Scylla and Charybdis [2/9] (The Hunger Games, Finnick/Annie)
Chapter two! In which Annie and Finnick have a war of double entendres, Johanna is herself, and everything goes to hell part one.
Title: Scylla and Charybdis [2/9] ( or read the whole thing at AO3 )
Authors: puella_nerdii and mithrigil
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Characters: Finnick/Annie; Mags, Haymitch, Johanna, Snow, various victors and denizens of the Capitol, and original characters.
Words: About 61000 in total. This chapter, ~8000.
Rating: R (expected THG violence, sexuality, recreational drug use, forced prostitution)
Spoilers: Backstory revealed in Mockingjay.
Summary: Finnick decides that, come hell or high water, he is bringing his tribute home from the seventieth Hunger Games. That tribute is Annie Cresta. But Finnick never thought that he would have to choose between bringing her home and keeping her safe, and he wants both. How Annie Cresta crept up on Finnick Odair.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine
Chapter Two: Riddles by the City Gate Annie makes a splash in training and at her interview, but once she’s in the arena, all bets are off.
Drusus is too well-mannered to hammer on Annie's door-it's gauche in the Capitol-but he drums his fingers on his arm and taps his feet and arches his silver-tipped eyebrow in a way that telegraphs how unimpressed he is. His words, not mine. "I expected her an hour ago," he says, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I would like to get in a preliminary fitting before her interview, especially if you two have other alterations you've neglected to inform me about."
"Nothing at the moment." I pat him on the back. "I'll see how she's doing."
Annie is curled up on her side, her knees drawn to her chest. She doesn’t stir when I enter the room.
"Hey," I say.
Still nothing. I sit next to her on the bed, near enough to see her face. Spots of color flare high on her cheeks, but other than that she's pale and drawn, her mouth thin.
"How did it go with the Gamemakers?"
She hunches her shoulders, still silent.
I try for a smile. I'm not entirely sure my face remembers what the real one feels like, but I try. "It can't have been that bad."
Annie shifts closer to me, rests her head in my lap. At least I'm not naked, I think, but she doesn't seem like she's going for any particular part of me. "I didn't embarrass myself."
"What did you do?" I ask her. Her hair tumbles over the side of her neck, sweeps across her face, and I brush some of it away. Her eyes remind me of mine-clearer, still moving, the sea at noon instead of evening.
"I rigged a chain of traps," she says.
I whistle.
"And I tripped them from the other side of the room." Her smile starts to emerge, just a little. "I remembered from your Games. You tripped that girl’s traps and killed her. So it would have worked. So I spent as much time at that station as I could."
"They don't see that often, you know," I say. "Most people throw around swords. You planned."
"That's because I'm not any good at throwing around swords." She pauses. "And you're not supposed to throw around swords."
I laugh, rumple her hair. "At least I taught you something."
"You taught me plenty. I just hope it's enough."
I hope so too, I think, but I'm fairly sure that's on the list of the worst things to say to a tribute, if there is a list. If there isn't, I should make one. "Mind if I share something else?"
"Not at all."
I nod, more to myself than to her. "It's not about how well you fight," I say. "It's about how well you survive. That's the disadvantage the other Careers have. They can throw around swords, but they can't tell a poisonous fish from an edible one."
"I hope there are fish."
"If there are, you're set for food."
"I just want to see the water again."
"I know," I tell her, and stroke her hair, rake my fingers through it and let it slip out. It has curls but no snarls, that must be Drusus's work. I used to do this with my cousin Lucy when she cried. She doesn't cry as much now, and Annie isn't crying either. She covers my hand with hers, brushes her fingers between mine like I'm doing with her hair and twines them together where she can see.
“Mags wants Varin to win.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t blame her. I think I do too. She shouldn’t have to see...” Annie trails off, shakes her head. “So all that’s left is the interview,” she says, more to my hand than to me.
I let her change the subject. And we need to talk about this anyway. “We still need a strategy for that. I can talk you through it, if you want.”
She nods, rubbing her ear against my thigh.
“Well,” I start, “I can tell you right now you don’t have to worry about Caesar Flickerman.” Not when it comes to the interviews, at least. “He may look scary, but he’s good at his job, and it’s his job to make you give the Capitol your best face. We just have to make that easy for him, come up with a way to help you leave a good impression on the Capitol.”
She seems more intent on what our thumbs are doing than what I’m saying.
“Annie?”
“Yes,” she says. “Sorry. A good impression.”
So she’s listening. I guess that’s all I can ask for. “You made a splash at the opening ceremonies, they won’t forget that. And I know Drusus isn’t letting go of the sea ghost angle. You’ll have your hair down, and jewels dangling from it, and he said you could go barefoot under your dress except for some rings, things like that.”
“But I don’t want to scare all my sponsors off,” she says, and then asks, “Do I have sponsors?”
“Of course you do. I’m doing everything I can for you, Annie.” I smile. I have to smile. I wonder what she thinks of me, if she doesn’t know the truth. “And you won’t scare them off, not if we find a way to make you show through on camera. I believe that you have a chance out there. They have to see it too.”
I lean over enough to see her face. She’s still staring at our hands, and our thumbs are sliding together, but she’s smiling. It’s not the lost kind of smile either, not distracted, not absent. I don’t know how else to describe it, but I trust it, I know she’s still following me.
“But I can’t let them know I hate them for this,” she says. “So I can’t just be me.”
I shake my head. “It’s not about being you. It’s about being the you they want to see.”
“The me that they’ll sponsor. The me that they’ll care about.”
“Yes.”
“What if I made my answers have two meanings?” She lifts her head off my thigh, shifts her jaw a bit like she’s tasted something awful.
“That could work.” I press my thumb to hers, thinking. “I was thinking it might be a good idea to play on the impression you made at the opening ceremonies.” I’ve heard the words sea ghosts floating around more than a few parties this week, and most people bring it up without me needing to steer the conversation in that direction. “The idea of still waters running deep.”
“Mysterious,” she says. “Frightening. Creeping up on you.”
“Think you can pull it off?” I ask her.
“I think I’d better.”
I uncoil our hands, wipe my palm on my knee. “Well, let’s test that. Sit up, you can’t do the interview curled up on your chair. I’ll throw a few practice questions at you. I’ve seen enough interviews with Flickerman, I can guess what he’s likely to ask.”
She sits up, shifts to the edge of the bed and crosses her legs at the ankle. It takes a couple of breaths, but she looks up at me and nods, doesn’t otherwise say she’s ready.
I smile at her, the wide genial expression Flickerman uses for the cameras. She laughs instantly; she’s spent most of her life watching the Games, too. “He opens with this,” I say. “The first question’s a warmup, something to get a sketch of your personality--he’ll ask you what’s impressed you most about the Capitol, or how you felt during the Opening Ceremonies, or whether or not you’re tired from training. He usually throws in a compliment, too, something about what an impression you made in your chariot or how your skin’s practically glowing from all that exercise.” I’ve almost memorized all the variations on it. “With you--” I think for a moment, then lean forward, prop my elbow on my thigh and purse my lips just slightly. “Well, Miss Annie Cresta! You’ve been haunting my dreams since the Opening Ceremonies.”
She thinks about her answer a moment, and then says, with the slightest upward turn at the corners of her lips, “I hope it isn’t just you.” Her voice is pitched lower than normal. I wonder why.
I turn to the imaginary audience, raise my eyebrows. “Well, ladies and gentlemen?” Annie looks like she actually expects a response, even though no one’s here, and over my shoulder, I say, “They’ll applaud, maybe whistle. And then he’ll turn back to you--” I do, “--and say ‘How do you find any time to train, if you’ve been busy visiting the dreams of every member of my audience?’”
This answer comes to her quicker. “I’m afraid that’s a secret.” The last word’s hard to hear; her voice drops off, and it evokes a secret well enough, but I don’t know how well it’ll carry on-camera.
“‘What can you tell us, Annie? I know we’re not allowed to hear about your training’--the audience will groan--‘but you must’ve gotten up to something since you arrived in the Capitol.’” I decide not to supply the audience’s reaction to that one, but I do remind her, “Sit up straighter. You’re going for strength, not ease. And see if you can draw me in with your voice--you’re losing energy at the end of your sentences.”
She adjusts her posture, settles her shoulders back farther. “I’m just doing my best to learn all I can before I head out. Not just about the Games, but about the people out there watching me.” This time her voice surges too much at the end, but it’s better to overcorrect, I think.
“Better. And what have you found out?” I lean forward. No, that’s not the way Flickerman does it, that’s the way I do it. I adjust my posture, rest my chin on my wrist again, my thumb brushing the line of my throat. There, that looks like him.
“I think I understand a little better why we have the Hunger Games at all,” she says, looking down. “Growing up in District Four, I had to wonder what kind of world it really was in the rest of Panem. I can see that clearer now that I’ve been here.”
My hand drops, and I slip back into my normal voice, ditch the Capitol accent. It always feels strange in my mouth, anyway, too clipped and hissing. “Don’t say that,” I warn her.
“Then he shouldn’t ask me about what I’ve found out.”
“He might. You’ll have to come up with a safer answer.”
“All right.” She takes a deep breath and starts again. “I’ve found out that people like you can still be haunted by people like me.”
One of the knots in my chest loosens. “Better,” I tell her, give her my own smile before I shift back into Flickerman’s mannerisms. I know he’d drop that line of questioning after that response. Where would he go next? Somewhere safe. “What’s your favorite thing about the Capitol?”
