C︎HAPTER SEVENTEEN
The back deck to Mags' home is covered in flowers.
It's a memorial.
It's a funeral.
She's not sure what the rituals of the humans were in terms of mourning and paying respects to the dead, but of what little she's seen and heard of his world, she understands that Mags' death was not given proper respects. Her death was part of a game, so much larger and more sinister than she could even comprehend.
Those that loved her were not given closure, so they found their own, here on her doorstep.
The flowers here are duller than back home. Still beautiful in their purpose - lush, tropical flowers that comes in swaths of orange and pink and red - but Anneyce wishes they'd brought a bouquet from the Colony; a nice vibrant, fragrant swath of peonies and roses and lilies to set among the cards and small seashells that have been left on the doorstep by others before them. Something beautiful, ethereal, not of this world, for the woman that means so much to Finnick. Something to help smooth the deep set frown on his face.
He looks lost, small. Drained, as he observes the display of mourning on Mags' doorstep. She watches his throat bob with the smallest hint of emotion.
Anneyce offers one last pass at the flowers and trinkets, before spinning towards the surf. She can hear Finnick following behind, feels his presence as he stands behind her now crouched form like a shadow, her fingers dancing around, almost digging until she gasps out a small, "Ah-hah!"
Anneyce, now proud, stands and turns to offer him something: a freckled, pink shell, no larger than the tip of his thumb. His eyes, green glass, water at the sight, and he gazes at her, trying to suck back the raw emotion that's running rampant through him. Anneyce, trying to tramp down the constricting feeling in the pit of her chest at the sight of his expression, smiles gently at him, placing a sea-dampened and sandy hand on his arm. He turns the shell over between his fingers, as if unsure what to do, before she nudges him along toward the house.
Shaky, he approaches the memorial, and nestles the shell between a bouquet of wilted sunflowers and a baby blue sea glass necklace.
"It's not much, but it's something," Finnick says to the shell, his voice like water.
"I'm sure she would have loved it," she murmurs, trying to help him understand. It's not your fault, she wants to say. How could you have known? This violence...
"She would have railed me a new one," Finnick stretches back into a standing position, turning to face her and smiling fondly at the thought, "I can just hear it now, 'you forgot to get me a gift for my own memorial?'"
Anneyce smiles at him, at the joke, a small pit of relief opening up in her belly at the sight of him cracking jokes. She reaches up, hesitant, before pressing her hand along the nape of his neck, sinking her fingers up into the soft hair there. He leans into the touch, his expression grateful for her presence, before he glances once more towards the house, his eyes growing distant.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay at Osa's?" she asks, because she needs to. She was unsure of this; of willingly entering a ghost's home. He had more strength than she, that's for sure.
He shakes his head, firm, and the action of it detaches her hand from its position on his neck. He sucks in a deep, wet breath, before marching over the flowers and shells, his hand digging underneath the lip of a wilted potted plant to the left of the sliding door's frame. Finnick procures a brass key from a hiding spot there, and in one shaky movement, he unlocks the back door and they enter.
Osa had mentioned that neither her nor Reed had seen anyone go into Mags' home since she died. It seems pretty apparent now by the layer of dust that sits like a thin, white blanket on all the furniture. It floats through the air as their movements stir it up, like a storm. The back door leads straight into a kitchen – the set up seems identical to Osa and Reed's. She imagines that the rest of the houses they'd passed that dot along the beach are all built with the same floor plan.
Finnick doesn't speak as they walk into the home, his face pale, features tight and drawn, and Anneyce respects the silence. She holds back the questions that burn her tongue as she marvels through the infrastructure, almost listless in its emptiness. Osa and Reed's home felt more alive, compared to this. This felt not as a home, but an empty shell.
Everything is white and pale, matching the dust that coats the furniture. She strokes the wall, a stale powdery blue color and she frowns.
"Victors aren't allowed to renovate any of the homes," his voice startles her and she turns to catch him observing her. She can't tell what emotion his voice is leaking, but he sounds clipped and distant. He turns away, his gaze now to the white walls. "But, knowing her, she would have painted the walls yellow."
It's a nice thought, bringing the rooms alight. To match the life in the woman left behind. She tries to picture it, canaries and sunshine.
"Yellow is a fitting color, I think," she agrees.
