Chapter Text
Finnick.
It’s the heaviness that I have to fight right now. You’d think it would be the pain, right? No, the pain actually is helping me here I suppose. It’s chaos all around, I’ve no clue where I am or what’s really going on to be honest, but I do know there’s an unfamiliar voice screaming at me to stay awake, but my limbs are so heavy that they’re practically yanking me into unconsciousness.
The agony is keeping me awake, keeping me screaming, at least I think I’m screaming. I’m not sure. I think I’m alternating between screaming, and quiet, ragged breaths. If I force my eyes open, I can make out blurry images of hands wrapped around my body in various places, carrying me somewhere. My body is jostling- everyone is running. Bombs are going off left and right so loud that I can no longer hear the person that had been screaming at me.
The last thing I remember with clarity is agony and screaming and water and a force so strong it knocked me out. It’s all a mess of jumbled flashes and memories. Biting, teeth gnashing, my flesh ripping and making audible shredding sounds, water entering my lungs, my nose, my eyes, my ears. There was no crevice of my body that the water had not entered. I had been an amazing swimmer at four, amazing at holding my breath, but the blast of the bomb forced me to gasp, letting the water in, letting it force blood vessels in my lungs to burst. I’m coughing in between screams, and I taste metal in my mouth. I know there’s bound to be blood in my lungs, probably everywhere.
Whoever is helping me, it’s futile. Whether they’re the capital or someone from the districts, it’s futile to waste time because I know I’m going to die. I can feel air moving through a wide wound in my abdomen. I think I feel air touching my spleen. I can feel it whistling through holes and tears in my body, and I feel warm blood turning cold as soon as it leaves me. I can’t breathe, everything smells and tastes of blood, burnt flesh and burnt hair.
“Stay awake Odair!!!” Someone screams but I can’t recognize the voice at all. In between shots fired, bombs going off and the ground rattling, I close my eyes, stop screaming, and take in a ragged breath.
“The medivac can’t land with all these mines!”
“I know that! We gotta get him to the edge of district two! It’s gonna land on the only standing building!”
“I don’t think I can carry him up the stairs!”
“We gotta!”
Screaming continues but I‘m only focused on-
On….
What had I been focused on?
I hope Annie’s safe.
I think there’s… There’s uh..
I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.
A hot, hard slap jolts me awake. “Wake the fuck up Odair!”
My eyes snap open and I see the interior of a helicopter. Bodies loom over me, rolling me around, wrapping things up, shoving gauze in holes, gasping at wounds. Then torture.
A tube is shoved into the sack around my lungs, forceful, sharp. There’s a poof and a gush, suddenly I can take a breath in- but oh God it’s agony. I would scream, but that requires breathing in more air and I don’t think I can do it.
Someone begins to spout off injuries but my hearing won’t let me actually hear and comprehend what’s being said. There’s needles and pin pricks stabbing into my right leg, I’m sure of it. My left leg? On fire, skin sizzling and sloughing off, burning rapidly. My abdomen is just a gaping wound. I can feel gauze rubbing up against my colon, I feel water and saline being gushed through and over where my spleen should be.
I must keep dozing off because areas of my body get smacked and pinched or someone simply screams into my ear- but it all grows muffled after a while, the voices get quieter, my body gets colder, and I’m out again.
ANNIE:
My fingers tug on the thick, itchy yarn a girl here in thirteen snagged for me. I wrap it around a wooden knitting needle, and glance down at the progress I’ve made over the last week. I’m slow at it, but that’s fine, who knows when the rebels will succeed in taking over the districts closer to the capital, who knows when they’ll get to Snow? It’s only after that, that Finnick can return to me, so until then… I’ll keep myself busy.
Yarn is a tough commodity to find here, I didn’t even know about it until Mave saw me pacing the halls over and over and over and finally grabbed some and told me to use it to keep myself distracted. It’s a very pale blue, almost gray, and there isn’t enough of it to create clothing, but I can make a baby blanket for the child I’m carrying.
I hadn’t told Finnick he was going to be a father yet. I want it to be a surprise after we win the rebellion. I also didn’t want him to get emotional and make rash decisions because he had a child to think about now. This war needs to be won, and it can’t happen without his help. If he’d known I was pregnant, he would’ve grabbed me and insisted we run as far away from the battle lines as possible.
I only found out a few days before he left. One missed period and slight stomach discomfort. Since Finnick left, it’s turned into hellacious morning sickness. More like all day sickness really. The good news was Thirteen updated my rations and food portions so I can eat enough to not lose weight even with the vomiting.
