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"Wait, isn't that…?" Tyde says above him. Finn lazily turns his head in her lap towards the television.
He sits up from the couch with a speed anyone else would find dizzying.
The news anchor reports that Finnick Odair's war trident has been deactivated. Without him, she says, it couldn't function, forever dormant despite years of tampering after its creator's death. Beetee Ma made it specially for Finnick, the honing bracelet requiring his DNA to work. As one of the most famous weapons used in the civil war twenty years ago, next to the Mockingjay Bow - also disabled, by request - and the parachute bombs, which have been illegal since their first and last use, the trident will join them in some museum.
Of course, the news must show old footage of the weapon in action, mere days before its ultimate failure. Finnick wielded it with a vicious kind of grace that's still an impressive sight today.
There's no footage of his death, though, being torn apart by mutts somewhere deep in the sewers of District Fourteen. For all it was worth in terms of money and technological advancement, the war trident didn't save him.
"A true tragedy," the news anchor laments, "that nothing else remains of the young hero and his duty in the rebellion."
Finn has never touched a trident before. His mom is adamant about that - for whose sake, he's not certain. He wonders dubiously if the war trident would have worked for him. He has half the DNA for it.
And he's a lot like his dad, he's told.
Sometimes Finn finds that hard to believe since he only sees him at his most legendary. Finnick Odair lives on through solemn Hunger Games documentaries and war propos like his famous divulgence of the victor prostitution and other transgressions within the former Capitol.
But Finn - he's not much of a hero. Unlike Finnick or his mom, he's never fought in a televised arena battle or a war or brought down an oppressive government. Honestly, Finn wouldn't want to handle a trident even if he was allowed to.
Finn does share a similar passion for the ocean as his dad. He works as a swim instructor and a lifeguard during the offseason with Tyde for the pay and the excuse to be at the beach for as long as possible. He needs the briny air, needs to be immersed and suspended in endless blue-green. He looks like his dad, too, more so than his mom.
Those are my eyes, he thinks of the man onscreen, both proud and sad. And I have your voice; I could have been mistaken for you over the phone all the time. We would've gone fishing and gotten along. You would've liked me.
Finn loves the man on the screen. But he'll never really know him as a dad - his dad - when he was only alive long enough to be a tortured, hopeful young man forced to be too much. The camera only shows so much yet it's all Finn has now, all he allows himself. He doesn't ask for stories anymore because it hurts his mom, and Johanna's memories of her best friend are tainted by the Games, which Finn learned in school typically lasted one month out of the year.
His dad's face is replaced by another as Tyde awkwardly changes the channel. She doesn't look at Finn. She doesn't understand, nor can she discern what will upset him and what will leave him yearning.
As Tyde chuckles at the sitcom that only she is watching, sounding a little forced, he nudges her side. He hopes she knows he wants to stay longer but the slim space between her curtains is too dark. Not dark like midnight; dark like my mom's going to worry herself into a panic attack if I'm not home in like, five minutes. The television drones and the couch that always seems to be involved whenever the ocean isn't creaks as he stands.
Tyde sighs, walks him to the door. "Wait." She stops him with her hand on the doorknob, the other on his arm. Their parting kiss cannot be outside as it's not a camera kiss, all passion and desperate, scrambling limbs or even tenderness and effortless intimacy. It's a little sad, Finn thinks. Like there should be more and there just isn't. But his parents fell in love early so he has to as well.
He's nineteen and unsure. At nineteen, his parents were already legends.
When he leaves, he avoids walking through town. Another Hunger Games anniversary is approaching, the cameras might already be here, and he resembles both his parents enough to attract unwanted attention. He goes to the beach a little ways from the marina and trudges up the stairs to his neighborhood, the former Victors' Village, while the ocean roars in his ears.
The original houses have long lost their sophistication, the recently built ones matching their stylish yet not quite magnificent quality, but the bloody price for their inhabitance sets them apart from the rest. Technically, Finn doesn't deserve his home. Families were evicted after their victor relative dies. It was his dad's house. His mom wanted to live there rather than her own house, for whatever reason, maybe the same reason why he's branded with a dead man's name. He doesn't know anything about his maternal family, and he thinks that's part of her logic as well.
"Hey, Odair! Hey! Over here!"
He curses, hurrying up his front steps.
The reporter is old, balding, and sweating. A camera suit trails him. As the paparazzo snaps too many pictures behind him, Finn resists doing anything that would be deemed as a breakdown or a late delinquent phase of adolescence on gossip shows.
He ignores the cameras but then there are the questions. They follow him onto the porch. "What are you doing out so late, Finn? Seeing a special someone? And just how does it feel knowing this year you'd be exempt from the reaping if the rebellion failed? How is your mother - still insane? Are she and Johanna Mason romantically involved? Have you fallen in love with anyone yet?" presses the reporter. The next question, "If your father were alive today, what would he think of you?" always seems to be the most persistent, the most intrusive to him.