He nods absently, glancing around the room they're in, but she's not sure if he really heard her. Without hesitation he reaches into one of the many drawers that adorn the island in the back wall of the room, and quickly fishes out a metal ladle. He holds the ladle in his hands, staring at it with an unreadable expression, and Anneyce feels a small pinch in her gut. Turning away, she decides to give him some semblance of privacy, and she pads through the rest of the house.
Rather than a single room that bleeds into another, the house is compartmentalized. Walls and doors and hallways that connect them to even more segmented rooms – it reminds her of Izzie's cottage, but with a little less chaos and more stability to the floor plan. Ghosting through rooms, she peers at the crooks and crevices, not touching but simply observing. Though the interiors of the homes were untouched to personal design, the life draped over the mandated furniture seeps through. Hand-made throws fold over chairs, their edges worn from use. In one room, dried flowers sit delicately in a vase on a table. In another, a painting of a footprint in the sand hangs hauntingly above a couch.
The rooms are alight with the static of their owner, and Anneyce wants to collect all of it, keep it somewhere it will forever be untouched. Keep the memories buzzing strong, unperturbed from the house and it's starch white walls.
But she doesn't touch, she just observes.
She's also struck by the advancement of Finnick's world. She sees levers and machines that she doesn't recognize as natural: black boxes that shine lights with black chords that disappear into the walls, lights that shine without the use of a flame. She had been so wrapped up in the drama of what was happening at Osa's house, that she barely took in the gadgets and gizmos they'd been using to heat up her tea, or bring light to a room.
It was unfathomable, a different kind of magic. Something handmade. She'd heard that, at risk to destroying resources in their own world, humans could create technology and weaponry far advanced to her own. It was one thing to hear it, but a whole other to witness it in person. It was dizzying to comprehend.
Anneyce had found a staircase on the other end of the house, and the top of it dropped her off to a long hallway speckled with a string of doorways, all held ajar in their abandonment. She turned into the first one that forked off from the landing, pushing into a large bedroom, with a massive bed propped in the center. On the far wall, a large, tall window opened up to a view of the ocean, now basking a rich orange as the sun starts to sink lower and lower beneath the tide. For a while, she watched the sky turn from peach, to the color of an orange rind, and finally to a puckered, bruised purple, the ocean below it reflecting the colors, mocking it.
"This was her room."
Anneyce jumps at Finnick's voice, finding him standing in the door, one hand pressed against the frame, as if it were doing the arduous work of keeping him upright. His eyes flicker around the expanse of the walls, before landing on her, his expression unreadable under the sliver of jaundiced light that the nearly receded sunset tosses into the room.
"There should be some spare clothes in the cabinets in here, if you'd like to change. You're welcome to whatever you like." His eyes skirt away, suddenly sheepish and Anneyce glances down at the tattered, bloodstained, and ripped remains of Izzie's leant clothing. She looks up to respond, but he's already gone, as if he was always just the wind, and Anneyce tries to ignore how hollow it makes her feel.
She wasn't sure if he was doing it on purpose, but every so often, she could feel him mentally shutting her out. It was like a barrier was sliding up, closing her off from him and whatever his emotions were. In a way, she was aware it was probably a grieving tactic, but that didn't help to siphon away the slice of hurt that cut through her like a warm sting whenever it happens. She wants to be let in – to be trusted enough to help him, no matter what's going on.
Anneyce's fingers roll through the knobs along the nightstand beside the large bed, but she pulls it open to reveal little much beside a small notebook, and some scattered odds and ends. Crossing the room, she approaches another set of double-doors along the far wall, and she pulls them open to reveal shelving with various linens and folded clothing.
She thumbs through the fabrics, all willowy and light to accommodate the humid climate. Mostly short and cropped, but a few fabrics that mimic the style that Osa had been wearing earlier. It was overwhelming, the sight of it all, the choices to make, when before Izzie had presented her with the folded shirt and trousers and that was it.
The humid air mingles with the headache trilling behind her eyes, and she blows out a shaky breath as she stares at the clothing now strewn about the floor. Anneyce's cheeks warm with frustration and embarrassment as she pulls the clothing from its tucked away place, unsure what to do, what to wear. She was so unused to the concept of it – she felt so out of her depth with everything here, and it was so silly that this was the final straw that brought the rush of emotion out of her, but exhaustion was settling in.
