[70th] steadily emerging with grace

[maredementis]

They don't allow a Victor who hasn't killed.

It's almost happened, a few times. But they never make it all the way.

Annie Cresta is so tired when the dam breaks, she is tired tired tired, and when the water rushes in and sweeps her and her little campsite (run hide run hide Finn told her if you can't fight so she did) away she thinks oh, she thinks it's another thing like Niall staring at her from her feet with his eyes fluttering and one, two drops of blood on his eyelashes, and were they friends?

In the Training Centre he put his food tray down next to her and said, "The other Careers are coming for you. If you weren't--"

"--a failure of a District 4, and Finnick Odair's Tribute, and too thin--I know, Niall." Annie wasn't good enough, not for this. There were none of the type of knife she specializes in at training, and she suspected this was not a coincidence. The girl from One, Amethyst, tried to break her arm in practice. None of this was fair, but ever since her name was called and none of the girls who were ahead of her in training volunteered this has all been like that. Annie accepted that. She had survivor's blood in her, from her mother, and Annie was sixteen with everything to live for. She had to make that be enough.

"I think we should make an alliance," he offered, tentatively, and she'd blinked at him like he was a sudden flash of lightning. Which maybe he was. Tall, broad-shouldered Niall, son of a shipwright, favoured weapon the spear, sure to get at least a nine in evaluations. Maybe even a ten. But Niall is also shy, sensitive. Kind. She's seen him with the boy from Ten, Colt, grinning as they successfully lit a fire together. Niall was a good person and that's why he didn't belong at the table of bright, vicious Ones and Twos, who have recently adopted a Six and an Eleven as well. To replace the two of them. Amethyst, Silk, Julian, Antonia, Spoke, and Husk. Annie knew everyone's names.

"Okay," Annie said.

Niall Strand was seventeen and he was only here because his father caught him kissing a boy in his room, so it was volunteer or his father would denounce him and Niall didn't care about himself but--there was his boy to think of. Annie's heart wanted to break a little or a lot when he talked about Skye. Annie knew they would have been friends if she knew him before. They should have been friends.

He's surprised she doesn't care that he kissed a boy, but Annie wasn't like that. In the Capitol it wasn't a problem, and most people in District 4 would find it queer but tolerable. (He laughed at queer, but she didn't know why.) Niall explained that his father had peculiar morals and wanted--Niall didn't know what he wanted, except that he wasn't it. Annie, who had always been cherished and protected, ached with sympathy that couldn't fathom the depths of what he meant. But she cared. She cared and (only one of you goes home) in a way it was how she defied the Game a little bit longer. She wasn't supposed to be here at all, so she would break a few rules. She listened to Niall's bad jokes and he humoured her efforts at doing something with his hair on the train, before the stylists had waved and waxed it shut and seamless, and Annie remembered salt-struck hair a lot like hers, how impossible it had been. Annie had to care--

"I know I'm not going to win," he said, very quietly, like it was a secret. Annie looked at him helplessly, because what was she supposed to say? She couldn't wish him luck. She couldn't tell him that everything would be all right, because Annie wanted to win. Only one of them could go home, and maybe neither of them could. It wasn't fair for him to say something like that to her--

--maybe he read that in her, because he smiled slightly and said, "I know. I know. Don't say things like that. I am--I'm going to try. I just don't think I could kill you. You or Colt or the little kids. You don't have to say you wouldn't, we both know you would. I just don't think I could."

That stung.

"No--Annie, it's not--I said that wrong." Niall bit his lip and tipped his head back against the wall. They were only on the fourth floor, so the buildings all over rose up above them. "It's not that I think you're--like the other Careers, they want to kill. And I understand that, because to them killing is how they get home. If I win, and I go home, I'll be glad. But I just--I can't. I can't look at you and think of putting a spear in you. You're innocent."

They had a fountain, in their room. Annie wished Finn was there. He was always out at parties and even though Annie knew he was getting her sponsors she selfishly just wanted him there. She wanted Finn to hold her so comfortingly so she could forget talking about this, to have Finn there to tell Niall that he didn't know what he was talking about. To make him stop hurting her.

