Chapter Text
Annie Cresta’s Victory Tour is a certified national disaster.
She delivers her speeches with her fingers all about her lips and neck, checking for feeling, checking for attachment. It’s been months, and she’s no better than the day they scooped her out of the arena. Her head is someplace else, presumably rotting in the dirt where her district partner’s fell. She speaks in a raspy whisper and never corrects herself when her words fall out of order. In 11, she covered her mouth and hummed a whole paragraph of her victory speech. In 10, no one could hear her because she was plucking and ripping bits of foam off the podium microphone’s pop filter. Her handler had to coax her hands back to her face. Not a great place for them, but it’s the only place she’ll allow them to be put. She’s like nothing I have ever seen before, and it’s difficult to watch.
In District 3, Annie’s hands leave her throat and find the print of her speech. From there, she lets her fingertips guide her across the page like a rogue divining rod. “Panem today,” she reads. “Panem to…. Three. Four.” She rakes her nails down the page, plucking up words as she likes them. “Panem forever… a… floral. A laurel.” She plucks up words like a lackadaisical aquarium loach sucking up gravel and creates strange poetry for her captive audience. “A, a championing crown of— Capitol condolence.”
No. Not that. Even she knows, not that.
“A championing clown, Cresta condolates.” Not a word, but that’s never stopped her before. “Later today, duller tomorrow.” She goes on and on. “Condolences for the rest of forever— Three— ever— to the Capitol forever. One. The Capitol won. Glory. Glory to gory Panem forever.”
It takes ten or fifteen seconds of cavernous silence before the audience seems to understand she is through. Then her arms come up over her head to block out the affronting noise that is District 3’s scattered applause. Even in this state, she is not immune to attention. Something like a smile pulls at her lips and she dips into a queer little curtsy of sorts.
“Wonderful, Annie. How poignant. How— musical.” The name of the candy-colored Capitol woman with the bejeweled, grit-toothed smile tending Annie is Tula Taft. She is attached to her side, rubbing her back in soothing circles. It is her job to do the impossible, to make this girl appear presentable. And it is Annie’s job to hold herself together well enough to stop getting people killed.
Annie does not know, or simply does not care, that this is her job.
Earlier this month, en route to District 7, Annie took a dive off the deep end. She became entirely divorced from reason and reality and she would not cooperate, not even if her life depended on it. Her body stiffened and she screamed like they were killing her when they tried to remove her from her bed. She broke Peacekeeper noses, bruised ribs, and clawed faces to bloody ribbons— including her own. She would not wake up to face the district that killed her partner, and she did not care what her alternatives were. Threats were made, but she had screamed her voice out. Kill her mother. Kill her father. Just try it. You’ll see. It was useless, and those threats were best made to a girl inside her own mind. The show simply could not go on.
So she remained in bed while the Victory preparations continued and, in a bid to save face, the Capitol manufactured a news event. An hour later, when we were only miles from 7, a series of improvised explosives detonated in the crowd awaiting our arrival. The train platform collapsed, killing fifteen and leaving several dozen more with life-changing, debilitating injuries.
Because of this, they had to cancel the tour’s stop in District 7. I hear they had themselves a whipping in its stead. Though the bombs had been set by Peacekeeper gloves, they were able to rustle up two laborers to take the lashings; one for each person affected by the blast. They both, of course, died.
I confess, I forgot who the enemy was. The whippings made it seventeen who were dead, and so many more were injured, out of work, suffering because their loved ones and breadwinners were gone— and I faulted the girl who couldn’t pull herself out of bed. For many reasons, each less fair than the last, it is easy to hate Annie Cresta.
I hate her most for the way the Victory Tour was put on hold for a week while the Capitol reevaluated their security measures and gleefully lambasted the mayor of District 7. We spent that week in the Capitol. While the nation was made to mourn yet another senseless rebel terror attack, the Capitol still held and attended their garish little parties and social events. I suppose my warm company in these cold winter months probably paid for the damage done to District 7’s train platform.
Again, it is not fair of me to hate her, but it is so, so easy.
When the tour resumes, Annie’s performance in District 6 is as poor as the five previous, except now she has a taste for the raspberries at the bottom of champagne flutes. She is ruddy faced, but agreeable. Actively picking the gems off her bodice, but surprisingly coherent. She waves at the crowd on her way off the stage, telling them, “goodnight, I love you!” What a charmer. I wonder if she remembers she killed both of their tributes. It was the little dark haired boy with an ever-runny nose who had the misfortune of springing up on a podium just beside hers. And then, the girl, who she had hunted with her district partner and the boy who took his head.
She does as well as a mad girl can in District 5. Then, in order to save the big homecoming for last, we skip District 4 and she begins to unravel all over again.
After Annie’s little performance in District 3, she’s in the immediate custody of her care team. It’s time– probably past time– for her medicine, for her electroshock therapy, and for me to feel sorry for her, I suppose.
Annie reappears in time for the mayor’s banquet, as refreshed as she can be, given her circumstances. The insides of her elbows are bruised, ugly, and achingly tender from her medicine, but she can speak coherently again. Nearly in full sentences, no less. Her hair is pulled back neatly, and she’s been dressed in a pretty seafoam green dress that makes her look younger and more blameless than she really is. She is more interested in the skin around her fingernails than her meal. She does not eat meat anymore. None, unless it’s the dead bits of skin around her nails.
The people of District 3 pity the sorry state of her. The mayor offers her a dish of ice cream from his personal ice box. Annie allows it to melt halfway before she’s got the wherewithal to pick up her spoon. Their most recent victor, Radar, a young man now well into his twenties, gives her a little hard-plastic mouse tchotchke with velvet lined ears. Something better suited for his young daughter than an eighteen year old. And then, after dessert, an older victor, Wiress, takes a long walk with her. They come back smelling of sweet smoke, locked in conversation about geometric proportions, sacred geometry, and the way in which shells are formed. They treat her well. It would have been a kindness to leave her there, because she is not received half so sweetly in District 2.