And where have I gone?

I wake in Montauk with you here

I'm roused by Fabian staring down at me, like some sort of madman. He's holding some basic cotton clothes, and orders me to put them on as quickly as possible. I know these aren't the clothes I am to wear in the arena. Final dressings of tributes are done in the catacombs underneath the arena.

When I am dressed and somewhat presentable, Fabian presses his palm against the small of my back and guides me to the rooftop. There, a large black hovercraft awaits. The seal of the Capitol is the first thing I notice, painted onto the side of the hovercraft.

I swallow hard, my knees threatening to buckle. Fabian whispers something to me, but through the blood roaring in my ears and the pounding in my head, I don't quite catch it.

He guides me toward the hovercraft, and with shaking legs, I step inside. A man in a white lab coat approaches me with a large syringe clenched in his hand. I'm not scared of needles, but this one is huge.

I'm too breathless to even question what the man's about to do, but then he suddenly jabs the needle into my forearm. I feel a sharp pang of pain, but it's gone in an instant. I rub the spot where he inserted the needle with my thumb, as the hovercraft takes off.

"That's your tracker," Fabian informs me quietly.

I don't acknowledge what he said, which is probably rude of me, but I figure that since I'm going to die in a few short minutes, I'm exempt from manners.

And that's when it finally hits me.

I am going to die today.

I am going to die today.

I am going to die today.

The words echo in my mind over and over again. I try to push them away, but they keep coming back, louder and more convincing than the last time. A woman hands me a bowl of cereal and a cup of mineral water, but I'm too sick and too scared to eat anything. When I try to pick the spoon up, it falls to my tray with a clatter. My hands shake. My head spins.

Feeling like I'm about to vomit, the hovercraft lands. Fabian leads me to the underground catacombs of the arena. It looks like the school locker room back home, except I'm not going to gym class today.

Fabian helps me dress in what I presume is my arena uniform, identical to the other tributes. I'm not really paying attention to what he's putting me in, though. The one thing I'm thinking of, the one thing that runs through my head, is that these are the clothes I will die in.

It's only when I'm given a gentle push over to the full-length mirror that I see myself. I'm dressed in tight black trousers, paired with a simple black tank top and a leather jacket that falls to my mid-thigh. My boots match my outfit.

I stare at my face in the mirror as Fabian begins to style my hair. Not out of vanity. I just simply cannot stop looking at myself. My face isn't pale like a frightened little child's. It's ashen grey, like I'm already dead. My eyes are cold and empty, and wide with fear, like prey before the slaughter.

Fabian steps away to examine my hair. It's been left down, naturally wavy, but one or two strands are done up in little plaits. Not that my appearance matters.

Nobody's going to care about the state of my hair when I'm lying in a pool of my own blood, now, are they?

"Almost forgot," he says, spinning me round to face him. He pulls my mockingjay pin out of his pocket. Wordlessly, he pins it to my jacket.

"Thank you," I mumble, realizing that those are the first words that have come out of my mouth today.

Fabian steers me over to what lies in the very centre of the room; the glass cylinder that will, in a few moments, rise and deliver me to death's doorstep.

A little way away from the cylinder, there's a long line of yellow tape on the floor that reads: "Only tributes permitted beyond this point!"

"Good luck, Maysilee," Fabian tells me. "Be brave."

He smiles at me slightly before stepping back, silently giving me my cue to walk away. I swallow hard, tighten my jaw, and walk as steadily as I can towards the cylinder.

Every step is agony, because it's one step closer to certain death.

Finally, I'm inside the glass cylinder, locked inside a cage that's impossible to escape from. The glass cylinder closes, immediately begins to rise, and I find myself a prisoner of darkness.

I hold my breath, not daring to breathe, for fear I might have a heart attack, or worse. I'm almost hoping I do, so that I don't have to face a brutal, violent death in the arena.

Yes, that is how I want to go, I think solemnly. Quietly. Inconspicuously. Peacefully.

But then, the more determined, fearless side of me roars that I'm being a coward. That I shouldn't be planning my death, because I am going to win. I am going to win.

Yeah. That's likely.

