A/N: Rated T for violence

The fan above her bed cannot keep up with the sun's heat. Annie has opened all of the windows, hoping to tempt in a cool breeze, but the day refuses. Rich tourists still flock to District Four during the winter for its warmth and sunshine, but the fancy hotels next to the pier are empty during these still days at the height of summer. In the afternoon, the streets are quiet, as everyone has hidden in their homes to nap away the hottest part of the day, and night brings little relief. Neighbors go days and weeks without seeing one another as they wait for the worst of the wet, sticky heat to recede. The district dies every summer only to be revived again when autumn arrives.

Her nightgown clings to her body, glued against her with a thin layer of sweat. Annie pushes its straps off her shoulders and hikes the hem up a few more inches. It doesn't help. She hopes that Ronan, who she stripped down to just his diaper before lying him down in his crib, is faring better. When she leans over to rest her hand on his forehead, she realizes that her three-week-old son suffers the heat far worse than she does. The poor child's burning up.

For what must be the dozenth time that night, Annie grabs the bowl that she keeps on her nightstand and hurries into the bathroom. It takes a few minutes for the water to cool down, but finally, the trickle of water that runs over her finger begins to grow cold. She fills up the bowl and grabs a clean cloth from the stack before she is ready to go back.

A gust of cool air lifts her hair from her shoulders, and Annie shivers in the sudden, delightful chill. The heat hasn't broken this early in the season for years, and they haven't had a single thunderstorm to bring in a cold front, but she's not going to complain. A cool mist now fills her bedroom. Annie sets aside the bowl and rag. If anything, Ronan will need another layer of clothing, not a damp cloth. She lifts the few strands of hair that have escaped the bun at the top of her head and pulls the front of her nightgown, still sticky with sweat, away from her chest, allowing the mist to caress every inch of her. Her sigh doesn't wake Ronan. For the first time in weeks, Annie slips a blanket over herself before she falls asleep, content.

The next day, the sun returns, and their home is again a furnace. The radio announcer makes no mention of the last night's fog during the daily weather report, which puzzles her, but they do live far enough away from the rest of the district that she supposes there's no reason to be surprised. The fishermen's families that live in the little clapboard cottages only feet off the shoreline get their cool ocean breezes. She and Ronan deserve some relief as well. Annie brushes any though of the weather away and smiles at her baby. "Are you a happy boy today?" He is too young to understand a word she says, but she still makes a point of talking to him. The parenting magazines that the doctors forced her to read before they allowed her to bring Ronan home from the hospital said that it would help his language development, and, if she's honest with herself, she gets a bit lonely all alone in their big house in the Victors Village without anyone to talk to. He's awake, but he doesn't respond, so Annie continues, "I would be too, if I were you. I'm very proud of you for sleeping five hours straight last night. The two of us needed some good sleep, didn't we?"

He'll turn a month old tomorrow, and he already looks heartbreakingly like Finnick. Once milky-blue eyes now share Finnick's sea-green sparkle, and the few little tufts of hair on his head are reddish gold. She worries that someday he'll be as beautiful as his father was. Being gorgeous only ever hurt Finnick, and she's terrified that the same fate will befall her son. Her stomach clenches and her vision blurs just thinking about it.

The doctors tell her she needs to stop worrying about things she can't control. Annie takes several deep breaths and focuses on the laundry she has been folding. When her hands stop shaking, she smiles at her baby, still thinking back to Dr. Aurelius' advice. Find something to keep your mind off of it. Go for a walk, listen to music, make small talk. Do whatever it is that you need to do to keep yourself sane. Sane is a lofty goal, but one does have to try, don't they? "Think we'll get some more of that mist tonight? I could certainly use some. I haven't been out to visit your father in a week with this weather. If only that cold could have stuck around for a few hours more, right?" She knows she's rambling, but if she needs to talk like a crazy person to keep herself from becoming one, then that's what she needs to do.

