Disclaimer: The Hunger Games does not belong to me.
"Wait," Carter called out before the other man could get too far away. "Could we just drop the pretense and stop pretending that this idea isn't stupid?" The other three stared at him warily. He sighed and wiped an arm across his forehead. It struck Maysilee that he looked nervous standing there. She had seen a lot of unusual things from Peacekeepers recently, but she had yet to see one be that open about letting the District residents see any emotions other than annoyance and anger and snide arrogance. (The ones that came into the shop were never emotional at all - just businesslike.)
"Look, I've been here for almost three years," he told them. "It took me all of a month to find my way to the Hob. I know you know what you're looking for out there. I've bought the stuff you've brought in - you and I both know it. I don't know anything about plants." He swung his arm out to indicate Maysilee. "I don't think she knows what she's doing." He pointed at the boy next to her. "I've never seen him doing any trading with wild produce in our quaint little black market. You should be the one leading this little exhibition. We're all about to start getting desperate here. This isn't time to follow the official line for the sake of following the official line."
"We were supposed . . . ."
"I know what we are supposed to do. We're supposed to pretend that the Capital is still in control. They aren't - not here. I may be a Peacekeeper, but what I really am is just another person who got abandoned in this District. The boss is afraid the regular suppliers will make a break for it if he sanctions you going out - we all know that's a pointless worry. If any of you were going to jump from this sinking ship, you would just do it. It's not like any of you have waited for an official endorsement before. He's also afraid if he sends out one of us with more than two of you at a time, you all will start realizing the number and firepower situation isn't in our favor and start picking us off one by one. Let's be honest - there's no reason to wait until we're out in the woods for that. Not that I'm looking to get stabbed in the back, but, really, what would be the point? We've got bigger problems."
"You're telling me to come with you?"
"I'm asking you to go with them," Carter replied after a moment. "It's a better idea."
"What will you be doing then?" Haymitch groused.
"Going hunting," Carter asserted.
Chris just raised an eyebrow and waited.
"I may not know anything about plants, but I'm not completely useless. I had a grandfather who liked to take the kind of vacations where you came back with trophies for the mantle once upon a time. I remember enough for it to be worth a shot. And we both know I've got a better chance at something like a deer if I don't have a noise making audience trailing after me," he appealed to Chris.
Maysilee could not be sure whether it was the woods that were distressing her or the fact that she knew there were things in these woods that they needed that she had no idea how to find that was causing the disquiet. Useless was not a feeling with which she was comfortable. She had had quite enough of that over the last couple of weeks to last her a lifetime. The whole point of crossing the boundary of the fence was to be doing something to fight against the notion of being useless in the face of the crisis. That was never going to be accomplished if she ended up rooted in one spot like a tree because she let her emotions get the best of her. People needed help. She needed to keep moving.
Haymitch Abernathy's sense of humor leaves much to be desired, however, Maysilee does admit to herself (not out loud, never out loud) that it does serve the purpose of allowing her to think of something other than how disconcerting she finds it to be on this side of the fence (for longer than it takes to run to the apple trees on the edge). His random comments (snarky and often ill-timed as they are) break the tension in a manner for which she cannot help but be grateful. It does not occur to her until they have been out there for what feels like forever to her (but she knows has really only been a couple of hours) that he may be doing it on purpose.
It is not as if the kids that live on the Seam side of the District spend all of their free time in the woods either. There are a few families that subsidize their living with regular trips, but those families are few and far between (the things they bring back would be less coveted if there were more people going she supposes, but more people making a habit of breaking the rules - no matter how sparingly enforced - would make a crackdown on all of them more likely). Haymitch obviously does not belong to one of those families. After she starts watching for it, she realizes that she can spot little signs that might indicate that his nerves are giving him trouble. Just as those ticks appear, he always makes another comment. He is breaking the tension for himself, but it is working just as well for her. She is grateful (even though she knows full well that he isn't doing it for her). Their other companion obviously knows exactly what he is doing out in the woods (every bit as obviously as she and Haymitch do not).
There should be a certain amount of camaraderie between her and the boy beside her based on their mutual unease, but the fact that the other two are both male and from the Seam seems to be leaving her as the odd person out anyway. She does not think that it is intentional - it is just the sort of thing that happens. She doesn't bother wondering if things would have been different if Carter had come with them as had been the original plan. She doesn't really want to know the answer.
Besides, she can think of a very good reason for her to be intentionally ostracized.
She keeps waiting for someone to say it to her. She actually wants someone to say it to her. She thinks she may need someone to say it to her. It is her fault - not completely she knows. She isn't the one who left a sick child in the meadow to be found, but she is the one who did the finding. She is the one who did the bringing. Everything happened so fast. Everything spread like wildfire, and it all began with her. She's been so worn down and tired, but the thoughts still manage to make themselves known. She likes to think that no one would have left the little one just suffering there. She likes to think that whoever had gotten there first would have done whatever they could have to try to help. It just happened to be her. She just happened to be the one to set off an epidemic that is destroying her District.
She can't get sick apparently. She is immune or whatever it was that Ari's mother had called her. She isn't going to die from this illness. She just has to watch other people die knowing that she is the one that brought it to them. She has to live with that. She has to live with seeing things and knowing things and the look in people's eyes when there was nothing left for her to do to help them. Although, if their little foray into the woods isn't at least moderately successful, then neither she nor anyone else is going to be living with it for long.
