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Mags has been teaching Annie how to knit.
Now that it’s not so oppressively hot outside, she’s ventured to the porch to feel the breeze on her face. It doesn’t sound like much, but to Annie even this is a victory. One year ago she had been at the peak of her life; excelling at the Academy, popular with the other students, and ready to take home the crown in the 70th Hunger Games. Today she’s proud that she made it out of the house, and a little ashamed that she’s proud of it.
She and Mags are working in silence. Mags must be tired from staying up last night, keeping watch because Annie was too wired to fall asleep on her own. The last thing she wants to do is break the tenuous peace they’ve built, but Annie’s no good at knitting and she’s got stuff on her mind. “My sister called me today.”
Mags is good enough at knitting that she can talk and work at the same time, unlike Annie who has to let her yarn rest in her lap. “How did that go?”
“How do you think it went?” she mutters dryly. Her sister Maeve is twenty-one and beautiful and strong. She’s engaged, she has a real future, and Annie may have won the Hunger Games but Maeve is the real success story. She’s always been protective of Annie in her own way, even though she’s not particularly sentimental.
“Your sister loves you,” says Mags as the wind blows through her hair. “But I think you know that already.”
She can see Finnick’s house across the street, and she lets her gaze fixate on it. “She asked if she could visit.”
Mags hums, waiting for her to continue.
“I told her I’d think about it,” Annie mutters. It had felt like too much at the time to make a decision. “I feel like I should say yes.”
This is the first decision that Annie has had to make regarding her family. There was never any question of whether her parents would come to the Victor’s Village to live with her. She’d been living at the Academy for two years by the time she won, so everyone was used to her not living with them anymore. And now that she’s an adult—a victor, no less—parental supervision feels like the last thing she needs.
“It’s up to you,” Mags reminds her.
“That’s the impossible part.” Annie runs a hand through her hair. “I want to see her, but I don’t want her to see me.”
She expects Mags to question her, or maybe remind her that she’s not a failure, but instead she just says, “I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” she replies. “Believe it or not, I had a family once, too. It can be easier to have our families remember us as we were before. I think any victor would agree with that.”
“Yeah,” says Annie, huffing a laugh. She shifts uneasily, and her chair creaks. “Is that why nobody here lives with their families?”
It hadn’t been something she noticed right away. Certainly many of the victors are old enough by now that their families will have moved out. But even Finnick, at nineteen, lives alone.
Mags shrugs and rests her hand on Annie’s. “That’s one reason. But you should remember that your family may want to get to know you again. They don’t want to lose you.”
Annie has nothing good to say to that. “They’ve already lost me. I’ve lost me.”
“You’ve lost a lot,” says Mags, and it doesn’t feel depressing, only validating. “But there’s a lot that you can find again.”
Before she won the Games, Annie had boldly proclaimed to her friends Mira and Piper that once she lived in Victor’s Village, she would never wake up early to run again.
That didn’t last long.
Before she felt comfortable leaving the house, she would wake up and run on the treadmill in her basement. It was a habit, it was familiar, and most importantly, it left her too exhausted to do much of anything else. These days, when she’s feeling alright, she can bring herself to run on the private beach. And she’s usually not alone.
Finnick runs beside her, and they keep a pretty even pace. Usually he talks idly as they run, seemingly never out of breath. Today his jaw is clenched and his eyes are far away, an expression so foreign on his face that Annie can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking about.
“Finnick,” says Annie, coming to a stop near the path back to the Village. “Are you okay?”
His eyes seem to come back into focus. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Because you haven’t said, like, anything.”
They sit down on the wooden bench that’s probably been around for as long as Mags has been a victor. Annie doesn’t think about how close together they’re sitting.
Finnick gives her a reflexive smile. “If I knew you liked my commentary so much, I would’ve kept talking.”
It’s not really an answer, but maybe he just doesn’t want to talk about it. “I don’t,” she says, because she’s feeling well enough to joke today. “In fact, I was actually thinking, ‘wow, this is the easiest run I’ve ever had’ and then I noticed you were quiet for once.”
His eyebrows raise. “Damn. Maybe next time I’ll just let you run alone. I’ll just stay home, sleep in—”
“Don’t,” Annie says before she can stop herself. She’s still looking at him, with his hair tousled and face flushed. She forces herself to look away. Then, “I like running with you.”
“I like running with you, too,” he says softly after a second.
She takes a swig from her water bottle, waiting for the breath to return to her lungs. “Seriously, though,” she ventures after a moment. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” he says without thought, then his gaze lowers to his hands clasped in his lap. “Yeah, it’s just that today is my sister Celeste’s birthday.”
Annie’s never seen, heard of, or met Finnick’s sister, so the best response she can manage is, “Oh, wow.”
He laughs. “She’s fourteen today.”
Everyone in Panem would be able to see the significance of that number for Finnick. “Are you going to celebrate?”
