A/N:Ah lovely cold snaps that put a halt to me wanting to do anything but stay in bed and read... I hope you all are safe in these weird times and historical events.

So this chapter is about twice as long as I normally post in a single chapter but it didn't have a cliffhanger (my bread and butter) or a natural break until it decided to. So you got a long chapter. Maybe this is making up for the prologue, I dunno. And if you, like me, find R'an a little frustrating, there's a reason my dears! And Finnick finds her equally frustrating so we aren't alone! Anyway. I had the chapter written so, despite the fact that I was planning on a bi-weekly post in Lightning Glass I just couldn't wait!

Let me know what you think so far!

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Much Love

JR

P.s. P-atreon and Ko-fi update: Why aren't there tiers and goals yet on either? Mainly because I'm trying to get used to writing regularly on them. I don't want to promise my patrons something and not be able to deliver. So I'm working on building slowly and getting my routine down, then I will be doing some patron-only content like polls for story design and personalized thank-yous and inspiration videos or packages that contain some of the things that inspire each story and other various things. So hang in there with me, I'm still learning, and sign up to follow me so that when the tiers and goals go live you'd be the first to know.

Chapter 1 Lightning Strikes

It was fitting, raining when he got home from the capitol where he made a deal that felt as if it ripped his soul from him. A deal to save his mother. To save Mags. Even Annie. At least they had the decency to wait until he was sixteen, if decency it could be called.

Laughing bitterly, Finnick pushed his wet hair back away from his face as he passed the shell-encrusted pillars of the Victor's village and made his way down the path that led between grass-covered dunes to the ocean beyond. Far out to sea he saw the flash of lightning and heard the rolling thunder that shook the ground beneath his feet. Frowning, he paused to judge the distance. Would he make it to the small shack that used to be a packing shed, until the one in closer to town had been built, before the storm reached him and the sands became too dangerous to stand on? Did it even matter anymore? Would it be easier if he just let the lightning do its worst, or gave himself to the ocean? Would it spare his mother, Mags, Annie?

He heaved a breath, his shoulders sinking under the unfathomable weight of his options. Play by the capitol's rules, or suicide? It would certainly make the nightmares stop if he did.

Pushing on, he had reached the beach just as the winds began kicking up the heavier of the sands, stinging his face. In the distance, he heard a voice calling but deciding that no one had known he was coming out to the beach, and so no one had reason to stop him, he pushed on.

Suddenly, a weight barreled into his shoulder, throwing him a step forward, but even as he fought to stand still something wrapped around his forearm in a hold that was unshakable though it was small. "Are you crazy!" The owner screamed over the winds, forcing him into a run on the shifting sands that time and again tried to send them to their knees. Or him at least. Though he had been crawling on the shore and swimming before he could walk, sands were still tricky at speed. But he noticed that his captor didn't falter or slow as they sped across the expanse of beach.

The shack appeared before them like a ghost against the greying sky and the girl, for it was a girl from what he could see, all but threw him up the few steps into the building that sat on pilings up off the sands.

Slamming the door that always stood wide just for people caught out in the weather, the girl pulled the heavy bar into place with a bang that rivaled the thundering clash outside and left them in equally thunderous silence but for the wind and driving rain outside.

For a time, Finnick wasn't sure if it was the wind outside or his own lungs that sounded like bellows in the darkness until he heard his companion shuffling around and the hiss of a match being struck. A tiny bright tongue of flame lit the gloom and suddenly he could see the being he shared the darkness with as she used the flame to kindle a fire in the small brazier in the middle of the large single room. Carefully she tended the small bundle of dried grasses, feeding them until she could add small chunks of driftwood that crackled and sparked merrily.

"Thanks." He murmured, as she waved him to sit across from her on the other side of the flames.

Silently, she nodded and went back into the shadows. To what he didn't know, but he heard the rustle of cloth and the soft clink of metal before she came back and set a small pot on the fire. It didn't take long before he could smell and hear a stew bubbling away. Wordlessly, she handed him a flat round biscuit.

