THG fic: "Spin Control" [4/21]
Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Where’s My Victor? If you’re looking for the Peeta/Kat bits but don’t want to bother with the whole story, I’d recommend starting at around Chapter 17, where that gets going for real, though they do make their share of appearances before that too. Gale’s appearances will be scattered through the fic more evenly. Gale and Peeta both are scheduled to make their first appearance in Chapter 6. Kat, probably Chapter 11. Chaff will be featured prominently as well.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Dancing On The Ice
The Twelve girl who had cried so hard through her Reaping was called Bee Donally. Like her district partner, she came from a place called Seam and had just turned thirteen, although she was so starved that she rather looked like nine years old, skinny as a stick and only half of Finnick’s size. Preferring to hide either behind her rich long hair or behind her district partner, she still seemed to fight tears whenever she wasn’t looking at Finnick with big, adoring, hopeful eyes that said she needed everything he said about her odds to be true. She didn’t act like thirteen, and there was no way of making her look more mature for the cameras.
The boy, fifteen-year-old Raif Knapweed, mostly acted suspicious towards Finnick - and everybody else - in a way that reminded Finnick of a scowling young Haymitch on the tape of his Quell. It took a long, progressively desperate talk with him on the necessities of survival before Raif even shared that he’d acquired his limp when he busted his knee falling off a tree as a child; at least that meant he was used to working around the disability by now, moving with startling agility - though not startling enough for him to ever stand a chance. Once they reached that point with each other, Finnick - who usually would have called himself good with children - was ready to cry from relief himself.
Both children had the olive skin and the black curls that Finnick had seen in at least one Twelve tribute of every Games he could remember; Bee and Raif might as well have been Haymitch’s niece and nephew. Though when he finally got around to asking ever-helpful Effie Trinket about it, the escort didn’t know what it said about their background either, why most Twelve tributes looked like that until sometimes, they just didn’t. When he casually asked Raif if there was any relation between him and Haymitch, Raif gave him his only laugh all week, startled and ugly in disquieting way, because despite his moodiness, there wasn’t anything cruel about Raif.
There was little chance that either of these two would even make it to the Final Eight. Yet Finnick swore to himself to do everything in his power to give them a fighting chance. Both Haymitch in his hospital bed and the families counting on him in his new district should see that he was trying his hardest to save those children. That was why he’d come, as far as Twelve was concerned. He’d be a new face in that district. Change always meant a flicker of new hope, no matter how jaded people acted - Mags had taught him that. He wouldn’t let them down.
Johanna Mason had asked him if it made him feel like a traitor, going and fighting for the lives of tributes from another district like a mercenary. It meant that two children from Four would die, if one from Twelve survived.
But Finnick knew he couldn’t afford to look at it like that. None of his predecessors had when they moved to coach another district. Every Hunger Games killed twenty-three children; the mentors merely served as props, because nothing they did would change that. None of those children deserved to die; everything about the Games was a farce. He might as well even out the odds.
That was certainly how the Twelve escort looked at it. Styled in accordance with the latest Capitol fashion, Effie wore a massive yellow wig and endless yellow heels. When she welcomed him to the Twelve floor, she beamed at him as if the sun was rising after years in coal-black darkness.
Giving her a friendly smile and witnessing a glow spreading on her face with some detachment, Finnick decided that Effie and he would get along just fine. While it seemed she had a crush on his body, it was by far outweighed by her crush on success.
“Normally Haymitch would have prepared the tributes for the opening ceremony,” Effie had informed him after she was done professing her excitement about his decision to mentor for Twelve. She got down to business with vigor. “As well as was still in Haymitch’s power, anyway,” she added with a wrinkled nose. “But since it was just the three of us, I moved the etiquette lessons up…” Her voice flipped upwards with that word. “…so the tributes are all yours now full-time, ready for strategy mentoring.” During her next words, she raised her chin defensively. “There hasn’t been any special attention paid to either tribute yet, not beyond coverage about you, though I have been monitoring all media activity closely. But that is quite usual for District Twelve. We can only expect attention at a later point.” She sniffed indignantly. “That sad old networks website of Haymitch’s last surviving fans, on the other hand, has been seeing rather a lot of visitors. All vultures, I assume.”
Like Finnick, Effie tried visiting Haymitch multiple times throughout the training week. But even Finnick’s victor status - and attempts at flirting his way in - wouldn’t pay for a ticket past the receptionist.
“Sure, it would have been great to talk to Haymitch,” Finnick once told the reporters lurking in front of the facility, intercepting him with questions greedily. “He is one of the most experienced mentors of the Games, he didn’t get so overworked without reason, and I want to do his - our - district justice. But I guess the doctors are right, he needs to focus on his health. I hope he trusts me to take care of Raif and Bee for him. There is a lot of potential hidden in them.” To be a baker or a nurse. “I don’t doubt that Haymitch would see it, too.”
“But isn’t it true that you have only mentored once so far, during the 71st Hunger Games?” one of the journalists called from the back of the crowd. “How will you compensate for that lack of experience without Haymitch’s aid?”
Finnick gave her his sweetest smile. “True, I did,” he agreed. “But my tribute made Final Four. He almost won.” His tribute had also been an eighteen-year-old, heavily muscular volunteer and the best close combat fighter in all of his district, but Finnick didn’t need mentoring experience to know not to point that out. Mentors had to market their own skill as much as their tributes’. “Don’t forget I’ve been trained by Mags,” he added cheekily. “That’s worth more than a dozen Games.”
It was a special interview to give, because everything he said in it was true.
***
When the single training sessions rolled around at the end of the week, Finnick and Effie had settled into a routine. Like District Four’s Honestia always had, Effie would keep track of schedules and mentoring requirements, monitoring the attention Raif and Bee were getting in the media and on the networks, betting office developments. Meanwhile, Finnick would try to chat up sponsors at the evening events and see clients afterwards, ignoring Effie’s frowns - she apparently thought he was partying. It was a grim affair; the sponsors who had been happy to invite him for drinks a year ago were now trying to make vague excuses or telling him to call them on the fourth or fifth day of the Games at the earliest. At least some were ready to listen when they wouldn’t have spoken to Haymitch, charmed by his flirting or feeling guilty about having bought him, especially if it had been a hush-hush affair before he’d turned sixteen. With his jaw clenched, Finnick decided that he might as well get something positive out of that now.
President Snow had lost no time in starting to send the clients his way, a wild variety of people, most of whom had very particular ideas about how to have a good time. The message was clear - Finnick was sold on special discount this season. Still, he took it with a sense of stoicism that he hadn’t been able to achieve last year. Pushed over the hood of a car, against the pane of a window, being told to be loud so that everybody would hear, he almost felt a rush of power. Snow really thought Finnick had done all this to get out of some of the whoring. For the first time since he’d won his Games, the President hadn’t at all understood what was going on in his head. He wasn’t getting to Finnick where it hurt him most.
Finnick tried not to dwell on how seeing all those clients even made things feel easier, at least a little bit. They provided a familiar pattern while he tried getting comfortable in his new bed in his new quarters, when he found himself hesitating about mentoring choices without having Mags to reassure him. The clients were old news compared to that, and his choices about how to act around them couldn’t ever accidentally get his tributes killed. He was good at sex. It reminded him of all the other things he was good at.
So it’s sick, he grimly thought. So what. I’ll take it, anyway. Everything in this whole world is sick.
