Greetings once again! Here we have the conclusion of what was, in my confused mind, originally going to be in chapter 19, because Finnick and life and my imagination got in the way. I hope you enjoy this scene! I appreciate the reviews, and you know what, numbers don't matter anyway. :) And "Guest", I appreciate your effort to encourage me, but if all four of you were the same person, which I'm pretty sure you were, please only review once. Thank you!
Day 11… 7:34 PM…
Willow tries to make conversation once or twice. She asks Annie about her home in Four, about the ocean, which she's never seen. Annie tries to answer, but her voice is faint and her eyes are glazed and distant. Willow and I strain to hear her and try hard not to appear troubled by the difficulty she's having simply finishing a sentence. After an hour or so, Willow hushes Annie and listens to the stillness of the woods. She whistles her melody and waits. Silence. Repeat.
Finally, there's a soft echo. I realize we have another ally.
No sponsors come to see Chaff and Seeder. The only visitor we receive is Haymitch, who suddenly appears, leaning on the partition wall with the familiar bottle of booze in his hand. Chaff greets him with a nod and eyebrows raised in a question.
"He's on his way," Haymitch says under his breath. He motions to me then with a lopsided smile. "What's the loser doing here?" I bristle but don't say anything, because I suppose I owe Haymitch for earlier, too.
"Wants his girl to ally." Chaff shrugs noncommittally. "It's fine with me. You?"
"Well, I like the money. But it depends on what the kids want to do," Haymitch mutters and then glances my way. "You know that, right, sport?"
I nod, wondering just how keen on having another ally Haymitch's kid will be. He and Willow whistle back and forth a few more times, the tune the black-and-white bird sang out moments before the Career attack. I'm curious to know whether they are mimicking the birdsong or vice versa.
Eventually he arrives at Willow and Annie's camp and whistles again, just a few yards away, before stepping into view. I haven't paid much attention to Twelve's boy until now. He's on the tall side, fair-skinned, big-boned but smaller than Otto, much thinner from the harder life he's lived. Maybe under normal circumstances he would seem more intimidating, but now he's sweaty and pale and exhausted from running and bleeding all day.
"Willow…" he calls when he sees her. "I found the Careers' camp. They're up by the dam." He holds up a backpack and a canteen. "I got food, grabbed some water-"
Annie suddenly shrieks like a banshee. Intimidating or not, her eyes go wild with terror, a delayed reaction to the sight of a stranger. Willow shushes her, reaches for her arm and squeezes it until she calms down a bit. The boy from Twelve's frown steadily deepens.
"Shh, it's alright. It's only Adrian, he's my ally," Willow soothes.
"Willow?" This 'Adrian' bites his lip uncertainly. "Who's your new friend?"
Willow smiles, rather tensely, and gestures to her 'new friend', who is still rocking back and forth hysterically. "Adrian, this is Annie from District Four. Annie, this is Adrian, from Twelve. Do you know anything about Twelve?"
"How do you do?" Annie shakily asks the forest floor, apparently not hearing the question.
"Hey… Annie," Adrian says hesitantly.
Her hands fly to her ears and block his greeting. Adrian glares at Willow. "What's wrong with her?" he whispers over Annie's bowed head. Willow sharply motions for him to be quiet. He winces when she grabs his bandaged arm and pulls him into the trees beyond the clearing.
"We'll be right back, Annie," she calls over her shoulder. Annie doesn't respond, just presses her forehead to her knees and tries to stop trembling.
"Explain. Now," Adrian hisses when they are out of hearing range. "Where did you find her?" Their conversation is low and fast and it sounds like they have a lot of experience arguing, even though when they met earlier in the arena they acted like total strangers.
"She found me. She had a net, Adrian-"
"A net?"
"She had knives. She let me go. Something's-" Willow motions to her head.
"Something's not right," Adrian echoes. "She sick or something?"
Willow sighs. "I don't know, okay? But she's got food-"
"So do I. I swear, you could hear her scream for a two-mile radius-"
"I think she's… she's unstable… but she's not dangerous…"
"Willow." Adrian's voice turns sharp, and she just sort of deflates, knowing just as well as I do what's coming. "We don't need an unstable ally. They don't let the crazies win."
