Hey! Please enjoy, I hope this is better than the previous chapter, but no promises.
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X-X-Part 3-Chapter 21-X-X
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He found that Annabeth's disappearance had no real reason behind it.
She found him, still with Peeta, going over swords and other similar weapons. Wrapped her arms around him from the back and gave him a fright for a moment before he recognized her smell, and presence and all of that, and he turned around with a big smile and kissed her. "Where have you been?" he asked her, for the moment forgetting about Peeta. Annabeth was always going to be the most important.
"Trying to convince my district partner to join me in training," she said, pulling back her hair in a ponytail. "He's a douchebag mind you, but like, he's from home right, and I guessed that he at least wants a chance to go back home. Instead, he's saying that he doesn't even want to try. He's done for anyway, and he just needs to wait for his life to be taken. Nothing to lose he says."
As he thought about it, he didn't see Genevieve around either, and he wondered for a moment, whether it was for the same reason. But then why was she in on the rebel plot if she wasn't going to at least try to stay alive. How would she help if she was dead? "Yeah," he said absently. "I think my own partner isn't going to either. Haven't seen her all day."
Annabeth kissed him, and then Peeta was coughing awkwardly. He laughed. "I'm sorry Peeta," he said as he turned around to look at him. The male from twelve was not amused. "What was I saying?" he asked him as he looked down at what they were doing. Peeta was holding a knife, and he'd been telling him different ways to hold said knife and how to use it.
Annabeth looked down at it, and then she laughed. She wasn't part of the plot, but he anyways found himself looking at her as she approached Peeta and changed his grip on the knife. Showing him how to then stand as well. "This guy is only good with a sword," she said to Peeta as she pointed at him. "Any other weapon I wouldn't trust him with it."
"Hey," he said indignantly. "Whatever. I still beat you with a sword, that's all that matters, no?"
She made a face at him, and then Annabeth laughed, but then Katniss was there too, and she wasn't looking happy. "Hey, what's going on?" she asked, and she sounded almost protective like she didn't like him talking to Peeta—like she didn't like Annabeth being so close to Peeta in showing him how to hold a knife. He found it almost amusing.
"Oh, Percy and Annabeth here were just showing me how to properly hold a knife, and how to hit with efficiency," he told her, as he put the knife away. "It's actually really helpful."
She looked at them, and then looked at her district partner. "Yeah, I'm sure it is," she said and then she walked away, Peeta left a quick note of an apology and then went after her.
He was on the verge of laughing, but then he turned to Annabeth and found that she didn't look any happier than Katniss had. "What were you doing?" she asked him, and there was a note of an accusation in her voice. Like she wasn't okay with it. "Do you wanna ally yourself with them?" she inquired.
Now, this had been the exact reasons as to why he had wanted her to be in on it as well. But they said they didn't trust her int he arena, but they would once she'd be out of there. They didn't trust her, and he'd agreed that this was a secret, that no one outside of their little merry band of traitors was going to know. This also meant her, but it was going to cause bumps in his relationship with her, as well as his alliance with her.
"Yes," he said smoothly, trying to keep his voice even. "They're the Capitol's favorites," he added to make his point. "They can be of help to us. You said it yourself, they're something. Plus, she's like, crazy good with a bow."
"We don't need their help, Percy," she said. "We're strong enough to win this, on our own without others. You're gonna need to be looking at them your every move, you're not gonna trust them. I mean I'm not. How could you go in there and put your life in their hands."
He sat down and played with the laces of his shoes. She sat there with him. "We need an alliance, Annabeth," he told her seriously. "Finnick for one, we've already agreed between us. This isn't like when we walked in there our first time. Then we were against kids who'd never been in anything similar before. This year…" He looked at Gloss, who was again throwing knives at a moving hologram. "All these people are trained killers. They've killed just like we have, and they won their games, same way we did. They're no different than us, and maybe we are better than them, but the more we are the better off we'll be."
"I don't know, Percy," she said, still sounding unconvinced. "I can't look around me and see myself trusting anyone of these people. I'm sorry."
He grinned at her. "Good thing then that I have a week to change your mind," he said and she pulled a small smile of her own. He pulled in for another kiss.
That's when her smile turned to a frown. "You're busy this week, aren't you?" she asked him.
He also stopped grinning. "Yeah," he said, and suddenly he couldn't look at her in the face anymore. He would always be embarrassed to talk about that with her. Always never want to share any of it because what he did to deal with was what Finnick talked about. Separate mind from body. That from real life. "I'm sorry, I wish it wasn't so, but…the last night I won't though. So, you can come…then."
