.The Trackjacker & The Mockingjay (Katniss Everdeen X F.OC).

-Anxiety-

Anxiety.

The monster as lanky as a skeleton but as ever present as death sat deep in Katniss' chest, all of their chest, as they descended into the city-wide sewer system that would either be their salvation or death.

Anxiety, master of all, friend of none, cackled in the whispers of the wind, mocked in the dripping of water, strangled in the knee-deep water.

For death does not work alone when collecting its due.

And Katniss felt it.

The tension in Jackson's face. Cressida's pacing eyes. Castor and Pollux are leading the way, but closer to each other than ever. Gale's rigid posture, gun raised. Finnick's drumming on his trident. Peeta's telling facial tick. Percy's playing with her rings despite being handcuffed and her own heart hammering away in her chest.

A deep-seated anxiety that seemed to come from before her father died (I should buy the newest book... I've heard of lovey new lore from the internet.), an anxiety that clambered on her shoulders, sat on her shoulders and whispered to her about who might be the next to die, who else would she lose, who wouldn't see the light of day and die swallowed by the murky waters rising around them as they moved through narrow halls and grand open places that might become their tombs.

But out of them all, it was on Percy's face that this familiar anxiety seemed to have taken root, one born of common thought but one showed through worry and the other through distant stares and focus cycling each other.

Katniss had never felt so close yet so far. What could she even say? After what happened, she too hadn't fully digested it, and here she'd be trying to talk to Percy through it? Yeah, that's baseless dreams of hope that would never be.

And so, the tension, this monster of anxiety, loomed ever near, accompanying them through chest-high waters, through sneaking past security cameras and crawling through tunnels that were not meant for humans, ever whispering that one sentence.

"Who's next?"

Not even when they finally stopped did she feel at peace.

Not when sitting on a thin metal grating above the water, a rat squeaking nearby, and trying to sleep several meters under tons of concrete.

"You know..." She broke the heavy silence with a whisper not to wake those who could sleep. "Prim thought it was sad, but I thought it was more funny when you kept throwing cooking utensils out of the window."

"...You invited me over after that... Real?" Percy's voice was lacking, in spirit or focus, whichever it might be but something was lacking, not entirely focused, like her mind was still pacing the tunnels despite sitting there, cuffs around the metal railing, holding said railing tightly and head leaned against it, only maintenance lights letting them barely see anything but that was enough.

"Real. Mom was a bit confused when you became a fixture, but Prim loved to have you there."

"Did you?"

"At the start, it was only a friendship, then it was a lie to the Capitol."

Percy looked over.

"And I loved you..."

"Real."

"Was there ever a moment you did too?"

But before she could answer.

a crackled hiss was heard through the tunnels, anxiety given voice and anxiety given... Claws...

(NEXT WEEK'S UPLOAD IS THE ONE AND ONLY ONE THAT WILL BE DELAYED BY ONE DAY!!! Purely because 18th is my birthday and I am a sucker for publishing the tunnel escape chapter when it hurts the most.)