Promises of a Sacrificial Lamb |Destiel x The Hunger Games|

-32-

For a moment, I have no idea how to react.  There are so many different emotions coursing through me that I don't know which one to focus on.  Claudius' voice echoes in my head like a broken record, long after the burst of static from his microphone cuts him off and plunges the rainforest back into its natural silence.  Did I hear him correctly?  Did he really just say what I think he did?

My heart hammers.  I look at Cas; he looks at me.  He looks just about as flabbergasted as I feel on the inside.

Then, without a single word, both of us stumble forward and into each other's trembling arms.  Well, arm, because he only wraps one arm around me, but I'm too overwhelmed to care.  I hold him tighter than I ever have.  Tears have begun to well up in my eyes.  I feel him shudder with fragmented breaths and realize he must be crying, too.  I cradle his head.  I bury my face in his shoulder, let the tears spill onto my cheeks, allow myself to shake like a leaf as that glorious realization fully sinks in.

We're alive.  We won the Hunger Games.

I wipe my face with my shaking hand before stepping back.  Cas looks so exhausted.  He barely even meets my eyes as he heaves an unsteady sigh and I glance around the quiet clearing.  A hovercraft should be coming to pick us up and take us away from this dreadful place.  That's what always happens when the victors are announced.  So where is it?  I want to get out of here and see my family again and try to put all of this behind me.  Now that I know for a fact that it's happening and it's not just a hopeful wish, I'm antsier than ever.

"Hello?"  I call to the open air.  It's uncomfortably still.  I don't hear the hum of an approaching hovercraft anywhere, and I'm starting to get frustrated.  After everything we've been through, they couldn't have prepared a hovercraft for an immediate extraction?  Where is it?

My gaze is locked on the canopy above, watching for any sign of that flying contraption, so I don't feel the heavy tug on my sleeve until it's too late.  By the time I realize what's happening, Cas has already collapsed to the ground.

My irritation instantly dissolves into panic.  I dive to my knees at his side.  He's trying to prop himself up on his right elbow, but it looks like every movement is causing him pain.  He's breathing heavily.  His pallid face is twisted into a grimace.  I'm so startled and worried and afraid that I can't even ask him what's wrong.  My throat has closed up, gone completely dry.

I don't have to ask.  Slowly, he lifts his left hand, his left arm, away from his lower abdomen.  It comes off coated in a thick layer of crimson blood.

My stomach clenches.  I feel my jaw drop, feel my mouth hang agape, but no words come to mind through the surge of paralyzing fear taking hold of me.  I fight to curb the tremor in my hands as I dare to grab the bottom hem of his shirt.  All the blood that's soaked into the fabric makes a horrible squelching noise as I lift it up to get a better look at the damage; I immediately wish I hadn't.

Spanning from just beneath his belly button to the left side of his abdomen is a grisly laceration.  The skin is so torn and mangled that I'm not even sure if I'm looking at skin or muscle or parts of his guts.  Whatever it is, it makes my heart stop, and blood is still oozing out at an alarming rate.

The ground sways beneath me.  It's like the world is spiraling out of control.  Why didn't he tell me?  He said he was okay.  He told me he was okay.  Now he's collapsed on the earth in front of me and in horrible pain and bleeding out and I have no idea how to fix it.  I'm so scared.  Why didn't he tell me sooner?

Ephemeral memories of watching past Games tell me to put pressure on his wound to slow the blood flow, so that's exactly what I do.  I pull his shirt back down and press on that gruesome injury with my hands as forcefully as I can without hurting him.  Still, the instant I make contact, he cries out and falls back to the ground, his eyes squeezed shut.