Thank you for reviewing! All of your love has meant the world to me! Definitely let me know what you think about this one!
Trigger Warning: Suicide/Drugs
I'm climbing a tree rapidly as I hear voices approaching. My bow is slung over my back as I nimbly climb. I reach a safe distance high above the forest floor as I begin to see the group of people owning the voices that I am running from.
The career pack circles the tree below me calling to me. But I can't make out faces as they circle the tree— only Peeta. Peeta with his shockingly blue eyes staring deadly into mine. No smile, no happiness at seeing me. He continues to circle the tree. His eyes piercing me and he calls to me.
"Katniss, come on down" but I don't move. Frozen. Rooted to my spot in the tree. I try to call back, but I have no voice. No words.
The pack walks slowly, steadily around the tree. In perfect rhythm with the person in front of them. Circling, continuously far below.
Suddenly, with one swift uniform movement that startles me and makes my blood run cold, they all look up at me. No, not the career pack. Faces of the ones I lost. Finnick, Prim with her shirt making a delicate duck tail behind her, Cinna, my father, Rue walking on the tips of her toes, arms slightly apart— ready to take flight. The more they circle the more faces are added to the circling pack. The morphlings, Darius, Mags, Bogs. They all stare piercingly at me, never dropping their gaze, never blinking. My chest tightens painfully as I watch them. Their stares are accusing, angry.
The song starts in Peeta. No change of expression, eyes locked on mine as he circles.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man
They say murdered three."
The rest of the faces— the faces of my friends, my loved ones— chime in to the chorus with Peeta. An eerie, haunting, echoing chorus.
"Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.."
Suddenly, there's the tolling of a bell. Slow and melodic bongs that continue on and on. One, two, three. And I look at the tree I'm standing in. It is charred and blackened as though it has been burned. Four, five, six. I look down at the ground and I can see Beetee suddenly. He's standing apart from the circling, singing group and is tying a rope to the bottom branch. A noose.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee"
Choruses the circling group below.
And I suddenly recognize this tree. I know the lightning is coming. We've reached midnight and the bell tolls the time. I'm yelling for my loved ones to flee but I have no voice. No noise escapes me. Seven, Eight, Nine. I'm climbing down, out of the lightning tree as quickly as I can.
"Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree."
I reach the bottom branch and leap to the ground. I'm trying to get my loved ones to run- to flee with me, but they've grabbed me and are pulling me back towards the tree, towards the noose that Beetee has hung. I'm struggling and fighting trying to scream with my silent voice, but there are too many of them.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run,
So we'd both be free."
They sing as they hoist me into the tree and wrap the noose around my throat, not made of rope as I'd originally thought, but BeeTees coiled wire. Ten, Eleven, Twelve. I'm gasping for air as the metal noose tightens around my throat and my loved ones step back and for the first time they are smiling, leering. I see a sudden flash of blinding white light as the lightning surrounds me.
I suddenly jolt awake. Wide eyed, shocked. As I'm waking I'm aware the song continues. Echoing hauntingly through the empty basement.
"Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight..."
Suddenly I realize the words, the song, is coming from me in a harsh panting chorus. The moment I realize the words are mine, they die in my throat. The song cut abruptly short. I sit there panting. Trying to catch my breath as fear washes over me. I rub my neck with both hands., filling where the cold metal noose had cut into me. But no marks remain. It was all just a vivid, terrifying nightmare.
Gasping, winded, I frantically climb out of the suddenly claustrophobic closet, but tripping on the doorframe I sprawl on the cold, hard concrete floor. I lay there, swallowing lung fulls of cold, damp basement air. Shaking. The lines of the hanging tree song still running threw my mind
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.
After a long time of deep breathing the musty air, when my heart has finally begun to slow, I reach into my pocket for my morphling pills, but there aren't any there. Had I really taken them all?
Still badly shaken from my nightmare, I climb up off the floor, and take the creaky, wooden steps out of the basement. I climb through the door and tip-toe across the kitchen to the dining room table. Just as I reach my spot at the table where all of my pill bottles sit, a voice cuts through the darkness making me jump like I'd been shot.
"You decide to stop hiding, Sweetheart," and the kitchen light flicks on. I whirl around to find Haymitch standing by the light switch wearing a nasty smile. He must have been sitting in the dark living room waiting for me.
Breathing just as heavily as when I woke from my dream, I spit back at him.
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh... well... seems no one could find you today. Apparently, you just vanished after Peeta and Sae came by for breakfast yesterday and nobodies seen you since." Haymitch looks very annoyed, but I don't care. I don't owe anything to any of them. I turn away from him and quietly start digging through the pill bottles.
"Glad to see you've finally washed your hair," Haymitch says. "You were getting so unbearable, even I couldn't stand you."
