InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "First night on earth."

Finnick Odair (changingtide) wrote in the100,
@ 2015-06-21 16:38:00

Entry tags:

finnick odair, peeta mellark

Who: Finnick Odair and Peeta Mellark
When: Today
Where: Hospital
What: Finnick goes to visit Peeta
Rating: TBD.

He liked that most of them were here. It was good for them to have support and people they knew they could trust. But he couldn't deny that it was hard having to fight to prove that he was real. He couldn't blame them. Not after all the tricks and cons the Capitol had pulled on them. It had broken them all, physically and mentally, time and time again.

But he, unlike everyone else, didn't have the luxury of questioning the reality of this place. As he was constantly reminded, this was the only place he had. So, if this wasn't real, but was the only place he'd have with Annie and Tristan, he'd take it. But he could understand some of the other's trepidations. They had full, real lives back home, no matter how marred those places were.

He didn't really know if he could help Peeta (or even Katniss, for that matter), but what he did now was that sometime during the Quarter Quell, he'd become quite fond of both of them. Peeta reminded him just a little bit of himself -- there were marked differences of course; Finnick had been naive and arrogant, but he knew what sort of path would have waited for Peeta after the games, and that maybe it even a little bit easier to feel sympathetic toward the boy. Especially when he genuinely seemed inclined toward just wanting to help people.

It was hard to tell how much Tristan understood of this place. He was four, not a baby. Big enough to understand that a dad who had been dead and gone before was suddenly alive, and that all the family he had grown up around was a little bit different even if he didn't understand why. Maybe it didn't matter. He was excited all the same when Finnick told him that they were going to visit Peeta, but they had to be very careful and very quiet, because Peeta was in the hospital.

Tristan held his hand all the way down to the hospital. Finnick sat down in the chair next to his bed, pulling Tristan up into his lap. (He knew that wouldn't last long -- not their troublemaking son with his penchant for wandering off.)

"Hello, Peeta," Finnick said with a smile.

(Post a new comment)

breadandcircus
2015-06-22 02:39 am UTC (link)

Peeta wouldn't say he felt better. For someone who struggled so much with separating reality from fiction, real memories from fake ones, being in a place of alternate worlds and uneven timelines was intensely damaging. He couldn't shrug and move on, not when accepting this all felt like a downward spiral into madness.

The people he trusted were telling him things that didn't fit, but the explanations made more sense than the ones in his head, and he felt like he was nothing but lost.

He'd gone back to his own bed when Finnick came to see him, so he could eat something while Katniss slept. He'd go back and crawl into bed with her later, and he kept glancing her way to make sure she wasn't having a nightmare.

He was hungry, but he hadn't touched much of his food, wary that something had been done to it.

"Finnick." Peeta watched him warily, his attention flickering to Finnick's familiar face, to the child in his lap. This was his son? Tristan was a baby. Tristan was a baby, and Finnick was dead.

He inched back, ever-so-slightly.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

changingtide
2015-06-22 03:10 am UTC (link)

He wanted to help. That was the long and the short of it. in so many ways, he and Annie had been tied to Katniss and Peeta. It wasn't just a sense of obligation though. He liked both Katniss and Peeta. He didn't know Peeta as well as Katniss, but he felt that he maybe understood Peeta a little bit better.

But maybe he wasn't helping, and that was a hard truth to admit. He was supposed to be dead when Peeta was from, and just his presence had to upset that careful dichotomy that Peeta had established in his life. Finnick made a lifetime out of reading people's body language (it was the only way to survive in the Capitol sometimes), and he knew they were making him uncomfortable.

"I can send him back upstairs," Finnick offered gently, patting a hand against Tristan's stomach and jostling him a little on his knee. "And I can leave, too, if you want."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

breadandcircus
2015-06-22 03:25 am UTC (link)

"No." Avoiding the problem wasn't going to help.