It wasn't the light green he was used to. Nor was it soft and springy the way loaves were in the district. It was almost as hard as a rock, he found trying to break it, and if he tried to chew it he had no doubts it would chip his perfectly straightened teeth. He was tempted to try actually, just to send his stylists into a fit of despair.

But as he brought it to his lips, the girl began to chuckle softly. A kind of bubbling sound almost lost to the boiling of the stew. Her eyes danced merrily in the darkness as the firelight caught in her eyes making them glow. "Don't. Unless you want to choke. Or break something." She warned, fishing out a bowel and a mug from the pack that he hadn't noticed her bring with her. "Ships biscuit," she explained pointing to the bread. Filling the bowel she handed it to him and then filled her mug and set the biscuit in the steaming stew. "Let it soak and explain what the hell you were doing out on the beach in the middle of a storm when there were lightning rods every few feet."

"Lightning rods?" He asked in surprise, sliding the bread into the stew. "Why would someone put out lightning rods?"

"I put them out." She sighed as if she was explaining to a small slow child. "To attract the lightning. I also put up danger signs that said lightning rods." She pinned him with a look. "They even had pictures just in case you couldn't read."

"I came from the Victor's village and didn't see any signs." He argued.

Instead of lashing him with the reply that he could see rolling around in her eyes like storm clouds, she set her mug of soup on the floor and began braiding wet hair back away from her face. In the low light tiny rings and shells caught the light. Bits of glass flashed and even pieces of coral. Her braid was long and thick, handing down over her bare shoulder near to her waist.

"Victor's village?" She asked, reaching the end of the braid. "Why would you be coming from there? Your parent a Victor or something?"

"No." He answered, puzzled. Everyone knew who he was. The youngest Victor ever. The pride of district four. The Capitol Darling. The Capitol Heartthrob. The newest Capitol whore, he added bitterly in his thoughts. "I am."

She only grunted, turning to dig a spoon out of her pack which she handed to him, and then searched through it once more and pulled out an oddly shaped shell. "You haven't introduced yourself. Only polite since you're eating my food, don't you think?"

He blinked, brushing away a bead of water that decided to run down the length of his nose just at that moment, surprised again that she seemed not to know him. He wasn't crying. He was soaked and dripping. "Finnick Odair."

If she recognized the name she certainly didn't show it. Scooping out some of the soaked bread and soup with the shell that he couldn't identify, she blew on it for a moment before popping it into her mouth and moaning quietly at the taste. Her eyes rolled in pleasure as she chewed the bite slowly before swallowing. Taking a breath, she turned her eyes once more to him. "Eat. Your bread should be softened by now."

Taking a bite himself, he found the taste odd. Not the salty stew he was used to, flavored mainly by the vegetables that would grow in the sandy soil or the seaweed that always seemed to make its way into it. It was still fish, but there was some grain and vegetable that he didn't recognize. Not even from the capital food. "It's good." He complimented after he swallowed it down. The flavor wasn't complex but it was as if it made strength return to his muscles and bones. Strength that he hadn't realized had been sapped some time ago.

"My mother makes better." She replied, scooping out another portion. He wasn't sure if it was false modesty or honesty so he didn't answer. "But it'll do for now." She shrugged.

Looking out between the slats of the closed shutters as they ate in silence that was neither oppressive nor icy but calm and soothing as if nothing more was expected of him but to eat and rest. It was an odd feeling for him. Even his mother required conversation lately as if she sensed there was something to worry about but didn't quite know what it was. Maybe she did know. Maybe she was scared of the silence.

"You ever gonna tell me your name?" He asked as they finished off the last bites of the stew.

She only shrugged. "Your kind don't normally like mine talking." There was no ire in her words. It was a simple statement.

"My kind?"

"Shore folk." She answered, pushing to her feet to clear away the remnants of their simple meal. It was only as she moved away to the back wall, where an old sink stood with a bucket beneath it to catch the water that was used in it, that he got more than a quick look at her. There was a window that bathed her in the flashing lights of the lightning through the shutters letting him see that what he thought were the normal clothes one could find in any general store across Panem, was really something else.

