Fear no Evil

When you do not set the world ablaze after your victory, you must live with the spoils of war; but there are no winners in this Game.

Warning for mention of non-consensual sex, language

Finnick is fourteen when his world shatters. He didn't know it had at the time. Everything was a blur and he'd lapsed into a fog as everything around him was arranged. Hands positioned, dressed him. Voices told him what to say and how to look and he mimicked as well as he could. Which, gauging the reactions of his parents, Ceasar, and his prep team, he pulled it off better than he thought.

Finnick, you've won!

Is victory everything you dreamed it'd be?

Smile, Finnick.

Finnick smiles. He grins, sweet and charming and enthusiastically and the screams of the little Capitol girls in the audience swell to a deafening crescendo. They drown out the ones that still play in his mind. His ears ring- when he turns back to Ceasar he can only see the man's lips for a few moments and not hear the words that bloom, carefully pruned, at his lips.

Finnick- is it?

"Is it?"

"Victory, my boy. Is it everything you dreamed it would be?"

He can hesitated, but somehow he already knows what to say. "It's almost unrecognizable, it's so far beyond anything I could have imagined."

His voice is bouncing. It is sprinkled with effervescence. It is sweet and full. But it is also not his own and in due time Finnick will learn that it is dead. His voice, and his eyes, and the person that used to be Finnick Odair all died in the 65th annual Hunger Games.

"The boy is stunned, absolutely stunned. As were we all- the youngest winner ever to emerge from the Games. What an incredible triumph!"

But I didn't win, he thinks to himself. It seems so natural to say that he lost that he forgets he technically didn't. That his heart is still beating and all the rest that goes along with that. He's sitting here with Ceasar and oh- right- he needs to smile.

"It's an honor."

The girls roar again and Finnick encourages them this time. Because if he's going to hear screaming he'd rather it be real.

Johanna is pretty sure that she should be feared. After all, her Games were won by pretending to be weak so convincingly that she managed to slaughter the Careers before they had time to blink at the end. She has stolen life with her bare hands, with weapons, with sheer force of will. Her very presence is wild and uncontrollable and lethal.

But that's not how she's received when she returns to the Capitol. Her head is still spinning a little, but she has spent sixteen years of her life dreading the arena and convinced that she would die so every breath of air tastes sweet and cuts through the haze that tries to ensnare her. Johanna did not allow herself to be killed and she will not allow herself to lose her senses.

"What incredible talent!" Ceasar coos, his hair and skin and clothing disturbingly pink. Not a bright pink but soft, muted- cute. Johanna despises him. She imagines standing and ripping his throat out, or holding his beating heart in her hand. She's already coated with blood, so a little more wouldn't make a difference. Maybe it would feel good.

Johanna would like to feel good again, but beggars can't be choosers so the thought leaves her.

"What can I say?" She says, voice thick with nonchalance while she tosses her head. "I guess I'm just a natural."

There is a wall of arrogance between her and the audience, between her and everything and anything in the physical world, and she doesn't expect them to love her. But they laugh and clap and nudge each other. Johanna hates them- more than she hates Flickerman and Snow and all the rest.

"And modest too," Ceasar says with a hint of amusement, eyes glimmering. Probably artificial like everything else.

"Well, I'm here aren't I? No use lying about it."

"Just teasing, my dear. But you are right, absolutely. There is no use denying how impressive your performance was."

Just as impressive as this one, she thinks bitterly and she tries not to play along with the path Ceasar is goading her onto.

"I'm just surprised no one thought of the strategy before."

"Then you wouldn't have had the opportunity."

They exchange a few more lines, Ceasar constantly trying to shine through her darkness and Johanna ruthlessly quashing his attempts. The audience laps it up with silver spoons, laughing and hollering and raising such a fuss that Johanna huffs, unimpressed. Idiots.

She learns later- years later- what Ceasar was doing. How treasonous her words are, how hard Flickerman worked to cast her in a soft light. A young light. Making her look young and stupid and overconfident but even when she learns this she resents it. If she's going to look young and stupid and overconfident it'll be because that's what she is.

To hell with Snow, to hell with what he'll do to her. She can take it- she's a Victor. She won.

For two years, Finnick doesn't mentor anyone. He's never been chosen, which is strange. He can't tell if the odds are usually in his favor or not, but wouldn't it be good for drama? A child teaching a child how to win when he himself only survived through the generosity of his sponsors and his knowledge of how to play to them. Then again, none of them were children, so maybe it isn't strange at all. He can't wrap his mind around it. It is still cloudy. It might always be cloudy.

