21: Caught

Gale POV

Cato and Clove are standing in front of me. Making a split-second decision, I know that if I run they will catch me. Katniss, Aravis and I will have to fight. If I use a sword, Cato will kill me in a second. My bow is useless, so I pick up a weapon from the floor. It is a polearm, the same type of weapon Mara used to use. The one Katniss trained with in the Capitol training room what feels like so long ago. Luckily she gave me a few tips on how to use it.

I swing it forward, gripping it with two arms and Cato jumps backwards. He pulls out a sword and runs in towards me. I walk backwards clumsily and sweep the polearm down towards his feet. He jumps and my swing misses. I make another attempt to stab him in his torso and Cato leans backward, laughing.

Laughing. He thinks that this is funny, my attempts to stay alive are amusing. Dodging a swing from his sword by a centimetre, new anger fills me and drive the polearm into his upper leg. Cato gives a scream of pain that chills me to my bones and in my moment of elation of getting a hit, he swings his sword.

Heart beating wildly, I try to block with the polearm. I manage- just- and the blade of his sword slides down the metal of the polearm with an unpleasant noise. The silver metal of the sword bites into the skin on the back of my hand and I gasp with the sudden, cold pain of it. In my moment of distraction, he hits my leg with the sword leaving a long, shallow, painful wound.

Then Cato kicks me in the stomach and I fall to the ground. Cato stands over me triumphantly. I look him into the eyes for the first time. I will not give him the pleasure of me pleading for my life and the floor. I may die, but I refuse to die a coward's death. Cato's blue eyes are bloodshot and his long, sandy blonde hair is matted with a mixture of dirt and blood. He looks like a pure, heartless monster, the type of insane villains that I found in stories when I was younger.

He raises the sword. "I'll see you in hell, flame-boy," he mocks me. "Say hello to that pathetic District 8 girl for me." He laughs again. "I knew you would betray us, I knew you felt sorry for her. Well now you can join her. I'll send you some friends soon too." He glances towards Katniss. I follow his gaze. Katniss is fighting Clove. She has the upper hand, but then she sees me looking.

Cato brings the sword down towards my head and time seems to slow down. I see Katniss scream in frustration and jump. I want to shout at her to go back, to fight Clove, but my lips are frozen. Katniss gets there just in time and uses her arm to sweep the blade of the sword away. It pierces the skin, but she doesn't seem to notice.

She punches Cato in the face, breaking his nose and knocking the sword away. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Clove coming up behind her with a knife. Also, Cato is recovering and is about to kick her in the stomach. "Katniss!" I shout. "Run!" I take off into the bushes and I can hear Katniss behind me.

Hearing Cato and Clove give chase, I put on an extra burst of speed. Due to my leg wound, I'm panting already. Cato is rapidly catching up to me and soon I see the silver glint of his sword. I throw myself forward even faster, but he is too quick for me. He catches my leg and has me on the floor again.

"You're not getting away that easily," Cato says threateningly, holding the sword under my neck. "No star-crossed lover to save you this time," he continues, grinning smugly. I glare at him and try to twist myself to the side, but Cato just shifts and the sword is under my neck again.

I crane my neck and try to look behind him to find a way out. If I kick him where it would hurt then I might have time to escape. To my surprise, I see Aravis. She has a knife in each hand and she gestures to me to get ready. I find my hand close around the hilt of a throwing knife as I shift my body weight, managing to get Cato off enough to kick him in the groin.

He screams in fury and I throw the knife. It seems like it is raining knives around me as Aravis throws her knives and takes more out and throws them. Most of the throws either miss or are dodged, but my knife hit him in the leg and one of hers hit his shoulder. I take off running again and I hear Aravis behind me.

As soon as Cato is a safe distance behind me, I throw myself up a tree and climb to the first branch. A minute later, Aravis joins me and Katniss is already there. "I heard you coming," she explains how she got here. Our hearts are thudding and we are all breathing hard.

"Did we lose them?" Katniss asks, panting.

"I think so," Aravis replies. "Are you OK Katniss?"

