Hey guys, two more chapters after this one! Please excuse the jumping, i'm just trying to cover all the plot points. For all you concerned about how finnick fits in to all this, all i have to say is patience. i don't believe in immediate gratification. and with that note, happy reading!
47
Sunlight
"PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!"
I look down at the knife in my hand, covered in Finnick's blood. He's looking wide-eyed at me as he falls to his knees. "Please don't go," he begs, even as he dies by my hand.
"I should have given you a reason to stay," I tell him, casting down the knife. "I have to get rid of you. I can't remember you anymore. I can't think of you."
"Annie, please don't."
I fall down to my knees and take his face in my hands so that I can find his eyes. "But you're everywhere Fin. I can't eat. I can't sleep. You've been everywhere. It's killing me inside, you don't understand."
He shakes his head and then collapses with his head on my shoulder. I wrap my arms around him and cry.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But I can't keep doing this."
When I open my eyes, they have real tears in them. I'm staring at the palm leaf rooftop of my old house, before Pearl got married and I moved to Victor Village. still dark but everything glows a little. Like the sun is just about to rise.
This is the second time I've tried to kill my memories of Finnick in my dreams. It's not worked. And what's worst it's not even him in my memories. He doesn't look quite right, like he's behind a mask. There's no pictures of him, and my mind distorts him, so it's more and more like the memory of Finnick is slipping from me. And at the same time, clinging tighter to me with every strangling second.
My house in Victor's village was destroyed during the battle here, along with Finnick's. Our memories living together lay in heaps of ash on the sand, getting carried away with the tide. Stephen was sent to the outer districts to fight, but he hasn't returned. So it's just me, Echo, and Pearl. Besides Kai and Kiandra, everything's like it was. Except that we're older and sadder. They all live in Stephen's house while I live in the hut. And I'm pregnant.
It was my choice to live here, alone and by my beach. Everyone knows Finnick is dead. I guess it was put on a list of casualties. Which means everywhere I go, people are walking on eggshells. I don't want to be alone. But company, when it's not the company you want, makes you feel almost lonelier. As if nothing in the world can comfort you. Besides, I'd rather sleep here so that they won't be worried when they see me cry straight through the night. They already take care of me. They make me eat. Go on walks. Visit Lillian's hospital for vitamins for the baby. All sorts of things. But they never have to remind me to bathe. I'm always in the water, sitting in the shallows and letting the sandy waves lap over me. I find wetness to be a good cover for the constant stream of miserable tears. I almost prefer my hollow, shell of a self than all this torment all the time.
And the nightmares. They've gotten so much worse. If it's not of Finnick dying, it's of someone else dying or being tortured. I dream about my nights in the Capitol prison a lot. Sometimes I dream about coming home from the train and finding everything on fire and no sisters. I have nightmares about what happened to Stephen and Finnick's friends. But I haven't had a single good dream. Not one. They've been so vivid, so real, and yet the faces are distorted. I don't realize it until I awake, but it's like my mind doesn't let the ones I love to be represented correctly in my nightmares. As if it dishonors their memories to be part of my nightmares.
I sigh and get up with a little difficulty because of my swollen belly. I walk out until I'm on my seashell beach with the gray ocean rolling under the overcast clouds. The sun is rising on the edge of the horizon, casting its tangerine light in a squiggly line over the water. It's incredible how, even though the houses and square have mostly been destroyed, the ocean is just so magnificently constant. I walk straight into its folds until it goes over my head. I stretch out my arms and lift my feet so that I float weightlessly in the in-between.