His stylist started slipping him little pink wake-up pills after the fourth day. That and all the coffee meant he just dropped on a couch at every opportunity, never dreaming anymore.
Finnick could deal as long as he didn’t have to dream.
When the single training sessions came about, Bee returned from hers crying. Those big tears just running down her face silently, she scurried over to Finnick and wrapped her arms around his waist, asking to be held. She was so small that her head barely came to rest on his sternum. Finnick crouched down to her, exchanging a helpless look with a crushed Effie while muttering encouraging things and rubbing her back and missing his kid sister Coral so fiercely that it hurt him physically.
When Raif returned fifteen minutes after her, he was looking even grimmer and scowling even more than usual. Refusing to leave Bee’s side all evening, he snapped at any Avox who dared startling her, while she curled up on the sofa next to him like a child. The louder he muttered swearwords under his breath, the less inclined she seemed to cry.
“I have to ask,” Effie gingerly whispered at Finnick before they all sat down to watch the training score announcement together. “Is it wise? Encouraging them to bond like that? What if it comes down to the two of them in the arena?” She lowered her voice even more at those words, as if she was barely able to picture that tragic event.
It would forever startle Finnick that Capitol people could ask him questions like that without finding anything wrong with the overall concept.
“Not their biggest problem,” he just told her with a shake of his head, because truth was, if Bee and Raif ever made it that far, they would be blessed. Even if they’d manage to hide out together for the whole Games, staying away from other tributes, chances were that one of them would be killed by mutts or arena surprises on the way. All three of them - Bee, Raif and Effie - seemed obsessed with that concept of one having to kill the other in the end, when Finnick didn’t even dare to hope for that scenario in his wildest dreams. He’d make either one of them betray the other three times over if that meant bringing one of them home.
Bee had showed the Gamemakers the simple traps she had learned, but there was no covering up how ridiculously short and frail she was; she scored a three. It went a little smoother for Raif, who did better with his six than Finnick would have dared hope - rattling off the plants he’d memorized including ways of using them to kill, while showing that he wouldn’t hurt himself with a knife. His brains would be his only advantage. But he wasn’t another Wiress. He wasn’t even another Haymitch.
Finnick had told his tributes to focus on learning survival skills during the week; he’d told them to spend all their time thinking of ways of using those survival skills to get other tributes in trouble. He’d said everything could be a weapon. He’d said, all you have to do to win is stay alive.
He’d said a lot of things, but he knew what Haymitch had to have seen in the Twelve tributes in each of those twenty years he’d mentored, too: These children weren’t Careers. They didn’t know how to survive. They’d spent all of their lives in the desperate hope that this would never happen to them.
You just couldn’t transform two sweet, starved children into killers in the course of one week. You shouldn’t have to live in a world where you were supposed to try.
***
“You’re fast,” Finnick told Bee seriously, looking her straight in the eye because he knew by now that that worked best with her. “You’re gonna be the smallest tribute in the arena, too, so you’ll be very hard to catch. Tell Flickerman that. It’s a way to stick out. And show him your smile. You have a beautiful smile.”
Bee did smile then from underneath her mob of black hair. Finnick answered it encouragingly before he turned to Raif, who appeared sullen, of course. Though Finnick knew it would turn into something like aggression on camera like they had practiced; the boy had a strong survival instinct and despite outward appearance, he did know when it was best to follow orders. The few times he’d gone off script in his interactions with the other tributes during Training Week, it had actually ended up benefiting both him and Bee.
“Show them you can be a fighter,” Finnick told him now. “Let them know that you’ve got other skills, they just weren’t relevant to the scores. Make it look like you’re holding something back.
“Flickerman will be on your side,” he added, addressing both. “Follow his cues. He wants to make you look good, because that makes him look good, too. If he latches on to something, play along.”
“Such a pretty boy,” Flickerman still purred every time Finnick took him in his mouth, playing with his hair. Even now that Finnick hadn’t been a boy in forever. “Can you take it in all the way?”
An unwanted image of Raif at the crowning ceremony came to mind: ordered to the host’s dressing room despite his disability, getting on his knees despite his busted leg. Finnick shuddered, fighting to lock it down. He’d have plenty of time for a meltdown after the Games, he grimly reminded himself and didn’t, didn’t think of what Snow had made him do in his office that night; this wasn’t the time.
Raif pressed his lips together, half-heartedly kicking the table in front of the couch he was sitting on. He muttered something to himself.
“What was that?” Finnick threw him a question.
The boy shrugged it off. “Just not seeing why we’re even bothering with all this shit. I don’t want them to like me or anything.”
“Your interviews determine how many sponsors you’ll get,” Finnick replied patiently. “Especially in the first few days. If you get good sponsors, that means food and weapons and survival. I’ll send you things you can use.”
“The boy from Two said Twelves should all just step off the platform before the gong,” Bee suddenly sputtered.
“Shut up,” Raif hissed at her and gave her an annoyed brotherly shove. “He just wanted to make you cry.”
Bee’s lips were trembling. “He said he’ll make it quick if I run towards him in the bloodbath.”
“He’s an ape,” Raif said as if that settled it forever.
Surprisingly, a giggle bubbled out of Bee.
Working hard to not groan in frustration about all the work on their self-confidence going down the gutter yet again, Finnick tried focusing on the positive last part and worked hard on a smile.
“Raif is right,” he told Bee. “That’s Brutus’ tribute. I know for a fact that Brutus is just grumpy because Two won last year with Fulvius and Brutus won’t get good sponsors for this tribute, because that boy looks too much like Fulvius. That’ll be too boring.” Games Command at Two made brilliant strategy decisions sometimes - there was a reason no other district had ever managed three consecutives. But everybody knew they’d miscalculated this time. District One would be the bigger problem this year: They always told the better in-Games stories. And Finnick tried not to think about the fact that Four had produced only one volunteer this year, the girl.
But Raif wasn’t privy to any of that and he just shrugged. “So what?” he said. “You want us to survive by telling jokes? Because we aren’t gonna be entertaining either while we’re dying.”
For a moment, Finnick felt like shaking the kid. It wasn’t his fault that Raif had been reaped in the middle of his grumpy teens, it wasn’t his fault that anybody was getting reaped and killed, but this wouldn’t help Bee. It had taken him days until that girl had stopped panicking enough to even listen to him.
Then he opened his mouth and closed it again at once, because he’d taken another look at Raif’s closed-off face and his clenched jaw and he realized, suddenly, that this Raif panicking now. He’d shut it all off and channeled it into his gloom but there was an interview coming and all of Panem would see, and it was all catching up with him. How little of a chance he really stood. How he and Bee would probably be dead in a week - one of them definitely would be. He was freaking.
It made something in Finnick’s chest clench up, looking at them sitting there like that.
He’d known what it would be like mentoring for a district like Twelve, he’d seen Haymitch and Chaff and Seeder going at it for years, plus Districts Five and Six, Eight and Nine, who had four victors each, at least. He’d heard the stories from the older Four victors, because Four’s run with the Careers was still a recent success story, that was why it was currently working so well; half of its victors had won in the last twenty years.
But it still felt so much realer and harder when it was happening to him. These children would die.
And Finnick was the only one who could stop it.
If Mags could make it work, I can make it work too, he firmly told himself what the old lady herself had pointed out to him when he’d been reaped. If old Mags had been able to win, she had said, a strong, self-confident young man like Finnick could do it just as well. Look at Four now. Things can change.
