² MANIA ─ catching fire

[ 015 ] wonder, why do we race?

"WE THOUGHT IT WAS RAIN," Johanna said, her gaze feverish, gesturing wildly toward the jungle, "y'know, because of the lightning. But when it started coming down, it turned out to be blood. Thick, hot blood. You couldn't see, couldn't speak without getting a mouthful. We just staggered around, trying to get out of it." She sucked in a ragged inhale, half-delirious, half a storm trapped between her ears. "That's when Blight hit the force field."

Never the tree, always the woodcutter, Alecto thought as she limped down the beach toward Johanna, still not quite believing her own eyes. Soaked in blood with her dark hair hanging in stringy tresses around her shoulders and her dark eyes glittering with a manic fury, Johanna looked half-wild, half-savage, a warrior brandishing her axe, standing among the carcasses of her slain enemies littering the battlefield. She'd felt herself moving before she could think of it, following after Katniss and Peeta, her father in tow, her entire body flushing numb.

"I'm sorry, Johanna," Finnick said, sympathetically.

"Yeah, well, he wasn't much but he was from home," Johanna said, "and he left me alone with these two." Her tone was scathing as she nudged Beetee with her toe, short of kicking him square in the shoulder out of frustration. "He got a knife in the back at the Cornucopia, and her—"

"Tick-tock, tick-tock," Wiress mumbled, milling about like a motorised corpse, the blood drying on her papery skin.

"Yeah, we know. Tick-tock, Nuts is in shock." Johanna rolled her eyes. At that point, Wiress drew close, nearly crashing into Johanna, who, irritation blazing, shoved her into the sand, hissing, "Just stay down, will you?"

"Lay off her," Katniss snapped, as Atlas went to help Wiress up.

Hatred warped Johanna's face, her angular features sharpening, the dark of her eyes glimmering with murderous intent. Lip curled, Johanna snarled. "Lay off her?" She lunged forward, and her arm snapped out so quickly only when Katniss' head snapped to the side and the shock registered, did they realise Johanna had slapped her. "Who do you think got them out of the jungle for you? You—"

At that moment, Finnick picked her up and tossed her thrashing body over his shoulder, kicking and screaming, and marched her down to the water. Even as he repeatedly dunked her into the waves, they could still hear Johanna viciously cussing out Katniss, her voice carried over by the sea breeze. Alecto frowned. Allies were established early on in the Games, in person. Once the Games begun, it was everyone for themselves. If you were killed in the Bloodbath, that was it. But Johanna had saved Beetee and Wiress for Katniss, dragging them through the jungle despite the fact that they were both deadweight, useless at fighting, and far from survivalists.

Alecto thought of Finnick's gold bangle, and her father's token—the ring that'd been given to him. There was a plan stirring, and it centred around Katniss' survival. No matter the cost.

But what about the rest of them? Alecto thought, water swirling around her ankles. What had her father gotten them into?

Unknowingly, she'd drifted from the group as Katniss and Peeta led Beetee and Wiress to the shallows to clean the blood off, wandering much closer to their camp. Alecto felt her father's gaze burn against her back, but he didn't stop her as she trudged through the knee-deep water toward Johanna and Finnick, who, caught up in their rapid-fire bickering, didn't notice Alecto trailing after them. Waist-deep in the water, Alecto risked a glance back, but her father had already moved on, and was now conversing with Beetee, the corners of his mouth tugged up just fractionally in the ghost of a smile as he helped sponge the blood off his back. She turned her gaze back to the water.

Sometimes, Alecto dreamt of the ocean in District 4—she'd only ever seen it once in person in her whole life, but she found herself wondering, often, what lay beyond it, what sort of secrets it held beneath the surface, guarded by the threat of death. Dreamt of its power, the immensity of it—not the ocean itself but the climbing tide of emotion sweeping through her as she stood ankle-deep in the freezing water, soaking it all in, gulping salty air into her lungs as if she could swallow the whole thing; the thunderous white noise of the waves rushing against the shore, the sand sifting beneath her feet to accommodate her weight—she'd never been hugged like this before. And the sea breeze stinging her cheeks not out of malice or aversion but with the feverish, colliding embrace of an old friend shucking the weight of too much time gone by off their shoulders, Alecto had never been so missed so fiercely by anyone before—it was never like this in District 2. Out here in the ocean, where the air was wild, where the current knew nothing except its power, and where she'd dreamt countless times of diving into the water, and disappearing into the waves.