Author's Note: Hello all. Here is Chapter Three, slightly longer than the first two chapters, but that's alright. I wanted to post this chapter before I headed for bed, since tomorrow I'll probably be too tired after my final networking exam (wish me luck), so yeah, here it is.
Please enjoy!
Chapter Three
I remember this one time, right after my parents had died and I was so miserable that I wasn't thinking about the ocean as I climbed some rocks on the beach near my grandmother's house. I wasn't watching the ocean as I climbed, not seeing just how rough the waves had become, and so didn't see the huge wave that crashed against the rocks I was climbing until it hit me and pulled me back into the raging ocean.
The feeling that had given me, a small child being hit by a huge wave and then being dragged almost to the bottom of the bay by its strength, knocked almost all the air out of my lungs. Somehow, through my panic filled mind, I managed to remember all that I had been taught from my earliest days of learning how to swim and I was able to swim my way back to the surface and somehow make it to a boat that had seen me fall in and had come to rescue me.
That feeling of air being smashed out of me, the feeling of an unbreakable force being pressed down upon my chest, it was the same feelings that I felt then that I felt now when my name was called.
"Annie Cresta? Where is Annie?" I heard Stansen cry loudly and cheerfully from the stage. Once again, as I had as a child, somehow through my panic filled mind, some part of me made me move, forced me to move. Move or you'll drown. Move or you'll drown!
But I'll drown if I go!
Move!
I took a few deep breaths to control my frantic heart and panicking mind before I started walking for the stage.
Someone will volunteer for me. One of those girls, they'll volunteer and then I won't have to go. I won't have to die and by dying, kill Grandma and Finnick with me.
Grandma and Finnick.
I lifted my head and looked at them, looked at their barely contained horrified expression. Why did they look so scared when someone is probably going to volunteer for me? I wondered before remembering.
I was seventeen.
Seventeen year olds are considered old enough to fend for themselves; seventeen year olds have usually fulfilled their Career training and are raring to go.
Seventeen year olds… don't get volunteers…
That almost stopped me in my tracks but somehow I managed to climb up the stairs, without tripping and stand in front of Stansen, who's positively beaming at me. I never realised he had yellow teeth. Was that something he had done, surgically or doesn't he know what a teethbrush is?
I can hear clapping, I guess, for me, but I don't pay much attention for it. I was too busy trying to keep myself from screaming. Die horribly or come back broken and mentally disturbed? Were those honestly my only choices?
"Now for the boy's turn." I heard Stansen gush and I don't know if it was just me, and I'm sure it just was, but in my panic filled mind I seem to think that his time picking out the boy tribute's name went by a lot faster than when his was picking out the girl's tribute's name, my name. But maybe that's just me.
"Merle Anchorson." I heard several loud cheers and realise that the boy who has been called was happy about it. Happy to be going into the Hunger Game. Happy to see kids die all around him. Happy to see me die! Bloody Career!
Merle steps up on to the stage with a bound in his step, grinning from ear to ear as he shook Stansen's hand, something I forgot to do. Were we meant to shake his hand? I couldn't remember.
Stansen is thrilled, of course, and trills out a loud welcome to us and for everyone to give us a loud round of applause, while the Mayor once more got to his feet from where he was sitting with Grandma and Finnick and all the other District Victors and started to rattle off the dreary speech about the Treaty of Treason before he motions for Merle and me to shake hands.
He's huge! And I'm not exactly short, but this guy is taller than Finnick and far broader in the shoulders too. You can see his muscles beneath his shirt.
I feel my mind wanting to shut down again, as it does sometimes when I feel like I'm dealing with too much. It did it when my parents died, and it does it sometimes when things are bad at home, when before Finnick and Grandma's are having bad nights and the nightmares just won't leave them be. And it's doing it now, to protect me from further pain, but I push it aside. I can't hide within my mind forever.
I shake his hand, fearing that he might just break it with the tiniest of squeezes.
I yank my hand back the moment the anthem starts to play and while it plays, I force my mind to get itself in order. The last thing I need is to appear weak. Appearing weak means no sponsors and sometimes having sponsors and not having sponsors is the difference between life and death.
There was that girl, Johanna Mason; she won her games by appearing weak for most of it, I remind myself but then remembered that she acted weak until the final eight and that was when she showed her true colours and revealed just how affective she was with an axe.
