☆ CHAPTER FOURTEEN! ☆
014. the burning man

|| JUNGLE ||
❝won't you follow
me into the jungle?
Ain't no god on my
streets in the heart
of the jungle.❞

➳➳

THE FIVE OF us walked around the dome for hours.

So long that the sun had finally left the centre of the sky and the canopy that I had marvelled at became mundane with each passing step- it was as if I had grown tired to the greenery in minutes. After so long, even my earliest wish of owning my own forest went sour because of the time I spent amongst the trees. Even if these trees weren't real, I was already convinced that I had seen enough.

It was all the same.

With every turn we faced the same green leaves and muddy floor that reminded me of my sister's eyes, or the hair that fell in minuscule feathers from the ponytail I had kept it in. The same rocks, the same trees so that we never truly realised where we were going or where we had been- Peeta could of been leading us in one large circle and none of us would of been able to tell.

Nobody but the viewers that were laughing along, or my sister who would be watching through her small boney fingers.

But I couldn't imagine it. Even with the torment that had passed across my view in the hours we had been walking, not one was based around my sister. It was as if I had banished her from them, or that I simply didn't have enough memories of her speaking or just being with me to manipulate into another nightmare. I had cut her out so drastically that I couldn't even imagine her smile as she saw me on a screen, or the tears that she would spill when she saw a weapon impale itself through my heart.

No, it wasn't possible. And yet I could imagine the same tears and smiles on Finnick whenever I caught his face in the leaves.

I didn't know if I could even call him my friend anymore. I wanted him to be, somewhat desperately, but there was a part of me that was so sure that the distance was a good thing in the end. Like a subtle warning for what was to come, or a hint to those that knew me best that the isolation was out of mercy instead of need- or that I had finally lost the last tether to normality I had. I had convinced myself that it was a good thing, even if my imagination didn't quite get the message through each foliage of sharpened greenery.

It still threw him into each memory I saw; every one that didn't take me back to the desert that haunted me.

Like how the last branch that Peeta slash with his only machete reminded me of a severed arm that'd been bled dry; his machete blunted almost as quickly as his vision did as he wasted its long sharp edge on inanimate branches. Not that anyone would tell him otherwise. It seemed that the group had found some kind of unspoken harmony as we all trekked through the jungle with sweat dripping down our backs, something that was only strengthened by the ghosts that kept me company in the heat.

We had been silent, until Katniss stepped out of her own leveled silence while she simultaneously stopped the group.

Katniss was staring at something. I curiously followed her gaze to a section of the jungle in front of us that was shining artificially in the light even without the sun hitting it, a shine that I recognised almost immediately. Like another ghost from the past, I swore that the next opening in the trees was glistening like the power of my District's force field had done beside my home. It was a light that was invisible to the others.

I was sure that was because it wasn't real- like the other memories that flew past my eyes- as Peeta walked straight towards it.

"Peeta!"

Katniss' scream didn't stop Peeta as he crashed into the very real force field. The invisible wall sparked to life as it propelled him back, missing Katniss by inches as he swept me to the forest floor with him in an instant. It happened so quickly that I didn't quite catch the sparks that flew from the boarder as the boy from Twelve's arm threw me to the floor.

"Lorna!"

The impact had winded me, but that wasn't the only pain that I felt as I tried to breathe. I could feel blood oozing from my lower back and the hot sticky feeling of sweat that got entangled in the deep cut that seemed to be throbbing as soon as I touched the ground. It was a pain that seemed almost too strained to ge real, just the the force field that still sparked gently even after it had been hit and recreated.

The forest would soon be drenched in blood again; Peeta laid beside me perfectly still.

Katniss seemed to snap out of her daze when she realised Peeta hadn't taken a breath; her bow hit my leg as she landed beside our bodies to examine her fiancé. Nobody noticed the pain crawling up my back like a spider would while Katniss pushed on Peeta, the fire only subsided when it reached my ribs.