She gets her wish that night, and the next, and the next. For the next week, just after midnight, the same cool mist seeps in through the open windows and fills her room, calming Ronan's fussing and allowing her to get some much-needed rest. By the fourth day, she finds herself looking forward to the mist and the sweet dreams it brings with it. For the first time in months, her dreams consist not of gaping, bleeding wounds and cold, dead eyes, but of her husband's green eyes only inches away from hers, his body pressed tight against the curve of her own, his lips against her throat, sucking against her pulse point. In these dreams, his golden skin glows pale in the moonlight, and she clings to him, trying to keep him with her. But he was always stronger than her, and he presses a kiss to her cheek before he pushes himself away.

Every morning when she wakes, Annie glances over to his side of the bed, only to find that he and the mist are gone.

It's a long walk down to the town, but the clouds provide a bit of protection from the sun today, and Annie knows she won't get another chance to get out of the house anytime soon. She still hasn't worked up the courage to put Ronan in the little baby seat that she affixed to the back of her bicycle, so she's carrying him in her baby sling and hoping he'll be all right in the heat. One of her hands holds a potted lily, and she has a small shovel tucked into her purse. The bag and the sling bump uncomfortably against her as she walks, the jingle of her keys and coins the only sound besides the faint crashing of the waves against the rocks below. As she leaves the false security of the Victors Village, Annie grows more and more aware of how alone she is, how vulnerable a woman carrying far too much and with a baby strapped to her chest must seem. She slips the shovel out of her purse and fists her hand around it, alert. It's almost as comforting as the knives she carried through the Arena.

Her grip on the shovel does not loosen until she is safely inside the town. True, the streets are mostly empty, and only a couple of the dozen shops that line the square have their doors open for business, but there are a few people out and about. Today, she's not interested in the living.

The graveyard sits behind an old, dilapidated building that has seen no use since the Dark Days. The iron gate squeaks as Annie pushes it open with only a bit of effort. Since the revolution, this gate has seen more use than anyone wants to admit to, but today, it's just her, Ronan, and generations of District Four's dead.

Finnick's sister insisted that he be buried in the family plot, not the center crypt that holds all but two of District Four's thirteen Victors, and Annie had been in no state to argue. She walks past rows of tombstones, many of which are too worn to reveal who lies beneath. When she was young and her father would bring her to visit Grandma and Grandpa Cresta, the forgotten graves had terrified her. The thought of rotting beneath the grass, nameless and alone, for all eternity had haunted her dreams for years. When she had gone into the Arena, Annie had learned that there were far greater things to fear.

One new, white headstone sits a few feet away from the others. Annie sits down cross-legged in front of the stone. "Hello, love," she says, and her voice shakes. "It's good to see you again. Been a while, hasn't it?"

There's no answer. There's never an answer, not anymore. She takes Ronan out of the sling and holds him out towards the headstone. "He's getting so big." No reply. "Isn't he handsome? I think he takes after his father."

"Not very talkative today, are we?" She unwraps the sling from her chest and lays it out on the ground, putting Ronan down on his stomach on top of it. "I brought you something," Annie says, picking up the lily. ""I thought yours might not have done so well these last few days, and it looks like I was right." The lilies she planted only two weeks before are now little more than brown, shriveled stalks. She gets to work digging them up and planting the new one. "I think… I think I'm getting better, Finn. I've been thinking a lot about you these last few days, dreaming about you every night, and they're not nightmares like they usually are. We're just really happy together." Annie pauses for a moment to wipe her hands on her skirt. She looks directly at the engraved words that say Finnick Odair. "It's like you're right there with me, and I love it. I love you, and it's good to have you back."

The dream is more vivid that night. His lips travel from her mouth to her chin and down towards her neck. Annie moans and runs her fingers through his thick, bronze hair. "Finnick," she groans when he reaches the bottom of her neck, sucking on it as he does every night. "Finnick, I love you so much."

He doesn't talk. In these dreams, he never does. His lips' hold on her neck does tighten, though, and his teeth graze the vein there. Annie grimaces. "Finnick, that hurts."

