save me from myself . elegant

For a brief moment, he'd felt relieved.

Then a twisted, vile thing had taken root in the pit of his stomach and Finn had leaned back against the hallway's wall. Linus and Elijah hardly seemed like a fair fight. Then again, neither had his with Annabelle. He still wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to win. A year ago, he was hardly a fighter, his hands were still soft and he could barely run two laps without needing to stop. She probably could have destroyed him if she'd wanted to, but she hadn't.

Finn still didn't know why and the only person who might have had an idea about it was dead. That should have been a relief too but it hadn't been. They'd spent nearly a year as enemies and when Meredith had left for the games, things had hardly been resolved. She'd fixed up the hole in his hand and had left a vague emptiness that Aster had quickly been dropped into. It was as if both Anna and Mer had never existed at all.

Finn knew it was just the Strauss way and he hated himself thinking like that, for becoming complacent with it. He didn't want to be one of Vincent's little killing machines or Olivia's perfect kid, smiling and waving at the cameras at her election events. When he looked in the mirror, that was exactly what he saw.

In the end, he'd do nothing about it.

Apathy had grown over any trace of indignation that he had left. The Strauss family was the first to keep him for longer than a few months and he'd grown comfortable. All he had to do was last another year and then he could leave.

That night, he lay awake. The house was silent in the same way that it was last year the night before the duel. A year ago, he'd been laying in this same bed, a film of cold sweat over his skin. Finn had been thinking about having to fight a girl who was meant to be his sister.

Now there were no nerves, no anxiety attacks, just a quiet calm weighing him down. He was tired but he couldn't sleep. The certainty that one of his brothers would be dead within twenty-four hours was a strange sort of responsibility because there was nothing he could do to stop it.

There was no choice, there'd just be another unmarked grave in the woods behind the house and another ghost to haunt the old house.

So Finn got up, moonlight lighting his way through the Strauss home. It was so late that it was almost early, a time in between the two so he wasn't expecting anyone else to be up.

The unmistakable sound of someone crying came from the training room and Finn paused. He turned on his heel, content with leaving them to it. It wasn't his place to comfort anyone and he doubted anyone wanted kind words from him anyway. It wasn't as if he'd ever been the most social. Then he heard a girl's voice, familiar of course.

Aster.

He turned again and walked quietly into the room. She was curled within herself, a withered rose. A spear was on the ground in front of her. Finn gazed at her folded form for a long moment. He'd forgotten how to comfort. He didn't know if he still could.

He stepped forwards and leaned over her to pick the spear up. "Odd time to train," he said, voice a little hoarse from hours passed without having spoken, "Couldn't sleep either, huh?"

He twirled the spear deftly in his hand, a movement he wouldn't have been able to do easily the year before thanks to Victor's punishment.

Finn placed the butt of the spear on the matt and held a hand out to Aster. "Come on," he said.

He'd forgotten that he could be scary, but her flinch reminded him. For awhile, after he'd killed Annabelle, he used to flinch when he saw himself too.

The boy in the mirror with sunken eyes from lack of sleep and exhaustion on his bones was a far cry from the Finn that stood over Aster. His skin had become deeply tanned over the summer and he'd put on muscle weight as well. He didn't look the part of the starving artist anymore, not even like a kid desperate enough to murder. He looked like a career, the pride of a district, but he was different.

Finn had actually killed someone.

Aster's hand was soft in his. Her softness mismatched his roughness and Finn wondered if she noticed it. His hands had been softer once, sure a callous on the pad of his pointer finger and where his pencil rubbed against his hands, but not like hers. It was as if he'd worn away the kid he used to be.

"It's ok," he lied.

If she didn't know how to fight she was going to have to learn, or she was right, it'd be her in the ring next year. Part of Finn was alright with that. It was one more person between him and being back there himself. Better her than him. The thought made him pause, since when had he been so cold?

The house was killing him, the kid he used to be.

"I'll help you," he promised, "With all of that, okay?"

