Chapter 11 :
They zigzagged between pine trees running as fast as they could, yet the hovercraft's engine was still very much audible. Haymitch counted their blessings, he had heard that they were developing silent vehicles, this one, at least, let them know they were being chased.
Effie's hand was clasped tight in his but she was slower than he was, unfamiliar with the woods and their treacherous snowy ground. She kept stumbling on hidden roots or rocks and he was quickly losing his patience. Not for the first time since dawn, he wondered what he had been thinking. Leaving Twelve? Giving up his liquor to run after a girl who was rushing straight to her death? He must have gone crazy… He used to be cleverer than that. They were going to get caught, she was going to get killed and he would be sentenced to a life in a hell of Snow's own choosing.
"Haymitch." Effie froze and pulled on his arm to stop him. He turned to her, intending to tell her exactly what had been on his mind, but the words and the anger died on his lips. She was tilting her head and staring at the part of the woods they had just left behind. She looked scared and lost and none of this was her fault. It had been his choice to go after her, his choice to start doing something else with his life than waste it away in a bottle of alcohol. It was unfair to resent her for that now. She had awoken him, she had given him hope of a life that didn't revolve around an arena and kids he couldn't save… A few more years living like that and he would have been beyond saving. "Do you hear that?"
He scanned the trees behind them but couldn't see anything, the woods were dark and the pale winter sun didn't do much to light the way. "What?"
He could hear the hovercraft circling above them but he didn't think it necessarily meant they had seen them. They were definitely looking for them though and staying put was against his every instinct. No prey ever stayed still when facing a much stronger predator.
"Dogs." Her breath formed a white cloud in front of her mouth.
He slung the crossbow off his shoulder, just in case, and listened carefully. Far away, barely perceptible under the noise of the hovercraft's engine, he could hear faint barking that was becoming louder and louder by the second.
Time to think fast.
"This way." he urged her, completely going off their initial direction. They started running again, he was dragging her mercilessly behind him, pulling on her hand when she was going too slow for his taste.
"But it's not north, is it?" she panted, after a few minutes.
No, it wasn't and they would lose days if they had to go on in that direction but it was their best bet. "The wind." he explained, short of breath himself. "It will throw them off our tail." Or at least, he hoped it would. As for their footprints… They just had to trust the wind to cover them. It was strong enough that snow was lifted from the ground and thrust into their eyes with each big gust.
"I can't go on." she protested after a while. She tore her hand from his grip and leaned against a trunk, trying to catch her breath.
Haymitch was tired too, he could have sworn his feet were covered with blisters. He couldn't hear the dogs anymore even the hovercraft had wandered away from them which was either very good or meant their pursuers were so close they didn't need the hovercraft anymore and were trying to lull them into a false sense of safety. He looked up, trying to gauge the position of the sun beyond the top of the trees. How long had they been running? Long and hard enough for them not to feel the bite of the cold in any case.
"Drink. You need to stay hydrated." he instructed her absent-mindedly, walking back a few steps down the slight slope they had just taken. He took out his own bottle of water and drank half of it in long swallows.
Water wasn't a problem as long as they were surrounded by snow. All they needed to do was fill the bottle up with it and wait for it to melt. Food, on the other hand, would quickly become an issue. He would need to hunt and that had never been his forte.
"Haymitch, talk to me." He hadn't heard her coming closer – which was disturbing in its own right because if a Capitol girl could creep up on him, then so could anybody else. She placed a hand on his arm, uncertainty written all over her face. "What's the matter?"
"We're getting chased by Peacekeepers, sweetheart." he snorted. "Isn't that enough for you?"
Her eyes darted around them quickly, as if calling the men hunting them by their names would make them appear right there right then, but wandered back to his face. She licked her chapped lips nervously. "You regret coming with me." she deduced. "You changed your mind."
Had he? They stared into each other's eyes for the longest time and, as he got lost into the blue of her iris, he gradually felt more grounded. His heart stopped racing, his skin stopped prickling in fear, the restlessness and apprehension he had woken up with slowly sunk back down to that part of his mind that belonged to bad memories and nightmares.
He had dreamt of the arena the night before. Worse, he had dreamt he was trapped back in the arena with his family and girlfriend and he lost them one after the other. He didn't need to be a genius to understand what that was all about. The nightmare hadn't relinquished his hold on him even after Effie had shaken him awake. When they had started to run, he had still been half convinced he was dreaming. It had taken almost an hour before he realized it was real. The lack of alcohol wasn't helping.
"No." he said, at last, when she averted her eyes. He put his cold hand on her cheek, brushing away the reddish curls falling on her face. She didn't resist when he pulled her in a kiss that left them breathless for more enjoyable reasons than their mad dash through the woods. "Never."
"Are you sure?" she asked with obvious concern. "Because if you want to go back… You should. I can manage."
She really couldn't but that wasn't why he wanted to stay.
"The whole thing brings back a few memories." he mumbled, a little ashamed of his weakness. It had been years since his Games and yet the nightmares never went away, the flashbacks never ceased, the ghosts were still haunting him and, according to Chaff, Mags and other older victors, it would always be like that. He had given up because it had seemed like the smartest thing to do, no sense in fighting a lost fight, but… Effie had prompted him to start running again and now he wasn't sure he could. He wasn't sixteen anymore, he was twenty-four and he felt like an old man : his body was strained, his muscles were practically non-existent and, somewhere, somehow, he had become rusty.
