A/N: I have some business to attend to. So:
A foreword on Clove: I know everything she says that Katniss hears Is vicious and cruel, particularly regarding Peeta, even more particularly when she says, "Cato knows where he cut him." Her attitude toward her fellow Careers pretty much completely contradicts her words. I am working out a solution to that (although I'm not even really sure that it's a problem).
A word of warning: It will be lame, and more than likely, dumb. SO DEAL WITH IT. Just kidding x) But yeah. Just a warning. The reason why I decided to make the Careers, like, nice is because I just thought that there is so much more a person than pointless, angsty teenage homicide, no?
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins does. I just keep forgetting to put disclaimers on these chapters haha.
Anyway, now that that's taken care of, I'm sorry. This is so bad. It is so bad. It is so bad that I want to throw up. I really don't feel that good right now :( and it's raining... can this day get any worse? *sigh* Anyway, I have a piece of good news: THE CAVE SCENE IS DEFINITELY FREAKING IN THE NEXT CHAPTER! Well, partially. Okay, at least a little. I am really excited! Anyway, most of this is fluff, so be mad, be disgusted, I don't blame you because this really sucks. So now that I've discouraged you so much you can read it.
"What are we supposed to do now?" asks Comet. He's sitting cross legged on the ground, chewing on some kind of water plant, halfway inside the circle of firelight, half way out of it. He just reached right in and yanked it out by the roots, which were secured on the bank of the lake.
"How did you find that?" I ask. I doubt Comet ever lived near any bodies of water, and he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to be caught hanging around the edible plants station in the Training Center.
Comet swallows. "Ruby showed it to me, last time we were here. Well, actually, the time before that. She said it was called Katniss."
My heart does a little somersault. Katniss. [Add more here].
"It's too bad she died," Comet continues.
I glare at him.
He holds his hands up. "Easy, there, Loverboy. It's a shame, really. I didn't like Star half as much as I liked her, and I knew her for, what? Eight days?"
Clove has her ears perked up, listening to our conversation intently. "Katniss," she says. "That sounds familiar, right Cato?"
Cato grunts. I wouldn't expect him to know Katniss's name. He probably never watched the news channel while we were in the Capitol, for one, and two, he called her Eleven Girl. I'm not even sure that he knows my name anymore.
Marvel snaps his fingers. "It's that girl's name from District Twelve," he says triumphantly, though without much glee. His eyes are red and Glimmer's death is taking its toll on him. "Loverboy's girlfriend."
"Huh, funny, I thought that was Ruby," Clove remarks. Cato makes an indignant noise.
"She was named after a weed," Marvel smiles a little.
"A tasty weed, at least," Comet says, grabbing another from the water and tossing it to Marvel. "Try it."
Marvel takes a bite. "Not bad," he admits. "What's that on your arm, Comet?"
Comet looks down at his left arm. "A mole. Why?" he asks, suspicious.
"Not that arm, moron, the other one." Marvel rolls his eyes.
"This thing? It's just - eww, what is it?" Comet holds his arm out to Clove.
"I don't know," she says."Ruby - wait. Never mind. You know, Loverboy? You've been awfully quiet."
After an examination, I have a verdict. "It's a leech."
"A leech?" Clove wrinkles her nose. "What's a leech?" she asks.
"It lives in the water and sucks your blood. Kind of like a water-borne mosquito. Except, it doesn't like be detached from the victim."
"More like a water-borne tick, then," Marvel points out. "How do we get it off him?"
"The best way would be to burn it off," I say. I really don't know, though; my leech knowledge has been exhausted. "Or we could just stab the leech until it dies. But that would be pretty bloody."
"Get it off me," Comet says. "I feel faint."
"Very funny," Marvel says, taking out his knife.
"No, really I -"
"Hey," Clove says, "put that in the fire, Marv. We can cut it and burn it at the same time."
"Now we're talking," I say, nodding my head approvingly. Peeta Mellark: on top of the situation even when he's not. Yup. That's me.
Marvel hesitates. "Are you sure? I don't want to get too near Cato..."
I'm assuming the unmoving lump by the fire would be Cato.
Clove rolls her eyes. "One, he can hear you, two, what do you think he's going to do? He's not going to attack you. Are you, Cato?"
"I make no guarantees," Cato mumbles. At least he can still joke.
