Medea Odair

## Medea Lethe Odair

Rio Odair (older brother)

Damocles Odair (younger brother)

Caspian Odair (younger brother, Calder's twin)

Calder Odair (younger sister, Caspian's twin)

## History

Medea Lethe Odair was born in a victor’s home.

The second one, to be exact.

In fact, she’d never had the first of anything. Medea was the second born child of Finnick and Annie Odair, the second to join a family that had already been seen surviving three separate Games in total. She was the second one of the children to learn how to swim, the second one to attend the Academy afterwards. It seemed that a big brother, cruel and careless in the delivery of his words, would dictate her destiny.

Medea had been looking up to Rio ever since she’d been old enough to speak her first words, take her first steps. All those firsts were only her own. She looked up to her brother, who prodded and pushed at her regularly to get her into a better shape than she’d ever be in. Knowing that, she began to resent him as much as she idolised him. He went surfing and swimming, and Medea proclaimed her distaste for the activities. He wielded a trident at the Academy, and Medea reached for a set of throwing stars. Rio disliked mingling in dingy city clubs that didn’t amount to the luxury he was used to, and Medea would swear that the only true entertainment came from everything that wasn’t luxurious.

It became more than just obvious, that Rio paid no mind to the four little children that looked up to him, up because of his height, up because of the height of his meaning to their little heads. Two years stood between Medea and her big brother. Two years of life that she’d have liked to have on him, just to see if he’d have looked up to her had she been the first.

For the fact that the Games were so intricately entwined in Medea’s entire being, they’d never been something she’d desired to participate in. Glory and gore and whatever else went into it aside from the cutting edge mentality at the Academy; it was nothing that she didn’t already know, nothing that she didn’t already have. Three victory mansions, one of them her mother’s - empty and abandoned - and the other two courtesy of her father’s luck. Money, in the form of multiple yearly victor incomes. Notoriety, for being part of a family that wouldn’t even exist if her parents had not beaten every odd imaginable.

Medea didn’t need more than that. And yet, the competitions and tension at the Academy were tough. And yet, there was no questioning that someday, she would volunteer as well. Like the Odair family didn’t already have a grotesque amount of victors to their name.

It got worse when Rio volunteered for the 128th Hunger Games. She’d watched almost the entire time, only pulling herself away from the screen when it was absolutely necessary. It could’ve been chalked up to sentimentality, wanting to make sure her big brother was safe and well inside the Arena. In truth, despite the overarching numbness and unsurprising fact that he was doing fine, she felt shameful disappointment, too. Perhaps, there was the little dwindling flame of hope that he would *not* be fine as well.

Still, he came back.

Then, all the curious, prodding, expecting eyes were on her.

Part of the watchful eyes was a group of students Medea had befriended out of convenience and necessity more than anything. They were the best the District had to offer, right after her brother and Carol, who’d gone on to volunteer and parade his victorious self all over Panem soon after Rio had done the same. It was a constant competition to see who would be the next. The next to volunteer, the next to win or - god forbid - die. If she hadn’t known better, Medea would’ve thought her parents had tried to protect her from it when they took her to the Capitol for the 130th Games.

There wasn’t much that could protect her from herself, though, or quite frankly from who she chose to be vulnerable with. Namely, a tribute from District Two, who was trying to impress her parents into sponsoring him and failing. It did charm her, though, and irrevocably so. She fell into bed with him, feeling more connected to Miller Brick than she had to most others before. Medea followed his Games with watchful eyes, silently rooting more for him than she did for the two tributes from her home District. It was a little sad, really, especially in retrospect. When he was on the verge of dying, Medea sent him the very thing that saved him, an antidote to whatever venom he’d been injected with right at the end of the 130th Games.

After their night together, though, she never saw him again. At least not in person. No, Miller was by no means entirely gone from her life, but instead on the news and on gossip sites, where he chipped away at her heart bit by bit with every conquest he made. The first time had been the worst of the heartbreaks, not comparing to any who came after, prompting her to sit out his victory tour and swearing off ever meeting him again. It wasn’t an easy pill to swallow, being forgotten so easily.

Back from the Tower, she was right back at what her parents had tried to help her escape. Like expected it’d only gotten worse after she’d spent one Games cycle in the Capitol. Tensions ran high, the competition in the Academy was sharpened by a few degrees, and in the end, a year after the 130th Games it culminated into an incident that would change the trajectory of her life drastically.

Pre-Games coverage of 132 had just begun, and moods in the Academy were always most irritable during the Games. Medea and her group of friends - or enemies, depending how one decided to look at it - had taken their teasing and pushing to the very limit. On a dark and stormy summer night, the group climbed up the side of a cliff, and one of them ended up dead. The others, suspiciously enough, sported an array of injuries that would suggest a fight, and haunted looks in their eyes that told a different story.

All of their parents paid money to have the details swiped under the rug as much as possible, but gossip was unstoppable. Especially, when five students got expelled from the Academy without further comment, amongst those five an Odair.

Suddenly, she was free of the expectations to risk her life for a legacy that had been secured long ago in any case.

The entire group went their separate ways, almost wordlessly immediately after. And Medea went back to the Capitol.