1. Four
Annie looks through the peep hole on her front door to see a figure with a spiky brown head uncomfortably scuffing the toe of one of her boots into the wood of the porch.
"Johanna!"
Annie throws open her door with a smile. She wasn't expecting her, but she isn't surprised to see her standing there.
The two women look at each other across the space between them, at the ways they have changed since the last time they saw each other. Annie is relieved to see that Johanna has put on some weight and that her skin has lost the grey pallor it had had in the hospital. There is some of her old mischievousness back in her face.
"Ugh," Johanna says breaking the silence as she walks through the door and throws her bag on the ground, "of course you are one of those women who only look more beautiful when they are pregnant. The world really isn't fair, no matter what anyone says."
Annie gathers the smaller girl into her arms, quieting her for a second.
"You look well," Annie says as she lets Johanna go and looks carefully at her. She brushes her hand lightly over the side of Johanna's cheek. "You look well."
Johanna coughs a little as she quickly swipes her wrist over her eyes.
"Well, you look stupidly beautiful and glowing when you should really just be huge. What are you, 7 months?"
"30 weeks," Annie says as she leads Johanna inside, grabbing her hand.
With the thought of what the time really means and the feel of Johanna's hand in hers, Annie pauses, suddenly unseeing, feeling the dark sweep of time going backward and constricting in her chest. Her knees are about to buckle, when she feels the baby inside her move slightly, and she remembers that she needs to pee.
She sees Johanna looking at her, concerned, but all the girl says is, "Okay, so we are quite done with that, right?"
"Yes," Annie smiles.
"You can stay in the blue room on the second floor," Annie continues easily.
Johanna is still looking at her a little warily, but seems to decide that if Annie is moving on, she is too.
"You know everyone in this whole district seems to know where you live, right? And that it is hours away from everything else?"
District 4 is long and thin, following the line of the ocean, and Annie had moved down south to where it is warmer, hours away from her parents' house and the old Victors Village and the main train station.
She had stayed in the Capitol after the vote, while Katniss' trial dragged on, trying to learn how to survive when the only thing that had been anchoring her to the world was gone.
She had stayed until Peeta finally left too, weeks after Katniss, and there was no one left in the Capitol despite the many people who were with her in the hospital in the aftermath of the war. The way Peeta had smiled, the true joy in his face, when he saw her smooth her hand over her just expanding stomach had been all she needed to see that the boy he had been was still there and was finding his way back.
She moved back to District 4 because she needed the water and needed to raise her baby near the water, but she had needed to get away a little too.
"I know it's a long trip. But I need to get a little farther away from… everything. I had never been this far south on land before, only seen it from the water.
"As for everyone knowing where I live… I think that they are just worried about me. But I have Arielle, and Dorsa moved down here too. And now you're here."
She shares her house with her sister, the only member of her family to survive the Rebellion, and Finnick's sister, who had lost her husband, is there almost every day. The three of them together are figuring out how to be a family as best they can.
"You'll get used to the sound. It can't touch you," Annie says quietly when she sees Johanna try to suppress a shudder at the sound of the water lapping up against the small breakwater that surrounds the lawn that extends behind Annie's house.
One night the two of them are sitting out on the grass, looking out at the black water that glints periodically with flashes of reflected golden light.
"So," Annie starts gently, "are you staying here permanently? You know that you are more than welcome. That room is yours."
Ever since Johanna showed up on her doorstep weeks ago, Annie hadn't asked any questions, just folded Johanna easily into the routines of her life, waiting for her to say something.
"Well I was at least going to wait until you popped that little sucker out," Johanna says, gesturing to Annie's belly.
"I'm glad you're here," Annie says as she smoothes a hand over her stomach. "He would have wanted you here. He would have wanted you in our baby's life."
Johanna sighs as she looks up at the starry sky. This place is just as imbued with memories of Finnick as she feared it was going to be, but somehow it is easier, with other people who remember and loved him too.
"But," Annie continues, probing gently, not letting her off the hook quite yet, "then you're going back to District 2?"
"What? No. Why would I do that? Maybe I will stay around here... I have to be best aunt, and I wouldn't want Arielle and Dorsa to get unfair advantage in the competition by always being around when I'm not."
"This doesn't have anything to do with Gale Hawthorne, does it?"
"What?" Johanna jerks her head so hard, her whole body moves. "Why would you think that? Who even told you about that? Not that 'that' was anything. What even made you think of that? Did that little shit talk to you? How does he know where I am?"
