Trigger warning for rape, implied sexual abuse / slavery, forced prostitution.

Her hands are still. It is strange, because on the ride back, she was shaking. Back at the patron's home, she was petrified. Now she is so still, so calm. It scares the hell out of him.

The elevator dings, reads out, "Fourth Floor." He tugs her along, through the living room. Her hand is limp in his. He grasps her firmly. She follows without any emotion, any thing showing. His lips are swollen, as are hers; and the rubbed-red coil marks on her wrists probably hurt. He leads her to the kitchen, takes ice and wraps some around each wrist, carefully securing them with a band. Not tight, no, he knows how that would trigger her. It would trigger him, too. The only thing worse than talking to the shell of a fragile girl, would be dealing with her triggered and hysterical.

He does not look her in the eyes, cannot even look at her face. It is not bruised, that would be extra, but there was just enough damage done tonight. There is so much more trauma under the surface than bruises could ever show. He faced it himself. He does not want her to be alone, the way he was.

Mags never meant to leave him. But she could not help being separated from him at the Banquet.

He was taken aside for his first appointment, without Mags' knowledge.

It happened, then and there, in the President's Mansion.

He was fourteen and didn't realize it was because he had a collar around his neck he couldn't see.

He was fourteen and didn't realize he didn't want it, until it was too late.

(she said later she thought they'd have the decency to wait, since he was so young

he had laughed then vomited, when she told him that, because he was high and mixing things he shouldn't

because decency doesn't exist)

"Let's get you to bed, hmm?"

He slips an arm around Annie's shoulders, guides her towards her room. She still does nothing but follow his lead. His hands untie her robe and it seems she is looking right through him. Thin, luminescent silver fabric is all that was provided her earlier in lieu of a dress, before heading to their appointment. It matches his jacket and pants, the former of which lacks a shirt, tie, and buttons.

Hers, however, takes the cake. Beneath the robe, she is naked. A sudden gasp and a weak slap against his wrists. An anvil of guilt accompanies the action. She is recoiling, eyes widening and Finnick pulls back himself, raising his hands.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispers, swallowing over a lump in his throat. "Please, I- I'm sorry."

She is shaking, eyes shutting as her breathing comes in quick, rapid gasps. A hand is covering her left ear, and her face looks pained.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. He does not know what else to say. He steps back, giving her space. She sways for a moment, before eyes blink opened. Glassy, the sea-green stares at him, unsure. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Her shoulders raise, but her hand eases off of her ear. After a few moments, seeming to blink back into focus, she nods slowly. He does not dare to touch her again. The guilt sits in the pit of his stomach, a maelstrom churning.

He is making himself sick.

(What else is new?)

He moves to the closet, and hears her shifting out of her robe. He brings a nightgown over from the closet.

He trains his eyes away from the sensitive spots. 'Petals,' stylists call them: tiny dots in the shape of seashells. They are just enough to hide her nipples, leaving the rest of her breasts exposed. It is the only cover they have offered her, apart from the silver thong, which barely hides her front and makes no attempt for her rear. He tries not to touch her, holding the robe out and keeping his eyes averted to her left. He sees the rush of goosebumps flecking her skin as the robe slips off. Air against skin might be as dangerous as hands. Flesh is all they ever are to the people who buy them. They need to be more to each other. They do not have anyone else, after all.

"Can..." her voice is a strangled whisper. "Help?"

He nods, slipping it over her head before buttoning it up the back. She slides her arms, haltingly, through the sides; her feet out of her heels. Her hands hang for a moment in the air before her, eyes flitting around. She looks lost, terribly frightened. He finishes buttoning her up, intertwines their fingers, checks on the ice still secured around her wrists. He squeezes her hands but there is no response. He is uncertain what he expected. He lets go, places hands on her shoulders to encourage her to sit on the bed. She complies without hesitation. He crouches down in front of her. Hands carefully unravel the pins from her hair, red curls flopping down as he does so. He is midway through the process when her head leans forward, rests against his shoulder. He expects crying, shaking, everything he has heard from her mentors, everything he has heard them discuss on television. Instead, she mumbles something inaudible.

"What's that?" Finnick rests a hand on her back, pulling back to try and see her face.

She swallows over a lump in her throat, and shakes her head. For a moment, he thinks she is lost again.

