A/N- To everybody who favourited, alerted or reviewed: thank you so, so much! It makes my day, honestly.
Just to reiterate: do not read while eating.
Sherlock was dying.
He accepted this fact without question or struggle. He was a very intelligent man; intelligent enough to understand the signs of dehydration. It was their third day in the arena, and late afternoon. Three days without water, with minimal food, with very little shelter? He was not arrogant enough to assume he would survive much longer.
He was out of the forest by now, trudging across fields. He thought that he was going the right way, but he'd probably never get the chance to find out. That annoyed him more than the idea of dying; the idea that he would never know if he was right or wrong. It was only that, that drive to be right, that kept him putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, even that failed. He tripped on a rock and when he tried to push himself back up, he found that his body was no longer willing to cooperate.
Get up! he screamed at himself internally. Get up!
Give up, his mind whispered back.
From where he lay, he could see more marks carved into the ground a short distance away. Sharp crosses and lines. He was intrigued but his mind wouldn't stay in one place long enough to make sense of them. It hurt to think. He closed his eyes instead and listened to the light birdsong begin around him. He smiled. He was right. There was life here- there was water nearby. He wouldn't be able to get there, but that was okay. He had done it right, he had worked it out. Everything was okay.
Sherlock was asleep when the first drop fell. He had been passing in and out of sleep for a little while, as though his body didn't quite dare to die. Whenever he felt himself drifting too far, something within him gave a sharp tug and pulled him back into consciousness. Oh no you don't, it said firmly. We have unfinished business here.
What? he questioned of himself unhappily. He was tired. He had given up fighting. His head ached like a world was cracking open inside of it, and the light around him was too bright. He was tired. Colours and shadows swam in front of his vision; things that he knew couldn't be there, but were. He was tired- he was so very tired. Why wasn't he sleeping? He closed his eyes again.
The markings, his mind sung smugly, knowing it had him caught. How could he die without knowing what they were? He couldn't. He just couldn't. Not yet. And so he continued to sleep and to wake, never going far enough to tumble off the edge.
It took a while for the rain to wake him. It grew out of nowhere, from drought to downpour in a few seconds. Eventually it stirred him, the cold liquid seeping into his closed mouth and making him twist awake, coughing violently. Sherlock forced his aching eyelids open and saw a dip in the ground, only a few centimetres away and rapidly filling with rainwater. He extended an arm and dug his nails into the ground, dragging the deadweight of his form towards it. It took much longer than it should have done, but the rain was so heavy that the indent became a puddle in seconds. He lowered his head to the gathering pool and drank, and drank, and drank. With every drop he felt better, more alert. He collapsed back onto the dirt and let the water beat down on him, breathing heavy and shaky.
His thoughts were slow to return, cogs catching and snagging as they tried to resume work. He reached through his bag with shaking, fumbling hands. It was only when he caught sight of the iodine that the crashing realisation dawned. Oh. He looked at the water in the pool hesitantly. Specks of dirt floated in it, a few crushed leaves swirling at the edges. It would be a shame to die of cholera after coming this far. He sniffed the iodine delicately, before swallowing a few drops straight up with another mouthful of rainwater. It was certainly not how it was intended to be taken, but it would be an interesting experiment if nothing else.
He filled the bottle from the pool and the rain, remembering to add the iodine and wait this time around. He had never really taken much interest in time- the world moved around him, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Now, with no clocks or guidance as to when it was, he had to count the seconds in his head, reaching sixty thirty times over.
It was only when fully hydrated that his thinking reached its usual capacity, and he remembered. The mark. Stupid, stupid! He pawed at the water covering the dent in the ground, but the carving had dissolved into mud. He ran his fingers over where it had been, but all he could feel was the slippery earth. Well, then there was no point in remaining there any longer.
He finished the flask before testing out his legs. He could walk. Good. He filled the flask, added iodine, and left.
Sherlock reached the river within a few hours. The water was clear and, judging by smell and taste, wouldn't require treating. He heard a cannon somewhere in the distance. He doubted it would be the last of the day. This far in, those who had been lucky enough to find the river would live. Those who hadn't would die of dehydration or of diseases from the dirty rain. He had been, as always, too stubborn to fit into either category.
"Did you find anything?"
"Am I carrying anything? Idiot," Sally snapped.
