PART TWO: The Sea Glass Games

District Four - Healing

The next few weeks are a whirlwind of activity. It reminds me of my Victory Tour, and how everything went by so quickly that I hardly got the chance to breathe. Only this time, the whirlwind is unwelcome. I don't want to forget everything that's happening. I want to grasp at every little detail, every little event, and catalogue it all in my mind.

Annie's house is next to mine. Since her mother's hospitalization, she's set her mind to making it as homey as possible. This has unleashed a new fire in her, a new purpose. I'm seeing a little bit of the old Annie shine through. I think she just likes the idea that she has someone to take care of, instead of the other way around.

I'm by her side for most of the time. There are few cameras here in District Four. There are no Capitol eyes besides the President's following me.

She works nearly every day from dawn to dusk, renovating her new house. Annie always calls it "the new house" or simply "the house." But never once has she referred to it as "home." Even as she fills it with old and new furniture, even as she hangs up pictures and puts away clothes and other belongings, I can see it in her eyes; this fancy, empty house will never really be her home. Home is where the heart is, and most of her heart is scattered out to sea.

Annie fits in well with the other victors. She continues to talk almost dayly with Mags. I know that they will always remain close. She also gets along grandly with Haro, who makes her laugh. Ore has always been a bit too shy to really form any genuine friendships with any of us, but Annie tells me that he helped her move in some heavy furniture while I wasn't present and I know that they will get along fine too.

Constance is incapable of coming out to meet Annie. She's still barely hanging by a thread, but I'm pretty impressed; Constance wasn't supposed to live long enough to even have the opportunity to meet the next victor.

"Do you think I should go visit her?" Annie inquires one day.

"No," I say. "Something tells me that it won't be beneficial for either of you."

Soon after that the doorbell rings, and when Annie goes to answer it she finds Nath at her doorstep. They give each other mildly surprised looks, as though Annie didn't expect him to be standing there and Nath hadn't actually expected her to open the door for him; but of course she would, because Annie is new to the idea of a peephole.

I scowl and stalk over there, taking the door in one hand and grasping the door frame in the other, keeping Annie close to my side. "What do you want?" I snap.

Nath gives me a sour look. Obviously he's not very pleased to see me. "Look, I just came to apologize and make amends for what happened. I was drunk, okay? I didn't know what I was doing."

"Sure looked like you did," I remark. "That's no excuse, Nath, you're always drunk. Now get out of here and don't come back, or I might have to bring my trident out of retirement."

Nath holds up a basket. "I brought muffins."

"Go away, you creep." As I slam the door in his face, he gives Annie a bland 'I'm sorry.' I peek out the window to make sure that he really leaves. He does, eating a muffin on the way.

Annie gives me a look. "He was just trying to apologize, Finnick. What you did wasn't necessary."

Slowly I take in her sunkissed face, her disapproving chaotic green eyes, the freckled skin of her shoulders, the delicate hands fisted at her hips, the curled toes on her bare feet. I sigh, and brush a brown lock of hair behind her ear. "I know."

Only a few days later, Annie is on her way to the hospital to pick up her mother and finally bring her to the new house. She's only been to visit her mother a few times, mostly because she's been busy with moving in and because it seems like every time she visits her mother is asleep. They say that's a sign of depression, excessive sleeping. But I don't say that to Annie.

I walk with her to the hospital today, just like I have always done. I never go into the room with her, I just wait in the lobby, but it makes me feel good knowing I'm there with her. The fact that I'm leaving for a "pleasurable" trip to the Capitol in only a few days is encouragement as well. I guess I think that maybe if I spend a whole bunch of time with her now, it won't be as bad when I leave. I know I'm wrong, but it's worth a shot.

Annie is a squirming ball of nerves. She doesn't like hospitals; an understandable sentiment, considering her experiences with them. I'm not particularly fond of them either. As we're waiting for Mrs. Cresta, she wiggles around in her seat and fiddles with her hands, her hair, her clothes. She taps little tunes on the wooden armrests. A part of me is irritated, but I just take a deep breath. She's nervous, I tell myself. She's just nervous.

Across the room, a mother snaps at her son to be still.

Then Annie sighs. And she heaves another one. And another. My gaze flickers up at the ticking clock above the desk, then back at her. "Annie," I say, unable to keep quiet, "you do realize it's only been five minutes, right?"

She groans and squishes her face into her hands, hiding it from view. I close my eyes and breathe slowly, thinking that maybe if I'm calm it will influence her emotions a little. It works, for a short while. I'm almost on the brink of dozing off when I feel Annie's hand on my shoulder. "Finnick?"

