My senses were groggy, I could hear something from somewhere around me, specifics weren’t exactly going well.

“…” there was that voice again.

It took a few times before I realised that it was my name they were calling.

“Olivia!”

My vision blurred back into colour and I soon realised that I was lying on the forest floor. I sat up and blinked a few times. When the trees became more than just brown and green blobs I saw him standing against one of them.

“Haymitch?” He gave me a small nod. “You’re not dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Wait… am I dead?”

“No, you’re alive, just not conscious.” He walked over to me and put his hand behind my head and picked up my hand. “Now come back.”

I looked into his eyes and he nodded to me. I felt my eyes get heavy again and blinked a few times before everything went black again. I heard the voice again and when I opened my eyes the blur was back.

“Olivia!”

I blinked harder to try and clear my vision.

“Olivia, wake up!”

Slowly, I began to make out the form of Caius, holding me in the same way that Haymitch had been in my unconscious dream.

I saw him breathe a sigh of relief and as I tried to sit up he pulled me into him.

“I didn’t know if you were coming back.” He whispered into my neck.

“What was that stuff?” I said meekly.

He pulled away and let me sit up. He propped me against a tree and sat by my side.

“Some kind of mist, I heard you screaming for me and… well I heard you screaming and when I saw the mist, well I thought it was going to end far differently. Why were you screaming anyway?”

I didn’t even have to look back, the images just came to me and I shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about the visions.”

“You had visions? What visions?”

“I’m not talking about it Caius, I can hardly stand to think about it.” I screwed up my eyes but the images were burned into my brain.

“Sorry,” his eyes dropped and came to rest on the burnt skin on my stomach. “What happened?”

I pulled my pack off my shoulders, a little stiffly, and started rummaging for the ointment. “I got burnt Caius, what does it look like?”

He looked away from my eyes and I know that I’m being unfair to him, but I need to focus on something because those images are threatening to rise again.

“It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it hurt?”

“I have this.” I held up the medicine and unscrewed the lid.

“You must have some pretty wealthy sponsors.”

“And a pretty good mentor.” He looked away from my eyes again and I started to rub some more ointment on my burns.

“Do you want me to do that?”

“Caius, thanks, but I can do it.”

“I just want to help you; you screamed all the way here and didn’t stop until you passed out. I was… I was just waiting for the cannon to be honest.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For braving the mist, not knowing what it would do to you, to save me.”

“I’ll do it again if I have to.”

“How did it not affect you?”

“I held my breath.”

“For how long? You couldn’t possibly make it all this way.” I’m not sure how far away we were but we must have been pretty far, considering the lack of mist around us.

“Did you watch my games at all?” I thought back to five years ago, oh.

They had started on sea platforms, Caius dived in after the cannon to start and the waves had started. Six died in the water, Caius was trapped underwater for five minutes before he managed to crawl onto land. Most of the other tributes were either still on their platforms because they couldn’t swim, flailing in the water, or already off into the trees. That made Caius famous, surviving underwater for so long, that’s when he really became one of the contenders.

“Neat trick.” I smiled gently.

“We should probably move on, are you alright to walk?”

“I’m not- yes I’m fine, just help me up.” I almost snapped again but I caught myself in time.

He stood up and reached down for me to take his hand. He did the same thing that he had the first time we ever spoke; he pulled me up easily and held me tight against him, only this time, he kissed me. He pressed his lips hard against mine and I felt his arms tense around me.

He pulled back but kept me locked to him. He looked into my eyes with a fierceness that said more than his words did.

“You scared me.” What he really meant was ‘I can't lose you again’.

“I scared myself.” That probably had a hidden meaning too.

He left a small peck on my lips, then another. I let him kiss me until he was ready to let go, in all honesty, I don’t think I was ready for him to let me go.

We started walking, my whole body was stiff and my left side was tingling where the burns were healing. I must have been pulling a few faces because Caius put his arm around me and before I knew it he had swept me off the ground. I tried to protest but he kept his mouth shut and tightened his grip. After we, well he, walked like that for about half an hour I managed to convince him to put me down.

It wasn’t too long before we came to another clearing in the trees, only this time there wasn’t a meadow and a lake. This time there was a large crumbling structure made from brick and a small creek trickling behind it.

“What is that?” Caius asked.

“They’re ruins.” I said quietly.

It looked like half of a building, without a roof, and it reached probably fifteen feet into the air. Because of the rubble, there were a number of different levels and even a few patches that would probably conceal a person, or two.