“The view from the roof of the Training Center.”
“There’s a roof?”
“There is. And you can see so much of the Capitol from it, the way the city radiates out from the center in spokes like the rings on a turtle’s shell.” She didn’t have to think about that answer at all.
“You’ve got a way with words, Annie,” I tell her, half in Flickerman’s voice and half in my own.
“I don’t,” she says. “That’s just what I see.”
“Don’t be so modest, Annie,” I tell her, abandon my own voice and resist the urge to wash my hands. Wearing Caesar Flickerman’s skin coats me in the kind of slime that clings, no matter what I do. “What else are you good at?”
That, she takes time with. “Not too long,” I say. “You have three minutes with him, and that’s it. And you want to look like you know what you’re doing. You’re not trying to be Johanna Mason.”
“What’s she like?” Annie asks.
“She’s a piece of work,” I say, because really, there’s no other way to say it politely. “What are you good at?”
She still breathes deeply, still doesn’t want to answer that.
“Annie, if you don’t bring up your good points, nobody else will. You have to give them a reason to want you.”
“You didn’t.”
I don’t need to say anything. I gesture to my body instead.
Her posture’s unwound and she’s leaning on the bed again, rubbing her ankles together and hiding her face in her hair, looking away. “All right,” she says, quietly, and if it’s not in interview attitude, at least she’s answering. “I’m good at seeing what other people don’t, and using what other people can’t.”
“Good answer. Try to look at him when you give it. Or the audience,” I add. “Like you’re looking straight through them.”
She nods.
There’s one more angle Caesar will play. I hesitate. I know how self-absorbed it’ll sound if I mention it, and how unprepared she’ll be if I don’t. “He’s probably going to ask you something about me,” I say, the words fouling up my throat.
“What about you?” She looks genuinely confused. “Haven’t they asked enough?”
If only she knew. I take that back almost as soon as I think it. “You know, something horrible. Something like, ‘So what’s it like to get private training from Finnick Odair?’” I drop my voice at least half an octave, waggle my eyebrows.
She gapes, and then mouths, oh. And then her lips curl up into a smile I haven’t seen on her before. “He’s very attentive,” she says. “I think I’ve warmed up to him a lot since we started training. He makes it very easy.”
She’s going to ruin my reputation. Well, actually, she’s going to give it exactly what it deserves. “Easy how?” I can’t resist asking.
“He makes me think I have a chance. And when Finnick Odair thinks something, you have to believe him.”
She had to be sincere, didn’t she. But I can’t find it in me to tell her to stop and start over.
Her cheeks flare up just slightly. “And we’re very comfortable together. Most of the time, he doesn’t even wear clothes.”
This isn’t exactly a revelation--between the company I keep and the broadcasts, I think everyone in Panem has seen me naked, or close enough to count--but the way she says it makes me look down and realize I haven’t bothered to put anything on other than my underwear. It’s not like Drusus minds, I think, jumping to my own defense.
“Is that too much?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her, trying to keep a straight face, “that’s just enough.”
She laughs and covers her cheeks. I can see the blush spreading. “Actually it’s a bit much for me.”
I choke on--well, I’m not sure what I choke on, but I choke. “Well, he can be hard to handle,” I say when I can breathe again. No, I haven’t seen this side of Annie Cresta before. I wonder what the cameras will think.
They won’t be able to see behind the hands covering her face, though. It’s different than what I first saw of her, even if the shape is the same. She laughs, and pulls her hands down just enough to look over her fingertips at me.
I think I love her eyes.
“It gets harder when people are watching,” she says. I think she might be grinning.
I can’t continue this. I’m going to continue this. “That’s why you have to take your time.”
“Well, no matter how slow he goes with me, I always see results.” Her face is pinker than a cooked shrimp.
The setup’s too good. “Sometimes more than once a session?” I ask, look at her through lowered eyelids.
Her hands have slipped down to the hollow of her neck, and she’s looking me clear in the eyes like she hasn’t ever seen me before. “He’s definitely built up my stamina.”
“Well, you know what they say about swimmers.” I haven’t had to work this hard to keep from laughing in ages. “They can go the distance.”
I think she just might be having the same hardship. “And he can hold his breath for a long time when he goes down.”
That’s it. I can’t take it. I collapse laughing on the bed next to her, my sides ready to burst from how hard they’re shaking. “Annie Cresta,” I manage to gasp in the middle of it, “you have officially out-innuendoed me.”
She’s sprawled out next to me, laughing so hard the bed really is shaking. “I couldn’t possibly,” she says. I think. “There’s no way to make it official.”
I’d make a joke about keeping score, but there’s no way I can top what she just pulled with that kind of crack. We stay stretched out on the bed, trying to return our breathing to normal. She rolls beneath my elbow, into my side, and my arm bends before I realize it. I pause, and my hand dangles in the air, my fingers not quite brushing her back.
She’s more tentative about taking my hand than she was earlier.
I nudge my thumb against hers. “You feel ready now?”
“More than I did before,” she says. “A lot more.”
I get up from the bed, let her hand slip from mine. My fingers tingle where she held them. “Is it all right if I send Drusus in? He wanted to do a preliminary fitting of your interview dress.”
***
Caesar Flickerman asks, “So what kind of training regimen has Finnick Odair put you on?”
He’s not quite as predictable as I thought, though he does drop his voice.
But Annie smiles just as brightly and calmly as she did back in her room, and everything that Drusus has draped her with glistens in the light of the cameras. “It’s not very strict, but specialized. I feel like he knows me inside and out. And he makes sure to train me and Varin separately, so we both get his full attention.”
The crowd falls all over themselves trying to out-whistle each other. I should have an easy time with the sponsors tonight.
***
The light is still on in her room when I get back from the post-interview parties. That’s good, at least, because now I can tell her that she’s got more than a few sponsors lined up, and I didn’t even have to work too hard at it, between the eight she scored from the Gamemakers and the impression she left tonight. So I knock, lightly, but the door swings open just from that.
She’s curled up on her bed again, but it’s not like she’s hiding, now, more like she’s trying to keep warm. Her interview dress, clear layers of blue and green and gold, spills out over the covers and to the floor. She could drown in that much cloth. I think that was the idea. But her bare feet, covered in toe-rings and anklets, rustle the cloth uneasily, and her arms look like all the green-beaded gold is weighing them down. Her hair seems to be floating, spread out on the cloth and the covers, and she’s staring at the ceiling. There should be sunlight. I look at her and know there should be sunlight.
“You should be getting some rest,” I say from the door. “Well, maybe you’ll rest easier when I tell you you’ve lined up sponsors.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Annie?”
And then, she does, startles from the shoulders down, enough that the beads and gold ring out and chatter. “Finnick,” she says. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” I still hover in the doorway. “Just wanted to make sure you got some sleep tonight.”
“I meant to. I just lost track of time.” She braces her hands on the bed and sits up, lets her gaze fall from the ceiling to the floor. “I want to sleep, but my heart is racing and everything smells like blood.”
I nod, clutch the lintel, and when I breathe in I can smell it too, the heavy tang of copper in the air. “You still have a few hours,” I say.
She wraps her arms around herself, but I can see her shivering. Her fingers catch on one of the beaded bracelets and rub, back and forth. “I know.”
I’m not having much effect hovering in the doorway. I cross to her bed and sit down on the edge, tug the bracelet out of her grasp. “I can get you something to knock you out,” I say, “but I don’t know if that would help.”
She shakes her head, no. Her hair shifts around on her shoulders, but I don’t get to see it for long before she’s turned to lean against the crook of my neck. I find her hand and squeeze it, and we sit like that for a while, resting but not asleep. I press my thumb to her wrist; her pulse seems slower now, steadier.
“Did I make a good impression?”
“You did,” I tell her. “You did just fine.”
She holds my hand a little tighter. Hers is cold. “Do you still think I have a chance?”
The coldness spreads from her hand to mine, travels up my arm. “I do.”
“Then I guess I have to think so too,” she says. “I meant what I said.”
“About what?”
“When Finnick Odair thinks something, you have to believe him.” I can feel her closing her eyes, the lashes drifting down my arm. “Or else you feel like you’re letting him down.”
“You’re not letting me down,” I say. The warmth keeps slipping from her hand, so I pull her closer, lace her fingers more closely with mine and hope that passes on some of the heat. “You’re not letting anyone down.”
She exhales, softly, and that might be a laugh, but if it is it’s the kind that means you wish things were funny. “I don’t know. What about Mags and Varin? And what did my family see, when I was up there? Why do they have to watch me?”
I’m not Beetee. I can’t scan a room and figure out the most likely locations for bugs, but I know they’re in here. “It would be worse if they didn’t know.” I change the subject. “Who’s in your family?”
“My mom and dad,” she says, “and my sister Emily. My uncle John lives with them now too, he’s my mom’s brother. That’s our boat.”
“Sounds like a good boat.” I lean back a little, remembering. “Ours is smaller, it’s just my mother and my dad and me.” I should say ours was smaller, since the boat I bought with my victor’s winnings is big enough for my entire family, aunts and uncles and cousins included, but it’s not the same kind of boat. “Sometimes we’d take my younger cousins along, get them out of my aunts’ and uncles’ hair.”
