Hunger Games fic: Rebellious (2/6), PG-13
Title: Rebellious
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 8,248
Beta: deathmallow
Fanmix and artwork: alinaandalion
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason, Coriolanus Snow, Enobaria, original characters
Summary: Finnick and Annie become pirates and accidentally start a second rebellion.
Author's note: Written for the het_bigbang challenge, this is the sequel to and continuation of Victorious, which you can read in its entirety here. The lullaby Finnick sings in this chapter is The Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling.
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Chapter 2 - There Once Was a Pirate
The air is so humid Annie feels almost as though she’s swimming as she browses the shelves of Edwin Macray’s general store. She trails her fingers along the edge of a shelf, looking down at the neatly folded sweaters stacked there. It’s a reminder that colder weather is on the way, although they’re far enough south that it’s never too cold.
“Do you have any valerian root, Mr. Macray?” Annie turns to look at Mairenn, standing beside the counter, backlit by the nearby window. Beyond her the afternoon is gray and Annie thinks rain can’t possibly be far away, as wet as the air is. She picks up a deep blue cable-knit sweater, liking the feel of it against her palms. This would look good on Finnick. If they had any money to spare, she’d buy it for him.
“Powder or pill?” the merchant asks Mairenn. Finnick stops beside his niece.
“What’s that for, Mair?”
“Powder, Mr. Macray.” To her uncle she says, “I used what was in the first aid kit when Annie was… when I bandaged Annie’s arm. It reduces pain and helps you sleep.” Annie puts the sweater back down and looks sharply at Mairenn. Is that why I felt so out of it the day after?
“You what?” Finnick asks, frowning. Annie starts to weave her way through the tables and shelves of merchandise toward the counter. Outside the window she sees people scurry about as rain begins to fall in heavy sheets; the bell over the door to the shop sounds as someone runs inside.
“She was hurting and Gramma always says sleep is best for healing. I just…” Her voice trails off as Annie reaches them and lays a hand on Finnick’s arm; she hasn’t seen him this angry in a long time.
“She’s pregnant, Mairenn,” Finnick spits out, his voice raised. Annie says his name and squeezes his arm, nodding toward the man who just came in as he wipes his wet face on his sleeve and looks around the store. His gaze passes over them, but Finnick’s eyes widen in recognition. Turning back to Mairenn, he lowers his voice so that only she and Annie can hear. “Did you even think of that, let alone bothering to ask her?”
“No, Uncle Finnick, I…” She sends a stricken look toward Annie and says, “I thought it would help her. And I’m sure Gramma gave it to Aunt Shandra when she was pregnant with Rhys. I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me.”
With another glance at the dark-haired man by the door, he grinds out, “This isn’t the fucking Capitol. You gave her something without even telling her. You-” He starts to say something else, but Annie stops him.
“Finnick, it’s okay. She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“And that’s supposed to make it okay? We have no idea how something like that could affect the baby.”
“The baby is fine, love,” she says, her voice calm and soft as she glances toward the stranger, but he’s paying them no attention, more interested in a shelf of canned goods on the far wall. She thinks he’s too far away to hear them anyway.
“You don’t know that,” Finnick replies, no longer quite so intense.
“It won’t happen again, Uncle Finnick. Annie, I’m sorry.” Annie nods and gives the girl’s arm a reassuring squeeze. Finnick still looks unhappy, but not quite so angry when he taps his fingers once on the counter.
“Maybe Macray knows a good doctor,” he says as he walks toward the other end of the counter, where Edwin Macray retreated in the face of their family discussion.
xXx
Finnick sits with Annie at a table meant for four in the back of Danny Malone’s tavern, the Shark Bait. He’s been here many times before, but the most memorable - in a surreal, fever dream sort of way - was the day Snow announced the terms of the Quarter Quell. He’d been here with his father and his uncles, Corin and Rick. Rick was dead now, executed for treason, and his father and Corin hadn’t been heard from since the war ended and they’d gone into hiding along with Finnick’s brother Kyle, his sister Shandra, and his niece Alona, Kyle’s oldest child. Thinking about his family now, he’d like to seek out his mother, living with friends here in town, but Peacekeepers have the house under surveillance, so he hasn’t even chanced sending her a message. If the Peacekeepers thought he was this near, they’d simply take her into custody, hoping to force him to come forward.
The door to the tavern is open to let in the light from the late-afternoon sun and the early autumn breeze which flows around the large room as easily as the various conversations. Beside him, Annie literally picks at her fish sandwich, pulling bits of bread from it and dropping them onto a small heap in the center of her plate. Wondering if she’s going to eventually eat it or just play with it, Finnick smiles and sips at his beer, listening to the conversations that surround them.
“Did you hear Andy Delmar collapsed yesterday? They say he starved to…”
“… raised the damn quotas again.”
“You can’t live on what little they leave us.”
“… paid a weeks’ wages just for two hours out on the bay. Can you believe that? It’s enough to make…”
“Are they ever going to cut Reyes down?” Even in the dimness in the back of the tavern, Finnick sees Annie shudder at that last, asked by a woman one table to their left.
“Is that the man we passed in the square?” she asks, her voice low. Finnick nods.
“It must be.” There had been a sign hanging across the man’s chest indicating he was a poacher, a three-time offender. He’d been there so long his flesh was picked over by birds and insects; what little remained still clinging to his bones had turned black and leathery in the sun and salt air. Finnick didn’t want to meet the Head Peacekeeper who would do something like that. Leto, the Head just before the Quell, was replaced sometime after the Games.
“Finnick. Two o’clock.” Paul, sitting at the bar behind them, directs them and both he and Annie look toward where he indicates. The sunlight streaming in through the open door is blinding and all Finnick sees is the black silhouette of a man weaving a path between tables, heading more or less directly toward them. It wasn’t an issue when they arrived hours before, and by the time it was, there were no other tables available. The man stops beside them and Finnick stands, shifting so that he’s no longer blinded.
The man -Finnick’s age, a few pounds heavier from muscle, an inch or two shorter - is the same one who sought shelter from the rain in Macray’s store a few days earlier.
“Finnick Odair.” He shakes his head. “If Danny hadn’t told me who you are, I wouldn’t know you.” Smiling a little nervously, he holds out his hand, but Finnick doesn’t take him up on the offer to shake. He feels Paul walk up behind him and to the right.
That first day back at school, six weeks after he returned home a victor, Finnick went to his morning classes, endured the whispers and the stares, and as soon as the lunch bell rang, he hit the cafeteria. When he got to his usual table, tray in hand, his friends were already there - Marco and Trevor and Cayleigh - along with a couple of other kids he didn’t know. He set his tray down on the table and held out his hand.
“Hi, I’m Finnick Odair.” The boy just stared at him. They all stared at him.
No one said anything at first until the new girl looked him up and down and said, “Why are you here?”
Confused, Finnick responded, “I go to school here?”
“You’re a victor,” the boy said and still they all stared.
“I know,” Finnick said and dropped his hand. Cheeks flaming, he glanced at his friends and slid into his seat, but before he settled into his chair, the others stood. Marco was the last, clearly reluctant, but he joined them, even so. And still, none of his friends said anything.
Two girls ran up to Finnick then, asking for his autograph and the group that had been at the table took over an empty table near the wall, away from Finnick. Finnick grabbed Marco’s arm as he walked past while the girls whispered to each other and waited for their autographs.
“What’s going on?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain steady, but just then Trevor called Marco’s name.
“Finnick, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” And he hurried off to join his group, leaving Finnick staring after him.
“Problem?” Paul asks and the man drops his hand along with his smile. Under cover of the table, where no one else can see, Annie brushes her fingertips against Finnick’s, a feather-light touch that’s there and then gone. He takes strength from it, wondering, as he always does, how she can possibly know that he needs it.
“No problem,” Finnick tells him, his tone carefully neutral. He resumes his seat, grasping Annie’s hand beneath the table and Paul fades back to his stool at the bar, where he has a better view of the tavern’s common room.
“Don’t you know me, Finn? I know I’ve changed since we were kids, but-”
“I know who you are, Marco.” He can feel Annie watching him, but he doesn’t look away from this man who used to be his friend. He knows he’s holding too tightly to her hand, but he can’t make himself let go as all those old feelings come flooding back, the hurt and anger and embarrassment when his friends abandoned him all those years ago. “Sit.”
Marco sits across from Finnick as Annie kicks Finnick under the table and he finally tears his gaze away to look at her; he still feels it on his ankle bone where the hard sole of her shoe struck. “Are you going to introduce us?” she asks him pointedly.
“Marco Sullivan, this is my wife, Annie.” Marco’s eyes widen and he looks from Finnick to Annie and back again. “Marco and I met when we were five and were pretty much inseparable until I was reaped.” She leans in a little closer to Finnick then and he knows he must be hurting her hand. Abruptly, he releases it, but she doesn’t move away, just lays it on his thigh, a steadying pressure. A peal of laughter rings out from a table near the door, quickly followed by several other voices. Marco says something, but Finnick doesn’t hear it, momentarily lost in another memory of two twelve-year-old boys sneaking into the Shark Bait through the open door and slipping behind the bar to steal some beer or whatever else they could get away with.
“Why are you here, Mr. Sullivan?” Annie asks.
“Danny put out the word - discreetly - that your husband was back in the district and looking to hire a few able bodied seamen.”
