Home Fanfics Go Back
Annie has heard that in Districts 1 and 2, students live in the training academies, sleeping in dormitories and only going home a few weeks per year. But things are different in 4. She goes to the academy during the day, and then in the evening she walks her favorite path home, toeing the rocks on the path, listening for birdsong, heart leaping as always as she makes the final turn around the bluffs and the ocean emerges, endless and emerald, big enough to swallow her without a care.
Endless and emerald. Ocean emerges.
Her mind plays with the words that it narrates, her fingers tapping along her hip as she turns into the gate of the cottage she shared with her parents. Her father is still down at the shipyard, she's sure, but her mom is there, sitting out in the yard, picking a net, same as any other day.
"Welcome home, Annie girl," she says, and Annie can hear the jingling of her earrings as she turns, a variety of little trinkets they've found washed up on the beach during their beachcombing walks over the years, crafted into jewelry, her mother's side project.
She greets her mother and goes inside. She kicks off her shoes and pads up to her room, pulling out the box she kept under the sweater, under her bed, away from any prying eyes. In it, her most prized possession, her beachcombing treasure, the one find she had not shown her parents, or Finnick, something that was hers alone: a half-tattered copy of an old book, washed up inside of a glass jar.
The glass jar was in their living room, currently holding sea glass, but the book is in her hands, pages yellow and crinkly, delicate, and though she's read it twice through since she found it over the weekend, she begins to read it again, obsessed.
She reads about the man unstuck in time. She reads about the bombing of Dresden. She reads about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. She reads about the alien race who questions free will. She knows it's just a story, she knows it's just made up, but she's never seen anything like it, and she wonders if she'll ever see anything like it again.
When she next looks up, the sun is lower in the sky, and she hears someone coming up the stairs. She knows the footsteps to be Finnick's. Finnick's footsteps. 1-2-1-2-1-
Quickly, she hides the book away, and turns to face him just as he come to her bedroom doorway. "Hey, Annie, your mom let me in."
Reaping Day. Annie realizes she's never actually felt nervous at one of these before this year. She might feel anxiety that her name might be called - that there would be attention on her as she was on camera, or maybe even called to the stage - but someone else would volunteer for her, in the end. It's why they had an academy. The "real" tribute is always known ahead of time.
But this year, she sees her classmates in the academy with their smoke-damaged lungs, and the underclassmen nervously fidgeting, and knows no one will volunteer. Knows that if someone else is called, she is expected to volunteer. She is 18 years old and healthy, after all. And she feels like the time-traveling man in the book, because suddenly time feels like molasses. She watches Finnick transformed into the person he becomes one month per year, stiffer, his smile easier but less genuine, a mask in front of his features. She sees Mags Flanagan standing beside him, her gaze on Annie until Annie is forced to look away.
And Nova, the escort, her hair a ghastly green and her outfit some sort of silvery fabric, commanding attention from her post on the stage. Finally, she reaches in, and Annie can see the future, because she knows her name is on the slip before it's called. Perhaps this is her punishment for reading that book. When she steps on the stage, she is transformed, too, from citizen to tribute, and she looks to 4 with desperation, because she doesn't want to leave, she loves her walk to school and back, she loves her room in her little cottage, and she loves the ocean. What does the Capitol have that can ever compare?
Seeing the Victors is like seeing figures from myth. She'd watched all of their Hunger Games at the academy, in training, so she knew who everyone was before she met them. The bigger surprises were how they changed since the Games, and how different they looked off of camera.
For instance, Haymitch Abernathy looked exhausted twenty years out. He still resembled his younger self, but he had obviously been on the drink, and he looked less than thrilled to be back in the Capitol. Enobaria was prettier in real life, with a beautiful face and hair, though Annie didn't dare speak to her.
"Is she your friend?" Annie asks, when she catches Johanna Mason watching them. She's shorter than Annie would have guessed, perhaps just past Annie's shoulder, and this gives her a strange sort of hope for the arena. That if Johanna can murder those tributes much larger than her, then she has a chance.
"She's probably my best friend here," Finnick answers, and Annie watches how he looks at Johanna. Like they were having a whole conversation with their eyes. She pictures Finnick kissing Johanna, fucking Johanna, cuddled up in bed at night with Johanna. She squeezes her eyes shut.
She feels Finnick grab her hand, perhaps mistaking her jealousy for anxiety about the arena.
Annie was taught, in the academy, about the strategies to win. They're named after the Victor who perfected them, or at least referred to in that way. Taking a life-threatening injury in order to secure Victory is a Cashmere move, whereas indiscriminate violence is more Enobaria.
Finnick's style is defined by his straightforwardness. The Hunger Games requires violence, but Finnick did not trick anyone or sneak around to set traps. Finnick did what he had to in order to survive, and no more - it was an ideal District 4 victory.
Unlike Finnick, Johanna's victory is defined by deceit. Annie is shown tapes of how she is shy and cowardly at her interviews, hiding in her arena, only to turn on the others inside the arena, to show another side of herself no one was expecting - that of an able killer. It was enough to earn her victory, but it is not noble or valiant, it would not be an honored victory back in 4.
Now, Annie can see them speaking with each other - Johanna and Finnick - as she trains at one of the stations. The Mentors can't come into the training areas, so they're nearby, in the designated area. Annie can't focus on sorting poisonous plants, because she can see them talking, she can see the way Finnick is listening intently to what Johanna has to say.
She's deceitful! Annie wants to shout. She wants to shake him. She tricked everyone in the arena, she'll trick you now.
Mags talks to her before her interview. "Don't tell them about you and Finnick," she advises.
Annie doesn't say anything. She's eating her breakfast and continues to do so, tapping her nails on the ceramic cup. Her father hated that habit. Perhaps he'll never have to hear it again, she thinks.
Mags sighs, her tone softening. "Finnick… a lot of the Victors… they have to 'entertain' the Capitolites," she explains. "Finnick needs to appear to be single, it would be bad if he had a girlfriend."
Annie has a hundred questions, from 'wouldn't a girlfriend 'save' him?' to 'if I win, will the same thing happen to me?' to 'what exactly do you mean by entertain?', but Mags lecturing her is irritating, so she continues tapping, continues her silence. She is an insect, stuck in the amber of this moment.
Mags tries one more time. "Finnick loves you, dearly. He is going to do everything he can to get you the best sponsors, to get you the best chance at winning. But the sponsors, the ones with the deepest pockets… they like the illusion of Finnick as a single man. Even if he has a secret girlfriend, a secret wife, they don't want to know about it."
In the end, she takes Mags' advice. In the end, she says she only has a crush on Finnick. In the end, she says that if she wins, she'll go home to 4, alone, tail between her legs, and leave Finnick to the Capitol. It feels like a betrayal.
When she enters the arena, Annie leaves Panem. Her last breath before getting lowered into the arena is her last breath before she leaves this time, this planet. She doesn't know where she is, exactly, but she knows she will never go back to where she came from.
And the cultures and traditions on this new planet are foreign, terrible. She doesn't speak the language, she doesn't know the customs. She barely has her feet on the ground before the one person she recognizes has his head separated from his body. She doesn't know what to think - is this normal? Is this correct? One of the women seems to smile at this, triumphant, so she laughs.
And that laugh carries her away from the others, up a hill, into brambles and trees, under a weave of ferns and there she teaches herself the language of this place. The way the ground seems to thrum with even sort of pulses. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. The way there will be exactly 8 seconds of silence, where even the insects are completely silent. Cover your ears. Hold your breath. The way that even the plants seem to move an incremental little taps, almost like the syllables of words. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The others seem to know the language instinctively, the way to move, the time to introduce themselves back into the soil of the place. But she is a visitor, so she does not know when she is overstaying her welcome. She receives two gifts, two items from the Other World, and she holds them close. But she feels safest with the trees, with the rocks and the dirt, and she feels distant from the other people. She doesn't know what to say, and she doesn't want to lose her head like her District partner.
So quietly, under cover of darkness, she climbs down to the valley, gets water in the rubber bladder, and climbs as high as she can on the other side of the stream, up a cliff face, into a cave. She pauses at the right times - three stomps, hold her breath for 8 seconds exactly, and tap her fingers along the rock at the right beats, and it seems to work as she makes it there safely.
And there she settles, until she becomes a part of the cave itself, a part of the rock, thrumming along with it. It's hard to sleep, because she feels she might miss the times when she needs to hold her breath, and if she doesn't do the tapping or the silence or the stomping or the other rituals, she might lose her connection to this place. But otherwise, it's fine.
She's hungry, she's terribly hungry, and when she needs to use the bathroom it's unsanitary, and she's so terribly delirious with lack of sleep, but she's fine. A rock isn't hungry, or thirsty. A rock cares little about modesty.
It's the monkey that breaks her concentration. The mutt that discovers her hiding spot, and the rock that saves her. She recognizes the spot in the pattern - not the 8 seconds of silence, but the tap tap tap of GO. She needs to act, or be attacked. She needs to kill. And as much as she doesn't want to - she did go to the academy. She had been trained on how to take down mutts.
After, she sits with her back against the rock, and she can't stop thinking about how the monkey's fur was wet in her hands. On the taps, she speaks aloud, her first words in hours, perhaps days. Wet. Fur. Wet. Fur. Wet. Fur.
And when the dam breaks, it's the easiest thing in the world. Swimming. Every infant in 4 was taught how to float and she goes now to the water, allowing herself to be taken wherever it leads. She's an infant again - without thoughts, guided by the sea. It's cold, but it's fine - either she freezes or she doesn't. She follows the rules, even now, even here - tapping on her chest, holding her breath, and punching one fist into a flat palm at the times she's supposed to stomp. Following the rules kept her alive this long, she can't stop now.
It feels like days she's floating before the sky opens up, and someone tells her she's won the 70th Hunger Games. She had forgotten that's where she was.
Annie leaves the arena - she is dried off, given new, warm clothes, and looked over by a medic, but she's not back in Panem. She's not sure where she is, exactly, perhaps a replica of her old world, or a timeskipped version? There are people she recognizes, certainly, but something is off.
Once she is hydrated and fed and warmed up, she is taken for an interview. She's not sure of what she says, but it ends quickly, with the host walking her offstage. She wonders what she did wrong. After, she is led down to a lounge for her Victory Party, and there she sees Finnick again, finally, or this version of him.
"You did it!!" he says, throwing his arms around her.
She nods. "I did it. Did. It. Did it." Finnick's footsteps had been the same approaching her, 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2, but his name has taken on that same rhythm now, one it hadn't before. Fin. Nick. Fin. Nick.
He looks at her strangely, watching the way her fingers tap out the words. She wants to explain the language of the arena, wants to ask if there was a code to his arena, but she doesn't have time, as dozens of people come to ask for her attention. People with the strangest comments, like 'I had counted you out, but you surprised me!' and 'I can't wait to get to know you next year,' and 'I was holding my breath wondering if another tribute would find that cave.'
She pauses at the last one - an older woman - wondering if this woman knows about the rules, about holding her breath, or if she was just using an expression. But Enobaria cuts in, smelling of drink, and smiles down at the woman. "Ms. Gladwell?"
"Enobaria, how beautiful you look! Come, tell me how you are."
Finnick guides Annie to a table, and hands her a drink, it's tangy, and she sips it through a tiny straw, suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of people. "Ms. Gladwell is fine, but she can be quite invasive. She'd want every gory detail of your Games," he explains, nodding at the woman Enobaria took aside.
Annie focuses on the television behind Finnick, watching her own post-Games interview with Caesar Flickerman, reading along with the closed captions. Caesar asked her what the moment was when she knew she won, and she had answered as honestly as she could. "I just tried to follow the rules. Did what the arena wanted me to do."
Caesar looked confused at this, she can see, then asked. "What the arena wanted? Are you saying you could hear voices in the arena?"
Annie considered this question, and she considers it now, watching herself on the screen. "I could hear the trees," the captions read, "And the stone, and the water behind the dam."
Caesar looks to the staff behind the camera for guidance, and it looks like he's staring straight at her in the bar with Finnick.
When Annie gets back to District 4, she is sent to the Victor's Village. She is 18 years old, almost 19, so her mother and father help her move, tell her to come back and stay with them as often as she likes, but they stay behind, in the cottage she adores so much, the cottage she doesn't want to leave.
The first night in her new home, Annie wakes up to shouting. Finnick and Lido are at Mags' house, just before dawn, calling for help. Annie sees her as they carry her out, limp on one side, fingers on the other hand gnarled in a fist, and Mags' white hair in a messy bun. It was as if she were angry at Annie for something that Annie couldn't quite put her finger on.
