The Arena does bad things to my self-control.
Back in District 12, Gale and I barely exchanged any words when we were out in the woods. Unless we were in our spot we dedicated ourselves to roam through the forest and hunt in comfortable silence, we needn't words to communicate. There had only been a handful of times in which I had lost sight of him and panicked, but I never cried out his name. The risk was too high.
Here in the Arena the risk is probably higher. But very against my will, I find Danny's name leaving my mouth quite loudly again, it only takes a second for me to press my hand against my mouth.
The echo of the canon doesn't help my accelerated heartbeat. I make my way through the forest frantically, following my steps to try and find the place where Danny stopped following me. I know it's impossible, but I can still hear the canon, along with my panicked thoughts.
Not him, please not him. I'm begging you, not him.
I am not sure who am I begging to, but I continue to do it. And someone listens.
"Katniss," the panic in his voice is only comparable to the relief that fills me when I see him. It only lasts for a second ─ the second it takes me to run my eyes across his whole body, making sure he is unharmed ─, this time I don't rush to him and wrap my arms around him. Mostly because I know I am unarmed and vulnerable, unable to protect us both, and whatever thing that just killed another tribute is still out th-
"Katniss I think I killed Foxface." His voice breaks in the end, when my eyes fly towards him again I think he is going to be sick.
"What?" This time I don't even regret being loud, the thought of the sweet boy in front of me killing someone is just unfathomable.
"I-I don't know! I was just picking berries and then out of the blue I heard the cannon and she was there! And she's dead! I don't know how!" My eyes travel to his shaking hands, in them there are what used to be berries, now squished with the strength of his fingers as he struggles to keep himself together. Before anything else happens I walk towards him to open his hand and make him let go of the berries.
"Did you eat them?!" I ask panicked, even if the only rational part left of my brain knows he hasn't. Not these, Katniss. Never these. They're nightlock, you'll be dead before they reach your stomach. My father's voice joins the echoes, and for once he is not welcome.
"N-no. Katniss what's going on?" I look up to find his tears and before I can think of anything else I'm hugging him. Because he just killed Foxface, and it's my fault. Because he was supposed to walk out of here free of guilt. And I've failed.
"They're poison Danny, she was stealing your food."
As an answer, a few feet behind him a hovercraft appears to retrieve Foxface's body, the stain of nightlock still on her fingers. Danny sobs when he hears it, because he doesn't need me to confirm it to know she's his kill. I hold on to him tightly for some time.
Only the silver parachute manages to separate us. Because this time the gift from Haymitch doesn't come with a wrapping: it's a quiver, and inside I count twenty five brand new arrows.
His voice joins the echoes. Good luck sweetheart, you'll need it.
I change my mind and we head back to the cave. It's a hard night. Even though I manage to hunt actual food and do my best to get Danny to eat, he only downs half a leg of grosling before telling me he is going to bed. I sit outside of the cave because somehow I know he doesn't want me with him, but his sobs last for hours until he cries himself to sleep. I wonder what the Capitol thinks about this.
Do they see now what the Games are really about? Do they realize that they just turned a twelve year old into a murderer? That he will forever be haunted by his actions, as unintentional as they were? I hardly think so.
I miss Gale. I miss him ranting his hate towards the Capitol, voicing the rage that I kept locked inside but he read so easily.
I close my eyes and try to picture our spot, our initials carved in the wood of a tree that is older than the two of us together. The place where the grass isn't as high because we sit on it so often. I miss his hum when he is skinning game, his big smile when he catches something big on his snares, the even bigger one when I shoot something down.
I miss my best friend so much I can't breathe.
After a while I join Danny in the cave, I pull him close and try to ease his restless sleep singing to him. I sing until I fall asleep too.
When we wake up, everything is wrong.
Danny is hungry, so I give him the food I saved from the day before, I can wait. And I know for a fact that a full stomach is exactly what one needs after a full night of crying. My nerves are on edge, and I don't know why. More often than I'd like to admit my fingers brush my new arrows, but soon I find out that the danger that I was sensing was not one I could shoot at.
"It's dry," Danny says. We stand in front of the place where the river was yesterday. And even when I know he is right I kneel down to touch the river bed, it's completely dry. As if water had never been there.
"They are herding us like cattle, they want us all to go to the lake," I say.
"We still have some water," Danny offers and I smile gently at him. Because he is right. Our bottles are full and so are our stomachs. We could simply find a good spot in the vicinity of the lake for me to shoot down our enemies when they come searching for water.
As if the Gamemakers could hear my thoughts, as if they could feel my rebelliousness and my impulse to go against their wishes, two sounds rattle the Arena.
One too familiar for my taste. The other one completely foreign, and hence more frightening.
The canon goes off at the same time a growl is heard. The growl is loud, angry, animal and hungry. It freezes my blood as my accelerated mind tries to make some sense out of it, but when I see Cato running through the forest, barely feet away from us, suddenly it all makes sense. Because there's only one thing that could have made him run past us without so much as giving us a glance, the only thing that could possibly scare him that way, that could take down Tresh without a fight: Muttations.
"Run!" I cry to Danny, grabbing his hand and pulling him behind Cato, running towards the Cornucopia.
I've never seen these mutts, but they're no natural-born animals. They resemble wolves, and they are fast. I try not to think of them, but their snuffling and growling makes it impossible. In this grand move, the Gamemakers of this year have managed to create the most action-packed finale in the history of the Hunger Games: I'm running towards my worst enemy, towards the vicious and revengeful Cato.