"Mèsi." it is a soft sound, and he sees the tears in her eyes when they chance a meeting with his own.

"Of course." he nods. He continues, removing the pins one by one. Then he stands, hesitating. He expects her to pull away, to retreat into her own world and curl up on the bed. Instead, her eyes are focused, watching with visible trepidation.

"Stay?" the words are inaudible. He reads them in her lips, instead. "Please?"

He hesitates before responding. "Let me change. Okay?"

She nods. He leaves her, easing the door shut quietly behind him. At a last glimpse, she is more a statue, frozen in place, than a girl who gutted more than one person, drowned three more in the arena, and ran hysterical from the decapitated corpse of her district partner. Covered in blood and scratches and dehydrated beyond belief, no: that is not the person who came out, he thinks. Who did come out is a scared sixteen-year-old who can hardly focus on a single point in a room, never mind a conversation.

The floor is quiet, little light save that leaking out from the empty living room. And the mentor rooms, apparently.

Mags.

The door opens as he pauses outside of it, the older woman with her grey hair, crooked fingers staring him down.

"Boy," she had said before they left. That garble and halt that she'd had all his life hardly phased him, after all this time. "Things you do, can't help."

"She's all right," he offers now.

He knows that is not why Mags has waited up: not tonight, not ever. She does not care about the appointments, she cares about them, the children made to do things no one should. The children who survived on corpses and threats. She continues staring, and he moves closer, wraps her in a hug. A strange thing: young, vigorous Finnick, and ancient, stroke-ridden Mags.

(He thinks, She's stronger than me

He thinks, I hate her

He thinks, I envy her)

"She's all right," he is repeating himself.

Mags boxes his ear, leans back to study him. He has picked up this habit of hers, one of many, over the years.

"I am, too." he forces a smile and she shakes her head. He drops his smile, because there is never a point in pretending with Mags. "She wants me to stay with her."

He says it, nearly like a question, but also as a defense; because Annie needs him, Mags had said as much. He had not been there to mentor her, hardly knew her beyond a face and a name. Until he received his assignment, met her the morning of. They had injected her with things, plastered her in makeup and sent her alone with the Golden Whore from District Four. She is a little girl, who clearly needs help, and Finnick can understand much better than Mags what Annie has gone through. She does not just need someone, she needs a fellow Victor. She needs someone who has been forced into this.

Mags never had to sleep with anyone, this Finnick knows. He never asks why.

"Needs us, boy," Mags had said.

Finnick came to her two days ago, holding an envelope tightly with confusion burned on his face. He would not be going to this appointment alone, oh, no.

"Start her, before leaves." Mags knew it, before he had. It still made her furious. "Salo malad."

So they had a double-date, an appointment for a foursome. Their middle-aged patron, and his twenty-one year-old wife. The President had not let Annie leave the Capitol, even though her Interviews had ended. The Capitol holds little pity, more irritation, with the sixteen-year-old Victor. They want to get their money's worth of her. She won by chance, and yes, she had made some kills, but it is not what the Capitol is accustomed to, never mind her onslaught of conscience being distasteful here.

("I didn't mean to- I had to but I-I'm sorry I-"

led into rocking back and forth, nails scratching at her neck

she had struggled to answer Caesar's questions without sobbing)

They say on television that she is, 'receiving treatment' in the Capitol. It is not the treatment intended to heal her, however. It is treatment to show her who owns her, and how she is expected to act. No one makes the Capitol regret forcing children to kill one another. No one makes them think about it. That is the secret, after all, the biggest secret of all.

Snow must owe their patron, for something, because there is a precedent (though never one you could trust, with the Capitol) that the auctions happen after the Victory Tour has concluded. He has broken that precedence, along with the idea that patrons can have only one Victor at a time. There are still those sick freaks who want to play with the pretty little Mad Girl, that much is clear. To do it when she is still a fresh Victor, and to add in the previous Victor from her district- well, they must be special, indeed. Quietly, of course: they do not want the publicity that usually comes with appointments with, say, Finnick Odair alone. Annie is a stepping stone, something to tick off their list of accomplishments. He can hear them now:

"We've got all of Four, except that old bat from ages ago; apart from her, we have had the whole set!"

Most importantly, of course, was Annie Cresta's virginity. And tonight, they got it. Finnick had been along for the show. He can do nothing for her. Nothing to offer except pity and his own form of kindness.

