☆ CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE! ☆
023. see you later

|| KIDS IN THE DARK ||
❝They left us alone,
the kids in the
dark, to burn out
forever, or light up
a spark❞

➳➳

LOVE IS SUCH a strange word.

It was used so frequently; by the time I was six years old I had heard it a thousand times and yet I never got an overwhelming feeling that the person saying it knew what it meant. It was a word that could of been leathal, it could of been used as a dagger to shatter the heart in seconds, or it could of been moulded into super glue to somehow put it back together. People used love flippantly. They made it disposable and useless- they made the very heart of it meaningless by it's overuse so that nobody actually remembered what real love felt like as they spat out petty meanings that they thought fit the bill.

To me that was a crime- love deserved so much better.

They had taken a word, one that was so precious and fragile in it's meaning, and turned it into a robust and basic phrase for general consumption. In doing so they forgot how intense it could be, or how fearful it could make the people that recieved it when they didn't know any better than to run away. Worst of all, they made it so that I didn't know what actual live felt like- they made me blind to it.

If it was right in front of me- weaved into the souls of everyone I touched- I still wouldn't see it.

And that meant that I never truly let myself believe that I could be loved, or that I could love somebody in return when I could never compare it to the affection I felt for my closest friends. It was impossible to decide which one it could be; nobody could tell me or write a long book I could read to explain exactly what would happen when I met the person that meant the most to me.

Without it, and with the blatant murder of the word love, I decided that I would never feel it before I was killed in the Hunger Games.

As we walked up to the tree that was supposed to destroy all other competition, I finally realised that was ok. Why? Because you can't miss something you had never felt and you certainly cannot wish for something that you weren't even sure existed.

Coming from me, it was hard to believe it when I said something didn't exist.

I would of asked someone like Beetee if I knew that he would give me a straight answer, or maybe even Peeta Mellark who would explain exactly why I was so terribly wrong while staring at the Girl on Fire until Johanna was sick. I wouldn't of asked Finnick- lord knew that he had lost faith in the ability to love long before I even considered the emotion again.

Beetee looked at the lightning tree in awe, while I glanced at anything but.

"Minimal charring." He marvelled as he readjusted his glasses from the walk up. "It's an impressive conductor, now let's get started."

As Finnick and Peeta helped Beetee wrap the tree in the large wire, Katniss pulled me out of my muffled thoughts to stare at more multicolored leaves. She had put her hand on my shoulder so gently that I thought she assumed I would crumble into dust as I tried not to pry into those around me, or the subtle scream in my ears.

Johanna was watching the wire wrap around the tree; her eyes followed Beetee as he ran around it so excitedly that she began to smile. There was some comfort in watching the coil wrap around the tree until I couldn't see the root or the trunk anymore, a strange sense that we were finally doing something right.

"Typically a lightning strike contains five billion joules of energy. We don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity when it hits." Beetee informed us all as he took one proud step back.

He skillfully worked with the wire until it was set below the small dust of leaves and roots; the coil was given to Johanna when he had enough of it right as he caught her just trailing the end of it with her eyes. I hadn't been watching the leaves like I should of been, but when I looked at Katniss she hadn't either.

"The girls will take the wire- uncoil it carefully. Make sure the entire coil is in the water. You understand? Once it's done, head to the tree in the 2 o'clock sector. We'll meet up there." Beetee spat information at us like it was filled with small parts of his own brain.

"I should go with them." Peeta interjected.

"No." He rejected almost as soon as the idea came up. "You need to be here to guard me and the tree."

"No, I need to go with her." Peeta argued. He rose his voice towards the older man, that was the first time I had seen even a morsel of anger on the boy's face, but it was paired with his usual caring worry too. On anyone else it would of been off putting for anger to be mixed with actual kindness, but on Peeta it reminded me of the feeling I got when I first saw home. They were both constants, but one was right in front of me without a shade of doubt.

"There are two careers out there, I need two guards." The man from Three replied calmly. He looked exactly like a teacher then- a teacher that was scoulding his favourite student.

"Actually." I jumped in, still half filled with air instead of noise. Katniss and Peeta seemed surprised that I had spoken up for them; the two from 12 turned to look at me expectantly and I suddenly lost the will to speak. I cleared my throat anyway. "I killed Brutus, there's only Enobaria left."

"And what about Alec?" Beetee retorted. They didn't notice the visible step I took backward, or the small heart attack that came over me as I actual thought about whether he would team up with them so quickly. Why wouldn't he? There was no reason for him to be on my side anymore.

"Finnick can protect you just fine on his own." Peeta tried.

"Yeah why can't Finnick, Johanna and Lorna stay with you. Peeta and I can take the coil." Katniss interjected the fight- nobody showed a morsel of surprise.

