The Hunger Games fic: Trap, Crackle, Pop (3/?)
Story Title: Trap, Crackle, Pop
Chapter Title: Three
Fandom(s): The Hunger Games
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,748
Summary: They say not all of Finnick Odair came back from his Games five years ago. How fortunate that the Capitol loves him so much they ask him to mentor and entertain anyway.
Trap, Crackle, Pop
Chapter IIIThey beat Annie and Marin back to the fourth floor, though not by much. When the two tributes enter, both sets of eyes travel immediately to Finnick. “Mags said you had to go to the hospital,” Marin says. “Are you all right?”
Well-versed in lies, Finnick doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, my appendix burst,” he claims. “Had to get it removed.”
Marin accepts this without question; Annie is more reticent. “You seemed fine yesterday,” she says. “What’d that note say?”
Finnick narrows his eyes at her mulish tone. “It said to ask you how your second day of training went, Miss Cresta.”
For whatever else she may be, Annie isn’t stupid. She knows how to pick her battles. “Fine. Same as yesterday, pretty much,” she reports, and Finnick retracts his irritability. “The female from Seven shot herself in the foot with an arrow.”
Finnick stifles a smile. Poor Johanna.
“Have either of you thought more about allies?” he asks, squirming a bit at the feeling of debt owed to Two.
“Who are we to break from tradition?” Marin answers with more than a tinge of bitterness. It quirks Finnick’s interest-outright disdain isn’t something he’s seen from the boy before. Whatever personal beef he has with the other Careers, he’d have to stow it for the meantime.
“I’ll let their mentors know,” Finnick affirms, not particularly looking forward to finding out just how many victors are apprised of his meltdown.
Brutus has never perpetuated drama and gossip, nor Lyme; Enobaria, on the other hand, is a wild card. Five years in, and he has yet to riddle her out. On occasion she’s as earnest as anyone, yet he’s also seen her blatantly throw her partners under the bus. It doesn’t help to know that she and Cashmere are two unlikely, thorny peas in a pod-and if Cashmere has heard, so too has everyone else.
(He doesn’t dislike the blonde, but she’d also lost any kind of filter a long time ago. Lost, so Mags had told him, around the same time she came home from her bachelorette party to find her husband-to-be dead on their bed with a single white rose over his heart.)
The morning of Annie and Marin’s sessions with the Gamemakers is succinct and without fanfare, since training scores really aren’t a linchpin in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of tributes have made it their strategy to get a low or mediocre score in order to throw everyone off. Sponsors know this, and in any event, they’d much prefer to base their money off the parade and interviews than a score when they aren’t privy to the session itself. They’d designated their skills-Annie, knives, Marin, traps-and while Finnick hasn’t specifically seen evidence of their expertise, he trusts they’ll give their best efforts.
Knives aren’t a very novel weapon of choice, but somehow, he thinks Annie will find a way to make them riveting. Traps aren’t usually a high-ticket item, though Marin had claimed the trainer told him he was the most adept tribute in years, and the Gamemakers do enjoy peripheral skills now and then. And, if Marin is as good at snares as he says, that would be an enormous help in the arena. Cornucopia supplies don’t last forever.
After the two head down to the gym, he and Mags split up to talk to the other Career districts about an alliance. It’s really more of a formality, given the sparsity of years where they don’t band together, but a necessity nonetheless. There’d be nothing worse than a miscommunication wherein they start killing each other before they have to.
There’d been some debate over whether they should include any of the outliers in their arrangement, but while there are some competitors-the big kid from Five being the primary one-they opt to keep the alliance to its usual three districts. Including others invariably carries with it inherent risk, and it’s happened more than once where the outlier’s hatred of the Careers outweighs any agreed-upon association.
Mags takes Two-Finnick’s seen enough of them-while he goes down to the first floor to tackle One. Gloss and Cashmere are lounging on the couches, watching some trashy Capitol production that supposedly chronicles the “real, raw, and unedited” lives of victors.
Finnick steals an orange from the bowl on their dining room table and starts skinning it, dropping the bits of peel on the floor. “Four requests partnership,” he says, bored with the whole proceeding. “Can we count on your participation?”
Gloss grunts in the affirmative, twisting to give Finnick a nod of acknowledgement; Cashmere doesn’t say a word. Of pleasantry, that is. “Heard you had a great time the other night,” she comments too-casually.
“Cash…” Gloss warns, shutting off the TV preemptively. “Don’t.”
“Enobaria’s got a mouth on her,” Finnick says. He been discreetly counting on her to shut up about it, but obviously he was misguided. “Well, what can I say? We can’t all revel in our appointments, can we, Cashmere?”
It’s unfair of him to say it, baiting her because he can. She snarls, getting up off the couch and a hair’s breadth away from homicide. “Knock it off, you two,” Gloss interjects. His posture is deceptively loose, feet propped up on the coffee table and arm slung over the back of the couch. “I’m not above calling Chaff in here to knock you both unconscious.”
“Like he could,” Cashmere says, knowing full well Chaff could-and would-do it in a trice. She backs down, though, folding her arms across her chest and pinning Finnick with a scowl.
Satisfied enough that he’s not going to be thrown into the middle of a death match, Gloss asks, “Was there anything else, Finnick?”
Matching Cashmere’s glare, Finnick says, “No, that’s all. See you at interviews.”
(A floor later, he can still hear Cashmere’s grousing.)
Mags doesn’t find Finnick’s recap of his sojourn very humorous, her lips in a thin line. She’d never been sold herself, since she was past her prime by the time Snow invented the idea of prostituting victors. She’d confessed to him once, years ago, that she’d love nothing more than to kill anyone and everyone who’d touched her friends, her protégés, and Finnick has no doubt one day she’ll do just that, given the proper venue.
It’s not a revolutionary opinion, among those in the victors’ circle. Finnick remembers Four’s Delphine sobbing of happiness when she’d received the letter telling her she’d gotten too old for her services to be regularly needed. She’d still had to return to the Capitol now and then, but it was at a much lower frequency and she’d finally had the opportunity to settle down.
“Must you antagonize everyone?” she asks wearily.
