Hey guys! Thank you so much for your support! Chapter 9 is finally online. It might be the longest I've written so far..

This story seriously gives me a hard time to write, but I sincerely hope that you'll like it. Also your encouragement gives me a lot of hope and strength and I really want to finish it. Please help me with it, inspiration's all I need. I'll also try to revise the first few chapters, since I think they're really... crappy. They just alienate all the new readers, and I don't want that ;-)

I feel really bad for Peeta. I love him so much as a character. Please don't think that he's out of character when he's rough and yanking people around. He's stressed and it's a really serious and dangerous situation he finds himself in. I hope you understand.

Thanks again for your support. It means a lot to me. I don't want to let this story die. I really don't want to. This chapter got longer again too. I'm really trying :)

Now, enjoy! Don't forget to leave a review. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of mistakes in this chapter. If you find something crucial, please tell me, so I can revise it.


Chapter 9: War follows you

The floor rumbled under my feet, my artificial leg vibrated and tickled my stump in a very strange way. The ceiling crumbled and dust filled the air. The detonations were so loud, they let me think that only two things could have been happening right now. Either we were facing the apocalypse this night or District 13 was under attack. The latter seemed to be a little bit more plausible.

I heard a bomb go off. The impact was must have been close and I immediately knew that I had to run for my life. I had to get to the lower levels as fast as possible if I didn't want to meet the same end like my own family back in District 12. There was no other option.

After what felt like an eternity, the alarm boomed through the corridors. At least the commander center seemed to be fine since Coin's voice sounded through the shrill siren. Her strained voice told us that we were – what a surprise – under attack and we needed to seek out the bunkers in the lowest level of Block C and D to find shelter until the situation's under control. And she said something like all the fire and safety doors would be closing in exactly fifteen minutes. Then, after another detonation, the speaker went silent.

'What the hell?' I thought. I was still standing in front of my own room which was located in Block A. It would take me at least five minutes to reach the next Block, which was B, another five to get to Block C and around ten more minutes to reach the bunker. I clenched my fist when I realized that my room was comparatively close to the surface which was even more dangerous than I thought. I was sure that the upper levels were already abandoned. There was no way to make it down on time. Would there be enough time for the people on my level to descend anyway? The only way to find it out was to start running. At least I tried to, but it was a very hard thing to do with my bad leg which slowed me down a lot.

'It wasn't enough to send me into war', I thought. 'Even if I ask for not having to go out and fight anymore, war just keeps following me. It doesn't matter where I try to hide.'

I jogged through the hallways, trying to get to the next Block. Of course I wasn't the only one. Some people joined me on my way, and most of passed me since I was too slow to keep up their pace. I did not have hard feelings towards them. The citizens of District 13 were just scared and top priority certainly was to get out of our Block alive.

I reached Block B after six minutes. That's where Katniss' room was located. I haven't been there for some time but – of course – I knew which way was the shortest to reach her. But never mind. I knew that Gale already got to her to play the hero, as always. This way might have been better in any case. That girl did not trust me and it was obvious that right now would definitely not be the best time to pay her a visit. For sure she already went nuts in Gale's arms as he tried to get her out of her room.

Normally I would have been the one to freak out by now. In the past, just the thought that the girl of my dreams could be in danger was enough for me to go crazy. I guess the last few weeks turned me into a desperate and numb person; dishearted enough that I managed to block out the urge to protect her.

She now had that man-beast Gale by her side and he would fulfill this task even better than I ever could. Because he was …whole. Because he was standing on both of his feet and was also full of good and unharmed memories for her to remember. She could go back to him without having to fear that he might be a monster like the one she thought I was.

Katniss surely did not want me anymore. I just hoped that I had come to this conclusion earlier, since everything would have become easier for me to accept. I should have known it all along, ever since I saw her caring for him after the whipping. But I never approved of this new found knowledge.

Gale would take care of her, I thought while I jogged towards Block C. He would take care of Primrose, too. He surely would get her on his way, since both of them lived in Block D.

Block D.

Wait a second.

I stopped abruptly. Gale's room was located in Block D. It was also close to midnight. He would be in his room. Like all the doctors who had rooms close to the bunkers. It was common knowledge that officers and doctors were extremely important for the entire District, so they would be given rooms that were closer to the safety zones.

Wait.

Then realization washed over me like an ice cold wave, and I started to panic.

Katniss was in danger.

She was alone.

No one was going to help her.

And worst of all:

She couldn't leave her room.

