Chapter 5

“3…2…1”

It’s bedlam. Everyone is running everywhere.  There’s blood and terror.  Blaine sprints in the opposite direction, straight toward the field stretching away from the cornucopia.  He hears screams.  The horrible screams of children being killed.  He runs and runs and runs, until he hits something.  His momentum causes both him and the object he ran into to fall over. 

He sees blue eyes, a tall, lean body.  Kurt. “Kurt!” he voices.

“Blaine!” and Kurt hugs him, but soon the hug turns into a kiss. And not a gentle one.  An aggressive-tongue-in-throat one.  But Blaine didn’t pull away.  He fell into it.  It briefly flashes his mind that there are cameras, they are in the arena now, where everything is seen.  But how are there cameras?  Everything is so flat, barren.  And where did everyone else go?  The arena is so empty, Blaine should have been able to see everyone.  But these ideas just flitted through his mind.  Kurt felt so good.

But then, Kurt pulled away, and Blaine saw that the tributes were now surrounding him.  They were all (all 23, hadn’t some died?) covered in blood.  He saw Cindy, holding a knife.  Blaine felt a weight in his hand.  He looked down. A sword.  His father’s short advice, “Stay alive,” seemed to echo all around him.  Cindy and Kurt, now holding a bow cocked with an arrow, began walking towards him, while the rest of the tributes laughed maniacally.

They both looked empty, devoid of emotion.  They stopped when they were standing directly in front of him. 

Cindy spoke then, her voice monotonous and droning, “What are you going to do Blaine? Kill us or be killed? It’s your decision.”

Kurt simply grinned and lifted his bow so the arrow was pointed right at Blaine’s heart.

Blaine glanced down at the sword in his hand.  He thought back to the pact he’d made both with himself and with Kurt, but was this even Cindy? It sure didn’t seem like the same, sweet little girl he’d known before. But did that matter now?  He lifted his sword.

Everything was flashing, he was angry and sad and he wanted to scream.  What cruel fate was this? What would this accomplish?  He made his decision.

He dropped the sword.  Almost immediately, Kurt pulled back the string and let go.

He heard a scream, but realized it was his own.  Blaine was back in bed.  He’d broken into a cold sweat.  His heart beat felt like it was slowing down from sprinting a mile.

“Just a dream, a horrible dream,” he tried to reassure himself.  It had felt so real.

The thing was, though, it really wasn’t all too far-fetched.

There was light coming in through the windows.  This was it.  Blaine would be in the arena in probably less than two hours. 

The night before, after…well after everything, Blaine and Kurt had parted on good terms.  Elated, to say the least.  Though, neither had had the heart to discuss what would happen once inside.  Once everything changed, and there was no going back.  It was too unbearable to think about. 

An hour later, all of the tributes were rushed to the boarding ships.  They would be taken to the arena and released.  Kick-off was only an hour away.

Once in his ship, Blaine was given his clothing by his stylist who was already there.  First he put on a t-shirt and khaki shorts.  From this he gathered the arena would be warm, but then he was handed insulated pants and a winter coat.  These were a light gray color.  The attire was very contradicting.  What was in the arena anyway?

His stylist patted him on the back as the intercom announced 2 minutes.  This was really happening.

Blaine went into the tube that would lead him to his death.  He could still hear the countdown as the tube closed around him. 

One minute, Thirty seconds.

He went up, up, up.  The walls of the tube felt so constricting, so forbidding.  He looked up and saw a small circle of light.  As he was moved closer and closer to the circle, his mind switched to survival mode.

Get away from the cornucopia.  It’s not safe there.  If you see survival equipment close to you, grab it, if not, run anyways.  First thing to do is find water.  When you know where water is, you will know how to survive.

He reached the top and looked around.  Everyone was in a semi-circle around the mouth of the cornucopia, a large metal cone filled with weapons and supplies.  Blaine took in the environment.  From where he was standing, Blaine could see a mountain range about a mile away, straight ahead.  Immediately around him stretched a prairie.  How in the hell had the game makers managed to make those two atmospheres work together?

