THG fic: "Spin Control" [6/21]
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 -- Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Introducing District Twelve
The differences between Twelve and Four were stark. Finnick had known that they would be, intellectually. But even the glimpses of Justice Buildings and town squares on his Victory Tour, all a blur now, hadn’t prepared him for the reality of eight-thousand lost souls staring at him while he was standing on the Justice Building stage, coal dust caught in every crevice of their clothes and suspicion in their eyes.
They were a wall of disgust. It was simmering in their faces, right underneath the desperation, barely hidden well enough for the Peacekeepers not to intervene. It wasn’t even hate for the Peacekeepers - Head Peacekeeper Cray, whose clammy hand Finnick had already shaken, was standing in the back of the hurriedly erected stage with his red face and those few grey hairs brushed across his head, scratching his nose as if he’d rather still be in bed. It was disgust for the Capitol camera teams crouching on the roofs like vultures, the reporters who breathlessly informed their respective audience about Finnick Odair’s arrival in Twelve and how everybody was so excited. Most notably, it was for him who was intruding in their tight little world, for his crisp Capitol clothes and his perfect skin and his styled hair.
District Four wasn’t content, it was struggling - the Capitol raising the quota although there was less fish to be found every year, the Peacekeepers penalizing every little thing, Mags and Calina having been forbidden to hold their annual food share. Four would explode one day, from fury and despair. But Twelve had already reached and passed that point of desperation. It had surrendered; it had nothing to fight with.
Finnick tried to keep his face blank while first Effie prattled on - the Capitol always felt safer sending an escort to host events like this and make sure the barbarians behaved themselves in front of the camera. Then Mayor Undersee took the stage and spoke carefully scripted words of welcome, mixing Capitol imperatives and district demands. He was a tall, bald man who seemed to have resigned himself to the role of Capitol voice, who could only ever change the smallest things in favor of his district. The arrival of Finnick Odair was not amongst them.
At least the people in the square hadn’t been divided by gender and age groups, like on Reaping Day, though still had been herded here like sheep. Painfully young couples barely out of Reaping age were holding babies in improvised blankets, clutching them to their chests. Children had hollow eyes and sunken cheekbones. The ones with dark hair were starved, their collarbones and shoulder joints showing under their thin summer garb - impossible to make out the Knapsweeds and Donallies, although Finnick searched for traces of Bee and Raif in everybody’s face. The blond ones were mostly not starving, but working on getting there. Every now and then in the breaks between speeches, the silence was interrupted by mucus-filled coughs. Black lung, Finnick remembered Haymitch calling it. “Dying in the Games is faster than dying of black lung, so there’s always that.” The miners’ disease.
When the mayor begged him forward to say a few words, everybody turned their eyes on him, and if these eyes didn’t quite say that nobody wanted him here, at the very least they said they didn’t think he’d make a difference. It was either Go away, or What do you think your fancy clothes and happy smiles will change? He’d be another mouth to feed, stealing their food with his money.
It said, We broke the other ones, too; you’re not a first, making Finnick shudder. He forbade his mind to go there. Haymitch would be back. He’d be fine, and he’d had plenty of reasons to drink that had nothing to do with his district.
Swagger March had had plenty of reasons to kill himself, too.
Summer in Twelve was humid in a lukewarm, clammy way, hanging in the still air and pressing down on his shoulders without an ocean breeze to diffuse is. Finnick had to clear his throat before he spoke, because coal dust seemed to fill his lungs whenever he breathed in.
There were things he wanted to say.
I know you don’t trust me. I hope you’ll start to one day, though. I really want to help you. Let me prove to you that I can bring some of them home. I’m pretty good at what I do, you see? We might stand a chance to make things better if we just keep hoping. If Haymitch and I can do it together. We’re both pretty sharp. We can make it work together.
He wanted to say, You think I don’t understand what it’s like. But it used to be like this in Four. Everybody was starving before Mags and Rory won. They changed it. They gave people hope. They built schools. The district even grew, they even moved the fence and let us build another village, with a hospital. We can change it here, too.
He wanted to say, Let me help, but if there was one thing he was sure the people from Twelve and he had in common, it was knowing that you never spoke your mind if there were cameras pointed at you, because this wasn’t ever about them or him. This was about the Capitol.
This was about filling the four-o’clock-slot between Fashion Report and My Top 25 Victory Kills.
So Finnick forced a smile on his face that he hoped wouldn’t appear too sunny and carefree and said into the microphone, smooth like honey, “It’s such an incredible honor that President Snow chose me to come here…”
***
“Everybody in the Capitol is so excited to have you here in Twelve, I have no words,” Effie chirped three hours later, when the camera teams had left and they had found themselves standing in front of his new house alone. “Social media activity is all over the place, I had to hire an intern to keep track of all the wonderful things your fans have been saying about you on the networks.” There was faint wonder in her voice; likely, she had never had to commission an intern. “There has been some activity concerning Haymitch as well, but, thank the Capitol, nothing too negative. Mostly, people have been showing support.
