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"Finnick? Finnick, are you all right?"
Pull it together, get your smile on straight. The arena has eyes and ears, and a perfect memory. He's watched you stumble; don't give him the satisfaction of watching you fall.
"Yeah. I'm alright. I'm alright."
Wave off her hovering, you need your space. Pull it together, because it was all an illusion, a twisted trick of the mind. Mind games. Hunger games. We're all just children playing a game, and you and you and you, you are one of the most expendable pieces.
So sit up and stand up and get her sobbing face out of your brain, because you'll likely never see it again, and it was just a jabbering jabberjay, her voice crippled with pain wasn't real and no one's screaming in a warehouse of torture.
At least not yet.
"Finnick!"
He is not all right.
Dusk is heavy in the sky when he heads towards the waters. Not for the first time, Finnick considers himself lucky to have a trace of home inscribed into the arena.
He wades in. The salted water takes to his pores like an old friend as he hunkers down, soaks up the cool of the evening that will not allay the burning in his ears.
"Finnick!"
The view is just gorgeous.
So beautiful, in fact, that Finnick nearly relinquishes his hands from the safety of the waves to reach out to the mesmerizing hues – now nothing but a thin, glowing line on the horizon. Were that he could touch it, that such goodness could be so easily grasped, held, kissed till she falls asleep under a blanket of dark hair, a murmured name on her lips.
"Finnick!"
Nothing but pleasure for his eyes on a dreamy night like this. And if and when the ugliness begins to encroach – a little dimming of the lights, a simple drop of his lids like a curtain before the finale, and all the troubling sights disappear in a snap, never have the chance to make a home in his memory. No nameless buyer with orange peel hair and matching lips stretching across face. No dollops of blood trailing off his trident after his freshest kill.
His eyes have always had it easy.
"Finnick!"
But there's nothing like lids for his ears, oh no, and the sounds – the sounds – they never leave him. Before the imprint of Annie into his life they were possibly the one constant in the whirlwind, cannons booming like a band on parade, the crooning songs of his lovers, a crescendo of Capitolite disharmony and all the other things he will never unhear.
A beloved voice bent like shrapnel, a perfect rendition of agony if her ever heard one.
"Finnick!"
Annie, Annie – he can't quite remember the timbre of her voice unladen with terror. And her face undistorted with pain is becoming a distant memory. But he tries to latch on to a what he can – she likes to cover her ears, doesn't she? Finnick thinks he could slice his ears clean off and still hear the pitch perfect echo of her torment.
He throws back his head with a random laugh at the moon, and thinks he understands her now more than ever.
"The sounds weren't real, you know." Bless Johanna. She's a good friend, but should know better than to lather him with pity.
So he curses her instead. "Thanks. I didn't understand that the third time Beetee explained it to me." He senses her winding up for a spar, and disarms her with a glittering smile. "Fourth times the charm?"
"Sorry for getting off my ass enough to care." Johanna picks up her axe with a wicked frown. "You know what – just forget it." She kicks sand into his lap as she trots away.
Finnick resumes his task. Over, under, and through. His hands work to a steady tempo. Weaving, tying, a net fashions to life in his hands. It's important to have a focus, Mags would constantly tell him. When your grip starts to loosen, find something else to hold onto. Keep your hands occupied and hope your mind follows suit.
Over, under, and through.
But it's not a fruitless exercise, either, and the purpose drives him further. They need the food, so they need the fish, so they need the net. So he keeps knotting, knotting, regrouping the fragments of himself that are still drifting in the water. Reminding himself that Johanna is right, the sounds weren't real. Manufactured somewhere in an underground laboratory. Fabricated, precisely manipulated to unhinge him, and so easy an undertaking even a child from District Three could do it – probably did do it, knowing the Captiol's outsourcing tendencies.
Over, under, through. A final tug, and Finnick carries his net to the water.
So breathe, Finnick. Undoubtedly she is safe and cozy in your home, probably glued to the television, curled up on the couch like she was on that final night as you paced mazes all over the floor.
The risks, the risks. You tried, God help you, you tried enumerating them to her that night before you left for the Quarter Quell.
"They'll take it out on you, if anything goes…wrong." If anything. As if there weren't only one thing that could ever go wrong, and it smelled a lot like sabotage, looked even more like rebellion.
Not that Annie would know anything. Nope. Nothing to see, nothing to hear. Your involvement in possible insurgency was probably the worst kept secret in your relationship.
Not that she knew specifics. She was always adamant about not knowing specifics. "I can't give anything away. I can't…I don't always know what I'm saying. I wouldn't want to do anything that could compromise…." She'd have to trail off to silence at that point, and place a finger over your protesting lips. Tell you, "So keep quiet," in a determined hush.
A hard order to swallow, when everything she said presumed her own capture. "I won't live with myself if anything happens to you." You worried your lip, worried your hands.
But you couldn't worry her. "I would die if it meant defeating the Capitol." She is the only one you know who can smile while speaking about their own death. "You know I would."
The sounds weren't real. So why do your hands shake in tandem with the currents as you bury them in the water? Didn't you prepare? Didn't you carefully burn away all the edges of your fraying excuse for a mind? Compartmentalizing, some bespectacled man had once told you, and your damn good at it. So pull it together, rope Annie back off into the compartment where she belongs, because the sounds weren't real.
At least not –
After half an hour he catches at least half a dozen white fish. The others have already started a fire. Smoke drifts up to a flawless blue sky as Annie fades. District four fades. His whole life fades to nothing but this very moment, the dragon mouth they call an arena, and keeping Katniss alive.
But he still can't rid himself of the sounds. And he can hear everything – everything but the chatter of his allies, the latent bursts of breeze that rip through the swaying canopies, the quiet lap lap lap against his legs.
He hears nothing at all, and everything all at once, an onslaught of inevitability rushing into his ears.
"Finnick! Help me!"
And so so so very hideously real, because Finnick knows he's hearing the sounds of his future.