Author's Note: Two chapters in two days, Whooo! It's to make up for lack of chapters for the past couple of months. Anyway, I started writing this chapter up yesterday and finished today along with proof-reading it. Though if I have made any huge grammar and/or spelling mistakes, let me know and I'll fix it up, I just wanted to get this posted as I'll be too tired during the week to do so and you would have to wait until next weekend until this chapter was posted and we wouldn't want that now, would we, lol?
It is only a quicky chapter but its going to help kept the ball rolling for what I want to now happen with the big Feast scene.
Big, HUGE thank yous to both WendyHamelet and LilyLunaPotter142, both of them have given me some great starter ideas for how I'm going to write my Feast chapter up, so thank you very much both of you. You've both been life saviours!

Anyway, on with the chapter. I hope you all enjoy and reviews are much loved!

Chapter Twenty-Six

Having Willow as my ally made my life in the game far more… complicated? Interesting? Comforting? Frightening? Too many words for the far too many emotions that were swimming around my head and heart.

A part of me was screaming that I should never have agreed to become allies with her, that it was stupid and that it would only end badly. But don't all things end badly in these games?

Willow is oblivious to my conflict or if she does notice, she's very good at hiding it. She asks me to teach her how to swim almost as soon as we finish breakfast and as I can think of no reason as to deny her request, I do so.

We go out the small opening in my cove, onto the rock shelf that is for me waist deep under water in our small clothes.

Here I give her her first ever swimming lesson. I teach her how to keep herself afloat and how to dogpaddle. She laughs and grins as she tries to follow my example of how to float on your back in the water, only that she sinks every time she tries, splashing back to the surface giggling as she shakes her great mop of wet hair out of her face. I find myself laughing and grinning with her, taking the delight of being able to play around in water like I used back in District Four.

We're careful to keep our laughter quiet, though, as I told Willow before we started that sound travels over water and if we are too loud, someone might hears us.

She nods her head very seriously and during our lesson, tries very hard to keep her laughter and excitable cries as quiet as possible. But it's hard and we're soon splashing and swimming about with reckless abandon.

When we finally got out and started trying ourselves in my cove, do I start to worry about the consequences of our fun, but like the day before no one, no Jade, no mutts suddenly appeared snarling above us and we are free to enjoy ourselves.

Was this normal in the games? For tributes to go days with nothing happening to them? I mean, it's been hardly days, more like a day that nothing remarkably threatening has happened to me, but still, this peace and quiet is strange. I haven't heard any cannons, none since Merl… none since I left the others.

Maybe the Gamemakers wanted to have some downtime before they started pulling the strings for the final confrontation before the end of the Games.

Whatever it was, I was going to embrace this peace and quiet for as long as I possibly can because I know it won't last and I know that before the end, things will return to chaos and death will be breathing even more loudly down the back of my neck.

"We need to get more firewood." I say to Willow after lunch.

While we've been careful to only create a fire to cook our food, we had still gone through the pile that I had collected two days ago.

"Ok." Willow nodded and we started gathering together what we thought we might need for the trip outside our cove. We planned on gathering some herbs and roots while we were out searching for wood.

So with our lighten backpacks on our backs and our weapons strapped and tucked around our body's we headed out, Willow going first because she is far braver than I am and checked that the cost was clear.

Together we stayed low as we crossed the rocks and when we reached the beach we took turns to run across it, with me going first this time. I checked the immediate tree line for anyone, listening carefully for any hint that danger might be near before I waved Willow to come and join me.

I must say, going foraging Will was a much more enjoyable experience than it was say with Sera and Jep, if only because Will knows exactly what to look for, which branches will burn well and what plants do what.

Hopefully the twins will remember all that I taught them, but with Willow I don't have to worry about her accidently poisoning herself.

Maybe it is because I had Willow with me that I decided that we'd go further than I had gone into the forest when I was on my own. With the two of us we covered more ground and could gather more herbs, roots and wood. I didn't think anything of how far we were from the safety of our cove, that if distaste hit we were a long way from safety. As they say the benefit of hindsight is marvellous.

I was just bending down to pick some wild onion when I first smelt it. Smoke. Heavy and thick, making me chock as I breathed it in.