How could he forget about this? Why didn't he use his brain? Everyone said that he was a smart kid, but now he felt like the biggest fool in the whole District. Again, some bombs detonated and the ground shook fiercely now. The walls began to crumble and I swallowed hard. I was terrified.

'Peeta you fool. Why do you even care about what's going on between Gale and her? It was like this to begin with! Are you going to lose her because of this?'

Of course not. Of course I did not want to lose her. Even if I had to give up on her one day because she decided to stay with Gale, I certainly did not want to lose her completely. If she died, she wouldn't come back to me. Never.

I can't afford to lose her. I simply can't.

I felt my strength flood back to my body. The strength I thought I had completely lost because of those depressing circumstances. It might be true that one's power and hope comes back if there's something to fight for. Someone to protect.

I started to run with everything I got; as fast as my left leg allowed me to. On my way I met some people heading to Block C and they warned me that I ran straight into the bombs. I simply ignored them. If Katniss died, I wouldn't live any longer anyway. My life would lose its worth, so I knew I had to go to save her. To save her and save me in the process, too.

Another bomb dropped and I almost lost my footing. The explosion sounded very close now and I was convinced that most of the upper floors wouldn't hold any longer. Nevertheless, I stormed to the stairway and made my way one level up, which was littered with debris.

I did not need to run a long time until I heard screams. Her screams. Some people stood in front of the safety doors of the medical tract but could not enter. It seemed that he was not the only one who wanted to help her; there were still some decent people left in District 13.

"We can't get in without the keys!" a woman shouted hysterically. "Do you have them?!"

Of course I did not. I had given them back to Sundower so he could hand them over to Gale. I'm such a brainless fool. Now I knew why Johanna had called me that. Because it's true.

If I just had shared the room with her, nothing like this would have happened. We would be in a safe place by now for sure, so if Katniss died this night it would have been my fault alone. This guilt would surely kill me, even if the bombs didn't.

"No, I don't!" I called back and I saw how the female's shoulders dropped. There was nothing she could do, so she took her husband's arm and begged to run away. I did not judge them for abandoning Katniss now. Of course they had wanted to run all along, but they had stayed and tried to help her and I was thankful for that.

I could hear her cry on the other side of the heavy doors and my heart sank when I realized that I was not able to get to her room at all. I shouted back; I shouted her name and tried to calm her down. I hammered at the door and called out for her, but she never seemed to realize that there were only a few walls between us.

"Katniss! Katniss, I'm here!" I shouted over and over, but her screaming never stopped. It grew louder, if anything.

Another ear-deafening impact.

This blast brought me to my knees and when a second blast followed, it sent me flying through the hallway. I crashed to the floor and the world grew dark for a second. Everything spun around my head and I fought hard to suppress the urge to vomit all over my feet. Pressing hands against my ears, I tried to get back to my feet. Fortunately, the detonation managed to unhinge another door. It was the door to the room next to Katniss'; the room that was used to monitor her. I've been in there many times with Doctor Sundower for briefing and I knew that only a one-way mirror actually separated this room from hers. Fate is giving me a tiny chance at least.

When I entered the room the mirror had already burst to million pieces. My ears were still ringing from the explosion but I was sure that the girl was still screaming her head off.

"Katniss! Hold on, I'm here!" I shouted back and I found that my voice sounded really strange for I could not hear it properly. For a second I had thought that she wouldn't hear me either, but her head jerked back to my direction. When she realized who I was, her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open. She was calling out to me. I couldn't hear it that well, but I could see it in her eyes. I could tell by the way how her lips were moving. She was calling out to me. Peeta. Peeta. Peeta.

I made sure that I climbed into her room through the window frame by using my prosthetic leg, since I did not want to risk not injure myself. Only a second later I reached her bed and started to untie her legs immediately. The numbness of my ears started to fade away and at least I could understand that she was shrieking something like "Help me! Get me out! I'm scared Peeta!" and I swore I would do everything in my might to rescue her. I tried to open the belt that tied her waist, but it proved to be rather difficult. The girl couldn't stop to struggle with her fetters and hindered my efforts to free her. She wouldn't calm down and my words did not reach her.

"Katniss, please stop! I can't help you like this! If you press your body against the belts, they won't open! Please, Katniss! I'm here, calm down!"

