A/N: Whew...been a long hiatus on this one. I tried to constrain myself to a bi-weekly posting basis, but (obviously) that flopped.

My big thing with this fic is I want the chapters to feel finished - this story is two years in the making, so I want to hit it with everything I got! So I think for the remainder of it, I'm going to have to bounce around on a sporadic update basis.

Anyway, thank you for all the support and hope you enjoy this chapter!

-Em


C︎HAPTER TEN


Izzie instructed that they sleep in the main room across from the kitchen, and neither saw reason to oppose.

If anything, it was one of the more empty rooms in the cabin – not covered by clutter and collected pairs of items stuffed in corners, and dried plants hanging from ceilings. Anneyce was grateful to be sleeping with some sort of roof over her head, and she was sure Finnick felt the same: as soon as he dropped into the blanket pile that Izzie had laid out for them, the impact of the day caught up to him, knocking him out.

It was a sweet kind of relief for Anneyce to watch him fall asleep so easily, and she simply sat up to watch his chest rise and fall rhythmically for a few moments.

Though her body ached and the need to sleep sat on her chest, she rose to her feet anyway.

Izzie had not returned. She had slipped through the room's doorway to a side room after making them their bed, under the guise that she would be back. But that had been hours ago, and Anneyce had questions.

Questions she wanted to ask without an audience: just her and the clairvoyant.

The house whispers under her feet as she works her way through the maze of rooms. Though it looked rather compact from the outside, the inside of Izzie's home was dotted with rooms that felt like they spanned for yards upon yards. It was like someone pieced together the cottage with layouts of other homes, stitching them together to join awkward rooms and weirdly misplaced hallways.

When she came to conclusion that Izzie was not in the house, she navigated her way to out the front door. Strands of moonlight winding through breaks in the large trees that seems to engulf the swampy forest, and Anneyce squints through the dark, her eyes trying to adjust. The only light comes from a vague, hazy glow of the mushrooms that dot the yard like mist.

It wasn't hard to find Izzie – she was sitting against the ropey trunk of the beech tree, her legs crossed and her arms tipped upon on the side of her knees. It's a startling sight: with the fungi sprawling across her skin and the stillness of her limbs in the moonlight, she looked like a corpse. If not for the slow, rhythmic moving of her chest, Anneyce would be convinced she was a corpse.

She approaches slowly, unsure if she should interrupt. She had a faint idea of what she wanted to ask, but she wasn't sure how to get there, or how to fumble through the knotted mess in her chest. She wasn't sure she wanted half of the answers she was seeking – what would it mean to know them?

"I've been looking around for you." Anneyce says in lieu of a greeting. She's not sure if Izzie noticed her approach, and besides she figured it'd be rude to start grilling her out of nowhere. "I hope we haven't kicked you out of your home."

Izzie's eyes remain closed, but she cracks the smallest of smiles.

"There are those," the clairvoyant says, "who think that if you sit as still as the trees, you will become one."

So that's what she's doing out here. It's a strange mindset, but Anneyce would be lying if she didn't understand the lure of it. There had been a time when she was really little that she liked to lay in the grass and look up at the sky. If she lay there long enough, watching the thick clouds breeze by and the leaves straining from the tops of the trees, she could swear she started to feel like one of the birds.

"My mother visited you." She says, because it felt like the safest way to start.

"As did you." Izzie responds easily, her eyes opening slowly as if she were waking from a deep sleep. She stays in place, though, hardly moving an inch. Anneyce wonders idly how long she'd have to stay there to become a tree. "Like mother, like daughter, I suppose."

"Can I ask you what was she here for?" Anneyce asks, and she hates how speaking the question aloud ignites a heavy drumming in her chest.

Why wouldn't she have told me?

"She sought the same answers you seek." Izzie clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth, eyes widening now, like her own words surprise her. "You're a continuation of her bookended work."

Anneyce frowns. All the cryptic speaking was giving her a headache, but patience was her virtue, so she took to sitting down across from the clairvoyant to level a decent conversation. The ground is cool, almost wet, under her skin and it sends a shiver up her back.

"And what work is that?" Anneyce asks.

Instead of answering, Izzie levels her a steady gaze. Anneyce isn't sure what she's looking for. She wiggles uncomfortably under her stare.

Finally, Izzie responds to the question, "I cannot tell you too much, simply because there is a reason she never told you herself."

The response sits like a rock in her stomach, and a rush of frustration hits her temple. She's not upset with Izzie, but just the situation in general. If anything, it's more proof of secrecy that she didn't even know her mother had.