“And they should, you know,” she added after a contemplative moment. “It’s a disease.”
Taking a deep freeing breath as if she was taking in an ocean breeze instead of faint whiffs of smog, she gave Finnick her best smile. “There surely will be coverage for Haymitch’s return, too. I’ll be right back here for that. Call me whenever you need anything.” Offering her hand, she indicated a curtsy and giggled when he smiled, intoxicated on success. “Have a wonderful time in your new district, Finnick. Working with you is a joy,” she said and waved on her way down the empty road of Victors’ Village, high heels clicking on concrete.
Finnick looked after her, taking in the silence.
Birds he’d never heard before outside of Games were singing in the trees, in the big oak tree behind Haymitch’s house, next to his. All the way down the road, at the empty mansion furthest away, an aging olive-skinned gardener was hosing down the yard. Otherwise, there was no life in evidence. Haymitch’s house so lived-in that decay had spilled over - he must have forbidden the gardener to tend to his lawn, fern growing wildly and covering the remains of wooden benches - but now silence was hanging over it like a cloak. Across the street, a mansion painted in dark red still showed faint signs of past habitation - a rotten dartboard mounted to a trunk on the lawn, broken garden pottery - but that had to have been ages ago; there was no telling if it had belonged to the late Swagger or Lyra from Two. It was uncomfortably easy to imagine the Twelve victor dangling from that tree, in this ghost of a place.
Finnick couldn’t even make out the hum of the district fence right behind the outer row of houses, and he wondered if the Peacekeepers even bothered powering it. Nowhere to go in District Twelve, where you could stay in your cage or die in the forests; in here, surely you couldn’t learn the survival skills needed out there. Bigger districts at least had farmland and forests, little children climbing trees or learning how to build camps. Seven with its lumberjack crews hadn’t produced five victors by accident. He didn’t need anybody to tell him that they didn’t teach that kind of thing in school around here. Probably had nobody to teach it, either, except the victors they disliked so much.
Finnick’s house looked a lot like his old one in Four had; it had the same layout. He knew all the furniture and the other impersonal items that he hadn’t put away in boxes himself had been spread out in roughly the same places from before. Even the exterior had been painted the same white and sunshine yellow for him. The trident was waiting somewhere in there, so that he could decide where to mount it - it would go back up on the wall across from his bed, where he could see it always, especially when he woke up at night.
It made it feel as if he’d never really moved anywhere.
Obviously, no impression could have been further from the truth.
***
People turned their heads to look after him when he walked down the street - starved dark-haired families who stuck together closely, skinny old men missing limbs huddled in entrances, who didn’t even bother begging for money. Little children’s eyes widened while they pointed at his bronze hair and his light, expensive district garb, their mothers dragging them away with hisses and whispers, throwing Finnick guarded glances the same way smart younger meat district tributes would throw a volunteer.
The bakery was empty at this time of day, filled with an intense aroma of warm bread and spilled sugar. It should have been a comfortable, cozy place.
The baker behind the counter was tall and impossibly skinny, but by disposition rather than starvation, her blond hair wrapped in a careful turban braid. Her eyes widened in shock when Finnick entered her shop, then transformed into a fierce, thin smile that would have looked Capitol, except nobody in the Capitol had ever had to defend anything with their lives.
“What an honor to have you here in the Mellark bakery,” she intoned, making Finnick suppress a tired smirk - apparently the victors weren’t the only ones with a cardinal rule. The baker’s eyes watered when she tried to look him over inconspicuously. Recognizing the business opportunity, and screw district ethics. “How can I help you today?”
“How about a couple of bread rolls,” Finnick said with a hopefully friendly and unthreatening expression on his face. “One of each kind to try them out.” Then he nodded at the displays. “Your cakes look beautiful.” He wasn’t sure who in this forsaken district could afford to buy them, though. Maybe the mayor did. Peacekeepers, probably.
Maybe Haymitch did, though no matter how unapologetically Finnick knew the other victor gorged himself on the Capitol food every Games, it was hard to envision him munching bright green birthday cake.
“My youngest son does the icing,” the baker informed him with a bristling air. “He is very gifted.” She said it like it was a requirement. Then, without bothering to turn towards the back room, she shouted, “Peeta! Bring a box, hurry up! We have a customer who wants to buy a cake!”
“Actually…” Finnick stopped himself. A tall, strong-looking, non-starved boy of maybe fourteen, half through Reaping age, had appeared on cue and was giving him a cautious once-over when he handed his mother a cardboard carton. He shared his mother’s blond hair, though his eyes just seemed curious.
