#and Peeta may have done the same if not for the reaping

[mollywog]

“He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner,’” Peeta says.

This is pretty much all we get on the Mrs. Everdeen/Mr. Mellark saga.

I’m sort of enthralled by the idea that kind and quiet Mr. Mellark silently admired Katniss’s mother from afar, unable to build the courage to speak to her until it was too late, still haunted by all the ‘what ifs.’

[maggie32432]

Prisoners - Finnick Odair Imagine (Part 3)

Finnick Odair and Sirena Nighthart both won their respective Hunger Games at age 14. Both from District 4. Finnick and Sirena both grow up in the Capitol, though keeping their distance from each other. What happens when both get reaped at the Quarter Quell for the 75th Hunger Games?

Third POV

A few floors above Finnick and Sirena are Peeta and Katniss.

This morning Haymitch Abernathy is taking the time to show Peeta and Katniss all the tributes that they will be facing. Tributes that he is all too familiar with. 

"Cashmere and Gloss. Brother and sister from District 1," he says while showing the pair of siblings on the screen. Both tall and extremely well-built for the Games.  "They won back-to-back Games. Capitol favorites, lots of sponsors, and will indeed be lethal," 

The screen switches to Brutus and Enobaria from District 2.  "What's with her teeth?" Katniss asks, referring to the sharpened teeth on the woman, 

"She had them filed into fangs so she could rip people's throats out," Haymitch says, increasing the nerves of both Peeta and Katniss. 

"District 3. Wiress and Beetee. Not fighters, but indeed brilliantly intelligent," Haymitch says, showing the two older tributes on the screen,  "He won his games by electrocuting six tributes at once," 

They both raise their eyebrows, impressed that anyone without fighting skills was capable of winning the games, 

"District 6. The morphlings. Basically, won their Games by hiding until everyone else was dead," Haymitch explains, "Self-medicating ever since. Which I applaud, but indeed not a threat," He says. 

The screen switches to reveal a blonde man with a white sweater on the screen, a smirk plastered on his face. Beside him is an intense-looking girl with bright blue hair and shocking blue eyes, she doesn't share the same smirk, but instead a serious look and sharp jawline.  "Finnick Odair and Sirena Nighthart, right?" Katniss asks, 

"Yes, both from District 4. Both won their respective back-to-back Games at age 14, being the youngest ever. They both are the Capitol darlings and are deeply loved here. Finnick is known to be extremely charming and smart. He and Sirena are both extremely skilled in combat, particularly in water," 

"What are their weaknesses?"  "None. That I currently know of," he says, making Katniss and Peeta both more nervous. 

Sirena's POV

I stand intensely still as about a dozen designers and make-up artists work on my face, hair, and costume for the tribute parade.  My dress is blue and quite ocean-y, which is always the goal for District 4. 

Lots and lots of sparkles on my nails, lips, and face. I also have this huge and heavy seashell crown on top of my head. 

I groan as my hair is yanked to be put up in a big dramatic braid. Blue and gold makeup is done on my face while I watch in the mirror, they do fish-scale-looking makeup on the sides of my face. My lipstick is also a vibrant blue and purple color. 

As it all comes together I do admit that I kinda look badass, and much cooler than I did the first time around.  I get guided by all sorts of people down to where the chariots are awaiting us.

Just before I enter the area Finnick walks over to me. 

His costume is insanely more simple than mine is. He has no shirt on and has a fishing net type of bottoms on.  I can't help myself but stare just a little bit at his bare chest.

Just a little.

"Hey, Blue," he says with a grin and I raise an eyebrow,  "C'mon if we're gonna be fighting for our lives together I may as well give you a nickname, right?" he asks and I smile just a little bit, 

together

"You look gorgeous, by the way," he grins and I roll my eyes,  "Flattery gets you nowhere, Odair,"  He smirks while taking my hand to walk into the main area. The hand holding is only a strategy at this point to get people to be on our side and adore us.

That's been the goal since we were 14 years old. 

On the way to our chariot, we say hello to dozens of people that we both know including some victors we will have to fight very very soon.

I continue to remind myself to put on a smile, at least for now. I've always been known to be much more soft-spoken than Finnick, so in some ways, I'm relying on him to strengthen allies for both of us. 

I look to my left to see Katniss Everdeen, and I gotta admit, she is pretty damn intimidating. "Should we go introduce ourselves?" Finnick asks me with a grin and I simply nod. 

He keeps holding my hand, which I appreciate.  "Katniss," I say and she turns to both of us walking over to her, 

"Sirena. Finnick." She says and Finnick asks,  "You want a sugar cube?" 

Where the hell did he find that?

"I mean they're supposed to be for the horses, but they got years to eat sugar, whereas you and I...well if we see something sweet, we better grab it," he says in his charismatic voice. 

Is that flirting? 

"No thanks. But I would love to borrow that outfit someday," Katniss says to him, and I smirk as does he.  "Well, you look pretty terrifying in that getup. What happened to the pretty little girl dresses?" he asks cockily, 

"I outgrew them,"  "You certainly did," he says with a grin, 

"Shame about the Quell thing. You could've made out like a bandit in The Capitol. Jewels, money, anything you wanted," He says,  "Well I don't like jewels and I have more money than I need, so... What do you both do with all your wealth, anyway?" she asks, 

"We don't deal in money," I say, speaking for the both of us,  "Then what riches do you have?"  "Secrets," I reply with a smile,  "What about you, Girl on Fire? Got any secrets worth my time?" He asks, stepping close to her, 

"I'm an open book. Everyone seems to know my secrets before I know them myself," She replies 

I like her 

"Unfortunately, I think that's true," he says, and he turns to see Peeta and Cinna walking over to us, 

"I'm sorry you had to cancel your wedding, I know how devastating that must be for you, " Finnick taunts, leading me to smile again.

We all are well aware of the fact that their love story is a complete sham, anyone trying to survive the Games would've done the same thing.

[thehungergamesbreakdown]

A Katniss Headcanon I Don't Understand

This might ruffle some feathers in a certain section of the Hunger Games fandom. I first noticed it this year, during my reread of the series and the so called "Hunger Game Renissance" that began with the excitmetn for the new movie. I won't be dropping blogs but I've seen numerous posts questioning if Katniss was Aromantic or even stating that she is. And I do not agree with this.

To start, we need some context. What does the word Aromantic mean? According to WebMD, Aromantics are people who "have little or no romantic attraction to others. They may or may not feel sexual attraction". They are essentially on the opposite scale of Asexual. Now there are people who say Katniss is aromantic and while I'm not going to say that they shouldn't think that, I am going to think they are wrong.

Katniss clearly has strong romantic feelings for Peeta. While she is confused by them during "The Hunger Games", she openly said "I don't know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I get," (Collins, 372). I believe that Katniss' stressful situation and the true blend of what needed to be done for the camera but also what was real mixed in Katniss's head and she couldn't tell what was real or not. Hence her confusion. Plus on top of all of this, she is a Sixteen-year-old girl!

It is incredibly telling that in "Catching Fire", whenever Peeta and Katniss sleep in the same bed, neither of them has their usual nightmares. That's how safe they feel with each other.

After everything, in District 13 after Peeta has been taken captive - Katniss has to be sedated at the mere thought that Peeta is being tortured. She comes to a new understanding with her mother after feeling such pain, because her mother shut down after her father's death. The pain she feels when Peeta comes back and was hijacked by the

Then at the very end of it all, the two marry and stay together in Victor Village. It's a sweet, kind ending for them that feels just right. Saying that Katniss is aromantic erases how much she truly cares about Peeta, and I think diminishes Katniss' own autonomy to heal as a child that grew up in a world where her children were always at risk of being reaped. She finally was able to heal after the end.

Is Katniss aromantic? No, certainly not. Is Katniss asexual? You got some evidence pointing there, but that is a topic for another day. This is our last post dissecting Katniss Everdeen, now we move on to the bread boy himself, Peeta Mellark.

[subsiist]

peeta mellark backstory.

TW. abuse, violence, amputation

In one of his earliest memories, Peeta was laying in bed in the room he shared with his older brothers wondering why he was born. Not in an angsty, woe is me sort of way, just generally curious. When he was little, he was still learning how to bake the bread and frost the cakes and was reminded on a daily basis that he was just another mouth to feed. His parents already had two sons, so why another? 

It was never a question he had answered, but the idea of love came wrapped around the idea of being needed from a young age. Or, at the very least, the love he received. His own love was often given without requiring anything in return. His mother was a hard woman to be around - the bruises on his chest or back or sometimes even his face growing up would prove that - but Peeta still loved her. He loved his father, despite the man’s passiveness to the abuse he saw at home. He loved his brothers, Rye and Cael, even if they weren’t exactly close.

Despite often feeling like an outsider in his own home, he could look back on his childhood with a small smile of fondness. They had their moments, didn’t they? Like all those times his father told him bedtime stories at night, quiet so Mama didn’t hear. Like when Rye pulled him towards the wrestling coach with his arm around Peeta’s shoulders and a smile on his face, claiming that he was a kid you’d regret missing out on. Like when Cael would shift in that bed they shared for years so Peeta could have the extra blankets on cold nights without feeling guilty.

And his mother. Peeta’s most recalled memory of her was just after the reaping, when she’d told him that she believed District Twelve would finally win. He was hurt, at the time, but there was a comfort to her words as well.

Because, in the end, he too wanted Katniss Everdeen to win.

He hadn’t expected her to bring him to the Victor’s Village with her but, well, here they are now. Peeta isn’t stupid, he knows what those berries had done to Panem. He reflects on his life often. The childhood that wasn’t that long ago where his heart was built and broken at the same time. The Games that left him without a leg and a head full of nightmares that could only be let go once brushed onto canvas in vivid colors of red and green and silver. 

Of after, where the girl is not really his but will always sorta be his anyway. He loves her. That’s something that is more defining than anything Peeta knows about himself or the Games or this world. And it’s okay that she doesn’t love him because at least he can keep her safe and make sure she stays alive. The marriage they’ve built - been forced to build - isn’t the one he used to picture in his old home with his eyes closed, hearing her sing in his ears despite hours having passed, but there’s still something real to it.

She may not love him, but he thinks she must like him, at least a little bit. Even if she didn’t, he’d still be there with his arms to comfort her at night and his bread to warm her in the morning and his smile to let her know she’s a better person than she thinks she is. It’s okay, he guesses, to do it this way. The proposal had plunged that knife into his heart and the wedding had twisted it, but they’re alive and that’s more they can say for Rue and Thresh and Cato and Clove and Foxface and… and… and…

And he intends to keep it that way. He has people to protect now. Katniss, Haymitch, Effie. Delly. His parents, his brothers. Katniss’ sister. God, even Gale. The list is ever growing. Hazelle now. Chandler. The latter feels especially important for the Quarter Quell, where everyone has seemed to have forgotten him in favor of the Hawthorne matriarch.

Peeta gets it. He does. He knows how much Gale’s mother means to Katniss and, in return, that means something to him. He understands that Haymitch had once had to make a choice and there aren’t any hard feelings for it not being him. But… he won’t let that happen to someone else. He’s a mentor now and that means he has a life in his hands. He might not be able to save either of them, but there are two of them and he’s determined to make it count.

Not to mention there are still the embers of a fire burning, igniting slowly but steadily. Peeta doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but if there’s a rebellion, he will learn of it. And then he will do whatever he has to in order to keep them safe. Her safe. If it means sparking that flame, he will bring the torch. If it means squashing it before it’s started, he will bring the water.

If it means his death, he just hopes he can have one final, beautiful memory to take with him.

[katnissmellarkkk]

Hi! 🤗 I haven’t done a bookcomb in so long I figured I might as well do an easy one. This may be random but I’m always fascinated with all the little mentions of Katniss and Peeta acknowledging each other before they were reaped for their first games. So here’s a (really random) bookcomb of every time they referenced seeing the other at school 🥰😂.

-

As I carefully replaced the lid and backed away, I noticed him, a boy with blond hair peering out from behind his mother’s back. I’d seen him at school. He was in my year, but I didn’t know his name. He stuck with the town kids, so how would I?

-

At school, I passed the boy in the hall, his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends and didn’t acknowledge me in any way. But as I collected Prim and started for home that afternoon, I found him staring at me from across the school yard. Our eyes met for only a second, then he turned his head away. I dropped my gaze, embarrassed, and that’s when I saw it. The first dandelion of the year.

-

“He can wrestle,” I tell Haymitch. “He came in second in our school competition last year, only after his brother.”

-

“Peeta,” I say lightly. “You said at the interview you’d had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?”

“Oh, let’s see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair . . . it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up,” Peeta says.

[…]

“So that day, in music assembly, the teacher asked who knew the valley song. Your hand shot right up in the air. She stood you up on a stool and had you sing it for us. And I swear, every bird outside the windows fell silent,” Peeta says.

“Oh, please,” I say, laughing.

“No, it happened. And right when your song ended, I knew — just like your mother — I was a goner,” Peeta says. “Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.”

“Without success,” I add.

-

When we make our way into the dining area, I see some of Peeta's gang have other ideas. They're dragging all the smaller tables to form one large table so that we all have to eat together. Now I don't know what to do. Even at school I used to avoid eating at a crowded table. Frankly, I'd probably have sat alone if Madge hadn't made a habit of joining me. I guess I'd have eaten with Gale except, being two grades apart, our lunch never fell at the same time.

I take a tray and start making my way around the food-laden carts that ring the room. Peeta catches up with me at the stew. “How's it going?”

“Good. Fine. I like the District Three victors,” I say. “Wiress and Beetee.”

“Really?” he asks. “They're something of a joke to the others.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” I say. I think of how Peeta was always surrounded at school by a crowd of friends. It's amazing, really, that he ever took any notice of me except to think I was odd.

-

“Delly's known Peeta for a long time," says Plutarch.

"Oh, yes!" Delly's face brightens. "We played together from when we were little. I used to tell people he was my brother."

"What do you think?" Haymitch asks me. "Anything that might trigger memories of you?"

"We were all in the same class. But we never overlapped much," I say.

-

“So what do you remember?"

"You. In the rain," he says softly. "Digging in our trash bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

"That's it. That's what happened," I say. "The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how."

"We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then...for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion." I nod. He does remember. I have never spoken about that moment aloud. "I must have loved you a lot."

"You did."

-

But since Peeta's greatest confusion centers around me--and not everything can be explained simply--our exchanges are painful and loaded, even though we touch on only the most superficial of details. The color of my dress in 7. My preference for cheese buns. The name of our math teacher when we were little. Reconstructing his memory of me is excruciating.

-

Through the water in the glass, I see a distorted image of one of Peeta's hands. The burn marks. We are both fire mutts now. My eyes travel up to where the flames licked across his forehead, singeing away his brows but just missing his eyes. Those same blue eyes that used to meet mine and then flit away at school. Just as they do now.

-

[plus-size-reader]

Engaged

Not Really Goodbye pt.2

Peeta Mellark x Plus size!reader

Word Count:1692 words

Warnings: none

Summary: Peeta having to explain his engagement to you, the woman he loves

Part 1

——————————————————————————————————

Marrying Katniss hadn’t been Peeta’s idea.

Quite frankly, none of this was his idea to start with; not pretending to be together, lying to everyone he cared about, not getting engaged, not going on the tour. It was all stuff he’d been dragged into without even meaning to.

Unfortunately though, that didn’t make it any easier to explain the whole engagement thing to you.

This whole thing was too complicated to just break down, too dangerous to get out of, and even if he wanted to try, Peeta knew the truth. It was too late to get out now, no matter what he did.

Still, it would break your heart, just as it was currently breaking his.

Ever since the two of you were children, you assumed that you would end up being together. You had been inseparable all your lives, never going too far without the other, and your mother often joked that there were no better friends in the world.

That much had always been true.

It wasn’t until you got a bit older that you started really thinking about the possibility that there may never be no two people better suited for one another than you and Peeta were.

He understood you in a way that no one else ever had and being with him was as easy as breathing. By this time in your lives, you were sure that you would end up married, living on a farm somewhere.

Though, clearly, you’d been a fool to believe that.

News of the engagement reached you and the rest of the districts before Peeta and Katniss could even make it back, which meant that he couldn’t explain. All you could do was listen to the broadcasts and try to put the pieces together yourself.

Naturally, it hurt to imagine that everything you’d come to believe was a lie. However, you weren’t shocked that he would rather marry her.

She was incredible.

In all this time since he’d been whisked away to compete in the games, you could see just how much they had bonded. The games were broadcasted all over Panem and you would have had to have been blind to miss it.

Not only was Katniss a fellow victor, and the only other person who had shared experiences with him, but she was also stunningly beautiful and wonderfully strong.

It was something you could have never hoped to compete with.

You only wished, in your wildest dreams, that you could be like her if not for yourself than for his affections.

You wanted nothing more than for Peeta to look at you in the way that he looked at her, like the world started and ended with her, like every action from her could halt his existence entirely.

She had a power of him that you foolishly thought you had, before he went off to the Capital, but that was never going to happen.

You knew Peeta well enough to know that.

That was exactly why, when he did show up at your door trying to explain, you turned him away. If he loved her, and she made him happy, then you wanted him to be with her.

You didn’t want him to feel the need to apologize, which you assumed he was trying to do when he showed up outside your house.

Knowing Peeta, he just didn’t want to hurt you, didn’t want there to be any hard feelings between the two of you. If that was all he needed, there was no need for you to talk it over, you understood exactly what was happening.

You knew a man in love when you saw one, and you didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

For whatever reason though, Peeta was adamant over what he wanted. He wanted to explain himself, and he needed to talk to you. This was all a huge misunderstanding, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he didn’t tell you the truth.

...And, at a certain point, you knew that you were going to have to hear him out. At the end of the day, you cared about Peeta and whatever it was that was so important, you knew that it wouldn’t hurt to hear what it was he needed.

“Peeta, I already told you, I get it” you huffed, opening your door to find him standing there again, waiting for the off chance that you would come out.

You had no idea what he was thinking, but there was one thing you knew for sure. He was going to freeze to death if he stood out here any longer.

“No, you really don’t. Please just let me explain” he begged, hoping that for the third time, you would hear him out. He just kept coming here, asking to see you, and each time he was met with the same answer.

Either you weren’t home, or you weren’t going to answer.

“Come in” you sighed finally, opening the door wide enough for him to pass through. It was clear that he wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon.

You were doing your best to just save face, to keep him from seeing how much it had upset you, but you had started to accept it. You were coming to terms with what it would mean, with the fact of the matter, Peeta was going to get married.

Peeta was going to get married, and he wasn’t going to get married to you.

That was just what was happening and there was no use fighting it. If you could understand that, you didn’t get why it was so hard for him.

It seemed simple enough.

“Katniss and I are getting married, but it isn’t because I want to” he grumbled, rubbing his hands together lightly as he started to explain, doing his best to gather his thoughts. It wasn’t until he was in the heat of your home that he realized just how cold it had been, the warm air nipping at his skin.

You nodded, having heard this all before. You felt like you knew, felt like you understood what was going on, but Peeta was far from finished.

This wasn’t about him and Katniss, it wasn’t about a wedding, this was about the two of you and nothing more.

“What are you talking about? Why would you be getting married if you don't want to?” you asked, sitting down beside him on the couch, trying your best to wrap your head around what he was saying.

It didn’t make any sense to you.

For what reason, other than the fact that you loved someone, would you get married? Besides, you saw the way he looked at her while they were in that arena, you knew that he must love her.

That was all you needed to be married.

That was more than most of the people of twelve had and they made it work. Your relationships were formed mostly for survival, and in a desperate attempt to form some kind of life with what you’d been given.

“This is bigger than it seems, but I promise I can explain” he tried, gingerly resting his hand on your knee as he tried to make this work. You weren’t sure that you believed it, but it wouldn’t kill you to give him a chance to make you believe.

So, you settled in for one of the most complicated stories of all your life. Evidently, the events of the games, and what had happened in the capital, was bigger than you could have ever assumed.

It was bigger than both of you.

The more Peeta explained, the more you put together in your head, the more you understood. Of course he had to marry her, if he didn’t, there was no telling what Snow would do.

He had already threatened all of Katniss’ family and you were sure that he’d done the same to Peeta.

There was a chance they would kill you, if this didn’t go the way they wanted, and for Peeta, that was the worst thing that could happen. In all your lives, he’d only ever really had you and if something happened to you, he’d have nothing left.

You were the one. You were the one who came to check on him the night before the reaping, who combed his hair on the day of so he would look nice. You were the only one to come see him before he left for the games.

Every time he needed someone, it was always you there, waiting for him.

If he didn’t have you, Peeta didn’t have anything.

He hated the idea of doing this, of getting married to a woman who wasn’t you, of putting you through this but in the big picture, it was better than losing you. It was better than having to go through life knowing that you died because of a choice he made.

Having to do that would kill him.

It was difficult enough that the two of them had to lie to the world, that he and Katniss didn’t really care for one another in that way. Adding another element, or another person, in your case, would be far too much.

He hated this, but if it was what he had to do to keep you safe, Peeta wasn’t going to apologize for that. You were too important to risk, for any reason.

“I’m so sorry Y/N, I really am. I just don’t have a choice” he huffed, using up all his breath in a hurried attempt to get everything he needed to get out before you started drawing your own conclusions.

...But you didn’t need him to say sorry.

You understood why he was going to do it.

Backing out of the wedding could end all of your lives and as much as you loved him, nothing was worth that. Similarly to Peeta, you figured that a life without him, knowing that he was alive, would be better than one where he died trying to be with you.

It was hardly a fairy tale, but real life rarely was.

[shesasurvivor]

May 8, 2021 (fic)

It’s here at last! I’m so sorry I’m so late this year; things really got busy for me. But I could never forget my favorite girl completely. Here’s the update for May 8 this year!

Summary: Prim surprises Katniss for her birthday one year with an unexpected gift. Set pre-Games.