District Twelve cannot take care of itself. It was never meant to - that is what the Capital has accomplished better than anything else with all of their machinations over the years. They have bred that ability to multitask out of the people (or, at least, they have done their level best to make that the case). She cannot decide whether it is comforting or sad that they have done it to themselves every bit as much. The Capital has gotten too used to being provided with things rather than doing the providing. Even if everything from their technology to their food is more elaborate than anything most people in the Districts ever dream of, the raw materials all come from elsewhere. Whether the trains aren't running because everyone is sick and there aren't enough well people left to direct them or because the Capital is trying to quarantine everyone in the hopes of making the illness stop spreading, the truth is that the people in the Capital will be suffering every bit as much as the people in the Districts are with the lack of supplies. (That will be the case for some more than others of course. She feels like District 11 is probably the best place to be - food that they know how to harvest even if the methods for how to save it for later may have been lost to them. There have got to be older ones in their District who still remember how. They may not be getting any coal for them to heat with come winter, but they have plenty of trees there. That's got to be worth something.)
She needs someone to blame her. She sits and thinks of that as she looks at the measly set of items that they have managed to gather. There are a whole lot of people back inside that fence that need something to help get them through to getting better. There are a whole lot more people for whom getting better won't matter if there isn't a new source of food coming into the District.
She started this. She has to do better. They need to eat. The weak ones (the ones that made it through the illness itself) need nursing that no one is going to be able to give them if they are too weak themselves.
"I can't feed the whole District on snares and wild greens," the leader of their expedition says out of the blue as if he has been reading her mind. One look at the slump of his shoulders tells her that that isn't the case. Those are his own thoughts and fears and inadequacies spilling out of him. She wishes that she had something to say to make it better, but she doesn't. He isn't wrong. They can't feed the whole of District Twelve on a few rabbits, a couple of squirrels, and a basket full of leaves that she has never even seen before. The weight of the situation is too heavy.
"Lucky for you, it isn't the whole District anymore," Haymitch states in the same drawling, aloof tone in which he has made his asides during the whole course of the morning. It is inappropriate in the extreme. It is morbid. It is just wrong . . . everything is just wrong.
She's laughing. She doesn't know why. She doesn't even know how she got started. She just is, and she can't seem to stop. She shouldn't be laughing. There is no reason to be laughing. There is nothing about any of this that should have her doing anything other than crying, but the only tears that are coming are the ones that are leaking out of her eyes because she can't breathe because the laughter simply will not stop.
"Is she broken?" She hears Haymitch ask. She doesn't hear an answer from the other man, but that may be because she literally can't hear him over the sound of her own hysterical (it has to be hysterical, there is no other explanation) laughter.
"Crazy girl," she hears muttered from somewhere behind her. She wants to tell Haymitch that he is right (but she can't because the laughter just will not stop). She thinks she has gone crazy. She thinks she might actually enjoy being crazy if it wasn't proving to be so completely terrifying to be unable to control her own actions and responses. If she was crazy, then maybe she wouldn't have to feel this way anymore.
She is very sure that something about her is broken, but she is equally as sure that the combination of things that have broken her have absolutely nothing to do with Haymitch and his chronic need to keep talking. She doesn't know how long the inappropriate laughter continues, but it feels never ending. She feels a tentative pat on her shoulder that sends her into further spasms at the sheer awkwardness of it. She's sure the attempt at comfort, calm, silencing, or whatever it was came from Chris. It doesn't strike her as a Haymitch sort of a move.
"Probably shouldn't touch her. It might be catching," his voice confirms her theory.
"Hush," he chides. "Maysilee?"
She takes a gasping breath sucking in as much air as she can manage as there is finally a respite from her out of control actions. The laughter is replaced by hiccoughs. They are uncomfortable (and still out of her control), but she can breathe better and there isn't anything drowning out the sound of Haymitch's commentary (only she thinks that she has shocked him into silence because the commentary has suddenly disappeared). She brushes that thought away as quickly as she can because she can feel the impulse to start laughing again come with it. Haymitch has one eyebrow quirked up when she raises her head; Chris looks as though he is trying for a sympathetic look when all she can see is the panicked expression that tells her that he is terrified she is going to start up again. She may be very lost inside her head at the moment, but she knows that she does not want that.
"If we are finished indulging in our little trip to crazy land . . .," Haymitch trails off expectantly.
"We have a job to do," Maysilee finishes for him.
"Do you . . . do you need to talk about it?" A hesitant voice asks - she can almost hear the unspoken "please say no" that he utters in his head afterward.
"Don't encourage her!" Haymitch admonishes in a near yelp even as he offers a hand to pull her to her feet. "We do not have time for this."
It is ill-mannered, but it is also very, very true so she takes that hand and lets him help heft her to her feet. She brushes her hands down her sides to knock off any clinging dirt - not that she supposes that it matters, but habits are habits. She smoothes out the list of medicinal plants from Ari's mother that has been riding around in her pocket and glances over it. Haymitch seems to be giving her the benefit of the doubt that over means over and is tapping his foot in impatience as he waits.
She ignores his display of impatience and holds the piece of paper that she has been carrying out to Chris. He blinks at her as if the idea of a list has never occurred to him before, and she has to wave it at him to get him to actually take it from her.
"All of this?" He asks sounding overwhelmed a few seconds later. She can't exactly cast stones at that having just completed an overwhelmed moment of her own, but she does her best to make her smile reassuring.
"Whatever of it we can find and carry back," she says. "This won't be our only trip," she tells him. "Anything we are bringing in is something we didn't have before."
He blinks at her like the words are foreign to his ears but slowly nods his head.
"We can do this," she tries to sound the exact opposite of how she feels, but the snort from Haymitch's direction tells her that she didn't exactly succeed in that endeavor. She tries again and gives him a challenging look in addition.
"Sure," he agrees with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. "What else are we going to do?"
No one bothers to answer.
