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wreywrites · 6 months

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Tiger Shark

Part 3: The Crown

Chapter 18

“So Beck gave me a pound of bacon, real bacon, for every dead seagull I brought him. Don’t know what he did with them. Somebody said he chummed it all. Somebody else said he turned around and sold them to Marth and that the fried rice that week wasn’t anything you’d eat if you knew what was in it. I try not to think about that too much, because I had supper there twice that week and honestly I’d rather not know. But I do credit that with my win. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to spear a seagull, but they’re harder to hit than you’d think.” Finnick notices me watching him. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“We missed supper.”

“I’m not really hungry anyway.” My stomach betrays me and growls loudly.

“We don’t have to go back,” Finnick says. “And you don’t have to lie about anything. We can eat at my house if you want.”

I nod. I don’t want to be around the others. Finnick is right. They try to help, but it just makes this worse. And it isn’t their fault, but I can’t do it, not right now, not tonight.

Finnick stands, then helps me up. My legs are cramped. Everything hurts. I am still tired. I am always tired. Maybe this is just how life will be from now on. Sore, exhausted, mentally unstable. Just more fantastic prizes they don’t tell you about until after you win.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Finnick locks the door behind us and we walk to his house in Victor’s Village. It is across the street and two down from me.

Finnick makes shrimp and rice. He’s not a half-bad cook, but I’m hungry enough my judgment may be skewed. After supper, we do the only thing we know how to do: sit on the couch and turn on the TV to see what the Capitol has to say today.

It turns out, not much. They are interviewing someone from District Three about new developments in broadcast speed. When that is over, they have three people talking about the coming fashion trends for this fall. After that, they start the highlight reel from a Hunger Games long before my time. I don’t even recognize the girl they focus on and who I assume will be the victor. We watch until the end, when she uses the slingshot that she is frighteningly adept with to kill the other remaining tribute. I decide it is probably time to go home.

No one else is awake when I get there. Coral and Jade’s shoes are by the door, but I don’t see them anywhere. I assume they are in the spare bedrooms. I go straight to my room. There is a small TV courtesy of the Capitol. I imagine they want to keep us as connected to them as possible, but in this moment, I appreciate it. It means I can listen to something other than the deafening silence around me.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Weeks pass this way. Once my father and I are completely unpacked and officially moved into the new house and have organized the old house into an office, Jade and Coral go home. They still come for supper three or four nights a week and spend weekends here, but they have given up on spending all day every day with me. I don’t blame them. Sometimes I talk and talk, and it is almost like the way things used to be, but then something will happen that sends my mind on a lark. To their credit, they just sit with me and talk until I come back. Sometimes it is only a minute or two, one day it was almost half an hour. But they are always there when I come back. They ask no questions, just give me reassuring smiles.

I spend a lot of time with Mags. She likes to sit at the beach and weave things. She says it keeps her hands busy without putting any weight on her mind. I start going with her most days. She teaches me how to weave. I am not nearly as good as she is, but I do feel more at peace when I’m doing something with my hands. I make shoe mats and rugs because rectangles are the easiest shapes. Mags makes baskets and bowls; one day she makes me a large sunhat that I quite like.

I make friends with the old men that fish off the pier. They like to tell stories and I like to listen. And on the days I don’t want to talk, they don’t make me.

I help my father in the office. I don’t trust myself going out with the fishing crew yet, but I do want to stay involved. So I make the schedules and rotations of which boats and crews fish where and when. I schedule maintenance, days off, shipments.

I read books. Books that I haven’t read since I was a small child and my parents read them to me at bedtime. Books that I read in school. Old books of my father’s, about great heroes of the ancient world and people who lived on other planets and men exploring the oceans.

I learn to draw. I am not good at people, but I draw animals everywhere. In the margins of papers at the office, in the sand while Mags weaves, in piles of sketchbooks that the Capitol sends when they find out I have begun drawing as a hobby.

I don’t see much of Finnick. Once in a while he stops in to say hi, or ask if we need anything, or invite us over for supper with Mags and Beck. We never turn him down. Dad likes Finnick. One night on the way home from supper, he even says, “Annie, I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about old Odair He Is.” I like Finnick too, but I am happy to distance myself from him for a while. I still have so much that I am trying to work through, and I cannot depend on him for this. I need to do it myself.

