THG ficlets, second batch (Mags, Gale, Lyme, Haymitch/Finnick)
Crossposted half of these on tumblr but not the other half, used shiny new Johanna icon just because I could. All from the Spin Control 'verse. Apologies if my writing should sometimes sound just as clogged as my nose feels, since I still have the cold of doom that might actually be the flu in disguise.
Mags & co. at home while Finnick is in D12 for marble-sharp:
Most of the inhabitants of Victor’s Rock thought that Snow had forced Finnick to move to District 12. They weren’t clear on why the President had gone to the trouble of making it appear as if it had been Finnick’s own idea, a little uncomfortable about how Finnick always played his part so shockingly well, but understanding how it went, nonetheless. The Odair house was now empty, his family had left, the highest cottage on the cliff now a ghost. It would remain empty, of course, new victors would be asked to pick another house, for in some cases in the history of the Games, punishments had ended and those forced to leave had returned.
Mags sighed when she checked her mailbox, sorting through advertisements from Capitol marketers and the escort’s monthly media report, but no news yet again from District 12. It had been a month, no mail at all from Finnick since. She knew he was still alone; Haymitch would be released from his hospital a week from now, the Capitol news had reported this morning.
Give him time to wrap that head of his around what it all means, she’d advised Finnick’s father when she met him in town. When he approached her for answers, he had undoubtedly been fueled by that misguided hope that some of them had, that old Mags would know what to do. That was nonsense, of course, but Mags thought it calmed them to think her old and wise. Undoubtedly, Mr. Odair had thought she meant, what Snow has made him do. But Mags had been there that night of that television show, she knew what had really gone down. And even without that, Mags was a hard one to fool.
She couldn’t say that she approved, not when Finnick’s choice had so obviously been driven by pain, and Mags didn’t think that was a good reason to do anything at all. But she thought that Finnick had to remember how to live with himself before he could remember how to live with anybody else. It had taken her over two decades to achieve it herself. So she knew a month was too short a time to start expecting a letter that told her he had. But she still checked her mail every day.
What do the D2 victors think of Finnick moving to D12 for lorataprose, Lyme & ensemble:
“It could have been worse,” Emilia Croaker stated rather calmly, blinking at the diagrams and figures projected onto the screen on the wall. Croaker wasn’t a victor, she was a marketing consultant, but nobody in Games Command had ever been as stupid as to think they could do without those. “For that, we have District Twelve to thank. A whole 25% of media attention were focused on Finnick Odair, additional screen time was tied up by Haymitch Abernathy’s... personal issues. This left considerably less screen time for District Two. Approximately half of the marketing attention left was fueled into One male, the favorite this year. The rest was divided between us and the rest of the tributes as a group. You can see here the corresponding click rates analysis of the tribute pages on the Networks.”
“I don’t care if it could have been worse,” Pythia Lambwick stated, who had won the 24th Games and then made Games Command, having held the position of Chief for over twenty years. She was old enough to have been allowed to keep the scar that ran all across her wrinkled face, left eye to right cheek; it didn’t exactly make her look happier now. “This was our mistake, and I will hold us responsible for it. We can hardly base our reputation marketing on the hope that Odair will pull a stunt conveniently every time we fuck up.”
“And yet we're already planning on pointing fingers at Twelve the next time it happens,” Brutus sing-songed into his water glass, low enough for only Lyme to here.
Lyme, who was very much aware that most of the blame of the Apollinara disaster would squarely be placed on her shoulders in the end no matter what, resisted an urge to grimace at him. Two was usually too much of a power house to have to worry about media spin control. Producing another victor every few years, getting Brutus or ‘Baria on camera to nudge the reporters in the right directions, usually was enough. They didn’t need to leak the other districts’ dirty laundry to the press to divert any negative attention from Two. None of the victors liked doing that; many of them were friends with victors from the other districts, and none of them would look forward to the atmosphere in Mentor Central if ever it was revealed that that was how Two played the Games. But this was the ninth marketing meeting she had attended since the Capitol had laughed at their panicking tribute, and damage control wasn’t concluded just yet. Lyme didn’t have to like it. Give it two or three years to try and repair their reputation with strong tributes winning a Games fair and square. If that failed, they had a lot of other means. Except Lyme had fucked up, and nobody would listen to her.
Listening to Croaker’s analysis with only half her attention, Lyme glanced down the briefing table with an uncomfortable feeling in her guts. Lyra Ingram was seated at the far end - 37th Games, substitute mentor for Twelve for seven years. An aging woman now, her graying hair was still cut short enough to not get in the way of a fight, and her face was hard as a statue’s, impossible to read. She had mentored a tribute to victory only once, and it hadn’t been a tribute from Two. Lyra hadn’t been banished to Twelve for nothing; she’d never made her district proud, and people liked to pretend that she didn’t exist. Lyme hadn’t once seen her at a meeting before; nobody would have wanted her to attend.
