(You might not like my choice, but I do tend to kill and leave alive different tributes between each books, so we'll see)
That...
That scream...
Katniss recognized it...
What the hell was Prim doing here?!
And as a surprise, or not to many, it was soon after that shriek that there was a headless print towards the screams' source from Kat--Huh?-- Wait wha?! Flipping through the script.
Katniss had not even moved when the supposedly unconscious and just over all punching bag of these hunger games Persephone Loras herself was snapped awake and actually being faster then her... Leaving Katniss to actually run after her and not the other way around.
Sometimes... Having a shity home life and being trained to fight has it's use, a light slumber and an explosive reaction time.
And when it came to the little girl, she was the only one Percy would protect above Katniss.
Stumbling into a clearing and being knocked over by Katniss, both falling over in their haste.
Hissing, just the jerk of falling and catching herself hurt Percy's head, taking the moment of Finnick catching up and helping her stand to be able to pull herself up as the screams stopped and a bird impaled by an arrow landed at her feet.
She held her head, hearing fuzzy so it was a bit hard to follow along with this time some other woman screaming and Finnick running off, Katniss following.
She slowly picked up the arrow, the bird twitching.
"What the..." Pulling the arrow out and dropping it, the bird in her palm.
It was almost looking at her.
Like reading her min-- "Percy!!!" In a dying shriek.
Percy jerked back and yeeted the bird at the ground, crushing it under her foot. A shiver went through her body, at the feeling of bone braking under her boot, at the familiar scream.
"Persephone!!!"
She jerked back, looking around, a shaky breath.
A bird on a branch right by her head, black like the night, eyes red and as small as a canary.
A deep breath.
"Help me!!!" It yelled only for her to whip out on of her blades and slice it.
"Help!"
"You need to help!"
"Persephone!"
Eyes wildly snapping around at the different birds coming out, all in one voice but having so much to say.
Her hands were trembling, trying to lock it out but her mind was having trouble distinguishing her right from her left even, so sinking down onto her knees and hands clasped on her ears.
Flinching when she felt a cut, pulling her hand away to look at it, those little bastards using their swooping and talons to try to keep her from covering up.
She put her elbows on the ground, trying to cover her face and ears but they were so loud, so many, so much.
The voice changed tho, as fear of hurt was not what would hurt Percy.
"Where are you?!"
"Come here right this second!!"
"Don't make me mad Persephone!!"
"Come on!! You like it!!"
"Look at what you were wearing!! You were asking for it!!"
"You are a failure!!"
"You're mine!! Only mine!!"
"No, no, no..." Whispering in the cacophony of one voice. "You're dead, you are dead."
Whispering with tears in her eyes, just paralyzed under the onslaught, trembling, once again that weak little girl in the shadows of abuse and hate, a little girl without any strength to stop it.
"YOU'RE DEAD!! THEY KILLED YOU!! YOU ARE GONE!! GONE!! DEAD!!!"
...
Hmm?
Had they stopped screaming?
No... Her ears still feel like bleeding.
But she sat back on her hunches, staring up at the flurry of feathers and birds, feeling a talon catch her ear here, another rip into the bandages there.
Taking a deep breath.
"You are dead..." She said. "You are dead and you can't hurt me." A smile of disbelief. "Cry in my brother's voice all you want... He... Is... Gone..."
Pushing up with a stumble, not in the greatest of shapes after all.
Trying to listen in the blizzard of voices for others, covering her head loosely as she followed the one of a little girl she had promised to protect in the 74th before her sister took her place.
She might be going deaf if this doesn't stop soon.
Tripping and stumbling through the forest to the source of those other voices.
Finnick, cocky-ass bastard, sitting catatonic as Katniss screamed her head off.
Peeta, Prim, even Gale she recognized but somehow... Paid them no heed, maybe because she momentarily feels numb, because the jabberjays with her brother's voice take up her mind, maybe because she knew if they could use her brother's voice this most be the same trick for them all... Whatever the reason was, one of these or something completely different she didn't care.
Crouching down, pulling Katniss in her arm and just holding on.
She needed to protect her after all.