Scylla and Charybdis [4/9] (The Hunger Games, Finnick/Annie)
Chapter Four! In which all of Finnick's attempts to make things better make things worse.
Title: Scylla and Charybdis [4/9] ( 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, ~5000.
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 Four: Ariadne at Naxos The victor of the seventieth Hunger Games emerges, but did she really win?
It’s not the nicest cafe I’ve eaten at, but it’s a quiet one. Quiet if you don’t count the televisions, at least, stationed in every corner, all of them tuned to the Games. They show a barrage of clips: the last earthquake, the cracks spreading through the dam, the water bursting through and emptying into the ravine, burying everything beneath it. They pan to the Arena briefly, and it reminds me of some of the cliffsides back home. A few scrubby trees here and there, chunks of rocks jutting up from the sea, and nothing else. Even the forest has choked on salt water. The commentators run simulations of the earthquake, bring up three-dimensional blueprints of the dam, replay the drowning of each of the dead tributes in slow motion. A waste, most of them seem to agree.
I’ve ordered coffee, the strongest they have, but no matter how tightly I clutch the mug my fingers won’t thaw. And no matter how much sugar I add, I can’t seem to drink it.
Johanna drinks hers black. “This is ridiculous.”
“Which part?”
“The part where it’s any more of a waste than usual,” she says.
I glance at the waiters, but none of them seem to be listening; they’re as fixed on the screens as the rest of the Capitol, and no doubt whatever they’re whispering has something to do with the Games. A few of them try to sneak looks at me and Johanna, which is the problem with trying to find any privacy at all in this city, really. Still, I think if I stayed in the victor’s lounge another day, I’d have stolen one of Johanna’s axes and smashed every screen.
“They don’t like senseless death,” I say dryly, sniff the coffee. My stomach rises in protest, and I set the mug down again.
Johanna laughs and shakes her head. “Exactly.”
They’re broadcasting Telluria’s death again, interspersed with a montage of clips from her finest moments in the Arena. I snort.
“I didn’t know,” Johanna says. Quieter. More to her coffee than to me.
I shrug. “It’s hardly a secret. Nobody usually talks about it, that’s all.”
“No, I mean--I should have known.”
“It’s your first year as a victor,” I say, not unkindly. “You have a lot to learn about the Capitol.”
“I’ve got some firsthand knowledge,” she says, and takes a long drag of her coffee. The steam beads on her cheeks. “So I should have known.”
Now isn’t the time to ask, so I don’t. I turn my cup in my hands, watch the liquid slosh inside.
“And I...well. Yeah.” She sets her mug down. “Can’t imagine it’s much fun when we do talk about it, so I won’t.”
I’ll accept the apology that’s meant to be. (I think it’s an apology, at least.) “Nothing’s going to be fun in the Capitol for the next few days.”
“Yeah, well, my time in the remake room after you had your way with me wasn’t exactly a walk in the forest.”
I smile. “Why, Johanna, you make it sound indecent.”
“Just giving them something to talk about. After all, the Games are kind of boring.” She raises her voice pointedly and rolls her eyes at the screens, at the waiters listening in. “They’ll want to end them quickly after a disappointment like this.”
I close my eyes. It’s down to Annie and the boy from District 6. Axel, I think his name is. I don’t know why I bothered to learn it now. If Annie kills him, I won’t need to remember. If he kills Annie, I won’t be able to forget. “Nobody wants to wait long,” I say. I think of the funds I’ve drawn from Annie’s and Varin’s sponsors, safe in the account I set up for her, but there’s no use tapping into it when no one seems to know or care where she is. When was the last time she ate? I never caught her fishing on-camera, or scavenging for food above the dam, and I’ve only managed to send her bread twice, when she’s been still and lucid. One of the loaves soaked through when it landed. A waste.
“You don’t want to wait either,” Johanna says.
“Nobody includes me.” I check the screen again. Another simulation of the dam. Is there nothing else to show? I grind the mug into the table. “I just want to bring her home.”
Johanna stares at me, biting her lip and cocking her head to the side like she doesn’t know whether to roll her eyes or smile. “Looks like you might get a chance.”
I could say I told you, but it wouldn’t do anything. Instead, I nod.
“That what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That? That creature in the water? And what Snow’s gonna do to her for winning a ruined Games? You want that?”
I abandon the coffee and rest my elbows on the table, clutch my head. I can’t think about that now. Johanna doesn’t understand how much I can’t think about that now. And now that she’s mentioned it, of course, I can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop the awful stream of images running through my mind, Snow’s voice and his blood-red mouth and his roses sucking the ocean dry and him touching her, telling her what she has to do to make up for all the people she disappointed--
“Not to mention what the rest of the country’s gonna do to her if she makes it out. Her or Axel, it doesn’t matter. You remember who won that year everyone froze to death? I don’t. He was from my District and I don’t. No one wants a victor by chance.”
“It’s better if no one wants you,” I say. “Easier. She won’t have to go back to the Capitol. They’ll let her stay in District Four. They’ll want her to.” Please, I think, not that anyone can hear. “But she can’t go back if she--”
My throat locks before I can say it.
“I don’t care,” I say, look at the table because I can’t look at Johanna now. “I don’t care what I have to do, I’ll do it. I just want to bring her home.”
Her mug scrapes across the table as she picks it up again. “You’re a piece of work, Finnick Odair.”
I look up.
Looks like she didn’t choose to smile. She’s shaking her head at me, all but calling me pathetic. I don’t care.
A waiter clears his throat. “Mister Odair? You have a phone call.” He uncaps a silver tray. The phone is sitting on a bed of lace. I don’t have time to scoff at it before I pick it up.
“Hello?”
“She’s sighted him,” a Gamemaker says. I don’t know which, but I do know how they’d find me. “It’s down to Annie and Axel. We expect a standoff within the next two hours.”
“I’m on the hovercraft,” I say.
“That isn’t usually sanctioned--”
“I’m on the hovercraft,” I repeat, and the tone of my voice brooks no argument.
I can hear the Gamemaker smile, and another laugh. “It leaves from the roof of the training center.”
