By the time they finally put in to shore it was dark. The sun set depressingly early this time of year. A peacekeeper met them at the dock and weighed their catch. "Nice work today," he told them with a smug smile as he slung the bag of fish destined for the capitol onto his back. Neil just nodded.

"Bastard," Finnick muttered. Siobhan chuckled, but Neil glared at him.

"Watch your mouth, kid," he said sternly.

"No worse than you say out on the sea," Finnick retorted.

Siobhan laughed out loud. "He's got you there, Neil."

"I have a hard enough job keeping him under control without you constantly undermining my authority," Neil grumbled. Siobhan only smiled and kissed him.

They climbed the hill up to their wind battered house. "We're home," Siobhan called as they entered. "Finnick, go dry off."

"You can't tell me what to do," Finnick said, but he went all the same. On his way upstairs he stopped and knocked on his father's door. "We're home," he said.

"So I gathered," his father said dryly, wheeling around to face his son.

Other Odair was once as handsome as his sons. Though age had taken its toll on his beauty, it was still there, just faded. His upper arms were strong and well-defined, but his legs were shrunken and wasted beneath the blanket covering them. A shipwreck during a storm had broken his back and drowned his wife, Finnick's mother, four years ago.

"How was the water today?" he asked.

"Good," Finnick said.

"Catch anything good?"

"Nothing of note. I'm going to go change."

Other nodded and turned back to the window. "Neil is making dinner," Finnick added. "It should be ready soon."

His father didn't say anything. After a moment Finnick went upstairs and pulled off his wet clothes, trading them out for a clean linen shirt and pants. A knock on his door and he looked up. Siobhan stood in the door. "There is a gaggle of teenage girls outside who want to know if you're home," she said, leaning against the frame. "Are you?"

"Always," he smirked. She rolled her eyes.

"So should I tell Neil not to bother with frying up another fish?"

"Nah. I'll be home late."

"Not too late," she warned, but kissed his cheek and handed him his jacket all the same. "Have fun."

The gaggle of teenage girls turned out to be not so much a gaggle as three. Nina Palov and Abby Nolan were in his grade at school. They introduced the younger one as Green, Nina's little sister, who looked fairly bored and grumpy to have been dragged along. They were nice enough, though entirely too besotted with him to be much conversation. After a while, their near constant giggling was wearing on his nerves.

"Wanna go check out the lists?" he finally asked.

The lists were District Four slang for Hunger Games training. Training sessions were, of course, completely illegal, but District Four, as one of the three Districts where work was much less regulated, managed to scrape up time for most of its children to learn how to wield a sword and trident effectively. Careers, the other districts called them. He supposed it was because they trained for the Games almost as much as for their future jobs. Of course, that wasn't exactly true. Only the richest in the district really devoted serious time to training. In addition to learning how to use the weapons, the lists provided a tournament of sorts each year. It was supposed to give an indication of your likeliness of getting out of the arena alive. Most people only went once or twice a month. But once or twice a month could make a huge difference in the arena. Finnick had been undefeated in the lists since he was twelve.

The training room was extremely well furnished, especially considering its illegality. Mats lined the walls and floor and wooden tridents and training swords lined the walls. "Odair," the instructor called. "Ring one."

Finnick beamed and turned to wink at the girls before he bounded over to the ring. His opponent was already waiting. He knew the other boy by sight but not name- he was probably three or four years older than him. A heavy longsword was clutched in his hand. Finnick selected a long trident off the wall and gave it an experimental swing before jumping into the ring.

"On my whistle," the instructor called. "Three. Two."

The whistle shrieked and the boy charged him, sword raised high. Finnick side-stepped him easily and waited calmly for the other boy to regain his balance. He did, quite quickly, and came right back at him. This time Finnick caught his sword tip in the prongs of his trident and yanked. The boy staggered and fell, and Finnick rolled on top of him, the points of the trident pressing into his neck and his wrists trapped under Finnick's knees.

"Yield," the boy grunted.

"15 seconds," the instructor called. "Impressive, Mr Odair. Next!"

He walked back to his house alone. The stars were already out by the time he reached the beach and inhaled the sea breeze. He loved the smell of his district more than anything, salt and oil and sand. He waved as he passed the salt refinery. The foreman waved back. "Say hello to your brother for me," he called after Finnick.

District Four was not a perfect place to live. People went hungry. They drowned. His teacher had once told him that District Four lost the most people in work accidents of all the Districts of Paneam. But Finnick wouldn't want to live anywhere else. "The sea is in our blood," his father had told him once, before his accident. "It's what we do, it's who we are. That's what keeps us different. One, Two, they're the capitols lapdogs. They eat off their plates and wear their clothes and follow what they say to the letter. But us? We have a culture, Finnick."

Sometimes Finnick thought he missed his father more than his mother. It was terrible, he knew, but his mother was still the strong, tall, dark-haired woman cursing out peacekeepers and merchants and singing him to sleep at night in his memory. But his father had wasted away after his mother had died, become moody, withdrawn. The laughing man who'd tossed his wife underwater to stop her from cursing, who taught Finnick how to swim and fish became a surly recluse, barely speaking to his sons, let alone neighbors. It was Siobhan and Neil who were Finnick's parents now.

Their house was one of the farthest from the town possible, so the moon was high above the water when he finally pushed open the door to his house and climbed up to his bed. The moon seemed to create a silver path out across the water.

"Why couldn't we just sail?" he had asked Neil once. "Sail far away and never come back?"

"There's nothing out there, Finnick," Neil had told him. "And you can't live on just fish."

He fell asleep to the sound of the waves.