Disclaimer : I do not own the series, as if you are surely aware of. But I do own some of the twisted plot in this fiction.

Percy’s POV

I jerk awake later that night (I had accidentally dozed off) with a gnawing sensation in my stomach. Stomach, not heart. I may feel rejected but for now, I’m hungry.

  I look around at the sleeping figure next to me, wondering if I should wake her up. Remembering back last night brought another ache. This time to my heart. How can she not have a crush on me? I thought to myself as I pull another roll from the basket. And I had admitted I love her. I mentally cringe at the embarrassment the memory brought.

   “ You’re up.” I nearly drop the roll when she spoke.

   “ Don’t do that again, will you?” I say, feeling extremely annoyed.

   She smirks. “ Since when are you easily surprised?” she asks, scooting over to the food basket. I didn’t retort, feeling my face warm. “ Were you going to eat without me?”

   “ Oh, yeah. I was just about to eat this last piece of roll,” I say, waving the roll in front of her face. She laughs. “ I got hungry. Do you want to get creative?”

   “ How?” she asks, taking the roll from me.

  “ Let’s become bakers,” I say, grinning. “ Addy used to drag me to the bakery so that we can smell the bread and tarts and all. I always ask her, ‘Don’t you think this is some kind of self-inflicting pain?’ and she said, ‘Yeah. But it’s so good to resist’. Her favourite was the fruit tart. It was full of cheese and topped with lots of fruits. Strawberries and apples, mostly.”

   “ Did you buy it?” she asks, looking astonished.

“ Are you mad?” I chortle. “ The baker’s wife would always kick our asses out of the bakery. And yet we go there again and again.”

  “ You’re pretty persistent, aren’t you?” she comments, looking at me in the eye. “ With the Goat Man, the baker’s wife. I wonder who you will be persistent to after this,” she says, playing with the roll.

  “ I’m only persistent for the sake of my loved ones,” I say, shrugging. “ So? What are we waiting for? Let’s whip some fruit tart!”

 She laughs again. “ You’re the bakery expert.”

   “ Nah…that would be Peeta,” I say as I carelessly top each of the half of the rolls with the goat cheese. “ He’s an artist. I could blow the whole district up if any of you let me make my own bread. Wouldn’t want that, would we? ‘Course, I’d go down in history as the kid who couldn’t bake but did and managed to blow the whole district up.”

  This time, she doubles over with laughter. “ Remember the time when Prim asked you to watch over the soup we were making?”

   I make a face. “ That was only a minor disaster.” You see, Prim asked me to look after the soup while it is simmering away over the fire. I took a sip, just to taste it and to me, it tasted pretty bland. There were several bottles of herb on the kitchen counter. Of course, since all of them knew which was which, none of it was labeled. I took all of the bottles and pour every single one of them into the soup. And before I could taste it, Prim says it’s done and calls Katniss and Mrs. Everdeen for dinner.

   Prim, thinking I had only watched over it instead of doing something to fix it up, took the pot and serves the soup for each of us in a tin-bowl. We had severe diarrhea that night.

   “ What can I say? I’m not a good cook,” I say as I add a few slice of apples to the smothered-in-cheese rolls before handing her half to her.

  “ Scratch that. You’re a terrible cook,” she says, grinning at me before digging in to the ‘tart’. “ That’s nice,” she sighs as she licks the cheese. “ That’s really nice.”

   “ Why, thank you, ma’am.” She snickers. “ I suppose I make a good baker, huh?”

   “ Maybe if someone actually bakes the bread and let you do the decorating,” she says, cleaning her hands with water. “ That way, you can get to do some baking, decorating actually. And the district doesn’t get blown up. It’s a win-win situation, really.”

   “ Nice to know my ally here has faith in me,” I say sarcastically. “ Right…I think I’ll get some shut eye for a few hours. Don’t forget to wake me up,” I remind her. I pull my jacket up to my face and roll on to my side, my back to her. But I didn’t fall asleep right away. No, I just lay on my side, listening to her breathing.

