Catching Fire And Burning Down

by Tare-Bear

Catching Fire: Pregnant Katniss Everdeen. New CF Arena. Slow Burn. Romance. "Do you miss it?" I ask. I thought of the lingering touches, the meaningless kisses, the arena. Part of me is consumed with guilt and another, much smaller part, is reminiscent. "I cannot say I miss the lies," Peeta whispers. He does not miss the fighting, the death, or my kisses.

10. Chapter 10

I rise unsteadily to my feet, my thoughts spinning. I grip my hair as if that will stop them.

A tightness builds in my chest.

I cannot... I cannot…

I back away from the cliff.

Flashes of an old nightmare infiltrate my mind: my father, the canary's call, the cave-in. The walls around me transform, replicating the true mines of District 12. Then I feel it, I remember, what this tightness in my chest means: grief.

Finnick is talking to me.

"Katniss," he says. "Katniss, look at me! Listen to me!"

He has me by the shoulders, shaking me.

"I have to go down there after him," I say.

"No," Finnick says.

I push him aside and approach the cliff. I wonder if there is a safe way down.

I crouch, but Finnick grabs me and pulls me against a nearby wall.

"He's dead, Katniss," Finnick says. "Leave him. We have to move, find somewhere to camp. These are the Hunger Games–"

"I'm not leaving Peeta!" I say, struggling against his hold.

"He's gone. There's nothing we can do. I'm sorry."

"I didn't hear a cannon shot, did you?" I snarl.

His expression falters, but he quickly composes it.

"Fine," Finnick says. "Let me go after him."

Suspicion flickers up inside of me. Could this be a ruse?

Has Finnick been winning my trust just for this moment, so that he can go down there and assure Peeta's death?

"I will," I say.

Finnick releases me and begins dropping all of his weapons to the ground.

"Better not exert yourself. Not in your condition," he says, and reaches down to pat my abdomen.

Oh, right. I'm supposed to be pregnant.

Thanks to Peeta.

My heart sinks.

"No," I say. "I have to do it."

Finnick takes a breath like he's about to argue, but Mags distracts us both, and though I don't understand what she says I follow her finger to where she is pointing.

"The vines," Finnick says, repeating what Mags has said. "That's perfect."

They help me rip vines from the wall and then tie them into tight knots. I test them and they are strong.

Finnick tests the knots a second time, before he finally relents to let me go down instead of him.

"We don't know how far it goes," Finnick warns me, as Mags ties the length of vine around my waist. "If you run out of rope, call to me and I'll pull you back up. We'll find some more."

I nod. I realize that this is dangerous. I am putting myself in Finnick's hands – literally dangling from the end of a rope – but there is nothing else I can do. Except to jump and risk my life. I must trust in my District 4 allies.

Finnick lowers me by hand over the edge, and when I am a few inches too far to reach he winds the some thirty-to-forty feet of vine around his wrist, up his arm, and his knuckles go white with grip.

"Slowly," I say, and he nods.

I try to look over my shoulder, but I feel the glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose and I hurriedly look back upward. If I lose the glasses, I will certainly die in this arena. To ensure I do not lose them, I take them off and tuck them into my fanny pack. While it makes me blind, it does not change the view I had with them on anyway.

Finnick lowers me slowly. I brace my feet against the wall of the cliff.

Whenever I start to feel suffocated or paralyzed with fear because of the walls hugging around me, I think of Peeta, and find some piece of courage inside me that I did not have before.

I begin to hear the faint sound of rushing water.

I jerk to a halt when we run out of vine. I still cannot feel an end to the tunnel.

"Katniss?" Finnick calls.

"I'm fine," I say.

"Anything?"

"No, nothing…"

Impatience draws Peeta's name to my lips.

Still, there is no answer.

"I can hear water," I say to Finnick.

"Okay, I'm going to pull you back up now," says Finnick. "We'll find more vines and see how far that gets us."

As the rope grows taunt and pulls me upward, I realize how long that will take: pulling me back up, finding more vines, tying them together, testing them, lowering me back down the space I have already covered. It will take way too long. Long enough for something else to happen to Peeta, or for an injury he's sustained to bleed out. That is a risk that I am not willing to take, but when I pull the knife from my belt, I know that cutting the vine is a risk I am willing to take.

