THG fic: "Spin Control" [23/24]
Title: Spin Control
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse; anorexia and exercise addiction
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
“Spin Control” on LJ: Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 12 -- Chapter 13 -- Chapter 14 -- Chapter 15 -- Chapter 16 -- Chapter 17 -- Chapter 18 -- Chapter 19 -- Chapter 20 -- Chapter 21 -- Chapter 22
Chapter 23: Changing The Rules
After a night of searching all of the Training Center for Haymitch, growing more frantic by the hour, it was Caramel who tipped Finnick off.
“I’m not going to act like I want anything to do with this, Odair,” he said, starkly reminding Finnick that he had people to protect, too, people whom he loved and who might die because of him; that was why Snow had been able to sell him for so many years and why he’d gone along with it so docilely. It was in the hallway of the Four quarters, after Finnick had been everywhere. Caramel seemed very stiff, visibly resenting the contact when he leaned in, speaking lowly and closely enough into Finnick’s ear for the bugs to not catch it. Even that was dangerous; a camera might catch that they were doing it.
His breath made the hair stand up on the back of Finnick’s neck.
“There’s a crossway in the Avox quarters, connects the Gamesmakers lounge with the kitchen and the district floors. And for all fucking districts’ sake, just don’t ask me how I know that. Ask Beetee to get you in the service elevator, he’ll override the codes. Act like you don’t see the Avoxes, and they’ll make like they’ve never seen you. Haymitch’s been trying to get one of the Gamesmakers’ assistants to talk to him all night, or someone even higher up. They are going to meet there soon.”
“Who else has he been talking to?” Finnick murmured back, making himself not flinch away, never having wanted to know what Caramel smelled like, what his skin felt like almost touching his.
The side that he could see of Caramel’s freshly shaven face shaped itself into a grimace.
“Safer for your family if you don’t know.”
Finnick felt so tense that he could constantly taste metallic adrenaline in his mouth, anxiety forming that painful tight knot in his stomach that shifted every time he moved.
It was four in the morning; tracing Haymitch’s steps, he hadn’t slept all night.
***
Beetee, on the other hand, had clearly been sleeping soundly, disengaged, now that his tribute was out of the Games.
Eyes bleary and his glasses ever-so askew, he’d stood in his doorway huddled in a silk bathrobe and listened, his face turning more serious and more awake and more there than Finnick had ever seen, with every sentence. After five or six of them, he had nodded, telling somebody in the Three quarters - maybe Wiress - that all was well, she should go back to bed. The fact that there wasn’t an awful lot of explaining or convincing to do told Finnick that here was another person in on the crazy scheme that seemed to have so suddenly popped into Haymitch’s mind. Apparently, Haymitch had enlisted everybody’s help but Finnick’s.
Beetee gestured at Finnick to follow him down the corridor, heedless of his bathrobe as if he owned the place - or had concluded that proper dress just didn’t matter to the image that the Capitol wanted him to project - until they reached the service elevator on his floor, in a corner of the Avox corridors where nobody would ever bother to look for anybody. None of the slaves could be seen.
While Beetee got to work with a little computer device that he held at the access panel, Finnick watched him nervously, wondering what the fuck he was even doing here. What Haymitch was doing - what they all were doing. They were already breaking rules that Finnick found unthinkable to break.
“It’s just a matter of time until I do something unbelievably idiotic again.” Those words suddenly popped into his mind. Haymitch had said that to him ages ago, the day after they’d first kissed when he’d tried to make Finnick stay away. “And then I’ll be gone, and hopefully it’ll just be me and a couple more tributes who’ll be fucked.”
“Are you sure that nobody’s recording…” he started saying, the thought making him feel even more on edge, but Beetee waved it off without looking up.
“They might have decided that I need to be an engineer,” he muttered almost dryly, “but I don’t believe that means I cannot have a hobby.” A fleeting smile appeared on his face. “And I’ve always been fascinated with surveillance devices. So shockingly relevant to all our lives.”
At those words, the elevator door slid open, revealing an empty, sturdy alcove made of steel, all functionality - as if you left the Capitol once you stepped in.
Before Finnick could breathe a “Thank you,” the older man touched his shoulder to stop him from leaving immediately.
The grave look he gave Finnick had no resemblance to the iconic absentminded scientist that the Capitol’s celebrity news reporter liked to gently mock, but otherwise was ignored. This, Finnick realized with startled recognition, was the man who’d befriended Haymitch, because simple people bored him too much. This was the man who had won his Games by making even water and lightning into a weapon, possibly the most dangerous of victors in that way.
“You’re aware why Haymitch is trying to reach Senecra Crane’s ear, are you not?” he asked. Caramel and Beetee might have been helping Haymitch on his quest because Haymitch was their friend and he had asked, but they still very much knew what was at stake, and they didn’t want him to die, like Finnick.
“He told you?” Finnick asked, startled, but Beetee shook his head.
“Not in so many words, no, but in hindsight, it seems apparent…” He paused for a moment, collecting his words. “Conny has… sources, from his Capitol days. He has access to popularity polls, the real results, not the versions that are aired and used to influence the audience. Haymitch had been looking at those for the better part of the night. Those two tributes of yours… They have created extraordinary reactions. I am almost entirely certain that he is advocating for a rule change. But such a thing would have to be instigated by a Gamesmaker, of course, if not the Head Gamesmaker himself.”
Finnick just stared at the other man, unable to catch on when those words just refused to make any sense. “What do you mean, a rule change? What kind of rule change?” There couldn’t be a rule change. Panem didn’t change. Snow had everything under perfect control. Nothing in the districts and the Capitol and the victors’ lives would ever change, and changing the rules of the Capitol was just as ludicrous as breaking them. Twelve-year-old Rue might have been allowed to. But that had been because she’d been twelve, and because she’d been as good as dead already.
The look Beetee gave him now from above the rim of his glasses was almost pitiful. “A rule change in the Games, Finnick. I’d suspect he is trying to allow for two victors, if they are tied together by an alliance, or representing the same district.”
He waved his fingers at the entrance. “Now go before a janitor checks to see why this elevator is blocked. You will be able to access it without any codes on the way back.”
“Thank you,” Finnick said, after a moment, unable to take his eyes off Beetee even once he’d stumbled over the threshold. But then the door was sliding shut and the steel box rumbled into motion, carrying him districts knew where.
Only then did the full meaning of those words finally dawn on him, and his heart was suddenly racing, nausea was creeping up from deep inside of him and spreading all through his body; everything in him screamed at the elevator to go the fuck faster. Rule change, rule change, rule change, his heart was chanting a mad rhythm against his chest.
There had been any number of times in these crazy last two years when he would have said he’d never felt this scared before, as if the stakes kept growing; but this time, the fear was acidic and existential, and all he knew was that he had to find Haymitch before it was too late.
***
A bell rang when the elevator stuttered to a halt. The doors opened, and Finnick was heading through the bare servant corridors, tunnels more than hallways, buried underneath the shining Capitol facilities, like rotting roots of a sick tree that still seemed fine outside. He kept his head down, desperately not making any eye contact with the Avoxes who passed him, laden with laundry bins and pushing kitchen carts, starting with wide, fearful eyes when they recognized him. Taking furtive looks left and right at all the crossways, he followed Beetee’s and Caramel’s directions, the edges of his vision blurring - all too aware that he was acting like he was in a Games, when he would never again be at liberty to act like in a Games.
The difference between inside and outside the arena was, after all, that inside was the only place where they allowed you to win.
Haymitch was a startling sight, so familiar in this foreign terrain, leaning against a wall next to what had to be the kitchen entrance. He was still dressed in the same clothes as the day before, glancing at his watch every other second.
At the sound of Finnick’s steps, he looked up and their eyes met, and so many different emotions crossed Haymitch’s face at once. Surprise, not the pleasant kind. Fear.
“Fuck Finnick, you shouldn’t be…”
“What the fuck are you doing down here?”
They’d reached each other. Haymitch took one look at Finnick’s face and grimaced, took another look at his watch, and then one over his shoulder as he gripped Finnick’s arm. “You need to get out of here, right this second. You can’t be here. If Snow sees…”
“I think Beetee disabled the cameras when he got me to the elevator…”
“And you think that that’s ever enough?” Haymitch looked angry now, but he seemed to reach a decision, because there were another couple of searching looks and then he was dragging Finnick along. “Come on, we don’t have much time, we sure can’t talk here.”
