A/N: I know I say this every time, but I mean it every time when I say THANK YOU! Like I said before, I didn't know I was going to go this far, but with the feedback I'm getting, I felt a lot better about going on. (: Also, to myname and jeffydohmer, I don't know if I trust myself to change the plot at all…but, jeffydohmer, I like your idea a lot! I'll see what I can work out…Thanks again everyone!
"Hey!" I give a start as Katniss shouts, breaking the frightening silence that told us quite clearly that we weren't to go home yet. "What's going on?"
I look down at Cato, his body mangled and bloody, and fight the urge to be sick. "Maybe it's the body. Maybe we have to move away from it." As awful as it is to look at, I hope that we won't have to move. My leg, already injured from Cato so many days ago, has been ripped to shreds yet again thanks to the mutts. Why isn't the hovercraft here?
"Think you could make it to the lake?" Katniss asks anxiously.
"Think I better try," I reply, sliding myself slowly across the horn. She helps me inch down to the ground, and half-supports, half-drags me to the lake. I'm trying so hard not to cry out from the pain that it's difficult to focus on anything else. Getting to the lake takes too long, but once we get there, Katniss helps me into a sitting position, then takes water in her hands and gives it to me, then takes some for herself. The mockingjay sings its low, solemn note, and the hovercraft appears and takes Cato's body away. That means that the hovercraft will be here soon, won't it?
Silence. Again. No one is coming.
"What are they waiting for?" I croak. The wound on my leg has been opened, which isn't surprising considering that the tourniquet was as good as removed.
"I don't know," Katniss responds, a look of utter hopelessness on her face. She notices my leg and seems to come back to her senses, getting up and retrieving an arrow to retie the tourniquet.
Before she can return, though, we hear the voice of Claudius Templesmith boom through the arena. "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 The earlier revision has been revoked.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. Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor."
It doesn't hit me immediately. Katniss turns and stares at me in horror, and then it sinks in.
They were never going to let us go home together. This has just provided the most entertainment that anyone in the Capitol could ever imagine. Two star-crossed lovers, destined to be separated. One of us will make it home. One will die here.
But I have said to myself so many times that I would give my life for the girl standing in front of me. Never once was it a lie.
"If you think about it, it's not that surprising," I say quietly, the pain in my voice evident. I get to my feet, trying hard not to topple again. I stumble forward, reaching for my knife, preparing to escape this pain, preparing to send Katniss home.
And I look up to see an arrow pointed at my heart.
By the time I've thrown my knife to the lake, Katniss' expression has shifted to one of utmost shame. Her bow and arrow fall to the ground, where she stares at them, stunned.
"No. Do it." Kill me. Please. I give back her weapons.
"I can't. I won't."
"Do it. Before they send those mutts back or something. I don't want to die like Cato."
"Then you shoot me!" She's shaking. "You shoot me and go home and live with it!"
Never.
"You know I can't," I say as calmly as possible. There are no words to tell her what that would do to me. I throw the bow and arrow to the ground. "Fine, I'll go first anyway." I tear the bandage off my leg. It won't take me long to bleed to death.
"No." She kneels down, still shaking as she tries to rewrap my bandage. "You can't kill yourself."
"Katniss. It's what I want."
"You're not leaving me here alone!" she hisses at me, looking close to tears.
I get painfully to my feet and pull her up with me. "Listen, we both know they have to have a victor. It can only be one of us. Please, take it. For me." I take a deep breath. And spill. Everything I've ever thought about her, that I'd daydreamed about telling her, it all comes out. "Katniss, when Prim was reaped, and you volunteered…I-I thought I'd go crazy. You're a fighter, I knew you would try here in the Games, but there are so many people here who have trained for this, trained all their lives. So you can't imagine what it did to me to know that you would be in here, with all these killers." I shudder inwardly at the thought that I'm one, too. I try to brush it aside. "And then I was reaped, too. I was so scared, but…I was glad, too. Because this way, I couldn't lose you, not really. I would die before I let them hurt you. I promised myself-so many times-that I would get you home if it was the last thing I did, and it could have been. It will be. Because I love you, Katniss. You can't imagine. Those words…'I love you,' they're such an understatement. You're what I live for. You're what I'll die for.
"And think about me going home without you. I might as well die. I probably would, because there would be nothing left for me. Years and years of mentoring children that I could be sending to their deaths, years and years of icing a cake, or baking bread, because that's the only escape I get. Without you, I'm-I'm nothing, Katniss. You are the very best part of me. I've never been good enough for you, and I never will be. But somehow, I have you…and I'm not going to lose you.