But his eyes are sharp and his grin is quick and sweet and two years after his victory it grows sultry. He learns what look drives the crowds wild, gets them on their feet, results in roses being thrown at his his own. Finnick doesn't like roses. They look like blood spatter and it's one more reminder he doesn't need.

"You know, Ceasar," Finnick says on one of his many television appearances, posture relaxed and expression pleased. "The people here are so- generous." He punctuates that with a lascivious wink.

It's always recorded live and there's always an audience, usually in the flesh. They're in the flesh now and they cheer for him. They ooh and ahh and swoon and Finnick continues to smile. Ceasar laughs beside him and after a moment Finnick turns from the crowd back to him.

"How so?"

"I can't count the number of presents that have been tossed at my head. I survived, only to be killed with kindness!"

That draws a laugh. Finnick wants to vomit.

"They do love you, Finnick Odair."

"And I love them all."

It's tender and mild and it makes him sound like a little boy. The crowd quite enjoys it, and for a moment a glimmer of real contentment breaks through the fog that's lived within him since he first killed another living person. These people, that have watched him fight to survive and bet on his odds, are now under his control. He's never felt powerful before- it's not a happy feeling but it's intoxicating and infinitely preferable to feeling like a posed doll.

"Well that's certainly apparent."

"You know, I really do love all those flowers. It's nice to receive something so beautiful- I've always had a weakness for beautiful things." A glance to the audience, a chorus of twitters and he continues, "But I was shopping the other day and came across blue ones."

"Ah yes, those are particularly lovely, aren't they?"

"They are. I think blue might be my favorite color, actually. Like the ocean. Like flowers."

After that, the only roses that land at Finnick's feet are blue ones. They're better. They don't look like blood, and maybe it's just him but they also smell less pungent. It's probably just him- maybe he's a little bit crazy, now. But either way, things are good for a few weeks. He spends the rest of his Capitol visit almost happy for the first time in a long time.

The day he is to leave for District Four, there is a rose on his pillow. At first he thinks it is a rusty red color, but then he realizes the petals are white and stained with some sticky liquid. Blood, the white is tinted almost brown with blood.

He spends an hour vomiting into the toilet. On the train ride home, he learns from his stylist that rose colors have meanings.

"Are you unattainable?"

"What?"

"Well, you asked for blue roses. That means impossible."

"I didn't ask for-"

"They're pretty, though."

Finnick doesn't request things ever again after that.

Haymitch's world was never hazy, but it shattered just same. It came in a few blows. The first when he killed his first victim, the second when he watched his axe bury itself in his last enemy's face. The third came as the light finally leached from Maysilee's eyes. The fourth when he realized that he'd won. That had always been the most terrible.

Four years hence, it is still the worst. And because it is, that makes it all the more terrible, because the repercussions of his stunt should have been the breaking blow. The blood on his hands just continues to grow and grow even outside the arena, the tally of his victims now plus three. He mourned his mother, brother, and girlfriend the way he spends every day now- with liquor.

He is twenty but he feels as if he's a hundred and ten. It took only a brief few weeks for him to realize that the blows would never cease. The reminders are everywhere and it isn't only his psychosis that conjures them.

Roses follow him. Most of them white. Mocking, searing, beautiful white. Some are red, but that's too blunt for Snow's taste so they are few and far between. They hurt less than the white because at least Haymitch can call Snow an idiot in his mind and throw the flowers on the fire.

Twice, they are black. On the anniversary of the day the president had his family murdered. On those days he feels violated, as if Snow had watched his mock-grieving for them. As if he was being punished for not shedding a tear. For finding a way around being broken.

But what Snow must have known was that Haymitch had never made it out of the arena. He was already dead, and spends most of his time in Maysilee's company. Or the Career's. Which might have been worse because Haymitch had never bothered to learn her name, even though he had taken her very life. He had been her god and she had been nothing. No exception, no title, no name. A congregation of limbs and organs that had once breathed but now never would again.

Every time Haymitch is invited to the Capitol, after the obligatory interviews and exclamations of his incredible prowess- the first victor from District Twelve!- there are always, always parties. They are lavish and beautiful. Excruciating beautiful. Painted in the same colors and scenes from the arena.

The caged birds high up by the ceiling are candy pink. So he drinks until he vomits. And then he passes out with the bottle in his hand, throat stinging but senses mercifully dulled.