“Good. I’ll be there.”
***
Annie claws her way up the pile of shattered concrete and snapped trees, rung by rung. The debris has gathered at a bend in the swollen river. The water level’s receded a few yards in the last half a day, so Axel is lying exactly where he washed up, thrown over a split log like he’s so much driftwood. It’s taken Annie about half an hour to get herself to his side. He’s barely conscious. She’s barely alive. I can see how much effort it takes her to breathe, how her ribs are ready to burst from her skin.
She grabs the nearest rock, about the size of her doubled fists, and bashes Axel’s head in. His cannon fires but she doesn’t stop.
When the ladder from the hovercraft freezes her in place, she’s still screaming.
***
I barrel past the security officers guarding the glass wall between me and Annie. They grab the back of my jacket and try to haul me back, but I throw them off. “I need to see her,” I explain, and because they refuse to listen I have to repeat it, louder.
“We don’t know what she’ll do to you,” a doctor says.
“She’s starving, dehydrated, and half my size,” I snap. “I’ll be fine. I don’t care. I need to see her.”
“I know you must feel responsible, but--”
“You’re right. I do. Let me through.” I manage not to add or I’ll slam you into the glass and steal your passkey. Barely.
He doesn’t look like he will. But he sees what I see, that she’s shivering in a corner of the hold, curled up and unresponsive as the ladder finally lets her go. “I’m not responsible for you,” the doctor says. “See if you can calm her down.”
It’s not polite to elbow my way past him, but I do anyway. “Annie,” I say.
She’s covering her ears. Axel’s blood drips down her arms, clings to her hair with the salt and the brine, weighs it down and pulls it out strand by fragile strand. I kneel beside her, put my hands over hers, even if they’re shutting me out. “Annie. Annie, I’m here. I’ve been here. And you’re here too.”
One last tremor runs through her, and she stops shaking. Her breath rattles, like it has to force its way out of her throat. She falls on her side, wraps her arms around my knees, and I catch myself on my hand before she pulls me over. She’s sobbing but not crying. There’s nothing left in her to cry with.
“The Games are over,” I tell her, keep my voice soft. “You’re going to go home soon.”
She shakes her head violently, holds tighter. Her teeth grind, her breath hissing through them.
“You won,” I say. “You never have to go back again. That’s the rule. You never have to go back.”
“It left with me,” she whispers, barely a sound at all.
“We’re flying away from it now,” I say, but I know what she means.
Her hands are shaking now, so I find one, hold her, intertwine our fingers. She isn’t wearing the token anymore. I trace our thumbs together anyway, remind her that it was there.
“When did it fall off?” I ask her.
“I don’t know.” Her breath is even shallower now, her chest barely moving at all against my knees. “Finnick, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know--”
“It’s all right,” I tell her, stroke her shoulders until they stop shaking. “I lost my token, too, when I fell into the river. But it didn’t mean the person who gave it to me wasn’t watching.”
She calms down, or at least she quiets down. No more words, no more ragged breaths. The doctors start advancing in and I wave them off, jerk my head to the side to say get out.
“You can sleep now,” I tell her. “I’ll keep watching you then, too. I’ll be right here.” She doesn’t smile, but she does relax, and her grip on my hand loosens but doesn’t fall away. I keep holding hers, though, stroke her thumb, twine our fingers together, remind her I’m here.
The doctors seem to swarm in as soon as she falls away. But they ignore me, so I find a chair and watch them work.
***
The flood from the Arena returns and Annie’s swept up in it again. I can see her this time, sometimes, when she manages to keep her head above the water, manages to get a few gasps of air before the waves suck her under again. And then I’m beneath them, racing against the current and the whirlpools, shouldering through the chaos and debris. Annie’s only a few feet away. Her hair fans out, twines around her arms, knots that don’t release. She’s reaching for me. She’s fighting the current for me. I kick harder to close the gap between us--
--and vines shoot up from the riverbed and drag her down.
“Finnick?” A hand on my shoulder shakes me awake, and I’m out of my chair in a flash, shaking off that hand and gripping whoever dared by the shoulder and flinging him into the floor before I realize it’s Drusus.
“Sorry,” I say, and help him up.
He takes a couple of deep breaths and stares at me like he’s the one who’s sorry. Then, panting, he gets back to his knees. “Never shake a sleeping victor,” he mutters. “They keep telling us that. Anyway. She’s at a functional weight now.”
“Good.” Part of me wants to sag back into my chair, but I can’t sit. I look down at Annie. Apparently my throwing Drusus to the floor didn’t wake her up. She’s less fitful than she was yesterday and the day before, her head relaxed into the pillow and her skin flushed warm and smooth. Her breathing is even, but faster than Mags’s was when I last saw her. Annie talks in her sleep. Pleas. Entreaties. My name. Varin’s. A few names I don’t know. And she covers her ears when she’s awake enough to move her arms. But now, she’s asleep, palms open on the bed, blankets still and tucked neatly around her.
“They’ve scheduled her postgame interview for tomorrow night,” Drusus says.
“They couldn’t push it back?” Then again, it might be best to get this whole thing over with. I bet the Capitol agrees. These haven’t been their most popular Games.
“I think they want to wash their hands of this as quickly as possible. It might not even be mandatory viewing.”
“That might be best for her.”
“But we’ve still got to get her onstage. Is she going to be docile when she wakes up?”
“Docile,” I repeat, and try to get the taste of the word out of my mouth. “She’s not a cow, Drusus.”
He holds up his hands by way of apology. “I don’t think Flickerman wants any bull.”
There are things I could say to that, but I don’t. It’s not about me. “We’ll figure something out. Flickerman will go easy on her, you’ll make her look her best, I’ll--I’ll talk to her when she wakes up. See what she can manage.” She’s not in the Arena anymore. Maybe she’ll recognize that, maybe she won’t need to hide. Maybe.
“She won’t want to see her own Games,” Drusus says.
“Nobody does,” I say. “They might at first, but after...”
Drusus shakes his head. “I can make her look like anything you want me to. But I think you’re the one who has to make her carry herself like a human being.”
