treadswater: (by the wine-dark sea)
Annie Cresta | Victor of the 70th Hunger Games ([personal profile] treadswater) wrote in [community profile] farsickness2021-02-28 09:07 pm

have we ever thought that being lost is our destination? | Locked + OTA

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHEN: 28th February, first part of March
WHAT: Arrival
WHERE: Gazin
WARNINGS: Anxiety attack in Arrival section + general anxious thinking in other threads. Will add if anything more shows up.
NOTES: Feel free to add a wildcard situation if you want! Annie will be scoping out Gazin a lot.




ARRIVAL | Locked to Lyanna Stark

She wants to be anywhere else. She wants to be somewhere away from the television, away from her house, away where she can't be found at all. No one. No journalists to ask her awkward questions because oh no, oh no, it's the Quarter Quell and the arena will soon be down to the final eight. And Finnick will live. He'll live past that. And then Annie is going to be in world of trouble because... Because...

Because they made the jabberjays scream in her voice. Because Finnick had been mad with desperation.

Because Snow had made the rules very clear and then he'd given the nod to force whats-his-name, that fucker of a Gamemaker whose name she can't remember right this very fucking second, she's so fucked, they are so fucked, and they hadn't done anything wrong. And now, and now there'll be journalists asking questions and Annie had bolted from the living room as soon as her feet let her. Bolted where? She doesn't know.

She just wants to be somewhere else-

The cold shocks her. Her feet trip as snow suddenly clings to her ankles, and Annie stumbles onto the ground. The cold, wet, snowy ground. Her gasp pulls cold air into her lungs and she starts to cough at the sudden icy conditions. Maybe it's a good thing: it stops her from screaming.

In a daze, Annie reaches out to push herself up from the ground, her other hand still clutching her shawl to her chest. She'd. She'd been running through a doorway, down her hall and, and had something blurred? She can't remember. But she can't have been drugged. Her steps had moved smoothly from one to another. No pause. Just suddenly... This.

Snow. A forest. A wooden crossroads and a cold wind chilling her through the thin cotton of her blouse.

Now I really have gone completely insane, Annie thinks, and she starts to laugh.



LATER | OTA

Gazin is strange. Annie can't make sense of it. She has a room now, on a loan from the tavern. She'll have to pay for board in a week. She has clothes. The faded dress is too big, the stockings patched and mended, the boots will need a repair soon, the cloak smells musty. But they are clothes and if she puts them over her own blouse and skirt, she's warm enough. It's enough. It's enough to be another data point because oh, no, the Capitol would not put her in such things. She knows how the Capitol works, how the arena fashion works, and none of this is what they'd do with her.

She's worn out from her bout of hysterics in the forest, so for a few hours that first night, Annie can be found in the tavern's main room listening in on conversations. Watching the dynamics at play. Trying to work out what, actually, is going on.

(When she goes to bed, she makes sure the door is blocked and she already has an idea of where to run if she has to climb out the window.)

The next few days, Annie can be found walking around Gazin. She's put on that old cloak but only sometimes wears the hood up. It restricts her vision and she is still jumping at shadows. Maybe this isn't all some new and excitingly detailed hallucination, but she's on edge enough that she's risking the cold to broaden her field of vision.

She visits shops, including a jeweller to get a price on the bangle she's least attached to. Not that she trades it in just yet. You only do that if you can't afford to bargain, and Annie has a week. She can look around to see where she'd get the best price. Once she can talk without nervousness, without her awkward laugh. She walks around the market, still watching, and one day, she even ventures out to the river. If she's to pay the loan, she'll need money, and trading bangles will only last her so long. She can fish. She can.

She'll just have to work out what she can fish in this ridiculous weather.

ylgr: (đŸș headtilt)

arrival.

[personal profile] ylgr 2021-02-28 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Lyanna spends a lot of time in the forests surrounding Gazin. Hunting, gathering supplies, doing what she can to earn a little gold towards the Stark’s homestead, here in this world. Winterfell the second. But also simply because there’s freedom, there. She can ride where she likes, when she likes. (And drink, and fight, and any number of things that would have earned her disapproving looks from most of her brothers.) And there is nowhere she’d rather be than riding through the forest on Sona’s back, the wind in her hair, the cold filling her lungs.

