Finnick Odair | Victor of the 65th Hunger Games (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sixthiterationlogs2017-03-11 07:07 pm
fishermansweater) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-03-11 07:07 pm
ψ my weakness terrifies me I must breathe in breathe out | closed
WHO: Finnick Odair
WHERE: Out on the edges of the area, later Finnick and Annie's house.
WHEN: March 15th (forward-dated for schedule reasons because it's a long weekend and the rest of March will be terrible)
OPEN TO: Cassian Andor, Annie Cresta
WARNINGS: FIREFLIES so insect attack, paranoia, PTSD; also issues to do with powerplay and sexual abuse, plus you know, Hunger Games is a murdergame despotic dystopia canon.
STATUS: Ongoing!
The fog and mist have rolled in apparently to stay, but that doesn't mean that Finnick and Annie can stop fishing, or stop planning for the future now that the weather seems to be starting to shift towards spring. Cougar's concerns about fish populations have been growing on him, as the number of people in the village increases and there's no obvious source for replenishment of fish stocks.
Finnick's waited until the afternoon before venturing out along the river, in the hope that the fog would burn off more than it has. He's exploring along the riverbanks, looking for a spring he knows that runs from the west down towards the river, in the hopes its pool might be suitable to create some sort of breeding colony. Unfortunately, somewhere in the fog, he'd lost the trail of the stream, and in doing so, he's lost the direction of the sun through the fog, and he's not sure which direction he's headed.
It's hard to keep perspective on distance and time when the woods are so featureless. He pulls the flashlight out of his backpack and turns it on, looking around himself to see if there are any recognizable landmarks. He's gotten to know the woods fairly well in the months he'd been here: a large rock, an odd formation of trees, a clearing, could all help him orient himself. The mist, though, is too heavy, maybe a sign that he's close to the river, that if he keeps going, he'll find that one steady constant of the landscape, and he knows the river, knows it well enough to be able to follow it back to the village.
What he finds, though, is the canyon wall, looming suddenly, a dark mass appearing out of the swirling damp. He puts out a hand, brushes it against the rock, looks up, wondering which edge of the canyon he's found: north or west? Either way, if he just follows it around, he should find his way back to the waterfall, and then, at least, he won't be lost, just potentially a long way from the village.
He's not sure just how long he's been following the cliff face around when he sees lights through the mist, floating just in from the canyon wall at the very edge of visibility. He's seen solitary lights sparking and disappearing over the last couple of weeks, but never this many, never concentrated like that and moving in that irregular, slightly erratic way.
That looks less like the will o' the wisps than some sort of swarm of insects, and he's just considering whether he should turn, skirt around them and find the rock wall again once he's past them, when the lights move, all at once, straight towards him, not like the little groups of insects he's sometimes encountered by pools of water here, more like ...
More like the trackerjackers that he'd watched swarm and kill his tribute last year.
He lets out a shout, surprise and a surge of fear vocalized, as the things come for him, and he turns to run, but he's not fast enough before they're on him and he feels the sting, once, twice, maybe more, on the bare skin of his face. Finnick reels away, trying to escape, and he has just enough presence of mind to try to lift his coat to cover his face so the wool might shield him from the attack.
He's dropped the flashlight, and he stumbles blindly off into the woods, shouting again, and his boot catches on something -- rock, tree root? -- sending him sprawling onto the ground, curling over and around, defensively, clutching at the coat. He doesn't feel any more stings, but half his face feels hot, needle-sharp painful, so it takes longer than it should to notice.
He stays down, not daring to lift his head to see that the swarm has dissipated.
WHERE: Out on the edges of the area, later Finnick and Annie's house.
WHEN: March 15th (forward-dated for schedule reasons because it's a long weekend and the rest of March will be terrible)
OPEN TO: Cassian Andor, Annie Cresta
WARNINGS: FIREFLIES so insect attack, paranoia, PTSD; also issues to do with powerplay and sexual abuse, plus you know, Hunger Games is a murdergame despotic dystopia canon.
STATUS: Ongoing!
The fog and mist have rolled in apparently to stay, but that doesn't mean that Finnick and Annie can stop fishing, or stop planning for the future now that the weather seems to be starting to shift towards spring. Cougar's concerns about fish populations have been growing on him, as the number of people in the village increases and there's no obvious source for replenishment of fish stocks.
