THG fic: "Moss On The Ruins" [1/5]
Title: Moss On The Ruins
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Characters: Finnick Odair, also featuring Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason and Mags, as well as an ensemble of victors and OC
Pairings: Finnick/OC, Haymitch/OC, Johanna/OC - pre-Finnick/Annie
Warnings: forced prostitution, dub con / non con, explicit non-consensual bondage & spanking, depression, PTSD, alcoholism, suicide of minor characters and discussion of suicide, Games-related violence
Rating: adult
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: It's the 71st Hunger Games, and Finnick Odair is ordered to mentor a boy he isn’t even sure he wants to bring home. With Johanna Mason alienating her friends and Haymitch Abernathy falling off the wagon, he finds himself struggling to not lose the last shreds of his sanity and soul.
Author's Note: Turns out that it’s pretty much impossible for me to write a THG backstory without making a couple of assumptions. Numero uno: To me, Johanna doesn’t appear like somebody who got out of prostitution, whether she lost all her family or not. Secondly: Snow would be stupid if he just went and killed all his leverage dead at the first offense. I don’t think Snow is stupid. So I’m not picturing Haymitch getting out of it that way, either. Especially since, well. Haymitch didn’t seem all that happy about Finnick telling the public about the prostitution. And we know he’ll lie with a straight face if it suits his needs. So a part of this fic addresses the intricacies of what all that means.
It’s also heavily influenced by conversations I’ve had with millari and deathmallow. I put various shout-outs in here that I hope you two will enjoy! Additionally, millari, thank you very much for the beta and the meticulous line-by-line breakdown.
Chapter 1
Niko Genero is too perfect for the Hunger Games.
That was how the 71st Hunger Games started for Finnick Odair: Staring into the bathroom mirror on the train, racing towards the Capitol with that slight persistent hum of engines - barely audible, but always present. And thinking that his tribute was too smart and too strong and far too attractive for a Games, because he might just win.
A mirror image should just exist, Finnick thought, watching the man in the mirror blink with an unmoved face. You should have looked at it too often to recognize beauty or flaws. However, all Finnick could see was an almost repulsive amount of beauty. His shoulders had broadened and filled out since he’d grown up, currently barely concealed by a transparent shirt - more than he usually wore, he thought with dark humor, but his stylist hadn’t gotten her hands on him yet. Hooded eyes no matter what he did to change his expression, as if he was just born to be that person, and all that flawless skin, ready to be licked. He’d sleep with himself, Finnick thought. Why shouldn’t he - he was beautiful. He was so symmetrical, it barely left room for personality.
He wondered if Niko Genero - just sexy enough - had ever thought the same about himself.
At his Games, Finnick’s cheek had been sliced open - actually sliced open, with a knife. He tried picturing that scar now, running from the corner of his mouth to his ear. It would make him look as if he grinned, Finnick thought. Like a demon. Everybody would be forced to stare at it.
There weren’t any scars, of course; there weren’t any, or he might… Finnick sighed at the thought, and that sick sense of satisfaction imploded. He wouldn’t take a knife and recreate that scar. He wouldn’t.
Finnick closed his eyes and turned his head away.
It was the year after Four had won the Games. The year after Annie Cresta had earned a disaster victory at the 70th Games. District Four didn’t care how she’d done it, of course - treading water for twelve hours was arguably a true Four win, his brothers had told him some had boasted at the docks, with an air of defiance as if they expected him to disagree. Like Finnick, Annie hadn’t even been a volunteer.
Like Finnick, Annie Cresta had fallen apart, though she’d done it right there in the arena where everyone could see instead of sleepwalking through her kills first as if it was actually a children’s game. They hadn’t properly met, but he still thought she had to be smarter than him. Certainly, she had more of a soul.
There was a knock at the door.
“Mr. Odair, are you in there?” Honestia, the escort, chirped in her singsongy Capitol accent. He’d never understood why she insisted on the last names when they were Finnick and Mags and Four male for everyone else. They belonged to everybody, after all, even to Honestia. “Mrs. Swanton and the tributes are waiting for you. Mr. Genero would love to start discussing his strategy now, I have been made to understand.”
Finnick sighed and gave himself a start.
“Good things come to those who wait, Honestia!” he cheerfully called back in what was almost a Capitol voice. “And believe me, my rewards are worth waiting for!” But he didn’t manage a chuckle at the exasperated sound she made, waiting for the sound of her heels to retreat before he swept the bathroom one last time.
