Author's Note: Hi everyone. I was going to wait until at least Friday to post this chapter but I'm weak and what's the point of it sitting around on my thumbdrive when I've already spell/grammar check it half a dozen times. Typical that my writing bug bites me now that I'm working. Couldn't have bitten me while I was sitting at home, twiddling my thumbs wanting desperately to write and finish this fanfic, but nope, had to wait until I started working and then bite me during work hours. I don't want to admit that I caved into it, but that would be lying. But I will say this in my defence, I've only been writing during my lunch break and when I've finished all my other work.

Anyway, enough from, please enjoy and reviews are much loved!

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I woke slowly, feeling completely and utterly rotten and woozy in the head.

My head spun as I slowly and carefully pushed myself up onto my elbows. Smoke was now hanging thickly in the air around me and I could feel the heat of the fire from somewhere behind me.

I struggled to move, to get up, to start running again but when I tried, searing pain shot up my right leg causing me to scream and causing my eyes to water even worse than they had been before.

I twisted around to see that the tree that I had seen falling towards me seconds before I had blacked out was lying beside me and that my right foot was caught underneath it, crushed between its trunk and the forest floor.

Oh no. Oh not good.

I looked over the trunk of the tree and saw that the fire was racing down the slope towards me.

Oh not good at all!

I tried to pull my foot free but only caused myself more pain and filling my lungs up with more smoke from my screams.

Out of the corner of my watering eye I saw something fast and orange shooting towards me and only just managed to drop myself to the ground as a fireball belted passed where I had been just sitting.

They weren't going to let me live past this. At least, they weren't going to make it easy.

I somehow managed to wiggle myself into a position where I could claw at the area around my trapped foot, digging fiercely at the dirt, trying to dig a hole deep enough that I could pull my foot free.

It was painful work, not only from the excruciating pain in my foot but also from the angle that I was having dig from which was awkward, my body twisted and hunch to get around to my foot while also trying to keep myself as small as possible so that I could be less of a target.

The smoke was growing ever thicker and the fireballs pelting towards me (some I barely ducked out of way of) were becoming more frequent and with greater accuracy.

I sobbed as I tried to pull my foot free but it was still wedge to deeply between the tree and forest floor.

Sobbing and coughing from the smoke, I tried again at digging my foot free, clawing even more desperately at the soil and bark but it was no good. My foot was stuck tight and unless I wanted to try and saw it off with my knife, I wasn't going anywhere.

I looked for maybe a moment at my knife at my hip before I shook the idea out of my head. It would take too much time, time that I did not have with the fire growing ever closer to me. Besides I'd mostly likely faint from blood lost and a general weak stomach before I even got half way through my upper ankle.

I know it's stupid and that it wouldn't help me in anyway and would only make me look weak in my final moments and that when I thought about my death I had wanted to appear strong and resolute for my Grandmother and Finnick's sake. I didn't want to spend my final moments alive crying, but here I was, in my final moments, crying.

The only thing I'm thankful for is that I haven't become hysterical yet. At the moment, I'm simply sitting beside the tree trunk, my foot still firmly trapped beneath, sobbing miserably as I watch the smoke and flames close in around me. I didn't want to go out screaming either, but that's how this was looking to play out.

I hugged my stomach, whispering muted apologies to my baby, cringing as the fires heat starts licked my skin.

I hunch down further, wanting to last out for as long as possible. I don't know why I bothered pulling my shirt up and over my mouth and nose. I don't know why I'm simply not accepting my fate.

It's strange because in some ways, I am as I'm not trying to dig myself free anymore and have said my apologies to my baby but in other ways I'm not. I'm not ready to die and that's why I'm hunching down to the ground, still trying to keep away from the flames. I'm not ready to die and that's why I pulled my shirt over the lower part of my face. A useless thing to do now, I know, but I can't just lie down and wait to die. I can't.

So keep on digging then! A voice in my head snarls, but I'm too weak from the smoke and the fall and from my previous effort of digging that I can't bring myself to start digging again.

So you are lying down and simply dying then! The voice snarls in disgust.

"I can't." I whisper, feeling more hot tears burning my cheeks.

Dig!

"I can't"

DIG! DIG! DIG!

"I can…"

"Annie?"

My head shot up and stared in disbelief as a small little figure came running towards me, her own shirt pulled up over her face like me and her think, black hair was hanging in a heavy, dirty mess around her face, but I could see her eyes, her beautiful grey eyes and I couldn't help but cry out her name in joy.

"Willow?"

"Annie, come on, we have to run, the fire…"

"My foot." I groaned, interrupting her.

I heard her suck in air through her shirt before she was beside me and digging with energy that I envied.

Well, don't just sit there and let her do all the work! DIG!

Groaning, I twisted myself around and helped Willow with digging my foot free. After a few moments with both our efforts I was able to pull it free, sobbing as I did so. Partially from relief, the rest from the pain that went from the tip of my toes right up to my hip.

With Willow's help I stood and only from her arm around my waist did I not fall down.

"We have to run." Willow whispered. She was right, we did, the fire was upon us, breathing down our necks but I wasn't sure if I could, not with my foot.

"Annie. Please." I looked down at her and saw her terror in face, her twelve year old face. No twelve year old should be facing this kind of terror. No child or adult should be facing this kind of terror.

I swallowed my fear and pain and caught hold of her hand, while I used my other hand to fish out my compass, trying to keep my balance as I sway on one foot.

"That way." I said and took a step to start running in that direction and almost fell, my eyes watering at the searing pain that shot up my leg as I took a step.

"Annie?"

"I'm ok. I'm ok."