"You just finished saying you can picture me killing little kids, Niall. That doesn't sound very innocent." Annie meant it to be light, but her voice cracked a little. They were both no good at this. Neither of them had meant to be on a path that went here. Niall was going to stay with Skye and build ships and Annie was going to go home and make nets. For a second Annie pictured all three of them, Skye a tawny but friendly blur, her babies running between them on the beach, but--no. That would never, ever happen. (Little kids. How was Annie ever going to let herself have children after this if she had to kill Cypher or Tuck? It was selfish and awful, because one way or another what matters is that Cypher and Tuck are going to die, not what Annie felt about it. She had discovered a lot of selfish and awful things in her lately.)

"They dressed me up as a selkie. You are one, Annie. You're more the sea than anyone I've ever met. You'll win because you just--move. You flow. You wouldn't do it because you hate them or you want to hurt them. You'd do it because you had to. They don't give us a choice. I can't--choose. I can't do what you do." Niall was still smiling, aching and lost and underlit by the lights in the fountain, and if not for Skye and all the other obvious Annie would have kissed him to see if that would make him less sad. She would kiss him because he was wrong, she's not a selkie. She was Annie Cresta, sixteen, short and thin, she was terrified and had no idea what he was talking about.

In the Arena, Amethyst flung an axe at her. Niall stepped in the way, calm and graceful, and that was that.

She knew Skye saw somewhere. She never met Skye, but he was supposed to be blond and fearless, a pearl diver, and Niall's head was at her feet and how can Annie go back--how can Annie not go back--Niall's shell necklace smashed to pieces and scattered but Annie has one shell, one that stuck to her, she has it in her mouth and the water rushes up to meet her and Annie just says oh.

They weren't really friends, except they should have been.

You don't win the Hunger Games unless you kill someone, and Niall doesn't count, because it was Amethyst's thrown axe that killed him. She was aiming for Annie.

Annie has been running and hiding since the Cornucopia. Annie hasn't killed anybody. She could have, when she ran into the Tens, but--

Colt and Pluck.

Pluck was a husky, strong, and ugly girl just her age. Colt was lanky and seventeen, but you would never know it by how he acted. Annie had blurred over the Reapings by District 10. She shouldn't have.

"Where's your weeds?"

"Excuse me?" Annie lifted her head from plant identification (you know how to fight already, a few days practice won't really help--learn the things you don't know instead) to see the District 10 boy smiling a little quizzically down at her. He had hair as black and waving as a storm cloud and deep, dark eyes, lovely and high cheekbones with no trace of acne, dark-skinned. Not as dark as the Elevens, but darker than Annie ever got except in the very middle of summer. He was beautiful, but up close--up close there was something about him Annie couldn't place.

"You had--in your hair?" He touched his own and smiled hopefully, and Annie couldn't help but smile back. Finn had told her not to get to like anyone, but she already liked Niall and she had shown the little girl from Three (Cypher, thirteen) how to tie knots, and it was too late.

"That was a costume. For the parade. Like you and your partner. I was a selkie." Annie was privately glad they hadn't made her do something like Finn's year. At least a selkie got to wear enough clothing to be decent, and Annie had looked in the mirror and held her breath after they dressed her, because with black-smudged eyes and soft, glossy fur wrapped around her, oh--Annie had been gorgeous. And they put kelp in her hair. Real kelp. It smelled like home and after the parade she had hugged Finn as hard as she could because she knew this had him all over it. (He'd gotten so dark, when her stylist had suggested streaks of foam, almost naked, like a little nymph, and Finn had said don't and Annie kept thinking that somehow Finn didn't want her to win. But he was her mentor. That was crazy.)

"I was a horse," he said, proudly, and even before Pluck walked up and said "Damn it, Colt, stop bothering everyone", Annie had known. They had a man like that at home. His name was Tad, and he made his living collecting sea shells to sell to people who would use them in crafts for tourists, but he didn't actually make enough from that to support himself. Everyone took care of him, though, because it was the only decent thing to do, and even when he got loud or had one of his fits he was sweet before and after. Tad was--

"He's retarded," Pluck said, bluntly, and Annie almost jumped at being shocked like that. It was so sharp, and Annie flushed a little. Not with embarrassment.

"Where I'm from we say slow," she said, almost angry, and Pluck stared at her like Annie was the stupidest person in the world. Colt was across the room, looking chagrined until the little twelve-year-old from Eight (Tuck) invited him to join him at shelter building.