Yes. Yes, he’d drained it all away.
All the puke was gone, the white marble sink shining clean.
It was the fourth year since Snow had called him back to the Capitol to show him a video of Haymitch Abernathy’s mother and brother and girlfriend shot in the back of their heads. It was his first as a mentor. Finnick wasn’t stupid or blind enough to think that that new role meant the Capitol’s interest in that man in the mirror had waned. It wouldn’t for a long time.
Man, he thought, giving himself an affirmative nod. Not a boy anymore, not for a while.
He should know. He felt like a hundred at least.
---
Niko Genero had volunteered, so he was eighteen. Unlike others, he hadn’t changed his name to something shiny and Capitol that would give him an edge in his Games marketing, and mark the beginning of the probably short rest of his life. He was tall, as tall as Finnick, and had the strong back and shoulders of a swimmer. His skin was black like ebony and his hair was braided tightly to his skull, and even after a year of avoiding the Games schools and the other victors, Finnick had heard that Niko and his fighting sticks could probably beat anybody in District Four.
It would be easier if Niko was an idiot who thought he’d already made it in life, Finnick thought with resignation. Somebody who thought this was already it, celebrated as a volunteer by all of Four, his name carved into the Monument of Sacrifice at Middletown. But Niko was obviously sharp. He was tense, as if the Games had already started - which they had - keeping a vigilant eye on Finnick wherever he was in the room. He set Finnick on edge.
Good.
He stiffened when Finnick stepped behind his chair and leaned in too closely to snatch a cookie off the table, intrusive enough to smell the lemon wax that slicked Niko’s braids. But Niko didn’t flinch away.
“I think I can win this,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“Good for you,” Finnick cheerfully retorted, circling the table to sprawl on the couch on the far end of the room, too pliant for a mere chair. “Now convince me.” He gesticulated grandly. “Then convince Panem.” There was a Two volunteer shaped like a bull this year, a desperation volunteer in Five. Nobody would have taken special note of Niko yet.
The young man dropped his eyes, tracing along the edge of the table with his thumb. The first sign of nerves Finnick had seen. “I’ve got guts,” Niko slowly said. He had a pleasant low voice too, not like a child but like somebody Finnick would stick his cock into in other circumstances. “I’ve got patience. I can wait out the field if that’s what you want, and I’ll give them a good show. I’m better than that boy from Two, even though he’ll be stronger.” He looked up, straight at Finnick, almost a challenge. “I’m beautiful, too.” As if he was trying the notion on for size, smart enough to be aware it was important but unclear as to why. Skill was all that had counted in his world up to the Reaping.
Finnick had never understood why the teachers at Games school didn’t tell the volunteers about what was waiting for a victor, but he figured there wouldn’t be any volunteers anymore if they did. Maybe Niko would consider it part of the sacrifice.
In a way, that would be true.
Finnick stifled a snort of a laugh, trying desperately not to give into that need to despair.
Oh, Niko, he thought. You haven’t even started to figure it out.
Not as smart as he’d thought, after all.
---
Lately, Finnick found himself missing the three weeks he'd spent in the arena - with a fiery passion that scared him out of his mind.
Nobody remembered that now, but his Games had dragged on for twenty-two endless days, and climaxed with a particularly gruesome Career pack tear-up, people butchering the ones they’d grown to like best. Finnick -just an impressionable kid with a good throwing arm - hadn’t had a clue what it was that he was doing, blind to what it meant for his soul and integrity to spear other children like fish. But realization had dawned as he’d grown up, which had been fast. They taught you it was okay to kill for survival at Four, but people who said that hadn’t had blood dribbling over their hand when they moved in for a kill. You couldn’t throw a trident at a catch in a net, not if you still needed that net, you had to get close.
The tribute from Two had lashed at his face and sliced open his cheek, and there had been blood, everywhere, dripping onto the remains of his tribute garb and coloring his lips and chin a terrifying red. Tiny fourteen-year-old menace, sweet and horrible at once. Finnick wasn’t ever able to turn his eyes away at the replay, astounded at how that sea monster was him.
