Katniss Everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stillplaying) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ten_fwd2015-01-17 05:12 pm
stillplaying) wrote in ten_fwd2015-01-17 05:12 pm
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It's been six months and five days. One hundred and eighty-six days since she had watched her sister burn like a pyre. One hundred and forty-five days since she sought out her revenge. Since she executed Coin and secured her freedom, her only chance to be free of anyone's strings and no longer be a pawn in their games. Less days than that since she returned to District 12. Only sixty-seven there. Fifty-three since Peeta's return and her first attempt to leave the house. She had made it as far as the fence and had to get a ride home in Thom's cart, sitting where all the dead had earlier that day.
The numbers roll through her head as she makes her way through the familiar forests. Reminders of how far she's come. Of life and living and that need to keep moving forward. It plays through her mind along with other words. Her name: Katniss Everdeen. Her age: eighteen. She lives in District 12 again. Commander Paylor is now President Paylor. There are no more Hunger Games. No more war. And somehow, she survived. She survived and others didn't and no matter how hard she tries, she still doesn't understand.
So it's easier to leave every morning right at sunrise. Before Dr. Aurelius can call her or Peeta can stop by. Before Haymitch might be out of his drunken stupor and before Greasy Sae or anyone else might stop by to check on her. Even in the May sun, she wears her leather jacket. Because it's easier to cover up, to hide the scars that might attract attention. Quiver and bow are slung across her back and her bag bounces against her thigh as she walks slowly along the edge of the meadow, carrying her supplies. She takes another step forward and...
...and she stops.
Gone is the fresh air. Gone is the slight breeze and the sickly sweet smell of corpses yet to be fully buried. Mockingjays no longer make noise in the distance. There's a different sort of chatter now. A different smell in the air.
Her heart skips a beat in her chest. There are people here. People in a place that looks like a bar but... but can't be a bar. Because there's no bar that looks like this in District 12. There's no time for the people of 12 to just sit around, doing absolutely nothing. Not with all the cleanup and the rebuilding and this can't be possible.
She takes a breath and forces herself to move. Her eyes dart around, aware and alert, already assessing the people in the room and the room itself. Looking for weaknesses, for entrances and exits, for anything she can use for defense in addition to her bow. She doesn't understand it. She doesn't know how she got here, why she's here, or even where here is. But she refuses to be caught off guard. She refuses to have survived this long only to die in... in some new game?
Did they change their mind? Decide that she was too dangerous to be kept in District 12 after all? Bring her back... someplace, alongside all the other unwanted and dangers from the old Capitol? She looks around and tries to spot someone familiar. When that fails, she forces herself to speak loudly, in as firm and threatening a tone as possible.
"I want to talk to President Paylor. Now."
It's only later, after matters are explained, that she's found herself sitting at one of the tables in the corner nursing a cup of tea, that she might be a little more approachable. But there's still a suspicious and angry look on her face and a steel glint in her eye. Her bow and quiver and bag are on the floor next to her but she keeps the skinning knife beside her hand.
Just in case.
The odds have never been in her favor.
The numbers roll through her head as she makes her way through the familiar forests. Reminders of how far she's come. Of life and living and that need to keep moving forward. It plays through her mind along with other words. Her name: Katniss Everdeen. Her age: eighteen. She lives in District 12 again. Commander Paylor is now President Paylor. There are no more Hunger Games. No more war. And somehow, she survived. She survived and others didn't and no matter how hard she tries, she still doesn't understand.
So it's easier to leave every morning right at sunrise. Before Dr. Aurelius can call her or Peeta can stop by. Before Haymitch might be out of his drunken stupor and before Greasy Sae or anyone else might stop by to check on her. Even in the May sun, she wears her leather jacket. Because it's easier to cover up, to hide the scars that might attract attention. Quiver and bow are slung across her back and her bag bounces against her thigh as she walks slowly along the edge of the meadow, carrying her supplies. She takes another step forward and...
...and she stops.
Gone is the fresh air. Gone is the slight breeze and the sickly sweet smell of corpses yet to be fully buried. Mockingjays no longer make noise in the distance. There's a different sort of chatter now. A different smell in the air.
Her heart skips a beat in her chest. There are people here. People in a place that looks like a bar but... but can't be a bar. Because there's no bar that looks like this in District 12. There's no time for the people of 12 to just sit around, doing absolutely nothing. Not with all the cleanup and the rebuilding and this can't be possible.
