Quite possibly the most anticipated chapter yet! I do apologize for the agonizing wait. AP exams and finals robbed me of my time in May, but now that it is finally summer break I will have far more time to write! (*Cheers*) Also, I am about halfway through with the following chapter, so hopefully that will be up very soon! Just one chapter left...(*sobs*) Again, the comments, votes, and reads I have been getting despite my quite horrible updating just make my day, so thank you all so so very much, they do mean a lot :) I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Kindest Regards,

Ninjafranbow

Chapter Eighteen

Day Twelve

Rain pours in icy sheets tonight.

It penetrates the night air like the beat of a drum before the start of the war and drives into the muddy ground like bullets from a gun. It bites my skin and burrows through my veins and freezes my blood like a parasite.

It echoes in my ears like a heartbeat.

I hardly notice the helicopter take him away. Hardly notice him etched into the night sky. Hardly notice his possessions right where he left them. All I can see is red. The color that stains my hands forever. The color that announces the arrival of Death. Through it all his face haunts me, robs me of my thoughts. First he was smiling. Then his lips were parted in shock. First his eyes were gleaming with life. Then they were veiled in Death. First he was here. Now he is not.

My mind is foggy as if I'm walking through a dream. I don't even process the sense of betrayal, something I have become so familiar with in the past month. I should feel angry. Angry that in the end he was just like my father. Angry that he most likely played me since the very beginning, and all of the words about his mother and his life back at home were just fiction, decoys to gain my trust. And eventually, I did. Like a fool I trusted the silence and clung to the bait, only to be pulled out of the water and nearly taken too.

But all I feel is empty.

......

Hours pass; days pass; minutes pass. By the time I push myself to my feet the icy rain has made its way to my bones. Rivulets have formed, carving their way through the muddy land and spilling into the rising river. A tiny voice in my head tells me that I need to move and find shelter. But I continue to sit on the soaked ground, staring off into the void of nothingness. And even when the night sky gives way to a gray morning I find myself in the same position, staring off into the same chasm of red and death.

It's only when the cannon booms in the heavy rain do I slowly stand up. I numbly pick up our—my—dripping belongings and stuff them in my backpack before looking around. The thick curtain of rain masks the world around me, save  for a handful of feet ahead. My feet stumble forward, though after days of aimless traveling I realize I have no idea which direction the willow trees are.

With one hand loosely clutching my backpack and the other pressed against my chest, I wander through the marshy land. I wonder what they must be thinking back in District Five, Ben's friends and family. They must be cursing my name and grieving over the body of their boy, the boy they thought would be buried in mounds of winnings, not in mounds of dirt. I promised myself not to harm—let alone kill—anyone once I got into the arena. It was supposed to be just me, flitting from the weapons of Death until it cornered me, just as it would twenty-two other tributes. But here I am, yet another puppet in their twisted games, being tricked and pulled into something I'm not. I look down at my hands. I am just like one of them; I am a monster.

It's nightfall by the time I curl into my makeshift hammock. With the rest of Ben's rope, both of our jackets—him having left it by our belongings—and the remainder of my blanket, I have crafted a somewhat elevated perch above the seeping ground. I wish I could just leave his stuff behind for someone else to find; I feel dirty and ashamed even just touching it. But I know that without them, I won't make it much longer. The rain chills me through and through until my toes are heavy and numb. I reach within the backpack and pull his shoes on. Of all things, those were the hardest to bear: pulling them off his dead body like a careless thief; leaving him there alone and exposed to the world only for the Capitol to pick at him like ravenous crows...

The rain has grown so heavily now that I don't hear the Capitol anthem ring throughout the arena, only see the bright blue seal just barely distinguishable amidst the rain. It was the female tribute from District Nine that boomed this morning. Was she killed and robbed from too? I tally off the remaining tributes and tally again, thinking that no, it can't have been that fast already.

Six tributes left that I know of. Including me.

The following day is just the same: treading through now ankle-dep muck and weighed down by the even further sodden clothing. My stomach grumbles in complaint—the food having turned mushy and broken from the rain—and my skin is pale yellow from the cold. To distract myself I weave a small basket from dead grass and twigs and allow the rain to collect inside it.

I nearly drop the basket when I see him. He practically blends in with the muddy surroundings, and from a distance, he could merely be a lump of dirt and rock. I run through the possibilities as I slowly tread closer to the curled body. Asleep, injured, dead. The boy's body is wracked with shivers when I tentatively reach his side. His skin is ghostly white; his lips and fingernails a sickly blue. I carefully kneel beside the boy—my breath catches in my throat. I know him. He was with the pack of tributes Ben and I saw that killed the crazy girl. He was the one who got bit by a snake.

