Under The Stars

Chapter 8

Katniss

We walk in silence towards the Cornucopia, waiting and watching for something, anything, to come for us. My grip on my bow is so tight I can barely feel my fingers. About half way there, the sky suddenly darkens, like someone blowing out a candle and I move closer to Peeta, bumping into him. He looks at me carefully and I move away.

"Sorry," I say. "I guess I'm a little jumpy."

"Yeah," he says. "Me too." A group of howls rings through the trees and I grip onto his arm.

"We need to get out of here," I say, my voice laced with my fear. He nods and we start running faster and I hear the creature following us through the trees. More join it and as we break into the clearing, I see a panting, tattered Cato hauling himself up. He collapses on in and I wait as Peeta climbs so he can haul me up. Just as he grabs my arm, one of the creatures sinks it's teeth into my calf. I scream and nearly loose hold of Peeta as it tries to pull me down to its companions.

"Just let go," I call up to him. "I'm already weak. It won't take them long to finish me off." He shakes his head and pulls me so hard I'm surprised he doesn't pull my arm from its socket as the beast finally loses its hold on me and Peeta gets me up, but not without the creature taking a good chunk of my leg with it.

"You okay?" He asks as I lay on the searing hot gold surface streaked with my blood.

"I think I will be," I say just as he's pulled away from me. I look up to see Cato holding Peeta in a headlock. The images from my nightmares last night are right before me and scramble up, struggling with my heavily bleeding leg.

"Well, isn't this sweet?" He chuckles. "The starcrossed lovers wrapped in each other's arms. I'm only too happy to finish your destiny of dying together." I load my bow and pull back the string, aiming for his head. He grins, the blood and scars covering his making it so cruel and grotesque. He locks his hand on the back of Peeta's head, just as I'd seen him do to the boy from 3.

"Go on shoot me," he says. "But you know I can still do this. I know you've seen me do it before." I look at Peeta and see he's doing something with his finger on the back of Cato's hand. Drawing an 'X' in my blood. I realize what he means milliseconds before Cato.

He cries out as my arrow sinks into his hand and he releases Peeta. Peeta gives him a hard shove and he tumbles off the Cornucopia into the wolf mutts below. My injured leg gives out and I fall to the floor with a metallic thud. Peeta kneels in my blood beside me. I look up at him and I watch as he quickly ties a tourniquet just above my knee using one of my arrows. I watch him closely, knowing from the time watching my mother as a child that there's really only three options for me. Each one depending on how long it takes for the wolf mutts to kill Cato.

First, if it happens within the next hour or so, I'll be most likely okay once the Capitol doctors get to me.

After that, there is the second option that is probably much more likely than the first, I could lose my leg.

And third, if it takes more than a day or two, I'm most likely going to die from my injuries. But I'm not going to tell Peeta that. I'll let him be a fool and hold me a while longer. I've figured out by now that he doesn't entirely feel the same as me, but I have convinced myself that some part of him does love me. I start to shiver from blood loss and the fact that what little heat was searing into me from the metal beneath me now feels like ice.

"I'm so cold Peeta," I whisper. His warm hand gently touches my cheek and I lay limply next to him. He picks me up and holds me on his lap, pulling me close as he zips me up into his coat with him. I let out a whimper as my leg drags across the metal. I try to lay my head on his shoulder, but he stops me. I look at him to see his blue eyes watching me with concern.

"I know you're tired, but you can't go to sleep right now," he says. "I want to be sure when you close your eyes, you're gonna open them again." I smile sadly at him.

"How long do you think it will take?" I ask him.

"Hopefully not too long," he says. "I'll let you sleep when the sun comes up."

But the sun never came up. For what I would later learn was three days, we sat there, in total darkness, only each others bodies keep us warm, listening to Cato scream on that long, starless night. He was wearing some sort of armor and all the mutts had access to was his head. They weren't killing him. They were playing and fighting over him like a toy. Towards the end, when I finally had enough strength to, I unzipped myself from Peeta and drug myself to my bow. He was asleep, so he couldn't stop me as I removed my last arrow from my tourniquet and tied it back shut. I crawled, slowly and painfully to the mouth of the wicked, cruel metal horn.

I saw something red and shiny in the fake moon's cold pale light. Ice blue eyes looked up at me from that ruined head, pleading with me, looking relived as my arrow hits it's mark between them and the light fades from them. The cannon rings in my ears as I pear down at him and Peeta wakes. The wolf mutts move away and I hear Peeta's steps on the hollow metal behind me. I don't even look at him as he carefully lifts me up and slides down the side of the Cornucopia with me held tightly to his chest in a curled up ball.

I place my feet down on the ground, clinging to Peeta to hold myself up on my weak legs. But nothing happens. The sky just barely starts to lighten and we stare at each other.

"Where is the hovercraft?" I ask him, even though I know he doesn't know. "We won. It's over. Isn't it?"

"Of course it is," he says but he still looks around puzzled when Claudius Templesmith's voice rings out.

"Attention Tributes, it appears that the earlier rule change has been, to put it simply, revoked. There can only be one winner. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor." I move away from Peeta and instantly reach for my knife, pulling it up. Peeta takes a step away from me and gets a panicked look in his eyes as I hold the knife to my own neck.

"Katniss, what are you doing?" He asks as he rips it from my grasp. I look at him and just nod my head.

"Fine then, you do it," I say. "Only one of us can win and it's gonna be you. Just please, make it quick." He turns and tosses the knife into the lake beside us.

"I won't kill you, Katniss," he says. "You are not dying by my hand. You are gonna go home to your family." He holds up the pouch I swore was still at my side and poses the berries into his palm. "Say hello to my father and brothers for me." I reach out and cover them with my hand. He looks at me and laughs. "You aren't strong enough to stop me."

"I'm not," I say as I take half of them into my hand. He looks down and the deep purple, nearly black berries sped over our palms. "If they can't have you as their victor, they won't be getting either of us. I'm done being a piece, just like you. There is no victor this time." He looks me in the eyes and I mouth the words 'Trust me'.

"Together?" He asks. I nod slowly, hoping that this crazy idea running through my mind will work.

"Together," I say. He pulls me into a soft, sweet kiss. I feel I tear run down my cheek as he pulls away when I realize that this may be our last. He wipes it away and I look up at him.

"I love you," I whisper, needing to say those words to him, not just about him.

"I know, sweetheart," he says softly, not even being able to say it now. Together we hold up the berries, letting them catch the sunlight. "On three." I nod.

"One"

"Two"

"Three"

I bring the berries to my lips and just as I've given up, just as I think this really is the end-

"STOP!" The announcer calls. "STOP! Ladies and Gentlemen, your victors of the Seventy-fourth Annual Hunger Games, from District Twelve, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark."