Chapter 19: 75th Annual Hunger Games
His head throbs something painful when he comes to, and the first thought Finnick has is: dead. They are all dead. He is dead. But Katniss Everdeen, is she dead? Will he ever know if he failed or succeeded in his mission?
Somehow, with the jitters and random twitches in his limbs and the ever-present ache in his skull, he feels that it's not quite over yet. With eyes open – just a crack, as the artificial light is stinging – he sees grey metal above, on the walls and ceiling. He is not in the Arena anymore.
It takes a few minutes more before he figures out that he has the ability to move. He starts with his fingers, stiff and cold. He holds out his arms when he has the strength, noting that he's wearing only a thin hospital gown. And then, to understand what is creating that dull beeping sound across the room, he moves his neck. His eyes scan the metal walls until they come to rest on a figure out cold on a bed. A number of machines surround the bed, and the beeping comes from them.
Beetee. Beetee is here. And the beeping must mean that he is alive.
It's difficult to remember what happened the last few moments he was conscious, but Finnick remembers that Enobaria found Beetee and stabbed him to distract him from his mission to blow up the Arena.
Then who did blow up the Arena? Certainly not Finnick, whose fury got the best of him and who chased Enobaria with the intention of murder instead of caring for the old man or finishing what Beetee had sworn to do.
No, in his final moments, all Finnick had done was chase. No help to anyone, really, and even as the sky rained down and he thought, I need to find Johanna, it was too late – he couldn't move. If he had done more, maybe they would all be dead. A peaceful kind of dead, not this metal-dome limbo.
In front of Beetee lies a smaller figure, her olive skin contrasting the stark white hospital gown. With her long, dark hair swept away in a braid, Finnick knows in an instant who she is.
Katniss.
Why is she here with them? Why isn't she moving? Where are they? Why didn't they save her?
He is frantically trying to sit up, to rise from his own hard bed to investigate when a stringy-haired, pot-bellied figure appears over him and lightly places a hand on his chest, forcing him back down.
"Katniss," he croaks helplessly, but the word doesn't come out the way he expected.
Either way, Haymitch seems to understand. He nods knowingly. "She's here. She's safe."
He opens his mouth again, but this time, he's too dry to say anything at all.
"I'll help you up," Haymitch offers. Finnick attempts to shake his head, but his movements are languid and painful. "You are alive," Haymitch says softly. "The doctors said you might be confused about that."
Haymitch puts an arm around Finnick's shoulder and heavily supports his weight as he helps him stand. Finnick's first intention is to check on Katniss and Beetee, to ensure that they are, in fact, alive. A doctor enters the wing and supports Finnick's other shoulder, leading him away from his allies. He tries to protest.
"They'll come to," Haymitch assures him. "For now, they need to rest."
He doesn't recognize this place – these grey, lifeless hallways and windowless walls. Are they in the Capitol? It's the only place he's ever met with other victors other than on Victory Tours. It doesn't make sense to be anywhere else.
But if they are in the Capitol, then death is near. And it is sure to be agonizing.
It's the first thing he asks when they sit him down at a table and place a straw at his lips. He gulps down the cool water and nearly sighs at the relief it provides his throat, but also notices that his head begins to feel better. Is this just water, or is it laced with some sort of medicine?
"Where are we?"
Just then, Plutarch Heavensbee enters the quarters with a broad smile. Behind him trails a woman Finnick recognizes only from behind a screen – it's Fulvia Cardew, his loyal assistant.
"Finnick, my boy," Heavensbee says as if they're jolly old friends. "It's good to see you, so good to see you."
Another man enters, saying nothing but placing a bowl of broth and some rolls in front of Finnick.
"Where are we?" Finnick repeats.
"Eat," Fulvia instructs.
He's frustrated now, and makes a move to stand up. Haymitch puts a hand on his shoulder and he's too weak to fight it; so he plunks back down. Haymitch then strides across the room and pulls the curtains aside.
So there are windows here. Daylight streams in, and beyond the glass, there is forest as far as the eye can see. They're in the air, floating so smoothly he can't feel it at all. A hovercraft.
"We," Heavensbee says with a twinkle of delight in his eye, "are on our way to District 13."
Finnick pauses. The last time he checked, there were only twelve districts…
"Oh, it exists," Heavensbee affirms with a nod, sensing his next question. "It very much exists."
