21

YES.

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As soon as her feet stepped off the aircraft back in District 13, she felt Finnick's arms pull her in for an embrace. He had heard about the attacks and the hospital; he knew what she was going through and that she blamed herself for it all. Her own arms wrapped around his abdomen slowly and weakly before tightening around him, Evelyn's head burying in his shoulder.

"Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?" he motioned to the soot that stained her cheek. Finnick pulled her gently towards their shared room after she nodded her head. As soon as they stepped into the bedroom, Evelyn noticed that her daughter was nowhere to be seen, "Don't worry, Lina is with Octavius."

Finnick took a damp cloth and cleaned the dirt from her face, kneeling in front of her as she sat on the edge of their bed. He made sure to be gentle, but he found it easy. He loved Evelyn with all of his heart, he always had. Ever since his Victory Tour, he had eyes for her. It was hard to spot her from the crowd but when he did, he felt changed. Everyone knew the story of Helena and Dominic Miracle and how they went on to have six children.

Finnick and Evelyn stayed in silence as he cleaned her face, hands and arms from the soot until her lips parted and she broke through the quiet, "Yes."

"Yes?" he asked her, his eyebrow twitching.

"Yes. I will marry you, Finnick Odair," she smiled at him, tears wetting her eyelashes and happiness gleaming in her eyes.

Finnick dropped the towel and brought his lips on hers passionately, "I love you."

"I love you more," Evelyn pulled back to say but was just as quick to press her lips against his one more time, bringing him up onto the bed with her and smiling into the embrace, "But I have one condition," he hummed into the kiss and moved his lips against her jawline so she could talk to him, "I want to keep my name, or we could join them."

"Anything for you, my Miracle," he grinned and pulled apart, much to their dismay, and reached his calloused hand into his back pocket to pull out the golden ring, "You lost it in the arena but I found it not too far from your body by the lightning tree."

Evelyn graciously offered her left hand out for him, "I can't guarantee our safety but what I can guarantee is that I will be at your side every step of the way. I love you, Evie. With all of my heart and much more. I always have and I always will. All I have ever wanted is for us to be a family with Aelian. and who knows, maybe someday we can give her siblings. Evelyn Miracle, will you do the honour of becoming my wife?"

Evelyn felt the gold slip past her knuckles, "Finnick Odair, it would be an honour to be your wife."

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It wasn't long before Katniss was banging on Finnick and Evelyn's door to ask for Evelyn to join them on a trip to the ruins of District 12. Finnick insisted that he was ready to join them, but Evelyn persuaded him to stay with their daughter who Evelyn hadn't even seen since early that morning before they had left for 8.

"So, I want to start with you in front of the Justice Building, okay?" Cressida asked Katniss as they stepped off the aircraft in her home District. Jaime reached his hand up to help his sister down from the rear hatch. All eyes were on Katniss as she took in all the rubble and destruction, "Katniss, can you tell us what happened here?"

"We were standing right here," Gale spoke up instead of Katniss, telling his story once she stayed silent for too long. Katniss breathed a sigh of relief. "Watching the Games when you fired that arrow, the screens just went dark and nobody had any idea what happened. Peacekeepers forced us back into our homes, for maybe an hour the town was just dead quiet. Well past nine we heard their trucks pulling out, all of them. I know what that meant."

Evelyn span around on her feet to try and imagine how the District looked. It had been more than seven years since she had been in the District 12 towns and even then she was only there for a few hours. She could picture a community that was forced to be so close, made to watch out for each other because if not they would have been alone. 

District 12 was also an outlier district; nothing spectacular was expected to happen there. And much like District 11, her own district; everything spectacular did happen.

"Me and a couple of guys from the mines started pulling people from their homes to try and get them to the fence lines. A lot of people were scared of the forest so they headed up onto the road. To make a break for it that way," his finger pointed off somewhere and then he started to lead them in the direction he had pointed to, "915 of us had made it to the fence and we watched as bombers circled back to the road. They firebombed them as they ran away. 915 out of ten thousand."

That was when Evelyn saw it. Thousands of charred bodies that had been burned down to just skeletons and bones amongst the destroyed buildings. There was nothing left of District 12, nothing at all.

"I should have grabbed people, I should have dragged them with me," Evelyn heard Gale's voice break as he blames himself for their deaths, "Some of the kids I could've carried-"

"You saved so many people, Gale," Cressida cut him off and crouched down beside him, "Without you, there would be no District 12, not even the memory of it."