"I know," she mutters. "We can leave her."
"You want to show mercy? Look at me." Adrian place both hands on Willow's drooping shoulders. "If we let her go, the Gamemakers have their fun with her. We don't have a choice."
"No choice," she repeats hollowly. Then she glances up at him and her dark eyes flash angrily. "You do it," she snaps, tucking her blowgun into his hand.
"I will," he asserts, but she's already halfway back to the clearing.
Annie sits just where they left her, but she's started moved and she's setting out dried meat and more apples, stacking brush for a small fire. "Welcome back," she says with a tiny attempt at a smile, motioning to the food she's laid out. "Dinner's ready."
Willow and Adrian sink to the ground and they eat hungrily, sullenly. They don't look at each other. They don't talk.
And mostly importantly, they don't kill Annie.
I glance over at Haymitch, but he just shrugs at me. I realize that neither of these kids has a kill yet. And I don't imagine a sick girl like Annie would be an easy first.
But then again, I am calling a dangerous bluff. I weigh our non-existent other options and end up back here in these clearing, with these kids again.
After a while, Adrian details his trek upriver, discovering the plugged dam, his raid on the Careers' supplies, how he got discovered in spite of his quiet feet. The boy gleefully highlights "running away" as his best skill. The girls ask about his injured arm, but he blows it off as "just a scratch." And it may be, but it's a deep scratch. He's simply reaching for another strip of jerky when he has to stifle a cry. The wound has pulled open again and fresh blood soaks through the bandage in minutes.
"Let me see," Willow demands. Adrian hesitates, and the look she gives him could burn all the coal in his district. He slowly unwraps the arm and winces when she touches it, even though she's trying to be gentle.
"You need stitches," she declares at last.
He shakes his head. "No, I really-"
"You. Need. Stitches." Willow starts digging through their newly acquired backpack, but Annie already has her first aid kid out. Willow takes it and nods gratefully. "Thank you, Annie. You might not want to watch."
But Annie does watch, wide-eyed, as Willow lights the campfire to illuminate her work. I always pictured Annie as the type to shy away from blood and gore, but I suppose after Otto and Shannon this is nothing to her.
The Games change people, remember?
Willow rations a little water out of the canteen to clean Adrian's wound out. He tries not to flinch and fails miserably. When he reaches a hand toward the wound, though, Willow smacks it away. Annie continues to study them, fascinated, as Willow strings the catgut thread through the needle and ties off one end. Adrian sets his face like stone as she prepares to stick the needle through his flesh.
"You've got to sterilize that," Annie says absently.
Both of our new allies turn to stare at her.
"The needle," she murmurs, motioning to it. "You've got to put it through the fire."
"Right," Willow says quickly, grabbing a broken branch off the ground, igniting it in the campfire. She holds the needle out into the flickering yellow flame and raises an eyebrow at Annie until she nods and signals that it's been long enough. But when she turns back to Adrian, he's shaking his head.
"Haven't you ever done this before?" he asks warily.
"Sit still." Willow ignores him and reaches for his arm, but he jerks it away.
"I asked you a question," Adrian snaps.
Willow heaves a sigh. "First time for everything, huh? Give me your arm."
"I'm just going to do it myself," he insists.
"Oh, that's brilliant." She shakes her head fiercely. "You can't reach, you can't even see it, and you've never done this before, either!"
"I have," Annie says, so quietly I think I've imagined it. For the second time that night, Adrian and Willow both turn to stare at her in total disbelief.
"You've done this before?" Willow asks.
Annie nods with a faraway look, and I can't help doubting that the incident she's remembering really happened. "My brother," she says at last. "He got caught in a riptide. The rocks cut him."
I remember the oldest moptop on the interview saying something like that. I let out a strange yelping sound, and Chaff and Haymitch stare at me, but I don't care. Annie remembers me and she remembers her brother and she remembers the sea and that's more than I could have hoped for a few short hours ago.