“You think they’re real?” He looked over at me but I just stared at the structure.

“No, there’s not enough crumbling on the sides or deterioration along the ridge of-”

“You know you’re probably going to start spouting out a bunch of things that I don’t understand again.” He smiled and walked over to the creek to wash his hands and face.

“Right, I should really know my audience huh?”

“We should rest here, you’re probably tired.”

“Excuse you? I’m fine.”

“Either way I think we should-”

He was cut off to the sound of a cannon firing. We both spun around and our eyes darted in all directions as we searched the forest around us.

“It sounded close.” He said as he came to stand by my side.

“There’s no way to be sure.”

“Yeah well just in case I say we keep quiet and it’s probably better not to light a fire.”

We sat together by one of the walls of the ruins and Caius pulled out the rest of the meat from the other night and we shared it out between us. The sun started to drop in the sky as we approached the late afternoon; it felt like the day had been much longer. Caius spent the time trying to teach me about what his mother does back in 7.

She’s a teacher at the local school, she teaches weaving and sewing and a number of other activities for home living.

“You know your mother and mine would probably have gotten along pretty well.” I smiled.

“You think?”

“Well you said she did a lot of home remedy stuff, and cooking, they’d probably have a lot to talk about.” He pulled me in closer and kissed my cheek.

He brushed my cheek with his thumb and leant in to kiss me; before he did we heard a crunch in the forest ahead of us. Caius jumped to his feet and I was quick to follow.

“It could have been-”

He put up a hand to silence me. “Stay here, take your knife out, I’m going to check it out.” He whispered.

“Caius I-”

“Don’t argue with me just stay here.” He looked into my eyes before he took out a knife from his pack and ran to the edge of the trees.

I quickly dashed back to the pack and pulled out my dagger. My eyes darted frantically; looking for something that I wasn’t even sure was there. For all I know I could be searching for a ghost. I have no idea what I would do if I heard a cannon.

I heard something behind me and I froze. I took a shaky breath I spun around waving my knife and literally didn’t know what hit me.

Something came swinging and hit me in the side of the face, knocking me to the floor. When I turned to see what it was I caught the black, hungry eyes of Cress bearing down on me. The knife had fallen out of my hand when he had punched me in the face and I tried to reach it but Cress pinned me down.

“Ca-” I started to call for Caius but Cress forced his hand over my mouth and pushed my head further into the grass.

“Oh no, lover boy can’t save you now.” He grinned as I struggled against his weight and tried to force his arms off me.

All that escaped from me was muffled screams and grunts.

“I thought it was pretty clever, sending him away while I came in to finish you off, then when he comes back I’ll sort him out. You’re just more… more fun.” He was so strong that all it took to hold me down was the weight of his body against my hips and the force of his hand over my mouth. With the other hand he touched my neck and ran it down my body until he found my burn. “Ooh, I see you got caught in the fire too, Blaze and I got separated, too bad too, she was such good company. I guess you’ll do.” He sneered and pushed his hips into mine.

I tried harder to push him away and felt the tears stream down my face.

“Don’t cry sweetheart, I’d say that it would be over in a minute but that’d be a lie.” He laughed to himself as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

His hand slid up and into my shirt, his snake eyes wouldn’t leave mine and I wished I was anywhere but here. If there was a cannon now, it would be mine. I closed my eyes so that I didn’t have to look into his anymore.

“What am I not good enough for you huh? Open your damn eyes!” He pulled my eyelids up and stared down at me enraged. “You know what; this’ll be just as easy when you’re dead.”

His spare hand reached for my throat and before I even realised it he was blocking my airway, strangling me. This time he used both hands but I couldn’t say anything. I can't even describe the feeling of having no way to access the air that you know is all around you. I felt like I had something large and constricting lodged in my throat and I tried again to call out to Caius but I started to feel groggy and my fingers and toes felt like they didn’t belong to me.

Everything was pressing down on me and all of a sudden I heard a roar and the pressure was gone. I spluttered and coughed and sucked in all the air I could get. I almost didn’t notice Caius standing over my hunched form. I threw up my food again and caught a glimpse of Cress lying a few feet away from us.

“Is he…”

“No, knocked out. I need you to get the packs and run, okay? Get out of here now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Run, go, he’s stirring, I’ll fight him off you get out of here!”

“You can't do that he’s too strong!”

