A/N- I appreciate the reviews, and as always, I'm open to any criticism that you have for me. Thank you for continuing to read my writing.
Finnick 15 Annie 13
So many glowing stars decorate the night sky that it reminds me of the swirls of glitter that brightened Sylvia's face during my Games. The moon is just a shining white glob in the middle, a sharp contrast to the black background. It's one of the most beautiful nights that I've seen, made so much better by the girl laying in the sand next to me.
We aren't saying anything, but that's fine. We couldn't if we tried. Tomorrow is the day of the reaping, and even though Annie only has two slips of paper in those huge glass balls, I'm still horrified. I may be safe now, but Annie isn't.
I know that I should be thinking about Rafe, who has sixty something slips now that he's seventeen and his mother had another child, adding to their already huge family. But I can't worry too much about him, even though we are talking again. We can never go back to the friendship we had before, especially not when I can't keep my mind off of Annie for a second.
Just thinking about her makes me smile, and I roll over to look at her. How could I have let one single person get so much power over me? Then she turns her head and looks into my eyes, and I know exactly how. Because she grew up under horrible circumstances, but still tries to see the good in everything. Because her smile makes even peacekeepers smile back. And because she's just so perfectly Annie.
"Are you scared?" I ask her softly.
"I shouldn't be," she answers. I take her hand.
"Everyone with their name in those two glass balls is scared." She shakes her head.
"What about you? You didn't even blink when they said your name. You showed absolutely no fear through the entire Games." I close my eyes and pull her to my side. I love the way that she fits there so perfectly, like a missing puzzle piece. I love the way I feel like I can protect her from anything. I never want to let go of her.
"I was scared, but not like I should've been. I'd been trained for the Games so much that I got cocky. As soon as my name was called, I was already figuring out how I'd get home. I didn't think much about everyone who wanted me dead. I'm scared now though, when I really shouldn't be."
"What are you scared of?" she asks gently. My eyes open and meet hers. She's so close to me that our foreheads are almost touching. I should kiss her. I want to kiss her. My eyes snap shut again, because I know that I can't think like that. It isn't right. I force my thoughts onto a slightly safer path.
"I'm scared that I didn't deserve to win after what I did. I'm scared that there are still people out to get me. I'm scared that I'll wind up like Mags, getting to know dozens of tributes, then having to watch them die. And I'm terrified that one of those tributes is going to be you."
"I don't see what you shouldn't be afraid of those things," she says. "Except for losing me. I don't want you to worry about that." I grip her hand tighter, and it has to hurt her, but she doesn't say anything.
"Annie, that's the only one that I should really be worrying about."
"What are the chances that I'll be picked, Finnick? There are thousands of names. The odds are in our favor."
She isn't as confident the next day. I make a few pathetic attempts to start a conversation when I walk her to her place, but she just gives me dull, one word answers. When a peacekeeper shouts at her to get with the thirteen year old girls, she just gives me a sad look before she walks away.
I want nothing more than to stay with Annie, but I'm required to be up on the stage. Then they put the victors in order by the year they won. I wind up next to Borglum, who won ten years ago. He's better than most of them, since he's actually sober most of the time and actually pretty normal, even though I avoid him because of his violent outbursts. I tried hanging out with him a month or so after I got back, mainly because he was Arowana's mentor, but he made me nervous. He'd see something, then start going off about it, talking about how much he'd like to kill certain people.
Sure enough, as soon as I sit beside him, he starts whispering in my ear about Alva, the District 4 escort. He goes on about how she rigs the balls so that people related to the victors get picked, to make things more interesting. I guess I've never paid attention, and I start considering this. Then he gets really close to me and barely breathes that everyone in the Capitol deserves to die.
"Borglum," I hiss. Doesn't he know how much trouble he could get into for that? He just chuckles when I call him out though.
"Give it a couple years and you'll be thinking the same way," he says. Then he turns around and points at a camera man trying to get our attention. We both smile broadly, even though I know that neither of us look truly happy. Borglum's blue eyes are burning with hate, and I'm sure mine probably look dead. When the cameraman looks away, I turn back to him.
"What do you mean?" He opens his mouth to answer, but Alva starts talking and his jaw clamps shut. I immediately forget about my conversation with him, now looking at the big glass ball with the slips for the female tribute. I will it not to be Annie. I actually pray. Then Alva walks over there and I know that nothing I do can protect Annie, and I bury my face in my hands. She opens her mouth to say the name, and I imagine my world falling apart.
"Eliza Snow." Every muscle in my body relaxes. I have another year before I have to worry again. Borglum sees my relief and actually pats me on the shoulder. I scan the crowd for Annie, and when her eyes meet mine, it takes everything I have not to run out there and hug her. She smiles at me timidly, careful not to be too happy because even though she's safe, there are two other kids getting shipped of to their death today.