So I focus on Mags and weaving and drawing. And as those things get easier, I work toward other things. I talk to the old men a little more while we fish. When they tell jokes, I try to laugh. Every day it gets a little easier, and then one day it is genuine, and I feel like I have rounded a corner. I start reciprocating Jade and Coral’s efforts. We talk about the old days and laugh about the trouble we used to get into. On Saturday nights we stay up far too late, talking about whatever comes to mind. One day I decide to go out with the fishing crew. They welcome me back as if I hadn’t missed a day. The work is hard, but I love it. It keeps my mind busy, and when I come home exhausted, I sleep much better than normal.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

It is four months before I visit Mako’s parents. I know I should have done it sooner, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I am terrified I will drift away on them, and I cannot do that. So I try to wait until I am no longer drifting. While it is rarer now, only a few times a week, and usually in the evenings, I don’t think it will ever go away. I always come back on my own eventually, but if someone is there talking to me, it is much faster. Everyone around me is quite good at it. Dad tells me stories from when he was my age and running his own fishing crew. Coral tells me funny things that the little kids she works with have said. Jade talks about the house she wants to build on the beach. Mags hums old songs. Even the old men on the pier are surprisingly helpful, talking about their most exciting fishing adventures.

Now I wonder if I should open my evening with Mako’s parents with a warning that at some point I will get a distant look in my eye and not respond for several minutes, but if they just keep talking to me, I will come back. It sounds crazy. And self-serving. And rude. I am supposed to be there to commiserate their horrible loss; I shouldn’t start by saying, “The arena messed me up, please help.” So I decide to say nothing. To simply show up and tell them how very sorry I am.

I knock on their door on Sunday afternoon. I know they aren’t busy. At least, they wouldn’t have been before the reaping. I don’t know what their weekly schedule looks like anymore. But Mrs. Silther opens the door and smiles at me.

“Annie, come in. We were hoping you wouldn’t stay away forever.” She beckons me inside and I follow her to the living room, where Mr. Silther is sitting at his corner desk checking ledgers.

He looks up over his glasses. “Hello, Annie. How are you?”

I think for a minute, then shrug. “I’ve been… adjusting… It was—still is—hard to go back to anything like how life was.”

He nods and stands up. “Shall we go to the kitchen? Tetra baked cookies yesterday.”

We sit at the kitchen table with iced tea and a plate of cookies. They are delicious.

“I’m going to be honest,” I say, deciding it’s best to just get this in the open and over with, “I haven’t visited before now because… I wasn’t sure how to. You’re grieving, I’m struggling to cope with everything, and I just… I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say.” I take a deep breath. “But I do know, and I want you to know, that I am very, very sorry about Mako’s death. And as much as I like being alive, sometimes I wish it was him that won and came back to Four instead of me.”

Mrs. Silther, tears in her eyes, takes my hand. Mr. Silther is silent and motionless for a moment, then says, “None of this is your fault, or ours, or even his. It was literally the luck of the draw, and after all these years of good luck, it was time for the bad. It is hard sometimes to see your father smiling on his way to work because his child came home, but I wouldn’t wish on him the same pain that we feel.”

“We miss Mako, but we’re glad you came home,” Mrs. Silther sniffles. “I don’t know what we would’ve done if we lost both of you.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

They invite me to stay for supper. I do, because it would feel wrong not to. These people used to be like a second set of parents to me, and now that I am trying to mend all my other relationships, why not this one as well?

We do not discuss the Games over supper. Instead, we talk about the teacher replacing Mr. Conchran, what kind of fish we think the Capitol will pay the most for this winter, the renovations being done on the Justice Building, and the upcoming fashion trends in the Capitol (which we all agree are ridiculous, but Mrs. Silther says snakeskin is the “in” pattern about every ten years, so we shouldn’t really be surprised).

After supper, I give each of them a hug and a thank you. Mrs. Silther tells me I’m always welcome, and Mr. Silther says we’ll have to try to get back in the habit of taking turns hosting supper on Tuesdays.

I walk home, feeling better than I have since I first saw Mags and Finnick after I won.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The next morning I am home alone when there is a knock at the door. It’s Finnick. He is holding flippers and a lobster box and wearing sunglasses and a woven sunhat almost identical to mine.

“I know you have flippers. I packed them when you moved. Go get them.”

I stare at him for a full minute. We haven’t seen each other for at least a week. Finally I say, “Good morning to you too.”

“Yes, yes,” he nods impatiently and flaps his hands at me. “Flippers, dive clothes, let’s go!”

