Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

District Four - After the 65th Games

Mags felt it would be best if Finnick got into a talent quickly. Idleness was not good for him.

"I figured I'd just mend nets,” said Finnick with a shrug. “I'm good at that."

"Your talent isn't allowed to be practical."

Finnick's next three suggestions (having abs, drag racing, and rope bondage) were similarly rejected ("that's not a talent," "you're literally too young for a driver's license," and "no").

"Poetry!" He said one day.

"You want to write poetry?" Mags was skeptical. Finnick was a clever boy, but he had never been particularly literary.

"No, I could memorize love poems. For, you know, that job."

Mags shook her head. "Your talent should be for you. Something you can feel proud of."

Three weeks passed before they both arrived at the same conclusion: free diving. It was the old practice, now maintained only for challenge or sport, of diving without breathing apparatus to spear fish or collect shellfish, with the goal of maximizing duration and depth. It presented an opportunity for Finnick to continue developing and challenging himself physically. And unlike a well-crafted poem or fishing net, it was impressive to the general populace. It would give Finnick something to brag about to the masses, a healthy way to earn the praise and attention that he drank up.

So Finnick began to train. He practiced breathing exercises. He refined his swim strokes. He mastered his body’s panicked reaction when it ran out of oxygen, to force it to keep going and override the powerful self-preserving instinct to surface. And Mags found there was a joy in coaching him. He worked hard, learned quickly, and seemed preternaturally adapted to the water.

Finnick lay on the sand, several weights piled on his chest. The goal of the exercise was resistance training for the diaphragm, but the target was, apparently, too ambitious. He struggled to breathe. Rather than the deep, powerful inhalation he was supposed to be working toward, he was only managing thin, insubstantial gasps. His vision narrowed. His lungs burned. He knew he could exit the exercise by simply rolling to one side or the other. He could even have snapped his fingers or kicked sand to alert Mags. He wasn’t sure whether she would actually be able to lift the weights, but she could certainly knock them off of him. But he did none of those things, just lay on the ground struggling to breathe until his mentor finally noticed his cyanotic semi-consciousness.

“What the hell was that?” asked Mags, annoyed. “We’re not going to train if you won’t be responsible about it.”

“Is that what dying feels like?”

“How would I know what dying feels like? For that matter, how would I know what getting the breath crushed out of me feels like?”

That wasn’t a very useful answer, but Finnick knew it has been a stupid question. He decided to ask another. “Why don’t I feel guilty?”

Mags lowered herself to the sand, parallel to Finnick, facing the surf.

“I just killed a bunch of kids and I'm going to meet their families. I should feel guilty, or sad at least. And I don’t. So I thought that maybe if I could see what dying is like, I would realize what I did and feel bad about it.”

“And?”

“And I still don’t feel guilty.” Finnick dug his feet into the sand. “I think I might be a bad person.”

“You might be,” said Mags. “I don’t know. We’ve only known each other a short time. But it seems to me that a bad person wouldn’t worry about being a bad person.”

They stared at the sea.

65th Games Victory Tour

The next time Haymitch saw Finnick Odair, the kid seemed…fine. Actually, unnervingly fine. As in, way too fine for a 14-year-old who had just been forced to kill several other children before being told he was to be sex trafficked by a fascist dictator. By means of prodigious self-medication, Haymitch himself had largely succeeded in forgetting the awkward, miserable conversation in which he explained the 'deal' Snow was going to offer the boy. but he suspected (hoped?) the kid hadn't erased his own memory by getting blackout drunk.

The boy was on his victory tour.  Haymitch didn’t know if Snow had actually sold him yet, or if the possibility was simply hanging over the kid, but either way Finnick was apparently fucking great at compartmentalizing, because he was cheerfully eating venison stew and chatting amiably with a couple of locals – a schoolteacher and a young man who recycled broken glass – while his escort and mentor looked on. The kid was charming them all, telling a story about how he had held a shell up to his ear to hear the sea – some kind of District Four practice – only to find out there was a crab inside which proceeded to latch onto his earlobe. It was a cute story and very crowd-pleasing, ever so slightly self-deprecating with no actual danger. Haymitch watched the boy reenact his flailing attempts to pull the crab off. He could tell that Finnick had told this story many times before, had honed it to elicit the maximum number of avuncular smiles and empty laughs.

A waiter – or rather, a sullen teenager girl who had been coerced into the role by the mayor – brought around a tray of drinks. Haymitch signaled he wanted a refill, watching as Finnick tried to talk his way into some wine. The waiter looked a little panicked, obviously having been told to do whatever the victor asked while simultaneously having the very strong suspicion that she was still not supposed to give alcohol to a child. Luckily, Mags intervened before the girl’s conflicting orders could blossom into a panic attack. “Half a glass,” she said. “And not until after dinner.”

Finnick looked ready to pout before he schooled his features back into a smooth smile. He tipped an imaginary hat to Mags, his promise to follow the rules, and went right back to holding court.

Once the boy seemed settled back in his role as raconteur, Mags found her way to Haymitch’s dimly lit corner. “You’re the life of the party, as always.”

“Your little glamour doll seems to have things well in hand.” Haymitch looked around for the waiter, wondering where his drink was.

“I never did thank you for talking to him.”

“You could thank me with a couple bottles of that cactus liquor. What’s it called?”

“Tequila. Sure, I’ll have some sent to you.” She took a sip of her drink. “He had his first appointment later that week.”

“That fast? Cashmere didn’t start until after her tour, and she wasn’t…” Haymitch waggled his fingers in Finnick’s direction to indicate the boy’s youth.

“He’s popular.”

“Sure, if that’s what you want to call it.”

Mags sighed. “I mean there’s demand. It’s not just about humiliating the victor this time. He’s profitable to Snow.”

“Well, why the hell did you let him parade around the Capitol like a fucking pole dancer from planet sex? I mean, you must have approved that thing he wore for his interview with Flickerman – you could practically see the outline of his dick in those leggings.”

Mags didn’t rise to the bait. “Why were you looking?” she asked mildly. Without waiting for an answer, she added, “And I let him because I knew that he could win if he got sponsors.”

“You knew, though. You knew what it would cost him.”

“It always costs a lot. Just making it through the arena costs everything.” For the first time, Mags understood that Haymitch was actually angry with her, not just indiscriminately surly. “And I threw everything behind Finnick because I knew he had a chance of bearing the weight.”

“Yeah, and how was he after his first night of whoring?”

“He slept late. He stayed in the bath for about an hour. He didn’t have much appetite, but he still managed to eat.”

“He sounds like the paragon of mental health.”

“He’s doing better than some people I know.” Mags didn’t look at Haymitch’s empty whiskey glass. She didn’t have to.

Everyone at Finnick’s table laughed. Haymitch couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but the boy had leaned across the table, gallantly kissing the schoolteacher’s hand.

“I did what I could,” said Mags, her pride and defensiveness finally flagging. “I made threats. I burned contacts. I begged – actually begged – Snow to wait, just wait a couple of years. There’s such a huge difference between fourteen and sixteen.”

Haymitch snorted. “And what in all the districts made you think Snow would give a damn?”

“Nothing at all. But I had to try.” She sighed. “The buyers can’t take him out in public yet, so that’s something. It will all be hush-hush until he reaches the age of consent. At least he won’t have to deal with the media, won’t get a ‘reputation’ for a few years.”

“Well, as long as he’s raped in secret, that’s not so bad, right?”

The waitress came back with Haymitch’s drink. Mags declined a refill.

“Who’s he got?” asked Haymitch. “To protect, I mean.”

“Father and two brothers. His older brother is married and has a daughter. There was an epidemic in Four before the youngest was born. The disease did something to the babies. His younger brother is sickly, and he’s slow, mentally.”

“The boys have a mother?”

“She died pregnant with their fourth child, about two years ago.”

Laughter broke out at Finnick’s table. He was cradling the schoolteacher’s hand in both of his, in a pose suggesting he was about to offer her a chivalrous kiss. Instead, he batted his eyes at her and waggled a finger in a mock-scold. Everyone laughed again. Haymitch didn’t get the joke.

District Four

“I just don’t know how to help him.” Corbin poured two cups of tea and offered one to Mags who took it gratefully.

“How could you be expected to know?” Mags’ smile was sympathetic, not pitying. “There are only a handful of people in all of Panem who know what it’s like to parent a victor.”

“There are so many things I never considered. I never thought about school. He doesn’t want to go back. He says none of the other victors did. But they kept saying on the television that the next youngest victor was sixteen. Finnick never even started high school.”

“It’s hard enough to make algebra matter to a kid in the districts.” Mags took a cautious sip of her tea. “It’s hard to make anything matter after you’ve spent weeks fighting for your life.”

“I understand that. I do.” Corbin shook his head. “No, actually I don’t. But I want to understand. I’ve tried. I’ve told him that I want to listen. I’ve told him that if he wants, we can watch every minute of his games together, and if he wants, we can never talk about it again. He just tells me not to worry and smiles. Smiles!” He looked down, ashamed. “It’s not that I want him to be miserable, but I almost think it would be easier if he cried, if he came to me scared and hurt like he did when he was little and there was a thunderstorm or one of the bigger boys pushed him over.”