Annie starts asking the questions she’s heard Finnick ask half a dozen times that afternoon and Finnick lets her as he tries to reconcile the hurt little boy he once was with the man he is now, who needs to hire a few men and women to work his boats.
xXx
They lay naked in their bunk on the Victorious, rocking on the water as she strains at her anchor. Although Annie can still feel the way he moved inside her, Finnick’s head rests on her stomach, his stubbled cheek scratching a little at her skin; his warm breath tickles every time he exhales. His hair is growing out - as is hers - the darkness of the dye slowly giving way to his normal bronze color and she hopes he’ll let that continue. She threads her fingers through the soft strands, combing it over and over as she listens to the water lap against the hull.
Everyone else is either on the island or the Notorious, the name she gave the cutter the day they saw a news clip from the Capitol in the Shark Bait Tavern. The reporter called its capture an act of piracy on the high seas, committed by the notorious Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta, victors turned rebel, criminals who threw President Snow’s mercy in his face when they broke their parole and ran from the Capitol. She smiles as she remembers the applause offered up throughout the tavern. Within moments, Finnick and Paul had started talking about things like homemade mines they could use as an underwater fence around the island.
Finnick shifts and slowly strokes his thumb over her hip as he begins to sing softly, a lullaby. She doesn’t recognize it at first, but she strains to listen, feeling his voice sink into her skin and bones, flowing with her blood to every part of her body.
Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, look downward to find us,
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease.
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.
Annie closes her eyes, lets herself drift as the soft sound of her husband’s voice, singing that ancient song, surrounds her and their child, weaving a cocoon around them. She sleeps.
xXx
They take the freighter without a single shot fired. She’s larger than the Victorious and Notorious combined, and has more manpower, but the moment her captain realizes who it is chasing them, he slows.
Her refrigerated hold is filled with fish and shellfish bound for the Capitol by way of District 4’s rail hub. Finnick and crew stop her about twelve miles from shore.
Despite the fact there’s no resistance, Finnick’s heart is in his throat the entire time. The whole thing is like a dream and even when it’s over, when they take the freighter and her cargo to a drop point south of town and turn things over to Arturo Fallon and Danny Malone for distribution to the people of the district, he feels like he should be waking up any minute now. And then he laughs, although it’s not a happy sound. If this is a dream, he thinks, there’d be a lot more death and blood and I’d wake up screaming.
xXx
Annie stands a little above the water line on hard-packed sand; the tide is coming in, so she’ll have to move soon if she wants to keep her feet and the bottoms of her jeans dry. The gusting wind whips her hair around her face, stinging where the ends strike her cheeks and forehead, but she doesn’t do anything to stop it. She watches as the sun sinks lower in the sky, just kissing the horizon and setting fire to the clouds, sleekly braided mares’ tails turned gold and lavender, fuchsia and rose and tangerine. The setting sun is warm on her face even as she pulls her thick sweater more tightly around her.
In spite of the wind’s attempts to blow the sounds away, she hears Finnick’s footsteps when he comes down the slope of the beach to join her. She wasn’t sure if he would, but she’d hoped… In their more than five years together, Annie can count the number of arguments they’ve had on the fingers of one hand. She hates it when they fight, doesn’t like feeling as though there’s an invisible wall between them.
He stops behind her, not close enough to touch. She tears her gaze away from the brilliant gold light of the sun, the ever intensifying colors reflected in the clouds, to look down at the gentle swell of her stomach, at the belt that holds her jeans closed since she can’t button the top two buttons. Your father and I wouldn’t have fought today, if it weren’t for you, little one. She’ll have to see if Stefana or Mrs. Macray might have anything looser that she can wear, at least for a few months.
“Annie, I’m sorry.” His voice is rough, as if he might have been crying. She lifts a hand and spreads her fingers over her stomach and the life growing inside her.
“I’m sorry, too,” she says, barely more than a whisper, but he hears her all the same; the same wind that tries to take his voice away from her carries her voice to him. He takes two small steps forward and slips his arms around her waist, tentatively at first, but when she doesn’t step away, he pulls her back against his chest, joining his right hand with hers over their baby. With his free hand, he gathers her hair and pulls it back to trap it between her shoulders and his chest. He kisses the spot on her neck beneath the point of her jaw.
“I know you would never do anything to hurt the baby,” he says against her neck. “I know that, but I…”
“But you worry. I know that, Finnick. I worry, too.” She tilts her head a little to the right to rub her cheek against his. “I want this baby. I do.” She turns around in his arms, slides hers up around his neck, rests her forehead against his. “But they told me once that you were dead.” That awful day, locked in a cell in the depths of the Capitol, surrounded by strangers who knew all about her but who she knew not at all, Snow had told her Finnick died when the arena fell. “I can’t go through that again. If you go into danger, then I’m going with you.” She tilts her head to kiss his mouth. “It’s hard enough for me to let you go when all you’re doing is going into town.” She kisses him again, more urgently. “Please don’t ask me to stay on the island when I might never see you again.” When she kisses him again, whispering, “Please don’t leave me,” he kisses her back and his arms tighten around her as she repeats “please” over and over against his mouth.
Finally he tears his mouth from hers and pulls back, pushes his fingers into her hair and swipes with his thumbs at tears she didn’t know had fallen. “Annie, I love you. We’ll figure something out.”
xXx
Finnick lifts his sunglasses to check their heading and glance at the course Paul follows with a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Grinning, he drops the glasses back over his eyes and says, “You’re doing fine, Paul. Relax.” It’s the ex-Peacekeeper’s first time doing everything by himself, from figuring their course to steering her in. They’ve been out for hours and Paul has been nervous the entire time, but those white knuckles are the only obvious indication. The man’s a rock, Finnick thinks, which is only fitting for a man born in District 2.
Paul slants him a look and then sets his dark eyes back on the horizon. “I’ll relax when we make land.” Finnick laughs.
“Listen to you. You’re starting to sound like a native.” Paul snorts. Finnick leans back against a bridge roof support and studies the man who he now counts as a friend. If it weren’t for Paul Rubius, he and Annie would still be in the Capitol, they’d still be used by whoever paid Snow’s asking price. The fact that they’re not and that this new child will be born far from Snow’s icy reach is a debt Finnick can never repay.
“Why’d you do it, Paul?” he asks. It’s a question that’s been on his mind for months, ever since that night on the train. Paul glances at Finnick again and then once more returns his attention to steering the boat. Finnick doesn’t press for an answer, but after a minute or so, Paul gives him one, of sorts.
“Did you know that I was on track for the arena?” Finnick lowers his glasses a touch to peer over the tops at the older man.
“Really. No, I had no idea.” Although District 4 trains its children so they at least have a chance at survival in the Games, it’s nothing like the training in Districts 1 and 2. Especially in 2, where the vast majority of those trainees go on to be Peacekeepers. “I guess I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“I was in Enobaria’s class.” Another glance at Finnick and then away again. “But where she was tapped to volunteer our last year, they decided I wouldn’t work out after all.” Finnick raises one eyebrow at that.
“Why not?”
Paul smiles, but doesn’t look at Finnick, instead keeping his gaze carefully trained on his instruments. “It seems I have a fairly strong sense of empathy.” He laughs. “I was told that while I had what it took to become a victor, I was not suitable to be a victor.” Finally he raises his eyes to look at Finnick once more. “They thought if I won the Games, I’d end up more like you than, say, Enobaria or Brutus.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Finnick quips.
Paul deadpans, “They didn’t want to risk a victor from Two becoming an emotional wreck.”
“Oh, ouch. Just for that, Mr. Rubius, you get to scrub out the bilge.” They both laugh, but then Paul turns serious.
“The Capitol, and especially President Snow, never treated you with the respect you deserved as a victor. But worse, you and Annie and those kids from Twelve, from where I sat, were little more than property. And if Snow treated you that way, then I couldn’t help but believe that he treated our victors that way, too.” He frowned as he said it, looking as troubled by it as Finnick had ever seen from the usually unflappable Paul Rubius. “Enobaria and Lyme both confirmed that.”
“You spoke to them about it?”
“Yes, when I had downtime during the Games.” He slants another look at Finnick. “Snow should never have put Lyme in a control collar.” He looks down at his coordinates and makes a slight course correction. “And having done that, he should never have sent her as an example back to Two. He should never have tortured Enobaria as though she were a rebel.”
“She wasn’t. A rebel, I mean. I tried to talk her into it in the arena, at the end, but she still didn’t join us.”
Paul snorts. “That was then.”
“Oh, really?”
xXx
The water is calm and there isn’t a breath of wind as Annie walks along the railing, pausing every few yards to watch out along the horizon. They’ve been out since just after dawn, testing the refurbished winch and the new fishing nets they’d finished installing the day before; once they’ve gathered up enough fish to make the trip worthwhile, they’ll head into town to trade for fuel for the engines. It won’t be a wash, but the trade should make up for the shortfall in their cash. At least that’s the hope.
Rounding the bow, she sees nothing troubling in the path ahead. Neither were there any problems to either aft or port, but there’s a flash on the flat horizon to starboard. Lifting her binoculars, she focuses in on the area and sees another boat. From this distance, she can’t tell anything useful about it, not size or configuration or whether it might be friend or foe. She leans into the Victorious’ bridge and catches Finnick’s attention.
“We have company to starboard. They’re too far away to tell anything.”
Nodding, he tells her, “Keep an eye on them.” Shifting, she leans back against one of the bridge support struts and lifts a hand to shade her eyes from the hazy sun. In spite of the sunshine, Annie smells rain; there is a front rolling in from the west, and it must be getting closer.
Another flash and she raises the glasses again. “Finnick,” she calls over her shoulder. “They’ve turned toward us.” She still can’t identify her markings, but they draw noticeably closer as she watches through the binoculars. “They’re moving pretty fast.” Behind her she hears him swear and then call for Kian and Marco.
