I do not own The Hunger Games.

Finnick Odair is precious.

The Girl With The Green Eyes

Your Victor


Oh no.

"Was - was that what I thought it was?"

There had been no warning.

Though he guessed the Games themselves should be considered the warning.

"Yes, Claudius, I believe it wa-"

"Oh my goodness, Caesar, look-"

And Finnick's entire being clenches.

Oh no, oh no.

No.

This is it.

They're all going to die.

She's going to die.

The earth had shook, trembled, the entire arena rumbling, even the trees had swayed dangerously, branches flailing, leaves showering down.

Tributes shocked and confused, those not already on the ground, flung to it against their wills.

Splayed, billowing dirt up into their nostrils.

There in the blinding sun of the noonday arena.

One tribute, smashing down so hard onto a rock that her broken nose gushed blood everywhere.

Annie on camera, curled and hidden in the dense copse of shrubbery, gasping suddenly with the shudderings, green eyes snapping open, instant terror, fingers digging like claws in the dirt below her.

Mags looking on in horror with him, fingernails pressing half moons into the flesh of his forearm, Finnick taking no notice of it at all.

Instead watching in horror, Annie scrambling recklessly out into the open.

Searching for the cause of the hideous groan rising up from the bowels of the very earth itself.

Booming cracks joining in, not of dead tributes, though those would come soon enough.

But . . .

No, no, no-

. . . the dam.

Huge and grey and forbidding at the far end of the arena, so far enough away from Annie he had forgotten all about it.

Part of the scenery, part of the backdrop.

Cracks now forming, spiderwebbing, marring its enormous surface.

First one, then another and another.

More and more as the structure weakens, begins to give way.

Chunks of concrete breaking off, falling with heavy thuds to the ground.

And then . . .

Oh my god.

. . . the water.


"My goodness, the Gamemaster has really gone all out for this one!"

"Indeed! First an earthquake, now this flood!"

And Finnick is sick, sick to his stomach.

Terrified and defeated moreso than he thought he could ever be.

It's gone on too long.

Not enough drama.

People got bored.

So they decided to kill them all.

The last one swimming, right before they drown, will be the Victor.

The last one swimming.

Swimming-

"Mags! Mags, she can swim!"

He knows it's a stupid hope, thin and weak and no real hope at all.

Mags turns to him, dark eyes questioning.

"Annie can swim!"

And Finnick feels wildly, irrationally, frantically hopeful.

"I've seen her, here in the pool!"

And turns back toward the wall projection.

Not even bothering to feel Mags' nails clamp down on his forearm . . .

"She can swim like a fish!"

. . . even harder than before.

"Mags, she can swim."

Only putting a hand over the older woman's.

"She can swim."

And holding tight.


"I say, Caesar, this is turning out to be one of the most exciting Hunger Games so far! Though I don't believe I'll be taking a bath tonight!"

"Agreed, Claudius, yes, I think I'll forgo my usual soak as well."

Cannons had boomed as tributes had drowned, been fatally struck by flying debris, or met some other unfortunate fearful fate.

Finnick knows he knows how many tributes are left alive as Noah's flood fills the now obvious bastard bowl of the 70th Annual Hunger Games arena.

He just can't think of it at the moment.

Because Annie is swimming.

Swimming.

". . . still swimming, can you believe it?! Here everyone had written off this gentle, kind girl as just lasting until she was found. And yet here she is one of the few remaining tributes still literally swimming toward her victory in the 70th Annual Hunger Games!"

Caesar Flickerman and his toady little stooge, Claudius Templesmith, are positively giddy over this new deadly development in the Games.

They're crowing over it, eyes lit with excitement, faces bright with enthusiasm and joy.

But they, in their unbridled glee, are wrong.

About a great many things.

Annie Cresta isn't swimming to a glorious victory in the Hunger Games.

Nothing that heroic and brave.

She's swimming, desperately.

For her life.

". . . a tree, I had no idea she was so agile, so scrappy!"

And she isn't.