But all thoughts leave me as I lay my eyes on the arena. The Cornucopia is placed in the middle of a sweet-smelling meadow, full of colourful flowers and plants. There's not a cloud in the blue, blue sky. I turn my gaze, seeing that the meadow appears to stretch for miles and miles. Far in the distance, though, there are woods, and a snow-capped mountain.

But the smell is like nothing I've ever inhaled before. So sweet and thick and overwhelming. A butterfly swishes past my face in the blink of an eye.

I grit my teeth, forcing myself not to get too carried away. I have to focus. This isn't some pretty little meadow where we'll all have a nice picnic. No, this is where we will all die.

We will all die.

I can sense the seconds ticking away. I have one minute on this pod, one measly little minute to decide what my game plan is. The most logical decision I can think of is to head for the woods. Far away from the Cornucopia. And I don't like the look of that mountain, either. For all I know it could be a volcano or something.

I look to the side, over to my fellow tributes. Haymitch stands a couple of tributes down from me, his eyes firmly fixed on the Cornucopia. I feel like a mountain of lead just dropped into my stomach, because I know that while Haymitch is bigger than me, he won't stand a chance at the bloodbath.

Not against monsters who've been training for this since they could walk.

I want to tell him to head for the woods, like me, to get as far away from the Cornucopia as possible, but how can I do that? I will him to look at me. And finally, he does.

He stares at me, looking confused. As inconspicuously as I can manage, I jerk my head slightly to the left. A hopefully subtle gesture that he knows will mean he should head for the woods.

With me.

Haymitch and I never said anything out loud about being allies. But I think that, ever since we began training together, it was sort of a done deal. A mutual agreement.

I wait for him to respond to my little indication, but before he can, the gong rings out.

And all hell breaks loose.

I leap off my podium, and begin to run faster than I've ever run before. And I realize that it is not blood that runs through my veins, not anymore. No, nothing but fear fills every square inch of my body.

Not only do I want to stay away from the Cornucopia – for obvious reasons – but I also do not want to witness any bloodshed. I don't want to see anyone die right in front of me.

But like always, when you desire something, the opposite of that happens.

Right in front of me, I see one of the boys from 2 stab Astrid, plunging his knife deep into her stomach. He pulls the knife out, and wipes the blood off with his hand swiftly. Then, he turns to me.

I can't breathe. I can't think.

All I am aware of is that there is a thirteen year old girl dying on the ground before me. The boy grins, and raises his knife.

"Maysilee!" someone shouts.

I whip round, where Haymitch is standing with a knife, and a gun in hand. A gun? My mind boggled, he grabs my arm and we race toward the forest.

Even after we've left the bloodbath behind us, I can't stop turning my head behind me as we run. The boy from 2 doesn't pursue us, which I'm not surprised by. He clearly didn't see the point in chasing us when there's not only a heap of goodies at the Cornucopia, but also plenty more prey.

We don't stop running. Tears run down my face, because of what I've just seen, and the wind whips my hair, unravelling Fabian's intricate plaits. I want to collapse, and at one point, I do.

I fall to the ground, beneath a tree with almost-neon green leaves, curl up in a ball, and cry.

"Maysilee," Haymitch says quietly. I can hear his voice cracking. "We...we have to run. We have to keep running or they'll come after us."

"I saw Astrid die," I whisper to myself. He wasn't meant to hear, but somehow he does.

"I know," he murmurs. "But we have to keep going. We can't stop, Maysilee."

I nod slowly, biting my lip. Haymitch offers me his hand, and I cling onto it tightly. In that small touch, a whole surge of emotions rush through me. Strength. Happiness. Hope.

He pulls me up from the ground.

"We can walk, if you'd like," he tells me, brushing a stray tear away from my cheek. "You don't seem up to running, sweetheart."

"Thank you," I say. I'm genuinely grateful for his concern and understanding, but I feel like a weakling. Sobbing at my opponent's death. Nobody's going to want to sponsor me now. Now that I appear weak and vulnerable and naive. And as much as I think I don't stand a chance in these Games, I know that I am none of those things.

As we proceed through the forest, it feels more and more like we're simply taking a leisurely morning stroll. This place is beautifully picturesque.

