So, yes, one of my barely-started Odesta stories has been taken down and the other put on hiatus so that I can focus on this. My new baby for which I have the first three chapters typed up and ready to go. I just have more of an idea of where to go with this one without running myself into a ditch, you know?
I hope you enjoy it :)
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. Or Annie. Or Finnick. Or anything you recognise, really. They're property of Suzanne Collins.
She can't feel her legs.
Annie glances down to make sure that they are indeed still there.
They are.
Then why aren't they moving?
"Whoops." Dom says casually, wiping the blood off of his sabre and onto the fabric at the leg of his arena costume, "How clumsy of me."
It doesn't register. None of it does. Not Dom with his sneer and his lies and his horrible, horrible voice; not the sabre, with crimson rivulets running down the length of its otherwise unmarred shining blade; not the body a few feet away, slumped over so that its headless stump is hidden from view; not the head itself that lies by her feet, hazel eyes staring up at her, glassy and void of any kind of life.
None of it makes any sense.
And then something blossoms in the wake of her confusion, like a light in the depths of a long, dark night. She latches onto it without a moment's hesitation, the one thought which seems to make at least some degree of sense in amongst all this chaos.
Run.
Stumbling blindly through the forest, Annie ignores Dom when he calls after her, quickens her pace when she hears him start after her. Not heeding where she goes, she seems to fly through the forest. Bushes and tree branches reach out to scratch at her limbs, at her face, to tangle in her hair only to be broken when she doesn't stop to untie herself.
Annie doesn't feel anything. She doesn't feel any of it at all.
When she can't run anymore, she stops. The extent of it all, of everything, slams into her quite suddenly as the world comes rushing back in one great surge that she couldn't possibly have any hope of quelling.
It all makes sense. Yet at the same time, none of it does.
If she thinks about it too much, it just grows more confusing, so she presses the matter out of her mind and looks around for somewhere safe to spend the night.
It comes in waves throughout the course of the night, washing over her when she least expects it and reducing her to nothing more than a trembling, snivelling wreck and then floating out to sea again like it was never there.
Not long after dark, a parachute arrives for her. It waits at the mouth of the cave she's found, bleeping rhythmically until she's plucked up the courage to climb up onto her feet and retrieve it. Inside, she finds a silver flask containing hot chocolate. She can taste the cream and the cinnamon added to the welcome concoction when she takes her first sip, which scalds her tongue and makes her silently vow not to drink any more until it has had chance to cool.
Taking it with her back into the confines of her cave, Annie cuddles that flask. It;s warm, whereas she is not. In the morning she awakens wet and sticky, finding to her dismay that the lid has fallen from her flask during the night and thus that she has been drenched in its contents.
That it might've been blood plastering her clothing to her skin makes Annie feel sick, but though she retches violently she does not throw up. She thinks that perhaps her stomach might pity her, hence why it decided not to empty its contents all over her dark, safe haven.
She thinks a lot of people are pitying her right now. If she didn't feel so numb, she might too.
That night, a second parachute arrives. This one bares a pump bottle of lavender scented soap and a short note that reads: "Sorry about the mess" in her mentor's blunt, simple handwriting.
Annie smiles to herself, knowing that the note is in reference to the hot chocolate incident, and sets the chrome box down beside her last at the back of the cave.
Squirting a small amount of the soap into her hands, she works it into a foamy lather before massaging it into her hair, from the roots to the very tips. Shedding her streamlined arena wear, Annie gets to work rubbing herself down with the soap, not only washing away the faint hot chocolate stain, but also the grime and the dirt and the blood.
She puts the blood out of her mind, somehow tricking herself into thinking of it as just another stain on her once-smooth skin that must be eradicated. When she's finished washing herself, Annie tries her best to wash the muck out of her clothing, sliding it back on once she's finished and fumbling with the zip at her back.
Cleaner than she has been in what feels like years, Annie places the now empty pump bottle with her equally empty flask and parachute boxes. Re-reading the note from Finnick once more, she giggles herself to sleep tonight, as opposed to the crying of yesterday.
She bolts upright, breathing heavily. Her hands fumble in the darkness for some sort of a weapon, and it takes a few agonisingly long seconds for her to realise that it was just a dream; just a horrible, horrible dream.
The comfort is short-lived, for Annie's brain seems intent to remind her that it might've just been a nightmare, but it was one grounded in truth. Much to her annoyance, she finds herself sobbing uncontrollably, unable to stop even though her lungs are burning and her ribs aching under the strain. She wraps her arms around herself in a poor attempt at comfort.
It takes a while for Annie to realise that outside of her personal bubble, something is breaking the otherwise perfect silence. Crawling to the mouth of the cave, she takes the silver box attached to this latest parachute inside with her and opens it tentatively, still snivelling but no longer quite so much of a wreck.
The content of the box changes that.
Somewhere out there, in the world that still soldiers on outside of this arena, Finnick Odair is probably kicking himself. He's probably asking himself how he could be so stupid, even if his intentions were good and just.
Annie doesn't think about any of that, not immediately. It's difficult to think about anything at all, save for the ball of string staring back at her from within the confines of its box.
"I'm sorry." Annie chokes as her sobbing fit consumes her once more, like high tide might the beach. "I'm so, so sorry."
The words become a mantra which she repeats over and over, as though they hold some sort of magical power that might protect her, might save her from this hell.
Of course, they don't. Nothing can save her. Not now.