He is six, and his mother cries a lot and screams at his drunken father that if he keeps talking like this then they are all going to be killed, and is that what he wants? Is that what he wants, for them to die, because if it is then she can take care of that right now. His father growls and laughs like he's in pain, and talks about something called the Capitol, and the little girl, the baby, she is blanketed in something made of soft, pink wool and she won't stop crying, no matter what Finnick does.
He is six, and the Peacekeepers come and hit his father until he stops cursing them and his blood is all over the walls, and his mother screams at them, (something about the children, he thinks he remembers) screams and sobs and struggles until they finally stop trying to reach the corner where Finnick is hiding with the baby and simply shake their heads and laugh, and say that it doesn't matter, they'll die soon enough anyway, and his mother collapses to the floor and shakes and doesn't look up again, not even when Finnick calls out to her as the Peacekeepers drag her to the huge black car waiting outside.
He is six, and he tries, he tries so hard, but even a place like District Four has its poor, and he is one of them, and even when he gives everything he can find or beg or catch or steal to the baby, she keeps crying, and then she stops crying, maybe because she knows that he has nothing more to give her, and then he wakes up one morning and she is cold in his arms, and he tried, so, so hard, but she is cold and dead and gone, just like his parents, and he can do nothing. He gives her a burial in the ocean, and the water welcomes her with soft, gentle waves, and he says thank you, and he says good bye, and he wonders if there is any reason to live until he is seven.
.
Annie doesn't know how old she is when she started leaving this world. But she remembers that her father owns the bank and is always coughing all the time, sometimes coughing up blood, and then he simply isn't there anymore. Her mother takes over, her mother with her shriveled face and her greedy eyes, and she laughs with the rich people and goes to their parties. Annie watches the poor people who go to the bank for loans, and how her mother gives them that fake, chilling, condescending smile, and sends them away happy, and shows them her real smile, her cruel face when they come back and cannot pay. Annie cries as she watches these people starve to death on the streets, surrounded by markets full of food that they cannot pay for, and surrounded by oceans of fish and plant life, guarded by tall men and women in black who are called Peacekeepers. They smile, but it is like her mother's smile, and they are terrifying.
Annie wants to do something. She wants to help. But there are children drying everywhere, and even if she does manage to sneak a piece of bread or a few coins from the house without her mother noticing and beating her for it, most often the gift only adds on another day or two of misery before their death. Not that they don't thank her. Not that they don't appreciate another chance to save themselves. But it is not enough, and she cannot do anything, and it hurts, so, so, much, and her whole body aches, and she cries for the children on the streets, and for herself, because she is so helpless and hopeless and sad.
She gives up, and she leaves. She goes somewhere where there is no starvation, no depression, where no one is hungry and everyone is happy and the Peacekeepers and her mother do not exist. Because she is not strong enough to see so much pain, and even if Annie does not remember now, at the time she is only six. When her mother smiles at the money and how rich she is compared to the father who they discover on their porch that winter, frozen with his son in his arms, Annie leaves. When the Peacekeepers kill a woman who stole a scrap of rotten fish for her children, Annie leaves. The children die later that week, and Annie leaves again. When there is pain and horror and nothing she can do, and it just hurts too, too much, Annie leaves. She leaves quite a lot. Eventually, she doesn't even bother to come back.
Her mother is not pleased with her daughter, who is useless and has strange ideas, and is now going completely mad, staring at things that aren't there, dreamily ignoring people that talk to her, mumbling quietly to herself, and disappearing into the ocean for hours and hours. She is useless. She is crazy. And Annie's mother is tired of her, of taking care of her, of being responsible for the town's little oddity. She doesn't want Annie. So she sends a letter to the mayor, telling him of Annie's obvious insanity, of how it is so upsetting, and she tried, but she is unable to properly care for her daughter. The letter is seeping with false tears and false regret and false sorrow, and the mayor is a friend, so he laughs to himself and signs the paper sending Annie Cresta to the children's home.
Annie comes back for a little while when she realizes what is happening to her. She watches her mother pack a small bag full of her things, and her aunt grunts a good-bye and her mother waves, happily, it would seem, as her brother leads her to the waiting car. He doesn't even bother to say good-bye to her.
The children's home is huge and moldy and dark, and packed with screaming children that don't seem to survive very long if they are useless, and angry women with ready fists who are so huge that they seem to black out even the memory of sunlight.
