Chapter Text
Chapter 2 - Finnick
I wake before the sun. Not because I slept well—no one ever does this time of year. Dread doesn’t keep office hours.
The ceiling’s dark. The house is quiet. The ocean air seeps through the window, damp and briny, clinging to my skin. This is District 4. Salt and silence.
I get up. Tea. Cold rinse. A wrinkled shirt pulled over damp skin, still dripping at the collar. It’s all routine burned into my muscle memory.
The Reaping’s today. Then the train. Then the Capitol. Then the cameras. The clients. The arena. Death, cleaned up in makeup and polished shoes.
Then back here. Same bed, same ceiling. Like none of it happened. Like I wasn’t being hollowed out one piece at a time. The Capitol doesn’t kill you all at once. It carves you. Slow. Greedy. Bite by bite, until you forget which parts of you were ever yours.
I stopped pretending I could save them a long time ago—the tributes— the children. My job is to smile while they bleed. To hand them over with teeth white enough to catch the light.
Still—today’s almost a mercy. Because after today, she’ll be free.
Rowen. Ren. She’s always been steady in a world built to collapse. Even at a distance, even after everything, she’s the one thought I hold without breaking. I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried not to think about her. Not when the Capitol’s watching. Not when I lie awake in beds that aren’t mine, thinking of the way her voice used to soften when she said mine. But it never works.
It’s her last year of eligibility. After today, I won’t have to fear watching her die in that arena. And for now—just for a moment—I can breathe.
The rumble of Peacekeeper transport engines cuts through the morning hush. Curiously, I step to the window that faces the street, just in time to see the vehicle stop in front of the Tavell house. My stomach does a nervous flip. I watch as Atlas climbs out stiff and silent. The Peacekeepers don’t acknowledge him, and it seems he doesn’t acknowledge them either. Doesn’t even look at them. But he does turn my way, meeting my eyes.
I break from the window, step outside, and cross the street—straight to my old mentor. He’s pulled out a cigarette in the time it took for me to meet him. It’s already lit and he’s letting out a long, smooth exhale.
"What was that?"
“I’ve been assigned to mentor with you this year.” He says not blinking, his breath still smoky.
My stomach drops. Not wanting to mentally piece together what that meant, but instinctively knowing. "What about Mags?"
"Replaced," he says flatly.
"What?"
His jaw tics. "Said something about needing fresh faces."
Fresh faces? That was my role.
He puts out the cigarette, stamping out the ashes roughly on the cobbled street and disappears inside. I follow him, feeling moderately perturbed by his indifference. I suspected it was a facade, but I never really knew - not with Atlas.
He shrugs off his jacket and hangs it over the coat rack, before slamming the door behind me.
“What exactly did they say to you?” I press.
“I already told you,” He says. His voice clipped. Curt. “It was just some vague bullshit.” He turns his back to me, walking away once again.
“And you just accepted that?” I won’t allow him to avoid me. Not where Rowen was concerned. “You didn’t think to press for further details? Or even ask why?” We come to another stop in the kitchen, he leans against the island.
“If I had, do you think they’d have been any more forthcoming?” His retort is dry and condescending. I bristle at it.
“You could’ve tried.” I tell him, searching his face for any ounce of anything . Though I couldn’t seem to find anything but the mild expression of apathy reflected in his dark eyes. “Do you even understand the implications here?”
“Perfectly.” Of course he did. It’s happened before… Beetee’s kid in District 3, Glimmer after Gloss from 1—it was a miracle she made it out alive, or more likely, it was her looks. When you piss the Capitol off—no, when you piss Snow off, there are always repercussions. They’ll send your siblings, your kids, anyone who you remotely care for into the games. They’ll assign you to mentor them, your last chance to save them from certain death—it's a lost cause though—their death certificate has already received the presidential signature. Rationally, you’ll know this, but that won’t stop the guilt from festering. From thinking that you could’ve actually done something.
