"You're still so beautiful, really." This sentence keeps replaying in his head, your voice saying those words keeps reverberating in his head, like an echo as distant as it is reassuring.

Finnick tightens his arms around you, he doesn't know how you discovered him, and when he realized you had discovered what lay behind the glittering success of the Hunger Games victors, the darkness and monsters that lurk behind perfectly human masks, he was ashamed; he didn't want you to find out, and if you had to, he didn't want you to find out him in someone else's bed.

He remembers begging you to listen to him, remembers the sound of his heart beating so fast, as if it wanted to burst out of his chest, remembers the tears in his eyes that matched yours. Remember the pain, the anger, and the disgust painted on your face when he spoke, but for once... They weren't directed at him.

He doesn't know what drove you to stay by his side, he who constantly dances on the razor's edge, he who is a broken boy, a tired and broken soul, a heart that beats by inertia and for those few loved ones he protects despite doing so causing him all this suffering. And yet... And yet despite everything, you stayed. You saw the good; you knew Finnick before his Hunger Games, you saw his Hunger Games and the consequences they had on his psyche and his heart, you saw the aftermath and discovered the truth... He hid it from you for years—he won at fourteen, and now, both you and he are eighteen—and yet you stayed.

And he will always be grateful to you for that; To love him enough to understand that he doesn't want to hurt you, but rather protect you even if it means suffering. You are his world, the only one—after his family—who remains for him, incorruptible in the face of envy and forced absence, since he can't deny himself when his presence is needed/wanted. You are still here, and he will do everything to ensure you stay—treating you like the princess and sweetheart you are in his aquamarine eyes—and protecting you from all harm.