"What you got there?" I ask, gesturing to the knife and gun in Haymitch's left hand. He's also got a pack swung around his shoulder, which I didn't notice before.

"A blow dart gun," he tells me, pointing to the gun, "A knife, and a pack."

"You made a little trip to the Cornucopia, then?" I say, trying to keep my voice light.

"Yes," he replies, shrugging. "No big deal." But I can see the pain in his eyes, and I can't help but wonder how many people he saw die today.

"You could've been killed," I mutter.

Haymitch laughs. "Sweetheart, we're in the Hunger Games. I'm constantly in danger of being killed."

"I just don't want anything to happen to you," I say without thinking. I feel my cheeks flushing slightly, and I turn to him, expecting him to laugh again or grin at me, like he used to.

But he does nothing of the sort. His face darkens, his jaw tightens. "You shouldn't be thinking that way, Maysilee," he says sharply.

"I know," I say, feeling pathetic. He's right – I shouldn't be worried for his safety. But I can't help it.

He doesn't respond, so I take to staring at the beauty around me. Nothing here is flawed. The very idea that this place could house a wilted flower, or a dying tree, is preposterous. The rich colours are overwhelming, the chirping birds are music to my ears.

After an hour or so, we reach a stream, the water azure blue. It's only then that I realize how thirsty I am – there's a dry patch on my tongue – and I want nothing more than to dump my face into the water. It just looks so...appetizing, which is ridiculous, because it's water. But...it's beautiful.

"Let's have a drink," I suggest, bending down onto my knees. I'm just about to dip my hand in, to cup some water in my hands to sip from, when Haymitch stops me.

"No," he says abruptly, his hand coming down onto my shoulder, squeezing it hard.

"Why?" I protest. "I'm parched, Haymitch. Aren't you?"

"Yes, but..." He trails off, appearing to have completely lost his train of thought. He gets down on his knees, like me, and examines the water. His eyes narrow. "It's poisonous."

"How can you tell?"

"The...the colour of the water," he says softly. "It's doesn't look...real. Fake."

"Haymitch," I scoff, "Everything here is fake. The colour of everything here is just as bright and just as fake-looking as the water."

He meets my eyes, and for the first time, I see fear in them. "Exactly."

I swallow hard. "You mean...everything here is poisonous?"

"Yes," he mutters. "I've suspected it as soon as we landed in here."

I nod, taking it all in. If Haymitch is right – and I'd never admit it, but he usually is – that means the water here is undrinkable. The idea that I might not be able to drink basic water is terrifying.

"We can only drink the rain water, then," I mumble.

"Guess so," Haymitch agrees, looking up. Not a cloud in the sky.

I purse my lips, and straighten up. Haymitch is still crouched on the ground, glowering at the water.

"Come on," I whisper, gently nudging him with the toe of his boot. "We've gotta go."

Haymitch nods without looking at me, and gets up. He doesn't say anything for a few moments, then looks at me and smiles slightly. "Here." He carefully places the blow gun in my hands. "You have it."

I balance the gun between my hands. Thankfully, it's not too heavy. But just looking down and seeing that I am holding a gun is enough to make me want to faint.

"H-How do you..." I feel utterly hopeless, and I'm starting to wonder why Haymitch wanted to be my ally in the first place.

"Shoot?" he finishes, grinning. The old Haymitch is back, I internally breathe a sigh of relief.

"Come here, sweetheart," he says, opening his arms slightly.

I smile and step closer to him. I'm reminded of our moment in training, when he taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow. And we would have kissed, if not for the gong that indicated lunch time. But there's no gong to interrupt us now.

He gently places my hands on the trigger, and then puts his own hands on top of mine.

"Grip it," he says quietly.

I clench the gun in my hands.

"Now pull the trigger," he whispers.

I do so as gently as I can, and a bullet flies through the air, making its home in a nearby tree dead ahead.

I spin round, smiling. "How do you know how to fire a gun?"

He shrugs. "There's a lot of things you don't know about me, sweetheart."

I grin at him. "I've got an idea."