"Yes?" I reply, opening one eye. She sounds like a scared, worried little girl, and she looks like one too.

"Oh, um...nothing." Annie's face glows red and she sits back down in her own seat, looking down at her hands. I shrug and close my eyes again. But I tap my foot on the ground, just so Annie can see that I'm moving and okay. I know from the look in her eyes that my stillness bothers her.

"Annie Cresta?" a nurse calls.

Annie shoots out of her seat so fast, it reminds me of a wind-up Jack-in-the-Box that I often see displayed in toy store windows in the Capitol. "That's me!" she says.

Another nurse wheels in Mrs. Cresta. Her legs are still in bad shape, all covered in bandages and gauze, but the rest of her looks relatively unscathed. Her honey-blonde hair is short and spiky around her face, starting to grow back after the nurses shaved off all the burned parts. But her face is sallow and gray, her eyes blank dark holes. To me she seems more like a skeleton than the elegant woman I met before.

Annie hesitates. Then she steps forward and begins talking to the nurse, shaking her head up and down vigorously, like a child receiving instructions from a teacher. I feel the corners of my mouth turn up. I'm glad that Annie can still be a child, in some way at least, even if she is broken and wise beyond her years at the same time.

I stand and stretch, making my way over to them just as the nurse says, "Are you sure you can handle this? She can stay here for a little longer, just until she's fully - "

"She can handle it," I interrupt firmly. This nurse doesn't need to plant any ideas into Annie's head that she's incapable of doing anything.

Annie looks down at her shoes, embarrassed, I think, by my tone of voice, but she gives the nurse a smile and says, "I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Okay." The nurse signs a sheet. I offer to push Mrs. Cresta's wheelchair, but Annie wants to do it. The three of us exit the hospital, an unlikely trio. Annie gibbers on for about two minutes, and then the conversation slowly dies. Mrs. Cresta kills it with her abysmal eyes. She kills the words in my mouth.

We finally make it to Victor's Village after a long stretch of silence. I help Annie maneuver her mother into the house. We stand there in awkward silence for a moment. Then Annie clears her throat. "So...are you hungry?" she asks her mother. "Or thirsty?"

Mrs. Cresta pauses. "...I'm tired," she says finally, slowly getting out of her wheelchair. She shuffles away from us and down the shadowed hallway, shutting the door to her bedroom with a solid thud behind her.

"Okay," Annie calls after her. "Maybe we can, um, go take a walk on the beach later...or something..." She trails off, looking at her feet again. Annie must have her feet committed to memory, as often as she looks down at them.

I take her chin and make her look up. Tears aren't gathering in her eyes, but they might as well be. She looks utterly hopeless. "Do you want me to stay?" I ask. I've spent the night at Annie's house quite a few times, but of course we've never had sex. In fact, once we did nothing but sleep on the couch. It was actually kind of nice.

"No, you can go home if you want to. You have to pack anyway," Annie reminds me.

"Ugh," I groan. "You're right. I'll see you later." I take her face in my hands and give her a kiss before I turn toward the door. When I look back, Annie is still watching me leave. I smile at her. "Are you sure you want me to go?"

"Yes," she replies, exasperated, as she gives me a weak shove out the door. "You need to go pack for your trip."

I grin wider and grab her by the waist, pulling her closer for a deeper kiss. Maybe I can convince her that I don't need to go pack...even though I desperately do. "You're sure you're sure?"

"Mmm...yes, I'm still sure."

Suddenly it occurs to me that I am being rejected, and the thought is so funny that I burst into laughter, releasing her and stepping onto the porch. "Annie, you really are crazy."

"What?" she exclaims, astounded.

I shake my head and make a sweeping gesture at my physique. "Refusing this body..."

"Get out," Annie scoffs, this time nearly pushing me off of her porch.

"Yes, ma'am," I grin, shooting her a salute before taking the steps two at a time and jogging over to my house.

"Don't get lost on your way there!" Annie calls after me, a joke between the two of us since my house is right beside hers. I give a dismissive wave of my hand and hop up the steps. Before I open the door, I glance over at Annie's porch to see she still has her eyes on me. I smile, wave, and blow her a kiss. She rolls her eyes and walks inside her own house.

I watch the door shut behind her, wishing that I was still beside her.

Packing is a slow, painful process. It seems bizarre to me that I need to pack the most mundane things for my own personal week of torment. Things like the toothbrush I can't find.

Must have left it at Annie's, I think, tossing a pair of pants into my duffel bag. It's not like a need much; the Capitol could supply anything I desired. I could get on the train nude and still survive without inconvenience for the next week. Personally, it's just nice for me to know that I have my own belongings with me, even if it's something as insignificant as a sock.