“No,” says Finnick, “just Cash and Enobaria. Jo, when she deserves it.”
Mags raises an eyebrow as if to say, My point exactly. “Try to play nice,” she says. “If not for you, then for me.”
It’s a targeted blow, in Finnick’s opinion, so he doesn’t dignify it with a response.
Following a dinner headlined by pulled pork and mashed potatoes, they all defer to the living room to await the announcement of the Training scores. Caesar Flickerman, ebullient in his lavender wig and matching eyebrows, is accompanied by his usual cohort, Claudius Templesmith, whose white hairpiece washes out his face. They wax banally for the first fifteen minutes of the show, before finally progressing to the tributes.
One and Two, none of whom deigned to smile in their headshots, range from seven to ten; the female from Three lands a seven, her male counterpart a six. Caesar pauses a minute to remind the viewers that Finnick is once again mentoring this year, like Snow letting him not mentor was actually an option. They flash a photo of him on the screen from a promotional shoot he did last fall, grinning and tanned and sultry and artificial and Finnick inspects a chip in the wall to avoid it.
Marin is up first, when they get around to continuing: an eight. Finnick ruffles his hair in congratulations-an eight is more than laudable-and the kid poorly restrains a smile. Finnick turns back to the screen to see Annie rein in a ten, tamping down the unease at her receiving such a high score. Since he’s already secured an alliance with the other Careers, her ten should only serve to boost their confidence and, hopefully, attract more sponsors.
There are a few upsets further down the line, with Blight’s boy netting a nine and Seeder’s girl only pulling a three. While Eleven rarely has a victor, usually the kids land in the mediocre-to-good range, thanks to the strength and agility required to farm food for an entire country. Which, he supposes, makes it all the more disheartening when they inevitably perish in the bloodbath or shortly thereafter.
“Well done,” Mags compliments once the show concludes with some recap commentary. “Let’s call it a night, you’ve got a full day of interview prep tomorrow.”
Without fail, the Games wreak havoc on Finnick’s sleep habits, those three or so weeks of absolute hell characterized by endless caffeine runs and nodding off against columns or the nearest victor when it all comes to a head. This evening is no different from the ones prior, with him once again finding peace as elusive as freedom. His brain keeps running through the scores he’d just witnessed, envisioning how Annie’s session might have transpired.
She’d been mum on the subject beyond relaying that most of the Gamemakers seemed impressed, which didn’t grant Finnick’s imagination much to work with. So he invents, vacillating between her throwing each one of her knives into a different Gamemaker’s head, finishing with a calm, Thank you for your time, and her fluidly sinking them into a target’s bullseye, at once harmless and sinister.
In either scenario, she hearkens back to a ballerina, dancing on clouds with her knives held like bouquets. When she releases them, it’s an art form, from the sound of them slicing through the air to the rotations they complete to the solid thunk they make as soon as they hit their intended quarry. She is in every way a siren: beautiful, rapturous, luring her prey into security before killing them with a single, well-placed blade.
The Training Center transposes into an arena, swirls of green and brown and gray and blue, no defined attributes, just broad strokes of color. Annie is an otter, slipping through carnage and bloody hands; she is a bird, flitting from one tree to the next, twittering as foe after foe trips her snares, ankles breaking and necks splintering. She is laughing and Finnick is weeping and Snow is whispering, The Capitol already loves her, my dear boy.
There are approximately zero aspects of the Capitol that Finnick enjoys but, inanely, he does find the reliability of the clock atop the Justice Building calming. In a (world) city that fucks him over relentlessly and has the attention span of a toddler, the unchanging nature of the bell tower is a welcome dissonance. Never mind what parties and galas are thrown, never mind the Hunger Games, never mind any of it, the clock is unwaveringly on time. In point of fact, he’s more than once used it as a bind to the present; it rings on the hour, every hour, which means he’s not in his arena, which means none of what he’s seeing is real.
Practically, it suffices as his alarm. Useless this morning, as insomnia has kept him from any kind of repose, but he can trust that when he counts down from thirty-six hundred seconds, there’ll be a chime resonating through to his room. When the first rays of pink-yellow creep up his walls and the clock signals six, he throws off the covers and sloughs off the scratchiness behind his eyes with a lengthy shower.
He utilizes the amenity panel this morning, alternating water pressures and soaps. He distances himself from the sickly-sweetness overused by the Capitol, flowers and bubble gum and coconut that burrow under his skin. He opts for sandalwood, and twenty minutes later, he’s clean, dry, and clearheaded. The tree itself has long been eradicated, damning its scent to synthetic production, but the elite still try to abstain from wearing woodsy fragrances. They’ll impose unsustainable quotas on lumber, but Snow forbid they associate themselves directly with the wilds of District 7 or 12 or anywhere that could be construed as less than affluent.
Ever-prepared, the Avoxes have a newspaper and steaming pot of coffee waiting for him, and Finnick inclines his head in appreciation. Sipping from his mug, he flops onto the couch and unfolds the paper. A habit since he was a child and still sitting on his father’s lap, seldom is there anything of consequence or import in the Capitol Post, but every now and then there are some palatable articles. At the very least, every once in a while he’ll read about a former client of his getting arrested on some charge or another, which always brightens his day.
Mags is the second to rouse, and she joins Finnick on the couch. Wordlessly, he passes her the Business section with which he’d finished, and himself moves on to Sports. Apparently there’d been a huge come-from-behind win, which Finnick merely skims. The Capitol’s version of organized sports is so much different from any of the districts’-for one, they actually have them-and in Finnick’s opinion are utterly unwatchable.
(He pointedly skips the Society pages. He knows plenty about how the glitterati spend their money.)
Sunday’s Post is bland, even for the Capitol, and although one of the comic strips elicits a mild chuckle, on the whole Finnick finishes the paper unimpressed. Back home, there is a library a couple blocks away in which he used to love getting lost, picking out an armful of books to borrow. Once upon a time, he would spend lazy afternoons in his room, reading until his eyelids drooped and the ink blurred.
