I have learnt that grieving a death comes in many forms, and feels like many different things. Guilt, sorrow, numbness, anger, fear, you can feel any of all of them when some dies, but no matter what, pain is there in all the forms of grief. Something nagging and pulling relentlessly at your heartstrings, and you might not cry, and you might not show it, but it's there no matter how deep you try to bury what you feel. 

I don't know what I feel, everything's a little hazy, like after you've had a few drinks too many. My knees buckle, and I can feel them hit the dirt. The earth holds me, and the dead hold Peeta. Or what Peeta was. Is. Who knows. I don't. I don't know anything.

Before I can acknowledge that I'm hurting, an apology is dribbling from my lips. 

"I'm sorry?" My voice sounds wobbly and uncertain. Try again. Do better. "I'm sorry, " I murmur. Too quiet. Speak up. "I'm sorry!!" Too scratchy now, more power, they have to know you mean it. "I'M SORRY!" I scream, ripping my nails through the dirt as I throw my head back in a guilty, shattered cry. "I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!" I lower my head to my knees, panting. I don't even know who I'm apologizing to. Mr. Mellark? My district? Peeta? I'm sweating, everything is hot, it's too hot. I fumble for the zipper of my jacket, ripping the coat off my overheated torso. I slip my hand into Peeta's cold one, and feel something sticky covering his palm. 

Shaking my hand away, I recognize something. Deadly and dangerous, ruthless and horrible, Capital approved, I'm sure. What are called Nightlock berries. They'll kill you before they reach your stomach. Dead in a flat minute. The canon shot splitters the quiet, and I aggressively wipe away the tears that have begun to fall. 

"Y/n?" I hear a strangled cry from back inside the cave. I crawl back over on my hands knees, rocks digging into my palms, and dirt scraping my calves. I am going to say "I'm okay!" or "Don't worry, I'm fine!" But before I can squeak out a word, something hits the back of my head, and it all goes dark.

________________________________________________________________________________

The little grey area between unconscious and conscious is odd. Feeling your consciousness ebbing back in is like being half asleep. You're not entirely sure what's going on, and you're on the tipping point between dreamland and the real world. For a minute you try and fall back asleep, before begrudgingly accepting that you have to open your eyes at some point. It's like when you swim to the bottom of a pool, and when you begin to swim back up things get lighter, and lighter until your head breaks the surface, and you gasp for air. Again, it's odd.

I crack my eyes open, and hiss with pain. I touch the back of my head gently with a finger, and recoil at the throb of hurt. The sounds of rushing water resounds along the rock walls of another cave, and my wrists press into the smooth stone floor. A headache pounds between my eyes, and I raise my hands to my head, trying to hold it as gently as possible. 

"I apologize, I didn't mean to hit so hard." A deep voice speaks. My head snaps up towards the unknown sound, and I immediately groan, touching my head again as if that could help stop the raging ache. I release short, pained breaths through clenched teeth, and I wobble on the edge of passing out. "I'm sorry, but you cannot go back to sleep now." 

A towering figure walks across the cave towards me, footsteps echoing. Crouched before me now, is Thresh. 

He's a little bloodied, a scratch trailing from his right temple to his cheek bone, and one of his eyes is a little swollen. Besides a few other scrapes and bruises, he appears mostly fine, but looks can be deceiving, can't they?

"If you were going to kill me," I say, my voice coming out a lot more strained than I would have liked. "You wouldn't have settled for doing it while I was still out?"

He chuckles heartily, and I frown. "I have no plans to kill you, Y/n." He smiles, and I am confused at his light, gentle tone of voice. "In fact, I have every intention of helping you get through this tournament." 

"Oh please, do whack me in the head again if you're going to help me, I'm really enjoying that strategy." I mutter bitterly, raising an eyebrow at him. He chuckled again, and irritation rose in my chest. I should probably be scared. I'm not.

"I don't imagine this is going to be a bond of trust." He says dryly.

"Why wouldn't I trust you? It's not as if you've given me reason not to,"

His shoulders slump, and he sighs. "I didn't take you for the fun of it, you know." He paces over to the waterfall that covers the cave entrance, I hadn't even noticed there was one. His back is facing to me, but his voice carries more than enough for me to hear it. 

"I have nothing and no one to go home too," Sadness resounded in his voice just as it did in the cave as he turned around to face me. "My father is sick, my mother is dead, and my district does not need me. But you," He came closer, and I shift around on the floor, growing more and more uncomfortable. "You have much to do. I am not as brave, or mentally strong. You have to get home to your friends, that little girl Prim, she will not grow up with out you." He shakes his head. 

"And so why have you rendered me unconscious and dragged me into a cave?" My voice climbing louder now. 

"You were not safe with the boy from 2. Careers are selfish animals, they're trained to kill since birth, he would have taken you out sooner rather than later."

I almost laugh, I can feel a chuckle bubbling in my chest, but I ignore it and crack a grin instead. "Cato's not like that," I say softly, recalling how he had confided to me about how he had in fact been raised for exactly this, but once he got here, he didn't want to kill. Anyone can spit out empty words, but Cato hasn't just charmed his way into my good graces, he's been showing me he can be trusted. Small things of course, but little things go a long way. He gave me his sweater when I was cold, he told me the truth about the night vision glasses when I got them, he let me get sleep before him even if he was more fatigued than I, and most of all, even when I wasn't there with him, Rue told me he went out of his mind when we were separated. He wouldn't have had to pretend if I wasn't there. Not for the audience not for anyone. But he cared. He cares.

"You're wrong," I nod my head in agreement with myself, I'm right, I'm certain of it. You can't fake that kind of worry. The kind where you bite the inside of the cheek so hard it bleeds, the kind where all you nail beds are practically non existent because they've been bitten to shreds, the kind where the air feels too hot to be real, and your skin crawls with anxiety. The kind where you're worried because you care, almost too much. 

A forlorn look twisted Thresh's features, and he sighed. "No, I'm not. I'm trying to help you, if he gets out of here, he'll change nothing. Absolutely nothing. The world won't be affected by him at all, he'll be another trophy for the first and second districts to hoist, and to show off for a little while until the next Hunger Games roll around and they win again. Then he'll become a number on a score board for this damned country. I'm saving you, because you can change that."

I glare at Thresh, no, maybe I don't know him, and perhaps he is doing this for the right reasons, but who I trust is of absolutely no concern to him. I clench my jaw, and ball my fists, finger nails digging into my palms, and say nothing. I will not be the one to change Panem. If I am to survive, I will help in any way that I can, maybe I will play a bigger part than I realize right now, but I will not alone stand for all of the districts. However, lord knows these people could use a martyr to believe in. 

"Save it," I whisper. "They are my friends, my family and my future. I spoke to you for the first time not five minutes ago, and you will not be the decider of what my life turns into. It will take any form it needs to in order to support those that I love, which some day may very well include Cato Hadley, who knows? These games do things to your head, irreparable things, but what I do know is that I need someone that I can count on here, and that that is Cato, not you." 

I don't think I should have raised my voice, yelling warrants unwanted attention, and based on  the roar of a predator that stings my ears from just outside, I have become living proof, regardless if I survive my next encounter with Capital influenced monsters, that attention will get you nowhere. Not if you die first.

A/N I am honestly so sorry about the quality of this chapter, I just wanted to publish something because I had the time to write. School's got me pretty swamped right now, and I wrote most of this on the bus, so I apologize for any errors. Stay safe, besties.

—HarrysCardigang