Chapter 4- The Boy

The next morning, I awoke to the hot sun. I shrugged off my blanket and coat putting both into my back pack. I ate the other half of the bread and had a sip of the water. I knew I would need to get more food and water soon. I got down off the roof, and traveled opposite of the sounds I heard last night. I was making good progress, coming to the outreaches of the ruined city. The rubble became scarce and the dirt ground spread out to reveal a shallow lake. There I could clean my wound that in the heat of yesterday's fight had been forgotten. In the rippling water I saw some slight movement. Fish!

In my hurry to get into the cool water and catch some food, I didn't notice the boy from seven heading towards me until I saw the reflection of his axe in the water. I jumped out of the way at the very last second making a big splash as I fell into the lake. I threw my pack to the shore, swung my scythe and met his axe. He had splashes of dried blood on the lower part of his face and neck. His grey eyes seemed dead in their sockets. His curly blonde hair stuck to his cheeks and his hands shook as they held the axe that was tangled with my scythe. Neither of us could get our weapons to move.

I let go of my grip on scythe. I knew this would give him the chance to unhook his axe from my blade, but in the second that I let go, I saw a flash in his eyes that said "I don't want to kill you." Maybe I was insane, but I was right. He dropped his axe next to the scythe. We stood for a moment, just looking at each other. Neither of us knew exactly what to do.

Behind him came another tribute. She carried three spears with blood on the ends of each. She threw one at us and I jumped down, using my arm to take him with me. We hit the rocky bottom of the inch-deep shallows hard. It looked like it knocked the wind out of the boy from seven. Quickly I rolled to the left and grabbed my scythe. Jumping to my feet, I ran towards the girl. She threw a second spear that nicked my side. She was ready to throw her third spear at the boy from seven when I shoved the blade into her stomach. I pulled it out and she collapsed to the ground, already dead. The cannon sounded and I felt my side. It was deeper than I originally thought. I dropped the scythe and saw the ground rise up before I fainted due to blood loss.

When I started to wake up I felt a painful burning on my side. I opened my eyes and screamed. Instinctively I tried to flinch away from the pain but something was holding me to it. I could faintly hear someone telling me it was almost done. It was then I noticed I wasn't outside anymore. I was inside a building. Light was shining in through a small window of pushed out bricks and there was a roof intact over my head. I felt myself slipping out of consciousness once again and used my remaining strength to look at the person who had just wrapped my wound.
"Boy from seven," I stated weakly.
He smiled and said, "Rory. My name is Rory."
"Elia," I said and fainted.

The next time I regained consciousness, it was dark. I could feel that I was covered. The Capitol's theme was playing and from the small hole in the wall I saw the names of the fallen: Delphi Worrel (female District 4), Leeanne Young (female District 10), Pari Triston (male District 11)

I sat up and a jacket fell away from my shoulders. Noticing that my legs were covered to I looked at the second jacket and realized that it was Rory's. I turned my head this way and that trying to locate him. I saw some movement in the corner of the room and realized it was Rory sleeping huddled in a ball to stay warm. I saw my pack next to me and I looked through it for my blanket. When I couldn't find it I tried to stand up to look for it, but was stopped by a sudden jolt of pain. I lifted my tank top to see that my side was wrapped with the blanket.

I must have made noise rifling through the bag, because Rory tiredly lifted his head and said, "Don't do more than sit for now or you'll reopen your wound."

"Reopen?" I repeated, "What'd you use?"

"I used one of my matches to heat up the blunt edge of your blade and cauterize it," he said.

"Oh. No wonder it hurt," I paused, "Why?" I asked, "Why not let me just bleed out?"

"You could've let that spear skewer me, but you didn't," he said.

"Thank you, boy from seven," I whispered.

"Just repaying a debt, girl from nine," he laughed.

I looked down at my wrapped wound and sighed. I looked back up at him and frowned. "Now that you've repaid me, are we fair game for each other again?" I asked, "If I heal and we go our separate ways and we meet up again, by accident, will you try to kill me, Rory?"

For a minute he was quiet. Then he glanced up out the window to the night sky. "No," he said seriously, "I don't think I could kill you, Elia. Not even if you were the last tribute and killing you meant victory."

I smiled. "I don't think I could either. There's… something about you that I like," I said, "So, allies?"

"Friends," he said.

I smiled again. "Come here," I said, "We'll both be warmer if we are closer together."

"Okay," he said and got up. He started to walk across the room when he stopped and walked to the window. He stuck his arm out just in time for him to catch a parachute. He came to sit next to me and opened it up. Inside was a small jar of medicine. I have to admit I was a little bit afraid that I was so willing to have him so close to me, but it felt right. It felt so different than being close to any other boy. After putting some medicine on my wounds, we covered ourselves with the our jackets and fell asleep next to each other.

Again, I'm not sure how long we slept, but I woke up to the sound of a cannon. It was still dark. I looked to Rory and he was just as alert as I was. In a moment of awkwardness, we realized that as we slept we had huddled much closer together for warmth. We both rolled away from the other and put on our jackets.

"I should check your side," he said, breaking the silence. I only nodded. He lifted up my shirt to reveal the blanket wrapping on my side. When my skin was exposed to the cold air I made a quiet hiss before getting goosebumps. The gash that had been cauterized was now a pink color, healed, at least on the outside.

"It looks a lot better," I said, "It's all closed up. We should probably be on the move. We don't know how far away that last killing was."
Rory nodded as he stood and helped me up. When I was on my feet he bent over to pick up our weapons. He handed me the scythe and took his axe in his left hand.