WARNING: This has minor spoilers for Mockingjay. Like, very minor, but I don't want to not tell you and then have someone yell at me about how I spoiled something for them, even though it's not spoiler-y at all.
I don't own the characters.
This was written for Starvation's monthly one-shot challenge. The prompt for August is "broken". You should check out the forum (link on my profile) to read the other entries, enter something yourself, or join the discussions, including several about MJ.
Finnick Odair is broken. His already fragile reality was broken down by years of being alternately revered and enslaved. Each secret he is paid he thinks will make him feel better, but ends up making him hurt worse. Too much knowledge to deal with.
Children are hard to beat. They do not know of any failures that last longer than a day, perhaps a week. The moments that they think will last forever are the carefree ones, the happy ones, but those are the memories that seldom do.
Supposedly, the tributes in the Games are children. But children are not meant to fight with intention to kill. Children are supposed to play.
Finnick thinks the ones who die first are the luckiest. They won't have to live with scarred souls, even for the few days they'll last in the arena. In hindsight he might have joined them.
Annie Cresta is everything Finnick is not. She is sweet where he is clever, innocent where he is experienced. She cries when a bird crashes to its death on her window, having thought it was the sky. He plunges weapons in to his enemies hearts and appears to feel nothing.
He is lucid while she is unstable.
"Her mind is broken, poor dear."
That's what his former neighbor says, shaking her head, when Annie is installed in to the house across from his in the Victor's Village. She is a mystery to Finnick, crying through her post-Games interview and silent all through her tour.
They are neighbors, and Finnick would like to do something kind, a drop of good next to the ocean of evil that was his Games. He visits her, brings her gifts, and eventually he gets her to remove her hands from her ears and look at him, truly see him, and they go walking.
Where Annie is withdrawn and irritable with others, she tells Finnick her every thought. He is sad he cannot return the favor.
Where Finnick is brash and harsh with others, he has endless patience with Annie. She thinks he was always this kind.
Finnick is broken, yes, and so is Annie, but together they are as close to whole as they will ever get.
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