"Oh?" He raises an eyebrow teasingly.

Wordlessly, I walk over to the tree I shot just a few seconds ago. He follows me without my even needing to ask him to. I get down on my hands and knees and pull a bright yellow flower from underneath the tree.

He opens his mouth as if to stop me, surely because he thinks it could harm me, but I ignore him. Then, I squeeze the stem of the flower. From the very centre of the flower, a strange royal blue liquid oozes out.

Haymitch's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "Maysilee, what are you-"

I turn to face him. "Just watch." I extract one of the many bullets from my gun, and dip it into the poison. I look back at him to see his reaction.

His mouth is open wide. He smiles at me. "You're a genius, sweetheart."

I laugh, stand up, and take a little bow. "So I've been told."

"Do you think the others are aware of the fact that everything here is poisonous?" Haymitch asks.

"Well, if they're as stupid as you said they were last night," I chuckle, "I doubt it."

"Guess so." He grins at me, then picks his pack off of the ground. "Should we see what's in this thing?"

I nod, and we sit cross-legged on the ground. I'm thankful that Haymitch managed to grab a pack from the Cornucopia, despite my upset at his recklessness. A knife and a blow gun won't exactly help us in terms of survival. The pack is black, which is good, because it'll blend in with the darkness when night comes around.

He opens up the pack, and pours the contents onto the ground. There's an empty two-litre bottle of water, one sleeping bag, a medical kit, and a small loaf of bread that looks suspiciously stale.

"Well," I say after a little while, "It's not much, but we shouldn't complain, right?"

" 'Not much'?" Haymitch scoffs. "Sweetheart, I risked my damn life to get this thing."

I roll my eyes, but one look at his face tells me he's joking. But then suddenly, something finally dawns on me, which makes me freeze.

"One sleeping bag," Haymitch says, reading my mind. He winks at me. "You know what that means, don't you, sweetheart?"

"Oh, shut up," I mutter, desperately wanting to avoid this conversation for as long as is humanely possible. Which is...tonight, I guess. I make a feeble attempt at changing the subject. "Uh, so, we should probably move on now, right? No sense in staying in the same place."

"Right you are." Haymitch nods and we set off into the forest once more.

The scenery shifts, but everything is roughly the same here – bright colours, beautiful but deadly flowers and plants, water that's unbelievably tempting to drink.

After a couple of hours, I feel a wave of hunger infecting my body. My stomach rumbles so loudly it could wake the dead. Unfortunately, Haymitch notices, because he turns and grins at me. My face feels hot.

Attractive.

"Here, sweetheart," he says, pulling a slice of bread out of his pack. He hands it to me, and I chew it almost violently. It tastes nice, although there's a hint of staleness to it. But I'm in no place to be picky.

"You should have some, too," I tell him as I finish off the slice of bread.

"No." He shakes his head, then smiles at me almost sadly. "I'm used to being hungry, right?"

A pang of guilt washes over me. Of course he's used to being hungry – he's from the Seam. It hadn't yet entered my stupid head that, whilst my stomach was utterly hollow, Haymitch was nowhere near peckish. Yet another way we are different.

I don't quite know how to respond to that, so I stay silent. And even if I did, what would I say? 'I'm sorry'? No, there's no use in apologizing for the fact that Haymitch has been starving his whole life. It wouldn't make anything better. It might even seem insincere, because it came from a "townie," as the Seam kids call us.

"Maysilee," Haymitch says abruptly. "Did you hear me?"

"Huh?" I reply stupidly, snapping out of my thoughts.

"I said, do you want to make camp here?" he repeats as patiently as he can manage.

I observe the surrounding area. It's full of trees, which is good in the sense that it will help conceal us from predators.

I nod. "Sure."

I look up, seeing that the sky is slowly but surely darkening. The prospect of sleeping in the middle of a forest doesn't scare me, for some reason.

Then, the anthem starts, and the faces of the fallen tributes light up the night sky. Two from 3. Three from 5. Two from 6. Three from 7. One from 8. Two from 9. Three from 10. One from 11. One from 12. The anthem ends, the seal of Panem replaces the faces of today's dead children, and the sky goes black.

