The Sterling Nightingale ⟷ Finnick Odair/OC

It is the in between

Welcome! This is a Finnick Odair/OC fanfiction. It's a slow burn, very long story that is based off of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Emma Orczy. I'm posting this on FF.net as well as Archive of our own as well, in case anyone sees it elsewhere and is wondering.

Please leave a comment if you like it and let me know! I'll be updating twice a week for the time being!

Chapter One | It is the in between

"We must prove to the world that we are all nincompoops." Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

District 13 is as different from the Capitol as the moon is from the sun. Indeed, as the moon triumphs over the night sky, silent and hidden from its counterpart, District 13 carries on with a secrecy that is quite similar. It just so happens that tonight, of all nights, secrets are the exact topic being exchanged around one of the unassuming dining tables in the District 13 cafeteria. One secret, in particular, holds much sway on the conversation, and that secret is one that the entire country has been trying to unearth for many long years. The secret is, of course, concerning a figure masked in mystery and hidden in the unique shadows that anonymity affords - a dilemma that is most assuredly done deliberately, for how else could the Sterling Nightingale operate in the vast net of the Capitol?

"I hear he's got a hundred faces," one woman claims. A refugee, just come from the hands of the Nightingale herself, and rescued from the inner bowels of the Capitol prisons that very morning.

The man sitting across from her eyes her dubiously and asks in a gruff tone, "Well don't you know? Didn't you see his face?"

But the woman empathetically shakes her head and responds, "Hardly! That is, is saw the face of a regular Capitol worker - several, in fact - but no sign of the Nightingale. Not that I'm aware of, anyway."
The table quiets at this, all wondering at her words.

"The Nightingale's been working with President Coin for years now," one of them says. "I wouldn't be surprised if she knew his identity."

It's true. President Coin has been in contact with the daring spy for many years, or so they say. Besides ferreting prisoners out of the Capitol before their sentences can even be announced, the spy is also District 13's main source of intel concerning the comings and goings in Panem. Even these lowly workers know as much.

"Not much good it does us," one of them responds, "since the President ain't about to grace us with a name to go along with the man."

The grumbling agreement that ensues makes the woman adamantly say, "Does it matter? As long as he can do his work, we don't need to know who the Nightingale is. He's gotten so many people out of the Capitol already, right under the nose of President Snow!"

No one would ever dispute the good that the Nightingale has done, of course. At least no one in District 13. The roguish spy has the audacity and the cunning of a dozen men. He's saved more lives than anyone gives him credit for, and has kept District 13 in the know with his information. And so the others at the table do not disagree with the woman's words, even though the mystery behind the unknown figure is a constant source of interest to them all.

But unbeknownst to the table, and the country at large, they have already gotten one thing immensely wrong where it concerns the identity of the man who wears the mask: the Sterling Nightingale is not a man at all.

How predictable the world is, when it stumbles across an anomaly. And yet - it is this predictability that the Sterling Nightingale counts on, for what else would allow the spy to hide in plain sight, at the center of the Capitol, under the nose of the very man who hunts her?