"You agreed to keep me safe until midnight, correct?" Beetee deadpanned at the couple who had created a whole new argument in my mental absence and somehow lost it already. That was it's own skill, even if winning a fight against Beetee seemed almost impossible.

"It's his plan, we all agreed to it."

"Is there a problem here?"

"An excellent question." Beetee finalised, glancing at the pair over his circulat glasses.

From beside me Katniss just about managed to set her jaw without popping a vein in her neck, or without hitting something with the bones that were taunt under her skin as the others questioned her; the anger within her was more obvious then she would like to admit. Her fingernails dug into her palm as she tried to stay calm, a trait I could recognise.

"No, there's no problem."

That was all that she said as a goodbye; it was supposed to be what floated through the air before both groups part for possibly the last time, but I couldn't leave it like that. The others could of been content, and before I would of been more than happy to leave, but I had made a promise to Finnick- one that I was trying my best to stick to.

I gravitated towards Finnick so that we met just before I could think through what would happen if I said too much. For all I knew I wouldn't see him again, so I made sure to remember every bump in his face and how it tilted sideways so that he could be level with me when I placed my hands on his shoulders to steady myself.

"Stay safe. Please." Finnick pleaded. His nose just about touched mine as he pulled me closer. If I hadn't moved over to touch my head into his neck, his lips would of collided with mine. It was only just avoided- my heart pumped louder than it ever had in my ears.

"Hey, this isn't goodbye." I sounded almost sure of it as I grabbed Finnick's chin to make him watch me instead of the leaves behind my head. "We're not going to say goodbye now, because I'll see you later."

"Ok." Finnick managed a small smile, one that was gentler then the softest blanket that I had ever been wrapped up in. "I'll see you later Lorna."

I hoped I would, partly so I could spend a little more time trying to figure out what love actually felt like.

➳➳

By the time we managed to walk through the jungle without looking back at the mess the three of us had left behind it was dark, and the soft hum of life was the only thing that filled the empty space that hadn't been filled with trees and unspoken questions. Everyone had their own; mine was just as blunt as the edge of Johanna's axe as she chopped down yet another fallen branch that was in our path, while I believed Katniss' was more complex than the rope she was carrying.

She had that look in her eyes, a look that told me she was having to really think about what she was going to say before she opened her mouth- a look that resonated just as strongly as the anger pent up in each of the girl from District Seven's harsh swings. Nobody could bring themselves to actually say it, so we didn't talk.

If one of us broke, I was sure that the others would follow.

"Come on." Johanna commented as she chopped through yet another brave tree. If it wasn't for the look on her face I might of thought she had taken the plunge and asked hers, even if she didn't even leave a second between her sentences. "I want to put as much distance between me and this beach as possible. Frying is not how I want to go."

There was something there, an underlying message that she tried to desperately send my way as she went to pull the wire Katniss had been holding further along. She was rough with it, impatient as it didn't move an inch past where the Girl on Fire had stopped with it. Something had seemed to have caught the wire; I could feel something twist within my gut as I let my blades twirl in my hands.

I was certain that the wire's trap was more troublesome than I first thought. Especially when Katniss walked back up the path we came from to make sure it hadn't been cut loose, and even more so when the taunt wire abruptly snapped.

Most of all, I realised how important it was when Johanna hit me over the head with her blunt axe.

It made my ear ring so profoundly as I fell onto the dirt that I couldn't hear it when Katniss screamed for Johanna to stop, or when I tried my best to shout out for the girl that I considered to be a friend. I knew I was screaming her name as my fingers curled themselves into the mud and my teeth bit down on m bottom lip to stop the world from turning, except she didn't seem to stop to take it in. She was ontop of Katniss is seconds with a small knife plunged into her forearm, right beside the arteries that could cause her death.

I screamed once more when the fuzzy sides of my vision became clear, and this I could hear it.

Johanna flicked up blood when she pulled the knife out, so much that it was red instead of a steel grey when she turned it towards me when I crawled closer. I was sure she was going to plunge it into my heart as she stood up- so sure that I felt my heart break at the thought of how far away my friend had come from the look she had given me that afternoon- until two more figures appeared further along the trees. Figures that made Johanna run before she could do anything but drip some of Katniss's blood onto my neck.

One resembled Alec as they ran past the two of us on the floor. They thought we had been killed, they thought that Johanna Mason had betrayed her allies before they could think about betraying her with each minute they spent sprinting towards her last known footsteps. They assumed we were done for, but for once I didn't agree.

Katniss was alive when I glanced at her, and I hadn't suffered more than one splitting hit.

••••••••
2199 words.