"Slow or retarded, you or one of your fucking Career buddies is going to kill him out there, so don't--just don't, Four." Pluck looked exhausted, abruptly, and Annie was embarrassed then. Embarrassed and ashamed, because Pluck was right. Colt wouldn't survive the Bloodbath. One of the Careers would kill him, probably after any real threats were dealt with, and Annie imagined Colt's trusting face turned up to a mace--she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, Pluck was gone.

But Colt didn't leave her alone. It was her fault. She had noticed Pluck hovering around him, guarding him, but that day Pluck was busy learning wrestling and Colt was carefully perfecting shelter building still. He could learn simple things. He was so proud of himself every time he did manage something, and besides two tantrums when he couldn't understand something or he was simply overwhelmed he'd been the calmest person in the whole Center. There was something serene about Colt that had nothing to do with being slow. An easy disposition, her father would say.

There was no reason to pick on him, except Amethyst was frustrated and bored, and she could pretend it was an accident when a lazy swing of her sword as she wandered back to the weapons rack clipped Colt's shelter and toppled it over. It wasn't irredeemable--the shelter--but Colt's face had fallen and Annie--Annie was always too caring for her own good. (You can't like them, Annie. I know you. If you start to like them you'll want to send them all home, but you can't. It can only be you.)

"Hey!" Annie surged to her feet and over to Amethyst, flushing dangerously bright and interrupting Amethyst beginning to tease Colt--no, tease was too soft of a word, Amethyst was playing with him like a dolphin tormenting a porpoise. Not many people out of District 4 knew how cruel dolphins could be. They looked so sweet and friendly in the water, but sometimes they'd break a porpoise's ribs and chase it until it died, for no reason. Dolphins could be monsters and so could beautiful girls.

"What, Four--" Amethyst started to say, but Annie's hands shot out and shoved her. They both got in trouble for fighting, but Annie recklessly thought it couldn't matter. The Capitol wanted her dead anyway. They had since she was Reaped. They had since she had cared at all about Finnick, although she hadn't known. So they would punish her before they killed her. Big deal. (Annie--Annie, they can make it so much harder for you in the Arena. You shouldn't have done that.)

Colt had hugged her tight when she came back, right in front of everyone, and after that he and Pluck ate with her and Niall. Cypher and Tuck joined them too, eventually. It made them look weak. They knew this couldn't last and that it would just make it worse, but Niall squeezed Cypher's shoulder and Pluck made jokes about rhyming with Tuck and--everyone at the table was going to die, except her. But Annie couldn't stop caring.

"Four." It was the last day of training. They had to be evaluated soon. Annie was hoping for an eight. Something average, for a Career. Not that it mattered. They were coming for her anyway, especially after what happened with Amethyst. Annie looked up at Pluck.

"I have a name," she said, forcing herself to--what? Sound cheerful? Pluck was too smart for that, and she smiled at Annie with a quirk in her mouth as if to say really, Four?

"I know. Listen." Pluck sat down next to her, in knot-tying, which Annie didn't need to practice at all. It just helped her calm down. "You and Fancy." Fancy was Niall; Pluck is incredibly good at reading people, underneath her gruffness. Pluck had three little siblings and a broken nose, which were all her father left her with after her mother died. She said they'd be fine. She had cousins. Annie didn't try to comfort her after she found that out, but Finn had to hold her while she cried later.

"Yeah?" Annie folded her rope on her lap.

"You're not bad. For District Four. So--listen. I'm not going home." Pluck was calm about this, so Annie forced herself to be too. "But I want to try for Colt. Send him home. I want that."

"You--do?" Annie tried to hide her shock, but didn't do so well, going by Pluck's bitter laugh. It was just hard to imagine Pluck doing that for someone else. Pluck always struck Annie as a survivor. If she had been watching from home she would have rooted for her to win, she thought--and then she realized she wouldn't have. She wouldn't have known Pluck, who worked in a slaughterhouse twelve hours a day since she was fourteen, and who had this clumsy, stupid way of being friendly like she was afraid someone would hit her if she ever really smiled. Annie would have been rooting for a Career. Probably Niall, or the girl who was supposed to go in her place.

"He volunteered," Pluck said, Annie stared at her, and then Annie felt like scum, because she'd never even asked herself why no one had taken Colt's place. She remembered his Reaping only vaguely. She'd dismissed him as a threat right after he'd gone on stage, because there had been nothing dramatic or imposing about him and she'd been talking softly with Finn. She'd just caught his name and his face, and forgot about him. Annie had just assumed--what, that they were like that in District 10? They'd just let a slow boy die, because no one cared, because they were less--human, over there? Something of her shame must have been apparent, because Pluck sighed.

