A/N: Well, this is it. The final chapter (and though I felt I might have rambled a bit in some places, there are parts of this chapt. that I'm rather proud of; also changed up the tense). I should say my good-byes now, since adding anything on to the end screws up my format . Anyway...

Most important, thank you a million and one times to all who have reviewed. I love every single one of you. Seriously. This was my first fanfic in nearly 2 years, first one on my newest and hopefully permanent account, and my first ever completed chapter story (No doubt I was a bit rusty ;P)
I have a couple other ideas spinning around; I might write some one-shots of happier times between our two favorite stylists, or maybe a look through the eyes of several characters...

Oh, and I updated chapter 7, mainly a revised version of the second half.

So, on with the story! As a side note, the quotes I've been using at the end of the chapters are from the song Never Alone by Lady Antebellum (sad song, very sweet). There's also a refrence to a certain Mayer song near the beginning of this particular chapter as well.

Disclaimer: The Hunger Games and its characters belong to Suzanne Collins

He strides down the wide hallway of District 13 with single-minded purpose, pushing through crowds of people and ignoring irritated glances and cross mutterings. There's a certain set to him that stops anyone from voicing a challenge – he has the air of a man who lives solely on desperate hope.

A steel door looms before him and he grasps the forearm of the man standing guard. "I'm permitted entrance," he says shortly, flashing an identification card that the burly sentry barely acknowledges. He's standing on edge like a high-strung wire ready to snap, and the guard passes him over with an uncertain eye before jerking the handle down and out.

The man enters a small square room, furnished with only a single long counter and several white stools. It smells overly clean and purified, and there's something bleakly systematized about the whole arrangement. But the man's expression is suddenly alive, his gaze trained towards the room's center.

She's standing there, back facing him, bright hair unmistakable. Hunched over a sketchpad, she draws in her way of flourished strokes and vigorous erasing. She radiates personality in the oppressing space, achingly-familiar and dearly missed. A muted word falls from his lips, but she doesn't hear.

And then he's walking, nearly running, footsteps oddly silent. His arms wrap around her from behind and he inhales her sweet scent. She gives a start of surprise, spinning in his hold, and her exclamation is given voice. "Cinna!" she gasps.

She's crying then, yet laughing – and he joins her, the only girl who could ever bring tears to his face. "Portia." He breathes, repeating her name once more for good measure. She throws her arms around his neck and brushes her fingers through his hair, face shining up to his with damp cheeks and a breathtaking smile. "Oh, honey," he sighs, holding her crushingly close. "How did they get to you in time?" he whispers, something akin to bewildered and everlasting gratitude evident in his breaking voice.

She opens her mouth to respond at the same time a bell goes off, somewhere in the distance. Cinna glances over his shoulder in an instinctive gesture, vague curiosity pricking at the back of his mind but without much care. He turns back and stiffens in shock.

He is embracing nothing but the air.

In the tantalizing silence, only unspoken words and empty promises remain.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

He rolls out of bed and down on his knees, and for a moment it seems he can hardly breathe. His palms are pressed against his eyes, creating sparks of white behind closed lids, and then he's on his feet. The door is jerked open with a rush of night air – beckoning him into the darkness as the stars glitter coldly overhead.

He stumbles blindly for several paces until he falls before a protruding mass of stone. A small box is slipped from his pocket, followed by the slither of wood and a flare of light kindling into existence. A candle at the foot of the pillar catches the flame and eerie shadows dance across the granite, throwing an inscription into sharp relief.

Here lies Portia Milada
Victim of the Capitol
Weaver of Beauty, Light of Hope
Forever Part of My Heart

His forehead rests wearily against the cold, bleak stone and he thinks that it doesn't do her memory justice, that it's a cruel joke to substitute her warmth and spirit with a mound of rock. He wishes so desperately that she was there in his arms that his body seems to be burning, even his eyes – then he realizes that it's only tears, barely suppressed.