 Forty-five.

Where would he go? The most logical option was to run for the mountains, but in order to bee line for it, he’d have to run straight through the blood bath.

Thirty.

No, he’d have to run around, but the whole prairie area was so barren, so open.  He’d have to flat-out sprint.

Twenty-five.

Cindy.  He had to find Cindy.  She was on the opposite end of the circle.

Twenty.

He tried to make eye-contact with her.  Tried to motion which way to run, but she was too absorbed in her own fear.

Ten.

He would need to find her. 

Nine.

Hopefully she wouldn’t die in the blood-bath.

Eight.

Kurt.

Seven.

He spotted Kurt.

Six.

Eye-contact.

Five.

And they both knew.

Four.

They knew that no matter what happened…

Three.

They had to try.

Two.

And they had to win.

One.

Or at least one of them.

And then the chaos.

Blaine’s first objective was to run away from the bloodbath.  So he did, but as he was sprinting away, he caught sight of a supplies bag.  Too perfect.  No one was within twenty feet of it.  He had to.  And he did, but continued running.  The bag was heavy.  Once he had run far enough away to be safe, he turned towards the mountains and continued running.  He was about 50 yards away from the action now, but far enough to be relatively safe.  He saw everyone attacking each other.  There were knives in the air and broken bodies on the ground.  Then he saw him. Kurt was running in the bloodbath.  What was he doing?  Was he stupid?

As he watched, a girl(it looked like the girl from Kurt’s district) was walking up behind him.  Slowly, but surely.  Amidst all of the disorder, this seemed to be happening in slow motion. Kurt was leaning down trying to get an arrow out of the ground. Blaine wanted to scream, tell him to watch out, but that wouldn’t do any good.  Instead he turned, knowing that the girl wasn’t paying attention to him.  He turned towards the bloodbath.  This was stupid, so stupid.  He should just run away.  If Kurt died, well he died.  But those things didn’t matter as Blaine ran into the slaughter.  He reached Kurt just as the girl reached for her knife.  He jumped on him and they fell to the ground as the knife collided with the ground beside Blaine’s head.

Blaine didn’t have time to breathe before the girl was grunting with frustration and attempting to pull out another knife.  Kurt’s eyes looked horrified, shocked and relieved all at the same time.  Blaine quickly jumped to his feet and pulled Kurt with him.  The second knife had gotten caught in her jacket as she was pulling it out, giving them just enough time to run away. 

“I’ll get you, Hummel!” she screamed after them. Then an evil laugh.

They had been running for about five minutes before either of them attempted to speak.

“What…were you…thinking?” Blaine attempted to chastise in between heaving breaths. 

Kurt held up a finger and stopped running.  They were approximately a mile from the cornucopia and it seemed like no one had broken from the madness yet.  Just a few hundred feet away the terrain turned to rock and jutted up into mountains.  It was hard to tell how far the range extended.  In either direction along the horizon it stretched into infinity.  But who knew what was just beyond the peaks.

Kurt began, having caught his breath enough to speak normally, “I needed a bow.  And…the only arrows I could see were stuck in the ground.  I tried to make sure no one was paying attention, but I guess I wasn’t very thorough. I’m sorry. Okay?” Kurt held an expression that seemed like a mixture between anger and appreciation.  “And you know what?  I didn’t need your help anyways.  I could have handled her.”

Blaine threw his head back, laughing without jest. “You could have handled her?  Oh really?  You know, you’re right I think you definitely could have handled that knife being hurled at your face.  You definitely had that entire situation  wrapped around your finger, didn’t you?  Well, Kurt Hummel, let me tell you something.  If it wasn’t for me, you. Would. Be. Dead. Right. Now. Hate to break it to you.”

