She crept up on me
A/N so this is a one-shot about how Annie crept up on Finnick, I hope you like it I'm not as happy with it as I was with My Manic and I but I hope you like it. And also if any of you are interested I'm rewriting my hungergames multi-fic "If it tastes like fire." under the new title "Too long a mermaid." so check it out if you like. xxxxx
He remembers the green-eyed tribute with the bedraggled brown hair before she became his Annie. For a moment, he sees her on reaping day, a stormy day. There was a sense of relief amongst the crowd that their young-men were not out fishing battling the waves. . She volunteered for a little girl a tiny twelve year old with enormous eyes. She had been so brave then, he corrected himself no she was always brave far braver than she was damaged. She volunteered her voice both delicate and steely through the crowd and the roaring wind. She volunteered but really, it was a sacrifice, she meant to die for the child. Her dark dress flapping at her limbs her hair streaming behind in waves as she made her way up to the platform. He thought he was looking at a dead girl.
She gritted her teeth during weapons training. She did not believe she had a chance. He remembers the feeling of her slightly shaking hands in his own as he tried to draw her arm back across the bow. Still she was very pretty the capitol liked her well enough. He could hope, she did not want to hope. Finnick felt almost nothing then, perhaps a need to protect? A desire not to send the lamb out to slaughter?
Desperation? Duty? but not love.
He did what he could during the games, because it was his job. He attended the outrageous parties and viewings where they re-watched the children die under the gaudy silver lights. He drank champagne, gossiped and flirted. He presented her, as an investment. She is a lovely girl is she not? Eyes like emeralds, pearly skin and long oak hair. Lovely girl. They buy her things and he gets into bed with them. Love-making or whatever you call it, is a business transaction like everything else in this sickly city. The Capitol is run on capital.
After Zander dies… she becomes the poor little mad girl. No one is going to invest in that, more importantly no one wants that mess in bed with them. They watch her rock back and forth on the screen hiding behind the rocks. They talked sugary sympathy to him but their hearts and purses were elsewhere, under the covers with him half the time. "Oh darling, can we not do business now?" And then it was his duty to try not to show that to him they were almost exactly the same things.
Eventually after she has survived (barely) for three days. He ends up in bed with Flavia the head-game maker. She should be expecting it what he whispers in her ears. Her worst secret, the one she would have taken to the grave if he had let her.
She looked at him, the contacts which turned her eyes a vibrant purple had fallen out, somewhere. Leaving them a rather nice speckled hazel colour, they were always the most pretty without the crap on their faces. She, Finnick realised was as trapped as he was.. But he didn't care, not at the moment he could be ruthless when he wanted to be it was all about winning the games after-all whether he was in the arena or not.
He knew what she was going to do.
They flooded the arena. Swimming was second instinct, standing watching under the big screen he longed to dive down into the waters too, to be reborn from the waves. As she rose and rose to the surface. Annie won without blood on her milk-white hands. Lucky girl, Lovely girl, Loony girl. Flavia disappeared, heart-attack they were all heart-attacks. Snow had struck like a snake, business as usual. Nothing changed.
He knew something was wrong when they brought her back up to her prep team wrapped in oyster coloured silk, her long brown hair piled on top of her head an her lovely green eyes utterly lost. The Doctor's who were supposed to put her back together had failed she was utterly shattered. Mags and he exchanged looks. There is no guidebook for madness, so they improvised with quicksilver speed. She curls into a ball and sings "Hold me close and hold me fast, this magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose." When he tries to get her for her interview, the sound is so sweet and pure and when she touches his face and looks at him like he is the most beautiful thing in the world. It breaks his heart the force her into the glare of the camera.
For some is a dangerous move by the Capitol she's something they can barely control. Still she has her advantages. It is quite clear why the Capitol wants to keep her alive, it is a warning.. Through, the pretence and masks the rest of the victors wear. The smiles and the make-up, This is what you are as really they say holding up Annie. This is what we can do to you. This is what we are doing to you. So what? Nothing changes.
Her mother understandably was horrified by the state of her seventeen-year-old daughter. She became grey and tired overnight. Annie hides in the blue white house, one of the twelve little boxes the Capitol built to put them in and he could hear the laughter and the screams through the walls. Poor, little mad girl.
Things changed at the victory tour, she was no longer manic per say. Distressed yes, she could not slip away not in the capitol's clutches like she did back at home.
"I'm playing a game." She confided in him
"Is it fun?" He asked.
"I keep on having to remember I'm real, it's not much fun. But it makes a change you know." She grinned at him. Such a lovely smile.