It reminds her of home.

There’s the sound of laughter, of all things, from somewhere off to her left, and she urges Sona in that direction at a canter, dismounting when she’s nearer to its source, to approach on foot. It’s near where she appeared, when she first arrived, and she wonders. if someone else has found themselves in a similar circumstance.

She catches sight of the slight redhead lying on the ground and she loops Sona’s reins over the nearest tree branch with murmur for her to wait there for her. “Are you all right?” she asks, moving to kneel beside the girl.
ostavil: (011)

shopping

[personal profile] ostavil 2021-03-01 10:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Gazin seems to have inherited a group of cagey people, if the person from the other day in the woods and this girl are any indication. Bucky doesn't mind it; he's well versed in being cagey and he doesn't want to tell someone how they handle being dropped into a brand new place without anything but the clothes on their back. It's been a shock for him and he's used to facing everything.

Still, this girl seems cagier than most and he tries to give her enough space before he speaks to her. There's nothing scarier than having someone mostly silent sneak up behind you so Bucky makes sure to be loud enough before he calls out.

"Not used to seeing people trying to sell jewelry. Usually they're buying it. You've got spares or something?"
ylgr: (đŸș ...)

[personal profile] ylgr 2021-03-03 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Gently, Lyanna. Gently.

The fractured sound to the girl’s laughter, how she tries to get away, like a skittish animal, to end up sprawled on the snow staring at her with wide eyes and her shawl pressed to her mouth hammers that home in a spectacular fashion. She needs to tread carefully. Whoever she is, she is scared and frantic and LOST. And not dressed for the weather in the slightest. She needs to get her to let her help her. Get her into town. Somewhere warm.

“I don’t think you are,” she answers, softly. “But that’s okay. I can help. If you allow me to. You’re not back home. Wherever that was, whatever you’re afraid of there, you’re not there anymore. They can’t get you. I know it sounds...” Crazy, is how it sounds. “Hard to believe, but it’s true. You’re not the first to find herself here. My brother and I have been here for a few months, now, and there are others who have been here longer.” She keeps her voice soft and gentle, as though she’s trying to talk down a skittish horse, or one of her brothers. (Not Ned. Ned’s the sensible one.)

“We need to get you out of the cold, and out of the snow.” She reaches up and undoes her cloak, pulling it off and holding it out in her arms. “But this should help a little, until we can.”
ostavil: (015)

[personal profile] ostavil 2021-03-03 09:40 pm (UTC)(link)
"That's a fair question," Bucky says. She seems nervous to him, drawn in and assessing him from head to toe. He's done that too when he's assessing threats and since this girl is slight and small, he might look very intimidating to her. It's not what he means to do, genuinely, and he has no idea how to make himself look like less of the threat he is. He opens up his body, holds his limbs looser.

"I think people make things here but bartering makes sense too. I was just joking around with you, though. It's hard to make gold when you first get here and you don't know what's going on and forgive me for assuming, but you look new."

He knows that better than most, having hidden for a while before getting stumbled upon by Merlan and offered a job almost on the spot. It's good work, the forge, but it doesn't seem like something this girl might be able to manage. She might surprise him, though.

"Let me spot you some. No payback. Just a gift?"
fishermansweater: (Take the fall)

L A T E R

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-04 07:05 am (UTC)(link)
Finnick is watching the river.

He's a fisherman, but he's always been more of a saltwater fisher than a freshwater one, and he doesn't know what he can expect from the conditions here. He does know that it's cold enough that fish aren't easy to come by spearfishing, and he doesn't want to stand up to his knees in the cold water while he's trying to work it out.

So he's up a tree on the riverbank, having hidden his footmarks as well as he can, watching the river current and looking for signs of fish.

(He's also watching the occasional small boat that goes by, but they're of less interest.)

