sixthiterationlogs | let the games begin

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: Fountain (other locations added as needed)
WHEN: Afternoon, 2nd September - All threads take place before Finnick's
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: Anxiety, panic attack
STATUS: Open

Annie doesn't stop to think until she's burst through the surface.

She's been tossed into water before - yes, even fast asleep - and she's from District Four, water is as natural to her as the land. She doesn't waste time on what, where, how, she just swims up. Gasps. Ducks underneath the surface again.

Now she thinks.

She's in a... Pool? No, a fountain, if she swims down and looks up, she can see the central pillar. But how? She knows all the fountains in City One. And that's where she'd been, she'd been in City One, District Four, but she'd been wearing a skirt, a waistcoat, light shoes. Now, Annie twists around in the water and she can see white. White trousers, white shirt. Brown boots. Black straps of a backpack.

It looks like a uniform. A tribute's uniform.

Annie doesn't leave the fountain. Not yet. She takes what breathes she needs, and then swims back down. She's safe in water. She knows how to swim, and this pool is, what, thirty feet across. She can swim and she needs to think.

But thinking doesn't help. Is this the Quarter Quell? Is it? Uniform, a strange entry, but she doesn't remember anything and when she looked out, briefly, it's just a park. There's no Cornucopia. No bloodbath. No screams no weapons no fighting, it's peaceful. But is that part of it? Not Snow's style, she doesn't think, and not Heavensbee. It makes no sense to change everything up, not when the bloodbath is so fucking useful.

But what else is it?

It's then that Annie notices her joints locking up, her chest feeling compressed. P a n i c setting in because no, no, no, no, oh no, she can't do this again, she can't she can't she can't. She can't be in an arena she can't be in the Games she just can't.

Her breath starting to choke her, Annie comes up to the surface again, but she doesn't get out. She doesn't trust herself to run. Instead, she backs up, all the way up against the stone spout in the centre of the fountain. There, she clings to it, and stares out, and tries not to scream.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's working, at least a little, his attempt to speak to the cool practicality that's never too far behind the surface of Annie's storms of emotion. It's working enough to team up, like they'd been trained to do, even if they were never going to be in the Games together because it's the oldest Careers who go and he's older than her by nearly a year. It's the same training, the same analytics, that slip them into the same mode of thinking.

And so Finnick leads, staring up at the sun for a few moments to get a sense of the direction, and starts off through the edges of the woods, never too far from the village on his right, but far enough away to be out of the danger of so many people.

"What did you get in your backpack?" he asks, softly, once they're far enough from the path they'd left to be safe talking. "Any supplies?"

The questions are both practical and pointed: the longer she stays focused on strategy, the better, as far as he can guess. Not that he's ever seen Annie in an arena situation since the dam broke and all Panem said she went crazy. But he's working on what he knows, and he knows Annie, in all her glass-delicate steel-strong beauty.

It's hard keeping her awareness to the right level. Not concentrating on the little things like left foot right left right or avoiding roots in the ground, not spiralling out past the foliage to what mutts might be in this arena, what did the red-garbed man mean back at the fountain, I'm in an arena I'm in an arena I'm in an arena. It's hard and it's exhausting, and she's trying so hard to be aware that she doesn't notice Finnick's question at first.

Oh.

Right.

They can maybe talk, now.

"I didn't look. Just ran."

He's leading, so he can't look at her, but she lifts her head anyway.

"It feels heavy, something's there. What did you get?"

The stress shows less obviously in Finnick. He takes the lead as they skirt around the edge of the village, moving deep enough into the woods to be safe before he checks the sun and then swings around to the north-east. But as they progress, he reaches around to his backpack and retrieves a knife, one of the spoils of his raid on the village.

He holds it tight in his hand, ready to fight, and that's the most apparent sign of his fear. The way his body tenses is less visible, though Annie might see it in the way he holds himself if she weren't trying so hard to hold herself together.

He glances back over his shoulder at her for a moment, flashes a brief smile.

