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I can’t take any more peacekeeper interrupted goodbyes, so when Annie bursts through the door, I know I’m a goner. Her face is puffy from sobbing and a few fresh tears are still sliding down her face like rain on a windowsill. I take her face gently in the palm of my hands and use my thumb pads to wipe her tears away.
She’s so beautiful.
I then snake my hands around her waist and bury my face in her hair. She hugs me back just as tightly as I am clinging to her. Suffocating to death in Annie’s hair seems far better than my other choices at the moment.
I pull back a tiny bit to see her face. Something I’ll never see again. Her lips part to form her next sentence and all I can think about is how badly I want to kiss this girl. How badly I want to tell her that I’ve been willing to do anything for her ever since we met.
“Finnick please…” she chokes out, “please win.”
God damnit. I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids. I tuck the hair that’s glued onto her cheeks by the tears, behind her ears and slide my hand down to gingerly cup her jaw.
“For you, I will.” I rub my thumb over her tear streaked jaw in a comforting motion.
It’s not a lie whatsoever. I’ll fucking do anything she wanted. But it’s not expressing everything I want to say to her.
“Get your hands on a trident or for heaven’s sake anything! You’re the top one in training for a reason, you know how to hunt and kill and survive—but my point is you can do this! You can win. Me and your family will have your back from right here and if at any point you start to doubt yourself, just think about us rooting you an-“ she rambles before more tears build up in her eyes.
Seeing her like this activates the faucet in my eyes. Not to where tears are streaming down my face like hers are. But they are close to spilling. I really don’t want to cry, for the camera to see me with puffy eyes, but the drops were building as soon as she came into the room and were ready to burst like a dam whenever it pleased.
“Annie.”
She looks into my eyes and for a moment, I let myself drift into another world. One where I haven’t been reaped. One where I had the oppertunity to properly confess my love to Annie. One where I’m not looking into her bloodshot eyes and telling her I’ll manage. And she fucking knows it too, that I’m lying. If things had gone accordingly and not like this shit show, I would’ve had more time to train and go into the games on my own account. And tell her that she means more to me than the ocean, which sounds stupid, but she knows how much the ocean means to me!
“If I don’t” I swallow before saying the next line, “make it. My family will take care of you. They know I’d want them too. And my mom just adores you. Maybe even more than me!” Self deprecation never hurt nobody.
She quickly goes on her tippy toes and gives me a sweet kiss on the forehead to shut me up. Warmth grows like vines from that small part throughout my whole body until it feels consumed. My forehead tingles in the spot where she placed her lips. No. Who am I kidding? My whole body tingles. It’s like she charged a current through my body and I don’t care what it takes, I need more of it. More of her kisses. Preferably on the lips but I’ll genuinely take anything.
She lowers herself back to the ground and it feels like I’m being x-rayed when her eyes bore into mine.
“You aren’t allowed to say that. I know it’s not how you planned and that you still have a lot of training to do but you—you have to fight your hardest and come back. You still have so much to do. We still have so much to do,” she blinks back and continues, “I’m still yet to beat you in a swim race. I still have to get you to hop onto the ‘the mango strawberry smoothie is better than the dragonfruit banana one’ train. We still have to make a path for baby sea turtles to reach the beach and—shit. I’m sorry. There are much greater things to worry about and here I am, blabbering about smoothies and races when you are going to be fighting for your life in a week!”.
Annie Cresta does NOT curse. In my 3 years of friendship with her, I’ve never heard her curse once. This makes me realize the amount of things I’m going to miss when I die. The day Annie takes back her words and agrees with me that the dragonfruit and banana smoothie is the best. The day Annie meets her newborn cousin that’s yet to be born but told me I could meet him too. There are much more important things but my mind is blanking as I pull her in for another hug.
“Will you wear this? I made it to give to you in much more desirable circumstances, but you can wear it as your token,” She leans back a bit and puts a small object in my outstretched palm. It’s a necklace. The chain is beautifully woven from a piece of blue rope with a little triangular shell dangling from it. I tilt my head and a tiny sheepish grin breaks out on my face. It’s a nice break from the tense and tear streaked state it has been in.
“Of course I will.” My fingers grasp each end of the necklace and pull it around my neck. I fasten it in a knot and move my head down to look at it. “Thank you…I’ll always have a reminder of home with me now.”
“That’s the point!” she smiles faintly and her eyes fixate on her creation around my neck. She then looks up and we lock eyes for a second, before the handle twists and the door lunges open.
“Alright. Times over,” a straight-faced peacekeeper announces in an expressionless tone. Annie’s hands frantically cling at my sides tighter, “No please!” she begs, “another minute!”. I rotate us so I’m shielding her behind me, away from the peacekeeper. She places her hands on my shoulders and looks up at me. “This can’t be it, it just can’t!”her tears make another reappearance. I pull her in once again for probably the last time and whisper softly in her ear, “Anemone Bay Cresta please trust me. It won’t be the last time you see me.”.
She moves my face to meet her gaze. “Pinky promise,” she says with a dead serious expression, one that communicates that this isn’t a request but an order. She holds out her pinky and I interlock it with mine. We lock eyes for a while and when I see her brow crease, I know she is fighting back tears. That acts as my cue to unlink our pinkies and detach myself from her because if I see her cry again, the peacekeepers will have to fucking pry her from me. I turn around and start heading to the door where the peacekeeper, who’s on the tips of his feet and a millisecond from grabbing me himself stands.
I spare one last glance behind me and spot Annie’s puffy yet gorgeous face.
The peacekeeper is closing the door behind us just as she yelps out “I love you!”.
I blink back.
I love you?
‘I love you!’
I know she probably meant it in a totally platonic way. But what if…?
No.
She doesn’t.
But my head can’t help but fantasize her saying those words to me again. This time with the same depth I’d say them to her with.
Oh Annie.
If only you knew how much I love you.
If only you’d mean those words in a different way.
The sun is blinding as I step out the back door of the justice building. I was so out of it that I didn’t realize the blonde girl who is a couple inches taller than me by my side. My district partner. Pearl Maris. A volunteer. Suddenly I flinch as multiple flashes blind us. I pinpoint the source to the many cameras they have on us, watching like seagulls do when they spot food unattended. Oh shit. Cameras. I replace my distracted face with an adorned mask that has a smile plastered to it. Little do they know I’m counting down the seconds when I can take it off in the privacy of my train compartment. The exhaustion of this day will surely wrack my body with sobs but I will welcome them. God my face already feels so tense from this minute that we’ve been walking to the train. But we are almost there. Just keep it on for a little longer.