fallaces_sunt | PL: Finnick Odair

"The Capitol. There's only one."

There is no which Capitol in Panem. It's the Capitol, because there is no other, because Panem is the only nation left habitable. The certainty he'd felt with such sudden conviction begins to wane, just as quickly. She looks confused, and she sounds confused, just live everyone else here has been when he's talked about Panem. He's a consummate liar and performer, but he constantly finds himself wondering if this many people could act this well for this long.

His stance, his gaze as it turns back to the mutt, both have the tense wariness of a victor, and one who'd been trained before the arena.

It hadn't been all that long ago he'd been fighting to the death against engineered monkeys in that nightmare jungle.

She'd been kind, this woman, when his thoughts had been so very hard to muster and so very dark when he did.

"You're saying someone bought it for you. As a pet."

There's a flat sort of incredulity in his voice. He's still holding his hands up defensively, still watching the mutt, though it's made no aggressive move against him.

He's not about to let it.

She looks from him to her dog, and if there's starting to be some tension in the way she stands, well. She did just say the dog is a pet.

She also spends a moment apparently mostly ignoring Finnick, stooping down slightly and clicking her fingers.

"Velkin, c'mere. C'mon. Come." Her voice is gentle, but commanding. The dog whines and sits down, but his tiny body is still clearly poised to start running.

Natasha makes a face and glances up at Finnick.

"Belated birthday present. But you gotta know Steve, I guess." Then she straightens. "On your planet, maybe. On mine? The United States of America, where I live? It has the national capitol, Washington DC. It's also got fifty states, and they have their capitols. That's one country. The United Nations recognizes two hundred and six countries. I've lived in a number of capitols, but the only one I'm actually from, trust me, you've never heard of it."

She regards him for a moment. "I can start listing them, if you want?"

"Washington DC. Ottawa. Mexico City. Belmopan. Guatemala. San Salvador. I know the names. None of them are there anymore."

It had taken Finnick and Annie some research to even learn that much, as pitifully insignificant as it seems in comparison to how much they've worked out they don't know. It takes careful application not to show how much that fact bothers him as he lists off the names so casually, but he does it well.

He's had plenty of practice at pretending things don't bother him.

The whole time he's speaking, Finnick's eyes haven't left the creature. If what she says about knowing different nations is true, she's not from his time and place, not Capitol, and the creature's not a genetically engineered weapon.

It doesn't have the eerie aura that so many mutts have. It hasn't done anything horrific. Hasn't set out to torture or attack him.

It's acting just like a dog, even if it doesn't look like one, and that relization makes the tension in Finnick's body lessen, almost but not quite imperceptibly as he looks at Natasha again.

"For you," Natasha says. Her expression is neutral, the kind of impassive which has many deep emotions roiling underneath the poise. There are many reasons for cities not to exist: she's lived through a number of them, and lived for decades with the threat of others.

This time, when Spike Velikan uses the opportunity to start slinking off, Natasha lets him.

(For now.)

"For you," she repeats, "in your universe. Or your time, or whatever variation it is. For me, they are still there. Same as with this universe." Then her mouth curves, and she seems, for a moment, older than the maybe-thirty she looks. "The capitol I was born in. Volgograd, Volgogradskaya oblast, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya. Or, in English, Volgograd, of Volograd Oblast, which is an administrative area in the Russian Federation. From your accent, I'd say...American, Mexican, maybe. I'm Russian.

So, trust me, whatever capitol you're thinking of? I'm not from there. And neither's my dog," Natasha adds, her throaty voice now dryly amused.

Edited 2015-04-17 05:08 (UTC)

Finnick has made his life in the Capitol the -- albeit dubious -- success it is by being able to read people. It's a combination of the way he can distract people, make them give things away, his training before the Games, his years spent studying tributes as a mentor, and a natural talent.

She's hard to read, the way her expression says so little about what she's thinking in reaction to what he's said about those cities.

What he can read, though, is the way that her voice changes when she speaks, pronouncing the names of the places. She speaks the words naturally, not like someone trying to learn someone else's accent, like the people in the Capitol who overdo the way they speak, like Finnick himself whose accent, though Natasha has heard it, is faint in comparison to those of most people in District Four.

"It's called District Four now. They say it's where Mexico used to be."

