Hunger Games fic: Diving Under (1/?)
Title: Diving Under
Chapter title: Prologue
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Word count (this chapter): 2,323
Betas: thatgirlsix and a-word-nerd; thank you both SO VERY MUCH! As always, any mistakes or missteps in this fic are mine alone.
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Annie Cresta, Coriolanus Snow, Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy, Plutarch Heavensbee, original characters
Warnings (this chapter): references to death and gore
Author's note: I have no idea how long this fic will be, but remember that it is the sequel to Treading Water, and I originally thought that one would run to about 80,000 words. My muse is still laughing about that one. It will follow the events of Mockingjay from both Annie's and Finnick's points-of-view, just as TW did, but it will also go well beyond the end of Mockingjay. I hope to be able to keep up with a posting schedule of about a chapter every two weeks, but I can't guarantee that, because I don't want to rush it, you know? Regardless, thank you, all of you, for reading and I hope you enjoy it.
Prologue
Annie’s left ankle throbs, heading up a long list of remnants of the force Shale used to pull her back down the stairs from the roof. Her ribs, elbows, and knees ache from repeated impact with the risers. She’s sure she broke the knuckles of her right hand when she punched him in the mouth, just before the Peacekeepers cuffed her wrists. She might have broken one of his teeth; she hopes she did. And yet every bit of physical discomfort and outright pain pales when she thinks of Martin Perch.
Lowering herself carefully to the floor beside his body, she reaches out to smooth the tawny hair back from his forehead. His eyes still stare at the ceiling, but they’re not his eyes anymore. He’s gone. She gently closes the lids and, with surprisingly steady hands, shifts his head to her lap so he looks as though he might be sleeping, if it weren’t for all the blood.
“Martin, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Guilt washes over her, even though she knows he made his own choices and those choices weren’t about her. It was pure, dumb luck that (an ally from District 1, a boy with whom they’d both trained, laughed, plotted, and planned) a Peacekeeper’s bullets struck him down, that (Erik) Martin hadn’t moved fast enough after (she killed the boy from 2 in self-defense) he shouted for Annie to run for the door. It still feels as though (Erik) Martin died for her. Annie shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to push the images from her Games away. At least this time, after losing her district partner, she’s still functional.
“He was a traitor.” Shale sits on the couch staring at her; metal cuffs circle his wrists, too. “He deserved to die,” he continues, armored in self-righteousness.
Annie glances past him to their matched pair of Peacekeeper guards standing at each side of the only door into the victors’ lounge, rifles in hand. The darkened glass of the visors covering their faces makes them look like some kind of insect. Laughter, razor sharp, wells up inside her. She tamps down on it, but it’s still there, waiting to slice from her if she lets her guard down.
“He was a good man,” she tells the victor from District 2. “And none of us deserved what we got.” Not the nightmares from the Games, and not the nightmare they’re living now. She wonders if she’ll ever get the chance to tell Elena Perch just how her husband died or if all Elena will have are Capitol lies.
But then, that’s all any of us has, isn’t it? Capitol lies? Lies that say it’s a good thing to come home a victor from the Hunger Games. That victors are heroes to their districts. Fame and fortune and adoration will follow them. They bring honor to their districts. They will emerge triumphant once they vanquish all of their enemies, and they won’t ever face such a trial again. None of it is anything but Capitol lies.
When had things inside her head shifted so much toward rebellion? Annie’s feelings now aren’t all because of Finnick. She suspects Haymitch and Mags and Martin himself, rebels all, contributed to this new attitude. But Mags and Martin are both dead now, and she doesn’t know where Haymitch is, only that he was ready to board a hovercraft on the roof of this very building when Shale ripped her away from him. Haymitch was going to take her to Finnick, he said, or at least he hoped.
Finnick.
“Oh, my love,” she murmurs, too low for either Shale or the Peacekeepers to hear, “where are you? Will I ever see you again?” Her last sight of him was in the jungle, beneath what they called the lightning tree, holding Beetee steady on his shoulders as the older man reached for a higher branch.