Read on A03

----

I open my bleary eyes only to see nothing but darkness spread out before me. I’m used to being an early riser, but somehow this seems to be pushing it. I’m not sure what time it is, but it feels too early regardless. I feel the light pressure of a small hand pressed against my back as it gently shakes me. So I didn’t imagine it.

With a start, I sit up, wondering what’s wrong that either my mother or my sister could be stirring me awake. It would have to be an emergency because that’s the only time either of them is awake before I am. I’m already halfway out of bed, using my foot to feel around in the dark for my leather boots when I make out Prim’s small shape in the darkness. 

“Prim,” I breathe. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s okay, Katniss,” she says with a giggle, of all things. The sound is strange and catches me off guard. A giggle? That doesn’t add up. Then a dim light fills the room as my mother strikes a match, and I find Prim beaming at me.

“Happy birthday!” she sings out as soon as she can see me clearly. Our mother stands behind her, still in her nightshirt, smiling faintly at me as well. 

Oh. My birthday. I’d nearly forgotten about it. Not that there’s ever much to look forward to, other than the memory that I’m eligible to put my name in the Reaping a few more times in exchange for tesserae. Happy birthday to me. 

“We have a surprise for you,” Prim continues, pulling on my hand to encourage me to get out of bed. I’m still a little groggy and would rather catch a few extra minutes of sleep before I take off into the woods, but I follow Prim anyways and let her lead me into the next room, to our cramped kitchen. In the center of the room sits a small, unfinished wooden table that’s been worn down from years of use. And right in the middle sits a round cake that’s been decorated with white frosting and dotted with ornately shaped yellow blossoms.

My breath catches in my throat at the sight of it. I can feel Prim exuding pride and excitement beside me. I want to be happy for her sake, to show how much I appreciate this. Instead, my heart falls into my stomach. All I can think about is how much it must have cost us to buy this.

“Oh, Prim,” I murmur, and there’s no mistaking that I’m upset and not as touched as she wanted me to be. And immediately I wish I wish I could take it back, or could have forced myself to play along, or something to keep the crestfallen expression that’s falling across my sister’s face now. 

“You don’t like it?” Her voice is small, fragile. I crumble to pieces, then snap back together as I rush to reassure her that she hasn’t done something wrong. “It’s just… how much did something like this cost?” I’ve been by the bakery windows enough times with her to know that these cakes fall well outside of our pathetic budget. Not even my trades with the baker would catch us something like this. It would take a whole lot of squirrels to get something like a decorated cake from the window.

“Oh, is that all,” Prim looks amused now. “I just traded a wheel of cheese for it.”

“A wheel of cheese?” I repeat, not sure how to process the relief and confusion I’m feeling simultaneously. I’m beyond grateful that Prim didn’t spend anything more than that, but it doesn’t make sense. Prim’s goat cheese is outstanding, but it still doesn’t amount to the cost of one of the fancy cakes. “Mr. Mellark let you buy a cake for a wheel of cheese?” 

“Not Mr. Mellark,” Prim explains. “One of his sons. The youngest one. His name is Peeta. He gave me some of the supplies and even offered to decorate it himself. He put the flowers on because I wasn’t getting them. He’s really good. Katniss?”

I’m staring blankly at the cake, trying to make sense of all this. I know the son she’s talking about, though this is the first time I’ve heard his name. Peeta. Peeta Mellark. We don’t know each other, at least not directly. But this isn’t the first time I’ve been gifted with baked goods because of him. There was one other time, on a fateful rainy day, when I thought my luck had finally run out and the end had finally come. Peeta Mellark. Of course, the cake is covered in yellow flowers. 

“We’ll save it,” I say, shaking my head to clear out the memory. I smile down at my sister, looking up at me with relief at my lightened mood. “We’ll have it for dessert after dinner tonight.”

“Okay,” she agrees happily. She gives me a hug, then goes off to get ready for the day. 

Later, in the crowded hallways of the school, I glance up and find Peeta Mellark staring straight at me. He looks as though he’s been watching me for a while, and for a minute, I think he’s going to actually come over to say something to me. For some reason, the thought makes me embarrassed. Heat flooding my cheeks, I look away quickly. A moment later, I dare to look back, but he’s not looking at me anymore either. Instead, he’s turned and has started walking in the opposite direction down the hallway. But as the hall begins to clear out, I notice a crumpled piece of paper lying where he had been standing moments earlier. Unable to resist the curiosity, I edge over to the spot and pick it up. On the wrinkled paper is a rough pencil sketch of the very same blossoms that dot the cake back home. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” is written in clean, careful handwriting underneath.

I lift my eyes and stare for a long moment in the direction he disappeared in, trying to make sense of it. Was he about to give this to me for my birthday? We don’t really know each other. Though he would have to know it was my birthday after he helped Prim with my cake. But why? Why would he do any of that? He doesn’t owe me anything. I’m the one who owes him, who will never stop owing him, and I still haven’t managed to get out so much of a thank you to him for saving my life all those years ago. 

After a while, I give up trying to piece it together. The drawing can’t have been anything more than a practice run for the cake he decorated, with no other meaning. He was probably looking at me because he remembered my sister. There’s no further explanation for it. Besides, everyone loves Prim. I’m the forgettable one.  

I think about tossing the crumpled drawing into a trash bin as I pass by but somehow feel bad about doing so. Instead, I fold it carefully and put it in my pocket. I forget about it until that evening when the Hawthornes have come over to help me celebrate my birthday. As Gale hands me a slice of the cake, I remember the incident, and a hand slips into the pocket and fingers the paper sitting there. 

Briefly, I wonder if I should find Peeta Mellark at school tomorrow and return the drawing to him, but I push the thought away. He clearly didn’t care about it. Neither do I, I tell myself. But the picture sits safely in my pocket regardless. It will serve as a reminder of a particularly nice birthday I had one year, if nothing else. 

[hockeysweetheart]

I was thinking about Katniss saying she never wanted to have children. I noticed most of the time she said she never wanted kids Gale was involved. Yes there are points fear yes if her and Peeta had kids with Snow in power. Her children would have a one way ticket to the games.  But after the Peeta’s baby bomb she was like okay didn’t expect then then very shortly after she’s like well the damage is done thank god I had no say in this. and Then a few chapters later she was like it’s not my plan to have kids with Gale your crazy. 2 seconds later oh I dream of a world Peeta’s child is safe. 

Okay Katniss who knew Gale better but Peeta longer. She is totally like me Marry Gale ahahaha your so Funny Me Have his children pfft not a freaking Chance. But when it comes to Peeta she could of denied it but she didn’t. sure she said “it’s for an act” but she knows she was fooling herself saying that because of the sheer fact that she was like well he’s not that bad... blushes...  plus  she never worked up any excuse for Hey Peeta   we over. Because I truely beileve she  had feeling for him the whole damn time.  and when it came to Gale she’s like were friends. Peeta it’s like oh my god you saved my life I can’t live without you. ( without admitting shes in love with him).  becuase lord knows how long that took.  anyways I got off track a bit.  

I’ll say this again  she wanted to be with Gale because it would be the biggest slap in the face to the Capitol but she couldn’t let go of Peeta.  without Fail every single  time she had sparks with Gale  her Feelings for Peeta were not far behind.  Plus she totally burned that bridge when Gale came out as a player.  but It’s Gale confusing Katniss when they kissed. Because not once before the games did he say btw I like you any sign of it that Katniss caught on.  Whereas Peeta is flirting with Katniss the whole freaking time. and yes Katniss is a little slow to catch on so slow in fact it took Peeta  to tell the whole  world that he’s madly in love with the world before she realized that he was just a boy in love with me. ( in fact it took her longer to realize that).  

Okay Katniss is a bit slow to show it. But some kisses were for I couldn’t do this without you. That beach kiss was all love sweetheart ( at that point we all knew that Peeta won Katniss’s heart.)  But like Gale literally almost got whipped to death and her reaction was like was like just give him the meds to knock him out let him slip away. and for Peeta when he hit that force field it’s like  oh my god I cannot live without you. Don’t ever do that again. and like later without Peeta I’ll never be truely happy again. I do I need you. I’ll be damaged beyond repare with you gone.

Below are some refences I pulled up of The whole “ not having kids or marrying to doing both”  subject... 

chapter 1  the hunger games 

"We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly. "What?" I ask. "Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale. I don't know how to respond. The idea is so preposterous. "If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly. They're not our kids, of course. But they might as well be. Gale's two little brothers and a sister. Prim. And you may as well throw in our mothers, too, because how would they live without us? Who would fill those mouths that are always asking for more? With both of us hunting daily, there are still nights when game has to be swapped for lard or shoelaces or wool, still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs growling. "I never want to have kids," I say. "I might. If I didn't live here," says Gale. "But you do," I say, irritated. "Forget it," he snaps back. The conversation feels all wrong. Leave? How could I leave Prim, who is the only person in the world I'm certain I love? And Gale is devoted to his family. We can't leave, so why bother talking about it? And even if we did. even if we did. where did this stuff about having kids come from? There's never been anything romantic between Gale and me. When we met, I was a skinny twelve-year-old, and although he was only two years older, he already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade and begin helping each other out. Besides, if he wants kids, Gale won't have any trouble finding a wife. He's good-looking, he's strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt. You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

the hunger games chapter 3 

Finally, Gale is here and maybe there is nothing romantic between us, but when he opens his arms I don't hesitate to go into them. His body is familiar to me  -  the way it moves, the smell of wood smoke, even the sound of his heart beating I know from quiet moments on a hunt  -  but this is the first time I really feel it, lean and hard-muscled against my own.

the hunger games chapter 10

I don't know what to think. "I should have been told, so I didn't look so stupid." "No, your reaction was perfect. If you'd known, it wouldn't have read as real," says Portia. "She's just worried about her boyfriend," says Peeta gruffly, tossing away a bloody piece of the urn. My cheeks burn again at the thought of Gale. "I don't have a boyfriend." "Whatever," says Peeta. "But I bet he's smart enough to know a bluff when he sees it. Besides you didn't say you loved me. So what does it matter?" The words are sinking in. My anger fading. I'm torn now between thinking I've been used and thinking I've been given an edge. Haymitch is right. I survived my interview, but what was I really? A silly girl spinning in a sparkling, dress. Giggling. The only moment of any substance I hail was when I talked about Prim. Compare that with Thresh, his silent, deadly power, and I'm forgettable. Silly and sparkly and forgettable. No, not entirely forgettable, I have my eleven in training.

the hunger games chapter 23 

Four of us left.

For the first time, I allow myself to truly think about the possibility that I might make it home. To fame. To wealth. To my own house in the Victor's Village. My mother and Prim would live there with me. No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But then. what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some. I think of Haymitch, with all his money. What did his life become? He lives alone, no wife or children, most of his waking hours drunk. I don't want to end up like that.

"But you won't be alone," I whisper to myself. I have my mother and Prim. Well, for the time being. And then. I don't want to think about then, when Prim has grown up, my mother passed away. I know I'll never marry, never risk bringing a child into the world. Because if there's one thing being a victor doesn't guarantee, it's your children's safety. My kids' names would go right into the reaping balls with everyone else's. And I swear I'll never let that happen.

catching fire chapter 2 ( this was what katniss was gonna say to gale after he kissed her)

That week I managed the snares and dropped off the meat with Hazelle. But I didn't see Gale until Sunday. I had this whole speech worked out, about how I didn't want a boyfriend and never planned on marrying, but I didn't end up using it. Gale acted as if the kiss had never happened.

Maybe he was waiting for me to say something. Or kiss him back. Instead I just pretended it had never happened, either. But it had. Gale had shattered some invisible barrier between us and, with it, any hope I had of resuming our old, uncomplicated friendship. Whatever I pretended, I could never look at his lips in quite the same way.

catching fire chapter 4 

In my room, I remove my sodden slippers, my wet robe and pajamas. There are more in the drawers but I just crawl between the covers of my bed in my underclothes. I stare into the darkness, thinking about my conversation with Haymitch. Everything he said was true about the Capitol's expectations, my future with Peeta, even his last comment. Of course, I could do a lot worse than Peeta. That isn't really the point, though, is it? One of the few freedoms we have in District 12 is the right to marry who we want or not marry at all. And now even that has been taken away from me. I wonder if President Snow will insist we have children. If we do, they'll have to face the reaping each year. And wouldn't it be something to see the child of not one but two victors chosen for the arena? Victors' children have been in the ring before. It always causes a lot of excitement and generates talk about how the odds are not in that family's favor. But it happens too frequently to just be about odds. Gale's convinced the Capitol does it on purpose, rigs the drawings to add extra drama. Given all the trouble I've caused, I've probably guaranteed any child of mine a spot in the Games.

catching fire chapter 18 

There. He's done it again. Dropped a bomb that wipes out the efforts of every tribute who came before him. Well, maybe not. Maybe this year he has only lit the fuse on a bomb that the victors themselves have been building. Hoping someone would be able to detonate it. Perhaps thinking it would be me in my bridal gown. Not knowing how much I rely on Cinna's talents, whereas Peeta needs nothing more than his wits. As the bomb explodes, it sends accusations of injustice and barbarism and cruelty flying out in every direction. Even the most Capitol-loving, Games-hungry, bloodthirsty person out there can't ignore, at least for a moment, how horrific the whole thing is. I am pregnant. The audience can't absorb the news right away. It has to strike them and sink in and be confirmed by other voices before they begin to sound like a herd of wounded animals, moaning, shrieking, calling for help. And me? I know my face is projected in a tight close-up on the screen, but I don't make any effort to hide it. Because for a moment, even I am working through what Peeta has said. Isn't it the thing I dreaded most about the wedding, about the future - the loss of my children to the Games? And it could be true now, couldn't it? If I hadn't spent my life building up layers of defenses until I recoil at even the suggestion of marriage or a family?

The moment we step off the elevator, Peeta grips my shoulders. "There isn't much time, so tell me. Is there anything I have to apologize for?"

"Nothing," I say. It was a big leap to take without my okay, but I'm just as glad I didn't know, didn't have time to second-guess him, to let any guilt over Gale detract from how I really feel about what Peeta did. Which is empowered.

catching fire chapter 24

Peeta won't let him, though. "It's too dangerous," he says. "I'm not tired. You lie down, Katniss." I don't object because I do need to sleep if I'm to be of any use keeping him alive. I let him lead me over to where the others are. He puts the chain with the locket around my neck, then rests his hand over the spot where our baby would be. "You're going to make a great mother, you know," he says. He kisses me one last time and goes back to Finnick. His reference to the baby signals that our time-out from the Games is over. That he knows the audience will be wondering why he hasn't used the most persuasive argument in his arsenal. That sponsors must be manipulated. But as I stretch out on the sand I wonder, could it be more? Like a reminder to me that I could still one day have kids with Gale? Well, if that was it, it was a mistake. Because for one thing, that's never been part of my plan. And for another, if only one of us can be a parent, anyone can see it should be Peeta. As I drift off, I try to imagine that world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta's child could be safe.

mockingjay chapter 3 

I skim my list. "Gale. I'll need him with me to do this." "With you how? Off camera? By your side at all times? Do you want him presented as your new lover?" Coin asks. She hasn't said this with any particular malice - quite the contrary, her words are very matter-of-fact. But my mouth still drops open in shock. "What?" "I think we should continue the current romance. A quick defection from Peeta could cause the audience to lose sympathy for her," says Plutarch. "Especially since they think she's pregnant with his child." "Agreed. So, on-screen, Gale can simply be portrayed as a fellow rebel. Is that all right?" says Coin. I just stare at her. She repeats herself impatiently. "For Gale. Will that be sufficient?" "We can always work him in as your cousin," says Fulvia.

"We're not cousins," Gale and I say together.

"Right, but we should probably keep that up for appearances' sake on camera," says Plutarch. "Off camera, he's all yours. Anything else?"

I'm rattled by the turn in the conversation. The implications that I could so readily dispose of Peeta, that I'm in love with Gale, that the whole thing has been an act. My cheeks begin to burn. The very notion that I'm devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning. I let my anger propel me into my greatest demand. "When the war is over, if we've won, Peeta will be pardoned."

Dead silence. I feel Gale's body tense. I guess I should have told him before, but I wasn't sure how he'd respond. Not when it involved Peeta.

mockingjay

They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. Carrying him was a little easier, but not much.

The questions are just beginning. The arenas have been completely destroyed, the memorials built, there are no more Hunger Games. But they teach about them at school, and the girl knows we played a role in them. The boy will know in a few years. How can I tell them about that world without frightening them to death? My children, who take the words of the song for granted:

My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard. Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I'll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won't ever really go away. I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.

[everlarkbirthdaygifts]

Happy Birthday, blackgem01!

Today, we wish @blackgem01 a very Happy Birthday! We hope you’ve got a wonderful day planned, and you get exactly the presents you wished for! To kick your party off in style, the lovely @mega-aulover has written a story just for you!

PROMPT:  Katniss and Peeta had a baby at a young age. Katniss decided to go off to college while Peeta stayed behind to take care of the baby and now she is coming back. (if you want to make it angsty can there be a happy ending

For: Blackgem01

A/N: Happy Birthday I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you to @norbertsmom for betaing

Rated: T

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“You sure she's coming back?” Rye asked.

Peeta changed his 18 month old daughter, Melody. She laughed when he tickled her, and her bright blue eyes stared up at him with glee. 

Peeta proudly winked at his baby. She’d learned to walk early. She was a good climber, too. Something he learned early on when he found her in front of the upstairs apartment.  She wasn’t talking yet, but he knew she was like her mother.

“Come on Peeta,” Rye said sitting on the bed next to Mel. 

Mel extended her leg so that Peeta could put her pants on. She smiled at him and when he leaned down, she patted his face with her little hand. 

“Rye,” Peeta warned. He didn’t want to discuss Katniss in front of the baby. 

“You’re delusional.”

“Katniss wouldn’t forget us.”  Peeta kept his voice light. His daughter was perceptive and she cried when people sounded upset or mad. 

“She was sure in a hurry to leave.” 

Peeta stopped to look at his brother in disbelief, wishing Rye would drop the matter altogether. 

“You can’t go to the train tomorrow station expecting you guys to be alright,” Rye insisted. “She’s been gone for a year doing who knows what in the Capitol.” 

“All done Mel, why don’t you go see grandpa.” Peeta put their daughter on the floor. He turned to his brother. “Rye stay out of it, this is my life with Katniss.”

“She left you and Mel to go to the Capitol and study, you guys barely talk on the phone...I think she sucks for leaving you behind with Mel.”

All these months he’d been silent about the arrangement he and Katniss made. His family and even hers wanted him to move on, find someone else. Mrs. Everdeen was upset Katniss left him with the baby. Primrose didn’t understand why she left and was angry at her. Katniss wrote to Prim and June, their mother but often the letters left untouched. 

Peeta knew the truth and that’s what really mattered. 

The opportunity for her to study something was too good for them to let go. People in district twelve didn’t get scholarships, they got a one way ticket to work in the mines or if they were lucky to work in their family business. “Rye, I told her to go.”

“I don’t believe it. I think she manipulated you.”

“Have you met Katniss,” Peeta said. 

“Well okay maybe she didn’t; she’s not exactly the most talkative person.  But why would you let her go? You’ve been in love with her since you were both five.”

Peeta heard Mel’s laughter. “How many times has district twelve won the reaping? For that matter who was the last person who won the reaping?”

Rye glanced away, knowing Peeta was right.  

The annual reaping was a scholarship that was founded when the districts won the war nearly 77 years ago.  Every year, one student was chosen from the graduating class of all the districts to study for a year in the Capitol. Katniss was chosen, but she was conflicted because they had a six month old baby. 

Peeta may have been in love with Katniss since he was five, but he didn’t get up the nerve to talk to her until they were sixteen. . Their friendship grew deeper, despite the things her former best friend Gale Hawthorne said about them, and by the time they were seniors they were in a serious relationship. They were both shocked when Katniss got pregnant. Peeta encouraged her to continue studying, bringing her assignments and tests when she was too sick to go to school. 

It wasn’t easy.  His mother wanted him to deny the child Katniss carried, while his father quietly told him he wasn’t ready for fatherhood. His father wasn’t entirely wrong; Peeta wasn’t ready to be a dad. It was a hard nine months for both of them.  It wasn’t until Mel was born did his mother come around and his parents supported them both. 

When Katniss won the reaping everyone expected her to decline it, because of the baby.  Peeta didn’t want her to lose her shot at something big. Every person who won had opportunities afforded to them. It’s why his brother was taking forever to answer.  

After a few moments Rye eventually said, “Mayor Abernathy.”

“And before that it was a wild girl named Lucy who ended up being a great entertainer in the Capitol.  I told Katniss to go, I told her to do it for our daughter.” Peeta sat on his bed, and sighed. “She didn't want to leave, but I told her she needed to because I didn’t want her to have regrets.”

“That’s all great and said, but you forget about one tiny detail, your daughter. Katniss has missed a lot of the big markers in Mel’s life.  And if by some miracle you guys have this magical reconnection and are able to pick up where you left off, just remember Mel will see Katniss as a virtual stranger.” 

Peeta watched Rye stand up and leave. His brother’s words stayed with him for the rest of the day. He hadn’t really given a thought about what it would be like to have Katniss home again. He loved her, but Rye was right. Katniss didn’t really know her daughter.  It was part of the sacrifice she made by leaving.

Katniss couldn’t come home; it was in the stipulations of the scholarship. She had to live at school and maintain a certain grade point average. She didn’t have much money and was dependent on the grant.  Calling the bakery was expensive, something she only did on major celebrations like Mel’s birthday. She did write, Katniss wrote two and three letters a week. 

Peeta wrote back filling her in on as much as he could. He even drew pictures of Mel. But still Katniss didn’t know the face Mel made when she was sleepy. Or the way she cried when she passed by a cat, thinking it was Buttercup. This next phase of their life was going to be hard. Peeta worried about Mel’s reaction to Katniss. Mel was only six months old the last time she’d been with Katniss. 

Mel hadn’t taken the loss of mommy well. She’d cried for Katniss and Peeta had seen the same tears mirrored on Katniss’ face when she left. Peeta hoped for the best but he was preparing for the worst.  