He's still tense, ready to move, but no longer looking like he's about to spring to his own defence. It's only now that his hands slowly lower.

He gestures to one side.

"I think he's trying to get away. Use me as a distraction."

His voice is just as dry as hers.

Well, 'used to be' doesn't sound good. Neither does 'District Four'; there's something distinctly imperial about renaming an entire country, and her eyebrows raise, very slightly.

But not the time to ask to satisfy her own curiosity.

"He's a puppy," Natasha says with a long-suffering sigh. "And way too smart for his own good. Velikan, come," she adds, patting her thigh loudly and then clicking her fingers.

"Come on, come here- Fine."

She doesn't break into a run. At least, not until she's moved past Finnick, where he wouldn't consider a burst of movement a threat.

Then she runs, and the puppy runs. But the puppy's been running for a while, and his legs are short, and Natasha catches him before he manages to turn around the corner. She clips the lead onto his collar, and then scoops him up.

"You're a silly boy," Natasha croons at Velikan as she walks back down the corridor.

Velikan just chews his squeaky toy, and occasionally makes a half-hearted attempt to wriggle out of his owner's arms.

He may be too smart for his own good, as Natasha says, but it's not in the way that a mutt would be. Their intelligence is extremely limited, mostly to creative ways to kill and spy. They're designed, almost programmed, to act in particular ways, and though Finnick's still watching the dog, he can see nothing of what he's come to know as the behavior of mutts, after so many years of watching the Hunger Games.

After fighting so many mutts himself.

It looks ... off, like but unlike the dogs he knows, but it's not like those eery monkeys that had tried to tear him apart in the arena, or like the jabberjays that had screamed with Annie's voice. It's like the people here he's been told are from other worlds, are alien.

Logic, as well as Natasha's word, say she's telling the truth about the dog.

He watches her as she runs after the dog, watches the dog tire and its owner catch it up and collect it in her arms. She doesn't just run, she runs like someone used to running, moves with the ease of someone comfortable in their body.

He's still watching, with the wariness of a victor, as she comes back with the dog.

"Right," Natasha says once she's closer to Finnick. "Hi. This is my dog. Spike Velikan. I'm aware it's a ludicrous name, but it's a long story."

Velikan gives another wriggle, but most of his movement is in his hairless, leathery tail, which is currently wagging and thumping into Natasha's thigh. Apart from occasionally adjusting her grip, she's ignoring this with the resignation only pet-owners and parents can really muster.

"As I said, he could be a 'mutt', in that he's a mix of different breeds of dog. But I don't think that's what you meant, is it?"

She's not entirely relaxed, and her hold on the dog is protective as well as firm. Her eyes, green and lovely, are intent on Finnick. But her voice isn't accusing, isn't angry, and if her stance isn't entirely relaxed, it's more so than it had been while he stood between her and the puppy.

Edited 2015-04-18 12:07 (UTC)

"No," he says, simply. "It's not."

He's still watching the dog, his startling green eyes still focused, but now it's less intent, less like he's trying to stare through the puppy, and he looks back up at Natasha as he speaks.

Natasha is watching him, too, and for a moment, their eyes meet. There's no judgment in Finnick's expression, but there is assessment, wary assessment, like there is about so much here.

"Where I'm from, a 'mutt' is a muttation. A specially engineered creature created by the Capitol as a weapon. They look like animals that aren't quite right. Giant dogs or monkeys with retractable claws or birds with razor sharp beaks."

Or, he'd thought, dogs with horns.

"Charming," Natasha says, voice dry. Given his reaction, she wonders if people in the Capitol use the muttations to hunt people down. After all, he'd said he was from a district: those in power can get bored and corrupt so easily. Look at tsars and their nobles, and the serfs.

Look at the scientists who had designed her augmentations.

Not that any of this really shows on her face: his eyes might be startlingly, shockingly clear, but hers are opaque.

Then again, her very control is a tell all of its own.

"Velikan, if you look on the computer, you can read up on his species. His planet, even."

The puppy drops his toy and tries to throw himself after it, but she tightens her grip so instead Velikan is left with his head dangling over her hand, staring at the toy on the carpet.

"Weapons against....who?"

If her lack of reaction is a tell, it's one Finnick doesn't notice: he's more prone to noticing an extreme reaction to his descriptions of Panem than he is a lack of emotion.

