Sorry it's been a while. Real life got in the way a bit. And I also got a bit distracted by a few one-shots (Check them out sometime!).

But then I suddenly got really sleepy and had the inexplicable urge to update…

So here's Chapter X.

Chapter X – La Triste Esprit de la Mer

Despite the traffic that Annie could see through the ceiling-to-floor window on the right side of her bed, the only noise pervading the enormous room was her steady breathing and the low ticking of an analog clock on the wall. In the muted light of the room, she could make out that the smaller hand was hovering between the III and IV, which she could assume – by placement – meant that the time was somewhere between two and three in the morning.

In only a few hours, she would be standing on a circular plate, preparing to run for her life into an arena filled with children who had no reservations to kill. In only a few hours, she could be dead.

Staring at the ceiling of the room and wishing that there were cracks she could trace with her eyes like there were over her bed at home, Annie could do nothing but think. For all her promises of keeping morals and sacrificing herself if need be, she didn't want to die. The thought of her breath leaving her and her blood staining the earth was enough to make her heart stutter in her chest.

Annie Cresta just didn't want to kill and didn't want to die.

But there was no way of winning the Games and keeping her humanity. It was one or the other, and Annie didn't want to choose.

With a soft sigh, she rolled out of the bed and made her way into the hallway. The carpet seemed to bounce as she walked, and the plush fabric felt strange against her callused feet. A muted flickering of light played on the floor, casting a soft blue glow onto the red carpet. For a moment, her toes were buried in a rusty shade of purple before she stepped into the sitting room.

"Terrence," she hissed. His face was bathed in the light of the television screen. "What are you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep," he said, flicking his eyes away from the screen to flash her a brief smile. "You don't need to whisper or anything. We're the only ones on this floor. I think Eros is at some party or another, and Finnick and Mags suspiciously left the premises about an hour ago. They didn't really say where they were going… Hey look, Annie. It's you."

Annie watched herself take a seat beside Caesar Flickerman on the screen. This year, he was all yellow, closer in shade to dandelions than gold. Beside the garish shade of his hair and suit, Annie looked soft and pretty in a subtle shade of aquamarine. Her legs were crossed, causing the material of her dress to shimmer. It rode up to reveal a pair of sandals embroidered with pink and white shells. She was surprised to see how comfortable she looked, remembering the way her palms were sweating as she told the story of her name.

"You're pretty, Annie," Terrence whispered when the onscreen her had finished her story and began making her way off the stage.

Tearing her eyes away from the onscreen Terrence's confident entrance, Annie cocked her head at the real Terrence. "That wasn't the angle I was supposed to be playing."

He laughed, shook his head. "That isn't what I meant." His tone suggested that asking what he meant would only garner more cryptic words.

She turned back to the television and watched Terrence compliment himself in a way that sounded like he was complimenting everyone else.

And – as she leaned forward to scrutinize him more closely onscreen – his velvet duality made sense. She'd been looking at his arrogance and his selflessness as if they were two completely different and at-odds entities of himself. But – like velvet – they really were two parts of the same whole. The way he puffed himself up was a way to make other people feel more at ease. Where Annie made everyone else grit their teeth and wish that she would stop making them feel terrible, Terrence showed his own selflessness in a way that made people feel good. His cocky attitude served to show everyone that even those full of fault could be good people.

"I think I understand you," she said.

There was a flash in his eyes that Annie knew he would want her to ignore. "Well good." His voice was gruff. "I'm too great to go misunderstood."

"Yeah." Annie twisted her lips into a wry smile. "You are."

Terrence laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound. "I think we just had two successive moments. I'm glad to know you, Annie."

Two moments? "Me too."

"I don't want you to die." Turning the television off and plunging them into near-darkness, Terrence sounded serious, despite his next words. "You're too pretty. You need to find a way to win."

He knew what she had promised. Why was he asking her to win? "But –"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. You need to find a way to win without killing, then. I think you're smart enough to think of something. I mean, I think you blew a few people away with your interview, right? And that was just on the spot."

"That wasn't on the spot, Terrence," Annie admonished. "That was a story my father's told me since I was too small to walk."

Getting to his feet, Terrence stretched, his hands reaching high above his head and the bones in his back popping. "Then maybe think of something like it. I dunno. I'm going to bed now." He was already walking back to his room. "It's three in the morning or something, assuming I'm reading the Roman numerals right."

"Roman numerals?"

"Sure. On the clocks. Don't ask me what Roman is, but Eros said something about it earlier, and it sounds to me like the Capitol's pretty obsessed with it, whatever it is." Terrence was walking backwards down the hall now, his finger pointing directly at Annie through the dark. "You think of some winning-no-killing strategy, got it? If I'm not winning, I want you to, and that's not going to happen if you don't think of a way to have a good shot."