Annie laughs softly.
"You were kind of hot gossip for a while there Johanna. I think most of Pan – Pax Republic knows about that."
"Oh for fuck's..." Johanna puts her head in her hands and groans.
"Well, I guess I am just going to have to live a life of celibate solitude from now on. It'll probably be for the best anyway."
Annie looks carefully at Johanna in the half light from the house. Johanna's face is thoughtful and sad as she looks blankly out at the water.
"What if we invite him here?" Annie asks quietly.
Johanna turns to her with a look that would have been more appropriate if Annie had asked whether or not they should exhume President Snow's body and invite that to the house.
"Okay, okay," Annie laughs, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Forget I said anything."
"Annie?" Johanna says hesitantly after a long moment. "Are you going to be okay?"
"With the baby or with everything?"
"With the baby. Well, with everything I guess."
"You know, I think I am," Annie says slowly. "I have to, because there is this whole other person who depends on me. Everyone figured out a way to deal with it, you know? Some people drank or did drugs, you built those heavily guarded walls, walling some things in and most other things out-"
"If I wanted to be psychoanalyzed, I could have gone to my own head doctor," Johanna interrupts, but Annie continues, ignoring her.
"Finnick compartmentalized... You must have seen it right? The Finnick that you and I knew was not the one most people knew."
"Yeah," Johanna says quietly, "It was weird. Like his whole face would change."
"Right. But I was just bad at it. And the doctors are helping, certainly, but it's more than that. I can't squander this victory that was so dearly won because it was won for this generation. It was won for our child. So I have to do everything I can to make it worthwhile. Every day," she trails off.
Johanna seems to mull that over in her mind.
"Sometimes I miss him so much, Johanna," Annie says in a heart-rending voice while she starts to cover her ears in an all too familiar gesture. Sometimes it just comes over her like a wave, prompted by nothing, the knowledge that she will never see him again. That he will never smile that little half smile that he would right before he swiped a bite of her dessert or swatted her on the butt. That he will never again stand tall at the wheel of their boat, looking seriously off at the horizon. That he will never know his child. That she will never touch him again.
Johanna grips the arm that is closest to her and firmly pulls it down between them by the hand.
"I know," Johanna says quietly. "I do too."
Annie's arm slowly relaxes.
"I'm glad you're here," she says, bumping Johanna lightly with her shoulder.
A couple of weeks later, there is a sharp rap at the door while Annie and Arielle are out on the boat.
Johanna has found herself forging a tentative peace with the boat but doesn't see the need to push it, so she stayed back. She isn't sure if someone as pregnant as Annie should really be out on the high seas, but she has resigned herself to not fully understanding these District 4 people.
The first time they had tried taking her out on the boat, claiming that it was the fastest way to get into town, Johanna had stayed, a tense knot of barely contained terror, in the middle of the cabin, gripping a wood hand rail with white knuckles.
It had been interesting to see how the other three women had changed on the water, easy and relaxed as they flitted around the boat, efficiently handling it out from the cove into the open water. Even Annie, whose center of gravity must have been constantly changing walked gracefully back and forth, helping out where she could. They were all at home on the water.
Johanna had dry heaved off the side of the dock the second they got into the marina in town and walked the long road back to Annie's house.
Johanna opens the door casually, expecting one of the many slightly nosy neighbors that have been dropping by unannounced to leave food or baby gifts for the expectant mother, and is startled to see the tall figure of Gale Hawthorne awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot on Annie's porch.
"Hawthorne!"
Johanna is surprised into silence.
"Hey Johanna," he says sheepishly. "Annie, um. Annie called and, uh, invi-"
"That lying little bitch!"
Johanna goes out onto the porch, closing the door behind her.
"If she wasn't knocked up with Finnick's baby, I would slap that fucking crazy right out of her!"
Gale backs away from her as she threateningly cracks her knuckles.
"So. You have to leave," she says, turning to him.
He stiffens instantly.
"I don't think you really get a say in that. I was invited. By Annie. The owner of this house."
"Well she isn't here, and I am not going to let you in."
"Fine," he says, sitting down on the step. "I'll wait out here."
She turns to go back into the house, then turns again toward where his broad back is infuriatingly blocking the view off of Annie's porch. She opens her mouth, shuts it, and turns back toward the door. She gets one hand on the doorknob before she spins around again, walks back toward him, and kicks him in the back with her bare foot.