I told her to hold still, I even begged her to stop tossing around, but it was all in vain. So I couldn't think of any other way to calm her down than kissing her. I kissed her hard on her lips to drown her until her yelling finally died down. It felt like I had just absorbed all her crying into my own mouth and body but there obviously was no way to think about it romantically. Her entire body however froze and remained motionless for at least thirty seconds; time enough to free her completely and pull her out of her bed.

"Come on, Katniss! We have to get out of here!" I yelled and got her out of her trance. I took her hand in mine and tried to get her to the broken mirror, but she wouldn't budge.

"Come on, now!" I repeated and yanked her back to her feet when she had sagged. There was no time to be gentle and I only wanted to get her out of this hell. But she just stood there, lost in her own mind and thoughts; I did not know what else I could do to bring her to run, so I just grabbed her around the waist and threw her over my shoulder.

She was so light that it hurt. I knew she had not been able to walk around a lot all these months. Her legs and arms were even thinner than before, lacking all the strength she once had built up as a successful huntress. She was merely a shadow of her former self, physically and mental. That hurt even more; since I had been convinced that Gale had made her feel better meanwhile. I should have checked on her more often. Again, Peeta, you're such a fool!

It was not that easy to get her out of this room, since the mirror was still dangerous to cross. I let her stand on her own feet again and rushed back to her bed, taking her pillow and blanket with me to cover the shards that were still sticking out of the frame. Then I held her up so she could climb out. At least she had begun to move a little, still being confused about the entire situation. She had never left this room before, and had only gotten into the small room next to hers where the bathroom was. But she had never gotten outside.

The girl had stopped screaming, crying and even talking altogether. She did not get the tiniest sound through her teeth since I had stilled her with my lips. Her eyes were clouded and her mind seemed to be far away, spacing out, thinking. Figuring out. I wondered if it was a good or a bad sign…
When I also had crossed the broken glass, I took her hand in mine and pressed firmly to get her out of whatever dream or world her mind has led her in.
"Run! Okay?" I explained when her eyes finally seemed to meet mine. She still did not react to me however; I decided to just drag her weak figure with me. As long as she moved, she did not need her now absent mind. She just had to get her body out of here to a safe place; I would figure it out later how to get her sanity back. At least she was alive in first place.

I could tell that she stumbled a few times as I pulled her with me mercilessly. She had trouble with keeping my pace, although I had also not been very fast due to my bad leg. There was nothing left of her former condition, nothing left of her speed and swiftness, or her will to fight. There was almost nothing left of her. But still, I had to force her to run. I felt sorry for her and I was sure that her wrist will bruise later, but this was a price I would gladly pay, if her life was spared in return.

After some minutes which felt like an eternity, we both reached Block C mostly unharmed, the bombing had calmed down a little for the time being. From here on would be stairs for emergency use to get to the lower levels; fortunately I faintly remembered their location. I never cared about District 13 that much because I was occupied with Katniss and my latter missions. I've never checked out the other Blocks which now proved to be a bad mistake. At least I thought that I had passed those stairs once, so I started running to where I expected them to be. I pulled the girl with me, when I spotted a direction sign for the stairs. That helped a lot.

As soon as we started movin again, hell broke loose. The bombing started again, closer and worse than before. Katniss slumped to the ground and cried out in agony.

"No! NO!" she screeched. "Don't do this to me! Please, don't do this to me!"

"We have to go on!" I answered, unable to understand what she tried to tell me.

"I can't! They are coming! They will get me! I can't go back there again!"

As much I wanted to ask her what she was talking about, it wasn't the time and place to pursue the matter.
"Come on! I need you to run!" I screamed through the ear-piercing sound of the detonations and grabbed her around the waist to help her to her feet. I wanted to lift her up again and throw her over my shoulder, but on the same time a bomb got off somewhere really close to us. I was thrown against her by the fierce shockwave that hit us both. I knocked the girl down with my broad shoulders as the blow sent us both to the ground and cried out in pain as something hard hit me. Some bricks had crashed against my ribs and my back and something inside me seemed to have broken apart. Lying on the floor, my sight went blurry for a second as I felt the pain pulsing through my ribcage. When I touched the wound I came to the conclusion that I must have broken a rib or two.

