Title: Soldier
Author: RosesOfTheGarden
Summary: One-shot. Post-Mockingjay. So maybe Merrill doesn't know Finnick Odair, his father, quite as well as he thought he did.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.
Soldier
Finnick Odair was kind. He was also brave and good at fishing. And swimming. He helped fight during the Second Rebellion, and they won with his help. He loved the sea, and he loved Annie and Merrill Odair even more. If he were here today, he'd be proud of him.
This is what she tells him on the better days, and this is what he believes.
"So why did Father have to die?" Merrill asks, leaning back in his mother's rocking chair. He's fingering the tightly woven nets on the floor, pulling at the knots. They're prickly, so if he presses too hard at the edges, it bleeds. He doesn't mind that much, though. It just proves how strong the net is.
His mother is sweeping the front porch, her broom moving back and forth in a steady rhythm. Though he can't see her face, Merrill knows she's smiling. But when she hears his question, she freezes. That old sea tune she was humming abruptly stops, right before it's highest note.
And he waits for an answer.
Her fingers grip the handle of the broom. She takes a deep breath, now rigid in posture. She's not going to answer, he realizes. He shrugs, and moves to pick another knot. He supposes it's alright. He didn't have to know. He was just curious, and he should have expected the outcome. His mother rarely answered questions like these. Merrill already knew the answer to the question, anyway. He just wanted to see if...
No, it doesn't matter. He shakes his head to clear the thought.
Picking knots is difficult, even though the nets haven't been touched in years. He isn't surprised. District Four was known for its fishermen, so of course they were good at weaving nets, that was what they did all day long. Years ago, his mother told him that an old woman called Mags had woven them. She must have been good with knots, if they lasted until now. After Merrill was told this, he asked where Mags was now. His mother only lowered her head, and repeated the same statement, that Mags was skilled in knots, wove nets day in and day out. It was what she loved best.
But Mags was dead. She was buried, carried away by the seas, thrown in a coffin.
It seemed that many of his mother's friends were dead. His father included.
He's heard that his father was good with them, too. He was also good with a trident; that was how he won the Games all those years ago, before the Second Rebellion. He was good at everything that had to do with water. Or so his mother said.
He doesn't think he can bear to sit in a room with a silence so thick. Merrill stands and says something about going out swimming.
Then she answers him.
"He died during the Rebellion, making Panem a better place for us all," she says as he approaches the door. Her back is still turned to him. Merrill thought he could hear a slight hitch in her voice as she speaks.
Merrill's been told this before. Many times, actually. Each time, he feels a swell of pride.
There isn't much on Finnick Odair, except for the short sections in the new history textbooks. It says there that he was the 65th Hunger Games victor, and he was 14 years old when he entered the Games and emerged victorious. He won because some rich Capitol woman bought him a trident.
It is all common knowledge. Nothing he hadn't heard before.
Every Saturday, they go down to the beach.
No one goes there anymore. Practically everyone he met knows how to swim, but never does. His mother says that it's because the people at Four used to fish for a living, and that they were at water almost every single day of their lives, so going to the beach isn't very special. But, his mother also mentioned, she loves the ocean. She will never be sick of the beach.
He hopes he will never be, either. It's what his father liked doing best. His mother says that he was like a fish; that was how good he was at swimming. If you don't look carefully, she tells him, you might see a merman instead, scales flickering in the water.
But Merrill doesn't like the ocean all that much. It's fun to swim, and he likes the feel of cool seawater brushing his skin, but there's always a fear, a fear that he'll lose control of his limbs and drown.
Maybe it's because he's not good at swimming. He's sure that if anyone saw him from afar, they would think he was just a pathetic human drowning. He has as much grace in the water as a dying seagull.
By the shore, the sand swirls with the winds, and if he isn't careful it gets into his eyes. It's anything but soft and feather-like; the specks of sand are rock, no matter how small they are. It's nothing like water.
This is half the reason he prefers the sand.
The other half is that sand is malleable; he could dig a moat around himself, or construct a city out of nothing but these pebbles. Often times, he would build a castle for his mother.
"See? That's where we'd live," he would say after he was finished.
"That's wonderful. Where would your room be?" she would answer, pride twinkling in her eyes.
"At the top, of course! And you can have the large one right next to mine."