I shuddered.
And she and Finnick are good friends, I marvel, though I'm not jealous. Finnick needs friends, real friends. He needs more than just Grandma and me. And once I go…
Once the anthem has stopped and we're being ushered into the Justice Building, a place I've only been in a handful of times and those times were only because my grandmother had needed to go there for one reason or another.
I've certainly never been within the room that I was put into to say my final goodbye to family and friends.
I sat down on one of the couches and looked up at the clock on the wall. I have no family, besides my grandmother and I'm not sure if she's allowed to come and see me or not. They might think she'll give me an unfair advantage or something over my fellow tribute. Though I don't know how she can, since she retired from being a Mentor three years ago, after her first (and hopefully only) heart attack. But if she isn't allowed to come, then how can I say goodbye to her? To tell how much I love her and that she needs to remember to take her medication, no matter what. Well, I suppose I can tell all these things to Finnick, but I want to tell her myself.
And what about Finnick? What if he isn't mentoring this year? I doubt it, but…
I take the seashell necklace into my hand again, squeezing it tightly as I squash down my panic.
After about three minutes of being on my own, the door opens and a couple of friends that I have from school come in. They tell me that I can win and that they believe in me and that they'll miss me.
The missing me part is probably the only truthful thing that they've said so far. Alright, so maybe they do believe in me, but they can't honestly expect to see me win, do they? Me?
I get a hug from each of them, each telling me in turn to "Swim Straight Through All Waters" which is the motto of our school and what our swimming coach is always telling us before meets.
After they leave my Swimming Coach comes in and tells me basically the same thing, though she is a bit more confidant in my abilities than my friends or I am.
"You can win this, you know." She informs me coolly.
"I…"
"You can. You are the best and fastest swimmer I've seen in years. The same goes with your running. Run when you need to, swim when you need to and hide. You can win this thing Cresta. You just have to believe that you can." With that she handed me a medal hanging from a soft cloth cord. A medal that I wasn't suppose to receive until the end of next year, at my graduation ceremony. But now…
I felt my eyes water a little as I stared down at the tiny gold medal.
I had come first in the school! I was the best swimmer in the whole school!
It had been years since someone had won this medal and I had, but the only reason I was being presented with it now was because I was most likely going to be dead before they can give it to me properly.
"As you know this isn't given until graduation but I thought you might need a little motivation and good luck while you're in those games, so," She closed my hand over the medal and smiled sadly down at me.
"Good luck Annie Cresta. Swim straight through all waters." And with that, after she kissed my forehead, she left too and I was alone again.
I sat heavily back down on the couch, feeling drained emotionally, turning the little medal over and over again in my palm.
I didn't have to wait long before a Peacekeeper came into the room, informing me that it was time to leave.
It was a short but miserable ride to the train station from the Justice Building.
I had been in a car a couple of times befpre but that was only when I was greeting Grandma and Finnick after they've come back from the Capital after the Hunger Games or from a Victory Tour. But I've never been in car by myself, or rather without them, since I wasn't by myself, Merle Anchorson was beside me and waving and cheering loudly to the crowd who was following the car and meeting it at the station.
When we got out we were almost overrun by people; reporters flittering around, camera's being shoved into our faces and questions that I couldn't understand being screamed at us.
I was feeling overwhelmed and suffocated but I somehow managed to keep a smile on my face and wave to the crowd as I all put raced for the shelter of the train.
I scrambled on with Merle behind me still yelling and waving to the crowd while I was simply desperate to get out of there. I hope my eagerness to escape the crowd is taken as eagerness to get to the Capital.
After a few more moments of being forced to smile for the cameras we were allowed to escape into the train's interior.
As soon as the door closes behind us, the train starts off and I'm taken aback by just how fast it is. Of course, I've seen from the outside how fast it is, waiting for Grandma and Finnick to return but on the inside, it's so different. Even though I know we're moving, and I can see by the windows that we are, I can't feel the sensation of movement at all. It was truly a strange sensation, seeing that we were moving but not feeling it.
"Come on, move already." I hear Merle say before I'm being shoved roughly to the side of the corridor that we are standing in and he strutting his way down the corridor in front of me.
