My body is bloodied, my breaths are ragged and I'm trying to reach for someone who I know is hours away. Doesn't put a stop to the pointed blows I know are due to more than the loss of blood and slice in my neck, leading threateningly to my throat. I'm aching for her to be near, to whisper words of ingenious luxury and soothe my body, take away the pain and to kiss me.
She's all I can think about and I instinctively smile - though I begin to cough at the sudden twitch in my face and it only hurts further. My body can't even handle a simple smile and I feel myself slipping away, my eyes giving away and my heart begging to cease pumping blood and to end my life. It's torture, lying in a place that reeks of rebellion with my clothing soaked in my own draining blood.
I take another ragged breath and close my eyes that I've been told resemble the sea. Her face, her beautiful face is all I can see and all I care to see.
Thinking of her is what urges me to keep fighting for the threads of my life to stay in tact and not to rupture. My breathing even slows and is not as dingy. She's my guiding light and I've known from the moment she first held my hand, her slender and calloused fingers tracing the lines that some believed would tell my fate. From that moment, I knew she was going to be the one I would fight for, the one I would die for.
Die for. If I had the ability, I would have scoffed at the beautiful irony of the thought I once had. Here I was, body contorted oddly and hanging for dear life for [I]her[/I]. Well, her and the child living deep within her stomach that I dream will have my eyes and everything else hers. I want to smile but, I fear I'll cough again and this time, choke on my own blood. Perhaps I'm going crazy, just as they said Annie had. She wasn't crazy and I decided that neither was I.
I could imagine her at the moment. Sitting on the bed we shared, fingers weaving in and out of a disheveled, indolent bit of rope that I kept in a drawer. But, I know she's okay - just worried. I know because my heart doesn't hurt immensely when I think of her.
When I die, I'll feel her discerning torment every moment of her life. Death will be torture when I've been told it's supposed to reflect the life you've lived. Of course, there's a chance my life was viewed as impish and beguiling. Now, I'll be forced to watch as she cries, watches as she holds our child close while I'm allowed to do nothing in the name of consoling her. I won't be allowed to kiss her, to stroke her head as she sleeps against my chest, steady heartbeat sounding in her ears and lulling her closer into a deep sleep that will not be interrupted by nightmares.
With that, I will myself to hold on further - though I know I'm nothing without water and without the proper amount of blood. I almost drift away but, I move a limb and a pain shoots forward in my body. I no longer want to sleep and I no longer feel the increasingly large urge to shut my eyes.
It's then that I decide to think of Annie at all moments in the small amount of time I have left. To remember her lips, the shade and texture of her eyes that reflected her different moods and to remember the way my throat tightened as she pressed clothing to her once stark body. I just remember how beautiful she is and the moment she truly crept up on my and turned everything I knew upside down.
I was lucky that everyone had been obsessed with the beautiful and avant-garde women of the Capitol. I was lucky that Annie was the girl that I had fallen in love with and I knew that the stars had me in their sights the moment she decided to love me in return and marry me.
I was so lucky and I managed a smile despite my throat protesting. I missed her.
The last thing I had told her was that I loved her but, I feared it wasn't going to be enough. I was discouraged at the current, wondering from left to right if when she received the news that I was gone from her life, she would believe that I loved her as much as I did. Annie always did have a strong sense of doubting what was obvious. She believed I loved her but, perhaps she never understood the amount.
But, the letters. Before I had left for the last Games, I wrote her handfuls of letters, telling her the things I remembered about her and loved the most - just in case I was to be slaughtered. I could have wrote a series of books but, I didn't have enough ink. She would find the letters, read them, understand and cling them close to her chest. Maybe she would read them to our baby and kiss their head twice - once for me and once for her.
My breath became ragged again and I knew she wasn't okay as she sat on our bed. She surely had to be crying and holding something that imprisoned my scent. I could feel her discomfort and unless I survived, I would feel it until she died peacefully and returned to me.
My eyes shut closed and my brain went fuzzy but, I was not dead. My heart was beating and Annie's gorgeous being was in my mind. Thank God her face had been engraved into my brain along with her legs, arms, bellybutton, ears. I had taken enough time to study her to help me remember her.
And God did I need to remember her.