THG fic: "Moss On The Ruins" [4/5]
Title: Moss On The Ruins
Author: trovia
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 / R / M (for the sex, but this is still pretty much gen)
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: At the 71st Hunger Games, 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.
A/N: Again, thank you very much, millari, for the beta, and I hope you and deathmallow will enjoy all the shout-outs to your fic and head canon.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 on LJ
Chapter 4
Everybody had known from the get-go that it would be a quick Hunger Games.
The Gamemakers had let loose the mutts. Everyone had thought they would; it had just been a matter of time. Until that point, nobody had as much as glimpsed a look at anything that moved in that arena, apart from the tributes, but the engineers were always too proud to not show off their work, giddy to win voting awards at the anniversary shows. So a beautiful and deadly panther had started prowling the grounds. In a matter of two days, it had mauled Nine’s Kenny and Five’s May into bits. Kenny had been thirteen, and had almost made the Final Eight by hiding, cooking tea out of moss roots. May had addressed the camera the night before, telling her father not to worry, she just knew she’d be home. They’d tried interviewing him about it but he was senile, and hadn’t even understood she was not in the house.
Niko was burning brightly with his fighting sticks, explosion of twirls when he took out May’s district partner Leonard.
The news channels buzzed with gossip about Haymitch and his very public reappearance at the side of a woman who giggled when they got drunk at a club and he puked into a garbage bin, seeming disturbingly enamored by the display. Juno talked train deployment on the phone, while Finnick ate her out. Benjamin from Seven broke his neck when he climbed up a ruins and fell. Finnick had never seen Gang that frustrated before.
“You must be so incredibly proud,” Cantata Aurelia crooned when she bumped into Finnick on her way to the vomitorium, pupils shot and high as a kite. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been as blatant as to press up against the her dear friend Juno’s pursuit, at that dear friend’s own going-away party, sloppily rubbing herself against his thigh. Finnick smirked, catching her around the waist before she could fall. “Not only strong and dangerous and sexy,” she purred, her sharpened fingernails scratching his jaw. “But also a mentor to the young. I like them competent, you know.
“What do I have to do to get a kiss?” she muttered, leaning in.
It wasn’t that Finnick would ever have pushed her away. It wouldn’t even have occurred to him to say no; he’d never have known which words he should use.
But instead he heard himself replying.
“Tell me a secret,” he muttered, whispering in her ear. “Is it true that Crooks became Minister of District Affairs by implicating Bagnold in a tax fraud affair?”
Cantata giggled. “Nooo,” she said in a drawn-out stage whisper. “That was Minister Crooks’ wife.”
Finnick smiled, his lips touching hers and working his tongue until she moaned, until he was almost hard, pushing his thigh further between her legs. There was an expression of bliss on her face when she careened off.
It was a tiny measure of control, but it was something at least.
When he returned to Mentor Central that night, Six’s Camilla had fired a bolt into Eight’s Joanie with her captured crossbow, and Final Four was on.
Camilla had taken out the panther while she was at it, rapidly upsetting the odds in her favor again while she gained more control over that crossbow with every shot, practicing firing it into a porous cement wall all day. A small crowd was always gathered around Ralda’s mentoring station now, offering advice when Terence, her partner was too high on morpha to be of any help. Finnick was firmly glued to his own chair next to Mags, half of a mind to wave any Avox off who approached him about a note with a new summons. But none arrived now. Brutus was never looking away from the screen anymore, vibrating, alive with a burning intensity like Finnick had never seen in him before. His Fulvius still had the best odds. The fourth tribute was One’s Velvet, Niko’s pack sweetheart mere days before, and Cashmere was just impatient with him all the time now, hissing insults at the screen and waving off Clarity’s offers to help.
Each of them had budgets left, but even the bread cost had skyrocketed. Sponsors were calling Finnick now instead of him calling them, and he sent Niko some shrimp.
Niko and Velvet faced off in the remains of what might have been a Justice Building once, bare white stone walls growing out of the ground.
Both young men were tall, both were quick, Niko’s dark skin a stark contrast against Velvet’s fair complexion and blonde hair.
Velvet’s weapon of choice was a broadsword, blade gleaming dangerously against the sinking sun.
It couldn’t have looked any more stunning if the Gamemakers had staged it like that.
“Looking forward to cutting that smirk out of your face,” Velvet said when they circled each other, his voice meant to carry for the cameras.