Annie jerks, her heart racing as the door opens for a Peacekeeper officer, helmetless and rank plain on his sleeve, to step into the victors’ lounge. The guards snap to attention. The man surveys the room, taking in the blood-spattered, bullet-pitted walls. His gaze briefly touches each lifeless body, both Peacekeeper and victor, lingering a bit longer on the living, first Shale and then Annie.
Over his shoulder, he says, “It’s safe to enter, Mr. President,” and then steps aside, his eyes fixed on Shale. Apparently he thinks Shale presents the greater threat to the safety and well-being of the President of Panem. Annie takes a deep breath to hold back more hysterical laughter. Her eyes begin to water with the effort so she closes them, but that only allows her to better see the awful images of the Peacekeepers on the stairs falling, dying, blossoms of blood blooming on their white armor as bullets from her gun tear into them. When the sweet scent of roses wafts its way toward her, Annie’s eyes snap open.
Coriolanus Snow pauses in the doorway, his eyes traveling nearly the same path as the Peacekeeper officer’s a moment before. When his gaze reaches Annie, he strolls over to her, careful not to step in any of the blood pooled on the carpet, but otherwise seeming relaxed. His face is expressionless except for his eyes. The rage she sees there sets her heart to pounding harder. She can barely breathe past the weight of his attention, past the stench of roses and blood and her own fear.
Snow holds out a hand; Annie stares at it, frozen. Martin’s head in her lap feels like an anchor dragging her down.
“I’m disappointed in you, Miss Cresta. You showed far more courage in my office a few days ago.”
“I’m not courageous.” If I were, I’d do to you what I did to the Peacekeeper who killed Martin. She can almost feel the knife sink into his throat, the hot blood flow over her hand and wrist, but she remains motionless, fighting nausea.
“Oh, but I think you’re a very brave young woman.” Snow pauses, considering her. “Though perhaps not wise.” He gestures toward the bodies on the stairs and bullet holes in the walls. “I’m told much of this was your handiwork, Annie.”
She shudders when he says her name. “I was terrified.”
Snow laughs. “I like you, Annie. It’s easy to see what Finnick saw in you.” His voice takes on a deceptively somber tone. “Such a tragedy that he didn’t survive the fall of the arena. I’m told electrocution is quite,” he glances at Martin’s blood-stained body before returning his attention to Annie, “painful.” He raises one eyebrow, meeting her gaze as he draws out the word.
Annie’s heart stops. Her lungs stop. Her world stops. The only thing that remains is the unvoiced scream trapped in her throat as the walls of the caldera shatter and the water they held back drags her into oblivion.
xXx
The first time Finnick woke, he lay on little more than a table with padding. Wires and tubes attached him to a monitor beside his cot. Katniss lay unconscious to his left on a cot just like his, her body covered to her shoulders by a sheet; Beetee was across the aisle. Both sported as many wires and tubes as Finnick himself. Of Johanna, Peeta, or Enobaria there was no sign, and Plutarch later confirmed Johanna and the others were Capitol prisoners.
And Annie? When Plutarch hadn’t responded, hadn’t even seemed to understand when Finnick asked about Annie was when Haymitch told him, without ever saying a word, that Snow had her. What was left of Finnick’s world came crashing down, taking him with it.
Reluctantly, he wakes again, but he doesn’t open his eyes. If he denies he’s awake at all, that this is anything other than another nightmare, then maybe it will go away. Everything is pretty surreal, after all. It feels like someone else’s life, not like it’s really happening to him. But he’s never had that kind of luck.
“She’s not going to take it well,” Haymitch is saying from Finnick’s left. The start of the observation is indistinct, unsteady. His voice isn’t muffled, exactly - more like he’s facing away or, given the slightly bouncy sound of it, like he’s walking toward where Finnick and the others lay.
“The boy’s alive,” Plutarch replies as if to say, what more could she want? His voice is clearer, closer, not moving at all. Realizing how close he is, Finnick suddenly doesn’t want to retreat back into that welcoming darkness. Finnick Odair has collected secrets for too long; it’s too ingrained. Even from friends and allies, tidbits of information, no matter how mundane, can be useful things. Finnick keeps his eyes closed, his muscles lax. “That’s more than I can say for Thaniel.”