Otherwise, her new home is quiet, and she's so alone. Certainly, Finnick is there, but he is cagey, coming and going and going, always looking over his shoulder, as if someone might come to snatch him back to the Capitol. It isn't until one night, a couple weeks after they're home that they're walking on the beach and he explains.
"When I'm in the Capitol, as a Mentor… I have to see people. People pay to spend the night with me, and…" he kicks at a piece of driftwood. "There's no way out."
Annie pictures herself, going back to the Capitol, trying to Mentor children from 4, boys and girls that she most likely grew up with, and instead dealing with people who want her body. "Will I-?"
The words are barely out of her mouth before he stops and squeezes her hand. "No," he says firmly. "I made sure you won't have to go back. I… I really like you, Annie, and I can't bear you having to deal with this."
She can't process what he's saying. What kind of deal could he have made, to keep her from going back there? His body? Money? He really liked her. "I really like you too, Finnick."
Now he looks away, and she can feel him slipping from her grasp. "I want to be closer to you, but I can't right now. It's hard - they're always watching me, and I don't want you caught up in any gossip, and well… I don't feel good about myself right now."
She nods. What can she do but accept this? She wants to drag him closer. She wants him to drown in her. She wants to envelop him and keep him close and never let him get on a train back to the Capitol, but who was she against Coriolanus Snow?
The next day, she walks out to the ocean before dawn, and wades in further and further. She's a good swimmer, an excellent swimmer, but she doesn't let herself remember that. She's hauled out from under the current by two fishermen heading out early. She's checked into a home for mad women.
On the Victory Tour, Annie finds it hard to speak. Nova is back, and she instructs Annie to say something nice at each stop. But at their first stop, District 12, Annie is sick from the long train ride, and nervous from how Finnick's been forlorn over Mags' health, and the skinny, sullen faces of District 12 do nothing to calm her nerves. She stands there, staring at them, for far too long, until Nova comes up to her with some cue cards for her to read off of. She can't even remember what they say.
Nova gives her some medicine to 'slow her thoughts' on the train to District 10, though she only takes a few doses before she stops it due to the terrible fatigue it gave her, and the fact that she could no longer hear the rhythm of the world, the right times to hold her breath or stomp, and she worries if she missed too many she might die. When they get to District 7, Annie can see Finnick visibly perk up. She sees Johanna Mason in the crowd watching, next to a taller, balding man around 50 years old, and another man closer to 60 smoking a pipe.
Annie reads her remarks off the cards, getting through the speech with only a few repetitions and a few pauses, and then they are taken on a tour of 7's lumber mill and a walk through a stand of beautiful, tall pine trees.
After, Finnick and she go to Blight's for dinner, and Johanna is there, and she pours them all wine. Johanna only picks at her food, though Blight is an excellent cook, and her cheeks are sunken in, her whole demeanor changed from just a few months ago when Annie met her before her Games.
They get up to leave fairly late, Finnick stumbling a bit with three bottles of wine gone, and Annie's eyes are heavy with sleep, but he grabs onto Johanna's arm before she can escape. "Can I talk to you?" he asks.
She shrugs. "I live two houses down."
So they follow her home, and she pours them each a glass of water, and Annie settles down on an armchair as Finnick sits beside Johanna on the couch, and she's rolling a cigarette and Annie's eyelids are heavy so she closes them, letting the two of them make conversation as she listens, half-asleep.
"Want one?"
"With morphling? Jo, come on, no, I'm working."
"Fine, I'll roll you one with just tobacco."
"Jo, what the hell is this? You look like death."
She laughs, a sick, short laugh, and then Annie hears the lighter click. "What the hell is this? What do you mean? You did this, didn't you?"
Annie hears her exhale and then there's silence for a bit, then the lighter again, presumably Finnick this time. The smell of tobacco hits her nostrils.
"Me?"
"You really don't know, huh?" There's the hush of whispers and Annie feels a pang of frustration, of jealousy, the nagging exclusion of being a Victor, but being locked out of the Mentor's club. It feels like a scab that just keeps itching, so she just keeps picking at it. She doesn't want to go back to the Capitol, she hated it there, and yet that's where Finnick was most loved, that's where Finnick is with Johanna, sharing secrets. That's where everything happens.
"Come on, Annie, we should head back." She hadn't realized she had fallen asleep until he is shaking her awake. She pretends not to see the way his shirt is buttoned one-off.
When they get back to District 4, it feels like Finnick has won the Games. All eyes are on him as the two of them take the stage, and that's fine by her, she is tired of the cameras, tired of saying the right words, tired of performing. But Mags isn't there, in the crowd of the Victory Tour stop, and Annie catches Finnick's eye somewhere between reading off of her notecards and him smiling for the flashing cameras.
"Mags is still in the hospital," Finnick's sister says, after, when they're mingling with the people of their District in the crowd. Well, Finnick is mingling, mostly. The girls from Annie's class at the Academy keep a safe distance, as if she's cursed - as if she didn't save them by going into the arena.
"Welcome home," her mother says, hugging her, and her earrings jingle with the same tinkling of sea glass she remembers since she was a child, her father standing in that same stiff way. She wonders why she can't go home, can't live with them if she's so defective that she can't live in the Victor's Village.
"Thanks," she says, and she sees even her father make a small smile of pride that she's come home. She bites her lip, trying to hold back, but she can't. As subtly as possible, she stomps three times, holding her breath as she waits for them to speak again.
"We were told you would be treated very well at the facility," her mother says, her voice gentle, but tentative.
Her phrasing is strange, leaving Annie with more questions than answers. Who told them? Was there a question that she might be treated poorly? So it wasn't an option that she could come home? She has to assume that Snow is involved, that Finnick is pulling some strings, that this is all some scheme in the Capitol that she is not privy to. And as much as she appreciates Finnick going out on a ledge to try to help her, she resents the secrecy, the chasm it forms between them. She nods, a little distantly, to her parents.
That night, her last night of freedom, she's to collect her things from that stupid house in the Victor's Village - to bring all the things she needs to the Ward for Troubled Women, and she thinks good riddance, what with Finnick being gone in the Capitol for months at a time, with Mags now in the hospital as well, and Mags wanting nothing to do with her before anyways. The other Victors from 4 never gave her the time of day. She loves Finnick, loves him more than she loves herself, perhaps, but she feels frustrated with him, with the way he is pushing her away, and the way he is planning her life without her involvement.
When she leaves her house in the Victor's Village, she leaves the stove on, just a little, unsure of when exactly the dishtowel will catch, but certain it will only be a matter of time. Good riddance, she thinks. There's no gift she wants to accept from the Capitol, nothing they can offer that comes without cost.
The Ward for Troubled Women is fine, Annie thinks. At first it's hard to adjust, with strict schedules, but that is just like being back at school. The women are strange, she thinks: some her age or younger, and some almost as old as Mags. Her roommate, Mara, is a few years older, with black hair in two braids, and she's kind to Annie. Two other girls, around Annie's age, crowd around the television or hoard any magazine's brought in, obsessed with the drama of the Capitol.
"Do you know him?" one of them asks, perched on the edge of Annie's bed.
The centerfold is a picture of Finnick, leaving a club with some Capitol elite gentleman, who to Annie looked rather ridiculous in his bright blue suit, matching hat, and oversized glasses. Behind him was Enobaria of District 2, beside another man, this one in all black.
Annie nods. "Yes," she says, before she has time to consider if she should lie.
The first girl, the blonde, squeals. "I heard he was dating Cashmere of District 1! Is that true?"
The other girl, the brunette, cuts her off. "It's not true, Cashmere definitely has something going on with Brutus, though."
Annie doesn't know what to say. She picks up the magazine which has been forgotten and flips through it. It's the first time she's ever paid attention to Capitol tabloids, and it's shocking to see Finnick all dressed up, presumably as a prostitute. He's beautiful, just as ever, but he doesn't look like the man she knows. He's wearing makeup, for one, and his hair is styled with some product. His outfit is nothing like he would ever wear at home. But more than that: she can see it in his eyes, an absolute death of the soul. She can see it in Enobaria's as well. There is nothing there, just another night to fuck another Capitolite to keep Snow happy. It makes her sick.
"He's dating me," she says clearly, so there is no mistake.
"Oh, that's why they sent you here," the brunette laughs, rolling her eyes. "You're delusional."
"Hey, shut up," Mara says, rolling over finally. She napped for long hours, every day, but she didn't like the two gossipers, that much Annie knew. "This is Annie Cresta, she won the last Games. Did you not see her and Finnick at the Victory Tour?"
For once the other two are silent, because of course they must have, but Finnick having a true girlfriend and not being perpetually single, the 'People's Victor', was inconvenient. Finally, the blonde relents. "Well, in that case, I'll bring you everything we have."
And she does, bringing a hefty stack of magazines and clippings. While Mara sleeps, Annie spends the evening poring over them, taking in image after image of Finnick in the Capitol. It feels like gazing into a world she'd only been able to peek into once.
She sees Finnick during the 67th and 68th Games, pictured here and there with Johanna, both of them looking too young and nervous. Her heart beats wildly as she imagines somebody buying his company for the night, of him expected to 'perform'. She sees him again in the 69th Games, pictured with Cashmere and Gloss, with Haymitch, with various high profile clients. He seemed to really grasp his persona that year, with his confidence growing, his style becoming more cohesive, the captions becoming even more flattering. She doesn't see Johanna that year, and takes it as a good sign, that their affair, or whatever they had, had stopped.
And then she sees the most recent pictures: from this year's Games, from the Victory Tour, and from some Capitol event that Finnick had obviously been recalled for. She just saw him, and yet within days, he had transformed back into that man she barely recognizes. Duty called. Even in the ones where she's there, standing beside him, she finds herself staring into his eyes, trying to see which Finnick is there: District 4's, or the Capitol's. "You should take a break," Mara says, once it's past lights out and she's squinting at the pictures in the dark.
She should, it's true. Finnick's pictures will still be there in the morning. She's sure more will come her way soon. She can't wait. She dreads it.
Finnick comes to visit, after a month, once she gains more privileges, once the staff aren't afraid she's going to run into the ocean and drown herself, or set fire to any other buildings. Mara stays in their room, curled on her side on her bed, as usual, but the two who brought her the tabloids, Shelley and Chamomile, they have become her natural supporters in her relationship with Finnick, peeping over her shoulder into the visitor's room.
"Would you like to be introduced?" she asks them, since they do steadily bring her the magazines, and call her to show her any television specials. They nod eagerly.
She sits at a table for four in the visitors room with Finnick and the other two, mindful of the other women meeting children, parents, lovers. Finnick looks out of place here, too beautiful to be in a hospital. She's spent too long looking at the perfect airbrushed Capitol images of him - fully made up in makeup and wardrobe against a gleaming perfect Capitol club or party. But even in reality he is greater than all of them, some sort of person that feels larger than life, like he deigns to meet her here but he is also somewhere else. "It's good to see you," she says, kissing him chastely. She's not sure how much of a kiss he would allow, not sure how afraid he is of being seen, even here. You. You. You. The word echoes in her mind, and she taps her finger against her thigh.
She introduces the other two, and Finnick is gracious as always, but she can feel his reticence, his concern. She knows that Shelley speaks too quickly with bulging eyes, and that Chamomile has massive scars on her arms. She can practically read his mind - his concern that she is getting too close to the wrong kinds of people, that she will always be a Troubled Woman, and never come back to the Victor's Village. She doubts she'll come back, but that isn't why.
As Finnick makes polite conversation, she watches, admiring him. He could probably talk to a rock, she thinks, thanks to his Capitol training. He obviously isn't fond of her friends, but he's playing nice for her benefit. But he's Troubled too, she thinks. The line between Troubled and not isn't as firm as Finnick probably thinks it is. Just because some of them were locked in a hospital, and he was allowed to roam free didn't say much about any of their states of mind, Annie thought.
All three of them have coordinating ropes, Annie's red, Shelley's yellow, and Chamomile's green, that they tie and untie into intricate knots to pass the time. It's this, of everything, that Finnick notices, and Shelley promises to get him one of his own, since 'rope is the one thing we have plenty of'. She doesn't mention the staff only hand it out in 12 inch lengths.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes, Finnick shifted. "So, will they let you out for a walk?" he asks.
She nods, showing him where to sign the paperwork. And as soon as the breeze hits her face, she almost feels like crying. It's been so long since she's just been able to walk, since she's been able to see her home. "My parents should be coming more often now," she says, perhaps a wish, perhaps to release him from some of the obligation of coming every day.