His mother doesn't swim anymore. She sits by him and absentmindedly rakes her hand through the sun-kissed pebbles, brings her hand up and lets it sift through her fingers. She says that she has to watch him, to keep him safe.
Safe from what? he would wonder.
She once knew an artist during the war, and he's still here today, but on the other side of Panem. The last she hears, he's doing well.
She tilts her head and smiles at him, and says that, with a few years of practice, he can become as good as he is. Maybe even better.
Merrill feels the pride soar in him. Then he's absorbed in his latest masterpiece. He cups his hand around the peak of the sand castle, and then slowly, slowly, lets go. He steps back.
Her mother examines it closely, and smiles at him. It's beautiful, she tells him. He stands by the side, fending off the waves for as long as he can.
It's perfect.
Sunday is the day for groceries.
His mother usually goes without him, early in the morning. Merrill thinks its because it's less crowded at this time, so she doesn't have to run into too many people. Having grown up in Four, she knows most the shoppers. But it's been so many years since she last spoke to them, that it's bound to be awkward whenever she happens to meet them.
"Merrill Odair! You get taller every time I see you, I swear!" A middle-aged woman often says as she ruffles his hair. Merrill recognizes her as their neighbor; she lives just three houses away. He decides not to point out the fact that she sees him nearly every single day. Like many of the others, she doesn't stop to chat with his mother. She smiles at him and him only, and says something about having an errand to run. She brushes past them.
Passersby give them passing glances as they walk along the road. Some offer tight-lipped smiles. When he was younger, he chalked it up to the fact that they knew his father personally, and pity them both. He had always wondered why it was only them; many soldiers died in the Rebellion. So, surely, he couldn't be the only one who lost a parent in the war, right?
Now, he knows why.
Her mother comes, then leaves quickly, as if shopping were more of a chore than anything. She doesn't stop and try to talk to anyone. Not that anybody tries to start a conversation with her, either. She probably knows, too.
Legend has it that the deceased are reborn into the sea. The strong-willed become sharks, the kind the turtles, and so forth.
It is also said that an elderly man drowned, trying to reunite with his dead wife. In a way, he succeeded. The man waded in late at night, and walked deeper and deeper into the ocean until he was swept away by the waves. No one has seen him since, sea animal or human.
This, he supposes, is one of the reasons why his mother likes the ocean so much.
It's clear what the other kids think of him the second he enters the school. They gawk at his brown hair and plain features. The disappointment quickly replaces the eagerness in their stares. They curiously walk up to him, then turn away when they hear his soft voice and see his nervous fidgets. Maybe they expected something else, something different, something better.
When they sit cross-legged on the floor, in front of the teacher, one of his classmates whispers, "Is Finnick Odair really your dad?"
"Well...yeah," he says quietly. A hint of pride creeps into his soft voice.
The classmate looks at him strangely. "You don't look like it," his classmate says.
"Well, I am." He says, with as much firmness as he can muster.
A pig-tailed girl joins their conversation. "If Odair's his dad... then isn't his mom Annie Cresta?"
Some overhear. "Annie Cresta?" One murmurs.
"As in, the Annie Cresta?"
"Ma told me about her..."
Soon, he's the object of his classmates' fascination. Merrill flushes and stares ahead. He tries to pay attention to what his new teacher's saying.
During recess, he stands by the eaves of the classroom, and watches the other kids play. They don't invite him to join their game, and he doesn't feel like playing. He stands by himself and waits for the teacher to call them back in for another round of lessons.
Merrill looks down when his teacher announces that the class is going to participate in a getting-to-know-you-better game. A few classmates shoot glances back at him, some eager, some mocking. Others curious. He tries not to notice.
At the end of the day, he has successfully carved his initials in the surface of his desk. He now knows one thing for sure.
Here, he's not Finnick Odair's—the Hunger Games victor and Capitol rebel—son, just some madwoman's kid.
After school, his mother asks him how his day was. He gives her a wide, beaming smile and says that it was great.
Here is what he knows about Finnick Odair so far:
He liked sugar cubes. This was what the old man who lived next door told him, when he came over once to ask for a baking tool his mother needed. During his stays at the Capitol, that was all he ate. Something about living life to its fullest.
The second thing: it was said that he was the most gorgeous man in Panem. They don't mention something as frivolous as this in the textbooks, even though everyone says that's how he won his Games. He was handsome enough that the Capitol citizens fell in love with him, and they made sure he survived.