The next morning he stood with both of their families at the train station. 

Rye was making funny faces at Mel and her peal of laughter broke the tension. His mother held Mel. She’d purchased a new outfit for Mel today, a pretty dove gray dress with pink polka dots with matching grey shoes and pink pom pom hair fasteners.  His mother was smitten with her dark haired grandchild.  Mel covered her ears as the train horn sounded. She turned to him holding out her little arms toward him.  Peeta picked her up and Mel put her face in the crook of his neck. 

The train pulled in and Peeta braced himself. 

...

“You did good by her,” June Everdeen said. 

Peeta glanced at Katniss' mother, and smiled. “Thank you.”

“I hope the sacrifice was worth it,” June said as the passengers began to disembark. 

Peeta recalled Rye’s words. He held his little girl closer. He hoped he did a good enough job of talking about mommy and showing Mel images of Katniss. 

“There she is,” Prim squeaked.

Peeta didn’t see her. Katniss wasn’t tall and was easily lost in the crowd. He followed Prim who was tall and thin.

Peeta saw her, she wasn’t wearing fancy Capitol clothing, she was, however, wearing a lovely dark orange dress with small white flowers. Katniss never used to wear dresses. Her hair was in it’s customary braid. She looked unsure as if searching the crowd. When she spotted Prim her face broke out in the most beautiful smile. Peeta always thought Katniss looked stunning when she smiled. 

“Prim,” she called out running to her sister. 

“Katniss,” Prim cried as they hugged one another. 

Peeta watched both sisters talk. His heart beat quickly.  Mel whimpered. Immediately Peeta’s attention went to Mel. 

“What's wrong button,” he cooed quietly, shifting her so that he could look into her face. “Are you tired?’

Mel stuck her thumb in her mouth. 

“Okay, we’re just getting mommy, okay.” 

“She’s beautiful,” Katniss said in awe.

Peeta looked up to see Katniss staring at him, her eyes filled with tears. She reached her arms toward Mel.

Mel swatted her arms away, and screamed, “NO!”

It was Mel’s first word. Katniss looked crestfallen. Peeta sighed. This wasn’t going to go easy at all. 

Peeta looked at himself in the mirror. Today had turned into a disaster. All day long Mel scowled at Katniss. Whenever Katniss came close to Peeta, Mel pointed her finger at Katniss, garbled words Peeta had never heard his daughter say, followed by, no.  Mel refused to leave his side and Katniss looked crestfallen, then Rye made a comment that started a fight.  He closed his eyes. Everyone ganged up on Katniss about her decision to leave. 

Her mother said leaving Mel was inexcusable. Katniss fired back telling her letting her children nearly starve to death was just as bad. When Katniss' father died of an accident at work, June went into a downward spin where she became nearly catatonic. The responsibility of the house, her sister and her mother fell on Katniss shoulders. Peeta recalled hearing the adults talk about how brave Katniss was to care for her ill mother.  Now her mother turned on Katniss. 

Peeta tried to defend Katniss but his voice was silenced. Mel began crying and Katniss left the house to cool down. Their baby was finally sleeping and everyone was gone. 

“Hey,” Katniss said quietly.

He looked up from the mirror to see her reflection.  “Hi.”

Her eyes were red rimmed, her face was flushed. 

Peeta turned around. He opened his arms, and she flew into them. 

“I hoped,” Katniss cried.

He held her, letting her cry. Katniss wasn’t one for emotional outbursts. When she calmed down she said, “Mel doesn’t love me, my own sister said I shouldn’t have left, your parents…” She took a deep breath and said. “We talked about this, but I didn’t think it was going to be so hard….”

“I don’t know what to do to help you. They wouldn’t even listen to me.” 

“I had great news for everyone. A job was created for me, given my talents with herbs, fauna, and trees, as District Twelve’s forest conservationist. One of my professors, Dr. Wiress arranged for Prim to study in District Three’s Medical and Technology program. I worked in the cafeteria in school and I gave them one of the breads you sent with me. My boss wanted to talk to your dad.”  

“You’re always looking out for us.”

“You have done such a great job with Mel. She’s so beautiful and she hates me.” Katniss stepped away, she placed her hands on his shoulders. Her hands drifting down over his chest. 

Peeta shuddered at her touch. One year of waiting and longing.  “No she doesn't hate you. She doesn’t know you and to Mel you’re trying to take away her daddy. It’s going to take time to convince everyone. Now let’s get to bed and see if we can make this family of ours work.”

Katniss sighed.

They slept rather awkwardly that first night as they had to get used to sleeping together again. In the morning Mel wanted nothing to do with Katniss. 

Two weeks passed by and slowly people’s attitude about Katniss changed. His father was over the moon with the contact she gave him. He’d struck a contract with Paylor Katniss’ supervisor to supply bread to the university. Primrose was delighted at the opportunity to study in District Three.

Only their daughter and his brother were the last holdouts. 

Mel kept up saying no to Katniss and exhibited her jealousy regularly. Anytime Katniss came close to Peeta she would cry no and stomp her little foot and push Katniss away. Their daughter didn’t want to share him. 

It was bedtime, Katniss wanted to get Mel ready by giving her a bath. 

“No, dada.”  Mel stood with a scowl on her face. It was like looking into a mirror. 

“You’re going to take a bath with mommy,” Katniss said kneeling  before their daughter. She held out the small rubber duck she brought from the Capitol for Mel.

“No,” Mel swatted at the rubber duck.

“Mel,” Peeta interjected. “Not Nice.” In a firm voice he repeated, “Not nice.” 

His daughter's eyes grew wide. Peeta seldom used that tone of voice with her. Her bottom lip trembled. 

“Go to the bathroom,” he ordered, but in a softer tone.

Mel stomped off to the bathroom.

Katniss gave him a pouty look of her own before following their daughter to the bathroom. Later on, Katniss was in the bedroom folding clothing rapidly. Peeta could sense the storm coming. 

He finished cleaning up the kitchen, wanting to give Katniss enough time with Mel. Her eyes narrowed right before she said, “I could have handled the situation.”

Peeta didn’t say anything. He only took the fitted sheet she was fidgeting with and folded it neatly.

“Ugh!” Katniss huffed, her eyes fiery. 

“I had it under control, you didn’t have to intervene.” 

Peeta sighed and bit his tongue. 

“She needs to learn that I am not going anywhere.” Katniss sat on the bed and looked around. “I shouldn’t have left, Peeta. I should stayed, here with her…” 

Peeta sat next to her. “No you did the right thing,” Peata said. He didn’t want for Katniss to feel bad for the decision to go study. “Prim’s going to spend her next last two years of school in District Three studying with Dr. Wiress, one of Panem’s foremost scientific minds. And my dad’s benefiting from it too. He’s going to be able to send his bread to the capitol for the holidays. And he’s going to have the opportunity to go to the Capitol with my mom to tour the school cafeteria, and my mom’s going to get a real honeymoon.” 

Katniss' face began to lose its worry. 

“And you’re going to be doing something you love, conservation of the woods. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn't made that sacrifice.” 

“I…” Katniss began, but trailed off.

“Come here.” Peeta sat back against the headboard inviting her to sit next to him. Katniss didn’t sit, she snuggled up against his side. Her head rested up against his chest.  Peeta sighed from the contentment of the simple gesture. Peeta missed her, missed listening to the sound of her voice. 

“I sometimes don’t see the bigger picture.”

“You just don’t know the effect you have on people, Katniss.” He placed a soft kiss on her cheek. “My mom distrusted the people from the Seam, now some of her very best friends are from the Seam. She even helped Hazelle open up her own laundry business in town.” 

“It’s true,” Katniss conceded. 

“All we have to do is teach our daughter not to hit you or anyone.”

“I was shocked.” Katniss looked up. “She just swatted at Mr. Quack.” 

“Yeah, unfortunately she gets that from my mother. Did I ever tell you my mom came to blows with Dross, the milkman?”

“Whatever for?” She picked up his hand before kissing his ring finger. In District Twelve wedding rings were expensive, so couples used twine or around their ring finger when they had their Toasting. It was a tradition and even those with enough money for rings still used twine. 

“Yeah, she insisted he wasn’t filling our milk bottles to the top.”  Peeta cleared his throat as Katniss kissed his shoulder, then his chin, next his cheek. They hadn’t slept together since she’s been back. Peeta was letting Katniss make the first move. 

“It sounds like something your mom would do,” she stared deep into his eyes as she sat astride him.  She leaned forward to kiss him.

“You sure?” 

“Peeta it’s been twelve months, fourteen days, and who knows how many hours since I’ve last had you touch me….” 

Peeta was astonished she had kept count. However every thought went out of his mind and other more pressing matters took precedence.

Time had a way of marching by quickly.  Katniss patiently dealt with their daughters' tantrums, and at night she would lie in his arms wanting for Mel to accept her. He was in the bakery when he overheard  Rye snicker. “My brother is a doormat and he doesn’t realize what a little slut you are. What did you have to do to get us that contract?”

“I would never cheat on your brother.” 

“Didn’t you?” Rye sneered. “Kids know when people are fake or liars. You only have to look at Mel to know she sees right through you.”

Peeta walked through the door and saw Katniss scowl, but Peeta could see the slight trembling in her lips , and the way that her face drained of color that meant she was near tears. 

“That’s enough Rye,” Peeta said, standing up to his brother. The last time he’d seen Katniss shrink back was when her father died. 

 In school Peeta had seen how the once vibrant girl diminished not only in personality but in size. She and her sister were so skinny they wore extra clothing to keep warm.  

Peeta had taken it upon himself to give the girl he loved extra food at lunch time.  He would sit next to her and say he was full, offering her an apple, or half a sandwich. One time he had left her family a basket of bread. His mother was furious that he took it without permission, but it was worth it seeing Prim’s face of joy upon discovering the bread. Peeta swore Katniss saw him hiding in the dim morning light. 

Shortly after that she began hunting and going around trading the meat she caught. Meat was expensive in the district and Katniss’ fresh game was welcome. It was this trading that afforded Peeta the ability to walk up to her in highschool and offer the bond of friendship.  It’s how they got to this moment. 

“I’m going to go hunting,” Katniss whispered. 

Peeta let her go before rounding on his brother. “Don’t you ever say anything like that to her. She worked in the kitchens while in the Capitol. Her supervisor Paylor, tasted the bread she brought with her. She gave dad Paylor’s number.”

Rye angrily turned his face away. 

“No, you’re going to listen to me, Rye. Katniss and I wrote to one another at least three times a week. She worked and studied hard. You know how shy she is around people. For her to make acquaintances in the Capitol was hard for her. She spent most of her nights studying, and when she wasn’t studying she was working. She asked about our daughter in every letter. Does that sound like a girl who is out for herself? She came back with ways to help both of our families.”

“What about Mel?”

“Mel thinks Katniss is going to take her daddy away. Yesterday she told Katniss, dada mine.  Mel has to learn how to share.” Peeta ran his hands through his hair.

“Mel’s stubborn.”

“Just like her mother. She’s also jealous just like Katniss.”

“Mitsy,” Rye and Peeta blurted at the same time and both of them laughed remembering the girl Katniss threatened to shoot in the eye while she was pregnant. 

“Just yesterday Mitsy came in to purchase bread and Katniss gave her a look that would freeze the lake in the woods.”

“There’s a lake in the woods?” 

Peeta grinned at the memories of them frolicing in the lake. The skinny dipping episode made Mel, “Oh there’s a lake in the woods.”  

   “Huh,” Rye said.

“Just give Katniss a break. She’s trying real hard to fit in again.”

“Alright fine,” Rye said. 

Peeta rubbed his face as Rye walked away. He needed to get all of his ducks in a row, now if he could only wrangle his toddler. 

Two weeks later he dragged himself upstairs. His father and mother left for the Capitol for two weeks. Rye was also gone on a singles train tour around the districts. Peeta was left to run the bakery by himself. He was tired and cranky like Mel when she refused to take her nap.

Tonight he kept the bakery open an  hour extra for a particular bride and her groom. Josi Raisin made him jump through hoops tonight. She was getting married to Jensen the newest Mine Manager and she was picky about the flavor of her cake.  She tried their vanilla, their lemon, the apple spice, lavender, poppy seed, pecan, raspberry, carrot, vanilla almond, and their most expensive, the german chocolate cake, only to choose a plain sponge cake.

The peal of Mel’s laughter stopped him dead in his tracks. 

“Again mama,” Mel shouted excitedly. 

Peeta quickly went up the stairs, he found Mel sprawled on the floor with Katniss giving their daughter raspberry kisses on her tummy. Mel laughter’s filled his ears and Katniss' brilliant smile gave his stomach butterflies. 

“Look, it’s dada.”

“Dada,” Mel said running to him. She patted his tummy then said, “Mama, mama…” followed by a gurgle of words. 

Katniss walked up to him and smiled, hugging them both. “It seems that a little patience, a lullaby and belly raspberries is what it takes to win her over.” 

“Well, I can’t comment on the belly raspberries, but  your voice is what made me fall in love with you.” 

Katniss smiled as Mel rested her head on her shoulder.

Mel then said, “My mama.”

Katniss grinned then said, “Yes baby girl I’m your mama.”

Mel then turned to Peeta and said, “My papa.”

“Yes button I’m your papa.”

Mel then patted them both on the cheek and gave them kisses. 

Peeta’s heart burst, filled with happiness.  He  hugged his girls and sighed, this was the dream. 

The end

[miaouerie]

[coda] a pyrrhic victory/an elpidian daydream

this coda marks my first multichapter fic wrapped up and completed!!! so here’s some more related ramblings as a way for me to commemorate this milestone n___n

with the nonlinear narrative I thought I’d include a linked timeline for the chapters in case anyone (like me lol) wants to read the story in chronological order. then there’s some further explanation of what I’ve dubbed ~the jeron’s death conspiracy~ and notes from characterization I wasn’t able to include directly in the story, but were still important regardless...

furthermore, I want to thank @ninelanterns, @atthelamppost, and @sadieandor for following along with this story, as well as anyone else who came along for the adventure. this is definitely a darkfic as far as rebelcaptain goes but I hope that both endings were satisfying in their own ways !!

1. an actual chronological table of contents

Before Cassian is reaped:

day 15

Cassian’s time in the Games:

days 2, 9, 5, 18

What came after that:

days 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 22, 26◆

Jeron dies:

days 20, 8, 25

Jyn is reaped and Cassian mentors her:

days 1, 3, 4, 12, 10, 16, 17◆, 19◆, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30

After Jyn wins her Games:

bonus chapter, day 31

◆ = chapters that are about trauma concurrent to most of the story, and loosely placed chronologically

2. the Jeron conspiracy

I decided to do a summary for this because I changed my plan slightly after posting day 8: “don’t say goodbye”/abandoned due to some inspiration from @ninelanterns; originally I was going to have snow have cassian brainwashed into genuinely believing that irga and his father were killed by someone with a grudge against them and the capitol (aka someone closely related to a tribute who died under their mentorship) in order to use him as a mouthpiece against those plotting against the capitol; the angst would’ve been from him finding out the truth and hating that his dad’s suicide was used for the capitol’s means. but then I got the idea to have snow brainwash cassian into believing that the “accident” his father and irga died in was actually his fault, because he told jeron the truth of what snow was doing to him in the capitol:

Snow sells Cassian “under the table” until he turns 19, which is when he has Cassian adopt a new persona that can be better capitalized on. Jeron realizes that Cassian’s faking it, suspects that Cassian has been hiding his victimhood this entire time, and when he confirms it realizes there’s no other way to get Cassian out of it; Snow certainly won’t let him sub in to mentor. Suicide is his solution to both Cassian’s problem and his guilt over not being able to protect his son.

Snow has Irga killed in the same way that Jeron kills himself to let Cassian and Lila know that Snow knows it was a suicide. Suicide is the ultimate refutation of Snow’s power—as well as the complete antithesis to any victor’s innate clinging to survival—so Snow has it covered up: Cassian, as one of two people to know the truth about Jeron’s suicide and Irga’s death, is tortured and brainwashed into believing that Jeron and Irga were killed in a power plant explosion as retribution for him disobeying Snow. Doing so serves two purposes: installing the cover-up and guarantees Cassian’s submission.

Before his death Jeron wrote a suicide note, knowing that he couldn’t kill himself and leave Cassian without an explanation. He knows that Snow will have their house stripped and searched, so he hides the note in what was designated to be Cassian’s house. He couldn’t have known it would be the one thing that would break through the brainwashing; if Cassian hadn’t found it, he would have continued to believe that it was all his fault.

Draven does his own investigation into Jeron and Irga’s deaths after witnessing the whiplash that was Cassian’s first three years as an unwilling victor whore, his outrageous personality flip after turning ninteen, and how his demeanor changed after undergoing “therapy” to cope with Jeron’s death. He finds out that Jeron’s death was a suicide, Irga’s death was retribution, and that Snow has an entire program to monetize and exploit victors after their Games.

3. getting from day 1 to 31?!

when I originally thought of this AU it was more about the angst that growing up in the limelight of the capitol as the son of a victor would be like, with constant camera crews as cassian was growing up, betting pools on when he was going to be reaped, etc. and more of an emphasis on the issues that cassian (as part of the pseudo-celebrity class that victors occupy in the capitol) would have trying to promote this fake relationship with jyn during the games to save her. there was also going to be a straight downer ending, with the closing scene being cassian telling jyn that they have to fake a relationship now in front of the cameras and jyn having a “what have you done?” moment

I deliberately did not go in depth with what jeron’s life as a victor was like, partly because plotting both jyn and cassian’s hunger games was already a Lot (I found out pretty quickly that you have to start with planning the arena first, in order to plan tribute deaths and sponsor gifts...) but jeron was an underdog winner, as are most of the victors from non-career districts. lila was pregnant around the time that jeron was reaped and esperanza, their first child, was born some time before jeron’s victory tour. snow had their daughter killed because of something jeron did/didn’t do on the tour; even though jeron and lila are shaken from the loss they agree to be open to having another child, provided that jeron doesn’t do anything to put the child at risk ever again.... but cassian would’ve gotten reaped regardless because there is no way snow wouldn’t have exploited the family drama!!! but cassian’s reaping creates a rift that is referenced in day 15: accidents. and even though jeron is successful in saving cassian that isn’t the end of it; while lila isn’t privy to what cassian is going through she can feel a marked difference each year he comes back in the way that mothers do, as well as the tension between father and son (cassian’s fear of jeron finding out as he’s dragged deeper and deeper vs. jeron’s suspicion that something wrong is happening that has to do with cassian), which all culminates in the year that cassian turns nineteen with jeron’s death. when her husband arrived in district 5 before cassian did he didn’t tell lila about their son being a horndog in the capitol, but lila seeing cassian after he finally gets back five weeks later confirms her worst fears. then she’s the one that discovers jeron’s body and is present when the peacekeepers come to take cassian back to the capitol. her son is gone for a month....... then when he comes back he’s spouting lies about jeron’s death even though both of them saw the body??? yeah, that’s why she nopes on out of victors’ village. after jeron’s death her and cassian don’t see each other for four years until cassian brings jyn home from the games

jyn’s backstory came together quickly but I had considered having bodhi be one of the tributes who died under cassian’s mentorship. bodhi and jyn would’ve been close friends so jyn would have already had that vendetta against cassian; it would’ve made hitting that original ending easier but having jyn be against cassian from the very start would’ve made it less plausible that they could earn each other’s trust before the start of jyn’s games............. while I wanted this story to be dark and depressing I still wanted it to have a reciprocated rebelcaptain end game, so :’)

it wasn’t until day 28 (the cassian/finnick noncon) that I got an idea for a not-so-horrible ending, and I blame the completely depressingly hopeless whump in that chapter for making me think “hmm maybe this shouldn’t end terribly” :’D btw, if anyone noticed I forgot annie cresta is in canon the 70th hunger games victor. for someone who’s neurotic about looking up details I have no idea how this fact escaped me because I didn’t notice until at least halfway through whumptober, so we’ll just say in this AU she’s the 71st victor. this weaves in nicely with my headcanon that after snow saw how easily cassian was manipulated when someone he loved was on the line, he had annie reaped to exert more control over finnick (which happens to be my favorite kind of odesta fic tbh). anyway after writing 3k of depressing andair (andor/odair ship name? ok i’m shutting up) cassian/finnick I had a lovely mental image of cassian and jyn cuddling on the train back home to district 5, relieved and alive, and thought that would be a more uplifting note to end on. then I remembered that I was writing this for whumptober, and decided to write the terrible ending too :’)

4. some chapter commentary because why not

[ETA later!]

5. is there no escape?

yes!!! yes they do escape:

in a pyrrhic victory, post-day 31, draven succeeds in absconding with cassian and meeting up with jyn, saw, lyra, and the rest of their resistance cell (an underground, pan-panem organization fittingly called.... the alliance). draven has to cut out cassian’s implant before they rendezvous with the group, which he ropes a medical professional into doing (he may or may not kill them afterwards); it’s the only mark cassian bears on his body until he starts getting freckles from being in the sun again. similar to mockingjay in how peeta’s hijacking was treated with therapy in district 13, cassian undergoes actual, legitimate therapy after he and draven settle in with the alliance HQ. draven hovers anxiously for the first several sessions because “therapy” in the capitol has a stigma, even before he read the term “extensive in-patient therapy” in cassian’s intendance records, and it does take a good while before they make any remarkable progress. but unlike katniss and peeta cassian is alright in jyn’s presence, and in fact prefers it. they’re almost always seen together, and while jyn has a good amount of guilt for leaving him behind the first time her motivation for staying with him is out of a genuine desire to help him get better so they can be with each other the same way they were in an elpidian daydream again.

in happily ever after!an elpidian daydream, cassian and jyn are able to escape together in between arriving home in district 5 and what was supposed to be jyn’s victory tour. jyn was never aware of what snow did with desirable victors because it’s really only the top 1% of panem and the victors who know about it; she and cassian escape after he tells her that he wants to leave with her, but he doesn’t tell her the real reason why he wants to escape until much later and jyn never sees the recording of cassian and finnick (but he does tell her it exists when he’s explaining the details of how snow exerts his control over the victors). their relationship progresses steadily, but the secret doesn’t come out until jyn points out that cassian is extremely passive in bed and only mirrors her desires. there’s varying attitudes towards sex in the districts vs. the libertine views in the capitol but cassian’s shame stems from his powerlessness in what he had to do Before. he receives therapy for it but jyn is patient and firm with reminding him that he had absolutely zero choice in the matter, and that she could never hate or be disgusted with him for it. there’s a lot to work through there as a result of cassian having to lie to himself about it for the first couple of years of it happening and then willingly choosing to engage with it when he was trying to save jyn, but their relationship comes out all the more stronger for it. as for what happens to draven?.... because this is the happily ever after ending I like to think he’s able to stay in the capitol and work as an agent codenamed fulcrum 🤪🤙 and that after his extraction when things get too dangerous for him in the capitol he and cassian are able to reunite again as part of the alliance/rebellion !!