"All I can say is that there is a strong reason for her secrecy." Izzie pauses, thinking, and then adds. "And that you are closer than you were before to finding out why."

"Is it something I even want to know?" Anneyce asks before she can help herself. "Does it affect anything we do from here on out?"

"Yes, no, maybe." Izzie shrugs. "Time and destiny are both fickle and strong. But I will say, the path you are on leads narrow for quite some time here on out. You've already encountered a strong crosshair."

Anneyce tries to figure what the crosshair might have been; she has an inkling that Izzie won't tell her if she asks. Was it coming here in the first place? Running from the Colony, taking Finnick with her? All of it combined?

It makes her head spin trying to pinpoint all of it. She tries to see it from the outside, but it's all a map with confusing lines. The only thing she's certain of is they never felt like deliberate choices. Of course she was going to save Finnick. Of course.

So where had been the diverge in the road? How did it cross with this one? At what point did it begin to matter?

"I don't know how you can do this." Anneyce blurts, "Picturing my own destiny gives me a headache. How can you stomach doing it for other people?"

"The secret is to understand nothing is linear." Izzie explains, "And nothing is really set in stone. What I tell you today could be false tomorrow. Of course, that's just the iceberg of it all."

Anneyce can't decide if that last part is assuring or just incredibly frustrating. Maybe both.

They were quiet for a period of time, Izzie's eyes wide and watching, her body so still while Anneyce seeps in it all. Somewhere, in a throng of grass to the left of her knee, a cricket trills one sharp song at a time.

"Is that all you've come out here to ask of me?" Izzie asks, but it's not unkind. She asks it softly, as if probing for more from Anneyce.

"I suppose." Anneyce sighs. "I'm sorry about coming out here to bother you. I guess I was just floored you met with my mother." And then, a detail of what Izzie had mentioned earlier reoccurs. "How did you know I was the daughter of the Singer?"

"It's the expression you wear." Izzie relents, face softening in the moonlight. She pushes her legs out straight in front of her, rolling even further back against the bark of the tree supporting her upright. "You share the same odd, darkened features of your sisters, but one never forgets the mechanics of a face."

Anneyce ruminates in that for a while, feeling warm and sad. She hadn't thought of her mother's physical features for a long, long time. There was a while where even thinking about her hurt - much less what appearance she held and how that related to the features on Anneyce's own face.

It still hurts, but now it's also a small comfort.

"It's also in the soul." Izzie adds. "She was softhearted – it radiated off her in waves. Much like you do, right now." She shakes her head. "Things like that can't be learned or adapted. It's a passing of her genes. You share her spirit."

Anneyce's conflicted feelings regarding her mother's secrecy melts a little at the clairvoyant's words, which is a bit of a relief she didn't realize she needed. Up until this point, she'd felt unsteady, like she never really knew her mother at all, but seeing someone besides herself pick up on the softness of her mother was another comfort. That it wasn't another allusion that grief put in place.

As if Izzie could tell her words hit a positive nerve, she steadies her gaze on the nymph girl and adds, "Your mother was a kind soul. Always the soft spot for human men." She continues, smiling cheekily, "Never saw the appeal, myself. They are more havoc than they were worth."

Anneyce's heart skips a beat.

"What do you mean?"

"Humans were frivolous," Izzie shrugs, seemingly bored. "One may even say stupid, but personally I think that's a rude generalization for a species not from this world."

"No, not that. The part about my mother."

Izzie smirks, "I figured that's what you meant. But I think you already know the answer to that question, Anneyce."

Anneyce thinks for a moment. Conversations between herself and her mother about Anneyce's father come flooding in. From the soft way she would talk about him to the sparkle that danced in her eyes - Anneyce had never heard another nymph speak about human men the way her mother had. Sure, the nymphs who'd lived through the previous rituals would hark on the men's physical beauty, but there was always a touch of something more to the way her mother would speak about him.

Anneyce had just been under the impression that to speak about the humans that way was a private thing, and her mother had always seemed to back that mentality up.

"You cannot repeat what I tell you, Anneyce, because it is something meant for your ears only." She'd whisper to her, huddled up together in the tiny cabin, Anneyce's eyes sparkling with her mother's tales of her father.

Anneyce figured it was a family jewel – to know about her father's heart was a personal gift shared between herself and her mother only. She figured every nymph daughter knew such intimate, human parts about their fathers, so there was no need to speak on it. But now she's not so sure that's right.

Did her parent's relationship span beyond what was expected of them?

Were they in love?

