Chapter Seven

Shooting out of the tunnel through which he had slid down at break-necking speed after recklessly diving into it, Will struggles to his feet and away from the opening just in time to avoid being bowled over by a screaming little sister. Rosie flies past him and goes spinning further into what was apparently an underground cave when she attempts to futilely slow herself down. She loses momentum by hitting a pillar and comes to a stop several meters away from him, panting harshly.

"Alright?" He asks, one hand pressed to his mouth as he fought back nausea. His heart was still beating as if he had just run a marathon, and his stomach had been forgotten somewhere outside.

"Ugh," Rosie tells him, and he takes that as a yes. He begins shoving the axes he had used to stop himself by sinking them into the walls of the slide back into his belt but rapidly reconsiders his decision, thinking of another urgent use for them. Silently gesturing at his sister, he has her stand on the other side of the tunnel's opening with her rapier drawn and lifts his own weapons above his head, ready to move at a moment's notice.

He planned to kill at least the first two of the Career Pack to descend down the tunnel with an ambush, but a minute passes, then another, and no one comes. Feeling his arms tire, he lowers them and cocks his head with a puzzled frown. They knew where the two of them were hiding. Their footprints would have clearly shown the path they had taken. With the cannons having failed to fire, they were also obviously still alive. So, what was taking them so long to follow after them?

There is a clang in the tunnel and his attention snaps back to it.

What was that sound? He exchanges a further bewildered glance with Rosie. That wasn't another person sliding down the passageway. It was more like –

A small shape clatters out of the tunnel, and his eyes widen. "GET DOWN!"

The grenade detonates in an explosion of fire and sound.

Will cautiously moves his hands from where they had been covering his skull and lifts his head, blinking rapidly. He had dived to the side and behind a pillar quickly enough to avoid serious injury, though his cheek stung where a shard of ice had skimmed him, and his ears rung from the loud bang.

Shaking his head to clear it, he sits up carefully. Bright red catches the corner of his eye and he pales when he meets the terrified gaze of his little sister.

He might have come out of the blast relatively unharmed, but Rosie… Rosie had a pair of bleeding scratches too, but most concerning was the large chunk of ice sticking out of the back of her shoulder. Unlike him, who had fallen flat on his stomach, she had curled herself into a ball to protect herself and had gotten hit worse because the pillar she had hidden behind was thinner than his. Blood was already seeping into the coat's fabric around the wound.

"Rose!" He thinks he must have exclaimed loudly in a panic, but the world around him was still muffled as if he was underwater.

Clambering over the mound of ice that the collapsed mouth of the shaft had become, he pulls his sister towards him, hands fluttering uselessly around the wound.

"Hurts." Rosie's mouth shapes or some approximation of it. "Willy, am I going to die?"

"No. I won't let you. Not like this." He vows.

Only… he didn't know what to do. How was he supposed to treat it? It didn't look life-threatening, but what did he know about injuries? Almost nothing, that's what. He could set a broken bone, or a dislocation, he could wrap a bleeding wound. He couldn't determine the severity of that wound, or if it had caused internal damage. Where there any important arteries in the shoulder? Could he risk removing the ice without running the chance of Rosie bleeding out?

The girl sags, her head lolling on his shoulder. The pain had become too much and she had fallen unconscious.

He was running out of time to do something about this.

"Alright, time to wing it." He mutters with false bravado and coughs when the lingering in the air mist created from the crushed ice tickles his throat. "Hopefully, I don't make things worse. Oh, please don't let me make it worse."

He leans back against the pillar Rosie had taken shelter behind and maneuvers his sister until he could reach the wound without great difficulty. Shrugging off her backpack, then his, he blindly searched around until he feels one of the heaters under his hand and pulls it out. He couldn't risk removing the piece of ice stuck in her, but he couldn't leave it there either. He hoped melting it slowly will give time for the blood to clot.

He didn't even need to clean the wound; the glacial water had done the job for him. Through the sluggish trickle of blood – the cold had probably helped with that – Will could see cracked bone. The shattered shoulder blade was far beyond his meager healing skills. And medical supplies for that matter. He could bind it, and maybe immobilize it, but that was it.

Using his newly acquired knife, he unhesitatingly rips up the sleeve of his equally new coat to pieces. The stuffing he uses to pad the wound, and the remaining material he turns into bandages. Later, he'll likely have to clean them in the snow before recycling them, because they didn't have any extras.

With the most pressing of his concerns dealt with, he turns towards the rest. Although they had avoided most of the blast, they had still been hit with some shrapnel. He had a large piece stuck in the back of his tight and another in his hip. A few smaller ones in his arm too. Rosie, on the other hand, had half of her back peppered with several more. It's what woke her up with a scream full of pain, him digging into her soft flesh with the pliers from his knife to pull the metal out.

