A/N: Same thank yous apply. Plus a thank you to Saber (in answer to your question, Cypress is an OC; Johanna mentioned that Blight "wasn't much," so I figured he wasn't her mentor or anyone else she knew well), my newest fan.

Here's the start of a conversation that's long overdue.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"There are people in District 13," I tell Mags in the same place where last year she told me about my dad.

My mentor's toothless mouth opens, shuts, and then curls into an ugly scowl. "Leave it. Putting yourself in danger talking like that."

"You knew?"

Her eyes tell me, "Of course I know, dummy."

"Stop trying to protect me," I say seriously.

Mags can't form the words quickly enough anymore, so she just moves her lips and makes some weird clicking sound to mock me. It makes my blood boil but I have to laugh because it's Mags and she looks so funny and what other almost-80-year-old would do such a thing?

"Be nice, old lady. You're forgetting that I'm your ride home from here."

She clicks at me again. "Going to ask me about Annie?"

My insides twist at the sound of her name. Away from home, it was easy to think of everything I'd like to say. Now...who knows what I'll be walking into? "I'll see her when I get there," I say, not wanting to hear it.

I try to follow Mags inside her house, because I half live there now—which is to say I sleep and eat and bathe there, even though everything I own is still in my otherwise empty house. She shoos me out and tells me to go see Annie instead. I tell her I'm not ready, push my way back inside, and ask, "What's wrong with me?"

Upstairs, the phone rings. Mags lets me pass, but I take my time climbing the stairs. The motion reminds me that I'm exhausted, and when I get to the landing, I briefly consider letting the phone ring and just going to bed.

Nightmares kept me from sleeping at all on the train. I ate and showered and watched recaps of the Games on television. But mostly, I ate because my body's been missing food in general for a while now.

"Hello?" I say into the receiver.

"What's going to happen to them?" Annie asks urgently.

"To whom?" I ask tiredly.

"To the girl and the boy."

From her voice, I can tell this Games hasn't been easy on her. I can picture her hiding under the desk, wearing a nightgown, with the phone held up to her ear through a mess of tangled hair. This is crazy Annie I'm talking to, and I'm suddenly very glad she called before I had to see her.

Annie knows as well as the rest of us do that the line isn't secure. Well, semi-normal Annie does anyway. "I don't know," I tell her half-honestly. The possibilities are endless, but I have a pretty good idea that whatever happens will be terrible.

"Are you going to come over?"

"Maybe later. I'm really tired."

"Should I come over?"

I don't know what to tell her. Of course I want to see her. But I don't want to talk about Peeta or Katniss or the horrors Annie and I experience when we're apart. "It's your call. I just need some sleep."

She says, "Okay," and hangs up without giving me any indication of whether or not I can expect her.

In my bedroom that's not really my bedroom, I strip down to my underclothes and slide in between the soft sheets. Even before I lose consciousness, my thoughts drift uncontrollably to darkness. My dreams are of rain and floods and children dying. In sleep, I'm vaguely aware of a body next to mine. I wake up with my hand on Annie's abdomen, guarding our son or daughter who will never exist.

My eyes search what they can see of her hair and skin for signs of distress. My nose picks up the first indication that something is different. Her hair smells of salt. I inhale deeply to be sure and confirm that she's been swimming recently.

Adrian promised to keep an eye on his sister and Mags for me. Actually, he jokingly promised their safety in exchange for the sort of relationship advice only I could provide. Still, I assumed he'd know better than to let her take to open water. Then again, it was only last year that I risked Annie's life by passing out on the beach during high tide.

I don't want to leave home anymore. I don't want to do a lot of things anymore.

Annie's fingers intertwine with mine on her stomach. Without turning to look at me, she asks, "Do you ever wonder whether you're a dad to some kid you'll never know?"

So, she's thinking about it too then, the baby we'll never be able to have. "I'm not," I promise. "It's the Capitol. They give me pills for that sort of thing."

"Pills?"

They're a bigger trade item than morphling among victors. Not just in the Capitol, either. Most of us would rather have kids with strangers, kids who would be spared the from future reapings, than have kids in our districts.

"Who took you swimming, Annie?"

She rolls over and rests her cheek on the back of her hand. Without looking at me, she says, "Vessel."

My hands ball into fists but my voice remains calm. "Annie, Vessel isn't exactly stable."

"Vessel pulled you out of the water when your dad died," she reminds me.

"Because Mags told him too. He's strong, but he has a child's mind, Annie. He's incapable of thinking for himself except to do harm. Adrian and Mags were okay with you going? Your dad was okay with you going?"

"We all went together. Only Vessel was the one to come in the water with me in case..."

I should feel better, but I'm furious. "He doesn't know his own strength, Annie. He could kill you."

"I don't want to fight, Finnick." Her voice is so heart-breakingly innocent that I'm caught off guard. Isn't this the girl I've been dying to see? She's alive. She's here with me. That's all that should matter.

I force my hands to relax and place one on her side.

"This time was hard on you, wasn't it?" she asks.

"I should be asking you the same thing."

"But you're all alone there," she tells me, even though I've told her a million times that I'm never alone in the Capitol.

My thoughts wrap themselves around the shell of a young girl who earned me a slap in the face from the only real friend I have away from home. And then I'm thinking of Johanna and how I kind of kissed her, and of every other thing I've done wrong.

My hand retreats at the same time that Annie asks me, "What?"

I close my eyes as my thumb and index fingers massage the bridge of my nose. "Why are you in my bed, Annie?"