Eventually I give up on it and flop down on the bed beside my bag, closing my eyes in preparation for blissful sleep.

I'm caught in that place between dreams and awareness when I hear the thunder of fists at my front door. I shoot out of bed with my pulse pounding in my ears. Who's visiting at this hour? Peacekeepers? What would they want with me?

Faintly, I hear my name being called.

It's not Peacekeepers.

I open the front door, and Annie is standing there. She's a wreck. Tears and mucus are streaming down her face, and her hair is plastered to her neck with sweat. I have the time to absorb only this before she's latched onto me, sobbing with relief in my chest.

"Annie, what's wrong?" I ask frantically, gently prying her off of me. "Did something happen with your mother?"

Her face drains of color, and her eyes fill with a kind of guilty horror. "My mother! I completely forgot about her!" She wheels around on her heel and tries to run back to her house, most likely to check that her mother is okay, but I grab the back of her damp shirt before she gets too far.

"First tell me what's going on."

"There was tunnel and blue light and I couldn't get to it no matter how hard I tried, but then suddenly it was all around me and I couldn't breathe, it was like I was drowning, and the whole time my head was pounding and I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe, and then my neck burned and my head - it - it - "

I relax a fraction. "It was just another nightmare," I say.

"Right." Annie stops, considers this, and nods to herself. "Right. Just a nightmare."

I can hear the crashing of the waves on the shore as we stand there in silence, digesting this. Finally, I take Annie's sweaty hand and lead her off of my porch. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up. You're a mess."

Annie is silent until we get to her house. "Will you check on my mother and see if she's okay?" she asks in a quiet whisper.

"I'm sure she's fine," I say back.

"Please?"

I look at her anxious face and stifle a sigh, nodding. Mrs. Cresta's door is locked, but it's easy to pick with a little trick Johanna taught me. Annie's mother reminds me of a sculpture, all hard angles and lines in the moonlight. She's turned over on her side, asleep in bed.

Annie bites her lip. "Are you sure she's okay?"

"Would you like me to check her pulse?" I say sarcastically, immediately regretting saying anything when Annie looks at me with hopeful eyes. I remember her shaking my shoulder when we were in the hospital and I had gone still. Annie doesn't like stillness. I walk across the room and gently press my finger to Mrs. Cresta's wrist. She is, predictably, alive.

After that, Annie is completely compliant. I take her back to her room and assess the damage. The sheets are soaked in sweat, bundled and bunched in every possible way. Vomit coats the bottom of the tub in the bathroom. Must've been one hell of a nightmare, I think to myself. I don't say anything though, I don't even crack a joke, because I can see the shame in Annie's eyes. She hates being so helpless, so vulnerable.

I tell Annie to take a shower in the bathroom across the hall while I clean out the tub in this one. I also change out the sheets with fresh ones and lay out some new pajamas for her.

As I do all of this, I wonder if this nightmare is another one of the President's schemes. Maybe a warning not to let Annie's presence affect my performance in the Capitol? As though blowing up an entire shipful of Annie's closest friends and family wasn't enough. As though I would forget that in only a few weeks.

Annie pads in wearing her clean pajamas and smelling of soap while I rinse out the tub one more time. I ask her questions while she brushes her teeth.

"Are you hearing any voices again?"

She shakes her head.

"Have you had this nightmare before?"

Again, another head shake.

"Has anyone been acting suspicious around you?"

Annie spits in the sink. "Well, there is this one guy."

I raise my eyebrows, suddenly alert. "Who? What does he look like?"

"He's pretty tall and tan and muscular, and he's got bronze hair and these big green eyes that make girls melt. He keeps following me around everywhere. I think he's under the impression that I like him or something." Annie gives me a sly smile.

I break into a grin. "Oh, he's not under any impressions. He knows you love him."

"I do." Annie's smile slides into something soft and almost heartbreaking in its tenderness. "Love you, I mean."

My heart does a little somersault. "I love you, too." I think that Annie is the only one I've ever loved, besides maybe Mags and Johanna. But she's the first person I've ever said it to. She's the only one I've ever loved like this.

Annie wants to check on her mother one last time, but she doesn't make me check her pulse. Then I coax her back into bed, promising her that I'll be there if she has another nightmare. She curls up next to me, warm and fragrant and shower-soft. I listen to her breathe, I listen to her sleep. For a second I hate the President and every Capitol woman that is tearing me away from her. But most of all, I hate myself.

Some more Annie/Finnick goodness. Tell me your thoughts.