“Alright!” I gesture inside. “Would you like to come in and sit while I change?”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Five minutes later I am back downstairs and ready to go. I grab my sunhat as we pass the hat rack. We are out the door when I realize: “Food?”

Finnick keeps walking. “Mags is bringing lunches and water.”

I jog after him. Next door, Mags welcomes us in. She picks up a beautiful basket that I am sure she wove herself and probably contains food. Finnick hands me his flippers and the lobster basket and hefts the water keg over one shoulder.

We walk to the docks, past the commercial fishing boats to the private section. I am about to ask which one of them owns a boat when I see Beck waving at us.

“Good morning!” he calls from the little fishing boat. “It’s been too long!” Beck helps Mags with the lunch basket, then takes the lobster box from me as Finnick situates the water keg. “Annie, glad you could join us.”

“Glad to be invited,” I smile. “Though, I wasn’t really invited, I was just told to get my flippers.”

Beck laughs. “I don’t know why I expected anything else from Finnick.”

As Beck steers us away from the docks and along the shore, I ask, “So, where’d you get the boat?”

“Capitol gave it to me after I won. It was before they fed and paid you for life, when they were still trying to figure out the prize system, so they gave me a boat.”

“Not a bad deal,” I say.

“No, not at all. I do have to pay my own repairs to keep her running, but all in all, not bad.” Beck turns and calls back to Finnick, “Where you wanna dive?”

Finnick looks up from the food basket and shrugs in response. Mags takes advantage of his distraction to close the lid on his fingers. He turns back to her to stare in exaggerated pain and betrayal, but she just smiles and shakes her head.

Beck takes us down the shoreline for a few more minutes before bringing the boat to a stop and dropping the anchor.

Finnick shakes his head. “If that octopus is still here, Beck I swear…”

Beck laughs. “He’s not, we’re having him for supper tonight.”

Finnick throws his head back in relief. “Oh glorious day! How’d you get him?”

“Two spears, a net, and a knife. And I think I was a little hard on you. He was a beast.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you! Why would I make that up?”

Mags is laughing. I have no idea what is happening. But I am too anxious to get in the water to ask. I have only just realized that I haven’t been lobster diving since before the reaping, and I miss it. I am also aware of how very cold the water is going to be, and I want to just jump in and get the initial shock over with.

Finnick must agree, because he ties a rope to the lobster box and hands the other end to Mags, who knots it around a cleat. I pull off my pants and shirt, leaving my dive shorts and tank top, then put on my flippers. Finnick does the same, though he does not have a dive shirt. I resolve not to stare. Mags drops the lobster box off the side of the boat and it drifts down through the water.

“Ready?” Finnick grabs a spear.

I nod, taking one as well. We don’t need them lobster diving, but if a shark would happen to really want to eat one of us, or if we were to run into another octopus—whatever that story is about—I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Finnick salutes Beck and Mags, then dives off the back of the boat. I roll my eyes and follow.

The water is frigid. Really, we are far too late in the season to be out swimming like this, but I don’t care. Being back in the water is like finally being home. Maybe I should have done this three months ago.

We dive down through the crystal-clear water, watching the rainbow of fish drift among the coral. I don’t even look for lobster on the first dive. I just take in the beauty around me. I have to go back up for air sooner than I’d like. There was a time, pre-reaping, that I could hold my breath for right around seven minutes. Now it feels more like three, if that.

When I dive again, Finnick grins at me and shakes his head. He already has a lobster in the box. I get to work, but I keep getting distracted just by being under water. It’s been so long, I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like, and now I am trying to take it all in as if for the first time. Finnick and I go up for air at the same time and I tell him as much as we tread water and scope out the ocean floor as best we can.

“I know what you mean. I felt the same way after my Games. You have to catch at least one though, otherwise you don’t get supper.”

“You’re not even going to share the octopus with me?”

Finnick laughs, then dips back under the surface.

I follow. Just when I am ready to go up for air, I spot one. It looks annoyed, like it knows what’s coming, but I am the Tiger Shark. I position myself directly over the lobster, then grab it around the middle and swim it back to the box. When I break the surface for air, I am lightheaded. I probably should have gotten the lobster on my next breath, but I have to get back into breath-holding shape somehow. And I was determined to catch him.

Finnick pops up next to me. “I’m so proud,” he sniffs, putting his free hand dramatically on his chest.

I splash him.

“Oh that is very mature. Now I’m not going to tell you the octopus story.”

“You like the sound of your own voice too much. You’ll tell me eventually.” I dive again.