The light grows dimmer as clouds roll over the sun. A gust of air swirls over the bridge to caress Annie’s face, much cooler than the ambient air temperature and she sees a jagged line of lightning over the water to her right. A few seconds later, Marco slips past her with a murmured apology as he hurries to man the forward gun, a belt-fed machine gun transferred from the Notorious and concealed beneath a tarp and some coils of rope. As soon as he’s past, she checks again - the other boat is close enough that she can see the Capitol markings and the spray of water in her wake.
“They’re Peacekeepers,” she calls, “and they’ve definitely spotted us.” Another gust of wind whips the ends of Annie’s ponytail across her cheek, more a slap than a caress, and a rumble of thunder sounds in the distance. Lightning lights up the ugly gray clouds overhead and when the wind gusts again, it doesn’t die back down. The sails start to fill and she hears Finnick directing Stefana and Luis to secure things against the storm as the Victorious begins to roll with the suddenly heavy seas.
Annie jumps at a sharp crack followed by a low rumble of thunder and the skies seem to open up, rain coming down in cold, gusty sheets. The wind picks up and the seas swell and Annie grabs hold of the support strut just to keep her feet under her as the Victorious rolls with the wind whipped waves. She can see the Peacekeeper cutter, larger than the Notorious, without the aid of her binoculars now, they’ve come so close, her running lights and the lights in her command center cutting through the sheets of water flowing from the sky.
She’s already nearly blinded by rain when a spotlight from the cutter tries to finish the job, locking onto her face before she has a chance to turn her head to the side. There’s another sharp crack that she at first thinks is thunder, but then she hears the ping of metal striking metal and something hits her cheek, stinging. The Peacekeepers are shooting at them - at her.
“Finnick!” Annie shouts in warning as she drops to the deck outside the circle of light, and Marco opens up on the cutter with the machine gun. There is answering fire from the Peacekeepers as Finnick turns the ketch hard to port.
A spear of lightning rips down from the clouds and strikes the Peacekeeper’s command center with a shower of sparks and the acrid stench of ozone, both quickly washed away by the driving rain. The wind and sea seem to lift the ketch up and throw her back down again and Annie’s breath catches in her throat as her feet go out from under her; the only thing that keeps the water that suddenly covers the deck from sweeping her overboard is the arm she manages to lock around the starboard railing when she hits it with bruising force. It feels as though one of her ribs snaps, a bright bloom of pain as the water roars in her ears and the earth heaves beneath her. A cannon report splits the air as a wall of dark green water rushes toward her and Annie begins to scream.
xXx
In the wake of the storm, Mairenn spots a small chain of islands, dark smudges on the horizon, and Finnick has Stefana steer the Victorious as best she can in that direction. They’re almost out of fuel, they have a cracked mainmast, they don’t know where they are, and there’s a Peacekeeper cutter out there somewhere; they’re not going home just yet.
He carefully sets Annie down on their bunk and she immediately curls in on herself in the center of the mattress, covering her ears with her hands. He reaches out to stroke the wet tangle of her hair.
“Annie, love,” he murmurs, his voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me. I need you.”
She’s shivering, but there’s nothing he can do about that. Between the rain and the waves that washed over the ketch in the course of the storm, everything is waterlogged, even the mattress on which she lies, and they don’t have any dry clothes to change into.
Her eyes are open, but unseeing, focused inward rather than out. Finnick doesn’t know how many times he’s seen her like this over the years, fewer and fewer as she moved further from the arena, but this is worse even than when they first took to the water during their escape through District 11. Her state now is akin to the days when she was fresh from the Games and he thinks it must be because of the waves that crashed over the deck during the storm mimicking her flooded arena.
“Uncle Finnick?” He starts at the sound of Mairenn’s voice behind him, tries to cover it up by straightening Annie’s wet clothes. He turns his head to look at his niece over his shoulder. “We’re anchored. Stefana found a little cove on one of the bigger islands.” He nods and she steps into the cabin, stopping beside him.
Looking down at Annie, she asks, “Do you think she might feel better on land?” and Finnick knows she’s thinking of their first trip on the open sea, too. Annie blinks once, slowly, and shivers, drawing herself into a tighter ball. He sits on the edge of the bunk and pulls his wife into his arms. When he’s sure he has control of his voice, he looks up at Mairenn.
“It can’t hurt.” Behind her, he sees the sun shining as though the storm they just passed through never existed. “You and Luis arm yourselves and go ashore, make sure there aren’t any unpleasant surprises waiting for us. Have Marco check in with me regarding the damage to the mast. Set everyone else to cleaning up unless Marco needs them for repairs.”
Over the next hour or so, Finnick sits with Annie and listens to the sounds of the crew moving around the Victorious, putting things back where they belong. Marco reports that he should be able to rig the mast so they can make their way back to Victors’ Island without using the engines, provided they don’t run into any more storms or high winds. Or Peacekeepers.
It’s still a bit of a shock to Finnick even after almost two weeks, seeing his former friend on a regular basis. There’s an invisible wall between them that was never there when they were kids, though, and he wonders if that wall will ever come down. They haven’t talked much since Annie convinced him hiring Marco would be a good thing. Paul had concurred, or he wouldn’t have done, even with Annie’s blessing.
When Mairenn returns and says she and Luis found no signs of human habitation and no evidence of potentially dangerous wildlife, he has the two take Annie ashore in the skiff while Marco, Kevan, Kian, and Stefana work on shoring up the mast. “I’ll come ashore and stay with her as soon as I figure out where we are,” he tells them as he heads back to the bridge to take a reading from the ketch’s navigation system.
The only thing in their favor at the moment is that the storm that blew them off course and damaged their mast also tore half the command center from the Peacekeeper cutter, taking with it most of their electronics. The Peacekeepers are running blind, deaf, and dumb and have far more important things to worry about than catching a group of renegades. Or so Finnick hopes. Snow’s wanted posters do say “dead or alive” and the reward offered is substantial.
He makes note of their current location and compares it to the map. He’ll work out the details of the course when they’re ready to leave, but it looks like it won’t take too long to get home, provided Marco can stabilize the mainmast enough to run under sail without worrying about losing it entirely. Marco’s father was a shipwright and Marco used to help him in the yard when he wasn’t in school. Even though he turned to fishing as an adult, that early experience gives them a far better chance than they’d have if Finnick had left him behind.
When Finnick checks in before going ashore, Marco tells him that, if all goes well, they’ll be able to sail in a couple of hours. It’ll still be light out long enough to get them most of the way to Victors’ Island, not that it would be a bad thing if they waited until dark before setting sail.
The water is warm and welcoming when Finnick dives off the back of the ketch. The cove, the beach, the trees, they all remind him of the Games, but he tells himself as he surfaces that he doesn’t have to worry about someone trying to kill him here or what kind of or how many mutts there might be lurking beneath the surface of the water. Taking a deep breath, he goes under again and lets the water’s peace take him as he swims underwater toward shore, and when he surfaces once more, Mairenn stands ankle deep in the water, watching him. He floats a little closer and then slogs through the waves to join her, shaking water from his hair like a dog. She leads him up the beach toward the trees where Luis sits with Annie; she’s no longer curled into a fetal position, but rather sits rocking on the beach, looking out at the blue-green water.
“If you two want to go explore, I’ve got her. Just be careful and don’t go too far,” he tells them. “The repairs will take another couple of hours and we’ll leave as soon as we can after that.”
He drops to the sand beside Annie and, although she doesn’t stop rocking, doesn’t change her expression, she leans into him. That simple fact, so clearly not accidental, goes a long way to quieting the loop of what if she doesn’t come back this time? that’s been playing in the back of his mind since the storm ended.
Mairenn disappears into the trees after Luis and Finnick can almost see the monkeys just inside the tree line, waiting, although he knows there’s nothing there. He hears a screech off to his left, coming from somewhere in the jungle, and a shudder ripples through him. His first thought, even though it sounds nothing like a human voice, is jabberjays and he tells himself to stop it.
Rolling onto his back, Finnick pulls Annie down beside him and rests her head on his shoulder. One arm loosely holding her, he puts his free hand under his own head and stares up at the dazzling blue sky. There aren’t even any clouds to distract himself with, so rather than think about the arena and monkeys and jabberjays - rather than giving in to irrational fear - he pushes his brain into more productive waters.
It’s early November. They’ve been in District 4 for a little over two months and the Peacekeepers know they’re living on Victors’ Island, although they haven’t tried to do anything about it since they lost a boat to Paul’s mine field. Between that, the lookout posted on the knoll whenever they’re on the island, and Paul’s contacts within the Peacekeeper ranks, they’ve managed to be someplace else every time it became an issue.
The baby is due in mid-April, and while the weather can still be dicey that early in spring, it should be warm. Even so, he wants to have a less well-known place to live well before then, which means abandoning Victors’ Island as soon as they can. They could probably find a place on the mainland. No one he’s run into so far would turn them in, but then he knows better than anyone that everyone and everything has a price, and the rewards offered by the Capitol for their capture are high enough that he’s tempted himself.
He closes his eyes against the dazzling sun. Annie is a warm weight by his side and she’s no longer trembling. Finnick begins to relax, listening to the sounds of the wind and the water, the sounds of home. We could always settle here, he thinks. The islands weren’t on the maps or charts when he compared the Victorious’ current position to them. Working out some of the things they’ll have to determine before they make a decision, he slips into sleep.
xXx
Hushed voices wake Annie. She doesn’t know who they belong to - it’s hard to identify little more than whispers - only that they’re talking about whether or not it’s safe to leave “them” on the beach alone while those voices go off to explore. A shadow falls over her and Annie forces herself to remain still, to keep breathing evenly; the shadow moves away.
