"Foxface is smart. She's been one of the best in these games. She doesn't just hide, Peeta, she plans. The boy from 3 set up mines around the food source, which I'm sure you know, and she watched you all carefully to navigate it, and shortly before I blew up the supply, I saw her get through and take food."
"So she saw the berries and ate them, thinking they were safe because we were going to eat them." She nods. I feel…bad. This is the only person I've actually really killed. The girl from 8 was going to die anyway. But I killed foxface. The only thing that makes me feel even slightly better is the fact that it wasn't a violent, painful death. If Cato had gotten to her it would have been. But now, Cato will be on our tail. "I wonder how she found us. My fault I guess, if I'm as loud as you say I am." I tell her, shamefully. "And she's very clever Peeta, until you outfoxed her."
I tell her she saved us in a way, because if she didn't eat the berries first we would have, but I can tell in her face that isn't it. "No we wouldn't. You recognize these, don't you?"
"We call them nightlock." She tells me. Of course she knew. Again, I feel inferior. "Even the name sounds deadly. I'm sorry, Katniss."
"Don't apologize. It just means we're one step closer to District 12." True. I didn't think about that. All that's left is Cato. We may actually win. "I'll get rid of the rest," I tell her. Then she tells me to wait, and puts them in a sack that I recognized. It was Marvel's. She puts in on the ground and tells me that if Cato comes across these, and eats them, that's it.
"Let's make a fire, right now." A fire will draw him in, for sure.
"Are you ready to face him?" I ask her.
"I'm ready to eat. Better to cook our food while we have the chance. If he knows we're here, he knows. But he also knows there's two of us and probably assumes we were hunting Foxface. That means you're recovered. And the fire means we're not hiding, we're inviting him here. Would you show up?" She makes a few good points. No, I wouldn't show up. No way. That would be suicide in my eyes. Katniss shouldn't kid herself, she is just as clever, or actually, probably more clever, than Foxface is. Or was. "Maybe not."
She hunts and I gather a little more, and we cook, and we eat, and we tell stories, and we laugh, and Cato doesn't show up. Just as she said. But when it begins to get dark, Katniss wants to go up a tree. There isn't any way I can do that with my leg the way it is. I beg her to just go back to the cave. I know it's far, but I just can't climb, and it seems like the only option. At first, she's slightly aggravated, and I don't blame her. I've slowed her down enough today as it is. But then I think maybe she feels bad because she stands on her toes to kiss me and tells me we can go back to the cave.
I stack more wood in the fire to confuse Cato, and then we start walking. I feel kind of useless since Katniss keeps her bow loaded, but she tells me the most helpful thing I can do is walk in the now very shallow stream, and keep a watchful eye on the edge of the forest. He is in there somewhere. I feel bad for asking her to walk back, since by the time we finally get there, we're both exhausted. But we sit down and eat some more. I guess my body is still weak, because I'm more drained than I should be. I only eat about half, then doze off. Katniss tells me to just go ahead and get into the bag, so I do, and I shut my eyes. Katniss leans down and kisses my forehead, bringing a smile to my face as I drift off.
It's a little to easy to wake up when Katniss shakes me. When I open my eyes, I realize why. The sun is beginning to rise. "I slept all night? That's not fair, Katniss. You should have woken me." She seems uninterested in small chit chat. She gets in the bag, yawns, and tells me to wake her if anything interesting happens. I'm praying nothing interesting happens.
As the hours go by, I'm becoming increasingly alarmed at the fact that nothing is going on. I know Cato. He's not as smart as Katniss, but just as stealthy. I wouldn't be able to hear him coming, and that bothers me. My only saving grace is that he is horrible at camouflage. So I poke my head up every thirty minutes or so and scan the forest for any sight of him, but there isn't any. When afternoon turns into twilight, I decide to wake Katniss. She stretches and gets out of the bag. "Any sign of our friend?"
