Chapter 1: PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Notes:
“The tributes from 1, 2, and 4 traditionally have this look about them. It’s technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol but it happens every year. In District 12, we call them the Career Tributes, or just the Careers.”
- The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
“'You mean you want us in the Career pack this year?'” I ask, unable to hide my distaste. Traditionally the tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 join forces, possibly taking in a few other exceptional fighters, and hunt down the weaker competitors.”
- Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
“It’ll be the remaining Career Tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4. ”
— The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Up close, the curve of the horizon seems a little less polished.
Annie leans forward, squinting, though she doesn’t really need to. There it is: smooth, metallic, and far too distant to make out much detail. Just a suggestion of lines, maybe panels—she’s not sure. She tilts her head as if the angle might shift something loose, offer a clearer glimpse of whatever waits beyond it, but all it does is distort the lines further, make them smear like charcoal under too much pressure.
She tries to focus on the sound instead. Beneath the hum of the boat’s engine, she thinks she hears it—a faint tremor carried through the hull, like the wall itself is breathing. Or maybe it’s the open waters on the other side of the Terminus, the wild expanse twisting in storms too far out to see.
No sky out there, she imagines, only clouds eating the light. No silence, either—just the howl of wind and the low groan of mutts moving through swells big enough to swallow a vessel whole.
The boat sways beneath her, and for a moment, the wall tilts with it, blurring into the swell of the sea.
She lurches from where she's seated and turns toward Mrs. Gardyne. “We’re leaving already?”
Mrs. Gardyne doesn’t look back. Her voice floats over her shoulder, tight against the salt wind. “We’re already too close. Did you see what you wanted?”
Honestly, no. Annie had wanted to get a better look at all the ancient technology making up the Terminus Praesidium. Maybe try and see how tall it is or if the wall has any cracks in it from all the centuries it’s stood in the sea. If they do get closer, though, they'll probably get incinerated by lasers or whatever Capitol technology protects it. This is the best she'll ever get.
Instead she says, “Yep!”
She tears off another piece of her two-pound rotisserie chicken with her bare hands, grease slicking her fingers, and stuffs it in her mouth. Death Lord butts her head against Annie’s knee, meowing incessantly. Annie coos an apology and rips off another strip of chicken to feed her. Dumb-o, Richard, and Boots mewl too, but they’re promptly quieted with a few scraps of meat.
The boat rocks again, heavier this time, as they turn back toward the harbor. The wall recedes into the distance, melting into the haze of sea spray.
She cranes her neck for one last look, catching a final glimmer of the Terminus' surface before it dissolves entirely, leaving only the sea and the faint spray that dampens her cheeks. She catches a glitter but that's only from a boat blasting an advertisement for Rexia.
“Do you want to see Victor Isles?” Mrs. Gardyne calls.
Annie looks at the glowing island across the sea, and grins. “Thank you, but I’m good. I’ll be living there by next month, anyway.”
“Thank the stars. Have you seen these prices lately? Five denarii for one gallon of fuel, are they out of their fucking minds? And the South putting their fucking trash in our sea…”
Annie spends the rest of her morning sharing her chicken with the strays, listening to the calming sounds of Mrs. Gardyne and her crew yell about how they’re all going to be forced to live in the South Coast if fuel prices don’t go down, and raving at the Capitol for not just replacing the wall with a forcefield so they have more water to fish in.
She tries to savor the moment, so she can think back on this little moment of home when she’s in the Games, but she’s not entirely sure how.
After they dock, she’s not even given much time to get her bearings. She’s getting ready to help the crew unload the lobster traps when she spots Maximilian stumbling over his own feet to run up to her.
Mrs. Gardyne walks by and smacks a wet kiss on her cheek, tells her, “You can go. I'll see you at your graduation!” and then Maximilian’s screaming at her, his little face all red and sweaty.
He skitters to a stop in front of her and points an accusing finger. “You!”
“Hi.” She tries to bend down to sweep him up in her arms and smother him with kisses, but he dodges out of her grasp and glares.
“You’re wet! What are you doing?! Even Marcielo’s—Even Marcielo is doing a mud mask and everything to get ready!”
Her uniform is a little damp, but not too bad, she’d say. “I’m gonna shower. Dad said he’ll do my hair, it’ll be fine.”
“What hair?! You have nothing!” He howls. He looks like he’s just a few seconds away from exploding.
She toys with the long, thick black braid hanging on his shoulder and smiles at him. “This hair. About time you shared it with me.”
He bats her hand off. “We need to go home right now. And you can’t stop to start any conversations with anyone, even if you know them, okay?!” He looks at her seriously, eyes wide. He’s so cute. “You can talk to everyone at Ludi.”
“Okay, boss. Lead the way.”
She lets him drag her through town, his hand clenched tightly on her wrist. She waves at the faces she recognizes—the ice cream lady, the couple who sells street corn, Kai, Talia, Malik, a million others—and laughs when some people whoop and cheer for her.
The streets are alive as everyone prepares for Ludi. They spill over with salt and song, with children darting between their mothers’ pants, arms tangled in nets of bright garlands. Around her, laughter erupts, bursts like fish breaking the surface.
A girl perched on her mother’s shoulders stretches to hang a strand of coral beads across the doorway of a shop. Men string flowers onto twine, their fingers quick, their mouths moving just as fast, as if the gossip keeps the knots tight. The cobblestones underfoot are dusted with crushed chalk, leaving trails of turquoise and pink, like the water has already spilled in. The main thoroughfare is cordoned off, ropes twisting up to hold flower garlands—a path cut clean through the chaos.
Annie doesn’t look at it for long. She looks down at tiny Maximilian, who still hasn’t said anything else to her, more focused on stomping home.
“I saw the Terminus Praesidium on Mrs. Gardyne’s boat. Real up close and everything,” Annie tries.
He snarks back, “So what?”
Oh, the woes of puberty. She wants to pinch his cheek. “Aren’t you interested?”
“Why would I? It's a wall. It's there for a reason. You're literally not supposed to get close to it because there’s mutts and… stuff outside of it.” His tone is still angry, but his hand does loosen a touch on her wrist. “It's probably going to get torn down and get replaced by a force field anyway.”
She goads him. “But isn’t it cool? You can never see it from land, and I was so close I saw some of the panels.”
“I don’t care,” he sniffs. He flings their front door open and pulls her along with him, gesturing for her to go up the stairs.
She stops at the foot of them and reaches down to cup his face in her hands. He looks ready to protest, brown eyes cranky, but she leans down to kiss his forehead. “Don’t be mad at me, boss. I’m gonna be away from home for a whole month. Let’s kiss and make up.” She pulls away. “You can do my hair, if you want.”
“Whatever.”
He says this, but when she comes out of the shower a few moments later, he has her brush ready in his hands, muttering about how she’s going to put him in an early grave. Like he’s eighty, not eleven.
She wraps him up in a big hug after he’s brushed her hair to silk. Murmurs, “Thank you,” and maybe squeezes him a little too hard, but she’s about to embark for the Capitol tomorrow, so she thinks she’s allowed some grace.
He melts into her embrace, hands clutching at her shoulders. He says nothing, and Annie is about to start tearing up before he pulls himself off and shrieks directly in her ear, “Where is your uniform?!”
She looks at her bed.
Huh. It’s not there. Well, she can wear the wet one—who cares?
“Here! It’s here, I’ve got it,” calls their dad from outside her room. “I was steaming it.”
“You’ll have to steam it again for the reaping, then,” Annie says, watching him step into the room.
He’s got her uniform folded neatly over his arm, and looks like he’s just spent the past hour bawling his eyes out. Sharp brown eyes pink, nose red.
“Big day. Finally graduating,” he says, setting her clothes down on the bed.
Maximilian smooths invisible wrinkles off the gray fabric of the uniform. “Dad, you can’t start crying or else she’ll be late. You can cry tomorrow when she says goodbye.”
Her dad tries his best, but once she’s all uniformed up, he ducks his head to squeeze out some tears. She can’t hug him again, because she might tear up, too.
The three of them head downstairs. Her mom’s leaning against the doorframe like she’s been there forever, her lips curling into a soft smile. “You look sharp,” she says.
They hug each other goodbye, and then Annie’s whisked off in a trolley that carries her to the edge of town—where the Central Coast surrenders itself to the South. She hops off the car, and immediately, the trainers are snapping orders.
“Where is Marcielo?!” Mr. Sullivan yells, and he looks like he’s about to tear any hair follicles he has left off his shiny head.
“He’s over here!” Pyxis pipes up.
She barely is able to stutter out a quick, “Hi!” to her classmates, before she’s pushed to the front of the line. Six rows, two columns, for all twelve of them.
Marcielo makes his way next to her, slumped forward, hands in his pockets. “Hey,” he says.
She makes a face at the sound of his voice. “Don’t slouch.”
“I’m tired.”
“Miss Kirby’s about to come up here and wake you up.”
Miss Kirby’s behind them, hitting Hurley for having a wrinkle in his clothes, then moves to chastise Nox. She works her way up to them, stares at Marcielo, mutters, “It’s in the tides hands,” and finally walks off.
Annie fights a laugh.
Then a horn blasts, sharp and brassy, and the band begins playing Panem’s Anthem. The sound spreads across the main thoroughfare, rippling through the crowd that’s gathered in the early light.
People are pressed shoulder to shoulder, their faces full of—pride, reverence, even a glint of envy in some eyes. Vendors have set up carts along the edges, selling salted fish wrapped in seaweed, delicate kelp rolls, and small waxy packets of candied orange peel that gleam like jewels in the sun.
The twelve of them move as one, their steps perfectly measured. The cobblestones beneath their feet are wet, gleaming from the morning mist that’s yet to burn away. Children weave through the crowd, clutching handfuls of salt and dried herbs—rosemary, thyme, a few sprigs of dill—and toss them into their path. The salt glitters as it arcs through the air, catching the light like scattered diamonds before settling onto the stones.
The herbs release their fragrance as they fall, mingling with the briny tang of the sea and the faint, metallic hint of the parade banners snapping in the wind. The banners are everywhere, strung from window to window, their deep blue fabric emblazoned with the Leviathan’s crest: a leviathan, coiled and immense, its body curling protectively around a silver trident. They flutter and ripple, alive with the breeze.
People toss out bouquets of wildflowers—sprays of purple thistle and yellow marigolds tied with rough twine. Kai, the girl next door, spots her and whoops, “Go, Annie!”, before ducking her head and laughing.
Annie smiles back at her, cheeks aching. She feels like she could float, her body buoyed by the energy around her.
As they march, the path widens, opening up to where a platform’s been set up at the Leviathan. Raised, wooden, draped in the blue and silver of their crest. And there, at the far right, is the giant, copper bell.
Once everyone’s settled, the director adjusts the crest pinned to her chest, taps the microphone, then smiles. “Today is the culmination of a journey that began a decade ago. For ten years, you have trained not just to fight but to win. Not just to survive, but to conquer,” she says, pausing to let her words settle. “Because we are not a district that waits for the tide to pull us under. We chart our own course.”
She turns the page of her script over. “By volunteering for the Games, you shield those who would otherwise be chosen. You save a child from a fate they are not prepared to face. You are their shield, their hope, and their protector.”
Pyxis starts nodding furiously next to her, clasping Annie’s hand as he holds back tears.
“Victory ensures our people need not worry about food. By winning, you shower us in gifts, so that the children of this district—your children, someday—will not know the bite of hunger for one more year. A victor is a champion. A symbol of what it means to be from District Four.”
She gestures out toward the crowd, her arm cutting the air like a wave cresting. “Glory is not given. It is earned through sweat, through sacrifice, and through the will to endure when all seems lost. Glory is bringing pride to your family, honor to your trainers, and inspiration to the children who will one day walk in your footsteps. Glory is the torch you carry.”
Above them, gulls wheel and cry.
“The path ahead is not an easy one, but it is a noble one. You will have brought light to your people, hope to your district, and honor to your name.” She smiles, one last time at them all. “Waves carry you well. Always.”
She receives thunderous applause, as does Mags after her. Afterward, the mayor’s speech is so boring in comparison to the director’s and the pride of their District that she receives significantly less applause. But the speeches end, and finally, finally, they start calling out names. Callum goes up first, then Pyxis, both ringing the bell and beaming at the crowd.
“Antheia Cresta."
Her heart pounds and she rises, ascending up the steps to the platform. Mags smiles at her, and Annie bows her head, feeling the tap of a gnarled finger against her forehead.
Mags drapes her black graduation sash over her shoulder and murmurs, “Congratulations.”
Annie whispers, “Thank you."
She rises to meet the director, who presses her aes into her palm. Then she walks past to the edge of the platform. The rope of the bell dangles before her, thick and weathered, frayed just slightly at the edges where so many hands have gripped it over the years.
She grips the coarse fibers in her palms, and pulls.
The bell rings out, a deep, resonant sound that fills the square and spills out toward the sea, reverberating off the cliffs. She lets the rope go and goes down the steps, smiling at the crowd. She catches sight of her father crying into her mother’s shoulder.
And then, just like that, it’s over. She’s graduated.
The ceremony ends in a flurry of applause and cheers. She runs to her friends, hugs them, and feels like crying a little. Pyxis is already doing it for her, getting his snot all over the uniform that some poor eleventh grader will be stuck with in a few months.
“Don’t forget me when you’re rich and famous, Annie,” he wails.
They all chat together, making promises to visit each other and keep in contact, but her mind is half there and half somewhere else because—ten years. Ten years of her life have brought her here, to this moment, to this sash, to this coin in her hand.
She looks at the aes, fingers curling around the engraved crest of the Leviathan, and feels a strange pang in her chest—joy and grief knotted so tightly together that she can’t quite tell them apart.
She’s supposed to be excited. And she is. She really is. This is what they’ve all been working toward, every sparring session, every grueling examination, every mistake and triumph. This is what it was for.
A whole decade of her life is behind her now. Gone. Ten years of structure, of routine, of knowing exactly what comes next. The endless days of lessons, the drills, the whispered jokes during mealtime, the nights spent looking at her ceiling and wondering if she’d ever be here, on this platform, wearing this sash.
They’re over.
Her chest tightens, but not in a bad way. It’s just… a lot. A lot to hold. A lot to let go of.
She thinks of the kids throwing herbs into the street, their wide, innocent eyes, and wonders if they’ll stand here one day, feeling this same mix of joy and loss. She thinks of herself, a few years ago, watching a parade just like the one earlier, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be at the front of the line.
Now she knows. And it feels like everything.
Ludi begins shortly after sunset, as they all join the rest of the district at the main square. It’s already begun, dozens of lanterns bathing the square in a patchwork of color. They hang from ropes strung between the buildings, swaying gently in the breeze, their shapes as varied as the stars: spheres, teardrops, even one that looks like a tiny ship with its sails aglow.
The air is rich with the mingling smells of roasted fish, caramelized onions, and the sharp tang of citrus. Vendors call out their wares, their voices cutting through the hum of conversation and the occasional burst of laughter.
Somehow, she gets pulled to one of the long wooden tables near the square’s edge, a group of old uncles and aunties waving her over.One of the uncles reaches over to grab her hand and looks her dead in the eye.
“I want you to make sure I don’t have to worry about the cost of eggs for the entirety of this year.”
She nods seriously. “Of course, Uncle. I’ll do my best.”
He sniffs and lays one of his cards on the table.
Someone passes her a clay cup filled with something sweet and sharp, and she chugs it, earning some loud whoops. It gets topped up again, she chugs it again. The liquid warms her throat and loosens the last threads of tension in her shoulders.
She makes jokes with the group, then loses spectacularly, so she drifts away from the table. The sound of drums pulls her toward the center of the square. Nox is on stage, drunkenly singing nonsense as Storm cheers her on.
A circle has formed, dancers swaying and stomping in time with the rhythm. Annie stands at the edge of the circle, watching for a moment, her body already beginning to move in time with the music. Pyxis grabs her hand—grinning and breathless—and pulls her into the circle. Then she’s spinning, her feet moving instinctively to the beat.
The music seems to flow through her, filling her chest and legs and arms until there’s nothing left but the dance. She laughs, the sound spilling out of her like it’s been trapped inside all day, and Pyxis laughs with her.
“Are you excited for tomorrow?” Pyxis yells over the sound of Nox’s voice cracking.
Annie smiles. “Of course!”
She loses track of Pyxis, loses track of time, caught up in the endless whirl of movement and music. Faces blur together—friends, classmates, strangers—all of them beaming, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Someone places a laurel on her head, the cool leaves brushing against her temple, and she tries to kiss their cheek but ends up kissing their chin. She attempts to hold onto it as she dances, but the world is turning fuzzy and so is her head, so she stumbles away to take a seat.
She groans as she sits, rolling her shoulders. She watches as Nox lies down with her back flat on the stage, and then Storm takes over the microphone, getting so close to it Annie can hear the sounds of her lips moving.
The gentle glow of the lanterns would lull her into drowsiness on any other night. Their soft, golden light sways with the breeze, brushing against the edges of her vision, but she can’t sleep. Her whole life is going to change tomorrow.
“Is this seat taken?” Marcielo asks, sitting next to her.
She glances sideways at him. “Why’d you even ask?”
“Manners.” He shrugs. Then, without any warning or ceremony, he says, “I’m gonna volunteer.”
The words drop like a stone into a still pond.
“What?” Annie jerks her head so fast her laurel tilts, nearly falling off. She fumbles to right it and gapes at him.
Marcielo's going to volunteer?
He doesn’t flinch. His expression remains blank, his posture as casual as if he’d just commented on the weather. “Your face is really funny right now,” he says flatly.
“Are you serious?” Her voice comes out in a half-sputter, half-gasp.
He doesn’t answer, just stares at her with that infuriatingly monotone face and those unsettling dead fish eyes. Marcielo has never been one to joke—at least, not with her.
No. No, that ruins everything. She can't let him volunteer. She—If he does, then she has no shot at winning.
“Oh, my stars. You are serious.” She exhales sharply, sitting up straighter. “Why? You’ve never wanted to volunteer before.”
“I just lost twenty bucks to Brooke. Now I’m strapped for cash, so…” He shrugs again, as if this explanation is entirely logical.
Her jaw drops. “You’re signing up for the Hunger Games because you’re strapped for cash?”
“Yeah.” His tone is maddeningly casual.
“Were you asleep during the director’s speech?”
“Yeah.”
Annie takes a long, deep breath to calm herself down. Around her, the drums in the square soften, rhythm steady and slow, matching the pace of her swirling thoughts. She might lose her life to a man whose motive for entering the Games is, quite literally, a gambling loss.
“That’s—You know the Games are for honor, right?” she asks.
“I can be very honorable,” he replies, utterly straight-faced.
A snort escapes her before she can stop it. She claps a hand over her mouth, composing herself. She reflexively wants to apologize for laughing at him right in front of his face, but decides against it. He's just complicated her life by tenfold. He can live without an apology.
Before she can say anything else, a firework is shot into the sky. Its golden light arcs high above the square, drawing every gaze upward. The explosion of sparks cascades like liquid fire, shimmering before fading into the darkness.
The drums pick up again, their beat slower now, softer. The square begins to settle. Couples drift to the edges, arms wrapped around one another as they sway lazily. Children are hoisted onto tired shoulders, their heads lolling as they fight off sleep. Older folks sit back in their chairs, their conversations quieter now, like embers glowing at the end of a long day.
Marcielo breaks the silence. “Will you tell Callum?”
She runs a hand over her face. “I’m thinking about it. But you two will probably spend so much time waiting for the other to announce they’re volunteering that we’ll end up sending whoever’s been reaped.”
“That’s the best-case scenario for you.”
“Best-case scenario would be you letting Callum volunteer. I don’t want to send someone who hasn’t had any training. The reaped kid would just end up as a meat shield. That’s horrible.”
Marcielo smooths his sash down on his suit, as if the thought doesn’t bother him in the slightest. “I’m open to an alliance until the end with you.”
She waves a hand at him, exasperated, her mind too full to process this conversation any further. “Hold on—don’t say anything else. Give me a second to process this first.”
The square feels quieter now, the hum of activity fading into the background. She closes her eyes, trying to center herself, to push past the growing knot of anxiety in her chest. She’s been so confident and happy this entire day, excited for tomorrow. The Games would be a cinch. She’s dead-accurate with a spear, dagger, and throwing knives. Everyone around her knows it, too. But, of course, Marcielo stamps out all the happiness she'd been feeling.
She can and has beat everyone else in her graduating class—except for Marcielo.
She looks at him and thinks, This man might be the one to kill me, and he’s doing it because of twenty bucks.
After a moment of silence, his voice cuts through her thoughts, flat and dry as ever. “Is it processed?”
“Are you trying to copy Finnick’s whole thing?”
“No… Callum and I are in the same graduating class. We’re all fair game to volunteer. It won't be that big of a shock.”
She tries again. “All they’ve been saying about these Games is that they’re gonna be insane because Harmonia Thornwell is retiring, so she’s going all out. Plus, it’s the 70th Games and the Quarter Quell’s soon, so they’ll be testing ideas out. These Games will be really difficult.”
“Okay.”
There’s a beat of silence where she simply stares at him, her mind flipping through a thousand things to say, but none of them stick. Finally, she says, “Why can’t we ever have a normal conversation? Why can’t we talk about the weather?”
Marcielo leans back slightly. “Well, we’re not friends. And I thought you should know.”
It’s too much. She bolts upright, the sudden movement making her laurel tilt dangerously again. She snatches it off her head, clutching it in one hand as she turns away. “I’m gonna go home. Goodnight, Marcielo.”
“No comments on my alliance offer?” he calls after her, still maddeningly calm.
“I’ll get back to you on that.” She waves a hand over her shoulder, the gesture so limp and flimsy it feels like an afterthought. “Happy Ludi.”
She doesn’t wait for his reply, weaving through the thinning crowd until she spots Maximilian. He’s dozed off in a chair, his other little friends trying to play cards despite not knowing the rules. Their eyes round when she gets closer, gawking at her.
“C’mon, boss,” she says softly, ruffling his hair as he stirs. “Let’s get you home.”
She thinks about carrying him, but that’ll just earn her a bout of screaming, so she waits patiently as he slowly lifts himself out of the chair. He follows her without protest, his steps uneven and heavy with exhaustion. They hop onto one of the trolleys, its clunky frame rattling slightly as it rolls through the quiet streets.
Maximilian leans against her side, his head tucked into her shoulder. The ride is short, the silence between them filled with the hum of the trolley and the distant echoes of drums still lingering in the square. She's quiet all the while, heart in her stomach. She feels nothing but the urge to throttle Marcielo and also scream at something.
By the time they reach home, the house is dark and still. Their parents are already asleep, her mom’s muffled snores coming from the farthest room. Annie tucks Maximilian into his bed first, smoothing the blanket over him and pressing a quick kiss to his forehead. He murmurs something unintelligible but doesn’t wake.
In her own room, she slips out of her uniform, folding it neatly before changing into a loose cotton shirt. The laurel sits on her bedside table, leaves still vibrant in the dim light. She stares at it for a moment, her mind drifting back to the parade, the platform, the way the crowd had cheered.
The weight of the day crashes over her all at once.
She crawls into bed, pulling the blanket up to her chin, and stares at the hairline crack in the ceiling above her bed. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to sleep.
Leave it to Marcielo to ruin all her life has been working towards since she was eight-years-old. Of course it would be him. She doesn’t even know why she's so surprised.
It’ll be fine, she tells herself. There’s been multiple times in the past where a physically stronger opponent was defeated by a weaker one. Case in point: Finnick Odair, who’ll probably be her mentor.
She’d like to think he’d choose to mentor her over Marcielo. She’d never seen the two interact at the Leviathan, but she at least worked with him on a project once in ninth grade. He’ll be able to teach her how he got the Capitol to love him so much and then she’ll have a shot against Marcielo.
There's not even a guarantee that she'll get her way at the reaping and be the only volunteer for the girls. All her female classmates know how much she wants this and they’re all good friends, but that doesn't mean there won't be someone like Marcielo who'll surprise her and steal this moment away. Hell, even a junior, sophomore, or even freshman could volunteer, just like what Finnick had done.
The door creaks open softly, snapping her out of her thoughts. She doesn’t move, her eyes half-lidded, watching as Maximilian tiptoes into the room. He’s quiet, clearly thinking she’s already asleep. He hesitates at the edge of her bed before crawling in beside her, his small frame pressing into her side.
Her heart melts. Even though he wants to act so mature, he’s still a little kid.
She shifts, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him close to her chest.
He freezes. “You’re awake?” he whispers, his voice small and unsure.
“Mhm,” she murmurs, pressing her cheek against his hair.
There’s a long pause, the kind that feels like he’s trying to find the right words but doesn’t know how. Finally, he whispers, “I’ll miss you.”
Her throat tightens. She closes her eyes for a moment, inhaling the faint scent of his shampoo. “I’ll only be gone for a month,” she says.
“But you might die.”
She feels his small hands clutching her shirt, the tension in his tiny frame.
“You think I’m gonna die?” she teases gently, her voice light. “That’s a little insulting.” Before he can get upset, she quickly adds, “Kidding! I’m kidding. Don’t worry so much.”
She holds him tighter, kissing the top of his head. “Just sleep, okay? You know I love you, boss.”
His voice is barely audible when he replies, “Love you, too.”
Annie stays awake long after his breathing evens out, her mind racing even as her body begs for rest. She strokes his hair absently, her thoughts looping over and over: the parade, ringing the bell, Marcielo’s stupid blank face and deadpan voice, and now Maximilian.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Today was supposed to be a good day. A day to celebrate the end of training, the eve of the reaping. Ludi. She was supposed to feel proud. Tomorrow, she will stand in the square and volunteer. Tomorrow, she will become a victor-in-waiting.
But now, her chest feels hollow, a boat with no keel.
She thinks of Marcielo in training, towering over her, his spear slicing through the air with lazy precision. The trainers never reprimanding him too hard, because he was the best student they’d had in years. The way he beat anyone—everyone—without breaking a sweat.
She’d never thought much of it before. Marcielo wasn’t a threat, and it made sense to her that he was so much stronger—he lived at the Leviathan. Of course, he would outmatch her; he’d been molded by the best. She didn’t resent him for it. She didn’t even think about it much. Marcielo had been a constant, like the tides—always there, always untouchable, but never coming for her.
But now, that distance is gone. He is no longer just Marcielo: the strongest student in the academy, the boy with dead eyes and a complete lack of a filter. He is Marcielo: her rival in the Hunger Games. He is Marcielo: the one who can kill her.
Soon, he will stand in the square, just as she will, and he will volunteer. His voice will be steady, cold, unshaking. And then they will both step into the arena.
Soon, she will face him.
And soon, she will lose.
Her breaths come shallow, uneven. She feels like she’s sinking, the weight of it all pulling her under.
She thinks of him in her mind, pinning her to a mat in the Leviathan only a few weeks ago like she was a child and looking down at her with his fathomless eyes. She sees it all: the way his knee had pressed into the dip of her thigh, how his breath had come sharp and shallow, each exhale grazing her neck. His thumb brushing against the inside of her wrist and leaving a brand that she can almost still feel.
Her heart pounds from anxiety, unbidden, at the memory of how easily he’d gripped her wrists in his hand. How weak she'd felt, looking up at him.
Because it's Marcielo.
The boy she cannot escape.
Notes:
i have pt. 1 entirely written and i'll post a chapter every wednesday :-) in total there will be 24 chaps for this part.... prob 60 for the whole thing oh em gee
Chapter 2
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Her alarm blares into the quiet darkness, jarring her awake. Annie groans, slamming her hand down on the clock with more force than necessary. The noise cuts off, but its sharpness lingers in her ears. Next to her, Maximilian stirs, body shifting beneath the covers. He blinks up at her, eyes glassy with sleep.
“Go back to bed,” she whispers, brushing his messy hair away from his face.
“Do you have to go?” His voice is thick with drowsiness, and there’s a faint whine at the edge of it.
“Yeah. Gotta cast my aes. Rest up, boss.” She presses a kiss to his forehead and watches as his eyes flutter closed again.
Annie swings her legs over the side of the bed and pads to the mirror. It’s still dark outside, the faintest hint of dawn just beginning to creep into the room. She flips on the light, squinting against the sudden brightness in her room. She brushes her teeth and hair, washes her face, then gets dressed.
She grabs her uniform off the back of her chair, and steps into the crisp trousers first, the fabric stiff against her skin. Then the dress shirt, its buttons sliding easily into place. She knots her tie, swings her gray suit jacket over her shoulders, and buttons that, too. Finally, she lifts the sash, black and pristine, draping it carefully across her chest. She adjusts it in the mirror, smoothing it flat with her hands.
Her reflection is too familiar, too close to a version of herself she doesn’t know if she’s ready to leave behind. The girl in the mirror looks at her with the same eyes she’s always had, but now they seem older, like someone pressed fast-forward on her life when she wasn’t looking. She still feels like she's a little freshman with bright eyes, hungrily eying the seniors at the reaping as they volunteered.
She stares harder, almost searching. The room behind her looks the same. The same off-white walls, the same poster of President Snow peeling at the edges, the same lamp that flickers if you bump the desk too hard. Nothing has changed here, not really. And yet, everything has.
Her hands linger on the fabric of her tie, tracing it. She can feel it, all of it—years piling up behind her like snow, light but unbearable. The first day she put this on, when she didn’t know what it meant yet. The mornings she stumbled through, half-awake, promising herself there’d always be more time. The afternoons filled with faces she thought she’d know forever. She wonders if this version of herself—this girl standing here, on this morning, staring into this mirror—will become one of those memories too.
She leans back slightly, letting herself take it all in, and her throat tightens in a way that makes her press her lips together. It’s not sadness, exactly. It’s not joy, either. It’s something in between, tangled and sharp and warm all at once.
She glances at the room one last time before turning off the light. She wonders if it will look different when she comes back. If it will smell different. If she’ll still feel like herself, standing here in clothes that won’t mean the same thing anymore.
She pulls the door shut behind her, and the sound is louder than she expects. She grabs a prepackaged SunnyBites breakfast, slips out of the house, and catches the trolley ride to the docks.
It’s quiet, the early morning streets almost deserted. The air is cool and laced with the briny tang of the sea. Annie stares out of the window, fingers idly tracing the outline of her sash as the trolley bumps along the cobblestones. She stares out at how Victor Isles glitters instead of thinking too much about the finality of today.
This is the beginning of the end.
At the docks, the graduates are already gathered, everyone’s black sashes stark against the morning mist that clings to the harbor. A longboat gleams in the faint sunlight, polished wood draped in silver and blue ribbons that sway gently in the sea breeze.
Annie steps onto the wooden dock, her boots clicking softly against the planks. She sees Marcielo yawning as his friends talk at him, not to him. Their eyes meet for a brief moment, but neither of them speaks. Instead, he looks away, his face as blank as always.
She doesn’t say anything to Callum either. He’s a few steps away, his back to her as he talks to Jacques. She probably should tell him that Marcielo is ruining his life's dream of competing in the Games, but she'll wait until after the aes ceremony.
