Alright, so this isn't what I'd planned, but it just sort of came out. I assumed that it's a good sign and continued with this. Hopefully you guys enjoy it, or it might make you cry. I don't know. School is busy, but I'll try to update ASAP. Thank you all for reviewing and please don't forget to tell me what you think about this.

Chapter Twelve- Finnick

I forgot how much I hate going to sleep. You can escape for a whole night, but in the morning, everything hits you again. I lay in bed for a second, looking at the sun coming in through the thin blue curtains and watching the wind softly blow the sand and dust on my windowsill.

I'm about to get up when I remember why I've been sleeping for almost an entire twenty-four hours in the first place.

The Victor's laugher sounded like grinding and screeching in my ears.

"It's ridiculous." Callie folded her arms across her chest and scowled. "I won't be able to handle this. I just won't do it."

"It's only been a few days." I whispered, remembering how loud they were the last time they stood in the hallway discussing secret things with a boy who is now dead.

"I can just see where this is going already!" She threw her hands in the air.

Brock grumbled and folded a piece of paper a few times. "She's right, Annie is going to have to come back. She didn't even kill anyone, so she's going to have to get over this."

"It was still the Games!" I whispered harshly.

Edison stuck his pointer finger at me, jabbing me in the chest. "She's completely insane over absolutely nothing. She has no blood on her hands, and she's young and pretty. She's going to ruin this for all of us if she doesn't come back."

I remember the taste in my mouth when Edison called her pretty. I thought of President Snow making her do the same thing I have to do. He would probably have to hold her family's life over her head.

"If she's not acting civil by the victory tour, I'll go insane myself! Who does she think she is anyway? She has no right to be acting like the rest of us when she didn't do anything to win!" Callie stomped her foot on the hard wood floor of the train angrily.

Everyone wanted a Victor who could be considered brave.

I remember Annie when they replayed the Games for her. She ended up curled in a ball screaming.

"Ridiculous."

"We all killed."

"She's coming back next year."

I roll over in bed and think of Annie's face when we turned and saw her at the end of the hall.

She looked so small and helpless, fists in balls by her side. Everyone was silent, and I'm sure I looked horrified. Her mouth hung silently open, and her eyes were somewhere very far away.

She turned around slowly and just walked away like she had just been slapped in the face. I turned and glared at Callie.

"She should have expected this, Finnick. Don't give me that look."

I tried to talk to Annie, but she wouldn't let me in anymore. If I tried to touch her, even to help her when she stumbled, she pushed me away. Her family lives right across the street from us now, but she never comes out. Her younger brothers play on the front lawn, but every time I try to check up on Annie, her mom tells me that she's asleep.

She's probably already figured out that sleep is the best escape, you just can't wake up or it will ruin it.

I drag myself out of bed and peek into my mom's room. She's sitting in bed, her frail arms holding a book. She smiles her yellow tooth smile at me. "Hey, Mom."

"Finnick, can you maybe go into town and get some more of this?" She holds up a bottle of white liquor and swishes it in little circles that slosh up and down the sides of the bottle.

"Maybe later." I wave it off. I don't want to go into town and have people ask me about Crazy Annie. That's what they call her.

My mom has been drinking since forever. She wasn't that bad when I was younger because we couldn't afford it with my dad's fishermen job. But now, since we have money to burn, she spends her days like this. Fascinated with Capitol luxuries, she drinks her alcohol, occasionally uses morphling for her "headaches", and paints her nails and face. She was thrilled when I won.

I spent a lot of time wondering what my father would have said about my Victory, but he probably would have been disappointed in the end. I've turned his wife into a Capitol wannabe and his only son into a male prostitute.

He never needed anything, just the sound of the waves and the open sea. At least that's what he always told me. He also said that he was never afraid of the water, that the water was afraid of him. It used to make me laugh, the jokes he would spat out in serious times. I guess that's where I get my desperate need to constantly lighten the mood. I don't think he was scared when he drowned at sea.

I remember how I felt when he died. I remember when I thought that was the worst feeling in the world. It's now nothing but a numb memory compared to some of things that came later. President Snow's phone call. The first time I spent the night with someone. Seeing Annie fall to pieces in front of everyone.

It's probably a good thing my father is dead, because he doesn't have to see me now. I've stopped caring if my mom ruins herself, because I don't have the strength to stop her.

"Well do you have anything else to do?"

"I'm going to see Annie."

"She doesn't want to see you."

It's my ninth day of ringing Annie's doorbell. Her mom lets me come in this time instead of stepping outside, which I take as a good sign.

Their house looks exactly like mine, except it looks lived in. There are pencils and paper on the little kitchen table where her brothers were drawing, and it smelled like some kind of stew was cooking. The back doors hung open, letting the soft fall wind blow into the house. I almost gasp. It's so perfect. It's something I would associate with some version of heaven.

"I'm tired of her telling me to not let anyone in. When do you think she's going to snap out of it?" Her mom whispers to me like I'm and adult and I would know. My stomach turns.