She hugged him, and he heard her loud sigh as she did. Then she stood up and helped him to his feet. "We'll see about that alliance," she said as she led him to one of the stations. "In the meantime, let's learn how to survive."
-.-
That dinner, Elizabeth snapped slightly.
"I am so sick of both of you acting as if the other doesn't exist," she said, dangling her glass in between her fingers. "Like come on. We are a team. You are a team, and when you walk into that arena, you should stay by each other's side, otherwise what type of image do you reflect for district five. Not united, and that is not what we want. Come on, cheer up."
"We're not going in there as allies, Eliza," he said as he took a sip of the wine. He wanted to get as drunk as possible before he had to go to his appointment for the night. Eliza and Genevieve both knew about it, but neither ever showed pity for it. Which he was glad about. "Gen here made sure to tell me so much. She was very clear. She doesn't want me next to her in there. I say it's her choice. Or well it was." He wasn't going to give her the same chance. Not after everything. They might be allies for a greater cause, but not for this.
He didn't spare her a glance as he had talked. He was sure she wasn't looking too great, and that if he saw he might end up chaining his mind about it all.
Eliza made a show of gasping. "Oh my lord," she exclaimed. "What has gotten into the both of you? Your best chances of surviving that arena are to work together, not to hate each other."
"It happens," he said as he stood up, and then wiped his mouth. He was leaving. He took one last sip of the wine, the alcohol in it burning his throat slightly, and then he was walking in the direction of the door. "Enjoy your night," he called to them and was glad when neither of them reciprocated the comment. He wasn't going to, that was given.
He made his way down the tribute center through the use of the elevator. He was there in the lounge then, and it was hours before he needed to be anywhere and his head was already shaking, the world around him looking blurred and not right. His thoughts incoherent and he knew that the five glasses of wine he'd drunk were having an effect on him.
He found himself falling into one of the chairs at the bar. The waitress arrived, and asked him what he wanted, to which he replied, 'The hardest you got, sweetheart'. She had come back with a bottle and a glass. He'd ignored the glass and simply started chugging from the battle. An hour later, Gloss appeared, and he wasn't sure what pushed him, but he called out to him.
"Gloss!" he said. Raising his bottle to him. "Have a drink. Gods know you need it."
The male from one ignored him, and simply walked out of there, his head held lower than he usually saw him, and before he walked out he covered his head with his hoodie. Perhaps Gloss wasn't as bad as everyone painted him out to be. Perhaps not as bad as he painted himself out to be. He wondered why they didn't trust him with the rebel plot, then realized he was too drunk to think properly on that.
He was about to ask the waitress to come over, ask her for another bottle as the one he was drinking was almost done when someone said: "I think not," to the waitress. "Thank you, I'll take care of this. Put it on my tab, if you will." Then he was grabbing the bottle out of his hands and drunk him, was weak enough that even though he tried to hold on to it, the other man grabbed it out of his hands with ease. "You're done for the night. I swear you're gonna kill yourself with this trash."
He looked at Finnick, so immaculate and clean and fresh, ready for whatever the night would bring him. He leaned his arms on the table as he spoke. "I am fine," he said, his words slurry. "It's just that…" He plopped back on his chair. "My district partner hates me because I'm hopelessly in love, and she can't deal with that. My love doesn't want to make an alliance with everyone I do and I don't know how to explain it to her that we need it. And now this…I'm just tired Finnick."
"I get it," he said. "Well not all of it, but I get it, but drinking isn't the way to get rid of all your problems, because tomorrow when you wake up, you're gonna see you've just made more problems because you drank." A pause. "What do you think is gonna happen when you show up as drunk as you are? She's not gonna be happy. She's gonna complain to Snow, and it won't be you on the other end of his anger, but rather your girl and your girl is entering the arena with you. You have to think Percy."
"I can't," he admitted, and a single tear slid down the side of his face. "I can't think anymore. I'm just…I just want to go home," he said and…until then he hadn't realized just how much. He wanted to see his mother, he wanted to see his father. He wanted to sleep in the bed in his mother's home and wake up to blue pancakes and a family home. Wake up to see her nice face, to a baby girl being his sister and to a stepfather who loved him no matter his blood.