They all begin to board the boat. Storm grins at her and offers a mock bow, gesturing for Annie to go first.
“Nice, you learned manners,” Annie says dryly, stepping past her.
“Only for today,” Storm replies, her grin widening.
The longboat is spacious but intimate, benches lined with cushions in deep blue velvet. Annie takes her seat near the center, her hands resting in her lap as the others settle in around her. Pyxis plops himself down in her lap and she laughs, holding her friend as the boat pushes off from the dock.
The rowers are silent, their movements synchronized and smooth as they guide the boat into the open sea. The mist begins to thin, revealing the vast expanse of water stretching endlessly around them. The city grows smaller behind them, buildings fading into a hazy silhouette.
Out in the distance, Victor Isles gleams and glitters. They drift further and further out into the sea, but the island continues to almost pulsate. She can’t keep her eyes off it.
She talks quietly with her friends, watching the water ripple around the boat, the sunlight dancing on its surface like scattered diamonds. She feels the coin in her pocket, the edges cool and sharp against her fingertips.
Finally, the boat slows, coming to a gentle stop in a calm stretch of water. The rowers pause, oars resting against the sides of the boat. Mister Kennedy stands at the helm and smacks Dylan to get him to shut up and pay attention.
“This is your final act as students of the Leviathan,” he says, his voice carrying easily over the sound of the waves. “Cast your aes into the sea as an offering to the depths. Let it mark the end of your time here and the beginning of what comes next.”
One by one, they all rise, each holding their golden coin. Pyxis rises from her lap and steps to the edge, movements deliberate as he throws his coin into the water. It arcs through the air, catching the light before disappearing with a soft splash. Hurley is next, then Storm, each of them casting their coins with varying levels of enthusiasm.
When it’s her turn, Annie stands, the coin warm in her hand now from her grip. She turns it over once, the crest of the Leviathan catching the sunlight. She presses a quick kiss to it, a smile tugging at her lips.
“Let’s see if I can hit the Terminus,” she says, drawing back her arm.
“Annie!” Mister Kennedy’s voice is sharp. “Do not even joke about that!”
With a laugh, she throws the coin as hard as she can. It sails far, farther than the others, until it lands with a faint ripple dangerously close to the distant wall in the sea. She tries to catch it sinking into the depths—the last goodbye to this part of her life. She still remembers her mother clapping her hands, as if dusting them, years ago. “Fifth grade? In the books.”
Twelfth grade had seemed so far away at the time.
“Not bad,” Dylan mutters.
Mr. Kennedy makes her stick her palms out so he can lash her with his little baton, but she’s weirdly nostalgic about that, too. This is the last time she’ll ever be hit like this.
The rest of the coins follow, each one disappearing into the water with its own small splash. Marcielo’s is last. He steps to the edge silently, his movements mechanical as he simply drops his into the water, not even bothering to throw it.
Annie watches him from the corner of her eye, but he doesn’t glance her way.
When the final aes has been cast, the rowers take up their oars again, guiding the longboat back toward the shore. Annie leans back slightly, letting the breeze cool her flushed cheeks. Her eyes can’t help but drift to Victor Isles again—always there, just out of reach but never out of sight. Where the water is too blue to be anything but true, spilling over the land like the sky decided to kneel down and kiss the earth. She imagines that the beaches are dusted in the kind of gold that doesn’t fade.
She’s hours away from getting that much closer to touching it now. Hours away from crossing the stretch of ocean that’s kept her in this waiting. The thought of it blooms in her chest—soft, electric, as if the world is leaning closer to her too.
All those years of wondering, of making maps in the dirt with her friends, arguing over where their houses on the Isles would be, what color they’d paint their doors. Of deciding, with a fierce kind of certainty, what pets they’d keep there—a goat named Clementine, a fat orange cat for the afternoons.
The Isles have always sat in her vision and everyone else’s. They're a smudged edge of green and gold against the endless blue, and she knows it’s no longer a dream she has to hold so tightly. Soon, she will taste the air, warm and soft, and finally know what it’s like to belong to something as beautiful as the Isles.
Her breath catches. A few hours. Only a few more, and she'll be in the Capitol, competing in the Games.
Her classmates all peer at the Isles, too, shoulders shifting to steal a better view.
“I want to live there so bad,” sighs Nox. “But I know Two would cook me. Just invite me for a sleepover when you win, Annie.”
They dock at the Justice Building. All twelve of them get off, and they’re made to stand in front of the stage at the empty square. Callum turns to all of them once they're all lined up. He takes a deep, deep breath.
“I wanna say some corny stuff right now,” he says.
Ione snorts, crossing her arms. “Spare us.”
“No, really,” he insists. “Like… I’m proud of us or whatever. We survived the Leviathan, we graduated, we’re here. That’s something, right?”
“Corny,” Storm mutters, but there’s no bite in it.
Scarlet laughs. “We should be allowed to be corny after we survived Mister Kennedy’s ‘fitness tests.’”
“Barely,” Jacques adds, rolling his eyes. “Remember when Pyxis puked after running laps in full gear?”
“Hey!” Pyxis protests, his face reddening. “It was really hard.”
“Marcielo did that twice and he never threw up,” Hurley responds, grinning.
Annie looks at Marcielo. He’s blinking slowly, like a lizard, as he says, “Pyxis, it was sad and disgusting watching you.”
Everyone laughs at that, even Annie, but she quickly schools herself. She can’t let herself laugh at his jokes. She hates that asshole for putting her life in very real jeopardy because he’s short on twenty bucks.
Damn, now she’s actually angry again.
Before anyone can say more, the soft click of heels echoes across the square. They all turn to see Martialis, the district escort, making his way toward them.
He’s impossible to miss: long, flowing blonde hair that catches the light like spun gold, skin that gleams faintly pink, and eyes shaped like perfect blue hearts. His dress is a masterpiece of shimmering fabric that shifts between silver and seafoam green with every step, and his nails—long and intricately painted—glint like tiny jewels. He's beautiful, but there's something about his face that just looks a little like he's constantly swelling.
Annie whistles lowly. “How would you guys react if I came back from the Capitol looking like that?”
Scarlet bursts out laughing, and Storm shoves a hand over her mouth. “He can hear you!”
Martialis’ arrival means one thing: the rest of the district will be here soon for the Reaping. The twelve of them exchange glances, and Annie takes a deep breath and steps forward. “Come on. Let’s huddle up. Marcielo… come here.”
They gather around her, forming a tight circle. She wraps her arms around the shoulders closest to her, pulling all of them in. The others follow suit, their arms tangling in a messy but comforting embrace. She can feel Nox's breath against her hair, Pyxis' hand resting lightly on her back.
“Last bit of corniness before I go off to die,” she jokes. She thrusts her arm into the circle of space in front of them all, and the others follow, hands stacking over hers, fingers brushing. “Family on three—"
"Oh, my stars, stop," Ione groans, and everyone laughs at that.
Annie’s bites back her own laugh, smiling. “One, two, three—”
“Family,” they all say, voices tumbling over each other, some loud, some soft, all carrying something unspoken but understood. Their arms shoot up together, breaking the circle. For a heartbeat, they’re untethered, weightless, the laughter pouring out of them like sunlight spilling through cracks in the clouds.
As they step back, the victors of District Four begin to gather on the stage. Annie’s eyes flicker over them, trying to count, but she loses track of how many there are. Fifteen? Twenty?
The district children begin to flood into the square, too, a steady stream of faces that blur together as they take their places. Annie watches as they move through the motions, their fingers pricked to confirm their attendance. She doesn’t focus on it—her mind is elsewhere, her fingers twitching with restless energy.
It’s happening. Everything is leading up to this.
The mayor steps forward, taking her place at the podium. She goes on and on and about the Dark Days—horrible, so disgusting that the Districts would even dare rebel and cause so much suffering for the Capitol—the Hunger Games—our punishment for the Dark Days—and the so-called spoils of victory.
Annie only half-listens, her attention drifting to the edges of the square, the sunlight glinting off Martialis’ nails, the faint hum of the crowd.
The mayor moves on to the list of District Four’s previous victors, reading each name so slowly that it makes her stomach twist. She wants to beg the lady to just hurry up, but finally, she steps back and gestures to Martialis, handing the proceedings over.
Martialis steps up to the podium with a dazzling smile, his voice like silk as he greets the crowd. “Welcome, darlings! Let’s get right to it, shall we?”
Everyone in the crowd cheers, and he laughs. He moves to the reaping bowl, his elegant fingers dipping into the slips of paper inside. The crowd falls silent as he pulls one out and reads, “Mary Nelson.”
A girl no older than twelve steps forward, her expression bored.
Annie moves to let her pass, and she fights a smile at how annoyed the girl looks. Annie doesn’t even know why they even bother going through the motions of a reaping anymore, because the moment Martialis asks, “Do we have any volunteers?”, Annie's hand is already shooting up.
Mary walks off the stage.
Martialis beams and the crowd erupts. Storm presses a kiss to her face; so do Pyxis, Hurley, Callum, Scarlet, Ione, and Nox. Then she’s moving up the steps and standing on the stage, heart racing in her chest as she looks down at the massive wave of people. The kids in the crowd are looking at her and whispering to each other. One blushes when they make eye contact, another glares at her with envy. The underclassmen at the Leviathan look at her with big eyes and the rising seniors for next year seem to be barely suppressing their excitement.
“Antheia Cresta was the female valedictorian of District 4’s highly reputed outdoors academy, the Leviathan School.” Martialis narrates in his Capitol accent, grinning at the camera. “Seemingly the favorite to win! No other volunteers?”
She holds her breath and waits. Please, let no one else call out. Please, don’t take this from me.
There’s nothing, and then Martialis moves on. “Now, for the boys!”
She almost collapses from the relief. Then she remembers what’s coming next, and her stomach twists. She forgot to tell Callum.Shit.
Martialis reaches into the glass sphere, his elegant fingers brushing against the slips of paper. He plucks one out with a flourish, holding it up like it’s the crown jewel. “Ortun Hornblower!”
A murmur ripples through the crowd as the boy steps forward. He’s tall for his age, fifteen, but his frame is gaunt, his shoulders hunched as though trying to make himself smaller. Once there, he stands stiffly beside Martialis, looking like he might blow away with the next strong breeze.
Martialis grins, his voice a lilting melody as he asks, “Do we have any volunteers?”
The pause is brief, almost imperceptible, before Callum’s voice rings out. “I volunteer!”
Before Martialis can even react, another voice cuts through the air. “I volunteer as tribute.”
Marcielo.
She can feel her face morphing into something very unpleasant.
Callum freezes mid-step, his head snapping toward Marcielo with a look of utter disbelief. “What the fuck?” he mutters, barely loud enough for Annie to catch.
Marcielo walks with his usual calm, unhurried pace, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t even glance at Callum as he climbs the steps to the stage, taking his place beside Martialis.
“Oh, how thrilling!” Martialis says, clasping his hands together. “Marcielo, the male valedictorian of this year’s graduating class! What an accomplished pair we have here.” He gestures grandly between Marcielo and Annie, the crowd murmuring again. “Any other volunteers for the male tributes?”
The crowd is silent.
Marcielo’s hand extends toward Annie. She takes it, even though his grip is predictably limp, like shaking hands with a dead fish. She suppresses the urge to sigh.
The stage grows quiet as the mayor, once again, steps up to the podium, this time reading the Treaty of Treason. Annie’s heard it all before, every year, the same speech. Her fingers twitch against her sides, the adrenaline still coursing through her. She wants to move, to do something. Would she get arrested if she knocked Marcielo out?
The mayor finishes after a few more minutes, and the formalities are over. Martialis gestures for them to exit the stage, and Annie is whisked into the Justice Building.
She’s led to an opulent room, where the walls are lined with silk drapes in deep oceanic hues, and the furniture gleams with polished wood and brass accents. A chandelier hangs above, its crystals catching the light like tiny stars. She barely has time to take it in before the door creaks open, and Maximilian rushes in.
He flings his arms around her waist, burying his face against her uniform. “Don’t go,” he mumbles, his voice muffled.
“I have to, boss,” Annie says softly, crouching to his level. She strokes his hair, trying to soothe him. “You said you made me my token?”
Maximilian pulls back and reaches into his pocket to pull out a delicate bracelet. It’s simple, a thin thread of twine with four tiny pearls spaced evenly along it. He fumbles as he clasps it around her wrist.
“I got the pearls by secret,” he whispers. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Annie smiles. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Maxi.” She pulls him close again and starts leaving kisses all over his face, while he tries desperately to squirm out of her arms. “Don’t let puberty hit you too hard while I’m gone. I need to still be able to recognize you when I’m back.”
She tugs on one of his twin braids for emphasis.
“Stop!” he wails.
Their parents enter the next moment. Her mom steps forward first, her expression calm but her hands trembling as she cups Annie’s face. “You’re going to do great,” she says firmly.
Annie nods, leaning in to pass her a hesp, lips ghosting hers.
Her dad follows, pulling her into a fierce hug before she passes him a hesp as well. He breaks down, tears streaming down his face as he tries to speak but fails.
“Dad,” Annie says, squeezing his hand. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”
“My baby girl,” he wails. “All grown up. I remember when the doctors first gave you to us, and you were so perfect. Everything about you was so perfect.”
He launches into a rant he’s given half-a-million times. Oh, there was nothing more precious, my little pearl, et cetera, et cetera. But once he’s done blubbering, there’s nothing left to be said, so Annie presses her lips to Maximilian’s, and then they go.
After her family leaves, a few of her closest friends are let in, one-by-one. Kai, Scarlet, Ione, Storm, Pyxis—they all enter, their expressions a mixture of pride and sadness. They hug her, offer her words of encouragement.
Pyxis says, before he leaves: “Your personality’s way better than Marcielo’s, so you won’t have to worry about a lack of sponsors.”
She wants to believe it so badly. There’s been so many cases where stronger tributes lost out to others simply because they didn’t have enough sponsor support.
Marcielo had announced his volunteering with his voice flat. Detached, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. No drama, no performance, just a fact. That’s the kind of person he is.
Maybe that can be his weakness.
There have been tributes before, she reminds herself, who weren’t the strongest, who didn’t win every sparring match in training. Tributes who shouldn’t have survived but did, because the Capitol loved them. Because their charm won them sponsors who could give them just enough to tip the scales.
She could be one of them, and if she has Finnick as her mentor, then it’d be too easy.
She rubs her thumb over the four pearls on her wrist. Her body feels lighter now, the weight of dread shifting just enough to let her breathe. She runs through every story she knows of unexpected victors—the clever ones, the charming ones, the coy ones.
Today, she’ll stand next to Marcielo in their parade chariot, and she’ll smile wider, laugh brighter. She’ll give the Capitol something to root for, something to love.
Because she can’t afford to lose. Not to him. Not to anyone.
Notes:
a/n: lore dump!!! need to ramble about all my thoughts LOL
everyone pushes aside the idea of training academies existing because they're just something that's movie canon and for a time, i agreed. originally i envisioned the leviathan as like ballet school and you just go there for 5 hours everyday after school but then i was like:
1. suzanne collins was directly involved with writing the screenplay for the first movie where the idea of career academies is first mentioned. nina jacobson, producer of the first movie said that she worked very closely with collins and collins also worked with the director on the final script. And
2. an academy further divides the district. I’d be so jealous if i saw a kid i knew get a fancy new uniform and get to go to a fancy new school and receive a bunch of privileges like occasionally getting free things. They become like a new elite class of people and there becomes a divide between the elites & the non-elites b/c they're separated a lot but not fully separated. the Leviathan students are also given every reason to be loyal to the Capitol b/c their privileges are a direct result of Capitol generosity.
3. all the kids r kinda put to work from when theyre young so if they spend hours after school fucking around they offer no real economic benefit to the district
Chapter 3
Notes:
“Being from District 4, [Finnick Odair] was a Career, so the odds were already in his favor, but what no trainer could claim to have given him was his extraordinary beauty. Tall, athletic, with golden skin and bronze-colored hair and those incredible eyes.”
— Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins“And who makes up the Career pack is generally agreed upon before the Games begin. Peeta barely got in with them last year.”
I think of the loathing I felt when I discovered Peeta was with the Careers during the last Games. “So we're to try to get in with Finnick and Brutus — is that what you're saying?”
— Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Annie's never been in anything so fast in her life.
She looks out of the window, watching the sea bleed further and further into the distance. Victor Isles still sparkles in the distance, just like it always does, and the twinkle of it is the last thing she sees of home. When that’s gone, the train simply speeds through the same, repeating terrain of forests. She’s bored, but she doesn't move her head away from the window because she refuses to turn and look at Marcielo.
Martialis is making conversation for them. “I must say; I am a simple man, and it takes little to make me excited, but I cannot wait for these Games! You two are excellent tributes.”
Neither of them say anything.
“Well, come on, Antheia, why don’t you at least look at him. Doesn’t he look nice in his sash and uniform?”
Annie turns her head to look at Martialis and his odd heart eyes. “Please, call me Annie. Everyone calls me Annie.” Then she turns to Marcielo and diplomatically says, “You look nice.”
Marcielo looks at her, blinking his eyes lazily. Always like a lizard. “You look…” He pauses, trying to find the right word as he stares straight into her soul with his dark, dead fish eyes.
He looks at her for so long that she’s almost starting to feel uncomfortable. Then he closes his mouth and turns back to Martialis after much too long a time and says, “I don’t know. I have nothing to say.”
She points her thumb at Marcielo. “We’re best friends.”
Martialis sighs theatrically, and smooths out his dress, seemingly giving up. “Roxy, please turn the TV on.”
Annie blinks, her head tilting slightly. “Who’s Roxy?”
“Roxy is the virtual assistant. She’s made by Roxia,” Martialis explains, like she’s an idiot for not knowing.
Before Annie can ask what a "virtual assistant" even means, the television embedded into the wall flickers to life. The Capitol emblem swirls dramatically, fading into the broadcast of the reaping recaps.
Annie’s breath catches as the screen fills with the vibrant chaos of District 1. The reaping ceremony there looks more like a fashion show, the tributes already preened and polished. It’s over quickly—there’s barely any time for drama.
The girl who volunteers is stunning, with silky light brown hair. The boy who volunteers after is also strikingly beautiful, dark skin glowing under the lights, tightly curled hair styled in a rounded shape. The Capitol announcers are nodding, satisfied with the always gorgeous volunteers from District One.
District 2’s ceremony is longer, the screen cutting through what must have been an intense selection process. Edited down, it’s a blur of arguments, shoving, and posturing.
Annie watches as a girl with cropped black hair and sharp, narrow eyes strides confidently to the stage. The muscles in her arms ripple with every step. Beside her, a tall boy with long, fiery red hair joins her, his face set in a determined scowl. The announcers chatter eagerly about their physical prowess, predicting a brutal show from them in the arena.
She’d hoped that maybe, just this year, some scrawny kids would be sent up from Two. But that was naive of her. She doesn’t think there’s anyone scrawny in that district.
District 3’s reaping is quieter. No volunteers. Just pale, nervous kids pulled from the crowd, looking like they’re going to wet themselves. The announcers don’t have much to say.
Then District 4 flashes onto the screen. Annie straightens instinctively, her eyes locking on her own figure as she steps forward to volunteer. She looks professional in her uniform, she’d say. Put next to the other Distinguished tributes, she doesn’t think she looks out of place at all, and that very idea makes her chest feel full. Twelve-year-old her would probably cry from joy.
The Capitol commentators murmur approvingly, calling her "a lovely beauty with fire in her eyes."
That makes her blush. Then Marcielo strides onstage in the video, and Annie catches her expression on screen twisting into something ugly. The announcers roar with laughter at her face, and suddenly she doesn’t feel very flattered anymore.
“Oh, they’re both eye candy!” one of the Capitol announcers says, drawing out the phrase in exaggerated delight. “Ooh-la-la!”
The train rattles slightly as the broadcast shifts to District 5. The tone changes immediately; the energy slows to a crawl. The first name called is for a girl who walks to the stage briskly, her chin held high. Then, the escort calls for the boy: Corin Tripp.
Annie’s brow furrows. "Did they say his last name is Tripp?"
“Yes,” Martialis answers smoothly, his lips quirking into a big smile. “That’s the son of Porter Millicent Tripp. She won the 38th Games.”
The camera cuts to a woman in the crowd and Annie’s breath catches. Porter Millicent looks different without her metal halo brace, but her face is still angular and striking. Now, it’s twisted into something utterly heartbroken. She doesn't cry, but the man beside her is sobbing, body trembling as she grips his shoulders.
“Oh, exciting!” Martialis exclaims, clapping his hands together. “She’s my favorite Victor not from Four. I’ve been waiting to see when her son would get reaped, especially after her other child died. He’s sixteen now, so it’s the perfect age.”
The Capitol commentators are buzzing with excitement, speculating about Corin Tripp’s chances and what it’ll mean for the legacy of his mother. The camera pans back to the stage, where the District 5 escort asks for volunteers.
“Hopefully he’ll be able to keep his body intact,” one says. “Do you think she’s taught him anything?”
No one steps forward to volunteer. For a moment, the silence is deafening, broken only by the sound of Corin’s shaky breaths as he slowly walks toward the stage, his head bowed.
Then someone raises a hand.
It’s a boy—taller, broader, and with an air of forced confidence. When he reaches the stage, he pulls the sobbing boy into his arms, holding him tightly. The cameras zoom in on the embrace, the Capitol commentators gasping in unison.
“No!” one of them wails. “Someone get him off the stage, he’s ruining it!”
“No, no, no, no, I don’t want to watch.” Another won’t stop moaning.
The boy steps back and introduces himself, his voice wavering. “Brites Logia.”
The commentators groan. “I want to throw something at the screen.”
“Little brat,” Martialis says under his breath, shaking his head. “They’ve got to be joking.”
“There’s always next year,” Annie suggests.
“I don’t want to wait for next year.”
Even on screen, the announcers’ disappointment is palpable, and it lingers as the broadcast continues through the remaining districts. Most of the tributes are unremarkable—scared, tense, ordinary, as all the Undistinguished usually are, and the announcers are still grouching over Brites ruining everything.
The only standout is in District 6. The girl chosen there is older, lean and mean-looking, with a dangerous glint in her eyes. The thirteen-year-old boy reaped alongside her must be infamous or something, because a lot of people in the Six audience gasp.
The competition doesn’t look too stiff. Brites is the only volunteer, and she’s shocked there even was one from the Undistinguished. There’s only the other Distinguished to worry about, and maybe the girl from Six.
Once the broadcast cuts off, Martialis is still complaining about Brites Logia, Marcielo is sleeping with his eyes open, and she’s debating if she should stuff herself with snacks just to stave off boredom. She’s just wondering where the mentors are, when Finnick Odair opens the door and steps inside the room.
She can’t help it. She gasps.
She’s seen him a thousand times after his glow-up, face shining from the flickering screens on the boats in the waters and on TV and everywhere else. His name is always mentioned on the gossip shows she half-ignores. But the reality of him—tangible, solid, undeniable—is an altogether different beast.
His eyes are still the same luminous light green she remembers from school, but nothing else is the same. His tanned skin gleams like gold in the light, smooth and flawless. His hair is a tousled crown of bronze waves, looking as though it was sculpted by the wind itself, wild and deliberate all at once. Somehow, he's only a year older than her, and that makes her feel mediocre just by being in his presence. Which is insane, because she remembers a boy with a bad side part that refused to stay put, peeling skin on his cheeks, and that wispy, sad excuse for a mustache he’d worn at fourteen.
Her most vivid memory of him was when he was body-slammed into the ground by Pearl Roberts, furious that this little fourteen-year-old scrap had waited until the last second to volunteer and steal his glory from him.
But now?
Now, he looks untouchable. Impossibly golden, impossibly alive.
Her mind can’t reconcile the gangly boy she’d known with the vision in front of her, and for a moment, she thinks she might be imagining him altogether. That maybe she’d conjured him from the smudged corners of her memory, like a half-drawn figure stepping into focus.
She’d had a somewhat similar reaction years ago when he first showed up on the chariots after the Capitol had worked its magic on him, but it is completely different now. She understands why everyone in the Capitol goes crazy for him.
“Antheia’s a little behind,” Marcielo is explaining to Finnick as she gapes, and that’s all it takes for her to finally rip her eyes from him. “I’m sorry for her. It’s nice to see you again.”
It’s not her fault she’d been caught so off guard. Finnick, unlike practically all the other victors, had never returned to the Leviathan to help teach a class or two. If he had, she swears she wouldn’t be gawking at him now.
“Finnick, you look great.” Annie steps forward and extends a hand toward him. “Who are you mentoring?”
Finnick’s smile widens, slow and deliberate, like he’s letting her know he’s catching her off guard and is enjoying every second of it. He takes her hand, and for whatever reason, his fingers curl around hers, lacing them together.
“You,” he says simply, his voice like velvet dipped in honey. His eyes seem to be flicking from her eyes, her lips, then her eyes again.
Annie has never gotten goosebumps so fast in her life, and that is not at all a compliment. Okay, that’s a little weird.
Her face must be doing something crazy because Finnick has the decency to look shocked and back up a few inches. Unbidden, an old memory comes to her: Finnick Odair, twelve-years-old, stealing peoples fishing nets and running around with them because he thought it was funny. Twelve, with long hair he kept in an extreme side part, a perpetual sunburn on his nose.
“Well,” she says. She has to make a joke, now, before it gets awkward. “Like attracts like, right? We’re both so attractive, it makes sense to pair us up together.” She slaps a hand on his back with more force than she intends—his muscles are solid, unyielding beneath her palm, and she immediately regrets the gesture. Too close for comfort.
Before he can respond, Annie turns on her heel and throws herself back into her seat next to Marcielo, sinking into it with exaggerated nonchalance. Didn’t this guy used to throw beetles at people? What’s he doing, looking and acting like this?
She looks at Marcielo, trying to see if he’s as gobsmacked as she is. But he’s just running his thumb over the clam shell charm of his necklace, eyes as emotionless as ever. Of course he doesn’t care.
Annie searches for something to say. “This is a nice… school reunion,” she offers up.
“Is it really a school reunion if one of us dropped out when we were fourteen?” Marcielo interjects before pausing to glance at Finnick. “Man, you were hard to look at. Visually.”
Annie chokes on the little cookie she’s eating and hunches over. She shakily reaches for a glass of water and guzzles it down, trying to mask her sudden laugh behind the sound of her asphyxiating.
“Thanks, Marcielo,” Finnick purrs his name in a way that makes goosebumps cover her arms again. “Happy to know that that’s past tense now. I can show you all the things about me that are easy to look at.”
Oh, now that is really weird. Marcielo seems to think so too, because he just stares at Finnick. Blank, for an obscenely long amount of time, until he finally asks, “Are you flirting with me?”
Finnick smirks. "Caught me," he says, voice syrupy. "What gave it away?"
Marcielo doesn’t blink. His deadpan cuts through the air like a cold wind, stark and dispassionate. "You’re that desperate?”
The mood changes immediately. She has to say something fast before Marcielo asks something insane—like, how many STDs do you have? She already knows it’s on the tip of his tongue.
So she says, very loudly, “Finnick, sorry, I’m kinda staring at you a lot. But you look so different! Do you still remember that project we did for our Advanced Conflicts and Atrocities class? The one about the Rape of Nanjing?”
He swivels to look at her, and the one good thing about Marcielo’s rudeness is that it looks like he’s laying off of the flirtation. Well, no, actually. Finnick now looks so unsure and small for some reason that it’s making her feel bad.
“I do.”
“Yeah! It was…” Not fun. The project was not fun at all and it’d made her cry several times. That class gave her nightmares. But she was never friends with him, so she has only scant few memories to work off of. “Depressing, but I did genuinely love having class with you. You would just open your mouth and say whatever. It was kinda great.”
He smiles, just a fraction at that, and it’s different from his earlier one. Less seductive, more normal. He seems like he’s going to say something, but then Sirena Walsh, Victor of the—Fifty-Seventh? Sixty-First?—Games enters the room and Annie wants to weep into her pants and thank her for coming.
“I’ll take Marcielo to a different car,” she tells Finnick. Then she gruffly beckons to Marcielo like he’s a dog. “Come here.”
Marcielo rises and ambles over. She holds the door open for him, then lets it fall shut, and Annie’s stuck in a room alone with Finnick Odair. She looks around for Martialis, but the bastard must’ve snuck off sometime during the awkwardness.
“Well,” Annie says, stuffing a square-shaped cake in her mouth. “Let’s talk strategy.”
“Right. Yeah." Finnick clears his throat. Then, it happens—a strange shift, like he’s reading from a script. His voice flattens, mechanical. It’s not like Marcielo’s blank tone; Finnick sounds almost like he’s dead.
"I know you have a likable personality, so we’ll use that," he says. "It’s a good thing Marcielo volunteered because he’ll make you look better."
Annie nods. Yes, another person who’s suggesting she might survive solely because of Marcielo’s personality.
"Focus on being funny," Finnick drones, his voice distant, far-away. "Caesar’s job is to make your personality shine, so try and make it easy for him too; don’t answer anything with a close-ended statement. Take any chance you have to talk about yourself. Try to intrigue the audience. You’re pretty, but we won’t highlight that."
She’d almost take it as a compliment if he didn’t sound like he was phoning it in from another galaxy. He’s genuinely worrying her a little, with how his eyes are dull, glazed over like frosted glass.
"Finnick? Are you okay?" She waves a hand in front of his face, trying to break through whatever fog he’s lost in. Then she lifts up three fingers, semi-joking. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
He hesitates before saying, "Three."
She adds a finger. "Now?"
"Four."
Another. "Five."
"Five minus three is…"
"Two."
For a moment, silence stretches between them. Then, like a rubber band snapping back into place, something shifts in Finnick. He runs a hand through his hair, and the tension in his shoulders softens, but only slightly.
"Sorry," he mutters, his head dropping into his hands. "I zoned out for a bit. Anyways… Right, the strategy is to be like you’re everyone’s best friend. The nation’s best friend."
Everyone’s best friend? Finnick doesn’t want her to have a strategy similar to his?
"What? I’m cool with that if you think it’s the best way to go, but you don’t want me to have that… you know, seductive persona?"
"No," he says, standing abruptly. The movement is jarring, almost desperate. "I actually think I’m gonna powder my nose. We can talk after lunch, okay?"
"Oh… okay?"
And just like that, he’s gone. She doesn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.
She exhales sharply, shaking her head. He seemed much more normal on TV. Or maybe he doesn’t like her?
Her thoughts spiral, but she tries to excuse each one. It could’ve been an off day for him. He could’ve just been tired.She hopes so. She needs it to be that. In the few minutes she’d spent with Finnick Odair, she’d seen something she hadn’t expected. It was like he wasn’t fully present in the room with her.
Maybe it was a mistake to be happy that he was her mentor. Finnick and Marcielo together would be a disaster—an oil-and-water mix so volatile it would implode before the Games even began. But maybe that’d be the point. Maybe Finnick would get so fed up, he’d let Marcielo flounder.