He has never been good with words. More than anything, he yearns for the chance to go back and confess to her all his feelings, and to tell her everything she meant to him. It's a chance that will never be granted.

The pool of light reaches a patch of churned up dirt resting in front of the grave. Another inscription is scratched there, into the ground, gone over so many times that it seems to be a permanent part of the earth:

I'm Sorry.

He's tired of this. Tired of waking up from a dream that he wants to be real, of being thrust into raw reality. Of having her wrenched from his grasp again and again. Sometimes he thinks he's going crazy, seeing her appear in his darkened room with crying eyes. He reaches out to her, wondering if she's really there.

But she's not. She never is.

When you're dreaming with a broken heart, waking up is the hardest part.

"I love you, honey." He whispers, and knows it's too late.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

She told him not to regret it; but he does. He had sworn to channel his emotions only through his work, to prevent from being hurt and from hurting anyone else. But though he regrets forcing his fate upon others, he can't bring himself to regret the love he felt for Katniss, for Peeta…and for Portia, most of all.

What would the point of fighting have been if there was no one to fight for?

He still misses her so much that it aches, somewhere deep inside of him that was touched by her light and now suffers in eternal darkness. The laughter in her eyes, the softness to her touch, the natural beauty caught in every flicker of emotion – all was lost, freed from her body and sent somewhere out of reach. That was something that could never be set right.

She had been so inherently good in a world that just wasn't.

Death is final, absolute. It's a release of all concerns. Continuing life; that's the hard part. Sometimes it seems impossible. Sometimes it's enough to bring a person to his knees, surrendering in the face of some higher power that seems to get a sick pleasure out of watching an entire world crumble to pieces.

He is Cinna. He is a man who had chosen to be an independent Gamemaker in the Capitol's twisted game, who had played with fire and set Panem alight.

But he had gambled with fate, and he had always known that ran the risk of dealing an unfavorable hand. Sometimes it was worth it. Sometimes losses could be cut.

Not always.

He may have won the war, but he had lost something irreplaceable.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

The hovercraft is sleek, beautiful in a dangerous sort of way. Its interior is coated with chromium, gleaming loftily and so very contemporary.

It's been a year and a half since the death of President Coin, which is accepted to be at which point the war ended. A year and seven months, in actuality, but who's counting?

It flies high above peaceful evergreen copses and dainty meadows, feigning the image of a serene nation that was never torn apart by rebellion – whether it had been two years ago or seventy-seven. For a second, he almost believes it.

He escaped the Capitol. He made it – but he feels no exhilaration, no triumph; just a man's weariness after suffering a weight that should never have been his to bear. He has streaks of grey on his young head to prove it, something he hasn't bothered to hide.

The hovercraft has a transparent option – an ingenious idea, really, that turns the floor seamlessly clear, as if one were standing on the air itself while surrounded by a metallic dome. It's frighteningly realistic, to the average person; but he is anything but average, and experiences as of late made the description of 'scary' take on a whole different meaning.

Cinna remembers, even as part of his mind struggles to forget, the fateful day that spelled the end of one life and the salvation of another. He thinks that whatever power in charge of these outcomes got it wrong, this time, and wishes she had been saved instead of him.

He finds it beautiful, personally, watching an endless expanse of green sweep past below, dotted with the silver lace of streams and patches of wild color.

Her plan had worked flawlessly, something neither he nor Lavinia had expected. Lavinia. The name brings an ache all its own, and he wishes to be free from these human feelings that seem to serve no other purpose than to hurt.

But he prefers to look above, towards the sky, where the blue reminds him of her eyes; they had never been dark or deep like Peeta's, but rather a soft azure as bright as the day.

The Avox girl had brought him to the deserted guards' quarters, from which an accessible trapdoor had led to the tunnels. Yet she had hesitated, torn between escape and some unseen force that he could only assume was her fellow Avox; Darius. He remembers his own bewilderment at the sad farewell in her gaze, remembers her flitting step retracing the path they had come by. He never did see her again.