Annie doesn't bother to stay. Before the evening meal (watery rice and questionable milk) is over, she is gone, somewhere else, and the huge women watch her carefully for a little while and decide that yes, Annie Cresta is quite obviously insane, but might be good for peeling potatoes.
.
Finnick decides that it is beyond his willpower to simply sit there and let himself die. He is one of the lucky ones, still strong enough to work, and the fishermen are always looking for kids to untangle their nets and clean fish and stick their hands into jammed propeller blades, because who cares if some poor orphan kid looses a couple of fingers or a hand or an arm, even. Finnick enjoys it. Not the whole risking his limbs part, but the part where he's on a boat on the sea and surrounded by salty air and water that stings the cuts on his skin, and seagulls screaming, and sometimes a dolphin will even leap about the prow of their boat. He tries to warn them off though, because dolphin meat is very rare and very expensive, but the silky bodies that try to play with the ships do not belong on some rich bastard's dinner plate.
He gets by. There is a group, a gang of boys that wander the streets and beg and steal their food, and when Finnick is done working with the fishermen he joins them, and they skulk through alleys and the dark parts of town, and sometimes raid houses that are empty for the night and easy to break into, though there is never much of a reward. The houses where there is a lot of food, good food, so much food it makes his mouth water to even think about it, those are the houses that Peacekeepers are bribed to guard, and no one dares to even walk on the same side of the road as they do. The Peacekeepers usually leave the slum areas to their own devices, but every few weeks there is a raid, and the street children who are supposed to be with their families or in the children's home that are unlucky enough to be caught disappear. He thinks that they are sent to the home, but he never sees them, so he doesn't know. Everyone knows that the home is pretty much a death sentence anyway, unless you're strong enough to be of some use to them.
He does not go to school. He doesn't want to, and can't afford to, since his every waking hour is claimed with surviving the endless hunger. The only time he abides by the rules is during the games, when everyone is herded into the town square and forced to watch as another pair of kids is offered up. There are often volunteers, rich kids who've trained for this, who want the chance at fame and even more money. But it happens less and less now, considering that One and Two have crowned their own children as victors six years in a row. Every year Finnick crowds into the square with the other slum children and prays that one of his friends is not picked. Three years he is lucky. But one year, he is not. His friend, of course, does not come back.
And then there is The Plot, an idea conducted and executed by some of the older kids, who talk often about Mags, the victor from so long ago she must be close to a hundred by now. They talk about her big, empty house in Victor's Village, about the food that must be in there, and how there is no one but a decrepit old lady to guard it. It does not take much time to convince the others of their plan, and Finnick soon finds himself slinking through a dark, hollow house, following the others closely. Mags, they discover, is a very light sleeper. And she has a long wooden bat that she is not afraid to use against young delinquents, waving it around her head while charging at them and screaming indistinct curses. Finnick tries to calm her and is rewarded with a harsh smack to the head.
They all make it out of the house, badly shaken and terrified that she may alert the Peacekeepers, suddenly blaming their leaders for a very, very stupid idea. Stupid doesn't even begin to describe it. They go to sleep with empty stomachs after warily checking their alley for the old lady with the stick.
Finnick is in the market the next day, looking for an unsuspecting victim to rob, when he feels a cold gaze on him. He turns. Gnarled old Mags beckons him over, her bony finger an arrow right between his eyes, and he has always been stupid, risky, his friends tell him, and he is ten when he walks over to Mags and helps her carry her groceries home.
He never leaves. She gives him food and new clothes and sends him to school and he really doesn't know why he listens to the cranky old lady who attacks him with a wooden spoon if he steps out of line and does something "so stupid you shouldn't be allowed to live," in her words. He learns quickly. And at night he goes to bed with a full stomach and new fresh knowledge piled up in his head, and pretends that he doesn't notice when Mags smiles fondly at him.
Life is good. He still sees his old friends when he can, though most of them are either dead or too busy surviving to pay much attention to the rich kid who used to be one of them. He isn't a rich kid, he tells himself angrily. He knows what it's like to be so hungry that leather shoes and pets don't seem like bad alternatives. But he stays with Mags, because as much as she tries to hide it, she loves him, and he loves her, loves the chance she's given him, and besides that she's beginning to have trouble getting up and down the stairs and going to the market. They use each other and help each other and somehow love each other, and Finnick, for the first time in a long time, feels like he is finally safe.
