The Ocean Rolls Us Away

Chapter 36: Annie

It had been four months since I had confronted Finnick, and we had not spoken a word to each other since then. Occasionally we crossed paths on the street, but there was only ever a small nod or glance between us. I had originally thought that our separation would be extremely hard on me since he was one of the only people left who still cared about me, however my life was radically disrupted almost immediately after we had parted and there was no time for me to even think about him.

Three weeks after Finnick and I had gone our separate ways, I had been upstairs in my room playing my cello when I heard a loud crash come from the kitchen. It sounded almost like multiple glass plates or cups smashing to the ground and shattering into a million little pieces.

Immediately I stood up from my chair and set down my cello, wondering what on earth could have happened. I stepped out into the hallway and quickly ran down the stairs. When my feet stepped down onto the hard wood floor, I darted towards the kitchen. I passed the living room and turned around a corner, stepping into the kitchen. That was when I saw what had made the terrible noise.

There were shards of my mother's favorite china plates all over the floor, and a small red trail of what must have been blood. My eyes followed the blood over to my mother's small body lying on one side in a heap on the floor.

Immediately I gasped and called out to her as I ran over and sank to my knees on the ground beside her.

"Mother!" I cried out again as I reached out and placed my hands on her arm. When my hands touched the dark sleeve of her shirt I instantly felt something warm and sticky and I raised my hands to see they were covered in her blood. In panic I shakily turned her body over and found that her frail limbs had been cut by multiple shards of glass creating a dark pool of blood beneath her. But what truly frightened me the most was not the blood but what I saw when I looked up at her face. Her mouth was twisted into a painful moan and her eyes were rolled into the back of her head as if she'd had a stroke.

A horrified cry escaped from my throat as I called out to my brothers. "Cinnian!" I yelped as I shook my mother trying to bring her back to consciousness. "Cinnian, Bress!" I yelped helplessly again as tears of terror for my mother began to roll down my cheeks.

A few seconds later I heard shuffling feet and Cinnian burst into the room. He was in the middle of asking me what was wrong when he saw our mother.

"What happened?" He shouted in panic as he sunk down beside me and placed his fingers on our mother's neck, feeling for her pulse.

"I don't know," I replied with equal strain in my voice. At that moment Bress walked into the room to see Cinnian and I hovering over our mother, covered in her blood.

I looked up at him and saw the fear and distress in his eyes as he took in the sight. I knew that I needed to find some way to distract him so I told him to call the doctor. He only nodded his head shakily and then hurriedly left the room.

When he was gone. I turned back to my mother and as I took in the sight, the blood, and the expression on her face, suddenly the arena and all of those horrific deaths came back into my memory. I could hear the screams of the little girl who was melted in the river, and Martins cries as his head was severed from his body. I began to tremble as my memories flooded back into my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut and raised my hands to my ears in a desperate attempt to block out the screams. But they wouldn't go away and instead only grew worse as my blood covered hands touched my face and I could feel the sticky heat on my cheeks.

In the midst of my panic, I suddenly felt strong hands gripping my forearms in an attempt to pull my palms away from my ears.

"Stop!" I pleaded in distress as the rough hands seizing my skin began to remind me of when Luster attacked me in the arena. It was as if I could still hear his laughter, feel the sting of his slap across my cheek or the searing pain in my abdomen after his kicks. "Please!" I cried our frantically.

"Annie, quit it!" I could barely hear Cinnian bark at me. I realized at that moment that he must have been the one who was trying to pull my hands away from my ears. I couldn't respond to him though, my lips were quivering with so much pain.

"Just stop!" He shouted at me again, and when I continued to ignore him, he let go of my arms, shouting angrily, "Damn it Annie! Our mother is dying and you don't even care!"

At that moment, our district doctor and a few paramedics burst into the house, followed by Mags and a shaking Bress. When Mags saw me, she quickly led me out of the room and helped me calm down while the doctor tried to revive my mother. Before long, the paramedics were rushing her to the hospital with the hope of saving her life. Mags, Cinnian, Bress, and I followed behind them and waited silently on the faded blue couches in the small waiting room.

As we waited, I sat still and didn't say a word. My body and heart were still so disturbed that I couldn't even begin to try and attempt to speak. The fact that Bress had Mags to comfort him made me feel less guilty for slipping away into my self, but there was still a feeling of remorse in me that I couldn't shake.