And just like that, Finnick’s heart was beating wildly, the whole craziness of the situation unfolding in front of him like a particularly bizarre storm. Rule change, rule change, rule change, that voice in his head was still chanting alongside his heartbeat, and, fuck in a tone that sounded suspiciously like Caramel. His mom, dad, Coral, Perri, Keanu, everybody could be executed just because he was in this hallway. Haymitch could be executed, or worse, just because he was here. Nothing could be worth that, nothing in the world. But Finnick, with a start, realized that Haymitch had become such a natural, important part of his life that he hadn’t even paused before following him, despite of what discovery might mean to the Odairs.
The thought left him trembling even more; nothing had ever, ever been more important to Finnick than protecting the Odairs.
A blink of an eye, and Haymitch had opened a door seemingly at random, had taken a look inside and dragged Finnick in, lights turning on automatically as the door fell shut behind them. Oppressive silence settled in abruptly, all the noises shut out. This was a storage room, Finnick realized - bare, dusty metal shelves filled to the top with boxes, some open, some closed, kitchen supplies spilling out.
Haymitch started pacing the room immediately. He should have been exhausted, but didn’t look the part, wide-awake as if there were so much adrenaline coursing through him that he didn’t know how to even start releasing it.
“Talk,” he ground out without looking at Finnick. “I’ve got to be back there when Crane arrives, or he’ll think the proposal is off.”
“I…” Finnick’s mouth was dry. He’s actually meeting with Crane. “What the fuck, Haymitch. Beetee says you want to change the Games rules.”
“And you should let me handle it instead of getting involved. It’s way too dangerous for…”
“They’re my tributes, too, I’m your partner, of course I’m fucking involved!”
Haymitch flinched, hard, and Finnick belatedly realized how Haymitch, who felt like he had gotten everybody he loved killed, would have felt that accusation as sharply as a twisted knife in his guts; but he felt so agitated himself, he could have grabbed a trident and drilled it into something, no matter what it was. He was scared.
“I’d have kept you out of this,” Haymitch reasonably said. “Snow isn’t in the business of punishing people who’ve always followed his rules.”
That was nowhere close to the point, though, as far as Finnick was concerned. “You can’t bring two of them home.” He was almost whispering it. “You’ll never bring two of them home.”
But Haymitch was shaking his head in denial, too vigorous to be really listening to him. “No. No, that’s where you’re wrong right there.” He took a breath, coming to a halt and facing Finnick, as if he’d reached a decision. Raising his hand. Lowering it when he reconsidered his course of action.
“Alright,” he said, all business. Finnick was here now, so apparently he would just deal with that. “Alright, let’s get this over with. Okay. We know the Capitol’s wild about Peeta and Kat, right? And not just the Capitol. Everybody is. District Eleven, for fuck’s sake,” he breathed, making Finnick shudder from the sheer sensory memory of that, because… yeah. District Eleven, where they’d sentenced Thresh to death for a display of emotional kitsch.
“So Conny’s got access to the clean polls, I’ve been looking at those. It’s big. It could get bigger than you and Conny ever got combined. People out there, they don’t care what kid survives in there, not really, but you wouldn’t believe how much they’d give right now just to see those two sharing a screen. They’re dying to see what the girl would do if she could ally with that boy. Nobody cares if it takes changing the rules to get that.”
But Finnick was staring at Haymitch who’d so very clearly lost his mind. “Snow cares.” It still didn’t sound as incredulous as he felt; there was no way to sound that incredulous.
“Snow does what the Capitol wants, don’t you get it?!” Haymitch snapped, furious, but in a desperate way. Not at Finnick, Finnick knew that, although it felt like it, hypersensitive as the adrenaline made him feel.
The breath Haymitch heaved made all of his chest rise and fall. “Alright, more. Factor in the Gamesmakers themselves. We all know that ain’t the safest job in the world. They’re antsy. Crane’s been antsy for years. Guy before him, Hogan Leash, he gave us Johanna, he gave us you. Now what? Crane’s tried the crazy arenas, but turns out what the crowds want is victors to love, and the snow globes ain’t producing those.”
“It’s not our job to help the Gamesmakers out…” Finnick tried to interrupt him, because this really was insane, that insane kind of thinking that had almost had ended up with Haymitch dying from alcohol poisoning one time, because people he loved had been killed and he’d been left miserable and alone. Now, it could kill Haymitch and Finnick.
But Haymitch was riding right over him, caught up in his own argument.
“So Crane needs a success, right?” he said. “Think about it. Really think. A rule change’d give him everything, it’d make them remember him forever, and it’d give them two of those popular kids. ‘This Games, two victors get to go home if they’re from the same district.’ What happens? Our kids join up, Two’s do as well, so it won’t look like it’s putting anybody at a disadvantage…”
“…except District Eleven!” Finnick interrupted him, exasperated. He refused to listen to this any longer. Haymitch might have as well proposed a climate change. “Thresh is still in the Games…”
Then he abruptly shut his mouth, because Haymitch had given him that side glance, half resolved and half defensive, and Finnick could only stare for a moment. “What did you do?” he managed.
Oh, this was so bad.
Haymitch looked away, jaw working. “Chaff…” He cleared his voice. “Chaff might have found a gift in front of his doorway last night? Chances are, he’s not gonna be a problem this Games day,” he muttered.
“You drugged him?”
The snort Haymitch gave him was bitter. “Don’t gotta drug him. I know well enough how it works. Just a nice bottle of booze and a note saying sorry, that drink’s on me. The way he gets when he’s got a strong tribute, he downs the whole thing, chases it down with some of the stuff he brought from home himself.”
“All the dirt in all the…” Finnick breathed, barely noticing that he’d adopted one of Haymitch’s idioms, his regular swearwords seeming too weak.
“It’s what you do to get one home and Chaff knows that,” was all Haymitch said to that, reminding Finnick that yes, while Haymitch was crossing a line about how you treated fellow victors and friends, this was the outlier districts. This was just how desperate you got. There were no luxuries, no privilege of deciding to put personal values over victory just this one year if for once, you had a child in the Games who might survive. Haymitch was breathing consciously and deeply now, the same way Finnick did to manage stress - none of his agitation gone, but tightly under control.
“This has to be about Twelve against Two,” Haymitch said in a reasonable, cold-hearted voice, the one he’d never have adopted before Finnick had pushed him to embrace the way the Games was played. “Or the Gamesmakers won’t see what the proposal’s all about. Look at Chaff, I say, he’s plastered, Eleven ain’t a real contender. Now I don’t know who’s gonna show up back at the kitchen entrance, if it’s gonna be Crane himself or what - not that I’d mind if this went straight to the top. But, Finnick.” His breath became shaky, and he rubbed his face, looking away. “Fuck, Finnick. I’ve been doing this for twenty-four years here. That’s forty-six dead kids on my watch. I can’t…” His voice broke, so he had to clear it, trying again but sounding clogged. “This is as good as it gets. We could save both this time.”
“They’re not you and Maysilee,” Finnick whispered.
Haymitch grimaced, though it looked like the expression had only settled on his face for lack of better options, because everything about this was just too painful and too hysterical, in a terrible way where you laughed instead of crying, for anything else. “Trust me when I say I’m aware,” he said, in a final way, bone-dry.
There was a metal crate stored in a corner of the room. Before he could think, Finnick had slumped down on it, hard, his legs suddenly feeling too weak to carry him; dust would get smeared all over Cherry’s creation of the night, but he just didn’t have room in his head to care. A heavy weight settled in his chest, all the anxiety and fear and exasperation tightening up into something new and exhausting.
“You don’t change the Capitol’s rules,” he muttered, rubbing his face. All night, he’d looked for Haymitch, who’d been suddenly gone in more than one way.
Haymitch looked equally exhausted now, like all the pain was way too much to bear. “Yeah, I don’t,” he agreed. “But the Capitol does.”
Finnick swallowed hard.
Haymitch was right on that front, of course. It was a final argument that should have chased away the other ones, because this was the Capitol, wanting those two children to survive. The Capitol wanted all manner of things and then obtain them, the opposite of life as any victor had ever known. If the Capitol wanted something but there was a rule, it expected that somebody would go and change the fucking rule. That was how the Capitol worked.