She shakes her head, the thought too heavy to carry on her shoulders. She had never heard of such a thing. Sure, the nymphs loved the human – but more so in a way that they loved the flowers, the food they grew, the brooks they bathed in. It was a love borne from necessity, from use.

It was never meant to be reciprocal.

"I'm not sure what you mean." Anneyce says slowly. And then, quieter, "Did she come to you because of my father?"

"He was tangled in the web of reasons." Izzie answers. "But yes, she did."

"Why?"

Instead of answering, Izzie offers a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. It's a sad, almost pitying look and for some reason, it shocks Anneyce more coldly than anything else she had learned tonight.

"You already know the answer to that, too, Singer's daughter."

"It has to do with the ritual, doesn't it?" Anneyce says, her voice growing quiet. She wants to shout, to yell. But somewhere, something deep inside her puts a stop to the emotion of it – she caps off, going soft and exhausted. "There's more to what we know, isn't there? There's another way to fix the Colony?"

"You had asked me to show you the answers to three questions." Izzie responds. "One of them was the wish to know who to trust."

It takes Anneyce a moment to understand she's talking about the reading she did earlier with Finnick. Her questions seem less weighted, now as she recalls them, compared to everything else swimming in her head. Humans, and her mother, and love.

"I did." Anneyce says, voice weary. "I also asked how to save my people, and save Finnick."

"You should know," Izzie responds, voice a murmur against the soft night, "that those are all the same question."


︎Finnick rouses to a shifting in the makeshift bed they had crafted like a nest on the floor. In retrospect, such a small jostle (in what is essentially one or two layers of blanket on a hardwood floor) shouldn't have sent a shock wave big enough to rip him from sleep, but after spending the last few days on the forest floor, the simplest of bedding made him hyperaware of the smallest shift – like the princess and the pea. He stretches, rolling to his side and pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"Sorry. It's just me, go back to sleep."

There's a hint of an odd tenor in Annie's voice that only causes him to rouse more, and he shifts to his elbow to watch her in the dark. Her lips are drawn in a tight line, and she doesn't notice his watching, probably expecting him to have already fallen back asleep. And he probably would have, without questioning her absence and return that woke him up to begin with, if not for the smallest warble in her voice catching his attention.

"Were you always here?" He asks and she looks at him, her expression saying she's very obviously pre-occupied with something in her mind.

"No, I'm actually one of Izzie's ravens."

He's a bit too drowsy to pick up on her sarcasm at first, but eventually he catches on she's joking and lets out a surprised laugh.

"I went out to talk to her," she tacks on, her tone hesitant. And then she adds. "About my mother."

"Ah." He responds, suddenly nervous. Though she never spoke much about her mother until now, Finnick had the feeling it was heavy territory. He had no idea how to proceed. He was never good with hard topics – his default was usually humor or flirtation of some sort, but he feels the occasion warrants more than that. Thankfully, however, Anneyce changes the topic before he has to say anything.

"Finnick, can I ask you a question?" Her voice is still low, but in the way that the dark coaxes a person to tread carefully with their words. "About the Colony?"

Now he really sits up, not entirely sure where this was coming from.

"What?" He asks as she sits up beside him, her expression calculating.

"Do you really believe that the Queen is…keeping something from us?" Her eyes are serious and conflicted as she stares at him, waiting for what he has to say.

The way she asked is so painfully sad. It's a heart wrenching kind of question, and it almost makes him wish he took back his harsh words from the other day. That he chose them more carefully. From his time spent with Annie, he knows that obviously she never instigated any of this – she was just part of a system so ingrained into stone that it was unthinkable to see things any other way.

But he knows she's also looking for the truth, and trusts him enough to give it to her.

"Yes," he responds softly, "I do."

She closes her eyes, and nods once in a quick, jerky movement. He watches her chest inflate in a large pull of air, before releasing it slowly.

"I think," she pauses, tasting her words. Her voice is so quiet, that it's almost hoarse. "I think that I'm starting to believe it, too."

There's a weight in the air. Finnick gets the sense there's more she wants to say, so he waits, letting the quiet pull the words out from her. It works slowly.

"All of those lives." She whispers into the dark room. "All of those humans. My father…you," she sucks in a shaky breath. "I can't wrap my head around it."

"Where do we go from here?" Her voice is small as she continues, her shoulders shaking. "What do - what can I do to fix this?"

Finnick places a comforting hand on her shoulder, feeling the trembling beneath her start to wane. She leans into the touch instantly, and he's relieved. It was an action he did without thought, like second nature. He saw she was upset, so the next natural step was to comfort.

When had it come to that?

