Here is the rest of what i had written. I thought that i would get it up last night, but apparently not.
APOV-
"Today you will spend four hours training with Ceely and then four with Finnick in preparation of tomorrow evening's interviews." Mags tells me at the breakfast table. I'm shoveling in eggs and toast in a manner that would probably make Ceely scream if she wasn't in her bedroom applying her daily makeup.
"Yay," I say sarcastically, "dress up Annie time with Ceely." Finnick snorts into his orange juice. I offer him a secret smile from across the table, even Mags smiles a bit at my antics. Ceely, however, has just arrived at the table and looks less than amused.
"Yes, well," she says, "let's begin. Shall we?"
"Walk, walk, walk, turn, and sit." Ceely barks out instructions while I move around with two books on my head. It has something to do with posture or something. Apparently I look at my feet to much. Thankfully this is the last thing on out agenda. She's already made me walk around for an hour in high heels, practice sitting correctly as well as standing corrects. Hell, she's even made me practice waving, not too enthusiastically, but not too subtle. Surely this qualifies as torcher.
I can't express how happy I am when the door opens and Finnick steps in to relieve Ceely. I toss the books off of my head and Ceely leaves the room with a miffed little "humph".
"Finnick, you are a saint!"
"Oh, really? I didn't know."
"I've been practicing walking for ages. Like I don't know how to walk; I've been doing it since I was a baby!"
"Yes well, not the way ceely classifies walking." He imitates her gliding movements as he walks over to one of the two chairs in the room and sits down. "Come. Sit. Talk." I comply.
"What are we doing today?" I ask him.
"Discussing your strategy for the interviews. How are you going to portray yourself?"
"I don't know…" I trail off and look down at my hands where they lay in my lap. I really have no clue how to make the audience like me.
"Well obviously we can eliminate vicious, strong-but-silent, and sexy." He tells me.
"Okay...hey wait! Why can we rule out sexy? That's what my stylists went for during the chariot presentation. It didnt' turn out too bad. I can be sexy…maybe."
"You're right. You're far too sexy for your own good." His words surprise me. He thinks I'm sexy? "Yes, you can do it, but I don't think that we should continue in that vein. It's much too overdone. Let's go for something more unique, more naturally you, give the audience a reason to sympathize. You my dear, are going to be sweet."
"Sweet?"
"Yes sweet. You will smile incessantly and talk with high, little, lofty voice like this." He imitates my voice, but poorly.
"I thought you said naturally me…"
"I did, didn't I? So let's make it naturally you. I ask 'So Annie, tell me, how did training go? I think I speak for all of Panem when I say that we were pleasantly surprised by your score." He does yet another poor imitation, this time of Ceaser Flickerman. "And you reply coyly, 'well I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it Ceaser, but I did the best with the talents my district has given me.' And then you smile."
"But that's not something I would say!"
"It will be when I'm done with you! This time you get to answer the question."
"Fine," I humph.
"Annie, how do you think that your family feels right now? Proud?"
"Well, Ceaser, considering that my grandfather isn't a complete cocksucker, no, I don't think he feels proud."
"Annie!"
"Alright fine." I glare at him, but do as he says. "The only family I have is my grandfather. I'm his only family too. I'm sure that he feels many things right now, but I know that he wants me to do my best to return to him," I say without breathing. "How was that?"
"Great…just try to breathe next time."
"It's not exactly easy! I hate public speaking. It always freaked me out in school." I can't believe that I've just told him that!
"So pretend that it's not public speaking. Pretend that you're just speaking to me," he says, taking my hand. "I'll be there the entire time Annie. If you ever start to freeze up or feel uncomfortable about the question just look me right in the eyes and talk to me." He slides a hand under my chin and lifts my head so that I am no longer looking down at my feet, but into his brilliant blue eyes. They're just like a calm afternoon see, just as the sun is setting. I've never noticed that before. "Just show them who you are and they'll love you…" He trails off and mumbles something that sounds like 'I do', but that's crazy. "Next question. This one is extra fun. By which I mean super uncomfortable of course. He asks all the good looking contestants this one. 'Tell us Annie. A pretty girl like you must have someone other than her grand-father rooting for her back home. Who's the luckiest guy in district four?"