Yet things had been easy in the arena, and heavens, he wanted that back. Easy. Straightforward. Kill or die. So much better than Fuck or we’ll kill your mother first, or, Let your brothers think it’s your own idea to sleep with those people or else. Blood had dripped off his hand when he’d killed the twelve-year-old in his net, and that made him a killer. He grew hot all over when he fucked Hersilius Butterbulp, and he came deliciously when Hersilius fucked him, and it wasn’t supposed to make him a slut.
But Finnick had long since lost the habit of deluding himself.
---
It had been a bad year home at Four, between Games, almost as if there was something wrong in his brain. Finnick had been struggling to get out of bed in the morning and dreading every day the Games got closer, fear leaving a lump in his throat. Not wanting to look his parents in the eye. Being expected to help out at Games school in Northbeach while Mags was on Victory Tour, and just never showing up.
Annie Cresta had returned from the Tour more broken than she’d been to start with, his old Games school teacher Calina had known to share when they met across their lawns. Mags had told him to go and see if maybe he could help her transition, but he hadn’t. Instead, Finnick had preferred sitting at the little lonely bay close to the Victor’s Rock where he’d used to try and figure that trident business out, no matter that everyone said that was a ridiculous weapon, even for fishing. That point had been made seven years ago for everyone to see, so he just sat there now. Trident resting on his lap, nothing to train for anymore, watching the waves.
When it came to the Capitol, though, the one luxury he wasn't allowed was choice, so here he was back on a train to the 71st Games, having given up on sleep for now. Finnick never had been able to sleep on the train. It always felt like the engines became louder at night, worming their way through his ears, into his brain, reading his thoughts. He got up instead, thinking he might try and mix himself a drink now that he was twenty, and even his father wouldn’t mind.
Mags was sitting in the lunch compartment, reading glasses on her tiny, wrinkly nose. Finnick froze when he saw her, fighting a sudden anxiety that he might blush when she looked up, although Finnick Odair never blushed. Though, her face moved into a smile at his sight, so he let the tension wash out of his body, on purpose, and sauntered right in. Mags was fierce, but she was tiny. She was just Mags, Finnick told himself. Mags, who’d made him fearless for a while and who’d brought him home.
“I’ve never seen you write in that thing, you know,” he said, referring to the leather-bound mentoring journal in her hands which was, he knew from idling evenings away at her house, filled with little notes and names. Stepping up to the minibar, he scanned the assortment of liquors and juices for something that ideally, would be almost unbearably sweet. “Not that I know what kinds of notes you would have needed during my Games. ‘Number of times a fan swooned’?” He turned to give her a wink.
In the corner of his eye, Mags dropped the notebook into her lap, and rewarded him with a smirk. “It was already full when you were born,” she informed him primly. “They think they tell a new story every year at the Games, but history is just repeating itself, for now.”
“Oh right, I forgot that you played the slut angle for Caramel, too,” Finnick thoughtlessly quipped. Thirty-eight year old Caramel Doll was his neighbor, and had these episodes where he started clutching his head whenever he laid eyes on Finnick - not that Finnick couldn’t empathize with that sentiment.
Then he realized what he’d just said and squeezed his eyes shut. Geez. Idiot. He was talking to Mags. Apparently, he really needed to sleep. “I’m sorry,” he managed. It hadn’t been like that. He’d been fourteen. “Forget that I said that.”
But he already knew he’d slipped. Mags was quiet behind him for a moment. She was like a rock, Finnick didn’t know how she did it, and that scared him right now. Mags was a legend in Four, more than a person. When Finnick’s name was called and she’d introduced herself as his mentor on the train, he’d been so sure that he’d come home just because that woman had told him he could. Even if he hadn’t been a volunteer. She was practically another grandmother these days.
Right now he was just glad she was so old; he wouldn’t ever know how to try coming on to Mags, and how sick was it that he was even thinking of that.
“Finnick…” she said patiently behind him, and Finnick violently shook his head.
“Don’t,” he said, because his sex life was one topic he never wanted to breach with Mags, and continued in one exhaled breath, “So have we ever even had two victors in a row? Niko and Corina should both stand a chance.”
Finnick was still staring at the bar, at the assembly of juices to cover the taste of the booze - very Capitol, that. Hesitating for a moment, he firmly reached out and poured some of them together in a mix he’d learned at the Training Center. It had a bar on the first floor, where the mentors often met up with the other victors on their breaks. Finnick sometimes chatted up the bartender when he waited for his driver to arrive.