Eventually, she comes the conclusion that whatever she did, she does not want to wear pants any longer. So she dawns the first long, flowing piece of fabric she touches and puts everything carefully back into it's place in the cabinet, closing it with a bit more force than necessary.
It felt good to shuck the dirty, bloodstained clothes she'd been wearing and replace it with the dress. It was light, widely draping just beyond her knees. Because of the nature of the weather here, it was sleeveless too, which was a bonus, the straps thick around her shoulders, but leaving her arms free and loose.
Relieved to be finished with the task, she lets out a slow breath and pushes the discarded clothing into a small pile. She figures they could burn them; no amount of scrubbing would bring them back, and she doubts Izzie would want them back anyway, if they had any means to track the clairvoyant down anyway.
Izzie.
So the strange clairvoyant had been right all along, Anneyce was capable of getting them through to the human world. The nymph sinks down into the edge of the large mattress, now finally gathering a moment to process it, among other thoughts that have prying away at her edges all day. They'd been sinking to the back burner as more and more weightier concerns reared their head – but now that she was alone, and her mind was bending towards the topic, she couldn't ignore them.
Anneyce touched her lips, pressing her fingertips to the warm, chapped skin there. If she tried hard enough, she could feel the residuals of the tingling sensation Finnick had lassoed to the surface every time he kissed her.
He had kissed her.
And she had kissed him – multiple times.
The very concept had opened a trap door to how she viewed the events of the past week. She had been ignoring the signs, but now she can't deny that it had been building to this point for a while now. The unexplainable eye contact he gave her. The grabbing of hands, the soft touches, the wordless gestures...
All warning signs that pointed to this inedibility, signs she'd been ignoring, until now.
Somehow, she felt like a prophecy had just come true; something monumental had shifted into place that Izzie had been nudging them towards. But was she really that important? Was this destiny really that grandiose? Or were these feelings for Finnick just becoming the center of her world – so big that they felt like the most important thing?
In the middle of all of this, the conversation she'd shared with Izzie about her mother beneath the beech tree poked and prodded at her all day.
"She sought the same answers you seek." That is what Izzie had said when Anneyce asked why her mother had visited the clairvoyant.
Until now, that had been a conundrum Anneyce had been too timid to try and unwrap, unsure how it would impact her view of the world, of herself, of her mother.
Her mother's ghost followed her like a cloud, always out of the corner of her eye, slogging along around her heart. But she's never felt the pressure of her father more than right now, here, in the human world. She's always felt like, in a way, they were tangled together, more than how it was with the other nymphs.
Her mother loved her father.
Before, when she was with Izzie, that statement felt like a question. Unearthed ground. But now here, in the human world, after she's felt the kiss of the human she's spent the last few weeks so close beside, the answers feel a bit more concrete.
Her mother was in love with her father.
And Anneyce is in love Finnick.
︎By the time Annie meanders her way back down the stairs, Finnick is pawing around kitchen for the spare wax candles he knew Mags kept stashed away for moments of emergency. He was glad to see she'd taken up his offer; one of Mags' old spring dresses flowing around her shins, like a wisp. He knows that clothes weren't really a part of the nymph's agenda in the Colony, so he wasn't sure if he needed to convince her that it was time to change out of the old, tattered ones they'd traveled in.
He figures, however, she's not a barbarian. She needs to feel clean, too.
Speaking of which.
"The bathroom is back upstairs and the next room over from the one you were just in, by the way," he offers. "If you want to wash up, later. We probably shouldn't use the shower, but the sink should suffice."
She almost doesn't seem to be listening, her eyes skim over him lightly, before they make their way to his, and she flushes a scarlet pink. Somewhere along the line he's changed into a new set of fresh clothes as well, a loose blue shirt that drapes over his frame with more ease than the last, ruined one, and a pair of lightweight pants that fall longer and fit more appropriately than the tight pair Izzie had provided.
Finnick stares back, eyes widening a little in confusion, before he smiles at her, almost teasing.
"Like the view?" he says, and she cocks her head, not picking up his sarcasm. Her cheeks flush deeper, however, at his inquiry, now that she's positive she's been caught.
As if to help close the distance between them and snuff out the now nervous energy radiating off her for some reason, he offers her one of the many candles lingering in his arms.
"The houses are still connected to Panem's power source, even after they've been vacated," he pauses, thinking about how to phrase the next part. He had been talking about showers and sinks and electric lights, without even knowing if she understood what it was he was referencing. "Um, I'm sorry, do you know what that it is?"
