Chapter Text
Mags was an unremarkable Victor in many ways. She hadn't won through being terribly clever or through anything horrifically violent – although she had killed two other tributes to secure her crown. She had simply persisted through an array of neat survival techniques and tenacity when it came down to her and one other tribute.
She came home, freshly 18, from the 13th Hunger Games, to a district that was largely unrecognizable. When she moved into Victors' Village, there was only one house, and it was hers. When she was called back to the Capitol, only 10 other Victors greeted her. (The winner of the first Hunger Games had died not long after, although no one knew precisely why. The winner of the fifth Hunger Games had killed herself before her Victory Tour.)
No, it wasn't as a Victor that Mags Cohen made her mark. She was renowned as a mentor. Up until she arrived in the Capitol, most people didn't know what it meant to be a mentor. They tried to keep themselves distanced from the stream of tributes they fed into the games, and barely spoke to sponsors. But Mags changed things. She didn't like being a Victor, but she tried to help her tributes the best that she could. It wasn't long before Four had brought home more Victors than any other district – and that was one when One and Two started their Career programs.
Once Four had more than enough mentors, Mags was passed around some of the outlying districts to mentor them. She brought home scrawny Haymitch Abernathy, the only Victor from District 12, during the Quarter Quell.
(“You don't know me,” he had scowled at her.
“I know you're scared,” was all she said.)
By the time Mags returned home to District Four permanently, she was 55 years old. She had brought home more Victors than any other mentor. She was known as a grandmother to everyone in District Four. Always went to her tributes' families after she came home. Inherently, she couldn't bring home more than she lost: But in the end, she always made sure her tributes knew they weren't alone when they died, which was maybe the best thing you could do for a tribute.
It was then that Lucy Odair walked back into her life.
Lucy had been in the same year as her throughout school. They had cowered together during Reapings, breathed sighs of relief when their names weren't called. But, of course, everything had changed when “Margaret Cohen” was indeed Reaped. By the time Mags came back from her games, Lucy was married to Bannock Odair and already pregnant with their first son. So Mags let her go.
But nine children and nearly four decades later, Bannock Odair was dead, Lucy was on her own, and the mess of her children had already started on messes of their own children, making Lucy a grandmother 15 times over.
Mags had promised herself she would never marry and that she would never have children. But she's surprised at how easy it is to let Lucy back into her life. And this far in, she's too old for fighting anymore. So, she loves Lucy all the same. Most of the kids don't come and visit Victors' Village, so Lucy makes the rounds between the lot of them. After awhile, Mags comes with her. (She has to admit that it's nice being around children who are so free. The Odairs are a wild bunch, and she can't keep track of them all. They reproduce like rabbits, she swears – but no, not rabbits, because the whole family is ocean-addicted. Sun-kissed with golden hair, just like their matriarch.)
For years, that's the way things go. Mags Cohen is an unofficial Odair. She is part of a family again. She can expect a warm welcome when she comes from the games, a parade of hugs from sticky, little hands.
That changes one Sunday, when Lucy's oldest son appears at the house in Victors' Village. Mags give them their distance, can hear the murmurs of their voices up the stairs. But she doesn't pry. She waits until Lucy comes to find her. She doesn't ask what's happened, because Lucy doesn't need her to.
“Joff and his wife are having twins,” Lucy announces from their bedroom door.
Joff Odair is uncharacteristically serious for an Odair. (It should be a breath of fresh air; after all, two of his younger brothers are far off the edge, one an alcoholic, one perpetually unemployed with a string of bereft lovers.) But Mags can't find it in herself to really like Joff, cold as the man is.
“Oh?” Mags asks; she understands that this might not be a cause for celebration. Their oldest daughter is sick most of the time, and that first pregnancy had been rough on Joff's wife. They have a little boy now, too, four years old and shier than most of the Odairs. But this pregnancy is unplanned to begin with, and Mags knows that four mouths will put a strain on the family.
“Joff was wondering if we might take in Finnick for a bit,” Lucy says. “Say you're training him.”
The Odairs are proud. Mags would have gladly provided for the whole lot of them, if they would have let her. But they won't. Which is why the veneer of training is necessary. Mags won't rebuff them.
“Of course,” Mags agrees.
(She doesn't know then. The course of her life is altered, thrown off its axis. This little boy will bring her entire world to its knees.)
