o2. Odds
Something that feels but doesn't look like night ghosts over the arena in a way that makes Katniss restless. The familiarity of the arena's falseness — strangling the day-night cycle that her body has integrated so seamlessly over the years — brings nothing but a sense of deep violation. Here, the world never behaves quite the way it should. And that is probably part of the plan. Maybe to throw all of them just a little more off; or, more likely, to condense their televised slaughter in a way that better fits the Capitol citizens' schedules. Regardless, there is something wrong with this playing field in the same way there is something wrong with the Games.
Everything conflicts. Her head pounds.
Everything conflicts. She feels Peeta's presence beside her, alive. As is she — two Victors from a game whose purpose is to allow one to survive. Two Victors who refuse to buckle under the weight of nightmares and phantom blood on their hands and the images of eyes and limbs and dead bodies that would never leave. Two Victors who are constantly paying for that — in Twelve. In the Capitol. In the arena.
She reaches out for Peeta's sleeping form, fingers hesitantly refusing to stretch fully. Her courage flags less than halfway there and Katniss drops her arm, letting her palm rest on the jungle floor. And we're supposed to be madly in love. She's meant to be carrying his child. And she can't even summon the bravery to stroke his arm.
There are constants that haunt her, waking and dreaming. Rue's chest going still, her lifeless hands holding a bundle of flowers planted and grown by the Capitol that orchestrated her death. Glimmer's eyes sparkling in the muttation, looking so alive that sometimes Katniss has trouble feeling the tangible line between life and death. The drawn look of hurt flashing across Peeta's face when he learned that the things he'd thought were her feelings — her love, her devotion — were nothing more than an act. Given time and space and fresh air to breathe, Katniss still isn't sure if her facade might ever become real — time and space they don't have on the best of days. Here, in this place so deep and dark and always watched, the very idea is an impossibility.
Well. At least he's alive.
An unspoken apology tastes bitter on her tongue, so she simply turns away and folds her legs up against her chest. One arm draped over her knees, the other hanging by her side with her palm still resting against the moist dirt of the jungle floor, she focuses on breathing.
Without really meaning to, her eyes fall to Finnick's back. Even turned to her, he is still sort of radiant. She gets it, in the way that someone observing birds from a distance can start to see their flight pattern. The commentators aren't wrong; Finnick Odair exudes magnetic charm and flippant indolence even when he is quiet, as if he is always ready and willing to play whatever game comes to him. Quiet and perched beside Mags the way Katniss is beside Peeta, his head is bowed but not bent; there is no pressure keeping it down, and he looks attentive rather than burdened.
Katniss can't help the disgust that flickers in her chest — perhaps after so many conquests and so much time in the Capitol's lap, he won't deign to suffer his true emotions even in the company of his mentor.
Then, of course, she wanted the earth to swallow her whole.
Peeta's alive thanks entirely to Finnick. And here Katniss is, searching for the worst parts of him.
Maybe I was wrong about myself. Maybe I am as bad a person as they say. The idea comes with no bitterness — just that burning shame and exasperation that lives in her now; one more thing at conflict with itself. One more thing to keep her head swimming and not in the game. One more thing to get her killed.
"Katniss?" She startles when Finnick sidles up beside her — again. Is he destined to be the breach in her defenses? At this rate, she should have rightfully died yesterday. Insufferable. Intolerable.
"What?" It comes out harsher than she'd intended, and even she has to wince at its sharpness. Her eyes are drilling a hole in her kneecap so she can't be sure if Finnick reacted; chances are good that he hadn't, but part of her hopes she has. Part of her wants it viciously — wants to win at something, even if there is no contest between them.
(Not yet. Not until there has to be. Not until there will be, inevitably.)
When he replies, though, his voice is as even as it ever was. More even than it should be in the thick of the Quarter Quell.
"Nothing in particular. I just figured we should regroup."
Her eyebrows raise. The suggestion is almost pragmatic. Flippant and coated in that special Odair charm, but it's sensible and Katniss is surprised for it. She looks up then, as quickly as she can. Not fast enough — she still manages to see how amused he is at her apparent surprise.
