#Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ragingbookdragon · 5 months

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It feels like an impossible moment in life. One you never expect to come knocking on your door. And yet, it does. In the form of two men dressed in Royal Military uniforms. It storms the day of the burial. The grass is flooded with water from the sky and from eyes. Mud licks at ankles and heels, sinking feet into the deep green field covered in white stones. The world is suddenly so much darker, black and white, no color. They hold onto one another as the wind howls over the voices of the priest. Lightning begins to flash as the men load their rifles.

Twenty-one guns.

The first set cracks across the sky as they hand her the flag.

The second has her standing to her feet, dropping the flag to the ground. Mud smears on the fabric, staining the stark whiteness of it.

The third set echoes a ringing in her ears, so loud, so deafening. It’s all too much, too soon. Too hard to breathe as she trips over her feet, knees sinking into the soil as she crawls for the casket.

The lightning flashes in arcs across the sky, violent and booming. Thunder sounds like the shots of artillery as she sobs.

She wasn’t ready. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. He was supposed to come home safe. He was supposed to come home. He was supposed to—

She bolts upright in the bed with another thundering crack, a gasp tearing through her as she looks at the window across the room. Rain beats against the window as it pours like a typhoon outside. The man begins to stir beside her, and she looks down, wide eyed and breathing deeply as she takes in the tuffs of blond hair sticking out from under the covers.

Slipping from under the covers, she flinches at the chilled floor against her bare feet as she pulls on the thin robe and escapes the bedroom. The power is out, evident to the deadened tableside lamp beside their hall that is always on. The bolts illuminate the shadows in the opened kitchen and living room as she clicks on the gas stove and sets a kettle on.

A hand massages her chest as she gets a cup and some chamomile tea with honey. The stretches of the nightmare still ebb in her mind as she tries to relax. Tries to remind herself that he came home the night before last. A few scraps and bruises, but still whole and alive. Still there.

The kettle begins to scream and she’s quick to pull it off and pour the steaming water into her cup. She sets the kettle aside and stares into her reflection as the steam wafts up into her face. It was just a nightmare; she tries to remind herself.

But what if it was a premonition?

What if it was her future?

What if the next mission he came home in a box?

What if—

“Love?”

His voice startles her, and she practically jumps a foot in the air as she whirls and stares at him with wide eyes. “Simon,” she whispers.

He knows. He doesn’t have to ask to know what she’s seen. He knows a night terror when he sees one. His hand is soft against her cheek, gently caressing her skin to jaw, warm, firm fingers at the back of her neck. “Bed was cold without you.”

“Sorry,” she murmurs, and looks anywhere but his face. “I…I just…I was—”

“The storm wake you up?”

She looks up at him for a moment; he’s giving her the chance to keep the dream to herself. “Yeah. Scared me awake.” She keeps most of it to herself. “Scared me out of an even scarier dream. One where I’m alone.”

He doesn’t have to ask to know; he gently lifts his other hand to her face, cups her cheek and softly kisses her forehead before folding her into his chest. He’s warm, like a furnace and she slips her hands under his sweatshirt to feel his skin beneath her palms, feels his heartbeat in his back, strong and steady.

“’m here, love,” he murmurs against her head. “Not goin’ anywhere anytime soon.”

“Promise?” the tears sting the corners of her eyes, and she digs her face into his sweatshirt.

“Mhm.” He wraps one arm around her back, the other taking the cup of tea. “Let’s get back to bed, yeah?”

“Okay,” she whispers, and lets him lead her back to their room, holds the cup as she gets back in bed and pulls the covers to her chest before handing her the mug. He crawls into the bed beside her, lays down on her lap, his head to her chest. “Don’t go anywhere I can’t follow. Okay, Simon?”

His head tips up and he meets her gaze with his steely gray ones; he can’t promise he won’t. “I won’t, love.” He promises anyway.

She finishes the tea soon after and tucks herself underneath his weight. The rain still beats against the window, the lightning still flashes across the sky, the dream still plays on her mind. But his steady breathing, the warmth that bleeds into the sheets, the firmness of his arms around her, it folds her fears into a small, tight cage, locked away in his presence.

