itinere | [open] action + text;

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{criminal minds: derek morgan

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It's everything Katniss eventually expected of Itinere. She knew that this world was too good to be true. Being reunited with her sister, living a life of relative anonymity and peace. It had all been too good. Too nice for anything in her life. Maybe it just took Itinere's Gamemakers a little longer to decide on properly playing the game. Ultimately the reason doesn't matter. Katniss only really has two goals as soon as the electricity goes out again: keep Prim alive and keep herself alive. In that order.

From the very second the sky turns dark, she's on guard. She's almost continuously by her sister's side. Nothing is going to happen to Prim. Nothing. Her sister has suffered enough because of her. Whatever happens next, Prim is to be kept safe from harm.

On occasion, she can be found alone. Usually she's on the outskirts of the town hunting. It's harder to see in the perpetual night but she does her best. The flashlight helps a little. Now more than ever, Katniss finds it important to stock up as much food as possible. People are too comfortable here with their easy access to food. Surely that has to go soon.

At some point, as soon as she notices the first building start to crumble, Katniss finally reaches out to the rest of the community. It's a simple text message:

What kind of game are they playing?

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Aside from a vibe of a really weird and creepy one? I wish I knew. This is definitely a level up from that power outage a few months ago.

Games aren't supposed to be fun or safe. [At least not the sort that she's talking about. Whatever is going on isn't some sort of childhood enjoyment. It's as sadistic as the white roses that had appeared shortly after Katniss had first shown up here. And far more dangerous.] Cities don't disappear.

I've never seen one disappear like this, no, but before I stepped into this one, one of the last things I experienced in my home was most of a country being lifted into the air, then blown up. Surprisingly, not many casualties considering.

Are you okay aside from wondering what's going on? [She asks because she'd help anyone who needed it in whatever way she could.]

[Cities don't lift into the air either. There's been very little of this day that has been of comfort to Katniss. She's starting to doubt that any part of the day might be.

It makes her more irritable than normal.]

Are any of us okay right now?

They've called them glitches before. This is a whole new level of crazy though. Looks like the city is starting to fall apart. You and your sister okay?

[It takes her a few minutes to respond. Mostly as she stares at the screen and does her best to remember the man's name. Derek. The one who works at the gym. Who introduced Prim to funnel cake.]

For now. Are you okay?

[Because she thinks Prim would want her to ask.]

We're fine over here. Hoping this all fixes itself soon.

[ Like the other glitches did. ]

Before it gets any worse would be good.

Me too.

[There's a pause between that message and the next as Katniss considers her next words. She doesn't like asking for help. Or putting her trust in people she doesn't really know all that well. But what other choice does she have right now?]

I need someone to help watch Prim. When I hunt. I can share food with you in return.

Prim is basically not leaving her sister's side right now. It makes her nervous, the way the sky turns black. It's like her nightmares and what she's seen all her life of the Games. This is just the kind of thing the Gamemakers would do and it makes her so nervous.

If Katniss weren't here, Prim would probably be in a panic.

Fire isn't something they can risk often, but when they do, Prim sits by it, trying to be brave and yet feeling like she's twelve years old all over again and she is in the Games instead of her sister. It's not a good feeling.

"Katniss?" she speaks up after a while. "Do you think this is different from losing electricity in July?"

Because she sure does.

That Prim is practically glued to her side is more than acceptable to Katniss. Harm had come to her sister when they had been separated. Katniss had been incapable of getting to Prim in time in the Capitol. She had been forced to watch instead. That's not something that Katniss will ever allow herself to go through again. Ever.

It is tempting to panic. There's no one here that Katniss trusts to keep an eye on Prim when she does have to leave her sister behind. For the first time, she's grateful that Prim has made friends here. She can trust Prim's judgement.

Tonight though they're together. Sitting by a fire with a bird roasting via a makeshift spit. Katniss looks up from the phone to try and smile at her sister. It's fake. She won't lie to Prim. Her sister isn't the little girl she had once tried to protect.

"Yeah." She turns the spit slowly. "Have you seen anything on the phones?"

The whole situation is weird. It doesn't feel the same to Prim, but she had wanted to ask Katniss to be sure. They seem to be on the same page there. Prim isn't sure if that's good or bad at this point. The lights are out and nothing seems celebratory. Their house doesn't seem very... safe anymore, which is probably why they aren't inside anymore.

"Not much," she admits, shaking her head. "Someone said it doesn't seem to be electrical on our end. So we think whoever's in charge let it go or cut it off. But it feels scarier than malicious."

It feels like the Gamemasters. Prim doesn't voice that. She doesn't need to. The Games are probably on both their minds.

"I haven't heard from many people and that worries me. Have you met Derek yet?"

She can survive the collapse of buildings. She can survive a lack of electricity and indoor plumbing and any loss of modern convenience. She can even survive a lack of steady food in her life. It's the mutts that terrify her. That giant, tentacled creature right outside the glass dome. Katniss doesn't know what to make of that. Of what it is or its appearance as a whole. It scares her. It scares her a lot.

Katniss has done her best to hide that fear from her sister but Prim has become very perceptive in the past couple of years. She's become wise. As much as she'd prefer to protect her sister from all the danger in the world, she can't. And she takes what Prim has to say very seriously. Everything strange that happens here will always have a degree of maliciousness in Katniss' eyes. But Prim has a point. This is terrifying.

She pulls out her own phone and glances at the screen. "He responded to my message."

Everything is different for them because of their connection to the Games. They know what kinds of Arenas are possible, how things can be manipulated, how reality can be manipulated and changed. This feels... similar to what Prim thinks an Arena must have been like. Terrifying in its own way, but the desperate need to survive is still there.

