Hey guys!
Slightly AU. Finnick's thoughts about being leaving Annie for her own good.
As always, the lovely Suzanne Collins owns the Hunger Games.
From a distance, he watches. He watches how she smiles, how the corners of her mouth curve upward as she lets out a shout of laughter. The way her hair flies out behind her in a rippling, shining sheet and she seems to almost dance through the air.
He watches, but nothing more.
He can't bring himself to do more than watch the only girl he will ever love, can't do anything more than admire her from afar. For to do so would mean instantly snatching her carefree, innocent life away, and he would rather die than allow that to happen. But the thing that aches the most in his empty heart is how she doesn't know. She doesn't know how he keeps watch over her, doesn't know how every time she smiles, it both brightens his world and breaks his heart. She doesn't know that her face is the only thing that keeps him from taking his own life, how he clutches to each word she speaks, each expression she makes like a man drowning.
No, she believes the lie that he's created, that absurd, most incredible lie he could ever dream of- that she no longer has his heart. He remembers it with crystal clarity, and each time he replays it in his head it feels like he's being ripped in two. How her face went from adoring, to shocked, to devastated. How her eyes closed, tears leaking from the sides. How he forced himself to walk away from her, to leave her there alone, her last memory of him as the cold, cruel persona that nearly killed him to adopt. The voice that still haunts his dream that pleads for him to return.
He still doesn't know how he found the strength.
But, as he repeats to himself every waking second, this is what he wants. He wants her to be able to run down the beach with a carefree smile on her lips, to laugh without abandon, without fear. The fact that he will never be the one to make her smile, make her laugh, causes him indescribable pain, but he bears it without complaint. He would willingly bear any burden, pay any price, mind body and soul, so that she doesn't have to.
He knows that his behavior could be considered obsessed, stalkerish, overly fixated, but if he is indeed mad, his mind gone, he couldn't care less. His own life has no meaning anymore, no purpose other than ensuring the happiness of the one he loves. Its not in ways that would be obvious, just subtle touches that keep her life simple and happy. He's careful not to link her to himself in any conceivable method, taking painstaking measures to ensure his anonymity. And he has a right to be paranoid. She doesn't know how much of a target she is, how he put her in such danger.
What a fool he was, to believe they could be together after he achieved the impossible. Powerful, unyielding, utterly untouchable-that's what everyone else saw, but in reality, he had never felt so helpless. She looked at him with such disdain now; he could only imagine her loathing had she really known what he had become. He longs to reach out to her, to redeem himself in her eyes, to make her understand, but to do so would only cause more heartache for them both.
Someday she would move on. Move on, forget him, and find new happiness in her life. He knows this from the way she is still able to laugh, still able to see the world through optimistic eyes while he hasn't even given so much as a smile in the past few months. He knows that moving on is the best thing for her. Still, it's hard to suppress the urge to go threaten any of her male suitors off. He's removed himself from her life, and on the outside he will remain.
She picks up a small child and blows into its face, the tiny boy cooing delightedly and shaking a pair of fat fists in the air while her sister, the boy's mother, stood next to her. He knew she had always wanted kids, and the image is on him before he can squelch it. A tiny baby, a tiny baby with her brown hair and his green eyes, laughing in her arms as she smiles at him. Gritting his teeth, he banishes the image from his mind but the longing is still there. He wants to be everything to her- friend, lover, confidant, husband- but it seems that it's the one job he's barred from.
So he watches.