A/N: So... Since I updated a really short, sad, pathetic little intermission chapter, I thought I would reward you all with a full length action-packed (sorta) much longer chapter! Yay! Enjoy and I really appreciate all of you that are still reading. :)

CHAPTER : WHEN SAMSON SAW DELILAH

When the brilliance of light had finally passed, Peeta blinked in the returned darkness, attempting to readjust. They were maybe half-way through the third day in the arena. Their mentors had joined into the fray sometime earlier that day—probably morning—and they had since encountered two bright bursts of daylight and absolutely no rain.

Peeta had been moving since he had risen that morning. Headed in what was possibly the stupidest direction anyone could think of: towards the Cornucopia. It would be empty, he assured himself. Empty and none of the mentors would have stayed and obviously the tributes had all long since left... Right? But if he were going to believe his own reasoning, then he had to ask: why was he going in the first place? If there was nothing there, what was the point?

He adjusted the ax gripped in his hand.

Because he had to see if she was there. If any of the mentors had already... If her... if her body was... He shook his head violently and trudged forward.

Maybe he was wrong, Peeta reasoned. Maybe Katniss wasn't one of those six mentors who had chosen to rejoin the bloody mayhem of the Games. Because Peeta could remember the broken girl who had returned to Twelve four years ago. She had been so traumatized... surely she wouldn't choose to go in again. Not after the first time.

Yes, he decided. She would have made the smart choice and stayed back at the Capitol to watch him die. It was the only decision that made any sense, right?

Grasping on to this hope, he convinced himself that his instincts were wrong, that Katniss wasn't here, and that she wouldn't be one of the obstacles standing in his way to get home. There were enough of those already. Madge, for instance. With already one of his friends in the arena with him, there was no way that Katniss would choose to put herself in a position where she would have to face off against him.

Even she wasn't that bitter.

He pushed forward for another hour, before he finally had to stop and rest. Slouching down on a rock in the darkness, he laid his ax across his knees and took slow lungfuls of air, trying to ignore that rough edge in the back of his throat that reminded him he was thirsty. The eerie silence of the wood surrounded him, mocking him with softness and timidness. He didn't like how quiet it was, but he admitted to himself that it was good. It would let him listen for unwanted guests. Even a slight rustling of trees would tip him off or a—

The loud yell of a boy to his left startled Peeta up from his rock, ax at the ready, but it wasn't in time to stop the large, burly boy from One from slamming into him hard enough to knock the wind out of Peeta. Together, they tumbled to the ground, Peeta's ax slipping away into the darkness. There was the sound of more rustling in the brush, then Peeta heard the swing of his ax through the air and the ting as it hit a rock not a foot from his head.

"Hold him still, Pharon!" a girl's voice called out.

Pharon's grip tightened as Peeta continued to attempt struggling and wriggling away.

The third flash of light in a single day was what gave Peeta the chance to get out from under Pharon and roll away before the girl could behead him with his own ax. He rolled a few feet, before trying to scramble awkwardly to his feet, hoping to adjust his eyes somehow to the light before his opponents could. Squinting and blinking rapidly, he tried, but could only blearily make out his surroundings, much less Pharon or whoever the girl was. A dark shape dropped from his right, making him shift quickly to face it, but whoever it was didn't seem to be on the Career's side. The figure darted at the girl, not Peeta, and took him down to the ground within seconds. The larger, bulkier figure of Pharon looked to be doing about as well as Peeta, stumbling around in the light, swinging at the air with big burly fists. Peeta tried to take advantage of the boy's disorientation—his eyesight seemed to be getting better—and charge Pharon, but the whistle of an arrow landing in the dirt right before his feet stopped him.

Now that he knew there was a bow out there—he tried not to think it was Katniss—he could make out the strange twang of a bow being pulled taught and realized whoever was shooting at him was aiming again, and if his vastly improved eyesight was any indication, they had a lot better chance of hitting him this time. And to make matters worse, Pharon had decided to take Peeta's idea. He was charging.

But not towards Peeta.

Everything moved very fast and very slow all at once and then...

All he heard was the scream of his name. Katniss' scream. He turned toward it within seconds, but it was too late. It was in time only to see her fall to her knees, an arrow tip sticking through her back, blood trickling down her skin and soaking her shirt. His feet seemed to be moving in slow motion as he tried with all his might to reach her. But even as he moved to reach her, she was still fighting. A make-shift bow raised, arrow poised, she was ready. She released it into the oncoming attacker, the large, burnt-skinned boy with buzz-cut black hair from One. It made it's mark, hitting squarely in the chest cavity where blood spurted—from the wound, from his mouth, from his heart—but he didn't stop. His momentum had propelled him forward to land with a red frothy mouth and wild eyes on top of Katniss.

A cannon sounded in the distance. Then another.