(He thinks, I wish she had died in the arena

He thinks, I wish I had died, too

He thinks, I should just kill her tonight, before it gets worse

It always gets worse.)

He is afraid, and that is the problem. His mother is a drunk and senile in the way old drunks get. His beloved mentor has nearly died more than once and now has little to show- little to say, without struggling to be understood. Finnick cannot pity this girl, too, he does not want to care for her. But he does all the same.

What the hell is wrong with me?

A tap, weathered old hands to his cheek, brings him back, and he stares at Mags.

"Fè atansyon." it is not proper words, not really, but he knows his mentor's speech well enough to hear her meaning. "No renmen li."

"What?! Mags-!"

"Know you. Estipid, boy."

He hears it even after he has changed, after he returns to Annie's room. "No renmen li." Do not love her. He has too many weak spots. He does not need another. Still, he goes back to Annie, because he feels he needs to be there as much as, if not more than she needs him. Her chin rests on her knees, in the middle of the bed, though her head raises as he enters the room. She shifts to the left, leaving more space which he occupies shortly.

"Hello," she murmurs, curling up on her side, facing him.

"Hello," he replies, a small smile offered. She returns it shyly. "Better?"

She nods. Her lips hang opened for a moment before she speaks. "Rete?"

"'f you still want me to."

She hums slightly in response, but does not look at him. He notices a pin he must have missed earlier. He reaches over, carefully removing it. He fiddles with the hairpin, bending the ends upwards and outwards, until it looks something like an anchor, more or less. He holds it out, and the shy smile returns to her lips.

(Do not love her, Finnick.)

He wants to promise they will go fishing or sailing when they get home, that he will be there for her, or that it gets better. That is what he is here for, is it not? To be comforting, reassuring? It would all be a lie. Finnick does not want to lie, not to this girl who weaves in and out of conversations, emerging with shy smiles and a sweetness that both endangers and endears her. She is vulnerable.

Finnick has always had a weak spot for (weak) sweet things.

There is a silence, for a time, she is dangling the mock-anchor, pretending it is floating underwater. She rests it on his cheek. He sucks in air to puff up the side of his mouth, then sucks his cheek back in. She laughs, a deep tut-tut-tut sort of laugh. It is different from the laughter he has heard when she zones out, and different than the one she had when their patron made a joke. It is real, so real it makes him smile widely. He repeats the action, silly as it is, and she laughs again.

They both go quiet, and she spins the anchor so that he feels the metal twirling against his cheek.

"Does it always hurt?" she asks, and the abrupt nature of the question startles him.

Because, tonight, she bled, and she cried, and their patron had cooed and crooned and gone harder than he needed to. And Finnick had done nothing but tie knots tie knots bind rope around her wrists, press his lips places-

Finnick looks her in the eyes now, hesitates because he does not know what to say.

"Finnick?" she prompts.

The anchor still rests on his cheek, and her hand is still holding it there. She is blinking rapidly, and he is waiting, because he thinks she may start panicking. If she does, perhaps he will not have to tell her. He hopes this happens, actually, because it would be better than the conversation she is seeking to have. Finnick is not that lucky, though.

"So…?"

"Not always," he manages. "The first time- it's almost always bad. After, no, not so much."

"I get used to it?" her eyes are beginning to go distant. He worries because he is unsure if she has heard him, unsure if he should even be saying anything at all.

"Needs us, boy." he hears Mags' voice.

So hypocritical, so ironic, is her other statement: "No renmen li."

His hand reaches up, wraps around her wrist and moves it, places it between them. She should not be touching him. He should not even be here, not with her, not with everything he has done, and everything they will ask her to do now. The tears appear, and he stays still, watching her crying.

"Manke lakay…," she whispers.

"I know," is all he can offer.

They all want to go home. They always do. They are not, however, allowed.

Annie nods and, after a bit of crying and quiet repetition of wanting to go home, she falls asleep.

Thank you so much for reading, never posted fanfic before.

In case you're wondering, I always liked the idea of Caribbean / French / Louisianan influence in District 4, not really sure why, I know it's never stated and obviously they only speak 'English' in the books, but English in the future is bound to be super different from today's version anyways? So yeah, thus the Haitian Creole (more or less) words and usages.

I can also be found on Tumblr as thelettersfromnoone if you want to contact me outside of here :) Comments and such are always appreciated!