Work Text:
“Just remember what we worked on,” Annie’s stylist trills into her ear on the night of her interview. “Preparation, purpose, and poise.”
“Right,” Annie murmurs back, only half interested. Truthfully, she’d gotten the same etiquette lessons drilled into her head yesterday by her escort. She doesn’t need or want the lecture. But she lets Evangeline ramble on about how she should conduct herself in her interview gown or all the best ways to make the dress catch the lights that line the stage.
Annie’s focused on other things at the moment. Namely, admiring her dress in the expansive mirror of her dressing room.
The first thing she notices is how similar the structure is to the dress she wore only days ago for the tribute parade. Just like in her previous dress, a transparent fabric decorated with gemstones clings to her upper half. The jewels are blue this time, and they cluster and swirl elaborately around her shoulders and chest. A light blue belt cinches her dress at the waist. More gemstones engulf her hips and thighs before they fade out like water and give way to a pale, gauzy skirt that flares out slightly and swishes around her ankles. Annie thinks it has the appearance of that foamy part of a wave just before it recedes back into the ocean.
That’s the point, she thinks. Everyone had been impressed with her training score, and somehow it got out that she’d won the number by swimming. So now she’s retained the goddess-like style from the parade but nobody can look at her without thinking of the very thing that’s supposed to make her win.
It’s a strategic move, sure. Annie should be grateful for that. But all she can think about is how she looks like she’s just walked out of the ocean and how much she really doesn’t want to throw up.
“So?” Evangeline asks, astoundingly and unfailingly chipper. “What do you think?”
That’s another thing she does. Asks what Annie thinks as if she has any control over what she wears or what she does. “It’s beautiful,” she answers honestly, and it really is. “It looks just like the ocean. Have you ever been?”
“Oh, no,” Evangeline answers with a dismissive wave, sounding the slightest bit regretful. “No, but I’ve been meaning to for ages. Maybe I’ll come visit you someday!”
Tears prick in her eyes. “Yeah, that would be nice,” Annie replies, knowing she’ll likely never get the chance.
Evangeline smooths Annie’s hair down one last time. Unlike the tribute parade, Annie’s hair is left down this time. Sleek and glossy, it tumbles down her back in what her prep team called “beachy waves,” although Annie’s never come out of any interaction with the sand or ocean with her hair looking like this.
“I think you’re ready,” Evangeline grins at her. “Good luck out there.”
Numbly, Annie walks to the line of tributes that’s slowly begun to form as prep wraps up. Her district partner, Caspian, is already waiting for her.
“You look nice,” he says genially.
“So do you.”
They stand in tense silence for a moment before he speaks up again. “Are you nervous? I am.”
A breathy laugh climbs up her throat. “Oh, me too. I’ve never spoken in front of this many people before. Especially not on television. I don’t want to be remembered by throwing up on stage or something.”
Caspian wrinkles his nose. “Please don’t. I’m the one who has to go on after you. It’ll totally ruin my reputation.”
The joking lilt to his voice is enough to make Annie’s tense shoulders unfurl a little. “What reputation?” They share a laugh at that. Annie waits a second for the laughter to dissolve before asking, “Didn’t they teach you how to handle this at the Academy?”
“The interview? Oh, yeah, sure. Plenty of times,” Caspian says. He fiddles with his suit jacket. “But I have stage fright. Once, in third grade, I had to give a presentation on the different types of crustaceans, and I totally freaked out. It was so embarrassing.”
Annie cringes in sympathy. “I bet your third grade self could’ve used my stylist’s advice.” She does her best impression of Evangeline’s Capitol accent. “Preparation, purpose, and poise.”
Caspian grins. “That was fairly passable.”
“Fairly passable?” Annie echoes incredulously. “I sound just like her. You just haven’t heard her speak enough.”
“Well, maybe—”
Whatever Caspian was going to say is interrupted when the District One girl glides up to the stage in a silvery gown. Annie and Caspian immediately stop talking, but he reaches for her hand, and she clings on. The interviews have begun.
Annie’s pretty sure that her dress has melded with her body.
The interviews are long over, and she’s not really supposed to keep the dress. But she’d practically begged Evangeline in the dressing room as they were leaving to keep the dress for one more night. She must’ve been pretty convincing because Evangeline had given her an awkward pat on the shoulder and said, ‘well, you just can’t let go of beauty, can you?’ and that was that.
All in all, it’s not a bad way to go out. Annie wishes she’d spent some of what’s likely her final night alive actually sleeping, but this is fine too.
The roof of the Training Center is peaceful in the late hour. Stars decorate the pitch black sky, and if Annie looks closely enough, she can watch them sparkle. Her skirt flutters around her legs in the night wind. It’s calm up here, she decides. Not a bad way to go out at all.
“You should be asleep.”
Annie jumps. A figure appears behind her, and at first she thinks it’s Caspian, but it’s not. It’s Finnick Odair, dressed in what appear to be pajamas but honestly look more like something he’d wear on television. Decorative pajamas. How weird is that? “I can’t sleep,” Annie answers.
Finnick nods, like he’d been expecting that. “Yeah. I couldn’t on the night before, either.”
“But you’re Finnick Odair,” she says incredulously. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
He shakes his head. “Everyone going into that arena is afraid of something. Maybe not the same thing you are, but something. Nobody’s fearless.”
“So is that your wise advice?”
“I never said it was wise,” Finnick says with a self-deprecating shrug. “You want some advice? Take the dress off before you go to sleep. It doesn’t look very comfortable to sleep in.”
Annie laughs. He’s right, probably. But she only shakes her head, fingers fiddling absentmindedly with the sheer fabric of the skirt. “Honestly, it reminds me of home. It’s like a wave, don’t you think?”
He regards her for a long, silent moment. “I can see it,” he agrees softly. “You’ll see it again.”
Her brows furrow. “The dress?”
“No. Home.”
Oh, she’ll see District Four again. There’s no question about that. The question is whether or not she’ll be walking off that train or be lowering into the ground in a coffin.
“I hope so,” is what she decides to say.
She bids Finnick goodnight eventually, slipping back into her opulent bedroom quietly. Annie takes the dress off and puts on something more comfortable, but she keeps the dress hanging on the back of her door.
It’s still there when she wakes up the next morning, hanging just as she left it. Before she goes to breakfast, Annie presses her face against the glittery blue dress and hopes this isn’t the last time she sees the ocean.
