Author: aimmyarrowshigh
Fandom: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Story Title: "Five Places Cinna Came From"
Summary: Cinna did not come from the Capitol. Five paths he took out of the Districts, and why he set a nation on fire.
Character/Relationships: (Specific to each section; listed on those pages.) OVERALL - Cinna/Finnick, Finnick/Annie, Katniss/Peeta. Johanna. Haymitch. Beetee. Mags. President Snow.
Rating: M
Warnings: There are very separate, very specific trigger warnings on each District's story, so please read those if you have concerns.
Wordcount: (total) 86,000
Disclaimer: I only own the original characters and concepts. All settings and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived.
Notes: Originally written for panemetfabulae for sihaya09. She wanted "Finnick POV pre-canon, AUs where different people died in/survived Mockingjay, or Johanna POV on how she won her games," so here are four pre-canon Finnicks and a How Johanna Won Her Games. :) I really hope you enjoy it! I would never have managed to finish this without poppypickle, badguys, electrumqueen, puella_nerdii, glycerineclown, lovepollution, skellerbvvt, and rurone.
Author: aimmyarrowshigh
Fandom: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Story Title: "Five Places Cinna Came From: District Five (The Boy on Fire)"
Character/Relationships: Cinna, Finnick, Portia, Finnick/Annie.
Rating: M
Warnings: Spoilers for all three books (although as long as you know what Finnick does for a living and who Annie is, you're probably okay on Mockingjay). Violence, forced sexual slavery, enforced reproduction, sexual abuse, bad language, character death, underage sexual contact, familial death. One mention past object rape. All of the usual feel-good content of Collins' Hunger Games world!
Major trigger warnings: Forced sexual slavery, enforced reproduction, sexual abuse. One mention past object rape.
Wordcount: 86,000
Disclaimer: I only own the original characters and concepts. All settings and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived.
Five Places Cinna Came From
District Five: The Boy on Fire
003. District Five
Finnick Odair wet his plump lower lip with the tip of his tongue. "Oh, I much prefer you to the awful girl I had before. Sinner," he drawled, undoing his silk robe. "That's just delicious."
Cinna tucked his pencil behind his ear. "Cinna, actually. With an 'a'."
"That's what I said," Finnick agreed with a cheeky, lopsided smirk. That District Four brogue that had seemed uneducated on every other Tribute in the annual Games interviews just made him seem like his mouth was tired in all the right ways – something, Cinna suspected, Finnick played up on purpose. He dropped the robe and green silk slithered down the length of his tanned legs to pool on the floor. "Sinner. With an A."
His eyes flashed as he canted his hips just so. There were few people who could look more naked than Finnick Odair.
Cinna's lips pursed. "I don't relate to people in that way, Finnick. So you can stop trying so hard."
Finnick's eyebrows rose. "Why, Apprentice Sinner, was that a pun?"
Cinna pinched the bridge of his nose. "No." He sketched a few quick lines into his preliminary drawings, adjusting a waistband here and adding a slit to show just a glimpse of Finnick's inner thigh there.
"Are you shy, Apprentice Sinner?" Finnick asked affectionately. "Do I make you nervous?"
Cinna looked up. "No. And I'm an assistant, not an apprentice."
"You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to, let's call the whole thing off," Finnick sang cheerfully, the rhythm of an old sea chanty lilting his voice. "Apprentice, assistant, coffee boy… all the same to me."
Cinna sighed and flipped another page in his sketchbook, drawing out conch shell calico patterns. "If I were still Sulla's apprentice, he would be the one dealing with you. Do you see him here?"
"I don't see anyone in this big old bedroom except you… and me," Finnick said, grinning a little too widely and a little too toothily to be real. "So let's start this partnership off right, hmm, Apprentice Sinner? Tell me a little about yourself."
Cinna smiled his own false smile, thin-lipped and tight. "To start and finish, if you won't call me Cinna, then you can call me Daunorubicin. And I'm from District Five."
Finnick's lips formed a little pink O. "I surely can't pronounce all that. I haven't had anyone from District Five. This is exciting, this new… relationship we have."
"You never will have anyone from District Five," Cinna said, sketching a row of spines along the epaulets of a blue blazer. "Like I said, I don't relate to people that way."
"Yes, you did mention that, but I'm afraid I don't quite understand your meaning," Finnick said pleasantly, but his veneer had cracked and his Victor was showing through; the dark, cold calculations in his eyes telling Cinna that he was beginning to compare strategies. "Maybe you hadn't heard, Apprentice Sinner. I'm not people. I'm Finnick Odair."
"Well, if it's all the same to you, Finnick Odair, I don't have sex with my clients, or anyone else," Cinna said, not looking up again. "So you can flaunt your penis in my face all you want, but I'm not going to do anything about it except figure out the best way to cover it with gold netting and sequins."
There was a long silence from across the room and Cinna took advantage of the peace to turn to his drawing board and begin riffling through his samples, trying to find that stretchy bit of turquoise fabric and some wire.
"You don't everhave relations with anybody?"
Cinna sighed. "No, Finnick, I don't. I don't want to fuck you. And I most certainly don't want to be fucked by you."
Finnick arched an eyebrow. "I thought our good mutual… friend… Plutarch said you took a particular interest in me."
Cinna blinked and looked away, back to his sketchpad and the sprinkling of tiny, half-shaded conch shells littering the paper. "I don't know what he implied, but I just want to dress you."
"Well, that's just unusual, Apprentice Sinner. Most people are just as like to undress me as anything else."
"Well, most people you know aren't from Five, are they?" Cinna asked, not looking up from where he was painting the turquoise scrap with different shades of blue watercolor, seeing how it took the dye. "You think I can't see through you, Finnick Odair? You don't want this."
This time there was a quiet so long that Cinna forgot Finnick was there as he descended into his creative haze, letting the colors and textures of the watercolors and mesh and wire begin to transform into polyps of a blue sea anemone. A soft shushing sound across the room alerted Cinna to Finnick's continued presence, and when he looked up, Finnick had tied his robe back on. Properly, even, so most of his chest and the entirety of his lower half were covered.
"What do they do to you in that District?" Finnick asked finally. He wrapped one of his arms around his waist and the other around his chest, his hand curled up over his throat. His posture made him look younger, and Cinna remembered that Finnick Odair was only twenty-one.
Cinna met his eyes. "Like I said. We're the DNA dump. I'm just glad every day that I was born a boy."
Finnick's blue-green eyes narrowed, and then he did something very strange.
He looked over his shoulder and said, with far less of a twang: "Beetee."
Then he looked back to Cinna with sharp, intelligent eyes and stated, "We have thirty minutes. You can tell the truth now."
"What – "
"Feedback loop. Don't you know the walls have ears in the Capitol?" Finnick smiled grimly. "Now the bugs won't get anything for half an hour. I believe my comrade said he made my loop sound much like moaning and bedsprings, so as to keep Mister President from getting too suspicious."