"Katniss?" I groaned through the dust as the ground had stopped shaking. My eyes burned.
The girl did not answer me, so I called out for her again louder.
"Katniss! Are you alright?"
I let my arms roam around blindly; hoping to find her fragile body, but there was nothing that greeted me but silence. I got up to my knees slowly, my head still spinning. I had to find her. That girl would not survive if she got hit as hard as I had. There were hardly any muscles and flesh left on her bones to protect her. She was a canary in a cave, in a collapsing mine, unable to fly away. Sitting and waiting in her cage that would not offer any protection. She was vulnerable. Weak. So very weak...
So it certainly surprised me when I suddenly felt a firm and unexpectedly strong grip around my neck. I stared up into a cold pair of silvery grim eyes. Katniss' eyes. She was hovering over me, her irises dilated and her teeth fletched like a dog's. She pressed her upper tights against my broken rib and sent my close to the edge of unconsciousness; the pain was almost unbearable.
She, the girl that I found to be the love of my life, had her all of a sudden strong and cold fingers tightly closed around my throat and dug her thumbs deep into my wind pipe. I was shocked and unable to comprehend what's happening. But instead of doing something, anything, I simply stared back at her; my lips opening and closing again, like a fish that had been torn out of the water.
"Kat-" I croaked, gasping for air and finally realizing that she was actually trying to choke me to dead right at the spot.
She wanted to kill. Kill me.
Katniss looked like the girl I met in the train, the day we got her back. Lethal. Deadly.

I grabbed her hands and tried to get her fingers away from me, but she grasped me even harder. I struggled against her body with teary eyes. I had been one of the best in our school in wrestling. I was strong, no matter how the last months had worn me off, but now I could not bring myself to move, just because it was her. It's always been her -she's my greatest strength but also my greatest weakness - and she wanted me dead. She wanted me to be killed by her own hands, and whatever power I thought I had in me before was lost.

"…Don't-"

The sight of her piercing, grey eyes that craved for blood and crazy murder just disarmed me completely. She was the only one that would be able to get to me, and I would not be able to defend myself against. Not against her.

Tears stung in my eyes as I felt myself being close to pass out. I was done for.

The second time this day, however, the odds seemed to be in my favor. The very moment before I would have lost consciousness, another bomb ripped the wall beside us into pieces. The shockwave threw the girl that wanted to claim my life off my body and crashed her onto the floor. She yelped as she landed on jagged stones that cut her back. I, on the contrary, was okay. Lying on the floor had me protected from the worst. I took several harsh breaths to get some oxygen back into my system and with the lack of Katniss' fingers around my throat, I started to function again. My knees wobbled dangerously as I tried to get up to my feet. My heart was racing and soon I started to feel the very belated panic raise.

'God damn, she almost killed me! Why did I give up? What was I doing?' I inwardly slapped myself. If I died, I couldn't save her, so why did I surrender to her grip?

'I can't die without her being safe.'
Haymitch would have punched me for this thought. While dying, I did not have better things to do than thinking about her wellbeing. Even if she undoubtedly was the one who attempted to kill me. The crazy one's not Katniss. It's me.

I would have stormed to her side as soon as my body allowed me to, but unfortunately, it didn't. That's when she started to shiver and scream again, like the day when I had visited her in her room for the first time. Her strength had dissipated and before my eyes lay that terrified girl from before, begging not to hurt her, not to come closer and finally, begging to let her die. Of course I could not let her do that and I could not let her have her way. I tried to get up on my knees again and this time, my body finally seemed to obey me. When I opened my mouth to speak to her, to tell her that I would help her, the floor below us started to grumble as if there was an earthquake. It must have been a rather heavy bomb, luckily far enough from us. I took a relieved breath that we've already made it to Block C already. B seemed to be hit. Of course it was far too soon to feel relief which I realized as the ceiling started to crackle and cave in, only five feet away from us.

Katniss screamed her head off in panic and tried to hide her face behind her palms. She had told me that she was scared of mines, since she had been sent in there with her beloved friend, Cinna. He had rescued her from the cold darkness of that cave and had led her out of the tunnel, before two rebels caught him near the exit and tortured him to death. The mine caved in and all of them had gotten buried.

I knew that story was nonsense. She originally feared the coal mines because she had lost her father to them. But a killing machine, a trained mutt of the rebels, surely was not supposed to have a father. They had twisted her fear and combined it with her last memory of Cinna, who was beaten to death right below the arena. This story was just another way to hijack and incite her against us. She believed and trusted this memory with all her heart. Whoever thought about the way to change her memories must have had a great ability of insight. Or really gifted with solving jigsaw puzzles.

Whatever happened and whatever she believed, her fear of mines and tunnel was more than real. I knew it without looking at her. She screamed, winced and whimpered when it once again started to rain metal cores and rocks, and all I could do was getting to her before the ceiling did.

