A/N- This was written for the April Starvation Forum prompt: "Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real." You should check it out if you like hanging out with awesome people or want to try writing for the contest. Thanks to my beta Laeve for doing her thing!
It's a strange thing to think, but I can't shake the feeling that Mrs. Everdeen understands me better than anyone else. Who in Panem has been through what we have? We both had a husband we had to be with, no matter how insurmountable the odds might have seemed. Then we were treated to a brief period of almost perfect happiness, hers marred with estrangement from her family and newfound poverty, mine by a war in which my husband was called up to serve.
Then both of our worlds were shattered.
While I have never spoken to Mrs. Everdeen about it myself, I understand it was a mine explosion for her. I do not know if I envy her or not. While her husband was gone, forgotten by most, leaving her alone and poor to raise two young girls, I cannot help but feel that my lot must be worse than any known to man. Perhaps it is my shallow human nature, but I cannot help but think that there is no greater pain in this world than to have Finnick, perfect Finnick, and lose him again.
I feel myself shriveling up inside of my own body, hollowing myself into a shell of skin and bone. I claw at myself from the inside, trying to gain some sort of purchase on the outside world. I feel my child stir in my body and I dig in. I have to hold on. I am no longer allowed to live for Annie. He must come first. That is a sacrifice I am willing and fighting to make, but I can feel myself losing against the loss that presses down on me.
I've heard the stories of Aliena Everdeen's descent into stillness. Into a world not our own. I thought I knew what that meant when I would press my hands against my ears and scream through the night, trying to drown out the sounds that haunted me, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. This is my journey into Hell, this death that hangs on my limbs and senses. It is so hard to fight, even pointlessly and ineffectually as I fought the sounds, because its nature is stillness. I am like a child only just learning to swim and dive, who finds herself in open water with weights tied to her arms and legs. How can I struggle when I hardly know how? When the trial itself prevents me from doing so.
I no longer press my hands to my head. I no longer see the conference table in front of me. A film hangs over my eyes instead, and my ears are full of water. I hardly understand the proposition Coin puts forth.
A- another Hunger Games? No. Not again. That is all I can think. Not again. I vote no, trying desperately to focus on what the others say around me.
Yes, yes, yes. They cry yes.
By the time we filter out of the meeting, I am hardly thinking. I glide from the conference room, trusting habit to keep me upright. Mrs. Everdeen is waiting to see her daughter. I think the last elements of my story are conforming to hers. As she saw her daughter kill for her freedom, I see my friends embrace killing for their own revenge.
And I drown and drown.
It's strange to think, but I may be more similar to Annie Cresta than anyone else. I can see myself, young and tortured in the wake of Larq's death, in the young woman as she cringes through life. She's doing very well, I have to say. Her composure is admirable. I know she's fooled the other victors and New Panem employees into thinking she has control of her mind, that her husband's death has not stripped her of a mind and a soul, but I know better. I fought the same fight she now struggles against. I felt the seething agony in my stomach that made me want to curl up and die. Eventually I did. Or tried to, anyway.
I don't remember those months when I lay in bed very clearly. Almost everything I know about that time comes from details Prim told me when I recovered. I know Katniss had to be stronger and braver than any girl her age should have been. I know it was during that time that her hate for me began to boil up. I know Prim wept every time I'd get up and do some mundane chore, only to crush her hopes by going immediately back to bed and shutting down.
It's mostly a blur at the moment, and I can see the same blur fogging up Annie's eyes, and the same moments of clarity when she fights to surface. I'm sure everyone else thinks she's just in mourning. That she's only silent because she thinks her husband's death has left nothing more to say. I know better. I know she does not say a word because she simply cannot. If she tried it would be a wash of words that make no sense to others.
Except perhaps to me.
I see Annie rest one hand on her growing stomach, and resolve sparks in her eyes for a second. As the others begin marching solemnly from the conference room, Annie does not move. I cannot blame her. Her world is spinning and leaving her behind, just as mine did. Any stillness is welcome.
Beetee helps her to her feet and she murmurs thanks. Her hand never moves. Why should it? The unborn person inside her is now her only anchor. Her only cause.
She walks absently out of the room. I can see from the look in her eyes that she has already forgotten Beetee's assistance, not to mention where she is and where she's going. As I walk behind Katniss, I can't help glancing back over my shoulder. Annie's eyes meet mine briefly, but I see only the dreamworld in her gaze. There is nothing behind her eyes. The sort of nothing that kills.