With a reluctant sigh, I followed him, wondering idly where Finnick is and if my grandmother was alright.
This isn't the first time that one of her family members has become a tribute and it will not be the first time that that family member hasn't come home.
With that cheerful thought playing around my head, I followed a staff member of the train as they led me to my very own private chamber; showing me the contents of all the drawers and the closet, all filled with the finest clothes that I've ever seen in my life.
She also showed me to my private bathroom and taught me how exactly my shower worked, since apparently there have be a number of cases where tributes before me have burnt themselves severely from not knowing how to work these showers. And they couldn't have that now, could they? Have us hurting ourselves before we entered the games? Nothing could be more terrible than that?
Well apparently there is and that's our manners. Or rather, lack of.
When she leaves me to go about her other duties, informing me that supper will be in about an hour, I flop down upon the bed and stared up at the ceiling of the train for a few moments before once more pushing myself up right and looking around the room.
Placing my medal down on the bedside table (I hadn't let go of it since I received it); I went over to investigate the contents of my drawers and closet.
The clothes in them really are of the finest quality that I have ever seen in my life. I run my fingers gently over them, before finally picking out a blue shirt and trouser before heading off to have a shower, which loosen up my tense muscles and made me feel a little more relaxed even though I knew that the only thing that could relax me know was a good swim in the ocean, but since that's near impossible now… and I hadn't even said goodbye to it.
I felt sick in my gut once more and I turn off the hot water so that now it only ran cold water over my body and I let a few tears fall before once more pulling myself together and got dressed.
I carefully folded my mother's dress and placed it at the end of my bed, picked up my medal, put it over my head and tucked it down under my shirt, so that it, as well as my seashell pendent from Finnick, were both touching my skin but were hidden from the rest of the world.
I looked out my window, taking in the scenery as it pass us by in a blur. It wouldn't have mattered if the ocean was still visible or not, it would be near impossible to make it out, what with the speed that we are currently travelling at.
But even so, I quietly said my goodbyes to it and to everyone - as few as they were - that I had cared about and had left behind.
I was going to die. There was no fighting it.
I wasn't big or strong and I wasn't particularly good at anything, besides swimming and running, but those weren't exactly traits that kept you alive during a battle for your life.
Yes, I could run from danger, but how long can you run before danger finally catches up to you and then, it's then that I am truly doomed.
I take a few deep breaths as I come to accept my fate only to have a wrench thrown into it by the person who had just come storming into my room.
"Finn-" I start but I am swept into his arms, his lips pressed fiercely against mine before I can finish. We kiss and cling to each other for several moments before he pulls away, his eyes wild and frantic.
"We'll get you out. You'll live. We'll get you out." He said this over and over again, like a mantra.
"Finnick. Finnick." I grab his face and force him to look at me. "It's ok."
He stared down at me for a few seconds before he scowled.
"Don't you dare!" He growl, looking furious.
I stare back up at him, startled.
"Don't I dare what?" I asked bewildered by his anger.
"Don't you dare give up! Don't you dare for one moment!"
"Finnick." I say, feeling desperate now, "Finnick. I'm not- I'm not a fighter. I can't. You know that I can't be in the same room when the Games are playing, especially when someone…" I trailed off. "I'm not strong like you! And I – I don't have a chance. Seriously, you must realise that. You must see that!"
"You do." He insists looking desperate now. "You do Annie. Trust me, you might not think you do, but I do. There is more to you than you know."
"I don't want to be like Johanna Mason." I yelped. "I don't want to turn in to a vicious killer because I finally snapped."
"That wasn't exactly what happened with her." He started before shaking his head. "Look, just don't give up on yourself, alright? Please."
"Please Annie." I looked into his desperate, pleading eyes. "I can't survive without you. I need you. I need you to live. If you d… give up, then I… I will too."
I scowled up at him.
How could he? How dare he! How…
I saw him start to smile in relief and I felt my fury at him rise. He had done that on purpose!
"So, no giving up." He said and kissed me before I could yell at him for breaking my resolve to simply let fate happen and to not fight my inevitable death by the hands of the Capital.
"Alright, so suppers ready. Come on." His arm was around my waist and steering me out of my room and down the corridor to a dinning room with polished panel walls. All around the sides the room was food. Most of which I had never seen before, some looking so pretty or elegantly crafted that I didn't want to eat them, because that would only destroy their beauty.