"He did?" she asks, glancing at her sister again. Prim is curious to see how Katniss likes him. "What did he say?"

It's not just being in the Games. After watching a lifetime of previous Hunger Games, she knows all of the perversity that Gamemakers are capable of. Like that creature lurking outside of the glass for the past few days. Katniss had once considered the lizard mutts that had stalked them in the Capitol sewers the most terrifying muttations that she's ever seen.

She had been wrong.

For a brief second, she glances up at the creature with a frown. She doesn't know how high up the glass dome actually is but it's clear that it would take more than one arrow to kill it. A lot more.

"That he'd help me look after you, little duck," Katniss replies, looking back at her sister. "I don't want you to be alone when I go hunt."

Prim knows exactly what it means that Katniss is agreeing to let someone else watch over her. Whether or not Katniss really knows Derek, she's trusting Prim's judgment, trusting that someone else won't hurt her sister. That means a lot in so many different ways. Prim will make sure not to take that for granted.

"You can trust him, Katniss," she says rather than voice any of those thoughts. "He helped watch out for me when I first got here. He'll do a good job now, too." She will always vouch for him. Derek is a very close friend at this point, someone she trusts implicitly. "Do you want to try meeting him now?"

In some ways, this end of the world thing is new to Peter. He's had dreams, visions and seen paintings about it for months now. He's afraid that he's going to be responsible for destroying at least a part of the world, but the end of the world back home was never like this. He's been working with his powers the last several weeks, making sure that all the work he'd done with Claude wasn't for naught. Right now, he's particularly glad that he's been keeping in practice.

Right now, Peter is just doing the responsible citizen thing. He's constantly on the move, looking for people to help. He's stocking supplies to hand out if necessary and he's trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. He's not being terribly careful since he can't be harmed, which is why Katniss might see him coming out of one of the crumbling buildings, his shirt on fire. He bats at it without too much concern then stops, still within the danger zone when he sees Katniss.

"Hey--H-hi."

Then

He waves like the giant dork that he is.

She's been on her best behavior the entire time that Katniss has been here. The logic had made sense to her: if she wasn't a threat to Itinere's Gamemakers, her sister's life wouldn't be put in danger again. She had been wrong. But in the chaos of the past few days, she doesn't know who to blame for their current situation. She doesn't know who to attack.

With all of the buildings crumbling, Katniss has had a difficult time finding a safe place for her and Prim to stay. Ultimately, she's settled on one of the parks. But the hunting there isn't all that good which means treks when they need food. Though Katniss hates leaving her sister behind, bringing Prim to a hunt isn't a good idea. Neither is bringing her near any of the crumbling buildings when Katniss opts to scavenge for supplies.

She's on the threshold of entering the danger zone herself when she watches Peter bat at the fire on his shirt. For a few seconds, she freezes. Katniss knows exactly what it's like to be on fire. The pain of a burn. Without thinking, she rushes over to throw what's left in her water bottle on to his shirt.

And then stands there awkwardly when she realizes that the flames might already be out. People don't wave at you when they're on fire. "Oh. Hi." Then in a more accusatory tone: "You were on fire."

Peter hasn't been misbehaving either, not really. He's tried to blow the door open with a variety of powers and he's tried to use Hiro's power to return home, but he hasn't destroyed anything. He's got no idea who to attack either. Instead, he's been trying to help people when and where he could.

There's not any place truly safe, but the park is as good as any. At least they can keep an eye on what is going on there. Peter doesn't know the first thing about hunting, but he's gathered as many supplies as he can, distributed them where he could and saved what he'd needed.

He gets splashed with water and he blinks. "Uhm...thanks," he tells her. The shirt is burnt clean through in some places but his skin is only a bit red and getting less red by the moment. "Yeah. I'm--I'm not now." Well this is awkward because obviously he's not on fire now. "A-are you okay?" he stutters out a little. It's more to change the subject of him being on fire than anything.

Where Peter's tried to help everyone he can, Katniss has kept her attention mainly on her sister's well-being. She's kept herself isolated from the rest of the community in Itinere. As a result, they mean little to her. Keeping Prim alive and well is all Katniss cares about. The food she hunts is for them. And to use as necessary to curry favors.

She stands there awkwardly for a few seconds more, staring at her empty bottle. Not only did she waste water but she made a fool out of herself in the process. But Peter thanks her anyway. That's when she looks up and notices the burnt holes in his shirt and the redness of the skin beneath. Though Katniss wants so much to forget the feel of flames on her own skin but she can't. He looks sunburned, not fire-licked. She frowns and without thinking, reaches out to touch one of the red patches.

"I'm fine," she says dismissively. People burn. She hadn't imagined those flames. Had she? Shaking her head, Katniss moves her hand away to roll up the sleeve of her shirt. Months have passed and the scars from her own burns remain crystal clear. "Girl on fire - boys on fire - burn. Your shirt's burned through and you don't have any marks.

If it matters, Katniss has only done what most of the people in town have. They're concerned about those that they care and everyone else is on their own. Peter is helping because he can, and also (though he wouldn't admit this) because it's just the kind of person he is. He's a nurse by profession.

He's used to people reacting oddly to him. She actually reacted very logically. He doesn't move when she touches one of the red patches, instead watches the expression on her face, trying to gauge her reaction. She can't hurt him, literally so he's not terribly worried about it.

No, she hadn't imagined the flames. He swallows hard, watching her for a moment longer before he answers. "I don't burn or rather...I do, but I heal. From anything." Well, almost anything. She could decapitate him, but he's not really into to sharing his only weakness.

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