My arms throb, pulsating with the wounds that are neither cleaned nor tended, and I have the insane desire to laugh. Much good I'll lend anyone if I die from infection.

It's been hours since the leader of the band of highwaymen questioned me, having disappeared long ago into his flimsy tent. I can't hear anything from it though, save for the occasional shout, and when the daylight begins to be sapped from the sky, I stop trying to. The only person I see over the course of the hours is Bitnee, but his attention is on whatever stew he's preparing. It's something Rye would probably gag on but to me, it smells delicious.

As if hearing my thoughts, he waves his wooden spoon at me in disapproval and it's clear.

I'm not getting any.

For a second, just one second that feels like a glitch in time, I am a coward. Or maybe I've always been a coward and it hits me then, because I suddenly prefer the sureness of death than to face the what ifs the Capitol has to offer. Those thoughts dance circles inside my mind until I'm dizzy. Then again, maybe that's just the loss of blood.

That thought brings me back around the carisol of my own demise. If I'm lucky, I'll die before they can deliver me to the Capitol. If I'm lucky, the Peacekeepers don't have Rye and he's in the woods somewhere, safe. If I'm lucky, my parents aren't trapped in the Capitol.

But luck doesn't seem to play in my favor.

When night comes, it feels like it brings with it the weight of the sky, crashing down on me and drowning me in shadows. The absence of my parents and my brother, even my own bed, weighs like an anchor pulling me beneath the ground. Not once can I recall a time of ever feeling so completely and utterly alone.

To quell my mounting fear, I focus on the stars overhead, glimmering like dusted jewels scattered across a curtain. The world has changed. Everyday it changes. A city can be there in the morning and then gone in the afternoon. A person could take one breath and never take another. But stars stay the same and I wonder if this is what my parents saw, every night in the arena.

But of course not-those stars were a fabrication. Fancy technology composed by man in the cage of the Capitol.

Here, at least, I get the real thing.

______________

The next day, we are on the move. Earlier, Bitnee oversaw the tending to my wounds which was done poorly but I quickly decided a rebuttal wasn't worth my mentioning of it.

I regret it, though, when they make me walk.

We travel in a scattered v-form, four on one side, four on the other, me in between. My hands are bound, the roughness of it chaffing against my skin. I don't know when it starts to bleed but it does, the rope absorbing the crimson.

Bitnee points it out when the sun hangs midday, cutting through the branches and blinding me.

"She doesn't need to be kept in pristine condition," their leader fires back. "Simply alive will suffice."

I don't even have enough energy to glare at his broad back or the hand that holds the ropes. 

Each time I slow, I'm yanked forward. Each time I pitch to the ground, I'm shoved back up. More walking. More stumbling. My arm wounds start bleeding too until the rivers of red blend into one free flowing stream.

"She's open again, Sir," Stelves says, his small brown eyes cutting to me. My lip lifts in revulsion. He says open as if I'm a flayed fish, a thing of inconvenience. I would've assumed they'd want to keep their prize looking a little less bloodied and white-lipped.

Bitnee redresses my wounds, poorly yet again, and when they stop to eat, I'm given a small bowl of that stew. I can tell it's not something that should taste good, but it does and I think about Rye just a week ago, saying that anyone could cook.

It is, indeed, a very loosely translated label.

We resume our trek through the trees for another few hours, me being practically dragged along the rest of the way. I don't realize they've stopped until I almost ram into the leader's back, thanking the rock that tripped me before I did so.

"Pitch the tent," the leader orders. I sag to the ground, the wind chilling me to my bones. I feel sweat bead above my brow and my eyes fall to my arms; the deep lines that decorate both my triceps are no longer colored a clean red, but a purple hue.

I breathe out a small gasp, suddenly wanting to scream. Or laugh, because pure idiocy has them deluding themselves into thinking I'll last days of grueling travel in this condition. It will be miraculous if I make it three, but I don't need a map to know the Capitol lies much farther than that. If their leader makes me walk tomorrow, I'll meet my grave that evening.

Which means I won't get to save Rye. 

I won't get to see my parents. 

I'll die beneath the branches, stretching like fingers to the stars. 

Maybe I wouldn't care as much if I knew my brother were alive. It'd be easier to greet death knowing that someone was waiting for me, but I can't stand the thought of him waiting, as if he would've accepted anything easily, because while Rye is gentle like Dad and soft like the sunsets he paints, he is strong like him, too. 

I want to fight the way I know that they would fight. But even as Bitnee changes my dressings again and sucks in a breath at what he sees there, I wonder if I may die, not as someone battling against the odds with a feral ferocity, but as a girl who simply didn't last.

My parents survived the Hunger Games. The Quarter Quell. My mom sparked a wildfire that consumed the world as we knew it. She saw the embers of it go out in the ash.

But me? I can't last a few days on my own and the expense of my incapability could quite possibly cost my brother his life. 

I may look like her, but I am not the Girl on Fire. I am not the Mockingjay. 

I am just me. And I am not sure that it will be enough.

***

Something jostles me awake.

 I don't know what it is and I blink up, bleary eyed and confused. The stars remain exactly where I left them. I look towards the horizon; daybreak is still a good four hours away.

I feel thick headed and groggy like I'm trying to see through unfocused glasses. A face swims before my vision, and my first instinct is to cower, thinking its the leader with his knife, come to ask more questions.

But it's not. Through the haze and the help of the moonlight, I see a familiar profile and my eyes widen.

"Leif?"

He hisses and I hear a snap as one of my bindings comes loose. The other follows. My muscles feel like sludge, unable to take any shape. I try to sit up but a wave of dizziness rocks me, nearly pitching me sideways.

"How are you here?" I think I whisper to Leif, who eyes my cuts that are uglier than I remember them being. "Why are you here?"

He raises his big hand to my forehead and his jaw tightens. His fingers are uncomfortably cold and I pull away from them.

Instead, though, he comes closer, wrapping his arms around my lower back and under my legs. I want to protest but I can't find the words to, my mouth suddenly losing the path to my thoughts. Instead I just stare up at those stars, counting them as he goes. Maybe this is my mind's way of handling death, maybe I'm still tied down in the camp, drifting lazily away where even a man with cruel eyes and wicked blades can't contain me.

I take a breath, feeling suddenly calm.

It's not as bad as I thought it would be.