"Where- what- huh?"

He blinked his eyes in confusion, then I tackled him with a bear hug.

"Ow!" Flynn bellowed, but didn't hugged me back tightly, even though I tried to move away to not hurt him and apologized, but he just held me tighter.

After a bit he let go, and I was the one who had to blink slowly. After Flynn had fainted yesterday I did everything I could to wake him up, but after he really wouldn't wake up I became mother hen. Meaning that I had set up the tent, dragged Flynn inside, treated his wound, gazed it up with the supplies I had taken from one of the houses awhile back, and made him as comfy as possible. At night the only death that had appeared was the red-haired girl from district nine, who was thankfully not Artemis. So apparently blue haired Vail had made it out of her battle, but was she somewhere dying? I closed my eyes and hoped not. I waited and waited for Flynn to wake up, but finally I feel asleep nuzzling against him for warmth. I had woken up only two minutes before he did.

"What happened?" he asked.

"You fainted," I shrugged, and tried to ask nacholantly, "so... where's the rest of the alliance?"

Flynn attempted to get up, but couldn't because of his wound, so he just layed awkwardly and moved his head, "why should you care? You left us."

I grimaced, but felt bad. If I had stayed with my preplanned alliance would Char still be alive? Pursing my lips, I figured that more would be dead if I had stayed, "I only left to protect all of you. I have to big a target on my back,"

He sighed, "I know, but I was frickin worried about you- most of us were," this made my eyebrows raise, but I tried not to get my hopes up on who else of the alliance was worried, "so you want to hear what happened?"

I nodded eagerly.

"Well after I saved your cute ass at the cornucopia me and Leek battled for a while. The rest of the alliance- Artemis, Char, Electra, and Nowl- where together just in the forest, Nowl finally came up behind Leek and knocked him out with a frying pan," he smirked at remembering the tale, "then we started walking for a long, long time, and came to a house! A house in the middle of the arena! We thought against it, but figured that we had a good defense going." He blinked repetivily and sighed, "she was on guard duty that morning, we all feel asleep by the fire in the living room and woke up early morning to her screaming for us to wake up. Char, you know,"

I nodded again, and absentmindely rubbed my heart.

"We all started to panic, like, we could see Leek, Thailia, that girl who just died, that black haired creepy kid-Remus, I think- and that guy who just stabbed me, from the window- a huge ambush. Thailia shot a bullet threw the window at me- I thought I was a dead boy- but it just bounced right off, she even had to duck to not get shot! We all looked so relived that we might have a chance until well, a bullet came trow the door, and we knew that that wasn't so bullet proof. So we started to baracade the door- everything in sight we tossed to the door. I told everyone to leave threw the back door, Electra and Artemis made it, but Char and Nowl where in the living room still pulling more stuff when a bullet made it's way threw the doorknob and well," he swallowed, and his voice went off key, "into Char."

I layed down beside him and stared up at the ceiling. I didn't like this story, I hated sad stories. I liked stories with happily ever afters, and since I knew the ending of this one I didn't care to hear anymore. My throat was too clench to tell him to stop, so he started back up again.

"Leek- that muscular steriod freak- started making his way into the house, I ran to the back door to see that the rest of Leek's alliance was running after Electra and Artemis, so we couldn't leave using the back door, so we pulled a stupid horror movie move and ran upstairs. Nowl carried Char upstairs, she wasn't dead, the bullet only got her in the leg, and he wouldn't leave her. We went into the first room and couldn't even close the door because Leek came bolting in so fast. He threw his only knife and it completly missed! But stupid Char stood up and punched Leek in the face! He was totally shocked, but then began strangling her. Nowl tried to pull him off her but he had a good grip, I grabbed the nearest thing and smashed the lamp on his head, and knocked him out. Char was losing a lot of blood, so s-she- she just-" his voice broke again, "she was gasping for breath and fell to the floor, and-and, Leek's knife was there, and she, she put it into her heart."

I wiped away my tears, she died by killing herself, the last final blow was hers. So Leek hadn't killed her, but had put her into agony which made her kill herself. I didn't know why, but this made me feel better. Leek didn't deserve to kill anyone, he didn't deserve the glory in district one that he'd recieve for the kills he made.

"Me and Nowl took the blanket and kinda parcheted out the window..." a trace of a smile played on his lips, "I mean, we didn't want to go downstairs, and there could have been people there so."

"So Electra and Artemis are together somewhere, but what about Nowl?"

"Well, we can't be sure they're even together, and me and Nowl... Well, we didn't last as an alliance very long," he said this uncomfortably, what could have made them seperate?

"...why not?"

"We just, you know, argued," it looked like that was all I was going to get from him, so naturally I pressed it.

"About?"

This made him even more uncomfortable; he thought for a second then said, "about strategies and stuff." It seemed like such a normal possible answer that I told my disapointment to shove off. It was stupid a very, very selfish of me to think that they would fight over me.

Flynn said that he wanted to relocate, he wanted to start right away finding the others in the alliance, but after I noticed the way he winced everytime he made the slightest ajustment we argued that it had to wait until he was a little more healed. In the end I won the argument by poking his wound unexpectantly and having him yelp in pain. Let's just say I knew how to win fights against him now.

Though winning the fight meant more than not looking for people, it meant having the constant fear of being found. I spent the first full of on guard duty, I told Flynn to rest up after our fight and he protested rather feebly then fell back fast asleep after eating. I sat outside our tent in a tree with my sword.

Only one interesting thing happened on guard duty- I made my second kill. It was really late at night- the death tolley had already faded by with no deaths today- and I could barely keep my eyes awake. Flynn was fast asleep in the tent, and my ears were taking over for my eyes in guard mode. I heard and rustling in the bushes too close to the tent, so with much hesitation I launched my sword start into the bushes, then jumped down from the tree.

I made my way steathly to the sword sticking straight out of the bush, yet quickly pulled the sword out of the bush. I smelt blood. And at the end of the sword was blood. My heart thumped in my ears and I thought that whoever it was hadn't made a sound in death- maybe they died pretty fast? I could have easily hit them in the heart. But no canons went off, so I prepared myself for battle with my sword at ready, and moved the bush.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, a thing I highly advise against in the arena, and it made Flynn come bolting it out of the tent. I dropped my sword and started shaking my hands quickly.

"What- what is it?" Flynn yelled at me. He grabbed my arms to get me to stop flalling them.

I just couldn't talk, "Iiiiijjuhhh kiiiillllllluheded!"

"Pauper! Slowly now!" it took him unearthing his knife for me to get a tiny grip on myself.

"I-I killed it!"

"Killed what?" he tried to keep calm for the sake of trying to keep me calm but I saw the look of panic flash in his eyes.

"Badger!" I wailed.

Everything was silent for a second, then very slowly Flynn smiled, "are you serious?" he laughed.

I shoke my head, "not funny!"

But that just made him laugh louder.

After that Flynn said he was rested enough to take guard duty for his first time. I tried to object, but I guess I was pretty tired and just kind of wandered off to sleep in the tent. In the morning Flynn made badger, I refused to eat it, but frankly it smelled too good, and Flynn's talks of protein and going to waste seemed to convince me that the badger would have wanted it like this.

Two days passed by with nothing happening. No deaths marked in the sky at night, and therefore no fun for the viewers. I loved the feeling that everything was okay in the arena, but of course okay never lasted long in these games. Early morning of day three, I let out another high pitched scream that wasn't caused by killing an animal.