The Fisher King and the Princess of Silence4
Author: Howlynn
Realm: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Story Title: The Fisher King and the Princess of Silence4
Summary: The Kingdom of Sorrow is left in darkness without his princess. Bly Fisher, the pirate king, falls into depression.
Character/Relationships: Finnick Odair, Prim Everdeen .
I Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author notes: Thank you for being patient – I am giving you some extra for sticking with this little AU story...
Warning: This may be an addictive substance, please check with your personality profile before beginning the program. Not responsible for any feelings of feelings you may experience.
The Fisher King waited for her calls. Sometimes Haymitch, the marauder, called but he did offer good news. She was going to see and speak again. They were working on making her skin look good enough to look normal with makeup. She would never look like she had once, but she would soon be meeting up with her poor broken sister. The months went by painfully slowly and sometimes he was sure she would never call him again. The first time he'd heard her voice, he'd lost his for at least ten minutes.
She prattled on about the news, and how wonderful everyone had been. She misses him. Primrose is going to be on TV when she will be reunited with her sister. Will he come? He answers her, no.
Bly watchs the event on television. He sees her there, looking beautiful and perfect for the first time. No, you could not have recognized her from the girl she'd been once, but she looks like them. Normal. She looks like a real person again and he stares at her in pure joy, knowing he'd done the right thing. The sister embraces her and his heart melts for the happy girls.
He'd just had another procedure and somehow they were going to fit him for a prosthetic eye. He is embarrassed that he is being funneled money that could have helped someone else more. Life had not been easy here, he had not realized how he'd come to depend on her. The Kingdom went to bramble and thorn as he stared out the window and searched his broken mind for a glimmer of any part of him. There is nothing there and he begins to lose his cheery false hope of someday.
There is no hope for him. He will leave this place and have to make his way into a world of nothing. He is nothing. There is nothing for him out there. There is nothing for him in here either. He is disappearing.
A day came in which she did visit. He was terribly frightened and sure she would never want to set eyes on him again after she sees what a monster he is.
He'd been up all night pacing, too excited to breathe and too full of fear to sleep. He imagined a pretty little girl, smiling at him then screaming in horror.
He turns and there she stands, arms out and not the least bit shy of him. He blinks at her proud that he now can. She giggles and he is in her arms, relieved to see her whole. "You're so beautiful. You always were, but I am happy for you. Did you see the boy yet?"
She nods. Her smile tells him it was better than he could have hoped for her. "He loves me." She hides her face in his shoulder for a second, then looks at his face for the first time."No more pirate! They matched you perfectly!" she exclaimed.
"Oh it was just stock. Left over from the capital." He laughs. His smile is easier now that he has a permanent jaw.
"Yes. It was from the old capital stock. Called Finnick Odair green, I believe." Haymitch stood leaning on the doorframe, watching the man as if waiting for some admission.
"Well It works just fine, so I don't care if it is orange and pink," he says with a cock of his head.
"I have been reading your file, Mr. Fisher. It says you have no memory of your life before."
"Haymitch! Stop it. I told you," Prim hisses with anger.
"I only want to help him Prim," Haymitch says softly.
"I am settled with it. I know I have darkness back there. Do me the kindness of leaving it alone."
"I don't mean any—" Haymitch begins confused.
"Is my Dragon girl here?" Pencils wheels himself into the room and it is chaos.
Abernathy lets out a groan and nearly falls trying to get himself in the face of the man in the chair. "Cinna? Cinna by damnation you are here?"
"It's you! Haymitch it's Him! Cinna? Oh, how could I not have known!" Prim squeals.
Pencils is miffed but laughs and chortles as if this happens to him all of the time. "I don't know him but I am so happy you see him!" He says grinning.
Haymitch looks at him. "Katniss will never believe this. Cinna do you know me?"
"Of course. You belong to my girl on fire. You drink." He says in a dizzy far off voice.
"Yes, I do. Cinna. Do you know what happened to you? How did you get here?"
"I have always been here. Just like Finnick." He says and hugs them more.
"Finnick Odair?" Haymitch glances up at Bly.
"Of course. He's lost his mind you know." Cinna whispers loud enough for people in the hall to hear.
Bly laughs. "He's confused. That's all. It is a joke you know? He thinks it is funny to call me that, because I am hideous. It isn't true." Bly assures them and glares at Pencils, wondering who this Cinna is that they have decided they know.
"Bly. I don't know if he's as far away from the mark as you say. The first time I heard your voice. It nearly gave me heart failure. It is rather strange that your eye color would be such a match to that name…don't you think?" Haymitch studies him and glances at Prim who is grinning from ear to ear.
"No. Anyone could match the eye color. Please. Just leave me alone." Bly doesn't understand his anger, but he doesn't want these people to pretend they know him. He doesn't want to be Finnick Odair. He is just Bly Fisher. He is nobody.
"But if you are Finn—" Prim says sweetly.
"I am not. Stop saying that. I am not him. Now leave me alone. Just leave me alone!" He shouts the last part as he flees from the room. He knows this facility better than anyone and hooking rights and lefts, he puts distance between the visitors and himself. How dare they come in here and make fun of him.
Finnick Odair was a victor. He was a murderer and a playboy who had no love. Prim liked him, but she was young. He left his wife and baby to fight and got himself killed. He would not allow that poor woman to be put through the horror of a mistake. He didn't remember them at all and it wouldn't help anyone. Even if it were true, he didn't want that someday. He didn't want to be that horrible person from the television, who had no soul in his eyes.
