He did this. The pain, the dehydration had pulled him down into a feverish daze, but he couldn't forget the tongue lying across from him on the floor. Annie would never speak again, never spend another hour telling him about the ocean she loved so, never murmur another one of her little lullabies in his ear as they settled into sleep.
He'd seen how people in the Capitol treated their Avoxes—forcing them to stand and serve for hours upon hours, beating them for the slightest infractions, herding them into warehouses at night where they slept on stained cots and prayed the guards wouldn't touch them. This would be Annie's fate now. In his haze, Finnick dreamt of her cornered in the back hallway of some Capitol mansion, empty lips trembling as her master shoved his hands inside her uniform.
The door of his cell opened, but he couldn't move. Gloved hands lifted him up by his arms and legs, and he let out a groan as the fire resurged in his burnt skin. The Peacekeepers loaded him onto a gurney, didn't bother to strap him in as they wheeled him through the hall, through a set of swinging double doors, loaded him onto a medical table. Now they strapped him down. More torture? Even if he wanted to confess what he knew, Finnick probably couldn't string a coherent sentence together. The thought of more pain made him shiver, and he squeezed his eyes shut as a man in a white coat approached him.
He felt a little pinch in his arm. Finnick glanced down to see an IV needle in his vein. A bag of clear liquid hovered by his head. Another doctor stepped forward and wordlessly slipped a slender tube into his nostril. Finnick started in protest, but the man braced him by the temples and held him in place, tilting his head slightly as the tube snaked down his throat, into his stomach. Finnick struggled not to gag.
The first doctor stuck a syringe into Finnick's abdomen, and in seconds the dizzying pain began to fade. He breathed a sigh of relief, but the doctor warned him to remain still. The two men began to clean and dress his wounds, first the burns, then the other abrasions left over from the Quell. When they were done, they retreated to a nearby counter to clean their tools and scribble down notes. Whatever they were shooting up his arm or his nose was working—Finnick could feel his head beginning to clear, his strength returning. While the doctors weren't looking, he began to tug against his restraints. The nylon held him fast.
"I want to see Annie Cresta," he announced, his voice cracked and dry. The men glanced at him, a bit surprised, then returned to their work.
"Has she been treated here?" Finnick asked them insistently. "Was her surgery here?" They continued to ignore him. He pulled at his restraints to no avail, fearing that he'd fallen into the hands of the same men who'd turned Annie into an Avox, fearing that he was next. But before he could ask, both of the double doors blew open, and a cluster of Capitol citizens pushed their way into the room.
Finnick blinked at them, bewildered. Their tall wigs and bright clothes didn't seem to belong in this bleak space, and they certainly didn't match the stern looks on their faces, no matter how colorful their lips or their eyes. The doctors only nodded to them in acknowledgement, and the group surrounded the table, avoiding Finnick's gaze as they began to unpack their bags, replacing surgical tools with combs and files and tweezers—a styling team.
"What is this?" Finnick watched them, brows drawn. They didn't answer. Instead, they cut away what remained of his uniform and began to sponge his skin clean, working carefully around his bandages. They scraped the dirt and the blood out from under his nails, picked his teeth clean and scrubbed the dead flakes from his dry, cracked lips. They washed the debris out of his hair. Eventually, the doctors unhooked him from his tubes and loosened his restraints so that the stylists could stand him up and baste him in tinted, shimmery lotion, dress him in a stiff, white suit, and finally, painstakingly mask every nick and bruise left visible on his face, his neck, his hands.
Finnick couldn't hide his shaking from them. Surely Snow wasn't selling him still, not after everything that had happened. He'd made his deal with Plutarch because it meant he would leave the Quell dead or free—because either way, he'd no longer have to prostrate himself beneath or above or behind or before every senator and tycoon who had the power or money to possess him. He couldn't go back to that, not so suddenly, not after believing that it was finally over.
The stylists had hardly finished their work before President Snow arrived, an entourage of Peacekeepers at his heels. As he approached, the stylists shuffled away with hushed, nervous greetings, leaving Finnick standing alone to face him in the hospital-turned-dressing-room.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Odair," Snow stepped up to him without offering a hand to shake.
Finnick mustered a shaky breath, "I want to see An-"
"Don't," the President warned him sternly, and Finnick swallowed back his petition.
"Where am I going?" he murmured instead.
President Snow produced a crisp piece of paper as an answer, "I wanted to give this to you in person so that there would be no misunderstandings."
Reluctantly, Finnick took it. The gold-trimmed Capitol stationary glinted under the bright hospital lights as the sheet quivered in his hand, and it took Finnick a moment to focus on the words before him. It didn't take him long to figure out this wasn't about a client, but his relief lapsed back into alarm as he scanned the page. "No," he pushed the paper back at the President's chest. "I'm not doing this."
The corner of the paper crumpled against the front of Snow's suit as he leaned forward, his eyes wide with violence. "You will follow these instructions exactly as they are written, or the next thing you will receive are Miss Cresta's eyes. Do you understand?" The words reeked from his poisoned breath, sinking down into Finnick's stomach with sickening weight.
"Do you understand?" Snow asked him again, eyebrows raised in expectation.
"Yes," Finnick choked out the word.
Satisfied, the President straightened. He smiled as he unfastened the fresh white rose from his lapel, reached out and pinned it to Finnick's own, "Then I'll see you this evening, Mr. Odair."