No, Peeta thought so frantically, he thought his own heart might burst. Not Katniss.

His knees crushed the dry bed beneath them as he skidded to a stop before the heap of body mass. With shaking hands he pushed the brute off of her.

One's eyes were still wide, but no breath came through his chest. He was dead, a carved wooden arrow sticking out of him, and Peeta could now explain only one cannon. He couldn't help the panic that told him to turn to Katniss—she wasn't supposed to be here. She lay unmoving in the dirt, face smeared with it and spatters of blood. Peeta's hands fluttered uncertainly, afraid to touch her, finally settling on her face.

"Katniss?" he whispered.

He stared at her, willing her to open her eyes, but she just wouldn't. Moving his hands down, he found the arrow lodged in her chest, below her ribcage. It was some kind of shiny silvery metal, obviously from the Cornucopia, while Katniss had probably made the one gripped in her hand. What was he supposed to do? There were no answers here in the arena. So he gripped the shaft of the arrow and—

"Wotchit, kid."

Her voice was so sudden, so relieving, that he thought he might whoop and holler with joy. She was alive, the second cannon wasn't for her. Later that night he could figure out who it belonged to, but now, in this moment, Katniss was alive and breathing and calling him kid and...

"I thought you were dead," Peeta mumbled hoarsely.

Grunting, Katniss adjusted her body stiffly into a sitting position, ignoring Peeta's attempts to help. "Take a little more than One's tribute falling on me," she muttered, giving the dead boy a dirty look. "He's not that big."

"How about an arrow?" he offered.

She shot him a dark look before nodding. "Yeah, almost. That might do it."

He swallowed; she ignored his nerves.

"Where's the shooter?" she got out, breathing heavily.

Peeta glanced up quickly into the tree where the arrow had come from, but he couldn't see anything, anyone. "I don't see anyone," he told her. "Why would they run?"

Katniss didn't answer immediately, instead trying to get up. When that ended with a tight wince and her teeth grinding against each other, she stopped and rested again. "Maybe whoever it was didn't like seeing Pharon go down like that."

The answer didn't satisfy either of them, but they didn't have any other answers. Short of someone not wanting to actually kill Katniss or Peeta, there was no point in running when they were both caught off guard. And with Pharon dead, whoever was in that tree would have had a better chance than ever. Nothing in this Game was making sense.

Katniss moved again, winced. "Decision time," she warned him, breathing labored.

But Peeta wasn't quite following her. The way her mind worked never seemed to be in line with his. There were these differences... Her resourcefulness and his general gullibility seemed to keep them in separate parts of the world.

Except they were both in the arena now.

"Yeah, where to camp," he said, looking around the general vicinity. "They won't want to wait for long to take up the dead. And we're going to lose this damn daylight soon."

Katniss just stared at him. Apparently, not what she was referring to. So, she did what she normally did when she thought Peeta was oblivious to something blatantly evident. She ignored him and continued on with her version of the conversation.

Maybe she had spent too much time with Haymitch.

"I'm injured. Badly. There's no guarantee that I'll—"

He stopped her before she could even finish. "You'll be fine. We'll patch you up and you'll be fine."

She would have argued. It was plain on her face that she would and, in fact, wanted very much to argue with him, but time was not on their side. The hovercraft was there already. To claim the dead. A silent moment passed as they watched the claw descend and pick up the boy with an arrow through his heart. Neither had liked him. As a Career, few would have. But somewhere out there, he had a family. A mother, a father, someone watching his death on screen, weeping for the one who would never return.

The one who lost to Katniss.

And then the time for argument had passed. Day three was waning, their sporadic light was disappearing, and the rustling of the bushes was getting uncomfortably close. They needed to move and Katniss didn't have the time to convince Peeta to do it without her.

So when he picked her up in his arms, she didn't protest and hid the whimper that threatened to escape at the jostling of her wound.

For the time being, they were still a team.

…

Somewhere along the way, Katniss had passed out and the rain that was both their salvation and a major pain began once again, leaving Peeta to fetter out what to do. He had her in his arms, losing blood, an arrow sticking through her middle. Seven tributes and probably all five mentors notified of their most recent location. And what looked to be a very nasty storm brewing on the horizon.

The odds were most definitely not in his favor.

Deciding he couldn't help Katniss until he moved them both to a relatively safe place, he moved out in search of shelter. Katniss would have found a tree to climb, strapped herself in and waited the whole thing out. Even if Peeta could climb a tree—which he couldn't, apparently not even to save his or her life—it wouldn't help any now. He couldn't treat Katniss' wound in a tree.

He was realizing quickly that he was not Katniss and it would be much more difficult to keep her alive.