"What is his species?"

His face is as coolly controlled as Natasha's, in its own way, though his version of cool still has something of the coyly flirtatious in it, because even when he's not on display for the Capitol, that's still a tool he can use, and one of his best. He distracts people. He rattles them.

Right now, he's not even doing it on purpose, but that doesn't stop the fact that when his gaze drops from Natasha back to the dog, there's a little more lowering of the lids than is needed, and he looks at the dog through his lashes for just a moment before his eyes open fully.

"At first, against the rebels during the Dark Days. They created birds that could spy and wasps that could make people hallucinate and all sorts of other mutts. Now..."

He shrugs. "Now they use them on the tributes in the Hunger Games. They've gotten really good at mutts."

The thought of the jabberjays' screams still makes his expression falter, just a little.

"Canis Alfa, from Planet Alfa 177."

He's a gorgeous man, is Finnick Odair, although she wants to say 'boy'. It's not so much how old he looks, or even the way he's starting to flirt as the startlement fades, but how old he makes her feel.

His reactions are far, far too familiar to someone who was born in 1928, in a city on the banks of the Volga.

"The Hunger Games," Natasha repeats, slowly.

Tributes.

Tributes in games with animals to toy with them.

Tributes when the boy was staring at her foolish, small dog like Velikan was an actual, viable threat, when he sounds weary and matter-of-fact.

But the speculation, Natasha keeps to herself. Old habits, she wants to see what he'll say first.

He nods as she gives him the information, nods and puts it to one side, in his mind, where he can check it when he gets back to the little computer they'd given him in his room when he'd first been assigned his permanent quarters.

He's not, to be true, entirely familiar with dogs, though there had been some, of course, nosing around the docks back in Fishery 8 when he was a kid, and if they'd seen someone with something they wanted that they were kept from, they acted just like the little dog in Natasha's arms, necks stretched out, little whimpering whines coming from their throats.

It's staring at the thing it had dropped, the little toy, like a baby that's dropped something and is waiting for its parent to pick it up.

Finnick looks up from the dog back to Natasha.

"The Hunger Games," he says, echoing his own words and her repetition.

Of course she'd be ignorant of them. She showed a flicker of curiosity at the name of District Four, she asked which Capitol he meant, she says she's from a country that in his world, he can only assume is gone and uninhabitable.

"It's an annual spectacle in which twenty four children from the districts go to the Capitol as tributes to fight to the death in a specially designed arena. Mutts tend to feature."

It would be a lie to say that she's shocked. The clues had been there, and the only thing she'd been wrong about was the age.

Children.

She's seen awful things, has Nataliya Alianovna Romanova. Survived awful things, done her own share of supporting a cruel, dysfunctional regime, but she's seen more. She's seen, too, a number of things that seem milder in compariason. Training, training of children, of little girls, into spies and killers. Underground fights, too: dogs, people. The former to the death, the latter...

Well. Weren't the gladiatorial games the Romans adored popular for a reason?

(And didn't some of those little girls kill each other?

Yes.)

His phrasing implies, heavily, that he's seen these games - she'd lay odds on him having personal contact with these mutts, but at the very least, he's most likely seen them. That leads to some other implications of its own, although she doesn't have enough clues yet to work out the details. But it's not that which is tripping her.

She's not shocked.

But spectacle implies entertainment, and Natasha is, coldly and abruptly, furious.

"I see," she manages. Her voice is even, cool even: her expression, in contrast, might still be controlled, but anger is leading a distinct tension to her jaw, to the set of her mouth, to her eyes.

Finnick's a good enough reader of people to know the way her face shifts, ever so subtly, but shifts nevertheless. It's the sort of expression of anger he's used to seeing. Stating anger at the Capitol out loud can get you killed. So people's eyes harden, their jaws tighten, their lips thin.

Even if they say nothing, their fury is there. People who'd known children who'd died in the Games. People at the tributes' funerals he's attended, who knew the children who'd died, who saw him as an agent of the Games because he'd been their dead child's mentor and he'd failed.

"It's a reminder from the Capitol to the districts of the cost of rebellion."

If they can take your children and do that to them, you mean nothing. You are powerless. Hopeless. Broken. That's the message, as much as the hope the victors embody.