Finnick let go of my waist the moment we entered and I walked to the table, my bare feet sinking deeply into the soft carpet with him trailing a few steps behind me.
I fought back a sigh.
If I was going to have to pretend to be nothing more than a tribute to him than my last couple of days alive were going to be even worse than I had originally thought.
I sat down at the table, looking over all the extremely delicate and breakable china that was laid out before me. There was no way I could eat off of these delicate, breakable things; I would break them before I even had a mouthful of whatever supper was.
A couple of the districts younger Victors' entered the room and Finnick moved over to talk with them. I wasn't sure which one would be acting as my mentor, maybe all of them, or maybe just Finnick, but then I wasn't sure if he was going to act a mentor this year or if he was simply going to the Capital for his other "job".
I slouched down further in my chair, glaring at the fine tableware, half tempted to peg some of it at the opposite wall, just to see how breakable the stuff really was.
I heard the door open again, but didn't bother looking up to see who it was, probably more mentors simply along for the ride and to visit their friends from other districts or maybe a couple of them had "Jobs" like Finnick. I wasn't sure and truthfully I didn't really care.
I didn't care until I smelt the familiar, but subtle perfume that my grandmother wore. My head snapped up and turn sharply in the direction of the door. My mouth dropped yet again.
"Grandma!" I was out of my chair and in her arms within moments, taking all of my self-control not to simply burst into tears in her arms like I used to when I was a child and something bad had happen or was happening.
Instead of crying, I simply buried my face into her sweet smelling hair, letting her presence wash calm over me as she rubbed my back.
"What-what are you doing here?" I asked once we pulled away and I helped her to chair next to me. "You're retired, you shouldn't be here." I looked around at the other Victors' who had all stopped talking and were watching us with varying looks of amusement, sympathy and in some cases disgust and jealousy.
I ignored them and went on to search the kinder faces, but it was my grandmother who answered me with a snort.
"As if I would let you go off to the Capital by yourself. No grandchild of mine is coming home with a full body dye job." She informed me quite seriously and I knew I wasn't the only one who laughed at her words. But while I giggled, I thought over what she had said, reading between the lines. She hadn't wanted me to be alone, she was determined for me come back home again. Yet another person was making themselves believe that I would win. That I could win. Why couldn't they see…
I started to shake my head but my grandmother grasped my chin firmly with her hand, forcing me to look into her brilliant green eyes.
"You can win, Annie. You will. I'll make sure that you do."
"Bit mean of you to just write off the tribute with the higher chance of survival simply because of my being your granddaughter." I replied in a hushed tone because even though I could hear the Victors' talking amongst themselves once more, I knew that most of them were probably listening in on our conversation.
"Just because he appears to be stronger than you, Annie, doesn't mean that he will last longer than you will. Most of these Games are won by those who use their brains, and that boy has a lot of arrogance and confidence to him but brains…" she simply shook her head.
"Yeah, but a lot of them are also won through pure strength." I whispered back.
"You have talents Annie. You aren't going in without anything up your sleeve. You can swim, which is a lot more than can be said for most of the other tributes, along with those from Districts One and Two. Don't give up on yourself so easily."
I looked at her with a weak smile and she smiled back.
"Speaking of swimming," I said clearing my throat and fishing around the collar of my shirt, searching for my medal, "look what I got." I pulled the soft cloth cord up and over my head and handed the medal to my grandmother, who gasped in delight.
"Oh Annie."
"I was meant to get it next year, for when I graduate but," I shrugged my shoulders up and down as she turned the medal over in her hands, her finger running lightly over my name that was engraved in the back of it.
"They've obviously known that you are the best for quite some time." She smirked at me while I blushed.
"Doesn't mean anything." I grumbled taking the medal back from her and slipping back over my neck, "just means that if I'm thrown into an arena full of water, I won't drown after the first day or so."
"Yeah, and everyone else will and you'll come home the winner, simple as that." Said Marlin from where he stood near us, by a window, snacking on some fish cake things. Marlin won his game about thirty or so odd years ago, lost his left arm and leg during it and so now has automated ones. He also acts as a sort of Head Mentor for our District tributes.