While I’m so utterly proud of Finnick and the strength he has despite the horrors he’s been through- part of me aches and longs for him. I wish he were here to rub my back when I puke, to hold my hair, kiss my cheek and put his hand on my stomach. I wish he were here to hold me at night when it’s quiet and the thoughts creep in.
Capital propaganda has reported of Katniss’ team dying at least three times now, and every time it hasn’t been true. I eventually stopped watching anything on the TV because the stress was only making me throw up more. Lately everyone had been comforting me more, asking how I was… Apparently the capital announced Finnick had died in an explosion near the sewer systems. I’m choosing to refuse to believe it. How many times had he ‘died’ now?
“Annie?” Mave pokes her head into my room, smiling, “Wow, you’re almost done with it! I’ll see if I can grab some more soon. I think we have a very pale lilac color yarn somewhere lying around.”
I lift my head to meet her warm brown eyes, “This is fine, I can undo it and restart.” Anything to keep these hands busy. “Why’d you come by?”
“Well uh, Coin called me in and um… She had some news and thought it was best if I delivered it.”
My heart drops into my stomach, my hands clench tightly around the knitting needles. No no no. No more bad news. No more, we’ve had enough.
“O-Oh?” Is all I can force out.
Mave stands up straighter and inhales sharply, “She confirmed that Finnick was caught in a blast down in the sewer systems close to the capital. He’s alive. He’s staying in district one where there’s a rebel hospital- he isn’t stable enough to fly back here yet. They’ll stabilize him there and then send him here. Apparently, the capital released mutts and they began attacking Finnick, he couldn't get out, Katniss detonated a bomb as a mercy killing.”
But he wasn’t dead.
Mutts. They released mutts.
But I’m a mutt. President Snow told me all about it when I’d been captured. We’re all mutts. Nasty, dirty, corrupt, in need of training.
I don’t know when, but I had somehow put my hands over my ears, shutting out what Mave was telling me. I force them down to my lap. “But he’s alive?”
“Rebels in district one received a message, an Avox was going to work in the sewers when they found Finnick, he was still alive but barely, the Avox sent another person to find rebels and lead them back to Finnick, they got him out and they landed in one an hour ago. He’s in surgery.”
Mutts. Multiple. A bomb… He had barely been alive. Whatever damage they did, it was going to be a lot. I have a sinking feeling it’ll be worse than anything that ever happened in the games. Would he even pull through? He had to, it was Finnick, he’s the strongest of us all, but… Would he? Would he survive? Would he still be him? What about his brain, had it been injured?
There’s a hand on my shoulder and Mave is telling me to slow my breathing because apparently I’d started hyperventilating. But how could I be calm? I almost lost Finnick, and I still might.
It takes an hour for me to get even remotely calm. I’d ended up pacing my room, throwing up twice, and no matter what- I couldn’t bring myself to cry. I wanted to. I needed to. I felt the tension in my jaw that happens right before I sob, but no tears came. Despite the horror coursing through my body, my face remained blank, dumbfounded. I probably looked like I was high on Morphling, when in reality my brain was refusing to allow me to comprehend what I’d just been told.
I don’t care about the injuries, he’s still my Finnick. I care about his mind. Would he be the same Finnick that left me? Or would there be too much brain damage? If so… Would he be functional, but with mood swings and outbursts of anger? Or would he be too ill to speak or move? Would he need constant care and supervision?
Back home, my uncle had a boating accident. One day during his shift fishing, a storm hit. He had been thrown overboard and slammed his head into a sandbar. He survived, and he functioned. He was just like himself- but slightly off. More prone to anger, to snapping. He cursed more, drank more, hit his wife. He had trouble expressing his emotions and could go from smiling and laughing to trashing a room in a second. My mom always said brain injuries could do that, could change the way you felt things, could turn you into an angry person.
I can’t knit. I can’t stay in this room any longer, where the bed smells like Finnick. I walk the halls of thirteen and end up as far from the room as possible. I curl up in an old storage closet and sit, staring in the dark at nothing.
Hours pass. They wouldn’t allow me to travel to see Finnick, I had to stay here and wait until he showed up. Mave’s brother- Eli- found me in the closet four hours after she told me the news, and took me to the infirmary. In thirteen they’d noticed high levels of stress can potentially make you miscarry, and they wanted to monitor me.
I was soon hooked up to machines, but the room was too similar to the room I’d been imprisoned in at the capital. Even my nurses looked like they had been from the capital. I had apparently screamed at one nurse to go away, to stop hurting me, and three more came out to calm me down, but the crowd only made my anxiety worse.
I’m not sure of the order of events, only that it ended in my yanking an IV out, getting blood everywhere and blowing a vein, and I’d tried to run down the hallway when a security guard got me. They agreed to allow me to go back to my room as long as I let two nurses stay with me to monitor me. They moved in heart monitors, fetal heart monitors, a large rolling cart full of medications and more.
