After The Storm (A Hunger Games Fanfic)

Parting is Such Bittersweet Sorrow - 9

Rain is trapped, lashed up with grass and dangling from a tree, blood rushing to her head, the scene spinning around her. Her arm rips and tears. She tries to scream but a grass gag cuts into the sides of her mouth and she tastes her own blood.

A voice shouts her name in the tones of home. Gavin! She can't see; everything spins too quickly but he sounds in pain. She fights against the bonds, not sure what she's going to do once she's free but only knowing that she has to get free and help. But the strands only dig in tighter and Gavin's voice gets louder and weaker. Her feet are numb and her head hot and dizzy.

And just like that, she stops spinning. They're inside. There are cold grey walls, shiny. It stinks, that sharp cold scent of the Capitol. And Gavin is in front of her, knelt down. His head is bowed. His arms and the back of his neck are sticky and red; blood. His blood? Her eyes widen but she can't say or do anything. He doesn't know she is there. His shoulders shake, his whole frame trembling. She can hear sobs. And then she sees; the Careers, all of them, the big one from Two included, have faded out of nowhere, a semi-circle, ten feet tall, and they ignore her too. They all sneer down at Gavin, weapons glinting in hands.

"Run!" Rain screams wordlessly, her vocal chords creaking with the effort. Tears drip into her hair, no, no, no...

She can't bite through the grass. It is cold and smooth as steel.

Gavin is muttering something, his familiar head turned to the floor, his rough hands clenched behind his back. Her ears burn to hear it, and her arm is on fire and strapped to her side and it hurts...

"Rain, don't look," Gavin is saying, and though he looks shaky and hurt and bloody, his voice is calm and steady like this is all he's thinking about, "Close your eyes."

She can't. She can't do it. And a blade comes out of nowhere and then, and then she doesn't know, there's just a lot of blood and Gavin stares wordlessly at the sky, his mouth half open with telling her to look away, just a shell and she saw it and she didn't do anything and the world spirals into dark.

Her eyes open again and she's not wrapped up anymore, not in weaves of suffocating grass. Her arm feels tight and achy. Her clothes cling to her. With a push of the breeze, the last vesitiges of fear and disgust scurry away, leaving her lightheaded and resigned. She knows what she has to do.

It's night, moonlight. Everything is a beautiful silver colour. Even the scythe looks more pleasant.

She's resting on something, something warm and solid and throbbing slightly under her ear. Her injured arm is laid across it, brushing the grass floor on the other side. Gavin. He's still alive. She breathes out a small sigh of relief.

"Why am I damp?"

He chuckles. She feels it rather that hears it, rumbling vibrations through his torso. "You were sweating quite badly."

It's so easy to forget the nightmare, to forget why they are here. She wants to. It's possible, if she just looks up at the stars. This is so much like home. Not like home now, the baked fields and cracked dirt, but the home of a year ago, the version that is already fuzzy in her memory. Golden crops stretching for the sky, a sky so stuffed with stars that it felt like it would cave in on itself. Or covered in the thick city of lights like a comfort blanket, every inch laden with a familiar array of colours, more dazzling than the plastic Capitol could ever be. If you worked at night, sometimes you'd be lucky and see a streak across the sky, a flash of silver or gold. Except a month or so before the reapings. Then for a few nights it would seem like the sky was ablaze with meteors. Everybody worked then.

"You're thinking of home, aren't you?" Gavin asks. Rain's weight is comforting and she doesn't fidget; if he tilts his chin he can see the endless stars reflected in her eyes. And despite the damp, she's warm. His lips still feel slightly salty.