"One of your human inventions?" she says, taking the candles from him gently, and he's almost positive she takes care to avoid his hands as she does. He ignores that conspiracy for a moment, to instead focus on the fact that she's aware humans invent things, far more advanced in technology. He's not one to generalize, but from what he's seen of her world, the people and their technology seemed more...primitive.
The fact that they've caught wind of it, but yet done nothing about it is strange to him. Where's the sense of ingenuity? No one in the Great Forest were idiots – he figured that surely they were capable of building cars and lamps and conventional ovens.
Annie's patiently waiting for him to continue on with whatever he was getting at before, so he forces himself to clear his head of his musings and continue, "yes. It also means we can light the rooms without needing to start a fire. But considering the fact that no one knows we're here, I think it's best that we don't use it."
Annie nods, agreeing, before lifting the bundle of wax candles, "So, candles it is then?"
They make quiet work of dotting the candles around the kitchen, and adjacent sitting room, shutting the window shades, just in case. Finnick shows her where the switches are for everything and how to avoid turning them on, and then procures a small tin with matches to light the three in the kitchen, crackling the once dark walls with pools of warm orange light. The sun had dropped completely, leaving nothing but the slivered moon and a smattering of stars to float before the ocean in the backyard, sheathing the house in darkness.
Afterward, they sit on the large, dusty dining table and eat the heartiest meal they've had in weeks. Osa had graciously donated food for them before they departed; smoked, cured salmon, meats, round citrus fruits, and the rest of the loaf of bread she had cut for them earlier. There's a stillness to the air while they chew, as the house sighs and breathes to the sound of their quiet chewing; the soft, airy sounds of ripping bread, the perfumed tang of grapefruit and orange being pealed between fingers.
Finnick breaks the silence first, and he's not surprised, as she's appeared to have something on her mind since she's come back downstairs.
"You stayed here a lot, didn't you?" she asks, soft, and the question takes him by surprise. Whatever she was about to say, he wasn't expecting that. He almost flinches.
"Yes," he replies eventually, slowly, as if cautious. Though she's not looking at him, he observes her worn expression, her eyes casted toward the candlelight cutting her face into a honeyed crescent moon. "I did."
He did stay here a lot, in the bedroom down the hall from Mags' master room. She had this big house all alone, to herself, and he had his, why not find company? She was his family, and he hers.
It wasn't all the time. When his mind grew weary and he found he paced more than sleep – or the weeks after the Capitol dropped him right back onto his doorstep – he preferred to shut himself into his house, away from anyone's prying eyes, even Mags. He couldn't spare her the burden of living with him while he went through those episodes, when he grew nasty, restless, and craved vices or sleep. His thoughts spun out like a diving bird. He wasn't himself.
As he observed Annie now, under the candlelit room, he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he hadn't had one of his episodes in a long time. That he was due for it. The thought startles him, waking a new fear in the bottom of his belly.
"Do you believe in destiny?" she asks, giving him a bit of whiplash. She looks at him, chewing out the side of her cheek as she studies him, her expression charged with something completely new. He quirks an eyebrow and rests his forearms on either side of his plate, the wood beneath him creaking under the added weight.
"I believe in chance," he says, testing his words, "I'm not sure destiny has anything to do with circumstance, though." He cocks his head, regarding her wearily, "Why? What's on your mind?"
He can't tell if he's imagining the blush in her cheeks now, or if it's just a trick of the candlelight. Either way, she snags her eyes away from him, and rolls her bread piece around in her hands, expression thoughtful. Whatever funk she's in though, she shakes it away, closing her eyes for a moment before she looks at him again.
"I don't know, really. Just thinking about everything from today, I guess," she says, and he relaxes a little at her admittance. This, at least, is a common ground for him. Today had been taxing.
Finnick hesitates for a second, and then reaches out across the table, leaving his hand palm up for her to take. An emotion he doesn't comprehend washes over her face as she watches the gestures unfold, before she gingerly takes his hand in hers, her tiny hand resting atop his, like a lily pad on water.
"I guess as far as destiny goes I have been wondering..." he starts, sucks in a breath, "If this whole thing had been a mistake."