After all, there’d used to be a rule about not fucking fourteen-year-olds, until there hadn’t been.
Finnick shuddered at the thought.
Clothes rustled. Finnick looked up. Haymitch had crouched down in front of him, the way he had done that day at Swagger’s when Finnick had melted and melted and somehow, when he was done, Haymitch still hadn’t left the room; he’d stayed with Finnick although Finnick was a pervert and a freak. Except Finnick was sitting on a crate instead of the ground now, of course, so Haymitch was beneath him, looking up. Watching him. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked strangely emaciated in a way Finnick hadn’t noticed before, too caught up in his own trauma this Games. It couldn’t be that Haymitch had lost that much weight since they’d come here, never having stopped eating, but he still looked haggard, and like something about him had gotten lost.
“Forty-six dead kids, Finnick,” Haymitch said, sounding hoarse, looking not quite at the ground now, but at Finnick’s hands, clasped between his knees, as if he longed to take them in his. “And I see her in all of them, yeah.”
Maysilee. Of course, he was talking about Maysilee, whom he couldn’t have saved, because only the Capitol had any power in a Games. “I see myself in them, too, sometimes. All those kids. They never stay dead.”
Finnick pressed his lips together. “You won’t get any of them back this way,” he repeated.
Haymitch nodded easily, acquiescing swiftly and stating that way that he knew; it just didn’t matter. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do anything to get two of them home.”
Being discovered roaming the Avox corridors could get all of the Odairs killed, Finnick thought again, in a detached way. He was sitting on a crate in a room in the Avox basement, and that fact alone could kill his mom and his dad. It could kill Coral or Mags. A year ago, six weeks ago, he wouldn’t even have hesitated before he said thank you, but no. He wasn’t sure he could have followed Haymitch here. Everything had always been about that. Now, he’d done it anyway, he hadn’t even thought about it; he’d just chased down all the information he needed, like raiding the Cornucopia, and then he’d reentered the Games and he’d gone to find and save the man who’d become his other family.
It didn’t quite leave him feeling as adrift as the other times before when being with Haymitch had changed all these things, but more like there was still a foothold left, like a flag on a pole flapping around in the wind.
Haymitch’s plan was sound, Finnick thought. It was crazily risky, but in a calculated way - the way only Haymitch got, with his phenomenal ability to go beyond the common ways of solving problems, as if using a force field against another tribute had only been the beginning of playing the system against itself. It was nothing like the way Finnick thought. But - trying to let go of his fears - he could see how it might work. He could see that his own way of playing Snow’s game exactly by Snow’s rules might be the best to stay afloat, but Haymitch’s was the kind that would eventually change the world. Change Panem and the Games. Make them want to keep two. Make them believe that they have all power in the world to change the Games. Make them change the Games.
They sat like that, for a moment, breathing the stale air of the slave storage room where nothing ever changed. After a while, Finnick slid off the crate, sitting on the floor and leaning against it instead. Haymitch had to inch away from him to make space, slumping onto his butt, both their legs propped up, intertwined, their ankles touching in that solid way.
Finnick reached out for one of Haymitch’s hands, playing with it.
As he always had ever since he’d dared admit his attraction to Finnick, Haymitch let him. Haymitch always let him do anything he wanted to do, even when Finnick was doing it to him, and Finnick suddenly wondered why that was.
“I’ve gotta do this,” Haymitch said after a while, his voice tight enough to remind Finnick that they were running out of time; there was a deadline involved. They had to make a choice, get going, if Haymitch still wanted to meet Crane. “Without the change, maybe we get one of them home. Odds are still looking good. Maybe we don’t, because districts know there ain’t such a thing as a safe bet in a Games. But.” There was a pause. “But if there’s a chance to make it as close to a safe victory as can be, you gotta take it, or you can’t live with yourself. You can’t.”
In those long nine years since his victory, Finnick had done everything Snow had told him to do, everything and then some. Because he’d had a family to protect. Because it was the only thing he could do. Still it had left him feeling shady and dirty all the time, just, that act of collaboration, of helping make that system work. Haymitch was proposing that one act of catharsis that all the victors had to be dreaming of, this powerful, desperate sense that you’d done right, that there wasn’t any reason to feel guilty, for once.
He thought of Haymitch leaving a bottle of booze in front of Chaff’s door, of how he himself had threatened the same man a year back that he’d do terrible things to him, expose him as an addict and exploit him as a cripple, because he’d so much needed Haymitch to be safe. He thought of Games school in Twelve. He thought of promises he’d made to Gale Hawthorne, of how he’d try everything to get Katniss home. He thought of Annie Cresta’s Games and of swimming and of how the one choice you had left if you battled it out with the ocean was returning back to the shore.
Finnick pressed his lips together.
“I want for us to be safe,” he said.
Haymitch took a sharp breath.
“Finnick…” he said, sounding pained, having to be so very aware of how impossible that would always be, but Finnick was shaking his head.
“No,” he said, the words stumbling out of his mouth. “No.” He took a breath. “There will be other Games. There will be so many Games. If this one doesn’t work out, we can try again next year. This is… it’s huge, already, we’ve already improved the odds for Twelve with this - things are going to get better. But, but I can’t lose you. I can’t. I can’t even think… all the things Snow could do… I can’t even breathe when I think…” His voice broke. But he didn’t have to tell Haymitch, of course, all the horrible things that could be done to them if Haymitch, or the both of them, went through with this. Done to Haymitch, done to Twelve. Snow could decide that it had become too much - that Finnick had become unsafe, that Haymitch had become too big a risk to keep alive. He could make them pay, in so many ways.
And there were a lot of those punishments that Finnick could take. The humiliation. The shame. The constant, terrible, unbearable abuse. But what he couldn’t bear was losing Haymitch, losing the life that they had together - Haymitch dead, Finnick sent back to his old home in Four, any of that.
The rule change was a Capitol supporter’s - Snow’s - biggest nightmare come true, and that made it Finnick’s worst nightmare come true, because he and Haymitch would be the ones paying the price of Snow’s fury. You didn’t change the Games rules, you didn’t get to bring two of them home instead of one because the fact that you couldn’t was the point of the Games. Changing the rules shook the foundation of everything the Games were supposed to be. There was no telling what would happen if Haymitch made Snow change the rules. That wasn’t a risk that Finnick could bear.
He’d lost so many things already, and he’d built so few in their place; he couldn’t lose any of them, not even a small thing, and this one was huge. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him, ever since he’d won his Games.
The grip of Haymitch’s fingers around his tightened.
“Sometimes, you’ve gotta sacrifice things,” he reminded Finnick, just sounding sad as if he’d followed Finnick’s thoughts - as if he were mourning already all the things they might lose if they tried to save Peeta and Katniss. As if that was just the way it had to work.
But Finnick was shaking his head. “No,” he said, feeling choked. “You don’t. You can decide that you can’t.”
He was in motion, then, turning and twisting until he fit between Haymitch’s legs, half turned towards him, his shoulder against the other man’s chest, breathing in the warm scent of soap and District Twelve and Haymitch; and Haymitch wrapped his arms around him with a shushing noise, very strong and very safe. That was another thing: He’d always been this protective presence, comforting Finnick whenever Finnick asked - reliably giving. “Finnick,” he again muttered, gearing up for yet another argument, but Finnick shook his head in the crook of Haymitch’s neck and said, “No,” again.
“We deserve to get things,” he said. “You deserve getting the things you want. You don’t have to risk us. You don’t have to. You don’t owe anybody…” He was feeling close to tears, like his whole body was shaking; the sheer act of having to argue this point felt like it was cracking him open. “You don’t owe anybody anything. Please,” he managed. “Please, I can’t lose you. I could lose you from this. It isn’t worth that. Snow can’t… he can’t…” Snow had forced this life on them, he’d forced them to make their whole lives revolve around the Games until they died. But for the first time, Finnick desperately told himself that Snow couldn’t force them to play. “We get to make that choice.