“We will certainly get both of them into the Career pack this year,” Mags agreed after a loaded pause, one that made him tense. She didn’t even bother answering the question, not when every child in the district knew the answer to that one. “Corina will be overshadowed by Niko, so we’ll trust that she’ll be overlooked by the other tributes like you were, and work with her after. She’ll have to convince the Capitol that she is smart enough to outlast the pack, and I think she might be. She can only do that by herself.”
“But Niko will be the priority tribute,” Finnick said, hands almost not trembling when he recapped the bottle.
“Of course. He’s everything you can ask for in a tribute. He’s not a sensation yet, but he can easily become one in the Games. He’ll shine once he fights.”
“I told him to play up the charms.” It was hard not to sound harsh about that. Apparently, playing it up was just the way it started. Offer it up on a plate so people would notice they could have that one, if they just paid up.
Mags sighed. “You can’t refuse to talk about it forever, lad.”
Lad. One time, Finnick had looked up that endearment at the Justice Building library when he was waiting for a delayed train. Nobody used it in the district except Mags. It meant both boy and man as well as stablehand, bizarrely, and he was never sure which one he wanted it to be. Being a servant of Mags’ would be easy, and he was already used to that role.
Claudius Templesmith sure didn’t want him to act like a boy when he had Finnick suck his cock.
“Finnick,” Mags said kindly. “Finnick, child, listen to yourself.” He heard her exhale a small sound when she got out of her chair, frail as she was becoming. A looming presence somewhere in his back despite of that, but Finnick still couldn’t make himself turn around. He hated looking Mags in the eyes. He’d come to hate looking most people he knew in the eyes this year, his family and other Four victors, but Mags had brought him home to be a district hero and Mags was worse.
“But I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out shakily. “So there’s nothing to listen to.”
“Exactly,” she replied with a trace of dry humor.
Then she had worked her way over, a tiny shadow in the corner of his eyes, as if they weren’t just facing a row of drinks and a wall that way, and a fruity drink with too much alcohol in it that Finnick still hadn’t touched.
Numbing reality wouldn’t make it go away, either.
“You know why I asked you to talk to Annie?”
“You want me to start pulling my weight,” he told the wall, hearing Mags snort.
“Leave that to the fishermen,” she retorted, making his lips twitch despite himself. She’d fucking harpooned people to death at her arena, sixty-one years ago, and she’d taught him knots he hadn’t even heard of, but she held strange contempt for gutting fish. “Annie and you are the same age,” she continued, in a firmer voice. “You can’t keep relying on old Mags. You should help each other. Start a new generation of victors. That’s how it should be.”
“Annie Cresta’s life is just a little different from mine, Mags,” Finnick said with as much poise as he could muster.
Annie Cresta didn’t even need to go back to the Capitol for this Games, not with a mental instability like that.
“Her aunt died of a bad batch of medicine this winter,” Mags said. “Snow had introduced Annie to her sponsors on her Tour, but she … was so far gone. I’ve told you how she gets.”
Damn. Finnick was trembling for real suddenly, having to hold onto the bar except his fingers threatened to slip, tremors spreading through all of his body until the whole world seemed to be shaking. It happened so fast that he couldn’t catch himself in time. Nausea crept up from his guts, taste of metal in his mouth. Mags had never brought it up directly like this, not when he wouldn’t let her, had never called it whoring or getting around or fucking everybody who could pay, which was what it was. The sudden verbal acknowledgement was too unexpected when his defenses had been so low for weeks, and at that moment, he didn’t think he could deal. He didn’t want it to happen to that girl, who’d made him smile at her pre-Games interview because she’d seemed funny and kind. And he wanted Mags to not know. He needed her to pretend.
Mags was clucking her tongue, but Finnick still flinched away from her when her hand brushed his elbow. Tears were welling up in his eyes as if his whole self-control was rushing out of him, and, fuck. He hated crying. He hated how it made him feel. He was twenty fucking years old and he knew there was nothing wrong with crying, but he should still know how to not do it.
He couldn’t go back to the Capitol. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t lead Niko Genero into either certain death or a life like his and still get home with the last shreds of himself intact.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to Annie,” he managed once it felt safe to speak, angrily brushing away the wetness on his cheeks.
I’m sorry I’m not what a victor is supposed to be. I’m sorry I grew up without becoming that man.
I’m sorry I’m me.