…
Finnick arrives on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. Mags doesn't even realize he's there. She heads downstairs to find Lucy and ask when Finnick is arriving – and finds the boy on the couch. He has the mop of golden hair that so many of the Odairs have, and is far scrawnier than most of his cousins. He has a cute smile – but smiles rarely, she finds. He's easily overshadowed by the louder and more rambunctious Odairs, whom he perpetually seems to be trying to catch up.
He has only a single battered suitcase with him. (When Mags opens it later to put his things away, she finds no toys. He's brought only a few threadbare outfits with him, and two books, both weatherworn and full of sand. She quickly learns that he doesn't lament the lack of clothes. The boy would spend his entire life in a pair of swimming trunks if they let him. The first time Mags manages to coax him to smile is when she shows him how close to the beach they are.)
Mags goes about stacking the house up with better food. Lucy has always done all the cooking, but Mags makes sure they have fresh eggs now, and any time fruit is shipped into Four, she buys a crate. When she realizes what a wicked sweet tooth Finnick has, she has a cake ordered up from the bakery every Sunday.
(“Now you're just spoiling him,” Lucy half-heartedly argues.
Mags shrugs.
“Boy could use some spoiling.”)
For the first year that Finnick lives with them, his “training” consists of going to the beach every morning. Finnick already knows how to swim, but Mags and Lucy teach him different strokes, and he gets stronger and faster. (By the time he's seven, he can outswim the pair of them. And by that time, he's also not afraid to brag about it either.)
They take him home for a bit to see his twin sisters, Sara and Coral, who are healthy and loud babies. Mags holds Sara and rocks her until she quiets. Finnick watches her with an obvious intensity, his green eyes locked onto every one of her movements.
“You want to hold her?” Mags asks, and Finnick nods. She kneels and passes his baby sister over to him, and Finnick copies her. (He's an unerringly bright kid, Mags has sorted out. Brighter than most of the Odairs. She doesn't dare say that out loud to Lucy, but Lucy has laughed over it already. A bit too much balls and not enough brains, Lucy always said of Bannock. It's a trait that's been passed down to too many of their sons.)
He's exhausted by the time they've walked back to Victors' Village, his feet dragging and scuffing across the ground. Mags picks him up, and he falls asleep against her shoulder. Lucy shakes her head, but doesn't say anything. Finnick is nearly as big as Mags is now, and it's a struggle to carry him. But she gets him up to bed anyway, tucks him in.
“Can I have a story?” he asks, blinking up at her, struggling to stay awake.
“You're sleeping,” Mags tells him immediately, kissing his forehead.
“'m'not,” he mumbles.
She settles down against the edge of his bed all the same, smooths the covers out, and tells him one of his favorites. (He likes anything with sea monsters, but only if it has a happy ending. He can't bear for the monsters to be killed, but likes when everyone makes friends. They've cobbled together a messy little world where all the sea monsters know each other, and only bother the land for very sensible reasons, which humans don't immediately understand.) He's asleep before the end of this one, just as she predicted, but she finishes it anyway.
By the time Finnick turns seven, he's put on some weight. He's not the scrawny four-year-old who came to stay with them. That's when Mags begins to train him in earnest. (They never intend for Finnick to go into the Games. By now, Four has a fairly well-established Career protocol. There's always a 17- or 18-year-old ready to take the place of any little one who is Reaped. But at seven, Mags can tell that Finnick will never have the tenacity to be a Career. And that's more than fine with Mags.) She teaches him things that can be useful anyway. How to find fresh water, how to fish and make fishing hooks, how to navigate with the stars. When he's nine, he asks how to use a trident, so she shrugs and teaches him that as well.
He grows strong and lean – and mischievous. Lord, can the boy get into mischief. He's with his cousins a good lot of the time, and while most of the Odairs have figured out how to slip away, Finnick never does. The boy is more prone to a rueful shrug of his shoulders and a wry smile than actually escaping.
(“It wasn't my fault, Grandma LuLu,” is a common saying in their household by the time Finnick is 10. But he never follows up with any extra line of defense.)
Mags, known through the districts for her razor-sharp wit and quick use of her tongue, finds herself incapable of disciplining Finnick. Lucy is the one who has to stand, unimpressed, against Finnick's impish smile. Because Mags is always upstairs, quietly laughing to herself. She manages to reinforce any of Lucy's punishments, but that's the extent of it.
He's fairly well-behaved anyway, and none of his infractions are terribly serious.
The older he gets, the more apparent just how good-looking he is going to be – although Finnick seems to be blissfully unaware of this.
(“He would be unbearable if he understood,” Lucy sighs as she gets into bed.
