sixthiterationlogs | ψ you don't feel pretty you just feel used

Entry tags:

ψ you don't feel pretty you just feel used | OTA

WHO: Finnick Odair
WHERE: By the lake
WHEN: Mid-July
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: Expect references to sexual assault and abuse, quasi-slavery, coercion, violence, and generalised totalitarian government nonsense. Also, mental health issues.

Finnick is used to hiding from shame. He'd lived for years in Panem with the knowledge that everyone around him knew he was a killer, had seen what he'd done on live television. As a teenager, he'd held his head high against that knowledge, because he'd done what he had to to survive, to win, in the system that was rigged against all the districts but that District Four tried to rig right back. That was what the Careers did: make the best of a situation they were all forced to live in by protecting the other children in the district. He could handle that, knowing what he'd done and what other people thought of it. But he'd never been able to handle what Snow made him do. Everyone saw the very public affairs he had in the Capitol, and there were some people who thought that made Finnick their sympathizer. At best, they probably thought he was trying to take what he could from the Capitol, including pleasure. But he'd never taken pleasure in any of it.

He'd enjoyed not having that perception, here. Not that he really cared much, except that it played into his own shame. Here, he knows that most people don't know what the name Secret Whore on the wristbands means, or even who it is, but he can't help feeling that same deep burning sense of humiliation.

It's harder to sleep, now. He has too much going on in his head, too many ghosts of too many bodies next to him instead of Annie's. Most mornings, he goes out before the sun is up to check on his fish traps. Sometimes, the little fishing dog comes with him, eager for whatever small fish Finnick spares for him. Sometimes, the dog himself catches things. Today, Finnick still has too much burning in his mind to be around Annie, so after he drops off his catch and leaves Coco behind, he takes his notebook and pencil and heads for the lake, where he perches on a rock and stares out across the water.

He'd had the idea of writing poetry, trying to purge some of these feelings by burning them into bitter words, but it's not working. He stares at the page, but it's blank, and the words won't come. Instead, he winds up toying with the pencil, drawing patterns in the sand with its blunt end.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bull is out getting his bearings and getting a feel for where they are. It is a pretty place, that is for sure, but he knows as well as anyone that that doesn't mean it is safe. Far from it. And he would very much like to know the area before a time comes when he has to use that knowledge. Eventually, he ends up at the lake.

It isn't had to spot the guy sitting on the rocks and Bull makes his way closer. He makes sure he is still well out of reach when he finally says something. He knows by now that these people might not be used to Qunari and that he can easily be scary to them.

"Hello there."

To Finnick, everything about Bull on first sight seems to scream Capitol: dyed skin, horns, tattoos, and for a moment, something flickers behind the clear, spectacular green of Finnick's eyes. But it only takes a moment for him to notice more things that speak against the immediate instinct: the eyepatch, the scars, nobody who could afford that level of body modification would leave those in place. Not in the place where they polish the victors' skin until all sign of their arena and their life before that is gone.

The voice, too, is unlike the Capitol: no piping pitch, no questioning intonation, just a simple greeting, the tone completely unlike the threatening appearance of the ... man.

"Hi." It's not particularly eloquent, but it's what his mind can manage, torn from the dark thoughts he'd been buried in.

"You're. You're new."

Bull actually doesn't mind his scars that much. The missing eye and the bad ankle he could do without. He crouches down, people seem to take that as him being less threatening and he smiles. "Yeah, arrived not that long ago in the middle of a thunderstorm. You look like you've seen Qunari before." Or at least have seen enough other humanoids not to be shocked by one.

Finnick could have been covered in scars. Should have been, really, after some of the things that happened in the arena, but the Capitol has its ways, and those ways include polishing every sign that he'd ever been more than their beautiful toy away from his body every time he went there.

He has a few here, on his hands mostly, from gutting fish and working with wood and simply the amount of time he spends out in the forest. This guy, though, looks like he's come out of the arena and nobody bothered with that. Finnick's clear green eyes flick up and down, assessing him, but he can read the way the giant man hunches as clearly as it's intended to be read: I'm no threat.

"It's more I've known a lot of people who'd pay a lot of money to look like you."

The grey skin, the Capitol could do. Toned muscles, yes, and oddly shaped ears. The horns, he thinks, would give even the best of the Capitol's surgeons trouble, but for a moment, there's a grim amusement in the thought.

"This is how you naturally look?" he asks, his head tilting a little with the question.

Bull laughs at that, a warm belly laugh. "There is a lot of people who would pay good money to look like me." He looks down at himself, assessing for a moment. "Well, sometimes I have a bit more of a beer belly depending on how much work we've been having and how much time I've spent in taverns."

But he is also pretty sure that isn't what this guy means. "I am not human." He says as an explanation. "I'm Qunari. We're about this tall, got the grey skin and the horns. Well most of us have horns, some are born hornless, but they are an exception, not a rule. I'm big for a Qunari but not so much bigger that it is weird. I come from a world that has elves and dwarves too. Does that answer your question?"

Finnick had gotten used to the changes he'd seen in some people since they'd arrived in this version of wherever they are, like Benedict's cat-like eyes. He'd gotten around them by writing them off as just the sort of thing he'd see in the Capitol, but this guy is talking about something different, about being from a people who instead of having a tendency to fair skin and hair like Panem's merchants, look like that.