While the existence of 13 is explained to him, detailing its retraction underground during the Dark Days and its survival ever since, Finnick can barely concentrate. 13 exists. He is going to 13. With Beetee and Katniss and Haymitch and…
"Johanna," he says suddenly, interrupting Heavensbee's history lesson.
The round man stops mid-sentence, exchanging a glance with Haymitch.
"Finnick," says the mentor, his tone oddly gentle, "when the force field was destroyed in the Arena, we only had a few seconds to act. There were only so many of you we could grab."
He frowns. "Did she die?"
Haymitch shakes his head. "It wasn't just our hovercraft there. The Capitol had one, too."
Realization sinks in. The heat from the broth causes him to sweat. "She's with them," he says quietly, not believing it himself. Them. The Capitol. They took her. Suddenly alert and anxious, his eyes dart to Haymitch. "What about—"
"The only ones we had time to lift were you, Beetee and Katniss," Haymitch confirms, and Finnick sees the pain in his eyes. "Johanna we had to leave behind. Along with Enobaria. And… Peeta."
His eyes widen. "They're all with them? In the Capitol?"
Pained, Haymitch nods.
They're dead, Finnick thinks automatically. Or they're not, but they will be soon. Poor Peeta. And Johanna… he can't bear it.
But there's someone else on his mind. Someone he can't force himself to forget about any longer, because he doesn't have the strength.
"The districts are in full-scale rebellion. Communications are down in 7, 10, and 12. But 11 has control of transportation now, so there's at least a hope of getting them some food out," says Heavensbee, as if this newsflash is helpful to his broken heart.
"I need to go back," Finnick says, his voice cracking with emotion. "Annie… I need to get to her. Will you take me to 4?"
"No, I'm sorry. There's no way I can get you to 4. But I've given special orders for her retrieval if possible."
Finnick begins to shake his head. It's not good enough. How dare this man decide it's not important enough?
"It's the best I can do, Finnick," Heavensbee adds, taking note of his despair.
District 4 in rebellion. Fletcher. The girls. If Annie's there, she's alone and afraid. If she's not…
Suddenly, Finnick knows that Annie is not in District 4. The moment the rebels lifted him from the Arena alive was the moment his agreement with Snow for Annie's safety and protection ended.
She's in the custody of the Capitol.
He looks around the room, powerless for answers. Oh, the things they can do to her to break him… he's overwhelmed with nausea.
"Then I want you to kill me," he says, wrought with anguish and, somewhere deep within him, conviction. "It's the only way to keep her safe."
Haymitch dismisses this right away. "Don't be stupid. That's the worst thing you could do. Get her killed for sure. As long as you're alive, they'll keep her alive for bait."
Haymitch knows, too – like a true victor, he knows the way Snow operates.
Before he can argue, the door flies open and in stumbles Katniss, her eyes wild. When she sees the open window and the scene before her – a bedraggled Finnick sitting limply on a chair surrounded by Haymitch and the two from the Capitol – she stops herself from what may have been an attack.
They sit her down beside him at the table, and while they force Finnick to eat and try to do the same to Katniss, Haymitch tells her everything. For the first time, she learns of the conspiracy. The alliance in the Arena. How it all turned out, and where they are headed now, with Johanna, Enobaria and Peeta left far, far behind in merciless hands.
Katniss handles everything with remarkable understanding and neutrality, simply nodding at key points to confirm she is still paying attention. But it's the last bit that breaks her. To know that Peeta is not here – that he is in the hands of the people who want her dead – sends her flying over the edge, and she lashes out at Haymitch by scraping her nails down his face.
Finnick can't blame her for her outburst, even though he is the one who grabs her, drags her away from Haymitch and helps to strap her down. He is the one with whom she locks eyes before the needle plunges into her arm and the sedation pulls her under.
And he is the one she finds next to her in his own hospital bed when she wakes. He has the same thoughts; the same anger. Why were they saved, but not the ones they loved? Why should a person's usefulness in a dreadful war determine their right to life?
He'd trade places with Peeta. He really would. No matter what they'd do to him in the Capitol, at least he would have the chance to see Annie one last time. At least they could die together.
And Peeta and Katniss could live together, just as they were meant to do.
