Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews everyone, I'm nearly at 50! I hope you enjoy this chapter, it's quite a change of pace. Read and review!
Crowd of Two
Chapter Eleven
Grey's POV
We follow Haymitch's vague instructions in silence, gently steering one another towards the edge of the town. We pass so many houses that are inches away from collapsing and people's hollow faces stare out of the windows at us; it just cements my idea that we need to escape before we become too far gone. A couple of times we have to duck behind houses or slip into the shadows in order to go undetected from peacekeepers, but there are hardly any military figures around here.
Eventually we get to the fence on the edge of the district and beyond it I can see miles of forest.
"I think it's this way Cato." He turns to look at me with a hard expression on his face, but I can see the apprehension in his eyes, mirroring what I'm feeling. What we are doing is breaking the law and we both know it. Once we pass this point there is no way we can pretend to be innocent. He kneels down beside the barrier and tries to pry up the bottom but it's attached to the ground and he can't make a gap big enough for us to crawl through. However I wander along the fence for a bit and find a hole already made that is just person-sized and I call Cato over. We stare at it silently for a second as the thought comes into our heads that maybe we aren't the first to escape.
Cato helps me under the fence first before following me under himself. As soon as his boot is pulled free of the chain we run until we can no longer see the destroyed houses, as if that seals our protection.
"It's weird, being on the other side isn't it?" I ask once we've stopped running and we are panting with our hands on our knees.
"Yeah, I guess. I just can't shake the feeling that we're still being watched." Cato turns his head to look behind him and protectively steps closer to me.
"Everyone is back with Haymitch. They probably think we've just gone to explore the district, if they know we've gone at all."
We continue to walk in silence for a minute or two until I feel the peculiar feeling of the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I slowly turn around to face Cato.
"Can you feel that? Almost like electricity is-CATO!" I can't warn him about the large man in white armour standing behind him fast enough and although he spins round perfectly to face his assailant, he can do nothing to stop the device emitting the electrical current from digging into his neck.
The effect is instantaneous and the man laughs as Cato screams and crumples, his limbs flailing and shaking as he struggles with an invisible enemy on the ground. I want to help him, but I'm too afraid of hurting him so I stand frozen in fear. After a few seconds Cato stops flinching and he slumps to the ground unconscious. I gasp and make a move to run to him, but another peacekeeper comes up behind me and roughly grabs my arm. Knowing their power, I don't struggle and I instead watch with eagle-like precision as the first man throws Cato's limp form across his shoulders and begins to walk back to the fence. Cato bounces gently and the sight makes me want to be sick because he looks like a corpse. We're caught.
Before we start the inevitable journey back into District Twelve, the peacekeeper holding Cato over his shoulders locks a strange device onto the unconscious blonde's wrists. He does something to the device and it makes a beeping noise before Cato's hands are forced together, presumably from some kind of magnetic force. I watch this action silently and don't bother struggling when the grip on my upper arm tugs me forward. I stumble and nearly trip up on the ground but the hold on my arm prevents me from doing anything except walk back towards the fence.
We don't go through the hole that Cato and I escaped from and instead we are admitted through the gate under the watchful eye of yet another figure in white armour. Cato has woken up in the peacekeeper's grip and I can tell from the way he is hanging at a strange angle over the man's shoulders that he still has no control over his body. We make eye contact and I can see the apologetic look in his eyes, as if he blames himself for not protecting me and getting us to District Thirteen. I want to tell him that it doesn't matter, but if I even mention the taboo district I'm sure that it would make our impending punishment much worse.
On the way back into the district we pass the same houses that we did on our escape attempt and the hollow eyed people who gave us emotionless stares before are now standing outside watching us. I see some subtly do a gesture where they press three fingers to their lips and raise them in the air, but as soon as a peacekeeper looks towards them the sign disappears.
We end up being taken to a clearing outside the Justice Centre, located beside the entrance to the victor's village and almost instantly I see Finnick come sprinting towards us. He glares at the man holding my arm until I am let go and the bronze-haired victor wraps me up in a tight hug.
"Grey, you stupid girl, what were you thinking?!" He shouts at me, looking me in the face before pulling me into another hug. Suddenly we hear more footfalls and I hear Brutus shouting.
"Unhand my victor at once! What do you think you are doing?"
Cato's POV
The fact that the stunner pushed into my neck has forced all my muscles into shutdown isn't helped by my feeling that I have failed Grey. All she wanted was to get out of this place so that she could get a chance at a normal life, one untainted by the games, but here she was getting escorted back to District Twelve as I bounced along on a peacekeeper's shoulders. Grey makes eye contact with me once but quickly switches her gaze to the ground when she sees that I am looking back at her, and if I could move my arms I would run my hands over my face in shame.
I wonder what my punishment is going to be for possible treason and attempted escape. There's no way I will let Grey take any form of beating from these men. At least I am used to taking a fair few hits from my time at the academy. We approach a large building with a large sign labelling it as the Justice Centre and I am unceremoniously dropped on the dirt ground in front of it. I'm beginning to regain feeling back into my body so I manage to lift my head when I see Finnick, Haymitch and Brutus, accompanied by half a dozen cameras running towards us. Great, my punishment is going to be broadcasted all over Panem.