He was Finnick fucking Odair, who all of Panem wanted to - and got to - touch. He had means that Haymitch had never even gotten close to.
So he took a deep breath and gave Raif a serious long look, casting in his mind on how to communicate that. He needed those two kids in best fighting shape if they wanted to make it. He needed them to keep hoping.
“Alright,” he said. “Alright. Remember Johanna Mason’s Games?”
He adopted a reasonable voice. While Raif just deepened his scowl as if sensing a trap, Bee shook her head, so Finnick addressed her.
“She’s my very good friend, so I have this on good authority,” he told her. “Johanna had started crying when she was reaped, like you. She had long hair that always covered half her face, and she had a training score of only two. Even her mentor had given up on her. But she didn’t lose hope and she’d decided to show them. She spent all Games in hiding and made everybody believe that she was really that weak. But then she took out the last three tributes and won fair and square.”
“I’ve seen her on the television,” Bee softly said. “She looks mean.”
“So her training score was a ruse,” Raif pointed out. “Ours really are fucked.”
Finnick conceded that point with a nod. “She played them, it’s true,” he agreed. “But that’s why you’ll remind Flickerman that you’ve got a lot of skills, even though they haven’t influenced your score. You’re smart like Johanna. You’ll find things you can use in that arena, things other people won’t notice.” Like Haymitch’s ability to outthink the arena, he thought, but didn’t say aloud. If there was one spectacularly bad approach he could tell his tributes to take, it was that one. You played the arena by arena rules or you didn’t play anything ever again.
Considering for a moment, he leaned forward in his chair. “Okay,” he said. “How’s this? Two years ago, Annie Cresta from my district won because a dam broke and everybody else drowned. She didn’t because she was such a good swimmer.” He started ticking them off his fingers. “A year after Johanna at the 68th Games, Kyle Akumi won without any weapons at all. He just used the traps and snares he’d learned in Training Week. He built the traps, then let his opponents spot him and led them towards them when they chased him. And he was fifteen like you, Raif. I know him well, he’s been mentor for Five ever since.” Sucked at it too, though he was getting better, still unafraid to absorb knowledge from every source he could find; his ever-tipsy partner Eleanor sure was no help.
But Finnick, who had been coached on all the Games by Mags mercilessly before she let him get close to any real-life tributes, wasn’t done. Mags hadn’t just considered it practice for mentoring either, he was sure - she’d been trying to give him a purpose, something he could focus on and be good at. Something other than his looks for the cameras to zone in on. “58th Games,” he continued. “Ralda Cavalera won because she convinced the other tributes they could trust her. That took guts, but no training skills. She made three different alliances in her Games and poisoned each of her partners. You’re not going to be doing that to each other,” he added sternly, pointing his finger at each of them like a teacher, and Bee giggled again, just a small hiccup. Even Raif’s lips twitched at that ludicrous thought. “But you’ve got plant knowledge now that you can use if the occasion arises. 57th Games. Wiress Moore also built traps. Her arena was shaped like a maze and when it got dark, she was the only one who knew where to go because she’d memorized it so well. Five years before that, a lot of tributes were killed by a bear except Blight McCall, who climbed a tree in time.
“The year after my Games, Clarity Rudder won by running although she was a Career. The mutts just caught everybody else faster. Your first victor from Twelve, Swagger March? Ever seen his Games?”
They shook their heads. What do they teach those kids in school? Finnick thought, incredulous.
“Well, he outlived everybody else because the mutts in his arena wouldn’t get close to him after he’d covered himself in mud. They couldn’t sense him anymore. He’d figured that out all by himself.” He’d also let his district partner walk into a trap on purpose, listening to her die, but that was another thing these children didn’t need to know.
But that was enough information for the two of them to take in all at once, so Finnick let them mull it over. Fighting skills weren’t everything. A lot of it was chance. Every arena could end up lending itself to any tribute. He needed Raif and Bee to believe that. He needed them to forget everything they thought they knew about Twelve participation in the Games. The very last thing he needed them to do was get a good grasp on Games statistics.
When Raif eventually squinted at him, it was with a suspicious look on his face. “But most of that was, like, way before you were even born.”
Finnick had to suppress a moment of relieved amusement.
“Well, that’s true,” he agreed. “I’ve seen most of the Games on tape, see, so I know what you two are getting into. People don’t like remembering the survival skill victories because they aren’t as entertaining as the others, but truth is, one out of three Games doesn’t have a final fight at all.
“Your one big task is making it out of the bloodbath,” he reminded them, now that they were listening to him again. “I don’t want either of you getting anywhere close to it. Raif, you’re not fast enough with that knee, don’t get anywhere near the Cornucopia. Bee, first thing on the platform, you look for Raif. You do the running for him. Always do what he tells you to, no questions asked.”
And if Raif would start figuring eventually that letting this sweet girl die would be a way of gaining sponsorship attention, there was nothing Finnick could do to stop it, in any case.
Raif had a disability. But Bee would never make it on her own.
Bee swallowed hard. “What if…”
“No ifs,” he interrupted her. “Remember what I taught you. Have a good look at the arena and remember the rules about the food and the weather. Go looking for water, but stay away from places where you could drown. Don’t panic if the arena looks inhospitable or dangerous. Remember that kind of arena might give you an advantage.”
Then he gave them his best encouraging smile. “Now show me that you still remember what you’ll say to Caesar Flickerman tonight.”
***
“Well this is new,” Chaff said when Finnick gingerly sat down at the console next to his, reaching for a headset that was very clearly meant for somebody else’s head.
“Don’t get too used to it,” he replied. “Haymitch will be back next year to claim this seat. It’s his. I’m only borrowing it this year to be closer to your sunny disposition.” Wiggling around uncomfortably, he added, “Certainly feels like it was built for his butt.”
The older victor threw him a glance. “You been to see him at the rehab place?” When Finnick shook his head, he grimaced. “Ah well. Good luck making it out of the bloodbath, and welcome to our side of the fence.”
It felt disorienting to sit on this side of Mentor Central, on the far end off to the left rather than in the cloud of Careers close to the entrance hall. Trying to get comfortable in a chair that really seemed to have molded into Haymitch’s shape, Finnick could feel how the other victors were throwing occasional glances at the probably equally disorienting sight of him at the console of the dark horse district. No district ever faired as badly as Twelve; even Eleven had managed three victors, all still alive and kicking.
Not a single sponsor had agreed to talk to him before his tributes had made it through the first and second day at least, not even the ones Finnick had slept with.
The lights were dimmed and an announcer boomed at them to take their seats while the feeds above their heads blared to life, and then Templesmith was moving through the countdown.
The camera had followed one of the Careers through the tube to the surface and all they could make out for a moment was a flurry of snow when twenty-four children in heavy winter parkas came to stand in a sea of white, heavy wind blasting snowflakes around. Finnick had never seen a blizzard before, not even in a Games recap, but he was pretty sure that he was looking at one now.
Well, shit.
Finnick cast for a contemporary Games featuring that amount of snow even in better weather and came up empty - there was very little from his studies of the Games that would help him with this.
He swallowed hard.
“So that’s pretty much it for us this year then,” Chaff remarked with the casualness of those who had to do that a lot. “They’ll never make it in that weather.”