“We did it backward, I guess,” she says. “Uncle John lost my cousins with his boat. So we took him in. Everyone’ll be taken care of even if I’m not there. I won’t worry. And Emily’s going to get training too, she’s almost old enough to start. She’s bigger than I was at her age. Stronger, too. Mom says she’s scarier than I am, too, except I’m quiet.”
“She might have changed her mind about you being scary after the opening ceremonies.”
“I think she’d be proud of that.” Annie might be smiling, now, but her hand is still tight on mine, except for her thumb, tracing patterns like before. “She used to say, if you ever see someone looking at you like he’s hungry, scare him. And then if he comes back, he isn’t just hungry.”
I smile, though I don’t know if she can see it in the dark. “I wonder if your mother would say that about me.”
“I think so. But you never look hungry.”
I try to think of a response to that one. None of my old standards work, and I’m left with my mouth hanging open like a fish’s. I reject I can buy better food now. “I don’t?” I ask instead. It was the first thing that popped into my head, I might as well.
“No,” she whispers. “You don’t look like you want anything. Well, except when you want me to listen to you.”
“I want you to do your best out there,” I tell her before my throat closes. “Will you?”
She lifts our hands up, presses our knuckles to her forehead. “I have to. You think I can.”
“You don’t have a District token, do you?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, no.
I fish in my pocket for the length of rope I carry in it. Maybe it is good that I’m wearing pants right now. “I have something for you,” I say, and disentangle our hands, wrap the string around her thumb and tie it with a surgeon’s knot, two twists and a double overhand. She lifts her head off my shoulder, and stares down at our hands, breath caught in her throat. “There. It’s not long enough to be a weapon, so the Gamemakers can’t take it from you.”
I rub my thumbnail against the line until it frays, and leave her with just the ring of rope. Her breath comes back to her, slow and warm on my cheek, and then she leans against my shoulder again, murmuring, “Thank you.”
I look down. “I didn’t want you to go in there with nothing.”
She takes my hand again, nudges our thumbs together like she needs to make sure the rope will hold. For a while she doesn’t say anything at all, neither of us do. Her eyes drift shut. I can’t help keeping mine open.
“I should try to sleep,” she says. “Could you stay with me until I do?”
“I will,” I tell her. “I’ll be right here.”
***
Just because I’m late doesn’t mean I need to rush to the victors’ lounge, but I do. Between throwing myself into the shower so fast I forget to hit any of the lotion buttons and barely grabbing a roll left over from Julia and Mags’s breakfast, I’ve shaved a little off the time, but I still feel awful about it. I try to tell myself that it’s fair I overslept, because if I hadn’t stayed up to make sure Annie got some sleep she’d have less of a chance, but then, for me not to be there when the Games start--
“What’d I miss?” I ask once I’m through the door.
“Cornucopia’s still got some action,” Chaff says. “My girl’s making out pretty good. Cane bit it, though.”
“Sorry to hear it.” I yank a chair out of its place by a card table and pull it closer to the viewing screens. The Arena, far as I can tell, is the dry basin of a dammed river, but densely wooded on either side of the ravine, much more so than it was the year I won. Just looking at the water trapped behind the Cornucopia I know it’s salt. At least Annie has that. I have to ask, “Is she--”
“She’s fine, they’re both fine,” Mags says from her chair next to Seeder. Her voice sounds so thin and taut you could snap it with a quick pull. “They’re with the pack.” When she waves a hand, one of the cameras pans to them, all six tributes from 1, 2, and 4 still alive. They’re chasing down a girl who’s managed to slash her sword through two of their backpacks but hasn’t quite laid a scratch on them. Annie is keeping to the back of the group, holding a spear like it’s her lifeline.
“Ha, look at her go, Beetee! Got a live wire this year too, looks like,” Chaff cheers.
Beetee nods, and if that girl with the sword is his from District 3, I have to agree. She has the Careers jumping, and Varin’s right in there with the fray, fighting back to back with the boy from District 1. I go to Mags’s chair and hold her shoulder, and her hand comes up to cover mine.
The camera cuts back to the Cornucopia, where some tributes still struggle, doing their best to step over the bodies littering the ground. I tried to get a good look at the tributes this year, familiarize myself with their faces, but it’s nearly impossible to identify who’s who in the carnage. Blood soaks the earth under them, turns it into mud, and dulls the color of their uniforms. Annie’s safe, I remind myself, but I keep looking at the screen, trying to put names to the faces the camera pans over. I come up empty.
“Well, that’s it for me,” Johanna Mason says as someone knifes one of the tributes in the back; he falls over, twitching. “You done too, Haymitch?”
“Thirty-five minutes ago,” he drawls from the couch he’s taken over on the far side of the room, away from the screens. “Congrats, sweetheart, you’ve sent your kids to die. You’re officially a mentor now.”
She shrugs. “They always go after the tributes from the District that won last year,” she says. “Rotten luck for them.”
I remember. It happened the year after I won, too. It still makes my stomach churn.
“Makes your brother a little more special, doesn’t it, Cashmere?” the male victor from District 5 says, punching her in the shoulder. I really should learn his name too, he’s been here long enough.
She wrinkles her nose as though someone is holding rotten fish under it. “Gloss was lucky,” she says. “The tributes from Two ate spoiled meat, and spent too much time vomiting to catch up with him.”
Funny, the little things that mean the difference between life and death in the Arena. If the girl from District 7 had taken out the bridge instead of shooting at me, for example. If Pacifica had recognized her own traps. If I hadn’t gotten that medicine for the wound in my side.
The cameras have panned back to the Careers, who are busy sorting through the supplies they picked up and figuring out a way to defend them. I don’t know where that girl from District 3 has gone. Annie hangs back, rolls the shaft of her spear between her hands. At this resolution, I see her knuckles whiten. “Come on,” I mutter. She built that trap for the Gamemakers, she can do it again in the Arena--and if she does, she’ll know how to disable it when she needs to take what she can and run.
I hold my breath. Annie lifts one hand off the spear and reaches past one of the other girls, speaks her piece. “How much rope do we have?”
“More than we need,” the boy from District 1 says, rolling his eyes.
She shakes her head. “And do we have wire or thin twine? I can rig something up to secure the food.”
Someone scoffs. It turns out to be the girl from District 2, the one Annie nudged aside before. “You really are Finnick’s girl, aren’t you.”
“He taught me a few things,” is all Annie says.
Johanna snorts. “I’ll bet.”
I hadn’t realized I was still holding my breath until I end up exhaling instead of snarling at Johanna. “I do try to train my tributes, you know,” I say, hold my smile as even as I can. “It’s considered good form.”
“I bet she likes the form you’re in.”
“She’s seventeen,” I say.
“So am I,” she snaps back, “and I just think you’re a whore.”
The room falls deathly silent. Even Cashmere and the victor from 5 stop bickering. I stand, slowly, keep my eyes fixed on the screen.
“Even whores have standards,” I say in my best imitation of a Capitol accent. “She’s not nearly rich enough.”
Only Haymitch laughs at that, bitter and blasting and heavy. Not even Chaff joins him.
“The rest of the day won’t be very exciting.” I fake a yawn. “Call me if something happens.”
I mean to breeze out of the room, but I end up slamming the door behind me. I lean against it, to make sure it’s closed, to make sure I can stand.
“And what the hell was that about? Prissy little fish-boy.”
“You shut up, Johanna.” I can tell Haymitch is stomping towards the door, so I stop leaning against it. It’s not hard to hear him through it. “You think it’s just you? Didn’t your mother ever teach you the difference between a whore and a slut?”
“My mother’s dead,” she says.
“Then let me learn you one, sweetheart. Your mother was probably a slut. That boy actually is a whore.”
Wonderful. Is there anyone in the Capitol who doesn’t know?
It gets so quiet in there that I can hear the broadcast of the Games, even out in the hallway. Everything cuts out until Haymitch laughs again, and then I know he’s coming to the door. I get out of the way, far enough down the hall that maybe it’ll look like I actually did try to leave and didn’t just storm out like a bratty child.
Haymitch slams the door open, but pushes it closed without any especial anger. Some of the white liquor sloshes out of his bottle and splashes on the hallway floor. He cackles deep in his throat like a gull and stares at me. “Still here, kid?”
“Seems like it,” I say, wish this suit had pockets so I could jam my hands into them.
“She didn’t know.” He takes a swig from his bottle. “Not that it matters.”
She was the only one, I think, but there’s no point in saying it. I shrug, roll my shoulders back, stare off at a point somewhere to the left of Haymitch’s head. “It’s true enough,” I say. “Hard to take much offense at the truth.”
“That’s the spirit.” He shoves away from the wall, staggers forward until he’s at my side. “Come on. Your girl said she likes the view from the roof? Let’s make sure you get a look.”
***
It does look like a turtle.
An electric turtle. An electric turtle with halogen graffiti and clusters of candy-colored people threading the streets and the Games up and running on all four sides of the biggest screen in the President’s Square. The girl from District 6 is bleeding drops the size of my body, over there, but from here it just looks life-sized. I wish there was another direction to face.
Haymitch doesn’t seem to care. He’s propped up on one of the garden benches, right in the thick of the rooftop wind, his feet crossed on the safety railing and the bottle resting between his knees. It’s about half-full. Half-empty.
“I can see why she likes it,” I say quietly. The fabric of my suit is thin, and as usual I’m not wearing a shirt with it, so the wind slips through it, chills my skin.
