Oceana Ridgeway ❦ Annie Cresta (reverence) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2019-01-31 23:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, * jamie, * terri, c: nick waters, c: oceana waters |
WHO: Nick Waters and Oceana Ridgeway → Annie Cresta
WHEN: January 31st, evening
WHERE: Their house
SUMMARY: Oceana has a dream about the end of the Quarter Quell. Nick comforts her.
WARNINGS: Hunger Games stuff, mostly. She also puked. Lol. Mentions of death, torture, and tragedy.
Though she hadn’t wanted to watch at all, she hadn’t been able to keep herself away. She had been glued to the broadcast every moment that it aired. With her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her eyes almost unblinking, Annie had focused her gaze on the television and watched through all of the interviews, then onto the games themselves. After the games had begun, she barely rested. When she did, it was only when she knew that Finnick, too, was asleep. She kept the Games running, curled up next to the screen, woken by the most subtle sounds of his voice. When Mags had died, Annie had wept for hours. Mags, who had volunteered for her, had been amongst the first to die in the games. She was elderly. It was of little surprise. That didn’t make the knowledge hurt any less. Annie had loved Mags, and now she would no longer get the chance to tell her. Never again would her small, capable hands wind Annie’s hair into intricate braids. She could almost close her eyes and feel the faint touch of Mags’ hand patting her cheek. Her parents had tried to pull her away from the broadcast with no success. They didn’t want her to see Finnick die any more than she wanted to, but she needed to know these moments, if they were to be his last. So she watched as he was nearly consumed in poison fog. She watched as those monkey’s attacked, and when they met up with Johanna. She saw the next fight on the Cornucopia and then...heard the sound of her own screams, meant only to torture Finnick. She had cried again, begging him to go back even though he couldn’t hear her. She was pleading with the image of him to hear her...to know that she was OK. Of course they would use her against him. Even when they realized that it was jabberjays, there was no escaping of it. She sat there with her hands pressed over her own ears to drown out the sounds of not only her screams, but those of his family and people that they knew. It went on and on, and even though the broadcast panned to other tributes, all she could focus on was Finnick. These games were going quickly, and she didn’t know how long he could last...just that she knew she needed him to come home to her. It was night when it happened. The numbers of tributes had dwindled significantly, and the majority of those that were left were in pacts. It was only a matter of time before those pacts dissolved. Her eyes desperately scanned those darkened feeds, watching as the events unfolded. A tribute died, but not one that she knew well. Then, the camera zoomed in on Katniss with her arrow pointed at Enobaria’s throat. Finnick was nearby. Her heart raced. At the last moment, Katniss turned her arrow upwards and it sailed away. There was a lot of light...an explosion. Debris raining down everywhere. The arena...it had exploded. Fires caught and swept through the forest. She blinked in surprise, a small giggle daring to pass her lips as she looked at the screen, her hands pressing to the crackling screen. “Come on, Finnick…” She didn’t see him. The cameras had panned up and away. There were fireworks exploding...a distraction. Then, the cameras cut out altogether. One of the announcers made some joke about technical difficulties, but they seemed nervous. She sat there diligently...waiting for the broadcast to come back. For some kind of explanation. There wasn’t one. They didn’t even knock on the door. It took thirty minutes for them to arrive. No more than that. The Peacekeepers let themselves into the house, kicking the door in with such effort that the trim around the door busted. She was still sitting there on her knees in front of the television screen, but her parents were shouting, “She hasn’t done anything!” “Annie doesn’t know what happened!” “Finnick hasn’t sent her any letters!” One of the Peacekeepers pulled her roughly to her feet by her arms, and on instinct, she grabbed the baton from his belt. In a split second, she had twisted and smashed it upside his helmeted head. Despite the protection the helmet gave him, he crumpled to the ground with a groan. One of the Peacekeepers aimed a weapon at her and fired, but she just felt the slightest of pricks at her arm. She reached up, grasping the dart and pulling it from her arm almost curiously. The baton slipped from her fingers and blackness invaded the edge of her vision. She collapsed next to the Peacekeeper, and for a while, darkness was all that she knew. When she next awoke, it was with a pounding headache and nauseous stomach. Her hands had been tightly bound behind her, and she was sitting on an uncomfortable surface. She breathed in deeply and regretted it, her stomach rolling with the scent of perfumed