"That's good," he says. "By the way, Mags was sent home the other day. She's no good at walking, really, so I don't think she'll be coming to the Capitol, but she's recovered pretty well."
Annie nods, happy at least for Finnick. He loved Mags like a parent, and would be devastated if she died. "I'll go," she offers, meaning it with every bone in her body.
He looks confused for a moment. "Go where?"
"To the Capitol. I can Mentor."
His expression warps, from a flash of amusement, to pain, to almost disbelief, as if he didn't think her capable of understanding the circumstances. But of course she did. To secure sponsor money, she needed to appeal to the men who ruled the Capitol. She needed to sleep with them. She could do that better than Mags, certainly. It was unpleasant, but she would be there together with Finnick, not locked up in a tower in her own District.
He turns to her, stopping on the path, and embraces her. It's been so long since she's felt this: pure, actual affection from him, that she melts into the embrace. It feels nostalgic, a relic from a time before she entered in the arena, before he and her own parents felt distant. She presses the side of her head against his chest. "I care about you, so much," he says, his voice thick. "And I won't let anything happen to you."
"What about me?" she asks, "I want to help you, too."
"It will help me knowing you're not in the Capitol. Get better, help Mags, stay safe here."
Annie isn't sure exactly what Finnick means by 'get better'. There isn't anything wrong with her, exactly. There isn't anything wrong with any of them on the Ward, except that someone decided they were obtrusive, as far as she can tell.
Mags comes by sometimes, and Annie wants to refuse her company, irritated as she is by the old woman's personality, but her days are so repetitive, so, so frustratingly similar to being locked in a tower, that she always accepts, sitting with Mags in a corner of the visitor's lounge.
Mags is terrible at speaking now. Whatever she was hospitalized for, it seemed to have garbled her speech so that when she does speak, it comes out slurred from a corner of her mouth. At first, Annie can't understand her at all, but Mags returns, every other day, and more and more Annie understands her - another secret language to add to the one she already knows.
"M'rng," Mags will say, an easy one. "Kints or debbels?"
Mags always has a deck of cards in her pocket. "Kings," Annie answers, having never won a game of doubles off of Mags. Annie shuffles, unless Mags is irritated and paranoid, in which case she'll get one of the other girls to shuffle and deal, and then Mags sets up her cards in a custom slotted holder she sits on the table. "Blit made 't," she explains.
Annie assumes this is one of the other Victors, probably from District 7, based on the rich color of the wood. "Did Finnick go back yet?" she asks, once they're into the second round. The reaping ought to be around now, she thinks, but of course she was excused from attending based on her 'Fragile State'.
Mags nods. "'st wuk," she says.
So that was it, she thinks. Finnick would be gone for a month, and he hadn't even said an official goodbye. He'd told her he would be leaving soon, but not an exact date. She knows as she earns more 'rights', she can come and go from the ward as she likes, that it will be easier to meet Finnick at the platform when he comes home, that it will be easier to share meals with him, and live like they used to. But a nagging thought frustrates her whenever she considers this: would he want her to? Would he be so afraid of someone seeing them together, of word getting out that Finnick Odair had a girlfriend that he would want to keep her locked up in this tower forever?
"Kints. You liss." Mags' speech is slurred, but the point is clear: Annie has lost yet another game.
"One more round?"
"Fer yer pudding."
Annie rolls her eyes, placing the pudding cup into the "pot" in the center of the table.
Later that night, she sits around the table in the common area with Shelley and Chamomile, poring over a new edition of 'Capitol Weekly'. There's a picture of Finnick, dolled up as he cuts a ribbon to some new school, and another of him and Cashmere with their Tributes at the parade.
What really catches their attention, though, is a half-page article called 'Fight at Illyria?" which features a picture of Enobaria holding back Brutus from swinging at Johanna and Haymitch. The author reports that no one involved was willing to talk about the fight, though one witness said the initial fight was between Haymitch and Brutus. Shelley starts in on her theories, involving Cashmere, Enobaria, Finnick, and others.
The Ward for Troubled Women is run by a man, and Annie wonders why she is even surprised to find this out. She goes to his office two days before the Hunger Games are set to end, to appeal the decision to not let her leave the ward without a visitor signing her out.
Mr. Squamish is around her father's age, but where her father was brawny and made to work in the shipyard, the Director had an academic look to him, accentuated by all the books on the shelves behind him. "What can I help you with, Miss… Cresta?" he asks.
Annie's eyes are drawn to the books, having never seen so many in one place before. Even in school there were only the minimum necessary, training manuals and the like. "I'm better," she says, suddenly feeling very stupid, very unprepared. She should have rehearsed what to say. How could she appeal to someone who has read all of these books when she barely knew anything? "I want… to leave… by myself. I promise I'll come back."
He nods, indicating he understands her predicament. "Please, take a seat," he says. There are two carved wooden chairs before his desk and she sits in one, loving the contrast to the bland chairs in the lounge and visitor's rooms. "Miss Cresta, you are making a promise, but that is just words. What have you done to prove that those words have backing?"
This feels like a puzzle, like a riddle she needs to solve to be granted freedom from the tower. "I can leave something precious behind, that way I have to come back for it," she says.
He raises an eyebrow at this, as if he wasn't expecting this answer. "And what precious item do you have? Could not you trick me by pretending something is precious?"
It is true, she supposes, that she has very few precious items. Some sea glass trinkets from her mother, the forbidden novel, and a pile of pictures of Finnick torn from tabloids. All but the first she would be too embarrassed to hand over as collateral.
"Might I propose another solution?" Mr. Squamish says. "One of the women was recently discharged who was a very dear personal assistant of mine. If you take on that role, you will earn my trust, and I will grant you free time away from here in return for your assistance."
She sees all the books on the walls. Books she would have time to read if she worked here. Books she could sneak out of this office, one by one, to read in the evenings as well. "Of course. Though I don't know if I have the skills you need."
"If you can read and write and follow directions, it will be enough. Please return tomorrow morning."
Annie takes to her new job quickly, taking down dictated notes for the director, following him into meetings, opening and sorting his mail, and sitting at a little desk outside his office and greeting visitors. It turns out that she doesn't even need to sneak the books off the shelf, as the first week, he offers her a book to read in case she got bored. The thought was absurd, after so many years of sneaking around with her novel, after holding reading close like a sin. She could just pick a book and read it?
"They're not very interesting, most are just reference books and other guides," he said, "But it's better than an idle mind."
She couldn't imagine using "not very interesting" to describe these books, and she started on a set of encyclopedias. She was through the 'A's in three days and tried to force herself to slow down, to cherish the activity, to convince herself to read slower to have a chance of retaining the information. Finnick was home now, a few days into her new job, and she actually had to decide between which she preferred: working or spending time with him. Ultimately, she discussed her schedule with the director and she left her post at 2 in the afternoon each day, and each day Finnick was waiting for her in the Visitor's lounge, where he would sign her out so they could spend the summer's day outside.
"I don't understand," he says, as they walk along the beach. "You're not even getting paid."
She holds her tongue from the first biting words she wants to say, something like "neither are you, but you make do with what you can." Instead, she says, "But I get to learn all sorts of new things. I'm reading all these books and learning skills I'd never try otherwise."
"For what?"
He doesn't say it aggressively, but she feels defensive. How can she explain that there doesn't have to be an end purpose for reading. That she just feels better the more she's filled up, that knowing other people lived before her and passed on knowledge is grounding in itself. Sometimes she feels like she and Finnick are on the same wavelength, that she doesn't even need to speak for him to understand, but lately she feels more and more like his experiences are drawing him further and further from her. And she blames the Capitol. No one has time for reading in the Capitol, for learning and appreciation of the past. No one has time for the mind when the body is right there.
"To fill my time, mostly," she says. "It gets boring in that tower, same thing day after day."
This, at least, he seems to relate to. She wonders if he feels the same, repeating days in the Training Center, then here in the Victor's Village, no real job but always an act to perform. "Yeah, that makes sense," he says. "I'm glad you have that."
In the end, he keeps her at arm's length. In the end, they spend most afternoons together, eating at each other's family's homes, fishing, beachcombing, or just talking, but rarely kissing, and never anything more. Sometimes they go to Mags', usually they gamble and lose to her at cards. Finnick never talks about the Capitol, and she never asks.
Shelley and Chamomile always ask about Finnick, since he never stays up on the ward anymore. She tells them the truth: she thought perhaps he would propose, even if it had to be in secret, but it feels like he's more distant than ever. And a year ago it would have frightened her, and it still does to a degree, but she has come to understand that Finnick is not her entire world, just as she is not his.
She has her job now, helping in the Director's office. She finishes the encyclopedias before winter, moving on to the almanac, and then the the medical guides. She finds words for things she's never had words for before, but she holds them secret, afraid to say them out loud, since she isn't sure where the line is drawn, isn't sure what is fine and what brings down the hand of power.
Dictator. Gladiator. Anxiety Disorder. Compulsion. Stroke. Prostitution. Slavery. Censorship.
These revelations, more than anything, are what keep her rooted in her position next to Mr. Squamish. She makes sure to do a good job, taking good notes, sorting everything well, trying not to make any mistakes, so that she does not risk losing her spot. When he announces to her she can leave without accompaniment, that she's earned his trust, she'd almost forgotten that was her initial goal. She'd learned a new word that day: paranoia, and it fills her now as it has ever day since she was reaped, fear of the Capitol and her own mind. Fear that Finnick is being corrupted and fear that he's not, that he's simply not the person she thinks he is. Fear that they love each other just as much as she hopes they do, but that something will come to ruin it all, that the all-seeing Capitol will play its hand at the first sign of her happiness.
That year, Finnick tells her before he leaves for the Capitol. "The reaping is in two days. Mags will be here, still," he says, as if drilling it into her that she's not been spending as much time with Mags anymore, busy as she is with her job.
She nods, accepting this. He can't refuse to go, after all. "Be careful," she says. She knows she'll go back to her usual habits, watching the tabloids with Shelley and Chamomile, probably watching the Games themselves just to get a glimpse of him on the screen.
He kisses her forehead. "Of course. I'll be home before you know it, and then maybe we can see about getting you out of that place."
She wonders if she wants to get out, really, if she wants to go to the Victor's Village again. Her parents rarely come to see her, even her mother, though now that she can leave she does go to see them for dinner fairly often. It's clear, however, that she will never be a part of their family like she was before she was reaped, for a reason she can't quite understand. And then there's the other thing: the books. There's at least enough to keep her busy for another six months. And she's sure she could stand to reread some. And she learns new things about the world all the time from Mr. Squamish's meetings. Sometimes she thinks he wants her to. She ought to want to leave, but if she does, what does District 4 have to offer her? Just a life of sitting around, waiting to die?
She ends up watching more of the Games than she plans to, because they keep showing Finnick when the action gets dull. And then the action is not dull anymore - not when one of the boys in the arena starts eating another tribute.
Cannibalism. She knows the word now. Strangely, that part is not that shocking to her, though the camera cuts away after just a second, and from the frazzled way the announcers talk around the issue, she can tell it's quite taboo. It isn't as if she would ever do it, or at least she doesn't think so, but the arena was strange. Once inside, Panem was distant, almost untouchably so. She didn't sympathize with the boy, not exactly, but she could understand a compulsion, something irresistible, or at least the idea that the laws no longer applied.
The next morning, she goes to work, but Mr. Squamish is stiff, a little more proper than he has been. They had been having tea together, discussing her reading, but now he has all the books put away again on the shelves, his desk cleaned up properly. She sits in the same chair she sat in when she initially met him, wondering if she is in trouble.
"Annie, you probably know better than most that the Capitol is very concerned with control," he begins, "And that extends all the way out here."
She doesn't know what he is saying, but she can feel her chest tighten. She had initially distrusted him, but this man was kinder to her than her own father, he let her read all she wanted and helped her understand it. Secretly, she knew this likely wasn't allowed, but she didn't dare question it.
"I fear that sooner rather than later I am going to be replaced," he says. "And you're going to have to make a choice."
"Stay or go?" she asks, putting the pieces together. She wonders vaguely what the Director did to catch the eye of the Capitol, but she doesn't dare ask. She hopes it wasn't her. She fears a debt she can't repay.
He nods. "I can release you today," he says, "Or any day until I am fired, to return to the Victor's Village. Or you can stay on with whoever replaces me. Though it would be at their discretion to discharge you, then."