"He has a little brother," Pluck explained. "Lamb. They Reaped Lamb first, and he's like--twelve, or something." Annie thought of Colt with Tuck, with Cypher. Of course. "He's not like Colt, you know. Colt says he's really smart. He wants to be a vet--an animal doctor. I don't know if they have those where you're from. Colt might be a retard, but he works in the slaughterhouse. Same as me." Another shock: Colt is so gentle, and Annie realized that she barely knew any of them still. That there were all these things she'd never know about them. "He knows what dying is and he knows what the Games are. He told me--fuck, Four, he told me on the train that he knew he was going to die, but it was okay, he's not scared. He's not scared but he's sad that he doesn't get to see Lamb be an animal doctor, can you believe that?"

Annie didn't even know Pluck could cry. She thought of leaning over and touching her, but knew better. People were watching. She might have to--later, that was later, but for now she wouldn't betray this ugly, brave, incredible girl. Pluck got it together on her own, her few tears easily blinked away.

"So." Pluck took a deep breath. "I'm going to try to keep him alive, and if it comes down to the two of us I'll--jump off a cliff, or something. I know it's probably not going to work. You don't need to tell me that. I don't want in on your alliance, either, because no offence, Four, but you're a dead girl walking. But if I go and you--I don't know, you find him? I'm not--going to ask you to do what I am, for him. You want to go home. I don't care if I do or not. But you kill him quick, Four. You kill him quick and you don't let those sick bastards over there touch him. Don't let anyone hurt him. Same with the kids."

Annie wanted to cry, but she couldn't. She just nodded. She was going to say something, but Pluck got up and walked away jerkily, and they hadn't talked again. She hadn't even talked about her, except telling Niall what she said, which he agreed to. So Annie hadn't talked to or about Pluck.

Not until she found Pluck, Colt, and Cypher huddled under a shelter in the rain, and Annie had stared at them. Cypher had squeaked, tinily, and Pluck had reached for her axe, but Colt had grinned and burst out of the shelter as soon as he recognized her.

"Colt! Colt, fuck, no--"

Annie let him hold her and cried and cried and cried, and in the shelter Pluck had rifled through Annie's pack without asking and took two jars of medicine to slather on the wounds the three of them had sustained getting out of the Bloodbath. Annie, twitching and biting her hand bloody in the back, hadn't cared. They didn't ask about Niall. She didn't ask about Tuck. They both knew already.

"Are you going to kill us?" Cypher asked, miserably. Her glasses were broken on one side. Annie stared at her.

"Annie won't hurt us," Colt assured her, and it wasn't the same as saying Annie won't kill us but Annie was already far too gone to care.

Colt let her and Cypher sleep on him while he and Pluck alternated watch. Annie was not all right. Annie didn't need Pluck to tell her to go before she had to--and Pluck had looked desperate, with her axe axe axe, and in the morning the cameras caught Colt briefly inconsolable because Pluck our selkie is gone but Pluck said shut up, Colt, exhausted and merciful beautiful stupid brave amazing Pluck who should have could have been her friend, and Annie will only see this after the Games but Cypher went so, so still, trembling still, and there was an arrow in her throat and run Colt go go go and they ran and went but Pluck died when she bled out anyway later that day (Amethyst, so good with swords) and Colt cried. Colt built a shelter and he had no parachutes but he killed with snares and he dressed his wounds like Pluck taught him and Colt didn't know how to swim but his shelter, his shelter, his awful shelter floated and Colt hung on.

Annie is so tired.

You don't win the Hunger Games if you don't kill someone. She didn't tell Pluck that.

They say Annie swam before she could walk.

This water isn't like the sea but it calms her, it calms her, it's water and water is hers, water is what home is made of. Everything is underwater and boom boom boom--but Annie knows that is not enough, there needs to be more sound.

Can she swim forever?

If she floats on her back she can even sleep, fitful, screaming, and this is why on the first day after the flood she wakes to the sound of splashing and Annie disappears under the surface nimble and quick, not even a ripple, and in the soft soft moonlight the thrashing of bubbles (you swim like a rock, contempt) tells her there is a predator in her not-sea. Annie surfaces, eyes only, and sees light hair, light eyes, beautiful girl, but they are monsters, does Annie have her knife?