Teeth break the delicate skin there, and she screams. "Finnick, stop! Get off of me!" She pushes him away with more strength than she knew she had, and he almost flies away, eyes glowing and mouth open in a horrifying hiss. He's so close to Ronan now, and for an instant she is scared that he'll hurt their baby, but then she realizes that the fog is gone, and it must be a dream, but the world is spinning and that doesn't happen in dreams, and –

When she next opens her eyes, she can remember a brief glimpse of green eyes as the mist floats towards the window and dissipates into the night. A bead of sweat runs down her face and into her eyes, and she wipes it away. "I-it was a delusion. It had to be." Still, she gets up to check on Ronan. Her baby sleeps, content, and all she wants is to hide him away where the rest of the world can never hurt him. "It had to be a dream. Just a nightmare." It's still too hot to close the windows, but feeling halfway safe in her own home is more important than comfort. She sits up the rest of the night, equally afraid of the contents of her dream and the very real possibility that she might be mad.

Annie doesn't notice the two fat drops of crimson that dot the pure white of her nightgown.

The phone rings four times before they pick up. "Doctor Herrington's office. How can I help you today?"

"Hello, I'm Annie Cresta-Odair, and I was hoping to set up an appointment for my son, Ronan Odair."

"All right, dear, let me go grab his file." She hears a drawer open and the rustling of papers. "There we are. So, it says here that he's not due for another checkup for four weeks. Do you have any specific concerns that you'd like the doctor to have a look at before then?"

"Yes, please. I need an appointment as soon as possible."

"Is he sick, dear?" Annie looks over at her baby, who she left in the other room for his afternoon nap. She watches Ronan's chest rise and fall in deep, even breaths, wondering how she should answer. "Mrs. Cresta-Odair? Are you there?"

The woman's words snap her away from her thoughts. "He's not sick, exactly, but there's something that I would like to get checked out immediately. I'm worried that he might have some kind of infection."

"The poor thing. Let's see if I can squeeze him in sometime in these next couple days." Annie struggles to keep her eyes open. Perhaps it's just the stress of a new baby catching up with her, but these last few days, even the most basic tasks have been a challenge. "I've got an opening tomorrow afternoon. Does that sound good?"

"Yes, that's perfect, thank you so much." It's all going to be okay. The doctor will be able to figure out what's wrong with Ronan. "Have a nice day."

"You too, dear. Take care." There's a click at the end of the line, and all Annie can do is wait.

"No, he hasn't had a fever or any other obvious symptoms, but he's been very tired recently, and though he's been eating as much as I can give him, he hasn't put on any weight in a couple weeks."

"Let's have a look, shall we?" She hands Ronan over to the doctor, who smiles down at the baby. It's hard not to smile at Ronan's chubby cheeks and sweet little features. "You, my friend, are going to be a heartbreaker someday." The baby's eyes open wide at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. "I think you're right. The measurements we took when you came in show that he's only gained about an ounce since you were last here, but this part of summer is tough on newborns. It's to be expected that he wouldn't be quite as big as a child born in another part of the year would be at this age."

Annie smiles, relieved, but she still has another request. "He also has two little cuts on his neck that I would like you to take a look at." Doctor Harrington tilts Ronan's head to one side. "On the other side."

"Hmm, yes he does." The woman runs a gloved finger along the angry red dots. "They look fairly fresh. Do you know how he got these?"

"I'm not sure when exactly they happened. I noticed them about five days ago and figured that I'd accidentally stuck him with a safety pin as I was changing his diaper, but they haven't gotten any better since then, and I think they actually look a little bit bigger. I'm worried that they're infected."

The woman examines Ronan's cuts more closely, peering at them over the rims of her glasses. "I'm glad you brought him in, then. Have there been any changes in what you're feeding him?"

Annie shakes her head. "No, I'm still breastfeeding." She waits as the doctor pokes and prods some more, and another thought comes to her. "We have been having some strange weather recently, though. Every night at about the same time, the heat breaks and this nice, cool mist comes in."