Mags considered this. “You’ve seen fish with eyespots?”

“Sure.” Everyone in four had seen them. Eyespots were large colorations on a fish’s body meant to fool predators – if the creature had such big ‘eyes’, surely it was enormous. They were a common adaptation.

“They’re faking to survive. I think we agree that Finnick is faking when he smiles. But maybe he needs to keep faking. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes him feel safe.”

“But he’s not in the arena anymore. He is safe.”

“Is he?” Mags held Corbin’s eyes, not saying, but saying.

Chapter Text

66th Hunger Games

Haymitch did not appreciate someone banging on the penthouse door in the middle of the night. The avoxes let themselves in and the Peacekeepers wouldn’t bother to knock, so whoever it was had no goddamn business waking him up when-

“Please,” said Finnick, “please. I messed up. You’ve got to help me.” The boy was wide-eyed, with a faraway look, but his pupils were normal, so he probably wasn’t (very) high. He was wearing tall leather boots and skintight pants, low enough on his hips that pubic hair would have stuck out over the waistband had he not been waxed within an inch of his life. He smelled like smoke and cologne and quite possibly pussy, though the cologne stench was strong enough that Haymitch was not entirely sure about that last one.

Haymitch blinked several times, making absolutely no move to beckon the boy into the District 12 penthouse.

“Please,” Finnick repeated.

“Go to Mags.”

“She’ll kill me.”

“What the hell did you do?” Haymitch took a step back from the doorway, allowing Finnick to enter. Then he pivoted back. “Wait, should we-?” Haymitch gestured to the roof.

It took Finnick a moment to understand what he was being asked. He shook his head. “No. No. My client was satisfied.”

Haymitch sighed, glad at least that the boy hadn’t lost his temper and assaulted his “date” for the night. He gestured into the sitting room. Finnick normally strutted into a room and relaxed onto the sofa with a casual slouch, his arm flung to the side, waiting to be handed one of those fluorescent cocktails he seemed to enjoy no matter how often Mags tried to coerce the staff into cutting him off. Now, though he walked a few steps toward the window, turned around, walked back, and then turned again, this time for a corner, hidden behind some kind of ornamental table. He leaned back on the wall and ran his hands through his hair, knitting his fingers together at the nape of his neck and pulling forward, as if trying to pin his own head. He then sunk to the floor, almost hidden from view.

Haymitch had a sense that he ought to follow the boy, sit on the floor to look at him face-to-face, but as he was neither entirely awake nor entirely sober, he settled onto a bench a few feet away. He sighed again and suppressed a belch. “Then what’s the problem?”

Finnick began unlacing one of his boots. He pulled out the long leather strap and began tying it in some kind of complicated knot.

“I haven’t got all night, kid.”

“I didn’t…I didn’t use a condom.”

“That was stupid.”

“It’s the one thing. It’s the one thing Mags said was my responsibility. She’s been saying over and over that it’s not my fault but the one thing I have to do is make sure…” Finnick waved his hand in a completely uninterpretable circle. “You know.” He looked up at Haymitch, eyes pleading for absolution, or at least understanding. “They’ve always brought condoms. And they always take them out and start, you know.” That gesture again. “But she didn’t bring it up. I know I should have. I know I should have said something, but I just…” Finnick looked down. “I can flirt. I can joke about it. But actually talking about sex is…it’s embarrassing.”

“You got tongue-tied?”

Finnick nodded, perhaps even more embarrassed at the prospect of admitting that he had been overwhelmed by adolescent blushing.

Haymitch filled in the blanks.  “So now you’re scared you’ve got some disease.” He didn’t wait for Finnick to respond before continuing. He stroked his chin. “Your appointment tonight: Woman, man, or both?”

“Woman. Maybe 60 years old.”

“What do you do with her?”

Finnick opened his mouth to answer, but shut it again. His lips worked as if he were trying to forcibly drag the words out.

Haymitch supposed that if Finnick was too embarrassed to bring up condoms with a perverted Capitol weirdo who wanted to get in a teenager’s pants, he was probably also too embarrassed to describe what he actually did with said weirdo. It was going to have to be yes/no questions. “Did you fuck her?”

Finnick nodded.

“Anything in anyone’s ass?”

Finnick shook his head.

“Any physical injuries on either of you? Any blood?”

Finnick shook his head.

“Then odds of you catching something serious are low,” said Haymitch. “Capitol women see doctors when they get sick. They don’t let it linger.”

“I wasn’t worried about-“ Finnick ran his fingers through his hair, but instead of letting them glide across his scalp, he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled. Finally, he blurted out, “What if she gets pregnant?”

Haymitch couldn’t help laughing. Maybe if he had been sober, well-rested, and in a better mood, he would have guarded the kid’s pride, but a sober, well-rested Haymitch would have been an entirely different man, perhaps one who wouldn’t have been much use to a teenage boy who was busily trying not to disappoint his mentor, while trying to sexually please a woman four times his age, while trying to keep the president of Panem from murdering his family.

“You’re really worried about that?”

Finnick nodded quickly, looking very unlike his usual suave self. He looked…young. He looked like a fifteen-year-old boy who was worried about unprotected sex.

Haymitch rolled his eyes. “A 60-year-old woman can’t get pregnant, moron.”

“Why not?” Finnick’s face revealed genuine confusion.

“You never noticed that there weren’t a lot of greying pregnant women in Four?”

“I figured they decided not to. Probably already had kids.”

“Finnick, women stop being able to have babies in their forties or fifties. It’s called menopause. Can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

“She can’t get pregnant,” echoed Finnick, ignoring Haymitch’s gibe at his ignorance. His hand squeezed his hair one more time, pulling on it lightly. He exhaled loudly, deeply, as if he had been holding his breath all night. “She can’t get pregnant.”

Now that it was clear that Finnick’s crisis was teenage nonsense, Haymitch was back to feeling annoyed at being woken up in the middle of the night.

Finnick look so relieved he was almost in tears. “It’s stupid. I should’ve known. I should’ve used a condom anyway. But I thought- All I could think was that I didn’t want to have a baby with one of them. With one of the Capitol women. With one of the ones who,” his voice dropped, “pays.”’

Haymitch stood up and walked out of the room, not acknowledging Finnick in the slightest. He was gone long enough that Finnick had just begun to wonder if he should leave quietly, when Haymitch returned, holding a little cardboard package. He held it out, not meeting Finnick’s gaze. “There,” said Haymitch. He dropped the condoms into Finnick’s lap. “You can bring your own. Practice putting them on right. Get used to them. Get used to talking about them.”

“He’s an idiot,” groused Haymitch. He added a little more bourbon to his class and stirred it with his finger.

“He’s a child,” scoffed Mags.

“He should get himself snipped.”

“I think he’s learned his lesson.”

Haymitch sniffed the air, a judgmental look on his face. “Because 15-year-olds never make the same mistake twice.”

Mags rolled her eyes. No one was going to perform an elective vasectomy on a minor. “He might want kids one day.”

Haymitch turned his head slowly, scanning the room in an exaggerated way. “Sorry, distracted for a minute. Just counting up all the victors who’ve got kids. Let’s see…there’s Cecilia, and Cecilia, and that’s fucking it.”

“The Capitol will tire of him eventually, and when that happens, I want him to be free to choose the life he wants for himself.”

“Yeah, we victors got all kinds of potential.” Haymitch counted off the possibilities on his fingers. “He could join our storied ranks as a morphling addict, a bulimic, a shut in, or hey, nothing wrong with good old-fashioned alcoholism.” He took another drink to emphasize his point. “And that’s if he doesn’t decide he can’t stand the taste of Capitol crotch and ends up, you know.” Haymitch pantomimed tying a noose.

“You are a truly awful person,” said Mags with a glint that may or may not have been irony.

District Four – In between the 66^th and 67^th games

It took several moments for Corbin Odair to make sense of what he was seeing. His middle son, Finnick, was dancing to music from the radio, eyes glassy, giggling inanely. It was Capitol music, all rhythms and noises with no melody to speak of, and Capitol dancing which was more or less a pantomime of sex. Finnick was obviously high, a fact which took no time at all for him to process, as it was an increasingly common occurrence. What was much harder for him to register was that his youngest, Ammon, was high as well. Ammon wasn’t dancing, just sitting on the floor, head rolling from shoulder to shoulder, laughing at nothing.

“Ammon,” he said, voice dangerously calm, “go to your room.” A part of Corbin’s mind noted absently that it was only because of Finnick’s victory money that Ammon had something as prodigal as his own bedroom.

“Hi, dad!” The child was cheerful and vacant.

