lover/fighter - Finnick Odair

Chapter 3 - Lost at sea

He wakes up in a cold sweat. The room is completely dark and while he tries to find his bearings again, he only sees black. He panics and desperately looks for the switch of the lamp on his bedside cabinet. He frantically feels his way through the darkness and almost falls out of bed.

He finally succeeds and as the bright light blinds him and he has to squint his eyes, his racing heart slowly starts to calm down. He breathes in and out slowly and deeply, sits down with his back against the headboard, pulls his legs towards him with his arms and rests his head on them. He remains in this position for a few minutes and just breathes.

This isn't new to him. The nightmares have been haunting him constantly since his games, robbing him of sleep. The images are forever burned into his memory. Images of what he was forced to do to stay alive.

But is that really true? Had he been forced to commit these murders. A wise person once said that you always have a choice. Finnick would have had the choice not to do it, to spare those lives, to give in to their pleas. But if he hadn't done it, someone else would have been in his place, or they could have died in countless other ways, the odds being 1 in 23. In the worst case, the situation would have turned against him, and his act would have cost Finnick his own life. It isn't hard to imagine that any of his victims would have been only too happy to kill him themselves had the chance been available to them. That's the way it is with games. It is completely meaningless how one decides, there is no right way. He can cope with the demons from the arena that haunt his dreams, he accepts this punishment.

But today it wasn't memories of the horrors of the arena that made his heart race. The trigger for this different kind of nightmare is the same as for the pain he feels all over his body, now that the adrenaline is wearing off after his moment of shock. The feeling returns to his body and with it the events of last night. Or actually this night, considering the fact that he was barely in bed for a few hours. Outside it is still deep night.

He is completely at the end of his rope and his back is against the wall. As he reviews the last 2 days, his chest tightens and he's fighting with tears. Finnick rarely cries, and when he does, he makes sure no one else but him witnesses his moment of weakness. But right now, he doesn't know how to help himself.

The evening he had to spend with Buffy Yates was really no different than any other but in a way it was the beginning of the end. Or actually it started even before that but from there on everything seemed to go downhill even more.

He had planned to give the cotton candy woman what she wanted and then catch up on some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, she had other ideas. That alone was nothing new, it often happened that his clients did everything imaginable to prolong his stay in their bed as long as possible. He unfortunately has the task to amuse people and not the luxury to reject them. So if he doesn't manage to escape the situation with well-chosen words of flattery, he had to give in to their insistence.

In this way, he has already forfeited thousands of hours of sleep, which often brings him close to his physical breaking point, considering the packed schedule that Snow's handlers put together for him. During the day he is rushed between interviews and photo shoots, and the rest of the time he spends playing the lover to anyone who pays Snow enough money.

Exhaustion is a constant state for him during all his stays at the Capitol but Buffy had catapulted him to his limit that night. With barely 2 hours of sleep, he had rushed straight from her apartment to his next appointment the following morning. The complaints about his shattered appearance had been loud, and his concern about what might happen if Snow heard about it were great.

He somehow struggled through the day, but then in the evening the turning point was reached. Another evening, another client, but not just any client. Finnick dislikes most of his clients, and what he is forced to do with them makes him sick. But women like Buffy are minor annoyances compared to what he experienced yesterday.