Finnick's waited until the afternoon before venturing out along the river, in the hope that the fog would burn off more than it has. He's exploring along the riverbanks, looking for a spring he knows that runs from the west down towards the river, in the hopes its pool might be suitable to create some sort of breeding colony. Unfortunately, somewhere in the fog, he'd lost the trail of the stream, and in doing so, he's lost the direction of the sun through the fog, and he's not sure which direction he's headed.
It's hard to keep perspective on distance and time when the woods are so featureless. He pulls the flashlight out of his backpack and turns it on, looking around himself to see if there are any recognizable landmarks. He's gotten to know the woods fairly well in the months he'd been here: a large rock, an odd formation of trees, a clearing, could all help him orient himself. The mist, though, is too heavy, maybe a sign that he's close to the river, that if he keeps going, he'll find that one steady constant of the landscape, and he knows the river, knows it well enough to be able to follow it back to the village.
What he finds, though, is the canyon wall, looming suddenly, a dark mass appearing out of the swirling damp. He puts out a hand, brushes it against the rock, looks up, wondering which edge of the canyon he's found: north or west? Either way, if he just follows it around, he should find his way back to the waterfall, and then, at least, he won't be lost, just potentially a long way from the village.
He's not sure just how long he's been following the cliff face around when he sees lights through the mist, floating just in from the canyon wall at the very edge of visibility. He's seen solitary lights sparking and disappearing over the last couple of weeks, but never this many, never concentrated like that and moving in that irregular, slightly erratic way.
That looks less like the will o' the wisps than some sort of swarm of insects, and he's just considering whether he should turn, skirt around them and find the rock wall again once he's past them, when the lights move, all at once, straight towards him, not like the little groups of insects he's sometimes encountered by pools of water here, more like ...
More like the trackerjackers that he'd watched swarm and kill his tribute last year.
He lets out a shout, surprise and a surge of fear vocalized, as the things come for him, and he turns to run, but he's not fast enough before they're on him and he feels the sting, once, twice, maybe more, on the bare skin of his face. Finnick reels away, trying to escape, and he has just enough presence of mind to try to lift his coat to cover his face so the wool might shield him from the attack.
He's dropped the flashlight, and he stumbles blindly off into the woods, shouting again, and his boot catches on something -- rock, tree root? -- sending him sprawling onto the ground, curling over and around, defensively, clutching at the coat. He doesn't feel any more stings, but half his face feels hot, needle-sharp painful, so it takes longer than it should to notice.
He stays down, not daring to lift his head to see that the swarm has dissipated.
no subject
Cassian's muscle memory almost had him starting that direction before he stranglegrabbed it all to point out, That's not coming from the fountain.
Pulling his body around by the psychological throat, Cassian listened… and yes, another shout. And he took off. In the correct direction this time.
He finds the trail before he finds the man. Which means he's found and picked up Finnick's flashlight and is using it to help him look, when he sees him.
Cassian instantly goes down on his knees, sticking the flashlight in the ground beside them to aid visibility, but freeing both his hands—to check for pulse and injury—if Finnick lets any touch get that far.
cw: graphic description of death, ptsd
There were many parties and other events going on in the Capitol during the Games, opportunities for the sponsors to mingle, place their bets, discuss their predictions, and Finnick had been at one of the never-ending mingles, making flirtatious small-talk with a regular sponsor when it started. When Rue from District 11 had shown Katniss the tracker-jacker nest, with the Career pack and Peeta all completely unaware of their danger.
The others in the room had stared at the screen in fascination. Finnick stared in horror, as Katniss hacked at the branch the nest was on. She'd left it, for then, and it wasn't until the next morning she did anything more. He'd been back in District Four's floor of the Training Center, sprawled out on a couch in front of the television, watching the Games through the night.
He never slept well during the Games, and he'd had the wasps on his mind, so he'd seen when Katniss woke up. When she resumed her attack. When the nest fell into the center of the Career Pack's camp, and the insects that had been created to terrorize the districts had burst out of their hive and engulfed the tributes. They'd sprung to their feet, screaming, running, and he'd watched in the too-familiar sick inevitability as his tribute, sixteen, pretty, talented, but just not fast enough to her feet, staggered to the ground, sobbing and screaming. She'd died in terror and agony, disfigured almost beyond belief by the swollen wounds the wasps inflicted, and she'd died on live television for the whole country to see.