When I almost doze off, I think I hear her say, “ You don’t know how much I actually love you.” No, I think I must’ve misheard her. My sluggish brain probably made me think that. But it’s okay, I like it.

   I wake up again when I feel someone shaking my shoulder, calling my name again and again. “ Wassapening?” I ask her groggily, leaping to my feet ( pain flares up in my broken leg) and accidentally bangs my head on the cave ceiling. “ Who’s there?”

   “ It’s me, Seaweed Brain,” a familiar voice hisses at me. “ Wake up!”  

  I blink several times to get the sleep out of my eyes and could finally focus on her face. “ Oh, it’s you.” She huffs indignantly. “ No, no. I thought it was Cato or Foxface.” Her mouth opens to retort. Luckily, I’m not in the mood for a banter. “ So, what’s up? Why’d you wake me up?”

  “ The storm’s stop,” she says, pointing outside. “ Let’s go hunting.”

  “ The sun is actually out,” I say, feeling astonished as I peek outside. “ The snow is already melting.” SCRAP SCRAP!  I turn around when I hear scraping of metal against metal. “ What are you doing?”

   “ Breakfast,” she says, handing me the plate. I stare at it in surprise : she had dished the remaining rice and stew. “ We’ll need some staying power.”

   “ Are you okay?” I ask her, setting my plate down. She might try to hide, but I noticed her red eyes. “ Why are your eyes red?” I ask her again. “ Have you been crying?”

   “ I’m okay,” she says, her voice a little bit croaky. “ I just got something in my eyes,” she adds, rubbing her eyes. “ Come on. Let’s eat. The sooner we finish our breakfast, the sooner we can go hunting.”

   We didn’t talk again after that, just focusing on our meal. It feels as if it’s been ages since my confession and her denial. Wow….awkward much?

   “ You know what?” I burst out, unable to stand the mounting tension between us. Her eyes look at me questioningly. “ Since we’re in the middle of nowhere, I don’t think table manners actually matter now,” I say, throwing my cutlery aside. I pull the plate up to my chest and began to shovel the food into my mouth with my hands.

She stares at me in disbelief. “ I think you’ve gone off your rockers, Percy,” she says quietly, though there was a faint smile on her face.

“ Oh, come on, Katniss. Ditch the spoon,” I say, leaning over to her and snatch it out of her hand. “ Let’s just enjoy the simplicity of life now. And besides, Effie is not here to reprimand us.” I made a pleading look at her and finally, sighing, she starts to shovel the food into her mouth. “ That’s better,” I say, grinning slightly before continuing to eat.

“ Effie would probably kill us when we get back to District 12,” Katniss suddenly says, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“ Hey, Effie!” I call as I lick the plate clean. “ Are you watching this? Oomf!” I shake my head, my eyes widen at her when I realize her hand is clamped on my mouth. And she was laughing, again.

“ Shut up, you idiot!” she hisses, trying to stifle her laughter. “ For all we know, Cato’s outside and eavesdropping on us, waiting for the perfect chance to ambush us!”

“ And the stone, a pretty little girl who was a victim of Medusa, somehow returns to her original state. Well and alive,” I say dryly, pushing her hand from my face. “ Good to hear you laugh again, Stoney.”

“ Sorry,” she says, after a moment of silence. I raise an eyebrow at her. “ It’s just so..complicated right now,” she says, looking so upset that it made me feel bad for being sarcastic earlier. “ The main concern for me is to get the both of us out of this arena in one piece. And alive,” she adds, giving me a pleading look.

“ How many times do I have to tell you?” I ask, pushing the corners of her mouth up, forcing her to smile. “ Do not make that face, ever again!” She laughs again. “ Come on. I’ve finish my portion. Don’t you want to do some hunting?”

“ Yeah, sure,” she nods, piling our plates in the same corner. “ Let’s go. Can you walk?”

“ I’ll live,” I shrug. “ So, where to?” I ask her as I follow her out of the cave. Finally, to be able to stand on my legs are a relief. Though, of course, my broken leg is a little bit bent. Sorry, I meant, I can’t straighten it. If I do, I would scream my head off. End of story.