The Capitol’s library is lackluster, more a pretense than an actual nexus of enlightenment. It’s not hard to understand why: if its citizens were to get their hands on certain books, the right kind of books, what would there be to stop them from questioning? Without the monitored, falsified structure of the Capitol’s encyclopedias and history textbooks, it would be akin to welcoming Anarchy itself through the gates. As brainwashed and moronic as the Capitol’s population is, enough evidence and corroboration could very well induce niggles of doubt.
Doubt, of course, Snow’s greatest fear.
Finnick doesn’t risk bringing any material with him during his Capitol visits, regardless of how plain the novels may be. The way his life has gone, Snow would find something wrong with a children’s picture book. Especially given how most of Finnick’s family’s books are antiques, it’s not worth the trouble. It’d be nice, though, on occasion to have something of substance to peruse.
“Slim pickings,” he says to Mags, who is approaching the end of the paper herself.
“I don’t know,” she says wryly, “sequins and rhinestones are the most essential parts of my outfits.”
“I knew you were shallow.”
She smiles warmly and tweaks his nose. “Why do you think I took a shine to you, boy?”
Finnick mocks insult, collects the paper sections and gets up to hand them back to one of the Avoxes for disposal. Not knowing any of their names grates on him; aside from it being common human decency, it can get tedious having to refer to them by physical descriptors, if at all. He’d made the mistake of pestering Mags about their names when he was here as a tribute, and between the way she scolded him and the stifled expressions of terror on the Avoxes’ faces, he’d been dissuaded from any future inquiries.
“Thanks,” he says anyway.
Unsurprisingly, the Avox doesn’t react. Finnick sighs. They’re not so dissimilar, really: each silenced from their own aspirations, each a slave to the whims of the Capitol. In more ways than one, Finnick thinks it might be a blessing to not have a tongue. He’d gladly endure disfiguration if it meant he could abandon his sordid lifestyle.
Annie rises at half past eight, Marin soon after. Their mouths full of eggs and mango juice, Finnick explains how the day will progress-four hours with Calliope to instill within them the best ways to comport themselves to the citizenry, how to pander without being too insipid, the importance of the walk-on and walk-off; another four hours with their respective mentor on how to perjure themselves. Manipulation 101.
Finnick elects to not inform Annie of how bad his track record is at this component of the Games. In his own interview, neither Calliope nor Mags had had much input to give him-smile, smile, smile, they’ll love you-and in the two years he’s had to mentor, he’s never been capable of shunning flashbacks to President Snow detailing to him the real definition of a victor. Last year’s tribute suffered through two hours’ worth of Finnick’s fumbling, and predictably proceeded to bomb his interview.
Calliope disappears with Annie and Marin into her quarters after breakfast, Mags subsequently declaring her intention to meander the rooftop garden. His offer of accompaniment, she gently declines. Left to his own devices, Finnick munches on a scone, gazing out the window at the bustle below. Mid-pastry, he’s hit with the full realization that in less than forty-eight hours, it will be solely up to him to secure all of Annie’s sponsors. It’ll be entirely his fault if she dies from something he could have prevented.
Kai Hanalei, victor of the 57th Games and Four’s last until Finnick himself, had volunteered for the unenviable task of clarifying Snow’s implications to a newly-crowned, half-crazed fourteen-year-old. With Mags preoccupied piecing back together Finnick’s brain, Kai had coerced the Capitol into celebrating his seventeenth birthday instead, allow him to mature for one more year. While it’d worked, it was nothing more than a stopgap, and the 68th marked the beginning of Finnick’s duties of two very different natures.
The sponsorship festivities, which peak in intensity after the Final Eight are announced, don’t have anything on individual client meetings, but the quantity makes them almost as brutal. Finnick isn’t such a fan of crowds. Especially ones that relentlessly ask him to relive the worst three weeks of his life and then suck them off behind a curtain. Kai had been permitted to shoulder the brunt of the solicitations for the first two years, with Finnick playing accessory.
Outside of Mags, who will have her hands full gathering sponsors for Marin, no help is due to him this year, no Kai to bail him out. He has a feeling it’s going to be especially shitty, accounting for the debacle with Gris that has most certainly hit the rumor mill by now. Whatever Mags and Two may have tried to reassure him, he’s not so sure he’s off the hook. If it were a random socialite that he’d decked, maybe, but Gamemakers have an obnoxiously prideful streak. Just because he hasn’t encountered the blowback yet doesn’t mean he won’t.
Only Snow knows what would happen then.
“Honestly, Finnick, you could at least pretend to be invested in mentoring.”
From his repose on the couch, Finnick opens one eye blearily. Calliope’s face swims into focus two feet above him; and, more obviously, her disdain. He attempts desperately to hold onto the dream he’d been having, not terrible for once, but the images fade away as if they were never there. He groans, staunchly cognizant of Calliope’s ability to get whatever she wants, no matter what.
“My turn already?” he asks, sitting up on the couch. He hadn’t even registered that he’d dozed off.
Calliope scowls and trots away, he presumes to go retrieve Annie from wherever she’d left her. Finnick shakes his head a few times to dust off the cobwebs, reorganizing his thoughts and strategy. His shirt is abysmally crumpled, something his stylist would bemoan and Finnick dismisses. He’s got more important things to stress over.
“I told Annie,” Calliope says as she flounces back into the living area, “to wait for you in your room.”
“I’ll alert the media,” retorts Finnick, wondering absurdly if the suite is in any way presentable for company.
She rolls her emerald-lined eyes at him and stalks away. As promised, Annie stands in the center of his room, examining the décor. “What’s in there?” she asks, gesturing to his locked bureau.
You really don’t want to know.
“Photos, for my adoring fans,” he replies sarcastically. He doesn’t want to get irritated with her, but at the same time, the last thing he wants is her anywhere near the secrets he hoards.
She snorts in derision. “Do you autograph them yourself?”
“Annie, stop,” Finnick hisses, and this is wrong, all wrong, she’s not supposed to be in here, not supposed to see this, not supposed to find out, she doesn’t belong-
“Stop what? You haven’t told me anything!” she objects viciously. She’s scraping where she shouldn’t, and Finnick’s grip is slipping. “You’re my mentor, and you keep secrets like it’s your job.”