…

It took precious time to find it again. Rain had soaked him through, and despite his best efforts, the unconscious Katniss in his arms wasn't much drier. His bearings were off, everything looked the same, and he still couldn't really see. He hated this arena. But after a time, he found it. The cliff that dropped off sharply, steep pathways leading down into the valley below.

The ruins where he had stayed with Spencer were still hidden in the large grouping of trees in the valley near the cliff that would be a waterfall during the rains. Although an obvious location—as obvious as anything could be in constant night—the trees provided some cover and the ruins themselves were laid out like a maze. If he moved them in far enough, no one would immediately uncover their location. For the time being, it would have to be good enough. The storm was already pouring down relentlessly and the pair of them were soaked to the bone. They needed to stop somewhere.

All he had to do was get her down there...

Almost immediately he knew he wouldn't be able to carry her down. He was going to need the use of his hands. So he knelt down and placed her legs on the ground, still cradling her upper body in his arms.

"Katniss," he tried.

Nothing.

"Katniss, you need to wake up." But she wasn't listening. Unconsciousness was in full swing and he didn't think he could wake her any time soon. He prayed the arrow hadn't been poisoned. He would have to think of something on his own.

Trying not to let frustration overtake him, he laid her down the rest of the way onto the forest floor carefully, mindful of the tip of the arrow sticking out of her back. He was going to have to take a risk here, he realized. Somehow, he had to carry her down that narrow path, but he still needed the use of his hands. Bridal style was definitely out and he didn't think throwing her over his shoulder like a bag of flour was a good idea either.

Instead, he took off his belt and put it off to the side. He did the same with hers. Taking her right arm, he slung it around his shoulder and began to slowly lift her up, angling her body so that her chest pressed against his back. Mindful of the arrow shaft sticking out of her middle, he brought her left arm around the other side of his shoulder until her hands met in the middle at his neck. Once there, he grabbed her belt and tied her hands together. Then he used his belt to tie them together around the middle. It wasn't ideal, but it would keep her from slipping off while he tried to get them down the cliff and into the relative safety of the ruins in the basin.

"Just stay with me," he muttered, hoping some part of her was listening. "Stay with me."

…

She had been out for several hours. Peeta took the extra time to wind his way through the old ruins, hoping to hide them from the world outside—rain and people alike. It was a valid waste of time, but still a waste. He should have been treating Katniss.

Except that he didn't know what to do.

He forced rain water into her, hoping he wasn't going to make her choke, and tried to keep her warm. The arrow still poked out of her middle, making her look unreal, like a doll that was broken. He had no idea what to do about that. Was he supposed to pull it out? Weren't you not supposed to do that? Didn't it cause more bleeding? But leaving it in couldn't be good either, right? Maybe if he could staunch the blood flow...

When Katniss finally opened her eyes, he thought it was a miracle.

She tried to say something, but her words were too low to hear. He crouched down beside her, moving damp hair away from her face. She coughed, clearing her rough throat, and tried again. "Peeta," she rasped. "How long have I been out."

He swallowed and held back the laugh that bubbled up from his throat. He was just so happy she was alive and awake. "I don't know for sure. A while."

Katniss nodded her head and glanced at their surroundings. "The ruins."

"You know about them?" he asked, surprised.

She arched an eyebrow at him. "I have been paying attention, you know."

Of course. She had been watching the Games since he entered them. All of the mentors would know where he had spent his short-lived alliance with Spencer. Anxiety hit him. What if they could find this place easily then? What if they had figured out that Katniss was injured and this was where Peeta would have taken her? What if they were searching the ruins as he and Katniss sat here now...?

Valid though his concerns might have been, mixed with a healthy dose of paranoia, Katniss gave him something else to worry about. Shifting from her spot against the stone wall, she winced. Glancing down at the arrow in her side, she gingerly touched it with her hand.

"Shit."

Immediately Peeta's concerns turned to her. "Are you okay? How do you feel?"

An arrow was sticking out of her, how did he think she was feeling?

Katniss assessed the damage. "I don't think I punctured a lung, but it was close. And even if I didn't, there is definitely damage." She looked up at him, and tilted her head to the side, thinking something over in her head. "Serious damage. The kind of damage that makes me a hindrance instead of a help to you."

Ah, back to the decision.

Well, Peeta had already made his. Nothing she could say to him would change that. Nothing. Maybe she didn't understand the futility, because she insisted still.

"Even if I survive—"

"You will," Peeta told her without hesitance, almost nonchalant about the entire thing.

Katniss' face flushed with irritation, even anger. But it didn't last long. She had been getting steadily paler since leaving the clearing. She had lost a lot of blood...

"Even if I survive," she pushed. "I will slow you down."

He continued to ignore her, checking through what meager supplies they had swiped from the pack of District One. Bandages were not to be found.

"So decide now," she demanded harshly. "Risk partnering with me or... leave me here as I am." There was something in her tone that suggested she meant more than just leaving her there as she was. "I won't hold it against you either way."

