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Annie wakes up sick to her stomach, same as most mornings. She's told Finnick that this is happening less, and in a way it is getting better: she spends less time in the bathroom, she usually feels better after she vomits up her stomach contents and no longer has to wait to also release some trickle of bile or stomach acid as well. But it is, without fail, still a solid part of every morning. It's easy to tell this half-truth, he leaves before the sun most mornings to join the fishing crew, even on these icy January mornings. Annie's gained a little weight, not the amount the Healer in District 13 told her she should be at by 5 months along. They were precise about everything in District 13 - weights, measures, timing, dosages, the shift to District 4 has her feeling unmoored.
Here, there is no one measuring out her portions, no one checking her weight or scanning her stomach to see the health of the baby. Here, there are rations, barely, and she qualifies for a little extra for her pregnancy, so she tries to eat what she can in the mornings, right after she's sick, since that food will have plenty of time to digest and get to her baby, unlike her supper, which always seems to come back up the next morning.
Finnick brings home fish, always, when he works with Jude, and she and Johanna get in line for the rest of the rations: eggs, wheat flour, milk powder, potatoes, turnips, and maybe 1 or 2 other ingredients if they're lucky. They have a routine now, a few weeks in. Another day of the week, they line up for the stove pellets to keep the houses warm. There's no chance they're getting electricity back in the Victor's Village anytime soon, so she's learned to live without, learned to heat water on the stove for a bath, to use candles to get around at night, and she's made up the bed extra warm to get through the cold winter.
This morning is not a ration day, so she takes time to heat water on the stove for tea - one of their extra ingredients in the last ration box - and she has two pieces of toast with butter for breakfast. The butter was also a luxury, given to her since she was pregnant, to 'help her gain some weight', so she tries to do so, slathering it on the bread that she's still not very good at making. Johanna had found a recipe in Mags' kitchen and the two of them had tried it, and Johanna's had turned out better, though she pretended it didn't.
Annie sits at the little table in Finnick's kitchen as she eats, tapping her fingers on the table, watching the scene outside. It's blustery, and she can't imagine being on a fishing boat in this weather. Jude had given Finnick some clothes to wear to work - an insanely heavy overcoat and waterproof pants and boots, and still Finnick came home with ice crystals in his beard. She'd been knitting him a gaiter for his neck and face, now that the wounds to his ear and cheek had healed enough that he could bear to have fabric touching them.
Annie sees someone approach Mags house and tenses, her breakfast forgotten half-eaten. The metal pole was by the door, and she wonders how quickly she can get over there. Fast enough to hit the person before they have a chance to sneak up on Johanna? She wouldn't have time to put her boots on, but that would be fine, she'd only be out there for a moment.
But before she even comes to a decision, Mags' door opens and Johanna steps onto the porch. She's in her jacket and pajama pants, and she's talking to the visitor, who obviously is trying to get in the house. Johanna puts her hands to his chest, and still, Annie thinks about grabbing the pole, but he shifts, just a little, and she sees it's Finnick's brother-in-law, Ryder. She can't imagine what he is possibly doing talking to Johanna, but not thirty seconds later, he turns and leaves.
She finishes her breakfast and gets dressed, crossing the short distance to Mags' house. "Johanna?" she calls, not hearing her steps anywhere in the house. She holds her breath- 8 seconds- an old habit as far back as her Games, and continues in further.
It's strange, she thinks, how much hasn't changed. She'd lived here, for a time, with Mags, after she got out of the Ward for Troubled Women, before the Quarter Quell. She knew every inch of this place, where Mags kept every little thing. Part of her thinks she'd be more comfortable staying here than she would be at Finnick's, a house she previously had only been able to sneak into, due to the secrecy of their relationship. There are little touches of Johanna here now, after a few weeks: her boots by the door, the open bottle of wine in the kitchen, but Mags was felt by her presence, and it seemed Johanna was known by her absence.
Funny, Annie thinks, because Mags was dead, and Johanna is still here. "Johanna!" she calls again, climbing the stairs now. She finds her in the spare room, laying back on the bed, a morphling syringe on the nightstand beside her.
