Author's Note: Sorry for the more-than-two-week-long wait, but last two weeks of the school year have been tough with so many final projects and a final test. :/ But, it's summer vacation now! Yay! :D

Secondly, THANK YOU SO MUCH TO ALL YOU REVIEWERS, especially those who reviewed all or almost all the chapters so far. Thanks to you, I made it to 200 reviews! Congrats to FannieForever15 for being the 200th reviewer! She has some awesome Finnick and Annie stories, so check them out. :)

Enjoy the happy fluff of this chapter while it lasts, because it won't stay long. :(

Chapter 36: As Strong as a Tightly Woven Net

"As long as it can be large and extravagant and televised, certainly!" Plutarch replies when I ask him about Annie's and my wedding. That's fine with Annie and I; we just want to get married.

I never realized how much preparation a wedding needs. The net Annie and I are weaving together lies in a corner of our compartment, growing in size as we add to it each night. In addition, there's a lot of planning to be done, but luckily we have Plutarch to help us. Otherwise, I don't think we'd get everything done for months.

One afternoon, Annie and I walk to the part of Thirteen where school for the younger kids is held. The entire room is overflowing with talkative, overexcited kids between the ages of five and eleven. Today we are teaching them District Four's traditional wedding song "On This Voyage We Call Love". Not many exciting things happen in Thirteen, so they are off the wall. A teacher gets them to settle down, and Annie begins to talk to them.

"Hi, I'm Annie. This is Finnick. How are you?"

"Good!" the kids chorus.

"I'm glad," Annie replies with a smile. "I'm good too. Guess why?"

"Why?!"

"Because Finnick and I are getting married soon, and we want you all to sing a special song at our wedding. Can you do that for us?"

"Yeah!" The kids cry in excitement.

Line by line, Annie teaches the children the wedding song. They pick it up quickly, and in less than an hour, Annie hands the sheet music to their teacher so they can practice on their own. Then the children flood her with questions such as, "do you love Finnick?", "How did you meet?", "When's the wedding?", and "Is the ocean pretty?" Annie patiently answers each question in a gentle motherly tone. Mother. That word has never come to mind when I think of Annie before, but now the idea makes me smile. With her heart of gold, I know she'll be a fantastic mom someday.

Annie freezes suddenly when one of the children asks, "Is the arena scary?" She unfreezes after a moment only to squeeze her eyes shut, cover her ears, and rock back and forth on her feet. I wrap my arms protectively around her and rub her back gently.

"It's very scary," I reply for Annie. "It's so scary that sometimes we have bad dreams about it. Sometimes Annie even has bad dreams when she's awake, like right now."

The room is silent except for the sound of my voice whispering soothingly in Annie's ear. Suddenly, a little girl in the front walks up to us and gives Annie a hug. Surprised, Annie comes back to reality and after a while, hugs the little girl back. We then leave with the children calling goodbye gleefully behind us.

The thought of young children lingers in my head all day, specifically babies. Even more specifically, I imagine Annie holding our baby, a little person with fuzzy bronze-colored hair like me and Annie's dark green eyes. I know this is something I want once this rebellion is over, to start a family, and I assume Annie wants it too.

"Annie, have you noticed how good you are with kids?" I ask as we weave our net that night.

Annie smiles and nods. "I guess it must because of my little siblings. I've always been really motherly to them, even now that Ava's seventeen…" She trails off. Ava's still alive, we know that much. But that doesn't stop Annie from worrying about her.

"Speaking of about being motherly, what would you think of being a mother one day, after we're back in Four?"

She looks at me, grinning. "Really?" I nod, grinning back. "I… I'd love it! You think I'd be a good mom?"

"You'd be a great mom!" I correct.

Annie smiles again and kisses me on the cheek before going back to weaving. "Yeah," she agrees. "Let's have a family. Back in Four when it's safe for them. When they won't get reaped. Because you know they will, with us as parents."

I purse my lips, silent for a minute. It's true. If this rebellion fails the first kids they'll go after once they're of age would be the kids of rebels. And with two victors and rebels as parents, any kids we'd have would be doubly targeted. "What would you name our baby, if it could be anything?"

Annie smiles. "Finnick."

I make a face. "No," I say, shaking my head. "Anything but that."

Annie looks puzzled. "Why not?"

"I don't want to name our kid after me. Not the first name at least. If we named him Finnick, people might expect him to be a carbon copy of me, and not his own person. I don't want that for him."

Annie nods. "That makes sense. Why were you named 'Finnick'?"

I smile. "My grandfathers' names were Finnegan and Nicholas, or Finn and Nick for short. Put them together, and you get Finnick. But both of those are still too similar. I would want something different."

"What would you suggest?" Annie asks curiously.

I ponder that question for a while before responding, "What about Kai. It means 'the sea' in an ancient language called 'Hawaiian'."

