The final chapter. :O

DUH DUH DUN...

There will be an epilogue that I hope to post tomorrow or Sunday, but it won't be emotionally resolving in any way, sooooo... If you are the sort who likes to leave sentimental-farewell-at-the-end-reviews... This is the place! Or if you are the sort who wants to leave a smiley face... to you I can only say...

:) - Right back atcha! ;)

I don't think I've ever been to a funeral before.

I could have been at my father's, but there's really no telling. I would have been much too young to remember, and maybe even then, they kept me away from the truth. Maybe that scoundrel Barnabas already had plans for me. I picture him leading a wobbling toddler away from the casket and tucking a knife into his pudgy hand. I wouldn't be all that surprised.

I've never gone to pay my respects to any of the children that I failed to bring home breathing. Instead, I spent my district's period of mourning in the Capitol, as wasted as they would allow my underage self to get. I never spoke to their parents, didn't apologize for the things I couldn't stop and couldn't stop hating myself for. I didn't sing their praises with gritty tales of their bravery or the flowery, exaggerated speeches that the mayor gives of their service to Panem. I pretended Cassandra didn't have a funeral at all. I spent the whole day out on the water and threw back every fish I caught because I could swear it had freckles.

Annie, being a much better person than I've ever been, planned to attend Otto's funeral. I asked her about it on the train ride home as often as I dared, and she insisted that she wouldn't miss it for the world.

Early that morning, I knock on her solid oak front door, and her sister lets me in, her normally fiery face tired and drawn. She dutifully reports that Annie has been crying all night and throwing up most of it, and she's just now collapsed into sleep half an hour ago. I beg to see her, and Claire Cresta hesitantly leads me up the stairs of the echoing mansion. I kiss Annie's forehead and feel her breath on my face and have to be content with that before she wakes up and starts apologizing- or worse, decides to go with me.

So I go alone.

It's a private affair, at least. No cameras at the square today to capture the tears and further exploit the Morris family. For the first time since the Reaping many weeks ago, I don't share the stage with my tribute. I'm not asked to make a speech on his behalf. My presence is not required or requested, and I'm not even sure I'm welcome here. I slip into the furthest possible row of folding chairs assembled in the square, and the whispering local women seated in front of me immediately drop off into stony silence. They must think I'm a coward for slinking into the back like a dog with its tail between its legs. They must know I'm a coward because I've never been here before.

I'm done with being a coward.

There's little that I could really add to the mayor's simple acknowledgement of his sacrifice- except that maybe it was driven by something in addition to nobility. It's something left unspoken. For as many times as the words "Annie" and "bravery" and "protection" are uttered at the ceremony, the word "love" isn't. Not once. It would take the whole story from tragic to heart-wrenching beyond belief. I don't know what Pallindra was planning to say, because she breaks down in full-blown sobs as soon as she takes the platform. She's led down again, flanked by several stoic Capitol attendants.

I'm almost glad I wasn't asked to speak.

His mother and brother take care of that, and reveal the bit of Otto that was never confiscated for the Capitol's personal use. The fearless warrior actually started out as a child who slept in a crib and explored tide pools and beat up his little brother and actually won a spelling award, once. The younger Morris boy, an awkwardly bulky kid of about fourteen, somberly tells the gathered crowd that thanks to Otto's sacrifice and Annie's victory, he won't have to volunteer next year, as he was planning.

I desperately try to meet the boy's eyes. Don't volunteer next year. Don't ever volunteer. But he's already done and Aragon Morris steps up, taps the microphone. With his voice echoing in his barrel-drum chest like it's hollow, he says exactly six words of his eldest son.

"I am so proud of him."

And then he steps down again.

The women in front of me frown and go back to whispering because six words of farewell is too short and unfair, just like Otto's life, and it will never come anywhere close to being enough.

But it is enough. I may be the only one here who understands that.

An old man near the front begins the dirge, and voices scattered through the crowd join one by one, in hushed, cracking tones. Rows of people stand and slowly file to the front to pay their respects, and that's when I see that they've opened the casket.

How could they open the casket?