"Oh, cool. Annie's here," Johanna says tonelessly. Annie realizes Ryder must have brought the drugs, and perhaps wanted to come in to take them with her, or perhaps wanted sex as payment. It's odd, seeing this play out in the room she used to sleep in, in the house she used to share with Mags, where she couldn't even imagine war or drugs or the horrors of the Capitol, but at the same time, it's not that odd at all. It's not that much different from being across from Johanna in that prison, from laying beside her in the infirmary in District 13. In a way, it's relieving to be back here, where she can see her, rather than in Finnick's house, where Johanna might just disappear, or where Annie is afraid her own memories are just false ideas she's invented to cope with things she can't understand. She stomps her foot - assured that the ground is really there, that this isn't a dream, and forces a smile. "I'm here."
Annie goes to Mags' room, finds a pair of knitting needles and a skein of yarn, and then returns. She sits on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and turns Johanna on her side. And that's how she passes the morning. It's cold, upstairs, with the stove low, but she doesn't complain, she just pulls the blanket over them.
Johanna seems to drift off after a bit, and wakes up in the early afternoon. Annie is hungry again, but she wants to make sure Johanna can sit up on her own first. "Aren't you going to yell at me?" Johanna asks dazedly.
"No," Annie says. She checks her work. The gaiter is at least half done now, she's worked quickly. "Maybe next time, you can do this at my place, in front of the warm stove though." She isn't even sure which one of them is shivering, probably both. She's certain there will be a next time, based on the little packet of powder remaining on the nightstand.
"Finnick would," Johanna says. She's still facing away, but Annie can hear it now, the emotion coming back into her voice, the hurt. Annie wants to reach out, to stroke her hair, to rub her back, but she's afraid to touch her, to break the spell. She's reminded of riding in the hovercraft with Johanna away from the Capitol prison, afraid of hurting Johanna further, so now she keeps her hands on her knitting needles.
Annie sighs. "Finnick has good intentions," she says. "But I think you frighten him, so he lashes out." She thinks Johanna frightens a lot of people, actually, but she doesn't say that.
Johanna rolls onto her back, so they can look at each other, Johanna from below, and Annie from above, leaning against the headboard. "If he lashes out at you, I'll kill him," she says, deadly serious.
And for the first time, Annie realizes that Johanna really did come to District 4 because she asked, it wasn't just an excuse to follow Finnick. She risks rejection and brushes Johanna's hair from her forehead, stroking her pale skin with the back of two fingers. "Don't worry about that, Johanna. He's always patient with me," she says.
Initially she thinks Johanna is in pain from the way her forehead creases, but when she turns, curling on her side right beside Annie, she realizes it was her trying and failing to resist the urge to draw closer. No, even strong and independent Johanna couldn't handle being absolutely by herself, especially not when offered comfort, Annie sees now. She had been afraid to touch Johanna for fear of rejection, but it appears that Johanna had been afraid of the same. It seems silly now. She traces her fingers in lazy circles around her back, her knitting forgotten. She can feel the bones of her spine, her shoulder blades.
Eventually, she leaves, Johanna declining to come with her for dinner. She gets home just before Finnick, and puts on water to boil for the potatoes and turnips. Finnick comes home as icy cold as usual, and takes his time thawing out, changing his clothes and soaking his feet and hands in warm water. Usually he goes to the public sauna with the other fishermen, but today they got in early to bring the haul to the waiting train, which took up most of the afternoon, so he arrived frozen to the bones. "What did you do today?" he asks, once they're settled down to eat. He is drinking his usual glass of liquor with dinner, which she doesn't complain about because she hasn't met a fisherman who doesn't drink, but she's never known Finnick to drink like this before the war.
"Knit, mostly," she answers. "Spent time with Johanna." She doesn't mention Ryder, or the morphling. She doesn't want him to focus on that, right now.
"Are you feeling any better?"
The word echoes in her brain, sticky like words sometimes are for her. Better. Better. Better. She shrugs. "I have an appointment at the hospital in a few days. I'm hoping they can give me some medication. I'm still not feeling great."
"Want me to come? I can take that day off."
