A/N: THANK YOU DandelionOnFire (Haha, guess what, you tell me what you want one month before your birthday and I'll write something for you:D), Kari (Hehe, are you mad at me for still not telling you?:)), Reven Eid (Yeah, you kind of put it in a nutshell:D), SWPeetaxKatnissAvatarTLA (Someone had to stay asleep and since I didn't really know what to do with her mother...:D), InLoveWithPeeta (haha, sweet:DD),InLoveWithAFictionalCharacter 7 (I know:) I said it wasn't as bad:)), lolyy (Yup, but it's supposed to be that way:D), ZaraB (Sorry:( And THANK YOU:DD), Alice, maryclumsy, Abby-TheTeeny (Hehe, THANK YOU!:D), khadija (Yeah, that's not nice, but at least it wasn't the worst cliffy I had:D), mspacman1 (You'll see:D), FlamingArrows (THANK YOU! You made me very happy:D), SparksFly23 (I know:) But I like them stubborn:D), Aloha-Pinkly, Mockingjay272 (You know, you were the only one getting at least close to the right guess:D), CharmChaser, mrspatrickdempsey (hehe, SO many questions;)), bookwriter-lover1212 (Thanks a LOT! You made me very happy:)) and Emmy (THANK YOU! I always look forward to reading your reviews:D)
Disclaimer: This is so boring. I. Do. Not. Own. The. Hunger. Games.
Chapter 7:
It's as though there is a time bomb, ticking in the background, waiting to go off. We're sitting here, still not saying anything, anxiously waiting. My eyes are wide open, although I feel the want to close them. After all, I haven't slept for twenty four hours. But I can't afford to sleep now .Because that could very well mean our death.
I look over at Peeta, who I find is also fighting sleep and watching my mother. He must have come to the same realization as me, and his eyes are slightly unfocused as he struggles to stay awake.
Prim's head is in my lap and her eyes are closed. I hope she's asleep again, although I have a feeling she's only pretending for my sake. This, of course, feels very wrong to me. It's supposed to be me protecting her, not the other way around.
My breathing is as quiet as I can keep it, and still I feel as if they should be hearing it over the loud noise of number two, apparently the brains in their team, and with that the one who must be fixing whatever is broken, repairing the hovercraft.
I don't know what number one is doing, but I have a bad feeling about him. Since I can't hear him I figured he could be anywhere. And I can't prevent myself from thinking he's going to barge in any moment, with a gun pointed at us, ready to kill.
But he doesn't, and there's no way to describe how relieved I am when I hear the sounds of number two machining the issues that prevent them from flying away dying down.
"Finally. You done now?" There is number one again, and his voice isn't too far away from the hovercraft, so he's probably only been pacing around. He doesn't seem to want to waste too much time either, because it's clear that he's urging number two on. Though, I know the only way I will be pacified is them being out of earshot. And sight.
"I am." I can hear the disdain in his voice. To be honest, I understand him. Working with someone like his partner must be frustrating.
"Great. I was starting to believe…What was that?"
Had I been able to speak without betraying my being here, I would have asked the same question. My head, which has been directed at the window again, how I notice now, turns around. Prim's eyes snap open, confirming my earlier guess. I can't see Peeta, but I imagine his reaction being similar to mine.
What shouldn't have happened did happen. We got distracted. My mother woke up. And she woke up screaming.
This time there's no mistaking this sound for the sounds of the forest. This time there is no holding ones breath hoping they think it was their imagination playing tricks on them. One is too smart for that, the other one too brutal.
I frantically search for something helping us to hide, to escape, to somehow survive this. My heart is beating faster and faster, it's rate speeding up, and my breathing is erratic. When I'm about to give up, to just collapse and wait for death, my eyes fall onto something. There is a chance for us to survive.
I grab Prim's hand as I hear the footsteps quickly approaching. Our only escape is the window where the hovercraft would shield us from their view outside and the house would do the same from their view inside. There's a slight space in between it and the wall and it's my only hope. Of course, if they see it too, we'll be doomed.
I usher my sister through it first. She gives me a praying look, wanting me to follow, but she should know me. I'm going to go last.
Or I am going to die.
That is what I want at least, until I feel myself being lifted off the ground and more or less thrown outside. The first shock quickly vanishes and is replaced by anger, directed at the person hindering me from fulfilling my task, by not only shoving me out of the room but also blocking the only way back in with his back.
Of course. That's just like me. I underestimated him. By forgetting about his biggest advantage, his built and his strength, I underestimated him. And if he didn't let me go distract them, he surely wouldn't let me stay behind.
Prim is clinging to me, begging me not to try and fight, begging me to stay with her.
