PART 1: THE TRIBUTE
CHAPTER 1: Fate
All along it was a fever
A cold sweat hot-headed believer
I threw my hands in the air and said, "Show me something,"
He said, "If you dare come a little closer."
Round and around and around and around we go
Oh now tell me now tell me now tell me now you know
...
Finnick Odair could no longer distinguish between love and lust. It had been so long since he had loved, and nowadays even the lust no longer surfaced. He had never lusted after the few women he had loved, and he had never loved the many women he has lusted after.
As the mutations and their vicious teeth tear at his legs and slash deep gouges in a body that was once unblemished and beautiful, he thinks of this. He should feel pain, and he does, but he call only gaze upwards with a final desperate intensity into the wide, tear-filled eyes of Katniss Everdeen.
"Finnick!" She cries, and for a moment he has an urge to laugh, for now he knows that the flesh has been stripped away from his lower body and the mutations will soon destroy all that he once was, the sins and the regrets would be no more when it was over.
"Go, Katniss! Run!" he cries at her, and she is pulled away by someone, sobbing. He latches on to the fading image of her beauty as he goes under the writhing mass.
It had not always been this way, he thinks as the muzzles and teeth knife through his chest. He had once loved, and now as the last pinprick of light is consumed by the dark, furless bodies writhing above him...Finnick remembers.
Finnick remembers, and as the light dies in his eyes, he can almost feel it again.
...
It was the 65th Annual Hunger Games.
She was a slim girl, with large hazel eyes and hair the color of chocolate. She was very awkward when he first met her, almost painfully so.
The first time he spoke to her was on the second day of training, when she tripped and planted her face on the hard marble ground directly in front of the Careers, who immediately sneered and made a scene of it.
At first Finnick had laughed as well, it was very funny. But then, as the girl got up furiously and wiped her bloody nose with the back of her hand, he felt something in him cringe for her. Perhaps it was the enormous reaction he had received from the time he stepped onto the platform in District 4 to the Tribute Parade, or perhaps it was a day spent with the haughty Careers, but somehow as this girl gave all six of the towering Careers a furtive, challenging look, the moment for helping had passed.
The girl sat alone at lunch, her uniform bloody and her hair a mess from the morning's training. She reminded him a bit of Annie, his friend from back home, in the way she didn't seem to care much that no one was paying attention to her. Annie was a little bit crazy, and he hoped that this tribute girl wasn't. Otherwise he would seem rather ludicrous if he sat with her.
When he sat down with his plate, however, she suddenly did not seem so dreamy anymore, and gave him a rather sharp look.
"Feeling sorry for the likes of me, Finnick Odair? I suppose you've never faceplanted your pretty nose anywhere, let alone in front of the very people who will kill you," she scoffs, her voice soft but quick in her anger. She begins scooting her chair away. As she does, it tilts backwards, and she falls again.
Finnick doesn't laugh this time, although the hall rings with the jeers of the others. He helps her up, noticing as she stands shakily that she is actually quite pretty, with dark curling eyelashes and a heart-shaped face. He had not seen her properly earlier, with the blood from her nose smeared across her face. She's perhaps his age, a little older maybe. Now, as he grasps her hand, he sees the dried blood at the fingernails. When she sees him staring at her hands, she snatches them away.
"There's a faulty chair," he pretends not to notice and turns to accuse the attendant closest to them. Even at fourteen, he knew that the best way to redeem one's dignity was to blame the fault on others. The attendant apologizes profusely, clearly stifling a laugh.
"What's your name?" He asks her. She regards him presumptuously at the question, but then her eyes turn mellow again, being unable to fool herself that she could ever be better than the beautiful boy sitting with her like a dream. The other Careers are hooting and yelling offensive things at both of them, wolf-whistling rudely.
"Cara, and your name is Finnick as all of Panem knows, so you don't need to repeat it," she says quickly. Finnick knits his golden eyebrows. She was not very sociable and he did not know what to say to that. He ate his food with her so so wouldn't be alone, but on the pretense of getting more, he returned to the Career table, where the charming female tribute of District 1 quickly leaned her head on his shoulder, although she was nearly half a decade older. He did not return to the lonely table in the corner of the room.
Cara watches this with neutral eyes, although she internally wishes she had not made such a terrible fool out of herself. All chance of a friendship or even a semi-familiar face here in the Games had been dashed the moment she had gotten nervous and fallen off that chair. The same was with the previous fall early that morning. It was something about the bronze-haired boy that distracted her so easily.
And now she was officially an outcast, unwanted by every alliance, even the weakest. She had deemed herself both clumsy and stupid, when she was neither. Even her District 10 partner, who was a powerful boy aiming to make his way into the Career alliance, did not want to be seen with her. He had tended the heavy-built, stubborn oxen back home. She had tended the harmless baby chickens. Those facts alone spoke for themselves.
Finnick Odair stays with the Careers for the rest of the day, laughing in that effortless way of his and not sparing another glance at her. The blonde from District 1 continues to smother him, and he does not do anything stupid such as faceplanting, Cara thinks, as she watches him inconspicuously in between her feeble attempts to light a fire. Rather, he has a sort of smoky expression reserved for such occasions, in which he smirks slightly and stares at whomever he's trying to woo.
"Conceited, gorgeous, goddamn...fisherman," Cara smiles to herself as she speaks and brushes the soot out from her eyes. If anything, she would cling to the few moments that she had actually spoken to him, when he had not thought her stupid.
It is at that precise moment that a flame decides to spring from the pile of wood, sending a hazardous amount of smoke into her eyes and mouth.
