Catching Fire (Katniss loves Peeta)

Chapter 24

Catching Fire belongs to Suzanne Collins. I do own baby Mellark and Katniss loving Peeta. This is fanfiction, none of it is what happened in the actual book. In other words, this is fake.

Chapter 24

Where is she? What are they doing to her?

 "Prim!" I cry out. 

"Prim!" Only another agonized scream answers me. How did she get here? Why is she part of the Games? "Prim!"

Vines cut into my face and arms, creepers grab my feet. But I am getting closer to her. Closer. Very close now. Sweat pours down my face, stinging the healing acid wounds. I pant, trying to get some use out of the warm, moist air that seems empty of oxygen. Prim makes a sound- such a lost, irretrievable sound-that I can't even imagine what they have done to evoke it.

"Prim!" I rip through a wall of green into a small clearing and the sound repeats directly above me. Above me? My head whips back. Do they have her up in the trees? I desperately search the branches but see nothing. 

"Prim?" I say pleadingly. I hear her but can't see her. Her next wail rings out, clear as a bell, and there's no mistaking the source. It's coming from the mouth of a small, crested black bird perched on a branch about ten feet over my head. And then I understand.

It's a jabberjay.

I've never seen one before- I thought they no longer existed-and I examine it. There is nothing about the bird that suggests it's a mutt. Nothing except the horribly lifelike sounds of Prim's voice streaming from its mouth. I silence it with an arrow in its throat. The bird falls to the ground. Then I hurl the revolting thing into the jungle.

It wasn't real, I tell myself. The same way the mutation wolves last year weren't the dead tributes. It's just a cruel trick of the Gamemakers.

Finnick crashes into the clearing to find me wiping my arrow clean with some moss. "Katniss?"

"It's okay. I'm okay," I say, although I don't feel okay at all.

"I thought I heard my sister but-" The piercing shriek cuts me off. It's another voice, not Prim's, maybe a young woman's. I don't recognize it. But the effect on Finnick is instantaneous. The color vanishes from his face, and I can see his pupils dilate in fear.

"Finnick, wait!" I say, reaching out to reassure him, but he's bolted away.

"Finnick!" I call, but I know he won't turn back and wait for me to give a rational explanation. So all I can do is follow him.

It's no effort to track him, even though he's moving so fast, since he leaves a clear, trampled path in his wake. But the bird is at least a quarter mile away, most of it uphill, and by the time I reach him, I'm winded. He's circling around a giant tree. The woman's shrieks emanate from somewhere in the foliage, but the jabberjay's concealed. Finnick's screaming as well, over and over.

"Annie! Annie!" He's in a state of panic and completely unreachable, so I do what I would do anyway. I locate the jabberjay, and take it out with an arrow. It falls straight down, landing right at Finnick's feet. He picks it up, slowly making the connection, but when I slide down to join him, he looks more despairing than ever.

"It's all right, Finnick. It's just a jabberjay. They're playing a trick on us," I say. "It's not real. It's not your... Annie."

"No, it's not Annie. But the voice was hers. Jabberjays mimic what they hear. Where did they get those screams, Katniss?" he says.

I can feel my cheeks grow pale as I understand his meaning. "Oh, Finnick, you don't think they..."

"Yes. I do. That is exactly what I think," Finnick raises his vocie with each word pratically yelling on the last one.