Dark hide clung to her long legs like a second skin letting him see the play of muscle beneath as she moved. It wasn't the muscle of someone who had built it for the arenas in one of the training academies. It was real, lean, and useful muscle. Even more, her arms were bare to her shoulders. The shirt that she wore, made of the same dark material as the pants and just as tight, covering her from her collarbones to her waist in the front cut in along her back to rest between her shoulder blades so as not to impede her movements.

And the way she moved? She moved with economy and grace, almost rolling as she walked like she was used to walking on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. But that couldn't be. There hadn't been anything that could truly be considered a ship in decades. Boats that had one small mast were the largest that were made now.

"You're a mariner."

A tiny smile danced about the corner of her mouth but she didn't answer. "Gonna tell me what had you out and about and nearly getting yourself killed?" She asked instead, drying the bowel and wrapping it back up into its small bundle with the other crockery. Glancing over her shoulder when he didn't answer, she shrugged. "None of my business anyway. It's just easier to tell a stranger that you'll probably never see again your problems sometimes than someone you have to see every day. I'll be gone as soon as I dig up the glass after to storm, anyway."

Once the dishes were done and put away, she tucked them away and pulled out what looked like a sleeping bag, but certainly not one that he had ever seen in the capitol. Or would ever see there he guessed. The outside looked to be the same waterproofed skin that she wore, but the inside was a soft pure white. Fur he decided when she took a seat next to him and offered half of the covering to him. But not a fur that he had seen in the capitol. Theirs was normally fake if it was as long and thick as the fur that lined the bag.

For a time he grit his teeth. But as the warmth of the covering dried him, Finnick found himself slowly opening up to her. Not at first about the games, or the "offer" he had received. But for each story he told her, she exchanged one of her own. Or one of them would ask the other a question, and once it was answered it was the questioners turn to answer one. He found her easy to talk to. She was never shocked, never alarmed. She didn't expect anything but honesty. And he had a feeling it would be a long time before he had the opportunity to talk to another person like that. With no show to put on, no pretenses.

"Scariest thing I've ever lived through?" She repeated his question. When he confirmed his question with a nod, she laid her head on her shoulder for a moment to think. "Hm. That's a difficult one." Her glittering eyes nearly closed in though as she looked down along her arm at the wooden floor. As the wood sparked again, glowing green from the salt, she straightened finally thinking of a reply. "Do you know what coral reefs are?"

"I know what coral is."

"And I haven't seen sharks around here, do you know what they are?"

At his nod, she launched into a story, rolling one leg of her pants up to the calf and showing the proof of the story in the scars she bore. "I got lucky that day." She said as she finished. "What about you?"

"I killed eight people in the arena." He breathed, tensing for her reaction. If she hadn't been disgusted by him yet, she probably would be as this and what he said next sank in. "And now they want to whore me out and are holding my mother, Mags, and my friend Annie's lives as collateral. I do what they want or they die."

For a moment she only looked at him. But then, without a word she stood. And he felt something tear on the inside. But a moment later she was back, a flash of something sloshing in her hand as she sat next to him again, closer this time. So close that when she turned to him he could feel her breath flowing across his shoulder.

She looked at him for a long moment until he shifted, uncomfortable under her unflinching gaze. Then her hand held out the flask to him. "I normally don't approve of drinking pain and fear away. But I think you might need this just once." Pressing the flask into his limp hand, she pulled him around to face her, one of her legs on either side of his that were folded before him. "Drink."

He did as ordered without a fight.

"Now tell me what you've decided to do." She said, taking his hands gently after he downed nearly half the large flask. "Because your death won't stop them."

"I can't fight them either." He spat, pulling his hands away to swallow another mouthful of the numbing drink. "If I could run with them, I would. But someone else would die for it. And they would only do it to someone else. Haymitch told me everything on our way home after the games this year."

Nodding sagely she gathered him up in her arms and stroked his back as the tears that he no longer bothered renaming began to fall thick and fast. Slowly pulling the container away, she stoppered it and slid it behind her back, knowing he had consumed more than enough. "What do you want to do?" She whispered as the tears became less violent.

