a/n [I don't think I've ever written my headcanon of Annie's Games, so... this is it, kind of. Written for Caesar's Palace's Monthly Oneshot Contest.]
—-
Seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
—-
Warm air skates through her hair, twisting and knotting it at the ends. The summer breeze lifts the skirt of her light blue dress—light like the sky, light like her father's eyes—and it flutters violently for a second before calming down. She can faintly hear the water in the distance over the noise of the crowd—she thinks she hears someone crying, and that can't be good. It's cresting then crashing in a rhythmic pattern one could get lost in for days. The sun beats down gently, warming noses and toes and loose ends. It's a nice contrast from the frigid beds the previous winter held. It's a beautiful day, and Annie feels free. Almost.
Her shoes restrain her; they keep her grounded. They're just sandals, flimsy little things that one should never wear to the beach because they could slip off and be carried off to sea in a heartbeat, but perfect for dressing up when you don't have much to dress up in. Though Annie hates the feeling off the thin straps digging into her skin. It's annoying and useless, and she only wishes she was running free on the beach, sand flying up around her.
She can't do that though, and she might never get the chance to again, because the ground beneath her is made of marble and too shiny, and the time for volunteers has come and gone—there haven't been any volunteers from District Four for three years now; she doesn't know why. Yet, she holds her head high and doesn't fidget with her dress, even though multiple alarms are screaming at her in her head.
She tries to calm down: There's a one in twenty-four chance I'll make it out.
But she's only deceiving herself.
—-
There are four other people in her family. Her mother, Estelle, keeps the family grounded and satisfied. Her father, Nicolas, provides hope and bedtime stories. Her younger sisters, Simone and Sophia, are identical twins and complete opposites. The former adds energy and liveliness, whereas the latter sympathizes and comforts. (Annie adds boldness and integrity, but she'd describe herself as the burden of the group.)
It breaks her heart when Simone breaks down the second she enters the visiting room. Sophia gently guides her to the couch next to Annie. Her mother sits to her other side and stretches an arm over her daughter's shoulders, but does little more. Annie stares at her shoes to compose herself before she speaks, but there's a giant lump in her throat and her eyes sting, and this wasn't a part of her plan.
Her father kneels in front of her and grasps her hands. Annie lifts her head and holds on tightly.
"I'll miss you," she tells him.
"I love you." She kisses her sisters' foreheads.
Annie looks at her mother. "I'll be fine."
It's the biggest lie she's ever told.
—-
The air surrounding the dinner table is stiff and quiet. Annie holds her fork delicately, barely scraping it against her plate as she scoops up more food. Any miniscule sound she makes is louder than anything she could ever dream up. Her foot kicks softly, quietly, against the leg of the sleek black table. She ditched her shoes hours ago in her assigned room, and she's positive it was the best decision she ever made. The cold metal feels excellent against her bare toes.
Only two people remain in the room. Excluding Annie, that leaves one. Finnick Odair finished his food a long time ago, but something keeps him in his chair, waiting for Annie to finish her meal. She's eating so slowly, partly because she wants to see how long he'll wait for her, and partly because she's never tasted anything this fabulous. The food was, without a doubt, the best—and only good—part about the Capitol.
Finnick interrupts her just as she's reaching for desert. She keeps her attention on the task in front of her—choosing chocolate cake or strawberry ice cream—instead of looking up at him as he speaks. She doesn't, at all, like any part about the man sitting in front of her, but she'd be stupid to deny how incredibly handsome he was. If she were to look up, she might do something ridiculous like blush, and that wouldn't help her at all.
"You're peculiar," he says. It's not the first words he's spoken to her, but it's the first ones that stick.
"How so?" she asks.
"You look empty." She's not supposed to look empty until after the Games, doesn't she know?
"What should I look like instead, then?"
"Scared."
"But I'm not scared," she answers firmly.
She's terrified.
—-
"Annie Cresta."
She rises at the sound of her name, emitted from the shiny speaker in the corner of the room, ignoring the many eyes that instantly turn her way. She walks to the door on steady feet, focusing on the way her constricting shoes slap against the concrete floor, ignoring the beads of sweat forming on the palms of her hands. She has nothing to worry about, of course.
The Gamemakers are seated on couches and lounges in a room-like box twenty feet above her head. She knows that's where they sit, they've been sitting up there for the past three days she's been changing, but it shocks her just a little bit. The individual scoring feels bigger, more eventful, yet the Gamemakers treat it like a casual event. It strikes a nerve inside her, but she promptly ignores it. Nothing will distract her from the task ahead of her.
She grabs four throwing knives. They feel slightly odd in her hand, like she shoved on a glove that was too big, but that's only to be expected; before this, she'd only held a knife when she prepared food in her dingy kitchen back home. She switches them back and forth from her right to left hand as she approached the targets.
Just like she was taught, she raises her right arm, currently holding one dagger, inhales, puts her arm in motion, exhales, releases. The knife sticks into the side of the target's head. Annie's momentarily proud of herself, but wastes no time throwing the rest of the daggers. The last one even hits the bulls-eye representing the heart.
