Burning
A Hunger Games Fan-Fic
Summary: Katniss has faced many arenas, but there is one that she will never escape: her mind.
Author's Note: I do not own the Hunger Games or Suzanne Collins' characters. This is mostly just some drabble I had written that never really got anywhere.
I am running.
The green and browns of trees and brush do not catch my eye unless they burst into the reds and the oranges of flame.
I am dodging fireballs, feigning to the left, twisting to the right, ducking straight down.
One whizzes by, leaving a trail of heat right next to my left ear. I see it explode into a tree.
I skirt it, fighting the sudden desire to watch the plant be consumed to ash. But my feet do not stop moving. I turn my head back, just for a glimpse.
The sapling is gone.
Instead of the young wood, there is a tiny form. A dark little human creature, with eyes wider than a deer's. Instead of bark and leaf and sap and twig going up in flame, it is skin and hair and blood and limb.
Rue.
I want to stop, want to turn around, want to take all the water I know I have in my pack and dump it over her - quench the flame, release her, save her.
But my feet won't let me. They have a mind of their own as they continue to sprint over the terrain, maneuvering through underbrush and over loose rocks and under low branches.
I twist back again and wish I hadn't, for the little girl who was my ally, my friend, my sister in the arena begins to crumble to the ground, turning to soot.
I try to scream, to release the pain from my chest, but all that issues forth from my mouth is my panting breath and a single, choked word.
"No!"
My head snaps forward of its own accord. I can hear another fireball hissing closer. It is low, aimed at my calves. Instead of veering, my legs leap me over a fallen tree just as the fireball reaches me. It slams into the moss-covered log with a deafening boom.
I glance backwards without thinking. The log is now Cinna, lying face-down, twitching in pain as flames eat him.
Again, I cannot stop. Again, I cannot scream. All I can do is keep running and keep evading fireballs.
I also cannot prevent myself from looking back and seeing who I am leaving behind.
Rue and Cinna are not the only ones I watch smolder.
I dart out of the way as Finnick flares into flame.
I twist sideways, avoiding the blazing sticker bush that becomes Haymitch.
The trees around me are no longer oak, maple, pine, but Effie, Lavinia, and the Goat Man.
One tree surrounded by three little shrubs transforms into Hazelle Hawthorne with Rory, Vick, and Posy before succumbing to charred ash.
I watch as they all disintegrate: citizens, tributes, enemies, loved ones, friends, neighbors —
My mother, my father...
...Cato, Clove, Glimmer, Foxface, Marvel, Thresh...
...Portia, Flavius, Venia, Octavia...
...Wiress, Beetee, Johanna, Chaff, Seeder, Enobaria, Cecelia, Woof, Lyme, Gloss, Cashmere, Brutus, Mags, Annie…
...Boggs, Mitchell, Jackson, Leeg 1, Leeg 2, Homes, Pollux, Castor, Cressida, Messalla...
...Tigris, the woman in the Capitol house...
...Darius, Cray, Lavinia...
...Dr. Aurelius, Coin, Snow, Paylor...
...Greasy Sae, Ripper, Delly Cartwright, Madge, Mayor Undersee, Purnia, Rooba, Bonnie and Twill…
...Heavensbee, Atala, Caesar Flickerman...
Some are together, some are alone, but all go up in smoke: the thick, clogging, blinding, suffocating, dense, gray smoke that is all around me.
My heart is pounding fiercely, painfully against my ribs as I am reminded of their crimes against me, my crimes against all of them. I know I am crying, but I cannot feel the tears, because I know that they are not enough to amend the world, to put out the flames.
I am the girl who set the world on fire, and must stand alone to watch it burn.
But I am not standing. No, I am still running. My feet don't know that I cannot escape, and so run they must.
The fireballs are still sizzling, singeing my clothing, but have yet to strike me. It's as if the fire must burn down the whole forest, must force me to watch the destruction before I may, in turn, burn.
Ahead, I see a trio of trees and I fight against the knowledge of who is yet to be incinerated.
