Finnick's Story: Mentor • The Hunger Games | IN PROGRESS

Prologue: Dreams of Prior Bloodshed

A hazy aura envelops the world around me. The air is cold, wet, and it smells of dampness and death. It's a scene I've witnessed so many times before, a smell I've become accustomed to, memories that are permanently ingrained. I look around me at the silhouettes of trees, their branches blowing carelessly in the wind as it whistles violently in my ears. I'm crouched above a body, Peony's body, as she's inches away from death. I'm all too familiar with the words she speaks, the manner in which she speaks them, and the look in her eyes as the life inside her fades away.

"Why did you do that?" I ask her, maintaining a steady voice. I can tell her breathing is growing labored.

"Because I wasn't just going to watch you die," she says. I force a small chuckle.

"I might not have."

"I didn't want to take that chance," she says. "I had...to do something."

Her voice is as clear in the dream as it was when I lived the moment. Her bravery, the courage she showed when she decided to risk her life for me, is as evident now as it was then.

"You're good, Finnick Odair," she says, her eyelids fighting to remain open. "Stay good...okay?"

Her words seem to have a strange echo to them. They're distant, but not; I can hear them ever so clearly. I thank her, just as I did that night, and she gazes up at me with an understanding of why I did so.

"Thanks for finding me," she says quietly. A couple stray tears run down her cheeks. "Stay alive, Poseidon."

I look at her, and the words that come next are not ones that I think about, rather, ones that just know to be said.

"You don't have to worry about me," I assure her.

I've assured her this a thousand times, it seems. Every time, it's the same, but the surroundings always seem slightly altered from what they were before. In the thick of the trees, through the rain and the wind, I see a different silhouette - one that's difficult to describe. I almost see it reaching out, like a hand, though not the hand of a person. More so, the hand of a feeling. Courage, perhaps. Peony's courage.

It doesn't speak, nor do I expect it to. I merely watch it, rippling through the pouring rain, and I can sense its presence - the energy it gives off. I look down at Peony's body, which lies still in the grass. But when I place my hand atop hers, her skin feels warm. The silhouette, in response, appears to glisten. It captures me for a moment.

But only for a moment.

Abruptly, everything halts to a stop, and all returns to dreary once more. The silhouette, her courage, disappears as if it were never there. Nothing surrounds me but the heavy rain, and the corpse of the girl I came to know as a friend. It's a still moment, one almost frozen in time, until I hear a loud noise that startles me. In a dazed, delayed sort of reaction, I realize it's the mechanical whirring of a Capitol hovercraft in the sky. I look up, but what I see is not the metallic silver aircraft that I've seen many times before. What I see more or less resembles a shadow, not yet transparent, but certainly not solid. When it lands, it does so with a quiet thud, hardly disturbing the forest around it. Yet the jet propulsions still cause tree branches to blow back in a gentle, swaying motion.

I don't remember rising to my feet, but as I stand and stare ahead, I watch a Peacekeeper emerge from the shadowy aircraft, trodding on a ramp that doesn't seem solid enough to walk on. Dressed in glistening white armor and lacking a helmet, he approaches me and smiles, though it isn't inherently kind. His eyes, which I previously remembered as a dark brown, are an unsettling lime green. They almost appear to glow; the hue of his irises contrasting against his black pupils. I can't seem to look away from him.

"Congratulations," he says to me, though the word ended in a sort of hiss. Through his teeth, I notice the flicker of a forked tongue as he grins.

I thank him as if the words were pulled out of me, beyond my control. In response, he gives me a nod.

The Peacekeeper then gestures to the shadowy hovercraft with one hand, instructing that I board it. In a brief moment of lucid clarity, I think to myself, 'How am I supposed to get on?' In its near transparency, I can't see any seats. But I'm unable to question the Peacekeeper. He instructs me, and I do as he says, seemingly without a choice. I board the hovercraft, and I shortly find myself sitting on a seat that I couldn't previously conceptualize. It's strange; in prior unconscious recollections, the hovercraft was less dreamlike--it was more of a solid, tangible figure. Now, it seems to only be formulated by distant memories. Possibly memories I've been trying to forget.

The Peacekeeper joins me on board, and I feel the hovercraft being lifted into the air, out of the arena below. After that, everything becomes a sort of hazy blur, and the next thing I know, I'm back in District Four. I recognize my surroundings; I'm standing on the stage of the Justice Building, and beside me stands President Snow. In the crowd, people are cheering loudly, though their voices sound warped and distorted. I wave to them, and my mouth stretches upwards in a smile as if it were pulled by strings. President Snow puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Congratulations, Mr. Odair," he says to me. It's a voice that is distinctly his, yet emphasis is placed on the 's', appearing to drag it out. He gestures out to the crowd, and I follow his gaze. The warped cheering drones on, and on, and on, but for some reason I'm still smiling. They're happy for me. They're happy I'm home. I'm happy I'm home.

However, the next time I blink, the crowd has disappeared. No one stands before the stage except for one man. A man I recognize; a man I love.

My father.

When I see him, I find myself trying to call out to him. I see my arm reach out to him from where I stand on the stage. But neither attempt is successful. He merely stands there motionless, appearing to me as still as a statue, as I try to get his attention. He doesn't seem to notice me.

I blink again. Now, I'm closer than I was before, but my father is no longer alone. Surrounding him are armed Peacekeepers, and one stands in front of him with a pistol aimed at his head. I'm close enough to see the fear in my father's green eyes. Close enough to see them glisten as he thinks about what he will leave behind. The son he will never get to see again. The son who had no idea, when he was on the train ride home, that his father would be dead before he ever made it that far.

I shout at them to stop, to leave him alone, but the words fall on deaf ears. At once, all of the Peacekeepers turn to face me, and each one of their eyes glistens an unsettling bright green. Their pupils look strangely reptilian, like those of the Peacekeeper who retrieved me from the arena. I stare at them, and they stare back at me. Simultaneously they grin, and forked tongues flicker through their teeth.

The Peacekeeper in front of my father turns around, resuming his point-blank aim, and I scream at him to stop. I beg him, trying to run forward, but I'm locked in place by invisible forces. My arm once more reaches out desperately, and I call out to my father, but my words are drowned out by the sound of a gun being fired. My voice fades with the sound, and everything is momentarily black and still.

When the world returns to me, I'm standing back with President Snow on the Reaping stage. He looks at me, and his eyes are just as reptilian as the Peacekeepers'. He grins maliciously, tilts his head a bit to the side, and says one thing to me.

"May the odds be ever in your favor."

His forked tongue, green eyes, and evil grin are that of a man who commands the reptiles beneath him. They hold more power, more weight. Evident of a master who controls his pawns. I stare directly at him, withholding no fear, no inferiority. He says nothing more, and eventually, I can't see him anymore. Now, it's only me.

May the odds be in my favor, he says, I think to myself.

There's a grim irony in that. It's an irony that I'm plagued with every waking moment, both while awake and in sleep. The odds were never in my favor; before the Games, during, or after. They're never in anyone's favor: not mine, and certainly not the 23 innocent children who die every year. I won, but I also lost. I survived, expecting to be handed the world, but instead I was handed a lifetime of grief that I would never be able to fully recover from.

The art of a snake is to be adept at deception. And as such, the odds are never in anyone's favor.

No one ever truly wins.