I work my throat, close my eyes. “Give her something she’ll feel safe in. Forget the sea ghost thing, it doesn’t matter anymore. She doesn’t have to win them over, she just has to make it through the interview.”
Drusus nods, and looks her over. “But she should still look like what she is.”
***
Drowned. Not a sea ghost, not someone who’s come up from the water; someone who’s gone under.
The dress itself is simple, thin and angular layers of green. No jewels, no trim, only the light fabric, falling in corners past her knees. Her feet and arms are bare, except for thin beaded bracelets, some of the same from the interview gown. Instead of gold, there are flowers tangled haphazardly in her hair, romarin and yellow poppies and one gold and white blossom that Drusus calls a narcissus, bowed over one ear.
I can smell them when she clings to me.
“You won’t be up there for long,” I say. She doesn’t let go of my arms. I hold hers, too, stroke the inside of her forearm with my thumb. Maybe I shouldn’t. I can’t do this for her onstage, after all, she’s going to have to brave the interview on her own. But she grips me like she’s trying to make sure I’m real, trying to make sure I’m here, and I can’t push her away. “A few hours, and most of that will be the highlight reel of the games, and you don’t have to say anything during that part.”
“I don’t want to hear them.” She doesn’t hesitate to say it. “You said it was over.”
“It is. Mostly.” My stomach ties itself in knots. “Listen, Annie, nobody wants to see their Games. Just remember that what you see on camera isn’t always the truth, all right?”
“Like you aren’t you.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Like you aren’t you now.”
I do step back from her then, but she follows. “Annie, I’m trying to help you.”
Her arms hang at her sides, but she still in my space, close enough to touch. She doesn’t. She raises her eyes, and real anger lurks behind the sadness, like the waves withdrawing from a shipwreck.
“I know you don’t want to do this,” I say quietly. “Believe me. I know. If it helps, look at me while you’re up there. Don’t worry about the rest of them. Just look at me. Try to talk to me. Can you do that?”
She hangs her head. “If I can find you,” she says, and turns away, holding herself for warmth.
“I’ll be in the front row,” I say.
She shakes her head, no, and a stagehand comes to take her to the hydraulic underneath the stage. I watch her leave, her green dress disappearing on the horizon.
Drusus sighs. “That wasn’t the best idea.”
“What, letting her go?”
“No. Telling her to watch you.”
“I wanted to give her something familiar,” I say, check my hair in one of the mirrors, pull one of the strands in front of my forehead.
“The world already thinks she wants you.”
“Her and half the Capitol.”
“And they’ll think you’re encouraging her.”
The room chills enough that I wish I had a shirt on. “I’m not,” I say. “Drusus, you know I’m not, she doesn’t even want me like that.”
“I’m just telling you what I see, and what they see. What they see is my life, you know. I have to know what they’re thinking. And I do.”
How much more am I going to screw this up? I cover my eyes, push my palms into my temples, rake my fingers along my scalp. Drusus protests about how I’m undoing all the work he did on my hair, but I only half-listen. “What do I do now?” I ask.
“Stop mussing your hair, for one. And as for her? Hope it’s not too late.”
She’s already in the waiting area under the stage. I can’t run to her and tell her not to look at me, to look at anything but me. “I have to pretend I don’t care,” I say, and wish I could claw my own throat out. “I have to let them think she’s just a girl with a crush. They’ll understand that.”
“And let’s hope it still helps her.”
“For now? No. In the long run? Probably.” I sigh, find the nearest chair and sink into it. “It’s a good thing she doesn’t actually want me.”
Drusus nods, and takes my elbow, pulls me out of that chair. No rest for the wicked. “Come on, let’s get to our places.”
***
She curls up in the corner of Caesar Flickerman’s couch, barely larger than the decorative cushions, knees drawn to her chest.
“Oh, Annie,” Caesar says, reaching out a hand to her, and I want to rip it clean off. “It must have been awful for you in there. Where’s that witty girl from two weeks ago?”
“She’s in the Arena,” Annie says. The microphone picks that up, clear and crisp. I count the minutes until this ends.
Her remark gets a few laughs, out there in the crowd. To Caesar’s credit, he doesn’t laugh, only smiles and puts his hand on her shoulder. “But you’re out here. You made it through. Well, I remember what you said, that you’re good at using what other people can’t! And that’s what kept you afloat. Are you surprised?”
Annie looks out into the audience and finds me right where I said I’d be, in front. The cameras train on my face. I don’t have time to freeze. The smile I give her is the wrong kind of encouraging. Indulgent, curling up at the corners, like she’s the most precious little thing.
“No,” she whispers. It’s not an answer to Caesar’s question. Her breath comes short and she retreats, wraps around herself and hides her face in her skirts.
The cameras catch me from all angles, pin me in place, freeze me. There’s nothing I can do.
“No?” Caesar asks, and now he laughs, cuing the audience to do the same. “I guess we’ll all be haunted by you a while longer.”
Someone behind me chuckles, too shrill to be soft. “You’d think every mother would have warned her children by now,” that person whispers, loudly enough for the cameras to pick up. “Never give your heart to Finnick Odair.”
Someone else clucks. “Poor dear.”
I pretend I haven’t heard. That the entire nation hasn’t.
“But you’ve got ghosts of your own,” Caesar says, taking the laughter down. “At least you avenged your District partner. I have to admit, my heart was in my throat when I saw your hand clawing out of the river. Can you tell me a little about that, Annie?”
Her face is muffled against her knees, but the microphones pick up her voice. “It was too loud.”
I could almost feel sorry for Caesar, he’s trying. Almost.
“Too loud?”
“Everything was sound. Everything was the river. I was too. That’s all.”
Caesar laughs and ruffles her shoulder. “You were the river! Well, I guess that means you got much more screen time than I thought you did.”
The audience is startled into laughing with him, but only for so long.
Annie lifts her head and finds me again. Her makeup is smudged, shimmering under her eyes.
I look away from her and towards the first camera I see, lower my eyes and shake my head oh so slightly and smile like I’m holding a laugh in. I don’t check to see how it plays onscreen. I can guess, and if I were in Annie’s shoes I’d leap off the stage and pluck my own eyes out. I almost hope she does.
