10.
Haymitch woke up on the sixth day certain that everything was about to take a turn for the worst.
For one thing, his head was pounding. For another, the wound on his thigh itched – which was either good or very bad – he took a peek the first chance he got and found it reddish and slightly swollen – very bad then. He kept it from the girls.
The general mood was gloomy.
Prim remained sitting on the beach, hugging her knees close to her chest and staring in the distance – the kid knew she was a goner, Haymitch figured, and he couldn't exactly promise the opposite. Katniss was nervous and kept her bow ready to shoot, her eyes darting to the edge of the jungle with a regularity bordering on paranoia. Effie was uncharacteristically sullen, she didn't say a word, barely answered him when he addressed her, and quietly munched on her share of the leftover meat.
"Something is about to give." he muttered to Katniss.
He could feel it in his bones.
There was a strange quietness to the jungle, it was almost peaceful. An arena was never peaceful. It was never good. It meant the Gamemakers were planning something massive.
"I know." she answered through gritted teeth. "What do we do? Do we stay here or do we move?"
"We move." he answered without hesitation. "We're sitting ducks here."
They found him a stick long and strong enough to carry his weight and off they went, trudging in the jungle like it was an everyday thing – lately it kind of was. The unnatural stillness was everywhere. No bird chirping, no ruffling in the bushes… There was an acute sense of danger in the air.
"I don't like it." Katniss grumbled for the third time. "Prim, stay close."
Haymitch didn't say anything but he touched Effie's shoulder once. She understood what he wanted and remained right next to him, within arm's reach. He didn't like it any more than the girl did.
They decided to head to another section of the arena, hoping that whatever the Gamemakers were playing at only concerned one sector. Their progress was slow mainly because of Haymitch and he almost told them to leave him behind more than once, he would catch up or not, but he held his tongue every time because at his only attempt to convince them to push on without him, Katniss glared, Effie glowered and Prim rolled her eyes. The kid insisted on checking his injuries but Haymitch refused, stating there was no time to lose – and no time for her to confirm what he already knew, his thigh was getting infected.
They were walking for two hours when he grew tired of Effie's sad face.
"Snap out of it." he commanded. "You will deal with it when you're out of here."
The gaze she turned on him was hollow, desperate.
"We are never getting out, Haymitch." she whispered, low enough that the girls wouldn't hear.
"Don't say that." he sighed. "You never know if…"
"I am not getting out without you and you are not planning on surviving this." she cut him off. "It is settled really. Let's help the girls as much as we can."
"Effie." he growled.
"Hush, now." she retorted. "My decision is made."
And it seemed it was because she stared straight ahead, her head high and her eyes focused. It was impressive until she tripped on a root and almost break her neck.
He laughed at her.
He couldn't help it.
Katniss and Prim started laughing too despite her flushed cheeks and her embarrassed pleas for them to stop. It helped lightening the mood slightly.
It didn't last long.
Soon the jungle ground turned to mud. It was nothing at first but it quickly became difficult to press forward, all the more so for him and his stick that kept getting stuck.
"We should turn back." Effie said.
And she found no opposition.
They agreed on heading toward the beach instead of cutting back through the jungle and its now sticky ground. Danger sirens were howling in Haymitch's head and he urged them all to go faster, cursing his damned leg…
They weren't that far from the beach when the rumble started but they were far enough that it didn't make a difference. The earth shook and they all lost balance and tumbled to the ground in that sticky and slippery mud that made it difficult to stand up again.
"Earthquake?" Katniss shouted over the noise, puzzled. "Why would they…"
The answer came in the form of a devastating wave of mud in the distance.
"Oh for fuck's sake!" he cursed grabbing Effie's arm and looking frantically around. "Find a tree! Strap yourself to it!"
He didn't need to clarify the tree would have to be strong and that it was no guarantee of survival. It was still a better plan than trying to outrun it. He found the closest tree that looked strong enough to resist and used his and Effie's belt to strap the both of them to the trunk. A few feet away, Katniss was doing the same for her and Prim.
"Hold on." he told Effie, entwining their fingers. "Whatever you do, hold on."
The mud wave was on them quicker than one would think. It was brutal and unforgiving. Trees were uprooted all around. He heard Prim scream and saw Katniss struggle to keep her sister in place. He could do nothing, their own tree bent with the force of the wave, sending them tumbling in the sea of mud. He never let go of Effie's hand, even when his mouth filled up with earth and twigs… He prayed that the belts would hold. If the tree or the belts snapped and they were carried away, they were lost.
His head eventually popped out and he spat the mud out of his mouth. Effie was coughing, but as long as she was coughing, she was alive and that was all that mattered. It seemed to last forever and paradoxically it was over in a matter of minutes.
They ended up slumped against the trunk, the tree half uprooted, held upright only by their belts. Good thing they had made them resistant.
Wherever the wave had hit, it was destruction. Almost a quarter of the arena had been turned into a wasteland.
"Katniss!" he called out. "Prim!"
He couldn't see if they had made it. He struggled with the buckles of the belts, his hands shaking too badly to be of use, until Effie wordlessly took over.
"We're here!" Katniss replied, sounding completely knocked out.
He wanted to check on them but the second the belt came loose he flopped on the slippery ground, his legs refusing to hold his weight. Effie tumbled down too and remained there, stunned.