"Katniss," Finnick whispers, his throat choked with tears. She does not look at him, but her eyes stare at the ceiling and he knows she hears. "Katniss, I'm sorry. I wanted to go back for him and Johanna, but I couldn't move."
Just the mention of Johanna's name grips him with fear. She knew too much. Was too involved in the conspiracy. And her tongue is too fiery for her own good. Johanna made sure there was no one left for her to love, that way they could never hold anything against her – all they can do is kill her very slowly, very painfully.
The thought paralyzes him, and as he lies there, he wonders if he's collapsed a lung just from the involuntary mental images of her bruised, beaten body hanging within an inch of its life.
"It's better for him than Johanna," Finnick manages to continue, speaking more to himself than to Katniss. "They'll figure out he doesn't know anything pretty fast. And they won't kill him if they think they can use him against you."
Johanna won't be so lucky. She doesn't need to be kept alive to manipulate anyone.
"Like bait?" Katniss asks with dead eyes. "Like how they'll use Annie for bait, Finnick?"
He didn't expect a response. That she says it out loud – what everything is thinking, but no one will say – makes it all too real.
And then, shaking with loss and apology and regret and misery, he sobs openly into the pillow. He hasn't wept like this for years, and certainly not in front of a young girl in her own pool of despair. But he can't help it. He's terrified. Terrified that Annie is still alive, because what they will do to her is far worse than death.
"I wish she was dead," he admits to Katniss through tears. "I wish they were all dead and we were, too. It would be best."
Right then, he doesn't care what awaits them in death. It could be Annie's vision of a dream, or floating blankly through space, or fire and brimstone, or nothing at all. As long as it's not here. As long as it's not this place.
They all just need to get out.
Following the Dark Days, the people from District 13 were pushed underground to survive and stayed there. It is completely cut off from the rest of Panem and, in many ways, the fresh air itself, and so everything it has is prized highly and nothing is wasted. Not paper, not food, not space. Not even people, Finnick soon learns. Everyone receives a daily "imprint" on their arm which details their hourly schedule, so that no minute of a day is ever spent unproductively.
Being holed up in the hospital with nightmares of Annie and Johanna and, sometimes, Peeta, Finnick hasn't been imprinted yet. There's very little motivation to right his mindstate, with all the pleasant drugs that pull him peacefully out of consciousness and only the cramped, grey compartment that is assigned to him to look forward to. The idea of imprinting upset him, when he's coherent enough to think about it. He's been told what to do – or threatened to do what someone else wanted him to do – ever since he stepped out of the Arena alive at fourteen years old. Now that he's done as instructed and gotten the mockingjay out alive, he's rewarded with a list of daily duties?
This is not freedom. This is not victory.
He's sure it's the air, too, that's keeping him unwell. It's stuffy and stagnant and stale underground, with no flowing breeze or ocean salt. It's no place to live. No place to die, either, but he'd die all the same if given the chance.
He's not. No one is quite so merciful. Instead of death, they give him a small section of rope. Not quite long enough to tie a noose. He could slowly cut off the circulation in his fingers or sear his neck with rope burn, but as he has trouble staying awake for more than five or ten minutes, he doesn't bother.
Instead, he ties. Knots and unknots. Over and over until they have to treat his hands every morning and night for rope burn. It doesn't matter – he keeps knotting. It's the tiniest bit of a life he once had. Just a little piece of home.
In the Capitol, he's sure they're far less accommodating. He doubts that Annie has a rope. But perhaps she has a friend, which is more than he can say for himself.
Take care of her, Johanna, he pleads on repeat in his mind. But even the pleas are filled with empty despair.
Johanna, wherever she is, no doubt has bigger problems to worry about.
What was it all for, if it's all come to this? He in one horrible place, Annie somewhere worse, and almost every district at war? This is a question that often plagues his mind, even with the sweet release of the drugs. What was the bargaining point, again? How had they convinced him to do this?
They didn't. He barely needed convincing at all, if he remembers correctly. And they never promised him anything. Not freedom, not happiness. Not even life.
All they'd wanted was their mockingjay, and all he'd needed was a cause to believe in.
Almost never is he allowed to leave the medical unit, so when Mrs. Everdeen leads him along with a group of patients to the Collective, easily the largest room in the underground, he's intrigued and a bit dazed. There's to be an assembly there, and Finnick's sure someone has told him the topic of the day, but he must not have been listening.