Cinna raised an eyebrow. "Gutsy."
"Rebellious, you might say." Finnick's smirk was so indulgent it could have been made of chocolate. "Now tell me: what are they doing to the children in that District? Why doesn't anyone from Five hardly ever win, and why don't you 'relate to people in that way'?"
"What don't they do to the children in District Five?" Cinna laughed hollowly. "Tell me, Finnick Odair, how old were you the first time you had sex?"
Finnick's jaw clenched. "Fourteen." The muscled ticked. "It wasn't my choice."
Cinna nodded in commiseration. "I was ten. Wasn't mine, either."
Finnick scrubbed a manicured hand through his illustrious bronze curls and let out a low whistle. He gestured to one of the chaises that flanked his enormous round bed. "Sit." Then he rolled over and rooted around beneath the dust ruffle, emerging with a packet of chocolate cookies. He offered Cinna one, and Cinna took it. "I promise I'll work off the sugar. Now, ten? How does that – can you even – I don't mean to pry, I think sometimes I've forgotten how privacy works – "
"They inject us with things from before we're born." Cinna nibbled at the cookie. It was dusty. "Hormones and genetically altered proteins. Do you know what those are?"
Finnick shrugged, eating a second cookie. "Enough."
"Well, from our tenth birthdays, we're put to work," Cinna said. "Just like any other District."
"In Four, work for the kids is sorting oysters and braiding rope. I get the sense from your demeanor that is not so much the case one District over?" Finnick asked, his green eyes shrewd. "You mentioned being glad you're a boy."
Cinna sighed. "Girls gestate the mutt embryos. Sometimes human. More often now."
Finnick blinked. "Why?"
"The Capitol's been trying to breed perfect Peacekeepers." Cinna paused. "Boys provide the human DNA for traits like strategizing and intelligence and creativity and language."
Finnick looked down at his feet as he polished off another cookie. "President Snow..." He looked up. "It's my job, too."
Cinna suddenly understood everything about this city and this Victor and these outfits he'd been commissioned to design – they weren't even lingerie or costumes, they were whore clothing. Advertisement.
"For six hours a day, four days a week, for nine years, I was hooked up to a harness in a lab with an electric rod up me," Cinna said, in a tone of voice that spelled of practice being controlled and matter-of-fact. "So… I don't really see the intimacy of sex or the alleged fun of orgasms."
Finnick nodded. "Everyone hates their job."
"Why do you do this?" Cinna asked, shaking his head. "Why do you have to? You're a Victor, you're supposed to have a Talent and live in Four."
"I wasn't supposed to win my Games. This boy from Ten was supposed to win, they had some kind of deal between the District mayor and the Capitol for better beef, or something stupid like that. But I didn't know. I just didn't want to die. So I killed him." Finnick looked up. "They inject me with something when I'm here. So I'm always – well, good merchandise."
"Sildenafil citrate," Cinna said. "It's not fun."
"No," Finnick agreed. "Phew, that's what you learned in school out there? Longest thing I remember learning out in Four is maybe 'bioluminescence.' And 'don't go picking up creatures you don't recognize.'" Then he snorted. "Clearly, no one taught that to the Capitol."
Cinna covered his mouth with the hand not holding the cookie.
Finnick's smile was real this time. Then his smile fell – perhaps for the first time – and he tangled his fingers together. "Does it – I mean, will I – I mean… I have a girl. Back home." He looked up and his eyes were shy, and this way, this natural way, Cinna finally thought he saw what everyone else did in Finnick Odair. The charm and the beauty. "I wanna marry her."
Cinna smiled back reassuringly. "You can still have kids, if that's what you're asking. I don't know what else they've done to mess with your chemistry, but if it's just the sildenafil citrate, you're okay."
Finnick's face flushed a soft, end-of-sunrise red and he looked down, nibbling at a third cookie. Cinna swallowed a few crumbs.
"Why did you tell me anything?" he asked.
Finnick looked up. "Plutarch said – he said he arranged for you to get this gig because you're sympathetic to the cause."
Cinna's brow furrowed. "What 'cause'?"
Finnick's eyes darkened. He paused, rolling the cookie from one knuckle to another. "Have you ever had chocolate before? I never did, before I came to the Capitol for my Games."
Cinna nodded. "We had it all the time in Five. I think we might have gotten better rations and supplies there, to – you know. Keep everyone from mutiny. Or something. But I always had chocolate as a kid, and wool blankets and enough to eat." He sighed. "It's so wrong, but no one does anything because we see how skinny those kids from Eleven and Twelve are and it's just like… they could make it even worse. If they wanted. Nothing, no one could stop them from making it even worse." Then Cinna paused. "Oh."
"Yes." Finnick looked up with bright, almost wild eyes. "Oh."
"So… why me?" Cinna asked, setting the cookie down on the dresser. "All I do is design clothes."
"Do you know how visiblethat is compared to what the rest of us can do?" Finnick asked, shaking his head. "Back in the Dark Days, there were these – campaigns, I guess, strategy campaigns, where millions of people would all wear the same ribbon on their shirt, and it meant something. A message." Finnick's blue-green eyes leveled with Cinna's. "We want you to design a message."
"Like what, a chocolate bar?" Cinna asked dubiously, scrubbing a hand through his hair again. "And how would anyone even see it? It's not like they get Page Cin the Districts, so even if you're wearing it – "
"Not me," Finnick interrupted. "Not yet, anyway." He paused. "What's the one thing every person in Panem sees?"
Cinna gaped. "The Hunger Games?"
Finnick nodded, a maniacal gleam in his eyes. "Think about it. What could be a more opportune time to reach out to the Districts than the annual slaughter of their children? You put the right message into their heads with the right symbol on the right Tribute – "
"It would be suicide," Cinna half-laughed, incredulous and wondering just how many drugs besides the Sildenafil were pumping through Finnick Odair's veins after all. "And I'm a private stylist."
"Plutarch is a Gamemaker," Finnick shot back. "Any District, any District you want."
Cinna shook his head. "I couldn't. I can't."
Finnick reached out to touch Cinna's arm, thought better of it, and rested his hand in the air like a blessing. "Think about it. Really… thinkabout it." He shook his head. "You have to find something that would be worth the risk. You know. I let the Capitol use me to protect my family… I'm not gonna let them make it even worse for them."
Cinna nodded, picking up the cookie again and nibbling at it. "That's sweet, Finnick. It is. But I don't have anyone. I got out of Five after yearsof wishing to be out of the Districts, and I don't really – I don't want to die, right off the bat. I want to live first. Without pain."
Finnick looked at his knees and nodded. "You're lucky to be getting that chance. Most people in Panem never do."
Cinna sighed and stood, walking back to his drafting table and picking out a turquoise pencil. "I know. I do know that, really, I just – let's start small, okay? I'll put some real thought into your clothes and try to help you, and if we live through that… I'll consider it."
"Petit four?"