But Two had fucked up good, and if it fucked up again, Command wouldn’t hesitate to exploit another district if it meant it drew attention away from Two. It was a good contingency plan, even Lyme had to admit, if she liked it or not. And if there was anything that could be used against Twelve, that woman would know.
Nothing about the Hunger Games was ever fair. Lyme tried telling herself that.
Haymitch/Finnick, spring thaw for lorataprose, set around chapter 10/11:
When spring thaw came around, Finnick seemed to hate it even more than he hated the snow. His feet got soaked when he stepped into puddles he just didn’t expect to be there, and Haymitch surprised himself by thinking he had no fucking clue how that man had ever survived a Games, while laughing at him.
He said as much when he grabbed Finnick’s arm on their way back from town, bodily hauling him out of the way of another hole in the badly maintained street. Maybe a fancy district such as Four just didn’t have those.
“Funny,” Finnick said, rolling his eyes. “My arena had a storm, I’ll have you know.”
“Get out of those shoes and get dry,” Haymitch said. He didn’t think anybody would be as stupid as to not do that first thing, excepting their friendly neighbors from the Capitol, but Finnick was opening Haymitch’s eyes to entirely new levels of ignorance, so it paid to be safe. It had taken Finnick long enough to get out of his funk this winter, he didn’t need him to catch a cold on top of that.
It should have gotten Haymitch’s mind reeling, thinking of arenas such as the one last year, the one he’d only gotten glimpses of when they let him watch the Games in the hospital. It should have made him obsess just a little about how to survive that Games, about how that arena probably wouldn’t have been for him, or worse yet, about Finnick in those Games. Fucking game of chance.
But it didn’t. All Haymitch thought was that he might have to accompany Finnick home and bully him into a shower or something, because obviously the kid had no idea how to take care of himself. Also, telling him that could end up pretty funny.
Haymitch had no complaints about spring thaw this year.
What made Gale decide that Finnick wasn't a threat for dorsalfinnick, set around chapter 14/15 (with excluuuusive spoilers for the upcoming chapters :p)
“I don’t like it,” Kat said, cleaning her knives. “He doesn’t have to care if his tributes survive. It’s not like they’re from his district! And he sleeps around all the time. Everybody knows.”
“Yes,” Gale replied. “But I think he’s got a plan.”
“A plan to get home maybe,” Kat huffed. “After he’s seen what Twelve is really like.”
Gale suppressed a grimace, sitting down on the trunk next to Kat and holding out a clean cloth for her to exchange for the oiled one she had used to tend to her knives. It was just far away enough from the fence that the patrols wouldn’t see. No reason to venture further out just for maintenance work.
He still didn’t know if it had been a good idea to introduce Kat to Odair, not even after it had become clear that his hunch had worked out - man with muscle like that needed protein more than he needed to suck up to Cray.
Though truth was, he hadn’t seen Odair sucking up to anybody yet, and that gave him pause.
Kat put down the knife with a sigh, throwing him an almost apologetic grimace. “I don’t get him,” she said. “I don’t think I want to.”
“I know,” Gale said, kicking at a rock with the tip of his shoe.
Gale didn’t get Finnick Odair either, Odair who was seen every day working out as if he had another Games to prepare. Odair who seemed like an okay person if Gale talked to him, who didn’t bat an eyelash at Gale’s prices although they both knew Gale had him pay extra - it had paid for Posy’s new dress. Odair who’d left for the Capitol this Wintermas and proceeded to fuck his way across the mandatory television broadcasts - and what disgusted Gale about that most was that he didn’t even seem to pick them for looks, just for the screen time opportunity.
Gale thought Odair had sort of tried to let him know that all wasn’t what it seemed in the Capitol, but even though he believed him that still didn’t mean he liked how the man conducted his personal affairs and acted like that had shit to do with anything.
“Maybe we don’t have to like him to trust that he’s on our side in the Games,” he eventually said, not sure where he was even going with that.
“Oh come on,” Kat said, reaching for another knife.
The thing was, Kat was pretty similar to Gale, but they were different in a lot of ways, too. Gale knew that Kat wasn’t angry the same way he was, like when he woke up in the morning and he thought about the Capitol and what it all meant and he just wanted to shake, that was how furious he got. Kat didn’t do that, she’d rather keep her head down and be safe, she and Prim. She didn’t want to act.
But sometimes, Gale thought that Odair did, that he knew exactly how Gale felt.
There was a sort of vague plan taking shape in his head when he thought about all that… Gale was nothing if not practical. He forever wondered how a thing could help him.
“What?” Kat said, glancing at his face as though she already knew that she wouldn’t like the answer one bit.
