sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO: Annie Cresta-Odair
WHERE: House 57, then the outskirts of village
WHEN: 9th December, following week
OPEN TO: Finnick Odair, e v e r y o n e
WARNINGS: Anxiety, intrusive thoughts - more tba as needed

A plain, red envelope is not a rose, white or otherwise. But it is. It's this arena's way of being one of Snow's damn white roses, just letting you know that he's watching, that he knows. One of them, anyway. Like the boxes that appear.

There's a plain, red envelope sitting on the kitchen table, radiating menace, and Annie can't move. If she moves, something... something will happen. Something bad.

How long she might have stayed there is debatable, because she can and has stayed frozen for hours. Hours and hours, just gripped by the certainty that if she moves, something terrible will happen. Something worse. Except outside, the birds stir and make noise and fuss and that's enough to get her moving. Not forwards, not towards the envelope, but back, back up the stairs, back down the hall in a carefully silent run until she's back in the bedroom and poking at Finnick's feet.

"Hey, hey, wake up, please?"

Her voice is quiet, thin, and afraid; but it'd been an immediate threat, her voice wouldn't waver like it does now.

For the next week, the already shy Annie is shyer. More nervous. She takes her birds out for their regular walks when the weather allows, and the familiar sight of the small redhead surrounded by her geese and peafowl remains that constant. But while she has her good social days and bad, now it's nearly impossible for her to meet anyone's eye and her greeting is a mumble.

The Gamemakers want her to hurt someone. Anyone. A true injury, and they want her to do it. She'll be rewarded if she does. Apparently. It sounds like a victor's bargain: lavish rewards for doing as you're told but the consequences for disobeying are only whispered. Warned about, maybe and then only softly, oh so softly.

Annie has spent years as a hostage to Finnick's good behaviour in such a bargain. Here, she doesn't know what to think. Something jumbled about the other shoe dropping or the price to be paid for marrying Finnick, because her mind keeps slicing her thoughts with options. Suggestions.

You could hurt that person, her mind whispers. You know how. You know how to break their wrist, dislocate their knee, shatter their nose. Her minds offers her images and images and so Annie tries to blink them away. She smiles nervously at people, trying to pretend that she can't see exactly how she could kill them.

Sometimes, she giggles. When she's walking alone with her birds down a muddy path, or just after she's startled, trying not to bump into someone her distracted mind hadn't noticed. Then she'll giggle, mumble an apology, and try to escape.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The victors, in general, don't sleep well. It's one of those things that many of them know about but rarely ever discuss. It's not just the nightmares, the past impossible to escape even in sleep. It's also their response to being startled from sleep, which can be sudden and violent, the boundaries between past and present blurred in the moment of awakening and jolting them back into the arena.

In this place, where the arena is already so close to the surface of memory, it's little surprise that he wakes tense, jolting upright and ready to attack, his whole body poised for action. Annie's seen this before, knows to wake him standing somewhere he won't accidentally lash out at her as he wakes, and the moment when he sees her, realizes what had woken him, is filled with a familiar relief that she hadn't been close enough to get hurt.

She's scared though, tiny and worried, and her voice has real fear in it, though whether she's scared of her mind or something has happened is hard to tell. Finnick swings his legs around to the side, reaching for the clothes he regularly leavs by the bed so he can dress in a hurry.

"What's wrong?"

She twists her hands. It's a gesture she tries not to make; too obvious, too likely to hurt her hands when she needs them. But sometimes, the tension has nowhere else to go, and she twists her fingers, her hands, until the bones and muscles ache.

"There's a red envelope downstairs."

He'd told her, about Beverly and her note. How she'd been instructed to steal something valuable and she'd refused. It's a logical conclusion to make, that red envelopes are Bad, mean Bad Things.

And, underneath it all, is the panic that someone has been in her house, in her territory, and she hadn't known until they decided to make it clear that they'd been there.