And, because there really is no other option, I obey, even if I'm more than upset by that choice. Almost furious. But he footsteps are close now, it's only a matter of seconds until they come bursting through the door, and arguing would only waste time and, in this case, possibly lives.
My mother must have reached the window, too, by now, because Peeta is allowing a small space, enough for her to slip through. I can see her blond hair, the side of her face even, but she doesn't take the opportunity. Instead she bends forward to whisper something in Peeta's ear. I can't hear her, although I'm barely a foot a way from her, but from the tensing of his muscles and slight shake of his head I can tell he's disapproving.
"Please." It's all my mother says, and after a second of hesitation, he finally does what I assume she must have told him to. He turns around, a painful expression on his face, and climbs through the window.
Just in time, because the very second his head vanishes below the window I hear the door open with a bang and one of the two men shouting: "Who's in here?"
Prim is in my arms, shaking. And it's not until her arms come around me that I realize I'm shaking, too. It's only a matter of seconds until they'll find her. My mother, the woman I never forgave for abandoning us, the woman my father loved, she's going to join her husband. It's unpreventable.
Yet there is still that tiny spark of hope inside me, telling me that maybe she has a chance, telling me lies over lies I don't believe, because I can't.
The sound of a body making contact with the wall of the house brings me back to my senses.
"What do you think you're doing here?" His voice is harsh, disdain and hate creating its tone, and it goes along with a the sharp sound of flesh on flesh, his hand making contact with her skin.
I flinch at it, and so do the two people hidden with me. This shouldn't be my mother. She may have abandoned us, but she doesn't deserve this the slightest bit. This should be me instead of her, I should feel the pain I'm feeling inside now physically.
When my mother doesn't answer, the sound of him hitting her reappears. "Are there others? Are you alone?"
She's coughing now, and I don't want to know why. I have a feeling though, a feeling it's not only her swallowing up something. "A…alone," she stutters before coughing again.
"Why are you here? To spy on us?" When there was only silence again, he started shouting.
"DAMN IT! Answer my questions, or I'll shoot you. Right now." He would do that either way. Shoot her. Kill her. She doesn't know anything, but she's broken the law and they surly think she knows about their mission. She won't stay alive.
So there was no answer. Instead I had to screw up my eyes and cover my ears with my hands, because one moment it felt as though the world had stopped, in the next there was a bang signalizing the gun piercing my mothers brain once and for all.
For a second I can't breath. It is comparable to the day a few years ago I fell off a tree. And screaming is all I want to do now. Screaming for my mother to come back, cry, let my anger out, my fury and my hate for the man who killed her. I want to jump back in, to crawl his eyes out, to wrap my hands around his neck, to hit him, pay back for what he did to my mother and with that, to me.
Tears are in the corner of my eyes, and they're streaming down my face. I make no effort to wipe them away. I don't think I could move my hands either way. They're clinging to my sister, now the last member of my family. She's weeping, silent tears coming from her, too.
I feel more hate for the Capitol than ever before. They killed her. They took away our parents, mine and the ones of this innocent, kind, sweet girl. They took everything from her. Her home, too.
So her face is hidden in my shirt, and I feel it getting wetter and wetter, but there's nothing I can do about it. Never in my life have I felt so helpless.
Only the noise of the starting hovercraft brings me back to my senses. At least halfway. We have to move, we have to go back in, otherwise our fate will be the same as mother's. And I can't let her dead be in vain.
Peeta helps me to drag Prim, who's still shivering, whose tears haven't stopped falling, back in. When we are, I collapse against the wall as a new wave of tears hits me, because I know see that they haven't taken her with them. She's lying there, a pool of blood coming from the wound on her head.
I realize I really never forgave her, not until now. I never told her I loved her. I never told her…all the things I should have. We never had a real mother-daughter relationship, at least not after father's dead, but maybe, someday, it could have been better again. We weren't as distant in the last week. We weren't really close either, but…I feel as if this was the last step. And I feel as if she didn't need to die for me to forgive her. I would have, eventually. And I could have told her.
"What did she tell you?", I want to know what her last real words were. I want to know what she told Peeta to make him let her sacrifice her life.
He looks at me, the pain clearly visible in his eyes. "She told me she wanted, for once, do something right. Only once in her life. She wanted to save you. She told me it would be a relief for her, a salvation. She would be reunited with the only other right choice she ever made. Your father." His voice is softer now, telling me this. "She said it was better this way. She said she wanted you to be happy and…she told me to take care of her daughters. And then she said 'let me die'."
He gives me a long far away look, signalizing he isn't done talking yet, but he's trying to find the next words, the right ones.