“He's not a bad kid,” Mags murmurs. Not their Finnick who still asks for bedtime stories and last week brought home an injured bird with the hope of setting its wing. He has the Odair charm, but a healthy dose of compassion offsets that.
“He'd have everyone as wrapped around his finger as you are,” Lucy answers. She laces their hands together, as if in demonstration. They both wear thin gold bands, paired. It's the only physical sign of their devotion to each other.)
…
Finnick is 12 when Lucy passes. They come home from training one evening to find her in the garden, bent amongst the flowers she had lovingly kept since she moved in with Mags. It was quick, the doctor says. She probably just felt tired, and that was all.
Finnick is inconsolable. He spends the entire next day crying in his room. Mags manages to coax him down for dinner, a largely silent affair with the two of them. The day after (and the day after that one) he takes to appearing out of nowhere, as if checking to make sure that she also hasn't disappeared.
They spread Lucy's ashes out at sea the following Sunday. It's a huge gathering, what with all the children and grandchildren (and even a few great-grandchildren). Finnick stays close by her side the entire time, but Mags feels small in the crush of bodies and grief. The truth is that Lucy was the love of her life, but it's a fact that will go largely forgotten. In the story of the family, Bannock is the starring role. Mags is lucky to be a footnote. But with Finnick's hand in hers, she thinks that she can be all right with that. She still wears her ring. Lucy's is in on a chain in the back of a drawer. She thinks she might give it to Finnick when he's older.
The dinner that follows is sprawled across the town. Most people go back to Joff's house, but it can't hold everybody. (Mags would have offered, but she knew they would refuse.)
Mags doesn't intend to stay long, but she knows that Finnick will follow her home. She hates to think of him not with his family. His youngest sisters trail after him like little ducks. He's old enough now to fake bravado with his older cousins. (Many of whom are also training to be Careers, but Finnick holds a special spot because he's her pupil.)
She's watching Finnick, and is caught off guard when Joff sidles up next to her. (Hadn't shed a tear once during his mother's funeral. Just a somber stare. Although at one point, Mags was fairly sure, that he had told Finnick to stop crying.)
“We were thinking that it's time for Finnick to come home,” he says with no precursor. She shouldn't be surprised. She tries to tell herself that, but she feels her heart break at the idea of returning to an empty house, devoid of Lucy's warmth and Finnick's laughter. He isn't mine to keep, Mags tells herself quietly.
“Of course,” she tells Joff.
(Joff takes Finnick that night. He and two of his brothers come and get Finnick's things from her house without saying anything, and she doesn't get to tell him good-bye, or that she doesn't want him to go at all. It's not her place to say those things, but she can't sleep anyway. Can't sleep because she thinks of her Finnick, far away. She wonders if he misses her. Or is he happy to go home to his family? Happy, she hopes. Happy, she prays, because that's the best she can hope for.)
She wakes up late the next day. She doesn't want to get out of bed at all, but is surprised to hear clattering in the kitchen. She goes down in her bathrobe, and there's Finnick, frying eggs, toast burning alongside him.
He beams at her.
And in this way, they carry on. He doesn't stay with her, but he doesn't leave either. They keep training together. (He is damned good with the trident, but she doesn't give him praise that freely.) She teaches him how to build fires, how to put out fires; how to heal burns and wounds; they go over berries and plants that are edible, that have medicinal purposes.
In the 63rd Games, Gloss wins his games at the end of a sword, so Finnick asks to be trained in swords for awhile. He's clumsy with it though, and quickly gives up. (When Cashmere wins with throwing knives, he asks to be trained in that as well. He's a little better with the knives, but he'll never be any better than he is with the trident.)
“What's the Capitol like?” Finnick asks when Mags comes back after the 64th Games.
“It's poison,” Mags tells him honestly. It's the most treasonous thing she's ever said. Finnick just scrunches his nose, as if she's being peculiar.
“Don't sass me, boy,” Mags tells him in response. (She tries, really does, to try and be bit more disciplined with him now that Lucy isn't here.)
At 13, the girls in Finnick's class have begun to take note of him. A few of them will trail after him when he comes to train, gathering in a gaggle at the top of the beach. Their giggles carry down. Finnick has taken note of them in return. As soon as he has an audience, he is hopeless.
Mags cuffs him around the back of the head. He drops the trident in the sand, and scrubs a hand across the back of his head, looking ruefully back at Mags.
“Pay attention,” she instructs him. (What she wants to say is, Don't be so much of an Odair.)
