Hey everyone! Sorry for not updating much recently! But here's a new chapter to make you feel better!
Oh, and by the way, today is my 18th birthday! Just wanted to tell you! :D So be thankful that I decided to write today! :P
Enjoy!
Haymitch
As the new day dawns, I continue to watch the screen, considerably more drunk than last night. Nothing happened last night, but I still stayed awake, scared that something would happen.
Now, Katniss is just waking up. She surveys her surroundings, and then calls for Rue. They secretly conspire to drop the tracker jackers on the Careers, and then Rue leaves, jumping through the trees like a little monkey. I'm impressed, no wonder Chaff was boasting about her.
Katniss scales the tree, faster now that she's no longer in pain. I can't help but feel happy that I've improved her situation. She hesitates for a moment, and I can tell that she's wary of getting so close to the nest and purposely disrupting the jackers. It could be fatal. But her selflessness is overriding her fear; she wants to help the other tributes and herself, and the only way she can do that is by taking out the Careers.
She starts sawing at the branch on which the nest hangs. The jackers start appearing, and I cringe as one of them stings her.
I hear Effie stir behind me. "Haymitch?" She asks, woozily. But I don't answer as Katniss has succeeded in cutting the branch, sending the nest falling to the ground. It bursts open and the tracker jackers erupt into the air. I pray that Peeta will be able to get away, and he does. He and a few others get up and run away, leaving everything behind. However, Glimmer and Aquaria aren't so lucky. They both get stung, but Glimmer gets the worst of it and goes mad, dying quickly in the swarm. Aquaria manages to get to the lake, but there is too much venom in her system, and she dies too.
Effie moves to sit beside me. "Why didn't you wake me up?" She asks, rubbing her red eyes.
"Wanted you to get some rest." I slurred.
"You obviously didn't get any." She said, taking in my drunkenness and my obviously tired face.
"I never sleep during the Games, you should know that." I said nonchalantly, and continued to watch Katniss as she reacts to the jacker venom in her system. But suddenly I remember something. Glimmer had the bow! And she's dead! Katniss could have the bow now.
She realises this at the same time that I do and goes for it before the hovercraft comes to take the girl's body away. She falters a few times, obviously a consequence of the venom, but eventually releases the bow and quiver of arrows from the dead Career. Victory courses through me, but it's quickly pressed down as the picture changes.
An angry Cato is chasing through the forest after Peeta; he seems to have realised that Peeta wasn't on his side at all.
Peeta finds Katniss and tries to get her to run, at first without success. But eventually, with much shouting, he manages to get the confused girl to get out of there. However, it's too late for him, as Cato bursts out of the forest. Effie screams as Cato snarls in anger at Peeta.
"You let her go? I knew that you were with her, Lover Boy! And now, you're going to pay!"
Cato slashes at Peeta with his sword, but Peeta blocks it with his spear. A fight breaks out between the two boys, during which Effie finds her way into my arms. I hold her and we watch together as Cato manages to break through Peeta's attack and slashes him on the leg, cutting him almost to the bone. Effie shrieks, and I squeeze her tight as Peeta falls to the floor in agony.
This is it. Peeta will die now. But weirdly enough, Cato doesn't go in for the death strike, only smirks down at Peeta writhing on the floor. He seems quietly confident in his wound making skills that he just leaves, going back to his group. But as he leaves, he calls out, "Good luck finding your Fire Girl before you die, Lover Boy!"
Anger courses through me. He was going to leave Peeta to suffer. But this did give Peeta a chance to survive. Maybe he could find Katniss.
I register that Effie's shaking in my arms. "Poor Peeta." I echo her statement, and we watch as Peeta tries to roll up his trouser leg to get a better look, but ends up giving up because the pain is so intense. The wound is deep and long, and looks so painful.
"Haymitch, could we get him a sponsor?" Effie asks hesitantly.
"Eff, you know that medicine for a wound like that would be astronomically expensive, and Peeta doesn't have that many sponsors. Katniss is the one that they're going for." I leave the rest unspoken; but Effie knows that we won't be able to convince sponsors now.
"Then he'll die." She states.
"Maybe. But we'll have to see."
Effie and I stay, watching silently as Katniss collapses on the ground, a consequence of the tracker jacker venom that is spreading through her system. Luckily there were only three stings; she won't die from that. However, if she stays unconscious for long, another tribute may stumble upon her.
