Chapter Text
She doesn't know anyone here. They look down at her, stare down at her, clinical and indifferent. Annie is crying. (Annie has been crying for the last eight months. There has been no reason to stop, but now, now, she is hurting and she is scared, and oh, she doesn't know how to tell the baby that he needs to stay still.)
But this moment is here all the same, the one she has been dreading. (And, how is it that the Capitol can take another one of these moments from her? From them? She had never been allowed the luxury of dreaming what carrying Finnick's baby would be like, but this is all their fears confirmed.)
They have lost the war. She is a prisoner. Their baby is about to become a prisoner.
She is hidden away in a Capitol hospital, and she doesn't know if anyone knows she's here. She is alone, except for the team of Capitol doctors who all look at her with disdain. She will not push, so they are frustrated with her. They tell her time and time again that she must, and they have been at this for hours, Annie struggling to hold on. They have nothing left with which to threaten her after all; she doesn't know where Finnick is, hasn't seen him in weeks. She doesn't know what they will do to her baby when he is not inside of her anymore. Something, she knows. Something, because she's been kept alive this long, and that has to be for a reason.
“Finnick,” she cries, the word slipping from her once again before she can stop it. (She will not allow herself to say please, even though she wants to. She wants to beg for him. But that will mean begging for him from the Capitol, from Snow.)
She is drenched, her hair plastered against her head. They have changed her hospital gown once, but now have just left her. They give her nothing, because she will not cooperate. She clenches her hands, tight, scans the room once again for a flicker of sympathy. (But, no, nothing; little one, can't you see what sort of world is waiting to swallow you?)
The doctors huddle.
“Prep her for surgery,” one of the doctors says finally to a nurse. There's a flurry of renewed activity.
“No,” Annie cries and wraps her arms around her stomach. “No.”
She has been fighting this for too long by herself. She physically can't sustain this anymore. When they drug her, she goes down, feeling as if she's clawing at thickened air. She tries to say Finnick's name again, but then she's just surrounded by the soft, bright lights. She is nowhere. The pain is finally gone, but something gnaws at her subconscious. Even in this twilight, she senses something is wrong.
She hears crying, and that brings her clawing upward. She's in a different room, flat on a metallic table. (She feels strangely distanced from herself, as if she's no longer slotted into her own body, but that isn't a concern anymore.)
She's looking for him.
The crying grows louder, and she watches as one of the nurses swaddles the red, squalling mass – her son.
“Please,” Annie whispers. “Please, can I see him?”
(That is her son. That is the baby that she and Finnick made, the one they were told was an impossibility. Here he is – and, oh, she wants him away from them. She wants to hold him. She wants Finnick here to anchor her, because she feels faint and blurred, and someone needs to rescue the baby.)
The nurse doesn't look at her. She coos down at the baby, and then turns and walks out of the room.
“Finnick,” Annie whispers again; Finnick, they're taking him away from us.