Chapter 10: Coal Between My Legs
"AHHHHHH!"
BOOM.
A scream and the sound of a cannon don't quite overlap one another as both pierce the still morning air, yanking me the rest of the way out of the most peaceful sleep I've had since entering the arena… and maybe even since the Reaping. Pushing up lightly off Haymitch's chest, my frightened, azure eyes scan the woods around us, which are coated in an early morning mist. The air seems to smell too much like the dew of dawn, the scent sickeningly sweet, for it to be putrefied by the odor of death.
I feel Haymitch stir under me, his knife already in his hands, and he draws me against him almost protectively, scanning for enemies. "Who do you suppose that was?" he rumbles.
"Whoever it was, they're close by," I gulp. My ears are still ringing from the echo of both sounds. Recalling the principle for measuring how far away a thunderstorm is, I know that it didn't even take a second for the scream and the cannon fire to reach my ears. Yes, whoever just died was close – very.
"Too close," Haymitch hisses. "Get up, Maysie, quick!"
We de-camp as rapidly and yet as quietly as possible.
"What do you think?" I whisper to him. "Hand-to-hand combat or mutts?"
Haymitch shrugs. "No telling. But I'd rather take a chance on the latter than the former."
I nod grimly in agreement.
I'm able to remember from what direction the scream came from. Since my naginata is longer, I ask Haymitch just this once if I can take the lead. He doesn't object, and we creep along out of our clearing and through the next thicket.
About fifty paces to the east, I pull up short, clapping a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream.
Only a few strips of flesh are left clinging to the skeleton, none of which are on its face so we can't even tell who it... was.
"Oh, gods…." I sob, turning in to Haymitch's waiting chest and weeping; he rubs my back soothingly. After a time, my crying subsides, and I sniffle, summoning the bravery to look upon the poor soul again. The few strips of flesh remaining make me think of my narrow escape with the carnivorous, golden squirrels.
The bones have been picked over so cleanly, there doesn't seem to be any way to identify who this could have been. I wheel back through the Final Eight in my head: Opal, girl from 4, boy from 5, boy from 8, girl from 9, Haymitch, myself, and Beech.
Oh no… Beech….
"Oh, Mitchy, you don't think it was Beech, do you?" I stare up into my district partner's face, utterly stricken.
Haymitch doesn't answer me, staring past me to the body. Stepping out of my arms, he treads over to the remains, his footfalls heavy, crouching into a squat to examine it. Something catches his eye in the grass, and he picks it up. Pinches the thing between his thumb and forefinger. The most revolted look I've ever seen from the man comes across his face, and I nearly retch too: it's a bloody phallus.
"Well," Haymitch huffs, dropping the castrated penis back into the dirt. "That eliminates half the field." I blush crimson even though it's absolutely not an appropriate reaction in this morbid context. He's right, our Final Eight was split evenly by gender: four girls, four boys… well, three boys now. Standing up out of his crouch, Haymitch studies the bones for a moment longer, at last giving an emphatic shake of his head.
"Whoever it was, it wasn't Beech."
I feel my heart sigh in relief even as I try not to build up false hope. "How do you know?"
"Even with no meat on these bones, you can tell this skeleton is too skinny to have been him," Haymitch points out.
That would be a good way to rule out our friend… except that Haymitch is picturing Beech the way he was before we entered the arena: broad, muscular, healthy and strong. After being in the arena a solid week… "I don't think it's difficult to imagine Beech has lost weight while we've been here. Hell, I've lost weight, even with all the food we've gathered! Unless Brutus is giving him carte blanche in parachutes, I highly doubt Beech or anyone else left has been eating as well as we have… except maybe the Careers."
Haymitch considers this, stroking his chin. At last, he pronounces:
"Even if you have lost weight a little, you still look fine to me."
I blink a little at the compliment, which in any other situation would be kind of strange, but in this one… is oddly adorable. My cheeks once again glow pink.
Gazing at him, I frown in bemusement, as Haymitch suddenly seems to be looking at something past me, gaze turning wild with fear. "Maysilee, behind you."
"What?" I grin at him. "What is it?"
Haymitch darts forward, knife raised. "Maysie, honey, turn around NOW!"