“Do they have snow in District Twelve?” He turned to Chaff, realizing that he had no idea and, yup - there was a first spike of panic. Even his Victory Tour stop in Twelve - his first stop - was all a blur. He’d been so young, still in shock. Had there been snow? Now over at the Four station, he knew that Caramel and Mags were rapidly dialing back their expectations. None of their kids had ever seen a frostbite in their lives. Neither had Finnick, and he would never have survived in there. In an effort to clear it, he shook his head. Focus. It’s a survival skill arena. You even told Bee and Raif, this might be good. “I mean, do they have that much snow?”
“Fuck if I know.” Chaff shrugged.
“Does District Twelve get blizzards? Anybody?” Finnick raised his voice to encompass all of Mentor Central; there was a moment of pause when people probably exchanged looks, though his eyes were trained on the screen and he didn’t see. Shit but that’s a lot of snow. This was throwing him, and he knew he was scrambling. He didn’t know anything about his odds. Things were happening down at the betting office in these sixty seconds and he had no idea about them.
“There was snow there last year’s Victory Tour!” the voice of District One’s Nymph shouted from all across the room. “There usually is, right?!”
“But they don’t get any skiing tourists, so it can’t be that cold!” another voice knew to share, who Finnick only recognized as District Nine’s Dune after the fact. “Those all go to us! We’re furthest up North, we get the frozen lakes!”
“There wasn’t any snow at all in Twelve during Chaff’s and my Tours,” Seeder knew to share, leaning forward to look at him past Chaff with concern in her eyes, not having to shout.
Suppressing a curse, Finnick impatiently drummed his fingers on his armrest, then scanned the room for an Avox waiting to fulfill the mentors’ needs, finding one standing in a corner. Forgetting about his manners for a moment, he snapped a finger to get her attention. “Hey,” he said. “Can you pull up a, uhm, a map of Panem, and any information on the weather conditions in Twelve. As fast as you can make it, please.”
Rushing to nod her head at him, she raised her thumb at him and was gone. It made him wonder what district she was from.
Finnick knew that there was nothing he could do, except lean back and follow the camera zooming through the wide expanse of the arena, mountain sites and groves drowning in heavy, frozen snow. A herd of what seemed to be heavy wild horses was racing across a plain at the far end of the field. It all was up to Bee, who looked tiny in her parka, and Raif, four platforms apart from her, stone-faced against the icy snowflakes freezing on the parts of his face not covered in a ski mask. But here Finnick was supposed to save the lives of these two kids while a whole district was looking on… somewhere in Panem, probably trying to decide whether he could even be trusted with their children, while he didn’t even know if his limping boy would know how to move on the ice.
Finnick hadn’t volunteered because he had a special liking of District Twelve or because there was anything he knew about it, really. He knew it was a small place full of starving black-haired children with olive skin, who tended to be dead after three days. But geography wasn’t his strong suit and he hadn’t even gotten around to looking it up on a map.
Flickerman’s voice was now starting to blab at them through the public speakers, because Templesmith had reached “Three, two, one” and announced the start of the “72nd Hunger Games of Panem, may the odds be ever in your favor!” So the carnage was on.
Forcing himself to keep his eyes trained on the screen, Finnick took a controlled long breath and let it out again.
Two chairs over, Seeder was muttering little sighs to herself; her boy was the first to go, stumbling over something underneath the snow, it looked like, after sinking in too deep. He never saw Mags’ massive girl lunging at him, just reaching out from behind and twisting the boy’s neck in a well-practiced move before she struggled on towards the Cornucopia.
Backpacks had been strewn all over the perimeter, more of them the closer they were located to the Cornucopia, which apparently held all the weaponry. Finnick sat up in his chair in alarm abruptly when he heard Raif’s voice in his earpiece, shouting at Bee to run and go for it. He didn’t even bother moving, just standing there on the platform and shouting.
“Smart kids,” Chaff commented inexplicably, glancing away from his own girl for a moment.
It was as if Bee had awoken from a stupor. Nonplussed, Finnick watched on as Raif’s unkind insults made her shake off her panic, running towards the backpacks like a cat and arriving there before anybody around her had made it, snatching off one, two - circling the bulky Seven male and ducking away under his swing without getting into real danger - freezing again on the spot and just staring after him until Raif’s voice was in the air again, telling her to “hurry the fuck up”.
Finally, the boy was in motion, too, making his way towards the grove on his side of the arena as fast as he could. In no time, Bee had joined him, handing him one of the packs. Lighter than anybody, she had moved faster than the heavier tributes close to her because she didn’t sink into the frozen snow.
Finnick let go of the breath he had been holding.
“Shit,” he muttered, sheer relief flooding him.
“And that looks like a strong district alliance for Finnick Odair’s Twelve tributes,” Flickerman’s voice was ringing in the distance from some main channel speaker. “Excellent teamwork.”
Raif had known this before Finnick.
So they did have snow like that in Twelve.
Without waiting to see who else was making it out there and how the conditions were shaking up the betting odds, Finnick had reached for his phone and started dialing. Blood was spreading on the screens in the corner of his eye, draining more and more patches of snow where tributes bled out. Everybody was running to the Cornucopia, scared into scavenging supplies by the weather. The death toll would be high this bloodbath.
“Mathildo,” Finnick purred into the phone as soon as he heard the sponsor pick it up. “Mathildo, this is Finnick Odair, mentoring for District Twelve. I know I’m not supposed to be calling you this early in the Games and I don’t mean to steal any of your precious time, but are you seeing these two right now? Bee will be dancing on the ice in that arena.”
Chaff was giving him a disbelieving look, letting Finnick know that he was laying it on thick. Finnick answered with an exaggerated shrug.
“Well I don’t know about that,” he replied to the athlete, “But she sure will look beautiful while she does, and I know how much you love your visuals. Actually…” The Avox had reappeared, pushing a stash of papers in his lap. When he started fumbling through them with one hand, she pulled one up for him and placed it on top - the Panem map. Pinching the phone between his shoulder and chin, Finnick gave her a grateful smile, then counted, starting in the North. “…actually, did you know that District Twelve is one of our coldest districts? Yes, sir, it is the third coldest district of Panem. It’s the coal mining district, too, of course, so you could even say they’re Panem’s experts on heating, now couldn't you?
“What’s that, sir? Do they have horses?” Finnick covered the mouthpiece, giving Chaff a desperate look. “Do they have horses?” he mouthed.
Chaff grimaced at him, spreading his arms in a gesture of You’re seriously asking me? “They’ve got goats, pretty sure,” he muttered in a low dry voice.
Well. Finnick wouldn’t have won the Games if he wouldn’t be willing to work with what he got, even though at the time that had mostly been Mags’ advice to be charming. “They have goats in Twelve,” he informed the sponsor, turning his head and the phone away when he heard Chaff guffaw. “Yessir. Well, they’re similar to horses.
“They both have hooves and they move similarly.
“Trust me, we know about these things in Four.
“Well, sir, you can do that but I promise you you’re not missing out on much. It’s just district detail. My tributes, anyway, are not going to make fools out of themselves with those horse mutts, and they’re basically the natives of this kind of arena. Think about it, sir.
“Thank you, Mathildo, I will. Very much looking forward to seeing you again, too.”
“You’re shameless,” Chaff stated when Finnick hung up and moved to call up the next number he’d saved on his console’s speed dial.
Finnick answered with a wink, licking his lips. “That’s why they can’t get enough of me.”