He feels her stiffen under his touch, and he rubs his thumb across the top of her hand, a smooth stroke that burns warm up his arm. Her expression is pained, and it confuses him momentarily, before he continues. "What if we just wasted time coming here? Risking our safety? Risking Osa and Reed and their family's safety? I keep thinking what if we just went straight to the Council, not even bothered coming back for Mags?"
It's like he poked her with a pin, let out all the air, the way she relaxes. She sucks in a breath, releases a tiny, "oh." And suddenly he gets it; it clicks. She thought he meant the whole thing was a mistake, her saving him, their journey, him and her after they'd crossed to Four...
He doesn't even know how to begin backtracking without putting her even more on the spot and making it even more awkward between them. Annie's in a weird mood tonight – she's been moving through fits and starts since the sun went down, and Finnick would be lying if he said it didn't worry him a little. He wasn't sure how to approach her, didn't want to push her.
"I guess it doesn't matter now," he nearly whispers, when she hadn't said anything. She'd retreated into herself, her expression thoughtful at his initial words. "We're here, might as well make the most of it."
"How long did you want to stay?" she asks, her expression reading as grateful for the change in subject, "I'm happy to stay as long as you need."
Annie probably thought he needed time to grieve, here, in Four. When in actuality, what he really needed was to get the hell out. What he came here for wasn't here anymore; there was nothing left here but dust and sour memories. It was too dangerous to stay.
But...it was also a checkpoint, a place with running water, a small supply of food (thanks to the Mildways), and soft beds to rest for a minute without threat of rock monsters or pixie charms. And Finnick desperately needed rest. He felt weary, physically and mentally.
"I'm thinking maybe one, maybe two days tops?" he offers, and she nods, unperturbed in the least. "We can build up our strength, and maybe iron out a solid plan to approach the Council with."
"I like it," she says, "do you think we'd be safe to stay here for the time being? Or should we move to the woods?"
"The house has been untouched this whole time, and I think if we're smart about not using the electric amenities and stay relatively indoors, we should be okay."
It's not a guarantee, but it's the best they've got. He did not recommend they sleep out in the wilds, or the beach. They may as well cross back over to the Great Forest, at that point.
Annie yawns, slipping her hand from his on the table to drape over her mouth, and she sits back in her chair, her eyes a haze. She smiles at him, and his stomach tumbles at the sight of it. His head was a mess nearly all day, jumping between grief and fear and guilt...but then there was Annie. Sometimes when he looked at her, it felt like he had just knocked back a smooth glass of whiskey. Warm, smooth in his stomach.
"If you'd like, you can use Mags' bedroom upstairs to get some rest," he offers, and her eyes flickers to the direction of the stairs before they move back to him, almost a question, "I'm going to stay down here for a little while before I come up for bed, snuff out the candles, clean up..."
He feels jittery, restless. Sleep will be far from his mind tonight, and she looks absolutely worn. He won't keep her up.
Annie bids him goodnight, hesitating before him, before brushing a hand on his shoulder as she passes. He watches her disappear toward the stairs, the end of her dress billowing behind her like a quiet dance. Finnick releases a shaky breath.
Something about her absence makes the room grow smaller.
A few hours later, Anneyce is awake and alone in the bedroom of a dead woman, staring at the ivory ceiling above her, thinking.
She thinks about home, about her thatched roof, and the stars beneath the black sky. She thinks of swamp cabins and redwood trees and banana leaves.
Everything is too synthetic here. Isolating. There is nature, but it's wild. It's on it's own body; it's own soul. She can't tap into it. She misses the sound of trees rustling as they dance in the night, or the sad symphony of crickets, playing their orchestra outside her window. She misses the connection to the soil, even when wrapped up safe and warm in her cot.
Initially, she didn't realize was that sensation was when they'd first crossed. It just felt like emptiness, or something taken out of the equation entirely. Like when she crossed the barrier between worlds, and her connection to the Great Forest cut out.
Now she realizes it's an absence of safety. She does not belong in this wild world; it leaves her vulnerable. Alone. So she thinks.
She thinks about Finnick. She wasn't sure what would happen after she bid him goodnight and climbed the stairs. Now that she knew he lived here some of the time, she figured he must have a bedroom, separate from Mags'. A part of her hoped he would bypass it for her room instead; climb into the sheets with her for another night together. She hoped so badly that, for a while, the hope felt like a reality.
A few hours later, she heard him moving about the house, his strong gait like rumbling thunder as he climbed the stairs. She felt her heart in her throat, thrumming quick as a hummingbird's wings, but sunk like a rock the moment his shadow swept by the crack under her door and continued it's way down the hall.