"What do you mean?" Finnick asked, growing limp in her steady hold. "What can I do?" Stilling, her hand in his hair, she frowned. He could feel it against his forehead and, even though he hadn't known her long, he knew that her brain was furiously buzzing. "I hadn't planned to tell you, you know?"

"I imagine not." She agreed, the frown remaining. "But people like to talk. And everyone has secrets." She sighed, resuming her soothing stroking on his hair. "Big plans and little ones, Finnick. Think big plans and little ones. What you want to do or need to do long term and what you want to and need to do now. It's a chess game to those in charge and you have the choice to be their pawn or your own king or anything in-between."

"I have to protect them." He put the biggest need into words.

"Well, there's no way to make yourself feel okay with going along with the capital's plan for you unless you really end up liking sleeping with someone new every day." She shuddered. "Being a one-man woman myself I can't see that happening if I was in your position. But in order to protect my family, if that was my only option?" She shrugged under his head. "I'd do what I had to. But I'd try to do it on my terms if I could. Get something from it for myself. Not just safety. Not even things, like they can make themselves less guilty with a gift. But leverage maybe." She hmmed, resuming her stroking. "Although I'd have to be very discreet and careful how and when I used it."

"Other than your family what is the one thing you don't want them to have?" She asked after a moment, looking out over his shoulder to the shuttered windows as a thunderhead cracked just overhead and she saw the lightning hit one of her rods outside.

Heaving out a heavy breath, he admitted on a bitter laugh. "In the district, we're old-fashioned in our little villages. In the capital, there are no rules. But here I would court a girl for months at least, we'd get married and she would be the first and only one I would go to bed with. I'm sure others aren't as…" Pausing he searched for the word he wanted but growled when he couldn't think of it. His head hurt too much from the crying. "I don't want them to have my first time even if I can't have the rest."

"So go get a pretty little thing you've lusted after for years and maybe isn't as virtuous as yourself." She chuckled darkly. "I'm sure there are several that would be glad to help you out there."

"Problem with that." He breathed, straightening just a bit to look up at her. "I fell in love years ago with my one. Haven't seen her since. Don't even know if she's alive."

"Oh?"

"My sea goddess." He whispered, not noticing the catch in her breath.

"What's the beauty's name?"

"Ran." He answered, curling his tongue around the word as the little girl had so many years ago when things were more simple.

"R'an Marin." She supplied, her mouth forming the name much smoother than she had as a child. "She gave you a tiny bit of sea glass, blue-green in color, rounded like a pearl?"

Finnick sat up like one of the bolts of lightning had just struck him dead center. "How did you know that? I haven't told anyone but my mother her first name since that day and I never told anyone about the glass."

Smirking, she chuckled. "I know her. Very well." Pulling the blanket closer around them, she looked out over his shoulder to the roiling storm beyond the shuttered windows. "Doesn't look like the storm will pass tonight. You had probably better stay till first light."

Refusing to be put off, Finnick caught at her wrist, pulling her closer so he could look into her eyes and maybe see the truth that ebbed and flowed there like the tides. "How do you know R'an?" He demanded, so intent on her answer that he missed the shiver that stole across her skin when his tongue rolled the name in a way all too unfamiliar to his tongue, but well known to her. It was almost a growl and she felt herself grown warm under his gaze.

Meeting his eyes for the first time, she wondered if he would recognize the little girl she had been, so innocent and as pure as a dewdrop, in the young woman she was now, hardened by life and loss and trials that no shore boy had ever seen. But she guessed, remembering his worries, that he had his own darkness. And she felt like calling to like within her soul.

But he gave no sign of realization. No sign of anything at all. So she followed that lead. "Everyone in the community knows the Marins." She said simply. "Her father is chieftain and her mother is one of the wise women. R'an herself is undergoing the training for becoming a wise woman."

"What does that mean?" Finnick asked, finding his voice and hand quivering like a line with a fish on. "You used that term before."

