Author's Note: I would like to thank "Yanofan" for both following and favoriting my story. Also, I am SO sorry that this took forever to write but I am also working on another story (not fanfiction, so it won't be on this site, sorry) and I got distracted.

Chapter 7: Safety Found In Fear

Number Of Different POVs: 3

BETHA'S POV (DISTRICT 2)

Imber's lips are warm and protective. I feel her heart race and realize her body is pressed against mine. She drops the knife and I feel its sting in my hand, which is better than if it was in my neck. She hesitates and then kisses back. She whispers in my ear. "Thank you for saving me." I don't try to move and I can hear Sicarium and Ignilia cursing me, but I am beyond caring about anything at all. I just want to enjoy this moment, this now.

I wrap my arms around her and she would to me except that I am lying on the ground. Time stops and I remember why I love her. It's because she is impulsive and brave and kind and amazing. I tighten my grip slightly on her, but not so much that it hurts her. Suddenly Opthalmius and Osher are prying us apart.

Osher gives me the task of sorting our poisonous food from our safe stuff. I find that it balances out nearly 50-50. Imber quickly starts a fire and comes to it with me. To my surprise, I don't flinch.

"Thank you. I can't say that enough. Thank you for saving me from that monster that I became. Part of me came out of deep down and said and did those things. I'm sorry. Listen, we need to run tonight. They don't trust us so we need to run away from them and just go. We have no choice."

To be honest, I had been thinking along the same lines so I agreed immediately. We sort together and I catch a few of her mistakes. It occurs to me that if I weren't here, she would be dead at least ten times over. I push away the thought and the ideas that spring from it.

That night, we volunteer to be on guard. Neither of the boys protest, which both surprises me and worries me. As soon as I hear them snoring deeply, I take their weapons. Imber, who doesn't seem to trust herself, takes a first-aid kit, all of the food, and more than enough water.

We paddle through the water, with her helping me along. When we reach the sandy shore, all I want to do is lie down on it with her, feel the sand along my skin and forget where I am. I am tired, so tired, so weary from trying not to die that I will snap like Imber if I have another sliver of a second of this. But somehow, deep inside, I find the strength to keep moving, keep going. We walk until the sky is smeared with dawn, and then we walk some more. Walk until we are deep in the forest, walk until we have come to a natural spring of water. There are no traces of humanity except, of course, the ones that are everywhere: the Gamemakers' spying eyes, showing all of Panem what they see.

We decide that I will go look for more food because I spent the longest at the poisonous plants station and that she will hunt for animals with our knife. I pick a random direction to walk and look for food of any kind. I have darts on me at all times, but nothing shows its face. Then I see the berries. They are blueberries, ripe and delicious. I open one and see that it is normal inside. It smells normal. It looks normal. I taste one and confirm what they are.

I am busy filling my bag with them and eating them at the same time when I hear a sound that alerts me immediately. A sound that threatens to destroy me with its clarity. A sound I can identify in a moment, or less. The sound of Imber's scream. It lasts for only a few seconds and then there is a sound even worse. Silence.

TRITICUM'S POV (DISTRICT 11 MALE)

I wake up at the BOOM of a cannon. I know the Hunger Games have changed me when I think, "One step closer to home" instead of being filled with dread. Rustica is still asleep. She looks so fragile that I feel an instant pang of fear that the inevitable will happen. If someone, a Career Tribute with plentiful daggers and a lack of mercy cornered her, what could she do? She couldn't run away with her leg like that. Fighting isn't an option for her; even someone like me with two good legs and two good arms couldn't hold their own against a Career's training, so she would be slaughtered in an instant. I watch her for a little while until another cannon shot jerks me out of my trance and into reality.

I look at where Pruna was lying down and anger consumes me: she has left us in the night and has taken one of the two makeshift water containers we made from leaves and twigs with her. I suppose she did some calculations last night and decided that the many disadvantages of having Rustica with us outweighed the benefits of me as an ally. I don't blame her. I would've taken off as well and abandoned Rustica, except—what? I don't love her, not in that way, but I also can't leave her behind. I don't exactly pity her, not enough to sacrifice myself. Then I realize what it is that has been bothering me about her: she is so much like Siligo that it hurts to know that they are destined to have the same fate.

I sit by my little sister's bedside. At six years old, she was only halfway to reaping age so everyone assumed she might live a little longer. That was before she got the Influenza Killer. Everyone says it was because of the gash on her leg that an angry Peacekeeper gave her without any provocation, but the leg miraculously didn't get infected. I brush her sweaty brown hair off of her forehead. She looks up at me with big eyes and I see the fear, but also the knowledge in them. It breaks my heart that, at six years old, she has accepted what will happen to her. The virus has left her so weak that her voice won't work, but I know what she would say. "I love you," I tell her as sincerely as anything I've ever said. Siligo is barely strong enough to smile. She is so courageous to smile in the face of death and has suffered so much more than I had at six years old. Her eyes close one last time and, as the life bleeds out of her, I kiss her on the forehead.

