Who: Finnick Odair and Katniss Everdeen When: Today Where: Their room What: Annie and Tristan disappear Rating: TBD.
He sometimes was able to trick Tristan into actually obeying his bedtime by tricking him. They would sit on the couch and trade stories back and forth. (Mostly, this consisted of Finnick telling some sort of story to Tristan, but Tristan liked to tailor them, so they ended up taking unexpected turns.) Luckily, after about a half an hour so, it also usually lulled Tristan to sleep. He slept like the dead, so it wasn't too hard to pick Tristan up and deposit him into his own bed.
They were past storytime, but Finnick hadn't yet gotten up to take Tristan to his own bed. He was lazily sprawled on the couch, half asleep himself. Tristan was breathing heavily against his neck, one of his hands pushed uncomfortably against Finnick's throat. Finnick had one of his own hands pressed against Tristan's back.
And then suddenly he didn't.
It took him a moment to realize what had happened. The room was too quiet, and his hand was just pressed against his own chest. He looked down slowly, in a bewildered sort of way, as if he expected Tristan to appear again. He sat up, adrenaline pumping through his body when he finally realized that his son had disappeared. He looked over the side of the couch, and then behind it and under it for good measure, because this was the sort of trick that Tristan would have loved to get away with playing.
"Annie!" Finnick called as he began to run about their living quarters, looking for where Tristan could have disappeared off to. What sort of new trick was this? They had been barraged by illnesses, but how they a four-year-old just disappear into thin air?
It took him another instant to realize that he received no answer. Everything was dead silent around him, as if he was the last person here.
"Annie!" he screamed again, too loud, as if his voice could conjure her back. He ran into the bedroom and shoved aside anything that could be peered behind. He did the same thing throughout their quarters, rushed the hallway, and then turned back. His hands shaking, he turned to the network to see if anyone else had mentioned anything. But there was just silence. This was just them. This was just him.
(He had heard of this before, but his mind refused to put the pieces together, because to think it was to admit that the impossible had happened. That his family was gone.)
The thought had grown before he could stamp it out though. And as soon as it was there, it took him out at the knees. He sank down in the space at the end of the bed, unable to stop the tears that wrenched their way out of him. He wanted Annie to come in and tell him that he was being ridiculous. Nothing in the world would have made him happier than to be told that he was overreacting, that it was nothing. That he hadn't just lost her again.