WHO: Io Tesla [D5] and Hugh Esbe [D3] WHAT: A reunion! WHEN: Day 4, early afternoon. WHERE: Right by the bridge between Cloud 9 and Nimbus. WARNINGS: Child murder games warnings. STATUS: Complete!
By the time Hugh had dragged her back into the bushes, Io could scarcely breathe anymore. It took her a beat to realize that it was Hugh--for some reason, she’d thought it was her cat, but that didn’t make any sense--and when she did, when they were safe, she managed to squeak out with a shaky smile, “I f-found you. I knew I would find you.”
With the initial surge of adrenaline dissipating, Hugh found himself strangely quiet for someone holding a soon to be dead thirteen year old. When he envisioned himself in the Hunger Games, he was either fantastically athletic, cutting down careers left and right, or more realistically sobbing in a bush, wishing he were dead. Now, he seemed to be neither of those things, only very angry and also very sad.
"You found me," he said reassuringly, putting his hand over her neck. He didn't need to know much to know that the blood was pouring out too fast to do anything about it. "We're just gonna sit here for a bit, if that's okay. I'm kinda tired."
Io tried to swallow, but her throat wasn’t working right, and it hurt. “I’m tired-- too,” she managed. The forest seemed a lot darker than it had been a minute ago, and all she wanted to do was sleep, but then, sleeping seemed like a bad idea when there was this much blood. “Did-- do you want-- water? I have water.” The bottle of fruity drink, or what remained of it, was still clutched tightly in her hand, and she thought she tried to lift it up and offer it to Hugh, though her hand didn’t move at all.
Hugh's quiet 'heh' was a testament to the irony that had he pushed himself to find her earlier, she'd be alive and he wouldn't have been licking bits of snow and morning dew out of hollow rocks. His chest ached in the knowledge, and he closed his mouth tight for a moment, swallowing down all the guilt that threaten to scream out of him. Then: "I'd better save that for you, kiddo, or you'll be complaining in the morning."
“If--” Why did talking hurt? Talking never hurt. “--if y-you’re sure.” And now breathing hurt, too, like when she’d been littler and had run too fast to win a race. Was it to win a race? Why couldn’t she remember?
One thing did come to mind, though, and it brought a smile to her face. “We-- we’re going to s-surprise them all, Hugh,” she said, and as she said it, a silver parachute floated almost gracefully down from the sky above them, landing in the grass just beside her head. She didn’t see it; it was too dark to see anything anymore, and not a second later, the cannon boomed as her heart stopped.
Hugh stared at the parachute with wide, hot eyes, his breathing measured as the cannon boom made everything agonizingly real. All of his allies were dead and he was alone. And now in an act of ultimate unfairness, he was going to take -- he was going to steal -- a present for the one ally he could have saved and failed to. He had never known how fast grief could become anger, but now he knew. He let Io rest on the ground gently and picked up the parachute from District 5, revealing a package of jerky and a small hunting knife. He held up the latter with a dark expression.
"We're going to surprise them, Io," he said bitterly, pulling Daeta's stone from his pocket. He pressed it carefully into her palm.
From a few yards away he could hear the crack of a twig and knew that Silas and his partner would be on them soon. He wanted to surprise them, wanted to drive the knife into that boy's neck, but he knew better than to risk a two on one. Not yet. He grabbed the rest of Io's water, pocketed her jerky and knife, and carefully wound his way into the misty woods.