sixthiterationlogs | don't you dare look out your window, darling

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: House 57
WHEN: 3rd July
OPEN TO: Finnick
WARNINGS: Past sexual assault, quasi-slavery

She hasn't commented on Kira's group message over the wireless exchange. She could be flip, could say that it's because she's reading on the little device on her wrist and everyone is commenting so it is hard to keep up - which is true. Too many responses, coming too quickly, enough to make her head spin this far out from any of the screens in District Four. Too many conversations splitting off from each other, and that'd been nothing like District Four. Not to mention, she's just woken from a nap. But that's not the main reason.

The main reason isn't even that her own name has seemingly been changed to the crazy little mermaid. That is... That is embarrassing, it's annoying and it seems mean. But she's had worse names, and she can hide among other names. Or if she can't hide, then she can shrug, smile all nervous. It'll be genuine, she doesn't like it. But she can handle it. So, no, it's not that.

It's Finnick's name. Finnick's new name on the network, and his reaction to it. She'd been able to read all his shame just in his few, curt sentences. And she is furious.

She doesn't get this angry about it, not often. It's too much energy over a situation that won't end, or at least, hasn't ended before they were sent here. Back home, she'd had a ritual to deal with her fury, but she's missing her throwing knives. She's missing her throwing knives, and she needs to find where Finnick has hidden himself.

Annie finds Finnick in the kitchen, sitting on the floor. The ugly little dog mutt has its head resting on its front paws and is gazing him at sadly, but Finnick seems off in space.

"Hey," Annie says, quietly. "Finnick?"

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In truth, he hadn't even noticed that the dog had followed him. Or that Annie had come in, and he doesn't know how long she's been there when she speaks. His arms are curled around his knees, his body curled forward so his chin rests on his legs. He's let the sound of the messages from his wrist float off into the distance, into a world where there's nothing but the slightly disembodied feeling of his arms against his legs.

If he let himself hear them, they'd be whispering whore, whore, whore.

But he can't unclench the tight feeling of sick shame that settled into his chest the moment he saw the name next to his messages. It's not the name, itself: he's been called that and worse before. It's the knowledge that it's right, that really, that's what he is, what Snow made him.

Whore, whore, whore and the gamemakers here know it, and some of the others will too.

It takes time for Annie's voice to filter through to him, and when it does, it takes a little longer for him to lift his head and look up at her.

"Hey. I'm. I'm sorry they called you 'crazy.'"

Annie regards him carefully, her dark green eyes flicking over him as she tries to assess him. Assess his mood, where his head is at. Nowhere good, she thinks, but at least he's talking to her.

Even with that worrying delay.

She walks over and then squats down, resting her forearms on her knees. She wants to reach out and touch him, hug him, but no. Not yet. She has to see how he is, if he'll welcome touch. If he asks for it.

"It's alright," she murmurs, then grimaces. "Okay, it's... mean. But I know what I am." She's heard worse. And she is, in the end of the day, crazy. She sees things. But him?

She really, really wishes she had her throwing knives. The idea of hurting people makes her feel queasy, but she's so angry, she wants to throw things, pretend that maybe, she could hurt someone for how they treat her Finnick.

"I'm sorry, too. I saw what they called you."

Usually, he'd protest that. Insistently, immediately, you're not crazy, because she's not, she's not, they played a game by the Capitol's rules so she could be isolated, at least a little, from the endless show and schemes the victors are forced into. It's not true, what they'd said about her, but it's hard to form the words.

He drops one of his hands and starts to trace a vague line on the kitchen floor.

"It's not fair," is the protest he actually manages to muster against the Gamemakers' description of Annie. It would be a name that anyone in Panem would be able to associate with her, if they saw it. It's the obvious joke, and she's right, it's mean-spirited, even petty.

His nickname isn't petty. His hurts, cuts down into the shame he's tried so hard to forget, here.

He shrugs, loosely non-committal. "It's what I am."

Edited 2018-07-19 13:17 (UTC)

The odd, tiny mutt-dog creeps forward, eyes oddly pleading. Annie gives it a passing glance, just to make sure it is following a Worried Dog routine and not a Predator About To Strike one. But its eyes on Finnick are as concerned as any other dog she's ever seen, so she looks back at her husband.

Her husband, who is being pulled out to sea by the dark rip currents in his mind.

"And yours is? No-" But there he goes, agreeing with it, agreeing with that horrible, horrible word. She tenses her jaw and narrows her eyes and she's trying not to glare, she is, but she is.

"No, you are not. Don't say it. Don't think it."

There's something, some corner of the foundation of his pride, that broke in Finnick that first night Snow sold the right to use the body of the young, beautiful victor of the 65th Games. Broke, tarnished, corrupted; he lost what little claim to innocence he had in the arena, but he lost something far less easily defined that night, and it's irretrievable, even here, so far from the Capitol and all its games.

There have been times, many of them, when that broken part of him seemed too much for him to bear, too much to let him be worthy of anything as good as Annie's unquestioning love for him, her understanding of the things he's never told her in as many words, but that she knows anyway.

Finnick's head drops, his eyes watering and stinging as he presses his forehead into his knees.

"I am," he says, choking on the word. "I fucked them because they paid for it, what else would you call it?"

"And I see things that aren't there, what do you call that?" Except, no, that's not the way to get through to him. She doesn't think, anyway. She's not sure. She tries something else.

"He forced you. That's different. And it's. It's part of a sick game, not business."

Snow doens't need the money, it's all about control as far as Annie has been able to gather. Control, influence, look what I can give you. That's to the wealthy and powerful in the Capitol, anyway. To the pretty victors, it's all just another way of toying with them. She'd escaped, with Finnick's help, and destroyed her reputation and part of her sanity in the process.

But she doesn't know how to take away Finnick's self-blame.

"I won't let them convince me of anything else about you."

He doesn't talk to her about this. It's always been there, of course, their whole relationship, because sometimes her touch will set off a dark memory that jolts him out of the moment, out of her bed and into theirs. But the shame is so deep that he's never been able to explain, to tell her outright what Snow did to him. She's understood, though, for a long time, from what he had been able to bring himself to say, and now ... she's the one saying it, saying what Snow did to him.

They don't need to convince her, and they don't need to convince him. He knows, deep down, under his skin, what he is, and he has for a long time. Sometimes, he can't even stand to let her touch him, because so many other people have, and none of them meant anything, but they'd had everything his body had to give before his relationship with Annie even started, and she'll never get that back.

"It's not you they'll convince."

His voice catches and breaks on the sentence, and he manages to unwrap one arm to hold out his hand to her, because his throat's tight, he can't say hold me, but he can ask for her hand and pull her in towards him.

Annie gazes at him, chewing the inside of her lip in consternation and thought. He sounds lost and he sounds like her when her mind plays horrible tricks on her, distorts reality into something ghastly and full of spikes. But at least he reaches for her, because she can do this. She can scoot over to him, set herself on his lap and hold herself close to him - or rather, hold him close to her. She can kiss his hair and hold him tight, and try and convey through touch everything that words just falter at.

"No, 'cause I'm stubborn like that," Annie says, quietly and with determination. "But they've convinced you. And... And I don't know about the people here. We'll find out. But there were so many cruel names, love, chances are they won't even remember in a few months."

It's not the most reassuring thing she could have said. She thinks that as she finishes, and winces. But she know too well that people can be awful to say that people absolutely won't pay attention. Who knows, really?

don't you dare look out your window, darling

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