Chaff just snorted again.
on to chapter 5
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
Where’s My Victor? If you’re looking for the Peeta/Kat bits but don’t want to bother with the whole story, I’d recommend starting at around Chapter 17, where that gets going for real, though they do make their share of appearances before that too. Gale’s appearances will be scattered through the fic more evenly. Gale and Peeta both are scheduled to make their first appearance in Chapter 6. Kat, probably Chapter 11. Chaff will be featured prominently as well.
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Dancing On The Ice
The Twelve girl who had cried so hard through her Reaping was called Bee Donally. Like her district partner, she came from a place called Seam and had just turned thirteen, although she was so starved that she rather looked like nine years old, skinny as a stick and only half of Finnick’s size. Preferring to hide either behind her rich long hair or behind her district partner, she still seemed to fight tears whenever she wasn’t looking at Finnick with big, adoring, hopeful eyes that said she needed everything he said about her odds to be true. She didn’t act like thirteen, and there was no way of making her look more mature for the cameras.
The boy, fifteen-year-old Raif Knapweed, mostly acted suspicious towards Finnick - and everybody else - in a way that reminded Finnick of a scowling young Haymitch on the tape of his Quell. It took a long, progressively desperate talk with him on the necessities of survival before Raif even shared that he’d acquired his limp when he busted his knee falling off a tree as a child; at least that meant he was used to working around the disability by now, moving with startling agility - though not startling enough for him to ever stand a chance. Once they reached that point with each other, Finnick - who usually would have called himself good with children - was ready to cry from relief himself.
Both children had the olive skin and the black curls that Finnick had seen in at least one Twelve tribute of every Games he could remember; Bee and Raif might as well have been Haymitch’s niece and nephew. Though when he finally got around to asking ever-helpful Effie Trinket about it, the escort didn’t know what it said about their background either, why most Twelve tributes looked like that until sometimes, they just didn’t. When he casually asked Raif if there was any relation between him and Haymitch, Raif gave him his only laugh all week, startled and ugly in disquieting way, because despite his moodiness, there wasn’t anything cruel about Raif.
There was little chance that either of these two would even make it to the Final Eight. Yet Finnick swore to himself to do everything in his power to give them a fighting chance. Both Haymitch in his hospital bed and the families counting on him in his new district should see that he was trying his hardest to save those children. That was why he’d come, as far as Twelve was concerned. He’d be a new face in that district. Change always meant a flicker of new hope, no matter how jaded people acted - Mags had taught him that. He wouldn’t let them down.
Johanna Mason had asked him if it made him feel like a traitor, going and fighting for the lives of tributes from another district like a mercenary. It meant that two children from Four would die, if one from Twelve survived.
But Finnick knew he couldn’t afford to look at it like that. None of his predecessors had when they moved to coach another district. Every Hunger Games killed twenty-three children; the mentors merely served as props, because nothing they did would change that. None of those children deserved to die; everything about the Games was a farce. He might as well even out the odds.
That was certainly how the Twelve escort looked at it. Styled in accordance with the latest Capitol fashion, Effie wore a massive yellow wig and endless yellow heels. When she welcomed him to the Twelve floor, she beamed at him as if the sun was rising after years in coal-black darkness.
Giving her a friendly smile and witnessing a glow spreading on her face with some detachment, Finnick decided that Effie and he would get along just fine. While it seemed she had a crush on his body, it was by far outweighed by her crush on success.
“Normally Haymitch would have prepared the tributes for the opening ceremony,” Effie had informed him after she was done professing her excitement about his decision to mentor for Twelve. She got down to business with vigor. “As well as was still in Haymitch’s power, anyway,” she added with a wrinkled nose. “But since it was just the three of us, I moved the etiquette lessons up…” Her voice flipped upwards with that word. “…so the tributes are all yours now full-time, ready for strategy mentoring.” During her next words, she raised her chin defensively. “There hasn’t been any special attention paid to either tribute yet, not beyond coverage about you, though I have been monitoring all media activity closely. But that is quite usual for District Twelve. We can only expect attention at a later point.” She sniffed indignantly. “That sad old networks website of Haymitch’s last surviving fans, on the other hand, has been seeing rather a lot of visitors. All vultures, I assume.”
Like Finnick, Effie tried visiting Haymitch multiple times throughout the training week. But even Finnick’s victor status - and attempts at flirting his way in - wouldn’t pay for a ticket past the receptionist.
“Sure, it would have been great to talk to Haymitch,” Finnick once told the reporters lurking in front of the facility, intercepting him with questions greedily. “He is one of the most experienced mentors of the Games, he didn’t get so overworked without reason, and I want to do his - our - district justice. But I guess the doctors are right, he needs to focus on his health. I hope he trusts me to take care of Raif and Bee for him. There is a lot of potential hidden in them.” To be a baker or a nurse. “I don’t doubt that Haymitch would see it, too.”
“But isn’t it true that you have only mentored once so far, during the 71st Hunger Games?” one of the journalists called from the back of the crowd. “How will you compensate for that lack of experience without Haymitch’s aid?”
Finnick gave her his sweetest smile. “True, I did,” he agreed. “But my tribute made Final Four. He almost won.” His tribute had also been an eighteen-year-old, heavily muscular volunteer and the best close combat fighter in all of his district, but Finnick didn’t need mentoring experience to know not to point that out. Mentors had to market their own skill as much as their tributes’. “Don’t forget I’ve been trained by Mags,” he added cheekily. “That’s worth more than a dozen Games.”
It was a special interview to give, because everything he said in it was true.
***
When the single training sessions rolled around at the end of the week, Finnick and Effie had settled into a routine. Like District Four’s Honestia always had, Effie would keep track of schedules and mentoring requirements, monitoring the attention Raif and Bee were getting in the media and on the networks, betting office developments. Meanwhile, Finnick would try to chat up sponsors at the evening events and see clients afterwards, ignoring Effie’s frowns - she apparently thought he was partying. It was a grim affair; the sponsors who had been happy to invite him for drinks a year ago were now trying to make vague excuses or telling him to call them on the fourth or fifth day of the Games at the earliest. At least some were ready to listen when they wouldn’t have spoken to Haymitch, charmed by his flirting or feeling guilty about having bought him, especially if it had been a hush-hush affair before he’d turned sixteen. With his jaw clenched, Finnick decided that he might as well get something positive out of that now.
President Snow had lost no time in starting to send the clients his way, a wild variety of people, most of whom had very particular ideas about how to have a good time. The message was clear - Finnick was sold on special discount this season. Still, he took it with a sense of stoicism that he hadn’t been able to achieve last year. Pushed over the hood of a car, against the pane of a window, being told to be loud so that everybody would hear, he almost felt a rush of power. Snow really thought Finnick had done all this to get out of some of the whoring. For the first time since he’d won his Games, the President hadn’t at all understood what was going on in his head. He wasn’t getting to Finnick where it hurt him most.
Finnick tried not to dwell on how seeing all those clients even made things feel easier, at least a little bit. They provided a familiar pattern while he tried getting comfortable in his new bed in his new quarters, when he found himself hesitating about mentoring choices without having Mags to reassure him. The clients were old news compared to that, and his choices about how to act around them couldn’t ever accidentally get his tributes killed. He was good at sex. It reminded him of all the other things he was good at.
So it’s sick, he grimly thought. So what. I’ll take it, anyway. Everything in this whole world is sick.
