ANGST WARNING. nothing heavy. Have fun, pls review!

The trees bristle.

Dean ran as hard as he possible could move, with his dagger in one hand and the open water bottle in the other, cold drops spilling on his t-shirt and trousers.

Jo was sitting against a tree, panting, covered in blood and a pale, white rope-like thing was wrapped around her ankle, pulling her towards a small hole in a dark corner of the cave.

Dean reacted as quick as he could and slashed the tentacle with his dagger when he heard a canon boom.

The tentacle, bloody and twitching, quickly retracted itself into the hole where it had come from and Dean sat down next to Jo, unwrapping the other half of tentacle from her leg. It was bruised, but there was no wound.

"Are you okay?" he asked, panting.

She nodded and pointed to Balthazar, who was lying in a puddle of his own blood, bruised around his neck.

Castiel sat down next to him and shook his shoulders. "Balthazar?"

"He's dead, Cas." Dean pulled the boy away. "You heard the canon."

Castiel sat down, with his back against the cave wall, rubbing his face with trembling hands.

"How can he have lost this much blood?" Dean said. "The octopus-creature strangled him, right?"

Jo nodded. "Yes, he started coughing up blood and the... the thing wouldn't let him go."

No-one knew what to say when the giant claw of the helicarrier picked Balthazar up and lifted him into the air. They stared to the sky. The uncomfortable silence didn't last long though.

They did what they had to do, clean the bandages, took care of Jo's wrist and washed Dean's arms and legs, since they were still covered in dirty scorpion bites.

"What now?" Dean asked.

Jo grabbed the heavy backpack and hung it on her back. "We get out of here, I am not spending anymore time here than necessary."

Dean laughed and shrugged the backpack off of Jo's back. "You've been very sick the last days, let's not put a lot of strain on you, okay? We don't want you to die."

"Not just yet," Jo smiled.

"We're one man down. We need to find Anna and deal with the pack. Quick." Castiel suddenly said. He got up and joined Dean and Jo outside. "But we'll never be able to find her. She could be in the mountains, in the forest, in the caves or at the Cornucopia."

Jo smiled. "This is my area of expertise. You'll be glad you didn't kill me, Cassie."

Castiel nodded, slightly annoyed but again, he didn't say anything about 'Cassie'.

Jo trotted forward, bowed as far forward as she could without tumbling over.

Dean chuckled, she looked a bit like a dog sniffing for a trail.

After a while, she found one without using the flashlight. Three strings of red hair on a branch made sure that it was Anna they were following.

They followed signs that Dean couldn't see, a smudge of soil on a tree or a deeper footprint than usual, but Jo read them like an open book, steady footed and without hesitating once, she trotted through the forest, Dean and Castiel on her heels.

After a couple of hours, they shared a very simple meal of moss, the little white flowers and a few mouthfuls of water.

"They're sweet," Dean smiled. He didn't expect that anything in this Arena would be sweet just for the sake of it.

"You know what I'd love?" Jo sighed. "Chocolate. Man, I'd kill to get some chocolate..."

Dean started laughing, almost chocking on his moss: "Well, you might just have to."

Jo was silent for a moment and then realised the joke she had just, unintentionally, made. She laughed too and they even earned a chuckle from Castiel.

The eagle appeared in the gap in the trees and Panem's anthem played.

Dean slowly started to hate that sound. He played with his amulet as he stared at the ground.

He didn't know if he wanted to see Balthazar's face in the sky. He was worried, if Balthazar's death touched him this much, after he had only known him for three days, what would Jo and Cas do to him? He shook his head and swallowed the last bit of moss and flowers.

He heard Castiel hum a song next to him, a song he didn't recognize.

Nobody said anything. Jo was so tired from her day of playing sniffer-dog, she rolled herself in a blanket and fell asleep.

Dean and Cas decided to sit down next to her, with their backs against each other so neither of them could fall asleep and they could watch the entire area around them.

Castiel kept humming softly, to keep himself calm, or awake, Dean didn't know. This time he did recognize the song.

"You a big fan of Led Zeppelin?" Dean asked.

He felt Castiel shrug. "Not really. This song was my father's favourite. He could relate to it."

"Was your father's favourite?" Dean asked.

"My father died. My mother and sister too." Castiel said. "They were burning down a patch of land that we were done with, just the small bushes and trees that were too thin, so the land would turn fertile again and we could plant new trees to harvest in ten to fifteen years. I was working at the lumber mill, my father was managing the fire and my sister and mother were at home. When the fire got out of hand and spread over to the village, my father ran in to save them, but they got stuck. The peacekeepers never bothered to come and tell me, so when I got home that evening, I had nothing left. No father, no mother, no family, no home. This is the only thing I found in the rubble of what used to be my home."

He took a ring off his finger and gave it to Dean. It was silver and looked like two smaller rings had been forged together. Dean turned it through his hands and he felt a dent, possibly where the fire had gotten so warm it had melted the silver. He gave it back.