He decides, at twenty, that he can never be happy again. It isn't something coated in self-pity, or even anger. It is fact- the blows will never stop on their own. But if there is nothing to knock him from, no mound of relief, no platform of reprieve, he takes the power away. He will play god to the Capitol in the tiny circle of his own world.

So every day, no matter where he is, is spent with a bottle of white liquor. Everything else tastes like something, but the white is so strong that it numbs his tongue from the first sip and he loses himself that much faster. He is drunk every moment that he is awake, unless he is hungover. When Ceasar asks for his opinions on the odds that year, Haymitch slurs something and the interviewer nods as if he's contributed something coherent or even meaningful.

After a while he realizes that there is no more Haymitch Abernathy. He strips the power away from the Capitol by refusing to be broken but maybe he's played right into what they intended for him to be all along. Before, full of life and the ability to find the government's weaknesses- the flaws in their forcefield- he might have stepped out of line.

Now, liquor soaked, incoherent, he is nothing but a figure piece to pull out when they need to fill a spot in their programming and then put away to dwindle into not much of anything at all.

He should be angry, but he's too drunk so he vomits instead.

When Finnick is eighteen, things change. Within the span of four years he thinks he's gotten pretty good at figuring out how to pull the strings he's learned he holds. A well placed grin, a wink, a dip in his voice, a leaning in or away- used correctly they produce the desired effects and if it was possible to feel joy he might have. Dead people have no power but he does, so that must mean he is alive.

"Finnick Odair." President Snow's voice is always soft and uniform, and his words are always spoken through a smile. "Someone has requested your presence."

"Oh?" Finnick has spent time with prominent Capitol citizens before, speaking with them in hushed tones in secluded areas of parties. But he's never been requested before. Something about it makes him nervous, though he knows he has no reason to be.

"You will be picked up at eight in the evening sharp and remain until you are dismissed. Is that understood?"

"I- well I-"

"Is that understood?"

There is only one answer to that tone. "Yes."

The rest is spoken mildly as Snow leaves his room. "If you do not perform, there will be consequences."

Before Finnick can ask what that means- he's always performing, there are always consequences- Snow is gone and he is alone with his questions and the niggling sense of dread that things are about to shift. But he's taped himself back together, so even if they do shouldn't he be alright?

Johanna breaks a lot of things. She's travelled to and from the Capitol for two years and each time she's away from home any room she occupies winds up destroyed. It is a private crime and laughably victimless. Because what will happen? The Avoxes who clean up after her will never speak a word, and there is nothing Snow can do to her at this point to make her stop. Maybe kill her outright but he'd basically done that already and slitting the throat of a walking corpse wouldn't be much retribution anyway.

She breaks every mirror first because she knows what she looks like and she doesn't need to see another killer when the Capitol is full of them already. Then she kicks the mattress off the bed because fuck mattresses and fuck beds and fuck the things that happen on them.

"If I don't perform? What the hell does that even mean?"

"I think you know what that means."

"-You're talking about sex."

Snow doesn't like being blunt or forward but Johanna delights in it. She's wasting away and doesn't have time for the rhetoric and run around. Still, his expression remains as impassive as ever.

"Your company for the evening."

"I'm not going to be your whore." There is enough venom in her words to fell a lesser man. Snow is probably more myth than human at this point though so it has no discernible effect.

"There will be consequences."

"Go to hell."

Johanna throws things because she likes the sound. It's louder than her memories and that's really all she needs. Plates smash against her thick walls, knives are embedded in plaster, lightbulbs are driven into knocked-over end tables. Johanna likes to watch as the inside part- what's it called? Filament? Whatever, it's a wire- bounce away. She doesn't look for it after.

Though she'll never say it, she wishes no one would look for her.

Someone always does. In the morning, her bloody hands are wrapped in sterile bandages. Everything broken has been replaced, every shard swept away. There is no evidence of what she has done and no retribution that follows. If Snow is one thing, it's pragmatic. Everything he does has a purpose and as long as her rage is contained behind closed doors than in the public's eye there's no point.

Not that there was anything he could do if he wanted to.

He'd already gotten rid of any bargaining chips.

A single black rose rested on the coffee table the next morning. She'd spent the night there- she hadn't gone when commanded. Her Arena-honed instincts should have alerted her to even the quietest of intruders. But she'd felt nothing.

Wrapped around the rose's thornless stem was a single ribbon. On it were names. Only a few, but the all the people she knew and cared for.

The official call came later that day but the message was already received.

