After The Storm (A Hunger Games Fanfic)

Settling In - 17

"I fucking hate this place."

"I thought you would," hisses a low male voice in return, "Keep your voice down."

Mercedes doesn't care. Martin means well, she knows, but he doesn't seem to understand that she's angry and she needs to shout. The grass stretches high above her head as she pushes it out of the way, scowling at it. She'd like to rip all this grass up, snap it in half and burn it. She has matches, snatched from the bloodbath before Martin tugged her away, telling her furiously not to look. Too late; she saw Jewel spear that quiet girl from Eight and the blood spurting everywhere, and she'd overtaken Martin in her hurry to leave after that.

And now they've been walking for hours and she's hungry and irritable – well, more than normal – and she doesn't want to be here. Martin is nervous, twitching at every flicker and turn and armed, somewhat unsettlingly, with a short-handled sickle. Occasionally he chops down a thick stalk, trying and failing to imagine it as a human being, someone younger than him. Several times he feels like collapsing to the ground and crying and not getting up again, because there's no way he's going to get out of here alive and all those kids he knew are going to have to watch him die, but then he thinks that one of those kids is here with him, and he has to stay strong for Mercedes.

Not that Mercedes appears to appreciate the effort. She storms around aimlessly, almost like she's looking for trouble. This makes him nervous; at home when Mercedes is looking for trouble, she almost always finds it. Her hair has been styled into two plaits down her back, a style synonymous with innocence but on Mercedes it just looks wrong. Usually she wears her hair loose; it nearly reaches her hips. Not that that takes much on such a small girl. It's hard to believe that she's fourteen. Martin shakes his head, wanting to feel the comforting flicker of his hair around his neck, but all that happens is that grass brushes past him. He wonders what his new, shorter, cropped style looks like on him.

His mind runs over things they'll need to do. Find shelter. No, first, food. No, even before food they need to find water. The weather is sickeningly cheerful but not too warm, a light breeze making the whole grassy world towering around him waver and shimmer. But the walking is drying out his throat. He wonders if this is what Nine is like; with stalks so tall you can't see over them. He worries whether that will give the tributes from Nine, that pair who seemed to be a couple, an advantage, and he frets about whether other tributes will be able to follow the path of broken stalks that they're making. The sickle is worryingly light but he can't imagine he'll ever be able to swing it with the power required to break a human. But then again, he knows that people can perform exceptional feats of mental and physical strength if they are under threat.

It's the mental part that he's worried about.

Mercedes looks around to check that he is still there. He is, his eyes jumping from one side to the other even though there's nothing to see but grass. Lots of bloody grass. Her stomach feels empty. It's too quiet and the birds above sound like they're mocking her for ending up here. They probably rigged it, got sick of her and decided this was the best way to get rid of her.

"I fucking hate this place," she repeats.

***

Rafe hears something crashing after him and wheels around, heart up in his throat. This is it, he's actually being attacked. He could run away, but they'd only catch him and besides, he's armed with his specialist weapon and he will do anything to get back to Arianna and the baby.

A small figure stumbles into view, her hair in front of her face and completely unarmed.

"F-flora?" he stammers. She looks up at him, her face red with the effort of running and shiny with tears. He's used to that expression; he's faced it across a dinner table too many times in the last few days and wished it was Arianna instead. She looks lost, pathetic, afraid.