SILVER • THE HUNGER GAMES ¹

| 13. LONGING OF A LONESOME LIFE

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

( LONGING OF A LONESOME LIFE )

JAMES' POINT OF VIEW

"STAY PRECISELY STILL, JAMES. Hey. . . are you listening? Can you hear me?," Bella's voice rung as I woke from my sudden episode. My hand trailed to my forehead, my fingers waltzing across the bloodied skin and red liquid that cover it. Rushing above me I saw a frantic Bella, who'd seemed to have dragged me under the tree we had previously spent our night and away from the opening around us. My hair was caught in leaves and sand, a mixture of the two also stirring into the crimson cascading from my head. I groaned at my aching eyes, waiting until Bella returned into my line of sight to talk.

     "Bella," I murmured under the coughing of blood and sand, "How long have I been out."

     "Oh, I don't know. . . About an hour?" She responded, sitting by me as I slowly but surely tried lifting my head up.

     "An hour! Were there any cannons? Have you seen anyone?" I scrambled.

     "No — thank goodness," she sighed, her hand returning to my forehead to wipe up some of my rebellious blood with some sort of fabric from the sleeping bag. "But it took me a while to drag you back from that open clearing. Out of all the places you could have landed."

     I laughed, "Next time, I'll try to look where I'm falling."

     "Drink this," she insisted, pulling a small bottle out from her bag to show me. "It came about five minutes ago with some cream. I did the best I could with that." She grinned, miming poking at my wound with her index finger in excitement as I drank what tasted like rich Capitol medicine from the bottle. "It said it was from a guy named Bradley. . . Do you know him?"

     I nodded sincerely as she smiled back at my reaction. Leaning back on the sandy dune as I, she breathed heavily like a weight had been lifted off of her chest after a long, intense battle. But, then again, it wasn't really a sigh of relief — more of a short, silent laugh as she shook her head playfully. And as we rested, watching the sun rise further into the metallic sky and the day begin peacefully unlike the first, I shuffled up some more in an attempt to regain my strength from the fall.

Then I watched as Bella sat, her shoulder connected with mine and her hands sticky from applying the medicinal cream to my forehead. She wasn't truly that selfish brute I had seen previously in training, but someone who cared. She hadn't run off, suspecting me to have died after the fall, or ended my suffering mercifully. She had stayed by my side, an ally I barely even knew, and nursed me back to consciousness. Bella wasn't all the pretended to be — and that was perhaps why the Careers had underestimated her before.

"So when are we leaving?" I asked, anticipating the moment I could get back onto my feet and continue our journey to find our little rogue ally.

Her head snapped towards mine, shocked, and said, "Hold up — we're not leaving until you're fighting fit again."

"But we've got to look for Silver."

"If she's all you've cracked her up to be, I think she'll be fine," Bella explained, her arm gripping mine to prevent me from staggering up so soon. "She's a girl with a score of ten — she has got Career levels of expertise."

And as she stopped her chatter, I looked around flabbergasted at her persistence. To the left of her was a wounded boy who was stupid enough to become allies with a Career and the right of the District Four Tribute was a blood tipped trident of which she had wounded said boy. If it wasn't for my incredibly useless loyalty and the fact that I was embarrassingly unarmed, I would have been dead by then — preferably and most likely at the bloodbath.  

"Why the hell do you care? Why do you want to help me?" I pleaded, moving my body painfully to face hers, demanding the answer I wanted to hear from her own lips. "What motive don't you have to kill me right now?"

"Because I do, James," she argued, her eyes swelling with what I had convinced myself to be invisible tears. "Because I've got enough guts to team up with you and risk my life betraying all that I've grown up to be. I don't want to be like them, James. I'm not a psychopath and I'm certainly not going to kill for sport. I've trained like a Career, but I won't be one."

Bella reappeared at my side, her face full of emotions and disgust at my questioning, and snatched the tub of cream at my side. She unscrewed the sponsor gif with absolute rage of her past experience and scooped out the cream with the force of a survivor. "It says to be applied every ten minutes for maximum effect. . . And I'm sorry for shouting —" momentarily stopping inches from my face, she sighed "— And I promise I didn't drop my trident on purpose. I don't want to hurt Silver and I, undeniably, don't want to hurt you."

Almost stunned to a silence, my eyes peered down at the bloodstained mess of my hands and then glanced up as Bella began to clean the tips of her trident, washed with my blood and etched with the memory of her mistake. I just couldn't carry on like this much further, I just couldn't blame her for everything that had gone wrong since the Games had begun. None of it had been her fault.

"Why didn't you go solo? It would have minimised the risk of finding untrustworthy allies," I stated curiously.

     "'Cause I'd be dead in a second by myself," she sighed, after a moment then laughing at herself pitifully. "I don't think Althea and the other Careers took my refusal kindly. But know they might know I'm with you and Silver. . . They'll back off for a while. Although, if they find Silver before we do I —"

     "— Don't think about that!" I cut her off. And as I sharply turned my head to scold her thoughts, a shot of pain climbed furiously through my head and left me in a short daze of dizziness. My voice raised, almost nearing a point of anger at Bella's uncertainty. "We will find her, alright? Stop doubting yourself and stop doubting Silver. If you dare do that I will leave you right here and find her myself. . ."

     Her voice quietened at my abrupt and unexpected response, shuffling back in her seat.

     "James, I didn't mean it like that. . ."

     "I know."

"I don't doubt her; I just don't trust her. You see, I volunteered for a 12 year old girl," she said, "And your friend reminds me of her so much. She was called Cierra, and I had trained with her for a while before the Games. The only reason I'm here is because she though she was ready, but I really didn't agree. She needed a constant ally, someone to support her, to watch over her as she fought as a last resort. Kestrel couldn't provide that — he was a lone wolf — and I had to step in."

     A took a long, thought provoking breath and scanned the familiarity of the parallel of the two stories. This one I was only listener, but the other I felt I was quite a part of. I had realised that there was so much truth in Bella's message and I had to do something about it. It wouldn't take just my weak self to help Silver; we needed a team; we needed to structure ourselves like an army to survive.

     And, at last, Bella had continued, breaking my silence and explaining herself, "Silver is strong, but she needs us. She needs you. And I think you need her more than you think."

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