“Room. Now.” He didn’t yell. He just narrowed his eyes in a way that conveyed how very serious he was, refusing to break eye contact until they boy unsteadily stood and made his way up the stairs. Then, Corbin turned to Finnick. Before the games, Finnick would have recognized the signs he was in trouble and at least pretended to be contrite, but now he barely seemed to notice his father’s presence. “You’re giving drugs to your younger brother now?”

Finnick just shrugged. His dance now downgraded itself to merely swaying back and forth, but there was no sign that this conversation was holding his attention.

“What were you thinking?!” Corbin shouted. “Ammon is ten and you know he’s fragile.” Ammon was born sickly, small and slow to develop. Even at ten, he talked and thought more like a five-year-old. He seemed to catch every illness that swept through town and took longer to recover than the other children. His body could barely handle a cold snap, let alone an unknown dose of some street drug. He saw a small, unlabeled pill bottle on the table and grabbed it. It was full of little yellow stars. He didn’t know what they were, precisely, but then, she suspected that Finnick didn’t know either.

“It’s fun,” said Finnick, displaying no awareness whatsoever that, perhaps, there were good reasons not to pop pills while babysitting a small child, let alone to share with the kid.

“Did it occur to you that he could have overdosed? Had a bad reaction? What would you have done then? You used to care about him.” Finnick had always been boisterous and extroverted, preferring to spend time outdoors with his friends, but before the games, he had always made time for Ammon. “There was a time when you would have been horrified to think you had put him in danger.”

“He’s fine. We had a good time.”

Corbin hadn’t expected his boy to come home from the Capitol the same. He hadn’t expected him to come home at all. He had hoped of course – every parent hoped – but the odds were against him, even if he hadn’t been so young. And then he won. Even so, Corbin hadn’t been so naïve as to think he would return unchanged, to still be the same sweet, sly, showy, sentimental boy who had been reaped. He knew what horror could do to a person, was prepared for anxieties and nightmares, but he had still been confident that the victor sent back from the Capitol would still be Finnick, not this stranger who had no concern for his little brother. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” he said.

“No,” said Finnick, “you really don’t.” His eyes were still unfocused, but the giggly detachment was gone.

Corbin took a step forward. “Then tell me. Help me understand. I’m your father. I’m supposed to protect you!”

“You’re not doing a very good job.” Finnick’s mouth clamped shut as soon as the words were out. Even intoxicated, he obviously knew that was a step too far. Finnick Odair had very good aim. He had trained it spearing fish and used it to kill seven other children in the Hunger Games. And now he had just used it to find his father’s weakest point and attack.

Corbin had raised his hands toward his son, moving to hug him, to hold him, to tell him that he would do whatever it took to help him. Now, he dropped his hands to his sides and stepped backward. Because the boy was right. He hadn’t been able to protect him from the reaping. He hadn’t been able to help him in the Games. He hadn’t been able to shoulder any of the burden he had been carrying since his victory. He didn’t even know what was eating his son’s soul, let alone how to stop it. “I think you should move in with Mags.” His voice was cold.

Finnick snatched the pill bottle from his father’s hand. “Whatever.” He walked out the front door.

After a few days, Finnick returned home. Or rather, he agreed to return home. His belongings – some of them, at least – were in the elaborate master bedroom in the Odair villa of District Four Victor’s Village. But he still ate his meals at Mags’ house. He still had a room in Mags’ house, slept there most nights (or at least, he wasn’t sleeping in his own home, and Corbin hoped very much that he was at Mags’). And while he spent time with his father and his brothers, when he was with them, he never dropped his smile.

And the worst part was, Corbin thought, the smile was starting to look real.

67th Hunger Games

“Can you swim?” Finnick Odair plopped down onto the sofa, his fluorescent green drink spilling over the edge of its martini glass and dripping onto his hand. He proceeded to suck the beverage off of each finger in succession.

Haymitch Abernathy sniffed the air. Finnick’s drink was definitely alcoholic and likely very strong. Haymitch very pointedly did not turn his head to watch the boy fellate his hand. “Neither had the need nor the opportunity.”

“I can,” said Finnick. “I can hold my breath for a very long time.” He held his hand in place and swirled his tongue around his fingertip.

“That so?” Haymitch did not want to become Finnick’s confessor, the one he went to every year as a repository for all the filth the Capitol was pouring into him. He had only agreed to warn him about the damn arrangement in the first place because, apparently, Snow liked to use the video of his family’s execution to maximize compliance, a fact which left Haymitch with a completely irrational feeling of responsibility.

“It’s true. I’m very talented.”

“You really want to talk about that here?”

“Why not? Should I be ashamed of my skills?”

“No, kid, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” Haymitch blinked twice as if surprised by his own sincerity.

“Last night’s client took me to some sort of sculpture exhibition.”

“Lemme guess: People spent more time looking at you than the art.”

“Well, it was an exhibition, and I am an exhibitionist,” quipped Finnick, laughing lightly at his own pun. If there was any sadness or shame or self-loathing behind that grin, it was buried too deep for Haymitch to detect.

Haymitch sighed. Apparently he was having this conversation. “Your client a man or woman?”

“Woman. Older, but very energetic. People underestimate older women,” he added wistfully.

“She treat you right?”

“Of course,” said Finnick cheerfully. “She wouldn’t have wanted to spoil this body with a bruise.” He gestured to his abdominal muscles, waggling his hips.

“Bruises ain’t the only thing I was asking about.”

“They’re the only thing I’m answering about,” said Finnick sharply, the flirty airhead suddenly gone from the room.

Haymitch took a moment to decide how to respond. He settled on, “My mistake,” and an ambiguous gesture with his glass of bourbon that could possibly be interpreted as an apology. It wasn’t like there was any point in digging for information – what could he possibly do with it? Sure, he could sneak out into the city, could probably find the handsy piece of shit who had bought time in a minor, and then – what? What exactly would he do that wouldn’t get Finnick’s family killed? Finally, he followed up with the only safe question he could think of. “Are you seeing her again?”

“Day after tomorrow. Private party.”

“Party?”

“Gathering, gala, fete. I took my victor’s money and invested in a thesaurus.”

“How many-“ Haymitch shut his mouth before he could ask how many attendees Finnick would be expected to entertain. ‘Entertain’ didn’t always mean ‘service sexually’, but even Haymitch, who was straight as an arrow, thought he might rather suck a dick than crawl around on a leash like a dog, let them eat dinner off of his body, or any of the many, many other humiliations that the Capitol had forced on its victors. Haymitch suddenly realized he had no idea of Finnick’s sexual orientation. He remembered talking about ‘girls’ with the kid the night after his victory, but had never established whether that was girls-not-boys or an all-of-the-above situation. Or even a passing fancy that didn’t stick with him into adulthood. That happened sometimes, Haymitch was fairly sure.

Didn’t really matter, though. Finnick was smart enough to know that he could never turn down an appointment, and that dating on his own initiative was just giving Snow more hostages.

Finnick changed the subject. “I need to talk to my stylist. She has me wearing jewel tones which are very last year. This time around, everyone is about pastels.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

But Finnick lingered on the sofa. “Eight,” he said. “There will be eight there. And she really did treat me well last night. So, here’s hoping she’s screened her guest list.”

Chapter Text

68th Hunger Games

Haymitch wished they would turn the damn television off. He had agreed to go to some stupid sponsorship brunch even though his tributes – a boy who hadn’t even hit his growth spurt and a girl who had been unable to stop crying for most of the train ride into the Capitol – were not going to survive long enough to receive a little silver parachute, even if the meager donations of the few sponsors stupid enough to bet on Twelve could pay for something actually useful. But Chaff and Seeder were going, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do, so Haymitch had agreed.

That was before he had realized that going out to a brunch was going to require an hour in Remake with the District Twelve preps. They made absolutely no attempt to hold back their disgust with his personal grooming standards, but that didn’t bother Haymitch very much. What did bother him was the television, which they insisted on leaving on while they worked.

The gossip shows (i.e., all of the shows) were saying that Gloss and Cashmere were fucking. They weren’t, but in retrospect, it was more or less inevitable that they would be accused of incest. First, they were young, attractive, and famous, so of course they were thought of in sexual terms. Second, they were both being whored out by Snow, which meant they had no hope of forming normal romantic partnerships, not publicly anyway. Third, the Capitol was full of sick bastards who got off on shit like that. Fourth, and most importantly, they were from the districts, and the Capitols would believe pretty much anything that confirmed their assumptions of district depravity.

Haymitch, for his part, felt uniquely situated to disprove this particular slander, albeit completely unmotivated to do so.

Six years ago, he had pulled Gloss aside at his victory party to explain what was going to happen. It hadn’t been out of any particular desire to soften the blow – Haymitch had never liked the slimy brute. It was because he knew he was the example that was held out to ensure compliance, and no matter how many times he told himself it was insane and irrational, that made him feel vaguely responsible.

“The buyers. They’re women and men?” Gloss’s face didn’t show much emotion. Haymitch wasn’t sure whether that was because he actually didn’t care, he was hiding his feelings well, or he was just too stupid to talk and bend his eyebrows at the same time.