"Why did you come here?"
"Don't kick me."
She kicks him again.
"Don't tell me what to do."
He doesn't say anything. She rears back to kick him again, and he whirls around off of the step in an instant, catching her foot in his hands. His hands are as warm as ever.
"Let me go," she says, furious.
He drops her foot. They stand there, glaring at each other, she having the height advantage for once, when the fight goes out of her. She walks over to the other end of the step and sits down slowly. He sits back down where he was.
They stare silently out past the little road that leads back out to the main road from Annie's house, past the house across the street, to where they can just see glints of water through the trees.
"I'd never seen the ocean before," he says quietly.
"Gale," she says after a minute, "what are you really doing here?"
He looks at her for a second before turning back to the view in front of them. She wonders if she has ever just called him Gale before.
"I... don't know."
He turns to look at her again.
"Why did you go?"
She doesn't say anything.
She is upset, furious that he is here, ruining her haven. She had been trying so hard to stop thinking about him, especially at night, especially when she crawled into her bed alone, and now here he was, standing as straight and tall as ever. She wants to hit him and scream at him and hurt him, but even more than that she wants to bury herself in his chest while his arms wrap around her, feeling the scratch of his stubble against her cheek as she inhales the smoky, sweet, familiar scent of his skin.
"I missed you," he says so quietly she can barely hear it, putting it all out there for the last time.
She looks at him, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
"Why?" She asks, throwing her head back and burying a hand in her hair. "Can't you see what a fucking mess I am? Can't you see that all I am going to do is hurt you? Can't you see that it is better if you just get away?"
"You have no idea about the things I have done, the things I would have done. You have no idea what-"
"Someone once told me to remember who the real enemy was," he interrupts her. "That we were in an impossible situation. Someone once told me that the world was a better place now."
The face she turns to him is open with fear and pain and a sadness that reaches down to her very core.
"I don't know if I believe that."
"I would," he says, looking directly at her. "The person who told me that is pretty terrifying. It's in your best interest to listen to her. She almost always gets what she wants."
She laughs soggily, pauses, and reaches her hand out across the space between them. He meets her halfway, enveloping her smaller hand in his.
"She sounds like a bitch."
"She kind of is," he nods thoughtfully.
She tries to pull her hand out of his to hit him, but he won't let it go.
Just then the door opens behind them, and Annie catches them, holding hands across her front step.
"Oh, Johanna? I invited a guest to stay for a couple of days, so be nice to him, okay?" she says before backing out the way she came and closing the front door again.
"I am going to kill her," Johanna says with a smile.
The next morning, Gale sits out on Annie's back porch alone, watching as the sun comes up over the water, cutting through the early morning mist. There is water everywhere, all around the house, all around the district, and it extends farther than the eye can see, awesome and beautiful. It makes him feel small, and there is something comforting in that. He understands why she had to come back, it is unlike anything he has ever seen.
He hadn't spent much time with Annie before and feels more than a little like an intruder in this house of women and baby clothes and memories of a man he had only started to know. All he knows about Annie is what everyone else knows, that she is beautiful and a Victor and crazy. But he also knows that Finnick loved her, and that most people in the Capitol's clutches are not what they seemed to be, something he started realizing the first time he saw himself, the cousin, on a television screen.
He is startled out of his thoughts by Annie, coming up to him quietly and folding herself into the chair next to him with a grace that is at odds with her hugely pregnant body.
"Thank you for coming here," she says, her voice soft and musical. "I know it was hard."
What had surprised him was how it wasn't hard at all.
In the weeks after Johanna left, he had reverted to what he had been like when he first got to District 2, cold and angry and drunk most of the time he wasn't working. His coworkers had started tiptoeing around him in the office, not wanting to be the one caused him to blow up. He had started to wonder how far he was going to let himself fall after he had gotten into a screaming match that devolved into him ripping off his coat and tie as he threateningly walked toward one of the reporters at a press conference, and Kalliope, who had more than enough to worry about without his going off the deep end, had had to talk to him in her office. Everyone had been more than a little relieved when he had asked for some time off.
"It wasn't as hard as you think."
Annie smiles at him.
"She isn't just the role she plays, you know. She runs because she can, but once you're in, she loves just as fiercely as she does anything else. I know she would never admit it, but she missed you."
Gale looks at Annie carefully.
"I know. And I am pretty sure none of us are, Crazy Annie Cresta."
She laughs a little.