Smug, slippery, unpredictable.
(Quick thinking, skilled in restarting the heart of someone who's died, generous enough to give her something that she can't ever repay.)
(She could at least do him the courtesy of not hating him, but thought of her debt and the memory of how he looks in the images and shows the Capitol turns out sit like poison in her and it's all she can do to simply live as long as she needs to.)
He laughs.
"I know, I know. Not as exciting as you were hoping, right, Everdeen? Our sparkling rapport is going to have to take a backseat to survival." The last, she realizes belatedly, isn't directed at her. He grins wider, eyes crinkling with a warmth that only shows its falsehood in their excruciating proximity. Wherever the cameras are, they won't see anything but playful sincerity.
They'll see allies. One of whom actually knows how to play to audience.
"Shut up," the succinct reprimand comes, this time not as biting but still low and full of authority. A peak sideways confirms that he's making a lip-locking motion of all things — fingers turning an imaginary key at his lips. Like a five year old. Even Prim had never done that in the time before their family had fallen apart.
"Alright. We'll plan." She grabs one of the sticks they'd collected in case they had a need to build a fire — but are also convenient for drawing maps in the soft earth. That's her intent at the moment, but something else nags at her and her arm refuses to move to sketch out anything before her lips can form the question.
Katniss looks away again. "— Just... Why?"
Finnick is silent for a long moment. Long enough to signify that something is wrong — to prompt her to move her gaze until she catches sight of his chin, then the corner of his mouth. Katniss is struck for a resounding second by how soft he looks, silhouetted against the orange artificial sky. The harsher than natural light should, by all means, make him look hard, chiseled, cut from stone and worn from the Games like they all are. But in this moment, she is looking at Prim. At Peeta the day he saw her in the rain. At her mother in the days of shock following her father's death.
She is overwhelmed by the thought that this is not something she is meant to see.
Then he grins and he is Finnick Odair again. Chipped at the edges but still whole and hale enough to cause countless Capitol citizens to fall at his feet and convince themselves they are, in fact, his one true love.
"Why what, Everdeen? Why am I so deliriously handsome? Why is my Game-approved clothing so revealing? Why —"
"Don't make me say it."
He'd already warned her, probably. With his silence. But Katniss is not intimidated by Finnick Odair and she will gut some answer out of him. A shadow passes across his face, but this time Katniss resolutely holds him in her sights. Her eyes narrow, and he is a goose about to fall at the end of her arrow.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"I wouldn't ask if it was."
"You're the most recent winner — winners. That makes you the strongest. You're a good bet to hedge."
Ice floods her veins. Her neck stays frozen in position, eyes wide open in a blatant stare she makes no move to control as unwise as that might be. Katniss' hands — one on her knee, one on the ground — are lined with something so heavy that they go numb. She tries to swallow but there is something stuck in her throat, sharp and multifaceted.
Poison. Or an insect. Or a tracker jacker.
Except it's none of those things. Except it's just her, and the weight of what Finnick has just told her.
"I'm glad you're finally sounding smart," she hears herself say, and then she feels herself move even though it should have been impossible. One leg, and then another until she is lying beside Peeta's sleeping form. His breaths are deep and even and sound healthy — healthier than someone whose heart stopped not hours ago; healthier than the Games should have allowed. "But there's nothing to regroup about yet."
It quells the storm gathering force in her chest.
"You've inspired me to be smart, Katniss Everdeen," he throws over her turned shoulder, but she is suddenly exhausted. She isn't even sure if she reminded him to take the first watch.
The air is growing cooler in the pseudo-night that passes over the jungle, but the earth is still warm and her flesh is too electrically alive to even feel the difference.
She falls into a restless half-sleep, her body at odds.
a/n. As of 2/15/2020, this chapter is now updated from its original 2013 incarnation. Chapters 3 - 14 are still unedited, and appear as they did in 2013. As a reminder, the first half of this story consists of moments / snapshots from the Catching Fire setting, before the more strongly plot-driven chapters that span Mockingjay.