He recognizes the gesture, of course; it's one he's seen more times than he could ever count, and it breaks his heart a little whenever he sees it, because he knows it means the struggle he can never defeat is going on in her head. Finnick pulls on his shirt and pants over the long underwear he'd been sleeping in, and crosses the room to his wife.

Her fear isn't unreasonable. Sometimes, sometimes, her mind makes things into terrors that needn't be, but this is something that frightens him, too, strikes deep into those same old memories and anxieties that his mind had tapped into when she'd woken him. Danger. Enemies. The Gamemakers' cost for the uneasy happiness they've dared to take from this place. He'd smelled Beverly's letter because it had reminded him so much of something Snow would do, a secret, unacknowledged demand, for the sake of Panem, for what the people needed to see, to keep society running as it should, and it had always been incredible what the snake could justify that way.

(The Capitol supported the victors, the Capitol gave them the sponsorship that had halped them survive, the Capitol demanded its return in pacts of flesh and sweat and shattered pride.)

He reaches out to Annie and carefully puts a hand over each of hers, his grip firm in the hope that he can stop that terrible way her hands are twisting around each other.

"Show me."

Finnick reaches out and she clasps his hand with both of hers. Too tight, probably, but he's a lifeline and you always cling to those. Then she steps forward to rest her head against his arm. She wants a hug, she wants to cling to more of him, bury herself in a strong embrace, but if she does that she might fall to pieces. She'd had no warning about this, nothing to steel herself in preparation, but she can't fall to pieces. It might even be benign.

Might.

Ha.

"All right," Annie says softly. It's just an envelop. It seemed too thin to contain a bomb.

Her steps are silent as she walks down the stairs, and she's not holding onto Finnick only because all of her training is telling her that if an attack happens, he needs to be free to move. Which really is a good thing, that she can still think with tactics and some presence. It's good. She hasn't completely spun out.

The envelope is sitting on the table, untouched and unmoved.

He's strong enough that no matter how hard she grabs him, it's hard for it to really be too much, and besides, he understands. He knows the sick feeling of familiarity and dread Beverly's letter had inspired in him, and Annie's less used to those sorts of demands than he is, because he's deliberately shielded her from them, putting himself between her and Snow, filtering the Capitol's requirements before he told her what they were. The Capitol wanted him more than it did her, because he was everything it wanted. Annie just had to keep being crazy enough for them, and maintain the lie that Finnick was theirs for the taking.

Both of them, though, have experienced what it's like to have that world intrude into their lives, leave reminders of its presence as a suggestion that one end of the deal isn't being upheld, that the threatened consequences may come into play.

He's been waiting for consequences, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, consequences for flouting the most important rule of his life as a victor, that he seem available, winnable, purchasable by the right person with the right money, no matter what the truth is.

He crosses the room to the table first, hands raised in a loose but ready position, though he'd never actually had to -- or been able to -- fight against Snow's threats.

He picks up the letter and flips it over, studies the seal, then raises it to sniff, again, for the President's perfume.

"This is just like the one Beverly Crusher had."

"I know that," Annie snaps in a sharp, hissing whisper. "Same dimensions, same colour, same insignia on the same seal." She shouldn't snap. It's rude. He's taking the blow for her, investigating while she can't, but her nerves are being wound tight as fishing net tangled around her. Fine and sharp, cutting off circulation and slicing into her flesh.

"Sorry."

She can do this. She can not lash out at her husband like a wounded, thoughtless, panicky creature. She can keep a grip.

"Wh, what, um. What do they w-want me to do?"

That's always the issue, isn't it? What do they want their toys to do? Sometimes it's just know something. Others...

Well.

Other times, not just know something.

She could have worked it out for herself; he'd given her a good description of Beverly's letter. It had been just confirmation of what he's sure she'd been thinking. Even if he hadn't described the other letter to her, though, it would have been obvious where the letter came from. They know that insignia pressed into the wax, have seen it on the things they'd been given when they arrived here. Things from their Gamemakers.