Merrill stands in front of the mirror sometimes, searching. His features are mostly from his mother. All everyone else can talk about is how much he looks like his father, how charming he looks. When he looks in the mirror, he doesn't see his father grinning back at him. He just sees himself: Merrill Odair.
They don't keep many photographs of his father around the house, so he can't quite tell. His mother says that he does, though, so it must be true.
Here's what Merrill has learned so far:
Sitting with his head down and eyes lowered will make him invisible. So will staying quiet and doodling in his notebook. It isn't anything magical, though doing so will often cause his classmates' eyes to skip over him, like a mistake, an error everyone learns to ignore.
His classmates reallydon't like people who stumble over their words, people who mumble and duck their heads. But after a while, they get used to it. Somewhat. Enough to know better than to try to actually acknowledge his existence.
The administrators do notice him, almost enough to make up for the times his peers do not. They treat him nicer than they ever are to the pigtailed girl who sits next to him in Math, or the mayor's loud, rowdy son. He thinks it has something to do with his parents. Or parent.
Merrill sits with his head lowered while the teacher discusses the Hunger Games, how cruel it was to the Districts. Tomorrow is Saturday, and he's already thinking of building a magnificent castle for his mother. The best yet. One that would make his mother smile even wide and brighter than usual. Maybe this one would keep her from staring off into the ocean with that sad, empty look in her eyes. Maybe she'll forget, just this once.
History, Merrill thinks, is either his favorite or least favorite class. It's the only time of the day that his classmates look at him. Actually look at him, instead of skipping over him. Every time the 65th Victor is mentioned, thirty-four pairs of eyes would flicker to him, then back at the teacher. It's quick, but at least it's something.
"Who can tell me the name of the 65th Victor of the Hunger Games?" the teacher is saying.
Thirty four pairs of eyes glance at him, and Merrill utters, "Finnick Odair."
The teacher blinks in surprise. Merrill rarely speaks during class; he rarely speaks at all, and when he does, it is to ask for something unimportant, like a pencil or permission to use the bathroom. "Yes," he said slowly. "That's correct."
"And," the teacher asks again. "can you tell me how Finnick Odair contributed to the Rebellion?"
Merrill answers without hesitation. "He gathered information from the Capitol," he says proudly, "and he saved the Mockingjay."
The teacher is impressed. "Correct again."
His classmates lean towards each other and whisper, then quickly pull away. A few of them snicker. A girl in pigtails raises her hand. "Sir...how did Finnick Odair gather information from the Capitol?" She gives the teacher a confused look, and smiles innocently.
The teacher obviously doesn't expect this. "Well...you see..." He starts to say, but he never finishes his sentence.
The girl interrupts. "I might be wrong...but my parents said that he slept with people at the Capitol," She smiles again at the teacher, and then shoots Merrill a glance. "Is that true?"
Merrill stares straight ahead at his teacher, silently pleading with him to deny the girl's accusation.
Because that can't be true. His mother never said anything about it. His mother has never lied to him before.
"Yes, that is partially correct," the teacher says finally, and the seedling of hope in Merrill's chest vanishes. He sneaks a glance at Merrill, as if expecting to see him break down this very second. The teacher tries to make it seem casual, when it's obviously anything but.
"My parents also said that the people Odair slept with paid him with secrets instead of money," the girl continues. She peeks through her bangs at him. "That was how he got the information. Right?"
"Well..." the teacher sucks in air through his teeth. "There's more to that. During the war, it was revealed that Finnick didn't become a...he didn't do as you described because he wanted to, but rather because the president at the time—"
"—told him to," the girl finishes for him. "But he still had a choice, right? He didn't have to. He chose to."
The teacher looks like he wants to say something, but doesn't have the right words for it. But he doesn't, so he just stands there with his mouth partially agape.
Everyone else is watching him silently, and Merrill's has his head lowered again, tracing the lead patterns the previous students had left from many years ago.
Then the teacher clears his throat, and changes the topic from the Victors to the various industries of the Districts. One manufactured jewels, Two were the stonemasons, Three engineered, Four fished...
Eventually, his classmates lose interest in him, and he's by himself again.
At school, his teachers don't say what they all used to call his mother. They take one look at him and keep quiet.