“No,” he says instantly. “I mean, she and my brother Adrian will probably do something, but we don’t talk unless it’s on the phone.”
Annie is quiet. It feels rude and invasive to ask why, but she can’t pretend she’s not curious. Finnick glances over and gives her a knowing smile.
“It’s fine,” he says. “You can ask about it.”
“They don’t live with you, do they?”
The wind rustles through his hair, and Finnick makes no attempt to smooth it. “They did, back when I first won. But at a certain point it just became too much. Celeste was too young to really see most of it, but I don’t think Adrian understood why I was acting the way I was. They wanted their brother back, not…” he gives a vague, encompassing gesture to himself.
It’s a lot to think over, and weirdly enough, similar to what Annie’s been experiencing. “You seem alright, though,” she points out. Finnick certainly looks like he’s adjusted well enough. He never lost his mind on national television.
He smiles again, but it lacks any depth. “Well, ‘seem’ is the key word there. Besides, I was a lot worse before. The nightmares and paranoia were easy enough to explain, but the rest of it wasn’t.”
“The rest of it?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. I was acting out, getting into fights. I said some shit I wish I could take back. I don’t know how Mags ever put up with me.”
Annie gently reaches over to take his hand, waiting for his permission before giving it a light squeeze. “I asked Mags to stay up with me because I couldn’t sleep without someone to keep watch.”
“You think that’s bad?” Finnick asks, sending her a real smile this time. “That’s barely an inconvenience.”
“She’s seventy-five.”
“She’s Mags,” he counters, and Annie shrugs. Mags is exceptionally tough.
Thinking of Mags makes her think of their recent conversation about Maeve and Annie’s family. “Are you going to call your sister?” she asks Finnick. Even though he wasn’t prepared for the sudden shift in the conversation, he takes it in stride.
“Yeah, probably this afternoon,” he answers.
“You could invite her over,” she suggests.
He eyes her skeptically. “Are you going to invite your family over?”
Annie shakes her head. “Fair enough.”
“We honor their sacrifice,” Annie says, forcing her voice to stay steady. “Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever.”
“Good, Annie,” says Nerissa. “Much better.”
With that, she slumps down onto Nerissa’s couch.
She’s not having a very good day, which can be attributed to a lot of different reasons. She didn’t sleep well last night, so she’s both wired and exhausted today. Her Victory Tour is coming up, and that means practicing speeches and developing a talent and trying to appear the victor she grew up wanting to be.
“It sounds totally fake,” she says, propping up her chin with one hand. “Nobody’s going to believe a word I say.”
“Don’t worry about them,” says Nerissa. She holds Annie’s gaze. “You’ve done your part. You’ve already survived. All you have to do now is get through these next few weeks.”
Annie’s glowering. She can’t help it. “I always envisioned my Victory Tour to be such a celebration.”
Nerissa nods slowly. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, not a single victor out there enjoyed their Tour. Whether they trained for it or not.”
“They looked like they did,” she says glumly.
“And they had the same image training as you, if not more intensive,” Nerissa replies. “You remember how much work went into crafting your stage presence. What makes you think the Tour is any different?”
She’s right. Annie knows she’s right. It’s why the victors from One and Two always look so beautiful and polished and grateful. Even the victors from her own district looked that way. And if what Finnick said had any truth to it, there’s a lot more happening under the surface. At least she’s not the only one who came out of the arena broken. “I don’t want to talk about the Tour anymore.”
“That’s fine, we’ve done enough for today,” says Nerissa. “If you’re bored, you can help me do the dishes.”
Annie rolls her eyes but she does it anyway. Nerissa’s kitchen is practical, but it still looks great. Plus, with her talent being pottery, she always has a lot of cool dishes. It’s on Annie’s way to the kitchen that she notices the picture.
It’s Nerissa and a man she doesn’t recognize. They’re standing on the beach, just barely in the ocean, holding two children in their arms. Nerissa follows her gaze.
“My husband,” she says. “And Cordelia and Murphy. My kids.”
Annie knew Nerissa had kids, but somehow it had slipped her mind since she won. “Where are they now?”
“The kids are grown,” she says. “Twenty-eight and twenty-four. And we sent my husband out to sea the year before Coral won.”
Sending someone out to sea is District Four speak for dying. “I’m sorry,” says Annie.
“Don’t be,” she replies, making her way to the kitchen sink to start on the dishes. “He got sick. It couldn’t be helped.”
“The Capitol couldn’t…”
Her jaw clenches. “We weren’t going to ask them for anything.”
Annie nods. The Capitol gives away nothing. Even their generosity must be paid back, which means it’s not really generosity at all, although she’d never say so out loud. “Was it weird?” she asks. “To raise kids as a victor?”
Nerissa pauses the faucet, thinking. “Not as weird as you might expect. Parenting isn’t easy for anyone, but we definitely had some unique challenges. We were very careful to keep the kids out of the public eye, and the Capitol let us.”
