In a random surge of motivation I typed up a storm and got out this chapter. Nothing really to say except please do enjoy! I've had the gangs hallucinations scenes in my head for a while now (and by a while I mean since I started writing out this story). The things that they fear now will play big parts in their actions later. I mean Tracker Jackers are supposed to make everyone go a little crazy, right? ;) Please lemme know your thoughts as usual. My writing style was a taddd bit different for this chapter.

(Edit) Fixed a few errors, added a few details about Marvel's ladylove ect. Just wanted to mention I'm almost sad parting with Glimmer and Marina :( It was fun writting them- especially Glimmer!

(Edit again: 7/8) After a little reading it came to my understanding that the lake the Careers ran to was their orginal base camp- therefore being guarded by non other than little Circut. So I fixed this. By the way I can't stress enough how much I LOVE you guys. Thankyou so much for supporting this story. Really. It means so much to me. I'll have a new chapter up soon, I promise!

13.

Even in sleep, Clove wasn't at peace. The decision to rest wasn't her own – it was her bodies. Had it been up to her, she would have stayed awake watching Twelve the entire night. As the others laid down to rest sometime earlier, when the stars had been at the opposite side of the horizon, the thought that none of them wanted Twelve as awfully as she did was confirmed (for this reason she decided they didn't quite deserve to have the girl then.) Though not long after their snores filled the air, her back and neck began to ache in protest. When she laid down her lids involuntarily sunk over her eyes as a bird chirped somewhere in the distance.

When they opened again, it was to a different sound entirely.

At first it was only a distant drone that seemed to faintly increase in volume. For an inconceivably small amount of time the noise could have been a sweet lullaby and nothing more.

Glimmer had been barely roused into conscientious. Like a small child, she nestled her blonde head further into her shoulder and smacked her lips which were dry from a deep sleep.

Hours ago, it was her turn to keep watch on the girl from Twelve. But never once in her life did Glimmer have to do anything she didn't care too. Especially if the orders came from the arrogant ogre that was Cato. So she stayed up for as long as she desired and didn't fight fatigue when it came. Glimmer drifted off as pleasantly as if she had been back home in District One, laying in her cloud of a bed and adorned in her fine silken sheets rather than sitting uncomfortably upright against the hard bark of a tree. She had a passing thought about the girl she was supposed to be watching as she sunk into sleep; how silly and dirty she was. Then it fluttered off into the night like a butterfly with the rest of her thoughts.

Now, about to slip back into the sleep she had been in, the drone was no longer distant. It was no longer even a drone. The sound was the combination of dozens of individual buzzes, each with their own pitch. Glimmer opened her eyes just in time to feel the first sting.

It began as just one insect. Then two. Then there were hundreds of black dots whizzing past her eyes. She hardly had the time to wonder exactly what they were before she began to scream and wildly beat them away from her.

As her hands moved before her eyes she saw that already there was a bulging wad of flesh developing, yellow against her opal colored skin. She shrieked. The bugs seemed to keep coming for her face. One flew into her opened mouth. They kept stinging her- again and again. They wouldn't stop stinging her.

The others around her had all woken up too. She saw Clove's dark ponytail flash past her but it almost seemed to move too slow. Cato caught the girl by her collar. "To the lake!" he shouted. "To the lake!"

Glimmer covered her face and grabbed her bow. But the insects were relentless. She stumbled forward after the others but she couldn't- she just couldn't reach them. All she felt was sting after sting. There were too many of the insects to swat off now but she still whipped her bow at them. When she felt her arm go numb she screamed for the others.

But in response she only heard a voice that echoed from the night before.

"Whose going to come for you?

Between the brown of the dashing insects she looked down to see purple, oozing appendages where her arms were supposed to be. But none of it made sense anymore. Not the pain. Not the screams. Not the ringing she heard around her. Nothing. Nothing.

As her body crumpled to the ground she saw something she hated. It was the mouth of her father. He had emerald eyes just like hers but she never looked into them. Only his mouth. It kissed her lips in a way no father should. Then it spoke.

You'll end the world, my dear.

With those words, she began to slip away from it all. Every memory she ever had faded to black. Fingers trailing across a blue wall. A wide window. The white teeth of chattering girls. Her lips against a warm, soft neck. A pair of hands at her back that she actually wanted there. Pairs of hands that she didn't. Sweet giggles that rang through warm summer nights. Blonde tresses encasing the twirling body of a child.