But of course she shouldn't have expected him to come into her room.
There was no need for them to be sleeping together. It's not like they were trampling through the woods, making a camp and preparing to hunker down under a copse of hardwood trees for the night.
She cramps her eyes closed, releases a long breath, tries to wiggle herself down into the mattress and sleep. To dream. To do anything but think.
She thinks of Finnick.
The silence is loud in his absence, and it's a thought that shocks a little more than it should. She misses his soft, breathy snore, and the way the wrinkle between his eyebrows would vanish as sleep smoothed it over, like a kiss.
Without him there, everything else is so much louder.
Even this one, peculiar sound that she can't quite make heads or tails of. It sounds natural, but not like the swish, swish, swish of the leaves of trees in the wind, or the babble of a brook. This sounded other, almost keening.
Pushing herself to her feet, she makes her way through the open doorway to the closed door down hall, where the sound was emanating – Finnick's room. When she reaches his door, if by some weird fate, she can hear the surf pounding the shore, even at a respectful distance away. She turns to her side and squints, trying to focus on what she thinks she's hearing, when she picks up the sound of sniffling. Sitting up, she stills and tilts her head to the sound, and the action confirms her theory. Ah, someone is crying.
Pausing before the massive oak door, she waits a moment to confirm that the sniffling is, in fact, coming from the other side before knocking lightly. Without waiting for an answer, she turns the brass doorknob and fits herself through the threshold.
Finnick sits at the edge of his own giant bed, elbows on his knees and hands pushed into his lowered head. His shoulders heave at the expense of his weeps; the sniffling sound she heard ripping from his shoulders as he tries to stifle the noise.
"Finnick?"
He jumps at her voice, eyes wide with worry, before softening at the sight of her. He desperately paws at his eyes with the heel of his hand, trying to hide the tears before pressing his hands between his knees. The sight breaks her in half, pieces of her floats away to the floor.
"Annie," his voice, what was so sure and so steady and reigned-in tonight, practically breaks under his raw emotion, "I thought you were asleep."
"Finnick, you're crying," she says.
He touches a hand to his cheek, finding the moisture there with an almost surprised expression, "Well...yeah, I suppose I am." He laughs a sad laugh, before it breaks into another tiny sob. He swallows the sound before turning to her, "Did I wake you up? I'm sorry."
She shakes her head, "I can't sleep anyway." She crosses the room to sit beside him, close enough that she dips into him where the cushion of the mattress gives away, pressing their knees together. "There is too emptiness here. It's hard to stop thinking and fall asleep."
Finnick nods, though she can tell he's not focusing on what she's saying. He's not looking at her. His eyes are glassy, almost far away, and she can feel the barrier struggling to push its way back up. To shut her out.
"Would you like to talk about it?" She asks gently and he shrugs.
"It just...ah," he sucks in a hiccupping breath, "guess I can't stop thinking, too."
"Oh," Anneyce murmurs, her heart clenching at the words. Guilt claws its way up her back. She never should have gone to bed alone. She should have stayed with him downstairs, "I'm sorry."
He only nods, dropping his gaze to her knees. "I suppose I just...feel guilty." He sighs, "I'm sure there was something that I could have done. I could have stayed, fought for her." He pushes his hands through his hair, suddenly agitated, "But I didn't. I ran. Like a coward."
She flinches at his harsh self-criticism, before putting a tentative hand on his shoulder. He jumps at her touch, before turning to look at her with those glass eyes. His words are running circles through her head, this guilt he's been carrying all day, for her death. Is this what he's been holding on to? Closing away from her, not letting her see?
To feel guilt for someone's death must be a heavy weight to bear by yourself.
His eyes are starting to well up once more, and his bottom lip is quivering at the tension of trying to hold it off. She offers a tiny smile and his resolve suddenly breaks, like the bursting of a dam.
"Oh," his face crumples, and then he falls into her embrace, his face pressing against her collarbone as she wraps her arms around him, locking him in. His sobs begin anew, this time loud and not afraid to unleash the monsoon against her skin. For a while, they sit and she lets him cry, rocking him gently and occasionally rubbing his quivering back, trying to sooth the sobs that rip from his chest.