"We need to find answers." Finnick says, trying not to feel self conscious about his thumb circling the nook of her shoulder. If she notices or cares, she doesn't say. "Maybe Izzie knows…?"

Annie shakes her head, and a slip of her hair brushes against his fingers. It sends a small shock wave of shivers up his arm, and he tries to ignore it and focus on what she's saying. "Whether or not she knows anything doesn't matter. She's not going to tell us. Not in black and white terms, at least."

"Is there anyone else, then? Who would know anything?"

Annie is quiet a moment, thinking. He's now intensely aware of his hand on her shoulder, and he's wondering if the time for comforting has officially passed. Should he move it? Leave it? Why did he care so much?

"The only ones I can think of would be the Council, and even then, approaching them with a human in tow is…risky." Annie answers, chewing on the edge of her bottom lip.

"The Council?" Finnick says. She had mentioned them before, in passing. He'd been too preoccupied in his own emotional drama to really focus on it. Sometimes everything about this place was loud, the details getting lost in his own head as he tries to keep up with everything. "They're the ones who started the ban on humans, right?"

Annie nods. "The Council is the authoritative voice for the Great Forest." She continues, "Legends say they are older then the trees themselves. They watch over the wellbeing of the forest itself, as well as its inhabitants."

"Which includes sicking their large rock monsters after us?"

She smiles at him, but it doesn't meet her eyes. He gives her shoulder a small squeeze. "I mean this lightly, Finnick, when I say that you are a…foreign object to the ecosystem." She says softly, "For a while, we had allowed crossover from your world to ours, until we realized the repercussions of what nature means to your kind."

His expression must have been one of confusion, so she clarifies further.

"We watched as you fell acres of trees, spread pesticides over leaves, and hunt wildlife for sport rather than necessity." She shakes her head, her eyes sad, "And so, for the safety of the Great Forest, the Council decided to bar humans. They keep a constant perimeter over boundaries. Like with the vines we encountered, or the Guardians."

He shivers, trying to shake the memory of the fog in his head as a result of coming in contact with the vines. The whispers in his head – echoing's of his own distraught thoughts. However, despite this, the Council don't sound malicious to Finnick. Just cautious and set in their ways.

"Do they have some sort of grudge with the nymphs?" He asks, an idea forming along the edges of the puzzle they've found themselves in.

"Not that I know of." She frowns, "The only conflict I can recall is just the fact that they stopped the human men from coming in."

"Is it safe to say that they have the best interest for everyone in the Great Forest at heart?" He asks, "That they wouldn't have intentionally put hundreds of nymphs to death with no way to save themselves?"

She doesn't answer, just watches him, her eyebrows knit and hung upset over her eyes. He can't tell if she's upset with him or the world. Nonetheless, he presses on.

"I think we need to visit them." He says, "I think they know the missing link here."

She's shaking her head before he even finishes the thought, moving from under his hand with the movement. "No, Finnick. No. They will not take kindly to you being here."

"Then we ask them to make an exception for me to stay." He says it so quickly he doesn't even realize the percussions of what he's saying before they're out. Her face goes blank with shock.

"For you to stay." She repeats, quiet. Her voice in awe.

"Annie I –" He pauses, weighing what he's even trying to say at this point. He sighs, "I have no where else to go."

Where else can I go?

Getting to District Thirteen seems as likely as making it to another planet at this point. He can't go back to Panem – they'll kill him. No, Snow will pluck his feathers one by one; find something that makes Finnick tick and use it to crucify him.

And then they'll kill him.

It's a fate that's worse than what any ethereal council could have planned for at the sight of him.

A hand find it's way on his cheek, and Annie's fingers work to gently turn his head to face her. Her expression is soft, but determined, and her hand is hot against his face. All at once, it's an exclamation without words. Live with me. Stay with me. Be with me.

He'd thought this through once before, back in the Colony. When the prospect of making his way through this world felt much more assuring than anything else.

"We need to visit the Council, Annie," He murmurs, his cheek rising against her hand, "We need them to hear us out."

He watches her chew her cheek, weighing it out. She doesn't speak for a long time. He allows her the courtesy of thinking it through.

"Okay." She says finally, her hand slipping from his cheek. "We will ask them for you to stay and if there's any way to save the Colony without harming anyone else."

All of this talk of home and Panem and councils and vines has tugged at a kink in the framework that Finnick had been ignoring up until this point. Of course, the voices whispered to him over and over while running from the vines. Affirmations of his guilt for running from his mistakes.

You killed Mags.

He sighs, moves his hand from her shoulder to hug around himself.