That evening, a glowing number on the screen reveals how well she did. Tobias, her district partner, smiles at her. It's a real smile, showing teeth, and Annie knows that he's really happy for her, even though her score was two above his.
She could win this thing easily, without a doubt.
So why were her palms still sweating?
—-
The arena is shaped like a bowl, mountains surrounding her on every side far into the distance. An intricate pattern of streams weaves down from the peak of each one. One river, bigger than the rest, flows from a source that Annie can't see from her perch in an inlet of rocks. Far below, it nearly encircles the Cornucopia in a rush of flowing water before turning around in a new direction. Annie assumes it's manmade, but doesn't pay it much more attention than that.
It's only been four days into the Seventieth Hunger Games, and two-thirds of the tributes are gone. Annie watches the entire thing unfold below her, while she remains hidden from view. It was a stroke of luck, really, that she found the alcove. Her filled water bottle had slipped from her fingers as she hiked up, lodging itself in the nook Annie uses as a temporary home.
She can see one entire half of the arena, and most everyone in that half. The remains of the Career pack—it's just the District One tributes, everyone else that was still alive, including her, left the group yesterday evening—sit in the shade of the Cornucopia. The couple shifts every hour or so, to make sure they stay in the cool shade.
The girl from District Nine has found a big tree by a stream to hide by. The boy from District Five is in the mountains like Annie is, sitting in the crooked roots of a tree that chose the wrong place to grow. The other three tributes—Tobias being one of them, Annie thinks grimly—must be the half of the Arena she can't see.
It's a surprisingly peaceful setting, and Annie entertains the idea that it will stay like this.
It was a nice pretense, at least.
—-
Annie is stumbling over her shoes, clutching her head. One misstep will send her into the churning river beside her, but she has at least some sense in her disoriented state. The earthquakes started sometime last night; they were soft at first, but got more violent as time passed. Annie woke up to the sound of tumbling rocks and the sound of a canon. Some point between then and now, something hit her head and knocked to her to the ground. She was smart enough to get up and run, but now she didn't where she was going.
It's not long before she stumbles upon a group of tributes; that was the Gamemakers' plan all along, of course. The ground is still at the moment—and it has been for the past ten or so minutes—but it still takes Annie a few minutes to realize she knows these tributes. Not like she saw them up on a screen or in the training room—which she did as well, but that's another matter—but she knows them.
It's the quote-on-quote Careers, Rayon and Sable, and Tobias, who appears to be trapped between the two of them without a weapon. Annie fumbles for her knives, but she's too late. Rayon acts first, charging at Tobias and stabbing him in the middle of his abdomen. He bends down immediately, his hands grasping at the slick hilt; Annie stops fumbling for her weapons because she sees his fault when he does not.
Her voice cracks when she screams his name, making her wince at the awful sound, but she's too late. Sable swings his sword at the back of Tobias' exposed neck, and Annie covers her eyes with her hands before anything else can happen. Her palms are warm and comforting, and she's surrounded in a thick blackness that's not as thick as the sound of metal slicing through human flesh.
The ground is spinning beneath her feet—literally—and Annie loses her balance, falling to the ground. When the earthquake ends, and she opens her eyes, the world is sideways and blurry. Tobias' body lies parallel to hers, fifty feet away. And he doesn't have a head. Annie's positive he should have a head, but it's nowhere in sight.
By the time she acknowledges the bile rising in her throat, she's already throwing up, and then shakily standing up. The ground is crooked below her, and the river seems to be rushing even more violently than before.
Tobias still doesn't have a head.
Annie turns and runs—and runs and runs and runs—only stopping when the branches of a shrub catch her side and push her to the ground. She stays there, huddled in a ball, unhidden. Pebbles bite into the thin skin covering her knees, but she doesn't care.
Her voice wavers as she whispers over and over to herself, "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay."
"I'm not okay."
—-
Her face is hidden in her pillow. It's a sterile white color—the same color as everything else in this damn room—and shines so brightly she can see it with her eyes squeezed shut. A doctor paces restlessly around the room. Annie knows exactly why he was here—she's insane, not dense—and she isn't going to have any part in helping him. She will fight against his gloved hands if he tries to draw blood, she will lie helplessly and stare at the ceiling for hours instead of answering his questions, and she will deny any and all food that is placed on the (white) table next to her (white) cot.
At least she doesn't have to wear shoes.
When Mags comes to visit her, it's different. Mags smiles kindly and speaks softly and Annie loves hearing Mags tell her stories. It's a common routine for the three weeks Annie's stuffed in that horrid (white) hospital. Annie will nibble on the mushed carrots in her stew and chew on the salty bread while Mags whispers tales of mermaids and fishing hooks.
Finnick comes to see her a grand total of once. He brings her a gift—her token, a sea glass necklace—and it's the first color she's seen in a long time. He clasps it around her neck, and then she can't seem to breathe right because Tobias doesn't have a neck, does he? She can't remember if it was just his head missing or if it was more. She hates that she can't remember.
She hates everything.
And this is why they won't let her leave the hospital, isn't it? She's insane.
"I'm insane, aren't I?" she asks Finnick. She's not really looking for an answer because she already knows. She's just checking.
"You're not insane, Annie."
That's a lie.