Her mentor had promptly gotten drunk at six in the morning.
Finnick's trembling on the ground when the light hits him, though he can't see it because he still has the coat clutched over his head. He doesn't know what dying of tracker-jacker stings feels like, but he remembers Marina and Glimmer's screams, and they seem to echo through his ears again as he huddles on the ground. He remembers how sick the tributes who'd survived had been. These weren't tracker-jackers, but they weren't ordinary insects either, he's sure of it from the way they'd moved, from how quickly they'd attacked, and the pain that's pulsing through his face, and his hand, too, now.
It takes Cassian's touch to make him move; he jerks away, on the sudden defensive, his eyes wide and his skin flushed as he rolls away and sits up, curling back onto his heels so he can spring to his feet and run if he has to.
"Cassian?"
no subject
no subject
Finnick's eyes aren't steady on the man: they're darting, this direction, that, hunting for the bugs, for the threat that had driven him back into the trees and away from the certainty he'd found in the canyon wall he'd been following. Now he's lost, again, unsure where he's going or where he is.
There's no sign of them, the only light that's not filtering down through the fog being the flashlight, Finnick's flashlight, that Cassian has placed on the ground next to them.
He can feel himself tremble, not sure if it's from fear or from the letdown of adrenaline as the sudden panicked thought of tracker-jackers starts to wane. Except it's not waning: his heart still feels like it's racing, his breath rapid, and he's been stung, he knows he has been. What's that going to do to him?
"Insects," he says. "Muttations, not ordinary insects. They sting."
They sting, and he doesn't know what they're going to do to him, and he doesn't want Cassian to be the person who finds out.
no subject
"Where did it sting you?" asked Cassian instead, laying his hand on Finnick's face to push back his hair and look into his eyes. Check the dilation of pupils, state of vessels, hue of the sclera.
If it had just happened, depending on the location of the puncture point, Cassian could try cordoning it off or siphoning it out.
no subject
He repeats the pronunciation: he knows what a mutation is. But nobody here will admit to knowing what a muttation is.
"Animals genetically engineered to use as weapons. They looked like fireflies."
But Cassian is so certain this place has nothing to do with Finnick's own experience that he won't believe him, will he? It's another thing from the Games, another thing from Panem, another game that Finnick carries with him. But Finnick knows what he saw, knows that those things didn't move like any firefly he's ever seen.
He's not wrong about this. He's not. That thing that attacked Karen, it was like nothing he'd ever seen, either, some sort of awful wolf-mutt.
He flinches back at Cassian's touch, unexpected as it is, but he stops himself, waits, once he realizes what the man's doing.
"My face and my hand. They got me three, four times."
If not more. He hopes it wasn't more. This is going to be bad enough. If not fatal.
no subject
(He was wrong. Based on everything he'd heard about them, which was all of the last two minutes, he was assuming something like fire ants. [Which are found on enough planets and tend to be similarly named, so he has heard of them.] Venomous insects with burning stings. He had no idea an Earth firefly was named not for poison but for its light and was typically harmless. Or he might have given Finnick's attribution of genetically engineered weaponization more thought.)
As it was… clearly, from Finnick's words as well as eyes, disorientation, skin flush/temperature, and tremoring (hopefully not a preliminary to seizing), they were definitely effecting him. Whether from inherent dangerousness or a more individual allergy. Either way…
Cassian's hand moved from Finnick's forehead to searching the rest of his face. Then dropped to pick up Finnick's hand, likewise examining.
He quickly made a decision.
"All right," said Cassian, pushing himself onto one knee, the other perpendicular, braced and prepped for leverage. Finnick seemed capable of standing on his own—his current predicament more psycho-sensory than physical—so Cassian didn't try to slide his arm under Finnick's shoulders, only extended his good hand. "On your feet, Odair. You're definitely having a reaction; good news, you're not having trouble breathing. So we're going to keep you awake and moving to keep your system active and help it flush out." (And diminish likelihood of shock.) "Plus, if you start feeling weaker, I won't be able carry you with one bad arm." One bad shoulder, rather, but the adjoining arm was still in a sling, supposed to stay immobile. "So you're gonna let me walk you back to Annie and get a head start on it. Yes?"
no subject
She'd screamed, and screamed, and fallen to the ground only a little after Glimmer, and he'd been haunted by her face, swollen and deformed with those huge bite wounds, for months afterwards. Still is, sometimes.