“I know I wanted the Games school,” he heard himself say. “That was all me, not you. I wanted more success in the Games. I wanted to be good at that. But I… I don’t want to do it at this cost. Those are the rules I want to change. I want to make it about us, I don’t want to win the Games more than I want you. I love you, I can’t lose you, I want to keep you in my life…”
“Shit, Finnick,” Haymitch was saying, helplessly, his hand on Finnick’s back, the other one in Finnick’s hair, holding all of him, and now his voice was trembling too. “Shit, it’s all good, alright, it’s… fuck, I love you, too, alright? I… Don’t fall apart on me. Not now. I’m not… if that’s what you want, I’m not gonna…”
“I don’t know how to live without you anymore, I want to get things, I won’t make it all about the Games when I have things to lose…”
“Yeah, alright, shit, alright…”
“You get to get things,” Finnick whispered, raising his head and bumping his forehead against Haymitch’s, feeling Haymitch’s breath against his mouth, needing to be close. He closed his eyes; there were tears on his cheeks now, and he couldn’t have edged away from Haymitch even if he’d tried; but as long as they were like this, he felt like he could still breathe. “You get to want things. You don’t owe this to anybody.”
A shudder ran through all of Haymitch at those words, so intense that Finnick could feel it underneath his palms and against his chest. It was as if it was all he’d ever needed to hear to be able to keep going, condensed down to two sentences.
There was a line, was the thing. They got to make up a line; it had to be allowed. They could say that they wanted to help those kids. They wanted to even out the odds, make things better for Twelve, make the district less desperate and less starved. Gain power in the Capitol in their own, small, fucked-up way. But they also got to decide when it was enough. Haymitch didn’t have to think that he didn’t deserve any happiness, that he had to give Peeta and Katniss the biggest possible chance because he owed those children, when everything about this Games had reminded him of his Quell. Happiness didn’t have to be a fleeting thing that he didn’t deserve to keep. His life had changed. It had gotten better. He was allowed to ask that it stay better.
But Haymitch hadn’t been told I want you or You’re worth it or I love you in over twenty years; he’d only ever been told that he wasn’t doing well enough and that he had to improve. He would never ask that his relationship, his personal life be more important than Katniss and Peeta, or any of his tributes. Two years ago, Haymitch hadn’t even been able to accept I like you as a reason for people doing anything for him, the memory of what that meant too distant, the fear of hurting them too great. But Finnick would ask for these things for him. Finnick needed to because Finnick needed Haymitch, and Haymitch needed that feeling that there was somebody who needed him. So, Finnick shakily thought, it all worked out for them.
He thought of Catriona Wink, the Eleven escort, and how all he had wanted to do when he learned about what Haymitch had done with her was to defend Haymitch, and how he hadn’t understood why he could make excuses for Haymitch in that situation, but not for other people. It was so simple, though. Haymitch meant the most to him. Finnick wanted to make that selfish choice, put Haymitch and himself and their relationship above the Games and everybody. And that was okay Haymitch had thrown himself back into the Games because Finnick had asked. Finnick could ask him now to stop.
Finnick had come to District Twelve to play a Games - against Snow, against the Capitol and the media, against District Twelve and himself. It felt as if he had been playing the Games ever since he had kneeled there at the edge of that jungle in his arena, sweat gleaming on his forehead, trident clutched in his head, that last dead child’s blood all over him. He’d told himself he was telling the Capitol a story, a story that hadn’t fully played out, and that he couldn’t afford to get swayed or doubt himself or consider new angles if he wanted to win. He’d played to win, but by Snow’s rules, volunteering to sacrifice more and more of himself.
He’d never before considered doing the opposite - consider the big picture, lean back, keep safe what he had. He’d never had anything to keep. Now all he wanted was to stop and start a new life, and give Haymitch all the things he needed, because Haymitch couldn’t reach for them himself.
No previous choice had ever left him feeling at peace like that about who he was and what he did and what he wanted.
Words had power, and many of the ones spoken in this room had been very powerful indeed; but Finnick had still somehow run out of them now. So neither of them said anything anymore, and neither one moved for a long time, and Haymitch never got up to talk to Seneca Crane.
***
After all that, they’d somehow both known that Twelve wouldn’t bring this one home despite how good it all still looked for Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.
Sponsorship had saved Finnick’s life, once upon a time. It had saved Caramel’s, who’d received so much help that he’d been able to betray the Career pack and go up against it alone in a terrible display of ruthlessness and guts. Fact was, however, that it hadn’t been money alone that had earned either of them the crown - everything that Finnick had done with his gold alloy trident, he could have done with a Cornucopia spear. It had been killing skill, and all Careers had that. It had been sheer dumb luck, turning at the right times, ducking at others, tributes who stumbled, who were blinded by light. Finnick couldn’t have figured out Haymitch’s arena, Haymitch couldn’t have figured out Caramel’s, Caramel couldn’t have figured out Finnick’s.
It became a rare Final Three with a tribute in the Games who’d never earned lush sponsorship budgets even now that there were so many sponsors left and so few children to spend money on anymore. That Chaff had lost eight hours to a drunken stupor before rejoining Seeder with a rather surprising amount of functionality had changed very little about that. Nobody cared about Thresh either way.
Katniss was beautiful and deadly, hunted by Cato and Clove who were still grimly determined to hold off killing each other to the end, but they fell for a false trail set by Katniss. She shot Cato square in the neck, then let him bleed out, and she escaped from Clove’s knives when she fled through the forest, the white of hysteria visible in the Two’s eyes as the Games and her partner’s death finally broke her mind down. A day later, however, Clove stumbled into Peeta’s territory, who led her on a merry chase with his camouflage skills. He’d stolen everybody’s heart at that point, but that didn’t save him from Clove’s well-cultivated hair-trigger in the end, reacting to the slightest sound, twisting around and burying her knife in Peeta’s guts before she could even have been sure it was a human being whom she’d sensed. He suffered, but for less than a minute.
In the end, with the nature of a Games making Katniss and Peeta’s reunion impossible, everybody had held their breath to see who of the lovebirds would kill who; when Peeta was killed by somebody other than Katniss, Clove taking that option away, the tide turned further towards Katniss, who received an even better bow, and against Two.
Katniss and Clove faced off both clad in sponsor gifts of armors, armed to their teeth, on the barren ruins of what had been a pack camp before Three’s explosives had ripped it apart.
The explosion had left Katniss deaf on one ear. She noticed Thresh only when his shadow fell across Clove’s face, lying in front of her, innocent and peaceful and still so spent in death. Thresh grabbed Katniss’ head, and pulled, and she dropped like a half-empty flour bag discarded in the market corner, and the cannon fired - two dead wasted girls on a heap, none of which had deserved to live above the other.
Thresh just stood there. He swayed a little bit, that big boy with the stormy face, with the brown eyes that, in his interview, had startled everybody when they had suddenly turned unsure and gentle for a beat, as Flickerman had asked about what he liked most about working in the fields, remembering maybe a sun dawn, maybe a friend. Now, he just stared, expressionless, at the dead girls at his feet. The purple sun was setting in his back. None of the commentators on the main channel spoke, and another two seconds passed, and then Templesmith made the announcement and the majestic theme started to blare.
The victor of the 74th Hunger Games looked up at the sound of the Hovercraft, following it with his eyes.
Somebody, somewhere, very close to Finnick - possibly Seeder - was breathing heavily, hyperventilating. Somebody - Chaff - was muttering things to her in a soothing, choked voice. Finnick and Haymitch just stayed where they’d sat in their seats, looking at their mentoring feed, suddenly empty, that chance suddenly gone - that girl suddenly dead. Just because they’d kind of seen it coming didn’t make it easier to understand.
Finnick only noticed that he’d reached out when Haymitch’s hand bumped against his and wrapped around it, or maybe it had been the other way around. Haymitch still felt strong and warm and scarred and familiar. Like he was his. Finnick squeezed it. Haymitch tightened his grip.
Another Hunger Games had passed. After twenty-nine years, District Eleven had won, with a boy who would go home to learn his district had decided that they’d have rather crowned the girl whose neck he’d snapped.
As Hunger Games irony went, that was a fairly typical twist, Finnick supposed. He’d seen his fair share of those in his life.
He was tired now, though. He just wanted to go home to Twelve.
Tbc.