I find myself taking my place at the back of the line, and nobody in front of me is reacting in the way I expect. No one is repulsed or vomiting the way I did when it happened. It must be safe to look now. But my vision suddenly flashes red, and I don't know if I can. I don't think so. I don't think I can look. I shuffle forward anyway, hands thrust into my pockets, gaze locked on the wispy clouds breezing by overhead.

Something tugs on my sleeve then, and a high-pitched voice close to the ground says, "Hi" with much more volume than is appropriate right now. I glance down to find a little girl of maybe four with jet-black braids flung over her shoulders. "I'm Lily."

"Hi there," I answer cautiously. "I'm Finnick."

She jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the polished casket, which still stands several mourners away from me in the line. "That's my brother."

"Oh." What more can you say to that? What kind of apology can I give her?

"He's dead." Lily states with certainty, fingering the end of one braid solemnly. "Isn't he?"

I take a deep breath and nod silently, wanting nothing more than to close my eyes and shut out this little person's wide-eyed bird stare. She's cocking her head, studying me, inspecting my face, with none of the grief or hatred of the adults here. Just a morbid, Annie-like curiosity, asking, is everything they told me about Finnick Odair true?

"I can't see," she says at last, rising on tiptoe, gesturing to the casket again. "I can't see him. I'm too short." Lily holds out chubby arms to me. "Pick me up."

Oh, God, no. I swallow hard and squeeze the bridge of my nose. "Sweetheart-" There's another flash of red behind my eyelids. "Not right now. You don't want to…"

"Pick me up!"

I falter and start again. "You don't want to see…" I'm searching for an escape route. "Don't you want to remember…"

"Pick me up now!" she shrieks."I want to see him! I want to see my brother!"

The little girl's face is beet-red and people are starting to turn around. She's disrupting the dirge. I wordlessly bend down and scoop her weightless form up, step forward to the casket, silently apologize for whatever she's going to have burned in her mind from this moment on.

Lily looks and she doesn't scream, but I still don't dare, because I am much more of a coward than she is. It's not until she leans forward and nearly pitches out of my arms that I'm forced to steady her, glance down into the wood box.

Otto's dressed like a tribute still, not all gussied up in the finery that would have made him uncomfortable. The toes of his hiking boots stick up out of the casket awkwardly, identical to the ones he gave to Annie. As I watch, his little sister strains forward against my chest and reaches out, lovingly strokes his cheek, his closed eyelids, the ripple of black hair against satin. With wide-bird eyes, she traces a finger across a line of stitches beneath his jaw that are attaching his head to his neck.

I hike Lily up onto my hip and squeeze my eyes closed again, heat flushing down my spine, wrenching my stomach. Oh, what can't the Capitol fix?

She bends down and presses a kiss to his cheek, and I shatter all over again. The answer is me. They can't fix me.

They can't fix Annie and they can't fix me.

A group of muscle-bound fishermen hefts the casket into the bottom of a little wooden dinghy and they push it down to the sea shore, bare feet cutting deep trenches in the burning sand. The tide picks up where they leave off, carrying the body out toward the horizon and a great, vast, empty sea. I head to my own silent home.

When I walked the streets of Four years ago, all I saw were strong men and fierce warriors-in-training, bright lanterns strung up everywhere, huge false storefronts. Now, there is brokenness every place that I look. Weather-beaten shacks on the edge of town. Fish bones littering the footpath. Those rocky cliffs rising in the distance don't seem so majestic anymore, but cracked and worn down by the age-old, constant drumming of the waves. The world is not what I ever thought it was, and I can't decide whether this is more of a disappointment or a relief.

I walk past my mansion and continue the fifty yards down to the shoreline instead, stopping only to rip a few more weeds out of Mags' flower box. I toss them down in a clump of seaweed and let the waves take care of those, too. The morning fog has burned off under the searing gaze of the sun, and sailor's intuition tells me this is one of the last few sweltering days of a waning summer. The water has brightened from twilight gray to brilliant turquoise, shimmering against the paler blue of the sky. It's a picture perfect scene. But even here, things are broken. The sand on this private, less tread-upon stretch of beach is all broken-down seashells. They haven't been ground to grains yet, and the rainbow shards still stick up from among the worn pebbles and gravel.