Yes. Annie has her knife.

"Just let me do it," Amethyst says, and oh, Annie hears froth in her voice, hears teeth and the thrash of an animal an animal in a net, no way out but struggling, and under the water--Annie shows teeth.

This is immortalized on camera forever and always.

They say Annie smiled before she gutted Amethyst like a fish like a squirming awful screaming fish, but no, no, Annie didn't smile, Annie is screaming and crying too and holding Amethyst underwater because Niall is staring up at her from underneath and she is saying please please look I killed her stop please please go away she shows his shell to him but he won't go away and she saves the shell and--

One kill. Four left. Boom.

Annie is cut. Bleeding in the water, it's not safe, she swam away from Amethyst and Niall but now they are following her because she's bleeding and Amethyst's guts trail her, wreathe her, she is an impossible jellyfish and a kelp forest, Niall caught in the loop of her intestines and along for the ride, Annie cries and slaps the water again and again and almost misses the silver fish flash of a parachute and oh.

Annie bandages herself but she is in the water and all the medicine in the world won't change what a fishgirl knows which is that a wound underwater will fester and she can't get dry and Annie doesn't remember how she got here or why and maybe she never existed before this and she doesn't know the people in the water still following her but--wait.

Wait.

She remembers now.

She has to make a choice.

Halfway through day two Annie Cresta begins to swim in smooth, strong strokes that belie the damage the District One Tribute did with her knife. (Swords are not very useful in water.) There are five Tributes left, Annie included. The boy from District 2, the girl from District 4, the girl from District 6, the girl from District 9, and the boy from District 10. These games are boring, the Capitol has decided. The flood turned a game of death into one of endurance, really, since there's so little chance any of the surviving Tributes will stumble across each other. The revival of the girl from 4 sparks some interest, but poor thing, she's insane. No one is very interested in the flailing and screaming of a demented girl who is sure to die soon. All that's left is waiting for them to drown until one's left, then scooping the half-dead survivor up, drying them off, and paraded them around perfunctorily. Next year ought to be better.

Quoin is the second person Annie kills. She's struggling to stay up, little thing, missing a chunk of her shoulder and her eye but alive, alive, and Annie lets her see her coming because Quoin is hugging her tree branch and Annie can tell she can only swim so-so, they should have named her Quay and the girl looks at her and Annie wants to say I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry like her heartbeat is but they are both tired and Annie takes her tree branch and holds her under until she stops moving and then Annie lets her go and she is sorry, sorry, sorry, but she had to make a choice and Annie wants to go home now. Annie needs out of this water because now Quoin follows her too with bulging eye and tongue out and Annie is afraid of what they will do to her if she goes underneath.

Three left.

Interest is roused again. Apparently, the girl intends to make an effort, finally. Finnick Odair feels like he's fucked half the Capitol, but--

Annie floats on her back while she eats like an otter an otter and she drinks from a clear bottle and there isn't enough bread but Annie caught a fish and she eats it raw and still bleeding like an animal like a monster like a--like a dolphin, she's the dolphin now, except--

"Annie," Colt says, and he's crying, crying, and Annie is barely above the water and his voice is rough his lips are cracked she is trailing her supplies in a little silver boat she made of the parachute and Annie is a monster now but she promised--she said--and Annie leaves her bread and the rest of her fish and her water, Annie keeps her knife and a shell, and Finnick hits the screen in the Victor's lounge until his hand is bloody.

Colt eats for the first time in three days and drinks water that doesn't make him sick, and his mentor, whose heart has been broken since Colt asked her, gently, to look after Lamb, quietly transfers the meagre, useless sum of money she managed to gather on Pluck's behalf to the account of District 4, Female Tribute. It won't change anything. But she thinks Colt would want her to try.

Annie swims a spiral around him, out and out and out, a shark backwards, and she finds Fallow on a raft. Annie didn't know District 9 had rivers but Annie didn't know a lot of things before like she didn't know that Fallow, round and roly-poly Fallow, knows how to throw a punch. Annie doesn't mind her nose broken but Fallow fights in the wreck they make of her raft desperate and uncaring like a dying thing like she knows and she makes Annie loses her knife in the water and Annie has to hit her and hit her and hit her before she drowns her and oh, oh, oh, now Annie only breathes through her mouth.