“Annie!” he shouts, cutting her off. It’s too late, it’s done.
She disappears as his mind opens up, unleashing tangible memories, sweaty bodies and sloppy kisses and rough hands and razor fingernails and spider whispers and you’re mine, Finnick and you’ve never been with anyone before, have you? I’m glad to be the first- He digs his nails into the raw gashes on his palm, grasping onto the sharp pain and the warm stickiness of blood that wells there and soaks through the bandage. It drips onto the floor, stains the carpet. He clenches his fist harder, slices his nail across the wounds. He counts from one hundred in his head and at twenty-seven, the ghosts finally begin to draw back into their caskets. Annie reappears, small and brunette and real and he flattens his palm against his pants to obscure the mess.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a much blunter, hollower tone than before. “I didn’t mean-just-leave it alone.”
Annie looks less horrified than perplexed, like she’s documenting some wild animal’s behavior. “Yeah, sure,” she says, and purposefully steps away from the bureau. She delays, deferring to him. He could explain things to her, could spout endless apologies, could could could. He assumes a blank expression, a silent plea. Stay, please, don’t run away. “I used to have nightmares about clowns,” she offers, out of the blue. “You know that carnival on the boardwalk?”
“‘A clown from Fisherman Brown’s will turn your frown upside-down,’” Finnick quotes dryly. “Fisherman Brown’s, really?”
“I was five, and I couldn’t see their faces,” she defends, amid the smile tugging at her lips.
He recognizes Annie’s anecdote for what it is, and hates that she’d had to use it at all, that he couldn’t keep himself together like a normal person and not some broken toy glued together with the wrong pieces. The Games already have him on a short fuse; he can’t alienate whatever feeble trust Annie has in him, if there’s any left.
He sits on the end of his bed and avoids assessing the damage he’d done to his hand. If Annie can shrug off his outburst, he can shove it aside, too. “Well, there probably won’t be any clowns in the arena, so don’t worry about that,” he quips.
“No, just the getting-killed part.”
Finnick winces, capitulating. “Yeah, just that. They don’t tell us any specifics about the arena, but I can help you with the interview.”
“All right,” she says, “how do I impress them?”
“The good news is that Caesar Flickerman excels at portraying you in the best light,” he says. He makes the executive choice not to divulge exactly how much Caesar Flickerman likes his tributes. His appetite is as diverse as the colors of his wigs. “If you flub something, he can usually spin it into something good.”
“So, what kind of questions should I expect?”
Much as Finnick wants to tell her anything other than the truth, it would be a disservice and disadvantage. “You’ll be asked about me,” he grimaces. “What advice I’ve given you, how much one-on-one time we’ve had, what I’m like. As a mentor.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, scrunching up her face. A lock of her hair escapes from behind her ear, and he fights the bizarre compulsion to brush it back. She impatiently bats it aside. “Isn’t this interview supposed to be about me?”
Finnick barks a laugh, caustic and abrasive. If only. “In theory,” he says. “Unfortunately, not in practice.”
Unprompted, Annie adopts an exaggerated, backwoods Four accent and tries her hand at an answer. “I got really lucky, Caesar. Finnick is amazing with all his personalized training,” she drawls. “I don’t know where I’d be without him. And he’s so handsome.”
Finnick plays along, impersonating Caesar’s inflections. “We can all attest to that, Annie,” he says, consonants clipped and S’s drawn out. It tastes sour in his mouth. “Can you give us any specifics? Some behind-the-scenes details?”
“Well, I really shouldn’t say…” Even tongue-in-cheek, she’s got an ear for manipulation tactics, for forcing the Capitol’s simpering audience to hang on her every word.
“Come now, Annie,” Finnick wheedles.
She looks at him through dark lashes, demure with a shade of coyness. “He’s very thorough,” she says. “And he’s trying his best, even though he’s…he’s got a lot on his mind.”
Her affected accent slips, for an instant. Finnick maintains character, pretending he didn’t catch it and pretending his heartbeat doesn’t accelerate. “You mean other than the Games?” he asks. “What other obligations could he have this time of year?”
“He hasn’t said,” she replies slowly, frowning, “but I don’t think he enjoys them very much.”
Finnick forgets the role-play entirely, searching her face for signs of her bullshitting. He’s never had such trouble reading someone, and it’s downright unnerving. “Perhaps he has no choice.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Annie hedges. “I know one thing, though.”
“And what’s that?”
Annie holds his eyes with hers, green against green. “He’s not mad like everyone says. Just tired.”
Finnick stares at her, frozen. She’s circumvented every intention he’d had for this mock conversation. His skin prickles. “I, uh, I think you’ve got the hang of this,” he fumbles. “We should move on.”
Ignorant to the grenade with which she’d just saddled him, she asks, “What else do I need to know?”
“You’ll want to steer Caesar away from me as much as you can,” Finnick replies, regaining his footing. “You want the audience to pay attention to you, not me. There won’t be as many opportunities to be relatable in the arena, so now’s your best chance.”
“Got it,” she says. She alters the cadence of her voice again, though less caricatured than earlier. “Finnick was good in his Games, Caesar, but that was then. I shouldn’t be ignored.”
“A little less targeted,” Finnick advises. Then, regaining Caesar’s verve, “I wouldn’t dare ignore you, Miss Cresta. And that reminds me-how about that training score of yours? A ten! You’re certainly not a tribute to be trifled with.”
“I just went out there and showed what I’m good at,” Annie asserts, lightening up on her acrimony. “I’m glad the Gamemakers approved.”
“And I have no doubt the people of Panem will approve as well,” Finnick simpers. He mimes checking a clock and laments, “I could talk to you for hours, my dear, but it looks like our time is up. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, Caesar,” she says.
Because his brain and his body abruptly disconnect, and it’s not something out of the realm of possibility for Caesar, Finnick grasps Annie’s hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. She doesn’t pull away, but there is a challenge, a warning, flickering in her eyes. He doesn’t rise to the occasion; he doesn’t recognize his own voice when he speaks, low and sincere and unlike any he uses in the Capitol.
