Annie Cresta | Victor of the 70th Hunger Games (
treadswater) wrote in
sixthiterationlogs2018-08-11 07:31 pm
Entry tags:
this world is only gonna break your heart [closed]
WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: House 57
WHEN: 11th August
OPEN TO: Finnick
WARNINGS: Grief + typical Hunger Games themes
WHERE: House 57
WHEN: 11th August
OPEN TO: Finnick
WARNINGS: Grief + typical Hunger Games themes
Peeta has been dead for eleven days. It's a shocking thing, here, this arena with so little death. And he'd been a nice enough boy. She'd appreciated that. Nice enough, but if ever she and Finnick are dragged back to their correct place and time, he'd had been a powerful adversary. Katniss and Peeta, the Star-Crossed Lovers: no matter who wound up in the 75th arena, it'd be a threat to whomever landed in there from District Four.
Annie has been thinking about that a lot, lately.
She's also been watching Finnick. Finnick, Finnick, Finnick, who can hide so much behind his brilliant smiles, but she knows him in a way that she knows no one else. She can tell when he's upset, and upset deeply. even Careers aren't as inured against death as people think, and he has a soft heart when it comes to the tributes in the arenas. The children. Of which Peeta had been one.
And yet... And yet, it's been days and days, and still, Finnick's more deeply upset than Annie would have ever anticipated. Upset might not be the right word, but she's not exactly sure what would be the right word. And she'd waited. She'd waited and waited, wondering if it's her own brain playing tricks on her, misreading things and people. Except, no. She knows Finnick.
It's been eleven days since Peeta was killed when Annie straightens up from gathering this morning's cluster of eggs and looks around for her husband. There, by the pond they are making for the geese, talking very seriously to the three peahens. She hovers, debating what to do. But no, she needs to ask. So instead of using the front door to go inside, Annie walks over to where Finnick is.
"Hey!" she calls out with a wave, trying to catch his attention without startling the birds. "Uh, you busy? There's something I need to ask you which'll take a bit."

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Peeta Mellark had been here a matter of weeks before he'd been killed by a monstrous mutt. Peeta Mellark, one of the two pillars the nascent rebellion had been founded on, the boy Finnick had been told had to be kept alive to win Katniss Everdeen's cooperation. He knows there's always a level of randomness in the arena, that things can happen to even the highest-scoring, best-prepared of tributes, but he also knows that sometimes the Gamemakers take particular tributes out.
Accident or not, it's a devastating blow to the hopes Finnick had gambled so much on, and it's a failure. A failure of his ability to defend the people he'd promised he'd protect. Another failure, to add to the list of the tributes who'd died under his mentorship.
And as much as he tries to ground himself in here and now, those thoughts keep returning, and even out here, in the bright sun with the birds peering up at him, it's hard to stop himself from going over and over what he should have done better.
It takes a moment for Annie's voice to break through, and he's not sure just how much she says before he catches you busy?
Not busy enough is the honest answer, so he shakes his head and bends down to retrieve his laces.
"Hey, I need those."
He wanders back over towards his wife, and holds out his hands to take some of the eggs.
"I have time."
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"Here. Um. Let's go inside, I'll put some of these away."
Inside walls have ears, but the outside air has eyes. She already assumes that they are always monitored and tracked and probably eavesdropped on anyway, particularly with the tracker-watch, so what's the use of trying to hide their conversation from their Gamemakers? But the rest of the village doesn't need to see if this conversation gets uncomfortable, or even just under Finnick's guard. No one can read lips from inside.
"So, uh," she begins, once they are inside and she's putting things away. "How you've been doing? Since, since Peeta's death?"
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He's leaning against the table when Annie asks the question, and he frowns, not entirely sure what -- if anything -- she's hinting at. She's been sometimes attentive and sometimes quiet over the last several days, and he'd assumed that she'd been concerned about how he'd been taking Peeta's death, trying sometimes to cheer him up and sometimes to give him space to work through it. Is the question just checking up on him, or is she asking something more, something about the guilt that's been weighing him down and keeping him awake?
He gives a small shrug.
"I liked him," he says quietly. "Spent a lot of time watching him last year, he was a good kid. It shouldn't have happened.""
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The first one. Then, later, she can circle back if she needs to. It's nice when conversations do this, where even she can follow and plot about them. Even with Finnick, it doesn't happen all that often.
Gently, Annie says, "I know you liked him, love. That's... not quite what I asked. How have you been doing?"
There's the faintest stress on the 'you'.
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There are a couple of things he could tell her, but it's hard to really answer her question without getting too close to those delicate topics. It would be a relief to be able to share what he's been worried about, and why, to be able to respond to Annie's gentle question with the openness she deserves, like he had when she'd comforted him about the name the Gamemakers had given him.
