Written for the Caesar's Palace monthly oneshot contest, month of July. The prompt for this month was 'lost'.
This fic is an AU. In the books, Dalton arrives at Thirteen before Bonnie and Twill would, and it never says they met each other.
Many thanks to Chasing Silmarils for looking this over for me!
When the sky shone with the dim gray light of morning, Bonnie finally noticed the footprints several feet to her and Twill's left. They were boot-prints, cracked down the middle and the edges as if the shoes that had left the prints might fall apart at any minute. She lifted up her own left foot and inspected the bottom of her stolen Peacekeeper's boot. With growing misery, she realized that the footprints were hers. And there, beside them, was another set of boot-prints. Twill's.
"Twill," Bonnie said, hearing a tell-tale whine in her voice, "we're going in circles again."
Twill turned around to face her. At the sight of Bonnie and her frustrated glare, her face fell as she realized that Bonnie was right. "It's fine," she said with an obviously forced smile. "Let's just go west. Obviously we're following our old path east. We'll be fine if we go west." She sounded as if she was attempting to convince herself.
Bonnie scowled. Their journey through the woods had worn her patience far too thin. "No, we won't!" she heard herself shout. Her face felt hot, and she knew it had turned red with anger, as red as the birthmark on her cheek. "We'll never be fine. We won't make it to Thirteen. We barely have any food left! We'll starve."
"Bonnie-" Twill started, her mother's instincts no doubt kicking in as she walked toward her sullen companion.
She got no further in her sentence. "We're going to die!" Bonnie shouted. "We're lost!"
Twill, who was walking toward her still, froze near to her. It was funny how much a word could affect a person. 'Lost' was a word that Bonnie and Twill never used. It worried them even more than the word 'death'. They knew that death would take them. Everyone knew that. They lived in Panem in a time of unrest- of course they might die. They threw around the word 'death' so often it had lost almost all its original meaning. It didn't effect them anymore.
But the word 'lost' was a different matter entirely. Bonnie and Twill were travelling. It had became a subconscious law to them: Don't say that we're lost, even when we obviously are. Don't admit it. We'll be fine. We're never lost.
The word 'lost' worried them. It made Bonnie feel like an insect- an ant, maybe, or one of the small moths that would always get into the fabric supplies back in District Eight. It made her feel like, at any moment, fate might blow its breath in her direction, and she might go sailing through the woods around her, unable to stop her flight. Or fate might cup her in its comforting hands, right before it smashed her between them. Being lost was having no control over that, no way to stop yourself from being squashed by fate.
"Bonnie, we're not lost," Twill insisted. She spoke the word 'lost' as if she had just swallowed a heavy dose of poison. "Stop shouting. Someone might hear us."
"No one will hear us!" Bonnie shouted. "There's no one out here!"
A sudden rustle of fabric behind her disproved her words. She and Twill both whirled around to face whatever had made the sound, and they found themselves looking up at the face of a tall, middle-aged man with graying brown hair. He was not really so old, Bonnie supposed, but his face was prematurely lined, and he walked with a limp almost as bad as her own, which made him appear older.
"Who are you?" Twill asked in a tight, fearful voice, her motherly instincts taking over. She stepped in front of Bonnie, shielding her with her own cadaverous body.
The man just smiled. "My name is Dalton. I'm from District Ten." He spoke with the telltale drawl of the people from District Ten, and his skin was tanned, as if he was often in the sun. Bonnie could believe what he said. "Who are you two?"
Bonnie was assessing the man. It didn't seem like he had any weapons on him. She suddenly remember that she, in fact, did, and she gripped her stolen gun with her wind-chapped, white-knuckled hands. "I'm Bonnie. She's Twill," she said in a curt tone that sounded nothing like her own voice. "We're from District Eight."
Dalton gave a quiet whistle of awe. "You're a long way from home, Bonnie and Twill," he said.
"How far?" Twill asked, not sounding so afraid.
"You're exiting District Eleven," said Dalton.