I get myself a little bit wound up when Alva steps up to choose the name for the boy, but it isn't Rafe. Another person that I don't know. I've gotten lucky, and I can feel it. I really don't feel like I've won much though, because no matter who it is, nobody deserves to go to the Hunger Games, and nobody's family deserves to watch their children fight to the death. Yet, today is just another reminder that it happens to twenty four different families every year.
This year it's even worse for our district because the tributes are both young. The girl is fifteen, older than me I guess, but small. The boy is just twelve, and you can hear the crowd hoping someone will take his place, that someone will give our district a chance, but there's nothing. I can't stand to look at either of them as they take their places on the stage, because I know that they'll be dead in just a couple weeks. At that moment, the injustice of it strikes me. Not hard, but enough that I realize just how wrong it is to make children fight because people almost a hundred years ago rebelled.
"This isn't right," I whisper in Borglum's ear, so quietly that I don't even know if he heard me. He did though, and he shakes his head slightly, his eyes focused on the two young tributes.
"This is only the beginning," he says back. Something about the way that he says it makes me shiver, even though I don't know how it can get worse than the Hunger Games.
Borglum and Mags are the mentors again, mainly because they're the only willing victors. I'm not really happy about that because I wanted to take them somewhere safe and talk about what they've been saying, mainly Borglum. Some part of me is scared to figure out what he meant by this only being the beginning, but the other part is dying to know.
I'm not too upset though, because Annie runs over to me as soon as the cameras leave the old victors to find the new tributes. I can't help throwing my arms around her as soon as she gets close to me. She leans her head against my chest and in that second I swear that nothing could be more perfect than feeling her here and safe, and knowing that she will be for the next year.
"They're going to die," Annie whispers to me.
"But you aren't." I'm still holding on to her, and I know that it's lasting too long for a friendly hug. Is it really that impossible to wrap my mind around how wrong it would be if I did like her as more than a friend? It would be a disaster. I have to get that through my thick skull. I let go of her and take a step back. It's almost physically painful. "It's wrong to think that, isn't it? Two kids are dying, and all I can think of is that you're safe."
"It is wrong," she admits, and there's no way either of us can justify it.
"Come on, let's go find your parents. We'll celebrate at my house tonight." That's wrong too, changing the subject to get her mind off of my callousness.
"That would be nice," she says. Then she takes my hand and drags me around, trying to find them, and I have to think that it would be nicer if it was just the two of us.
Just for the record, I'm dead wrong about our tributes. The boy, even though he's just twelve, makes it to the last fifteen at least. The girl makes it home. I hadn't known this when she came up on stage, but she'd trained for as long as I have, and during the Games it became obvious that she was deadly smart. She set traps for the tributes, cut off their food supplies, and actually baited tributes into encounters with one another. Like Mags, her mentor, she didn't kill a tribute directly. She just made them kill each other. And now she's back in District 4. It actually makes me feel weak. She didn't go crazy, and her Games were drug out of two and a half weeks. I make myself stop thinking of that. My Games are in the past. Nothing I can change now.
A week after the Games are done, I'm sitting in my library, just staring at the walls of books. I know that I should find something to read, just to make my brain work, but I haven't been able to make it through a whole book since I've gotten over my post traumatic stress disorder. As soon as I lost the need to lose myself in the books, any appeal they had to me disappeared. It's even worse because my hobby that I picked after the Games was reading. Now I can't even pick up a stupid book.
I'm starting to get really frustrated when the doorbell rings. I'm extremely surprised to see Borglum standing outside.
"What's up?" I ask him.
"Do you want to go on a hike?" Something about the way he says it makes it seem like he's asking me for more than that. I can feel that this is important, and even though I know that Annie will be getting off of school very soon, I also know that staying home is not an option. Borglum has something that he needs to tell me, and I have to find out.
"Sure, sounds like fun."
"Oh, it will be."
Borglum says absolutely nothing the entire way up the mountain. This kind of silence drives me nuts, and I want to say something, but I can tell that he's thinking about something really hard, so I keep my mouth shut. I try singing to myself just to make the time go by faster, but I have to stop immediately because I got that habit during the Games. I can feel a rush of memories trying to break down the invisible wall in my head, and I quickly change to the safest subject possible. Annie.
Or maybe it isn't safe. My mind goes to the night before the reaping, when I wanted to kiss her. Or the day of the reaping, when I held her so tightly, the way that she leaned her head on my chest, and how warm she was, and how everything was so perfect. Then I think about the way she took my hand and pulled me away, and how badly I wished that we were going somewhere where it was just us.