Finnick finds more money than he expected in Annie's account. District 10 won't look at him. He sends her a breathing strip for her nose. Annie attaches it, carefully, and keeps swimming.

Two left.

There are no more parachutes now for Annie, no matter what Finnick does. It's the third day after the flood and she hasn't had water since what he sent her, and even if she kept it all it'd be gone by now. She could risk the river water, but he's seen what it did to Colt and Fallow when they tried to drink it. It's impossible to keep down, untreated, and Annie has no tablets. Annie doesn't even have a bottle. But no one will send her anything, because they assume she'll give it to the District 10, and that's simply boring.

He told her not to like them. He wishes he'd sent her a message in the last drop, but it's likely she's too messed up to understand it.

Colt will die on his own. But Julian's family grew up next to a lake. He's no Four, but he can outlast Annie. So she has to find him and she has to kill him, and she's a starving, traumatized, unarmed girl, while he's--

Annie follows a wake. She has to be careful, careful careful careful, because this one--he is the better predator, she's just a skinny darting thing and he is power, power and hunger, following the sound of crying (not hers) and Annie promised, she did, she shook her head yesyes and that's a promise that's an oath she will not let him touch, no, that belongs to Annie. She still has that. They can make her a dolphin outside but inside she's a seal, she's a minnow, she's a tide pool, Annie is Annie unless she lets him make her a liar so she won't. She can hold her breath a long time. A long time.

He has to rest some time and when he does Annie slips up neat as you please underneath him and undoes his knives before anything because she is--hurt, she's hurt in her head but she is not stupid and she sees them all smiling at her, even Amethyst, who is cradling Niall and Quoin and Fallow in her tendrils, and Annie would smile too as the knives sink, sink far away, but Julian hauls her out of the water and is screaming at her you little bitch fine I'll use my hands--Annie can't breathe, choked, but she is the best swimmer the most slippery Annie was swimming before she could walk and she twists and twists and they roll over and over and Annie holds him--under, under, and every time he comes up it's for less time and he stays down longer and Annie still stays over his body until she hears the sound that sets her free, but--

One left.

She promised.

By the time Annie gets to Colt she is drifting more than swimming. Colt clumsily kicks to propel his makeshift float to her, not crying anymore. Does he know? Of course he does. Colt has been working the kill floor since he was thirteen and big enough to swing a hammer, big enough to pretend he was fourteen. Colt sees the world simply, but he sees it. He knows dead means forever and he knew he was dead as soon as Lamb's name was called, and these things are okay. He pulls her halfway onto his broken shelter and covers her in half a ripped blanket, one that got tore up when everything flooded.

"They're still following me," Annie says, and she reaches out and touches Colt's face, light and soft, Colt with swollen eyes and cracked mouth, how can she--

Underwater Annie holds Colt's head against her shoulder and he only kicks once, one time, tenses a little, but she holds him with her breath held until it burns, until it hurts so much, until she hears, muted and far away, a sound, and she lets go. She lets go. Amethyst curls a strand around Colt's ankle and Annie screams.

In the Capitol, they realize after an hour or so that Annie has no intention of vacating the site to allow Colt's body to be collected. Quite the opposite. She screams blindly at the water and the sky and the hum of the waiting, impatient hovercraft, and even though it's a bit disorderly they pick her and the corpse up at the same time. Everyone just wants the whole tedious business over, and it's frankly embarrassing that an obviously deranged girl won. She didn't eat anyone, at least, there are small favours. In the hovercraft it takes two full grown men to pry Annie from Colt's body, to restrain her enough for sedation, and until she goes under entirely she's screaming at them don't touch him don't touch him don't Niall don't.

They're all Niall.

Underwater, Amethyst smiles at her.

There are one, two drops of blood on his eyelashes.

She touches his face, so light.

Cresta, A., has severe bacterial infections. She has numerous lacerations and contusions. She is dehydrated, starved, and out of her mind. All in all, a fairly typical Victor. There is no especial fuss that needs to be made over her treatment, although a doctor, consulting with a stylist, makes a judicious adjustment to her figure when he's operating on her chest regardless. When Finnick comes back and sees the new raised shape of Annie's breasts where she is sedated and wound in a nest of electrical leads and tubing he has to be persuaded by Haymitch Abernathy not to literally choke the life out of her medical team. They're only trying to help, and Annie will need all the help she can get. It isn't like Haymitch's Games, at least. Annie didn't do anything wrong, herself. In the end, she killed five of her fellow Tributes, including her former ally. Her instability isn't her fault. Besides.