“They’re both out. I think they’ll be fine.” There’s nothing after that, just the sounds of the sea, the wind through leaves, the steady beat of Finnick’s heart. She remains still for a little while longer before opening her eyes.
Her head rests on Finnick’s chest. Without moving, she sees the Victorious at anchor, the blue-green of the water melding with the blue of the sky, the only thing marking the separation between being the sparkle of the water under the sun. From the angle and feel of the light, she judges it’s mid-afternoon. She has no idea where they are; it’s not Victors’ Island.
She sits up carefully, not wanting to disturb Finnick, and only then becomes aware of how sore her body is, how stiff her muscles are. Her throat hurts and when she turns a certain way, her left side hurts. And then she remembers.
Annie remembers, but it’s all a tangle in her mind. A wall of dark green water slamming into her and dragging her under. Spinning endlessly, end over end, sinking with nothing to grab onto to save herself. Her lungs desperately in need of air but finding none to breathe. Screaming her throat raw until there was no more sound. Clinging desperately to the railing as the green and salty water pulled at her, streaming over the deck and over the side. Thunder crashing. Cannons crashing. Lightning crashing. Hands dragging her away from the metal railing, the only point of stability that remained.
She lifts her hands to her head, covers her ears, squeezes her eyes shut so hard she sees little flutters of white light. She doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. After a moment, she forces herself to breathe again and to lower her hands. She doesn’t open her eyes, though. Concentrating only on breathing slowly and naturally, she starts to feel the warmth of the sun on her arms and legs, on her face, to smell the sweet scent of the wind flowing through the trees to play with her hair and stroke her face, to hear the white noise in the background that is the sea. She opens her eyes.
Finnick sleeps on his back on the sand, one arm flung over his head, the other - the one she slept on - out to the side. Even in sleep, he looks exhausted. There are dark circles under his eyes and tiny lines between his eyebrows that she doesn’t recall seeing there before. She reaches out to smooth those lines but pulls back before touching him. Instead, moving cautiously because of her stiff muscles, she kneels beside him and leans over. Holding her hair back, she lightly kisses that spot between his eyes; he murmurs something unintelligible and shifts, but doesn’t wake, and Annie smiles.
Sitting back, she looks around at the wall of trees that lines the beach. The direction of the sun tells her that when they lay down, she and Finnick were in the shade. There’s a path into the trees nearby, but it’s not where the whisperers went to explore; the footprints in the sand lead farther up the beach, away from the Victorious. With a glance at her sleeping husband, Annie rolls to her feet and heads toward the path.
It’s not really a path, she sees when she gets closer, but a dry stream leading from the trees down to the water, breaking up and spreading out in tiny runnels and shallow canyons when it reaches the beach. Annie hears a weird cry that might be a sound of distress, coming from somewhere up the path, but when she stops to listen, she hears nothing more threatening than the breeze and a few insects. Peering into the trees, she hears the sound again, sees a flash of bright yellow as something small passes through a patch of sunshine on the ground.
Biting her lower lip, she looks back at Finnick and then forward into the trees again. It’s only a few feet in… Calling herself a fool, knowing she shouldn’t, especially if, as she suspects, she had another flashback to her Games - what if Finnick wakes and finds her gone? What if she has another episode? - she follows the streambed into the trees and stops at a small clearing about twenty feet in.
Staring at her from the middle of the clearing is a bright blue and yellow bird with a great black beak and pale, suspicious eyes. It holds one wing out to the side and when Annie takes a few steps closer, it drags that wing along the sandy ground as it tries to back away from her.
“I won’t hurt you, little one,” she tells it and steps closer yet. It squawks at her and flaps its good wing, stirring up dust and sand. She looks around for something to keep the bird’s beak occupied and finds a stick a good inch or so around, but the bird surprises her by stepping onto the stick, rather than attacking it. Still, when she reaches out a tentative finger to touch its back, the bird screeches at her, the sound almost deafening, and she falls back with a startled laugh.
xXx
A bloodcurdling screech splits the air followed by a thick, unnatural silence punctuated only by the breaking waves. Finnick surges to his feet, spinning in place, but sees no one. He’s alone.
“Annie…”
The birds and insects that make up the background noise resume their songs as Finnick runs up the beach toward where the sound came from. He doesn’t hesitate, plunging into the jungle, ruthlessly quashing the sudden fear that tries to overtake him. Remembered terror is no match for what’s running through him now.
“Annie!” he shouts as he crashes through the trees and undergrowth. “Annie!” He sees her on the ground beside a patch of bright blue and yellow in the middle of a small clearing. It takes him a moment to process that it’s not the right color for blood, that there’s no scent of blood in the air, only something sweet, like honey or vanilla. “Annie?” She’s not hurt. She looks up at him and he’s torn between the terror that still makes his heart pound and elation that she’s come back to him, that she’s no longer trapped inside her own head.
His heart in his throat, he comes closer, drops to his knees beside her, searching her face. “I heard a scream…”
“It wasn’t me,” she says. “Oh, my love, it wasn’t me.” She looks down at her lap and back up at him. “It’s okay, Finnick. I’m fine. It’s just a bird.” She seems to realize then just how frightened he still is and reaches up to touch his face. “It wasn’t a jabberjay, love, just a bird.” He blinks and the patches of brilliant color resolve into blue and yellow feathers and a shiny black beak.
The bird hisses at Finnick, staring at him with unblinking pale gray eyes. “A bird,” he repeats, his pulse finally beginning to slow. “It’s a macaw.” Annie reaches for Finnick’s hand and the bird - a young one, from the size of it - puffs up its feathers and flaps its wings. Or rather it flaps one wing; the other remains at an unnatural angle along its side.
Finnick relaxes back onto his heels, twisting his hand around to grip hers tightly. Closing his eyes, he sways in place as he pushes the terror back down into its hole. Annie lifts Finnick’s hand and kisses his knuckles; he raises his free hand to stroke her cheek.
“I don’t suppose there’s any possibility that we’re not taking the bird with us?” he asks. Annie’s answering smile is radiant and Finnick dissolves into somewhat hysterical laughter as Mairenn and Luis come crashing through the trees.
“Uncle Finnick, we-” She stops and Finnick watches as she takes in the scene, her expression changing from fear to confusion. Luis kneels beside Annie and reaches toward the bird, making it squawk again, which just makes Finnick laugh harder.
“It’s hurt…”
“You’re as bad as she is,” Finnick says, nodding toward his wife.
In the end, Finnick gives up his shirt to wrap the bird so it can’t hurt either itself or anyone else, and they all troop back through the trees to the beach. It reminds him once more of the Quarter Quell arena - Mairenn and Luis instead of Katniss and Peeta, Annie instead of Johanna - but this time the memory doesn’t bring fear with it.
When they leave the jungle, a shout from the Victorious breaks the illusion. Looking in that direction, he sees Stefana waving at them. “She’s ready to sail!” His gaze shifts to the mainmast, standing straight and tall like its fellows.
Lifting his hands to form a cup around his mouth, Finnick shouts, “We’re on our way!”
Once back on board, it doesn’t take Finnick long to confirm their position and then put together a course to take them back home in as short a time as possible. If they don’t run into trouble, they shouldn’t have to fire the engines. Running strictly under sail, they should dock in less than two hours, not long after nightfall.
Annie takes the juvenile macaw below to their cabin; although Marco and the Obispos look as though they want to say something, either about the cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms or about her recovery from the near catatonic state in which she left, they don’t. If they have questions, they keep them to themselves and swing into action alongside Mairenn and Luis, preparing the Victorious to head out.
The trip home is uneventful, if somewhat slower than Finnick would like. The skies remain clear and the winds steady and the moon is on the rise when they draw near to the cove. The moon’s light is plenty bright enough to illuminate a strange boat at anchor beside the Notorious. Inside the minefield. Looking past the two boats, he sees figures on the beach moving back and forth between a couple of fires, but they’re too far away to make out voices.
He feels Annie come up beside him, knowing it’s her before she says, “We have visitors.”
“Looks like. And it’s someone Paul trusts.” He glances at her. “Where’s your bird?”
“Asleep on the bed frame.” She stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. “I’m sorry I left you.” Her apology is for more than simply leaving him asleep on the beach. He slips an arm around her waist and pulls her close.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Kissing her on the forehead, he continues, “Shall we go see who our visitors are?” Sliding her arm around his waist, she nods and Finnick guides the ketch into the cove and a few minutes later, the Victorious rests at anchor with the cutter and the strange fishing boat and her crew is on the beach.
Finnick jumps into the water when they’re close enough to help Kian pull the skiff up onto the sand. Paul wades out to join them.
“We have visitors,” he warns and Finnick shoots him a look.
“No kidding.” He doesn’t ask for an explanation and Paul grins.
“I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised…”
Just then Finnick hears Mairenn shout, “Mama!” He straightens abruptly and turns toward the group gathered around the fire in time to see Mair throw herself into her mother’s waiting arms. Beside them, Xal moves in to join the hug. And then his gaze fixes on the woman striding down the sand toward him and he’s suddenly fourteen again.
“Mom?”
Laughing and crying at the same time, Jenna Odair pulls her youngest child into her arms and he clings to her. Whoever brought them here and why, at that moment, he just doesn’t care.