His stylist started slipping him little pink wake-up pills after the fourth day. That and all the coffee meant he just dropped on a couch at every opportunity, never dreaming anymore.
Finnick could deal as long as he didn’t have to dream.
When the single training sessions came about, Bee returned from hers crying. Those big tears just running down her face silently, she scurried over to Finnick and wrapped her arms around his waist, asking to be held. She was so small that her head barely came to rest on his sternum. Finnick crouched down to her, exchanging a helpless look with a crushed Effie while muttering encouraging things and rubbing her back and missing his kid sister Coral so fiercely that it hurt him physically.
When Raif returned fifteen minutes after her, he was looking even grimmer and scowling even more than usual. Refusing to leave Bee’s side all evening, he snapped at any Avox who dared startling her, while she curled up on the sofa next to him like a child. The louder he muttered swearwords under his breath, the less inclined she seemed to cry.
“I have to ask,” Effie gingerly whispered at Finnick before they all sat down to watch the training score announcement together. “Is it wise? Encouraging them to bond like that? What if it comes down to the two of them in the arena?” She lowered her voice even more at those words, as if she was barely able to picture that tragic event.
It would forever startle Finnick that Capitol people could ask him questions like that without finding anything wrong with the overall concept.
“Not their biggest problem,” he just told her with a shake of his head, because truth was, if Bee and Raif ever made it that far, they would be blessed. Even if they’d manage to hide out together for the whole Games, staying away from other tributes, chances were that one of them would be killed by mutts or arena surprises on the way. All three of them - Bee, Raif and Effie - seemed obsessed with that concept of one having to kill the other in the end, when Finnick didn’t even dare to hope for that scenario in his wildest dreams. He’d make either one of them betray the other three times over if that meant bringing one of them home.
Bee had showed the Gamemakers the simple traps she had learned, but there was no covering up how ridiculously short and frail she was; she scored a three. It went a little smoother for Raif, who did better with his six than Finnick would have dared hope - rattling off the plants he’d memorized including ways of using them to kill, while showing that he wouldn’t hurt himself with a knife. His brains would be his only advantage. But he wasn’t another Wiress. He wasn’t even another Haymitch.
Finnick had told his tributes to focus on learning survival skills during the week; he’d told them to spend all their time thinking of ways of using those survival skills to get other tributes in trouble. He’d said everything could be a weapon. He’d said, all you have to do to win is stay alive.
He’d said a lot of things, but he knew what Haymitch had to have seen in the Twelve tributes in each of those twenty years he’d mentored, too: These children weren’t Careers. They didn’t know how to survive. They’d spent all of their lives in the desperate hope that this would never happen to them.
You just couldn’t transform two sweet, starved children into killers in the course of one week. You shouldn’t have to live in a world where you were supposed to try.
***
“You’re fast,” Finnick told Bee seriously, looking her straight in the eye because he knew by now that that worked best with her. “You’re gonna be the smallest tribute in the arena, too, so you’ll be very hard to catch. Tell Flickerman that. It’s a way to stick out. And show him your smile. You have a beautiful smile.”
Bee did smile then from underneath her mob of black hair. Finnick answered it encouragingly before he turned to Raif, who appeared sullen, of course. Though Finnick knew it would turn into something like aggression on camera like they had practiced; the boy had a strong survival instinct and despite outward appearance, he did know when it was best to follow orders. The few times he’d gone off script in his interactions with the other tributes during Training Week, it had actually ended up benefiting both him and Bee.
“Show them you can be a fighter,” Finnick told him now. “Let them know that you’ve got other skills, they just weren’t relevant to the scores. Make it look like you’re holding something back.
“Flickerman will be on your side,” he added, addressing both. “Follow his cues. He wants to make you look good, because that makes him look good, too. If he latches on to something, play along.”
“Such a pretty boy,” Flickerman still purred every time Finnick took him in his mouth, playing with his hair. Even now that Finnick hadn’t been a boy in forever. “Can you take it in all the way?”
An unwanted image of Raif at the crowning ceremony came to mind: ordered to the host’s dressing room despite his disability, getting on his knees despite his busted leg. Finnick shuddered, fighting to lock it down. He’d have plenty of time for a meltdown after the Games, he grimly reminded himself and didn’t, didn’t think of what Snow had made him do in his office that night; this wasn’t the time.
Raif pressed his lips together, half-heartedly kicking the table in front of the couch he was sitting on. He muttered something to himself.
“What was that?” Finnick threw him a question.
The boy shrugged it off. “Just not seeing why we’re even bothering with all this shit. I don’t want them to like me or anything.”
“Your interviews determine how many sponsors you’ll get,” Finnick replied patiently. “Especially in the first few days. If you get good sponsors, that means food and weapons and survival. I’ll send you things you can use.”
“The boy from Two said Twelves should all just step off the platform before the gong,” Bee suddenly sputtered.
“Shut up,” Raif hissed at her and gave her an annoyed brotherly shove. “He just wanted to make you cry.”
Bee’s lips were trembling. “He said he’ll make it quick if I run towards him in the bloodbath.”
“He’s an ape,” Raif said as if that settled it forever.
Surprisingly, a giggle bubbled out of Bee.
Working hard to not groan in frustration about all the work on their self-confidence going down the gutter yet again, Finnick tried focusing on the positive last part and worked hard on a smile.
“Raif is right,” he told Bee. “That’s Brutus’ tribute. I know for a fact that Brutus is just grumpy because Two won last year with Fulvius and Brutus won’t get good sponsors for this tribute, because that boy looks too much like Fulvius. That’ll be too boring.” Games Command at Two made brilliant strategy decisions sometimes - there was a reason no other district had ever managed three consecutives. But everybody knew they’d miscalculated this time. District One would be the bigger problem this year: They always told the better in-Games stories. And Finnick tried not to think about the fact that Four had produced only one volunteer this year, the girl.
But Raif wasn’t privy to any of that and he just shrugged. “So what?” he said. “You want us to survive by telling jokes? Because we aren’t gonna be entertaining either while we’re dying.”
For a moment, Finnick felt like shaking the kid. It wasn’t his fault that Raif had been reaped in the middle of his grumpy teens, it wasn’t his fault that anybody was getting reaped and killed, but this wouldn’t help Bee. It had taken him days until that girl had stopped panicking enough to even listen to him.
Then he opened his mouth and closed it again at once, because he’d taken another look at Raif’s closed-off face and his clenched jaw and he realized, suddenly, that this Raif panicking now. He’d shut it all off and channeled it into his gloom but there was an interview coming and all of Panem would see, and it was all catching up with him. How little of a chance he really stood. How he and Bee would probably be dead in a week - one of them definitely would be. He was freaking.
It made something in Finnick’s chest clench up, looking at them sitting there like that.
He’d known what it would be like mentoring for a district like Twelve, he’d seen Haymitch and Chaff and Seeder going at it for years, plus Districts Five and Six, Eight and Nine, who had four victors each, at least. He’d heard the stories from the older Four victors, because Four’s run with the Careers was still a recent success story, that was why it was currently working so well; half of its victors had won in the last twenty years.
But it still felt so much realer and harder when it was happening to him. These children would die.
And Finnick was the only one who could stop it.
If Mags could make it work, I can make it work too, he firmly told himself what the old lady herself had pointed out to him when he’d been reaped. If old Mags had been able to win, she had said, a strong, self-confident young man like Finnick could do it just as well. Look at Four now. Things can change.
