Chapter fifty eight: Whatever Happens
The three of us were still standing like that when the rest of the team found us. They stood in silence, waiting. To me, it was still surreal. I glanced around to see that all of the others had survived, although there was a few casualties. Hannah was leaning half on Lachlan and Vikk for support, and hopping on one leg. Lachlan had peeled back his upper body armour, and his neck was bleeding slightly, the result of a cut extending from his neck down over his collar bone. Vikk was also cut, however the cut was on his leg. I wondered what had happened down there for them to manage to cut themselves. Only Preston had escaped relatively unharmed.
When Mitch finally released Jerome and I from his arms, the seven of us made our way outside the building. A hovercraft was just arriving, and we boarded it, thankful to get away from the scene of so much death. Although it did make me feel a little better that the majority of the people we fought were non living robots.
All seven of us crashed and slept for at least half of the ride home. My body had been begging me for sleep hours ago, and I was so drained of energy that I felt as though I could easily sleep through a nuclear war. Mitch told me afterwards that he didn't even wake when a medic had removed his armour and cleaned his side of the blood to put a bandage on it. It was a while before all of us were conscious again. We were all sat talking in the room we had been sleeping in, when one of the hovercraft managers came in to talk to us.
"There's something you guys should know," he said, cautiously.
"What is it?" Asked Mitch, immediately feeling tense.
"The Soviets... discovered the base. At the last minute. And they dropped a bomb." We stared at him in horror.
"Did they get everyone down to the safety compound in time?" Asked Jerome. Our informer nodded.
"Thankfully, most people made it down there in time. There were a few that didn't make it though. Only a few that concern some of you personally though." He glanced at me.
"The young girl from India... Savarna... She ran outside after your mother, Abby. Your mother had realised something that nobody else had, and that was the fact that we had omitted to turn on the oxygen generators for the safety compound. She had gone out to turn them on so that when the bomb hit, everybody wasn't suffocated underground. She managed to flip the switch in time, but she didn't make it to safety. Also, everybody in the design building at the time didn't escape it. The alarms didn't notify them due to a power failure."
My mouth felt dry. Shari had been in that design building. My mother and Savarna were gone. If only we'd been just a little faster, we might have prevented this happening.
The others were watching me intently. I stood up quietly, and let myself out of the room. I headed to the place I always sat in the hovercraft. The room at the back, with the windows. The place I'd sat with my fellow Australian tribute on our way to the hunger games. The place I'd sat with my sister on our way to the arena. The place I'd sat with Mitch as we escaped the compound to return to Canada. And finally, the place I'd sat and told Savarna a story about courage.
The truth is, I didn't feel courageous at all. I wanted to cry, and let everything out of my system. But my eyes were dry.
I remembered my mother's last words to me.
Whatever happens, I know your father would be proud of you. And I am too.
Both of my parents were gone. Taken by a country of power hungry, wealth seeking, vegetables. My only consolation was the fact that I had avenged them. I had destroyed the man behind all of this destruction. And in my heart, I knew that they would be proud of me for that.
I heard the click of the door, and turned to see Mitch enter the room, and close it gently behind him. He sat beside me, and pulled me close to him. I felt a tear finally slide down my cheek, and disappear into Mitch's shirt.
"My sisters didn't make it," he whispered. "Both were killed in combat about two minutes before we shut the soldiers down." I looked up to see that he too was crying. I rested my head on his shoulder, and allowed the tears to fall freely.
"Mitch we came so close," I sobbed. "But it wasn't enough to save them."
"I know," he replied. "After everything we've done, it makes me feel like I've failed in what I set out to do. I can save the world from a destructive government, but I couldn't keep a promise to protect my own family." I felt his tears seep through my shirt to my skin. I held him tightly as he cried. It was a long time before the tears would stop falling. When we finally calmed down, Mitch laid on his back on the long window seat, and pulled me on top of him, placing his arms tightly around my body. I could hear his heart beating strongly in his chest. It was a calming sensation.
"Mitch?" I whispered.
"Yeah?"
"Can I remind you of a promise that you did keep?"
"Which one?" He replied.
"You promised you'd never let me get hurt again. And you kept that promise. I didn't get shot once today."
"For that I'm happy," he whispered. We were silent for a long time, until I spoke again.
"Something that never ceases to amaze me is your heart's determination to continue beating," I whispered.
"As long as you're here, it won't stop," he replied. "However long you live for, I'm going to live for that long minus one day, so I don't have to ever be without you." I felt a soft ghost of a smile creep onto my face. From the first time we'd worked together, nothing had been able to stop us. However much destruction we faced, we always managed to struggle through it together. I knew that nothing could ever destroy our love for each other.
Whatever happens.
A/N: just when you thought everything was all peachy... It's not. It's really not.