Well. Now she’s stuck with Finnick, and maybe he’ll let her flounder.
Notes:
porter millicent tripp is a victor from capitol couture (movie canon promo thing) :3 check out her profile here
Chapter 4
Notes:
“Finnick is the expert on both of Peeta’s Games, as he was a mentor in the first...”
— Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Her prep teams’ eyes are crawling over her body like invisible fingers, lingering on places that make her want to curl in on herself.
Annie’s fine with the staring. She’s accepted that it’s part of the whole remaking process. But the way their gazes move—pausing, dragging, flicking back again—makes her feel stripped even beyond her skin. Inexplicably, she wants to cover herself up.
“Hmm,” Valentina murmurs, stepping closer, her eyes raking up Annie’s torso. “You have hip dips. That’ll need to be fixed. At least your waist is small.” Her hand ghosts over Annie’s side, fingers brushing her ribs.
Hip dip? She’s never heard those two words before in her life. She says as much out loud.
“The ugly dents on the sides of your hips. They have to be filled.” Leontes explains. “Hips have to be a perfect curve.”
Annie’s face flushes red at that, and for some reason she feels a bit of shame creeping up her spine. Shame for daring to have that defect and never noticing. She looks at her hips and—it does look a little weird that they suddenly indent.
“Oh, but look at her legs,” Junius pipes up, voice dripping with sugar. “They’re so long.”
A chorus of giggles ripples through the room. Annie’s stomach churns.
Valentina smiles at her, and then her long fingers dart forward to squeeze Annie’s breast. It’s quick, playful—like it’s nothing at all—but it isn’t nothing. Annie’s entire body goes rigid, and her face feels so hot she wonders if she looks like a tomato.
“Firm,” Valentina says, turning to the others with a grin. “We won’t need to do anything here. Can’t say the same about that nose.”
“What’s wrong with my nose?” Annie asks.
Lucia brings her hand to Annie’s nose, cold fingers tracing the shape. “It’s high, but it curves a little at the end. Noses have to point at the end and be straight and high. Annie, don’t you know?”
She’s so close that Annie can see how Lucia’s nose looks a little like it’s collapsed in on itself. Still, it is thin, straight, high.
The others laugh again, like Annie’s stupid for not knowing, and she almost feels like she is.
“You’re beautiful, of course, but you could look ethereal,” Lucia continues, stepping closer. Her fingers, cool and delicate, lift Annie’s chin, tilting it so their eyes meet. “Otherworldly. You have the kind of face a plastic surgeon dreams of. You don’t need anything major, just a few little tweaks.”
Annie has no idea what to say to that. Lucia says it like it’s a compliment, but she just feels a little hurt, inexplicably. Because her face isn't good enough.
She tries not to move, tries not to breathe too deeply. The wrong movement might invite more of their touch, their hands that are too familiar, almost invasive.
“I’d start with her jaw,” Prisca says. “Just a nice shave, take some of the bones out, and her face would become that much smaller. The V-shape would add so much personality.”
“I was thinking of a lip lift,” Lucia adds, her long, fake nails grazing Annie’s cheek. “Make them even more kissable. The nose needs a nasal implant, too.”
“Filler,” Valentina murmurs, her voice like the edge of a knife. “Forehead, cheeks. Smooth everything out, add some volume.”
“Veneers, too. Absolutely needs veneers.” Junius chirps, clapping his hands. “Her teeth are straight, but so plain. With veneers, they’d shine like pearls under the lights. Imagine that.”
Annie feels like she’s not even a part of the conversation, which is weird, because they’re talking about her. And—she’s noticing things she’s never noticed before, looking at the mirror in front of her. They’re not wrong. She would look better with all of it. She can already picture it: the pointed chin, the fuller lips, the flawless skin.
Her reflection disappoints her so much that she looks away. It feels almost unacceptable that she doesn’t have those modifications. She doesn’t know how she’s never seen these imperfections before. But—the idea of getting the bones in her face sliced out and removed slightly terrifies her, so her mind races for an excuse. Anything to make them back off.
“Finnick said,” she says suddenly, her voice too loud in the buzzing room. The words hang there, cutting through the chatter.
They pause, their eyes snapping to her.
“Finnick said he’s waiting for me,” she says quickly, desperation seeping into her tone. “I can’t keep the guy waiting.”
Valentina waves a dismissive hand, her bracelets jangling. “He knows to wait. Finnick’s always impatient.”
“Of course,” Junius chimes in, smirking. “But he doesn’t understand, does he? He’s the only tribute we’ve ever had who’s naturally beautiful. He has no idea how much work goes into making the rest of you presentable.”
She’s not presentable.
Oh. She never knew that.
“He doesn’t want me to,” she blurts out. The lie tumbles from her lips before she can second-guess it. Their eyes narrow, skeptical, and one of them looks genuinely crestfallen. She pushes forward. “He has a vision for me. Something about a natural look and being everyone's best friend? Anyway, he said no work. It’ll ruin the image he’s trying to make.”
The room falls silent for a moment, their expressions a mix of doubt and devastation. Leontes crosses his arms, tilting his head. “You’d look so much better, though.”
Annie nods, her heart pounding. “I know. But Finnick wouldn’t stop. He was like, 'Oh, it’ll ruin everything! Blah blah.’”
They exchange glances, reluctant, and for a moment, Annie thinks she’s won.
Valentina sighs and says, “Well, we’ll convince him later. Lie down.”
“Or maybe he’ll convince you!” Prisca chirps, and suddenly they’re all caught in a fit of giggles, the sound sharp and brittle, cutting through Annie’s already fraying nerves.
Her head pounds, the ache spreading from her temples to the back of her skull. She doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and doesn’t care to ask. She’s just happy that the bones in her face will live to see another day. She wants this to be over already, to get out of this room, to wrap herself in clothes and disappear somewhere they can’t follow. Which is weird. She should be excited for the chariot parade after this.
Annie sinks onto the metal table, the cold surface pressing against her bare skin. She stares up at the ceiling. Their voices blur into the background as they bustle around her, clinking tools and snapping gloves, their chatter overlapping in a way that makes her head throb.
She tries to lighten the weight in the air, even if only for herself. “Is my face that bad?” She tries to joke.
Valentina looks down at her, tilting her head like a curious bird. “You’re very cute,” she says, and then her eyes look at Annie in that way that makes her want to run away. “But you’d look like a goddess if we could just change up a few things. You could be the most beautiful tribute in all the years of these games. Better than Finnick.”
The idea of it makes her chest feel warm. She lets herself think of being adored—praised, because of her beauty. Lauded as the most beautiful in the country. It sounds sweet, and for a second, she wants it so badly, but having implants under her skin that she'll never be able to get out and titanium plates holding up her jaw makes her stomach churn.
She changes the topic. “Did you all get those same procedures?”
Leontes steps closer, his movements smooth, his smile wide and gleaming. “Oh, we’ve gotten much more than that,” he says, his voice lilting, airy. “But it was all our choice. We decided ourselves that we’d look better this way.”
She looks at Leontes—his glassy, sculpted features, his impossibly plump lips, and his wide, unblinking eyes framed by lashes that could sweep the floor.
Were you born wanting to look like this? Her mind asks.
She doesn’t linger on that.
Her prep team tilts her back in the chair, metal cold against bare shoulders, and she braces for the burning wave as wax spreads warm over her skin. They tell her to breathe, just breathe, while they pull the wax off in long, rippling sheets, each motion a slap of fire. The pain is a piece of cake after all her training at the Leviathan. But she almost kicks one of them in the face when they start laying down wax on her mons.
Why do they care if she has hair on her vagina? It’s not like it’ll be shown on television; they always cut away when someone has to do their business. Besides, what do the Capitolites like so much about hairless skin? It makes them look uncannily like cleaned intestines.
Lucia pats her now-bare genitals, almost lovingly. “Needs a labiaplasty, too.”
Surgery on her vagina? What’s wrong with it?
Actually, she doesn’t want to know. If she knows, she’ll probably cave in, but she can't even stomach the idea of plates in her face. Knives and needles near her vagina? That'll take some more time before she comes around.
"Ooh, I want to touch her, too!" Leontes titters before stroking Annie's thigh. "So promiscuous! I love you Four tributes."
She’ll never understand them, she decides an hour later, as her stylist, Clara, insists on having her prep team straighten her already pin-straight hair. She doesn’t even have that much hair in the first place, only enough to go to her shoulders, and still Clara insists.
“Your hair’s so damaged,” Junius sighs, combing something into her hair. “You should stay out of the sun more. It’s not supposed to be brown.”
“That’ll be a little hard,” Annie laughs. “The sun always shines in District 4. Have you guys ever been to the ocean?”
Valentina pipes up, “I visited the Arena for one of the games where the setting was a beach. It was lovely.”
Annie talks with them all as they work, semi-distracted by how her reflection keeps changing. Her hair becomes perfectly straight, black as ocean trenches—and it shines. The last time her hair was this black was when she was a child. She tries to focus on only the appearance of her hair, and ignore everything else that’s on her face. For some reason, she doesn't feel as excited about getting styled than she should.
When her hair’s done, just a short, silky black sheet, without any strays out of place, Clara weaves a thread of pearls to drape over Annie’s torso. Annie feels like she’s casting a net to drag something half-wild from the sea. Shells hang from the hem, clicking together like teeth. They’re small, bone-white, the kind she used to find along the shoreline and stuff into her pockets as a child. They catch the light too, like tiny moons, turning and turning against the bare skin of her chest.
Then Clara slips pearls over the curve of her collarbone, down the shallow hollow between her ribs. They barely conceal her, which she wouldn’t be so worried about if Clara wasn’t giggling like a madwoman.
“Is everything okay?” Annie asks, fingering the four tiny pearls from home around her wrist. Her nipples harden in the cold air, and she almost wants to ask for a shawl or something.
Clara laughs and directs Junius to begin brushing a layer of some weird cream over her face that’s the same color as her skin. “No, you just remind me why I always fight so hard for the chance to style the little kiddies from District 4. I could parade you naked on stage and you’d think nothing of it. Do any of you wear clothes at home?”
“I mean, of course we do,” Annie says, and for some reason, her face is hot. “We only don’t when we swim. We cover our… nether areas. But nothing else.”
Again, she feels stupid, but what does Clara expect? You can’t swim in clothes.
Prisca smiles at her, taking the same tone she heard her friends once make when they cooed over a sea turtle laying eggs. “How indecent of you! Naughty girl.”
Annie laughs along with her, but she’s not really sure what they’re all laughing at.
Clara’s choice for the bottom is a skirt that has a long train at the back, but shortens at the front. It’s made of thin, overlapping strips of translucent fabric that shimmer like scales, dyed in shades of sea-green and deep indigo. There’s a small window of skin they don’t cover at her hips that makes her prep team laugh even more. It covers her hip dips, at the very least.
The fabric sways with every shift of Annie’s weight, barely more than slashes of fabric that part to reveal the now-smooth length of her legs. Thin, silver chains, catch the light with each breath, criss crossed low over her bottom and tied together with delicate knots. Small shells hang from the ends of the ties, clinking softly with every movement, and beneath the gauzy material, a hint of her silver underwear peeks through.
The whole outfit feels like it’s on the verge of dissolving, a breath away from falling apart if she so much as turns too quickly.
“You look beautiful. Empowered,” Leontes praises, beaming at her.
Annie catches Clara’s gaze in the mirror to look at herself and for a second, they both seem surprised to see her there. Then Clara smiles and adjusts a strand of pearls that has twisted the wrong way, her fingers gentle, almost tender.
"Perfect," Clara murmurs, as if she’s speaking to herself, as if Annie isn’t even there.
Annie’s ushered out of the room to meet Finnick. The moment the outside hair hits her body, she has the sudden, horrible urge to hide herself. The urge amplifies as other prep teams from different districts dash in and out of the halls, yet each makes time to look at the shells lightly dancing across her breasts. There’s something in the way that their eyes linger on her that makes her want to—wear something else.
But that’s absurd. The tributes are always half-naked during the Chariot Parade. Are they analyzing how lacking her face is? Thinking that she’d be better after some injections?
Her arms come out to hug her waist, and when she turns a corner, she bumps into Finnick. He’s wearing an extraordinarily low-cut shirt, steeping all the way to his chest, and she’s pretty sure she can see the imprint of his crotch in his baggy pants.
Or maybe he has rocks in his pocket. That’s what she’ll go with.
“Annie! You look good.” He’s so normal that she almost feels like her mind concocted him speaking like a robot on the train. He surveys her and for a moment, he frowns. Then it’s replaced by a small smile.
“Questions? Anything?”
Did you stop smiling at me because you expected me to have gotten that work done? What happened to me being Panem’s Best Friend, Finnick?
“No, nothing,” she tells Finnick Odair’s very defined pectoral muscles.
He begins to lead her down the corridor. “Well, we’re going to the lowest level of the Training Center right now to get to where all the chariots are. You’re gonna have time before the parade to introduce yourself to District 1 and 2. Make a good first impression, because how strong your alliance is will dictate the rest of your Games.”
She nods, and she swears she’s listening to him, but she can’t stop thinking about every look her way. She fights the urge to duck her head.
But it doesn't seem like everyone who's staring is judging. It seems like they all want to look a little longer at her flesh.
She hears the crowd roar outside as they draw nearer and nearer, and she can’t stop her fingers from twitching at her sides. They fidget with the thin, translucent fabric that sways against her legs.
She’s here. At the Capitol—genuinely here—in a place she’s only seen on TV, when a few hours ago she was still at home.
She feels almost dizzy. What is she freaking out about? She's gone eighteen years of her life without worrying about her face this much. She can just try to go back to being blissfully ignorant. Besides, she’s been wanting to be a part of the pageantry of the Games since she was a girl. Now that she finally has the chance, she needs to enjoy it. And walking with Finnick is—better than walking alone. Instead of all eyes on her, all eyes are on both of them, and especially at Finnick’s rocks. So maybe they’re not studying her deficiencies.
The weight in her chest feels lighter for all of two minutes, until Finnick leaves to go to wherever the Mentors are stationed after leaving her with some vague encouraging words. Then she’s alone again.
Her eyes pass over some of the other tributes, all of whom have been given the luxury of shoes. All she has are thin threads of silver dangling around her feet.
She spots someone from District 7 painted with just body paint and no clothes at all to look like a tree, and she has the sudden thought of wishing Clara had just dressed her as a fish. Four is the fishing district—it just seems to be the obvious thing to do. Not dress her up in some scraps and shells.
Her eyes flit over the tributes from District 6; the male is tiny, can’t possibly be more than twelve or thirteen, and is being embraced by the girl from his district. He won’t stop bumping his wrists together, like a weird version of clapping. It seems like the two of them have an alliance.
Then she looks at Brites Logia and actually winces. His stylists must hate him, because he’s dressed to look like what she thinks is a malfunctioning lightbulb.
He even has an oversized, bulbous headpiece made of reflective materials to look like a shattered bulb, and a bulky, misshapen socket bodysuit. Wires are dangling haphazardly from his costume, sparking erratically with poorly hidden mechanisms. He’s hobbling awkwardly to his chariot, and his hair looks like he’s been electrocuted.
The girl from his district is wearing a flowing suit that glows with smooth, neon-like lines, like the flow of power through a circuit. It’s futuristic and flattering, with a glowing collar and subtle arcs of electricity running along the fabric. She looks pretty, too, and Annie remembers enough of how she looked at her Reaping to know she didn’t look like that two days ago. Complimentary plastic surgery before the Games? Annie thought only the Distinguished got that.
Actually, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen Five get such a good outfit before. The difference is so jarring that she genuinely thinks there must be some ploy to harass Brites because he’d robbed everyone of the chance to see Corin Tripp compete. Poor guy.
Her eyes move to where District 1 and 2 are clustered. Marcielo seemingly isn’t done with his makeover, so she walks right up to them.
“Hi!” she says, sticking out a hand. “I’m Annie Cresta.”
They turn toward her, and wow. Radiance and Lace, obviously from District 1 because of their gorgeous faces, are draped in shimmering golds and jewels. For whatever reason, her eyes drift to their lips and nose, and she almost wonders what they’d look like if their lips were a little bigger. If their chins were a little smaller.
She pushes that thought aside to look at Slate and Bedford from District 2. They’re in sleek, battle-ready armor that gleams under the lights. They’re massive, with rippling muscles, and make her own feel puny. She’d seen them on TV, but she’s beginning to really understand that there’s a difference to watching something and actually experiencing it herself.
She makes relatively easy conversation with them; Radiance and Lace are nice, if maybe a little standoffish, and both Slate and Bedford seem wary of her at first, but are soon cracking smiles. Brites’ outfit might be horrible for him, but it’s giving them all a way to bond. Lace says his stylist was gossiping about Brites with his prep team, and that all the stylists hate the kid, because Porter only has one child left.
Someone yells, “Five minutes!”, so they all say their goodbyes and she waits in her chariot. There, she spots him.
Marcielo looks like he’s stepped out of some fever-dream version of the sea—stripped down to the barest essentials, his lean, sinewy form catching the light like wet stone. His outfit is even more absurd than hers, just a series of slim, knotted pearls crossing his chest, winding down around his arms. His legs are bare except for a low-slung wrap of fabric that looks like it’s been shredded by the waves, hanging in tatters that brush his knees. A few scattered shells are caught in the pearls across his torso, and a silver circlet rests on his forehead, a single piece of coral jutting from the center like the tip of a spear.
Nothing about his face seems to have changed at all. It’s still the same mask of indifference she’s known all her life—utterly unmoved. The ridiculousness of it hits her like a slap: how serious he looks despite the absurdity of his clothes, his bare skin flashing like he’s some kind of Capitol parody of a sea creature.
A bubble of laughter breaks out of her, sharp and high, before she can stop it. She claps a hand to her mouth, but it’s too late—her shoulders shake with it, and she bends forward a little, like she can fold the laugh back into herself.
He turns his head, just a fraction, to look at her—a single, unreadable glance from beneath the silver circlet.
“You look so bad,” is the first thing out of her mouth, said with glee. Relish.
Marcielo stares at her blankly. “You look sickly. Did Finnick give you a disease?”
She pats her cheek and huddles a bit next to him as he steps up into the chariot. “No. Maybe it’s the weird creams my stylist put on my face.”
With him so close to her, she can see the remnants of similar creams flaking on his face.
She takes a deep breath when the giant, hulking doors of the Remake Center open and the opening music begins to blare. Radiance and Lace’s chariot start to roll forward, Slate and Bedford, then District 3 who are covered in tatters of metallic fabric, like they’ve been pulled from the guts of some Capitol machine.
Their own chariot suddenly begins to jerk forward. She feels her breath hitch, heartbeat rattling against the cage of her ribs, and then she sees the Capitol in all its glory. It’s all gleam and color, towering buildings, vivid people, every inch of it so much—a world away from the sea-weathered docks and salt-rough wood of District 4.
She feels as though she’s stepped into a fever dream of color and light, and that there are too many eyes on her, looking in a way that makes her shudder. The shells on her chest now feel too sharp, too cold against her skin.
The chariot picks up speed, the streets narrowing around them as they plunge into the heart of the city, and she presses her feet harder into the floor of the chariot, trying to find her balance.
She nearly punches Marcielo in the face out of instinct when he grabs the arm resting by her side.
“What are you doing?” she asks casually. She has to stay perfectly still. One wrong move from her, and she might toss him from the chariot.
Marcielo says, also casually: “I think I’m gonna fall over.”
She almost laughs. “It’d be so funny if I just let you.”
But she doesn’t, because she might fall too if she so much as moves. Her eyes glance up to see herself on screen: a dark-haired girl wrapped in silver and sea-green, shining like something caught between the tide and the sun, and her bored-looking partner.
It suddenly comes to her that everyone at home is seeing that. Maximilian, Pyxis, Kai, Scarlet, Hurley, her parents, her friends, everyone. This is what she’s wanted since her earliest memory. Why is she shrinking away?
She straightens, her shoulders square, and she lets the Capitol look.
Then it hits her without warning—a cool rush of air against her skin. The breeze threads through the strands of her hair, lifting it like a slow, careful hand, tugging it away from her face. She shivers, and for a heartbeat, it feels like she’s standing at the edge of the docks back home, the ocean breathing against her skin.
Her eyes widen, and her eyes glance around, catching the flutter of the translucent fabric at her hips, the way it dances in the breeze. The shells on her chest sway, their delicate jingling blending with the roar of the Capitol’s cheers.
She needs it to stop immediately before the cameras get a full shot of her nipple. Actually, maybe better her nipple than them looking too long at her nose.
She looks up at the screen again, and she sees it: the illusion of a gentle sea breeze, flowing past them as if they’ve brought a slice of the ocean with them into this immaculate city. Her hair ripples, black and glossy as wet kelp, and even the shimmering strips of her skirt seem to move like waves lapping at the shore. No other district has this—it’s only them, caught in this current of air that makes the shells sparkle like caught sunlight and the thin chains sway as if they’ve been pulled taut by the tide.
“It’s the stylists’,” Marcielo answers for her. “I’m gonna do a li’l pose.”
Not to be outdone, she curves her hair behind her ear and smiles at the camera, eyes crinkling. A variation of a move she’s seen Finnick do on television. That earns a wave of applause. When she gets back, she’ll have to ask him for a crash course on posing.
District Five has some special effects too; the girl has lightning cracking through her suit that flatters her incredibly, but Brites just looks like he’s being fried. He doesn’t look very beaten down, though. Instead, his eyes are focused on what’s in front of him, back straight.
By the time they enter the City Circle, she’s quite sure her breasts have been the focus of the camera a bit more than once. Which is a little odd. She’s never thought of them as being that interesting before. They’re not even that big because of how much muscle she has on her body.
At least she’s not alone. Marcielo’s crotch has been inconspicuously placed on camera roughly the same amount of times, and he’s not wearing nearly enough for her to tell herself that she’s just looking at some rocks.
President Snow steps out on a balcony to say a few words, and she doesn’t even realize Marcielo’s way too close to her until she feels his breath on her ear. “I want to bounce the coral on my headband off his lips.”
Her eyes widen and her nails dig into him so she doesn’t laugh. She stares up at the blue, blue sky, because now she’s imagining the coral ricocheting and the recoil from President Snow’s lips and she might really just keel over if she looks at him.
Marcielo decides to be a comedian at the worst times.
“Be quiet before a Peacekeeper comes to beat the hell out of us,” she chokes out, moments later. Then she pauses, eyes swiveling down to fixate on President Snow’s luscious lips, and says, “I don’t know how he can talk with them.”
She swears she sees Marcielo smile at her on the screen in front of them.
When the procession ends back at the Training Center, Finnick stands waiting, holding what looks like blankets. His handsome face lights up when he sees them and he jogs over as the chariot comes to a stop. A part of her wants him to just stand still so she can properly soak up the wonder of his face.
“You guys are probably cold, right?” He asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer, practically racing to drape one over Annie and one over Marcielo.
Clara looks cross, standing with her arms folded in the corner, but she says nothing. There’s a man next to her who looks equally as miffed.
Annie practically snatches the blanket from his hands to cocoon herself, sighing. “Thank you,” she breathes. It’s the middle of summer and the sun is bright and warm outside, but she suddenly feels much safer hidden underneath the fabric. She kind of wants something for her face, too.
“Where’s Sirena?” Marcielo asks, enveloping himself in the blanket.
Finnick steps back from them. “She’s with the other Mentors.”
Annie looks around. The only Mentor there besides Finnick is a mentor for District 11.
Suddenly, she’s misty-eyed. He must’ve somehow sensed how weird she and, apparently, Marcielo had felt. What a nice guy. She completely misjudged him. She is glad he’s her Mentor.
The angry man next to Clara turns out to be Marcielo’s stylist, and he comes to usher him away. Finnick, similarly, guides her to a changing room. “I told Clara and Osric to make some more comfortable outfits for you guys in the future.”
“Thank you.” Annie says again, taking her new change of clothes from him. “The outfit today was fine, but I thought we weren’t going with seduction.”
“You’re right, that was my bad. You do want people to stare at you, just not like that,” he says, still smiling bright-as-ever.
She hesitates. Debates asking. Then she just does it anyway. “I felt like they were looking at my breasts. An abnormal amount of times, actually. Am I reading too much into it, or—?”
Finnick looks up at her and licks his lips, thinking of what to say. Then he smiles again, a little rueful. “No, you were right. This isn’t like how it is at home. In the Capitol, you have no reason to get naked because there’s no ocean, so showing that much skin is a turn-on.”
“What?” Annie asks, voice far-off. A turn-on? She knows abs and muscles are a turn-on, maybe a nice ass every now and then, but her chest?
Finnick nods. “Yeah. So be mindful of that. Like I said, seduction won’t be a part of your persona at all. So just—try and stay away from that, alright?”
She points at his defined chest. “Do the people in the Capitol think that’s a turn-on?”
He doesn’t even look down at himself before he says, “Yes.”
They gather with District 1 and 2 in the District 1 apartments for lunch, every mentor save for Finnick—for whatever reason—all gathered together to discuss strategy.
“You don’t have to worry about Brites because no one likes him.” Cashmere says, her pointer moving to the picture of Brites Logia on the hologram. Without the suit, he’s skinny, with dark olive skin and dark eyes and hair. “The entire Capitol was just making fun of his parade look and saying he was the uglier version of Marcielo. He’s guaranteed zero sponsor help; his partner’s getting disproportionately more attention because of this, though.”
Cashmere moves the pointer to an obviously outdated photo of the girl from Five, because she definitely didn’t look like that at the parade. “Get rid of her at the bloodbath. Either way, Brites should be your number one target in the Games. If you do, people will send you gifts simply out of spite.”
Then she zooms in on the muscular female from District 6, who looks even stronger when placed next to her skinny thirteen-year-old partner. Kiva. Lexus. “She seems like the most promising out of this group. It’d be a good idea to recruit her.”
Sirena shakes her head. “No. All the Gamemakers are talking about is how hard the Games are this year. We don’t need anymore people.”
Cashmere eyes her for a moment, then nods. She taps the pointer furiously at the photos of the two tributes from District 6. “These two? They seem to be attached to the hip. From what I’ve gathered, Lexus has some sort of issue and Kiva is watching over him. Their bond is something you can take advantage of.”
Annie takes down mental notes as the meeting progresses. Try to get rid of Kiva and Heller at the Cornucopia. Aim for Districts 7 and 10 after that. Remember that District 6 are like a mother and son.
Then Brutus smacks the coffee table for absolutely no reason. She would’ve jumped if she hadn’t had that instinct trained out of her years ago.
“This is serious!” He practically hollers, spittle flying. “You are the cream of the crop. It is a goddamn honor to be here. So you all need to get your heads in the game, and fucking work!”
She backs up just the littlest bit away from him so she’s not in the splash zone. Her eyes move up to see Marcielo, doing that thing he does where he sleeps with his eyes open. How he’s sleeping through Brutus’ yelling, she doesn’t know.
Sirena seems to have no problem with the fact that Brutus is screaming in her ear, and adds, “Remember. These are the 70th games, and the Capitol always puts a little bit more effort into the games that end with ‘0’. You need to expect the unexpected.”
Notes:
a/n: Got inspired by this for annie’s outfit. Also i imagine brutus to be one of those high school sport coaches who are way too invested in their sport & they live vicariously through their players. No but real shit i read “the body keeps the score” and took notes on it for this fic & some ptsd victims don’t feel alive again if they’re not doing something dangerous that reminds them of their trauma so that's basically what’s up w brutus
Chapter 5
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
The first time she steps into the District 4 apartments, Annie gasps. The air itself feels different—lighter, cooler, somehow scented with something faintly floral and impossible to name. She gapes at how large everything is, and how expensive it looks. She thought the cliffside mansions in the North Coast were otherworldly, but looking at the apartments, she realizes how wrong she was.
The ceiling stretches impossibly high, strung with light fixtures that shimmer like captured stars. The walls are a pearlescent white, smooth and gleaming, and the furniture looks as if it’s never been touched by a single human hand. There’s a large sofa in the living room shaped like a breaking wave, translucent and pale blue, and chairs that seem to float just off the ground. She almost doesn’t want to sit down, as if she might dirty it by making contact.
Her fingers trail over a panel on the wall, and it lights up with swirling colors, responding to her touch. She snatches her hand back, her breath catching in her throat. Is it alive? It seems like it might be.
She doesn’t know the rules here—doesn’t know what is allowed or forbidden, what might get her punished, or worse, laughed at. But there’s no one else in the room right now, and the air carries a strange stillness.
She slowly spins to take it all in—the furniture, the shimmering curtains, the sleek lines of the kitchen glinting in the corner like some kind of futuristic ship. She’s so used to the rough edges of District 4—the worn wooden planks of the docks, the salt-scoured walls of the fishery. Here, everything is smooth, polished, perfect.
In the corner, the kitchen catches her eye. It’s sleek and seamless, a metallic gleam that makes it feel more like part of a ship than a place to make food. A small mouthpiece juts out from the wall, glinting.She approaches it, hesitant. There’s no guide, no instructions, but she did see Cashmere use it at their lunch meeting. So she clears her throat, her voice wavering slightly as she leans toward the device.
“Um,” she says. “Fatty tuna? Raw and sliced, please.”
For a second, nothing happens. Then, with a soft hum, a tray slides out from the wall as if conjured by magic. On it, nestled on a white plate as smooth and perfect as the moon, are thin, glistening slices of tuna. They catch the light, their pinkness so vivid it feels unreal.
Annie’s heart flutters in her chest as she uses the fork on the plate to spear it. She hesitates—this is a fish she knows intimately, has hauled from the sea with her own aching arms, gutted with hands sticky and slick. But she’s never eaten this part of it before. It’s always shipped off to the Capitol first.
She places it on her tongue, and the world tilts.
It melts. That’s the only way she can describe it—like butter, like ocean silk, impossibly rich and smooth.
Another gasp escapes her lips, unbidden, and she claps a hand over her mouth, embarrassed by the sound. But there’s no one here to judge her, no one to see her eyes widen as she reaches for another piece, and another, her heart racing with every bite.
She feels like she could cry. Is this what the Capitol people eat every day?
Her mind races ahead, already thinking of what else to try. Snow crab. Caviar. Sea urchin, with its strange orange flesh that looks like the sunrise over the water. Abalone, its shell shimmering with colors like oil slicks.
She speaks the names into the mouthpiece, one after the other, and the tray fills with dishes that look like art. The crab is sweet and delicate, the caviar bursts against her tongue with little pops of salt and brine, and the urchin—she shivers—tastes like the essence of the sea itself. Her stomach fills quickly, but there’s so much more she wants to try. She makes a mental list, her mind racing with the possibilities. There’s no limit, no one telling her to stop, and the sheer freedom of it all makes her giddy.
She wants to eat like this everyday for the rest of her life. Why did she have to be born in the Districts and not the Capitol?
A soft noise startles her, and she turns sharply.