They never force him to give up his rope, and he's grateful for that as he stands in the assembly hall gazing at the enormity of the room and the gigantic crowd filtering in. Everyone in the district must be here, and yet he recognizes so few faces. Every body is clothed in grey. Amidst this colourless sea, it's difficult to remember the exact shade of the calm ocean on a clear, sunny day.
"Finnick! How are you doing?"
Someone calls him to attention and, bewildered, he looks around and down to a small figure. With the dark hair and braid, he recognizes her instantly and is glad for the familiarity.
"Katniss," he says, finding her hand and gripping it. They poke and probe at him all the time, but no one really touches him anymore – the human contact, he finds, has been sorely missed. Though she's surprised by his overwhelming need for contact, she doesn't pull away. She was angry with him the last time they saw each other. She was angry with everyone, really. Today, her grey eyes are laced with sympathy. He hates it, but he needs her to answer a question.
"Why are we meeting here?"
Katniss sighs, leaving her hand in his. And with that, she says the most comforting words he's heard since the last time he spoke with Annie: "I told Coin I'd be her Mockingjay."
Mockingjay.
This is why he's here, he faintly remembers. Why he would have given his life and left Annie without him. Because Katniss is the mockingjay, the Girl on Fire, and she will burn the Capitol.
But she doesn't look very convincing. In fact, she looks entirely reluctant, and with that, he feels his shoulders slumping and the fading of whatever hope he had left.
Katniss Everdeen. The mockingjay. The lynchpin of the rebellion. Never once before, during, or after the rebellion did anyone ask her if she wanted to be. By the look on her face, it's clear that someone should have thought to do that.
What have they done?
The hospital staff begins to allow him out for excursions – never to the "real" outside, like he begs, but around and about the underground. He's harmless to anyone but himself, they say, and they're about right. His excursions are never busy enough, and he always ends up distracted by thoughts of Annie, or Johanna, or Calix, or anyone who died in the Games. Even Cashmere and Gloss he would welcome now, for even if they hated him, they were at least familiar. They understood each other, in a strange way. Had suffered the same fate.
Happiness is a relative term these days, but he's mildly content when they allow him to join the film crew on the set one day while giving Katniss her first task as mockingjay: filming rebel material. Finnick is amused for the first little bit, watching Katniss stand around taking cues with no real ideas of what she should be doing in front of the camera. This is where Peeta may have come in handy, for Katniss is no actress. She's not even good at taking instruction. She's too stubborn and defiant, even to those who are on her side.
She glares at Finnick for chuckling at her, but he secretly admires her from the sidelines. When he was her age – seventeen – he was tainted and broken into submission.
Though the rebel propos intrigues him, his mind wanders as always, just like it used to after the first Games – but worse, because Annie's not here to call him back.
He's jolted to life again minutes or hours later, when the Girl on Fire, in all her fiery glory, yells into the camera, "People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!"
He can't muster the humour to chuckle this time – he just feels hopeless. Haymitch, however, laughs derisively from across the studio, arms folded across his chest.
"And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies," he remarks.
Suddenly, Finnick is salivating, alert and craving a little white pill. They've placed so much hope in their mockingjay. So much effort. If she fails to inspire, the rebellion is lost.
Everything is lost, and Finnick doesn't want to be conscious when it goes.
There's to be a special mission to District 8, where an uprising is in full swing. The film crews are going along with Haymitch, Katniss, and Gale, Katniss' hunting partner from District 12, who strikes Finnick as one of the most intense and serious people he has ever known – and he has known Fletcher. It's what years of living in hunger with a family to feed can do to you, he suspects, so he can't really blame Gale for his demeanour. Still, he watches him around Katniss and can't help but raise a disapproving brow. It's clear that the pair have buried feelings for one another, and both seem to be fighting it – viciously. So much so that it seems they take it out on one another.
Sometimes he almost feels that he should intervene. For Peeta, in the hands of the devil, whose only happy thought might just be Katniss Everdeen.
But he doesn't. He stays out of it, because he knows with certainty that no distraction or intervention or person can force someone to fall in or out of love.
