THG fic: "Moss On The Ruins" [2/5]
Title: Moss On The Ruins
Characters: Finnick Odair, also featuring Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason and Mags, as well as an ensemble of victors and OC
Pairings: Finnick/OC, Haymitch/OC, Johanna/OC - pre-Finnick/Annie
Warnings: forced prostitution, dub con / non con, explicit non-consensual bondage & spanking, depression, PTSD, alcoholism, suicide of minor characters and discussion of suicide, Games-related violence
Rating: adult
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: It's the 71st Hunger Games, and Finnick Odair is ordered to mentor a boy he isn’t even sure he wants to bring home. With Johanna Mason alienating her friends and Haymitch Abernathy falling off the wagon, he finds himself struggling to not lose the last shreds of his sanity and soul.
A/N: Again, thank you very much, millari, for the beta, and I hope you and deathmallow will enjoy all the shout-outs referencing your fic and head canon.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Finnick hadn’t mentored before, not when doing so would have kept him away from the Capitol clients. That was the one thing preferable about mentoring, though the thought twisted something in his guts: As long as Niko stayed alive, he wouldn’t be receiving any of those notes about a name and date and mode of transport.
Great world.
Finnick only hoped that the Games would last long enough for him to get himself together, and that whatever happened, he wouldn’t start falling apart again the way he almost had with Mags on the train. Don’t cry in public, he firmly told himself when the limousine drove them from the train station towards downtown. Whatever you have to do.
Most of the other mentors had already gathered at the Training Center bar when they got there, happy enough to finally greet him as one of their own.
Finnick had listened to Mags and the others from Four often enough to not be all that nervous about the new responsibility - he knew the Games inside out, and there’d rarely ever been anything he hadn’t been naturally good at in his life. But it was still nice to be patted on the back and be hugged, to be offered to just ask any question at any time, and getting to know some of the more private victors, who hadn’t been to the Capitol since he’d won, was definitely a plus.
Well, maybe not Clarity Rudder, the thin-lipped stocky victor from One who’d won the Games right after his, and who gave him a long look top to bottom, as if she was inspecting him, contemplating what he looked like underneath his sparse clothes and not coming away with a positive conclusion. Finnick remembered her wreaking havoc with a katana at the bloodbath; the Capitol had called it the only highlight of those whole Games.
Clarity shook his hand and immediately let it drop, turning to continue her conversation with Cashmere as if he wasn’t standing there. Finnick blinked at his hand, and put it down.
“Girl talk,” Brutus announced. He threw an arm around him, as if they were suddenly best buddies instead of two men who’d barely ever met. Giving Finnick’s shoulder a surprisingly warm squeeze, he led him to the bar and ordered him a drink. “All ‘swords here, swords there’ with those two, as if that was all there is to a good Games. And about time you took a shot at mentoring, boy. A couple of us are going out for drinks tonight, if you want to come.
“Not you,” he added in Haymitch’s direction, who was so drunk he was pretty much asleep at the bar. “You’ve had quite enough, young man.”
Blearily raising his head, Haymitch crooked his hand in Brutus’ direction to show him a finger. Brutus laughed.
“Shame about his tributes again,” he still told Finnick later with a shake of his head. “Did you see them at the Reaping? It’s not a good Games if you just want to take them home and feed them up.”
Finnick had spent enough time at the Capitol to get used to the disturbing Games culture of Two, and proceeded to let Brutus’ passionate talk about coaching technique wash over him.
Brutus wasn’t as unsettling as the quiet woman with the stringy hair, who looked up at one point to stare at the buffet, pale and trembling from a desperate attempt of holding some sort of anxiety attack at bay. Various victors were watching her with apparent concern, as if she might burst.
“Ralda Cavalera from Six,” Mags informed him. “It’s good to see her back. She hasn’t mentored in years, although I know she corresponds with Haymitch and Wiress.” And, off-handedly, “She’d profit from meeting Annie,” which was a way of saying that Ralda Cavalera was as crazy as a bug. Finnick dimly remembered her having won one of the late Fifties, round-faced eighteen-year-old making a new alliance every day and convincing younger starving kids to eat her poisoned supplies.
Just looking at her fighting her anxiety made Finnick grow aware of his own disquiet all over again. So he excused himself from Mags to step onto the balcony for a minute and get some fresh air.
Instead of solitude, he got greeted by the distinctive shape of Johanna Mason, pushing a young man against a wall and kissing him as if she meant to crawl inside his throat.
“Men’s room in five,” she informed the boy when she shoved him away a second later; after a moment, Finnick recognized Kyle Akumi, District Five’s recent victor, looking part excited, part scared. “You better push that tongue right between my legs when I step into the room.
“There something you want?” she addressed Finnick before Kyle had managed to scramble, throwing him an unkind look. Though he had a clear sense that her words at Kyle had been meant to be heard. “Because I’m kind of busy warming up,” she added with a bitter kind of anger in her voice.
Finnick almost chuckled. Catching up with Johanna had to be better than taking a minute for himself. Snow had started selling them at roughly the same time; she was the closest friend he had at the Games. “Are you sure Kyle is legal this year? I didn’t know that was your type.”
“You wouldn’t believe how little I care.” Johanna shrugged tensely. Dressed in a revealing skirt with a slit that reached all the way up to her thigh, and the trademark endless heels, her stylist obviously had already played dress-up with her, making her look every bit the high-priced whore. They did that if they planned on putting you on a particularly tight schedule. Finnick, in his bare excuse of a pair of pants, should know.
Now though, he frowned. Johanna had always been brash, but there was an air of anger, almost fury surrounding her now, equal parts directed at the world at large and very much personally at him. Not like she was interested in bonding with anybody, never mind him.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Johanna said, “My tribute sucks, so I’ve got to get to into gear here for all the sex I’ll be having next week.”
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together. “You’ve got a problem me enjoying myself for a change, Odair?”
“Seems like a crappy way to be deflowered.” He shrugged.
Johanna’s lips thinned. “Tough,” she almost hissed it, pressing the words out through her teeth. “Me is who he’ll get.” She stalked past him then, making sure to push him aside with her shoulder on the way to the door. Compared to him, she was slender and small, and her balance was forever shot in those shoes, but there was still enough anger vibrating in all of her body for Finnick to instinctively retreat a step. Then, Johanna paused, and looked at him with unveiled contempt. “Is everything alright?” she repeated his question. “Everything’s peachy, Finnick. I’m off to another exciting round of getting it on with everybody I meet, and it looks like I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. So excuse me if I’ll see if sweet Kyle here will actually do what I want, which would be lovely, and maybe there’ll be days when I’m old when I won’t have to fucking care about what’s best for everybody but me.”
Her face twisted into something ugly. “Go serenade Panem with a poem, Finnick,” she said. “And happy fucking Hunger Games to you.”
Then she was off, and Finnick grabbed onto something blindly to, just, take a breath and hold it in, and slowly let it out, too many thoughts in his head to even understand them all.
The training week rushed by faster than Finnick had anticipated.
There was more to do than he’d assumed. Niko and Corina both showed off in training, working their way into the usual Career alliance each on their own, and keeping a healthy industrious distance from the other. Fifteen-year-old non-volunteer Corina wasn’t a natural fighter, but she was smart and of course, she had attended Games school; both Finnick and Niko knew she might as well become a surprise contender in the right arena. Meanwhile, Mags sent Finnick off to the numerous sponsoring events of the pre-Games. She was too old to suffer through all of them herself, she claimed, but Woof and Brutus and Haymitch - when he was sober enough - willingly took Finnick under their wing. Chatting up people for their money wasn’t that different from chatting them up to have sex. Four was a popular district. It had fans.
“Your tribute seems a little, shall I say naïve?” one sponsor said disdainfully, sipping at his cloudy red drink. “He is built as if he’s twenty-five, I’ll grant him that, but his eyes… As if he’s new to the Capitol, if you know what I mean.”
Where do you think we raise our tributes, at the Training Center bar?
“That should be the least of your worries,” Finnick purred, his fingers running up and down the straw of his cocktail. “I can assure you our Niko is very mature.”
“Good one,” Haymitch told him later, toasting him at the bar.
“Not cruising yourself?” Finnick asked and took a seat.
“Nah,” Haymitch said. “They all think I’m disgusting these days, lucky me.”
