She can't tell them. They've kept Peeta in the hospital for weeks now, and she can't go back there, not with the doctors and the needles and the restraints that keep you down so they can do whatever they want to you. But these terrors, these bubbles of uncertainty that stay in her chest and get bigger until they're ready to swallow her whole that say none of it is real, they won't leave her alone, and she knows they'll never really go away. Even when they retreat, they're just a hairbreadth away, and she can't predict when her mind will move just a millimeter too far this way or that and send her back there.

The worst Thirteen's doctors can do does not compare to that place.

In her nightmares – waking and otherwise – she returns there, to the place where the most horrifying demons do not have to hide. Instead, they walk among the others, their scales, forked tongues, and horns not so strange among the other freaks the Capitol deigns beautiful. They come to her, when she is weakest, when reality and fantasy fall into an indistinct gradient, brushing their claws gently along her cheeks and whispering sweet horrors in her ear.

Tonight, the nightmares are so impossible that they must be real. There is no light to generate the shadows that leap and dance across the wall, tactile enough that one will occasionally step away from it to become a dark night-creature, the sort of which she once doubted exists outside of children's stories. The bubble expands within her, its thick, blood-red walls putting such a pressure on the inside of her ribcage that Annie is sure it's about to burst through. She wants to scream, but then they'll all know, and they'll do what's best for her, the same they always do. But if she doesn't, she'll hurt Finnick – or not-Finnick, because they're one and the same now and that doesn't seem like it should be possible, but it is – and no, she can't, that's not who she is, but when has that ever mattered?

In the Arena, Annie Cresta, was that you?

It's pitiful, she's pitiful, for all she can do is whimper. The shadows' dance becomes more lively, for they feed on her, everything good leaking out of her to fuel their torture further. She can see their tubes, so much like the ones in the Capitol, the ones the doctors here threaten her with. Colorless plastic, this one pumping the morphling in while another sucks out her joy, another, her sanity, all of it gone forever to leave Annie like one of the shells on the beach: used, empty, discarded.

No, she can't wake Finnick, not-Finnick, him up. Her fingers dig into her mouth to keep another scream inside, but they're not enough, and she's forcing them further in, until the nails dig into her cheeks and she's not sure the arm and the mouth belong to the same person because it hurts so much, and –

"Annie?" He's touching her, bare skin to bare skin, and now he's over her, and no, only the real Finnick's allowed to touch her like that, no please – "Annie, what's wrong?"

Her entire body is tight and aching, distance from head to toe longer than it ever has been before,as though she's been stretched on a rack. Rigid, her muscles refuse to move, to bat him away. But this is the real Finnick, he must be, the door hasn't opened since they went to sleep. She's been up, and she would have noticed if anything changed, but nothing's the same. "Annie, come on, you need to get to a doctor."

"No!" she screams, all the hurt coming out with that single word.

The lights come on, blindingly bright, and she's on fire. "Oh fuck, did you do that?" He must see the blood coming out of her mouth, and maybe it's hers, but she's spilled so much over the years that even she isn't sure anymore.

In either case, she did do it, so it's only honest to nod, jerky and painful and not how getting better is supposed to be. They say she's getting better, when she goes to the doctors. Annie's too kind to tell them otherwise. He pulls her fingers out of her mouth, and they're stained red, and their, her, blood will get all over the bedspread and sully the doctor's too-clean white offices, and –

"I – I can't go."

"You're going to hurt yourself."

Her laughter tastes bitter. "I already did." It's not funny, but it is.

Finnick - it has to be him, it just has to – gets a little closer. "I'm going to keep an eye on you, all right? If it gets worse, I have to call the doctors." He still hasn't let go of her hands, and he pulls them closer to his chest.

"No."

"I have to."

"Finnick, no."

He runs his fingers through his hair, and she wonders if he's going to pull it out. That might feel nice, to get rid of all of it and then there would be another way out for all the thoughts she doesn't want to think. "Annie, if you're going to get hurt, I have to call the doctors. I can't let that happen."

"I hate them."

Finnick pauses at that, but only for a moment. "But I love you."