Catching Fire belongs to Suzanne Collins. I do own baby Mellark and Katniss loving Peeta. This is fanfiction, none of it is what happened in the actual book. In other words, this is fake.

Chapter 24

Where is she? What are they doing to her?

"Prim!" I cry out.

"Prim!" Only another agonized scream answers me. How did she get here? Why is she part of the Games? "Prim!"

Vines cut into my face and arms, creepers grab my feet. But I am getting closer to her. Closer. Very close now. Sweat pours down my face, stinging the healing acid wounds. I pant, trying to get some use out of the warm, moist air that seems empty of oxygen. Prim makes a sound- such a lost, irretrievable sound-that I can't even imagine what they have done to evoke it.

"Prim!" I rip through a wall of green into a small clearing and the sound repeats directly above me. Above me? My head whips back. Do they have her up in the trees? I desperately search the branches but see nothing.

"Prim?" I say pleadingly. I hear her but can't see her. Her next wail rings out, clear as a bell, and there's no mistaking the source. It's coming from the mouth of a small, crested black bird perched on a branch about ten feet over my head. And then I understand.

It's a jabberjay.

I've never seen one before- I thought they no longer existed-and I examine it. There is nothing about the bird that suggests it's a mutt. Nothing except the horribly lifelike sounds of Prim's voice streaming from its mouth. I silence it with an arrow in its throat. The bird falls to the ground. Then I hurl the revolting thing into the jungle.

It wasn't real, I tell myself. The same way the mutation wolves last year weren't the dead tributes. It's just a cruel trick of the Gamemakers.

Finnick crashes into the clearing to find me wiping my arrow clean with some moss. "Katniss?"

"It's okay. I'm okay," I say, although I don't feel okay at all.

"I thought I heard my sister but-" The piercing shriek cuts me off. It's another voice, not Prim's, maybe a young woman's. I don't recognize it. But the effect on Finnick is instantaneous. The color vanishes from his face, and I can see his pupils dilate in fear.

"Finnick, wait!" I say, reaching out to reassure him, but he's bolted away.

"Finnick!" I call, but I know he won't turn back and wait for me to give a rational explanation. So all I can do is follow him.

It's no effort to track him, even though he's moving so fast, since he leaves a clear, trampled path in his wake. But the bird is at least a quarter mile away, most of it uphill, and by the time I reach him, I'm winded. He's circling around a giant tree. The woman's shrieks emanate from somewhere in the foliage, but the jabberjay's concealed. Finnick's screaming as well, over and over.

"Annie! Annie!" He's in a state of panic and completely unreachable, so I do what I would do anyway. I locate the jabberjay, and take it out with an arrow. It falls straight down, landing right at Finnick's feet. He picks it up, slowly making the connection, but when I slide down to join him, he looks more despairing than ever.

"It's all right, Finnick. It's just a jabberjay. They're playing a trick on us," I say. "It's not real. It's not your... Annie."

"No, it's not Annie. But the voice was hers. Jabberjays mimic what they hear. Where did they get those screams, Katniss?" he says.

I can feel my cheeks grow pale as I understand his meaning. "Oh, Finnick, you don't think they..."

"Yes. I do. That is exactly what I think," Finnick raises his vocie with each word pratically yelling on the last one.

I have an image of Prim in a white room, strapped to a table, while masked, robed figures elicit those sounds from her. Somewhere they are torturing her or did to get those sounds. My knees turn to water, and I sink to the ground. Finnick is trying to tell me something, but I can't hear him.

What I do finally hear is another bird starting up somewhere off to my left. And this time, the voice is Gales. Finnick catches my arm before I can run.

"No. It's not him." He starts pulling me downhill, toward the beach.

"We're getting out of here!" But Gale's voice is so full of pain I can't help struggling to reach it.

"It's not him, Katniss! It's a mutt!" Finnick shouts at me.

"Come on!" He moves me along, half dragging, half carrying me, until I can process what he said. He's right; it's just another jabberjay. However, at some point, this was recorded from him.