Finnick pictured becoming publically known as a drunk. Gossip news channels analyzing close-ups of his waistline to estimate the weight that he’d gained, to study the definition he’d lost and the embarrassment he’d become, like they’d been doing with Haymitch, these last two awful liquor-hazed years.
It wasn’t hard to see the appeal.
The light at Mentor Central was dimmed before the tributes entered the arena. The room looked much like Finnick had envisioned it from hearing older mentors talk - twelve consoles and twenty-four screens, twenty-three of which would turn blank at some point. But he somehow hadn’t expected that the lights would be dimmed, the faces of the mentors left and right of him covered in the flickering lights of the consoles. Finnick should have expected it, though. Children were scheduled to die here, after all, so the Capitol staged it like the spectacle it was, everywhere, even here where there were only victors, used to being humiliated in that way long since.
But that wouldn’t be like Snow, to ever let them breathe.
The victor feeds blared to life above their heads. Claudius Templesmith’s voice was laced with an ominous echo when he started moving through the countdown, reverberating at them twice, once through the speakers at the walls and once through the headset, from the arena.
Mentors leaned forward in their seat, and Finnick did so as well, taking in everything at once. Twenty-four tributes lined up around a marmoreal Cornucopia that held its contents close to its mouth this year, and white rocks high as walls all around them, almost entirely covered in moss.
The camera panned across what looked to be the ruins of a long lost city, except no city but the Capitol was built from so much stone in all of Panem, so it gave off a strangely artificial modern vibe. No forests or trees - half across the room, Gang Chen from Seven groaned in dismay at the sight. No mutts or animals that Finnick could make out. Just endless rows of fallen stone underneath the blue sky. At least, there was a small creek snaking through the arena, and the moss seemed moist as well. Plenty of places to hide, but none for the long run; a tribute with that strategy would have to stay on their feet.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen an arena this small in my life,” Beetee was remarking to his partner on Finnick’s left. “This could become an extraordinarily quick Games, I’d say.”
On Finnick’s right, Mags was nodding along. Leaning closer to Finnick while Templesmith reached forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, she was nibbling at a pretzel stick. “So sponsorship will be a priority this year. It’s good that they will be with the pack and gather supplies at the Cornucopia.” Finnick found himself nodding along. Survival skills wouldn’t save you in a city arena, bare like District Thirteen might have looked if they’d ever use new footage.
“Twenty,” Templesmith boomed. “Nineteen.”
There was no expression on Niko’s face now but determination, chin raised in what almost looked like defiance. Let there be fighting sticks, Finnick prayed, and then the gong went off and it was bloody and brutal and awful. There was an urge he’d always had to avert his eyes from that, a need to just not see, that his own Games had only served to intensify. It was different if it wasn’t him fighting, if all he could do was watch helplessly. But he was a mentor now, so he tried to ignore the voice in his head screaming no, and kept his eyes trained on the feed, no matter what it did to him inside.
The six Careers started shouting commands at each other across the field before the fight had even started, marching towards the center like one man. Niko found himself partnered with the One male, Corina trailed after Two female, and they even didn’t reach the Cornucopia first, they didn’t have to, overpowering the two girls already there by sheer intimidation. It was a classic Career district alliance this year, and the three male Careers, in particular, were tall and strong.
One of the kids with Haymitch’s hair foolishly tried to make a run for the center, just to die when she was tripped by a girl in Six yellow and stabbed by Nine. The Seven female was bleeding out on scarred concrete and nobody had time or inclination to fully put her out. On Finnick’s left, both Three mentors took their headsets off; after a while, Finnick heard Haymitch telling the room at large, “Well, that’s it for me,” before he got up as well.
It was quick. Most bloodbaths were quick; it just didn’t take that long to butcher a couple of kids without proper defense strategies. Finnick groaned when the only fighting sticks at the Cornucopia went to the Eleven tributes, who managed an orderly retreat at the side of the two Fives - a short look confirmed that Eleven’s Seeder was already conferring with Five’s Kyle. Niko didn’t hesitate, and grabbed some spears instead.
“You need to start calling up sponsors as well,” Mags told Finnick once it was done, the pack setting up camp in the remains of a basement while seven children lay dead on the screens all around. Strictly speaking, Finnick supposed Mags couldn’t give him orders about Niko, but he also knew even Brutus would heed her advice. “Do it right away. It will be a quick Games, and the alliance will be falling apart fast. You will have to pool with Two and One for now, but build a budget to use later if you can. Niko will need to be sent a better weapon.”
Finnick nodded along. “Do you think they’ll be in trouble because of Annie?” he asked. It happened sometimes, revenge kills on account of a previous victor, but if it wasn’t personal or helping a story unfold on the screen, the strongest contenders tended to be more strategically inclined than that.
Mags shook her head. “Annie won by swimming,” she said. “It was a very lucky win for her, boring to the audience.” Lucky in every sense of the word, Finnick understood. “She isn’t interesting enough for that narrative.”
Reassured, Finnick started making calls, telling Brutus and Cashmere with a gesture that he would join them at their consoles as soon as he had a budget at hand. Grimacing, he tried to ignore Clarity Rudder, who was glancing at him as if she was trying to decide where to bury his body.
Maybe she just really had a problem with beautiful people.
Finnick spent the rest of the day keeping an half an ear on the banter unfolding in the pack while he talked to potential sponsors, trying to make out a story they could start building for Niko, something for Templesmith and Flickerman to explore once they fed it to them in their mentoring interviews. It was sort of what Four was known for, keeping the Capitol entertained with swerve and guts and signature narratives, what Mags had worked on all her life. Woof had once said half of the typical Games narratives had been invented by Mags. She would tell the most outrageous stories about tributes in front of the camera without even having to lie.
Chatting up the sponsors on the phone, Finnick listened to his own velvet voice, marveling at how it had just suddenly sounded like that one day, so unlike his own.
It was late in the evening when an Avox hurried past him with a note. He wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t for Johanna’s low, “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. She hasn’t even made it to the morgue,” that made most mentors look.
Her face hardening into a mask, Johanna threw her headset off and took her long legs off the console. “Switch with you later,” she told Gang, her mentoring partner. “Looks like I’m just going to be terribly popular this year.” Finnick raised his eyebrows at her, but the furious look she gave him told him where to shove his inquiry. She generally looked furious at everybody who looked after her sauntering off.
That was when it suddenly hit Finnick, what it really meant, having a tribute in the running like this.
Mouth dry, he looked up at the screen, where night was falling and the pack was making camp, starting a fire and joking with each other while Niko… flirted with the One male. Male. Huh. It was a beautiful romantic image of camaraderie that would make it onto the recap tape no doubt.
Home at Four, he knew, people would be lighting a lantern in their front windows right now. They had a volunteer this year, and he needed to be shown district respect.
And the longer Finnick kept that volunteer alive, the longer Snow couldn’t send Finnick off to see clients.
The closer Finnick dragged Niko to becoming a whore …
No. He wouldn’t look at it like that. He wouldn’t.
Except, how could he not?
It was the evening of day two. The alliance between Five and Eleven proved strong, forcing the Career pack closer together, keeping Niko and Corina safe for now.
Finnick had just told Mags he’d fetch something to eat and a shower, when District Six’ Ralda cornered him on the way out of the room. She gave him a twitchy nod towards a spot near the coffee table; he snatched a batch of cookies from it and started nibbling at one, until he noticed she was staring at it with a strange look of nausea in her eyes. Clearing his voice, he folded his arms behind his back.
Ralda visibly regrouped.
“There’s a problem I need you to help me with,” she said, voice surprisingly steady, if unused. “I’d ask Chaff, but Chaff’s home this year and he was never sold anyway.” Just the opener he loved, Finnick thought. Being the man to approach because of how he got around. “They sent Haymitch to remake once his tributes were dead.”
“What?” he asked, because while that wasn’t the most dramatic twist he’d have expected, he still hadn’t expected it. “Didn’t they clean him up before the parade like everybody?” A haircut, a fashion update and a shave, that happened to all the mentors who weren’t sold for sex, as far as Finnick knew. Loss of body hair was reserved for the tributes and the whores.
Ralda gave him a look. “I’m saying Haymitch was sent to remake, Finnick,” she said. “It was on very short notice. He’s got an appointment across town an hour from now.”
