The wind started to whip at our faces, the snow beating relentlessy against us. It was a mistake to leave the forest and now we were lost in a tundra with nothing but white around us. Even with Peeta's hand in mine, I couldn't make him out.
"Clove?" I shouted hoping she would be able to hear me over the winds churn.
"I'm here!" Clove shouted back. I couldn't see her, but her voice at least confirmed she was here.
"Take my hand, I don't want any of us getting seperated." I shouted. Peeta was still silent from the encounter with Katniss. It obviously shook him and he was having trouble coming back to us. My grip on his hand tightened. "Do you want you're glove back? I'm sure you're hand is freezing."
There was no answer so I repeated it, a little louder this time. "I heard you the first time, Cato." His words held a sting to them that shot through me painfully. It's only been a few hours since everything happened, but it seemed like he was blaming me for it all.
Clove's hand grasped mine, making me jump. "We need to get out of this snow before it traps us." She shouted, "And we don't know where we are going, we might walk off a cliff or something. We should turn back."
"Turn back to what? We don't even know where we came from." I shouted back, "It's pure white out here and our tracks are probably covered by now."
"Well we have to do something!" Clove shouted back.
That's when Peeta started moving, consequently dragging the two of us with him with our locked hands. "We at least know what direction we were headed, if we turn straight back we should at least hit the forest at some point." Peeta snapped.
I didn't know what was worse, the bitting cold from the blizzard that left us all numb or the cold hatred Peeta was radiating. "I suppose you're right." Clove hollered back. "The forest did seem to circle the cornucopia, we'd hit it at some point if we turned back. Even if we moved a little of course."
"And what about the cliffs and ledges?" I yelled.
"Would you rather stay here and be burried alive?" Peeta barked back at me. "Let's go."
He was pulling us along before I could even get to answer him. What happened to my Peeta? This one isn't the one I was falling for. Had fallen for. It was the first time I admitted it to myself, that I was already his.
We walked for an hour before Peeta stopped. "This doesn't seem right. The ground is different."
"No shit." Clove replied, "It's a blizzard, everything is being blown around."
"No, what we were walking on before was rock, this is ice." A flashback to the 'lake' me and Clove spent the first night on came to mind.
"Blizzards usually cause ice to form on the ground, Peeta." Clove answered
"Yes, but it takes time, it doesn't usually happen during the storm. Snow doesn't randomly turn into ice unless it melts first. Do you really think the snow melted during this blizzard?" It amazed me how much Peeta actually knew about the cold, but then again he was from district 12 where they had some of the worst winters in the country. "We must have turned around somewhere."
"Can we walk around it? Or just move forward, we turned around at least, we must be headed toward the forest's direction." I asked, I wasn't very happy about having to walk across ice again, however the need to be out of the storm was more pressing.
"I would rather not travel over ice." Clove shouted.
"We could follow the ice for a little while. We can't stay out here much longer or we'll freeze to death."
It was difficult to hear eachother over the wind so we all fell silent as we walked. We had to have been getting close by now. It seemed as if hours have passed by, and without the sun to judge our time, there was no way of telling for sure. Peeta's hand was still in mine. His ungloved hand was turning red. I pulled him to a stop, he turned to me confused. I took his glove off and handed it back to him.
"Take it, you need it more than I do right now." I shouted at him. He tried to push it away but I forced him to put it on. He wasn't going to lose his hand because of me. I won't let it happen, plus I could take the cold for at least a little while.
We continued on in silence again, the blizzard seemed to be letting down. You can never tell for sure, seeing nothing but white constantly starts to mess with your mind a little. I kept seeing random shadows fly by. I had to distract myself. My hand was now frozen numb without the glove and I wondered how Peeta had bared it for so long. The Peeta I knew was broken, and I never wanted anything more in my life than to put him back together.
Peeta had stopped, causing Clove to run into my back. "What's wrong" I shouted to him.
"Pretty sure we made it back to the forest." Peeta said, pulling us into the trees.
The snow almost instantly died down under the trees protection and it was the first time since the storm began that I could fully see Clove and Peeta. All three of us were covered head to toe in snow and probably looked as exhausted as I felt.
The wind was still heavy, but the snow was less intimidating in the forest's protective shield. We moved deeper into the woods hoping to find a more heavily wooded area to stop.
It didn't take long, the tree's thickened quickly the more we moved in. The wind was still strong, but the large foliage broke most of its power and the canopy protected us from most of the snow.
"Thank God!"Clove shouted, collapsing to the ground. "I don't think I could have gone any further."
Peeta sat down against a tree and brushed the majority of the snow off of himself.