I looked around me wildly, horrified when I saw smoke snaking its way through the trees towards where I was kneeling.

"Willow?"

No reply and I started to panic when I found that she was nowhere to be seen. I was sure she had only been a few trees away from me only moments before, gathering mushrooms. Where had she gone? And why hadn't she told me that she was going to move out of range of sight? What had she been thinking?

"WILLOW!"

It was stupid to yell but the smoke was growing thicker by the moment and I could now feel the heat of the fire behind it. It was a big fire, I was sure of it, moving quickly through the forest's undergrowth.

"ANNIE!"

Willow was running towards me, her grey eyes wide with understandable terror and I quickly saw why. A fireball, looking almost like a miniature comet with a smoke trail, was hurtling in her direction at a terrifying speed.

"Willow, DROP!" I order, doing the exact same thing, lifting my head ever so slightly up from the undergrowth to watch as the fireball zoomed over where she lay on the forest floor. I winced and closed my eyes as I felt its heat as flew over my head before it crashed into a nearby tree, causing it to creak and fall from the large hole now in the middle of its trunk.

"RUN!"

We were on our feet and sprinting the way we had come in seconds, weaving and dodging fireballs and falling trees alike.

"ANNIE!"

My sprint slowed and when I looked behind me I saw that Willow had fallen well behind me, her short legs no match for mine that were used to running and had once it enjoyed it for fun.

Despite the fact that I know all of District Four was shrieking at me to leave her and keep running, I waited for Will to catch up with me before taking her rough little hand in mine and all but dragged her behind as I started sprinting again.'

She slowed me down considerably but we were least together and she was running faster with me than she would have if she was alone.

I could hear her gasping for air and sobbing against my back from both the smoke and her own fear but I kept on pushing forward.

I couldn't cry even though I am terrified, I couldn't be terrified or rather allow my terror to take control of me or I would become a statue, frozen with fire and the flames and smoke would consume us both.

Due to all the dodging and weaving we've had to do to avoid fireballs and falling trees we've been forced away from the route we took earlier and so are now running along the steep slope that I had fallen down days earlier when Jade was chasing me after she murdered Merle.

This part of the ridge is too steep and dangerous for us to try and climb or slide down, so we have to keep running along it, hoping to find some kind of relief, an ease to the slope that we can either climb or run down, but so far, nothing.

It was growing hard to breath; the smoke is so thick I am almost blind, though I can now see the fire burning its way through the trees towards us.

I never thought I'd think this, but I really wish Jade was around.

Dying by her hand was by far preferable to dying by burning. I knew that Willow and I would not be given the kindness of dying by smoke inhalation. The Capital will wish to see us die screaming as the raging fire bite into our flesh.

"ANNIE!"

Willow's scream breaks through my thoughts and I only just in time see the fireball hurtling towards us before it knocked both us clean off our feet and hurtling off the side of the ridge.

I couldn't scream as Willow's hand was ripped from mine.

I couldn't scream out in pain as I fell, hitting and rolling down the slope, bouncing of trees and rocks.

I couldn't scream when my head hit something hard and the world grew black with the final thing I saw was a huge tree falling down upon me, its bark glowing orange as the fire came swooping down to claim me.

What had I been thinking, just this morning? That things seemed to be peaceful and quiet in the games right now?

I should have touched wood when I thought that. I should have known it was too good to last long and that I should have expected something like this to happen. But I hadn't, I had been naïve in thinking that the peace and quiet might last for a little while longer.

Look where that kind of thinking has got me now.

I'm sorry Grandma.

I'm sorry Finnick.

I'm sorry baby. I'm so, so sorry.

Author's Note: Yeah, yeah, don't you all hate me?
I think this is one of my worst cliffhangers yet, though the ending of Part 2 was a pretty big cliffie, wasn't it? Though a couple of you did guess who it was who called out to Annie at the end of it. Question because I'm curious and I'm interested to read your thoughts; in this fanfic what have been the biggiest cliffhangers, twists and/or surprises for you as you've read this? Let me know because I'd love to hear and did any of you guess something and later discover you were right? Let me know.
Thanks for reading and reviews are greatly loved!
Bye for now!