Her hands come up to her face. For an instant, I think she will.
She covers her ears, and Caesar can’t coax another word out of her for the rest of the interview.
***
At the feast afterwards, Snow comes up to me and says, “You handled that well.”
It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to smash my glass into the nearest table and carve into his face with the shards.
***
The cameras aren’t waiting for us when the train pulls into the station, only her family. I wonder if this means they’ll cancel the Victory Tour, but this is what the Games are really about, isn’t it? To show us all we’ve lost.
I have to carry her off the train. She hasn’t spoken a word to me since we boarded, spent the entire train ride curled up and facing away from the window. When the train stopped and I came to fetch her, she was awake but unresponsive, and I had to loop her arms around my shoulders to move her off before the train returned to the Capitol. Her eyes are closed now, but I think she’s awake. Her chest rises and falls erratically, hitches against mine.
She told me about her family before she went into the Arena. They’re all at the station to meet her, her mother and father, her uncle, her sister. The man that rushes forward to help me carry her is probably her father, tall, with long thick arms. Her mother isn’t far behind. Annie doesn’t take after her physically; her mother’s strong all through and almost as tall as her husband. “Annie. Annie, dear, you’re home.”
Annie buries her face in my shoulder.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Finnick.”
“We know who you are,” her father says. “And we can’t thank you enough.”
They’re the first people who have. “I promised her I’d bring her home,” I say, my mouth dry. “She told me about you.”
Her sister watches me solemnly, eyes wide. She looks horrified.
“You’re Emily, right?” I give Annie the gentlest shake I can. “Annie, Emily’s here. Emily and your uncle John and your mother and father.”
When Annie turns away from my shoulder, her father’s face is the first thing she sees. He has tears in his eyes, and she uncurls an arm from around my neck to reach for them. He catches her hand, and then her mother’s hands clasp over both of them. “Annie,” her father says, “I’m so proud of you.” Annie shivers.
“Can you stand on your own?” I ask her quietly.
She shakes her head, turns her face into my chest again. Not now.
“Should I hand you over to your father?”
Her breath catches in her throat, and she’s close enough that I feel it too. She pulls her hand out of their tangle and throws it over me. I feel like she’s trying to make herself smaller in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her parents. “I think she wants me to carry her a little while longer. If that’s all right.”
Her mother nods, and once he’s seen that, her father backs off as well. “We’re in your debt,” she says. “I can understand if she needs you now more than us.”
I’m home. I’m close to the sea again--I can smell the salt in the air, taste it if I breathe in deeply enough. I shouldn’t feel like I’m sinking. “Have you finished moving?” I ask.
Her mother shakes her head, no. “The Victor’s Wharf is farther south than we’re used to,” she explains. “I wanted to wait for her, to make sure she’d be okay.”
“I’ll help get her set up. I have lots of cousins, they’ll lend a hand, too. And my family’s right next door, if you need anything else...” I trail off. It hurts to look at the sky after so long in the Capitol. Nothing stands between me and the sun here, and its heat weighs heavy on my face, the back of my neck, my arms, makes all the water in me rise to the surface. Annie’s curls hang limp with sweat. I should get her something to drink soon.
“Same goes for you,” her uncle says, taking a couple of steps nearer. “If there’s anything we can do for you, after this, we will.”
I’m about to thank him, when I hear Emily hiss.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes at me. They’re lighter than her sister’s, and she has heavy eyebrows like her mother. “No, thank you. I don’t want to come down here at all,” she says.
Her father and her uncle reprimand her. “Emily!”
“I don’t.” She pulls herself behind her uncle’s legs, barely looking out at us. “That’s not Annie. She’ll kill us in our sleep.”
“I haven’t killed anyone in their sleep,” I say. The sweat on my arms chills. “She won’t, either.”
“No, you tied them up instead. Like they were just fish.”
I see Pacifica’s traps spring into action, tangling around her ankles and chest as rocks swing down from the cliffsides. I remember throwing my net over her, how she tore open her hands on the bones and vines, struggling to get free. My father caught a dolphin once. Pacifica screamed the same. I’d close my eyes, but that won’t make it go away. The images won’t stop racing, faster and faster until my vision blurs, and I know better than to wonder from what.
“Emily Cresta!” Annie’s mother pulls away and storms down the stairs, cowing Emily into shadow. “You watch that mouth, or you won’t be talking out of it for a week.”
“I want Annie back!”
Annie cringes and clings to my neck. Her ear is pressed to the collar of my jacket and she’s trying to cover the other, drown everything out.
“You’re here,” I tell her, nudge her hand away with my cheek. “You can smell the sea, can’t you? Listen. There’s a boat docking, it’s blowing its horn, and there are gulls circling over us. Listen.”
Her hand is shaking when it touches my cheek. “It’s too far,” she whispers. It’s the first thing she’s said to me since before the interview. “Can we be closer?”
“We can.” I clear my throat, motion Annie’s father and uncle closer with a tilt of my head. “She wants to see the ocean,” I say.
“I’ll come with you,” her uncle says, and her father nods and turns to deal with Emily, still screaming about wanting her sister back.
We walk towards the shore, Emily’s shouts at our backs; they’ve faded by the time we reach the pier. There’s a stretch of beach between that and the nearest jetty, and I kneel on the shore where the sand darkens, let Annie’s heels touch down. Her uncle is hanging back, watching us, but the tide’s so loud that I still feel like Annie and I are alone.
I tell Annie to breathe.
She lifts her head from my collar enough to sniff at the air, then gulps and shudders, breathing harder than I’ve seen her do in days. “It’s all right,” I say, “here,” and dip her fingers into the water. It laps at them, licks them clean. She grasps at the sand, holds it as tight as she’d been holding me. I let her out of my lap and the skirt Drusus gave her soaks through when a wave rolls in, covers us both to the waist and withdraws.
I don’t know how long we sit there, letting the tide drag us out, inch by inch. But by the time the rest of her family has gathered behind us, and her sister is walking through the waves to touch Annie’s hair and say she’s sorry, the sun’s reached the water’s edge on the horizon.
