After The Storm (A Hunger Games Fanfic)

Two by Two - 13

Mercedes traipses after Martin, her stomach grumbling. This is so boring. Occasionally she lashes out with the sickle, her tongue sticking out of her mouth and her hair swinging. There's nothing to do, and the endless waves of grass are making her dizzy. Even back home doesn't look this dull.

Martin lopes on ahead gracefully, ears pricked for any sign of water. His mouth is dry and his shirt is sticky with sweat. He's never walked for so long in his life. He misses the comforting swish of his hair around his ears, the security of home. This is too different, too alien. The walls of grass move when you tap them, bending willingly out of the way. He wants cold grey stone, unmoving and reassuring. And the blue of the sky is too blue, the sun too hot. It can't be real. But at the same time, he knows it is.

People are seeing him on screen. Marcus, his father. Did they ever believe he would get this far? He knows the answer straight away; no. His goodbyes have always been goodbyes. Reassuring Marcus, telling him to have a good life and not wind the girls up too much. Marcus had gripped him in a brutal bear hug, which had terrified him more than anything, because it meant that he was scared.

Had anybody come to say goodbye to Mercedes?

"It's fucking boring," she swears from behind him, and he smiles a little. She's not bothered, or if she is she's keeping it hidden well. The Capitol must be loving her; for once a fourteen year old kid with a chance. He stops that thought straight away. Don't start thinking about winning. Just think about staying alive.

"They're the same bloody thing," Mercedes snaps. Martin's head snaps around and he blinks at her, startled. The idiot hadn't realised that he was speaking aloud. He fixes her with a look that makes her feel like she's back in school, on one of the rare days that she could be bothered to go. It's a good job she didn't; if she'd wasted time going to school to end up here, she would have been really pissed off.

"They're not," he mutters, staring her down for once, "If we wanted to win, we'd be out there looking for people to kill. The Careers win. The rest of us just stay alive."

The second he's said it, he knows it's stupid. The angry hauter fades from Mercedes' face, and her shoulders hunch a little. Her eyes are wide. The sickle trembles in her hand. Martin shakes his head, wishing desperately that he could take it back. She won't take an apology.

They will have to say goodbye.

He tries to push the thought from his head as he carries on, focusing on the little rush that means water, and keeping an eye out for any plants other than the legarthic grasses. 

Mercedes is silent.

"Here!" Gavin exclaims, his voice low and hushed, his rough, tanned hands running along the grassy floor. Rain stops still.

"The grass here is damp. There must be water nearby." Rain breathes a soft sigh of relief. She'd thought she'd be okay, used to surviving on meagre water rations, but meagre is better than none at all. Her tongue feels as cracked as the ground back home, heavy and numb in her mouth, and her lips are dry no matter how many times she licks them.

"Oh, thank goodness..."

Gavin looks up at her, dark patches on his combat trousers from the damp ground. He can't share her smile, her relief. If there is water nearby, there will be other tributes, and if there is other tributes, there will be fighting, and there will be deaths.

Rain sees the seriousness spread across his rugged features and bites her lip, toying with a strand of burnt umber hair. It's too easy, somehow, to forget why she's here. To forget that there are people out there hunting them. It's too much like home here, the waving crops, back when the rains came regularly, liquid silver drenching the ground. She can lose her thoughts in the grass and the company.