An Avox is there, moving so silently she hadn’t noticed his approach. He’s young, only a few years older than her, with eyes that flicker briefly to meet hers before dropping to the floor. In his hands, he carries a small tray, ready to collect her plates.
Annie freezes.
The Avox doesn’t say anything, of course—they can’t—but his presence fills the room with a strange, heavy quiet.
If she ever sticks a toe out of line, she might just end up like him. That makes goosebumps prickle on her skin.
“No,” she blurts, her own voice too loud in the stillness. She tries to smile, tries to make it seem less like an order. “I’ll take it, thank you.”
The Avox pauses, bowing slightly before retreating without a sound.
Annie exhales, the tension in her shoulders easing as she gathers the plates herself.
She carries them to the sleek kitchen. There’s no sink she can see, but a compartment slides open as she approaches, humming softly. She places the dishes inside, watching with fascination as the machine whirs to life. Lights flash, and when it opens again, the plates are spotless, gleaming as if they’ve never been touched.
Life-changing. Why don’t they have that in the Districts?
She puts them away in the cupboard, and tests out the other technology all over the apartment. Everything seems designed to make life effortless, to erase the labor of living entirely. She can’t help the envy she feels.
She finds a wardrobe that responds to her touch, presenting her with outfits more elaborate than anything she’s ever imagined. She runs her hands over the fabric, and it’s the second softest thing her hands have ever touched. First place goes to baby Maximilian’s little cheeks.
Another panel on the wall changes the color of the room with a simple tap, shifting from warm gold to cool blue to soft lavender. A chair reclines on its own when she sits, molding itself to the curve of her back, and massages her back in gentle waves. She nearly falls asleep right there, her body sinking into the comfort.
But for some reason, the Avox won’t leave her mind.
“Antheia, why don’t you try out the spear station?” Marcielo calls to her from the other side of the training gymnasium.
She looks up from the edible plants and leaves station, turning toward where he’s standing with Lace.
“You’re right, I haven’t yet.” She makes a big show of stretching and then walks over, smiling politely at Lace, who smiles back. She grabs a spear, sings, “Here I go!” and launches it.
The spear lands a foot in front of her, sticking straight up out of the ground.
Annie clutches her arm and winces, looking up at Marcielo with big eyes. “Phew, that took a lot out of me. I’m gonna… I’m gonna head back.”
She doesn’t hear what he says, if anything, because she’s already walking away.
Why did he even ask? Showing skill is suicide, especially in front of Slate and Bedford. Case in point, Slate picks up the spear she dropped, and launches it at the target. It lands dead-center and leaves cracks in the bullseye.
It’s not fair. Two kids are always pumped full of steroids, performance enhancers, and whatever other drugs. But no one ever says anything. At least she knows she’s spent ten years training for this body, and didn’t have to have it artificially given to her.
She wonders if she should even bother training. It’s not like you can really train any physical skills at the gym—unless you’re Undistinguished—so the mentors just do one-on-one private training with their tribute. Which would be great! It’d be fantastic, even, if her mentor wasn’t the topic of every talk show on television, hosts gossiping about where he was seen the other night and with whom.
Why do they let him be a mentor if he can’t be here as much as possible? She hasn’t seen Finnick at all since he gave her that blanket and her good will from that is quickly souring.
Something in her stomach sinks whenever she sees Sirena and Marcielo huddled together, talking about something she can’t hear. Sirena can do a lot for her, but at the end of the day, her job is to guide Marcielo. Not Annie.
Finnick has to turn up eventually, she tells herself. It’s only the first day of training.
The clock strikes 1 P.M. and then everyone’s being led to a large dining area with twelve tables. Behind it is a buffet with dozens and dozens of different dishes, half of which she’s never seen before in her life. She can't resist. Not after a life of just eating SunnyBites and whatever other packaged stuff is in the fridge.
She grabs a plate and practically runs to some roast chicken, asking the female from District 11, “Who knew there was this many different kinds of food, right?”
Her eyes widen and she looks up at Annie, wary, before squeaking out, “Um, yeah.”
“What’s your name?” Annie asks. “I’m Annie.”
“I’m Sour,” she mumbles.
Annie leans in closer. “Your name’s Sour?”
“Soy.” The girl’s voice seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
“Soy?”
“Soya.”
“Ohh, Soya.”
She must be scared of her. But Eleven usually puts up a good fight in the Games—there’s no reason to be this frightened.
Annie wants to talk to her a bit longer, but Soya looks like she’s going to piss herself if Annie stays for even another second, so she says a short little goodbye and spots Lexus and Kiva.
She makes a beeline for them.
“What are these?” Annie picks up one of the pieces of meat with the tongs, turning it over. The breading flakes slightly under her grip, revealing a pale, meaty surface. The little breaded bear stares up at her, frozen mid-roar, and she feels a flicker of absurd guilt.
“Chicken nuggets.” Kiva says coldly. She looks Annie up-and-down.
“They’re animals. Animals.” Lexus says. He’s speaking to her, but not making eye contact at all. “That one’s a bear, but I think—I think there is a dolphin too. And there are dinosaurs, which are very cool because they’re extinct, so it’s like you’re eating a piece of history. I think that's pretty cool.”
He’s weirdly excited to talk to her. His body's angled away from her, but it doesn't seem to be because of fear. She thinks he might have a bit of a lisp.
“That is really cool,” Annie says, nodding as if he’s just imparted some great wisdom. “Which one’s your favorite?”
“Stegosaurus.” Lexus says. He holds up a nugget shaped vaguely like a lumpy pancake. “This one is a st-stegosaurus. The plates are for defense, but they’re also thermoregulatory. That means they regulate their temperature.”
Lexus starts going into a tangent that leaves her no room to comment or interject, and there’s something about the way he speaks that’s just a little different from everyone else she’s ever met. She can’t quite put her finger on it. He jumps from topic to topic, his cadence is sort of high-pitched, and his vocabulary seems to be very limited.
Her eyes glance at Kiva. Is that why she was hovering around him at training? Is there actually something up with him?
Annie's food is definitely getting cold by now, and she’s on her tenth mm! but Lexus is just a kid, even if he’s a little odd, so she stays and listens. He's now explaining to no one in particular how nuggets are breaded in industrial factories.
Her eyes flick up to Kiva, who looks like she’s two seconds away from tucking Lexus into her pocket and then running out of the room.
Lexus says, “You’re my friend now,” without looking at her at all. After that, he just grabs his tray and walks off.
Kiva follows him, but it’s so abrupt that Annie just stands there for a moment. He’d been talking so much a moment ago, and then just up and left.
Huh. She hasn't been forcefully befriended since kindergarten.
What a horrible weakness to have, she thinks as she watches Kiva huddle closer to him.
The second day of training begins, and there’s still no sign of Finnick.
She goes to the Training Center and mainly sticks by Radiance, because she along with Lace seem to like Marcielo the least of all the other Distinguished. She respects that about them.
“Slate is showing off again,” Radiance mutters, jerking her chin toward a corner of the center where Slate hurls axes at a distant target. Each throw lands with a loud, satisfying thunk.
“Well, she is from Two. Nothing to lose if she does show off,” Annie sighs. She squints her eyes at an image of two mushrooms that look exactly the same. She knows one of them is a true turkey-tail and the other is false turkey-tail, but she doesn’t know which is which.
She goes for the ones that look a little fat, and she’s right. That is the false-turkey tail.
She mutters a little, “Let’s go,” to herself.
She looks up for a bit to scan the room, and spots Lexus and Kiva at the knot-tying station. He’s fumbling with a coil of rope as she tries to surround him with her thick arms. His dark hair is a mess, sticking up in all directions, and he’s not really focused on the task at hand.
He looks up and catches her watching. His face lights up.
“Annie!” he calls, waving her over. “Come over!”
Radiance gapes at her. “Is he talking to you?”
“Yeah. I don’t know, I’m gonna go talk to him.” She pats Radiance on the shoulder and then walks over to Lexus. Kiva is glaring daggers at her but Annie pretends she doesn’t even notice.
She crosses the training center, weaving between stations where tributes sharpen knives, swing axes, and practice throwing punches.
“I’m learning knots,” Lexus announces, holding up his handiwork. It’s a mess of loops and tangles, utterly useless for anything practical.
Annie crouches beside him. “You’re gonna need to start over,” she says, taking the rope from his hands. “Here, watch this.”
She works quickly, her fingers deftly twisting the rope into a simple slipknot. “This one’s good for securing things in a hurry,” she explains, loosening and tightening the loop to show him how it works.
Lexus watches, nodding along. When she hands the rope back to him, his tongue pokes out in concentration as he tries to replicate the knot.
“You’re good at this,” he says after a few failed attempts. “Better than the instructors. I don’t wanna say they’re bad, because they’re not bad, they just leave a lot to be desired. No offense to anyone, but they... are not good!”
Annie smiles despite herself. “You just need practice,” she says. “And maybe a little patience.”
Lexus beams at her, like she’s just handed him the sun. Kiva glowers at her, like she just declared that she actually has a bomb strapped to her chest and they’re all going to die.
As they work, Annie peeks at some of the other tributes around them. At the archery station, a girl from District 8—not much older than Lexus—pulls back a bowstring with shaky arms. The arrow veers off course, clattering against the wall. She winces, her lips pressing into a thin line.
Annie makes a mental note to learn her name.
Closer to the knife-throwing station, Brites Logia is all by himself. The station instructor isn’t even bothering to help him, more busy with chatting with the other instructor at the station next over.
He doesn’t even look upset. He hurls a blade with more precision than she’d expect from someone from an Undistinguished District, the tip sinking deep relatively near the target’s bullseye. He looks up and catches Annie’s gaze for a moment before turning back to his task.
“Show me how to reset this?” Lexus asks, pointing to the mechanism of a spring trap laid out on the table.
Annie nods, her fingers brushing against his as she takes the trap. “It’s simple, but you have to be careful,” she says, guiding him through the steps. “See this pin? That’s what keeps it from snapping shut too early. If you don’t set it right, you’ll lose a finger.”
He deigns to look off into the distance rather than focusing, bumping his wrists together. “I should know how to tie ropes. I want to make a treehouse, ‘cause they seem really neat. I’ll invite you over for a party. Knots are very hard so I may have to contract you.”
She has the sudden, fierce urge to pinch his cheek. If she did, though, Kiva would probably take her massive arms and snap her neck.
She says, “Then you should focus up, okay? If we have a party and the treehouse crushes me to death because of a bad knot, I’ll be very upset.”
He doesn't seem to hear her. He starts talking endlessly and endlessly about his treehouse. It’s going to have three rooms, and be large enough that no one can find him. He’ll be able to have room for all the books he likes, but he’ll need to stock up on food and water, and he'll have to be wary of mosquitoes.
“Annie!” Bedford’s voice cuts through the air, sharp and impatient. “You done babysitting?”
Annie doesn’t look up. “Almost,” she calls back. Then she lowers her voice for Lexus to hear. “Man, I swear he and Slate are Brutus’ secret love children or something.”
Lexus wrinkles his nose. “What is a love child?”
Kiva gasps, her hand fluttering up to her chest as if to shield something invisible. Annie laughs, because his innocence is so refreshing.He really is just a kid.
Marcielo chooses this time to walk over, his strides unhurried, deliberate. He always moves like that, like the world will wait for him to arrive. His expression is full of nothingness, as if he’s a wax statue come to life.
It’s like a dark storm cloud has cut through the fluorescent lights of the training center when he comes up to her and asks, “What are you doing, Antheia?”
She doesn’t look up right away, letting the silence stretch just long enough to feel like a dismissal. “I’m teaching Lexus how to—”
Lexus interrupts and asks, “Why do you call her Antheia?”
Marcielo meets Lexus’ gaze, deadpan as ever. “I call her Antheia because that’s her name.”
“That’s not my name,” Annie interjects, her tone airy, dismissive. “He’s lying because he’s a very bad man, Lexus. He’s horrible.”
Lexus furrows his brow and looks between the two of them like he’s trying to solve a particularly tricky puzzle. “But I call her Annie. Do only your friends call you Annie?”
“Only normal people call me Annie.” She shoots Marcielo a pointed look. “He’s not normal. He snuck onto Earth from a different planet, you can tell by his dead fish eyes.”
“That’s not true.” Lexus stops bumping his hands, looking unsure. “I don’t believe that.”
Cute.
Annie leans closer, as if she’s about to share a terrible secret. “Well, believe it. The proof’s right in front of you.” She waves a hand in Marcielo’s direction like she’s presenting evidence.
Lexus stares at Marcielo, his uncertainty deepening. Marcielo, for his part, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink, doesn’t even roll his eyes. He just stares at her.
“Why do you call me Antheia?” She asks. He’s never given a straight answer, all these years.
“The day I call someone by a nickname is the day I die.”
Lexus tilts his head. “Would you if you really liked them?”
Marcielo pauses, the silence stretching just long enough to make Annie glance up from her knots. “I’ve never really liked someone before. I don’t know.”
“Not even your mom and dad?”
Oh, abort. Abort. She can't let Lexus continue this line of questioning about Marcielo's parents. The kid obviously doesn't know he's stepped into some very horrible territory, so she bursts out laughing to steer the conversation away.
“Marcielo really likes Finnick. You should ask him about it.”
For a moment, Marcielo’s expression shifts—subtly, almost imperceptibly. A flicker of disgust, maybe irritation, but it’s hard to tell with him. His face is so blank most of the time it might as well be carved from stone.
“I’m good,” he says flatly. “I think I’m going to go run The Gauntlet. See you.”
Then he turns, and walks over to the obstacle course. Kiva, who’s been so silent the whole time that Annie forgot about her, seizes the moment. “Lexus, let’s go to the fire-starting station.”
But Lexus doesn’t budge. “I want to stay with Antheia.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Where you go, I go. That’s how this works.” Kiva’s voice tightens, coiled with an undercurrent Annie doesn’t miss.
Annie stands, letting the exchange play out, her eyes darting between them. There’s something fascinating in their rhythm, the way Kiva circles Lexus, her every move subtly calibrated to keep him close, tethered, like a kite she’s terrified might slip from her grasp. The way Lexus seems to have trouble concentrating on any one thing for too long, unless it's something he's interested in.
Annie raises an eyebrow. “I think I’m actually gonna join Marcielo at the Gauntlet,” she says. She gives them a small wave, smiling. “I’ll see you at lunch, bo—uh, Lexus.”
Kiva really can’t let go of him. Annie saves that information and stores it in her mind.
Annie tries to make up for her lack of a mentor.
In the morning, she runs ten miles in a simulation that takes her to different locations: an arctic tundra, a desert, valleys, canyons. She lifts weights and shadow boxes in her room. She throws knives and spears on the roof of the Training Center, does every station in the Training Center that doesn’t require showing off physical prowess, but it’s not good enough.
She gnaws on her lip, pacing her room. It’s the third and final day of training, her showing to the Gamemakers is soon, and her nerves are gnawing at her. Sirena has been talking with Marcielo endlessly, and Annie hasn’t seen Finnick in days.
All she’s accomplished is chatting with every single tribute at lunch. And “accomplished” is a very strong word, because Delly from Twelve had called her a monster, your mentor killed my brother, and then promptly stormed off.
So, nothing much.
She feels like she’s able to understand Delly and his poor district partner more, honestly. They’re stuck with that fat guy who’s more worried about rolling around in his vomit and drinking than he is with trying to help his tributes. At least she knows Finnick will help her get sponsors.
Annie’s other saving grace is she’s not worried about her performance for the Gamemakers; she’s had it nailed for months. She’s only worried about how she’ll perform in the arena, especially when compared to Marcielo.
She walks out to the living room, where said man lies slumped on the couch, eyes closed as it massages him. His mouth is open, releasing a single, steady note—a flat hum that wavers as the chair vibrates beneath him. The sound isn’t even a word, just a constant monotone carried on the shaking of the machine.
“Hi,” Annie says, stopping to stand in front of him. The sound of his monotone voice jilting up and down as the chair massages him makes her absurdly irritated, for some reason. She wants to smother him with a pillow. But in this apartment, he is the closest thing she has to a friend. “Do you think I can, I don’t know, file a complaint against Finnick?”
“Not a bad idea. He winked at me when I passed him in the halls before the tribute parade. I had to stop and stare, I was so utterly aghast,” Marcielo says in his blank tone. “He looked like he couldn’t believe he’d just done that. I couldn’t either. He should be demoted just for that. I was frightened for my chastity.”
His words are so out of left field she can’t help but choke out a laugh at the image it concocts; Finnick winking, Marcielo stopping to pin him with his dead fish eyes long enough for Finnick to feel shame.
Then she stamps it out—she’s angry right now.
“Don't get your hopes up, man, I think that’s just what he does. I’m saying he should probably be replaced because he isn’t ever mentoring me. That could be why I die in a week, you know?” She bites her lip to prevent spilling any more. He can’t know how desperate she feels.
Marcielo’s stupid voice vibrates as he says, “If you’re so worried, you could always just spar with me.”
She looks down at him and gapes. Just—gapes at how horrible of an idea that is. “Are you joking? You’re probably the last person I should ever spar with right now.”
He’d know all her weaknesses, be able to concoct a plan just from that, and take her by surprise at any time during the Games. Worse, he could make allies and tell them. Absolutely not.
They’ve sparred before. Hundreds of times. She’s only won a handful, and even then, they weren’t clean wins—just cheap shots he let her have or moments when he couldn’t be bothered. There’d only been one time where she sort of won at the start of their freshman year, when she’d come back a little leaner after months of helping haul up nets of fish.
When they’d squared off, he’d looked different too. Taller. Shoulders broader, so he should’ve gotten her easily, but he hadn’t even lifted his arms to block when she struck and then flinched away from her when he did try to hit her. His hands had gone limp at his sides when she’d knocked him to the mat. He’d only moved to gingerly remove her hands off his chest.
She wishes she knew what had caught him so off guard back then. That would be a useful card to have in her sleeve. Or maybe it wouldn’t even matter, because that’d been years ago, and the Marcielo before her is leagues stronger than the fourteen-year-old in that memory.
He opens his dead fish eyes and looks at her. He turns the chair off with a little sigh, then yawns and tousles his hair before looking at her, plopping his head in his hand. “Did you forget my offer of an alliance until the end?”
She frowns. “No.”
“I feel like you want to ally more with the Undistinguished. Which is kind of insulting. They’re all mentally challenged because they never get fed.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“So you are allying with them.” He blinks at her languidly. “Antheia, they don’t even bathe regularly in the Undistinguished districts. Didn’t they do a study recently that shows that the people there have lower intelligence than us? Why would you ever do that?”
“Okay…” She laughs. “I said two different things and you just jumped to an insane conclusion. What are you talking about? I’m more inclined to ally with you, because I know you. I just don’t trust you.”
Before he can object, she says, “Because! Because the whole reason you’re here is because you were short on twenty bucks. You’re wishy-washy.”
“I wouldn’t change my mind on you. I’ve known you since we were kids. I don’t know anyone here aside from you.”
That’s true. He never speaks to the other Distinguished and falls asleep whenever they have meetings. Lace nearly keeled over from the sight of Marcielo picking at his ear wax with his pinky, so Lace and Radiance are always sitting at a distance from him.
He continues. “You might die with me. We’re all we have and all that.”
For once, he’s said something profound and correct. It is just the two of them. She's only known the others for not even ten days, but she's known Marcielo for ten years. Marcielo, who never stops looking so eerily emotionless and yet has the love of so many people back home—people who pinch his cheek and pat his head. Marcielo, who always makes her want to throw something, run, laugh, and scream all at once.
She is either going to die or come out alive in two weeks.
She doesn’t know why, but it’s only now hitting her. Maybe it’s Finnick not being here, or Slate and Bedford not attempting to even hide how strong they are, but—it’s only the two of them.
In her mind's eye, all she sees are the images of all she loves racing in her mind, and the salty brine of the sea. A deep, sudden ache rises in her chest, and she regrets not saying everything she should’ve. The words she swallowed because she was so sure of returning.
That was all before she saw Slate and Bedford and their insane physiques and feats at training.
She should have told her father how, even though she makes fun of him for being so emotional, she’d give everything for him. She should have hugged her mother one more time, long enough to remember the smell of salt and soap in her hair. Should have said something to Maximilian—maybe, don’t be as hasty as your stupid sister.
All of them, far away and fading like a half-remembered dream, and here’s Marcielo, and it’s just him.
She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, forces herself to meet his gaze. His eyes, a shade of brown that always reminded her of wet sand, are steady on hers, and that’s something that makes her hate him a little less and hate herself a little more.
"You know what? Yeah," she says, her voice steady this time. "We’ll do it together. An alliance until the end, until it’s just us. You’ve got yourself a deal."
“Just us,” he echoes.
Chapter 6
Notes:
"But ever since [Finnick] turned sixteen, he's spent his time at the Games being dogged by those desperately in love with him. No one retains his favor for long. He can go through four or five in his annual visit. Old or young, lovely or plain, rich or very rich, he'll keep them company and take their extravagant gifts, but he never stays, and once he's gone he never comes back.”
— Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Annie can’t sleep.
All she can think about is the fact that she has nothing but Marcielo. She doesn’t even have Finnick, who’s seemingly too busy sleeping with the entire Capitol to care for her.
She can’t even stay in the living room anymore because Martialis likes to blast his gossip channels. She’d nearly vomited her meal all over the expensive television screen when they played a clip of Finnick feeling up a middle-aged man, then him putting his tongue down the throat of a girl near her age.
She swears the only reason why they keep him as a mentor is because the Capitol lobbies for it. They just can’t let go of their golden boy, not even for a second, and now she gets why all of Finnick’s four tributes before her all died.
She really could be next.
The hours after that bleed into each other. The night passes in a blur of fractured thoughts, fragments of moments she never gave enough weight to. Things she never thought to say. Things she never thought to feel.
Her chest is hollow and her mouth tastes like rust. She’s caught between wanting to go back and knowing there’s no such thing. It’s all a fist she keeps trying to unclench, but it slips tighter around her every time she moves.
When the sun rises, her eyes are gritty and raw, but she forces herself to her feet. She peeks out her head, trying to see if Finnick’s there, and of course, no luck.
She eats a massive breakfast of eggs, sweet potatoes, kale, spinach, next to Marcielo, who’s eating an entire chocolate cake. When she’s done, she races to put her dishes away herself so she doesn’t have to interact with the Avoxes.
She smiles and jokes with the other Distinguished at lunch, saying she’ll sing the national anthem as her talent. She then proceeds to exaggeratedly sing it off-key, taking awkward pauses after each line to do interpretive dances. Everyone except Marcielo laughs, which she counts as a win in her book.
They talk of the other tributes, with Lace leaning in closer to them all, sneering as he says, “Look at how uncivilized they act. It’s so gross. Aren’t they embarrassed?"
Across the dining hall, the Undistinguished sit hunched over their plates, the silence punctuated by clumsy scraping sounds as they wrestle with their knives and forks. Buck from Ten awkwardly saws at his steak with the wrong edge of the blade, while Heller from Five grips her utensils in fists, more like weapons than tools.
Bedford laughs, perfectly manicured nails toying with the tablecloth. "It’s not their fault they’re Undistinguished. We’re just more like the Capitol than they ever will be."
A Peacekeeper comes up to approach Radiance, and then she's whisked off to her evaluation. Lace goes next, then Slate, then Bedford, and then she’s left with Marcielo and nothing but her own thoughts.
“And then there was two,” Marcielo drawls.
She says, “Don’t talk to me.”
She watches Byte get taken away by the Peacekeepers, then Huxley, and then it’s her turn. She stands up from her seat and walks with the Peacekeepers to the showing room. She’s almost waiting for Finnick to jump out of the corner, yell, “Surprise!” and give her some last minute advice, but of course, he isn’t there.
The door closes with a loud thunk, and she looks up to see the Gamemakers watching her from above in their little balcony.
She walks to the weapons stand and grabs a knife, straps a few others on her belt. She breathes in, lets the coldness of the room settle into her bones. She’s had this routine down for months. It’s fine if Finnick’s not here.
She moves, and the knife moves with her, a sliver of silver that sings through the air. She twists, the motion so clean it’s almost elegant, like the wind folding over itself, like the crest of a wave just before it breaks.
There’s a stillness to it, a violence so precise it feels like beauty—the way her wrist flicks and the knife snaps through the space before her, catching light in a way that makes it shimmer. The edge kisses the target with a soft, hollow thud, bulls-eye.
Her arm snaps back as she draws a second knife from her belt. This time, she spins—every muscle remembering what her mind keeps forgetting—and the knife buries itself dead-center, the handle quivering.
She hears a low, appreciative murmur from above, but she doesn’t let it distract her. She flows through the routine, her knives arcing in perfect synchronicity, the way they always have. One flick of her wrist and a knife flies upward, hitting a spinning target mid-motion—a trick she perfected last year, one that always drew gasps of admiration from the others back at home.
The home she might never see again.
Just like that, her focus slips. A heartbeat too long, a breath too shallow.
The knife stutters in her hand, the tip of the blade catching the edge of her fingers, and the hilt turns slick in her grip. Before she can correct it, the knife drops, clattering to the floor with a dull, echoing sound that cuts through the room like a jagged tear.
She freezes.
For a split second, she can see it all slipping away—the faces of the Gamemakers above, their expressions hardening, their interest waning, as if she’s already lost whatever spark of promise they thought they saw in her.
Her vision blurs, and she doesn’t know why, only that she’s somewhere far away from here, somewhere the sea isn’t calm but roaring, drowning everything she’s trying to hold onto.
Move, she yells in her mind. Move.
Her heart is pounding too fast and her palms are sweating. She grabs another knife, spins, and hurls it with a snap of her wrist. The blade flies true this time, embedding itself in the center of the final target, and she finishes the routine like she planned—spinning low, her last knife flashing out to strike, landing in a perfect crouch as if she’d meant to be there all along.
She can feel the air leave her lungs in a rush, but it’s already over. She waits, chest heaving, the knives all gleaming from the targets in a flawless pattern.
“You are dismissed.”
She walks out of the room, mind blank. Then she sinks against the nearest wall.
Her chest is heaving, her pulse is roaring in her ears, and she knows that it doesn’t matter that she finished her routine. The drop is all they’ll remember—the slip, the fall, the moment she lost control.
She gnashes her teeth together and bites back a scream.
The horror in her grows and grows and grows, until finally, nighttime rolls around and everyone gathers around the television screen. Marcielo, Sirena, Clara, Osric, and both prep teams. Finnick isn’t there.
Annie sits on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped tight enough to make her knuckles ache. She doesn’t want to see her score, but a part of her pleads, hopes that somehow she made above a 7.
She chews on her lip as she sees Lace get an 8 and Radiance get a 9. Slate gets a 10, and so does Bedford. District 3 get a 6 and 7 respectively.
Then her face appears on the screen, smiling at the camera. For a moment, there’s nothing—just the empty space where the number should be, and she thinks, maybe they won’t even bother. Maybe they’ll skip me like I don’t exist.
But then it flashes: 5. The announcers all make a face at that.
“Wow, you did horrible,” Marcielo says from below her, extremely loudly. “What’d you do?”
“I dropped my knives,” she says.
“I didn’t,” he says, and she wants to vomit again.
Her breath starts to catch, sharp and quick, and she feels the world lurch around her, tilting on its axis. She forces herself to keep looking, to take it in, even as she feels the ground cracking beneath her feet, everything she’s built crumbling like sand slipping through her fingers.
It’s worse than she expected, worse than she ever let herself imagine, because even the Undistinguished—kids who haven’t spent ten years of their life training—are scoring higher. They’re getting 7s, 8s, even an 11 from Brites Logia, while her number, small and pitiful, pulses on the screen.
She sits back, her shoulders slumping, the breath shuddering out of her in a rush. A 5 means she’s no threat, no one to watch.
That’s good, she tells herself. It’s a good thing. Better for the tributes to not know her talents even if this does cost her Sponsors.
But does she even have any talents to begin with if they’re evaporating so quickly at the smallest sign of stress? She doesn’t know how she expects herself to survive in the Games if she’s cracking now.
She watches Sirena nod gruffly and pat Marcielo on the back like he’s already won. “Just like I told you to,” she says. “And look. Perfect score.”
“I’ll tell my kids about it in the future,” he says drily.
On reflex, Annie says, “Very optimistic of you.”
Sirena turns to look at her, eyes cold and narrowed. An overreaction if Annie’s ever seen one.
It hits her, then. Oh.
“I meant that… that it’s optimistic of Marcielo to think he’ll find someone who’ll want to procreate with him. Nothing else,” Annie chokes out.
Marcielo blankly says, “I heard you the first time.”
Sirena, meanwhile, relaxes, but still looks at her warily. Of course she does; she just thought Annie was directly threatening him, and was worried on her tribute’s behalf.
That’s what a mentor should do.
Finnick hasn’t been there. He hasn’t guided her through the endless hours of training, hasn’t told her anything she needs to hear from a previous Victor, hasn’t pushed her to be better when she faltered. He hasn’t even been here to give Marcielo a dirty look after his comments.
Instead, she’s been alone with her failures. The Distinguished with the five, and her mentor is a ghost.
The night settles heavy over the apartment, but again, Annie can’t sleep. She sits on the edge of the sofa, knees drawn to her chest, and counts the seconds between each tick of the clock. She can’t remember when she started counting, or why it’s the only thing keeping her still. Time moves too slowly here.
Each moment is suspended in the sterile air, and she feels like how she does when she’s swimming, weightless and untethered. Her fingers twist the fabric of her pants, twisting tighter and tighter, like if she pulls hard enough, she’ll unravel.
The prodigious female tribute from District 4 now come to this. Valedictorian for her graduating class, even, and everyone at home knows she got a 5. Her old instructors must be shaking their heads. Being here is an honor, and she’s just—cracking.
It’s past midnight when she hears the faint chime of the door, and Finnick steps inside the penthouse. His hair is slightly damp, pushed back from his face, and he’s dressed in a new set of baggy clothes she’s never seen before. The faint scent of Capitol perfume drifts off him, sharp and sweet, mingling with the cold air.
He doesn’t see her at first, just drops his coat over the back of a chair, exhaustion etched into the lines around his eyes. But she steps closer, the anger rising in her throat like bile, and he looks up.
His eyes are covered in that same dazed sheen he had on the train. He looks at her and licks his lips, like he wants to say something suave.
“Where have you been?” she asks, her voice colder than she intended. She doesn’t wait for him to answer, the words spilling out faster, sharper, more desperate. “You’re supposed to be helping me. You’re supposed to be my mentor, but you’ve been—”
She gestures at him, at the clean clothes and the Capitol sheen, and the bitterness surges. So many people at home whisper that he’s more a Capitol man than he is of the Districts, and right now, she can’t help but agree.
“—gone. I’ve been training alone. Everyone else has someone who actually cares somewhat about what happens to them, and you’re just not here.”