“Annie, the pleasure is all mine.”
Next
Chapter Title: Three
Fandom(s): The Hunger Games
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,748
Summary: They say not all of Finnick Odair came back from his Games five years ago. How fortunate that the Capitol loves him so much they ask him to mentor and entertain anyway.
Trap, Crackle, Pop
Chapter IIIThey beat Annie and Marin back to the fourth floor, though not by much. When the two tributes enter, both sets of eyes travel immediately to Finnick. “Mags said you had to go to the hospital,” Marin says. “Are you all right?”
Well-versed in lies, Finnick doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, my appendix burst,” he claims. “Had to get it removed.”
Marin accepts this without question; Annie is more reticent. “You seemed fine yesterday,” she says. “What’d that note say?”
Finnick narrows his eyes at her mulish tone. “It said to ask you how your second day of training went, Miss Cresta.”
For whatever else she may be, Annie isn’t stupid. She knows how to pick her battles. “Fine. Same as yesterday, pretty much,” she reports, and Finnick retracts his irritability. “The female from Seven shot herself in the foot with an arrow.”
Finnick stifles a smile. Poor Johanna.
“Have either of you thought more about allies?” he asks, squirming a bit at the feeling of debt owed to Two.
“Who are we to break from tradition?” Marin answers with more than a tinge of bitterness. It quirks Finnick’s interest-outright disdain isn’t something he’s seen from the boy before. Whatever personal beef he has with the other Careers, he’d have to stow it for the meantime.
“I’ll let their mentors know,” Finnick affirms, not particularly looking forward to finding out just how many victors are apprised of his meltdown.
Brutus has never perpetuated drama and gossip, nor Lyme; Enobaria, on the other hand, is a wild card. Five years in, and he has yet to riddle her out. On occasion she’s as earnest as anyone, yet he’s also seen her blatantly throw her partners under the bus. It doesn’t help to know that she and Cashmere are two unlikely, thorny peas in a pod-and if Cashmere has heard, so too has everyone else.
(He doesn’t dislike the blonde, but she’d also lost any kind of filter a long time ago. Lost, so Mags had told him, around the same time she came home from her bachelorette party to find her husband-to-be dead on their bed with a single white rose over his heart.)
The morning of Annie and Marin’s sessions with the Gamemakers is succinct and without fanfare, since training scores really aren’t a linchpin in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of tributes have made it their strategy to get a low or mediocre score in order to throw everyone off. Sponsors know this, and in any event, they’d much prefer to base their money off the parade and interviews than a score when they aren’t privy to the session itself. They’d designated their skills-Annie, knives, Marin, traps-and while Finnick hasn’t specifically seen evidence of their expertise, he trusts they’ll give their best efforts.
Knives aren’t a very novel weapon of choice, but somehow, he thinks Annie will find a way to make them riveting. Traps aren’t usually a high-ticket item, though Marin had claimed the trainer told him he was the most adept tribute in years, and the Gamemakers do enjoy peripheral skills now and then. And, if Marin is as good at snares as he says, that would be an enormous help in the arena. Cornucopia supplies don’t last forever.
After the two head down to the gym, he and Mags split up to talk to the other Career districts about an alliance. It’s really more of a formality, given the sparsity of years where they don’t band together, but a necessity nonetheless. There’d be nothing worse than a miscommunication wherein they start killing each other before they have to.
There’d been some debate over whether they should include any of the outliers in their arrangement, but while there are some competitors-the big kid from Five being the primary one-they opt to keep the alliance to its usual three districts. Including others invariably carries with it inherent risk, and it’s happened more than once where the outlier’s hatred of the Careers outweighs any agreed-upon association.
Mags takes Two-Finnick’s seen enough of them-while he goes down to the first floor to tackle One. Gloss and Cashmere are lounging on the couches, watching some trashy Capitol production that supposedly chronicles the “real, raw, and unedited” lives of victors.
Finnick steals an orange from the bowl on their dining room table and starts skinning it, dropping the bits of peel on the floor. “Four requests partnership,” he says, bored with the whole proceeding. “Can we count on your participation?”
Gloss grunts in the affirmative, twisting to give Finnick a nod of acknowledgement; Cashmere doesn’t say a word. Of pleasantry, that is. “Heard you had a great time the other night,” she comments too-casually.
“Cash…” Gloss warns, shutting off the TV preemptively. “Don’t.”
“Enobaria’s got a mouth on her,” Finnick says. He been discreetly counting on her to shut up about it, but obviously he was misguided. “Well, what can I say? We can’t all revel in our appointments, can we, Cashmere?”
It’s unfair of him to say it, baiting her because he can. She snarls, getting up off the couch and a hair’s breadth away from homicide. “Knock it off, you two,” Gloss interjects. His posture is deceptively loose, feet propped up on the coffee table and arm slung over the back of the couch. “I’m not above calling Chaff in here to knock you both unconscious.”
“Like he could,” Cashmere says, knowing full well Chaff could-and would-do it in a trice. She backs down, though, folding her arms across her chest and pinning Finnick with a scowl.
Satisfied enough that he’s not going to be thrown into the middle of a death match, Gloss asks, “Was there anything else, Finnick?”
Matching Cashmere’s glare, Finnick says, “No, that’s all. See you at interviews.”
(A floor later, he can still hear Cashmere’s grousing.)
Mags doesn’t find Finnick’s recap of his sojourn very humorous, her lips in a thin line. She’d never been sold herself, since she was past her prime by the time Snow invented the idea of prostituting victors. She’d confessed to him once, years ago, that she’d love nothing more than to kill anyone and everyone who’d touched her friends, her protégés, and Finnick has no doubt one day she’ll do just that, given the proper venue.
It’s not a revolutionary opinion, among those in the victors’ circle. Finnick remembers Four’s Delphine sobbing of happiness when she’d received the letter telling her she’d gotten too old for her services to be regularly needed. She’d still had to return to the Capitol now and then, but it was at a much lower frequency and she’d finally had the opportunity to settle down.
“Must you antagonize everyone?” she asks wearily.
“No,” says Finnick, “just Cash and Enobaria. Jo, when she deserves it.”
