A/N: Finnicks POV

Everyone was right. Knowing is not easier. Knowing makes it hard to watch the Games. Knowing makes it hard to think about Scarlett without pity and disgust - not at her, but at the men who paid for her. Knowing made me disgusted with myself, with what my life would become so soon.

She knew. She must have known it would happen to me, just like Mags and Haymitch and everyone else must have known, but nobody said a word. Scarlett I could almost understand, having her own pain so fresh and immediate, but Mags? What was her excuse?

I watched the Games, though. I watched nothing happen but the tributes walking around, interacting, finding food and shelter and looking for water, which was still alluding them all. I assumed it was because it wasn't there, but I supposed that I couldn't know for sure until they'd shown every inch of the arena, which they weren't likely to do.

"It can't go on like this forever," Beetee pointed out calmly as we came back from lunch with sponsors to find that all that had happened was Draven and Charlotte kicking Daisy out of their group because they were running low on food supplies. "Someone's got to die sooner or later."

He was right, and we knew that it would be sooner if the Gamemakers had anything to say about it. I hoped that it would all be over with in just a matter of hours so that I could go back to District Four and have time to digest what was happening to me, time to think and talk it over with my family, who were sure to have some sort of advice. My parents were very smart people.

But the chances that it would all be over, just like that, were low and I knew it.

"Oh, I think Daisy won't make it a full day," Jonas said with a shrug. "They didn't even have the courtesy to give her a small amount of provisions, and she's got no sponsors. I heard Piper frantically trying to get her some over lunch because I think she sensed this was going to happen."

Piper Northrop of District Nine had won the 13th Hunger Games, and had been a mentor for more than thirty years until Chloe Tillman won. Chloe had handed mentoring back over to Piper, though, a couple of years before my own Games, so that she could spend more time with her children.

Of course, she was just sitting around praying her children wouldn't be reaped, but I wouldn't know the difference, personally. She had a son if I remembered correctly, definitely reaping age. I couldn't recall what she'd named him, but her surname wasn't Tillman anymore. Zimmerman, I thought. It was typically a name that was from District Seven, which was what made me remember it. Probably the descendent of someone displaced during the Dark Days. Maybe he was even distantly related to Ellie, who'd died in my own Games.

Those of us with surviving tributes were interviewed that evening, Claudius Templesmith and Caesar Flickerman both chattering and excitable, probably because there hadn't been a death in so long, which usually meant something was going to happen soon.

"So, Finnick," Caesar asked me as we watched some replays of Luke's kills, "Luke was certainly not a favorite coming into this, but he's risen toward the top quite rapidly, especially with the specific kills he's made. Did you know he had it in him?"

"Honestly, no," I said, keeping on my greasy smile that I was glad I'd gotten so practiced, else I wouldn't have been able to summon it that day. "Luke never seemed especially dangerous or charming or promising, not like Ligeia did, but then, I think in my own Games no one expected anything of me, especially next to Stella!"

"These Games have had some interesting twists," Caesar agreed. "For example, Draven. He's avoided a lot of the killing himself, getting Charlotte or others to do it for him. Do you see that as his strength, or his weakness?"

"I think it depends on whether he kills Charlotte," I whispered, "or she kills him."

"And that's just the truth of it, isn't it?" Caesar said, and I got the sense he'd finished with me, and when someone said 'cut' from off the soundstage I knew it was the truth and I was grateful for the opportunity to leave the soundstage.

Haymitch was standing there as I came out, watching Scarlett go in, and I was about to leave, but he caught my arm, just standing there, watching as the door closed behind her before turning to me.

"I know," was all he said at first, just watching my face for a reaction, but I was too emotionally exhausted to give him one. "I talked to Snow. You're not working tonight. I got it off for you. You need the time to work things out, think things over, come to terms."

"Did you ever-?"

"No," he said softly, shaking his head. "But I've seen it enough in others. You and Scarlett... you're not the first. You won't be the last. If that Draven wins, he'll be the next."

I nodded.

"Thank you," I said, not entirely certain if I wanted to thank him or not, but I knew he'd done something that was probably good for me, and probably at great personal risk.

He just grunted and walked away.

After a moment of watching him go and Scarlett not coming out of the soundstage, I made my way back to my room, silently, contemplatively, wondering why Haymitch would make such a gesture for me. Had he done it for Scarlett, or had something else marked the beginning of her time as a prostitute of the Capitol?