For the first time, Doctor Harrington looks up from Ronan. "And you're staying up in the Victors Village still?" She nods. "That's a bit unusual, isn't it? I'd think the folks closer to shore would get any fog or anything earlier than you would, and I haven't heard anything from the fishermen."

"I can't explain it, but it's happened every night for the last two or three weeks."

The woman looks down at Ronan's cuts again. "Annie, would Coral be willing to take the two of you in for a few days? I think it might be a good idea to get the baby out of that house and see if things get better."

"Is it serious?"

"I'm not sure, but it's better to be safe than sorry. I'll get someone to check out this fog you've been seeing." Something in the tone of the woman's voice is very, very wrong, and Annie has been in and out of enough psych wards over the years to know exactly what that something is.

"This is real. I'm not having hallucinations."

"Annie, I never said the fog wasn't real, but it doesn't make any logical sense, and I'd like to have someone check it out. It could be a problem with one of your utilities for all we know, but until we have this figured out, we need to be very careful, especially with a new baby." She gives her a small, kind smile and reaches over to pat Annie's hand. "We need to work together on this, Annie. Don't worry, I know how hard you're working to be the best mother you can."

"Thank you," she replies, a few tears sliding down her face. "I'll see what I can do."

Her sister-in-law's house is far louder than her own. Even a six-week-old that never goes more than three hours without crying can't compete with the noise that two parents and four children between the ages of three and eight can create. Annie didn't think that she would be able to fall asleep with the steady snoring in the next room, but she must have, because she wakes up in a dark room, surrounded by the same mist that she has seen the last several nights. Good. She isn't going mad.

She yawns and stretches, but before she completes the action, the fog is gone, replaced by a tall, dark figure. For an instant, she's too shocked to do anything, but when the man takes a step towards Ronan's crib, she screams and lunges at him. Green eyes glow in the darkness, and strong hands wrap around her wrists. She meets Finnick's gaze for just an instant, sees long, pointed teeth moving in towards her throat, and she fears that she won't survive the next few minutes. Annie screams again. Even if he does kill her, she won't let him hurt Ronan.

Heavy footsteps can be heard hurrying down the hall, and as suddenly as he appeared, the man is gone, dissolved into silver mist yet again. Annie drops to her knees as the doorknob twists. "Annie, are you all right?" Coral flicks on the lights. "Dear, what's wrong? You should be in bed." She shakes her head, not yet recovered enough for words.

"You think a man who looks like Finnick and is made out of mist attacked you."

Annie's hands are wrapped tightly around a cup of tea that's far too hot for the season, but she still shivers. Those eyes, those fangs… every time she shuts her eyes, she sees his mouth opened wide, ready to cut open her throat. And it's undeniably Finnick. Every time she replays the scene in her head, it becomes more and more obvious. Finnick, her lover. The man who swore to love and protect her. The father of her child.

"You realize that's impossible, right?" Coral's golden skin and bronze hair are so much like Finnick's, like his.

"He was standing over Ronan's crib, and I couldn't let him hurt the baby, so I screamed at him and tried to keep him away. I'm sorry if you think it sounds crazy, but that really is what happened."

"Finnick's dead. You saw the corpse, you watched them bury him eight feet under. Only wishful thinking is bringing him back, even if it is as some type of demon."

Annie shakes her head. "I know what I saw, and it was Finnick. How can you explain these?" She holds out her arms, already bruised at the wrists, for the other woman's inspection.

Coral studies them for a moment before shaking her head. "I don't know, Annie, but what you're suggesting just isn't possible. I don't want to think that you did that to yourself –"

"But that is what you think."

"I'm not sure what to think about any of this. This mist that nobody else can see, my brother coming back to harass the two of you but disappearing just before I open the door? It's all unbelievable." Annie senses that she wants to say something more, but their conversation is cut short when both women turn as Derrick returns from outside. "What did you find?" Coral asks.