“I’ll do whatever I need to for you, even if that means I’ll never see you again.” That one caught me off guard.

“What did you say?”

“I’ll die for you if I have to Olivia.” He reached up to touch my face again and after a second he was wrenched away by Cress.

They wrestled one another on the floor before throwing punches and throwing each other around. I launched myself at Cress but he backhanded my face and sent me flying into the ground.

“Olivia… GO!” Caius yelled as he took another blow to the jaw.

What the hell was he asking of me? And what was he even thinking? He couldn’t possibly be suggesting that he would hold off his death long enough for me to escape, no, he couldn’t.

“Olivia now!” Cress slammed him into the ground and climbed over him like he had done me.

“You can't save her, and when I’m done with you I’m going to deal with her.” Cress spat.

“Don’t you touch her!”

“I can touch her however I like.”

“Eat shit!” Caius head-butted Cress who elbowed him in the ribs.

“Speaking of eating shit, am I going to have to watch her eating something of yours in the replays? Because that’d be a little awkward.” He sneered and the two started to wrestle again, but Cress was too strong for even Caius.

He pinned Caius to the ground and slammed his fist into his face.

“You better hope your little whore is gone, because you’re about to disappear you pathetic little-” He was cut short when the dagger entered his back.

“This is for the man whose neck you snapped… This is for the woman you guttered…” I twisted the dagger and he groaned, “And this is for all the other people that you took pleasure in killing.” I forced the dagger up and into his chest cavity, piercing his diaphragm, heart and lungs.

His warm blood trickled down my arm and I felt his body go limp. “Move him!” I yelled and Caius lifted him so that I wouldn’t drop his body on top of him.

When he was out of the way I pulled the dagger out of him and he fell to the ground, his black eyes even colder than before, a shudder ran through my body. I looked down at my hand and saw the blood starting to dry as I heard the cannon fire.

“We need to move while they pick him up.” I said flatly as I wiped the blood off the dagger and started to clean the blood off my arms.

I didn’t look back, not at Cress and not at Caius as I walked around to the other side of the ruins. I saw the hover craft approaching and sat down as I waited for Caius to join me.

Everything was running through my mind, what Caius said, what Cress was going to do to me, and what I did to him.

“Are you okay?” Caius was looking over at me tenderly and I shot him a glare that said ‘are you kidding me?’.

“What the hell was that crap you pulled?”

“What do you mean?” He looked genuinely unsure of what it was I was referring to.

“What were you trying to do? Die? Why would you do that?”

“I told you before that I don’t want to lose you.”

“So does that mean sacrificing yourself so that I can run? Even though he would be after me again after finishing you off?” I looked at him angrily.

“At least you’d have a chance to plan, and it means doing whatever it takes to get you to the end of this thing.”

“What about your life?”

“It’s over no matter what happens here. If it comes down to the two of us at the end I’ll be dead before you even realise what I’ve done.”

“You can't do that!”

“And why not?!”

I didn’t know what to say to that, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “You think I want to see Cress or someone like him beat you senseless and slice you open? I can't know that you died like that.”

“If I had it my way I wouldn’t die at all, or at least it would be quick and painless, but I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t be able to handle it if that happened to you.”

“You might go on to win if you see something like that.”

“Why did you even volunteer if you’re so blasé about dying?”

“Why did you?” I looked into his stunning green eyes and saw something in them that I’ve only heard about; I wonder if his eyes were a mirror of mine.

 His eye was swelling slightly and purple bruises were forming on his face. His fingers were covered in blood, probably Cress’, and his knuckles looked a little swollen too. He pulled me into him and held me tight. To be honest it was slightly painful and it must have been for him too but he didn’t let go. And then he whispered to me, so quietly that I barely heard him. I assume that the cameras couldn’t hear him either.

“You may think that I am a man who gets around and feels it all for every girl who looks his way but that’s not true. I have never felt anything this real in my life and I have definitely never felt anything like this.” He pulled back again and looked into my eyes. “I can't lose you; I just can't, so you’re going to have to lose me, because I’ll never make it without you.”

I leant in and kissed him lightly, and even though his lips but me bruised, cut and sore, he pushed his lips into mine and kissed me with so much fervour that it knocked all the thoughts out of my mind. That was probably a good thing.

This couldn’t end well and Cress has made me see that I’ve been distracted. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’ve lost sight of my goal and now there are only six of us left. I have to get back on track, but for now, I’ll just enjoy the taste of Caius’ lips on mine.