A/N: I know a lot of you probably laughed at that joke last chapter, right? Right? R.M. and I are so hilarious! (Don't kill me. It was her idea. Evil ginger.) But all jokes aside, here's Chapter Twenty-Four.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Hunger Games.

TWENTY-FOUR

It is safe to say that if I make it out alive, I am never sleeping in a tree again. I wake up very stiff and quite warm though it is only an hour past sunrise. As I shuck off my jackets and throw my hair back into a low ponytail, I look towards the spot where the doe laid last night. I gather my materials into my backpack, unsuccessfully attempt to get all the dirt off of my hands and onto my jacket, and force myself to only eat a few of my raspberries though I know that they will spoil soon in the heat away from their resource. Before I climb down to head in the direction of the doe, I look around to see if maybe my parents or Haymitch had sent me a parachute in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Unfortuantely, they did not, and I am once again reminded of my thirst.

I head in the direction of where I remember the doe was, hoping that she was just well camoflaged. However, I see that she is not and even if I would have found her dead, I feel that I would not be able to find my way back to the stream since we wandered so far from it. I strain my ears to see if maybe I can hear it or any other source, and get nothing but the trill of the mockingjays' songs. The sound makes me think again of my parents. How are they holding up? Seeing, not just me, but the other tributes in the arena must bring back terrible memories for them. And Sutton. How does Sutton feel, watching me?

He would always make jokes about the Games and how I would be one of the ones to go in if there were. Of course, we both brushed it off, thinking it harmless. Neither of us thought that anyone would actually bring them back. Does he feel guilty about the jokes now? He's never been superstitious, but does he somehow feel as if he's jinxed it, always saying I was going to be in it? Like me, he's never had very many friends. Unlike me, though, he is a very likeable person and will have no trouble finding new friends. Has he already found new friends? Or does he have faith that I will come home?

My nose begins to tingle, tearing me from my thoughts. I scratch it, trying to make the feeling go away. However, it does not, and I begin to sneeze. Loud. I clamp my hand over my mouth to muffle them as I sneeze not once, but four times in a row. When I am finished, my eyes feel prickly and puffy. I rub them violently as my nose begins to itch again. I squeeze it and the sensation goes away immediately. I shake my head to clear it of the stuffy feeling and keep walking. Only to stop as I sneeze again, much quieter this time.

I blow air out through my mouth because now I cannot breathe through my nose. I scratch my neck where a mosquito bit it last night and begin to walk again as I wonder what's wrong with me. I have a strong immune system, rarely ever sick. Most of the kids in my class can be out of school with a cold and I can be perfectly fine the whole flu season. Of course, since medicine is now District Twelve's main industry, it's really not that hard to get it, but I never really need the Gamemakers released an extremely contagious virus into the arena to slowly kill us all off, I doubt that I am getting ill. I have never felt anything like this since I had a cold over a year ago.

I hold my hand over my nose in case I feel another sneeze coming on. I feel heavy and miserable as I forge on in search of water. Half of me hopes that at some point Mother or Father will send me water and half of me hopes that they will send me medicine to get rid of whatever this is that is bugging me.

By the time that noon rolled around, I was sweaty and hot, had eaten the rest of my raspberries, and feeling my energy drain slowly due to lack of water and rest. I learned in one of my science classes that a human can go at least a month without food and only three without water. So right now, water is my main priority. My heart drops to my stomach every time that I turn to what I think is what I hear as a creek or river and find nothing, reminding me each time of my increasing thirst. Mother once told me that a person is supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day and she always made sure that Bey and I got that much, knowing that we could be much less fortunate to even get one glass a day. At the moment, I would give anything for just a drop. I know that it is not that simple. I should have just taken the water that I found yesterday.

I stop to rest, leaning back against a tree, my face feeling as if it is on fire. I look down at my arms and see that they are a pinkish-red color, either because I am very hot or because I am getting a sunburn. I sigh as my miserable feeling seems to be getting deeper and deeper. I sneeze again and wipe my grubby nose on my sleeve, knowing that Wynona is probably disapproving as a clear line of mucus covers it. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and push my two fingers up on the place between my eyebrows, remembering an old trick my grandmother taught me to help clear sinuses for a little while. I used it a lot whenever my allergies flared up.

Allergies...