Besides, why punish her, when this is perfect for punishing Finnick?

Anything you even begin to care for will be taken away from you and corrupted, because we can. Our power is everywhere, absolute, and this is even better than a dead girl. This is a mad, broken, vulnerable girl, and Snow doesn't have to say any of these things directly to Finnick's face. He doesn't have to muse aloud, while Annie sleeps in drug-muddled nightmares, what would happen to her battered little mind if she had to entertain.

When Annie wakes up all she does is scream and cry. They have to put her under over and over again until, eventually, lucid or not, she has to do her interview. Annie is so heavily sedated on stage that they have to use careful cuts and dubbing to make it appear she's simply quiet, not staring through Flickerman with wide, empty, black-smudged eyes. Finnick has to carry her back to their quarters. He has less than six months to make her ready for the Victor's Tour, and Annie, when she's awake, can't seem to remember her own name. She bites her fingers and tries to slit her wrists with a broken mirror on the train, and Finnick clutches her bleeding hands as she sobs and says they won't stop looking at me.

After a while, she's quieter.

One drop, two drops.

They expect her to want nothing to do with water. Annie throws herself into the sea like a child to her mother, when she can barely even look at her flesh and blood. Oddly, her mother doesn't seem to mind. Annie, she says, kneading bread, will come back when she's ready.

Not a lot of people remember that Mrs. Cresta used to be little Spur, who survived for eight days in a lifeboat with her dead father, drinking rain and--well, what do you eat for eight days in an open lifeboat with a dead man, when you're seven?

Her older sister is less serene, storming around with Annie's nephew in her arms and accusing everyone, wildly. She punches Finnick Odair in the face and gives him a black eye, because they never would have touched her if not for you, and since this is true--well. What can anyone say?

Annie's father weaves, grieving, and he weaves and weaves until he's made enough wall hangings for every room in Annie's new house they share with her. They're ornamental nets full of shells, and bright stones, and feathers, bits of everything beautiful from the beach, and he kisses Annie on her forehead and tucks her in every night like he did when she was much smaller.

In the corner, Amethyst smiles. Annie can see Niall's teeth in her mouth. She closes her eyes, but they're still there. They're always there, Colt strangled in a coil of Amethyst. She promised and she lied.

"I tried, Pluck," she says, to the wind and the birds, holding her hands out blind in front of her, and Finn catches up to her but doesn't catch her up into his arms like he used to because she would claw out his eyes.

She's quiet. That's all they can say. She's started laughing again by the time her Tour happens, but it's bright, meaningless laughter, like gulls screaming more than a girl, and she laughs at things no one else can see.

Finn isn't allowed to go more than ten feet away from her at a time, and honestly if she'd let him he wouldn't go. He'll be her anchor. He'll be anything she wants him to be, or needs him to be, and he'll slowly reel her back from that submerged place she vanished into when Niall landed at her feet. Patience is a fisherman's first virtue, and Annie--Annie is worth waiting for.

Twelve and Eleven mean nothing to Annie, and she means nothing to them. She didn't kill any of their Tributes, didn't ally with anyone who did. She's allowed to be still and quiet, and the hope is that no one will care. That Annie can glide through this and go home, untouched, and be allowed to heal in peace. She'll never Mentor, not Annie. If Finn has his way she'll never go to the Capitol again. She takes two little blue pills every day, morning and evening, so that she doesn't have outbursts. It's impossible to know if it helps, since Annie isn't telling.

Ten makes everyone on the train tense, because Ten--in Ten, Annie is the Victor who killed a handicapped boy, someone as defenceless as a baby seal. They don't know what to expect.

It turns out that District 4 usually underestimates District 10, because what they remember is the bread and the fish and the water.

Annie walks onto a stage covered in white flowers wound with what looks like kelp but isn't, and in a long, flowing dress the colour of pearls she shines like a virgin goddess holding audience. There's a speech she's supposed to read, but she stammers in it, lost, wide-eyed, and Finn is tensed and ready to scoop her up and carry her away if he has to--

One drop, two drops--

The lanky little boy Annie is afraid to look at because oh, oh, oh, he walks across the stage and touches her elbow, slightly, smiles shyly.

"Miss Cresta," he says, polite and as perfect as if this was planned, except no one saw this coming, "It's okay."

