Chapter 2:
Darkness Will Fall
~before another sunrise wakes me~
At five forty six in the morning, Johanna falls into her bed. While her body begs for sleep, her mind just will not allow such a thing until it has calmed down from the immense amount of knowledge it just absorbed. After everything that Annie told her, she can't understand why her brain just won't shut up and sleep; it has to be tired after everything Annie spilled. It took her over an hour to explain everything.
For starters, when the Capitol said that there were no survivors of the final bombing of District 13, they were off, way off. Everyone from District 13 survived. The "dead bodies" that the Capitol found weren't even bodies at all: they were wax sculptures of all the people of Thirteen. The Capitol's "search and rescue" crew did not do a very good job of searching, probably because they didn't want to do any actual rescuing. According to Annie, after Johanna and Haymitch were captured by the Capitol, after Katniss was killed, and before the bombs started dropping, she had just about lost it.
Her insanity had been creeping up ever since her Games, it surged forward when she was reaped again, but when Mags saved her, it died down a little, until Finnick was reaped as well. When she was captured, the madness took a turn for the worse; it almost ended up killing her until she was rescued by an actual search and rescue team. Her wedding was absolutely beautiful, and there was no trace of the madness that night; it was still there, but it had just fled for a short while. After that, it was present, but it was not as bad as it could have been. After Finnick went to the Capitol, her insanity kept creeping back up to her, and once Katniss had reported that she saw Finnick die, there was no more hope for Annie. With no one left to help her, except for Beetee, Annie was sure that she was not going to make it; she was sure that she was going to die from the madness. So Annie did the only thing that she had always wanted to.
As soon as Alma Coin returned to the district, she put a knife through the president's heart.
Annie thought it did everyone in Thirteen justice. Coin was almost as brutal a ruler as Snow was, although she didn't directly demand the death of children. Directly.
When Coin was killed, Annie was appointed the new rebel leader, even though she was four months pregnant. Beetee, who found some way to tap into the bugs in the Presidential Mansion, the prison cells, and just about everywhere else in Panem, discovered that they were planning to re-bomb Thirteen. Once and for all.
Annie, knowing that it was something that she and Finnick did once together, advised every rebel in Thirteen to create a sculpture of himself out of wax, which District 13 had an extremely large storage room of because it was a main ingredient in their deadly recipe for nuclear weapons.
Exactly one week after Katniss's death, Beetee discovered that there were planes on the way to bomb the rebels out of existence. But Annie was two steps ahead of the Capitol, and she intended to stay at least two steps ahead for the rest of its existence. Everyone had pretty much finished their sculptures by that point, and Annie told all of the inhabitants of Thirteen that they were to move out that night. It took only two days' time to fly from the Capitol to Thirteen, even in high-speed bombing hovercrafts, so the rebels had a maximum of three days to get as far away from the district as possible.
When Annie herded them out, with Beetee as her head captain, she took them north, into an area that was no longer Panem. They traveled for four months in the woods, living off of the land by hunting and gathering and off of some rations which they had brought from the district, before coming to a stop at a clearing, what first looked to Annie like, a campsite.
The site was not large at all; there were a maximum of twenty tents pitched around, all a sickly, off-white color, as Annie had described them, with multicolored patches sewn over holes and tears. It looked like a bunch of people who were on the run like Annie's team. Annie's team had tents. Each family had a tent; whether that was six people or one person to one tent, everyone was sleeping in a tent. They had extra tents, as well, after losing some of their people along the way.
When they reached this campsite, Annie wanted to ask anyone around about their location, or the date, or if there were any information about Panem. Only about 175 rebels remained, with 20% of that being under 18. After starting off with over 300 rebels, Annie's self-esteem had lowered after they had to surrender their people to starvation, diseases, animal attacks, and suicide. The worst was how two teenaged boys had wandered off from the group and got lost. Trying to protect her remaining people in case these people were unfriendly or friendly with the Capitol, she told them to wait, hidden in the tree line, while she, Beetee, and their other captain, Kai Jack, went to speak to anyone who was willing to speak.