Niko just showed more teeth in answer. “There’ll be nothing left of you to send home when I’m done.”
It was over quickly, and there was nothing Finnick or Mags or any of the sponsors could have done to change anything about it. Niko had wider reach with his sticks, but Velvet had been trained just as well. Once he had scored enough minor cuts to wear Niko down, the One launched himself at him with full force, knocking the sticks out of his way like a freight train. It was a daring maneuver, and it broke his arm. The Games channel replayed it all night. When Niko was down, Velvet cut off his head with a clean stroke although he didn’t have to anymore, so Niko wouldn’t choke on his own blood, though he made sure it looked vicious and gory on screen.
Finnick lowered his head between his knees, breathing until the whooshing sound in his ears very slowly died away. After a while, he noticed that Mags’ hand was on his back, moving in soothing circles like his real grandmother’s used to when he was sick with a cold back before he was reaped. He looked up, and she gave him a little smile, sad either for Niko or for him.
Maybe for both of them, he thought.
“Excuse me for a minute,” Ralda said, barely composed, and Haymitch muttered a curse and rushed into the bathroom after her. Fulvius had positively butchered her Camilla into bits.
It didn’t take more than an hour until he had found Velvet Twain, slowed down by his useless broken arm, who went down almost without any resistance.
Like almost everybody had considered the safest bet from the start, Fulvius Tucker from District Two was declared victor of the 71st Hunger Games of Panem. At the announcement, he looked up at the hovercraft with an almost anguished expression, like he’d never donned in all of the week.
“Good win,” Woof said and clapped Brutus on the back.
Finnick knew to understand it meant that Fulvius would make a fine mentor or teacher one day, but otherwise, just wasn’t exciting or pretty enough to ever be back - the best they could hope for in every respect.
But he still wished that it had been Niko who got to go home.
“I’m sorry,” he said. It seemed like it was the only thing he ever said these days, but it had become almost compulsive. Despite the fact that he knew he was repeating himself, it needed to be said, for himself if nothing else, just so that he could hear the words aloud and make it real.
“There’s nothing you have to be sorry about,” Mags said with a fond look on her face and patted at the spot next to her on the couch at the quarters of Four, which were almost empty now that Corina and Niko were dead and Honestia and the tribute stylists had left.
Finnick took the proffered seat. He wished he could think of the motion as gingerly or awkwardly, but it looked as if he’d just have to resign himself to the fact that he’d never do anything physical awkwardly in his life. Everything he did would always look smooth, no matter almost nothing ever really was.
“You don’t even know yet what I’m sorry for,” he pointed out.
Mags smirked at him, looking cunning and old. “You have to be sorry for none of it, lad,” she said and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to shake him with surprising vigor to bring the message home, so Finnick chuckled despite himself.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help out at Games school this year,” he said, before he’d even caught his balance. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you when I should have, and that I told you I’d go over to Annie’s, but then I still never did.” He swallowed hard, trying to get it all out in one breath, before he could convince himself that there’d never be enough breath for those words. “I’m sorry I survived my Games when all those volunteers didn’t. I’m sorry … I’m sorry they made me a whore, and you have to see.”
“Hush,” Mags said dismissively.
“I know it’s not what you wanted me to be.”
“No,” Mags said. “I want us to be free and happy, and not have any Hunger Games for anybody anymore.” She paused, waggling her finger at an invisible spot that Finnick supposed was where he’d find a bug, possibly the one with the best reception. “I hope you caught that on your tape loud and clear.”
Then, she touched Finnick’s jaw with her frail hand, her skin so loose from age that it might as well only have been bones. “I only see good things when I look at you, Finnick Odair.” She paused expectantly, and he realized she wanted him to look back at her, so he did, although there were very few things he’d have liked to do less. Mags, she was like a sea turtle, he thought, although he knew that was one thing he’d better never say aloud if he didn’t want to be smacked over the head. But she still was like a sea turtle to him - old and patient and wise.
Mags looked him over, all of his face, like she’d done when he was fourteen, on the train, when she’d told him that she’d surely get him home. Except he didn’t feel like she was studying the surface this time at all, contemplating how to use it. She wasn’t thinking about using him. Maybe she never did. She certainly wasn’t studying his bone structure, or eye color and how it was so beautiful.
“Only good things,” she repeated, looking him square in the eyes.