And then he is fourteen, and he stands in the square as a pretty fifteen-year-old girl with white gold hair steps up and Mags is smiling like a lemon from her seat on the garishly decorated stage, and then he hears "Finnick Odair" called in a too happy voice, and he is confused by why he feels so calm with his death sentence hanging in the air.
He isn't confused for long. As soon as Mags releases him from a crushing hug and heads to her own compartment on the train, the hysteria and terror all rolls in on a single massive tidal wave, and he spends the night wide awake, curled into a ball on the floor.
.
When Annie arrives at the children's home and then leaves the same day, she is six.
When Annie finally returns, she is twelve, and confused as to how the time went by so quickly.
She is standing in a square with the ringing echo of a trumpet blast in the air, surrounded by decorations made of purple and gold sea flowers and fresh kelp, trying to remember what called her back to the real world, when she feels the warmth of sunlight, fresh, clean sunlight glowing above her head, and it feels like she hasn't been caught in its rays for decades. She tilts her head back, letting the light burn her paper white skin, not at all conscious of the other little girls giving her odd looks and edging away.
"Pearl Trate," and a collective sigh from the other girls, coupled with a wail from a woman standing nearby, who collapses to the ground with a sigh that sounds like death.
Annie looks around at the crowd of unhappy people in beautiful clothes. She looks at the cameras, at the ropes that cut off the children from the adults, at the group on the stage, a tall, plump man in a too tight suit, a woman with gold swirls in her black hair and sparkling red stones set in her smile, and at the varyingly grave, drugged, or drunk individuals seated at the back.
"What is this?" she asks the girl beside her, whose brown hair is pulled into pigtails.
The girl gives her a very strange look. "The reaping, or course. For the Hunger Games."
"Oh," says Annie. She's been gone for a while, and isn't quite sure what she remembers, what the Hunger Games are.
"Finnick Odair" and a handsome boy with an expression of mild surprise moves up to join the girl, and everyone gives a very unenthusiastic round of applause.
Annie remembers about the Hunger Games. The two kids on the stage, looking around with a mixture of forced calm and bewilderment at what has happened, they will probably die soon.
So she does the only thing she can. This time, she hopes that nothing will wake her up.
.
The Capital is huge and rich and crowded with silly, happy people, and he doesn't know whether to hate it or love it.
It's hard to dislike the girls who are always flirting and laughing and not so thin that they have trouble walking. It's hard not to get caught up with them, to not be distracted, fascinated by the silver tattoos that disappear under a shirt collar, or the eyes that change color according to mood, or the simple sheer scope of an out of control drive for physical perfection.
But then, he remembers the girls back home that work all day until they're covered in sweat and coated in a salty crust of dried sea water, and how they glow when the day is over and they can bring food back to their families. He thinks of how they have felt more and seen more and done so much more than these pampered little Capitol brats.
He has to physically restrain himself from hiding bread in his pockets, because he can't believe that they can eat all this food and still have some left for the next day.
His stylist is a little eccentric, even by Capitol standards, with constantly changing hair and clothes made from geometric shapes. But once he convinces Finnick of the advantages of the whole 'sexy' theme and Mags stops threatening to castrate him with a pair of nail clippers, it doesn't end that badly. He needs coaching, of course. He may have joked around with some of his friends about sex and the District Four girls, but they were jokes, and those girls, his girls, he can't help thinking after seeing the Capitol ones, are too tough to mess with anyways. The guys aren't stupid to try anything when it's so easy to stick a spear or harpoon or trident somewhere vital. At first it's awkward, embarrassing even, and he can't help but joke around until Mags slaps him upside the head and tells him that this might be his only chance to stay alive. He does what the trainer tells him. He walks this way, copies the sickly sweet purr, the inflections of certain words, learns the cue for a wink, develops a suggestive smirk that's all his own. And the crowd goes wild. They love him, and once he's in the arena and there is no food, nothing, and those who are desperate and starving aren't picky enough to refrain from cannibalism, he is very, very grateful for their love.
