DON'T WORRY! THERE ARE NO SPOILERS FOR MOCKINGJAY IN THIS CHAPTER.


okay so I'm seventeen years old
you're the last best thing I got going
but then the special secret sickness
starts to eat through you
what am I supposed to do?
no way of knowing
so I follow you down your twisting alleyways
find a few cul-de-sacs of my own
there's only one place this road ever ends up
and I don't wanna die alone
let me down, let me down, let me down gently

- The Mountain Goats, Dance Music

Sometimes, the lack of recognition in her eyes kills him.

"Annie," he whispers to her one day, when she's sitting with her feet in the water. She is sitting out of his reach, a million miles away.

"Annie, you need to start trusting me. I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."

She turns to look at him and it feels as though the gap between them has closed, just a tiny little bit. She leans back on her hands and she says, "I dream about you sometimes."

This catches him off guard. "What?"

"I dream about you. You're in my dreams. I see you. With a really big fork." She giggles. "And you're with a girl. She's beautiful, y'know. And you... you hold her and kiss her and..." She trails off and he shifts slightly closer to her.

"Do you know who that girl is?" He asks her, not allowing himself to believe it.

"You were happy with her. What happened to her?"

He sighs. "She's somewhere. I know she's somewhere."

And then she takes his hand and he's reminded just how well their palms fit together, and he looks at her in surprise but she won't meet his gaze. And he knows that she is in there somewhere, the Annie Cresta who invoked a million different feelings in him, the one who held his hand and refused to give him promises she couldn't keep, the strongest girl he ever knew. She is in there somewhere, and he will wait for her to resurface.

Until then, he will continue to love the girl across from him.