Archive of Our Own

“Mary Caddel!” I squeeze the girl’s hand, but she pulls away from me. This can’t be happening. She’s only fourteen. She’s my age. She’s… at the stairs!

“No!” The shock is gone, and now I’m screaming. Maybe. I can’t be sure with how far away everything sounds.

The group of Seam kids I'm in parts down the middle as I run forward. She turns to me, looking ready to cry. I hate it when she cries. It tears me apart. I run into her, holding her tight and catching us with a hand on the stage behind her so she won’t hit her head. That’s the last thing she needs.

“What are you doing, Iris?” she whispers.

“Let me volunteer.” She shakes her head. “I’m going to anyway.”

“Iris —”

“I volunteer!”

“Iris!” She starts pounding her fists into my shoulders. I don’t even flinch. I just keep my arms tight around her waist.

“I volunteer as tribute.” I look up at the very colorful Effie Trinket that stands on stage. Mary’s still slamming her fists into me like it will change anything, and now I can hear Katniss and Prim behind me, and how my mother and father are trying desperately to calm them down.

“Lovely!” says Effie Trinket. “But there’s a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth, then we, um…” she trails off, unsure herself. We never have volunteers in District 12.

“It doesn’t matter,” says the mayor. “Just let her forward.”

“Iris! Iris, don’t! Please don’t!” I smile at Mary.

“I already did.” She’s trying to shake me now, but it’s not really working. We’re both smaller than we should be, but I’m just barely bigger than her, and I’ve set my feet so I won’t move. “My mother will kill me if this dress gets ruined. Be careful.”

“That’s not funny,” she cries. We both know it won’t be my mother killing me.

“It’s a little funny.” I keep my smile. I don’t want her to think I’m worried or terrified or anything else I’m feeling.

I carefully pry her fingers off my dress and step away, climbing the steps and stopping at Effie’s side.

“Oh, joy!” gushes Effie. “What’s your name?”

“Iris Everdeen.” There’s a wail from the back of the crowd, and Mary, still in front of the stage, collapses, like me being up there means I already have one foot in the grave, which I do.

I shoot up and gasp for breath. My hands are gripping the sheets, and the fabric is keeping my nails from breaking the skin of my palms.

“Hey.” I look down at the groggy man beside me. He fully opens his eyes and sits up at my terrified expression. He groans when he does, and I fall into his arms when he opens them.

“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head and kisses my temple.

“Don’t be,” Finnick says, his voice still rough from sleep. “I get them too. We all get them.” He knows my dreams almost as well as I do, both good and bad. It’s almost reaping day. It doesn’t take a genius to guess what day I’m remembering now. Volunteering for my childhood sweetheart. I’m glad I managed to wake up when I did. It always ends the same: coming back to find her dead in my new home.

And it was all because I played the Games better than Snow. That’s what Haymitch said when we came home from the Capitol after the 67th Hunger Games.

I had found the force field around the arena. It came down to me and who I think was a tribute from District 1, if my math was right. I tried to keep count of how many were left, not who. I could thank Haymitch for that bit of advice. Don’t think about names or faces… don’t think about people at all. It really does make things easier.

But it was just us, that I remember. I remember I knew I could never beat him. He was twice my size. He was stronger, faster. I had agility and brains, but when you're fighting for your life, those skills aren’t as good as one might think.

I made it to the edge of the arena. On-screen, and if you were brave enough to get close to the force field and look over the edge, it looked like a floating island. Obviously, it wasn’t, but it was beautiful. I wouldn’t have minded dying there, but I had come too far, and I would not let anyone take me out but me.

I had found a gap between the arena itself and the barrier around it. I was small enough to slip through, so I did, and I stabbed my knife into the soft Earth, somehow lucky enough to snag it in the roots in the dirt. I was nearly under the arena, but the tribute thought I had fallen to my death. He lost his hearing earlier in the Games. He couldn’t hear the cannon, but I thought he’d be able to feel it, and I’d be given away. It never happened. I had taken another knife from the belt around my waist and stabbed it into the barrier. It ricocheted off into the back of the cheering tribute’s head.

Haymitch had won his Game in a similar fashion, and he warned me what to prepare for when I got home. I wasn’t worried. I had won fair and square, just not in the eyes of Snow. I was trying to move my family into the best home we would ever know and found the girl I was ready to die for in the doorway of the hall, on the ground, with a knife from the arena in the back of her head.

I pushed everyone back. We were going back to the Seam, and we weren’t taking a thing from the Capitol. We weren’t using any of my “winnings”. We were doing fine enough before it; we didn’t need it now.

“Hey, come back to me.” I look up at Finnick’s soft voice.

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry.” He kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. You don’t deserve to feel like this.”

I love Finnick. He doesn’t know it, but I do. Every moment with him becomes my new reason to live. I can’t live for my family, not after our father died because of me.

