Tips of Brushes, Blades of Arrows

Option B

By: KaKaVegeGurl

Author's Note:

I simply adored writing this chapter, I hope that it reaches up to everyone's expectations. I tried to stay fairly loyal to the story line. But this is pretty much the point where I can change things, chapter 9 is going to be a whole 'nother ball game. This was mostly just to get the ball rolling, get the details down, and then Chapter 9 is where I can finally have my cake and eat it too. ^_~

I hope that you all are enjoying my fanfic so far, thank you lot fer reading and sticking around, have a nice steaming cup of yaoi, and I'll see you next week!

~KaKaVegeGurl

Side Notes:

Would you catch me if I fall out of what I fell in?

Don't be surprised if I collapse down at your feet again

I don't want to run away from this

I know that I just don't need this

Chapter 8 - No Water, Just Fire

I stare out through the Willow Trees to see if I can spot any sign of who it is, but there's nothing I can really see accept the light of the fire that the person's made, "Why now?"

Katniss shakes her head, "I don't know. But whoever it is, they're gonna get their selves killed."

"Yeah," I agree. We're silent long enough until I decide to ask: "How did you sleep?"

"Alright, did you sleep at all?"

"I did, some," I tell her honestly, "But not much."

Things settle down as we stare out at the person's fire, grow bored with watching the dancing flames, and finally we both drift off to asleep again.

I don't know how much time has passed before a scream pierces the cold night air.

It was a girl that had started the fire, I can tell now as she is screaming and crying for her life, and then she's silenced by the group of Careers that have found her.

Katniss is up, staring out at them, and then looks at me. Her eyes wide in fear, she readies her bow.

The Careers cheer and howl with laughter and me and Katniss sit in silence. They get closer and I pull Katniss back into the bag and cover her mouth with my hand.

She lowers the bow just a bit and we share a look of complete fear.

We listen to them talking for a while before they set off back into the forest, leaving us alone again.

"That girl," Katniss starts to say, her voice shaking.

"It wasn't her," I interrupt, "Not that girl from eleven. No."

A helicopter arrives to take the girl's body away and we stand up finally to stretch out our sore muscles.

"We need to go soon," Katniss says, "You have to be just as thirsty as I am by now."

"I am," I agree, "but let's eat first. I'm starving as well."

We eat and Katniss checks her snares. She's caught a rabbit in one, takes care of it, cooks it with the girl's fire, and uses the coal from it to dim down the orange backpack. But it doesn't work as well as we would've liked it to.

"Well," I say, joking, "We'll definitely never go hungry. But we do need to get to some water."

We walk on for the entire day, an eventful day I assure you, we found out that the sunglasses were useless, and all we really managed to do was find some berries. Bad berries. That we had to ignore and move on from. And we don't find any water. Not a drop.

"This isn't good." Katniss says as I zip up my pants.

"What's that?" I ask.

She looks at me, "When urine is that color. Brown, dark. We don't have enough water in us. What color was yours?"

I raise a brow at her and can't help but to laugh at the strange question. "I'm sorry, Katniss. I wasn't looking."

It's her turn to raise a brow and then she smiles, "Oh. Well, we need to sleep soon, I guess we should find a good tree."

We climb up the nearest one and snuggle down close in the sleeping bag.

The Anthem plays after some time and confirms that the girl that was killed early that morning wasn't Rue.

The next morning we climb down unsteadily from the tree and start off in search for water.

My bones ache as I walk, my head swims, I'm tired even though we've just slept an entire night. I don't know if it's from the lack of water, or just the activeness that the arena has required from me.

And I don't think I'm nearly as thirsty as Katniss is, which means that she has to feel worse. She's stumbling through the forest, still keeping ahead of me, but it's clear that she's dragging with every step.

Finally, she's fallen down to the ground with exhaustion and I run forward to help her up.

"Mud!" she exclaims just as I reach her.

She thrusts her entire body up from the ground and runs forward, through the trees, and we reach a small lake.

Katniss kneels at it, arms reaching out to it, but I take her shaking hands up from the bottle of water that she's filled and help her purify it.

She sits back against the trunk of a tree as we wait and then I hold the drink up to her lips to help her swallow.

We sit together, drinking slowly over another hour or two and finally her head slumps to the side from exhaustion. She's asleep.

The Anthem plays, I haven't even realized how late it is, but no one's died today. And I turn to see Katniss as her eyes droop closed and she's asleep again.

I sip silently from the bottle of water and I don't know how long I watch over her, listening for other tributes when an abrupt brightness catches my eyes.

I turn and see a massive wall of fire burning through the forest.

Katniss is already up then, and we stand to pack our things. I take the backpack over my shoulder and we sprint out to get some distance.

"That thing's not right!" I shout at her.

"No," Katniss breathes, "It's definitely not."

We run blindly through the trees and Katniss is slowing down, so much that when I turn to her I see that her jacket has caught fire in the back.

