She made broken look beautiful and strong look invincible. She walked with the universe on her shoulders and made it look like a pair of wings.
| the hunger games |
| catching fire |
| finnick odair // oc |
| completed |
| book two |
Started: 10/2...
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Peeta drops the sheath and buries his knife into the monkey's back, stabbing it again and again until it releases its jaw. He kicks the mutt away, bracing for more. Katniss has his arrows now, I have a loaded bow, and Finnick at my back, breathing hard but not actively engaged.
"Come one, then! Come on!" shouts Peeta, panting with rage. But something has happened to the monkeys. They are withdrawing, backing up to the trees, fading into the jungle, as if some unheard voice calls them away. A Gamemaker's voice, telling them this is enough.
"Get her," Katniss says to Peeta. "We'll cover you."
Peeta gently lifts up the morphling and carries her the last few yards to the beach while Finnick and I keep our weapons at the ready. But except for the orange carcasses on the ground, the monkeys are gone. Peeta lays the morphling on the sand. I watch as Katniss cuts away the material over her chest, revealing the four deep puncture wounds. Blood slowly trickles from them, making them look far less deadly than they are. The real damage is inside. By the position of the openings, I feel certain the beast ruptured something vital, a lung, maybe even her heart.
She lies on the sand, gasping like a fish out of water. Sagging skin, sickly green, her ribs as prominent as a child's dead of starvation. Surely she could afford food, but turned to the morphling just as Haymitch turned to drink, I guess. Everything about her speaks of waste — her body, her life, the vacant look in her eyes. I hold one of her twitching hands, unclear whether it moves from the poison that affected our nerves, the shock of the attack, or withdrawal from the drug that was her sustenance. There is nothing we can do. Nothing but stay with her while she dies.
"I'll watch the trees," Finnick says before walking away. I would like to walk away, too, but she grips mine and Katniss' hand so tightly I would have to pry off her fingers, and I don't have the strength for that kind of cruelty. I think of Monty and Calyptus, how I couldn't save them either even though I tried so hard.
Peeta crouches down on the other side, beside Katniss, and strokes her hair. When he begins to speak in a soft voice, it seems almost nonsensical, but the words aren't for us. "With my paint box at home, I can make every color imaginable. Pink. As pale as a baby's skin. Or as deep as rhubarb. Green like spring grass. Blue that shimmers like ice on water."
The morphling stares into Peeta's eyes, hanging on to his words.
"One time, I spent three days mixing paint until I found the right shade for sunlight on white fur. You see, I kept thinking it was yellow, but it was much more than that. Layers of all sorts of color. One by one," says Peeta.
