☆ CHAPTER SIXTEEN! ☆
016. the sacrifice.

|| RUNNIN' ||
❝And every voice
that cries inside my
head, forever drives,
forever drives, I've
killed the lights.❞

➳➳

THERE NEVER SEEMED to be any rest in sleep. I had heard that for most sleep was a time when they felt the safest, where the warmth from their blanket or comforter made them feel as if no monsters could attack them or prove them wrong. To others it was just a place to rest their head and close their eyes without noise polluting the calm that would flow over them in buckets, and there were some that simply stayed in bed all day because there was nowhere else that they could trust themselves so deeply that they fell.

I didn't feel like that on the good days; it was ludicrous to think that my eyes would close on their own in a jungle.

Without a clock, it was hard to time how long I had been floundering with the idea that at any moment I would actually be able to close my eyes and finally shut off every single unanswered idea; all I knew was that at some point I must of almost drifted away, because as Katniss's heel kicked a spear twig in my direction it woke me up with a sharp intake of breath like I had been sleeping deeply.

Unlike most nights I didn't momentarily forget where I was when I was shaken back to life, or forget what I was supposed to do once I had; I remembered exactly what I had to do and why my back was screaming into a woven leaf mat on the floor.

I didn't glance anywhere else but at Katniss as I rubbed my aching eyes.

"How long was I lying there?" I asked between deep breaths. My muscles felt as if they hadn't been asleep at all, neither did my eyes as they tried to keep track of the raven-haired girl in the darkness. Every once in a while I would get distracted by a vine in the night, but it wouldn't hold my attention for too long.

"3 hours at most."

The jungle floor was harder to walk through at night, when the shapes of bodies seemed to blend seamlessly into the rocks and dirt it was hard to find a spot that I could place each step until I was back in the centre of the clearing. It would of been impossible if I hadn't heard Katniss's gentle breathing in the night air the closer that I got, or as my feet scraped the main log she had been sitting on.

The souls of my shoes had somehow worn enough for me to feel every single branch and artificial stone that I stepped on as I walked over to the only other tribute awake.

"You can sleep if you want." I mumbled as I sat on a particularly flat rock beside her. The moss made the seat almost bearable; a haven compared to the ground that I had come from. "I know I can't."

"Neither can I."

"Yet another thing we have in common."

She seemed strangely calm as she watched the jungle. It was the first time I had seen her when she looked anything other than on edge, there was something about how soft her jaw had become and how lazy her eyes glanced around the entire area that made it seem a little less dangerous- a little more normal.

"I think that my opinion of Finnick might be changing." Katniss said after another moment of silence while she turned away from the foliage. Her statement caught me slightly off guard, enough to feel heat rise to the top of my skin.

"I thought he was the kind of Victor that loved the spotlight, the kind that would manipulate people with empty promises that he couldn't keep. He's not. I'm starting to see it from your perspective."

"Which is?"

"He's the kind that gets stubborn when he's angry, and overly affectionate when he's not. Dramatic."

If it wasn't for the darkness that had been around us both I would of shown her just how confused I was. Katniss Everdeen was harsh, she didn't talk all that much but when she did it wasn't ever anything that really meant a lot to her, and yet she thought that she needed to explain herself.

"And you think that's what I think?" I asked, trying my best to keep my voice low.

"I think you made him angry." Katniss replied almost before I even finished asking my question. She was very serious when she talked to me, the previous glimmer of laziness was forgotten and the small twitch that she always had when she was trying to smile was no longer there for me to watch. The drum in my cheat no longer skipped a beat at the mere thought of what she was insinuating or at her rather gravelly voice; not when the blank wall I normally stared at had become a wall of vines and leaves.

"We're going to die, I doesn't matter if we like each other or if he's angry with me." I admitted, avoiding her eyes to drop such a heavy subject.

I didn't glance at him. I really wanted to tell her then, everything that had been at war inside of me and all the things I think I see, and I wanted to explain to her why we had been so distant. I knew I couldn't; that was what made it so frustrating.

"I think that's all that matters." She challenged. "If I die, I'd want to do it with the most important people around me knowing I cared."

A low gong disrupted the conversation's sombre tone and caused the others around us to startle themselves awake. Even without our voices, I still carried on whatever we had tethered between us as I raised my thickening eyebrow. It was a look that told Katniss that she didn't know me, and that for her to live I would have to be killed. It was a look that asked the point of her giving me advice, or if there was a dangerous warning underneath it.