She knows what he is saying. He wants her to ask to leave. But her house is a pile of ash, and to move in with Finnick would be to doom him. She is certain whoever the Capitol sends will not be as kind as this man, will not let her decide her own end, but it will be someone from the Capitol, someone she can analyze and study. She could be a spy. Could she really be a spy if she has no one to report to? She wonders. But doing something feels better than doing nothing, and at least here she has friends.
"I want to stay," she says.
He smiles, a little grimly. "I thought you might say that. In that case, we have some work to do. To prepare."
That night, even the old women and Mara come out to watch the Games. Annie can see at least five women working small lengths of rope into knots before picking them loose again. They are all gathered in the common room, munching on snacks and gathered around the tiny television when the avalanche comes down, burying the boy from District 6. It's terrifying in its swiftness, the way he had seconds of warning before imminent death. And yet it wasn't unlike the dam breaking in Annie's arena - she is sure there was an unfortunate tribute caught right at the mouth of the dam, killed instantly.
The avalanche breaking feels less like a twist of fate and more like the hand of the Capitol coming down in swift and intentional punishment. She wonders if it was the same in her Games, and if so, why.
When Finnick returns, she meets him on the train platform. His sisters are there too, and they carry on chatting loudly all the way down to the beach, Finnick dropping his bag and jumping right into the ocean. His oldest sister is pregnant, now, and they have dinner at her house that night, her and her husband talking about baby names and plans for the nursery. Annie lets herself dream for a moment, imagining a life where she and Finnick have a baby, a life where they get to live in a seaside cottage and think of the Hunger Games as nothing more than a distant distraction.
She can see Finnick's tension throughout the conversation, his fear perhaps that the reaping is not as random as they once thought, that a new baby means one more person at home that he needs to protect. But he doesn't say a word of this to his sister, merely laughs with her, drinks a little too much wine, and stumbles out into the fresh air with Annie at the end of the night.
It's dark now, and so they walk back towards the hospital. Slowly, hesitant to leave each other. "Want to stay the night with me?" he offers. She wonders if he's offering because he's shaken up, because he's drunk, because it's his first night back in District 4. She wonders if he'll regret such a thing in the morning. Regardless, she nods, because she does. She so desperately wants to be close to him.
She calls the clerk at the desk on the ward from the public phone in the town square, reporting that she'll be home in the morning, and is granted a pass for the night. Then she follows Finnick back to the Victor's Village. She's been back there since she'd moved out, but not in a while, and is surprised to see that the plot of land her house had been on has been cleared of all the ash and rubble and now hosted a small garden. She wonders who had started it, who maintains it.
But she can wonder about it later, she thinks, following Finnick inside. His house is quiet, untouched for over a month, but he drops his bag and walks to the bathroom. "Want to take a shower?" he asks.
She nods, a little unsure about being naked with him, but then dispelling the thought. He must be seen by everyone in the Capitol, she thinks, by that woman she's seen him with a few times in the tabloids - Marcella Cork - and by others, maybe Johanna, maybe Cashmere. The water is warm and she presses against him in the shower, feeling the curves of his muscles, memorizing how the feel of his body matches how it looks. There are no scars, no evidence of the damage he took in the arena or anytime after. The aestheticians in the Capitol were thorough, of course.
He wraps his arms around her shoulders, and she can feel his erection against her thigh. "God, I missed this," he says, and they are silent for a while, standing in the warm water.
"You're home now," she reassures him.
When they fall into bed together, she tries not to think of the Capitol, of who else Finnick has been forced to sleep with. She dares not wonder if there's anyone else he's been with out of choice, since they weren't really exclusive. Or maybe they were, but the month in the Capitol didn't count. It is hard to say, exactly, when they're so bad at talking about things like that. She wants to give him grace, to be patient, but she wants him all to herself, Snow be damned.
He pleasures her first, and she comes calling his name, laying back on the bed after, having forgotten what pleasure was like. It's beautiful but sad, she thinks, that they couldn't discover this together, that he is perfect at this already, from dozens of repetitions for his 'clients' in the Capitol. She is gangly and awkward, but he doesn't complain, and they make it work. Perhaps he likes the change, after all of the weeks of Capitol perfection. At the end he pulls out, neither of them daring to risk a pregnancy. "I love you," he says, the words almost ghosting off his lips, and he doesn't even seem to realize he's said them, already half asleep. She kisses him and settles into his chest.
It's not long after Finnick comes home that the Director is fired. A Peacekeeper comes in to escort him out, reading to everyone on the ward his charges: impropriety, indoctrination, treason, and dissent. Annie knows all of these words now, thanks to the law book she was able to read in his office, one of the many books they were able to hide away in recent weeks.
She wonders what they'll do with Mr. Squamish. She hopes they'll just fire him, but she pictures him as an Avox, or foraging around in the Wilds, and her heart sinks. Mara, who had been coming out of their room more and more, retreats back to bed, napping for most of the day. Shelley and Annie make sure to hide all the tabloids away. Chamomile pulls her sleeves down over her hands.
The new director is a man from the Capitol, Mr. Lender, who is younger and strict looking. He watches them all with a keen eye, and instead of being shut up in his office all day, he sits with the staff at the desk for hours, watching them all. Annie makes no mention of her 'job', wanting no special treatment with this man. But he calls for them all, one by one, and eventually it's her turn for a meeting with the new director.
He's reading her file when she enters the office, and the word on the front catches her eye. Sensitive. Sen-si-tive. The syllables break up in her mind, and her finger taps them out. She wants to hold back the stomp but she can't, it's impossible. She holds her breath for the full eight seconds before she sits down, aware the whole time that he is watching her. She hadn't realized how much she had improved, how little she was having her intrusive thoughts until they came back: until a new reminder of the Capitol appeared.
"Annie Cresta, age 21," he reads. "Admitted after a suicide attempt and arson. And a Hunger Games Victor." He closes the folder and this shows her he had just been pretending to read it. Certainly he's memorized all he thinks he needs to know about her. She sits silently, waiting for him to continue. His look is very toned-down from the other Capitolites she's seen in-person and in the tabloids. He has a black, curled mustache and wire-rimmed glasses, and a pin-striped suit, but it, too, was black, none of the flashy colors and excess she was used to seeing. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to erase the images she can't help but see: Finnick with his arm around Marcella Cork, Finnick tossing back shots with two other Capitolites, that bizarre fight between Brutus and Haymitch. And that was just what made it into these magazines.
"Annie, are you listening?"
She had not been.
"Annie, I am concerned," he says, and to his credit, he does look it. "I fear there is unrest spreading in Panem, that rebels want to start a civil war."
Her heart begins to pound. She can't figure out what kind of trap this is. Squamish was right, in a way, to think the Capitol suspected he was a rebel, despite the fact that he wasn't, or at least she didn't think he was. She doesn't know what the word means, exactly. But why would the new director tell her this? Did he know of her job under the old director? Did he think she knew things, as a Victor? She laughs, coldly, thinking of how much Finnick has left her in the dark, only then realizing what an inappropriate moment to laugh it was.
The Director eyes her strangely, as if wondering the value of involving a "crazy person" in his plan, and she settles a bit. Good. If he thought she was truly unstable, he wouldn't think she was capable of understanding the intricacies of plots and plans. She puts a hand to her mouth, trying to look demure. He continues. "Understand that unrest cannot be allowed to perpetuate, that any rebellion will cost thousands of lives. It will mean war, fighting, and death for those who plan it, and innocent civilians. You are in a unique position, with your connections to Mags Flanagan and Finnick Odair. I'd like you to continue spending time with them, and let me know of anything that sounds odd - any behaviors or plans out of the norm. In exchange, all three of you and your families will remain safe from harm."
A spy. Isn't that exactly what she wanted? She laughs again, because it's more like the opposite of what she wanted. He wants her to spy on Finnick for Snow. And what choice does she have? He said he'd like her to do this, but hasn't said she could refuse. She nods, too shocked for anything else. He smiles, pleased. Then he stands, and she does as well, and his hand is on her shoulder, his grip firm. "I'm glad we understand each other, Annie." He feels like the Capitolites after she won her Games, too close, too intimate. He moves her hair from her face and she has to keep from spitting at him, clawing at him. She doesn't know how Finnick stays in line every day he's in the Capitol. "Such a pretty girl, I'm sure they'll open up to you."
When she's free she returns to her room, knees to her chest as she tries to forget what has happened. But it's impossible. She counts, up and down to 8, and there's the stupid repetitive word in her head: Spy. Spy. Spy. Was Finnick a rebel? She has no idea. Of course he hated Snow, but he followed along to keep everyone safe, to protect his family and her and Mags. Was hating Snow enough to make you a rebel, or did you have to act on it? She hadn't considered Mr. Squamish a rebel, he only let her read the banned books. But was that enough? Where was the line?
Eventually Mara wakes up from her nap and they get dinner, picking over the stew that doesn't have much flavor, same as most nights. Only then, as she is chewing, does she really grasp the other side of the proposal, the true meaning to the Director's words. If she is a good spy, she and Finnick and their families will be safe. If she is not… there would be no guarantees. For perhaps the first time, she understands how Finnick feels.
Finnick is home from the 72nd Games, and she spends her days with him. She doesn't tell him about Lender, however, deciding against it for two reasons. First, she doesn't want to worry him, afraid that he's already concerned about playing his part in the Capitol, worried about keeping her safe here in District 4, and she doesn't want to tell him that the Capitol is here, threatening them from this side, too. And second, she is afraid he'll clam up around her, afraid to talk about anything, if he thinks she'll turn around and tell it to the Director. Lender correctly assumes she doesn't know exactly what makes a rebel, but she doesn't want Finnick to be afraid of the same thing.
"You don't have that job anymore?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "The director changed," she says. "The new one doesn't want an assistant."
He smiles a little, perhaps happy they have more time together. "Let's go for a long hike, then."
She does tell Mags, however. She doesn't even know why, exactly, except that she feels that after all this time, Mags will understand. Maybe because if there's one thing they have in common, it's protecting Finnick. Maybe it's because she knows Mags sees more than she lets on, and maybe understands that Annie is the same. They've been meeting for over a year now, mostly to play cards and share snacks, but she's come to know Mags and begrudgingly has accepted that Finnick has good taste in picking a favorite Mentor. She can understand Mags perfectly now, despite her speech not truly coming back after her stroke. And Mags never comments on Annie's quirks, her tics or compulsions that disturb the flow of their meetings.
"He's afraid we're rebels?" Mags asks, in a quiet voice in the kitchen of her home. Annie is on a day pass, like usual, but Finnick is out fishing with his father and brother-in-law.
Annie nods.
Mags smiles with the strong side of her face, her eyebrow quirking. "Interesting. And you didn't tell Finnick?"
Annie shakes her head. "He's not, is he?" she asks.
Mags is silent for a moment, then she sips her tea. A year ago, she couldn't do so without the lidded cup, but now she's got her strength back, at least on one side. "No, he's not," she says finally. Then she sighs. "A rebel is someone who renounces the government, or takes up arms against it. That's not what Finnick is doing."
"But he is doing… something?" she asks, her voice low.
"I take it you understand now how much subtlety is required, how quietly you have to move," Mags says. "Things happen slowly, and they happen because a lot of people do their part."
Annie furrows her brow, trying to understand. Mags seems to imply there were a lot of rebels. But who? Haymitch? Johanna? Cashmere? Once again, it all feels like a club she's not a part of. She squeezes her eyes shut, reminding herself that she's involved: that she is a Victor, and that she does have a job. She has to distract Lender.
"What do I tell the Director?" she asks.
"Hmm, I wonder," Mags asks. "The best thing is to throw him off Finnick's scent, I think. Tell him I seem suspicious, but you don't have anything concrete. You need to spend more time with me. We can make that recipe next week."
She does as she's told, and Lender is pleased. "I knew that old woman was suspicious," he says. "Yes, spend time with her. Try to listen in if she makes any phone calls," he orders. "Don't ignore Odair completely, though," he says.
It's easy to do this, at least, and months pass quickly. Occasionally she will tell Lender something vague, like "Mags called someone and asked about their dog. I don't know if it was a code, though," and then the Director will go down a rabbit hole for the better part of a week. In the meantime, she spends time with Finnick, sometimes by themselves, sometimes with their families. Finnick's niece was born, and they go to see her often. His parents also love to spoil Finnick when he's home, pressuring them to "get married already", though Finnick always dismisses these ideas with "there will be time for that later, when I'm not called to the Capitol all the time".