I smile weakly at him, while he toasts me with the delicate looking fish cake, while inside I simply feel nauseous again.
Merle finally joins us when supper is being brought out to us. He sits down at one end of the table, while I'm up the other. He immediately lurches into asking question after question of different things around the Games.
I try to listen in because I know the answers that our Victors give are important and could save my life, but after a few moments I feel too sick at how casually one of the Victor's describes how he took the life of a fourteen year old boy tribute with a hand-made spear.
I started to feel the sensation of being overwhelmed again, making it hard to breathe, let alone eat the courses of food that keep being placed in front of me.
They are all beautifully made but each one simply makes me feel sicker and sicker in my gut that I want to just stop and go straight back to my room and sleep, maybe find that this is all just some terrible dream.
"You need to eat." My grandmother whispers to me, once she sees yet another untouched or barely touched plate of food being taken away from in front of me.
"I'm not hungry."
"Annie." She puts on her serious grandmother voice and I can't help but give her a 'are you serious' look, before forcing myself to eat the food that has just been placed in front of me.
I barely taste it though and I simply feel sick as I keep hearing snippets of conversation from the other end of the table, a couple of them are laughing over long dead tributes final moments. I can see now, why we are known as a Career District.
Even though I've known all these people all my life, I've never actually seen them in Victor/Mentor mode, so seeing them, all of them, this way, talking about their own Games or Games that they've mentor is a completely new experience for me, a disturbing one at that, with some of them seeming to take glee of remembering their pass kills or the kills that they've witness being made over the years of mentoring.
Maybe we are more bloodthirsty than I realised.
"Annie…" my grandmother started because I was once more going off my food again, but I cut her off with a sudden thought.
"How did you win your games?" I asked overcome with sudden curiosity, a sudden need to know that my grandmother wasn't like those at the other end of the table, informing Merle on the best way to disarm and disable your opponent with a jagged rock.
The only positive thing I was taking from this dinner was that neither Finnick nor my grandmother were joining in with these disturbing conversations. There were a few others who weren't joining in too, but most of the Victors were.
My grandmother blinked at me in surprise and I saw from where he was sitting, across the table and a few seats down from us, Finnick's eyes flicker in our direction. I knew he was curious too to know how my gentle, warm, ever-loving and peaceful grandmother had ever won her Hunger Games.
Please, don't let her be like them. Please, don't be secretly relishing in the fact that you took innocent lives.
"I hid."
"What?" This time I was the one who blinked in surprise.
"I hid." My grandmother said again, matter of fact as she dug into her fried fish and mashed potatoes.
"Hid?" I said slowly.
"Yes, hid."
"For your whole game?" I was speechless. Seriously, can someone actually do that?
"Ah, but you see darling, my games were quite a bit different from how they are now. It was easier to hide back then, for you to be forgotten. There were less cameras around then and the Gamemakers had less part during the games than they do now. Back then it was just ourselves against ourselves, no outside interference. It meant that the games were longer, because it took longer to hunt down everyone because there weren't any forces driving us together, but it made being able to disappear and go by unnoticed a lot easier. I simply found a nice hiding spot by a pool of water and waited for the other tributes to simply…
"Kill themselves off and since you were the last one standing, you won even though you didn't kill anyone." She nodded.
"That's why my games aren't shown very often. Or at all, rather. I didn't do anything in particular to bring the wrath of the Capital down upon my head, but I was very unpopular for what I did."
"For hiding and not killing anyone."
She nodded and sighed.
"They made me pay for that, later on. When President Snow came into office." Her eyes became cloudy and I suddenly started to wonder.
My parents?
My parents had died in a boating accident. Bits of their boat had washed up upon the shore but their bodies were never recovered. And I had an uncle and an aunt, my grandmother's two other children, both of whom I had never met because they both died during their respective Hunger Games.
I looked at my grandmother and suddenly understood why she held so much grief within her, why she put so much effort into protecting me and keeping me from harm's way. Why she had been, at first, so against mine and Finnick's relationship.
She was trying to hide me, like she had hidden herself all those years ago. But she could only hide and protect me for so long.
I guess I should be thankful that I've had as long as I've had to go by unnoticed by the Capital. And I wasn't going to just waste all the effort my grandmother put in to keeping me safe.