Finnick didn't know that though. "I want to go home, too," he said, but he really had no idea. He'd been missing home for four years now. He wanted it to be done, and right now, right there, so drunk on his pities and problems, he couldn't hold it together anymore, and he was glad it was Finnick there, and not Annabeth.
"No, Finnick," he said. "I want to go home home. In New York, where the sea is beautiful, and the land is great, and there are no Hunger Games. No arenas, no tributes, and no presidents that believe this is right. I want to go home to a place where everything is right. Where my mother is in love with a man, and I can be her son in peace. Where I can grow up and get a job and live. Not this. I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to sit down, because I don't want to fight anymore."
"Come on," Finnick said as he walked around him and helped him to his feet. "You're too drunk to function, I'm bringing you back to your suite, and if I have to stay there, then I will, then tomorrow I guess we'll show up to Snow's mansion together and you can explain."
"Leave me be," he said as he pushed Finnick off him, but as soon as Finnick's hold was gone, he stumbled and fell on the pavement face first. Finnick picked him up again and swung his arm over his shoulder.
Finnick brought him to level five, and then opened the apartment and walked him to his room. He let him fall to the bed, but as soon as that was done, he turned, slid off the bed and vomited. Finnick made a disgusted sound, but he was there quickly. Helping him up and then directing him to the bathroom. "Here," he said. "If you need to vomit do it here!"
He wanted to tell Finnick to keep his voice down, there were other people in the apartment, and at this hour they were most likely sleeping, but instead, as he opened his mouth, he simply vomited more and the taste of the liquor was brought back up, and he hated every second of it. Finnick wasn't there, but he was cursing as he was coming in and throwing wet paper into the toilet and then flushing it. He was cleaning up the vomit next to his bed.
"Man, this was not a great time," he told Percy as he checked the time. He crouched down. "Alright," he said, getting eye level. "I'm gonna go. I'm going to talk to your client, and tell her what happened, then I'm gonna go to my own, and let's hope for me she won't be too upset I'm late. Then tomorrow, when we both get called to the president, we can explain what happened, okay. I need to know that you're gonna be okay, though. Alright? Will you be okay?"
He nodded. "I'm sorry," he managed to say, and then Finnick was out of his room, and making his way quickly around the Capitol. He was such a mess. He was in such a mess, he hated himself for it. Hated himself for bringing Finnick in on all of it as well. He found his way to his bed eventually, and from there on he just slept, trying not to worry about himself, about Finnick, Annabeth, and Annie. Because four people would be affected by his actions tomorrow unless he managed to fix it somehow.
-.-
He woke up hungover the next day, with a terrible headache and awful thoughts traveling through his head. It was only the second day of training out of five, and he had no strength or will to go down there that day, and train. He thought it would be okay if he skipped this day and just took a day off where he just lied in bed and slept.
Except that when he rolled over, his eyes caught the grey of the envelope on his nightstand. Who had put it on there, how they'd managed to get in without him waking up, he had no idea. All that mattered to him at the moment, was that it was there and that his actions the night before had had consequences. That all his actions would always have consequences. Yesterday night he'd decided to get drunk, too drunk to properly function. He barely remembered Finnick helping him to his room, vomiting, and then falling unconscious on his bed. Which meant he had not gone to his appointment, and there was one Capitol woman who had complained to Snow.
Fuck, Finnick! The man was no doubt in trouble for all of it as well. Annabeth and Annie. All of them, in harm's danger because of his own damned stupidity. He rolled off the bed, noticing he was almost naked if not for the boxers, and then picked up the letter. He opened it, and this time, unlike the first, it was really from Snow, and he didn't sound happy. It was a short message: Meet me at ten in my office in my mansion.
He looked at the clock on the wall and saw that there was no way whatsoever that he'd make it in time. It was five minutes before ten. He wondered for a quick moment why Elizabeth or Genevieve or anyone hadn't come to wake him up but then realized that by the way he had acted the day before, neither of them probably wanted anything to do with him.
He was quick to throw himself in the shower, washing with speed and then drying himself off with his powers as he dressed up. Not in the training attire that was the same as the day before, but rather in casual clothes. He ran, the way, from the training center to the presidential mansion, knowing that taking a car would take him longer just to wait for it to arrive to him.
He was sweating by the time he was in the mansion, the guards letting him in through recognizing him immediately and perhaps even knowing he was expected. He made his way through the long corridors and then found himself in the waiting room. Where he had first met Finnick, and there the door to the study or the office or whatever it was, it was open, and Finnick was there as well, sitting down in front of Snow.