My life for Peeta's. I have been prepared for that since the Quell announcement. Who says I will die? There has been no cannon shot for Peeta. He's alive somewhere below and he was unprepared for the fall.

I am braced for the fall.

Certainly I will be better off.

Or so I hope, as I slice easily through the vine and cut myself loose.

For a short time I hear Finnick's incomprehensible shouts, then there is silence.

I am falling.

Adrenaline pounds in my veins.

I relish in the feel of plummeting. I cannot say how long or how far it is; only that the sound of roaring water fills my ears.

I am knocked breathless when my body crashes into the underground river.

Pain is all I feel, like an icy fist to the face. My ear drums pop, nose throbbing, skin stinging, and my mouth opens instinctively to breathe, inundating with water. Then I use my arms and legs, like my father taught me, struggling against the force of the cold water and the aching across my entire body.

I am dragged by the river's current. It is stronger than I am. I barely manage to bob to the surface for breath before I am pinwheeled downstream.

The water is deep and icy cold. I try to gain control, but it is not until the river takes a sharp turn that it begins to slow. The tunnel the water is barreling through widens, slowing down and opening up into a large room where the river turns into a reservoir. Here, I am able to put my glasses back on and swim, cutting through the water with my arms, and steering toward what looks to be the only dry stretch of rock on the far side of the room.

I wonder if Peeta has managed to get this far, or if, since there is no pool in the Training Center and no way to learn to swim in District 12, that he has drowned. I comfort myself by remembering that there has been no cannon shot.

Sure enough, the closer I get, I begin to notice a form laying spread eagle against the rocks.

"Peeta!" I say. "Peeta, can you hear me?"

He gives his hand a weak wave.

I splash onto the rocks, shivering, and crawl over to him.

Peeta chokes up a bit of water but manages to smirk up at me.

"I was wondering if you'd follow me," he says.

I laugh, but it comes out shaking.

Peeta's smile turns into a frown.

It is all hitting me. I could have lost him. So quickly, so easily. We are in the Hunger Games, and this time one of us is really going to die. This arena is something straight from my nightmares, and I am sure that is no coincidence. All of this is torment, and that's all it will be, for the remainder of what's left of my life.

I bury my face into my hands to hold in the awful gasping sounds I make when I sob, and Peeta pulls me into his lap. His hands rub up and down my shoulders.

"It's alright," he says, and I nod my head, but still the sounds will not stop.

"We found water," Peeta tells me, whispering.

I know he is trying to make me feel better, but I cannot stop what has been started.

Eventually, in fear of dehydration, I stop crying, and I am able to say, without faltering, "Don't... don't ever do that to me again."

"Never," Peeta says.

My nose is running like crazy and I don't even have a shred of fabric to use as a handkerchief. Peeta lets me go for a moment and rips off a handful of moss from a nearby wall. I'm too much of a mess to even question it. I blow my nose loudly and mop the tears off my face. It's nice, the moss. Absorbent and surprisingly soft.

I notice a gleam of gold on Peeta's chest when he pulls me close again. My fingers turn the locket around. It's the same necklace I noticed the other day. Now, I examine it neutrally, while we sit, clinging to each other for warmth. Tucked underneath his chin, I might be at least partly hidden from the cameras, but surely, they are on us. They would not miss our reunion. Everyone saw my crying.

I am not acting myself. I know it. They know it.

I run my thumb along the mockingjay symbol.

"I left behind our allies," I say.

"Do you think they'll look for us?"

"Sure, they'll look for us," I say. "What really matters is if they want to kill us or make an alliance all over again."

Peeta has nothing to say to that, because we both know everyone in the arena is looking to kill us, with our scores and our fame with the sponsors.

Which remind me, what is Haymitch doing? Is he too drunk to even notice that his tributes are freezing to death?

We have to get warm.

We strip out of our soaked outer layers and lay them against the rocks to dry. I pour the water out of my boots as Peeta wrings out his underclothes. Afterwards, we sit against the wall, holding each other for warmth.

"How did you manage not to lose your glasses?" I ask him.

"I took them off as soon as I fell," he says. "I heard the water, and I was hoping that was what I would land in." He takes them off to point at something. "But I broke them a little."

Indeed, one of the lenses had a crack and on the opposite side one of the ear prongs were bent.

"They're still working. That's what matters," I say, and he puts them back on.