“But he’s, what…”
“Thirty-seven, yes, and no, he’s not the finest stallion in our stables, but there you have it anyway. Maybe the client isn’t rich enough to afford someone like you. Or even, you know. Somebody like me.” Nothing much Finnick could say to that beside concede the point, too drained for a quip on how yes, he sure was a sweet piece of sugar and did she want a lick? There never were a lot of victors on the whoring market at once, just three or four beside him this season, as far as he knew. It was rare that victors became this popular - the last one before him had been Bunny Noxton from Ten, who’d won the 56th and was still too busy seeing regulars to mentor much even now. Caramel Doll from Four had been three years before her - a good Games decade, people called it. He’d retired when Finnick appeared on the market, because they had the same hair color and there was only room for one of them, apparently. Sometimes, victors maintained regulars for a couple of years until that dried up, and there was the occasional pervert, but overall, the Capitol just didn’t like real adults. Those were sold for conversation and company, for the occasional appearance on a television show, yes, but not for sex.
But as Ralda had implied, beauty base zero wasn’t necessary for conversation and company.
So much for Haymitch being safe.
Ralda had wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture, lowering her voice so that the bugs wouldn’t catch all of her words. “We all know how it is, Finnick. It doesn’t get easier the more often you have to do it. It gets worse. If you suddenly have to do it after so many years have passed, it’s… it’s hard. And you know Haymitch, he… he gets drunk. He deals badly. He’s got an alcohol problem.” It struck Finnick, how her voice had turned stilted at what was a statement of the glaringly obvious to him. Then it occurred to him that Ralda had been around since before Haymitch had self-destructed. She had to hate sacrificing another piece of his dignity by saying it aloud. “I need you to talk to him,” Ralda continued. “You need to make sure he gets through it in one piece. He goes there drunk tonight and pulls a stunt, they’ll make his district pay, and that’ll be bad. I can talk him down later if need be, but first I need to make sure that he wants to make it through intact in the first place.”
Finnick’s mind was still racing to catch up with that. He knew Haymitch, knew him fairly well. Haymitch had taken him aside quickly when he’d returned to the Capitol at sixteen, when Mags was off mentoring, coaching him on who’d sent him that trident back then and how to behave to turn that person’s mind off fucking Finnick and how that was important. Years later, Finnick had heard all about Septima Coddlebrick’s special tastes, and he was still grateful that he’d never had to get close to that particular toy chest. But still - Haymitch was comparatively old. He’d been drinking too much for ages, Finnick understood, but it had only been two years or so since it had become impossible to hide from the public. Two years ago had been when Haymitch had shown up at the Twelve Reaping plastered, taking the microphone and attempting to give a little speech that thankfully had been too garbled for anybody to understand. He’d been drunk every day Finnick had laid eyes on him since.
Haymitch had lost both his tributes yesterday. Chances were he’d gone off to celebrate that achievement with a bottle. Finnick knew nothing of Haymitch’s life outside the Games and he knew little about alcohol abuse, but he knew asking Haymitch to not drink would be like asking a tribute on a winning streak to not kill.
“And why do you think I’m the right person for that job again?” he said, doubt coloring his voice. “I mean, I’m half his age. Why don’t you talk to him yourself first?” Somebody as slender as Ralda had to have done it for a year or two. She was sickeningly bony, so she’d have been perfect for the Capitol.
She grimaced, following his thoughts. “I was in no state to be left alone with Capitol citizens after my Games, I can assure you. They were too afraid I’d… contaminate their lunch for fun.”
Finnick blinked.
“And would you have?” he couldn’t resist but ask.
Instead of laughing, Ralda raised her chin, and looked away.
“Sorry,” Finnick said.
She sighed.
“Haymitch would just brush me off, Finnick. It’s a handy excuse, but he’d just say I don’t know what it’s like. He wouldn’t be that rude with you. He thinks a lot of you.” Her bony shoulders dropped. “You talk to him? We need Haymitch around in one piece.” She hesitated. “I need him in one piece,” she admitted reluctantly. “It’s just this one last set of appointments, probably just through the Games. He’d never forgive himself.”
Right, Finnick got back to his earlier assessment. Qualified to help because of how I’m such a whore.
It made him angry, suddenly.
I’m twenty, he wanted to inform Ralda. He wanted to scream it, actually, right at her face. Who did she think she was? They made me gut people with spears when I was a kid. Now they make me fuck people, twice my age, who I don’t even like. I can’t help anybody. I can’t do any of it. I’m not even sure I’ll make it through this Games alive. Ralda was right in one thing. It didn’t get easier over time. It got worse, until Finnick dreaded every day even at home, because the Games got closer every day. He started forgetting how to imagine what sex should feel like, and when he managed anyway, he wanted to cry as if he was a child. He was the last person in the world who could convince Haymitch Abernathy to stay sober. He was fighting not to be Haymitch Abernathy, hiding at the beach with his tridents all those days, and breaking into those tears as if he was crazy.
But Haymitch would do the same for him. Most victors would if they were asked. Finnick knew he couldn’t say no. Not if there was a chance that Ralda was right, and there was actually something he could do. He could hardly refuse.
“Of course. At least I’ll try,” he said with a sigh. “Is he back yet?”
“He’s on the roof,” Ralda said and reached out with her frail hand to pat his arm, then stopped herself midair as if waiting to see if he would flinch away or leash out; when he didn’t, she resumed the motion. A habit only a victor would think up.
We’re all damaged, he thought. We’re all of us in ruins. All in a different way.
The touch felt light like that of silk, barely making an impact. “Good boy,” Ralda muttered, as if she felt a hundred years old as well.
What they all sounded like, he miserably thought.
Maybe that was where Seneca Crane had taken the inspiration for his arena this year. Except for how their ruins never got the chance to get covered by anything, moss or scar tissue or otherwise.
But Finnick didn’t want to talk to Haymitch, Haymitch who’d won the year Finnick was born. It was too easy for him, who liked Haymitch, to picture all the things Haymitch could have been, if he hadn’t been reaped. Haymitch still tended to command a room whenever he forgot that a victor wasn’t allowed. His temper picked the weirdest times to resurface, sheer physical strength still made him dangerous in that way every victor knew to respect, and he held fierce pride in his futile little starving district that Finnick couldn’t but admire. In another world, Finnick thought Haymitch would have been a skipper, protective of his crew until death and deserving every bit of loyalty they offered in return.
The Games didn’t produce leaders though, he thought. They didn’t even produce plain killers. A killer could atone for their crime and pay off that debt and die with a bit of relief. It wasn’t that easy for a victor, who’d lived when others had deserved it so much more. It wasn’t like you were making a sacrifice, if you were only ever trying to stay alive.
Haymitch was leaning on the railing on the roof, right at the blind spot where the surveillance wouldn’t catch any words, swanky silver silk shirt falling loosely over smooth leather pants. It looked surprisingly good on him; ‘not starved’ was certainly the way to go with the ladies in the districts. Finnick knew, even before he stepped up to him and leisurely lounged against the railing himself, that Haymitch’s shirt would be fashionably unbuttoned at the top. He’d be clean-shaven and his hair would look as if his unruly dark curls were meant to fall that casually. It was a popular look this season. Beauty base zero had been reached and explored. Haymitch didn’t look like a killer. He didn’t quite look Capitol either, but like a luxury good from District One. Like Finnick did, too.
Like a collaborator.
“Surprised I never see you play around with the force field up here like the others,” he idly said, trying to chase the foul taste in his mouth away. “I’d have thought you’d enjoy that, seeing how it’s something like your specialty.”
“Been a while since I’ve enjoyed my clever ideas flying back in my face,” Haymitch said with a perfectly straight face, just to break into a hysterical laugh the next moment, slightly unhinged in that way he’d become. It was then that Finnick was hit by a wave of thick liquor breath, and he swallowed down a grimace, because obviously Ralda was right: Haymitch wasn’t dealing well with this, and Haymitch was drunk. Of course, Haymitch was drunk.
But what in the world was Finnick supposed to do about it?
Dropping his casual stance, he decided to try cutting the bullshit. “You know you’ll have hell to pay if you don’t start sobering up just about now.”
“So they keep telling me,” Haymitch lightly agreed, taking a sip from a flask Finnick hadn’t noticed was dangling between his fingers.