After an hour, the doctor finally came out to the waiting room with a solemn look on his face. This made me sit up in nervous anticipation, and part of me rejoined the world. As I did this, I felt Mags' warm hand gently fall on my shoulder, and a wave of comfort rushed over me.

"How is she?" Cinnian asked the Doctor impatiently, after he had continued to stand there and say nothing.

The Doctor looked at us all with remorse and then said, "It appears that stress had been eating away at your mother and caused her to have a stroke. Unfortunately, we were too late, and unable to revive her."

My hands flew up to my mouth as tears began to lurch up my throat and I gasped with pain. In rage, Cinnian lashed out at a vase of flowers next to him, and it went smashing to floor. Bress only broke into tears and buried his face into Mags shoulder. There was nothing any of us could do now but weep. That morning I had sat and had tea with my mother, talking about how our lives had been so drastically changed. And now here I was, learning that I would never get the chance to speak to her again. I would never feel the comfort of her arms around me, or get the opportunity to tell her that her husband was in fact dead and not in the Capitol on business. The only thing that gave me peace was knowing that now she could be with my father and Martin.

When the Doctor let us go back and see her body, I couldn't go because I just couldn't face her lying there, defeated by death. My mother had always been so filled with life, and now here she was completely emptied of it.

A few day's later, we held her funeral in the old District Four cemetery. She was buried next to her parents and her tombstone read, "Sonia Cresta… Died Aged 38…A Loving wife and mother. You shall be missed."

As they lowered her casket into the ground, my brothers and I each tossed a yellow rose, my mother's favorite flower, onto the glossy wood. Then watched silently as it sunk into the earth.

All of my mother's friends attended, along with our last surviving relatives. As we were leaving, out of the corner of my eye I saw Finnick standing in his black suit and gazing at me with saddened eyes. But I couldn't look at him without feeling overwhelmed with sadness, and so I quickly turned away.

After everyone had gone, Mags came up to me with a carved wooden box in her hands.

"What is that?" I asked her quietly, as I was still filled with grief.

"It's from your mother." She said softly and she held the box out to me. I took it from her hands gently and examined it as she continued, "It was her jewelry box. She kept everything in it. Her will dictated that she wanted you to have it."

"Thank you." I said faintly to Mags as she rubbed my arm and then sadly walked away.

That night, I was sitting in my room and I decided to open the box. Mags had said that it was a jewelry box, but I had seen my mother's jewelry box before and this wasn't it. So when I opened it, I wasn't surprised that there wasn't jewelry inside. Instead there were old letters and photographs, little trinkets, and dried flowers. Since my mother had left the box to me, I decided that she wouldn't mind if I read the letters, so I pulled out the first one and unfolded it.

The letter was written in my father's handwriting, and looked relatively new. It was only when I started to read though, that I realized how recently this letter had been written.

Sonia,

My love, there is something that I must tell you. I have done a terrible thing, and I don't know how you will ever be able to forgive me. I lost all of our money playing cards in the Capitol. I couldn't find the right words to tell you, so I decided to go and win it back so that you would never have know what a fool I'd been. I had nothing to gamble with, and I was so desperate to get the money back that I did something very stupid. I made a deal with the President. He offered to give me back all of the money that I lost, if I agreed to enter Annie into the reaping. I immediately said yes because I assumed that her name would only be in there once, and that she would never be picked. But then the inevitable happened. I couldn't let you all see how furious I was when she was reaped, and so I made her go up to the stage. Then a peacekeeper brought me a note from the President containing the money, and wishing our family the best of luck in our future endeavors. At the end of his note he warned me that everything comes with a price that must be paid.

Immediately after the reaping, I stormed up to the girl's tribute bowl and dumped it out onto the ground. Every single slip of paper had Annie's name on it. Snow rigged the reaping, and it's all because of me.

I tossed the letter aside in agony because I couldn't even bare to finish it. All I could think was that now I understood why my father had looked so guilty that day. It was because he had gambled with my life for the sake of his reputation and dignity.

In horror, tears began to roll down my cheeks. If my father hadn't used me, Martin would still be alive. So would my mother and probably my father too. Our lives would all be just the way they were. I would have never gotten to know Finnick, District Four wouldn't hate me, and I would be living ignorant of just what might have happened.