"Well, I did tell you-"
"Don't you dare start saying 'I told you so'."
"Well, I did!" he objected. "There's no food here, Sally. At least, there's nowhere near enough."
It was true. The few berries the bushes around them held were gone, eaten within the first twenty-four hours. Neither of them had gotten food from the Cornucopia, and there weren't even birds in the trees. What had seemed like a great place to stay when they found it on day one had already seemed like a dead end by day two.
So Greg had proposed that they move on, and look for a new place to stay. Sally had been resistant.
"We don't know what else is there," she had said. "We're better off staying here."
They had enough water, but there were no fish in the river. Greg tried to remember the last time they had eaten. There had been the berries after they learned about Jonathon and Sherry, and then the rest of the fruit the next morning when they still thought there were more nearby. So that was… a day and a half? Greg had gone longer with less food, but it never got any easier.
"Things aren't going to get better, Sally," he said almost pleadingly. "They aren't. There's nothing here."
"Maybe if we just look nearby-" she began uncertainly.
"But we have! There's nothing. You know there isn't."
"I'm not going anywhere," Sally said. "I'm not. It's not safe."
"What, and staying here is?"
"They killed Jonathon, Greg, and he was much, much stronger than me. Than either of us. I'm not moving anywhere."
Maybe it was the almost childlike note that had crept into her voice, or maybe it was because he didn't think she'd ever used his first name before, but he relented.
"Okay. We'll stay here. We can't have looked through all the bushes nearby."
She nodded, back in control. "Finally. So let's get back to work and quit wasting time."
Greg returned to the shrubs he had been searching for fruit, beginning to comb every branch again. If he had checked the cluster of bushes once, he had checked it a thousand times.
Molly watched as the Capitol seal appeared in the sky, obscured slightly through the canopy of branches.
"Time for the nightly show," Irene hummed from outside the bush. Molly didn't climb out to watch; she didn't really want to see their faces. Irene was on guard duty, as she didn't seem to have any issues with watching the pictures flash up. It was the end of the third day, and there had been eight causalities overall.
The idea that eight hearts had stopped beating and that eight pairs of eyes had closed forever seemed overwhelming. Molly found herself struck with a strange, twisting terror when she realised that this would be considered a low fatality count. For the viewers at home, there had been disappointingly little death.
"The girl from Five… and the girl from Nine," Irene announced. "Anybody you knew?"
"No," Molly replied, as the light faded away and they were back into darkness. "You?"
"No, but I hardly made many friends during training."
"Really? I would have thought…" Molly trailed off.
"I have been told that I'm rather intimidating." Molly had to smile.
"I can see that."
Molly was getting ready to go to sleep when Irene's voice came again from outside the bush.
"I'm not angry at you, you know," she said indifferently.
"I know," Molly replied.
"Good."
There was a pause. "Why not?" Molly asked.
"Why should I be?"
"Because of- well, because of yesterday, and the- oh, you know!"
"I do love it when you get agitated. It's like a robin trying to roar."
"Sorry," Molly said immediately.
"Why are you apologising?"
"Because there's no point in being angry," she said. "It just makes everybody around you feel as bad as you do."
"Oh, Molly. You really are such a sweet and repressed little thing," Irene sighed. "I'm not angry with you because there's nothing to be angry about. You don't need to do things you don't want to."
"Really?" Molly asked doubtfully.
"Well, it worked well enough today, didn't it?"
Molly had spent the day catching fish from the river and plucking fruit from bushes. Irene had disappeared for four hours and returned with another knife, an empty water bottle and a foldaway tent.
"Yes," Molly smiled. "It did."
It hadn't. Not really. Things had been awkward and stilted when they spoke, Molly still feeling hideously guilty for letting Irene down. She hadn't dared asked where Irene had gotten the supplies, but somehow she doubted they were handed over willingly. Irene hadn't asked for Molly's assistance this time around. A part of Molly was glad. Another part- a silly part- felt forgotten, unwanted.
She wasn't shocked when she woke up the following morning to find that she was alone. Not really.
"Irene?" she called out unsteadily, but nobody replied. She was fairly confident that she would have been woken up if a cannon had fired, which could only really mean one thing. When she checked the surrounding bushes, her suspicion was confirmed. The knives were gone, the bottle was gone, the tent was gone.
