disclaimer: I don't own district four, or the beautiful (sort of mysterious) love story of Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta, and their relations with Mags or anyone.
notes: this is the last part, part two out of two. this turned out way different than I expected it to, and very I think different from the first part of this two-shot. and I think I screwed up the ending, and warning! Annie and Finnick might be kind of ooc, and I'm so sorry about that if they are... also, did you hear? they're casting actors for Finnick right now in the Catching Fire movie, and I hope Finnick will turn out right. (; oh yeah, hope you adore this part, and feel free to correct any errors I might've made.

oh the tragedy, captured as mine

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ii,

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He runs to her side, and scoops her up in his arms. His head drops slightly, looking down at her face, and winces inwardly at what he sees. It's his new way of coping, instead of cursing; he winces when his dismay is reflected towards her, replacing the bad habit, so he wouldn't startle the little girl in his arms.

He needed to stop calling her that. The little girl. It wasn't right. She was a champion, a survivor, the victor of the games. Despite the rumors of a flaw in the games, she was the winner. It was made and announced once the flood was set off, and everyone drowned — except for her, and that cannot be fixed or reversed.

His green irises swirl together with the other lighter shades in concern, as he stares at a watery wide eyed Annie Cresta, glancing up right at him, her dark emeralds stormy and bloodshot, rendering him speechless. It takes him a moment to realize that she's not looking at him, but up at the ceiling of the small hospital when he drops her securely onto her bed.

Her eyes remain unmoving, and he waves his hand over to close them, and jumps when he feels skin, a warm, feverish touch linger onto his hand. His hand immediately flies to his side, and he stares at the poor little mad girl with a puzzled curiosity.

"Finnick," she murmurs raspily, her gaze directing their attention to him, as if noticing him for the first time. "I'm sorry…"

Finnick Odair watches numbly, standing as rigid as ever, while he feels his throat go dry. He's muddled with thoughts, some shocked, and some relieved, and some with bemusement, and his eyebrows furrow together asking her a silent; why?

She's used to his presence by now, and recalls his every expression perfectly. She answers him sincerely and starts to fiddle with the sheets. "For leaving this stupid lonely place, when I shouldn't have, and scaring you and everyone…I just wanted some air, and," her voice falters, muttering softly like she was ashamed, "I wanted an adventure."

He barely heard the last of her words, and a flash of anger courses through his veins when he hears it, but a small smile fends it off. "Annie…"

"No, Finnick. I-I, I mean this is the part where you're supposed to be all furious and say I'm in big trouble or something, and that's my cue to ignore your lecture and fall asleep," Annie supplies for him.

This causes his smile to grow bigger, with him chuckling a bit, causing Annie to sit up looking at him, all scandalized. "You weren't supposed to laugh at that either," she pouts, folding her arms together.

She seriously does not know the effect that she has on him, Finnick thinks to himself. It's because of her, that he rushes to the hospital everyday when he gets off that flight from the stupid Capitol after some gross affair with one of the citizens, or from an extravagant appointment with Snow. She's either sleeping, or in a daze when he visits her, and probably never really acknowledges his existence beside her. But that's okay, Finnick reassures himself every day. It's enough to see her safe and alive, worth every penny to see her in serenity away from her nightmares, and just to see her pretty face, assures him that she is his saving grace, his hope to continue to live.

He cares about her deeply. Once he gets off from his job, and arrives at the small district 4 hospital. He always asks the nurse about Annie, if she received the medication she needs, what she ate, and how she behaved while he was gone.

He panicked a few hours earlier to find Annie missing from her bed, and the nurses frantically searching for her. Finnick ran outside of the infirmary, onto the calm shores of the beach to look for Annie. She wasn't sitting on the sand, or playing in the water, or anywhere in sight. He feels distraught, and scurries to the small shacks set up around the beach, asking nervously about the sightings of a precious Annie Cresta.

No one knows, shrugging, and expresses their pity and sympathy to him, turning away from the bronze haired legend to get back to their work. He searches for the mad girl, who carries his heart unknowingly with her, looking for her around the schools, the homes, and the stores of district 4. He wipes the sweat off his forehead, and he chokes on air once he spots his Annie lying on the empty docks, clear of fishermen and boats.

"ANNIE!" He screams, running hysterically towards the petite frame laying down flat on the brown planks of wood. He pulls her up to his chest, embracing her into a tight hug, clutching her protectively, his arms wrapped firmly against her back. He grabs her shoulders, shaking her out of whatever daze she is in, but she doesn't respond, just idly stares up at the sky, her skin all hot and feverish.