“Can’t bring myself to hate it,” Haymitch says, and waves me over.
I cross to his side, train one eye on the screen. They’re replaying the death of the girl from District 6, slowing down the moment where the club catches her on the side of her head. If they’re replaying that, I remind myself, it means nothing else exciting is happening. Exciting by the Capitol’s standards, at any rate.
“Your girl’s gonna die,” Haymitch says like it’s nothing.
I stop dead in my tracks. I should say something. I can’t. My jaw refuses to work.
His is working, though, enough to take another long drink. The wind’s so loud I can’t hear the gasp when he lets the bottle down, even if I can see it, shaking through every hair on his chin. “You’d better accept it quick.”
I’ve recovered enough to say, “No.” I catch a flicker onscreen out of the corner of my eye, but when I whip my head around, I don’t see Annie, I see the boy from District 1 sharpening his knife. “No. She has a shot at this.”
“She might’ve before you got your hands on her. Now all they see when they look at her is you.” He groans, cracks his shoulders. “Come on. If I’ve seen you calling in favors, believe me, so have the others. If they’re not complete hash they’ve told their kids to watch out. You think these tributes haven’t grown up knowing that if they see a Finnick Odair in the Arena, they better take him out quick?”
“She’s nothing like me. She doesn’t even look like me.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m just telling you what they see. You should’ve stuck with the boy, at least then half of those morons could pretend.”
The back of my neck flushes. “I couldn’t do that to Mags. And you’re wrong.”
“What, that you could’ve pretended?” He laughs. This time it blasts through the wind, strong enough to push it back. “Or that they’re gonna take her apart at the first sign of trouble?”
“I told her to run as soon as she thought she was in danger--”
“Then she should’ve run at the starting gun, ‘cause they’re gonna milk her for as much as they can and then cut her to ribbons when she isn’t looking.”
I close my eyes, block the screen out, but the sounds travel through the force field--the boom of Claudius Templesmith’s voice, the crack of something wooden. “How do you know?” I snap. “Your tributes died minutes into the Cornucopia, what do you know about keeping them alive in the arena?”
“I know not to get their hopes up if they haven’t got a goddamn chance.” He growls, and when I open my eyes to slits he’s got the bottle ready, pouring more liquor down his throat. “Trussing her up, parading her around like she’s this week’s arm candy--you’re just as bad as Snow.”
My fish smashes into his jaw. Did he chip his teeth on the bottle? I hope he did. He’s cursing, wiping it on his sleeve, and I see blood and hear acid but don’t see any scraps of bone. My hand stings, and I check it to make sure nothing’s wrong. I’ve skinned my knuckle, but for the price of a skinned knuckle I’d punch Haymitch again. And again.
He spits against the railing. It drips and splatters on the roof. “Good form,” he says, like this is all a joke.
My blood pounds in my ears. “More than I can say for you,” I say, and seize him by the front of his shirt. “Never compare me to that man again. I’m trying to keep her alive--or do you want me to leave her to die, the way you do with yours every year?”
His eyes loll up towards the sky, reflect back the glow from the city and the screens. “--Let me go if you don’t want me to hurl on you.”
I drop him. If his head hits the roof it won’t cause any noticeable damage. I decide I’ve had enough fresh air for one day, and the air is about to become considerably less fresh if the retching sounds are any indication. By the time I make it to the elevator, I can just barely hear him.
“Finnick.”
I stop.
“No one from District Four’s lasted three days since you won.” His voice is hoarse, low, just barely on the edge of the wind. “I’m not saying they’re no good. Maybe some of them could’ve had a chance any other year. And that’s eight kids, whose only crime is not being as good as you. Nine and ten are in the Arena right now.”
My fist hovers above the call button. I should slam it down. I don’t.
“Neither of them’s a survivor,” Haymitch says. “Least of all that girl.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, and step into the elevator before he can counter that.
***
At the end of the first day, there are a dozen dead. The boy from 3, the girl from 5, the girl from 6, and both from 7, which I’m sure Johanna must be overjoyed about. The girl from 8 I noticed from her Reaping Day is still out there, and she’s teamed up with the boy from 9, who she probably doesn’t know killed the boy from her District back at the Cornucopia. Olivia can’t stop talking about that, says if they make it much farther it could be terribly dramatic. And 10, 11, and 12 are wiped clear from the board. Haymitch and Chaff are probably boozing it up somewhere, and even after what Haymitch said on the roof yesterday I’d rather be there than here.
“And I did so love Spindle’s dress at the interviews! You know me, Finnick dear, I’m an absolute wreck when it comes to layered fabrics, as long as they’re tastefully done, and her stylist played that up so elegantly for her. That train! You must have loved the train.”
I hate the train echoes in my head, and I bite my lip so I won’t smile in the wrong way. “It was all right,” I say, sighing, “but it barely held its shape at all at the end.” I lift my head from her lap, and her fingers play across my throat. “If you like layered fabrics, you must have noticed Annie’s dress.”
“Oh, I did, to be sure, but Spindle just outshone her!” She laughs, high and thin and much more suited to someone twenty years younger, and the sound scrapes against my ears. “Though your stylist is to be commended. It takes a daring man to play up a wreck of a child like that. So horrific! I can only think of how horrible it would have been if he tried to make her beautiful.”
I look at Olivia’s face, stretched out at the corners and filled under her eyes in a way that makes me think of the mantle of a squid, and try to keep my pout from becoming a grimace. “Oh, don’t be like that, Liv,” I say. “You know I have my hands full mentoring this year.” Now is the time to touch her, to run my hands up her calves, and I do, press my lips to the crook of her knee so I don’t have to look at her face.
She laughs again. “There’s definitely room for more in your hands.”
In the corner of my eye, the light from the television flickers. I can hear footsteps if I focus, leaves rustling and wind whistling and trees creaking and beneath it all, a low distant rumbling. “Mm,” I say, noncommittally. “I suppose I wouldn’t have to spend so much time focusing on them if I knew I could call on funds when I needed them.”
“So that’s what this is about, young man,” she says lewdly, raking her nails along my scalp. “Then again, with those hands of yours you could wring blood from a stone.”
Sometimes I feel like I have to.
“What about my mouth?” I whisper, and there are some times I still can’t believe the things I say.
The television flares to life, and Templesmith is practically shouting, but that rumbling has swollen to an outright quake. The camera cuts to all of the surviving tributes in turn, and I realize that quake, that’s at the Arena. We’ve had earthquakes in District 4, some underwater where it’s even worse and causes waves that can capsize every boat at the docks. Varin fills the screen, jumping up from where he’d been keeping watch, to wake and warn the others, and almost as soon as I see him do that the camera cuts to the girl from District 3, leaping out of the branches with her sword arcing down.
I probably make the connection at the same time as the rest of Panem. Which is to say, about half a second before the blade slices through Varin’s neck.
Annie.
Varin screams, but Annie’s scream drowns his out. His head falls at her feet; his blood splashes across her face, drips from her spear, mats her hair. Varin’s scream has stopped, but Annie’s hasn’t, and it’s the kind that rings, the kind that even the sharks can hear. She hurls her spear--not at the girl, and not at the trap either--and takes off for the dam, chest heaving as she runs.
A passing camera catches her eyes. They’re not her eyes anymore.
I stand up and start hunting for my pants. Annie. I glance at the screen again; the cameras are still tracking Annie’s flight, following her through the trees. And it’s not an illusion or a trick when the brambles and branches start grasping at her ankles, like the smell of the blood has woken them up. I know those. I know their underwater cousins. The forest is alive. Alive, and hungry.
I wonder if she scares it. She’s scaring me.
The branches twine around her arms, rend her sleeves and rake across her skin, and a pronged branch that looks uncomfortably like Mags’s hand reaches out with its talons, straight for her eyes.
Olivia squeals, delighted. “Oh, is that one yours?”
“Annie, run!” I scream at the television, but I don’t even know where the Arena is this year, don’t know how far my voice would have to travel before it could reach her. All I can do is send parachutes. Parachutes. Can I send her anything now? Would a knife cut through those branches, or is their bark too tough? I’m her mentor, I should know these things, I should know what she needs to survive--
Olivia’s phone rings, and she laughs before slinking over to take it up. “Yes? Oh of course, he’s right here. How ever did you know? Oh, of course, you know everything. Finnick, darling, it’s your representative!”
I snatch the phone out of her hand without thanking her. “Julia?”
“Finnick, it’s Mags,” Julia says. Her voice quavers, like the phone itself is blinking out. “We believe she’s had a stroke. A fall, certainly. I think you know when.”
I nod, make some kind of small sound so Julia knows I’ve heard but my throat constricts too much for anything more. No. No, it wasn’t supposed to go like this, I had a plan, a strategy. Varin is dead and Mags might be dying and Annie is--I don’t know what Annie is and that frightens me more than anything--and I’m standing around in my underwear in the apartment of a woman whose face reminds me of a squid’s mantle. I’m worse than useless here.
“Where is she now?” I manage to ask.
“We have a medical team with her, they’re doing everything they can. She’s been moved her to the ward in the Training Center. If you could go back to her room and get a few things--”
I cut her off. “I’ll be right there.”
“Good. I apologize for cutting your evening short.”
“You’re forgiven,” I mutter. I finish putting my pants on, throw my jacket over my shoulder, and tell Olivia, “I have to go.”
