Disclaimer: I do not own Hunger Games
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Summary: (Finnick Odair/OC) Taya Abernathy is crowned victor of the 73rd Hunger Games, and now, the real trials begin. For like all beautiful, charming victors, there are those in the Capitol willing to pay the exorbitant sums required to buy their company for the night. None is more familiar with that horrific truth than Finnick Odair, the most popular victor the Games have ever produced.
Loving his daughter more than anything, Haymitch approaches District Four's champion with a helpless plea: Help his daughter. Help Taya survive the insanity that is a victor's life if they survive the arena.
And that's precisely what Finnick does.
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"People of the Capitol, I give you our victor, Taya Abernathy!"
Gasping futilely against the crushing weight of the corpse on top of her, Taya pushed desperately with her arms, willing the boy from District 1 to roll off of her.
But he refused to budge.
The smell of blood was pungent. That thick tang of iron in the blistery cold air; a scent she'd become all too familiar with over the last five days.
Five days of pure hell on Earth.
"Get off," The hoarse, trembling plea barely registered with her own ears, let alone the multiple cameras currently circling her, but Taya couldn't stop the words. "Get off. Please! Get him off!"
He'd strangled her to within an inch of her life.
Mere seconds ago. How was it possible that the hauntingly-still Career tribute splayed on top of her was only alive mere seconds ago?!
"Stay down. Stay down," He panted above her, a crazed grin curling his lips as he watched Taya beat ineffectually at his face, his chest, his hands; anywhere that might force him to release her from death's grip. "That's right, sweetheart, can you feel the cold yet? That deep, dark pit of nothingness? I promise you, it's waiting there."
Black spots swam in front of her eyes, widening with alarming speed.
She was going to die.
"You know the first thing I'm going to do once I'm back in the Capitol?" Randall laughed breathlessly. "Take a bath. Being from District 12 I imagine you're at home amongst all this ice and snow, but I've always preferred heat to cold."
The grip on her neck tightened and Taya couldn't have stopped the way her chest arced weakly off the frozen ground at her back if she'd tried, as if her body were trying to break some sort of surface to reach the precious air currently setting her lungs on fire.
"Not long now," Randall wheezed, chuckling, his own impressive body sagging from exhaustion. "Not long."
Her father's face flashed across her mind, blinding her with sudden, inescapable terror.
No.
No!
She wouldn't, couldn't, leave him alone!
She refused to.
With energy she hadn't known her small body capable of finding, Taya clawed at the half frozen dirt. Digging. Tugging. Pulling.
She was all her father had left!
Black dirt sprayed through the icy air as the rock came free.
So fixated was he with the way the light, even now, was draining from her eyes, Randall never saw the end coming.
Taya's arm swung up with every last iota of strength left in her body, the heavy stone connecting loudly with the boy's vulnerable temple.
All it took was one hit.
"Get him off, get him off, get him off me!" Inside, she was screaming. Outside, barely any sound escaped her horribly damaged throat.
She didn't know how long she lay there, trapped beneath the large body of the young man she'd murdered, but to Taya, time didn't matter.
It would always be too long.
"Hey, hey, well done, girlie," The excited squeals echoed like the canon in the arena, striking her skull. "Hold this to your mouth, that's right, like that. It'll help you breathe until we can fix that awful bruising around your neck, okay?"
The lights were too bright. The air suddenly warm.
It wasn't until Taya was being lifted to her feet by her elbow that awareness suddenly came back to her.
Time, reality, returned with a vengeance.
Stumbling down the hover plane's ramp, oxygen mask clutched to her face by the swarming medics twittering around her, Taya searched for only one thing.
Her father.
Where was her Dad?
…
Hands clasped furiously around the metal railing keeping him away from the colossal-sized television monitor, Haymitch had never felt more unhinged in all his life.
"She looks like a flailing fish on the deck of a boat," Johanna scoffed, picking at her nails.
A smack tore through the observation room before the truly feral snarl could do anything but contort Haymitch's face.
Flesh hitting flesh.
"Shut your mouth, Johanna," Chaff threatened lowly, towering over the glaring Johanna that had fallen to the floor, "No one wants your comments."
He wanted nothing more than to turn and deliver unto Johanna the brutal beating such cruel words deserved, and Haymitch knew himself well enough to know that ordinarily he would have carried through with that impulse, but even for that he couldn't tear his eyes away from the scene in front of him.
The scene of his little girl being choked to death by a boy near three times her size while he was forced to do nothing but stand here and witness it being done.
"Someone's tetchy," Johanna's sassy rebuttal fell on deaf ears.
"I'm so sorry, Haymitch," Seeder whispered from beside him.
Pain shot down his neck from the force with which he was gritting his teeth, untold rage bubbling when he finally registered the conciliatory comment, but still, he did nothing.
Haymitch never looked away from the screen.
Please, baby girl, his mind whispered desperately, falling in on itself. Please.
"Is that-?"
"Oh my G-!"
"Shit, ye-!"
"Come on…"
Haymitch said nothing, saw nothing but her hand; the way Taya's fingernails ripped and shredded against the hard Earth as inch-by-inch the rock broke free.
As soon as he heard the crack of stone against human bone, he knew.
She'd won.
His legs gave out.
Strong arms barely caught him in time, others around the observation room quickly running to Chaff's assistance as he tried to keep the father upright.
"Oh God," It wasn't a prayer; it wasn't anything so coherent as a prayer. "Oh God, God, God," Sobbing, Haymitch buried his face in his hands as wave after wave of emotion crashed down on his psyche, tearing it to pieces.
She was alive.
His baby was alive.
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Hey! Please review! I'm so excited for this story!