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WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: Annie and Finnick's house
WHEN: 26th August
OPEN TO: Finnick Odair
WARNINGS: Depression, other mental health issues

They've long been a see-saw; when one is down, the other will reach out to help them, and then be helped in return when the debt is due. At least when the down is serious, and Annie knows it was. She's still shaky now, nearly a month after the last rolling aftershock, the wounds in her psyche rubbed raw and open. But she's better. She is. Time and necessity because Finnick had to care for her by himself, without any Mags, without any of the other District Four victors, in a strange arena and...

She's not surprised that he's crashed, and hard. Even as it's been hard to keep them both afloat.

Annie's managed over the past few weeks. Managed the traps, managed to get food and keep everything standing. Managed sometimes to bully Finnick out of bed and outside, even if he found it hard to do much. But she's getting worn out herself, again, and doesn't want to wind up with the see-saw going up and down, up and down. Even if that's what the actual things do.

Maybe they aren't the best metaphor she could come up with.

Today, she walks to their bedroom and eyes her- her fiancé, now, she guesses, but he's still her person. She eyes Finnick and puts her hands on her hips, gnawing a little on her bottom lip.

"Morning?"

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There's nothing actually wrong, he knows that. Annie's okay. He's okay. The house is okay and the birds are okay, even after the earthquakes. None of the birds have even managed to escape, despite Star's best attempts. He just can't care about any of it much right now. Except Annie. Finnick will always care that Annie is all right. But he knows she is, he'd cared for her all through the earthquakes to be sure that she was all right. Now it's Annie making food, checking on the birds, making the rounds of the traps that he's been so determined to keep up with. But he's tired, and checking traps and fishing and gathering takes more than he has in him at the moment.

So when he's tired, Finnick doesn't bother trying, and today he'd gone back to sleep after Annie had gotten up, and he's been lying in bed staring at the wall for he's not sure how long now, when he hears her open the door. At first, he doesn't move, assuming that she's come back for something she'd left behind.

It's only when she speaks that he rolls to look over at her.

"I'm awake," he says.

"Gettin' up?"

There's no accusation in her tone - she understands, there's nothing she needs him to do today, and there's no point in yelling when he's like this - but there is a mild curiosity. She's missed 'casual'; she wants to know how he'll reply.

"Nice enough day out there. And the birds miss you."

She does have a back-up plan if he won't get up even for their beloved birds, but always best to see if he can summon the will to stand, move downstairs, before she resorts to drastic and ridiculous measures.

He doesn't answer right away. It takes thought, more thought than it should, to answer what really should have been a simple enough question. Ever since they got here, until now, he's been working to help them survive. He'd done it all for much of the time Annie was stressed out by the earthquakes, and he knows he should keep doing it, that it's not fair to Annie to collapse on her like this.

(Even though it's far from a new experience for either of them.)

"'M tired," he says, eventually, because as much as he knows he should get up and join her, the idea seems exhausting. And though he loves caring for their birds, he also knows that Annie is the head of their little flock, not him.

"They love you. They're okay with you."

"You're still part of our little flock we got goin' on here," Annie says, head tilted and chin slightly up. Not a challenge, exactly, but a bit tart. Sometimes it works if she pokes and prods.

Sometimes.

His first chance to avoid her ridiculous measure is rapidly being blown.

"Treat today like when you're working back home. Tired, but you still have to get up." It's not a question this time, he'll have to work a bit harder to wriggle (or.... flop, more accurately) out of it.

He's always hated to disappoint her, and he knows that's where this is headed if he doesn't do what she's asking. They have their ways of working through times like this, and usually Annie lets him be for a while before she starts trying to work on him. Sometimes she wheedles, but now, she's being more practical, and he knows that she's right, that he should force himself to get up and help her with some of the things that need doing, like he's so often had to get up to go to the Capitol, or to help with fishing back home. It's all perfectly reasonable, what she says.