[holidaywishes]

not all monsters do monstrous things...

Part 6: The Argument

  Summary of Series: Delly Cartwright lost her best friend, Peeta, to   the games. Now, the one that took him seems to have a soft spot for her.

  Summary of Chapter: Delly has been living with Cato for a couple weeks now but his constant sneaking out leaves her feeling angry and alone.

  Warning: Fluff, some angst, mentions of prostitution,

  Author’s Note: This one is a bit longer but we’re starting to get to more exciting parts of the series so get pumped! Again, credit goes to original fanfic.net writer of They Caught Fire. Find it, read it, it’s good. Mine is slightly more flushed out but the idea is the same. So credit where credit is due.

  masterlist

  the other masterlist

xx

Delly’s P.O.V

  It had been two weeks since you were torn from your home and brought to the Capitol to live with Cato. He tried explaining it to you but you refused to listen.

  “You can’t ignore me forever” he said after days of you not talking to him, earning a scoff from you as you walked to the couch, “if you would just talk to me, you’d understand why you’re here”

  “I’m not interested”

  “So you’re just going to live here in silence?”

  “If that’s the way it has to be”

  “Whatever,” he sighed, rubbing his temples, “I have to go. Stay here, read some books. Watch something. So whatever, just stay here. Got it?”

  “Yeah-uh” you said, waving your hand to shoo him away and he shook his head as a reply. When he finally left, you caught yourself staring at the closed door, biting the corner of your mouth as you contemplated peeking out the hole in the door. You huffed as you stood up and hopped to the door, hoping you’d still be able to see him, and, there he was, climbing into a limo, “where is he going?” You said to yourself as the car drove away toward the bright lights of the Capitol Centre. You spent a few hours searching through his cabinets and exploring different rooms of the house, starting to get bored but not knowing what else to do. When you had run out of options, you decided to get some sleep when there was a knock on the door, “company?” You thought to yourself, “it couldn’t be, Cato wouldn’t allow that.” Whoever was at the door, knocked again and you stood behind the door, biting your lip as your hand hesitated to open the door

  “Hello?” The voice called, you suddenly flew toward the door to answer it, desperate for company. “Oh! Hello?” they said

  “Hello..” you replied, not inviting them in

  “I’m Finnick,” he smiled, outstretching his hand, “nice to meet you.”

  “I’m--” you stopped, not knowing if you should introduce yourself, “Delly.”

  “Can I come in, Delly?” he asked, walking past you into Cato’s home

  “Uhh..” you stammered, “I’m sorry, Cato isn’t here”

  “No I know. He’s out... partying” he smirked

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “I just wanted to meet you”

  “You know about me?”

  “Cato mentioned something a little while ago”

  “I see...” you sighed, closing the door and walking in his direction

  “He explained you quite accurately,” he said and you tilted your head, “he was very... smitten, let’s say.”

  “Smitten?” you scoffed, “he’s sure doing a hell of a job showing it”

  “Go easy on him, huh?” he said softly, sitting on the couch as if he was going to be staying a while

  “Go easy on the victor who killed my best friend and tore me away from my family?” you snarled

  “He’s been put in a tough situation now. He’s actually not a bad guy...”

  “How am I supposed to act? He won’t tell me why I’m here, He didn’t even ask me to come here -- I was just thrown into a train and dragged here”

  “I have a feeling he tried to tell you why you’re here but you didn’t listen”

  “No...” you tried, “fine. I’ve been trying to ignore him because I’m angry. I don’t want to be here, I want to be at home with my family and friends.”

  “He means well,” he laughed, “he’s just... never had to be nice to anyone before.” You scoffed again, rolling your eyes, finally sitting down next to him

  “You’re really going to tell me to sit there and give him a chance?”

  “Yes”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he sighed, looking down as he twiddled his thumbs, “I think you’ll realize how much he needs you.” The words caught you off guard. No one had ever needed you before. Not your parents. Not your brother. Not Peeta. No one. So the idea that you could be that important to someone made you want to rethink everything.

  “But..” you started, sighing and leaning back into the couch as you groaned, “I haven’t been able to leave this giant house for two weeks. And he leaves every chance he gets”

  “Let him explain why..” Finnick urged

  “Why can’t I leave?”

  “Because you’re not from here. People would have questions”

  “No one knows me here”

  “You forget that the reapings and the tours are all broadcast. People know you’re Peeta’s best friend. They may not remember your name but they know your story” he replied, leaning his elbows on his knees

  “Great...” you sighed, “so I’m just supposed to give Cato a chance while I stay locked up here like some... prisoner?”

  “Oh, Ms. Cartwright,” he scoffed, “you’re not the only prisoner here.” You scrunched your eyebrows together and opened your mouth to speak when Cato threw the door open and huffed as he walked through the large corridors. Doubling back when he realized that you were, in fact, not alone.

  “Finnick?” he asked with a growl. He looked like he’d had quite the night; shirt torn, hair messed up, a small purple mark forming on his jaw

  “Hey buddy!” Finnick laughed, “how was your night?”

  “What are you doing here?” he said through bared teeth and you watched as Finnick led him back to the door, whispering something in his ear that you didn’t quite hear, until they looked back at you

  “Just sit down and talk to her” Finnick said to Cato as he waved goodbye to you. You waved back and waited for Cato to yell at you for inviting someone in but instead he just closed the door softly and stood with his head against the door for a moment before finally speaking to you

  “I didn’t think you’d still be awake...”

  “I was going to go to bed but Finnick...” you started

  “What did he tell you?” the words grew louder with each step he took toward you, forcing a flinch to overtake you until you were practically cowering with fear

  “He didn’t tell me anything,” you replied meekly, “he just told me to give you a chance.” He seemed to soften at your confession, dropping his head and letting out a sigh

  “You should get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

xx

Cato’s P.O.V.

  You didn’t know what to do with Delly. You weren’t sure if she was telling you the truth about Finnick and you needed to know what he told her in order to protect her. But she was making it increasingly difficult.

  “Delly,” you said as she walked into the kitchen the next morning, “we should talk...”

  “Sure” she replied, sitting down at the table

  “I don’t know what Finnick told you but in order for us to trust each other,” you started, watching her eyes follow your movements, “there’s probably some things you should know.”

  “Yeah.. like... why you’re--”

  “I didn’t tear you away from your home.” You interrupted and she furrowed her brow at you, “I was in the middle of writing you a letter explaining what was going on when Wade, my mentor, explained what was happening to you.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that? I’m not supposed to think that this is what Victors do? That this is what your District Partner would’ve done if the two of you won together? Keeping people around like prizes to do whatever you please with”

  “Don’t you dare talk about her!” you yelled

  “WHY NOT?! IT’S NOT LIKE YOU DO! I AM SO SICK OF WALKING AROUND GLASS TO NOT UPSET YOU!”

  “Watch what you say next Delly...” you warned but she didn’t listen

  “You were all cruel, in that arena. I get it, you had to be. But her?” she said, “she was the worst. Of all of the Careers.”

  “She was a soldier” you said

  “SHE WAS INSANE!”

  “SHE WAS TRAINED!”

  “TO BE A INSANE PERSON?!”

  “IF SHE WAS INSANE, AM I NOT A MONSTER?”

  “MAYBE YOU ARE! MAYBE I WAS WRONG ABOUT YOU!”

  “AT LEAST I’M NOT WEAK. LIKE YOU AND YOUR LITTLE BAKER FRIEND.”

  “WHY DID YOU EVEN BRING ME HERE?!” Her yelling had caused her voice to crack and you could only imagine how raw her throat must have felt. Her eyes were beginning to well with tears, “I just wanna go home”

  “If you leave,” he stammered, sitting down across from where you stood, “I can’t protect you”

  “Protect me? From what?” You asked

  “President Snow.”

  “I don’t und--” she started but stopped quickly when you glared at her

  “He saw us talking at the Apothecary, during the Tour,” you explained, “he got the idea in his head that there was something going on between us. So, he used you against me”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He said he would kill you and your family if I didn’t do what he said. I couldn’t let you die. I didn’t want you to die”

  “Why not?” she asked harshly, forcing you to shake your head at her question, “you don’t know me. You don’t know my family. You’ve killed people before, and we’re just from District 12. We’re outsiders right? So it wouldn’t have been a big deal to you to kill us.”

  “Delly...” you said softly, reaching out to hold her hands but she tore them away from you, “Snow wasn’t wrong. Maybe you don’t feel anything for me. Maybe you have feelings for Gale..”

  “Gale?” she questioned

  “But,” you continued, “there was something for me there when we met. I didn’t know what President Snow would do but I knew I couldn’t let anything happen to you. Things just spiraled.” You watched as she shook her head, trying to understand your words, and her eyes shifted around the room

  “Fine.” She huffed, “but explain to me why you’re always leaving? Why I can’t go anywhere? I hate being cooped up here all the time and you leave at all hours of the day! I mean sometimes you’re gone before I wake up and then out the entire day. What are you doing?”

  “I can’t--”

  “You have to!” she yelled

  “No, I don’t!” you shouted back

  “Then let me leave.” She countered, sitting back against her chair and crossing her arms over her chest

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can,” she replied, “let me go outside. Take me with you, wherever it is you go. Take me to one party in the Capitol and I won’t say anything more about it. I’ll stay here and continue to do as you expect me to do.”

  “Delly...” you groaned

  “I’m thousands of miles from home. From my family. From everything I’ve ever known. I deserve not to be treated like a criminal!” The two of you stared at each other for a while before you eventually agreed, even though you knew it was a bad idea that meant Snow would be displeased. But the smile on her face almost made it worth it, you just hoped it would be a fatal agreement.

xx

Delly’s P.O.V

  You had somehow managed to convince Cato to take you out of his mansion and into the Capitol for a party. You were sure that was where he was constantly running off to every night and you just wanted to see why he was so consumed with it. He set out a dress for you on your bed that you were positive his stylist had picked out for him -- a short metallic pastel blue dress to compliment his eyes with sharp shoulders that reminded you of Effie Trinket’s outfits during the Reapings -- and you quickly got dressed to head to the club that Cato was taking you to. When you walked into the club, you were in awe at the opulence of it all; the ceiling stretched for miles and the marble tile covered the entirety of the club, making the music echo throughout every corner. There was stained glass on the dome ceiling that looked as if it depicted great wars and you couldn’t help but be lost in the images you saw.

  “Delly?” Cato asked, bringing you back to reality

  “Sorry,” you said, “I’ve just never seen anything so beautiful before”

  “You’re going to give yourself away” he whispered to you

  “What do you mean?” you asked

  “I got you this dress so people would think that you were from the inner districts, 1, 2, 3, not from District 12. If you continue to fawn over the ceiling, people will definitely know you’re not from here,” he chided, still whispering in your ear, “you look stunning by the way.” You blushed at his compliment and composed yourself, taking your eyes away from the décor

  “So, how do I blend in?” you asked

  “For starters,” he smirked, “have a drink. Then something to eat. Then move over to the dance floor”

  “I’m allowed to dance?” you joked

  “Yes,” he said, “but not too much. Just enough to show off your dress and then head back to the bar.” You did as he said, not wanting to get either of you in trouble, until you saw someone pull him aside

  “He’s just doing business,” a voice said from behind you, “don’t worry, he won’t leave you behind.” You turned around to find Johanna Mason watching Cato walk away with a woman much older than him

  “What do you mean?” you said as you turned to her, “what kind of business?”

  “Oh sweetheart,” she laughed, “you must be the girl from District 12.”

  “What? No! I’m from District 1...” you lied, hoping that the dress and your makeup would fool her

  “He talked about you, Cato, he told us about the girl he met on his Victory Tour whose hair was beautifully gold and whose eyes were like oceans of Sapphire.” She scoffed, forcing you to furrow your brows at her statements, “It’s okay, I’m not going to out you.”

  “What did you mean about Cato? What kind of business is he doing with that woman?” you asked again

  “President Snow has many of the Victors... sell themselves to members of the Capitol Elite as a way of keeping them in line.” You thought about it for a moment but didn’t want to believe it

  “No,” you replied, “Snow loves Cato. He was the perfect victor. He believes that the games are exactly what Snow has told Panem they are.”

  “It’s that kind of dedication that Snow preys on. He needs someone who he can control and tell him that it’s all the price you pay for winning the Games.” She moved to sit down on a curved, purple velvet couch and encouraged you to do the same, which you did, as she continued to explain, “See, I’m not like the other Victors. I don’t have anyone left that I care about so Snow couldn’t force me to do anything. I was free to decline his offer and he couldn’t do anything about it. But the others, they weren’t so lucky. Our dear President would threaten the lives of those we loved most if we, as Victors, didn’t do exactly as he asked.”

  “He said he’d kill us” you mumbled to yourself

  “Yes,” Johanna responded, “or, more accurately, he’d have someone kill you.”

  “So why me? Why would President Snow threaten to kill me and not Cato’s family?”

  “Because,” she huffed, “Cato’s family are the only ones in District 2 who train the tributes to become Victors. Sure, it’s an illegal activity that should not be condoned by our government but it makes for a more exciting Hunger Games, so President Snow allows it. Encourages it even. And because Cato’s parents are the experts in training our young Victors, Snow knew Cato wouldn’t believe his threats against them. That’s where you come in.”

  “I’m not exactly Cato’s type...” you groaned, “he’s not exactly going to worry about me enough for Snow not to kill me or my family. I mean... if he cared he wouldn’t be working tonight”

  “He’s always working. Whether he thinks he is or not” she said

  “So what do I do?” You replied, turning your head in hopes of finding the tall blonde victor you came with

  “Take in the Capitol luxury. Drink, dance, eat. Kiss someone if you want. But be careful what you say. You never know who might be listening...” You turned your head back just in time to find Johanna had left you and you shrugged before heading to the bar to order a drink, only to be stopped by an arm

  “I’ve never seen you before...” the voice that belonged to the arm said

  “I’m.. uhm... a friend of Cato’s...” you stuttered

  “The new victor?” you nodded nervously, “I’m Gloss.” He seemed to be sizing you up and you weren’t quite sure how to proceed, “you look familiar. Where would I have seen you?” he continued to pry and your mouth began to feel dry

  “He bothering you?” Cato said as he suddenly appeared behind you

  “No, he’s fine. It’s fine, I was just going to get a drink...” you replied, gesturing toward the bar and to Gloss to get him to move aside. He apologized and moved aside while you ordered a drink but when the bartender wouldn’t order you a drink, Cato stepped in

  “Glass of Champagne, Bartender,” he said, “and quick. Before I get angry.” You looked up at him, amazed at how much his presence seemed to compel everyone to listen to him, before smiling and taking a sip of your drink. “What?” he chuckled when he noticed you staring

  “Dance with me” you smiled

  “I don’t know, Delly,” he whined, “people might talk.”

  “People will always talk but we’re here to have fun”

  “One dance.” He caved and you dragged him onto the dance floor. You both moved to the fast-paced music, you laughing at him when he did an old-fashioned dance move, until the music slowed and you awkwardly smiled at him

  “I know you said one dance...” he smiled back at you, moving closer to you and putting your arms on his shoulders while he placed his hands on your hips. His eyes began roaming the club and you tried to bring his attention back to you, if only to calm his nerves, but it didn’t work.

  “We should go. People are staring...” He dropped his hands from your hips, taking your hand and leading you outside where a car was waiting. When you arrived back at his house, he ran ahead of you and you tried to talk to him

  “Cato...” you called, “please, Cato, talk to me.” He stood across from you, eyes trained on yours, and you took a sharp inhale in preparation for what he might say

  “We shouldn’t have been dancing like that. I shouldn’t have brought you there.” He replied sternly

  “Why didn’t you tell me? About what Snow was making you do?” you asked, moving slowly toward him

  “What was I supposed to say? I’m being prostituted by our President so you don’t die?”

  “Yes!” you exclaimed, “because it’s the truth. And it would have made so much more sense than him just bringing me here for no reason.”

  “Well, I didn’t know exactly what to say...” He dropped his eyes to the floor and, for the first time, he seemed so vulnerable. Almost scared.

  “You don’t have to say anything else if you don’t want to. I get it now. I get that he’s got a hold on you and that you’re just as much a prisoner as I felt I was. I’m here to listen, if you need it, but otherwise, I’ll do as you ask and stay here. I won’t complain and I won’t ask questions.”

  “I don’t want you to be miserable...” he confessed and you smiled

  “Just talk to me every once in a while. Make me feel like I’m human and maybe you’ll feel more human, too.”

  “Deal.” He smiled, gently taking your hand in his, rubbing your palm with his thumb before clearing his throat and heading to bed. You weren’t sure what any of tonight meant -- the dance, the kindness he showed you, the way he stood up for you, -- but you hoped that this wasn’t all there was for the two of you.

[run-in-the-shadow]

My Unnecessary Pitch of the New Hunger Games Prequel (a book that has already been written)

So I’ve given a lot of thought to the new Hunger Games prequel that Suzanne Collins is releasing next year. While there’s always some risk in resurrecting older properties, I’ve decided that I am excited for this. 15-year-old me rise.

But I’ve also been wondering, how could this story work? What will Collins do to make sure this isn’t just a Hunger Games 2.0? What will make it new and unique? How can it add to the existing story in a necessary way?

So I’ve basically come up with the format, characters, and basic plot that I think would be really cool in this potential prequel. Of course I’m not expecting any of this to actually be in the new book, but on the off chance that I actually do predict something right, I just want to write all of this down for the record.

If you’re at all curious about what I have in mind, read below. It’s long. Whoops.

Why it won’t be Hunger Games 2.0

The first Hunger Games novel has a fairly familiar formula, no doubt because the Games themselves have followed the same formula and traditions for 74 years at that point. There’s the reaping, tributes being picked, the training, the ceremonies, the interviews, the Games, the killing, and finally, one victor. Katniss, being the revolutionary that she is, broke that when both she and Peeta shared the victory.

But in order to have Katniss in the 74th Games, there can’t really be a Katniss-like character in the 10th Games. I’ve thought it over, and I just don’t think the narrator/main character (assuming Collins continues with 1st person POV) will or should be someone who is reaped as a tribute. We’re too familiar with that experience. We know the motions; we know the feelings. Additionally, it would seem all too predictable to assume that the main character we follow will end up being victor of the Games. Unless Collins does make the bold choice to kill them off. But then what? Would that make an impact on the overall story? One kid’s death among hundreds over the years?

I then thought, what if the story were told be someone at home, someone witness to the Games through the TV, the same as everyone else in the country watching? Meanwhile, they have their own fight to survive or take care of their families or whatever. Perhaps it’s someone they know, a friend or a relative, who is fighting in the Games. Basically if the Hunger Games were told from Prim’s perspective.

But we know why this won’t work. It’s boring. We are the Capitol. We enjoy the spectacle. We need to be closer to the action. Can you imagine a movie adaptation of someone just sitting, watching the Games from their home? So no, we can’t have that. Not for an entertaining story.

But if I don’t think it should be someone competing in the Games or someone watching in the districts, what does that leave...

The Young Mentor

(Sorry if the gender-neutral pronouns make it confusing. I just don’t care if these characters are gendered one way or the other.)

So here’s my pitch: Our main character is a previous victor of the Games, winning within the last couple of years (7th-9th Games). Perhaps they won when they were 15, so for this book, they are 17. Through brief flashbacks, we can discover details about their particular Games without having to go through the whole routine again. Not only that, but we can explore the aftermath, the PTSD, the shock, the changes in their lives, etc. And being a previous victor, they now have to take on the role as mentor for their district’s tributes.

Other details: they should be from a district other than 12. I just think it would be important to explore more areas of Panem, especially early Panem. Was the inequality from district to district just as extreme as it was in Katniss’ time? What if our main character was from one of the Career Districts? Or would they even be Career Districts that early on in the history of the Games? Maybe our character’s actions or experience contributed to those districts basically cheating the system. I really don’t have a particular district in mind at this time, but I just don’t want it to be 12 again.

What I especially love about this character’s age is that they would have memory of “before” the Games. The first Games would have occurred when they were 7. They could remember the distinct shift in the country, and they would be able to remember the adjustment to that life. Those are just very interesting topics to explore, since we’ve never seen life in Panem at that time, especially from the firsthand experience of a child.

The General Plot (& inevitable romance?)

So our main character is a mentor to their district’s 2 new tributes for the 10th Hunger Games. Perhaps this is their first time mentoring. Perhaps it is not, and the past year’s experience was either traumatic or just didn’t go very well. They probably still weren’t over the shock, and perhaps, like Haymitch, they were just too cynical to seriously mentor. Or maybe there is an older victor from the district who took on most of the mentorship roles. I like the idea of that relationship between 2 very new victors who don’t have any idea what they’re doing. Would it be antagonistic? Sibling-like? Would they just avoid each other? On the other hand, I also like thinking of our main character being the first victor of their district, and they have to deal with all that responsibility on their own.