Annie, even though she was due for her child in about three more weeks, had walked the whole way from District 13 to and through the campsite, refusing help. She hadn't complained at all, not when she had horrible morning sickness, not when she was starving, not when she had cravings, and especially not when she was feeling especially emotional. She always refused help, too; then again, she hardly accepted help from anyone who wasn't Finnick. Becoming the rebel leader had pushed away her slight insanity because, as she tells herself every day, she needs to lead the rebels to another battle, to victory this time, in order to save Finnick. He'd saved her enough times, and it is about damn time she saved him.
They walked through the site and found a cluster of about forty people, men, women, and children, standing around, like they were waiting for the rebels.
They were, in fact, waiting for the rebels.
A short, pudgy man stepped forward first. Annie was prepared to tell him about their predicament, had their story set out so that she could practically beg for help without complaining much, but the man smiled, holding his hand out to shake hers. "We've been expecting you all, Mrs. Odair," he'd said to her. Shocked, confused, and anxious for any form of help, Annie had no choice but to listen to his story. She felt as though she could trust him, however, and so she, Beetee, and Kai followed the man into one of the larger tents.
According to Annie, the tent's outer appearance was the greatest façade ever created. The interior had high-tech screens plastered from the grassy ground to the un-holey top on each side. There was a table in the middle of the large tent (which looked larger on the inside than on the outside) where there were screens at each place where there was a chair. Each screen had a headset attached and a keyboard in the table.
All of the monitors on the tent's walls were turned on, all except one. The largest of these monitors had, what looked like, the 76th Annual Hunger Games in color with a banner on the bottom in white letter which read "Capitol TV." Others looked like the districts with black and white images and banners that said this such as: "District 7 Lumber Mill," "District 4 Victor's Island," "District 12 Seam," and "District 2 Village Square." What disturbed and intrigued Annie the most was the one marked "District 13 Control Room," and that the camera was still intact, sending footage of rubble and fake people.
Considering that the rebels had left just after Katniss's death and that it was now the middle of the 76th Games, Annie figured that they had traveled for almost seven months.
All of the screens in the tent were connected to cameras spread all across the country of Panem, including the Presidential Mansion, Capitol Town Center, and the Prison Cells. And one camera focused perfectly on a certain someone locked in a cell beneath the Capitol.
Annie saw Finnick's condition for the first time that day. The film was in color, and Annie almost wished it weren't. He was in the fetal position, hands locked over his ears. His skin was a sickly shade of gray, his ribs poked through his shirt, his eyes were open yet unseeing. His eyes were so dark they were almost black, and it terrified Annie.
She wished he were dead instead of in that circumstance.
The man who led them into the tent introduced himself as Ronald Cross; he was the head of this small village that was connected to fourteen others just like it, fifteen in total. Each village corresponded to a different district plus one for the Capitol and one specifically for rebels. Each village was there to see everything that was done, said, and thought in every single dusty corner or hidden alleyway of Panem. There was no place in Panem that this Anti-Panem did not know about. Their technology was so advanced; there was no hope for the Capitol in Panem to discover it.
Ronald's village did not oversee a specific district but more of the country as a whole. He was the one in charge of all of the rebels of Panem. All of the Anti-Districts and Anti-Capitol reported to him, warning of anything relating to a rebellion. When word of Katniss's rebellion hit Anti-Panem, Ronald had sent many men to fight with the rebels. Unfortunately, Boggs and the Leeg twins had died in the invasion of the Capitol with Squad 451.
Ronald's brother, the head of Anti-Thirteen, warned Ronald of Annie's plan, too, and so Ronald sent scouts to meet up with the team and guide them to safety without giving anything away. Annie hadn't thought until then just how peculiar it was that two women had met them along the way and told of a "story" they'd heard back home in District 8 and how they had gotten help from Katniss Everdeen. When Twill and Bonnie joined their crew, their speed increased majorly.