"I'll be ok." I whisper to her softly, causing her to look at me, startled.
I grinned back her before starting to eat.
I ate so much that I really did feel like I was going to be sick, but I seem to have reassured my grandmother and made her happy. And even if I only have a few more weeks left to live, I want those weeks to mean something, maybe not to the rest of Panem, but at least to my grandmother and Finnick.
I want to die with them being proud of me and with them knowing that I loved them more than anything else and that I want them to be happy, more than anything else in the world.
Once the meal was over and I was fighting to keep the rich food down – I saw that Merle too looked a bit green in the face – we were all ushered by Stansen Flickershade from the dining room to another compartment to watch a recap of the reapings across Panem.
I felt even more ill when I sat down on the floor to watch the reaping, my back pressed against my Grandmother's, her fingers gently playing with my hair, undoing the knot work that Finnick had created, so that my hair now fell loosely down my back.
It was hard to watch the reaping, harder to listen to Merle, the Victors and Stansen all making comments about all the children who were reaped for the Games.
The kids from District One and Two looked like typical Careers.
The four of them look like they can barely contain their glee when they are chosen. The boy and girl from District One are tall and beautiful but definitely show the signs of those who have spent many hours staying fit and working on skills to prepare them for the Games. The two kids from District Two are monstrous in size and are completely terrifying. Not in their looks so much, but their eagerness to be in the Games, the looks that they gave the camera. These two were in these Games not so much to win to win, to bring glory or whatever back to District Two, they were in it to kill.
I pressed my back more firmly against Grandma's legs, her hand on my shoulder squeezed back in sympathy.
The kids from District Three are scrawny, with barely any meat on them. They weren't smiling when they are called up; in fact the fourteen year old girl tribute bursts into hysterics before she even reaches to stage.
I hear a snigger or two from somewhere in the room as she is more of less shoved up and on to the stage by a couple of Peacemakers.
I'm surprised by how much my inner panic came across as boredom when my own reaping appeared on screen and they did a close up of my face. I honestly looked as if I was bored or indifferent about the whole thing, when inside I was a mess. I do feel relieved by this though; people won't think I'm weak because of how I reacted during the reaping.
I fight the desire to roll my eyes as I watch Merle on screen more or less bound on to the stage after his name was called.
The other districts after that were much the same as Three; boys and girls walking slowly to the stage after their names are called, all knowing that they'll most likely never be coming home again.
The boy tribute called from District Six was truly heartbreaking. From the moment the camera found him after his name was called it was obvious that he was of a simple mind, his blank eyes confused, not understanding that he had to go up on to the stage. He fought and cried when the Peacemakers tried to force him. It wasn't until his eleven year old brother took him by the hand and led him to the stage that the boy calmed down and became once more placid, smiling sweetly for the crowd.
I swallowed thickly.
He was just a baby. A baby trapped in a sixteen year olds body, there was no way he would survive, no way he could live through the Hunger Games.
I don't know how I managed to watch the full recap of the reapings after the boy from District Six was called; I simply allowed my mind to wander, unable to bear watching anymore children who were doomed to die.
"Come on, Bed now, big day tomorrow." I was shaken from the depths of my mind by Stansen's loud voice.
"Come on, sweetie." Grandma said gently as I sighed and stood up and helped her to her feet.
I walked her to her private room.
"My beautiful girl." She whispered, running a hand gently down the side of my face.
"I'll be ok. I'll fight, I promise."
"You will?" my grandmother asked, her eyes hopeful.
"Yeah, I will." I watched as she closed her eyes for a moment, before she opened them again and smiled at me gently.
"Good girl." She whispered before kissing my cheek. "Try and get some sleep."
"Try." I said and she smiled before she entered her own room.
With a sigh, I padded slowly back to my own room.
I changed into a pair of loose shorts and shirt before crawling into the bed, burying myself within its softness.
I was just beginning to fall asleep when I heard the door of my room open and close quietly before my bed moved as someone bigger than me hopped into it.
"Finnick?" I rolled over, my hands reaching out for him. He slid his arms around my waist, kissing my mouth gently before telling me to try and sleep.
I did and surprisingly soundly.
Author's Note: Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Chapter Four will be up over the weekend, most likely.
Bye for now