At the very least, we will not be accosted. From where we sit, I see no tunnels and no way to get here but to follow the river. On the opposite side of the large room, across the water, I see a dip, which continues downward, and while that may be our only way out, at least no one will be coming up it. This is good, since I left my bow and all my weapons, except for the one knife, back with Finnick and Mags.

"We will stay here for the night," I say.

"And then what?"

"Then we have to follow the water, and hope that there's some way out."

There is nothing to eat, of course, so we lay against the rocks, hungry. I have become unaccustomed to the hunger pains, but not entirely. I comfort myself with the fact that while the underground river water may not be purified, at least it is drinkable.

I close my eyes and wait.

I cling to him and ignore our shivering.

After a while, Peeta leans closer and his lips rest against my temple.

That's when I hear the cannon shots. There are seven of them, signaling the end of the bloodbath that kickstarted this Hunger Game. Soon, the Careers will be on the prowl.

Sitting too long makes me weary and restless, and the cold harder to bear. So I get up often to drink from the water. I stretch and pace. Peeta lies out on the rock, obviously spent from the fall and the swim that I've heard nothing about, but that had been no doubt difficult to manage.

Just when I am beginning to grow tired enough to attempt to sleep, the ceiling above us brightens. An image appears, seemingly projected onto the rock, of the Capitol's seal. The first's strains of the anthem play, and I think tiredly, it will be harder for the others.

It turns out to be plenty hard for me as well, seeing the faces of the seven dead victors projected overhead. The man from District 5, the one Finnick took out with his trident, is the first to appear. That means that all the tributes in 1 through 4 are alive — the four Careers, Beetee and Wiress, and, of course, Mags and Finnick. The man from District 5 is followed by his female counterpart, the male morphling from 6, Woof from 8, both from 9, and the man from 10.

The Capitol seal is back with a final bit of music and then the cave goes dark again.

We do not speak. I cannot pretend I knew any of them well.

I can only assume night has fallen, and to reenforce this thought, the air starts to feel colder; much, much colder. We had been chilled and damp, but now it does not take long for Peeta's lips to turn blue and for my nose to feel as if it is going to freeze and fall off.

I do not know how long we might have sat there shivering if it were not for the arrival of the silver parachute. It glides down through the rock to land before us, coming from seemingly nowhere. Random slots in the ceiling?

Peeta reaches for it first. He unties the cord and flattens the circle of silk.

On the parachute sits a thermos.

"What do you think it is?" I ask, wondering why Haymitch would send us liquid when we've plenty of it here.

"No idea." Peeta unscrews the top and then inhales, but gags at the scent. "Here, nothing I've ever smelt before."

I take a sniff.

"Agh," I say. "Bitter."

More than that, though. A lot more. It is bitter and overwhelming, and I have half a mind to say it's some form of extremely potent alcohol, considering the smell and the history of our mentor.

The liquid is a strange orange color and my stomach turns at the thought of drinking it.

"D-Do you think he's insane or just too drunk to notice which buttons he's pushing?" Peeta says. The humor in his voice would have sounded better if his teeth weren't chattering.

"Who knows?" I say.

Haymitch's gifts usually mean something. There is not very much of this stuff. The thermos is only about a quarter of the way full. It must be very expansive.

Experimentally I put it to my lips, but Peeta stops me.

"Me first, just in case," he says.

"Fine."

I watch anxiously as he takes a sip, then another, before it's too much and he begins to cough.

"What does it taste like?" I ask.

"Bitter." Peeta makes a face. "It's warm though... it spreads. Try it."

I do, then rebuke at the taste. The liquid slides like hot water down my throat, but it does not burn. I can feel it spread across my chest, loosening the grip of the cold.

Peeta and I pass the thermos back and forth until it is almost gone.

I feel warm from fingertips to toes. I put the remaining amount into the fanny-pack attached securely around my waist with my one remaining weapon: the knife I used to cut the rope.

Without the cold to distract us, we both become aware of how exhausted we are and make preparations for the night. Last year, I always tried to have my gear ready in case I had to make a speedy retreat in the night. This year, there's no backpack to prepare. Only our fanny packs and our clothes.

Our clothes are still damp, but we put them back on, because even if they fully dry overnight, in order to leave this place we are going to have to swim anyway.