"Uh…" I suddenly feel very warm and aware of just how close Finnick and I really are. "There isn't anyone else...just gramps…"
"That's not what they want to hear," Finnick says.
"Oh, really! Well it's the truth!"
"Chill. Chill. Just say something ambiguous. That's all they need, something to gossip about. It worked for me."
"Uh-huh, and what exactly did you tell them oh brilliant one?"
"I just said of course there would many broken hearts in district four should I reach my untimely demise," he says roguishly.
"I'm not sure that'll work for me. Was that really it?"
"Well, he did ask if there was a special girl who I would miss. I told him, the sea."
"Oh, now that's romantic," I scoff.
"Fine, so what are you going to say? It has to be sweet."
"Yeah funny enough I got that much thanks." I think hard and begin to talk, still looking into his bottomless blue eyes. "Well…there is this guy, but he's a few years older than me…"
"Go on," he say, now back to his Ceaser voice.
"He has the most brilliantly blue eyes. They're like the calm sea at sunset…and when he smiles…" I bite my lip thinking about it. "One side goes up just before the other. He tall and muscular too, which doesn't hurt," I tease.
"I'm sure it doesn't." He does an incredibly accurate Ceaser chuckle which makes me laugh. "Do you know each other well? Does he know about your feelings for him?"
"We know each other fairly well from the market, passing each other in school. Every now and again we share this secret stretch of beach…but there's no way that he would ever think of me like that. He still thinks I'm the little girl he met on the beach who told him that she didn't think he was anything special. Obviously her view on that changed."
I catch myself. I've given it away. I expect Finnick to ignore what I've said, to chuckle like Ceaser and say something witty, at the very least to tell me to be careful about what I say, but he does none of these things. He closes his eyes and bites his lip and says, "No he doesn't."
"What?"
"He doesn't think that you're still a little girl. In fact he's very much aware that you are not." I'm still trying to process what he's saying. "Annie I would have to be blind and crazy to not notice you. Even if I couldn't see how beautiful you are I would still know how special you are. Annie you are the most beautiful person I have ever known. I think all of these years you've been…creeping up on me until I finally noticed that it isn't the idea of you that I love…it's you."
The other night on the roof I had thought that Finnick was about to kiss me. Afterwards I concluded that I had obviously been having delusions of grandeur, but what if I wasn't? My heart pounds and annoyingly obvious tattoo against my ribs as Finnick leans in…and…yep, he kisses me.
Now I've never been kissed before so I don't have anything to compare it to, but surely he is the best kisser in the world. At first it's just the lightest brush of his lips against mine. Then he threads a hand into my hair and slides the other up to cup my cheek as he deepens the kiss. My hands naturally come up to rest on his chest, tangling in the soft material of his shirt. His tongue slides along my bottom lip and I open my lips to receive him, but he pulls away. He lets go of me and stands and puts as much space between us as is possible in the small room.
"I-I'm sorry Annie I-I-I don't know what's gotten into me. This is completely inappropriate." He runs his hands through his hair, disheveling it farther than it's already artfully mussed look.
I sigh. "And there it goes."
"What?" He turns back to face me, looking confused. I shrug.
"My happy. Wheeeeew there it goes, out the window."
"What?"
"Well, you see Finnick, you can't just give a girl hope like that and rip it out from under her feet it just isn't nice."
"I'm sorry I-" I hold up my hand to stop him.
"I wasn't finished yet. You can't just give a tribute another reason to fight to come home, something to really motivate them and then take it away. I love you Finnick Odair, you pea-brained, jerk. I have loved you ever since I was a young girl, twelve actually."
"I-I'm sorry Annie, but I'm your mentor and-and I'm the absolute worst man that you could ever love."
"Well maybe you should have told me that on the beach when I was eleven, then we wouldn't be in this mess." I leave the room, not slamming the door behind me. Even though I have just spoken the harshest words that I probably ever have in my life I still can't bring myself to slam the door.
I huff all the way back to my room. I shut myself in and only come out for dinner when Ceely bangs on my door and shouts at me that I'm being rude. Rude! As if she isn't rude! I whip open my door and huff at her. This just earns me a glare.
"This is not how the future winner of the hunger games acts," she tells me sagely.
