The Price of Peace (Finnick Odair)

Spicy Fog

"Hey. You doing okay?" Finnick whispered into Evadine's sweat-soaked hair as she rested against his chest. She had been breathing really hard through her nose.

"I can't shake this nausea. Little fishy swimming around in there is already a pain in my ass." Evadine joked, taking comfort in Finnick's fingers lightly tracing shapes on her arm. 

Even after they had gotten water from the tree thanks to a sponsor gift, Evadine couldn't shake the nausea. She kept having to pee as well, but she knew that it was the irregular hormones. She was already dehydrated she didn't need to make it worse by puking and pissing her way into an early grave. 

"Little fishy?" Finnick laughed, smoothing her sweat-soaked curls out of his face. 

"Well, we don't know if it's a boy or a girl. Fishy is unisex" 

"So is the baby. We could just call it the baby." Finnick laughed even harder. His joy seemed out of place in the dreary atmosphere. "You're no fun at all," Evadine whined, cozying up closer to Finnick. 

After a few minutes of silence, she eventually heard his breathing even out and his hold loosened on her as her beloved drifted off to sleep. After a while, her sickness faded and she too followed her husband into the realm of sleep. 

Until the absolute worst alarm clock ever decided to start screeching. 

"AHHHH! Run! Run! Poison! The fog is poison!" 

God damn it, Katniss. 

Finnick was on his feet in a second, pulling his wife with him as they began running. The adrenaline woke them with a start as their groggy limbs pushed to the limits. 

Usually, Evadine would be singing or dancing. Anything to put on a show for the people of Panem. But she had no idea what effects that fog would have on her baby. So she ran, focused on survival, hand in hand with Finnick. 

Even as Katniss fell and Peeta went back for her, their attention was on each other and the feat of staying alive. 

"Ahhhh!" Finnick grunted, falling to his knees as the poison touched his leg. 

"No! Finn, you gotta get up!" Eva scrambled, pulling him with her as he stumbled forward. He grit his teeth, refusing to slow down his family from getting to safety. The fog graced over Evadine's hand as she tried to help Finnick. 

She cringed, waiting for the explosive pain, but none came. No boils, no burns, no pain. 

What the hell? 

She didn't have more than a second to think about it before Finnick pulled her in front of him and raced after Katniss and Peeta. 

Finnick helped Katniss pull Peeta off the ground as they raced to escape. 

The fog began to surround them leaving only one path to escape. The fog clipped her a few more times, just like the others. But instead of falling on the ground and writhing like the rest of them. Her mind played through a thousand possibilities and landed on one. 

President Coriolanus Snow. 

The man was obsessed with her. Ever since her little lie about being Lucy Grey Baird's granddaughter the man had been extremely keen on her. She wasn't dumb, she knew that the delusional old man believed her to be his granddaughter. 

It wasn't hard to deduce when he sometimes said things like, "You know I too adore blackberry pie" "You know in my youth I acted much like you." "You my dear, will always land on top" 

It didn't take a genius to connect the dots. 

Would he have done that? Ordered the games be made safe for her? 

The fog was a bio-chemical attack, an instant poison. She knew it well, it was developed as a gas grenade in the dark days, engendered to kill the enemy soldiers but not the allies. With a little DNA, the developers could make anyone immune... How the hell did they get her DNA?

It didn't matter at the moment, because Evadine Ripley-Odair had just been gifted the golden ticket, the holy grail, the secrets of the universe. Evadine Ripley-Odair had just become hunger game-proof. 

Thank god for the power of imaginary nepotism. 

She helped Finnick into the water, scrubbing the boils off his skin as he gasped in pain. 

"Are you okay? Did it touch you? Is the baby okay?" Finnick gasped through grunts of pain. His shaking hands searched her body for boils, checking to make sure the light of his life would not flicker out in front of him. 

She leaned in close, kissing his lips before pulling him into a tight embrace. As he held her she whispered in his ear, "The fog touched me and yet I did not burn." 

She leaned back watching the theories flicker in Finnick's eyes, before he seemed to come to the same conclusion as he did. Though unlike her, he was not pleased. 

Snow had been stalking his wife since she was thirteen and there was absolutely nothing he could do to protect her from it. 

"You think-" He then became hyper-aware of the cameras that were definitely watching. He felt like the eyes of Coriolanus Snow himself were burning into him. 

Evadine went back to washing the painful boils off his skin, ignoring the other two tributes completely as her attention fixed on him. There was a time when Evadine would have completely fangirled over being so close to Katniss and Peeta. But this world was real to her now. This was her life, the life she never had while tucked away in the mountains with her mother and stepfather. 

Her love for Finnick held her to this life and kept her grounded. 

He is what made her feel real, feel alive. 

"I think... that our anniversary is coming up... any special plans?" Evadine smiled, trying to ease his mind off the pain and panic. 

It works as he smiles that sunshine smile that breathed life into this hellish arena of death. 

"I'm thinking, dinner on the beach." Finnick played along. 

"We should have Mags make us that fancy pasta you love. We can both slurp up the same noodle and meet in the middle, don't look at me like that, it's romantic."

"Any description with the word slurp in it, can't be that romantic."