A/n: Thank you so, so much for the reviews! I updated as quickly as possible to show my thanks. I hope you enjoy this chapter! Let me know your thoughts :)
The sight of the hovercraft materializing above me startles me, and my grip on the tree loosens for a moment. I slide down into the water and I kick my good leg a few times to stay afloat while a ladder slowly lowers and what if I didn't grab it?
I'm staring at the metal rungs—gleaming bright underneath the sun—when a voice rings out from above me, below me, around me, everywhere. He's telling me that I have to grab onto the rungs, but doesn't he get it? I don't have to do anything. I'm in this arena that is now a giant sea and I can drown if I want to. It is my body and it's surprisingly breakable. I don't have to listen to anyone anymore. The Games will never be over, so just let me end them myself.
The moment I cease keeping myself afloat, the hovercraft veers closer to me, and I enter the force field of the ladder. It feels like a warm, tight hand around me and I can't swim away from it or move. The voice is back, telling me to grab onto the ladder and they'll pull me up, but I just stare at the shine of the metal. He continues, talking to me slowly and loudly as if I'm hearing deficient, explaining that I won the Games, I'm the victor.
In my head I'm screaming because I don't want to be the victor. I didn't choose this. I didn't want any of this. I didn't want the stupid costume I wore at the tribute parade and I didn't want to learn how to use a knife and I didn't want to swim in a lake that drained me of my blood and I didn't want to stitch up a girl's leg and I didn't want to see anyone murdered and I didn't want to murder anyone myself and I especially didn't want to win. Maybe in the beginning that would have been okay, but not now, not now, not now, not now.
Not.
Now.
Never after, only before. Before the darkness came and before the bad things happened and before I felt my heart and mind break and before I ended up like this, a few bloody pieces resting on the ground. Before when I was still Annie and when thinking of home made me smile, instead of cry until my entire body aches. Before when the world was beautiful and people were kind and my father still held my hand when we walked down the stone streets to the market.
I hear someone screaming my name, and my head swivels up. The sun is bright but I can make out Mags standing in the opening of the hovercraft. I suppose seeing her would have made me ordinarily very happy, but all I can feel now is a deep sorrow. I'm sorry, Mags. I'm sorry.
She motions for me to grab onto the ladder, and it isn't until I'm rising that I realize I've done it. Two doctors in white latch onto my arms the minute I'm in, and they don't even give me a chance to react to anything, or say anything, or do anything, or think anything, before they jab a needle into my arm and inject something cold that immediately makes my head swim.
They lift me up and I'm moving somewhere and I have no say in anything at all.
So this is what the rest of my life will be like.
I can't tell how long it has been or where I am or even who I am.
I regain consciousness on and off only to lose it the moment I gain enough mental clarity to take stock of my surroundings.
The only thing I can ever register is how cold it is. It's cold everywhere around me. The air, the bed or cot I must be lying in, my hands, my feet, my nose, everywhere. There are always voices around me when I wake, but either I show no signs of being awake, or they just don't care because no one addresses me at all.
It's quite fine, though. Unconsciousness is heavy and soft and warm and nothing. Nothing is quickly becoming my most beloved friend, my most steadfast ally. Nothing doesn't hurt and nothing doesn't force me to remember things I never wanted to see in the first place. Nothing is safe and nothing is real.
I don't trust it when suddenly nothing is gone. I don't even try to move or open my eyes, waiting for the moment when the black wave takes me under once more, but it never comes. Instead the steady beeps of what must be medical equipment and deep voices of strangers fill my mind. The sudden noise assaults me and my hands try to jerk up to cover my ears, but my arms are chained down to the bed.
This starts an entirely new round of hysteria. My eyes open and then immediately close, burning from the bright lights. I am certain I have never seen a room so bright. The blankets are rough against my body and I'm naked and so cold and why am I here why am I chained down where is Finnick where is Mags where are my clothes where is Annora where is Chiron where—
No I know where Chiron is, remember? Chiron's corpse is far under water back in the arena and his head is floating separately from his body and the entire water is red and there's Twine and he's bleeding out into the water too and blood is spurting rapidly from a hole in his chest that I caused and—
No I'm in District 4, remember? I'm sitting in front of the fire with Arnav and we're drawing pictures. I can see the flickering, orange light reflecting on his pale skin and the shine of his light brown hair. I can see the way the colored wax crayon colors the paper in his hands. But I can't feel anything but freezing cold, even though we're in front of the fire, and that's what tips me off that as much as I wish this was the right world, it can't be.
Strange, strangled sounds that terrify me fill the room. Who is being hurt? Who is crying like that? What are they doing to them? Are they going to do it to me?
