This is not good.
The fog will catch us any minute. I can't run because I'm in quicksand. I've completely sank from below the knee. This is terrible, this is the worst, this is how I might die.
"We can handle this," Emma says, as asserting as always. "Rahne, hold one of his hands, I'll take the other."
I'm sinking like a ship. I shift, I try to get myself out of this.
"Stop moving!" Emma warns. "You'll sink faster,"
They pull me by both arms, but it's no avail. I'm going down, fast.
I'm not making it out of this, am I?
Days ago, I almost drowned in the flood. Yet I survived, only to end up in quicksand. I wish I just let myself drown that day. It'd be a better death. And now it's quicksand or fog.
This stupid pin is not lucky at all.
Emma stares behind me, her eyes widen. "Fuck," She curses. She releases my hand, and gently pulls Rahne away from me. "Rahne, this thing isn't slowing down. You need to go."
"What…" Rahne looks at Emma in disbelief and keeps pulling my arm. "No!"
"Yes," Emma pulls her away again, impatiently. "Run to the opposite side of the arena. As fast as you can. You can do it. I know you're fast. I'll get him out and we'll meet, okay?" Emma gives her a half hearted smile, and motions straight ahead.
"I'm not leaving you guys behind to die!"
"We're not going to die, Rahne." Emma rolls her eyes. "Don't be dramatic."
Don't be dramatic. Only Emma could say that in a situation like this. I don't bother engaging in the conversation. My knees are already gone. This is their discussion, I'm already dead.
"You're lying!" Rahne pushes Emma away and reaches for me again. But Emma pulls her away again, much harder than before.
"I told you to RUN!" She screams her lungs out and pushes her in the opposite direction. Rahne lets out a sob, but she runs away.
Damn, Emma. Understandable, but still.
We're alone now. She stares after Rahne, she's making sure she's really gone.
My lower body has completely sunk. Emma returns to me. She holds both my hands and pulls me with all her strength. I can tell because her face is slowly going red.
"We can do this," She mutters. "It's not that bad."
Sure, Emma. We're being chased by poison fog and I'm in quicksand. Everything will be totally fine.
I do what Emma has been avoiding to do, and check how close the fog is. It's not too far.
"Emma…" I sigh.
"No," She says. "Don't even think about it."
"We don't have a lot of time,"
"Shut up, Scott," She pulls harder, but I don't even budge.
"You need to go."
"Shut up," Her face has gone tomato red. She's trying her best, but there's nothing to do. She needs to accept this. It's time.
"Emma, don't do this,"
She ignores me.
"Emma," I say, between my teeth. She's wasting time. I can't help but roll my eyes, and push her hands away. She fights it, hard, but I manage to get ahold of her wrists.
"If you stay here… You'll die." I point out the truth. The fog is bound to get her. There is no way either of us will make it out if she stays. If she leaves now, at least it'll be only one of us, not us both.
Emma takes her sweet time digesting my words.
"If I don't, you'll die." She responds. "You can get out of this—"
"Go away, Emma!" I can't be patient anymore. I'm sinking, for crying out loud. "This can't be how it ends, don't you get it?"
Emma pulls her hands away. She has that look again. The machinery inside her head— It's running. I just know she doesn't intend on listening to me.
Why do you always have to be so stubborn, Emma?
"The fog will be here in a minute, two minutes tops. If you stay, we'll both die. What happens to Rahne then?" I add, still trying to pursue her.
Emma looks to our left. She's not listening.
"Emma, please just run,"
I'm desperate. I hate it. I hate this, but I'm so fucking desperate right now.
I can't let her die because I wasn't careful. She's not dying because of this stupid fog. She's not dying because of me. I can't go knowing that I took someone with me. That I dragged her down with me. She deserves her chance to live. I've lost mine already, but she doesn't have to.
While I drown in guilt and self-pity, Emma runs. Just when I begin to relax and come to terms with my death, I realize that she's not running away, she's running to our left. She grabs a thick branch from the ground.
"Hold this,"
"It's about to catch up!" I say. It really is. Through approximation, I'd say we have less than a minute, in case the game makers don't do anything funny.
"I'm not leaving you behind, Scott." Emma offers the other end of the branch. "Now hold this, or else."
"I hate you," I mutter, like she did on the tree.
My hands wrap around the branch, she begins to pull me. I can hear the high pitched shrieks of the birds the fog has caught, they get closer second by second. Emma pulls me like her life is depending on it, which in a way does.
I'm scared.
I'm afraid that it won't work and the fog will get us. I'm afraid that she might end up in quicksand too. And then there's Rahne… What will she do without us?
My head is swarmed with millions of intrusive thoughts, but all are interrupted when something happens. My body budges toward Emma's direction.
Hell, it's working!
Taken aback, she stops pulling me for a second.