Finnick knew he had not meant to kiss he after she asked him if she was mad, but the expression on her face. He could have quite happily died amongst her joy. Love… maybe, perhaps. However, love had a price he was sure of it, he could not risk paying he did not want to force Annie to pay it either. He stole away back to the capitol, or perhaps he was stolen. However, this time, he did not just lie their bored with someone he hated all pampered and painted in his arms. He tried, the way he had never tried before he went to bed that year with the greatest beauties the capitol had on offer .But he couldn't forget her, the tears rolling his thirteen year old tribute's face during training reminded him of her. And in the dark nights lying in a tangle of sex, sweat and sheets he thought about Annie, guiltily he did not even want her here in the capitol, in his thoughts. Too dangerous.
Johanna Mason won that year. She was full of fire, full of rage. The same way Annie was full of water.
"Be careful." He says, during the ceremonial dinner. She looked at him with mistrustful eyes, clearly not a fan of golden boys, her eyes had been on the cleavage belonging his accompanying mentor a pretty red-head all through dinner.
"Why?"
He smiles at her, the smile of the capitol's darling.
"You are not yourself." He says. "Not anymore."
Her return smile says fuck it. He remembers the delight of the feeling in defying President Snow all those years ago, fuck it and fuck everything. But he knows just how much loss is attached to it, he thinks of Annie oh fuck it. Fuck it.
Annie is herself. She is just a bit mad but there is no pretence in it, she is here or she is not. He clings to that it is his hope, if she can be herself…
When he gets home… she has stopped talking, she stopped talking the day he left, her mother says. The day after he came back he found her walking one day to the port, dressed in her nightgown her arms full of bread. He followed her. He did not try to stop her. The children of the poor fisherman, grimy from the slums by the port greeted her like an visiting angel. The bread fell from her hands and she drifted away. He can do nothing but follow.
He tries to bring her back, for a bit more for her mother's desperation than his own. He can bear it because she laughs a lot, genuine laughter he thinks and he is happy enough with simply that. They walk a lot along by the cliffs the salt, the waves biting into skin and hair. He flirts and she laughs and mumbles. Imperfect pieces they do not quite fit together. She squeezes his hand. Or maybe they do. She brings him back too he stops thinking when she is there.
"Do you love her?" Johanna asks, when they meet again at her victory tour. He realised he had said her name aloud. He does not know how to answer love is such a dangerous thing, its new and terrifying. Love is revolutionary. He lets the question drift too the breeze. He does not want to answer. Love…Whenever he thinks about it he always is blocked by the Capitol it hangs over his head
In the end, she says it first. It has been almost a year of silence and he has almost given up. Fear pure fear, when she tumbles over the edge down into the soft yellow sand. He thought the look in her eyes was goodbye, goodnight. Despite everything, he has not cried since he was ten years old, but he cries then. Her arms are around him. The sea rushes in, everything around him brakes and crumbles. They have smashed a fist through the prison bars. I love you. It is her second sentence. I love you, I love you and I love you.
Annie, Annie, I love you too.
He can and he will keep her safe. It is a promise, they do not own Annie they never have and they never will. He makes sure of that. Love is not simple, yes it is. It is three simple words and a promise. It is unfortunate, no one has bothered to inform the capitol this. Love if not a moneymaker can easily make a weapon, far more effective than poison. But their manipulation of his love will not tame the anger. Every time he is forced to be unfaithful, every time she loses it tells him she is afraid and every single god-damn reaping day. Another fist through the bars. Anger swells and fear fades a little bit each time.
The girl on fire… the girl who managed to escape well kind of: Katniss Everdeen. He was not stupid when she held out the red berries for Panem to see. It was for defiance, for life, for revenge not love. He thinks what if? The berries wonder up to Annie's mouth, in his mind's eye he mirrors her. Save her or let her chose? Die together or make her live.
He surprised that he knows the answer. It is not worth living here. So what are you going to do?
"Clever girl," Johanna says flicking her spiky streaked hair.
"Stupid girl." He laughs. Don't you know what they are going to do to you?
The truth is they are not safe. Whatever he promises something is happening. Finnick has never been one to resist too much goes with the tide. Something is changing the girl on fire is catching.
"Do you think she loves him?" Annie asks when they watch the beginning of the victory tour. Sprawled out in the blue ice and snow they share a kiss.
"No." He says.
"I'm not sure." She says, "She could have run him through."
"I didn't say she was heartless." He said.
"Do you think the other victors believe you could be in bed with me right now?" She asked. "You're all so cynical, you lose track of all the faces you put on."
Maybe she was right. The screen crackles with the half sound of a bullet, before Caesar Flickerman's face resurfaces trying to look as if nothing had happened. Fire, fire, liar, liar. If she loves him, there is a price to pay. Maybe it is time to stop paying. Maybe it is time to say no. He goes back to the Capitol, for the victory dinner, but he does not see the girl on fire. The new games-maker puts a hand on his shoulder.
"This is not romance." He says, "This is revolution." Perhaps they are the same thing.