I spin, the blade of my naginata flashing.
Even as I still catch her in the stomach, drawing blood, the wild-eyed girl keeps coming, managing to knock me to the ground. The bamboo hilt of my weapon is twisted out of my hands and we roll through the soil, punching and biting and kicking and screaming. The girl finally pins me beneath her, hands – caked with dirt – wrapped around my throat. Squeezing on my windpipe. My vision starts to grow spotty. I try to find one final thought to take with me into that good night, but my mind can't grasp one quickly enough.
Suddenly, the hands around my throat slacken and there is a wail. A cannon fires: is it mine? No, greens and blues and pinks are awash in my line of sight again. I'm still in the forest. I'm still alive.
Pushing the dead weight of the girl off me, I scramble to my feet. Backing away, I watch as Haymitch tugs his knife out of the girl's neck, panting and gawping at what he just did.
I know what he did: he saved my life. We're now even on kills, three and three, but I'm not really thinking about odds at the moment.
With a strangled gasp of relief, I launch myself at my district partner, fling my arms about his neck and push my lips against his, kissing him full on the mouth. Haymitch freezes in my embrace for a moment until, with a groan of equal relief, his strong and massive hands steal about my waist and he pulls me closer. Eyelids drooping shut, I nearly swoon as I moan again. He's kissing me back….
"Mmmm….. Hmmmm….."
My lips part, fall open with a sigh against his, allowing his tongue to push through and twine about mine. I feel my feet leave the ground momentarily, and then I'm lowered back to earth. The kiss escalates into little feverish, desperate pecks. Drawing back to catch my breath with a gasp, I roughly shrug Haymitch's light jacket off his shoulders, my fingers quickly moving on to forcefully grab for the fabric of his undershirt.
We can't seem to undress each other fast enough. My jacket is removed from across my own back without me fully remembering who removed it or how it got to be crumpled on the ground. My breasts heaving for every gulp of air, I tug my own undershirt over my head and cast it aside, revealing a simple bra underneath.
Haymitch growls and he's yanking me back to him, kissing me again, and this time we lose our balance, falling back into the flowers, me underneath him. He's straddling me, kissing my face, my breasts and when I remove my bra, he seals his mouth around one purple, straining nipple and begins to suck. I throw my head back with a groan, pushing my other boob into his eager hands, and I spread my legs.
Haymitch lets out a choking noise and begins to furiously grind against me. The friction of his excitement along my thigh, my… ohhhh….. makes my knickers flood with dampness. He pushes my trekky pants and underwear down past my slim hips and I move to help him. A buckle unclips and falls away.
And then he's pushing inside me, and I whimper, tears pricking at my eyes. Though I feel something shatter within me, I pull him in deeper, rocking my pelvis against his as he slowly begins to thrust.
My breathing becomes labored, my hands are bunching up mounds of skin along his rippling shoulder blades. I feel my own body become slick with sweat. I tilt my neck back to allow Haymitch better access and he groans into my shoulder.
"Harder!" I cry softly. He grunts and obeys, slamming into me until I let out a pretty yelp, but I like it. Pressed chest-to-chest, I fall back into the flowerbeds, taking him with me, and kissing gently, we continue to make love…
Haymitch pounds into me faster, and I feel a wave begin to crest along my pink beauty.
"Mitchy, love, I'm gonna cum – oh, sweet Panem, I'm cumming, please don't stop….."
I scream when he makes me cum, and I bring him with me.
I sleepily awaken a couple of hours later to find both of our jackets draped over me to cover my naked beauty, and my lover gone. Rising languidly out of the flowerbeds in which we made love, I use the jackets to cover myself while I search blindly for my clothes. I find my trekky pants with the rough fabric and tug them on, then clip my bra. I throw on the first dark undershirt and jacket I can get my hands on, realizing belatedly that these are actually Haymitch's. The undershirt smells like him, and the colored lining of his jacket is green, not orange like mine.
It's once I'm dressed that I bite my lip in concern: where is he? He can't have gone too far. His knife is missing, so he must have taken it with him.
Suddenly, there is a rustling in the leaves, and I gasp, seizing my naginata and holding it aloft. There are now only five other people it could be.