Though it doesn't upset him like it used to when he was younger, it still bothers Finn nonetheless when they use Finnick to trigger him. Finn just grits his teeth. He's learned to never say anything to them.
However, Johanna - yes, the Johanna Mason - does. She's carrying an armful of logs and a playful yet dangerous smirk. "He'd be fucking proud. But he'd be disappointed in you, Calvin. A week early, aren't you? Not even the Capitol came to the districts that early, and they lived for the Hunger Games."
Finn escapes through the door as Johanna continues to heckle the reporter, informing him of the recent breakout of robberies downtown that no one has investigated yet. The press hates her. She's an explicit product of the past they so often condemn who keeps reminding them that Panem hasn't actually changed all that much, save for some legal adjustments.
In the living room, Annie Odair is frowning down at her current project. She took up her knitting talent again years ago. Finn isn't sure why she stopped, why she would stop; her hands are quick and steady and her mind is clear whenever she works. Still, she's worried.
When she hears Finn walk into the room, she smiles up at him in relief from her overstuffed armchair. Her green eyes are nevertheless tight with concern.
"Hi, Mom," says Finn.
"You were gone for almost the whole day."
"I went over to Ty's after work. Sorry, I'll tell you next time."
Brow slightly less furrowed now, she continues to knit. "How is Tyde?"
Finn crosses the room into the kitchen to grab a peach from a bowl on the table. "Fine." They didn't talk long. "Johanna's going to be on the news soon. District Fourteen's already sent out news crews."
It takes a moment for his mom to place where exactly the crews came from, to translate the city's current title with the imposing old one. With an indignant gasp, Annie abandons her unfinished bag. "That's ridiculous!"
He rolls his eyes in understanding. "I know. Johanna's having fun, though. Besides, it's the only time you get that kind of, uh, acknowledgment, anymore."
Annie sighs, calmer but still irked. "They do leave us alone the rest of the year - but when they don't, it's the worst time for attention. I hope they're okay in Twelve…" Her nimble fingers finish the thought, clicking the needles.
"Why was Johanna out cutting firewood this late, anyway?" Sitting beside his mom, Finn bites into the peach with a wet squelch. She stops to give him a look, to which he makes an exaggerated show of wiping his chin as he chews.
Shaking her head, Annie busies herself again. "Oh, you know how Johanna gets competitive with the neighbors. They're having a bonfire on the beach tomorrow night, and now she wants to have a bonfire tomorrow night, too. She'd probably lose sleep unless she started stocking up today."
He chuckles because he can just imagine Johanna saying, Bigger the flames, the better. It won us a rebellion and it'll win me some damn appreciation from those amateur fire-starters over there. Pass me another log, Finn-o.
As he remembers what those flames could destroy, his grin fades. "They deactivated Dad's war trident today."
"Well, it wasn't any use to us before, and it's no use to us now." She loops the thread into another row. At his confounded expression, she explains, "It was something he needed to protect himself and the people he loved. If they think they're saving the one thing he wanted to leave behind, they didn't know the man I married."
Finn looks away. But that news anchor is right, he thinks bitterly. There's nothing left of Finnick Odair that's not on display. Everything I know about him, everybody else knows as well.
His mom's next words soften him. "He left us something that can't be shut off, something better: a safer future for children that we didn't get ourselves."
She hasn't spoken of his dad this openly in a while. Finn soaks it in and it's too much. Annie wipes a thumb across his cheek, smearing the teardrop. He mumbles an apology - he's had nineteen years to cry over this loss that feels so fresh and raw now, like a reopened wound - but his mom shushes him.
"He left me something even better." She smiles, strokes his face. "People do see him when they look at you, Finn. All the reporters see is a familiar handsome face of a martyr and a widow, which makes for a good tragedy, doesn't it? But I can see the best parts of him that would rather swim or help others swim all day than take up a trident. I like knowing that he's still here somehow, that those parts are what's left of him."
"But is that all I am?" he asks thickly, brokenly. "Just parts?"
Annie answers without hesitation. "No. You're our son and your own person, too. Don't let all the publicity convince you otherwise." She pulls him close. "I couldn't love you more, and I know that means Finnick couldn't have either."
"I love you, too." Finn hugs her back tightly, breathing in the familiar salt-air smell of her hair. When Annie starts to snicker, he pulls away. "Mom?"
She just smiles and shakes her head, her hand brushing back his bronze hair like an afterthought. "You got peach juice all over my shoulder. Your manners aren't from either of us; they're definitely from Johanna."
Later, Johanna calls up the steps for Finn, "You can't miss out on watching me kick Capitol ass, kid! Don't you want to see the rest of what I said to that weasel? Am I not your favorite not-aunt? Do I need to hash this out with Brainless again?"
He wants to laugh. He's always suspected she tries to wring that reaction out of him to remind her of an old friend and his perfect, charming laugh. Still, it makes her happy like it makes his mom happy. Finn heads for the door, laughing his perfect, charming laugh that's exactly like Finnick Odair's.
Yet there's so much of him that isn't. He has a lot of time to figure those parts out.