Darkness in the grove was a far different beast than on the canyon surface. Here, shadows of all shapes and sizes bore down in scary patterns and frightening visages. Sam had never been in the wood in District 10 at dark – the worst darkness she'd ever known had come from dark days at home under her father. Here, however, everything felt closer and dangerous. With only four tributes left, everything would soon come to a close. The 98th Hunger Games would undoubtedly be over inside of two days; more likely, the curtain would close tomorrow.
And here Sam was with an injured and sluggish Storm.
The pair had crossed deeper into the grove throughout the afternoon, escaping as far as possible from Royal and Fresco. Sam had completely lost sight of the vixen from District 1 who had been responsible for three cannon shots alone inside of five minutes, and her district-mate had gone flying off into the desert somewhere. Either way, she was willing to bet that they would cross each other before they reached her and Storm. Then…then things would come to a head.
Sam wondered what the Gamesmakers would do to spice up the climax of the Games.
New and improved mutts? Scatter the bodies of dead tributes around like rain? Play with their minds? Rex had all sorts of tools at his arsenal. It wouldn't be hard to find something to entertain the audience with.
"Sam," Storm's weakening voice took Sam's thoughts off of more existential things. "Sam…look…"
"Let's stop, okay?" she replied, helping him to a sitting position on the dry earth. "We can stop for the night here; wait to see what happens."
"Sam no, listen to me," Storm began, breathing hard with pain from Royal's well-placed shot into his chest. "Take the bow and the arrows. There's only four of us left; I can do something…I dunno, draw them off. I can start a fire. Make a basic spear, maybe I can kill Fresco if he comes around."
"No you listen," Sam grabbed his left shoulder and shook, her sapphire eyes boring into his. "I'm not going to leave you here like that. I'm not gonna let those two monsters from 1 kill you like some animal. You're the only thing I have left in this place. I'm going to stick with you until I physically can't."
"Sam, we can't do that forever…"
"I don't care!" she surprised herself with her energy in the response. "I don't care. I don't. I saw how that boy from 1 just murdered the girl from 12 today. He watched Gannet get murdered by Hadrian. I'm not going to let him just toss you aside the same way. I'm going to keep fighting."
Storm smiled and gave up his protests. "Your district better be proud of you when you get home, Sam."
"What d'you mean?" she asked, picking leaves off the nearby trees to stuff as a makeshift bandage for his injury.
"In my district, they say being a victor changes people," Storm said. "Both my mentors, Haymitch and my uncle, gave into alcoholism. Haymitch is horrible about it, and although my uncle's a good enough guy…he doesn't really do anything. Those are examples of people who got scarred by the process; who never really beat anything. They let the Games beat them. I don't know who your mentors are, but I wouldn't be shocked if at least one victor from your district fell the same way."
Yeah, well Cheyenne did a real good job, Sam thought.
"But you," Storm laughed and coughed. "Just seven days ago, we were curled up in that cave after Troop's death. We were scared to death of what was coming, crying into each other's shoulder, going off into the unknown in darkness. Four of the Careers were still out there; fourteen total tributes. We had no idea what we had gotten into. But look at you now – you're not some scared girl like the Capitol would like you to be. You're a fighter; a survivor. You were a champion for a little girl from District 4 who had nothing, and now you're a champion for me."
"You're everything a victor should be, yet never is. Nobody but you deserves to win."
Sam let her arms fall to her side, her head drooping in the darkening night. She clutched a handful of eucalyptus leaves as she considered what he said. Was she an exemplar; a standard of victor? How could she be – she hadn't had a problem wasting Troop no matter how Storm had said it, had she? She'd done it without a second thought as soon as he'd advanced, charring him like a lightning-struck tree. She'd slit Laredo's throat, been prepared to gut Hadrian if it had come to that, and certainly would be killing again before these Games were over if she wanted to come out alive.
She wasn't an exemplar. Nobody who won these Games was.
"When I was younger," she unzipped Storm's jacket and got her first good look at the wound. It was an ugly thing – blotched with blood that had only partially coagulated; to attempt to bandage it, she began to lay the leaves on before she'd tie it off with her own jacket. "I was kind of ignored a lot. Because we had some more money, the kids with parents in…less glamorous professions tended to dislike me, and there's a lot more of them than there are of me. So I stayed quiet, kept to myself a lot, played with the animals on my father's ranch. Learned from my brother, had two friends of note my age. Adults who worked on the ranch called me sweet but shy. I don't know if that was true, but maybe it was."
"That girl couldn't kill. She couldn't harm anything, really – an old sick or dying animal, sure, or something that's meant to be meat, okay, but not anything like this. That girl was fine. Maybe she could be a representative of everything that's good."
Sam pressed the leaves into Storm's injury with her palm, eliciting a grunt of pain from him. "I'm just a girl who's killed some people and now has to live with it, though. I'm not championing anything. I'm just fighting. There's nothing good in that. Animals do that."
Storm grimaced as Sam wrapped her jacket around his chest, knotting it loosely to keep the leaves firm as a bandage. "There's plenty good in that if you're fighting for something worth it. The girl you keep demeaning yourself as wouldn't have saved Gannet. She wouldn't have helped me today. She wouldn't be fighting for me now. Someday, Sam, you're gonna have to realize you're more than you put yourself down as."
He straightened up and pulled her into his chest, removing the blanket from their backpack and laying it over them. "And I, for one, don't care what the rest of the world thinks. If this is my last night, then I'm spending it with the only person I'd want to do so with. The Capitol can throw whatever horrors they want at us, but I don't care. Right now, I have you. That's better than everything they have."
Sam felt that warmth from earlier returning as Storm kissed her cheek, wrapping his fingers around hers. No matter what she could say or do, no matter the circumstances, Storm gave her the hope that constantly tried to slip away.
"I think I knew it when I first saw you in that chariot," he said, looking up at the darkened sky studded with stars. "I love you, Sam. No matter what happens, I want you to know that's never going to change."
A yellow, twinkling spot of light caught Sam's eye shining through the darkness of the trees. Venus, the planet of love, smiled down at her.
Sam smiled back.