A shoe scrapes on metal as Haymitch comes to a stop. “Or Acer and Pierce, Watt, Rae.” Haymitch pauses for a moment, and all Finnick hears is the sound of the monitors. “And Martin. He and Finnick were friends.”
Martin Perch? Dead? And Rae, too? Add that to Annie, held prisoner along with Johanna… The beeping of one of the monitors changes, grows faster, more erratic, until the rest of what the two men say fades into the background once more as Finnick tunes them out, holding himself alone in his grief. Snow has Annie, but where? And will he use her as a weapon against him? Or worse, will he simply use her?
The third, or possibly the fourth, time he wakes he’s alone, except for Katniss and Beetee. They all three still have wires and tubes sticking out of their bodies. Katniss mutters Peeta’s name in her sleep, the sound muffled by a plastic mask over her face. Oxygen, maybe? She pulls against straps holding her wrists and ankles to the cot. Beetee lies motionless. The only indication he’s still alive comes from the monitor displaying his heart rate and respiration. It’s too far away for Finnick to read, but he sees numbers change from time to time. Lifting his head enough to do even that much sets it to spinning, though, and he fades back out before his head hits the padding.
When Finnick wakes once more, simple bandages replace the tubes and wires, although the uncomfortable cots and his companions remain the same. His eyelids feel glued to eyes almost as dry as his mouth. He cautiously sits, folding his legs beneath the sheet. After rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands in a mostly futile attempt to clear his vision, he looks around.
Katniss appears to be asleep, no longer strapped to the bed. There’s a bandage around her right arm where her tracker used to be, evidence Johanna succeeded in that part of the plan. Beetee looks somehow shrunken beneath his white sheet, like a child rather than an adult. A bag of clear liquid hangs from a hook over his cot, and a tube leads from the bag to his right arm. There’s a bandage there that could as easily be covering the wound left when Finnick cut out Beetee’s tracker as holding the tube in place.
Gingerly, Finnick swings his legs over the side of his cot and sets his feet on the smooth metal floor. He shivers at the absence of warmth when the sheet falls away, leaving him wearing only a thin tunic and his legs bare. There’s a slight vibration rising up through his soles; he’s been on enough hovercrafts in his life to know the feel of the engines. He takes a tentative step, fairly certain if he falls, the medics will find him unconscious in a heap on the floor when they come to check on him. If they come to check on him. Other than Beetee’s monitors, it feels as though everyone has abandoned them.
Once he’s steady on his legs, Finnick quickly searches for something resembling clothes. He dons a set of gray shirt and pants that probably belong to one of the medics before leaving the room in search of Haymitch, the only person he feels he can trust. The shirt keeps sliding off one shoulder or the other, and the pants are too loose. Eventually he stops adjusting the shirt in favor of holding the pants up so they won’t slip down past his hips again.
He finds Haymitch and Plutarch Heavensbee eating eggs, fruit, and toast in a room at the end of a narrow corridor. Outside curved windows, he sees blue sky and the tops of trees in the distance, but he has no idea where they might be. At least that sky isn’t pink.
“Finnick.” Haymitch stands. “You’re looking dapper as always.”
“I would have said like death warmed over.” Plutarch spears a bite of what looks like pineapple as Haymitch shoves a chair toward Finnick.
Feeling weak as a kitten, he grabs the back of the chair, clinging to it for a moment before dropping heavily into it, his head still spinning. He’d laugh at the greetings they’d given him, so in keeping with their personalities, but he doesn’t think he can do it without choking on it.
“In a couple of weeks, this’ll be all the rage in the Capitol.” His voice wavers back and forth between gravelly and a strained whisper; either way, it’s not quite his own.
He needs to know just how bad things are, where Snow is holding Annie, where Johanna and Peeta and Enobaria landed, whether they died when Katniss shorted out the arena force field or whether they’re in Snow’s hands, too. He doesn’t know if his family did as he’d asked them, heading out to sea or if Snow has his Peacekeepers hunting them down. There are so many things he needs to know. Too many things. Instead, at least for now, he croaks out, “Maybe some water?”