I stop fighting Finnick, though, and like the night in the fog, I flee what I can't fight. What can only do me harm. Only this time it's my heart and not my body that's disintegrating. This must be another weapon of the clock. Four o'clock, I guess. When the hands tick-tock onto the four, the monkeys go home and the jabberjays come out to play. Finnick is right-getting out of here is the only thing to do.

I catch sight of Peeta and Johanna standing at the tree line, and I am filled with a mixture of relief and anger. Why didn't Peeta come to help me? Why did no one go after us? Even now he hangs back, his hands raised, palms toward us, lips moving but no words reaching us. Why?

The wall is so transparent, Finnick and I run smack into it and bounce back onto the jungle floor. I'm lucky. My shoulder took the worst of the impact, thankfully if I ran into it and my stomach hit, that may have caused an issue. Whereas Finnick hit face-first and now his nose is gushing blood. This is why Peeta and Johanna and even Beetee, who I see sadly shaking his head behind them, have not come to our aid.

An invisible barrier blocks the area in front of us. It's not a force field. You can touch the hard, smooth surface all you like. But Peeta's knife and Johanna's ax can't make a dent in it. I know, without checking more than a few feet to one side, that it encloses the entire four-to-five-o'clock wedge. That we will be trapped like rats until the hour passes.

Peeta presses his hand against the surface and I put my own up to meet it, as if I can feel him through the wall. I see his lips moving but I can't hear him, can't hear anything outside our wedge. I try to make out what he's saying, but I can't focus, so I just stare at his face, doing my best to hang on to my sanity.

Then the birds begin to arrive. One by one. Perching in the surrounding branches. And a carefully orchestrated chorus of horror begins to spill out of their mouths. Finnick gives up at once, hunching on the ground, clenching his hands over his ears as if he's trying to crush his skull.

I try to fight for a while. Emptying my quiver of arrows into the hated birds. But every time one drops dead, another quickly takes its place. And finally I give up and curl up beside Finnick, trying to block out the excruciating sounds of Prim, Gale, my mother, Madge, Rory, Vick, even Posy, helpless little Posy...

Then a new one joins the chorus of screams, and I don't even know it, but they know it'll get to me; a baby screaming. I freeze for a few seconds, then I cry and cry. Finnick stares at me oddly for a few seconds even though he has his hands around his ears, he must still hear it.

I know it's stopped when I feel Peeta's hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle. But I stay eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, muscles too rigid to release. Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently. It takes a long time before I begin to relax the iron grip on my body. And when I do, the trembling begins.

"It's all right, Katniss," he whispers.

"You didn't hear them," I answer.

"I heard Prim. Right in the beginning. But it wasn't her," he says. "It was a jabberjay."

"It was her. Somewhere. The jabberjay just recorded it," I say.

"No, that's what they want you to think. The same way I wondered if Glimmer's eyes were in that mutt last year. But those weren't Glimmer's eyes. And that wasn't Prim's voice."

"Or if it was, they took it from an interview or something and distorted the sound. Made it say whatever she was saying," he says.

"No, they were torturing her," I answer. "She's probably dead."

"Katniss, Prim isn't dead. How could they kill Prim? We're almost down to the final eight of us. And what happens then?" Peeta says.

"Seven more of us die," I say hopelessly.

"No, back home. What happens when we reach the final eight tributes in the Games?" He lifts my chin, so I have to look at him. Forces me to make eye contact.

"What happens? At the final eight?" I know he's trying to help me, so I make myself think.

"At the final eight?" I repeat. "They interview your family and friends back home."

"That's right," says Peeta. "They interview your family and friends. And can they do that if they've killed them all?"

"No?" I ask, still unsure.

"No. That's how we know Prim's alive. She'll be the first one they interview, won't she?" he asks. I want to believe him. Badly. It's just those voices.

"First Prim. Then your mother. Your cousin, Gale. Madge," he continues. "It was a trick, Katniss. A horrible one. But we're the only ones who can be hurt by it. We're the ones in the Games. Not them."