Eventually, one of them does, but to my relief, it's Chaff's girl, little Rue. She doesn't try to take Katniss out, only moves her to a safe place, underneath a bush. Gratitude fills me as I watch the little girl move away from Katniss and hop away through the trees. She may have just saved Katniss' life.
After a while, we find out that Rue did save Katniss' life. Another tribute ventured past that spot where Katniss had collapsed. If Rue hadn't moved her, then she may have just been killed.
Effie leant her head against my chest and whispered, "That wonderful little girl."
I agreed with her on that, but both of us knew that the wonderful little girl wasn't going to make it out of there alive. Neither of us brought up that subject though; we just waited for when Katniss would wake up.
Peeta was struggling to do anything now; he just limped through the forest and tried to stay alive. He eventually collapses in the forest, wriggling into a little hole in a tree, and tries to eat. I hear Effie's whimpering as she watches him; I can tell that she feels so sorry for him.
"I put him through this." She whispered.
"What are you talking about?" I ask.
"I picked his name out of that ball, and now he's suffering. Because of me." She burst into tears, and I spun her around to face me.
"No, Effie. No. Stop saying that. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault. If it wasn't Peeta, it would have been another kid." I held her close to me as she sobbed. She didn't say anything more, just cried for a while and then once the tears had stopped, she sat up and started watching again.
I was very worried about her. What was with all these changing moods? I hoped that it was just the stress of everything getting to her, and not something more serious.
We carried on watching until we couldn't take sitting there any longer. The two of us decided to move into the living room, and Effie took a detour to the Avoxes to order food.
Two days passed without much event. Nobody died in the two days, and it seemed like the Capitol citizens were getting agitated. Effie and I didn't venture out into the Square, but I could see from the window that they were being very demanding.
Eventually, Katniss woke up and ventured out hunting. She found little Rue and agreed to become allies. In any other circumstances, I would be aghast that she would have wanted a twelve-year-old as an ally, but Rue was a useful ally. And she was about to prove her worth, when she found a way to help Katniss with her jacker stings. Chaff had told me that there was a very high concentration of jackers in Eleven, so they had to find ways of healing the stings.
Katniss healed Rue's burn with the medicine that I sent her, and they both started gathering food. They seemed to get on well, and I could understand why. Rue must have reminded Katniss of her little sister; despite the obvious differences in looks.
They started discussing the Careers and their inventory. Rue had scouted the area and had discovered that the Careers kept a big pile of supplies down by the lake near the Cornucopia. So Katniss decided to take out the Careers' supplies.
It was a great idea. Without the supplies, the Careers would be weakened. The only problem was how to do it.
Another tribute dies, the boy from Ten, which should sate the hunger for death, but I bet the Gamemakers will be eager for a faster-paced death toll; it's all going too slowly.
Katniss and Rue make a plan, giving Rue the task of lighting fires to draw the Careers away, and then Katniss goes to inspect the pyramid. I realise way before she does that they must have uprooted the mines from the Cornucopia and placed them around the pyramid, with the help of the boy from Three, of course. There was no way those brainless idiots would have figured that out on their own.
It's only when the fox faced girl, Medea, dances her way through the safe path between the mines that Katniss finally works it out.
Effie and I watch as Katniss fires arrows at the bag of apples, which succeeds in loosening the apples and blowing up the mines. The explosion is enormous, but I can't help clapping and laughing. It's a spectacular feat, and now the Careers will be at a disadvantage. But the explosion has taken its toll on Katniss. She's obviously gone deaf, and the explosion has sent her flying, landing at an odd angle. She's in shock, and the Careers are closing in.
Eventually, she manages to get away, and goes to look for Rue. But the cameras zoom in on the little girl getting caught in a net trap. She screams Katniss' name, and she hears it.
By the time Katniss has got to the girl, the boy from One is there too. Effie screams as the boy throws his spear directly at the trapped child.
"No! Not her!" Effie squeals and buries her face into my chest. I hold her close as Katniss screams, and shoots an arrow at Marvel, killing him.
I brace myself for what is about to follow; the girl is still alive, but not for long.
Katniss is looking around wildly for the other Careers, not knowing that they split up to catch the attacker.
"Are there more? Are there more!" She screams at Rue, and the little girl has to say no three times before Katniss hears her.
Once Katniss has freed Rue from the net, she cradles her in her arms. The girl looks up at her with bright brown eyes wet with tears, and, as I have done on countless occasions, I can't help feeling angry at the injustice of this situation. This poor little child will die.