It was eleven, in the morning, and he was one hour late.
Snow did not look happy, and Finnick was looking down at his hands, where he saw, a piece of rope weaving though his fingers, unnoticed by Snow. Or perhaps it was, and Snow allowed it since neither of them was talking. The male from four looked slightly disturbed, and Snow…if looks could kill he'd be lying in a grave six feet underground by now.
He entered the study, and then softly closed the door behind him. He stood there then, not wanting to sit down unless the president invited him to. Clasping his hands behind his back, he looked at Snow and tried not to think too much of how much he had fucked up. He knew it was probably going to start with him being all humble and all, but the situation was going to escalate, one way or the other. He didn't want it to though.
"I woke up, at ten," he said, as a way of an excuse. "I wasn't aware I had to meet you until then. I rushed as fast as I could after." He looked at Snow and hoped to god that Finnick hadn't already paid for the mistakes he'd forced him to make.
"And here I was, thinking that with everything Gaea has taught you, that you'd know when your actions are likely to bring consequences," Snow said, and he cringed. "You didn't go to your appointment yesterday, then I also got complaints from his client," he pointed at Finnick, "that he was an hour late. Do you have anything to say to that."
He nodded, and then stepped up, so he was standing behind the chair, his hands gripping the wood. "It's not his fault," he said immediately. "He just tried to help me, he doesn't need to be here. It's my mistake, my responsibility. I could probably be dead right now if it weren't for him."
Snow shook his head. "The complaints were from both of you," he said as he pointed at them. "Not only you, so the consequences are for both of you." He turned to Finnick. "Tell me, what's your side of the story."
"He was drunk," the male from four said. "I saw him there, drunk, and I helped him to his room, he couldn't even stand, much less make his way half across the Capitol to fuck someone. Then I warned his client and got late to mine. That's all."
"Yet, they complained to me," Snow said. "They both paid high prices for the pleasure of your companies, and one was ridded of it completely, while the other lost a whole hour." His snake eyes moved between them, they rested on him. "You say he doesn't have anything to do with it. But your clients want to be reimbursed, and the money is not coming out of my pocket for it. So how do I fix it? Do I hurt your families? Do I kill someone to make an example? Tell me."
His heart raced, because all he could think about was Annabeth, and he was sure Finnick was thinking of Annie and this was all his fault. "I was drunk," he spit out. "Not him, whatever you do, it wasn't his fault. I don't care, sell me twice a day. More. Take my money. I don't care. It's not like I'll be caring about any of it in a week right. I mean I'm dead anyway, no?"
Snow smiled, and Finnick looked at him with a little bit of shock on his face. "Mr. Jackson," he started slowly. "I've said this before, I like your spirit, but I do not like you, so I would watch your tone. Especially now, days before the Quell starts."
"I mean it's what Gaea taught me, yes?" he asked him, and he was mad, fuck it he was mad, and he wished Finnick would just leave because this had nothing to do with him. "After all, all she really did was make sure that whatever anger surges up in me will always be directed towards her, but since she's not here, then it's towards you. And I mean, you keep on saying you're gonna hurt Annabeth, but then what exactly is gonna hold me here? If you kill her in the arena, there's gonna be nothing holding me back right. What's to say I don't just kill everyone then? I mean I could right now but I don't, but you know I can."
"I believe everything that needed to be said has been said, Mr. Jackson, tread carefully, as to you Mr. Odair," he paused. "Weigh the consequences of your choices. This is my first and last warning to you. Now both of you, get out."
Percy didn't need to be told twice, he turned around opened the door, and stormed out. He heard after a couple of seconds, Finnick was catching up with him. He didn't want to talk though, and so he didn't say anything, but the male from four didn't leave. He wasn't mad, which was something, and he knew he should probably apologize but he didn't know how to do that without then breaking down and crying.
They got a cab together, and in there he said the simple two words. "I'm sorry," before closing his mouth and not opening them again.
"It's okay," Finnick replied kindly. "I see you're going through some shit. I get it. Just try to fix it before you walk in there because it's gonna kill you in seconds if you don't take it under control. Alright?"
He didn't reply, and the ride was silent, up until they got back to the training center, and then Finnick left for the gym, but he went up to his room and threw himself on the bed. He went back to sleep.
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I don't even know myself, I'll be honest with you.
But I hope you enjoyed it, and please leave reviews and follow this story. :)
Hunter :)