"No, he's been keeping a disturbingly low profile."
"How long do you think we'll have before the gamemakers drive us together." Hopefully, awhile. I like when she asks my opinion on things. I've been following her lead for so long, and for good reason, but it's nice to know she relies on me, even if it's just a little bit.
"Well," I answer, "Foxface died almost a day ago. So there's been plenty of time for the audience to place bets and get bored. I guess it could happen at any moment."
"Yeah, I have a feeling today's the day. I wonder how they'll do it." I am silent. I don't know how, but I don't want to know, either. They always come up with some way, and it's never pretty. "Well, until they do, no sense in wasting a hunting day," she tells me. Then she suggests we eat as much as we can so that if we run into trouble, our strength is up.
We make our way to the stream which is completely dry. I'm surprised at the Gamemakers. Normally, they drive tributes together at the end by some violent or horrifying turn of events, not by depleting the water source. We'll have to return to the lake. I'm sure Cato is near there. Katniss checks the ponds to be sure, but yes, they are dry. To the lake we go. She asks me if we should go now, and I tell her we might as well while we have plenty of rest. Plus, if we don't go now, the gamemakers might just send in the horrifying circumstance to make us go now.
I'm scared out of my wits, but I try to act like it's no biggie for Katniss. She doesn't seem afraid, but I don't need to encourage it. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her cheek before telling her, "Two against one. Piece of cake." Yum. Cake. If we make it back, I'm going to spend all day making a cake in the bakery, then just eat the whole thing, all by myself. Katniss can have some if she wants. But the rest is mine. I also focus on how much better things will be if we get back. It helps keep the fear at bay. I won't ever have to eat anything stale for dinner. I can buy my mother jewelry for her birthday. I can get my dad the new ovens he so desperately wants. I'll be in a big house, living next to Katniss. Katniss- I'll have her still. I won't go back to the same Peeta I was before the games. No way.
"Next time we eat," she says, "It will be in the Capitol."
"You bet it will." I stop her then, and turn her around, facing me. We stand there for quite awhile, locked in a tight embrace. I rub my hand against her back, and whisper in her ear, "You're amazing, you know that? You've got this." She doesn't say anything, but I think it's just because her mind is otherwise occupied.
We walk until we're near the lake, then Katniss picks up some tree branches that will completely hide us from view, and we climb underneath. She told me this is where she hid when she was trying to blow up their food source. By this time, I'd already been lying in the riverbed. I, again, am amazed at her intelligence when she tells me she launched three arrows, each hitting a different spot on a bag of apples. The bag fell the way she wanted it to, and the falling apples disabled the mines. Foxface didn't think of that. She opens the branches and sees the sun sinking. We don't want to fight him after dark, she tells me. "There's only one pair of glasses." I squeeze some iodine to purify water while I answer her question. "Maybe that's what he's waiting for. What do you want to do? Go back to the cave?" I don't want to go back to the cave, I want to kill Cato and go home. "Either that or find a tree." No, not a tree. I hope he shows. "Let's give him another half hour or so." I nod. After we drink some water, we decide to go stand out in the open. By the lake, in front of the Cornucopia.
While I'm busy continuously wiping my nervous palms on my pants, Katniss seems to enjoy sitting here by the lake. The Mockingjays are active, singing. She has a very peaceful smile on her face. Then, I hear her sing, and my palms stop sweating. I'm no longer nervous or scared. For as long as she's singing, I'm taken away from here, from these games, from the Capitol. I turn my head to watch the beautiful four-tuned sound come out of her throat. The mockingjays stop to listen, and it's beautiful. And it's safe. And it's what I never want to stop hearing. "Just like your father." Katniss looks down. She touches the pin with her fingers and smiles. "That's Rue's song," She says, "I think they remember it." Of course they do.