"I wish I could have stopped it happening," he says, eventually, dropping his gaze from her face because he knows that's not as honest as he should be, but it's as honest as he can be.
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They are... fair enough words. As far as they go. But he's dodging. It's not just due to any emotional state, she doesn't think. She could be wrong. She has to keep that in mind, that she can be wrong about things and reading people and reading too much into things. But she can't go through life doubting even Finnick, she can't. She refuses. So she has to trust what she knows.
And what she knows is: he's dodging.
"You said it shouldn't have happened. Why?"
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"He was our ally," is what he says instead, which is true, even if there hadn't been an explicit agreement in those words. It was what he'd promised to do, and it's a failure that could destroy everything he'd risked, back in Panem, by agreeing to be part of Plutarch's scheme.
"That means something here, not just sticking together until the best time to turn on each other and fight it out for good television. He was an ally, and he's dead, and I wasn't there, wasn't even thinking about him."
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Maybe, she should try and be more direct. Which has its disadvantages, of course, but every play does.
"We have other allies," Annie starts off, reasonably. "And we gave him a funeral. That's more than any ally in an arena has gotten." She presses her lips together slightly, squinting at Finnick a little. "It just seems... A bit excessive, I guess. For a boy you hardly knew. Not - I'm not saying don't care. It's sad. But you're jumpy and upset."
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He'd seen the end of last years' Games on live television, watching from a party at which the highlight had been the obviously building climax of the Games, and he'd seen it in an instant, what they'd done, what it meant. Annie had, too, though he hadn't been there with her. It had been obvious to anyone who knew enough about Snow and how he operated.
To anyone who'd how Haymitch Abernathy won the Games and knew the man as he was now. Who'd heard the darkly muttered warnings that even the tutors at the Academy had been wary of speaking out loud. Defiance is as bad as outright treason.
What Katniss had done had been defiance, and that made her and Peeta dangerous. Finnick had noticed the theme in the people who'd been brought here from Panem: Haymitch, himself, Annie, Johanna, Katniss, Peeta, all of them dangerous to the Capitol's lies in their own ways, and all of them involved in one way or another in the growing rebellion.
It's what's been waking him at night, driving his thoughts around in frantic circles until he wants to scream: what if it was Peeta for a reason?
Surely Annie can understand that.
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But Finnick's reaction makes her wonder about other things. About choices and why they might bother him so much now, that one of their number is dead. Why Peeta Mellark being here, and now being dead, might upset Finnick this much. Peeta being killed comes as no surprise to Annie on any number of levels, but...
But Haymitch had painted the sign of the Mockingjay on Peeta's shroud, and she'd followed suit in a sense of rebellion. And then the three fingered salute, and oh, if things are actually what she's now thinking, she's going to kick herself for months about how she didn't see it.
Annie's dark eyes remain narrowed.
"Why do you wonder that it was Peeta Mellark, Finnick?"
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But if Finnick and Annie know about the dangers of the arena and the characteristics of those best suited to survive it, they also know that some deaths in Panem that seem perfectly reasonable and natural are suspicious. Finnick's parents had died in a shipwreck, but it was no accident.
"You saw what Katniss did, Annie," he says, softly, the mask he's been maintaining softening, falling away to a gentle, concerned expression. "They were a threat. That mutt could have gone after anyone, but it was Peeta."
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It's important. She just doesn't understand why it is upsetting Finnick so much. They've both seen victors punished before - both been punished.
(Her mother and uncle, too, had been 'lost at sea'.
She tries not to think about that much.)
"But why does that upset you?"
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(Even if sometimes, Annie's senses work too well, slip her into a fear that loses all perspective. When it's not like that, it's helped keep them alive.)
It's only after she's asked the question that Finnick realizes he doesn't have a good answer for her, not one he can actually give. Eleven years as a victor, why would Katniss and Peeta's punishment be relevant to him, who had been so careful for so long to publicly follow the course set by Snow?
"Because I'm popular and you're forbidden. We're dangerous."
Dangerous, in a way that makes them targets, even if that's ... far from the whole story.
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"Not as dangerous as District 12's pair."
Annie's sounding tired now, and increasingly frustrated. He's circling around the issue now, offering reasonable sounding answers that lack the ring of truth because he keeps on thinking up different things to say so each one sounds less and less likely.
"And if that'd been the true reason, you'd have said. Earlier. But you didn't, so what is going on? Finnick?"
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It hits him like a punch to say it, because it's the closest he's come to saying out loud that he'd failed and the whole of Panem could suffer, if there's ever any way out of this. She's right that it's not about the kid himself: Finnick is a mentor, and he's seen a lot of kids he liked killed, ones he'd known better than he did Peeta because they were Careers, and he'd trained with some of them and trained others. And he hates himself for that, but the guilt of those dead tributes is a constant, not like this.