It's me, though. It has to be because that's my voice and I can feel my throat aching from screaming and crying. I'm pulling against the restraints too, and it's tearing the skin on my wrists.
A sharp needle pricks me again.
I fall still.
Nothing again.
The next time I awake, I can't be certain of how much time has elapsed, but it feels almost exactly the same. I'm still naked under a coarse, thin blanket, and I'm still freezing, and I'm still chained to the bed. But when my eyes flicker open the lights are dimmer, and no one is talking, and I'm not pulling at the restraints.
Two doctors in white are standing on the other side of a large, empty room, both reading some sort of screen. I glance down at my body. I'm resting in a large bed and I've got tubes running in and out of me. I look down at my arm where Twine cut me, but I don't see anything at all. What are they doing to me? Why are they doing it to me?
The doctors turn around and seem surprised to meet my open eyes. I'm shaking violently due to the freezing temperature of the room and I try to ask them why it's so cold, but I can't open my mouth to say anything at all. I am crying again, though. I can taste the salt from my tears. That only makes me feel worse.
A doctor walks over and peers critically at me. He reaches forward and lifts my eyelid up more, shining a flashlight into my eye. The sudden movement and the sudden contact make me panic and all my muscles convulse as I try to jerk away from him. The other doctor steadies my face and I cry out and all I can think about is Twine's hand on my chin as he held my face forward and forced me to watch Chiron and are they doing that too? Is this just another part of the arena?
I'm in the middle of a panic attack and they are talking amongst themselves, checking my eyes and nose and ears and typing things into some small handheld computer. I can't breathe and why can't I just go home and if they are going to keep me here can't they just kill me why do they even need me I am not important I am nothing I am just a broken girl I don't even know what's real anymore—
And where is Finnick?
They set the tablet down and take their hands off me and I want to curl up into myself but I can't move. I'm still chained down.
The doctor on my right looks down at the tubes in my arms as he speaks.
"Do you know your name?" He asks me.
I stare at him. His hair is so red, red as blood, red as muscle. My name? Yes. I know my name.
He looks at me strangely and it takes me a moment to realize I haven't said anything out loud yet. I just stare at him, suddenly sure I can't say anything at all. My name is Annie Cresta but that is a lie. Officially I am her, I live in her body and her mind, but she is gone, and I miss her so much. I miss her hope and her light and I hate what I am now. I hate the broken fragments of myself with a passion so overwhelming I almost scream.
"Can you say anything at all?" The other doctor asks.
Maybe. I don't know.
Just go away.
I don't want to be here anymore.
I don't want to be her anymore.
I close my eyes and I'm back in my own world, the one painted with colors so bright they are blatantly fake, but I don't care. I live here. I walk on the shore and pick seashells out of the wet sand and make nets with Cora. I dance with Finnick on a dock and we do the wedding dance again but we aren't married but still the dance is right. The moon pulls the tide and it pulls me too and I swim all the way out into the middle of the sea, and Chiron and Sophia are there, and they're taking bets on who can swim out the furthest. I chicken out first and my dad picks me up in his boat and we go on a trip around the sea, just me and him. We spend our days and nights doing puzzles and fishing and drinking raspberry iced tea. Mags joins us when we dock and she gives me a blanket she knitted and it's so warm but I'm still cold.
White bleeds through this world and a few words too and then suddenly the entire thing has been shattered and my eyes are opening and Mags is right in front of me.
"Sweet girl," She whispers gently, and that is all she says, but it's enough. She slowly extends her hand and repeats that she isn't going to hurt me and then she slowly strokes my hair back. I'm dazed and confused, lying flat on my back, still cold under just the thin blanket and tethered to the bed. My mind is exhausted from the shifts in reality. When I'm in District 4 I know deep down it isn't real, but it doesn't matter. When I'm here I know it's real, and it tears me apart.
Mags doesn't say anything or ask me to say anything either, and I am glad, because I am certain I won't. I can't explain it but it's almost as if I speak, I'm solidifying this reality. Like if I speak or become an active participant in it, I'm accepting that it's the true reality and that it's the one I have to live in. If I only live in the one I created and I just lie here in this one, doesn't that mean mine is real? If I make myself unreal in this reality, I can be real in the false one.
Mags notices my shivering and demands the doctors place more blankets on me. They add two, but I am still cold, and then I am scared that I will never be warm again.