"I'm sure Johanna can come." She doesn't say this to imply he shouldn't come, but she can see he takes it as a rejection. She only meant he didn't need to change anything on her behalf, since she was only going to obtain medication. "You're always welcome to come, if you like."
"No, of course you can go with Jo, if you're comfortable," he says.
"You should go see her," Annie says, collecting their plates and bringing them to the wash basin. Washing dishes was a bit of a pain, since their only running water was freezing cold, but she put some in a pot on the stove to prepare to wash. She supposes it should be enough that the water doesn't freeze in the pipes.
"She doesn't want to see me," Finnick says. "She never comes to dinner or comes out with us to town anymore."
Annie turns around, leaning against the counter. She is suddenly so, so tired. "I think she doesn't come around because she thinks you hate her." She comes back to the table, her voice quieter than she intends it to come out. "You can love her too, you know."
"I don't. Love her." He says it quickly, almost automatically.
She nods, repressing an eyebrow raise of doubt. "I'm sorry, I know you worked all day, but I'm so tired, do you mind doing the dishes tonight?" she asks. When he nods, she stands to go upstairs. The she pauses, unable to hold it in. "But just in case you did," she says, trying to keep her voice as gentle as possible, "I've had plenty of time to come to terms with sharing you with Johanna, and I know it doesn't mean you love me any less. And if I did care, would I have asked her to come back here?"
She leaves before he has a chance to reply, knowing both of them are too tired for this argument to go anywhere productive tonight.
It's odd, her life back in District 4, like their roles are reversed. She's spent so long being told she's weak and she's insane, and despite never thinking that about herself, she'd heard it enough to believe it was true, that maybe her own opinion was the wrong one. She was strange for winning her Games without killing anyone. She was weak, unable to go back to the Capitol, and Finnick and Johanna had to turn extra favors - sleep with more scummy Capitolites - in order to keep her home. And her mind was feeble, which was why she lived in that tower with the other women for years.
But now it feels like she's the only one keeping things together. Finnick is throwing himself into work, and when he comes home he's drinking, refusing to talk about the Capitol, the war, his injuries, any of it. And Johanna is in pain, Annie can see it so blatantly, and using morphling to cope, but she won't dare ask for anything from them.
Haymitch called Annie 'intuitive' once, back in District 13. He had been visiting Johanna but she was asleep, so they talked, just a bit, about herself and Finnick. "I can tell you see a lot more than you let on," he said, like it was a compliment. And she does, she knows she does. She could hear the earth move in the arena, and she can feel her baby growing inside of her. And she knows Johanna and Finnick need each other or they're only going to get worse and worse, hold her breath, tap three times and stomp her foot.
The next week, Annie and Johanna go to the hospital as scheduled. It's oddly busy, busier than Annie had ever seen it when she lived in one of the towers on the campus, the Ward for Troubled Women. It looks as if that building is abandoned now, or perhaps used for something else, and she wonders what they've done with all the women who used to live inside. Let them live in the village, she hopes, though she hasn't seen any of them around. Part of her, a horribly pessimistic part that only developed after going to that Capitol prison, thinks they're either Avoxes or dead.
Today, they go to the main hospital, and the waiting room is bustling with parents of children with bruised limbs and bleeding gums, gaunt elderly people, and men with frostbitten fingers and ears, probably dockworkers or fishermen. They take a ticket and sit, and Annie pulls out her knitting. She's glad she brought Johanna, in the end. It seems like lately, Finnick's patience has worn thin, and injuries and illnesses remind him of his own. Johanna, for her part, pulls one leg under herself and sits, watching and waiting, picking at her fingernails a bit.
"Mags has a sewing machine," Johanna says, her first words in thirty minutes.
"Oh yes, in the sitting room. I never saw her use it, though."
"I added new oil, and it seems to move correctly. I've never sewed, but I was going to hem some of Mags' pants to fit me. If I get any good, you can bring over your clothes or Finnick's that need repairing."
Annie smiles a bit, thinking of Mags' reaction to Johanna using her sewing machine and her wardrobe. She certainly would like Johanna's spunk, she thinks. "There's a particularly awful pair of pants she has, they're purple and green…"
"I saw! Maybe I can sew them into some shorts and gift them to Finnick," Johanna teases.