Anyway, our character is a mentor, and one of the tributes reaped just happens to be someone they know very well. I’m thinking either a best friend or love interest. I also thought that they could be someone they don’t know well, but through the course of mentoring, they get to know each other and become friends/love interests/people who care about one another. But I think I’d rather they be invested from earlier on. There’s always potential for friendship at the start to turn into romance later. And one that feels slightly forbidden at that, between a mentor and a tribute.

(I don’t mean to over-emphasize the romance aspect. I noticed a lot of people looking forward to the potential romances in the new book, while others criticizing those for missing the main message of the story. I’m just trying to be realistic. This is YA, after all. There most likely will be a romantic storyline at some point. But I am trying to avoid any love triangles in this pitch.)

So our main character and their tribute friend are plotting for how to survive the Games. Obviously our character wants to keep their friend alive, ideally to victory. While in the past, they might not have cared as much, disillusioned to the whole ordeal, this time they have a reason to care about the circumstances of these Games.

As for the other tribute, the one who’s not the friend? Who knows, who cares? But really, the other tribute will probably be the focus of the other mentor (if there is one), or else will notice the favoritism toward the other tribute and feel resentful. That could brew conflict, especially once we’re within the Games themselves.

The Games Themselves

It being the 10th anniversary of the Games, you know they’re gonna make it special. Like the clock design in the 75th games, I figure this one will have some kind of special theme to it. What might that theme be, you may ask? I don’t know. I’m not writing the book. But really, I can’t worry about the specifics right now. Let’s just settle on...an arena in which you can only travel up, eventually meeting in the middle at the peak of a mountain with nowhere to go. Imagine a vertical-only course in which you have no choice but to climb, since there are cliffs and maybe even rising floodwaters that force you to keep moving. There’s a concept. I just made it up as I went. I guess that was specific.

Anyway, our main character is only concerned about the wellbeing of their friend within the arena. We get to see the behind-the-scenes of trying to connect with sponsors and influence the Gamemakers. Sure, there will still be some of that watching-the-Games-on-TV stuff, but our main character will still be much more directly involved with the action than if they were just stuck in their district. Also, we might see more daily life in the Capitol while our main character deals there.

Within the Games themselves, you know how it goes. People die, get killed. Our character’s friend will do all right for themselves, making it pretty close to the last few tributes in the arena. But I do expect that the friend will die. I know, tragic. But again, it just feels too predictable to make the tribute we focus on the most win the game. The circumstance of the friend’s death could be as simple as slipping and falling. They could’ve been killed by someone from another district. But now I’m liking the idea that they could be killed by their fellow tribute, the one ignored by our mentor. This tribute might end up actually winning the Games, causing a conflict of emotions in our main character as this new victor (who they’ll regularly have to be around from here on out) is the reason their friend is dead, yet they are expected to be proud that their district has yet another victor.

And now I come back to the idea of the main character being from a Career District, before the “Career” part even became a thing. Maybe seeing their friend die and feeling like they could’ve done more makes them feel guilty or responsible. Maybe they see that their mentorship wasn’t good enough. Something triggers them to want to be better, to make sure that deaths like their friend’s don’t happen again. Maybe they institute the “Career” ideology and promote it through the district, preparing the children there to fight to win. And there you have the start of a beast of the Hunger Games.

Other cool things that could be included

As I’ve said, I think a look at life in the Capitol would be interesting. Who’s leader/president at this time, and what are they like? Surely it’s not still Snow. I’ve had thoughts that he could be older than he looks, what with all his surgeries. But according to the wiki page, Snow was 1 when the 1st Games took place. That would make him 10 in this book. Possibly a cameo of a weird child in the Capitol? Maybe. (Imagine the book being narrated by him, a 10-year-old kid who would grow up to be a dictator, having no concept of life before the Games existed...scary.)

I wonder where their technology is at this point in Panem’s history. During Katniss’ time, it is quite advanced, but what about 64 years before that time? Where are they in technological and biological advancements? Do they even have forcefields around the tributes’ living quarters so they don’t jump and kill/hurt themselves? Maybe something happens in this book that gives them the reason to install those...

Speaking of Katniss, I know it would be cool to tie it back to her in some Skywalkerian way. But I actually don’t think that’s necessary, and I just don’t want a rehash of her same story. Perhaps some allusions are fine, but there’s enough time and distance from Katniss that I see very little reason to make it about her.

It’s late, and I really don’t know what more there is to say. I’m excited for the story, regardless of what it will actually involve. If it’s anything like my little prediction, great! But I’m not the author. And I trust that Suzanne will tell the story that she feels is the most necessary to be told.

[kriscme]

One Life To Live

“One Life to Live” is the title I’ve settled on for this fic (thanks Loueze).  It’s only one chapter instead of my usual three, but it was trickier to do as it sets up what happens next - whatever that may be.  Even I don’t know.   As usual, could be subject to change later on if it suits the plot.  When it’s finished it will be put on AO3.  Thanks for reading.  Chapter 20 Marcus Muir pulls a map from his pack, unfolds it, and lays it across the rock ledge.  It’s a topographical map which shows elevation changes.  He also has another that shows landscape features.   And aerial photographs taken from a hovercraft as well. Not to mention some kind of handheld device that reminds me of a Holo.   Only this doesn’t show pods but your location anywhere in Panem.   Marcus uses it in conjunction with his maps.   “Why did you need me when you have all this stuff?” I ask.   I take a water bottle from the side pocket of my pack and take a big gulp.  The weather is still chilly, but the climb to the top of the ridge has me sweating under my clothes.   Marcus turns his extraordinary eyes to mine. They are a light brown, the colour of maple syrup, and almost the same golden brown of his hair.   Paired with even features, a lithe athletic build, he’s not too bad on the eyes.  A little like Finnick in appearance actually, if Finnick had a not-quite-as-good-looking older brother. “There’s no substitute for local knowledge,” he says as he refolds the map and tucks it back into his pack.   “Take this place.”   He sweeps his hand over the lush valley below.  It’s a magnificent view and a familiar one.  It’s where Gale and I used to meet.  “A map only tells you that there’s a high elevation point and then a sharp drop in altitude.  It takes someone who’s actually been here to know that it’s worth the climb to see it.” “Humph” I grunt in reply.  “And why should it be so important that there’s a view worth seeing?” “For a look-out,” he says, his gaze now trained on the horizon.   “This is perfect.   We’ll have to put up a barrier, of course, for safety’s sake. We don’t want people too close to the edge and falling off.” He maps out a large square with his hands.  “We could put a platform right here.  And once that thicket of bushes is removed, there’ll be nothing to impede the view.” He’s right.  The bushes are in the way.  And the loss of them won’t take anything away from the natural beauty of the place.  But they’re not just any bushes.  Gale and I would nestle into a nook in the rocks between these bushes and the ledge, and talk, and eat, and plan our hunting strategy for the day.  This is the place where we met on that last morning before the reaping to share a meal of bakery bread and a goat cheese, made by Prim.   A few meters away is the large flat rock where Cressida filmed us.  And it’s where I came to rest, that first time I could rouse myself to venture back into the woods after I was confined to 12.  I let the last of Gale go that day, that day Peeta returned.  It was a turning point, I now realize.  To be free of the ties that had bound me to him.   But it was for no purpose in the end.  Peeta no longer cared. 

“Imagine it, Katniss,” Marcus enthuses.  “People using the forest as it should be.  Out exercising and enjoying nature and learning about the natural world. That’s the way we conserve it.  Not by putting fences around it and shutting everyone out.  Or the way it is now with people doing whatever they like.”   I say nothing but he doesn’t seem to expect a response.  I think he’s used to my sullen silences by now.  He hoists his pack onto his shoulders and that’s the signal for me to do the same.   He likes to keep moving.  It’s been a challenge for me to keep up, and I don’t consider myself a slouch when it comes to traversing through the woods. Ambivalent is too mild a word for how I feel about Marcus’s purpose here.  He wants to establish national parks to conserve our natural heritage for prosperity, he says.  He got the idea from an ancient book he discovered in the basement of the Capitol library where he worked.  He had access to all the old books stored down there, many of them forbidden to the public.  They had national parks before the dark days, it seems, and they were very successful. Most of the wilderness areas we have now were once national parks.  The irony is that great care was taken to conserve these areas but the rest of the planet was left to go to pot.  The changes in climatic conditions – rising sea levels, or something – led to civil strife, and then wars and then finally the Panem we know today. It’s not that I don’t see the value in it. I know what’s happened to the woods since the fences came down and people are free to enter as they please. Before the rebellion, you would have been whipped in the town square, or even hanged, if you were caught trespassing.  Only a few of us were daring enough, or desperate enough, to risk it. But, because there were so few of us, what was taken from nature was very little and it quickly recovered.  When I escorted Marcus into the woods for the first time, I saw through his eyes just how much damage has been done.  People have lost the fear that once kept them out of the woods from either predators or the law.  And they are no longer afraid of being put to death if they are caught in possession of a weapon.  Forget bows and snares, firearms are used now and some species are less abundant as they used to be through over hunting.  Trees, some of them centuries old, are indiscriminately chopped down for building material or firewood.  And human footprints crisscross the terrain causing erosion and destruction to undergrowth. I saw rubbish left behind by picnickers, and the remains of a camp fire that was surely too big for safety.  Yet, on the other hand, I don’t want a look-out built on my old meeting place either.  Gale and I were the only ones who knew it was there, so well hidden it is, and now everyone will know about it.   It dawns on me that there was a least one good thing about the pre-war days and that was having the woods virtually all to myself. We continue our walk along the ridge. Marcus makes a few notes as he goes, stopping occasionally to peer across the valley.  I think he’s searching for more look-out sites.   Eventually we descend into a saddle with another steep climb just ahead of us.  It’s sheltered from the wind here and sunlight filters through the tall straight pines.    A fallen tree lies invitingly a few meters away.  I glance hopefully over at Marcus.  My stomach is rumbling and I want to eat.  Luckily, he seems to have the same idea because he props his pack against the log and pulls out a rumpled paper bag.   “Ready for lunch?” he asks. I don’t have to be asked twice.  I take a seat beside him on the log and get my food out too – ham sandwiches, a banana and a couple of cheese buns.  The buns are from Peeta.  For some reason, he’s started baking them for me instead of cookies, even though I can get cheese buns from the bakery.  I think, maybe, that he has a memory of baking them for me, and he’s acting it out to see where it leads.  Rather like with the snickerdoodles when he couldn’t remember the key ingredient.  Going through the motions helped him to remember.   I think now that is what was behind all the touching he used to do.  It came out of all the hugging and affectionate gestures we were forced to do in public as the star-crossed lovers.  His body remembered it even if he didn’t.  And now his body remembers baking cheese buns for me.  Cheese buns equals Katniss sort of thing.  Much as I would like to, I don’t set any store by it.  The action means little without the feelings behind it.   “I know how you feel,” says Marcus. “Hmm?” I mumble through a mouthful of sandwich. “About your woods being turned into a national park.  When you’ve had it to yourself for so long, it becomes like your home.  You certainly don’t want strangers walking through it.  And then there’s the peace and solitude. It’s just not the same when you have to share it. “ I look at him skeptically.  How could anyone from the Capitol know how I feel? All the Capitolites I knew were as divorced from nature as you could possibly get. Artifice is what they valued. Expensive cloying perfumes. Thumping synthetic music that would as soon give you a headache.  What colour wig to wear that day.     “I grew up not far from the mountains east of The Capitol,” Marcus continues.   “The Rocky Mountains they were called in the old days.  Very different from here – the mountains are much taller, more rugged. And there’s far fewer trees but in its way it’s just as beautiful.  My father and I would go hiking most weekends.  Sometimes we’d camp out overnight.  He knew someone whose job it was to the manage the border fence.  He’d turn the electricity off so we could slip under it.  In return for a monetary contribution, of course.” “Wait! Why would you have to get past an electrified fence?  I thought they only had them in the districts.” I say, in surprise. “No, we had them too.  Only it wasn’t to keep us out.   It was to stop people from neighboring districts from getting in. You know, terrorists and other malcontents. That’s what we were told anyway.  My grandmother lived in terror that she’d be murdered in her bed by marauding savages if the fence failed.  It’s a common phenomenon, I’ve noticed, that we assume that others will act exactly like ourselves, if given the opportunity.  We oppress others in the mistaken belief that if we don’t, the oppressed will just turn around and do the same to us.” “But we didn’t,” I point out.  Marcus is free to travel the country as he pleases and to promote a scheme that was forbidden under Capitol rule.  My former prep team prospers in a foreign district. They couldn’t have done that under Snow. But, underneath, a disquieting thought niggles at me.  The Victor’s meeting with Coin and the proposal to choose between another Games with Capitol children, or the extermination of all Capitol citizens.  It was all made up by Coin, wasn’t it?  I assume it had to have been, since neither of those things happened.  But still, at least one person had the idea.  It’s possible she wasn’t the only one. “No, you didn’t,” confirms Marcus, gazing straight ahead. We sit in silence for a little while.  I glance over at him as he quietly eats his lunch.  Suddenly I have an urge to reach out to him, to know him better.  I sense that, in a way, he’s like me.  A kindred spirit of sorts. “My father took me into the woods too.   Not to hike or camp.  But to show me how to hunt and forage.  I was named from the katniss plant that grows around here. Katniss roots are edible – a bit like a potato.  My father once told me, “that as long as you find yourself, you’ll never starve.”” “And it’s in the woods that you find yourself?” he asks, with an understanding smile. “Yes,” I say, after considering his question for a moment.  I’d never thought of it that way.  That my father’s words could allude to more than just my physical survival.  “For almost as long as I can remember, actually.  A friend once told me that I never smile except in the woods.”  I can’t help my lips turning upwards at the memory.  It was Gale who said it to me.  He certainly had to wait a long time for one.  It seems funny now, how intense and focused I used to be. Marcus laughs.  “I bet that’s not true.” He starts to pack away the remains of his lunch. “You do get a sense of ownership about it.  That it won’t be just yours anymore.  Not once we start making it more accessible by laying down walking tracks and putting up signs.  But you know it’s happening already – this incursion by the public.  And they have a right to enjoy the forest too.  At least this way, it can be regulated.  If it’s left unchecked and without rules . . . well, you’ve seen what will happen.” I nod.  “Yeah, it’s not that I don’t see the necessity.  It’s just . . . well, it won’t be the same, will it?” “No, it won’t,” he concedes.  “But change is inevitable.  It’s better to adapt than to fret about something that won’t come back.” I think about this as we make the long hike back to 12.  About fretting over something that won’t come back.  As usual, Peeta isn’t too far from my thoughts.  I fretted over Peeta for the longest time until I decided to accept the inevitable and adapt to the new situation.  I can’t say that I’ve been very successful.  As much as I might tell myself that it’s time to move on, there remains a corner of my heart where hope refuses to budge.  The wedding looms ever closer and there’s no sign that either Peeta or Lace will change their mind.   In fact, they seem more lovey-dovey than ever.  She’s back to licking ice-cream off his face.  I had the misfortune to catch her at it as I passed by the ice-cream parlor a few days ago.  It’s positively sickening.  Johanna agrees with me.  Overkill, she called it.  But apparently not as cringe-worthy as the way Peeta and I used to act.   I did take umbrage at this.  But I managed to hold my tongue.  Johanna has become something of an ally of mine in the Lace affair and I don’t want to ruin it.  I need all the allies I can get.   Johanna arrived in 12 a few days after Marcus. It was toss-up between mine or Peeta’s house where she stayed – Haymitch’s house was never seriously considered.   I wasn’t at home when she turned up unexpectedly at the Victor’s Village, suitcase in hand.  But Peeta was.  So she’s staying at his house.  In the guestroom.   I almost choked on my cheese bun when I heard. What happened to being a good boyfriend? Why is she allowed to spend full nights in his house, when I can’t even sleep there for just a few hours when the nightmares get too much? 

I was sure my hurt and indignation must have shown, but Johanna didn’t appear to notice anything untoward.  Maybe it’s because she was too busy licking the grease from the buns off her fingers, or she just thinks it’s my habitual expression.   Between sips of tea, she filled me in on her adventures as an environmental activist.  That’s a job title Johanna’s given herself.  I knew something about it already.  I had recently seen her on TV chained naked to a tree as part of a protest. Johanna got involved when Marcus came her district to call for the cessation of unauthorized logging in the forested areas of 7 and to declare it protected as a national park.  And Johanna, aimless and looking for something to do, seized upon it as a cause worthy of her time and effort.  She became one of Marcus’s most enthusiastic supporters, organizing protest rallies and demonstrations.  I could see why this combination of resisting authority and civil disobedience would appeal to Johanna.  And it made her quite the celebrity in 7 in a way that’s totally unconnected to the Games.  Most people in 7 were hostile towards the logging companies, who exploited their workers by paying them poorly and making them work long hours in unsafe conditions. No one wanted to see the industry taken to task and regulated more than they.   “Is that what brings you to 12?” I asked. “If you’re here to do the same, I think you’ll find that there’s little for you to do.  There are no big companies to fight, and most people are OK with a national park. After all, there’s no advantage in taking what you want from the woods, if everyone is doing it.  Soon there’s nothing left.  And Marcus has the approval and assistance of the local council too.  That’s how I came to be working with him.” Johanna simply shrugged.  “That’s OK.  I sort of knew that, but I’d thought I’d come anyway just in case Marcus did need my help.   And since my work is done in 7, I figured I might as well travel a bit and catch up with old friends.” She’s bored, I thought.  And lonely. But then something else occurred to me. “Are you interested in Marcus?” “What?” she exclaimed, in genuine surprise. “No!  Of course not.  I mean he’s attractive enough, but he’s not my type at all.  Far too earnest.  And he has a one-track mind.  It’s all about saving the forests with him.  Didn’t even blink when I stripped off in front of him.” “Oh,” I said, momentarily without words. Johanna is used to getting a reaction. It must have come as quite a shock. “Maybe the sun was in his eyes, or something.” “Yeah, maybe.  Come to think of it, it was.”  Johanna reached for another cheese bun.  “So, there’s to be a wedding soon, I hear.  I just caught Peeta as he was about to dash out the door.  He was in a hurry to get into town so there wasn’t time to chat, but he mentioned something about having to finalize the menu for the wedding reception.” “Yes,” I said, trying to put off for as long as possible what I was sure was coming next.  “Peeta’s very particular when it comes to food.” Johanna turned to me with a quizzical look. “Funny.  I’d never have picked you for the big wedding type.  Peeta, maybe.” “Um, it’s not me Peeta’s marrying.  It’s someone else.” I turned my attention to pouring myself another cup of tea.  Anything to hide from Johanna’s startled reaction.   Of course, then I had to explain everything. And there was no sense in spinning some story about how I don’t care or that I’m happy that Peeta is marrying another. Johanna has the best bullshit detector of anyone I know.  And she was with us in the Quell, saw how Peeta’s hijacking affected me.  She knows I was far from indifferent about him.   “Wow,” said Johanna, after I finished. “The evil-mutt version of himself must still be in there.  Except it wants to destroy your soul instead of your body.” “I don’t think it’s quite like that,” I said. “But something is holding him back. Maybe they put some delayed programming into his head.  Something that erased the memories he gained and made him fearful of getting them back. I don’t know.  Dr Aurelius doesn’t tell me anything.” “Are you still in love him?” asked Johanna, peering at me intently. “Yes,” I said eventually.   “But something’s been lost.” “Innocence,” said Johanna, nodding sagely. “And trust.  Well, if you want him back, I’ll help you.  I know if I were in Peeta’s shoes, and I was about to rush into marriage with a half-cracked brain, I’d want someone to stop me.  You in?” I hesitated.  It’s not that I don’t want Peeta, it’s that I’m certain that Peeta doesn’t want me.  And half-cracked brain or not, he’s happy and I don’t want to ruin that.  Anyway, my attempts at interference had just made him more confused than ever.   “In,” I said cautiously.  “But there’s conditions.  He’s not to know how I feel about him unless he specifically asks. We have to give Peeta credit for knowing his own heart, at least.  He wouldn’t be marrying Lace if he didn’t love her.  This has to be about helping Peeta find the person he was before the hijacking so he can make the best decisions for his future.  But if we see signs that we’re doing more harm than good, we back off.  Agreed?” “Agreed!” cried Johanna with almost unseemly gusto. Well, at least someone’s happy.  Johanna has herself a new project.  And then she laid out her ideas for what we should do.   Marcus and I eventually make it to the edge of the woods, where the electrified fence once stood.  It’s now a tangle of twisted wire, flattened into the ground by many feet.  No one seems afraid of predators anymore.  Indeed, most of the predators have retreated deeper into the forest as more humans invaded their territory and decimated their numbers with high powered weapons.   Marcus has plans to erect information boards here and transform the meadow into a picnic area.   I had to remind him that the meadow is also a burial ground and he has promised to respect that.  Maybe a memorial of some kind.   We haven’t spoken much since we stopped for lunch and I’ve decided that’s one of the things I like about him.  He enjoys nature as I do, keenly attune to the sights and sounds around him.  The only talk that’s welcome comes from the birds, or from the wind rustling through the trees.   We’ll part ways soon.  I’ll go home to my house in the Village, only a short distance away.  But he has a far longer trek to his hotel on the other side of town.  It’s not the most convenient location, even mid-week, as he likes to consult with me about future reconnoiters.   “You know, I have plenty of room at my house,” I say. “Why don’t you stay with me for the duration instead of the hotel? It would be more convenient for both of us – closer to the woods for you, and we could plan our walks without having to meet somewhere.” It takes a split second for Marcus to make up his mind.   A couple of hours later, he had retrieved his gear from the hotel and he’s now comfortably installed in my house.  In the guestroom.  

[katnissmellarkkk]

Okay, here we go! Imma do my liveblog of The Hunger Games, Chapter One, for #THGagain :

I’ll put my thoughts underneath the cut so I don’t clog up the dash 🥳

Okay but right off the bat, Katniss says her mattress cover is rough 🥺. I don’t know, this just made me sad all of a sudden.