Sleep washes over her as his nose brushes her temple, lips pressed against her cheek as he whispers how much he loves her. As consciousness fades, so does her worry, all left behind on a stormy night where she is safe in her lover’s arms.

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happyhauntt · 5 months

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BURIAL GROUND, a hunger games fic.

─── summary: In District Four, they teach you how to survive the Games. They don’t teach you how to survive what comes after. ─── warnings: this story contains triggering themes including sexual assault & rape, prostitution, self-harm and thoughts of suicide, death and canon-typical violence. these themes, along with others, are prevalent in the hunger games universe and will come up in this story, so please don’t read if these things affect you! ─── fic tag. read on ao3. fic masterlist.

CHAPTER ONE ─── the uglier truth (3.8k words.)

YOU WOULD THINK, by the way people in the Capitol talk about Nimah Caplan, that she was some kind of deity. That she wasn't born human, but instead rose from the sea foam crashing onto the shores of District 4 one day, skin glowing like the inside of a buttercup and eyes greener than the freshest grass.

The Capitol likes to forget the uglier truth ━ that she was never some goddess that appeared out of the blue one day, some beautiful woman to be at the center of President Snow's glistening parties.

Nim hates to disappoint, but her life certainly didn't start out that way. She was a child, once, a long time ago. They drag it up every year, her adolescence reduced to nothing but a newsreel; it hurts to look at the films and see how young she used to be, still soft with innocence. She grew up a feral child, practically born with a knife in her hand, and yet still, before the Hunger Games, she'd been... something else.

On mornings like this, though, she wishes she were born of the sea. Dragging herself out of bed, the silken sheets still tangled around her legs, she stumbles into the bathroom across the hall. She runs the tap and holds her hands beneath the freezing water for a moment before splashing it onto her face, hoping the chill will wake her up faster.

Nim is fairly certain that goddesses don't get hangovers.

She groans, drying her face off with a towel. A mirror hangs above the sink, large and oval with a silver-painted frame. The sheet she threw over it years ago, in an effort to ensure she never saw her own reflection again, is loose at the edge. For just a moment, she catches a flash of blue-streaked curls, desperately in need of brushing.

She holds her breath and tugs the sheet back into place.

The clock says it's late. Later than she should be waking up, anyway, on market day. She learned a long time ago that alarm clocks weren't the best way of rousing her from a dead sleep, and Nim had destroyed more than enough of them in a panicked haze to prove it.

Heading back into her bedroom, she tugs on the nearest pair of black slacks she can find and grabs her tan wool-lined jacket from where it is draped over the foot of the bed. The empty bottle sitting on her bedside table glares at her until she grabs that, too, taking it downstairs with her and tossing it into the trash.

Her boots, slippery black leather, slide on too easily over her narrow shins. At the door, she pauses. The nausea comes quickly, an unpleasant burn lingering at the back of her throat, and Nim presses her forehead against the glass until it passes.

It isn't always so bad.

Most of the time, these days, she doesn't need to drink. At night, she can take her sleeping pills and drift off to a dreamless netherworld where little can trouble her, and the nightmares cannot fight their way into her subconscious to tear her brain apart. Nim is happy to survive in this way, half-rested, as long as the terrors stay safely trapped in the lining of her bones where they belong.

There are the bad days, though. Less now than there were a few years ago, when the Games were still fresh and the trauma was new, but they still happen. Those days, she cannot sleep without a bottle in her hand and enough alcohol in her system to tranquilize an elephant.

Those days only come when she knows the inevitable is coming. A fast train to the Capitol, a few nights clinking glasses with society's elite, a shining example of what a young woman should be, with the right stylists, escorts, manners ━ and a particularly memorable stint in the Hunger Games under her belt.

The thought of brushing shoulders with Capitol folk again always makes her want to crawl inside a bottle. The thought of what happens when the lights go down and the party is over makes her want to never come back out.