Ronald must have known what Annie wanted, to save her friends from the Capitol, bring down Snow, and finally have peace in Panem.
After Annie had discovered what was happening over all of the years of Panem, right underneath President Snow's and President Coin's noses, she made a deal with Ronald. In exchange for shelter for her rebels, Annie agreed to let Ronald use her people for the new Revolution they were going to plan. It wasn't much, but it must have been enough. He must have known how well her people fought because he did not hesitate to agree to Annie's plan. He only made a slight adjustment.
Annie was not allowed to train with her rebels until she was deemed fully and completely healthy after the birth of her child by a doctor.
Annie was the only one to object to this part of the deal, so she had no choice but to agree.
Once, the plan was set, the rebels began training. Annie oversaw from a spot cleared by the trainers, her doctor, and Ronald. Someone was always with her at all times, however. Her doctor, Dr. Aurelius from Thirteen, declared her due date exactly three weeks from the day they arrived at Boot Camp.
But Odairs are never satisfied with the expected.
Three days early, Matthew Finnick Odair was born. Named Matthew in honor of the tribute she went into the arena with, Finnick's and her childhood best friend. Named Finnick for his father. With perfect golden skin and a small tuft of sun-kissed auburn hair like his father, there was no doubt that this was Finnick Odair's son. When her son was born, Annie had burst into tears, temporarily succumbing to the madness that had been pulling at her for weeks and weeks. She missed, and still misses, Finnick. Her son reminded Annie too much of him. It wasn't just the flawless hair that could not be replicated, the facial features that made them look almost like twins, or even the smile that perfectly replicated his.
It was the eyes.
His eyes were the same sea green as Finnick's, Annie's favorite color. Matthew's eyes had the same depth, same attentiveness, as Finnick's. There was, however, no sign of tarnish or horror, things her young mind should not have seen yet. Matthew was pure, and Annie still intends to keep it that way.
By the time the rebels were ready to go to war again by Ronald's standards, the 78th Hunger Games were underway. Annie was worried about Finnick, having not seen him physically in three years. He thought that she was dead, that their child was dead. And he still thinks it. Everyone does, even the president who could detect a lie from across the country and see through everyone as though they were all made of glass.
Before she sent her army out to the Capitol for another extraction of Peeta and now Finnick, Annie wanted to stop by to Johanna and Haymitch to ask them if they want to join. She knew they would want to be a part of it, even if neither wanted to fight. Neither could respond to her request at the moment she showed up, and Annie didn't expect them to. Go to war with wounds so fresh? Why would anyone do that?
Annie's reasoning does make sense: the Capitol's wounds will also be fresh. This war will pour salt into their open wounds. The Capitol's army isn't prepared, seeing that all the possibly threatening rebels are in their captivity or "dead."
Johanna told Annie that she would think about it, said it was "too early in the morning to even consider wars and revenge." Annie had chuckled at that. Johanna told Annie that she was welcome to stay on their couch for what was left of the night. "Oh, that's alright," Annie had said. "I have somewhere else to stop before I head back to Base. I just thought that I'd plant this idea in your brains. I have to pass here to get back, so let me know if you want me to pick you up."
Before she left, Annie handed Johanna a small, black phone, said that it couldn't be traced through the Capitol. Annie told Johanna to call if she needed or wanted anything. Then, before Johanna or Haymitch could ask any more questions, Annie walked out the door.
Now, as she lies in her bed, Johanna can't sleep, even though she really, really needs to. With all of Annie's information swirling around in her head, Johanna can't seem to figure out what she should do versus what she wants to do versus what she can do.