The career districts are all the same. They are angry, not sad or broken or sympathetic. They want answers and death, and they don't understand. I wonder how people like Mags and I belong here. We should be in another district where people pity the Victors instead of being jealous of them. Somewhere like twelve or seven or nine where they no that no one's life is easy unless you live in the Capitol.

I don't want to snap at Annie's mother, so I just nod my head like I agree. "I don't know."

"Were you like this?"

I wasn't like Annie. At first, I was thrilled. It just took a month for me to realize the money would destroy my mom, and the fame would destroy me. I tried not to show it though, because that's how everyone in Four acted. I am a Victor, so nothing is wrong.

Annie is different. I knew that, though. She really doesn't hide anything, crazy or not.

"Yes, I was. It will go away."

Her mom nods and stirs a pot on the stove. "Her room is down the hall. Try to get her back to normal." She says it like she actually believes I will. In one day. At all.

Everyone in the Career Districts is exactly the same.

I walk down the hall to a closed door and knock on it softly. When she doesn't answer, I just go in. The smell hits me hard. I almost want to back up, but I don't.

It doesn't smell sweaty, but more like stale. Old. It's like a desert in her room, but she's tucked under many blankets and covers.

I look around at her room, painted the same pale blue as mine. There are a lot of different types of flowers sitting in vases on her dresser, and I wonder if it's to cover the smell. On her wall are messy drawings that her brothers made her and hung there. It's the Hunger Games. They think the Hunger Games are cool.

"What do you want, Finnick?"

I jump back. She glares at me from under all of her blankets, only her eyes peeking out. "I've been trying to see you."

"Yeah, I know that."

"So why didn't you let me?" I'm doing this wrong, I know. But Annie is still Annie. She has a funny way of making my blood pressure rise.

"You think I'm insane."

"I never said that."

She rolls over and looks at her ceiling. I look up too. There is little yellow hand painted stars over her bed. "Who painted those?"

"I did."

"Why?" I ask, coming closer and sitting on the edge of her bed, noticing her greasy hair sticking out on her pillow.

"My mom and dad think I'm crazy, you know."

"They don't understand."

"Do you understand, Finnick?"

"No."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I wanted to make sure you didn't fall off the face of the earth."

She rolls her eyes and tucks her hair under the covers when she notices I was looking at it. "I'm Crazy Annie."

I sigh. "Do you remember anything I told you at the Capitol?"

"I remember everything you told me. It doesn't mean you were right. Brock and Callie and Eddison are right."

I get up and walk to the window, throwing back the white curtains and opening it up as wide as it will go. Annie flinches and sinks into the covers even more.

"You have to be burning up under there." I feel the sweat on her forehead with the back of my hand.

"I'm fine." She says, her eyes suddenly welling up with tears. "Just get out, Finnick."

"Annie," I whisper, going closer again and feeling paranoid that I blew my only chance as seeing her by getting frustrated. "What did I say?"

"Nothing. I'm just tired. I want to sleep." She says like a little girl. The calm composure she had before is gone, and her sarcastic attitude has completely vanished.

"Annie-"

She jumps upright in her bed and glares at me, tears running down her cheeks. My eyes widen in shock. Her arms. Her chest. Her face. She is covered in cuts. I wonder why they have money for bandages and medicine but she has none. Her parents probably don't even know.

She realizes what she just did and she lets out a small cry before trying to cover up frantically in her tangled blankets. "Just get out. Just leave me alone." She commands in a shaky voice.

I crawl across her bed and sit right next to her, doing exactly the opposite of what she said. She doesn't move; she just keeps staring at where I was standing before. She doesn't pull away when I take her arm and examine the damage. There are lines running all the way from her shoulders to her wrists. I run my fingers lightly down the parts of skin that are unharmed, giving her goose bumps. I wonder if she even knows what she's doing when she makes these lines.

I should have just come up anyway, even when her mom told me not to. I wasted nine days just sitting at home and in Mags' kitchen.

I wipe off her tears gently with my thumb, being careful to barely touch her so I don't hurt the cuts.

After a while, she stops staring into space and looks back at me. "I'm tired." She says quietly before leaning into my shoulder and collapsing like on the hovercraft.

She still cries, even when she's asleep. I comb my fingers through her hair and undo the knots. I realize that this is the same hair do that she had when she came home.

Annie is afraid of water.

When I'm sure she is in a deep enough sleep, I slowly untangle myself from her arms and put her head under a pillow. Before I leave her room though, I search everywhere. When I finally find the knife, I slip it in my pocket and go to Mags' house to ask a favor.

Thank you all for reading. Question: What do you think of the "career district" thing? Do you think I'm on the right track with that or not? My mind just comes up with random stuff sometimes, but I thought this could work?

I wrote a one-shot about Gale and Katniss's friendship, called "Remember Me When I'm Gone". Since you guys are Hunger Games fans, you should check it out if you want to :)