All that remained of the food was stacked neatly together in one of the smaller bushes. There was a small pot of Molly's favourite stew, a sealed pack of crackers, and the small pile of berries that Molly had so carefully collected. Next to the pot, somebody had scratched a rough heart shape into the dirt with their nail.
Alliances couldn't last forever, Molly supposed- especially when she was no longer of use to Irene. She was surplus to requirements, just another mouth to feed. Why would anybody keep her around?
Stop that, she told herself firmly. She fixed a smile back onto her face in case any cameras were nearby. There's no point in being miserable.
"Hello, day four!" she said out loud, as if chatting happily to herself. "Let's see what you've got."
Henry Knight was doing perfectly well by himself, thank you very much. Yes, maybe he had cried (just a little) when he had learned about Carl, but that didn't make him weak. He had just been shocked, that was all.
He had been hoping that he would find Carl in the arena and they could ally together like they had talked about. Henry was two years older than Carl, though, so obviously he would have been in charge most of the time. That would have been okay, he thought. Carl was- had been- a really good swimmer, and he had promised to teach Henry if they got the chance.
But that didn't mean that he couldn't do it by himself. Just because he was fourteen didn't mean that he was weak or that he needed protecting, no matter what his mentors might have implied. He talked to the other tributes because he liked them, not because he was scared.
Lia in particularly had been really horrible about that. He had only been trying to be nice to her- she was his mentor, after all- and she had simpered to people about his 'need for a replacement mother figure- you know, as the poor poppet only has his father'. It was rude, and not even a little bit true. Well, his mother was dead, but Henry couldn't even remember her- she had gotten sick when he was only a baby.
He wondered if his father was watching now, and if he'd be proud that his son was doing well. Henry had been amazed when he came across the river- felt like the luckiest boy in the world. He had slept by its side for the last few nights, not quite trusting himself to find it again if he left. But there was only so much sitting on a bank that a person could do, and so he had decided to see what else was out there. The third day in the arena had been drawing to a close when he left, and it was the morning of the fourth by the time he came across the cave.
"Hello?" he called, sticking his head in. His words bounced off the walls, but nobody moved in the darkness or made a sound. The entrance was blocked by several large rocks, but there was a gap just big enough for somebody small to climb though. He worked his way in, holding back a yelp when he banged his elbow against a stone. It was cool inside the cave, and dark. In the dimmed light, he couldn't tell how long it stretched on for.
The ground was soft, and Henry sat on it. He leant against one of the rocky walls, and looked around. It took time, but eventually his eyes adjusted. The cave carried on in a long tunnel to his right, with the gap he had climbed through to his left. He couldn't see what was down the passageway, but could make out the bleary shapes of more rocks.
Henry yawned. He had been walking all night. He returned to the exit of the cave, and examined the rocks nearby. Should he put some up against the opening to stop other people from coming in? Or would that just make them think he had something worth hiding? Could he even lift any of the rocks? He managed to pick up one of the smaller ones, but found he had no idea what to do with it. He tossed it awkwardly to the side. The patch of ground underneath was now revealed, and he leant in curiously.
LXXII
Somebody had cut that into the ground. Lexi? he thought to himself stupidly. The first person to come to mind was Lorena- the girl he had come with- but she called herself Lori, not Lexi. It wasn't somebody's name, then. He thought that he had seen similar things before- maybe somewhere in the Capitol- but he couldn't be sure.
Henry yawned again. He wondered if he should be afraid, but there was nothing inherently menacing about the carving- it was just there. Maybe it'd make more sense after he'd had a few hours' sleep. Deciding he would worry about it when he woke up, Henry retreated a little further into the cave. Tucking himself into a ball, he closed his eyes and let himself fall asleep.
Hours later, a hideous noise tore through the air; an inhuman screech. Henry jolted awake, struggling to his feet and looking around wildly. Maybe it was a dream, he thought uncertainly. Maybe I just dreamt it. He turned to leave but then something huge and solid was slamming into his chest, breath hot at his throat. He landed heavily against the cave wall, rock scraping against his face and his hand taking most of his weight with an agonising crunch. He cried out in pain and a glowing red pair of eyes snapped up at him, animalistic and angry.