And they go to see her parents as well. Her mother looks tired, thinner and hair grayer than Annie remembers, and her father's temper is shorter, his grip tight on the utensils as Annie can't help but stomp when she meal is started. "You've been in that home for years now and they haven't fixed that?" he asks, with an edge to his voice.
"They never tried," she says honestly. The ward, as far as she can tell, was to keep them out of sight of the 'normal' people, not to fix what was wrong with them. It was to make life peaceful and happy, not to make them change.
Her father looks like he might throw his fork at this. "What? What's the point?" he asks.
Annie thinks perhaps he would do well in a Ward for Troubled Men, but doesn't say as much. She thinks of all the times Mags came to visit her, all the times Finnick came, all the time she spent with Mr. Squamish and Shelley and Chamomile. Even rotten Mr. Lender took more of an interest in her life than her father. She thinks she understands what is aging her mother, but she's powerless to fix it.
She and Finnick leave the dinner tired, but he kisses her just outside the gate. "I'm sorry," he says. "I wish it were easier."
"Me too," she says. He's leaving soon, for the next Games. Another cycle beginning. Back to her searching him out on television and in the tabloids. Back to only having Mags. But more time on the ward meant more time to see the true effects of Lender's direction. Mara, who always slept a lot to begin with, is sleeping in their room with the pillow over her head, and Shelley tells Annie they had taken her to be electrically shocked. Shelley herself is quiet, not her usual chipper self.
"What happened?" Annie asks her.
"He says they're taking Chammy for some new therapy," she says, "Something that's all the rage in the Capitol," she says. "She's been gone two days now."
Chamomile does return, after another two days, but she's not the woman they remember. She's like a child, with dulled reactions and short sentences, and Annie can see a diaper peeking out from her waistband. She has bandages around her head, indicating that they have been poking around inside her head.
And more women arrive, more 'nuisances', Annie assumes. One shouts that the intake nurses sterilized her, telling her that she's too mad to be trusted to have children anymore. But she quiets down after a meeting with Lender.
Annie's own meetings with Lender are fine, though she can feel his tension all the way across the desk. Even with Finnick back, unharmed from the Games, she's stressed, unsure if he's in more danger here or in the Capitol. Fortunately, she's not had to lie about her meetings with him, she's even passed along quotes verbatim. "I did go out with Finnick yesterday," she says. "I asked him about District 2, like you asked. He called them 'clever', but said he doesn't spend time with them in the Capitol."
Lender nods, taking nods. "Very good, excellent. Alright. Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I want you to tell Mags we're thinking of releasing you soon. Obviously this isn't true, you're insane," he says, laughing a bit, "But ask her if you can stay with her, help her around the house and so on. You can go on an extended pass from here and just check in with me during your appointments."
So it goes that Annie moves in with Mags around the Victory Tour of the 73rd Games. She lies to Finnick again - telling him she was released, and to her parents as well. Only Mags knows the truth, since she couldn't bear to deceive Mags and sleep in her spare room.
"At least they let you out," Mags says, stirring their dinner on the small stovetop. "I hear he's drugging women, doing brain surgeries."
Annie nods. "I hear he's sterilizing them, too."
Mags widens her eyes, a look of horror she hasn't seen on Mags before crossing her face. "What have we come to?" she asks.
They eat together and it's peaceful, and she wonders if her life would have been different if she had just listened to Mags from the start, if she had accepted her as a Mentor and listened when she was speaking about Finnick and not been so concerned with making sure she was remembered, that she was part of whatever 'club' Finnick belonged to in the Capitol. Probably not, she thinks. Everything feels so certain, like her misery was predestined. But at least she is being pushed forward. If everything is bad now, there's no reason to fight against change, she thinks.
"I want to help the rebels," Annie says, once they sit down for dinner.
Mags sputters a little, cocking her head in a 'careful' kind of gesture. "That's a dangerous game," she says, and ordinarily Annie might scoff at her, but they're both Victors, they both know the meaning of that phrase in the truest sense.
"Even so," Annie says. "My friends are being hurt every day. I can't ever be with Finnick like this."
Mags takes her time chewing on another bite before she answers. "You and I," she says at last, "Our job is to help from here."
"Well I at least want to know what's going on," she says. Without the books, without the tabloids and the television, she is starved for information.
But Mags shakes her head. "The less you know, the better. The less you know, the less they can torture out of you."
It's the first time she's heard the word torture aloud. She has to complete the ritual, squeezing her eyes shut at the end. She can't imagine such a thing, even Lender has always asked nicely. "Then what can I do?" she asks. She can hear the whine in her voice.
"Keep Lender off Finnick's back so he can help the others in the Capitol. Help your friends in any way you can. Don't underestimate the power of subterfuge."
Sub-ter-fuge. She taps the word out. The next day she tells Lender that Mags said something about 'heating up' but she couldn't tell if it was about a plan or about the supper, since Mags might have a touch of dementia. Dutifully, Lender wrote this into his Mags file and told her to "observe carefully", and to report any detail, no matter how small.
She signs Shelley out for the afternoon and they check out the tabloids, but it's the off-season, so it's just Cashmere's face everywhere. "You would have been a beautiful model," Shelley says, raking her fingers through Annie's hair. It's tangled now, worn loose and swept up in the wind all day, but it's long now, down to her waist.
Annie smiles. "Thank you."
Annie watches the 74th Hunger Games with Mags. They sit on the two chairs in Mags' living room, eating dried salmon skins and watching the Tribute Parade. She gasps at the Girl on Fire.
"District 12?"
Mags nods. "I don't know what they're thinking."
And it's sounds like she's telling the truth. She wonders if secretly there's another layer, if just as she's keeping things from Finnick to protect him, Mags is doing the same to her. But she doesn't question it. Mags has been a Victor for longer than she's been alive, so she has to trust her judgment.
"Are you sure I shouldn't go back as a Mentor?" she asks, a little later, after they see Finnick, struggling as a solo Mentor. Well, really, he looks fine, invigorated actually, but she's sure it's a burden, securing the sponsors, taking on both tributes, and all the socializing between. "It would get me out of the ward, at least."
"You're out of the ward now!" Mags says. She sounds upset. "Don't throw away all of the work Finnick has done on a whim, girl! You'd leave the frying pan and jump into the fire!"
She'd been to the Capitol, at least that one time, and she didn't see anyone getting forced brain surgery there, so she isn't sure that it's really worse to go there than to stay, but she knows Finnick would feel defeated if he didn't think he was protecting her.
And so she stays, and they continue to watch. The District 4 tributes aren't children she knows, but she's heard of them. She doesn't want them to die. She watches the love story of the District 12 tributes develop with little segments between the Games action, but it fails to click the way it should when the last District 4 tribute is killed by Katniss Everdeen's actions. But as time goes on, she sees how the ending is set up: District 12 or District 2. And she wonders if the Capitol knew this somehow, ahead of time. If this was why she was asked to inquire about District 2 with Finnick all those months ago.
She and Mags watch the end of the Games in the same way she guesses the rest of Panem does: eyes glued to the screen. When the boy from 2 is eventually killed, she can't predict the ending. When finally the Games are ended with an unprecedented two winners, Mags sits back in her chair, her shoulders sagging. She looks deflated.
"What does this mean?" Annie asks.
Mags shakes it head. "It means somebody is going to have to pay," she says.
When Finnick returns, he looks more tired than Annie has seen him ever coming home from a Games. She spends a day with him, but isn't sure if he'll want to be alone at the end of the night. She's relieved when he asks her to come home with him, and they sleep together for the first time in months. He calls her name as he finishes, and they settle down together to sleep. "Miss me?" she asks.
He nods against her shoulder. "So much, I can't even explain. Every day I'm away from here it gets worse."
"I missed you too."
"Some of the girls are having a hard time at the ward," she says, after a few minutes. "The new director is really tough."
He opens his eyes, looking up at her. "Are you alright?"
She nods. She doesn't tell him she hasn't technically been released that she's on an extended pass to stay with Mags.
"I'm sorry, Annie, I know you care a lot about your friends." He shifts their positions so he's holding her more than she is holding him. "I hope that things are changing soon. I can't be sure, but… I think they might be."
She wants him to stop talking. She doesn't want to hear him say anything about rebel plots or plans near her. She wants to insulate herself, to delude herself into thinking he has no involvement. And she wants to hear more. She wants names, times, dates, exact plans. She wants to tell Shelley that it will be alright soon. She kisses him, settling down again. "I hope so."
Annie reports to Lender more infrequently now, only once a week. She tries to keep her omissions as truthful as possible, so she says that Finnick told her he was "afraid something was going to change soon" but when she pressed him, he said it was only a feeling.
Lender seems satisfied with this, and Annie credits Finnick's Capitol persona: his flighty, patient-but-not-too-bright lover boy, which made people think he was good at picking up on vibes, but not great at listening or understanding what was actually going on. She has to admit, it serves him well. What she doesn't expect, however, is Lender's next request. "My contact in the Capitol is concerned about his link to the known rebel Johanna Mason. I know it will be hard to ask him about her directly, perhaps you can ask him as if you're concerned about a rival? They have been linked romantically, after all."
She tries to swallow down the emotions that surface, but it's impossible, it takes all her effort just to keep her face neutral. She squeezes her eyes shut, taps her fingers, and stomps, holding her breath for the requisite eight seconds. Lender seems to take this as his cue to continue. "Here, in case you need it, this was published just before the Games ended," he says, sliding a tabloid over to her. She takes it without looking at it, afraid of her reaction in front of Lender.
Then, she leaves the building and walks to the beach, to a secluded spot where she can check the image alone. It's small, a quarter page in size, and overexposed, but the subjects are clear: it's Johanna, leaving some kind of party or club, based on the line of patrons waiting to get in and the strappy dress she's wearing, and Finnick behind her, tugging on her arm, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He looks like he's saying something, like they're in a conversation or a mild argument that he wants to continue and she wants to leave. The write-up says it took place on the night of the Victor's Party, with Finnick returning to the festivities after she burned him with the end of her lit cigarette.
She can almost feel herself trembling, imagining such a night in contrast to hers: either eating and watching television and sleeping on the ward with the girls, or now, doing her calm nightly routine with Mags. When she does see Finnick, he's shirtless, returning from a day fishing with his brother-in-law, and she unconsciously looks for a scar from a cigarette burn before remembering the Capitol would definitely erase that from their precious Golden Boy.
"I want to ask you something," she says, after dinner, when they're walking along the beach. She isn't sure why she's doing Lender's bidding exactly, when she's not going to give him the answers in the end. It's probably because she knows that she wants to know as well, that she's been dreading the answer to this question for years and finally, finally she has a hint of an excuse to ask it. "Do you see other people, in the Capitol?"
He bites his lips, and that's all the answer she needs, really, but she supposes she's somewhat of a masochist. "I… for sponsors we have to-"
"Not for sponsors," she amends quickly. She doesn't want to make him talk about anything like that tonight. "Like… for fun."
She wonders what his excuse is. That she is crazy? That he is flawed?
"Yes," he admits. "I have." He says it with a heaviness that conveys the emotion it requires, but he says it without hesitation - he does not lie to her.
"Is it Johanna?" she asks. She hates the twisting dread in her stomach saying the name.
"Yes."
"Anyone else?"
He shakes his head. He stops walking, standing for a moment in the sand. It's twilight now, about time for them to head back to the Victor's Village. "I was hiding behind the excuse that we never promised to be exclusive," he says, "But the truth is, it's just so, so soul-crushing there, and she's my best friend."
She feels like a balloon about to burst, unable to say any of the things she wants to say because of the pressure. She relieves a little by tapping, stomping, holding her breath, then repeating it. She wants to ask if he really believes they're only friends, but doesn't know if he can bear to hear the answer. Wants to ask if he knows she's a rebel, but Mags' warning to only learn the bare minimum information echoes in her mind.
"What did you fight about? At the Victor's Party?" she asks instead, as they walk back home.
"How do you know about that?" he asks.
"Tabloid," she says.
He shakes his head. "Something stupid. She's really stubborn. Always sticking her neck out for someone, and won't listen to me when I tell her one of these times it's going to bite her in the ass." He takes her hand. "But listen, Annie, I've been a terrible boyfriend. I can't say no to sponsors, but I can stop fooling around in the Capitol. From now on, you have all of me, I promise."
She wants to protest, to say that by definition, with sponsors still in the equation, she doesn't have all of him, but she stays silent. But more importantly, she's hung up on him calling it fooling around. Had he really strayed from her just to 'fool around'? And did Johanna love him properly but to him this was just 'fooling around'? She wants to believe in Finnick, to see the man she's always known and loved, but she wonders if there's something that she is missing, something corrupted by the Capitol like a void he's trying to fill. Or worse, if he's always been flawed in a way she's previously been willing to overlook.