Chapter 3 - Dead or Alive
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 8,248
Beta: deathmallow
Fanmix and artwork: alinaandalion
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy, Johanna Mason, Coriolanus Snow, Enobaria, original characters
Summary: Finnick and Annie become pirates and accidentally start a second rebellion.
Author's note: Written for the het_bigbang challenge, this is the sequel to and continuation of Victorious, which you can read in its entirety here. The lullaby Finnick sings in this chapter is The Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling.
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Chapter 2 - There Once Was a Pirate
The air is so humid Annie feels almost as though she’s swimming as she browses the shelves of Edwin Macray’s general store. She trails her fingers along the edge of a shelf, looking down at the neatly folded sweaters stacked there. It’s a reminder that colder weather is on the way, although they’re far enough south that it’s never too cold.
“Do you have any valerian root, Mr. Macray?” Annie turns to look at Mairenn, standing beside the counter, backlit by the nearby window. Beyond her the afternoon is gray and Annie thinks rain can’t possibly be far away, as wet as the air is. She picks up a deep blue cable-knit sweater, liking the feel of it against her palms. This would look good on Finnick. If they had any money to spare, she’d buy it for him.
“Powder or pill?” the merchant asks Mairenn. Finnick stops beside his niece.
“What’s that for, Mair?”
“Powder, Mr. Macray.” To her uncle she says, “I used what was in the first aid kit when Annie was… when I bandaged Annie’s arm. It reduces pain and helps you sleep.” Annie puts the sweater back down and looks sharply at Mairenn. Is that why I felt so out of it the day after?
“You what?” Finnick asks, frowning. Annie starts to weave her way through the tables and shelves of merchandise toward the counter. Outside the window she sees people scurry about as rain begins to fall in heavy sheets; the bell over the door to the shop sounds as someone runs inside.
“She was hurting and Gramma always says sleep is best for healing. I just…” Her voice trails off as Annie reaches them and lays a hand on Finnick’s arm; she hasn’t seen him this angry in a long time.
“She’s pregnant, Mairenn,” Finnick spits out, his voice raised. Annie says his name and squeezes his arm, nodding toward the man who just came in as he wipes his wet face on his sleeve and looks around the store. His gaze passes over them, but Finnick’s eyes widen in recognition. Turning back to Mairenn, he lowers his voice so that only she and Annie can hear. “Did you even think of that, let alone bothering to ask her?”
“No, Uncle Finnick, I…” She sends a stricken look toward Annie and says, “I thought it would help her. And I’m sure Gramma gave it to Aunt Shandra when she was pregnant with Rhys. I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me.”
With another glance at the dark-haired man by the door, he grinds out, “This isn’t the fucking Capitol. You gave her something without even telling her. You-” He starts to say something else, but Annie stops him.
“Finnick, it’s okay. She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“And that’s supposed to make it okay? We have no idea how something like that could affect the baby.”
“The baby is fine, love,” she says, her voice calm and soft as she glances toward the stranger, but he’s paying them no attention, more interested in a shelf of canned goods on the far wall. She thinks he’s too far away to hear them anyway.
“You don’t know that,” Finnick replies, no longer quite so intense.
“It won’t happen again, Uncle Finnick. Annie, I’m sorry.” Annie nods and gives the girl’s arm a reassuring squeeze. Finnick still looks unhappy, but not quite so angry when he taps his fingers once on the counter.
“Maybe Macray knows a good doctor,” he says as he walks toward the other end of the counter, where Edwin Macray retreated in the face of their family discussion.
xXx
Finnick sits with Annie at a table meant for four in the back of Danny Malone’s tavern, the Shark Bait. He’s been here many times before, but the most memorable - in a surreal, fever dream sort of way - was the day Snow announced the terms of the Quarter Quell. He’d been here with his father and his uncles, Corin and Rick. Rick was dead now, executed for treason, and his father and Corin hadn’t been heard from since the war ended and they’d gone into hiding along with Finnick’s brother Kyle, his sister Shandra, and his niece Alona, Kyle’s oldest child. Thinking about his family now, he’d like to seek out his mother, living with friends here in town, but Peacekeepers have the house under surveillance, so he hasn’t even chanced sending her a message. If the Peacekeepers thought he was this near, they’d simply take her into custody, hoping to force him to come forward.
The door to the tavern is open to let in the light from the late-afternoon sun and the early autumn breeze which flows around the large room as easily as the various conversations. Beside him, Annie literally picks at her fish sandwich, pulling bits of bread from it and dropping them onto a small heap in the center of her plate. Wondering if she’s going to eventually eat it or just play with it, Finnick smiles and sips at his beer, listening to the conversations that surround them.
“Did you hear Andy Delmar collapsed yesterday? They say he starved to…”
“… raised the damn quotas again.”
“You can’t live on what little they leave us.”
“… paid a weeks’ wages just for two hours out on the bay. Can you believe that? It’s enough to make…”
“Are they ever going to cut Reyes down?” Even in the dimness in the back of the tavern, Finnick sees Annie shudder at that last, asked by a woman one table to their left.
“Is that the man we passed in the square?” she asks, her voice low. Finnick nods.
“It must be.” There had been a sign hanging across the man’s chest indicating he was a poacher, a three-time offender. He’d been there so long his flesh was picked over by birds and insects; what little remained still clinging to his bones had turned black and leathery in the sun and salt air. Finnick didn’t want to meet the Head Peacekeeper who would do something like that. Leto, the Head just before the Quell, was replaced sometime after the Games.
“Finnick. Two o’clock.” Paul, sitting at the bar behind them, directs them and both he and Annie look toward where he indicates. The sunlight streaming in through the open door is blinding and all Finnick sees is the black silhouette of a man weaving a path between tables, heading more or less directly toward them. It wasn’t an issue when they arrived hours before, and by the time it was, there were no other tables available. The man stops beside them and Finnick stands, shifting so that he’s no longer blinded.
The man -Finnick’s age, a few pounds heavier from muscle, an inch or two shorter - is the same one who sought shelter from the rain in Macray’s store a few days earlier.
“Finnick Odair.” He shakes his head. “If Danny hadn’t told me who you are, I wouldn’t know you.” Smiling a little nervously, he holds out his hand, but Finnick doesn’t take him up on the offer to shake. He feels Paul walk up behind him and to the right.
That first day back at school, six weeks after he returned home a victor, Finnick went to his morning classes, endured the whispers and the stares, and as soon as the lunch bell rang, he hit the cafeteria. When he got to his usual table, tray in hand, his friends were already there - Marco and Trevor and Cayleigh - along with a couple of other kids he didn’t know. He set his tray down on the table and held out his hand.
“Hi, I’m Finnick Odair.” The boy just stared at him. They all stared at him.
No one said anything at first until the new girl looked him up and down and said, “Why are you here?”
Confused, Finnick responded, “I go to school here?”
“You’re a victor,” the boy said and still they all stared.
“I know,” Finnick said and dropped his hand. Cheeks flaming, he glanced at his friends and slid into his seat, but before he settled into his chair, the others stood. Marco was the last, clearly reluctant, but he joined them, even so. And still, none of his friends said anything.
Two girls ran up to Finnick then, asking for his autograph and the group that had been at the table took over an empty table near the wall, away from Finnick. Finnick grabbed Marco’s arm as he walked past while the girls whispered to each other and waited for their autographs.
“What’s going on?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain steady, but just then Trevor called Marco’s name.
“Finnick, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” And he hurried off to join his group, leaving Finnick staring after him.
“Problem?” Paul asks and the man drops his hand along with his smile. Under cover of the table, where no one else can see, Annie brushes her fingertips against Finnick’s, a feather-light touch that’s there and then gone. He takes strength from it, wondering, as he always does, how she can possibly know that he needs it.
“No problem,” Finnick tells him, his tone carefully neutral. He resumes his seat, grasping Annie’s hand beneath the table and Paul fades back to his stool at the bar, where he has a better view of the tavern’s common room.
“Don’t you know me, Finn? I know I’ve changed since we were kids, but-”
“I know who you are, Marco.” He can feel Annie watching him, but he doesn’t look away from this man who used to be his friend. He knows he’s holding too tightly to her hand, but he can’t make himself let go as all those old feelings come flooding back, the hurt and anger and embarrassment when his friends abandoned him all those years ago. “Sit.”
Marco sits across from Finnick as Annie kicks Finnick under the table and he finally tears his gaze away to look at her; he still feels it on his ankle bone where the hard sole of her shoe struck. “Are you going to introduce us?” she asks him pointedly.
“Marco Sullivan, this is my wife, Annie.” Marco’s eyes widen and he looks from Finnick to Annie and back again. “Marco and I met when we were five and were pretty much inseparable until I was reaped.” She leans in a little closer to Finnick then and he knows he must be hurting her hand. Abruptly, he releases it, but she doesn’t move away, just lays it on his thigh, a steadying pressure. A peal of laughter rings out from a table near the door, quickly followed by several other voices. Marco says something, but Finnick doesn’t hear it, momentarily lost in another memory of two twelve-year-old boys sneaking into the Shark Bait through the open door and slipping behind the bar to steal some beer or whatever else they could get away with.
“Why are you here, Mr. Sullivan?” Annie asks.
“Danny put out the word - discreetly - that your husband was back in the district and looking to hire a few able bodied seamen.”