"Hey," I shout to her, "Your jacket is on fire."

She looks back and stops.

We struggle to pull it off of her and stomp it out. She stuffs it in the pack that's been over my shoulder and we have to set off again, because the fire is gaining on us.

The smoke fills my lungs so completely and I'm coughing for air.

We jump over a small cliff face and Katniss wretches so hard that she pukes against the rocks, she turns her head away from me and I move to her side.

I pull the hair back from her face and rub my hand over her back as she dry heaves. We're only there for a minute though, breathing deeply, when a ball of fire passes through and streaks over my left arm.

Katniss straightens up and we start off through the rocky area of the arena.

I've grabbed my hand under arm to put out the fire that is on my sleeve. But I know that it's done a great deal of damage to the skin underneath. The burn stings as we run. Fireballs streak by, barely missing us.

"Move when you hear the hiss!" Katniss shouts to me, "Listen for the hiss."

I listen then, hear it, and twist left, dodging a large fireball aimed for my back.

After so long Katniss collapses, convulsing with dry heaves again, completely overwhelmed now. She's exhausted and spent finally and I turn and stare up at the firewall.

I start to reach out to Katniss, we have to keep going, when a ball of fire comes out from the left and hits right over my chest. I throw myself back without even thinking and roll over, chest to the ground. I don't scream, but the pain is enough to make me want to.

When I straighten up again I see Katniss is on the ground, ripping the leg of her pants away.

"Katniss!" I take her burned hands up and we limp away together from the wall of flames. No more fireballs come, but we're both badly burned.

We find a small lake and Katniss sits at it, reaching out to soak her hands in the water.

I ignore my burns, I know they're both bad, and I don't want to worry her. So I worry about her instead.

We wash our faces calmly in the water.

"You," she says finally, staring into my eyes, "You got burned too right?"

"It's no big deal," I say, shrugging it off, "Let's see your leg though, and see what we can do about it."

She puts it before us with a grimace and my stomach lurches. The skin is so brightly red and badly burned that my first instinct is to get it into the water. But I know it has to go in slowly.

I take her leg in my hands, climbing waist down into the water myself, remove her boot and sock, and guide her leg down into it.

She sighs in relief, her eyes are on me, her hands are on her legs, gripping at the cloth of her pants as though it can stop the pain in her leg, "Oh Peeta, thank you."

My heart swells in my chest at her words, it's silly, when you think about it, but I'd give anything to hear her say it again. Instead, I look up then and stare into her eyes.

"You're welcome," I say firmly.

We drink water as she sits with her leg in the lake.

My burns sting more then ever now, but I ignore them. Water will only make the pain afterwards seem worse then it really is. And I've been burned before, so it's no big deal.

Katniss cuts off the burned back of her jacket and we eat a small meal of crackers and rabbit meat. For the third time, Katniss is back off into sleep.

I wish I could fall asleep that easily.

The stinging gets worse on my chest and on my arm, but all I do is pour water on Katniss's hands and keep her leg soaked.

The footsteps jar her awake suddenly and in a minute I've got her sock and boot back on and we're scaling the tree that she was laying up against.

The Careers meet up with us as we finally get high enough to be significantly out of reach. They look up at us in annoyance, I watch the first boy with his blackened face from the smoke as he smirks.

"Hello down there," I banter to them.

"How's your day been?" Katniss asks with just as much bravado.

The leader of them raises a brow to the both of us at our calm demeanor, "Well enough," he says, "Yourselves?"

"A bit warm for my taste," Katniss jeers with a wide grin, "the air is better up here. Why don't you come up?"

"Think I will," and as he starts to climb Katniss whispers to me.

"Step on my branches."

I do, and before I know it, we're up at least seventy feet or so in the air. Cato isn't so lucky though to have as good of a guide as Katniss. We look down as the branch snaps and he falls all the way back down to the ground.

He's up in a second though, angry and cursing and then the girl with her daggers decides to try.

She isn't as lucky either.

"Why don't you just shoot them?" I ask Katniss as the District two girl tries to throw a dagger or two at ass, but we're too far away.

"They don't know how good I am with a bow, but they know I have it," She says softly to me, "We can afford to wait on them. And if they stay here tonight, it'll be a big mistake."

I smile back, "Good idea."

"It's all I've got," Katniss says, "There's so many of them, if I let it out how well I am and a few of them get away then the chances of beating them all will be slim."

I nod in agreement, "Then whatever happens next is entirely up to them."

The Careers set up camp at our feet and we climb down a bit for a good spot in the tree, pull out our sleeping bag and prepare for sleep.

I sit there silently, staring at Katniss, as I pour water over her leg.

"Thank you," she says to me, smiling.

It's the second time today that she's thanked me. And it's the second time that I welcome her.

But with the Careers siting down below us, I think to myself, tonight is going to be a long night.

Ending Notes:

Review? Why ever not?

~KaKaVegeGurl