I toss my shirt down on the shore and swim out to where I can clear my head. I dive and twirl and surface effortlessly, tirelessly, fueled by anger and confusion and bitterness. Unfortunately, this will only keep me going for so long. I dread finding out whether I'll be able to go on in the Capitol after that rage-fire burns itself out. After the real light is extinguished.

How many more times will we see each other? Maybe they'll let me eat dinner with the family again tonight, and then dawn tomorrow, it's back to my home away from home. She'll have a victory tour, six months from now. Six months, and we'll have to play indifferent to one another. Will that be worth just losing her again? And then…

I float there, bobbing on my back, staring at the sun, until I'm blinded by tiny twinkling spots. My other senses must be overcompensating, because even from this far out in the water I hear a door slam shut back on land. I sit up, treading water, and blink a few times to clear my vision. A figure picks her way down the beach from the house next-door to Mags'.

Well, speak of the chickadee, there she is. Fresh out of bed, judging from her tangled curls and baggy sweats. That's what she was wearing the very first time I told her she was pretty. I start to make my way back to shore, because even from this distance her face seems pale with anxiety as she searches for me in the water. Annie comes right up to the line of dark, wet sand, and watches the tide creep its way in, breeze tousling her hair in that messy, picture perfect way.

"Hey," I call unceremoniously as I wade in toward her, decorated with little bits of sand and seaweed.

"Hey," she calls back, gaze still locked on the foam lapping at her feet. She is so afraid here, and yet somehow fearless, because here she is.

I quickly towel myself off with my sandy shirt and then throw the sopping wet thing back on anyway, because I haven't missed that the tips of Annie's ears are turning pink. "Didn't expect to see you out here," I say lamely.

Waves. Flood water. Rising. This is what I see etched in Annie's memory when she finally glances up at me again. "I love the ocean," she says falteringly. "You said yourself. Why shouldn't things still be the same?"

Maybe because so many things have tried to drag her under, it's a miracle she didn't drown.

"Of course. It's your ocean, Annie." I gesture widely behind me. "It's right here for you whenever you're ready for it. And your family's going to be here, too. How are they doing?"

"They're good. They're great. It's so great to be back." Annie catches my unspoken question, why aren't they supervising you, and saves me from having to ask it. "My parents took the boys to the market. They're going to fix another celebration lunch for today. I'm ordered to let them pamper me." She rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "Claire passed out on the couch an hour ago. I guess I kept her up late." From her tone, I can tell she doesn't remember much of last night.

Annie pauses to squish wet sand in between her toes, pretending to be fully absorbed in the task. I just wait for what she's trying not to say. "Claire thinks she's going to fix me," Annie says at last. "She told me that herself, this morning. She said that our family couldn't wait until I'm all better."

I close my eyes and stifle a sigh. "They might not understand, Annie, but… they love you. That's obvious. Please- don't push them away."

"You said to hold onto them," Annie murmurs. "You said not to let the Capitol take anything away from me." Her voice is low and she keeps her eyes averted. "But you didn't mean it."

I leave tonight on the express for the Capitol. Of course I didn't mean it. "Annie…" I begin softly.

So she drops that subject and moves on to a much brighter one. "How was the funeral?" Annie whispers.

I immediately go stiff and silent in that way that I wish she didn't recognize so well. It was much easier back when I just understood her pain, and not the other way around. Annie weaves her fingers through mine and brushes the other hand over my temple, combs through my dripping hair. She pulls my head down until my cheek rests on top of her head.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," Annie whispers. Her hair smells strangely like sunshine. She silently sinks onto the sand, folding her legs under her, and gently tugs me down beside her. Small arms wrap around my middle, and I'm overcome with a jumble of emotions as I cradle her head against my chest. Hope. Hopelessness. Longing. And an inescapable warmth.

"I'm here now," Annie assures me in a tone barely audible over the gentle cadence of the waves. "I'm here." The ocean is terror to her, but she is here now because she knows it's comfort to me. Annie squeezes her eyes shut, ear pressed to my heart.

"How can you take a picture with your eyes closed?" I tease her huskily.