At least three days pass. I'm sure of it, because I drift in between my reality and this one frequently enough to catch the rotation of doctors. There must be a night shift and a day shift, because after what must be half a day, a different doctor comes and replaces the previous. I try to stay in my fake reality as long as I possibly can, but it gets harder and harder as people start to interact with me. The doctors pry at me and work on my body and ask me questions and tell me things. It is impossible to block them out.
One of the worst parts is the food I'm forced to eat. There are three small trays brought to me three times a day, and a Peacekeeper stands there until I eat at least half of it. He has a gun and a knife in his belt, and I can't take my eyes off it the entire time. It makes eating even more challenging, because the sight of the knife makes me so nauseated I throw up at least once a day during one of the meals. After the second time vomiting all over the floor, Mags orders a bucket in the room, and she stands beside my bed with it like a mother does for her sick child, just waiting to see if I'm going to vomit. And when I do, she holds my hair back just like my mother used to, and hums a song from District 4 children sing in the schoolyards.
All I want to know is where Finnick is. I try to ask Mags a few times, but I can't get the words out of my throat. They cling, terrified, and I'm too weak to try any harder than I already am.
Mags is there the morning they suddenly start pulling all the tubes and wires out of my body. I lie still and stare at the lit up ceiling, half of me convinced I am going to finally be killed and the other worried I'm going someplace even worse. My fears are not lessened as they help me into a sitting position and then into a wheelchair.
Mags keeps asking them what they are doing. I've got the room fully in focus now, and I'm blinking against the bright lights. I'm still freezing, but it's worse now, because I'm completely naked in this wheelchair as they wheel me out of the room I've been in for what must be at least a week. The wind smacks against me and it's awful and cold and I am so tired of being cold. Mags is following after us. I can hear her voice and I turn my head around to look at her truly for the first time. She looks even older than I last saw her, even though it can't have been that long since I did last. She looks furious.
"You can't do that!" She's screaming at the doctor pushing me.
He ignores her blatantly, and Mags words alarm me. What are they trying to do? Haven't they done enough? Isn't this all enough? Will they ever be satisfied? How much blood do they need puddled in their palms?
I'm pushed into another bright white room. This one has a giant bathtub in the middle. It's filled already with water that seems to have been overrun with pink bubbles. Mags is screaming at the top of her lungs as they pick me up again.
"You have no right to treat her this way!" She hollers. "You know what this will do to her! You may have been able to keep him away this long, but once I tell him about this he'll be here before the week is over! And you can deal with him then!"
Finnick.
I know she is talking about him and I am hit suddenly with a crippling desire to see him. I miss him. I miss him almost as much as I miss myself. The shock of feeling an actual emotion in this reality causes me to shut down and start to retreat back to the other one. It's not too late. I'm not too far into this one. I can still crawl back, I can still feel the cobbled streets against my bare feet, I can still watch the sun setting over the ocean, I can still—
My entire body stops as I'm placed into the tub.
Violent flashbacks overtake me almost immediately. I'm back in the blood-thining lake, weakly trying to push my way to the shore while my own blood slides down my throat. I'm lying in the sand, too sick to move my arm. I'm desperately trying to break the surface of the rolling body of water that used to be the arena, certain I'm going to drown. But more than anything, in every one of these situations, I'm watching Osmium hack at Chiron's spinal column with his blade, and his blood is splattering all over me, and I'm bathing in it. This isn't water—it's blood. It's Chiron's. They got it from the arena, they held his body over the tub and let all the blood leak out from the stump that used to be his neck. I will never wash myself of it. And now I'm being washed in it.
I'm screaming so loudly I have to stop to catch my breath. The doctors stick another needle into me, and I'm thankful, but then I realize this isn't the same Nothing Needle that they have been sticking into my arm. My entire body falls still and I am paralyzed, unable to move anything. My mind is still here but my body is completely out of my control. It's just like being in the lake, so weak I couldn't even stay afloat, only much worse because I'm completely and totally paralyzed.
Horror and anxiety are weaving throughout my entire body like long serpents. They wind their way tightly around my stomach and my heart and my lungs and my limbs and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. I can't even move my eyes. I am stuck staring forward at the wall, my body stuck under all this water that may or may not be blood, I have not decided yet. I can't look down at it anymore either, so I will never know.
"We are doing this to show you there is nothing to fear, Miss Cresta." One of the doctors says. "We are going to target your triggers and expose you to them until you are desensitized. We believe you are unable to function normally because you keep recalling traumatic visions as most things trigger the memories. In order to fix this, we are going to slowly dissociate the things that trigger you and the violent images."