As good a way of spreading some of his money in the district as any, Finnick supposed.
“Hey,” he said to the boy while he reached for his wallet. “I’m Finnick.”
The teen hesitated, glancing at his mother. “I know,” he replied in a soft, surprisingly low voice, as if he’d carefully thought about those two words.
“Give me that.” His mother took the box out of his hand, and it was almost imperceptible, but Finnick could still see how Peeta hid a flinch. The baker gave him another of her manic smiles. “Which cake would you like to try out? Mr. Odair?”
Resigning himself to the fact that he would be buying a cake, Finnick pointed at a small one in the display case with a lot of red and white frosting. It was decorated with little sugar flowers, though fortunately none of them were roses. He couldn’t but admire that sales pitch, either, imagining Mrs. Mellark bullying Capitol folks into sponsoring tributes. The way she covered reality with a bright smile and a loud voice certainly reminded him of Hunger Games coverage.
Though picturing her in the Games at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, she would probably never have made it out of the bloodbath.
“What an excellent choice!” the baker said. And, “We are very grateful to have you with us here in Twelve. May the odds be ever in your favor.” Finnick gave her a perfunctory smile and paid, the last thing he heard when he stepped onto the street the sound of a slap and, “That’s no way to treat the richest customer in town, you worthless…”
The door fell shut behind him, cutting her off.
Welcome to District Twelve, he thought with a grimace.
***
There was a girl waiting in front of his door when he came home.
The sun was setting in the distance, a blazing crimson ball illuminating the forest atop the hills behind the fence. Four had been flat, miles and miles of ocean stretching out in the East, just as many miles of wet land in the West. Twelve was surrounded by mountainsides and trees wherever he turned, the district a little cleared pocket of coal and despair.
Finnick thought the girl was maybe seventeen, tall but starved to the bone, her long black hair - rich like Bee’s - carefully braided in that simple way he’d seen in other women on the street. He thought it was probably her pride and joy, carefully tended to every morning before school - maybe she’d even skipped a meal sometimes so that she could use a precious chicken egg or beer for hair conditioner. Her face was clean, her dress carefully mended, yet worn and stained.
“Uhm, hello,” he said carefully, walking past where she’d been sitting on his doorstep, hurrying to get up and brushing the dirt off her skirt while he unlocked his door. “Can I help you with anything?”
The girl blushed. “I’m Fallon.” She said it like it was a question.
“It’s great to meet you,” Finnick said. “I’m Finnick.” He quirked his lips at her suggestively and crooked his head towards the South. “From a place down that way.”
There was some natural maturity in the way she held her back so straight, a frailty in her gestures that would have been pretty if she didn’t look so sickly, so the nervous giggle escaping her sounded strange. Then it transformed into something like a hiccup and became just the most awful sound Finnick thought he’d ever heard outside the Capitol.
“What…” he said in alarm, and she interrupted him.
“I thought you’d be, you’d be all alone.”
She lowered her eyes.
“Well, I am,” Finnick said blankly. “Just me in the Village until Haymitch comes back.”
Her blush grew more prominent.
“I meant,” she said. “I meant you’d be lonely.”
“Say again?”
No.
No. Absolutely not.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be happening. Not to him. Not to him.
Understanding dawned upon him and Finnick thought he’d never felt so dirty. Which was ridiculous, because he’d murdered children seven years ago and he had liked it, he still used those three weeks to prop himself up when he was down, and because he was a whore himself. He’d even sat there in Snow’s office and when Snow had told him to… when he’d told him to, Finnick had…
No. No. Don’t go there now.
But here Fallon from District Twelve was standing in front of his door, expecting him… thinking he would… because he had money, because he was Capitol to her, one of them.
The fact that she was almost out of Reaping age, almost Finnick’s age and therefore somebody who he might have enjoyed talking to, given how he was starved for a conversation partner from his age group, only made it worse.
“Listen,” Fallon said in a rush, when she saw that he had frozen, not all that enthusiastic about the proposition. “It’s not a lot of money, it’s just a couple of coins and I won’t steal, while we’re inside. You won’t even have to look me in the eyes if you don’t want that. I’m clean, I don’t have any diseases, I promise; some of the other girls have diseases. I’m practically a virgin and if you want me to…”
“No,” Finnick interrupted her harshly, pressing out the words between his teeth, “I really don’t.”
Balling his hand into a fist until the key pierced into the palm of his hand, he took a breath, feeling his torso rising and falling abruptly. Fallon’s eyes flickered at his shoulders, the way his biceps had tensed, then back at his face.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, as if soothing a wild animal. “The Peacekeepers do it too.”