"I don't know how you eat that much sugar without going into a diabetic coma," Cinna said absently, waving to Finnick without looking up from the dressform.
The springs on the bed creaked softly as Finnick flung himself down on it, munching tiny cakes. "I don't know what 'diabetic' is, but I'd take a coma right about now." He yawned spectacularly.
"Long night?" Cinna asked, taking a pin from between his lips and marking a hemline.
There was a soft crinkle of paper as Finnick unwrapped another little pink cake. "You could say that."
Cinna looked up and over at his charge. The skin around Finnick's eyes was tight in a way that spelled of exhaustion and there were fresh rings of Remade skin around his wrists and ankles. He smiled wanly and inhaled the cake in one gulp.
"It isn't always like this," he assured Cinna, flopping back and yawning again. "And I just have to get through Crane's party tonight and I can go home. Probably at least a week this time."
"Do you like going back to Four?" Cinna asked curiously, coming over to take a little coconut-crusted cake from the box.
Finnick smiled, his eyes closed. He rubbed at the rubbery-smooth new skin on his wrists. "More than anything in the world. It's too coldhere. The air's hard to breathe."
"I hadn't noticed," Cinna said honestly, dusting sugar off his fingers and heading back to the dressform.
"You wouldn't've," Finnick said, good-natured. "You haven't left this room in about a week. Do you even sleep?"
"Not much," Cinna admitted. "Not when I'm designing. It's kind of important that you make an impression tonight, you know."
Finnick sat up. "You decided to help?"
Cinna shook his head. "I haven't decided anything. I just don't want to get sent back to Five for dressing TheFinnick Odair like a mitochondrial anomaly."
Finnick stared blankly. "Am I just too tired for my ears to work or was that gibberish?"
Cinna smiled. He could see why everyone wanted the company of Finnick Odair – the man was charmingly self-effacing. But Cinna wondered how much of that was real. "I hope my clothes don't look foolish."
Finnick raised an eyebrow. "Have you seen the people who live here?"
"I have," Cinna said, turning back to his pins and marking another minute pleat. "But the first lesson of manipulated evolution is that you have to start with the smallest deviations."
"What's the last lesson?" Finnick stretched and the new skin on his wrist striped over with the effort. He grimaced and rubbed it, digging around in the nightstand table for a violently-purple ointment.
Cinna drew back, measuring the scale of the design on his dressform, weighing its ratios with his eyes. He took up his soft brush and dipped it in the little pot of phosphorescent pearl powder, dabbing it at one of the pleats.
"Cinna?" Finnick asked again through gritted teeth as the salve reknit his fragile skin. "What's the last lesson?"
"Hmm?" Cinna looked up. "Oh. A new species." He blinked at Finnick. "The powders need to charge for half an hour before I can fit you and do the alterations… do you want to take a nap?"
Finnick shook his head. "If I fall asleep now I'll never wake up for the party tonight." He stood and the bones of his spine cracked, one two three four in a row. "I'm going to take a shower, if you don't mind my leaving you."
Cinna waved a hand. "Go. Be careful of that new skin in the water, if it rehydrates too much – "
"It'll fill with water like a sponge and burst?" Finnick asked. "I know. Not my first trip to the lighthouse."
Cinna nodded. "When you're finished, we can start prep for the party. Do you have your own prep team or do you – "
"I want you to do it," Finnick said quickly. "If you're comfortable with that. I just… I'd rather have someone who doesn't – "
"It's fine," Cinna said, turning back to the pearl powders on his drafting desk. "I understand."
Finnick nodded and reached out again to clasp Cinna's shoulder before pulling back, looking apologetic. "I know you do."
Finnick's skin, both original and Remade, was perfectly smooth and just barely scented with the sea salt soap he used in the Capitol when he emerged from the lavish washroom and Cinna helped him lace into the wide blue cummerbund lined in whalebone – almost a corset, if Finnick had more hip, as he'd commented wryly – and matching knee-length pants so tight he would be stitched into them just before the party.
"I'm impressed," Finnick said, looking down as Cinna snipped off the excess laces. "It's already a major change to get to wear pants."
Cinna grinned. "Just wait a minute."
"What do you have up your sleeve, Cinna Balmain?"
"The question is," Cinna said, pulling the final lace tight at the base of Finnick's spine and snipping off the excess, "What do you have up yours?" He stepped around to check the draping of the myriad pleats across Finnick's abdomen and thighs. "Now, pretend like you're at Snow's party and I'm a drunk Capitol housewife."
Finnick slid on a grin as easy as glycerine pouring into a tube, tilting his hips forward and reaching up to run a hand through his hair. Cinna reached out and waved a hand in front of Finnick's cummerbund, a few inches off from actually touching the man –
And hundreds of long, tapered, transpired spines tipped in glowing blue shot out from the ensemble like a shield of a hundred arms.
"Whoa," Finnick gasped, looking down at the forest of glowing, defensive tentacles. "I'm a sea anemone."
"Exactly," Cinna said, pleased. He stepped around Finnick again and loosened the cummerbund's laces, and the spines shot back into place like harmless pleats. "Beautiful to look at, poisonous to touch."
"I love it," Finnick said, looking down at his chest. He waved a hand over the front and nothing happened. "Do it again. It only activates if someone else touches me? How?"
"Angles of approach," Cinna said, getting a pincushion and kneeling to start piecing together the inseam of Finnick's pants. "You can move however you want, but no one else can get close. I figured – I know it won't change your night, but it might improve your evening. And either way, it'll give Page Csomething to talk about."
They both fell quiet as Cinna worked, pulling the hems close an inch at a time and stitching Finnick's pants tight around him, dabbing phosphorescent powder over the seam. It was a comfortable silence, broken only by the persistent, tiny hum of the feedback loop battling the bugs.
"It's Annie Cresta," Finnick Odair said suddenly as Cinna plucked a pin from his mouth and wove a dart into the pocket of Finnick's sharp, spiked anemone leggings.
Cinna remembered the hollow shell of a girl who'd been plucked from the water two years before. "What is?"
"My girl," Finnick said, and the bashful pride in his voice made even Cinna Balmain smile around all the pins. "The one I want to marry. It's Annie Cresta."
Cinna plucked another pin from his mouth and tried not to stab Finnick's arm. "Isn't she… the rumors all say that she went mad."
"She isn't crazy," Finnick said sharply. "She just needs different things than other people do to be happy."
Cinna wove another pin through the slick material. "Don't we all."
"She doesn't know what I do here," Finnick murmured a while later as Cinna looked up at him from where he was bejeweling the spikes along Finnick's long thighs. "I mean… she knows, but she doesn't understand. She's not – we're not – that way."
Cinna smiled wryly up at him around the pins in his mouth. "Would you look at that? The great Finnick Odair is stammering over the idea of sex."
Finnick shook his head. "It's different. Even you have to understand that's different." He paused. "I do this for her. So she won't – she's not a great Victor, you know? She'll never mentor. She can't be put into Capitol specials, and she doesn't have a Talent that people can follow. She just lives. And she just is. Snow doesn't like that."