Finally, he forced his blue eyes to look up at her. Face pale, strands of her smooth, deep brown hair sweeping her face as they fell from the braid that slid down her back. Grit and grime covered her face, blood smearing tracks down her cheeks. Her lips were pulled into thin lines as she forced them together harshly. Her gray eyes glinted with determination and heat and fire and Peeta remembered her burning debut in her first Hunger Games. The fire glinting off her black suit, setting her face alight in blazing, immortalized glory. The cries of the crowd at the capital, screaming her name.

The girl who was on fire.

"We're both already here," he said in way of answer. He couldn't tell her, couldn't say the truth that was all but begging to pour from his heart. Not now. Not after Gale. "Tell me what to do."

Katniss stared at him, hard, looking for some hesitation, some chink, some moment of uncertainty that would tell her that his answer was to be disregarded and that she must continue again in her attempt to push him from her. After several long moments, she still found none.

"Take out your knife," she ordered.

Peeta hesitated, mistrust clearly in his face. He didn't believe she wouldn't do something foolish—like kill herself.

Rolling her eyes in irritation, she pushed. "Take out your knife. We're going to need to cut away my shirt."

The process was slow at best, incredibly painful at worst. Any sort of movement seemed to move the arrow the wrong way and tear at the wound farther, ripping open any clots that might have been slowing the bloodflow. Finally, Katniss told him to stop.

"Enough," she breathed through gritted teeth. "Obviously, we're going to have to get the arrow out first."

She looked like she might have paled at the idea, but it was impossible to tell. Her face was all but translucent. Whether it disconcerted her or not, it sure as hell terrified Peeta. He knew it was his job to get it out, and he knew how much it was going to hurt.

"I— What should, I mean, how—" He didn't even know what questions to ask. "This is going to hurt."

Katniss managed a lift of her lips that might have been a smirk, but dropped it quickly having decided it was too much effort. "You're going to have to find the exit wound."

Simple enough. "That would be where the arrow is sticking out of your back, right?" Peeta asked sarcastically.

She didn't even bother glaring at him and it made him nervous. At least if she had the energy to be pissed at him, then he could believe that everything would be fine.

He did as told, sliding his hand around her waist to her back, suddenly a lot closer to her than he had ever been before. What he would give for it to be a different moment, a different reason to have his face only inches from hers... But the moment was what it was. He busied himself with finding the protruding end of the arrow. The sharp tip was covered in a metal spearhead. With a sickening feeling, he realized that the arrow tip was not going to come back as easily as it had gone in. He was going to have to tear flesh to pull it back out...

"Break off the tip," Katniss told him, ragged breathing hot on his face. "As close to the wound as you can."

He tried to do as he was told with some difficulty. These weren't half-assed, haphazardly put together arrows. They were from the Capitol, sturdy and designed for the Games, which meant they were made to kill. One hand on the shaft as close to her back as he dared, the other gripping the tip of the arrow, he tried to bend the two halves in opposite directions. Katniss winced, making a short tortured sound, but she didn't tell him to stop.

"Sorry," he whispered so quietly that she wouldn't have heard him if his lips hadn't been right beside her ear. "Sorry. Sorry."

He said it every time she winced, all the while still trying to break the arrowhead off. After several long minutes, Katniss let out a cry, pushing her head forward to muffle it in Peeta's shoulder.

"Katniss, I'm sorry," he said again, stopping his attempts. "Whatever this is, it isn't wood and it isn't going to break."

She kept her head against his shoulder, breathing in and out as steadily as she could. He let her rest, his hand moving from the arrowhead to lay flat against the wall for balance, his other remaining at her back. When she had regained her composure, she pulled away, looking him in the eye.

"New plan," she told him hoarsely. "You're just going to pull the shaft out."

This sounded like about as good a plan as the first one, but he nodded anyway and she bent her head forward again for a moment. "Ready?" he whispered.

Her whole body tensed, but she pulled back and smiled weakly at him. "Do it."

Gritting his teeth—because he knew this was going to hurt worse than just trying to break off that damn tip—he put his left hand flat on her stomach around the entry wound and the other gripped the arrow sticking out of her. She didn't even get the chance to tell him to do it fast before he yanked harsh and quick. Katniss cried out in pain, her voice echoing against the walls of the ruins. The arrow broke loose with a sickening sound that would probably resurface in his nightmares. She slumped back against the wall, exhausted.

She passed out as he was pressing his hand against the now open and bleeding wound.

…

A/N: Okay, so I had a couple of problems with the arrow scene. Ultimately, I took some liberties here and there and if it's not realistic enough, well... if anyone's had to pull a metal arrow out of someone else, feel free to let me know how it really goes lol. (Actually, I really hope none of you have ever had to do something like that. O.O)