After The Storm (A Hunger Games Fanfic)

Pressure - 7

He's soaking wet, water dripping from every available surface. How long has he spent praying for rain? And now all he wants is for it to go away. He's sick of the precious sound of drops splattering on the floor. Occasionally he tips his head backwards, letting it fall into his eyes and mouth, letting it streak through his hair, and thinks of his district looking at him hungrily. Or Rain. Is she on camera right now? Injured and unarmed, her familiar face screwed up in pain.

A sharp pain shoots through his stomach, the normal pang of hunger. He's used to it. But he needs to keep his strength up, somehow. Water won't do the trick. Something filling, something to survive on.

Come on, sponsors, he thinks, where are you?

Sudden thought; maybe the bandages and creams were for Rain. Maybe he doesn't have any sponsors at all. It's pointless hoping for something from his family; they can't even feed themselves, let alone spare any money for him.

He snaps off a stalk of grass, sending droplets of rain flying into the sky with the flicker of movement, and chews on it, just to make it feel like he's eating. Rain's trick. It was okay at home. At home he'd have something to do. But here all there is to do is wander around, relieve himself, wonder what the Gamemakers are planning and wondering if he's going to die. And he'd rather not do the last two.

No. He refuses to die. He hasn't spent the last year pacing the cracked soil, his throat parched and his still-strong frame trembling, to die here.

Neither has Rain...

He wishes she was here, just for the company. He's never been so alone. Not even on the day that he was the last one in the fields, or rather, the dry dirt that passed for the fields. Somewhere more people than he can even imagine are watching him and yet the space around him feels empty.

How long will this go on before he has to do something?

And, for that matter, what is he willing to do?

"Mercedes?"

Mercedes hacks down a clump of grass and wipes the rain from her eyes bitterly. Fucking weather. She hates rain. It rains too much in Six. But she prefers it back there, where at least you know where everything is and it's different every so often. Occasionally.

"Mercedes!" She jumps. Martin has one hand shoved in his pocket and lopes along behind her lopsidedly. He looks less like stone now, although there's still traces around his forehead. His hair is plastered to his cheeks. "We're going the right way," she insists.

"I know," Martin soothes. They can't be going the wrong way. All they have to do is follow the path they made here. The tree has long since faded, and the water is hours behind them. All he can hear is the endless pattering of the rain and Mercedes' footsteps, like she's trying to stamp through the floor, and the occasional thwack as she takes out her frustration on a clump of grass. She's stopped complaining about being hungry. And he's forgotten. Strange, but he actually has. He's forgotten to be hungry. He feels full inside, not with food but with...pressure. That's the closest word, even though it's so much more than that. And he has the axe.

"What do you want, then?" she snaps. No swearing. Seven people. There was the cannon last night, the one that started to tip him over. Who else? The only ones he can think of are the pair from Nine and the girl from Eleven, but there's two more. Careers.

No. He turns his attention back to Mercedes.

"Life, at home," he says, "What's it like for you?"

Just for the tiniest second, she pauses, before taking a vicious swing at some more wet grass. A small shaft of light creeps through a crack in the clouds and retreats again.