Aftermath

[fuelforthefire]

It takes hours for the news crews to give up and go home, their chance of getting a good story evaporating as the night starts to set in. The police take longer, eventually locating another mine directly across from the one that was set off. That weighs heavily, knowing that the two tributes from any District were often placed across from each other. I honestly can't remember where we were situated in our first Games, but it still seems like a message. Like someone saying they know I'm here.

When everyone finally clears out it's late, dark except for the moon. My eyes adjust easily. They don't have street lights out this far, just like they'd never used them in Twelve, except in the Square after Thread came. I wait until I'm sure that everyone has cleared out and even then I head off toward my house and not in the direction of Katniss' tree. In case anyone's watching I doesn't want to give away more than I have to. How much have I changed since that first reaping? When I trusted the people around me so easily and didn't think about survival tactics.

A quarter of an hour passes before I head out again, leaving the light and television on inside my house when I go. Not that it'll fool anyone for long, and if there are cameras like in the Arena it won't fool anyone watching, I know. But I have to try to make it safe. The way to Katniss and Prim's house has started to grow over, the path we'd beaten my first few months here disused. That again makes me sad, but I don't have the luxury of that. I need to talk to Katniss, to decide how we're going to keep playing this game. Just when I thought we'd stopped.

I tap at her door and call out her name as I open it. The last thing I want is to end up with an arrow in my shoulder because I scared her.

Comments

[vocalfuel]

When the cameras first show up, I nearly give in and shoot them all. Perched up in a tree, no one having seemed to notice me yet, I could do it, I think, take them out before anyone even knows what's happened. It's just too familiar, the thought of something like this as entertainment, broadcast on people's televisions. Familiar and not unexpected. Ultimately, though, I keep still. My bitterness isn't worth the risk of giving myself away and losing what might be Peeta's one chance at escape, if it comes to that.

It doesn't. The sun sets, and I wait, barely aware of just how long has passed until I stop to remember how early it was when I went out into the woods in the first place. I guess it really is just like being in the Arena again — doing anything I can to keep Peeta safe, watching and waiting and not knowing what might happen, me stuck up in a tree like this while he plays friendly with people who only might, in this case, want to hurt us. Thinking about it almost makes me sick, but at least I know what I'm doing, more weary but wiser than I was in our first Games. I don't let my guard down once, not even when they're all gone and Peeta is, too, and I can finally descend from my place in the tree. We should have worked out some kind of plan for after, I realize, but we'd been too pressed for time, too uncertain. We'll just have to figure something else now, hope we can meet in the middle.

As it turns out, he beats me to it. The knock on the door nearly gives me a heart attack, still too on edge and with adrenaline coursing through my veins, but it's clear within a moment that it's Peeta. Even having known already that nothing happened to him back by the cornucopia, I'm too relieved to stay put, crossing the room quickly to wrap my arms around his neck. "Hey."