"You could win," Annie insisted, trying to sound as confident as he always did. She didn't want to see his face in the sky of the arena.

"Of course I could," he said. His tone – as it always was when he was being arrogant – implied that he was stating the obvious. "But you still need a plan. No one likes a martyr."

And with that, he had disappeared into his room, leaving Annie to sit in the dark across from the great reflective surface of the television screen. Her distorted reflection in the muted light made it look like an ethereal creature of the sea was staring at her, expectant. She was reminded of another story that her father had told her when she was little. Of a benign sea creature who…

"La Triste Esprit de la Mer," she whispered. She remembered the scales that were painted on her skin for the opening ceremonies and the delicate webbing that her stylist had made her hands into with the use of some plastic-rubber substance.

On autopilot, she crawled under her covers and fell into a surprisingly peaceful sleep. She would be a sea creature in the arena, and she didn't even need water to do it.

Even as she was flown in hovercraft the next morning to the industrial underground room that housed nothing but a table with her arena clothing and a metal plate that she knew led to her possible death, Annie felt peaceful. She hadn't felt this way since she was sitting in the Justice Building and waiting for her family to burst through the doors.

"See the material the boots are made out of, Annie?" Pompey – Annie's stylist – adjusted the loud straps on her boots, pulling them loose with a ripping sound and tightening them until they seemed to be suffocating her feet. His fingernails were far shorter than the claws Annie had seen on Eros Coastas' hands, each with a startlingly detailed painting brushed in vivid colors.

"Rubber," Annie declared. Back home in District Four, some of the more affluent boat owners and the Peacekeepers wore boots made of the same material, although none of them had the constricting straps that were on these.

The dark jacket that Pompey helped Annie slip onto her arms was made of the same rubbery material on the outside but was lined with soft cotton on the inside. "I'd expect rain," Pompey advised. "A lot of rain."

"A lot of rain," Annie echoed, pulling at the legs of her shorts. The boots completely covered her shins but left her knees uncomfortably exposed.

Without notice, Pompey clasped his hand around her wrist, his fingers long and tapered enough to circle completely around it. There was tenderness in the gesture that belied the suddenness. "Good luck," he said. In his hand was her token, a reassuring length of rope that reminded her of home. But when he clasped it on her wrist, his hands were too soft, not the tough texture of a fisherman's hand, coarse and callused from handling rope and scales. It made Annie feel hollow.

"Thanks," Annie whispered. She couldn't bring herself to raise her voice any further. "For everything. You made me a sea creature for the chariot ride."

"That I did."

"Have you ever heard of La Triste Esprit de la Mer?" Annie asked, already knowing he hadn't. "She's a sea creature in one of our legends in District Four, and I'm going to be her, in there." He could take that as he would. She didn't have the time to explain what that meant.

"I think I would enjoy hearing that story one day, huh?"

"Maybe I'll tell it." Stepping onto the metal plate, she tried not to flinch in surprise as a glass tube dropped around her. Immediately, she began rising up into the arena, darkness encroaching her vision. "Goodbye, Pompey."

"Goodbye, Annie Cresta of District Four."

Annie watched the shadows swallow up her bare knees, soaking down her shins and flowing over the rubber of her soles until – for a few brief, terrifying moments – she was ensconced in black. She closed her eyes and swallowed.

And then she felt light cut through her eyelids, a mild breeze rustling through her hair, carrying the smell of pollen. A bird called from somewhere close by, a hollow ring that was nothing like the squawk of the seagulls that settled on the masts of docked ships.

Annie opened her eyes. The countdown began.

Fifty-nine…

On her left was the girl from District Six. On her right was the boy from District Eight.

Fifty-eight…

The sky was overcast, the smell of rain and pollen making Annie almost smile. Pompey was right. There would be a lot of rain in these Games.

Fifty-seven…

Mountains loomed to her right, separated from the Cornucopia field by a slow-flowing river. The field stretched farther to her left, uninterrupted grass for a good thirty meters until the arena was consumed by low-lying trees.

Fifty-six…

Between the tributes and the Cornucopia was a ring of large rocks, each about two meters high and one meter across. They were different colors and textures. Annie could identify a few. The yellow was doubtlessly sulfur, the smoky purple amethyst.

Fifty-five…

Annie couldn't see the other tributes. The rocks were in the way…

Fifty-four…

The arena exploded.

And we're in the arena!

I've never written a cliff-hanger before, so I'm not sure if this actually is one or not…

Thoughts?