"I'm fine," she responds, catching her breath. "Where were you?"

"She was helping me," I answer for her. She seems surprised at this, I look like the one fighting careers, not Aravis. During the fight, I was the one fighting Cato. "Cato caught up to me and nearly caught me, but she threw knives," I explain. "One hit him in the shoulder, that's why he stopped."

Aravis nods. "Gale got injured," she states. "Do you have any of those bandages left?" she asks.

Katniss searches through the backpack and takes out the pack of bandages. "Yes, a few," she replies. "Where were you injured?"

"Hand and upper leg," I reply. Katniss takes a look at my hand. There is a wound from where Cato cut me after my block with the polearm. Luckily it's not deep, but it is still quite painful. Blood still oozes sluggishly and of it and it has pieces of dirt and leaf in it from the chase. I'll need to wash it before she can bandage it, I know that much just from seeing Katniss mother and Prim working when I went around to their house sometimes.

She pours some water from one of our bottles onto my hand and cleans out the dirt as best she can before wrapping a bandage around the wound. Then I take a look at my leg. This wound is definitely nastier, I'm surprised I managed to escape the careers with it. It is about six inches long and a centimetre deep and is still bleeding strongly. Also very painful now that the adrenaline rush has worn off.

At least it is clean, I think, trying to look on the bright side. Katniss takes a bandage and wraps it around my whole upper leg, thickly to stop the bleeding. I wince and shift in pain as she does it and at one point I make a loud noise of pain. She hates causing me pain, I know that, so she finishes as quickly as possible.

I take a look at Katniss. She seems not to have too bad injuries- a scratch on her hand where she grabbed Cato's sword to save me and a shallow cut on her arm, probably from fighting Clove. Katniss bandages her own cut. Aravis seems pretty much unharmed- she wasn't fighting Cato or Clove close up so that's only to be expected though.

After we are all bandaged up and have caught our breath, we wander back to the cave. It is a relief when we finally reach- walking with an injured leg is slow and painful. Not fatal though, so I guess I'm lucky. Or as lucky as a man in the Hunger Games can be at least. And Katniss is still alive.

I collapse on the cave floor and lie down, resting. Katniss sits next to me, arms around me and Foxface just sits awkwardly off to the side. Even though she probably saved my life earlier, I don't want her here now. This is a moment between me and Katniss; I don't want her or the rest of Panem looking in.

I rest my head on Katniss's shoulder and just sit, enjoying her warmth. I feel our breathing synchronise and I can tell she feels comfortable like this too. It's one of the best moments of the games: no danger, just peace and me and Katniss together. If I don't think about it, I can almost forget that we still have to kill tributes and that the whole of Panem is looking in on us. I can forget all of the stress and just concentrate on my love for Katniss.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a small silver parachute float down from the sky and land outside our cave. I get up and collect it, wondering what is inside. Katniss and Aravis lean over me as I open the package. It is another packet of disinfectant bandages and a small note is attached.

You're running out. Keep having moments like that and you have the best chance of survival. -Haymitch

The message is fairly easy to understand. The Capitol people like the dramatic romantic moments such as where Katniss saved my life. The more moments like that we have the more sponsor gifts we get. And we we've run out of bandages anyway- and I'll probably need to change the one on my leg wound tomorrow.

Katniss seems to have got the message too. She scrunches up the paper and throws it away. "How badly do you think the careers were injured?" she asks.

"I know Cato has a wound on both legs and took a knife to the shoulder," I say, "but he has a high pain tolerance and they have bandages. What about Clove?"

"She wasn't badly injured," Katniss admits. "I could hardly defend myself, let alone harm her. She was wearing something so that arrows wouldn't work when I tried to shoot her at first. Stabbing works though," she says. That must have been what the District 2 bag contained at the feast. Body armour to defend themselves against our arrows- I didn't notice it with Cato because I didn't attempt to shoot him.