Annie starts drying the dishes. Every house in the Village has a dishwasher, but sometimes it’s good to have something to do with her hands. “That sounds exhausting.”
Nerissa gives a fond laugh. “It was. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
She tries to imagine herself in Nerissa’s shoes, further out of the arena and meeting someone she’d like to have kids with. It feels impossible on many levels. “I can barely even keep up with my current family, let alone start a new one.”
“You’ll get there,” Nerissa promises. “I know it feels impossible right now to talk to anyone but other victors. And there are some things that civilians will never understand, no matter how close you are to them. But it is possible to build a life for yourself. I want you to remember that.”
“It’s just hard to believe,” she says softly.
Nerissa gives her a kind smile. “Give it some time. It’ll sink in eventually.”
She’s coming home from her morning run when she notices Dylan hauling a big box outside. Annie’s been having a string of good days so she tentatively walks over and asks, “Need any help?”
“Oh, Annie,” says Dylan with a kind smile. “That would be great. There’s one more box inside if you’d like to grab it.”
Dylan’s house looks eerily similar to hers, even on the inside. Maybe all the houses in the Village look alike. The box is right in the foyer so she grabs it and hoists it onto her hip. It’s not too heavy, but nothing rattles around inside and she can’t tell what it is. “Where are we headed?”
“Just to Nerissa’s,” he says. “It’s not far.”
They leave the mysterious boxes on Nerissa’s porch for her to handle, and Dylan invites her back inside for a cup of iced tea. Annie lets the flavor burst on her tongue and doesn’t ask about it.
“It’s stuff that belonged to Leander,” Dylan answers anyway. He says it sort of resigned, but a little detached. “I didn’t want to look at it anymore, but I couldn’t give it away, so Nerissa said she’d take some of it.”
Annie knows who Leander is; there's a reason she was top of her class at the Academy. Leander was Dylan’s son who died in the 62nd Games at the age of fourteen. Nobody stepped up to volunteer that year, and to this day she’s not sure if that was intentional or not. It must have been excruciating.
Dylan must see it on her face because he says, “You don’t need to apologize or anything.”
Annie shakes her head. “Yeah, it’s just…I wish I had something good to say.”
“There’s nothing good to say, so don’t worry about it,” he answers. Nerissa had mentored him, and her calm acceptance is evident in the way Dylan speaks about his son. “We gave him the best life we could, but you know how it is. There’s only so much you can do.”
She nods, feeling vaguely sick. “I remember seeing him around the market a few times. He seemed happy.”
Dylan smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “I hope so. Selene and I tried. I just wish we could’ve had more time.”
Suddenly, Annie feels lucky. What does she have, if not time? Isn’t that the one thing that being a victor guarantees? She’d been given sixteen good years with her family, and winning the Games has bought her several decades more. That’s worth something. “I should go,” she says, finishing her tea.
“Thank you for your help,” says Dylan, and Annie smiles.
It’s one day before Annie is supposed to leave on her Victory Tour, and it’s the last thing she wants to think about.
She’s brought out every coping skill she can think of. She’s kept her body and her mind busy all day, but the night is closing in on her, and soon it will be tomorrow morning and there’s nothing she can do about it.
“I can’t,” she says to Mags incomprehensibly as they eat dinner.
It’s a testament to Mags’s skill as a mentor that she doesn’t need clarification on what Annie is thinking. “Are you up for some company?”
Annie nods. She’s up for anything that might work.
Finnick is the first to arrive, but he’s not the last. The other victors soon start to fill her house; Nerissa, Coral, Callie, Dylan, Calder. Not Kai, she notes, who rarely leaves his house, but she doesn’t know him well anyway.
“What is this?” she asks Mags, bemused but not disappointed.
“They’re here to send you off,” she replies. “It’s not a goodbye. Just some words of support before you go.”
As she chats with the other victors, she’s struck by how comfortable it all feels. Annie remembers those tense few minutes saying goodbye to her family at the Justice Building. This, though, is relaxed and uplifting. There’s no desperation or sense of finality, but they feel like her family all the same.
She catches Finnick later on as the night creeps forward. “Did you know she was going to do this?”
He shrugs. “She did it for me, too. I think it’s, like, supposed to remind you what you have waiting at home.”
“Do you really think of yourselves as a family?” she asks impulsively.
“Depends on who you ask, I guess,” he answers. “I do. I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier if you accept them as your family, too.”
“What about my other family?” asks Annie. She can’t bring herself to call them her real family; not because they aren't her real family, but because that would be invalidating the connections she's made with everyone in the Village.
Finnick grins. “That part’s up to you.”
Later, once everyone has left and the house is quiet, Annie picks up the phone and dials a number. “Maeve? It’s Annie. I don't know when I’ll be ready to see you, but if you want, I’ll call when I am.”