A/N For Iris. A bit of a loose interpretation of the prompt, I'm afraid! :)
i… the high tides came and brought you in
People fill the white, white corridors as far as she can see. White, white, white, white, she doesn't like the no-colours-anywhere that people are telling her is District Thirteen. She clutches her sheet closer to her chest and keeps walking, keeps pushing past everyone, pushing past the gurney with Johanna on it – Annie remembers screaming, more screaming that adds to the screaming inside her head, Johanna and Peeta and Cinna and not just the children who died in her Games. He's here, somewhere. She knows he is. He has to be.
A head of bronze hair. Surety stabs deep into her heart and she screeches his name, starting to run, not caring about the sheet slipping-sliding down her back or the stares of people as they pass. She can see him properly now, green salt-sea eyes wide, and then his arms are around her, squeezing the air out of her lungs and they hit the wall and sink to the floor. He kisses her, his hands moving through her tangled hair, snagging on the knots but she doesn't care, because he's here, and the people were right, and he's holding her so close, so tightly but like she's the most precious thing in the world.
He pulls away and smiles, and after a second she smiles back. The screaming inside her head has stopped. He's here. Nothing's going to take him away again.
ii…the currents swept you out again
When they tell her that he's dead, she doesn't believe them. And then they tell her, again and again and again until it sinks into her skin, and she starts to fight and kick and scream. They hold her down, tell her to stop, tell her that she's hurting her baby, that she'll lose the baby if she doesn't just stop right this instant, but she can't because Finnick's not dead, he's not dead, he's not, he's going to come in, he's going to hug her and kiss her and hold her all night…
When Johanna finally comes in, Annie has stopped crying. The tear tracks glisten on her cheeks like ghosts. Johanna bites her lip.
"I'm sorry, Annie. I'm so sorry."
That's when the screaming in the back of her mind starts again.
iii. this love came back to me
It's in the later stages of her pregnancy that she starts not being able to cope with being all alone with the spirits wailing and whispering through her house and the rasp of the sea wearing down the happy memories of all the times she and Finnick spent playing or searching for crabs and fossils or walking, hand-in-hand along the shore. She can't stand being alone with the perpetual screaming in her head because he's not there to pull her gently out of it, she can't stand the fact that he's not ever going to phone or to burst through the door and stand for half-an-hour holding her whilst she shows him all the trinkets she's collected from the beach whilst he's been away.
So she paces up and down for half a day, and then makes up her mind like Finnick would and calls Johanna. When Johanna picks up, Annie doesn't say anything. In the back of her mind there's an unearthly screeching, a rising tide, blood spatters the walls, blood, blood, blood…
Her uneven, ragged breathing is enough. Johanna sighs. "It's alright, Annie. I'm coming to get you."
She finally starts to find herself again out there in the cold, clean mountain-coloured air of District Two, firmly ensconced in the spare bedroom of Johanna's house. She walks around sometimes, a little bit, and Johanna's husband will drive her down to see the midwife in town once a week. Slowly, the screams subside like a storm that has finally had enough of battering the coast and sending tangled wrecks to a watery grave.
Without anything in her head anymore, she starts to talk to Finnick, silently, at first, then out aloud. It's just little observations to start with, how the baby's kicking more now and the way the stars twinkle benevolently between the peaks of the mountains, but somehow it grounds her, it makes her think that even though he is dead, maybe he isn't so far from the land of the living after all. Especially when he begins to talk back.
Within a couple of weeks, she can almost feel him hugging her close, and after that it doesn't send a twinge of pain through her already bruised and battered heart when she sees Johanna and her husband standing together, lost in the world of each other's eyes.
It's New Year's Eve when the baby decides to make an appearance. They're just getting ready to go into town to see the fireworks, to celebrate the first New Year without the chafing bit of the Capitol between the Districts' teeth when there's a dull pain in the base of Annie's back and a wetness running down the insides of her legs.
She gasps. Johanna is immediately at her side, and in her head, Finnick is there, worried, confused. "What's happening?" she hears Johanna ask, but all she can think about is Finnick's eyes, the glassy-calm-greenness of the sea on a clear day. She can't say anything. Her tongue is fuzzy and her head is full of Finnick.
"It's the baby," she hears, and then a murmured conversation, a kiss, the stomping of snow boots and the growl of an angry engine.
"It's alright darling," Finnick says as Johanna helps Annie up the stairs and into her bedroom. "I'm here. I'm here. Don't be scared."
"I'm not," Annie says. When she blinks, Johanna is looking at her strangely. The moment passes. Another pain comes.
The hours slowly fall over each other in an attempt to run away and Annie's only holding on because of Finnick, because of the way she can squeeze his hand, his murmured words that make no sense but don't even need to. Then a voice that isn't Finnick's is telling her to push, and Finnick and Johanna are joining in with the refrain and there-is-so-much-pain but finally there's the squall of a baby splitting the air into two pieces.
As the midwife puts her little boy into her arms, Annie feels Finnick wrap his arms around them both. In the corner of the room, Johanna is hugging her husband so tightly that he can't even draw breath. Annie looks down into the little, red scrunched up face of her son, and rocks him back and forth carefully. She can tell that Finnick is smiling so much that his cheeks are cracking apart. "Annie, he's beautiful," he says, but then it's not just him, but Johanna and and her husband too, and Johanna's hand is resting tenderly on her own stomach.
The glorious morning light rolls over the slopes of the mountains, and the baby opens his eyes. Green, like emeralds, like the prettiest kind of sea-glass, like his father. Annie can barely breathe for the love that is rising relentlessly in her throat. She never thought she'd feel like this again.
"What are you going to call him?" Johanna asks.
Annie thinks about it for a second. "Finn," she says.
End.