He panics. Tears begin to coat his eyes, and he shifts her body, propping her into a horizontal, sleeping, flat-on-the back-like position against his strong arms. He stands up, lifting her up bridal style, and treads towards the hospital, carefully carrying her.

Around this moment was when he realizes he's fallen for her. Well, actually, Finnick has realized all along, just never admitted it out bluntly to himself or anyone else until now. He, Finnick Odair is straight up in love with Annie Cresta. He loves her, and her gorgeous innocent doll-like face, her superfluous flaws, her madness, her crazy spasms, her past, and her beautiful personality. She crept up on him like the summer night breeze blowing through his hair. She crept up on him like the tide washing up against the shore, dragging in some sand with it into the sea, and leaving some behind.

And now, with her sane personality intact, he can't help but smile at everything she's saying.

"Sorry, doll face," he smirks, "but you're just so funny."

"Am I? Am I really?" she challenges him, an eyebrow raised playfully. She grins at him amusedly, filled with pride and a tease, "Or is this just another one of your ways to seduce me? Don't think I forgot about the trainings, almighty Finnick Odair. Oh yeah, I remember, and your charms don't work on me."

He pretends to be offended, looking shock and stricken, his hand falling dramatically over his heart, like it was just wounded there. "You don't know what you're missing," he says jokingly, gesturing towards his face and his body. "Missing out on this charming face and all... Mark my words, Annie Cresta, you'll be sorry!"

-;

Another whole year goes by, and it's Annie's twentieth birthday.

She remembers Finnick humming melodiously out into the finest seas, where the wind is nice but also strong, blowing the sails on the mast of the ship steadily, while the waves are calm, rocking and churning the vast boat slowly. He's steering the ship, spinning the wooden wheel recklessly, while continuing humming the tune of his favorite shanty.

She chimes in, humming along with him, the familiar ballad of the fishermen in district 4, and her forest colored green eyes twinkle at the sight of Finnick in a tricorne hat, spinning the helm, and she can't help but think he oddly looks like a pirate.

She ruins the music, once she runs toward the edge of the yacht, and puts her hand in the water, feeling the cool liquid surpass her skin, and she splashes some water, startled when a seagull soars over, perching on the rim of the boat a few inches beside her.

Finnick jerks his head towards Annie worryingly, watching as Annie is about to fall backwards onto her back. Finnick rushes to her side, not quick enough to catch her, but she stares up at him, unfazed and bubbling with laughter.

She stands up, brushing through her shorts, and floral top, beaming brightly at Finnick, whose face is still somewhat stoic and mostly alarmed, unaware of his hat lying crookedly on the crown of his bronze head.

She remembers fixing it for him and his green eyes burningly gazes at her intensely and fondly with a mix of desire. She tries to ignore his expression, and brightens when his hat is fixed. "There! You're a pirate again."

"A pirate?" he asks her, and she shrugs in reply pointing at his hat.

She remembers a silence falling over him, while his eyes narrow absently, calculating. A sheepish smile graces his lips then, and parts to say, "If I'm a pirate, would you be my first mate, Annie Cresta?"

Annie just stares at him, and contemplates his offer. "I would love to, but not today. I'm turning twenty today, if you forgot, and don't think you're fooling anyone that you're a pirate without the accent."

Finnick gives her a goofy grin, and the face of a great idea. "No, of course I wouldn't forget about it be yer birthday, luv. Aye, yer the captain of this grand ship!"

"Captain?" Annie inquires, quirking an eyebrow, with a small smirk forming.

"Aye, aye Cap'n!"

She laughs, and takes off the tiara made of seashells and flowers nesting on her hair, and lays it gently onto the table in the middle of the ship. "If I'm Captain," she says, an octave curving up towards the end of her phrase, "Then I need a hat, suitable for a captain."

Finnick scrambles towards the staircase, climbing down the stairs, and returns with a pearly white peaked cap, round and cylindrical with a visor extended out like a bird's beak in the front.

"Perfect," Annie exclaims, putting the captain hat on her head. "How do I look?"

"Absolutely stunning," Finnick answers, and she looks at him, confusedly, but smiles softly at his sentiment.

"Uh, want a sugar cube?" he says instead, looking distractedly away from her, preventing the awkward tension to be formed.

Annie nods, and he hands her a napkin full of sugar cubes. She plops one in her mouth, and walks towards him, to plop one in his mouth too.

