crescendi /krə SHen dē/
(pl. noun) gradual increases in loudness in a piece of music
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a/n [Might be confusing if you don't know canon too well. Written for Caesar's Palace's dozen's challenge.]
—-
"I love you," she whispers.
"And I love you."
It begins with this:
Finnick Odair is sitting on a stage—a platform, really, raised a few feet off the ground—when she's called up from the square. Her eyes are green and empty, her hair brown and flat, her body strong but thin. It only takes a single glance to know she's going to die.
They always die.
On the train, a couple hours later, he drowns himself in alcohol and wonders if this time it'll be enough to not wake up the next morning. With a pounding headache, he does.
Rinse and repeat.
She was never supposed to come home. He's walking sideways, or sitting on the couch, or lying upside down (the memories are hazy and he doesn't know, doesn't know) when her name is ringing out, being spelled out, throughout Panem. It's then that he learns it. Syllable by syllable, tasting the sound upon his mouth.
Annie Cresta.
His stomach revolts, and its contents end up on the floor. Her name goes to waste. Finnick goes to sleep.
(The nightmares drag him back up again, and as he's sitting there panting, a scream floats through the walls. He winces. On this lone train ride back, another shares the same demons. He hates sharing.)
Full cycle, they end up back home, on a platform. The train station. The girl smiles, the girl screams. Alone, Finnick disappears.
Or perhaps this:
Victors are not friendly people, not really. They're all neighbors, staged in pretty houses like dolls, but they don't talk, don't look. Often, the victors of Four can be found on their porches. Or backyards that open up to beaches. Within sight of each other, yet never bothering to cross over that invisible line.
Mags breaks this boundary; Mags breaks many. There is no one Finnick knows who could say no to Mags.
Annie breaks this boundary; Annie is mad. When she sidles up next to Finnick on his porch, he does little to push her away. He's too tired, too used. She doesn't talk, never explains. He assumes it's best.
The next day she wanders over to Mags. Then Jayden. Then Pip. And on and on she goes on a journey of madness through a world made up.
After a few months, Finnick notices that she sits next to him most often.
"Smile," she says one day. Not a question, not a command.
He doesn't smile. He doesn't turn.
"Why do you never smile?"
"Why do you?" These are his first words to the mad girl, and they taste sour in his mouth. He will still remember these words years later.
"There are fewer reasons to smile now," she says slowly, "but not none at all."
So he smiles with teeth and raised cheeks and dead eyes.
Annie Cresta leaves.
Or perhaps this:
They send him straight to the Capitol. There's no use in keeping him stuck on the same train through district after district. No use in keeping him where he's not needed.
The crew meets him eventually. Mags strolls in like she owns the damn place, leading her tribute by the hand through the mazes of hand-painted dolls; stylist and prep team split up by the door and wander in their own directions; and the escort walks straight up to Finnick. He thinks he should learn her name, but he knows she'd never notice if he used it either way.
"Hello, darling," he purrs. She giggles. He continues on.
(In the moments there's no one's arms draped low around his hips, Finnick observes from his hideaway by the cake table. Annie is swept from dance number to dance number. Annie is swept out of the room. Her fate's sealed like wax on a letter.)
Or perhaps this:
Annie Cresta sits on her own porch today. It's the middle of winter, the sea is trembling in its hold, and it wouldn't even take a sailor to tell you there's a storm on the way.
He will look back on this day, but he will never know what possessed him to open his door and walk across the dying grass to her porch. For the first time, he approaches the mad girl.
The second his knee brushes hers during the clumsy process of sitting on stairs, she smiles. He recoils.
Words dance on his tongue before the sentence in his mind pieces itself together. He steals her retired words. Fixes them. "Why do you smile?"
She only laughs.
It might irritate him, he thinks, if she were to sound happy. To throw that in his face. But she sounds nothing short of mad. So he waits for her answer.
"I'm still finding reasons," she says at last.
She is quickly becoming the most put together broken person that he has ever seen.
"What reasons?"
"Mags makes pancakes on Thursdays."