SNAP! SNAP! My head whip to the  source of the sound, relaxing when I see it’s only Katniss, snapping a branch off of a tree.

“ Here,” she says, handing it to me. “ Try to stay off of that broken leg as much as you can.”

“ Thanks,” I say and, hesitantly, gives a peck on her cheek. The color rose yet again and somehow, that kinda makes me feel smug.  “ So…Cato is on our tails now.”

“ If he’s wounded – “ she begins but I interrupt her.

“ One thing you should know about Cato is that he is stubborn and persistent and dangerous. Not a very good combo. He’ll hunt for us even if it’ll take weeks or even months just to catch our scent.”

She didn’t reply. When I look straight into her eyes, she averts her gaze, saying, “ If we want food, we should head back to my old hunting grounds.”

“ Your old hunting grounds? How is it that I’ve  perched in a tree high up and not spotted any single life?” I grumble as I limp after her.

A faint smile plays on lips. “ It’s because I’m a better hunter than you.”

“ Who says?”

“ I do.”

I didn’t reply, merely snorted at her smugness. It feels good to have our usual banter again. “ So, since I am not allowed nor capable of actually hunting, what do you want me to do? Collect berries? Roots?”

“ Just keep an eye out,” she says as she navigates through  the melting snow. Good thing it has started to melt. At least it’ll cover our tracks.

“ I am not going to just hang around while you get all the fun,” I say, feeling quite disturbed that I have to rely on a girl to bring me food. Not that I doubt her abilities. It just doesn’t seem…right. Men are supposed to be chivalrous, right? And it doesn’t seem to chivalrous of me to let her go hunting.

She scowls at me. “ Keep that pride of yours in check, Jackson. You might get the both of us killed.”

I open my mouth to retort when a slight movement a few yards in front of us caught my attention. It’s Foxface, I’m sure. Judging by the silent movement and the fact that the figure seems too small to be Cato.  I slowly tap Katniss on the shoulder. She spins around and glares at me, annoyed that I interrupted her focus.

“ Not to disturb you or something,” I say, using really, really soft tones, “ but I think Foxface is somewhere near us.” Her eyes widen and sensing that she’s about to do an inspection of our surroundings, I grab her face and kiss her. After a while, I pull away, saying in normal tones, “ You go hunt some of those winter birds and I’ll go and find those berries. I think I’ve taken a liking to them. Meet me back here in ten minutes, if you’ve managed to get some meat.”

She raises her eyebrows at me, asking a silent question : “ What are you on to now?”

I wink at her, give her a peck yet again before hobbling off into the woods where I stumble across some berry bushes. I saw her shake her head and before continuing to hunt for the birds. I bend down to inspect the berries, careful to look at it carefully. If I screw this up, our chances of getting rid of Foxface would disappear.

Did I just actually thought about that? Oh, wow…what has gotten in to me? Am I becoming like one of the heartless Careers now? No. I am not like the Careers, certainly not like Cato. This plan will result in her easy and pain-free death. She won’t be in pain for long. I grab a fistful of the berries and hobble back to our rendezvous point.

There, I take off my jacket and lay it on the ground like a picnic blanket. It’s gotten a lot warmer than a couple of nights before when it feels as if they’re trying to turn us all into popsicles. I put the berries there and hobble to a tree several yards away. There’s a few icicles there, melting. Good thing I brought the water bottles.

I hear the pitter-patter of soft footfalls.

The sound of wind.

BOOM!

CRASH! THWACK! THWACK!

Katniss emerges from the left side of the woods, a couple of metres from where I laid my jacket, her face pale and panicky,  and she has a winter bird in her hand. Her eyes widen when she sees me, relief floods her face and she runs toward me, throwing herself at me. My new crutch snap under our combined weight and we both fell down to the ground.

“ You idiot!” she screams at me ( I wince a bit, seeing as her mouth is right next to my ear). “ You blithering idiot!” This time, she slaps me. “ Do you know how I nearly had a heart attack when I heard the cannon?”

