AUTHOR NOTE:
Hi! So, first oneshot on FFn. I wrote this about a week ago for a friend of mine, on-request. If you like this, please review it! I love hearing what people like about my stories, what I can do better, etc. Also, feel free to request something, I love getting writing ideas.
It seems that I have been held in some dreaming state,
A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake.
No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber,
Until I realized that it was you who held me under.
— Blinding, Florence + the Machine
At first, Annie's headplace was wonderful.
That's what she called it, her headplace. Maybe it was only because she couldn't really think of another name for it; nothing else seemed to fit. It was simply a place in her mind, something that no one else could see. It had taken a while for her to figure out that these things weren't real. She never really could distinguish fully, only separate out piece by piece what she could see and what others could see. She didn't know why the others couldn't see them at first. Butterflies bloomed into birds, fish darted among the grass, laughing children could be caught out of the corner of her eye, never fully seen. It was forever an enigma to her, a curious little puzzle, trying to figure out the odd things she saw.
Back home in District Four, her headplace brought her comfort when very little else did. The waves of her home filled her mind, cradling her and lulling her. Finnick's hands threading through her hair became a rhythm, and her pulse thrummed to it. Seagull cries morphed and became music, the beauty of it too much for the bad things to take over. Annie named things simply in her mind. Headplace. Bad things. Her world was so complicated already, she took it upon herself to at least make everything black and white in her mind.
The bad things didn't like to let go though.
It started with the second reaping. Clothes again and names again and older faces and different feelings but the same glass bowl, same slip of paper. Same name, same Capitol accent clipping it in all the wrong places. Finnick's eyes. Desperate. Mags's hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her away and taking her place. No, no, no. Not them. Not them.
There was nothing she could do. She curled up and let the bad things win that night, and several nights after. Bad nights of hearing— rather than seeing, because she didn't think she could watch— screams and bloodshed and girl on fire and Finnick crying, crying, crying when he heard some artificial calls from a mockingjay-Annie…
And then her headplace became horrible.
Waves turned to blood knocked from her when she couldn't answer questions, beat out of Peeta the-boy-with-the-girl-who-was-on-fire on live television. Seagull cries turned to screams of the dark haired victor girl who had intimidated Annie so much before, when her head was dunked and her body scorched with lightning-electric shocks. It was horrible like the stark white of the prison walls— weren't prisons supposed to be dark and dingy, these were bright and sterile, so wrong so wrong.
It was horrible like the Peacekeepers who, when no one else was looking— or when no one else cared— took turns hurting her hurting her hurting her because she was Finnick's and because she was mad and because she was "a whore, but a damn pretty one" in their words. Annie felt trapped, continuously floating in a nightmare, her body wasn't her own and no this wasn't real, wasn't real, wasn't real, and maybe she was becoming like Peeta because he couldn't remember things right either, they were screwing his head back on wrong, and hers had been unscrewed oddly in the first place and this was just making it all worse…
The nightmare ended with more screams, people in odd gray outfits bursting through the prison doors, and a vaguely familiar dark-haired boy ushering them to "go, go, go, get out, get out!"
Annie obeyed, running even though she was bruised and tripping and naked too, and no one seemed to give a damn until she was on the hovercraft, and they gave her a sheet to wear. She huddled in a corner; she didn't see Peeta or Johanna, though she was told they were on another hovercraft. She never asked about it. She never even asked where they were going. They were just going away. The only words she uttered were to a gray-haired lady who was bandaging the arm of the dark haired boy who had helped Annie out of the prison. "Where is Finnick?"
The woman looked over at her, some pity and recognition mixing and mingling in her eyes. "You'll see him soon," she stated simply. Annie didn't know if it was too much hope to believe her, but she grasped the hope, clung to it like life. Soon. Soon.
They landed at midnight, army men ushering her down into an underground place, other gray-clad figures pushing past her, calling out other names, nurse-hens clucking at her to get to the infirmary quick, quick, quick. The place was white like her prison, and that almost made her panic.
Then she saw him.
"Finnick! Finnick!"
Crashing and folding and hugging and it was too much, too much, too much, and Finnick was pressing his face into her hair and breathing her name and there were people around but she didn't care. She was crying and laughing at the same time, and maybe it didn't feel real, but at least it was a happy dream if it wasn't.
Her headplace bloomed again.