Of course, Rustica will probably not contract the Influenza Killer, but in the end it doesn't matter if your end was a swift dagger in the heart or a slow, agonizing disease: your book is closed, your story is over, your tale is done being told. The beginning is the same as everyone else's and so is the end. Only the middle is what is different. Only the middle is the part that has been changed.

I stoke a fire easily and watch the flames dance. I find myself wishing that the traitor Pruna could burn in it. She left me to deal with Rustica. It is the Hunger Games, but I still don't see how someone,especially someone from District 12, could leave another person helpless on the ground to be slaughtered.

I sit there assembling some herbs we picked during our hike yesterday when something floats down into my lap. The silver parachute glints in the dawning light. It has my name on a slip of paper on it; there wasn't really a chance of it being for Rustica anyways. I open it to find a beautifully crafted silver blade embedded into a leather handle. I stand up to slash the air a few times with it and discover that the blade is balanced perfectly in my hands. It must have cost a fortune and I wonder idly who bought it for me; surely not my district. Everyone there is either in poverty or a Peacekeeper, and neither group is a likely candidate. What Capitol citizen would buy me a blade? I realize that it must be someone who wanted action. There must be another tribute nearby. Maybe I can even get revenge on Pruna.

I hear something in the distance and I freeze. There it is again: crackling leaves. I take an offensive position with the sword and wait. Someone walks into the clearing. Without waiting to register a face, I leap at them. One smooth swish of my blade ends them, a scream still trapped in their throat. I turn around and, where Rustica was, I see Siligo. She sleeps there with no sign of the disease that once racked her body. I realize that saved her! Siligo didn't die at home, and it is up to me she doesn't die in the surreal planet of the arena.

At the sound of a cannon, Siligo stirs in her sleep and then wakes up. She looks from the crumpled body of Pruna to my face to my blade to the corpse again. "Where did you get the blade and why did you kill Pruna?" she asks. Her voice comes out as Rustica's and I realize that my ears know what my eyes deny: Siligo is dead, and so is our ally. Rustica is the one standing up shakily.

"I thought—gone—parachute—Siligo—Career—woke up—" I stammer. She raises an eyebrow and I start over. "I woke up and Pruna was gone, so I thought she deserted us. Then I got this sword in a parachute so I figured a bloodthirsty Capitol citizen saw a tribute nearby. Then someone came and I didn't see who it was but I thought you were Siligo and I had to save you and the scream was trapped in them and then you woke up and you weren't Siligo and she got killed and then I kissed her as she died and I wanted to protect you…" I realize that I began to babble again. "I thought you were my younger sister Siligo and then I didn't see who it was and I thought it was a Career tribute and they died before they could scream. I was trying to protect us."

Rustica's eyes flash and I can see what she is thinking. I finger my blade in a casual threat. She understands and backs down, but not all the way. I can't let my dagger out of my hands. I keep a wary eye on her as she stumbles her way to Pruna's corpse and takes the plants, dead squirrel that she must've snared, and water off of her body.

Rustica hobbles back to the fire, sets down the materials, and limps back to the body. She lies Pruna down on the ground and I see where my blade struck her. Pruna's head is almost completely detached from her body. Rustica is very smooth and careful with her movements. Back home, the dead are treated with respect. The body is put on the ground and covered in dirt. A seed is often placed on the layers of mud so that the spirit of the dead person can grow into the plant and they can be reincarnated.

I remember the fear when the preliminary drawings for each village bore my name, but also the futile last hope that my name would not end up picked at the filmed reaping. Rustica's village is near enough mine that our funeral customs are identical.

It takes until the sun is directly above our heads for her to cover Pruna's body with enough dirt to not only hide her from view but also to be thick enough to be planted on. After a few hours, Rustica gives up on finding a seed and instead takes a small sprout from the ground and replants it on the mound of Pruna's grave. Then she whispers goodbye and looks for kindling.

I feel a trace of guilt that I killed Pruna when she was only hunting for food but I remind myself that it was going to happen anyways. I busy myself by making the two of us a salad but my mind keeps drifting from the work and I have to restart several times.

I keep replaying the scene in my head where Rustica's eyes promise revenge as I finger my blade in an obvious gesture. Letting her live will mean my death, but killing her will be too much like killing Siligo. I need to put distance between the two of them. I could make Rustica do something Siligo never would, then stab her. It's messy and bloody, but I'll feel less guilty. I remember a five-year-old Siligo saying something before she got sick, the morning before an unprovoked, bitter Peacekeeper slashed her leg.