“Oh, but we just got started--”
“You know me,” I say. I have no idea what my smile looks like. “I never stay for long.”
---
--
.
Title: Scylla and Charybdis [2/9] ( or read the whole thing at AO3 )
Authors: puella_nerdii and mithrigil
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Characters: Finnick/Annie; Mags, Haymitch, Johanna, Snow, various victors and denizens of the Capitol, and original characters.
Words: About 61000 in total. This chapter, ~8000.
Rating: R (expected THG violence, sexuality, recreational drug use, forced prostitution)
Spoilers: Backstory revealed in Mockingjay.
Summary: Finnick decides that, come hell or high water, he is bringing his tribute home from the seventieth Hunger Games. That tribute is Annie Cresta. But Finnick never thought that he would have to choose between bringing her home and keeping her safe, and he wants both. How Annie Cresta crept up on Finnick Odair.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine
Chapter Two: Riddles by the City Gate Annie makes a splash in training and at her interview, but once she’s in the arena, all bets are off.
Drusus is too well-mannered to hammer on Annie's door-it's gauche in the Capitol-but he drums his fingers on his arm and taps his feet and arches his silver-tipped eyebrow in a way that telegraphs how unimpressed he is. His words, not mine. "I expected her an hour ago," he says, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I would like to get in a preliminary fitting before her interview, especially if you two have other alterations you've neglected to inform me about."
"Nothing at the moment." I pat him on the back. "I'll see how she's doing."
Annie is curled up on her side, her knees drawn to her chest. She doesn’t stir when I enter the room.
"Hey," I say.
Still nothing. I sit next to her on the bed, near enough to see her face. Spots of color flare high on her cheeks, but other than that she's pale and drawn, her mouth thin.
"How did it go with the Gamemakers?"
She hunches her shoulders, still silent.
I try for a smile. I'm not entirely sure my face remembers what the real one feels like, but I try. "It can't have been that bad."
Annie shifts closer to me, rests her head in my lap. At least I'm not naked, I think, but she doesn't seem like she's going for any particular part of me. "I didn't embarrass myself."
"What did you do?" I ask her. Her hair tumbles over the side of her neck, sweeps across her face, and I brush some of it away. Her eyes remind me of mine-clearer, still moving, the sea at noon instead of evening.
"I rigged a chain of traps," she says.
I whistle.
"And I tripped them from the other side of the room." Her smile starts to emerge, just a little. "I remembered from your Games. You tripped that girl’s traps and killed her. So it would have worked. So I spent as much time at that station as I could."
"They don't see that often, you know," I say. "Most people throw around swords. You planned."
"That's because I'm not any good at throwing around swords." She pauses. "And you're not supposed to throw around swords."
I laugh, rumple her hair. "At least I taught you something."
"You taught me plenty. I just hope it's enough."
I hope so too, I think, but I'm fairly sure that's on the list of the worst things to say to a tribute, if there is a list. If there isn't, I should make one. "Mind if I share something else?"
"Not at all."
I nod, more to myself than to her. "It's not about how well you fight," I say. "It's about how well you survive. That's the disadvantage the other Careers have. They can throw around swords, but they can't tell a poisonous fish from an edible one."
"I hope there are fish."
"If there are, you're set for food."
"I just want to see the water again."
"I know," I tell her, and stroke her hair, rake my fingers through it and let it slip out. It has curls but no snarls, that must be Drusus's work. I used to do this with my cousin Lucy when she cried. She doesn't cry as much now, and Annie isn't crying either. She covers my hand with hers, brushes her fingers between mine like I'm doing with her hair and twines them together where she can see.
“Mags wants Varin to win.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t blame her. I think I do too. She shouldn’t have to see...” Annie trails off, shakes her head. “So all that’s left is the interview,” she says, more to my hand than to me.
I let her change the subject. And we need to talk about this anyway. “We still need a strategy for that. I can talk you through it, if you want.”
She nods, rubbing her ear against my thigh.
“Well,” I start, “I can tell you right now you don’t have to worry about Caesar Flickerman.” Not when it comes to the interviews, at least. “He may look scary, but he’s good at his job, and it’s his job to make you give the Capitol your best face. We just have to make that easy for him, come up with a way to help you leave a good impression on the Capitol.”
She seems more intent on what our thumbs are doing than what I’m saying.
“Annie?”
“Yes,” she says. “Sorry. A good impression.”
So she’s listening. I guess that’s all I can ask for. “You made a splash at the opening ceremonies, they won’t forget that. And I know Drusus isn’t letting go of the sea ghost angle. You’ll have your hair down, and jewels dangling from it, and he said you could go barefoot under your dress except for some rings, things like that.”
“But I don’t want to scare all my sponsors off,” she says, and then asks, “Do I have sponsors?”
“Of course you do. I’m doing everything I can for you, Annie.” I smile. I have to smile. I wonder what she thinks of me, if she doesn’t know the truth. “And you won’t scare them off, not if we find a way to make you show through on camera. I believe that you have a chance out there. They have to see it too.”
I lean over enough to see her face. She’s still staring at our hands, and our thumbs are sliding together, but she’s smiling. It’s not the lost kind of smile either, not distracted, not absent. I don’t know how else to describe it, but I trust it, I know she’s still following me.
“But I can’t let them know I hate them for this,” she says. “So I can’t just be me.”
I shake my head. “It’s not about being you. It’s about being the you they want to see.”
“The me that they’ll sponsor. The me that they’ll care about.”
“Yes.”
“What if I made my answers have two meanings?” She lifts her head off my thigh, shifts her jaw a bit like she’s tasted something awful.
“That could work.” I press my thumb to hers, thinking. “I was thinking it might be a good idea to play on the impression you made at the opening ceremonies.” I’ve heard the words sea ghosts floating around more than a few parties this week, and most people bring it up without me needing to steer the conversation in that direction. “The idea of still waters running deep.”
“Mysterious,” she says. “Frightening. Creeping up on you.”
“Think you can pull it off?” I ask her.
“I think I’d better.”
I uncoil our hands, wipe my palm on my knee. “Well, let’s test that. Sit up, you can’t do the interview curled up on your chair. I’ll throw a few practice questions at you. I’ve seen enough interviews with Flickerman, I can guess what he’s likely to ask.”
She sits up, shifts to the edge of the bed and crosses her legs at the ankle. It takes a couple of breaths, but she looks up at me and nods, doesn’t otherwise say she’s ready.
I smile at her, the wide genial expression Flickerman uses for the cameras. She laughs instantly; she’s spent most of her life watching the Games, too. “He opens with this,” I say. “The first question’s a warmup, something to get a sketch of your personality--he’ll ask you what’s impressed you most about the Capitol, or how you felt during the Opening Ceremonies, or whether or not you’re tired from training. He usually throws in a compliment, too, something about what an impression you made in your chariot or how your skin’s practically glowing from all that exercise.” I’ve almost memorized all the variations on it. “With you--” I think for a moment, then lean forward, prop my elbow on my thigh and purse my lips just slightly. “Well, Miss Annie Cresta! You’ve been haunting my dreams since the Opening Ceremonies.”
She thinks about her answer a moment, and then says, with the slightest upward turn at the corners of her lips, “I hope it isn’t just you.” Her voice is pitched lower than normal. I wonder why.
I turn to the imaginary audience, raise my eyebrows. “Well, ladies and gentlemen?” Annie looks like she actually expects a response, even though no one’s here, and over my shoulder, I say, “They’ll applaud, maybe whistle. And then he’ll turn back to you--” I do, “--and say ‘How do you find any time to train, if you’ve been busy visiting the dreams of every member of my audience?’”
This answer comes to her quicker. “I’m afraid that’s a secret.” The last word’s hard to hear; her voice drops off, and it evokes a secret well enough, but I don’t know how well it’ll carry on-camera.
“‘What can you tell us, Annie? I know we’re not allowed to hear about your training’--the audience will groan--‘but you must’ve gotten up to something since you arrived in the Capitol.’” I decide not to supply the audience’s reaction to that one, but I do remind her, “Sit up straighter. You’re going for strength, not ease. And see if you can draw me in with your voice--you’re losing energy at the end of your sentences.”
She adjusts her posture, settles her shoulders back farther. “I’m just doing my best to learn all I can before I head out. Not just about the Games, but about the people out there watching me.” This time her voice surges too much at the end, but it’s better to overcorrect, I think.
“Better. And what have you found out?” I lean forward. No, that’s not the way Flickerman does it, that’s the way I do it. I adjust my posture, rest my chin on my wrist again, my thumb brushing the line of my throat. There, that looks like him.
“I think I understand a little better why we have the Hunger Games at all,” she says, looking down. “Growing up in District Four, I had to wonder what kind of world it really was in the rest of Panem. I can see that clearer now that I’ve been here.”
My hand drops, and I slip back into my normal voice, ditch the Capitol accent. It always feels strange in my mouth, anyway, too clipped and hissing. “Don’t say that,” I warn her.
“Then he shouldn’t ask me about what I’ve found out.”
“He might. You’ll have to come up with a safer answer.”
“All right.” She takes a deep breath and starts again. “I’ve found out that people like you can still be haunted by people like me.”
One of the knots in my chest loosens. “Better,” I tell her, give her my own smile before I shift back into Flickerman’s mannerisms. I know he’d drop that line of questioning after that response. Where would he go next? Somewhere safe. “What’s your favorite thing about the Capitol?”
