13 was waiting outside of the bunker.

The earth around him was dead. Holes cut into the ground from heaps of bombs. There were no bodies. The methods of execution were so brutal and calculated that there was no room for human remains, only piles of ash. You either got to safety in time or you didn't, and that was that. 

At least 103 dead with this new wave of bombs. Most of them being desperate citizens trying to make it to the other districts, praying that the Capitol would show mercy. Couldn't even make it halfway, huh?

He couldn't tell what he was looking at. Giant eddies of dust swirled through the air, obscuring the sun and all the hope that could've come with it.

He thought of the coal in district 12 and the dying miners, hands sculpted for pickaxes, not the triggers of guns. 

Where was she?

He didn't know. Couldn't even begin to. Wasn't sure if he ever would, and not many minutes of the day were left, if the darkness around him said anything. He was unsure how thick the grainy cloud of filth permeating the air around him actually was, so it very well could still be the morning, or the afternoon, just as well as it could be evening or night. Actually, too light to be night, but he would prefer to think that their suffering could crystalize in the very air that he breathed and form something better, because agony must always mean something. If his trials could be so abundant and lead to something so lovely as the sun, it would mean something. Even if it killed off what was left of the sun instead, it would mean something.

(It usually didn't; he knew this well.)

And who would help him when the fantasy fell apart in shards of glass around him? Who would help when he cut his skin upon them? Who would dry his hands of the warm blood running down in little rivers from his scarred arms? Who would come back, even when the bombs rained again? She would. She must. She always did. The other districts bowed, but she wouldn't. Yes, the miners were not built to fight nor last, but she had hunters, too. She had singers who had enough breath to run for cover before every assault started. It counted for a lot. More than what some of the other districts had.

(But not nearly enough.)

The bunkers could last at least 5 more raids. He didn't care much for thinking about the people within them if they weren't making food, or ammunition, or in the process of using it. Anything else wasn't worth his time yet. The only thing about the people that really mattered was if he had enough to fall back on should he surrender- but he wouldn't. 

He loved rationalizing these things. People were dying, and he was thinking of heaps of stone and the one person he could count on. But where was she now? Somewhere in the haze ahead of him, surely. If he could imagine her as a certain presence, sure to be waiting around the next corner, he could find a bit of peace. The only thing that thought limited him from doing was actually getting up to check.

And through his half-lidded eyes, something showed up in the distance.

It started as a blob, indistinct and hardly noticeable, no different from any of the other shapes creeping through the air. It got a bit closer, though, and it started to look like a person. Soon, it became one. And she stood in front of him, just like he'd imagined. Was he hallucinating?

Her voice, curiously wispy and elusive, fled from her mouth like a wounded deer. “Couldn't make it any easier on me, could you? Just had to sit down?”

He groaned in response, glaring at 12, “Haven't you got anything better to do?-” What a lie, he'd been wanting this, “-your people are dying.” So were his, and he was calculating how many more could go.

Her eyes briefly misted over, lips pressing shut. She did everything in such a final way. If she stopped talking, you might be fooled into thinking she'll never do so again. When she frowns, you forget what it's like when she smiles. So, for a bit, he wondered if she would ever reply. Maybe she'd walk away and he'd never see her again. 

“Yours are too,” she finally hissed. 

12 sat down and settled beside him, and next to each other, they seemed more bedraggled than usual. Huntress and scientist, they had nothing left to lose except for their dignity.

One of them decided that they'd be trading it first.

“I'm leaving,” she said very simply, very cordially, as if this was the natural order of things. As if this was the way things were supposed to be all along. 

The world stopped spinning.

“What? But-” she couldn't. He saw the citizens, saw them go crawling back to the capitol, saw them collapse and die. Was 12 being serious?

“You're right. My people are dying. Not everyone can fight like you. I don't think anyone can.”

But nobody can accompany me as well as you! He wanted to wail, wanted to scream, we've made it so far! Who cares about the people? There only needs to be us!

But he saw it in her eyes, she didn't want it to be them. She simply didn't like him in that way. 12 always seemed to slip through his fingers like sand, and he hated how that was what kept him in place next to her even when she did nothing but move away again. She could traverse the woods between 12 and 13 all she wanted, come by to the bunker and say hello, dance around him with steps as light as a hunter's practiced gait upon the forest floor. But that's all it would ever be, wouldn't it? Around him. Never actually with him.

All that he could do to whisper even a fraction of his utter hurt at her abandonment was to stare at her for a bit. His body was so much slower than his brain. 

So as she stood up and walked away, he didn't do anything. He only thought Please, please, don't do this to me. Why won't you love me?