---
--
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Title: Scylla and Charybdis [4/9] ( 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, ~5000.
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 Four: Ariadne at Naxos The victor of the seventieth Hunger Games emerges, but did she really win?
It’s not the nicest cafe I’ve eaten at, but it’s a quiet one. Quiet if you don’t count the televisions, at least, stationed in every corner, all of them tuned to the Games. They show a barrage of clips: the last earthquake, the cracks spreading through the dam, the water bursting through and emptying into the ravine, burying everything beneath it. They pan to the Arena briefly, and it reminds me of some of the cliffsides back home. A few scrubby trees here and there, chunks of rocks jutting up from the sea, and nothing else. Even the forest has choked on salt water. The commentators run simulations of the earthquake, bring up three-dimensional blueprints of the dam, replay the drowning of each of the dead tributes in slow motion. A waste, most of them seem to agree.
I’ve ordered coffee, the strongest they have, but no matter how tightly I clutch the mug my fingers won’t thaw. And no matter how much sugar I add, I can’t seem to drink it.
Johanna drinks hers black. “This is ridiculous.”
“Which part?”
“The part where it’s any more of a waste than usual,” she says.
I glance at the waiters, but none of them seem to be listening; they’re as fixed on the screens as the rest of the Capitol, and no doubt whatever they’re whispering has something to do with the Games. A few of them try to sneak looks at me and Johanna, which is the problem with trying to find any privacy at all in this city, really. Still, I think if I stayed in the victor’s lounge another day, I’d have stolen one of Johanna’s axes and smashed every screen.
“They don’t like senseless death,” I say dryly, sniff the coffee. My stomach rises in protest, and I set the mug down again.
Johanna laughs and shakes her head. “Exactly.”
They’re broadcasting Telluria’s death again, interspersed with a montage of clips from her finest moments in the Arena. I snort.
“I didn’t know,” Johanna says. Quieter. More to her coffee than to me.
I shrug. “It’s hardly a secret. Nobody usually talks about it, that’s all.”
“No, I mean--I should have known.”
“It’s your first year as a victor,” I say, not unkindly. “You have a lot to learn about the Capitol.”
“I’ve got some firsthand knowledge,” she says, and takes a long drag of her coffee. The steam beads on her cheeks. “So I should have known.”
Now isn’t the time to ask, so I don’t. I turn my cup in my hands, watch the liquid slosh inside.
“And I...well. Yeah.” She sets her mug down. “Can’t imagine it’s much fun when we do talk about it, so I won’t.”
I’ll accept the apology that’s meant to be. (I think it’s an apology, at least.) “Nothing’s going to be fun in the Capitol for the next few days.”
“Yeah, well, my time in the remake room after you had your way with me wasn’t exactly a walk in the forest.”
I smile. “Why, Johanna, you make it sound indecent.”
“Just giving them something to talk about. After all, the Games are kind of boring.” She raises her voice pointedly and rolls her eyes at the screens, at the waiters listening in. “They’ll want to end them quickly after a disappointment like this.”
I close my eyes. It’s down to Annie and the boy from District 6. Axel, I think his name is. I don’t know why I bothered to learn it now. If Annie kills him, I won’t need to remember. If he kills Annie, I won’t be able to forget. “Nobody wants to wait long,” I say. I think of the funds I’ve drawn from Annie’s and Varin’s sponsors, safe in the account I set up for her, but there’s no use tapping into it when no one seems to know or care where she is. When was the last time she ate? I never caught her fishing on-camera, or scavenging for food above the dam, and I’ve only managed to send her bread twice, when she’s been still and lucid. One of the loaves soaked through when it landed. A waste.
“You don’t want to wait either,” Johanna says.
“Nobody includes me.” I check the screen again. Another simulation of the dam. Is there nothing else to show? I grind the mug into the table. “I just want to bring her home.”
Johanna stares at me, biting her lip and cocking her head to the side like she doesn’t know whether to roll her eyes or smile. “Looks like you might get a chance.”
I could say I told you, but it wouldn’t do anything. Instead, I nod.
“That what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I say.
“That? That creature in the water? And what Snow’s gonna do to her for winning a ruined Games? You want that?”
I abandon the coffee and rest my elbows on the table, clutch my head. I can’t think about that now. Johanna doesn’t understand how much I can’t think about that now. And now that she’s mentioned it, of course, I can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop the awful stream of images running through my mind, Snow’s voice and his blood-red mouth and his roses sucking the ocean dry and him touching her, telling her what she has to do to make up for all the people she disappointed--
“Not to mention what the rest of the country’s gonna do to her if she makes it out. Her or Axel, it doesn’t matter. You remember who won that year everyone froze to death? I don’t. He was from my District and I don’t. No one wants a victor by chance.”
“It’s better if no one wants you,” I say. “Easier. She won’t have to go back to the Capitol. They’ll let her stay in District Four. They’ll want her to.” Please, I think, not that anyone can hear. “But she can’t go back if she--”
My throat locks before I can say it.
“I don’t care,” I say, look at the table because I can’t look at Johanna now. “I don’t care what I have to do, I’ll do it. I just want to bring her home.”
Her mug scrapes across the table as she picks it up again. “You’re a piece of work, Finnick Odair.”
I look up.
Looks like she didn’t choose to smile. She’s shaking her head at me, all but calling me pathetic. I don’t care.
A waiter clears his throat. “Mister Odair? You have a phone call.” He uncaps a silver tray. The phone is sitting on a bed of lace. I don’t have time to scoff at it before I pick it up.
“Hello?”
“She’s sighted him,” a Gamemaker says. I don’t know which, but I do know how they’d find me. “It’s down to Annie and Axel. We expect a standoff within the next two hours.”
“I’m on the hovercraft,” I say.
“That isn’t usually sanctioned--”
“I’m on the hovercraft,” I repeat, and the tone of my voice brooks no argument.
I can hear the Gamemaker smile, and another laugh. “It leaves from the roof of the training center.”
“Good. I’ll be there.”