"Of course not," I mutter.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
"That's what I thought." She escorts me to the dining room table where everyone is present, but Finnick. I hope I didn't scare him off that badly. I'm really not a scary person.
"Where's Finnick?" I ask Mags. She shrugs noncommittally.
"Somewhere around," she says. Great, she knows.
"I'm always around," Finnick says as he walks into the room. He seems completely unflustered. Naturally I'm the only one affected by our earlier encounter.
He takes his seat across from me and Mags smiles at him affectionately. He really is like her son. I remember when his family died; it was really hard on him. I think he might have been sixteen at the time. I saw a lot of him at our beach spot during that time. We woulsd just sit next to each other watching the waves. I hope that my companionship helped him in some small way. He needed-no needs help. And he's worth helping. Not many people seem to realize this, but I do, and so does Mags.
"Eat something," She urges him, passing over a plate of rolls. Finnick takes two and offers one to me. I accept. I'm glad he's not being awkward, but I'm also confused.
"Here," Mags says, offering me some sort of stew. "You need to eat too." She smiles at me and I can't help, but feel better. Mags is just so motherly and I've never had a mother before, not one that I remember. Also, the food is delicious. It's so different from what they serve at home. Here I can eat all kinds of meat, not just fish. There's chicken(which is my new favorite), ham, and turkey. I don't particularly like the steak or pork(even though Finnick says pork comes from the same animal as ham) or lamb, but hey, it's not fish! I haven't even eaten a single oyster or shrimp. I did try the calamari, but we can't afford to eat that back home, squid is too rare now.
I take a spoonful of stew and moan. This stuff is amazing!
"What's in this?" I ask.
"Uh, it's just beef stew: potatoes, carrots…beef…" Finnick trails off. Apparently he doesn't know much about food.
"Well it's amazing!"
"We'll make sure to have some tomorrow night then," He says. This ends the pleasantries for all of us. It's down to business. Mags asks what my plan for the following evening is and scoffs at my answer.
"Really Finnick, sweet?"
"She is sweet!" He insists.
"Not to everyone." This is the first that Ceely has spoken since we sat down. Clearly she's still miffed about earlier. These capital people are so easy to offend.
"It'll be fine," I finally chime in. "I'll play my part perfectly. Besides, like Finnick said, I am sweet…when I want to be."
I lay awake in bed. I've been tossing and turning for the past two hours and it's now midnight. It only now seems to be sinking in that in less than forty-eight hours I could be dead. There is so much I have yet to do. I've never gone fly-fishing. I am so close to breaking the record for the best time swimming out to the little lagoon; I only need one more try. I'm still a virgin. Until yesterday I had never even been kissed. They seem like such small things, but they're things that will probably always stay the same. I won't be alive to change them.
Maybe if I get up and walk around the apartment I'll realize how tired I really am. I slide on a pair of slippers and tip toe out of my bedroom. I walk slowly across the living room, challenging myself to make no noise. When I look up from my feet I'm well across the living room. In fact I'm in the hallway on the opposite side of the apartment in front of a slightly cracked door. Through the crack I can see the shadow of a man in the light from a lamp. Finnick's room. I tap lightly on the door. His head snaps up and I half expect him to throw a weapon at me. He looks as startled as the tiny fish at home when children chase them.
"It's not the best idea to sneak up on a former tribute," he says quietly. I take this as permission to enter, so I do so, closing the door behind me. Now I have a better view of him. He's wearing nothing but a pair of cotton pajama pants which gives a view of an unsettling amount of perfectly golden skin, nothing like my pale freckled complexion.
He's sitting on a bed, head bent over some papers. His back is to me as he writes something. He has the body of a swimmer, lots of lean muscle. "Couldn't sleep?" He asks me.
"No. You? What are you doing?"
"Financial stuff."
I lean in and look over his shoulder. On the bed are ledgers of anonymous donations to various charities in district four. Most of them seem to be to the orphanage.
"It was you wasn't it?" I ask, "You were the one who financed that new wing in the children's home."
"Maybe."
"Finnick…you really are amazing. You know that, right?" I place a hand on his bare shoulder and my whole body tightens in reaction to the contact. He doesn't shrug away, exactly, but he moves to put away the papers.