“Yep,” said Haymitch. “It all depends on who wants you, but you’ll have some of each.”

“Then I’m going to need performance enhancers,” said Gloss, matter-of-factly.

“Can’t be that hard to find. Check with Blight. He could never get it up for male clients either.”

“I’m going to need performance enhancers,” repeated Gloss, “for the women.” He turned and looked directly at Haymitch. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Gay sex wasn’t illegal in the Capitol, but the idea of dispositional homosexuality, of gay as something permanent that you were instead of something trendy that you did was not widely accepted, which explained why Gloss hadn’t let his orientation slip in an interview as a way to counteract the incest rumors.

Haymitch was annoyed that he was even aware of this scandal, let alone its sordid backstory. He cared very little about anything that happened in the Capitol, and less than that for the public image of an entitled ogre from One. He had been forbidden by the stylists from reaching for his flask, though – “Every time you move your head, you add fifteen minutes onto our work.” – so he was forced to suffer through the vapid TV presenters’ expressions of disgust and fascination in a state of increasing sobriety.

All of which explained why Haymitch was (sort of) glad to hear the mixed, overlapping chatter of another prep team from the opposite side of the room. Any distraction was better than none.

“We could use the waterproof concealer.”

“It says ‘waterproof’ but it’s really water-resistant.”

“Do you really have to do this photoshoot today, honey?”

“There’s no makeup that will stay on perfectly while you’re submerged in water.”

“I don’t see why they can’t just touch up the pictures afterward instead of trying to get your skin perfect from this side of the camera.”

And then the voice of their target: “I’m sure whatever you come up with will be spectacular.” It was Finnick Odair.

The preps all laughed at his flattery.

The voice of Cordelia, chief stylist for Four: “It would really be better to give you a few days to heal up instead. Do you want me to have your escort call the photographer?” A pause. “Once the redness goes down, it will be much easier to cover up.”

At the phrase, ‘heal up’, Haymitch’s head jerked to the side. (“That’s another fifteen minutes, Mr. Abernathy.”) He made a brief effort to let his preps continue their efforts, but once he heard ‘redness’, he batted them away. They objected vociferously as he made his way across the Remake room, but Haymitch had plenty of experience ignoring their complaints.

And there was Finnick, lying supine and naked on the metal prep table. “Hi, Haymitch!” he said with a broad smile. His teeth were, if anything, straighter and shinier than they had been last year, which seemed impossible. “You know,” he said, pointing to the half of Haymitch’s face that was still covered in shaving cream, “that’s a hell of a fashion statement. Looks good on you, though.”

Haymitch ignore the kid’s words in favor of the ‘redness’ that needed to ‘heal up’ – a series of dozens of crisscrossing lacerations and welts on the boy’s inner thighs and groin. It was difficult to judge whether there was damage to his penis itself, wrinkled as it was in its flaccid state, but logistically, it seemed unlikely that whatever instrument had been used had managed to miss it entirely. Not that it really mattered. The injuries themselves were not particularly deep or severe; it was their number and placement that were grotesque.

Finnick followed Haymitch’s gaze. “I know,” he said, with an exaggerated air of annoyance, “wouldn’t be such a big deal, but I’ve got a modeling gig this afternoon and they want me in a swimming pool, so the regular makeup isn’t going to cut it.”

“What the hell are you modeling that won’t cover that?” Haymitch waved his hand in the general direction of the boy’s crotch, pointedly not looking at it anymore.

Finnick tipped his head toward the row of clothes hooks on the wall. Hanging from them was a pair of sleek, shiny green underwear. Less than underwear, really. A tiny triangle of fabric. “It’s some kind of Capitol swimwear. Ridiculous, really. If you want to actually work in the water, you wear a wetsuit. And if you want to relax, you skin.”

“Pretty sure it’s still illegal to take your picture naked.”

Finnick’s smile froze but never faltered. Without moving his lips, he muttered, “Think we both know that ‘illegal’ doesn’t count for much.” His face relaxed slightly. “It’s not a bad job, really. They’re actually paying me personally. Mags is going to show me how to open a bank account.”

“So you’re working today. You working last night, too?”

“Yep, pretty much the same job, too: just stand still and look pretty.” He fluttered his eyes. “Two things I am very good at.”

Haymitch rolled his eyes. He held out his flask.

“No thanks,” said Finnick. “It won’t mix well with what I’m already on.”

The thing was, Finnick did not look particularly stoned, which meant that he had a pretty good tolerance for whatever he was taking, which was not a good sign. “Does Mags know about…” Haymitch used a head nod to indicate the boy’s injuries.

“She knows there are cuts. That made her mad enough. She doesn’t need to know the details.”

“You’re gonna try to protect her? Boy, you should watch the vid of her games.” Even as he said this, Haymitch had his doubts. Mags cared about her tributes, even more about her victors. She was pragmatic about it, though, unwilling to cast her lot in with a rebellion that had no chance of succeeding. But even she would have a hard time ignoring the fact that someone had caned this boy’s dick.

“It’s not that.” There was the tiniest hint of a scowl behind Finnick’s smile. “She knows my dad.”

“She told your father?”

“No, no, she said that was up to me,” said Finnick quickly. “But they talk. They have tea together. I wish they didn’t. I don’t want that information anywhere near my family.”

“Mr. Abernathy!” called one of the preps from the other side of the room. “If we’re going to have you ready by-“

They were cut off by Haymitch grabbing a bottle of electric blue nail polish and pouring it over his head. “I am very clearly not going.”

Finnick laughed and for the briefest moment, his smile reached his eyes.

“You fucker,” said Chaff, settling down at the bar next to Haymitch. He sounded angry, but he obviously wasn’t, as he brought them both drinks. “You left me at that brunch by myself.”

“Well, I thought I’d give you a chance to get noticed. If I had shown, you wouldn’t have managed to outshine my charm.”

Chaff began to set up the chess board. When they started playing, years ago, Haymitch had won more than he lost, but he had gradually lost his edge. They still alternated who got to go first, though, and it was Chaff’s turn to play as white.

They were a few moves in when Haymitch said, “I’ve got some new moves to target your king.” They sometimes talked about the resistance in code via chess. It wasn’t particularly subtle, referring to Snow as the white king, but chess was not very popular in the Capitol, so they felt fairly secure that no one listening in would realize that there were no ‘new moves’ in the game and therefore some kind of second meaning.

“You cheating on me? Who’ve you been playing with?”

Haymitch ignored the question. “You ever heard of otters? They’re some kind of ocean dog.” The message came from, or was about Four.

“That doesn’t sound real.”

“Apparently it is. Heard about ‘em while I was killing time in Remake this morning.”

The tributes were in training, not prep, so something to do with a victor. “Ah,” he said, “Are ocean dogs vicious or friendly?”

 “I’m told they seem cute, but they’re predators.”

Chaff took a slow sip of his drink. “Sounds like your pawns are just itching to attack.” Was Finnick Odair ready to join the resistance? Could he be trusted to keep his head? The boy had been unerringly strategic in the arena, but patience was not, generally speaking, the strong suit of sixteen-year-olds.

“Nah, the pawns are just trying to stay alive,” said Haymitch, “but it might be a good time to start bringing the queen into play.”

69th Hunger Games

“They said you were asking for me.”

Finnick was laying on his side on the sofa, knees drawn up, arms crossed in front of his chest. Mags wondered if he knew he was laying in the heat retention position, the posture that every child of District Four learned to maximize survival in chilly water.

Finnick nodded.

“Your client last night?”

He nodded.

“Are you injured?”

He shook his head.

Mags just waited. She could keep questioning the boy or she could let him talk in his own time.

“You know how some of them want me to call them ‘Daddy’?”

“Yes,” said Mags slowly. She thought it was rather disgusting, but it was common enough and didn’t seem particularly harmful. In fact, she was fairly certain that Finnick initiated it at times, toward men he was hoping would ‘spoil’ him with lavish gifts. “Your client last night, Hadrian Majors, was one of them?” Majors was minister of finance and quite enjoyed showing off his access to victors.

Finnick was silent for a moment and then the whole story came spilling out. “He had them give me inhibitors – not the low dose that lets you last a long time, but the really high dose they give you in the arena.” Female tributes had been given hormone inhibiting injections from the very beginning of the Games to stop their menstrual cycles, not because the gamemakers were worried about the girls’ comfort, but because that particular bleeding somehow offended Capitol sensibilities. And then in the fourteenth games, a boy from One raped the girl from Five. After that, they started giving the inhibitors to male tributes as well. In high enough doses, the drug made erection and ejaculation more or less impossible.  “When you take that much,” continued Finnick, “if someone touches you, it feels…weird. Not bad exactly, but not like sex.”

Finnick stared at nothing as he kept talking. “He had a whole plan, almost a script. He wanted me to start out nervous and naïve, ask him to stop when he was blowing me, but in a hesitant way, like I don’t know what I want. And then crying and pain when he started to fuck me. But then partway through I was supposed to start to enjoy it and thank Daddy for loving me and promise I would never tell anyone.”