“Could’ve fooled me.” I can feel the calm slipping. “You’re showing a hell of a lot of indifference for someone whose sister might be-”
Atlas shoots me a dark look. “Don’t.” His voice is low. Deadly. But I can’t stop. I can’t let him stand there pretending he’s made of stone while she’s hanging in the balance. He has to feel it. He has to care. I can’t be the only one.
The silence is thick. I’m testing his patience. I can tell. I don’t care; I won’t let him intimidate me.
“I wasn’t sure, Not given the complete lack of concern you seem to be showing.” This seems to get a rise out of him - something that isn’t easy to do. Atlas is distant, and emotionally unfound.
“Lack of concern? I don’t have to prove anything to you.” He snaps.
He turns the kitchen tap on, hunching over the basin and scrubbing his face down. I’m pacing, I almost don’t even notice.
“They’re replacing Mags,” I press on, forcing him to acknowledge the very real possibility at hand here. “That’s not nothing. Mentors aren’t replaced hours before a Reaping.”
“I know.” His voice is hard, but brittle around the edges.
“This isn’t a coincidence.”
“I know .”
“So why aren’t you doing something?”
“What would you have me do, Finnick? March back in the Peacebuilding and demand to know if they plan to kill my sister?”
It wasn’t fair to ask that. He was right about that much. Realistically, there wasn’t much you could do in regard to Capitol demands. But I still wish he had done something, but I suppose that was exactly what got us here in the first place.
“We both know how this ends.” Atlas cuts through the silence, his words have a sense of finality about them. Foreboding. I had almost hoped he would disagree with my line of thinking. Telling me that I was wrong—that it was just a coincidence. I feel unsettled. Sick.
“It’ll be Rowen.” I say, voice almost a whisper. It's a fact that I don’t want to fully realize, but Atlas needs to acknowledge this. I think I almost see a shift in his expression.
The tap shuts off abruptly and he’s moving across the room in heavy strides. “Let’s not forget why that is.” He hissed venomously.
My gaze falls to the floor, mouth feeling very dry. The front door slams again, and I’m left standing in the Tavell house feeling as if the weight on my shoulders will cause my feet to sink deep into the wooden floorboards beneath me. I hope it does.
I pour myself a cup of cold, stale coffee trying to rid my throat from the lump steadily forming. It doesn’t help.
I let out a long sigh; it’s shaky, more so than even my trembling hands. He didn’t need to remind me. I wouldn’t ever forget. It’s my fault. My weakness. My inability to endure. I should never have gone to Atlas, expecting him to ease my burdens—they were supposed to be mine to carry alone . I should’ve learned my lesson after the first time. Once again it’s his family paying the price. Her family. Even from a distance I can’t stop hurting her.
I sink into one of the kitchen chairs, cup still in hand, fingers clenched too tight around it. But I’m not really looking at the coffee, rippling gently from the tremor I can’t control. I’m replaying everything. The way she used to look at me—before I broke whatever we had. The way she doesn’t look at me now. The way her voice sounds when she says my name like it’s a ghost she thought she buried. I would give anything to go back. To undo it. Just for one more chance to be the boy she trusted. But I’m not that boy anymore. I don’t know what I am.
“Well, if it isn’t District 4’s golden boy. Should I be flattered that you're mourning something in my kitchen?”
Her voice cuts through the oppressive silence, like a finely honed blade. Sharp. Deliberate. My chest stutters at the sound of her voice. Like a wire pulled too tight. No matter how many times I brace for it, she still manages to knock the wind out of me. I flinch—hard. My head snaps up, fingers instinctively tightening around the mug. Rowen stands there, framed by the entryway, draped in a robe that hangs loose over her shoulders. She’s all sharp lines and sleepless eyes, too beautiful for how tired she looks, and too dangerous for how calm she seems. Her eyes pin me in place. God, she’s grown even colder around me. And I deserve it. But it doesn’t stop the ache.
