Hi team!

This chapter has been reviewed and edited in May 2020. I have made very small alterations to the original chapter. You will not necessarily need to read it again if you already have.

Enjoy!

Oh! I forgot to mention in my warnings on Chapter 1: English is my second language, please forgive any mistake that might have slipped through! :)


Finnick

"-I volunteer!"

Finnick's head snapped up to the screen on the wall. The screen in the train wagon that was taking him, two of his fellow victors and the two tributes they would be mentoring from District 4 to the Capitol.

He had been distractedly tying knots on a length of rope while his fellow mentors were trying to learn more about their new charges. None of them really had been watching the television where the reapings of the double-digit districts were now broadcasted live. The four other people in the room briefly looked at the screen, barely a couple of seconds, before resuming their talk.

But not Finnick. He watched, slightly intrigued, as a young brown-hair girl detached herself from some Peacekeepers and shouted what she had just murmured, her back straight and her voice strong and clear.

"-I volunteer as tribute!"

Finnick smirked then stood up and went to the buffet to pick one of the sugary pastries. He sat back down and finally got involved in the conversation between mentors and tributes.

How rare, a volunteer from a lesser district! And 12, no less. Maybe this year's Games would turn out to be interesting.

But he doubted it.

Finnick looked at the other mentors around him. Not all twenty four of them were there, but it was never the case. The room he was in was one of the thirteen mentoring rooms in the Training center. Twelve individual ones – one for each district – and the big common one where mentors could watch the Games together.

The Games wouldn't start for another two weeks but mentors liked to meet here to discuss things and greet one another.

Finnick had gone to the common viewing room. He wanted to check the mood of these Games. So far it seemed that there would be no surprise. But Finnick, perhaps more than anyone, knew that there always was the possibility for big surprises.

Half an hour before the Opening ceremony started, mentor and victor Haymitch Abernathy staggered in, drunk as usual. He was far from being the only victor with an addiction. But a part of Finnick had expected him to maybe go easy of the alcohol this year, if only because the girl tribute seemed to have more of a back bone than his usual tributes.

Finnick didn't quite know what to make of an as-drunk-as-usual Abernathy. Did that mean that she had broken down in the train and revealed herself to be just like the others before her?

The young mentor sighed, disinterested once more. Whatever is was, it wasn't his problem. He left: it was time for him to go find his own tributes to send them off. He would then return to the mentor viewing lodge to watch the parade. He would go to District 4's allocated one this time.

Finnick sat down on the chair in front of a middle-size screen. He was back into the common lodge in the end. He had a feeling it would be interesting to hear the others' comments. So he watched and he listened.

He watched the screen where children displayed the colours of the districts they would never go back to. As usual the Careers looked confident, his own tributes included. Most of the others were younger and less imposing… Preys. The male tribute from 11 almost looked like a Career, dwarfing his petite female counterpart.

Finnick watched as the tributes from 12 appeared on the television screen. He listened as the Capitol went crazy about her and her flames. He watched as the innocent girl from the reaping was consumed by a more mature version of herself. He listened as the Capitol gave her a name, branding her into their minds: the Girl on Fire.

And Finnick snickered: maybe this year's Games would be interesting in the end, if only because someone from a lesser district was memorable, for once.

Finnick didn't talk to or help his tributes. That was Jason's and Milia's role, the other mentors. On his yearly visit to the Capitol, Finnick was tasked with the publicaspect of mentoring and had to meeta lot of people. So Finnick only watched what everyone else was watching on the television instead of the more detailed and informative mentors' channels.

He was at a meeting when the scores were announced. Fortunately the man he was with desired to watch the announcement. So Finnick watched, as surprised as the rest of the Capitol, as the girl from 12 received an eleven, beating even the Careers.

Finnick smirked: yep, this year's Games would be interesting. So he decided to watch them more attentively than usual, if only to see if her flames would burn bright or be extinguished.

Just like he had decided ,Finnick watched.

He watched as the Girl on Fire survived the initial Cornucopia bloodbath, gaining a knife in the process. He watched her trek into the forest for several hours and stop to take stock of her new belongings. He discovered that she had a good head on her shoulders.

Finnick paid no attention to his tributes. After ten years it was just easier that way. He paid a minimum amount of attention to everyone equally, except for the Girl on Fire.

He watched and saw that she was a hunter. The fisher in him would have liked to take a closer look at her snares, to see how they worked. He watched as she climbed up in a tree and tied herself down for the night. Smart move.

He watched as she observed the Career pack kill another tribute nearby.

He didn't watch what happened during the first night. He had an appointment. But when he entered the common viewing room the next morning and looked at District 12's screen, he saw that she had grown more dehydrated.

He watched as Haymitch and her seemed to have a conversation through the screen. Smart girl.

A lull in the Games, at least for the girl. Another appointment. Than another. Finnick wished he could watch the Games in the mentor room instead. Anything but the appointments. The only bright side was that everyone in the Capitol watched the Games. His clients watched the Games. So Finnick could watch them too. At least the edited version.

He was at an appointment when he watched her run for her life and try to escape a fire Finnick knew had been meant for her. He watched as she ran and ran and twisted and turned. He watched as she screamed when her thigh burned. The Girl on Fire burned. She kept running. He kept watching.