Finnick leans forward, waits. This is something he already knew. This is something that manages to get him out of bed by noon to steal the last of the giant batch before it goes cold. This is not a reason to smile.
She says nothing else.
On Thursday, Finnick sets an alarm. He is up at seven, the sun peeking through briefly before the fog rolls all the way in, his eyes drifting shut again without permission. He enters Mags' house half blind. It's enough to see Annie sitting at the table, plate piled high.
Finnick sleeps on his plate instead.
"Is he all right?" someone asks.
Laughter, distinctly his old mentor's, is the reply.
Pip shows up at ten, when Finnick's finally roused himself enough to reach for the syrup. All of Mags' living tributes under one roof, he thinks. Then Annie Cresta walks right out the door.
Or perhaps this:
Patterns, however slight, are hidden in everything. It takes days, weeks, months before he returns to Annie's porch. He starts the same way as before, and she smiles a real smile, and then she tells him why.
Feeding seagulls.
He joins her the next time he sees her doing so—the one thing everyone in the entirety of Four knows not to do because then they're reliant, and get too close to people, and shit on everything. The birds fight and topple over each other. She laughs, falls silent, stops, laughs again. She's mad. Finnick watches.
And then he returns to her porch. Again. Again.
They're reading dusty books in Mags' castle. Leftover pancakes litter counter tops. Clocks tick second after second. He's still on page one, reading the sentence, the words, the letters, but it's not making a mark on his brain. Reading requires thinking, but he's not thinking of the right things at all.
Mags asks what books they're reading—it's fair. They're hers. Annie answers, Annie knows. A hand hits the back of Finnick's head before he realizes he's yet to reply.
"Good book?" Annie asks.
No. That's not why he isn't paying attention. His old mentor looks down at his page. She laughs.
Or perhaps this:
A year's Games come and go. Annie's mother passes with them.
(This is what Snow does, what he's always done, what he'll always do. Finnick doesn't blink twice, does nothing but lead her home from the funeral with a hand pressed to her lower back.)
This leaves him sitting on her porch because don't leave. Technically he hasn't left yet. A foot drops experimentally down onto the grass below, off the structure of the house. Like she knows, a light flickers on upstairs. He quickly withdraws his foot.
"Finnick?" It's the next morning and he's asleep on the porch step.
Mags uses his shins as a stair and escorts herself to the door. He jumps up quick enough to open the door for her, and follows enough inside to collapse on Annie's couch.
"Tea?" is the next question. And he wakes up again. Life, it so appears, goes on. It's sickening.
"Sugar?" is his favorite of the interrogation that is his life.
Before he can reach for the offering, however, it's pulled back. Out of reach, still in sight. It's maddening. Though Annie Cresta's eyes are not.
"You're smiling." She's smiling. The whole damn world is smiling, and he's not sure how to handle it.
So he reaches for the sugar again. She lets him take it.
Or perhaps this:
It's his idea to bake her a cake for her birthday. Mags laughs at him and leaves him to figure it out for himself. That's how he ends up on Annie's front porch again, proposing his idea to the receiver of his gift, pathetically. She laughs, too, but takes his hand to drag him inside.
Same skin and bone. He wonders how her hands are softer.
Her mother's recipe. She reads it to him. Finnick refuses to let her do any of the work.
"But why isn't reading instructions included in this 'work?'" she asks. Amusement creeps up on her words as a smile creeps up on her lips.
"Because I need you to do that," he answers. "And you can't do any work."
"Oh, so it's just because you said so."
He pauses, time freezes. "Well, yeah."
"Well, I say that I get to mix, then, because you've been poking at that batter for years, and it's not even close to looking like it's supposed to."
The spoon stops its circles. Its owner looks up at the accuser.
"But that's work."
A smirk. "But I said so." And when he opens his mouth, she slants towards him, falling, and whines, "It's my birthday."
He throws an arm out to support her, holds her for a second too long while he thinks it over, then hands her the spoon. The cake flourishes under her hands, and while he should be taking notes on how and what and when, he's stuck stupidly watching her.