He was Finnick fucking Odair, who all of Panem wanted to - and got to - touch. He had means that Haymitch had never even gotten close to.
So he took a deep breath and gave Raif a serious long look, casting in his mind on how to communicate that. He needed those two kids in best fighting shape if they wanted to make it. He needed them to keep hoping.
“Alright,” he said. “Alright. Remember Johanna Mason’s Games?”
He adopted a reasonable voice. While Raif just deepened his scowl as if sensing a trap, Bee shook her head, so Finnick addressed her.
“She’s my very good friend, so I have this on good authority,” he told her. “Johanna had started crying when she was reaped, like you. She had long hair that always covered half her face, and she had a training score of only two. Even her mentor had given up on her. But she didn’t lose hope and she’d decided to show them. She spent all Games in hiding and made everybody believe that she was really that weak. But then she took out the last three tributes and won fair and square.”
“I’ve seen her on the television,” Bee softly said. “She looks mean.”
“So her training score was a ruse,” Raif pointed out. “Ours really are fucked.”
Finnick conceded that point with a nod. “She played them, it’s true,” he agreed. “But that’s why you’ll remind Flickerman that you’ve got a lot of skills, even though they haven’t influenced your score. You’re smart like Johanna. You’ll find things you can use in that arena, things other people won’t notice.” Like Haymitch’s ability to outthink the arena, he thought, but didn’t say aloud. If there was one spectacularly bad approach he could tell his tributes to take, it was that one. You played the arena by arena rules or you didn’t play anything ever again.
Considering for a moment, he leaned forward in his chair. “Okay,” he said. “How’s this? Two years ago, Annie Cresta from my district won because a dam broke and everybody else drowned. She didn’t because she was such a good swimmer.” He started ticking them off his fingers. “A year after Johanna at the 68th Games, Kyle Akumi won without any weapons at all. He just used the traps and snares he’d learned in Training Week. He built the traps, then let his opponents spot him and led them towards them when they chased him. And he was fifteen like you, Raif. I know him well, he’s been mentor for Five ever since.” Sucked at it too, though he was getting better, still unafraid to absorb knowledge from every source he could find; his ever-tipsy partner Eleanor sure was no help.
But Finnick, who had been coached on all the Games by Mags mercilessly before she let him get close to any real-life tributes, wasn’t done. Mags hadn’t just considered it practice for mentoring either, he was sure - she’d been trying to give him a purpose, something he could focus on and be good at. Something other than his looks for the cameras to zone in on. “58th Games,” he continued. “Ralda Cavalera won because she convinced the other tributes they could trust her. That took guts, but no training skills. She made three different alliances in her Games and poisoned each of her partners. You’re not going to be doing that to each other,” he added sternly, pointing his finger at each of them like a teacher, and Bee giggled again, just a small hiccup. Even Raif’s lips twitched at that ludicrous thought. “But you’ve got plant knowledge now that you can use if the occasion arises. 57th Games. Wiress Moore also built traps. Her arena was shaped like a maze and when it got dark, she was the only one who knew where to go because she’d memorized it so well. Five years before that, a lot of tributes were killed by a bear except Blight McCall, who climbed a tree in time.
“The year after my Games, Clarity Rudder won by running although she was a Career. The mutts just caught everybody else faster. Your first victor from Twelve, Swagger March? Ever seen his Games?”
They shook their heads. What do they teach those kids in school? Finnick thought, incredulous.
“Well, he outlived everybody else because the mutts in his arena wouldn’t get close to him after he’d covered himself in mud. They couldn’t sense him anymore. He’d figured that out all by himself.” He’d also let his district partner walk into a trap on purpose, listening to her die, but that was another thing these children didn’t need to know.
But that was enough information for the two of them to take in all at once, so Finnick let them mull it over. Fighting skills weren’t everything. A lot of it was chance. Every arena could end up lending itself to any tribute. He needed Raif and Bee to believe that. He needed them to forget everything they thought they knew about Twelve participation in the Games. The very last thing he needed them to do was get a good grasp on Games statistics.
When Raif eventually squinted at him, it was with a suspicious look on his face. “But most of that was, like, way before you were even born.”
Finnick had to suppress a moment of relieved amusement.
“Well, that’s true,” he agreed. “I’ve seen most of the Games on tape, see, so I know what you two are getting into. People don’t like remembering the survival skill victories because they aren’t as entertaining as the others, but truth is, one out of three Games doesn’t have a final fight at all.
“Your one big task is making it out of the bloodbath,” he reminded them, now that they were listening to him again. “I don’t want either of you getting anywhere close to it. Raif, you’re not fast enough with that knee, don’t get anywhere near the Cornucopia. Bee, first thing on the platform, you look for Raif. You do the running for him. Always do what he tells you to, no questions asked.”
And if Raif would start figuring eventually that letting this sweet girl die would be a way of gaining sponsorship attention, there was nothing Finnick could do to stop it, in any case.
Raif had a disability. But Bee would never make it on her own.
Bee swallowed hard. “What if…”
“No ifs,” he interrupted her. “Remember what I taught you. Have a good look at the arena and remember the rules about the food and the weather. Go looking for water, but stay away from places where you could drown. Don’t panic if the arena looks inhospitable or dangerous. Remember that kind of arena might give you an advantage.”
Then he gave them his best encouraging smile. “Now show me that you still remember what you’ll say to Caesar Flickerman tonight.”
***
“Well this is new,” Chaff said when Finnick gingerly sat down at the console next to his, reaching for a headset that was very clearly meant for somebody else’s head.
“Don’t get too used to it,” he replied. “Haymitch will be back next year to claim this seat. It’s his. I’m only borrowing it this year to be closer to your sunny disposition.” Wiggling around uncomfortably, he added, “Certainly feels like it was built for his butt.”
The older victor threw him a glance. “You been to see him at the rehab place?” When Finnick shook his head, he grimaced. “Ah well. Good luck making it out of the bloodbath, and welcome to our side of the fence.”
It felt disorienting to sit on this side of Mentor Central, on the far end off to the left rather than in the cloud of Careers close to the entrance hall. Trying to get comfortable in a chair that really seemed to have molded into Haymitch’s shape, Finnick could feel how the other victors were throwing occasional glances at the probably equally disorienting sight of him at the console of the dark horse district. No district ever faired as badly as Twelve; even Eleven had managed three victors, all still alive and kicking.
Not a single sponsor had agreed to talk to him before his tributes had made it through the first and second day at least, not even the ones Finnick had slept with.
The lights were dimmed and an announcer boomed at them to take their seats while the feeds above their heads blared to life, and then Templesmith was moving through the countdown.
The camera had followed one of the Careers through the tube to the surface and all they could make out for a moment was a flurry of snow when twenty-four children in heavy winter parkas came to stand in a sea of white, heavy wind blasting snowflakes around. Finnick had never seen a blizzard before, not even in a Games recap, but he was pretty sure that he was looking at one now.
Well, shit.
Finnick cast for a contemporary Games featuring that amount of snow even in better weather and came up empty - there was very little from his studies of the Games that would help him with this.
He swallowed hard.
“So that’s pretty much it for us this year then,” Chaff remarked with the casualness of those who had to do that a lot. “They’ll never make it in that weather.”