Of course, once I thought of it, it wasn't exactly a secret. I hadn't know exactly what to look for, but the way the male sponsors flocked to her, fawned over her...

I had just thought it was a part of her persona, I mused, stripping down and getting into the shower, letting the cool water run over my body as I lathered my hair. Perhaps, in a way, it was. Our personas had caused this, caused the initial interest that kept us alive, and then made us profitable. And part of staying alive after that meant bowing to our own profitability, and not ruining Snow's profit margins. We, the tributes and victors, were his little cash cows, and he would milk us dry and then take some more.

"I don't want to do this," I said to myself, shaking my head violently against the stream of water. "I don't want to. I don't want to be a pawn."

But my parents... I didn't want anything to happen to them. I didn't want to be like Scarlett, alone and desperate and still forced to do whatever it was they wanted of her.

I had an idea of what they wanted of her, of what was wanted of me. But not much of one. I'd never had a girlfriend, and I'd never even been kissing any of the pretty girls who'd become suddenly interested in me once I'd become a victor.

They didn't really want to kiss me, just to kiss a victor.

I didn't want to be that victor, but apparently I would have to be. They wouldn't even be girls I knew or liked or thought were pretty. They probably wouldn't even be girls, but the women who I had to schmooze with to get any sort of support for Luke, the same women who'd probably paid for my trident in the hopes that they'd get a chance to have sex with me, when I was old enough.

I had been fourteen when I'd won the Hunger Games! I had been a child! That was just sick!

But in a way, I was still a child, I thought. Scarlett had been protecting that, as had Mags and all the others, by not telling me about Scarlett, by not warning me. They were allowing me to keep that childish innocence just a little bit longer, knowing like I should have seen the situation I would be in, what was coming the moment I became old enough to be acceptably sold off for the night.

I wasn't angry at them, not really.

They were protecting me, and I was sure that someday I would be grateful for it. Someday... but not in that moment. Not standing under the jets of water, feeling the cool liquid on my skin, knowing that in a day's time I would be expected to warm the bed of some rich floozy who'd paid an awful lot of money for the pleasure. I could barely stand knowing it, could barely stand myself, and I just had the urge to break everything I could find.

But what good would that do? If I could break enough things that the cost weighed out the money that would be paid to bed me, what about all the other nights?

I turned off the water and grabbed a towel, drying myself off as I tried to calm down my rage, knowing that all would be left once that was gone would be despair. What else could there be? And did I really want to be left with nothing by my despair to protect me?

Did I really need to be protected? Was I really so weak? After all, I'd won the Hunger Games, hadn't I? I was strong enough to survive. Surely I was strong enough to handle what was going to come to me.

But I didn't feel strong as I pulled on some shorts, looking around the room with a frown on my face.

There had been nights, presumably her nights off, when Scarlett had snuck into my room, plagued by nightmares. At least, I had thought that was what had bothered her as I'd wrapped my arms around her and told her that no one was going to hurt her. I had fed her the lies she had so badly wanted to believe, the same lies that I so badly wished I could make myself believe, that someone might feed me.

But there was no one left naive enough to feed me lies as I had done with Scarlett. She wouldn't do it. Mags wouldn't do it. No one would hold me and tell me things were okay.

Because they weren't okay, and I wasn't a child anymore and it was time I dealt with things, I could almost hear an ambiguously stern voice saying in my head, scolding me for even wanting to be lied to.

With a heavy sigh, I climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin and scrunched my eyes shut, desperately hoping against hope that I would have peaceful, dreamless sleep for once, not filled with the faces of those I'd killed or watched die or failed, not filled with the smell of blood and roses that followed President Snow around, even lingering in the District Seven living area after he had left Scarlett and I alone.

But eventually I fell asleep, and while it wasn't dreamless, it was thankfully not too horribly unpleasant, simply dreaming of myself floating in the ocean, bobbing up and down as the waves ebbed and flowed.

I woke up partway through the night, though, with a red-haired girl in bed beside me. At first, I thought she might be there for comfort from nightmares again, but I realized she was caressing my face.

"Scarlett?" I muttered sleepily. There were tears in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"The president gave me the night off," she whispered.

I was confused, not sure if this was a byproduct of the dizziness of being still half in sleep, or the dizziness caused by the patterns her fingertips were tracing on my skin.

"What?" I managed to murmur.

"I've been granted the night off from my Capitol duties in order to get you ready for yours," she whispered into my ear, and I couldn't help but shudder at the sensation.

"Why?" I asked as I realized what she meant.