“Would you rather have died in your Games?” she asked, and he was shaking his head before she’d finished the question.
“There you go,” she said, echoing what Haymitch had said on the roof. Or more likely, it was the other way around and Haymitch had been repeating what she’d once said to somebody else. It was a victor’s truth, the only one they’d get.
It wasn’t enough, Finnick thought. He wanted to apologize again. He had a terrible feeling that he’d always want to apologize, and that it wouldn’t ever be enough.
But Mags and Haymitch both were right. It would have been Niko’s choice to say if he wanted to live this life or not live one at all, and it was Finnick’s as well. It was a little choice, but one he’d been making every day for four years without noticing he had. Every day, he could decide to bow out. He could.
He wouldn’t, though.
There wasn’t a long waiting period to be expected before the crowning ceremony. Fulvius hadn’t been hurt terribly in his last fight, still steady on his feet when the hovercraft arrived, so remake had no reason to take a long time. If the humongous new victor had started paling as if he was planning to faint before they’d fully hauled him in, the camera hadn’t focused on it and it was nothing a surgeon could ever mend, anyway.
So Finnick expected a note for a tight schedule of last-minute appointments coming in sooner rather than later. He was too tired from the Games, and everything that had happened, to even be surprised when the one penciled into the last row read, like an afterthought, Secretia Colbert and, Limousine sched. 20-00. Accomp.: Haymitch Abernathy. Full remake, 16-00.
Better than a gang bang, he supposed.
They met up at the Training Center bar. Haymitch barely spared him a glance when he asked him if he was ready, and they headed out. Haymitch was dressed in a similar get-up from when Finnick had seen him the last time, leather pants and loose shirt smoothing out his waist smartly. Finnick wore dress pants and a jacket, which would have been hilariously conservative if he’d worn a shirt underneath.
“What’s she like?” Finnick asked in the limousine.
Haymitch was quiet for a moment. “Expansive,” he eventually said, which explained nothing much. And then, “There’ll be paparazzi. She’ll want you to act as if you’re old friends.” Which didn’t help either. Secretia wasn’t the first client who combined getting laid with informing the public about the interesting people she knew.
An hour later, Finnick had gotten to know Secretia Colbert up close - very up close, seeing as how she stuck her tongue down his throat almost aggressively while they danced - and he had almost grown convinced that her affair with the aging drunk from Twelve had been a publicity stunt. Originally, anyway. Something about it just didn’t sit right with him. Threesome hook-ups were normal enough in the Capitol, and even now he could see reporters having a go at them in the corner of his eye, camera lights flashing in the dark of the club before the doorman hauled them outside. All of Panem would know what exactly the three of them were about to do with each other tonight, Secretia made very sure of that. But Haymitch was watching them from the bar with a bemused expression on his face, a natural expression, not a mask. Secretia was happily chatting away at Finnick a mile an hour about the one time she’d had a photo shoot in Four and how the fish had smelled so badly. But every now and then, she’d glance at Haymitch in a way that wasn’t proprietorial in the least. It was questioning. And Finnick couldn’t make out why.
Haymitch didn’t drink too much.
They eventually left for her apartment, cameras flashing yet again when they entered the car. Secretia let Finnick put an arm around her and snuggled up close, hand under his jacket. When Finnick glanced at Haymitch, he just rolled his eyes and sighed, almost as if to say, whatever.
Finnick mentally prepared himself to have sex with Haymitch, making himself list all the ways it would be good even if Secretia turned out another Juno, or a creep.
“I adore the men from Four,” Secretia said, wriggling her manicured fingers at the concierge on the way up to her apartment. “All of them so strong and tall. Like Haymitch.” She winked at Haymitch then, who gave her a look that said, nice try. “And such beautiful girls as well. I’d never achieve a waistline like that without changing my diet, and where’d be the fun in that? I have always wanted to sleep with a Four. But I don’t have a girl, I just have you and I think that will be quite alright as well.” She giggled in a somewhat aged and jaded way, forty-year-old woman playing the part of a girl.
“I’m sure we’ll find some way to conclude the evening… satisfactorily,” Finnick promised her, leaning in with a deep look until she giggled again, and added a salacious stock phrase about how he didn’t take issue with her diet in any way.
