ten_fwd | Ten Forward -- OTA

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Ten Forward -- OTA

Plenty of people have, by now, seen Finnick tying knots with either the rope Katniss and Guinan gave him or the hair ribbon that was a gift from Sinthia. On his bad days, that's still what he does: find a quiet spot somewhere and sit and tie knots, his whole being focused on the length of rope in his hand.

Today, he's also tying knots, but this isn't like that. Today, Finnick's sitting at a table that's scattered with gleaming golden things. One of them looks like it might be some sort of circlet or headpiece made of complicated knots. Others look like little figures: a turtle, a dragonfly, lots of different little flowers.

He's got a chair pulled out next to him, a skein of golden thread wound around its back, and he's cut a length off it that he's concentrating on weaving in and out and around. When it's done, though, he still doesn't look entirely happy with it, and he gets up to go to the replicator for a cup of coffee.

When he sits back down, he doesn't pick up his knots again, immediately, but studies them for a while. It's possible he could use some distraction. Or some advice.

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Charm is something he's known for, but he's at his most charming when he forgets all that the Capitol taught him about seduction and sensuality and falls back into ease with himself. It's still not the norm for him, here, but he's getting better at it as he slowly learns to trust this life.

There are fewer shadows in his face than is often the case today; Annie had asked him if he couldn't just try planning their wedding, if maybe excitement would come then, and she'd been right. He watches Erik's hands drawing invisible veils in the air, and his head tilts a little in curious interest before he looks back down at the circlet and reaches over to pick it up and study it.

"I'd want to draw attention to her face," he says, simply, but after a moment, he gives a shy little smile.

"Annie might not like that." She is, since her Games, since the Tour when she'd broken down so publicly (partly at his instigation), painfully shy.

Natural charm and ease with oneself is always more appealing than charm taught with the soul purpose of seduction. And learning to trust an environment was a slow, slow process.

But he remembers planning a wedding and light it brings - he enjoys seeing that on both of them. They deserve it. And then some.

"Perhaps do it both ways? The back circled, the front pointed down, so she can decide how she's feeling the morning of?" It would take a little more work, but could be done, and would allow Annie some much needed control - and give Finnick a needed focus and place to show his love and concern.

Trust is a slow process, especially for somebody who's grown up never knowing any place he could trust. It's easier, though, when he's around some of the people around here he's slowly learned to put some faith in. He happens to be with one of them now, and that's part of the easy way that something bright and joyous shines from him.

The wedding, of course, is another part of it. The wedding he never thought he'd be able to have.

"I like that idea," Finnick says, and he flashes a grin that shows some of that force of brilliance that's cleared so many of the clouds in his mind, for now.

"I don't know what her dress will be like, but this is simple enough it should go with it."

Trust is a very slow process and Magneto believe that it's having a shared kind of trauma that helps, because there is an unsaid understanding which grows slowly but more speedily than trust.

Weddings bring a certain joy that is impossible to replicate otherwise, he well knows.

Magneto responds with his own grin, remembering planning his own proposal and planning - part of the few years he could call himself truly happy, and it showed.

"Then that sounds like the best plan. Has she told you about it at all?"

Not knowing much about Erik's story, beyond the hints of similarity and familiarity he'd given early on in their friendship, Finnick doesn't know just how similar their shared trauma is. Nor, in some ways, does Erik, because Finnick hasn't told him the depths of the abuses he'd suffered at the hands of the Capitol, the very things that make this wedding so remarkable.

In Panem, it would have been impossible as long as they were in Snow's power. Snow only tolerated them being together because it gave him one more person to use against Finnick.

There's a reason there's still a little disbelief in Finnick's smile when he's talking about the wedding.

He shakes his head.

"She's keeping it a secret. I know it's cream and pretty. One of the other victors is making it."

He'd pieced together enough, between talks with Annie and Finnick, as well as the few with Prim, and combined with Finnick's behavior (as well as his and Annie's when together), he'd guessed more than the young man knew. But he knew when to keep his quiet. And he could guess at what it would cost in such a world to love another and have that love known.

But how deep it ran, and much worse it was - that he didn't know.

"That's adorable. There is an old tradition of the groom not seeing the bride's dress until the wedding."

Finnick's used to people who understand the impact the arena has, the nightmares, the fear, the way that shadows and corners and being startled kick straight into the senses and instincts that kept them alive in the Games. He's not used to people who understand the terror and the hate and the disgust with himself that come from what Snow made him do after he survived.

