redshiftlogs | ψ after the smoke clears when it's down to you and i ...

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ψ after the smoke clears when it's down to you and i ... | CLOSED

Who: Finnick and Annie
What: Some long-overdue emotional decompression
When: late November to early December
Where: Double 017
Warnings: Description and depiction of depression, PTSD, anxiety, suicidal ideation, drug use, and discussion of mental health. Also possibly mentions of torture, kidnapping, and sexual assault/abuse/slavery.

Sometimes, Finnick loses track of time. It happens when it's too hard to get out of bed, when food, beauty, even his beloved swimming, fall away in favor of ... nothing. It hasn't been happening much here, not since he'd been reunited with Annie and so many weeks of misery had seemed to disappear into the joy of being reunited and having her safe with him again. But it's been a part of his life for so long that it's not surprising that it happens again. Not that he notices at first. Time just seems to slip away, and he doesn't want to go down to the lake or check to see if the bots at the spa have stopped trying to enforce baths in medication, or go to the agricultural level to work on the fish farm. He skips meals and doesn't notice through his mental haze, and doesn't realize it's been days since he left his and Annie's quarters.

It's like being back in the hospital in District Thirteen, except that nobody's stopping by to bring him medication or to expound theories about the damage electrical shock might have done to his mind when Katniss brought down the arena. There aren't any head doctors trying to get him to talk about his past or his relationship with Annie, either. There's just Annie, Annie who makes food and brings it to him, who goes out to do the things he's not doing. Who doesn't ask him any questions harder than whether or not he's hungry.

He's more grateful for her quiet presence than he can say.

The day does come -- eventually, and he has no idea after how long -- when Finnick goes to the bathroom while Annie's out and catches sight of his reflection to see a face that's haggard, cheekbones too sharp, chin covered with many days' worth of beard growth. It's enough to remind him t shower, to shave, to actually put on the soft robe he'd stolen from the spa and curl up on the couch in their room and wait for her to get back.

It's something.

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This is familiar. Not welcome, not wanted, but familiar. So much of Finnick is like the tides, his energy and awareness and ability to cope has its high tides and their low. The trick is that they aren't predictable. Which isn't a trick, it's a fucking pain in the ass. They're alone here. There's no other victors here, no one she trusts like she trusted them. Cho is still proving to be reliable in her niceness, and kindness, and lack of stabbing in the back, but this is Finnick. This is her husband.

And Mags isn't here.

Mags is dead.

Which Annie still can't deal with, there hasn't been time, she saw Mags die and then it was what, a couple days before her own arrest? She can't remember. She's terrible at time. And everything about that week bleeds into each other and what happened after. Which she's not thinking about, either, because Finnick metaphorically out at sea.

It makes her tense, though she tries not to show it. And anxious. She has to protect him, and do everything. She can't curl up into a heap, because it's all on her. They aren't outside, no one is trying to actively kill them, but that only makes her feel worse - if the stakes were dire, she's not good enough to keep them both safe.

But she tries.

She tries, and she tries to let him be, and when she walks in to find him dressed in something new, and shaved, she smiles. It's a tentative smile, but brimming with relief.

"Hey. How you doin'?"

"Okay."

It's an answer that's more simple than true, but that's usually something of a complex question, and Annie knows that as well as anyone, and what matters is that, for now, he's okay. Not great, not well, but no longer in the depths of the fog that sweeps over him and makes the world disappear into a dark haze that's too hard to see through.

So, okay it is. He's been riding high on the joy of getting Annie back, of their wedding and the giddy feeling of having nothing more to hide from anyone, but he should have known he'd slip back into darkness eventually. It had felt like being genuinely happy, genuinely free, out of Snow's reach where no threats could hurt him anymore, he'd finally be able to just live, but of course it's not that simple. He's a victor, and none of them are ever quite normal again.

(And being freed from Snow's grasp doesn't change the feeling deep in his being that he should never have let himself fall into it, or the dull sense of loathing of his own self, his own body, that's been so much a part of him ever since he did.)

But he's okay, for now. And okay is a thousand times better than the dark misery that had permeated everything he did for so long in District Thirteen.

He sits a little straighter on the couch and holds out an arm towards Annie in a silent invitation.

Let me hug you.

They've long since developed a silent way of talking. It's nothing that can convey complicated means, not even the signals they learnt at the Career Academy can do that. But they can ask questions, receive answers. And questions about touch? Those, Annie and Finnick have long since worked out.

Finnick holds out an arm, and so she moves towards him, curling up on the couch and tucking herself under his arm as she wraps one of hers around his mid-section. Hugs, then, are on the table. Are wanted and requested. So she obliges, and it's reassuring after so many days of Finnick being so very, very far away.

She knows what 'okay' means, too. And here... Here it gets a little tricky. They aren't home. They aren't in District Four, with no real duties imposed on them. They are in Anchor.

So, cautiously, Annie decides to push. A little.

"Think tomorrow you'll join me and the fish?"

He closes his eyes and lets his head drift sideways, pressing his cheek against the crown of Annie's head. For a few moments he simply exists, like that, his wife's arm wrapped around him and her hair soft under his face. He'd wanted to hope that all that had happened could fix the broken, empty part of him, but maybe this is as close as it gets: the ability to remember how to move past it, to take joy in what is good in his life, and to hold Annie close when he can.

It's good, better than he's often been. Good enough to get by.

He lifts his head at her question, looking down at her so he can see her face. There's no impatience, no sense of abandoned responsibility there, though he knows it's been Annie who did everything over these past however many days. There's just a question, gentle and kind.

"I can try, if you want me to."