Katniss closes her eyes for awhile and leans back, her hands behind her and propped up on the ground. She lets her head tilt back, and for awhile she just listens. I'm listening to. And I mimic her, I sit the same way and lean my head back to capture the tune. Then, they all stop. Immediately I open my eyes. Some start up again, but the tune is jagged, it's not the same. The Mockingjays all leave their tree branches and start flying everywhere, as if in a panic. And I know it's over. At least for now, the peace is gone.
I jump up first, wielding my knife. Then Katniss quickly joins me and pulls an arrow from her quiver. It sits on her bow ready for the kill. We both see his shadow coming fast, headed straight for us, and Katniss releases her arrow. It hits him in the heart, but bounces off. By now, he's close enough that when I squint, I see him wearing some kind of body armor, and I relay this information to Katniss. Cato has no weapon, but in his eyes are something fierce. Even though we both don't really know what's going on, we brace for impact as he pushes right through us, and then I realized he is running from something. I know I am going to hate to see what it is.
Huge dogs bound through the forest, eyes red and wide, and teeth showing and snarling. There are at least twenty of them. Katniss and I then take off and sprint to the point where I no longer feel in control of my legs to the Cornucopia, away from whatever the hell the gamemakers decided to unleash upon us. Katniss has reached the Cornucopia and is about to launch herself up onto it when she realizes I'm still pretty far behind her. I want to yell at her to forget me and just jump, but I don't have any breath left in me. One is about to snap my leg in half when Katniss shoots an arrow straight through it's head. I then notice is has a collar on when I see the arrow hit. The collar simply says "10" I don't know what it means. Maybe these animals came from District 10? That is livestock, though I'm not sure I'd think of these as livestock. These are monsters.
Katniss prepares another arrow but she doesn't have enough to kill all of the creatures and she needs to save some to kill Cato anyway. I reach the cornucopia just as Katniss is about to let an arrow fly through Cato's chest, I scream out because one is right on my heel and I curse myself when I break her focus. She yells at me to climb. She shoots one more down in order to clear them enough to pull me up when I get to her feet. When I'm up, the breathless, heaving Cato says something Katniss can't understand. "He wants to know if they can climb it?" Katniss looks back at the mutts. She prepares another arrow, not answering the question. She doesn't know. As she is waiting to observe their behavior, she shrieks. She is staring directly at a mutt's collar. This mutt has a number "1" on it's collar, but I don't see why she screamed. She shoots the arrow into the dog's throat and I notice she only has a few arrows left.
As I grab her arm, I ask her what's wrong. "It's her!" She screams. "Who?" She tells me it's the tributes with terror in her eyes. I gasp. "What did they do to them, do you think those are their real eyes?" This is not the question I should be asking right now. One jumps dangerously close, and Katniss shouts at me to kill it. Before I stab it with my knife, I notice the "4" on it. It has brown eyes. It's Kyra.
Other than Katniss, Kyra was really the only friend I had in here. Though she would have killed me had it come down to it, inside, she was just like me. Just wanting to go home but not wanting to kill anyone, and it pains me to watch my knife slide across her chest as she falls to the ground below. But I don't allow myself to focus on her too long, as there are plenty more of them after us. I notice Katniss pull an arrow and look towards Cato, but instead, she has to shoot it through the throat of the biggest mutt there is: Thresh. Just then, as she is pulling another arrow, I'm yanked to the side, and I feel Cato's arms around me.
I close my eyes. Cato has an arm around my throat. He will either break my neck or throw me to the wolves. Either way, this is it. I'll die here today. My only hope is that he's close enough for Katniss to shoot an arrow straight through his eye. But she won't shoot, not with me in front of him, and he knows this, explaining why he hasn't killed me yet. Just shoot, I'm thinking, and I glance at her pleadingly, but she doesn't budge. She has her arrow ready to go, and won't take her gaze off of me and Cato. Then I feel woozy. I thought it was Cato cutting off my air supply at first, until Katniss looks at my leg. A mutt has taken a chunk out of my leg. It's okay, though, the more air Cato prevents me from getting, the less it all hurts. And I'm actually just wanting him to kill me and get it over with. But then I come up with an idea.
