Spoilers: Major spoilers for the events in Mockingjay.
Disclaimer: I'm only playing in someone else's sandbox. This is just for fun.
A/N: As always, I thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace and his many blessings. I would be utterly lost without him.
I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you think! :)
Little Treasures
Birthdays are hard for Annie.
They hadn't always been, but now they are, because every birthday marks another year that she's older but Finnick isn't.
It's on days like this that the siren song in her head is louder than ever, and it's so very tempting to let it lull her into that quiet place in her mind, the one where Finnick is alive and happy and waiting for her. It's not real, though, even if she wants it to be, and she knows that. But their son is real, and he needs her, and she's learned to ignore that siren song just for him.
It's hurts, though, it hurts to keep herself grounded in reality, today of all days, when all she wants to do is dream, because Finnick had always managed to make her birthday special.
Sometimes, when they were lucky, he was home with her and they would spend the day together, simply being. On those days, they weren't Finnick Odair the Capitol Playboy and Annie Cresta the Mad Girl. On those days, they were Finnick and Annie and Annie and Finnick and nothing else mattered.
When they weren't lucky, when her birthday came but Finnick was in the Capitol and Annie was left alone, he always made sure there was a gift waiting for her somewhere. She'd find it hidden in her house, tucked away in a cupboard, or up on a shelf.
It was never anything he'd bought, just little treasures…little treasures that might not have meant anything to anyone else but they meant the world to her. A pretty shell. A jar of pebbles from their favorite spot on the beach. A bracelet he made out of rope (she still clutches at the knots around her wrist whenever she gets nervous, the knots his fingers made, and it's almost like touching Finnick again).
She misses him.
She misses his face, his voice. She misses the way he always smelled of salt and sand and sun when he was home, she misses the way his eyes sparkled, misses being able to run her fingers through his hair.
But, what she really misses the most is his smile.
Not the smoldering ones he gave the women hanging off his arm, not the smirks he gave for the cameras that followed him around the Capital, but the sweet, gentle smile that was just for her, that one that made him seem years younger and chased away the shadows in his eyes.
That smile had chased away the shadows in her too, lighting up all her dark corners and leaving her to bask in the warm glow.
She can see it in her memory, even now, but it's not the same. It's not the same, and the longing she feels leaves her hollowed out and aching, so she closes her eyes and starts to drift, and…
"Momma! Momma, look! Look what I found!"
Annie's eyes snap open and she digs her hands into the sand where she sits on the shore, where she was just watching her four-year-old son play in the tall grass nearby. She clenches her fists, feeling the sharp edges of a few rocks press painfully into her skin, but she needs that right now. She needs the pain to remind her what is real.
"What is it?" she manages to ask when she finds her voice.
Her little boy runs up to her, then thrusts out his hands proudly and uncurls his fingers. It's an eggshell - one half held in each of her son's little palms - a bright blue eggshell that looks like it's a piece of the sky fallen to earth.
"It's beautiful," she tells him.
And it is.
"It's for you! Happy Birthday, Momma!"
Her little boy smiles up at her, with faint freckles dotting his nose and bronze-colored hair flopping over his forehead, and Annie's breath catches in her throat, because for a one glorious moment, it's Finnick who's smiling up at her.
Tears fill her eyes and their son scrunches up his face in confusion. "Momma?" he asks. "What's wrong? Don't you like your present?"
She smiles a watery smile - but it's a real one, the kind that feels almost foreign on her face - and she gently takes the shells from his hands, setting them in the sand beside her. Then, she pulls him into her arms and hugs him hard, kissing the top of his head.
"I do," she murmurs into his hair, "I like it very much."
Fin
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this, and please let me know what you think!
Take care and God bless!
Ani-maniac494 :)