The first time it happens, Finnick cries.

He hasn't cried since he was little, but the most he can manage is to wait until he is in the dark of his own quarters, having been picked up from the woman's place by taxi. His legs nearly gave out, his stomach clenching and jaw burning, on fire with the force of being clenched.

But as soon as he's alone he collapses. All of him does, like his insides are suddenly too heavy to stay intact and drop out of his body completely. His limbs shake and even though he's not standing he still feels as if he's falling. He can't breathe because he doesn't have lungs anymore and the air can't get in- it's cold, it's freezing and he's shivering and shaking and flying apart at the seams weakened by the wetness coating his cheeks-

-He's dying. Something has gone wrong, something broke, she poisoned him, he did something wrong and now he's actually dying. Could that kill you? He'd never been touched there before, hadn't wanted to be in the moment- had his fear caused something to go awry? It must have, it must and oh god he is going to suffocate, he is going to drown on dry land when his entire life was spent in the water.

Time passes. It might be hours or it might be years. Finnick has no idea because for however long it is his world is the trembling and crying and his legs pressing against the freezing floor.

After awhile he hears himself mumbling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm so sorry, I'm sorry- I'm sorry," over and over again. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know to whom. He did what was asked of him. And even though he had felt battered and broken and non-whole after it she had been smiling so maybe he had done it well.

But that is how he spends the rest of his night, whispering his apologies because maybe, if he is repentant enough he'll finally be allowed to stop feeling.

Haymitch doesn't think much of anyone, mostly because he doesn't think much of anything. At thirty one, he's spent a little less than fifteen years drowning in liquor and he probably wouldn't notice if he was struck by lightning. So when the winner of the Games is announced as the youngest- and the most popular in a very long time- he grunts and drinks and gives some slurred, perfunctory answer that is twisted into something deserving of District Twelve's first victor.

It's all the same to him. For fifteen years, he's done a good enough job at staying miserable that it isn't so bad anymore. He doesn't notice anymore blows, if they come, and if he's going to spend the rest of his life dead at least the food is good and he gets the knowledge that he's giving everyone a hard time.

That thought is the only one that makes him smile anymore. But when he manages to catch a glimpse of the kid's- Finnian? Something like that- face, his expression almost drops. When you forget everything, you also forget how damn young these walking corpses are.

Something stirs in his stomach and it's not nausea. Haymitch quickly drowns it in alcohol and for a moment all is well again.

Johanna figured she'd fucking hate Finnick Odair. He's beautiful and charming and he has the young men and women of the Capitol eating out of his hand. By all appearances he has conformed to exactly what a winner is supposed to be and when they meet two years after her victory she is sure that she will never feel anything but scorn for him.

Three parties later she has changed her mind. He has snagged a bottle of some ridiculous liquor with an even more ridiculous label and they sneak onto the balcony. Most of the night is spent in silence that somehow doesn't make the noises in her head worse, and in the rare glimmer of quiet she studies his profile. It looked strong and confident on television, but there's something dead in his eyes the cameras hide.

Maybe she can see it now because she knows it's the same in her own.

The line of his nose, lips, jaw, cheek, they don't look connected. Instead, it's like he's been drawn in little dashes. As soon as she ventures to think that she calls herself an idiot, finishes the bottle and smashes it against the railing.

Johanna likes that he doesn't flinch.

All they've ever had are fleeting pockets of time together but somehow they become friends. It's sticky and scary and foreign but slowly their routines change. She's not breaking things every night. Instead, they stay together- drinking and sometimes talking and once in a while smashing breakable things.

"God," he says quietly, letting the night keep his words aloft. Johanna raises an eyebrow at him.

"What?"

"I..."

She knows. He can't talk about it, but she saw his face. He's been a mentor before but was never this stricken. This bloodless, this at a loss. It's that tiny girl that's up this year- what'sherface. Annie. Johanna reaches out and runs a tentative palm across his arm. It's not a lot but they've never needed much anyway. It tells him he doesn't have to say a word, and though they also don't need words she fills the silence with a change of subject.

"So you got back late last night." Her voice is as teasing as it will ever be. Finnick stares at her blankly for a second before he chuckles.

"Yeah. They like it when I stay over, but sometimes it's in and out."

She nods at his matter of fact tone before grinning a little and nudging his ribs.

"Gettin' it in then, lover boy."

He looks down. "I don't know much about loving, Jo."

"Well you've got enough of them."

"Yeah. Well- it's not... you know how it is. It's not for me."