Annie shakes her head silently and mutters something that makes sense only in her little world- "twice for every wave". I realize after a long moment that she is listening to my heartbeat.

Well, it must be picking up speed.

Her eyes fly open again, and Annie doesn't grace me with an answer. Only another question. "What's your favorite memory?" she asks.

This is. Hands down. But that's a strange answer because, just hours from now, it will be the most painful thing I can ever remember. I hesitate for a moment, pinning my gaze on something far over the horizon. "I don't know if it's happened yet," I admit lamely. "What's yours? It was here, wasn't it?"

A faraway look creeps across her face, as if she's searching for the same distant point that I've fixated on. Maybe we're looking for Otto. "When I was a little girl, I was walking on the beach alone…" She pauses to trace her fingers through the sand. "And I came across a shark lying on the shore. Just lying there. Washed-up. Six feet long, at least. It was just flopping around, gasping, almost lifeless. So I just went and kicked it right back into the sea."

"Oh, you did?" I start to laugh aloud at the mental image of Annie, as a small child, being big and brave and bold enough to walk up to a hungry shark and show it a little tough love. "Well, you've always been spunky, haven't you?"

Annie shrugs. "I don't know. It didn't actually happen."

"Excuse me?" I protest, poking her stomach so she can't help but giggle. "I must have misheard you, then."

Annie pushes me back lightly, trying her very best to scowl. "It didn't! It never happened. It was a story my mother told us when we were little kids. But I remember doing it as clearly as anything. I always told the story, and Claire and my brothers would just laugh and laugh because I really believed it happened." She shakes her head in wonder, remembering. "Isn't it amazing the tricks your mind can play on you?"

The words are heavy with too much meaning. Annie pours another handful of the shell sand between her fingers and watches it intently. I can't help but notice the way the jagged fragments catch the sunlight as she sifts through them. Have broken things always been so beautiful?

"All of my best memories never happened. That's what I've figured out," Annie says steadily, but her hands dig faster and deeper through the sand and they betray her uneasiness. I have a soggy piece of rope in my pocket that I willingly donate, and she takes it up and begins to tie knots, almost subconsciously. "Never. No matter how clearly I remember something now, I always have to ask someone else what is real. I can't trust myself to know."

"Then I guess you'd better stick with people you can trust," I advise.

"Maybe I don't want to know what's real," Annie says stubbornly. "Aren't there some things you'd rather stay mysteries?"

The simple answer is no. I've been looking for something real my entire life, and the moment I found it, I started clinging to it like a lifeline.

"I would have been perfectly happy to live out the rest of my life thinking I had kicked a shark, without knowing it was my imagination, and without being teased about it. I would have been so happy." Annie's getting oddly choked up on this subject, so I pull her close and wait for her to sort through the chaos that overtakes her mind sometimes.

"I would have been happy not to learn that I was in the hospital after the Games, or that I was on suicide watch, or that they needed to wax my legs. I thought I was below deck in a boat- I really thought I was- and I rocking with the waves. And there was a storm and I was going to jump overboard but then somebody said, 'No. I love you, Annie. I love you.' "

Her voice breaks, and I startle.

"Somebody said that in the middle of the wind, and I didn't drown."

She heard? There's no way she heard me. And remembered. She remembered all this time? I tilt her face toward mine. "Annie, baby- you heard somebody say that? You heard-" She cuts me off before I can deny or confess it.

"It was a dream," Annie croaks. "A dream I had about you when I was sick, and you can't laugh because I'm sure a thousand other girls have had that same dream and believed it with all their hearts, but…" She trails off. "I was insane. I was medicated. I'm not- I'm not asking whether it happened. I don't need you to say."

My heart splashes down into my stomach. The sun becomes cripplingly bright overhead. If she asked, I don't think I could lie to her anymore, but, no, she's not asking. Why? "Because you're afraid that it wasn't real?" I ask softly.

Annie gives a shuddery sigh. "No, I'm- I'm more afraid…" Her hands creep up toward her ears like she's tempted to block out my voice, or something going on inside her own head. "I'm more afraid that it was real, and you'll say that it wasn't. To protect me. I'm more afraid that… that you won't ever let me say it back. I can't hear that. I can't. Please."

