Finnick and Annie's Untold Stories: Hope

Chapter Six

Finnick's POV

He had spent his day at the training center. There were several different training centers located in District Four, all of them ever the more populated with the Games nearing by the second.
In a few days, the tributes would be escorted from their homes and forced into an arena.
In only a matter of weeks, twenty three children would be murdered.
Some would be kinder deaths than others.

The worst ones Finnick had seen on the family television were the agonizingly slow, delayed deaths. Most of those consisted of freezing to death, dying of thirst, a tribute snared and trapped, the lucky ones were ended quickly while the unlucky starved.
Then there were the tortured. Fatalities like those were always the most gruesome.
One year two male careers had been mortal enemies. About half way through the Games, one of the tributes set up a trap for his "ally".
The poor other career had naively fallen for the trickery and been ensnared like an animal. The tribute who had set up the trick had taken his time with his fellow career's death.
In the end of it all, limbs had been hacked off and the maniacal career had kept his allies' finger as a trophy.
Finnick had kept his eyes squeezed shut when he had watched the gruesome scene of it all. He had not even been aware that a human being could be holding so much blood, so much red guts and entrails. The thought of it even now caused a shudder to course through his body.

That year, the psychotic career had not even won. In the end a small girl from 11 by the name of Seeder had managed to trick and kill the remaining tributes and return home victorious.

There were several trainers working patiently with the other children who were hoping to volunteer. All of them were older than he, most of the age of eighteen, ready to volunteer and bring honor to the District, to prove themselves worthy of fame, attention, and riches.

   So what was he doing, skipping a school day for extra training? That was precisely it: he was avoiding his peers to stab at mannequins with adequate tridents, not his wooden weapon that gave him splinters, but a Capitol weapon made of all kinds of strong and foreign materials.

It was still morning and potential tributes were arriving.

    He had been listening through a short lecture on knifing opponents, watching as the instructor demonstrated a smooth and quick stab to a training dummy-not a wound fatal enough to kill but definetly to disable and cause a rainfall of blood.

Behind his head, whispers were audible-murmurs were heard from the background. He chose to ignore the voices and concentrated as best as he could on the instructors movements and demonstrations.

The whispers increased in volume and he found his concentration wavering.
"Is there something particularly funny that I should be aware of?" The instructor asked, aggravation leaking behind her words.
A dirty blonde girl in braided pigtails smirked. She looked around seventeen years old and her face was cocky and arrogant, her lips pulled into a snarl.

"Oh we were just wondering why a certain young child is amongst us," she said. It took Finnick a few seconds to realize that she was referring to him.

"Shouldn't he be in school, not hanging out with the big kids?" Her tone was mocking, belittling.

Finnick hated her instantly.

He hid his loathing with a small smirk and retorted, "hey, nice pigtails. Did your mommy do your hair for you?"

There were a series of jeers and a few scoffs, until the instructor yelled for quiet and threatened that she would close the training center for the rest of the week if she didn't get silence, which, of course, she couldn't, but it was affective in shutting them up.