She finds out that she is mentoring again for the 65th Games. She's nearly 70 and beginning to feel the press of her age. She wonders if Snow will have mentoring until she's in her grave and knows that's a likely story. She meets with the Careers a week before the Reaping. It's good to know who's volunteering. She's seen mishaps in One or Two when they have a few too many excited kids, all trying to clamber and volunteer at once.
She doesn't see Finnick the morning of the Reaping. (She had bought him a new pair of dress pants the week before though she knew Joff wouldn't approve. He's grown so much in the last few months that half his clothes don't fit anymore, and Mags is used to seeing his ankles sticking out the end of his pants.) She'd also sent a box of oranges with him, including strict instructions that he was to share them with his sisters. (The twins have the Odair devil in them, too. They've come over with Finnick a few times, and they enjoy nothing more than letting people mix their names up. The oldest, Aerona, Mags barely sees. She's got Joff's serious countenance.)
The day is blazing hot, and Mags has to sit on stage. Their escort's makeup is almost melting off her face, and she shades herself with a parasol. She's not the worst of the lot, really. Been around long enough to know that Four isn't as much of a Career district as One or Two, but they have a hell of a lot of hidden strength. She also is damn good at finding stylists who don't make them look foolish, so Mags can respect her even if she shows up looking peculiar in her Capitol getup.
Girls first. A 16-year-old is Reaped, but immediately the 18-year-old Career, Trina, volunteers. She walks onto stage, looking proud and strong.
An 11-year-old boy is Reaped then. Silence drags on. The boy peeks out of the crowd of 11-year-olds. They're all waiting, waiting for the Career who surely must volunteer. Mags squints down at the boys, trying to locate their contender. Before she can spot him out, an all-too-familiar voice rings out of the crowd, much too far back.
“I volunteer as tribute!”
The crowd parts again, and a golden head bobs out of the 14-year-olds.
She feels faint. No, she thinks. Not you.
A murmur runs through the crowd as Finnick Odair is flanked by Peacekeepers who bring him up to the stage. Their escort leans in, puts the microphone in front of his face, asks for his name.
“Finnick Odair,” he answers, and that dazzling, boyish smile is broadcast all over the Capitol.
As soon as they're off stage, behind closed doors, Mags grabs him by the ear.
“What are you doing, you little fool?” she asks, the cruelest words she's ever said to him, but she's scared. Lucy would never forgive her, not for this, not for allowing their Finnick to volunteer.
“Ow, Mags!” Finnick protests. He screws up his face in pain, but doesn't try to shove her off. “I'm a Career, too, ain't I!”
“Aren't I?” Mags corrects on impulse. She almost goes on to say that he's 14 and no one that young has ever won the games. But she stops herself, and takes a shaky breath. She lets go of his ear. There's no use crying over it now. It's done and he's a tribute. She gathers him up in her arms, but not for too long. He's still looking at her warily. She can't do anything to scare him now. They're going to need that Odair confidence to get him through.
…
They polish off the last layers of his boyhood. He looks older when he appears on the chariot. (Still small compared to Trina, though.) But that is easily forgotten when Flickerman interviews him. Flickerman is clearly enamored. Mags watches from backstage, her stomach twisted in knots. Flickerman leaves his hand too long on Finnick's knee, specifically asks at the end for him to flash them that pretty smile again. (Finnick likes the attention too much. He gives them anything they ask, not thinking about what he might be losing in turn.)
Mags frets. (And here is her worst truth: She will do anything to keep Finnick alive, and is terrified that the price they – he – will pay for that sin is much too high.)
“You sure you want to bring this one back?” Haymitch slurs, tossing an arm around her shoulders.
“I brought you back, didn't I?” Mags returns, trying to mask all her fears. (He's too young, her head keeps telling her.)
Finnick is pale the final morning. He picks at his food, until Mags tells him to eat. He swallows everything almost whole then, puts away nearly an entire pitcher of water. (It won't save him. Dehydration is almost always the most dangerous thing in the games.)
She stays with him while he gets suited up. His stylist leaves and Mags brings him in close for a hug. She clings to him. Her hands shake. She remembers telling him stories when he was small, a mere 10 years ago, and then when he was big enough, he'd started telling her stories. In her heart, suddenly, like a sunburst, she realizes that she won't survive losing him.
“Stay focused,” she tells him instead, voice still stern. She pats a hand twice against his cheek, and then points at him. Dear God, that has always been his weakness. He smiles at her, but it's watered down.