For a moment, Bonnie forgot that she shouldn't trust him, and she beamed at Twill, all her previous complaining suddenly water under the metaphorical bridge. "We're nearly there!" she said, her eyes brimming with tears of joy. Twill reciprocated the smile, and Bonnie could tell that her eyes were filling also.
"Hold on, there," said Dalton with a slowing gesture of his hand. "District Twelve might be small, but it's not so easy getting through it. Eleven's mostly flat land, but Twelve has mountains, cliffs, harsher winters... And the Peacekeeping force is paying close attention to the woods."
"Well, we'll blend right in," said Twill with determination, gesturing at her stolen Peacekeeper's uniform. "They won't even notice that we don't belong if they catch us! We'll just say that we're looking for people in the woods."
"I'm glad that you're so persistent," said the man sincerely. "But no, you won't make it far," Dalton said.
Bonnie was defiant. "Why not?" she asked, her hands on her hips.
"Because you're going the wrong way," said Dalton matter-of-a-factly. "You're heading north instead of east."
Twill's forehead was crinkled in confusion. "How do you know?"
Dalton smiled. It was a reassuring gesture. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and Twill gave a gasp of envy. "A map!" she said. "I haven't seen one since I left the district. Where did you get it?"
"I stole it," said Dalton off-handedly. "but you need it more than I do." He jabbed a gloved finger at the map. "Go south until you find the frozen reservoir. Then go directly east..."
Bonnie stopped paying attention to the directions. Twill kept nodding and looking, wide-eyed, at the map. Bonnie was watching the woods around them. She knew that they were in the middle of nowhere in District Eleven, but that didn't stop her from becoming paranoid about the sound of their voices. But all she heard was the songs of birds, flying through the forest and hopping across the snow, and the wind that whipped the tree branches around in a bizarre, forceful dance.
When Dalton finished relaying the directions to Twill, she held the map to her heart and smiled, more genuinely than Bonnie had seen her smile for months. "How can we ever thank you, Dalton?" she asked.
Dalton gave her another smile. "Just hope you'll get the chance to. We'll probably see each other again," he said. "After all, we're headed to the same place." Twill and Dalton laughed together, as friends might.
"District Thirteen?" Bonnie asked. Evidently, this had been part of Twill and Dalton's discussion that she hadn't heard.
Dalton nodded. "And hopefully I'll get the chance to meet the two of you there," he said. When he smiled, dimples formed by the corners of his mouth, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. Bonnie could tell he meant his words. "I'd better get on my way, then," he said, hefting the pack that he carried over his shoulder. "Hope to see both of you in Thirteen!" he said. He began to walk off into the snow-laden trees.
Bonnie and Twill watched him go. Twill was still hugging the map to her breast, a grateful smile on her face. But Bonnie had a question for Dalton, and she knew she might not have the chance to ask it again. "Dalton!" she called to the man. He turned and faced her with a smile. "Why'd you give us the map?"
Dalton's smile seemed to become less of a grin, and more of a sincere look. "You said you were lost, didn't you?" he asked. "I figured you had something wrong, there. You're never lost." He turned and began to walk again, limping in the deep snow. "You're just going the wrong way," he called over his shoulder.
The next time Bonnie and Twill met up with Dalton wasn't long later. They had entered District Twelve's woods several days ago, and were currently sitting at the base of a tall oak tree, each woman satisfying her hunger with half a cheese bun.
When they heard footsteps, they were instantly on alert, but they had nothing to be afraid of. Even as Twill was yelling, "Come out and face us! We're armed!" Dalton was stepping into the clearing, his hands over his head, a joking grin on his face.
Twill dropped her gun. "Dalton!" she said, beaming. "I'm glad to see you again. Look, we have food! More than enough for the three of us. Won't you join us?" She was so glad to see him that she was babbling.
It was like Twill was asking him to come to her house for a dinner party. Bonnie began to laugh. Dalton's deep-voiced laugh and Twill's breathy, high-pitched laugh joined hers.