“The view from the roof of the Training Center.”
“There’s a roof?”
“There is. And you can see so much of the Capitol from it, the way the city radiates out from the center in spokes like the rings on a turtle’s shell.” She didn’t have to think about that answer at all.
“You’ve got a way with words, Annie,” I tell her, half in Flickerman’s voice and half in my own.
“I don’t,” she says. “That’s just what I see.”
“Don’t be so modest, Annie,” I tell her, abandon my own voice and resist the urge to wash my hands. Wearing Caesar Flickerman’s skin coats me in the kind of slime that clings, no matter what I do. “What else are you good at?”
That, she takes time with. “Not too long,” I say. “You have three minutes with him, and that’s it. And you want to look like you know what you’re doing. You’re not trying to be Johanna Mason.”
“What’s she like?” Annie asks.
“She’s a piece of work,” I say, because really, there’s no other way to say it politely. “What are you good at?”
She still breathes deeply, still doesn’t want to answer that.
“Annie, if you don’t bring up your good points, nobody else will. You have to give them a reason to want you.”
“You didn’t.”
I don’t need to say anything. I gesture to my body instead.
Her posture’s unwound and she’s leaning on the bed again, rubbing her ankles together and hiding her face in her hair, looking away. “All right,” she says, quietly, and if it’s not in interview attitude, at least she’s answering. “I’m good at seeing what other people don’t, and using what other people can’t.”
“Good answer. Try to look at him when you give it. Or the audience,” I add. “Like you’re looking straight through them.”
She nods.
There’s one more angle Caesar will play. I hesitate. I know how self-absorbed it’ll sound if I mention it, and how unprepared she’ll be if I don’t. “He’s probably going to ask you something about me,” I say, the words fouling up my throat.
“What about you?” She looks genuinely confused. “Haven’t they asked enough?”
If only she knew. I take that back almost as soon as I think it. “You know, something horrible. Something like, ‘So what’s it like to get private training from Finnick Odair?’” I drop my voice at least half an octave, waggle my eyebrows.
She gapes, and then mouths, oh. And then her lips curl up into a smile I haven’t seen on her before. “He’s very attentive,” she says. “I think I’ve warmed up to him a lot since we started training. He makes it very easy.”
She’s going to ruin my reputation. Well, actually, she’s going to give it exactly what it deserves. “Easy how?” I can’t resist asking.
“He makes me think I have a chance. And when Finnick Odair thinks something, you have to believe him.”
She had to be sincere, didn’t she. But I can’t find it in me to tell her to stop and start over.
Her cheeks flare up just slightly. “And we’re very comfortable together. Most of the time, he doesn’t even wear clothes.”
This isn’t exactly a revelation--between the company I keep and the broadcasts, I think everyone in Panem has seen me naked, or close enough to count--but the way she says it makes me look down and realize I haven’t bothered to put anything on other than my underwear. It’s not like Drusus minds, I think, jumping to my own defense.
“Is that too much?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her, trying to keep a straight face, “that’s just enough.”
She laughs and covers her cheeks. I can see the blush spreading. “Actually it’s a bit much for me.”
I choke on--well, I’m not sure what I choke on, but I choke. “Well, he can be hard to handle,” I say when I can breathe again. No, I haven’t seen this side of Annie Cresta before. I wonder what the cameras will think.
They won’t be able to see behind the hands covering her face, though. It’s different than what I first saw of her, even if the shape is the same. She laughs, and pulls her hands down just enough to look over her fingertips at me.
I think I love her eyes.
“It gets harder when people are watching,” she says. I think she might be grinning.
I can’t continue this. I’m going to continue this. “That’s why you have to take your time.”
“Well, no matter how slow he goes with me, I always see results.” Her face is pinker than a cooked shrimp.
The setup’s too good. “Sometimes more than once a session?” I ask, look at her through lowered eyelids.
Her hands have slipped down to the hollow of her neck, and she’s looking me clear in the eyes like she hasn’t ever seen me before. “He’s definitely built up my stamina.”
“Well, you know what they say about swimmers.” I haven’t had to work this hard to keep from laughing in ages. “They can go the distance.”
I think she just might be having the same hardship. “And he can hold his breath for a long time when he goes down.”
That’s it. I can’t take it. I collapse laughing on the bed next to her, my sides ready to burst from how hard they’re shaking. “Annie Cresta,” I manage to gasp in the middle of it, “you have officially out-innuendoed me.”
She’s sprawled out next to me, laughing so hard the bed really is shaking. “I couldn’t possibly,” she says. I think. “There’s no way to make it official.”
I’d make a joke about keeping score, but there’s no way I can top what she just pulled with that kind of crack. We stay stretched out on the bed, trying to return our breathing to normal. She rolls beneath my elbow, into my side, and my arm bends before I realize it. I pause, and my hand dangles in the air, my fingers not quite brushing her back.
She’s more tentative about taking my hand than she was earlier.
I nudge my thumb against hers. “You feel ready now?”
“More than I did before,” she says. “A lot more.”
I get up from the bed, let her hand slip from mine. My fingers tingle where she held them. “Is it all right if I send Drusus in? He wanted to do a preliminary fitting of your interview dress.”
***
Caesar Flickerman asks, “So what kind of training regimen has Finnick Odair put you on?”
He’s not quite as predictable as I thought, though he does drop his voice.
But Annie smiles just as brightly and calmly as she did back in her room, and everything that Drusus has draped her with glistens in the light of the cameras. “It’s not very strict, but specialized. I feel like he knows me inside and out. And he makes sure to train me and Varin separately, so we both get his full attention.”
The crowd falls all over themselves trying to out-whistle each other. I should have an easy time with the sponsors tonight.
***
The light is still on in her room when I get back from the post-interview parties. That’s good, at least, because now I can tell her that she’s got more than a few sponsors lined up, and I didn’t even have to work too hard at it, between the eight she scored from the Gamemakers and the impression she left tonight. So I knock, lightly, but the door swings open just from that.
She’s curled up on her bed again, but it’s not like she’s hiding, now, more like she’s trying to keep warm. Her interview dress, clear layers of blue and green and gold, spills out over the covers and to the floor. She could drown in that much cloth. I think that was the idea. But her bare feet, covered in toe-rings and anklets, rustle the cloth uneasily, and her arms look like all the green-beaded gold is weighing them down. Her hair seems to be floating, spread out on the cloth and the covers, and she’s staring at the ceiling. There should be sunlight. I look at her and know there should be sunlight.
“You should be getting some rest,” I say from the door. “Well, maybe you’ll rest easier when I tell you you’ve lined up sponsors.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Annie?”
And then, she does, startles from the shoulders down, enough that the beads and gold ring out and chatter. “Finnick,” she says. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” I still hover in the doorway. “Just wanted to make sure you got some sleep tonight.”
“I meant to. I just lost track of time.” She braces her hands on the bed and sits up, lets her gaze fall from the ceiling to the floor. “I want to sleep, but my heart is racing and everything smells like blood.”
I nod, clutch the lintel, and when I breathe in I can smell it too, the heavy tang of copper in the air. “You still have a few hours,” I say.
She wraps her arms around herself, but I can see her shivering. Her fingers catch on one of the beaded bracelets and rub, back and forth. “I know.”
I’m not having much effect hovering in the doorway. I cross to her bed and sit down on the edge, tug the bracelet out of her grasp. “I can get you something to knock you out,” I say, “but I don’t know if that would help.”
She shakes her head, no. Her hair shifts around on her shoulders, but I don’t get to see it for long before she’s turned to lean against the crook of my neck. I find her hand and squeeze it, and we sit like that for a while, resting but not asleep. I press my thumb to her wrist; her pulse seems slower now, steadier.
“Did I make a good impression?”
“You did,” I tell her. “You did just fine.”
She holds my hand a little tighter. Hers is cold. “Do you still think I have a chance?”
The coldness spreads from her hand to mine, travels up my arm. “I do.”
“Then I guess I have to think so too,” she says. “I meant what I said.”
“About what?”
“When Finnick Odair thinks something, you have to believe him.” I can feel her closing her eyes, the lashes drifting down my arm. “Or else you feel like you’re letting him down.”
“You’re not letting me down,” I say. The warmth keeps slipping from her hand, so I pull her closer, lace her fingers more closely with mine and hope that passes on some of the heat. “You’re not letting anyone down.”
She exhales, softly, and that might be a laugh, but if it is it’s the kind that means you wish things were funny. “I don’t know. What about Mags and Varin? And what did my family see, when I was up there? Why do they have to watch me?”
I’m not Beetee. I can’t scan a room and figure out the most likely locations for bugs, but I know they’re in here. “It would be worse if they didn’t know.” I change the subject. “Who’s in your family?”
“My mom and dad,” she says, “and my sister Emily. My uncle John lives with them now too, he’s my mom’s brother. That’s our boat.”
“Sounds like a good boat.” I lean back a little, remembering. “Ours is smaller, it’s just my mother and my dad and me.” I should say ours was smaller, since the boat I bought with my victor’s winnings is big enough for my entire family, aunts and uncles and cousins included, but it’s not the same kind of boat. “Sometimes we’d take my younger cousins along, get them out of my aunts’ and uncles’ hair.”