The arena is a canyon, empty and barren, with nothing to keep away the more than one hundred degree heat but rocky shelves that prove to be unstable. The rocks break and slip when Finnick tries to climb, and a thick, perfectly smooth, horizontal shelf keeps anyone from escaping the canyon, with it's invisible traps and deadly predators. Some die quickly from hunger and heat. The heavy, brutal rain keeps others barely alive, but floods the lower regions and drowns at least four. Some are, of course, killed, sometimes eaten, by their fellow tributes. Others are literally boiled to death in mud pits that peal off skin. His district partner, Pearl, is killed by some kind of bird that eats only her arms and then leaves her to bleed to death at his side. Red eyed, carnivorous lizards are attracted to the smell of blood.
He waits until eight days have gone by and there are only four of them left, and when the trident falls from the sky and into his hand, he knows that it's time to begin hunting. It is easier with the District One tributes, who fight back and manage to break his left arm, but the sad-eyed, quiet boy from District Twelve who smiled at him when they were typing knots together is almost too much. Finnick finds him hidden in a cave, steadily bleeding, his wounds infected, hallucinating, barely alive. But he recognizes Finnick. Killing the boy is an act of mercy, Finnick knows that, and the boy smiles at him, asks for it even. That doesn't make it any easier.
He doesn't cry. He doesn't let the people who have orchestrated this despicable entertainment see that they have hurt him. He doesn't cry. He gives the District Twelve boy as painless a death as possible, and he stands straight and victorious as they pull him out of the arena.
He doesn't cry. That doesn't mean he hasn't been scarred. All he can wonder on the trip home is whether or not President Snow knows the damage that he does to the children who survive.
.
Twelve.
Six years of solid, blissful, nothingness, and now she can't even seem to leave for a week before something calls her back again.
Maybe it's her self-preservation, finally kicking in now that she is a candidate for the Games, waking her up, reminding her that if she does nothing, if she learns nothing, if she doesn't pay attention, than she won't even know that she's a contestant until she's dead.
Whatever the reason, she fights it. She leaves for as long as she can, but every year it's the same thing. However long she's managed to stay away, she's always snapped out of it at the reaping.
Thirteen.
For another year, she is safe, and the girl who slept next to her on the floor of the children's home walks up to the stage and is ripped apart by some kind of thorny, living vine, because no matter what Annie does she can't seem to leave until the Hunger Games are over and she watches a boy from District Five be crowned.
She can't seem to leave for more than a day this year, which greatly upsets her and scares the other kids. She tries to leave and can't, sits up all night rocking back and forth and humming to herself, wishing she could just get outside and swim, just once, but the doors are all locked, and the windows too, and something in her body is screaming what if you're picked next year, you aren't ready now, you won't be ready then, and you'll die, doesn't that matter to you? It doesn't. It doesn't matter at all.
If she could get out, just once, she would swim until she couldn't swim anymore, and then she would let herself slip beneath the surface, and she would happily drown.
Fourteen.
Another year safe, and the voice that seems to be trying to prepare her is more insistent that ever. She doesn't want to train, to get ready like some of the others are. She just wants to leave. But she can't, the way is blocked off, so she moans to herself and stays awake for endless nights, and seems to do nothing but sit there and peel potatoes, all day long, thousands and thousands of potatoes, a never ending pile, but it takes her mind off of things, distracts her when a little girl doesn't earn her keep and starves, or when the matrons won't waste medicine on a boy stupid enough to go and get his hand caught in the car engine that they told him to try and fix. The cooks hits her if she cries in the food, so she stops, because if they force her out of the kitchen, she doesn't know what she'll do if she can't peel potatoes.
Fifteen.
The voice still won't let her leave, even if there are only three years left. Only three more chances, and there are so many others besides her.
She doesn't know how much longer she can go on like this, even if she peels potatoes every waking moment. She starts dreaming again, endless nightmares that make her cry when night comes again, because she knows that soon she'll have to sleep, and then They will come for her. She tries not to sleep. She cuts herself with the potato peeler and the cook hits her again. She really, really doesn't know how long she can go on. Three children die over the winter. Annie contemplates throwing herself from the top floor and hoping that two stories is enough to kill you instantly if you land the right way. Or, perhaps, the wrong way. She peels potatoes. Every day, day after day, peeling potatoes, until they tell her that she's done all they have for her to do, and she's getting in the way. She doesn't know what to do. She can't leave. They've taken away her only distraction. She doesn't know how much more she can take.
"Hi."
