Spoilers: Mockingjay.
Warnings: None for this chapter.
This is now my first multi-chaptered piece on this site! How exciting! Thanks for sticking around.


2. Jericho

I do not remember falling asleep, although I wake up in the hotel's luxurious bed. It must be mid-afternoon: I have slept for over twelve hours, but still I feel exhausted. As my brain slowly restarts itself, I realize I am very alone. Perhaps my sudden display of emotion scared off the man who came to visit me last night.

Had he come at all? Had I just fallen asleep and dreamed up a caring stranger? I tried to remember the man, but it was like walking against a current. It had been too dark to really commit anything about him to memory, and the feelings his kindness brought out of me have obscured him even further. I am convinced I imagined him, except I do not think I am capable of inventing a voice as kind as that man's had been.

I get up and cross to bathroom, thinking I might as well use its excellent shower as long as it's been paid for. The bathroom is tiled white from floor to ceiling, with the occasional red tile placed at random as an accent. This goes well with the redness of the bedroom, but red is in no way my favorite color. It's not until I shed my clothes and step into the hot water that I am really awake. My confusion runs off me with the many scented soaps I use. I am sure that man was never there; whoever paid for me simply got scared and didn't show. That is a common occurrence, after all.

When I step out of the shower and into a soft, cottony bathrobe, I am singing an old fishing song that I learned on the docks. I am pleased to have all this time to myself. I might exercise a bit or go to the park on the east side of the city to enjoy some fresh air-

I must have been blinking right when I stepped back into the bedroom, because when I look at the bed, the man from my dream is there, reading a book. I freeze in place. When he looks up at me, I hold my breath. His eyes are curious, a deep brown at the center, radiating out to a shimmering gold. I know those eyes see me scan the room and try to to form a plan: could run out the door or the window; if I move quickly, I could use the lamp as a weapon, because for one mad second I am convinced that he is a ghost or a mutt and somehow a lamp would save me from either of those. He just makes no sense, being here last night, then gone, then here again. Of course, he probably has a key into the room just as I have. He is a person who uses doors and walks on two feet and does not visit people in their dreams. With clever eyes like his, this man must know I would not be so terrified of him had I not just decided he couldn't exist.

We watch each other again (because last night had happened), and again it's his soothing voice that releases me:

"Hi, Finnick. Would you like to sit?"

Somehow I am uncomfortable with this man knowing my name, though, of course, all my clients know who I am. I nod mutely and do as he suggests. When I am beside him on the bed, his eyes do not slip through the gap in my robe that I know allows him view of my body. He does not want me, I realize. Part of me wishes he did, so he would look away from my face. I do not know what to do, pinned down by eyes like his.

"I've brought you books."

As he holds up the short stack of volumes I'd not registered until now, I see a pattern emerging: his eyes spook me into silence, and his voice gives me permission to move. I lean forward and touch his face, just to make sure this supernatural man is tangible. He blinks at the contact, and I cannot decide if I am happy or sad to lose sight of his eyes for a moment.

"You're real," I say lamely, my hand still cradling his warm face.

"Of course I am!"

The man gives a small laugh. The sound is of it is not bemused or superior or pitying, like I have heard in so many other Capitol people, but almost musical. As the muscles in his face move, I see a fine scar that starts under his left eye and probably curves around underneath my hand. No dyes, no tattoos, and no apparent interest in cosmetic surgery. This man continues to soundly defy everything I know to be the norm.

I pull away, like I shouldn't be touching him, and he focuses on me again. A minute shift in his gaze tells me that it's my turn to unfreeze myself, but I can't think of what to say to this unsettling man whose only crime is being a person who manages to do what all my other clients do without being like them at all. It takes me a moment, but I realize that I don't like this man knowing my name because I don't know his. Apparently, I want to know.

"What do I call you?" I ask. I attempt to inject my voice with its usual level of cool, but I don't believe for a second that it works on this man. With that question finally asked, a million others grab my attention: He's brought me books? Why has he brought me books? I tear my eyes away from his, hoping to look at the titles of those books, but I can't see them. He knows I can read. He knows I like to read. What happened last night? Why is he interested in me?

The last thought has a sort of heavy echo. What could this man possibly want?

"My name is Jericho," he says in that voice of his, "and you and I have a lot to do today."