He's watching a spot where eddies are forming near some rocks when he notices a slender figure approaching. She's moving carefully, feeling out where she's going in a way that makes his heart ache, because it's the same way Annie moves when she's exploring. She's wearing a cloak and carrying a long stick. As he watches, she bends down to poke something on the riverbank with the stick, and he sees the gleam of sunlight on red hair. Just like Annie's hair, worn like Annie would wear it, and now she's closer he can see that she's very like Annie in stature too.

It's only when she straightens and turns downstream that he sees her face.

"Annie."

He breathes the name out, his voice soft, almost reverent. He can't say it any louder, because it feels like that might make her disappear. He's been thinking about her so much, wishing he knew what was happening to her, longing to be back in Four, with her.

It can't be Annie. She can't be here. But he's scrambling down to hang on a limb of the tree and then drop to the ground almost before he's thought that.

He needs to know.

"Annie!"

He runs a few steps but then he stops, because this can't be real. The last time he'd heard her it had been screaming from a jabberjay's mouth.

It hurts to see her there, to see her and think it must be some sort of trick.

He holds out his hands, palm first.

"You're here. Not real?"

He wants the answer to be real so much.
Edited 2021-03-04 13:21 (UTC)
fishermansweater: (No no no)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-06 03:32 am (UTC)(link)
He hesitates.

The little sleep he's had here has been full of her screams, screams like he'd never heard before the jabberjays. Not the shriek of alarm when her mind plays tricks on her or the high-pitched edge her voice gets when she's hysterical. Screams out of his worst fears, Snow's worst threats given a sound, fed to the jabberjays and used against him. It had been so real, hearing them, as real as she looks, now. But a Capitol trick wouldn't know that response, wouldn't know the full phrase he'd only asked half of. The shorthand they'd developed after so many whispers of it's not real, Annie, so many times when he'd tried to soothe her out of the knots her mind ties her in.

It's theirs. Not for the Capitol to take and use against him.

"Real. Annie, I'm real. I'm here, and you're ..."

He can't say anything else, because his voice chokes into a sob because he'd been so scared what they'd done to her, what they'd do to her, because they'd tricked him into screaming her name in the arena for the whole country to hear, and they were only allowed to be together if it remained a secret.

There's so much he wants to say, and he can't say any of it.
fishermansweater: (Annie - Tonight you gotta hold me)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-06 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Catching her is simple.

It's familiar, something they've done over and over again in the secrecy of their own homes. Never in the open, where they could be seen. But he's acting on instinct as he takes the few steps needed to meet her, to sweep her up into his arms.

It hurts, the injury on his forearm pressing against her back as he holds her, but he doesn't care, because she's here, it's really her, and he'd thought he might never see her again.

So he holds her, clings to her, lets her cling to him, and he buries his face in her hair. That's an old trick, too, for when they can't be sure whether they're observed or not. He can hug a friend. He can whisper to a friend, too, words that can't be heard by anyone else, because they'd betray him for her lover.

"You're safe. I thought they'd hurt you."
fishermansweater: (Annie - you and me against the world)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-07 01:59 am (UTC)(link)
She knows what he means. Of course she does: he knows she must have been watching. Not because it's compulsory, but because he was there, and Mags was there, and they were family to her. So she'd seen it. Seen him screaming for her, seen him collapse under the weight of the agony of hearing her like that. Those sounds had ripped into his heart, but he can feel that heavy wound healing, soothed by her assurances.

He'd wanted to believe it when Beetee had told him it was a trivial thing to manipulate the sounds he'd heard, but it had been so real.

"Annie, I..." His voice trails off, because he's not sure what he wants to say. There's too much. Things he'd wanted to tell her before the Peacekeepers marched him straight to the train. Things he'd been thinking of in the arena, when he couldn't get her out of head. The simple fact that he missed her too, that he loves her.

"Missed you too. But. Someone could be watching."

Be careful is another thing he doesn't say.
fishermansweater: (Shattered)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-07 09:35 am (UTC)(link)
"Annie, you saw what they did..."

It's always been his darkest fear, ever since he first realized he'd fallen in love with her. That he'd step out of line and she'd be punished for it. And their relationship had always come at the price of secrecy. Not from Snow, because Snow had made it very clear that he'd known about them. But from the public. Never being in any stable relationship was a necessary part of the role Finnick had to play for his public. That way, everybody could keep pretending his patrons were real affairs, that he had some choice, when the only person he'd choose was the one person he could never admit.

