Finnick Odair is packing his bags when he hears the lithe footsteps of Annie Cresta stop in the frame of his doorway. Hair hanging down around her face, effectively shielding herself from him, she crosses her arms and eyes him wearily. Giving her no attention, he focuses on the task at hand. Pick up a shirt. Fold it. Lay it in the knapsack. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. For a while, she simply watches him, gaze unassuming and expectant in the same moment. She fiddles with the hem of her shirt, embroidered with yellow yarn sunsets, and counts the breaths that escape Finnick's chest as she waits for her courage to find her.
"You're gonna come back, aren't you?" She finally asks, braving a look from her hem to his focused, working eyes.
Pick. Fold. Lay. Repeat. Pick. Fold. Lay. Repeat. He gulps hard and raises his eyebrows as he tries to placate her with things she already knows but doesn't quite believe. All at once, his words are scolding and silencing.
"You know I can't promise that."
These words have the absolute opposite effect that Finnick was hoping for. Instead of stealing the words from her lips, they actually spark hope in her taped-up heart.
"You've said that every time you go to the Capitol. And you've always come home," she reminds him, her voice gaining a bit of the life that it was missing only a moment ago.
Finally, Finnick Odair deigns to give Annie Cresta his eyes.
"This is different."
His dismissive glance is gone in a moment. They've been over all of this before and the fact that she's asking him to explain it all again twists the knife in his gut, pressing in ever sharper against his ribs. Annie isn't stupid. He doesn't need to tell her twice that reaping victors is different. She huffs and raises her voice, but only by a bit. Of all the things the young, crazed victor doesn't handle well, loud noises are the worst.
"I know it's different-" She protests.
Continuing, completely heedless of her plea and focused entirely on keeping the emotions in his throat from bubbling to the surface, Finnick turns sharp.
"And I want you to be prepared."
She knows what he wants her to be prepared for. But she wants, if only for a moment, to feel that he believes he can make it home to her. Picking at the skin of her hands, rubbed raw from hours handling sailing rope and drying out sheet sails, she lowers her voice to a funeral whisper.
"Prepared for what?"
He doesn't say it. He cannot say it. Not out loud.
"You'll be taken care of. There's money under my bed and Carp will make his regular deliveries," Finnick says, skirting around the obvious.
Opening his mouth to continue, the hero of District Four pulls the chord on his knapsack and ties the knot tight. He could go on for hours about the minutia of what both his and Mags' permanent absence would mean for Annie's new life. How to fix the pipes and who to find if the power grid suddenly fails, which it is apt to do during thunderstorms. But, she cuts him off, her eyes softening. Suddenly, she can't find the energy for truth. Instead, she wants to dream. She wants to pretend.
"Finnick. I don't want to talk about that," she says, definitively.
The victor in question snaps, pulling his bag off of his bed, letting the thing create a resounding thud on the floor, breaking a few spare shells left on the hardwood from Annie's earlier escapade with seashell bracelets.
"What then? What's more important than your survival?" He nearly shouts.
In exchange for his shout, she returns with a near breath of a whisper. Crossing the room, she sits on his bed. This is their last night together before he inevitably boards the train for the Capitol and their Hunger Games in the morning.
"What do you want when you come back?" She asks.
He sighs. Not this again.
"I might not-" He begins.
But she doesn't care for his tone or his refusal to play along. Catching his eyes, she lets him see how serious she is about this question being answered. She separates each syllable so he has no room to misunderstand her. She wants to believe that one day, very soon, she will see him again. That the moment he steps onto that train, back into the wicked embrace of The Capitol, will not be the last time she lays eyes on him.
"When you come back, what do you want? A victor should have exactly what he wants. You should have exactly what you want."
For a while, there is no response from him. Not a breath out of place or any indication, even, that he heard her at all. But, then, he sighs and crosses the room, his steps leaden and his burden heavy. He collapses next to her, threading his fingers through her dainty ones without looking at her.
"When I come home," he begins, trailing off into a world of dreams where he never before allowed himself to venture, "I want the house painted blue. A blue like the sea, so that even when the waters are too rough for swimming, you'll feel like you're in the middle of the ocean."
He pauses, surprised at his own candor. He continues, unable to stop himself. Before he knows it, he's off like a flash, eyes swimming with a world he will never be able to visit.
"And I want fresh baked bread. Something briny and sweet all at once, a new recipe. I want a new necklace and a dog. A big, black dog that will catch sticks and fish and keep you company."
Another long stretch of silence. But she knows he isn't finished. Finally, he looks at her. There is nothing but sincerity in his eyes. Sincere terror. Sincere devotion. Sincere aching. Sincere longing. Sincere love and hope and resignation. All in one look. He debates his next sentence, but is completely unaware of how it will strike her in a few day's time, during the victor's interviews when Peeta makes his grand announcement. But, Finnick figures, throwing caution to the wind, if he may die in the arena, he might as well say the one thing he want most in the world.
"I want to marry you. I want to marry you on the beach while you're wearing your favorite dress. And I want to start a family. A proper family."
She smiles at him, a graveyard smile that says everything she is thinking. Her hands are shaking in his sweaty palm. He laughs. Such small things to want from the world. Such insignificant things to wish for. And so many armies in the way of him getting them.
"That's it. That's all I want."
With a nod and a squeeze of his hand, Annie tries to blink away the tears. But her voice betrays her.
"I think I can manage that."
So, when the raid on District Four begins, there are some oddities in the Odair household. Alerted by the piteous bark of an ever-growing black dog sitting on her porch, Annie runs from the kitchen, hands still covered in bread dough and salt. When the walls collapse around her, they fall together in heaps of half-yellow, half-blue boards, their jagged edges drawing red from her skin. In her pocket, there are seven shells, one for each strand of the necklace waiting on her work table. And, when she's uncovered by the Capitol, pulled from the rubble, she doe nothing but scream that she can't leave without her wedding dress.
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