He shouldn't be this irritable, not even with Cassian. Especially not with Cassian. With Cassian he needs to play it cool, because Cassian is the man who'd read Finnick like looking at his own bad victor's-talent poetry and seeing the good stuff, the poems the Capitol never got to see.
Would that plant Rue showed Katniss in the Games last year work? Did it even grow here?
It's harder to keep his thoughts clear than it should be, and not because of the proximity of Cassian. Not because his mind's trying to evade having to concentrate on the touch of the man who'd tried to seduce him. It's trying to run off, back to last year's Games, or back to when he'd met Cassian and the fear he'd felt.
He needs the man's help, though. He can feel the venom at work, or maybe it's the memory of Marina's face that's making his skin feel so hot under the needle-pain of the bites. He's in trouble, and that means he's at Cassian's mercy.
His reluctance is obvious, but he takes the man's hand with the hand the insects didn't sting, and lets him help him to his feet.
"Choking me would be too easy."
no subject
…Well, catching one of the things for processing was a non-starter, but it could still be useful to get a description—and either way, to keep Finnick talking as they walked. "If I've ever seen a fire fly, I didn't know it by that term. Tell me what they look like?"
no subject
This man has to be pretending.
Not getting Panem, maybe Finnick could believe that, but there are so many things that Cassian says he doesn't understand. How can he not know fireflies, when fireflies have even survived into Panem, after everything that happened to the planet to leave one sole nation alone and capable of surviving?
There's a sudden sharpness in Finnick's wide-dilated eyes as he turns them back to Cassian, jerking his hand away, and taking a couple of uneven steps away from Cassian, wheeling on him.
"You think I don't know you're a spy?" he says, his voice rapid, tone rising in a way it very rarely does after so many years spent learning self-control. "You're here to try to trap me into saying something treasonous, because even now, when I have so little left, the President still thinks he needs to test me! He doesn't! I'm done! All I have left to lose is the one thing I can't survive losing, and he should know that by now!"
no subject
A choice… when someone was exhibiting symptomatic behavior, it wasn't necessarily productive to engage with it. That was only engaging the symptom, probably compounding it, making it harder for the person to come back through it. Arguing against it counted as engaging. It might only register as an attack. The key was to deescalate, reassure, let the person feel safe enough that the symptom could burn itself out or die down or retreat and the person attempt to reassume control.
The problem was… that tended to require a baseline of trust already… which they definitely didn't have…
Well… if there was a way to counterargue without provoking defensiveness, seeming to attack…
…probably not, but try. Carefully.
Cassian spread his hands. Show of submission and intent to be peaceful. And a touch of helplessness. You're not going to believe me now when you haven't before… you haven't even really grasped it… Which was not Finnick's fault, nothing to do with any individual's level of imagination or intelligence, rather a leap of perspective that required more gradual evolution usually in a whole society let alone a person… So perhaps offering it now is worse, when Finnick seems to be getting a bit delirious… On the other hand, perhaps that's the best time.
Perhaps Finnick wouldn't process any of Cassian's words. Perhaps all Cassian can hope to do is keep his voice gentle and soft, at a pitch, tempo, and frequency most conducive to smooth brainwaves, and try to help anchor and soothe Finnick.
Fine. He'll recite Yaval poetry if he has to.
But he'll start with respect Finnick's intelligence, however compromised by current ailment, and answer the question.
"I am a spy," Cassian said quietly, "but not for your president. Not for the local government of any one country. Not any one planet. I've never been to your world. I'd never heard of it before I met you. But I've traveled to many. The war I fight in spans whole star systems. I serve the Alliance to Restore the Republic against the tyranny of the Galactic Emperor."
If Finnick doesn't respond, Cassian will keep going— "If your world was one I'd have any business on, it would be spacefaring itself. I'm sorry… I wish I knew anything about your world. Terrible things obviously happen there. But we're from entirely different places. …I don't even know what I might swear on to try and make you believe me, since I don't think we'd have a reference that meant the same to both of us"
—but who knows how far he'll get.
no subject
So what comes next? Increasing agony, like the tracker-jackers? Hallucinations, like Glimmer and Marina and the others who'd been stung?