PAGE C: Capitol Celebrity Coverage
ANNIKA TEMPLESMITH: NEW NOSE, LIPS! • 'DISTRICT FOURTEEN' SET TO REOPEN ON SNOW SQUARE; ADDS 'BLOODY MASON' COCKTAIL TO MENU • CAESAR FLICKERMAN TO UNVEIL FRAGRANCE LINE
FINNICK ODAIR MAKES A POINT AT GALA
All eyes were on Finnick Odair at President Snow's Winter Season gala last night, but not for the usual reason: instead of making a scene out of his clothes, the Ohhh-dair made a splash with them! In a stunning debut for fresh stylist Cinna Balmain, Finnick Odair wore an interactive undersea sensation.
"It's a sea anemone," he explained with a cheeky grin [illus. at right, p.2C] "Cinna did a great job. I'm hoping that we can convince him to work with my Tribs for the 73RD Games."
We second that wish! As long as Balmain can correct the design flaw that rendered Fantastic Finnick unapproachable for most of the evening, we'd love to see the fearsome Four Tribs wrapped up in glowing tentacles!
When Finnick returned to his suite the next morning, he fell straight into bed and was asleep before he'd even taken the anemone costume off. The spikes crushed against the sheets, but that was alright – Cinna knew it was a design meant to be worn once and never replicated.
Quite possibly his favorite thing about design was the capability for uniqueness. He could create something purely for beauty and never have to record his findings for anyone else to cross-examine. His art was his, and his alone.
He smiled down at the news clipping tucked onto his breakfast delivery beside the sweet, smooth coffee and decadent sweet roll. He pasted Page C's praise into his sketchpad on the corner of the anemone's mechanism outline, took a sip of coffee, and cracked open the spine of Capitol Texts For District Four, taken from Finnick's little shelf of personal effects.
Finnick slept for 36 hours. Cinna would have worried, but every so often, Finnick snuffled and turned over, twisting himself up in the blankets and activating-and-deactivating the anemone spikes comically.
"Hey," he rasped finally, almost two full days after Snow's party. He rubbed his eyes and blinked over at the dressform Cinna was slathering in black liquid latex. "What the fragum is that?"
Cinna glanced over his shoulder. "You're awake. Good. Should I call for food or can you come try this on?"
"Food first," Finnick yawned, stretching. "I want a lemaranja meringue pie."
"No," Cinna said, laughing. "I'm honestly worried about your pancreas."
"You pronounced it wrong, it doesn't have a 'cr' sound in the middle," Finnick mumbled, distracted and falling face-first into the pillows again. "I want a jar of roe. Orange, not black. And two soft-boiled quairtridge eggs. And three pickled sardines."
Cinna raised an eyebrow. "Toast?"
Finnick shook his head, looking up at his assistant with one bleary eye. "I'm not supposed to eat bread on my diet."
Cinna snorted a laugh. "You can eat an entire box of petit fours, a whole jar of roe, and three pickled fish and you're not allowed bread? What kind of diet is that?"
Finnick finally sat up and twisted so Cinna could start unlacing his cummerbund. "Snow calls it the Four Beach diet. But we eat bread in Four, so I don't know where they got it. I think it's just because bread reminds people of the Districts and unless they're fighting in the Games, Snow doesn't like to remind people that they're out there." He sighed appreciatively as the cummerbund came loose and he rubbed his ribs. "You haven't had a Games season out here yet. Every bar just serves Victory cocktails and District-inspired food and plays the coverage on the walls. Just bread and Games."
Cinna smiled and nodded. He folded the cummerbund and stood up. "Well, I'm in charge of your appearance now, and I say you can have some toast. Go wash up, eat, and then we'll cut you out of those pants."
Finnick stood up and winced, stretching out his back. "You know, it's a good thing no one could get near me with that thing on, considering the pants don't come off."
Cinna shrugged innocently. "I know."
A smiled tugged at Finnick's lips. "I'd hug you if you weren't from Five."
"I know," Cinna said, nodding. "I appreciate it. Go. Wash. You stink like an entire pharm closet. What kind of toast do you want?"
"Every kind," Finnick called over his shoulder as he gingerly made his way to the showers.
Cinna sighed as the door shut, then called down to Kitchens to order two soft-boiled eggs, three pickled sardines, orange roe, and fourteen slices of toast: one from each District.
When the table slid open and a rainbow of bread rose out of the nether of Kitchens, Cinna couldn't help but to chuckle.
Finnick walked out of the bathroom in his tiny blue robe, fluffing a hand through his hair, and said, "It's nice to see you laugh – hey, you really got me toast! Look at that!"
He sat down and grabbed a pale green, fish-shaped roll and greedily bit off its head. He beamed up at Cinna, mouth full. "Thanks." He looked at the table. "Want some toast?"
"Sure," Cinna agreed, sitting at the chair opposite and reaching for one of the modest crescent rolls, studded with seeds. He tore off a small piece and chewed, surprised by the malty flavor.
"That's from Eleven," Finnick informed him, his mouth full of green seaweed bread and orange roe. "Chaff fries it with milk and sugar for breakfast. Calls it 'Liberty Toast.' He and Haymitch eat it and tease me that I can't have any. Which one's Five?"
Cinna pointed to the little dish of white bread in little knots the size of walnuts, swimming in clear, garlicky butter. "You can have them all."
Finnick nodded and swallowed his bread before starting in on the pickled sardines. He laid them out across Twelve's rough, oaty biscuits. "Beetee." They waited, chewing pensively, as the screws turned. "So, have you thought any more about my… proposition?"
"Finnick."
"Sorry," Finnick said, not sounding sorry at all. "It's automatic. But have you?"
Cinna sighed. "I'm going to say no, Finnick. At least for now. I am sympathetic to your cause and I want to do everything I can to help you, but I don't want to take on the Games. I don't want to take on the Capitol. I'm Cinna the stylist… not Cinna the conspirator."
Finnick looked down sadly at the little squares of white Three bread in his fingers. He dipped them into the runny, orange-red yolk of the quairtridge egg balanced delicately on its half-shell. "I understand."
"Do you?" Cinna asked, drumming his thumbs on the edge of the table. "It's not that I don't want a free Panem, I do, I just – "
"No, I do understand," Finnick assured him, meeting his eyes and smiling softly. "It's a lot to ask of someone, I know that. And you… don't have anyone you're fighting for. And that's great for me, because it means you're not too afraid to dress me as a fragum sea anemone at Snow's Winter Gala, but I can see how there'd be less motivation to… probably die… horribly… if there's no one who's worth that, to you."
"And Annie's worth that, for you?" Cinna asked, picking at Two's crisp, crackly, unleavened flatbread. "Knowing you'll be hurt more than you already have?"