"It's okay." He pauses as he shifts his attention back to their way through the scrub ahead of them. "Not much. Spare clothes."

It's a stupid sort of thing to give someone, just like he'd thought when he'd seen the skirt and blouse Kate Kelly had been wearing. "I got a container for water and some knives from the village, though."

"Clothes," Annie repeats, a little disbelievingly. She tries, though. Tries to see a reason for it. As if for some reason, some strange unfathomable reason, Finnick hasn't said, cold-weather clothes. Or rain-proof clothes. Or any other reason why they might require a change.

"What... kind of clothes?"

Her lover - but, no, she can't think of him like that, it's all Friend and Ally - at least is making sense. He's the only thing or person that is. Water container. Knives.

Knives make her feel sick, but they'll need something. They will.

He doesn't understand the clothes, not most of them. The coat, the warm underwear, yes, and that's a hint that the weather here is going to get nastier, perhaps with freezing cold nights. (The only warning tributes get about what their arena will be like comes from the clothes they're given, and the combination of heavy boots and a coat isn't promising.)

The other stuff, though, that was just strange.

"Overalls, underwear and socks, a hat. Winter coat, thick socks and long underwear, so I guess we're in for some cold nights."

There's a hint of a question in his voice, and he shrugs before chancing another look at her. Good. She looks more thoughtful than panicky, and that's what they need right now. He could use her perspective on this, because nothing is making sense to him.

This is fine. This is familiar. She can pretend they are just... They are just going for walk. Inland. Just ignore that the humidity isn't the same, that the trees are wrong, that the smells and tastes aren't right. It's fine.

One step, another step. Left foot and right. Left foot and right, or did she have it the other way before?

"Enough clothing for snow?" she asks then, thinking of the games in the tundra. Thinking of arenas and their weather surprises.

This forest would look so pretty, dusted with snow. That is relevant, when thinking about the Gamemakers.

"With these clothes?" he asks, his voice a little dubious. "I don't think so."

It's a good question. Finnick's never the one who gets to see the clothes the tributes are put in before their grand unveiling in the arena. He's not the one who has to make these guesses with nothing else to rely on. That's the stylists. By the time he's seen the tributes' uniforms, something of the arena is obvious.

"Unless they plan on trying to freeze us out."

He continues on without speaking for a few steps, until he has to stop because his path is blocked by some sort of heavy brush.

"What do you think?" he asks. "Even with long underwear I don't think a coat's enough to make these clothes work in snow."

He doesn't sound certain, though.

It looked a peaceful death, on the screen. Freezing to death. Just... go to sleep. Never wake up. As far as deaths in the arena go, anyway, which is why she can simply shrug, contemplate it, muse a little while there's hysteria still bubbling in her veins.

"It's an idea, anyway," is what Annie actually says. "There are the houses. And other tributes. Drive us together, fight over shelter and resources.

Snow doesn't have to last long, either. But.

He said that they were living there. The others. The man I met at the fountain."

No, it doesn't take long for a sharp change in the weather to do what the Gamemakers want it to. Freeze or drown or dehydrate the weakest of the tributes, drive the others to whatever resources is most needed: shelter, dry land, water supplies. It's one of the simplest pieces of analysis taught to the Careers: learn when you're being manipulated.

"They wouldn't give it to us for no reason."

It's what they'll tell themselves, for now. The tributes' uniforms are usually adapted to the environment of the arena, and with such a plain, uninformative uniform, they need to take whatever hints they have.

"Expect us to be doing a lot of walking, too."

That is, though, just talking for the sake of talking, really: surely Annie's already drawn the same conclusion about their boots. What she says next, though, is the interesting thing.

Finnick frowns in thought as he starts to edge around the tangled undergrowth that had blocked the approximate path he'd been taking.

"Explains why there were so many people around in the village."

The path continues, and Finnick glances up to check the direction against the sun before he sets off along it again, gesturing for Annie to follow him.

"They don't seem very worried about leaving themselves open to attack."

let the games begin

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