all_inclusive | Entries tagged with zz: annie cresta

Any entries earlier than this were pre-reboot.

Running, running, running.

Katniss hasn't slept in days. The nightmares come and go but since Peeta left, she hasn't had the long stretches of relief that she'd had with him. The nightmares always come back. This run is particularly bad, as she hasn't slept more than a few hours in the last week. Her eyes are red-rimmed from tears and exhaustion and deep bruises beneath them show just how hard this has been on her. She's been trying to keep moving, to push herself to physical exhaustion so that the sleep she gets is dreamless. It doesn't work as well as she wants it to.

She's afraid of the doors but it isn't something she ever wants to admit out loud. She knows there's ones she can trust, ones that lead to safe places, but what if the doors change and she winds up in the Arena again? What if she winds up in the Capitol, instead, or in bombed out 12? The 12 of her dreams is never the one where she hunted with Gale or traded at The Hob. It's always the firebombed 12, the one where the walkways are paved with the bones of the people she couldn't save and where the air is scented with ashes and white roses.

Are we in the clear yet?

Today, she's working in the restaurant, bussing tables and taking orders and trying to keep afloat. Her mind is too tired to do the mental gymnastics her job requires and she drops two whole trays of glasses before the middle of her shift, glass slicing her palms as she picks it up. Still, she can't go to sleep. Sleep is where Snow can get her, where the mutts are after her, where the faces of all the people she's failed swim in front of her and scream at her in the harsh, metallic voices of jabberjays.

The buzz of the people dining starts to sound like Prim, like Peeta, like Rue. She can't take it any longer. Katniss runs, runs far back into a storage closet at the other end of the restaurant and hides. It's not her closet in 13 and it doesn't have piles and piles of smooth graphite pencils for her to break but it's good enough. It's quiet and it's dark and it's far away from everyone else.

[Feel free to have seen Katniss drop the glasses or if you're a canonmate, to know she's been having a hard time lately.]

concierge

The annual Nexus New Year's Eve gala began at 8 in the evening. Too grand to be contained by the lobby or dining hall, the gardens at the front of the hotel were employed, with long strings of white lights forming a twinkling canopy from the front doors all the way to the hedge maze. The weather was temperate and calm, and the night perfectly clear.

Drinks were served at various bars set up throughout the gardens and lobby, with champagne cocktails being the specialty of the night. Wheeling through the crowd was a bartender with golden cart providing warm drinks on the go: Tom and Jerrys, rum punch, negus, and Irish coffee.

Crisply-dressed wait staff wove through the collected guests with an abundance of hors d'oeuvres for all different tastes. The Bistro remained open with a limited selection of items for those who were wanting something more substantial.

Above the front doors was hung a large, gold-rimmed clock counting down the last hours, minutes, and seconds of the current year.

makestheplans

As soon as Katniss is sedated, I vanish. I kept it together in front of her, but once she's passed out I can feel myself start to crack. Heavensbee's looking at me; Prim's looking at me; I have to get out.

There's no booze in Thirteen, that's what they say. Coin's rules— but where there's a will, there's a way, and right now I need it so bad I don't care if I have to tear the entire place apart to find it. The kitchen's too obvious— but I know where there are storage closets, caches of supplies. An easy place to hide a bottle, if you had one you wanted to hide.

I push through door after door, barely hearing the noise of them banging shut behind me. The echoes are too loud in my head— Peeta screaming, hoarse and ragged with his hands wrapped around Katniss's throat; her sobs, desperate gulping gasps that only quieted when they put the IV in her arm. My own breath comes loud and sharp; my vision greys, my brain full of static, and I stagger, bracing myself against the wall with a trembling hand. The only thing that'll silence the noise is a drink. I shake my head to clear it, focusing on the door ahead.

I'm so focused on navigating I barely notice when the concrete beneath my feet changes to carpet. When the watery fluorescent light turns brighter, warmer, on the back of my neck. It's not til someone calls out behind me that I turn and realize, panic stabbing sharp in my side— I'm not where I was.

I plaster on a smile, hoping it'll hide the way I'm grinding my teeth. "Think I'm a little lost."

[Find him already in the bar or wandering the halls looking for it.]

burn_with_us

Katniss never goes into the door that leads back to the Arena except, apparently, this time she did without even realizing it. She knows the tricks of it now, though, and she survives - but it doesn't make it any less hard to know that Peeta and Johanna are suffering because of her. Because of her and her stupid berries and her stupid wedding gown and her stupid desire to thumb her nose at Snow and the Capitol whenever she gets a chance.

Katniss isn't the face of a revolution. She just gets people killed.

So now she's been in 13 for what feels like an eternity, blithely getting a schedule printed on her arm every morning and ignoring it just so she can go sit in a closet and hide for hours and hours until someone notices she's missing. It's not the best system, but it's one that works for her, and she hopes that someday she'll be able to get the sound of Peeta's voice and the smell of his skin out of her head. She thinks about being in the hotel, too, and wonders if that's just something she dreamed up when she was pumped full of drugs after being rescued.

She hopes not.

They want her to be the face of this thing, the symbol that inspires everyone to fight. Katniss thinks that Finnick would be better at it, or Beetee, or anyone but her. Everything she touches dies, more or less, except those goddamned roses of Snow's. She doesn't want to be responsible for the rebellion dying too and she thinks they need someone less damaged than she is to lead them. Much less damaged. She's not a Victor anymore. She's just a survivor.