“Well. It’s just this one more client, right? They probably won’t want you for longer than the Games. I doubt you’ll have a renaissance and get back into the saddle full time.” Not at his age, not without losing some pounds first. Certainly not as long as he didn’t start commanding public attention by producing victors. That thought made Finnick uncomfortable, though, reminding him of his own thoughts, making him wonder if Haymitch had ever led any promising tribute into a trap so that the Capitol would keep ignoring him. Haymitch was… Haymitch. He was obviously a better man than Finnick.
Another thought occurred to Finnick, filling him with a new sense of alarm, because Ralda hadn’t actually said it. Clearing his voice, he asked, delicately, “You’ve had to do it before, right? This isn’t a first?”
“What?” Haymitch looked at him like he thought Finnick had cracked, the notion apparently just that inconceivable for him. Then he snorted, and took another sip. “Never been a Finnick Odair, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Not that I’m not trying my mightiest to suppress it, but yeah. I used to turn my share of heads. Served the Capitol well enough for three or four years, before your district’s Caramel came around. Us lesser pretty boys were old news after him.”
“Why do you think that client wants you now?”
“Daddy kink?” Haymitch cheerfully shot back.
Finnick made sure to let his inner pain at that one show when he shuddered, and the other man laughed bitterly, clapping him on the back as if Finnick was the one to comfort.
“Don’t scowl. You wouldn’t want to get wrinkles, I’m sure.”
“The others are scared that you’ll do something stupid tonight.” Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that annoyance started coloring his voice. It was too much. Why him? He’d just screw it up, and people would die. “We all know you have bad ideas when you get wasted. You’ve made it for twenty years already. You can’t get addicted to that stuff now, it’ll just kill you. You think Snow is going to let you get away with it? You?”
It was futile, of course. His words hit Haymitch like they’d hit the force field, bouncing off. It seemed that all they did was give him a reason to have a look at his watch, screwing the lid on his flask, hiding it in a pocket of his pants underneath his fancy shirt. He made sure not to tear the silk, Finnick observed with loathing. He’d grown up on a shrimper and Haymitch had grown up in a forest or a coal mine or something, but both of them knew not to put a tear into the damn silk. Haymitch might finally have been hurting too much to give a fuck anymore, but the Capitol had still broken both of them in for good.
“Remake’s given me something to cover the smell, no matter how much I drink,” Haymitch informed him. “Fancy little chewing gum thing. Plenty people drink a lot and hide it well, you know. How do you think that Capitol drunks do it? So, no.” He smirked. “I’m not going to be stepping off the platform tonight, I think. We’ll see about tomorrow.
“But tell Ralda I appreciate the concern.”
“Plenty of people stop drinking altogether,” Finnick stated the obvious, letting go of the railing in frustration.
Haymitch shrugged. “Doubt that I could.”
With those words, he threw Finnick what he must have thought was a sea salute and sauntered off, vanishing between the shadows of the roof. Then the door to the stairway could be heard falling shut. Skipper, my ass, Finnick thought, angry, because he knew he should just stop using his mind altogether, making ridiculous worlds like that one up. Yes, it was killing Haymitch to go to that appointment. Surprise, surprise. Maybe Ralda was right and Haymitch was as good as dead. So what? Wishing had never made anybody happier. All of it, Haymitch and Ralda Cavalera made him mad and he was trembling again, incapable of doing anything to stop it, turning to stare at the Capitol skyline through the force field that was invisible and still always there, and clasping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking dare.
Haymitch didn’t have a choice. Finnick didn’t have a choice either, not about what kind of person he was becoming, whether he’d be a drunk like Haymitch, or skittish like Caramel or just convince himself it was all so grand like Brutus. There were so many things he hated in his life, crying seemed like the only possible reaction exactly because he hated the tears so much.
You do have a choice about whether or not you’ll help Niko get home alive, he thought, hating himself even more because, yeah. Great.
Maybe when it came down to it, he was just a plain child killer after all. Maybe the rest didn’t matter that much because that one overruled all.
To make matters worse, Jo was waiting for him when the elevator opened to the floor of Four. She was sitting on the carpet, leaning against the wall across the hallway, her tight skirt rolled up all the way around her waistline as if it had been in the way of a more comfortable position. She wore lace underneath. An Avox walked by carrying a stash of towels, unable to suppress his rapid blink when she rose without bothering to smooth it down, and she threw a kiss and a wink after him. Whippings for ogling Capitol meat visibly flashed before his inner eye; he paled and fled.
Finnick wasn’t in the mood. “What the hell, Jo?”
“Might as well flaunt it if you’ve got it,” she said, unconcerned. Equally unconcerned about all the skin she was showing Finnick, she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her blouse was only half buttoned. “I hear you had a little chat with everybody’s favorite drunk.”
“Yes, as little good as it did. Mentor Central thinks he’s pretty much on his way to get himself killed.” Or cost his district a couple of food rations and yeah, Ralda was right - knowing Haymitch, that would hit him even harder than having to take it up the orifice of the season.
Johanna frowned. “And are they right?”
“He’s an addict, Jo.” Finnick sighed. He was too tired for this, and not just from the long day at Mentor Central. “What do you expect? He’s burnt out, he’s done. He’s a drunk, he couldn’t stop if he wanted to and I don’t think he’s all that interested in trying. Chances are he’ll be dead in a puddle of vomit someday soon.”
“Oh, so it’s all his own fault now?”
“Huh?” He raised his eyebrows at her accusing tone of voice.
Johanna pushed herself off the wall, all grace like a cat in her lush green dress and with glitter in her spiky hair, even now in her rumpled state. She was perfectly beautiful in her own way, Finnick had often thought, and more cynically - just beautiful enough for the Capitol. Now, though, she was angry, like she’d been angry all through the week, and he didn’t know what to do with that at all. Finnick was struggling himself. They all were struggling. Haymitch at least only made people miserable because they cared, but if Johanna went on like this for much longer, that would cease to be a problem in her case. Most victors hadn’t won by being kind and understanding people. Most victors fell apart at some point, like Haymitch two years back, like Finnick right now, into little wasted bits.
“Everybody’s on his back because he isn’t keeping it together enough,” Johanna said harshly. “Oh no, how can he ever get tributes home alive if he acts like that. His stupid little district will lose even more food, as if they aren’t used to it, if he doesn’t behave like the proper fuck toy he’s supposed to be. He’s from Twelve, Finnick. They’ve only ever had one other victor before him, and he was a default win. Wanna know what happened to him?”
“Jo, nobody is saying Haymitch…”
“Hanged himself from a damn tree,” she hissed without letting him speak, and fuck, were those tears in her eyes? “‘Course he did. People die here, Finnick, it’s not fun and games for some of us. It’s not for us like it is for you and Brutus, or fucking Ralda Cavalera who everybody coddles like she’s still a baby girl because ooh, poor crazy Ralda’s scared of food. We don’t get to go home and have our precious hair ruffled by our old mentors and our family and friends and all the people who’re so fucking glad we take care of their dead kids for them. We don’t get to have our names carved in some monument. We have to make things right on our own. Do you have any idea what that feels like?”
Finnick thought of his brothers’ looks when they saw him at Capitol parties on the television, wearing bits of cloth that barely qualified as dress pants. He thought of Mags and all his shame skyrocketing whenever he was around her, and no, his name wasn’t on the damn monument because he hadn’t been a volunteer, he hadn’t saved a child or anybody. He thought of Niko Genero and how he was working on getting him home so that Cherry could make him a slut, too.
A bitter laugh escaped him. “I think I’ve got a vague idea.”
“Then have fun being miserable about what a good little whore you are while you have your mom to pat you on the back,” Johanna hissed. Off she was, hitting the elevator button with a force as if her life depended on it and shooting him a last look of fury through the glass door until she slid out of sight.
Finnick resisted a groan, resisted an urge to hit a wall or kick a chair or something, too. Instead, he turned on his heels and finally trudged off to his rooms. Mags was old, he thought. Mags was old and shouldn’t have to sit watch for that long just because he wasted his time with… He wasn’t even sure what this had been.
Johanna was mad at something, alright, more than usually, but hell if he knew what it could be about. There was something she had said that was nagging away at him already, something out of tune, but he just couldn’t point his finger to what it might have been…
It would kill him, Finnick thought miserably. It actually would kill him, only ever being barely able to prevent things from getting worse, and failing at that most of the time, too.