“Hush,” Mags said, resigned.
on to chapter 2
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Characters: Finnick Odair, also featuring Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason and Mags, as well as an ensemble of victors and OC
Pairings: Finnick/OC, Haymitch/OC, Johanna/OC - pre-Finnick/Annie
Warnings: forced prostitution, dub con / non con, explicit non-consensual bondage & spanking, depression, PTSD, alcoholism, suicide of minor characters and discussion of suicide, Games-related violence
Rating: adult
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: It's the 71st Hunger Games, and Finnick Odair is ordered to mentor a boy he isn’t even sure he wants to bring home. With Johanna Mason alienating her friends and Haymitch Abernathy falling off the wagon, he finds himself struggling to not lose the last shreds of his sanity and soul.
Author's Note: Turns out that it’s pretty much impossible for me to write a THG backstory without making a couple of assumptions. Numero uno: To me, Johanna doesn’t appear like somebody who got out of prostitution, whether she lost all her family or not. Secondly: Snow would be stupid if he just went and killed all his leverage dead at the first offense. I don’t think Snow is stupid. So I’m not picturing Haymitch getting out of it that way, either. Especially since, well. Haymitch didn’t seem all that happy about Finnick telling the public about the prostitution. And we know he’ll lie with a straight face if it suits his needs. So a part of this fic addresses the intricacies of what all that means.
It’s also heavily influenced by conversations I’ve had with millari and deathmallow. I put various shout-outs in here that I hope you two will enjoy! Additionally, millari, thank you very much for the beta and the meticulous line-by-line breakdown.
Chapter 1
Niko Genero is too perfect for the Hunger Games.
That was how the 71st Hunger Games started for Finnick Odair: Staring into the bathroom mirror on the train, racing towards the Capitol with that slight persistent hum of engines - barely audible, but always present. And thinking that his tribute was too smart and too strong and far too attractive for a Games, because he might just win.
A mirror image should just exist, Finnick thought, watching the man in the mirror blink with an unmoved face. You should have looked at it too often to recognize beauty or flaws. However, all Finnick could see was an almost repulsive amount of beauty. His shoulders had broadened and filled out since he’d grown up, currently barely concealed by a transparent shirt - more than he usually wore, he thought with dark humor, but his stylist hadn’t gotten her hands on him yet. Hooded eyes no matter what he did to change his expression, as if he was just born to be that person, and all that flawless skin, ready to be licked. He’d sleep with himself, Finnick thought. Why shouldn’t he - he was beautiful. He was so symmetrical, it barely left room for personality.
He wondered if Niko Genero - just sexy enough - had ever thought the same about himself.
At his Games, Finnick’s cheek had been sliced open - actually sliced open, with a knife. He tried picturing that scar now, running from the corner of his mouth to his ear. It would make him look as if he grinned, Finnick thought. Like a demon. Everybody would be forced to stare at it.
There weren’t any scars, of course; there weren’t any, or he might… Finnick sighed at the thought, and that sick sense of satisfaction imploded. He wouldn’t take a knife and recreate that scar. He wouldn’t.
Finnick closed his eyes and turned his head away.
It was the year after Four had won the Games. The year after Annie Cresta had earned a disaster victory at the 70th Games. District Four didn’t care how she’d done it, of course - treading water for twelve hours was arguably a true Four win, his brothers had told him some had boasted at the docks, with an air of defiance as if they expected him to disagree. Like Finnick, Annie hadn’t even been a volunteer.
Like Finnick, Annie Cresta had fallen apart, though she’d done it right there in the arena where everyone could see instead of sleepwalking through her kills first as if it was actually a children’s game. They hadn’t properly met, but he still thought she had to be smarter than him. Certainly, she had more of a soul.
There was a knock at the door.
“Mr. Odair, are you in there?” Honestia, the escort, chirped in her singsongy Capitol accent. He’d never understood why she insisted on the last names when they were Finnick and Mags and Four male for everyone else. They belonged to everybody, after all, even to Honestia. “Mrs. Swanton and the tributes are waiting for you. Mr. Genero would love to start discussing his strategy now, I have been made to understand.”
Finnick sighed and gave himself a start.
“Good things come to those who wait, Honestia!” he cheerfully called back in what was almost a Capitol voice. “And believe me, my rewards are worth waiting for!” But he didn’t manage a chuckle at the exasperated sound she made, waiting for the sound of her heels to retreat before he swept the bathroom one last time.
