A Whole New Game: A Hunger Games Story

Chapter 9: Escape

Clove

....

It's nearly midday. The light is harsh.

....

His face is inches from mine. I nearly scream.

....

It's just Marvel.

I try to sit up as I grow more aware, but his arm is locked tight around me. He's still fast asleep, breathing heavily but steadily. I am tightly bundled in his grasp. Frost covers our bodies, but I am warm.

What happened? Peeta had left. We set up a little camp. We didn't light a fire, couldn't risk attracting Cato. He'd kill Marvel. It was cold. So cold. I had been right about the gamemakers turning down the temperature, but it seems both Marvel and I had managed to survive. We had watched the faces of the district 3 and 10 boys flash across the night sky with the Capitol anthem.

My flesh had burned with chill, the wind scraping at the spaces where skin peeked through my clothing and ravaging them with pain. Had it snowed? I couldn't remember. I had tried very hard to ignore the pain by falling asleep, but I was shivering so hard I was nearly vibrating, certainly unable to rest.

The pain had stopped so abruptly. He enveloped me. He tucked me into his embrace, forcing my head gently against his chest as his strong arms encircled my back. Thump, thump.Thump, thump. His heartbeat had filled my eardrums and my whole body, keeping me alive with his tender pulse. "It's okay," he had said. "I won't hurt you. We should share body heat. I'll keep a watch, you just sleep."

He was so...hot. Like, temperature wise. He was the only thing keeping me from freezing to death. His body was so inviting, I was so exhausted, I didn't have the strength to argue. Screw it, I had thought. If he tries anything the damn gamemakers can take care of him. My hands had curled around his torso, feeling the crisp lining of his jacket and the soft texture of his shirt. For a moment, my fingers brushed his skin: warm, firm skin. Softer than I might expect. His chuckle shook us both. And then I was drifting, sinking to a place far beyond this one, so cruel and dark, to one of stars. Endless, radiating stars. There was music; low and deep, gentle and irregular. I think he must have been humming. And then I had fallen asleep.

I look at him now, and wonder how I let any of it happen.

Had I really not learned anything? After Cato, Evan, had I really been stupid enough to think that this dear homicidal stranger was really just trying to keep me warm?

He lays so gently snuggled next to me, his body in the same unmoved position it had been when we had first fallen asleep. His arms wrap around my back, locking into a protective knot just under my elbows. The bruises had formed on my arms overnight in the places where Cato's fingers had kneaded into my skin yesterday, adjacent to fading tracker jacker scars.

Nothing had happened. Marvel had held me, nothing else. But the thought, the very grotesque notion that I had let a near stranger into such a vulnerable place...its disgusting. With him this close, the gamemakers might not be able to stop him in time. He could kill me. He could really, truly kill me.

My hand is already on the knife.

He stays asleep as I grip the blade in hand, raising the dirty gut hook up to his neck. How dare he make me look so weak, so fragile that I would need him to merely last the night, let alone the arena. How dare he think so little of me that he fears I could do him no harm. How very wrong he will be when he wakes to a slitted throat.