Finnick set down all of the food and laid his hands flat on the tabletop. "Absolutely yes. Because the only realway to hurt me again would be to harm a hair on Annie's head. I want her to be safe. And I want her to heal. And I want to live in a country where she and I can get married, and – and have lots of babies and not worry about 'what if I have to watch her watch them get Reaped'?" He sighed and popped the last of the Three rolls and egg into his mouth. "So. What is that contraption you're dressing me in next?"
Cinna smiled. "You're lucky, to feel that about Annie. And she's really lucky to have someone as brave as you are to love her." He stood, sucking a last crumb of bread from his thumb. "And that – " he gestured to the black-splashed dressform, "Is an anglerfish."
Finnick raised an eyebrow. "I am intrigued."
Cinna nodded as though in welcome. "Go ahead and look at it. Walk up from the right, from the left. And then try getting in close from the front."
Finnick stood and brushed his hands clean of sticky yolk and fish eggs on his robe. He slowly walked towards the dress form, approaching from the right, tilting his head. "It's pretty. I like the glowy bits – oh, I get it, how anglerfish glow, that's nice. And it actually covers my ass, that's nice, too." He sidled around and looked from the left. "Pretty painting on the scales. But I don't – " He looked up from straight ahead of the dressform and jumped back, startled, his hand at his throat. "Holy Poseidon in the seas, what the – fragum!" He looked over at Cinna, his eyes wide. "What is that?"
Cinna smiled. "Anglerfish."
"How is it suddenly there out of nowhere?" Finnick asked, finally dropping his hand from his throat. He reached out to poke the looming fangs that cloaked the costume like a protective bubble. He stepped to the left. "Oh! They're gone again!"
"They're still there," Cinna said smugly. "Mirrored hologram projecting from the collar, see? You can't see the anglerfish mouth until you look head-on. But the danger's always there."
PAGE C: Capitol Celebrity Coverage
GET FIT WITH ATALA BRIAND • HUNGER GAMES COUNTDOWN: 10 DAYS • SPOTTED! ENOBARIA AND GLOSS… IS A NEW POWER COUPLE ON THE HORIZON?
FINNICK ODAIR FASHION STATEMENTS: EDGY OR OUT-OF-HAND?
Spikes and holograms and alarm bells, oh my!
If you have an eye for fashion – or fear – you've noticed the frocks on dear F***-Me-Finnick Odair this season. From the stunning sea anemone two-piece suit at President Snow's Winter Gala (LEFT) to the terrifying anglerfish-inspired bodysuit at Fulvia Cardew's pre-Games fundraiser, this is the first time it can be said that Finnick's making waves for what he's wearing… and not what he isn't wearing!
"My new stylist is wonderful," Odair gushed. "It's really all the unique special effects that make his work so inspiring."
Inspiring is one word for it. With all of the scary sparks in Finnick's outerwear, no one can get close enough to get a look at the inner Finnick anymore!
"Can't touch me?" Finnick laughed. "You know, I guess that explains why I've been able to get a full night's sleep lately."
Oh, Finnick, we hope you and your stylist sort out a way to make those gorgeous special effects a little less aggressive soon – sleeping seems like such a waste of Finnick Odair's Capitol nights!
Finnick laid the paper down on the tabletop beside the sweet breakfast rolls and coffee. "That's not good."
"Nope," Cinna agreed. "I am so sorry… is Annie okay?"
Finnick's lips were thin. "I called Mags last night to check on them; she said Annie's not doing so well. But she's alive, so, yeah, she's okay." He sighed. "I guess we're back to little gold thongs, huh?"
Cinna wrinkled his nose. "Maybe we can stuff some dry ice down there, make it misty. That's about as much intrigue as the Capitol club kids can take, huh?"
Finnick exhaled once softly in an almost-laugh. Then he swallowed and sobered. "Cinna, I know you hate talking about Five, but… the Reaping is coming soon. Is there anyonethere that needs protection?"
Cinna picked a nut from the top of his sweet roll. "No. My father's the head of the muttations lab, they wouldn't hurt him. They need him. My mother's dead. My sisters are all dead. I don't have any other family."
Finnick nodded, folding the corner of the newspaper until it ripped off in his hand. "That's good."
"Are you headed back to Four soon?" Cinna asked, pushing the button on the table to send their uneaten breakfast down to Disposal.
Finnick shook his head. "It's probably safer for everyone if I – don't go back for a while. I'm not Mentoring this year, so I'll stick around the Capitol, do a few… odd jobs… to get back in good graces. I'll be around for the Games; it'll be a lot of parties and appearances." He looked up. "And a lot of meetings, if you want to sit in."
Cinna ran a hand through his dark hair. "I'll consider it. I will."
Finnick nodded and stood. "I'm going to shower. I probably have an old ropework bikini somewhere, if you want to take a day off. I'm – I'm not kicking you out," he said quickly. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to stay all the time."
"It's okay," Cinna assured him. "You aren't bad company, when you tone down the flirting."
"Tone it down?" Finnick asked in his most charming voice, trailing a hand suggestively down his front, "Why, Sinner, I do believe that you have grown immune to my charms. I'll just have to try… harder…"
"Oh, criminy," Cinna groaned. "Get out of here. Go shower. Put on pants for a change."
Finnick laughed. "You're good company, too."
He left the room, toying with his flyaway bronze hair, and Cinna smiled softly at the tabletop, wondering if that soft, ticklish feeling hovering in his chest was happiness.
Ten days later, Cinna sat in Finnick's suite at the Training Center, watching the Reaping ceremonies unfold with disinterest and distaste. Finnick, clad in glittering gold body paint and carrying his trident, was somewhere down the hall hobnobbing with Gamemakers and fellow Victors alike – but within spitting distance of his stylist, in case that gold body paint got smeared. After the incident with the anglerfish costume, Finnick and his fashions had to be on their very best behavior.
Cinna couldn't help biting his thumbnail as the Tributes from Five were announced, despite not knowing anyone in the District. It didn't even look familiar now, the way it was filmed and framed by Panem flags.
"And your male Tribute is… Greggory Watson!"
An ashen, familiar-faced little boy – he could not have been older than twelve; Cinna knew with stomach-dropping certainty —stumbled his way to the stage. He had his arms wrapped around his chest like fruitless armor. Cinna perfectly recognized the look of relieved fear in Greggory Watson's eyes.
Because they were Cinna's eyes, too.
Finnick burst into the room and had his arms around Cinna before the older man could even react. Finnick held Cinna's face into his shoulder and Cinna could feel the dewy heat of Finnick's skin, smell the citrus soap that Finnick used and taste the salt that rose from his skin. Then Finnick pulled back, just as suddenly, and held Cinna's face in urgent hands.
"That's you," he gasped, and the pale sea green of his eyes reflected the District Five Reaping speech like mirrors. "Cinna, that Tribute is you."
