A/N

My Annie fic Only One Fish In My Sea, late in Chapter 11 and early in Chapter 12, covers reactions to The Announcement from her POV. Here's a version of that material.

Chapter

Annie's Own Thoughts

I had a feeling that the impact of what Templesmith had said would go beyond just these Games. It seemed the Capitol was trying to cut their losses by only breaking up one of the couples. Pregnancy test results could well have been one of the many things whispered between tributes. Somebody must've gone through their district's marriage ritual, but not being from those districts, I wouldn't know what to look for.

I wouldn't have wanted to be Clove, Rue, Marvel or Thresh last night. I really wouldn't have wanted to be one of them right now. However, it was unbelievably great news for Finnick and myself as well as the two couples in the arena. The odds were in the favor of one couple or another. The couple that had gone through a marriage ritual would no doubt want to do that again for real. The other young man would face greater than usual pressure to marry the mother of his child. Besides, sharing such a terribly unique experience, they'd make a particularly good couple.

If Snow was smart, not just sadistic for its own sake, he'd make a joint ceremony out of it in order to control my and Finnick's resentment, although that definitely was not a given.

It was quite likely that a soon to be mother and father would be joining Finn and I as victors. I imagined Finnick having as much love for a child of ours as he already had for me. We were still young, in our early twenties, but had already waited more than long enough to be fully together, and wouldn't wait any longer for this.

Children. I wanted to give them the joy of siblings, something we had never had. What parent didn't want their children to have a better lot in life? I didn't even tell Finnick. It would have been too heartbreaking if those plans for our future were also crushed.

Media Blitz

The friends and family of the final eight tributes were always interviewed, but those media crews were an unfamiliar sight in Districts Eleven or Twelve. That was a relatively minor detail of how this had been a very unusual year. The crews had evidently traveled during the night or early morning so they could be in place right after The Announcement.

Career Singletons

As expected, Clove and Marvel's families were some of the few people not behind one or the other of the couples.

"Don't you count out my boy just yet," Marvel's mother muttered. That was hope, but not the kind of hope many of us were feeling. Maybe they didn't get it – being a few scales short of a fish often ran in a family, whether by nature, nurture or both.

"That Cato turned down my little girl, my deadly little girl, and is about to find out just how deadly she is," Clove's father said with a mix of emotions. Those in each district's Career training often knew each other, sometimes very well. This had been Cato's last Reaping, but Clove was three years younger – obviously, if they were a couple, she would have waited, because nobody would've seen this year's rule change coming. Maybe them not being a couple had to do with why she didn't wait. She certainly had shown more than enough attitude to pull a stunt like that.

Clove's sister had the bearing of another Career – the aggressiveness and the fairly justified confidence were some of the emotions I did recognize, and the training had long since started, even by little Flavia's tender young age. "She'll get 'em all," Flavia said of her big sister.

And I'll be right behind her, she seemed to say without actually saying. Since we couldn't technically prepare to volunteer for the Games, part of our training was to not let on about our training. Also, a good showing in these interviews might lead to a final sponsorship push that could make the displayed hopes a reality. Some people hoped for a change in the Games; the youngest Hawkins seemed to want them to stay the same.

Couples

The friends and family of each of the four lovers all expected their pair to come back home – my fellow Career districts were doubly confident, and for once Twelve had a reason to feel like that at all.

A reporter approached Glimmer's father with a version of the question that was on everyone's mind. "Are you the father-in-law or the grandfather?"

"Both, if he knows what's good for him," he answered with a chuckle, knowing the middle-aged craft worker couldn't make serious threats to a fighter in his prime. "I worried if I'd get my little girl back. Now I hope I'll get a grandchild and a son-in-law back with her."

Cato was not entirely sane, no person who approaches the Games with such zeal ever is, but he should be enough in his right mind to realize how much the odds were in his favor to have a woman like Glimmer. I still wondered sometimes if Finnick was crazy to love a woman like me, however disgusting his Capitol alternative could be.

Like Clove, Glimmer had a little sister that looked like a miniature version of her. "Glim always said that lil' shiny, that's me, got her to want a little girl of her own. I'm not surprised she's going ahead and getting one, especially with such a handsome guy, in such a situation." Overall, the one fetus this year seemed to affect the audience more than the twenty-three already born children every year. That made no sense whatsoever, but people often didn't make sense to me. "She'd want a big fancy wedding, not a simple one in camp."

In some ways Cato's mother had a similar attitude to that of Glimmer's father – worried about a child, incredibly relieved to now expect another child. "I was afraid the wrong girl would be the end of him, nothing else could stop him of course. Apparently what we have here is the right girl making it even more likely that I'll get someone back from the arena for once. And 'Grandma Teresa' don't sound too bad, no not at all."

The little sister Katniss was in the arena to save was an absolute darling. Nobody in the audience, so nobody in Panem, would soon forget Primrose Everdeen. Gale's brother Rory was a sweetheart too. This put faces, very cute face, to the escort-called names that had stirred such furor in their older siblings. And the two of them holding hands? Little girls and grown women who thought like little girls would be going absolutely wild. For me, it removed the last vestiges of spite against Katniss after she killed the District Four tribute sin the bloodbath, and I was not alone in that sentiment.

Their mothers were losing composure, though in a good way. "Tears of joy," Mrs. Hazelle Hawthorne got out before catching her breath and clearing her throat. "Apparently my boy is unofficially a married man now. When they toasted bread together the first night, we all knew that was a key part of our district's marriage ritual."

"I'm not exactly surprised," she continued. "Most everyone around here knows how close those two are to each other. Some said there was nothing between them, but more accurately, there was everything but romance between them, so it must've come naturally under pressure. I hope they're as happy together as his father was with me, and being in Victors Village instead of the mines, the odds would be ever in their favor."

Farmers

Surprisingly, Eleven seemed relatively resigned to their usual arena fate even when they stood a relatively high chance of it being different. They had cruelly learned to not get their hopes up.

An old lady spoke up. "I've seen more than enough death in my long life, seventy years this September. My son a bit over seventeen years ago, after his wife exactly a year before that. I done raised up their babies, and it's one of them that y'all are here to talk to me about. Maybe that grandson of mine is about to join them in the earth. Yet if Thresh's death means two others come back instead of one other, I'll understand. If not my boy, then mister and missus Hawthorne."

"Hell, Thresh has a younger sister too, though by a few minutes instead of several years. But Katniss and Gale also know what it's like to have they fathers gone, and what it's like out here in those districts," Thresh's also-hulking sister Raspberry added.

"Course I wanna see my baby later this month," Rue's mother said. "They still haven't caught her yet, after all," she added with a wry grin. "But if I see Katniss and her man in six months, that wouldn't be so bad."