Don't show fear, not here, not to him.
He can see the overt show Cassian makes of being non-threatening. He's keeping his distance, but it's never been weapons that make Finnick fear him. It's that sense of familiarity, of power, authority, manipulation. It's feeling like he doesn't know if the man is like a patron, or a Gamemaker, or the President himself.
Or like Plutarch, quietly working to organize the rebellion that he and the handful of others involved so desperately hope will stand up against Snow and what he does, and who he is.
"You could swear on anything and lie just as easily," Finnick replies. "Talking about planets and star systems makes no sense. Nobody can reach the stars. Not anymore, if they ever could, so why tell me that?"
He's seen so many lies, so many liars. He's dug through their pasts and their allegiances to find so many truths, and he's collected them all into his head. But Cassian's lies are so impossible to believe, Finnick can't understand why he's let him convince him as far as he has, so far.
"Did you think I couldn't recognize what you are? I've known men like you, I've slept with them, and the whole country knows it."
no subject
The immaterial tirade leaves a material hollowness in his chest as it fades. Yes. Everyone. Which didn't invalidate anyone else's suffering. Quite the opposite.
And Finnick's cosmological awareness might be small, but it was a near-perfect microcosm of Cassian's. The same problems, on whatever scale. Smaller reach, fewer victims. But also less recourse for them.
Cassian shut his eyes.
(Another demonstration of submissiveness… maybe not trust, exactly; maybe faith; maybe a test. Giving Finnick an opening. See if he'll take it. See how Cassian will react if does.
…He does keep his hearing alert, just in case Finnick does try to attack him. Cassian isn't really feeling like getting his shoulder re-dislocated.
But, gladiator-fighter-killer or not, right now, he'll still be surprised if Finnick does.
Mostly, though, it's not for Finnick's benefit. It's just to calm the kark down.)
[ooc: choose your own adventure! If Finn attacks, ignore the rest of this. If not, continue:]
When Finnick didn't attack, and Cassian had his thoughts back under control, he opened his eyes.
Don't engage the symptom. Don't argue. Don't attack. Deescalate. Calm.
…Don't argue, but demonstrate…?
Keep talking. Soothingly. The Yaval poetry principle. But maybe with something a bit more pertinent.
Extending the arm not in a sling, Cassian showed Finnick his hand. The one Finnick had helped to bind that day by the spring. The one whose stitches had long gone but still showed scarring. Clean, white scars.
"You warned me against infection, remember?" Cassian said, in that soft, gentle tone. "You said in the arena, more died of infection than in combat. And you remember how badly I was taking care of myself. But look how cleanly it's healed. More cleanly than should be possible based on the available disinfectant options here. The Alliance I work for has a high level of medsci—medical technology. When I joined, they treated my blood with antiviral and antibacterial courses that will keep me from suffering infection from a hundred ecosystems' species of bacteria for the rest of my life." He'd mentioned this in passing to Finnick before—but lacking a more immediate demonstration, repetition in of itself could seem a little more grounded. (A rhetorical technique too often used to ill-effect, but in this case it was something to fall back on.)
Cassian looked around for something else. The problem with attempting to demonstrate space-age expertise was that he could currently only talk about it, and without equal expertise/fluency on Finnick's end to find the conclusions demonstrable, sound or compelling, it was just more words.
Resigned, at last, Cassian only shrugged. "I don't know, Finnick. I don't think there's any way to make you believe me. All I can tell you is that if I were trying to convince you of something, I'd damn well come up with a story I thought you'd find more convincing. But right now I just don't want to leave you alone because I'd worry about you. I want to help you get back to Annie the way you helped Jyn find me. You tell me what ulterior motive that could have, when I'm injured and you're angry and staying near you is likelier to go worse for myself than for you."
no subject
His face is flushing with warmth again; it feels hotter under his coat than it did, but Finnick's expression wavers only a little as Cassian holds out his now-healed hand. His example means less than nothing: Finnick himself had been badly injured in the arena and saved by the medicine his sponsors had sent. Medicine they'd later extracted such payment for. He's seen the victors year after year hauled out of the arena horrifically damaged, their wounds often disappearing between the ends of the Games and their crowning as victor.