So instead of facing her fears and doing what's asked of her, Katniss flees to the closet again. She'll nestle up next to boxes of graphite pencils and cleaning supplies and try to ignore the screaming in her head for a little while in hopes that one day it'll actually all go quiet.

She sits with her back toward the wall and closes her eyes and gains her bearing again. In and out. In and out. Eventually, she feels like she might be able to stand on two legs and gets to her feet, shaky but only a little worse for the wear. She tugs open the door and when she sees the carpets instead of the utilitarian concrete of 13, she crumples up on the carpet and just weeps.

She's back.

concierge

Throughout the day on the 14th, the Nexus staff deliver single roses and accompanying notes to designated hotel guests in celebration of the Valentine's Day holiday. For some, the gesture will be a foregone conclusion; for others, it will be a surprise. For some, they might only guess at who sent them the gift in the first place.

[Comments with deliveries ~~will follow~~ are done. You may reply to yours with a reaction if you like!]

burn_with_us

November 27th, 2014 | Nexus Hotel

Katniss and the Victors celebrate a holiday that nobody in the Districts has ever heard of.

In Progress | All Ages

65th_victor

He'd been careful. He'd been really careful, because the last thing he wanted to do was go back into the arena.

But maybe he'd gotten complacent since the last door that had been special had been weeks ago, resulting in him being a girl for a couple of days. But since then, there'd been nothing. So maybe he hadn't been as diligent about watching where he was going, and maybe he'd been more than a little tired because Tristan hadn't slept well the night before and Finnick had been up with him for most of the night, trying to calm his son back down.

When Finnick did look up and found himself looking out into the jungle instead of into his room at the Nexus, he took a step back, his heart stuttering in his chest. Reflexively, he looked down: He was wearing the wetsuit he'd arrived at the hotel in.

He was back in the 75th Games.

"No, no," Finnick said out loud before he could stop himself. He turned around, desperately looking for the door that had led him in. He had to get back out. He couldn't be here. He couldn't be back here.

His brain suddenly snagged on a horrific thought: What if this wasn't a door at all? What if he had been sent back. It was something he couldn't even begin to fathom. It meant losing Annie and Tristan, and that was something he couldn't contend with.

The arena provided suitable distraction though: the sound of a cannon booming in the distance jolted Finnick back to the present. Door or home, he needed to stay alive. Weapon and water, Finnick thought, years of training fall back into place. The cornucopia was still in the middle of the arena, looking strangely deserted. He ran hastily across the beach and headed out into the water. He swam as fast as he could, reaching the cornucopia where a trident still sat, gleaming. He wrapped his hands around it -- just as he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, brandishing the trident in front of him.

themadgirl

1 July 2014 | The Nexus

Welcome to the world, Tristan Odair.

In Progress

themadgirl

Slowly but surely over the last few months, Annie had been learning to trust the Nexus. Her faith was tentative, fragile, but she could not live the whole of her life inside a hotel room, no matter how lush or large. Not in general, and certainly not when she was only a month from being a mother. Holding Finnick's hand needed to be a comfort but not a crutch.

Still, it was an ongoing process, and she always opened doors with care.

From their windows she could see the sprawling gardens, her feet itching to wander amongst the blooms, but the space out there felt far too large, too open and exposed, and she hadn't quite managed going alone yet. Inside was seldom better, a maze of corridors and dead ends, but the library she liked. Quite a lot, actually.

Annie liked books to begin with, but the balcony was what she really loved, here. Sitting at the top of the spiral staircase, she could see the entire room and still get up easily with the help of the railing. A watchful bird on her perch.

She was there now, stack of books beside her on the top step and another open in her lap as she referenced the little notebook she'd taken to carrying around with her here. Everything was so different, and she was eager to learn as much as she could. The music she'd discovered on her telephone was particularly confusing.

Eyes narrowing at the page, Annie frowned. She glanced to her notes and then back again. "This makes no sense at all," she murmurred, and then jerked her attention up as someone else entered the room.

[THG cast mates, please read this first. <3]

themadgirl

BACKSTORY | PANEM

For Finnick and Annie, there have always been obstacles to happiness.

001 | 002 | 003 | 004 | 005 | 006
ALL COMPLETE | HOVER FOR RATINGS AND WARNINGS

withbread

When Peeta's entire world exploded, he expected many things, mostly that he'd die, but he hadn't expected to find himself in a hotel. His ears are still ringing from the explosion, he's riddled with scrapes and he's not wearing a whole lot as the skin tight suit has mostly been eaten away by acidic smoke. He's also got patches of greenish-grey scattered across his skin from some medicine they'd all used to treat bug bites and help with sunburn.

He gets to his feet, still reeling from both the explosion and the scenery change. He's got a tight grip on a sword. "Katniss!" he screams at the top of his lungs, but whether it's because he's still somewhat deaf from the ringing in his ears or because he could care less what sort of attention he attracts is unclear.

So sorry for the half naked boy wandering from room to room, dragging his sword and yelling for Katniss at the top of his lungs. Do be careful approaching him.

themadgirl

1 February 2014 | The Nexus

The Mad Girl walks out of the Capitol and into Finnick's arms, but this is no perfectly scripted reunion.

In Progress ; Spoilers for Mockingjay

All Inclusive

Reboot Marker

are we out of the woods

Gathering: New Year's Eve Gala

come on in and save me; come on

faster than my bullet

Valentine Delivery Service

what we're thankful for

no subject

You were sweet and you were sound.

You're a little bit damaged, I'm a sucker for that.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

no subject

Pockets full of stones.

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