"There was no body left to take it from, just charcoal and dust, rubble and ashes." Castiel let his head hang.

"What were their names?" Dean asked. He thought that his life was bad. At least he had a mother, a father and a brother to fight for.

Castiel smiled sad. "My father's name was Deus, my mother's name was Elsa and my sister was named Hester. They send me to an orphanage. Worst three years of my life, I watched children around me die. Friends. If you have friends there, they will use it against you. In the end I stopped making contact, tried being a shadow so no one would notice me."

"Obviously Anna knew you," Dean said. "It looked like she knew you at the reaping."

"We were in class together. Shared our books so we only had to buy half." Castiel smiled. "Everyone used to think we were a couple."

"But you weren't?" Dean asked.

"Anna wanted us to be." Castiel shrugged.

Dean laughed, a bit too loud, it made Jo twitch. "I'm sorry, why did you turn her down?"

"Because there was no way we were going to end up together happy. The children from the orphanage don't have friends remember?"

"And now you were going to the Games together."

Castiel laughed, bitter. "The universe has her own ways of playing tricks on us."

He sighed. "What about you, Dean? You volunteered for your brother without hesitation."

"Anyone would have done that." Dean shrugged.

Castiel shook his head. "Many children have been send to the Games. Girlfriends and boyfriends, brothers and sisters, but rarely do any volunteer for each other when the other's name gets called. But you, your brother's name got pulled and before that puffed up escorts of yours had called his name, you were on the stage volunteering to take his place."

Dean smiled. "That's because I promised. I promised that never, never in his entire life he would have to enter the Hunger Games. When I made that promise, on the morning of the Reaping, I never thought about what I would do to prevent that from happening. When Effie called his name, I didn't think twice about stepping forward."

"You love him." Castiel smiled.

"More than myself." Dean said. "I would do anything in the world to keep harm from him."

After a while of silence, Dean proposed that Castiel should get some sleep. "You look like you could use it."

He felt Castiel tiredly nod against the back of his head.

Dean tilted his head, so Castiel could lean on his shoulder and counted the stars.

All the constellations that Jo had shown him, they were gone. The skies were dark and cold and he knew nothing around here.

The night was long. Dean didn't feel tired, not for one second. He was worried and tensed up, listening to the sounds of the forest to see if he could hear false notes.

Dawn, as usual, didn't come around but Castiel woke up and shortly after him Jo did. They shared a meal of moss and flowers and got back on their feet again to pick up where they left off.

Jo with her face on the ground again and Dean and Castiel on her heels.

Three hours later they softly hear the trees bristle above their head. Something fell, or rather, jumped out of the trees onto Dean. He rolled on his back and tried to fend off the knife that was getting dangerously close to his throat. He recognized it as the one he had stuffed in his shoe.

Suddenly he noticed his attacker had red hair. "We come in peace! We come in peace!" he yelled.

Castiel grabbed Anna under her armpits and pulled her off Dean. She managed to graze his cheek, but Castiel pulled her back far enough so she couldn't hurt them anymore.

She wrestled free from his grip and stumbled away from the group. She raised her hand, clenching Dean's small throwing knife in her fist.

"I believe that is mine," Dean growled, pulling his favourite knife out of its sheath and swirling it around in his hands. "But, if you join us, you can keep it. We're friends right?"

"I don't have any friends. Not anymore." Anna pinched her eyes.

Castiel frowned. "So everything we shared, it means nothing to you anymore?"

"It means everything to me Cas." Anna shook her head. "And therefore, I'm sorry."

With one quick movement, Anna threw the knife at Castiel. Dean lunged forward and he saw that Castiel had been hit in the corner of his eye. Good, now that Anna was unarmed it would be easier to take her. On the other hand, he hoped Castiel wasn't too badly hurt.

He overpowered her easily, pinning her arms above her head and stabbing her in the chest without hesitation. He closed his eyes when he felt her twitch beneath him, and she suddenly whispered something in his ear.

"Why."

Dean opened his eyes, with the full intention to say: "For Sammy." But he couldn't. He couldn't kill in the name of his brother.

He decided to look Anna in the eyes, to show her respect and to say he was sorry, that he didn't want to but that he wanted to go back home, and that this was the only way.

He couldn't even do that. When his eyes met Anna's, he suddenly understood what writers were talking about when they spoke of the light fading away in someone's eyes.

Anna's were a pale kind of grey, which didn't mismatch her fiery red hair. He felt blood on his hands, warm and sticky, and then knew that no matter how hard he scrubbed, he would never be able to wash it off.

As the blood seeped out of her body, so did the life seep out of her eyes.

Dean could not say what changed, but something changed in her eyes, something where Dean could pinpoint the exact moment Anna died.

And when the canon boomed in the distance, he was pretty sure something changed in him too, for good.