She doesn't know who he's talking to. She's the only one there and no one ever talks to her. Maybe he's crazy too.
"You're Annie, right?"
It takes her a minute to recognize her name. She looks up at him from her sprawled position on the ground. He has curly brown hair and mismatched eyes, one grass green, one cloudy grey. He's definitely looking at her.
"I'm Gil. Gil Sunnet." She doesn't respond. "You are one of the most melancholy people that I've ever seen."
She blinks. Her voice is rusty, but she manages, barely.
"What's melancholy?"
He thinks. "Well, probably exactly what you're feeling right now."
A frown. "Confusion?"
"Okay," he amends, "maybe what you were feeling a minute before I interrupted your ruminations."
"Oh. My what?"
They talk until the dinner bell rings. Well, Gil talks, and Annie listens. She reaches a grand total of thirty-four words, and wakes with a sore throat. It's the most she's spoken in nine years,
Sixteen.
She breathes a sigh of relief, but not until the boy's name has been declared, and it's not Gil Sunnet. They smile grimly at each other, thinking just two more years. Gil celebrates with an exceptionally long word, while Annie simply smiles a bit dazedly.
Two more years, and the voice in her head gives up a little, because she hasn't been picked for five years now, and she's been fighting to leave for just as long, and suddenly it's as if a huge wall in her mind has been knocked down and she slips in just like she used to, forgets about everything, just floats there in the sweet nothingness and breaths in not-pain, and Gil's saying her name, over and over, "Annie, Annie," and she wakes to the panic on his face and feels guilty, very, very guilty.
She still leaves sometimes, because she's just been doing it for so long that it's become natural, and when she helps Gil make a splint for the boy that always talks back to the matrons and received a broken arm for it, she can't help but leave, just for a minute, and then Gil is calling her back with a few words and a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Gil. He calls her back, every time, reminds her that she's Annie, that she's human, maybe not normal, but human, and she can't keep running away like this. He forces her back to herself, forces her to eat, to exercise, to run with him, and she reads to him, slowly, from the books about medicine and chemicals and the human body while he cuts firewood. He tells her that when he's nineteen, when he can finally leave the children's home, he's going to be a doctor for the poor people in the slums, and she can come with him and help if she wants. They'll do it, together.
Annie can't really remember if she's ever smiled like this before.
Seventeen.
Girls first, as always. But this year, she didn't have to be woken up. This year, this day, today, marks the day before a six month anniversary. She hasn't left for almost six months. She's rather proud of herself.
Girls first, girls first… She glances over to her right at Gil, just across from her, and he meets her eyes, trying for a weak smile.
Girls first. Girls first. Girls first. The hand in the bowl. Please no. No no no. Just this year, then next year, and she's free. Free free free. She repeats it over and over, a mantra, a drum beat in her soul. Free, free, free. Free from the Games and the Capitol and the fear. Annie thinks vaguely that she could never, never have children. It would kill her.
"Annie Cresta."
And the world implodes. Everything she knows cracks down the middle, and she is so, so afraid. "Annie," someone says, and she knows what she has to do. She can't leave now. She wants to, but if she leaves, she'll just leave and never come back and die. Somehow, she makes it to the stage. She can't look at Gil.
The woman with the red, ruby smile is saying something to her but she can't hear, and she just stands, silent and so scared that she almost (almost) isn't scared anymore. But she is scared. She's terrified out of her mind. Out of her mind. She almost laughs. She wants to leave, wants to leave so, so badly, but she can't-can't-can not leave. Not now. She digs her nails into her palms and almost wails at the pain that chases away the blackness and the emptiness and the not-pain that she wants so so so badly.
"Gil Sunnet."
No. Oh, oh, no. No no no no no no. Not Gil not Gil you can't have him, you can't have Gil I won't let you have him, not Gil.
But there he is, walking, stiff and pale up to the stage to shake hands with the red woman, and then he takes her hand and smiles a little at her and just like that, her heart, broken and broken again and slowly stitched back together with time and Gil's gentleness, her heart, it shatters.
It's too much.
The matrons will be angry, she thinks, to have lost their Chief Potato Peeler and their Chief Wood Chopper on the same day. And then she leaves.
So much for her six month record.
.
He lives with Mags, because the new house they assign him to in Victor's Village is cold and new and empty and most definitely not home. Mags doesn't comment. She just smiles, acts like whether or not Finnick would stay with her was never a question.