She swallows the bile back down and breathes deeply until her headache subsides a little, but the static on her skin never goes away. The hangover is only half of what makes her so sick; leaving her house in Victor's Village always feels like treading through a minefield. The wide open spaces, the eyes peering at her, judging her, reducing her to nothing but a tiny grain of sand...

Nimah can be confident. She can fake it with the best of them, hold her head high in the Capitol and wear her dazzling smile and bat her eyelashes, because when the cameras are out there is nothing else she can do. This was the part assigned to her when she won the Games, and it is the role she'll play for the rest of her life.

In her home district, though, Nim just wants to be invisible. Every pair of eyes on her feels like a dagger in her back. The navy streaks in her hair and the inhuman green of her eyes mark her out as a creature of the Capitol, now. An outsider.

Steeling herself, she wrenches open the front door and steps out into the street.

Nim used to think that Victor's Village was pretty. As a child, she'd stand at the gates and press her face between the bars, looking at the long row of a dozen white marble mansions, six on either side, dreaming of the day she'd get to live in one.

Now, as she treks down the path, gravel crunching beneath her feet, the mansions aren't so pretty anymore. They line up like pale tombstones on either side of her, empty windows leering into the street. At the very end of the road, six of the houses sit dark, with no one inside to make them into homes. Every other mansion in the village bares the flaws that Nim was blind to as a child; the cracks in the paint, the wrinkles in the skin of a Victor, the proof that the Games are not all they are made out to be.

Mags' home is nearest to the gates. Orange chrysanthemums blossom in the window boxes ━ gardening was the talent Mags chose when she won her Games around sixty years ago ━ but her gnarled hands haven't touched the soil in years. These days, the caretakers are the ones keeping the village looking perfect.

Annie Cresta's house sits across from it. There are little stars and hearts carved into the front door, from when the pair of them sat on the doorstep one day a few summers ago, intent on letting the world slip by for once. They'd been able to hear the voices from the square, where the rest of the district had gathered to watch that year's Victor on their victory tour. They were both supposed to go, but Annie's breakdown prevented her, and Nimah volunteered to stay behind and sit with her friend.

She'd stolen knives from the kitchen and they'd sat in silence, gritting their teeth, carving happy symbols into the wood, forcing their anger out in a way that was more productive than smashing things. The caretakers painted over them, but when Nim goes to visit her friend, she runs her fingers over the marks left behind by their knives. It reminds her of a solitary, pleasant memory in the midst of so much bad.

Next to Mags' house is Cowell. Winner of a Games that had long-since past, the windows of his mansion were broken years ago in a fit of rage, and boarded up with wood. Sometimes Nim can see the light from inside peeking through the gaps in the boards, but she doesn't see Cowell often. She doesn't mind. There is a haunted look lingering in his eyes, the kind she knows is mirrored in her own, and she hates to be reminded of her failures.

Hobbs lives next door to Annie. Almost as old as Mags, his door is always open for anyone who needs to talk. When Nim first returned from the Capitol after winning her Games, it was Hobbs she ran to when she could no longer stand the quiet in her own house.

Finnick and Nimah live opposite one another. She has been inside Finnick's home enough times to know that he keeps it immaculately tidy, as if cleaning up a physical mess is his way of sorting through the trauma he keeps buried. He always needs to keep his hands busy.

Nimah sleeps with every light on in her house. Before she goes to bed, she treks through all the rooms and closes all the curtains, only to turn on the light before she leaves. If she wakes up in a darkened room, terror clogs her throat until she can't breathe. Her screaming wakes up the whole street. Even now, at midday, if she looks back over her shoulder she'll find her bedroom window glowing with golden light. It's how she finds her way home.

When she reaches the gates, Nim pauses. Just beyond, down a long pathway, she can hear the bustle of the docks. From her window she can see the beach, the sea rising up in raucous grey waves to crash against the sand, and all the fishing boats bobbing in the water.