She wants to help Annie and the other rebels, wants to rescue Finnick and Peeta, but her mind isn't stable. She hasn't completely healed from the last war, but she doesn't know if she ever will. She didn't even fight as much as she should have. If she's this bruised, she can't even begin to imagine how bruised everyone else is.
She doesn't know whether or not this new Uprising will bring back painful memories of the previous one or not, but if it doesn't and Johanna stays home, she is going to regret it.
She thought she was ready, thought she was whole, but when Annie showed up, it felt like rubbing carpet burn up against an oak tree. She's truly not ready, no matter how badly she wants to be.
Should she push it is the question.
Flipping over in her bed in frustration, Johanna looks at her clock. Six twenty three. Great, I've been thinking about this for almost forty five minutes. Sighing, she decides to sleep and ask Haymitch what he thinks tomorrow.
~before another night is gone~
If Haymitch Abernathy had asked Haymitch Abernathy if he wanted to take part in whipping the Capitol's ass, Haymitch Abernathy would have said, "Hell yes!" But, when Annie Cresta had asked Haymitch Abernathy the same question, the answer had not been, "Hell yes!"
He was actually having a good night; not many faces had showed up when he'd closed his eyes at first, and there were no nightmares.
But then Johanna started screaming, and Haymitch woke up.
Of course, Johanna's screaming was perfectly reasonable. When an actual, physical ghost from your past shows up and says, "Hey, I'm not actually dead! I'm really just plotting to overthrow the government," you've either gone completely insane or you made a terrible choice in friends.
He can't blame Johanna for being terrified and confused; Haymitch is, too.
What Annie is asking of them, to come out of hiding and risk getting caught and slaughtered and tortured, is pure madness.
It's a damn good thing, then, that Haymitch's entire family is made up of mad people.
He wants to do it, wants to help. He would have said yes to Annie right then and there if it weren't for Johanna.
Johanna and he have grown close over the time they have spent rooming together. Haymitch sees Johanna as his little sister, and he feels protective of her. He may not have understood why the hell Katniss did all the things that she did for her sister when they happened, but he can empathize now. He wishes she were here now so that he could ask her advice.
Oh, how the tables have turned.
He never would have thought that he would need advice from anyone, least of all, Katniss Mockingjay Everdeen. However, he never would have thought that she would die, either.
He knows what she would say, though. He knows that he has to put Johanna's needs before his. That's exactly what Katniss did, right? Granted, Prim died in the end, but it was not because of anything Katniss did.
He knows what he has to do. No matter how much he wants to go and fight again, considering he hardly fought last time, Haymitch is going to stay if Johanna stays and go if Johanna goes. He is not going to leave her alone anywhere. He doesn't give a flying crap how over protective he seems; his jar full of craps to give is emptier than Snow's heart.
Looking at his clock, seeing that it's now eight a.m., Haymitch hauls his lazy ass off of the floor where he had been sitting and walks downstairs to start a wonderful breakfast of cereal and milk.
He doesn't expect to see Johanna downstairs already, but it also doesn't surprise him that she isn't sleeping. He hadn't been able to sleep either. Instead of heading straight for the kitchen, like he'd originally planned, he walks over to her usual spot by the window and sits next to her.
They're silent for a while, as Haymitch stares at the wall and Johanna stares out the window.
"I don't know what I want to do," Johanna says quietly, so quietly Haymitch almost misses it.
"Did you sleep at all last night? After she left, I mean," Haymitch replies, hardly above a whisper. He doesn't really know why they're being so quiet, but he can't seem to get his voice to be any louder.
Johanna shakes her head. "I mean, I sort of fell asleep for ten minutes, but then I woke back up, thinking I had slept a lot longer. Then I came down here." Johanna then moves from where she had been curled up in a ball on the window sill to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Haymitch.
"I think I'm just over thinking it," Johanna says as she shakes her head. "But, then again, I don't really know how to under think it, either."
She won't look at him; he won't look at her. They don't know what to do.