Yes. Yes, he’d drained it all away.
All the puke was gone, the white marble sink shining clean.
It was the fourth year since Snow had called him back to the Capitol to show him a video of Haymitch Abernathy’s mother and brother and girlfriend shot in the back of their heads. It was his first as a mentor. Finnick wasn’t stupid or blind enough to think that that new role meant the Capitol’s interest in that man in the mirror had waned. It wouldn’t for a long time.
Man, he thought, giving himself an affirmative nod. Not a boy anymore, not for a while.
He should know. He felt like a hundred at least.
---
Niko Genero had volunteered, so he was eighteen. Unlike others, he hadn’t changed his name to something shiny and Capitol that would give him an edge in his Games marketing, and mark the beginning of the probably short rest of his life. He was tall, as tall as Finnick, and had the strong back and shoulders of a swimmer. His skin was black like ebony and his hair was braided tightly to his skull, and even after a year of avoiding the Games schools and the other victors, Finnick had heard that Niko and his fighting sticks could probably beat anybody in District Four.
It would be easier if Niko was an idiot who thought he’d already made it in life, Finnick thought with resignation. Somebody who thought this was already it, celebrated as a volunteer by all of Four, his name carved into the Monument of Sacrifice at Middletown. But Niko was obviously sharp. He was tense, as if the Games had already started - which they had - keeping a vigilant eye on Finnick wherever he was in the room. He set Finnick on edge.
Good.
He stiffened when Finnick stepped behind his chair and leaned in too closely to snatch a cookie off the table, intrusive enough to smell the lemon wax that slicked Niko’s braids. But Niko didn’t flinch away.
“I think I can win this,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“Good for you,” Finnick cheerfully retorted, circling the table to sprawl on the couch on the far end of the room, too pliant for a mere chair. “Now convince me.” He gesticulated grandly. “Then convince Panem.” There was a Two volunteer shaped like a bull this year, a desperation volunteer in Five. Nobody would have taken special note of Niko yet.
The young man dropped his eyes, tracing along the edge of the table with his thumb. The first sign of nerves Finnick had seen. “I’ve got guts,” Niko slowly said. He had a pleasant low voice too, not like a child but like somebody Finnick would stick his cock into in other circumstances. “I’ve got patience. I can wait out the field if that’s what you want, and I’ll give them a good show. I’m better than that boy from Two, even though he’ll be stronger.” He looked up, straight at Finnick, almost a challenge. “I’m beautiful, too.” As if he was trying the notion on for size, smart enough to be aware it was important but unclear as to why. Skill was all that had counted in his world up to the Reaping.
Finnick had never understood why the teachers at Games school didn’t tell the volunteers about what was waiting for a victor, but he figured there wouldn’t be any volunteers anymore if they did. Maybe Niko would consider it part of the sacrifice.
In a way, that would be true.
Finnick stifled a snort of a laugh, trying desperately not to give into that need to despair.
Oh, Niko, he thought. You haven’t even started to figure it out.
Not as smart as he’d thought, after all.
---
Lately, Finnick found himself missing the three weeks he'd spent in the arena - with a fiery passion that scared him out of his mind.
Nobody remembered that now, but his Games had dragged on for twenty-two endless days, and climaxed with a particularly gruesome Career pack tear-up, people butchering the ones they’d grown to like best. Finnick -just an impressionable kid with a good throwing arm - hadn’t had a clue what it was that he was doing, blind to what it meant for his soul and integrity to spear other children like fish. But realization had dawned as he’d grown up, which had been fast. They taught you it was okay to kill for survival at Four, but people who said that hadn’t had blood dribbling over their hand when they moved in for a kill. You couldn’t throw a trident at a catch in a net, not if you still needed that net, you had to get close.
The tribute from Two had lashed at his face and sliced open his cheek, and there had been blood, everywhere, dripping onto the remains of his tribute garb and coloring his lips and chin a terrifying red. Tiny fourteen-year-old menace, sweet and horrible at once. Finnick wasn’t ever able to turn his eyes away at the replay, astounded at how that sea monster was him.
