Chapter Text
Internally, Finnick knew the mission was a horrible idea, he always knew anything District 13 brewed up was a bad idea, and if he knew anything in this mess of a world, it was that his intuition was always correct.
He barely manages a full breath before the sharp, cloying scent of roses overwhelms his senses—so potent it stifles even the stench of the sewer… or perhaps that was just him. He retches and mutters a curse under his breath, vowing that if he ever made it out of these godforsaken tunnels, he’d burn every last rose bush in Panem to ash.
Keyword: IF.
Right now, he’s got a pack of mutts tearing after him and a traumatised Peeta to look out for. He would chuckle at the irony—some things never change—But a mutt lunges too close for comfort, and he bares his teeth like a cornered animal. Hopeless, yes—but still fighting. He has to survive. He has a wife waiting for him, a life worth clawing back to.
So maybe if becomes when.
Between his moments with the mutts and hauling Peeta’s sorry ass toward the ladder, he begins to question the keyword once again. It’s not until he throws his trident and finishes cursing himself for it—or until Katniss finishes her ascent up the ladder- that it sinks in: Katniss is going to have to burn the bushes in his memory.
The first mutt sinks its teeth into his neck. He draws his blade—so much lighter and less elegant than the trident—but efficient. Desperate. He slashes wildly, fending off five, ten, maybe more. It hardly matters. They're everywhere.
He recalls thinking the tears in his eyes might be from relief—he’s the ladder climbing, escaping from sewer purgatory—but in truth, it’s sewer water. Or blood. Or both. It soon becomes irrelevant in the muddled mess of blood, waste, and whatever chemicals were in those tunnels. The claws dig deeper into his back, and his strength buckles. He collapses onto the platform, dragged back down into the filth that will become his tomb.
The situation was bad enough, but there were two things Finnick could be happy about: the fact that he finally got the girl and that it was a fast death. Unfortunately for him, the latter couldn’t be any further from the truth.
His screams drown out the snarling of the lizard mutts, and in the haze of pain, he spots Katniss’ escape just before a mouthful of jagged teeth finds the same spot in his neck that Annie used to kiss tenderly. With what little awareness he has left, he mourns the memory—then he’s pulled beneath the putrid water, buried under the weight of monsters, all of them thirsty for his blood. He makes peace with dying quickly, begging for Katniss to end it already, before a flash of light brings him one step closer to Mags.
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Dimly, Finnick opens his eyes not to the sight of District 4’s golden shores or Mags’ gentle smile, her quilt wrapped around her. But he finds complete darkness. Thick, impenetrable darkness and the nauseating stench of roses bred with coppery blood. He coughs up bile and the remnants of rations eaten what feels like a lifetime ago, wincing as his battered chest heaves in protest.
He tries to snort, but ends up choking instead. He closes his eyes, silently praying that he wakes up somewhere better—perhaps a coconut waiting for him, some fish pie and Mags’ weathered hand patting his cheek, greeting him in the abyss.
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He wakes up to a growling stomach, his hand weakly batting some flies away from his face. He gingerly touches his shoulder and gags when he feels some chunks of lizard flesh glued onto his mangled neck.
There are scabs now, coarse along his skin; at least his body is making a sorry attempt to heal itself. His stomach grumbles in rebellion, and he opens his eyes once more to darkness. The smell of roses becomes thicker, sickly-sweet and horrid among the sewage. He vaguely smells what he thinks is decomposing chicken from one of the chunks of litter strewn about his darkened room. He tells himself it’s a hallucination, because it somehow becomes appetising in his sorry state.
In a dazed state, Finnick can recall how much he hated chicken, those pesky animals, he remembers the capitol parties he would be forced to attend, the endless amounts of food those people would splurge on, how some people in the districts were starving, yet half the food would go wasted, forgotten when the spotlight was on him, the ‘Capitol Darling’ everyone called him.
If they can see him now, half-dead in a sewer, forgotten like their scraps, where he was once shown around like some trophy.
His stomach grumbles; he would kill for some chicken. Even if Cesar Flickerman, that madman, fed him live, in front of the Capitol. He’d even welcome squid—rubbery, foul, impossible squid—if it meant survival. He’d blacken his fingers with ink and call it a feast.
Maybe the hunger will be the thing that kills him. Or maybe the thirst, although he hasn’t been at all thirsty this whole ordeal. Finnick will blame it on the moist environment he found himself in. Perhaps the wounds become infected, and that’ll finish him off, or he’ll impale himself on the trident he lost to the mutts. Maybe more mutts are sent in, and they finish the job.
By this point, if the rebels survived, that is, Annie would be informed of his passing, he knows that Johanna would be right beside her—cursing him out and mourning him all the same. The love of his life and his best friend, he was so lucky to be loved by them.
Finnick smiles at the thought of Annie, his beautiful, sassy, funny, caring girl. As long as she’s safe, he can die in peace. But he aches to see her one more time.
Deep down, he knows that he shouldn’t cling to the hope that someone will come get him, after all—for all the rebels know, he should be dead alongside the mutts he finds riddled around himself. Katniss is efficient, and if he weren’t in this predicament, he too would be convinced she did a thorough job of exterminating all the mutts in these tunnels.
He wishes he had died alongside the mutts.
But the hunger constantly reminds him that he is alive, and he loathes the constant nagging it brings. His jaw aches for something, anything to chew on, but aside from the mirage of chicken and the steady odour of rotting roses and muck, he comes back emptier than he woke up.
A desperate growl comes out of him, and he rolls over, a plea for death on his lips.
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The smell of roses is suffocating. Every breath he takes drives him to the brink of insanity as the scent suffocates him in a sweet, floral poison. When he opens his eyes the next time around, something changes—he swears he can see the outline of the platform he’s been residing on for the duration of his time. More striking, though, are the chunks of grey matter nearby, glistening faintly and releasing that dreadful floral odour.
Finnick cries in joy when he realises they’re edible. Or close enough. The texture is reminiscent of squid—save the ink—instead, it’s just an oily substance that squelches with each bite.
It reminds him of fish and even chicken, but the rose morphs into a sort of citrus as he loses himself to hunger.
He doesn’t question it. He devours it, piece after piece, tearing into them with urgency. The scent of roses shifts into citrus, and he lets his imagination take over reality. When he finally stops, only rubbery skins remain—like the scales of something once alive. He pushes them aside and collapses into the dark once more, his belly warm and heavy.
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He can’t recall the moment when he ate through the leather of the chunks like it was the skin from a fish—or when he started to see more than just his platform—but the tunnel as a whole and the mangled ladders above. He claims that he’s always been able to smell the distant breeze of the open Capitol, faint, distant over the oppressive scent of the sewers.
But he remembers when he regained enough energy to stand up, taking his first steps like he was a toddler again. He remembers looking up at the ladder that the rebels escaped from, the very one that spelled his death—except he wasn’t dead—as he felt the determination brewing in his bones, stacking up the debris from the explosion—creating a makeshift plateau. He recalls the rush of hope coursing through his veins as he finally grabbed the cold metal bar and lifted himself up from the confined space that was to be his grave.
Finnick could smell freedom in the air; he knew he was alive—and his intuition was always correct.