Taking a deep breath and fighting back screams and tears of pain, I forced myself to move, first limping, then a limping walk and finally a limping run. I am nowhere near as fast as I had once been; in fact Willow was now running faster than me but was making herself run at my pace.

"You go." I say, trying to smile encouragingly at her, that it was alright for her to leave me but she shakes her head and stays glued to my side.

I don't know how we managed to get out of the burning forest and on to the beach or how we ever managed to get over the rocks to our cove, but we did, somehow. I don't really remember. The last thing I clearly remember before I fell unconscious was plunging my feet into the shoal water of the little pool inside our cove, gasping in relief as I did so before I blacked out again.

When I came to again, like the last time, I wished I hadn't.

My feet!

I gasped and sobbed as searing pain shot up both my legs from my feet. My right foot felt as if it had been hacked off with a sword, while my left foot or rather the bottom of it felt as if I had millions upon millions of little nails sticking into it.

"Annie?"

"Willow?"

Willow was crouching over me, her dark eyes wide with worry.

"Are you ok?" I whispered through parched, cracked lips.

She nodded her head very seriously before holding a water bottle to my lips for me to drink.

I winced as the cool liquid trickled down my sore, raw throat but I drank greedily despite the pain. Compared to my feet, my throat was nothing more than an irritating itch.

After I had drank my fill, so much so that I now needed to go empty my bladder but did I even dare to look towards my feet.

Like with most things that I dare myself into doing, I really wished I hadn't. Forcing back my nausea as I stare at my bloody and swollen feet, I decided to tackle the worst foot first, meaning my right one.

With knife in hand, because there was no way I'd be able to get my boot off otherwise, I started cutting the leather. I had only made a tiny cut in the leather and my hands were already shaking from the pain I felt every time I bumped my ankle.

"I'll do it." Willow said and before I could say a word, she's taken the knife from me, has me back on my back and carefully cradling my right foot in her lap.

I bite down hard upon my hand as she gently cuts and pulls the boot of my foot. With the final cut and pull I can taste blood in my mouth and I can see black spots above me. It's only Willow's harsh gasp that stops me from fainting and forcing myself to sit up and look.

Again, I wish I hadn't.

My right foot was a mess. Clearly broken in multiple, multiple places, it was a pretty painting of black, blue and purple colours, reminding me of the ocean during a truly awful storm. My right foot was a storm of many broken things.

I bit back a whimper as I took in the broken bones just barely concealed under my skin, just waiting for a chance to burst through.

"Bad." I whisper to myself, my head feeling dizzy again, "this is really, really bad."

My feet, my speed had been my one and only true ally. The one thing I had over everyone else and now… it was gone. My right foot mangled beyond the primitive care I could give it and my left?

Well, I wasn't entirely sure what was wrong with my left foot, the top of it looked fine but I could see from the tarp that Willow had obviously placed under my feet while I was out cold, to try and keep as much infection out of them as possible, had blood on it.

"What should we do?" Willow asked as she eyed my right foot with horror.

"Ah…" good question.

"Clean it."

"It'll hurt."

"Will, it already hurts." I say and I try to move towards the pool in our cove bitting back a sob when I pressed my left foot down.

"What's wrong with my left foot?" I ask when I give up trying to use my feet to move and simply used my elbows and butt to get me to the water's edge. I look away the water when it discoloured with my blood.

"Ah…" Willow starts.

"Will," I say looking at her because she's the safest and best thing to look at at this current moment in time, "just tell me."

"You've run it raw."

"What?"

"Because you hurt your right foot and your left foot had to take your weight and you've been doing so much running of late, you've run away the sole of your boot."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," Willow sighed, "that after you ran the sole of your boot out, you were just running on the sole of your foot and you, well, ran it out as well."

"Bone?" I squeaked.

"No, but you've ran a good couple of inches off the soles of your feet."

I started to hyperventilate. I couldn't help it.

My feet, my speed had so far been the only thing that had saved me from certain death… without them I was no better than a fish caught in a net!

I was dead. I was so very, very dead.

I might not be breathing my last breaths yet, but it would only be a matter of time. If I couldn't run, than I might as well just start screaming out Jade's name now and get it over with.

You can still swim. A voice, Grandma's voice, said.

Fat lot of good that'd do me though, I thought back angrily, brushing angry tears from my eyes.

"We need to wrap your feet and try and set your foot." Willow was saying but I was beyond hearing, I had hit my pain tolerance and could no longer deal with it or reality and so I did the only sensible thing I could think of to do in this moment and that was to faint and so… I did.

Author's Note: Don't you hate me for doing this to Annie?
I had planned to have her feet hurt from the beginning good injury (are there such things?) for her to have but now that I'm actually writing it I'm realising what a huge obstacle making your herione basically unable to walk. But I can't and won't change it now. I'll figure it out somehow.
Question: How many of you are curious to know what's happening with the other tributes? Like Jade, Jep, Sera, Cole, Garth and so on? I know when I was reading Hunger Games, I was always wondering what the other tributes were doing because as we all know the story is from Katniss POV so we only ever see the other tributes when she sees them. So my question is, is anyone interested in reading a serious of one-shots from all the different tributes POVs?
If I have enough people interested, I'll write it up because I have basically all my tributes backstories in my head, just sitting there.
Other wise, I'm thinking of moving on from this (Once this is finished of course) and writing up a Hobbit fanfic. Yes, I'm a huge LOTR fan, it's surprising I haven't written any fanfiction for this fantastic book series yet.
Thanks all for reading, reviews and ideas welcomed and loved.
Bye for now!