I feel a slight twinge of annoyance and embarrassment, but I ignore his words and continue to look for my morphling pills. I've checked and re-checked all of them before I realize the morphling is missing. Where are they? I start to look under the table, anxiety building inside my stomach, when Haymitch says gruffly.
"Looking for something?" I whip around to see him holding the tiny bottle of morphling and wearing a smirk. "I knew you wouldn't be able to stay hidden very long without these babies."
I put out my hand for the bottle but Haymitch doesn't relinquish it. His brows knit together and he frowns hard at me.
"How many you getting through nowadays?"
"Give it to me, Haymitch," I say with as much venom as I can muster. He only gives a harsh bark of a laugh.
"I'll make you a deal," he says walking slowly towards me in the kitchen, holding the bottle tightly in one hand "You hide from me again when you hear me calling, I pour the entire thing down the drain." I can feel my lips form a hard line as my annoyance at Haymitch grows. Really? Indefinitely drunk Haymitch is going to give me a hard time about the pills? "Deal?" He says as he bends down slightly so we are now eye to eye. He's so close to my face now I can smell the stale liquor on his breath, but I don't look away. Glaring hard at him, I give a sharp nod.
"Say it," he hisses at me cocking his head slightly to the side and giving the bottle a little rattling shake. I'm so angry, that I have a strong urge to spit right in his nasty face, but since he is still holding the pills that I desperately need, I refrain.
"Deal." I say as coldly as I can. Haymitch gives a chuckle as he tosses the bottle to me.
I catch the tiny pill bottle, and with shaking hands pry the lid off. I swallow two pills dry before dropping down into the chair at the table.
"You want to tell me why you're hiding?" He asks taking a seat at the table as well.
"No," I say closing my eyes. Trying to block out the visions of my neighbors yelling hate filled words, and all the other terrible things I've been running from since I reached 12.
"Your hiding from him aren't you?" I look up at Haymitch confused. "Peeta," he says exasperated, like it should have been obvious.
"No," I say unconvincingly.
"Seriously, you need to talk to him. After everything you two have been through... there's no use hiding."
"I'm just not ready yet." I say quietly.
"Well, I've got to tell him something," Haymitch says impatiently, "Right now for all he knows, you're lying dead in the woods somewhere. He's been crazy looking for you."
"Tell him to give me a few days. Just a few," I say, "I'll come by and see him when I'm ready." Haymitch looks at me like I've disappointed him somehow.
"Fine, I'll tell him," he says as he rises from the table.
He opens the door to leave. Even with my back to him I can feel the cold night breeze blow through the kitchen. He stops frozen for a moment on the threshold.
"You know he came back for you don't you."
"I don't know what he came back for," I say quietly, "But it wasn't for me." Haymitch gives a frustrated growl, and slams the door behind him. I breath a sigh of relief to finally be alone again.
After a moment of sitting at the table, I decide to go back to my closet to see if I can sleep a bit longer. I grab the morphling and head for the basement.
Once again I curl up in my closet, humming softly, consolingly to myself. But after a moment of laying there I realize I'm humming the simple melody of the hanging tree. As the lines of the song begins repeating through my mind again, I abruptly sit up and take two more morphling pills. Finally, finally, my emotions dissipate and I fall back into an emotionless half-sleep fog.
The day that follows is an exhausted one. I hide in my closet until Greasy Sae leaves, but after repeatedly making myself stop humming the hanging tree, I'm forced to get up and leave my secret hiding place. Desperate to think of something else, anything else. I stop by the kitchen on my way upstairs and pick through a plate of eggs on the counter for a moment. After trying to force myself to take a few bites, and deciding I really don't want any, I head upstairs to take a shower. I sit on the floor of the shower with my knees pulled up to my chest as the warm water runs down my body. I sit there for so long that the water slowly begins to go cold.
Suddenly, I catch myself again singing the hanging tree song.
"Are you, are you
coming to the tree?"
The song had become firmly lodged in my mind.
Over and over it ran through my thoughts that day. The more I tried not to think of the song the more incessantly it ran through my head. I caught myself singing the tune constantly, while showering, while eating, while laying on the couch in the study, while crouched hiding in the closet under the stairs. An all consuming repetitive chorus of my loved ones calling me to join them.
By lunch on the following day, after a sleepless night of obsessively singing the hanging tree and several more morphling pills, I had to get out of the house. I plan to dodge what used to be the Merchant Section and the Seam, to avoid the callous words of my neighbors. I dress and leave. Still quietly singing under my breath as I slowly wander the deserted streets on the outskirts of town.
Sorry about all the angst! Just trying to get into Katniss's mind a bit. Don't worry, we are headed toward some Everlark goodness soon!
Love it? Hate it? Seriously let me know. I love the critiques, both good and bad. You guys have been so awesome! Review away!