"Shh." He tells the girl, putting more weight on her to keep her still. He had stripped her off her coat, laid her down on down on it on her belly, and had then straddled her from behind, one hand holding down her uninjured shoulder precisely because he had been afraid she'd jerk at the wrong moment. "I'm almost done." The shard of iron drops on the ground, and he passes the back of his hand across his forehead, leaving a streak of blood. "Just a few more to go. Endure it, baby."

Heedless of Rosie's pained crying, he mercilessly digs in for the next fragment. He couldn't leave it in as it would only cause more harm, so she had to suck it up and bear through with it.

When the last of the shrapnel is finally pulled out, Will has more ice melt on the wounds since it had worked so well for the shoulder and sacrifices the second of the new coat's sleeves for dressings. Only with Rosie done and once she had passed out again, does he turn to himself.

Ideally, he would have stitched close the wound on his cheek. As it was, without proper care and merely a quick press of snow to slow the bleeding, it was going to badly scar. The wounds on his tight and hip are more easily dealt with, though much more excruciating. He bites his lip until that starts bleeding too to keep himself from screaming when he searches for the metal wedged inside him. Afterward, he sits panting for close to half an hour, eyes clenched shut and bloody pliers held loosely in his hand, thanking whatever gods people had believed in before Panem that neither of them had bled to death from a nicked artery.

Eventually though, recalling the danger they were still in has him sliding open his eyes with a grimace to observe their surroundings. Similar to the outside, the walls and the ceiling, and the floor of the large cave glowed from the inside in a stunning light blue mixed with white, only here it created designs of light in the ice resembling water reflections. What he had first taken for pillars in the confusion of their escape from the Careers and then the bomb and unexpected field surgery were actually connected stalactites and stalagmites of ice. The ground was incredibly smooth with the barest hint of a patchy snowy layer, which meant it would be harder to track anyone.

The maze was intimidating, but this… this was beautiful.

It was warmer too, by just a bit. And even the howling wind had been replaced with the echoing steady dripping of water from the ceiling. For the first time in a while, Will could see the purple color of Rosie's lips fading into an almost healthy, but still too pallid pink. His fingers moved easier and he could actually feel his toes. It was also nice to not have his nose hair stick together every time he breathed. He's almost forgotten what's it like to inhale and exhale without discomfort.

The only problem was that he couldn't get out anymore the way they had come. The grenade had completely collapsed the opening to the outside. Unless there was another way out, they were stuck until they cleared out debris. And that's hoping the collapse hadn't affected the entire tunnel. He didn't fancy being buried alive. From the several times he'd seen it happen in previous Hunger Games, it was an unpleasant and often slow way to go.

Stumbling to his feet, Will limps further into the cave struggling to rid his mind of the image of himself choking on his blood after being impaled by the ceiling. It was quickly replaced by one where he was slowly suffocated by the rubble crushing his chest. Delightful. He could already see all the nightmares that were going to plague him in the future.

Luckily, there was another way out. Kind of. Will concludes this was the second level of the maze, staring tiredly at the two passageways he had just discovered; one that went down in a small incline, and the other straight but branching off into three more directions further in.

He glances back towards his sister. Only the tips of her boots were visible from behind the several stalagmites she was hidden behind. She wouldn't be easily seen from the passageways.

He faces forward again.

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe –" Muttering, he points with his finger. Landing on the one that didn't split in more directions, Will adjusts his grip on the shafts of his axes and projecting confidence he certainly wasn't feeling, marches ahead.

The passageway is long. Without the sky, he's unable to determine precisely how long but his internal clock told him he had been walking at least fifteen minutes when he finally came out of it. He'd elected to go in a straight line, ignoring the two or three round openings in the sides. It prevented him from getting lost and he wasn't looking for thoroughly mapping out the place. He was only trying to find an example of the kinds of danger they will face on this level.

The new cave he enters wasn't as big as the one they had landed in, but it was even more beautiful in his humble option. Will crouches down and trails a soft finger over the flower growing amidst the thick, downy snow. With the petals shaped similar to those of a lily and colored in a gradient mix of ice blue, dark blue, and white with silver stems and leaves there was no mistaking it. A carpet of Fallen Snowflakes.

The pillars and ceiling were covered in another plant of similar coloring. The petals were slightly darker and both stems and leaves were navy. In form, they resembled wisteria and here and there he could spot small frosted silver berries. Those were Frozen Tears.