“Here we go!” she announced, retina recognition opening a door. “I know it’s not much but one does have to always stay humble, is what I always say! At least in interviews where people can hear.” Again she laughed. Her apartment was roomier than a house, open spaces rivaling each other underneath a brightly gleaming piece of luster art above their heads. “You two sweet boys get comfortable, and I’ll be right back for more of your delicious octopus skin, Finnick Odair!”
Finnick glanced at Haymitch when she scuttled off, who shrugged.
“Doubt she knows what an octopus is,” the other man helpfully commented and threw his jacket over an armchair as if he was feeling at home, which at this point was probably the case.
Considering for a moment, Finnick followed his example. Taking off pieces of his clothes early on had never been the wrong choice.
He tried picturing Secretia and Haymitch doing it with each other by choice and just… couldn’t.
I’m so screwed, he thought with an inward sigh.
There’d better be plenty of physical stimulation involved.
“Bugs are disabled!” Secretia chirped when she breezed back in, and for one long confusing moment, Finnick tried to match that statement up with a fetish.
Then Haymitch said, “So, enough with the necking. Turns out, Secretia really works for District Thirteen. And I think I’ll just leave the rest of the explanation to her.”
“What?” Finnick asked, unable to follow any of those words.
Haymitch gave him what was almost a smile.
“You want a drink?” he asked. “I did.”
Fulvius Tucker was crowned the next day, bending his head with a faint blush on his cheeks so that the President could reach his head. A lot of victors had trouble rewatching their own Games but it seemed that Fulvius, like Finnick, had trouble drawing his eyes away even after the victory kill had been shown.
Finnick’s head was spinning from the news that District Thirteen - District Thirteen - was biding their time while deep cover agents took position all over the Capitol and victors were contacted and stylists were bought out. They could use him, Haymitch had said. Haymitch trusted him to keep mum about it, and it would be useful that Finnick, unlike Haymitch, had obvious excuses to meet people. It would be dangerous, yes, but there wasn’t a possible situation in which Finnick would even have considered saying no.
“I hear things,” Finnick had said.
“Good,” had been all Haymitch had replied.
The victors met one last time at the train station, killing time together while one after the other tickled off. Before leaving to fetch Fulvius, Brutus made time to congratulate Finnick on a first time to be proud of, he was sure it would work out again for Four soon enough. Ralda hugged everyone with something like new color in her cheeks, and informed Finnick that she was glad they’d had a chance to meet. Haymitch only shook his hand, as if he’d never told a rebel organization that Finnick was the victor to recruit.
Johanna punched his shoulder for goodbye, then muttered, “Fuck it” and drew him into a hug of her own, refusing to let him go for a long time. She’d be returning to an empty house and a new grave, Finnick thought with feeling, holding her especially close.
He admitted to himself that he got a bit of a kick out of how he was able to lecture Mags on how the trains to Nine and Four were so late today because the tracks had been rerouted for repairs. She advised to slip the district mayor a hint. He might be able to use the information for something.
Amongst the last to wait for their rides were the Career districts. While the dead and Finnick’s outfits were loaded into the cargo compartment, Finnick told himself, whatever, and walked over to Cashmere Bing.
Cashmere flinched away from him in irritation when he leaned in from behind and asked in her ear, “So why is it Clarity Rudder dislikes me so much? Apart from the obvious points of jealousy, such as my extraordinary charms and looks. So hard to take for some.”
Cashmere flashed him an annoyed look, and flattened the crinkles on her blouse from how he’d startled her. While he didn’t know her well, he clearly could see that she disliked that he had been able to. Maybe women from One just all didn’t like him. “Do I actually have to explain that to you, Odair?”
“I’m afraid that you actually do.”
The other victor sighed, brushing long blonde hair out of her face. “Think about it for a while. You won the 65th.” He waited, and Cashmere continued as if she was talking to a child. “She won the 66th. The 67th, she wants to be back like everybody, but never gets the call. Instead, it’s all Finnick Odair paraded up and down the television screen, cheerfully back at the Capitol. And it isn’t even for mentoring. It’s just because they adore him so much, they really want him back, while nobody is talking about her pathetic little win. How well is she supposed to like that?”
Finnick gazed at her in disbelief.
“She knows I… enjoy that honor very frequently, doesn’t she?”
Finnick thought of what Haymitch had called it, and shied away from repeating it even now, in his head, where only he could hear.
One day, he thought. One day when I’m safer than now.
“So?” Cashmere retorted with an impatient look.
Finnick stared at her.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, shaking his head and walking away.