His words mean nothing to me because he has no idea what he is talking about because I'm in a pool of Chiron's blood right now. How is that going to help me? How does this help me? How can it? They can't do anything to help me. They can't do anything at all. No one can. I am stuck paralyzed in my own mind forever, watching Chiron die and Twine lie and Mags sigh and myself cry. Die, lie, sigh, cry. Die, lie, sigh, cry. Die, lie, sigh, cry. The words replay over and over in my mind, blocking out the memories for a few moments, but it doesn't work for long.
The hour they leave me in the water is the most agonizing hour of my entire life.
I can't move or do anything and they keep talking to me, so I can't pull my mind completely out of this reality. I am stuck lying in the water, replaying every single thing I want to forget over and over again until the memories take on a life of their own and start playing out differently, having different outcomes. Osmium chases after me in the woods, Chiron's blood flying off him as he runs, his hands itching to bury the knife in my throat as well. Twine rises back from the dead and finds me inside the hollow of the tree and he holds me down and I can't do anything as he hurts me in every way he can imagine to do so.
Mags takes my hand the minute I'm back in the wheelchair. She shoves them away when they approach me with towels and dries me herself, looking worriedly at me. Whatever they entered into my bloodstream begins to wear off as she's drying my hair, but I make no move to move or say anything at all. I don't even cry, even though the weight and fear and horror inside of me is pressing down so hard on my chest that I am sure I am being crushed to death.
They put me back in the bed. They restrain my hands once more, but they don't need to. I don't fight or scream anymore. I don't do anything at all.
Mags keeps a grip on my hand.
"They won't do it again. We won't let them. You're a victor now, and we all protect each other."
I don't know who the "we" is in her statement, but I don't see anyone here with me besides her. This "we" isn't here and they haven't been here and I don't think they exist.
Mags leaves around the time the nighttime doctor arrives.
I'm back in District 4, but it never stops raining. The waters rise and rise and rise and houses are going to flood.
When Mags calls me back to the hospital room, I panic once again, because both my realities are turning into terrors. I don't stop shaking for at least an hour this time, and after Mags yells at them for a few minutes, the doctors sit me up and put a fluffy robe around me to try and keep me warm. It doesn't help much.
Another day, and then the next is here, but Mags isn't there. I've gotten used to her voice waking me gently every day. I've gotten used to her hand in mine as she helps me walk to the small bathroom and her soft voice as she talks to me about innocuous things. So when I'm woken by a shout instead, I'm momentarily petrified with fear.
My eyes adjust once more to the bright light of the room, and I scan my surroundings in panicked confusion. Someone is coming for me again, but why? What could I have done to deserve it this time?
The door to the room is opened for the first time. I can see two Peacekeepers standing in front of the open door, their backs tense and hands on their guns. I'm frantically trying to understand why two Peacekeepers are needed to keep me in my room when the screaming starts again.
"She's not well! I'm her mentor—don't you dare try to tell me what the hell I can and cannot do when it concerns her! I want to see her right now!"
Finnick's voice shoots through me like a warm shock. I rise into a sitting position without even realizing it.
"We have orders from Snow, Mr. Odair. You know that. You're to stay away from her for your own protection. She's mentally unstable."
The words have my mouth hanging open in confusion. Protection? I would never hurt Finnick. I could never hurt any—
No, that's not true either, is it? I killed Twine. I am revolted then, sure that they are keeping him from me because they understand what I know, that he's precious, and that he can't be risked by being around someone as malicious as me.
"Keep your fake excuses! We both know that isn't why and I no longer care about the real reason! You can tell Snow to stick our most recent "agreement"; he has nothing left to hold over me now. If he wanted me to keep my side of it, he should have kept his." Finnick snaps.
I catch a glimpse of bronze as he moves to walk in the doorway, but he's blocked again.
"Judging by your insistent need to get into this room, I would beg to differ." The other Peacekeeper says darkly.
Finnick stops then. I'm sitting up straighter than I have since I have been in this room. My hands are in tight fists and I want to yell at them to let Finnick in, but I can't talk, I haven't yet, and maybe I never will again. I'll be just like Chiron: mouth wide open, pain ringing throughout my entire body, my voice stolen from me forever.
"She's protected just as I am. Let me tell you something right now, and I am only going to say it once, so listen very carefully: there is a side to me that only twenty-three other people have seen. Consequently, they're dead. If you or Snow lay a harmful finger on that girl, I swear on my life I will make you regret it. Got it? Now get out of my way."
Finnick's voice is so harsh and furious that it terrifies me and brings me back to the arena. But the minute his eyes lock on mine and he's walking towards me, I'm rooted more securely in this reality than I ever have been before.
He's moving quickly to my bedside.
"Mr. Odair—" A doctor starts, edging towards him.