“I’m not a Peacekeeper, I’m not…” Finnick muttered, trying not to sway. He felt dizzy, and nauseous, as if tremors might start running down his body and breaking him into little bits any second. All the world seemed to be in motion, as if he was a figurine in a little dollhouse that somebody had picked up and tilted.
“I want you to leave,” he said, barely hearing himself over the noise in his ears.
At the edge of his vision, he saw her taking a hesitant step back.
“Leave,” he repeated more firmly and she was nodding, flash of concern on her face while realizing that she’d just propositioned a nutcase. The skirt of her dress swirling, exposing a grey petticoat, she took off, not quite running but knowing how to be gone swiftly, her summer slippers echoing on the Village concrete.
Her Reaping dress, Finnick thought irrationally. She’s wearing her Reaping dress for me.
What a perfect choice.
Finnick reached out until he felt the doorframe behind him, dropping his keys and stepping back until he could lean against the door, hard assuring steady presence in his back. All the world was still swaying around, smears of bright blue summer sky rocking into view, then the roof of the abandoned red house from across the street, the smell of bees and summer and despair.
The back of his head connecting with the heavy wood warmed by the sun, he struggled to breathe. It would have been easier if he was swimming, letting the waves crash over his head and riding out the tide. But there was no ocean in District Twelve, and this would have to do.
***
When a knock echoed through his house the next morning, Finnick followed the noise to the kitchen door leading out to the back. He told himself there was nothing wrong with reminding himself that he was considerably taller and stronger than most of the starved people in Twelve, and that there were kitchen knives close by. People tended to forget that Finnick hadn’t won his Games by blinding his opponents with his smiles. After restless nights like this one, it was harder to remember how that gave him a strategic advantage.
However, the young man leaning against the railing of the stairs was just as tall as Finnick. Defensively, Finnick took a step back.
The man - no, boy, he couldn’t be older than about sixteen - gave him a grim little smile.
“Since you’re new in town, I thought you might want to buy some turkey for your empty freezer,” he said, the tail end of puberty flipping his voice across two octaves in as many words.
He had the dark hair and the grey eyes of Twelve - Seam hair, Finnick corrected himself, miners’ hair - and the fact that he wasn’t looking starved like almost everybody probably made him appear older than he was. He had a handsome face, too, with a serious, mature streak. He did look like he could be made into a whore. The Capitol would eat him alive.
A little vicious voice in his head told Finnick there was always hoping that he’d get reaped.
“Turkey,” he repeated without understanding, his eyes trailing to the game bag slung over the boy’s shoulder, its underside soaked with patches of fresh blood. He wanted to take another step back when the smell hit him.
The young poacher followed his eyes. “I can sell you a leg and a chest,” he said. “A quart of blueberries to go with it. But you’ll have to make me a good offer, because those would fetch a good price with the Peacekeepers, too.”
It was the same message Fallon had relayed: intruder from the Capitol that he was, Finnick didn’t have to be concerned about breaking the law. It didn’t surprise Finnick when he thought about it, having learned that the butcher mostly sold frozen beef from District Ten. Even the people with money still needed to organize enough food to spend it on.
Finnick could almost imagine this young man arguing with his family and friends trying to stop him from selling to the new victor: “Man with muscle like that needs to eat meat.” Thinking of Cherry’s diet plan, he wouldn’t have been wrong either.
Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Finnick leaned against the doorframe.
“Isn’t poaching forbidden in Twelve?” he still asked, his tone mild, just because he wanted to hear the reply.
Dried blood underneath his chopped nails and the smell of animal guts still clinging to him, the boy gave him a grimace that didn’t quite manage the impression of a smirk. “What, that?” He glanced at his bag. “I found it lying in my backyard. Must have hurt itself when it came through the fence.”
“With those blueberries caught in its beak?”
“Something like that.”
Everything about his stance looked relaxed, but there was an underlying tension to his demeanor that grated at Finnick, as if he was stopping himself from looking around for threats. He set Finnick on edge, looking the closest that Twelve would ever have to a Career, acting like a tribute on Day Three.
Another one in this district who doesn’t need an arena to play the Games, Finnick thought, remembering Mrs. Mellark.
When they settled on a price, Finnick reached for his wallet and counted the coins.
They might have decided to hate his guts, but apparently the same wasn’t true for his money. They’d apparently learned to be pragmatic.
It reminded him of Haymitch, who’d worked his arena with the little he had brought - desperation, schoolyard fighting, a determination to use whatever he could find as a weapon, even the arena’s own boundaries.
So when the poacher had disappeared, leaving bits of turkey and a bag of berries behind, Finnick grabbed an encyclopedia from a shelf in his living room and flipped pages until he found the picture of that particular mutt.
Northern Lowbush Blueberries: edible.
Just to be sure.