Then, a voice calls out:
"You there, Princess?"
I exhale and lower my blade. Haymitch steps out of the trees; the sight of him elicits from me a goofy smile. "Hi."
Haymitch nods to me once, jaw tight and brushes past me to begin sorting the backpacks. Watching him work, I wait for him to address the elephant in the… well, the arena, but he doesn't say a word. He doesn't even look at me.
Glancing away, I notice how the shadows are stretching long across the landscape. It's evening, almost sunset; the anthem will be playing soon.
Behind me, I can still hear the rustling as Haymitch works. I can't imagine what needs sorting; we were already all packed when that girl attacked us this morning. And we kind of dropped everything in our haste when we slept together.
I turn back to my… I don't know what he is anymore, brow creased in confusion. Well, if he isn't going to bring it up, I will.
Just as I'm about to say something, however, the lighting around us seems to shift abnormally from day into night, and the anthem starts to play. Haymitch pauses in whatever busy work he created for himself to join me in looking up at the faces in the sky.
The skeleton we came across actually belonged to the boy from District 8. I nearly cry in relief knowing that Beech is still out there somewhere. The girl who attacked us and Haymitch subdued was the girl from 9. I'm not surprised by this; it would have seemed too easy for Haymitch to make that kill if it had been the girl from 4. Plus, the girl didn't have any kind of backpack – no supplies to raid. A Career, even at this late stage of the Games, would have still been stocked with something.
The anthem fades, replaced by the sounds of the cicadas chirping. I peer at Haymitch, his grey eyes catching the moonlight, and smile at him as flirtatiously as I can.
"So:" I work past an initially squeaky crack in my voice. "How does it feel to know you've had a Merchant girl?" Hard as it is for me to believe, I lost my virginity by tasting Seam… and damn me to hell if I didn't like it.
Haymitch doesn't answer me, slinging one of the backpacks over his shoulder. "We'd better get moving," is all he says.
I blink owlishly at him, frowning hard as I gather up my weapons and the other two packs, following behind. We've never traveled at night before. And there are still four other tributes out there. I'm not worried so much if we encounter Beech, really, but the Careers and the boy from 5 might be close by.
I frown at Haymitch's back as he pushes resolutely through the underbrush. I scan my eyes down to his feet, their heavy tread.
No, it's not my imagination: for reasons completely unfathomable to me, Haymitch has managed to have us maintain the same direction for the past three, three-and-a-half days. If he even notices that he's now wearing my shirt and jacket, he doesn't comment on it.
We're pursuing a trail when we don't even know what's at the end, if anything. And I want to know why.
"Mitc – Haymitch," I forgo my pet name for him halfway through. "Where are we going?"
He doesn't even turn his head, hacking at some leaves with his knife; the silvery blade has an ethereal glow to it from the light of the moon. "Come on. We've got to keep going."
Scrunching my nose up tight, I elect to halt and lean against a tree. It takes him a second to hear my silence, to hear that I'm not following him and he turns to peer at me.
I merely shrug, folding my arms. "I'm not going any further without a straight answer."
Haymitch scowls at me for the first time in who-knows-how-long and stalks closer. "Is this about…?" He doesn't finish the sentence. I stare squarely back at him.
"No," I say coolly. "On that matter, you've made it very clear that you think our being together was a mistake. And I can't say I blame you: after all, you have a girlfriend waiting." He doesn't confirm what I've deduced, but he doesn't deny it either. He doesn't have to: his silence has said it all. I tilt my head, studying him, satisfied when I see him shrink back a little. He's been caught – I still don't entirely know what for, but I've caught him. "So, I'll ask again: where are we going?"
He huffs out a long, annoyed breath. "Because it has to end somewhere, right? The arena can't go on forever."
My lashes blink as fast as a hummingbird's, surprised. I hadn't given any thought to the idea that the arena was an enclosed space. Finite. But it would be, wouldn't it? My heart constricts with fear, even as Haymitch turns away, when I realize: is he trying to escape?
I resume following him, worrying my lip between my teeth and trying to cast aside how it felt to have Haymitch's bottom lip between my own. "What do you expect to find?"
"I don't know," he shrugs. "Maybe something we can use."