Adrian and Willow have another silent conversation that assures me they never were strangers after all, and finally Willow nods and holds the needle and thread out to Annie. She takes it and the canteen and rinses out Adrian's wound once more before she pulls the edges of skin together and starts sewing. Willow rests a hand on her ally's shoulder reassuringly and watches Annie's work closely, but her fingers are quick and steady and experienced, just like when she tied knots with me in the penthouse living room an eternity ago.
Relief floods Willow's face. "You're very good at that, aren't you?"
Annie's too deeply concentrating to respond, but Adrian nods for her. "It's nice to see somebody knows what they're doing."
Willow's eyebrows shoot up, because how long ago was it that Adrian was insisting they kill her? He looks away quickly, because I get the feeling it's hard to stare down a girl like Willow.
"That is such a nasty cut. What got you?" she asks after a moment.
Adrian winces as Annie pushes the needle through his skin again. "It was Blade. I don't even know what he threw… some sort of boomerang that could have sliced right through me-"
Annie stops, her quick hands immediately frozen in place. Her intense concentration shatters in a heartbeat and her eyes go glassy all over again.
"Annie?" Adrian asks weakly. "Hey, Annie?" He bites his lip, fighting panic because the needle is still jammed halfway through his skin. "Annie!"
It's like a person regaining consciousness, the way her eyes roll around before returning to reality. She pulls the needle the rest of the way through, but she's shaking too hard to make any more progress. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, barely above a whisper. "I sometimes- I have trouble- I can't … focus…" She drops the needle and thread and runs anxious hands through her hair. They pause over her ears and she seems to be struggling to stay in the arena instead of blocking everything out again.
"It's alright, Annie. I want you to lie down," Willow says gently, plucking up the needle, rinsing it, cleansing it in the fire again. She finishes the job, and although she stitches more slowly and less confidently than Annie, Adrian doesn't dare complain again. Annie scoots away and leans back against a tree trunk, still trembling visibly, cradling her head in her hands.
"What do you think happened to her?" Adrian whispers.
Willow ties off the last knot and begins to rewrap his arm in clean bandages. "I honestly don't know. Memory loss-"
"Did you see her eyes?"
She snorts. "Hard to miss. Annie, baby, did you hit your head on something?" she calls, tucking some extra pain pills into Adrian's hand.
"I don't think so" is her weak reply.
"She's got to have a concussion," Adrian mutters.
"We'll see." Willow shuffles on her knees across the clearing to where Annie is slumped, dragging the first aid kit behind her. "Sweetheart, can I take a look at you?"
Annie doesn't agree but doesn't try to stop her. So the older girl pulls her head into her lap and runs a gentle hand through her hair, pausing occasionally, feeling for bumps or lumps or anything out of the ordinary. "Seems alright." She reaches for the emergency flashlight lying beside Annie and flicks it on. "Let me see those pretty eyes."
Annie shrieks like she's being burned when Willow shines the beam into her eyes. Willow immediately turns off the light, but it's too late, Annie's hysterical and it takes a lot of quiet coaxing to calm her down again. Her breathing eventually returns to a normal pace, and Willow makes her lie down in her sleeping bag and strokes her hair until she is asleep.
"Well?" Adrian asks.
"Concussion, definitely," she says, although it obviously isn't. But this is a much better explanation for the audience than 'emotional instability'.
I owe Willow again.
There's a lull now, and I ask my fellow mentors to tell me about their tributes. They're both eighteen and poor, the kind of kids that are generally reaped from the outer districts, because they've entered their names more times in exchange for the extra food, the tesserae. Adrian might not have had to, if his father and his older brother had survived the mine accident, but he's the man of the family now. And Willow, there's no telling how many she's lost. She comes from the group home for the orphans, and even though she was old enough to leave, she didn't. The house director didn't care, not really, so back home Willow was everybody's mother and nobody's daughter. I don't think she minded much, because, as Seeder tells me, "she needs to be needed."