Well, that's what I call a plot twist.
I almost slam myself against the Cornucopia, unable to break in time. Danny is more agile and he climbs up before I can think of anything else.Clever kid. I follow him quickly, and when I reach the top I remember Cato and whip around. But he's doubled over with cramps, his back turned in our direction and apparently more preoccupied with the mutts than us. My hand reaches for an arrow and I aim right at his back. I can take him down now, and the mutts will go away.
But I don't, because even after all this time I am not a killer.
I quickly regret my decision when the mutts reach the Cornucopia.
There are at least seven of them, I force myself to think like a hunter, to analyze them like the animals they are and find their weakness. Instead I only find strengths. The mutts' back legs are incredibly powerful, allowing them to stand easily and giving them an eerily human quality. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
Danny cries out when one of them jumps, proving once again the strength of their legs when it lands just feet below us. For a moment, he hangs there and it's all it takes for me to realize what else unsettled me about the mutts. The green eyes glowering at me are unlike any dog or wolf, unlike any animal I've ever seen. They are human. And not only that, but they are familiar.
They are Glimmer's.
I shriek as I stumble backwards, at the same time the mutt has begun to slide down the Cornucopia. Turns out they can't in fact climb. I am safe, we are safe. I reach behind me to grab Danny's hand, but only then do I realize that Cato's panting is a sound no longer heard.
I turn around to find him smiling at me. His smile is unsettling, and the hold he has on Danny even more. It's almost tender, as if he was his little brother. Both the blondes stare at me, Danny with panic on his eyes, Cato as if he had completely lost his mind. Maybe we all have.
I take a long time to process the situation:
There are mutts around us, the mutts are most probably the tributes that have died in the days before. The people I've killed, the ones I've failed to protect. Rue.
Said mutts cannot climb the Cornucopia. We are safe.
Danny is not safe.
Cato has on a kind of armor, a high-grade body armor from the Capitol. Was that what was on his pack at the feast?
I know my arrows will have no effect on his body, so I aim at his face. Right in his forehead. He smiles wider as he tightens his hold on Danny, the boy whimpers.
"Let him go," I snarl.
"Or what? You'll kill me?" He jokes and my stomach turns. I know he is right, I'm completely hopeless. The only thing I wanted since I stepped on the Arena was to get Danny back home alive. And for the first time I have absolutely no idea how to do it. I don't lower my arrow.
"Shoot me and he goes down with me."
We've reached a stalemate. The seconds weight on me as my tired brain tries to come up with one more solution. As if in a hurry, Cato tightens his hold on Danny, lifting his small feet from the surface of the Cornucopia, he's choking him.
Danny's legs start to trash as his small hands tug on Cato's bigger one, attempting to release himself. It takes me too long to realize that's not what he is trying to do. He is telling me to do something. When his lips have started to turn blue I take action, shooting Cato's hand. He cries out and reflexively releases Danny, who falls down on his fours below him.
I shoot another arrow towards Cato's head, but I fail. On the last second he manages to avoid it, but in doing so he loses his footing. Only now I realize that the mutts have gone quiet, but when Cato falls down in the middle of the pack the growling begins again.
It's over. It's over. It's over. The thought falls like a hammer on me as I rush towards Danny, who is gasping for air. I wrap my arms around him tightly, trying to stammer out the words to him, to tell him we are going home. But I can't. Because it just doesn't feel like it's over.
The canon. It's missing.
I don't watch, but I can hear the snarls, the growls and the howls of pain that come from underneath us. The body armor must be protecting Cato from being killed, but it still doesn't mean that he can't serve as a chew toy for the mutts.
They want me to kill him.
Night falls and the anthem plays, but only Tresh's face is in the sky. My heart is squeezed as I realize that I didn't save one thought to his death. Even when we said we were even I know we were not. Because he let Danny go, because I will forever owe him that. And now he is dead and I can never repay him. I can never make up for my mistakes with Rue.
Danny is shaking in my arms, and I know I have to do something, anything. But I don't. Not until Cato cries out my name. I feel a thousand years old when I stand up, my shaking fingers reaching for an arrow as I squint in the darkness, trying to find him.
The arrow flies into his skull, and for a moment everything is silent. The mutts quiet down as if they were suddenly turned off, the wind stops howling, my heart seems to stop too. And then the canon is heard. A hole opens in the plain and as if on cue, the remaining mutts bound into it, disappearing as the earth closes above them.
We wait for the hovercraft to take Cato's remains, for the trumpets of victory, but nothing happens. I haven't dared myself the words out loud, but Danny does:
"But we won."
I swallow, something's wrong.
"Maybe we have to get away from the body, so that they can come pick it up. And then we go home," his voice is so hopeful. But I don't feel the same way. Still, I humor him and we jump off the Cornucopia, walking towards the lake as we try not to notice the bloody mess that used to be our enemy. After a couple minutes Danny proves to be right, the hovercraft comes and retrieves him. But there is no sign of trumpets, no hovercraft comes to get us.
It all suddenly makes sense to me, and then Claudius Templesmith's voice booms into the Arena, confirming my thoughts.
"Greetings to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed," he says. After a long pause, his voice makes me jump again when he adds:
"May the odds be ever in your favor."
Author's Note / Well look at that! This is a long chapter, I hope you guys like it! I'm sorry not sorry for leaving you hanging like this, but to make up for it the next chapter is a Peeta POV (I know you love those!) Thank you so much for your support 3