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After filming the propos that hopefully did their job and bought the rescue team time to get the victors from the Captiol, Katniss had nothing to do except sit around and wait for them to come back. So she did what she had become good at ever since arriving to 13: she sat and she waited. Maybe she was imagining it, her brain so desperate for any kind of change, but she could almost feel Finnick’s rope fraying in her hands as she knotted and unknotted, unknotted and knotted.
A knock at the door to her family’s compartment startled her out of her rhythm. Her throat started producing sound, waiting to see who it was before shaping it into words. If it was Prim or her mother, a quiet plea for some time alone would get them to back off. For Gale, a sullen “go away” would do the trick. Ever since coming to District 13, he took that as an answer, where pre-Games Gale would have seen it as a challenge to cheer her up. And if it happened to be anyone from Command, they would take her hollow silence to mean whatever was most convenient for them, but at least it usually resulted in her being left alone.
The door opened, and Katniss had expected this presence so little that she hadn’t bothered to prepare a way of saying she didn’t want company right now. Finnick Odair took her surprised silence as an invitation and sat down on the bed beside her.
After hearing him speak this afternoon and learning the truth about his past - a history she’d been so sure she knew was true, forgetting that Finnick was just another pawn in the Capitol’s games - she wasn’t sure how to start a conversation with him. At first, it seemed Finnick was in no hurry to break the quiet between them either. He seemed content to sit beside her, fidgeting with his own rope, causally making more intricate knots than she could ever dream of.
Then he started to talk about whatever anyone who knew the Capitol’s version of Finnick would guess his favorite subject was: himself. “Everyone thinks they know me. They think they know my story, my motivations, my hopes, my dreams, my fears. But none of them are even close to the truth.”
“After our broadcast today, they’ll know.” It was all she could think to say. Certainly it had changed her mind about this legendary man, practically a god to Captiol citizens.
He scoffed. “Even the ones that already knew that part of me still don’t get it. I hear the way they talk behind my back. You know as well as I do, even after leaving the arena, you can’t shut down your senses all the time. Especially you with your Capitol-reconstructed super force field detecting ear.”
Katniss gratified his joke with a roll of her eyes. Even that small of a gesture felt like a grand display of emotion considering how numb she’d been for the last days, weeks, months. Year.
“I hear them when they don’t think I can. They say ‘There goes Finnick, who’s so handsome and brave and all around wonderful, who has the whole nation fawning over him, who-“
She gently smacked his shoulder. This new teasing, friendly dynamic wasn’t exactly easy, but it was nice to have.
“Rude. As I was saying,” his voice softened. “They say ‘There goes Finnick, who could have anyone he pleases, but chose to devote himself to a poor, mad girl.’”
Katniss realized that anyone who actually knew Finnick would know that now he was talking about his actual favorite subject: Annie Cresta.
“They talk like I’m some saint for loving her. Like I’m a hero for helping her when she has bad days. Like she’s a burden and I’m with her as an act of charity rather than because I love her.” Finnick’s tone shifted, protective of Annie and mad at anyone who would think so little of her.
Katniss hadn’t had the opportunity to meet Annie - if all went well with the mission, she’d get to soon. But when she thought of everything she knew of Finnick’s love, she couldn’t find anything that disagreed with that picture of her. Annie Cresta, the victor who won seemingly by accident. Annie Cresta, the victor driven mad by her games. She had never seen Annie on a televised broadcast without Finnick watching over her from somewhere in the background of the screen.
“So what’s the truth then?”
“The truth?” Finnick stopped knotting his rope, his eyes staring across space to wherever the hovercraft bringing Annie back to him was. “The truth is that between the two of us, Annie is the sane one.”
Katniss must have let a hint of surprise cross her face, because Finnick hurriedly continued.
“Everyone knows that on her bad days, when her brain keeps her trapped in the arena, I bring her back to reality. But what they don’t know, what they don’t see, is that she does the same for me. Everyone wants a charismatic victor who looks back at his time in the games and smiles like it’s a good memory. No one wants a traumatized son of a fisherman who gets so trapped in his memories that he shuts down and can’t function for days. No one except Annie. She takes me on my good days and my bad days and never wavers in her faith that I might be more than just a disaster of a person.”
It was a beautiful story. Two broken people who came together to fix each other. But Katniss couldn’t help but wonder. “Why are you telling me this?”
Finnick smiled as if he were a teacher and one of his pupils had asked an impossibly easy question. “Because you get it. You know what it’s like for everyone to think you’re the strong one, when really without the other there, you'd crumple like a sheet of paper.”
She was ready to object, to insist he was wrong, that she was strong all on her own. But look at the state she was in, reduced to sitting on her bed tying knots waiting for Peeta to get back.
“Everyone thinks I’m the Girl on Fire.” She coughed, choking on the words, realizing the truth of them as she said them. “But they don’t realize it took two people to play that part. In the chariots when I was truly on fire, in the Games when I held up the berries, every time I was in that role, Peeta was there too. And,” her voice betrayed her by cracking, “I don’t know how to do it without him.”
In the absence of drinks in the room, Finnick held up his rope and touched it to Katniss’s in a cheers. “To Peeta Mellark and Annie Odair, coming home soon to make us whole again.”
“Annie Odair?” Katniss needed an out from the awkward vulnerability of the moment, so she turned the topic back to Annie, knowing Finnick would go on and on about her given the chance.
“Just like you and Peeta did your secret bread toasting, Annie and I married in secret too. In Four, we have a tradition that you take your first swim together, diving into the water to symbolize diving into commitment to one another. Annie has come a long way since her Games, but that was still too much for her. So we walked into the water holding hands, one step at a time.” The pride in his voice could only be outshined by the radiance of his smile. A smile that had been missing in the recent weeks. “Of course she was my wife in spirit only, not officially, but it didn’t matter, we were bound to one another.
“And Snow was less than pleased. No matter how much we tried to keep it a secret, I knew he’d find out. And he did.” Finnick’s smile dimmed. “I was summoned the next day for two months straight in the Capitol with appointments every night.”
“Finnick, I’m so sorry, that must have been difficult.”
“It wasn’t easy, but knowing I could come home to my wife at the end of that visit and all the others in the future made it easier.”
Another knock at the door. This one brought Haymitch poking his head in. “I figured you two might want to know that the mission was successful and that you can go see everyone they brought back in the Med Bay.”
Finnick stood up and was out the door so fast it was like someone had shot him out of a gun.
Katniss could hear Haymitch chuckling behind her as she ran to follow Finnick. All the way there, she thought of the confession that he had brought out of her - that she couldn’t be the Girl on Fire everyone expected of her without Peeta there by her side. She had resisted the mantle at first, but after reuniting with Peeta, she was ready to burn brightly again.
Passing by Finnick and Annie - who had collapsed to the floor in a jumble of limbs, tears, and promises to never be separated again - she made her way to Peeta. As he walked to meet her, she realized the only thing burning was her lungs as Peeta wrapped his hands around her throat and choked her into unconscious.