The first few weeks after he gets back, he can't sleep.
There is blood hiding behind his eyelids. As soon as he drifts off they're there, waiting for him, Pearl and the District Twelve boy, the tributes from One, from Two, the Seven girl that almost took off his head with a trap, the Capitol girls laughing, fingernails clawing his skin off, President Snow, smiling at him, Mags falling dead at his feet, a trident in her back, a woman screaming (something about the children, he thinks he remembers) a baby wrapped in pink, floating under the waves, sharks, birds, tearing her to bits, burning heat that dries up the oceans, and when he tries to swim the water scorches him and there are dead children everywhere and he has a bloody weapon in his hand and he can't remember how many of them he killed, because it can't be all of them.
He wakes up screaming, and he can't stop.
Weeks go by. He catnaps in the sun during the day, and the nightmares don't come as often, and he wanders the black, empty streets at night. Somehow five months go by in the blink of an eye. Mags gives him pills, drugs that send him into long dreamless sleeps, until his mind has recovered sufficiently that he can sleep without the dreams, or at least without such intense ones every night. When he starts showing some life again, smiling a little, going for long walks along the beach and through town, she begins to wean him off the pills. When he forces himself to begin swimming again, when he laughs with her, when he gives her the remainder of the pills, she grins. She stops grinning when the symptoms of addiction kick in, but a few smacks on the head and a few months later, Finnick is poison free.
There are still nightmares. Not as bad, not as often, but still there. He begins to accept that they will never go away, that he will never be normal again.
He does his best. He smiles at people on the street, buys a boat and spends hours relearning the sea, he meets with his old friends sometimes and does what he can for them. He is insolent enough to throw salutes and mocking smiles at the Peacekeepers. He does what he needs to survive.
He turns fifteen, holds a quiet party with Mags, and two months later, the reaping is held. A skinny, terrified girl from the children's home and a volunteer, a stocky boy with an arrogant smirk and a brain the size of a pea. Mags takes them to the Capitol, tries to help them, and Finnick watches as the boy is strangled and the girl is ripped apart by plants. Two more faces are added to his nightmares.
When Finnick turns sixteen, Hell somehow gets worse.
A letter from President Snow, delivered by a grinning messenger, stiff, blood red paper, white, precise letters, a colorless rose below the signature. An invitation to the Capitol. Mags looks at it and seems to choke. Her hand grips his shoulder like a claw as she steadies herself, and he asks her what it means, but she just shakes her head again and again, grey and white hair swaying, looking like she's about to cry, which scares him more than anything.
The next day he climbs into the big black car that comes to fetch him and can't help but think that it's something like a tomb. Mags can't bear to see him off.
And then there he is, sitting across from the President, exhausted by fear and a sleepless night, listening to the words that make him want to run, but his legs are lead, and he is simply empty of feeling. He is dead. He is dead and doesn't know it. The President doesn't know it either, because he keeps talking. Saying things…
President Snow smiles at him. An executioner's sentence.
"Well?"
Finnick is dead, and another Finnick, a Finnick he didn't even know existed, smirks back at the President and sips tea that is supposed to be cinnamon but tastes like roses and burns down the back of his throat.
"How can I refuse?"
How can he? How? Mags… She's the only one he has left, the only wall between him and the inevitable insanity that's creeping up. How can he say no?
He can't. So he shakes the President's hand, though he feels very much like ripping it off, along with his head, and then laughing very hard about it.
He visits the first woman that night. President's orders.
She is older, forty, experienced, and she has him strip naked and parade in from of her like some kind of freak show, just for her. In the coming years the various women and men that buy him will all blur together into a single being, the Capitol, existing simply to torture him, but he will always remember her. The way her skin seemed to pinch her boney arms. How her purple eyes glowed at him. Her yellow skin, tattooed with curling green plants. The fake, plastic touch of her lips against his body. Her wide, hungry smile. The same smile that they all seem to share.
She ties him to the bed and he fights back blind terror, memories of the arena scattering through his mind and clouding his eyes as she groans over him. She does what she wants to him. He tries not to scream. And she leaves him like that, the leather straps digging into his wrists as she drapes herself over him and falls asleep. He can't cry. Somehow, he's too afraid.