"The Capitol can do that."
Gifts, secretly healing him and returning him, he only has to think about it for a moment before he comes up with two possibilities for how Cassian has healed so well, if he really is working for the Capitol.
The thing it's hard to actually believe is that Cassian is trying to make it sound like there's no possible motive he could have for this, when every interaction they've had has been charged in some way with that sparking current of fear, of looking at Cassian and knowing what nearly happened and what could happen, what he could say and do and leave Finnick just as helpless as he'd been in the Capitol.
He lets out a scoff.
"Getting me alone again. You know what I am. You tried to have me once, you saw ..."
Cassian had seen the way Finnick reacted, then. The powerless fear that made him so incapable of defending himself, when he could have attacked, in defense.
He swallows, and he leaves it there, his eyes now wide, the control he's usually so careful to show fled with the firefly-mutts.
no subject
"I'm sorry," said Cassian. "I'd misinterpreted. I didn't know." That you weren't willingly offering. That you couldn't truly give consent when the ability to withhold it had been stripped from you. "Do you want to know what had happened to me just before I came through the fountain? Why I behaved that way—and how unlikely it is to recur?"
no subject
He's the most desired man in Panem, and though there's arrogance in it, it seems natural to Finnick that a stranger want him.
How much safer he'd feel if he had his knife in his hand. He doubts he'd be able to reach it quickly enough to use it against a man like Cassian, whose very movements speak of training.
"What difference could it make?"
Later, for Annie
He's not sure if he'd lost Cassian or not, but he's also not sure how much more trying to avoid the man he's up to. Suspicious, suspicious, spy but not a spy for Snow, and he doesn't believe it, doesn't believe anything except that there's one person he can trust and he has to get back to her. Annie, Annie, Annie, and that means getting back to their house, means finding the river again, means following it until he finds the road, because if he tries to go off into the mist, he'll get lost, lost again and again and he can't see the sun to be sure he's not going in circles.
Waterfall. He dips his too-hot head in the water for a moment, then starts staggering back down the river, faster, faster, can't let himself be too slow, or he'll be caught up by the spy, and he needs not to let that happen.
He's lost track of sense and meaning and logic in his fevered desperation to be back with Annie, the one person he knows will help him. His hand and face are still painful, still burning, the sensation seeming to spread from them over the whole rest of his body. Too hot, so hot even the mist doesn't feel cold the way it did.
Finnick makes his way down the river, stumbling occasionally in the fog, an occasional sound in the distance making him push himself harder, fearing that it means he's being pursued. It seems a long, long way down the river to the edges of the village, but he comes across the isolated houses on this bank suddenly, their shapes looming out of the fog. He turns, staggers across the bridge and cuts his way around the edge of the village, trusting himself this time because he's done it so many times before.
He hears the geese before he emerges from the trees, and they've never sounded so welcome before. There's less fog this far from the river, and he can see where he's going better, too, but he wouldn't need to, not now he's so close to safety.
Finnick stumbles his way up the steps, sweating and exhausted, his face and hand marked by the bites of the firefly-mutts, calling out to Annie as he finally makes it through the door.
"Annie?"
no subject
It's the story of her life, or one of them anyway. Annie Cresta, trying not to worry. Trying not to let her mind conjure probabilities and possibilities, memories of death and impossible imaginings of maiming. It's not turning into a day where she needs to be careful when she goes up and down the stairs, but only because she's trying to keep herself busy. Not worry. She'll wash down the floor in the living room after the geese and really-not-geese, she'll make some fish hooks, she'll... she'll...
She'll spring to her feet and rush over to the kitchen door. And Finnick. The door isn't important, except that it's where Finnick is coming through all horrible. Scared, stressed, sores swelling, and he's calling for her. Frightened, that's what he is.
"Finnick? Anyone after you?"
Training comes in useful, she'll know if she should go for a staff or some clean water.
no subject
"Annie."
She's here, she's here, she's safe, he doesn't know what he'd been afraid might have happened to her, but the way relief swells in and over him is a sudden sharp contrast to the fear.
He's still breathing heavily, and he looks behind him, staring at the door as though Cassian might burst through it.
"I don't know. Cassian, maybe. Got away from him in the fog."