Annie starts asking the questions she’s heard Finnick ask half a dozen times that afternoon and Finnick lets her as he tries to reconcile the hurt little boy he once was with the man he is now, who needs to hire a few men and women to work his boats.
xXx
They lay naked in their bunk on the Victorious, rocking on the water as she strains at her anchor. Although Annie can still feel the way he moved inside her, Finnick’s head rests on her stomach, his stubbled cheek scratching a little at her skin; his warm breath tickles every time he exhales. His hair is growing out - as is hers - the darkness of the dye slowly giving way to his normal bronze color and she hopes he’ll let that continue. She threads her fingers through the soft strands, combing it over and over as she listens to the water lap against the hull.
Everyone else is either on the island or the Notorious, the name she gave the cutter the day they saw a news clip from the Capitol in the Shark Bait Tavern. The reporter called its capture an act of piracy on the high seas, committed by the notorious Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta, victors turned rebel, criminals who threw President Snow’s mercy in his face when they broke their parole and ran from the Capitol. She smiles as she remembers the applause offered up throughout the tavern. Within moments, Finnick and Paul had started talking about things like homemade mines they could use as an underwater fence around the island.
Finnick shifts and slowly strokes his thumb over her hip as he begins to sing softly, a lullaby. She doesn’t recognize it at first, but she strains to listen, feeling his voice sink into her skin and bones, flowing with her blood to every part of her body.
Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, look downward to find us,
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease.
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas.
Annie closes her eyes, lets herself drift as the soft sound of her husband’s voice, singing that ancient song, surrounds her and their child, weaving a cocoon around them. She sleeps.
xXx
They take the freighter without a single shot fired. She’s larger than the Victorious and Notorious combined, and has more manpower, but the moment her captain realizes who it is chasing them, he slows.
Her refrigerated hold is filled with fish and shellfish bound for the Capitol by way of District 4’s rail hub. Finnick and crew stop her about twelve miles from shore.
Despite the fact there’s no resistance, Finnick’s heart is in his throat the entire time. The whole thing is like a dream and even when it’s over, when they take the freighter and her cargo to a drop point south of town and turn things over to Arturo Fallon and Danny Malone for distribution to the people of the district, he feels like he should be waking up any minute now. And then he laughs, although it’s not a happy sound. If this is a dream, he thinks, there’d be a lot more death and blood and I’d wake up screaming.
xXx
Annie stands a little above the water line on hard-packed sand; the tide is coming in, so she’ll have to move soon if she wants to keep her feet and the bottoms of her jeans dry. The gusting wind whips her hair around her face, stinging where the ends strike her cheeks and forehead, but she doesn’t do anything to stop it. She watches as the sun sinks lower in the sky, just kissing the horizon and setting fire to the clouds, sleekly braided mares’ tails turned gold and lavender, fuchsia and rose and tangerine. The setting sun is warm on her face even as she pulls her thick sweater more tightly around her.
In spite of the wind’s attempts to blow the sounds away, she hears Finnick’s footsteps when he comes down the slope of the beach to join her. She wasn’t sure if he would, but she’d hoped… In their more than five years together, Annie can count the number of arguments they’ve had on the fingers of one hand. She hates it when they fight, doesn’t like feeling as though there’s an invisible wall between them.
He stops behind her, not close enough to touch. She tears her gaze away from the brilliant gold light of the sun, the ever intensifying colors reflected in the clouds, to look down at the gentle swell of her stomach, at the belt that holds her jeans closed since she can’t button the top two buttons. Your father and I wouldn’t have fought today, if it weren’t for you, little one. She’ll have to see if Stefana or Mrs. Macray might have anything looser that she can wear, at least for a few months.
“Annie, I’m sorry.” His voice is rough, as if he might have been crying. She lifts a hand and spreads her fingers over her stomach and the life growing inside her.
“I’m sorry, too,” she says, barely more than a whisper, but he hears her all the same; the same wind that tries to take his voice away from her carries her voice to him. He takes two small steps forward and slips his arms around her waist, tentatively at first, but when she doesn’t step away, he pulls her back against his chest, joining his right hand with hers over their baby. With his free hand, he gathers her hair and pulls it back to trap it between her shoulders and his chest. He kisses the spot on her neck beneath the point of her jaw.
“I know you would never do anything to hurt the baby,” he says against her neck. “I know that, but I…”
“But you worry. I know that, Finnick. I worry, too.” She tilts her head a little to the right to rub her cheek against his. “I want this baby. I do.” She turns around in his arms, slides hers up around his neck, rests her forehead against his. “But they told me once that you were dead.” That awful day, locked in a cell in the depths of the Capitol, surrounded by strangers who knew all about her but who she knew not at all, Snow had told her Finnick died when the arena fell. “I can’t go through that again. If you go into danger, then I’m going with you.” She tilts her head to kiss his mouth. “It’s hard enough for me to let you go when all you’re doing is going into town.” She kisses him again, more urgently. “Please don’t ask me to stay on the island when I might never see you again.” When she kisses him again, whispering, “Please don’t leave me,” he kisses her back and his arms tighten around her as she repeats “please” over and over against his mouth.
Finally he tears his mouth from hers and pulls back, pushes his fingers into her hair and swipes with his thumbs at tears she didn’t know had fallen. “Annie, I love you. We’ll figure something out.”
xXx
Finnick lifts his sunglasses to check their heading and glance at the course Paul follows with a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Grinning, he drops the glasses back over his eyes and says, “You’re doing fine, Paul. Relax.” It’s the ex-Peacekeeper’s first time doing everything by himself, from figuring their course to steering her in. They’ve been out for hours and Paul has been nervous the entire time, but those white knuckles are the only obvious indication. The man’s a rock, Finnick thinks, which is only fitting for a man born in District 2.
Paul slants him a look and then sets his dark eyes back on the horizon. “I’ll relax when we make land.” Finnick laughs.
“Listen to you. You’re starting to sound like a native.” Paul snorts. Finnick leans back against a bridge roof support and studies the man who he now counts as a friend. If it weren’t for Paul Rubius, he and Annie would still be in the Capitol, they’d still be used by whoever paid Snow’s asking price. The fact that they’re not and that this new child will be born far from Snow’s icy reach is a debt Finnick can never repay.
“Why’d you do it, Paul?” he asks. It’s a question that’s been on his mind for months, ever since that night on the train. Paul glances at Finnick again and then once more returns his attention to steering the boat. Finnick doesn’t press for an answer, but after a minute or so, Paul gives him one, of sorts.
“Did you know that I was on track for the arena?” Finnick lowers his glasses a touch to peer over the tops at the older man.
“Really. No, I had no idea.” Although District 4 trains its children so they at least have a chance at survival in the Games, it’s nothing like the training in Districts 1 and 2. Especially in 2, where the vast majority of those trainees go on to be Peacekeepers. “I guess I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“I was in Enobaria’s class.” Another glance at Finnick and then away again. “But where she was tapped to volunteer our last year, they decided I wouldn’t work out after all.” Finnick raises one eyebrow at that.
“Why not?”
Paul smiles, but doesn’t look at Finnick, instead keeping his gaze carefully trained on his instruments. “It seems I have a fairly strong sense of empathy.” He laughs. “I was told that while I had what it took to become a victor, I was not suitable to be a victor.” Finally he raises his eyes to look at Finnick once more. “They thought if I won the Games, I’d end up more like you than, say, Enobaria or Brutus.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Finnick quips.
Paul deadpans, “They didn’t want to risk a victor from Two becoming an emotional wreck.”
“Oh, ouch. Just for that, Mr. Rubius, you get to scrub out the bilge.” They both laugh, but then Paul turns serious.
“The Capitol, and especially President Snow, never treated you with the respect you deserved as a victor. But worse, you and Annie and those kids from Twelve, from where I sat, were little more than property. And if Snow treated you that way, then I couldn’t help but believe that he treated our victors that way, too.” He frowned as he said it, looking as troubled by it as Finnick had ever seen from the usually unflappable Paul Rubius. “Enobaria and Lyme both confirmed that.”
“You spoke to them about it?”
“Yes, when I had downtime during the Games.” He slants another look at Finnick. “Snow should never have put Lyme in a control collar.” He looks down at his coordinates and makes a slight course correction. “And having done that, he should never have sent her as an example back to Two. He should never have tortured Enobaria as though she were a rebel.”
“She wasn’t. A rebel, I mean. I tried to talk her into it in the arena, at the end, but she still didn’t join us.”
Paul snorts. “That was then.”
“Oh, really?”
xXx
The water is calm and there isn’t a breath of wind as Annie walks along the railing, pausing every few yards to watch out along the horizon. They’ve been out since just after dawn, testing the refurbished winch and the new fishing nets they’d finished installing the day before; once they’ve gathered up enough fish to make the trip worthwhile, they’ll head into town to trade for fuel for the engines. It won’t be a wash, but the trade should make up for the shortfall in their cash. At least that’s the hope.
Rounding the bow, she sees nothing troubling in the path ahead. Neither were there any problems to either aft or port, but there’s a flash on the flat horizon to starboard. Lifting her binoculars, she focuses in on the area and sees another boat. From this distance, she can’t tell anything useful about it, not size or configuration or whether it might be friend or foe. She leans into the Victorious’ bridge and catches Finnick’s attention.
“We have company to starboard. They’re too far away to tell anything.”
Nodding, he tells her, “Keep an eye on them.” Shifting, she leans back against one of the bridge support struts and lifts a hand to shade her eyes from the hazy sun. In spite of the sunshine, Annie smells rain; there is a front rolling in from the west, and it must be getting closer.
Another flash and she raises the glasses again. “Finnick,” she calls over her shoulder. “They’ve turned toward us.” She still can’t identify her markings, but they draw noticeably closer as she watches through the binoculars. “They’re moving pretty fast.” Behind her she hears him swear and then call for Kian and Marco.
