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

[fishermansweater]

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.

Comments

[fishermansweater]

"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.

[treadswater]

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?"

[fishermansweater]

"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.

[treadswater]

"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?"

[fishermansweater]

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?"

[treadswater]

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?"

[fishermansweater]

"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."

[treadswater]

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."