Henry dropped to the ground as the beast drew back to strike him again, and it smashed into the wall with an enraged howl. Henry scrabbled desperately towards the entrance to the cave, throwing himself towards the small gap and pulling himself through. He was conscious of hot, wet liquid running down the side of his face and a blinding pain in his left wrist when he tried to put pressure on it.
He was nearly out of the hole when suddenly he felt teeth cut into his ankle, sharp and piercing. He screamed as he felt his flesh tear, but kept moving and the teeth dragged agonisingly through the muscle but detached. He kept moving, half running and half crawling, hyperventilating and letting out involuntary whimpers between breaths and oh god, the pain. His wrist was definitely broken and he clutched it to his chest in a bizarrely protective way as he staggered blindly forwards, not knowing where he was going except for away.
He had made it a good distance away when he stumbled and fell. He managed to twist so that he landed on his shoulder and not his wrist, but it still hurt. He froze in place, holding his breath, but nothing emerged from the cave. Henry moaned as pain suddenly pulsed through his wrist, tucking his knees up to his chest for comfort. He gingerly touched his good hand to his leg and felt bile rise in this throat. His skin was mangled, blood slick against his fingers and filling the air with a disgustingly metallic tang.
"John! John, over here!" somebody was calling. He could hear footsteps, people beginning to run. He tried to sit up, to escape, but hands cradled his head and lowered him back down again. He shouted in fear, and they dropped away.
"It's okay! We won't hurt you," a girl's voice said. "I promise that we won't."
Henry calmed down long enough to look at her properly. She was quite pretty and smiling reassuringly- sympathetically. She stroked at his hair gently and he wanted to tell her to get off, that he wasn't a child, but there was something in the touch that stopped him. The adrenaline slowly faded away. He, to his disgust, began to cry.
"Hi," a boy said, kneeling down beside the girl. "My name's John, and this is Sarah. We're going to get you fixed up, okay? Is the person that did this still around?"
"It- it w- was-wasn't-," Henry tried, but he couldn't get it out.
"Just tell us if it's safe to stay here," Sarah said gently.
"Y-yes," Henry managed.
"Good. We're going to wash some of the blood off of your face, okay? It might sting a little, but it's not going to hurt you. Can you turn your head to the left?" Henry obeyed, and cool water flowed over his cheek.
"I think they're mostly grazes," he heard the boy saying. "The one on the right side of his head might look bad, but it's still more of a scrape than an actual cut."
"Head wounds always bleed heavily. I'm more worried about his leg."
"I am here, you know!" Henry said with just an edge of hysteria. Worried? How worried? He hadn't had a chance to actually see the injury yet. He tried sitting up to look, but John was there and pushing him firmly back down.
"You're in shock. It's best if you stay down. What's your name again, sorry?"
"Henry."
"Okay, Henry. I'm going to need to look at your leg. It might hurt a bit, but you can grip Sarah's hand. Try and be brave, okay?"
Sarah's hand enveloped his, warm and reassuring. John gently turned his leg this way and that, examining the wound.
"Is this a cut?" he asked.
"B-bite," Henry said.
"Okay, then I need to try and clean the wound. It'll just be with water," John said, holding up a flask so that he could see. "Again, it hurt, but it's important." Henry clenched Sarah's hand as the water poured over his distorted flesh.
"Okay, that's the last of the water," John said, and he set the flask down. "I think you were lucky, Henry. Whatever it was didn't get the chance to get a proper hold on you. It's left a nasty tear, but it could have been much worse."
Henry wondered if the creature- the hound- had been asleep when he entered. If it was usually faster, stronger, but that drowsiness had slowed its reactions. He imagined it lying just out of sight, waiting, as he slept, and found that he could not stop shaking.
"Definitely in shock," he heard John murmur to Sarah. "He's gone very pale."
"Can you blame him?" Sarah replied- and then, strangely enough, asked John "and how about you?"
"Me? I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. It… it feels good to help. How about you?"
"Same." Turning back to Henry, Sarah looked apologetic. "I'd like to take a look at your wrist. Could you hold it out, please?"
"No," he said, shrinking away. "No, please don't touch it, no."
"I'm not going to touch it," she reassured him. "I promise." Slowly, he obliged. "Thank you. Can you clench your fist?" Henry found that, whilst it hurt, he could do so. "Okay, good. Can you turn your arm?"
