I wrap my arms tight around Katniss' waist. She's lying with me in my bed, her toes freezing against my calves.

"Finnick?" she asks me. "Are you still awake?"

I let a choked little laugh. With thoughts of my dear, beautiful Annie Cresta swimming through my brain, how could I possibly sleep?

Tonight, it's thoughts of her with nothing on but seaweed that had draped itself around her waist. She was marvelous that day, the day we swam down to a tiny cove we claimed as our own.

Annie found a nest of seabird eggs.

One tiny chick hatched right before our eyes.

She cried, but they were beautiful tears. Wonderful, lovely tears that I took pleasure in kissing away.

I bury my face in Katniss' shoulder and let a whimper slip from my normally unwavering throat.

She knows.

The night is the hardest part, and Katniss knows.

She has taken to coming into my compartment at night, and she likes me to hold her, remind her that there's still something solid left in the world.

There never needs to be any words.

Just two bodies in the dark, needing to be held.

"I can't sleep either," Katniss says against my hair. Her breath tickles. "Peeta… I'm so, so… If he…" she trails off into the dark.

"They'll find out soon enough that he doesn't know anything about the rebellion," I say automatically. It's the same answer I give myself about Annie.

I have to believe it.

Or else I'll go mad.

I bury my face back into Katniss' shoulder, using the bone of it to dig into the bridge of my nose, almost as if feeling enough pain it will bring my Annie back to me.

Eventually she falls asleep, clinging even tighter to me now that she's unconscious. She has strong arms.

Some nights, she cries out for Peeta.

Some nights for Rue, some nights for Prim.

Occasionally Gale's name or mine escapes her lips.

I know who it is I yell out for in the night. I cry for Annie, although I've herd myself giving Johanna Mason a turn. My friend is so much stronger than Annie.

My Annie is fragile.

I've always thought of her as a sea anemone.

Fragile.

Lovely.

Able to sting, but also the home to a small fish with a tough skin.

Me.

I told her this once. She insisted we go down to the tide pools with a big glass bowl and a pair of gloves.

Annie filled the bowl with salty seawater, and studied tide pools for two hours until she found the one she wanted.

I followed along, holding the bowl and listening to her quiet humming.

I watched s she dipped her nimble fingers into the water, and wiggled them, pretending they were worms. When a tiny fish came out to nibble, she caught it in the cage of her fingers, and dropped the tiny, colorful fish into the bowl I carried.

She caught a second, then a third, before putting on the gloves, and picking up two rocks with the anemones attached.

"What are you doing, Annie?" I had asked.

"I'm bringing them home," Annie said in that lovely, quiet voice.

"Why?" I leaned on the rocks, watching as Annie moved some living sea grass and a few snails into the bowl.

"I'm going to keep them," she told me, "I'm going to keep them my kitchen, so I can have a piece of you near me, even when you're in the Capitol. It's a part of you that they can never take. It will stay with me no matter what Snow makes you do."

Annie knew.

She knew me.

I hope she still knows me.

I settle Katniss close against my chest.

There are nights we cry out.

There are nights we weep.

I hadn't even known that the Girl on Fire was capable of tears until that first night.

Then there are the nights like this.

Nights where we just hold each other, and remember that there are people in this world, in Panem, that love us.

That Snow won't get us, even if he has our loved ones.

Nights where we lay awake, trying to forget our Games, our personal Arena Hells.

Nights where we lean on each other, both of us the others' rock.