Ocean Eyes - Finnick Odair

Forty-five

Gale, Finnick, and Katniss are sent off the following morning to shoot glass off the surrounding buildings with the camera crew, and Marissa hangs back with the rest of the squad. The group are trying hard to come up with ways in which they can help Peeta figure out which of his memories are real and which were fabricated in the Capitol. Soldier Jackson is actually the one who manages to come up with a sort of game she names 'real or not real'. It entails Peeta asking the squad about a specific memory, and they tell him If it's real or not and explain what happened.

The other three finish shooting just as Peeta and the Squad start testing out the game, and Finnick sits beside Marissa, lacing their fingers together. He quickly kisses her on the cheek, and she grins, blushing.

"Most of the people from Twelve were killed in the fire?" Peeta questions.

"Real. Less than nine hundred of you made it to Thirteen alive."

"The fire was my fault," Peeta says.

"Not real. President Snow destroyed Twelve the way he did Thirteen, to send a message to the rebels."

Luckily, there are a large number of people here who know Peeta personally, so Jackson changes the rota around. Marissa, Finnick, Mira, Katniss and Gale are all assigned to guard Peeta with a Soldier from Thirteen, meaning that Peeta always has access to somebody who will be able to answer more personal questions. Finnick is the expert when it comes to Peeta in the Games as he mentored for the first one and was his ally in the quarter quell; Marissa can tell him all about their time in the Capitol, and she is happy to do so, even if the memories are quite unpleasant for her to relive because she'd do anything to help her closest friend; Mira is good at filling him in on what happened in District Thirteen as she ended up spending a lot of time with Peeta in the hospital through visits with Marissa and she also had insider knowledge from being relatively important to the rebel cause; Gale tells him all about District Twelve, even informing Peeta on seemingly trivial things like where members of Twelve used to buy soap from; Katniss mainly answers questions about herself such as the colour of the dress she wore in District Seven and whether or not she likes cheese buns.

They continue to answer his questions throughout the day in between shooting smaller propos in little groups. The camera crew choose to focus on Marissa and Mira's sisterly bond rather than her relationship with Finnick, which Marissa does not mind because shooting the little propos with Mira is actually quite enjoyable; the two of them get into trouble for laughing quite a lot as they watch each other pretending to duck out of the way and exaggerating their reactions for the camera.

The next afternoon they have to shoot a more complicated propo that involves the whole group. The rebels have set aside a whole block for filming which includes several active pods that the group have to safely set off and film their reactions. The members in the group that have speciality weapons have even been permitted to use them in the propos, so in addition to Marissa's rifle and concealed pistol, she has a belt of throwing knives wrapped around her waist. she probably won't get a chance to use them unless anything needs blowing up but, it will help make the propos more interesting if she's seen with her Hunger Games weapon.

"Here," Boggs says, handing a rifle to Peeta. The young victor takes it but barely glances at Boggs. He's staring intently at Pollux, a member of their squad. "It's loaded with blanks."

"I'm not much of a shot anyway," Peeta shrugs. He's so focused on Pollux that people are growing tense until he finally speaks up. "You're an Avox, aren't you? I can tell by the way you swallow. There were two Avoxes with me in prison. Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads. They'd been our servants in the Training Centre, so they arrested them, too. I watched them being tortured to death. She was lucky. They used too much voltage, and her heart stopped right off. It took days to finish him off. Beating, cutting off parts. They kept asking him questions, but he couldn't speak, he just made these horrible animal sounds. They didn't want information, you know? They wanted me to see it."