Chapter Text
If this was a good world, Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta would have something like five children, who are all golden and sunkissed. They would live mostly in the sea and rise out of the foam with wave-wild, salt encrusted hair. They would laugh and be free; Finnick would teach them how to fish and take them swimming, and Annie would show them how to twist sea glass into beautiful jewelry and tell them all the myths of the sea. Their home would be too small. The roof would leak, but they would be safe from the snapping grasp of the Capitol.
But this isn’t a good world. This isn’t a decent world. It’s not even a terrible world. It’s a living hell, an utter nightmare, which is why Johanna Mason finds herself pregnant with Finnick Odair’s daughter a year after she wins her Hunger Games.
Later on, the history books will say that Johanna never agreed to whore herself out for Snow. That’s not how it goes. She tries, the same as they all do, in the beginning. She thinks of her four brothers back in District Seven, of her her mother. Of her dogs, even.
She lies on her back and spreads her legs. And that’s mostly how she meets Finnick Odair. She knows who Finnick Odair is, because who doesn’t? One of the youngest victors to emerge from the arena. (She thinks about that after the first time that she meets him, that he went into the arena years younger than she was when she won.) Most expensive gift in the arena. His games made the most money of all time, she’s been told. (She’s been told that her games made the second most.)
Clients like to bookend them. Charming and polished Finnick Odair against the raw and wild Johanna Mason. It helps her and destroys her the first few times when they’re together. (He shows her that she can’t just lie back and spread her legs. It’s still a show, and there’s no one better than Finnick Odair. He’s the world best and most expensive prostitute, all easy-going smiles and gentle touches. His hands are always snug against someone’s lower back, lips always brushing against the shell of someone’s ear.) She wants to hate him. She does hate him. She does hate Finnick Odair.
(And it’s not that simple, because he covers for her for a long time, eases all the attention back onto himself when they work together. This boy has taken beatings for her, and has taken fuckings for her that are terrifying. He does these things for her even though he doesn’t owe her a goddamn thing, and she hates him for it, because she doesn’t need anyone to protect her. She is Johanna Mason. She won her Hunger Games at the end of an axe without a single fucking sponsor and she doesn’t need anyone’s protection, least of all golden boy Finnick Odair.)
She doesn’t have allies.
That sentiment counts for so little.
It counts for nothing at all the night she finally loses it, three months in. (He’s been doing this for five years, if the rumors are to be believed.) It’s Finnick who catches her about the waist when she goes to finally kill one of their clients; it’s not even that he’s asked anything more than what they’ve done before, but Johanna suddenly can’t take an entire lifetime of this. She doesn’t have any weapon, but she starts after him anyway. She’s barely made it three steps before Finnick’s strong arms are around her, deftly catching her. (She, just like everyone else, forgets what he is, how he’s been trained.) He shoves her out into the hallway, clicks the door shut behind him.
She screams. She screams because she can’t swallow the sound anymore. She screams until she’s raw, and her stylist team takes her back to the apartment that has been given to her in the Capitol. She trashes it. She throws the chairs against the walls, listening for the crack of the plastic-made fake wood. She breaks all the glasses and then the plates and then the television, and finally she has nothing left.
Finnick shows up at seven in the morning, and she wonders if someone has seen him like this. She doesn’t know where his own stylist team is, but he’s bleeding, and there are bruises around his throat, and she’s fairly sure he’s concussed. (She thinks that means he’s not supposed to go to sleep, but he waves her off, collapses on the ruins of her couch. Doesn’t say anything about the mess of her apartment.)
“I don’t owe you anything,” she snarls.
He smiles, still bleeding charisma, and falls asleep.
Her eldest brother dies the next day. Her second brother the week after. Finnick surfaces and drinks at her apartment, and they poignantly don’t talk about the bodies stacking up in District Seven, about the funerals she will never go to, about the good-byes that will always stick in her throat. (They are Finnick Odair and Johanna Mason, bookends to each other, except that she no longer spreads her legs for President Snow.)
Six months after she wins the Hunger Games, she has no family left. There is no one left alive she loves. Finnick is suddenly the person who knows her best in the world.
They sleep together, without another person in between them, for the first time, on the morning her mother is buried in District Seven.
Snow has no more leverage over her, she thinks. She breathes.
She was so fucking wrong, so fucking stupid, that it hurts later on.
She finds out as she’s getting ready to go on her Victory Tour. She has no one left to keep alive, but there’s still no getting out of this. No one expects her to smile and be gracious though. That’s not who she is, and that’s not the persona the Capitol expects from her.
Her stylists are in the room, painting her nails of all things, when the doctor — the one she used to see regularly, before she decided to stop playing Snow’s game — comes in and clears his throat. He shifts from one foot to the other, not quite meeting her eye.
Finally, he manages to say, “You’re pregnant, Miss Mason.”