She takes a breath and forces herself to move. Her eyes dart around, aware and alert, already assessing the people in the room and the room itself. Looking for weaknesses, for entrances and exits, for anything she can use for defense in addition to her bow. She doesn't understand it. She doesn't know how she got here, why she's here, or even where here is. But she refuses to be caught off guard. She refuses to have survived this long only to die in... in some new game?
Did they change their mind? Decide that she was too dangerous to be kept in District 12 after all? Bring her back... someplace, alongside all the other unwanted and dangers from the old Capitol? She looks around and tries to spot someone familiar. When that fails, she forces herself to speak loudly, in as firm and threatening a tone as possible.
"I want to talk to President Paylor. Now."
It's only later, after matters are explained, that she's found herself sitting at one of the tables in the corner nursing a cup of tea, that she might be a little more approachable. But there's still a suspicious and angry look on her face and a steel glint in her eye. Her bow and quiver and bag are on the floor next to her but she keeps the skinning knife beside her hand.
Just in case.
The odds have never been in her favor.
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Why would that ever change?
Except... except for a second there, she thinks that she hears her name. Tea spills as she quickly slams the mug back on the table and looks around with renewed suspicion, if not a bit of surprise. And then she sees him.
Her eyes tear up almost automatically. Because it's him and he's looking so alive and healthy and Finnick and she remembers hearing his screams. She remembers seeing him die. The lizard mutts haunt her nightmares every night. She'll never forget. Never forget what he sacrificed for her.
Wobbling a little as she stands, she uses the table as a crutch and whispers, "Finnick?"
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Now, she's one of the few people he could even begin to trust if they showed their faces here: Katniss, Annie, Peeta, Johanna, the other conspirators. There's nobody else, nobody he trusts not to be a part of a Capitol game. Not willingly, at least.
He watches the bow, for a moment, remembering how wound up he'd been when he'd arrived, how long it had taken Doctor Bashir to persuade him even to let him treat the wounds of the arena. Katniss, though, doesn't go for the bow.
The alliance still stands.
There's more to it than that, though. When Katniss looks up at him, it's not with the relief of someone finally seeing a familiar face. When they first met, back before so many things happened in so few days, she'd told him that everyone else knew her secrets before she did, and he'd agreed with her. But there's no hidden trick to reading Katniss' secrets. They're there in her eyes, an easy confession to read for someone as experienced in secrets as Finnick.
Katniss has never looked at him like that, never spoken of him in a voice like that. Never whispered his name like she can't believe she's saying it.
"Katniss?" he asks, arch, half a smile creeping over his mouth, almost even real.
She's surely overreacting.
"When did you get here?" he asks, carefully maintaining a layer of cover over the very genuine question as he takes another few steps towards her. "Have you seen any of the others?"
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He died for her. How can she ever forget that?
Ever?
Maybe somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks that she ought to be covering her reaction better. Not let the secrets slip out on her face. Does he even know? Does he remember? She doesn't know. And right now, she doesn't know who to ask. She doesn't have anyone she trusts enough to give her an answer. She just has to accept it, accept him, and pretend... pretend what? Another game?
She has to play another game.
But for now, she forgets it. He takes a few steps forward and she closes the distance with a hug. She's not alone. For whatever reason, unless she really is hallucinating, she's not alone.
"A couple days ago," she mumbles to answer his first question as she rests her cheek against his chest for a second. There's a heartbeat there. He's alive.
Then, she takes a step back. "You're the first person I've seen."
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He plays in love with everyone. She plays in love with Peeta, except of the two of them, her role is more honest. She does love Peeta; Finnick had seen that in her desperation when he'd hit the forcefield.
He'd watched Katniss Everdeen last year, in the arena. His tribute had been in an alliance with Peeta, and Katniss' strategy and her score said she was a threat. So he'd watched. And he'd watched her on her Victory Tour, as well, then he'd rewatched the footage of both once the plans for the conspiracy fell into place (secretly, in his own home in the Victors' Village, where Annie wouldn't see and work out what he was planning). And he's studied her more closely in person than she knows this year, in the parade, the interviews, watching her in training.
Katniss Everdeen is not the sort to run and hug a man she barely knows. But she's hugging him, pressing her face against his chest with a sort of gentleness that nobody but Annie and Mags has used when they touch him for a long, long time. Then a moment later, Katniss is stepping away, answering his questions, almost, almost, back to the sort of emotional detachment he's more used to seeing from her about people she doesn't know well.