Finnick and Haymitch instantly gravitate towards Grey to check that she is okay, which is fine by me. I know I'm not going to be fine by the end of this, but as long as she is safe I will go through anything. I see Brutus' steel capped boots near me and I brace myself for the impending hit on the back of my head, but I am instead dragged to my feet by my collar and pushed by a peacekeeper so I'm sent stumbling. My hands are still pulled together with the strange device locked onto them so when I fall I take the brunt of the force on my chin which leaves me reeling. I'm pulled up again and through the pain in my jaw I don't notice that I'm bonded to a stake in the ground until I hear Brutus ask angrily what is happening.
"Five lashes for the instigator of treason." A voice says sternly from behind me and before the Capitol workers in our victor tour team can even turn their cameras on, there is a *crack* and I feel the first bite of the whip against my back. The unexpectedness of it makes it all the more painful and I can't hold back the cry of pain. I hear Grey scream but someone instantly silences her. The second lash is just as bad as the first; it feels like they've messed with the leather and dipped it in tracker jacker poison, because I can feel my head swimming in and out as if I'm going to start hallucinating any second.
Grey's begun to cry and the sound is making everything worse. I wouldn't feel pain if she just stayed quiet so I could be alone with my thoughts, so I would know that no one would care if I got hurt.
"Cato, please, you're hurt!" She shouts, and I have no idea what I'm meant to do. Just stand up and decide that I'm not going to get the other three lashes? I turn to look towards her and I catch the gaze of Finnick.
"Get her away." I plead with clenched teeth and he understands instantly, dragging her back towards Haymitch's house and ignoring her screams. Once Grey is gone, I manage to stay quiet through the final lashes, but there's definitely something off about the weapon they 're using because the pain of the hits are nothing compared to the stinging aftermath, as if I'm being burnt in the long slashes across my back.
I feel the bonds being untied and as soon as I'm free, I throw up on the ground. It must be some sort of venom because I've never reacted like this to lashings before. I feel someone throw a heavy blanket over my shoulders and back and the contact with my wounds makes them sting but I'm beginning to shiver. This is some crazy stuff.
"Come on Cato, let's get you to Haymitch's place so that we can fix you up." A voice starts talking but it sounds to me like they are standing at the end of a tunnel that is getting further and further away. Then everything goes dark.
Grey's POV
Haymitch and Finnick escort me back to victor's village and I cry and attempt to run back to Cato at every block.
"Grey, it's going to be fine. Cato's just a little… incapacitated at the moment. I'm sure there are doctors here. He just wanted to protect you from getting the same punishment." Finnick says quietly as we walk and I unattractively wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my dress.
"That whip took chunks out of his back! He-he's-" Finnick interrupts me with another hug - there seems to be a lot of those today - and my sentence dies away.
"I know sweetheart, I know."
We arrive back at Haymitch's house and the two men sit me on the couch and wrap a blanket tightly around my shoulders, basically debilitating me. They walk hurriedly from room to room, talking and making phone calls as I sit numbly watching them.
Soon there is a knock at the door and I run to open it before anyone else can. There's a small crowd of people on the doorstep, a woman, a young girl, a girl my age, and a young man who is holding a limp body wrapped in a blanket similar to the one around me. I recognise a familiar tuft of blonde hair and I shriek and grab onto Cato, startling the person holding him. Cato doesn't respond to my advance and I stop when I realise that he's deeply unconscious. It reminds me of when Spens drove the knife through his hand and Cato had to be carried back to camp by Marvel. The memory makes what is happening now all the more worse.
"Ah Mrs Everdeen, thank you so much for bringing Cato here. Hello Primrose, Gale, Katniss." Haymitch greets the people standing at the door and gestures for them to come in. He sounds surprisingly polite when he's sober and I'm surprised. The change in him is disconcerting and it sounds like we are at a wake after a funeral. The woman I presume is Mrs Everdeen gives me a sad smile as she passes me and rubs my arm softly. The young girl instantly follows the woman inside, taking a large basket of herbs with her. She has long blonde hair and looks nothing like the sullen-looking pair that follow. For a second I think that they aren't going to say anything to me, but they stop and look uncomfortable before speaking.
"I'm Katniss and this is my friend Gale." The young woman says. She has long brown hair tied in a braid with olive coloured skin, and if she wasn't so thin she would be absolutely stunning. The boy carrying Cato looks a lot like her, but I put it down to living in the same area rather than being related. "Look, we're really sorry. That gap in the fence is ours. We didn't know someone else would try and use it."
"It's okay, really. Cato and I are stubborn; we would have found a way out of the district anyway." After a call from further inside the house we take the unconscious Cato into the main room. Finnick must have started preparing as soon as he heard the door because he has pulled out a table and draped some sort of plastic sheet over it. Then I notice all the towels bundled in a pile and I realise with a sick feeling that there is going to be a lot of blood.
I must let out a sob because I feel a gentle tug at the fabric near my waist and I look down to see the little blonde, she must be Primrose, wrap her arms around me.
"He'll be okay, it's happened before. I went and picked some herbs yesterday so we're fully stocked!" She looks so hopeful and innocent that I offer a small smile to her and nod.
"Excuse me, Grey is it?" A voice calls from beside me and I turn to see the older woman Mrs Everdeen, still with the sympathetic expression on her face.
"Yes?" I whisper, my voice cracking slightly.
"You're going to have to help us hold him down dear."