They talk in whispers, and I can see that Katniss is trying to keep her composure for the poor girl, but that she's dying inside, blaming herself for not getting there soon enough.
The glimmer of gold on her chest reminds me of a time when I blamed myself for other peoples' deaths. Mother, Ronan, Nadyah. And especially Maysilee. Our situations weren't too dissimilar now. I hadn't been quick enough to save Maysilee, I had let her go off alone, just as Katniss had let Rue go off alone. And now Rue was dying, just as Maysilee did.
Suddenly, Katniss was singing to the girl; and I recognised the song. My mother used to sing it to Ronan and I; it was a widely known song in the Seam. And as she sings, the Capitol monsters show Rue's slowing heart rate, until it stops altogether.
Katniss finishes singing, and just watches, crying over the girl's body until she hears the cannon fire.
Effie's crying now, the ugly sort of crying that isn't very attractive. I hold her tightly, rubbing her back, but not telling her that things will be okay, because they won't. If Katniss does make it out of there, she'll have that little girl's death on her conscience for the rest of her life; just as Maysilee's death is on mine.
Katniss gets up, but doesn't clear out. Instead, she moves to a patch of flowers, starts picking them, and moves back to the girl. And as Effie and I watch, dumbfounded, Katniss decorates the corpse with flowers, giving her a floral outline and a wreath in her hair. It's beautiful, but dangerous too. The Capitol doesn't like this sort of defiance.
After the girl is outlined in flowers, Katniss whispers, "Bye Rue," and then gets up. And to shock me even more, she presses her three middle fingers of her left hand to her lips and then holds them out to Rue.
"Oh my gosh," Effie whispers, and I agree with her. This is big. A part of me wants to slap Katniss for being so stupid, but then another part of me is proud of her for trying to make the girl's death seem bigger than the Capitol made it out to be. She made it seem like it was truly tragic, which it was. District Eleven would be happy.
Suddenly, I hear the door open, and Chaff's voice call out my name.
When Effie and I go out into the living room, I can tell that Chaff has been drinking heavily. The smell of liquor practically burns its way into my brain.
He stumbles over to me when he sees me, and locks me in his tree-trunk arms, sobbing heavily.
"Thank you for your girl," he slurs. "What she did was great. It'll mean a lot to Rue's family."
Chaff pulled back, and hung his head.
"Why don't you give her something to say thank you?" Effie calls from behind us.
Chaff's head snaps up. "That's brilliant! I'll do that now." And with that, Chaff shoots out of the room.
I turn back to Effie. "That was a good idea." I walk over to her and wrap her in my arms. Her makeup is screwed up again, but I can tell that she doesn't care.
Effie and I sit and watch as Chaff's parachute drops from the sky. Sometimes the people of the Districts can give their tributes gifts, but never has a District given a gift to another district's tribute before.
The gift is simple, just a loaf of bread, but its symbolism is massive. And Katniss knows that. It means that District Eleven are on her side. That they thank her for what she did to Rue.
"My thanks to the people of District Eleven," she acknowledges, and I have never felt more proud of her.
"There are only six left." Effie says, and I realise that she's right. Katniss, Peeta, the two remaining Careers, Medea from Five, and Thresh.
"One of them could win." Effie comments, when I don't say anything. I know that she's right, but I don't want to get my hopes up just now. Everything could go horribly wrong.
Effie and I stayed together that night, just watching the Game. We didn't seem to do much besides that anymore; but then again, none of our tributes had ever gotten this far before, let alone two of them. We had to watch them, just to make sure that they were alright.
I kept on drinking, despite Effie's offhand comments that I should stop.
They could win. But something inside of me was thinking that they would have to go through hell and back to win. And I wasn't sure if either of those kids could handle that.
Okay guys, this is important! I am begging you all to review, because I am so close to 100 reviews, and it would make my birthday so special if I could get to 100! Please please please review! I love you guys so much!
Oh, and I'm sorry, but I won't be updating for a while. I'm going on holiday to Florida! And I live in the UK, so this holiday is a big deal! I have a notebook (not the computer, a pad of paper) and I will be writing while I'm away, I just won't be uploading anything! I'm sorry! But I promise that when I get back, I will be writing loads and getting chapters up quickly for you guys! Maybe I'll even make a schedule of writing days to stick to!
Sorry, I'm rambling!
Please review, you'll get a virtual cookie! :D
Thank you for reading, and happy 4th of July for all you Americans tomorrow! I wish I was going to America tomorrow, that would be awesome!