"I think about my mother, too," Anneyce begins after a while, and the hitch of his shoulders shaking slows enough to give her incentive to continue, "She had come to live too long in a Colony that just could not support her life energy any longer. It was not a big event, for many others in the Colony suffered a same kind of loss."
He's completely still now in her arms, and she holds on tight, if only to keep her thoughts grounded. She finds her voice cannot go higher than a whisper. "But for me, it was like the Great Forest itself had been uprooted beneath my very feet. Like a light had gone out in my soul. She was more than just my mother – she was my mentor, my friend. While the other nymphs had grandmothers and aunts, and even sisters in some rare cases, the only family I had was her."
He sits up in the circle of her arms, his head tilted towards his lap, but by the steadiness of his breath coming and going she can tell he's still listening, so she continues unperturbed.
"For a while I was angry. Angry at the other nymphs who got to keep their mothers, at the Queen for not providing enough to save those who were too old to be sustained, at the Great Gardens, for selfishly sucking the life from my family," for a moment, her voice wobbles, "At myself. For not doing enough...not being enough." Her cheeks grow warm at the memory of her wrath. It was her least favorite part of the grief process.
"But, over time, I realized something," her voice softens now, almost as if she's afraid the night will steal words that needed to be claimed only by him, "what happened was not my fault, and there was nothing I could have done. The important thing is, she lived a lifetime, and I was honored enough to get to be a part of it, even if it was a small one."
He's quiet by the end of her tale, with his head bowed and his hands drawn into his lap. When he looks up, however, the tear tracks on his cheeks have dried. After studying her for a moment, the question he asks startles her.
"What was she like?"
It takes her a moment to think about it, to conjure the answer in her mind. Anneyce doesn't like the knowledge of that; that her mother, the essence of her wasn't at the tip of her tongue, at her beck and call, ready to be displayed.
But, once the answer comes, she finds it hard to stop.
"She was beautiful," Anneyce pauses, looking at the push and pull of his hands, "and she looked nothing like me." She sighs, and then musters a sad smile, "She always said I looked like my father; beautiful in the features he provided. But then again, most of the nymphs born under the same moon as me shared them, so how could I really be that extraordinarily beautiful if I looked like everyone else?"
"Mother, though...she was a special kind of beautiful." Anneyce looks at the dark wall, trying to picture her mother after all of these years apart, "Her hair was as golden as a sunset, with the most beautiful blue eyes I'd ever seen. She walked with a grace and poise that could compete with the grass in the wind. And her beauty even seeped straight into her soul, particularly with her voice. She was the best songbird in the entire Colony. She was so full of love and life..." The bitter sweetness of the reminder of her mother sets in, and a sudden fog of sadness curtains Anneyce once again.
Everyone of that dark time was an empty shelf in her memory. She'd blocked that particular part of her life out, the remnants of it clawing its way up her throat and into her now shaking hands.
She finds a larger pair of hands covering her own, ceasing their quivering with a warm embrace of the palm.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Annie." Finnick says quietly.
Anneyce sniffles, hadn't even realized she was crying, before tossing her gaze away from Finnick, ashamed. It wasn't right of her to take the focus from his justified mourning by selfishly imputing her own grieving. She had only meant to comfort him, show him he's not alone in his pain, which was something she could have desperately used during her mother's death.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes, pulling one of her hands from Finnick's to wipe her greedy tears, "I hadn't meant to say all that. It was selfish of me."
"It's alright," she looks over to catch the faintest of smiles on his face, "You've actually helped, a little."
"I guess what I was trying to get across was, you shouldn't blame yourself for what was entirely out of your control." She looks at their tangle of hands, "And I bet that your Mags would be happy with the choices you've made. I know my mother would be."
He deflates at her words, and nods tightly, also observing their hands. He lifts them, rotating her wrist gently, before bringing the back of her hand to his lips and dropping a gentle kiss on the soft skin there. She thrills at the unexpected gesture, her heart pounding. His eyes creep up to her own, his brows knitting together softly in concentration.
"Would, uh," he pauses, uncharacteristically shy, "would you like to stay in here, tonight?" Anneyce stares at him, a bit taken aback, and he starts scrambling, his tear-dried face now almost comically panicked. "You don't have to, obviously! I don't want you to feel like you have to share a room with me, especially since there are two perfectly good bedroom-"
"Yes," she cuts him off, her face flushing with just how badly she had wanted to not too long ago. "I'd love to stay here with you, Finnick." How much she wished he'd stopped at her door, slipped himself in, under her sheets.