Yet things had been easy in the arena, and heavens, he wanted that back. Easy. Straightforward. Kill or die. So much better than Fuck or we’ll kill your mother first, or, Let your brothers think it’s your own idea to sleep with those people or else. Blood had dripped off his hand when he’d killed the twelve-year-old in his net, and that made him a killer. He grew hot all over when he fucked Hersilius Butterbulp, and he came deliciously when Hersilius fucked him, and it wasn’t supposed to make him a slut.
But Finnick had long since lost the habit of deluding himself.
---
It had been a bad year home at Four, between Games, almost as if there was something wrong in his brain. Finnick had been struggling to get out of bed in the morning and dreading every day the Games got closer, fear leaving a lump in his throat. Not wanting to look his parents in the eye. Being expected to help out at Games school in Northbeach while Mags was on Victory Tour, and just never showing up.
Annie Cresta had returned from the Tour more broken than she’d been to start with, his old Games school teacher Calina had known to share when they met across their lawns. Mags had told him to go and see if maybe he could help her transition, but he hadn’t. Instead, Finnick had preferred sitting at the little lonely bay close to the Victor’s Rock where he’d used to try and figure that trident business out, no matter that everyone said that was a ridiculous weapon, even for fishing. That point had been made seven years ago for everyone to see, so he just sat there now. Trident resting on his lap, nothing to train for anymore, watching the waves.
When it came to the Capitol, though, the one luxury he wasn't allowed was choice, so here he was back on a train to the 71st Games, having given up on sleep for now. Finnick never had been able to sleep on the train. It always felt like the engines became louder at night, worming their way through his ears, into his brain, reading his thoughts. He got up instead, thinking he might try and mix himself a drink now that he was twenty, and even his father wouldn’t mind.
Mags was sitting in the lunch compartment, reading glasses on her tiny, wrinkly nose. Finnick froze when he saw her, fighting a sudden anxiety that he might blush when she looked up, although Finnick Odair never blushed. Though, her face moved into a smile at his sight, so he let the tension wash out of his body, on purpose, and sauntered right in. Mags was fierce, but she was tiny. She was just Mags, Finnick told himself. Mags, who’d made him fearless for a while and who’d brought him home.
“I’ve never seen you write in that thing, you know,” he said, referring to the leather-bound mentoring journal in her hands which was, he knew from idling evenings away at her house, filled with little notes and names. Stepping up to the minibar, he scanned the assortment of liquors and juices for something that ideally, would be almost unbearably sweet. “Not that I know what kinds of notes you would have needed during my Games. ‘Number of times a fan swooned’?” He turned to give her a wink.
In the corner of his eye, Mags dropped the notebook into her lap, and rewarded him with a smirk. “It was already full when you were born,” she informed him primly. “They think they tell a new story every year at the Games, but history is just repeating itself, for now.”
“Oh right, I forgot that you played the slut angle for Caramel, too,” Finnick thoughtlessly quipped. Thirty-eight year old Caramel Doll was his neighbor, and had these episodes where he started clutching his head whenever he laid eyes on Finnick - not that Finnick couldn’t empathize with that sentiment.
Then he realized what he’d just said and squeezed his eyes shut. Geez. Idiot. He was talking to Mags. Apparently, he really needed to sleep. “I’m sorry,” he managed. It hadn’t been like that. He’d been fourteen. “Forget that I said that.”
But he already knew he’d slipped. Mags was quiet behind him for a moment. She was like a rock, Finnick didn’t know how she did it, and that scared him right now. Mags was a legend in Four, more than a person. When Finnick’s name was called and she’d introduced herself as his mentor on the train, he’d been so sure that he’d come home just because that woman had told him he could. Even if he hadn’t been a volunteer. She was practically another grandmother these days.
Right now he was just glad she was so old; he wouldn’t ever know how to try coming on to Mags, and how sick was it that he was even thinking of that.
“Finnick…” she said patiently behind him, and Finnick violently shook his head.
“Don’t,” he said, because his sex life was one topic he never wanted to breach with Mags, and continued in one exhaled breath, “So have we ever even had two victors in a row? Niko and Corina should both stand a chance.”
Finnick was still staring at the bar, at the assembly of juices to cover the taste of the booze - very Capitol, that. Hesitating for a moment, he firmly reached out and poured some of them together in a mix he’d learned at the Training Center. It had a bar on the first floor, where the mentors often met up with the other victors on their breaks. Finnick sometimes chatted up the bartender when he waited for his driver to arrive.