They send him home the next morning. He stands on the porch of Mag's home, wondering if he can face her again, wondering what she will think of him now. Just when he's decided to go away and drown himself, she opens the door. She stares at him for several long moments, reads the loss and the fear and the simple agony in his eyes, in his hunched figure, in the way his hands hang at his sides, as if he is almost afraid to touch himself.
She takes his hand, leads him up to the bathroom, orders him into the steaming water, scrubs every inch of him with a painful metal brush, but he's grateful, because when he finally leaves the cooling water and looks at himself in the mirror, it's impossible to tell which of the marks on his red skin are from Mags and which are from the whip.
He can't sleep in the bed that night, or the next. He can't sleep at all. Sometimes he goes to Mags and she holds him while he cries. Because he's afraid. Because he knows that soon enough President Snow will call for him again. Because he doesn't want to do this and he's angry and scared and ashamed and confused and bitter and empty and so many things, and he knows that it's only going to get worse.
He's right. It does get worse.
Two months later, the reaping, but he isn't there to see it because his face is mashed into some guy's carpet and he's trying not to scream. He doesn't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but that's pretty much how all of his time is spent during that year's Hunger Games. He's released for the crowning ceremony of someone who isn't from District Four, and then sent home by a smiling woman who keeps touching his arm and promising that he'll hear from them soon. He nods and smiles and pretends that he's pleased, when what he really wants to do is burn off every bit of skin that she's touched.
If anything, this whole experience is making him into a fantastic actor.
Months pass. The President sends him the bloody red letters at least once a month, though more often he is called every other week, and asked to stay for two or three days.
He hates it. And he forces himself to live with it, to learn what to expect, to slowly create a place in his mind where he can escape whenever his services are required. He mentally prepares himself for it, every time, knowing that as soon as he's in the bed it won't matter, that his perfect mental rehearsal will be shattered and he'll yet again be a frightened boy just trying to survive the next few hours.
He's seventeen, and a fifteen year old from District Seven is crowned after she throws axes into the faces of her opponents. The only reason he's aware of this is because the only thing his client like more than sex is having sex while watching children murder each other.
Life goes on. People talk about him, about how Finnick Odair is the most lecherous ladies' man any of them have ever seen, and he lets them talk, because it's so much easier than telling them all the truth. And there's Mags, of course, who swears at the gossipers and tells them to mind their own damn business.
Birthday eighteen, and he laughs with Mags and tries very, very hard to be normal for this one day, for her, but as soon as he sleeps the nightmares are back and he cries and lashes out, shatters a mirror, cuts his hand badly, because after four years it still hurts so much, and there's nothing he can do about it, and he is so, so sick of the Games and President Snow and the Capitol and the endless stream of men and women who somehow keep finding new ways to torture him. He cries until he feels absolutely hollow and empty, until he thinks that there can't be anymore tears. But the next night, of course, there are.
The District Four tributes die. The girl, large and brutal, he might have given half a chance, but the District Two boy crushes her head with a rock. The boy, thin and pale, doesn't make it past day one.
Another year. Trips to the Capitol. Pain. More pain. Mags shows him how to make some kind of clam stew. He makes a horrible mess of things, and they laugh. Happy birthday, Finnick, he thinks to himself as the woman shrieks and claws his chest. Mags has the cake waiting when he gets back the next day. He wonders how long it can all go on.
He is nineteen, and he takes his seat beside Mags for the reaping.
"Annie Cresta."
He remembers her. They used to talk about her, the mad girl who was one day rich and the next day poor. He wonders how such a frail looking creature managed to survive in the children's home. She doesn't seem to be aware of her surrounding, and her eyes are huge and afraid.
"Gil Sunnet."
Another boy from the home, bigger, if a little thin, but with one blind eye. He takes the girl's hand, and she seems to completely crumble. Her eyes grow glassy, her face blank. The boy leads her.
Finnick knows that if either of them survive it will be a miracle.
Yeah. Hello! How have you all been? It's been... Geez, a long time. Allow me to try to correct that.
I wrote this back when Mockingjay was first released and all the Finnick and Annie feelings were so overwhelming I kind of exploded a little bit. This 7,000 word thing is just the beginning of the story, and I hope that when Catching Fire is released that I'll be motivated enough to finish it, and a few other ridiculously long Hunger Games fics that have been bouncing around in my head.
Sooooo... Enjoy everybody!