He had a pretty certain feeling that nothing of this little talk with Johanna had had anything to do with Haymitch or the Games.
on to chapter 3
Characters: Finnick Odair, also featuring Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason and Mags, as well as an ensemble of victors and OC
Pairings: Finnick/OC, Haymitch/OC, Johanna/OC - pre-Finnick/Annie
Warnings: forced prostitution, dub con / non con, explicit non-consensual bondage & spanking, depression, PTSD, alcoholism, suicide of minor characters and discussion of suicide, Games-related violence
Rating: adult
Wordcount: ~ 20,000 overall
Summary: It's the 71st Hunger Games, and Finnick Odair is ordered to mentor a boy he isn’t even sure he wants to bring home. With Johanna Mason alienating her friends and Haymitch Abernathy falling off the wagon, he finds himself struggling to not lose the last shreds of his sanity and soul.
A/N: Again, thank you very much, millari, for the beta, and I hope you and deathmallow will enjoy all the shout-outs referencing your fic and head canon.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Finnick hadn’t mentored before, not when doing so would have kept him away from the Capitol clients. That was the one thing preferable about mentoring, though the thought twisted something in his guts: As long as Niko stayed alive, he wouldn’t be receiving any of those notes about a name and date and mode of transport.
Great world.
Finnick only hoped that the Games would last long enough for him to get himself together, and that whatever happened, he wouldn’t start falling apart again the way he almost had with Mags on the train. Don’t cry in public, he firmly told himself when the limousine drove them from the train station towards downtown. Whatever you have to do.
Most of the other mentors had already gathered at the Training Center bar when they got there, happy enough to finally greet him as one of their own.
Finnick had listened to Mags and the others from Four often enough to not be all that nervous about the new responsibility - he knew the Games inside out, and there’d rarely ever been anything he hadn’t been naturally good at in his life. But it was still nice to be patted on the back and be hugged, to be offered to just ask any question at any time, and getting to know some of the more private victors, who hadn’t been to the Capitol since he’d won, was definitely a plus.
Well, maybe not Clarity Rudder, the thin-lipped stocky victor from One who’d won the Games right after his, and who gave him a long look top to bottom, as if she was inspecting him, contemplating what he looked like underneath his sparse clothes and not coming away with a positive conclusion. Finnick remembered her wreaking havoc with a katana at the bloodbath; the Capitol had called it the only highlight of those whole Games.
Clarity shook his hand and immediately let it drop, turning to continue her conversation with Cashmere as if he wasn’t standing there. Finnick blinked at his hand, and put it down.
“Girl talk,” Brutus announced. He threw an arm around him, as if they were suddenly best buddies instead of two men who’d barely ever met. Giving Finnick’s shoulder a surprisingly warm squeeze, he led him to the bar and ordered him a drink. “All ‘swords here, swords there’ with those two, as if that was all there is to a good Games. And about time you took a shot at mentoring, boy. A couple of us are going out for drinks tonight, if you want to come.
“Not you,” he added in Haymitch’s direction, who was so drunk he was pretty much asleep at the bar. “You’ve had quite enough, young man.”
Blearily raising his head, Haymitch crooked his hand in Brutus’ direction to show him a finger. Brutus laughed.
“Shame about his tributes again,” he still told Finnick later with a shake of his head. “Did you see them at the Reaping? It’s not a good Games if you just want to take them home and feed them up.”
Finnick had spent enough time at the Capitol to get used to the disturbing Games culture of Two, and proceeded to let Brutus’ passionate talk about coaching technique wash over him.
Brutus wasn’t as unsettling as the quiet woman with the stringy hair, who looked up at one point to stare at the buffet, pale and trembling from a desperate attempt of holding some sort of anxiety attack at bay. Various victors were watching her with apparent concern, as if she might burst.
“Ralda Cavalera from Six,” Mags informed him. “It’s good to see her back. She hasn’t mentored in years, although I know she corresponds with Haymitch and Wiress.” And, off-handedly, “She’d profit from meeting Annie,” which was a way of saying that Ralda Cavalera was as crazy as a bug. Finnick dimly remembered her having won one of the late Fifties, round-faced eighteen-year-old making a new alliance every day and convincing younger starving kids to eat her poisoned supplies.
Just looking at her fighting her anxiety made Finnick grow aware of his own disquiet all over again. So he excused himself from Mags to step onto the balcony for a minute and get some fresh air.
Instead of solitude, he got greeted by the distinctive shape of Johanna Mason, pushing a young man against a wall and kissing him as if she meant to crawl inside his throat.
“Men’s room in five,” she informed the boy when she shoved him away a second later; after a moment, Finnick recognized Kyle Akumi, District Five’s recent victor, looking part excited, part scared. “You better push that tongue right between my legs when I step into the room.
“There something you want?” she addressed Finnick before Kyle had managed to scramble, throwing him an unkind look. Though he had a clear sense that her words at Kyle had been meant to be heard. “Because I’m kind of busy warming up,” she added with a bitter kind of anger in her voice.
Finnick almost chuckled. Catching up with Johanna had to be better than taking a minute for himself. Snow had started selling them at roughly the same time; she was the closest friend he had at the Games. “Are you sure Kyle is legal this year? I didn’t know that was your type.”
“You wouldn’t believe how little I care.” Johanna shrugged tensely. Dressed in a revealing skirt with a slit that reached all the way up to her thigh, and the trademark endless heels, her stylist obviously had already played dress-up with her, making her look every bit the high-priced whore. They did that if they planned on putting you on a particularly tight schedule. Finnick, in his bare excuse of a pair of pants, should know.
Now though, he frowned. Johanna had always been brash, but there was an air of anger, almost fury surrounding her now, equal parts directed at the world at large and very much personally at him. Not like she was interested in bonding with anybody, never mind him.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Johanna said, “My tribute sucks, so I’ve got to get to into gear here for all the sex I’ll be having next week.”
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together. “You’ve got a problem me enjoying myself for a change, Odair?”
“Seems like a crappy way to be deflowered.” He shrugged.
Johanna’s lips thinned. “Tough,” she almost hissed it, pressing the words out through her teeth. “Me is who he’ll get.” She stalked past him then, making sure to push him aside with her shoulder on the way to the door. Compared to him, she was slender and small, and her balance was forever shot in those shoes, but there was still enough anger vibrating in all of her body for Finnick to instinctively retreat a step. Then, Johanna paused, and looked at him with unveiled contempt. “Is everything alright?” she repeated his question. “Everything’s peachy, Finnick. I’m off to another exciting round of getting it on with everybody I meet, and it looks like I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. So excuse me if I’ll see if sweet Kyle here will actually do what I want, which would be lovely, and maybe there’ll be days when I’m old when I won’t have to fucking care about what’s best for everybody but me.”
Her face twisted into something ugly. “Go serenade Panem with a poem, Finnick,” she said. “And happy fucking Hunger Games to you.”
Then she was off, and Finnick grabbed onto something blindly to, just, take a breath and hold it in, and slowly let it out, too many thoughts in his head to even understand them all.
The training week rushed by faster than Finnick had anticipated.
There was more to do than he’d assumed. Niko and Corina both showed off in training, working their way into the usual Career alliance each on their own, and keeping a healthy industrious distance from the other. Fifteen-year-old non-volunteer Corina wasn’t a natural fighter, but she was smart and of course, she had attended Games school; both Finnick and Niko knew she might as well become a surprise contender in the right arena. Meanwhile, Mags sent Finnick off to the numerous sponsoring events of the pre-Games. She was too old to suffer through all of them herself, she claimed, but Woof and Brutus and Haymitch - when he was sober enough - willingly took Finnick under their wing. Chatting up people for their money wasn’t that different from chatting them up to have sex. Four was a popular district. It had fans.
“Your tribute seems a little, shall I say naïve?” one sponsor said disdainfully, sipping at his cloudy red drink. “He is built as if he’s twenty-five, I’ll grant him that, but his eyes… As if he’s new to the Capitol, if you know what I mean.”
Where do you think we raise our tributes, at the Training Center bar?
“That should be the least of your worries,” Finnick purred, his fingers running up and down the straw of his cocktail. “I can assure you our Niko is very mature.”
“Good one,” Haymitch told him later, toasting him at the bar.
“Not cruising yourself?” Finnick asked and took a seat.
“Nah,” Haymitch said. “They all think I’m disgusting these days, lucky me.”
