[Finnick Odair] The Trident and the Book Thief

The Divine Comedy

Finnick shifts uneasily on his spot as Mags gazes out of the window. Delia and Shaun exchange looks of bemusement. Eleni looks expectantly at them. One of her knots has come undone and he fears that one wrong move will result in her standing naked before them. It’s Mags that breaks the news.

“There’s no room.” She says shortly.

“Escorts are expected to stay with their tributes… throughout all of their stay in the Capitol. Of course some don’t, but it’s in the rules.” Eleni reasons. “So there has to be a room. They wouldn’t design it so that there wasn’t room.”

“Platterby never slept over, so her room got turned into a-” Finnick’s voice breaks off and a soft smile touches his face. “A personal gym for me. I have to maintain my physique, it takes a great deal of work to look like this.”

“It takes a great deal of beauty sleep to look like this.” Eleni laughs and she points to her perfect skin. “Which I won’t be doing if I don’t have a bed.”

“You can sleep in my room. I can take the floor.” Shaun says and Finnick thinks he’s never sounded more like a boy. It’s Delia that saves the day.

“You can sleep with me. It's king-size and my whole family sleeps three to a bed, so it would be strange sleeping alone anyway.” She says. Finnick expects Eleni to be unhappy with the arrangement, but she grins widely.

“I’ve never had a sleepover. It’ll be fun.” Eleni smiles. She crashes out onto the sofa and lets out a deep breath.

He wants to tell her he found out about the trident, yet there’s far too many ears for that conversation. He wants to tell her to stop pitying him, that it’s emasculating and he’d almost prefer it if she hated him. Her face is soft, like the rose petals her grandfather stinks off, and he thinks someone so pompously empathetic has no business being related to someone like Snow, who is so pompously the opposite. He has a thousand words for her. He’s never met someone so bizarre, someone who had invited him into their family drama and spilled every secret they ever had as though it were nothing but a fart in the wind.

In one night he has deduced that her mother has a drug problem, her father has a drink problem and her twin brother, the very epitome of toxic masculinity, is secretly gay. Her life is full, too full, and his is empty.

It seems that Delia and Eleni’s sleepovers are indeed fun. Finnick’s room backs onto theirs and for the next three nights he hears them giggle and talk into the small hours of the night. He’s happy at least that Delia is distracted from her impending doom, yet one night, sleep-deprived and moody, he decides he’s had enough of listening to giggling women. Still in his boxer shorts he clambers through and bursts open their door.

“You’re training in the morning.” He points to Delia, whom tries very hard to keep a straight face. Eleni has painted her face with exuberant makeup and she looks almost like Octavia. He points at Eleni next. “And you are - doing whatever it is you actually do all day. Perhaps you both might consider sleep as being beneficial to your pursuits, I certainly would.”

He leaves the room but Eleni is hot on his tail. She shuts the door behind her and corners him in the living room. She’s fire made flesh and if he had met her in the arena, he would have ran the other way, with or without a trident.

“She can’t sleep.” She all but hisses at Finnick. “She’s terrified. Every time she shuts her eyes she has a panic attack. So yes, I’m staying up all night with her. Yes I’m making her laugh and painting her face and telling her ridiculous stories that make her laugh and forget. If you had a problem with that Mr Odair, then all you had to do was talk to me and I’d have given you these.”

He watches as she roots around in her handbag and pulls out a small set of noise-cancelling headphones. Finnick is speechless as she chucks them at him. She vanishes back into Delia’s room and the giggles become cackles. All he can think is that she doesn’t belong here, this impossibly good girl, and that she won’t last long in the viper’s nest that is her own family.