It seems a bit unfair that they get a set of full body armour and we got poison, but then again, since the careers don't use arrows the body armour would be pointless. It does put us at a slight disadvantage though, Cato and Clove being immune to our best weapon. I wonder if the armour has any chinks or weak-spots- Cato's face wasn't covered, neither were his hands.

Perhaps we can use those weak spots against them, though I doubt that I will try to seek confrontation soon- I barely got out of this alive. The only reason that I did was because of Katniss and maybe Aravis. I guess we've been lucky with sponsors, most tributes don't get this much. Even for careers this would be good. Then again, we are something different. Every once in a while a tribute is sponsored an irregular amount for one reason or another.

At least we still have the poison from the feast, I think to myself, wondering what purpose it will have now. Cato and Clove will be suspicious of us and we don't know much about where Thresh would be, just the grain field. Seeing as that covers about a third of the arena that information is fairly unhelpful.

"What was your life like before the Games?" Katniss asks suddenly, turning to Aravis. It's something I am interested to know and we have not much else to talk about I guess. Then again, knowing about Aravis's life and family before the Games will make it harder for us to kill her when the time comes. To late for regret about that now though, Katniss has already asked.

Aravis shrugs at the question. "We were fairly ordinary in our District," she responds. "How much do you know about District 5?" she asks us. None of us know much about the other Districts, probably a Capitol plot to stop us from uniting properly for another rebellion. Everyone is too afraid to try and escape their District though because of what happens if we're caught. The red-headed avox that I saw in the Capitol comes to mind.

"Not much," I admit. "Just that they produce power."

"We do," Aravis says. "I'll tell you a bit more about us. We produce power in three ways- wind power, water power and solar power. Because of this, our District is situated in a part of Panem that is hot, windy and by the sea. It's quite a nice place to grow up- if you avoid the power-stations then you can have a lot of fun out in the sun and on the beach. At school, when we're seventeen, we choose a branch to work in- unless you have a family business of course. Jobs such as nurses, shop-owners and the like are kept in families. When a person retires, at sixty, they have a choice. They can help to maintain our area or become a teacher."

"What branch were you going to choose?" I ask, fascinated by this system.

"I hadn't really decided. I wanted to be a nurse, but I couldn't get the opportunity because of the family thing. None of the nurses in 5 would take a random girl as an apprentice when they could train their daughter or son."

"Oh," Katniss says. "In our District, women don't work much. Unless it's a work at home thing, like my mother. She's a nurse. My sister wants to be as well, but I found some of the injuries people came with disgusting. Working in the mines is dangerous, people sometimes came in with their arms blown off or burnt down to the bone. I would probably have become a nurse if I hadn't been reaped eventually though- because there wasn't much else I could do."

"Anyway, my life is pretty simple. I have a sister- Tessa, who's thirteen. We played together at the beach quite often, and in the fields and in a small wood that was near our house. That's why I'm so good at hiding and climbing- practise. I go to school, I'm one of the smarter people in my class. I come home to my mother and help her cook dinner. My father comes home about an hour later and we eat together and talk. That's pretty much it. My life. How about you?"

It sounds better than my life. District 5 seems well organised and run. Everyone is taken care of, the jobs don't seem too bad. I am envious of her, it seems every District has it better than 12 does. "Mine and Katniss's fathers are dead," I reply. "So we're quite poor, but we can live with what our mothers do. I have a brother named Rory and a sister named Posy. When I'm eighteen I would have got a job in the mines. So yes, my life was fairly regular."

"I have a sister named Prim," Katniss says. "Who I volunteered for. Before that I was just a normal person in District 12- most of us are poor but we were below average."

Both of us know better than to announce the illegal hunting in the woods and visiting the Hob, which so much of our lives are built around. About how we met each other or any stories about ourselves really because they mainly involve things which are illegal. And while in District 12 offering to sell a peacekeeper illegally hunted game is acceptable, I think that other peacekeepers who are watching this would be so lenient.

xXx-X-xXx

Quite a quick update- sorry about the cliffhanger last chapter! So tell me, what did you think? I hope you enjoyed, and as usual, please follow, favourite or review. Thanks.

-MoonOfPluto