Two years after I won, Snow stopped me on my way to the train with Haymitch with what he called a proposition. Please his people and be rewarded.

By then, I had already known Finnick. He helped me. I beat him for youngest victor. Not many people knew, but according to Finnick, I beat him by just a few months. We both won at fourteen.

Finnick had gone through this. He was the Capitol golden boy, and while I never understood it, it wasn’t something I judged. I had to do things I didn’t want to do to keep the money coming in and food on the table as well, but I had never done that. Back then, I was still stupid and naive. I thought it was a choice.

I told Snow I wasn’t interested. Haymitch and I got home, and the next day, the mines exploded and collapsed with my father inside. The day after that, I was back in the Capitol, only going back to District 12 to mentor and fail another pair of tributes. I never even got the chance to go to his funeral.

Katniss hated me for that. I think she still does. Prim could never hate anyone. She was always too good. Mom…. I didn’t know about my mom.

“What are you thinking about that’s so much more important than me?” Finnick asks, making me chuckle at his teasing tone.

“Nothing.” Finnick smiles and pulls me back down to lie next to him in bed.

“Come here, crazy.”

There were times I’d just explode at Finnick. He felt like all I had left, and sometimes I couldn’t take it. I wanted to push him away before something took him. The self-sabotage set in, and I’d throw what I could only call a temper tantrum, but he would call a much-needed meltdown. Then the episode would be done, and I’d ask how he could ever waste his time with someone as crazy as me.

“Crazy is my favorite,” he’d say every time with a kiss on my forehead.

We weren’t together. It was more like a not-so-secret friends with benefits. It was a way for us to have control. It was so we could finally have a choice of who to be vulnerable around and who to give ourselves to.

We weren’t together. He loved Annie. This was just pity for me and an escape for him. Remember that, Iris.

I’m twenty-one now. He’s twenty-three. It’s normal to have urges, but it’s not fair to either of us that we don’t get to deal with them how other people our age do. We don’t get to go on dates without being paid. I don’t know if it’s different for him, but I have no choice when it comes to what happens during mine. They were paying for a product, and products don’t get a choice.

“Are you staying here until the reaping?” Finnick’s voice sounds hopeful, but I know it’s just because I want it to.

“I was thinking of heading back tomorrow,” I answer, laying my head on his bare chest. He seems a bit disappointed, but I'm sure I’m just imagining it.

“Will you at least give me a chance to see you in the morning?” I look up at Finnick, and I can feel his eyes on me through the dark.

“I think I can spare some time to grace you with my morning breath.” He chuckles and tightens his arms around me, bringing me even closer.

I stayed in the Capitol with Effie and, if I wanted to risk it, snuck on the train that went to District 4 to see Finnick. Most times, I didn’t really have to sneak since I was the Capitol’s sweetheart. I slept with one half and charmed the other. Everyone loved me. I got away with everything, and I guess I convinced Snow that my family was no longer important to me because I haven’t heard him complain about it.

“Good, that’s exactly what I want,” Finnick says. “Mm, morning breath.” I laugh at this, and he shushes me, laughing quietly himself. “Shh! You’ll wake Mags.” I cover my mouth.

The relationship he had with Mags was adorable. She had gotten to a point where he started to worry about her living on her own and invited her to stay with him. Finnick was just too good for the world. He felt like the only thing left that wasn’t tainted. Snow and I had ruined everything else. Not him, though. Despite it all, he was him, and he was perfect.

I wake up the next morning to Finnick no longer under me. I swear he’s like a cat. Quick and silent.

I get out of his bed and take some clothes off the floor. My underwear and his shirt, which was practically at mid-thigh. He was bigger height- and size-wise. Probably because when he was growing, he was eating and taking care of himself, while I just barely slid by, hiding from my parents that I was starving, so more food could be on the table. I was always worried about food.

I pad silently down the stairs to the kitchen. I wanted to scare him like you see the couples in those stupid shows do, but he had done that to me once, and I shoved his face into the counter. It had been after a long sleepless night, and I still feel bad about it.

“Hey.” I speak quietly, like it’s a warning I was approaching. He looks up and smiles at me.

“Oh, I love seeing you like this.” He opens an arm, and I go right to his side like I belong there. I don’t know what’s so great to him about bags under my eyes or messy bedhead, but to each their own. “Let me guess what you want.” He puts down his mug to hand one to me without having to move the arm around me.

“Thank you.” He smiles and kisses me. It’s an odd friendship we have, that I can admit, but it’s still just a friendship. It’s hard to remember that. Times like last night make me worry I’m nothing but a body to him, like I am to the Capitol, but I know that’s not true. He doesn’t love Annie. He loves me. I’m just too scared to take the plunge and admit that.

“When do you have to leave?” I tilt my head at Finnick. He only asks when I’m leaving when he wants to make me stay longer. I tell him, and he always organizes some kind of distraction so I would just miss the train.