"Oh." She frowned. "When the memories of… When I think back to…" She fell silent and breathed out slowly. She was thinking about her family, he guessed. "I count." she said at last. "Anything and everything. I count until there is no space in my head for the memories. Would it help you?"
"Count?" he repeated with disbelief. He considered it for a second and then shrugged. "Can't hurt to try. I will keep it in mind."
"Good." she nodded, before a relieved smile graced her lips. "I was afraid you were going to run away from me."
"You should be afraid I never run away from you, sweetheart." he snorted. "You're going to get sick of me before you know it."
She kissed him. He could count the number of times they had kissed on one hand but he thought his favorites were the ones she had initiated. She kissed like she did everything else, with so much energy and passion it left him dizzy.
"Never." she mumbled against his lips. She pecked his mouth and stepped back. "We should…"
"Yeah." he agreed, adjusting his backpack. "We will go that way and loop back once we're sure they're not following us." He pointed west, or rather, since he couldn't get a good hold of the position of the sun, what he thought was west.
"Do you think they know where we're going?" Effie asked, after they had started walking again. "Do you think they know about Thirteen?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." He could still hear the hovercraft in the distance. Who were they looking for? Haymitch or Effie or both of them? Had they already discovered his supposed suicide note? Had they bought it or had they seen through his lies? Did they know Effie was with him? "If they know about Thirteen, it's going to be impossible to reach it."
They would cut out their path.
Her hand slipped into his and, for a second, he gave in to the fantasy that they were just two lovers out for a walk.
"Do you think we can survive this?" She didn't sound certain she wanted an answer to her question and he wasn't certain she would like what he had to say on the matter. He stood by what he had said since she had told him about her plans to go to Thirteen: it was suicide. Perhaps, slightly less with him by her side, but… still.
"If we're smart about it, maybe." he sighed. He had survived an arena and forty-seven people out for his blood, after all. He could deal with impossible odds.
They walked mostly in silence after that, listening carefully for a hovercraft, men or the barking of dogs. The woods around them remained peaceful though, so when night started to fall, Haymitch deemed it safe to call it a day. They found shelter against a small ditch that protected them from the strong cold wind. He didn't like that wind and he didn't like what he could glimpse of the sky between the top of the pine trees either. It smelt like snow and another snowstorm was the last thing they needed right then.
They huddled together to keep warm as the temperature dropped lower and lower. He toyed with the idea of starting a fire and then rejected it, unwilling to take the chance of anyone seeing smoke.
"Is that your northern star?" Effie asked, through chattering teeth, pointing out to the sky. It was barely visible but it was there. He still found it flabbergasting that she didn't know what Ursa Minor was.
"You're my northern star." he retorted. Flirting had always been easy for him, it was actually talking about his feelings that was difficult. Although, things between them were pretty clear, he thought. Ridiculous, perhaps, but pretty clear. He had never thought he could feel that way for anyone again.
"Ten." she reminded him. Her head was tucked under his chin but he could hear the smile in her voice. Ten was him being soppy if he recalled correctly. That game was beginning to get hard to follow.
"You never did say what my twelfth point was." he mused. Everdeen had barged in before she could spill it and he had been wondering…
Silence stretched for a few seconds which piqued his curiosity. What had she been about to say that she couldn't say now?
"Maybe I will tell you one day." she whispered at last. "I'm not sure you are ready to hear it now."
He couldn't help his low laughter. "What? You already think you know better than me?" He tightened his hold on her. "We will be an old couple before we reach Thirteen."
"Is that a bad thing?" she asked, fiddling with the zipper of his jacket.
He covered her hand with his and forced his body to relax, trying to get comfortable against the damp earth at his back and the wet snow under his legs. "Don't know." he shrugged. "Don't think so."
"I love you." she said, completely out of the blue. "At your house, you didn't let me tell you before I left, but… I love you." She let out a round of chuckles. "How is that for being an old couple?"
He couldn't answer right away, his heart was racing and he could feel the familiar tremor kicking in his hand, his mouth watered and he was longing for alcohol. As easy as that, the panic was back.
"Effie…" His voice sounded strangely strained. She must have noticed the sudden tension of his body because she relaxed more into him, as if she wanted to compensate for it. It was stupid to react that way, of course, he knew. He had known just as he knew he was feeling the same way.
"It's alright." she vowed calmly. "I understand, you don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know."
He let her fall asleep after that because he truly didn't know how to express his feelings out loud. The last time he had uttered those words, the last time he had actually said them… It had been in the Justice Building, right before Peacekeepers ushered him to the train waiting to take him to the Capitol. He had told his mother and his brother he loved them and he had told his girl too and they were all dead when he had come back. Those words felt like a curse now.
He had the nagging feeling that if he told anyone he loved them, they would be dead quicker than he could blink.
Hey! I've miiiiissed you all all week! I hope you had a great week! Let me know what you think of this chapter =)
