(It's surprisingly hard to find a picture of these two besides the production shot
of the so-called "sugar-cube scene" from Catching Fire - oh, shippers....)
Maybe this is my aceness coming through, but when it comes to The Hunger Games, I’m not particularly invested in the so-called Team Peeta or Team Gale. Mostly, I just wish both guys would realize Katniss has a lot on her plate trying to stay alive and overthrow oppressive regimes, and she really doesn’t need them making her feel like a shrew for not falling into their loving arms. While I enjoy her fine with either boy, I greatly prefer Katniss’s interactions with loads of other characters. This one isn’t necessarily my favorite (it’s hard to beat the warm fuzziness of Katniss and Cinna,) it’s pretty rich and infinitely readable. Note – I can’t even start to explain these two without spoiling the central plot of Catching Fire, but I’ll avoid major details from Mockingjay.
When they first encounter one another during the lead-up to the Quarter Quell, Katniss and Finnick both misjudge each other. She thinks he’s a shallow, slutty product of the Capitol, trading sexual favors to vapid citizens for pretty much anything he wants. He in turn thinks her star-crossed-lovers bit with Peeta in the last Games was nothing but a stunt and doesn’t realize the complexity of her feelings. Their early associations in the Quell are excellent to read, because they’re thrown into an alliance despite a near-total lack of trust. Through a good chunk of their first day in the Arena, Katniss is trying to figure out when and where to murder him, and Finnick casually holds his trident in an attack stance while talking to her. There’s electricity in the air as they circle each other while making a show of playing nice.
Over the course of the Quell, however, they start to edge toward the oddly profound comradeship that ultimately grows between them. With Katniss’s small size and Finnick’s much-talked-of pretty face, they’re both easy to underestimate in the Arena, but they prove themselves to one another in strength, intellect, and valor. And beyond this grudging respect for one another’s abilities, they begin to know each other. Finnick isn’t the promiscuous heartbreaker he purports to be, and Katniss isn’t the girl who bats her eyelashes at Peeta for the cameras’ benefit. Finnick starts to come around sooner than Katniss, of course. She’s practically allergic to trust, and even as she slowly loosens up, she never fully lets her guard down; at the first hint of uncertainty, she’s ready to believe the worst of him.
Both, though, are put through the ringer, and it’s when each is brought low that they really come together. In Mockingjay, broken by the events of the previous book, they’re one another’s unstable shoulder on which to lean. They grope unsteadily through extreme circumstances at one another’s side, each pushing through the heavy weight of their own despair and panic to provide what small comfort they can to the other. Some make untrue assumptions about their relationship, mistaking their closeness for heat, but these people don’t get it. Because they can’t; in this book, Katniss and Finnick are victims of the same cruel mind game, and only someone experiencing the same torture can offer any understanding.
In this way, through this new, painful kinship, they really and truly become friends and allies. They muddle through their shared trauma together, cling to, lose, and regain hope together, fight together, and strategize together with mutual respect and solidarity. This affinity between them is lovely, and it’s made so much more interesting by the long journey both of them take to reach it.
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