Clove gives Marvel a shove. "You should see him when he's really upset. The last time I did -" She tugs on the hem of her shirtsleeve, revealing her shoulder. There's a fading scar, seemingly the imprint of a hand and fingers.
"After his dad died," Clove explains. "I think I tried to hug him, and he freaked out. There began our friendship, ironically."
I want to ask more - it's strangely intriguing to me, the relationships between the other tributes prior to the Games. Star and Comet evidently weren't close; Glimmer and Marvel were probably childhood acquaintances; Ruby and Rex - was that his name? - it seemed like they had just met, but became fast friends. And Cato and Clove... I don't know exactly.
Comet groans. He looks pale in the firelight. His cheekbones are shadowed and his eyes look like deep pits.
He collapses. Clove sighs. "Damn. These are arena leeches, not the garden variety. What now, Loverboy?" She kneels beside Comet and starts taking his pulse.
I shrug, joining her on the sandy ground. "On with the plan. How're his vitals?"
"Normal." She frowns and removes her fingers from Comet's neck."Hurry up with that knife, Marvel!"
Who knew Clove could be nurturing? It's strange to watch her, while her protective instinct is equally as high as her instinct to fight. I wonder where the bloodlust went.
I feel my eyelids droop and have to fight to keep them open. It's about four in the morning, I'd guess by the position of the moon. None of us have slept a wink. There are extra supplies at the Cornucopia, but we agreed hours ago to wait until morning to replenish our stock. And though we've made it through many nights on the unspoken agreement to not stab each other in the back, no one is exactly at ease tonight, not since Glimmer and Ruby's deaths.
My stings feel a little bit better; they're still swollen as ever, but the hallucinations stopped hours ago. I'm not allowed anymore blue cream, though; apparently it's multi-purpose and half-gone.
"Here," Marvel says, handing the knife to Clove. "Careful," he adds, fumbling with it. "It's hot."
"You take this one, Loverboy," Clove says, still under the impression that I know what I'm doing better than she does. Either that or her hand is shaking too badly to be trusted with a blade. I'm thinking the latter.
I take the knife in one hand and Comet's arm in the other.
Comet groans. He looks pallid, his cheeks sallow and lips bloodless.
I lay the flat of the blade on the little critter. The tail flicks, but nothing more. The heat radiating off the metal burns my hand. I'll have a blister, undoubtedly.
Gritting my teeth, I rotate the knife and press the edge of the blade into the leech. Its tail thrashes, blood drips down Comet's arm, though whether it's his or the leech's is unclear. The thing has swollen to the approximate size and shape of a small carrot.
"Just tell me if I break the skin," I tell Comet. I start scoring the leech lengthwise, making three, four, five cuts until it stops moving.
"He really is handy with that knife," I hear Clove whisper to Marvel. Both of them are obviously watching my surgical procedure carefully – from what I hear, I'm doing well. The leech shudders – and falls.
Comet's breathing slows, his eyes close, and his body relaxes. In fact, everyone relaxes, myself included.
"He's okay, right?" Clove twists her hands together. They glisten with sweat, and it's as if she is wringing them out. She drops to her knees. I still can't believe how vulnerable her composure is. At the beginning of the Games, she would have never kept such an unguarded stance – right now, I think of how easy it would be for Marvel or myself to simply draw a knife and stab her in the back. I glance over at the other boy. He's watching Clove, his eyes trained on the back of her neck. Somehow, I can't see any homicidal thoughts running through his head.
"He's fine," I say. "I think. There might be some more… ill-effects, but we'll have to wait and see. Put some of that blue cream on it."
Clove obeys, then looks up at me. Her brown eyes look hazel in the moon and firelight. "If you did anything that hurt him…"
I am taken aback, though I know I shouldn't be. "No, of course not. I just wish we could somehow get that blood back inside him." I look at the leech, discarded on the sand, laying there in a pool of Comet's blood. Blood that he needs. "I don't supposed either of you knows how to do a transfusion?"
Marvel and Clove look helpless. I didn't think so. "Let's get some rest. There's nothing else we can do to help him until morning." Hopefully it won't be the cannon that wakes us. I sigh. I don't know which Peeta I am now. Old Peeta would never even consider helping the Careers, let alone saving one's life. But New Peeta wouldn't even consider helping anyone.
