District Four Subdivision A smelled of saltwater and fish. It was a scent that Coral Swan recalled from back before she took her first steps. Her first swim. It mingled with blood from the first blade held in her hand. The Swan's weren't wealthy by any stretch, but Delmar Swan had taken his father's fishing trawlers and turned them into a thriving corporation. He employed seven per cent of District Four's expansive population, training them from eager pre-teens to loyal adults. Delmar had married for love, a whip-smart merchant named Gillian who had birthed him first a son, and then a daughter.
Coral's early childhood was filled with days on the sea, saltwater staining her lips and an endless cycle of her father's employees training her in how to wield a trident. A knife. A rope. A net. None of them ever alluded to what they were doing, but Coral knew. Her brother Ford had known it too. Their lives had been built from the ground up to give them all the best opportunities. Networks. Skills.
Enough that the day when Ford Swan's name was pulled from the reaping bowl in the Sixty-Third Hunger Games, he would have enough strength and support to bring him back home.
That year, Coral discovered that money and respect weren't infinite. Particularly when one's father was pouring every last surplus cent into keeping his family name alive. His boy. His pride and joy. Coral at all of twelve had stared blankly at the screen while Ford ranked mediocrely. As he'd emerged from his training with his face torn, and whispers grew of some feud between the boy and the other tributes. The Games began and the usual collaborations between districts One, Two and Four didn't appear. Her brother had had to flee into a barren desert landscape with little to help him survive. It had been her father who had paid for the water he received. For the bread. For the medicine to ease the blisters raised on his sunburnt skin.
Delmar, Gillian and Coral had watched as their people betrayed them. As District Four, the Capitol, and everything it stood for, simply settled back into its seats to watch Ford Swan starve to death in an arena full of monsters. His mentor Mags had done her best, but as Coral watched – the people chose to turn their heads away. Those that didn't avert their gazes cried Ford Swan too ugly to warrant help. Too weak. Too simple. Even if we help him now, they claimed, what good is he to us like that?
Bitterness doesn't happen overnight. It's found in the quiet agreement of a district that their hopes were better pinned on the young girl who could make weapons out of stones and viper venom. Found in the mutt snake that slithered its way over sand to sink fangs into her brother's wrist and fill him with poison. Found in the image of the boy who cut Ford Swan groin to throat with an axe when his screams drew attention. Found in the aftermath of an unmarked coffin and a district that peeled out for the funeral of a boy they had abandoned to the wolves.
As her father crumbled, her mother rose. Gillian established a stall on the docks to sell the fish she was able to catch until Delmar managed to cobble together enough men to start sailing again. The damage had, however, already been done. Delmar trusted few of his men, the hard-fought-for loyalty he'd thought he'd instilled little more than ash and dust. Swan Fisheries dwindled down to two boats and a handful of supporters. Her home, too painful to bear with her brothers' empty room, was sold and replaced with a smaller affair. Her parents' marriage bed transitioned from a double to two twins.
Coral waited for each subsequent games with bated breath. With sorrow and anger and blinding fear that soon her own name would be called. The sixty-fourth passed with two unnamed tributes volunteering their names, and a faint balm to the wound. It wasn't just them. It was everyone suffering. In pain. Agonised. Coral almost convinced herself that maybe, someday, the feelings would pass.
And then, the sixty-fifth had brought Finnick Odair. A boy her own age. From her own Subdivision. She'd passed him and his bright smiles in school. Recalled the way he'd reached for her once after Ford, his hand out and mouth open as though he could offer her anything at all.
For a brief moment, Coral had felt relief that her parents would not lose their second child. Quick on its heels was sympathy for Finnick and the fate that awaited him. It lasted all of the ten minutes that it took for Coral to see the broadcast and the commentators as they singled him out from the start. As he claimed high ranks and praise for his beauty, his charm.
By the time Finnick Odair made it to the games, his tribute finance pool was thirteen times what her brothers had been.
By the time he was granted the trident that helped him claim his victory, Coral had found a vehicle for her loss. An embodiment of all the wrongdoing that had befallen her family. The Capitol was too far away to strike against. Too much of an idea in a world that was grounded in sea and sand.
Finnick Odair was less of a wisp. He was human and whole and as far as Coral Swan was concerned, he was nothing less than a monster.