Mags had spent decades coaching teenagers into a maze of murder, had called dozens of parents to tell them to turn off the broadcast before they could see their child’s death, had shepherded the few that survived through the Capitol’s decadence and depravity. There wasn’t a lot that surprised her. This, though, left her at least momentarily stunned.

Finnick looked up before she could figure out what to say. “All of that is…well, it’s…I don’t know. If I knew it was just pretend, I could let it go. But, Mags, he has a son, a little kid, younger than Ammon.” Finnick looked stricken. He whispered, “I wish I didn’t know he could be hurting a real boy.”

In that moment, Finnick looked so small and so young that Mags sat down next to him on the sofa and guided his head into her lap. She stroked his hair and said, “You are a real boy.”

That was either the right or the wrong thing to say because Finnick began to weep. Not beautiful, broadcast, one-tear crying, but snot-dripping, hiccupping, gasping crying. The real kind of crying. “What do I do?” he whispered between sobs. “I can’t…I can’t not do-“ Swallow, deep breath. “But if I-“ Sniffle. “Snow will-“ Shuddered inhale. “He’ll know. He’ll know it was me. And then he’ll-” He turned his head to look at Mags. “You have to choose. I can’t choose. I can’t choose. I can’t choose.”

Nearly all of the conflicts Mags had with Finnick were centered around his desire to be treated as an adult. He wanted to drink alcohol. He wanted free access to the many mind-affecting pills and serums that Capitols traded in. He wanted his newest ‘girlfriend’ to buy him a car. He wanted his father to stop calling him with his complaints and worries and humiliation about Finnick's newest photoshoot or leaked sexvid. He wanted to decide for himself whether he had been out too many nights in a row, whether he was hurting or helping himself with parties and drugs and anonymous sex. But at the moment, Finnick looked so very young.

“I’ll choose,” said Mags. “I’m not going to tell you what I choose and you’re not going to ask. This is my responsibility now. Not yours.” And she let him lay there with his head in her lap until he fell asleep.

Chapter Text

After the 69^th Hunger Games

Mags took Plutarch’s hand in both of hers. “You’re such a nice young man,” she said, in the tone of a doddering old woman.

Plutarch knew she was sharp as ever, so he played the game. “Does that mean you’ll finally let me take you on a date?”

“Perhaps.” Mags continued to hold Plutarch’s hand, gazing into his eyes. She slowly traced letters into his palm, one at a time. I-F Y-O-U K-I-L-L H-A-D-R-I-A-N M-A-J-O-R-S

Plutarch frowned. “I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to earn your affections.”

“You’ll never know unless you try.”

70^th Hunger Games

Finnick’s time in the Capitol was highly regimented. He helped, somewhat, with the tributes, but he was never fully responsible for them. He quickly realized what a miserable business mentoring was, and while he suspected it would be preferable to his current profession, he knew that if he took up Mag’s mantle, he would not be excused from Snow’s schedule, and would instead have to manage both. So he remained largely detached from the games, only keeping up with them to the extent expected by his clients, which was how he managed to miss the fact that Annie Cresta had gone mad. She was hardly the first tribute to do so, but she was certainly the first to win despite being a few knots short of a net.

In fact, he didn’t hear about her condition until he told Mags that he wouldn’t be able to take the train back to Four with her, was expected to stay in the Capitol for another month.

By the time he made it back to Four, though, Finnick had heard the whole story – how her district partner, Jeto, was beheaded, how she treaded water while her fellow tributes gradually succumbed to exhaustion and drowned. Mags explained that the girl was only intermittently in contact with reality, spending most of her time catatonic, tearful, enraged, or in some kind of fugue state in which she was unable to tell whether she was still in the arena.

Finnick avoided her. He had enough responsibility without dealing with a crazy, screaming teenager. At least, he thought, she wouldn’t end up in Snow’s prostitution scheme. She was too unstable. There were clients who enjoyed fear, who wanted tears and begging, but always controlled, always within very specific parameters to maximize their feelings of power and minimize feelings of guilt. They wouldn’t want a girl who sniveled with her nose running or who was practically unresponsive.

But the Capitol sent doctors in hopes of stabilizing her enough for her victory tour. They put her on powerful medications that left her fuzzy and sedated – no more sane, really, just easier to manage.

By the time the victory tour was slated to begin, Annie was going three or four days between episodes. Finnick was slated to go with her to the Capitol – not for her sake, but so he could see more clients. He could see that she was stabilizing. She wasn’t well and would probably never be, but she was less overtly disturbed, and, more importantly, less overtly disturbing.

As he settled into the train’s dining car, Finnick asked, “Does she have an appointment with Snow?”

Mags eyed him carefully, as if weighing whether or not to tell the truth. After a moment, she nodded.

“She can’t possibly…” Finnick didn’t finish his sentence. “She’ll fall apart again.”

“I imagine he’s heard that she’s recovering. He’s not necessarily interested in long-term investments.”

Finnick scowled. “Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care about her,” snapped Mags. She went on, answering the question he didn’t ask: “And I care about you. If I could stop it, I would. But Snow’s like a hurricane. There’s no fighting him, just figuring out how to survive.”

They went through each district. Finnick rarely left the train. He liked dinner parties, but the victory tour was a joyless, awkward, guilty trek that he didn’t feel like subjecting himself to. Besides, the traveling party was always kept under armed guard, never got to actually explore each district. And he didn’t want to spend any more time with Annie Cresta than was absolutely necessary. He wasn’t sure if he was worried her crazy might rub off on him, or if he felt guilty that he wasn’t as crazy as her. After all, he had actually murdered people, but had apparently been able to shake it off. Annie had simply survived while others died, and she was overwhelmed.

Except she was getting better. Against all rational explanation, she was improving over the course of the victory tour. Maybe it was because she didn’t have any kills, so although she met grieving families, they weren’t the angry survivors of her victims. Maybe it was because there was a strict schedule that left little time for her to get lost in her thoughts. Maybe the Capitol doctor who was tagging along was giving her higher and higher doses of whatever it was he had in those syringes. As they got closer to the Capitol, she got clearer and clearer.

Finnick came to a decision. He wasn’t sure what exactly he had to do to accomplish his goal, so he decided he would throw in everything he could think of. He grabbed a pair of shear tights and ripped the legs apart. He took one leg and dragged the thigh hole over his head, leaving the calf as a little tail in the back. It wasn’t a disguise that would hold up to even minor scrutiny, but he wasn’t planning on being seen. He picked up a holo in one hand and a table knife in the other. It was dull and small, but that wouldn’t matter. He slipped down the corridor to the viewing area in the back of the train, where Annie was standing, looking at the countryside. He stood behind her and held the knife to her throat. He said, “You’re still in the arena. You’re never going to leave the arena.”

“No,” she shook her head. “No, I swam and I got out and-“

Finnick grabbed her hair and pulled hard, exposing her neck. He pressed the knife down. “I’m going to cut off your head. I’m going to cut off your fucking head.” He tossed the holo down so it projected the beheaded body of Jeto into her field of vision. “That’s right, just like him. Did his mouth move? Did he try to talk with no lungs? How much blood was there? Did his nerves leak from his spine like jellyfish tentacles?”

Annie knitted her fingers behind her head, so her palms covered her ears and her forearms blocked her eyes. “No,” she whimpered, “no, no, no.”

But Finnick had said ‘no’ before, and sometimes that just turned them on more. He had to keep going. “His body was in the water,” whispered Finnick. “All that time you spent treading, you were swimming in his blood. His hands were under there. You could probably feel them brush against your legs. You’re sinking. You’re drowning. He’s pulling you down. He’s-“

Annie screamed.

Finnick looked down at the girl. She was incoherent, unresponsive. Sometime during his stunt, she had lost control of her bladder. No one would want her now.

The tradeoff was worth it, Finnick told himself. It was. One breakdown, one setback, and she could avoid a decade of forced prostitution. There was a time – several times really – when Finnick thought he couldn’t hate himself any more. When he met the families of the kids he had killed. When his father admitted he was disappointed in what he had become. When he fucked Cecelia for a client’s amusement, two weeks after she gave birth, and she cried from the pain. And yet, apparently, he had hidden depths of shame that he never knew existed.

71^st Hunger Games – Johanna Mason

“I hate snow. I hate snow. I fucking hate snow.” Johanna’s song was quiet, repetitive, and constant. She was clearly freezing, red-faced and miserable as she hacked down two long, thin branches and lay them parallel on the ground. She then drove her axe into a pine tree nearly vertically, straight down, peeling off a thick slat which she laid perpendicular to the branches. “I hate snow. I hate snow. I fucking hate snow.” She repeated the action several times, eventually moving onto a new tree when the first was stripped bare, at least for the five or so feet that lay beneath her height. Snowflakes had settled onto her hair which was had become filthy and greasy over the past week. Soap was a common early sponsor gift as it was cheap and kept the tributes presentable on camera, enticing to sponsors. Johanna had been sent a small bar, but she had not bothered to wash. She seemed to enjoy being disgusting. In fact, two days ago, she had deliberately tainted the careers’ water source with her own feces.