He tried, and howled in pain. Sarah blanched. "Okay, bad idea, bad idea. I'm really sorry, Henry, but I don't think there's much we can do about your arm right now. It's going to be okay, but it's also probably going to hurt quite a bit. We'll just have to hope that a sponsor will send you some painkillers," she said, stroking the side of his face again. He didn't even want to think about what Lia would be muttering now about 'replacement maternal figures', and he didn't really care. Sarah could only be a year or two older than him, but he found that he wanted her protection anyway.
"We can't leave him," she said to John desperately.
"I know," he said uncertainly. "But we don't have much food as it is."
"I saw a rabbit an hour or so ago," Sarah said.
"We don't have any weapons."
"I don't want-" Henry tried, ignoring the hushing sounds that Sarah made. "I don't want to be a drain on you."
"You won't be!" Sarah said, seemingly amazed at the suggestion. "You won't be." She looked at John, who nodded.
"Stay with us. It'll be okay. I found fish in the river nearby a few days ago."
"Sponsors might send things," Sarah added.
"We'll make it work," John agreed. "We should start trying to gather food now, though."
"Can you sit up?" Sarah asked. "No, not that fast, slowly- there we go." Henry felt a little woozy, but it passed.
"Do you want me to carry you?" John asked.
"No," Henry insisted. He had to keep some pride, after all.
"Can you walk?"
With Sarah's aid, he got to his feet, and took a few shaky steps. "Yeah, I think so."
"Okay, good. Sarah, stay with him."
Sarah looped one of his arms around her shoulders. "Come on, you. Where do you want to go, John?"
"There's this place by the river. There are fish there." Sarah looked at him.
"You're not talking about-"
"Yeah, there," he cut her off. "But it'll be okay. Honestly." Sarah seemed unsure. She started scrubbing her fingers against her shirt, and Henry wondered if they were itching or something. They began to move forwards, Henry's leg and wrist still hurting. His mind hurt even more.
"You okay?" John called from in front, turning around to look at him. Henry nodded, trying to smile. He didn't want to tell this brave, older boy that all he could think about was the hound. The way it had snarled, the way its eyes had glowed as it lunged for his throat. The pictures wouldn't get out of his head.
"Why don't we play a game?" Sarah suggested. "What's your name?"
"I already-"
"Humour her," John said, shooting Sarah a half-amused, half-sad look.
"Henry."
"Henry…?"
"Knight."
"Middle names?"
They continued in this fashion for the next few hours, stopping occasionally to rest. It was for Henry's benefit, no matter how much they tried to pretend otherwise. It took much longer than it would have done without him, but neither seemed prepared to entertain the idea of leaving him.
The place John brought them to struck fear into Henry's heart. "Oh, John," he heard Sarah mutter sadly, but he didn't understand why. The grass was coated in blood, a discarded gun lying nearby.
"I thought somebody would have taken the gun," John tried to joke. Nobody laughed.
"Are you sure you're-"
"Yes, I'm fine, it's fine. Let's just get these fish and get out." Sarah nodded, and guided Henry forwards.
"Ignore it," she told him. "It's safe, I promise." They reached the riverside and Sarah refilled her bottle. Henry peered in the water, but he couldn't see any fish.
"I- they were right here," John said desperately.
"You were… you were pretty out of it," Sarah said.
"No, that wasn't it. I ate them, Sarah. I physically cooked and ate two of them. They were really here, and now they… aren't."
"Somebody else must have eaten the rest, I guess," she suggested. "Or maybe they swum somewhere else. Let's just follow the river for a while."
"That seems like a plan," John said, still staring at the river like he expected fish to materialise from nowhere.
"You okay to go on, Henry?" Sarah asked.
"Of course," Henry said. He had recovered enough to feel utterly mortified. He really, really hoped that his father back home had missed the previous four or so hours of footage.
"Good boy. Let's get going. And, um," she looked uncomfortable. "John-"
"Way ahead of you," he said bluntly, crossing the bleeding grass to scoop up the gun.
"Are you-"
"Yes. Now let's go, before I'm not." They left, Henry now walking independently and feeling better for it. Sarah started to clean her hands on her shirt again, and John moved too quickly and a little unsteadily, but nobody said anything about anything.