I know how stupid all of it is, how wrong it would be for me to like her in that way. I don't want to twist Arowana's promise like that, not to mention that Annie would be thrown into the media fire, and that's just if she isn't creeped out. She probably would be. I've been acting almost like her brother the last year. I can't just go up and kiss her. Maybe I'm just getting desperate or something. That has to be it. All I need to do is find a girlfriend, and I'll be fine. One of those tiny blonde girls that would look so perfect next to me.
"We're here," Borglum says, thankfully breaking off my train of thought. I can immediately see that I was right about the reason for the hike. We're now looking into the mouth of a dark cave, and I'm guessing that we probably went six miles or so. Six miles for a hole in the rock. There's no other reason to be here than to talk.
Borglum leads me into the cave, then reaches into his pack and pulls out a flashlight. We find a couple of rocks to sit on, then he gets right to business.
"Before I say anything, I need you to swear to me that you will not repeat any of this to anyone outside of a few select people. Do I have your word?"
"Yes," I answer. I can feel the importance of this. No one can know.
"Then tell me your opinions on the Hunger Games." I know that out here, no one can be listening. Nothing I say can hurt me, not when I know that Borglum feels the same way. I don't just let myself speak freely for the first time. I let myself think freely.
"They're cruel, barbaric. No decent human being would let something like that continue, but the Capitol does because they're a bunch of fluffed up monsters who care about nothing but themselves." The words flow freely from my mouth, even though I haven't even let myself imagine saying them before. I don't even think that I felt them. But now, out here where nobody can hear me, and fresh from watching another twenty three tributes die, I know that it's true. I can feel it, even though everything I just said goes against how I was raised.
"Finnick, the people everywhere in Panem, even the Capitol, eat up every word that comes out of your mouth. Nothing has happened yet, and I don't think anything will happen for a while, but if the districts rebel, will you wholeheartedly support the districts?"
My jaw drops and I can't do anything but stare at him while I try to process what he's saying. That the districts may rebel, that he wants me on the side that will surely lose. I think of Annie. Everyone close to me will suffer if the Capitol finds out that I'm against them.
"Maybe when the war actually starts, I'll side with the districts, but now I'm not going to take any sides." Borglum shakes his head like he can't believe me.
"We need you Finnick. You'd be able to do so much. Wouldn't taking down the Capitol be worth risking your life?"
"My life? Sure. But it isn't just my life that I'm worried about. Nothing that you can tell me will make me make a single move against the Capitol. I can't risk it." His eyes soften just slightly, and he puts a hand on my shoulder.
"I understand, but if you change your mind, just tell Mags or me."
"I will."
I'm nervous when my doorbell rings the next day. Suddenly I'm worried that Annie will be mad at me for ditching her. My house is a mile away from her school, and she would've walked all the way here to be left to a note.
Of course, it's Annie, and she greets me with a sweet smile that makes my heart stutter.
"How was your hike?" she asks me, and there isn't a trace of bitterness in her voice.
"I should've just stayed here," I answer truthfully. "You're so much better than Borglum." She smiles a little.
"Thanks, I think. But you had fun, right?" I bite my tongue to keep from blurting out the truth. I want to tell her about the rebels so badly, just because it doesn't feel right for her not to know something so big. But I don't know enough to make it big news, and it would be too dangerous. She can't know anything about this.
"Yeah, it was fun. There was a great view from the top of the cliff." Yeah, right.
"That's cool. Was it a really hard hike? I'd like to go some time." My breath catches in my throat when I think of how amazing that'd be. Not going to the cave, but hiking up the rest of the hill, of being alone with her at the top of the mountain, watching the sun set with her in my arms.
"It was pretty hard, but I bet you could do it. Maybe I should take you some time." The words are out of my mouth before I can really think about them. I want to slap myself. How stupid can I get?
"How about today?" What am I doing?
"Sorry, but I only have an hour or so tonight. I have to help my mom with chores later. Maybe some other time."
"Oh. Well, what do you want to do now?"
"Can we read? We haven't just sat around for a long time."
"That sounds nice," I say. That's fine. Reading is good.
Or not. Because I don't read. I spend the entire time watching Annie. I feel like a creepy stalker, but I can't stop. I realize that I'll never be able to forget about her, that there's no way I could find another girl that would make me forget about her, that nothing could make me forget about her. I will never be able to stay away. She's too beautiful, she's too perfect, and I love her way too much. I know she's just thirteen, hell, hell, I'm just fifteen, but I can already feel that I'm going to end up with Annie eventually. It feels so right that nothing can ever make it wrong.