Mags Diver [D4 victor] (oldmermaid) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-05-05 05:13:00 |
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The night before the Reaping for the Third Quarter Quell, she has him promise he will find a way to go on without her. Mags knows she'll never make it out of the arena alive at her age and accepts it. Her death at the end of a long life will mean something this way. Perhaps she may even make Games history again as the first tribute to have her death credited to old age. But Finnick is such a good boy that he insists, with tears in his eyes, that they will make it out together. District 13 will save them along with the Mockingjay. This isn't like the other Games. And he will never abandon her, not after everything she's done for him, Annie, and everyone else. There must be a way. Neither of them would have won the first time if they didn't believe that. Even if they have promised to be willing to die to keep the rebellion's hope alive, victors have an uncanny ability to live against the odds. She simply shakes her head and smiles, touching his cheek with one hand. Ever since the stroke, she doesn't speak much anymore. But she never really has to with Finnick. She looks into his eyes, sea-green like hers, and points at the two of them, then Annie collecting sea glass further down the beach. There's no place in the future after the rebellion for old victors like herself. Her time has passed, and ancient relics like her are from another time best forgotten. And she's already known a life without the Games once before. It's time for others to have a turn. The new era won't be for her. But for Finnick and Annie, everything they have dreamed of together will finally be real. ----- Mags remembers when people used to tell her she was brave to volunteer for the little girl whose name had been drawn from the Reaping bowl that year. She had never bothered to learn the girl's name when she meant nothing to her and wasn't the reason she had stepped forward to take her place. She'd had no interest in saving lives then -- only taking them for fame and glory. This time, it's Annie Cresta's name on the slip of paper. And when the poor girl breaks down and screams, trapped in her own mind and knowing they would never let her and Finnick live and win together like Twelve's star-crossed lovers last year, Mags doesn't hesitate to volunteer again. This time, her only interest is saving lives -- both Annie's and hundreds she'll never know. She remembers who the real enemy is. And when she takes Annie's place, she ends the cycle of Four's children volunteering to kill and die she had begun. ----- 'It's no use. Can you take them both? Go on ahead, I'll catch up.' 'No. I can't carry them both. My arms aren't working.' Even in the dark, she sees the tears shining in Finnick's eyes, and she is reminded of the lost fourteen-year-old boy who had pleaded with the same look years ago in another arena. He knows what they both must do now, for each other and the rebellion. Peeta has to live or Katniss won't survive, and the rebellion needs the Mockingjay. But she knows understanding and accepting are two separate things to him. He has to let her go, and she needs to help him, as she has always done, one last time. Hesitation will get them all killed. She only hopes he can forgive her and himself in the years to come once this is all over. Their eyes meet, and he does not look away. This is good-bye. 'I'm sorry, Mags. I can't do it.' She has always been one for practicality over sentimentality. But she allows herself a passing moment to kiss him before she gives the last and only gift she has left for him. Something far more precious than the tens of sponsor gifts and the trident in another Games from another lifetime, but that couldn't be given until now. Keep going. You won't be alone. Finnick has already turned away and moved on with the others. She trusts her boy completely and knows he will succeed. There is no need for her to turn and watch over him. And when she walks into the fog, sixty-four years of borrowed life on the deaths of twenty-three children finally catch up to her. Her time is up. Mags is Four's first volunteer. And when the cannon sounds and the rebellion ends, she is also its last. |