"Wise women are spiritual leaders." She explained, relaxing as his hold on her wrist loosened. "They provide guidance of all kinds, perform ceremonies, other things too. But R'an won't take her place as a wise woman until she marries so it's some time off." When his look clouded over, darker than the storm head outside, she asked. "Do you really not know anything about the Mariners?"

"Not much." He admitted, shivering as the wind outside began pushing through the cracks of the old shack enough to chill his wet shoulders.

"Lie down."

"Excuse me?"

She rolled her eyes, pulling the blanket away and something from her pack which she quickly unrolled and stretched out over the floor. The fur-lined blanket was quickly folded double and she gently pushed him onto it. "Unless of course, you want to freeze before morning in those wet clothes."

"I could always take them off." He laughed. A tiny bitter sound if ever there was one. "It'll likely be the only chance I have to do it willingly with someone else."

Without replying to him, she slid into the fold of the blanket behind him, pressed against his back, keeping him between herself and the warmth of the brazier. "Get some sleep, four." She whispered. "If the storm is still here come morning I'll tell you then."

Sure that he would never be able to sleep, Finnick lay his head down on his arm and stared into the cracking fire. Within minutes he was asleep.

Sometime during the night Finnick woke up to a bang and jumped only to find the girl closing the door to the outside again. It had been the bar that slipped from her icy finger and fell making the racket. "Sorry," she whispered, seeing him get up by the light of the flickering embers. "Went out to check traps and collect my rods." She told him, lifting up a small bundle of seaweed he could recognize in the darkness by the bulbs that he had always found to be rather tangy, almost like the capital oranges but you couldn't juice them. You ate the leaves in soup for breakfast normally and had the bulbs like grapes.

"Is the storm passed?" He asked, no sooner getting the words out than the weather itself answered pouring down rain as if someone left the faucet running.

She laughed, coming back to sit by him with the bundle before she began separating the bulbs and long blade-like leaves out. She didn't speak for a long time other than to say thank you when he began to work in silence with her. Once they were finished, he looked out the shutters and saw that night had only just fallen, and while he was dry and warm, she was now cold and shivering from the wet. Finnick drew her back into the blanket with him and wrapped around her much smaller form, holding her until the shivers stilled and her breathing evened out.

She had fallen asleep in his arms. Innocent in a way that he couldn't begin to express gratitude for, he brushed her hair back over her shoulder and saw the piercings that ringed one ear. Idly, he counted them, tracing the small hoops with a fingertip. Two of some hammered metal that showed dimly in the light of the flickering embers. One of what looked like some kind of bone and another of glass. All in the curve of one ear.

Looking around, Finnick caught sight of the small pile of driftwood she was using for fuel and stood to retrieve some and feed the embers. It must have taken her quite some time to collect the seaweed and get her rods because he somehow doubted she would have left with the fire dying.

After the fire was crackling again, Finnick found that he simply couldn't sleep. It was as if the storm was now within him and as much as it raged and swirled, he couldn't move. It only twisted and swirled around the eye, the very center of the warring emotions. And that center seemed to be swirling around the words she had spoken earlier. "Everyone has secrets, Finnick." She had said. "You have a choice. Pawn or King. I'd do what needed to be done but I'd do it on my terms. Get something for me."

And like a bolt of lightning, he had an idea. There was no fighting Snow. He had too much power for any one person to bring down. But if the Mariners still existed in the way the legends said, if they had really been soldiers that refused to give in when the capital attacked and had taken to the sea instead. Then maybe thirteen existed. And even if neither one of these things were true, maybe there was someone working to bring Snow and the whole damn system that spawned the Hunger Games and the exploitation of victors crashing down. He could find them. It may take time, but if he was cautious…

And if there wasn't, surely there was someone who hated Snow and the conditions that the districts were kept in just as much as he did. If there was no group working toward setting things right then maybe, just maybe if he was very careful, he might just be able to spark the idea in someone. After all, a ripple only needed a drop of water to start.

And when he found them, he and those secrets he could collect would be a very powerful weapon in his new arena.