Kurt just stood there, staring at him.  Kurt knew Blaine was right.  And it was very scary. Very real.  Everything sort of seemed like a dream (well, nightmare) right now.  It was so surreal.  Death was so surreal. 

Then they heard the cannons, signaling that the initial bloodbath was pretty much over.  One shot for every death.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, Blaine counted.

“Ten dead,” he said out loud.  “We need to go.  We need to find Cindy, I hope she’s alive.”

“You should have gone after her, not me.”

“I didn’t see her,” he admitted.  Then they were silent.  They walked now toward the mountains. 

It was hot.  Really hot.  Blaine was surprised he was just now realizing it.  Part of the heat probably came from the amount of insulation he had on, but he could feel sweat forming at his temples.  He stopped momentarily to shed his coat. He’d get the pants later.  The mountains jutted above them, forbidding and intimidating.  Blaine decided that their best option would be to climb the mountain, get elevation, maybe see a layout of the arena.  He told Kurt this and the other boy agreed.

Neither one mentioned that weird thing hanging between them.  That strange unidentified emotion.  How could they? They were watched now.  Every move they made was monitored.  But really neither one wanted to bring up anyways. 

The first peak they came to was a vertical cliff, it seemed that at the top it gave way to a slope.  Blaine knew that this would take considerable upper body strength to climb.

“What’s in that bag?” Kurt asked, looking around them for about the fifteenth time, searching for any sign of lurking killers.

“Umm…I’m not really sure.”  Blaine pulled the bag from his shoulder and unzipped the top.  He pulled out a small zipped bag labeled “Sleeping bag” (how a sleeping bag fit in such a small container, he had no clue) and then a canteen.  There were a couple of energy bars and some sunglasses.  At the bottom of the bag he found some climbing gear(how lucky) and a pocket knife. 

He pulled out the bundle of ropes and pulleys.  He wasn’t quite sure how these things worked, but Kurt seemed to have an idea what to do. The other boy grabbed the ropes and configured them so the two were tied together. 

Blaine had, obviously, never been rock climbing or done anything resembling rock climbing, but apparently Kurt was superman or something and took off straight away.  The act was very taxing and Blaine tried to focus on what Kurt was doing, but it was difficult.  They were on different rock positions and their movements didn’t match up perfectly.   By the time they were just twenty feet up (the wall was about sixty) Blaine was out of breath and his muscles ached.  Everything hurt, and he just wanted to think about something else, anything else. 

So naturally, he thought of Kurt.  He cursed himself for it, but was grateful for the distraction.  He spared a look over at Kurt’s face as they moved.  He was so perfect.  He’d never really looked at Kurt, and one could probably say that it was impossible in such a situation to do so.  But Blaine would disagree.  His skin was a pale, porcelain-like white.  His features pointed, but beautiful in their symmetry.

And then were his eyes.  Blaine would notice his eyes over and over again.  He could lose himself in the blue over and over again.  Drown in it.  

Lastly were his lips, and with those came the oh-so-recent memory of the kiss.  The kiss.  It felt like it had happened in a different world entirely, but so close at the same time.  Blaine remembered how those lips felt pressed up against his own.  Searching, memorizing.  Anything they could do just to feel wanted, desired, noticed. 

But he couldn’t think about that. Not now. Not now that things had changed and they were facing death.  Everything had to be different now.

So it surprised Blaine when they reached the top and Kurt, who was slightly ahead, pulled him up over the edge. 

Blaine turned so he was facing out.  The sight before him took his breath away, though it was mostly gone to begin with.

For miles in front of him stretched a scenic field, then beyond that he could see a forest, but he could tell that the arena didn’t proceed into it. The air seemed to waver just about the edge of the field, so very far away, but still noticeable.  This arena was strictly field and mountain.  Behind him the mountains rose up again, much higher and from what he could see spanned quite a ways beyond what was first in sight.

Kurt who had tied the ropes and dropped them in Blaine’s bag broke the silence, “We need water.”  Then he began walking.