I think from now on I will be updating either on Tuesdays (Australia time) or Fridays. So once or twice a week. I hope that's enough. I don't own the Hunger Games.
Chapter 10:
That first day, Ayla stayed with Annie for over an hour as she desperately watched to see what would become of Finnick.
"Come on, Annie, Nonna's at home waiting," she urged her to get up.
Annie shook her head, "What if something happens?"
"It's the first day, he's got allies. We have to go home now, we can watch then."
Ayla nudged her again, but Annie didn't want to leave. She felt that if Finnick died, she would be betraying him if she stopped watching, leaving him alone, abandoning him. She knew in her mind that this logic made no sense but she couldn't help feeling that way. Her walk home could be the time when Finnick could die. What if the Careers turned on him early? It was not unheard of. She was caught in this constant state of have a desperate desire to watch, but not wanting to see what horrors would befall him.
"They've had their show. Nothing's going to happen," Roger said kindly in an attempt to reassure her, "today." And there it was.
Annie looked around, knowing they were right.
"Fine," she said, "I'm coming."
The swamp was eerie and dark, and the phrase 'death trap' came to Finnick's mind. A permanent mist seemed to hang in the air, emitting a faint, bluish white glow. The whole place seemed surreal, like something out of a nightmare, but this nightmare contained a putrid odour which for some reason reminded him of fish guts and coconut, a fruit common in District 4 which he also happened to loathe. The Career pack seemed to have opted to remain and set up camp at the Cornucopia where all the supplies were. This decision made sense, and he would not be the one to overrule it, however the metallic and sickening scent of stale blood hung in the air, drenching his nostrils and making him somewhat lightheaded. This is great he thought I'm in the Hunger Games and the smell of blood is bothering me.
They sorted through the supplies, finding water purifying tablets, rope and twine, rations, some water canteens and, in the spirit of the games, weapons galore. But no trident, he noted glumly. He'd have to settle for a spear, which seemed for too long, too heavy, too inaccurate for his liking. It was better than nothing though.
This took quite a long time, but looking around, Finnick found it surprising how dark it was getting so soon – and how cold.
"Kind of cold," Raya noted not long after the thought crossed his mind.
"Any matches?" Willow asked.
Everyone shook their heads. All around them, except for the patch of ground that the Cornucopia lay upon, was water, shallow in some parts, deep in others, and no doubt holding countless threats and ways for someone to get killed.
"There'd be nothing to light anyway," Finnick muttered, mostly to himself.
"What? Speak up, 4!" Jed barked in the typical 2 aggression.
Finnick looked at him coolly, remembering what Mags had kept reminding him during the week. He was always on camera, there were always people watching.
"I just said that even if we had matches, there's not dry or dead wood to light anyway," he said, not flinching when Jed's eyes narrowed.
"I suppose so," he grumbled.
"We'll just have to deal with the cold then," concluded Rhys.
Dealing with the cold turned out to be harder than one would think. The temperature dropped considerably overnight and would have been near impossible to cope with had it not been for the sleeping bags found in the packs. Finnick was on second watch, and he sleepily wandered to himself how the other tributes would be coping. Some of them had managed to obtain packs, a few not. At what must have been past midnight there was the sound of a cannon firing off in the distance. Finnick could not imagine anyone leading any kind of assault or attack at this time. This death would be due either to injury or the unforgiving cold. He shuddered to think of what the past few hours must have been like for that unfortunate soul, but forced it to the back of his mind. He shouldn't be thinking like this. Pity would get him killed. He continued knotting and putting his focus into the net he had begun weaving earlier. Who knows, it could become useful.
Annie's time was primarily consumed with watching the Games. She was constantly nervous, so, so much more than usual. She kept that rope with her at all times while watching the Games to keep her hands busy. She watched Finnick as he survived each day, sometimes at home, sometimes at Finnick's house with his father and brother and friends, and once even on the screen in the town centre. She watched him knot, she watched him hunt, and she watched him receive gifts. These he never seemed short of. Each day a parachute would come down with whatever he may need, water purifying tablets, bread, if he needed it he would get it. This sort of gift receiving was unprecedented, and made even more unusual by the fact that to this day Finnick's only kill was that mercy kill at the Cornucopia. Call it what you want, Annie saw the look in Finnick's eyes when he delivered that blow, pity, guilt.