Her husband shrugs and shakes his head. "There's nothing out there. No footprints under the window, no suggestion of a ladder, nothing, not even the fog you talked about earlier. Sorry, Annie, but I don't think there was anybody in there with you."

Coral leans back in her chair and watches Annie, who does her best to occupy herself with her tea. She knows there was something, no, someone, in that room with her, and she knows it was some horrible version of Finnick, but no one will believe District Four's poor, mad girl. Coral's voice is kind, but its words are not. "Annie, I think that maybe you ought to go in and see the doctor again. Ronan can stay with us until you're feeling better."

The words strike with more force than a physical blow. Annie feels the air sucked from her lungs at the thought of losing Ronan. "No, I can take care of him."

"You need to take care of yourself first, love. Let's focus on getting you better before you try taking care of an infant. Don't worry, Annie, we have four kids. He'll be very, very safe with us."

"You can't take my baby away from me without my permission, and I'm not going to give it."

Her sister-in-law looks over to her husband, and Derrick runs his hands through his hair before he speaks. "Annie, you're seeing things that nobody else can, things that defy very basic rules of how life works. If Coral got on the phone right now and called Doctor Aurelius or Doctor Harrington, they would put you into some intense psychiatric treatment and leave Ronan with us, and it wouldn't be up to you. Coral's offering you the opportunity to make your own choice and figure this out for yourself without the embarrassment of getting the doctors involved."

A part of her knows he's right, but that doesn't dull the pain. "So you think I should be grateful towards the woman that wants to steal my baby away." Annie's shoulders sag, and her eyes fill with tears. Ronan has the smallest of smiles on his face as he sleeps in Coral's arms, and it's all too easy to imagine this scene without her own presence. "It's not just my imagination."

"You're seeing things from children's stories, Annie. It's just stress and the heat. You need a break." Coral's voice leaves no room for argument.

Annie's stomach rolls at the thought of leaving Ronan, but she pushes those worries aside and nods. "I'll look into some options tomorrow. Until then, I'd like to hold my baby, please." Coral concedes and Ronan is once again safe in Annie's arms. She can't help but wonder how long it will be until she holds him again.

The next morning, she begs them to stay up during the night to make sure that Ronan is kept safe. Coral and Derrick agree, probably more to keep her happy than because they believe that their nephew is in any real danger, but she knows her baby will be protected, and that's all that really matters.

The water in the three-gallon jug she carries sloshes back and forth as she walks, and the heavy shovel bangs against her shins with every step. The bag she has filled with other essentials is no more comfortable, but she can't stop to rest now. Perhaps tonight, when she is finished, she will be safe enough to stop and sleep.

After a night of pondering the possibilities, Annie decided that Coral was right. The things she's seeing do belong in story books. The only reasonable way to deal with them is as the heroine of those stories might. If Finnick was here, he would agree.

The summer's heat is good for one thing: there is nobody else in the graveyard to stop her. She digs for hours, but when the sun sets, Annie has not yet reached her goal. If she had another hour or two, she suspects she would hit the wood that lies beneath feet of dirt, but she can't take that chance.

She hurries back into the town and tucks herself into the slim alleyway between two of the shops. Her mother used to be friends with the butcher, and she knows he'll come out to investigate if he hears a woman scream during the night.

Far above her, the sky darkens, and hundreds or thousands of stars come out to illuminate the sky with tiny pinpricks of light. Though she exerted herself the entire day digging, Annie knows she won't be able to sleep tonight. Instead, she settles back against the wall and contents herself with watching the night sky. Every once in a while, she looks down at her watch, barely able to make out the numbers with the dim light the stars provide. Slowly, the hours tick by, and Annie begins to worry that perhaps this entire ordeal has been just her imagination.

"Fancy seeing you here, love. I thought you'd still be with Coral and Derrick." She whirls towards the source of the voice, and her stomach sinks. "Happy to see me again?" When he smiles, she can see the fangs.

"I was worried that I wasn't going to see you tonight. Your sister doesn't think you're real." Annie smiles up at him and reaches out to touch his hand. Cold, like death, it's everything she expects. She suppresses a shudder, struggling to keep the smile on her face.