So okay, but the fact that Prim had a bad dream and climbed in with their mother? I don’t know if that indicates that Prim still sees their mother as a source of comfort whereas Katniss can’t let herself feel the same way or if it’s just because she didn’t want to wake Katniss.

Maybe it’s supposed to be that Prim is too naive to understand that their mother is mentally fragile? Since in Mockingjay, she says “I know there’s only so much mother can hear,” or something like that, as a way to prove she’s not a little kid anymore sooo. I don’t know. Just some thoughts.

Katniss is shady towards mama right off the bat 🤣. Katniss is shady no matter what though. It’s what makes her narration sound like a teenage girl.

If Katniss is so anti-social though, who’s telling her her mother was once beautiful?

As a cat lover, I take offense to Katniss’ insults to the poor one eyed furball 😭.

So coal miners are also women? I suspected as much but I didn’t realize it was explicitly stated? So if Katniss’ life had gone differently, would she have become a coal miner?

So none of the houses in Twelve get electricity outside of a couple hours a night? Or just in the Seam?

I always forget that Katniss had nightmares even before the games 😔😔😔. Nightmares of her father “being blown to bits.” She has a vivid way with words.

Her father made her bow 🥺🥺. I knew that. I just thought I should mention it again. She uses the bow her father handmade throughout the series 🥺.

Also she says Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to “the few of them who hunt”. A few is more than two. Who else besides Katniss and Gale go hunting?

I like that she randomly starts mumbling to herself 🤣🤣🤣

Once upon a time, Katniss was outspoken apparently. But she mentions that she has to hold her tongue even at home because Prim may repeat her words. I don’t know why, but Prim seems immature for twelve years old. At twelve, in today’s society, you’re going into sixth grade. A sixth grader should know how to keep a secret or hold her tongue.

Gale says she never smiles but in the woods but isn’t that the only place they really spend time together? 🤣

“I kind of liked that lynx but I liked the money I got for it’s pelt more” 😂😂😂

An arrow inside bread. How fortuitous 😭😭😭

I do love that Katniss’ first introduction of Gale is “he could be my brother”

“But we’re at least not that closely related” 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

“Katniss, get off your cousin”

Even though the merchant class is smaller

Meaning they’re even more inbred

And Katniss is half merch-

Okay I’m done with this line of thinking 🤭😅

So backwoods 🤣

So did Mrs. Everdeen’s parents disown her? Or what? Do they still own that apothecary shop? Does Katniss occasionally walk by her grandparents in the town square? Like I’d like more context here, Suz 🙃

Aww, I always feel so bad for Katniss when she talks about her mother abandoning her 😭😩🥺

“But to be honest, I’m not the forgiving type” me either. Me either 🤧.

This may be why I so closely relate to her when she’s angry.

And why when people in the book say she needs to be more forgiving (ala Haymitch) I’m like “no”

I’m sorry but on second glance (more like 8th glance because I’ve read this chapter since I was 16) it’s so obvious Gale was hitting on her here 😅.

She’s oblivious 🤣🤣🤣

As she should be 😆

So later on, in the second book at least, Katniss definitely has some high respect for Hazelle Hawthorne. But here it seems to be like she’s implying Hazelle and her own mother are useless without her and Gale, and like they wouldn’t be able to provide for themselves. Maybe Hazelle just wasn’t fleshed out to Suzanne when she wrote the first book, the same way the love triangle you can tell if you look is sort of just tossed in there in the first book too? Anyways, just a thought.

That line about Prim being the only person Katniss is certain that she loves is sweet (it’s actually one of my favorite lines in the series) but it’s also so shady at the same time 😅😅😅. Like girl, you’re not sure if you love your mother or even your best friend (in a platonic way)?

Katniss makes a point in mentioning it took a long time for her and Gale to become friends. And I feel like that has been simplified a lot along the way, but it never really sounded to me like Katniss and Gale were besties for as long as most people think. The movies are a lot to blame for this, I know.

I don’t actually think Katniss is truly jealous here of the other girls wanting Gale? I feel like if she were she would have unconsciously insulted the school girls who were into him instead of just outright saying she was jealous, just not for romantic reasons. But who knows 🤷🏼‍♀️.

It was already mentioned earlier but I think Suzanne made a continuity error here, when Gale and Katniss mentioned fishing at the lake. The lake is a place Katniss explicitly mentioned in Catching Fire, to be private between her and her father. She even specially said she never took Gale there. I feel much better about my own writing continuity errors now.

Okay, both Katniss and Gale are so dumb. I would never prepare a feast for after the reaping. They’re just jinxing themselves. I have OCD really bad no one come for me.

I like how The Hob is a black market that’s literally just sitting in broad daylight 🤣🤣🤣.

Katniss just referenced being attacked by dogs... um I’m sorry, do we have no fear of rabies in this universe? 😭😭🙃🙃😐😐😅😅

Katniss : “me and the mayor’s daughter aren’t friends, we just hang out all the time at school, eat lunch together, sit by each other and are always partners. But weren’t not friends.” 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

I like the mention of hair ribbons for the rich girl. This is just the fic writer in me seeping into my reading.

Gale and Madge’s little dispute ...

I see why they get shipped together 😅. They’re both just taking swipes at each other here.

Awww, Katniss sticking up for Madge, even though Madge is the privileged one 😭. Katniss has such a pure heart.

The entire point of the Madge/Gale interaction though was just to set up the class divide explanation in Katniss’ head to the reader.

But my Peeta centric heart also picks up on the comments in Katniss’ head of how unlikely it is to be chosen at the reaping when you’re a town kid.

In other words, Peeta had a slim to none chance of being chosen and still was.

Now I think of it, so was Prim...

That was just an unlucky reaping for the kids without tesserae 🙃

Also it reminds me of every fic I ever read that mentioned a conspiracy in the reapings and how the kids aren’t actually chosen at random but anyways I digress

I feel Gale though, with the whole idea of knowing something isn’t this person’s fault and there’s nothing they could do but still being so angry at them because it isn’t fair that you have to suffer and they don’t.

My anger issues are really showing 😅😅😅.

Honestly though, if Katniss is saying Gale on a normal day is rational about the class divide not being merchants faults, then clearly his issues with Peeta later on really were just of jealousy and not because he was a merchant vs Seam.

I just feel like I’ve seen that around and I’m not really convinced

In my interpretation of the character, Katniss’ reasons for not sharing in Gale’s rage comes from exhaustion after a lifetime of powerlessness. Some people (re: females more often) just get worn out about the things they cannot change and can’t even let it get inside their brain because there’s nothing they could do about it.

I mean, she is a more understanding person than Gale but I feel like so much of her character is already so tired right from chapter one.

Okay, just a pointless rambling thought

“Where something pretty” these children are so shady 🤣🤣🤣 that’s a line I would say though

The fact that her like 42 year old mother still fits in a dress she wore at like 20 is really a testament to how hungry they are 🤧🤧🤧

Okay but I’m not trying to pick on her mother, but when they were starving, why did either she or Katniss sell the fancy clothes from her apothecary days? I’m nitpicking I know. I’m a nitpicker.

Also good for Katniss trying to forgive her mother.

God knows how hard it is for me to try and forgive people.

Literally, God knows.

I like that Katniss didn’t disagree with Prim saying she’s beautiful, just that she doesn’t usually look this way 😂😂😂.

I just know my sister wouldn’t let me not take tesserae if this was us. She’d be like “you’ll be fine, four entries? Please. We can have more food for an entire year, don’t be selfish.” 😅😅😅

I feel like noting that Katniss and Prim’s age gap isn’t that significant? Four years? That’s not that large. Not even at 12 and 16.

They herd these children off like they’re .... pigs going to a slaughter... 🤭🤭🤭

Katniss casually stating “I could be shot on a daily basis” 😐😐😐

Katniss and Gale agreeing they’d rather be shot than starve is honestly so sad but lowkey sounds like something two teenagers would say. They should have put dialogue like this in the movies.

I didn’t even remember District 12 has 8,000 people.... why’d I think they only had 3,000????

I need to update some of my fics with this information

Katniss just said “televised by the state”. I’ve never heard her call any region a state before?

I like that Katniss calls Effie’s grin scary and white, because tons of people (i.e me) whiten our teeth in today’s society. And to Katniss and probably all of Twelve that’s creepy. I think it’s weird to Europeans too but l digress.

Also do the people in this district brush and floss, they never seem to mention it in the books, ya know?

Honestly the idea of the hunger games sounded cooler without Songbirds and Snakes telling us it was just some dumb guy’s idea that no one ever thought would come true.

Aww, sugar is a delicacy 🤧🤧🤧

I knew already that but lemme fully feel that sentiment for a moment okey

Umm I’m sorry, did Mayor Undersee just casually state Lucy Gray Baird’s name every year and we never knew it? Did Snow just allow this? Seems suspish

Also the idea of Katniss being her distant relative and hearing the name and not knowing the connection... and yeah, anyways. I got wayyyy ahead of myself and off track sorry

Why would Haymitch hug Effie? I’m sorry, but Hayffie having a secret affair at some point in all the years they worked together seems more likely than I thought.

I mean, Katniss never mentions Haymitch hugging anyone besides her and Peeta when they just almost died, are about to die or that one time Katniss was sobbing because she thought Peeta was gonna die.

You know what though? I like that at this moment, when the name is about to be announced, Katniss worried about herself. She spends so much time worrying for her sister, babying her sister, mothering her sister, she deserves ten seconds of worrying for her own safety.

Of course, said sister is the one chosen. Ironic considering the whole encounter with Madge.

Okay, I think that concludes my thoughts for chapter one of The Hunger Games!

[everlarkficexchange]

The Midnight Train

Written by: @katnissdoesnotfollowback

Prompt 52: Submitted by @567inpanem. “I know what you want. You have money, but what I have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a dream come true for people like you.“ Sexually frustrated trophy wife Katniss commissions artist Peeta who immortalizes naked women after giving them the greatest O of their lives.

RATED E

WARNINGS: Contains explicit sexual content, dubious consent, incest (step-relation incest), age gap, implied underage, explicit language, suicidal thoughts, canon typical violence, shades of dark!Peeta (but really not that bad, some of you will probably laugh at my idea of dark-ish!Peeta), my brain wouldn’t let this go so here we go, all aboard on another crazy ride.

Length: A little over 10,000 words

A/N: While this may have taken a complete turn away from the original prompt, the basic elements are still there. That made better sense in my head. Hopefully it will make sense to you too by the end of the story and you are able to enjoy anyways! A thousand thanks to @stjohn27and @savvylark​ for pre-reading.

Her father died when she was seventeen. Her mother followed ten months later, on Katniss’ eighteenth birthday. They would starve or worse if Katniss didn’t begin working immediately. A future awaited her in the mines, they insisted.

A future that had killed her father. Drove her mother into despair and their entire family to the brink of desperation. And Katniss couldn’t stand the thought of spending almost every day of her life trapped underground where her father had died.

There were options, of course. A visit to one of the more lonely Peacekeepers guaranteed a handful of extra coins that she could stretch for a month, if Leevy Thompson’s information was reliable. She could hunt and feed her family that way, but hunting full time would look too suspicious. Bring too much attention to the way she flagrantly ignored the laws of Panem.

Katniss was looking for something more stable. More permanent. Prim was only twelve. She had seven Reapings in her future.

She knew that he wanted her. Knew it in the way his cold blue eyes followed her across the town square. Found her after every Reaping she survived. She knew it because he never looked away in shame when she caught him looking. Not even when she was thirteen and still figuring out how to deal with the breasts slowly emerging on her chest or the warm tingling sensation between her thighs late at night or when she’d catch a glimpse of the wrestling team at practice. She knew he wanted her because sometimes when he watched her, he licked his lips as if preparing to devour a feast. His fingers brushed absently over the front of his trousers.

It made her feel itchy and small the way he looked at her, because she knew she couldn’t ask him to stop. He was the mayor after all, and could have anything he wanted.

She could have married Gale instead. He was strong and a skilled hunter. A good partner she worked well with. But he wanted children one day and already had five other mouths to help feed. Their life together would have been a constant struggle.

So the day after she turned eighteen, Katniss put on her best blue dress, walked Prim to school, and instead of attending classes herself, she knocked on the imposing front door of the mayor’s mansion.

“I’d like to speak with Mayor Mellark.”

The maid who answered scoffed and made to close the door in her face.

“Who is it, Gaia?” His voice rang out clear and commanding as it did every Reaping Day when he delivered the speeches touting the Capitol. The same as it did before public punishments. Whippings and beatings and hangings, all of which he oversaw with a satisfied smile and ended with a clap of his hand on Head Peacekeeper Thread’s shoulder for a job well done.

She hated his voice. It made her shudder.

But today it gave her a slim chance at a future for Prim. The maid opened the door wider so the mayor could see her and she tried not to vomit in the perfectly pruned shrubs outside his mansion when he smiled at her.

“Come inside,” he offered the invitation with a wave of his hand.

Gale tried to persuade her not to do it. The second the announcement was made, half the Seam turned their backs on her. She had sold herself into the good graces of the one person they hated almost as much as they hated President Snow.

But it didn’t matter, she told herself. Prim would be safe. He promised her that Prim would never see the inside of an arena. He arranged for Prim to move in with the apothecary and his wife. The couple had no children and were more forgiving of their niece than they had been of their sister. They would train her as a healer and apothecary, and Prim would never have to stay in the mayor’s mansion. Katniss would not be allowed to visit her. It would be…beneath her when the mayor’s wife could afford to be seen by real doctors.

Prim would be safe. Katniss chanted it over and over inside her head as she signed the papers in the Justice Building. Again as the mayor draped a strand of pearls around her throat.

“A wedding gift,” he said.

Over and over as she danced with him in the square. As she posed with him and his three sons for wedding pictures. The oldest son sneered at her, a hatred unlike anything she’d seen before in his eyes.

“Levi. Go get a punch for your mother,” the mayor said after the pictures. “She’s looking flush.”

“She’s not my mother,” Levi snarled but still went to fetch the punch. He was the same age as Katniss and the only one of the three boys old enough to remember their mother – the baker’s second daughter. She had been friends with Katniss’ mother before Lily ran away from town to marry a coal miner named Everdeen.

Rye, the middle son, vanished as soon as he smelled freedom from the posing and smiling of the pictures.

Only the youngest lingered or seemed to offer any sort of kindness to her, his blue eyes curious and questioning, but not malicious. He never knew his birth mother at all. She had died bringing Peeta into the world.

Katniss watched as her husband — the thought made her tense up to keep from showing a physical reaction — ruffled the boy’s curls and spoke with important officials. Peeta stepped away from his father as soon as the touch ended. He moved closer to Katniss.

All for Prim, she told herself all evening long. Through cake and dances and well wishes that no one meant.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself when the mayor led her into the most luxurious bedroom she’d ever seen and told her it was hers. All hers.

At least Prim was safe, Katniss told herself as the mayor then led her to the adjoining room and told her this one was his. Two bedrooms for two people, each room on its own larger than her family’s old house in the Seam. She fumed at the extravagance. But at least she wouldn’t have to actually spend the whole night, every night, with him.

Then he kissed her and bit her lip. Dragged off the brand new white wedding dress, ignoring the sounds of ripping silk as he discarded it and growled that he was going to tame her, make her his.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself as she stifled her cries of pain in the pillow while the mayor slammed into her. Once. Twice. Thrice.

“Fuck,” he said and pulled out. “Touch yourself.”

“What?” she asked, unable to keep from looking at him. His dick was hanging in a curve towards the floor and streaked with a pinkish fluid.

“You’re not wet. Touch yourself.”

She hesitated and he sighed. Disappeared into his private bathroom and she thought perhaps she was off the hook.

Then he returned with two bottles. Pills clanked in one and he tossed one of them back, still watching her as she lay there in shock. He slathered the contents of the second over his dick and started to talk. The things he said frightened her. The things he said he wanted to do to her.

He stroked himself hard and entered her again. A dozen thrusts and then he flipped her onto her stomach. She stared at the door and held onto the sheets as he pounded into her.

Slap slap slap

Each thrust punctuated with a grunt.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself as the bedroom door opened and a wide eyed boy wandered in.

Slap slap slap

The mayor didn’t notice his youngest son watching them, or at least he didn’t stop even if he did. Should she say something?

But then the mayor was shouting in release and the boy was gone.

“Clean yourself up and go to bed.”

She did as ordered and stared out the window. She had known this was part of the deal. At least Prim was safe.

At midnight, she was still awake and heard the blare of a train horn as it left or entered the station. She couldn’t tell. She hadn’t know they ran this late. The Seam too far from the station to hear the horns from there.

The day after she married the mayor, Katniss set about doing something. She needed to do something before she gave in to the urge to claw her own skin from her body. With just her allowance, she now had more money to spend in a month than she’d ever seen before. She took the assistant cook and one of the maids with her and they shopped in the stores in town, then in the Hob. Whispers followed her in her fancy shoes and pearl draped neck. They weren’t too proud to take her money, at least, even if they wouldn’t look her in the eye or they spat on the floor as she left.

She ignored their disdain and their dirty looks and left her companions with Sae for a bowl of stew and a crust of bread. The servants seemed intimidated but did as the mayor’s new wife asked. While they were occupied, she bought all kinds of things she didn’t know if she’d have a use for.

And one that she knew she would.

The liquid glittered in the vial as the grizzled Seam woman explained she’d need a syringe to inject it but it would last for six months at least. It cost most of her allowance, but Katniss handed over the exorbitant sum without hesitating.

“I’ll be back for another in six months,” Katniss promised the woman who gave her a toothy smile.

When she returned to the mansion, she dealt with her purchases and then moved to head upstairs. The door to the office flew open and out raced Peeta, cheeks red and tear stained as he collided with her then recoiled.

“Don’t touch me!”

“That is no way to speak to your mother, young man. Apologize this instant,” the mayor commanded and Peeta’s jaw clenched.

He stared at the carpet as he muttered. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Good. Get upstairs. We’re done talking about this. And none of that drawing nonsense!”

It was only after dinner when her hip still smarted from injecting herself with a Capitol grade birth control that she heard the servants whispering and learned what had happened.

“Another fist fight. And the teacher caught him drawing in class instead of taking notes. Again. Mayor Mellark is sending him away to school.”

They clucked their tongues and shook their heads, bemoaning the poor sweet boy for being cursed with such a wretched father.

“Dad, I don’t want to go,” Peeta said just days later, sounding scared and plaintive at the train station.

“You’ll go and you’ll succeed. The Capitol has the best schools available. And hopefully, they’ll teach you some discipline and respect. Make you into a real man. Don’t embarrass me.”

The boy’s lip quivered and he glanced over at Katniss. She should hate this boy for everything he stood for, but as tears welled up in his blue eyes, she succumbed and bent over in front of him to speak to him eye to eye.

“It won’t be that long. You’ll be home for the summer break,” she assured him, surprised when he threw his arms around her neck and squeezed the breath out of her.

Then he picked up his suitcase and went without another word.

Peeta was only gone a month before he came home. Quiet and studious. He spent most of his time in the garden, drawing. But not even the mayor’s sons were safe from the Reaping.

Katniss almost wished it was her, but it wasn’t. Nor was it Prim, and she breathed easy for the space of two minutes. It was the mayor’s middle son that year. He died in the shadow of the Cornucopia, the last victim of the bloodbath at the start of the 77th Hunger Games. He was only fourteen years old.

The day after the Victor was crowned dawned hot and muggy. The Mayor spent all morning sequestered in his office. Right before the mid day meal, he summoned Katniss to him.

She bit back her tears as the room rang out with the slapping of skin and his guttural grunts. She could see the back of a blonde head through the ivory curtains covering the windows. The desk dug a furrow into the front of her hips as he swore and then slapped her ass raw. Her soft whimpers of pain got him hard enough to finish.

When she tried to move away from him, his fingers bit into her hips, holding them together.

“You’re gonna give me another son. I want a Victor. Strong. A survivor like you. Not a milk sap weakling like that pussy out there.” She tried again to get free and he wrapped a hand around her neck to hold her in place. “Don’t move. I want my cum in you as long as possible. Don’t move, baby.”

She tried not to shudder as he whispered about how good a mother she already was to his son. How he wished she had married him sooner. Then maybe she would have had a chance to turn his youngest son into a real man, but he feared it was already too late for Peeta. He pet her back and held her down for almost half an hour. All while she could see that same son through the window, sitting in the gardens. Maybe she could have taught the middle son her illegal skills to help him survive the arena, the mayor growled. When he finally let her go, he told her to be ready to get fucked often.

Several weeks later, long after Peeta had gone back to the Capitol, the mayor stood mid chew from the dinner table and walked over to her. He grabbed her hand and placed it over his hardening dick.

“My cycle started this morning,” she told him. His face contorted in disgust but he dropped her hand and walked away, grabbing his plate and leaving her to eat in the dining room alone.

When her period ended, he fucked her three times a day. He burned through half a dozen bottles of pills from the Capitol to do it.

“It’s only been a few months. Took my first wife a close to a year to conceive each of our boys,” he said as sweat poured down his face and her fingernails dug into her thighs to hold her legs open like he ordered her to do. “Give. Me. A. Fucking. Victor.” He bit out the words as his thrusts stuttered and he came.

A whole year of submitting to him.

She found solace in what she could now that she was the mayor’s wife and her woods were forbidden to her. Most had looked the other way when she was just Katniss from the Seam, but she was pushing it now by frequenting the Hob. Katniss Mellark, Mayor Mellark’s wife had no place poaching in the Capitol’s woods.

Katniss gave away money as best she could and people slowly stopped sneering at her. She renewed her contraband birth control shot six months after her wedding. Prim blossomed under the tutelage of the apothecary. The mayor’s oldest son moved to District Five to begin a career working for the government there.

Peeta called home once a month and reported to Katniss in a monotone voice that classes were going well and no, he hadn’t been in any fights. The reports that came home from the teachers described a model student. Bright, caring, hard working, quiet and well behaved, well liked by all his peers. The mayor grunted in satisfaction whenever he read the reports.