Surely nothing could hurt more than this. She loves me back. Somewhere up above us, a lone seagull cries. I drop my head into my hands.

"That happened," Annie whispers, as if I'm not already very painfully aware of the fact. "Don't tell me it didn't. This is the only thing I know."

Here's the part where I am noble- one last time. One more time, as necessary. "Annie, I have to go."

"Not forever."

For all practical purposes, yes. I'll be gone for more of forever than a person could stand. "I can't keep coming back. I can't do that to you. I couldn't live with myself if… if I knew I was hurting you here."

She grabs my arm feverishly. "You wouldn't hurt me, Finnick. I understand now and it doesn't matter, it won't ever matter, I can stay here and wait-"

"Annie, you are not waiting for me!" I cut her off sharply, loneliness carving into my heart like a blade. It doesn't matter whether I try to hurt her. Doesn't she see that loving me is pain?

"And why not? I leave you all the time, and you are always there when I get back!" she protests. "Every time. How could I tell you to leave? How could I ever make you stop loving me?"

She can't. She never could. I walked right into this one, didn't I? Annie's eyes burn right through into my soul, like before, like that very first day, and she must see my bravado melting away. She must see that I need her as much as she needs me. Can you really fight something like this? Maybe my nobility isn't the problem.

"Annie, I'm afraid…" I admit quietly. I grossly understate this terror that's eating away at me. "I'm afraid that it wouldn't last. Everything will just pull us apart again. And it would be so much harder than the first time."

Annie glances away, hands fidgeting still. She forms a loop in the rope and hands both ends of it back to me. Her eyes glow green fire, the kind that shows no sign of ever flickering out. Or burning me.

"Pull this knot apart, Finnick. Pull it so hard it tears apart."

I look at her blankly, and she closes her hands over mine, starts to tug the ends in opposite directions so that they close together. "You're strong, Finnick. Go ahead. Pull us apart."

I pull, but everything I try yanks the knot tighter. I'm only making it stronger. Annie studies my face, waiting patiently.

"It's impossible," I say finally.

Impossible. I drop the rope decisively. We're intertwined now. Her hands are balled up in my shirt, and she rubs at a spot on my chest just over my heart, like it's frozen and she's trying to knead a little warmth back into it. Her words flutter into my ear, soft and breathy.

"Can you please just let me love you? Because I'm really not sure if you can stop me."

Impossible things happen. I say yes.

It's something like giving up and something like starting over again. This is an option that allows for tomorrows. She's crying and I'm hugging her so tightly my arms ache and you can't tell my heartbeat from hers from the breaking waves. "This is the only time I'm ever going to say this, my dear, but you must be out of your mind," I manage. "You don't know what you're getting into."

Annie pulls back to look me in the eye. "Here's what I know. No matter where my mind goes, my heart is right here." She holds up our knot again, pulling one end tight. "And no matter where your body goes, your heart stays here, too. That part of you can stay with me." She tugs the other end and holds it up for my inspection.

"It will," I insist, clasping her hand, stroking a bed-headed curl behind her ear. "Will you believe that no matter what you see on a TV screen?"

"Of course," she murmurs. It's not enough for me.

"Promise me," I urge her, heat flushing my cheeks. I have never trusted anybody like this before. I never will again. "Promise me."

"Let's make a promise," Annie agrees.

Annie and I make a horrible, wonderful, terrible, beautiful promise, and a promise, a kiss, can't ever mean nothing to me again. This one means more than I could ever begin to express in words. I try, but her lips immediately stop mine, and they taste like sea salt and knots and promises and the first rays of daylight peeking in. And this time I do it right, gentle and slow and sweet as the sunshine in her hair, because after all, it's Annie's first kiss.

It's my first kiss, too.

:')

Thanks for reading, everybody! :D :D :D I love you all so much and you've made me a better author with your support and concrit and THANK YOU and I'm going to get all emotional now... :') :') *goes off to cry because six months of her life's passion is over now*

Well, there's still an epilogue... STAY TUNED! :D