Tbc.
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 -- Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Introducing District Twelve
The differences between Twelve and Four were stark. Finnick had known that they would be, intellectually. But even the glimpses of Justice Buildings and town squares on his Victory Tour, all a blur now, hadn’t prepared him for the reality of eight-thousand lost souls staring at him while he was standing on the Justice Building stage, coal dust caught in every crevice of their clothes and suspicion in their eyes.
They were a wall of disgust. It was simmering in their faces, right underneath the desperation, barely hidden well enough for the Peacekeepers not to intervene. It wasn’t even hate for the Peacekeepers - Head Peacekeeper Cray, whose clammy hand Finnick had already shaken, was standing in the back of the hurriedly erected stage with his red face and those few grey hairs brushed across his head, scratching his nose as if he’d rather still be in bed. It was disgust for the Capitol camera teams crouching on the roofs like vultures, the reporters who breathlessly informed their respective audience about Finnick Odair’s arrival in Twelve and how everybody was so excited. Most notably, it was for him who was intruding in their tight little world, for his crisp Capitol clothes and his perfect skin and his styled hair.
District Four wasn’t content, it was struggling - the Capitol raising the quota although there was less fish to be found every year, the Peacekeepers penalizing every little thing, Mags and Calina having been forbidden to hold their annual food share. Four would explode one day, from fury and despair. But Twelve had already reached and passed that point of desperation. It had surrendered; it had nothing to fight with.
Finnick tried to keep his face blank while first Effie prattled on - the Capitol always felt safer sending an escort to host events like this and make sure the barbarians behaved themselves in front of the camera. Then Mayor Undersee took the stage and spoke carefully scripted words of welcome, mixing Capitol imperatives and district demands. He was a tall, bald man who seemed to have resigned himself to the role of Capitol voice, who could only ever change the smallest things in favor of his district. The arrival of Finnick Odair was not amongst them.
At least the people in the square hadn’t been divided by gender and age groups, like on Reaping Day, though still had been herded here like sheep. Painfully young couples barely out of Reaping age were holding babies in improvised blankets, clutching them to their chests. Children had hollow eyes and sunken cheekbones. The ones with dark hair were starved, their collarbones and shoulder joints showing under their thin summer garb - impossible to make out the Knapsweeds and Donallies, although Finnick searched for traces of Bee and Raif in everybody’s face. The blond ones were mostly not starving, but working on getting there. Every now and then in the breaks between speeches, the silence was interrupted by mucus-filled coughs. Black lung, Finnick remembered Haymitch calling it. “Dying in the Games is faster than dying of black lung, so there’s always that.” The miners’ disease.
When the mayor begged him forward to say a few words, everybody turned their eyes on him, and if these eyes didn’t quite say that nobody wanted him here, at the very least they said they didn’t think he’d make a difference. It was either Go away, or What do you think your fancy clothes and happy smiles will change? He’d be another mouth to feed, stealing their food with his money.
It said, We broke the other ones, too; you’re not a first, making Finnick shudder. He forbade his mind to go there. Haymitch would be back. He’d be fine, and he’d had plenty of reasons to drink that had nothing to do with his district.
Swagger March had had plenty of reasons to kill himself, too.
Summer in Twelve was humid in a lukewarm, clammy way, hanging in the still air and pressing down on his shoulders without an ocean breeze to diffuse is. Finnick had to clear his throat before he spoke, because coal dust seemed to fill his lungs whenever he breathed in.
There were things he wanted to say.
I know you don’t trust me. I hope you’ll start to one day, though. I really want to help you. Let me prove to you that I can bring some of them home. I’m pretty good at what I do, you see? We might stand a chance to make things better if we just keep hoping. If Haymitch and I can do it together. We’re both pretty sharp. We can make it work together.
He wanted to say, You think I don’t understand what it’s like. But it used to be like this in Four. Everybody was starving before Mags and Rory won. They changed it. They gave people hope. They built schools. The district even grew, they even moved the fence and let us build another village, with a hospital. We can change it here, too.
He wanted to say, Let me help, but if there was one thing he was sure the people from Twelve and he had in common, it was knowing that you never spoke your mind if there were cameras pointed at you, because this wasn’t ever about them or him. This was about the Capitol.
This was about filling the four-o’clock-slot between Fashion Report and My Top 25 Victory Kills.
So Finnick forced a smile on his face that he hoped wouldn’t appear too sunny and carefree and said into the microphone, smooth like honey, “It’s such an incredible honor that President Snow chose me to come here…”
***
“Everybody in the Capitol is so excited to have you here in Twelve, I have no words,” Effie chirped three hours later, when the camera teams had left and they had found themselves standing in front of his new house alone. “Social media activity is all over the place, I had to hire an intern to keep track of all the wonderful things your fans have been saying about you on the networks.” There was faint wonder in her voice; likely, she had never had to commission an intern. “There has been some activity concerning Haymitch as well, but, thank the Capitol, nothing too negative. Mostly, people have been showing support.