“ I can imagine,” I say wryly, massaging my jaw. “ No need for the slap, you know.” She glares at me (which made me nervous, just in case she tries to actually break my nose) before pulling me into a tighter hug.

“ I’m glad you’re still alive, you idiot,” she says, her voice breathless. “ I thought I had lost you.” Then, she breaks into a sob, but still didn’t let me go. “ I thought Cato actually found you.” I had no choice but to let her strangle me in her hug, my ear to her chest. Her heartbeat is fast. Really, really fast. I guess I did gave her a scare.

“ I thought you understood my plan,” I say, my voice muffled.

“ I didn’t actually caught on, you know,” she says, forcing out a laugh. “ I thought you really did want to find the berries.”

“ I did. Except it wasn’t the berries we’ve been eating.”

“ Then what?”

“ You know the answer.” She shakes her head. “ I used nightlock.” She looks at me questioningly. “ On Foxface.”

“ Oh,” is all she can muster. She stares thoughtfully into the distance. “ How did you know she’ll fall for the trap?”

I shrug. “ You nicknamed her Foxface. A fox is sly and cunning. I saw her lurking about near us. Figured I might take her out now.”

“ I’ll rephrase my question : how did you know she’ll take berries?”

I thought about it for awhile. “ Well, I can tell she’s no hunter so she’s got no constant supply of food. She might’ve nicked some food from the Careers’ base camp. But then you came along and burn all of the food.” She grins. “ And the feast is a few days ago and if there was any food in that bag, it might have been finished or at least, depleted. So, my guess was she was hungry and tailed us so she could nick our food later on,” I shrug. “ It wasn’t that hard coming up with the plan.”

Her face breaks into a wide smile. “ You know, you’re smarter than you look.”

“ Always a pleasure to show a fellow tribute how smart I can be.”

She snickers. “ Right, then. Let’s go roast the bird. Are you hungry?”

“ Always.”

************

“ So, only the three of us left now.”

Katniss nods, gnawing at the winter bird’s thigh. After we finished roasting the bird, she had packed all of it up, leaving only the bird’s leg each for us.

“ Cato’s the only obstacle now between us and home.”

She nods again, this time looking a little bit thoughtful. “ You know, all of this feels so … surreal to me. I mean, I can’t believe we actually made it to the final three.”

I smile at the thought of home. “ Are we the first tributes from Twelve to actually make it to the final three after Haymitch?”

“ I think so. Maybe some of the others did make it to the final six but not all of them made it to the final three, let alone the final two.”

I sigh, feeling happier than I have in weeks – maybe months! – since Addy’s death. We made it to the finals, we’re going to make it back home. “ So, back to the cave?”

She stares at me.

“ You are not making me climb a tree!”

She smiles a little. “ Fine. Let’s go back to the cave. And anyway, you’ll only break your other leg if we spend another night in a tree.”

“ Oh, shut up.”

We didn’t talk all the way back to the cave. Partly because we enjoy the silence, partly because I’m too exhausted to pick a fight with her. Hey, hobbling around on a broken leg (my crutch broke, remember?) is not easy! That night, I didn’t have much appetite from all the exhaustion. Katniss orders me to go to sleep but I don’t want to. Partly because even if I’m tired, I’m not sleepy. Weird, huh? And partly, because of the nightmares.

Sometimes, I feel as if the nightmare I had a couple of nights ago didn’t actually have an ending. I swear it probably had some kind of ‘to be continued…’ quality to it. I don’t think I could actually face another round of the nightmare.

We huddle close to each other. The day had been quite warm but the night is as chilly as ever. A few moments later, the anthem begins to play and the sky lights up with the seal. A moment later, Foxface appears in the sky before finally disappearing from the world forever.

I wonder if she’ll join the others in my nightmare.

“ You should sleep,” Katniss says quietly, tracing the bruise on my jaw. “ You look awful.”

I smile slightly at her comment. “ You’re the one who should sleep. You did some hunting today. That must’ve cost you a lot of energy.”

“ But I’m not the person who has to limp and hop around,” she contradicts me. “ You really need some sleep, Percy.”