Nothing.

Her thoughts in those final moments were frantically trying to understand something, anything. But eventually even they went silent.

What a tragedy, was breathed throughout her hollow mind. Because though she was too far gone to know who she was or how she got there, she knew she was dying.

Marina staggered forward.

She knew of these little monsters. Tracker jackers. She had seen them in previous Hunger Games. She could remember a time when she sat before the massive screen in District Four years ago wondering with mild curiosity what sort of horrors their stings could cause. Now she knew.

She wished more than anything that she didn't.

Glimmer's piercing shrieks motivated her to push on. Only a few of the insects hovered around her now, occasionally awarding her with another sting. But they had already gotten her bad enough. She wasn't as fast as the others. She thought she saw Peeta, running far ahead- though her eyes were beginning to deceive her now. Things had lost their proportion. Absently she touched her neck which was covered in frighteningly large lumps. As the world around her began to darken, she knew she couldn't take many more. Her only defense was to swat the little beasts with all her diminishing strength.

Her hands moved slow before her eyes. She couldn't be sure if she truly was that weak or if it was part of the hallucination. The ground began to shift into a steep incline. A heavy weigh was upon her. She tumbled down beneath it.

Black was pouring from the stings on her arms- now the size of plums. No, she wouldn't go like this. She couldn't. The idea that she may die frightened her to her core. She couldn't move her mouth but inside a ghastly scream was rippling through the cervices of her mind. She could die.

As she flipped on her belly to crawl, she looked up to see she wasn't surrounded by trees anymore. Rather all she saw was massive looming entities the color of fresh blood. In the distance there were guppies wiggling through the strange beings but they disappeared almost as soon as she noticed them. She wanted to reach out an arm to catch them. She tried. But her arms weren't a part of her anymore. Nothing was.

If there was something Marina understood it was not to bother fighting a losing battle. And she was losing this one. So she ended the struggle, waiting with patience for death to come.

And come it did.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Clove was snarling the words as she crushed the remaining insects that buzzed around her. The stings they left her with were growing at a rapid rate. The first one she had gotten on her shoulder blade was already the size of a ripened orange.

She was running but roots seemingly rose to trip her. The trunks she thought she passed continued to move alongside her. But she didn't pay mind to them. Focus on Cato, was all she told herself as she followed him. Just look at him, look at him.

When the lake came into view she hurled herself into it without hesitation. The water roared as it took her, dragging her into the mud at the bottom of its murky body. She held her breath as she fought against it. Something was holding her ankles and dragging her down. She kicked away at it but it kept grabbing her again. When she opened her eyes she saw faintly saw it. It was a creature. It looked almost human. Black clumps of hair flowed away from the pale face.

Her head was bursting from the water then, coughing and sputtering. The trees that loomed overhead seemed to have taken on a different quality. She couldn't be sure exactly what. Though she did notice that the colors around her seemed a bit… brighter.

The boy from Three began screaming as a few of the Tracker Jackers that had followed them began to attack him. With very little grace he almost fell into the lake.

Cato appeared beside her with a splash. Droplets were rolling across a massive purple sting beneath his eye and from his dusty gold locks of hair. His eyes were off though. They were as black as the water that now breathed around them. Clove was confused. She hadn't truly seen a natural body of water before she came into the arena but she knew that it wasn't supposed to pulse like that.

"Get him," Clove said. Though she only understood why she had said it a second after the words spilled from her lips- because Lover Boy was already out of the lake and running through the trees again. She shook her head. No, no, she told herself. Stay with it. Hallucinations are for the weak.

Cato didn't acknowledge her. Instead his head was already moving through the water like a serpent. He crawled from the lake, breathing heavy. Then he was off too. Gone.

Follow them, Clove told herself. But for some reason she had an undying need to stay exactly where she was, listening to the stillness around her. Only the stillness itself seemed to increase in volume. The chirping of some animal was as loud as if it had been blaring through a speaker. The wind was thumping, louder and louder. She was so distracted she didn't even hear the buzzing of a stray Tracker Jacker before it stung her again.

Marvel's head slowly rose from the water before her, his skin as white as a pearl. A cannon fired. The sound sent waves through the air. Marvel only locked his black eyes with hers while the water continued to pulse around them- more in unison and unnatural than before. He held one arm out to her and tapped the plum that grew there.

The water then rose like the walls of a funnel.

