red. { finnterstellar, day 6 }

well no one’s gonna fix it for us
no one can

I don’t know how long we danced for.

Between falling over each other and filling silences with laughter before we became too tired to keep moving, time passed quick enough for me to forget my own worries about abandonment. Each time he fell I would help him back up because I think that’s what friends do. I don’t really know because I never had any friends before the Games.

When I do speak between childish giggles, my voice is nothing more than a whisper.

‘Finn, thank you.’

And I don’t know if he hears me in those moments, but I like those moments of serenity, when we’re dancing to an irregular beat and our footsteps don’t make any sense but the world is much too perfect to be real.

‘Finn.’

The temptation of sleep in the hours before the Sun should have been rising is too much not to resist, and the eventuality of sleep is a welcome break from the rarity of happiness, for even though I don’t want it to end, I don’t want to waste it all now.

I fell asleep thinking how one of us had to make it out alive, remembering that no matter how long we lived in our world of fantasy for, we wouldn’t be safe forever.

I remember pain, sadness. How I had nothing back home to live for. That all I cared for was here with me. That living meant returning to a world without Finn, a world in black and white, because even though there is only darkness to surround us nothing has ever been more beautiful and colourful.

And then darkness.

♢

I woke to the sound of a cannon’s boom echoing across the arena, and terror swept through my body because even though I’m very much alive, it could have easily been my lifeless body the sound represented. But when I look at Finn, whose body is crouched by the side of the lake, the fear passes. We’re both alive.

We’re both still safe.

I lay still, listening to objects being tossed into the mercury liquid, waiting for the thud against the ocean floor that never comes, the lake is so viscous. ’No more weapons,’ he’d said, and if I wasn’t so at peace I’d stand up and walk to the edge, coming up next to Finn and throwing my axe just as his own weapons fell.

Somehow, in the darkness, I’d found a way to be happy, be lighter than I’d felt in a long time.

(Oh Stella, when will you learn?)

(Those things never last.)

’Stella?’

I turn to my side, searching for Finn’s face.

It’s there.

Illuminated by a silver blade.

I don’t register fear until I feel it slicing my leg away.

No, Finn.

And I scream so loud that I swear the ground shakes under my anguish, scream so loud that even Belle can hear despite being buried six feet under some part of District 11, scream so loud that I feel my vocal cords unravel until I’m left choking and gasping and trying to speak, but there’s no such success.

‘There is no forever, is there?’

I don’t want to hear him.

I don’t want to hear that voice I fell for, because I was right all along, he’s evil, a thief and a murderer, and I was a fool for believing we could be happy, for at least one more day.

(But that’s exactly what he’s saying, isn’t it?)

(There was never a happy ending to believe in.)

And there are more tears in my eyes, and I’ve cried a lake as big as this mercury-filled one to do anything else but nod right now. Nod through the stream of water pouring from my face, splashing to the ground and mixing with splatters of silver. Because he’s right. We don’t get a fairytale.

I nod, and it’s an action as conclusive as an illuminated face, a gliding body suspended in dance, a final breath.

It sounds like the end of the world. Calm, quiet.

Because that's how everything ends. A single second of peace.

Then nothing.

well no one’s gonna fix it for us
no one can

I need to move.

I need to speak.

I need to do something to remind myself I’m still alive, but it doesn’t feel like living when you’re being battered to pieces by someone you thought you loved.

The fucked up part is, I still do.

I need to speak, I need to, I need to ask him why, ask him so many things and finish stories that we never started. I need to tell him about Belle so he understands why I’m here. I need to learn about his home because I thought I’d be able to see it one day, and thank the people he loved more than me for making him so kind. But he’s not kind, and it doesn’t matter anymore. I know that I need to speak, I know that as well as I know Crusader should be here because he was the one who said he’d protect me even when I told him there was nothing I had to live for, but when I open my mouth all I can feel is a raw throat that doesn’t allow anything louder than a whisper to escape my lips.

‘I messed it all up.’

(No Finn, I did, I was the one who messed up because I believed we could make it out of here, or at least be safe. I messed it all up when I saved you. I messed it all up when I ran away with you the night we left Cha.)

(You don’t get to take this blame.)

‘I’m so sorry Stella.’

There’s no light to lead me to him, lead me away from him (I don’t know which is worse) but I can feel his gaze on my face and when he looks at me with the same eyes I drowned in as we drowned in our sins together, a part of me snaps.

It’s not rage, or anger. It’s not love, or forgiveness.

It’s acceptance.