“We did it backward, I guess,” she says. “Uncle John lost my cousins with his boat. So we took him in. Everyone’ll be taken care of even if I’m not there. I won’t worry. And Emily’s going to get training too, she’s almost old enough to start. She’s bigger than I was at her age. Stronger, too. Mom says she’s scarier than I am, too, except I’m quiet.”
“She might have changed her mind about you being scary after the opening ceremonies.”
“I think she’d be proud of that.” Annie might be smiling, now, but her hand is still tight on mine, except for her thumb, tracing patterns like before. “She used to say, if you ever see someone looking at you like he’s hungry, scare him. And then if he comes back, he isn’t just hungry.”
I smile, though I don’t know if she can see it in the dark. “I wonder if your mother would say that about me.”
“I think so. But you never look hungry.”
I try to think of a response to that one. None of my old standards work, and I’m left with my mouth hanging open like a fish’s. I reject I can buy better food now. “I don’t?” I ask instead. It was the first thing that popped into my head, I might as well.
“No,” she whispers. “You don’t look like you want anything. Well, except when you want me to listen to you.”
“I want you to do your best out there,” I tell her before my throat closes. “Will you?”
She lifts our hands up, presses our knuckles to her forehead. “I have to. You think I can.”
“You don’t have a District token, do you?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, no.
I fish in my pocket for the length of rope I carry in it. Maybe it is good that I’m wearing pants right now. “I have something for you,” I say, and disentangle our hands, wrap the string around her thumb and tie it with a surgeon’s knot, two twists and a double overhand. She lifts her head off my shoulder, and stares down at our hands, breath caught in her throat. “There. It’s not long enough to be a weapon, so the Gamemakers can’t take it from you.”
I rub my thumbnail against the line until it frays, and leave her with just the ring of rope. Her breath comes back to her, slow and warm on my cheek, and then she leans against my shoulder again, murmuring, “Thank you.”
I look down. “I didn’t want you to go in there with nothing.”
She takes my hand again, nudges our thumbs together like she needs to make sure the rope will hold. For a while she doesn’t say anything at all, neither of us do. Her eyes drift shut. I can’t help keeping mine open.
“I should try to sleep,” she says. “Could you stay with me until I do?”
“I will,” I tell her. “I’ll be right here.”
***
Just because I’m late doesn’t mean I need to rush to the victors’ lounge, but I do. Between throwing myself into the shower so fast I forget to hit any of the lotion buttons and barely grabbing a roll left over from Julia and Mags’s breakfast, I’ve shaved a little off the time, but I still feel awful about it. I try to tell myself that it’s fair I overslept, because if I hadn’t stayed up to make sure Annie got some sleep she’d have less of a chance, but then, for me not to be there when the Games start--
“What’d I miss?” I ask once I’m through the door.
“Cornucopia’s still got some action,” Chaff says. “My girl’s making out pretty good. Cane bit it, though.”
“Sorry to hear it.” I yank a chair out of its place by a card table and pull it closer to the viewing screens. The Arena, far as I can tell, is the dry basin of a dammed river, but densely wooded on either side of the ravine, much more so than it was the year I won. Just looking at the water trapped behind the Cornucopia I know it’s salt. At least Annie has that. I have to ask, “Is she--”
“She’s fine, they’re both fine,” Mags says from her chair next to Seeder. Her voice sounds so thin and taut you could snap it with a quick pull. “They’re with the pack.” When she waves a hand, one of the cameras pans to them, all six tributes from 1, 2, and 4 still alive. They’re chasing down a girl who’s managed to slash her sword through two of their backpacks but hasn’t quite laid a scratch on them. Annie is keeping to the back of the group, holding a spear like it’s her lifeline.
“Ha, look at her go, Beetee! Got a live wire this year too, looks like,” Chaff cheers.
Beetee nods, and if that girl with the sword is his from District 3, I have to agree. She has the Careers jumping, and Varin’s right in there with the fray, fighting back to back with the boy from District 1. I go to Mags’s chair and hold her shoulder, and her hand comes up to cover mine.
The camera cuts back to the Cornucopia, where some tributes still struggle, doing their best to step over the bodies littering the ground. I tried to get a good look at the tributes this year, familiarize myself with their faces, but it’s nearly impossible to identify who’s who in the carnage. Blood soaks the earth under them, turns it into mud, and dulls the color of their uniforms. Annie’s safe, I remind myself, but I keep looking at the screen, trying to put names to the faces the camera pans over. I come up empty.
“Well, that’s it for me,” Johanna Mason says as someone knifes one of the tributes in the back; he falls over, twitching. “You done too, Haymitch?”
“Thirty-five minutes ago,” he drawls from the couch he’s taken over on the far side of the room, away from the screens. “Congrats, sweetheart, you’ve sent your kids to die. You’re officially a mentor now.”
She shrugs. “They always go after the tributes from the District that won last year,” she says. “Rotten luck for them.”
I remember. It happened the year after I won, too. It still makes my stomach churn.
“Makes your brother a little more special, doesn’t it, Cashmere?” the male victor from District 5 says, punching her in the shoulder. I really should learn his name too, he’s been here long enough.
She wrinkles her nose as though someone is holding rotten fish under it. “Gloss was lucky,” she says. “The tributes from Two ate spoiled meat, and spent too much time vomiting to catch up with him.”
Funny, the little things that mean the difference between life and death in the Arena. If the girl from District 7 had taken out the bridge instead of shooting at me, for example. If Pacifica had recognized her own traps. If I hadn’t gotten that medicine for the wound in my side.
The cameras have panned back to the Careers, who are busy sorting through the supplies they picked up and figuring out a way to defend them. I don’t know where that girl from District 3 has gone. Annie hangs back, rolls the shaft of her spear between her hands. At this resolution, I see her knuckles whiten. “Come on,” I mutter. She built that trap for the Gamemakers, she can do it again in the Arena--and if she does, she’ll know how to disable it when she needs to take what she can and run.
I hold my breath. Annie lifts one hand off the spear and reaches past one of the other girls, speaks her piece. “How much rope do we have?”
“More than we need,” the boy from District 1 says, rolling his eyes.
She shakes her head. “And do we have wire or thin twine? I can rig something up to secure the food.”
Someone scoffs. It turns out to be the girl from District 2, the one Annie nudged aside before. “You really are Finnick’s girl, aren’t you.”
“He taught me a few things,” is all Annie says.
Johanna snorts. “I’ll bet.”
I hadn’t realized I was still holding my breath until I end up exhaling instead of snarling at Johanna. “I do try to train my tributes, you know,” I say, hold my smile as even as I can. “It’s considered good form.”
“I bet she likes the form you’re in.”
“She’s seventeen,” I say.
“So am I,” she snaps back, “and I just think you’re a whore.”
The room falls deathly silent. Even Cashmere and the victor from 5 stop bickering. I stand, slowly, keep my eyes fixed on the screen.
“Even whores have standards,” I say in my best imitation of a Capitol accent. “She’s not nearly rich enough.”
Only Haymitch laughs at that, bitter and blasting and heavy. Not even Chaff joins him.
“The rest of the day won’t be very exciting.” I fake a yawn. “Call me if something happens.”
I mean to breeze out of the room, but I end up slamming the door behind me. I lean against it, to make sure it’s closed, to make sure I can stand.
“And what the hell was that about? Prissy little fish-boy.”
“You shut up, Johanna.” I can tell Haymitch is stomping towards the door, so I stop leaning against it. It’s not hard to hear him through it. “You think it’s just you? Didn’t your mother ever teach you the difference between a whore and a slut?”
“My mother’s dead,” she says.
“Then let me learn you one, sweetheart. Your mother was probably a slut. That boy actually is a whore.”
Wonderful. Is there anyone in the Capitol who doesn’t know?
It gets so quiet in there that I can hear the broadcast of the Games, even out in the hallway. Everything cuts out until Haymitch laughs again, and then I know he’s coming to the door. I get out of the way, far enough down the hall that maybe it’ll look like I actually did try to leave and didn’t just storm out like a bratty child.
Haymitch slams the door open, but pushes it closed without any especial anger. Some of the white liquor sloshes out of his bottle and splashes on the hallway floor. He cackles deep in his throat like a gull and stares at me. “Still here, kid?”
“Seems like it,” I say, wish this suit had pockets so I could jam my hands into them.
“She didn’t know.” He takes a swig from his bottle. “Not that it matters.”
She was the only one, I think, but there’s no point in saying it. I shrug, roll my shoulders back, stare off at a point somewhere to the left of Haymitch’s head. “It’s true enough,” I say. “Hard to take much offense at the truth.”
“That’s the spirit.” He shoves away from the wall, staggers forward until he’s at my side. “Come on. Your girl said she likes the view from the roof? Let’s make sure you get a look.”
***
It does look like a turtle.
An electric turtle. An electric turtle with halogen graffiti and clusters of candy-colored people threading the streets and the Games up and running on all four sides of the biggest screen in the President’s Square. The girl from District 6 is bleeding drops the size of my body, over there, but from here it just looks life-sized. I wish there was another direction to face.
Haymitch doesn’t seem to care. He’s propped up on one of the garden benches, right in the thick of the rooftop wind, his feet crossed on the safety railing and the bottle resting between his knees. It’s about half-full. Half-empty.
“I can see why she likes it,” I say quietly. The fabric of my suit is thin, and as usual I’m not wearing a shirt with it, so the wind slips through it, chills my skin.
“Can’t bring myself to hate it,” Haymitch says, and waves me over.