Pairings: Finnick/Haymitch, Kat/Peeta
Characters: Finnick, Haymitch, Chaff, Peeta, Gale, Kat; plus appearances by Mags, Johanna, Caesar Flickerman, President Snow, Effie, Claudius Templesmith, Beetee, Prim, Thresh, Rue, District Twelve ensemble and various OC
Rating: adult
Warnings: forced prostitution & non-con; people dealing with sexual trauma; rape fantasies; self-hate; canon-typical violence; minor character death (of major canon characters); implied physical abuse of children (in the Mellark household); alcoholism & drug abuse; anorexia and exercise addiction
Summary: When Haymitch Abernathy’s alcoholism makes the prime time news, Finnick Odair is sent to live in District Twelve to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to save a friend if you can barely stand looking yourself in the eye. And it might become impossible once that friend decides to move hell and high water to bring two of his tributes home at once, even if it should cost him his own life.
“Spin Control” on LJ: Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Chapter 10 -- Chapter 11 -- Chapter 12 -- Chapter 13 -- Chapter 14 -- Chapter 15 -- Chapter 16 -- Chapter 17 -- Chapter 18 -- Chapter 19 -- Chapter 20 -- Chapter 21 -- Chapter 22
Chapter 23: Changing The Rules
After a night of searching all of the Training Center for Haymitch, growing more frantic by the hour, it was Caramel who tipped Finnick off.
“I’m not going to act like I want anything to do with this, Odair,” he said, starkly reminding Finnick that he had people to protect, too, people whom he loved and who might die because of him; that was why Snow had been able to sell him for so many years and why he’d gone along with it so docilely. It was in the hallway of the Four quarters, after Finnick had been everywhere. Caramel seemed very stiff, visibly resenting the contact when he leaned in, speaking lowly and closely enough into Finnick’s ear for the bugs to not catch it. Even that was dangerous; a camera might catch that they were doing it.
His breath made the hair stand up on the back of Finnick’s neck.
“There’s a crossway in the Avox quarters, connects the Gamesmakers lounge with the kitchen and the district floors. And for all fucking districts’ sake, just don’t ask me how I know that. Ask Beetee to get you in the service elevator, he’ll override the codes. Act like you don’t see the Avoxes, and they’ll make like they’ve never seen you. Haymitch’s been trying to get one of the Gamesmakers’ assistants to talk to him all night, or someone even higher up. They are going to meet there soon.”
“Who else has he been talking to?” Finnick murmured back, making himself not flinch away, never having wanted to know what Caramel smelled like, what his skin felt like almost touching his.
The side that he could see of Caramel’s freshly shaven face shaped itself into a grimace.
“Safer for your family if you don’t know.”
Finnick felt so tense that he could constantly taste metallic adrenaline in his mouth, anxiety forming that painful tight knot in his stomach that shifted every time he moved.
It was four in the morning; tracing Haymitch’s steps, he hadn’t slept all night.
***
Beetee, on the other hand, had clearly been sleeping soundly, disengaged, now that his tribute was out of the Games.
Eyes bleary and his glasses ever-so askew, he’d stood in his doorway huddled in a silk bathrobe and listened, his face turning more serious and more awake and more there than Finnick had ever seen, with every sentence. After five or six of them, he had nodded, telling somebody in the Three quarters - maybe Wiress - that all was well, she should go back to bed. The fact that there wasn’t an awful lot of explaining or convincing to do told Finnick that here was another person in on the crazy scheme that seemed to have so suddenly popped into Haymitch’s mind. Apparently, Haymitch had enlisted everybody’s help but Finnick’s.
Beetee gestured at Finnick to follow him down the corridor, heedless of his bathrobe as if he owned the place - or had concluded that proper dress just didn’t matter to the image that the Capitol wanted him to project - until they reached the service elevator on his floor, in a corner of the Avox corridors where nobody would ever bother to look for anybody. None of the slaves could be seen.
While Beetee got to work with a little computer device that he held at the access panel, Finnick watched him nervously, wondering what the fuck he was even doing here. What Haymitch was doing - what they all were doing. They were already breaking rules that Finnick found unthinkable to break.
“It’s just a matter of time until I do something unbelievably idiotic again.” Those words suddenly popped into his mind. Haymitch had said that to him ages ago, the day after they’d first kissed when he’d tried to make Finnick stay away. “And then I’ll be gone, and hopefully it’ll just be me and a couple more tributes who’ll be fucked.”
“Are you sure that nobody’s recording…” he started saying, the thought making him feel even more on edge, but Beetee waved it off without looking up.
“They might have decided that I need to be an engineer,” he muttered almost dryly, “but I don’t believe that means I cannot have a hobby.” A fleeting smile appeared on his face. “And I’ve always been fascinated with surveillance devices. So shockingly relevant to all our lives.”
At those words, the elevator door slid open, revealing an empty, sturdy alcove made of steel, all functionality - as if you left the Capitol once you stepped in.
Before Finnick could breathe a “Thank you,” the older man touched his shoulder to stop him from leaving immediately.
The grave look he gave Finnick had no resemblance to the iconic absentminded scientist that the Capitol’s celebrity news reporter liked to gently mock, but otherwise was ignored. This, Finnick realized with startled recognition, was the man who’d befriended Haymitch, because simple people bored him too much. This was the man who had won his Games by making even water and lightning into a weapon, possibly the most dangerous of victors in that way.
“You’re aware why Haymitch is trying to reach Senecra Crane’s ear, are you not?” he asked. Caramel and Beetee might have been helping Haymitch on his quest because Haymitch was their friend and he had asked, but they still very much knew what was at stake, and they didn’t want him to die, like Finnick.
“He told you?” Finnick asked, startled, but Beetee shook his head.
“Not in so many words, no, but in hindsight, it seems apparent…” He paused for a moment, collecting his words. “Conny has… sources, from his Capitol days. He has access to popularity polls, the real results, not the versions that are aired and used to influence the audience. Haymitch had been looking at those for the better part of the night. Those two tributes of yours… They have created extraordinary reactions. I am almost entirely certain that he is advocating for a rule change. But such a thing would have to be instigated by a Gamesmaker, of course, if not the Head Gamesmaker himself.”
Finnick just stared at the other man, unable to catch on when those words just refused to make any sense. “What do you mean, a rule change? What kind of rule change?” There couldn’t be a rule change. Panem didn’t change. Snow had everything under perfect control. Nothing in the districts and the Capitol and the victors’ lives would ever change, and changing the rules of the Capitol was just as ludicrous as breaking them. Twelve-year-old Rue might have been allowed to. But that had been because she’d been twelve, and because she’d been as good as dead already.
The look Beetee gave him now from above the rim of his glasses was almost pitiful. “A rule change in the Games, Finnick. I’d suspect he is trying to allow for two victors, if they are tied together by an alliance, or representing the same district.”
He waved his fingers at the entrance. “Now go before a janitor checks to see why this elevator is blocked. You will be able to access it without any codes on the way back.”
“Thank you,” Finnick said, after a moment, unable to take his eyes off Beetee even once he’d stumbled over the threshold. But then the door was sliding shut and the steel box rumbled into motion, carrying him districts knew where.
Only then did the full meaning of those words finally dawn on him, and his heart was suddenly racing, nausea was creeping up from deep inside of him and spreading all through his body; everything in him screamed at the elevator to go the fuck faster. Rule change, rule change, rule change, his heart was chanting a mad rhythm against his chest.
There had been any number of times in these crazy last two years when he would have said he’d never felt this scared before, as if the stakes kept growing; but this time, the fear was acidic and existential, and all he knew was that he had to find Haymitch before it was too late.
***
A bell rang when the elevator stuttered to a halt. The doors opened, and Finnick was heading through the bare servant corridors, tunnels more than hallways, buried underneath the shining Capitol facilities, like rotting roots of a sick tree that still seemed fine outside. He kept his head down, desperately not making any eye contact with the Avoxes who passed him, laden with laundry bins and pushing kitchen carts, starting with wide, fearful eyes when they recognized him. Taking furtive looks left and right at all the crossways, he followed Beetee’s and Caramel’s directions, the edges of his vision blurring - all too aware that he was acting like he was in a Games, when he would never again be at liberty to act like in a Games.
The difference between inside and outside the arena was, after all, that inside was the only place where they allowed you to win.
Haymitch was a startling sight, so familiar in this foreign terrain, leaning against a wall next to what had to be the kitchen entrance. He was still dressed in the same clothes as the day before, glancing at his watch every other second.
At the sound of Finnick’s steps, he looked up and their eyes met, and so many different emotions crossed Haymitch’s face at once. Surprise, not the pleasant kind. Fear.
“Fuck Finnick, you shouldn’t be…”
“What the fuck are you doing down here?”