Annie starts to cry, but it's not gales that shake her down to nothing or horrified little hiccups of torn air. It's just crying, soft and quiet, and the little boy is tall enough to reach up and fold Annie into his arms, and Annie, who will let no one but Finnick touch her when she is not being tranquilized for styling, wraps her arms around him like she never wants to let go. No one cares very much about the speech after that, although Finnick salvages it for the Capitol with a few quick words he can't even remember.

The dinner is seafood and leafy greens, and the Mentor from last year, Stun, she smiles at Finnick. No red meat, no blood. Annie barely eats anyway, but it's a kind, thoughtful gesture, and it's amazing that anyone in Panem is capable of kind, thoughtful gestures.

"I think Colt had a crush on your girl, you know," Stun says, after dessert.

"Everyone does," Finnick says, watching Annie sit cross-legged on the floor with no sense of propriety at all as she plays with Lamb and the mayor's new kittens. Annie lifts her eyes to his, and for the first time since he said goodbye to her the morning of the Games, she smiles at him.

There are no drops.

The kittens are tiny tender things, mewling and warm underneath her fingers, and Annie pets their soft stomaches with Lamb, who keeps piling kittens onto her lap and talking about calving season, how this year he gets to help assist in deliveries on his own. Annie tells him about her sister and her baby, how it's probably not much different, how a lot of things in District 4 are the same as 10 and--

Maybe he sees her eyes go glassy, because he touches her hand.

"Miss Cresta?"

She looks at him. Just him. Not Amethyst, not Niall, not Quoin or Fallow or Julian. Not Colt. They're all here, but they'll always be here. Annie will carry them around forever. She's starting to get used to it. They all are.

"Thank you. For looking after my brother." Lamb bites his lip, and oh, he looks so much like him then. "Not--everyone would have been nice to him. But you were nice."

"I killed him," Annie whispers.

"Not you," Lamb whispers back, and oh. Oh, he's as brave as his brother.

"I want to give Lamb money for school," she says, on the train, after they leave, and since this is the first time Annie has expressed a desire to do anything with her money it's easily enough arranged.

They lap Panem with no more incident, although Finn has to--or just does, because to hell with it--hover near her in the Capitol every second, this place where people don't understand not to touch or surprise. Annie whirls into his arms over and over again, the only place she feels even a little safe.

Annie doesn't tell Finn he's the only thing that keeps Amethyst away, because the ghost is afraid of him, and she doesn't say that every day Amethyst looks more and more like Annie, but dead Annie, Annie torn open and tangling up everything. In her dreams Finn is in the water with her, and he cuts her open, over and over. Annie isn't afraid of Finn, but she's afraid of herself. In her dreams Finn cries when he kills her, he's sorrysorrysorry, and Annie smiles like they say she smiled before she killed Amethyst and just says harder. Annie is a very different person when she sleeps.

They go home, and Annie climbs out of her window and disappears down the beach. They used to watch her closely, for things like that, because they're afraid she'll hurt herself. Like on the train, before. But Annie doesn't want to hurt herself. She just has to do something, and every time she tried to find the words they went away.

The sun comes up a little after she swims from Victor's Island to the village, and she dries off on the beach before she goes into town. Skye, she says, Skye, she asks everyone, Skye the pearl diver, and eventually she is at a tiny house on the beach. She doesn't knock, but the door opens eventually anyway.

"Hi," Skye says. She knows it's him right away.

"Hi," she says. "I brought your shell."

"You--" Skye glances behind him "--should come in. We're having lunch."

Mr. Strand looks at Annie like he wants to hug her, or maybe break her, and he can't decide what he means to himself, so he smiles at her like it hurts and she smiles back the same way.

Is this what Niall would have wanted, she wonders?

"He was brave," she says, telling them nothing they don't know, but she has to say something, "He was brave and he told me dumb jokes."

Skye laughs like he's crying: "Did he tell the one about the fishmonger's wife?"

"Yes."

Mr. Strand, cautiously: "How about the sailor and the dressmaker?"

"That too."

When Finnick arrives, almost breaking down the door, they're all telling the worst jokes they can remember and laughing brightly around the edge of a shape that rolls in the corner of the room until their words build a body and Niall is laughing even if no one but Annie hears and his shell is on the table and none of it is fine, nothing is all right, but Annie smiles at Finnick when he comes in and says:

"Finn. We're remembering."