Now she's the one who buries herself under the sheets, proper exhaustion taking course. She had truly not meant to bring up her mother – to unpack that can of worms. Her mother had just been floating around her head all day, like a storm. It was maddening.
She feels him slide in beside her, but the bed was so large it didn't even register that he was there. She wonders, not for the first time, why the humans needed such space for everything. Big, large, empty beds, all for one person.
Once again she thinks about thatched roofs, stars, and swamp cabins, and redwood trees, and banana leaves.
She wonders if he thinks about them, too.
Finnick sighs beside her, so soft, and her heart beats so frantic in her chest as a thought envelops in her mind. It takes her a full five minutes to work up the courage, but she shuffles herself close, fumbling in the dark until she bumps into his form. She feels him startle, his hands reaching out to catch her, and she nearly loses her nerve then and there.
Songs, why was she so nervous around him suddenly? It was like she was so aware of him, of how he could make her blood sing when he touched her. It was throwing her off.
His hand rests against her arm, locking her gently into place a few inches from him, their breath mingling in the space between. She hikes her knee up, and it tangles between his spindly legs, as he hooks his calf around hers. She knows her expression must look shell-shocked, but she can't help it, the sensations she's experiencing at being so close in this setting is electrifying. They'd slumbered close together for weeks, and shared a bed once or twice back in the Colony, but the circumstances had been very different.
Anneyce couldn't shake the thought that this felt intimate, somehow.
As if reading her mind, the hand Finnick has on her arm drags away and reaches up, almost hesitant, before ghosting before her face. His fingers are light as butterfly wings, tracing the shape of her lips. She sucks in a breath, so small, her heart thrumming behind her ears. He catches his thumb on her bottom lip, dragging it down before letting it go and she feels sparks light low, fast down her belly. She squirms at the feeling, trying to decode the expression on his face.
He's not sad anymore, or at least he doesn't look it. The barrier has slipped back up, but there's something more to his expression that the usual pit that digs a hole in her stomach at the sight of it vanishes. The glassiness in his eyes has receded, to her relief. Instead, his pupils are blown nearly black as he regards her.
She's not sure what to make of it, barely has time to even try as he scoots closer, closer, closer.
The gap shrinks, their breath mingles, and suddenly she tastes the ocean and the leftover citrus from the orange he'd had at dinner as his lips envelope hers, a soft sound releasing from his throat. She feels hot, sticky sweet, like he's pouring warmed honey down her veins.
She releases a sound of her own, low and wonting, her hands quickly magnetized to his hair pulling him to her to drink him in even more. She hikes her knee up, up, up his leg, pressing her body flush to him, now aware she's frantically chasing towards something that's building in her. His hands find purchase along her lower back, pressing her gently into him, like a puzzle piece.
His teeth scrape against her bottom lip, snagging it like his thumb did just moments before, tugging it softly and she releases a repeat of the sound she made earlier, but this time its wild, carnal. She's not even sure it's her voice. The pressure that's pooling low, low, low is daring her to move, to connect so she takes a chance and rolls into him, his own pleasure hard against her, sending shooting sparks behind her eyelids and, he gasps, pulling their lips apart with a pop.
The moment breaks, and for a second all they can do it stare at each other in shocked surprise, chests rising and falling with the fast, steady rhythm of running through the woods.
Songs, everything about this was electric. It was spelled out between them, in the look he was giving her; bewildered, unabridged, completely mirroring her own. Though she was a novice with this stuff, she had her suspicions, and this was confirmation enough. Whatever was going on here, it was something entirely new to Finnick, too.
"I take it I still feel nice?" he breathes against the quiet din of the room, breaking the spell entirely, and it takes her a moment to understand the reference to the words she'd mistakenly uttered before the first time they'd kissed. She groans, and laughs, pushing at his chest. She sees the whites of his teeth as he smiles what she assumes to be a cheeky smile.
She just shakes her head, trying to quell the thrumming of her heart, the uncomfortable need for more of whatever just happened still rippling around inside her. Soon enough exhaustion rears, and she settles into the mattress. She feels the edges of her own sleep take form, the world starting to finally quiet for her, the headache dulling enough to drag her under.
And Finnick's voice, soft as rain, she's not even sure if it's real or a dream.
"Goodnight, Annie."