He didn’t need to hear her reply.
on to the epilogue
Author: trovia
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 / R / M (for the sex, but this is still pretty much gen)
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: At the 71st Hunger Games, 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.
A/N: Again, thank you very much, millari, for the beta, and I hope you and deathmallow will enjoy all the shout-outs to your fic and head canon.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 on LJ
Chapter 4
Everybody had known from the get-go that it would be a quick Hunger Games.
The Gamemakers had let loose the mutts. Everyone had thought they would; it had just been a matter of time. Until that point, nobody had as much as glimpsed a look at anything that moved in that arena, apart from the tributes, but the engineers were always too proud to not show off their work, giddy to win voting awards at the anniversary shows. So a beautiful and deadly panther had started prowling the grounds. In a matter of two days, it had mauled Nine’s Kenny and Five’s May into bits. Kenny had been thirteen, and had almost made the Final Eight by hiding, cooking tea out of moss roots. May had addressed the camera the night before, telling her father not to worry, she just knew she’d be home. They’d tried interviewing him about it but he was senile, and hadn’t even understood she was not in the house.
Niko was burning brightly with his fighting sticks, explosion of twirls when he took out May’s district partner Leonard.
The news channels buzzed with gossip about Haymitch and his very public reappearance at the side of a woman who giggled when they got drunk at a club and he puked into a garbage bin, seeming disturbingly enamored by the display. Juno talked train deployment on the phone, while Finnick ate her out. Benjamin from Seven broke his neck when he climbed up a ruins and fell. Finnick had never seen Gang that frustrated before.
“You must be so incredibly proud,” Cantata Aurelia crooned when she bumped into Finnick on her way to the vomitorium, pupils shot and high as a kite. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been as blatant as to press up against the her dear friend Juno’s pursuit, at that dear friend’s own going-away party, sloppily rubbing herself against his thigh. Finnick smirked, catching her around the waist before she could fall. “Not only strong and dangerous and sexy,” she purred, her sharpened fingernails scratching his jaw. “But also a mentor to the young. I like them competent, you know.
“What do I have to do to get a kiss?” she muttered, leaning in.
It wasn’t that Finnick would ever have pushed her away. It wouldn’t even have occurred to him to say no; he’d never have known which words he should use.
But instead he heard himself replying.
“Tell me a secret,” he muttered, whispering in her ear. “Is it true that Crooks became Minister of District Affairs by implicating Bagnold in a tax fraud affair?”
Cantata giggled. “Nooo,” she said in a drawn-out stage whisper. “That was Minister Crooks’ wife.”
Finnick smiled, his lips touching hers and working his tongue until she moaned, until he was almost hard, pushing his thigh further between her legs. There was an expression of bliss on her face when she careened off.
It was a tiny measure of control, but it was something at least.
When he returned to Mentor Central that night, Six’s Camilla had fired a bolt into Eight’s Joanie with her captured crossbow, and Final Four was on.
Camilla had taken out the panther while she was at it, rapidly upsetting the odds in her favor again while she gained more control over that crossbow with every shot, practicing firing it into a porous cement wall all day. A small crowd was always gathered around Ralda’s mentoring station now, offering advice when Terence, her partner was too high on morpha to be of any help. Finnick was firmly glued to his own chair next to Mags, half of a mind to wave any Avox off who approached him about a note with a new summons. But none arrived now. Brutus was never looking away from the screen anymore, vibrating, alive with a burning intensity like Finnick had never seen in him before. His Fulvius still had the best odds. The fourth tribute was One’s Velvet, Niko’s pack sweetheart mere days before, and Cashmere was just impatient with him all the time now, hissing insults at the screen and waving off Clarity’s offers to help.
Each of them had budgets left, but even the bread cost had skyrocketed. Sponsors were calling Finnick now instead of him calling them, and he sent Niko some shrimp.
Niko and Velvet faced off in the remains of what might have been a Justice Building once, bare white stone walls growing out of the ground.
Both young men were tall, both were quick, Niko’s dark skin a stark contrast against Velvet’s fair complexion and blonde hair.
Velvet’s weapon of choice was a broadsword, blade gleaming dangerously against the sinking sun.
It couldn’t have looked any more stunning if the Gamemakers had staged it like that.
“Looking forward to cutting that smirk out of your face,” Velvet said when they circled each other, his voice meant to carry for the cameras.