roses filling the air. Despite herself, a small laugh passed her lips again, and she blinked blearily until her vision came into focus. She was in a small cell that was too dark and too sterile. A small, hard bed where she sat was chained to the wall. “Hello, Miss Cresta.” She laughed, her hands twitching in their bindings, wishing to be wrapped around his throat. Of all the people that Annie blamed for her suffering and for Finnick’s - his most of all - it was this man. Their president. “Coriolanus.” “I wanted to be the one to deliver the news myself,” he told her, twirling a long-stemmed white rose between his fingers, “To give my condolences. Our dear Mr. Odair died in the explosion.” Her heart seized in her chest. Immediately, that nausea turned her stomach to knots that tightened like fists, “Liar!” The word was a shriek, a snarl from her lips. She tried to stand, to approach him, but her hands weren’t just bound. They were chained to the wall behind her. She strained so hard against it that the cuffs bit into her skin, her shoulders aching with the effort. Finnick couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. He had promised her. They would always find each other. Forever, Finnick. You and me. This life and the next one and the one after that. We’ll always find each other. Promise me. I promise. You and me. I will do everything in my power to find you, in this lifetime and the next. If he was dead...she needed to die, too. To fulfill her part of the bargain. “I assure you. He will be missed by many. He was so...useful,” President Snow smiled almost sadly, and placed that rose just out of her reach before he turned to exit the cell. He stopped there, only briefly, with the barest of instructions, “Remind her of who she is.” The room around her darkened. There was a crackle, and then video began to play. There was darkness, a crackling fire. A net spread out over her lap, crumbs of bread from District Four stuck to her fingers. Wayland. Her voice was scratchy, almost feral, a scream filling the air as she watched in horror. These were her Hunger Games. This was the moment she became a murderer...where she had lost a part of herself that she could never get back. She closed her eyes as she heard the whip of a scythe through the air, her whole body trembling, “NO!” Oceana sat up with a gasp of breath drawing into her lungs, a yelp of denial on her lips. The room swirled around her, dark except for the flickering scenes on the television where she had fallen asleep on the couch. She was damp with cold sweat and tears. It took only a few moments before she scrambled up from those cushions, still with the sickly scent of roses and blood in her nose, and ran to the bathroom. She was on her knees, heaving the contents of her stomach into the bowl. Her skin was clammy, hands shaking so badly that she thought they may never stop. Some combination of grief and rage warred inside of her. Even as her stomach began to calm, sobs still shook her shoulders. She had enough sense, perhaps, to wipe her face of sick and flush the toilet. Then, she lost what remaining will she had maintained. Oceana just let herself curl up there to cry on the bathroom floor, feeling her heart flayed open. Nick was in the second bedroom turned office, situated just right that he heard the sudden commotion as Oceana threw herself from the couch and made her way to the bathroom. He was sitting at his laptop, accounts open around him as he tried to finish up his usual winter work for the business, piecing together everything to give to the accountant so as to get taxes squared away. The plan had been to join Oceana on the couch as soon as he was done, but that was quickly abandoned as he recognized the sound of her throwing up. Immediately concerned, Nick pulled himself to his feet and navigated his way through their house until he'd reached the bathroom. The sight broke his heart to pieces, seeing Oceana holding herself and in tears on the tile floor, and he didn't hesitate before falling to his knees beside her. He didn't have to ask what had happened; he may not have known the specifics, but he did know in that moment that she'd had some sort of glimpse from Annie's life -- and, quite clearly, it wasn't a good one. He swallowed hard, reaching out one of his hands to touch her shoulder gently. "Hey," he murmured, inclining his head to the side. "I'm right here." He didn't know if such assurances were what she needed in that moment, but Nick knew that when he had a particularly terrible dream, her presence always helped calm him. There seemed to be some kind of dull roar in her ears that drowned out most noise. She thought, if she listened closely enough, she could hear screaming. Oceana hadn’t heard Nick approach, the cool tile the only inviting touch until his fingers reached her shoulders. It was his touch and his voice that could cut through the haze. Only him. Her eyes popped open, and though the view of him was watery and blurred. For a moment...he looked like Finnick to her, all sun-kissed hair and charming smiles. She took in a ragged breath as she unfurled from where she’d been and immediately sat