"Good luck getting his chiseled behind into Mags' scrawny pants."
They joke around a while longer, until Annie is called back. Johanna stays in her chair, but Annie suddenly realizes she doesn't want to be separated. "Would you come with me?" she asks, and immediately Johanna comes along. Perhaps she understands the fear of being led by a stranger down a strange corridor. Even when it's intrinsically safe, even when there's no perceivable risk, her past colors the present, making everything seem dangerous or unknowable.
They're led into an exam room, and Johanna takes a small chair Annie assumes a husband would usually sit in, while she sits on an exam table. The nurse comes in and checks her vitals, and then a Healer comes after for her appointment. "Morning sickness, still?" she asks.
Annie nods. They ask her about her weight, about how much it's changed, about how much she's eating. They check her feet for swelling. They feel her belly, they do a rudimentary version of the exams she was getting in 13. "We are short on many medications due to the train blockades and factory shutdowns. Now that the trains are running again, even intermittently, the problem is not all the factories are making the medications we need." She writes Annie a prescription for ginger root and nettle, from the herbal pharmacy, but has no drugs like she was receiving in District 13. "Fortunately, we don't need folate supplements in District 4 with all the fish and potatoes we eat, but try to get some vitamin C once we get it shipped in," she says. She then gives Annie new weight goals and another appointment for the next month.
As they're leaving, Johanna stops the Healer. "Can I ask you a question?"
She looks frazzled, running from patient to patient, but she stops, nodding. "Of course."
"I never want kids. Ever. Can you do something to me so I can be sure I'll never get pregnant?"
Annie pauses where she is putting on her jacket, like a prey animal. They conversation isn't even about her but she feels shocked.
The Healer, it seems, is not. She nods, pulling out her notepad again. "For now, I'll prescribe you contraception. We have plenty of that injection in stock, you can get that month to month for now. You can return to talk about more permanent options at your own appointment."
Johanna takes the slip of paper, nodding. "Thank you."
She walks with Annie to the pharmacy on the next floor of the building. It's quieter here, their boots clunking a bit on the floors. "You never want kids?" Annie asks.
Johanna makes a face as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. "There's almost no Victors with kids, Annie, it's absurd. Cecilia was an idiot for having three, look where it got her - now they're three orphans."
Annie knows Johanna protects herself with cruelty, but it doesn't make it hurt less. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around the bump that's just starting to become apparent. "I don't think she was an idiot, no one could have predicted the Quarter Quell," she says.
Johanna clicks her tongue. "Everyone knows Snow will go after people you care about. Having kids is just making it easier for him."
They stop, fifty feet from the pharmacy, far enough away to avoid making a scene. "Johanna, Snow is dead," Annie says firmly. "There are no more Games."
"Yeah well he really did a number on us," she says. "There's some fucked up people who maybe shouldn't be parents, that's all I'm saying." She walks away without letting Annie reply, without indicating if she includes Annie in that designation or not. Johanna goes to the injection counter, and Annie to the herbal counter, and by the time she gets her pills, Johanna is gone.
Annie decides to walk home past the house she grew up in, the little cottage tucked away on the path to the Training Academy. It sits abandoned now, she sees, the garden snowy and overgrown, and two of the windows are broken which makes her think it's been looted. She wants to go in herself, to see if there's anything of her parents she can salvage, a little memento she can keep, but she doesn't have a weapon, and she's frightened of someone squatting inside, so she walks away.
She tries to imagine her mother setting off on her own, into The Wilds, and allows this to be the only thing she imagines, because she wants a future for her mother. She wishes she had a photograph, something, because even now her memories are vague: she can see the two gray streaks of hair in the front, the tinkling of her seaglass earrings, the swish of her flowing outfits, but her actual face is a blur, someone in all the faces Annie has ever known, someone in a dream.
When she gets home, Finnick isn't home yet. The old, corded phone is ringing, still working despite the power outage by some explanation Jude went through but Annie didn't follow. She picks it up, thinking perhaps it's Finnick, or even Johanna, but it's an official voice that asks for her. "Is this Miss Annie Cresta?" the woman asks.
"Yes, who is this?"