He doesn't care much about it, anyway, when Boggs, District 13's right-hand man, tells him he can't go along on the mission to 8. He's furious at this disallowance. If anyone wants an uprising, it's him. If anyone wants to destroy Snow, it's him. Why rescue him from the Arena to lock him in a hospital wing underground while his beloved cries for his comfort from behind Capitol walls?
Katniss convinces him to visit Beetee in the Weaponry unit, instead, and he goes because he can't bear to see them leave without him and because Beetee is a familiar face, no matter if he likes Finnick or not.
After throwing on some clothes – slate grey, like everything in this hole of a district – he marches down to Special Weaponry, scowling all the way. His bitter frown is replaced by intrigue and wonder when Beetee places in his outstretched hands a golden trident.
"What's it do?" Finnick asks, wary of using it right away as it seems to be more than just a slab of gold.
Wheeling about in his chair, Beetee shows him some of the special features, like how pressing a button on the matching cuff will return it to him after it's been thrown, and how the prongs can extend into even sharper, deadlier blades.
"And this is for me?" Finnick asks with raised brows.
Beetee nods. "You and you alone. It's voice activated, just like the bow for Katniss."
He tests the weight of it in his hands, thoroughly impressed. With a doleful expression, he asks, "You think they'll ever let me use it?"
"Certainly," Beetee says. "Katniss Everdeen isn't their only mockingjay."
Wear it if you can be it. That was the note attached to the gold bangle when he found it in the sand. From the beginning, they planned for Finnick to be a rebel leader, too.
"Then why am I here when she's making waves in 8?"
Beetee eyes him over the rims of his glasses. "You're not helping anyone by losing yourself," he says calmly. "They didn't pick up the three of us by chance. It helped that we were close together in the Arena once the force field collapsed, but they could have taken the boy in our place if they thought they'd need him. They could have picked up Johanna, but they didn't. They needed us. Katniss, the mockingjay. Beetee, the technology specialist. And you, Finnick. Because no one has more reason to fight for change than you. No one is more of a soldier."
Another scowl wipes away his wonder and awe. He thrusts the trident into Beetee's hands. "I don't care," he says. "I didn't ask to live. I only said I would protect her."
"And how can you, when she's in the middle of a war zone and you're stuck here?"
Beetee's poignant question causes him to turn on his heels. He narrows his eyes. "She's out of the Arena alive, isn't she?"
"But don't you see? We're still in the Arena."
His gentle tone causes Finnick to tilt his head quizzically.
"The Games are still on," Beetee continues. "They'll go on until there's a winner. Us, or Snow."
He opens his mouth to argue, but he can't. It's true: if the rebellion is squashed, next year's Games will be truly unforgettable, if any of the rebels are still alive to participate in it.
The feeble man holds out the golden trident again. "At least this way, you'll know you tried."
Finnick laughs coldly. "Tried? You think all this is for lack of trying?"
"You know Johanna better than I do. What would she say to you now, left behind on a mission you should have been spearheading?"
"Don't," Finnick snaps, gritting his teeth. He may be elderly, but Finnick will still strangle him if he dares mention Johanna again.
He doesn't stand a chance against an on-edge Finnick Odair, but Beetee's breathing doesn't shallow in the slightest. "The one you love," he says, "she's not gone, you know. I'm certain of it. She's there, in the Capitol, alive. As long as there's life, there's hope."
He presses a button on the arm of his chair, wheeling it around and away. Finnick watches him go, taking the trident with him. Beetee pauses in the doorway to another unit of the Weapons Department, looking over his shoulder.
"By the way," he says, "thank you for your help in the Arena. That knife in the back would have killed me at the Cornucopia, and Enobaria would have done so again at the bitter end. First it was Johanna who saved me, and then it was you." He pauses, mulling over his words. "You gave me life, and I don't intend to waste it."
Man, this month is killing me. May, why you gotta suck? It's no consolation that the weather is beautiful, either, because I sit inside at a desk staring at a screen and talking on the phone all day at work. Sigh.
But enough of my Debbie Downer-ness. All I wanted to say is that months such as this are like a kick-in-the-face reminder of why I write. And if I can share that with other people and know that they are getting something out of it, too, then even the worst month isn't a write-off.
So thanks for being awesome, all you readers, you. It's more appreciated than you know, especially in times where I can't seem to get my act together.
Catch ya next Sunday!