Niko just showed more teeth in answer. “There’ll be nothing left of you to send home when I’m done.”
It was over quickly, and there was nothing Finnick or Mags or any of the sponsors could have done to change anything about it. Niko had wider reach with his sticks, but Velvet had been trained just as well. Once he had scored enough minor cuts to wear Niko down, the One launched himself at him with full force, knocking the sticks out of his way like a freight train. It was a daring maneuver, and it broke his arm. The Games channel replayed it all night. When Niko was down, Velvet cut off his head with a clean stroke although he didn’t have to anymore, so Niko wouldn’t choke on his own blood, though he made sure it looked vicious and gory on screen.
Finnick lowered his head between his knees, breathing until the whooshing sound in his ears very slowly died away. After a while, he noticed that Mags’ hand was on his back, moving in soothing circles like his real grandmother’s used to when he was sick with a cold back before he was reaped. He looked up, and she gave him a little smile, sad either for Niko or for him.
Maybe for both of them, he thought.
“Excuse me for a minute,” Ralda said, barely composed, and Haymitch muttered a curse and rushed into the bathroom after her. Fulvius had positively butchered her Camilla into bits.
It didn’t take more than an hour until he had found Velvet Twain, slowed down by his useless broken arm, who went down almost without any resistance.
Like almost everybody had considered the safest bet from the start, Fulvius Tucker from District Two was declared victor of the 71st Hunger Games of Panem. At the announcement, he looked up at the hovercraft with an almost anguished expression, like he’d never donned in all of the week.
“Good win,” Woof said and clapped Brutus on the back.
Finnick knew to understand it meant that Fulvius would make a fine mentor or teacher one day, but otherwise, just wasn’t exciting or pretty enough to ever be back - the best they could hope for in every respect.
But he still wished that it had been Niko who got to go home.
“I’m sorry,” he said. It seemed like it was the only thing he ever said these days, but it had become almost compulsive. Despite the fact that he knew he was repeating himself, it needed to be said, for himself if nothing else, just so that he could hear the words aloud and make it real.
“There’s nothing you have to be sorry about,” Mags said with a fond look on her face and patted at the spot next to her on the couch at the quarters of Four, which were almost empty now that Corina and Niko were dead and Honestia and the tribute stylists had left.
Finnick took the proffered seat. He wished he could think of the motion as gingerly or awkwardly, but it looked as if he’d just have to resign himself to the fact that he’d never do anything physical awkwardly in his life. Everything he did would always look smooth, no matter almost nothing ever really was.
“You don’t even know yet what I’m sorry for,” he pointed out.
Mags smirked at him, looking cunning and old. “You have to be sorry for none of it, lad,” she said and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to shake him with surprising vigor to bring the message home, so Finnick chuckled despite himself.
“I’m sorry I didn’t help out at Games school this year,” he said, before he’d even caught his balance. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you when I should have, and that I told you I’d go over to Annie’s, but then I still never did.” He swallowed hard, trying to get it all out in one breath, before he could convince himself that there’d never be enough breath for those words. “I’m sorry I survived my Games when all those volunteers didn’t. I’m sorry … I’m sorry they made me a whore, and you have to see.”
“Hush,” Mags said dismissively.
“I know it’s not what you wanted me to be.”
“No,” Mags said. “I want us to be free and happy, and not have any Hunger Games for anybody anymore.” She paused, waggling her finger at an invisible spot that Finnick supposed was where he’d find a bug, possibly the one with the best reception. “I hope you caught that on your tape loud and clear.”
Then, she touched Finnick’s jaw with her frail hand, her skin so loose from age that it might as well only have been bones. “I only see good things when I look at you, Finnick Odair.” She paused expectantly, and he realized she wanted him to look back at her, so he did, although there were very few things he’d have liked to do less. Mags, she was like a sea turtle, he thought, although he knew that was one thing he’d better never say aloud if he didn’t want to be smacked over the head. But she still was like a sea turtle to him - old and patient and wise.
Mags looked him over, all of his face, like she’d done when he was fourteen, on the train, when she’d told him that she’d surely get him home. Except he didn’t feel like she was studying the surface this time at all, contemplating how to use it. She wasn’t thinking about using him. Maybe she never did. She certainly wasn’t studying his bone structure, or eye color and how it was so beautiful.
“Only good things,” she repeated, looking him square in the eyes.
“Would you rather have died in your Games?” she asked, and he was shaking his head before she’d finished the question.