If Katniss can get Cato off me, I can push him. I draw an X on his hand with my fingers, and immediately she gets it. She shoots, and Cato shouts as he goes over the Cornucopia, to the dogs, pulling me with him.
Katniss reaches me and grabs my hand at the last minute, pulling me up. So, Cato won't last long, and technically, it is safe to say that now, we are the victors. But I don't think the Capitol will let it happen that easy. No, they want us to watch as Cato is ripped to shreds, one piece at a time. That's how they are.
I'm desperately trying to keep from passing out, as I've lost a lot of blood. I am afraid that when I close my eyes, they won't open again. Strange to think that only a week and a half ago I was actually praying and waiting and hoping for the sweet release of death. Now, though, I'm not. Not with the life I can have so close to me. I just have to wait until Cato is gone, then the cannon will fire and the Capitol will heal us. Then, we can go home. Katniss seems to be thinking the same thing. She tells me "Don't go to sleep." I think she realizes how slim my chances are if I do.
I'm trying to keep my eyes open, so I watch Katniss. It's better than watching the dogs rip Cato's life from him, literally. She is sitting in the fetal position, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. Her eyes are closed and she looks like she is in pain, but she is just traumatized. I long for us to finally go home and be safe back in District 12.
As more time goes by, I see her shiver. "Are you cold?" I have to admit I'm cold too. But at this point, I don't think I'll be needing a jacket anymore. I don't think I'm leaving the arena. I offer her my jacket. However, she just comes closer to me and we hold onto each other while sharing my jacket.
The next few hours are excruciating. The only sounds we hear are of the poor boy from District 2 crying, and begging for his suffering to end. He was the most Capitol raised ruthless killer in here, but still, he was just a kid wanting to go home. Katniss asks me then why don't they just kill him. And I know why. So does she. This is the end of the Hunger Games. Of course they have to see this. They sit in front of their televisions, gorging themselves on food they don't need, drinking liquor, and discussing the events of the games. It's sick.
I realize that I can no longer fight it. My eyes are getting heavier and my pulse getting weaker. And now, the chills have left me, and I know I am dying. Again. Each time I shut my eyes, though, Katniss screams my name, desperately shaking me and holding on to me. I do my best to stay with her, but this happens a few more times. Katniss is looking at the sky. Just anything to avoid watching the dogs. "Look at the moon, sweetheart." I tell her, nearly breathless. "What about it?" I'm sure she knows, hunter that she is, but she is trying to keep me from sleeping. "You can tell the time that's passed. It's three." She nods and looks back at the moon.
Katniss wakes me again and now the sun is beginning to rise. I'm more surprised that I'm awake than I was the first time I woke up on that riverbed, after I thought for sure I'd be dead. Still, it won't be long now. No way. Katniss is no doctor, but her mother is, and I'm sure Katniss paid enough attention to know what death looks like. She looks at me in way she hasn't before, with fear and dread, like she's afraid I'll leave her. I suggest she kill Cato, and the thought registers. She nods slowly as I unzip my jacket.
I see Katniss shoot the arrow, and the cannon fires. Finally, the pleading and the whimpering stops, and I can breathe easier knowing he's no longer in pain. Then it hits me that I am alive, Katniss is alive, and we won. Never ever in a million years did I expect this. Amidst the sadness and anger and pain, now, there's a little bit of joy and relief, knowing that I can finally go home, and take her with me. But nothing happens.
Katniss demands they tell her what's going on and I suggest maybe it's because the hovercraft hasn't removed the body yet. I am guessing we have to move away from it and Katniss suggests we get back to the lake. I think it's pure adrenaline and happiness and hope that keeps me going, as I half-walk half-crawl to the lake. Katniss helps me some of the way, but I'm much heavier than she is so there isn't much she can do. Against all odds, we sit by the lake and watch the hovercraft take Cato away from here.