Once her pile was big enough, she chopped off a larger limb and laid it on the back of the branches to keep her pine slats from falling off of her crude sled. “I hate snow. I hate snow. I fucking hate snow.” The melody was singsong and irritating, like a child pestering an older sibling. It was going to leave a very clear track through the woods, but so would footprints, and if anything, the sled was flattening down the marks left by her boots, making a smooth-ish surface that would blend in with its surroundings once more snow came down.

Johanna tucked her axe in her belt, picked up the branch ends, and trudged away, still chanting, “I hate snow. I hate snow. I fucking hate snow.”

She walked almost a mile, creating distance between her and the obviously harvested trees, before finding a small outcropping, a three-foot drop between one plane of the forest floor and the next, laying bare the bedrock. It was there Johanna began layering her slats into a shelter, interleaving them to keep out the wind. The shelter was angled against the rock so it simply made the outcropping look like a modestly steep hill. She packed snow over the outside before lightly brushing it. In a few minutes, her shelter would be completely undetectable unless someone happened to step on it. And throughout, the whole time, “I hate snow. I hate snow. I fucking hate snow.”

Finnick plopped down in the chair next to Haymitch. “Not very subtle, is she? I can practically hear the capital S.” Both of Haymitch’s tributes had died in the bloodbath. Finnick still wasn’t mentoring, but he was trying to make an effort to at least be aware of what was happening in the games, lest he completely drop the ball on another Annie Cresta situation.

Haymitch shook his head. “She’s smart. Watch her lips. She sings it whenever one of the broadcast drones gets too near. It guarantees they can’t use the footage.”

“Why doesn’t she want to be on screen?”

Haymitch shrugged, indifferent. “Maybe she heard the rumor that gifts send secret messages to their tributes, try to lead them in the right direction. Doesn’t want anyone using that trick to help the others find her.”

“That’s not exactly untrue,” said Finnick. It was true they couldn’t get actual written messages into the arena, but more than one mentor had tried using their specific choice of gift – a blue rope or a red one, a pack of three matches or four – in a way that strongly suggested some sort of code.

“Or maybe she’s just thumbing her nose at the Capitol. Not a bad way to spend your last days.”

“No way. I can’t.” Johanna had been cleaned up by her prep team, but she still had a feral look about her.

“You can,” said Finnick. “It’s going to seem impossible, but you can do it. We’ll help you.”

“There’s no fucking way.” Johanna had a way of speaking that put equal stress on every word, like a drumbeat.

“Have you ever done it before? Sex, I mean, not prostitution.”

Johanna didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“If you don’t want this as your first time, we can find you someone.” Finnick tried to remember how Haymitch had phrased the offer. “It won’t be real romance, but at least it will be about your pleasure, not his.”

“There has to be a way out of this.”

“There isn’t.”

“I could run away. I could kill myself.”

“He’ll kill your family.”

“What if I destroy my snatch? Burn it with acid or something?” She sounded like she was seriously considering the possibility.

“Then they’ll fuck you in the ass,” said Finnick flatly.

“So I just have to get raped? Over and over until they decide I’m old and unfuckable?”

“Yes,” said Finnick. He didn’t like to use the word ‘rape’ for what was being done to them. He wasn’t sure whether that was because he honestly didn’t think of it that way, or because it was overwhelming to do so. But he wasn’t about to tell Johanna how she ought to label being forcibly sold for sex. “But it’s usually only a few years, and so far no one’s ever been at it for more than ten.” Finnick had a feeling he was going to break that particular record, but he elected not to mention it. “And it’s not all the time, just when you’re in the Capitol.”

“Why the hell are you helping him? Trying to soft-pedal it, trying to make it sound not that bad? Just because you like it-“

“I don’t. I don’t. Every time hurts. When they try to be nice, it hurts. When they tell me to take pills to cum again for the fourth time in an hour, it hurts. When they get off on owning me, it hurts.” Finnick shook his head as if to clear it. “But you don’t have a choice. He will kill your family. There are no warnings. There are no second chances. If you don’t play the game, he will kill someone you love.”

Johanna still looked unconvinced.

“Count,” said Finnick. “Think in circles.” He rested his hand over Johanna’s and stroked his fingers up her arm, then drew them in and laid them back where they began. He repeated the gesture, “One, two, three,” and again, “four, five, six.” He placed his other hand on the back of her neck, doing the same, delicate, rhythmic dance. “One two-three, four five-six.” It was a strong-weak-weak pattern that emphasized the steady repetition.

Johanna raised her hand to her mouth in an open C-shape which she proceeded to jerk back and forth while chanting, “One two-three, four five-six,” in what was, Finnick decided, the single most hostile blow job, pantomimed or otherwise, he had ever seen in his life.

Finnick pretended not to notice her rage. “That’s excellent. But the motion should come from your wrist, like this.” Finnick too began stroking an imaginary penis. He smiled and added, “One two-three, four five-six,” to the demonstration.

“I hate you so much,” answered Johanna.

“Focus on the details,” said Finnick. “Think about the counting, the movement. Think about your body, not theirs.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “It helps.”

“The only thing that’s going to help is-” Johanna described an extremely unlikely anatomical act involving Coriolanus Snow, an axe handle, and hot tar.

Finnick couldn’t suppress a laugh.

“You’re like a statue,” said Johanna with mock sincerity. “You’re chiseled, you’re hard, and with any luck, your cock will break off.”

“You’re like a fire,” whispered Finnick, in a parody of his seductive voice. “You’re hot, you’re dangerous, and I don’t want you anywhere near my cock.”

From then on, they were the best of friends.

71^st Hunger Games

Finnick opened his door and froze. “Johanna,” he said, “please tell me that’s your blood.” She was pale, covered in sweat and gore, sweating and shaking and dead-eyed. Finnick stepped back, gesturing for her to enter. “Please tell me that’s your blood,” he repeated.

“I wasn’t me when I did it.” Johanna was talking to Finnick, but not looking at him. “It’s like I was watching myself from the outside.”

“Johanna, what did you do?” Finnick was having a hard time keeping the panic out of his voice.

“I killed him. I killed him. I stabbed him and he’s dead.”

“No,” said Finnick, “no. You lost your temper. You reacted. But I'm sure you didn’t kill anyone. I’m sure they can patch your client up. They’re incredible in the Capitol. They’re-“

“He’s dead. I know what dead looks like.” She paused. “He said he wanted me to pretend to be scared, the way I did in the games, and he was going to chase me. And then we were doing it and he chased me and I was in the arena and I broke a mirror and I took the glass and I stabbed him.”

Finnick took her hand and led her back to the elevator.

Haymitch’s head was pounding. No. Wait. Haymitch’s door was pounding. Haymitch rolled over and struggled to his feet. He wasn’t currently drunk, but he certainly wasn’t in great shape either. He thought about shouting at the interloper to wait but before he managed to start talking, he was already at the door. He opened it and there was Finnick Odair, leading a blood-splattered Johanna Mason. Splattered wasn’t the right verb. Soaked would be closer. Drenched, maybe.

“Help,” said Finnick. He guided Johanna into the apartment over Haymitch’s angrily hissed objections.

“I’m not your damn momma, boy. Quit bringing me your problems!”

“Snow gave her a rapeplay client. She…reacted.”

Haymitch dragged his hand over his face. Now his head was pounding. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he whined.

“What’s going to happen?” asked Finnick.

“What the hell do you think is going to happen?!” shouted Haymitch, wishing very much that he had a bottle in his hand, both to drink and to throw at the irritating, senseless teenagers who were dead set on ruining his night.

“He’s dead,” whispered Johanna. “I was in the arena again and he’s dead.”

“Sit her down,” said Haymitch, exasperated. Once Johanna was seated stiffly on the edge of the sofa, he grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. “Listen, girl, repeat after me: I was set up to fail.”

“I was set up to fail.” Johanna’s voice was empty and toneless.

“Whatever happens next…” Haymitch shook Johanna’s chin lightly to get her to respond.

“Whatever happens next…”

“Is not my fault.”

“Is not…”

“Say it.”

“My fault.”

“Now say the whole thing.”

“I was set up to fail. Whatever happens next is not my…not my…not… He’s dead. He’s really dead.”

Haymitch squeezed his eyes shut. He sighed. “Boy,” he said to Finnick, “what pills do you have?”

“Uh, I don’t-“

“Shut up.” Haymitch’s eyes flared. “What pills do you have?” he repeated.

Finnick’s face straightened, clearly realizing that this was no time to pretend he was living clean. “I’ve got sparkles, empty, valleys, J, and I might still have some gears.”

“No morphling?”

Finnick shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Valleys might work. How many pills does it take to knock you out?”

Finnick considered. He generally tried to get woozy, but not unconscious, so he wasn’t precisely sure. “Seven, maybe?”