“There you go,” she said, echoing what Haymitch had said on the roof. Or more likely, it was the other way around and Haymitch had been repeating what she’d once said to somebody else. It was a victor’s truth, the only one they’d get.
It wasn’t enough, Finnick thought. He wanted to apologize again. He had a terrible feeling that he’d always want to apologize, and that it wouldn’t ever be enough.
But Mags and Haymitch both were right. It would have been Niko’s choice to say if he wanted to live this life or not live one at all, and it was Finnick’s as well. It was a little choice, but one he’d been making every day for four years without noticing he had. Every day, he could decide to bow out. He could.
He wouldn’t, though.
There wasn’t a long waiting period to be expected before the crowning ceremony. Fulvius hadn’t been hurt terribly in his last fight, still steady on his feet when the hovercraft arrived, so remake had no reason to take a long time. If the humongous new victor had started paling as if he was planning to faint before they’d fully hauled him in, the camera hadn’t focused on it and it was nothing a surgeon could ever mend, anyway.
So Finnick expected a note for a tight schedule of last-minute appointments coming in sooner rather than later. He was too tired from the Games, and everything that had happened, to even be surprised when the one penciled into the last row read, like an afterthought, Secretia Colbert and, Limousine sched. 20-00. Accomp.: Haymitch Abernathy. Full remake, 16-00.
Better than a gang bang, he supposed.
They met up at the Training Center bar. Haymitch barely spared him a glance when he asked him if he was ready, and they headed out. Haymitch was dressed in a similar get-up from when Finnick had seen him the last time, leather pants and loose shirt smoothing out his waist smartly. Finnick wore dress pants and a jacket, which would have been hilariously conservative if he’d worn a shirt underneath.
“What’s she like?” Finnick asked in the limousine.
Haymitch was quiet for a moment. “Expansive,” he eventually said, which explained nothing much. And then, “There’ll be paparazzi. She’ll want you to act as if you’re old friends.” Which didn’t help either. Secretia wasn’t the first client who combined getting laid with informing the public about the interesting people she knew.
An hour later, Finnick had gotten to know Secretia Colbert up close - very up close, seeing as how she stuck her tongue down his throat almost aggressively while they danced - and he had almost grown convinced that her affair with the aging drunk from Twelve had been a publicity stunt. Originally, anyway. Something about it just didn’t sit right with him. Threesome hook-ups were normal enough in the Capitol, and even now he could see reporters having a go at them in the corner of his eye, camera lights flashing in the dark of the club before the doorman hauled them outside. All of Panem would know what exactly the three of them were about to do with each other tonight, Secretia made very sure of that. But Haymitch was watching them from the bar with a bemused expression on his face, a natural expression, not a mask. Secretia was happily chatting away at Finnick a mile an hour about the one time she’d had a photo shoot in Four and how the fish had smelled so badly. But every now and then, she’d glance at Haymitch in a way that wasn’t proprietorial in the least. It was questioning. And Finnick couldn’t make out why.
Haymitch didn’t drink too much.
They eventually left for her apartment, cameras flashing yet again when they entered the car. Secretia let Finnick put an arm around her and snuggled up close, hand under his jacket. When Finnick glanced at Haymitch, he just rolled his eyes and sighed, almost as if to say, whatever.
Finnick mentally prepared himself to have sex with Haymitch, making himself list all the ways it would be good even if Secretia turned out another Juno, or a creep.
“I adore the men from Four,” Secretia said, wriggling her manicured fingers at the concierge on the way up to her apartment. “All of them so strong and tall. Like Haymitch.” She winked at Haymitch then, who gave her a look that said, nice try. “And such beautiful girls as well. I’d never achieve a waistline like that without changing my diet, and where’d be the fun in that? I have always wanted to sleep with a Four. But I don’t have a girl, I just have you and I think that will be quite alright as well.” She giggled in a somewhat aged and jaded way, forty-year-old woman playing the part of a girl.
“I’m sure we’ll find some way to conclude the evening… satisfactorily,” Finnick promised her, leaning in with a deep look until she giggled again, and added a salacious stock phrase about how he didn’t take issue with her diet in any way.
“Here we go!” she announced, retina recognition opening a door. “I know it’s not much but one does have to always stay humble, is what I always say! At least in interviews where people can hear.” Again she laughed. Her apartment was roomier than a house, open spaces rivaling each other underneath a brightly gleaming piece of luster art above their heads. “You two sweet boys get comfortable, and I’ll be right back for more of your delicious octopus skin, Finnick Odair!”