Or perhaps this:
The door opens smoothly; Finnick stands there fidgeting, yet again. He can't look her in the eyes, not now, and he thinks he might flee, but she keeps him captive. And everyone else can see him from their porches, and while he's willing to act like a fool in front of Annie Cresta, he can't in front of the victors of Four. Trapped.
She looks at him curiously. He wishes she never answered the door.
"What is it?" she asks.
It's the wrong question. Because he doesn't have an answer.
"I was—just—wanna say—hi?"
He cringes, waits for the worst, but she simply smiles, opens the door wider.
And they sit in her kitchen and talk and talk over cups of tea and bowls of sugar. He spills his with a hand gesture, cleans it up with an apology. She's still smiling, smiling, smiling.
His brow crinkles. The conversation lulls.
"Why do you smile?" he asks, while smiling all the same. He's predicted her answer before the words escaped.
And he gets it right.
Her cheeks flush red. It's because of him. "It's because of you."
Or perhaps this:
She falls asleep on his couch, and the silence she leaves in her wake is deafening. Her hair slithers across the armrest, brown rivers on bright blue knitted pillows. On the side table, a mug of chamomile sits half empty.
Finnick has no clue what to do about any of it. Feet trudge upstairs, body rests on the soft sheets of a proper bed.
The scream wakes him, the shaking wakes her. Her limbs are frantic, chest heaving. With a gentle grasp on her forearm, Finnick holds her steady, kneeling next to the couch barely an hour after he last left her.
The chamomile creates a puddle on the floor.
Annie is confused once it stops, her eyes focusing evenly and questioningly on his. Concerned, he strokes his hand to her forehead and into her hair. Repeats the motion until her eyes are falling shut once more. Then they open again.
"Sleep," he whispers, knowing better than to try and wake the night.
Her voice pierces the air. "I'm scared."
A hand reaches for his, but he pulls back, sits on his haunches, and stares.
The things he knows about fear.
Instead of responding, instead of offering her an explanation, he reaches for the fallen mug and leads it to the kitchen. The sink is already full, but he's sure it doesn't mind another addition. Feet slide as he sinks to the floor.
(One room apart, but neither of them speak another word, neither of them get a wink of sleep. She might be afraid of falling victim to the night terrors, but he's terrified she'll fall victim to him. He's already lost too many people from getting too close.)
Or perhaps this:
She likes dragging him from his house now. Often at odd hours of the morning. Occasionally at precisely two o'clock in the afternoon. Every destination is different. He doesn't know where they come from.
This one, he knows.
The water pulls at the sand around his feet, he buries his toes. Annie chases the waves up and down as they rise and fade. Then, once one foot is hidden up to the ankle and the other is stubbornly fighting the sand, she shoves him from behind. The turf looks different when he's on its level.
Annie looks different when she's sitting on his chest.
Eyes move quickly. Blink, rid of salt and sand, squint against the sun. He watches her, she watches him.
"I win," she announces softly.
He promptly stands, limbs flying, until she's tilted off balance, supported only by him. Waits. She attempts to climb up his arm. The wave roars up, Annie is dropped into the rushing foam.
Finnick runs back home. He knows better than to stick around with a sopping Annie.
Lemonade. Peace offering. It's thrust into her hands the moment she notices the door is unlocked for her.
Unbeknownst to him, he's smiling, smiling bright, even when a bit of ice comes hurtling towards him. Annie drowns in her lemonade. Glasses are refilled.
"I win," Finnick mumbles.
She takes his lemonade pitcher.
And shadows hide from their light.
Or perhaps this:
Realization comes in the form of a jab and a call out. Neither one was on Finnick's agenda for that morning, but really, with knowing Mags this long, it should've been.
First. A book hitting a shoulder blade.
Second. "Not polite."
Staring, he fills in. Staring is not polite.
Realizations do not come easily. Old mentors do not like explanations. Lifting eyes back up to previous locations is tricky.
Pip and Annie. One talking animatedly, the other lying sideways on the porch swing. He wonders why she still bothers with him. He wonders if she knows she's beautiful.