The light grows dimmer as clouds roll over the sun. A gust of air swirls over the bridge to caress Annie’s face, much cooler than the ambient air temperature and she sees a jagged line of lightning over the water to her right. A few seconds later, Marco slips past her with a murmured apology as he hurries to man the forward gun, a belt-fed machine gun transferred from the Notorious and concealed beneath a tarp and some coils of rope. As soon as he’s past, she checks again - the other boat is close enough that she can see the Capitol markings and the spray of water in her wake.
“They’re Peacekeepers,” she calls, “and they’ve definitely spotted us.” Another gust of wind whips the ends of Annie’s ponytail across her cheek, more a slap than a caress, and a rumble of thunder sounds in the distance. Lightning lights up the ugly gray clouds overhead and when the wind gusts again, it doesn’t die back down. The sails start to fill and she hears Finnick directing Stefana and Luis to secure things against the storm as the Victorious begins to roll with the suddenly heavy seas.
Annie jumps at a sharp crack followed by a low rumble of thunder and the skies seem to open up, rain coming down in cold, gusty sheets. The wind picks up and the seas swell and Annie grabs hold of the support strut just to keep her feet under her as the Victorious rolls with the wind whipped waves. She can see the Peacekeeper cutter, larger than the Notorious, without the aid of her binoculars now, they’ve come so close, her running lights and the lights in her command center cutting through the sheets of water flowing from the sky.
She’s already nearly blinded by rain when a spotlight from the cutter tries to finish the job, locking onto her face before she has a chance to turn her head to the side. There’s another sharp crack that she at first thinks is thunder, but then she hears the ping of metal striking metal and something hits her cheek, stinging. The Peacekeepers are shooting at them - at her.
“Finnick!” Annie shouts in warning as she drops to the deck outside the circle of light, and Marco opens up on the cutter with the machine gun. There is answering fire from the Peacekeepers as Finnick turns the ketch hard to port.
A spear of lightning rips down from the clouds and strikes the Peacekeeper’s command center with a shower of sparks and the acrid stench of ozone, both quickly washed away by the driving rain. The wind and sea seem to lift the ketch up and throw her back down again and Annie’s breath catches in her throat as her feet go out from under her; the only thing that keeps the water that suddenly covers the deck from sweeping her overboard is the arm she manages to lock around the starboard railing when she hits it with bruising force. It feels as though one of her ribs snaps, a bright bloom of pain as the water roars in her ears and the earth heaves beneath her. A cannon report splits the air as a wall of dark green water rushes toward her and Annie begins to scream.
xXx
In the wake of the storm, Mairenn spots a small chain of islands, dark smudges on the horizon, and Finnick has Stefana steer the Victorious as best she can in that direction. They’re almost out of fuel, they have a cracked mainmast, they don’t know where they are, and there’s a Peacekeeper cutter out there somewhere; they’re not going home just yet.
He carefully sets Annie down on their bunk and she immediately curls in on herself in the center of the mattress, covering her ears with her hands. He reaches out to stroke the wet tangle of her hair.
“Annie, love,” he murmurs, his voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me. I need you.”
She’s shivering, but there’s nothing he can do about that. Between the rain and the waves that washed over the ketch in the course of the storm, everything is waterlogged, even the mattress on which she lies, and they don’t have any dry clothes to change into.
Her eyes are open, but unseeing, focused inward rather than out. Finnick doesn’t know how many times he’s seen her like this over the years, fewer and fewer as she moved further from the arena, but this is worse even than when they first took to the water during their escape through District 11. Her state now is akin to the days when she was fresh from the Games and he thinks it must be because of the waves that crashed over the deck during the storm mimicking her flooded arena.
“Uncle Finnick?” He starts at the sound of Mairenn’s voice behind him, tries to cover it up by straightening Annie’s wet clothes. He turns his head to look at his niece over his shoulder. “We’re anchored. Stefana found a little cove on one of the bigger islands.” He nods and she steps into the cabin, stopping beside him.
Looking down at Annie, she asks, “Do you think she might feel better on land?” and Finnick knows she’s thinking of their first trip on the open sea, too. Annie blinks once, slowly, and shivers, drawing herself into a tighter ball. He sits on the edge of the bunk and pulls his wife into his arms. When he’s sure he has control of his voice, he looks up at Mairenn.
“It can’t hurt.” Behind her, he sees the sun shining as though the storm they just passed through never existed. “You and Luis arm yourselves and go ashore, make sure there aren’t any unpleasant surprises waiting for us. Have Marco check in with me regarding the damage to the mast. Set everyone else to cleaning up unless Marco needs them for repairs.”
Over the next hour or so, Finnick sits with Annie and listens to the sounds of the crew moving around the Victorious, putting things back where they belong. Marco reports that he should be able to rig the mast so they can make their way back to Victors’ Island without using the engines, provided they don’t run into any more storms or high winds. Or Peacekeepers.
It’s still a bit of a shock to Finnick even after almost two weeks, seeing his former friend on a regular basis. There’s an invisible wall between them that was never there when they were kids, though, and he wonders if that wall will ever come down. They haven’t talked much since Annie convinced him hiring Marco would be a good thing. Paul had concurred, or he wouldn’t have done, even with Annie’s blessing.
When Mairenn returns and says she and Luis found no signs of human habitation and no evidence of potentially dangerous wildlife, he has the two take Annie ashore in the skiff while Marco, Kevan, Kian, and Stefana work on shoring up the mast. “I’ll come ashore and stay with her as soon as I figure out where we are,” he tells them as he heads back to the bridge to take a reading from the ketch’s navigation system.
The only thing in their favor at the moment is that the storm that blew them off course and damaged their mast also tore half the command center from the Peacekeeper cutter, taking with it most of their electronics. The Peacekeepers are running blind, deaf, and dumb and have far more important things to worry about than catching a group of renegades. Or so Finnick hopes. Snow’s wanted posters do say “dead or alive” and the reward offered is substantial.
He makes note of their current location and compares it to the map. He’ll work out the details of the course when they’re ready to leave, but it looks like it won’t take too long to get home, provided Marco can stabilize the mainmast enough to run under sail without worrying about losing it entirely. Marco’s father was a shipwright and Marco used to help him in the yard when he wasn’t in school. Even though he turned to fishing as an adult, that early experience gives them a far better chance than they’d have if Finnick had left him behind.
When Finnick checks in before going ashore, Marco tells him that, if all goes well, they’ll be able to sail in a couple of hours. It’ll still be light out long enough to get them most of the way to Victors’ Island, not that it would be a bad thing if they waited until dark before setting sail.
The water is warm and welcoming when Finnick dives off the back of the ketch. The cove, the beach, the trees, they all remind him of the Games, but he tells himself as he surfaces that he doesn’t have to worry about someone trying to kill him here or what kind of or how many mutts there might be lurking beneath the surface of the water. Taking a deep breath, he goes under again and lets the water’s peace take him as he swims underwater toward shore, and when he surfaces once more, Mairenn stands ankle deep in the water, watching him. He floats a little closer and then slogs through the waves to join her, shaking water from his hair like a dog. She leads him up the beach toward the trees where Luis sits with Annie; she’s no longer curled into a fetal position, but rather sits rocking on the beach, looking out at the blue-green water.
“If you two want to go explore, I’ve got her. Just be careful and don’t go too far,” he tells them. “The repairs will take another couple of hours and we’ll leave as soon as we can after that.”
He drops to the sand beside Annie and, although she doesn’t stop rocking, doesn’t change her expression, she leans into him. That simple fact, so clearly not accidental, goes a long way to quieting the loop of what if she doesn’t come back this time? that’s been playing in the back of his mind since the storm ended.
Mairenn disappears into the trees after Luis and Finnick can almost see the monkeys just inside the tree line, waiting, although he knows there’s nothing there. He hears a screech off to his left, coming from somewhere in the jungle, and a shudder ripples through him. His first thought, even though it sounds nothing like a human voice, is jabberjays and he tells himself to stop it.
Rolling onto his back, Finnick pulls Annie down beside him and rests her head on his shoulder. One arm loosely holding her, he puts his free hand under his own head and stares up at the dazzling blue sky. There aren’t even any clouds to distract himself with, so rather than think about the arena and monkeys and jabberjays - rather than giving in to irrational fear - he pushes his brain into more productive waters.
It’s early November. They’ve been in District 4 for a little over two months and the Peacekeepers know they’re living on Victors’ Island, although they haven’t tried to do anything about it since they lost a boat to Paul’s mine field. Between that, the lookout posted on the knoll whenever they’re on the island, and Paul’s contacts within the Peacekeeper ranks, they’ve managed to be someplace else every time it became an issue.
The baby is due in mid-April, and while the weather can still be dicey that early in spring, it should be warm. Even so, he wants to have a less well-known place to live well before then, which means abandoning Victors’ Island as soon as they can. They could probably find a place on the mainland. No one he’s run into so far would turn them in, but then he knows better than anyone that everyone and everything has a price, and the rewards offered by the Capitol for their capture are high enough that he’s tempted himself.
He closes his eyes against the dazzling sun. Annie is a warm weight by his side and she’s no longer trembling. Finnick begins to relax, listening to the sounds of the wind and the water, the sounds of home. We could always settle here, he thinks. The islands weren’t on the maps or charts when he compared the Victorious’ current position to them. Working out some of the things they’ll have to determine before they make a decision, he slips into sleep.
xXx
Hushed voices wake Annie. She doesn’t know who they belong to - it’s hard to identify little more than whispers - only that they’re talking about whether or not it’s safe to leave “them” on the beach alone while those voices go off to explore. A shadow falls over her and Annie forces herself to remain still, to keep breathing evenly; the shadow moves away.
