there is nobody deserving here [jodie&flynn]

She was supposed to grow up into a spitfire.

And she was going to, really. Fingers running over the crown of her head, splitting her hairline into a ribbon river as a nervous habit. It was fluid, the movement, with the way she'd tip her head back and laugh, the corners of her mouth pulled back in delight. In school, her classmates loved to make her smile because it felt rare, precious somehow in a way none of them ever knew how to put their finger on.

But when one of your best friends makes it back home from the games, people start looking at you different, like you're not the nobody they pinned you to be. When Flynn came back, the other kids in school started looking at her and the others like they were something worth seeing for the first time, instead of the misfits all of them had always been.

Jodie never really recovered from that.

All her life, she'd only ever been looked at, examined and dressed up or down and had been made so aware of herself and her body at such a young age. A few years ago there was a disconnect, where she realised that her body had never felt much like her own. It'd always just been a vessel and when she looked in the mirror there was less a concept of self than there was a slow, burning hatred for the face that peered out at her from under uneven bangs.

A week or two after Flynn's win, she showed up to class with her hair shorn down to her skull and she got really good at turning away whenever anyone tried to make eye-contact.

"How's Flynn doing even?" people would ask her, like she had personal access to her friend's trauma.

"Can't say," she'd answer, because it was the truth. Even in the rare moments that it was just her and Flynn, Jo would freeze up, better to sit in silence than ask stupid questions. Maybe's she's never had to survive an arena but for the first decade of her life, she lived in a house that maintained a constant state of violence.

How could anyone ever be okay again?

And she's better at letting people slip through her fingers than holding on to them. After they graduated high school, Jodie's always dutifully showed up to as many club gatherings as she could but it's been awhile since anyone's caught her one-on-one. She and her mom have never had much money though, when they ran away from home all those years ago, they had nothing but a suitcase each.

There's no college fund for Jodie, nothing set aside to cover more than rent and groceries each month, but she's never expected more than that. Even as everyone else was talking about their offers or where they wanted to go for school after grad, Jodie sat silent, a cleaning job already lined up for overnights at the hospital to supplement the serving job she'd begged for at the diner.

Doesn't leave a lot of room for sleep or friends, working double like that, but Jo just grit her teeth and bore the exhaustion that came with it in silence. She'll always choose sleepless nights over missing out on being together with everyone, even if they're just doing the same old thing they've always done.

Maybe it's not the life she dreamed of, or the one her mother and teachers wanted for her, but it's the life she has and so she holds it all carefully.

But then Flynn's letter came home ahead of him after he lost his tributes in the ninety-third. As the rest of them all sat together in silence in the diner after reading it, Jodie could feel something splintering.

In the left side of her chest, maybe.

Of all the people who could eventually throw her away, Jodie hadn't bet on Flynn.

And when the train came back with him on it, she did try to stay away from his place. It wasn't like it was all that hard to do so, Victor's Village is about as far as you can get from the trailer park, but she still found herself taking the long way home after finishing her cleaning shift at the hospital.

Because there's a side to Jo that was born to be the most destructive parts of a storm even though she's always done her best to be the eye. She's never liked being told what she can and cannot do.

This morning there's a container of chicken stew under her arm she made last night and a leftover cookie from the diner in her pocket. From her experience, people in mourning are terrible at feeding themselves and if Flynn doesn't see her, she's not really ignoring his letter.

Her body aches, shoulders sore and the tips of her fingers raw from scrubbing blood off the tile in a surgery room. A couple nights ago she ran into an old classmate from high school, now a student at the hospital, looking pristine in light blue scrubs.

"Jodie? I didn't know you went here too!"

"I don't."

She approaches Flynn's house. It's the first time in a while that she's seen the blinds open. When they were younger, the dares club used to ride their bikes through Victor's Village and dare each other to ding-dong-ditch.

Jo smiles a little to herself and thinks about tripping Flynn's doorbell just to run away. The urge is silly and fleeting. It's childish, from a time when all of them had a lot less on their shoulders.

She doesn't do it, at least not this time. It's so strange, so bittersweet growing older. When they were kids they used to talk big about one of them winning the games and having a big house for them all to share. Luca even drew a layout of the rooms, Jodie's was at the back of the house, looking out over the garden. But Jo still wakes up every evening on the pull out bed that becomes a table when not in use in her aunt's trailer and people drift apart.

She puts the meal down on Flynn's stoop and places the cookie on top. There's a smily-face drawn onto the pastry bag in black sharpie and she hesitates, thinks about knocking for half a second, then starts to back away to go home.

Then the door opens and there's Flynn.

It's been almost a month since any of them have seen him, must have been the yearly hangout before he had to get on the train. Jodie had sat beside Luca, shoulder to shoulder and had to work hard to keep from dozing off. The memory was warm but blurry and out of focus.

He looks at Jodie and she looks at him and she can't help the blush that tries to spread across her cheeks at being caught. There's still a tug of fear there, deep down, when she's found doing something she shouldn't be doing. There's the memory of a hand wrapped too tight around her arm and pain and her heart nearly forgets to beat.

But there's the hurt too, of Flynn's letter and the way he chose to end their friendship as if it was entirely up to him. There's the heat beneath the skin, the spitfire that Jo was born to be digging her heels in stubbornly.

And it's been awhile since she's seen him, been longer still since she's been alone with Flynn. She missed him, she has for some time.

But he looks terrible, faded and colourless and that rends her heart in a whole new way. She's seen what grieving can do to a body, watched the slow wasting away first hand. Her mouth twists into a firm line.

"No," she says, "Everyone deserves to eat, especially victors, you're an endangered breed." Then she points down at the cookie, still sitting on top of the container. There's a spot of oil from the butter staining the wax paper, "Brown butter chocolate chip," she says firmly.