Before the Games, Annie was sure she couldn't have spoken to Roger more than once, if ever. But now, she could almost think of him as a friend. Not in the same friend sense that she thought of Finnick though, who was her companion, her confidante. Still, Roger showed a maturity beyond his years, and it was interesting for her to compare Finnick's impulsive nature with Roger's careful thinking, one's energy with the other's calmness. It could be true that opposites attract, looking at those two as best friends.
Roger never seemed to have his family around, and in the small amount of conversation they had, never mentioned it. It seemed to be something he shaded, hid, and while she was curious Annie did not question it. She knew better than to try and bring up subjects people obviously wanted to ignore.
On the sixth day of the Games she sat on the floor in front of the day, the discomfort of the hard wooden boards underneath her keeping her awake. This had been a night where she had hardly slept, a few hours at most, with plenty of waking and sweating and nightmares. She feared for her health but was too tired for this to be too much of a concern. Have to watch, have to knot, Finnick can't die, Finnick can't die…
Her dreams were no longer of far off worlds or bizarre happenings. They were filled with her life for the past few days, the sitting, the stress, the nails being chewed to the bone, the knot tying and knot tying and more knot tying. She was in a constant state of anxiety, her dreams the same as real life except she would be watching the games and something horrible to Finnick. His neck would be snapped suddenly and quickly by the brute from 2 or he would fall into one of the traps which had taken the lives of other tributes. The worst of these had probably been a suction hole in the swamp, undetectable beneath the water. The girl had struggled and cried and screamed and sobbed unbearably as she was slowly and horribly pulled underneath and drowned. In her dream, Finnick had been the one to befall this fate, and his cries had seemed so real that Annie had awoken gasping, silently screaming.
This sort of thing happened when she had spent so much of the day indoors alone, while Ayla and Nonna went to the stall. There was no convincing her to go with them, she would not leave. These past three days had been spent inside the home and that was how the rest of her days would be spent until Finnick was either safe or dead.
She heard a knock behind her, but ignored it. Finnick was not on the screen, so she would knot and knot and knot some more.
"Annie?"
She turned to see Roger standing there, holding something in his hand.
"Roger," she croaked, and cleared her throat. "Roger."
"Geez, Annie, you look like death."
She stared at him, unaware of how she was made to look in the poorly lit room, curled up on the ground with a rope in hand and deep bags set under her eyes.
"Sorry," he apologised upon seeing her nonresponsive. "Here I brought you something."
He tossed it to her, and she instinctively caught it. A mango, ripe and fresh and smelling deliciously sweet.
"Thank you, Roger, but I can't accept it," she shook her head.
"It cost nothing, we have a tree of them, and they've been really good this year."
He walked over and sat next to her, taking the mango and pulling a knife from his pocket. He cut a portion off and cut cubes into it and handed it to her.
"We missed you at Finnick's," he said while she ate. She doubted this. "Alec's had trouble coping. The longer goes by, the more of a wreck he is. He's worried. Wil's having trouble calming him down."
"Nothing can help him," Annie murmured, setting the left over mango skin down.
"What?" Roger looked at her.
"I said nothing can help him," she repeated, knowing the feeling all too well. It was too soon for her to lose her friend. "Not until Finnick comes back. Then he'll be ok. It'll all be ok…" she trailed off.
Roger looked uneasy, "Annie, you can't just…"
But the look the Annie shot him stopped him from finishing his sentence. There was no "he might not"s, not this far in the game. Her bloodshot eyes said that this was not a thought worth considering right now. They sat in silence, Annie knotting and he observing the screen. Her concentration was lost, she was hardly awake. She felt so desperately tired, the kind of tired where sleep seems to offer no relief. It was a haze, all noise seemed distant and even the rope seemed to be slipping from her vision.
"Annie, Annie it's them."
Roger nudged her and her eyes flickered up to the screen immediately. It showed the Career pack, following smoke from a fire near their camp. Little did they know it was a trap.
Annie thought bitterly about how much fun this must be for the Gamemakers. They must be overjoyed, showing the unsuspecting Careers following the smoke, the girl lighting the fire and quickly climbing a tree, and the stirring beast which lay asleep under the water between them and the fire.
"Oh no…no, no," Annie groaned.
Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith appeared in the corner of the screen, commenting on how an alligator, a muttation lay in the water. Footage from a previous death by this alligator flashed up on the screen and Annie closed her eyes, but was unable to get rid of the few images she had seen. Teeth like knives, a thirst for blood, and a mass of red pouring from a mangled corpse. By the end there was next to nothing left.
And the Careers waded forward unknowingly. It was Finnick, Raya, Willow and Jed who had gone, Rhys keeping watch back at the Cornucopia. They were close now, so dangerously close.
Jed was the first to notice something.
"Stop!" he exclaimed, but it was too late.
Yellow eyes stared from the water for about a second, and then the silence was over and the beast launched itself from the water. Raya shrieked as she darted out of the way. The swamp waters made it doubly hard to move, while the alligator was completely in its element. It darted out, stretching out a massive jaw containing a lightless, gaping gulf and those killer teeth. It was all over within a matter of seconds, all of them splashing urgently and moving away in what seemed like slow motion. The cameras provided no clarity on the situation and Annie couldn't help but let out a small moan and grab Roger's arm, squeezing hard, her blunt nails digging into skin.
Half the screen zoomed out on the remaining tributes while the other half replayed what just happened in slow motion. The mutt had seized Willow in its teeth, the sickening crunch of its jaw crushing her now so frail bones being magnified, and her entire body being split and dragged underneath the surface. The survivors frantically hurried away, but the beast would not attack again today, its hunger temporarily satisfied.
Annie released Rogers arm, only noticing now what had happened in her anxiety.
"Sorry," she said.
"It's alright I hardly noticed," he waved her off, inspecting her face and bloodshot eyes. "Annie, you really should get some sleep."
She avoided his gaze, feeling uncomfortable at being looked at for this long.
"It's fine," she lied. The room was spinning.
"Annie, you can't not sleep."
Try me she thought weakly. Her knots fumbled. Rhys had just found out the news about Willow and he looked steely.
"Wow," commented Roger, dropping the subject of sleep, "He took that well."
Annie shook her head, "No he didn't. He's scared."
Roger turned back to the TV for a second. "He doesn't look it."
"He's scared," she continued, "Because now if he dies, he dies with nothing left from home. He's got no one left with him. It's scary."
"Whatever," Roger shrugged, "Come on Annie, you should go to bed."
She didn't appreciate being brushed off like that, but was too tired to notice anything. Her head ached. Roger stood up and offered a hand to help her up.
"Fine, I'm coming."
She didn't accept his hand, instead getting up on her own. She stumbled a few feet to the couch and lay there, too exhausted to bother going to her room.
"Sleep well, Annie," Roger said and began leaving.
"Roger," she mumbled.
He turned and said half expectantly, "Yeah?"
"Wake me if something…if something….happens…with Finn…" she trailed off, far too tired to keep talking. Already she was slipping out of consciousness.
"Sure."
Since Willow's death, all of them had been uneasy. There were four other tributes out there, including the one who had ambushed them with the mutt of an alligator. There was distrust in the air, the group seemed unstable, and no one knew if they were going to wake up with a knife in their back. And that night there was the night Finnick knew he had to leave. It was too much of a risk to stay with the Careers, better to get a head start. It was getting difficult hiding the packages he received from them anyway. He offered to take first watch, and no one complained. This whole game was getting tiring. With the others asleep quickly, he would have the whole night to get as far from them as possible, maybe even get some rest.
Once he was certain, or as certain he would ever be, that the others were asleep, he quietly tucked his knotting work into his pack, picked up his belongings, and crept away. It would have been impossibly dark with no moonlight if not for the eerie glow coming from the fog which lay like a heavy blanket. He picked a direction and prayed that it was the right one. He hoped this was the right time. What if it wasn't? There was no signal from Mags. Or maybe there had been a signal and he missed it.
Come on Mags, help me out here.
And as though she had heard his silent plea, sure enough, a few feet ahead of him, the familiar shape of a silver parachute descended through the fog. He could not make out what it was, but saw that it was larger than anything he had received previously. He went forward to uncover it and gasped.
In his hands he held a silver trident.
Let the games begin.
Queue the usual spiel about I'm sorry if it was crap and tell me if you hated it blah blah. Reviews are so greatly appreciated you have no idea. I'm like a child every time I get one. Thanks for reading/commenting/favouring/alerting.