The Heiress {Finnick Odair}

Training Tributes

Training separately with Annie and Jack seemed to do the trick.

The next four days were spent in a whirlwind of chaos. They spent all day focusing on the survival skills, and all night learning how to fight.

It was an abridged, intense version of the horrors that Finnick forced Adrien through when he was working on convincing him not to volunteer, and it made both Annie and Jack appreciate the daily training sessions the two had.

Amara was soaking up as much time with Annie as she could. Annie appreciated it. She loved that they spent one evening after the training was done watching movies. She loved that they spent another gushing over Annie's engagement and talking about wedding plans. She loved that when she was with Amara, she felt like a normal girl. She loved that they could pretend she had a future at all.

Unlike the previous year, Amara saw a lot of her friends. The first three nights, she just joined them for dinners as they debriefed about their day. On the last night, however, she joined them in the basement to see what they had been working on.

"Top left. Bottom right. Top right. Bottom left." Finnick instructed as he and Adrien walked around the two tributes, analyzing how they threw their punches and kicks.

Amara sat in the corner of the room with Mags. The poor woman had been suffering from migraines all week and had to take a step back from mentoring Annie and Jack.

"Drop and give me twenty push-ups!" Adrien suddenly shouted, and Annie and Jack threw themselves to the ground.

Finnick poured three years of work into Adrien, and knew they would never be able to reach that level in four days, but he could see the difference. It was getting easier for them to do the push-ups. They were becoming more and more excited to do the exercises, and they both went completely unnoticed by the other tributes.

"Up!" Adrien yelled, and they both jolted up. "Run the perimeter of the room until I tell you to stop."

And they took off. Amara couldn't help but laugh when both Finnick and Adrien took the opportunity to waltz over and say hi to the two women. They both took a swig of water, and Mags rolled her eyes.

"You're enjoying this too much," Mags said, and Amara agreed. Finnick and Adrien pointed at one another with an unspoken accusation.

For the most part, it seemed the two had put aside whatever frustrations they had for each other. They had a common goal to prepare their tributes to the best of their abilities, and that was all that mattered.

"How are they?" Amara asked. Finnick glanced over at the running tributes, noting how their breathing was starting to become more labored as they pushed themselves.

"They're getting better. On the first day, they couldn't even--"

"No," Amara interrupted. "I mean: how are they?"