Finnick pictured becoming publically known as a drunk. Gossip news channels analyzing close-ups of his waistline to estimate the weight that he’d gained, to study the definition he’d lost and the embarrassment he’d become, like they’d been doing with Haymitch, these last two awful liquor-hazed years.
It wasn’t hard to see the appeal.
The light at Mentor Central was dimmed before the tributes entered the arena. The room looked much like Finnick had envisioned it from hearing older mentors talk - twelve consoles and twenty-four screens, twenty-three of which would turn blank at some point. But he somehow hadn’t expected that the lights would be dimmed, the faces of the mentors left and right of him covered in the flickering lights of the consoles. Finnick should have expected it, though. Children were scheduled to die here, after all, so the Capitol staged it like the spectacle it was, everywhere, even here where there were only victors, used to being humiliated in that way long since.
But that wouldn’t be like Snow, to ever let them breathe.
The victor feeds blared to life above their heads. Claudius Templesmith’s voice was laced with an ominous echo when he started moving through the countdown, reverberating at them twice, once through the speakers at the walls and once through the headset, from the arena.
Mentors leaned forward in their seat, and Finnick did so as well, taking in everything at once. Twenty-four tributes lined up around a marmoreal Cornucopia that held its contents close to its mouth this year, and white rocks high as walls all around them, almost entirely covered in moss.
The camera panned across what looked to be the ruins of a long lost city, except no city but the Capitol was built from so much stone in all of Panem, so it gave off a strangely artificial modern vibe. No forests or trees - half across the room, Gang Chen from Seven groaned in dismay at the sight. No mutts or animals that Finnick could make out. Just endless rows of fallen stone underneath the blue sky. At least, there was a small creek snaking through the arena, and the moss seemed moist as well. Plenty of places to hide, but none for the long run; a tribute with that strategy would have to stay on their feet.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen an arena this small in my life,” Beetee was remarking to his partner on Finnick’s left. “This could become an extraordinarily quick Games, I’d say.”
On Finnick’s right, Mags was nodding along. Leaning closer to Finnick while Templesmith reached forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, she was nibbling at a pretzel stick. “So sponsorship will be a priority this year. It’s good that they will be with the pack and gather supplies at the Cornucopia.” Finnick found himself nodding along. Survival skills wouldn’t save you in a city arena, bare like District Thirteen might have looked if they’d ever use new footage.
“Twenty,” Templesmith boomed. “Nineteen.”
There was no expression on Niko’s face now but determination, chin raised in what almost looked like defiance. Let there be fighting sticks, Finnick prayed, and then the gong went off and it was bloody and brutal and awful. There was an urge he’d always had to avert his eyes from that, a need to just not see, that his own Games had only served to intensify. It was different if it wasn’t him fighting, if all he could do was watch helplessly. But he was a mentor now, so he tried to ignore the voice in his head screaming no, and kept his eyes trained on the feed, no matter what it did to him inside.
The six Careers started shouting commands at each other across the field before the fight had even started, marching towards the center like one man. Niko found himself partnered with the One male, Corina trailed after Two female, and they even didn’t reach the Cornucopia first, they didn’t have to, overpowering the two girls already there by sheer intimidation. It was a classic Career district alliance this year, and the three male Careers, in particular, were tall and strong.
One of the kids with Haymitch’s hair foolishly tried to make a run for the center, just to die when she was tripped by a girl in Six yellow and stabbed by Nine. The Seven female was bleeding out on scarred concrete and nobody had time or inclination to fully put her out. On Finnick’s left, both Three mentors took their headsets off; after a while, Finnick heard Haymitch telling the room at large, “Well, that’s it for me,” before he got up as well.
It was quick. Most bloodbaths were quick; it just didn’t take that long to butcher a couple of kids without proper defense strategies. Finnick groaned when the only fighting sticks at the Cornucopia went to the Eleven tributes, who managed an orderly retreat at the side of the two Fives - a short look confirmed that Eleven’s Seeder was already conferring with Five’s Kyle. Niko didn’t hesitate, and grabbed some spears instead.
“You need to start calling up sponsors as well,” Mags told Finnick once it was done, the pack setting up camp in the remains of a basement while seven children lay dead on the screens all around. Strictly speaking, Finnick supposed Mags couldn’t give him orders about Niko, but he also knew even Brutus would heed her advice. “Do it right away. It will be a quick Games, and the alliance will be falling apart fast. You will have to pool with Two and One for now, but build a budget to use later if you can. Niko will need to be sent a better weapon.”
Finnick nodded along. “Do you think they’ll be in trouble because of Annie?” he asked. It happened sometimes, revenge kills on account of a previous victor, but if it wasn’t personal or helping a story unfold on the screen, the strongest contenders tended to be more strategically inclined than that.
Mags shook her head. “Annie won by swimming,” she said. “It was a very lucky win for her, boring to the audience.” Lucky in every sense of the word, Finnick understood. “She isn’t interesting enough for that narrative.”
Reassured, Finnick started making calls, telling Brutus and Cashmere with a gesture that he would join them at their consoles as soon as he had a budget at hand. Grimacing, he tried to ignore Clarity Rudder, who was glancing at him as if she was trying to decide where to bury his body.
Maybe she just really had a problem with beautiful people.
Finnick spent the rest of the day keeping an half an ear on the banter unfolding in the pack while he talked to potential sponsors, trying to make out a story they could start building for Niko, something for Templesmith and Flickerman to explore once they fed it to them in their mentoring interviews. It was sort of what Four was known for, keeping the Capitol entertained with swerve and guts and signature narratives, what Mags had worked on all her life. Woof had once said half of the typical Games narratives had been invented by Mags. She would tell the most outrageous stories about tributes in front of the camera without even having to lie.
Chatting up the sponsors on the phone, Finnick listened to his own velvet voice, marveling at how it had just suddenly sounded like that one day, so unlike his own.
It was late in the evening when an Avox hurried past him with a note. He wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t for Johanna’s low, “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. She hasn’t even made it to the morgue,” that made most mentors look.
Her face hardening into a mask, Johanna threw her headset off and took her long legs off the console. “Switch with you later,” she told Gang, her mentoring partner. “Looks like I’m just going to be terribly popular this year.” Finnick raised his eyebrows at her, but the furious look she gave him told him where to shove his inquiry. She generally looked furious at everybody who looked after her sauntering off.
That was when it suddenly hit Finnick, what it really meant, having a tribute in the running like this.
Mouth dry, he looked up at the screen, where night was falling and the pack was making camp, starting a fire and joking with each other while Niko… flirted with the One male. Male. Huh. It was a beautiful romantic image of camaraderie that would make it onto the recap tape no doubt.
Home at Four, he knew, people would be lighting a lantern in their front windows right now. They had a volunteer this year, and he needed to be shown district respect.
And the longer Finnick kept that volunteer alive, the longer Snow couldn’t send Finnick off to see clients.
The closer Finnick dragged Niko to becoming a whore …
No. He wouldn’t look at it like that. He wouldn’t.
Except, how could he not?
It was the evening of day two. The alliance between Five and Eleven proved strong, forcing the Career pack closer together, keeping Niko and Corina safe for now.
Finnick had just told Mags he’d fetch something to eat and a shower, when District Six’ Ralda cornered him on the way out of the room. She gave him a twitchy nod towards a spot near the coffee table; he snatched a batch of cookies from it and started nibbling at one, until he noticed she was staring at it with a strange look of nausea in her eyes. Clearing his voice, he folded his arms behind his back.
Ralda visibly regrouped.
“There’s a problem I need you to help me with,” she said, voice surprisingly steady, if unused. “I’d ask Chaff, but Chaff’s home this year and he was never sold anyway.” Just the opener he loved, Finnick thought. Being the man to approach because of how he got around. “They sent Haymitch to remake once his tributes were dead.”
“What?” he asked, because while that wasn’t the most dramatic twist he’d have expected, he still hadn’t expected it. “Didn’t they clean him up before the parade like everybody?” A haircut, a fashion update and a shave, that happened to all the mentors who weren’t sold for sex, as far as Finnick knew. Loss of body hair was reserved for the tributes and the whores.
Ralda gave him a look. “I’m saying Haymitch was sent to remake, Finnick,” she said. “It was on very short notice. He’s got an appointment across town an hour from now.”