Cinna nodded, still staring at Greggory Watson. At the cowlick in his dark brown hair that made it fall in a C-curve over his high, arched brow. At the cut of his jaw and how, if he were anything close to smiling, he would have dimples. The tiny cleft in his chin. His dark, sharp green eyes with their pupils blown wide as he took in District Five for the last time.
"You didn't tell me you had a son," Finnick hissed, shaking Cinna's shoulders. "You said there was nothing they could use against you!"
"I didn't know," Cinna said. He watched as Eugenia Crimble put her hand on Greggory Watson's back to lead him off the stage and into the Justice Hall, and he saw Greggory shiver away from her touch. "Look at him, Finnick. He must have happened when I was – what, ten?" He exhaled. "I didn't realize that…"
Finnick wrapped his arms around Cinna's shoulders again. "You didn't think he'd be old enough for the Reaping?"
Cinna shook his head. "I didn't think they were making people yet. I knew – I knowthat one of Snow's pet projects is breeding perfect Peacekeepers, but I'd always – " He felt his air cut off with a gulp, and he had to shake his head and pull himself free of Finnick Odair's embrace, out of the overwhelmingly heavy weight of being touched. "I'd always thought that they were still coming out wrong. Their telomeres were too short. They… got old when they were still young. They weren't able to produce white blood cells. Their hearts were too big. I was under the impression that the first viable fetii didn't happen until maybe five years ago. The girl – their surrogate was Reaped, and someone had to take her place, and then she bled out giving birth anyway. I thought – back then, they were still destroying the embryos when they were wrong."
"Maybe he isn't wrong," Finnick said softly as they stared at the blank television screen.
"He isn't," Cinna whispered, wrapping his arms around himself like fruitless armor. "He's… they're just destroying him anyway."
Finnick looked over at Cinna. "If you want to see if you can get a placement with District Five – "
"No," Cinna said sharply. "No. He is going to die. I couldn't survive those Games, neither can he. We're just not equipped for it." Cinna took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles one by one, down his neck, through his shoulders, down the arms and into his hands until finally his numb fingers relaxed and began to pulse warm. "That's why he's in the Games. Somehow, they know that I wanted to fight them anyway. And I'll watch myself fail."
Finnick reached out and wrapped his hand around Cinna's wrist. "If you want to step back from me, from the Rebellion – "
"No," Cinna said with sudden clarity, "They can get rid of one of me, but it's going to take a lot more than terrorism to break both of me. Because it's not just the Tributes, Finnick. Everyone in Panem suffers."
He gently pried Finnick's hand away from his wrist and rubbed at his skin like it had been burnt, and in a way it had: he could feel invisible fingers sticking to him still, twitching against his skin like manacles.
"Sorry," Finnick said, looking down to where Cinna was rubbing at his own wrist, frowning. "I didn't think – I was just so surprised." He shook his head and his hands mussed the coif Cinna spent half an hour styling that morning. "You know it's bad when something they do can surprise me."
Cinna nodded. "It is bad. But I didn't know him, Finnick. He's not really my family. It's not the same as Annie."
Finnick looked up and the color drained from his face.
"Annie," he hissed like a curse, and turned to run out of the room.
Cinna watched him go and sat down hard on the white sofa, staring at the videoscreen on the wall now broadcasting the District Eight square. He leaned over to the table and programmed in a drink order, rubbing his temple until the gin rickey slid up from the tabletop.
He sipped it slowly, not quite watching the pundits and opinionmakers chatter. He heard enough to know they'd hoped for an interior Arena this year; there hadn't been a Games held in the starkness of a city or a box or a bank vault in almost a decade.
What would it look like, he wondered, to see himselfbattling through complete darkness, like the first Quarter Quell? Or to starve locked in a safe, like the year that Three girl won, and all of the fashion glossies were dedicated to ribcages and vertebrae for months?
What would it feel like to see himselfkill another human being?
Cinna was lost in thought when Finnick slid back into the room, shutting the door behind him and muttering 'Beetee' so softly that Cinna barely heard him.
"Is Annie alright?" Cinna asked, settling his empty glass back on the tabletop. "And do you want a drink?"
"Yes to both," groaned Finnick, sagging down where he sat against the door. "I'm so fragum sickof this."
"What?" Cinna asked, dialing Finnick's drink order into the panel.
"Their games. And their Games. What they do to everyone I care about just because they can. I'm sick of Panem," Finnick growled. "I'm fucking sick of it."
Finnick's extra-strong, extra-sweet cocktail slid up from Kitchens and Cinna brought it over to him, kneeling down on the floor beside him.
"Finnick," he said evenly, pressing the glass into the other man's hand, "How do you feel about showing everyone just how sick of Panem you are?"
PAGE C: Capitol Celebrity Coverage
GET TRIBUTE ALERTS ON YOUR COMM • LATERAN SIXTUS GIVES THE ODDS ON BETTING POOL 073 • SPOTTED! ENOBARIA AND GLOSS KNOCK-DOWN, DRAG OUT AT ROSE CLUB
FINNICK ODAIR PUTS ON A STRANGE FACE
One of the highlights of the programming schedule is the Opening Ceremonies of perennial viewer favorite, The Hunger Games, Panem's top-rated broadcast. The top designers and stylists from Hemant to Brabantio pull out all the stops to make the Tributes look their Capitol best, but we look forward all year to the return of our all-time favorites and their fabulous frills.
District One Mentor Cashmere stunned in a silver bandage dress – or maybe just little silver bandages! – by Simoens (RIGHT) but it was Finnick Odair who surprised most, showing up to the ceremonies wearing only his customary briefs – and ornate black horse-blinders.
This is the third strange fashion statement by Odair in the week leading up to the Games (who can forget his duct-taped mouth at Cashmere's Victory party [LEFT] or faux bandages of bloody ears at the Mentors' press conference on Tuesday?).
No mouth, no ears, no eyes… we're beginning to wonder if you're trying to give us a little hint about one of your famous secrets, Finnick Ohhh!
Cinna did not want to watch the interviews. He did not want to hear Greggory's voice – his old voice, the way it had been so squeaky at that age – or watch Caesar Flickman fawn over him with those bright red, bloody lips. Someone's stylist was either shirking or outvoted this year.
He bought a coffee and a groosling salad sandwich from a silent, empty café near the design school and headed down the silent street. Echoes of the crowd's laughter and cheers spilled from doorways along the City Circle as chameleon-skinned Capitolites stumbled in and out of betting parlors and clubs and bars, laughing at the drawling accents of the Tributes and loudly hedging bets on first to die and by whom and how. District One, at the Cornucopia, with a wrench!
Cinna pulled open the familiar doors of the design school and ducked inside, his footsteps echoing along the crystalline floor past empty classrooms and workshops and studios.
He ducked into his old workspace and smiled: whoever had taken his place was a scientist, too. Chemical formulas and squeaky-clean beakers cluttered the little shelves alongside spools of satiny thread and skeins of soft fabrics awaiting dye. A half-dressed mannequin lurked in the corner, staring eyelessly.