"I didn't even fight last time, and it makes me feel so damn week to know that I'm actually considering not fighting this time. But I don't know if I can do it. Even if I didn't fight in the war, I was apart of two freaking Hunger Games, and I've killed more people than I ever wanted to. I just don't know what the hell I should do," Johanna rambles on. She's on the verge of tears and looks so pathetic.
And in that moment, looking at her, seeing the girl he's come to love as family look so broken, he knows exactly what to do.
"Why don't we go up to Snow-knows-where with Annie? We don't have to decide right now if we want to fight or not, but if we don't tell her that we're going to help right now, we might not ever get another shot," Haymitch begins. "If we go with her, we can train and then decide if we want to stay back and plot or go out and fight. Hell, she can even tell us where she wants us so that the decision is not all on us. You're not alone in this, Jo. You never were, even if you may have thought it."
She looks at him then, a brief moment of eye contact. She gets up, walks over to their counter, and grabs the phone Annie left before walking back to her spot next to Haymitch.
And she hits the button to call Annie.
~where this highway takes me~
It smells of rocks and bricks and mud. It's just how Annie remembers from when she had visited before to keep an eye on her subject, the man she is now here to meet, in person this time. Walking through a dirty, old neighborhood near the edge of the district, Annie finds the house that she is looking for on the end of all the others.
The house, like most in the district, was made of bricks that were worn down, discolored, and mismatched. It's ordinary for the lower class in District 2. And the lower class in District 2 is treated better than the higher class in District 12. Annie is determined to change that.
Annie shakes her head at that thought, at how screwed up the world under the rule of President Snow is. She knows that if they do end up putting someone else in power, it won't eradicate every problem, but she knows that someone who's experienced everything first-hand will try his best to make everything as fair as possible. Someone like Paylor, if she hadn't been one of the unfortunate to be struck by disease during the journey from Thirteen.
She had just come from Johanna's and Haymitch's very early this morning, and now it's rather late in the night, almost midnight. As if Beetee can sense her thoughts, he sends her a message through her phone telling her that their subject is still awake, not that she expected him to be asleep. She wonders if he ever sleeps or if the nightmares of his dead best friend keep him awake. She understands that better than most.
Reaching the house she had her sights set on, she walks up and knocks on the door loudly. She hears a groan, the scrape of a chair against the floor, and the shuffling of feet towards the door.
When the door opens, Annie keeps the same stance as she had at Johanna's, leaning against the door with an expecting smirk on her face. The door opens, the man inside stares at her for a moment, no expression crossing his face, and then he tries to slam the door in her face. Annie, however, anticipates this action, and she puts her foot in the doorway before it can close all the way.
"You can't get rid of me that easily, Hawthorne," she says to him. "You of all people should know this."
Gale Hawthorne opens the door all the way again, and Annie pulls her foot from its path, Finnick's old sneakers rubbing on a few of her blisters with the action. He mimics her stance, and Annie has to tilt her head to look him in the eyes.
"Why are you here?" he asks brashly, eyes full of pain and pure anger.
"For oatmeal," Annie retorts with a quirk of her eyebrow. "Why the hell do you think?"
Annie walks past Gale and into his small house. She walks past the kitchen and couch into his study at the back of the house, right next to his bedroom. Before she can even open the door, Gale is behind her, stopping the door.
Annie turns around to look at Gale with a mock-innocent expression. "What?"
"Why the hell are you here?" Gale screeches out through gritted teeth.
Annie sighs, turns completely around, and leans against the closed study door. "I need to retrieve something of yours," she says simply before forcing the door open against Gale's intentions.
Like she had anticipated, he follows her in. Reaching his desk, Annie pulls the key out from under his chair and unlocks the bottom left drawer. She had watched him do this a lot while she was first nursing her son, Matthew. She knows what's in the drawer; they need it back at Base. Beetee would have come out and gotten it himself if he hadn't been so under the weather lately.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Gale screams as he sees what Annie is doing. "How did you know that was there?!"