"You believe that?"

"I truly do," says Peeta. I waver, thinking of how Peeta can make anyone believe anything. I look over at Finnick for confirmation, see he's fixated on Peeta, his words.

"Do you believe it, Finnick?" I ask.

"It could be true. I don't know," he says. "Could they do that, Beetee? Take someone's regular voice and make it..."

"Oh, yes. It's not even that difficult, Finnick. Our children learn a similar technique in school," says Beetee.

"Of course Peeta's right. The whole country adores Katniss's little sister. If they killed her like this, they'd probably have an uprising on their hands," says Johanna flatly.

"Don't want that, do they?" She throws back her head and shouts, "Whole country in rebellion? Wouldn't want anything like that!"

My mouth drops open in shock. No one, ever, says anything like this in the Games. They've cut away from Johanna, are editing her out. But I have heard her and can never think about her again in the same way. She'll never win any awards for kindness, but she certainly is gutsy. Or crazy. She picks up some shells and heads toward the jungle.

"I'm getting water," she says. I can't help catching her hand as she passes me.

"Don't go in there. The birds-" I remember the birds must be gone, but I still don't want anyone in there. Not even Johanna.

"They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love," Johanna says, and frees her hand with an impatient shake. When she brings me back a shell of water, I take it with a silent nod of thanks, knowing how much she would despise the pity in my voice.

While Johanna collects water and my arrows, Beetee fiddles with his wire and Finnick takes to the sea. I need to clean up, too, but I stay in Peeta's arms, still too shaken to move.

"Who did they use against Finnick?" he asks.

"Somebody named Annie," I say.

"Must be Annie Cresta," he says.

"Who?" I ask.

"Annie Cresta. She was the girl Mags volunteered for. She won about five years ago," says Peeta.

That would have been the summer after my father died when I first began feeding my family when my whole being was occupied with battling starvation.

"I don't remember those Games much," I say. "Was that the earthquake year?"

"Yeah. Annie's the one who went mad when her district partner got beheaded. Ran off by herself and hid. But an earthquake broke a dam, and most of the arena got flooded. She won because she was the best swimmer," says Peeta.

"Did she get better after?" I ask. "I mean, her mind?"

"I don't know. I don't remember ever seeing Annie at the Games again. But she didn't look too stable during the reaping this year," says Peeta.

So that's who Finnick loves. Not his string of fancy lovers in the Capitol. But a poor, mad girl back home.

A cannon blast brings us all together on the beach. A hovercraft appears in what we estimate to be the six-to-seven-o'clock zone. We watch as the claw dips down five different times to retrieve the pieces of one body, torn apart. It's impossible to tell who it was. Whatever happens at six o'clock, I never want to know.

Peeta draws a new map on a leaf, adding a JJ for jabberjays in the four-to-five-o'clock section and merely writing beast in the one where we saw the tribute collected in pieces.

Finnick weaves yet another water basket and a net for fishing. I take a quick swim and put more ointment on my skin. Then I sit at the edge of the water, cleaning the fish Finnick catches and watching the sun drop below the horizon. The bright moon is already on the rise, filling the arena with that strange twilight. We're about to settle down to our meal of raw fish when the anthem begins. And then the faces...

Cashmere. Gloss. Wiress. Mags. The woman from District 5. The morphling who gave her life for Peeta. Blight. The man from 10.

Eight dead. Plus eight from the first night. Two-thirds of us gone in a day and a half. That must be some kind of record.

"They're burning through us," says Johanna.

"Who's left? Besides us five and District Two?" asks Finnick.

"Chaff," says Peeta, without needing to think about it. Perhaps he's been keeping an eye out for him because of Haymitch.

A parachute comes down with a pile of bite-sized square-shaped rolls.

"These are from your district, right, Beetee?" Peeta asks.

"Yes, from District Three," he says. "How many are there?"

Finnick counts them, turning each one over in his hands before he sets it in an exact configuration. I don't know what it is with Finnick and bread, but he seems obsessed with handling it. "Twenty-four."