Peeta offers to take the first watch and I let him. I lie down beside Peeta on the floor of the cave, telling him to wake me when he's tired.

A few hours later, he does, and as I sit up and he lays beside me, I brush a hand unconsciously through his hair as he sleeps.

I wish I had my bow.

After an hour or so, I hear something in the distant.

The sound of the cannon startles me, although it makes little, if any, impression on my sleeping companion. There's no point in waking him. Another victor dead. I do not even allow myself to wonder who it is.

Moments later, though, I hear a scream. It's so piercing to the ears that Peeta sits up in a whirl. I rise to my feet meaning to do something, but I find myself as a loss.

We watch and listen. Eventually we see figures pour from the river into the reservoir.

A head bursts to the surface of the water.

Johanna howls in frustration.

"You idiot!" she says, thrashing and flailing to stay afloat. There is the sudden pop of another face surfacing in the water next to her. "We could have taken them!"

"Without killing ourselves?" they respond. I recognize the rough face of Blight, male tribute of District 7, as he replaces his glasses and he sees me, too, over Johanna's bobbing head.

That's when I realize that I am stuck in a room with Johanna Mason. One of the most vicious victors in all of existence.

Peeta touches my hand when I move to say something, and he whispers, "There's blood."

There is blood coiling in the water. Most of it surrounds Johanna, and another figure, next to Blight. A corpse, I realize, remembering the cannon shot. It is Wiress' corpse and my stomach twists, remembering the day I spent with the soft, distracted woman at the Training Center. Next to her is Beetee, clearly struggling to pull her body and swim at the same time to the only means of dry land.

"Truce?" Blight says, startling me.

"Yes," Peeta hastily agrees. "Truce."

I do not trust that.

Johanna does not either, I assume, by the way she swivels around in the water, but she has no glasses and she cannot see us. It would be easy for us to try to kill her when she is blind, but if all three were to fight us, then it would be risky. I also did not want to kill Beetee.

"Who is it?" Johanna demands.

Blight attempts to help her swim, but she flinches away from him. "It is District 12."

Johanna's face pales, but she does not say anything.

I offer to help Beetee to shore, and swim out there, despite the risk of the cold, and pull him along. Blight and Johanna manage to get there by themselves. It is not until Johanna crawls up onto the rocks that I notice a vicious wound in her thigh.

Blight notices my stare.

"Careers," he spits vehemently.

"Did they push you?" Peeta asks her.

"No," Johanna says back, gritting her teeth. "Some coward thought he'd rather take on the pit."

"Do you have any weapons? Something useful?" I ask.

"Does it look like we have anything? I lost my glasses on the fall and my axe sank!" Johanna is furious and in pain, but even when Peeta offers her moss to press into the wound she snarls at him.

This is not an alliance, only a temporary truce until one of us is strong enough to kill the other. In other words, as soon as I get a bow or Johanna's feeling better. Despite my wish for District 7 to die of hypothermia, I advise Beetee to remove his soaking clothes and they do so without my words. He's not much up for talking, District 3, and though Wiress' body was out in the water moments ago it's gone by the time I check again.

Blight and Johanna shuffle off to the side. Johanna sits against the bottom of a wall, hands pressed against the moss on her thigh and Blight sprawls out in front of her, his back to us. There is silence once they have settled in.

I attempt to speak to Beetee, but he turns away from me.

"Are you not feeling well?" Peeta asks him.

"A lot of things are not well," Beetee responds, and I have no idea what that means, but he sounds so grave that I decide he just wants to grieve his district partner in peace.

No one sleeps, except maybe Beetee a little.

Peeta is intent on getting me warm again, hugging me to his chest, but I make sure to keep District 7 in my constant sight. I do not drink any of the thermos' liquid because I want to save it and I do not want our 'allies' to steal it.

"We have to get out of here," I whisper to Peeta.

"Yes," he agrees just as softly. The only way out though is by following the water. We both know this. "When?"

"Soon," I say and then Johanna raises her head. As an excuse I kiss Peeta and I wait for her suspicions to go down.

They do, but his lips are so warm... I break myself away abruptly and force the thought of more from mind. I cannot let this distract us, no matter how urgently the fire in my lower abdomen pulses. I know better.

Peeta nuzzles his face into my neck, and I can almost hear him agree with me: Soon.