"There is one thing, though." He murmurs and she tilts her head curiously. "Before I…came here? I guess?" He shakes his head, "Before the Queen found me, I was running from my world. And I left someone behind. Someone important to me."

There's a small part of him that knows Mags isn't in District 4 anymore. That she has been chosen for the games. But there's a larger part of him that knows he couldn't settle down here without knowing for sure.

If he could save her as well, it's worth the risk.

He looks to Annie now, and notices a knot of confusion on her face. She doesn't say anything for a while, but then, quietly she asks. "Who is she?"

There's an added flavor to her voice, a certain tilt that Finnick picks up easily, from his time flirting around social politics in the Capitol. It's a tone that dangled from the smartly dressed women like their pearl necklaces, wooed by his charm and empty of affection because of their husband's new mistress. From arms strewn around his neck and side glances and whispers to the collar of his shirt: "Do you see him over there, with that whore? Make sure he sees us."

Ah.

"Her name is Mags, and she's like a mother to me." He says, softly. A clarification. He resists the flooding urge to take one of her hands, knotted together in her lap, into his.

She doesn't speak, but her expression feels lighter, more relieved, so he continues, "Annie, I can't settle down here knowing she's in danger. That she's left behind without me." He feels like glass as he asks, "Is there any way we could bring her here, to live?"

She wiggles, uncomfortable under the guise of it all. It's a lot to ask – just moments before, she was adamant that they don't approach the Council at all. He tramples the urge to keep talking, to will her to continue with his sweet convincing. To use soft voices, and effortless flirtation to woo her to his side – like he would while hunting secrets in rich Capitolites beds.

It's a sour instinct and he wrinkles his nose, stamping it down in disgust. They're dirty tactics and Annie isn't a Capitol woman. Instead, he waits, trusting in her decision.

"I don't know if the Council would let us go back to your world and return with her." Annie says, slowly, and his heart sinks for a moment. She continues. "We'd need to have her with us when we ask permission. Which means we should go and get her before we approach the Council."

He blinks, and then what she said sinks in completely and the grin that spreads over his face has potential to light rooms. Now he does take her hands in his own. They tremble slightly - whether from being under his scrutiny or from the bravery it's taking to make the decision to go – but he holds them firm while she watches.

"It won't be easy, Finnick." She says, quickly, eyes trained on their entwined hands as if it were a curious sight. "We'd need some help from Izzie to cross the barrier, all the while keeping out of the Council's eyes in the meantime but I –" She pauses, takes a breath, "I can tell you really care about this woman. And if it's important enough for you to go get her, then it's important enough for me too." At the last bit her eyes catch his own, a small smile on her lips.

It makes his heart stutter a moment; a confusing thing. But he returns the smile nonetheless, shaking their hands up and down, as if completing a business transaction. And the glee of it wears down a little bit to emerge a stronger reminder. One Finnick hadn't planned on ever since this whole crazy thing had started.

He was willingly going back to Panem.


︎Annie fell asleep in the crook of his elbow shortly after they made their plan to heist Mags from Panem, her hair strewn out beyond the pillow like a satin pillowcase. Finnick hadn't realized she was sleeping until she was, going still under his arm, the soft plume of her breath ghosting over his collarbone.

In between thoughts of Mags and returning to Panem, he had difficulty falling back asleep, though the allure of sleep sat like a rock in his chest and made his eyes weighted. He'll pay for it in the morning, when they started their journey.

But now he was hyperaware of her there, nestled against his side, and new thoughts kept him up at the sight of it.

Though he hadn't realized it at the time Finnick had, in few words, admitted to wanting to stay here – with her.

It's not really too surprising: if Finnick was anything, it was someone who followed loyalty. She had left her dying home for him. Ran from rock monsters for him. Tangled in dangerous vines and willed to seek out a psychic witch for him.

For him.

And now, tangled together in bedding on aforementioned psychic's floor, he was beginning to see what that "for him" was doing to her.

In sleep, her face puckered into a frown, worry creasing her brow. She held her hands up against her chest, dancing under the crook of her chin. Even in sleep, she was distraught. He wonders what she talked about with Izzie before returning and waking him.

He hadn't heard Izzie enter the room until she was upon their makeshift nest, like a shadow on the wall, watching them from above. Perched on her shoulder, sat a raven, teetering precariously around the dots of mushrooms stuck to her skin. Finnick tensed, his arms swallowing Annie a little tighter.

With a tiny shake of her head and a knowing smile, Izzie ghosted through the archway deeper into the bowels of the cabin, winking out, as if she were a mirage.