Peeta looked down at the food on his tray, his brow furrowed. The explanation that there were other worlds beyond Panem, that people were being pulled through space and time ... it made sense, once you understood that it was possible in the first place. It made sense that Finnick could be alive, that Tristan could be older. It made sense that Katniss lacked some memories that she should have had but didn't.

He just couldn't wrap his head around this being real.

He'd supposedly been here for months already, but he had no memory of it at all. That didn't help, either.

"I'm really glad to see you," he said, somewhere between wanting to go hug him and keeping his distance because seeing Finnick made him feel crazy.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

changingtide
2015-06-22 03:46 am UTC (link)

Finnick nodded at Peeta's answer. He jostled Tristan once again, smoothed his hair out of his face (Finnick's blonde, but with Annie's wind-wild hair, which made it look perpetually mussed).

"Why don't you color a picture for Peeta?" Finnick asked Tristan, setting his son down on the ground with the crayons they had brought along. It was strange having to think of things all of a sudden. He liked being a dad. He just wasn't used to it. It wasn't a role he'd ever thought he'd find himself in, and to be fair, back home, he never did.

"It's good to see you, too, Peeta," Finnick said warmly, leaning in. "And for whatever it's worth, we've all been eating the food," he said, nodding toward the untouched tray that sat beside Peeta.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

breadandcircus
2015-06-22 03:57 am UTC (link)

Peeta's expression softened when Tristan sat on the floor to color. It was hard to stay suspicious of a toddler, especially when he was enjoying coloring. He wondered if his own children would be artistic — he wondered if he'd have children at all.

He glanced at the food, and reluctantly took a small sip of the tea he'd been given. It had long since gone cold, but it was something.

An uncomfortable silence followed. He didn't know what to say. Protesting the situation wasn't doing anything but making it worse. Instead, he asked: "How is she?"

To Peeta, there wasn't another girl in the world other than Katniss. He needed to know about her first.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

changingtide
2015-06-22 07:03 pm UTC (link)

Finnick didn't need to ask who he was talking about. Katniss, of course. It was a bit of a loaded question, as always, when it came to the two of them. Until a few days ago, he could have easily answered fine. Now it wasn't so simple. Even if her injury had been the only thing, Finnick felt that he could have answered relatively confidently. The physical was so much easier to fix than the mental, after all. She had needed a bit of blood and now just needed some time to heal.

But he knew that losing Peeta and having him returned so quickly had shaken her a little. He had felt almost guilty when she had written him, asking him to repeat whatever magic he had said in Thirteen that apparently helped her realize her own mind when it came to her feelings for Gale and Peeta. (Unfortunately, there was no magic wand he could wave; he couldn't say she loved one over the other, or even loved one in the way she so obviously wanted to. It was the first time he had been appreciative of his relationship with Annie, which was perhaps telling. They'd gone through hell and back for each other, and Finnick had so adamantly denied how he felt about her for so long, but once he had known, he had known.)

And that wasn't to mention that she didn't know about Prim yet. That had been a bombshell of a revelation, and he didn't doubt that it would decimate Katniss when she found out -- and she would find it. It felt risky not to just tell her. But how could he? How could any of them? How could they tell Katniss that the person she had been fighting for, above anybody else, the one she wanted to save, was another person sacrificed to Snow?

"She'll be all right," Finnick said quietly, glancing over at Katniss. "She's strong. You know."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

breadandcircus
2015-06-22 09:37 pm UTC (link)

Peeta knew now that there were some discrepancies between them, that Katniss lacked memories that he had, lacked experiences. He didn't know how much she was missing, supposedly because of "timelines", but he knew that Katniss didn't remember being ... together, for the first time. Peeta knew he hadn't dreamed it, he knew it was real, knew that those private, perfect moments were theirs.

His, now. Just his.

He watched her, nodding. "I know she is."

He pulled the tray into his lap and finally began to eat. "Has she ... said anything? About me." Not to drag Finnick into it, not to ask uncomfortable personal questions, but there were months of time that Peeta apparently couldn't account for here, and he didn't know where he stood with Katniss. Maybe Finnick did.

(Reply to this) (Parent)