They’d reached each other. Haymitch took one look at Finnick’s face and grimaced, took another look at his watch, and then one over his shoulder as he gripped Finnick’s arm. “You need to get out of here, right this second. You can’t be here. If Snow sees…”
“I think Beetee disabled the cameras when he got me to the elevator…”
“And you think that that’s ever enough?” Haymitch looked angry now, but he seemed to reach a decision, because there were another couple of searching looks and then he was dragging Finnick along. “Come on, we don’t have much time, we sure can’t talk here.”
And just like that, Finnick’s heart was beating wildly, the whole craziness of the situation unfolding in front of him like a particularly bizarre storm. Rule change, rule change, rule change, that voice in his head was still chanting alongside his heartbeat, and, fuck in a tone that sounded suspiciously like Caramel. His mom, dad, Coral, Perri, Keanu, everybody could be executed just because he was in this hallway. Haymitch could be executed, or worse, just because he was here. Nothing could be worth that, nothing in the world. But Finnick, with a start, realized that Haymitch had become such a natural, important part of his life that he hadn’t even paused before following him, despite of what discovery might mean to the Odairs.
The thought left him trembling even more; nothing had ever, ever been more important to Finnick than protecting the Odairs.
A blink of an eye, and Haymitch had opened a door seemingly at random, had taken a look inside and dragged Finnick in, lights turning on automatically as the door fell shut behind them. Oppressive silence settled in abruptly, all the noises shut out. This was a storage room, Finnick realized - bare, dusty metal shelves filled to the top with boxes, some open, some closed, kitchen supplies spilling out.
Haymitch started pacing the room immediately. He should have been exhausted, but didn’t look the part, wide-awake as if there were so much adrenaline coursing through him that he didn’t know how to even start releasing it.
“Talk,” he ground out without looking at Finnick. “I’ve got to be back there when Crane arrives, or he’ll think the proposal is off.”
“I…” Finnick’s mouth was dry. He’s actually meeting with Crane. “What the fuck, Haymitch. Beetee says you want to change the Games rules.”
“And you should let me handle it instead of getting involved. It’s way too dangerous for…”
“They’re my tributes, too, I’m your partner, of course I’m fucking involved!”
Haymitch flinched, hard, and Finnick belatedly realized how Haymitch, who felt like he had gotten everybody he loved killed, would have felt that accusation as sharply as a twisted knife in his guts; but he felt so agitated himself, he could have grabbed a trident and drilled it into something, no matter what it was. He was scared.
“I’d have kept you out of this,” Haymitch reasonably said. “Snow isn’t in the business of punishing people who’ve always followed his rules.”
That was nowhere close to the point, though, as far as Finnick was concerned. “You can’t bring two of them home.” He was almost whispering it. “You’ll never bring two of them home.”
But Haymitch was shaking his head in denial, too vigorous to be really listening to him. “No. No, that’s where you’re wrong right there.” He took a breath, coming to a halt and facing Finnick, as if he’d reached a decision. Raising his hand. Lowering it when he reconsidered his course of action.
“Alright,” he said, all business. Finnick was here now, so apparently he would just deal with that. “Alright, let’s get this over with. Okay. We know the Capitol’s wild about Peeta and Kat, right? And not just the Capitol. Everybody is. District Eleven, for fuck’s sake,” he breathed, making Finnick shudder from the sheer sensory memory of that, because… yeah. District Eleven, where they’d sentenced Thresh to death for a display of emotional kitsch.
“So Conny’s got access to the clean polls, I’ve been looking at those. It’s big. It could get bigger than you and Conny ever got combined. People out there, they don’t care what kid survives in there, not really, but you wouldn’t believe how much they’d give right now just to see those two sharing a screen. They’re dying to see what the girl would do if she could ally with that boy. Nobody cares if it takes changing the rules to get that.”
But Finnick was staring at Haymitch who’d so very clearly lost his mind. “Snow cares.” It still didn’t sound as incredulous as he felt; there was no way to sound that incredulous.
“Snow does what the Capitol wants, don’t you get it?!” Haymitch snapped, furious, but in a desperate way. Not at Finnick, Finnick knew that, although it felt like it, hypersensitive as the adrenaline made him feel.
The breath Haymitch heaved made all of his chest rise and fall. “Alright, more. Factor in the Gamesmakers themselves. We all know that ain’t the safest job in the world. They’re antsy. Crane’s been antsy for years. Guy before him, Hogan Leash, he gave us Johanna, he gave us you. Now what? Crane’s tried the crazy arenas, but turns out what the crowds want is victors to love, and the snow globes ain’t producing those.”
“It’s not our job to help the Gamesmakers out…” Finnick tried to interrupt him, because this really was insane, that insane kind of thinking that had almost had ended up with Haymitch dying from alcohol poisoning one time, because people he loved had been killed and he’d been left miserable and alone. Now, it could kill Haymitch and Finnick.
But Haymitch was riding right over him, caught up in his own argument.
“So Crane needs a success, right?” he said. “Think about it. Really think. A rule change’d give him everything, it’d make them remember him forever, and it’d give them two of those popular kids. ‘This Games, two victors get to go home if they’re from the same district.’ What happens? Our kids join up, Two’s do as well, so it won’t look like it’s putting anybody at a disadvantage…”
“…except District Eleven!” Finnick interrupted him, exasperated. He refused to listen to this any longer. Haymitch might have as well proposed a climate change. “Thresh is still in the Games…”
Then he abruptly shut his mouth, because Haymitch had given him that side glance, half resolved and half defensive, and Finnick could only stare for a moment. “What did you do?” he managed.
Oh, this was so bad.
Haymitch looked away, jaw working. “Chaff…” He cleared his voice. “Chaff might have found a gift in front of his doorway last night? Chances are, he’s not gonna be a problem this Games day,” he muttered.
“You drugged him?”
The snort Haymitch gave him was bitter. “Don’t gotta drug him. I know well enough how it works. Just a nice bottle of booze and a note saying sorry, that drink’s on me. The way he gets when he’s got a strong tribute, he downs the whole thing, chases it down with some of the stuff he brought from home himself.”
“All the dirt in all the…” Finnick breathed, barely noticing that he’d adopted one of Haymitch’s idioms, his regular swearwords seeming too weak.
“It’s what you do to get one home and Chaff knows that,” was all Haymitch said to that, reminding Finnick that yes, while Haymitch was crossing a line about how you treated fellow victors and friends, this was the outlier districts. This was just how desperate you got. There were no luxuries, no privilege of deciding to put personal values over victory just this one year if for once, you had a child in the Games who might survive. Haymitch was breathing consciously and deeply now, the same way Finnick did to manage stress - none of his agitation gone, but tightly under control.
“This has to be about Twelve against Two,” Haymitch said in a reasonable, cold-hearted voice, the one he’d never have adopted before Finnick had pushed him to embrace the way the Games was played. “Or the Gamesmakers won’t see what the proposal’s all about. Look at Chaff, I say, he’s plastered, Eleven ain’t a real contender. Now I don’t know who’s gonna show up back at the kitchen entrance, if it’s gonna be Crane himself or what - not that I’d mind if this went straight to the top. But, Finnick.” His breath became shaky, and he rubbed his face, looking away. “Fuck, Finnick. I’ve been doing this for twenty-four years here. That’s forty-six dead kids on my watch. I can’t…” His voice broke, so he had to clear it, trying again but sounding clogged. “This is as good as it gets. We could save both this time.”
“They’re not you and Maysilee,” Finnick whispered.
Haymitch grimaced, though it looked like the expression had only settled on his face for lack of better options, because everything about this was just too painful and too hysterical, in a terrible way where you laughed instead of crying, for anything else. “Trust me when I say I’m aware,” he said, in a final way, bone-dry.
There was a metal crate stored in a corner of the room. Before he could think, Finnick had slumped down on it, hard, his legs suddenly feeling too weak to carry him; dust would get smeared all over Cherry’s creation of the night, but he just didn’t have room in his head to care. A heavy weight settled in his chest, all the anxiety and fear and exasperation tightening up into something new and exhausting.
“You don’t change the Capitol’s rules,” he muttered, rubbing his face. All night, he’d looked for Haymitch, who’d been suddenly gone in more than one way.
Haymitch looked equally exhausted now, like all the pain was way too much to bear. “Yeah, I don’t,” he agreed. “But the Capitol does.”