Two trees are tall, one more so than the other, all of their branches strong, sure, and sturdy. The tallest of these giants is darker than the other, its foliage held high as if pride and self-certainty and principle are its sap. The other tree has lighter bark, thinner bark, but moss has lovingly wrapped itself 'round it, telling me that this is a giving tree, that welcomes symbiotes and parasites alike. The third is a little tree, a beautiful young sapling, which is producing leaves and fruits and flowers as if it is full-grown.
My feet cease their endless movement before this odd cluster of trees. Without being told, I know that I am out of the arena's fire quarter. I know not what terror will begin now, but something new.
I will take something new and I will face some new torment and I will burn if it means these three trees shall remain standing, if these three trees will remain safe, if these trees will remain fire-free.
There is a crack, and a boom, and a pop. Before I can blink, I am on the ground face-down. Three fiery streaks rush over my head, weaving in and out of each other like a braid.
These fireballs should not exist because the rules dictate they only exist in dictated perimeters. But I've forgotten that the rules don't apply anymore. Not when it comes to me.
I break the rules. The rules break me.
In one last deft, beautiful, lethal combination, they separate and hurtle straight into each of the three trees.
And they are no longer bark and wood and leaf, but a scorching conflagration of the three most beloved people in my life.
Gale. Peeta. Prim.
Run, I think. Run! My feet had taken me away from all the others – why do they not move now? Why can I not flee?
My feet will not move.
My neck will not turn.
My eyes will not shut.
They are melting, charring, twisting, burning, blistering, screaming, bleeding, reaching for me. All for me.
"Take me!" I cry, feeling as though my throat is being strangled by the smoke. "I am the girl on fire, not them! Burn me!"
It is my fault that they are engulfed in hell.
I tremble violently, my body twisting back and forth as I comprehend just what I have done.
"Katniss! Katniss!" My name hisses like the water I wish I could wrench from my body to salvage my friends and like the leaves that are disintegrating in the heat.
"I'm sorry...I'm so, so sorry." I am crying but without tears. What should be liquid flowing from my eyes are little rivers of flame.
"Katniss! Wake up!"
It is not my grief that was shaking me, but the person whom I share every day with, whom I share every night - good and bad.
Peeta. Peeta - gloriously alive, wonderously unburnt Peeta.
"Katniss," he sighs, wrapping his arms around me. "Katniss, it's over." He brushes his hand over my sweat-covered forehead, pushing back the mess that is my hair. "I'm here. It's over. No more arenas." He kisses my forehead, my eyes, my tears, my nose, my cheeks, my lips - all with a tenderness that cools my burning soul.
I can stare back at him as I fight to find reality. My hands slowly reach out, touching his arms and shoulders, chest and neck, then rest on his face. His face, which is scarred and worn by the Hunger Games, still maintains and creates expressions of hope and love. Goodness that I would not know any longer if not for him.
"It's over," he says again, his mantra for when he wakes me from nightmares.
I want to argue that it's not, because my mind has become the arena I fight in every day, every night, but I know what he means. And he knows that I cannot respond.
"I love you." He curls around my body protectively in our bed, settling back to his own sleep, his own hauntings, his own arena.
Guilt washes over me, because I know that I have burned him. Not physically, not always directly, but in any other way a human heart, mind, soul can be burned. I did it. And despite it all, there has been a little part of him that has loved me, forgiven me, wante d me.
How he holds me and comforts me ceaselessly, without a tremor of resentment or hatred, is beyond me. He shows me that there is another kind of fire that is worth burning for. Love warms and heals, not destroys.
"I love you, too," I murmur against his skin, trying to let him know just how much he has done for me.
His lips move in wordless patterns against my scalp in his sleep, tightening his protective grip on me instinctively.
I can breathe a little easier in Peeta's arms. I go to sleep a little easier, knowing what I will wake to.
But it still doesn't stop that horrid burning that awaits me in my unconscious. I am safe outside my head; but inside I am in the wrathful fire of hell.