Chapter 1 - Ash and Dust
Chapter title: Prologue
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Word count (this chapter): 2,323
Betas: thatgirlsix and a-word-nerd; thank you both SO VERY MUCH! As always, any mistakes or missteps in this fic are mine alone.
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Annie Cresta, Coriolanus Snow, Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy, Plutarch Heavensbee, original characters
Warnings (this chapter): references to death and gore
Author's note: I have no idea how long this fic will be, but remember that it is the sequel to Treading Water, and I originally thought that one would run to about 80,000 words. My muse is still laughing about that one. It will follow the events of Mockingjay from both Annie's and Finnick's points-of-view, just as TW did, but it will also go well beyond the end of Mockingjay. I hope to be able to keep up with a posting schedule of about a chapter every two weeks, but I can't guarantee that, because I don't want to rush it, you know? Regardless, thank you, all of you, for reading and I hope you enjoy it.
Prologue
Annie’s left ankle throbs, heading up a long list of remnants of the force Shale used to pull her back down the stairs from the roof. Her ribs, elbows, and knees ache from repeated impact with the risers. She’s sure she broke the knuckles of her right hand when she punched him in the mouth, just before the Peacekeepers cuffed her wrists. She might have broken one of his teeth; she hopes she did. And yet every bit of physical discomfort and outright pain pales when she thinks of Martin Perch.
Lowering herself carefully to the floor beside his body, she reaches out to smooth the tawny hair back from his forehead. His eyes still stare at the ceiling, but they’re not his eyes anymore. He’s gone. She gently closes the lids and, with surprisingly steady hands, shifts his head to her lap so he looks as though he might be sleeping, if it weren’t for all the blood.
“Martin, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Guilt washes over her, even though she knows he made his own choices and those choices weren’t about her. It was pure, dumb luck that (an ally from District 1, a boy with whom they’d both trained, laughed, plotted, and planned) a Peacekeeper’s bullets struck him down, that (Erik) Martin hadn’t moved fast enough after (she killed the boy from 2 in self-defense) he shouted for Annie to run for the door. It still feels as though (Erik) Martin died for her. Annie shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to push the images from her Games away. At least this time, after losing her district partner, she’s still functional.
“He was a traitor.” Shale sits on the couch staring at her; metal cuffs circle his wrists, too. “He deserved to die,” he continues, armored in self-righteousness.
Annie glances past him to their matched pair of Peacekeeper guards standing at each side of the only door into the victors’ lounge, rifles in hand. The darkened glass of the visors covering their faces makes them look like some kind of insect. Laughter, razor sharp, wells up inside her. She tamps down on it, but it’s still there, waiting to slice from her if she lets her guard down.
“He was a good man,” she tells the victor from District 2. “And none of us deserved what we got.” Not the nightmares from the Games, and not the nightmare they’re living now. She wonders if she’ll ever get the chance to tell Elena Perch just how her husband died or if all Elena will have are Capitol lies.
But then, that’s all any of us has, isn’t it? Capitol lies? Lies that say it’s a good thing to come home a victor from the Hunger Games. That victors are heroes to their districts. Fame and fortune and adoration will follow them. They bring honor to their districts. They will emerge triumphant once they vanquish all of their enemies, and they won’t ever face such a trial again. None of it is anything but Capitol lies.
When had things inside her head shifted so much toward rebellion? Annie’s feelings now aren’t all because of Finnick. She suspects Haymitch and Mags and Martin himself, rebels all, contributed to this new attitude. But Mags and Martin are both dead now, and she doesn’t know where Haymitch is, only that he was ready to board a hovercraft on the roof of this very building when Shale ripped her away from him. Haymitch was going to take her to Finnick, he said, or at least he hoped.
Finnick.
“Oh, my love,” she murmurs, too low for either Shale or the Peacekeepers to hear, “where are you? Will I ever see you again?” Her last sight of him was in the jungle, beneath what they called the lightning tree, holding Beetee steady on his shoulders as the older man reached for a higher branch.