Finnick swallowed hard.
Haymitch was right on that front, of course. It was a final argument that should have chased away the other ones, because this was the Capitol, wanting those two children to survive. The Capitol wanted all manner of things and then obtain them, the opposite of life as any victor had ever known. If the Capitol wanted something but there was a rule, it expected that somebody would go and change the fucking rule. That was how the Capitol worked.
After all, there’d used to be a rule about not fucking fourteen-year-olds, until there hadn’t been.
Finnick shuddered at the thought.
Clothes rustled. Finnick looked up. Haymitch had crouched down in front of him, the way he had done that day at Swagger’s when Finnick had melted and melted and somehow, when he was done, Haymitch still hadn’t left the room; he’d stayed with Finnick although Finnick was a pervert and a freak. Except Finnick was sitting on a crate instead of the ground now, of course, so Haymitch was beneath him, looking up. Watching him. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked strangely emaciated in a way Finnick hadn’t noticed before, too caught up in his own trauma this Games. It couldn’t be that Haymitch had lost that much weight since they’d come here, never having stopped eating, but he still looked haggard, and like something about him had gotten lost.
“Forty-six dead kids, Finnick,” Haymitch said, sounding hoarse, looking not quite at the ground now, but at Finnick’s hands, clasped between his knees, as if he longed to take them in his. “And I see her in all of them, yeah.”
Maysilee. Of course, he was talking about Maysilee, whom he couldn’t have saved, because only the Capitol had any power in a Games. “I see myself in them, too, sometimes. All those kids. They never stay dead.”
Finnick pressed his lips together. “You won’t get any of them back this way,” he repeated.
Haymitch nodded easily, acquiescing swiftly and stating that way that he knew; it just didn’t matter. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do anything to get two of them home.”
Being discovered roaming the Avox corridors could get all of the Odairs killed, Finnick thought again, in a detached way. He was sitting on a crate in a room in the Avox basement, and that fact alone could kill his mom and his dad. It could kill Coral or Mags. A year ago, six weeks ago, he wouldn’t even have hesitated before he said thank you, but no. He wasn’t sure he could have followed Haymitch here. Everything had always been about that. Now, he’d done it anyway, he hadn’t even thought about it; he’d just chased down all the information he needed, like raiding the Cornucopia, and then he’d reentered the Games and he’d gone to find and save the man who’d become his other family.
It didn’t quite leave him feeling as adrift as the other times before when being with Haymitch had changed all these things, but more like there was still a foothold left, like a flag on a pole flapping around in the wind.
Haymitch’s plan was sound, Finnick thought. It was crazily risky, but in a calculated way - the way only Haymitch got, with his phenomenal ability to go beyond the common ways of solving problems, as if using a force field against another tribute had only been the beginning of playing the system against itself. It was nothing like the way Finnick thought. But - trying to let go of his fears - he could see how it might work. He could see that his own way of playing Snow’s game exactly by Snow’s rules might be the best to stay afloat, but Haymitch’s was the kind that would eventually change the world. Change Panem and the Games. Make them want to keep two. Make them believe that they have all power in the world to change the Games. Make them change the Games.
They sat like that, for a moment, breathing the stale air of the slave storage room where nothing ever changed. After a while, Finnick slid off the crate, sitting on the floor and leaning against it instead. Haymitch had to inch away from him to make space, slumping onto his butt, both their legs propped up, intertwined, their ankles touching in that solid way.
Finnick reached out for one of Haymitch’s hands, playing with it.
As he always had ever since he’d dared admit his attraction to Finnick, Haymitch let him. Haymitch always let him do anything he wanted to do, even when Finnick was doing it to him, and Finnick suddenly wondered why that was.
“I’ve gotta do this,” Haymitch said after a while, his voice tight enough to remind Finnick that they were running out of time; there was a deadline involved. They had to make a choice, get going, if Haymitch still wanted to meet Crane. “Without the change, maybe we get one of them home. Odds are still looking good. Maybe we don’t, because districts know there ain’t such a thing as a safe bet in a Games. But.” There was a pause. “But if there’s a chance to make it as close to a safe victory as can be, you gotta take it, or you can’t live with yourself. You can’t.”
In those long nine years since his victory, Finnick had done everything Snow had told him to do, everything and then some. Because he’d had a family to protect. Because it was the only thing he could do. Still it had left him feeling shady and dirty all the time, just, that act of collaboration, of helping make that system work. Haymitch was proposing that one act of catharsis that all the victors had to be dreaming of, this powerful, desperate sense that you’d done right, that there wasn’t any reason to feel guilty, for once.
He thought of Haymitch leaving a bottle of booze in front of Chaff’s door, of how he himself had threatened the same man a year back that he’d do terrible things to him, expose him as an addict and exploit him as a cripple, because he’d so much needed Haymitch to be safe. He thought of Games school in Twelve. He thought of promises he’d made to Gale Hawthorne, of how he’d try everything to get Katniss home. He thought of Annie Cresta’s Games and of swimming and of how the one choice you had left if you battled it out with the ocean was returning back to the shore.
Finnick pressed his lips together.
“I want for us to be safe,” he said.
Haymitch took a sharp breath.
“Finnick…” he said, sounding pained, having to be so very aware of how impossible that would always be, but Finnick was shaking his head.
“No,” he said, the words stumbling out of his mouth. “No.” He took a breath. “There will be other Games. There will be so many Games. If this one doesn’t work out, we can try again next year. This is… it’s huge, already, we’ve already improved the odds for Twelve with this - things are going to get better. But, but I can’t lose you. I can’t. I can’t even think… all the things Snow could do… I can’t even breathe when I think…” His voice broke. But he didn’t have to tell Haymitch, of course, all the horrible things that could be done to them if Haymitch, or the both of them, went through with this. Done to Haymitch, done to Twelve. Snow could decide that it had become too much - that Finnick had become unsafe, that Haymitch had become too big a risk to keep alive. He could make them pay, in so many ways.
And there were a lot of those punishments that Finnick could take. The humiliation. The shame. The constant, terrible, unbearable abuse. But what he couldn’t bear was losing Haymitch, losing the life that they had together - Haymitch dead, Finnick sent back to his old home in Four, any of that.
The rule change was a Capitol supporter’s - Snow’s - biggest nightmare come true, and that made it Finnick’s worst nightmare come true, because he and Haymitch would be the ones paying the price of Snow’s fury. You didn’t change the Games rules, you didn’t get to bring two of them home instead of one because the fact that you couldn’t was the point of the Games. Changing the rules shook the foundation of everything the Games were supposed to be. There was no telling what would happen if Haymitch made Snow change the rules. That wasn’t a risk that Finnick could bear.
He’d lost so many things already, and he’d built so few in their place; he couldn’t lose any of them, not even a small thing, and this one was huge. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him, ever since he’d won his Games.
The grip of Haymitch’s fingers around his tightened.
“Sometimes, you’ve gotta sacrifice things,” he reminded Finnick, just sounding sad as if he’d followed Finnick’s thoughts - as if he were mourning already all the things they might lose if they tried to save Peeta and Katniss. As if that was just the way it had to work.
But Finnick was shaking his head. “No,” he said, feeling choked. “You don’t. You can decide that you can’t.”
He was in motion, then, turning and twisting until he fit between Haymitch’s legs, half turned towards him, his shoulder against the other man’s chest, breathing in the warm scent of soap and District Twelve and Haymitch; and Haymitch wrapped his arms around him with a shushing noise, very strong and very safe. That was another thing: He’d always been this protective presence, comforting Finnick whenever Finnick asked - reliably giving. “Finnick,” he again muttered, gearing up for yet another argument, but Finnick shook his head in the crook of Haymitch’s neck and said, “No,” again.
“We deserve to get things,” he said. “You deserve getting the things you want. You don’t have to risk us. You don’t have to. You don’t owe anybody…” He was feeling close to tears, like his whole body was shaking; the sheer act of having to argue this point felt like it was cracking him open. “You don’t owe anybody anything. Please,” he managed. “Please, I can’t lose you. I could lose you from this. It isn’t worth that. Snow can’t… he can’t…” Snow had forced this life on them, he’d forced them to make their whole lives revolve around the Games until they died. But for the first time, Finnick desperately told himself that Snow couldn’t force them to play. “We get to make that choice.
