Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Turn, Turn, Turn - 14

The air is so humid now that it practically feels solid, like you could reach out your hand and force it down your throat. Just moving saps energy, and most of the tributes are starting to come down from the adrenaline rush of the last few bloodthirsty days and feel the hunger. The pictures will be shown in the sky soon; in the relative shelter of the building, Thom keeps glancing through the cracks in the roof, waiting. But the day isn’t over yet.

Eden knows the feeling before a storm, before the weather unleashes itself on the surroundings. Storms in District Eleven are frequent, especially in the summer, and even though you have to keep working through them or risk getting shot, it always helps to be able to tell when the rain will be so strong that the Peacekeepers won’t be able to see you crouched under the trees, trying to stay dry. 
She knows this feeling too. The air doesn’t crackle with electric tension; there will be no lightning. This is going to be the type of storm where you get drenched right through to the bone, where despite the warmth the rain feels cold and chills you in your core, where the rain is more like a constant sheet of water. But without being able to see the clouds, she can’t tell how close it is.
She shudders in preparation for being soaked. Ideally she’d find somewhere to hide, see out the storm, but the crumbling buildings that slump tiredly between the trees don’t look like much shelter. They look like they might fall in on her.

She lowers herself onto the floor at the base of a tree surrounded by thick bushes with huge leaves, glossy even in the dark. Her eyes have always been sharp, used to working the night shifts in the endless orchards, but here everything is just different shades of grey. With a shudder she pulls one of the giant leaves around her - they look waterproof - and almost screams as something scuttles across her leg. The leaves don’t even rustle. The night is still, waiting expectantly for the storm to break.

Ellie is starting to yawn. She trudges along behind the three older ones, the Glimpty limply clutched in her hand. The trees and plants seem to be trying to trip her up, and as they make their way across a broken and crumbling slab of ground, she stumbles on a vine lying motionless along the cracks and hits the ground hard.

Byron’s nerves are already on a knife edge, and he whirls around at the little cry she gives as her knees bite into the unforgiving ground.  He’s about to snap something at her at the adrenalin rush subsides, but something in her tired eyes stops him.  Instead, he strides over to her and hold out a hand.

“Thought you might have been a Career,” he says, a touch more gruffly than he intended.  She looks up at him, and for the first time, there’s no laughter in her grubby little face.  There’s still streaks of Ryan’s blood across her cheeks, and in the now fading light it looks like she’s weeping red tears.

“I’m so tired,” she whispers as she grabs his hand and pulls herself up.  Byron glances over his shoulder at the others, who have stopped a few metres away.  He’s not sure, but it looks like Carmen is looking impatient.  

Well, tough.  She wanted to save Ellie, now it’s his turn.

“I know, so am I,” he confesses.  Her eyes widen, perhaps in surprise that the older boy is actually admitting that he is something less than invincible.  He bends down and picks up the dusty Glimpty.  He gives her a little smile as he presses it into her hand, and feels her thin fingers clutch tightly at it; her last link with home.

“Come on, I’ll carry you,” he says.  She doesn’t even protest as he scoops her up, just sort of relaxes in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.

“What’s District Ten like?” she asks, her eyes already beginning to flutter closed as they begin to move again.  Byron thinks for a moment, his mind’s eye flying back across the miles between him and home.