HUNGER GAMES: survive the fall (katniss & finnick gen)
Title: survive the fall
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Katniss Everdeen & Finnick Odair
Warnings: None
Summary: And don't you know there's a war on?
He's the only one who gets it. The others play games, dress up in fancy bulletproof costumes and sling guns like props, but Finnick's been inside the arena and he gets it. She's seen his Games - seen what he can do with a trident, wielding a weapon like an extension of his own self. Seen him hunting children and killing innocents because he has to, it's the only way. She gets it, now. She was too young when he first went into the Games, only six years old, too young to understand why everything was coming up shades of red.
So maybe that's why she does it; crawl into his bed at night, not for anything more physical than the comfort of something dirty, someone just as close to unhinging as she is. Thirteen is clean, too clean, everything careful and planned and precise. Finnick understands better than anyone that there is no clean in the Games; it's do or diediedie.
So they do. Finnick lies on his side facing her and she lies on her side facing him and they tie knots together in the dark. He teaches her new ones, pushing her hands into the right twists and loops to form a tangled mess of threads. But he never teaches her to untie them. Katniss has to pick the knots apart with her nails until they break, and then Finnick wordlessly takes her hands and teaches her a new one. It's good; passes the time, keeps her focused on something other than oh God PeetaPeetaPeeta. And Finnick likes the teaching because it keeps his mind off of Annie, drowning in the Capitol.
He's beautiful when he sleeps. Finnick has spent so much time posing for the cameras that she wonders sometimes if he's forgotten how to just let it go. But it all falls away when he sleeps, the smirk and the flirtation and the bravery and she's left with a thin man with coppery hair and scars on his back and a broken heart.
So it's not love, because too much of them is Annie and Peeta and not enough is left over for anything else. But it's survival, and keeping watch over one another, and trying not to break because they're not alone, because breaking is like giving up on everything; on dead Districts and long-forgotten victors and mostly on two broken people in a city that they just - can't - reach. Breaking is letting each other down and falling to irreparable pieces, so they have to hold together.
Katniss would trust Finnick with her life, but her heart is far more fragile, and anyway, that's not who they are. He gets that.
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Katniss Everdeen & Finnick Odair
Warnings: None
Summary: And don't you know there's a war on?
He's the only one who gets it. The others play games, dress up in fancy bulletproof costumes and sling guns like props, but Finnick's been inside the arena and he gets it. She's seen his Games - seen what he can do with a trident, wielding a weapon like an extension of his own self. Seen him hunting children and killing innocents because he has to, it's the only way. She gets it, now. She was too young when he first went into the Games, only six years old, too young to understand why everything was coming up shades of red.
So maybe that's why she does it; crawl into his bed at night, not for anything more physical than the comfort of something dirty, someone just as close to unhinging as she is. Thirteen is clean, too clean, everything careful and planned and precise. Finnick understands better than anyone that there is no clean in the Games; it's do or diediedie.
So they do. Finnick lies on his side facing her and she lies on her side facing him and they tie knots together in the dark. He teaches her new ones, pushing her hands into the right twists and loops to form a tangled mess of threads. But he never teaches her to untie them. Katniss has to pick the knots apart with her nails until they break, and then Finnick wordlessly takes her hands and teaches her a new one. It's good; passes the time, keeps her focused on something other than oh God PeetaPeetaPeeta. And Finnick likes the teaching because it keeps his mind off of Annie, drowning in the Capitol.
He's beautiful when he sleeps. Finnick has spent so much time posing for the cameras that she wonders sometimes if he's forgotten how to just let it go. But it all falls away when he sleeps, the smirk and the flirtation and the bravery and she's left with a thin man with coppery hair and scars on his back and a broken heart.
So it's not love, because too much of them is Annie and Peeta and not enough is left over for anything else. But it's survival, and keeping watch over one another, and trying not to break because they're not alone, because breaking is like giving up on everything; on dead Districts and long-forgotten victors and mostly on two broken people in a city that they just - can't - reach. Breaking is letting each other down and falling to irreparable pieces, so they have to hold together.
Katniss would trust Finnick with her life, but her heart is far more fragile, and anyway, that's not who they are. He gets that.