“I know I wanted the Games school,” he heard himself say. “That was all me, not you. I wanted more success in the Games. I wanted to be good at that. But I… I don’t want to do it at this cost. Those are the rules I want to change. I want to make it about us, I don’t want to win the Games more than I want you. I love you, I can’t lose you, I want to keep you in my life…”
“Shit, Finnick,” Haymitch was saying, helplessly, his hand on Finnick’s back, the other one in Finnick’s hair, holding all of him, and now his voice was trembling too. “Shit, it’s all good, alright, it’s… fuck, I love you, too, alright? I… Don’t fall apart on me. Not now. I’m not… if that’s what you want, I’m not gonna…”
“I don’t know how to live without you anymore, I want to get things, I won’t make it all about the Games when I have things to lose…”
“Yeah, alright, shit, alright…”
“You get to get things,” Finnick whispered, raising his head and bumping his forehead against Haymitch’s, feeling Haymitch’s breath against his mouth, needing to be close. He closed his eyes; there were tears on his cheeks now, and he couldn’t have edged away from Haymitch even if he’d tried; but as long as they were like this, he felt like he could still breathe. “You get to want things. You don’t owe this to anybody.”
A shudder ran through all of Haymitch at those words, so intense that Finnick could feel it underneath his palms and against his chest. It was as if it was all he’d ever needed to hear to be able to keep going, condensed down to two sentences.
There was a line, was the thing. They got to make up a line; it had to be allowed. They could say that they wanted to help those kids. They wanted to even out the odds, make things better for Twelve, make the district less desperate and less starved. Gain power in the Capitol in their own, small, fucked-up way. But they also got to decide when it was enough. Haymitch didn’t have to think that he didn’t deserve any happiness, that he had to give Peeta and Katniss the biggest possible chance because he owed those children, when everything about this Games had reminded him of his Quell. Happiness didn’t have to be a fleeting thing that he didn’t deserve to keep. His life had changed. It had gotten better. He was allowed to ask that it stay better.
But Haymitch hadn’t been told I want you or You’re worth it or I love you in over twenty years; he’d only ever been told that he wasn’t doing well enough and that he had to improve. He would never ask that his relationship, his personal life be more important than Katniss and Peeta, or any of his tributes. Two years ago, Haymitch hadn’t even been able to accept I like you as a reason for people doing anything for him, the memory of what that meant too distant, the fear of hurting them too great. But Finnick would ask for these things for him. Finnick needed to because Finnick needed Haymitch, and Haymitch needed that feeling that there was somebody who needed him. So, Finnick shakily thought, it all worked out for them.
He thought of Catriona Wink, the Eleven escort, and how all he had wanted to do when he learned about what Haymitch had done with her was to defend Haymitch, and how he hadn’t understood why he could make excuses for Haymitch in that situation, but not for other people. It was so simple, though. Haymitch meant the most to him. Finnick wanted to make that selfish choice, put Haymitch and himself and their relationship above the Games and everybody. And that was okay Haymitch had thrown himself back into the Games because Finnick had asked. Finnick could ask him now to stop.
Finnick had come to District Twelve to play a Games - against Snow, against the Capitol and the media, against District Twelve and himself. It felt as if he had been playing the Games ever since he had kneeled there at the edge of that jungle in his arena, sweat gleaming on his forehead, trident clutched in his head, that last dead child’s blood all over him. He’d told himself he was telling the Capitol a story, a story that hadn’t fully played out, and that he couldn’t afford to get swayed or doubt himself or consider new angles if he wanted to win. He’d played to win, but by Snow’s rules, volunteering to sacrifice more and more of himself.
He’d never before considered doing the opposite - consider the big picture, lean back, keep safe what he had. He’d never had anything to keep. Now all he wanted was to stop and start a new life, and give Haymitch all the things he needed, because Haymitch couldn’t reach for them himself.
No previous choice had ever left him feeling at peace like that about who he was and what he did and what he wanted.
Words had power, and many of the ones spoken in this room had been very powerful indeed; but Finnick had still somehow run out of them now. So neither of them said anything anymore, and neither one moved for a long time, and Haymitch never got up to talk to Seneca Crane.
***
After all that, they’d somehow both known that Twelve wouldn’t bring this one home despite how good it all still looked for Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.
Sponsorship had saved Finnick’s life, once upon a time. It had saved Caramel’s, who’d received so much help that he’d been able to betray the Career pack and go up against it alone in a terrible display of ruthlessness and guts. Fact was, however, that it hadn’t been money alone that had earned either of them the crown - everything that Finnick had done with his gold alloy trident, he could have done with a Cornucopia spear. It had been killing skill, and all Careers had that. It had been sheer dumb luck, turning at the right times, ducking at others, tributes who stumbled, who were blinded by light. Finnick couldn’t have figured out Haymitch’s arena, Haymitch couldn’t have figured out Caramel’s, Caramel couldn’t have figured out Finnick’s.
It became a rare Final Three with a tribute in the Games who’d never earned lush sponsorship budgets even now that there were so many sponsors left and so few children to spend money on anymore. That Chaff had lost eight hours to a drunken stupor before rejoining Seeder with a rather surprising amount of functionality had changed very little about that. Nobody cared about Thresh either way.
Katniss was beautiful and deadly, hunted by Cato and Clove who were still grimly determined to hold off killing each other to the end, but they fell for a false trail set by Katniss. She shot Cato square in the neck, then let him bleed out, and she escaped from Clove’s knives when she fled through the forest, the white of hysteria visible in the Two’s eyes as the Games and her partner’s death finally broke her mind down. A day later, however, Clove stumbled into Peeta’s territory, who led her on a merry chase with his camouflage skills. He’d stolen everybody’s heart at that point, but that didn’t save him from Clove’s well-cultivated hair-trigger in the end, reacting to the slightest sound, twisting around and burying her knife in Peeta’s guts before she could even have been sure it was a human being whom she’d sensed. He suffered, but for less than a minute.
In the end, with the nature of a Games making Katniss and Peeta’s reunion impossible, everybody had held their breath to see who of the lovebirds would kill who; when Peeta was killed by somebody other than Katniss, Clove taking that option away, the tide turned further towards Katniss, who received an even better bow, and against Two.
Katniss and Clove faced off both clad in sponsor gifts of armors, armed to their teeth, on the barren ruins of what had been a pack camp before Three’s explosives had ripped it apart.
The explosion had left Katniss deaf on one ear. She noticed Thresh only when his shadow fell across Clove’s face, lying in front of her, innocent and peaceful and still so spent in death. Thresh grabbed Katniss’ head, and pulled, and she dropped like a half-empty flour bag discarded in the market corner, and the cannon fired - two dead wasted girls on a heap, none of which had deserved to live above the other.
Thresh just stood there. He swayed a little bit, that big boy with the stormy face, with the brown eyes that, in his interview, had startled everybody when they had suddenly turned unsure and gentle for a beat, as Flickerman had asked about what he liked most about working in the fields, remembering maybe a sun dawn, maybe a friend. Now, he just stared, expressionless, at the dead girls at his feet. The purple sun was setting in his back. None of the commentators on the main channel spoke, and another two seconds passed, and then Templesmith made the announcement and the majestic theme started to blare.
The victor of the 74th Hunger Games looked up at the sound of the Hovercraft, following it with his eyes.
Somebody, somewhere, very close to Finnick - possibly Seeder - was breathing heavily, hyperventilating. Somebody - Chaff - was muttering things to her in a soothing, choked voice. Finnick and Haymitch just stayed where they’d sat in their seats, looking at their mentoring feed, suddenly empty, that chance suddenly gone - that girl suddenly dead. Just because they’d kind of seen it coming didn’t make it easier to understand.
Finnick only noticed that he’d reached out when Haymitch’s hand bumped against his and wrapped around it, or maybe it had been the other way around. Haymitch still felt strong and warm and scarred and familiar. Like he was his. Finnick squeezed it. Haymitch tightened his grip.
Another Hunger Games had passed. After twenty-nine years, District Eleven had won, with a boy who would go home to learn his district had decided that they’d have rather crowned the girl whose neck he’d snapped.
As Hunger Games irony went, that was a fairly typical twist, Finnick supposed. He’d seen his fair share of those in his life.
He was tired now, though. He just wanted to go home to Twelve.
Tbc.