Annie jerks, her heart racing as the door opens for a Peacekeeper officer, helmetless and rank plain on his sleeve, to step into the victors’ lounge. The guards snap to attention. The man surveys the room, taking in the blood-spattered, bullet-pitted walls. His gaze briefly touches each lifeless body, both Peacekeeper and victor, lingering a bit longer on the living, first Shale and then Annie.
Over his shoulder, he says, “It’s safe to enter, Mr. President,” and then steps aside, his eyes fixed on Shale. Apparently he thinks Shale presents the greater threat to the safety and well-being of the President of Panem. Annie takes a deep breath to hold back more hysterical laughter. Her eyes begin to water with the effort so she closes them, but that only allows her to better see the awful images of the Peacekeepers on the stairs falling, dying, blossoms of blood blooming on their white armor as bullets from her gun tear into them. When the sweet scent of roses wafts its way toward her, Annie’s eyes snap open.
Coriolanus Snow pauses in the doorway, his eyes traveling nearly the same path as the Peacekeeper officer’s a moment before. When his gaze reaches Annie, he strolls over to her, careful not to step in any of the blood pooled on the carpet, but otherwise seeming relaxed. His face is expressionless except for his eyes. The rage she sees there sets her heart to pounding harder. She can barely breathe past the weight of his attention, past the stench of roses and blood and her own fear.
Snow holds out a hand; Annie stares at it, frozen. Martin’s head in her lap feels like an anchor dragging her down.
“I’m disappointed in you, Miss Cresta. You showed far more courage in my office a few days ago.”
“I’m not courageous.” If I were, I’d do to you what I did to the Peacekeeper who killed Martin. She can almost feel the knife sink into his throat, the hot blood flow over her hand and wrist, but she remains motionless, fighting nausea.
“Oh, but I think you’re a very brave young woman.” Snow pauses, considering her. “Though perhaps not wise.” He gestures toward the bodies on the stairs and bullet holes in the walls. “I’m told much of this was your handiwork, Annie.”
She shudders when he says her name. “I was terrified.”
Snow laughs. “I like you, Annie. It’s easy to see what Finnick saw in you.” His voice takes on a deceptively somber tone. “Such a tragedy that he didn’t survive the fall of the arena. I’m told electrocution is quite,” he glances at Martin’s blood-stained body before returning his attention to Annie, “painful.” He raises one eyebrow, meeting her gaze as he draws out the word.
Annie’s heart stops. Her lungs stop. Her world stops. The only thing that remains is the unvoiced scream trapped in her throat as the walls of the caldera shatter and the water they held back drags her into oblivion.
xXx
The first time Finnick woke, he lay on little more than a table with padding. Wires and tubes attached him to a monitor beside his cot. Katniss lay unconscious to his left on a cot just like his, her body covered to her shoulders by a sheet; Beetee was across the aisle. Both sported as many wires and tubes as Finnick himself. Of Johanna, Peeta, or Enobaria there was no sign, and Plutarch later confirmed Johanna and the others were Capitol prisoners.
And Annie? When Plutarch hadn’t responded, hadn’t even seemed to understand when Finnick asked about Annie was when Haymitch told him, without ever saying a word, that Snow had her. What was left of Finnick’s world came crashing down, taking him with it.
Reluctantly, he wakes again, but he doesn’t open his eyes. If he denies he’s awake at all, that this is anything other than another nightmare, then maybe it will go away. Everything is pretty surreal, after all. It feels like someone else’s life, not like it’s really happening to him. But he’s never had that kind of luck.
“She’s not going to take it well,” Haymitch is saying from Finnick’s left. The start of the observation is indistinct, unsteady. His voice isn’t muffled, exactly - more like he’s facing away or, given the slightly bouncy sound of it, like he’s walking toward where Finnick and the others lay.
“The boy’s alive,” Plutarch replies as if to say, what more could she want? His voice is clearer, closer, not moving at all. Realizing how close he is, Finnick suddenly doesn’t want to retreat back into that welcoming darkness. Finnick Odair has collected secrets for too long; it’s too ingrained. Even from friends and allies, tidbits of information, no matter how mundane, can be useful things. Finnick keeps his eyes closed, his muscles lax. “That’s more than I can say for Thaniel.”