I groan as I think about the fact that my allergies are probably the problem. Only that doesn't seem logical. When I was little, my parents had me allergy tested and then given allergy shots because they were so bad. I try to remember how long the doctor said they would last for. Ten years. I was five during my last one of the required four. Of course. They've worn off. And there must be more of something I'm allergic to here than there was in District Twelve. I press my hand tight against my mouth to stiffle my sneeze as the sensation comes again. As usual, I sneeze several times before I finally stop and feel stuffy when I finish. To add to that, I feel disgusted when I slap a mosquito on my arm and find that it is full of blood, and my arm stings where I slapped it, confirming that I have sunburned. I watch as it goes from a pale handprint back to a dark pink.

"I have something for that."

I jerk my head up, feeling unafraid because the voice that spoke was a small, young voice, not an older, intimidating one. There is only one other person I know in this arena that is so young that their voice has not changed yet. I smile as a head of dark hair, similar to mine, peers around a tree. "Yeah?" I say, watching Gia carefully.

She comes out completely, a ghost of a smile on her face. "Yeah," she says. She pulls a tube out of her bag and squeezes a bit of what looks like pink lotion in her hand. She sits down next to me slowly and gently rubs some on my arms. Almost immediately the heat is gone. "This stuff is supposed to help keep you from getting burned too," she tells me as she wipes what's left of the residue on her hands. As she does, I notice that her arms are covered in pink bumps, topped with little, red, bloody patches. She also has one on her neck and cheek, which must be very difficult to keep from scratching. I've learned the hard way that scratching a bug bite can make it infected.

I pull my can of bug repellant out of my bag and hold it out to her. "Here," I say, resisting the urge to scratch at a bite on my finger. "This should help keep those mosquitos off. It might sting on the ones that you've scratched the skin off of though."

She nods and sprays some on her arms and wipes some of the drips on the can on her finger and smeared them on her face. The smell was very strong and repulsing but it was worth it knowing that it was one of the things that would help keep us alive. We are quiet for a few moments, not sure exactly what to say to one another. Finally, she speaks up. "Are you thirsty?"

I look at her. "You have water?" I ask, hoping I do not sound as desperate as I feel. I would give my own hand at the moment for water. My hopes soar whenever she pulls out a silver canistar. However, she just holds it in her hands, rubbing her thumb over the top. "I drank all of it on the way around the arena," she says quietly. "But I'm pretty sure I know the way back. I put little markers around."

I smile, packing the repellant back in my bag and offering her a hand up. "Well, I guess we had better get moving then," I tell her.

As we weave through the forest, Gia in the lead, I am brought back to District Twelve to Bey's first day of school. He was so excited that he ran ahead of me and I had to call for him several times. Finally, we got lost because he thought he knew the way and he was too far ahead to hear me calling directions. He had the most confused look on his face whenever he ended up in front of the medicine factory. I know he was carefully logging directions as I dragged him sulking along behind me. I feel the same way now, lost and confused while paying good attention to directions as Gia guides me through the forest to this place where the water is. The two of us jump as another cannon sounds.

Gia looks at me with wide eyes, her tan skin now pale. "You're so quiet," she mumbles. "Don't- don't leave me."

I shake my head. "No," I say, ruffling her hair. "I'm not going to leave you. Don't worry." I remember that while she may seem like a brave young girl she still is a young girl. I know that she is very clever and has a much a chance to survive as the rest of us.

She nods and faces back to the direction she was walking, putting the brave mask back on that all her family wears so well. "So, who do you think it was?" she says as she looks around for another mark.

I run my hand across a tree with a shallow scratch, easy enough to see but not able to seem as if it was deliberate. I log it in my mind as I try to think of the tributes shown in the sky last night."How many are left?" I ask her, for some reason trusting her memory better than mine.

She slows down a bit as she thinks, ticking them off on her fingers. "Um... You and me, Chisel, Agro and the two District One Careers," she says, naming them off quite quickly, "the boy from Four, the girl from Five, the boy from Six, the girl from Seven, the boy from Eleven, and both from District Thirteen."

"Hmm," I say, thinking of all their skills I observed in the Training Center. "Well, we know it's not you or me. It's probably not any of the Careers, meaning that Agro and the Ones are okay. Alvara (the girl from Thirteen) is probably fine. You should see her with throwing knives, Gia. The girl from Five-"

"What about Chisel?" she interrupts quietly. This makes me go silent because I know that it must be torturous for her, having her older brother in the arena with her and knowing if it came down to the two of them, one of them would have to kill the other. I wonder silently if she has had the same nightmare that haunted me almost every night. Where she has to kill Chisel and live with it the rest of her life.