“But he’s, what…”
“Thirty-seven, yes, and no, he’s not the finest stallion in our stables, but there you have it anyway. Maybe the client isn’t rich enough to afford someone like you. Or even, you know. Somebody like me.” Nothing much Finnick could say to that beside concede the point, too drained for a quip on how yes, he sure was a sweet piece of sugar and did she want a lick? There never were a lot of victors on the whoring market at once, just three or four beside him this season, as far as he knew. It was rare that victors became this popular - the last one before him had been Bunny Noxton from Ten, who’d won the 56th and was still too busy seeing regulars to mentor much even now. Caramel Doll from Four had been three years before her - a good Games decade, people called it. He’d retired when Finnick appeared on the market, because they had the same hair color and there was only room for one of them, apparently. Sometimes, victors maintained regulars for a couple of years until that dried up, and there was the occasional pervert, but overall, the Capitol just didn’t like real adults. Those were sold for conversation and company, for the occasional appearance on a television show, yes, but not for sex.
But as Ralda had implied, beauty base zero wasn’t necessary for conversation and company.
So much for Haymitch being safe.
Ralda had wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture, lowering her voice so that the bugs wouldn’t catch all of her words. “We all know how it is, Finnick. It doesn’t get easier the more often you have to do it. It gets worse. If you suddenly have to do it after so many years have passed, it’s… it’s hard. And you know Haymitch, he… he gets drunk. He deals badly. He’s got an alcohol problem.” It struck Finnick, how her voice had turned stilted at what was a statement of the glaringly obvious to him. Then it occurred to him that Ralda had been around since before Haymitch had self-destructed. She had to hate sacrificing another piece of his dignity by saying it aloud. “I need you to talk to him,” Ralda continued. “You need to make sure he gets through it in one piece. He goes there drunk tonight and pulls a stunt, they’ll make his district pay, and that’ll be bad. I can talk him down later if need be, but first I need to make sure that he wants to make it through intact in the first place.”
Finnick’s mind was still racing to catch up with that. He knew Haymitch, knew him fairly well. Haymitch had taken him aside quickly when he’d returned to the Capitol at sixteen, when Mags was off mentoring, coaching him on who’d sent him that trident back then and how to behave to turn that person’s mind off fucking Finnick and how that was important. Years later, Finnick had heard all about Septima Coddlebrick’s special tastes, and he was still grateful that he’d never had to get close to that particular toy chest. But still - Haymitch was comparatively old. He’d been drinking too much for ages, Finnick understood, but it had only been two years or so since it had become impossible to hide from the public. Two years ago had been when Haymitch had shown up at the Twelve Reaping plastered, taking the microphone and attempting to give a little speech that thankfully had been too garbled for anybody to understand. He’d been drunk every day Finnick had laid eyes on him since.
Haymitch had lost both his tributes yesterday. Chances were he’d gone off to celebrate that achievement with a bottle. Finnick knew nothing of Haymitch’s life outside the Games and he knew little about alcohol abuse, but he knew asking Haymitch to not drink would be like asking a tribute on a winning streak to not kill.
“And why do you think I’m the right person for that job again?” he said, doubt coloring his voice. “I mean, I’m half his age. Why don’t you talk to him yourself first?” Somebody as slender as Ralda had to have done it for a year or two. She was sickeningly bony, so she’d have been perfect for the Capitol.
She grimaced, following his thoughts. “I was in no state to be left alone with Capitol citizens after my Games, I can assure you. They were too afraid I’d… contaminate their lunch for fun.”
Finnick blinked.
“And would you have?” he couldn’t resist but ask.
Instead of laughing, Ralda raised her chin, and looked away.
“Sorry,” Finnick said.
She sighed.
“Haymitch would just brush me off, Finnick. It’s a handy excuse, but he’d just say I don’t know what it’s like. He wouldn’t be that rude with you. He thinks a lot of you.” Her bony shoulders dropped. “You talk to him? We need Haymitch around in one piece.” She hesitated. “I need him in one piece,” she admitted reluctantly. “It’s just this one last set of appointments, probably just through the Games. He’d never forgive himself.”
Right, Finnick got back to his earlier assessment. Qualified to help because of how I’m such a whore.
It made him angry, suddenly.
I’m twenty, he wanted to inform Ralda. He wanted to scream it, actually, right at her face. Who did she think she was? They made me gut people with spears when I was a kid. Now they make me fuck people, twice my age, who I don’t even like. I can’t help anybody. I can’t do any of it. I’m not even sure I’ll make it through this Games alive. Ralda was right in one thing. It didn’t get easier over time. It got worse, until Finnick dreaded every day even at home, because the Games got closer every day. He started forgetting how to imagine what sex should feel like, and when he managed anyway, he wanted to cry as if he was a child. He was the last person in the world who could convince Haymitch Abernathy to stay sober. He was fighting not to be Haymitch Abernathy, hiding at the beach with his tridents all those days, and breaking into those tears as if he was crazy.
But Haymitch would do the same for him. Most victors would if they were asked. Finnick knew he couldn’t say no. Not if there was a chance that Ralda was right, and there was actually something he could do. He could hardly refuse.
“Of course. At least I’ll try,” he said with a sigh. “Is he back yet?”
“He’s on the roof,” Ralda said and reached out with her frail hand to pat his arm, then stopped herself midair as if waiting to see if he would flinch away or leash out; when he didn’t, she resumed the motion. A habit only a victor would think up.
We’re all damaged, he thought. We’re all of us in ruins. All in a different way.
The touch felt light like that of silk, barely making an impact. “Good boy,” Ralda muttered, as if she felt a hundred years old as well.
What they all sounded like, he miserably thought.
Maybe that was where Seneca Crane had taken the inspiration for his arena this year. Except for how their ruins never got the chance to get covered by anything, moss or scar tissue or otherwise.
But Finnick didn’t want to talk to Haymitch, Haymitch who’d won the year Finnick was born. It was too easy for him, who liked Haymitch, to picture all the things Haymitch could have been, if he hadn’t been reaped. Haymitch still tended to command a room whenever he forgot that a victor wasn’t allowed. His temper picked the weirdest times to resurface, sheer physical strength still made him dangerous in that way every victor knew to respect, and he held fierce pride in his futile little starving district that Finnick couldn’t but admire. In another world, Finnick thought Haymitch would have been a skipper, protective of his crew until death and deserving every bit of loyalty they offered in return.
The Games didn’t produce leaders though, he thought. They didn’t even produce plain killers. A killer could atone for their crime and pay off that debt and die with a bit of relief. It wasn’t that easy for a victor, who’d lived when others had deserved it so much more. It wasn’t like you were making a sacrifice, if you were only ever trying to stay alive.
Haymitch was leaning on the railing on the roof, right at the blind spot where the surveillance wouldn’t catch any words, swanky silver silk shirt falling loosely over smooth leather pants. It looked surprisingly good on him; ‘not starved’ was certainly the way to go with the ladies in the districts. Finnick knew, even before he stepped up to him and leisurely lounged against the railing himself, that Haymitch’s shirt would be fashionably unbuttoned at the top. He’d be clean-shaven and his hair would look as if his unruly dark curls were meant to fall that casually. It was a popular look this season. Beauty base zero had been reached and explored. Haymitch didn’t look like a killer. He didn’t quite look Capitol either, but like a luxury good from District One. Like Finnick did, too.
Like a collaborator.
“Surprised I never see you play around with the force field up here like the others,” he idly said, trying to chase the foul taste in his mouth away. “I’d have thought you’d enjoy that, seeing how it’s something like your specialty.”
“Been a while since I’ve enjoyed my clever ideas flying back in my face,” Haymitch said with a perfectly straight face, just to break into a hysterical laugh the next moment, slightly unhinged in that way he’d become. It was then that Finnick was hit by a wave of thick liquor breath, and he swallowed down a grimace, because obviously Ralda was right: Haymitch wasn’t dealing well with this, and Haymitch was drunk. Of course, Haymitch was drunk.
But what in the world was Finnick supposed to do about it?
Dropping his casual stance, he decided to try cutting the bullshit. “You know you’ll have hell to pay if you don’t start sobering up just about now.”
“So they keep telling me,” Haymitch lightly agreed, taking a sip from a flask Finnick hadn’t noticed was dangling between his fingers.