Finnick nods.

"There's only humans where I'm from."

At least, that's what they'd been told. Were any of them to know who or what else was living in the world before it was destroyed, before disasters and toxic fallouts of war reduced it to the remnants of North America that became Panem.

That's skepticism that is best not voiced out loud, especially not to a stranger, but he keeps it to himself.

"What do elves and dwarves look like?"

Bull shifts and settles into a crouch that is going to be more comfortable for a while. "Elves are a little shorter than humans, and a much smaller build. Skinny. They have pointed ears. Humans have kept them as slaves, or more or less the same thing, for many years. There are some groups though who are still free. Officially most places don't have slavery anymore but what does that matter when people live in slums and have to take whatever jobs get handed to them?"

He shifts a little. "Dwarves live underground. Or most of them do. They are shorter than elves and stocky." He holds up a hand to indicate how tall they are. "They are really good craftsmen and traders." He takes a breath. "There is also the darkspawn. They are... twisted and ugly. There are many different kinds of them and they are evil. Every so often they will try to take over the lands of the rest of us and will kill anyone who stands in their path, or at least try to kill them."

Beverly doesn't know what that username means to Finnick, doesn't know all of his backstory. What she does know is that a lot of the names the Observers have chosen have been painful in some way. Or annoying. Beverly's brought up bad memories, a nickname she thought she'd managed to leave behind forever. Whatever Finnick's is, it seems to have made things incredibly difficult for him.

So she'd given him some time before trying to find him to talk. Eventually, she discovers him by the lake, looking like someone with a lot of bad thoughts swirling around in his head but no real way to let them out. Approaching as loudly as she can manage without stomping or acting threatening, while also coming towards him in his direct line of sight so she doesn't startle him, she does her best to be a motherly presence and not an unwelcome one.

"There you are," she says lightly. "I was hoping I'd find you. Mind some company?"

He'd been ... terse might be a good word for it in response to Beverly's message asking if he was all right, earlier in the month (or maybe last month, he never knows what the actual date is here beyond what people guess from the feasts they're given). Not because he'd had any problem with her asking, but because it had to be asked at all. Because there that name was, where anyone could see it and at least some of them had worked it out. Beverly. Peeta. Annie.

He hasn't spoken to her since then, and he'd been able to avoid talking to the one person who'd worked it out who didn't know where he came from and who he was. What he'd done as a child and what had been done to him in return.

That doesn't make him want to tell her to go away, though; there's a warmth in Beverly that's been rare for him in his life, though he'd felt it sometimes from Mags, and before that, long ago, from his mother. Before Snow had them both killed.

He looks up only briefly, then shrugs and gestures to one side, inviting her to take a seat on one of the rocks there if she wants to.

Beverly only settles next to Finnick at the obvious invitation, not wanting to push him too much, and she does so close enough to be a physical presence, but not so close that she's an invasion on his space. Hesitating only a brief moment, she lifts one hand to rest it comfortingly against his arm, if he'll let her.

"I don't know everything that name represents and I won't ask you to tell me anything you don't want to," she begins softly, comfortingly. Warmly like a mother. "Whatever it is, I'm sorry the Observers are bringing this back for you and I want you to know that you are so much more than just a name. You're a good person and you deserve better than this."

There aren't many people Finnick really trusts, and most of them are dead or gone now. It's only Annie left, Annie and for some things Haymitch, but even that trust is conditional, based on the things Haymitch knows and the things they've gotten involved in together more than on personal feelings. But there's a warmth, a gentleness in what Beverly says as she sits down next to him, in the way she places her hand against his arm, that reminds him of those bitter days when he was first trying to come to terms with what Snow had forced him into. Mags had held him as he cried out his broken pride, soothed him like he were her son instead of her victor.

Buts Mags isn't here now; Mags is dead, killed in the Quarter Quell arena, is or will be or something he doesn't understand, but she's gone, like his parents. He has nobody left who can do that now. Annie cares, of course, Annie's been trying to reassure him, persuade him that it doesn't matter what the Gamemakers call him, that people won't remember it among all the others and that it doesn't change who he is or how she feels. But he suddenly misses that maternal comfort, the affection of someone older, with more life experience, who doesn't judge but will advise.

He'd never told his parents what Snow had forced him into, but Mags had known. Mags had helped him to survive what it did to him. He misses Mags.

Finnick twists the pencil between his fingers and looks across at her, seeing nothing but the same sympathy in her words and her touch.

"Even if it's true?"

Beverly's instincts, based on what little she does know of Finnick and his world and what she's seeing in him now, tell her that whatever the name means it isn't exactly a literal truth. She suspects there are extenuating circumstances involved and not good ones. When he finally answers her, she turns a little more fully to look at him, her hand remaining right where it is until and unless he decides to shake her off.

"Even if it's true," she says firmly. "Somehow I think that whatever the Observers' name for you says, that isn't the entire truth to it. They seem to be taking something from all of us and twisting it. But whatever it is and whatever truth there is to it, I meant what I said."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

ψ you don't feel pretty you just feel used | OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: child abuse, character death

no subject