He glances back at Annie, his brilliant green eyes impassive. He'd reach for her if she were close enough to touch, but he'd approached closer to the table than Annie, going forward ahead of her as though his physical presence could protect her from the letter's intangible threat.

Finnick slides his finger along the flap of the envelope, dislodging the seal and pulling the letter out. He hadn't read Beverly's letter; she'd taken it back after he'd reassured himself the uncanny sense of familiarity with Snow's notes wasn't born out by his senses. The writing isn't like the President's, either, all neat block letters instead of Snow's script.

His expression stays blank, a sort of blank that's telling in its own way, because it means he's hiding a reaction without covering it with something else: more honest than he would be to anyone else but Annie, but not honest enough to show the sickening lurch his insides take as he reads. She can't comply, can't, or will think she can't. He's more convinced than she is that she has something left in her that could lash out at their enemies, but even if she could, he wouldn't want her to.

Annie's supposed to be shielded from things like this. It's how that unwritten deal between Finnick and Snow goes. He takes the blows, the humiliations, the pain, and she's protected. This is breaking the rules.

"They want you to hurt someone."

There are moments on the open water where Annie felt like she was flying. The boat would crest a big wave, then fall. For that single instant in the air, between water and water, she was free, untethered.

This feels like that. But at night, in a hurricane, with water pouring in from all sides and the boat keeling this way and that way and her boots have left the deck.

They want her to hurt someone.

She knows how. Ignorance is not an issue. She can break bones, she dislocate joints, she knows how to slice and hit and punch. She know how to lash out with a weapon, she knows how to kick. She knows too well. She knows the aftermath even of sparring, when sparring is okay, with Finnick. She knows bruises and burst blood-vessels under the skin but she knows the sounds, the appearances, she knows the feel and how long it can take to heal if someone's given a chance. She's seen the scars of sparring, of floggings, too.

She knows. That's the problem. She knows too much and she can't stop it. She can't actually do the action, follow through. She can't kill. But no, no, they aren't asking her to kill, just to hurt. But to hurt physically means all those things she thinks too much about and to hurt in other ways means to break the tacit agreements and to show herself a threat and she can't be a threat, she can't, because she can't kill anyone she can't, she has to be harmless and useful so they'll leave her alone and this means not being mean to people, either, in case they turn on her.

"No," Annie whispers, still in free-fall.

Neither of them is entirely innocent, but Finnick is entirely aware which of them is the killer. Annie survived her Games by swimming, swimming until she was the only one left, even though the entire nation thought she'd gone mad and couldn't look after herself to stay alive, let alone do what she needed to win. But she'd stubbornly survived, and she's kept stubbornly surviving. That's her strength, not her ability to fight.

It was Finnick who won that way, who killed the other children until he was the last one left alive. It's Finnick who would kill to protect Annie, who would fight if this place demanded it of him, and do it with a clear enough conscience to be able to live with himself afterwards. He's destroyed himself to keep her safe enough times, he'd hurt someone else if he had to.

Annie is too gentle, too kind, her heart disjointed from the things they'd been taught as children by the horror of seeing them in action.

Finnick crosses the distance back across the room towards her, takes her hand in one of his, staring down at her. He knows that distance in her eyes, the fragility of her whisper, and he can't let her slip away into that place she goes where sometimes even he can't reach her.

"Annie. Annie. We'll work it out," he tells her, his voice low but insistent.

Thud.

There she goes, the first thud. It's never as simple as that. There's the first thud of the stumble, then an attempt to right oneself, cling to something, then another stumble as the momentum keeps on going. She's well-versed in the power of movement and hysterical fits.

Thud she went and now she turns her increasingly glassy eyes at Finnick.

We'll work it out?

Her mouth opens and she stares at him, trying to work out what he means, what schemes he might be thinking up. She has to hurt someone. The only she can hurt, physically, even in sparring, is-

"No, no, no no nonononono I'm not hurting you either! I can't! I refuse!"

"Annie!"