Eighteen dead.

I turn away, surprised to see that our only sleeping bag is already laid out on the ground. Our pack sits beside it, as does my blow gun and Haymitch's knife.

"So," says Haymitch, who is kneeling beside the sleeping bag, staring up at me expectantly. "How are we going to organise this whole... sleeping arrangement?"

"Uh," I say stupidly. My next words come out so quickly that even I can barely understand what I'm saying. "Well, we shouldn't sleep up in the trees because er, sure, I can climb trees, but you can't and-"

"Maysilee-"

"And it wouldn't be very practical of just one of us to sleep up in the tree, would it?" I continue, "Because then one of us would be on the ground, without a sleeping bag, with no protection and-"

"Maysilee," Haymitch says flatly, and this time, I stop. He places both hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye. "We don't have to...sleep in the same sleeping bag if it makes you uncomfortable."

"Haymitch, it's not that I don't want to," I whisper, praying that the cameras don't catch my words. "It's just...I've never been in that kind of...situation before." My cheeks are incredibly red, I just know it.

"It's okay," he assures me quietly. "I mean, I'm not going to, y'know-" he winks, "-try anything."

I laugh nervously. "Okay." I awkwardly gesture to the sleeping bag. "Do you want to uh, get in first?"

"Sure," he says calmly, zipping the sleeping bag open and climbing in.

I get down on my knees, take a deep breath, and slip inside the sleeping bag as gracefully as I can, which isn't very. The sleeping bag is rather large, so at first, we lie on the opposite sides. I bite my lip and rest my head down, turning my eyes away from him.

Suddenly, his body shifts itself over to me. My blood runs cold, and I'm not sure if it's out of fear or excitement. I scold the tiny part of me that's afraid. Haymitch would never intentionally hurt me.

"Maysilee," he murmurs. "Are you okay... with this?"

"More than okay," I whisper without thinking. Because despite the fact that I'm slightly worried as I've never had a boy so close to me before, I'm also...excited? I can't explain the flurry of emotions running through me.

Haymitch wraps his arms around my waist, and I can feel my face flushing. A swarm of butterflies flutter around my stomach. The feel of Haymitch's arms around me is everything I ever dreamed it would be. Safe. Warm. Protective.

Loving.

My lips part slightly, as I feel Haymitch's cool breath in my ear. It sends lovely shivers down my spine. I reach down to my waist, where his hands are, and place my hands on his. I stroke his hands with my thumb.

"We shouldn't be doing this," Haymitch mumbles.

I turn my head round to face him, feeling like a heap of bricks have dropped down on me. "You don't want to?" All the conflicting, mess of emotions I've felt as his hands locked me in their firm grasp, and it turns out he doesn't like it as much as I do?

"No, it's not that," he replies softly. "It's just... what will your parents think?"

I freeze. My parents. My sister, my family are watching me cuddle up to a boy – a boy from the Seam, no less – on live television.

"Doesn't it embarrass you?" he whispers. "That they're seeing this?"

"No." I shake my head. I don't want to admit it, but I probably won't be seeing my family again. So it won't be awkward next time I see them. Which is an event that will never happen.

I can feel tears welling up in my eyes, because it's the first time I've thought about my family since I've landed in the arena. I don't want to think about them. Too painful.

I turn around in the sleeping bag to face Haymitch, because a foolish part of me believes that his face is the only thing that'll stop me from crying. Because he strengthens me. Makes me a better person, somehow.

His hands are forced to let go of my waist, and instead we reposition ourselves. Like before, he puts his arms around my waist, sending tingles through my body. I place my hands around his waist, too, in a spur of the moment sort of thing.

I can feel his body shudder in delight. I smile, though it makes me blush, knowing that I have that kind of effect on him. Our faces are so close, but I'm not in the mood for kissing tonight. I don't think he is, either.

All we do, until we fall asleep, is look into each other's eyes and feel safe. Warm and protected. My last thought before my mind shifts into unconsciousness, is that when we're wrapped in each other's arms, we can almost forget the horrors we've witnessed today.

And that, to me, is love.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Leave your thoughts in a little review, maybe? :)