The 75th Games is a Quarter Quell, and she can feel Mags' tension in the weeks leading up to it. "Something's always quirky with these ones," she warns. "Stay on your toes."
They go to the reaping as a group, and it's Annie's first time attending a reaping since her own. She's always been on the ward, watching from afar. But this time she can feel the palpable tension in the air, the nervous energy and the terror that a visit from the Capitol always brought.
Nova stands on the stage, announcing the conceit. "…the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors." She feels the bottom drop out. Her name was in the reaping ball. Annie Cresta was there, able to be reaped again. She could go back into the arena. So could Finnick. They could face each other. She holds her breath for 8, then 16, then 32, until a chop between the shoulder blades from Mags makes her exhale on a very unlucky 23.
Nova reaches into the reaping ball and calls out: "Annie Cresta!"
She wails, for herself and for Finnick. For the fact that if she was just able to finish holding her breath, this could have been avoided. "I volunteer!"
Mags walks to the front before Annie has time to understand what's happened. She hobbles along with her cane, needing help to get onto the stage. "I volunteer for Annie," she says.
Nova accepts this, and reaches into the male ball. "Finnick Odair!" she calls. Annie wails again. Mags would not make it to the end, she would be saying goodbye to Mags today. And Finnick? Finnick perhaps had a chance, but facing Enobaria and Brutus, facing Cashmere, she isn't sure who else, but only other Victors made for a very tough Games.
She follows him back stage with his family and no one stops her. "I'm getting out of this," he says to her, grabbing her face to make her focus on his words. "I'm getting out of this, and after, we're getting married."
She kisses him, hating how he's whisked away so quickly. She holds onto the promise of the marriage for days, it's not until three nights later that she realizes he says "getting out of this" and not "winning".
After Finnick and Mags leave, Annie is brought back to the Ward for Troubled Women. Mara is gone, though no one seems to know where. There's a new girl in Annie's room, and she cries almost all day. As a result, Annie spends most days with Shelley in the lounge, watching the Games on the small television.
"He said we'd get married after this Games," she whispers to Shelley, and this at least, makes her smile. Chamomile is there too, sitting in the padded chair, but she's no good for conversation anymore.
But the Games are brutal, right from the start. They watch Finnick take off with the pair from District 12, watches as he saves Peeta's life. It's not the first time someone's saved someone else's life in the Games, but it has to be one of the most dramatic. She stays up late, eyes glued to the screen, afraid for Finnick, afraid for Mags.
And then, she watches Mags give in to the fog, understanding she was a liability to the other three. "No!" she shouts, watching Mags slip away under cover of the mist. It was horrible, that someone so wise and so wonderful could just die without a second thought for the Hunger Games to go on. She cries watching, realizing she can never meet with Mags again, never lose at cards or eat her homemade food or learn more about the world by talking with her. It's an awful feeling.
She's hysterical enough that they give her some kind of pill to calm her down, not unlike the medication Nova gave her on her Victory Tour. She sleeps a bit, then watches the Games in a stupor. She watches Finnick on the beach reunite with Johanna, watches him toss her into the water. She can't swim, Annie can tell, but despite Johanna's awkwardness in the water, there's a familiarity she has with Finnick, and it makes Annie's skin crawl. It must be the medication messing with her mind, but she pictures the end of the Games, all of them killing one another. Katniss seems to hate Johanna, she can go ahead and kill her. But not before Johanna kills those two from 3 that she seems to hate. This way, there's fewer people for Finnick to deal with at the end.
She sleeps again, and wakes up sweating and famished. She showers, changes her clothes, and heats up a meal. Then she returns to the television as Shelley tugs at her sleeve, her brow furrowed. "You have to see this!" she coaxes.
And she does. She has to witness it at least. Finnish is trapped, it seems, with Jabberjays that know her voice. She hears herself screaming, herself asking for help, herself asking for them to please stop! Finnick is on the ground, hands covering his ears. She lowers the volume, sick of listening to it, and tries to finish her meal, though most of her appetite is gone. How can she eat when Finnick is right in front of her, suffering? Who is ok with this? Once the Jabberjays stop, Finnick and Katniss are able to rejoin the others, but she can tell he is drained. Annie thinks of Mags warning her that the less you know, the less they can torture you for. She supposes this falls under that as well.
She watches as he settles down to sleep, and then as Johanna comes to sleep beside him. Shelley elbows her. "I know," she hisses.
And the camera zooms in on the two of them as Finnick pulls Johanna close, as if they've done this for years, which they probably have. She can see his lips moving, see that he's whispering to her, but it's too faint to be heard on the microphones. Like the splashing around in the water, it was likely a ploy they were using to plot. But it didn't mean she liked it.
She and Shelley are glued to the television for the end of the Games, but Annie isn't able to make heads or tails of it. If there is a plot or plan, it's convoluted. She watches as Enobaria and Brutus make their way to the others, and Johanna and Katniss start rolling out the wire. And then, as Johanna betrays Katniss, knocking her out, cutting her with a knife, and kicking her while she's down. And at the same time, Finnick is grappling with Brutus, both of them slipping and scrambling on the slippery terrain.
And there's Enobaria chasing Johanna, and the massive lightning bolt. "What just happened?" Shelley asks.
"Show Finnick!" she commands the television. There have been no 'booms' to signify deaths, but it also seems like some of the communications are down.
Then, there's a flicker of light, and then another one, and she sees a hovercraft. Not the kind that picks up the bodies, but the kind that can transport multiple people. The camera moves wildly around for a moment before focusing back on it again. She can hear people speaking over each other on the broadcast, and then it cuts out.
The room is silent, but for a phone ringing. Annie meets Shelley's eye. "Do you think he's alright?" she asks.
"I couldn't see him since that shot about two minutes ago," she says.
Director Lender appears in the lounge, two Peacekeepers beside him. They're armed with rifles. "Annie Cresta, we need you to come with us," Lender says.
"What? Why?" she asks. "Do you know what happened to Finnick?"
"That was not a request, that was an order. You have been summoned to the Capitol, and the train is leaving soon." This is not the same Director who asks her for information about Mags and Finnick. This man is cold, cruel. He's sweating a bit.
The Capitol? She had been itching to go back since she won her Games, but now of all times, she did not want to go. She can feel dread fill every inch of her and make her limbs feel like lead.
"Why? To make Finnick behave?" Shelley asks. She stands in front of Annie, arms out.
"Move aside," one of the Peacekeepers commands her, pointing his gun at her.
"Absolutely not. You disgust me, hiding behind that armor and that gun. Afraid of a few feeble-minded women?" she asks.
Annie has never heard Shelley speak like this, and she wants to use it, she wants to sneak out and run away and hide. But where would she go? Where is safe? Squamish is gone. Finnick is missing. Mags is dead. She doesn't know where to go. She hears one of the Peacekeepers click a safety off of his gun and she stands, putting her hand on Shelley's shoulder. "Thank you. I'll be back," she assures her.
"You better be!"
The Peacekeepers escort her to the train station, where two more are waiting on the train. These two look young, maybe younger than her even, but they watch her every second, like she's a hardened, violent criminal, and not someone being sent somewhere without any details. She knows they won't give her any, so she doesn't bother asking. She's wearing the stupid pajamas from the ward, but no one offers her anything else to wear.
And when she gets to the Capitol, they take her off the train and to the Training Center, one of the only buildings she's already been to. She goes to Remake, where they do her hair, her makeup, and give her some glitzy gown, but still no details about why she is where or where Finnick is. And then she is sent in a car. The Capitolite in the car with her has cropped blonde hair and a pretty face. Annie is not told her name. "This job is very easy," she says. You just need to walk up the stairs into this building, stay inside the lobby for a minute, and then walk back to the car."
She does it, because it is, in fact, easy. But then they change her hair and dress and have her do it again, and then a third time, and she begins to complain. "And what if I don't?" she asks.
The woman leans in close and hisses in her ear. "There's a sniper on the roof, so no funny business," she says. "You will do this job, or I will be an Avox by midnight."
Annie doesn't know this woman, doesn't know if she is rotten to the core. But how can she justify being the cause of someone else's suffering? That is how the Capitol plays you, she supposes. It is a game Finnick knew well. They put one mark on you, and another on someone you cared about. She gets out and takes the video as directed, one where she walks into a cafe and they record her eating a slice of cake. It tastes like nothing.
By the end of the night she is exhausted, and she is granted the luxury of a shower before she is given a training uniform and then a blindfold. She assumes if she doesn't put it on, someone will be punished, so she complies. And then she is taken on a cart through a set of underground tunnels until she is walked into a set of smaller corridors.
Only then is her blindfold removed, and she is buzzed into what she can only describe as a secret underground prison in the center of the Capitol. She is walked to her cell, and passes Enobaria from District 2 and Peeta from District 12. A voice from the cell across from the one they are unlocking says, "Oh? Fresh blood? Tired of torturing the three of us already? Must be hard for you and your short attention span."
The Peacekeeper steps back to kick at the bars of the woman's cell. Only after, once Annie is locked inside, does she see that she is face to face with Johanna Mason.
The days in prison are far more repetitive than the days in the ward, and remind her, if she's being honest, to the timeless space when she was huddled in the cave in her Games, unsure of how long she would be there, with nothing surges of terror and adrenaline and the voices in her head for company.
But here, there's many more noises, none of them good. There's Peeta, mumbling constantly about Mutts, about Katniss, about being tricked and deceived and working himself up around and around in circles. There's Enobaria, who eats her meal meticulously, item by item, and though Annie can't see her, she can hear her pace in the cell next door, hour by hour. There's Johanna, who always has a remark for the guards, something like "Oh, will it be the electric shocks again today? You know those are my favorite."
That is, until the days turn into weeks and it becomes clear that they are not getting out of there any time soon. She spends her mornings listening to Peeta howl about Katniss as some sort of venom runs through him. She spends her afternoons listening to Johanna scream as they electrocute her or do whatever they do to try to get her to answer their questions. And Enobaria's pacing and eating turns to silence, until she hears absolutely nothing from the cell beside her.
Sometimes they take Enobaria to interrogation, and Johanna seems extra sour when they do that, punching the stone walls until her knuckles are bloody. "She doesn't fucking know anything," she mumbles. "Sadists."
"Where's Finnick?"Annie asks Johanna, after about a week. Her voice is hoarse after days of non-use and not enough water.
Johanna ignores her, turning over on her cot.
"I know you can hear me!" she tries again. "I know you know!"
Johanna rolls over, just enough that one eye can meet Annie's. "You're decent at that. Keep it up and you can join them in there soon enough," she says, then she rolls back over.
Annie bites her lips. Of course that's what they asked her in there. Of course they could be listening right now. Did Johanna think Annie was brought in just to get her to talk? She turns over on her own cot as a dread fills her, a new possibility she hadn't realized. Finnick was alive, and he was with the rebels. She was there as bait, to lure him back to the Capitol. It is the only thing that made sense. She amends her previous thought. The guards knew where Finnick was, more or less. They just wanted him back. They were upset they had let him escape, so she was here to get him back.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm just afraid."
Johanna turns over again, and Annie can see the burns on her hairline, all over her chest. "The less you know, the better," she says.
It was like Mags said, and here she was, in some crazy torture chamber.
Johanna is, as Finnick had said, as stubborn as they come, but even she has a breaking point, Annie finds. They shave her head a couple weeks in, and she stops eating her meals, and her comments to the guards have ceased completely. They drag her to interrogation and carry her back.
Occasionally, she'll still talk to Annie, though, and more often to Peeta. He gets to leave sometimes, though they don't know why. Annie is sure it's nothing good. After, right after, he gets an extra dose of his 'treatment', so he's always shaken up on those evenings.
"Katniss isn't a mutt," Johanna says, the same mantra she's said a hundred times. She can't see him - their cells are next to each other, but she speaks to him through the wall. "Remember your childhood - District 12, going to school with her?"
"Those- those are implanted memories!" he says, panicking.
"It really happened. Katniss is kind," Johanna says. Annie thinks this might be a stretch, but she's never met the woman.
"She's a murderer!"
Johanna seems to pause here, to consider this. They were all murderers, more or less. "Katniss isn't not a mutt," she says firmly.