"Emma! Keep pulling, come on!"
She keeps pulling, even though I spot a couple of splinters on her hands. We'll take care of those later.
The fog is way too close. It's going to get us. But we have to keep doing this, there's no other way out now. It's too late.
"Come on, Emma. A little more,"
The fog covers almost every tree in my eyesight. I close my eyes and await for it all to end, I'm prepared for the pain.
Instead, I land on top of Emma.
Her breath tickles my upper lip, I let out a relieved smile. I quickly get off her and grab her by the hand, we're running once again. No time to say thanks, not now. We're not safe yet, the fog is still approaching us.
"Where do we go?" I turn to her.
"I don't know," She starts, then looks to our right. "We're surrounded, I can't see anything…"
"Have you seen the—" Emma's words are interrupted, she lets out a tiny yelp, and the next thing I know, we're rolling down the hill.
I hate my life.
My body comes to a stop next to a bunch of berry bushes. I can barely catch my breath as I check whether the fog is still after us, but it never makes it down the hill. Instead, it slowly disappears into the air.
"Emma…" I call while getting off the ground. I'm dizzy, but I'll be fine. I crawl to her. She's laying on the ground, with her back turned towards me.
"Em," I shake her lightly, and turn her around. "Hey."
She slowly opens her eyes. "Is it gone?"
"Yeah. You okay?"
She nods. "You?"
"I'm fine," I say while helping her up.
"Yeah, you're welcome."
"Could you at least wait for me to say thanks?"
"Where's the fun in that, sweetheart?" Emma smirks. "Come on, let's go find Rahne."
It doesn't take a lot of time to find Rahne, even though we were initially tense that we wouldn't be able to. But since everything had happened in the span of twenty minutes, we don't have to walk a lot to find her.
"Hey lovebirds," Rahne says, from above. She climbed on a tree, of course. "Nice fall."
Emma rolls her eyes. "Get down," She orders. "We're going to find somewhere to spend the night."
"You're not my boss, you know," Rahne sticks out her tongue, but obliges regardless. Once she gets down, she takes a look at us from head to toe. "You look like shit."
"Thanks," I wrap my arm around her. Emma rolls her eyes again.
"They walked by while I was up,"
"Who?" I raise one of my brows.
"They." Rahne threw me a look.
"The careers?"
"Yup."
"Which ones?" Emma asks.
"Jamie and Betsy."
"There are still ten of us left, right?" I ask.
"Unfortunately," Emma says while slicing the vines in our path with the axe.
"It's only going to get worse," Rahne places her hands in her pockets and begins to walk at a faster pace. "Jamie and Betsy were talking about hoarding supplies near the Cornucopia. Food, medicine, weapons… Everything."
I know this is the Hunger Games, but why can't something good happen to us for once? Just once.
"They're trying to lure us to the Cornucopia?" Emma says, sarcastically. "Please. No one is that stupid."
"They're not looking for stupid, though. They're looking for desperate. The instance we need something desperately, we'll have to go there." I point out. "We need to do something."
Emma looks at me in disbelief. "Absolutely not. Have you gone mad, Scott? That's not a risk we can take. Look at us," She gestures all three of us with the axe. "We can't afford to attack unless we have to defend ourselves. And even in that case, our chances are low when it comes to the careers."
"Our chances weren't low that day,"
"Yeah, you're welcome," Emma places her hands over her hips. "I was our chances that day."
"They couldn't even climb a stupid tree, Emma. They're not invincible. Besides, I have the crossbow now."
"Right, I forgot, the crossbow makes you invulnerable. My bad." Emma snaps.
"Let's say we took the safe route, Emma." I cross my arms. "One of us eventually gets injured, and we need something they're keeping at the Cornucopia. Would you want us to walk straight into the trap while we were weak?"
She gives me a look.
"He's got a point, just saying," Rahne leans against a tree. "That pyramid looks huge."
"Looks? You can see it from here?"
"Yeah, you can see the Cornucopia from the top of that tree. The pyramid too. It's freaking high."
"How high?" I ask.
"I'd say about half the size of the tree you climbed the other day," She looks behind me, at Emma. "You know, the one you so elegantly fell from." She teases.
"We have to do this, Emma. They can't have an upper hand like this." I say.
"We can't just barge in there. They'll kill us." Emma objects.
"Who said we would barge in?"
"What?" Emma says, baffled.
"Okay, uh… Alright," I pick up a thin branch from under the tree and begin drawing on the ground. "Let's say we're here… Rahne, you've seen it, can you show me where the Cornucopia is from where we stand?"
Rahne takes the branch and draws an X on the ground.
"Draw where the supplies are too, please,"
She draws an O on the left of the Cornucopia, then hands the branch to me.
"They have the upper hand now, with the pyramid of hoarded supplies," I say. I draw a line over the O Rahne drew. "So we take that from them, without letting them know that's the plan."
