A/N: from Annie's rescue, through the end of Mockingjay.
First thoughts, post-rescue: flying? Definitely – gut rising (relief, then, to feel that core insteada), hair shimmering around elbows like electricity, rumbling that for once isn't coming from the inside of a head. Still rising, must be take-off or – something wrong? Not hovering like – you know – the name implies ("hover" … "craft") so something must be wrong, should probably—
Rising like being what lifted into what the first – yes lifted from the training center to what the oh yeah fishbowl, so full of water that arena, last time?—
Still rising, surely something's wrong, rumbling louder hands over ears, hum – loud humming, drowning, eyes shut please, thank you, loudest hum except cold?
Looking down: sheet fallen to the waist, hands were holding (oops) now naked kill me ears uncovered, pull it back up, Joanna isn't naked, Peeta isn't naked everyone can tell, something different happened & shit, still have hair. So lovely. Still going up? Rubbing the sore spot from the prick – "standard sedative" the soldier said, so brains like soup, nothing new. Annie'd let him carry her out of the plush Capitol cage like a bride, pretended him Finnick, never believed it.
A minute to find her voice. Sore, mouth underused / overused but in all the wrong ways, she thinks Johanna is sleeping, no Jo, don't close yr eyes, that's how they get you,
(that's how they got her, was sleeping, home in Finnick's bed, suddenly arms everywhere – how did they know she'd been living there? How did they know in which house to look?)
Wait drat, who to ask, soldiers looking so straight ahead, names, any of them? Oh but: the nice boy who'd told them to stop before touching her, let her collect her breath because when they first when to touch she jerked and wept and he said taking you to Finnick, Annie, you can trust us – Katniss Everdeen's cousin, grey eyes like 12 – Gale! "G-gale? Why are we still going up?"
"S'a hovercraft, dipshit," Johanna mumbles, words smearing, eyes still shut.
"Soldier Hawthorne, did you give her the sedative?" Someone adult, sounding like a stronger woman than she, strong as Johanna (before shocks & such) and Katniss Everdeen.
"Yes sir," says the cousin (Gale, a person, something remembered, see her brain wasn't ruined). "We're ascending, Annie. Should level out in a few minutes."
"Oh." Oh. Ascending. Beautiful word in all this hurt. "Okay."
Try to do the thing where cover ears but can't hold the sheet everything hurts. Rumbling so so loud like death or a cannon or a dam bursting. Hmmm—
Gale's voice gets quiet like a secret (secret? Like Finnick, his bed, living in that house, how did they find her?). "Hey Annie? Do you want earplugs?"
Johanna is slurring: "If you don't shut Cresta up soon I'll need some too."
Is that Peeta laughing? No but he looks different now, so tense, is he restrained? Annie's not. Gale gives the earplugs and everything goes away. Humming dies. Can hold the sheet too, small pleasures.
Sleep is too awful, too scary. Do the thing and leave.
She's floating somewhere around 4 (water, definitely, but like a small domesticated ocean? Somewhere soft. Bath?) when rumbling starts again, even if she can't hear it she can feel it in her stomach, something is VERY VERY WRONG and why is no one reacting to the fact that they are literally falling out of the sky? Ripping out earplugs—
"Can somebody please calm Citizen Cresta? We're preparing for descent."
Somebody she guesses means Gale. He rustles around, does he look unhappy? Displeased. He doesn't like this job, Annie thinks, it isn't his, poor heart. Holding a needle – don't they have doctors for this? Nurses, for the trackers they had—
Descending to where, what arena, what tracker what?
"I am very calm!" Annie insists, her voice rising octaves, arias contained in four declarative words. "Please don't—"
Another soldier, strange accent: "Think another sedative might do more harm than good? She's pretty frail."
"We're almost down. Annie? You gotta focus now," says Gale, a little gruff still trying to look her in the eye but Annie knows now that people only do that when they want you to know they're going to hurt you, every which way, she wishes she could have clothes like 4 like home although whoever grabbed the sheet was very kind.
Annie nods her head and tries to be good. If she holds the sheet up in the middle at her collarbone, she can cover one ear, leans against the wall to cover the other. Sacrifice.
WHOOSH. Descent is quicker, Annie lurches, grabs an arm. "Don't lose your lunch, Cresta," Johanna murmurs which is funny because they haven't been given lunch in weeks and weeks, or breakfast either or dinner, except also it comes out more like Donloseyrluh,Cehss because Johanna's mouth is a mess of syllables, then the THUD of a landing and Annie is screaming, so sure it is another arena and now she's fucked because who wins by luck twice in a row? But they tell her it's only 13, she'll accept that for now she'll accept anything, and sure enough she can see people waiting without weapons, just two stretchers and a wheelchair.
Peeta looks bad. He's out but thrashing, makeshift restraints on Stretcher #1 and Johanna is mad because she's supposed to go on Stretcher #2 until Annie says "You can have my chair, Jo" which nobody likes but Johanna, and Annie doesn't mind being babied anyway, she doesn't care about seeming not-strong (that's what Finnick's for), lies back as they push her down corridors feeling like a lily left in a pond, blossoming into rot, swimming into the heart of 13 whose elevators are so claustrophobic. Panic attack.
Then bright white, like being born: sterile, everything, this is a hospital and Annie is panicking, there was a hospital in the Capitol too, with shots and blood except they didn't want to heal her there. Peeta gets wheeled away and everyone is fussing – where is Finnick? – and Johanna hates it too, she's scowling and shoving and lurching until she's unconscious where is Finnick legs swing over the edge "Ms. Cresta? We're going to ask you lie back down now" is that Primrose Everdeen? Remember her from TV?
Annie lies back dutifully but it's a classic Games fake-out, playing dead (or in this case obedient) because the nurse turns and then Annie bolts trailing tubes where is Finnick where is Finnick they lied he's dead they lied he's gone they lied where is Finnick where—
(Then the whole balance of the room/world/all-of-the-above shifts somehow, she can feel it under her feet because:) "Finnick!"
"Annie?" Wildly s/he's running,
"FINNICK!"
((There you are. Everything stops. Feels like leaping or sleeping. Feels like the whole world exists in pianissimo, and arms – lovely arms, holding, finally touch that doesn't feel like violence, he's lifting her, she's clinging, burying/burrowing, this is everything ever made, so quiet she can hear his hasty caught breath, the coughed away sobs, kissing her face again and again, eyes shut, when his mouth meets hers it's like an IV, sounds icky & yet – life into her somehow, alive again somehow, like trickling sunshine into her blood and then kissing her eyelids, her nose, arms tight almost like pain but perfect don't go, don't let go…))
"My heart," he says, pressing a kiss by hers, pulling his face from her to do so, to smile this smile that feels like relief or sadness or elation, to let himself see the entirety of her existing there, living.
"Nodon't," Annie says. She buries her face in the crook of his neck, resumes indivisibility, this is no time to step back, to be weak. "Nodon'tletgo."
He makes his lips home in her hair, makes promises. "Never again. I won't."
ch2 coming soon, thoughts welcome!