“Do they have snow in District Twelve?” He turned to Chaff, realizing that he had no idea and, yup - there was a first spike of panic. Even his Victory Tour stop in Twelve - his first stop - was all a blur. He’d been so young, still in shock. Had there been snow? Now over at the Four station, he knew that Caramel and Mags were rapidly dialing back their expectations. None of their kids had ever seen a frostbite in their lives. Neither had Finnick, and he would never have survived in there. In an effort to clear it, he shook his head. Focus. It’s a survival skill arena. You even told Bee and Raif, this might be good. “I mean, do they have that much snow?”
“Fuck if I know.” Chaff shrugged.
“Does District Twelve get blizzards? Anybody?” Finnick raised his voice to encompass all of Mentor Central; there was a moment of pause when people probably exchanged looks, though his eyes were trained on the screen and he didn’t see. Shit but that’s a lot of snow. This was throwing him, and he knew he was scrambling. He didn’t know anything about his odds. Things were happening down at the betting office in these sixty seconds and he had no idea about them.
“There was snow there last year’s Victory Tour!” the voice of District One’s Nymph shouted from all across the room. “There usually is, right?!”
“But they don’t get any skiing tourists, so it can’t be that cold!” another voice knew to share, who Finnick only recognized as District Nine’s Dune after the fact. “Those all go to us! We’re furthest up North, we get the frozen lakes!”
“There wasn’t any snow at all in Twelve during Chaff’s and my Tours,” Seeder knew to share, leaning forward to look at him past Chaff with concern in her eyes, not having to shout.
Suppressing a curse, Finnick impatiently drummed his fingers on his armrest, then scanned the room for an Avox waiting to fulfill the mentors’ needs, finding one standing in a corner. Forgetting about his manners for a moment, he snapped a finger to get her attention. “Hey,” he said. “Can you pull up a, uhm, a map of Panem, and any information on the weather conditions in Twelve. As fast as you can make it, please.”
Rushing to nod her head at him, she raised her thumb at him and was gone. It made him wonder what district she was from.
Finnick knew that there was nothing he could do, except lean back and follow the camera zooming through the wide expanse of the arena, mountain sites and groves drowning in heavy, frozen snow. A herd of what seemed to be heavy wild horses was racing across a plain at the far end of the field. It all was up to Bee, who looked tiny in her parka, and Raif, four platforms apart from her, stone-faced against the icy snowflakes freezing on the parts of his face not covered in a ski mask. But here Finnick was supposed to save the lives of these two kids while a whole district was looking on… somewhere in Panem, probably trying to decide whether he could even be trusted with their children, while he didn’t even know if his limping boy would know how to move on the ice.
Finnick hadn’t volunteered because he had a special liking of District Twelve or because there was anything he knew about it, really. He knew it was a small place full of starving black-haired children with olive skin, who tended to be dead after three days. But geography wasn’t his strong suit and he hadn’t even gotten around to looking it up on a map.
Flickerman’s voice was now starting to blab at them through the public speakers, because Templesmith had reached “Three, two, one” and announced the start of the “72nd Hunger Games of Panem, may the odds be ever in your favor!” So the carnage was on.
Forcing himself to keep his eyes trained on the screen, Finnick took a controlled long breath and let it out again.
Two chairs over, Seeder was muttering little sighs to herself; her boy was the first to go, stumbling over something underneath the snow, it looked like, after sinking in too deep. He never saw Mags’ massive girl lunging at him, just reaching out from behind and twisting the boy’s neck in a well-practiced move before she struggled on towards the Cornucopia.
Backpacks had been strewn all over the perimeter, more of them the closer they were located to the Cornucopia, which apparently held all the weaponry. Finnick sat up in his chair in alarm abruptly when he heard Raif’s voice in his earpiece, shouting at Bee to run and go for it. He didn’t even bother moving, just standing there on the platform and shouting.
“Smart kids,” Chaff commented inexplicably, glancing away from his own girl for a moment.
It was as if Bee had awoken from a stupor. Nonplussed, Finnick watched on as Raif’s unkind insults made her shake off her panic, running towards the backpacks like a cat and arriving there before anybody around her had made it, snatching off one, two - circling the bulky Seven male and ducking away under his swing without getting into real danger - freezing again on the spot and just staring after him until Raif’s voice was in the air again, telling her to “hurry the fuck up”.
Finally, the boy was in motion, too, making his way towards the grove on his side of the arena as fast as he could. In no time, Bee had joined him, handing him one of the packs. Lighter than anybody, she had moved faster than the heavier tributes close to her because she didn’t sink into the frozen snow.
Finnick let go of the breath he had been holding.
“Shit,” he muttered, sheer relief flooding him.
“And that looks like a strong district alliance for Finnick Odair’s Twelve tributes,” Flickerman’s voice was ringing in the distance from some main channel speaker. “Excellent teamwork.”
Raif had known this before Finnick.
So they did have snow like that in Twelve.
Without waiting to see who else was making it out there and how the conditions were shaking up the betting odds, Finnick had reached for his phone and started dialing. Blood was spreading on the screens in the corner of his eye, draining more and more patches of snow where tributes bled out. Everybody was running to the Cornucopia, scared into scavenging supplies by the weather. The death toll would be high this bloodbath.
“Mathildo,” Finnick purred into the phone as soon as he heard the sponsor pick it up. “Mathildo, this is Finnick Odair, mentoring for District Twelve. I know I’m not supposed to be calling you this early in the Games and I don’t mean to steal any of your precious time, but are you seeing these two right now? Bee will be dancing on the ice in that arena.”
Chaff was giving him a disbelieving look, letting Finnick know that he was laying it on thick. Finnick answered with an exaggerated shrug.
“Well I don’t know about that,” he replied to the athlete, “But she sure will look beautiful while she does, and I know how much you love your visuals. Actually…” The Avox had reappeared, pushing a stash of papers in his lap. When he started fumbling through them with one hand, she pulled one up for him and placed it on top - the Panem map. Pinching the phone between his shoulder and chin, Finnick gave her a grateful smile, then counted, starting in the North. “…actually, did you know that District Twelve is one of our coldest districts? Yes, sir, it is the third coldest district of Panem. It’s the coal mining district, too, of course, so you could even say they’re Panem’s experts on heating, now couldn't you?
“What’s that, sir? Do they have horses?” Finnick covered the mouthpiece, giving Chaff a desperate look. “Do they have horses?” he mouthed.
Chaff grimaced at him, spreading his arms in a gesture of You’re seriously asking me? “They’ve got goats, pretty sure,” he muttered in a low dry voice.
Well. Finnick wouldn’t have won the Games if he wouldn’t be willing to work with what he got, even though at the time that had mostly been Mags’ advice to be charming. “They have goats in Twelve,” he informed the sponsor, turning his head and the phone away when he heard Chaff guffaw. “Yessir. Well, they’re similar to horses.
“They both have hooves and they move similarly.
“Trust me, we know about these things in Four.
“Well, sir, you can do that but I promise you you’re not missing out on much. It’s just district detail. My tributes, anyway, are not going to make fools out of themselves with those horse mutts, and they’re basically the natives of this kind of arena. Think about it, sir.
“Thank you, Mathildo, I will. Very much looking forward to seeing you again, too.”
“You’re shameless,” Chaff stated when Finnick hung up and moved to call up the next number he’d saved on his console’s speed dial.
Finnick answered with a wink, licking his lips. “That’s why they can’t get enough of me.”
Chaff just snorted again.
on to chapter 5