"You're okay?" he shouted in the direction of the girls.
A few trees had made it but the whole area was mostly cleared.
"Never better!" Katniss retorted ironically.
"Watch the sass, girl!" he laughed. "You're turning into me!"
There was an answering bouts of hysterical chuckles.
Effie's head fell on his shoulder briefly and then she crawled away on all four and she retched. Clearly, she had swallowed more than he had. He forced himself to reach for her, holding her hair back while she threw up – not that there was much more to preserve on that front, there wasn't an inch of them that wasn't covered in thick brown mud.
"I'm being sick on national TV." she mumbled, between two heaves. "I'm being sick on national TV."
"Cheer up, sweetheart." he snorted. "They say mud is good for the skin."
He ended up with a fistful of mud in his face for his trouble.
He flopped on his back and stared at the unchanging clear blue sky, happy to be alive for once. He would have liked to stay that way. The thought came unbidden, his survival instinct finally kicking in.
Eventually, Katniss and Prim dragged themselves over, looking worse for the wear. Katniss had a cut on her forehead and Prim's hair had come loose and was tangled with twigs.
"I think a trip to the beach is in order." Effie declared. "We all need to clean up. Nobody will sponsor us if we look like street urchins."
Katniss and Haymitch exchanged a look. Trust Effie to have her priorities straight, he thought.
"We need to find water first." he objected. "Then we go swimming."
"I didn't hear a canon." Katniss said. "Did you?"
Haymitch shook his head. That didn't mean anything though, with the roar of the wave he wouldn't have heard anything.
They were all bruised and battered. Limping away from the devastated sector took them almost an hour, they had to sidestep fallen trees and avoid the deep puddles. The ground wasn't exactly stable either and more than once one of them slipped and ended up a few feet down the slope. Haymitch had lost his stick and was using Effie's shoulder as support. His thigh was throbbing something fierce but he didn't say a word about it.
Eventually, they found a tree. They all took turns digging the spile in, too exhausted for one of them to do it alone. The water felt heavenly on his tongue and he drank his fill slowly, making sure to pause and breathe so he wouldn't get sick. It took almost as much time to drag the spile out as to dig it in.
They staggered to the closest untouched portion of the beach. Katniss kept her bow at the ready. It had suffered during the mud wave though and she kept frowning and tinkering with it. That didn't stop Haymitch from paddling in the water with relief, closely followed by Prim and Effie. Soon, a brown cloud surrounded them in the salted pond as they got rid of the mud caking their skin.
"Between the sunburns and that, I will need a full body peeling when…" Effie grumbled only to suddenly stop and focus on getting all the mud out of Prim's blond hair.
Katniss was quicker about it, apparently not caring about being dirty from head to toes. She remained in the water to the knees and simply washed her face, watching the edge of the jungle with an arrow already notched in her bow.
He knew what the girl was thinking. If someone wanted to take them out, now was the time to do it. They were tired, weak and in the open. The cold water was numbing the pain in his leg though so he didn't followed her out but kept a hand close to his knife.
Effie and Prim were chatting, oblivious to it all. The cheer in their escort's voice was as fake as it could be and not as convincing as usual but the kid seemed to buy it. The both of them were laughing when they stumbled to the beach, finally clean and obviously exhausted.
Still, Haymitch remained where he was. He was attentive but probably not as much as he should have been, the cold water was acting like a relieving balm on the throbbing wound on his thigh and it was distracting.
Everything happened in the blink of an eye anyway, too fast for him to do anything.
He saw Katniss suddenly tensing.
He saw her letting an arrow loose.
He heard her curse and he understood that the bow had been damaged and wasn't shooting as straight as she wanted it to. She notched another arrow but it was already too late.
The spear was already flying straight at Effie who was oblivious, still chatting with Prim who was crouched to tie up her shoelace.
It all happened so fast, Haymitch didn't have time to take more than a step.
He blinked and he missed the whole thing. He missed Prim standing up, unaware of the danger, he missed Katniss' scream, he missed the howl of pain at the edge of the jungle, he missed Katniss dropping to her knees as if the spear had stabbed her instead, he missed Brutus collapsing on the beach and Johanna stepping out of the jungle, her axe gleaming in the sunlight, covered in blood.
The canon boomed once.
Twice.
And Haymitch felt like throwing up.
Prim and Effie had both gone down but only one of them was wriggling and wailing in pain. Katniss crawled closer but it wasn't until the girl started howling for help that Haymitch moved.
He reached them at the same time Johanna did.
He and Seven's victor exchanged a glance, his hand was hovering over his knife but if she had intended to attack them she would have so already.
"He was trailing you. I was trailing him." Jo explained, her mouth set in a hard line.
He nodded briskly but focused on the girls. Effie and Prim were impaled, pinned to the ground like butterflies. One dead, one alive.
"We need to take the other off the spear." Johanna said in a clinical detached tone. "Inspect the wound. If you take it out and it touched something important, she will bleed out."
He knew all that.
He knew but he was still grateful for the instructions because he didn't know how to proceed.
The idea of her dying was so ridiculous, he couldn't process it.
Try to remember you still love me... :p Who's dead... Who's alive... Who knows...