Mags raises an eyebrow as if to say, My point exactly. “Try to play nice,” she says. “If not for you, then for me.”
It’s a targeted blow, in Finnick’s opinion, so he doesn’t dignify it with a response.
Following a dinner headlined by pulled pork and mashed potatoes, they all defer to the living room to await the announcement of the Training scores. Caesar Flickerman, ebullient in his lavender wig and matching eyebrows, is accompanied by his usual cohort, Claudius Templesmith, whose white hairpiece washes out his face. They wax banally for the first fifteen minutes of the show, before finally progressing to the tributes.
One and Two, none of whom deigned to smile in their headshots, range from seven to ten; the female from Three lands a seven, her male counterpart a six. Caesar pauses a minute to remind the viewers that Finnick is once again mentoring this year, like Snow letting him not mentor was actually an option. They flash a photo of him on the screen from a promotional shoot he did last fall, grinning and tanned and sultry and artificial and Finnick inspects a chip in the wall to avoid it.
Marin is up first, when they get around to continuing: an eight. Finnick ruffles his hair in congratulations-an eight is more than laudable-and the kid poorly restrains a smile. Finnick turns back to the screen to see Annie rein in a ten, tamping down the unease at her receiving such a high score. Since he’s already secured an alliance with the other Careers, her ten should only serve to boost their confidence and, hopefully, attract more sponsors.
There are a few upsets further down the line, with Blight’s boy netting a nine and Seeder’s girl only pulling a three. While Eleven rarely has a victor, usually the kids land in the mediocre-to-good range, thanks to the strength and agility required to farm food for an entire country. Which, he supposes, makes it all the more disheartening when they inevitably perish in the bloodbath or shortly thereafter.
“Well done,” Mags compliments once the show concludes with some recap commentary. “Let’s call it a night, you’ve got a full day of interview prep tomorrow.”
Without fail, the Games wreak havoc on Finnick’s sleep habits, those three or so weeks of absolute hell characterized by endless caffeine runs and nodding off against columns or the nearest victor when it all comes to a head. This evening is no different from the ones prior, with him once again finding peace as elusive as freedom. His brain keeps running through the scores he’d just witnessed, envisioning how Annie’s session might have transpired.
She’d been mum on the subject beyond relaying that most of the Gamemakers seemed impressed, which didn’t grant Finnick’s imagination much to work with. So he invents, vacillating between her throwing each one of her knives into a different Gamemaker’s head, finishing with a calm, Thank you for your time, and her fluidly sinking them into a target’s bullseye, at once harmless and sinister.
In either scenario, she hearkens back to a ballerina, dancing on clouds with her knives held like bouquets. When she releases them, it’s an art form, from the sound of them slicing through the air to the rotations they complete to the solid thunk they make as soon as they hit their intended quarry. She is in every way a siren: beautiful, rapturous, luring her prey into security before killing them with a single, well-placed blade.
The Training Center transposes into an arena, swirls of green and brown and gray and blue, no defined attributes, just broad strokes of color. Annie is an otter, slipping through carnage and bloody hands; she is a bird, flitting from one tree to the next, twittering as foe after foe trips her snares, ankles breaking and necks splintering. She is laughing and Finnick is weeping and Snow is whispering, The Capitol already loves her, my dear boy.
There are approximately zero aspects of the Capitol that Finnick enjoys but, inanely, he does find the reliability of the clock atop the Justice Building calming. In a (world) city that fucks him over relentlessly and has the attention span of a toddler, the unchanging nature of the bell tower is a welcome dissonance. Never mind what parties and galas are thrown, never mind the Hunger Games, never mind any of it, the clock is unwaveringly on time. In point of fact, he’s more than once used it as a bind to the present; it rings on the hour, every hour, which means he’s not in his arena, which means none of what he’s seeing is real.
Practically, it suffices as his alarm. Useless this morning, as insomnia has kept him from any kind of repose, but he can trust that when he counts down from thirty-six hundred seconds, there’ll be a chime resonating through to his room. When the first rays of pink-yellow creep up his walls and the clock signals six, he throws off the covers and sloughs off the scratchiness behind his eyes with a lengthy shower.
He utilizes the amenity panel this morning, alternating water pressures and soaps. He distances himself from the sickly-sweetness overused by the Capitol, flowers and bubble gum and coconut that burrow under his skin. He opts for sandalwood, and twenty minutes later, he’s clean, dry, and clearheaded. The tree itself has long been eradicated, damning its scent to synthetic production, but the elite still try to abstain from wearing woodsy fragrances. They’ll impose unsustainable quotas on lumber, but Snow forbid they associate themselves directly with the wilds of District 7 or 12 or anywhere that could be construed as less than affluent.
Ever-prepared, the Avoxes have a newspaper and steaming pot of coffee waiting for him, and Finnick inclines his head in appreciation. Sipping from his mug, he flops onto the couch and unfolds the paper. A habit since he was a child and still sitting on his father’s lap, seldom is there anything of consequence or import in the Capitol Post, but every now and then there are some palatable articles. At the very least, every once in a while he’ll read about a former client of his getting arrested on some charge or another, which always brightens his day.
Mags is the second to rouse, and she joins Finnick on the couch. Wordlessly, he passes her the Business section with which he’d finished, and himself moves on to Sports. Apparently there’d been a huge come-from-behind win, which Finnick merely skims. The Capitol’s version of organized sports is so much different from any of the districts’-for one, they actually have them-and in Finnick’s opinion are utterly unwatchable.
(He pointedly skips the Society pages. He knows plenty about how the glitterati spend their money.)
Sunday’s Post is bland, even for the Capitol, and although one of the comic strips elicits a mild chuckle, on the whole Finnick finishes the paper unimpressed. Back home, there is a library a couple blocks away in which he used to love getting lost, picking out an armful of books to borrow. Once upon a time, he would spend lazy afternoons in his room, reading until his eyelids drooped and the ink blurred.