Clove was frantic. She struggled to climb out of it. The water. It was as black as a grave. It was as red as blood that spurted from Ten's neck. It was as orange as the flames of the fire. It was burning her. It was pulling her in. It was consuming her.

Another cannon.

When she pulled herself onto shore she couldn't remember how she had got there. A part of her was still drowning in the water. She wanted to go back for it. Until she saw the body.

It was lying a distance before her in the sand. It's blonde hair was in a mess. It was Glimmer. Clove couldn't see her face but she knew it was Glimmer. With its back still to Clove it began screaming. The sound of it was so incredibly loud that Clove could hardly bare it. But when she approached the body, it stopped.

"No," Clove said. Her voice seemed to echo through her own ears. "Scream again."

But the body didn't listen. Clove kicked it.

"Scream again," she demanded, stomping her foot on the ground. She wanted to hear the screams again. She didn't know why because they were so awful. But she wanted to hear them again.

The body still didn't listen. Instead the hair began to turn gray and fall out of its head and the skin began to melt away.

"Scream again! Scream again! Scream again!"

Clove was on the body now. She was pulling it by its colorless hair and smashing its face hard into the ground as she shrieked. Its skull began to crack but it wasn't hard enough. She pulled out the clumps of hair it had left. She began to kick its back until it was indented.

Scream again. Scream again.

Its head turned from the dirt to look at her. When Clove saw its face, she screamed right along with it.

Because the face was her own.

Everything grew large around her now as she crumpled to the earth, drowning in her own screams. The world was spinning so fast it was all only a blur. She was dying, she was so sure she was dying. And with this thought everything changed.

The scenery dissipated into blackness. All around her. She only saw black.

Never before had she understood so clearly why she had always hated that color.

It was nothing. It was nothing. And she was so full of nothingness. How many aspects of her life had been shaped to fill it? How many times had she stared into blank walls or pulled her hair out screaming, screaming because there wasn't a thing she could do to keep herself from tearing apart into nothing.

But she would never escape it.

She could see it all now. Even if she killed every last one of the tributes in the arena, even if she lived to see District Two again, it didn't matter how much she destroyed; she would still be consumed by the nothingness. Right up until the day she died.

And in that moment, she understood death at its blankest.

When it came her entire being would seize to exist. There would be no thought, no feeling, not even a conscious of being dead. She would be gone- left in the blackness for the rest of the eternity.

Nothing at all.

Her screams drew her back to the spinning world again. But before she had time to feel any real relieve the sky was falling down on her.

As Marvel hauled himself from the lake, he heard a cannon fire.

He took slow deep breaths. That cannon signaled the death of one of their own. He wasn't sure exactly who. In efforts to keep his mind away from hallucinating, he tried to make sense of who. Perhaps Lover Boy? No, Marvel had seen him. Cato was still alive and kicking, unfortunately. The boy from Three was struggling in the water still. Clove was within eye range, though truthfully she didn't exactly look like she was going to make it much longer. The girl had seemed to go completely mad, screaming and pounding her fists into the ground. Marvel wouldn't let the venom get to him like it did her. All of Panem was watching. He wouldn't embarrass himself or his district in such a way.

Though he realized when he saw a little girl crawl down from the trees that he didn't have much of a choice.

Upon seeing her, he knew whose death the cannon had signaled. He also knew that this little girl wasn't truly there. Not only was she dead but even when he left her screaming and thrashing on the ground back at camp, she was ten years older than the child who stood before him. Her emerald eyes bore into him.

"Marvel," Glimmer sneered, her voice just as real as it had been ten years ago as they trained together in the academy. He had hated her just as much then as he did now.

He waited for her to say something more. But she said nothing. Instead the child only opened her mouth and when she did, he heard the horrific buzz of the Tracker Jackers. Instinctively he stood up to run, only to fall back down again. He tried to tell himself it wasn't real but little Glimmer was in his face now, her mouth still opened inhumanly wide as the maddening buzzing filled his ears.

Then it wasn't Glimmer anymore. It wasn't even a human. The creature that stood before him now was one he couldn't explain. He couldn't see it but he knew it was there. It was worse than any mutt he had ever seen, it was far worse than any Tracker Jacker. Its presence brought along with it a terror he had never experienced before.

He began to tear away at his own flesh to keep it from touching him. Starting with his arms. He dug his nails into his skin and ripped across until his own blood turned his fingers red. The buzzing still rang through his ears. It was so loud it was painful. No longer was it the buzz of the Tracker Jackers though. It was much like the static of the broken television that sat in the dingy little room Citrine shared with her mother back in District One.