"I haven't seen anyone else I know, either." There's a flash of a smile at her. "Nobody even recognized me. Nobody asked for my autograph or anything."
A couple of days. Less time than him, but maybe not by much, and that's important, and he does have a more serious reply, one that could shape everything else he asks.
"From the arena?"
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It's been freeing in a strange way. The only good thing in this new game.
Until now.
It's both a relief and a fright to see Finnick standing in front of her. And she wonders just how much she's given away in her reaction. Especially the look of surprise that appears when he mentions the arena.
"What?"
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He repeats the question, more fully this time, and his voice slips for a second into a noticeable District 4 accent. "I did."
Surely she did, too, or she'd noticed him vanish. He wound up here, expecting to fight, and instead he'd been treated for the wounds the arena's clock of nightmares and Enobaria had left him with, given food and drink and new clothing and treated like a guest.
(Not that he trusts any of it. It reminds him a little too much of the pampering of the scared district kids before they're thrown to each other's mercies or lack thereof in the arena.)
There's an unease in his expression as he looks at Katniss; it's like the looks he'd given her on the first day in the arena, when she'd seemed ready to shoot him if Peeta hadn't intervened, in spite of Haymitch's bracelet. (He'd known that was a risk. It's hard to win Katniss Everdeen's trust.) But they'd grown less uneasy in their alliance since then. Not friends, not trusting, but firm allies. Firm enough that he'd hoped he could hold the alliance together until they were rescued.
Now, though, he can see differences. Not only does she show no sign of the burns from the arena, but she has other scars. Nastier scars, showing on her neck, nasty, but old, or at least, not fresh. Not just a couple of days old.
Scars she hadn't had when he'd last seen her.
Something is very wrong here. Scars that are both new and old. Katniss' familiarity with him, the way she hugged him like almost nobody hugs him. The look in her eyes at the mention of the arena. At the sight of his face.
"You didn't, did you? You've had those scars for a while. And you've known me longer than a few days."
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She hates her scars right now. She hates her scars and her inability to lie and that Finnick's figured it all out. He put the pieces together faster than she possibly could. No, she hadn't come from the arena. And even though she's certain that her answer is written completely over her face, she shakes her head anyway. Just to be able to answer with something.
"That was almost a year ago," she finally whispers. Almost a year and so, so many deaths. Including his own. How does she even begin to tell him any of this?
It's simple, she realizes a second or two later. She doesn't tell him anything. If... if he really doesn't remember anything past the Quarter Quell, she's not going to be the one to tell him. She owes him too much to ever hurt him like that.
"It's good..." Katniss forces out. "It's good to see you again, Finnick."
no subject
A year later.
A year later, and Katniss Everdeen is alive. Alive, but scarred. Alive, but looking at him like ... That's a thought he can't complete. He can't think that far ahead. If Katniss is alive, that means he succeeded. That's what matters.
What is this new game they're caught in? How can she be from his future, and be here now? He has no reason to trust anyone here, to think they're anything more than possible tools in a scheme of the Capitol to punish him, for Annie, for the conspiracy, because victors have power and he has power that none of the others have, in his very own special way.
He'd suspect almost anything of the Capitol. This is exactly the sort of game they'd play if they wanted to trick him, to punish him, to destroy him, and that's clearly what they do want: the jabberjays made that clear.
But Katniss Everdeen wouldn't buy into that game, would she? He's watched her, he knows her better than she can know he does, or than she could have known, as he knew her, just days ago in the arena.
"Annie."
Her name comes from his lips in a strangled sort of choke.
He hasn't told Katniss about Annie. But she'd been beside him in the arena when he'd been screaming her name in the fear that had blinded him to the consequences, when he'd lost all thought of the cameras, the danger, protecting Katniss, of anything except the sound of her screams.
But if she's known him for a year, she must know.
"Katniss, what happened to Annie?"
If Katniss is alive, Annie's all that's left that matters. Everything had been for her. For Annie herself, or for Annie's future.
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Watching Finnick now, she doubts that she'll ever be capable of loving someone as much as he loves Annie. And she doubts that that she'll ever deserve being loved like that in return.
"She's home," Katniss says softly, a wistful sort of grin crossing her face. The shock and pain at seeing Finnick again has started to ebb, replaced by an unexpected sort of pleasure in telling him this. "Back in District Four. She's alive. And I think she's happy."
