A Dangerous Game

Chapter Fifteen: Tracker Jacker

Blacking out after being shot by Quinn, Blaine had no clue that he had been found by Kurt or that his wound had been tended to. In fact, he wasn't really aware of anything at all. Anything real that is...

Blaine didn't know where he was; everything was in shades of grey, which made details hard to distinguish. He was on a pedestal; that much was clear. Bright lights were focused on him like eyes. There was a constant pounding, loud, like a cross between drums and the whip of a fan.

He shielded his eyes, trying to see past the lights, squinting. "Hello?" he said tentatively.

"Blaine Anderson," a voice came from behind him. Swinging around, Blaine was relieved to see that it was just Caesar Flickerman. "Follow me." Flickerman turned, walking off in to the darkness.

"Wait!" Blaine hurried off after him, not wanting to be left behind.

Flickerman led him down a path, which stretched out into infinity. They were still surrounded by the eyes, and darkness still hung over them. He stopped, facing Blaine. "Let the Games begin." And with a bright flash, he vanished.

The eyes or lights or whatever they were snapped back, forming a dome around him. From twenty-three openings in the darkness, emerged tributes, all faceless with empty black eyes and no distinguishing marks to tell them apart. All were identical, all except for one.

Kurt.

Kurt.

Although he was in black and white, his bright eyes shined blue.

The other tributes were frozen in place as if waiting for a signal to move, but Kurt moved slowly toward him, a gentle and loving smile on his beautiful face. "Blaine," his voice sounded like music. Blaine would have run to him, but his feet seemed locked to the floor. So he had to wait for Kurt to come to him, seeming to take millennia, although it was little more than a matter of seconds.

Kurt ran his hands up Blaine's arms, smoothing his palms over his back. He pulled him forward and Blaine's feet were freed from the floor and he stumbled into Kurt's arms. Their lips touched, passionate but slow. Kurt moved back, looking into Blaine's eyes, "Run to me Blaine. Run."

"You're here, I don't understand…"

"Run," Kurt ordered. He started to vanish from Blaine's arms, turning to a glowing mist and then disappearing completely.

Blaine grasped at the air where Kurt had been.

"Run," Kurt's voice echoed.

Rachel and Kurt set up camp around Blaine, not wanting to move him. The tarp protected him from the lightly falling rain, but he seemed completely unaware of everything. Nothing Kurt did or said could awake him, although occasionally Blaine would mutter something incomprehensible and shiver uncontrollably.

Kurt leaned down, kissing Blaine's forehead. "It's okay, shh… It's okay. I'm here. You're okay. You're going to be okay. I can't lose you." He looked over to Rachel, sniffing and whipping his tears off on his sleeve. "I don't understand. You said his wound wasn't fatal, right?"

They had received a gift from a sponsor, which had done something to heal his wound, but it was still red and raw, still oozing blood. Even the cut on his ear was unhealed, although the powerful Capitol medicine should have sealed the skin.

Rachel nodded, "He didn't lose too much blood. He should be fine. It was deep, but not in a position to cause internal bleeding."

Kurt wished that he had paid more attention to the first aid portion of training, Rachel had spent most of her time there, but he hadn't really seen the point. In his mind getting injured in the arena would mean certain death, which he now hoped with all his heart was not so. "Then what did she do to him?"

"I don't know," Rachel sighed.

None of this seemed right; it was like a puzzle with one piece missing. Some clue Kurt had overlooked as to why Blaine was in this condition. The injury had become swollen and Kurt feared it had become infected.

Swollen… that reminded him of something. When he was about nine, he had snuck into an old, abandoned factory on a dare. The place was practically falling apart. The machinery was broken down and rusty. It had been dark, as there were very few windows and the light weren't working, so he had literally been under the nest before he had saw it was there. Of course he had heard of tracker jackers before, everyone knew about them, but he had never seen one before so he didn't immediately realize what they were. He had screamed when it finally dawned on him; if he hadn't he would have possibly been able to get uninjured. The sound had awoken insects and they had swarmed him. By some miracle he had managed to get back out with only the slightest graze from the stinger; some of the boy's who had dared him to go in weren't as lucky. They had been unconscious for weeks and one boy had never been quite the same since. Kurt had gotten off lucky, it took him a few days but he eventually recovered. A cold sweat, vivid dreams and hallucinations, swelling at the place of the injury… of course!

Still, that didn't explain how an injury caused by an arrow head was giving him tracker jacker sting symptoms. But did it matter how tracker poison had entered his wound? He knew exactly what he needed; it had been one of the first things he had covered in training. "I'll be right back."

Rachel stared at Kurt as he got to his feet, "Where are you going?"

"I'll be back in a few minutes." He hurried off, then shouted an explanation over his shoulder, "I think I know what can save Blaine!"

"Run."

Blaine obeyed turning on his heels and fleeing. Behind him he could sense the tributes following close, freed from their previous bind. The darkness melted out of his way, forming a path as he ran.

No matter how far he ran, the tributes gained on him. Fear and exhaustion consumed him and just as he felt that he could go no further, the blackness stopped moving out of his way.

Blaine pounded his fists onto the wall of black, but it refused to give way. He ran forward trying to find another way. A tribute stopped in his path, its cold black eyes watching him. It walked towards him, taking its time. He turned in the other direction, only to find himself face to face with another one of the monstrous beings. The rest of them emerged from the darkness.

Blaine backed up, looking over his shoulder. The black wall had turned into a swirling mass of nothingness. Not simply black, but pure nothingness. It terrified him, perhaps for that reason or perhaps for the ominous thrumming sound that it was omitting. No! He was not going to go through that… that… whatever it was!

The tributes, which were now more creature than human, were relentless however. There seemed no other choice. Blaine clenched his eyes shut and allowed himself to be pulled back into the oblivion.

While Kurt had been off searching for the right plant, a cannon shot had rung out. He had raced back to camp terrified that the shot had belonged one of his companions. "Rachel! Are you okay? What happened?"

Rachel jumped is surprise, not expecting him back. "It wasn't us."

Kurt sighed in relief, sinking down to the ground. "I found what I was looking for at least." He opened his hand; he had managed to find four of the shiny green leaves. He gently uncovered Blaine's worst wound, which restarted bleeding slightly when the gaze was removed from it. He gently laid the leaves on the wound, saving one for the cut on Blaine's ear in case it was also infected.

By the time the sun was setting, the leaves had made the swelling on Blaine's wound go down, but not nearly as much as Kurt would have liked. However, Blaine did seem to be sleeping more peacefully now, which hopefully was a good sign that he was on the road to recovery.

Nothingness.

Kurt chose to try to get some sleep, although he was unable to achieve this. Feigning sleep was more for the purpose of avoiding watching the tributes be projected into the sky. Rachel whispered to him that Sam Evans was the cannon they had heard earlier.

Kurt stared at the ground, fixating on a bit of bark. He didn't need to see Quinn again; the shocked expression on her face when she had died was forever engrained in his memory.