It's strange to think, but there's no one more different from me than Mrs. Aliena Everdeen. At first glance, we seem to be sisters in fate. She lost her husband; I lost my husband. She was left with only her children; I am left with only my son. This is where the similarities end.
She left the world behind, totally and unarguably. I have heard the stories. They're well known, now that her older daughter is so famous. It was when Katniss began learning to fight for herself. Without her mother's period of… absence, she might never have become a Victor and therefore the Mockingjay. Even if there was a benefit to the Everdeen family's suffering, I had the distinct feeling that they would not have allowed it to go forth if they'd been able to choose, even knowing what it would it would bring about. Because one way or another, it took Prim from the Everdeens.
I don't doubt Katniss would have volunteered for her sister even if she hadn't had the survival skills to win. But she did, because she does. Ironically, it was because Katniss won that Prim died. The Everdeens were doomed to lose a daughter, one way or the other.
That will not be me. That cannot be me. I will lose myself if that's a price I must pay. Why would I mind? There is no point in holding on to me without Finnick here, anyway. I would let go without a moment's hesitation if my son's safety were guaranteed. While the Everdeens lost a child, my story will not follow. The Odairs may lose two parents, but the tragedy will end there. It must.
"Mrs. Odair? We'll see you now," comes the nurse's voice. I know what I will see. It will be my son growing inside of me, small and perfect and alive. I will see hope. No matter what horrible things have happened to me, my son will be born safe from my fate. From his father's. He might never see a broken woman like Aliena or me, because the world that broke us is gone,
We have derailed the Hunger Games. With Katniss' murder (Murder? Execution? Assassination?) of President Coin, they will not continue.
Those who exploited us are gone. My son will not grow up in a world where you are required to work yourself to death. He will not have to sell himself to the Capitol for tessera . He will not be a slave.
I don't pretend I will survive this. To be brutally honest, I know I will not. But it does not matter. What does this world need of an Annie Cresta? It has purged almost all of its other Victors. It wants those embarrassing remnants of an age of brutality gone. It will stop at nothing to erase us, I think. But he will live free. He will live happily ever after.
"What will you name him?" the midwife urges as I hold him for the first time.
"Neo," I whisper. "New."
It's strange to think, but I probably differ more from Annie Cresta than anyone.
My husband's death destroyed me, quickly and quietly. I didn't fight back against it. I couldn't have. The world was ripped away from between my fingers, leaving me paralyzed and silent. It was a fast death, but not painless. I left my children alone. Somehow, miraculously, they survived.
Not so with Annie. She is being killed slowly by her madness, but is fighting through it. It's grotesquely fascinating, like her own little Hunger Games waging itself in her chest. I find it almost hard to look away, because I see in Annie the strength I lacked.
I survived my husband's loss. I survived the reaping of my eldest daughter. I survived a war and a rebellion. And I survived my youngest daughter's death. If you can say nothing else about me, I have survived my trials. But have I survived at others' expense? It sometimes feels that way. A mother should die before her children. She should never bury a daughter. That is how it should be; the core of my being knows this. Somehow, I have outlived Prim. The rules of the world have rearranged in cruel ways for me. Annie is forcing that rule to submit and play itself out for her.
Annie will allow what I was powerless to prevent. While I can see it pains her to keep fighting, I am envious of her choice.
What do I have? A dead family, who disowned me when I had the nerve to fall in love with a poor boy. A dead husband who left me alone. A dead daughter who was the brightest part of my life. A daughter who hasn't loved me since she was eleven years old. A life I need to start again from scratch. And the ache they leave me.
Is it wrong to envy her fate?
My clinic is small, because I want it to be. There are two more in the area. To have three doctors in a District would have been almost unheard of before. Now it's come true.
Perhaps it's masochistic to work specifically with children. Every blond or black-haired child I see twists a knife into my gut. Still, most of the time my work numbs me, and the numbness is worth the occasional blast of pain.
There is no end in sight. I can see that Annie has her eyes fixed on a finish line. Probably the birth of her child. She is still rich. She will have the luxury of giving up. I will not. I will stagger through indefinitely.
"Did you hear? Annie Cresta had her baby this morning. A little boy. I bet he grows up as handsome as his father!" Cornelia chirps. I give the obligatory smile and return to my work.
She doesn't know that today will the last of Annie's life.
She doesn't know that the last day of mine has lasted seven years.
She doesn't know the ways we drown.