"And how will we do that?"
I recall Emma and Logan's conversation on the train.
"So no fire,"
"Depends, are you trying to get killed?"
I draw four X's surrounding the Cornucopia, one for each side.
"Fires. They're going to think there are tributes nearby when they see the smoke and they'll walk into the woods to get them. And when the Cornucopia is free, we have our shot."
Emma pauses, biting her inner cheek. "That's not bad— But Shaw doesn't risk anything. He'll leave someone behind."
"Which will be Jamie, because he's the most spareable one to them, isn't he?"
Emma smirks. I've given the right answer.
"You and Rahne will start the fires and I'll head there. I'll destroy the pile, and I can handle Jamie if things get ugly again."
"What if they come back earlier than you think?" Emma asks.
"I'll be at a safe distance, I'll run. Then we'll meet again somewhere else."
"By one of the fires?" Rahne suggests.
"No, that's too dangerous. We'll meet…" Emma points straight ahead. "Right there."
"Why?"
"That is the only palm tree in the entire arena. It'll mark the meeting point."
Upon reaching an agreement, we spend the rest of the day collecting branches, leaves, and anything that can easily catch on fire. We make sure to hide those under some bushes nearby until it gets dark. We eat some safe mushrooms Emma found as dinner.
It's dark now. We've found a rather stranded area, so this is where we'll spend the night. After massaging Emma once again, her back has not taken that fall well, I let her rest her head on my lap. We're certainly getting better at the act. Emma says it'll be good for the audience if I play with her hair. I gladly oblige, because we need all the help we can get. I also trace her cheeks with the back of my fingers in between as well, for a dramatic touch. Rahne rests her head on my shoulder.
The fallen tributes are projected onto the sky. No one new is there. No one has died for the second day in a row, and even though that is supposed to be something good, I find myself feeling mad. This only means this nightmare is lasting longer. I feel absolutely disgusted with myself at this point, but there's nothing I can do about it.
"You were the mayor's daughter, right?" Rahne asks Emma while playing with the leaf in her hand.
"Yeah,"
"You must have been pretty rich."
"Yeah. For someone living at Thirteen anyway."
Very true.
"Couldn't your father just pay your way outta it?"
"Nope."
"Even a little bit?"
"Nope."
"And no one volunteered for you either?"
"Nope."
"So you don't have any siblings?"
"I do."
"How many?"
"Three. A brother and two sisters."
"Shit, that's a lot."
Emma smirks.
"Why didn't your sisters volunteer for you? Like Scott did for his brother?"
Ouch, Rahne.
Although, I also find myself wondering about Emma's sisters occasionally. All the Frost sisters were present at the reaping. I saw them standing next to Emma. But let alone volunteering, I didn't even see any signs of sadness on their faces. And when I consider the fact that Emma only ever talks about Christian… I can only guess they're not on very good terms.
"You ask a lot of questions, Rahne," Emma says. "I'm getting tired."
"How about clothes? Did you have pretty clothes?" Rahne ignores her.
"Yes, plenty. Good night." Emma closes her eyes.
"Hey, wake up, I wanted to ask about your—"
"Can't, going through a tunnel." Emma mocks, her eyes still closed.
Rahne rolls her eyes. "She can't go through a tunnel, you know…"
I smile at their bickering. Emma is fast asleep.
"How do you put up with her?" Rahne asks me, resting her hands over her chest.
"I just do," I tell the truth while combing through her blonde strands with my fingers.
I've gotten quite used to Emma's presence ever since we left Thirteen. Before that, the girl I used to spend most of my time with was Jean. I've known her ever since I could talk, and we've barely disagreed on anything; even when we were children. It was like we always had that thing between us, even though I was too much of a coward to make any moves.
But now, the girl I spend most of my time with is Emma, and I've gotten from not being able to stand her to getting used to her. To how she is. I can recognize when she's thinking, when she's angry, when you shouldn't bother her (right after she wakes up), when you should bother her (when she acts like she knows everything), and when she's acting cold, it's not really on purpose. Most of the time, anyway.
So I'd say being around Emma has been quite a change from what I've been used to. More challenging, for sure.
"Because you love her?"
"Yeah." The cameras are always on.
"Love is weird."
"You have no idea."
"Do you think we'll get this done tomorrow?" Rahne changes the subject.
"Sure thing," I nod. "I know they're experienced, but they're not perfect. They barely made it out the other day."
"But what if we can't?" Rahne murmurs while tearing the leaf apart. She's nervous, and she has every right to be. Even I feel nervous. I think only Emma isn't.
"Everything will be fine, Rahne. Trust me. We planned everything. As long as we stick to it… We'll be fine."
Rahne speaks after taking a long pause. "Okay. Good night, Scott."
"Good night, Rahne."