Finnick’s expression doesn’t change. He simply runs a hand through his hair. “Annie, I’m sorry,” he says distantly. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy doing what? ” Her eyebrows dip into a scowl that’s more weariness than rage. “Busy getting on another headline? I don’t care what you do in your private life, but it just—this doesn’t feel fair. I might die, just like Vela, Cordelia, Mare, and Caspian all did. I at least want a fighting chance. Yeah, I trained, but training can only go so far. I need guidance from someone who’s actually experienced and won the Games.”
Does he not get it? Does he not understand the importance of a mentor?
She wishes Mags hadn’t retired. Now that was a woman who knew how to make Victors.
Then, without warning, Finnick moves closer, cornering her against the counter. The shift in his body is almost imperceptible, but suddenly he’s there, looming.
His smirk reanimates him and his hand brushes a strand of hair out of her face. “I know a way to make it up to you,” he says, voice low. Too low.
The silence when he touches her is loud and frightening. She recoils instinctively, her pulse hammering in her ears, loud enough to drown out the scrape of her slippers against the tiled floor.
“What are you doing?” she asks, genuinely bewildered. “Are you on drugs?”
She talks about how he failed all his previous tributes, and might be failing her, and he decides now is the perfect time to come onto her? What?
His eyes are—soulless, and his smirk makes her feel like prey. She’s heard whispers about Victors and morphling. But Finnick? Finnick doesn’t seem the type.
Or maybe she just doesn’t know him at all.
His smirk falters for a moment. “Why are you so upset?”
“Why am I upset?” Her laugh is sharp, bitter. “Maybe it’s that I might die on live television, or that my mentor—the person who’s supposed to be keeping me alive—is coked out and hitting on me. Man, I’m one of a handful of people who still remember your side part phase. What are you doing?"
For a second, the bravado slips. Finnick’s shoulders sag, his gaze darting to the side like a child caught in a lie. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he mumbles, his words tripping over themselves. “I—I think I’m gonna go.”
The change in him is so sudden she almost gapes. He must be on drugs, or something. He’s flipping through personalities so fast she’s getting whiplash. If getting rejected is what’s making him sad, then Marcielo would’ve made him bawl. It has to be morphling.
“Wait, what? Don’t go.” She reaches for his wrist, but he flinches like she’s struck him.
Something cracks open in her chest—a fissure of pity, or worry, or both. He looks so fragile now, like a bird with its wings clipped.
Maybe not morphling. More like morphling withdrawals.
She wants to yell and maybe tear up a pillow, but being angry doesn’t seem like it’ll do anything other than make him run off and hide. So she closes her eyes, takes a bunch of deep breaths so she can look at him without getting mad, and then opens them.
“You know what? Fine,” she says softly, her voice gentle now, like the way she speaks to the feral cats on the docks. “Let’s just… pretend that didn’t happen. Reflexes, right? You flirt. I—My gag reflex kicks in whenever I see Marcielo.” She tries to go for some humor to lighten the mood, and she thinks it’s working a little. “I’m sorry for being mean. I just really need your help with this interview tomorrow.”
Finnick doesn’t answer. He still won’t look at her, and the silence between them feels heavier than it should.
She leans against the counter, watching him, and wonders what exactly is going on behind those beautiful, piercing eyes. Then she nudges a chair toward him with her arms, her tone light, careful. “You look tired. Wanna sit for a second?”
He takes the chair without a word, folding into it like a marionette with its strings cut. His gaze is distant, somewhere deep inside himself, and Annie fumbles for a thread to pull him back.
“I’m worried about the interview tomorrow,” she starts, pitching her voice into something casual, conspiratorial. “But maybe I’ve got the wrong guy for help. Didn’t you get into an argument with Mr. Sullivan once? Something about listening to music during conditioning, and he—”
She pauses, pressing her fingers to her temple, trying to piece together the blurry fragments of an old story. “He said doing that wasn’t up to Leviathan standards or something, and he made you write an apology letter. But you pissed him off so much with it that he made you do, like, a hundred push-ups every day for a week. I saw him backhand you in the halls, too.”
Finnick blinks, as though the memory has momentarily pierced the fog around him. He speaks like a machine when he quietly says, “The letter started with, ‘I did nothing wrong. I’m writing this because the director told me I had to. Plus, you’re bald.’” He stares at his hands. “And then I drew a picture of his bald head on the paper.”
Annie bursts into laughter, startled and delighted. Okay, progress. “I’m surprised he didn’t kill you.”
“He looked like he wanted to.” He’s still talking like he’s just a reanimated corpse, but they’re getting somewhere.
“You’ve got way more courage than me,” she says, still smiling. “The most anyone in my class did was put hand sanitizer in his water when he wasn’t looking. And didn’t your class once make Mr. Allan cry because you all hid under the tables and wouldn’t come out?”
“He wasn’t a bad guy. His class was just boring.”
She laughs, and so does he, but it’s more like he’s laughing only because she is. There’s tension still coiled tight in Finnick’s frame, and his gaze begins to drift again.
She hesitates, then ventures cautiously. “Finnick… we weren’t really friends, but you seem nice. I remember liking you in Advanced Conflicts because you made that class bearable. Like when you asked the teacher if he liked cream pies—”
“That wasn’t me,” he cuts in, his voice distant. “That was Rowan.”
Okay, abort. Annie laughs it off. “My bad. My point still stands, though. I think it’d be nice if we could be friends. I missed my chance when we were in school, even though I wanted to be. I always thought you seemed really cool and fun to be around. No pressure, though.”
Finnick doesn’t respond to her offer. Instead, after a pause, he says, “I’ll try to make time for you tomorrow. Okay? I’ll do my best.”
“You don’t have to.” She searches his face, the exhaustion carved into it. “I’ll manage the interview. I have enough social skills to get through it, I promise. Right now we should both get some rest.”
She wants to ask, Want me to walk you to your room? but it feels patronizing. Let me walk you to your room feels too forceful. Instead, she settles on, “Want to walk to our rooms together?”
The delivery feels clumsy, but she keeps a smile pinned in place.
“It’s fine,” he says stiffly, standing. “Goodnight, Annie.”
“Goodnight, Finnick.” She says, a little stupidly.
Once he slips away into the shadows, she sinks into the chair. She’ll have no support going into the Games. That’s—okay, the fat guy from District 12 beat all odds and won against forty-seven other tributes.
Still, she can’t stop the horror crawling through her stomach, heavy and cold.
She can train, she can fight, she can claw her way through the arena but it doesn't matter what she does. Marcielo will be there, and he will be stronger. He will be faster. And he will kill her, just as easily as he killed the dummies in training, with a flick of his wrist and a blank look in his eyes.
Finnick can’t help her. Her instructors from the Leviathan can't.
No one can save her except for herself.
Chapter 7
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
The preparation for the Games is slowly driving her insane.
She tries to sharpen her social skills in time for the interview tonight by talking to Marcielo’s prep team as they all get ready for the day.
They take hours. Spritzing the air with perfume, doing their nails, putting paint on every square inch of their faces, and spending hours trying to decide what to wear. To be fair, if she was them, she’d probably have the same issue. For some reason, they have hundreds of the same type of perfume, lipstick, concealer, whatever else, but in slightly different packaging.
“I’m exhausted looking at you,” she tells one of them, Danilo.
Danilo smiles at her with that same Capitol smile her own prep team has—the smile that says you’re-so-stupid-it’s-cute-but-you’re-also-on-the-brink-of-pissing-me-off.
He slathers on a cream that makes his skin glimmer and says, “I like getting ready because it’s about creation. Just because it needs effort doesn’t mean it’s work. It’s an exercise of the creative soul.”
The other boys hum in agreement. She doesn’t really see what’s creative about painting on exaggeratedly long eyelashes and making their lips fuller, but she also doesn’t really know what goes on in their minds.
Her hands itch. She wants to learn how to wear makeup, too. Not to be creative—she wouldn't be as dramatic with it as they are, either—but she’d like it if she could at least make it look like her lips are bigger than they actually are, or somehow make her nose look taller and pointier. She wants to learn how to contour his face so she can make her chin appear slimmer and lessen the disappointment she feels every time she looks in the mirror.
But she has no idea of how to even do that in the first place, and she doesn’t want to embarrass herself in front of them. She forces herself to angle her body away from the giant mirror and tries to talk about something they’d be into, like gossip, but all she gets are half-hearted responses.
Corydon finally ducks his green face away from her and complains, “I don’t like you looking at my bare face. I’m ugly.”
“Yes, could you leave us?”
It was getting hopeless anyway.
She waves and then prowls for more Capitolites to speak to. Anyone who can mimic Caesar Flickerman.
She doesn’t want to talk to her own prep team because she sort of blames them for how she can't look in the mirror anymore, despite how unreasonable that is. Talking to Marcielo is like talking to a rock, and Sirena is always side-eying her. The Avoxes scare her and she’s pretty sure people without their tongues can’t talk.
Anyway, looking at them makes her chest hurt, especially when she watches them swallow their food in a weird way that she’s only ever heard of before, not seen. She tries to make their lives easier by cleaning up after herself whenever she can, but she’s afraid that if she talks to them, a Peacekeeper will know and shoot her head off. So she goes to find Martialis.
First, he makes her sign a contract for the Games. "Every tribute has to sign this," he explains as he gives her a pen. "It usually happens on the first day, but I'd nearly forgotten."
It's a thick packet, thicker than the length of her thumb and full of words that make her head swim. He tells her she doesn't have to read all of it, it's only a formality, so she just signs her name wherever it's needed. After that's done, he sits with her on the couch to watch highlights from old Games that she’s seen a million times, blond hair cascading in glorious, softly shining waves.
“They’re like little monsters,” Martialis comments as Enobaria tears out the throat of the tribute on top of her.
He rips open a little plastic package and pulls out a bottle, closing his eyes as he sprays his face with whatever that is. Then, he drops both the bottle and package in a little trash chute next to him, which gets whisked away by silent, pneumatic tubes. It’s almost like it disappears into thin air, but she knows it’s going to wind up in the South Coast one way or the other.
What if she stuffed herself into one of the tubes? Free trip back home.
She really is going stir-crazy. She looks at the screen, where a giant serpent mutt wears the eyes of a tribute who'd just showed up in the clip before this one. She wonders, briefly, how mutts are even created. Do Capitol scientists break down a tribute's corpse and then sew features of them onto a mutt they already have? The thought is a little disgusting, and she thinks about how that, if she dies, she'll be turned into one.
She digs her nails into her palm and turns to Martialis.
“Mr. Martialis,” she asks over the sound of a tribute screaming as he gets his intestines yanked out. “What do you do for fun?”
Not her best conversation starter, but it’ll do.
“I do too much,” he sighs. “I donate to a charity to give back to the brutes in Twelve, I host horseback riding competitions, and I have to go to so many galas. Sometimes I’ll redecorate my house. I just got this lovely new kind of fish that expires after three days, and my Avoxes swap them out before I can get bored of the colors.”
Then he turns to smile at her. The hearts in his eyes make her feel a little ill. “You can have a life like mine if you just work hard for it, Annie. It took a lot for me to get here. Nothing was handed to me. I used to be a Ferral. I was so—Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
He laughs. “Of course you don’t. Why would you?” He curls a strand of his hair behind his ear. “Everyone has four blood types. I had A blood, so I was a Ferral. Ferrals are aggressive, natural leaders. The kind of people who fill a room without asking.”
His mouth curves into something like a smirk. “B blood are Lumens. They're academic, artistic. AB blood are Cerrans—simple, sturdy. No ambition, but perhaps that's their gift. And then there’s O blood—Vapors. Social glue, the ones who make everything else stick.”
He explains how each one has a certain look; Ferrals have structured clothes, long hair. Lumens are minimalist, ethereal. Cerrans—utilitarian. Practical. And Vapors are dynamic and loud with their fashion. There’s subsections to it, like Vapor Positives and Vapor Negatives, but he won’t get into that.
She leans in closer to him, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to digest all of it. She’d heard some of the terms on TV but never really understood any of it. It’s fascinating—she’s likely known people of every blood type, but she’s never, in her entire life, ever heard of these classifications.
He waves a hand dismissively, the exaggerated gesture almost theatrical. “But Ferrals are so... brutish. Always stomping around, barking orders. No elegance. No flair. That’s not me. I’ve always been drawn to Vapors—O blood. They’re dynamic, expressive, the life of every room, even if they have some bad stereotypes.”
She’s leaning in now, her brow furrowed. It’s strange, hearing him untangle this web she didn’t know she was caught in. “But you’re not a Ferral anymore?”
Martialis tilts his head, the smirk returning, this time with a sliver of pride. “No. I became a Vapor and got a bone marrow transplant from a Vapor donor. Simple, really.”
It doesn’t sound simple. It sounds a little frightening. A body hollowed out and rebuilt, piece by piece.
He adds, “I have to regularly have my blood infused with compounds to ‘coat’ my cells in Vapor antigens. Oh, and my spleen had to go. With it, my body won’t accept the new blood cells.”
She almost winces at that description. “I wonder what I am.”
“You seem like a Vapor or Ferral. That’s what most Distinguished are,” he says, like he’s handing her a gift. “Everyone who works to help the tributes, aside from the stylists, are either Vapors or poor. Or both!”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I think my blood type is B.”
His smile falters, just for a second, before it twists into an even brighter one. “Well, if you win, you’ll have the funds to fix that.”
“Would I have to lose my spleen?”
“Yes, but it’s worth it. You’d be free.”
First the jaw, now this. Smooth out the edges. Shave away what doesn’t belong.
Always something. Always pieces.
Annie doesn’t know what to make of it. It all feels like a secret language the Capitol has been speaking all along, and she’s only now catching a fragment of the conversation.
Blood types. Ferrals, Lumens, Cerrans, Vapors. She tries to fit the people she knows into the words. Is Marcielo a Cerran, steady and quiet, without any ambition? Would he get ambition and become a Ferral if his blood type was changed? That doesn’t seem right.
She should probably try and see where she fits into all this, but—she needs to take things one at a time. Her most pressing concern is whether she's going to live or die, not if she's a Cerran because her hair's at her shoulders.
The front door chimes, and she turns her head to see who it is.
“Annie,” Finnick calls.
Her eyes widen.
She crosses her fingers, holds her breath, and then he cocks his head to the door and says, “Let’s do some interview prep.”
She practically leaps off the couch.
Annie sits on the flowers.
She feels bad for squashing them, but she’s weary of sitting on the one bench in the rooftop garden with Finnick—that’s just too close for comfort—so she chooses the lesser evil.
The flowers are beautiful, like nothing she’s ever seen before. They make her yearn a bit for home, so she plucks a few. Her fingers move instinctively, seeking the stems of flowers that catch the sunlight just so, their petals trembling like little mirrors of the sea. She tugs one free, its roots resisting in the soil.
“Do you want to make wreaths with me?” she asks Finnick without looking up. Something to keep his hands busy will probably keep them from getting anywhere near her.
There’s a pause. She glances at him.
Finnick’s sitting cross-legged a few feet away, leaning back on his hands, head tilted toward the sky like he’s trying to let it swallow him whole. The sun catches on his hair and makes it look like gold, the kind you can’t spend. It feels strange to see someone like that—the Capitol’s golden boy—look so utterly far away, like his body forgot to tether his soul.
“Finnick?” she presses, her hands full of green stems and small white blooms.
“Yeah,” he says after a beat, his voice low, like the words are struggling to stay upright. “Yeah, okay.”
She smiles politely. “What kind of wreath are you gonna make?”
He blinks slowly, then looks at her. His eyes are always so green it makes her think of the most pristine, clean waters. “Uh… I don’t know, something random.” He shrugs one shoulder, casual but stiff.
Annie nods. She starts weaving, fingers tying the flowers together. Knotting the stems.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Finnick reach for a cluster of soft purple flowers. He fumbles a little, but soon his hands are working, clumsy at first, then steadier. He’s copying her motions, twisting vines and stems with surprising focus.
She doesn’t say anything, just lets the silence stretch, the sound of their weaving filling the space between them. He probably doesn’t know anything about what’s been going on these past few days, so she says, “I got a five.”
Finnick looks at her. His brows draw together, but it’s faint, like the expression has to fight through some invisible fog. “A five? What’d you do?” he asks. “I thought you were pretty talented.”
“You know, that’s exactly what I said,” she sighs. “When you were going into the Games, were you also constantly thinking about the chance that you might die?”
Finnick doesn’t say anything for a long moment, still weaving his wreath. He finally says, “Everyone has a phase where they realize they might not go home. It doesn’t hit you until you come here. Everyone.”
Oh. It's normal. That makes her shoulders relax a little.
She points to a cluster of sparkling red flowers near Finnick. “Can you give me one of those?”
Finnick hesitates, but then he reaches out and plucks it carefully. He hands it to her without a word, his fingers brushing hers for just a moment. His hand is warm, rougher than she expected. She waits for him to flinch away from her, but he doesn’t.
“Thanks,” she says, tucking it into her budding wreath. It stands out against the muted whites and greens she has so far.
The wind drifts lazily across the rooftop garden, carrying with it the faint tinkling of the chimes dangling from the branches of the potted trees. The soft notes blend with the rustle of leaves, and it makes a rhythm that reminds her of home.
Annie lifts her head slightly, letting the breeze tug at her hair, loose strands dancing against her cheeks. “It’s weird how quiet it is here,” she murmurs. “At home, there’s always something in the background.”
The waves, the winds.
Finnick doesn’t answer immediately. He’s less stiff than before, his shoulders not as hunched. His fingers move deftly, looping vines and threading flowers like he’s done it a hundred times before. It’s strange, she thinks, how different he looks like this—focused, present.
“I missed the smell of fish guts,” he says finally, his voice quiet but steady.
She blinks at him, her fingers stilling on her wreath. “Really?”
His head dips slightly, and he nods. A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Not a smirk, but a real smile.
“When you go back home after the Games, you’re hit in the face with the smell of fish. We get used to it because we live there, but I’d never noticed how strong it was until I’d left and came back.” He pauses, his fingers brushing against a pale pink flower as he adds it to his wreath. “It’s the best feeling. Hits like morphling.”
“Huh,” she says. What she really wants to ask is, Do you know from experience? But that’s rude, and being around Marcielo for her entire life has taught her what’s polite and what's not.
“If anything,” Finnick says, glancing at her briefly. “Work toward that feeling.”
She pictures it for a moment: the docks, the salty air, the slap of waves against the pilings. She’s been thinking so much about going back, but the thought always catches on the same sharp edge: what if she doesn’t?
The wind chimes tinkle softly again, filling the quiet that follows. Finnick’s hands continue their work, the flowers in his lap slowly taking shape.
Annie notices the way his movements have changed—how deliberate they’ve become, how his fingers linger on the flowers now as if they deserve his attention. His breathing seems slower, steadier. It’s like watching someone wake up from a long, restless sleep.
No, she decides. She doesn’t think he’s on morphling.
Her fingers find another flower, small and white with petals that feel like paper. She threads it into the wreath without thinking, her hands moving on instinct.
“Does this look good?” she asks him.
He nods.
Finnick shifts in front of her, the flowers in his lap now a neat loop of greens and blues and purples. His wreath looks different from hers—more like a garland, something you’d hang on a boat to bless it before a long journey. She thinks it suits him.
She looks at him then, really looks, and sees the boy he used to be that she never knew. A boy with sunburnt cheeks and salt-crusted hair she never paid much attention to. All she’d thought of him was: Funny! Loud!
Now he’s somehow become a gorgeous playboy who has the Capitol in love with him. But here, in this moment, he seems a little less like his explosive personality on TV.
Suddenly she’s five years in the past, when he was just a face in the same room.
She remembers how he used to laugh too loud at lunch, the way his voice would carry above the rest. She used to wonder what he and his friends were talking about that was so funny. It all feels so close, like she could reach out and brush the memories with her fingertips, but they slip away when she tries, hazy at the edges.
She remembers, achingly, that time is just a wave, crashing and pulling away in endless rhythms. Each second folds back on itself, tugging pieces of her youth into the tide. She reaches for them, these pieces of herself: the ghost of a laugh, the curve of a shoulder turned away, the weight of a knife perfectly balanced in her palm. But they’re not hers anymore. They’re already part of the sea.
Six years of school together and spotting him in the halls. One year of sitting behind him in Advanced Conflicts and Atrocities, staring at the back of his shaggy hair as she daydreamed of the life she’d get when she won the Games: being able to retire like that, without needing to go to college and spend fifty years of her life wasting away at a dead-end job.
She remembers it all like yesterday—how easy it was to just laugh at his antics, wishing for a moment in her mind that she could be friends with the cool upperclassmen. But she was more focused on the things that seemed so important back then: chattering with her own group of friends; trying to keep her cool in front of Marcielo whenever he spoke to her; the sound of knives clashing together in training.
Her friends’ laughter is just an echo, Marcielo might kill her, and her knife had fallen from her hand. The boy who used to sit in front of her is now someone else, and it hits her—how long it’s been since those school days, and how short the distance feels at the same time, as if she blinked and everything changed.
She can almost feel the weight of those years gathering in the hollow of her throat. It all feels so fragile now, like it’s fading even as she remembers—like the tides of home pulling the coastline out to sea, inch by inch, erasing any footprints left in the sand.
The wind plays with her hair again, lifting it gently, and she closes her eyes for a moment, letting herself sink into this moment.
She only remembers they’re there for interview prep when Finnick leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “Alright, Annie. They already like you. You’re from a Distinguished District, pretty, and… your face.” He gestures to the aforementioned face.
Annie blinks. For a moment, she'd forgotten. Up here, with the wind and the flowers, it’s too easy to imagine that the Games are something far away, not lurking just days ahead. Then she winces. Why separate “her face” and “pretty”? She knows her face isn’t all it could be, but that seems a little insensitive.
Finnick nods at her. “See? That. That’s what you do. Your face is really expressive and animated, and that makes people like you.”
“What?” Her hand comes to ghost her cheek. Now she wants a mirror—no one’s ever said that to her before. “Got it. So, make facial expressions?” She tries to smirk at him, like how she’s seen him do on television, but he actually shudders when she makes that face. Now she feels insulted again.
“No. Nothing sexy. You need to distance yourself far away from that, because… because District 1 is always the sexy district.”
She frowns. “You did the sexy persona. And I thought One was more refined sexy, and we were wild sexy.”
He snaps his fingers and smiles. “That’s exactly why they don't want to see it again! Everyone always tries to be sexy, and it'll only be more stale and tired if you try it because I’m your mentor. So when I say be expressive, I mean make the face you’re making right now.”
Her fingers toy with the edges of a flower, pulling at a stray stem. “What face am I making? Shouldn’t we be doing this in front of a mirror?”
Finnick nods. “Good point.”
He lets go of his garland, sticks his hand down one of his pockets, and out comes a small pocket mirror that, with the press of a button, expands to be much, much larger. Of course Finnick Odair carries a mirror with him at all times.
She scoots closer to him to get in frame of the mirror. He’s sitting out of frame, and she doesn’t want to be in frame, either, because the first thing she sees is her chin that’s not a V. She looks away, about to say something to him, but seeing Finnick Odair’s face after seeing her own just makes her feel like a squid.
He makes eye contact with her—his eyes are such a light, crystal-clear green that she wants to study them, wow—and says, “Underneath it all, Marcielo is so outgoing and kind.”
Her eyebrows furrow together and she looks at him in disbelief. Her jaw drops open just the slightest bit. Did he actually mean it when he winked at Marcielo? There’s just no way. But maybe Marcielo wasn’t joking when he said he was worried about his chastity.
"See? That’s the face." He grabs the mirror and angles it to her face. "Look. Just like that."
And there she sees herself: the disgust in her dark green eyes, the set of her jaw and the furrow of her brow. Suddenly, she understands.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I’ll make more… faces. Any other tips?”
“Your real personality is likable enough. You just have to be everything they’d love to be: funny, confident, and effortlessly cool. You can be the friend that everyone wants to have.”
She makes another face at that description, and the mirror catches her grimace.
Annie lets herself exhale, just once. “You won’t teach me how to, you know, compose myself? Or how to pose?”
“No,” he says instantaneously. “No. Annie, don’t try to look attractive for the cameras. It’s a tired idea. I’m telling you, be yourself. You’ll stand out that way; everyone’s going to dress up and try to look cute, and you’ll be the only one who’s normal. Just—trust me on this.”
Above them, the sun dips, its light pulling gold across the stone like spilled honey. The sky slowly turns into a light pink.
“Okay,” she says. He is the expert, and what he’s saying does make some sense.
“Let’s do some interview prep, then. Pretend like I’m Caesar.” He shifts his weight to her. “What’s the first thing you’ll do if you win the Games?"
She stares at herself in the mirror, back straightening. She thinks back to all the interviews she's seen on TV, and makes herself smile bashfully and shake her head. “Well, that’s easy. I’ll give my family a hug—”
Finnick shakes his head. “Family’s too basic. Everyone talks about theirs. You have to be unique.Try again. What’s the first thing you’ll do if you win the Games?”
“I’ll…” She puts the smile back on, wracks her brain. What else would she even possibly do? “Can I reference you in my answer?”
“Try not to. Your interview needs to be about you.”
“The moment I get off the train, I’m diving right into the ocean. I’ve been inside so much this entire week, my tan’s fading!” She gives a little laugh, trying to envision a laughing audience, but all she sees are Finnick Odair’s glittering eyes. Her answer makes her want to vomit somewhere, but whatever Finnick says, she’ll follow.
“Back home in District 4, what will your family and friends say when they see you here tonight?"
“Hopefully, they’re not seeing how nervous I look! I—”
“Annie,” he says softly, “You know, I messed up. Okay. We’re not practicing any interviews; it’s just you and me. On this rooftop, in this garden, and we’re having a normal conversation. It’s… just a conversation where you need to remember to try and talk only about yourself and be a little more expressive.”
Her mind whirls. Be yourself, but also not too much. Be expressive, but don’t go over-the-top. Be unique, but don’t weird anyone out.
“Let’s try again. You’re far from home. What will you miss the most while in the arena? What will keep you going to survive?
She hesitates, then answers, “I’ll miss the water. It… I don’t know, it makes me feel safe. I’ll miss the docks. In the morning, it gets so foggy that you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you.
“And home has seagulls, which I hate, because one shat on my head once when I was a kid. Definitely one of the worst things to happen to me. It was dripping down my hair, and it smelled like”—she shakes her head and makes a face she catches in the mirror—“I can’t even describe it, or I’ll remember it and get sick.”
Finnick smiles, almost wistful. “I actually think I remember that. Was that when you sheared off all your hair?”
She gawks at him for a little bit. Not only because a part of her is happy that he actually remembers her, but because the fog around him seems to have lifted a little. Now that she’s realized that, she sees that his movements have become more animated. His voice is lighter.
When she nods, he shakes his head. “That’s my most clear memory of you. I thought you were getting abused at home and your parents cut your hair like that as punishment. Think that’s why I never bothered you.”
“One good thing came of my hair getting all messed up, at least.” She presses her index finger to her heart, right shoulder, forehead, her left shoulder, then back to her heart, mimicking how the old uncles and aunties do it back home.
A laugh tumbles out of him, and it’s nothing like the sharp-edged chuckles she’s seen him do on screen. This is raw, full-bellied, a sound that shakes loose from somewhere tender. And then that smile—open, unpracticed, as if he’s forgotten himself completely. It hits her like a wave, his laugh tugging hers up from her chest, bubbling over before she can stop it.
He asks what her ideal arena would be (a beach, c’mon ), if she’s surviving for herself or someone back home (she’s motivated by the idea of living in the nice houses on Victor Isles), and if she has anything to confess to the audience (she’s not spoiling anything; they need to wait and see).
Soon they’re talking about nothing and everything: the time she swore she saw a sea monster, she once nearly died from a hornet stinging her on the ass, Finnick would apparently just take his pants off as a sign that he wanted his training with his classmates to end for the day.
Time melts between them like honey in warm tea.
The conversation rolls on, slow and easy, punctuated by the rhythm of their breathing, the occasional laugh that bubbles up without warning. Annie forgets to measure her responses, forgets that every word she says is meant to matter—she just speaks.
He looks different. Not like the Finnick they show on screens, or the man with the dazzling smile and the charm that wraps around people like a net. This Finnick is quieter, his movements more human, more real. He’s alive in a way he hasn’t been since all the last few times she’s seen him. Something softer, something that feels like it belongs up here in the garden with the flowers and the wind chimes.
She has so many things she wants to ask him, but instead, she continues adding to their conversation about Mrs. Gardyne. Her fingers slow as she begins to work on a flower crown. It's small and uneven, the stems bending under her fingers in ways she doesn’t expect.
When she finishes, she holds the crown up to him. “Do you wanna wear this?”
He blinks at her and says, “Sure.”
He leans forward, taking the wreath from her hands, and then sets the crown atop his head.
And wow.
The flowers sit a little crooked, some petals caught in his hair, and yet they suit him so perfectly it’s almost painful. The colors bring out something in his face, his sea-glass eyes suddenly deeper, his skin luminous under the golden light. He looks like a figure carved from stories long before theirs, something holy. She understands, in a way she never thought she would, why people once believed in higher beings.
“Those flowers really suit you,” she says, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. "Good job."
He laughs at that, and she can't help but smile back. “Thank you,” he says. Then, after a pause, he looks at her with something new in his face, soft and open. “Should… Do you want me to make one for you?”
“Sure.”
She doesn’t really want one when she knows she’ll pale next to him, next to the quiet glory he wears so effortlessly. But Finnick’s hands are already moving.
They keep talking as he works, their voices low and easy, carrying no weight beyond the rhythm of their breaths. She doesn’t notice the time slipping away until the door bursts open behind them, breaking the air apart.
“Annie!” Clara’s voice cuts like glass, sharp and frantic. She stumbles onto the roof, her cheeks flushed. “Where have you been? You were supposed to meet me an hour ago!”
Annie doesn’t have time to answer before Clara is on her, fingers like hooks, dragging her to her feet. The rooftop tilts beneath her as Clara pulls her toward the elevator, chastising her for forgetting about her interview.
Annie glances back, though, because she can’t help it.
Finnick is still there, his wreath for her clenched tightly in his hands, the edges of it trembling just slightly. He looks like a lost child, his eyes wide and shimmering, and it makes something in her chest hurt.
Annie calls, “Let’s do this again, okay? Once I win.”
“Once you win,” Finnick agrees. But his back’s all rigid again, and his crystal eyes are fogged over.
He’s not looking at her.
Notes:
a/n: fun fact calling someone a squid is korean slang for an ugly person.
also i wanted to inject that. Feeling of seeing kids you grew up with years later becoming drug dealers (american things) or changing completely and how weird it is. Like i used to watch teen titans go with u and now ur shaking ass on instagram??! (true story btw)
Chapter 8
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
The room is white—so white it burns, a light so clean it feels like a lie. Annie lays on the table, her legs parted slightly, her hands gripping the edges as if to keep from floating away.
Her prep team works on her with silent hands, too many hands, pulling and pressing. A machine hums, hot wax spreads across her armpits, her thighs, ripped away with sharp precision. They laugh, soft and sharp like glass breaking in another room.
"So much," Prisca says, and though her voice is light, there is weight in it. "Your hair grows so fast. Like you’re not trying."