"If you insist," said Dalton with a particularly pompous look, which sent them into fresh peals of laughter. Normally, Bonnie would be frantically shushing the other two of them so no one would hear them, but she was far too happy. Meeting the Mockingjay was nothing next to meeting someone she recognized. "Where did you get the food?" Dalton asked them.
"We met Katniss Everdeen," Twill said, brandishing the bag of baked goods. "Here, take a cheese bun. They're amazing."
Dalton took a cheese bun, but he obviously didn't believe Twill. "You met Katniss Everdeen?" he asked doubtfully.
"We did!" Bonnie piped up. Together she and Twill relayed the event to Dalton, who raised his eyebrows and nodded at all the right moments to satisfy them that he was listening and believing them.
"It's good luck that you did," said Dalton when the story was done. "I hardly see any deer anymore. It's getting harder and harder to find good meat." Evidently that was how he survived. Bonnie wondered if he had hunted, back in his District.
Twill's face was drawn. "I'm worried too," she admitted. "But I'm sure we'll get far on this-" -she held out the bag again- "-if we ration it." She set it down and held her hands in front of the flickering flames of the fire which had taken Bonnie an hour to light properly.
"You've survived this far," Dalton agreed. "Who says you can't go any farther?"
Even as their discussion delved deep into the night and they laughed so raucously that Bonnie was afraid a Peacekeeper might hear, all Bonnie could think was, the Capitol says we can't go any farther.
Despite that, it was, perhaps, the happiest time they'd had during their journey. Bonnie smiled until her face hurt and huddled between the comforting shapes of Dalton and Twill when the chill night reached its coldest. They warded off the cold that attacked her, and she was as snug as if she was in her old house, sitting at the fireplace with her little brother and sister and parents.
When she and Twill laid out their blankets for a night's sleep -Dalton volunteered to watch them- Bonnie fell asleep so easily it even surprised her. For once, her dreams were not filled with white-uniformed Peacekeepers and firing guns. They were filled with her childhood memories of sledding down the hills in her District on top of an old door. Instead of Peacekeepers taking her home for breaking curfew, Twill and Dalton met her at the bottom of the hill. Laughing, they all ran back up it, racing to the top, so they could go to the store and loiter in front of the warm fire there.
When she woke up, Dalton was gone, but the bag of food was newly topped off with dried deer meat, and a spare blanket covered her.
The third time Bonnie met Dalton, it was at a terrible time.
She was nearly to the middle of District Twelve, and she carried two backpacks, a distressingly lightweight bag of food, and a pile of blankets. She was hobbling painfully on her crutch of wood, and her stolen gun hit her injured leg with her every stride. She walked alone.
As Bonnie walked along, stumbling over rocks hidden by snow and holding onto nearby trees for support, she thought about the journey. It had been so much easier, she thought, when she had Twill. Then, there was someone to remind her that when they got to District Thirteen, they'd have all the food they wanted. There was someone to tell her all the fairy tales she hadn't heard since she was a child as she fell asleep most nights. There was someone that would always comfort her even in her most annoying, complaining moods. Now she had no one, and her thoughts plagued her relentlessly.
It was only three days ago when Twill had died. The deathblow wasn't exposure or injury. Maybe it wasn't even starvation, although that certainly had some kind of effect on it.
No, Twill had just fallen to the ground one day -crumpled to the ground with a quiet "Oh!" as if she was shocked that she had just fallen- and then she had moved, a bit, as if preparing to sit up. But she never sat up. Bonnie shook her fragile shoulders first tenderly, then roughly. First she quietly asked if Twill was all right. When she didn't answer, Bonnie began to raise her voice until she was screaming, shaking the shoulders of a person whose life had left them as swiftly as a candle being blown out.
Bonnie had cried then, harder than she had for a long time. It wasn't the first time she was driven to tears during the journey. Sometimes she had been homesick, or she was hurt. But that time had been so painful that she had laid down next to Twill and thought that death would take her too. She'd hoped that death would take her then. But death had no mercy for her, and she was forced to take Twill's supplies, shoulder her friend's backpack along with her own, and keep on going through the cursed woods, over the cursed rocks and cursed snow that seemed to have sapped Twill's strength.