“Nothing,” Gale said, shrugging it off.
He had a feeling that he would be better not to tell; so she wouldn’t be hurt, if it went wrong.
Mags & co. at home while Finnick is in D12 for marble-sharp:
Most of the inhabitants of Victor’s Rock thought that Snow had forced Finnick to move to District 12. They weren’t clear on why the President had gone to the trouble of making it appear as if it had been Finnick’s own idea, a little uncomfortable about how Finnick always played his part so shockingly well, but understanding how it went, nonetheless. The Odair house was now empty, his family had left, the highest cottage on the cliff now a ghost. It would remain empty, of course, new victors would be asked to pick another house, for in some cases in the history of the Games, punishments had ended and those forced to leave had returned.
Mags sighed when she checked her mailbox, sorting through advertisements from Capitol marketers and the escort’s monthly media report, but no news yet again from District 12. It had been a month, no mail at all from Finnick since. She knew he was still alone; Haymitch would be released from his hospital a week from now, the Capitol news had reported this morning.
Give him time to wrap that head of his around what it all means, she’d advised Finnick’s father when she met him in town. When he approached her for answers, he had undoubtedly been fueled by that misguided hope that some of them had, that old Mags would know what to do. That was nonsense, of course, but Mags thought it calmed them to think her old and wise. Undoubtedly, Mr. Odair had thought she meant, what Snow has made him do. But Mags had been there that night of that television show, she knew what had really gone down. And even without that, Mags was a hard one to fool.
She couldn’t say that she approved, not when Finnick’s choice had so obviously been driven by pain, and Mags didn’t think that was a good reason to do anything at all. But she thought that Finnick had to remember how to live with himself before he could remember how to live with anybody else. It had taken her over two decades to achieve it herself. So she knew a month was too short a time to start expecting a letter that told her he had. But she still checked her mail every day.
What do the D2 victors think of Finnick moving to D12 for lorataprose, Lyme & ensemble:
“It could have been worse,” Emilia Croaker stated rather calmly, blinking at the diagrams and figures projected onto the screen on the wall. Croaker wasn’t a victor, she was a marketing consultant, but nobody in Games Command had ever been as stupid as to think they could do without those. “For that, we have District Twelve to thank. A whole 25% of media attention were focused on Finnick Odair, additional screen time was tied up by Haymitch Abernathy’s... personal issues. This left considerably less screen time for District Two. Approximately half of the marketing attention left was fueled into One male, the favorite this year. The rest was divided between us and the rest of the tributes as a group. You can see here the corresponding click rates analysis of the tribute pages on the Networks.”
“I don’t care if it could have been worse,” Pythia Lambwick stated, who had won the 24th Games and then made Games Command, having held the position of Chief for over twenty years. She was old enough to have been allowed to keep the scar that ran all across her wrinkled face, left eye to right cheek; it didn’t exactly make her look happier now. “This was our mistake, and I will hold us responsible for it. We can hardly base our reputation marketing on the hope that Odair will pull a stunt conveniently every time we fuck up.”
“And yet we're already planning on pointing fingers at Twelve the next time it happens,” Brutus sing-songed into his water glass, low enough for only Lyme to here.
Lyme, who was very much aware that most of the blame of the Apollinara disaster would squarely be placed on her shoulders in the end no matter what, resisted an urge to grimace at him. Two was usually too much of a power house to have to worry about media spin control. Producing another victor every few years, getting Brutus or ‘Baria on camera to nudge the reporters in the right directions, usually was enough. They didn’t need to leak the other districts’ dirty laundry to the press to divert any negative attention from Two. None of the victors liked doing that; many of them were friends with victors from the other districts, and none of them would look forward to the atmosphere in Mentor Central if ever it was revealed that that was how Two played the Games. But this was the ninth marketing meeting she had attended since the Capitol had laughed at their panicking tribute, and damage control wasn’t concluded just yet. Lyme didn’t have to like it. Give it two or three years to try and repair their reputation with strong tributes winning a Games fair and square. If that failed, they had a lot of other means. Except Lyme had fucked up, and nobody would listen to her.
Listening to Croaker’s analysis with only half her attention, Lyme glanced down the briefing table with an uncomfortable feeling in her guts. Lyra Ingram was seated at the far end - 37th Games, substitute mentor for Twelve for seven years. An aging woman now, her graying hair was still cut short enough to not get in the way of a fight, and her face was hard as a statue’s, impossible to read. She had mentored a tribute to victory only once, and it hadn’t been a tribute from Two. Lyra hadn’t been banished to Twelve for nothing; she’d never made her district proud, and people liked to pretend that she didn’t exist. Lyme hadn’t once seen her at a meeting before; nobody would have wanted her to attend.