And yet she could read it while counting the number of gongs with a baited breath, right as the others crawled up like they had come from a hole in the Earth instead of just some sleep- they looked so much less comfortable once they realised that it hadn't stopped for minutes.

"I counted twelve." Katniss informed.

"Midnight?"

"Or the number of Districts."

Finnick got up from the floor once he noticed that I wasn't sleeping by the edge of the group, or since he caught just how close I had ended up next to the Girl On Fire. He seemed a little hurt, instinctively I glanced at Katniss as if it would replay the advice she had given me just a few minutes before. When he stood beside me, I gently shuffled away from Katniss so that I was perfectly in between the two; I just didn't know what he made of such a small gesture.

I would of watched, but all of our attention was stolen by the dramatic lightning that began to hit a large tree like it was having a tantrum for not being thought about enough; something I've never seen happen in District Five. To us, lightning belongs in machines or in a chord that could be used to make life that much easier- it had never been aloud to command humanity freely.

It was astonishing to watch.

Finnick didn't seem too bothered by the lightning that kept striking the tree until that had caught up with the gongs that had pulled our attention before, instead he placed his hand on my shoulder to try and get my attention. I pulled my hand from his quickly when I realised that he was using it as a support system as he looked at the bags under my eyes; it was too obvious that he wanted me to sleep but didn't know how to say it without seeming too involved.

"What?" I asked quietly, challenging him just like how Katniss had challenged me before. He looked as if he wanted to use all of the many words he knew existed at onced, and yet he chose to use as little of them as possible.

"Sparky- you're no good to us sleep deprived."

He frowned as the syllables hit me, even more so when I moved closer to Katniss again and glanced to see what she had thought of that, but she hadn't changed her stance. When he walked away, she stressed her point once more as she failed to change anything in her posture.

It made my stomach churn to know that he was upset with me, that much was true, but his words cut deeper than the deep gash in my back. And yet, I was reminded of what would happen if it was different.

➳➳

It must have been hours since the lightning had called for our attention in the darkness that once made everything silent, and despite the very real possibility of an attack at any time I was beginning to lose the strength I needed to keep my eyes awake. My eyes felt like they had been weighed down by the same hinges that kept each powerline tethered to the ground in one of our three memorable storms; there was no scenario that I thought could snap me out of the daze and break me away from the metal rope that fueled every single move.

I was sure I was stuck, that the invisible prision that kept energy from me was too tall to climb.

I had been wrong before, but never as wrong as when Katniss elbowed me in the ribs and pointed towards an army of putrid green mist that was stalking towards us both. I winced, she had forgotten about the very real injury that spread across my lower back, but the smoke was enough to break the walls around the prision and set my energy free. It wasn't exactly slow, nor was it fast, but it went quick enough to startle me into standing up from the rock.

Unlike me, Katniss had been so fuled up on energy that she could get a jumpstart towards the impending weather. She kept scouted closer and closer towards the gas until she was just centimetres away from it and the thinner entrails of the mass cloud licked at her nose.

I shadowed the raven as she reached her hand out to touch it, but when she did, she let out an ear-piercing scream that stopped me before any actual skin could feel just how thick or condense it was. Boils and blisters welled up on her hand instantly as a horrible acid sound sizzled at her skin.

"Run." Katniss called to me as the scorching heat from such a fresh burn seeped into the whites of her eyes. When I froze to watch her skin try to expel the toxic substance, she screamed louder. "Run the fog is poison!"

It did its job, it woke up the other three tributes fast enough for them to be able to get away from the acid as I quickly stumbled back.

This was the first time we have faced real danger, and the first time my plan really did cross my mind. I could cross of the first point that seemed to have been stuck in front of my vision with pins as I channelled Katniss so that her plait was swinging right before me, and another as the smoke began to tumble down my own exposed back.

Finnick somehow knew; from his position beside a frantic Mags his head snapped to find me in the instant that the chemical that made it green stroked the cut. The same cut he had wanted to see earlier, that had been bleeding on and off for hours when it hadn't been provoked.

They all ran, and as I let out a singular twisted yell I ran with them.

Vines slightly obscured what I could see as I caught up to the sleep-filled allies I was clawing for life with until I was beside Finnick. There was one look we all wore when our feets pummeled the dirt like I had with the stones near the Cornucopia, one that I seemed to radiate as I got tugged back by a branch that had grasped my long hair. I pulled again, this time so that I was propelled forward as the band that had kept my hair up broke from the force.