“Rowen,” I say, my voice rasping, almost breaking around her name. It feels wrong in my mouth now—like something I lost the right to say it a long time ago. But the familiarity escapes me anyway, unbidden.
Her brow quirks. Icy green eyes watch me with a cool curiosity. “Did I catch you mid-spiral, or post?”
I exhale through my nose—half a huff, half a sigh—and sit back in the chair like it suddenly weighs more. The movement feels inadequate, under her scrutiny. I don’t know whether or not she’s overheard anything. I hope not.
“I didn’t hear you come down.”
“That much was obvious.”
She crosses the kitchen slowly, deliberately casual. Her fingertips skim the back of a chair but she doesn’t sit. She’s doing it on purpose, standing there like she’s tightening the noose around my neck by inches. She’s always known exactly how to leave me exposed. How to remind me I have no right to comfort.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” she says lightly. “Your house is actually the one across the street.”
If she did overhear, she gives away nothing. I’ll never be able to tell for certain—not when she’s so guarded around me now.
I default to charm. “The coffee tastes better here.” It’s meaningless, automatic. A defense.
Her mouth twitches faintly—amused or irritated, I can't tell. “Must be the company then,” she remarks dryly. “Or the existential dread in the air that Atlas wafts all over the place. Adds flavour.”
That earns the faintest hint of a smile—crooked, involuntary, and gone in a blink. But it was there. “I’ve missed your optimism,” I say. It slips out quieter than I meant.
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Odair,” she murmurs, finally sliding into the chair across from me. “It’s barely past sunrise and the Reaping isn’t until noon.”
I shift, uncomfortable in my own skin. Like I’m trying to find a version of myself that can survive this conversation, but I’m coming up empty.
She’s sitting across from me, stiff—something’s wrong. I clock immediately. “Do you want to talk about it?” The words are out of my throat before I can stop them
She lifts a brow. “Talk about what?”
The silence between us stretches tight. I flinch from it. She leans into it.
Somehow I feel even more on edge. “I just meant… if something’s bothering you.”
“You mean besides the looming threat of government-sanctioned death?”
My jaw clenches. “Besides that.”
She studies me, tilting her head. Then she leans in, elbows on the table like she’s offering something. Like she’s playing at closeness. She isn’t.
“You’re acting like I should be bothered.”
I blink. It’s too slow. She sees it. Of course she was testing me. She was playing me from the moment she walked in—testing for cracks. And I gave her everything—too slow, too soft, too easy.
“I didn’t mean—”
“But you did.” Her voice is still even. “So, go on. What is it you think I know?”
My lips part. Shut again. Panic flickers behind my ribs—how much did she hear?
“I don’t think anything. Just… checking in.” The excuse sounds flimsy, even to my ears.
She exhales, low and slow. “That’s sweet. You check in with all potential tributes the morning of, or just the ones you used to kiss behind the cannery?”
I don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t give her the satisfaction.
“Ren,” I say, and the name breaks something in my chest.
“Don’t,” she replies. Quiet. Measured. “Not unless you’re going to tell me something I don’t know.”
I lean forward now too. No mask. No charm. Just me, raw and exposed.
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
“But you suspect.”
I nod once. She already knows.
“It’s just a feeling. A pattern.”
“And Atlas?” she asks.
Another nod.
The house creaks around us. I can feel it in my bones.
She stands, pushing her chair back hard enough to screech. I startle. She sees it.
“More coffee?”
I blink. “What?”
She doesn’t respond. Just turns toward the cupboard, moving with that impossible calm, opening a large tin. Snaps off the lid like it insulted her.
“You’re making coffee now?” I suppose I had told her it was the reason I came, even though it was an obvious lie.
“What can I say? Impending doom gets my appetite going.”
