𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

seventeen

☆ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN! ☆
017. monkey business

|| MR. BRIGHTSIDE ||
❝Let me go, and I
just can't look it's
killing me, and
taking control.❞

➳➳

THE FIRST THING that welcomed me was pain, a red-hot pain that engulfed the entirety of me until I shouted out in a desperate attempt for it to stop. I felt like I was underwater- my ears were blocked and my mouth was filled with some kind of icy liquid as I tried to scream for someone to help me, even if it felt like the noise was only heard by my own amplified ears. It was overwhelming in its magnitude, and reminded me just why I had always found comfort in the coldest of days back at home. There was sweet relief enticing me in the form of the liquid that surround me as the heat began to get engulfed in shards of frozen band aids.

All at once the pain subsided from its great height only to be replaced with a pleasant calm. The feeling of being underwater left me when the calmness hit, it was enough to push that little bit more to open my eyes, even as the weight from what I was engulfed in suddenly left me too. It no longer felt like each eyelash was weighing down my whole head, and my hands were no longer kept upright by the very thing that pushed me into the ground.

The canopy of the jungle was out of focus; a blurry figure sat over me obscuring the sky while an array of colours danced around my line of sight until they twirled into oblivion. When I blinked, I realised that the light was what created such a show. It made leaves into fallen angels and made the grey sky look like it was a metropolis of wealth and fortune, and it made the figure look like an alien that was scanning me for spare parts. The figure slowly concentrated as I blinked one more, and then as I blinked again until I could see Katniss on top of me instead of a monster with my swords keeping her off the ground. She was using them as crutches as her chapped lips moved silently like I was watching her in mute.

Perhaps I had become deaf.

I would of asked her, or tried to make a sound so that I could test the theory that seemed to stem from worry, but my throat was dry and raw. The memory of what happened returned to me once I tried to speak; grief's familiar arms embraced me as I replayed the last seconds of Mags' life over and over again until I was sure I saw her in front of me. She looked more real then Katniss did, but she disappeared faster.

Or maybe she had simply waddled out of sight- all I wanted was to stand up.

Katniss could see it as I strained my neck, and again as I curled my hand into the soft dirt so that I had something to latch onto when I slowly brought myself up. When I went to place one foot on the ground, she clutched under my arm so that I didn't have to do so much work.

In the cloud of dizziness that surrounded me I could just about see Peeta and Finnick; both of whom were twitching horribly as they seemed to be recovering. I couldn't look at the man from District 4 without feeling sick, and I couldn't move without a spasm in my lower knee that almost made me fall again.