And they'd attacked him with her in the arena.

He closes his eyes, trying to stop tears from appearing in them. His arms press against his chest, because if they don't, he'll want to reach out to her again, and he couldn't pass that off as the gesture of a friend.

"We have to care."
ostavil: (027)

[personal profile] ostavil 2021-03-08 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
"I could get you both. I have more than enough money to do it," Bucky says. People had been kind to him when he first showed and while he'd been suspicious of it at first, he'd come to understand that these kindnesses had been genuine and not tricks. He doesn't know if he can convince this girl of the same but he can at least offer it and see if she accepts the gift.

"If you want, we can look for the boots now and then I can take you to lunch afterward. It's the least I can do after people took care of me when I came here. For what little it might be worth, you can trust me."

Strange words to give instead of receive but it feels good to be on the other side of it for once.
fishermansweater: (Jungle warrior)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-08 11:08 am (UTC)(link)
"You've been in the city?"

He opens his eyes as he's pulled suddenly from his thoughts about the danger they're in if they show too much affection in public to another danger he's been more preoccupied with here.

The people. The town. He's been wary, too wary to even go into the city, not trusting that it could be anything other than a trap, and preferring to stick to the woods, where he could avoid contact with the threat posed by other people.

"A few days? A week, maybe a bit longer? I've. I've been in the woods. Moving around. Didn't want anyone to find me."

He's surprised that she'd gone into the town, and it shows in the slow, careful way he speaks and the faint frown on his face. The whole situation is dangerous, and until now there'd been nobody here he could trust.
fishermansweater: (Victor twitch)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-13 09:09 am (UTC)(link)
She doesn't finish the question, seems to realize the answer that's behind the flatness in Finnick's expression as she asks. She knows as well as he does what it is to be in the arena. She knows the fear. The reaction to the environment as it changes, the threats it can bring.

The arena killed most of the tributes left in Annie's Games when the dam burst. She survived because she reacted, and because she knew how to outlast the others in that environment. And the Quarter Quell arena had been designed to kill. Not when the Gamemakers got bored and decided things needed shaking up, but as a feature.

"I have a fire and blankets. I'm -"

He's about to say fine, but he knows that's not true, and he owes Annie enough respect to not say something so outright stupid. He's hurt in ways that have nothing to do with his physical injuries, ways that crawl under his skin, that make him startle and take cover at unexpected noises. That make him so wary of everything here that he'd decided the forest was safer than anywhere people were.

But she can probably guess that, and it's not what she meant, and he can hear her voice getting more frantic, see the fear in her face.

"Nothing serious."
fishermansweater: (Glower)

[personal profile] fishermansweater 2021-03-13 10:29 am (UTC)(link)
Finnick hasn't trusted anything here.

He'd accepted help from a few people who he'd met in the first few days, let the girl he'd met dress his wounds and Bucky give him food, blankets, and a knife. Mostly, he's been in hiding. Moving around, covering his tracks and his fires better since Bucky had warned him about other people in the forest. He's been waiting for traps, to see if there was some sort of timer here like there had been in the jungle, that would unleash death with no warning.

He's exhausted, cold, hurt, but there's a reason he's out here and not in Gazin. Gazin doesn't feel safe, not when he's afraid of every unexpected or unnatural noise.

But he trusts Annie like he trusts nobody else. Trusts her with his heart, his body, his mind. Trusts her so she can sleep next to him without the dread that crawls through him whenever he sleeps with anyone else. Trusts her enough to let her see the wounds in his mind, in his sense of self and being, left by the things the Capitol has done to him.

He trusts her that she wouldn't lead him into a trap, wouldn't tell him it was secure if she didn't believe it was, but he can't trust this place.

He turns his hand against hers, lets his fingers close tightly, quickly, over hers. A squeeze, like a friend might do for comfort.

"How can it be safer?"

He doesn't mean to question her judgment, but he can't understand.

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