"I like it," says Annie with a genuine smile. "But what if it was a girl?"

Annie and I look each other in the eye, and a name comes to us at the same time. "Magdalene." We say at once, obviously as a way of honoring Mags by using her full name.

I smile. "Definitely. Glad we agree."

Annie smiles. "How could we go with anything else?

I sit nervously in a hovercraft with Katniss Everdeen herself, fiddling with my hands. Finnick says I can trust her, but I'm still nervous around the most recent victor. She's the Mockingjay, after all, the powerful force driving this rebellion. She's rather intimidating, and being with her on a hovercraft without Finnick makes my nervous anxiety worse. I know she must be nice though, because the reason I'm even here is because she offered to take me to her home in Twelve to find a wedding dress.

"So, Annie…" Katniss says cautiously. "How long have you and Finnick known each other?"

"We've been together for five years, but I've known him for about eleven. He saved me from…" I trail off, covering my ears to prevent a flashback of the arena. No. I'm not going to the glass box. Not right now. I slowly uncover my ears. "Sorry. From the arena. I've loved him ever since. Before that even."

Katniss nods. "That's nice. You two seem to really love each other."

I laugh nervously, though I'm not really sure why. "We do."

Our conversation continues like this for the entire trip. It's slightly awkward, but very polite and friendly. I decide that I like Katniss, and I'm glad she and Finnick had each other's backs when Peeta and I were in the Capitol. I cover my ears again as we land, blocking out the sound of the hovercraft landing in Twelve. It brings back memories of when I was brought out of the arena, and once we're on the ground Katniss has to shake my shoulder slightly.

Katniss, her prep team, and I go into Katniss's old house in Twelve's Victor's Village and open her closet, which is filled with dozens of beautiful dresses made by her deceased stylists, Capitol rebel, Cinna. One of the prep team, Octavia, drops to her knees and bursts into tears. "It's been so long since I've seen anything pretty!" she gasps.

I try on many of the dresses with Katniss's prep team oohing and awing and Katniss nodding along with them out of kindness and slight indifference before finally deciding on a green silk dress the prep team says "goes strikingly well with my eyes". We choose one of Peeta's fancy suits and board the hovercraft again. The only thing left to do now is to hold the wedding itself.

The wedding ends up being in between the huge, extravagant event Plutarch had in mind and the simple signing of papers Coin would have preferred. A man from Ten named Dalton just happens to know how to preform wedding ceremonies stands at the front. The choir of children stand in rows in a corner along with a fiddler from Twelve, and a sea of three-hundred people sit in rows in the middle of it all.

I walk down the aisle with my dress flowing behind me, surely beaming. Finnick too is absolutely glowing, his eyes brighter than I've ever seen him. Finally, Dalton begins to speak. "Ladies, and gentlemen, we of gathered here today to witness the union of Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta. May we have the net our couple has woven together?" Two girls of about eleven or twelve come forward and drape the net over our shoulders. "And now for the vows. Finnick?"

"Annie, as cheesy and cliché as this may sound you have completely changed my life. You taught me it was possible for me to truly love someone, which I'm forever grateful. We're here for each other, to help and support each other. I never thought I'd love someone as much as I love you, but I do. I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives together, without a threat from anyone."

When Finnick finishes, Dalton nods for me to begin.

"You're my rock, Finnick. I've said this a million times, but it's true. I don't know where I'd be without you. But you're more than just that; you're my soul mate. I can't believe how lucky I am to have you. I also can't wait to begin the next part of our lives together as husband and wife, and know that you will be the best father any children we may have in the future. I love you, Finnick Odair."

We touch each other's lips with salt water, and sealed the marriage with a kiss. Everyone cheers, and the fiddler plays a happy tune. Whether we're supposed to or not, a woman from Twelve takes Gale by the hand and begins to dance with him, and everyone else joins them. For a long time this goes on, and Finnick and I even get our own special dance. Katniss can be found dancing with her little sister, Prim, and even Seraphina is being twirled around the dance floor in her temporary wheelchair by a grinning Liberty, laughing jovially and being happier than I've ever seen her.

After the dancing, everyone gathers around for cake, which Peeta has so kindly made for us. I'm glad he's feeling well enough to do so, because I've been worried about him. He did a great job of decorating it to, with its blue-green colored frosting, fish, sailboats, seals and sea flowers. For the rest of the night we mill around and socialize, with me safe in Finnick's arms.

"I'm Mrs. Odair," I say softly when Finnick and I go to bed that night.

Finnick grins broadly, his smile full of love and pride. "Yes you are. And I love you, so much, Mrs. Annie Odair."

I fall asleep wrapped in his strong, warm arms. Our love is as strong as a tightly woven net, and absolutely can come to break us now. There's just no way I'm going to let it.

Next Chapter: Finnick made a vow to never leave Annie's side again, but he slowly begins to realize that in order to keep her and their future family safe, he just might have to.