The other kids let him know anyway.
The crazy girl from Four, they called her.
"Did you have a nice day at school?" his mother asks, smiling ever-so-slightly.
He doesn't meet her gaze. "No."
"Did you make any friends?"
"No."
"So what did you do today?"
"Nothing." Merrill says, giving an irritated sigh. "We didn't do anything today. It's the same thing over and over again each day." He pauses, then asks: "Why do I have to go to school? It's pointless."
His mother smiles softly at this, and tangles her fingers into the scratchy threads of the net. "You learn new things, if you are patient. I'm sure your classmates are nice. If only you would just go up and talk to them—"
"My classmates are not nice! You know what they said Father was today? They said he was a...a whore." He can't get used to saying that word aloud, especially when it's used to describe his father. His voice drops to a whisper. "And he was one...wasn't he?" He's waiting for her to deny this, to tell him that they're wrong, they're all wrong.
She doesn't. Everything is silent.
"Merrill..." she says after a long pause. Her eyes have a far-away look to it, and for a moment, Merrill thinks she's going to cry.
But she doesn't. Instead, her eyes are downcast, and she stares blankly at the tangled nets on her lap. It's like she wants to say something more, but doesn't quite have the words for it. Like the teacher.
It scares him, just how dead she looks.
When Merrill can't bear to stay any longer, he retreats out to the porch. He leans against the railing, and tries to forget, tries to rewind, to brush away the words he has said and the words his classmates said and the words his mother hadn't said.
He knows he can't. But he still pretends.
It's difficult, Merrill has realized, to separate lie from truth.
It's even more difficult to separate a lie from yet another lie.
It's during a break. The children are gathered at the steps of the school, bunched in groups of two or three, holding snacks, and chatting happily with friends.
Not him.
Merrill stays out of sight. He's hunched over at the foot of the stairs, as if it will somehow make him disappear, or at least become invisible. Though on the better days, they ignore him, like he's someone who's better off unnoticed. On the worse days...
Before he knows it, a tall, gangly boy stands in front of him. He smirks at Merrill. "You know what your mommy is?"
Merrill closes his eyes and waits for it all to be over.
"You know what your daddy is?"
He knows what's coming next. It's the same thing, over and over again, each time. But each time, it's just like the first day of the school, when everyone turned away from him. Each time feels like the day he first learned the definition for words like "prostitute" or "whore."
"Finnick Odair? The whore?"
There it is.
"The murderer?"
Merrill winces slightly. The boy's smirk widens.
He continues. "I bet you didn't know that."
Merrill did.
The boy, seemingly annoyed with his silence says, "Hey, you hard of hearing? Or just plain stupid?" He waits for some kind of reaction.
When he gets none, he leans in, as if he is going to tell a secret. "I bet you're gonna end up a murderer, just like your daddy," he whispers smugly. Merrill is close enough to smell his breath: it's putrid and so nasty he feels like pulling away. But doing so would be synonymous to surrendering, and he isn't about to do that.
Merrill's fist clenches, though he says nothing.
He presses further. "And you know what? I bet you're gonna end up as crazy as your mommy did."
Merrill takes in a shaky breath of air. He can feel his anger manifest in the pit of his stomach. Calm down, he tells himself, calm down.
Then he says, "Th-that's not true." It is not firm, not even remotely demanding. His face reddens with embarrassment, and he is reminded for the umpteenth time how hopeless this is.
"'That's not true?' You mean, you're saying that I'm wrong," the boy taunts. He says enunciates every syllable, as if he were speaking to a toddler.
"You're wrong," Merrill says.
"Oh, I'm wrong? About what? The part about your daddy being a whore, or the part about your mommy being crazy?"
"Everything," Merrill answers. "You're wrong about everything."
There are sniggers throughout the crowd. At that moment, Merrill notices with discomfort that the boy is quite a few inches taller than he is. He tries not to flinch.
"Everything, you say," the boy says, his grin widening. "Well, you're the one who's wrong about everything!"
Merrill stands up and balls his hand up into a fist and he almost throws a punch. Almost. At the moment, it is certainly tempting.
But he doesn't, because all Merrill could think about were those names on the memorial at the heart of Four, his father's among them. It was true that he was a murderer, but he was not just a murderer. Finnick Odair was a hero, a soldier who fought and died in the Rebellion—this he knows for certain.