Every once in a while, they take Annie to be interrogated. Usually, this consists of asking her about Finnick's 'known contacts', his plan for the Games, and other things she truly didn't know about. They ask all the questions with a gun to the head of a Capitolite she doesn't recognize, telling her that if she answers wrong the man will die. She scrounges for answers, trying to thread the needle between saving that man's life and not dooming Finnick's.
Sadly, she thinks he'll be re-used for the next interrogation and the next until someone messes up and he is killed. When she gets back to her cell, Johanna tosses her a strip of fabric to tie knots with. She says she saw Finnick doing so before. She thinks of what Finnick said, that Johanna is always sticking her neck out for people. She accepts the gift, and uses it right away, knotting and unknotting the fabric over and over again.
Enobaria is so silent, Annie almost forgets she's there, until the day the guards come for her. "This way," they say, rifles out. Annie and Peeta watch, terrified, as Enobaria is led away, not to the interrogation room but to the way they came in, and they're not sure if she's being set free or being killed. Johanna doesn't move from her cot. She's weak now - they've taken to drowning her lately before the shocks, and Annie doesn't know if it's a true attempt to get her to reveal more information, or if they're just being held by truly cruel men.
One afternoon, a guard comes to get her while they're interrogating Johanna. She's afraid that she's the bait, the one they're going to aim the rifle at the head of. She's more or less right, she supposes, but instead of a rifle, the guard pulls off her shirt, pawing at her naked breast.
She is in shock, so surprised by the violation that she just stiffens up, but makes no move to get away. She doesn't want to anger him. At the table, Johanna looks on with dead eyes. She doesn't say anything.
The second guard speaks. "Isn't this her? Finnick Odair's girlfriend? We have intel that you agreed to a deal with the president to protect her before," he says.
The man holding her pulls down her pants, so she is standing in just her underwear. It's cold down here, in this dank basement, and it's terrifying, to be in this room with these two horrible people, but she has nothing to do but endure.
"I don't know her," Johanna says, her voice cold.
The guard holding Annie slips his fingers into her panties, his other arm snaking around her chest. Her entire body shudders in revulsion. "You've been held across from this woman for over a month. It's fine if I just… have my way with her?"
Johanna rolls her eyes, but she looks exhausted, like she can barely keep her head up. "You asked me if I know if this is Finnick Odair's girlfriend. I don't. I've never met her."
The guard at the interrogation table with Johanna presses a finger to his ear. "We've got something incoming," he says.
Annie is thrown unceremoniously back into her cell. They must have left Johanna cuffed in the interrogation room, because she doesn't come back to her cell. Annie wraps herself in her bedsheet, trying to maintain some bit of modesty. And then, just as she sits back on her cot, the wall with the door to the outside blows up, sending rubble into the narrow corridor between the cells.
In come several insurgents in garb she's never seen, definitely not the Peacekeeper uniforms she's used to. "It's ok, we're here to help," one assures her.
"Who are you?" she asks.
"We're from District 13," he says. "Please stand back."
They open fire on the guards, taking out the two that come out to investigate the commotion. And one of the soldiers takes a keycard from one of the dead guards, allowing him to open the cells. "Please hurry, careful," he says, ushering them out the way they blasted in.
"Please, Johanna is in there," she says, pointing to the interrogation room.
She helps Peeta out of the cell. He's weak now, too, after so many sessions of the serum, after so little nutrition and so little room to walk around. They're all in bad condition, but he stumbles even trying to step over a few bricks. She helps him to where there's a hovercraft waiting, holding up the stupid bedsheet she is using as a makeshift dress.
Eventually, the last soldier comes out, carrying Johanna, and they take off. Annie presses her face to the window, wanting to be sure they were really leaving the Capitol. "Where are we going?" she asks.
"District 13," says one of the soldiers. Hawthorne, per his name badge.
"Is Finnick there?" she asks.
He was the one who got Johanna out, and he's sitting beside her now, checking on her as they fly. She's sleeping, fitfully but very much alive, and he barely seems to hear Annie's question. "What did they do to you guys in there?" he asks.
"Is Finnick in District 13?" she asks again.
"Oh. Um… yes, he is."
Her eyes light up, and she can feel her heart skipping. She was going to Finnick. She was going to see him. He did survive the Hunger Games and he was in District 13. "Thank you," she says, to him, and to all the other soldiers on the flight.
Annie doesn't realize how bad her own condition is, until she's sitting on the hovercraft for hours. She's spent so many days staring at Peeta and Johanna across from her, taking in their gaunt frames, Johanna's burns, Peeta's ravings, that she's missed her own weight loss, the bruises on her arms and legs, the sores in her mouth. She'd had a cough for days that wouldn't go away, something deep in her lungs. And of course, they never let them sleep for more than a couple hours at a time. She was just so, so tired.
So she tries to sleep on the ride, but she's paranoid that the Capitol will pursue them, will shoot them down out of the sky, and then halfway through the ride Johanna vomits, and Soldier Hawthorne panics because there's no medic among them. "How could we be so stupid, of course we need a medic," he curses. So Annie kneels beside Johanna, turning her on her side, rinsing her mouth, holding her in that position for the rest of the trip. She wants to do more, to stroke her hair or rub her back, to tell her that it will be alright, but every inch of her skin looks painful, and she's afraid that it might not be alright: she has no idea what awaits them in District 13. She's never even heard of it before except as a vague rumor - she thought it was destroyed.
Mostly, however, she can't sleep because she knows it's only hours until she sees Finnick again. Her body is weary, her eyes fluttering closed and her limbs hardly holding up anymore, but her brain won't rest. Her heart picks up with just the thought of being reunited.
When they finally make it, she sees the hovercraft descend into what seems to be a shaft. "Are we going underground?" she asks.
One of the other soldiers, Hobbs, nods. "Yes. The whole District is underground. That's what keeps us hidden."
The hatch opens once they are parked, and there is a flurry of activity. She is given a wheelchair, which perhaps she would complain about, but the alternative was a stretcher, and she can't imagine meeting Finnick like that. She wishes someone would offer her clothes. They bring her down corridor after corridor, and it's not unlike when she arrived at the Capitol prison. She can feel herself getting more tense, and squeezes her eyes shut.
And when she opens them, he is there. "Annie!" He embraces her, and she can't imagine how she looks, how she smells, how different she is from the last time they saw each other. But it doesn't matter, because he survived the Hunger Games, again, and she survived whatever horrible plot the Capitol had for her. "Finnick! I'm here!"
They have a moment to themselves before the Healers at the infirmary insist that the come in to be evaluated. Finnick is there by her side. "Please, tell me what happened since the Games," she says.
"Tell me what happened to you, Annie," he says. "I was so worried."
She nods. "Of course, but you first. The cameras cut out after that lightning strike."
He explains while the Healers check her over, distracting her as they patch up her cuts and scrapes, and continues while she is fed her first proper meal in weeks. They hook her up to an IV of fluids, vitamins, and antibiotics after determining that she is dehydrated, deficient in several nutrients, and has a respiratory infection. After the bags are empty, they promise she can bathe before the next round. And through it all she learns about the end of the Games, about the rebel plan to end the Games early, to protect Katniss and Peeta, even without their knowledge. She learns about the two Hovercrafts: one from District 13 and the other from the Capitol, and the war that has broken out since: the bombings in District 12, District 8, and District 13, the battles for transportation and communications, the war with propos.
After she bathes, she finds she cannot untangle her hair. Even clean, the knots are just too much after weeks and weeks of living in filth without any way to care for her hair. She asks one of the Healers, a younger girl, to help her cut it, and she does a good job, preserving as much as she can. She cuts it just below Annie's shoulder blades, then takes the time to undo the remaining knots carefully. "I'm Primrose," she says, her voice shy. She reminds Annie of Chamomile, back before her 'treatment'.
"You're Katniss's sister, right?" Annie recognizes her from television, famous for being volunteered for.
Primrose nods. And she's sweet, Annie finds, telling Annie all about her pet cat, about how she wants to be a Healer like her mother, especially a midwife, blushing when she admits one day she wants to find a boyfriend. Before she knows it, her hair is untangled. Primrose reconnects her to the IV, and shows her to her bed in the infirmary, just a few feet away from Johanna's.
"Oh, welcome back," Johanna croaks. Her voice is slow, and her eyes are barely open. Annie can see the morphling bag on her pole. "You got a haircut… too…"
"Yeah, guess you're a trendsetter," she says. Usually she's not one to make jokes about things like torture or any sort of cruelty, but it's worth it just this once to see the hint of a smile on Johanna's lips as she dozes back off. Haymitch is sitting there, in the chair on the far side of her, reading some sort of manual, and smiles as well.
Finnick proposes to Annie two days later. She's walking with him in the hall, her prescribed therapy, when he turns to face her, his face serious. "I told you after the Games… we would get married. Let's do it, now. Annie Cresta, will you marry me?" There's an anxious flush to his cheeks, and she wonders how often he rehearsed this, if he said the words the way he planned to.
It doesn't matter, she realizes. It took a war for this to happen, but they can finally be together without hiding. "Yes," she says. "Of course!" Months ago she would be hung up on petty things - on his infidelity, on his secrets, but she can see what is truly important now. It took a war for her to understand, but she just wants to be happy with him.
He lifts her off her feet as they kiss, and sets her down gently. He's smiling in a way she rarely sees, a smile that reaches his eyes. "Let's plan it quickly, so that we can marry before I possibly am called away to help with some mission."
She hadn't thought of this, of him leaving, of him fighting in this war. He was in two Hunger Games. He got this all started. What more could they ask of him now? She goes back to the infirmary thrilled to be getting married, but worried about Finnick, worried he would be throwing himself into danger for a cause that saw him as nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard.
Katniss is back in the infirmary, and Johanna never left, and the two of them and Primrose congratulate her over her engagement. She hadn't wanted to tell Johanna, but she couldn't find a way around it. Johanna reminds her of Mara: sleeping all day, skipping meals, and she thinks oh, Mara would have loved morphling.
Haymitch is there, however, day after day, and Annie doesn't miss the way she reaches for his hand, the way she hates being touched but doesn't refuse his company. Annie takes the chance to ask Haymitch if he thinks they'll send Finnick to the front lines. "I don't know," he says. "I think this war will be won with public support, so they'll send him out and film him, make it seem like he's on the front lines, but they don't want such a powerful propaganda tool actually getting hurt."
"So he just… can't play the hero," she says.
Haymitch raises an eyebrow, indicating that she's got it, then rolls his eyes and glances at Katniss.
"I can see you, you know," Katniss groans.
When she's next out with Finnick, Annie tries to think of how to stop him from doing this. How to fulfill his role, but do no more. How to not 'stick his neck out for other people', as he once fought with Johanna over. When he asks her, for the fifth or sixth time, what 'really' happened in that prison, she tries to make him understand. "Bad things!" she says. "You see Peeta, they reprogrammed him somehow! And they interrogated Enobaria even though she had no rebel connections. And every single day, I listened to Johanna screaming."
She wants to tell him about them asking her questions while they pointed a gun at a captive man, or them assaulting her while interrogating Johanna, but her throat is tight, she's not ready to say it. It was easier in the Hunger Games, somehow: everything was on camera, she never had to redescribe the events, because everyone already saw them.
But the next day, her last day before she is discharged from the infirmary, Finnick asks Johanna, and she can't move. "Did they hurt Annie, when you were in the Capitol?" he asks.
Her hands are on her ears, she is holding her breath, she can't speak until the eight seconds are up. But Johanna doesn't speak either. It was like asking what a rebel is - how do you define it? How do you define hurt? No one electrocuted her, no one drowned her or injected her with tracker jacker venom. But yes, she was hurt. She still hurt. But Finnick had proposed to Annie and more or less left Johanna to Haymitch. Annie didn't want them to get back together, but she could appreciate when Finnick was being insensitive. So, just as Johanna threw her the strip of cloth in the prison, she tries to throw Johanna a line.
"Finnick, I told you, they arrested me as bait for you. They didn't keep me in a nice hotel, but they didn't hurt me."
In time, Annie's bruises disappear, her lungs clear up, and she gains some weight, enough that she looks closer to her usual self than the malnourished woman that left the Capitol prison. As she's completing her final checkup to move out of the infirmary and into a temporary compartment until her wedding, when she'll share one with Finnick, there's a delay, as Primrose requests an additional set of blood samples. She gives them, and goes to sit back on her bed, working on her knitting.
Johanna is more lively today, likely because the Healers have cut down on her morphling, and she watches with interest. "Is that my hat?" she asks.
It is, and Annie nods. "I unraveled the ugliest Capitol dress that came along in one of the Capitol rebels bags," she says. "but the dark green color was nice."