“We will certainly get both of them into the Career pack this year,” Mags agreed after a loaded pause, one that made him tense. She didn’t even bother answering the question, not when every child in the district knew the answer to that one. “Corina will be overshadowed by Niko, so we’ll trust that she’ll be overlooked by the other tributes like you were, and work with her after. She’ll have to convince the Capitol that she is smart enough to outlast the pack, and I think she might be. She can only do that by herself.”
“But Niko will be the priority tribute,” Finnick said, hands almost not trembling when he recapped the bottle.
“Of course. He’s everything you can ask for in a tribute. He’s not a sensation yet, but he can easily become one in the Games. He’ll shine once he fights.”
“I told him to play up the charms.” It was hard not to sound harsh about that. Apparently, playing it up was just the way it started. Offer it up on a plate so people would notice they could have that one, if they just paid up.
Mags sighed. “You can’t refuse to talk about it forever, lad.”
Lad. One time, Finnick had looked up that endearment at the Justice Building library when he was waiting for a delayed train. Nobody used it in the district except Mags. It meant both boy and man as well as stablehand, bizarrely, and he was never sure which one he wanted it to be. Being a servant of Mags’ would be easy, and he was already used to that role.
Claudius Templesmith sure didn’t want him to act like a boy when he had Finnick suck his cock.
“Finnick,” Mags said kindly. “Finnick, child, listen to yourself.” He heard her exhale a small sound when she got out of her chair, frail as she was becoming. A looming presence somewhere in his back despite of that, but Finnick still couldn’t make himself turn around. He hated looking Mags in the eyes. He’d come to hate looking most people he knew in the eyes this year, his family and other Four victors, but Mags had brought him home to be a district hero and Mags was worse.
“But I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out shakily. “So there’s nothing to listen to.”
“Exactly,” she replied with a trace of dry humor.
Then she had worked her way over, a tiny shadow in the corner of his eyes, as if they weren’t just facing a row of drinks and a wall that way, and a fruity drink with too much alcohol in it that Finnick still hadn’t touched.
Numbing reality wouldn’t make it go away, either.
“You know why I asked you to talk to Annie?”
“You want me to start pulling my weight,” he told the wall, hearing Mags snort.
“Leave that to the fishermen,” she retorted, making his lips twitch despite himself. She’d fucking harpooned people to death at her arena, sixty-one years ago, and she’d taught him knots he hadn’t even heard of, but she held strange contempt for gutting fish. “Annie and you are the same age,” she continued, in a firmer voice. “You can’t keep relying on old Mags. You should help each other. Start a new generation of victors. That’s how it should be.”
“Annie Cresta’s life is just a little different from mine, Mags,” Finnick said with as much poise as he could muster.
Annie Cresta didn’t even need to go back to the Capitol for this Games, not with a mental instability like that.
“Her aunt died of a bad batch of medicine this winter,” Mags said. “Snow had introduced Annie to her sponsors on her Tour, but she … was so far gone. I’ve told you how she gets.”
Damn. Finnick was trembling for real suddenly, having to hold onto the bar except his fingers threatened to slip, tremors spreading through all of his body until the whole world seemed to be shaking. It happened so fast that he couldn’t catch himself in time. Nausea crept up from his guts, taste of metal in his mouth. Mags had never brought it up directly like this, not when he wouldn’t let her, had never called it whoring or getting around or fucking everybody who could pay, which was what it was. The sudden verbal acknowledgement was too unexpected when his defenses had been so low for weeks, and at that moment, he didn’t think he could deal. He didn’t want it to happen to that girl, who’d made him smile at her pre-Games interview because she’d seemed funny and kind. And he wanted Mags to not know. He needed her to pretend.
Mags was clucking her tongue, but Finnick still flinched away from her when her hand brushed his elbow. Tears were welling up in his eyes as if his whole self-control was rushing out of him, and, fuck. He hated crying. He hated how it made him feel. He was twenty fucking years old and he knew there was nothing wrong with crying, but he should still know how to not do it.
He couldn’t go back to the Capitol. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t lead Niko Genero into either certain death or a life like his and still get home with the last shreds of himself intact.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to Annie,” he managed once it felt safe to speak, angrily brushing away the wetness on his cheeks.
I’m sorry I’m not what a victor is supposed to be. I’m sorry I grew up without becoming that man.
I’m sorry I’m me.
“Hush,” Mags said, resigned.
on to chapter 2