"With the blizzard as cover, we might be able to make a fire unnoticed." I said. It would be difficult though, most of the wood in the area was wet, and building a fire was never something I learned back in District 2. Plus, did we even have anything to build a fire? We never actually went through our packs yet. It was sad, the last two days had been hell and we never really had a chance to see what we had.
"I'm for that, a fire sounds amazing." Clove was back on her feet, where she found the energy is a complete mystery. "Anything to warm me up a bit."
She wandered off a little in search of firewood and I busied myself with the contents of my pack. I pulled out some rope, the sleeping bag we had been using, two loaves of bread, and a small flashlight. The damn flashlight would have been useful last night if I had known it was there.
"How's your hand?" I asked Peeta as I reached for the pack Clove left for me to dig through. I opened it to find another sleeping bag, a small cloth similar to the one stuffed in my jacket, a bag of smoked jerkey, and a water canister. Normally a water canister would have been usefull, but with all the snow around, it was easy to stay hydrated.
"Peeta?" He wasn't his normal talkative self and I needed some kind of recognition from him, anything. If he wanted to punch me, I'd let him. I couldn't do this without him, and I won't allow him to fall apart on me. "Talk to me."
"What do you want me to say?" Peeta coldly responded. "That one of the people I've looked up to my whole life called me a faggot and wants me dead?"
"You looked up to her?" I asked. It never really made sense why he was so attached to her, but now it all seemed to click into place.
"Of course I did, you say it like it was some big secret." Peeta said, "I'll always be a little hurt that she never acknowledged me, esspeically with what I put myself through for her. But it didn't mean I wasn't watching. She seemed so strong, not many people liked her. But I admired her strength, she provided for her family in any way she could. I've looked up to her for a long time, wishing I was that strong… Only to find out she hates me because of who I am. Is that what you wanted?"
"I honestly didn't know." I answered, settling my head on his shoulder. He initally pulled away slightly, but let me rest against him. "I'm sorry, I did't know."
"What are you apologizing for? For how long I've known you, I've only seen you apologize once before." Peeta answered, honestly this was the third time thinking back to Clove, but that's not the point. I didn't even really know what I was apologizing for. Have I really changed this much? If I have, I'm glad. The person I am now is happier than I ever was, even if I have to fight the person I care about most to the death, it doesn't matter. At least I got to really live for a short time. His arm slid around my back, and I was pulled closer into him.
"I'm sorry," Peeta replied, "I know you're only concerned about me. I'm not used to having someone care as much about me as you do."
I relaxed against him, his hand settled on my shoulder and I was reminded of it's exposure to the cold. I felt him kiss my clothed forehead and I felt safe in his arms, letting my thoughts of his hand disappear for the moment.
"I tried finding the driest wood I could, but it's all still pretty wet." She said. She stopped when she saw me in Peeta's arms. I could see her smile through her facemask and knew Clove would always be there, even if she went mental at times. "All cozy, are you?" Then again, maybe I missed mental Clove at times.
She dropped the firewood, probably as confused what to do with it as I was. She was trying to stack them in a strange manner. Peeta rolled his eyes and stood. "You have to make it into a tepee. Fire has to vent a little or you'll never get it started. Here, let me."
Peeta stacked the wood against eachother, forming a cone shape. "When did you become wilderness man?" I asked him.
"Grew up in 12, we only get electricty for about an hour a month. So, I've gotten pretty good at making fires." Peeta explained, "Grab my pack, I know mine has some matches in it. Hopefully I can get this thing started."
Clove handed him his pack and he pulled out the matches and some of the gauze from the first aid kit. "Think we'll need much more of this?" He asked, "I'll save a little to redress you're wounds, but I'll never get this fire started unless I use something to help it along."
He placed the gauze under the wood tent and started it on fire with the matches. It blazed fast, causing the wood to hiss from the water inside it. It took a little coaxing, but the fire finally started and we were gathered around it, letting it warm our chilled bodies. We ate some of the smoked jerky and bread from our packs, only enough to keep us going, saving most of it for later.
I rested my head against Peeta's thigh and looked up into the sky; the blizzard started to die but was still strong enough to make our fire invisible to the others. The sky slowly turned to the colors of the sunset, magnified by the heavy snow in the air: day 2 was coming to an end. Peeta's hand rested on my chest as I watched the sky grow darker. He looked down at me, my eyes catching the last glimpse of blue before the only light we had was from the fire. I pulled him down to me, letting our lips meet and feeling my internal fire burn, making me warmer than the fire we were sitting next to ever could. Our kiss broke and I let myself relax back into his thigh. My eyes started to close. A random memory popped into my head, something my escort said. 'I watched you fall in love with Peeta'. Maybe I did.