"Because your first time should be with someone who cares about you, Finnick," she whispered, "and not with some rich old person who finds your innocence cute and provincial."

I didn't have to see her face properly to know she was crying. I could hear it in the ever-so-slight quiver of her voice. Whatever had gone on during her first time was clearly a painful memory.

But before I could collect my thoughts and really know what I ought to say or do, Scarlett had pulled her nightclothes up over her head and thrown them on the floor. And she had nothing on underneath.

All mental facility I had managed to pull together after have been woken utterly vanished in that moment as I stared at her and she took my hand and ran it along her body, and my fingertips felt as though they burnt with a delightful sort of fire at the feel of her silky skin.

"Scarlett-"

But she silenced me by crashing her lips on mine and, I'll admit, I'm male and she was delicious.

I could hardly determine what was going on, but I had some sense that I was hungrily returning her kiss, vaguely aware that my hands had begun roaming her skin of their own accord, and that her fingers were running through my hair.

Suddenly, her lips parted from mine and I let out a moan of disappointment, only to gasp in pleasure as her plump lips explored my neck, clearly well-practiced at the path she followed down my chest. She pulled off my shorts, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but she whispered, "Relax," and I took a deep breath, attempting to calm myself.

I was entirely unprepared for the sensation of her warm, wet mouth on my already-hard penis, and I twitched in surprise and pleasure.

"Ah, Scarlett," I whimpered, trying very hard not to cry out too loudly as her head began to bob up and down the shaft, and I hissed, my mind getting fuzzier by the second from the thrill of it all, my hands getting tangled up in her hair almost of their own accord.

She spent hours teaching me how to pleasure her that night, and how to give myself pleasure while doing so. I knew it would never be the same, doing any of it with some other woman, as I would have to do, but I consoled myself with the fact that I could always imagine that the Capitol woman was Scarlett, and then it would all be easy.

She also took my virginity, although I was a bit scared when it came to that. She reassured me sweetly, although not in the sickening way of her Capitol persona, but the sort of way she used to talk with her brothers or Alyson, before they'd been killed.

"It won't hurt you," she said softly, her fingertips tracing my face as she climbed on top of me, straddling me.

"Did it hurt you?" I asked, half curious, half trying to think of things to say because I thought it might ease the fear I was feeling about having something so important taken from me with such little time to think it over, with such little self-determination.

"Yes."

"Does it still hurt?"

I didn't like the idea of causing her pain, even if it would do me some measure of good in the long run. I wasn't sure what I would do if she said it did, whether I would stop everything and demand that I not hurt her, or if I would let her just get it over with anyway, for my sake, like she wanted.

"Not physically," she said in a sad voice, her fingers tracing my lips thoughtfully, frowning as though just remembering something unpleasant. "Don't worry. You won't hurt me."

About a half hour later when we finally collapsed together, our legs intertwined, her body on top of mine, embracing each other, her head resting on my chest, it was nearing dawn and we were both completely spent. It felt good, the sweat on our bodies so intermingled and a small mark on her shoulder from where I'd bit her in my moment of greatest passion to keep from waking Mags. I had a feeling there were lines on my back from where Scarlett's fingernails had been.

"Wow," I sighed. "Is it always that incredible?"

"No," she said honestly, her fingers lacing in mine, feeling just perfect. "It's usually not."

"Mmm," I murmur, turning her over so that I was on top of her and kissing her sweet lips again. I felt a bit drunk on the taste of her lips, deciding that her mouth was my favorite flavor. "I just got lucky then, did I?"

"Tremendously," she sighed as I kissed her graceful neck, enjoying the feel of her sweat-soaked skin on my lips. "Oh, Finnick, I swear you're a natural."

"I'm just a quick study," I teased, "with the best teacher."

"Finnick," she whispered, and I rested my forehead on hers, running my fingers through her perfect, silky hair, enjoying how the sweat and actions of the night had tangled it. "You know this doesn't change anything between us. The rumors, they're not going to suddenly be true now. We're still just really good friends, right?"

"Of course," I agreed, pressing my lips gently to hers to seal the agreement, but I wondered in the back of my mind if there was any way I would be able to look at her again and not see her riding me, her red hair falling around her shoulders as her head was thrown back in ecstasy, my name on her delicious lips in a sigh of pleasure.

Somehow, I didn't think so.

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Missing Triforce, my lovely friend and co-author who is a dedicated reader and reviewer of this series. THANK YOU DEAR for your interest in this story and others.

-J