Oh.
Finnick follows Mags inside. His own house. She's evening out the papers strewn over his coffee table.
"Don't touch that."
She keeps sorting. Sitting in her way, he catches her attention. Sitting on the couch, she yawns.
"What is it?" he asks.
"You?"
"Me?"
"Never get through a conversation like that," she chastises. Mags always chastises.
Finnick waits. Finnick never waits.
"Why're you inside?"
"You are not going to—"
"Leave."
"—kick me out of my own house." A finish too late. It trails. He makes up for it with "oh."
"Bring mashed potatoes for dinner."
Finnick leaves.
Two steps, three. The last step. Annie is walking back home. A breath, two. He waves. She turns, but he quickens his pace to reach her. Her house. Is anyone where they belong, now?
"Why?" he asks. Questions, over time, shorten. Rocks, over time, change.
They're standing in a kitchen. A robin peers in.
"The world isn't trying to destroy you, Finnick."
A laugh bubbles, but doesn't quite reach the air. Miserable laughs are not sounds meant to be heard.
"You are, though," she continues.
Sometimes reactions aren't necessary.
He gives one anyway. "Oh."
Repetition, repetition, repetition.
"You shouldn't."
It doesn't seem that he knows what's going on anymore. Finnick boils water and pulls out the tea. Ignores the girl behind him. Doesn't turn when she wraps fingers around his forearm, softly. The world is too loud.
Her head's resting against his shoulder when he notices how close she's gotten, notices how much he doesn't mind. When the water pours from the spout, he makes care to keep the splashing, burning water far from her skin.
Mug in hand, she finishes her answer. "I refuse."
Flames of a match lick his hand. Annie's fireplace lights.
"Which part?"
"Refuse to destroy. Be destroyed."
"You make it sound easy."
"It is."
"How?"
She settles next to him on the carpet. Her mug watches from the stone of the fireplace. He watches it back. Doesn't look at Annie. Never looks at Annie.
Her hands wring. She falls silent. Sometimes, Finnick forgets. Often. Always. He takes her hand, squeezes, and tells her it's all right. They can do something else. They can be something else. The things that hide in brain tissue aren't real. I promise.
Smiles are things that lurk. Hers takes time to creep up.
"You see?" She's talking to her hands. The mug is, too. "That was easy."
He was helping, failing at helping, hopelessly helping. That doesn't count. "That doesn't count."
When she smiles this time, it's a secret. He leans closer, eager for an explanation, for more of her sweet words. The world tilts around them. The mug drops, rolling closer, eavesdropping.
Bravery. Her fingers press to his cheek, soft as petals, as dew. Checks herself in his eyes. Not brave enough. There is suddenly too much he knows and too much he doesn't. By the time his brain has frantically responded, yelling do something to his nervous system, she's already touched noses with him. Smiles are secrets. Finnick tilts his head.
Or perhaps this:
Snapshots. Annie brushes her hair back, steals his shirt when he's not looking. Winter beds are cold alone. Innocence. Laughter. Things lead to things and trail in circles. He's stolen away to the Capitol. He keeps her safe. Embraces meet him when he arrives home. So does a storm. Few things are big enough to matter. Most things fall through cracks. They balance. They grow.
Finnick is not afraid anymore.
But definitely this:
Like a pair of lovers that they're still learning to be, they hold each other. The bed is soft and warm. Their feelings are more so.
A nightmare. It's what caused her to jerk up. It's what caused Finnick to wrap his arms around her. While the fear runs away from the warmth of his arms, the night closes in and suffocates. She buries farther into him, and a kiss lands on her head.
He has become safety. The irony bubbles as laughter in his chest.
"I can't breathe," she chokes out.
Hands weave through dark locks. "Yes, you can."
Breaths calm, time passes. The night relinquishes its hold, so Finnick does, too.
"I love you," she whispers, words stark against night air. Hands sit frozen in her lap. Hesitantly, they move to cover his.
As he tries to respond, words stick and unstick in his throat. He clears it. Wraps his fingers around hers. Tries again. "And I love you."