That just doesn't make it any easier to actually muster the determination to move. It might not seem like it, but he does try. Finnick moves his feet under the bedclothes, with a vague intention of swinging them down towards the floor and pulling himself up to sit, but it doesn't turn out that way. Instead, he stirs the covers a little, pushes himself up at an angle from the bed, then gives up and flops back against the pillow.

"I need more sleep," he tells her, his voice a little plaintive because he knows it's not the answer she's looking for.

She shakes her head. First chance gone. He'll only get two.

"You really don't," she informs him. "C'mon, up. You can roll outta bed if you wanted, like a seal. Though the floor's a bit hard..."

But even as she talks, she realises that there's not point in Chance #2. Not after that little exaggerated flop. Even when in one of his melancholic states, he can be a little peacock about it.

"All right. Well. You've got until I get back, okay, darlin'?"

And with that, Annie leaves the room.

It's longer than she would have liked, but she returns with Wind perched on her arm, the peahen looking around curiously. With a quiet, reassuring murmur, Annie walks over to the bed and encourages the bird to jump off her arm, onto the bed... and onto Finnick.

He intends to try again before she gets back. He does. But the time slips in his head like a rope ill-fitted to a pulley, and what to Annie seems longer than she wanted to Finnick seems not enough time to muster his energy for another attempt at setting -- or even, as Annie had suggested, sliding -- out of bed. He's not sure what she's doing or how long she'll be gone, or even what might happen if he hasn't done what she asks by the time she gets back, but he hears her steps approaching long before he's managed to actually do anything, and all he does is bury his face in the pillow.

That's why it's such a surprise to hear Annie murmuring, and a gentle rustling sound, and that's enough to make him lift his head, just in time to see a flurry of wings and mottled feathers. He starts out of the way, just as one of the peahens -- Wind, he thinks, from the face -- lands on the bed and turns her head, first one way, then the other, making her little crest of feathers bob.

Finnick's startled into a seated position, and after the surprise of a sudden bird on his bed clears a little, he realizes that's probably the whole reason Annie brought her in. The bird tilts her head and lets out a little crooning sound of recognition, proving his earlier comments wrong.

"Hey," he says, holding out a hand to see if the bird will flinch away from being touched.

The bird bobs her head a little more, tests out the mattress with cautious feet. Finnick's outstretched hand gets a beady-eyed stare, still a little wary after how quickly he'd sat up. Eventually, she struts over and gives his thumb a friendly peck.

Or maybe it's a demand for food.

Or both.

Annie watches the tableau, trying not to be too hopeful. It's hard when he's like this - hard for him, too - and sometimes little things can help, but they can't cure, and he's been in a bad, bad state. But, he sat up. He reached out. It's.

It's a good start.

He hasn't quite worked out if the birds like having their feathers stroked or are just fond of attention from their adopted parents, but they don't seem to mind. So he takes the bird's approach as permission to run his hand gently along the feathers on her back.

"Yeah, hey, Wind," he murmurs. He can still feel the memory of the sharp little peck on his thumb, but he's sure the bird didn't mean anything unpleasant by it. They've never shown any aggression towards their human friends. "Didn't expect to see you here."

A peahen in their bed is not something they've tended to encourage; even when the birds were living inside, they hadn't been able to get up the stairs because they were too small. He strokes the bird's feathers again, then looks up at Annie.

"Was it hard to get her to come with you?"

"Oh, nah, it wasn't. I went outside and asked which one wanted to go and sit on you, she seemed interested. So I clicked my tongue and held my arm out like we were kinda teaching them, and she flew up." Or jumped. It can be hard to tell, with birds and distances.

Annie doesn't really think the birds understood her, as such, but Wind had been interested in her human-momma's babbles and attention, and that had been good enough for Annie.

"She's gettin' to be a decent weight now."

Annie pauses, glances at Finnick in her odd shy-sly way. "We have more birds, you know."

Edited 2017-08-29 10:35 (UTC)

"Good," he muses. "They're learning." He hasn't been sure if the peacocks would really learn to sit on their arms like they'd been trying to teach them. The geese, of course, with their webbed feet, don't seem as able to sit on as many different things as the peafowl -- they don't, for instance, perch on the porch railings like their bright blue and brown flockmates.

