Sugarcubes // Finnick Odair - Hunger Games Fanfic

X.

I'm allowed back into the training room.

Though the peacekeepers are supposed to be keeping a closer eye on me, I doubt anybody took my episode very seriously. I'm known for acting rashly, and I'm sure that chucking a small knife at the Game-makers – one which could never reach them – was chalked up to that. In fact, it might've even amused some of them.

"Typical Kendria," The older ones must have said – the ones that knew me and my body. The Game-makers are some of my most frequent customers, for lack of a better word. So, I know most of them a lot better than I'd like to. But these thoughts don't occupy as much space in my brain as they would've just yesterday. No. Today I'm focused on something so much more important than anything else, which is probably why I'm sitting on a stool staring into space – or to be specific, Finnick talking to Katniss about knots.

Rebellion.

It's something that I've been tangled in since my first games, though never in any amount enough to get me into trouble. In front of what they are planning to pull off now, my small acts of defiance seem like a child talking back to his mother.

Insignificant.

Something everybody will forget in the next moment. And sure enough, they have. The red paint has been washed off my wall, and the dent in the training center has been repaired. The knife that I threw at the game makers just yesterday has been put back in its place at the knife section. No. If I want to be remembered for something other than slaughtering 6 people in my first games, I'll have to do a lot worse than playing games with the game makers.

I have to take the games to Snow's front door.

Unfortunately for me, I can't do that alone.

Unfortunately for Haymitch and Plutarch, I've never been a team player.

A sight eventually pulls me out of my thoughts, which like always are spiraling downwards into a deep dark pit of despair. Finnick is waving a knot end at Katniss – One that is tied around his neck. He's probably talking to her like he does to everybody else – to get into her head – but it still sends sparks of anger flying through my brain. I don't care how angry I might be at Finnick, I can't stop caring about him. It's just a plus point that I get to annoy Katniss in the process of caring about him. I drop the knife that I've been fiddling around with suddenly, and it falls to the floor with a loud clang. Sucking on the blood that is now oozing out of the cut on my finger, I put the knife back on the stand.

The game makers watch all of us like hawks, judging not our potential this time around – everybody knows that every one of us has some – but the best ways to press our buttons. I will never admit it, but Katniss presses mine.

It's a slow day, other than the thoughts that are bouncing around in my mind. Rebellious thoughts. Dangerous thoughts. I bounce around from station to station unable to settle on anything productive to do. I spend an hour with Peeta and the morphing's at the camouflage station, drawing cartoonist flowers on my palm not paying any attention to what we're actually supposed to be doing. In that time, I make idle conversation with Peeta who seems to be shaking in his boots, uncomfortable with my presence. Maybe he's afraid his lover will see us.

When my palms are covered with paint to the point where I can see no more skin, and they are dry enough that I can pick stuff up without causing too much mess, I switch stations. I sit with mags tying knots and making fishing hooks for at least two hours, pausing every now and then to have conversations with the old woman about Annie, and Finnick, my two favorite topics from district Four. I hate the water there, so those two topics are really the only things I can talk about.

And before I know it, the day is done, and all I have accomplished is getting angry at one more person and drawing flowers on my hands. And think.

My brain never shuts off. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, it means that it is very hard to surprise me or disappoint me because whatever you do, I've probably already thought it through and reconsidered the possibility a million times. On the other hand, It mean that I never get any peace and quiet. There is always an apprehensive buzz about in my head, telling me about the different ways in which things can go wrong. It makes decision making very hard, unless a decision is made when I am angry, in the heat of the moment.

When I enter the district 7 apartment again, eager to rip off the leotard reserved for training, I see Johanna, sleeping soundly on the sofa, curled up into a little ball. I smile. She's been through so much, and she wants to appear like she can handle everything on her own. Sometimes she needs help, but she's too proud to admit it.

Sort of like me

I think to myself, laying a light sheet on her body and watching as she instinctively uncurls on the couch. Maybe I do need help to make what I need happen. Maybe Plutarch can help. I don't have a great history with rebellion. I never did forgive my father for leaving us to go and rebel against the capitol with no force, no plan, and no thought. Just a suicide mission. Maybe he was sick of us. But if I'm dying anyways, I might as well go out with a bang, right? I did say I didn't want my tombstone to read 'Died in the quarter quell'

My father got no tombstone. I didn't think he was worth the effort.

I still remember the day that I found out my father was dead. I remember thinking that it was the last day the peacekeepers of seven showed any pity on me. The first and last day.

I got home after a tiring day at work, hoping and praying that it wouldn't be as bad as it was yesterday. Yesterday was very bad. My father had come across the white dress I kept for my future reapings; the one that my mother used to wear. To say that he was mad would've been an understatement. He was absolutely and surely livid. I was used to a certain level of anger pent up inside my father to be unleashed on me by then; and I found a way to keep myself grateful and positive by reminding myself that at least that fury hadn't been passed to my siblings. I had always been able to bear the brunt of it so that he could be the best father possible for my siblings. Yesterday, I couldn't.

I blacked out halfway through, with him slamming me against walls and kicking me until I spit up blood, only waking up a few moments before Danny came back from school. He walked in on it. He helped me off the floor, and onto the bed, and went out to confront our father before I could stop him. My father slapped him. And exited the house and I didn't see him the next morning either. I slept on the bed that night.

The peacekeepers were already in our house. My father was not. They saw me, and filed outside, waiting on the lawn path outside our shack for me to reach them.

"Kendria Parstons?"

"Yes," I said, standing up a little straighter and tucking today's carving under the hem of my skirt.

"We regret to inform you that your father was part of a rebel protest today,"

"I didn't know where he was!" I screeched, throwing myself to my knees in panic. "I promise."

"Please clam yourself, Ms. Parstons. We have already determined he didn't bring any trace of his work home. We wanted to inform you that he is dead. Shot. And return to you this necklace that may have been of family value. It was recovered from his body."

Oh.

I could still feel my heart beating loudly.

"Thankyou" I said, reaching forward and letting the cool metal chain be dropped into my palm. I closed my palm around it and watched as the peacekeepers filed away. I let out a shaky breath.

My dad was gone. It didn't make me feel bad, at first. I hated my father.

But my siblings didn't. At least, Lia didn't. I didn't make nearly enough money to support our family and I couldn't be the mother and the father and the sister for my siblings. I just couldn't. It was this overwhelming feeling that sent me crashing to the floor, struggling to breathe.

My first panic attack.

I lay in my bed, fluffy and comfortable, with my heart pounding with the disturbing memory. One that I vowed to myself would never come back. I wipe a few tears off my face. The scars my father gave me might have healed, but the memory of them will always remain. So will the memory of the hunger games. I stare into the holographic forest that the capitol has provided for me in my room.

My father was a lot of things that I will never ever appreciate him for. But maybe he had the right idea. Maybe the rebellion is the thing that will make sure that nobody else has to deal with the memory of old scars ever again. Maybe this is the way of making sure my tombstone doesn't read 'died in the quarter quell'

Maybe it should read 'died in a rebellion catching fire'

Published: 26th December, 2023