By late in the night I’m in bed with IV fluids hooked up to me and an antipsychotic medication. It’s one of the only ones safe for pregnant women, and unfortunately it didn’t work as a sedative, they couldn't give me anything to let me sleep, but the medicine they did give me helped lower adrenaline, which got rid of my incessant need to walk.
I sleep very little, but I do have a revelation. Finnick is going to need me. As strong as he is, no one should have to go through this alone. As long as he’s known me, he’s been protecting me. It’s time for my turn. I need to find some way to calm down, to be okay, in order to help him.
The next day I knit more, undoing and redoing my baby blanket until my fingers cramp. There’s little news on Finnick. He survived surgery but was too critical to fly here, and the airspace wasn’t the safest right now.
It’s four days after I get the news of his accident, that I’m told he’s being flown back to thirteen. Back to me. They’d emptied out a bedroom next to the infirmary for me to put my stuff and be closer to him, and he arrived at two am. They wouldn’t let me back, stating he had to be examined and ensured he was stable, but during all of that, a doctor approached me.
I’m in the hallway picking at my nails, shifting my weight side to side when Doctor Mobarn approaches me and asks if I would like a list of Finnick’s injuries so I can prepare myself before walking in.
“Um… I suppose so, yes. Is there anything I’ll need to prepare for long term like a brain injury or-”
“We need to wait until he wakes up for longer than thirty minutes. He’s been in and out for a while. When he was discovered, he had already suffered an amputation of his left arm, two inches above the elbow. He had an amputated right leg from the knee down- but the wound grew infected so we unfortunately had to amputate just under his hip. He has a spinal cord injury that is affecting his left leg. Lost his spleen, gallbladder and appendix. We cut four inches of his intestines out due to bacteria from the mutts’ saliva. He had a bite to his ribcage that took out one rib and punctured his lung, so we’ve replaced that rib with a curved metal rod that will funcion just as well as bone. There are significant burn scars to his back, both shoulders and part of his face.”
My brain can’t function. I think it stopped after the leg amputation. So many injuries, different types too, not the same one over and over.
“So, just to make sure I understand…” I trail off and press a hand to my cheek, it’s boiling hot. “He has lost his left arm, right leg, has a spinal cord injury which paralyzed his left leg…. Punctured lung, replaced his rib, missing some organs, and burn scars across his back and part of his face?”
“Yes ma’am.” Doctor Mobarn says softly, he talks to me like I’m made of glass- and maybe I am. Everyone seems to think I’ve gone mad years ago, and they’re waiting for me to go even more crazy after the whole being held hostage thing. Despite this, his tone only angers me- but it’s a blessing because it gives me some much needed energy.
“He may also have more injuries but we won’t know for certain until he wakes up for extended periods of time. Then we can check for hearing loss, vision loss, speech impediments or more brain injuries. He did have some swelling of the brain but it’s since gone down.”
Those mutts had tried to destroy him, had tried to whittle him down into something incapable of living, breathing and functioning- let alone thriving. But I refuse to let that be it. I refuse to let snow win. Even if we lose this war, I refuse for us to lose this battle. Snow doesn’t get to just kill everyone he wants. Finnick will survive this and he will thrive. I will thrive. We will succeed in being content and at peace and snow can shove it so far up his ass that it comes out of his mouth. No matter the results of Katniss’ mission- we will beat this and snow will lose.
I can tell that all the fear is starting to shift into something else, something determined. I don’t care anymore if finnick will be finnick because as long as he’s breathing, I’m going to love him, he’s going to love our child, and we will be happy no matter what Snow throws at us.
“Do you know when I can see him?” I ask calmly. I refuse to let any emotion invade my voice and risk everyone thinking I’ve lost it yet again.
“It’ll be another hour or so.” Mobarn grits his teeth, “are you sure you’re prepared to see him?”
“He’s my husband.” I say dumbfounded. “I need to see him.”
The doctor fails to realize the type of bond Finnick and I have, that I’m not me without him. I can’t truly relax or be at ease when he’s not with me. I can’t allow myself to show my personality when he’s gone. It’s more than a want, it’s an intrinsic, internal pull that tugs me to him and when I ignore it I feel physically ill.
He makes the noise stop. In a tornado he’s my shelter. In a blizzard he’s my coat and gloves. Without him I’m exposed.
I have to wait three more hours. My body screams for rest and the only reason I listen to it is because of my child. I can no longer push myself to the point of self destruction, I have to allow myself to rest because it’s not just about me anymore.
