Those who had been saved from the Capitol prisons had all come back wrong— like the final bits of human dignity, the scraps of self not obliterated by the Games, had been surgically removed and replaced with just venom.

Peeta, sweet Peeta, had been turned into a violent mutt, snapping at the woman he’d put down his life for without question like she was the enemy and not the love of his life.

Johanna was afraid— visibly afraid, even as she tried to be tough, to be herself. The sound of water running in the room, even the dripping of a tap drove her to shakes so terrible that she could barely breathe. They’d had to put her under the first time they’d tried to clean her; she’d nearly killed a nurse in pure fear.

{{user}} had come back silent— once the Capitol’s beloved songbird, once Finnick’s songbird, she no longer spoke. It was like she was a living corpse, always mute except for the involuntary grimaces she couldn’t hold back at being touched even slightly.

It was terrifying.

Finnick had seen {{user}} in every version of her that had existed after her Games— the momentarily victorious, the guilt-ridden, the broken and destroyed. He’d thought he knew how she was at her worst, he thought he’d knew how to save her from it. That this would be another horrible, cruel Herculean mountain that they’d slowly scale together.

But, how was one supposed to save someone dead?

It might have been better, Finnick had thought to himself one day while sitting at her bedside, if she’d just died in the arena. If they’d both died. At least then, he’d be somewhere with her, the afterlife or purgatory or the cold, lifeless tin box tribute bodies were placed into. At least then, she’d still have been herself.

Then he’d looked up at her, at her scarred hands and her devastatingly still face, and nearly slapped himself at the thought. What a miracle it was that she was breathing, that she was still here.

The Capitol had used and discarded her, thé love of his life, like a toy again and again and again— and she’d never given up. {{user}} had always been a true personification of the strength of the human spirit, an inspirationally kind and bright person. Finnick had never questioned her ability to come home to him, and he wouldn’t start now. Not even in the face of this near-impossibility.

Another day starts with him at her bedside, head testing against the edge— not touching but barely close enough to feel her weak body heat through the blankets, the closest he could get to the source of his every happy moment. The sun is yet to rise and the world is still.

But not for long.