The 70th Hunger Games: A Little Love

Chapter Twenty-Two

**disclaimer** the first part of this chapter talks about the triggering events of last chapter. if this may trigger you, be cautious reading.

Dear Diary,

**trigger warning here**

As soon as Finnick let go of me, he turned around to shut the door, I guess to give us a moment of privacy, and he saw the tissues on the ground.

"Hey Annie, what is this?" He picks up the tissues, and my reflexes aren't fast enough to hide my wrist behind my back. He saw it.

I take a step back, already expecting some sort of lecture, sinking into the bed and running my hands through my hair anxiously. "Go ahead, get it over with," I mumble, biting my lip. "I know I shouldn't have done it," I add on, my face looking down on the ground with guilt in my eyes. I was lucky. Lucky to survive. Lucky to win. But I didn't feel lucky. I felt alone.

Finnick put the tissues in the garbage before sitting next to me on the bed and wrapping his arm around me. He tilted my face up so that I could better look at his. In his eyes, I saw a reflection of my face. Slightly thinner, pale, with big blue pools of sadness in my eyes. What did he see in me?

"Annie," he begins, his voice heavy as he stares into my eyes. I feel my cheeks growing warm, and I look down, breaking our gaze. I couldn't bear to look at him. I couldn't bear to talk about what happened in those games, what I went through.

"You saw it," I mumbled, not just in reference to the cut on my hand. "You saw what they did to Percy. What happened to Sparkle. What Marietta did to herself. You saw all of it. You can't—" I choke up, swallowing my spit nervously and then looking up at him. "You can't expect me to be okay," I mumble out, a few faint tears falling down my face and landing on my wrist, stinging it slightly.

"Annie I was not going to yell at you. Come here," he mumbles, bringing me in close to him and wrapping his arms around me once more. In his arms, I tried to feel the warmth. I tried to focus on that, on him, but instead, all I could think about was Percy, his head on the ground.

"Annie, I don't want you to think you're alone. You have me. You have Mags. You have all the other victors. You have your family. You have your friends," he holds my head with his hand, and I feel myself relax just the slightest. He's right. My family was back home, waiting for me. If not for myself, I at least had to do it for them.

"Can I tell you something?" He asks, one of his eyebrows raised. I nod my head, and he pulls away from the hug so that we were sitting side by side. When we're sitting like this, he wraps his arm around my waist. And slowly, very cautiously, I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. I think it was more to make him feel better than me.

**trigger warning ends here**

"When I won my games, I was fourteen. The youngest victor ever, or at least in the longest time. I was instantly loved by the capital at my interview. At fourteen, I had plenty of capital women willing to sponsor me just so I could leave the games and have sex with them. And it worked, they sponsored me to the point in which I had gotten a golden trident, which, as you know, I used to kill them. But when I left the games, they had expectations for me.

At my crowning, Snow quietly asked me if I would be willing to sell my body to the women of the capital. I instantly said no. I was fourteen. I was still a minor. I hadn't even had a girlfriend yet. Well, when I said no to him, he took it as a big offense. When I came home after my interview, I found a note at my home. My family didn't have much, after my father and mother died of some sickness when I was nine, it was just me and my older brother. Well, at our small little house in the poorer side of town was empty, with a note that said "Don't you wish you had taken me up on my offer?" - Snow."