But Two had fucked up good, and if it fucked up again, Command wouldn’t hesitate to exploit another district if it meant it drew attention away from Two. It was a good contingency plan, even Lyme had to admit, if she liked it or not. And if there was anything that could be used against Twelve, that woman would know.
Nothing about the Hunger Games was ever fair. Lyme tried telling herself that.
Haymitch/Finnick, spring thaw for lorataprose, set around chapter 10/11:
When spring thaw came around, Finnick seemed to hate it even more than he hated the snow. His feet got soaked when he stepped into puddles he just didn’t expect to be there, and Haymitch surprised himself by thinking he had no fucking clue how that man had ever survived a Games, while laughing at him.
He said as much when he grabbed Finnick’s arm on their way back from town, bodily hauling him out of the way of another hole in the badly maintained street. Maybe a fancy district such as Four just didn’t have those.
“Funny,” Finnick said, rolling his eyes. “My arena had a storm, I’ll have you know.”
“Get out of those shoes and get dry,” Haymitch said. He didn’t think anybody would be as stupid as to not do that first thing, excepting their friendly neighbors from the Capitol, but Finnick was opening Haymitch’s eyes to entirely new levels of ignorance, so it paid to be safe. It had taken Finnick long enough to get out of his funk this winter, he didn’t need him to catch a cold on top of that.
It should have gotten Haymitch’s mind reeling, thinking of arenas such as the one last year, the one he’d only gotten glimpses of when they let him watch the Games in the hospital. It should have made him obsess just a little about how to survive that Games, about how that arena probably wouldn’t have been for him, or worse yet, about Finnick in those Games. Fucking game of chance.
But it didn’t. All Haymitch thought was that he might have to accompany Finnick home and bully him into a shower or something, because obviously the kid had no idea how to take care of himself. Also, telling him that could end up pretty funny.
Haymitch had no complaints about spring thaw this year.
What made Gale decide that Finnick wasn't a threat for dorsalfinnick, set around chapter 14/15 (with excluuuusive spoilers for the upcoming chapters :p)
“I don’t like it,” Kat said, cleaning her knives. “He doesn’t have to care if his tributes survive. It’s not like they’re from his district! And he sleeps around all the time. Everybody knows.”
“Yes,” Gale replied. “But I think he’s got a plan.”
“A plan to get home maybe,” Kat huffed. “After he’s seen what Twelve is really like.”
Gale suppressed a grimace, sitting down on the trunk next to Kat and holding out a clean cloth for her to exchange for the oiled one she had used to tend to her knives. It was just far away enough from the fence that the patrols wouldn’t see. No reason to venture further out just for maintenance work.
He still didn’t know if it had been a good idea to introduce Kat to Odair, not even after it had become clear that his hunch had worked out - man with muscle like that needed protein more than he needed to suck up to Cray.
Though truth was, he hadn’t seen Odair sucking up to anybody yet, and that gave him pause.
Kat put down the knife with a sigh, throwing him an almost apologetic grimace. “I don’t get him,” she said. “I don’t think I want to.”
“I know,” Gale said, kicking at a rock with the tip of his shoe.
Gale didn’t get Finnick Odair either, Odair who was seen every day working out as if he had another Games to prepare. Odair who seemed like an okay person if Gale talked to him, who didn’t bat an eyelash at Gale’s prices although they both knew Gale had him pay extra - it had paid for Posy’s new dress. Odair who’d left for the Capitol this Wintermas and proceeded to fuck his way across the mandatory television broadcasts - and what disgusted Gale about that most was that he didn’t even seem to pick them for looks, just for the screen time opportunity.
Gale thought Odair had sort of tried to let him know that all wasn’t what it seemed in the Capitol, but even though he believed him that still didn’t mean he liked how the man conducted his personal affairs and acted like that had shit to do with anything.
“Maybe we don’t have to like him to trust that he’s on our side in the Games,” he eventually said, not sure where he was even going with that.
“Oh come on,” Kat said, reaching for another knife.
The thing was, Kat was pretty similar to Gale, but they were different in a lot of ways, too. Gale knew that Kat wasn’t angry the same way he was, like when he woke up in the morning and he thought about the Capitol and what it all meant and he just wanted to shake, that was how furious he got. Kat didn’t do that, she’d rather keep her head down and be safe, she and Prim. She didn’t want to act.
But sometimes, Gale thought that Odair did, that he knew exactly how Gale felt.
There was a sort of vague plan taking shape in his head when he thought about all that… Gale was nothing if not practical. He forever wondered how a thing could help him.
“What?” Kat said, glancing at his face as though she already knew that she wouldn’t like the answer one bit.
“Nothing,” Gale said, shrugging it off.
He had a feeling that he would be better not to tell; so she wouldn’t be hurt, if it went wrong.