He chews, smiling at her, while she returns the notion. She remembers tasting the sugar melt in her mouth, sweetness and a tint of a fresh icy taste of lime swirl with the sweetness, making the cube taste awfully sweet with a dash of sour.

Finnick always knew how to make his food taste unique but also delicious at the same time, she remembers. She thinks he'd make a great cook, or more like a really attractive professional chef, and perhaps an amazing husband, but quickly dismisses the idea, realizing how weird that would be.

Annie redirects her gaze back to Finnick, whose pirate hat is lying on the floor now, and decides at that exact moment to take his shirt off. She yells at him protesting, and he gives her a breathtaking million dollar grin that could make all the girls in Panem swoon, teasing her provocatively. "Find this distracting, sweetheart? Do you like what you see?"

Annie scoffs at his comment, "You're not going to woo me anytime soon, Finnick. Maybe in your dreams, but you have to realize that this is reality." She laughs at her own reply, realizing the irony of the words she'd spoken. The mad girl is telling her caretaker to wake up from his delusional fantasies, when she has been trying to do the same over the past few years. It really is ironic, she thinks to herself.

Finnick laughs as well, not fazed by the retort or the ironic meaning hidden underneath it at all. He just throws his hands up in surrender, and takes a step backwards, tumbling into the water.

Annie yelps in surprise, running towards the edge of the yacht to find Finnick. Her heart lurches in a frenzy, afraid of the thought of Finnick drowning, and relief washes over once Finnick pokes his head up from the water, grinning madly.

"Did I scare you, little Annie?"

Annie just shoots him a glare, turning away from him. "That was mean."

"Aw, you really cared about me, didn't you?" He badgers, diving down underneath the surface of the sea, and jumps back up catching the rim of the ship with his best hand.

"Aw, come on Annie, don't be angry with me. It's your birthday!" He whines, while climbing up back onto the ship, and wraps his arms around the birthday girl, causing her to elbow him in the chest.

"You're wet," she says, as she shifts her head to face him. There's a mischievous gleam in his eyes, she notes, and he gives her that knowing smirk, adding a phrase to hers. "And you're going to be soaked."

Before she can open her mouth to speak, he grabs her, hugging her, while her peaked cap is flung beside Finnick's three cornered hat, and they both dunk into the ocean together. He's holding her tightly so that she can't escape his clutches, while she stubbornly squirms in his embrace. Sea water squirts out from her mouth, when she glances up at Finnick in a playful rage, and he returns her glance with a big smile. He's finally caught her, he thinks. The unattainable, Annie Cresta, the one who he could never catch, is now his, within his grasp, and he can't help but to feel victorious.

Annie wants to be free, she remembers. She wraps her arms around Finnick's neck, and moves her face closer to his. She can feel his breath grow heavy and ragged, his eyes locked on hers, and she moves a hand away from his neck, and splashes his neck, surprising him. An arm falls away from her back, to return the favor, ready to splash her, but Annie moves fast. She takes this chance to escape and swims away from Finnick's safe and bulky arms.

That's when it hits her, she remembers. She remembers the flood, a rush to her skull, and she screams. She finds herself in the arena again. A deafening cry reverberates against her head, and the lingering image of her friend, the district 4 tribute's head chopped off from his own body. She starts to sob, and cover her ears. She feels herself submerging, the water claiming her, while she slowly sinks down, giving into the sea.

"No!" Annie hears Finnick yell, and his arms perform strokes, a front crawl, as he makes his way towards her. His arm finds her small frame, and he leads them back onto the ship.

Her eyes are closed, when he lays her onto the main deck of the ship. "No," he mutters to himself, as he feels Annie's heartbeat slacken.

She's unconscious, and Finnick grows angry and distraught at his actions for bringing her into the water. It's his fault he brought this weight on her, and it was her birthday too. He felt that Annie was ready for a swim, but he never expected one of her spasms to occur. He regrets everything and brings his fist to her chest, gently beating it for water to spurt out from her mouth.

Nothing comes, and Finnick becomes worried. He leans down toward her pretty face, and drops his lips to hers.

Her eyes flutter open, and his lips are a centimeter away from hers, almost touching. She gasps, and tries to stay down, before their lips accidentally meet.

Finnick backs away from Annie and smiles as she regains her consciousness. "I'm so sorry, Annie," he tells her, his eyes all wide, broody and serious.