“And they should, you know,” she added after a contemplative moment. “It’s a disease.”
Taking a deep freeing breath as if she was taking in an ocean breeze instead of faint whiffs of smog, she gave Finnick her best smile. “There surely will be coverage for Haymitch’s return, too. I’ll be right back here for that. Call me whenever you need anything.” Offering her hand, she indicated a curtsy and giggled when he smiled, intoxicated on success. “Have a wonderful time in your new district, Finnick. Working with you is a joy,” she said and waved on her way down the empty road of Victors’ Village, high heels clicking on concrete.
Finnick looked after her, taking in the silence.
Birds he’d never heard before outside of Games were singing in the trees, in the big oak tree behind Haymitch’s house, next to his. All the way down the road, at the empty mansion furthest away, an aging olive-skinned gardener was hosing down the yard. Otherwise, there was no life in evidence. Haymitch’s house so lived-in that decay had spilled over - he must have forbidden the gardener to tend to his lawn, fern growing wildly and covering the remains of wooden benches - but now silence was hanging over it like a cloak. Across the street, a mansion painted in dark red still showed faint signs of past habitation - a rotten dartboard mounted to a trunk on the lawn, broken garden pottery - but that had to have been ages ago; there was no telling if it had belonged to the late Swagger or Lyra from Two. It was uncomfortably easy to imagine the Twelve victor dangling from that tree, in this ghost of a place.
Finnick couldn’t even make out the hum of the district fence right behind the outer row of houses, and he wondered if the Peacekeepers even bothered powering it. Nowhere to go in District Twelve, where you could stay in your cage or die in the forests; in here, surely you couldn’t learn the survival skills needed out there. Bigger districts at least had farmland and forests, little children climbing trees or learning how to build camps. Seven with its lumberjack crews hadn’t produced five victors by accident. He didn’t need anybody to tell him that they didn’t teach that kind of thing in school around here. Probably had nobody to teach it, either, except the victors they disliked so much.
Finnick’s house looked a lot like his old one in Four had; it had the same layout. He knew all the furniture and the other impersonal items that he hadn’t put away in boxes himself had been spread out in roughly the same places from before. Even the exterior had been painted the same white and sunshine yellow for him. The trident was waiting somewhere in there, so that he could decide where to mount it - it would go back up on the wall across from his bed, where he could see it always, especially when he woke up at night.
It made it feel as if he’d never really moved anywhere.
Obviously, no impression could have been further from the truth.
***
People turned their heads to look after him when he walked down the street - starved dark-haired families who stuck together closely, skinny old men missing limbs huddled in entrances, who didn’t even bother begging for money. Little children’s eyes widened while they pointed at his bronze hair and his light, expensive district garb, their mothers dragging them away with hisses and whispers, throwing Finnick guarded glances the same way smart younger meat district tributes would throw a volunteer.
The bakery was empty at this time of day, filled with an intense aroma of warm bread and spilled sugar. It should have been a comfortable, cozy place.
The baker behind the counter was tall and impossibly skinny, but by disposition rather than starvation, her blond hair wrapped in a careful turban braid. Her eyes widened in shock when Finnick entered her shop, then transformed into a fierce, thin smile that would have looked Capitol, except nobody in the Capitol had ever had to defend anything with their lives.
“What an honor to have you here in the Mellark bakery,” she intoned, making Finnick suppress a tired smirk - apparently the victors weren’t the only ones with a cardinal rule. The baker’s eyes watered when she tried to look him over inconspicuously. Recognizing the business opportunity, and screw district ethics. “How can I help you today?”
“How about a couple of bread rolls,” Finnick said with a hopefully friendly and unthreatening expression on his face. “One of each kind to try them out.” Then he nodded at the displays. “Your cakes look beautiful.” He wasn’t sure who in this forsaken district could afford to buy them, though. Maybe the mayor did. Peacekeepers, probably.
Maybe Haymitch did, though no matter how unapologetically Finnick knew the other victor gorged himself on the Capitol food every Games, it was hard to envision him munching bright green birthday cake.
“My youngest son does the icing,” the baker informed him with a bristling air. “He is very gifted.” She said it like it was a requirement. Then, without bothering to turn towards the back room, she shouted, “Peeta! Bring a box, hurry up! We have a customer who wants to buy a cake!”
“Actually…” Finnick stopped himself. A tall, strong-looking, non-starved boy of maybe fourteen, half through Reaping age, had appeared on cue and was giving him a cautious once-over when he handed his mother a cardboard carton. He shared his mother’s blond hair, though his eyes just seemed curious.