"Oh, I bet it is." There's a warmth to her voice that wasn't there before, but it's not a good warmth. She smiles, faintly. "Also a good reminder of the cost of not."

The smile deepens to one side.

"Sorry. Won't ask you to agree."

Either he believes, he doesn't, or he's trying to believe when he can't anymore: any of those states can be dangerous ones, and expecting him to agree to righteous anger from an outsider is selfish.

"You from the same world as that dark-haired girl with the bow?"

Edited 2015-04-19 07:17 (UTC)

It's the Capitol's line, and it's meticulously sold: this is your punishment, this is your fault, it is only the good grace of the Capitol that means 23 of you die each year instead of all of you. Be grateful it's just your children and remember it could be all of you instead.

He knows the line. And it's a very good weapon of fear.

Natasha's voice is heated, though her expression has a smile, a hard one, not unlike the one he sometimes wears himself.

He won't say anything to her about agreeing or not agreeing with her, but she at least gives him that much. He takes the chance she gives him to bend down and pick up the thing the dog is whining after. Its head follows him, its whimpering gets higher pitched.

Finnick holds the thing for a long couple of moments after he straightens up, then offers it, gingerly, to the little creature.

His expression is perfectly controlled.

"Katniss." He only knows one person here matching that description. "Yeah. We were in the Games together."

SQUEAKY. HIS SQUEAKY. HIS SQUEAKY HAS RETURNED. Velikan quivers with excitement as Finnick picks up the toy, but instead of lunging when he returns it, the dog takes the toy back gently.

Reverently.

For a moment, Natasha's smile softens. Then it fades away.

"She mentioned games when she arrived. A lot of things make sense now." So many things. "You mentioned District Four...what's your country called?"

Edited 2015-04-19 11:01 (UTC)

Finnick doesn't show the moment of fear as he holds out his hand into the dog's reach. His hand is steady, but he's watching the dog, green eyes fixed on it. It doesn't lunge out: it leans, carefully, and closes its jaws around it. Just the toy. Just like a dog begging for food or a stick to play with out on the docks.

There's a loud squeaking sound.

Maybe it really is just a dog. An alien dog, not a mutt, just like those people with the strange color and texture to their skin are, apparently, not Capitol-enhanced, but people from other worlds.

"Panem."

He still remembers, even after the fog had lifted, somewhat, from his mind, the conversation he'd had with the girl who gave him the ribbon. About Panem. About what that means.

"What sort of things?" he asks, something slow and suggestive in the corner of his smile.

For a moment, she looks confused. Panem? Who the hell calls their country that?

Then she thinks of a boy she'd walked out with in Moscow during her first year of university. Andrei. Classics major. He'd think it was funny.

(They hadn't walked out for very long.)

Maybe North America was taken over by Classics majors.

Then her expression settles to just being amused. "Oh, you know. Things like having to talk her down from shooting everyone as soon as she arrived." Her tone is conversational, chatty, with just the faintest burr of sarcasm to highlight the rest. If he picks it up.

But he's recovering well from being scared, and if he's come from the kind of country she thinks she has, and can still pull on a subtle flirt as he breathes while surviving this long, then she thinks he will.

Edited 2015-04-19 12:42 (UTC)

"I can't blame her," he says, his voice light, that smile lingering over his lips.

He'd had to be talked down when he arrived here himself. Katniss hadn't been pulled here straight from the arena like Finnick, but she'd survived two Hunger Games and the revolution, and Finnick knows victors.

He still doesn't know just what the Quarter Quell has done to him, but he knows his constant edginess, his wariness, his sharply honed reactions are all more sensitive than they were. It had taken a lot for Doctor Bashir to persuade him to stand down enough to lower his weapon.

"Victors of the Hunger Games tend not to react well to sudden changes."

Edited 2015-04-19 13:24 (UTC)

Her smile back is decidedly crooked as she looks at him.

"No, you wouldn't. People who survived violence, and violence like that...No. We don't tend to react well to situations like being dropped here."

Her use of 'we' is deliberate, as is the clarification about survivors.

The Games, no matter how horrible, no matter how much they clearly have written themselves into the brains of Finnick and Katniss, aren't the only thing that makes people act like they do.

"I arrived here out of the arena. I was just about ready to kill the first person I saw."

