o1. Trite

Katniss' shoulders ache. Muscles that have gone soft over a year of restricted use protest this new change in routine. Sweat pools at the small of her back and more than one bruise has blossomed across her arms and ribs. Her heart is still pounding and her breath is better used in breathing than talking.

She very nearly smiles.

But she is steady and keeps her expression drawn, lips pulled tight at the corners, eyes dark and shaded and her back set in a stiff posture. Haymitch might have other ideas about what she needs to be here in training — he might voice them loudly, constantly reminding her of the importance of allies in these Games, the power that a well placed word or a passing moment of open, welcoming posture, how any indication that she can feel more than angry might mean inviting someone close enough to save her life.

He's right, probably. Katniss can give him that much, at least; when Haymitch chases answer at the bottom of bottles, he usually finds them.

Still, it's Cinna's words that she hangs onto with a white-knuckled grip. Stare directly ahead, as if you're above all of this. He must have known — he must understand, in a way that trembles in all the parts of her that are still soft and still terrified of this endless cycle of arenas, what she needs to win. That she needs fire and power, and she needs the only expressions that come to her without thinking: none at all, everything smoothed over lest it breach the surface and undo from places she cannot reach inside of herself.

Calm, controlled, and entirely made from the one thing that drives her every step forward.

Besides, even if Haymitch is right, it's not as if Katniss' goal is winning.

So, she trains. She shoots, she climbs, she lifts weights nowhere near as heavy as what more than half of the others can lift. Every move she makes is made with a purpose that defines her life. Every step speaks rigidly and without hesitation; I am Katniss Everdeen. I am a winner of the Seventy Fourth Annual Hunger Games. I am going to get what I want this time.

Only when she glimpses the back of a familiar blonde head does she slow. Destination, motivation, and purpose do not sway, but the frostiness of her expression softens just so around the edges, entirely out of control. She releases a tense breath twined up in the grueling process of retraining her muscles and allows her shoulders drop as she pivots on her heel and makes her way for her co-champion.

Hers. If only Snow could feel the fire of possessiveness that burns in her belly when her gaze falls on Peeta Mellark, every single time. Perhaps he might reconsider his terms and conditions he'd printed on love's tin. It is certainly the strongest thing that Katniss understands outside of Prim and Gale. For her — for her it is more than enough. It is enough to print what she must do around every bone, engraving her mission in places that even the Capitol cannot carve out of her. She sees Peeta — training, cast in the orange glow of sunset from a traincar window, snatching a drink out of Haymitch's hand, planning for these Games in his careful, steady way — and that is enough to know that she will give everything she has for him to live.

That is all Katniss knows of love, all she has ever known to do with love, and for her, this is real.

It is not enough for Snow.

Then again, maybe nothing is enough for Snow.

She extends a hand as she draws closer, ready to catch Peeta's attention and pull him aside. But a shadow blots her vision and causes her to stumble to a stop. Instincts kick in like breathing and she is reaching for a bow that she does not have when a rumble of laughter tells her with whom she is sharing her company..

"— Odair."

He is standing in front of her — but not only. When he moves into position to meet her gaze, he eclipses her line of sight on Peeta. Katniss can only see the bare outline of Peeta's arm — still but untensed. Likely waiting as he watches them, maybe hearing what he can across the strange, hollow din of the training center.

"Everdeen." Where her tone is heavy with accusation, his is alive with the ghost of laughter. When she tears herself away from what she can see of Peeta and looks back up at Finnick, it is as if every inch of his face is delighted. She raises a brow.

"Yes?" She refuses to give him an inch, but if her waspish response has any effect on him he doesn't show it. Instead, he simply rests one hand on his hip and gives her a look that Katniss assumes has wooed many a legendarily lucky conquest in the Capitol.

She braces her arms against her chest, wondering belatedly if that is too much — too much an indication of her discomfort, too openly emotive when all she wants and needs and has to be is stoically untouchable. If there is anyone who can read the smallest suggestions that gestures offer, it is a tribute. Particularly one as young and still sharp as Finnick Odair.

Overwhelmed by the thought of making even one small mistake, she makes another and says in a rush before he can repy, "If you haven't noticed, we don't have the luxury of time."

He laughs again, this time open and loud enough to make her flinch. Dropping his arm, he affects a gentler pose. "Duly noted, Miss Everdeen." His smile is no less radiant, but it's not as stretched tight around the edges; it doesn't glow with the same vacant, blinding brightness of Caesar Flickerman's cosmetically enhanced teeth.

"Can you get on with it?" Katniss snaps, biting her bottom lip to prevent herself from any more outbursts. Finnick only smiles.

"For the lady? Of course." He winks. Katniss ignores him. Not missing a beat, he sweeps his hand out towards her. "Train with me?"