"My name is Miranda Hexley, I am a councilor of President Paylor. I am calling to get your assistance with a project we are working on in the Capitol, a memorial service for those killed in action and missing in action during the war. It will be a ceremony in the Capitol and broadcast to all of Panem."
"We don't have television in District 4," she says, realizing as she says it that this was not what Miranda was asking her, but if this woman wants her help she could at least ensure that she could see the fruits of her labor.
This seems to gag the woman for a moment. "Surely you have television," she says, laughing a little.
Annie scoffs. "I don't have electricity. I don't have hot water. I don't have medication. I don't have television." It feels good, a little, to have someone to complain to. Without the Hunger Games, without the Peacekeepers, things were of course better, but she was afraid things would devolve into riots and tyranny if people continued starving and living in abject poverty after the war. She needed the Capitol to understand this.
"Ok, let me ask you the questions I had planned to, and then we can talk about this."
And she does. Annie spends the better part of an hour telling Miranda all the details she could about everyone she saw in the Capitol prison, everyone she saw when she was being paraded around in the Capitol before the prison, and the women in the Ward who she hasn't seen since the war. She mentions her mother, Finnick's father and sister and the other demonstrators in 4, and after she talks all about life in District 4 now.
"So Johanna Mason is there in District 4, now?" Miranda asks.
Annie thinks about lying, wonders if she can get away with it. "She's here, but she isn't ready to talk about the war," she says. She hangs up with barely a thanks for her time. Doubts Miranda will respect her. Expects Johanna to push more morphling that night after such a call. Annie herself wants something to calm herself down after the call, and it's the baby growing inside of her that keeps her from doing so.
She sits at the table, setting up the candle molds because they're running low on candles for light. She wonders if Johanna is right, in a twisted way. If the Capitol messes people up, changes them in a way that really can't be undone. She didn't understand why Finnick was so obsessed with her never returning to the Capitol until she was taken back there during the Quarter Quell, until it was too late. She doesn't think it will make her a bad parent, in fact, she thinks it might make her a better parent, since she's determined to never let her child know how incredibly cruel the world can be, but part of her does know what Johanna is saying: they are fucked up people.
When Finnick gets home, he's already been to the sauna, so he's warm and recovered from his day on the fishing boat. She's needy, after arguing with Johanna, after passing her parents' abandoned house and speaking with the woman from the Capitol, so she pulls him to bed before he can reach for his drink, before he can ask her about the appointment at the hospital.
"I love you," she says. "I want to be a parent with you." An affirmation.
"Where is this coming from?" he asks. She's already kissing his neck, and he lays down beside her, the two of them shedding clothes and then tucking themselves under the covers.
She smiles, a little defeated. "The Capitol took a lot," she says, "But I still want to be a mother."
He pauses, and she can feel him, half-erect against her thigh. "Did Johanna say something to you?"
She shakes her head. "Not to me." It's only half a lie. "She just said she didn't want kids of her own, after the Capitol, so I was doing some thinking."
He resumes, kissing down her chest, kissing her pregnant belly. Then he returns, and he's right beside her as he presses his fingers against her, and they're warm, a contrast to her own icy fingers. He enters her, first with one, then with two, and she closes her eyes, waiting for that extra bit of contact, his thumb on her clit, his tongue on her nipple, and when it comes she wills him not to stop, she needs this for just a few moments. She finishes calling his name into his neck, and pulls him closer, guiding him into her.
It's still a miracle, she thinks, that they can be together without it being a secret, that no one will punish him or her for simply wanting to be married, for having a baby. That Finnick is no one's but his own, able to make his own choices is enough for her, and the fact that he chose her is a victory, and she watches him as he takes his pleasure, his face changed after the Battle of the Capitol, but underneath still the only man she's ever loved. When he cums, she pulls him close, and they lay together as their heartrates slow, chest to chest. "I don't need electricity if we can do this every day," she jokes.
"But it would be nice."
Later, at dinner, she tells him about the call she got from the Capitol. About how she complained about the lack here in District 4, about how everyone has less than they had before. He looks nervous, and now he does pour a drink. "I probably would have done the same thing," he says. "But I wonder if they'll send help, or just send soldiers to prevent a riot."