A/N: If you give me a review, I'll give you free hugs and cookies. No, really.
Disclaimer: People often ask me, "Are you the author of The Hunger Games books?" I'm kidding, if you didn't get that. They never do, because I'm not Suzanne Collins.
Chapter Three: Time
Time has always been a constant for Annie, like a friend she could always rely on. It never changes. It's either day or night, dawn or dusk. It is either one or the other, and in the world of blurry lines she takes comfort in that one simple clarity of time, always so straightforward and honest.
But now, like all the other things she had before, it is lost to her.
She finds that day and night interwine, embrace, and collapse into each other. Sleep is limited, brightness is essential.
But Annie still believes that when you lose something, you gain something else—in some cases, something better.
In her blind optimism, she believes that this is the case.
The boy. Her fellow district tribute.
She finds that they are like peanut butter and jelly, thunder and lightning, salt and pepper. No one like Finnick, of course, but a friend, someone she connects with instantly. She knows they make a good team. Good allies.
Most of all, she finds comfort in his presence. He soothes her, makes her laugh, makes her forget she is in the Games at all—makes her forget her starvation, her exhaustion, her anxiety.
But she knows that time passes. She knows it ticks away every second wasted in her life, in rhythm to the beat of her pulse, aching and throbbing. She knows that in any second, she could be faced with a danger that could ultimately take her life, spontaneously and unpredictably.
She knows that even the slightest comfort doesn't last very long.
For time is constant, yet irregular; kind, yet cruel; unsurprising, yet unpredictable.
She thinks she's prepared for whatever comes next.
What she doesn't know is that she's never been more wrong about anything.