Still, nothing happens, and I am deeply worried that maybe citizens have placed bets on how long I'll last before they end the games. One last way to make money, who cares that it's a kids life right? "What are they waiting for?" I ask Katniss. She tells me she doesn't know and finds a stick. I'm guessing she's going to do her best to make a tourniquet out of it. Then we hear the announcers voice and I feel the hope again.
Leave it to the Capitol to take all hope away. Of course they changed the rules back to only one winner. They just wanted to see a little bit of romance before tragically ripping one of us away from the other. Bastards. Heartless sons of bitches. Katniss is looking at me with disbelief. I think this is as mad as I've ever been at the Capitol. "If you think about it, it's not that surprising." I tell her. Because it isn't. I stand up and pull my knife. I close my eyes and think of everything I'll miss. Food, Water, walks in the rain, my family, my friends, her… I intend to kill myself, but I think Katniss thinks I have my knife drawn to kill her, so she loads an arrow and aims it to my heart. Well, this is the cherry on top of the best Hunger Games yet. It hurts me that she thinks I'd ever do anything to hurt her. It hurts me more than all of the pain I've been in in this arena, put together. Then I throw the knife to the side and give her a look that communicates "How could you?" She looks ashamed, and lowers her arrow.
"No, do it." Quite frankly, I don't care anymore. When I die, I won't have the pain I feel in my leg or the heartache in my heart. But I try not to be upset with her, it isn't her fault she has trust issues, and she did see me pull the knife. I understand, but it still hurts. "I can't." She chokes out. "I won't!" I roll my eyes.
"Katniss, please. Just do it before they kill me some other way. I don't want to die like Cato." She shoves her bow at me. "Then you shoot me." The heartache I felt is gone. She is serious. She wants me to live? To do this, she must care about me a lot. "You shoot me and go home and live with it." Nevermind, it's back. She doesn't want me to live, she just doesn't want to go home and face District 12 knowing she killed me. Still, she must care about me a little bit, she's risked her life to save mine a few times. "You know I can't" I won't ever in a million years be capable of that. When she does nothing, it gets the best of me. "Fine, I'll go first anyway." I lean down and rip the bandage off and shout in agony at the pain.
Katniss screams "No, you can't kill yourself!" She desperately tries to close the wound and I bring her back up to her feet. "Katniss, it's what I want."
"You're not leaving me here alone," she says. "Listen, we both know they have to have a victor, so please, just take it, for me." She looks like she is thinking about something but I tell her how I feel anyway because I'm not sure how much time we have left. "I can't tell you how grateful I am to have had these four weeks with you, to get the chance to know you, hold you, kiss you…" She interrupts me and she whispers, "Trust me." I just look at her. I don't know what's going on. But I do. I do trust her.
She pulls the pouch of berries and empties some in her hand. She puts berries in my hand, and I see what she's doing. The Capitol needs a victor. So if they think we either both win or we'll kill ourselves, maybe they'll announce us both winners. But, what if they call her bluff? Then we'll both die. "On the count of three," she tells me. Well, I'm going anyway. At least if it happens this way, it'll be fast. I kiss her, one last time, possibly. "Count of three." I agree. "Hold them out," I tell her. "I want everyone to see." She does, and I hold mine out to let everyone, especially the Capitol, know of our intentions.
She squeezes my hand, and I count, "one. Two. Three." And at the count of three, I say my last goodbyes in my head as I put the berries in my mouth, as does she. I bite one at let the sweet succulent kiss of death coat my mouth. Then, Claudius' voice booms. "Stop! Stop!" He yells. "Ladies and Gentleman, I am pleased to present the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen, and Peeta Mellark, I give you- The tributes of District 12!" And we've done it. I've got a strange sense that this one action, this one thing with the berries has just set the course of both of our lives forever.