This is my first fanfic. Please read and review/comment! Thanks. I don't own anything, I haven't even read all the books yet so if it sounds like I'm repeating things from the novels, I don't mean to.
Chapter 1
Laughter, loud and coarse up ahead. I crouched down, concealed by the brush. I was sure the feather tips of the arrows in my quiver could be seen, but they were not paying attention. I watched the group go by, counting, taking mental note. The tall blonde holding a sword – Cato I believe – led the way. A blonde girl and young dark haired boy followed. Cato turned to the girl, "No one gets away from me. When I get my hands on his scrawny neck . . ."
Gestures I couldn't quite make out from between the leaves. The girl started calling out unabashedly, mockingly, "Hey lover boy! Where's your girlfriend?"
Cato laughed, "She'll never be able to save you now! We're coming for you!"
Lover boy? My mind raced back to the bits of gossip I heard surrounding the current Hunger Games. A boy and girl from an outlying district were rumored to be in love. Poor suckers.
The trio crashed through the underbrush. Holding my breath, I listened until their voices disappeared. I peered between the branches. No one was in sight. Cautiously, I raised my head, readying my bow and arrow. They were gone. And just my luck, in the opposite direction I needed to go.
The river was just a half mile away, and I needed to drink and refill my flask for the journey back. Already I had been gone too long and wouldn't make it back before dark. I would have to stop just on the other side of the barrier for the night. The journey had been worth it though. I thought of the leather satchel across my body, filled with the day's finds: some apples, rope, and an unclaimed canister of medicine. All in all a good day's hunting.
By the time I made it to the river, the sun was high. The water cut down on the humidity that choked the rest of the area. I removed my leather boots, letting my feet enjoy the coolness of the river and rocks. As I filled my canteen, I heard the faintest of noises from farther up the river. Quickly, I scrambled to put away the canteen and put on my boots. I took my bow, fitted an arrow, and cautiously crept upriver. A blood trail caught my eye; as I followed it, I wondered what I could take from this unfortunate loser of The Games. The trail ended farther up, where the rocks met the bank and became mossy and overgrown. I paused, listening. It sounds like breathing.
Another second later, I knew where it was coming from. I aimed the arrow at a patch of greenery on the ground to my right. I waited for a reaction.
An eye opened, bright blue. We stared at each other. Eventually my eyes could make out the rest of the face, then the body. Masculine lines, but cleverly and artfully concealed with paint, rock, and moss. The eye continued to stare, when he realized he did not recognize me from among the contestants.
"Who . . . who are you?" lips materialized, his voice cracked.
I ignored his question, still ready to fire my arrow. "How badly are you hurt?"
He considered the question for a few seconds, deciding whether or not he should answer. "My leg . . ."
I saw it twitch. Lowering my weapons, I kicked away the stuff on his leg, revealing a grossly bloody gash in his thigh. The blood was dark, sticky; it looked to be infected. I looked back at his face to confirm: feverish eyes, parched lips, shivering body. He wasn't going to make it. As soon as I made eye contact again, he knew. I raised my bow, aiming for his heart.
A faint flicker of fear. But then he said, "Do it" and closed his eyes. Defeated, resigned to his fate.
I hesitated. Poised, ready to put him out of his suffering. And still I hesitated. Slowly, I lowered the arrow. He opened his eyes, surprised as I reached into my pack, and pulled out the tin of medicine. I crouched down, felt for his hands, and placed the tin in them. I covered him back up in his disguise. As I stood to leave, I told him, "There is a cave to your right if you follow the water upstream about 20 feet. Go there. Hide."
He blinked. "I'm Peeta. Peeta Mellark. Who are you?"
I pursed my lips into a grim smile. "Nobody. I don't exist."
I continued my journey, leaving the river and heading back into the forest. About five minutes into my walk however, the mockingjays trilled. I frowned. I knew the birds well enough to know they knew when trouble was brewing. After studying them for all these years, I could even communicate with them a bit. I whistled my pattern, the one every jay in the district knew was from me. The answering call was one of alarm. It usually meant other people were close by.
But the call was coming from the river.
I thought of the boy I just met. I should have just killed him myself to spare him the agony of what they will do to him. Still, something in me was pushing me to go back and get him. Though I met him for all of two minutes, I knew a couple of things about him. He was smart. He was tenacious. And even though he knew he was more than likely going to die, either at my hands or Cato's, he was still brave to face it knowingly. He didn't beg for his life.
The mockingjays trilled out again, urgently this time. My determination to make it back alone wavered. I turned to the river, and silently ran back for the boy, Peeta.
As I neared the spot where I found him, I whispered his name. In the distance I could hear Cato's voice again. I whistled to the birds, and they sounded off the distance between Cato's party and me. 2 kilometers and closing.