Ah, of course. All the veneer in the world does not change who and where they are — in the bowels of the Capitol, underneath floors of Gamemakers and amidst weaponry polished so brilliantly it almost seems a shame to use it, these are the Games. They start before the arena ever sinks its claws into them.

Distantly, Haymitch's warning echoes in the back of her mind.

Katniss hands onto Cinna's instead and raises her chin.

"Kind of a tall order," she says, cool and even and low. "I already learned how to make fish hooks from someone a lot more tolerable, so I don't know what's in it for me."

For just a single moment, Katniss has the pleasure of watching Finnick stumble into silence, eyes flickering widely and lips parted as if he'd planned on saying something but has now forgotten what it was. Good, she says to herself, even as a flush of shame striking up behind her ribs as she thinks of Haymitch's disapproval, Peeta's worry, how much Cinna believes in her and how he'd trust in however she chooses to carry herself.

But it doesn't matter. It can't, it would never — Finnick Odair will not save Peeta in that arena. He's more dangerous closer to her than farther.

"Well!" True to someone born for the cameras and fame of Victory, Finnick has collected himself. Still, there's an edge of something — less polished, less rehearsed, when he says, "I can't argue with that. Y'know, for all this talk of being an open book, you're still a singularly fascinating individual."

"What a compliment."

"I meant it as one." Finnick does well against the barbed steel that wrap around Katniss' words, and she hates him a little more for it. "What about knots, then?"

"You saw my snares last year."

"Nets?"

That is — unexpected in a way that halts Katniss. Nets, very nearly a personal superpower of Finnick's, an identifiable stamp. He can't win this Quell the same way he won years ago — everyone knows him and his tactics and his Games too well — but even without the element of surprise, his nets may still prove to be deadly without how fast and strong he can make them.

Katniss hesitates.

"— And what would you want, then?"

"You're a wealth of survival knowledge, don't you know? If you can't turn me into a marksman, you still might be able to keep me alive a little longer."

She could, probably. Finnick's last games were quick and deadly — more fighting than passing longer stretches of time with enough food and water to last. She could probably give him something that might keep him alive, like Beetee and Wiress' fire starting lesson.

Maybe she could give him the knowledge he needs to stay alive and kill the entirety of District Twelve.

This for that, trading one trade secret for another. Bargaining and striking deals before they are spat into an arena that will gladly kill them if they cannot kill each other. There is something in this that rings bitter and rusted and acidic in the back of Katniss' throat, and for a single moment she remembers how it felt to strike the deal with Snow that fell apart anyway. Moving pieces around behind closed doors and hoping you understand how events will play out when you've set them in motion.

Katniss is not a gamemaker; she is not the person who can charm the camera or fall into a glittering rapport with Caesar Flickerman that feels entirely natural. Here, she is not even the girl on fire.

"Then I guess we'll just both have to take our chances with what we already know."

Maybe Finnick had been expecting her refusal — maybe he's just that good, smoothing his expression down before it can ripple with surprise. Either way, all he does is cant his head to the side.

"Then sit with me, at least. At the banquet."

— What?

Whatever game Finnick is playing, Katniss can't unravel it. Is he only trying to make nice — find someone in decently good shape with a high enough kill count to ally with? Is he trying to unsettle her, distract her from the goal in front of her as if she is some silly, dreamy girl in puppy love?

If he thinks he can manage that, then he has underestimated her and she has overestimated him.

This conversation is over. Katniss breezes past him, just close enough that she nearly, but doesn't, knock into him to get where she's going. As she does, she tells him, "Sorry, you're going to have to get in line."

Finnick doesn't say anything more. Katniss reaches Peeta, brushes her hand against his elbow so that he'll follow her to the other side of the training center without her needing to stop. He does get the message — perhaps still more invested in her than the spectacle that is Finnick Odair — but his overly-loud, careless footsteps behind her cut through the noise of training.

He's going to need a refresher course.

Katniss does not turn back to see if Finnick is still standing in her wake. She does not want to know what he looks like — if he is grinning foolishly, openly, mocking her for whatever it is she has not understood. She does not want to know if he is resigned, if his invitation was anything more than what he has extended to other potential allies and lovers alike — trite and well practiced. She does not want to know if it was real and he is even a little crestfallen.

Her stomach twists uncomfortably regardless.

a/n: well, it's 2020. originally, i was going to save editing the first fourteen chapters of this thing for a far later date, largely because even six years after originally posting it, i'm not all that unhappy with most of it. but i felt that the first chapter, more than the others, never really represented the fic well, not back then & certainly not now.

if there are new readers in 2020 - miraculous, incredible, welcome. i stopped writing this thing in 2013 & then picked it up again this year. chapter fifteen is brand new, & this chapter has been updated to fit closer with my current style. the interim chapters, two through fourteen, are six years old, in the past tense, and still (in my estimation) not half bad. but they will, at some point, get the update treatment.