As good a way of spreading some of his money in the district as any, Finnick supposed.
“Hey,” he said to the boy while he reached for his wallet. “I’m Finnick.”
The teen hesitated, glancing at his mother. “I know,” he replied in a soft, surprisingly low voice, as if he’d carefully thought about those two words.
“Give me that.” His mother took the box out of his hand, and it was almost imperceptible, but Finnick could still see how Peeta hid a flinch. The baker gave him another of her manic smiles. “Which cake would you like to try out? Mr. Odair?”
Resigning himself to the fact that he would be buying a cake, Finnick pointed at a small one in the display case with a lot of red and white frosting. It was decorated with little sugar flowers, though fortunately none of them were roses. He couldn’t but admire that sales pitch, either, imagining Mrs. Mellark bullying Capitol folks into sponsoring tributes. The way she covered reality with a bright smile and a loud voice certainly reminded him of Hunger Games coverage.
Though picturing her in the Games at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, she would probably never have made it out of the bloodbath.
“What an excellent choice!” the baker said. And, “We are very grateful to have you with us here in Twelve. May the odds be ever in your favor.” Finnick gave her a perfunctory smile and paid, the last thing he heard when he stepped onto the street the sound of a slap and, “That’s no way to treat the richest customer in town, you worthless…”
The door fell shut behind him, cutting her off.
Welcome to District Twelve, he thought with a grimace.
***
There was a girl waiting in front of his door when he came home.
The sun was setting in the distance, a blazing crimson ball illuminating the forest atop the hills behind the fence. Four had been flat, miles and miles of ocean stretching out in the East, just as many miles of wet land in the West. Twelve was surrounded by mountainsides and trees wherever he turned, the district a little cleared pocket of coal and despair.
Finnick thought the girl was maybe seventeen, tall but starved to the bone, her long black hair - rich like Bee’s - carefully braided in that simple way he’d seen in other women on the street. He thought it was probably her pride and joy, carefully tended to every morning before school - maybe she’d even skipped a meal sometimes so that she could use a precious chicken egg or beer for hair conditioner. Her face was clean, her dress carefully mended, yet worn and stained.
“Uhm, hello,” he said carefully, walking past where she’d been sitting on his doorstep, hurrying to get up and brushing the dirt off her skirt while he unlocked his door. “Can I help you with anything?”
The girl blushed. “I’m Fallon.” She said it like it was a question.
“It’s great to meet you,” Finnick said. “I’m Finnick.” He quirked his lips at her suggestively and crooked his head towards the South. “From a place down that way.”
There was some natural maturity in the way she held her back so straight, a frailty in her gestures that would have been pretty if she didn’t look so sickly, so the nervous giggle escaping her sounded strange. Then it transformed into something like a hiccup and became just the most awful sound Finnick thought he’d ever heard outside the Capitol.
“What…” he said in alarm, and she interrupted him.
“I thought you’d be, you’d be all alone.”
She lowered her eyes.
“Well, I am,” Finnick said blankly. “Just me in the Village until Haymitch comes back.”
Her blush grew more prominent.
“I meant,” she said. “I meant you’d be lonely.”
“Say again?”
No.
No. Absolutely not.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be happening. Not to him. Not to him.
Understanding dawned upon him and Finnick thought he’d never felt so dirty. Which was ridiculous, because he’d murdered children seven years ago and he had liked it, he still used those three weeks to prop himself up when he was down, and because he was a whore himself. He’d even sat there in Snow’s office and when Snow had told him to… when he’d told him to, Finnick had…
No. No. Don’t go there now.
But here Fallon from District Twelve was standing in front of his door, expecting him… thinking he would… because he had money, because he was Capitol to her, one of them.
The fact that she was almost out of Reaping age, almost Finnick’s age and therefore somebody who he might have enjoyed talking to, given how he was starved for a conversation partner from his age group, only made it worse.
“Listen,” Fallon said in a rush, when she saw that he had frozen, not all that enthusiastic about the proposition. “It’s not a lot of money, it’s just a couple of coins and I won’t steal, while we’re inside. You won’t even have to look me in the eyes if you don’t want that. I’m clean, I don’t have any diseases, I promise; some of the other girls have diseases. I’m practically a virgin and if you want me to…”
“No,” Finnick interrupted her harshly, pressing out the words between his teeth, “I really don’t.”
Balling his hand into a fist until the key pierced into the palm of his hand, he took a breath, feeling his torso rising and falling abruptly. Fallon’s eyes flickered at his shoulders, the way his biceps had tensed, then back at his face.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, as if soothing a wild animal. “The Peacekeepers do it too.”