“Well. It’s just this one more client, right? They probably won’t want you for longer than the Games. I doubt you’ll have a renaissance and get back into the saddle full time.” Not at his age, not without losing some pounds first. Certainly not as long as he didn’t start commanding public attention by producing victors. That thought made Finnick uncomfortable, though, reminding him of his own thoughts, making him wonder if Haymitch had ever led any promising tribute into a trap so that the Capitol would keep ignoring him. Haymitch was… Haymitch. He was obviously a better man than Finnick.
Another thought occurred to Finnick, filling him with a new sense of alarm, because Ralda hadn’t actually said it. Clearing his voice, he asked, delicately, “You’ve had to do it before, right? This isn’t a first?”
“What?” Haymitch looked at him like he thought Finnick had cracked, the notion apparently just that inconceivable for him. Then he snorted, and took another sip. “Never been a Finnick Odair, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Not that I’m not trying my mightiest to suppress it, but yeah. I used to turn my share of heads. Served the Capitol well enough for three or four years, before your district’s Caramel came around. Us lesser pretty boys were old news after him.”
“Why do you think that client wants you now?”
“Daddy kink?” Haymitch cheerfully shot back.
Finnick made sure to let his inner pain at that one show when he shuddered, and the other man laughed bitterly, clapping him on the back as if Finnick was the one to comfort.
“Don’t scowl. You wouldn’t want to get wrinkles, I’m sure.”
“The others are scared that you’ll do something stupid tonight.” Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that annoyance started coloring his voice. It was too much. Why him? He’d just screw it up, and people would die. “We all know you have bad ideas when you get wasted. You’ve made it for twenty years already. You can’t get addicted to that stuff now, it’ll just kill you. You think Snow is going to let you get away with it? You?”
It was futile, of course. His words hit Haymitch like they’d hit the force field, bouncing off. It seemed that all they did was give him a reason to have a look at his watch, screwing the lid on his flask, hiding it in a pocket of his pants underneath his fancy shirt. He made sure not to tear the silk, Finnick observed with loathing. He’d grown up on a shrimper and Haymitch had grown up in a forest or a coal mine or something, but both of them knew not to put a tear into the damn silk. Haymitch might finally have been hurting too much to give a fuck anymore, but the Capitol had still broken both of them in for good.
“Remake’s given me something to cover the smell, no matter how much I drink,” Haymitch informed him. “Fancy little chewing gum thing. Plenty people drink a lot and hide it well, you know. How do you think that Capitol drunks do it? So, no.” He smirked. “I’m not going to be stepping off the platform tonight, I think. We’ll see about tomorrow.
“But tell Ralda I appreciate the concern.”
“Plenty of people stop drinking altogether,” Finnick stated the obvious, letting go of the railing in frustration.
Haymitch shrugged. “Doubt that I could.”
With those words, he threw Finnick what he must have thought was a sea salute and sauntered off, vanishing between the shadows of the roof. Then the door to the stairway could be heard falling shut. Skipper, my ass, Finnick thought, angry, because he knew he should just stop using his mind altogether, making ridiculous worlds like that one up. Yes, it was killing Haymitch to go to that appointment. Surprise, surprise. Maybe Ralda was right and Haymitch was as good as dead. So what? Wishing had never made anybody happier. All of it, Haymitch and Ralda Cavalera made him mad and he was trembling again, incapable of doing anything to stop it, turning to stare at the Capitol skyline through the force field that was invisible and still always there, and clasping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking dare.
Haymitch didn’t have a choice. Finnick didn’t have a choice either, not about what kind of person he was becoming, whether he’d be a drunk like Haymitch, or skittish like Caramel or just convince himself it was all so grand like Brutus. There were so many things he hated in his life, crying seemed like the only possible reaction exactly because he hated the tears so much.
You do have a choice about whether or not you’ll help Niko get home alive, he thought, hating himself even more because, yeah. Great.
Maybe when it came down to it, he was just a plain child killer after all. Maybe the rest didn’t matter that much because that one overruled all.
To make matters worse, Jo was waiting for him when the elevator opened to the floor of Four. She was sitting on the carpet, leaning against the wall across the hallway, her tight skirt rolled up all the way around her waistline as if it had been in the way of a more comfortable position. She wore lace underneath. An Avox walked by carrying a stash of towels, unable to suppress his rapid blink when she rose without bothering to smooth it down, and she threw a kiss and a wink after him. Whippings for ogling Capitol meat visibly flashed before his inner eye; he paled and fled.
Finnick wasn’t in the mood. “What the hell, Jo?”
“Might as well flaunt it if you’ve got it,” she said, unconcerned. Equally unconcerned about all the skin she was showing Finnick, she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her blouse was only half buttoned. “I hear you had a little chat with everybody’s favorite drunk.”
“Yes, as little good as it did. Mentor Central thinks he’s pretty much on his way to get himself killed.” Or cost his district a couple of food rations and yeah, Ralda was right - knowing Haymitch, that would hit him even harder than having to take it up the orifice of the season.
Johanna frowned. “And are they right?”
“He’s an addict, Jo.” Finnick sighed. He was too tired for this, and not just from the long day at Mentor Central. “What do you expect? He’s burnt out, he’s done. He’s a drunk, he couldn’t stop if he wanted to and I don’t think he’s all that interested in trying. Chances are he’ll be dead in a puddle of vomit someday soon.”
“Oh, so it’s all his own fault now?”
“Huh?” He raised his eyebrows at her accusing tone of voice.
Johanna pushed herself off the wall, all grace like a cat in her lush green dress and with glitter in her spiky hair, even now in her rumpled state. She was perfectly beautiful in her own way, Finnick had often thought, and more cynically - just beautiful enough for the Capitol. Now, though, she was angry, like she’d been angry all through the week, and he didn’t know what to do with that at all. Finnick was struggling himself. They all were struggling. Haymitch at least only made people miserable because they cared, but if Johanna went on like this for much longer, that would cease to be a problem in her case. Most victors hadn’t won by being kind and understanding people. Most victors fell apart at some point, like Haymitch two years back, like Finnick right now, into little wasted bits.
“Everybody’s on his back because he isn’t keeping it together enough,” Johanna said harshly. “Oh no, how can he ever get tributes home alive if he acts like that. His stupid little district will lose even more food, as if they aren’t used to it, if he doesn’t behave like the proper fuck toy he’s supposed to be. He’s from Twelve, Finnick. They’ve only ever had one other victor before him, and he was a default win. Wanna know what happened to him?”
“Jo, nobody is saying Haymitch…”
“Hanged himself from a damn tree,” she hissed without letting him speak, and fuck, were those tears in her eyes? “‘Course he did. People die here, Finnick, it’s not fun and games for some of us. It’s not for us like it is for you and Brutus, or fucking Ralda Cavalera who everybody coddles like she’s still a baby girl because ooh, poor crazy Ralda’s scared of food. We don’t get to go home and have our precious hair ruffled by our old mentors and our family and friends and all the people who’re so fucking glad we take care of their dead kids for them. We don’t get to have our names carved in some monument. We have to make things right on our own. Do you have any idea what that feels like?”
Finnick thought of his brothers’ looks when they saw him at Capitol parties on the television, wearing bits of cloth that barely qualified as dress pants. He thought of Mags and all his shame skyrocketing whenever he was around her, and no, his name wasn’t on the damn monument because he hadn’t been a volunteer, he hadn’t saved a child or anybody. He thought of Niko Genero and how he was working on getting him home so that Cherry could make him a slut, too.
A bitter laugh escaped him. “I think I’ve got a vague idea.”
“Then have fun being miserable about what a good little whore you are while you have your mom to pat you on the back,” Johanna hissed. Off she was, hitting the elevator button with a force as if her life depended on it and shooting him a last look of fury through the glass door until she slid out of sight.
Finnick resisted a groan, resisted an urge to hit a wall or kick a chair or something, too. Instead, he turned on his heels and finally trudged off to his rooms. Mags was old, he thought. Mags was old and shouldn’t have to sit watch for that long just because he wasted his time with… He wasn’t even sure what this had been.
Johanna was mad at something, alright, more than usually, but hell if he knew what it could be about. There was something she had said that was nagging away at him already, something out of tune, but he just couldn’t point his finger to what it might have been…
It would kill him, Finnick thought miserably. It actually would kill him, only ever being barely able to prevent things from getting worse, and failing at that most of the time, too.
He had a pretty certain feeling that nothing of this little talk with Johanna had had anything to do with Haymitch or the Games.
on to chapter 3