The words came unbidden from a quiet well that he didn't know he still had. Finn meant it though, much to his surprise. He'd never have thought that he'd be good enough to help himself let alone anyone else. He'd learned a lot about himself, about what he could really do if he tried. Maybe he could even defy Olivia if he put his mind to it.

God, it would be beautiful to see that woman on her ass, shock all over that perfectly drawn on face.

"Come on new girl," he said and pulled her along the floor towards the side door out to the training grounds, "We're getting out of here for a bit."

The early morning was crisp, still untouched by the sun. Finn shrugged his sweater off and handed it over to Aster as he led her away to the far off tree line. Sleep was already out of the question and the rest of the day beckoned with crooked, wooden arms.

"What do you want to know?" he asked as he scrambled over a log. Finn turned and offered her his hand again. He stopped for a moment, fighting a grin as he held a finger up, "The one thing I can't explain is Izzy, that thing's an enigma."

Finn gave Aster a moment to collect herself. The cold morning air was pressing against his cheeks, waking him up a little after a restless night. There was a slightly sick feeling at the back of his throat and a heaviness to his eyelids, his body was complaining from the early rise. He didn't mind it though, crisp autumnal sun tenderly brushing the tree tops and a blank blue sky slowly rose to meet them. It was summer's last kiss.

Aster spoke finally and Finn dropped his gaze away from the forest canopy to meet her eyes. She was shorter than him, not by a lot but still. She seemed smaller than when she'd arrived in the summer, less bright. He knew that it should bother him, that he should be figuring out a way to stop the machinery they all found themselves trapped in but he couldn't see a way out, not yet.

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. The question had been too broad. It was hard to say why anyone did anything, least of all the Strauss siblings. It'd be easy to just say what they were all thinking; the siblings had to be insane, especially Victor. Finn didn't really think that was true though.

"Why does anyone do anything?" he asked, "Greed. They want a victor for the fame and fortune, they've just figured out a way to manufacture one. Torture us until we're half-mental or brainwashed and then send us into the games. If we come back, great, if we don't, like-" he paused. It wasn't that he missed her, no.

He just missed what they were supposed to have. She should have been his family, instead, she'd been his enemy. That was what the Strauss siblings did, they adopted children and ran them through their training machine until they were more metal than flesh. That's what Meredith had become by the time Finn had arrived, made of flesh but hollow, an empty husk.

"Like Meredith," he continued, "Then at least the Strauss name still goes down in history, right?"

Finn gazed out into the woods, that familiar tug of needing to search stck firmly down in his boots. The Strauss family had been burying its bodies out in the woods for years and even though it'd been nearly two years, Finn still had this need to find Annabelle's unmarked grave.

An impossible feat, simple enough to distract him from the horrors of their household. Finding her grave wouldn't absolve him of his sin but it didn't stop him from searching, from wanting her forgiveness.

With Meredith dead, there was no one left to forgive him. She'd died hating him and he couldn't fault her for that but it still seemed like a betrayal that Mer had gone off and died like that. She'd left all of the weight of Annabelle's death on his chest.

"Me?" he repeated softly, having gone a little bit far away for a spell, "Me."

It was an odd question. Finn had just arrived at the Strauss house two years ago and no one had ever bothered to ask him where he'd come from. "No one wanted me," he said truthfully, "Before this place, I'd pretty much switch foster homes and orphanages every few weeks. No one wanted a poet."

He wouldn't call himself one still, the title no longer fit him. It'd been months since he wrote a line of anything beautiful and weeks since he'd sketched even for practice. He didn't think he wanted to be an artist anymore, the concept felt like a piece of clothing that no longer fit him.

Aster looked away but Finn caught the way her lips trembled.

"I'm sorry about your mum," he said, "Really. I know what that's like, we all kind of do."

His tone was gentle but firm. Every kid in the strauss house was a runaway, an orphan or both. Everyone had been there but that didn't mean Aster didn't deserve the time to grieve. Finn gestured for Aster to follow him again and walked in silence for a few minutes, the woods slowly growing thicker around them until the sky was harder to see. He stopped in a small clearing, a small log worn a little on its side from where he often sat.

"We're deep enough for you to scream and no one will hear you," he promised.