Katniss didn’t get pregnant.

He could have anything he wanted, the mayor, but she refused to give him this. The mayor’s house grew more tense and quiet with each passing month. The servants gave her pitying looks every morning she gently lowered herself into her chair for breakfast. The cooks learned her favorite foods and made sure her plate was never without something she loved. She used her ample funds to make sure the servants and their families never wanted. But she was powerless to protect their children from the Reaping.

Every night, she listened for the midnight train leaving District Twelve, longing to just climb aboard and vanish into the night. But then what would happen to Prim?

One day in early May, Katniss came home from afternoon shopping to the sounds of fucking in her husband’s office. A shrill pitched series of moans and loud thumping. The averted gazes of the staff. She watched curiously from the stairs, looking down towards the office door as the woman left.

“Pass the salt please,” she said at dinner that night.

The mayor smashed his fists on the table and shouted that she could damn well get it herself. He left the room and flipped over a serving tray on his way out.

Everyone ignored the sounds of him swearing and grunting from the conservatory later. Ignored the gardner as she slipped out after the sounds ceased, ducking her head and wiping her mouth as she ran from the house.

The gardner had three daughters all of Reaping age. All pretty blonde girls. Katniss couldn’t fault the gardner for seeking extra security for them.

The door between her room and the mayor’s was locked that night and remained locked.

“He’s infertile,” Helena, one of the maids, whispered as Katniss knelt next to the woman and helped her clean up the shattered crystal decanter, the most recent victim of his rage. “He found out right before your one year anniversary.”

“How?” Katniss asked and the maid pursed her lips to shake her head as one of the butlers passed by them, examining his cufflinks and not bothering to help.

“Doctor told him it’s because the pills he takes to, you know…help him,” Helena told her when the butler had gone.

Katniss could feel her cheeks turn pink as she scrubbed harder to get the bourbon out of the carpet. The pills to make him stay hard.

“Apparently it does damage if you take too many.” Helena squeezed Katniss’ shoulder as she stood when they were done. The touch felt like understanding.

She’d never felt freer than she did in the next two weeks.

The mayor refused to touch her beyond superficial or ceremonial events. In public they smiled, the picture of a thriving Panem family. At home, she listened to the walls echo with the sounds of her husband fucking everyone but her. Desperate to prove he could get someone pregnant. She didn’t want to fuck him. But she didn’t want anyone else punished either.

Year after year dragged on. Children died to the Games, twenty-three at a time. The name Primrose Everdeen never called at a Reaping. Never attached to tesserae.

“There’s a summer program for those interested in politics,” Peeta announced on the phone, around the time he turned fourteen, sounding serious but his voice cracking on a few words. He cleared his throat and asked her to tell his father. “I’ll be home for the Reaping, but then I’ll return here.”

There was always a summer program in the Capitol. But he always came home for the Reaping and stayed until the end of the Games.

Katniss spent hours socializing with high placed District and Capitol officials. She played hostess to them all. The mayor fucked her once every blue moon, just to remind her that she belonged to him. He never stayed hard for long and told her it was because she was no longer tight.

“Your cunt is used the fuck up. Who you fucking on the sly? Huh? Who you fucking on the sly, bitch?”

“The baker,” she said because she knew he wouldn’t believe her if she told the mayor the truth. Told him that he was the only one who had used it. She didn’t want to fuck anyone.

“I’ll have him killed in the middle of the fucking square. What do you want for him? Hanging or firing squad?” He grew harder inside her as he said it and her stomach roiled at the evidence of violence working to arouse him.

“Go ahead. Take your pick,” she said as the mayor finally came.

“You think I won’t? You’re not fucking the baker. You’d be stupid if you were,” he panted over her neck and played with her hair. She shuddered in revulsion and he took it for desire. He stayed on top of her and swallowed one of his pills and when he was hard again, he stood up and shoved her to her knees. “Suck until I tell you to stop.”

The year Peeta and Primrose both turned sixteen, Katniss somehow wound up meeting him at the train station, stunned at how much he had changed in the past year. The boy with the quivering lip was long gone, replaced by a boy — almost a man — who waved at her and smiled warmly in greeting, whose gait was now a confident swagger. He already towered over her and dwarfed her in breadth.

Peeta didn’t really look anything like his father beyond the blonde hair and blue eyes. The shades weren’t even the same. She wondered if his features took after his mother. She hoped they did, but her mental picture of the mayor’s first wife had already hazed over with time.

Peeta’s deepened voice, almost like velvet – so much softer than his father’s – sent strange currents through her as he sat across the table from Katniss, calmly eating dinner and explaining new models of government being debated in the dorm halls at his school.

“That will never work,” the mayor insisted.

“But—“

“No foolish talk at dinner!” the mayor said and Peeta jumped when his father’s fist hit the table.

Katniss kept her eyes on her plate. After dinner, she went for a walk in the garden and ignored the screams from her husband’s window.

“My father’s an idiot.” Peeta’s voice startled her and she jumped this time, heart fluttering as he stepped from the shadows.

“What would you know?” Katniss asked harshly. “You’re still just a child.”

“I won’t be for much longer. And when I’m not, if I’m lucky enough to have a wife like you, I wouldn’t be making love with anyone but her. I’d want her screaming not to please me, but because I’m the only one who can please her.”

She stared at his mouth, the lush lines of his lips as he smiled.

“I’d find every way to make you come and then discover twenty more just because I’d want you completely satisfied.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that. I’m – I’m your –”

“You’re not my mother,” he said, but it wasn’t cruel like the way his oldest brother said it. It left her panties wet. “Good night, Katniss.”

The day of the Reaping, Peeta stood in the square with every other child at risk. She found herself wishing safety for him as well this year.

His name wasn’t called. Neither was Prim’s.

As the Tributes made their way towards the Capitol, Peeta swam in the pool behind the Mayor’s house. His legs and arms powerful as he cut through the water.

Katniss watched him from an upstairs window. Unable to get his words about her out of her head. It wasn’t right. He was too young. He didn’t know what he was talking about, she was sure. Bold words he surely uttered to make himself sound older than he really was rang in her head. Her breasts grew heavy and her thighs slick with arousal with each successive lap he swam. She pressed her palm against the wall and her breath fogged up the window. No one had ever satisfied her the way he claimed to want to. She couldn’t give in to the illicit promise in his words.

He was still a child. And she was married to his father.

She turned away from the window and avoided him the rest of the time he was home. The morning he left, she faked a headache.

Two more years rolled by and Katniss listened to the whispers. Traded at the back door of the mansion with anyone who brought wares she could concoct an excuse for needing. Gale was one of her best suppliers. The mayor of Twelve served wild grown berries and fresh game, wild turkey and squash grown in secret just beyond the fence. Fish from streams in the woods, apples from the trees behind the town square. Guests from the Capitol and other districts marveled at the wild bounty of such a poor district.

Katniss owned shoes for every occasion and dresses to match. She filled the mayor’s closet with clothes made by merchants, the fibers plucked in secret from the woods around Twelve by Seam hands. Homemade remedies for sickness, old glass containers painted and dusted with shimmering powders, and rough hewn sculptures she claimed were art filled their shelves. In a way they were art, a story of desperation and starvation carved into loose bits of scrap wood.

She bought secrets with each purchase. Whispers of discontent. She followed dinner conversation assiduously, seeking the clues of arms and Peacekeeper movements. Signs of unrest in other districts. She felt she might burst with the information, not knowing where to turn with it or what to do as it built up inside her. She read the mayor’s Capitol papers and watched the news feeds, dutifully giving him highlights and reserving her analysis for herself.

The summer after he turned eighteen, Peeta came home for his final Reaping. Dinners were stiff and formal, the mayor holding tight to his anger at his son as Peeta touted the theaters, the arts and the museums of the Capitol and how bringing some of that culture to Twelve could help the people.

“They do not need art. Art is a distraction from labor.”

“Or art could be a form of joy that gives the laborer hope.”

The mayor stood abruptly at this. “Watch your tongue, boy.”

Peeta’s eyes flicked over to Katniss and dropped to the table as a smile played around his handsome lips.

“My apologies, father. I only meant that such hope would give them a reason to work harder.”

She managed to avoid Peeta for two days until one night she found herself hungry and walked the dark hall towards the kitchens. She ran into him there and he offered to cook for her while she sat and they talked. Words flew between them as fast as his hands worked and she soon found herself laughing, enjoying this easy version of him.

He told her about school and his classmates. The districts he’d been to on holidays with their families or on school outings. The beauty to be found in their world, hidden beneath the ugliness. The potential for the world to be beautiful again. He didn’t say that exactly, but it’s the foolish hope she heard in her head as he talked. Maybe their world could be good again, but so much would have to change first.

She watched his clever fingers as we worked and ignored the tightening in her belly when he licked them clean with a sensual smack. He caught her looking and smiled. The midnight train horn echoed through the night.

“When he told me to watch my tongue, do you know what I was thinking?”

“Peeta,” she tried to warn but he persisted.

“I was thinking that I’d like to watch my tongue working in and out of your wet pussy.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

“Then teach me,” he whispered back. Heat curled in her belly and her body craved.

She left without eating and lay in bed, tossing restlessly until morning.

The next day, she saw him in the garden, sketching again. He really was quite talented. The mayor grumbled at him over dinner for wasting time on useless frivolities when he could be courting a wife of high position in the Capitol, engaging in politics, working to improve Panem, or a hundred other more important things.

That night, Katniss tossed in bed, once more unable to sleep. She could finally stand it no more. She ambled down the hallway, thinking she’d take a bath to relax herself, but was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice the shaft of light under the door. She walked in without knocking and came to a halt, gasping at the sight that greeted her.

Alerted by the sound, Peeta turned in the glass walled shower to face her and a smile slowly curled his lips up. She swallowed and her hand flew to her neck as she watched him. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t tear her eyes away from his body. Toned and muscular with water running over him. His hair hanging over his ears and eyes, straightened and lengthened with the weight of the water saturating the normally curly locks. Blonde curls scattered over his chest, a dark trail of them leading her gaze down. Down to where his hand worked his stiff shaft in a steady rhythm. His teeth parted on a heavy breath and his lashes fluttered and still she could not move or look away.

“Shut the door, Katniss,” he said, barely audible over the sound of the water. She did as he said and leaned back on it as their eyes met. His hand pumped faster and his unoccupied palm flattened on the glass separating them. Steam curled through the air and he moaned softly right before his cum splattered across the shower door. Thick, milky white streams of it.

They stood there as he continued to pump himself. Until the last spurt coated glass and his shoulders heaved. Then he smiled and, still holding his cock with one hand, trailed two fingers of the other through his own semen, gathering it on the pads and offering it up to her.

“Want a taste?”

Her hand grasped wildly for the knob and she fled. Fled to her room where she paced and tried to quench the fire burning in her belly. But it was no use.

Katniss laid down on her window seat, dropped her hand to her navel and caressed, thinking of his fingers and lips and his intense blue gaze. His fit body and his charm and what it might feel like to have his face and his tongue between her legs. Her fingers in his hair. Slowly, her fingers traveled down her body, down to tug up the hem of her nightdress, over quivering skin as her thighs dropped open and her breathing grew ragged.

She ached for him to touch her as she’d never ached before. It made no sense. He was a spoiled, entitled Capitol brat. She should hate him with every cell in her body. But she came with a few frantic swipes of her fingers and the idea of Peeta’s tongue between her folds. She came hard and curled into a ball as the spasms wracked her body.

It was only as she lay there in the afterglow of release that it occurred to her. All he said was to shut the door. She could have left and then closed it. But she had stayed.

She had stayed because she had wanted to witness his pleasure. She wanted to take pleasure in watching him.

The shame of what she had done kept her in her room for five days until she had to leave it for the Reaping.

Prim was safe. Safe for real at last.

When Peeta left for a fancier school in the Capitol, one of higher education, Katniss braved taking him to the train station. He smiled at her and hugged her close, whispering that she’d be in his thoughts while he was gone.

In the autumn, Prim married the shoemaker’s youngest son. He moved into the apothecary and began training with her to take over the business eventually. Katniss was not invited to the toasting. But at least Prim was safe. By spring, Prim was pregnant and Katniss knew she would stay with the mayor, if only to keep that child safe too.

The next time Peeta came home, he was twenty and sporting a line of stubble on his jaw, his normally impeccable suit recklessly disheveled. Top buttons undone, tie loosened and swinging free, sleeves pushed up and his shoes scuffed. A hard edge in his blue eyes.

She followed him when he snuck out at night, telling herself it was because she didn’t want him to get in trouble with his father. Even the mayor’s son was subject to curfew.

She expected a trip to the slag heap or a shack in the Seam, a clandestine tryst with a woman.

Instead she watched him lean against a pole of the fence surrounding the district and light a cigarette. Trees grew close to this section of fence and cast shadows obscuring her view. She almost missed the papers passed through the dead wires into a gloved hand.

She left after that as Peeta stayed to finish his cigarette. He came home smelling of cheap perfume and smoke, with his clothes even more disheveled, a shirt tail hanging out and a smear of makeup on the collar, his hair messed up.

She stood there as his father lectured him about propriety and breaking curfew, about setting the example for the district as the mayor’s son, but while the words seemed harsh, the tone was proud. And once again, Katniss didn’t miss the handoff. This time it was a box of prophylactics. Capitol grade protection given to the mayor’s youngest son with a cheeky smile and a dirty wink. A pride and relief that “maybe he is just like his old man.”

Peeta entertained at dinners, making all the overprimped visitors laugh loudly and talk longer. Katniss held back a scowl at how easily he got them to open up, how deftly he flirted with both men and women alike. How easily he slid away with them to “show them the gardens.” But she guessed it was because Peeta was just like them.

Only he wasn’t.

Peeta treated everyone with kindness and respect. Dignity. From the diamond laced ladies of the Capitol to the lowest coal miner begging in the streets of District Twelve.

He snuck out at all hours and returned acting drunk or recently fucked, his footsteps loud and disruptive in the late night, but each time she followed him, all he did was walk along the District perimeter and smoke or disappear into The Hob well after the black market had closed down. Sometimes he wandered to the train station at night. She hid in the shadows and watched him laughing and conversing with the train workers, leaning against the back car and casually smoking a cigarette. Other nights, he played cards with Thread and some of the other Peacekeepers. She couldn’t stomach the sight of them laughing and talking boisterously.

And she couldn’t catch him with any women, try as she might. Or men. Not so much as one desperate Seam girl sucking his dick for a meal. There were the Capitol visitors who returned from the gardens flushed and bright eyed, but Katniss could never quite catch him in the act.

Katniss needed to know what Peeta was doing. It was consuming her.

She watched as he left with his father one day, carrying baggage and headed to the train station. The mayor had business in the Capitol and asked his son to see him off. He’d be gone for two weeks, and Peeta for at least an hour, giving Katniss plenty of time.

“I’ll take care of that, Meredith. I’ve got some energy I need to burn,” she told the maid and took the cleaning supplies from her hands. She ignored the profuse thanks as the woman hobbled away, her pregnant belly hindering her movements.

With a deep breath, Katniss entered Peeta’s room and set aside the supplies to quickly search his drawers. She grasped behind the furniture or up inside the drawers. Between the mattresses, she found half a dozen sketch books filled to the brim. Images of people from all walks of life, from the Districts, the Capitol, and everywhere in between. There were even some of her and the skill with which he captured every face took her breath away. Stunning landscapes and blindingly accurate portrayals of birds, animals, and plants. His father mocked him for his art, but Katniss wondered if he would if he knew how talented his son was.

In the bedside stand, she found nothing suspicious except an opened and half empty box of condoms. She dropped the box, scattering the foil wrapped packages as her gut squeezed in pain. Falling to her knees, Katniss gathered the items.

Her eyes flicked up as she tried to stand and she froze. Slid a hand beneath the bed and discovered a slit cut into the bottom. Reaching her hand inside, her fingers lit on an envelope. Her heart hammered in anticipation as she slid it loose. Leaving the condoms scattered, she stood and opened the envelope. Palms sweating as her eyes scanned the contents and her brain tried to deny what they meant.

“What are you doing searching my room?” His whispered words made her jump and spin. His fingers closed around her wrist and she stared up at him, struggling to gain her freedom. Peeta’s grip on her tightened, became almost painful. He smiled at her and her pulse fluttered, her skin vibrating beneath his hold.

“Let me go.”

“I can’t,” he said and the wavering note of desperation in his voice called to her.

Katniss did the only thing she could think of in the moment. She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. His lips went pliant in seconds. Her fingers wove through his curly hair to grab hold of something steady as her entire world disintegrated.

Peeta was a rebel. A spy. A traitor.

As the pieces clicked into place, she fell back on his bed, dropping the damning evidence and taking him down with her as he moaned around her tongue and discovered her mouth with his. Her greedy hands searched under his clothes for skin. And her nails scraped over it when she found it.

“Do I have to fuck you into silence?” he whispered into her neck.

“Peeta, we can’t,” she whined, and yet her hands still grasped at the fastenings of his trousers.

“I locked the door. He’ll never know.”

They shed their clothes down to their underwear then he knelt on the floor and tugged her ankles until she was splayed before him, legs dangling over the edge of his bed.

“Fuck I can’t wait to taste you, Katniss. I’ll bet you’re delicious. Forbidden fruit always is.” She grabbed hold of his duvet and stared up at the carved and gilded ceiling, her breath raspy as his touch grazed her over her panties. “Soak these panties for me. Soak them with your need. Look at me while I touch you.”

Katniss lifted her head and their eyes locked together as his fingers stroked and pressed and his lips whispered kisses and words of longing and need to her thighs. She moaned and he shushed her. There were still servants in the house, after all.

When her panties were good and soaked, he slid them from her body and she tore off her bra, fondling her own breasts for him and pinching her nipples as heat settled firmly between her thighs.

“You are magnificent. You should be worshiped by someone who can appreciate how incredible you are,” he murmured and shoved her panties in his bedside drawer then shucked his own underwear. Katniss bit her lip to keep from groaning at his cock. Straight and thick, impossibly hard and embraced with coarse golden curls.

She wanted his cock but instead she got his mouth. He knelt again and inhaled deeply the fragrance of her arousal before latching his lips to hers, his blue eyes focused on hers, daring her to deny that she wanted this. That she needed him. She squirmed at first, a stranger to the sensations of a mouth there, but his wriggling tongue and insistent fingers soon had her writhing desperately against him. Then coming and pinching back a scream of relief.

“I’m gonna make you come like this again, Katniss,” he promised and draped her limp legs over his shoulders. “I’m gonna make you come like this until dinner.”

Peeta refused to relent. Refused to let her go. Making her come with his tongue pressed to her clit, inside her lips, then again on her clit with his finger slicked in lube and teasing her ass.

He did things to her she’d never dreamt possible and made her both curse and praise his Capitol education. As the sun sank lower, he finally stood and smiled down at her.

“Stay there. Please,” he said and with two dozen harsh strokes of his cock, he came all over her belly. When he was done, he gazed at her in wonder and gasped out two words. “A masterpiece.”

She lay there, soaked in sweat and his seed, her breathing harsh and her body exhausted yet still needy for more. She bit back disappointment as he put his shorts on and offered her bra to her.

Instead of taking it, she swirled her fingers through his cum and sucked it down her throat. His jaw dropped and she shrugged. “I wanted a taste.”

“Fuck,” he whispered and she stood, taking his undershirt from his hands and using it to clean herself. Then she dressed and slid out the door to go take a shower, hoping he couldn’t see the way her legs wobbled with weakness.

They didn’t speak during dinner. Not a word. But when he snuck out to the train station that night, she followed him. She watched him lean against the caboose and smoke a cigarette as he talked to the crews. When he finished that one, he lit his second and asked the crew about a new sign. They all looked in the direction he pointed, but Katniss watched him. Saw him affix something beneath the rear platform of the train car.

He waved good night shortly after and crushed his cigarette out as he left the train station. She cornered him and pushed him into the shadows.

“You’re a rebel spy,” she whispered and he grinned then turned on her so that his body shielded her from view, trapped her against the wall. Trapped her right where she wanted to be.

“And you’ve seen too much. How can I persuade you to keep this pretty mouth quiet?” He trailed his thumb over her bottom lip as he spoke.

“Kiss me,” she said and met him as his mouth descended towards hers. Their teeth clashed and pain radiated through her skull at the contact, but she refused to stop.

She wanted him. She wanted him for herself and since she’d turned eighteen and married the mayor, she had nothing she could call her own.

She wanted Peeta to be hers.

Her hands pushed at his jacket. He pulled her legs up and around his waist, pressed himself into her groin so she could feel his erection on her clit. He rocked his hips and swallowed her moans as they kissed. Then his lips trailed forbidden fire down her throat.

“Fuck me, Peeta. Fuck me hard and deep. Oh fuck I need you to fuck me right here,” she whispered as his hand ran up her thigh, up beneath her dress to the apex of her thighs. She twisted and thrust herself towards his fingers, desperate to have his touch on her aching nub.

“You want me to use my fingers or my cock?”

“Oh! Both,” she gasped and clung to him as his fingers entered her. One finger and then a second as she whined and bit into his shoulder.

“Fuck yourself on my fingers,” he urged and she rocked her hips, caught his thumb on her clit and cried out. He kissed her to silence her and then the train engine fired up, the loud noise covering the sounds she made as she came. And then their relieved moans as he entered her.

The second she felt his coarse hair on her lips, she moved. Rolling and rocking and unwilling to give an inch as he drove into her and she sang quiet praises at how well he filled her. How much he pleased her. He fucked her as the train warmed up. As the wheels squealed when it began to move. Her body arched and bounced and then sprang loose. She clung to his shoulders as her release rocked through her and coaxed his out of him too.

“Fuck, Katniss. I can’t stop wanting you,” he moaned in the dark. Right before the midnight train blared it’s horn.

They had two weeks. Two weeks of fucking in the closets, behind the Hob, in the middle of the night when the rest of the household was fast asleep. Katniss even risked taking Peeta into the woods so she could fuck him by the shores of the lake where she often fished as a girl. But it wasn’t all fucking.