"Shut up." He acknowledges him.
He stands beside the bed, his eyes still locked on mine, and I have never seen a color so beautiful in my entire life. I am crying almost immediately, because that green is the first real color I have seen since the arena. Everything has been dark and dirty and tinged and I was certain I would never see anything beautiful ever again and I was so certain that nothing beautiful existed anymore and that the entire world was dark and blood stained and terrifying cold, but then here's Finnick and he is beautiful and he is smiling and his eyes are so warm and his lips are pink and his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are so green and his hair is bright and shining and he's the most vivid thing I have seen yet.
I see one of the doctors stand on the other side of the bed from the corner of my eye, but I don't care.
"This is the most reaction we've gotten out of her the entire time she's been here." He says, his voice a bit startled.
Finnick's eyes are wide and clear and so pained that I start to cry even more. He slowly extends his hand and lets me watch it make its way over to me, so I know what's coming. He sets it on top of my head and it's the warmest thing I've felt. His hand slides down and his hand cups my cheek and his thumb strokes back and forth softly.
"I'm so cold, Finnick." I say suddenly. My voice sounds odd to me. It's high and rough and cracked and tight, like it's been left out in the sun too long. I'm just relieved I have a voice still. That relief fades to a panic a few moments later, as I realize I have probably sealed myself out of my alternate reality forever. But maybe that isn't too bad. That reality was flooding, and this one has Finnick, and there are colors now, and my face is warm.
Finnick smiles sadly. "Well, that won't do, will it?" He turns around and looks at the other doctor standing near the door. "Get Annie more blankets, she's cold."
I'm startled to hear my name. I'm stunned because it still feels wrong, but for the first time I feel like maybe I am Annie after all. Damaged and deranged, but still Annie Cresta deep down inside of me. Something about Finnick's voice and the way his voice held my name brings back that sense of belonging, and I am drowned with a feeling of gratitude for that. If he can look at me and still say I'm Annie, I must be. He knows what he's talking about. He always does.
The doctor shakes his head. "She has plenty. Her body temperature is fine. She's just mad."
Mad.
Mad?
Is that what I am?
Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.
It tastes so very sad.
I am mad.
Something inside of Finnick visibly comes apart. His head snaps around and he stares evenly at the doctor, his eyes narrowed and his teeth clenched. Fury is radiating off him in waves, and I'm leaning back away from him, because it is all too much. Too much anger, too much emotion, too much thereness. I want to put my hands over my ears to block it all out, but I'm still restrained.
"I don't care what her body temperature is! She's cold, so you need to be doing everything in your power to make her warm! I won't have her here where you write off all her concerns as her being "mad". She's not insane. She's suffering. And you're not doing a damn thing to help."
The doctor scoffs. "If you think you're so much more qualified, then have at it."
He leaves the room without another word, slamming the door behind him. The second follows, shooting an angry look at Finnick.
Finnick turns back around and he softens again. I fall back into a feeling of ease. He searches the room for extra blankets, but he can't find any, and I try to stop shivering because I can tell it upsets him that he can't help, but I am so cold. I am always so cold.
He finally walks back to the bed and carefully unlatches the restraints. I immediately raise my arms, the muscles crying out in protest from being moved from their almost static position.
"Thank you." I whisper. Talking still feels strange. Everything feels strange. The world isn't the right colors or the right textures or the right light. Nothing is the same.
Finnick lifts the blankets and slides underneath them, right beside me. He stays a modest distance away and asks if it's okay to move closer, and I nod, and then he has his arms tightly around my body and I am warm for once. I press my face against his chest and his button down shirt smells just like him and it hasn't changed even though everything else has. His arms hold me so tightly and securely that I feel certain that no one is going to come grab me and no one is going to make me watch anything like what I've seen ever again.
He rests his face on top of my head and presses a kiss there. Warmth spreads throughout me again and for the first time I not only feel like I am Annie Cresta, but that there is a point to living again. There is a point because people care about me. That is the point, that has always been the point. It was easy to lose sight of that when I was alone, drifting in and out of realities, reliving each trauma over and over again in my mind.
A sudden memory of Kaya's panicked expression overwhelms me and it's then that I remember the doctor's words. Mad. Maybe there isn't a point after all. Who would ever love a mad girl?
"Warmer?" Finnick asks me.
I nod against his chest, my arms moving of their own accord and winding around him as well. It feels good to have something to hold onto, something other than a false reality that is quickly falling to shit just as quickly as the real one did. It feels good to hold someone who is holding me too.