It was lucky for Doctor Bashir that Finnick, while he has sharp, practiced reflexes, also knows how to assess a threat in an instant, and act on it, and Doctor Bashir had been assessed as not an immediate threat to his life.

Still, there's no abashment in Finnick's words: Natasha has given away something about herself, and that honestly, at least, deserves the frankness of his reply.

"I only know victors," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "But I do know victors. None of us would have taken being here well."

Even aside from the constant fear of the Capitol and their spies, that shock would unsettle any of them with the wits left to be unsettled.

Natasha inclines her head in acknowledgement at that, but her expression is thoughtful. "There are, uh, a few people here. From my world. People I know. So, the possibility is there we're being brought in batches, at least initially. Some people go back.

If more victors, from your world, arrived. Would you know them? Be able to talk them down?"

She was able to talk down Katniss, at least. But Katniss and Finnick have too many similarities in the jumpy and potential for violence. If more arrive...

Well.

Natasha does take trying to protect civilians seriously.

"So far, the evidence would support that. There are more people here from my world, too."

Not all victors, but almost all. And they'd been reaped, all of them who are here: Finnick, Annie, Katniss, Peeta, Prim, Haymitch. Finnick, Katniss, and Peeta had been reaped once and volunteered once. Annie and Haymitch had been reaped twice. Prim, the once. All three of them saved, once, by someone volunteering for them.

In truth, he's already done precisely what she's asking about, when Annie arrived. He'd soothed her, talked to her, assured her that it was going to be all right, though Annie hadn't been about to offer violence.

She had been frightened and confused and high on morphling, though.

"I'd know them," he says. "I've known the rest of them for years." Except Katniss and Peeta, but they're already here.

"Whether I'd be able to talk them down or not..." He shrugs, and for an excuse not to look at her a moment, looks down at the dog in her arms, apparently entirely contented now it has the toy back.

"Most of them don't like me enough to trust my word."

Velikan watches Finnick back, around gnawing his squeaky toy. Slow gnawing now, though: the puppy is starting to radiate tired. Escaping has been a lot of excitement for an animal who isn't that old.

"Ah," Natasha says in the tones of one who is really saying damn. "Well, worth a shot. I think we'd all prefer people not to get hurt just because someone's having a freak-out."

She sighs then.

"Well. I should be getting back to my place before Velikan falls asleep on me."

"I'll do what I can."

He says it quietly, but he's sincere and that's there, in his voice, for someone who's listening. He knows victors. They've been most of the people he's known and socialized with for years. He knows how dangerous they are when they're frightened or threatened. They didn't all survive by killing, but most of them did, and even those who didn't ... they're still uneasy.

"That includes the victors."

Whatever people might think of them, there aren't many victors who won because they enjoy killing. Not even Finnick, though he'll kill when it's needed, kill for his own protection.

He nods, giving her a slyly teasing smile.

"I guess having to wake him up to put him to bed would be counterproductive."

Edited 2015-06-21 04:37 (UTC)

"I was including them." It's said mildly, no hint of defensiveness. She knows the attackers in situations aren't always thought of, but she also knows very well how much people in the grips of panic might do things that they might not otherwise.

Natasha's expression turns into a crooked little smirk. "Just a little," she says. "So, I'll be seeing you around, Finnick."

The public in Panem tend not to see the victors' damage. They see Finnick's beauty and popularity without what it does to him ever time he goes to the Capitol. They see the drugs, the drink, the things the victors turn to so they can chase some of the nightmares and fears and memories away, but they don't see why.

They don't hear the screams in the night the way he and Annie do.

And here, in this situation, they'd see the violence without thinking of the reason for the snap reactions.

Natasha, he thinks, gets it. So he nods, and he looks at the dog again, letting his smile grow a little in response to Natasha's.

"Kind of hard to avoid someone in a place like this," he points out easily.

Avoiding each other isn't the point, and if he sees Natasha again, he won't avoid her. Or her dog.

"Hard, but not impossible. Just a challenge." She sounds amused, though it's more directed internally than at him.

She inclines her head in farewell, and walks back down the hallway the way she came. Her back is to him - it has to be - but she doesn't walk away faster. Call it a pointed act of social trust.

Because, yes.

She gets it.

PL: Finnick Odair

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