Finnick claims that Annie managed to creep up on him. This is an imagining of just how she managed to do that.
Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns these characters and any book references belong to her.
Their eyes prey on me, dissecting each piece of my body and tasting me. An old woman, her yellow eyes swelling, mouths obscenities at me as I watch from where I have been perched on the stage. My mouth twitches, dropping the plastered smile for a moment. I scramble, regain it, and then flash her a wink. She's stripping off my clothes with her eyes; I feel the bile rounding up in the back of my mouth. The dirt of her district settles on her cheeks as her lips curl back.
The boy catches and redirects my eye. He ascends the stage, floating towards me, his smile already in easy imitation of my own. His hand finds mine, shakes it, and then he turns to wink at the crowd. His body is muscled, like mine was, and though he is not a volunteer, he has the appearance of one who has trained for this moment. A small chain on his neck catches the sun's glint.
Though years have now passed, I haven't quite gotten the hang of mentoring the children who greet me on this stage. Luckily, Sasha's more eager than Mags or I ever have been: her fresh victory seems to still spike her enthusiasm, and she happily greets those able-bodied tributes' whose mouths are frothing for blood.
The girl that takes to the stage now, however, is not one of those. Though she's pulled from the pool of seventeen-year-olds, she seems smaller or frailer somehow: her dark hair falls in curtains over her shoulders and she trips mounting the stage. A soft groan falls from the crowd; when she recovers, she attempts something between a giggle and a cough that does little to ebb their discontent.
She tumbles towards Sasha, and I see her sucking in long breaths to regain a sort of grace or ease. I catch the boy's eyes and see that sympathy flashes across them only for a moment. I had expected disgust or worse, but when they shake hands, he steadies her somewhat. She mouths a lost word of thanks before turning to the audience.
As we exit, Sasha gives me a weak smile. The lines in her cheeks cannot surrender entirely to the powder they've coated her face with.
"Well, suppose this it, again."
The crowd disperses. We are ushered to our car, and as we climb in, Sasha presses her polished fingernails to her lips.
"We save the boy, yes?"
Flippant, airy Sasha. Her dyed red curls fall near her altered red eyes: no longer the green of our district, but instead set to a constant glare.
I see the girl swim before me, teetering slightly as she waves to the crowd. I picture her sobbing her goodbyes to her family.
"She's not worth it, Finnick," she says, shaking her head.
I toss my head back, staring out the window as I drink in the last tastes of sea salt that linger in the air.
"Of course," I say. "Of course."
Yellow eyes, red eyes, and the last bits of sea salt intermingle with the girl's dark hair and threaten to choke me.
#
Some hours later, we sit down to watch the recap of the reapings. The girl sits immobilized, but not shaken in the way I expected. Her hands are clasped on her lap, and she absorbs the flashes on the screen.
"You'll want to make allies with that one," says Sasha off-handedly as a stocky tribute appears on the screen. She points out others who are rugged or beautiful or whose mentors she already has spoken to.
The girl nods, thinking these notes are for her. The boy chuckles when a twelve-year-old clamors up to the stage, struggling to reach up for the hand of his mentor. The girl's eyes flash to him, and he sinks back with a sigh into his chair.
"To bed," I say plainly as a pair of grey-eyed children pop off the screen. "Long day ahead."
They disappear, the girl trailing after the boy. I hear her tinkling voice fading away.
"I won't be able to kill any of them," she whispers.
"Oh, you will," snaps the boy. "You'll kill me, if it comes down to it."
"No," she murmurs. "I—"
"Stop it, Annie," hisses the boy. "Stop making this so difficult. We'll be allies, okay, if you can pull this together, but you have got to know where we're going. Get your head on straight. Do you hear me?"
The faintest voice—almost a whimper—answers him. Her door clicks shut, and I hear him stomping down the halls.
She's not worth it, Finnick. I hear Sasha's voice echoing, and when I sink to my bed, the girl haunts my dreams. She endures the murders that I watched and some that I committed over and over again. Blood drowns her, and though she claws against the walls, trying desperately to free herself of the space I've trapped her in, she's caged.
You have to know where we're going, the boy said.
Yes, I think. I was right to bet on the boy.
#
When I come down to breakfast, I find Annie sitting at the table and clicking her heels together. She stares at a plate of oatmeal and berries, surveying it as though she plans for it to rouse to life and bite her.
"You can eat it, you know," I say. "It's good, really."
She looks at me, tilting her head, and smiles.
"Finnick, right?"
I nod, sitting across from her and popping a cube of sugar into my hot chocolate. Sasha and the boy are busy discussing strategy already, or they were when I passed them in his room. Sasha had given me a wink, waving me away when I tried to intervene.
"Keep the girl company," she had said before turning back to the boy. "Now, you said you've had practice with a spear? Not surprising…"
I decide to try this with Annie, who is currently munching on a berry. The red juice lines the top of her lower lip.
"So, Annie," I begin. "Are you—erm—good with any weapons? A spear, maybe? Or a knife?"
She pops another berry in her mouth, not bothering with her fork.
"Oh, not really," she says. "I mean, I've helped my dad sometimes fishing. But I'm nothing really. Knots, maybe. But not with weapons."
She pauses, and then flicks another berry between her teeth. "Nothing like you and a trident."
"Really just an overgrown spear," I say, trying to displace the memories that stir at the mention of the trident.
For a moment, she's laughing: it's not the silly giggle from the reaping, but a laugh that bounds across the room and buries itself in my chest. I think she'll topple over, but she just swings and laughs and grins as I begin to laugh with her. We stay like that for awhile, and the demons inside me seem to descend ever so slightly. Then we both begin to stumble over our laughs as the room fades into silence. We push around our food awkwardly, and I lock onto the passing images in the window. When I do look up at her, I see that fog clouds her eyes, and she drops her gaze.