Yes, she will make sure to try harder to stop her hair from growing. It’s a wonder she’s never tried it before. How could she be so stupid?
She wishes she could peer inside their brains to see how they worked.
Her flesh burns where the wax was, skin screaming beneath the perfect silence of their movements. They dunk her in a bath, scrub her down, then rub her in creams that make her petal-smooth. When she’s toweled off and seated in front of the styling vanity, Clara enters the room, looking like a human peacock.
“Too little time!” she tuts, “And to spend it with Finnick! You are such a naughty girl.”
“Yes,” Annie agrees, “We were doing horrible things you couldn’t even imagine, Clara.”
Clara giggles, and spends the next two hours ordering the prep team around. They beat her face and her body. Junius curls Annie’s hair faintly at the ends and dusts something on her hair that leaves a faint silvery thread of shimmer.
Leontes slips a choker of raw, unpolished crystals on her neck, and they glow faintly like embers just about to catch flame. Then Valentina stacks Annie’s fingers with mismatched rings, and outfits her ears with ear cuffs that spiral upward, like the curves of a seashell. Prisca laces boots on her legs, and just by looking at them she knows this is a completely different style than the one she took at the chariots.
The boots are knee-high and sharp. Architectural. Black with a high-gloss finish, but beneath the surface, faint veins of bioluminescent blue pulse like life just beneath the skin. They look functional enough to survive battle, and she wonders if she could somehow take them into the arena.
Lucia puts something on her face that makes her skin glow with a dewy, almost aquatic sheen. Her lips are left bare, just kissed with a sheer, wet gloss, like saltwater kissed them first.
When Annie’s finally all done and fitted, she looks into the mirror and—wow. She almost doesn’t recognize herself. She looks cool. Genuinely like someone who could be a celebrity, cover television screens and posters, and worlds away from her usual look.
In the mirror, she doesn’t look soft. She looks sharp. She looks like she could walk into a room and have every pair of eyes waiting to see what she’ll do next.
Clara doesn’t seem very happy, though. “I wanted to give you an outfit like your chariot one. You don’t even look like you’re from Four, but Finnick insisted.”
Annie wears a jumpsuit crafted from a fabric that shifts like water under moonlight—silk and metallic threads woven so finely they seem liquid. The color is oceanic: deep teal that fades into petrol blue at the legs. There’s streaks of phosphorescent silver tracing asymmetrical seams, like lightning caught in the depths. It’s cinched at the waist with a belt, but it doesn’t even feel restrictive.
One of her shoulders is bare, while the other is sheathed in a sleeve that flows like seafoam, translucent and billowing, held in place by fine silver chains that drape delicately across her skin. Swathed over her is an asymmetrical half-cloak, falling over one shoulder and flowing down to her mid-thigh on the opposite side.
The cloak moves when she breathes, and she inhales just to see it shimmer, to watch the light follow her like it’s begging to be close. The sleeve brushes her arm, cool and soft, as though the ocean hadn’t abandoned her but climbed ashore to stay.
Thank all things good for Finnick. She never wants to take this outfit off.
Annie flicks the edge of her cape, letting the fabric ripple like water caught in moonlight. Her heart is a fist uncurled, loose and open, ready to grab hold of something she’s wanted since she was twelve—this moment, this stage, this feeling. Her score still weighs on her, but it can't ruin the utter giddiness she feels.
The buzz of chatter wraps around her like static, the other Bedford talking to her as they both half-watch Slate's interview. She's half-watching her own reflection, tilting her chin to let the sharp line of her jaw catch the light. From this angle, her chin looks like a V.
The asymmetrical cape swings with her, and she plays with it, twirling it around her fingers like a magician conjuring smoke. Every time the cloth brushes her skin, she feels it—how she’s not just wearing the outfit; she’s wearing the moment.
Excitement pulses in her chest, quick and bright, making her movements fluid, almost too fast. She can’t stop grinning. She’s not nervous—no, that left her a long time ago. This is something else. The world’s about to see her, finally see her, the way she’s always seen herself: sharp, radiant, alive.
Bedford sees her off, and for some reason, Marcielo isn't anywhere she can see. She thinks of looking for him but decides against it.
Huxley from Three goes up, then Byte, both of whom are a bit boring. Then it's her turn, and she's being ushered out before themassivecrowd. Larger than she ever would’ve imagined.
There has to be thousands of people in the audience, and for a moment, her breath catches as she walks toward Caesar Flickerman. She smiles and gives them a little wave before shaking Caesar's hand. They're all clapping for her, and it makes her skin buzz.
She looks at Caesar, and wow, he’s genuinely blinding in real life. She isn’t sure if his white teeth or bright purple hair is drawing her attention more.
Once the cheers quiet down, Caesar speaks. “You look… wow! I feel embarrassed just sitting next to you, oh my. But you were so sultry at the chariots with all your little pearls, and now you look so… so, what’s the word?” He turns to the crowd for help.
In return, he gets a barrage of different shouted answers. She can’t make out any of it, but Caesar apparently can, because he says, “Yes, formidable, like a Ferral. Formidable now, but so sexy before. I do have to ask; what happened?”
Annie says, with a laugh, “Well, I can’t show you everything. I have to keep some secrets to myself, or else how will you want more of me?”
The crowd begins to clap again and—and clapping is good. It’s a good sign, right.
“Very true, very true.” Caesar nods along. “I think we all want more of you, Miss Annie, but…” He lowers her head and gives her a knowing look. “What was that score? A five! We have not seen a Distinguished with a score that low in decades. Tell us how it happened.”
Her heart starts racing. Finnick had told her that was a question that was absolutely going to be asked, and she’s practiced her response with him dozens of times, so she’ll be fine. She wants to imagine Caesar as Finnick, but they just look so completely different that she can’t.
"I’m better at surviving than performing. Performing is a little hard for me. I’ve been told my face shows everything." Her eyes narrow and she looks across the room, like she’s asking the crowd to give her a reason as to why her face is such an open book.
That gets even more cheers, and she almost crumples from relief. The hardest question, done.
Caesar laughs, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "You don’t even know the half of it! At your reaping, there was a moment we all loved.” He turns to the audience. “Do you know what I’m talking about, folks?”
“Yes!” The crowd yells back to him.
No, she wants to say. Just so, her face is utterly perplexed on the large screen in front of them.
Caesar guides her attention to the screen behind them, over here, my dear, and it changes from black to… her, standing with her head held high at the reaping. It shows her volunteering, beaming on stage, ducking her head from the crowd.
“Look at her face. Pure, pure joy. And then…” The footage speeds up. Martialis is beginning the reaping for the male tribute, and they zoom in on her face, which immediately twists into an expression of complete, utter disgust. Like one of the little kids she’s swimming with just proudly announced to her that they’d peed in the water.
The audience starts laughing raucously, and even Caesar is guffawing. Annie stares blankly for a millisecond and then remembers to be expressive. Funny. So covers her face with her hands and sinks into her chair, pretending to be embarrassed. The walls of the room bounce with everyone’s humor at that.
“It’s too good!” Caesar says, wiping his tears with a handkerchief. “Even the tributes from District 12 looked happier! And we have another clip, sent to us by the Leviathan School!”
The scene of the screen changes, and for a second, she doesn’t know what she’s looking at. Then her mouth forms a little ‘o’ at the video.
It’s fifteen-year-old her, beginning to lift a massive barbell stacked with weights. Her arms start shaking from the weight, and she starts to stumble closer and closer to Mr. Sullivan, who’s seated and watching her.
The weight makes her sway, and soon she’s only a foot away from him, arms trembling furiously, like she’s about to drop it on him. He reaches out an arm to try and stop her, then rolls off his chair and away from her like he’s in slow-motion. Two spotters come to help her set the barbell down, and then the video ends.
She looks across from her, and Caesar’s laughing so hard that he’s fallen out of his chair. She’s a little uncertain of what to do, especially with all the eyes staring at her, like they’re analyzing each movement she makes.
Does she act embarrassed again? Would that get stale? What did Finnick say, be cool? That doesn’t seem cool.
She ends up sitting there, looking a little bashful but still laughing with the audience. Then Caesar’s asking another question.
“To switch gears to something less humorous, how about we talk about some romance? Eh?” Caesar waggles his eyebrows. “You have the handsome Mr. Odair as your mentor. Sources say that you two went to school together for six years when you were young. Tell us about your time with Finnick.”
Annie puts one hand sky-high. “This is where Finnick is.” She puts her other near the ground. “This is where I am. Even if I wanted it to, it just wouldn’t happen.”
“Oh, give yourself some credit! You’re stunning!” Caesar crows above the sound of the audience tittering. “I’m sure something must’ve happened.”
She sighs. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the tabloids lately, but Finnick has been a little busy. I actually haven’t seen much of him.”
“We’re hogging him! We’re hogging him, oh, Annie, we’re sorry, but can you blame us?”
The screen behind Caesar flickers to life again, and it shows Finnick in the audience, dressed in a sheer dark green top that covers his arms, but is only buttoned once in the middle of his torso. Every plane and curve of his toned muscles are on display.
Finnick shakes his head and chuckles at the camera. His body and face say: Yeah, I’m sexy, and everyone wants me. Sorry.
The crowd goes insane at the sight of him and Caesar takes a bit to quiet them. When they’re settled, he asks, “Now, Annie, final question. If you win the Games, what is the first thing you’ll do when you get back home?”
She looks at them, eyes searching amongst the faces. She spots Finnick seated near the right of the stage and smiles at him. “When I go back, the first thing I’m going to do is go back to the docks and really take in the smell of fish guts.”
The audience choruses, “What?”
Finnick meets her eyes. She turns away from him to look back at the crowd.“No, I’m serious! Someone told me that if you’re gone from District 4 for a while and come back, it’s the first thing you smell. I’ve never smelled it before, probably because it was all I knew. I just have to get in on it.”
The audience seems to like such a unique response, and she breathes a shaky, soundless sigh out of her nose. She feels entirely wrung out.
“Fish guts! Annie, you have guts!” Caesar declares. “Thank you! Annie Cresta, from District 4, everybody!”
When Marcielo goes up on stage, she can’t help it. She gasps. The camera catches her expression, and the audience laughs one last time at her, before Marcielo starts his interview.
His outfit is black, liquid and alive, catching every light that’s been turned back on in the room and breaking it into quiet constellations along his arms and chest. His jacket frames his body, the fabric shimmering like oil on water, high-necked and long-sleeved but tailored so sharply it seems to cut the air as he moves.
There are no buttons. The jacket parts in a careful slit at the front, revealing a sleek undershirt that fits him like a second skin, the faint sheen of it suggesting something impossibly smooth, impossibly warm. His hands rest lightly on his thighs, fingers resting on the fabric just so. He leans back into the chair like the weight of everyone’s gaze is nothing more than a breeze at his back. Calm. Unbothered.
His eyes are still the same deep brown they’ve always been, but now they seem to smolder, as if lit from within. Where the hell have his dead fish eyes gone?
His voice is steady, low, a river cutting through rock. His words are smooth but simple, and he isn’t performing, exactly. That’s the strange part. He isn’t trying. And somehow, that makes it worse. It’s as if he’s too good for effort, for artifice, like he’s been poured into the moment fully formed and entirely unattainable.
She shifts in her seat, suddenly too aware of her own skin. She tries to tell herself it’s just nerves, just the spotlight pressing down.
“Could we be getting two playboys from District Four?” Caesar is asking.
Marcielo tilts his head toward Caesar, and the line of his jaw catches her off guard. She feels it like a physical thing, a jolt low in her stomach.
“No. I’m very big on monogamy,” Marcielo drawls. “Antheia, on the other hand…”
Her eyes almost bulge out of her head. What is that asshole saying?
She catches herself leaning forward, her breath hitching just slightly, and forces herself back against the chair, her arms crossing tightly over her chest. Don’t be seductive, Finnick had said. It’s tired. He’d said.
Most of her strategy has been relying on the fact that people will like her more than him, because she knows full well he’s more than capable of killing her. She looks around her, how everyone’s staring at how the edges of his lips curl into something that isn’t quite a smile but could be if he let it.
No one seems to be very tired.
It might be over for her.
She didn’t think he’d be able to do it, but he’d successfully charmed the entire audience. Damn Sirena for knowing exactly how to make him shine.
She can’t even think as she rides the elevator up the Training Center with Marcielo and the other tributes. She makes conversation with them as best as she can, giving compliments and making little jokes, and then it’s their turn to get off.
Then she mentally slaps herself. She can’t not look at him and put their alliance in jeopardy. And she just has to know why he said what he said in his interview.
“Marcielo,” she says, “did you really call me a player on live television? Or was I dreaming?”
“Yes,” he replies, like he’s confirming the weather.
She waits, expecting an explanation, but he offers nothing but silence. She half-turns, staring at him now, her brows knitted. “Okay. Well… why?”
“I thought it would be funny.”
There’s no hint of irony, no flicker of amusement on his face. He stands there, his posture as stiff and unyielding as ever, his expression unreadable.
She blinks at him, unsure if she’s heard him correctly. “To tell everyone that I’m a player?”
“More people will think you’re similar to Finnick now.”
She opens her mouth, closes it, then tries again. “Yeah, but why?”
What possessed him to even say that in the first place? Sure, what he said probably helped her image, but that’s not the point.
Marcielo tilts his head ever so slightly, as if considering her question for the first time. He’s acting like the entire conversation is nothing more than an unfortunate misunderstanding on her part. “Aren’t you a player?”
Her jaw drops. She stares at him, wide-eyed, and for a second, she can’t even form words. “What?” she finally sputters.
Before she can press him more and try to piece together the mental gymnastics that led him to this conclusion, Osric runs up from the front door to excitedly gush with Marcielo. Sirena and Finnick follow, lagging a bit behind.
Sirena smiles at her, says, “You were lovely,” and then moves on to Marcielo. As Marcielo passes her to walk over to the couch, Annie swears on the tide and the deep that he smiles.Maybe evensmirks as he walks away.
The sight is so jarring that she just stands there for a moment. Was he trying to tease her?
She turns her head to find Finnick and sees that he’s—smirking at her. She looks closely, and she’s pretty sure there’s a love bite on his neck that he certainly did not have when they were in the garden.
She knows it’s not morphling. So what, exactly, is up with this man? All the men she’s surrounded by in the Capitol seem to have some issues.
He reaches to put a hand on her waist, but then she high fives that hand and shakes it. She's not in a mental state where she can do the same song and dance again, so she loudly says, “I’m really glad we’re such good friends.”
That makes him freeze. The smirk falls off his face and he looks like she just reached into his chest and yanked his heart out. He stays silent for a bit, and then the fog is back in his eyes.
“You did great,” he says, faraway.
“Sure,” she says. “But they loved Marcielo. They laughed and cheered at everything he said, even if it was just, ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
Finnick guides her to the dining room and pulls out a chair for her, sitting next to her once she’s seated herself. “Everyone laughed and cheered with you, too, and they did it because you were genuine . You just have to see the replays to know how good you did.”
“Okay,” she says.
She doesn’t want to freak out, not with the Games just tomorrow, but how can she not? Marcielo, one of her biggest competition, if not the biggest, has been incredibly well-received. More well-received than her. Not only has everything she'd been banking out is falling out from under her, but her mentor changes personalities every few hours.
Marcielo's scarily similar to Finnick. No one expected them to volunteer, and they’d blown everyone away with their interviews by charming the Capitol with their faces and charisma. She might be witnessing a victor in the making, which makes her feel physically ill.
Finnick just doesn’t understand any of her worries. In his Games, he outshone everyone immediately.
He wasn’t one of the tributes cast in his shadow.
Notes:
this is super important the video the leviathan sent is literally just this video
Chapter 9
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
After dinner, they all huddle in the living room to watch the replays on television.
Of course, it opens with Caesar prattling. “Panem, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Seventy years of drama, talent, and life-changing moments. But trust me, nothing—and I mean nothing—can prepare you for what will go down tomorrow.” He takes on a more serious voice, uncrossing his legs. “The Games are a punishment, of course, to the Districts for their rebellion. But who says we can’t have a little fun?”
The crowd cheers, and he flashes his too-large teeth at the camera. “This season is bigger. Bolder, folks, it’s absolutely bananas! Twists that’ll leave you speechless, an arena like never before, and the last game that will ever be headed by the legendary Harmonia Thornwell. Buckle up, because the competition starts right now! Welcome, Radiance from District 1!”
Finally, he gets to the point. Radiance strolls on stage, followed by Lace shortly after, in a beautiful skirt that trails behind him. Their interviews are good. Maybe a little boring, but good. Like Finnick predicted, both have sparkling outfits that expose large amounts of their body, and they give little winks to the camera. Slate and Bedford after them aren’t very memorable, and neither are District 3.
Then it’s Annie on screen. She’s—fine. It’s not bad. She does well, but she doesn’t leave much of an impression, other than being funny and confident. Annie doesn't even look at her outfit—whenever the cameras cut to show an angle that displays her nose from the side, her fingers dig into her palms.
The video of the Reaping plays on screen, and Marcielo loudly says, “You know, I was so hurt when you did that. I almost bawled when they showed that video.”
“Why aren’t you bawling right now?” Annie asks.
“I’d ruin my makeup.”
Osric nods, obviously approving that answer. Annie just ignores him, too busy studying the easy way she’d crumpled into her chair on screen. Her acting looks natural, if she doesn’t say so herself.
The video of her failed weightlifting makes even Osric laugh, so that’s good, at least. She sees Finnick tense up in the corner of her eye when Caesar mentions hogging him, but then he relaxes a second later.
Her interview ends, and Marcielo appears on screen. The camera switches to Annie blatantly gawking at him for a split second, and Marcielo on the couch huffs a little laugh.
She’s so surprised that she inches a little closer to him. “I’ve never heard you laugh before.”
Blankly, he responds, “That’s because you’re not funny.”
She doesn't even know what to say to that. She sits through the three minutes of his interview, sees him give a little smile to the camera, and just has to wonder: how did he do it? How did he convert his laziness and sloppiness to what she’s seeing on screen?
As she watches, she understands. He was quieter, more focused, in his interview than the other tributes. But when he smiled, it felt like a secret he was letting you in on, contrasting perfectly with District 1’s brash glamor. He’s attractive, but that quiet, confident energy makes him magnetic. You want to watch him just to see what he’ll do next.
He nailed it. There’s no other way to put it.
The interviews carry on. Heller gets polite claps from the audience and doesn’t look as done up as she did at the chariots. It’s Brites Logia’s interview after hers that’s noteworthy.
He’s wearing a dull gray outfit with poorly incorporated electric elements as the base. It has faint, flickering lights along the edges, but the technology looks like it's malfunctioning, with a few lights occasionally sputtering or dimming. The cut of it doesn’t fit him at all, either.
He looks a little nervous, but he taunts the audience. "I'm just ignoring the hates," he says, "because I know that once I won, they're all going to regret underestimating me."
That gets a bunch of boos from the crowd, and Caesar spends the rest of the interview trying to smooth it over, but it doesn’t work. Brites looks defiant for the rest of it, and then he’s waved off to welcome Kiva.
None of the other interviews are all that interesting and the prep teams move along to gossip about Brites once the replays are all done. Sirena shuts off the television and she leaves with Marcielo, leaving Annie and Finnick alone on the couch. Good.
Annie gnaws her lip, the skin raw, tasting faintly metallic. “They loved him.”
Finnick nods, a slight, mechanical tilt of his head. “Yes.”
It’s not the answer she wants. Not even close. “So—So you agree he outshone me?”
His gaze slides past her, indifferent, like water rolling off glass. The television screen, dark and blank now, holds his attention more than she ever could.
“Even if he did,” he murmurs, “what matters is when the countdown ends and what happens after. No amount of sponsors he brings will even compare to the amount I’ll have for you.”
“What are you looking at?” she asks, instead.
He doesn’t respond. Just sits there, marooned somewhere in his head.
“Sorry.” His voice is distant, and when his eyes flicker to hers, it’s like they’re not entirely his anymore. He’s looking at her but also not, like she’s a shadow flickering across the edges of his consciousness. His gaze drops again, this time to the ground.
She wishes she could talk to the version of him that was on the rooftop.
She slides her pearl bracelet off her wrist, pressing it into his palm. “Here,” she says, feigning nonchalance. “You can mess with that. I’ll mess with my clothes.” Her fingers tug at the fabric of her cape, a repetitive motion that grounds her just enough. “Any other advice for me?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His fingers trace the smooth surface of the pearls, rolling them over and over, their soft clinking the only sound in the room. Something flickers in his face—a flash of light breaking through the fog—but it’s faint and fleeting. He’s still somewhere far away, but at least now she can see the tether, thin and wavering, holding him here.
Finally, his voice emerges, slow and deliberate, like he’s pulling the words up from the bottom of a well. “You also need to remember that the Triumvirate will help cut the competition a lot, but you need to know when it’s time to leave.” He pauses, his thumb absently rubbing one of the pearls. “The moment you feel unsafe, or that maybe you’ve pissed them off, run.”
Finnick continues, “No second-guessing, no staying to see if you’re wrong. They don’t turn back once they decide. You split first, while they’re still whispering, before their hands get heavy. And Marcielo…” He exhales through his nose. “You’ll have to be wary of him. He could turn against you at any time. Just keep up that persona I gave you. You’re smart, likable, strong, and attractive. I think you could win this whole thing.”
She’d be flattered if not for how depressed he seems to look at that very idea.
“Hey,” she says, trying to smile despite. “You should reserve the house for me next door on Victor Isles. Next time you see me, we’ll be neighbors.”
Finnick blinks, his head turning slightly, as if she’s just spoken a foreign language. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile, not exactly, but something adjacent to one.
“I’ll see you there,” he says.
She feels a little forlorn when the time comes to change out of her outfit. She just—loves the way wearing it makes her feel, but she has no choice but to part with it.
After her shower, she feels fresh and so, so clean, without paint on her face and her body out of her suit. She steps out of her bathroom, newly dressed in a robe, and almost throws something at the person sitting on her bed.
“Hi,” Marcielo says, staring at the vase in her hands.
“What are you doing? If you want to talk to me, why can’t you knock?” she asks breathlessly, setting the vase back down to the dresser it was standing on.
“I did knock, but you didn’t answer. So I let myself in.”
Of course he did. She sighs and goes to join him. Her bed is large enough to swallow both of them, yet they end up huddling close at the edge.
He asks, “How’d you feel about today?”
“Good.” She glances down, fingers tracing a wrinkle in the sheets that won’t smooth out. “You should be proud. You managed to make yourself likable.”
“I’m always likable.” His voice is as flat as always. “Aren’t you nervous for tomorrow? Ten years of waiting.”
Her eyes flick to him, then to the ceiling, embossed with perfect, glittering details.
“Yes.” She lets the word sit there, heavy and unadorned, before adding, “Try not to get yourself killed in the bloodbath. That’s just embarrassing.”
He exhales sharply—not quite a laugh, but enough to let her know he’s amused. Or maybe he’s annoyed. It’s impossible to tell with Marcielo.
“Wow,” she says, her voice quieter now, almost swallowed by the sterile hum of the apartment. “Can you believe it? Our Games are tomorrow.”
She tries to feel the weight of it, the enormity of this moment, but her mind skips and skitters away from the thought like a stone over water. Instead, she thinks about being selected for the Leviathan and how proud she’d been, ten years ago. Of all the young girls in Four, only she and five others had been deemed fit enough to train.
Caeruleus Beltran had won the year Annie had been selected. She’d speared three people on the first day, her face calm and clean like she was sorting fish on the docks. Annie had watched her with hungry eyes, not for her but for the way she moved, the precision of it. She’d thought: I want to be like that.
And now she is.
Except it doesn’t feel like triumph. It feels like walking into the last chapter of a book she doesn’t remember starting. Like the finale of her life.
“I never thought I’d be here with you,” she says, not looking at him.
Marcielo shifts, his weight creaking the bed frame. “I did.”
“Well, I didn’t,” she shoots back, almost grumbling. She sounds like a petulant child and it’s so unbecoming of her that a part of her is shocked, but also not really, because that’s the sort of effect Marcielo has on her.
He doesn’t respond, and for a moment, the silence between them is thick, a thing with weight and shape. She wonders if he’s thinking about tomorrow, about the blood and the cameras and the way they’ll both have to try their best to just survive.
“I used to think about this,” she says after a while, her voice so soft she’s surprised it reaches him. “All throughout my life, I’ve thought about what it would feel like to finally be here. It’s weird. Like, it’s exciting, but it also feels final. You know?”
Marcielo doesn’t respond right away, and she wonders if he’s even listening. But then he nods, a small, almost imperceptible motion. “Yeah. This is the end, Antheia.”
“You didn’t even need to volunteer.”
“Well, I need my thirty bucks back.”
She lies back on the bed, letting her head sink into the mattress. The ceiling stares down at her, beautiful and perfect, and she thinks about how tomorrow, someone will die. A lot of someones. Maybe him. Maybe her.
“I think I hate you,” she says suddenly, the words sharp and startling even to herself.
Marcielo turns to her, blinking slowly. “Okay.”
“Just thought you should know,” she says, savoring the strange, almost giddy satisfaction of saying it out loud. She wants to say a million other things, like, If I die in that arena and it’s because of you, I will haunt the seas and make sure that one day, you drown. I don’t want my life to be worth just twenty denarii.
But she doesn’t.
“Thanks,” Marcielo says.
She laughs then, eyes crinkling as she smiles up at him and his dead fish eyes. “But I like you a lot more than everyone else here, so we’ll stick by each other until the end. Because we’re all we have.”
The next morning, the Avox wakes her up bright and early. Morning breaks like a snapped thread, unraveling everything. The light creeps in pale and weak through the apartment’s curtains, casting the room in a soft, silvery haze.There’s a brightness to the air that makes her feel light, almost breathless, and she decides she will not be afraid. Not today. She has no space left for fear.
She moves quickly, pulling on a little shift. There’s a calmness in her hands as she sweeps her hair from her face and ties her hair back in two little spiky pigtails. She kisses a pearl on her bracelet for luck, and then goes to eat breakfast. It tastes like nothing, but she forces it down with quick, precise bites. She has another round of food, and eats until her belly feels like it’ll burst.
She takes the elevator up to the roof. Extends her arm when the people in the Hovercraft tell her to. There’s a pinch, a quick bite of pain that she forces herself not to flinch from. She barely breathes as they slide the needle under her skin, as the cold metal settles into her veins. It’s done in seconds, a soft click and it’s over.
She’s given a pill to swallow with water after, told it will stop menstruation and hair growth.
Then she climbs inside with Clara. Neither of them speak—Annie closes her eyes as it takes off and tries not to think too hard. Her heart won’t stop pounding, no matter how deeply she breathes.
But it’s okay. She’s spent ten years training for this, and there’s eighteen people in the game who haven’t. She just has to work with One and Two to whittle the numbers down, leave at the most opportune time, and kill until it’s just her and Marcielo.
It’ll all be fine.
She tries to keep her cool when they enter the Launch Room. She lets Clara undress her and open the package containing her clothes for the arena.
“Oh, my,” Clara laughs, inspecting the pieces of the tribute outfit. “I have no idea what setting you’ll be in. I can’t wait to watch.”
Annie moves to stand next to her, and reaches for it. There's a bodysuit that she runs her hands over, the fabric thin as breath but with a strange weight. It smells faintly of metal and salt, a scent that clings to her fingers like memory.
There’s a jacket to go with it, a utility belt, and a pair of pants that are outfitted with zippers to convert into shorts. The knees of it are reinforced. Clara helps fit her into both of them, sliding fingerless gloves over her hands. At least that tells her there’ll be some climbing involved.The boots concur, heavier than she imagined, and outfitted with reinforced toe caps. It almost seems as if they’re a little waterproof, but she’s not sure.
Clara was right. Annie has no idea what the arena could possibly be.
Clara gives her a nod when she’s done dressing her, eyes lingering for just a moment, and then she’s gone. It’s just Annie now, the hum of the platform beneath her feet vibrating up her legs, the coldness of the metal pressing against the soles of her shoes.
She breathes in, out, and the air tastes too clean, sterile, almost. She presses her palms to her sides, forcing them to stay still, forcing her heart to calm its wild, desperate beat.
This is it. The climax of her entire life.
A voice crackles overhead, and she feels the platform shift, the soft hum turning to a low, steady grind that thrums up her spine. The darkness of the Launch Room gives way to blinding white, and she has to squint against it, her breath hitching as she ascends, higher and higher, the roar of her heartbeat filling her ears.
There’s a rush of warm air, and she knows she’s almost there—seconds from the surface, from the Games. She forces her shoulders back, her chin up, feels the weight of it settle in her chest like a stone, heavy and immovable.
She can hear her own breath now, sharp and shallow, echoing off the metal walls. She counts them—one, two, three—as the platform climbs, an ascent that feels like it will never end. Her fingers twitch at her sides, and she locks them into fists, nails biting into her palms.
The light shifts, grows brighter, harsher, and then she’s there—breaking through the surface, the sun exploding overhead. All she sees is—light, piercing and scattering, folding the world into shards.
She shields her eyes as she turns her head; to her left is Harvey from District 9 and to her right is Kiva from District 6. They stand on platforms in a reservoir that can only be described as a kaleidoscope of shattered light. She’s never seen anything like it.
“Let the Seventieth Hunger Games begin. May the odds be ever in your favor,” booms Claudius Templesmith’s voice.
The countdown starts, a deep, echoing thrum that vibrates in her bones, and she immediately tries to map out where she is.
Fuck.
She’s been put on a platform behind the glittering Cornucopia, which makes her life just that much harder. She closes her eyes briefly against the glare, mind sketching out a plan. She’ll swim to the platform and just—run. Sprint to any weapon she can get her hands on, and then look out for the other Distinguished.
She opens her eyes again and takes in the surroundings.
They’re in a basin of iridescent water; boxed in not just by jagged peaks, but a giant, arched, glass-like dam carved from translucent quartz on one side that catches the sun and reflects rainbows across the arena. Like sunlight splitting on the crest of a wave, the way water devours the light and makes it more.
Beyond the dam, if she really cranes her neck, are mountains of impossibly bright, silver trees. A forest terrain, it seems like, though those trees are probably something to look out for. Annie twists, her head snapping back and forth. She can’t see the edges, can’t find the lines where this ends and she begins. It’s too much. Too bright.
She tastes copper, her breath catching in the shimmer. Everything breaks, refracts, bends—except her. A single figure, fragile and sharp, standing still in a world cracking open.
The sound of the countdown thunders in her ears. Thirty-four, thirty-three…
She swerves her head back to the front, focusing on the Cornucopia. There’s random bags haphazardly scattered on the outskirts, then better, stronger weapons in the center of it. She tries to make out a shape or two, squinting her eyes, then curses when a flash of light blinds her. Harvey and Kiva seem to be squinting, too, so it’s affecting everyone. She breathes in deep through her nose and steels herself. There’s nothing more to look at.
This is it.