“I’m not a Peacekeeper, I’m not…” Finnick muttered, trying not to sway. He felt dizzy, and nauseous, as if tremors might start running down his body and breaking him into little bits any second. All the world seemed to be in motion, as if he was a figurine in a little dollhouse that somebody had picked up and tilted.
“I want you to leave,” he said, barely hearing himself over the noise in his ears.
At the edge of his vision, he saw her taking a hesitant step back.
“Leave,” he repeated more firmly and she was nodding, flash of concern on her face while realizing that she’d just propositioned a nutcase. The skirt of her dress swirling, exposing a grey petticoat, she took off, not quite running but knowing how to be gone swiftly, her summer slippers echoing on the Village concrete.
Her Reaping dress, Finnick thought irrationally. She’s wearing her Reaping dress for me.
What a perfect choice.
Finnick reached out until he felt the doorframe behind him, dropping his keys and stepping back until he could lean against the door, hard assuring steady presence in his back. All the world was still swaying around, smears of bright blue summer sky rocking into view, then the roof of the abandoned red house from across the street, the smell of bees and summer and despair.
The back of his head connecting with the heavy wood warmed by the sun, he struggled to breathe. It would have been easier if he was swimming, letting the waves crash over his head and riding out the tide. But there was no ocean in District Twelve, and this would have to do.
***
When a knock echoed through his house the next morning, Finnick followed the noise to the kitchen door leading out to the back. He told himself there was nothing wrong with reminding himself that he was considerably taller and stronger than most of the starved people in Twelve, and that there were kitchen knives close by. People tended to forget that Finnick hadn’t won his Games by blinding his opponents with his smiles. After restless nights like this one, it was harder to remember how that gave him a strategic advantage.
However, the young man leaning against the railing of the stairs was just as tall as Finnick. Defensively, Finnick took a step back.
The man - no, boy, he couldn’t be older than about sixteen - gave him a grim little smile.
“Since you’re new in town, I thought you might want to buy some turkey for your empty freezer,” he said, the tail end of puberty flipping his voice across two octaves in as many words.
He had the dark hair and the grey eyes of Twelve - Seam hair, Finnick corrected himself, miners’ hair - and the fact that he wasn’t looking starved like almost everybody probably made him appear older than he was. He had a handsome face, too, with a serious, mature streak. He did look like he could be made into a whore. The Capitol would eat him alive.
A little vicious voice in his head told Finnick there was always hoping that he’d get reaped.
“Turkey,” he repeated without understanding, his eyes trailing to the game bag slung over the boy’s shoulder, its underside soaked with patches of fresh blood. He wanted to take another step back when the smell hit him.
The young poacher followed his eyes. “I can sell you a leg and a chest,” he said. “A quart of blueberries to go with it. But you’ll have to make me a good offer, because those would fetch a good price with the Peacekeepers, too.”
It was the same message Fallon had relayed: intruder from the Capitol that he was, Finnick didn’t have to be concerned about breaking the law. It didn’t surprise Finnick when he thought about it, having learned that the butcher mostly sold frozen beef from District Ten. Even the people with money still needed to organize enough food to spend it on.
Finnick could almost imagine this young man arguing with his family and friends trying to stop him from selling to the new victor: “Man with muscle like that needs to eat meat.” Thinking of Cherry’s diet plan, he wouldn’t have been wrong either.
Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Finnick leaned against the doorframe.
“Isn’t poaching forbidden in Twelve?” he still asked, his tone mild, just because he wanted to hear the reply.
Dried blood underneath his chopped nails and the smell of animal guts still clinging to him, the boy gave him a grimace that didn’t quite manage the impression of a smirk. “What, that?” He glanced at his bag. “I found it lying in my backyard. Must have hurt itself when it came through the fence.”
“With those blueberries caught in its beak?”
“Something like that.”
Everything about his stance looked relaxed, but there was an underlying tension to his demeanor that grated at Finnick, as if he was stopping himself from looking around for threats. He set Finnick on edge, looking the closest that Twelve would ever have to a Career, acting like a tribute on Day Three.
Another one in this district who doesn’t need an arena to play the Games, Finnick thought, remembering Mrs. Mellark.
When they settled on a price, Finnick reached for his wallet and counted the coins.
They might have decided to hate his guts, but apparently the same wasn’t true for his money. They’d apparently learned to be pragmatic.
It reminded him of Haymitch, who’d worked his arena with the little he had brought - desperation, schoolyard fighting, a determination to use whatever he could find as a weapon, even the arena’s own boundaries.
So when the poacher had disappeared, leaving bits of turkey and a bag of berries behind, Finnick grabbed an encyclopedia from a shelf in his living room and flipped pages until he found the picture of that particular mutt.
Northern Lowbush Blueberries: edible.
Just to be sure.
Tbc.