***
Annie claws her way up the pile of shattered concrete and snapped trees, rung by rung. The debris has gathered at a bend in the swollen river. The water level’s receded a few yards in the last half a day, so Axel is lying exactly where he washed up, thrown over a split log like he’s so much driftwood. It’s taken Annie about half an hour to get herself to his side. He’s barely conscious. She’s barely alive. I can see how much effort it takes her to breathe, how her ribs are ready to burst from her skin.
She grabs the nearest rock, about the size of her doubled fists, and bashes Axel’s head in. His cannon fires but she doesn’t stop.
When the ladder from the hovercraft freezes her in place, she’s still screaming.
***
I barrel past the security officers guarding the glass wall between me and Annie. They grab the back of my jacket and try to haul me back, but I throw them off. “I need to see her,” I explain, and because they refuse to listen I have to repeat it, louder.
“We don’t know what she’ll do to you,” a doctor says.
“She’s starving, dehydrated, and half my size,” I snap. “I’ll be fine. I don’t care. I need to see her.”
“I know you must feel responsible, but--”
“You’re right. I do. Let me through.” I manage not to add or I’ll slam you into the glass and steal your passkey. Barely.
He doesn’t look like he will. But he sees what I see, that she’s shivering in a corner of the hold, curled up and unresponsive as the ladder finally lets her go. “I’m not responsible for you,” the doctor says. “See if you can calm her down.”
It’s not polite to elbow my way past him, but I do anyway. “Annie,” I say.
She’s covering her ears. Axel’s blood drips down her arms, clings to her hair with the salt and the brine, weighs it down and pulls it out strand by fragile strand. I kneel beside her, put my hands over hers, even if they’re shutting me out. “Annie. Annie, I’m here. I’ve been here. And you’re here too.”
One last tremor runs through her, and she stops shaking. Her breath rattles, like it has to force its way out of her throat. She falls on her side, wraps her arms around my knees, and I catch myself on my hand before she pulls me over. She’s sobbing but not crying. There’s nothing left in her to cry with.
“The Games are over,” I tell her, keep my voice soft. “You’re going to go home soon.”
She shakes her head violently, holds tighter. Her teeth grind, her breath hissing through them.
“You won,” I say. “You never have to go back again. That’s the rule. You never have to go back.”
“It left with me,” she whispers, barely a sound at all.
“We’re flying away from it now,” I say, but I know what she means.
Her hands are shaking now, so I find one, hold her, intertwine our fingers. She isn’t wearing the token anymore. I trace our thumbs together anyway, remind her that it was there.
“When did it fall off?” I ask her.
“I don’t know.” Her breath is even shallower now, her chest barely moving at all against my knees. “Finnick, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know--”
“It’s all right,” I tell her, stroke her shoulders until they stop shaking. “I lost my token, too, when I fell into the river. But it didn’t mean the person who gave it to me wasn’t watching.”
She calms down, or at least she quiets down. No more words, no more ragged breaths. The doctors start advancing in and I wave them off, jerk my head to the side to say get out.
“You can sleep now,” I tell her. “I’ll keep watching you then, too. I’ll be right here.” She doesn’t smile, but she does relax, and her grip on my hand loosens but doesn’t fall away. I keep holding hers, though, stroke her thumb, twine our fingers together, remind her I’m here.
The doctors seem to swarm in as soon as she falls away. But they ignore me, so I find a chair and watch them work.
***
The flood from the Arena returns and Annie’s swept up in it again. I can see her this time, sometimes, when she manages to keep her head above the water, manages to get a few gasps of air before the waves suck her under again. And then I’m beneath them, racing against the current and the whirlpools, shouldering through the chaos and debris. Annie’s only a few feet away. Her hair fans out, twines around her arms, knots that don’t release. She’s reaching for me. She’s fighting the current for me. I kick harder to close the gap between us--
--and vines shoot up from the riverbed and drag her down.
“Finnick?” A hand on my shoulder shakes me awake, and I’m out of my chair in a flash, shaking off that hand and gripping whoever dared by the shoulder and flinging him into the floor before I realize it’s Drusus.
“Sorry,” I say, and help him up.
He takes a couple of deep breaths and stares at me like he’s the one who’s sorry. Then, panting, he gets back to his knees. “Never shake a sleeping victor,” he mutters. “They keep telling us that. Anyway. She’s at a functional weight now.”
“Good.” Part of me wants to sag back into my chair, but I can’t sit. I look down at Annie. Apparently my throwing Drusus to the floor didn’t wake her up. She’s less fitful than she was yesterday and the day before, her head relaxed into the pillow and her skin flushed warm and smooth. Her breathing is even, but faster than Mags’s was when I last saw her. Annie talks in her sleep. Pleas. Entreaties. My name. Varin’s. A few names I don’t know. And she covers her ears when she’s awake enough to move her arms. But now, she’s asleep, palms open on the bed, blankets still and tucked neatly around her.
“They’ve scheduled her postgame interview for tomorrow night,” Drusus says.
“They couldn’t push it back?” Then again, it might be best to get this whole thing over with. I bet the Capitol agrees. These haven’t been their most popular Games.
“I think they want to wash their hands of this as quickly as possible. It might not even be mandatory viewing.”
“That might be best for her.”
“But we’ve still got to get her onstage. Is she going to be docile when she wakes up?”
“Docile,” I repeat, and try to get the taste of the word out of my mouth. “She’s not a cow, Drusus.”
He holds up his hands by way of apology. “I don’t think Flickerman wants any bull.”
There are things I could say to that, but I don’t. It’s not about me. “We’ll figure something out. Flickerman will go easy on her, you’ll make her look her best, I’ll--I’ll talk to her when she wakes up. See what she can manage.” She’s not in the Arena anymore. Maybe she’ll recognize that, maybe she won’t need to hide. Maybe.
“She won’t want to see her own Games,” Drusus says.
“Nobody does,” I say. “They might at first, but after...”
Drusus shakes his head. “I can make her look like anything you want me to. But I think you’re the one who has to make her carry herself like a human being.”