We stay this way for a while. I doze off for a few minutes, but each time I wake up, he's still there and I'm still warm and I'm not shaking and I can still see colors and the pain inside my heart isn't so bad.
The flashbacks still come, though. They're less frequent when I'm with Finnick, but they still arrive, sometimes out of nowhere, and sometimes from triggers I didn't even know existed. They make my entire body ache and I find myself crying again.
Finnick tightens his arms around me, holding me as tightly to him as he can, as if he knows that right now I feel like I have something heavy and dark inside of me that needs to be pressed out.
"I can't forget it." I whisper to him.
"You never will completely, but I promise it will fade in time. Even the worst memories lose their details eventually." He replies.
But I'm not the same, I'm mad, my brain is a sticky web that has trapped every single bad thing and it keeps replaying it over and over again like a tape. My entire mind is a black hole that I can't seem to escape. I fall prey to both the flashbacks in this reality and the appeal of the reality I made up in my head. I can't clear the muck in front of my mind. Nothing is clear. The clearest it has been has been with Finnick here, but what happens when he goes? I go back to living in a hazy, mad world, rocking back and forth between worlds like a boat stuck in turbulent waves.
It's like another world in itself to be here, my eyes closed and my face against Finnick's chest and his arms tightly around me. But it's not like any of the other worlds, because this one is real, and this one is warm, and this one makes sense. It's safe and it's okay to be glad I'm in it.
"I killed him." I murmur.
He reaches a hand up and runs it through my hair soothingly.
"You were defending yourself and trying to save someone. It is not your fault at all, not even in the slightest. Don't let your mind trick yourself into thinking that it was." He says kindly.
I can't stop crying, though. I wonder if I ever have stopped crying. Maybe I have been crying for weeks nonstop. I don't think it would surprise me.
"Am I mad, Finn?" I gasp out, my voice strained and laced with the fright and distress I wish I could hide, but I know I can't. Every broken fragment inside of me all joins together in an effort to ask this one question, to get this one answer: am I ruined beyond repair? Have I been damaged so far I will never return? It is something I have to know, and I don't trust anyone but Finnick to give me the answer.
Finnick gently pulls back so he can meet my eyes. He stares seriously at me, his jaw working again like it did that day we said our goodbyes.
"Promise me you'll listen to me and believe what I'm about to say, Annie, because it is very important." He says.
I nod, my eyes still locked on his.
His eyes search mine and he plays with the tips of my hair behind my back as he tries to find the words.
"People are going to say things. They are going to say that you are mad, that you're out of your mind. They're going to treat you just like those doctors do. But it doesn't matter, okay? Because you aren't crazy, and you aren't mad. You are Annie and you have been pushed to the furthest limits of what people should have to handle, and you are still here. That makes you strong. Not mad, not crazy, but strong." His voice is steady and sure and I could fall into it I am sure. I could fall into it as easily as I fell into the lake or got swept underneath the current of the flood.
"I feel mad, though." I finally answer, my throat aching and my eyes burning and more tears searing their way down my cheeks. He reaches up and brushes them away.
"You have a beautiful and extraordinary mind, and it is doing whatever it has to do to handle what it has had to endure and see. You're still you. You're just unwell right now. Maybe you will feel more like you did before the arena later, and maybe you won't. Either way, it's fine. The arena changes us all. Just because you are different than everyone else doesn't mean you're mad. Frankly, I believe everyone else is mad." He pushes my hair that's sticking to my wet cheeks back. "You don't want to be like them, Ann. I wouldn't want you to be like them either."
In the end, it's his acceptance that makes me feel better. Maybe I am insane, maybe I have lost it, but if Finnick still cares about me, I have to hope that everyone else I care about still does too.
I slip easily into my made up reality, warm and feeling almost not scared for the first time since I entered the arena, and things are better there. Finnick's holding me there too, but instead of being in the Capitol, we're having a picnic on the beach.
He pulls me back with just a brief touch of his hand and I'm looking up into his eyes.
"They're still going to make you have the final interview with Caesar. I tried my hardest to get it cancelled, but it has never happened before and, in Snow's words, it never will. Do you think you can do it?"
Final interview. What's that again? My mind struggles to grasp memories from last year's Games, and when I remember, I'm feeling sick once more.
"The Replay." I say. I'm gasping again for air. "Finnick, I can't—I don't know if I can handle—"
I fall silent, my mind overcome with previews of all the things I am going to have to see again. I already have to relive them every day in my mind, why do I have to see it all again for real?
I come back to it and finish my statement a few minutes later.
"Handle it. I don't think I can." I finish.
