Title: No Light

Pairing: Finnick x Katniss

Rating: T

Setting: Somewhere around Mockingjay and after

Summary: Sometimes, she swore she could hear the ocean when he talked.

Author's Note: My very first Oneshot in English, feel free to point out any mistakes!

In many ways, Finnick could consider himself lucky. He didn't feel lucky, but he knew that, if he had been in Katniss' place, he wouldn't have survived the first few hours. The rescue mission had failed. They got Annie – his Annie and the name burned like acid on his tongue - out, but she was injured, badly, and when she finally fell into his arms all he saw was the red of her clothes. He had never seen the colour on her since she survived the games. And when the red stained his hands and the grey cloth on his body and his hair as she clung onto him, the state of bliss faded as sudden as it came.
The others knew that there was no place on this earth for her anymore, that's why they never stopped him, that's why his frantic cries for help were all but ignored. Or so he thought.
The last whisper on her lips would haunt his dreams for years to come.
"Finnick – Finnick, please don't look back." So much love in her eyes and the ghost of a smile (and then his mad girl was gone). She hadn't covered her ears when he cried.

They shot Peeta the minute they were discovered. Supposedly, it was an accident, because with Peeta, they lost the one grip on Katniss Everdeen they had. Finnick didn't like to imagine how she managed. At least he could hold his Annie one last time, at least they buried her properly, Peeta had no such luck. Peeta was but a faint memory.
And yet, Katniss' pain burned in vivid colours (Just like all those dresses her stylist designed long ago, Finnick thought sarcastically).

It wasn't until weeks later that he saw, really saw her again.

She sat beside him on the cold floor of his hospital room, silent, but not as dead as he had assumed her to be. They didn't speak, so he tied knot after knot after knot (wrap. turn. tighten), never looking up, when finally – to him, it felt like days – she moved, leaning in ever so carefully and kissing him on the top of his head. His hands stilled to wrap themselves around her body and he felt it shaking violently with sobs, although they never seemed to reach her voice.

When they first kissed, it was out of desperation. Agony lingering on their lips, rage within their touch. Unspoken fears threatening to eat them up alive (alive? So barely). They snapped out of it when Finnick pressed her back against the wall and she panicked because for a moment she thought she was back in the arena.
He taught her how to breathe steadily again.

Katniss hadn't even so much as stepped into her room since she spent her nights in his arms. It didn't stop the nightmares, but it soothed the pain that came afterwards. After all, he was the only one who could understand, truly understand. As they lie awake in the dark – so much like his days with Annie back in District Four, he mused – and he asked her to sing and she asked him to tell her stories, him falling asleep to the sound of her voice filling the air, songs of her district that he knew by heart soon enough, her falling asleep to the magical places he took her, of mermaids and fishermen and the sea. The fairy tales that washed ashore when he was still a child.
Sometimes, she swore she could hear the ocean when he talked.
Finnick feared the nightmares more than she did, so it was no surprise when he heard her calling the name, "Peeta, Peeta, Peeta!" and then sometimes turning into "Finnick".
He felt his heart ache and held her closer.

Kisses they shared chased away the loneliness, brought comfort, brought warmth and all the things missing from the life of a victor, a survivor. It didn't take that long for Finnick to realize that this strange way of escaping turned into something he could only describe as joy. Joy?, he thought. When was the last time he so much as pronounced that word in his head? With Annie, he was sure.
Guilt washed over him like waves of the district he left behind. Annie, his Annie. What would she say if she could hear his thoughts now, betrayal in every fibre of it, what would she – except. He knew what she would say, she said it before after all.
Don't look back.
The smile that grazed Finnick's lips tasted like decay. Well, he hadn't smiled in a while.

It wasn't about the similarities (they did share some and he winced when she brushed her hair with that absent look on her face – it reminded him), he refused to believe that when the doctors told him, when Johanna told him (thank god she's alive, thank you, thank you, thank you).
"She is not a distraction!", he heard himself blurt out one time too many. She wasn't though. He didn't use her to get over Annie, because he couldn't get over her, just like Katniss couldn't get over Peeta.
Instead, they coped, they cried, they screamed, they healed. Slowly, ever so slowly. Together.

Maybe it wasn't about the similarities but the things that both of them made him feel.

Annie had been his everything. Blinding his darkness, drowning the pain, setting his heart on fire when he so much as looked at her. With her, he never feared the night, the dreams, the suitors.
And Katniss? The strip of moonlight getting lost in the woods when it was cloudy, the glimmer on open water, that spark you once saw out of the corner of your eyes (funny how he called her a spark when she was The Girl on Fire).

If Annie was light, Katniss was hope.