"Quite a change in tune since we first met." He smiles wryly.
"It's true though. And I wanted you to know…just in case, you know, I die."
"You're not going to die Annie."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because you are going to have so many sponsors you won't know what to do and-and I have quite a bit of pull, I might be able to sway the odds in your favor." He looks down and bites his lip in that way that makes him look younger, more like my age.
"Even with all of your help there's still a good chance that another tribute will kill me off. I have at least a seventy-five percent chance of death…I'm scared. He pulls me into him and rests his chin on my head.
"I know Annie. I know you are, but you can't let them see that."
"I know." I say testily.
"But you can let me see, because I understand Annie. I was scared too." He rubs my back and I feel so small.
"I'm not afraid of death really," I say. "I'm going to die eventually anyway and my grandpa will be taken care of…it's all the things I'll miss."
"Like what?"
"Like learning how to fly-fish," I say.
"It's not really all that exciting."
"Maybe not, but I still want to learn."
"Fine, I'll teach you when we get back to district four."
"Finnick!"
"What? I will. What else?" He is infuriating.
"I'm so close to beating that lagoon swim record." I lament.
"I'll help you train the day after we get home. Is that all?"
"I don't want to die a virgin."
"You're not going to die Annie."
"But I might. And you can't teach me to fly-fish or train me in swimming tonight…but you can give me one last experience before I die."
FPOV-
"No Annie…I can't."
"Why not?" She asks. I'm finding it hard to respond. She has settled herself across my lap facing me…and god, I'm going to hell.
"Because Annie, now isn't the right time. And believe me when I say that that's something you want to wait for the right time for. I should know, I wasn't given that choice. That's something you should give to someone you love not throw away because you think that you're about to die, which you're not, I might add." As difficult as it is, I manage to extricate myself from under her and sit back down on the bed so that I'm facing her.
"Is it because I'm sixteen? Three years isn't that big of a difference. I know I'm not all perfect like the women in the capital. I'm flat chested and short." She pouts.
"God no Annie, it has nothing to do with that. There's nothing wrong with you. You are more beautiful than anyone I have ever met. You're perfect, but Annie…I'm not. I'm broken and used and jaded. You're so pure in so many ways, and I won't be the one to take one of them away from you. Maybe in a different life I could have been lucky enough to call you mine in any and every way, but now."
"Great, so basically I'm going to die a Virgin." I can't help but laugh.
"No Annie, you're not going to die. You're going to come home to me and I'm going to teach you fly-fish and I'm going to be there cheering you one when you break that record. We'll build a life for ourselves out of the rubble the capital has turned us into and maybe…maybe one day…"I trail off. She nods.
"Finnick what did you mean earlier about not having a choice."
"Fuck," I wasn't thinking. I must have let something slip. "Nothing you need to worry about Annie."
"I think I know Finnick. All those women in the capital…if I win is that what's going to happen to me."
"No."
"Be honest Finnick. I need to know. I need to be prepared. Hell, do I even want to live?"
"No Annie. I won't let that happen to you," I say fiercely, "I will protect you to my last breath, always."
"There isn't much you'll be able to do pretty soon," she says. I grimace.
"You're strong Annie, stronger than you know.
"Can I-can I sleep in here tonight?" She asks, her voice wobbly. "I don't want to be alone." I sigh. I really shouldn't do this.
"Yeah, come on." I hold back the covers for her and let her slide in. I lay down next to her, keeping a decided distance.
"Thank you Finnick," she breathes, snuggling in closer. I can feel her warm breath on my shoulder and I shiver. It's unsettling, being close to someone like this. She reaches out and takes my hand in her much smaller one and I will myself to relax.
"Go to sleep Annie," I say, but when I look down at her, her eyes are already closed, her breathing slow and even. Now that I know she can't hear me I allow myself to say it. "I love you"
By the way, after a while this story will turn into more of snapshots of their life. Considering that ten years elapses between finnick's win and the 75th games I'm just going with the important stuff...like when he teaches her to fly-fish. There will be some more straight through stuff for a while and then when the 75th games roll around it will be straight through as well. I just thought that i would let you know.
I hope that you're enjoying...and dare i ask(*ahem* beg *ahem*) review :3
XOXO,
Batty