I cross to his side, train one eye on the screen. They’re replaying the death of the girl from District 6, slowing down the moment where the club catches her on the side of her head. If they’re replaying that, I remind myself, it means nothing else exciting is happening. Exciting by the Capitol’s standards, at any rate.
“Your girl’s gonna die,” Haymitch says like it’s nothing.
I stop dead in my tracks. I should say something. I can’t. My jaw refuses to work.
His is working, though, enough to take another long drink. The wind’s so loud I can’t hear the gasp when he lets the bottle down, even if I can see it, shaking through every hair on his chin. “You’d better accept it quick.”
I’ve recovered enough to say, “No.” I catch a flicker onscreen out of the corner of my eye, but when I whip my head around, I don’t see Annie, I see the boy from District 1 sharpening his knife. “No. She has a shot at this.”
“She might’ve before you got your hands on her. Now all they see when they look at her is you.” He groans, cracks his shoulders. “Come on. If I’ve seen you calling in favors, believe me, so have the others. If they’re not complete hash they’ve told their kids to watch out. You think these tributes haven’t grown up knowing that if they see a Finnick Odair in the Arena, they better take him out quick?”
“She’s nothing like me. She doesn’t even look like me.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m just telling you what they see. You should’ve stuck with the boy, at least then half of those morons could pretend.”
The back of my neck flushes. “I couldn’t do that to Mags. And you’re wrong.”
“What, that you could’ve pretended?” He laughs. This time it blasts through the wind, strong enough to push it back. “Or that they’re gonna take her apart at the first sign of trouble?”
“I told her to run as soon as she thought she was in danger--”
“Then she should’ve run at the starting gun, ‘cause they’re gonna milk her for as much as they can and then cut her to ribbons when she isn’t looking.”
I close my eyes, block the screen out, but the sounds travel through the force field--the boom of Claudius Templesmith’s voice, the crack of something wooden. “How do you know?” I snap. “Your tributes died minutes into the Cornucopia, what do you know about keeping them alive in the arena?”
“I know not to get their hopes up if they haven’t got a goddamn chance.” He growls, and when I open my eyes to slits he’s got the bottle ready, pouring more liquor down his throat. “Trussing her up, parading her around like she’s this week’s arm candy--you’re just as bad as Snow.”
My fish smashes into his jaw. Did he chip his teeth on the bottle? I hope he did. He’s cursing, wiping it on his sleeve, and I see blood and hear acid but don’t see any scraps of bone. My hand stings, and I check it to make sure nothing’s wrong. I’ve skinned my knuckle, but for the price of a skinned knuckle I’d punch Haymitch again. And again.
He spits against the railing. It drips and splatters on the roof. “Good form,” he says, like this is all a joke.
My blood pounds in my ears. “More than I can say for you,” I say, and seize him by the front of his shirt. “Never compare me to that man again. I’m trying to keep her alive--or do you want me to leave her to die, the way you do with yours every year?”
His eyes loll up towards the sky, reflect back the glow from the city and the screens. “--Let me go if you don’t want me to hurl on you.”
I drop him. If his head hits the roof it won’t cause any noticeable damage. I decide I’ve had enough fresh air for one day, and the air is about to become considerably less fresh if the retching sounds are any indication. By the time I make it to the elevator, I can just barely hear him.
“Finnick.”
I stop.
“No one from District Four’s lasted three days since you won.” His voice is hoarse, low, just barely on the edge of the wind. “I’m not saying they’re no good. Maybe some of them could’ve had a chance any other year. And that’s eight kids, whose only crime is not being as good as you. Nine and ten are in the Arena right now.”
My fist hovers above the call button. I should slam it down. I don’t.
“Neither of them’s a survivor,” Haymitch says. “Least of all that girl.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, and step into the elevator before he can counter that.
***
At the end of the first day, there are a dozen dead. The boy from 3, the girl from 5, the girl from 6, and both from 7, which I’m sure Johanna must be overjoyed about. The girl from 8 I noticed from her Reaping Day is still out there, and she’s teamed up with the boy from 9, who she probably doesn’t know killed the boy from her District back at the Cornucopia. Olivia can’t stop talking about that, says if they make it much farther it could be terribly dramatic. And 10, 11, and 12 are wiped clear from the board. Haymitch and Chaff are probably boozing it up somewhere, and even after what Haymitch said on the roof yesterday I’d rather be there than here.
“And I did so love Spindle’s dress at the interviews! You know me, Finnick dear, I’m an absolute wreck when it comes to layered fabrics, as long as they’re tastefully done, and her stylist played that up so elegantly for her. That train! You must have loved the train.”
I hate the train echoes in my head, and I bite my lip so I won’t smile in the wrong way. “It was all right,” I say, sighing, “but it barely held its shape at all at the end.” I lift my head from her lap, and her fingers play across my throat. “If you like layered fabrics, you must have noticed Annie’s dress.”
“Oh, I did, to be sure, but Spindle just outshone her!” She laughs, high and thin and much more suited to someone twenty years younger, and the sound scrapes against my ears. “Though your stylist is to be commended. It takes a daring man to play up a wreck of a child like that. So horrific! I can only think of how horrible it would have been if he tried to make her beautiful.”
I look at Olivia’s face, stretched out at the corners and filled under her eyes in a way that makes me think of the mantle of a squid, and try to keep my pout from becoming a grimace. “Oh, don’t be like that, Liv,” I say. “You know I have my hands full mentoring this year.” Now is the time to touch her, to run my hands up her calves, and I do, press my lips to the crook of her knee so I don’t have to look at her face.
She laughs again. “There’s definitely room for more in your hands.”
In the corner of my eye, the light from the television flickers. I can hear footsteps if I focus, leaves rustling and wind whistling and trees creaking and beneath it all, a low distant rumbling. “Mm,” I say, noncommittally. “I suppose I wouldn’t have to spend so much time focusing on them if I knew I could call on funds when I needed them.”
“So that’s what this is about, young man,” she says lewdly, raking her nails along my scalp. “Then again, with those hands of yours you could wring blood from a stone.”
Sometimes I feel like I have to.
“What about my mouth?” I whisper, and there are some times I still can’t believe the things I say.
The television flares to life, and Templesmith is practically shouting, but that rumbling has swollen to an outright quake. The camera cuts to all of the surviving tributes in turn, and I realize that quake, that’s at the Arena. We’ve had earthquakes in District 4, some underwater where it’s even worse and causes waves that can capsize every boat at the docks. Varin fills the screen, jumping up from where he’d been keeping watch, to wake and warn the others, and almost as soon as I see him do that the camera cuts to the girl from District 3, leaping out of the branches with her sword arcing down.
I probably make the connection at the same time as the rest of Panem. Which is to say, about half a second before the blade slices through Varin’s neck.
Annie.
Varin screams, but Annie’s scream drowns his out. His head falls at her feet; his blood splashes across her face, drips from her spear, mats her hair. Varin’s scream has stopped, but Annie’s hasn’t, and it’s the kind that rings, the kind that even the sharks can hear. She hurls her spear--not at the girl, and not at the trap either--and takes off for the dam, chest heaving as she runs.
A passing camera catches her eyes. They’re not her eyes anymore.
I stand up and start hunting for my pants. Annie. I glance at the screen again; the cameras are still tracking Annie’s flight, following her through the trees. And it’s not an illusion or a trick when the brambles and branches start grasping at her ankles, like the smell of the blood has woken them up. I know those. I know their underwater cousins. The forest is alive. Alive, and hungry.
I wonder if she scares it. She’s scaring me.
The branches twine around her arms, rend her sleeves and rake across her skin, and a pronged branch that looks uncomfortably like Mags’s hand reaches out with its talons, straight for her eyes.
Olivia squeals, delighted. “Oh, is that one yours?”
“Annie, run!” I scream at the television, but I don’t even know where the Arena is this year, don’t know how far my voice would have to travel before it could reach her. All I can do is send parachutes. Parachutes. Can I send her anything now? Would a knife cut through those branches, or is their bark too tough? I’m her mentor, I should know these things, I should know what she needs to survive--
Olivia’s phone rings, and she laughs before slinking over to take it up. “Yes? Oh of course, he’s right here. How ever did you know? Oh, of course, you know everything. Finnick, darling, it’s your representative!”
I snatch the phone out of her hand without thanking her. “Julia?”
“Finnick, it’s Mags,” Julia says. Her voice quavers, like the phone itself is blinking out. “We believe she’s had a stroke. A fall, certainly. I think you know when.”
I nod, make some kind of small sound so Julia knows I’ve heard but my throat constricts too much for anything more. No. No, it wasn’t supposed to go like this, I had a plan, a strategy. Varin is dead and Mags might be dying and Annie is--I don’t know what Annie is and that frightens me more than anything--and I’m standing around in my underwear in the apartment of a woman whose face reminds me of a squid’s mantle. I’m worse than useless here.
“Where is she now?” I manage to ask.
“We have a medical team with her, they’re doing everything they can. She’s been moved her to the ward in the Training Center. If you could go back to her room and get a few things--”
I cut her off. “I’ll be right there.”
“Good. I apologize for cutting your evening short.”
“You’re forgiven,” I mutter. I finish putting my pants on, throw my jacket over my shoulder, and tell Olivia, “I have to go.”
“Oh, but we just got started--”
“You know me,” I say. I have no idea what my smile looks like. “I never stay for long.”
---
--
.