The Capitol’s library is lackluster, more a pretense than an actual nexus of enlightenment. It’s not hard to understand why: if its citizens were to get their hands on certain books, the right kind of books, what would there be to stop them from questioning? Without the monitored, falsified structure of the Capitol’s encyclopedias and history textbooks, it would be akin to welcoming Anarchy itself through the gates. As brainwashed and moronic as the Capitol’s population is, enough evidence and corroboration could very well induce niggles of doubt.
Doubt, of course, Snow’s greatest fear.
Finnick doesn’t risk bringing any material with him during his Capitol visits, regardless of how plain the novels may be. The way his life has gone, Snow would find something wrong with a children’s picture book. Especially given how most of Finnick’s family’s books are antiques, it’s not worth the trouble. It’d be nice, though, on occasion to have something of substance to peruse.
“Slim pickings,” he says to Mags, who is approaching the end of the paper herself.
“I don’t know,” she says wryly, “sequins and rhinestones are the most essential parts of my outfits.”
“I knew you were shallow.”
She smiles warmly and tweaks his nose. “Why do you think I took a shine to you, boy?”
Finnick mocks insult, collects the paper sections and gets up to hand them back to one of the Avoxes for disposal. Not knowing any of their names grates on him; aside from it being common human decency, it can get tedious having to refer to them by physical descriptors, if at all. He’d made the mistake of pestering Mags about their names when he was here as a tribute, and between the way she scolded him and the stifled expressions of terror on the Avoxes’ faces, he’d been dissuaded from any future inquiries.
“Thanks,” he says anyway.
Unsurprisingly, the Avox doesn’t react. Finnick sighs. They’re not so dissimilar, really: each silenced from their own aspirations, each a slave to the whims of the Capitol. In more ways than one, Finnick thinks it might be a blessing to not have a tongue. He’d gladly endure disfiguration if it meant he could abandon his sordid lifestyle.
Annie rises at half past eight, Marin soon after. Their mouths full of eggs and mango juice, Finnick explains how the day will progress-four hours with Calliope to instill within them the best ways to comport themselves to the citizenry, how to pander without being too insipid, the importance of the walk-on and walk-off; another four hours with their respective mentor on how to perjure themselves. Manipulation 101.
Finnick elects to not inform Annie of how bad his track record is at this component of the Games. In his own interview, neither Calliope nor Mags had had much input to give him-smile, smile, smile, they’ll love you-and in the two years he’s had to mentor, he’s never been capable of shunning flashbacks to President Snow detailing to him the real definition of a victor. Last year’s tribute suffered through two hours’ worth of Finnick’s fumbling, and predictably proceeded to bomb his interview.
Calliope disappears with Annie and Marin into her quarters after breakfast, Mags subsequently declaring her intention to meander the rooftop garden. His offer of accompaniment, she gently declines. Left to his own devices, Finnick munches on a scone, gazing out the window at the bustle below. Mid-pastry, he’s hit with the full realization that in less than forty-eight hours, it will be solely up to him to secure all of Annie’s sponsors. It’ll be entirely his fault if she dies from something he could have prevented.
Kai Hanalei, victor of the 57th Games and Four’s last until Finnick himself, had volunteered for the unenviable task of clarifying Snow’s implications to a newly-crowned, half-crazed fourteen-year-old. With Mags preoccupied piecing back together Finnick’s brain, Kai had coerced the Capitol into celebrating his seventeenth birthday instead, allow him to mature for one more year. While it’d worked, it was nothing more than a stopgap, and the 68th marked the beginning of Finnick’s duties of two very different natures.
The sponsorship festivities, which peak in intensity after the Final Eight are announced, don’t have anything on individual client meetings, but the quantity makes them almost as brutal. Finnick isn’t such a fan of crowds. Especially ones that relentlessly ask him to relive the worst three weeks of his life and then suck them off behind a curtain. Kai had been permitted to shoulder the brunt of the solicitations for the first two years, with Finnick playing accessory.
Outside of Mags, who will have her hands full gathering sponsors for Marin, no help is due to him this year, no Kai to bail him out. He has a feeling it’s going to be especially shitty, accounting for the debacle with Gris that has most certainly hit the rumor mill by now. Whatever Mags and Two may have tried to reassure him, he’s not so sure he’s off the hook. If it were a random socialite that he’d decked, maybe, but Gamemakers have an obnoxiously prideful streak. Just because he hasn’t encountered the blowback yet doesn’t mean he won’t.
Only Snow knows what would happen then.
“Honestly, Finnick, you could at least pretend to be invested in mentoring.”
From his repose on the couch, Finnick opens one eye blearily. Calliope’s face swims into focus two feet above him; and, more obviously, her disdain. He attempts desperately to hold onto the dream he’d been having, not terrible for once, but the images fade away as if they were never there. He groans, staunchly cognizant of Calliope’s ability to get whatever she wants, no matter what.
“My turn already?” he asks, sitting up on the couch. He hadn’t even registered that he’d dozed off.
Calliope scowls and trots away, he presumes to go retrieve Annie from wherever she’d left her. Finnick shakes his head a few times to dust off the cobwebs, reorganizing his thoughts and strategy. His shirt is abysmally crumpled, something his stylist would bemoan and Finnick dismisses. He’s got more important things to stress over.
“I told Annie,” Calliope says as she flounces back into the living area, “to wait for you in your room.”
“I’ll alert the media,” retorts Finnick, wondering absurdly if the suite is in any way presentable for company.
She rolls her emerald-lined eyes at him and stalks away. As promised, Annie stands in the center of his room, examining the décor. “What’s in there?” she asks, gesturing to his locked bureau.
You really don’t want to know.
“Photos, for my adoring fans,” he replies sarcastically. He doesn’t want to get irritated with her, but at the same time, the last thing he wants is her anywhere near the secrets he hoards.
She snorts in derision. “Do you autograph them yourself?”
“Annie, stop,” Finnick hisses, and this is wrong, all wrong, she’s not supposed to be in here, not supposed to see this, not supposed to find out, she doesn’t belong-
“Stop what? You haven’t told me anything!” she objects viciously. She’s scraping where she shouldn’t, and Finnick’s grip is slipping. “You’re my mentor, and you keep secrets like it’s your job.”