They both know the importance of the word try, and everything it carries with it: the desire too succeed and the possibility to fail. Trying is more than he's been able to do lately, but sometimes, even a little is too much, and he might not know until he tries it.

Annie doesn't answer straight away. She worries at the inside of her bottom lip, trying to work out how to word things to get her actual point while trying not to sound accusing. She's not accusing him of anything, or at least, not trying to. It can be tricky trying to hit the right note.

"I'd, um. I'd like it, if you could try."

It's softer than she'd initially phrased it, less like and more need. But the danger here isn't acute. Not at the moment. It can be want, it can be like. And that'll be okay.

But one day, it might be need, and she's not sure how either of them would go if they needed to have their shit together to survive, and neither of them could.

"Okay. I'll try."

He says it quietly though, and with no sense of assurance that trying will become succeeding. So far this hadn't really been like in Thirteen, when the doctors had regularly sedated him and told him it was for his own safety. (Looking back, it probably was. He doesn't remember everything he said and did in the fog of drugs and despair, but it had been a dark time.)

"I think ... I can try to control it, now." His hand finds its way to the ends of Annie's hair and he starts toying with one of her curls. "They tried to teach me that in Thirteen, but I could never do it. I think I can try now." Because it's Annie asking. It never all sank in, what they'd tried to teach him, but there are pieces he can remember, and now the thought seems easier than it had over the past days. For Annie.

She frowns. It's not the lack of a promise behind his words. All they can ever do is promise to try. She knows that. It's comes with him being with her, and her with him. There sometimes when they try, and fail, to do whatever it is. That's just how it goes. But they never stop trying. No, it's his words. And the meaning behind them. The actual information there.

"Control it?"

Control his dark moods? His reaction to them? How?

(And was it something he could share?)

"What do you mean, darlin?"

"The head doctors, in Thirteen," he says. He's speaking slowly, his hand still toying with Annie's hair, but he drops his head back down to hers and snuggles closer.

"They tried to teach me to ... to be able to control how I react when I'm feeling like that. A lot of it didn't work, but I think maybe I can do that now, make myself be able to go with you?"

He says it in a way that makes clear that he's not certain, a hesitance, a cautious inflection sounding a warning. But he does want to try, to remember what the doctors had said and see if he can push aside the malaise long enough to actually help Annie instead of just being a burden on her.

Maybe.

"Mmm," Annie hums, both acknowledgement and an indication of thought. She doesn't have his gift of understanding people, of social engagements and settings and how to change the mood of a room. She freezes and fumbles in combat now, even sparring with anyone else but him, while he can look at a battle in motion and think of a strategy and throw himself in. She doesn't have his gift of words, either.

But she'd always been good at analysis. Situations in the abstract, or after. Experiments gone wrong. Information in reports. She can compile it and take it apart, and see patterns and how to change things. She tinkers, and puts things back together. And this is what she's doing now.

Or, trying to, anyway.

"Yeah, I, um. Was wondering how you might. Like, the mechanics of it? What did they say about what you should do?"

He's quiet for a while, but the hand on her waist moves slightly, caressing her side so she knows he's not ignoring her, just thinking. The suggestions the head doctors had made in Thirteen had seemed impossible at the time, but there had been times when he'd wanted to get better, wanted to help the rebellion, and he'd listened, and tried.

Everything had just been too overwhelming, and it hadn't worked.

Eventually, he speaks, his voice quiet, thoughtful.

"They talked about recognizing the way you're thinking and knowing when it's not right. Like blaming myself for what happened to you, I should think about reasons why it's not my fault and that can make it better."

He sighs. "Of course it didn't work very well in Thirteen, but here I think it could?"

Well. There's a statement. Some part of Annie wants to say, you should have told me the danger, and then I could have escaped-! Either cold and cutting, or screaming with the rage of the imprisoned. But it's not fair. It's not even right. She's still deeply, deeply angry at being arrested, at being imprisoned. At being tortured.

And overriding all of that is her concern for Finnick. She... She maybe needs to talk to him about that. About her anger. No, fuck it, she does, but not now. Not when he's just pulling himself out of one of his episodes.

"So, you can, um. Logic your way out of it? Or present yourself with a report refuting it? Hmm. I guess I can see that? It. It might stick better, for you, for you to do it. Not outside people telling you things?"

"That was what the doctors said," he says, his hand still moving against her side, but there's a note of skepticism in his voice.

"It didn't work, there, when they tried to get me to do it. I couldn't concentrate for long enough to make it work. But I can concentrate now."

Unspoken is what had been keeping his concentration so fractured: every thought of what the Capitol would do to her, and why they'd been doing it, when she'd been no threat to them for years, had been careful to be no such threat. It had been because he was a threat, because he'd finally shaken himself loose of Snow's control and they hadn't rescued her.

But that ... that is too much to think about, too much for now. Too recent and raw.

He swallows.

"I was supposed to do it myself. I think, what you said, it works better if you think of it yourself."

The causes and reasons for his lack of concentration - Yeah, she can't bring that up. Or even allude to it. There's too much there, and she needs to think about it before she brings it up. And not when he's like this. So she sidesteps it, like once she'd sidestep a flung net.

"Well. I guess those doctors had some good ideas." There are a few more notes of scepticism in her own voice. She'd had her own dealings with them. Mostly, she had no issues. Most people were kind, in a similar no-nonsense way that she's always liked in the districts. But others... wanted things. Like her to be functional, stable, enough to smile for the cameras.

She hadn't liked them, much.

"Would writing it down help? I mean, um. You've always been good with words."

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ψ after the smoke clears when it's down to you and i ... | CLOSED

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