This story is at the request of music lover from district 4. My usual field is songfics (as you can see from my 2 other stories) however I decided to branch out to a new field here and I know it isn't my best work (I acknowledge that now) so keep that in mind as you read and (hopefully) review.

Chapter 1: The Odds Were Never in Our Favor

Finnick had not planned to participate in another Reaping, had been promised he would never be put through that horror again. Yet here he was, standing amongst the other victors from his district and trying to hold his head up and above the rolling waters of his despair. His khaki pants and linen green shirt felt far too warm for the day and the twenty-four year old felt beads of sweat pool on his forehead causing his bronze curls to stick to it. Deep down he was well aware that it was not the temperature that was causing the salty liquid to flow from his pores but rather the stress of being up here again and feeling like the fourteen year old he had been when his name had been called by Iris Adais, their District's Capitol representative.

The memories flooded back as he stood there trying his best to conceal them, they couldn't see him fall apart for he had too much to lose. Despite knowing this he felt his mind rush back to his first Reaping and suddenly he was there again standing there absolutely shaking with fear. His sea green eyes dart around as he looks up at the much bigger fourteen year olds standing around him; he barely comes up to their shoulders and has yet to reach the growth spurt his parents keep reassuring him about. Straightening his shoulders he tries to look bigger like them but it fails as his freckles stand out in the sunlight making him look painfully younger than he is. Without really listening he watches with terrified deer-in-the-headlight-eyes as he sees a little twelve year old girl get reaped and makes note of the tears streaming pitifully down her face; a brief terrible thought hits him as he looks at her and feels a sudden urge to yell out that her tears can't save her now. As this thought makes him recoil in fear at his lack of compassion he watches as another older girl, an eighteen year old who looks to be prime Career material, pushes her back in line and takes her place beside Iris. She must have volunteered for the twelve year old just to have a chance to compete in the Game his fourteen year old mind registers. Volunteers like her may save the lives of their younger classmates who, like him, have only just begun to train for the Games but this girl didn't volunteer out of kindness but rather a selfish desire to compete. He hated people like her for that, the bronze haired boy admits as he feels his ability to hear return and finds his body trying to stand up even straighter as he puts on a brave face. With his ability to focus and hear having returned he could now not just feel but hear his heart pounding in his ears and the sharp rasp of air catching on his sore throat as his breath quickens in time with the Capitol representative sharply clicking strut over to the boys' bowl and his breath nearly stops as she fishes out a slip of paper with some sorry lad's name on it.

"Finnick Odair!" The woman cries out with a big grin reaching from ear to ear making him wonder, how sick were these people really? He felt pity now for this Finnick fellow until it hits him harder than any slap to the face, that is his name, he is the sorry lad who is going off to die. Looking around he watches as the bigger boys part for him, the fisher's son, to work his way through the crowd. A few are looking down at him with pity as he moves through them while trying desperately to look brave when in all reality he could barely keep his head above the waters of pain and despair filling his young form. Most, he soon saw, couldn't even meet his sea green eyes and all were too chicken to actually step forward and take his place. Nobody was taking pity on him as they had the twelve year old girl and no one was stepping forward to volunteer in his stead as he forces his lead-filled feet to take the stone stairs one at a time to meet the eighteen year old young woman who waits for him there beside the woman with the purple curly hair and wearing a bright yellow dress with purple polka dots. Getting closer he notes that her lips are painted the same yellow, her eyebrows had been drawn on purple and her heels are bright yellow with the same pattern.

"Why are you not just a cutie patootie!" She exclaims pinching his cheek and ruffling his bronze curls before she raises his tan hand high above his head in one gloved purple hand and the girl's in her other. "Your tributes for the 65th Annual Hunger Games!" Her cry rings out around the square as Finnick catches his parents and Mako looking on in horror, they know he is headed off to his death and there is nothing they are able to do about it. Glancing away from them he locks gazes with a twelve year old who has her dark brown hair pulled back in two ponytails and her sea green eyes staring into his with the horror he feels reflected in them. The girl who was supposed to be reaped with him stands crying with her face pressed into this girl's shoulder. The girl with the sea green eyes and pigtails looks up at him with a gaze that seems to speak to him and tell him not to give up, that there were girls like her out there that needed to be protected still and he could do no such thing if he was dead. That girl is right, Finnick realizes and makes a silent promise to her that he will fight, will fight as hard as he can to get back home because here was someone who believed in him and needed him to protect her along with many others. Once the promise was made he knows that he can't let her down regardless of whether or not she ever even knows that she was the reason that his desire to survive was resurrected and that he is going to win the Games or die trying.

