I didn't know her well before my first games; I didn't know her at all outside of school and business. Her family sold the fish that my father and I caught, and from time to time our fathers would send us off together to 'go play or something'. We never did. A few times, we would try to talk, but we had nothing in common. I was a poor fishmonger and her family was actually wealthy for a district family.
As I grew older I decided that I didn't quite like her. It was nothing personal, I just didn't like any of the merchants, they were elitist and rich and they harbored their money to themselves while others of us starved.
We went to school together, I suppose you could say, but we never even spoke there, she was a few grades below me.
I can't say for sure when it happened, it was somewhere between my first games and her games.
In those first years of them carting me back and forth to the Captiol like a little toy to be played with and discarded, I found my comfort in her. She didn't know, the president warned me in no unspecific terms that nobody was to know, not my parents, not my friends, and especially not any girlfriends I might be harboring back home. He had warned me of that much before I even knew her middle name. Somehow, even though I knew that she didn't understand at all, she seemed to understand more than anyone else.
We only had about a year together before she was reaped.
I had always known that Annie was beautiful, even before I liked her. Brown curly hair cascading down her back, slightly crooked smile, sea green eyes masked with thick dark eyelashes. Annie Cresta was quite something, I had even known that when we had to 'go play or something' all those years ago.
Eventually I came clean and told her everything. About the secret trade in the Capitol, about how even though I wanted to be faithful I couldn't. That she shouldn't settle for me.
That night was the first that I ever saw her cry. She held my hand and whispered how sorry she was and that we would get through it, that we had to, she even told me that she loved me. Those three words that I had certainly known were true on some level, the ones I had always been afraid to say.
I returned them.
The day she was reaped was terrible, worse than the day I was reaped. I felt so helpless, standing on the stage with Mags and watching as she took her slow, small, scared steps up to the stage. I wanted to hold her tightly and tell her that she would be okay, even if she wouldn't be.
I comforted her the night of the opening ceremonies as her mentor, I assured her that she looked beautiful in her costume, I held her tightly the last moments we had together before she went to the stockyard, giving her last minute advice.
Again and again we whispered the words before she had to be pulled away from me, each time quieter than the last because we both knew we couldn't be caught. Unsure of if it would be the last or not, unsure of just how many hours we had left. Over and over.
IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
No, I didn't love Annie right away. She crept up on me.