After three more breaths and only a second lobster to show for it, I am simply watching the fish when Finnick shoots past me. Instinctively, I follow, and then I see the lobster. I can beat Finnick, I am sure… if I cheat. I jab my spear into the sand so I can use both arms, then grab his foot and yank backward. It catches him off guard more than anything, but in his confusion I press my advantage and pull ahead. I snag the lobster and turn around to return to the box when Finnick snags me. Thankfully, he is still carrying his spear, and so only has one free arm, which is wrapped around my middle. But I have the lobster.

This does, however, put us all in the precarious position of having a barely-secured lobster in very close quarters. I hold it as far away from myself as I can while Finnick tries to grab it with his spear-hand.

I am starting to consider giving up the lobster for the chance to go breathe—Finnick has a very unfair advantage—when I realize we have actually wrestled our way quite close to the surface. I drive my elbow into his stomach and make a break for it.

I gasp for breath when I reach the surface, still holding the poor lobster as high above my head as I can reach. Desperately, I paddle for the boat. This is my lobster.

And then I see a hand reaching over my head. “No!” I twist away.

Finnick follows, still hindered by the spear. I’m sure it says something about me that I was so quick to abandon my spear over this point of pride. Finnick manages to grab my wrist.

“No!” I shriek, still out of breath but laughing. This is ridiculous. “No! This is my lobster!”

Finnick is laughing too as he tries to pull my arm down. “I saw it first!”

“But I caught it! It’s mine!”

The spear arm wraps around my waist. Desperate, I transfer the lobster to my other hand, then bring it close to Finnick’s face. He lets go, reeling away, and once again, I flee for the boat. I am half in when a hand closes around my ankle. I turn around, waving the miserable lobster in the vicinity of where I think an ear could be. The fingers release my foot and I scramble onto the boat.

“It’s mine,” I wheeze. “I caught this one. It’s important to me that we all know that.”

Mags and Beck already have a bucket on the deck with some water in it. Gently, hoping to make up for all the stress I’ve put it through in the last few minutes, I place the lobster inside. I have no more than let go of it when Finnick grabs me around the middle and throws me overboard.

At least, he tries to throw me overboard. I’m not stupid. As he throws, I reach back and grab one of his arms with both hands. For a second, we stay there, with me suspended over the water and him standing on the boat. Then momentum catches up to us, and I pull him in with me.

“Why won’t you just let me have it?” I laugh as we both bob to the surface.

“It’s a matter of pride! I saw it first! And you left your spear! That’s reckless endangerment!”

I snort. “You had yours, we were fine!”

And then we both realize that his is still on the boat, where he put it down to pick me up.

“Maybe I should go get it…” I glance around to find it before I dive.

Finnick laughs, pointing a little to the right, where the metal is glinting in the light. “Maybe.”

When I get to the spear, there is another lobster right there, so I grab it as well. Finnick is waiting by the box when I get back to it. I deposit the lobster, and we head for the surface together. I hand the spear to Mags, then climb in the boat. Finnick follows. Beck has pulled up the lobster box and is moving the lobsters into one of Mags’s watertight baskets that they have filled with water next to the bucket with my lone, probably traumatized, lobster.

Finnick and I towel off and put our other clothes back on over our dive clothes. Then we all sit around a little heater and eat the soup and sandwiches Mags brought while Finnick tells the story of the octopus.

“I was just exploring, minding my own business.”

“Already this story sounds fake,” I say.

Beck snorts as Finnick glares at me and goes on, “I found a little cave, you know how sometimes there’s a hollow under some coral. It was sizable, so I thought I’d look in. I didn’t just shove my hand or my head inside. I was a few feet away, looking in, when this octopus-” he spreads his arms as far apart as they’ll go, “-grabs my legs from behind! I guess I was sitting by his front door when he got home, and he did not appreciate that. But instead of asking me to leave like a reasonable host, he tried to kill me. And I can’t out-wrestle an octopus, and of course I didn’t have anything on me to kill it, so I swam for the surface, which only angered the beast. And it was holding on to my legs, so it wasn’t like I could force it out of the water, so I tried to peel it off as I swam, but that wasn’t working well at all.”

“He looked ridiculous,” Beck says through a mouthful of sandwich. “Like a kid who thinks he’s drowning but just needs to stand up.”

“Octopuses kill people!” Finnick brandishes his half-eaten sandwich at Beck. “Finally I got desperate enough to try flipping over and sticking my legs out of the water and just hoping that when he let go, he didn’t re-attach around my face.”