"You're a good girl," he murmurs to the bird sitting in front of him on the bed. Wind seems to like the cooing tone of his voice, tilting her head again and fluffing her feathers under his caress.

"She is," he agrees. "She's starting to look grown up."

Finnick glances back at Annie. "How are the others?"

He knows that's not really the point of what she's saying, but he needs time to decide whether he feels ready to actually go see them yet, so he's not committing, as nice as it is to have Wind here with him.

Annie hums for a moment noncommital, watching Finnick - her fiancé, her fiancé - and weighing up how to answer. How to be honest enough and how to get him out of bed.

Even if they were home, with Mags and the relative strange safety of pre-announcement District Four, he'd had long enough by all their reckonings. Here? No, she needs him, like he needs her. So she has to play dirty, but keep it light enough so it's not too manipulative and awful.

(He'd win that game, in the long run. They are messes, the pair of them; they don't need any encouragement to get bad for each other, she knows.)

"They miss the adult peacock," is what Annie settles on, finally. "Been a bit odd without him."

Finnick carefully closes his hands around the little bird's body and lifts her up to his chest. Wind gives a chirping sound, stretches out her neck, and pecks at his shirt. It's not that he's ignoring Annie, but the immediate warmth and affection -- or interest, whichever it is -- of the peahen is more grounding.

"Guess it's been a long time, hasn't it."

It's ... a question, but he doesn't really phrase it as one, because he knows the answer. He just doesn't know how long it is, because time tends to disappear when he's like this. Sometimes he'll stare into nothingness and only know by the changing of the light that the day has died away.

"A few weeks, love."

She'd tried not to pause too long before answering, tried not to make it too obvious she was weighing up how to answer. She tries, but it's a question and he deserves an answer.

Hopefully it's vague enough, still, without giving the impression she'd been counting down the days. She hadn't, she's not that great at time passing herself, but sometimes too much precision can be too much of a harsh implication. At least, it is for her, and it's worth being kind to him, too.

"Been quiet, though. Some of the others got sick, but they're better now. Um, the other humans. Villagers. Not the birds, the birds are all fine."

"You're a good girl, aren't you?" he tells the bird, softly, setting her back down on the bed, where she tilts her head to one side, then the other. He watches the bird rather than Annie, but he nods as she speaks. If he'd thought about it, he'd probably have guessed that long, but it's a relief to know that it hasn't been longer than that. It could have been; sometimes he loses more time than that without realizing.

Finnick holds out his arm to Star to see if she'll jump up, like she did for Annie. When he makes a little encouraging sound, she does, and he looks up to Annie with a grin, rare over the last few weeks, but still showing no less than its usual brilliance.

"I'm glad they're okay," he says. "The people." He looks back down at Star. "And the birds. Thanks for looking after them."

"I didn't stick around close to the village once I knew, but you hear things, y'know? Kept my distance but still talked. A little." She'd tried, while he's been ill. Tried so hard.

She smiles back as Star jumps up, pleased for more than just one of their birds doing the trick. It's good to see Finnick smile, it's so good that something has happened to get through his fog, to make him smile. To make him happy.

"Hey, it's what I'm gonna do. They are good things." She pauses a little thing, worries at the inside of her lip for a moment.

"Think you can stand and, uh, see if she'll stay here?"

"Good. I wouldn't . . ." He can't finish. What he means to say is wouldn't want you getting sick because of me. It would be because of him, too he knows it. She's borne the whole burden of looking after him, as well as doing everything else, finding food, cooking, feeding the birds, going into the village. It's hard for her, he knows, when he disappears into his mind like that. They're used to working together, the two of them, taking up each other's slack as they haul on the lines of their life together, tenuous as they can be.

He shakes his head, dismissing that thought, then looks back down at the bird.