The thought of her brought her into the arena. Marvel saw her moving through the trees in the distance- her fiery curls fluttering around her willowy frame. He heard her calling his name as she stumbled over the stones and roots her unseeing eyes couldn't detect. But her beautiful voice was drowned out by the sound. That god forsaken sound that he would rather tear his own ears off than hear any longer.

It was all silenced by a scream.

He could tell this scream was real. It was natural. It pulled him from his hallucinations just so he could fall right back into them again.

It was Clove. She was the only thing real in all of this. He tilted his head from where he lay flat on his back to look at her. The pale flesh on her face fell in folds between her eyes. And that scream. It was the shriek of a thousand banshees. He needed it to end. He had to make it end.

He grabbed his spear which laid dislodged at his hand as he rolled on his belly so he could crawl to her.

He had always known she was a monster. He had always known.

In many ways, Peeta was glad she did it. Katniss had saved herself. And she may have saved him too.

By dropping the nest on them, Katniss had killed two of the careers. Maybe Glimmer and Marina weren't exactly the most blood thirsty of them all but if it had come down to it, they would have killed whoever they had to to win. And while Peeta had gotten stung it wasn't enough to kill him. So really this was a victory for him- a gloomy victory but a victory all the same.

Though he felt the lumps rise painfully across where he had been burned on his chest from the fire hours ago. He knew hallucinations would come for him. He wobbled slightly as he ran and he still thought he heard Marina's deathly moans saying his name. She was dead now. They had already collected her body.

In the madness, Peeta had hardly noticed exactly what happened to Glimmer. He knew she got the worst of it all. He feared they hadn't collected her body yet.

But when he crashed through the underbrush what he saw was much, much worse.

"What are you still doing here?" he hissed at her. Katniss only stared blankly back at him. Absolute fear washed over him now. Cato was right behind him. He would kill her. He would kill them both.

"Are you mad?" he said, prodding her with the butt of his spear to make her stand. "Get up! Get up!"

With difficulty, Katniss rose but she didn't make any moves away from him. She was bad. Peeta could already see she was bad. She wouldn't stand in a fight right now. Peeta shoved her away from him hard.

"Run!" he shouted in desperation. "Run!"

She stumbled away at the sound of a sword slashing through the underbrush behind him. Katniss would escape. She would be okay, for now. But he wouldn't. Peeta closed his eyes for just a moment before he turned to meet his death. He had thought that he was saved too soon.

Cato didn't try to hide the unbreakable rage from his features as he approached Peeta with the sword that suddenly looked triple its original size. Peeta's thoughts flickered to his father. He saw the man's warm smile as he ruffled Peeta's hair.

He hoped more than anything he wasn't watching right now.

Cato was tilting his head as he spoke. "I warned you," he said. He was going to continue but Peeta knew this would be his only chance to strike. Should he flee Cato would probably catch him, or worse he would go for Katniss. Peeta wanted nether of those things. If he was going to die, he was going to die as himself. And while Peeta may have not been a fighter, he wasn't a coward ether.

But he was afraid.

Peeta charged at Cato without a sound. He could have hurled the spear but if he missed, he would have ended up weaponless. Cato managed to block the blow with his sword but he was still slow to do it. The venom was already weighing down on the massive boy, making him sluggish. Peeta made a motion to directly stab him in the abdomen but Cato skillfully swung the sword with such force into his spear that he knocked Peeta over right along with it.

Cato had his foot on Peetas chest before he could scramble away. As Cato leaned his face toward Peetas, the boy was as large as the trees.

"-Dead faster than you can say Katniss," Cato spit through gritted teeth.

Peeta heard Panem cheering Cato on, screaming like animals for his blood. He swore he heard it blaring through the arena. Did they normally do that? Play the reactions of the crowd for the victims to hear? Peeta heard his mother too as a manic smile spread across Cato's face. District Twelve will still have a winner, she hissed. And at least she won't be such a fool.

"You know what?" Cato said, trying to feign calmness for theatrical purposes. Though the effect was all the more frightening. His words were shaky as they were squeezed from his teeth. Had he grown in the past twenty seconds? Suddenly the boy looked even bigger than he had been.

"Maybe we should make this slow, huh, Twelve? Panem doesn't want to see their Lover Boy go just yet."