“Might’ve done you some good,” Beck snorts.

“Thankfully he did not. He just let go and floated there, looking at me. And as much as I didn’t want to run away and let the stupid octopus win, I really didn’t want to die, so I went back to the boat in shame.”

“I’ve been coming out every day this week trying to get him. This is too good a lobster spot to lose it to an aggressive cephalopod. Yesterday I finally got him to come after me.” Beck scrapes the bottom of his soup bowl. “He was mean. Almost like he didn’t appreciate us coming into his house like that.”

“We’ve been fishing here a long time now, and I’d never seen him before that day. And you’d think we’d see something that aggressive more than once if it was a regular resident.”

Beck shrugs. “He’s gone now.”

“I hope he tastes good,” Finnick growls.

“He��s an octopus, he’ll taste like whatever I cook him in.”

“Which is?” I ask, wanting to discover what I might be getting myself into.

Beck smiles. “Butter.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Back at the dock, we help Beck tidy up the boat before packing everything back to Victor’s Village. We drop the leftovers of lunch and the half-empty water keg at Mags’s house, then Finnick and I return to our houses to shower and put on clean clothes for supper while Mags and Beck go to Beck’s house and start cooking. We reconvene at Beck’s, warm and dry.

Once inside, Finnick gives me a quick tour (though the house is identical to mine), ending in the downstairs study which has been turned into an ice room. There are ice boxes scattered around, all neatly labeled with the contents and catch date. Finnick pops open the one that says ANGRY OCTOPUS. And there it is, laying on the ice, its arms easily as long as mine, and looking distinctly unappetizing. Lots of people in Four think an octopus is good eating, but I’ve never liked them. The texture is… something else, and entirely unpleasant.

Finnick, however, is smiling down at it. “Not so tough now, huh?” He closes the ice box, then looks at me for a minute. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

I shrug. “Probably going to the beach with Mags and weaving another door mat. Unless the weather’s not that good, then I’ll just sit at home and read and listen to the TV. Dad’s got inspections all day, so he doesn’t need me to work.”

Finnick nods. “You should call your dad and invite him to supper. Since I found that one lobster, we’ve got plenty.” A grin creeps along his mouth.

“Shut up, I caught it.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night. But you wouldn’t have seen it without me.”

I smile and shake my head. “I hate you.”

He snorts. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Dad joins us for a supper of lobster, octopus, and noodles. When he asks about the octopus, Finnick no more than says it attacked him than Dad agrees that an octopus of that size isn’t to be trifled with. Apparently when he was younger, he was attacked by one as well, and only lived to tell about it because he had a few friends out with him and they were able to kill it.

“Didn’t get the satisfaction of eating it though,” he says, “There wasn’t much left by the time they’d peeled it all off me. And we didn’t want to waste time picking up the pieces—the sharks were already around when we started fishing, and all the action got them even more riled up.”

Beck and my father trade fishing stories through the rest of the meal. For dessert, Mags gets out a box of caramel taffy that I helped her make a few days ago. It was delicious then and it is delicious now. When we are all full to bursting, we move to the living room where Beck gets out a board to play the marble game.

We play for hours, rolling dice and moving marbles, sometimes using standard rules and sometimes alternate ones, laughing and shouting and accusing each other of cheating. It is well after midnight when we all leave. Mags waves to us all, then heads across the street. Dad walks with her. He knows she can take care of herself, but he likes to keep an eye out for her anyway. Finnick and I stand on the sidewalk in front of Beck’s house and watch them.

“Thanks,” I say without looking at him.

He glances at me. “For what?”

“For bringing me along today. Life almost felt… normal.” I turn to him and smile. “How do you do it?”

“Do what? Act normal?” He sighs, thinking. “I accepted a long time ago that my life is not and will never again be normal, so every day I remind myself to do at least one normal thing, and I consciously find joy in those things. And going out fishing with Beck is something we all enjoy, so we do it quite a bit. I just thought it might be time for you to join in.”

I nod. “Well, thank you. Again.” I start across the street, but turn and call back, “And don’t be a stranger! I’m starting to almost miss the days when we lived together!”

He laughs, shaking his head, and turns toward home.

****

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Tag List: @avoxrising @snow-dragon-rider @anakins-ride-or-die

#wrey writes #the hunger games #thg: tiger shark #annie cresta #finnick odair #dissociation #ptsd #i also know nothing about lobsters/lobster catching but they needed a hobby and this one sparks joy

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