Ocean Eyes - Finnick Odair

Fifty

It's not a relief for Marissa when she wakes in the Capitol's dazzling white hospital. Her skin is in agony, blistered and obliterated by the fiery blast that consumed her. Her lungs don't get enough oxygen when she breathes in, and her eyes struggle to stay open against the harsh lights. Morphling intoxicates her bloodstream, but it's not enough to dull the pain. Nothing is.

Her body has burned an inch within its life, Mira is gone, and nobody has been to visit her. Not Finnick or Peeta or Annie or Mags. She wonders if they're even alive. Maybe the fire burned Finnick and Peeta to death. Maybe they're just more lives she's taken. They were by the barricade because of her. She doesn't even know if the two Capitol children she tried to save survived the delayed explosion.

One glance around the room confirms at least one of her questions. There's a smaller bed beside hers, and in it lays the small boy whom she had carried out of the barricaded zone. He's wearing a small hospital gown, but Marissa can see his body is heavily bandaged. His face, like hers, is unscathed apart from a few minor burns or scrapes, and his eyes remain closed, deep in a drug-induced sleep.

"You're lucky, you know," a woman announces loudly beside her. She jumps, startled by the woman, whose presence she was unaware of, and turns to see a doctor. "The flames didn't touch your face or eyes, and your lungs are healing nicely. You saved that little boy's life too. Your body shielded him from the worst of it."

Marissa doesn't reply. Nothing about her situation feels lucky.

"Your husband is in the next room. He's been asking about you ever since he woke," the doctor continues to chatter anyway. Marissa's eyes widen with relief after hearing that Finnick is alive and awake. "He got some pretty nasty burns too. Not as bad as you, though. We'll have him good as new in no time. There won't be a mark on him."

"There was a little girl," Marissa finally says, her voice barely even a whisper.

"Oh, she's the same as him. She's got some pretty horrific burning, but nothing we can't patch up. Her parents are with her," the nurse informs her, and she furrows her eyebrows.

"What about his parents?"

"He's been identified as Theodore Laurier," the doctor replies. "His parents haven't come forward yet, and he has no other living relatives. If his parents died during the war, then he'll probably go into care."

The healing process after this is fairly slow and painful, they have to replace her burns with new skin, and they told her it was a skin graft. Eventually, Marissa's skin toughens up enough for her to stand moving around in the bed and have a proper duvet on top of her. She spends most of her time talking to the little boy, although he's only two, so they aren't particularly intellectual conversations. Marissa mainly just tries to distract him from the pain of his burns and calm him down when he's upset.

She is allowed visitors now that her condition is improving, and Mags is the first one to walk in through the door.

"Mags," Marissa's voice shakes, and her eyes well with tears at the sight of the woman, who has been her mother for most of her life. Mags sits down on a chair beside Marissa's bed and reaches out, offering her hand for Marissa to take. She gently holds Mags' hand with her bandaged-up fingers, trying her best not to apply too much pressure as it's still painful for her to touch things.

Mags offers her a small smile laced with sympathy and despair as she breaks into tears.

"Mira is gone," Marissa wails and Mags nods solemnly. She holds Marissa's hand while the girl cries until the redhead cannot cry anymore and reaches into her pockets, fishing out a small hard-boiled sweet, which she places in the girl's hand.