I yanked her on her feet and pulled her away, away from this dangerous place. She would not walk on her own, so I had to pull her with me what proved to be really hard. Dizziness formed in my head and I was aware of the fact that I soon couldn't go on any longer. We had to reach the stairs, for god's sake, to get to the lower, safer levels. They weren't far from this point, but with an abstracted Katniss like this, it seemed to be almost impossible.

"Come on!" I screamed at the crying and shivering figure when I grabbed for her hand. "Get yourself together! Run, Katniss! You have to run!"

She had to pull herself together. She could do it, if she only wanted to. Her eyes got somehow clearer, as if she had remembered something significant and then, out of the blue, she nodded. She moved her lips and whispered something, but I couldn't hear it. At least she started to follow me in a faster pace than I could have hoped before.

Another explosion ripped the air; and my eardrums for sure now. I felt the warm blood dripping down my neck onto my collar. Katniss surely suffered the same fate, but only one ear seemed to be harmed by the deafening blasts. The other one that had been treated by the capitol one year before seemed to be alright. At least, it didn't bleed.

The girl ripped her hand out of my grasp. One look into her eyes was enough to learn, that the sounds, the fear or the pain had triggered her again. This time I was mentally prepared when she tried to throw herself at me; this time, I was faster. I swung her around her own axis and had her pinned to the ground even before she was able to make contact with my skin. Her fingers tried to find her way to my neck again, but as soon as I had her body secured under my own, I pinned her hands to the ground.

"Katniss, it's me! Come back, please!"

Her eyes kept dilating and contracting for several moments, as if someone had switched the lights on and off. The next explosion erupted and it was the worst so far. The blast was strong and rocks came flying from everywhere. Despite the risk that she'd attack me again, I released her hands and gathered her body beneath mine. I wrapped my arms protectively around her, shielding her delicate body from every blow. That was all I could do, let the rocks plunge down on me and hope that Katniss would survive somehow.

It took her several seconds to realize that I certainly did not intend to harm her. She had tried to throw me off and kicked around, screaming. Fortunately, she was too weak to free herself from my grasp. When she saw my pained face however, she gave up.

"Close your eyes, Katniss." I hissed through gritted teeth. A rock just smashed my prosthesis, but luckily it hadn't hit her. "Don't look."

I didn't want her to see the blood that was running down my forehead and temple. I didn't want her to see anything. This was just another mine, caving in. I didn't want to bestow her with further nightmares. She's had enough already.

My voice finally reached her. She closed her eyes and pulled my body closer to her. I was her shield, her lifeline. Maybe she really got that.

"You'll be safe. I promise..." I whispered in her ear while shielding her from the world.
"Everything's gonna be al..- aghhh."

I groaned in pain. My already broken ribs got hit again, also the back of my right knee. I could only hope that it would not be seriously injuried. I couldn't afford to lose another leg. Shit.
At least the roaring sounds stopped after some time and I clenched my jaw when the stony rain stopped, only to feel the floor rumbling again. I turned to glance upwards at the cracking ceiling and immediately realized that it wouldn't hold out any longer.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I pushed her away from my body and literally tossed her away in direction of the stairs.
"Run! Damn it, Katniss, fucking run!" I screamed right before everything came crushing down. Mud and stones buried me from my hip downwards and I got my shoulders and back hit really hard. I cried out.

"Run! Run down! To the stairs, go!"

When she didn't leave, I gathered all my remaining strength to throw a stone in her direction and actually managed to hit her arm. The pain reminded the girl to move again. And she did.

She turned and ran away, sobbing, abandoning me.

At least she would make it.

At least this girl would survive.

That was all I had ever hoped for. My life was hers anyway, since the first games had started. I just wished that I had gotten to see Katniss again. The real one.

'I've got no regrets' I thought, when the whole world around me grew dark.

This is it.

I, Peeta Mellark, won't open my eyes ever again.


Please don't hang me.

It's a bad cliffhanger, I know.
I really wonder, what you think about it. And what you think what's gonna happen next :) Any ideas?

What do you think about Cinna and her father? Was it understandable? I tried to find a good solution for their deaths that would be useful for her hijacking. It really feels like a jigsaw to me.

Anyway, you all are wonderful. Thanks for reading! Thanks for enjoying! Thanks for leaving reviews.

If you want to know about my updates, find me on tumblr. and follow! My username's " Elsterbird ". See you there :D

Love you all so very much.

ElsterBird (Toast)