He does, though, believe that Erik understands him about as well as anyone not from Panem on this ship, except perhaps Beverly. There's a reason they are his two closest friends he's met here.

"I didn't know that," he says. "I wonder if someone told her about it."

He suspects that Annie just wants to surprise him.

"In District Four, most brides have to borrow a dress, and grooms rent their suits. We're victors, so it wouldn't have been like that for us, but that's what we've been used to."

There was no arena for him, though he knows some of the terror he endured at the hands of the Nazis was done for the sport of those watching, but he's well aware of what being hunted does to you, how it lingers long after people want to assure you the danger is passed. And he's also well aware of being willing to do whatever it takes to survive and to ensure the survival of others. The risks you'd take, the prices you pay.

He's less aware of how these traumas linger in an adult, he was only seventeen when he and Magda escaped. Magda, the girl he loved and nearly lost and would have been forced to clean up after, the girl he'd met with in secret for months, the girl who despite her fear had survived what many would not have been able to.

Magneto feels he understands Finnick pretty well - and vice versa - and some day, one suited to the subject, he feels he should sit him down and begin a series of conversations to explain why they understand each other. Why Finnick is one of the few, and one of the few humans, he counts as friend.

"There are a great deal of them...it's overwhelming." He doesn't know if anyone told Annie either but he wouldn't be shocked to learn she wanted to surprise him either.

"Makes sense. In Jewish communities - which is mine - and Roma communities - which is my late wife's - families would make the dress for the Bride or if they had money, purchase one. It was a way of showing wealth and status within the community, as well as how loved the bride was. You and Annie are lucky you aren't navigating different cultures, then it really becomes confusing."

The danger never passes for the victors. None of them, but especially not those like Finnick and Annie who'd incurred the wrath of the president. They cannot trust their government, and they can't always know who to trust in their districts, either. Their lives were supposed to be freed from the fear of the Games when they'd won, but nobody ever warned them about the new fears they'd learn on victory.

He'd rather talk about the wedding customs than that, and his expression is attentive as he listens, then smiles.

"In the Capitol, it's not a wedding without a party that lasts at least three days, and enough food to feed a village for a week."

The dryness of his voice suggests what he thinks about that. "If we were getting married in Panem, we'd probably have got my stylist from the Capitol to make our clothes. But we'd want a traditional wedding."

He shrugs, his smile going softer, more genuine. "You've been married. I guess you know what I mean when I say it won't feel right without some parts of the traditional District Four ceremony."

Never trust a survivor until you know what they did to survive was often warned - but when you are the one who forced that person to become a survivor and you know what they did to survive, you can never trust them. You especially cannot trust someone you've taught to kill for your amusement.

But this isn't a topic either of them want to linger on, and they both know that.

"Shame people don't understand that food is supposed to feed the village for the week." He wasn't one to want a large wedding - but some did. And wedding parties had been meant to feel a village. He liked that idea, even if it didn't often work out.

"Who is the other victor?" That he was curious about. "I do understand. It's a balance but it's an enjoyable one. I loved planning it as much as I loved her, the start of our lives together."

There was, it's certain, one person in Panem who could not trust Finnick, and that was Snow. Hate is not something Finnick does easily. He hates his patrons. He hates the people who prey on the Games. But above all, he hates Snow, for what he's done to him. He hates Snow so much that he's gathered enough information to destroy what little reputation the President has, turn people who think they are his allies and associates against him.

It is true, though, that he doesn't want to focus on that. Not when he is trying to plan the wedding Snow would have forbidden.

"In the district, if anyone had enough money, they would have. The victors sometimes held public feasts in District Four." His mouth twitches a little in disapproval. "Of course, in the district that wins the Hunger Games each year, the Capitol pays for the feast at the Harvest Festival."

Not because the Capitol cared. But because it was another perk for the victors of the Games.

"Lacey Harwood. She's from District Eight. I only know her a little, but she's a dressmaker."

A perfect, as it were, fit.

"I hope Annie and I get to enjoy planning ours that much."

Hate is learned. It's a lesson Finnick and Magneto have learned all too well.

"Because of course, they didn't leave you with enough of what you caught to do it yourselves." It's the only way the system would have worked. Starve and brutalize people into submission.

"How many are there now, from your world?" He assumes they will all be present at the wedding. "And that does sound opportune."

"I'm sure you will. Anyone would understand how much you love each other."

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Ten Forward -- OTA

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[cw: discussion of effects of abuse]

[cw: discussion of effects of abuse and WWII]

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