"Finnick!" Old Hank Gris whispered his name beside him and lightly shook his shoulder to awaken him from whatever daze he was in. The younger man looked at him with slightly panicked sea green eyes and a lack of composure that seemed completely unlike the Capitol's heartthrob who had the swagger and charm of the greatest actor known to mankind. Hank knew that's all he was, an actor for the Capitol, and that's all he admitted to being in front of those who knew him well, and he also knew that the strain must be getting to him for such a large slip up to occur.

"What? What is it Hank?" The twenty-four year old asked with fear in his sea green eyes and written on his face in the worry lines across his forehead and the specific crease at the bridge of his still freckled nose. Hank choked back a sigh, this man, this boy really, did not deserve to go back in the Arena, for that matter none of them did. This was a cruel twist of fate for a bunch of people who had already realized that the odds had never been in their favor, himself included, but it was worse for the youngest of the surviving Victors who had a whole life ahead of them that they now would never have a chance at.

"Those sick bastards." Hank growled under his breath with his light blue eyes transforming into icy shard as they grew hardened by all the anger that had built up inside him over the ages.

"Huh?" Finnick replied looking confused and as the older man looked deep into the younger man's sea green eyes while his hard as ice blue eyes melting to become their normal lighter and softer color as he tried to control his anger, wouldn't do to have a balding man with age spots and sun cancer marks populating his skin with a limp and hunch back to match making a scene today. No it wouldn't do at all. For a second, the younger man could have sworn that his elder was angry and that his normally mellow gaze had suddenly hardened by that anger and an added pain but it was gone too soon and he chalked it off to be his imagination fueled by the stress of participating in another Reaping.

"Nothin' son just bein' sure you were with us, Iris just finished that propaganda crap and is movin' on to the lassies." Panic filled Finnick's heart as he heard Hank's words distorted in his familiar accent and turned towards where the woman was standing, oddly enough in the same outfit she had worn a decade ago when he had been Reaped. Not many people knew or understood why Finnick feared, but anyone who knew him better than the average Joe knew it was for the two years younger Annie Cresta that the young man looked on with fear beating in his chest like a caged bird dying to escape. She was the same girl, he found out in time, that had looked up at him on his own Reaping Day and the same one he had promised to try and come home for simply due to the determination in her similar sea green eyes. Now though she was more than that, she was the only girl Finnick had ever truly loved and now he might lose her, might even be the one to kill her like all his nightmares had threatened over the past five years since she had won and even more so when she had finally said that she loved him a little over two years ago and promised to stay with him and try to protect him in the same way he protected her.

"Now for the girls." Iris began using her favorite little cliché and stepped forwards to their nearly empty bowl before fishing an immaculately manicured hand inside. Pulling out the piece of paper, Finnick knew in his heart of hearts that the name on that paper was Annie's, that it couldn't be anyone's but hers. Whispering it with Iris his face fell as he was proven right and he hated himself for it, "Annie Cresta!" Looking over at her, their wide sea green eyes met as the young woman stepped up. Glaring at the women around her, he watched as none met his gaze, and none volunteered in her stead. But what did he expect? The only woman who would have, Mags Fisher, had been killed, poisoned by Snow for telling Annie his secret. That was what Finnick had been told by a Capitol executive as the woman pressed wet, slobbery, disgusting kisses to his face and he remembered feeling salty tears spill from his eyes as he knew that it was his fault someone he had sworn to protect had died.

"No, no, no!" He heard himself murmuring under his breath and caught eyes with Hank who had looked his way with pain clearly written on his ancient features, this pair did not have any sort of odds in their favor the elderly victor realized.

"Now for the boys!" She continued her cheerful voice making his stomach churn painfully as he saw Annie standing alone up there with her hands trembling and her sea green eyes wide with fear. "Finnick Odair!" Iris cried out and he felt himself fall back in a near faint from keeping his knees locked for too long; probably would have gone down completely had Hank not caught his shoulder and steadied him. Had his name not been called, he realized with a shock as he stepped up there and felt the eyes of his whole District boring into him if not completely through him, he would have volunteered just to keep Annie safe.

"Finn." The younger woman whispered desperately as Iris linked their hands together and lifted them up in the air and the Capitol woman cried out her usual conclusion ignoring the pain that the pair on either side of her was clearly feeling.

"Your Tributes for the Quarter Quell!" No, the odds were definitely not in Annie and Finnick's favor.