up. In the next moment, she’d buried her face against his chest, her arms tightly squeezed around him. The shaking that had set in still hadn’t subsided, and her teeth chattered a little even as she clenched her jaw in an attempt to get some kind of control over herself. That life wasn’t her own, and she’d never been so glad for it...but she’d never felt closer to feeling unhinged as Annie did until this moment. Shaking it off was easier said than done when all that filled her head were the visions of everything that Annie had done...and what she imagined when she thought of Finnick being lost to her for forever. She squeezed her eyes closed and managed one trembling word, “S-Snow.” It no longer meant the white, fluffy precipitation that often graced the winter months this far north. Oceana didn’t like snow anyway, so she was glad that she’d had no strong favor to the association in the first place. She was meant for warm places, like the beaches where she had grown up...like where Annie had lived. In her world, Snow only really meant one thing: the man who held power over her every nightmare and reveled in it. The moment that Oceana moved toward him, Nick's arms wrapped around her, holding her close. He held her tight, as much for his sake as it might have been for her own. All he wanted was to reassure her that he truly was there, that he wasn't going to go anywhere, despite whatever horrors she might have witnessed -- and, he knew, it truly could have been a plethora of different horrors that she was thrown into. She confirmed exactly that as she managed the one word that spoke volumes. Snow. Finnick's life had become a true nightmare, both in waking and sleeping, thanks to President Snow. It was Snow and his government that controlled the existence of the Hunger Games, something that had changed the entire trajectory of both his life and Annie's. It was Snow who had allowed Finnick to win his sadistic game, only to turn his life into one of servitude of the worst kind once he was old enough to do so. It was Snow that had dragged Finnick back to the arena, tearing him from Annie. And now Snow had done something else, something terrible enough to leave Oceana shaking in his arms. It infuriated Nick, an emotion fighting with the sorrow. "I'm sorry," he murmured, his head tipping forward so he could press a kiss to her hair. Nick didn't know the details, but he didn't need to. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart." She thought that if Nick had known anything to discredit what Annie had been told in the dream, he would have told her. But maybe if he did know, he had been trying to spare her the pain. Though she knew Annie didn’t want to believe Snow, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was true. Wouldn’t she have felt it, though? If Finnick had died, wouldn’t her soul have been on fire? There was enough doubt that she almost didn’t want to say anything at all, but the idea would eat away at her if she kept it to herself...if she could warn Nick of what was to come and didn’t. It took several long minutes before the shaking began to subside and the sobs stopped tearing air from her lungs. Then, she was left with a sore chest and sniffling nose as she stayed there close to Nick. She didn’t even care that she was leaning on her bad hip, the cold from the tile seeping through her clothes. There was something that felt fractured there in her chest, like it was keeping her emotions open and raw, “I s-saw the end of the Quarter Quell. There were...six, I think. Six victors still alive when the explosion happened. Finnick was one of them. Within half an hour, the Peacekeepers came to Annie’s house and arrested her. They brought her to Snow. He….” the words got stuck in her throat. How could she even say it? Words that she didn’t know to be true...ones that she didn’t want to believe. Nick's memories hadn't led to the end of the Quarter Quell just yet, though he knew it was only a matter of time. He had seen the horrors within more than he'd have ever liked, from watching Mags die to the jabberjays to the senseless violence that he had to take part in, both to get home to Annie and for the rebellion. He knew about all of that, of course. He had seen the planning and remembered everything he had been told from Haymitch. The plans, District Thirteen, counting the bread as it came in. Everything that Finnick had done had been with Annie in mind. He wanted to give them a chance, a future. But, he had wanted to protect her. He had been so sure that she would be safe, that they would be able to get her out of Four before anything would happen to her or her family. From what Oceana was saying, he had been wrong. His arms tightened around Oceana, gentle and still firm. Though his imagination ran wild with what the end of that sentence might have been, Nick could tell she was struggling and that was the last thing that he wanted. "It's okay," he said, raising a hand to smooth over her hair. "You don't have to talk about it, not if you don't want to." Even though Nick assured her she didn’t need to speak the words out loud, she thought they would eat her up inside if she didn’t. It wasn’t really fair to him. It was honestly selfish on her part. She didn’t really know that warning him would truly do any good, after all. It wasn’t as though they could change anything. She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath, “Snow said Finnick didn’t make it, but he was...taunting her with it. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t want to believe it.” Her arms tightened around him a little, thinking maybe she should be comforting him rather than the other way around...just in case, “He said he wanted to deliver the condolences himself and left her one of his damnable roses. Then they locked her in a cell and let footage of her games play on the walls, again and again…” She shuddered a little, and her voice croaked out again, “Mind games.” Nick tried not to react as she spoke, attempting to process each new bit of information that Oceana presented to him before coming to any sort of conclusion. Still, his spine straightened just a bit as she said the words -- that Snow had told her that Finnick had died. It seemed impossible, though he didn't know why. Finnick had been living a life that felt as though it was flirting with death for years; if not his own death, the potential death of those he held most dear, from his parents and sisters to Annie herself. It had started with his volunteering to be a tribute at the foolhardy age of fourteen, then death turned into a threat that forced him into obedience... and then he was thrust right back into another arena, this time as a secret rebel. Had the news come from anyone else, he might have let himself believe it more thoroughly. Snow was not a reliable source of information, though. If he knew what Finnick and Annie meant to one another, of course he would use such words against her. He had done the same with Finnick, after all, with the jabberjays that knew her voice. But, he couldn't help but wonder. What if something had happened? What if it was the truth? He couldn't admit that questioning, though. Not just then. Instead, he let himself relax, his body pressing a bit into Oceana's as his arms stayed firm around her. "They tortured her," he murmured, breathing a long sigh as his mind finished the sentence with because of him. "And you had to see it. I'm so sorry, sweetheart." She nodded softly, though it might not have been the kind of torture that one usually thought about. There was no dripping water or instruments poking and prying at her body. It was just her truth and reality...the ugliness that was her life so prominently on display. It wasn’t just in her head, then. It was there to be re-lived and seen and heard over and over again until she could never forget...as if she ever could have in the first place. It was almost worse than physical torture. Pain could be endured outwardly. She’d done that as well. Those scars had been stripped away from her, repaired and smoothed until they didn’t even exist anymore, but the screams had never stopped. That wasn’t something she could ever escape or heal from. “It was just the beginning,” she didn’t honestly know what Snow had planned for Annie after that, but she could guarantee that it wouldn’t be pleasant. She sighed softly, finally finding some kind of strength to pull back just enough to look up at Nick, sliding her hand up his chest to his cheek, memorizing every little thing about how he looked, “I’m sorry, too...it may not even be true. But if it is...if I could warn you...I don’t know if it really helps....” He felt that squeeze in his chest again as Nick considered Finnick's demise. Again, he knew just how plausible it truly was; he had been in the middle of a warzone, no matter how untraditional of one it might have been. He had known that there was a good chance that he might not get out of the arena this time. But, they had been through so much. Nick couldn't help but have thought that they deserved more than what they had seen. Part of him that was still rooted in the real world and Dunhaven, with its own faults and difficult times, plenty of which he had experienced himself, had been hoping for a happy ending. If anyone deserved one, it was Annie and Finnick. And so, until he saw Finnick's death for himself, he would assume it was a lie. It was the only way to go about it. "Thank you." Nick raised his hand to press against Oceana's fingers at his cheek. "For telling me, I mean. I appreciate the warning and we'll... well, I guess we'll see. It's not like these dreams are stopping anytime soon." Unless Finnick really was dead. Then, Nick supposed, they would be. She didn’t know if this would trigger more dreams for Nick, and if it was true, she almost hoped that it didn’t. One way or another, time would tell and they would eventually know for sure, “I don’t want to sleep...but can we go lie down?” She would brush her teeth on the way and wash her face to try to erase at least a little of the havoc the dream had wrecked on her waking self, but Oceana hadn’t let go of it enough to settle down just yet. She couldn’t focus on a movie or even music right now. She just wanted to be with Nick, and the rest of the world would sort itself out. |