Johanna needs a moment to process this. Finnick Odair's conquests are legendary throughout the Capitol and even in the outlying districts. He is a lover of all- not like when he was a kid, spewing nonsense about loving everyone and clumsily trying out his influence. It's like a science now, the way his low sultry voice ensnares his prey. That's what everyone thought- that's what she thought.

Her blood turns to ice.

"Wait- are you saying that-?"

He looks at her with eyes so wide and confused that she thinks her nonexistent heart is breaking. She reaches out and grabs his arm hard enough to bruise. When he doesn't protest her half-question is answered.

"You did it." Her voice is a mix of awe and concern. His is bemusement.

"You... didn't?"

"No. Hell no, of course I didn't!"

This time Finnick flinches. Guilt and shame live in equal measure on his features and she regrets her outburst instantly. She doesn't let go but her fingers loosen so the hold is less vicious.

"I know. I know, god do I know. I'm... used I guess. Stupid, so stupid."

Usually his sentences are long and full and rich and planned precisely. This hint at his broken edges is more than anything he's exposed before to her and Johanna has to tamp down her rage to sort through her emotions. At first, she hates him- she wants back the young man that stood firm as she crushed that fucking wine bottle against the railing. She hates him because he is weak when she was strong and she thought they were the same.

But guilt follows that immediately and silences her childish internal tantrum with no protest. Selfishness has always been the best defense but there's a time and place for it and for god's sake this isn't it. So her anger turns on those who are actually deserving of it and she takes a good long moment to imagine the Capitol and all of its citizens burning to the ground.

She wants to know what these people- these people who have used and abused this dead boy- would do if they were in that Arena. These people who have turned her into a caged beast, who have starved and beaten and shattered her. These people who have made them, the pair of them who were so goddamn capable, into malignant, lingering ghosts of their former selves.

"You are not," she chokes out, fire in her eyes and jaw set. Her free fingers find his chin and force his gaze to him. But then she realizes that she, too, is forcing him like those despicable pigs that use him every night and she drops her touch. He stays looking at her not because he's been broken in- he is Finnick Odair and he will never be broken in- but because she is Johanna Mason and they are in this together.

"You are not and if I hear you say that again I'm going to shove you off this goddamn building." That gets him to laugh, and it's one of those rare ones that touches his eyes. Good. She presses on, "You are you. We're all broken and dead and gone and tired but do you really think I'd spend my time with someone stupid? Jesus, Finn. Don't be obtuse. I have better taste than that."

He laughs again and in that sound is the gratitude that he can't voice- his throat is too clogged. It's more touching than they've ever shared but he's seized by the memory of that first night and he can't help but rest his head against his shoulder. He must look pretty dire because Johanna allows it.

But even if that's the case it's a better way to spend the rest of his night.

Haymitch is forty one. He has seen a lot in twenty years of whiling away days as a victor. Even though his insides are sloshy on a daily basis, he still sees glimpses that tell him enough. There's that angry girl that acts as the thorn in Snow's side whenever she gets the chance. If Haymitch liked anyone, he'd like her. That man needs someone to get under his skin and she has the fire to do it.

There's that boy that's learned how to control his world. It's more than he's manged; his little rebellion to drink himself to death has backfired. He's become the docile puppet that Snow always intended but that kid is different. He plays the role well, but beneath the facade is a system of careful calculation. What he needs, he gets, and though it costs everything he is it's more power than the Capitol ever intended a tribute, a victor, to have.

Then there's himself. At least the alcohol isn't as damaging as the morphling. It dulls his senses in the moment but he can still process. A necessary evil since he needs enough control to make sure his life stays exactly the way he's planned it.

Sitting through the reaping is the worst part- the kids always die in the bloodbath so he never has to get attached, never has to do any work. He's free to burn the shame away with booze after the fact, but in the moment when their names are called he has to witness their faces as they're sentenced to death.

Someone needs to do something one of these days. Someone needs to take a damn stand, needs to- needs to upset the balance.

"I volunteer!"

Someone needs to set this world ablaze.

A/N: Okay, so this fic basically wrote itself. Like, entirely. I've been just a tad obsessed as of late and this would not leave me alone. So here it is- a look at the lives of victors who don't have a rebellion to distract them from what they've done. There's a lot I could say about this but I'll let the work speak for itself.

There's a poll up on my profile! Please go vote so I can start working on my next multi-chapter fic :) Thank you to those who have and thank you for all the reviews- please leave one if you can!