"It is true," he protests, looking over at her with a flash of wounded pride in his gaze, "it's all true. I did want to protect him, because he was dangerous. Things were happening, Annie, because of him and Katniss, and now ... "
He folds his arms across his chest, wrapping them around the fear that's taken root in him since Peeta's death, as though that could snuff it out, strangle it and stop it from tormenting him with maybe and what if and the sense of hope snuffed out.
"We'll never know, will we?" he says, habit rather than conscious thought making him turn his face to the floor, where his words won't be so easy for a camera or eavesdropper to capture.
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"Excuse me?"
It's a chance. His last one. Still, still she has an element of doubt. Because he wouldn't. He would join the rebellion without her. Without telling her. Oh, she knows about the rebellion, she's not stupid. She's the best at analyzing the Games in District Four, and what is politics but the Games writ large across the arena of Panem?
And he wouldn't. He wouldn't join without her. Without telling her.
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He knows that tone in her voice. He knows it, and he doesn't dare to look up to see the expression on her face, because her tone is enough to make his stomach drop like he was on a boat that had just sailed off the crest of a wave straight into a trough.
There'd been a rebellion in District Four. They hadn't been actively involved in it, but it had happened, and things had changed. There'd been an outlet for the anger that ran deep under the surface in District Four, and afterwards, he'd been told that it was the same in other districts too. It wasn't because of Katniss and Peeta, except perhaps in District 11, but they'd sparked something, with their doomed-lovers story and their charismatic hints of defiance.
But it's weak in comparison to the passion that had slipped out in his defense of himself.
(Too much sincerity, too much to cover, he'd been too open and he hates the though the moment it surfaces in his mind, because he should be open with her, always, if he had the choice.)
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You saw what happened, Finnick says, as if it means anything except for the fact that... The fact that...
He's not lying. He doesn't lie, outright, to her. But there are gaps and omissions, and she understands because the Capitol is awful, but this, this is differet. He didn't tell her. Even now, he of the clever tongue and cleverer mind can't bring himself some way of telling her out right that he is in the fucking rebellion and didn't tell her. And he still can't tell her. She's having to read it in his silences and his omissions, and that'd been his last chance to come clean and he didn't, hasn't, couldn't, and she can't stand it.
Annie shakes her head. She looks away, she shakes her head and then throws up her hands. A warding off gesture, maybe.
She can't even speak. She just pushes herself away from the bench, and walks out of the kitchen.
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She doesn't say anything, so he doesn't know whether she's read his silences, the things he can't say out loud. He can't lie to her -- or he refuses to lie to her. If he truly tried, he probably could, but there are few enough barriers between who he is and what he does in the Capitol and his relationship with Annie, he won't lie.
Annie's departing footsteps jolt him out of the dread-laced anticipation of what's coming next. He looks up in time to see the door drift shut behind her and his heart pounds heavy in his chest.
"Annie!"
He's taller, he can probably catch her up if he needs to, so he flings himself towards the door, yanking it open and hurtling through it.
It turns out that she hasn't gone far, and he jerks to a stop almost as abruptly as he'd dashed after her, his eyes wide.
"Annie," he repeats, stepping towards her and reaching out a hand to take hers. "Please."
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(Almost subconsciously, she thinks if she flees, it'll be too much.)
"You- You didn't tell me," Annie whispers, voice cracking. "Nothing. Not a word. Just. I. I trust you, Finnick Odair."
Present tense, still. Not past. She does, still, trust him. Even with this awful, awful omission, she trusts him.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
cw: sexual assault
There are a lot of things he doesn't talk to her about. Being sold or given away by Snow, what the people he's sold to do to fundamental parts of his being. The depths of the cruelty and venality he sees in the Capitol. Things he hates, things that hurt and shame him, that he can't let her know because of what it would do to him, or because of the danger of even voicing them to her. Like the dirty secrets he's stolen from so many lips, extorted in return for his body or the illusion of his heart, secrets that could kill him if their subjects knew they were known.
But now, she knows the most precious of them, the secret that isn't just leverage, that's hope, that had been hope until Peeta died. She hasn't outright said as much, but he'd hinted at it and now she's looking at him like that, and it's the only thing it can be.
"It was too dangerous, Annie," he whispers through a throat that wants to choke, lips that want to freeze and block out the confession. "If it went wrong, they'd hurt you to find out what you knew."
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"No," Annie hisses at him. "No, that's."
She bites her bottom lip, trying to muffle herself so she doesn't shout at him, and so she doesn't say anything too cutting.
"When were they supposed to work out I knew nothin', Finnick? I could have been pretending to be clueless, so I'd get tortured anyway."