(And that is fucking impossible, is the first thing she wants to say. Because she explicitly remembers this asshole injecting her with something about a year ago that was supposed to safeguard against this kind of problem, and the only person she’s slept with in six months is Finnick Odair, and she knows they do something to the male victors as well. You don’t get a baby off a victor by accident. And it’s that last sentiment that suddenly sticks her in head. No, you don’t get a baby off a victor by accident.)
“I’ve taken the liberty of notifying Mr. Odair,” the doctor says, and there’s no shifting feet now, just a piercing gaze that pins her in place, says, this baby isn’t going anywhere.
“Get out,” she manages to say through gritted teeth, needing them all out of her sight immediately. She needs to scream, needs to claw.
“We can’t,” her stylist says, and Johanna hears the hint of remorse in her voice. She wants to claw her throat out with the fake nails. She is Johanna Mason, and she isn’t weak.
Ten minutes later and a bouquet of white roses arrives from the president’s mansion with a short note of congratulations.
The lights of Flickerman’s studio are sweltering. Johanna doesn’t remember them being like this. She swears that the applause is louder when she walks out this time than it was after she won her Games.
Her dress is binding, all dark browns and greens, tight against her skin, as if to show how very not-pregnant she looks at the moment. The heels are too tall for her, but she walks steadily in them. (She thinks, I couldn’t run in these. If I needed to get away, there would be nothing I can do. There is nothing I can do, but I bet these spikes would make a good weapon.) She imagines sinking a heel into Flickerman’s shoulder. Imagines the surprise that would cause.
She sits down in the chair waiting for her. She doesn’t lean back. Her body language is too terse, her shoulders too angular. She doesn’t smile at Flickerman. He has a lifetime of training the crowd, but she never helps him, always makes him work for it. She knows what’s coming, and so does the audience. She doesn’t rise to any of his jokes, gives singular syllable answers to all of his questions about her tour, about her talent, about what she enjoys in the Capitol.
“So, Johanna,” Caesar says, smiling growing wider, telling her that she can sulk all she wants, but he’s got all the cards. He’s got the question everyone wants an answer to. He puts his hand on her knee and she stares at it until he takes it away. “I think we are all quite interested in knowing when you’re due.”
“Due?”
There is acid in her throat, and she thinks, I’m not doing this. What else do they think they can do to me? What else could be fucking worse than this?
She never does find out if it was Snow’s or Finnick’s idea for Finnick to appear on stage in the very second when Johanna is about to murder Flickerman, but there he is all the same. He peers around the edge of the stage, and the entire crowd just goes wild, absolutely loses it. (She will never be applauded for like that in her entire life, and she is so insanely grateful for it.)
Caesar bounds up to meet Finnick, grabs his hand, and begins to pump it up and down several times, talking energetically to Finnick without the microphone overhearing them.
There are only two chair on stage, so Finnick merely leans on the arm of Johanna’s, one of his long arms going around the back. He’s too close, and Johanna thinks that she might just settle for killing him.
“Finnick!” Caesar says exuberantly once he’s also back in his seat. He’s beaming now, clearly pleased to have someone of his caliber on stage.
“We were just discussing the exciting news,” Caesar presses. “Anything you’d care to share with us?”
“Share with you?” Finnick asks, laughing. “More like anything you want to share with me? You know, I was in Four, out on my boat, and this poor man comes swimming up along the side. Had these purple ringlets that were just plastered against his head. Anyway, he goes, ‘You’re Finnick Odair, right?’ And I nod, because that’s who I am.” He pauses to grin, and Caesar laughs along with him. “And this man says, ‘Well, I’ve got a message from Johanna Mason from you,’ and tells me, right there in the water, while he’s still trying to stay afloat!”
The whole thing is such a blatant lie that Johanna can’t believe there’s a single person in the Capitol who believes it. But the crowd loves it. They eat it up, laugh along with Finnick, practically forget that she’s there on stage at all.
“You must be excited!” Caesar exclaims.
“Of course we are,” Finnick returns. His fingers actually brush over her shoulders. She doesn’t need to imagine what they would sound like if she broke three of them. She’s heard that before.
She knows she should smile. And that’s precisely why she doesn’t.
Caesar asks Finnick a few more questions, and these he manages deftly deflect, because they are things he can’t possibly know, things that are far too early to tell. (Sex? Names? Where the baby will be raised? Will they get married?)
The answer to the last one is a resounding no, and Finnick manages to imply that with a simple smile. The Capitol would never give up Finnick Odair to Johanna Mason.
The moment they are off stage, Johanna vomits, all acid. When Finnick reaches for her, she does break two of his fingers, and she thinks, close enough.
He doesn’t cry out or even flinch, just lets his hand fall to his side. She stares at him, venom in her gaze, and watches as he ages 10 years from the carefree boy he was on stage.
“Jo,” he pleads.
“Don’t you ever fucking call me that again,” she snaps instantly.
“I’m sorry,” he says as she storms away from him. He’s defeated.