I work my throat, close my eyes. “Give her something she’ll feel safe in. Forget the sea ghost thing, it doesn’t matter anymore. She doesn’t have to win them over, she just has to make it through the interview.”
Drusus nods, and looks her over. “But she should still look like what she is.”
***
Drowned. Not a sea ghost, not someone who’s come up from the water; someone who’s gone under.
The dress itself is simple, thin and angular layers of green. No jewels, no trim, only the light fabric, falling in corners past her knees. Her feet and arms are bare, except for thin beaded bracelets, some of the same from the interview gown. Instead of gold, there are flowers tangled haphazardly in her hair, romarin and yellow poppies and one gold and white blossom that Drusus calls a narcissus, bowed over one ear.
I can smell them when she clings to me.
“You won’t be up there for long,” I say. She doesn’t let go of my arms. I hold hers, too, stroke the inside of her forearm with my thumb. Maybe I shouldn’t. I can’t do this for her onstage, after all, she’s going to have to brave the interview on her own. But she grips me like she’s trying to make sure I’m real, trying to make sure I’m here, and I can’t push her away. “A few hours, and most of that will be the highlight reel of the games, and you don’t have to say anything during that part.”
“I don’t want to hear them.” She doesn’t hesitate to say it. “You said it was over.”
“It is. Mostly.” My stomach ties itself in knots. “Listen, Annie, nobody wants to see their Games. Just remember that what you see on camera isn’t always the truth, all right?”
“Like you aren’t you.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Like you aren’t you now.”
I do step back from her then, but she follows. “Annie, I’m trying to help you.”
Her arms hang at her sides, but she still in my space, close enough to touch. She doesn’t. She raises her eyes, and real anger lurks behind the sadness, like the waves withdrawing from a shipwreck.
“I know you don’t want to do this,” I say quietly. “Believe me. I know. If it helps, look at me while you’re up there. Don’t worry about the rest of them. Just look at me. Try to talk to me. Can you do that?”
She hangs her head. “If I can find you,” she says, and turns away, holding herself for warmth.
“I’ll be in the front row,” I say.
She shakes her head, no, and a stagehand comes to take her to the hydraulic underneath the stage. I watch her leave, her green dress disappearing on the horizon.
Drusus sighs. “That wasn’t the best idea.”
“What, letting her go?”
“No. Telling her to watch you.”
“I wanted to give her something familiar,” I say, check my hair in one of the mirrors, pull one of the strands in front of my forehead.
“The world already thinks she wants you.”
“Her and half the Capitol.”
“And they’ll think you’re encouraging her.”
The room chills enough that I wish I had a shirt on. “I’m not,” I say. “Drusus, you know I’m not, she doesn’t even want me like that.”
“I’m just telling you what I see, and what they see. What they see is my life, you know. I have to know what they’re thinking. And I do.”
How much more am I going to screw this up? I cover my eyes, push my palms into my temples, rake my fingers along my scalp. Drusus protests about how I’m undoing all the work he did on my hair, but I only half-listen. “What do I do now?” I ask.
“Stop mussing your hair, for one. And as for her? Hope it’s not too late.”
She’s already in the waiting area under the stage. I can’t run to her and tell her not to look at me, to look at anything but me. “I have to pretend I don’t care,” I say, and wish I could claw my own throat out. “I have to let them think she’s just a girl with a crush. They’ll understand that.”
“And let’s hope it still helps her.”
“For now? No. In the long run? Probably.” I sigh, find the nearest chair and sink into it. “It’s a good thing she doesn’t actually want me.”
Drusus nods, and takes my elbow, pulls me out of that chair. No rest for the wicked. “Come on, let’s get to our places.”
***
She curls up in the corner of Caesar Flickerman’s couch, barely larger than the decorative cushions, knees drawn to her chest.
“Oh, Annie,” Caesar says, reaching out a hand to her, and I want to rip it clean off. “It must have been awful for you in there. Where’s that witty girl from two weeks ago?”
“She’s in the Arena,” Annie says. The microphone picks that up, clear and crisp. I count the minutes until this ends.
Her remark gets a few laughs, out there in the crowd. To Caesar’s credit, he doesn’t laugh, only smiles and puts his hand on her shoulder. “But you’re out here. You made it through. Well, I remember what you said, that you’re good at using what other people can’t! And that’s what kept you afloat. Are you surprised?”
Annie looks out into the audience and finds me right where I said I’d be, in front. The cameras train on my face. I don’t have time to freeze. The smile I give her is the wrong kind of encouraging. Indulgent, curling up at the corners, like she’s the most precious little thing.
“No,” she whispers. It’s not an answer to Caesar’s question. Her breath comes short and she retreats, wraps around herself and hides her face in her skirts.
The cameras catch me from all angles, pin me in place, freeze me. There’s nothing I can do.
“No?” Caesar asks, and now he laughs, cuing the audience to do the same. “I guess we’ll all be haunted by you a while longer.”
Someone behind me chuckles, too shrill to be soft. “You’d think every mother would have warned her children by now,” that person whispers, loudly enough for the cameras to pick up. “Never give your heart to Finnick Odair.”
Someone else clucks. “Poor dear.”
I pretend I haven’t heard. That the entire nation hasn’t.
“But you’ve got ghosts of your own,” Caesar says, taking the laughter down. “At least you avenged your District partner. I have to admit, my heart was in my throat when I saw your hand clawing out of the river. Can you tell me a little about that, Annie?”
Her face is muffled against her knees, but the microphones pick up her voice. “It was too loud.”
I could almost feel sorry for Caesar, he’s trying. Almost.
“Too loud?”
“Everything was sound. Everything was the river. I was too. That’s all.”
Caesar laughs and ruffles her shoulder. “You were the river! Well, I guess that means you got much more screen time than I thought you did.”
The audience is startled into laughing with him, but only for so long.
Annie lifts her head and finds me again. Her makeup is smudged, shimmering under her eyes.
I look away from her and towards the first camera I see, lower my eyes and shake my head oh so slightly and smile like I’m holding a laugh in. I don’t check to see how it plays onscreen. I can guess, and if I were in Annie’s shoes I’d leap off the stage and pluck my own eyes out. I almost hope she does.