He has the look of a sad lost puppy, Annie recalls, and she blinks rapidly to be certain of her surroundings. "It's okay," she reassures him, sitting up and wrapping her arms around him, "It is okay. I'm okay, and you're okay. That's all that matters."

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She's back home with Finnick in district 4, where a sunset falls over the skies. The pretty orange of the sun, combined with the pink and purple colors in the air meets the thin line of the horizon where the water takes over, brings a warm happiness to Annie. She dances among the people who continue to celebrate her twentieth birthday with her.

Joy hums in the air, and she feels like the most special person in the world. She searches the crowd for Finnick, or Mags but she sees no one in sight. Instead, she hears a faint song in the distance, and it grows louder as everyone joins in to sing it.

The small flickering flame of candles makes its presence noticeable to her, when she sees the gorgeous birthday cake unveil in front of her eyes. It's big and pretty representing her favorite places and things in district 4, the cake having a majority of five layers. The cake is adorned with blue squiggly lines, on each layer, which she suspects symbolizes the waves in the ocean, and a pink oyster with a pearl inside is shown on the first, upper top layer, while the second layer is full of boats and ships. The third layer has fishermen figurines molded out of milk chocolate sitting there, while their fishing sticks and strings are made out of wafers, dangling down to the fifth layer where fish is painted on there. 'Happy Birthday Annie!' is written in a swirly script in a purplish blue icing, on the left side of the oyster, where five pastel colored candles border the edge of the cake.

Finnick's standing in front of her too, with Mags, both of them singing 'Happy Birthday' to her, and setting the cake onto the small stand behind the crowd of people who were surrounding her moments ago. Finnick runs to her side, while Mags stands beside the cake, while she blows out the candles.

Mags begin to cut slices of the cake, giving everyone a piece. Finnick hands Annie a small box, with a fancy cornflower blue bow woven on it, and she tugs gently at the string. She holds onto the lace, and lifts the top of the box, to find a whole lot of fibred ropes in it, and she gives Finnick a 'what is this?' kind of look, and he returns it with a disarming smile.

She grabs the lock of rope, and finds a silver necklace on the bottom, with a ring of two dolphins embedded onto the small band along with three blue shiny marquise cut zirconium rhinestones in the middle, between the two animals, and a pair of clear white diamonds, one above the dolphins, and one below them on both sides, dangling from the chain. There were words engraved inside the ring, that Annie deciphered as, Forever the lovely Annie Odair.

She raised an eyebrow at that, "Annie Odair? Are you trying to propose or—"

"I'm about to ask you if you would like to be my girlfriend." Finnick interjects. "And it's not a joke," he adds.

She smiles brightly; glad that everyone's attention is on the cake, and no longer on her. "Sure," she agrees, and Finnick takes this time to sweep a lock of her long dark hair onto her shoulder, and fastens the necklace around her pale slender neck. While he clasps it together, Annie starts to tie knots with the ropes he gave her, and she speaks while she feels his hand around the cord of nerves behind her neck. "It's the least I could do, after everything I put you through…and thanks Finnick, for this amazing birthday, and taking care of me. I know I can be tough to handle at times…"

"Yeah, you sure are tough to handle." Finnick admits, agreeing with her, moving his hands away from her skin, scratching the back of his head. This earns him a punch on the shoulder, and he laughs halfheartedly. "Ouch, that hurt! Do I get a kiss for that booboo?"

She giggles at this, "Gosh, you're so cheeky!"

"And handsome," Finnick adds, smirking.

"And arrogant, and such a flirt," Annie tells him.

"Hey! I'm only a flirt because of you! It's not my fault you're so vivacious. You and your looks just call to my soul, and cause me to try to seduce you. That's all," he fires back, and Annie narrows her eyes at him.

"You're serious?"

"I mean every word, Annie Cresta. I'm in love with you, and even your tragedies. Your tragedies are mine, and everything, and I would never lie to you."

"And you're also honest, and caring," Annie says, adding to the list.

"Yes, so, how about that kiss for this cheeky, handsome, arrogant, flirtatious, honest, and caring boyfriend of yours?"

She gives him a genuine smile and wraps her arms around his neck, and studies him, realizing that this is what she wants. And for once in her life she lets herself be willingly captured by this man before her, and enjoys it thoroughly. That's what she remembers.

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( — Finnick is hers, and Annie is his.

His tragedy is enamored with her.

His heart is captured by her.

Her pain is captured by him.

And her heart belongs to him. — )

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