Her old house, a brown shack with only a few rooms and a leaking roof, isn't near the beach. It sits in a long row of other shacks, all different shapes and sizes, in the shadow of the huge fisheries. Her parents used to work on the conveyor line, sorting the fish. Nim grew up in a house where the scent of rotting fish permeated everything, and she shared a room with her brother, and her grandparents lived in the room next door. There were six of them in that house. Her family wasn't poor, they earned better wages than many in the district and Nim and her brother never had to take tesserae, but every spare bit of her parents' money was spent sending their children to the combat academies.

They didn't want the Hunger Games to take their children away.

At least not without a fight.

"Nim!"

The crunching of gravel creeps up on her, and she turns weary eyes upon her new companion, offering him a small smile. "Finnick. I thought you had left for the Capitol already."

His throat bobs as he comes to a stop beside her, holding the gate open so she can go through ahead of him. "Tomorrow." The smile he offers her in return is dazzling, white teeth gleaming like a shark's. "I've got business to attend to before the party next week. Are you going?"

His voice dips, and for a moment it vanishes in the cool wind blowing in off the sea. Nim can't help it; she shivers. The party in question is the Victor's Ball, held at the Presidential Palace for this year's newest winners, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. Former Victors have always been invited, but most of them don't bother to go; Annie hasn't been to the Capitol for years, not even as a Mentor, and Cowell never passes the threshold of his front door these days.

For Finnick and Nim, though, their attendance is not optional.

Nim grimaces at his question, knowing he is only asking to be polite. "I'm putting it off until the day before. I've no desire to be in the Capitol any longer than required."

Part of her likes it. The mindless gossip, the glitter and the gold, all the strange people and the way it distracts her for an hour or two. Her prep team dolls her up, and Nim has always shone as the center of attention, able to command a room with little effort.

The days after, though, she has to bury herself beneath the covers and cry. To be so outgoing comes at a cost. To allow strangers to touch her, to rub shoulders with them and laugh with them, takes all of her energy. At one of her first parties after winning, someone grabbed her wrist when she wasn't looking, and she nearly clawed their eyes out.

Surviving them takes everything she has.

Without another word, the pair of them start the slow trudge down the path towards the town square. Nim pulls her jacket tighter around her. In mid-winter, the weather in District 4 is mild. It never snows here, but on the coldest days, the wind coming from the sea nips and bites.

Her earliest memories are of summers spent playing on the beach with her brother, digging her toes into the warm sand. Those days were few and far between ━ the peacekeepers only opened the beach up to the public on holidays ━ but Nim's fondest memories are of chasing her brother into the surf and jumping over the waves.

Every one of those moments feels tinged with red, now. The salty tang in the air reminds Nim of blood on her tongue.

"What do you need from the market? I'll get it for you." Nim already has a list for Annie and Mags tucked into her pocket. The old woman had tried to insist that she was perfectly able to buy her own bread, but Nim had refused to listen.

Finnick shakes his head. "You look like you need the company." He looks at her, his eyes lingering on the plain silk eye patch and the dark circles beneath her uncovered eye, her unruly curls and the odd pallor of her skin.

Nim turns away. "I don't..."

She leaves her sentence unfinished and lowers her eyes, careful to ensure her steps are even, one boot in front of another. Part of Nim craves silence; where Finnick must always keep his hands busy, must always have something to do, Nim adores nothing more than the quiet rooms of her too-large house, legs crossed in the middle of the plush carpet, trying her best to breathe.

The small, traitorous heart of her, though, needs the company. Not to be surrounded, but to just exist with someone else, in the little moments of peace. To breathe with them. To be reminded that, no matter the horrors she has endured, there is someone else in the world that bleeds the same way she does.

That doesn't mean she appreciates it. Finnick Odair, the Capitol's golden boy, hovering over her shoulder like she's a fragile thing about to break. Him and Mags and Hobbs, all watching and waiting for her to snap again. Wondering if it will be worse than last time.

The pair of them walk on in silence, until they reach the town square. On market days, the square in front of the Justice Building fills up with stalls selling all kinds of goods. Peacekeepers mill through the crowd, white-gloved hands ready with their guns. They used to chat with stallholders, gossip and buy their bread without much trouble, but since Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark came through last week on their victory tour, things have been different.