Her hands come up to her face. For an instant, I think she will.
She covers her ears, and Caesar can’t coax another word out of her for the rest of the interview.
***
At the feast afterwards, Snow comes up to me and says, “You handled that well.”
It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to smash my glass into the nearest table and carve into his face with the shards.
***
The cameras aren’t waiting for us when the train pulls into the station, only her family. I wonder if this means they’ll cancel the Victory Tour, but this is what the Games are really about, isn’t it? To show us all we’ve lost.
I have to carry her off the train. She hasn’t spoken a word to me since we boarded, spent the entire train ride curled up and facing away from the window. When the train stopped and I came to fetch her, she was awake but unresponsive, and I had to loop her arms around my shoulders to move her off before the train returned to the Capitol. Her eyes are closed now, but I think she’s awake. Her chest rises and falls erratically, hitches against mine.
She told me about her family before she went into the Arena. They’re all at the station to meet her, her mother and father, her uncle, her sister. The man that rushes forward to help me carry her is probably her father, tall, with long thick arms. Her mother isn’t far behind. Annie doesn’t take after her physically; her mother’s strong all through and almost as tall as her husband. “Annie. Annie, dear, you’re home.”
Annie buries her face in my shoulder.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Finnick.”
“We know who you are,” her father says. “And we can’t thank you enough.”
They’re the first people who have. “I promised her I’d bring her home,” I say, my mouth dry. “She told me about you.”
Her sister watches me solemnly, eyes wide. She looks horrified.
“You’re Emily, right?” I give Annie the gentlest shake I can. “Annie, Emily’s here. Emily and your uncle John and your mother and father.”
When Annie turns away from my shoulder, her father’s face is the first thing she sees. He has tears in his eyes, and she uncurls an arm from around my neck to reach for them. He catches her hand, and then her mother’s hands clasp over both of them. “Annie,” her father says, “I’m so proud of you.” Annie shivers.
“Can you stand on your own?” I ask her quietly.
She shakes her head, turns her face into my chest again. Not now.
“Should I hand you over to your father?”
Her breath catches in her throat, and she’s close enough that I feel it too. She pulls her hand out of their tangle and throws it over me. I feel like she’s trying to make herself smaller in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her parents. “I think she wants me to carry her a little while longer. If that’s all right.”
Her mother nods, and once he’s seen that, her father backs off as well. “We’re in your debt,” she says. “I can understand if she needs you now more than us.”
I’m home. I’m close to the sea again--I can smell the salt in the air, taste it if I breathe in deeply enough. I shouldn’t feel like I’m sinking. “Have you finished moving?” I ask.
Her mother shakes her head, no. “The Victor’s Wharf is farther south than we’re used to,” she explains. “I wanted to wait for her, to make sure she’d be okay.”
“I’ll help get her set up. I have lots of cousins, they’ll lend a hand, too. And my family’s right next door, if you need anything else...” I trail off. It hurts to look at the sky after so long in the Capitol. Nothing stands between me and the sun here, and its heat weighs heavy on my face, the back of my neck, my arms, makes all the water in me rise to the surface. Annie’s curls hang limp with sweat. I should get her something to drink soon.
“Same goes for you,” her uncle says, taking a couple of steps nearer. “If there’s anything we can do for you, after this, we will.”
I’m about to thank him, when I hear Emily hiss.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes at me. They’re lighter than her sister’s, and she has heavy eyebrows like her mother. “No, thank you. I don’t want to come down here at all,” she says.
Her father and her uncle reprimand her. “Emily!”
“I don’t.” She pulls herself behind her uncle’s legs, barely looking out at us. “That’s not Annie. She’ll kill us in our sleep.”
“I haven’t killed anyone in their sleep,” I say. The sweat on my arms chills. “She won’t, either.”
“No, you tied them up instead. Like they were just fish.”
I see Pacifica’s traps spring into action, tangling around her ankles and chest as rocks swing down from the cliffsides. I remember throwing my net over her, how she tore open her hands on the bones and vines, struggling to get free. My father caught a dolphin once. Pacifica screamed the same. I’d close my eyes, but that won’t make it go away. The images won’t stop racing, faster and faster until my vision blurs, and I know better than to wonder from what.
“Emily Cresta!” Annie’s mother pulls away and storms down the stairs, cowing Emily into shadow. “You watch that mouth, or you won’t be talking out of it for a week.”
“I want Annie back!”
Annie cringes and clings to my neck. Her ear is pressed to the collar of my jacket and she’s trying to cover the other, drown everything out.
“You’re here,” I tell her, nudge her hand away with my cheek. “You can smell the sea, can’t you? Listen. There’s a boat docking, it’s blowing its horn, and there are gulls circling over us. Listen.”
Her hand is shaking when it touches my cheek. “It’s too far,” she whispers. It’s the first thing she’s said to me since before the interview. “Can we be closer?”
“We can.” I clear my throat, motion Annie’s father and uncle closer with a tilt of my head. “She wants to see the ocean,” I say.
“I’ll come with you,” her uncle says, and her father nods and turns to deal with Emily, still screaming about wanting her sister back.
We walk towards the shore, Emily’s shouts at our backs; they’ve faded by the time we reach the pier. There’s a stretch of beach between that and the nearest jetty, and I kneel on the shore where the sand darkens, let Annie’s heels touch down. Her uncle is hanging back, watching us, but the tide’s so loud that I still feel like Annie and I are alone.
I tell Annie to breathe.
She lifts her head from my collar enough to sniff at the air, then gulps and shudders, breathing harder than I’ve seen her do in days. “It’s all right,” I say, “here,” and dip her fingers into the water. It laps at them, licks them clean. She grasps at the sand, holds it as tight as she’d been holding me. I let her out of my lap and the skirt Drusus gave her soaks through when a wave rolls in, covers us both to the waist and withdraws.
I don’t know how long we sit there, letting the tide drag us out, inch by inch. But by the time the rest of her family has gathered behind us, and her sister is walking through the waves to touch Annie’s hair and say she’s sorry, the sun’s reached the water’s edge on the horizon.
---
--
.