I huff a breath that almost becomes a laugh. “I missed this.” Another thought that slips out without a moment’s thought. Too caught up in the moment—too caught up in her presence. It was addicting. Even now—when everything between us is wreckage—it feels almost easy, almost natural, like some part of me still knows how to breathe when she’s in the room. The tension hangs thick, but somehow, being near her still feels like home, and that’s the cruelest part.
“Please don’t get nostalgic. It’s unattractive.”
The machine groans to life. The scent of scorched grounds drifts in like memory. So many mornings in this kitchen. Stolen jokes and burnt toast. Easy smiles and lingering touches. And now it’s just this, war behind her eyes and a silence sharp enough to bleed from.
“You seemed off earlier,” I say. All too stiff, all too guarded.
“Must’ve been the charming morning atmosphere,” she says, turning toward me. “Y’know, doors slamming. Accusations being thrown around. Light breakfast entertainment.”
“That wasn’t meant for you to hear.” I murmur, the weight of it settling between us. As if hearing it first hand instead would’ve made it any less cruel.
“Then maybe next time don’t broadcast it through the floorboards.”
She folds her arms. A breeze curls in through the cracked window, brushing the back of her neck. She shivers—barely. I don’t move, but every part of me wants to reach for her.
“You and Atlas seemed pretty confident,” she says. “That it’ll be me.”
“It’s not confidence.”
“No? Because it sure sounded like certainty. Unless I misheard the part where you said my name like a funeral bell.”
I wince.
“It’s just a pattern,” I mutter. “A feeling.”
“Right,” she says. “You said that already. Still sticking to that answer?”
The machine hisses behind her. She pours two mugs. Sugar in mine. Of course she remembered.
She sets one down. Her hands are steady until they’re not. A ripple. A spill. A tell.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were. Don’t look at me like I’m fragile.” She snaps.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were. If you thought you were hiding it well, you need to try harder.”
I don’t acknowledge it any further, instead I lift the mug to my lips. Sip. Swallow. “Thanks.” It burns the whole way down my throat.
She leans against the counter, arms crossed. Catching my attention again with those sharp calculating eyes. I feel naked under her gaze. Entirely exposed. I can’t tell if I hate it or love it.
“So you and Atlas—what? Just felt something in the air and decided the Capitol was aiming at me?”
“It’s more than that.”
“Then enlighten me.”
I hesitate. My silence builds. I feel like I’m scrambling for anything useful to say, but there’s nothing. Nothing that I ever would tell her. I’ve learned my lesson now. The Capitol. The Clients. President Snow. That was for me to bear, not her. Never her.
“It’s not something I can explain.”
“Try.”
“I can’t.”
“Because you don’t know,” she says, “or because you won’t tell me?”
She already knows the answer.
“Right,” she murmurs. “Of course.”
“Ren—”
“No.” Her voice slices through the room. “Don’t do that. Don’t use that tone like we’re still… whatever we were.”
“If I could fix this, I would,” I say, soft and brutal. “You know that.” But we both know I can’t. I broke this—whatever we were. And if she hadn’t been made of iron and fire, I would’ve broken her too. Rowen Tavell. Unbreakable. Thank God .
She stares at me. Nods once. Not agreement, just acknowledgment.
“So you came to say nothing helpful and leave uncomfortably. As usual.”
That’s my cue to leave. She’s dismissed me. “Thanks for the coffee. And the damage.”
“Anytime.”
I rise slowly. “I’ll be there, Ren. Even if you don’t want me to be.” Even if it kills me. Even if she never speaks to me again. Even if I have to watch her name read from that stage and know I can’t stop it. I’ll be there.
She doesn’t answer.
I leave without another word. The front door clicks shut behind me…quiet, deliberate. Unlike Atlas. I don’t slam it. Never around her. She’s always deserved gentleness. Even from the pieces of me that forgot how.
The morning air hits harder now. Sharper. There’s no warmth to it, not really. Just the scent of fish brine and rusting nets, of wet rope and memory. The sun is rising, but it feels like the day’s already over; it hasn’t even begun.