"He's not breathing! He's not breathing! He's not- "

Finnick pushed Katniss left mindlessly as he thought on his feet, something that I just about saw through the waves that made my vision distorted to the canopy above. When I took my next breath I felt the skin wriggle around an obvious cut in the suit, and yet it was hardly parallel to the panick I felt for Peeta as his lips were parted my Finnick's fingers. I couldn't imagine what Katniss would do if he died- something that threw the plan I had promised myself to complete completely off course.

He seemed to be panicking as he ducked down to Peeta's face. Katniss had snatched her bow up from the floor without taking a moment to compose her shaking hands, which made her aim untrustworthy when she pulled the string back. I shouted out to stop her shot; that seemed to be when she realised I was still there.

"Katniss, he's giving him CPR." I hissed between small grunts as I watched Finnick push air into Peeta's lungs.

His rhythm was fast but lean as he pressed on the boys slightly hot chest. I watched from the side as Mags helped me to my feet and dusted off the dirt from my suit; I felt the blood begin to ooze again as Mags pulled back the fabric that had been shielding the cut from the dirt. My suit had not been cut, just pushed into the obvious incision in my skin, so Mags pinched the material closer to try and stop the bleeding.

I didn't scream when Mags' long fingers accidentally slid into the cut, I only grunted to ensure that nobody would do anything stupid for my sake.

"Please wake up." Katniss pleaded as her face became drenched in tears.

Her nose ran as she desperately clutched onto the baker's hands. Maybe Katniss didn't even know how much Peeta meant to her until he was almost taken away, but it seemed that even she was shaken by how much his possible death seemed to change her. I had never seen her cry- it didn't suit her.

"Come on Peeta." Finnick encouraged.

Like Finnick's words reached into his soul and clawed the life back through his chest, a single gasp left Peeta after the seventh push and chant from District 4. All his bones contracted at once as he coughed, but it was loud enough for Finnick to stop and even Mags to look away from my back to watch as Peeta opened his eyes and inhaled through his nose.

"Peeta. Oh my God."

"Be careful, there's a force field there."

"You were dead." Katniss continued as her cries turned into broken laughs. "Your heart stopped."

"It's ok, it's working now."

I hissed as Mags went to pull a splinter out from what I thought was a shallow scrape, even if the two tributes from District 12 barely registered it as passing wind. They were too engrossed in each other's fastly beating hearts, and the sound of their breaths that were synchronised in motion.

"Do you want to stand up?" Katniss finally asked, right in the middle of their unspoken conversation.

With his body upright, and the dirt on his face half washed away by the tears that had fallen onto his cheeks, Peeta looked as if he was unscathed from the crash. What that meant was that I was the only one that spilt blood- even if it was hidden by the patches that had been there since the games began. Only Mags felt the severity of it, but that didn't mean that she was the only one that noticed it.

"You ok?" Finnick looked at me when I tried to lean against a tree for support. I inwardly groaned as the cut in my back stung from the layers of sweat between it and the jungle air that was slowly invading it, but I waved my hand dismissively anyway. He sounded so casual that I was sure he had glanced back to Peeta by the time I answered his question; Mags took a step back to make it seem like nothing was wrong when he did eventually glance back at me like he just remembered he had spoken to me.

I didn't miss the look she was giving me. She looked irritated at us both; she looked like a mother who had caught her children bickering behind her back. Even if Finnick was trying too hard to ignore me, that look was the sign I needed to prove that it was real.

"I'm fine." I muttered as he walked away, more to myself than to him.

Finnick picked up his trident from the floor as the burnt boy caught the air around him that was still sizzling from the electricity- it was the reminder I needed to reach behind me where my two blades should of been. In the panic, and how swiftly everything had changed, it never occurred to me that the two blades were sat on my back with the tips of them digging into the floor.

If it had been different, the angle would of forced them into my spine.

"Can you move?" I asked as Katniss leaned away from Peeta's chest. I didn't mean for my question to ruin the moment that was forming between the two, but it was vital that we moved away from the blast that would of been heard all around the arena. That, and the unsettling feeling that plunged through my chest when I thought about how close I had been to death for the first time in the games.

"Yeah I can keep going."

When Peeta spoke, and when Katniss took the lead that he had previously taken, it hit me that balance I had been perfecting inside my mind had changed.

Now, the dynamic was highly in favour of heat.

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