Finnick watched as she climbed up a tree despite her injuries, hissing in pain, once again running for her life as the Career pack chased her. He noted that his tributes were not part of it. But the male tribute from her district was.

He watched as she taunted them. He repressed a laugh.

The night was fast approaching as she waited in the tree, high enough to be safe. When the silver parachute arrived in a higher branch next to her, he almost winced with her, imagining the pain she was in. He'd never been burned but it looked nasty. When she sighed in relief after applying the medicine, he decided to call it a night. He had no appointment.

Finnick had to admit he was intrigued. It wasn't every year that someone from the double-digit districts survived that long, especially when the Career pack was hunting them.

Later he watched the sky in the arena beginning to light up. The night-and-day rhythm was different in the arena: the Gamemakers made it so the hours when most activity took place in the arena were when most of the Capitolites were up and watching. After 74 years of Games, they knew the crack of dawn was one of the most interesting parts of the day: the tributes were tired or sleeping, their guard lowered.

Finnick watched the girl in the tree. The sky was still dark light of the very early morning. She was climbing up again. Where to?

"-Tracker jackers," came the voice of the mentor of District 7.

"-Hum?

-12. She's climbing up to a nest of tracker jackers. The girl from 11 showed it to her last night.

-Where is she now?

-Disappeared in the trees again."

What could the girl possibly do with tracker jackers?

Finnick watched as she started sawing the branch the nest was in. His eyes widened slightly in surprise and disbelief. Was she going to do what he thought she was going to do?

He watched the nest fall down on the ground and the tracker jackers explode out of it, attacking the Career pack. She had done exactly what he thought she would do. Air bubbled out of his chest in a short laugh, echoed by Haymitch's guffaw. Her mentor had arrived in the room just moments before. Could he have done it on purpose?

"-Ahah, Sweetheart, you're priceless!"

The older man laughed some more.

"-I got to say, Abernathy, your Girl on Fire has balls of steel.

-That she has, Pretty Boy, that she has."

Finnick watched her during his appointments, now more intrigued than ever. He watched as the little girl from 11 helped her through the hallucinations. He watched as the Girl on Fire fed her and treated her like a friend.

He was at yet another appointment when he watched her blow up the Careers' supplies sky high. He bit his cheek to prevent himself from smiling. She was on fire all right, that girl.

And in that moment Finnick knew.

He knew that he would watch her go home. Because she was a fighter. She packed more will to survive in her petite form than the huge male tribute from 2.

A few hours later, Finnick was back in his own room, fresh out of a scalding shower when he watched her break down. The little girl from 11 was now home. He watched as the girl from 12 tucked her in a bed of flowers and cried for a little bird whose wings had been cut. He watched as the girl, the huntress, brought her fingers to her mouth and suffered with District 11.

On the mentor channel he watched as she ate the small bread a whole district had paid a fortune to send her, tears streaming down her face. Finnick knew for certain this was not showed on the television. But he watched. He saw. He saw that maybe the Girl on Fire had done something. Something that would be branded into the districts' minds. Branded by her fire.

Finnick watched. And as he watched, he saw others start to really watch too. The Capitol was watching.

The rules changed. Panem watched her search for the boy and try to bring him back to health.

Haymitch, that crafty man. Finnick watched as she put the naive boy to sleep.

He watched as she kissed him. And because he was who he was, Finnick knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that he would watch her go home and give the world hell for it. For the girl from 11. For forcing her, the free spirited girl of 12, to play a game she had played by her own rules until now.

Because of who he was, he knew that she had been forced to embrace the rules and give the Capitol a show. Because of who he was Finnick saw through the kisses. After all, he was Finnick Odair.

Finnick was just one of the thousands who watched the boy from 11 spare her just because. Because of what she had done.

Panem watched as she and the two boys left in the arena ran for their lives. In the eyes of Panem and above all of the Capitol, the mutts were big terrifying dogs. But not for the mentors. Not for the Victors, who watched and saw the horror on the girl's face. They knew that whatever was too small to be clearly seen on the screen was something she would forever see in her dreams.

For they knew how the arena worked.

Panem watched as the girl and the boy were finally the only ones left. Bloody, scared, exhausted, but happy, in a way that only Victors could understand. But the Games did not end. And Panem watched as the rules changed again.

Finnick watched as she almost became a Victor. He watched as she made up her mind and once again did something.

He watched as a girl from District 12 of all places embraced the rule of the arena, the rule of the show in the purest form, and made it hers.

She had been forced to give Panem a show. Finnick watched as she embraced the show and, with a handful of berries, bent the rule of the Games.

Finnick and the mentors and the Victors and the Districts and the Capitol watched as the girl from 12 went back home hand in hand with the boy.

And for the first time in a very long time Finnick let himself smile. This year's Games had been more than interesting. He had watched a girl become a Victor. But by her own rules. He had watched her become something. Something he did not know the nature of yet but something he would keep watching. And Finnick couldn't wait to watch her again. And to meet her, that girl from District 12, that hunter, that survivor, that Victor, that Girl on Fire. That girl who had branded her name on his mind.

Katniss Everdeen.