The Hunger Games: Continued

The Disguised Cure

Katniss' POV

It leaves you. For a little while - the pain, the poison that the bearded man pumped into your veins. Life soon becomes a continuous circle of days and nights, you grow older, you try and forget. You love for the sake of loving. You cry for the sake of crying. Never for the sake of anything else.
It only takes a pinprick of poison for everything to come flooding back.
That's what happened to Annie.
Just a pinprick.

How do you spin someone out of hysteria? Drugs? No, I know too well it doesn't make you feel any better when you emerge. Comfort? Worth a try.

Her scream filled the hallway, echoing in the dining hall. Plutarch's eyes flew from mine and to the source. I didn't flinch at first, my reaction time isn't what it used to be. Plutarch disappeared. Fin hid under the food table, Zeb comforted him. Peeta was gone. Where was Peeta? Out of the corner of my eye I saw him sprinting, his blond hair bouncing, muscles flexing. How could he be running so fast? On his prosthetic leg? I guess instinct can make you do the impossible. I just sat. Then I ran.

My legs were soon tearing through the red gown, desperately trying to reach my friend. Down the long hallways, dodging marble pillars. How long had it been since I ran this fast? I reached Peeta, staring at the floor. What is he doing? I thought. What are you doing, Peeta? It was only when I reached him that I realised, he wasn't staring at the floor at all, but at Annie. Crouched against the wall, her head in her hands. Crying, rocking back and forth. Who was that beside her? Johanna. Johanna doesn't cry, but she was. Annie and Johanna. Johanna and Annie. Wrapped in each other's arms, hysterically crying.

***

We bring Annie back to the dining hall. Johanna cleans herself up, rejecting Zeb's arms and claiming her tears were to comfort Annie. I'm not sure how that works, but I don't question her. I turn my attention back to Annie. It's Peeta and I who calm her. Okay, I tell myself. I make a list in my head - sit her down, put a wet cloth on her forehead, ask her what's wrong (tread carefully) tell her it'll be alright (even if you're not convinced.)

With a damp cloth on her head and her steady breathing initiated by Peeta's techniques, I comfort Annie. "What happened?" I ask. I've never been very good at comforting people, but I take her hand in mine and squeeze it reassuringly.
"I'm sorry...I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to cause a scene." Starts Annie. "Seeing you all again, it just brings it all back." Her eyes scat around the room, like she's demented- which she probably is. "I miss him, Katniss. I miss my Finnick. It's been a long time, now. But sometimes it all comes flooding back at once." Her hand twitches in mine. "I needed to breathe - get some time out. Then Johanna found me, and she knew, I didn't need to tell her what was wrong." Her unsettled eyes find Johanna at the back of the room. "She has Zeb now. You have Peeta. But who is left for me? Who looks out for me? Who tells me it's alright when I'm scared? I have to be so strong, for Fin, for myself." Her tears flow faster than before and I fear she's about to spin herself into another hysteria.

I'm right.
Should I hold her? Tell her it's okay? Because when Plutarch approaches her with a needle I know I have to come up with another plan. No drugs.

Annie's POV

In the end there is darkness - that is what I have brought myself to believe.
The thought is unbearable though, that at the end of this life, it's all I get, and what a terrible life it's been. I like to imagine Finnick in an afterlife, looking down on us, on his son, smiling even though he cannot be with us. But my constant depression has forced me to believe in the dark.
What a terrible error it is to believe in the dark.
Amongst the terror of The Hunger Games, amongst the terror of the war - hope was never the only rebellion, never the only answer.
Love.
When the bearded man pumped the poison into our veins we did not fall, because we found away to cure it. A cure that he could not comprehend, a cure he had not realised. A cure that could tame his very soul if he could let it in.
In the darkest of nights, when the shadows danced across the walls of my own home. In the loneliest of moments, imagining Finnick wrapped up in another women's arms, unwillingly. Even in those seemingly endless times, I held Finnick so close to my heart. I understood him when many people failed to. He refused to acknowledge me as mad, like the others.
Pain was the poison.
Love was the cure.
It was not Snow who destroyed me.
It was him. It was Finnick. It was always destined to be him.
When he was ripped away from me, I felt it. Not in my head or in my heart. In my chest, like a punch. I felt it.
That's when the love simmered away inside me, bubbling, boiling, until the cure was the poison.
The cure has always been the poison. It had only been disguised.