Finnick glanced at Haymitch when she scuttled off, who shrugged.
“Doubt she knows what an octopus is,” the other man helpfully commented and threw his jacket over an armchair as if he was feeling at home, which at this point was probably the case.
Considering for a moment, Finnick followed his example. Taking off pieces of his clothes early on had never been the wrong choice.
He tried picturing Secretia and Haymitch doing it with each other by choice and just… couldn’t.
I’m so screwed, he thought with an inward sigh.
There’d better be plenty of physical stimulation involved.
“Bugs are disabled!” Secretia chirped when she breezed back in, and for one long confusing moment, Finnick tried to match that statement up with a fetish.
Then Haymitch said, “So, enough with the necking. Turns out, Secretia really works for District Thirteen. And I think I’ll just leave the rest of the explanation to her.”
“What?” Finnick asked, unable to follow any of those words.
Haymitch gave him what was almost a smile.
“You want a drink?” he asked. “I did.”
Fulvius Tucker was crowned the next day, bending his head with a faint blush on his cheeks so that the President could reach his head. A lot of victors had trouble rewatching their own Games but it seemed that Fulvius, like Finnick, had trouble drawing his eyes away even after the victory kill had been shown.
Finnick’s head was spinning from the news that District Thirteen - District Thirteen - was biding their time while deep cover agents took position all over the Capitol and victors were contacted and stylists were bought out. They could use him, Haymitch had said. Haymitch trusted him to keep mum about it, and it would be useful that Finnick, unlike Haymitch, had obvious excuses to meet people. It would be dangerous, yes, but there wasn’t a possible situation in which Finnick would even have considered saying no.
“I hear things,” Finnick had said.
“Good,” had been all Haymitch had replied.
The victors met one last time at the train station, killing time together while one after the other tickled off. Before leaving to fetch Fulvius, Brutus made time to congratulate Finnick on a first time to be proud of, he was sure it would work out again for Four soon enough. Ralda hugged everyone with something like new color in her cheeks, and informed Finnick that she was glad they’d had a chance to meet. Haymitch only shook his hand, as if he’d never told a rebel organization that Finnick was the victor to recruit.
Johanna punched his shoulder for goodbye, then muttered, “Fuck it” and drew him into a hug of her own, refusing to let him go for a long time. She’d be returning to an empty house and a new grave, Finnick thought with feeling, holding her especially close.
He admitted to himself that he got a bit of a kick out of how he was able to lecture Mags on how the trains to Nine and Four were so late today because the tracks had been rerouted for repairs. She advised to slip the district mayor a hint. He might be able to use the information for something.
Amongst the last to wait for their rides were the Career districts. While the dead and Finnick’s outfits were loaded into the cargo compartment, Finnick told himself, whatever, and walked over to Cashmere Bing.
Cashmere flinched away from him in irritation when he leaned in from behind and asked in her ear, “So why is it Clarity Rudder dislikes me so much? Apart from the obvious points of jealousy, such as my extraordinary charms and looks. So hard to take for some.”
Cashmere flashed him an annoyed look, and flattened the crinkles on her blouse from how he’d startled her. While he didn’t know her well, he clearly could see that she disliked that he had been able to. Maybe women from One just all didn’t like him. “Do I actually have to explain that to you, Odair?”
“I’m afraid that you actually do.”
The other victor sighed, brushing long blonde hair out of her face. “Think about it for a while. You won the 65th.” He waited, and Cashmere continued as if she was talking to a child. “She won the 66th. The 67th, she wants to be back like everybody, but never gets the call. Instead, it’s all Finnick Odair paraded up and down the television screen, cheerfully back at the Capitol. And it isn’t even for mentoring. It’s just because they adore him so much, they really want him back, while nobody is talking about her pathetic little win. How well is she supposed to like that?”
Finnick gazed at her in disbelief.
“She knows I… enjoy that honor very frequently, doesn’t she?”
Finnick thought of what Haymitch had called it, and shied away from repeating it even now, in his head, where only he could hear.
One day, he thought. One day when I’m safer than now.
“So?” Cashmere retorted with an impatient look.
Finnick stared at her.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, shaking his head and walking away.
He didn’t need to hear her reply.
on to the epilogue