I cross the street without looking. There’s no one out yet, there’s no need to pretend. I don’t bother glancing back at the Tavell house. If I do, I might not move again.
My own front door groans open. Same sound it’s always made. I’ve oiled the hinges twice this month. Doesn’t matter. It still groans.
Inside, the silence is heavier. Like something pressed against the windows and stayed there. I don’t turn on any lights. I don’t need to see the way the place looks—still, neat, sterile. Like I never really moved in.
My shirt sticks to my back. I didn’t even realize I was sweating.
I press my hands to the sink, knuckles pale. Try to breathe. In through the nose. Out slow.
It doesn’t work.
It’s not supposed to be her.
She was never supposed to be one of them—one of the kids I had to lead to slaughter. I told myself I’d die before that happened. That I’d find some way to make it impossible. But I don’t even know how to protect myself anymore. Let alone her.
And if they call her name—
If they call her name.
What then?
I strip the damp shirt from my skin and toss it into the corner like it offends me. I need another shower. I move on instinct. Routine. Right. It’s easier than thinking.
Towel. Water. Razor. Suit.
The mirror doesn’t show a person. Just parts. A hollowed-out jawline. Familiar sea-glass eyes that don't feel like mine. The Capitol taught me to smile with those eyes. They’ll expect me to smile again today. I don’t even know if I could, even if I tried.
I wander to my room and sit on the bed, still half-dressed, shirt buttons undone. My fingers were too shaky to fit them through the small holes.
My palms rest on my knees. My breath feels too loud in the stillness.
What happens if it’s her?
Do I coach her like I would any other tribute—teach her how to kill, how to lie with a smile? Do I tell her which weapons to trust, which alliances to fake, how to make them love her just enough to send gifts? Do I sit in that damn viewing room night after night, waiting for the screen to show her body broken in some twisted Capitol tableau?
Do I teach her how to survive?
Or do I teach her how to die fast?
I bury my face in my hands.
She has everything the Capitol worships—skill, brilliance, beauty. She’d shine. She’d play their game well, maybe too well. They’d fall in love with her. And still, they’d destroy her. Because Snow doesn’t care about admiration. He only cares about control. And if killing her keeps me in line—keeps Atlas in line—he won’t hesitate. Not for a second.
She wouldn’t have a chance. Not really.
But maybe it was better that way.
No.
No, I won’t think that. I won’t allow it. Because she’s not just some girl in the Games. She’s the only thing I have left that still feels real, even if I lost the right to call her mine a long time ago.
I can still remember the first time she kissed me. The way her fingers curled in my shirt like she was angry at herself for wanting anything from me. The way I let her. Because I wanted it too. Because I wanted her .
Even now, I still do. I’ve never stopped. And that’s the most dangerous truth of all.
The clock ticks on the mantle. I’ll have to leave soon. Victors are expected in the square early; they need plenty of time for the cameras to find their angles.
I stand. Mechanically, I finish dressing. A crisp white shirt, the fabric stiff against my skin. Charcoal slacks—creased sharp, cut to fit too perfectly. The kind of fit that says someone measured you like you were property. I slide on the polished leather shoes last, heavy and silent on the floorboards.
Capitol-tailored. Every inch of it.
Made for a boy they think they own… Maybe they do.
I catch myself in the mirror again, fully dressed now. A polished image. Marketable. Beautiful.
They’ll eat this alive.
They’ll eat her alive.
I draw a shaky breath. Combing back my hair and straightening my cuffs.
I make sure the necklace is tucked beneath my collar, hidden from view—especially from her. A worn little thing she gave me years ago. Small, but it still feels heavier than anything else I wear.
Just one step at a time now. Out the door. Into the day. Toward the square. Toward the Capitol. Hopefully without Rowen in tow. But that was wishful thinking.