Fic: From the Depths (The Hunger Games)

[keep_counting]

Title: From the Depths 
Characters/Pairings: Finnick Odair, Mags, Finnick/Annie
Rating R
Warnings: Allusions to violent deaths, bloodshed, sexual acts (not explicit) and mythological sea-creatures
Genre: Drama/Romance
Word-count: 1,861
A/N: This is a result of reading up on Nordic myths when I should be studying modern art. And also, for my unyielding and deep love for Finnick and the books in general. Not beta'ed - sorry!
Summary: 'We don't need fairy-tale monsters. We have enough in the real world'

From the Depths

 

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell…

 

“The fish are often attracted to it,” Finnick’s father had once told him, when he’d been nothing but a young boy and the sea was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “So we must take the risk of sailing right over It.”

He never said Its name: never uttered the word. Most sailors didn’t – superstitions went a long way in a world where people could disappear faster than you could say Capitol, and the sea was as merciless as the hunger that often found way into their homes.

It was his mother that first gave it a name: Kraken, she’d whispered to him in the darkest throes of the night, when the rain had thundered against the water outside and made that low, echo-y sound that kept him awake years later.

Like golden metal hitting flesh. Like blood pouring to the ground.

“It is a great beast,” His mother would tell him, her face only illuminated by the shadowy, almost sickly light from the single lit lamp. “It comes upon the sailors when they least expect it. Its tentacle arms reaching up and pulling everything down into the very depths of the ocean. Its eyes are huge and black, its mouth is a huge hole of teeth as sharp as a trident and if you listen closely, you may hear the screams of the still-living victims it has swallowed whole.” Her eyes seemed as dark as the Krakens, her voice quivering slightly. “And if you are not careful… it will come for you as well.”

When he was younger, Finnick feared the Kraken more than he feared starving or even the Games. It was a horrible monster, arising from the sea – the very thing that gave them life and strength, now standing against them. It was cold and unfeeling, no human emotions blocking its way. No creature bigger or more terrifying.

The first time he stayed in the boat overnight, waves floating all around them, his father snoring lightly without a care in the world, Finnick lay awake trembling and waiting for the first push, the gentle shift that would announce something heavy and out of place coming. It never did of course; they were far too close to land. Close to safety.

He became calmer as the years progressed and nothing happened: but still, every time someone didn’t make it home, there was that quiet nagging in the back of his mind, the vision of long tentacles and black eyes. He would creep up beside his siblings, curl in on himself and wonder if this monstrous thing could crawl unto land.

“Scylla,” Mags had called it as Finnick threw another knife and hit his target. “The most dangerous thing in the seas.”

“No one has ever seen it,” Finnick would counter, the all-too familiar feeling creeping into his spine. “We can’t be sure that it’s real.” His throat was dry and he missed his mark completely. “It’s just a fairy-tale monster.”

Her eyes seemed to grow darker, her mouth set in a tight line. “Your mother was foolish to tell you those tales. We don’t need fairy-tale monsters.”

She didn’t say anything else, but Finnick heard the rest of her sentence clearly.

We have enough monsters in the real world.

Later, when he came home from the Games, victor and glorious and covered in unseen blood, he would lie shaken in his new bed and his youngest sister would silently creep into his room, her face streaked with tears.

“Nightmare?” He whispered into her hair, his heart beating in joy that she wasn’t scared of him. He wondered if their parents had let her see the little girl from seven that he’d impaled.

“It just… grabbed me out of nowhere,” Her voice was choking on tears as she hid her face in the crook of his neck. “It took me away…”

Yes, Finnick thought. The Capitol does that.

It wasn’t until the dawn had brightened and a new day shone upon him, that he realized she’d meant the monster from his youth.

 

… And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.

 

Annie Cresta is a wonder and a stranger.

 “They all die,” He tells Mags, looking at the thin, wispy girl and the scared looking, but determined boy. Tributes of District 4 for the 70th Hunger Game.

For the last five years, he’s had to watch people with reddish-brown hair and eyes like his sister being torn apart. He’s beginning to understand why the Capitol throws up force-fields on every building that’s more than two stories high.

She’s quiet and tentative, but so very beautiful, as she sits quietly on the roof, her hair – darker than what is normal for someone from 4 – shining in the fading sunlight. He thinks that someone with talent could probably write poetry, long and winding sonnets about that hair and that glow and those mesmerizing eyes and how she’ll die before the week is over.

She doesn’t die. She wins and it’s horrible. Her screams as they lift her out of the Arena. The blank hollowness of her expression, the light trembling in her left hand: she’d held a knife in that hand, tearing up a boy from 12 to pieces. She’d been trying to run, but he’d pursued her, as mad from all the bloodshed as she had become.