Slowly, I shake my head. "You know he's too smart to get himself killed this early. If he's anything like you or your father, he's very clever and knows his survival skills," I tell her. "I don't think you should be worried about him." I know that this is terrible advice because, of course, one cannot simply not worry when their family member is in an arena where they have to fight to the death.

"I tried looking for him," she says as she pats her hand on yet another young tree with a broken branch as a mark. "But it's like he doesn't want to be found, or the Gamemakers don't want us finding each other. You can never tell with Chisel, though."

A thought pops up in my mind as I her words sink in. I swallow down the queasy feeling I get and ask her the question lingering in my mind. "What about Agro? I mean, why aren't you teamed up with him? It's normal for district partners to try to survive together."

She makes a noise that sounds somewhere in between a sigh and a scoff. "What makes you think he's going to want me for an ally?" she says matter-of-factly. "A thirteen-year-old with only a year and a half of training (yes, One and Two still have Training Centers)? Agro... He's strong, yes. He's fast, yes. He's also smart. But know this, smart doesn't necessarily mean common sense. Trust me, I have never seen a better example than him. If it was a battle of book smarts - though I don't know your forte in school - he would probably win. But a battle of wits, I think he would lose to all of us. Plus, he's a jerk. More of a jerk than my teacher who smells like my grandfather's pigs."

I smile a bit. Though I do not like the Hawthornes, for some reason I am very fond of Gia. Maybe because she is so young and innocent though she hardly seems so since she is almost as tall as me. I know that I have chosen a good ally. Her own brother may not want her for one, but I would take her in a second after I learned about her.

Finally we find the little pond she was leading to. I barely managed not to splash down in it headfirst. We fill our bottles to the brim, me draining mine long before she does. I empty my bottle at least twice before I finally convince myself to save some. I convince her to hand me her jacket and let me soak it in mud. While we are there, both of us wash off, knowing that this is the closest we will get to a bath in a while. After a while, she asks me a very important question.

"You don't have any food, do you?"

I sigh and shake my head. "No," I tell her guiltly. I look towards the sky and see that it is dusk and getting cool. I rub my itchy eyes and cover my mouth as I sneeze again. After Gia blesses me, I find my voice again and it sounds like my nose is broken. "It's too late to look for some now. First thing in the morning, we'll go, alright?" I try to ignore the grumbling in my stomach as I hear hers, a slight look of discomfort on her face. I wonder how long it has been since she's eaten something. However long it has been, she puts on a brave face and suggests that we keep moving. I agree, finding an oak tree that both of us can sleep in, not too far from the pond.

I am satisfied when she does not argue when I tell her we don't need to light a fire. I tell her I will take first watch as she squeezes between two branches, pulling my extra, now light brown jacket over herself. Her face looks content and relaxed and I can see the first bit of resemablence between she and Chisel. The slope of their nose, the shape of their eyes, how their jaw line protrudes even more whenever they raise their faces in sleep. Other than that, they do not look very much alike. I am not sure why but it has always confused me whenever I see two siblings who look nothing alike. Bey looks more like Mother than I do but other than the few details, the two of us look almost exactly alike. Sometimes - such as whenever he is sleepy - his eyes will turn more blue than grey, and we will look a bit more alike. This may be why, but I have always been interested in how genetics work, possibly from the medical background in my family.

My thoughts are interrputed as the national anthem plays and the Capitol seal appears in the sky. Only one face is shown tonight. I feel relieved as I see who it is and then feel guilty for it, thinking about their family and the pain they must feel. But I shake Gia awake. Her eyes slowly open and groggily meet mine, silver in the moonlight. "What?" she mumbles. "How long has it been? Not that long, right?"

I nod. "No, no. I was just going to tell you that Chisel is okay," I say, forcing a smile on my face. "That cannon today? It was the boy from Eleven. Chisel's alright. He's fine."

A smile plays on her lips too. "Thank you, Sapphire," she says quietly as if she does not want to be overheard. "Anytime you are tired, let me know, okay?"

I again nod. "I will. Thank you. Goodnight."

And I good night I hope it will be.

A/N: Hey, guys! Sorry that it's coming so late! I know I said that the real chapter would be up by Tuesday, but I ended up going to a friend's house while we were out! I've been really busy. Play practices Monday & Tuesday, church Wednesday, piano lessons & FBLA study sessions on Thursday, & football games Friday. I haven't had the past few Saturdays off and Sundays are church days too. But I finally got the real 24 done. Hope you liked RM's version of it! She said she was quite proud of herself when she wrote it.

Don't forget to review! Reviews = motivation. Motivation = better chapters than this one. Better chapters than this one = great story for you to enjoy.