Whichever one of us it is takes up residence beside the fire, where it's warmest. Clove and Marvel stay with Comet. I don't have a sleeping bag, and my pack will have to suffice for a pillow, though its contents render it an uncomfortable lump. The last thing I see before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep are Cato's glittering eyes, shining with dancing flames.
My eyes flick under my eyelids. They won't life for some reason, they feel sticky and heavy. My head feels cloudy. I can't feel much, but all of a sudden my limbs feel like they're being set on fire, one by one, my legs, my arms. My lungs are feel like they're being sat on, a bellows that can't blow Why am I even awake?
"This is how it ends," a voice above me says. Sadness. Anger. Those are the emotions that I can clearly detect. "It's a lot nicer, suffocation, than death by something that you didn't even know could kill you. You know, Ruby saw one of those bees. Whatever they were, wasps, whatever, she saw one. She said "Cato, isn't that pretty?" and it landed on her finger and she laughed. For the last time."
I try to choke out some words. "Cato. I didn't know either. It's not even my fault." My speech is garbled.
Suddenly, the pressure from my neck is gone and a hand strikes my face. "Argh!" I exclaim, gasping for air, scrabbling at my throat, feeling the pain and the blood gushing from my nose. I don't think it's broken, but it hurts like anything.
"What were you thinking when you saved Eleven Girl, huh? What was going through your head? What were you thinking when you saw Ruby dead on the ground?"
So Cato blames me for Ruby's death. "I didn't –" I try reasoning, but Cato cuts me off with a roar.
"What is going on?" Comet's voice. The others murmur, too, roused out of their sleep. I hardly have time to register the fact that he's alright before my focus is shifted to the knife in Cato's hand.
It glints in the sun. The world is still coming back in bits and pieces. The sun is about halfway over the horizon. Not a cloud in the sky. There's even a star twinkling in the distance, somewhere out in space. I'm glad I see it, because it's at that moment that the knife comes down, and I'm sure that the star is going to be my last sight.
"Cato!" someone cries out. "Cato, stop!"
A blinding pain drives through my leg. I scream, louder than I've ever screamed in my entire life. I scream until my voice is raw, until tears stream down my face.
"It's done," Cato says, as I roll around, clutching my leg, trying to staunch the flow of blood. I'm crying like a baby; I've never been in so much pain before, not in any way, shape, or form.
"Cato, he didn't do anything!"
"He killed Ruby!"
"He didn't kill her, that was the hallucinations from those bugs, you idiot!"
It's taken me a little while to identify the voice that is battling with Cato's, but I recognize it as Clove's.
I can hear Cato's breathing, ragged as my own. "What?" His voice is quieter now, but I can't tell if it's because he lowered it, or because the pounding in my ears in drowning it out.
"The bugs killed her, not Peeta, Cato," Clove says. She nudges me with her foot. "Loverboy?"
I open my eyes slowly, one at a time. All four of the Careers are standing over me. Their faces are distorted, like I'm seeing through a water wall.
"Someone get something on that," Clove says. She must be talking about my stab wound. I agree with her statement, but no one moves.
"It's too late," Comet says. I see his lips moving before I hear the words. My vision blurs, and there is nothing.
Okay, there. The end of the boring chapters. I am seriously hyped for the Cave Scene. I think that's gonna be at least 3 chapters. It's weird becuase I've literally been waiting for like a year (actually it was a year 4 days ago that I started this story, I think. Happy anniversary!) to write this part. Haha, and I couldn't wait to start writing Catching Fire, so I've already written like 12,000 words on that, which is like 6 chapters. Now, here's a little supplement to the reading that you just did:
Standard procedure for removing a leech: Peeta was right: the best way to remove a leech is to burn it (or to squeezing the friggin daylights out of the nasty little bugger). Stabbing is probably a close second. Honestly, I would probably do anything to get that ugly, disgusting little gross leech off me.
Off topic: Just after I thought of this brilliantly awesome plot device (haha, yeah, NOT), my cousin told me that he had a leech on his finger. It just fell off. That could be your third option, given that the life is not being sapped out of you by a hungry Capitol leech. That was your science lesson for today. You're welcome.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Review, please, please, please, please, please, please,please, please, please, please, please don't ignore all of the these pleases! I've been really happy with the reviews lately, so keep up the good work!
Thanks for reading!
-seastar