There is a tension in the air that wasn't there before.

The shouting batters her ears. Nim closes her eyes for a moment, struck by the sudden rise in volume. Without a word, Finnick presses closer; not close enough to touch her, but she can feel the warmth of his hand hovering over the small of her back, close enough to shield her from the noise.

Releasing a slow breath through her nose, Nim heads over to the first of the long line of stalls. Drawing the crumpled list from her coat pocket, she passes it over to the stallholder, who sets to work putting a series of glass jars into a basket.

Finnick leans over Nim's shoulder. "What is Mags cooking up that requires that many jars?"

Nim shrugs. "Ask Mags."

They move along the line of stalls. Nim keeps her head low, eyes intently focused on the movements of her hands ━ passing the money across to each vendor, inspecting her purchases before carefully putting them into her basket. She can feel Finnick at her back, only a few inches taller but feeling infinitely more like a human shield the longer she spends in the midst of a crowd.

She hates this. Every time someone she doesn't know accidentally brushes past, she flinches away. A vile feeling coils in the pit of her stomach like a viper waiting to strike; an urge to run coupled with the instinct to attack first, to drive a knife through someone's throat before they can get her.

Her muscles tense. She keeps a tight grip on the basket, lime-green eye darting from stranger to stranger, her pupil narrowed to a tiny black pinprick. Everyone is an threat, even the people she recognises ━ a girl she went to school with lingers by one of the many shellfish stalls, hardly paying attention to her surroundings, but when Nim blinks, she sees a flash of bare teeth lunging for her neck.

To be that ignorant, she thinks, pushing the obtrusive thoughts away. It does not stop the horrible prickling of her skin, but she loosens her shoulders a bit. Even with the Peacekeepers wandering around, everyone in the marketplace seems so carefree in comparison to the thundering of her heart. None of them know what it is like to have blood on their hands; to feel the slick warmth of it as it runs up their wrist, to scrub and scrub until their skin is raw and still feel no closer to clean.

The girl ━ her name tugs at the edge of Nim's memory, but Nim hasn't thought of her old schoolmates in so long that it feels like that life belonged to someone else ━ moves along. Nim tracks her movements like a predator until she has moved just out of view, and suddenly someone else, someone heartbreakingly familiar, crosses into her line of vision.

She can feel Finnick looking at her, wondering why she froze like a deer caught in the sights of a hunter, but with one look at where she is staring, he understands.

Her grandmother hasn't seen them yet.

Distantly, as if she is underwater, Nim can hear the irritated mutters of people as they step around her and Finnick, annoyed that they've stopped in the middle of the path. Finnick wraps his hand around Nim's arm and gently tugs her out of the way. Almost automatically, she tears herself out of his grasp, shocked out of her haze.

The old woman stops at one of the stalls further down, clutching the hand of a young child. Something stony and cold ripples through Nim as the little girl, no older than six, chatters happily away. Beneath the eye patch, the marbled scar over Nim's eye burns.

"Have you talked to her recently?" Finnick's voice is soft in her ear, but Nim wants to reach up and rip his tongue out. Finnick, darling of the Capitol. Finnick, who, in the eyes of the world, seems never to have done anything wrong in his life ━ except save her.

Nim scoffs. "What do we have to talk about?"

He grimaces, a poor attempt to hide his loathing of the old woman. He has never been so good at biting his tongue when it could get him into trouble with Nim, but these days, he knows better than to push her where her family is concerned.

Her grandmother buys a loaf of bread and carries on walking, pulling the little girl along beside her. The child tosses her head back to giggle, a wave of brown curls cascading over her shoulders, before suddenly she looks back over her shoulder, beaming a bright smile at no-one in particular.

"I'm not a masochist," Nim says through gritted teeth. Jaw clenched, she watches as her grandmother and the girl press on, eyes lingering on them until the crowd swallows them up and they vanish from sight.

#* fic: burial ground.#* chapter update.#the hunger games #the hunger games fanfiction #finnick odair #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair fanfic #thg series #* ch: nimah caplan.

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