Annie grabs the briefcase full of, what she knows to be, bomb drawings, from the Uprising. "How you underestimate me, Hawthorne."
When Gale left for the Capitol with Katniss and the rest of Squad 451, he had taken the drawings for the bomb mechanics. After he left for District 2, he had taken them with him again. Now that Annie and Beetee were on the brink of another Revolution, Beetee knew that he was going to need those.
Annie closes the drawer, locking it and returning the key to the chair, before walking past Gale and out the door. He makes a grab for the case, but she pulls it out of his reach and calmly walks out towards the front door.
"Wait a minute," he yells from behind her. "You're supposed to be dead."
Annie chuckles before turning around to face him. "Took you long enough to realize that little detail."
"I thought I was having another freaky dream," Gale says, defeated. "Usually Katniss or Prim show up, but I've had weirder visitors."
Annie gives him a small, pitiful smile. She knows he doesn't want pity, but sometimes people deserve pity. Besides, if she can convince him to return to Base with her, he won't be so defeated.
"Have a seat, Hawthorne. I'm going to spin you a tale."
As she and Gale sit down and she prepares to tell him the story of District 13, her phone rings.
Assuming that it's Beetee calling, she puts her finger up to Gale to signal that she'll be right back and walks into the hallway.
"Hello?" Annie asks, not bothering to look at the name that pops up. Beetee called it "caller identification," or something like that. Annie and Finnick never had that on their phone back in District 4.
"Mommy?"
Annie almost drops the phone. She was not expecting to hear her son's broken voice, clouded with tears.
"Hi, baby." Annie smiles with watery eyes. She would never admit it to anyone, but every time she hears or sees her son, her heart breaks a little. He's so much like Finnick, and Annie has been a single mother for three years, knowing that Finnick is dealing with a fate worse than death.
Matthew sniffles into the phone. "When you coming home, Mommy?"
"Aw, baby, I'll be back soon. I promise."
She doesn't like leaving him there at Base, but sometimes she has no choice. There are things that need to be done, and sometimes only she can do them. His second birthday is coming up, soon, and she hopes that she will be there with him and with Finnick.
Matthew was born on the last day of the 76th Annual Hunger Games, and now Panem has just begun the 78th Annual Hunger Games. Now, the Games do not last the same amount of time every year, but the general time span is two weeks.
The Games are a perfect time to break into the Capitol, too. Peacekeepers with be dispatched to the villages, Snow will be distracted, and Finnick will be practically unguarded. Peeta is a different situation, however. He will be mentoring tributes at the Training Center. With a lot of witnesses around.
"You bring Daddy home, too?" Matthew asks, bringing Annie back to the present.
"Almost, baby, almost. But I'll bring back other people. You remember those pictures of Aunt Johanna and Haymitch?"
Haymitch and Johanna called her that morning to let her know that they're in.
"Yeah," Matthew says quietly.
"They're going to come and stay with us. And then we're going to go and bring Daddy home, okay?"
Matthew sniffles again. "Okay. I miss you, Mommy."
Annie smiles a heartbroken smile. "I miss you, too."
"Matthew?" calls a voice from her son's end of the phone. Annie knows who it is. She takes care of Matthew when Annie is away. And she does a great job. "Come on, buddy. Let's go draw more pictures."
"Bye, Mommy," is all that Matthew says before the line goes dead.
Annie didn't realize it, but she ended up leaning against the wall of Gale's hallway.
"I'm going to come with you," Gale's voice says from behind, startling Annie.
She turns around to look at him, true confusion on her face. "What?"
"I may not know the entire story, but I've pieced together enough to know that you're going to need help. My help."
"You've got yourself a deal."
DISCLAIMER: Ya know, ya know. Props to whomever can figure out my "line breaks" song lyrics. They're not mine. I did use that song for a dance solo once, though. And who can find my Starkid reference?