"Let me go. Please. Let me die. Sooner instead of later, without you."
Her fingers jump to the pouch on her belt. Nightlock. Maybe she thinks that if she's quick enough, she can get away with it. I grab her wrist. "No, I won't let you." Don't you understand?
"Trust me." It's the steadiest thing that she's said in a long time. Her silver eyes search mine, determination clear in them. I can't trust you…I can't lose you.
But I let go. I do trust her.
She fills my hand with berries, then her own. If both of us can't go home, then neither can. "On the count of three?"
I lean down and kiss her. One last time. "The count of three."
We stand back to back. I can feel her shoulder blades in my back, hunger having taken meat from her bones. Our fingers of one hand are intertwined, the others are holding our deaths.
"Hold them out. I want everyone to see," I say at the last second, my heart thumping in my chest.
She squeezes my hand. We count together. "One. Two. Three."
My hand flies to my mouth, tossing the berries inside.
Trumpets and the voice of Claudius Templesmith register in my head. "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! I give you-the tributes of District Twelve!"
District Twelve. I am going home. With Katniss. The berries fly from my mouth as I try to get rid of any juice. I pull Katniss to the water, and we wash our mouths out thoroughly. I throw my arms around her and she falls into me, panting and gasping.
"You didn't swallow any?" she makes sure.
I shake my head. "You?"
"Guess I'd be dead by now if I did."
"I guess I would be, too," I reply, but I can't even hear myself over the roar of the crowd. I guess they're playing the sounds from the Capitol, but I could be wrong; darkness has been threatening to take me for so long now, I don't know how much longer I can hold up. Maybe I've finally begun to hallucinate. Maybe I'm dreaming.
A ladder falls from a hovercraft that the darkness takes from me, and we step together on the same ladder. We begin to rise, but I'm falling. We reach the top and the blackness wins. The last thing I feel is Katniss's grip on my arm, holding me with her.
"I think he's closer now. Katniss, can you shoot him?"
She agrees silently that taking his life would be kind. "My last arrow's in your tourniquet."
"Make it count," I say, unzipping my jacket so that she can retrieve it. She reties the tourniquet after removing the arrow, trying to keep it tight. I can feel the blood still draining out, little by little. I am falling. Slowly. Very slowly. But I'll fall into the darkness soon.
I hold onto her waist as she leans over the edge, aiming at who used to be our enemy. She takes careful aim, her arrow poised to end his life, end his pain, when suddenly, I see it all flash before me.
My leg gives way, and I stumble. I keep my hold around Katniss's waist, but I've knocked her off balance, and she flips over my arm. "Katniss!" I scream as she falls to the mutts, landing on top of one that squirms beneath her. "No! No! NO! KATNISS!" I'm sobbing, screaming, terrified. I want to throw myself down at them, I want to tell them to take me, hurt me, kill me, instead of her. She slips off the wolf's back and shoots her arrow at Cato's heart. The cannon booms. Before I have time to register the fact that a wolf has just grabbed Katniss by the arm in its mouth, is ripping, is killing her, the cannon booms again.
She's gone.
"NOOOOOO!"
I am finished. I am dead. The pain I feel is deeper than anything I have ever known before. This is true agony. I want to die. There is nothing left. My Katniss, my beautiful Katniss, is gone. I let her die. I swore over and over again that I would die to send her home. I broke the promise. I let them kill her. I begin to hurl myself over the edge of the Cornucopia, but the wolves are gone. In my agony, they have disappeared. Cato's mangled body is gone, too, but they have left Katniss. They have left her, just to torture me. Just to show me that they can. Just to show me that, now that I've won the Games, now that I've survived, I must endure an eternity of grief for the one person who made my life worth it.
And they have killed her. I let them. She died because of all of us. All of them did. I outlived every child that set foot in this arena. I outlived the person that I cannot live without.
Her body is so broken. Not necessarily stuck out at strange angles; just there. Just dead. Her eyes still open, pain etched clearly in them. The light taken from them by death. Her hair in knots around her face. I can't take my eyes away. I can't look away from the only thing left of Katniss Everdeen.
I have won the Hunger Games. But to say that I feel defeated is an understatement.
The world slides into focus. All I can see is white. I'm lying in a bed that is unbelievably soft. Two memories swirl into my thoughts.
Berries. Suicide.
Katniss. Dead.
I am so beyond terrified. Which is real? Which did my mind, traumatized by the horrors of the Games, make up?
Sorry it's rather short. I thought this stopping place would be best. But hey, reviewers get a virtual hug! From me!