I nap on an uncomfortable couch out in the hallway, just outside of the door to finnick’s room. By the time I get into a deep sleep, a nurse comes to grab me and informs me I can go back if I want.
“But I’m warning you, he looks nothing like he used to… okay? We’ve been trying to clean him up some.”
I couldn’t care less what he looked like. Finnick is beautiful yes, and yes I am attracted to him and I do enjoy his beauty but more than that, I love his voice, I love his warm hands-er, hand- I love how he squeezes my hand when he knows something has triggered me. I love his snark and the way he laughs. I just want that.
“I’m ready.” I place a palm on my stomach even though it’s too soon for me to be really blatantly showing or for me to feel a baby kick. I’m only twelve weeks along, but I still hold my hand there, silently bonding myself with the precious little baby they’ll soon become.
She opens the door and I have to breathe through my mouth to avoid the smell of the room in an attempt to not be triggered.
Finnick is lying in a white sterile bed, pillows under his left leg, an empty space where his right should be. It’s the same for his left arm, a stump, then nothing. Every part of visible skin under his neck has been wrapped in gauze. His abdomen- though it’s under a thin blanket- looks swollen. His jaw and cheeks have dirty blond scruff forming from not shaving for as long as he’s been gone. It’s not a full beard but it’s more than a five o’clock shadow.
There’s a large, triangular scar starting at his left temple, crossing through his eye and it stops at the corner of his left nostril. It's clearly a burn scar. There’s clear bandages over it with cream and oil trapped under it to hopefully heal the skin sooner.
His blonde hair has been singed, the left side thin and what little was left was black. I can see stains in his skin where they’d tried to clean off dried blood but it still left a faint red hue.
“Do you need anything?” The nurse asks me as I settle into a chair next to the bed, my eyes locked on finnick. His body is a battleground, a hollow shell casing fired in war. A map of pain and torture.
“I’m okay, thank you.” I offer her my sincerest smile and when she leaves, I dare to reach out and rub his left shoulder, just above where the bandages start. His skin is still warm like always, but not so warm I’d worry about a fever. It’s still him.
He’s sleeping so I don’t speak, he’s going to need all the rest he can get. I curl up in the chair as right as I can comfortably get, and keep my arm extended so it’s resting on his chest. I listen to his breathing, slow and deep like always. I listen to the beeping of his heart monitor, steady and smooth. With that reassurance, I fall asleep.
Finnick sleeps for three more days with little stirring. He will wake up occasionally, but he doesn’t open his eyes or speak, he lets out pained grunts and clenches his hand into a tight fist, his monitors alarm with spikes in heart rate- then he falls back to sleep and goes quiet. A nurse tells me he’s been doing that a lot.
They’ve been giving him watered down morphling to help with the pain, it was that fine line of not wanting to get him addicted, but also knowing that without the medicine he might just die from the pain alone.
Morphling also makes him sleep. It isn’t really a sedative, but for some people it does calm them so much that they sleep. For others it takes away any inhibitions or fears and gives them hallucinations. It’s clear that for Finnick- it makes him sleep. I stay by his side except to pee, chug water and the occasional ultrasound to check on the baby. Coin had called for me to get daily ultrasounds- fearing the stress may have a bad effect on the baby.
The baby is okay, I’m losing a little bit of weight which isn’t great for this stage of pregnancy, so I’m being given even larger portions and practically force feeding myself daily. Coin also arranged for me to have numerous protein drinks a day just to add on the calories and nutrition. My stomach has never been so bloated and hard, but if this is what it takes to have a healthy child, I’ll do it. After all we’ve been through, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I lost this baby. Finnick would be broken hearted to know he had a chance at being a father and lost it.
I will do everything in my power to keep them both alive and safe. Finnick spent so much of his life protecting me, it’s my turn now. I place a hand on my stomach and sigh, rubbing circles over it. In the silence I ponder what kind of person my child will turn out to be, what world they will grow up in. Will they be stuck under a strict regime from Snow or another just as evil dictator? Or will they grow up free, not knowing the kind of fear I did?
On day five of being in district Thirteen, I’m knitting in my little chair by Finnick’s bed and taking sips of a protein drink in between rows on the baby blanket when he grunts and his hand twitches, his alarm blares. I glance over at him but I don’t get too excited- because this has happened a lot.
But something unexpected happens after that. His eyes open.
They’re glazed and not fixated on anything at first. My heart lurches and I almost cry tears of pure joy. I force myself not to and I slowly whisper, “Finnick?”
Setting my knitting down on the floor, I lean over him and make sure I’m in his line of sight. His face contorts but soon stops when the expression pulls on the still fresh burn scar. But he opens his mouth and hoarsely croaks out, “Annie?”