Work Text:
Her grief encapsulates her.
She lets it.
She embraces it.
Her grief fills her up, so that it's the only thing she can feel. It's a raw abrasion, scratched over her insides, sanding down the center of her heart. She hasn't stopped crying. (She is in her arena again; she is water.)
She is frozen in this moment of time, because how can there be anything after this? There is nothing after this. She is halved. She is incomplete. She can't move away from this.
(She is so many things when Finnick is nothing. Finnick's life is completed.)
Her grief is the last vestige of Finnick. (And that thought is scarier. That there is a possibility of this becoming normal. Of her accepting that he is gone. How can that be? When he can't be dead? The word is so infinite, so unending. A separation made permanent. He had promised he would come back. Had sworn to her. He would take no unnecessary risks. He just needed to be there to finish this, needed to be there to make sure that Katniss would be safe.
But his heart was – is – here with her, so he has to come back for her. He has to come back to her. And he didn't – doesn't – lie to her.
So this can't become normal. This status – of him being dead – can't be accepted.)
She quivers in fear of it. She is the last one standing firm, the last one holding out. If she can mourn him enough, it can bring him back to life. Her love, her force of will, every shed tear can resurrect him.
She doesn't care about anything else. The rest becomes inconsequential. The end of the war. The day-to-day trivialities of food and bathing. She aches with her longing for him, of the long impossible years in front of her. She wraps her arms around herself, feels the goosebumps ridged on her skin, and imagines how it felt when he held her at their wedding. Remembers the sight of his smile blown wide on his face. That was the happiest she had ever seen him.
He wouldn't have died. Not after that. He was made immortal by the touch of their love, by all the possibilities of their future.
She chokes on her sobs.
…
“Annie.”
It's Johanna, back again. Annie doesn't like when she comes, because Johanna sends her tumbling through time, jolts her back into the present.
“No,” Annie murmurs, latches onto the word and repeats it like a prayer. A refusal to be in the present, a refusal for Finnick to be dead. A refusal of everything the world has denied her.
“Listen,” Johanna says sharply. She pulls Annie up into a sitting position, and Johanna's face swims into her line of vision.
“No,” Annie says more insistently, fighting to get her hands up over her ears.
“Yes,” Johanna snaps back, tightens her hold on Annie's arms. “Listen, all right. You can't keep doing this, okay? You need to take a shower. You need to have something to eat. You have to choose between this and having your baby, okay?”
Baby? The word is meaningless for a moment until something comes to her, until she remembers Katniss' mother giving her the news. But there can be no baby growing inside of her when there is no Finnick, when time has stopped moving. She needs her grief more. Her grief extinguishes everything else, and Johanna has to know that. She lets her attention drift away.
“Annie,” Johanna says desperately, catching her chin in hand. “I know this isn't fair. But you know what they're going to say about you.”
“Mad,” Annie whispers faintly; that's fine. Isn't it time it was actually true?
“Mad,” Johanna says, nodding. “And if you're mad, you don't get to keep your baby. Can you live with that? With strangers taking away the one thing you and Finnick got to make together?”
She stares at Johanna, and she can feel that fissure open wider in her. The Annie that is the after. After Finnick. Because he is gone. They will keep coming back and telling her that over and over. The soft swell of her belly will grow larger and larger. She thinks of it for the first time – the pebble of a baby that is sitting heavy in her stomach, willing itself into existence even as her body fights to reach the same destruction that took Finnick.
Annie wraps her arms around Johanna and sobs into her shoulder. Johanna holds her.
“He's not coming back,” Annie whispers.
“No,” Johanna answers angrily, her voice breaking. “He's not coming back. But we're going to do this together, okay? We're going to protect your baby. Is that what you want?”
She pulls away, back, so that Annie can see her face. Annie nods.
Time starts up again, sweeping her up in its current and away from Finnick. Her baby's heart beats for the first time.