In agony, I buried my head into my pillow as my body racked with quiet sobs. After a while, I fell asleep.

The next morning, I desolately went down into the kitchen to make breakfast when I found a note from Cinnian. It said that he could no longer live in this house, or district and that he had left to find a better life. He wanted to get away from everything that he hated, and all the things that were poisoning his life. He never said where he was going, or what he planned to do. All I knew was that he was gone.

I tried to look for him, but never found him and so I gave up, realizing that what he truly had wanted to get away from was me, and that finding him wouldn't have done any good.

A few days after Cinnian ran away, I was in my room when I noticed my mothers box sitting on the floor. I had never kept looking through it after I found my fathers letter, but now a small spark of curiosity ran through me, and so I gently picked up the box and set it down on my lap as I sat on the edge of my bed.

I opened up the box and gently picked up a small stack of letters on top, held together by a ribbon. I started to untie them, when I noticed a pile of pictures resting beneath where they had been in the box. The first few pictures were of my mother as a young girl. She was beautiful with sea green eyes and honey colored light brown hair. The next few pictures were of my parents together as teenagers. They had been together before my father's games and when he got back, they were married just a few years later. I was expecting to find pictures of their wedding next, but instead I found pictures of a baby boy with dark curly hair. As I flipped through the pictures, he appeared older, but the last one stopped with him looking to be about four or five. I flipped over the picture and found that on the back someone had written, 'Damian, age five'.

I had no idea who Damian was, and why there were pictures of him in my mothers box, but when I was about to set the pictures back into the box, I notice a small-unopened letter addressed to Damian. Curiosity took a hold of me and I quickly grabbed the letter, opening it and sliding out a folded piece of my mother's stationary. When I unfolded it, I immediately began to read.

Dear Damian,

It's hard for me to write this letter since I'm not quite sure how to start it. I guess the only way to begin is by introducing my self to you. My name is Sonia Cresta, and I live in District Four. I'm writing to you because I have a story that I've needed to tell you for a long time, and I know that you don't know me, but someday I hope that you will. After reading this letter I also hope that you are able to forgive me for what I am about to write.

When I was sixteen years old, I met a young man named Aether. He was the handsomest boy in my school, and every girl wanted to be noticed by him. I was lucky enough to catch his attention, and pretty soon, we were crazy about each other. He had been training as a career and that year he was reaped as District Four's male tribute. A week later I found out that I was pregnant. In shame I went to my parents and told them everything. They were so humiliated by me, that they decided to send me away to live with my aunt and uncle in District One. There I would deliver the baby, and then I would leave it in their care to be raised as their child. I was told that I would never tell Aether, if he survived the games, and that I was to have no relationship with my child. Painfully, I accepted my parent's terms, even though it killed me, and after nine months I gave birth to a son that I named Damian. Yes, I gave birth to you. I stayed for another week, and then left you with my aunt and uncle with the hope that someday I would see you again in person, and not just through the pictures that they would send of you.

While I had been away, Aether had won the games, and my parents had told him that I went on an educational trip to District One. He believed every word of it, and when I got back, we were reunited. I hated not being able to tell him about you, but I knew that it was for the best.

A few years later we got married and you now have three brothers and a sister. Every time that I look at them, I think of you and how I wish that they could know you. Someday I know that they will. But the point of writing this letter is not for me to tell you about what I wish could have happened. The point of this letter is for me to tell you that I love you so much and that I think of you everyday. I'm so sorry that we were pulled apart, but leaving you behind was one of the hardest things that I've ever done, and I hope that you can forgive me.

Love,

Your Mother

I set down the letter in complete shock. I had another brother, and he was living in District One. By now he would be about twenty-two, maybe even living with a family of his own. The thing that broke my heart though was that my mother had never been able to give this letter to him before she died. He didn't even know that she was dead.

As I realized all of this, I knew that I couldn't let my mothers long kept secret die with her. Damian had to know the truth, and there was only one person who could tell him, me. And I knew the perfect way to tell him too. The Victory Tour was in exactly one week. I would be stopping in District One, and when I did, I was going to find my older brother and give him my mother's letter. Then I would tell him the rest of our story, and maybe, just maybe he would want to be a part of our lives.