Pregnant and... There can't be harm, right? In telling him? How will he ever know otherwise.
And he deserves it. He deserves so much to know.
"You're going to be a father."
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That was nothing on the fear when he realized he loved her, that she'd become the most effective tool Snow could use against him. Most of those other people Snow had used against him had died. Suddenly, but in ways that looked perfectly innocent to anyone who didn't know what they were: just pieces in the games the Capitol played with his life.
He's been terrified for Annie for years, and the one thing that he'd questioned himself over when he'd gotten involved in the rebellion in District Four, in the plans for freeing Katniss from the arena, was what might happen to Annie. He'd consciously put her in danger, though it had been in aid of making Panem a place where she could be safe, where she didn't need to be afraid because of the Games, because of the Peacekeepers, because of who she'd fallen in love with.
No matter how good his cause, his intentions, losing Annie, when he'd lost Mags, when he'd lost his whole family, would have been too much to bear.
He doesn't bother trying to hide what he's feeling. For once, he can be honest with Katniss, because she's told him the one thing he most needed to hear.
"Thank you."
Katniss looks happy to be able to tell him this, a smile crossing those features that are so often so serious. She's paused for a moment, like there's more, something she's thinking about, but what she says next drives any other thought out of his mind.
Him? A father?
He doesn't mean to stare at Katniss, but he does, the shadow of fear in his eyes, the fear that victors know, of knowing their lives are marked.
He and Annie had never even talked about children. Just being together is so much of a risk that marriage, let alone children, is impossible. He's got no doubts what it would mean. Annie's death, or the child's, to punish him, and one more impossible weight on his conscience. He could never have what Katniss and Peeta played as their strategy in the Quarter Quell: a secret wedding, an unplanned pregnancy.
He swallows, licking his lips.
"Katniss," he says, his voice so soft it's barely more than breath, "tell me that's safe."
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She had locked herself in a closet that day, unable to do anything but sit there as tears fell every now and then. All day she had been as mute as an Avox. She had left the phone hanging off the hook and refused to step out even when Haymitch had come knocking. The guilt had been overwhelming, too overwhelming.
Finnick Odair should never have died for her. Especially for a mission she failed to see through.
"It's safe," she whispers, that guilt threatening to overtake her all over again. "There aren't any more Hunger Games. It's safe, Finnick. I promise. It's safe."
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It worked. She hasn't said it, and he hasn't asked, because he doesn't trust this place. He trusts Katniss not to be a willing part of any game being played here, trusts her more than she could probably trust him (hasn't he played the Capitol's games for years?), but he trusts nothing else, doesn't trust that he's not here because of just what Katniss is telling him.
There's only one way the Hunger Games are going to end: if the revolution happens. If Finnick and the other conspiring victors get Katniss to District 13, to lead their cause.
He's worked towards that goal, helped in his own way to inspire the revolt in District 4, planned with Plutarch Heavensbee and the victors he'd drawn into his circle on how to get Katniss out of the arena safely. He'd been prepared to volunteer, to risk his life protecting her and Peeta, not so much because of Katniss, but because of what she could mean for Panem.
For there to be a world with no Hunger Games, a world where Annie can be safe and happy in District 4, where she doesn't need to be afraid to have his child ... that's a world he and any of the other victors could only have dreamed of. He'd wanted a world where Annie could have that life. Where he could marry her and they could raise their children by the ocean, on the boats, like they'd both been raised.
He can't help the smile. He doesn't even notice it.
There's so much to say that can't be said, but he's a victor. He knows how to play that.
He's Finnick Odair. Because he's Finnick Odair, nobody would be surprised to see him step back towards Katniss and wrap his arms around her, hugging her tight. Or to see him drop his head to whisper in her ear, as though he were murmuring a flirtation.
"That's more than I could have hoped for. Thank you, Katniss."
Not just for the assurance. Not just for the news, for the thought that some time in the future, his life and Annie's will be safe enough to be parents.
For what she must have done for that to be the truth.
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She doesn't deserve any sort of thanks. It's news he needed to know. She would have told him no matter what.
But she accepts his hug without a word and wraps her arms around him in return. She needs it. She needs to pretend for a second that he might actually forgive her for getting him killed. It's a guilt she knows she'll never manage to shrug off, one that'll be with her for the rest of her life. Finnick deserves more than she'll ever be able to make up for.