"Annie," I say quietly. "You do know what you have to do, don't you? To stay alive? You may not be any good with a weapon, but we need to start somewhere."
Her eyes cut to me, narrowed and brimming with the same sea green I've seen my own eyes reflect on camera. They're the eyes of someone who has sailed the waters of District 4 and they bear down on me, boiling and hot.
"Oh Finnick," she says. "I know what they say about me. But when I say I won't kill anyone, it's not because I'm stupid and don't understand what this is all about. I mean that I can't. I can't throw a spear, I can't burn someone, I can't bite someone, I can't do anything. I am going to die and you and the rest of this world are going to laugh while I die."
I meet her gaze, and all at once she throws her arms around my neck and buries her face against the crook of my neck. I have held so many women like this, but never held anyone quite like Annie. She is all sea salt, that same sea salt from the car and from my home; she isn't drenched in some artificial perfume or dyed the color of roses.
I can't say anything to this girl, I think. All sponsor donations will be saved and sent to the boy, all attention and strategy lauded on him. She will enter the arena with nothing save what little strategy she can muster on her own. For awhile, perhaps, the boy will protect her. Then he will desert her, or be killed and leave her to die.
"I…"
I try to pull some charm back into my voice as I squeeze her shoulders.
"I would never laugh, Annie," I say. "Now, how about we try to find a way to make a weapon out of those knots, eh?"
It's all I can manage in the situation.
#
She flits across the screen, vanishing into trees or nests that she carves out of the ground. Annie's strength, I soon learn, is her ability to hide. The other tributes care little for her, but she does well assisting her pack of allies by disguising them. I suppose suggesting she go into defensive training at the knot tying and camouflage stations paid off in this way.
Still, as the days tick away, I worry she is doing too well. She and the boy evade the few deaths and do little to capture the attention of the cameras. I see her bright eyes sinking into her hollowed face and watch as she wilts from starvation before me.
Eventually, they lead them to food and water, but it's too easy and Annie should know this. I sense that she's worried, that the Gamemakers are tugging them into a trap, but she follows him anyway.
The blow comes too quickly for him to evade. No weapon that we could have sent would save him. His blood washes over the ground and his attacker continues to hack at him even after the cannon sounds. The attacker's eyes burn and he turns for her, but Annie's gone. She tears through the arena, strangled cries struggling to get out of her throat. Then she's digging into one of her nests, her sobs surrounding me in our far-away, paneled room. Over the next days, her eyes appear swallowed up in a film of waste and starvation; she doesn't eat the food we send until it's gone bad. I watch her melt into the mud and try to keep my interviews light to the press. She's strong, Annie, I assure them. She'll pull through. But of course, I can't imagine how when I see the diminished girl on screen.
#
Too little blood—that's what causes them to send the flood. The waves rip through the tributes, racking their emaciated bodies up against rocks and trees and hurtling them against each other. Some hack away at other tributes in the water, staining it red, before succumbing to the waves themselves. They do this for hours, fighting for the bits of material that they can float on, until it's only Annie paddling and diving away from it all.
Annie. The blood still seeps from the last remaining tribute when she surfaces, staring at the stream of bodies that are being drawn up by the hovercraft claws. She struggles against the one that takes her, screaming, her eyes wild and dazed as she thrashes.
I do not celebrate. One look at her eyes and the blood that stains the water and I know that she should have died.
#
Annie flickers between consciousness and the deadened sleep that I must also have assumed after I was plucked from the arena. I stay with her, or watch her from behind the one-way glass that separates her from her team. Her prep team and stylist are beside themselves over her victory and are just itching to get their hands on her for alterations. However, when Annie does come to, it's to laugh hysterically or to scream at them to run. Eventually, they resolve that she isn't ready for alterations of the surgical kind. They polish her body, dunking it in creams and troughs of sand-like scrubs. She surfaces only to mumble about heads and maces.
Congratulations, I'm told, are in order. I am pushed on television to wink suggestively and to thank my own admirers for supporting Annie. I reassure them that Annie is just giddy to see them. As I say this, I imagine her wailing back in her too-white room.
When I come to collect her, her eyes stare steadily at the wall. I approach, and she reaches up to touch my cheek, then draws back as if I am an open flame. She moans, whimpering and trying to disappear beneath her hospital sheets.
"Annie," I whisper. "It's okay. You're not in the arena anymore."
I brush back a strand of her hair, tentatively. Her hair's glossy from the polish and runs easily through my fingers. She still sinks beneath the hospital sheets, but at least she stops whimpering.
"They killed him," she says. "All of them."
I press my finger to her lips. "It's over, Annie. You need to get ready for your interview, and then it's all over. You understand?"
But of course I'm lying. It's only beginning for Annie. She has a year or so, I think. I shiver, recalling that I am due for the celebrations. I have many offers now, Snow hissed, now that Annie has been so successful.
#
I instruct the stylists to play up Annie's paleness, her hollow cheeks. Make her eyes look wider, I tell them. Keep her hair simple. I want the Capitol to see an uninteresting victor of an uneventful games: forgettable, possibly mad, that's what I want for Annie. I want them to ignore her.
I take her hand before she goes to the interview.
"Remember," I tell her. "Just get through it. Find a spot on the screen and stare at it. Laugh occasionally. Smile. It'll be over soon enough."
She looks away from me, dazed. "Finnick," she whispers. "I'm scared."
I draw her back so that her eyes find mine and seem to clear somehow. I imagine her sailing, laughing, tying knots with me. The girl I sent to the arena surfaces for a moment, and I see the frightened child that no one—including me—wanted to bet on.
"Just get through it," I say, unable to draw the sunken quality from my voice.