She answers without hesitation. "Because otherwise I might not believe you were home." I feel her fidget a little before she adds, "And because I don't care anymore."

I have to open my eyes and make sure this isn't crazy Annie I'm talking to. Her green eyes fight to stay focused on mine while her eyebrows tighten and relax. Her bottom lip puckers as she chews on the inside of it. I smile weakly. "You say that now, but you'll change your mind," I say. Then I roll onto my back.

Annie drapes her arm around my waist and moves in closer.

I try to fend her off by telling her that I slept with a teenage girl who reminded me of her. She rests her head on my chest. "I kissed Johanna," I say.

Aside from the pain I feel as she pushes her hand into my stomach to sit up, the words have the desired effect. "Why are you trying to hurt me?"

"I'm only reminding you who you're cuddling up in bed with," I say coolly.

"I know who you are, Finnick. I've always known and it's never mattered."

She lies back down as though she doesn't care, but I can tell by her breathing that she's at least a little annoyed with me.

"If it makes you feel any better, she slapped me in the face. Pretty hard, too." I smile at another memory. "It all started because she couldn't believe that it's been almost ten years since I kissed someone for real. She was sure that you and I were at least making out on a regular basis."

She sits up again, though more gently this time. "Does President Snow think that about us?"

"What? No. Johanna's always saying I have a secret girlfriend and I said something that made her think it was you."

"Mags says Snow isn't going to pay much attention to the rest of us for a while."

History has left me no choice but to agree. Mags is always right.

"Will they ever be done with you?" Annie asks me.

I try to swallow and can't. It's something I've wondered about. I'm only twenty-three. They could easily drag me out for another ten to twenty years, and that's without surgeries. And then what? I'll be disposable. Even if they let me retire to a quiet life in District 4, will there be a life here for me then? Who knows what Annie will be like by then? And Mags...

"Please don't ask me that. Let's just be glad that Peeta and Katniss will be monopolizing the country's attention for a while."

"For how long, do you think?" she asks.

"Six months at least. Up until, during, and then probably a little while after their Victory Tour. It could be longer or shorter, depending on what Snow has planned for them."

Annie shifts, probably because she's uncomfortable about what I've said. "Finnick?"

"Hm?"

"Those pills won't last forever, will they?"

It takes me a few seconds to realize she isn't talking about the sedatives she takes once or twice a year when things get really bad. She means mine, the immobilizers that I take exactly twice a year every year to avoid any accidents. One dose can last for up to three months. Then my swimmers are free to try to fertilize the shower floor or the handful of other impenetrable places they end up. "Does it matter?"

She shrugs. "You don't ever want kids?"

"I'm glad I don't have any siblings, Annie. Of course I don't want kids."

Actually, what I want is what my father had before his world went to shit. A wife. A son. I'd be afraid to ask anything more than that, seeing what happened to my mom. But in this world, what I want will never matter. Annie's right: It's easier to pretend.

"Oh."

Oh. She says it like she's disappointed. To hear her say it tears at me the same way her absence did when I first found that I missed her. "Why?" I half breathe, half choke. My fingers toy with the spiraled ends of Annie's hair, and for a while, I think I've lost her to the world inside her head. "Ann?"

Her head jerks and the rest of her follows back to the present. Softly, she says, "I thought that maybe, when you were done, things could be different for us. And maybe, while the Capitol is distracted, we could try...I don't know. We could see what it would be like to be together."

I'm interrupted from being able to process what she's said by the warmth of her fingertips as they trace my jawline. Instinctively, my face tilts into hers as if drawn there by some magnet.

"Finnick?" She says my name like it's a question, like I might be the one who's out of my head.

"And if this doesn't last, this thing with District 12?" I ask mechanically. "What happens to us then? Once we cross that bridge..." I have no choice but to pause as my heart pounds and my breath catches in my throat. "Once we cross that bridge, everything will change. Once I experience the alternative, I won't be satisfied with this life or the one I have in the Capitol. And you..." It would be bad enough to hurt her by getting together with her only to leave in a few months' time. But then there's also the fact that I wouldn't exactly be making things better for Annie by getting together with her in the first place.

"I don't want to have to miss you even when you're right here," she tells me.

I don't want to keep pushing her away so I can love her from a safe distance, but I can't tell her that. Mostly, I can't bring myself to repeat the words for fear of hearing them back.

I pick up Annie's hand and scan her forearm for telltale scratches. I find nothing, push her hair aside, and check her neck. The quick breath that escapes Annie's lips would go unnoticed by anyone without my experience. My cheeks burn as I inspect the delicate skin of her throat. For some reason, she thinks this touch is something intimate. She's right, I guess. Who else but someone in love with her would touch her and look at her this way? I remove my hand, sigh. Annie's eyes lock on mine with ease.

"I—"

"Just wait, okay?" I interrupt. "Give it until the Victory Tour. Let them come here. Let me go there. And if this thing with them lasts and no one gets hurt, we'll try it too."

"I was going to say something."

"And I want you to wait."

She frowns. She can't understand that I don't want to hear it from her when I know I'll have to hear it from a stranger when I return to the Capitol. Things are changing. The game is changing. Two victors were crowned. There's life in 13. I have information that could get me killed, but that could also get Snow to release me from my duties. If there was ever a time to threaten him with it, it's now. So I don't want to hear that Annie loves me now, not while everything still hangs in the balance.

"Just wait," I repeat, because there's a chance the scales will tip in my favor. And if they do, that's when I want to hear that Annie loves me too.

Still to come: uprisings, more conversation, and (finally!) some sense in the romantic life of our hero.