The Gamemakers are frustrated, their teeth clenched and lines of worry appearing on their beautiful – fake – faces. They can’t show a broken winner. They can’t use her.

He slips into her room that night, charming his way past the nurses and doctors with an ease that after five years still makes him a bit sick. But he can’t stand to look at the tears in Mags’ eyes anymore. He’d rather be with an insane victor than a grieving one.

She looks as pale as the sheets around her, but her eyes blink open as soon as he stands by her. She looks startled for a moment, but then seems to settle, looking at him curiously.

“Why are you here?” She asks, her voice croaky from having screamed and cried all day. Finnick wonders what she means: ‘Why are you here and not with one of your lovers?’ ‘Why are you here and not out celebrating?’ ‘Why are you here, when I’m nothing but a broken bird in a cage, a poor, mad girl and still better off than you?’

He allows himself a moment to resent her for this: for acting like a lunatic so that they couldn’t use her, couldn’t sell out her body and her soul.

I could tell you secrets, he thinks. But, for now, they are mine to keep.

Finnick turns and leaves the room, her gaze heavy upon his back.

Later, he will find her sitting on a pier, waves crashing against stones and her hair flying in the wind. His first impulse is to turn around, walk away, but she’s shivering in the cold – why didn’t she bring a jacket? – and he does the gentlemanly thing and walks over to offer his.

“Maybe you should come back inside,” He mumbles, his voice almost lost to the wind. She’s shaking and her lips are turning a sickly shade of blue. She must have been out here for hours.

“He’s gone,” She says, sounding loud and clear and so incredibly frightened. “It took him… my father… he’s gone…”

Finnick blinks and follows her gaze, the angry swirls of a whirlpool creating patterns in the water.

“It is so huge that there is danger in it just rising from the sea: it creates such disturbances as it arises as to crash a boat and when it descends, it can leave whirlpools the size of houses in its wake.”

His mother had told him that it was so huge it was often mistaken for an island. Finnick lets his gaze shift, from one unclear, great shape in the distance to the next, wondering which one will sink below any minute now, it’s flailing arms lazily creating waves ten feet tall.

Annie starts crying and he takes her back to the small fisher-cottage that used to belong to his family before they moved into the Victors City. She’s shaking in his arms as he puts her in front of the fire, tugging her into blankets.

“What scares you the most?” He asks as she’s calmed down somewhat, her small form leaned against his shoulder. He’s poking the fire with a long twig, sparks flying everywhere and keeping away the darkness. “The Capitol or the Kraken?”

She flinches as he says it and for a moment, he’s afraid she’ll go into shock again, but she only reaches up and clutches his arm tightly.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what is real anymore and what is not,” She confesses, sounding as if she is barring a whole life and soul to him. In a way, he thinks that she is. “I wake from my nightmares and find myself in another one. I’m not sure when I am sleeping. I am not sure if I am here or in the Arena still.”

Finnick thinks of the little, frightened girl whose blood was covering his hands, of monsters with black eyes and mutts with even darker, of fire that water could not quench and of the smell of blood as President Snow clasped his hands, declaring him the victor.

As a dark-haired girl with eyes full of rage forces the Capitol to save not one, but two tributes, Finnick thinks that maybe he isn’t sure what is real anymore. Except for maybe Annie’s soft skin beneath his, her hair tickling and her mouth a holy cavern of warmth that sets his entire body on fire. Not even the cool salt-water can soothe him like she can now and when he’s away from her, he wonders how it happened, when it happened and when he sees her again he wants to ask, but is lost for words.

“Don’t sail out again,” She says to him one night. He isn’t sure what she means, but when he asks her eyes flicker and she looks frightened, so he gently enfolds her in his arms and sits quietly, rocking her in his arms.

“I’m not going anywhere,” He lies and somewhere, someone whispers, a single word that will set of an explosion and he sees a girl with determined eyes and a golden emblem of a bird and Finnick thinks that, at least, as long as there are monsters in this world, there will always be people to fight them.




 

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die

-‘The Kraken’ by Tennyson

 

 

 

Comments

[devymel12.livejournal.com]

Lovely. :')

[mrstater.livejournal.com]

I just read this last night and wow, it's really gorgeous. I love Finnick fic that ties District 4 in with old sea myths, and your use of the Kraken was creepy and brilliant, and the whole thing is just gorgeously worded. I think my favorite bit was Finnick's irrational anger at Annie for "acting crazy" so she couldn't be used--that's an intriguing premise, to be sure.

Well done, write more Finnick/Annie, please

[wethrowknives.livejournal.com]

this was just beautiful.