"You want to go over and see Annie?" he asks. Star, of course, can't say anything in response, but she sits, steady, on his arm as he stands up and takes a few steps towards Annie.

"She's learned it," he says. "Did you do any more training with them?"

She's not sure what he failed to say. There are too many things to fill it in, and she's not sure where exactly his mind has gone. Not that she tries to fill in his sentences anyway, it seems rude, but she's doubly not going to do so now.

Instead, she smiles as Star stays on Finnick's arm, as Finnick gets to his feet, as he walks towards her.

"Star's a clever girl. Yeah, I'm talkin' about you," she tells the peahen. "Um, but, no, I was mostly just concentrating on the jumping. Some get it better than others."

Annie had also been busy, but then, not so busy as to not have free time. But training new things required energy, and she's still recovering herself.

He wouldn't have thought, if someone had told him when he'd first come here, that he'd wind up as some sort of surrogate parent to a brood of peafowl and geese, but here they are, talking about the training progress of the peafowl like they were students at the Academy, before it had been shut down.

"She's learned it well," he agrees. The little bird seems serenely unconcerned as Finnick moves, as he makes it across the room to where Annie is waiting. "You must have been working hard with them."

There's pride there in his voice, though it's still a little weak, along with everything else about him, the paleness of his skin and the too-sharp angles of his face. She's done well, if the other birds are learning as well as Star.

There's an innocent joy to having the birds around that Annie loves. They might still die or have to be killed, but it's a might. It's something she can try and protect them from without having to sacrifice them. They aren't looking at a group of kids with the awareness that even if one survives, only one will survive. She'd never have been able to send one of the Careers to pull Finnick out of one of his moods, but she can use a bird.

She's just pleased that it has worked.

"They are good birds," Annie says, then laughs softly. "And then they get bored and muck up, so it keeps me on my toes." She can't get too attached to controlling them, because they have minds of their own. She feels this is only a good thing, because she gets too easily upset when she gets used to control and then has little.

She doesn't mention Finnick's appearance, or the smell of him. He's too vain, and in any case, it is a day for one step, any step, at a time.

"Let's see what the others can do. Or if she'll stay on your arm down the stairs."

"They can't let you get complacent," he agrees.

They'd had so little to care for, the two of them, Annie deliberately estranged from her family and Finnick with no survivors in his. The Careers had never been a good choice to nurture, and eventually he'd stopped working with them altogether, unable to face a life spent teaching them to prepare to die. Now, though, there were the birds, with no expectations of him except that he care for them, feed them, water them and provide them shelter when they need it. And in return, they offer more affection than he'd known birds could give.

"You gonna come downstairs with me?" he asks Star, and the peahen blinks at him, apparently still content to stay on his arm.

He gives Annie a little smile. "Okay."

Well, if Star wants to stay there, she can stay there as far as Annie is concerned. They aren't particularly small birds, even at this age, but Annie knows Finnick's stamina. He can carry a bird downstairs.

And downstairs they go. Downstairs, away from the bedroom, away from the bed where he has spent so, so much time. She'd hoped for this, but not too badly. Just getting him up, paying attention, is a triumph: this is all a lovely, reassuring bonus.

She leads the little procession into the kitchen, then opens the door for Finnick and Star. Before joining them out in what is increasingly a garden, she grabs some of the food pockets from that emergency survival pack, a pair of bowls and some spoons. Food. Food is also important, if she's going to be pressing her luck like this.

It's bright outside, and Finnick has to raise his free hand to shade his eyes while they adjust. It's been too long since he was outside; he doesn't know just how long it's been, but he's had this happen before after his dark moods. Star shifts on his arm, and he glances down at her.

"Yeah, I better take you back to your friends," he agrees, and once the light looks a little less dazzling, he heads down the porch steps to where the other birds are gathered around their water container.

He crouches down and holds out his arm for Wind to jump off. "There you go."

The peahen flutters off his arm and struts back over to Port and Lee, looking pleased with herself. It's only then that he turns around and sees Annie carrying bowls and some packets.

"What have you got?" he asks.

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