He's losing her, he can see it in her face. She's slipping, falling from clarity to that rocky place where he can't reach her with reason, where he can do nothing but be there with her until her mind has exhausted itself and she can take the lifelines he offers and let him pull her back to shore. He has to be quick, maybe has already lost what little chance he had of staving off one of her attacks, but he has to keep trying.

He lifts his hands to her shoulders, grip firm, holding her so she can feel that he's there.

"You can. If you have to, you can. I can't let them hurt you to keep myself safe."

He never has. He doesn't tell her the depths of what goes on in his head, what the life he lives in the Capitol to keep her safe does to him, but it's a worse hurt than she's ever inflicted on him, and he takes it because that's the price of Annie's safety. If the Gamemakers here are threatening her, he won't let them harm her if her harming him is an answer.

"I won't, I won't, I won't!"

He's not listening but then, she's not sure what she's trying to say. It's all just so monumentally unfair. She's always known this, she has, and even now Annie can feel some part of her getting annoyed at this utterly childish temper tantrum, but...

But, damn them all.

She tries. She tries so hard, she's tried for years to try and make them safe. Them, both of them, are safe to each other. Emotionally, physically, mentally, as much as she can make them. There are lines not to cross and deliberately inflicting harm?

No. No. No. She won't.

But something stops Annie from shouting that she refuses, that she'll dare the Gamemakers to do anything. Even with panic swirling her down down down into a whirlpool, a lifetime of the Games and Peacekeepers keeps her from saying anything too damning.

She can scream, she can laugh, those are acceptable, and she nearly does before the envelope catches her eye again.

"WhatdidBeverlydo?"

He just can't stand the thought of her being harmed because of trying to protect him. It's always been the other way around, a decision that had been so certain that he doesn't remember ever making it. She just became so important to him that what he did in the Capitol became to protect her as much as Mags, because now he had two people he needed to look after. Then she became the person who he'd do anything for, and he doesn't care about himself, he only cares about Annie.

He lets his hands slide, onto her back so he can hold her.

"Annie," he whispers, because a whisper is the only counter he can find to her shouts, but she ... not calms, because she's not calm, not at all, but her anger subsides into something more contained, something he can wrap his arms around.

"She wasn't going to do it. She said she wouldn't do something that would hurt someone else."

He'd been surprised, at the time, so used to knowing the consequences of defying those sorts of requests that the very idea then, as now, seemed impossible.

"Mrs. Odair? Are you all right?"

It's impossible not to see the conflict on her face, especially for someone as used to that line of thought as the good father is after years in a war zone. Mulcahy had been on his way to the inn when he'd spotted the young woman, seemingly lost in her mind as she wandered the paths. The haunted look is very, very familiar, and while he's already aware that Annie is fragile, it's still not a look he expected to see this... openly on her face.

Making sure to keep his movements calm and non-threatening - he'd learned a little from Sidney, though not as much as he would prefer to know - Mulcahy approaches her, concern all over his face. "Do you need any help?"

Beverly might not have spent an appreciable amount of time around Annie, but she's seen enough, and heard enough about their world from Finnick, to understand that they're likely both suffering from various forms of PTSD. Johanna, too, assuming she's from the same place that they are. Johanna had been in a right state when Beverly had pulled her from the fountain one day. She remembers Peeta and Katniss, too, though not quite as well. They haven't been present here in months. Something in these people's home worlds has traumatized them and Beverly is learning how to help in any way she can.

She can't assure them that they won't be hurt again, not even here, but she can assure them that the original people who hurt them aren't here, to her knowledge, and that they aren't alone. If they could ever trust her, she is a safe person who will do everything in her power to help them.

When she spots Annie this time, she immediately notices the differences. Small, subtle because the girl herself isn't a large presence normally, not like Finnick. But it's enough. Making sure to keep her body language loose and non-threatening, she carefully approaches, both to prevent the birds from screeching and charging her and to keep Annie from spooking and running.

"Hi, Annie," she calls warmly and gently. "Everything all right today?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(no subject)

House 57

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Dec 12

early in the week?