I had lost ground, so much so that it felt like I was only watching a screen when Katniss tripped on a root, Peeta tried to help her up and the both of them got enfused with the acid that had burned them throughout the process.

Even still we all ran faster; by the time I was close enough to have been able to help them both up the mist had pushed itself so close that I could feel it swaying my hair as it once again invaded my blood coated behind. Screams from Finnick accompanied mine like a symphony of acid before I reached him to try to push him ahead like I had with Peeta, all while the fog seemed to be guiding us all in one direction.

"Finnick!" I called in agony as the blisters grew on my hand like they were trying to become mountains.

"Mags, Mags please come on." He pleaded towards his friends before the man from District 4 was safe.

I tried once more to push them forward as my hands shook; Peeta and Katniss seemed long gone as I gripped onto the older woman's bony hand to drag her further through the jungle. We caught up to a fallen Peeta and an exhausted Katniss too quickly. The fog continued to creep towards us.

"I can't carry him." Katniss groaned was higher than her normal voice.

She was crying once again. She wouldn't move as her fiancé curled up into a ball on the floor- she refused to with the same hot tears creating waterfalls- so I dragged Peeta up by his arm and hung it around my neck instead. The pain was exponential, and the blisters were constantly scorching my skin each time smoke curled around me for a second helping.

I screamed again. My blistered had been broken by the very thing that created then.

It was like nothing I've ever felt before, as if the devil himself had appeared to dance from each cut until it opened up to the size of my hand. I fell before I could take another step.

"Lorna!" Finnick screamed, somewhere.

I sat on the ground exhausted; as the checklist once again unfolded before me I took note of what I had written at the bottem in imaginary ink so long ago. There were more steps, so much more I needed to do, but the outcome if I just didn't get up would stay the same- it would only occur sooner.

I didn't know if it was worth it to stand up with the wriggling feeling of death. As Finnick disguarded Mags so that he could run back to pick me up, it occurred to me that I never really would be able to choose when I was going to die.

He decided that I was going to live a little bit longer, and like the jump cables to on of the Capitol's trucks, my bones forced each limb to stumble forward; teetering on the line between life and death as each of us fumbled and wandered over leaves and roots like they were put there to be our own personal obstacle course. Mags halted in her spot once the District 12 couple fell again- Finnick (with me under his arm) halted beside her.

The old woman placed one of her hands that had been solidified by arthritis on Finnick's broad shoulder and the other under his chin so that it cupped his face. She was quick to show him every little secret that she could in the reflection of her iris, only to then reached out for me, where she spent a similar amount of time transferring all of the control she could possibly muster.

Take good care of each other, you can't be apart forever she had all but whispered in my ear before taking small but swift steps back. Those where her last wishes- the last words that she would ever portray to anyone as she stood back into the green smoke.

"No." I whispered, trying to lure her back with the soft velvet that I imagined formed from my voice. Finnick tried to call her back too, right as the army of small inescapable particles surrounded her so neither of us could see any part between the cracks of gas.

"Mags." Finnick screamed. He screamed her name twice more- neither of which managed to bring her back.

"We have to go." Katniss warned from behind us as the mist formed a semi-circle around the jungle. "We have to get out of here."

Finnick didn't move a muscle. The green in the smoke turned into some navy substitute as the moon began to rise further into the sky, but that didn't stop the hunger within it as it's front forces continued to roll- a hunger for more and more death.

He wasn't going to move; he barely breathed as he watched the fog come ever closer simultaneously throughout the the line. We had to go, I knew only that as I pulled at Finnick's hand.

"Finnick, don't make her die for nothing."

My words seemed to restart his system, his hand reached out to grab Peeta as I tried to stumble again after so long of being rooted to the same spot like I had been just ten minutes before. Only tens minutes ago Mags was still sleeping like she was at home, and the adrenaline within me was still hidden between each cell. Ten minutes ago the next step wouldn't of made me fall down a sheer hill that nobody saw coming.

I could feel the blisters pop each time they hit the rocks that caused such a steep fall, but I no longer cared. The pain had tipped over the edge of my senses; it was paralyzing.

••••••••••
3164 words.

Hey guys I just wanted
to apolagise for the
lack of attention I have
been putting into this
book. I have my end of
year tests in two weeks
and have been trying to
edit while revising. I'm
not sure how well the
next few chapters will
turn out but we will have
to see, I'm going to
try my best. Xx

I wrote that passage
in year 9, I have now
finished year 11 and
will be going into year
12 in three or so weeks.
If that doesn't tell
you how much has
changed nothing will.