So I listen to him, because if the last sounds to carry me from this world were the notes that made up his voice, that would be good enough.

‘But I have to fix this, trust me, I can.’

‘I can fix this.’

(Fix what? What is there to fix? We were safe, Finn, so safe, and even though I told myself to stop believing in happy endings and even though that stupid shell told me you’d leave me again, we were safe, and now we’re not.)

(And I still can’t find it in my schizophrenic heart to hate you.)

‘Am I going to die?’

I cringe as my throat closes up in pain, my scream surely damaging the vocal cords beyond repair. I cringe again for the ingenuous nature of my question. Of course I’m going to die. And even though I missed out on too many years of childhood and spent too long convincing myself I was a grown-up – that I didn’t need that youth – I don’t mind that I could be a five-year-old right now.

‘I don’t want to die alone, Finn.’

'I don't want to drown in this darkness.'

My voice is barely audible, but the lake behind us is still and there are no sounds except my own wheezes to disturb that same fucking silence I’d put up with for too long.

It hurts to speak, but I need to.

well no one’s gonna fix it for us
no one can

I never wanted to make it home.

I’m strong, I know that (or at least I used to know that, before I became a fool and cried every day a new piece of my heart was torn), but I’ve learnt that going back home would be a torture I couldn’t bear. I’d sit in an empty house with no one to love and no one to love me (Finn would be dead, you see), a crown upon my head that I didn’t deserve (I would have had to kill Finn, you see.)

I had never wanted to go back home, but these caves wouldn’t stand motionless forever, and I think they’re closing in on me now. It was that, or the clutch of Death around my throat, and I don’t think I’m ready to believe in that alternative just yet.

I wanted us to last, me and Finn. Not in a realm outside the arena, because we both knew that land was far from our reach. But I’d wanted to stay with him until the end, until four more cannons had resonated and there was only one last thing to do: send Finn back home. Because he’s gonna make it, I can feel it, he’s gonna make it out alive and I’ve been wrong about many things in my life but not this time. He’s gonna make it.

‘I promised I wouldn’t leave again, I promised that and I’m still here.’

You are.

Thank you.

‘It’s okay.’

I can’t even hear my own voice anymore.

‘It’s okay.’ It’s okay because it has to be, because we have to be, even though I’m dying and I can’t see where I’m swinging because pain sits behind my eyes and blurs with my tears. Pain that was much harder to deal with than the pain of losing family member after family member. I don’t care if that makes me selfish. Finn’s worth more than all of them.

‘It’s okay.’ I would say more, but I can’t. Physically, emotionally – I’m tongue tied with thousands of unfinished sentences buzzing around my mind, the stench of blood (this time it’s mine, truly mine, waterfalls of red red red) overpowering as it seeps between tiny crevices and empty spaces. I can’t see the liquid draining from my body, but I feel myself drowning in it – like a twisted nightmare that had come to life, no metaphors to prove otherwise.

Literal drowning, and my fingers touch the blood from the scratch on my thigh (no lower, because if you can’t see it’s gone, it doesn’t have to be.)

‘I won’t leave you in this darkness, not again.’

It’s okay.

I just needed to keep my eyes open. Keep them open a little longer, so that my eyelids didn’t shut and my last trace of light didn’t die out before I did. I wouldn’t die in darkness. The same darkness that had consumed Finn, and yet somewhere in the black I can still see his glowing outline.

It’s enough to guide me to where he stands, and my legs give way as I swing a weapon I don’t want to hold any longer.

(He’ll steal that one, too.)

attacks finn with axe

gZ9yBPs0200+11000

shallow cut on forehead - 4.5

His sword scares me.

My own axe scares me, but at least each of my swings is in defence and with half-hearted intent, no trace of malice. Because I couldn’t kill Finn, no, but he’s killing me even though he promised and his sword looks so terrifyingly close and I’m almost glad I can’t see his face because surely then I would truly lose the Finn I once knew.

I don’t want to be scared of Finn.

So I don’t be.

‘I’m glad, you’re here.’

(Why do you keep talking? He doesn’t care anymore – he never did.)

But that’s not fucking true.

What is true is that he does care, I’ve always known that, and what is true is that I am dying and I am sprawled across the ground and I am utterly hopeless and I love Finn Stoddard.

I don’t want to fight anymore.

‘It’s okay.’

And maybe if I say it enough, it will be.

‘Finn, I just don’t want to die alone.’

Even before I manage those eight difficult words, I know there will be no more.

No more words.