“They’re both out. I think they’ll be fine.” There’s nothing after that, just the sounds of the sea, the wind through leaves, the steady beat of Finnick’s heart. She remains still for a little while longer before opening her eyes.
Her head rests on Finnick’s chest. Without moving, she sees the Victorious at anchor, the blue-green of the water melding with the blue of the sky, the only thing marking the separation between being the sparkle of the water under the sun. From the angle and feel of the light, she judges it’s mid-afternoon. She has no idea where they are; it’s not Victors’ Island.
She sits up carefully, not wanting to disturb Finnick, and only then becomes aware of how sore her body is, how stiff her muscles are. Her throat hurts and when she turns a certain way, her left side hurts. And then she remembers.
Annie remembers, but it’s all a tangle in her mind. A wall of dark green water slamming into her and dragging her under. Spinning endlessly, end over end, sinking with nothing to grab onto to save herself. Her lungs desperately in need of air but finding none to breathe. Screaming her throat raw until there was no more sound. Clinging desperately to the railing as the green and salty water pulled at her, streaming over the deck and over the side. Thunder crashing. Cannons crashing. Lightning crashing. Hands dragging her away from the metal railing, the only point of stability that remained.
She lifts her hands to her head, covers her ears, squeezes her eyes shut so hard she sees little flutters of white light. She doesn’t know what’s real and what isn’t. After a moment, she forces herself to breathe again and to lower her hands. She doesn’t open her eyes, though. Concentrating only on breathing slowly and naturally, she starts to feel the warmth of the sun on her arms and legs, on her face, to smell the sweet scent of the wind flowing through the trees to play with her hair and stroke her face, to hear the white noise in the background that is the sea. She opens her eyes.
Finnick sleeps on his back on the sand, one arm flung over his head, the other - the one she slept on - out to the side. Even in sleep, he looks exhausted. There are dark circles under his eyes and tiny lines between his eyebrows that she doesn’t recall seeing there before. She reaches out to smooth those lines but pulls back before touching him. Instead, moving cautiously because of her stiff muscles, she kneels beside him and leans over. Holding her hair back, she lightly kisses that spot between his eyes; he murmurs something unintelligible and shifts, but doesn’t wake, and Annie smiles.
Sitting back, she looks around at the wall of trees that lines the beach. The direction of the sun tells her that when they lay down, she and Finnick were in the shade. There’s a path into the trees nearby, but it’s not where the whisperers went to explore; the footprints in the sand lead farther up the beach, away from the Victorious. With a glance at her sleeping husband, Annie rolls to her feet and heads toward the path.
It’s not really a path, she sees when she gets closer, but a dry stream leading from the trees down to the water, breaking up and spreading out in tiny runnels and shallow canyons when it reaches the beach. Annie hears a weird cry that might be a sound of distress, coming from somewhere up the path, but when she stops to listen, she hears nothing more threatening than the breeze and a few insects. Peering into the trees, she hears the sound again, sees a flash of bright yellow as something small passes through a patch of sunshine on the ground.
Biting her lower lip, she looks back at Finnick and then forward into the trees again. It’s only a few feet in… Calling herself a fool, knowing she shouldn’t, especially if, as she suspects, she had another flashback to her Games - what if Finnick wakes and finds her gone? What if she has another episode? - she follows the streambed into the trees and stops at a small clearing about twenty feet in.
Staring at her from the middle of the clearing is a bright blue and yellow bird with a great black beak and pale, suspicious eyes. It holds one wing out to the side and when Annie takes a few steps closer, it drags that wing along the sandy ground as it tries to back away from her.
“I won’t hurt you, little one,” she tells it and steps closer yet. It squawks at her and flaps its good wing, stirring up dust and sand. She looks around for something to keep the bird’s beak occupied and finds a stick a good inch or so around, but the bird surprises her by stepping onto the stick, rather than attacking it. Still, when she reaches out a tentative finger to touch its back, the bird screeches at her, the sound almost deafening, and she falls back with a startled laugh.
xXx
A bloodcurdling screech splits the air followed by a thick, unnatural silence punctuated only by the breaking waves. Finnick surges to his feet, spinning in place, but sees no one. He’s alone.
“Annie…”
The birds and insects that make up the background noise resume their songs as Finnick runs up the beach toward where the sound came from. He doesn’t hesitate, plunging into the jungle, ruthlessly quashing the sudden fear that tries to overtake him. Remembered terror is no match for what’s running through him now.
“Annie!” he shouts as he crashes through the trees and undergrowth. “Annie!” He sees her on the ground beside a patch of bright blue and yellow in the middle of a small clearing. It takes him a moment to process that it’s not the right color for blood, that there’s no scent of blood in the air, only something sweet, like honey or vanilla. “Annie?” She’s not hurt. She looks up at him and he’s torn between the terror that still makes his heart pound and elation that she’s come back to him, that she’s no longer trapped inside her own head.
His heart in his throat, he comes closer, drops to his knees beside her, searching her face. “I heard a scream…”
“It wasn’t me,” she says. “Oh, my love, it wasn’t me.” She looks down at her lap and back up at him. “It’s okay, Finnick. I’m fine. It’s just a bird.” She seems to realize then just how frightened he still is and reaches up to touch his face. “It wasn’t a jabberjay, love, just a bird.” He blinks and the patches of brilliant color resolve into blue and yellow feathers and a shiny black beak.
The bird hisses at Finnick, staring at him with unblinking pale gray eyes. “A bird,” he repeats, his pulse finally beginning to slow. “It’s a macaw.” Annie reaches for Finnick’s hand and the bird - a young one, from the size of it - puffs up its feathers and flaps its wings. Or rather it flaps one wing; the other remains at an unnatural angle along its side.
Finnick relaxes back onto his heels, twisting his hand around to grip hers tightly. Closing his eyes, he sways in place as he pushes the terror back down into its hole. Annie lifts Finnick’s hand and kisses his knuckles; he raises his free hand to stroke her cheek.
“I don’t suppose there’s any possibility that we’re not taking the bird with us?” he asks. Annie’s answering smile is radiant and Finnick dissolves into somewhat hysterical laughter as Mairenn and Luis come crashing through the trees.
“Uncle Finnick, we-” She stops and Finnick watches as she takes in the scene, her expression changing from fear to confusion. Luis kneels beside Annie and reaches toward the bird, making it squawk again, which just makes Finnick laugh harder.
“It’s hurt…”
“You’re as bad as she is,” Finnick says, nodding toward his wife.
In the end, Finnick gives up his shirt to wrap the bird so it can’t hurt either itself or anyone else, and they all troop back through the trees to the beach. It reminds him once more of the Quarter Quell arena - Mairenn and Luis instead of Katniss and Peeta, Annie instead of Johanna - but this time the memory doesn’t bring fear with it.
When they leave the jungle, a shout from the Victorious breaks the illusion. Looking in that direction, he sees Stefana waving at them. “She’s ready to sail!” His gaze shifts to the mainmast, standing straight and tall like its fellows.
Lifting his hands to form a cup around his mouth, Finnick shouts, “We’re on our way!”
Once back on board, it doesn’t take Finnick long to confirm their position and then put together a course to take them back home in as short a time as possible. If they don’t run into trouble, they shouldn’t have to fire the engines. Running strictly under sail, they should dock in less than two hours, not long after nightfall.
Annie takes the juvenile macaw below to their cabin; although Marco and the Obispos look as though they want to say something, either about the cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms or about her recovery from the near catatonic state in which she left, they don’t. If they have questions, they keep them to themselves and swing into action alongside Mairenn and Luis, preparing the Victorious to head out.
The trip home is uneventful, if somewhat slower than Finnick would like. The skies remain clear and the winds steady and the moon is on the rise when they draw near to the cove. The moon’s light is plenty bright enough to illuminate a strange boat at anchor beside the Notorious. Inside the minefield. Looking past the two boats, he sees figures on the beach moving back and forth between a couple of fires, but they’re too far away to make out voices.
He feels Annie come up beside him, knowing it’s her before she says, “We have visitors.”
“Looks like. And it’s someone Paul trusts.” He glances at her. “Where’s your bird?”
“Asleep on the bed frame.” She stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. “I’m sorry I left you.” Her apology is for more than simply leaving him asleep on the beach. He slips an arm around her waist and pulls her close.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Kissing her on the forehead, he continues, “Shall we go see who our visitors are?” Sliding her arm around his waist, she nods and Finnick guides the ketch into the cove and a few minutes later, the Victorious rests at anchor with the cutter and the strange fishing boat and her crew is on the beach.
Finnick jumps into the water when they’re close enough to help Kian pull the skiff up onto the sand. Paul wades out to join them.
“We have visitors,” he warns and Finnick shoots him a look.
“No kidding.” He doesn’t ask for an explanation and Paul grins.
“I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised…”
Just then Finnick hears Mairenn shout, “Mama!” He straightens abruptly and turns toward the group gathered around the fire in time to see Mair throw herself into her mother’s waiting arms. Beside them, Xal moves in to join the hug. And then his gaze fixes on the woman striding down the sand toward him and he’s suddenly fourteen again.
“Mom?”
Laughing and crying at the same time, Jenna Odair pulls her youngest child into her arms and he clings to her. Whoever brought them here and why, at that moment, he just doesn’t care.
Chapter 3 - Dead or Alive