A shoe scrapes on metal as Haymitch comes to a stop. “Or Acer and Pierce, Watt, Rae.” Haymitch pauses for a moment, and all Finnick hears is the sound of the monitors. “And Martin. He and Finnick were friends.”
Martin Perch? Dead? And Rae, too? Add that to Annie, held prisoner along with Johanna… The beeping of one of the monitors changes, grows faster, more erratic, until the rest of what the two men say fades into the background once more as Finnick tunes them out, holding himself alone in his grief. Snow has Annie, but where? And will he use her as a weapon against him? Or worse, will he simply use her?
The third, or possibly the fourth, time he wakes he’s alone, except for Katniss and Beetee. They all three still have wires and tubes sticking out of their bodies. Katniss mutters Peeta’s name in her sleep, the sound muffled by a plastic mask over her face. Oxygen, maybe? She pulls against straps holding her wrists and ankles to the cot. Beetee lies motionless. The only indication he’s still alive comes from the monitor displaying his heart rate and respiration. It’s too far away for Finnick to read, but he sees numbers change from time to time. Lifting his head enough to do even that much sets it to spinning, though, and he fades back out before his head hits the padding.
When Finnick wakes once more, simple bandages replace the tubes and wires, although the uncomfortable cots and his companions remain the same. His eyelids feel glued to eyes almost as dry as his mouth. He cautiously sits, folding his legs beneath the sheet. After rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands in a mostly futile attempt to clear his vision, he looks around.
Katniss appears to be asleep, no longer strapped to the bed. There’s a bandage around her right arm where her tracker used to be, evidence Johanna succeeded in that part of the plan. Beetee looks somehow shrunken beneath his white sheet, like a child rather than an adult. A bag of clear liquid hangs from a hook over his cot, and a tube leads from the bag to his right arm. There’s a bandage there that could as easily be covering the wound left when Finnick cut out Beetee’s tracker as holding the tube in place.
Gingerly, Finnick swings his legs over the side of his cot and sets his feet on the smooth metal floor. He shivers at the absence of warmth when the sheet falls away, leaving him wearing only a thin tunic and his legs bare. There’s a slight vibration rising up through his soles; he’s been on enough hovercrafts in his life to know the feel of the engines. He takes a tentative step, fairly certain if he falls, the medics will find him unconscious in a heap on the floor when they come to check on him. If they come to check on him. Other than Beetee’s monitors, it feels as though everyone has abandoned them.
Once he’s steady on his legs, Finnick quickly searches for something resembling clothes. He dons a set of gray shirt and pants that probably belong to one of the medics before leaving the room in search of Haymitch, the only person he feels he can trust. The shirt keeps sliding off one shoulder or the other, and the pants are too loose. Eventually he stops adjusting the shirt in favor of holding the pants up so they won’t slip down past his hips again.
He finds Haymitch and Plutarch Heavensbee eating eggs, fruit, and toast in a room at the end of a narrow corridor. Outside curved windows, he sees blue sky and the tops of trees in the distance, but he has no idea where they might be. At least that sky isn’t pink.
“Finnick.” Haymitch stands. “You’re looking dapper as always.”
“I would have said like death warmed over.” Plutarch spears a bite of what looks like pineapple as Haymitch shoves a chair toward Finnick.
Feeling weak as a kitten, he grabs the back of the chair, clinging to it for a moment before dropping heavily into it, his head still spinning. He’d laugh at the greetings they’d given him, so in keeping with their personalities, but he doesn’t think he can do it without choking on it.
“In a couple of weeks, this’ll be all the rage in the Capitol.” His voice wavers back and forth between gravelly and a strained whisper; either way, it’s not quite his own.
He needs to know just how bad things are, where Snow is holding Annie, where Johanna and Peeta and Enobaria landed, whether they died when Katniss shorted out the arena force field or whether they’re in Snow’s hands, too. He doesn’t know if his family did as he’d asked them, heading out to sea or if Snow has his Peacekeepers hunting them down. There are so many things he needs to know. Too many things. Instead, at least for now, he croaks out, “Maybe some water?”
Chapter 1 - Ash and Dust