Bly wandered around the empty floors waiting until enough time passed that he knew they would leave. He didn't mean to hurt their feelings, but he could not go back and let them convince him of a lie. It was a lie.
Late in the night he went back to his room. They had taken Pencils with them this time. Robbers in his kingdom. He didn't hear from the girl for a week. By that time he'd managed to have a raging infection. He wasn't fighting it very hard and he could see the worry in the kind nurse's face. He'd picked up some bug while wandering in the abandoned sections of the hospital. He let his eyes close, realizing that the his royal personage, had found his someday.
"We didn't have anyone else to call. He misses her terribly. We thought maybe it would help him fight. We tried the dna match, but we are sorry, Mr. Abernathy, all of the Odair files were corrupted."
Primrose Everdeen sat in the familiar room. She had traveled here with Rory Hawthorne. He had traveled on to district two to visit his older brother. She had been offered her old room and she felt at home here. Though she didn't recognize a soul by sight, she recognized footsteps, sometimes smell and often the voice of those around her.
Her pirate king was Finnick Odair once upon a time. She knew it in her heart. She had known him when he went crazy for Annie back in district 13. Of course until she saw him, it had not dawned on her. The eyes. The playful little boy. The kind hearted man. She had known him before. She spoke to him and told him all the things she remembered about him, hoping he would dream of them and remember.
The ocean. It is all around him. He is home. The mermaid will come now. Only the mermaid can pull him down to the bottom of the sea and let him sleep there safe and sound. In his fever he remembers things but they are just distant flashes of another person's life that he doesn't know. He remembers being broken because they hurt the mermaid. He remembers a blond boy who must have drowned on a mountain somewhere. There were other people who he didn't know. It was all a jumble and he couldn't escape.
There is an old woman in his dreams and he didn't remember her, but her piercing eyes fell on him and she shook her head. "Coward. I never knew you to be a coward. Stupid as the day is bright, but not a coward." She said no more but disappeared into the fog, leaving him with a broken heart.
"Finnigan Oh Finnigan!" the mermaid called. He searched the water but could not see her.
A man with white hair and dead blue eyes smiles at him. "I win. I always win, boy. You should have known it by now. You lost something. You lose and you lose." The cold man laughs at him and somehow he would hurt his mermaid.
There was a pretty room and he hated it. The only good thing in the room was the sugar cubes. He ate them and it brought memories of coffee which he loved. Coffee made it so he could do the bad things. He had to stay awake to keep Annie safe. It was only his soul that he gave up for her. It was gone now and the world was a better place without him.
He opened his eyes and she was there. "Princess Rose," He whispers.
"You have been sick, Finnick," she said softly.
He nods. "It may be true. But it doesn't matter if it is. I don't remember them and what he was loved for no longer exists. He no longer exists, Prim." He pats her hand.
"Finnick Odair you called Haymitch and you think I am keeping your secret over something as stupid as the way you look?" she hisses.
He looks at her. "How is Annie?"
"She isn't good Finn. They keep trying to take Finnigan from her. Johanna lives there now. You have to stop being a coward and you have to try." Prim says.
"No I don't. I don't have to be loved in pity or burden them. Imagine my son, off to school, having to point me out as his father. No woman could love this and from what I remember, he didn't deserve her anyway. He was a cad. He was a murderer and he is dead. If you insist on doing this to me. Then I have to ask you to leave." Finn says in such pain that Prim wraps her arms around him and comforts him.
"It's ok. You don't have to do anything before you are ready ok? Just at least think. You were all she had left, Finn. I love you and I still know how you feel, but not one person cared how I looked. I promise. Not one. Rory was so mad at me for being worried about how I looked. He was mad at me for being selfish and making him live extra days not knowing. I bet she would love you right now. Even if she didn't know you were her Finnick. "Prim stood up.
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes. It does actually." Prim had a stubborn look on her face. "Finnick used to like to bet on weird stuff. Never the games, but he would bet on how people would act. He would bet on when Haymitch would take a shower, or if a nurse would touch her nose while giving someone a shot. He would bet that a roach could outrun a green-hopper. So I am making a bet with you. I bet if we show up in district 4 and I introduce you to her, Annie will love you just like you are. If she doesn't, you stay Bly Fisher. But if she does, you have to meet Peeta's doctor and let him help you. "
Prim looks at him expectantly. "I am not going to bet on such nonsence." He turns his head away.
"I don't believe it. You were right all along. You aren't him. Finn was never such a coward." She doesn't stay. She blinks away tears and heads to her room.
He lays there in the quiet dark, thinking of her bet. He did want to go to district four. He didn't want to try to make a poor crazy girl love him. He would like to see his son in person. It wouldn't be too bad. She would never know and it would not hurt her. If he didn't try very hard, maybe Prim would leave him alone about it.
The next morning he waited for her to come. She didn't. He hung his antibiotics bag on the rolling pole and went to her room. She glared at him.
"I will do it. But she must not know. Nobody will know. I am just your monster friend from the hospital and Haymitch brought me there for some extra treatments. When my treatments are done. That is the end of it." He crosses his arms and glares at her right back.
"Deal. Nobody knows. And you might get your memory back being home." Prim throws her arms around him.
"I will do it then. But you better not ..do what I did to you."
Prim laughs, "I won't have to, silly old pirate!"
Well, I hope you like it - review and let me know - or even if you hate it - review and let me know.