His hand wraps around hers. "But you've always been smart. You knew better."

"Yes, I knew you'd never leave me."

"But yet you attacked me." She tries to pull away, but now his hand is vise-like around her wrist. "No, Annie, you aren't leaving. You don't get to attack me and try to dig up my grave and escape unharmed."

"Why did you come back? Why couldn't you have just stayed dead?" Annie knows she should scream for her own safety, but she keeps her voice even. If he leaves here, she has no doubt that his next destination will be Coral's house. She struggles against him to add to the effect.

His green eyes, which were always so warm and gentle when he was alive, now are cold and harsh. "I'm not the Finnick I used to be. I have no use for him. But you…" He looks up and down her body, appraising every inch of her, "You, I'm sure, I could find a purpose for." The man that used to be Finnick drags her a little closer.

"Wh-what are you going to do to me?" She doesn't have to fake the fear in her voice. If only I could move him a little this way. Annie pulls away from him, and, thankfully, he steps forward to again hold her against him.

He doesn't answer, instead pushing her hair over her shoulder to bare her neck. His lips press against the side of her face first before he leans down further to caress the large vein on her neck, the exact ritual he has performed every night in her dreams. Now, though, what seemed so loving and intimate turns into a nightmare, a sick mutation of what their relationship had once entailed. Annie forces herself not to struggle as his fangs break through the delicate skin. Finnick smiles against her neck as he sucks, not allowing a single drop to escape and run down her neck. Though disgusted, she holds his head flush against her neck with one hand as she reaches towards her bag with the other.

Her jaw tightens as she reaches the item she has been looking for. The odious white flowers will only scare him away, but this should banish the vampire forever. Already, her vision narrows, and her grip is not as strong as it was just a few minutes prior, but Annie gathers all the strength she can to send the stake through Finnick's back.

He releases her with a horrible, high-pitched shriek. Annie pulls the stake from his back and plunges it in again. Finnick managed to grab one of her arms, but she's not finished yet. Again and again, Annie stabs the vampire, not stopping even when he has collapsed to the ground. She arranged the stake carefully over his heart. He's almost certainly already dead, but when the tip of the stake pierces his heart and blood seeps from around the edges of the stake, she knows he will never come back to haunt her family. With gentle hands, she shuts the man's eyelids. "I really do love you, and I always will" she whispers into the night.

Annie sits there for long minutes as she considers what to do next. Eventually, she pushes herself off the ground and wipes her hands on her pants. There are still a few hours before dawn, and there's no reason that anyone has to know what happened here tonight. As she drags him through the two blocks of brick roads that separate the alleyway from the graveyard, Annie tries to think of a reasonable explanation to give everyone for the pile of freshly-dug earth over his grave. She shrugs when she pushes his body back into the hole she created this afternoon. Nobody will doubt that the mad Victor had a fit that led to erratic behavior. Even she isn't quite willing to say that this isn't a hallucination. She throws the first shovel full of dirt back over the body. She has a lot to do before sunrise.

"I just needed to figure some things out for myself. Don't worry, I have it all taken care of now. I won't be seeing anything like that again." It's enough to convince Coral that she's ready to take care of Ronan again. True, she does ask Annie to continue to stay with them for a couple more days, just to be sure, but she can live with that.

When Ronan is older and he goes through the silly phase of believing in ghosts the way all children do, Annie does what her own mother did and assures him that the supernatural is nothing more than the imagination playing tricks on people. It's almost always true, after all, and she's wise enough now to know that almost always true is as close to certainty as the living can come. Even she's not certain the ordeal was more than the product of stress and heat. He never asks about the twin scars on the side of his neck, and Annie is glad that she doesn't have to choose between lying to him and telling the truth.

She still plants flowers on Finnick's grave, and she still means it every time she whispers that she loves him.

A/N: This was originally posted as a chapter of Memories of Us, but I thought it made more sense to have this as a stand-alone story. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.