He presses his face in my hair and stays silent for a moment. I feel myself slowly start to relax, the thoughts of the final interview slowly starting to leave my mind. Maybe that isn't real. Maybe this world isn't real. Maybe the only world that is really real is the one I'm in right this moment with Finnick. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I'm not sure of anything anymore.
"It will be awful, and difficult, but I know you can do it. They're going to make you do it very soon now, because they've already postponed it for two weeks, and the Capitol is getting antsy." His breath is warm against the crown of my head and I try not to focus on anything but that. Warmth. "I'll be there just like I was at the last one, though. And you can shut your eyes if you need to. I'm going to talk to Caesar Flickerman tomorrow and we'll work out a way to make it as easy as possible. Okay?"
I feel my head nodding, agreeing to something I didn't even want to agree to at all. I don't want to do a lot of things I have to do, though. I never get to choose. Like I don't get to choose what they do to me here.
"It's so warm. Don't let them give me that shot again." I plead. A few seconds after the words leave me, I'm concerned that he won't get what I'm saying, that I've done that thing again that I did that week with Chiron where I jumped topics in my own head and world and forgot to remember that I have to bridge the gaps between the two for everyone else. But Finnick doesn't seem to need the gaps bridged. He does it on his own.
"I'm glad. We'll get you out of here soon, so hopefully you can be warm all the time. And I won't, I promise. Mags told me about what they did. It won't happen again."
A sudden thought invades my mind quickly and solidly.
"But it will. The prep team will make me." I realize. Panic takes over once more as I imagine being put back into a tub like the one they put me in before. My heart is racing so quickly I am sure Finnick can feel it. He must, because he rubs my back and quickly starts to refute this belief.
"They won't. I have an idea." He says. He sits up and it's cold again without him. I watch him climb out of the bed, trying to understand why just that sight breaks my heart and makes my eyes burn because why would it? Why, after all I've seen, would Finnick Odair leaving my side make me want to break down and cry. Perhaps it's just that I have seen too much—I can't handle anything anymore, not even something as small as this. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But then he's on the other side of the bed and he's grabbing my hands and helping me up and onto the floor. He walks patiently with me even though I still walk a lot slower than normal from all those days lying in the bed. I stop walking when I realize he's leading me to the bathroom, and the feelings of betrayal and fear that take over me are blinding.
"No!" I immediately shriek.
It doesn't work. It doesn't matter how many times I'm forced into the water, it's never going to get any better, I'm just going to die and burn and ache and break and I can't do it again I can't I can't I can't and I won't he can't make me no one can make me and why would he do this he is my friend why would he why would he be the one to do this I thought he understood I—
Finnick's hands are cupping my face once more, and he's looking in my eyes.
"Annie, I will never treat you the way they are treating you. I just want to show you something. Trust me again."
The green sea of his eyes pulls me back under the current again and I can do nothing but ride under it, nodding my head.
He walks me into the small bathroom and then lets go of my hand as he walks over to the shower. He presses a few buttons and turns a few dials and then a soft burst of water comes through the spout. He turns around and holds out his hand. I shakily walk over to him, grabbing his hand but keeping my body away from the shower. He sets a hand on my back and then takes my hand in his hand and moves it under the spray.
My body jerks away from it immediately, but he gently guides my hand back, and the warmth of his hand on my back and his hand around mine keeps the panic building in the pit of my stomach from boiling over.
"What does it feel like?" He asks me.
I close my eyes and try to forget the arena, the Capitol, the bathtub and the paralyzing shot. Rain. It feels like rain, like walking down the wet cobbled streets barefoot, the rain sliding down the back of my shirt and soaking my hair.
"Rain." I say.
He lets go of my hand slowly, and I keep it in the spray, because rain is okay, rain is safe, rain is District 4, rain is home.
"It never rained in the arena, remember? Not once." He continues carefully.
I nod, moving my hand around under the spray and letting the soft, warm pressure caress my skin.
"It didn't." I agree.
He moves my hair out of my face and I can feel his eyes on me. I can't look away from the spray of the water, because it's so strange to see rain here, inside a bathroom in the Capitol, when it's supposed to be back in 4. Just like Finnick and I, it should be back in 4, not here.
"It's just like the rain back home." He finally says.
And then I must be crying again, because my back is shaking and my face is wet but I haven't put it under the spray at all. He turns the water off and dries my arm with one of the thick, Capitol towels and hugs me tightly.
"I want to go home." I choke out.
He keeps a steady grip on me, and it's all keeping me from dissolving into thousands of tiny pieces.
"You will. I promise."
