Chapter 14- Boiling Point

Katniss POV

This was a prime example of why I hated the Hunger Games. Maybe Gale was right, you do pick favorites and cry when they die. But the boy from 5, he had been noble and died to save the girl I'd call my second sister. If you're wondering, yes, I was crying.

I heard the doors slide open. I almost screamed at the person who was there to go away, but I saw both Peeta and Gale there so I guess they could stay. "What's wrong Catnip?" Gale asked, coming to hug me. I wiped my eyes before I spoke.

"The boy from her district was killed saving her." I guessed they knew who the 'her' was.

"Oh Katniss, I'm so sorry," Peeta came over too, dropping all he held to hug me too.

'She sang to him,' I said.

"Like you did for… your friend?" I still couldn't think about Rue or hear her name, because every time I did, I had awful flashbacks of how she died.

"Yes."

Two Days Later

Seneca POV

Prim woke up right as I was wrapping her body in a towel after lifting her out of the gold bathtub in my personal quarters at the Game Control room. "So beautiful, I said.

"Hmmm…?" she was confused, but she leaned to kiss me.

"You're so beautiful," I said again.

"No I'm not, I'm just a twig of a girl who was raised in the Seam," she corrected.

"To me, you beat the city in beauty by a million to one."

She turned back to the mirror I had set her down in front of. She looked herself over. I smiled as I brushed a lock of hair from her shoulder. Her hand had come up to the place where mine had brushed the hair back. She kissed my hand.

At that moment in time, I realized I wanted my lips to touch every inch of her skin like hers had just touched my hand.

So that's what I started to do.

"Seneca… I love you," Prim whispered.

Nicki POV

I was dormant for two days after Roan had been killed; I hid in my prickly bush, not caring if it stabbed me repeatedly. Maybe I deserved it, because I had not saved him.

If I won by some odd chance and returned home, his family would hate me.

I remembered singing the song to him as he died in my grasp. Tears sprang up in my eyes. I blinked them back. I wasn't going to have a breakdown just so the Capitol audience could lap it up.

Fuck all of them.

I dug around it my survival pack and gorged myself in some jerky I had and some of my precious water. I should leave soon, to refill it, but it was getting too cold to move and the wind was blowing so hard that I could not see out in the distance.

After eating, I laid back down to see if I could try to sleep off my grief. As I closed my eyes I heard a rustling. I assumed it was just the wind, but it spoke;

"Nicki, I came to help you."

Juniper POV

"You're… going to help me?' Despite the fact that she must be older than me by at least two years, it sounded like she was the scared child and I was the saint.

"Yeah. Here," I gave her the knife I had been using since the Games started.

"But that leaves you without a weapon," she protested after I made her take it.

"Not exactly. I picked up this from one of the fallen tributes," I showed her the switchblade.

"Are you sure someone as young as you should be running around with that?" I could have sworn that she almost laughed.

"No."

After a pause, Nicki blinked, "All right then, so, allies?"

I hugged her, "Allies."

Haymitch POV

Effie came in with her ridiculously high heels as I'd just watched little Juniper make an ally. "What's happened? Has anyone been killed? I hope our tributes…'

"Cool your jets. No, no one's dead. Juniper just allied with another tribute."

"With a Career?"

I laughed at that prospect. Effie was entirely clueless, as she had never been thrown in to the arena like I had. It was an unspoken rule that if you were sane, you did not ally with the Careers. That was a sure way to get a knife in the back. Literally.

"No," I said taking a sip of booze, "with the girl from 5."

Gale POV

I sat in front of the flat screen in the Everdeen apartment. This was sick, that I was watching this just like they did. I was on the edge of my seat, just like they usually were. This was wrong, and the worst part was, I knew it.

"Gale you want some hot chocolate?" Katniss called from the bar area.

"What's it made of?" I asked. I'd never had anything like what hot chocolate sounded to be.

"Coco beans."

"Sure," I accepted. She brought two mugs and gave one to me. "Thanks, Catnip."

"What's happened?" she asked as I flipped the channel back to the Games.

'I don't know. UI was too preoccupied watching live news reports from District 5 where there's been a mass killing of Peacekeepers."