Game On: Tick Tock

Chapter 7

“Tick tock,” I say again.

“Huh?” Beetee grunts.

Johanna shrugs. “Oh, nothing. Your wife is only being her usual Nutty self.”

I want to kill her where she stands, quite honestly. Beetee would actually comprehend my words and do something about my discovery. If he were strong enough. 

Katniss, however, looks like she’s considering my words.  She doesn’t get what I’m saying, but just the fact that she wants to understand me is comforting. She’s even nice enough to clean the blood off of me and wrap up Beetee’s stab wound.  Now it can really heal. When the job’s done, she sits in Peeta’s lap for a while, resting on him. The “star-crossed lovers of District 12”, as the Capitol calls them. Beetee kept telling me last year that they might be just an act. But I see the way she looks at him, and it’s easy to tell she loves him just as much as he loves her. When they became the final two tributes, neither one of them could bear to kill the other. So they prepared for a double suicide. That’s why we have to save them. Nobody else had the guts to be so defiant.

Beetee and I watch them, and my mind fills with our own memories. Like when I kissed him for the first time. When he proposed on top of the tallest building in District 3. When we got married on a snowy day. After the ceremony was done, I pushed him into the snow. We made snow angels and threw snowballs at each other. Beetee kissed me as snowflakes fell; then we warmed up inside the penthouse.

Here, on this twisted island “paradise”, Beetee seems to be thinking back, too. He entwines his fingers with mine and asks, “Was it worth it? The last twenty years?” His brown eyes leave me in a trance, just like the first time I gazed into them.

“Yes,” I say immediately. The years since my death-that-never-was have been a gift that I’ve always treasured.  I’d thought I was a goner even before our first kiss, but something kept me alive in the arena. There was a reason he didn’t die in his Games, either. We both know what could happen at any second, and that, if we became the last two tributes, he’d kill himself to let me win. To give Beta a chance at life. I’d never allow it. Either (by some miracle) we both escape, or we both die here.

Three words flow out of me easily: “I… love… you.” It’s the only full sentence I’ve been able to use in a long time.

Beetee strokes my cheek with his thumb and takes my face in his hands. “I love you, too.”

There’s something so final about the way he kisses me. I want to make it last. My arms encircle his shoulders as I press my lips back on his. It ends before I’m ready to let go. How do I know this isn’t his last  night? Or mine? Nothing is certain anymore. Not in the Hunger Games.

He pulls me to him, and my exhaustion gives way to sleep. I never sleep as soundly as I do when I’m with Beetee. He’s the safest place in the world for me.

It seems like no time has passed when I wake up. Somebody’s gently touching my hair.

“Darling. The others want to move.”  I open my eyes, and Beetee comes into view. Of course. He always knows the best way to wake me up. “We’re going to the Cornucopia.”

I’m so comfortable in his embrace. Do I really have to get up? Slowly but surely, my aching legs force me upwards. I try to lift Beetee, but Finnick comes to the rescue.

“I’ll take him,” he says. What a nice boy he is, really. It’s a shame he was reduced to becoming a killer. Then again, all of us were.

Katniss approaches me.

“Tick tock” is the first thing that pops out of my mouth.

“Yes,” she says. “Tick tock, the arena’s a clock. It’s a clock, Wiress, you were right.” *

Relief washes over my face. Katniss figured out what I was trying to say! I knew she was smart. Now everybody will understand, and we’ll have a big advantage over the others.  

“Midnight,” I tell her.

She replies with, “It starts at midnight.”*

At the Cornucopia, she explains the arena to our allies.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been more helpful,” Beetee says, shooting me a guilty stare.  

“It doesn’t matter now,” Peeta replies. “Your wound is so horrible, it’s a wonder you can function at all. But we’re glad to have you back. You’re able to help, and that’s what matters. We need your intelligence.”

“Then let’s get to work.” That’s the Beetee I know and love. I blow him a kiss, like I always did when he’d leave in the morning for his job.

Peeta hands me Beetee’s coil of wire, asking me to wash it. I sit down on the edge of the water and get to work. A nursery rhyme comes into my mind as I clean the wire, and I begin singing. Just for the fun of it.

“Hickory dickory… dock; The mouse ran up the… clock; The clock… struck one, the mouse ran… down,

Hickory… Dickory dock. Hick-”

As a muscular hand covers my mouth, a nauseating shock runs through my body. Then I see the glint of a knife, coming towards my throat. But I can’t scream for help. The knife is so painful I have to close my eyes. In a second, I’m fighting for air. It doesn’t take long before my heart gives out.

Tick tock. My time is up.