She hadn't bounded up the tree with the greatest of ease, like a squirrel on a flying trapeze.

She had clawed, scratched, scrabbled her way up.

Crying and screaming and fighting all the way.

Gaining precious feet, slipping, losing them again.

Perilously regaining only a fraction of what she'd had.

Ripping up her hands, tearing her clothes.

Desperate for any way to escape the rushing water, the foaming current.

Other tributes had been sucked into the undertow, pulled under.

Slammed with bone-shattering finality into rocky outcroppings, unforgiving trees.

Lungs filling with drowning water as the body's involuntary mechanisms had forced them against their wills to gasp for breath in their watery graves.

". . . under, he's going under! I don't think he's coming back up!"

And Annie had climbed, fighting for every sacred inch, until the surging water had finally caught up with her.

And she had been torn from her precarious safety into this swelling new arena.

Whisked away, pulled under, to Finnick's abject horror, resurfacing yards away just when he had lost all hope.

But once out in the open, the current not so turbulent, at least here on the surface, some thirty-five feet above the dirt in which she had previously been groveling.

Blood from her hands spreading into the water and it had briefly crossed Finnick's mind that he should dare to hope the previously grass green arena wasn't laced with muttation sharks.

And Annie had swum, desperately at first, screaming and flailing.

Until she seemed to realize there was no place to swim to.

And Finnick watching helplessly on, dropped knotted rope forgotten on the carpeted floor.

Watching Annie, Annie, so close, yet so far from salvation, from survival.

Casting her gaze wildly about as her red hair clung to her face, seeming to threaten to obscure her watery vision.

No adversarial tribute close to her, or even in sight.

Though the continuation of this torture guarantees the continued survival of some other unfortunate somewhere.

And Annie, gasping breath, tears rolling down her cheeks to join with the water eager to swallow her up fully, finally stops fighting.

And starts surviving.

Conserving energy, if Finnick's any guess.

Simply staying afloat, head above the water, unseen arms and legs and torso below, Finnick knows, keeping bouying movements and upcurrent direction.

Alone and abandoned in this deadly drowning pool of the Hunger Games arena.

While Finnick Odair . . .

Swim, Annie, swim.

. . . looks on helplessly from the luxury of the fourth floor of the Tribute Tower in the Capitol.

Come on, please.

She has done well, considering the circumstances, far better than he originally thought her capable.

She has survived, almost to this sudden end.

But her energy is clearly waning now, handfuls of berries and streamwater providing little base for stamina, especially after surviving days of the Games.

Hours and hours and hours, it seems she remains in this timeless torrent of torture.

More and more frequently, sinking completely under the water, causing Finnick's heart to stutter in his chest over and over again until his body is laboring with exhaustion.

Though nothing compared to hers surely, Annie Cresta, the girl with the green eyes, slipping under the water again, with a blurb and a whimper of anguish.

And she may not come up for air again.


"That's it, folks, that's it! My goodness, folks, what a show it has been!"

The final cannon has boomed though Finnick has lost count and doesn't realize it is the one until Caesar's celebratory declaration.

The cannon boomed and it wasn't Annie's.

Annie, now exhaustedly flailing and sinking further and further into the welcoming water as her body begins to give up, shut down.

Annie crying, crying out, not for assistance nor help, for even she, especially she, knows it will not come.

Every tribute alive and dead can speak to that harshest of truths.

So she knows and Finnick knows just by watching her face crumple with grief, with fear, with dread.

Watching her cry out in despair at her death more and more rapidly approaching.

And then . . .

"Ladies and gentlemen of Panem, your victor for the 70th Annual Hunger Games, Annie Cresta from District 4!"

And Finnick's impressive jawline hangs slang, his heart slamming so heavily against his ribs it hurts.

He looks to Mags dumbfounded, Mags with tears streaming from her relieved, silent eyes.

She nods, waving hands at him.

Go.

I'll catch up.

And Finnick Odair . . .

She's alive.

. . . runs.


Whew!

*wipes brow*

Well, thanks for reading! Hope you're doing okay out there.

:)