Chapter One - I Know You're Loving
I know you're there, I know your heart is beating,
I see through you, I know our love ain't fleeting,
I need you here, right now by my side, girl,
I don't see how, I'd do anything for a simple greeting,
I know you're loving, I know you're loving!
So keep on trying!
Her face, the moment she steps out of the room - the cold, malicious, malevolent, white room - it's something that can never be conveyed on paper. It's the look of a haunted past, such a haunted past that rips a soul into millions of shards with no hope of ever being picked up again. Unless… unless there's someone in the world who would do that for you. Unless… unless there's someone in the world like me.
"Annie?" I whisper, the word just managing to choke itself out of my mouth as I bring forward a shaking hand out to brush her paper pale skin, then withdraw it immediately as her body shudders and recoils at my touch. What have I done? What have they done? What has happened to her? But I know full well what's happened to her, and the horrors that the games have captured, framing inside her thin, sickly, frail body. "Annie?" I repeat, the word coming out of my mouth, stronger now. I feel exposed, I feel naked. It's as if everything around me in the world, covering me from the blunt hardships of life has been stripped away, leaving me bare and shivering alone. Not alone, I remind myself. Never alone.
A hand, my hand, reaches out and grips Annie's tightly. She flinches, tugging her hand away, but I grasp it firmly and she lets her palm settle in mine, defeated. I don't want it to be that way, and it burns and scars my heart as she recoils at my touch. But what can I do when she's like this? A burning sensation inside me, I lead Annie by the hand like you would do to a little girl, and direct her towards the door leaving the room. Her hand feels ice cold at the touch and the warmth in mine slowly spreads to her, but her face still gazes off into the distance in an unaware gaze as if the heat of my body never even traced the frail and shivering outline of her body. Her hair's a tangled mess of brown, like a fishing net crumpled into a matted ball, unable to untangle. Her deep blue eyes, the melting colour of the ocean, gaze out, reflecting the scene back home at district four that I'm longing for. The sea… maybe that will shake some sort of reaction out of her, maybe that will at least withdraw a twinge of emotion as she realises she's made it. She's made it home. Her skin is as pale as whipped cream, devoid of colour as if someone has just slathered her with white paint, and her expression is the same and never changing. Gazing off at the distance, never focusing at a single point. Never focusing, never understanding…
"Annie… speak to me," I choke out, my body shuddering in reject against the words pouring out of my mouth. But she doesn't even react, just keeps on staring out into the distance, past the walls and the building, past the street and even past the Capitol, past everything until it finally settles on the sea, resting as if it were home at last. My heart burns at her lack of a reaction, but as I tug open the door with my free hand I can't afford to show any emotion across my face either, and only realise as I guide Annie forward with one hand like a lost lamb that she'll be the envy of all of the girls in the Capitol, her paper pale skin brushing with my tanned bronze version, waxed and stripped of all hair as if I was a mannequin, not a person. I somehow, though I don't know quite how I manage it, am able to force a smile onto my face. It's more like a grimace than a smile actually, but it comes across as a flicker of painful emotion in a brewing tide of cheering, grinning faces, flashing cameras licking up the air with their spreading lights.
And all I can do is grimace.
The bitterness of my brewing emotions, bubbling rapidly throughout my body, stings me harshly with its malicious bite. My face flushes a beet red, my legs start shaking uncontrollably and all I have to hold me up, to guide me, is this wild girl beside me. She's like an iceberg, pale and freezing, dangerous… and melting. It's like the very Annie I know is slipping beneath my fingers like a fish, flailing in my hand before it dives, dips underwater and saves itself from my chilling examination of it. Annie seems to think I'm trapping her like a Gamemaker, playing her as a piece in my games. But it isn't true, it can't be true… Annie means a lot to me, a lot more than I have ever cared to mention.
Finally the never-ending tunnel of flickering lights and heroic cheers end and I'm guiding Annie, though half the time it feels like she's guiding me, through the building. We reach a flight of stairs, I wonder if Annie can climb it in her condition, but without so much as batting an eyelid she continues, even tugging me along slightly until I regain the lead.
Eventually I manage to shudder off the feeling of isolation that has submerged me, standing next to her, and I tug her inside my room, hurriedly opening the door and then slamming it behind me. With a quick glance through the room to check some Capitol stalker hasn't arrived while I'm out to try and get some unwanted action – unwanted on my part – I coax Annie onto the bed, bubbling emotions brewing inside of me and a swelling feeling of loneliness swamping over my senses.
"Annie… what happened?" I ask, knowing full well what happened, only wanting to hear the story from her mouth. Yet all I get to receive my question is a blank as if uncaring look into the distance.
"If you don't want to talk about it that's fine," I mumble, suddenly feeling so insecure. I'm Finnick Odair, I'm meant to be some sort of god, some sort of supernatural and superhuman being, shining with radiance above everyone else, charismatic and the total catch for everyone. I'm meant to be some sort of hero. Yet right now I don't feel like any hero. Instead I feel like a young boy again, sitting on the beach while the sun's setting, cold, shivering, alone, with nowhere to go home to, no-one who wants me anyway. And suddenly, though it takes a while to fully spark off inside me, I'm scared.
I'm scared that Annie won't reply, ever, I'm scared that what's happened to Annie can't be changed and is irreversible, I'm scared that the blank look on her face will occupy mine too, I'm scared of what will happen to her if I ever slip up for President Snow again, and most importantly I'm scared that those three simple yet mind-cloggingly beautiful words will never tumble out of Annie's precious lips again, "I love you".
The way she dazes absentmindedly off into the distance, it's like she's broken. Broken because of the hunger games. But no, anything that's broken can be fixed, I'm certain. And that's what I'm going to do – fix her. No matter how long it takes.