Haymitch rolled his eyes upward, doing mental arithmetic. “Let’s give her five.”

“How’s that going to help?”

“It’s not,” said Haymitch. “There’s nothing any of us can do. But she can at least sleep through the worst of it.”

Finnick ran downstairs to get the pills.

Haymitch shook his head at Johanna. “That was a damn fool thing to do,” he said, but she wasn’t listening.

Finnick returned. They sedated Johanna and sat down to wait.

Haymitch turned on Finnick. “Why in all the districts did you bring her here instead of getting Mags?”

“She’s busy mentoring. I knew your tributes were out.”

“Oh, and you couldn’t pull her away for ten minutes?” Haymitch’s voice brimmed with sarcasm.

“And she’s mad at me.”

“What’d you do this time?”

“It’s what I’m not doing. She’s mad I won’t, you know, make friends with Annie Cresta. I don’t see why we all have to be buddy-buddy, just because we’re from the same district.” That was not precisely true. Mags didn’t expect friendship. She had simply tried to insist that Finnick at least interact with Annie, but Finnick found he couldn’t look at the girl without feeling guilty about what he had done on the train, and – on a level he barely acknowledged – envious of her relative freedom.

Haymitch poured himself a drink. “No, please, tell me more about your stupid teenage drama. I’m fucking fascinated.”

Johanna whimpered in her sleep.

Finnick scowled.

They all waited for the news to come from Seven.

Chapter Text

65^th Hunger Games

“Another present for Pretty Boy,” crowed the boy from One as the parachute descended onto the career camp.

Finnick opened his sponsor gift. It was cheese and bread. He looked up at the sky and thanked the donor, before taking a big bite and sharing with the other careers. His steady stream of silver parachutes was helping him stay in the career pack, convincing them not to turn on him as long as he provided obvious value. He would have to break off eventually, of course, and he was carefully squirreling away a little bit of each gift to prepare for that moment, but until then, he was wisely spending his sponsors’ largesse on maintaining his allies’ loyalty.

Which meant he had to keep his sponsors’ interest. Mags had talked with him about the importance of presentation, of fronting for the cameras to entice Capitols who might send him gifts. She hadn’t been very specific about how to do so, perhaps because she had sensed she didn’t have to be. Finnick had always known how to attract and leverage others’ attention.

He stood on an outcropping, feeling the warmth of the artificial sun on his face, and suddenly knew what he should do. He unzipped his bodysuit all the way down his back and began peeling it from his torso, baring his arms and chest. He brought it low, just below his waist, as far down as it could go without triggering the Capitol’s censorship. If he had possessed any pubic hairs (he didn’t – what little fuzz he had grown had been waxed off by his prep team), they would have peeked out. As it was, he suspected a well-placed camera would be able to catch the top of his butt crack.

“What are you doing?” This, from the girl from Two.

“Just enjoying the morning,” said Finnick. “I probably don’t have too many left.” He allowed himself to look just a little sad, just a little worried, for the briefest of moments. This was to remind his sponsors that he still needed their help. Then, half-naked and as alluring as he could possibly make himself, he closed his eyes and smiled for the cameras.

After the 72^nd Hunger Games

Finnick took several slow, deep breaths before he dove off the dock, a loosely woven sack in his left hand. He reemerged several minutes later, the sack now full of oysters.  As soon as he breached the surface, he tapped his watch, a fancy, waterproof model that he had been given by Wiress. (It’s purpose, she told him, was so he would always know when his wrist was.) He tossed the sack onto the dock and pulled himself up, only to find Annie Cresta. She was staring out at the ocean, showing no sign of registering his presence, which was why he was surprised when she said, “Can you really see when you’re that far down?”

It was a very sensible question, but one that few people thought of. They mostly focused on the admittedly impressive duration of his free dives or simply enjoyed the opportunity to see him less-than-fully dressed. “It’s not that deep,” he said, “and the watch has a light,” he said, holding up his wrist.

Annie nodded. She still wasn’t exactly looking at him, which Finnick found both unnerving and a relief. It was so rare that people, even well-meaning locals in Four, didn’t stare. Young kids idolized him and told him they were working hard in Games School so they could become a victor like him. Adolescents and adults took one of three stances: They were envious of his popularity, they lusted after him, or they were faintly disgusted by his status as the Capitol slut.

Finnick poured his oysters into a bucket and prepared to dive again.

Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to Finnick that Annie would have a talent, but of course she did. He had just been so studious in avoiding her that he hadn’t noticed. But after their conversation on the dock, he found he couldn’t stop noticing. She collected samples of flowers, snails, seashells, fish scales, squid ink, seaweed, berries, and even bits of minerals, driven from the rock by a small hammer and chisel. He could not see any pattern in her collecting. Some of it was edible, some wasn’t. Some could possibly be preserved as jewelry, some could not. Some were dried, some kept fresh.

Finally, he followed her back to her home in Victor’s Village. “Is it art?” he asked, before she could enter her home. “Are you making some kind of collage? Or just a collection?”

Annie shook her head. “You can see for yourself,” she said. Normally, a statement like that would go with a gesture, beckoning him inside, but she simply unlocked the front door and entered, leaving it slightly ajar.

Finnick sighed and went after her, too curious to worry. Her home had the same layout as all the others, but where the study was supposed to be, she had an overflowing library of little jars, shelves, and drawers. There were long workspaces with mortars and pestles, tiny burners underneath glassware, and dozens upon dozens of little clear glass pots full of brilliantly bright powders. Finnick gaped. Annie had been busy in the time since her games, had done much more than just gibber, had done much more than Finnick himself, even though Finnick had spent much longer as a victor. After nearly a minute had passed in silence, he asked, “Are those…drugs?” Because they weren’t spices, and he didn’t know of any other powders.

Annie frowned. “They’re pigments.” When Finnick did not immediately react, she added, “Colors. For paints and dyes.”

“You’re an artist,” said Finnick.

Annie shook her head. “I don’t actually make art. I just make the colors.”

“No,” said Finnick in awe, “you’re an artist.”

“Do you remember your victory tour? The train ride into the Capitol?” They were sitting on the dock, Finnick having just fetched some iridescent abalone shells for Annie's pigment-creation from the seafloor. Every part of him resisted having this conversation, even though he had taken several pills to dampen the intensity of his emotions. It had been months since the silence between them had broken. Tense, terrifying months.

“Yes,” said Annie. “I don’t always know if what I remember is real, but I remember everything.”

Finnick felt his mouth go dry. If she hadn’t recalled what he had done, he might have been able to justify sidestepping the whole affair. But she remembered, and now, if he wanted to keep spending time with her (and for reasons he could not quite fathom, that was what he wanted) he had to have two conversations with her: what he did and why he did it.  

They sat in silence for several minutes.

“Johanna’s family died,” blurted out Finnick. That was not how he had planned to start this conversation.

“Johanna Mason?”

Finnick nodded. Planned or not, he would have to continue. “Her parents, her sister, her grandfather and her uncle and his kids.”

“All of them?” Annie covered her mouth with her hand.

“There was a fire. It wasn’t an accident.”

Annie’s nose wrinkled. Some very annoying part of Finnick’s mind found this adorable.

“She made Snow mad and he punished her. Being a victor…it’s not…once Snow has you, you’re trapped forever. You have to keep him happy or the people you love will pay.”

“When you go to the Capitol…”

“I’m there to keep Snow happy. And it’s…it’s…”

“Bad,” said Annie. “I’ve seen you when you get on the train. I’ve seen you come back. It’s bad.”

Okay, that was the ‘why’ established, at least in general terms, now for the ‘what’. “You know I was on the train with you, on your victory tour, right?”

“Of course,” said Annie, “you attacked me.”

Finnick turned to look at her, startled. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Finally, he said, “How did you know?”

“I’m crazy, not stupid,” she answered. “It was a man who did it. The only men on the train were you, my doctor, and some avoxes. You spoke, which rules out the avoxes. The doctor was much shorter than you. The knife would’ve been at a different angle. And,” she added, “I recognized your voice.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Finnick. “It was a terrible thing to do. I just wanted to keep you from having to…from letting Snow get ahold of you.”

“That wasn’t your choice to make. Maybe I would’ve thought it was worth it, to be beholden to Snow, but getting better.”

Finnick almost found himself saying, “Trust me, it’s not worth it,” but he kept his mouth closed, because he didn’t have any right to ask Annie to trust him, not now. So they sat on the dock in silence until they went home.

73^rd Hunger Games

Finnick glared at the card directing him to his next appointment. A Gamemaker. With any luck the man would be a submissive and Finnick would get to take out a little aggression. He sighed. Finnick knew he did not have any luck.

“I’d like you to undress.” The man was on the high side of middle age and unattractive, but at least he was basically natural, without weird surgeries and dyes.

“I’d love to strip for you.” Finnick tipped his head downward so he could look up at the man, a thin smile accentuating his cheekbones and fluttering eyelids.