His heavy-lidded eyes widen when he sees me and his mouth parts as if taking in a sharp breath, though the sound is lost in the cacophony of the rain. He makes to raise his knife pressed against him, though the movement sends pain across his face. I try to give him a reassuring look and show him my hands void of any weapons. The tribute moves again, though this time to try and ease his way up onto his elbows—but he winces once more. He tries again. His trembling arms fail him and collapse to the ground, his body slams back into the mud and water.

I can't just leave him here, not again.

The boy doesn't even flinch when I bend down next to his ear. "Is that okay if I move you to the tree?" I jut my chin to the nearest trunk. He only nods weakly in response. It takes rather tedious minutes of wincing and hefting before he is slouched against the base of the tree and I am sitting just beside him. His shaking fingers reach inside his jacket and pull out a seemingly warped plastic sheet the size of his arm. I suck in a breath. He got a sponsor gift...but why is he handing me the parachute?

"Shelter," he wheezes as if answering my question, tilting his head ever-so-slightly up.

"What happened?" I ask him once I carved a slit into the tree and stuck the parachute against it—giving us each roughly a palm-sized space of shelter. He stiffly cinches his pant leg up a bit. Bile rises to my throat.

His ankle is a mess, to say the least. It is grotesquely swollen and a grisly purple, creeping up the entirety of his leg. In the middle of the injury, however, are two deep, angry red puncture wounds. His blue lips don't even need to form the words before I recognize it as the snake bite he got in the swamp just the other day.

.....

"They didn't believe me at first," he says in a hoarse voice, pressing my woven bowl to his lips once more. "They thought I was lying, trying to get sponsors. But then I became feverish, and my leg started to swell." He tilts his head to his ankle. "And then I overheard them talking one night, saying that I would just—" he stops, sucks in a sharp breath, and continues, "slow them down. I knew they were going to kill me." His voice is insipid as if reciting words from a page. "So that night on watch I ran away—well," he chuckles flatly, "as best I could anyway." He takes another sip of water from the basket.

"And they didn't try to chase after you?"

He shakes his head. "If they did then they either gave up or went the wrong way."

"The rain...it washed away your footprints." He only nods again. "And...and their stuff? Did you take anything?" He doesn't have a backpack with him. But then again Ben didn't either until I ran into him...

"Too risky. I only took some food, but," he bites his lip and looks at me a moment longer, as if still rather unsure whether or not to trust me. The boy then buries his hand into his soaking jacket, and a palm-sized silver container emerges. With pale fingers, he unscrews the lid.

I'm not quite sure what I am expecting, but it isn't this. Not steaming soup or life-saving medicine. No, crammed to the brim of the container is a heap of burnt twigs and fabric of the like, and amidst the blackened remains is a small package of matches.

......

"How is it lasting so long?" I breathe more to myself than to him. My fingers thaw over the burning container between us. The kindle inside it has managed to continue to burn despite the hours of use.

"Vaseline...wax maybe..." his voice is quiet, nearly as faint as the cool wisps of breeze now slipping between the rain drops. The bright blue seal of the Capitol shines through the plastic parachute just covering our heads. It leaves as quickly as it came. No deaths tonight. "How many?" He whispers after a moment.

"Six." I stare into the tiny fire, the heat never quite reaching me.

"The girl who died yesterday," he rasps, "she was from Nine." His words catch me off guard, but one look at his tenuous face makes me cling to them.

"Did you know her?" Anything, anything to keep him talking and awake. Anything to keep that count from dropping to five.

"No, but I saw it happen...I saw everything." At first, I think that's all he is going to say, for his eyes stare off into nowhere and his lips are glued together. "It was a panther, you know. Shredded her to nothing," he adds after a moment. A panther? Even just the thought of one prowling through the swamp sends shivers down my spine. With such a large creature I'm surprised I haven't seen any around here yet.

"But they didn't find you."

A grin dies at his lips. "They didn't find me." When I look over his eyelids are heavy and closed, and his face sags with exhaustion. My heart plummets to my feet. If his skin was pale before, it doesn't even come close to the sick, ashy tone that robs the boy of life. I know with reluctance that any time now Death will steal him away too. And perhaps he knows as well because he nudges the container over to me and in a feeble voice croaks out: "you keep it."

An hour passes.

The rain beats down upon the arena.

The breeze becomes a wind.

The cannon booms.

He is gone.