"An even two dozen, then?" says Beetee.

"Twenty-four on the nose," says Finnick. "How should we divide them?"

"Let's each have three, and whoever is still alive at breakfast can take a vote on the rest," says Johanna. I don't know why this makes me laugh a little. I guess because it's true. When I do, Johanna gives me a look that's almost approving. No, not supporting. But maybe slightly pleased. I look over at Peeta whose slightly smiling and rolling his eyes at me.

We wait until the giant wave has flooded out of the ten-to-eleven-o'clock section, wait for the water to recede, and then go to that beach to make camp. Theoretically, we should have a full twelve hours of safety from the jungle. There's an unpleasant chorus of clicking, probably from some evil type of insect, coming from the eleven-to-twelve-o'clock wedge. But whatever is making the sound stays within the confines of the jungle and we keep off that part of the beach in case.

I don't know how Johanna's still on her feet. She's only had about an hour of sleep since the Games started. Peeta and I volunteer for the first watch because we're better rested and because we want some time alone. The others go out immediately, although Finnick's sleep is restless. Now and then I hear him murmuring Annie's name.

Peeta and I sit on the damp sand, facing away from each other, my right shoulder and hip pressed against his. I watch the water as he watches the jungle, which is better for me. I'm still haunted by the voices of the jabberjays, which unfortunately the insects can't drown out. After a while, I rest my head against his shoulder. Feel his hand caress my hair.

"Katniss," he says softly, "it's no use pretending we don't know what the other one is trying to do."

No, I guess there isn't, but it's no fun discussing it, either. Well, not for us, anyway. The Capitol viewers will be glued to their sets so they don't miss one wretched word. We always end up arguing when it's brought up. Besides I'm really confused on my opinion of this topic.

"I don't know what kind of deal you think you've made with Haymitch, but you should know he made me promises as well." Of course, I know this, too. He told Peeta they could keep me alive so that he wouldn't be suspicious.

"So I think we can assume he was lying to one of us." This gets my attention. A double deal. A second promise. With only Haymitch knowing which one is real. I raise my head, meet Peeta's eyes.

"Why are you saying this now?"

"Because I don't want you forgetting how different our circumstances are. If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life," he says.

"I would never be happy again." I start to object but he puts a finger to my lips. "It's different for you. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living."

Peeta pulls the chain with the gold disk from around his neck. He holds it in the moonlight so I can clearly see the Mockingjay. Then his thumb slides along a catch I didn't notice before and the disk pops open. It's not solid, as I had thought, but a locket. And within the locket are photos. On the right side, my mother and Prim, laughing. And on the left, Gale. Actually smiling.

There is nothing in the world that could break me faster at this moment than these three faces. After what I heard this afternoon... It is the perfect weapon.

"Your family needs you, Katniss," Peeta says.

My family. My mother. My sister. And my pretend cousin Gale. But Peeta's intention is clear. That Gale really is my family, or will be one day, if I live. That I'll marry him. So Peeta's giving me his life and Gale at the same time. To let me know I shouldn't ever have doubts about it. But I would never marry Gale, Peeta or no Peeta.

Everything. That's what Peeta wants me to take from him.

"No one really needs me," he says, and there's no self-pity in his voice. It's true his family doesn't need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me. Then of course our baby definitely will, but that's just if it lives after birth.

"I do," I say. "I need you."

He looks upset, takes a deep breath as if to begin a long argument, and that's no good, no good at all because he'll start going on about Prim and my mother and the baby and I'll get even more confused. So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss.

There is nothing but us to interrupt us. And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

It's the first crack of the lightning storm-the bolt hitting the tree at midnight-that brings us to our senses. It rouses Finnick as well. He sits up with a sharp cry. I see his fingers digging into the sand as he reassures himself that whatever nightmare he inhabited wasn't real.

"I can't sleep anymore," he says.

"One of you should rest." Only then does he seem to notice our expressions, the way we're wrapped around each other. "Or both of you. I can watch alone."