"Hey there, Ribo," he said cheerfully, nodding to the mannequin. "Nice shirt."
"It's a dress, actually," said an amused voice behind him, making him jump. "And her name is Atilia."
Cinna turned, faced with a black-haired girl a few years his junior. Her coal black eyes were ringed in bright, sunny leopard spots and long false lashes, but the rest of her face was a natural porcelain, a little flushed from the summer heat outside. She, too, carried a groosling salad sandwich and a cup of coffee, and Cinna smiled at her.
"Is this your studio now?"
She nodded. "I'm Portia."
"Cinna," he offered. "It was mine, last year."
"I know who you are," Portia said, scuttling into the room and pushing some papers aside on her desk so she could spread out her lunch. "You work for Finnick Odair."
"For now," Cinna agreed. "Why aren't you watching the Games interviews?"
Portia didn't look up from where she was halving her sandwich. "My kids are going to die."
"I'm sorry," Cinna said, and meant it. "Most of them are."
"My girl had a baby less than a month ago," Portia muttered, taking the lid from her coffee cup. "A litter of them. I think they'regoing to be in the Arena, too."
"You have District Five," Cinna said. "I'm from Five. I grew up there."
Portia tilted her head to look up at him. "I can tell. You look like Ry."
Cinna's mouth twisted and he nodded. "Is that what he goes by?"
"Isn't he your brother?" Portia asked, picking a stack of books off the second chair for Cinna.
"No," Cinna said, taking the lid from his own cup as he sat. "I've never met him. I never knew he existed. And I doubt he knows me."
Portia's eyes narrowed as she considered him. "You look toolike him."
Cinna nodded. "He was made from me. For all I know, the girl was, too."
Portia picked at the crust of her sandwich. "He's going to die. He doesn't have a family, doesn't have parents. I'd wondered how someone could have never had parents."
Cinna was quiet for a long time, and Portia was, too, neither of them eating or drinking. The sounds of revelry from the street outside Portia's studio window floated up sporadically.
"I like what you did with Finnick's outfits this week," Portia said finally, chancing a glance over. "Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. It's a folktale from Five, isn't it?"
Cinna almost smiled. "It is. How did you know?"
"Greggory told me," Portia said. "He recognized it at the Opening Ceremonies, backstage. He's smart. And creative. He's beautiful enough that he could have Sponsors, if he presented himself better."
"I don't think he wants to win," Cinna said, finally taking a bite from his sandwich. "I wouldn't. Five isn't worth going home to, and the life of a Victor – "
"You lose either way, it seems to me." Portia smiled sadly. "I don't think I want my kids to win. But I can't watch them lose, I can't. I worked One last year, and I hated them, so it was okay to – " She broke off. "It wasn't okay. But it was better than this will be. I hate the Hunger Games."
"Why do you work them, then?" Cinna asked. "Go into private styling."
Portia laughed. "Right, because anyone hires a female designer. Name one."
Cinna looked over at the mannequin. "I'm sorry."
Portia shrugged. "It's the way things are in Panem."
"It doesn't have to be," Cinna whispered. Portia's eyes snapped to his. "I'll talk to Finnick Odair for you. You might be able to do each other a mutual favor."
Portia smirked. "No offense to your employer, but he's not exactly my type."
Cinna grinned. "Well, then you'll get along famously. He likes people who aren't his type." He rolled his eyes. "Or at least, he likes torturing people who aren't his type. That man can turn anythinginto an innuendo. But no – I think he has some ideas that you might like, and you probably have some ideas that he needs. I'll put in a good word. If Ribo likes you, your designs can't be that bad."
Portia smiled. "Thanks."
Cinna stood, throwing the wrapper of his sandwich into the overflowing trash. "Does… does Greggory have a Token?"
Portia shook her head. "Neither of them do."
Cinna nodded, considering the mannequin. It was indeed a dress; the full skirt was almost completely invisible from this angle, camouflaged with hundreds of tiny mirrors. Portia was good.
Portia would be useful.
He pulled a stick of charcoal from the packet in his pocket. "Will you give this to him? It's not from Five, but… he should have something, in the end."
Portia smiled and took it. "I will. It was good to meet you, Cinna."
"It was good to meet you, too. I look forward to working with you sometime," Cinna said sincerely. "Expect a call from Finnick or Sulla after the Games."
"I look forward to it," Portia said. "And Cinna? I'm glad to know that Ry would have grown up good. He's a great kid."
Cinna swallowed. He didn't have words, and he wasn't good with emotions – he always bottled them inside, letting them out only through his designs, and he wasn't designing now sans that stick of charcoal – so he just nodded awkwardly and left.
Greggory was the youngest, the smallest, the palest, and the most skittish of all of the Tributes entering the Arena. Cinna watched from Finnick's couch as his own younger face stood on a plate at the edge of the Arena, trembling and looking from face to face around the circle.
He almost wished the clone would step off the plate and end things now.
It would be easier than anything that could be yet to come.
But the Hunger Games began and Greggory – eighty pounds soaking wet – ran for the golden horn of the Cornucopia, settled in the heart of a bright, eerily green forest Arena. He ran more quickly than Cinna remembered being able to run at his age and he wondered if maybe the scientists had been getting closer to perfect Peacekeepers for longer than he'd thought.
Greggory grabbed a backpack before most of the Tributes had even reached the thicket hiding the base of the golden horn, and then he disappeared as though into thin air between the full foliage below the horn, where he hid until the bloodbath was over and the bodies collected.
Cinna stared into the face he'd poked and prodded at every night of Second School as Greggory crawled out from beneath the bushes and stood, looking out into the trees. The white tail of a deer flashed through the trees to the West, and Cinna could see Greggory assessing it in his mind:
Are all available specimens of juvenile age?
Is the chest cavity of the specimen narrower in ratio than in a natural specimen?
Are facial or other bodily anomalies present in the specimen that show marked difference from a natural specimen of similar species?
Mutts.
Greggory ran the other way, backpack thumping against his skinny back, and scrambled up a tree. A few hours later, the little girl from Twelve approached one of the deer with wonder in her eyes, and minutes later, all that was left of her were her bones.
Greggory had a skill that the other Tributes were lacking, and against his will, Cinna felt his heart soar with the strangest, newest sensation of ill-gotten hope.
Thunderstorms wracked the Arena every night, strings of lightning forking the sky above the rickety trees. A rogue – or not-so-rogue – bolt felled the boy from Four only a few feet from where Greggory hid beneath a bush, and Finnick didn't return home that night.
Cinna had planned on ignoring the Games, but it was harder to pretend his own flesh and blood didn't exist than he'd expected. He had lunch with Portia twice over the following week of Gameplay, but they didn't talk much about Greggory or Finnick or Panem. She asked how he had made Finnick's anglerfish; he wanted a tour of her design space.
