Title: His Own
Author: TheAudaciousButterfly
Rating: K+
Summary: Katniss meets Annie and Finnick's son for the first time, forcing her to think about his parents and her own history. One-shot.
Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns all Hunger Games characters.
His Own
"Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games."
-Peeta Mellark, The Hunger Games
I'm not sure I want to meet him, because everyone indicated that he is a tiny version of Finnick wrapped up in Annie's arms, and I have to remember the fact that his father is dead because of me. Peeta keeps reminding me that it would have happened even without those berries; they didn't die for me. But the smell of those mutts was a message, an assassin for the Mockingjay, not for Finnick Odair. I almost feel sick, but know that I have to answer the door sometime.
My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am eighteen years old. I am engaged to Peeta Mellark. He's still partially hijacked. I'm about to see the baby of a boy who died for me. His name is Finnick too.
Maybe that's what's making me feel like there is a hand waiting on my heart, waiting to push a detonator on a bomb, blowing me up from the inside. That this baby will always be a little Finnick, and will always be a ghost. I finally turn the doorknob, slowly, and see Annie waiting patiently while she bounces the little boy in her arms. Annie knows that sometimes it can take a while to open doors here, but she waits patiently with her wide eyes, the same colour as the sea.
Small talk always feel impossible because there are so many things that you can't say when someone asks you how you are. I'm okay. I woke up this morning looking for a noose like your dead husband taught me to make so I could hang myself after having a dream about being forced to watch Cato be picked apart by mutts. I'm awful, really, barely hanging on. You? So I stick to that I'm fine, but I wish I had some morphling. I know Annie will react badly if I tell her this, because any mention of the games makes her shut her eyes up and smack her hands against her ears. She'd remember her own if I mentioned mine, and I can see Finnick's face giving me a reproachful look, even if he isn't here. Especially that he isn't here.
Finnick Mags Odair. Mags is a unisex enough name and I don't think anyone could argue that once you learn her history, it's impossible not to accept her name as an honour. The way that she went into that poisonous cloud to save me, to save Peeta, and the kiss she gave Finnick before. But mostly I remember the way that she volunteered for Annie, and how that made me want to be her ally right away, because she must have known there and then that she'd die. It was the same thing I knew when I volunteered for Prim, so I know how much love it takes to do something like that.
The baby really is a miniature of Finnick—I half-expect Annie to pull back his blanket to reveal a fully formed set of abs—except his hair is curlier, though it is Finnick's bronze, and he has the round cheeks of a child. I remember taking stock of Finnick the first time I met him, him offering me sugar just to make me uncomfortable. This is not the Finnick that I knew, even though it's the first memory I conjure of him. The true Finnick was the deranged boy who trailed off in the middle of his sentences and watched the propos with my in my bed at the hospital. The true Finnick was the boy with the length of rope, who needed it to cope himself but who still gave it to me and still gave it to Peeta when we needed to be saved from drowning. That was Finnick, the boy who was always able to swim when no one else could be kept afloat. All of the secrets that he knew, about himself, and about others must have made him weighty, but he always tried to save the rest of us first. The Finnick I remember would never have stopped looking at this little boy, and I wonder if he would have voted for the Seventy-Seventh Hunger Games the way I had. No, he wouldn't; wouldn't let what happened to Annie happen to anyone else. Wouldn't let what happened to him happen to anyone else.
I realize that Annie has stopped walking, her sea green eyes paused, wide, on something on my kitchen table—I still don't really think of it as mine even though it is mine and Peeta's house in the Victor's Village. My home was not here, not in the arena, not in District 13, but in the small shack where I had lived with my father before his death, where I took care of Prim. Where I learned to front. It takes me a moment to realize that the reason Annie has stopped is because my Mockingjay pin is sitting on the table, and Annie can't block out the memories that that brings with it. My games. Her games too, then. The Quell. Her time in the Capitol. Finnick's death. I hurry to snatch it up, but the damage has been done, and she has placed Finnick on the table before shutting her eyes like a child and slapping her hands to her ears. The baby is dangerously close to the edge so I take him into my arms, sure that I'm not holding him how I'm supposed to be.
Annie. It always takes me time to remember that this fragile girl won her Games years ago, took the victor's place in the arena at the end, even if it was only because of the flood, only because she grew up in District 4 where swimming came before walking. But I knew that it could never be only this; the Gamemakers would never allow any victor to have no kills. Before the Capitol changed him, Peeta would have known exactly how Annie had killed her victims, if she was crying while she did it, or if she did it automatically, because she had to. But now I would have to play a game of Real or Not Real with him, and I wouldn't know the answer myself, so we would sit there and wonder what is real.
The baby in my arms squirms, and I am shocked by the mini-Finnick in my arms. He is so quiet, but comes from a family that has had so much screaming that he seems to be making up for that. His little fingers reach out for my chest and I wince while he brushes against a graft of the pink, manufactured skin. A constant reminder of Prim, and how she will never come back to me. The baby is striking, already so handsome that if I didn't have Peeta, I think I would swoon, but only because he reminds me so clearly of Finnick. Especially his eyes, that same green of a lapping sea, unlike the water in the lake that my father taught me to swim in. It is on my second evaluation of him that I notice the sea eyes are flecked with gold, like someone has shaved the sunrise into his irises. Not like Finnick. Not like Annie, either. Not like anyone else, but little Finn.
The baby has something that none of the rest of us have. Not Finnick, whose sexy exterior was a product of muffled cries against pillows, writhing between slippery satin sheets. Not Annie, who replays her District 4 partner's decapitation in her head whenever her eyes go wide, and then she shuts them, unable to block out what is in her head. Not Peeta, who has to be told what's real and not real, and who still struggles not to kill me at night. Not even me. Especially not me, who can never be anything like the girl who fought in those first games. I was molded into a star-crossed lover by the Capitol and then later, the Mockingjay by the rebels and it's hard to separate who I really am underneath all of that. But Finn, Finn's little gold flecks represent something that he was not made to be, but something that is entirely his own.