The man sat back on the sofa, holding but not drinking a martini, as Finnick kicked off his shoes and peeled himself out of his clothes. He hadn’t known his client was going to want a striptease, or he would have dressed differently. As it was, he tried his best to make shimmying out of skintight trousers sensual. Once he was down to his boxers, Finnick took a step toward the man, straddling his knees without touching.

“No,” said the Gamemaker. “No lap dance. Just get naked.”

“I like a man who knows what he wants,” purred Finnick. And the truth was, he did. Clients who knew what they wanted were easier to please.

Once Finnick was in the buff, the man looked him up and down and nodded appreciatively. “Good. Leave the clothes. Come with me.” He rose and walked into the next room – not, Finnick noted, upstairs to the bedroom.

That was never a good sign. Clients only brought him somewhere other than a bedroom for two reasons: to show him off in public (unlikely at this point, but still possible) or to push him into some humiliating party or orgy or – once – an evening of being a living statue. That last one actually hadn’t been that bad, except the client had wanted Finnick to gain and lose his erection repeatedly throughout the night, without ever ejaculating, which had been frustrating. But he was here and he had a job to do, so Finnick followed the man through his overlarge house to a small, bare room, decorated only with a few simple chairs. No bed. That was a good sign. Finnick took a deep breath before entering, preparing himself to be shared, but there was only one person inside.

“Haymitch?” What the hell was Haymitch Abernathy doing here? Finnick had more than once been booked along with another victor, usually with the expectation they would have sex with each other for the amusement of the Capitol audience, but Haymitch wasn’t getting whored out by Snow.

“The fuck are you doing, Heavensbee? Did you really have to strip the kid naked?”

“Yes,” said the client, “I did. There were bugs in his shoes and belt. And those were just the ones I detected with a quick scan.”

Haymitch scowled and took off his suitcoat. He handed it to Finnick. “Cover up, would you?”

Finnick scowled right back. He didn’t like being told what to do, so he grabbed the suitcoat and put it on normally, leaving his buttocks and genitals uncovered. What – was he supposed to be embarrassed by all of this? Half of Panem had seen him piss in a glass toilet. He wasn’t going to blush at having his balls out in front of two men in a private room. Unless his client wanted him to be embarrassed, in which case he would have to fake it. He turned back to the Gamemaker and flashed his bedroom eyes again. “So, what can I do to make your night special?”

“You’re not here for sex, boy,” interrupted Haymitch. “Plutarch,” he gestured to Finnick’s client, “bought time with you because it was the easiest way to get you alone in an unbugged room.”

“Why am I here?”

Plutarch Heavensbee raised his glass again, this time taking a drink. “Welcome,” he said, “to the resistance.”

For a boy from the districts, Finnick spent a lot of time in the Capitol, which meant he spent a lot of time watching television, which meant he had a very good sense of where the sponsor breaks were meant to go. This was, very clearly, one of those times. Finnick often felt like his life was a television show, not in the sense of being dramatic and scripted, but in the sense that it did not feel precisely real. And if this were a television show, it would cut to commercial, giving Finnick a few precious moments to decide how to react. It was not a show, however, so Finnick found himself reacting with a dull, “What?”

“We’re gonna get rid of Snow, the Games, the district system,” said Haymitch. “All of it. Won’t be quick, but we victors have lots of time to waste, eh?”

“We’re in the early stages,” said Plutarch. “Gathering information. Learning to evade the Capitol’s monitors. Identifying allies and getting them into key positions.”

Finnick had not been self-conscious about his body for many years. Any modesty he had possessed had been dabbed, rubbed, plucked, and scraped away from him by the Capitol. But this was such a non-sexual conversation that his nudity felt ridiculous. He took the jacket off of his back. He sat down, laying it over his lap. “Why are you telling me this?”

Both men answered at once: “Because you’re valuable,” said Plutarch. “Because you hate Snow,” said Haymitch.

Finnick looked back and forth at them before settling on Plutarch. “Valuable,” he echoed with a hollow laugh. “What skills do you want me to contribute? Because right now, I’ve got killing teenagers with a net and trident, looking pretty, and fucking.” He ticked his attributes off on his fingers. “Are you planning to ask me to whore for you too?”

“No,” said Plutarch, “not any more than you’re already doing for Snow. But your, uh, job gets you into a lot of very sensitive positions, gives you chances to make contacts and gather intel.”

“Wouldn’t it be better,” asked Haymitch, “to know that there’s a point to it? To take back a little control?”

“It would be better if Snow didn’t murder everyone I care about because he caught me in this stupid plot.”

“It’s not without risks,” said Plutarch, but with a wave of his hand that made clear he did not think the risks were worth consideration.

“You can’t keep this up forever,” said Haymitch. “You’re going to mess up one day, like Johanna, and then what?”

“You’re not much of an optimist,” said Finnick. He didn’t have to bother with an ironic tone for his message to come across clearly.

“My point,” Haymitch responded, “is that playing Snow’s game might feel like the safest option, but it’s not. Yes, he might catch us, and we’ll pay. But you also might overdose or lose it with a client or forget to put on your Capitol mask in public, just once, and we both know what happens then.”

Finnick flashed back to that first day in Snow’s office, watching the vids of Haymitch’s family’s executions. “Does Mags know about this?”

Plutarch hesitated before revealing information about another resistance member before someone who hadn’t even agreed to join, but Haymitch knew Finnick’s devotion to the woman, so he said, “Yes. Plutarch brought her in a couple of years ago.”

“Does she know you’re talking to me?”

“Yes,” said Haymitch. “She didn’t want you involved at first. Thought it was too risky. Amongst other things, she thought you might let something slip while high. But she says you’ve got that under control since you started getting sweet on that Cresta girl, so she gave her blessing.”

“If substance use is disqualifying…” said Finnick, trailing off because there was no need to continue his thought.

“I’ve been working with Haymitch longer than any other victor,” said Plutarch. “His alcohol problem did concern me at first, but drinking only seems to make him more isolated and taciturn, so it’s not an issue. You, on the other hand, got talky during your last detox, mentioned something about being sold. Mags had to pay your nurses off. But she assures me that you’ve got things together now.”

Finnick hadn’t know about Mags paying the nurses. He knew he had said something, but thought he had been able to smooth it over. Apparently not.

Haymitch sighed. “You’re not helping,” he said to Plutarch. “Go get the kid a bathrobe, will you?”

Plutarch knew when he was being dismissed. He left the room.

Haymitch walked nearer to Finnick, side-by-side, but facing the other way, so although they were physically closer, there was no longer any danger of eye contact. They were both silent for several moments. Then, he said, “Why did your mother die?”

Finnick found the question uncomfortable, but more startling than anything else. It was a wound that had, for the most part, scabbed over.  “What do you know about my mom?”

“Just what Mags told me, that she died a couple of years before your Games.”

 “She died of a blood clot.”

“No,” said Haymitch, “that’s how. Tell me why.”

“She was pregnant. They said that it just happens sometimes in pregnancy.”

Haymitch shook his head, still dissatisfied with the answer. He untucked his shirt and lifted the hem over his stomach to expose a long, thick scar. “You know how I got this?”

“I’ve seen your Games.” The vids were somewhat sanitized, but they still showed an adolescent Haymitch Abernathy holding back his intestines from spilling out of the gash across his belly.

“Hell of a lot worse than a blood clot, but they patched me right up. Hell, if I just asked nicely, they could get rid of the scar. Good as new. So, I’m going to ask you again, why did your mother die?”

Finnick felt like he was in school again, getting quizzed on a chapter he hadn’t bothered to study. It was just a blood clot. Nobody’s fault. And it was before he or anyone in his family had drawn the Capitol’s attention, so there was no reason to suspect it was one of Snow’s ‘accidents’. But then, it was just a blood clot. A physical thing that just got in the way of the blood and oxygen and starved your heart or your lungs or your brain. Right after her death, Finnick had yelled and screamed at his father that there had to be a way to fix it.  It seemed so simple – why couldn’t they just go inside her and find the thing and pull it out. Months passed before Finnick accepted that the District doctors had done their best with the resources available to them. But there were more resources in the Capitol than in District Four, enough medicine to reassemble Haymitch’s guts, and certainly enough to find and remove a little clot of blood. Finnick said, “She died because the Capitol didn’t save her.”

Haymitch nodded. “That’s right, boy. There’s a risk to fighting. I can’t promise you that Snow won’t retaliate. But there’s a risk to not fighting, too.”

Finnick alternated between orally pleasuring Mr. and Mrs. Tatius. It was a miserable job. The man stank and the woman’s pubic hairs kept getting stuck in Finnick’s teeth. But when they were done, he lay between them and listened to their secrets. He was sober, completely sober, because he needed to focus, needed to remember. This was the job he was made for: not the sex, but the spying. He had spent his whole life preparing, practicing projecting one mood while feeling another, had split from himself so completely that he had spent several years unsure if he was even real.

But now it mattered. He mattered. He wasn’t just holding his breath, biding time. He wasn’t just keeping his head above water. He was swimming.

Finnick smiled.