That isn't why she is angry, not really. But it is easier to say.
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The word punches into his chest, clutches at his heart and crushes. For a moment the world seems to go blank as his mind disconnects from the room around him, leaving nothing but Annie's hissed words.
I'd get tortured anyway.
His blood pounds in his ears as he shakes his head, slowly like the lag when the television isn't working properly. He can't let himself think that, he hasn't let himself think it.
"No. No, that wouldn't ... I wouldn't, they know I wouldn't ..."
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The hurt is flooding back into the spaces anger left, but the anger is still there. He didn't tell her. He didn't tell her. He didn't tell her.
He didn't tell her.
Without realising it, Annie is holding herself in close, with her arms crossed defensively, protectively, over her chest.
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They will, they will, he has to believe that, because a world in which they hurt her because of him is a world he can't live in.
"Because they know what I'd do to keep you out of danger," he says, faintly, shaking his head and watching her, wide-eyed, to see if anything he says gets through her anger.
It's been all he cared about for years, all that Snow needed to force him to do whatever his patrons wanted. The threat to Annie, usually silent but always there, kept Finnick captive as truly as chains would have. He gave them everything but his heart and mind, and it was all for her.
They know he wouldn't give them any more opportunities to use her.
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She wants to scream at him. She might have, had they been back in District Four. But here, no. Not for fear of eavesdroppers, not really, not in this moment: but because it'll scare their beloved birds, scare the foolish little mutt-dog.
"I'm always in danger. Always. But I can do things to help if I have my eyes open. I could have helped! I could have, I could have known the risks and calculated and seen what I could do anyway, and you took that away from me."
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Now she's talking like it doesn't matter, and he is crying now, the barrage of angry words hitting over and over, and she's not wrong, but he hadn't been thinking of that, he'd been thinking of keeping her away from the danger his treason would bring, and now she's so angry with him and he can't stand it.
"Annie I didn't mean to, I'm sorry, I ..." His voice shrinks to barely more than a murmur. "I thought I was protecting you."
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This time she'd known nothing, and that knowing nothing is making her blood run hot and furious to cover the deep cold of terror.
She sways a little, turns but doesn't leave. Instead, she paces, steps quick and angry. Then she stops, whirls to face him.
"I know. I know you. And I can, I can see that you did.
But it's not fair, Finnick. To go land in me in more trouble without lettin' me know. Okay? It's not fair."
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His voice is still quiet, a little dampened by emotion, though he doesn't actually choke or stutter. But he can't see the look on her face, hear the way her steps had tapped on the floor in an angry little pattern without a surge of panic. He doesn't panic often, but seeing her so angry, so hurt, knowing that he'd done it, without tightness in his chest, a lump in his throat, a sense that he should try to reach out and grab something, cling onto the situation before it races any further out of his control.
But what can he do? He can't change what he'd done or that he hadn't told her, or any of the things that had made him keep it secret, just another in the collection of secrets he kept about what happened in the Capitol, things that were dangerous and could only hurt her to know, and so didn't get talked about.
He swallows, forcing himself not to choke on the lump in his throat.
"I'm sorry, Annie."
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It's a repetition, and it isn't. She does know. She only has to look at him to know how wretched he feels, and she only has to know him to know how bone-deep genuine his panic is. She knows. And it is better that he's sorry, that he's realised how hurt and angry and betrayed she is.
Annie just isn't convinced he understands why.
Equally, she's not sure she can explain right now. It's a thought to force her to breathe, to try and be reasonable.
"I'll forgive you. I will. But, I-" She falters, and clenches her fists in frustration. "I need to be alone. For a little bit."
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"Okay."
Except it's not okay, it's not, he wants to reach out with word or touch, hold onto her and beg her to let him do something, anything, whatever it would take to make it right. But he can't, the two syllables are all he can get out as panic tries to overwhelm him, blank out his mind and drag him into despair. But there's more than just that, because he knows that to reach out to grasp in blind desperation for the fragments of the situation could well be to shatter them further.
It's an old, old barely acknowledged arrangement that's developed over fights and misunderstandings, nightmares of the Games, days when Annie's mind makes her want to jump out of her skin and nights when his patrons' hands seem to crawl all over his. When they need to be alone, they need to be alone, and they always respect that for each other.
So he doesn't try to go closer to her, and he doesn't beg for her understanding and forgiveness, though the thought of parting without it stabs into his heart. He knows she wouldn't promise forgiveness if she didn't mean it, but everything between them has twisted, tilted, and he doesn't know how to exist without it being righted.
But he has to, because that's what she wants. So, okay it has to be.
He nods again, blinks at tears, repeats the nod, and then the word.
"Okay. I'll. You'll be able to find me."
He needs to be alone, too.