I'm inclined to believe him, because everything he has promised has come true. He promised he'd be there for me in the arena, and he always was. He promised I'd come home, and I did. So there is no reason that this promise would be anything but the truth. There is no reason to believe that there is any reason to not trust Finnick. There are plenty of reasons to believe that I can't trust anyone but him, though.
He helps me back into the bed and I'm thinking that I might ask him to stay when he climbs in before I even have to ask. I stop crying when his arms are back around me, and it's warm, and my head feels like it's in order for once.
I'm half asleep when I hear someone enter the room.
"Be quiet. She's asleep." Finnick hisses. He's got hatred laced in his voice, and it makes me sure I want whoever is here to leave.
The door shuts, heavy footfalls near us, I smell something strong—like metal and some sort of flora. It's upsetting and makes my head swim even more than it already is.
"I was most surprised when my Peacekeepers told me you were here."
I stiffen a bit in Finnick's arms, suddenly completely awake, because President Snow is in my room and I don't know why and I don't want him near me. Something in the way Finnick very slowly and carefully unwinds his arms from around me and pushes my hair back tells me that I should keep pretending to be asleep. He sits up and I feel so exposed now, without him beside me and Snow somewhere very near me.
"Well, I was surprised when I heard what your Captiol doctors did to her, too." Finnick says.
He talks to President Snow in a way I have never heard anyone talk to him before, or imagined anyone would. It's not even like they're enemies—it's more like they are two people who used to be friends, but one of them betrayed the other and now there's a palpable sense of dislike and disrespect between the two, but one still holds something over the others head.
"I promised she wouldn't be harmed, and she wasn't. They were trying a very common procedure for curing insanity." Snow replies calmly and slowly.
I want to scream for him to leave, because I don't like the way he talks to Finnick, like Finnick's a nuisance, like he's something to be controlled and used, like he's not a real person. He talks to Finnick almost like the doctors talk to me.
"She's not insane, and it was traumatizing." Finnick replies shortly. He climbs out of my bed and I can hear his footsteps walking slowly away from the bed.
There's the sound of a chair being pulled out, and Snow exhales in relief when he presumably sits. I can hear Finnick stop walking. I know he wants Snow out of here, and I know because of that, Snow isn't going anywhere.
Finnick walks again, and I'm guessing he's walking towards where Snow is sitting now.
"So you're done with our most recent agreement?" Snow asks. His voice is light but holds so many dark implications that I am terrified even though I don't know what I'm scared of. I don't even understand this conversation at all. I wish I were asleep, because all it's doing is confusing me even more. I don't need this when half the time I'm not even sure of which reality is completely real and which is fake.
"Yes." Finnick answers.
Snow sighs and I hear the chair slide and his knees crack as stands back up.
"There will be consequences, you know." Snow warns him.
Finnick's voice is tight and furious when he replies. "I'm not giving up on our longest agreement, Snow. I'm just not agreeing to your most recent demands. This refusal won't affect our first agreement anymore."
He has so many agreements with a man so horrible and so evil. Why do you make deals with the Devil? Why? Why would you?
"Oh, but won't it?" Snow asks. He doesn't give Finnick a chance to reply. "We'll see what happens in due time, I suppose. Just remember your duties and remember what happens if you neglect them again."
Snow's footsteps are sharp and heavy as he walks away from me and towards the door. I don't hear Finnick move, so I think maybe he might stay after all, and that makes me feel less frightened.
Snow's footsteps pause near the door.
"But you know, maybe you're right. Maybe she's not insane. And in that case, there are some agreements I could make with Miss Cresta as well, don't you think? She quite beautiful in her own way."
I don't know what he's saying but he should stop because I'm not making agreements with anyone, especially not him. I don't agree to anything anymore.
The words mean something to Finnick though, because he makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds almost like a snarl.
"You stay away from her. Her and Mags are the only reason I'm keeping up our first agreement in the first place. Don't forget that." Finnick retorts. His voice is strong, but something sounds frightened underneath his anger. And that is petrifying. What does he mean? What about Mags and I? What is his agreement? I want to be asleep. Why am I not asleep?
"And you don't forget who is in control, Finnick Odair." Snow declares.
The door shuts and Finnick seems to let out a breath he's been holding
And
I
Understand.
You make a deal with the Devil because the Devil is in control of everything. You make a deal with the Devil to keep him away from you and your friends. You make a deal with the Devil when it's the last thing you can do, the only thing you can do. And it sounds like Finnick's had to make a lot of them. I remember what he said about fame and being a victor, and I remember how I used to think victors were the most free, and I remember the way I've been treated since coming out of the arena, and I remember Snow's tone of voice.
So this is what life as victor is going to be like.