There wasn't much to say to that, all eight of them stood in silence to pay tribute to the lives lost. Katniss started to lead them off to her home which was coincidentally the only building left untouched in the whole of the District. The others left Gale and Katniss to go off into her home whilst they waited for them, talking lightly between them about the videos and the ruins around them.

"How about 11? What's left of your District?" Cressida asked Jaime from where she sat on the steps of Katniss' home.

Evelyn looked to her brother, they had very few conversations about the past. It wasn't just a trigger for him but also one for her too, they decided to focus on the future and the present instead, she gave him a nod as if to say she was ready to hear it. "Honestly, I have no idea. I was told by Haymitch to meet him by the river with Lina. At first I didn't trust him because he was another tribute's mentor, I thought it was a personal vendetta or something. He explained to me what was going on and he managed to lend me a few men to go and get the rest of my family out. But we were too late."

"What happened?" Pollux' brother, Castor, asked him with a soft tone of voice.

"Just as the house was in sight we heard the jets fly over. It all happened so fast," Jaime's voice cracked but he shook it off with his sister's hand on his back to support him. She, too, had tears brimming in her eyes, "The realisation didn't hit me until I saw the explosion. I don't know what they used to do it, but it was anything but fast. It was more fire than an explosion. So much fire. We ran to the door to try and open it in hopes of them being alive. But the doors were locked, the windows too. I heard them scream for help as they were burned alive. I heard my sister choke on the smoke and flames as she screamed for our parents. My brothers didn't stop fighting until the windows caved it. By then, it was too late."

"All I know is that it was just our house that was targeted by Snow and his men. He left every other building alone other our home," Evelyn informed them as her brother looked away from everyone's gaze, "It's Snow's sick way of telling me that I'm alone in this world."

"You aren't," Castor read his brother's sign language to translate for them all, "You have us."

Evelyn smiled at the mute man and nodded to him, "Thank you, Pollux, that means a lot to me."

Gale stepped out of the building before Katniss did, leaving the girl behind him in the kitchen who had a confused expression on her face, but Gale's expression was easy to read. Evelyn didn't want to pick up on it or to be the one to break the tension around them, so she kept quiet.

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They had all found themselves hiking to a nearby river to fill up their canteens and rest before they were to be collected by the helicarrier in a few hours. Evelyn had positioned herself above Pollux and Katniss, Gale sat with Jaime and talked in hushed tones above Cressida, Castor and Messalla who shared MREs around to the others.

"Here," Katniss passed one to Evelyn who took it with her left hand, the gold of her ring shining in the direct sunlight and catching her attention. The District 12 girl took Evelyn's hand and inspected the ring, "I thought you lost it in the arena?"

"I did, but it turns out that Finnick had it this whole time," she nodded and politely taking her hand back to open her bottle that had been filled with fresh water from the river.

"Didn't you wear it on your right hand before?" Katniss asked her as she pushed her hair from her face to see better, using her palm to block the sun from her face as she glared up at her. But Evelyn was silent. She and Finnick hadn't discussed if they were going to tell people and she definitely didn't want Jaime to know until she had thought of how to tell him, "Oh shit!"

"Shh," Evelyn shut Katniss up with a glare and motioned her head to her brother, "We don't want to tell people just yet, especially JJ."

Katniss' grin grew on her face, almost doubling in size, "Congrats."

"Thank you," she uttered with red cheeks and looking down at her bottle in embarrassment. Pollux nudged her as his own way to say congratulations, her own grin growing in size.

A bird flew down and landed beside the District 11 girl. Pollux pointed to the Mockingjay pin on his chest making Katniss nod, "Yeah, that's a Mockingjay."

Pollux placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled the same tune that Rue and Katniss used in their games; the one that Rue had taken from her own District that was used to signal that the working day was over. The bird mimicked the tune and flew off with its purple feathers glistening in the light. All around them, hidden in the trees, Mockingjay's repeated the tune.

She could see it on Jaime's face and she knew that her face was a mirror of her brother's. It sounded like home. 

"Well, that'll never shut up," Gale remarked, earning a snicker from Jaime.

Evelyn felt her lips tug downwards. "I should hope not."

Gale refused to meet her eyes as he sipped on his water.

Pollux tapped his fingers to his lips and pulled them away, "You want me to sing?" Katniss asked him, gaining a nod from the man.

There was a brief pause before Katniss opened her lips to sing a song.

It wasn't until the end of the first verse that Evelyn felt the colour drain from her face. There was a shiver that ran down her spine; clinging beneath the surface of her skin. 

How could she forget? She had told Octavius what to in the case of her death. But hadn't expected to make it out of that arena alive. She needed that fuse now more than ever. But who could she trust?

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