Scarred | The Hunger Games

25.

"Run! Run! The fog is poison!"

I'm jolted from my sleep, immediately getting onto my feet, grabbing my spear and helping Mags up. Finnick comes over, and carries her on his back, as I take that as my cue to start bolting away. 

I'm the fastest out of the five of us, leading the way and making good distance between us and the fog, before I hear Katniss and Peeta cry out in pain. 

I pause in my tracks, running back to help Katniss, who's trying to lift Peeta. Then, I hear Finnick cry out as well. "Mags, please, please! Come on! Come on!"

Peeta's face is bubbling with the poison, ad he's clearly too affected by the poison. 

"Katniss! Come one, you grab his side, I'll grab the other." I call out, already throwing one of his arms around me. I was clearly in better shape, not having been touched by the poison due to my fast stamina when I used to train back home. My actual home, not victor's village. 

Katniss copies my actions, but she struggles with holding Peeta up, and sways, before falling onto her knees from both the poison and the added weight. Finnick comes up to us, and Katniss says in her distress, "I can't carry him."

I turn at her, "yes we can. Come on Katniss, get up, I'm helping you." She looks at me, despair in her eyes. 

Finnick looks lost for a moment, before Mags taps him on the shoulder. She offers him one final gesture, before turning towards the fog. 

"Mags?" Finnick calls for her. 

"Mags, stop!" I shout. "Come back, come back! Look, we got Peeta. Look, I can carry him!" I cry out, moving Peeta's body to my back and attempting to stand up with him. "Finnick can still carry you!"

"Mags? Mags!" Finnick cries out, going to chase after her. 

"Mags! I can carry Peeta!" I yell.

"Mags! Mags!"

Boom.

I crumble under Peeta's weight, my small 17 year old frame not being able to hold his muscly build. 

"Finnick, we have to go. We have to get outta here. Nova can't carry Peeta. We have to go." Katniss says, shaking Finnick's arm.

The fog catches up quick, as Katniss and Finnick throw Peeta's arms around their shoulders, but as soon as they try walk, I can already see Katniss sway.

"Katniss, you lead, there's too much poison in your system already, I'll help carry him." I say, taking over. 

We switch, and start moving, but the fog had already caught up. I feel the burning pain stretching from my scalp to my ass, before the pain is all I can focus on. 

We must have been too distracted by the pain or too desperate to escape it, because that's when we meet the end of a cliff, and begin tumbling down it, before finally landing. 

I turn around, watching the fog chase us, before it stops at an invisible barrier, like a dimension to hell. Katniss and I share a look of relief, and pain. She turns around, crawling towards a small pond, before dipping her hand in it and screeching. 

"The water. The water helps."

I begin pulling myself towards the pond, sinking my entire body in it, and watching as Katniss, Peeta and my skins' release the poison in it. 

"Finnick!" I call out, as I leave the pond, noticing his missing prescence. He clearly had the worst of the poisoning. I heave his heavy-ass body into the pond, as he screams out in pain as the poison is released. 

***

We stay at the ponds, rinsing off whatever poison we had missed off our bodies. 

"I'm sorry about Mags." Katniss says. 

I look at Finnick, knowing how she was an important person to him. 

"She was never going to make it." Finnick says, but I can tell that he still mourned for her. Then, his eyes lock on something. 

Katniss and I turn to see monkey mutts, each of us grabbing our weapons, and trying to get Peeta away quietly, before they started screeching at us. 

"Get to the beach." Katniss says.

They've completely surrounded us, and it was only when the first one attacked that they all started coming at us.

There must have been at least three dozen mutts, and it felt like more and more of them were coming for every one that we killed, and they kept chasing us as we made our way through towards the beach. 

"AUGH," I yell out as a mutt bites into my stomach, the same place where the shark bit me. I felt it release me from its mouth, before bitting once more as I tried to stab it with my spear. 

When it bites down on me for the third time, I almost give up, until I see Finnick stab the thing. He helps me up, glancing at my probably horrible injury in concern before helping me move towards the beach. 

"A morphling! Help me get her." I hear Peeta say. 

Just as we get to the beach, I feel Finnick toss me onto the sand, as he turns towards the mutts to defend the beach. I can barely roll over to look at how the mutts don't dare touch the sand. Reluctantly, the mutts begin to turn back into the jungle. 

Boom.  

Finnick's head whips back towards me, eyes darting, thinking the cannon belonged to me. 

"Still alive", I call out with a weak wave. "Unfortunately."

***

Finnick is using his trident to fish as I use the salt water to wash away the sand that had gotten into my wounds when he tossed me like a ragdoll onto the beach.

"If I get an infection from the sand, my blood will be on your hands." I joked to him. Although my fear of bodies of water was still prevalent, the only reason I was comfortable in the water right now was because Finnick was here.

He glares at me as he pulls a fish out, "Not funny Nova, I wouldn't be able to live with that." And I knew that he would heave me out of the water, if I started going into a full blown psychosis episode in the water.  

I throw him a teasing smile. "What? Didn't you say we're not holding hands anymore?"

He gives me a look, "You know that doesn't apply to you." I smile at him, muttering an 'I know', as we begin to head back to the beach. 

As we reach shore, a faint beeping is heard in the distance, making all four of our heads turn to find the source of the sound. 

The sponsor gift lands in my hands, and I begin to open it as we approach Katniss and Peeta.

"What is it?" Katniss asks, as everyone begins to eat the fish. 

"Shark Biter? ✘ Monkey Biter ✔" - CeCe

It's a thick paste, "medicine." I say, delighted for something to soothe my aching wound. I grab a handful of it, lathering it all over my exposed wounds. "Do you guys need any? Did any of you get hurt?"

They all reassured that they were fine, especially since the morphling saved Peeta from any injury.

We hear a scream, all of us standing up and grabbing our weapons, watching as an enormous wave wipes out a section of the arena. A cannon goes off, and an aircraft comes to claim the dead body. I wonder who was just killed. 

"Someone's here." Katniss says, drawing an arrowing into her bow.

I steady my spear, ready to attack, as we make sight of the people on the beach.

"Johanna?" Finnick says to himself.

It is Johanna.

"Johanna." I roll my eyes, groaning.