Two Evils ◦ Finnick Odair

uno; becoming a bodyguard

TWO EVILS.

01 UNO: BECOMING A BODYGUARD

❝Finnick Odair and Grier Rowe, right?❞

❝Yes. She won her game at fifteen and he won his at fourteen. Youngest ever. He's extremely humble.❞

❝You're kidding?❞

❝Yes, I'm kidding. He's a peacock and she's a total psychopath in a way. But they're some of the Capitol darlings, they treat them both like some sort of gods. Both are charming, smart, and very skilled in combat. Finnick is best if he's underwater, and Grier, well, she's good with just about any weapon you place in her hand.❞

❝What about weaknesses?❞

❝So far, all we know is that Finnick has one. Grier. She's his weakness even though it may not seem like it. Grier was his mentor and basically taught him everything he knows and he's trying to protect her in any way that exposes him. He wants to keep his mentor alive.❞

❝A guy like that has to know she's gonna kill rather than be killed.❞

❝And that's what you have to watch out for.❞

____________

After Grier's first Hunger Games, the 64th Hunger Games, she'd been stuck with anxiety inducing PTSD. Every night she'd wake up in a panic, one hand gripping her throat and the other reaching for her non-existent machete. It went on like that for years until the memories began to fade; the crusted blood underneath her fingernails and lifeless eyes staring back at her slowly erased from her memory.

That arena had changed something inside her, something she didn't like. They turned her into a murderer, something she knew she really was deep down, but thinking about it was just too much. So many people stared at her like she was some kind of goddess, like she was meant to be an immortal. But she wasn't a goddess, she wasn't immortal. To her friends, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. To everyone else in the Capitol, it was all for show.

People in the Capitol had no clue what it was like to be stuck in that bloody arena fighting for their lives every second until they were the only person left alive. It was traumatizing being the last. There she was, all alone, standing over a pile of dead bodies with more blood on her hands than anyone else, ghosts of the dead hanging around her like a dark shroud. 

That was a part of Grier's past that she'd like to forget. It was something she didn't want to experience again, but she wasn't given a choice.

Ever since the 74th Hunger Games where a girl named Katniss and a boy named Peeta made a risky move by playing against the gamemaker, things had been different. Grier was watching when they traveled around the districts on their victory tour still mourning the lost souls. Everything was so precise there was no independence in anything they did. It was like watching herself up on the screen ten years before.

Katniss and Peeta had started something that they didn't know how to end. By challenging the same, they caused mass hysteria among the Capitol and President Snow. That was why she was here now, reliving her worst nightmare all over again. Normally, the thought of watching the games year after year wouldn't faze her but being in them again was entirely different.

Grier wondered how Finnick was holding up. He was her tribute once before, still younger than her. He was tougher then he looked; he could win again. She wanted to blame both Katniss and Peeta for getting stuck in the Capitol once more but they didn't have a clue as to what they were doing.