lover/fighter - Finnick Odair

Chapter 25 - Victory and Defeat

"It's like everything and everyone around me is falling apart. Just what is wrong with me?"

Finnick sits slumped at Mag's kitchen table, his face buried in his hands. After Ava brought him in, it took nearly two hours and a whole pot of tea to get him down enough to communicate again without choking on every other word. It still feels like an invisible force is trying to crush him.

"Don't say that," Mags counters empathetically, patting his back in reassurance. "It's true that life isn't easy for people like us, but you can't start telling yourself that this would be your fault."

He lifts his head and looks at her helplessly. "But it was my fault. I wanted to get rid of her, but I never meant to ..."

"I know. Accidents happen sometimes, that's just the way it is. But you couldn't have foreseen it," the old lady replies sympathetically. "Mind you, I've been telling you for years not to hang around there," she adds, pinching his cheek a little.

Finnick grimaces. "Cut it out. It doesn't make any difference now."

Mags sighs wearily and crosses her arms in front of her chest. "There's no use feeling sorry for yourself over stupid things you've already done, there's nothing you can do about that now. But the whole thing could have turned out even worse, so you'd better think about what you can do now to make things right."

The way she says it makes it sound so easy, but constantly having to clean up after his own failures is starting to tire Finnick out. If it were just him, it might not matter, but whenever others get dragged into his mess it sets him off.

"How did it get to this in the first place? Everything was fine for the last two days," Mags muses.

Finnick feels his stomach tighten. He's never liked lying to Mags, and he usually doesn't. Just on this one thing, he's keeping her in the dark. Ironically, one could say that the reasons are quite similar as with Rhea.

Because of the double life he is forced to lead, he is stuck in an inter-role conflict. He has to fulfill the expectations placed on him as a victor and darling of the Capitol, but in return he has to disappoint the expectations placed on him as a human being. This is the dilemma that makes his life a gauntlet.

He knows that Mags would never approve of his ways of making his work at the Capitol easier, because she is one of the few people who really thinks the world of him. Nevertheless, it's not possible for him to live up to her expectations, because he has to submit to Snow and the Capitol. Only because he is not willing to lose her recognition despite everything, he at least tries to keep up appearances. Even if that means lying to his mentor.

It's the same with Rhea. The demands Snow has on him block his path to being someone she would fully acknowledge. Even when she gets along well with Finnick the sailor from District 4, Finnick the Victor can never live up to her. Instead, she constantly gets caught between their fronts and ultimately ends up as collateral damage.

It's bitter to watch his very existence seemingly ruin her. It feels like a punishment from the universe and maybe he just doesn't deserve anything else. If there is such a thing as fate after all, then perhaps he was always destined to be alone.

"Doesn't matter," he replies dejectedly, without the strength to think up a story. The risk of talking out of turn in his battered state is also too great for him.

All the time, his thoughts are only about Rhea. At first, he just wanted to use her to fulfill his mission, no matter what happened to her. Then his conscience interfered and after the surprising realization that someone can be a good person in spite of a Capitol descent, he actually only wanted to prevent her from endangering herself, after she somehow got involved in machinations that also affected the president.