Chapter Four

I'm awake sometime during the middle of the night. I don't think I woke up for any particular reason. I'm just done sleeping. I haven't slept through the night without the aid of some drug or another since my name was pulled from the Reaping Ball.

With the knowledge that further attempts at sleep will only result in nightmares, I roll off the bed and into the bathroom. A shower and a teeth cleaning make me feel marginally better but not enough to risk sleep again. I doubt I'll really sleep until I get back to Four. After all, the tributes go into the arena in the morning.

Thinking to get myself a glass of sweet tea, I make my way to the common area of our floor. That there's a light on in Annie's room distracts my momentarily from my goal, but she might like some sweet tea too so I get two glasses and then I go to her room.

She accepts the glass with shaking hands and watches me as I sit on the chair by the window in her room. "Why are you here?" she asks as she sips it carefully. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Mentors have a sense that their tributes aren't sleeping," I lie openly. "The good ones come check on restless tributes."

The way she rolls her eyes tells me she's not buying it. Good for her.

"How did I do in my interview?" she asks.

I feel guilty because I wasn't there to talk to her much afterward. I'd wanted to be, but President Snow required my presence and I reasoned it was best for Annie that I let Muscida and Calpurnia take care of her. She was brilliant during her interview. She did more than just tell the Capitol she didn't know that she was special enough to win their favor, much less the Games. In fact, she hardly did that at all. Instead, after Caesar asked her about Mags' illness and how losing her as a mentor affected things, Annie talked about how much Mags meant to the people of District Four and how worried she was that we might lose someone so important to us.

To her, I think she was saying just what she meant to say. With any luck, at least a few citizens of the Capitol will hear that she's saying how much her loss would cost District Four. That might be reaching too far, though. Maybe it's safer to say that they might find something new and some worth caring about. Or maybe that's just my own pipe dream.

"Finnick?"

I didn't answer her question and I feel horrible again. "You were perfect, Annie," I tell her honestly. "I don't think it could have been any better."

She smiles a little at that. "I just wanted to be me to the end."

"And do you feel like you were?"

She bites her lip and nods. "Yes, I was. I didn't stop being me just because they stuck me in a fancy dress and painted my skin. It was strange to be myself in that shell, but I was."

I lean forward and hold out my glass, tapping to against hers. "Cheers for that, Annie. Don't lose you who are, not for a moment. Do you know what happens if you do?"

Her teeth crunch against an ice cube and she nods again. "They win."

I confirm her answer by putting a finger over my lips. I lean back in my chair and swallow the last of my tea, leaving only half melted ice cubes in the bottom. "Will you die with any regrets, Annie Cresta, if you do die in that arena?" It was probably the wrong thing to ask a tribute but Annie isn't like any other tribute I've mentored or known. Maybe she'll forgive my asking. Maybe she'll understand.

"Of course," she says, not hesitating at all and giving me hope that she does understand. "I'll regret that I don't get to be old and gray, or fall in love, or live. But that's not the question you meant to ask me, is it?"

I stare at her because I don't have a good answer. I don't know what question she thinks I meant to ask her.

"You meant to ask if there's anything I wish I'd done before my name came out of the Reaping Bowl," she elaborates when I don't say anything. "Specific things. Not vague, obvious answers the Capitol would love about leaving my family and never having children."

I don't know if I was going to ask that question but I want to hear her answer. "If you're so sure I was going to ask, what's your answer?"

For being so bold a moment ago, she blushes furiously now. "It's stupid. Never mind. I should just go to sleep before they come to get me ready."

I watch, sort of frozen, as she plunks her glass on the table and flops face-first onto the bed. And then I force myself to my feet and move to sit on the edge of her bed. "No, Annie, don't. Don't hide now. You've only got so long to get what you want. So take it. If it can still be taken, take it. If I can get it for you tonight, I'll do it. Just tell me if there's something you wish you'd had or done. Please, Annie."

She turns her head just enough to fix her green eyes on me, and then she sits up. Before I know it, before I can stop it, she cups her right hand to the side of my face and kisses me. I must not react how she expects because she pulls away quickly and buries her face in her pillow again. "I've never been kissed," she mumbles into the pillow. "I wish I'd been kissed."

I know, although I'm not entirely sure how I know, that she isn't telling me this because I'm the most kissable darling of the Capitol - a title Caesar Flickerman officially gave me three months ago. She's telling me this because she's a girl who wants to be kissed.

Now I have to figure out a way to kiss her without having her feel like it's a pity kiss - which it will be, if I'm entirely honest about it - or like I have no faith in her survival - and I have little.

I pull back when I feel myself start to slip into my Capitol persona. I can't kiss her like that. But I've never kissed a woman who wasn't a citizen of the Capitol. I'm not sure I know how to do this.

"You don't have to just sit there pitying me," she mutters, her voice still muffled by the pillow. "You can go back to bed."

"You've never been kissed?" I ask, ignoring her words.

"No."

"Have you ever kissed anyone?"

She turns her head a little to the side. "Is there a difference?"

"Mm-hmm. Being kissed means the other person makes the first move and kissing someone means you make the first move." I don't know if I'm making sense but I'm drawing her out of her pillow and that's enough.

"Oh. No, I guess I haven't then."

I put my hand on her shoulder and make her turn over to face me. "That's not true, Annie, because you just kissed me."

She scrunches her face into a frown and wiggles around until she's twisted her red hair into a rope over her shoulder. "That hardly counts, Finnick. You've kissed and been kissed by so many women."

How do I tell her the truth without telling her everything? I don't want to hurt her. So I tell her a version of the truth. "I've never kissed or been kissed by a woman who doesn't live in the Capitol." It shocks her, I can see that, so I lean down close to her and hope any bugs in the room don't pick up my words. "Those women don't mean anything to me. I'm a toy to them and they're something I have to endure. You kissing me, being the first girl to kiss me just because she was desperate to kiss someone, that's completely different. Don't you see that?"

She stares at me for a long minute before she nods once. And then she whispers three words. "Now kiss me."

We don't stop until long after we should have stopped.

She tells me before she finally falls asleep that she's happy to know she won't die without being kissed or without having lost her virginity.

There are probably rules about mentors having sex with their tributes but as I watch her sleep peacefully for what might be the last time, I realize I don't care about the rules.

I don't care about any of them. I just want to be free. I want Annie and every other young person in Panem to be free. That's what I care about.