At five, she had been working the fields for two years. Dawn's rosy fingers are still hugging the sky when we wake up to go to work. Our parents have left even earlier. I warm up a bit of breakfast for us over the fireplace before we head off. These moments where the two of us are alone, these moments where the rest of the world ceases to exist, these are the moments that the real Siligo emerges to talk to me. "How do you climb trees in the orchard?" she asks me. These talks, the times of the world where our lives become better than those of the Capitol citizens, these are the times when her usually timid voice takes on a braver tone. "It's not hard. I could teach you some time," I offer. She shakes her head vigorously. "No way! I could never go up that high!" she blurts out. We resume our terrible, burdened lives after that statement when a Peacekeeper shouts at everyone to wake up and get to work. It is almost noon when it happens. An angry Peacekeeper named Insidae shouts at her, "Hurry up, S11!" He called everyone by his or her first initial then "11." Siligo quickens her pace slightly, but he doesn't care. He takes his blade and slashes across her leg so deep that blood gushes out and Siligo falls over, never to stand up and walk independently again.

I have to get Rustica to climb a tree, but I can't. Her leg is too weak for that. I have to steel my nerves and just finish her off quickly. Considering what would happen if the Careers get her, it might almost be considered humane. Not that the arena is the place for that sort of attitude, of course…

CLEO'S POV (DISTRICT 7 FEMALE)

Nighttime has almost come to a close when I hear footsteps coming my way; the soft ones that take straining to hear. I run into the trees to hide as I see the girl from 12 gathering plants. She looks wary of the Cornucopia, as if expecting hidden dangers. I don't stay to watch but instead run and run and run through the trees that are so similar yet so different to the ones at home. I don't stop until I hear noise at dawn: cracking twigs, a curse muttered under someone's breath, and the soft but powerful sounds of sprinting in my direction.

I have the advantage of a mace. At least I think I do until I catch sight of her sleek blade forged in the belly of Capitol furnaces. I still have surprise on my side, but I am about to back down when she catches sight of me. Career Tributes never back down from a fight, even if they are guaranteed a loss, which she absolutely isn't.

Imber leaps at me with her blade extended but I meet it with a crushing blow of my mace, which sends it flying out of her hands and onto the dirt a few meters away. I swing it again, this time making contact with her flesh. I can almost hear it ripping open. Her shirt is beyond saving, and her bloody chest gushes onto the dirt to create a twisted form of mud.

She falls to the ground and attempts to crawl away from me to her knife, but we both know she has no chance of reaching it and stabbing me before I kill her. I slash her again and one of the spikes punctures a lung. With her last, dying gasps of air she manages a scream. Then she collapses and lies there dying in a pool of her blood. In a last effort to bring me down with her, she tosses a knife but it comes nowhere close to me.

The girl from Two, Betha, comes rushing in just as Imber's cannon sounds to confirm her fate. Betha must have been nearby, which means the other Careers will soon follow. Imber only lost because I was lucky, or else she wasn't. But there will be no luck when I face Osher, Opthalmius, and Betha combined, so I resort to my final option: running.

I hide in between the trees, dipping and dodging in an effort to lose her. It doesn't work; she pursues me into a corner. My only hope is that the other Careers haven't come yet, or else don't plan to.

She appears unarmed at first but soon reveals some pointed wooden darts with juice on the ends. Betha doesn't waste time on teasing me or making me flinch; she aims straight for my heart. I barely dodge them and suspect that there is poison on the ends of her weapons. I take my mace, cursing myself for not retrieving the knife, and swing it at her, but she leaps just out of reach with surprising dexterity. I jump at her and attempt to make contact but hit only air.

She throws another three in quick succession, but my attack fazed her enough that she misses. She turns and runs away as I pursue her, unwilling to let Betha go. She will only end up coming after me. I realize that the ground is getting much more slippery until I realize we have left the forest and have emerged into an arctic area. A spontaneous and risky idea pops into my head. I slide across the ice to Betha, knocking into her legs and falling on top of her. I take my mace and swing it into her skull mercilessly until the cannon fires.

I back away as the hovercraft retrieves her body and look around at the barren landscape. There is only snow and ice as far as my eyes can see. I stare down at the spot where her body was just moments ago and a deadly combination shoots through me: fear, adrenaline, and memory.

A girl with big, round eyes and night-colored hair stares up at me. Her hands grasp tightly what I know can save me, but in doing so must doom her because there can be no witnesses: a warm loaf of bakery bread. "Please," she whispers. "Please." I know I can't back down unless I want my life to do so as well.