"I didn't want to. I wanted her to live. I know the both of you would be destroyed. Broken. And Katniss…she asked me to. 'Please'. And I…I promised. I promised to do what she wanted me to. She's in a better place now. And she's happy."
Those words are spoken with grief and his voice is breaking at the end, but he gets all of them out.
He is right, he really is. Her life was ruled by the Capitol. They killed her husband and with that her will to live, a part of her, and they killed her in the end, too.
I feel a strange mixture of hate and pride. I'm proud I'm out here, not under the Capitol's rule; I'm disobeying their orders, I'm myself and I'm not…not theirs. I don't share my mother's fate.
There's also hate for them. That they found us, here, that they murdered her in this place that was supposed to be a refuge, a place of piece, somewhere safe, where they could never reach us. They destroyed it, they sullied this place with their aspiration for power, because no one should ever dare doubting the Capitol, no one should ever dare not playing by their rules. And whoever does is going to be punished.
We have to leave this place, and soon. It isn't safe, it never was, and all the happy memories with my father I have of it are now clouded by this image, my mother lying there, dead, murdered.
"I don't want this Capitol man to be the last person ever having laid hand on her. It isn't right." Usually, words fail me. But not now. Not today, not in this moment. Maybe it's the grief. Maybe it's the fact that this is the truth.
Prim, who hasn't done anything but laying there until now, gives a slight nod. "I'll clean her wounds." She sniffles, but I understand her. She rises from her spot on the wall an takes a bucket that was placed next to the fireplace.
"They've taken everything with them." Peeta is right, they have. Except for a water bottle and our smallest backpack; they must have overlooked them. He proceeds picking mother's body up and laying it down on a different place, not sprawled against the wall, so it has more dignity.
"I could have sworn brains had seen me while they were discussing it, but he didn't say anything." He sees my confusion, so he adds: "One told the other he was the one with the 'brains', so I decided to give him that name. The other one is 'brawns'."
I realize what he's doing. He's trying to distract me. He somehow seems to know I can't take words of comfort right now. He hasn't offered any. Distraction me seems to be a better way in his opinion, and I guess he's right. Comfort would mean a constant reminder of it.
"It'll be a lot harder now, without our supplies. Do you think we can do it?" He seems to be pondering it, but in the end his answer is:
"Do we have a choice?"
He's right. We don't. We have to survive, and I'm determined to, now more than ever. Make sure my mother didn't sacrifice her life for nothing.
Just then Prim comes back through the door, her face wet, as she obviously washed the tears off with the water from the lake. She doesn't say a word while she kneels down next to mother's body and begins cleaning her wounds. Prim is doing her job. It's like in the kitchen back in twelve with the patients on the table. She's seen so many dead people, cleaned up so many of them, she's kind of an expert at doing so. Her eyes are focused, and despite her professionalism I can see her trying to suppress the tears threatening to spill over again.
For some reason, I don't want her to. She should let her feelings out, she shouldn't be like me. I realize that's what is happening, she isn't doing that for her sake, she's doing it for mine. The little girl I knew is gone for now and a young woman has taken her place, a young woman trying not to cause me more pain.
I decide to put aside my reluctance to be near an open wound and go over to her, trying not to look at them though, and start helping Prim.
When mother's body is clean and there are only scars left, I find there is something missing. We will bury her, of . That's the reason why Peeta is out there at the very moment, scooping out a grave with some limb shaped like a spade he found.
I push the thought away, though. I can't give her anything anymore, whatever is missing won't be found and we may as well get over with it so we can move.
As much as I loved this place before, now I don't want to see it anymore. The Capitol's dark shadow hangs above it.
The funeral doesn't take long. I know there is something about waiting three days, but we can't afford to do that. She won't care anymore, she can't. After all, we don't have a coffin either.
Peeta is the first to say a few lines, which he ends with 'I promise'. Prim is only able to get out the words 'I love you' before the tears and the hiccups we both let out when we're crying stop her. I only tell her I hope she is in a better place now and that I forgive her. Then the tears, and I make a vow they will be the last ones for her, mine and Prim's, seal her grave together with a lot of earth.
After that, the three of us rise. "We're going to leave now, aren't we?" It's Prim's question, but I'm sure she knows the answer.
"Yes. We are." Prim gives a nod.
"Where?" This question has been plaguing me over the last hours, too. I don't know any other place to go, not really. The only thing I know is that I don't want to head into the direction the hovercraft disappeared to, so I asked Peeta, who thankfully knew which direction they chose.
And now I point to the left. "We'll sleep in the trees. I can't tell you more about our future."
Phew. She's dead. I hope you like this chapter though:) And I promise more fluff than in the previous chapters for the next one. Not too much, but more:)
I've never written someone dying before, so would you mind telling me if it was OK? Thanks:)