"Peeta!" I whispered. Ahead of me, a hand shot out of the ground holding the medicine tin.
"I'm here." He called back.
I ran over and hushed him. I took the tin from him and put it back in my bag. After securing the bow over my shoulder, I bent over Peeta and began to uncover him. "Listen to me carefully. I am going to get you out of here. But you have to do exactly as I tell you. Can you stand up?"
We fumbled around, trying to get him on his feet. Once up, I could tell he was in really rough shape. Cargo pants and t-shirt were muddied and torn, body gaunt from lack of food. His face paled as he tried putting weight on his bad leg. The jays sounded off: 1 kilometer.
"Here." I put his arm across my shoulder. He leaned heavily on me. I played out the scenario in my mind as we hobbled through the shallow water: he will slow us down. They will catch up with us. I cannot get to my arrows with him leaning on me. We are defenceless. He can't make it far. Why am I doing this?
Still, we picked our way through the river. I tried not to let him stumble on stones on the river bed. It was painfully slow following the river, and Peeta knew it. "Faster to travel by land?" he huffed.
"Yes. But there are no camera's along the river."
"They put in . . . a tracking chip . . ."
"I know. Keep walking," was my grim reply. I wished he would stop talking, so I could hear the jays more clearly. The next whistle reported that Cato's team was falling behind. The whistle after sounded off a 3km distance between us. Soon there were no more alarm calls from the birds. They must have thought we headed off into the forest to hide.
I forced Peeta to walk another hour or two before we stopped. I sat him on the shore and extended his legs into the river, washing out his wound. He bit his tongue to prevent him from crying out in pain as I scraped it clean. Bits of stone and moss flushed out. When I was finished, I told him the damage. "It looks like a clean cut down to the bone. Cato's sword?"
He nodded. I unscrewed the lid from the medicine and liberally applied half of it before wrapping it in a strip of cotton I took from a blanket back home. He winced, then tried to laugh, "Well, that's not so bad."
I looked at him, carefully surveying his reaction, "That's nothing compared to what I have to do next." Before he could do more than shoot me a quizzical look, I unsheathed a dagger from my belt. "Where did they put the tracker?"
Eyes wide with realization, he extended his right arm, and pointed to a faint mark underneath the mud. I took his arm and washed it off as best I could. "They're getting wiser, I'll give them that."
"What do you mean?"
"They used to put trackers in shoes or clothing. Smart now. Putting it in the contestants. Much harder to lose that way." I explained.
"Wait . . . what?" he asked as I walked away. I came back with a stick, about the size of a finger, and held it out to him.
"Put this between your teeth. And don't watch."
As he took it from me, he asked, "I'm sorry, who are you?"
"Rayne." The name sounded foreign even to my own lips. I felt like I was just saying words. "My name is Rayne. Now please don't move. Try not to make a sound. This is going to hurt."
Peeta put the piece of wood between his teeth, shut his eye tight and nodded. I made out where the tracker was, placing my thumb and finger at either end of it, gauging its size. With my right hand, I took the tip of my blade, and pressed deeply into his skin. It sliced through the layer of skin, but I had to go back and do it again to get through the thin layer of muscle that prevented me from pulling it out. I watched Peeta's face scrunch in pain, saw his teeth dig into the wood as he groaned, suppressing screams. Looking back, I could see a flash of silver amidst the blood that now flowed over his arm. As carefully as I could, I fished it out with the flat side of the blade. Once out, I lay it carefully on the rock next to me, and cleaned up Peeta's arm the best I could. Opening his eyes, he spat out the stick, sighing in relief. I put on the rest of the medicine from the tin and bound his arm with the remaining strip of cotton.
"Thanks Rayne. Now what?"
I picked up the tracker, walked up the sandbank. I felt around on my hands and knees for the perfect spot. Warmth was needed for this part, and the sand in the midday sun was hot enough. "Now we bury it."
"Why?"
I found the right spot: hot enough now, and out in the open so it would have the sun all day, not shaded by trees, and far enough away from the water so the sand would stay warm and dry. I dug a shallow pit, dropped the tracker in, and covered it over. "New feature of trackers the last few years. They detect body heat. If someone is in hiding, they know where you are, but they don't know if you are alive or not. Live bodies give off heat. Dead ones don't."
"So . . ."
"So we took it out of you. We can't take it with us, we have to leave it here. Can't toss it into the river. It's too cold. It would sense that you're dead, they shoot cannons, come to find the body, but we will still be here trying to hobble away. Then they catch us and we're both dead."
"The sand would keep it warm for most of the day."
"Giving us enough time to get out of here before they try to find your missing body." I glanced up at the sun. "I say we have until late tonight."
"Then what?"
"One thing at a time." I went over and helped him to his feet. "Now, we walk."