She was smart, and she was beautiful, and she had no interest in him as a man. Cinna loved being around her, and he took a strange sort of comfort in Finnick's constant ribbing and nakedness. It was dependable, and it meant Finnick had returned from his Sponsorship-raising in one piece. Most of the time.
But whenever he was alone, he turned on the videoscreen in Finnick's suite and watched Greggory hide. He had begun to track one of the stronger solitary Tributes, the boy from Nine. Greggory ate from Boy Nine's scraps, hid in Boy Nine's previous forts, drank only from the water sources Boy Nine survived.
Boy Nine was gathering sticks to make a small fire before the nightly thunderstorm, Greggory silent in a tree overhead, when the deer came. Blood trickled in rivulets down its gentle, majestic, soft throat as it ripped long strips of Boy Nine from his bones with its tiny, sharp teeth. And then there was only the deer, a skeleton, and the canon overhead that made it look up and see the boy in the tree.
It rammed its head against the trunk and the tree shook. Greggory clung on.
It rammed the tree again, and Greggory slipped.
He landed on the bones of his inadvertent mentor and the deer pressed its face in close to his, lips pulled back in a grimace.
The camera zoomed in close, Claudius chattering happily about the efficacy of these new muttations from Five and the irony and –
The deer had Greggory's eyes. Would you look at that? The miracle of Five, everyone!
Cinna watched as the two creatures that shared his DNA stared each other down in the Arena. The forked tongue of the deer mutt swept out and licked a shiny red acid-burn into Greggory's cheek.
Then it turned, and galloped away.
Five Tributes left in the Arena. Greggory touched the burn with shaking fingers, snatched up Boy Nine's discarded backpack, and ran away to hide in another tree just as the nightly thunderstorm began, lightning crackling overhead.
Hours later, Cinna woke up to a hand on his shoulder and he jerked away, kicking wildly.
"Sorry, sorry," Finnick whispered hurriedly, pulling back. His green eyes were huge in the dark, spillover from the lights of the City Circle reflecting in little moons off his pupils. "Cinna… it's Greggory. The Careers turned on each other. It's going to be him or Girl Two."
Cinna jerked upright and wiped his eyes. "He could win? He could live?"
"If those deer get to her before she gets to him, he probably will," Finnick said, his voice tight and high in his chest. "Cinna, if he does – what do you want to do about him?"
Cinna's mouth felt dry. "I don't… I don't know him. What is there to do?"
"If he goes back to Five, he has to live through more of what you went through," Finnick hissed. "If he stays in the Capitol? He'll go through what I do."
"Then what is there to – "
"Plutarch can get him out," Finnick said. "There's a – there's a place where he can go that's safe." Finnick paused. "District Thirteen. It's still there, underground. Plutarch can get him there, if that's what you want for him. He doesn't have a family. You're it. You can choose. You can choose, Cinna."
Cinna swallowed against the drymouth, dizzy with the first choice in his life that really mattered. "Let's see if he wins, first."
Finnick nodded and stood to go.
Cinna's hand shot out and brushed at the air beside Finnick's hand. "Stay with me until – whatever happens?"
Finnick looked down and half-smiled. He settled onto the mattress beside Cinna, above the covers in his little shorts. Cinna clicked on the videoscreen.
A huge herd of white-tailed deer mutts stampeded across the forest arena as lightning crackled fast as an inferno overhead. Girl Two screamed as the deer bore down on her and Cinna's heart sped –
But the deer ran past, screeching horrible, almost-human-voiced screams, barreling across the dry forest.
Girl Two looked shocked. Then the screaming of the deer was drowned out by a wild, untamable roar and Girl Two froze, facing the thing that chased away the mutts.
A wall of fire raced through the forest. Before she could move, Girl Two was swallowed up in the blaze.
"He won," Cinna croaked, fists clenching. "Get him out! He won! Where's the hovercraft? He won! They need to get him – "
Finnick's hands pressed to his mouth. "I think it's like Annie," he whispered. "The lightning… it must have gotten the trees…"
"No," Cinna said, shaking his head, "No, they control the lightning. They can get him out."
The cameras found Greggory hiding in the top branches of the deadwood trees. The fire swirled like a ground-borne tornado as it loomed closer and closer.
The hovercraft could reach him. He had won.
The flames gobbled up the deer with Cinna's eyes. Their dying calls sounded like his voice.
"Get him out!" Cinna whispered. Finnick looked to him and he looked back. "Plutarch is always on the hovercrafts, right? Tell him to get him out! Call him on the comm now!"
Finnick shook his head. "If the cameras can see him, they know where he is. They made Annie tread water for days. They didn't want her to win. But she refused to lose."
"You can't float in a fire," Cinna spat. "They can't make him wait it out. He'll die. He won! He's not supposed to die!"
"He wasn't supposed to win," Finnick whispered. "There have been years without Victors before."
The fire was beautiful as it swirled through the Arena, climbing kudzu and ferns like a bright-glowing ladder: yellow and red and white with bits of blue; sparks catching in the night sky like stars, bursting and raining more fire into the canopy of the trees.
The camera panned across the solid mass of roiling flames as it approached Greggory's tree.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time, Cinna heard him speak.
"The Victor of the 73RD Hunger Games," he whispered, holding the stick of charcoal in his bruised and blackened fingers. Sparks caught in his hair and made him glow. "Male version 1.2415, Greggory. District Five."
And then he was engulfed in tongues of fire.
Cinna stared as the screen cut over to a feed of Seneca Crane looking oh-so-sorry about the miscalculations of the lightning. He addressed his sympathy to 'the good people of District Five, who raised the abandoned child Greggory as their own, and to whom credit was due for breeding a Hunger Games Victor.'
Cinna set his jaw.
"Mr. Odair," he said brusquely, turning to face the ashen-faced man beside him. "I'd like to tender my resignation from your service. I'm going to apply for a styling position in the Hunger Games."
Finnick had the long, sparkling line of a tear pooled under his eye. "I'll pull some strings for you."
Cinna let Finnick drop his face into Cinna's shoulder to mourn everything Panem always lost. Cinna stared across the dark room at the reflection of his eyes in the black videoscreen, waiting in the hush, basking in the thing that ignited inside him.
The crowd in the stadium hushed, and their cheering grew into a howl like the sound of a forest, an Arena, a country setting itself ablaze as the chariot began its rounds, the precious cargo inside beaming, waving, holding hands: glowing.
"You set them on fire," Finnick breathed. "They're beautiful, Cinna. It's perfect."
Cinna let the roar of the crowd and the circus of the ceremony and the brilliant, winking flames on Katniss Everdeen's dress and the blinding, faithful smile on Peeta Mellark's face wash over him and he shivered deep in the base of his spine.
Blindly, Cinna reached beside him and brushed the back of his wrist against the warmth of Finnick's skin. He wrapped his fingers around the rough, callused fisherman's hand and squeezed.
"Finnick?" Cinna whispered, looking up at the dancing, radiant flames in the dark.
"Yeah?"
"I don't hate this job."