He then looks to the horizon, where earth and air seem to merge into a single entity; far into the distance.

And so he had journeyed in the tunnels for nearly three days, keeping to the shadows. Becoming them. He has never slept easy since, agonized by the possibility that just maybe, he could have saved her. He doesn't quite know how he survived those days, and he doesn't quite care. Because she hadn't. Portia.

Earth and Air. Ground and Sky. Land and Heavens. Blue and Green, combined.

He had enlisted the help of an old friend from District 13, finding a safe haven among the new colonies being built in the untouched forests. Hardly anyone knew of his continued existence; it was too risky, with Capitol sympathizers running loose in the post-war chaos. But even more than that, he had needed time to himself – to heal, both emotionally and physically. Alone, with only his thoughts.

The view below is suddenly corrupted with grey. Rubble, ash, a landscape marred by the burnt remains of District 12. He exhales and closes his eyes, and wishes he could close his heart as well.

.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.

Twin eyes peer out from the window. Even from this distance he sees them widen, and catches a muffled shout. For the first time in a long time, he smiles.

Then she's running from the house, nearly tripping in her haste, and he opens his arms just as she throws herself at him.

He's caught off balance and topples over, sacrificing his own body to catch her fall. He straightens them both and hugs her properly; she has grown some, but her head still seems to fit right beneath his chin, as it always had.

"Hello, my little flame." He whispers.

Katniss stumbles over half-spoken questions interrupted by summoning cries for anyone within earshot. Cinna feels a sudden clap on his shoulder and looks into the face of Peeta Mellark, who just shakes his head mutely with an expression of elated wonder. Haymitch appears, his stupefied manner having nothing to do with a few too many drinks, for once.

Cinna scrutinizes his old companions and finds that, like himself, no one has quite recovered from the horrors of the recent past. Katniss is still gaunt and so pitifully thin, as if she refuses to accept the bounty of resources left to them as reward for a war that shouldn't be praised. Peeta has regained his strength, physically – yet there's the haunted look to his eyes of a man once broken and never put back together quite right. Haymitch is the only one who hasn't changed much, but he had never been well off to begin with.

With a grim twist to his lips, Cinna thinks that they had seen happier times during the reign of the Capitol, and questions almost shamefully, for perhaps the thousandth time since Portia's passing, why selfless acts had been repaid with such grief.

"I am so proud of you." He says to her, voice lowered. "I'm not sure I would have been able to accomplish what you did, and can only wonder how you found the will to keep going."

She leans back in his grasp and her fingers move to a special pocket sown into the lining of her jacket. She carefully pulls out a scrap of paper, folded so many times that it is worn and looks ready to turn to dust. It flutters down into his open hand, settling like a feather.

Cinna finds that he has suddenly forgotten how to breathe, staring at the innocent sheaf as if holding a gift of gold. He recognizes it. He remembers stooping beside Portia, long ago on the day after she discovered his dress designs, providing the pen with which she so delicately wrote the elegant letters that now stared him in the face.

Fly for us, Mockingjay.

He clutches the scrap like it's the last essence of her being and understands, suddenly, with a burst of such clear realization that it seems to chide him for forgetting the answer he has known since his first conscious decision to defy the Capitol –

No person lives eternally. What really matters is what they leave behind – even at the cost of personal loss, if it means a better future for countless others. It's a cruel truth, but a finite one nonetheless. The goal is not to live forever, but to create something that will.

He will never stop missing Portia; he is only human, after all. But one day he will pass from the world, as will all others who suffered through this period of war. He finds an odd humor, how such strife brought people together who might otherwise have never met, and is conflicted with a strange inkling of gratitude. It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, he thinks, and knows that the most they can do is hold out the hope that maybe one day, their paths will all join again in the end.

He looks to a sky as blue as her eyes once were and wonders if she's watching over them, if she's free somewhere high above the nation that caged them all – if she took the advice she gave, and is finally able to spread her own wings and truly fly.

My love will follow you, stay with you
Honey, you're never alone.

.:.