“Annie!” he shouts, cutting her off. It’s too late, it’s done.
She disappears as his mind opens up, unleashing tangible memories, sweaty bodies and sloppy kisses and rough hands and razor fingernails and spider whispers and you’re mine, Finnick and you’ve never been with anyone before, have you? I’m glad to be the first- He digs his nails into the raw gashes on his palm, grasping onto the sharp pain and the warm stickiness of blood that wells there and soaks through the bandage. It drips onto the floor, stains the carpet. He clenches his fist harder, slices his nail across the wounds. He counts from one hundred in his head and at twenty-seven, the ghosts finally begin to draw back into their caskets. Annie reappears, small and brunette and real and he flattens his palm against his pants to obscure the mess.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a much blunter, hollower tone than before. “I didn’t mean-just-leave it alone.”
Annie looks less horrified than perplexed, like she’s documenting some wild animal’s behavior. “Yeah, sure,” she says, and purposefully steps away from the bureau. She delays, deferring to him. He could explain things to her, could spout endless apologies, could could could. He assumes a blank expression, a silent plea. Stay, please, don’t run away. “I used to have nightmares about clowns,” she offers, out of the blue. “You know that carnival on the boardwalk?”
“‘A clown from Fisherman Brown’s will turn your frown upside-down,’” Finnick quotes dryly. “Fisherman Brown’s, really?”
“I was five, and I couldn’t see their faces,” she defends, amid the smile tugging at her lips.
He recognizes Annie’s anecdote for what it is, and hates that she’d had to use it at all, that he couldn’t keep himself together like a normal person and not some broken toy glued together with the wrong pieces. The Games already have him on a short fuse; he can’t alienate whatever feeble trust Annie has in him, if there’s any left.
He sits on the end of his bed and avoids assessing the damage he’d done to his hand. If Annie can shrug off his outburst, he can shove it aside, too. “Well, there probably won’t be any clowns in the arena, so don’t worry about that,” he quips.
“No, just the getting-killed part.”
Finnick winces, capitulating. “Yeah, just that. They don’t tell us any specifics about the arena, but I can help you with the interview.”
“All right,” she says, “how do I impress them?”
“The good news is that Caesar Flickerman excels at portraying you in the best light,” he says. He makes the executive choice not to divulge exactly how much Caesar Flickerman likes his tributes. His appetite is as diverse as the colors of his wigs. “If you flub something, he can usually spin it into something good.”
“So, what kind of questions should I expect?”
Much as Finnick wants to tell her anything other than the truth, it would be a disservice and disadvantage. “You’ll be asked about me,” he grimaces. “What advice I’ve given you, how much one-on-one time we’ve had, what I’m like. As a mentor.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, scrunching up her face. A lock of her hair escapes from behind her ear, and he fights the bizarre compulsion to brush it back. She impatiently bats it aside. “Isn’t this interview supposed to be about me?”
Finnick barks a laugh, caustic and abrasive. If only. “In theory,” he says. “Unfortunately, not in practice.”
Unprompted, Annie adopts an exaggerated, backwoods Four accent and tries her hand at an answer. “I got really lucky, Caesar. Finnick is amazing with all his personalized training,” she drawls. “I don’t know where I’d be without him. And he’s so handsome.”
Finnick plays along, impersonating Caesar’s inflections. “We can all attest to that, Annie,” he says, consonants clipped and S’s drawn out. It tastes sour in his mouth. “Can you give us any specifics? Some behind-the-scenes details?”
“Well, I really shouldn’t say…” Even tongue-in-cheek, she’s got an ear for manipulation tactics, for forcing the Capitol’s simpering audience to hang on her every word.
“Come now, Annie,” Finnick wheedles.
She looks at him through dark lashes, demure with a shade of coyness. “He’s very thorough,” she says. “And he’s trying his best, even though he’s…he’s got a lot on his mind.”
Her affected accent slips, for an instant. Finnick maintains character, pretending he didn’t catch it and pretending his heartbeat doesn’t accelerate. “You mean other than the Games?” he asks. “What other obligations could he have this time of year?”
“He hasn’t said,” she replies slowly, frowning, “but I don’t think he enjoys them very much.”
Finnick forgets the role-play entirely, searching her face for signs of her bullshitting. He’s never had such trouble reading someone, and it’s downright unnerving. “Perhaps he has no choice.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t,” Annie hedges. “I know one thing, though.”
“And what’s that?”
Annie holds his eyes with hers, green against green. “He’s not mad like everyone says. Just tired.”
Finnick stares at her, frozen. She’s circumvented every intention he’d had for this mock conversation. His skin prickles. “I, uh, I think you’ve got the hang of this,” he fumbles. “We should move on.”
Ignorant to the grenade with which she’d just saddled him, she asks, “What else do I need to know?”
“You’ll want to steer Caesar away from me as much as you can,” Finnick replies, regaining his footing. “You want the audience to pay attention to you, not me. There won’t be as many opportunities to be relatable in the arena, so now’s your best chance.”
“Got it,” she says. She alters the cadence of her voice again, though less caricatured than earlier. “Finnick was good in his Games, Caesar, but that was then. I shouldn’t be ignored.”
“A little less targeted,” Finnick advises. Then, regaining Caesar’s verve, “I wouldn’t dare ignore you, Miss Cresta. And that reminds me-how about that training score of yours? A ten! You’re certainly not a tribute to be trifled with.”
“I just went out there and showed what I’m good at,” Annie asserts, lightening up on her acrimony. “I’m glad the Gamemakers approved.”
“And I have no doubt the people of Panem will approve as well,” Finnick simpers. He mimes checking a clock and laments, “I could talk to you for hours, my dear, but it looks like our time is up. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, Caesar,” she says.
Because his brain and his body abruptly disconnect, and it’s not something out of the realm of possibility for Caesar, Finnick grasps Annie’s hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. She doesn’t pull away, but there is a challenge, a warning, flickering in her eyes. He doesn’t rise to the occasion; he doesn’t recognize his own voice when he speaks, low and sincere and unlike any he uses in the Capitol.
“Annie, the pleasure is all mine.”
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