If Fire Caught

Chapter 20: Peeta

When I wake up, Katniss is still sleeping next to me, snoring softly while her hand rests over our unborn child. I carefully shake her shoulder and she blinks open her beautiful silver eyes. She smiles at me and I give her a quick kiss.

I look to the others and they are watching as a parachute falls to the beach. We join them and see its another delivery of bread. That gives us thirty-three rolls in all. We each take five, leaving eight, which will be split up easily after the next death, but even Johanna makes no joke about it. It's not very fun to joke like that anymore.

Katniss sits down next to me to eat, but she doesn't look at me. She stares the the other three the whole time. When she finishes her rolls, she grabs my arm.

"Come on. I'll teach you how to swim," she says but her eyes tell a different story. That this is just an excuse to get away from the others. She takes me down the beach a ways and shows me how to paddle through the water, but I know it's all so the others don't get suspicious. She sits up on the beach and scratches at her scabs, peeling them off. I join her after a while and do the same s she starts to speak.

"Look, there is only eight of us left," she says. "Its time to get out of here." I think it over for a moment before nodding.

"Tell you what" I say. "We'll wait until Brutus and Enobaria are dead. Then we'll go. I promise." Katniss just frowns. She meant she wants to leave now. She doesn't want to stick around any longer. But she needs to understand the danger we would be facing if we left now. Three groups coming after us plus this hell of an arena.

"All right," she says. "We'll stay until the Careers are dead. But then we're gone." She looks up the beach and yells to Finnick, signaling Shes done talking to me right now. "Hey Finnick! Come over here! We figured out how to make you pretty again!"

The three of us help each other remove the scabs and reapply the medication to protect the fresh pink skin. Beetee calls us over and we go over.

"We need to get rid of the Careers," he says. "I doubt they'll attack when they're outnumbered."

"Do you think they figured out the clock?" Katniss asks.

"Maybe," He says. "Probably not how we do, but they most likely have a hint by now. But our best bet is setting a trap. If you were those two, knowing what you know about the jungle, where are would you feel safe?"

"The beach," I say.

"Then why aren't they here?" he asks.

"We claimed it," Johanna says. "Five against three, even with Prego here," making Katniss shoot her a glare. "isn't good odds at all."

"So where do you think they would be?" Beetee asks.

"On the edge," Katniss says. "Close to safe food, easy to spy from, easy to escape."

"Exactly," Beetee says. "I plan on a twelve o'clock strike."

"When the lightning hits," Katniss says and he nods.

"After noon, but before midnight, we will run this wire from the tree, to the saltwater, which is highly conductive. When the lightning strikes, it will electrocute anything in the water and the sand that will still be damp from the ten o'clock wave," he says.

"It should work," Katniss says sitting back. The others start debating the risks and Katniss just gently runs her fingers over her protruding belly. They argue like school children, no real reason for it not to work.

"Look," Katniss says, obviously tired of the bickering. "If it fails, there's no harm done. If it works, there is a decent chance we'll kill them. And even if we don't, Enobaria and Brutus lose their food source too, and we still know other ways to get that."

"I say we try it," I say. "Katniss is right."

Johanna and Finnick stare at each other, as though discussing it through their minds.

"Alright, better than having to hunt them down anyway," Johanna says and we get up and break camp. Johanna takes the lead and Katniss follows her, using her golden bow as a walking stick.

We get to the tree after a while and Katniss goes to hunt down some of the rats. She comes back with three of them and I help her clean them and cut them up to cook. We leave when we hear the beetles in the next section and wait for the lightning. Beetee watches it intently and when it's over, we quick go back before the blood rain starts.

Beetee leaves us to our own devices, saying he wants to work alone. Since this is the last chance of seafood, Finnick takes the rest of us to the beach to get as much of it as we can.

We spear fish and dive for shellfish even getting oysters. Johanna keeps watch while the rest of us clean the seafood. I pry open an oyster and find a beautiful pea sized pearl. "You know, if you put enough pressure into coal it turns to pearls," I say.

"No," Finnick says. "I doesn't" Katniss has her hand up to her face and is laughing as she shakes her head, not being able to believe I actually thought that. I feel slightly embarrassed as I wash the pearl off and hand it to Katniss.

"For you," I say. "Maybe someday you can make it into a ring, since, you know, I never got to give you one." Katniss looks at the iridescent surface and smiles.

"Thanks," she says closing it into her fist. She stares into my eyes and I can read her like a book. She has no intention of making it into a ring, because she has no intention to go home.

"The locket didn't work, did it?" I say, not caring that the others are there. She does respond. "Katniss?"

"It worked," she insists.

"But not the way I wanted it to," I say. I look away from her. We eat after a parachute falls, giving us more rolls and a spicy red sauce. We each eat five leaving seven, a number that can never be spilt equally.

We gorge ourselves and throw the remainders in the water so the Careers won't get them. Katniss and I sit hand in hand, wordless as we watch the sunset. I said what I wanted to say last night, but I'm afraid I did more damage than do what it was supposed to. And thing that scares me the most is.

How is Katniss planning on ruining my plans of getting her home?