Falling, Falling, Falling Down
-Madness makes the world go 'round
Characters: Annie, Finnick
Universe: Cannon
Author: MorningGloryBlue
"I dropped a tear in the ocean. The day I find it I will stop missing you." - Unknown.
Humans are very fickle creatures, she thought.
Communist, fascist, socialist- no matter the differences between them all, the end result all seemed to be the same. Death by starvation, torture, ignorance, and martyrdom. Death by all sorts of awful things. Death in a game created by tyrants bloated with power, pride and paranoia. Yet despite all the horrors humans had seen, anything could be forgotten in time. She swears she won't.
Once upon a time she was in love. He was young, strong and handsome, and they would spend hours swimming on the beach and with their toes in the sand. Once when she was upset, she rushed into the ocean, and she swam and swam and swam, until she found a lonely little cove decorated with seaweed, pebbles and coarse wet sand. It was cold. Until he came that is- and then that lonely little cave wasn't so cold, nor so lonely, anymore.
But then he had to leave, with her love in his hands, and then everything was cold, cold, cold.
When he came back, he returned her heart, and she smiled big and wide and she was so, so happy. When they came for her too, she felt like she had been caught in a harsh current, and that everything, everything, was up to chance. But hadn't he come back? Hadn't he? And she did too, she did. But not all of her.
And he loved her anyways.
Once upon a time she was married. She loved him with every frayed, battered and misshapen inch of her being. She saw all the people dancing around her, swirling colors of greys and browns, with the occasional pop of yellow and blue.
Blue- her favorite.
From Aqua to Turquoise, Midnight to Azure, she held every shade close to her heart, painted every wall a different hue of blue, hoping, hoping, hoping it would keep her from ever forgetting.
Down fell her hopes
Down fell her dreams
Only her shell clutched at the seams
His body was never returned to her- perhaps it was for the best. Her mind couldn't take the stress, she heard them say. They said she could fall away at any moment: Perhaps she already had. Some time after he was taken, they showed her a girl. "Do you know her?" they asked. "Yes," she told them, but not her name: She couldn't remember. But Annie knew the girl very well, with her empty eyes and burned skin and hollow voice.
They were one in the same really- burned from the same flame, ravaged from the same sea, frostbitten by the same Snow. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all.
In her ear Finnick whispers, "Yes it does, yes it does!"
Annie floats in her memories. She is suspended in a sea of listlessness, and nothing seems to break into her castle walls. Living in the past is far easier than learning to grieve. In moments of clarity, Annie looks back, and finds that she had never been able to grieve for all the things, the pieces of herself that she had lost to life under president Snow. Hating takes time and energy that she no longer possesses, but if she did, she still wouldn't.
When Snow had taken her away from Finnick the first time, she had been full of fight, and comforted by the knowledge that if she died, she would have not left the world without experiencing a world without love. But in that crush of water, tainted with the taste of blood- any fight she had left was used up not letting herself give in to the pressure, the emptiness, the cold.
Once upon a time she had fought so, so hard. And in the first battle for her sanity, she won. Mostly. Once she returned home, the panic attacks started.
Her heart was of glass, it shattered on the ground
the grit of innocence and tears were all that could be found
And all of the districts, and all of her friends couldn't put poor little Annie together again.
She was dangling from the sky, waving like a white flag in the wind. Below her was the vast ocean, smooth and sparking, waiting to give her a chilling hug. Maybe, if she let go, she could swim back to Finnick like she had the last time. just before her fingers slip off the edge, the swell of her stomach was like glue to her last bits of sanity.
When she sees the small bulge where flat skin used to be, it's as if she was submerged in a deep vat of water, and has not heard, seen, nor breathed properly for an eternity.
The first thing she does is cry.
Primrose [No other flower smelled so sweet]
Rue [Goodbye, Goodbye! was her favorite lullaby]
Boggs [who had a backbone of loyalty]
Coin [counted her eggs before they'd hatched]
Maggs [In the end, a martyr]
Snow [a black mamba among the roses]
Finnick [the father of her child]
What's in a name? They're all gone anyways. The living are half gone too.
It doesn't matter anymore.
"It does," He calls, "It does!"
For the first time since his passing, she believes him.
Once upon a time she was dangling on the edge of insanity.
Once upon a time she didn't have a son.
She won't fall. Not yet.
She can't let them forget.
In the arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold,
And all this devotion I never knew at all,
And the crashes are Heaven, for a sinner released,
And the arms of the ocean,
Deliver me.
-Never Let Me Go, Florence and the Machine
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-Blue