Without warning Cato dug the sword into his upper thigh. Peeta thought he had prepared himself for pain but not like this. His body convulsed but Cato's foot kept it pinned to the ground. He didn't care to stop himself from screaming. He could hardly see Cato anymore. It was as if all his other senses had been turned off and all he could feel was the excruciating pain.

The sword carved straight through the muscle of his thigh, perhaps even scrapping the bone as well. As if from a distance, Peeta heard Cato's laughter. Even further in the distance he heard the soft weeps of his father. Further still, he heard Katniss's whispers as she watched him, years later, back home in District Twelve with a victors crown still adorned in her hair.

Her words were carried in the wind that rushed past his face.

Cato reveled in Lover Boy's screams. He stayed and watched him as he struggled to crawl away until he heard that familiar buzz. He ran back the way he came, barreling through the trees, but the little bastard still got him anyway. He crushed it before it could fly away from him. As he stared into his palm he thought he saw it's dislodged wings still beating. He shook his head.

When he turned to face the forest, he wasn't quite in the arena anymore. No, he was in the arena. But it didn't look like the arena. There was something so different. He supposed the trees were the same. It wasn't the rocks or the ground ether. But then he realized it was the air itself. It visibly pulsed around his body as he moved through it. He waved his hand in front of his face, marveling at the strange vibrations he could see around his wiggling fingers. Then he understood what was happening. Fear washed over him.

The very air of this place was trapping him here.

No, he snarled in defiance. Then he charged ahead, dully realizing how slow he had become. The rising sun in the sky weighed down on him, pushing him to the ground. But he wouldn't let it.

"My Cato, always a fighter," said Licinia, glowering at him as she stepped from behind a tree. He realized her nose was crinkled drastically, like that of a snarling dog.

What are you doing here, mother? He growled to keep her away.

"My Cato, always a fighter," she said again, only now she was twirling around the tree. "My Cato, always a fighter. My Cato, always a fighter."

She was singing. He covered his ears. Get out! He tried to scream at her but he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. You bitch! Get out! Get out! Suddenly the dark trees were flying past him again and he was sure he was moving. But he couldn't be certain. There was nothing now he could be certain of.

His body crashed into the ground and when it did, roots began to grow toward him. He reached for his sword to hack them away but the device was too heavy.

No, stay. It was the trees speaking, coaxing. The ground was working its way up, or perhaps he was sinking in. He would be trapped here forever, he was sure of it.

Get up, he told himself. Get up.

His knees buckled when he tried to stand, so he crawled. Bursts of dirt flew into the air as they tried to bury him in their sickening whispers but he wouldn't let them. Then there were the bugs. They swarmed from the trees and crawled out of the ground. They completely covered him and suddenly things began to drag him into the earth. He tried to scream but already it was too late.

He saw his body decomposing in this place and the worms as they burrowed into his dead eyes. Fungus growing out of his limbs and his mouth open in a permanent gawk because the world had already forgotten he ever existed. And then he saw Her, the small of her back before she slipped into the pink waters of a bath at home, in District Two, and she raised a fine glass in her white fingers and through her head back to take a drink. She laughed. She laughed and laughed. She had won and he had lost. He rotted away, never to leave this place, never to feel the glory he had waited so long to feel; a life lived in vain.

This discovery was his worst fear. The truth of it would never leave him. And as he understood this, the absolute horror of it all gave him back his voice. He screamed. He screamed like he had never heard himself scream before.

The trees parted like a curtain to reveal the lake. The waters were red. Everything was becoming red.

He saw something as it slithered through the mud. It was pale and gold. But then it became red. Through the shifting colors he recognized the face to be Marvel's. What he moved toward looked like nothing more than a ball on the ground. But Cato knew that dark hair and he knew those screams. It was Clove.

I have you, her voice echoed around him. She did have him. She truly did.

He could see now how much she terrified him. Because for all he choose to ignore, she really could win this. She could win and he could die here, stay trapped in this place forever while the world forgot his name.

The world would never forget his name.

Cato saw what Marvel intended to do with the spear that glimmered from his hand. But he wouldn't let him. He would kill her. He would kill her and show District Two. He would show the nation.

He ran to protect what was his. Marvel hardly even noticed him, just raised the spear as he nearly slumped over the screaming girl. Cato saw his own fist slamming into the boy's jaw.

And then he plummeted to the ground on top of her.