Suddenly a voice came from the surrounding trees. "Good to see you, Bonnie! Where's Twill?" It was Dalton's voice, clearly. He came striding out of the trees, a broad grin on his face, a dead rabbit slung over his shoulder, its eyes staring glassily.
It was the combination of the dead rabbit's limp body -like Twill's body, limp and dead, just so dead- and Dalton's question that made Bonnie's eyes fill with tears. "She's dead," Bonnie said. Her voice wobbled. "She died three days ago."
The smile disappeared from Dalton's face. "I'm sorry, Bonnie," he said. "She was a good woman."
Bonnie nodded, tears spilling from her eyes. She wiped them off her painfully wind-burnt cheeks. "I don't have the map," she told him, veering the topic away from her dead companion. "Twill dropped it in the snow when she fell down. Before she died." The final word was little more than a squeak. "It got soaked in snow, and the ink came off. I left it there." There, with Twill's body. She had left that too. Bonnie had arranged Twill's arms over her chest like the morticians back in District Eight did, and she had closed her wide-open blue eyes. It was all she could do.
Dalton nodded. "Well, you're headed too far north again," he said kindly. He set down the dead rabbit and stood in front of her, his face calm and sincere. "Remember what I told you?" he asked.
"I'm never lost?" Bonnie said, her words a question. She wiped at her running nose with one of her hands.
"Exactly," said Dalton. He pulled her into an embrace. It reminded her of her father, which made her even sadder. She buried her face into Dalton's shoulder. He smelled like pine needles. They stood there for a minute. They both knew it, but did not admit it: they were giving themselves a minute to remember Twill. When they broke apart, Dalton's brow was furrowed. "Go to the cliff there and go down it," Dalton said, turning and pointing south. "Then keep heading east."
Bonnie nodded. "Thank you," she said, her eyes still watery.
Dalton waved it off. "Thank you, Bonnie," he said. "I'm glad to have met you and Twill, even if it was by chance. It's all I can do to help you on your way. You lose track of it easily."
"You mean I'm lost," said Bonnie. "I would be, if you weren't here."
"Not lost," Dalton corrected. "You're always walking on someone's path, Bonnie, did you know that? Everywhere you go, someone else needs to go there. That's their path. Yours is here-" -he pointed to the cliff again- "and theirs might be here. You're just on the wrong path for now." He smiled sadly at her. "I would stay with you, if not for my own needs. I'm running short on food, and I need to hunt here. You better go on. I'll meet you there, in Thirteen," he said. "I wish you all the luck I have to give, but I don't know how much that is."
With that, he left, his footsteps soft on the snow, his head bobbing unsteadily as he limped through the forest. Bonnie could swear that Dalton's hair had gotten grayer since the first time she had seen him.
She kept going, dragging her weary feet, the song of birds sounding around her, warning of a coming snowstorm. Bonnie smiled at them as she passed them by. She was going the right way, finally, on her own path. In some way, she was meant to go that path. She didn't feel lost anymore. As Bonnie watched, the birds danced in the golden light on the horizon.
When Bonnie reached the cliff, it felt as if her path was drawing to a swift end there. Everything crumbled away into layers of rock below her, and she was so high above the ground it made her dizzy. She steadied herself and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then Bonnie lowered himself down onto the closest ledge of the cliff. With a quiet exhale of breath, she landed on the ledge. She repeated this several times, with ledges that were increasingly narrower.
Then she looked below her, and she saw no ledge but one that would only hold her if she had all the luck in the world. And she jumped for it.
Even as she fell through the harsh winter air, she knew she would not land. She saw her small ledge zoom past, above her, and she closed her eyes.
This is where my path ends, she thought in those fleeting moments. Dalton was right. I was never lost.
I was just going the wrong way.