She just wants the timer to be done with already, because there’s still so many seconds left, and time has never felt so slow. She wants to see who else is around her, and she thinks she sees a flash of Lace’s ink-dark skin, but she’s not entirely sure.
Hurry up, she begs the countdown, still stuck at twenty-six, twenty-five.
She has the advantage of being from Four, so she should reach the platform before anyone else. The water looks shallow enough to wade, but swimming is faster. That should all offset the time lag she’ll have from being behind everything. There’s always a surplus of daggers in the Games, so once the Cornucopia’s cleared, she’ll stock up on them. Take as many as she can get. Throwing knives will be good, too, but they’re not necessary.
There’s still twenty seconds left when she checks. And she starts shaking.
What if she dies? What if she’s caught off guard, and someone gets her from behind? There’ve been so many Distinguished in the past who’ve died at the bloodbath because they got overzealous. What if she becomes one of them?
She doesn’t want to think anymore. She just needs the damn countdown to move faster.
She squints her eyes to hone in on the Cornucopia. She'll swim to the Cornucopia, sprint to the other side, dive in and get some weapons, and take as many of the others down as she can.
Ten, nine, eight.
She takes in deep breaths. In, out. In, out.
Her hands are still shaking.
Six, five, four…
She’s trained, and they haven’t. She’s Distinguished, and she’s from Four, and she’ll be fine.
Two, one.
The gong sounds, and the world cracks open.
Notes:
the hunger games movie said that the 74th games would be seneca crane's third year as head gamemaker so to make this make sense i think they were trying to
Chapter 10
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
Kickkickkick, big breath, kickkickkickkick, now get up, runrunrunrun—
The world snaps—breaks—into motion, each fragment of it a sharp edge. Shapes smear like wet paint, color bleeding into color, skin blurring into light. The mountains shatter on the reservoir’s surface, a mirage bent wrong, bent bright. The Cornucopia rises from it all—golden, grotesque, and the light catches it like fire.
Her legs move before she does. Knees hitting dirt, hands clutching the smooth haft of a spear.
The world splits again: Vivian, District 10, her mouth a perfect line of determination, a soundless thing as she reaches for a mace. Annie’s arm moves without her, drawn back, a string pulled taut.
The spear flies as if born to.
And then: red, sudden and spreading. A violent exhale of life. Vivian crumples like paper touched by flame.
The pile of weapons beckons Annie back.
She snatches a javelin this time, eyes darting around to see if anyone’s snuck up behind her. Screams tear through the air. Flesh gives way to blades. Glittering water breaks into splashes. Cannons thunder like drums.
Annie turns, finds a shape—Elm, from Seven, stabbing another tribute and then falling to his knees, trembling. He’s crying, his voice cracked and small: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She’s seen Undistinguished tributes weep before on television countless times in the past. It’s just as nonsensical seeing it in person as it is seeing it on a screen.
His apology dies on the tip of her spear, a clean line through his throat. His body tips backward, slow, almost serene, into the reservoir behind him. The water ripples around him, then swallows him whole.
Annie doesn’t stay to watch the splash. Her eyes are already searching again, faces, names, locations. She sees District 12—someone trying, failing, to wade through the water and get away. She snatches a spear off the ground, readying her stance, but an arrow hits them in the back before she can even move her arm.
The light flashes off steel, off teeth, off sweat-soaked skin that glistens before it tears open under a blade. The world is vibrating, splitting apart, every moment an explosion: metal on bone, a roar, a splash, the thud-thud-thud of bodies hitting dirt.
One boy screams, his hands clawing at the water as a girl shoves him under, holding him there, her arms trembling with the effort. Glowing bubbles rise, pop, disappear. Gone.
She steps over a body—too small, stars, they’re all so small —and there’s Lace. Finally. He's hunched over a dead body, braids sticking to his face, darkened with blood. The sun glints off his blade like a second heartbeat.
“Lace!” Annie shouts, voice nearly lost in the chaos. “Where’s Radiance?”
Lace doesn’t look up, doesn’t blink. His boot hits the body—Buck, District 10—as he shoves it into the reservoir. Buck’s chest yawns open around a blade like a mouth mid-scream.
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice low, flat.
They move together. Quick steps slipping over blood-slick ground, weapons rattling in their hands. Every step is a heartbeat in this body that feels like it might explode from the sheer force of adrenaline.
They race through the shrapnel of lives—a weapon here, a bag there, a body splayed open like a burst fruit.
Ahead, the girl from Five—Heller—flails in the water, clutching a bag of supplies. Lace doesn’t hesitate. Annie doesn’t blink. A sharp arc of motion, a blade slipping between ribs, and the girl is gone. The water claims her with a soft ripple.
Annie turns her head and they keep on moving.
Somewhere in the chaos, Bedford joins them. His frame cuts through the din, his fists swinging like anchors in a storm. Around them, light refracts in violent shards, water and steel catching the sun and splintering it.
They dodge the dying, leap over the dead. The ground is oiled, red, alive.
And then—
Marcielo.
Her eyes find him and it feels like the first breath after drowning. His face is streaked with sweat, blood smudged like war paint across his jaw. His shoulders tremble, taut with something feral. But his eyes—his eyes catch hers and hold, and she sees his body relax.
He’s alive. So is she.
She hears a boy scream behind them—a raw, animalistic sound—and then it cuts short. Annie rips her eyes away from Marcielo's to watch as Slate’s sword carves through the boy's ribcage. The sick, wet crack of bone reminds her of where she is.
Bedford slams another boy into the dirt so hard the earth groans in protest. Lace moves too fast to track, his blade gleaming so brightly Annie feels her head start to hurt.
By the time the basin stills, the Cornucopia stands ankle-deep in blood and bodies. Five scattered like driftwood at the Cornucopia’s feet. Six more floating in the glowing reservoir.
Annie’s chest heaves, lungs working like bellows as she takes it in—the silence that isn’t really silence, just the absence of screams. The scent of blood hangs heavy, metallic, clinging to the back of her throat like rust. Her fingers twitch, phantom adrenaline still ricocheting through her veins.
Slate spits, the sound wet and too loud. “Easy,” she mutters.
Bedford nudges a body with his foot. "They never tell us how much blades hurt," he says, his voice lilting as though this were a conversation at home. "Not that I’m complaining. It makes them easier to kill."
Lace wipes his kama on the hem of his jacket, smearing blood in dark streaks across the fabric. “They’ll make up for it later,” he says, voice shaking. “Radiance is dead.”
Annie’s head snaps up, her gaze following Lace's. Across the Cornucopia, Radiance lies in pieces—a heap of limbs, her once-handsome face now split wide by the ax still lodged in her skull. Her brown eyes bulge grotesquely, one hanging loose, a macabre pendant on a string of nerves. It dangles, swaying with the faint movement of the wind.
Only yesterday Annie had been talking to her backstage at the interviews. Radiance had smiled, laughed with her. Told Annie about how much she liked boxing, that she had a girl to go back to.
Annie looks away.
It’s just the five of them—her, Marcielo, Bedford, Radiance, and Slate, the wreckage of what’s left. The blood’s still wet on their hands, the air still ringing.
Marcielo sidles up beside her. His voice is steady, impossibly dry despite everything. “They made it pretty this time,” he murmurs, eyes scanning the wreckage. “Everything glitters. Even the dead.” His gaze flicks toward Radiance’s crumpled form. “I’m sure she’d love that.”
“Pretty to watch on a screen,” Annie says, “but not pretty to experience. My head’s killing me.”
Everything’s too much. The basin is almost alive, the mirrored crystal of the dam catching the sun and splintering it into a medley of crimson and gold. The light shifts, ricocheting off blood and water, and the glass walls gleam.
It's refracted back in jagged shards—the bodies, the blood, the brokenness.
All is tinted gold inside the horn of the Cornucopia.
Annie sits cross-legged on the floor, unzipping the last bag and dumping all its contents to the ground. Lace and Bedford are already separating the large heap of items into smaller piles. There’s a system in the way they sift and sort: weapons to one side, food to the other, and the odd supplies—rope, matches, water purifiers—piled between them.
Bedford breaks the silence first once the sorting is done. “We could wait the first few days out and stay here,” he says, “There’s fish in the reservoir, and fire starters in the bags. Everything outside is way too much of a fucking headache.”
Lace doesn’t even look up from the pile of food he’s counting. “The Gamemakers would never let us stay here the entire time,” he murmurs, twisting open a tin of something pungent and gray. “They rely on us for most of the entertainment. We have to torture the others or get tortured to keep things interesting.”
“Then we’ll stay until they send something after us. Why throw ourselves into all that mess earlier than we have to?” Slate says.
So, they stay. The piles are all sorted into neat stacks and distributed between them all. Annie’s bag grows heavier as they divide the loot: knives, dried meat, fire starters, a coil of rope.
Marcielo and Slate decide to nap, whilst Lace and Bedford make quiet small talk. Normally, she’d jump to sit with them and save them from whatever stilted conversation they're having. Instead, she steps outside and sits at the edge of the little island the Cornucopia is situated on. All the bodies are floating on the reservoir after Slate kicked them all inside.
She lets her fingers drift over the water, the currents parting in ribbons that glow faintly, like the veins of something alive and vast. Each ripple catches a glint of the sun, and for a moment, the water is no longer water but molten glass, spilling out and over into the air.
It’s so loud—the jagged edges of the Arena reflect light that stings her eyes and bites at her thoughts. Even when she looks away, she can feel its presence pressed into her back, humming with all that stained it hours ago.
She sees them when she closes her eyes: Vivian, whose eyes had burned so ferociously with the fervor to live and fight. Elm, who’d sobbed and moaned at the idea of killing someone else.
It had to happen. She had known this long before the gong sounded. Maybe they hadn’t.
She opens her eyes to look back at the water. Her hand stirs a faint glow, small microbes swirling like fragments of stars drawn to orbit her fingers. She wonders if this light is theirs, too—all eleven who’ve died—if their bodies broke apart in some cosmic way she’ll never understand, only to be stitched back into the arena itself.
She has no answers. All she knows is that they died honorably and nobly in these Games. So, she opens her mouth, and she sings:
Make us whole again,
together with the salt, the swell,
The waters call through old, worn stone—
The tide is turning, home we go.
Salt clings to skin, to bone, to breath,
A thousand waves, a thousand deaths.
The current hums, the earth below,
The tide is turning, home we go.
She has no idea how many other Districts have dirges, if they even do. But death seems incomplete without this song.
Drift, oh drift, to the endless blue,
where the sea, she cradles all we knew.
Through shadows deep, through undertow,
The tide is turning, home we go.
And in the quiet, far from shore,
We cease to drift, we are no more.
Whispers rise, seagrass grows—
The tide has turned, and home it flows.
She pulls her hand free from the water. The wetness clings to her skin, but not the light.
She sits there for a bit, observing the water, but winces when the water reflects a blade of light directly into her eyes. Her head starts to pound again from the brightness, so she steps back into the Cornucopia. She tip-toes over Marcielo and Slate, smiling down at Bedford and Lace as she sits down to join them.
They talk about everything and nothing. First, what their respective training academies were like; Bedford doesn’t say much—probably because his training consisted of injecting himself with steroids—so she and Lace are mainly the ones trading stories. Then, they talk about what they did in their free times, and how insane it is that, without fail, Twelve always dies first. The conversation starts to deviate to strategy.
“We should set up camp near the river that the dam’s blocking and put a ton of traps near it. Thoughts?”
Lace nods. “That’s a good idea. It looks like it’ll be the main water source. The others will have to go there eventually, whether they like it or not.”
“My pants are wet,” Bedford says intelligently.
Annie bursts out laughing, turning to Lace. “The plan’s so good it’s turning him—oh.”
She feels moisture on her legs and looks down to see that the reservoir’s water has begun lapping into the floor of the Cornucopia.
“Dammit,” Lace curses, shooting up off the ground. “Gamemakers can’t let us have some peace.”
Annie sits up and unzips the zippers of her pants, turning them into shorts. She slings her pack over her shoulder when she’s done and shakes Marcielo awake.
The first thing he does is blink up at her and ask, “Did you wet yourself?”
She responds, lamely, horribly, “Yeah, from looking at you.” She makes a face at her words and then changes the topic. “Grab your things. We’re leaving.”
The reservoir rises faster and faster and soon they’re splashing through waist-deep water. Annie debates if she should swim or not, but decides against it. She doesn’t want to go through the trouble of getting wet. Behind her, she hears Slate cuss when she bumps into a body.
It takes a few minutes for them to reach the end of the basin and step onto the solid concrete. Before them is the hulking dam, and it’s so, so Capitol that she almost wants to laugh. The whole structure looms, so colossal it seems to scrape the sky, its edges soft and blurred by the sheer intensity of the light.
She squints up at the wall as she zips back the bottoms of her pants, trying to find handholds, something solid in all that shimmer.
“Guess I have to crank my ass up there,” Marcielo mutters from next to her.
She doesn’t even look at him as she says, “Don’t ‘crank your ass’ in front of me.”
For some reason, she smiles.
She starts for the dam, fingers burning as she digs into the translucent quartz, feeling the cool, polished smoothness under her nails. The stone catches the sun and blinds her, bright splinters of light dancing in the corners of her vision.
Dammit. Hopefully Finnick will be able to send her something to help or she swears she’s going to go back home blind.
Her foot slips immediately, the smoothness of the surface swallowing her movement like quicksand. Her nails scrape against the dam as she fights to stay upright, her breaths heaving as frustration surges through her chest. She swears under her breath, then pulls herself up with a grunt that sounds like an animal. Her boots scrape against the crystal, catching momentarily before slipping again.
The light is everywhere. It reflects off the dam in sharp, unforgiving bursts, stabbing her eyes and turning the world into a blinding white blur. She squeezes her eyes shut, then forces them open again.
She can’t see. She has to see.
Her foot slips again.
Her knee bangs hard against the crystal, and she thanks whomever decided to build knee pads into their pants. Still, she hisses, hands scrambling for another hold, palms slick with sweat. Move. Keep moving.
Her fingers find a crack—a shallow groove running diagonally across the surface. She latches onto it, her body pressed flat against the dam as she pulls herself higher and higher. Her breathing is shallow and rapid, every inhale scraping against her throat.
The brightness shifts, a sudden flash that blinds her completely. Her head spins, her grip falters, and for a horrifying moment, she’s dangling, her feet kicking uselessly against the smooth surface.
Don’t fall. Don’t fall.
The thought beats against her skull like a drum, frantic and insistent. She claws at the dam, nails catching just enough to keep her from plummeting. Her arms shake violently as she pulls herself up, the tendons straining under her skin.
Somewhere below her, Bedford screams. She wishes for the possibility that he fell, but in her heart she knows it’s probably not true. But she can’t think about him. She can’t think about anything except the next hold, the next step, the next impossible inch.
Her vision blurs with tears from staring at the horrid light. Her fingers are raw, the skin peeling and bloody, but she doesn’t stop.
The sun beats down on her back, its light oppressive and unforgiving. Sweat drips into her eyes, stinging and blurring her vision even more. She blinks furiously, her breath hitching as she fights to stay focused.
One hand up. One foot. One more.
Her thoughts are a jumble, fragments colliding and breaking apart. Climb or die. Bright. Too bright. My hands—My hands are slipping. Don’t stop. Don’t fall.
She grits her teeth, her jaw aching from the pressure. Her arms burn, muscles screaming with every pull. Her legs feel like they’re made of weights, heavy and uncooperative, but she forces them to move.
The edge is nowhere. The top might as well not exist. The dam stretches infinitely above her, shimmering and cruel, and she’s just a speck of dust clinging to its side.
Dammit, they should've just taken the scenic route and waded to the side of the basin that wasn't blocked off by the dam. This way's quicker, but it's so hard.
Her foot slips again, and this time her body jerks violently, her grip faltering. A cry tears from her throat, raw and desperate, as she clings to the dam with everything she has left. Her nails dig into the crystal, her shoulders straining as she hauls herself back into place.
Her fingers find another ridge, her arms trembling as she pulls. Her knees scrape against the crystal, and she is, again, endlessly grateful for the knee support of her pants. The brightness shifts once more, another searing burst of light that turns her vision white. She squeezes her eyes shut, her breath catching in her throat.
Just keep climbing. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything.
Inch by inch, she drags herself upward, her body a machine running on fumes. The edge of the dam is still out of reach, a distant line that feels more like a mirage than a reality. Her chest heaves, her lungs burning as she gulps down air. The light presses against her like a physical weight, smothering and relentless.
Her fingers find one final ridge, the edges sharp against her raw skin. She pulls with everything she has left, her body trembling violently as she hauls herself up. Her knees scrape against the edge, and then—
She’s there.
She collapses onto solid ground, her chest heaving, her arms shaking subtly. The world tilts around her, the brightness searing her vision even through her closed eyelids.
They stop shaking after a few moments, though, and she watches as Marcielo climbs up, followed by Slate, Lace, then Bedford. Once the five of them are all accounted for, weapons at the ready, they go out into the forest.
And it hits her just how strange it is.
Light spills from every angle, searing her eyes even through the squint she’s forced to adopt. Sunlight bounces, ricochets, pirouettes across the metallic bark of the silver trees, each trunk catching the sky’s fire and hurling it into the forest’s depths.
Every single part of the arena is so insanely bright for no reason that it’s starting to drive her crazy. Couldn’t the Gamemakers be a little more creative?
The rest of the group fans out behind her, their footsteps crunching in the brittle undergrowth of shattered reflections. One step forward, and their shapes fracture into countless versions, scattered like glass shards across the gleaming trunks.
The trees stand taller than she’d imagined, heights exaggerated by the jagged flashes of sun cutting between their limbs. The bark is impossibly smooth yet rippled, like the surface of a pond frozen mid-stir.
She reaches out, tentative, her fingers brushing cool metal that sends a shiver racing up her arm. A reflection—her own—slides across the surface, but it is wrong somehow. The eyes are too wide, the mouth too small, as if the tree has taken liberties in recreating her.
And then the light shifts again. The forest swells, twists, the mirror-like trunks bending like liquid, their reflections stretching into streaks of gold and silver that blur the line between where the forest ends and where the sun begins.
“Stay close,” she says, though her voice sounds thin.
Lace spins suddenly, his knife flashing as he lunges at a specter—a tribute’s face, floating in the bark. But the face disappears, and his knife simply lodges itself into the tree.
For a moment, they all freeze.
“Mind games.” Marcielo jerks his head forward, ushering them all to walk. “That's a big part of this arena. Can’t trust what you see, I guess. We have the advantage because we’re a big group, so we can do reality checks on each other.”
Annie follows behind. “Good point. We should start looking for the river, too, and setting some traps there.”
“There’s a lot of swarming insects here. Means we’re on the right path,” Slate says. “We’ll be stuck with low hanging fruit for a few days, because the others probably have Sponsors who’ll keep them afloat.”
“Well, fruit is fruit,” Annie says airily.
It takes them a bit, but the river’s hard to miss. It’s brighter than the water in the artificial basin and impossibly beautiful—diamonds made liquid.
They all split up, and she crouches where the damp earth fades into mud. Her fingers sift through reeds, their stalks slippery and brittle. She begins to weave them with wire.
To her left, Marcielo works in silence, his strong hands yanking at silvered vines that coil around a tree trunk. The bark peels away in strips under the force of his tugs, the fibers giving way with a sharp snap. The vines glisten, faintly wet, their texture like some strange animal sinew.
Annie shivers at the thought but says nothing.
They all have their tasks. Slate and Radiance are further downstream, setting heavier snares from the Cornucopia where they think tributes are most likely to fall upon. Occasionally, one of them yells a sharp reminder not to step into the traps they’ve already set, but for the most part, they all work in silence.
Marcielo has a rhythm to his movements—pull, strip, braid—that she falls into without thinking. The traps they’re making are simple but effective, knots looping in deliberate ways to tighten at the slightest pressure.
Her focus narrows to the work, the repetitive tangle of her hands in the vines and wire. Her body’s already exhausted from the adrenaline rushes and some of her regrets not napping at the Cornucopia with Slate and Marcielo. But she’s survived the bloodbath. So, go her.
“Do you see that?” Marcielo asks suddenly, breaking the quiet.
Annie looks up, startled. “What?” she asks, her fingers stilling against the vine. She follows his gaze toward the edge of the woods, squinting. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“There’s a parachute over there,” he says.
She cranes her neck, scanning the tree line. All she sees are the reflective trunks of the crystalline trees, their bark throwing back fragments of light in dizzying patterns.
“Where?” she asks. “I don’t see it.”
“Between the trees.” Marcielo points, his arm rigid, his finger stabbing at the air.
She narrows her eyes, trying to focus, but all she can make out is the interplay of light on the bark.
“I don’t see it,” she says again, frowning.
“Look with your eyes. Look with your eyes. Look with your eyes.” Marcielo’s voice sharpens. “Your eyes, Antheia.”
“Yeah, as opposed to looking with my nose.”
She’s about to tell him to focus up and finish the snares, but the words catch in her throat.
His face.
The fractured light from the river catches him at just the wrong angle, and for a moment, Marcielo’s face isn’t a face at all. It blurs, splitting into jagged edges of color and shadow, his features sliding away like oil on water. He becomes something less than human and his skin is a shimmering mask of wrongness.
Annie freezes.
“What?” Marcielo asks, his voice in that sweet, sweet deadpan.
And just like that, his face is back. The sharp planes of his jaw, the light brown skin, the dead fish eyes. He’s Marcielo again. Just Marcielo.
She exhales sharply. “Mind games,” she simply says.
Marcielo pauses, his hands going still over the vines. He studies her for a moment, then nods. “Mind games,” he echoes.
Chapter 11
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
The river gleams like spilled light and Annie crouches at its edge, hands raw from the endless knotting of traps. Her eyes squint against the brilliance, the burn of it relentless, unyielding. It feels like they've been here for days, though it’s only been a couple of hours—a strange eternity wrapped in shimmering light and the hum of insects.
She doesn’t mind, not really. The Games are effort; they are the stretch of sinew, the ache in her palms, the burn of light behind her eyelids. She knows this. But the sun is relentless, and her body has its limits.
She shifts on her heels, glancing at the others, their silhouettes blurred against the gleam of trees and water. “Anyone else kinda sleepy?"
Lace freezes and glances at his wrist. “The sun hasn’t moved at all, actually,” he says, “and we’ve been here for a few hours.”
He, probably the smartest of them all, points to the watch he’s wearing. It’s so smart that Annie feels ashamed for having just brought her pearl bracelet. Then she looks at Marcielo with his clam shell necklace and feels a little better.
“We got here at ten A.M. It’s seven P.M. I don’t think the sun will set in this arena,” Lace finishes.
Bedford counts on his hands. “That means no ambushes at night and we’ll have to figure out different sleep schedules. Dammit, that puts a wrench in a lot of our plans.”
So, they replan, and Annie especially replans where she’s sitting because Slate looks murderous and she really doesn’t want to be near her when she has that look in her eyes. Annie plants herself next to Marcielo and all he does is blink at her, like some kind of lizard.
She blinks back at him, slowly, then turns to Lace as he begins to speak again.
“We need a base that’s simultaneously hidden in the forest and not too far away from the river. We’ll send hunting parties to scout and actively search for anyone else.”
Slate nods. “First thing to do is to find a good spot for the base and then put traps around it in case anyone wants to gamble away their life. Carry your supplies on you, always. The base will just be for rest.”
Their merry band all collects their things and they move a bit away from the river and into the forest. It takes them some time to find somewhere suitable to set up the base camp, especially with the monstrous light, but they do find a small clearing.
They’re divided into two teams at Lace’s behest. He’ll be with Marcielo and Bedford, Slate will be left with Annie. They’ll switch over who’s patrolling the forest and who’s guarding the camp every two hours and use Lace’s watch to keep track of time.
The teams are more than reasonable. But they’re designed to keep district partners from each other, and she just hopes her time away from Marcielo doesn’t make him rethink their alliance.
They all gather for a quick breakfast after resting, huddling in a loose circle, sitting on overturned logs and rocks, clutching meal-ready bags from the Cornucopia.
“Oh, this oatmeal isn’t bad,” Annie says, mostly because silence that lasts over two seconds makes her uncomfortable. She takes another bite, the texture kind of gritty, kind of gluey, but still food. “I usually eat SunnyBites' breakfast meal for breakfast in Four. What about you guys?”
They all look at her, except Marcielo. He’s eating his oatmeal lazily, like a cow chewing cud.
“I eat SunnyBites, too,” Lace offers.
“Carbs are the enemy,” Bedford mutters. His cheeks go pink when Annie looks at him. “I just eat protein. Slate does, too.”
“Yeah, you’re both in really good shape,” she says, nodding toward Slate and Bedford. “I try to eat more protein, but it tastes like dog ass. I just can’t do it.” She smiles. “Some kid in my class hated it, too, and she tried to ingest it through her nose. It went really great.”
That seems to melt some of their walls. She has to carry the conversation a bit at the start, but soon, they’re all chatting together—save for Marcielo—and she feels a little accomplished.Once everyone’s done eating, Marielo, Lace, and Bedford all stand guard around the camp as she and Slate go into the tent for some rest.
Annie lies down. Closes her eyes. Stills her breathing, and tries to sleep.
She shifts uncomfortably on her pack, turning this way and that. She keeps shuffling around and then opens her eyes again.
The tent feels too small.
Slate’s snoring rattles softly through the space, rhythmic and steady, like the ticking of a clock that Annie can’t shut off. It’s strange—she didn’t think Slate would be someone who’d snore. In training, Slate was sharp and silent, always composed. But here in their tent, she’s sprawled on her back, her chest rising and falling with each ragged breath, and the sound reminds Annie, wistfully, of home and her mom’s motor-loud snores.
Her body is too still, her nerves too electric. She lies on her back, staring at the fabric of the tent overhead, her arms crossed over her stomach to keep herself still. Her thoughts won’t stay quiet, and her heart won’t slow down. It feels like it’s beating against her ribs, loud enough to wake Slate, loud enough to echo out into the arena.
The Hunger Games. She’s in the Hunger Games.
The thought keeps looping through her mind, a strange, thrilling chant that she can’t stop repeating. I’m here. I’m really here.
It should’ve sunk in before now, she thinks. Maybe when the gong sounded and they all rushed for the Cornucopia, or when the first cannon fired. But none of it felt real then. She’d been more focused on survival than anything else.
Even when she killed Vivian and Elm, it hadn’t hit her. Her body had moved like it always does, fast and certain, and afterward, she barely remembered the details. But now, lying here in the tent with Slate’s snoring and the glittering brightness of the trees outside, it’s starting to settle in.
She’s in the Hunger Games. Not watching from home, not imagining herself on the screen like she used to when she was younger, playing pretend with her friends and acting as if they were all in the Games together.
All her friends and family are watching her. The entire world is. Kids will watch her and—hopefully—dream of becoming her one day. If not, well, her death will be played in slow motion in classrooms in the Leviathan as Miss Kirby tells a group of students what exactly not to do.
She wonders if Slate feels it too. Maybe not right now—Slate looks too dead to the world, her face slack in sleep.
I’m really doing this.
The thought sends a thrill through her, and her lips twitch into a small, involuntary smile. She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to hold onto it, trying to savor this strange, electric feeling. She’s never felt so alive, so aware of every inch of herself—the ache in her shoulders from climbing up the dam, the sting of a scratch on her forearm, the steady rhythm of her breathing.
It’s thrilling. It’s terrifying. It’s everything she thought it would be, and more.
She wonders what the other tributes in the arena are doing. Are they lying awake like her, staring at the clear, blue sky and thinking about their families back home? Or are they moving through the forest, hunting, planning their next move?
Annie hopes they’re not too far away. She hopes they’ll come soon, give her something to chase, something to fight. She doesn’t like waiting. Waiting feels too much like drowning, like being stuck underwater with no sense of which way is up. She wants to move.
I’m here, she thinks again. I’m really here.
And for the first time, it feels real.
Their rest is cut short because Annie just can't sleep and Slate grumpily woke up ten minutes after falling asleep, complaining about the light. The boys are sent off into the forest to search for tributes and the two of them take their stations around the camp.
There's not much for Slate and her to do other than make small talk. Annie tries her best to engage Slate in conversation, but that fails. Then she's left with nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the light of the trees.
After ten minutes of silence and staring at them, she decides she hates them. Why couldn’t they get a normal forest, where the trees actually have some variation? All these trees look the exact same and she keeps getting flash-banged by their ghastly light. She just had to be unlucky enough to volunteer for Harmonia Thornwell’s last Games.
Annie feels her migraine get worse from these horrible trees and the dry conversation, and she knows that if she tries to speak to Slate anymore, she'll probably get thrown into the trees. Slate lookspissed.
She's bored. She has nothing to do except walk around the camp and spin her spear around. She's seen glimpses of past Games where weaker tributes went insane when left alone, tortured by their own thoughts. She can kind of see where they’re coming from now.
But the trees make everything worse. Her eyes will drift to a tree, and she’ll see Slate. When Annie turns to speak to her, Slate’s actually yards away, sharpening her sword. In other reflections, Slate turns skeletal in a passing shimmer, then shrinks to a child the next. When Annie looks at a different tree, she sees her face in the warped, metallic bark, fractured and reassembled a thousand times. She’s taller, shorter, too thin, grotesquely wide, with teeth missing, with no eyes at all.
So instead of looking at the trees and the garish light, she looks at her hands and speaks to the viewers. She wonders if a sponsor will send them some playing cards so they can pass the time.
“I wonder what it’s like to watch us.”
“Are you talking to me?” Slate asks.
“No. The audience at home.” Annie gives a big wave to the air and watches as the trees show the reflection of her fingers as five long, white bones.
She almost tears up from joy when she sees Marcielo, Bedford, and Lace carry themselves over the traps around their little camp, finally back from patrol.
Marcielo throws himself into the tent they scored from the Cornucopia. Bedford trudges forward similarly, looking exhausted, and Lace yells to them, “Your turn!”
“No luck finding anyone?” Annie calls to Marcielo inside the tent.
He grunts. No.
“But we did confirm that that river is the one source of water in the arena,” Bedford adds.
“So we just have to wait another day or two before they really start showing up in droves.” Annie stretches her arms, pulling tight the ache that’s taken root between her shoulders. “Slate, you ready?”
Slate nods, already halfway to the edge of camp, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword.
Annie walks beside her as they slip into the forest. The mirrored trees twist the sunlight into jagged shards, splintering it against the ground. Her feet crunch on leaves that aren’t there—or maybe they are, but the kaleidoscope of this place chews them up into colors that don’t make sense. Red where there should be green. Blue where her shadow should fall.
Annie tries to focus instead on Slate’s back. How broad her shoulders are.
It’s just not fair that they let the tributes from Two abuse substances. It’s not a well-known fact at all—the trainers at the Leviathan had been the one to tell her class. And it makes sense. She knows that the people from Two are stronger on average because they do most of Panem’s masonry and work in stone quarries, but none of that explained how consistently good they are at combat.