"You're welcome," she whispers in return despite knowing the words won't ever be enough. Sure, she lost a lot. She lost Prim. But she hand't died in the war. She hadn't even been allowed to kill herself. "We'll get you back to her."
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He may barely know Katniss, but he does know she brought him a hope he hasn't dared to feel before. And he knows one thing about her now that he didn't a few days ago: that she understands what it is to love somebody, to fear losing them more than anything.
He'd thought she and Peeta were playing to the cameras, that it was a clever strategy on Haymitch's part to get them both out, that it continued because that's what victors' strategies do, long after they've left the arena.
He'd been wrong. Or, if not wrong, not entirely right. He'd seen Katniss' terror when Peeta had nearly died, felt the terror in the instinctive way she'd attacked him as he checked Peeta's body for signs of life. He'd had to hit her, knock her into a tree, to get her out of the way.
She'd had to go through what Mags saved him from: going into the arena with the person she loved.
He nods as he pulls back, a little, so he can look at her again, though her arms are still strong around him.
"She's in danger." Is now, and will be until the revolution succeeds, because of him. It's driving him mad, knowing that and being unable to do anything about it, worse being stuck here even than being in the arena. At least there he had hope, a way to save her.
He lets out a long breath.
"It's good to know she'll be safe."
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There's a lot she can't say aloud. A lot that she doubts that she'll ever be able to say aloud. The 76th Hunger Games: their nickname for the mission to the Capitol, and how true a nickname it had been. He died on that mission. So many people had died on that mission. She'll never find the words to tell him that, will she?
"Yeah," she answers, doing her best not to remember. Because that's easiest. Focus on the good, forget about the bad. "It's a different Panem now."
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It had seemed like a stupid dream at first, but slowly, so slowly, he'd been drawn further into it. He'd met people. He'd whispered things, had them whispered to him. He's good at secrets, good at making people comfortable enough that those secrets slip out, and that's not just true of his patrons. He'd been a very careful, very secret agitator in District 4 before he'd been contacted by Plutarch Heavensbee's revolutionaries.
That longing for a new world, where he could escape the Capitol, where Annie could live without fear and maybe begin to heal, where they could be together openly, where they could marry and have children and go back to their lives as quiet fisherfolk, has burned in him for years.
It's funny, though, that he'd never thought what that new Panem might look like. Not in any detail.
Not beyond no Games, no Snow, no false hope of victors held up as a lie for public consumption. No Peacekeepers, no fear, no lives of slavery that just pretends to be anything else.
"What's it like?"
Maybe it's not smart to ask. Not here, not now, not even with his arms around her, holding her for the sake of saying things that can't be said openly. But he has to know, and the wistfulness in his voice is more suited to the boy who'd so brashly volunteered for the Games than to the man who's seen so much darkness since.
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Katniss shrugs. She wishes she could give him a better answer. But she doesn't think that she has one yet. And she doesn't want to lie to Finnick, make false promises and assertions that never come to pass.
"We're still rebuilding," she says with a slight shrug. "It's only been a few months since the fighting ended."
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Finnick nods.
"It was always going to take time. But it happened. That's a start. That's ... more hope than Panem has had since the Dark Days."
That he means what he says burns in his eyes; he'd signed onto the revolution because he wanted, so badly, just the world Katniss has described. He's no expert in what's going to come next: leave that to Plutarch and District 13 and the politicians. But someone who wants to see the Capitol's elite destroyed, see Snow dead for what he's done? That's Finnick.
It's only once he's murmured those words that he drops his arms from around her and takes a half-step back.
"It will get better."
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But she still thinks that she'd give everything up if it meant having Prim back.
Katniss nods. "I know."
But she's not sure how much it really matters anyomore, so long as they're trapped in this new game.
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And it's worth rebuilding, worth the time that will take. Hope is an ephemeral thing to anyone from Panem, embodied in the victors, but they themselves know just how futile that hope is. Or was, before Katniss provided the opportunity the revolutionaries lying in wait needed.
There's a genuine happiness on his face as he looks at her, though his smile's only small.
This is real hope, not the fake version he's been forced to peddle to the districts for years.
"It has to be better than it was. If Annie and I ... a lot must have changed already for us to be together."
He doesn't know how much Katniss knows of what kept their relationship the deadly secret it was, but the dangers of a victor, let alone two victors, having a child must be clear to her, for her own sake, even without the danger Snow always held over Finnick's head.
The happiness fades from his face, replaced by something harder, darker, at that thought.