I learn that the alliance between Eleven and Twelve was planned from the beginning, in training, but they had agreed to split up and cover more ground, keeping tabs on the other tributes, reporting to each other occasionally. They pretended to be enemies, for the cameras. The other tributes from their districts would have been involved, too, if they hadn't died in the bloodbath. I learn that the boy from Eleven was named Bracken and the girl from Twelve was Leticia. And even though I've always tried hard to forget names, my victims and my tributes and the girls, I want to remember these. Somebody should.
Then of course they have to bring up the one subject I've been avoiding.
"So you and the crazy girl…" Chaff drawls slowly. "You really messed around with your tribute? That's low, even for you, Odair." His tone is equal parts disgust and amusement.
Coming from another mentor instead of the Capitol crowd, this raises my hackles beyond what I can bear. And because the red light on the dashboard is still off, I mutter one word. "Publicity." I don't dare look at Haymitch.
"Ahhhh." Chaff nods understandingly, because won't we all say anything to get ahead? "That was just what I heard, anyway."
"I heard you were sick last night," Seeder adds sympathetically, but I don't miss the too-wise eyebrow lift at me. "Or was that publicity, too?"
I grace her with a slightly strained smile but no answer. Her hand catches my arm and squeezes it, and that's gentle, too. I suddenly remember from somewhere that I'm pretty sure she has children, so I accept her gesture, wishing for Mags.
"I'll watch," Adrian volunteers when darkness has fully descended and the campfire must be put out. "It'll be a while before the meds kick in and I won't be able to sleep before then." Everything feels like it's back to the way it was before, with Otto. The alliance, patching one another up, taking shifts in the night. But it's not, and these people have even less obligation to Annie than Otto ever did. But here they are, and Willow is stroking Annie's hair again as she tries to settle herself down for the night, and Adrian is watching over them both because that's his job now.
Willow follows Annie into restless sleep and he still just sits there, shifting his weight occasionally, studying his teammates. He pulls the blowgun out of his pocket and turns it in his hands, heaves an irritated sigh, glances back at Annie again. Glances at the neat row of stitches in his arm. He grinds his teeth and that little pipe goes flying across the clearing. Because he can't.
Or he won't.
All the things I should be feeling, relief and happiness and worry and insanely-in-love, mix together into a restless sort of exhaustion. I get up and wander to the coffee maker to pour myself another mug of mud that I never intend to drink, and a dozen pairs of eyes follow me across the room. Even the Avoxes, the ones who could suffer for it, stare now. I'm used to being gawked at but not by my fellow mentors, because they are the only ones that can appreciate that I didn't choose my fate as Panem's heartthrob. They know that I'm only acting. But that's the reason they're so curious now. Because of this 'act' with Annie.
"Finally got yourself a little team, Romeo?" Brutus asks me. The shadows under his eyes indicate he isn't handling the stress of the Games so well, either. I just nod and wonder if he's jealous that my girl is still alive. I wonder whether he felt any sorrow at Shannon's death, or if he's holding it personally against me or Annie.
Brutus leans in confidentially, and even though I lean out he whispers, "If the boy wasn't a weakling, she'd be dead by now."
I clench my jaw and return to Eleven's cubicle. I watch the boy from Twelve watch her, silent and resigned to his decision, and weak is the last thing I would ever call him.
Chaff and Seeder scold Haymitch for serving himself yet another glass of white liquor, but he quickly turns the conversation aside to me, asking what Brutus wanted. "Oh, you know," I say bitterly. "Everyone has some snide remark to make about my strategy. Again."
Oops. I realize I left Haymitch's window wide open. He smirks and I know it's coming. "Star-crossed lovers," he slurs, tipping his flask back again.
I snatch his tumbler and drop it into the nearest trashcan, liquor and all, ignoring his barely-concealed rage. Luckily for me, Eleven's mentors are both having a good laugh. "So good to have you on the team, Haymitch," I say more confidently, shoving my own steaming mug into his unsteady hands. "Meet your soul mate."
So there you have it! Another new character-chapter so it's always good to have some feedback. Adrian's a lot of fun to write for, hope you enjoyed him as much as I did! Thanks for reading! There will be more action soon, promise! :D