Johanna nods in agreement. She watches Annie's hands move for a few minutes, wincing in pain just once.
It's quiet, and Annie is brave enough to ask something that's been on her mind. "What did that guard mean, on the last day, that you struck a deal with Snow about me?"
Johanna rolls her eyes. "Nothing. They're all full of shit."
She sees it now, a little bit, what Finnick likes about Johanna. She's incredibly loyal, and not confused about her feelings on anything. Annie tries again. "You're not in the Capitol anymore. They're not going to hurt you for being honest."
And Johanna looks at her with the most exhausted expression she's ever seen. "It's not your burden," she says. "It involves you, but it's not about you."
"I don't understand."
Johanna sighs. "Finnick taking extra clients wasn't enough for Snow to allow you to stay in District 4. He wanted me to take clients again. I agreed, but it wasn't some bleeding heart kind of thing. I did it because I love Finnick. I didn't want him to be miserable. You didn't even factor into it."
Annie hears the present tense of love, but doesn't comment on it. "How did you get out of it before?" she asks.
Johanna presses the button on the pain pump, but Annie's been counting, it's at least ten minutes until she gets another dose. She shakes her head. "You get to stop when he kills everyone you love."
Annie wants to point out the fallacy in this, that she still has someone she loves alive, but it just feels cruel when she's about to marry him. Johanna's entire family is dead, then. Maybe friends, any lover back home. Of course she would give everything to the rebels.
Primrose ushers her back to the exam room, and shows her a readout of her test results. "I did a bloodtest to confirm," she says, "But it's certain. You're definitely pregnant."
Preparing for the wedding is hectic, but at the same time, it's simple. There's few choices to be made, because there's little excess in District 13. There are only so many options for a menu, only a few trinkets to spare for decor. There's only one room available to host the event, and a few pretty dresses she can try on, things brought along from those who came to the District from the Capitol. She asks Peeta to bake them a cake and he agrees.
She is not showing her pregnancy yet, but Finnick knows, and he is overjoyed. "When we win, there will be no more Hunger Games," he says. She can't imagine a world without the training academies, without fearing a reaping. They live apart from each other for now, but she knows soon enough they'll move in together, and she stays with him more nights than not anyways.
Even Johanna leaves the infirmary in the lead up to the wedding, moving in with Katniss Everdeen. The two of them start training with the soldiers, and Annie watches them train, sees Johanna absolutely winded after a single lap in the gym, all of her fitness from the Hunger Games gone.
After, she sits with Johanna in the cafeteria, on the other end of the table from Gale Hawthorne, Katniss, and Peeta. "Why are you training?" she asks. "No one will make you go back."
"I know," Johanna says. She seems to finally have her appetite back, digging into her lunch eagerly. "But I have to go. So I can murder Snow."
Soon after, it's the night of the wedding. She is dressed into a gorgeous dress, one that used to be Katniss's, she is told, and her hair and makeup is done by one of the former stylists from the Hunger Games. The gymnasium in District 13 is austere, there is no sand and ocean as is customary for a District 4 wedding, but they did manage to craft an archway, and it is here that she and Finnick say their vows.
Someone, Katniss maybe, has collected water from above ground, from a nearby spring, and they join their hands in the cool, clean water, slipping on their rings with hands submerged. It's not the warm salty spray of the water at home, but it will do. They kiss, and it feels like everyone in the District is there, cheering. Perhaps they are - there are not many special events.
Afterwards, there is dinner and cake and dancing, and everyone is stopping by to congratulate them. Primrose drags her off to dance with her and a couple other younger girls, and she sees Finnick pulled off to dance with one of the older women from the cafeteria, who teaches him a new style. She laughs with the girls as they gossip about the soldiers who are also standing in a group, both too shy to approach each other.
Once the dancing tapers off, she sits with Finnick and Haymitch and Johanna and Peeta, eating cake and talking about nothing. They ask if she has any baby names picked out, but of course she doesn't, not yet. It's such a strange wedding: underground, mostly attended by people she barely knows, with food that admittedly is not very good, but she's so happy that she can't be bothered to care. Finnick is alive, he is safe, he is married to her. She stands, unwilling to wait any longer. "Let's head back," she says, ignoring the way Haymitch raises his eyebrows.
"Sure," Finnick concedes.
And they go to their shared compartment for the first time, and make love on their marriage bed. It's tiny - no one gets more than a capsule in this place, but it's theirs. She lays beside him, calm, finally, after this rush of a day, and relaxes. "I love you," she says, the words coming out easily. She taps them into his back.
"I love you too, Annie."
Annie is in the infirmary, picking up medication for her morning sickness, when Johanna returns. She looks awful, too-pale and shaking, and Primrose and the attending Healer move quickly to settle her on the bed. Annie can see she's soaking wet.
"What's happened?" the other Healer asks the soldier that brings her down.
"She was in her combat exam. Reacted badly to the street flooding. I think it's from whatever happened in the Capitol."
Primrose catches Annie's eye and Annie moves closer. Johanna is breathing too fast, obviously unaware of anything around her. "Can you hear me, Johanna?" Annie tries. "It's Annie. We're in District 13. You're safe."
She tries for another few minutes as the other Healer checks various vitals, but then she seems to give up. "Her blood pressure is too high. I'm giving her a sedative," she says, using a syringe to do so. After a few more seconds, Johanna lays back, still shivering but sleeping on the cot. Primrose brings over the warming blanket, a favorite of Annie's.
She knows what they want to know, the details of that place. How they used electrodes, how they drowned her or just got the skin wet enough to make the shocks worse. They probably still don't know all the details of Peeta's situation, but Annie knew it more or less. But she doesn't want to explain, just like she doesn't want to explain her own. She takes the pills Primrose got her, and the list she wrote out of the herbs she can request in the kitchens, and settles down in the chair beside Johanna until someone else - Haymitch or Katniss or whoever - comes instead.
And soon enough, she gets the world that they're sending the 'Star Squad' out, that Katniss and Finnick are being deployed along with some other soldiers. She knew it was coming, but she's still unprepared. He is to be a father, she wants to shake Coin, can't she spare him? Hasn't he done enough?
But Finnick settles her, assures her that he is going because he wants to, and not because he is being forced. "I want to end this war," he says. "I want to make a better nation for our child."
She nods, but she can't bring herself to agree. She would live with him in this claustrophobic underground bunker if it meant they could be together and safe. But he kisses her and leaves before dawn one morning, and she is left to worry and wait, same as every other time he's left, same as both times he's gone into the Hunger Games arena.
She spends time with Johanna, mostly. Johanna has started a job, now, in the indoor gardens, spending her days pruning and watering rows and rows of lettuce, herbs, beans, and root vegetables. There's other people who work there, too, but they're so spread out, they mostly just greet each other on coming and going. Annie follows Johanna as she plucks away dead leaves and flicks bugs into a special container, plant after plant, row after row. "You think they'll be alright?" she asks, her hand on her belly, her entire self tense with worry.
"I threatened him before he left," Johanna says, "Told him be better not kill himself for the Mockingjay when he has a wife and child on the way."
Annie cracks a smile at this. "You know, he once accused you of sticking your neck out too much," she says. She thinks of that picture in the tabloid, the cigarette burn. It doesn't make her jealous anymore, she finds. It almost makes her nostalgic.
Now Johanna smirks. She twitches her arm, one of the spasms Annie has grown used to seeing. Johanna has never commented on Annie's tics, so she ignores this in turn. "Yeah, well I'm more clever than Finnick," she says, but her words lack any bite. "He's an idiot, so he has to toe the line."
Annie is woken up in the middle of the night by Johanna, maybe a week later. "Finnick's alive," are the first words from Johanna's mouth, and Annie wraps her arms around Johanna in relief. "But he's hurt. The war is over. Let's go."
She packs her things quickly, unworried about them, really. But the thought crosses her mind that she might not come back here, that she might go back to 4 from the Capitol, so she packs Finnick's mementos, her wedding dress, the scrap of fabric Johanna tossed her in that prison, her pressed flowers from Primrose Everdeen, and the little placard on their compartment door that indicated that this was the suite of Mr. and Mrs. Finnick Odair.
She learns on the way to the Capitol that Katniss is injured, and Primrose is dead. Sweet, innocent Primrose Everdeen was killed, and she didn't get a chance to say goodbye. And when they arrive, she sees the extent of Finnick's injuries: a missing eye, a missing ear, and slashes all along the left side of his body. He's weak, from blood loss and nerve damage, and she's told there's still risk of an infection which could be life threatening. He's been given pain medication, but he refused morphling, she's told.
She goes to see him, kneeling beside his bed, which inexplicably is set up in a spare room in Snow's mansion. "How are you?" she asks.
He smiles, a half-smile that is more alike to Mags than she expects. It makes her tear up. "Been better," he admits. "Wasn't allowed… to die."
Even the speech pattern is similar. She wants to set up a game of doubles, just to get demolished. "I heard you wouldn't let them give you morphling," she says.
"Afraid of it," he admits. "And didn't want to sleep when you got here."
"I'm here now, she says, laying her head on the uninjured side of her chest. "It's over now. Snow is going to die, and Panem will be different tomorrow."
He smiles at this. "I love you," he says.
"I love you too."
Annie sees Johanna on the steps to the mansion, her fingers tapping, her shoulders tense. Annie realizes she's never seen Johanna in the sunlight - it's always been in the Training Center or that prison or underground in District 13. Her hair is a richer brown that Annie thought, with the sun glinting off it, and the scars on her arms don't look as apparent.
She isn't sure why she makes the offer to have Johanna come with them to District 4. She hadn't talked about it with Finnick first, even. She doesn't exactly want Finnick's other lover around her all the time, reminding her that he is never completely hers. But she likes Johanna, and she hates misery. She feels like she did in the car with the woman who'd been threatened to become an Avox if she didn't film the propos, or in the interrogation room with the man with the gun to his head. She is in a position to try to stop the suffering of someone else, and of course she can't look away.
But Johanna is prickly, skeptical. "I don't think I could stand the water," she says.
Annie wonders if this is a metaphor, or if she's really afraid of living beside the ocean. She wonders what will happen to the Ward for Troubled Women, because under Snow, they'd definitely send Johanna over. "Just think about it," she offers. When she asks if Johanna wants to talk to Finnick, she declines. Perhaps it was a metaphor.
The execution does not go the way Annie anticipates, and when Katniss murders Coin, she feels herself again frozen in shock. The smoke bomb explodes and her hands go to her ears, blocking out reality. And then she feels a hand on her wrist, tugging her along. "Come on, this way," Johanna is urging. "We have to get out of here."
She manages to snap out of it and follow along, helping Finnick navigate through the streets despite his injuries. It wasn't unlike getting Peeta out of that prison, she thinks, but easier, with Johanna actively helping. She leads them to a fancy Capitol townhouse, and they barricade the door behind them.
"They've been killing Victors," Johanna says, "There's a lot of angry people out there."
Johanna shows them around this house, and Annie realizes she's been here before, several times, and perhaps just for a party, but it's more likely that she saw a client here, that this was where one of her sponsors lived. Annie catches Finnick looking at Johanna with a strange expression, not desire, exactly, more like shame, or fear, maybe, and she makes an excuse to go take a nap. They need to talk, she reasons.
And afterward, when Finnick comes back to the bedroom, he looks tired, and smells like tobacco. "I asked Jo to come back to 4 with us," he admits. "Maybe I should have asked you first. But it doesn't matter, she declined."
Annie sits up, rubbing his back. "It's alright, I did the same thing," she confesses.
He turns to her, eyebrows raised. "You did?"
She shrugs. "I thought… her family is dead, right? Wouldn't she want to go where she has friends?"
He sighs, leaning forward, but he doesn't dare put his face in his hands with his injuries. "She's going to 12, apparently. With Haymitch, and eventually Katniss."
"That's good then, isn't it?" Annie asks.
"Yeah, of course. I think I am just selfish."
Annie smiles. "I don't think you're selfish. It's hard to let go of the few good things you've had in your life," she says. "I used to be so upset we were apart, but now I'm glad I only know District 4, because I don't have two separate lives to try to connect."
He kisses her forehead, and they lay back again on the bed. "Let's get out of here as soon as we can," he says. "Tonight, tomorrow, whatever. I'm ready to go home."
She nods, afraid of what's happened to District 4, but knowing it can't be worse than what they've seen: than the Hunger Games or a secret prison or a bombing in the Capitol that took out dozens of innocent people.
"Ok. Let's go home."