Slate had four kills in under ten minutes. Annie had seen her drag one boy—District 3, maybe, so Huxley—by the collar before sinking a blade into his throat with all the efficiency of a fisherman gutting a catch. Bedford was an absolute unit, too, but Slate seems to be on another level. Logically, the person most primed to win.
Annie’s only viable options to deal with her are if Slate dies from thirst or gets killed in a Gamemaker event. Best case scenario would be if she, for whatever reason, decided to brawl with Bedford and they took each other out.
Annie will have to figure it out eventually. A knife in the throat, clean and quick. Or maybe something quieter, softer, so Slate doesn’t see it coming. Maybe she’d use a bow, but that’s a coward’s weapon. Annie considers knifing her in the back when she’s sleeping, but then she’d have to abandon the Triumvirate, including Marcielo.
For now, she follows Slate’s lead, watching the way her reflection warps on the mirrored trees, how the sunlight breaks and bends around her. Even giants are made of glass here.
Then the anthem starts blasting, and Annie squints up at the bright sky as the death recap begins: Radiance’s face flashes, followed by Huxley from Three, both Five tributes, Angorra from Eight, the two she’d killed. She’d seen Fonio from Nine flee from the Cornucopia, but now his face shimmers in the sky.
“District 10 is all dead?” Slate mutters. “That’s surprising. Usually they survive a little longer.”
Ten: Buck and Vivian. Annie closes her eyes, and sees Vivian’s determined face in her mind. “I’m more surprised that Lexus is still alive.”
Slate’s nose wrinkles. “Who?”
“The—Uh, the boy from Six?” Annie scratches at her arm. “Guess he just swims well. Hey, do you hear that weird buzzing sound or is that not real?”
She feels a sudden faint hum, a vibration deep in the marrow of her bones, a sound so low it feels like it’s pulling the earth apart at the seams. Annie jerks her head up just as the first explosion of brightness explodes through the trees.
Slate curses, pulling her hands over her eyes and hunching into herself. “Don’t look!” she hisses, her voice strangled, but Annie is already caught.
Her head tilts, as if pulled by an unseen tide, and there it is: the light.
Not light as she’s known it—not the yellow spill of dawn on a windowsill, not the crackle of flames licking wood—but something vast, breathing. It folds and unfolds itself, a geometry of hunger that shimmers in patterns her mind cannot hold. She feels her gaze fracture, split like glass struck by a hammer, each shard reflecting a color that does not yet exist.
It’s a warmth at first, soft as the spill of milk into water. But warmth becomes ache, ache becomes searing, and searing becomes the kind of pain that feels almost otherworldly.
Her retinas bloom as if the light has pressed itself into her, not just to burn but to flower. She aches, and the ache is a gift spoken directly to the marrow of her bones. She tries to curse, or scream, but her voice disintegrates into a silence so deep it thrums.
Annie feels the edges of herself thinning. Feels her skin stretched to gauze. Behind her, the world muffles itself, sound folding into silence, silence folding into a hum so deep it vibrates all she is.
The colors twist and bleed, writhing as if alive. They coil through her vision, paint her skull from the inside out. Violet spills into green, green ignites into gold, and gold… gold sings.
It fills her, the song, thrumming in her teeth, in her ribs, in the tender hollows of her eyes. It whispers, not in words but in sensation: Open. Look. Be seen. And she does. She is.
Her tears come without asking, streaking hot rivers down her cheeks, but they are nothing to the flood inside her. The light doesn’t relent—afterimages cling to her gaze: spirals, cracks, fractals sprouting infinities upon infinities. They grow, each one splitting open a new vista, each one an ecstasy that burns.
She blinks, but it doesn’t matter. The light has already pressed itself into her. It leaves streaks, spirals, things too perfect and too cruel to belong to her small world. They echo, folding endlessly into one another.
She can’t look away. She doesn’t want to.
Then the light blinks out, and she screams.
The world rushes back too fast, smearing itself against her mind like wet paint dragged across glass. Shapes. Shadows. A blur of green, a blot of brown. Trees? The forest? Yes, trees, but wrong—too soft, too vague, like looking through water thick with silt.
Her chest heaves, breath sawing in and out. She presses her palms against her face, desperate to blot it out, but the pain is a raw, wet thing. Pressure only makes it worse—a crackling, electric ache spreading from her sockets to her temples.
The edges of Slate’s face are smudged, as if someone has wiped a thumb over her features. Her voice is coming through a thick wall: “Annie? Did you not close your eyes?”
She tries to focus, but it’s all wrong—the world is cracked glass, all prisms and splinters, flecked with spots of black. She stumbles up, her hands outstretched, but everything is washed in a murky yellow. She blinks, again and again, but the blurs don’t sharpen.
“Fuck,” Annie says. She shuts her eyes, as if to cage the damage, but the light persists, staining the darkness with jagged streaks of white and yellow, each pulse more vivid than the last. It’s like the light has imprinted itself onto her, carving its veins and prisms into the back of her eyelids. “Holy shit. Fuck. I didn’t—”
What’s happening to her? Why can’t she see?
The world outside her skin feels far away now, and then she remembers who's in front of her. Slate, from District 2, who absolutely will kill her if she so much as sniffs out a hint of weakness.
Annie forces herself to control her breathing and shuts her eyes. In, out. In, out.
She straightens her back and rolls back her shoulders. She can’t afford to look weak. Can’t, especially not in front of Slate of all people.
"I’m fine," Annie says, forcing her hands down, peeling them away from her face. “It’s just like looking at the sun.”
Her eyes flutter open and she’s struck by a wave of nausea. Everything is still yellow. Not golden like sunlight or the glow of a fire—this is sharp and unnatural, like the color of warning signs.
She blinks rapidly, her eyelashes brushing against the slick sheen of tears that won’t stop welling up. She thinks—she hopes—that this is all just temporary. Maybe the light is still fading and her eyes haven’t caught up yet.
But no matter how many times she blinks, the yellow haze remains, thick and cloying, painting everything around her in that sickly tint.
"Annie," Slate says again, sharper this time, her gaze cutting toward her. "Stay focused. That light probably disoriented some of the others. We should patrol further and see if anyone’s vulnerable."
Disoriented.
Annie seizes on the word like it’s a lifeline, a chance to make sense of what’s happening. Disoriented. That’s all this is. She’ll blink a few more times, and her eyes will adjust. The world will go back to normal.
"Right," Annie says quickly, forcing her voice to steady even as her pulse races.
She blinks hard again, trying to clear her vision, but the blurriness doesn’t budge. She can’t tell if Slate notices the way her gaze keeps darting around, desperate for a glimpse of something—anything—that looks normal.
"Come on," Slate says. She turns and moves deeper into the forest.
Annie hesitates for just a moment before following, stumbling slightly as her foot catches on an uneven patch of earth. They trudge through the forest, minutes stretching between them.
A few minutes into walking, Annie realizes it’s not going away.
Her hands clench into fists at her sides as she walks, forcing herself to keep her head down, to focus on Slate’s broad shoulders ahead of her. She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks, panic bubbling up in her chest no matter how hard she tries to shove it down.
Her eyes aren’t fixing themselves.
The forest grows quieter as they move further in, the sound of their footsteps the only thing breaking the heavy stillness. Annie’s breathing feels too loud in her ears and she wonders if Slate can hear it too. The realization settles over her like a weight, pressing against her ribs until it’s hard to breathe.
Something’s wrong with her eyes.
Her chest tightens as she steals another glance at Slate, who looks as unshaken as ever. She’s always looked dangerous, but now, as Annie follows her deeper into the forest, she feels something else stir in her gut.
Fear.
Slate is strong. Slate doesn’t need her. And if Slate realizes she’s hurt—if Slate figures out that she’s stumbling and hesitating because she can’t see properly—what’s to stop her from just shoving her sword in her chest?
Annie swallows hard, forcing the thought away. She can’t let herself go there. Not now. Not when she needs to keep moving, keep pretending everything’s fine.
Bursts of color swim in the blur of her vision like fish trapped under glass, and her eyes ache.
She tells herself she’ll be all healed up by the time they’re back at camp. If not then, then all she needs is some shut-eye and she’ll be good as new.
When she tries to sleep that night, all she dreams of is the bloodbath. Instead of bleeding red, Vivian opens her mouth and bleeds light.
“Antheia, wake up.”
Wow, the first thing she wants to hear in the morning is definitely not Marcielo’s monotone voice. Or maybe she’s having a nightmare?
Then she remembers she’s in the Hunger Games and she’s just survived her first night.
Her eyes fly open and that’s her first mistake. The pain comes, sharp and endless, as though someone has whittled the shape of the sun directly into her eyes and the world rushes in, too bright and unforgiving.
The first thing she sees are the trees looming through the open flap in the tent and their glassy bark, catching the sun’s fire and flinging it straight at her. It’s all a collision of blinding shards, white-hot in the center, smearing into bruised purples and reds at the edges and it’s prying into her skull.
Her eyes snap shut.
It’s okay. It’s fine. The trees have always been bright and her eyes are just sensitive from yesterday and sleep. She’s fine.
She doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Marcielo murmurs, “Stay still.” His hand is warm, steady, brushing the sweat-slick hair from her face. “This came for you in a sponsor gift.”
There’s a rustle, the faint clink of metal, and then she feels something cool sliding onto her face, the weight of it foreign but grounding. Glasses?
She tests out a squint. The sharp edges of the world are dull, softened by the tinted lenses. It’s not enough—the pain is still there, radiating deep in her skull like a wound that refuses to close—but it’s a reprieve, however small. Through the film of the glasses, the searing white of the forest dulls into a dim gray haze. The world isn’t better or clearer, just… different.
She takes a shaky sigh of relief. The only thing wrong with her is that her eyes are sensitive. That’s doable. Manageable.
Her body loosens, shoulders slumping like a string finally untied. The tension bleeds out of her, slow but steady. She’s still in the running. Still capable.
She opens her eyes fully, and then her stomach clenches, a knot so tight it feels like her ribs are caving in.
Marcielo is right in front of her but—his face isn’t there.
Where it should be, there’s something her mind trips over. Not darkness, not a shadow, but a hollow space, as if her eyes simply refuse to finish the sentence of him.
He's only a void.
Her stomach knots. She stares harder, willing the image to resolve, but the harder she looks, the less there is. The edges of him warp, ripple, smear into nothing. He's an absence, something caught halfway between a man and nothing at all. Where his eyes should be, her brain conjures no meaning. Where his mouth should open, there’s nothing but a dark smear.
“Annie,” he says. It’s his voice, but it doesn’t belong to the thing crouching in front of her.
Her stomach lurches.
The void where his face should be moves, pulsing in a way that feels aware. The edges crawl outward, devouring the line of his jaw, the curve of his neck, as if it’s spilling into the air around him.
She blinks rapidly, clawing at her own eyes now, fingers scraping over her lids like she can tear this wrongness out of her skull. But it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t leave.
Her chest tightens, a scream building, but it dies in her throat, choked off before she gives him a reason to kill her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Marcielo leans forward, his head tilting just slightly, and her vision twists with it, the void stretching and yawning wider, wider, as if it’s reaching for her.
The air bends. The light dies. The fabric of reality buckles and warps, and in that ripple of wrongness, she feels the weight of something watching her back.
Her breath catches. She scrambles backward, hands clawing at the ground, the tent fabric, anything solid, but the smear doesn’t stay with him. It follows her, a roving blot of darkness burned into her vision. Even as she looks away, it lingers, pulsing behind her eyes, pressing like fingers against the soft meat of her brain.
Her chest heaves. Her lungs claw for air. She blinks again, harder this time, fast and desperate. Her nails dig into her temples as if she can peel the void away, scrape it off like dirt under her fingernails.
Marcielo crouches, his void-face looming closer. “Are you okay?”
His words don’t stick. They slip right through her, tangled in the rising tide of panic that fills her chest, her throat, her skull.
She can’t breathe. The air feels thick, damp, wrong. Her lungs seize as if the void is inside her now, crawling, filling the spaces where breath should live.
Her head jerks up and she catches the outline of him—just the outline. The void is too big now, eating everything else. It’s in her head, crawling behind her eyes, pressing against the bone of her skull.
“I—” Her voice comes out a broken whisper, trembling and unsure. “I don’t—”
What? What doesn’t she?
She can’t even finish the sentence. Her thoughts slip away from her like fish wriggling through her fingers, slick and impossible to hold. She looks away from him but the void doesn’t leave.
It stays. It pulses. It breathes.
Her hands shake as they hover near her face. She’s afraid to touch her eyes again, afraid of what she might feel. Afraid she might find nothing there.
Her eyes are broken.
Marcielo moves even closer, but in that movement—just barely—she sees his eyes.
Brown blots, blurry, but despite it, they’re still disinterested. Still deadpan, staring at her like he’s looking at some sand. The same as they’ve looked for ten years now.
She reaches for his arm, grabs it, and her body loses some of its tension the moment she touches him. He feels warm. Real, underneath her hand.
She tilts her head down to study what’s left of his face that she can see, and it’s such a welcome sight that a part of her wants to throw her arms around him and start wailing like a small child.
None of that doesn’t change the fact that the void isn’t his. It’s her.
Ten years, ten years, 3653 days of anticipating her Games. And when they finally come, she ruins her shot of winning on the very first day by blinding herself and marring her vision with a massive, gaping blind spot.
She can’t win like this.
She is going to die here.
Chapter 12
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
PART I: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
The silver of the plastic bag isn’t silver at all, Annie realizes. The parts of it that she can see shift in her hands, liquid somehow, like a puddle catching the sun.
She grips it tighter, willing it to stay still, but it won’t. The edges ripple, bend inward, almost as if the bag is gasping for air. Her reflection blurs in the polished surface—only a void, and nothing else. Like she doesn’t exist.
She pretends not to notice.
Her spoon is shaking.
No, her hand is shaking, and the spoon vibrates with it. A ripple of oatmeal sloshes over the edge. She sets the spoon down too hard, the plastic crinkle echoing longer than it should, sharp against her ears.
She has to focus on eating. On acting normal, so that no one else in the Triumvirate will notice and kill her. Because they would, and it'd be the smart thing to do. She's the weak link. It'd happen so easily; the bite of a blade, and everything would end.
Bedford looks at her, but she doesn’t look back. Can’t. His face might not stay his face. His cheek might bulge like it did moments ago when she glanced up too fast, his teeth sliding unevenly under lips that stretched wrong.
Instead, she watches the ground. Safe enough, she thinks, until the grass around the void starts to swim.
The oatmeal tastes like paste. Like nothing.
She forces herself to chew and swallow, to ignore the wavering lines of the rocks below and the way her peripheral vision catches something—a shadow, a shimmer—that disappears when she turns her head. Around her, the trees are bending. The straight lines curve, bowing inward like ribs cracking under pressure.
Her pulse quickens.
She's going to die.
“Are you okay?”
Bedford again. His voice is too close, the words scraping. The fact that he even has to ask makes her bite the inside of her cheek and scream in her mind, What are you doing, you need to act normal.
Annie glances up briefly, forces a smile that feels like cardboard stretched over her teeth.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Just had a nightmare about the Cornucopia.”
Bedford inches closer to her but doesn’t say anything else.
She speaks, tries to act like everything’s fine. Keeps the conversation going, laughing and smiling when appropriate, but her eyes are stuck to her moving oatmeal. She takes another bite of it, jaw working mechanically, and hopes no one is looking at her too closely.
The forest tilts, just slightly, the borders of her vision folding inward like paper creased too quickly. She steadies herself with one hand on the ground. She catches a glimpse of the tall, gleaming dam above the forests, and resists hissing when it catches the light.
Bedford passes a plate toward her. Toast. Butter substitute smeared unevenly across its surface, glinting. The metallic sheen is impossible, but there it is. She reaches for it anyway, her fingers trembling just enough to betray her.
The toast tastes wrong. Like oil. Like the burn of sunlight on bare skin. She chews anyway, swallowing against the tightness in her throat.
He could kill her so easily. With her sight, she could’ve put up a fight, but without it, all he has to do is smash her sunglasses. Even an Undistinguished could do it.
The world is splitting.
The trees are bending inward, the ground warping underfoot. Her gaze catches on Bedford’s shadow, which shouldn’t be moving, but is. It pulses, smears, alive in a way shadows should never be.
Her breath is shallow now, her chest tightening. She forces it out, slow and deliberate.
She worries that she’s already lost. That the moment the light burned her eyes, she fell out of the running. The sunglasses are a small bandage over a mortal wound and they’ll all figure it out eventually. They’ll see how she flinches when the sunlight catches too sharp, how her head tilts slightly, trying to find clarity where there is none.
Her reflection in the trees catches her eye. It shouldn’t be there—she’s not sitting close enough—but there it is, absence eating away at her features. The parts of her face that she can see elongate, one eye ballooning outward while the other shrinks. Her mouth stretches open, a silent scream trapped in the glass.
She looks away.
Another bite of oatmeal. Another swallow. The world tilts again, but she keeps her hands steady, her face blank.
This isn’t—fair. Not when the odds were supposed to be in her favor.
She almost scoffs at the thought. Her situation has deteriorated so much that she’s acting like a petulant child.
How pathetic.
After breakfast, she and Slate move into the forest. Again, they patrol the forests. Again, they find nothing. Just the endless sea of silver trunks and foul light, only now with a black hole scarring the center of it all.
Even through the sunglasses, the light presses against her, leaking in around the fringes like water, the kind that spills over your hands, impossible to catch. It’s everywhere, and it doesn’t care that she’s drowning. Her head aches with the effort of making sense of it all.
Her peripheral vision—what’s left of it—catches only fragments of the world as it tilts and breaks. Ghostly reflections of branches sway where there are none, faint shapes that tease her. She turns her head, but they’re gone before she can even name them.
Her steps lag behind Slate’s no matter how hard she tries to keep up. The ground underfoot feels wrong, like it’s breathing with her—rising when she steps, dropping when she hesitates. The forest bends, shimmering with a cruel sort of grace. The trees reach like strangers’ hands, mirrored bark catching her in a thousand broken fragments.
She doesn’t recognize any of them.
She can’t talk or crack jokes—that scares away any potential tributes—so she tries to think of better things. Anything to get her mind off the massive patch of nothing in her vision and the ripples it makes.
Her mind lands on that time she’d tried to do a backflip in the sand, and had nearly broken her neck. Her classmates had all howled and she’d patiently waited for them to calm down, beaming. Because, yeah. She was funny.
The only one who hadn’t laughed was Marcielo. He’d just stared at her without saying a word, brown eyes blank as ever. She’d almost become a paraplegic before his eyes and he hadn’t even blinked.
When they go back to camp, she wants to ask him if he remembers. He obviously does, since it was just a few months ago, but she wants to hear what he thought of it as it happened.
Annie hears a gritted out curse and lifts her head to see the shadow of Slate darting through the trees, her motions sharp, feral. She snaps at shades that collapse into glittering shards, lunges at reflections that scatter like startled birds.
“Over there!” Slate hisses, a hunter on the verge of triumph. But nothing stays. Nothing holds its shape long enough to fight back.
Annie can’t even see what Slate’s seeing. The shapes—are they shapes?—pulse at the edges of her vision, there and not there. The trees seem to loom closer, or maybe she’s stumbling towards them.
Because she’s blind and failing, and she can’t even walk through this forest anymore without—no.
No, she needs to think of something better. Like when she’d once thrown a volleyball way too hard at recess, broke a stool, and then pinned it on Marcielo.
She blinks. Just one, single blink.
Slate’s there one moment, and then she disappears mid-stride, a flash of motion sucked into the forest’s shimmering skin.
Annie’s pulse stumbles, breath catching in her ribs. “Slate?” she calls. “Slate? Where are you?”
She readies her spear in hand, wildly trying to look around the void. All she sees are the damn smudges of trees, winking at her, showing her something moving in the distance—a shimmer, like a figure darting away. She moves her head every which way, trying to see what her blind spot is blocking.
And, just like that, Slate reappears to her right. Annie nearly launches her spear at her.
Slate’s movements are too smooth, too immediate, like she’s been plucked from one frame and pasted into another. “What are you doing?”
Annie doesn’t respond immediately. Her head tilts slightly, caught on the flicker of something just beyond her peripheral vision. A branch, bending without wind. A shadow, where there shouldn’t be one.
She tries to focus, but the effort only makes her temples throb.
“Did you see that?” she whispers, finally.
Slate’s brow furrows. “See what?”
Annie swallows hard, her throat tight. The words don’t come. She doesn’t know how to explain what isn’t there. What might never have been there.
She closes her eyes beneath the sunglasses, the brightness pressing against her lids, warping everything. I’ll be okay, she tells herself, again and again.
I’ll be okay.
The forest stretches wider, brighter. The trees blur at their edges, their reflections sliding into one another until Annie feels her footing slip again. Her knees buckle, and she catches herself on a trunk. The bark feels slick and cool under her palm, but when she blinks, it’s gone—just air, empty and cold.
The bag is in her hands again. Always the same bag, filled with oatmeal that cooks with just some water.
Annie has stopped trying to look at her reflection in it—it never looks back the way it should. She focuses on the oatmeal, pretending the oatmeal doesn’t ripple like water when she looks at it.
Slate sits beside her. She chews slowly, stares into the distance, swipes her knife across a sharpening stone. Over and over. Every meal, every break, every moment of stillness is exactly the same with Slate. The girl never says much beyond what’s necessary. Patrol. Rest. Patrol again.
Annie starts conversation with the others. They talk about past winners, controversies, theories about the Games. She has to carry the conversations for the most part, which, honestly, isn’t too bad because she can pull conversation topics out of her ass and she’s desperate for some stimulation.
She gets so lost in the conversation that, for a moment, she thinks that she’d like to be friends with them. Which is completely absurd, and she banishes the thought entirely. They'd kill her without a second thought if they knew, and she knows that if she were in their shoes she'd do the same. What she needs to focus on is maintaining her normal personality.
Mealtimes are the only times where everything isn’t so mind-numbingly boring. But her eyes have begun flickering over to Marcielo, Lace, and Bedford. They always sit together, like they’ve established themselves as a trio. It scares her, just a bit.
Still, she thought the Games would be… different. More clashing, more fighting, more alive. Not this. Not this endless monotony, this slow grind of silence punctuated only by meals.
And always, the light. The forest, the trees. They always head there, then back to the camp. Rest. Back out again. Rest.
The same every time.
“Shift’s over,” Slate says, her voice flat. She always announces it like that, even though Annie knows the rhythm by now.
They trudge back to the camp and Annie only manages to stumble seven times. She’s making progress.
Then they return to guard the camp again. She closes her eyes against the world, straightens her back. She pretends like there is no void in her vision and that she is whole.
How many hours of sleep is she going on? Two? Maybe not even an hour, just half? Bedford, Slate, Annie, Lace—none of them can sleep.
Marcielo, however, can. The man always sleeps soundly and deeply during his rest times.
When she looks at him during rest, propped up on her elbow in the tent, it’s almost like they’re back home. Back in training, and he’s dozing off in a little corner despite how loud her and her friends’ shrieks are.
She accidentally falls on top of him in the memory. Suddenly, he’s awake, tattling loudly in his deadpan to the trainers that he’s just been unfairly assaulted, and it makes her want to smack her hands over his mouth. The one thing ruining her fantasy is that, back then, his face was not a dark, rippling patch in the dead center of her vision.
She conjures up an image of him in her mind, eyes closed, and just—sits there, listening to his breathing. The steady inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.
In her mind, she sees his tousled black hair, almond eyes, lips that have never formed anything other than a slight downward curve. When she opens them, she sees a black spatter with dark speckles that form the foggy shape of something like hair.
It’s fine, she thinks. This kind of thing is light work for Capitol surgeons.
Marcielo stirs next to her, eyes fluttering open, and for a second, something flickers there—silver and sharp, like a blade caught mid-air.
Her hand twitches, but then it passes. The edge is gone. It’s Marcielo again.
“You’re very close to me,” he says, monotone voice husky with sleep.
She is. There’s probably an inch of space between them, but being this close is the only way she can see him over the giant blur of nothingness in her vision. From his perspective, she’s probably glowering at him, with her chin pointed to her chest and eyes pointed up at him.
“All the better to see you with, my… Yeah, good morning.”
He asks, “Are you trying to pass me a hesp? You’ll need to take off your sunglasses first.”
“No…” She leans back after that and pushes her sunglasses further up her nose. Should she even have said that? She shouldn’t be distancing herself from him—they need to get closer. “Actually, maybe later.”
“Oh. I don’t really know if I want you to. We’re not there yet, Antheia.”
Damn Marcielo. Making it sound like he’s kindly rejecting her and that she’s just so desperate to be considered close enough to him to be able to pass him a hesp.
I didn’t even want to in the first place, is what she wants to say, but she just closes her eyes, looks at the bright splotches under her lids, and says, “It’s your turn to patrol.”
He sits up with a sigh and then off he goes out of the tent. She gives a little wave to his retreating back.
The flap opens just as soon as it closes, though, and it’s Lace. She can tell by his footsteps—not as lumbering as Slate and Bedford or as lazy as Marcielo. Lighter than all three of them. He seems to be grabbing something, though she can’t tell.
He pauses in front of her. “Why are you still wearing your sunglasses?”
Annie yawns and stretches her limbs out like a cat. “It’s a gift from Finnick because I was complaining about the light. You don’t think I look cool?”
He can’t know. He has no way of knowing, even if he suspects something.
He can’t know. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t. If he did, she'd already be dead.
“But you’re wearing them inside the tent.”
Annie leans back on her elbows. “The cameras are everywhere. I need to leave an impression.”
He gives a noncommittal hum to that, and then out of the tent he goes. She sighs, standing up, and follows right behind him. Another two boring hours of guarding the camp and pretending like she’s actually watching out for tributes, when in truth, her eyes are closed.
In the hours before Marcielo returns, she gets so sick of the boredom and the worry that they’ve all caught onto her that she begins talking to the cameras. Slate’s a few feet away, guarding her side of the camp and turning occasionally. Probably to give her weird looks.
Annie’s never really seen any other tributes in previous games seriously treat the cameras as another person, but honestly, what does she have to lose? At worst, she comes off as annoying. At best, she gets some sugar.
First, she whispers as quietly as possible, so Slate doesn’t hear, “I can’t see. I have a giant blind spot in the center of my vision and everything around it moves like it’s alive.”
Finnick will be able to get her something more if he can, now. After, she tells her best stories to make the audience like her more. It's easy enough if she just pretends she's back home talking to Pyxis: When it was our head trainer’s birthday this year, me and my friends wished her happy birthday by painting “happy birthday” on our bare chests. We knocked on her door to surprise her. Just seven half-naked, muscular teenagers at her door at midnight.
When Annie runs out of stories to tell, she manages to somehow wheedle a sponsor watching to drop her a pack of cards. It reminds her a little of speaking into the mouthpiece in the apartments, making things appear out of thin air.
The cards turn out to be a bad idea because Slate can’t move from her post, so Annie just resorts to playing against an imaginary opponent. An hour later, and she’s so tired of talking to the air that she just clams up.
Then it’s just her and the void.
Another parachute comes for her only a few moments later, an energy supplement, it looks like, so maybe she’s not that annoying. She really doesn’t want to talk anymore, but it must be a sign from Finnick that her persona is working on the audience and she should do it more. So she forces it in her mouth and makes her lips quirk into a smile.
“I choked on a piece of ice once and nearly died. I’m not even kidding. All my friends were laughing at me and refusing to help. The only reason why I’m here is because it melted…”
She goes on and on and on, but her head aches with the effort of analyzing everything she says and does to make sure it aligns with the persona Finnick gave her. She doesn't think she can spend any more days trying to be cheerful and "cool" and suave and whatever else Finnick said. All she wants to do is get some rest that doesn't last for only a few minutes.
She stops short when she hears a cannon sound in the distance.
It can’t be someone in the group or else there would’ve been a few more successive cannons. Her suspicions are confirmed when Marcielo and all the others return. He says nothing and Lace tells her Burton from Eight is dead.
She tells them, “Nice job!” at that, but none of them look happy in the slightest. She thinks she sees Bedford shrink away from the trees.
The hours after that blur into something shapeless, a cycle of patrols and rests where no one except Marcielo rests.
She tries, she does, but when she closes her eyes, she dreams of the silver trees leaning down to scrape their metal fingers against her cheek. Then light bursts through everything, blinding her even with her eyes closed. But when she starts awake, all she’s met with is a missing piece of her vision and Slate right next to her—a girl who could end her life so easily if she caught on.
So, no. She doesn’t sleep. Instead, she fiddles around with her cards and offers to take Marcielo’s place on watch. Him and no one else, because he’s the only one who would appreciate a break.
Then it’s back out to the forest with drawn knives. Then back to camp, then back out again. Over and over, endlessly.
The patrols are worse than the meals. At least when they’re sitting, the ground stays mostly still. Out in the forest, the ground shifts and tilts beneath her feet. Not really, she knows, but it feels like it. Her vision can’t hold it steady. Paths appear and disappear in the light bouncing off the trees, and she has to rely on Slate to keep them moving in the right direction.
Slate never speaks. She just keeps walking, her sword drawn and ready, as if expecting an attack at any moment, but there never is one. Never anything but the light and the void.
Still, the fact that Annie can somewhat navigate her way through the forest is a good sign. All isn’t lost. She can’t let herself lose hope and give up—if she must die, then she will fight against her fate with tooth and nail. She has to get back to Maxi and her parents and everyone she knows from home.
Talking to the cameras loses its appeal quickly and it’s more like Annie is complaining instead of engaging the audience in conversation. It’s driving a part of her crazy, that she has no idea what the audience’s response to all this is. What more do they want to see from her? How can she mold herself to be more likable for them?
It’s on Annie’s nth patrol that Slate tells her, eyes wide, that she swears she saw her father in the reflection of a tree.
“Is it real?” Slate asks.
Annie looks at the trees and realizes that she can’t tell anymore if they’re silver or just gray.
“No,” she replies. Then she looks down at her clothes, and through what’s visible past her blind spot, sees that the color of them is barely there.
It had been a mistake, staring into the light that first day, trying to see if it would give, if it was real. It wasn’t real. But now neither was green. Or red. Or violet, which wasn’t even supposed to exist in this place but used to haunt the edges of the metal trees like a ghost.
The rest of the colors dull hour by hour, like they’re being siphoned off, bleeding into the trees, into the air. And—she hasn’t closed her eyes in days, not really. She can feel the hours collapsing on top of her, turning soft, gelatinous.
During rest, with her eyes fixated on the wobbling gray sky and the gaping chasm in between, she thinks about her blind spot. About how big it might get. About how maybe she’d go on patrol tomorrow, and the metallic trees would hum, and her knives would flash, and the world would be gone.
And she wonders if, when she and Marcielo finally break away, she’d even be able to see him. Or if he’d just be a voice, running toward the edge of something she can’t follow.
She thinks, I’m losing pieces of the world faster than I can name them.
Notes:
ok i lied LOL i'll be updating tuesdays and fridays methinks... idk what r we thinking of this schedule?