"No, you're wrong. My father's not a murderer, or a...whore. He was a hero." Merrill whispers the last part. The boy smirks, and shakes his head, as if to say, Can you believe this kid?
Merrill can feel the humiliation burn into his cheeks. Yet, he continues.
"And you don't know anything about Mother," he says, soft but firm. "She's my mother and she takes care of me and loves me!" His voice escalates with each word. "You—you just hear lies and repeat them. All of you are wrong."
For a second, everything is quiet.
The boy is at a loss for words, face beat red with embarrassment. "Whatever," he hisses. He turns away.
Merrill sits back down. And, as much as he tries to fight it, a small smile of a fight fought and won spreads across his face.
It isn't much, but it's enough, for now.
So maybe he doesn't know his father quite as well as he thought he did. Neither him nor his mother.
Merrill's too old to play in the sand. In a year, he'll graduate from school, and be old enough for a job, old enough to live by himself.
He would like to leave the district, but only for a while. Visit the Capitol, the other districts. Maybe find a job in Three or Five, where there are still factories that specialize in technology. They say that the ones at Three rarely see the sun, and that its more superficial and man-made than natural. It's a world away from Four. He entertains himself with the thought of living there. He would probably be happy living and working there for a while, but he would eventually get homesick and come home.
But he will probably end up staying here, by the sea and sun.
He and his mother still come to the beach on Saturdays. He sits next to her on the sand. They don't say much during this time, just a few words here and there. Mostly, he watches the waves advance and recede, and thinks of how easily water could demolish the sand castles he might have made when he was still a child. His mother watches the sea, too, but for a different reason. For her husband, his father.
Out of the blue, she asks, "Merrill, how is school?"
"It's fine, I guess," he says. It's vague, he knows, and not the answer she wants out of him, but school isn't a subject he wants to elaborate on. She's silent, as if she's waiting for him to say something more, so he adds, "It's better. It's not exactly ideal, but better."
"That's good," she says.
They're both quiet for a minute. Then, he blurts out, "Mother, do you think it would be alright if I..." He stops abruptly, afraid of what he's about to say.
This time, she's the one waiting for him to continue.
"Would you think it would be alright if I go somewhere else after I graduate? Like another district, but just for a while, to see what it's like outside of Four. It won't be long," he finishes. He peeks at her from the corner of his eye, gauging her reaction.
She smiles gently. There's maybe a tinge of unhappiness in her gaze—a touch of disappointment, and this is what makes Merrill look away in guilt, and his hopes of traveling somewhere far beyond the borders of Four vanish. He's fine with staying in Four, he supposes. It really wouldn't be so bad, he tells himself. It's where he grew up, where his parents grew up. His family's here.
After a pause, she says, "Yes, it's alright."
He gives her a skeptical look. "Really? Are you sure?" he says. She nods, still smiling.
Merrill whispers to himself, "Alright, then."
He shifts in the sand beside his mother so that he's staring straight across the ocean. He can't see the other side of it. From where he is, it's all but a smooth waves, lapping the sand and then retreating. His textbooks say that there's nothing but water for a long, long distance, and that the other side of the ocean is outside of Panem. Undiscovered.
There's a thousand different futures that leaving Four could lead to, and a thousand more, staying here. The only thing he knows for certain is that no matter where he goes, he'll come back here again, someday.
Without words, the beach is lonely. Even with his mother right beside him, the silence hangs over them. Maybe she can feel it, too, because she doesn't stop him when he speaks.
Most of the time, he's the one who does the talking, his mother the listening. He talks until his throat is sore, or until the sun dips below the horizon, whichever comes first. He talks about anything he could think of. It's odd, because he's supposed to be the quiet one, the daydreamer who sits at the back of the class by himself and doodles in his notebook. It isn't supposed to be this way. It is supposed to be the other way around.
Even so, he doesn't stop.
His mother says that she can see his father everywhere she goes in Four: the raging waves, the summer sun, the busy chatter of the people as they walk across town.It's different for him. All he can see is the monument at the heart of the district that honors all those who have fought and died in the war, the heroes. His father's name is near the first few.
Though on the windier days, when the sand shifts around him, a miniature sandstorm revolving around him and him alone, he thinks he can.
fin.