"It means a lot to me that you are here. It would have meant a lot to him."
He nods once in acknowledgement.
"He was a good man. I am proud to have been in his squad. I am proud to have been able to fight beside him," he pauses, wondering if he shouldn't have mentioned that.
"He liked you. Respected..." She trails off, looking into the distance and laughs at some conversation that only she can hear. But she is back in a second, looking at him like she can see something in that he can't see in himself. He gets the feeling that she sees a lot of things that other people don't, a lot of things that are more true than the things other people see.
"Come on, let's go inside. There's breakfast," is all she says as she unfolds herself from the chair and leads him to the kitchen.
"She isn't crazy is she? Not really."
Gale is sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to Johanna through the half open door of the bathroom.
"Annie?" Johanna asks as she walks back into the room, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.
"I don't know. Is it crazy to be affected by all the horrible shit that happens to you? Or crazy not to be? Or crazy to pretend that it doesn't when you relive it every day?"
She shrugs. It's a real question she doesn't know the answer to.
"But I think she is stronger than anyone gives her credit for."
Gale nods.
"I think so too."
"Did you love him?" He asks after a moment. He isn't sure what he is doing, what he is asking, but he has to know all the same.
She stops, her shirt in her hands, and turns to look at him.
"Really? That's what you're worried about? What does it matter?"
He doesn't say anything.
"Although he was better looking than you, so I can see how you would be concerned..." She stops herself because he looks so serious.
"Of course I loved him. But not like that. It wasn't like that. We just..." She pauses, inundated with memories.
"It wasn't like that."
He nods again.
"Johanna?" he says after a minute, "I talked to my family a couple of weeks ago. They are going to move to 2."
She freezes for a second getting into the bed, and keeps her voice deliberately calm as she starts moving again.
"You're getting a house together?"
"No, they are going to move into Village 5, away from the city center. But I was thinking, maybe, that we could… That you could... That if you come back..." He takes a deep breath.
"We could get a place together."
He's not looking at her, twisting the sheet in his hand. She smiles a little to herself and her heart starts beating faster, but she would never let him see how much she wants to.
"I get complete control of all decorating decisions," she says as her only response.
He looks at her, eyes wide, a smile growing on his lips.
"I'm not actually stupid, you know. Contrary to what you seem to think."
She smiles as she crawls on top of him.
Annie is sitting serenely in the middle of the living room, occasionally gripping the arms of the chair tightly, while the rest of the occupants of the house run distractedly around her.
Arielle and Johanna are completely repacking the bag that had been packed for weeks, while Dorsa searches frantically for the right baby blanket, a designation that distinguishes it from the other two already in her hands, and Gale gathers up everyone's coats and tries to herd them out the door.
"How do we get to the hospital?" Johanna asks.
"Well, the fastest way..." Arielle starts hesitantly, shrinking from Johanna's glare.
"Don't tell me. It's by fucking boat."
Johanna and Annie sit in the cabin, gripping each other tightly by the hand, unclear about who is comforting whom, while Gale sits up in the bow, reveling in the rush of the wind through his hair and carefully watching Arielle and Dorsa skillfully work their way around the boat.
They make it to the hospital, shiny and new, a group of some of the most famous people in the whole country, about to welcome another.
They are settling into the room the nurse had quickly led them to when Katniss' mother comes hurrying in, checking in on her newest patient.
Gale freezes when she comes in, wondering if he should leave, if she won't be able to see him, if all she will see is her daughter, or her other daughter, or a monster. But when she finally turns around and catches his eye, she just walks up to him, hugs him tightly, brushes the hair gently back from his forehead, motherly, and asks after his family. He hugs her back, and something else inside him, something hard, dissolves a little.
They are all learning to forgive, to live as best they can.
In the end, it is Annie and Arielle together, while the rest of them wait outside.
Johanna and Gale pace around the waiting room like caged animals, while Dorsa sits, her right leg tapping away with nervous energy in a way that Johanna finds too familiar.
The little boy they meet, Kenn, Annie whispered, is beautiful and perfect, but not as beautiful as the pure joy and wonder in the face Annie turns up to them when she shows him to them.
They all understand. The children of this new world need names that are all their own. They can't be burdened with a lifetime of memories before they have a chance to make any of their own.
As they look all look down at him, filled with the hope that what they did was worth it, for this, Arielle calls him Kenn, Johanna calls him little sprout, Gale calls him little man, and Dorsa can only cry.