Finnick watches the chocolate girl from his side of the room, where the lights are metallic and harsh over the target range. The more he looks at her, the more her hair looks like chocolate. The area where the chocolate gir- he corrected himself. Where Cara had fallen is now scrubbed clean of blood, and quite amusingly, a large mat has been placed in the general vicinity, as if trying to protect the other tributes from the terribly menacing floor. How ironic, when only ten metres away is a rack of quite lethal weapons, among which include bows, knives, spears, and a general assortment of things. He sees a spoon and a fork.
He chuckles, a victor could win the Hunger Games with most anything. He certainly knows that it is not just with skill that he might win, he knows his physical advantage.
He grapples with the knives for a while, but quickly bores of the same targets and same sounds of contact. What's the point of practicing if he had hit the mark the first time? He mentions this to Carrow of District 1, who seems to have taken the role of leader, but the older boy doesn't seem to comprehend the sense of it and continues to throw the same weapons over and over.
"I suppose," Selene from the same district says, but from the way she flips her long hair again, he can tell that she doesn't really understand either.
"Do you?" he says sarcastically, and she nods happily, giving him a tap on the nose.
The Careers are actually rather idiotic, he decides with a smirk.
He looks for the chocolate girl again, but she is not there, and he tilts his head to one side. From one side he senses Selene watching him hungrily, from the other, the gazes of a dozen Gamemakers weigh upon him. They sit in their congregation high above the tributes, the pinkly lit space radiates the smell of roast meat and their heavy perfume.
The Gamemakers watch the District 4 boy, the one who is effortly good-looking, to the point of disbelief, really. If not for the records stating that he had been too impoverished to afford any beauty products, they would have gladly attributed his beauty to the Capitol's own shampoos and soaps. He was a fisherman's son, after all, and from the most horrific part of District 4, the part with the shacks. It must have smelled foul by the sea, the head Gamemaker first thought as he read the report.
The boy, Finnick, is only fourteen as well. If he were to win this Hunger Games, the possibilities of use for his body were limitless. And as the Gamemakers gaze down at him from their perch, champagne and bobbles of meat held in their manicured fingers, they unconsciously but simultaneously are thinking that this District 4 fisherman has a real chance of being a victor. He possesses the looks and the skills, luck be it that both will prove true. They cannot even imagine, nor consider the same for the clumsy girl who shamefully fell twice in one morning. They had not even noticed her before she so untastefully disgraced herself. It's the District 10 female. Her name was Cara Edenthaw, or Edenthorn, or perhaps her surname was Raththorn. None of them cared enough to check. The only reason they glanced at her occasionally was for comic relief-only a moment ago, the head Gamemaker had chuckled as she sent a plume of smoke into her own pretty little face.
For some reason or another-although it was most likely also for a laugh, Finnick Odair keeps on glancing at this awkward girl. Though she might have the body and the potential for great beauty, the low-class, mortifying manner with which she composed herself completely destroyed hopes of being a formidable tribute.
"Perhaps she'll even make it to the Cornucopia!" One of the Gamemakers exclaims, the ludicrous feathers upon his bright hat waving. Everyone laughs, even the tributes and training mentors below, for voices echo easily in this vast hall.
Cara does not pick up the weight she had tripped over, but runs out the door, tears gathering in her eyes. God, what is happening to her? Every step she has taken from the moment she had that nosebleed has resulted in disaster. If only her friends, who used to envy her before, saw how she's embarrassed herself today...
She continues to run, up the halls, her feet pittering across the veined marble. Oh, what was the point of even going to training anymore? If it wasn't required, she wouldn't go tomorrow. It was useless for her and almost everyone knew that Finnick Odair would win.
He had been brilliant during the Tribute Parade, and although she herself had been received with much applause, for her dress of tight leather had brought out her curves, it was nothing compared to the ecstatic crowds' cheering at the District 4 chariot.
Ha. Baby chickens. She had been taking care of chickens her entire life, and now she was part of the Hunger Games, already seen as slow-witted and clumsy.
She slams her hand on the elevator press, feeling immensely pleased when the doors open and she does not trip or get a leg stuck in the door or whatnot. What should be expected, such as a simple walks across twenty feet of smooth expanse suddenly seems to present itself as a challenge.
Finnick, on the other hand, walks across the training hall, stepping neatly over haphazardly placed weight, over to the fire-making station. He had never had a need for fire before, so he did not know how to start one. Every night in District 4 there would be a great bonfire on the beach, for the people to roast their food and keep warm by.
"Hello," he says to the attendant there, and she nods her head at the young, handsome boy.
He successfully strikes up a fire with flintstones in a matter of seconds, and is about to move on to the ropes course when he sees the small charcoal smudges on a piece of wood, clearly written and wiped hastily.
It's a small heart with the letters FO written inside, and although the heart is dustily smeared, the initials are alarmingly prominent.
"Who was here before me?" he asks softly, crossing his own initials out with more charcoal, no one needs to come across that.
"The girl with the chocolate colored hair, from District 10, I think," the older woman replies, sneering nastily at the memory of the girl.
"It does look like chocolate, doesn't it?"
He smiles despite himself, suddenly rather amused.
A/N: If you've made it this far, I will presume that you are moderately capable of dealing with an OC for a couple of chapters. This will move fast, I have places to tell of, love to spin, fables to dream up. I will not dote on certain characters more than others.
Shorter or longer chapters?
Thank you for reading and I hope you continue to bear with me as I tell Finnick Odair's story.
-PLUS if you wanted to know, the Capitol socialite is Effie Trinket and obviously the Girl on Fire is Katniss Everdeen.
Suggestions and reviews are greatly appreciated. (more like if no one reviews i wont update cough)