That was a lot of food, he can't help but think, eyeing the berries with a watering mouth and a rumbling stomach. Immediately jerking back in horror at the thought, he flings the single berry he had picked as far as he could throw it.

It was a good plan from the Gamemakers, he has to admit. Starving tributes wouldn't think twice before gorging themselves on this feast. Both plants were rare and only available in the Capitol. They wouldn't know better unless they came from District 11 and had worked in the Genetics Department. Like Will had.

As the name implied, the Genetics Department was the ones who were in charge of improving old species and creating new ones. For example, the favorite flowers of President Snow had come out of their labs. Will had seen the original successful bush and had thought the genetically enhanced perfume of the white roses had been sickeningly sweet.

Fallen Snowflakes and Frozen Tears were initially intended to be purely decorative, commissioned for a winter wonderland-themed birthday party of the daughter of a high-ranking and very wealthy Capitolite about a decade ago – she even got to name them. They had achieved their goal, but hadn't managed to fix the last snags; other than being finnicky to grow and requiring low temperatures for maximum comfort, both species were highly poisonous.

Disappointed, he's about to leave when an idea hits him. Dropping his axes into the snow, he begins filling his pockets and his backpack with as many delicate berries as he could without crushing them. Later, he was going to smear their juice all over the blades of their weapons. This way, a single tiny scratch will cause pain to their enemies. And a stab wound? Just might well kill them even if they got away. It was a good thing they wore gloves and had most of their skin covered. They wouldn't be accidentally poisoning themselves since they wouldn't be in contact with the poison.

In the distance, there is an echoing growl. He freezes, listening intently. It wasn't one of the wolf mutts from the outside. They had a clear crystalline sound. This was more animalistic. More alive than mechanical.

Will shivers and not from the cold. Gamemakers had the bad habit of reusing the bodies of the fallen Tributes. Almost every game, part of the mutts they sent out had been modified corpses. It was horrible and gruesome and only the Capitol found it was amusing. Tributes went in the Arena knowing that if they died, it more likely than not that their bodies will not be returned to their Districts for burial. The moment they were Reaped, they became the property of the Gamemakers. They had no free will and had to spend the rest of their usually short lives dancing like puppets on strings to their tunes.

There is another howl, further away this time, and he relaxes as much as he could while in the Arena. Rubbing tiredly at his eyes – ignoring the dried blood he was scrubbing off his face – he turns away. It's been a long day, he'll figure it out after a nap.

Returning to Rosie, he pulls her head upon his lap and lifts he coat he had wrapped her in, but not properly put on, to check on his dressings. They seemed to hold, so he increases the temperature the heater was emitting and settles down. Only, his thoughts wouldn't leave him alone.

He had an important decision to make. If he was to break his promise and abandon Rosie, this was the perfect moment. She was injured seriously enough moving would be a problem. She had become a liability. Before, at least, she could have played backup with her acid marbles. Now, if she could move, which was very doubtful, she most certainly would not be able to run.

He couldn't stay with her. They needed food, and there wasn't any here. Eating snow wasn't going to sustain them for much longer. It wasn't a defensible location either. If other tributes found them, or a pack of mutts, they were toast.

He didn't want to do it. He really, really didn't, but he wanted to live too. He did his best, he got her this far. Wasn't it enough? Everyone would understand. They wouldn't blame him.

But…

He couldn't.

Logically, it was the best move. He knew that. He still couldn't.

Tears of frustration spring to his eyes, and he buried his sobs into the top of Rosie's hood, clutching her close.

It hurt, not knowing what to do. He'd been vaguely aware he'd might have to make such a decision before, but it hadn't seemed real. Not until now.

He tilts his head back to look at the stunning ceiling, quickly freezing tear tracks glistening on his cheeks, and whispers pleadingly, "Please. Help us."

Please, let there be sponsors watching.

Please, let them have a heart.

While in the Districts most people only saw an edited cut of the day's event at the end of the day because they couldn't stop working for weeks at a time, in the Capitol, life ground to almost a halt. On their televisions, they had a channel dedicated to a specific tribute, so though it was unlikely many in the Districts saw much of him after the impromptu field surgery, there was a chance a few Capitolites were still following him and could hear his plea for help. If they didn't, there was also the chance it would be replayed as a short clip in the recaps tonight. They just had to last that long. And maybe, just maybe, they will be moved enough by his and Rosie's plight to do something about it.

He hated being reduced to begging for help from Capitolites of all people. It left him with a bad taste in his mouth. Yet, he didn't have any other choice. It was either this or leaving his little sister behind to die alone.

He didn't think he'd be able to live with the guilt.

Slowly, after crying his eyes out, he drifted off to sleep.

I don't own the Hunger Games.