She told him everything. About watching Prim grow from a distance and not being able to be a part of that. She told him about missing her sister and the longing she felt for her woods every day that she breathed. The desire she kept in her heart to watch their world burn so she could finally be free.

She told him everything. All the pent up knowledge of years of hunting with her father, how to survive in the woods. She spilled out years worth of gossip. Who was loyal to the Capitol and who was lukewarm, and those who were too eagerly loyal to not be hiding something.

They entertained together in his father’s absence and people remarked what a fine young man and model son he turned out to be, a line she taunted him with when she was grinding her pussy on his face later that night. He responded by throwing her off of him and then pounding her to a mind numbing orgasm with his cock buried inside her lips and his hand over her mouth to stop her ecstatic squeals from getting too loud.

“I’m a terrible son,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot and his voice soft as she came.

He spoke about his brother who died in the games and the blows his father would strike his sons to discipline them, always on the back where no one could see beneath the fine clothes. He told her about the many faces he wore. The masks used to extract information and secrets. The mayor’s playboy wastrel youngest son with a talent for art and politics but no real ambition. Skilled at seduction and kissing secrets out of bored Capitol socialite wives. Women who needed a good fuck and an incredible orgasm and couldn’t find it in their marriage bed. Women who posed for him so he could draw them, after he’d made them come.

“As a souvenir for them to remember me by,” he explained with disgust in his voice. Then he told her it all started with his classmates’ mothers.

“Seduce me. Show me your best moves,” Katniss teased and he chuckled.

“Thought I already did.”

But he kissed her and reached for the pearl necklace she’d discarded on the bedside table when she’d shed her clothes. Peeta told her to get on her knees and she did so, eager to suck his cock, something she’d discovered she could take great pleasure in as long as it was Peeta’s dick in her mouth. Instead, he knelt behind her and threaded the pearl strand between her thighs. He slid the pearls over her panties, back and forth, the ridges created by the string of orbs catching on her clit. He did that and whispered to her about her spirit and her strength and how she inspired him. He whispered that she was his everything.

He teased her to the brink with the pearls and his words until she was so wet her panties stuck between her folds and her nails bit crescents into his thighs as she held him in place behind her.

“Now fuck me. Take me how you want me,” he told her and held the pearls in place as she lowered herself onto his cock so they rubbed over her clit and slid between her folds as she rode him and came with stifled moans, making the pearls slick with their sex. After, they lay in his bed as late into the night as they dared, listening to the midnight train leaving.

The mayor returned. Katniss rebuffed all of Peeta’s veiled advances and innuendos, constrained by the presence of his father. Peeta grew sullen. Her heart ached. Burst with pain, deprived of his touch. She wore the pearls every day and fingered them to seek strength.

The masks suffocated and chafed, but they continued the ruse. Peeta snuck out at night to send messages and information off to contacts in other Districts. They played their parts, entertaining their guests and gleaning every whisper of rumor and every drop of truth they possibly could.

The entire happy family took a holiday tour of the Arenas and Katniss tried not to show her disgust.

Then to the Capitol where she saw in blinding oversaturated hues just how deep the Game went. She saw it in a mirrored window as Peeta whispered into another woman’s ear, his words making the woman blush and giggle. Then they disappeared for hours. Bile rose in her throat when he joined her for breakfast the next morning.

“You were out late last night,” she sneered and the mayor laughed, commented on his son’s prowess with the ladies and Katniss’ overprotective motherly instincts. Peeta smirked at his father and slathered butter over his biscuit. But there was a brief look of pain in his eyes meant only for Katniss.

On the train back to District Twelve, she felt the walls closing in on her. Near midnight, she capitulated sleep and, checking the corridors, made her way to Peeta’s compartment, locking the door behind her. She slid a hand over his mouth to keep him from making a sound and woke him with a whisper. His body jolted and a knife glittered in the moonlight. He stopped himself right as the blade reached her throat. It nicked the pearls still draped around her neck and never reached her skin.

He dropped the blade and she dropped her hand.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They whispered the words to each other on repeat as their bodies rocked with the motion of the train and the clanging bells as they raced through an unknown district covered the sounds they made as they both succumbed to euphoria.

“I fucking hate this,” she whispered as she lay on top of him, spent but unwilling to leave just yet and knowing that she must.

“Only a little longer and then we’ll be free.”

She slipped away in the early morning and cried into her pillow until she needed to rise and dress.

“It’s disgusting. What do they hope to gain?” the mayor said to his son as they shared a drink and watched the news reports from the Capitol. Rebels had taken control of Districts Eleven, Four, Eight, and Seven. Additional Peacekeepers were on their way to all other Districts. All officials were on alert to capture spies. Katniss watched from the doorway as Peeta brushed off his father’s concerns, placated him with assurances that the might of the Capitol would overcome. This was only a minor setback.

Fire danced on the screen, mesmerizing her. Hypnotizing and beautiful. This was how the world looked when it was burning.

The pair was so engrossed with their conversation, they didn’t notice Katniss in the doorway behind them. Or the change to a report on wanted spies and traitors. A technology genius and former Victor from District Three who had vanished. A pair of stylists from the Capitol and the famed film director, Cressida.

They were still absorbed as the screen switched to a grainy, shadowy picture of a man in a train station, identified only as The JabberJay, a suspected spy and rebel conspirator from the Capitol, real identity unknown. A breathtaking sum offered for any information that would lead to the man’s capture.

She held her breath until the picture changed. Her knees wobbled in relief that the mayor hadn’t even noticed his son’s back pictured on the television.

“You need to be more careful,” she urged at the back door as he slipped out into the night.

“I’ll be fine,” Peeta said with a smile and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back before midnight.”

She couldn’t sleep. She paced and then wandered to the kitchen for a glass of milk. It tasted sour on her tongue as she waited. She sat by the window in her room and let her head rest on the glass as the midnight train blared it’s horn and still no sign of Peeta.

Katniss contemplated her options. She had no idea where to start looking for him. She’d put herself at risk if she just wandered the district aimlessly. And if she found him, she could put him in even more danger than he already was. It was better to wait and trust that he could take care of himself. He’d been a spy for years and knew what he was doing.

She woke stiff and unrested, and she stumbled from the window seat, downstairs to a household in uproar. The mayor shouting instructions to have the District turned upside down. His youngest son had disappeared.

That night, the mayor told Katniss to dress in her pearls and pretend nothing had happened.

“You tell everyone that Peeta went back to school early,” he growled and she nodded as she sat at her vanity to apply her makeup. She understood the game. She nearly gagged when he placed a hand around her throat to force her to look at him in the mirror. “My son is not a traitor…understood?”

She swallowed beneath his grip, her skin pushing into his and her windpipe constricting under the hold. “Our son is not a traitor,” she croaked.

“Good girl,” the mayor said and released his hold.

For weeks, she played the game. She knew the rules now since Peeta had told her everything he did. She walked late into the night delivering the packets Peeta used to. At first, she had no way of knowing if they fell into the right hands. But she smiled at dinners and fabricated stories about Peeta’s education in the Capitol, oozing charm and loving happiness for her husband.

She paid visits to Thread and the Peacekeepers under the guise of concern for her missing stepson and the future of Panem, but really to gain their trust through gifts of food and drink in a well crafted helpless rich wife act. There was no word or sign of Peeta but her visits were never fruitless.

At night, she listened for the sounds of the midnight train and held onto her memories, once more wishing she could just climb aboard one and vanish into the night.

But she had a new purpose now.

Months passed and she grew angry in secret. He left her here. If they’d caught him, they would have paraded him in front of a crowd and executed him publicly, gruesomely. Made an example of him. Which meant he’d left her. Peeta left her here to suffer and probably to die. At least, she would die on the inside without him.

Winter arrived and she contemplated ways to end her life. She had no one left. Peeta had lied to her and then left her. Used her. She was certain of it. He had seduced her and used her for the information she could provide. Worst of all, she had fallen willingly into his arms, had believed it was all real. Just like one of his Capitol lovers.

They lost District Six and then Ten to the rebels. Nine and Five were tenuous at best. Thirteen came out of the shadows and Katniss wondered if theirs were the hands reaching through the fences to grasp hold of the information she and Peeta had possessed.

Winter turned to spring.

Or maybe Peeta had been killed in quiet. Maybe Snow couldn’t risk such a high profile, publicly known traitor. The son of Twelve’s mayor, a favorite of Snow’s, a man who could have had everything and anything he wanted. Who else might begin to question the Capitol if he had betrayed them?

She had kept her shot to prevent pregnancy current for eight years, but in that moment of weakness, for the first time ever, she briefly wished it would have failed her. Just once. Then she’d at least have a piece of Peeta to love. The moment passed and she remembered that she couldn’t bear to bring a child into this life. Not even Peeta’s.

Katniss sank into her bath water and cried with her face hidden beneath the scented bubbles. It would be better if he were already dead. So she told herself that he was gone forever. At least he was free that way.

The longer Peeta stayed missing, and the worse things became for Twelve, the easier it became to convince herself. The mayor was angry enough in public for both of them. Punishments increased as the mayor desperately tried to hold onto Snow’s favor, and Katniss took more risks with what she revealed to the rebels.

She shook her head and agreed with the mayor’s disgust at the reports of assassinations, sabotage, derailed trains carrying Peacekeepers or supplies, many of which Katniss knew were at least partially her fault.

Her fault.

The words made her smile in secret. At night when she touched herself and bit back cries of Peeta’s name. He had left her, either by design or by death, but she still wanted him. She could understand him now. Even though he was gone.

Reports of new spies appeared on the news feed. They called her The Mockingjay and wherever her information aided the rebels, they painted the bird they named her for in red. As the months dragged on, the Capitol bled fear, the stench of it replacing all their honeyed perfumes. They whispered her name – The Mockingjay – over dinners, clutching their jewels and bemoaning what would be lost next.

Feeling the noose tightening, the mayor begged his friends in the Capitol to shelter him, just until this little rebellion was quelled. But fear is a powerful weapon, as is rumor. And everyone knew that Twelve’s mayor was close to being replaced. No one had space for him and his wife.

The year Peeta would have turned twenty-one, there would be no Reaping. The night before it was scheduled to occur, the mayor’s wife paid a visit to the main power substation and left two baskets of treats with the Peacekeepers guarding it. The baskets contained four bottles of cold beer laced with sleep syrup. Enough to knock them out for an hour. On her way out, she dropped an apple packed with explosives and a timing device. Dropped it at just the right spot to roll where she needed it to go.

Gale had helped her build it, his eyes dark and suspicious when she’d asked for it. She couldn’t tell him what it was for. She couldn’t put her old friend at risk if it failed.

She had sent word to the rebels weeks ago. Telling them in code what their window would be. Now it was up to them to take advantage.

When she was done, she went home to soak in her tub. Afterwards, she put on her pearls and satin robe over her nightdress. She braided her hair and waited.

District Twelve burned that night. Rebels swarmed over the deactivated fences and gunned down Peacekeepers in the streets. Screams rent the night.

The mayor barricaded himself in his mansion with his wife, holding several of the maids hostage at gunpoint. It wasn’t enough. Rebels and Seam and Merchant alike overpowered him and forced him to his knees on the front steps. They dragged Katniss out the door behind him, kicking and screaming. Fighting for her life. Putting on a good show because in reality, she welcomed death by now.

As someone held a gun to her bent head, she reached up and twisted the pearls around her fingers so the last thing that went through her brain before the bullet would be thoughts of Peeta.

“Stop!” Katniss risked looking up at the rebel in all black as he approached the steps, a familiar swagger to his gait. Her pulse stopped in disbelief. “Not her.”

“She’s the mayor’s wife.”

“No. She’s The Mockingjay.”

Katniss heard the mayor yelling obscenities at both of them as Peeta stepped into the light and smiled at her. She didn’t see the mayor struggling against his captors as he tried to get to her, her eyes too busy taking in Peeta – healthy and whole and alive and safe. Here, with her.

She heard the crack of the rifle butt on the mayor’s skull as Peeta ordered the rebels to let her go. She barreled down the steps and flew into Peeta’s arms, barely flinching when the rebels lodged a bullet in the mayor’s skull, silencing his furious tirade.

“You’re alive. You’re back,” she sobbed and he bent his head so that his lips just touched her neck, right above the pearls, and warmth spread through her. It felt so impossibly good to be in his arms again.

“I’m sorry I stayed out so late,” he whispered and she laughed as the rebels torched the mansion behind them, the flames crackling high into the midnight sky.

[shesasurvivor]

17 + 39 + Everlark

Anon, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to this last night, as I promised! But here we go. Everlark with Secret Admirer and Last Dance, as promised. :)

Rated PG, canon divergent ‘would have happened anyways’ type fic. 

---

The letter arrived the morning after my last Reaping. It was stuffed in the corner of our front stoop. I might have missed it, except the tip of the folded parchment just caught my eye as I was returning from hunting.

“What’s that?” Prim’s question pierces my thoughts as I wander into our small house. Startled, I glance up, not really sure I want to answer.

“Umm… just a letter,” I mumble. It’s not convincing, but it’s all I can come up with.

Neither Prim or my mother say anything, but I can see by the looks on their faces that they don’t believe me. But they don’t push the matter, and I don’t offer any more details.

But the letter eats away at me for the rest of the day. So when we’ve all done to bed that night, and I can tell by the sound of my mother’s breathing that she’s drifted off to sleep, I decide to tell Prim about it after all. I turn on my side to face her, hoping she’s still awake. She must hear me, know I want to talk, because a split second later, she’s on her side facing me as well.

“Prim,” I tell her, “The letter I got today… “I trail off, too embarrassed to admit what it was about.

She gives me an encouraging look. This isn’t the first secret I’ve shared with my sister like this, and there probably isn’t anywhere else in the world that I feel safer to talk about something like this.

“It… it said it was from a secret admirer,” I push through the confession.

Prim’s face lights up immediately. “Really?”

I nod, feeling how warm my cheeks are.

“Who do you think it’s from?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“It has to be from Gale.”

“Gale?” I ask, thrown for a loop. “Why would it be from him?”

“Come on, Katniss,” she laughs. “Surely, you’ve seen how he looks at you?”

“What? No, there’s nothing like that between us,” I say immediately. “Besides, he was out hunting with me all morning. When would he have put it there?”

“Before you came outside this morning,” she says.

“No. We meet outside the fence,” I tell her, even though I’m pretty sure she already knows this and has only conveniently forgotten.

“He delivered it on his way up then, or maybe last night. Or maybe he got one of his brothers to do it for him,” she says.

I shake my head, feeling adamant. “I really don’t think it’s him. It isn’t like him.”

“True,” she admits. “Well, who else is a possibility?”

“No one,” I say. “I don’t know anyone else.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “You really don’t know anyone else outside our family and Gale’s?”

“Not like that,” I say defensively, feeling flustered.

“Well, it’s a secret admirer. It’s not someone who’s comfortable telling you how they feel. It makes sense if you don’t know who it is.”

“Well whoever it is, we’re not going to figure it out tonight,” I say, effectively ending the conversation. I roll over and fall asleep.

Over the week, several more letters arrive, each confessing they’ve admired me for ages, and have been trying to work up the courage to talk to me for years. Soon, they’ll reveal who they are.

“I guess that rules Gale out,” Prim says. “If it’s someone who’s been too afraid to talk to you.”

“And Darius,” I murmur. Prim looks at me, shocked, and immediately I blush, realizing what I’ve said.

“You think…?”

“He flirts with everyone,” I say quickly. And it’s the truth. But as he tugged at my braid while I was trading at the Hob earlier this week, the thought did cross my mind.

“Well, who could it be, then?” Prim wonders out loud.

I don’t answer. There is one person, but… no, it couldn’t be. Not him.

“It’s probably just a joke. We should forget about it,” I say curtly. I crumple the latest letter in my hands and throw it away as I leave the house.

Friday night is the Graduation Ball, a special dance they throw for students who have finished their last year of school. It’s also unofficially a celebration for those of us who have survived all of our Reapings.

It’s also the day that the last letter arrives.

Prim reads it over my shoulder just as I’m reading it myself. She practically lets out a squeal of excitement over its words.

“You’re going to find out tonight! Katniss, it’s so romantic!”

“I guess,” I say, feeling uncomfortable.

“You aren’t excited?” She looks disappointed.

“It’s probably just a joke,” I say, shifting in my seat.

“No, it won’t be,” she insists.

I can’t help smiling at my little sister’s optimism. But who would be sending me secret love letters in earnest? I’ve never been particularly friendly to anyone at school. No one there would think anything more of me except to think that I’m odd.

It makes me feel uneasy, but I decide to shove the whole thing out of mind as my mother pours a bath for me and lays out one of her dresses for me from her old days in the apothecary shop. The same blue dress I wore to my Reaping when I was 16 years old. She does my hair in the same elaborate braids, and then Prim walks with me to town.

“Are you nervous?” She asks.

“About what?” I ask, knowing full well what she’s referring to.

“You know,” she says.

I’m quiet for a moment. “Maybe a little,” I admit.

“Don’t be. Besides, if it is a joke -- and I don’t think it is -- the letter said it would be during the last dance. You can leave if you aren’t happy.”

That’s a good point and one that does make me feel a little better. I give my sister a hug goodbye because we’ve reached the school, take a deep breath, and go inside.

Music plays in the gym. Everyone from my grade is there, looking just like they do on Reaping days. Only this time, there’s a sense of relief over the whole thing. I soak it in, letting it put me at ease. Maybe I don’t have many friends here, but at least I can relax that I’ve survived. I find Madge, my only friend here, and sit with her for the duration of the dance.

“You look nervous,” she says to me half-way through the night. “Is something wrong?”

“N- no.” It’s unconvincing.

“We’ve made it through,” she says. “Isn’t that enough to make you want to celebrate?”

“It’s not that,” I say, and then I give in and tell her about the letters. When I’m done, she actually looks impressed.

“Do you have any idea who it is?” She asks.

I shake my head. “No.”

She looks around the room. “I guess time will tell.”

The night goes on. The dance winds down. The last dance will be coming next. “Maybe we should get out of here,” I tell Madge.

“Don’t be afraid,” she tells me, trying to hide a grin.

“But what if it’s… “I stop, not wanting to voice my suspicion to her.

“What?” She asks, her voice kind.

“A joke,” I say. “What if it’s just someone playing a prank?”

Madge looks across the room. I follow her gaze and land on a group of blonde kids from town. “I don’t think it is,” she tells me.

“Why? Do you know something?” The way she’s looking at that group makes me sure she does.

“Nope,” she shakes her head. “I’m as curious as you are.”

At last, they announce that it’s time for the final song. Couples holding hands head to the dance floor for one of the slower songs. Madge nudges me with her elbow.

“Now’s the time. Aren’t you going?”

My mouth has gone dry. I’m nervous. “Uh-uh.”

Madge is on her feet and pulling me up to mine. “Don’t be afraid. Get out there.” She practically shoves me towards the floor.

I gape at the sight of the couples slowly swaying together in front of me. I’m frozen to the spot. Behind me is safety. But if I turn back now, I’ll never hear the end of it. Everyone will think I’m afraid, and I can’t let them believe that. So with small, slow steps, I head forward.

As if in a dream, I take in the sight of the dancers only a few feet away from my elbows. I can feel their body heat, smell the musky cologne some of the wealthier kids are wearing. But everyone is taken. There are no secret admirers here. Just as I suspected.

I awaken from the dream. What am I even doing here? It’s a joke. Of course, it’s a joke, the last prank on the weird Seam girl that no one likes. I turn to head back to Madge, but I’m stopped in my tracks.

The baker’s son stands only a couple feet away from me. He startles when I turn, and his eyes widen. I’m frozen to the spot, and so, it seems, is he.

“Excuse me,” I mutter after what seems like an eternity, and push past him. But as I do, I hear him call after me.

“Katniss, wait!”

It’s the fact that he even knows my name that makes me stop. We’ve only had one interaction before, many years ago, but we never even spoke to each other when it happened. I didn’t think he even knew who I was, besides a poor girl from the Seam to take pity on. I turn to face him.

He looks lost. “Um… my name’s Peeta.”

“I know.”

Surprise registers in his blue eyes. Maybe he didn’t realize that I knew his name, either.

“Oh… “Am I imagining things? Or do his cheeks look pink? Probably because it’s so warm in this room all of a sudden. “Um. Would- would you like to dance?”

I scowl. “I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not- it’s not pity.” Now panic registers in those eyes. “I… I mean it. I’d like to dance with you. Of course, we don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he adds quickly.

It would be rude for me to refuse. I may have grown up in the Seam, but my mother still taught me manners. “Okay,” I say quietly.

He still looks surprised, but now it’s a pleasant sort. We walk to each other, and Peeta Mellark takes me in his arms as we begin the dance. He’s so steady, just like a rock.

“Thank you for the bread.” It’s out before I even know what I’m saying. He looks just as surprised as I feel.

“What?”

“From when we were kids,” I drop my gaze. “Look, if this is because I never thanked you- “

“What? No, not at all. I don’t care about that,” he rushes to tell me.

“Then what do you want to dance for?”

Peeta Mellark truly looks lost now. “Because I wanted to. Didn’t you get the… “He doesn’t finish. I feel his arms stiffen around me. And suddenly it all clicks in place.

“You?” I gasp.

He stops dancing. Drops his arms from around me. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You clearly don’t feel the same way.” He turns to leave, but I grab his arm before he’s entirely out of reach. To do what, exactly? I’ve never wanted this. I don’t want to get married or have children. It’s never been my plan.

But I also don’t want to lose the Boy with the Bread.

“I- don’t know- how I feel,” I say haltingly, and realize it’s not entirely untrue. Peeta looks at me like he’s trying to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but he must decide it’s at least promising because he turns back to me.

“Do you still want to dance?” He asks.

“Why not?” I say and feel the corners of my mouth quirk up in a smile. He cradles me in his steady arms, and we learn to dance as one.