I shake my head. “ You sleep first. I’ll keep watch. And I won’t doze off this time.” She wants to argue, I just know it but I guess my tone made it final. “ I’ll wake you up when I really need to crash.”

“ Don’t forget,” she warns me before slipping off to Slumberland.

It was near to dawn when I finally decide I should sleep.

“ It’s nearly dawn!” she says, looking extremely furious. “ You should’ve wake me up hours ago! You look like trash!”

“ It’s okay. A short nap would be enough and then I’ll be as good as new,” I say, yawning. “ Wake me up if Cato appears.”

I guess Cato either chickens out or waiting for the right opportunity to ambush us because when I open my eyes, we’re still in the cave, in the arena and intact. Sorry, I meant still alive.

“ No signs of him,” Katniss says, when she notices me sitting. “ Although, the snow have melted altogether and I think some of the leaves are turning brown.”

“ Are they going for autumn now?” I ask, as I crawl to the cave entrance. Indeed, there was no more snow on the ground now. Heck, there’s not even any sign that there used to be snow here. “ Well, Katniss,” I say, turning to face her, “ today is the day when we will find out whether or not we make it out alive out of this place.”

  She pales, but only for a moment before the usual stoic expression takes place. “ How do you know?”

“ They are driving us out of this cave.” She looks at me as if I’m mad. “ I’m not sure if you’ve noticed it or not but the cave is getting a little bit hotter now.”

  She looks around the cave before agreeing with me. “ We should eat. Just in case something comes up.” I nod a bit, scooting back into the cave. She lays down a big meal : the rest of the bird, a fistful of my berries, several pieces of Rue’s roots and a little bit of cheese.

  We ate in silence, feeling slightly nervous at the thought that today would probably be our last day in this arena. By the time we’re done, the cave feels a bit like the mines. The ones that were closer to the surface.

  “ Let’s get out of here,” she mutters, picking up her backpack before crawling out of the cave. “ It feels like a furnace in there.”

  “ It feels like the mines to me,” I shrug as I follow her out of the cave. “ Oh, wow,” I say when I get (painfully) to my feet. “ If they don’t watch the temperature, this place is going to catch fire,” I comment, observing what used to be the winter hemisphere.

   The snow had completely melted, leaving really, really dry grass everywhere. The trees turned brown, the leaves withered and are now clustered around it. The hemisphere hasn’t even burst into flames, yet I could somehow smell the smoke.

  “ Um, Percy?” Katniss says, gripping my arm so hard. “ I think that side just caught fire,” she points to the trees to our west.

  “ Well,” I say, trying to maintain my cool, “ let’s get going now.”

  On that happy note, we jog as fast as we could towards the Cornucopia. But the trees seem to catch fire more faster.

   “ Run!” I yell, grabbing her hand and yanking her faster, the pain in my leg forgotten. All I know is I am not going to get toasted.

   We nearly reached the clearing where the Cornucopia is situated when we heard howls and barks. And another faint screaming. Cato, chased by something I do not want to know or meet.

   “ Climb!” I holler at her, grabbing her around the waist and propel her towards the Cornucopia. “ Hurry! They’re getting closer!”

   Katniss had just managed to climb the Cornucopia when Cato bursts into the clearing, his face scratched and nicked in a few places, his eyes wild. And he looks extremely scared. Katniss yells at me to get my attention and stretches her hand, trying to pull me up. But my broken leg, moments ago so strong I could outrun Katniss, feels useless now.

  “ I can’t,” I pant. “ I don’t think my leg can take it.”

  “ No,” she says, her face is filled with determination. “ No, you will make it. Use your knife to climb. Whatever you do, you are not going to die!” she says, yanking me higher. I use my free hand to retrieve my knife from its sheath when a wolf bursts into the clearing, right behind Cato, who is running as fast he could towards the Cornucopia.

   That’s when I panic.

   Because I can tell it’s no wolf.

   It’s a mutt.

  How you may ask?

  Because it suddenly stood on its hind legs, like a human, looks straight at me in the eye.

  And spoke : “ It’s good to see you again, Percy Jackson.”

 And it spoke in Thalia’s voice.