Eggs.

Romaine lettuce.

…Salad dressing…

Ugh!

Milk. Definitely, she'd used the last drop on her overly dry cereal that morning.

Speaking of which…

Cereal.

She could not leave out the basic survival staple of absentee-caregiver-imposed self-sufficiency, not when it came tragically paired with but the most rudimentary of culinary skills. That'd be tantamount to forgetting Pop Tarts.

Huh.

Pop Tarts.

Mac & Cheese.

Pasta.

And…

And…

Christ! What else was it her mother had asked her to get at Dalton's after school? Thanks to the flu bug running rampant through town, the woman had been pulling double shifts twice a week for a month. Now her child was going to starve because Katniss couldn't be trusted to focus long enough to remember the grocery list her barely-awake mother had coaxed out over the phone that morning.

A hissed breath rushed out through the bottom row of teeth mutilating her upper lip. The resulting breeze propelled that stubborn strip of hair that always found its way out of her braid straight into her right eye. She quickly tucked the offending strands behind her ear.

As continuation to the gesture, her face lifted, her pewter eyes listing away from the impromptu grocery list scribbled onto the margins of her Algebra notebook (in lieu of actual notes, because heaven forbid she could actually focus on Ms. Atala's lecture). They settled on the large pane glass window over her left shoulder.

Ominous swirls of dusty gray, coal and navy collided, tingeing the midafternoon sky a false twilight. The charged air coated her tongue with a coppery tang—not so much unpleasant as peculiar—and coaxed the fine hairs on her arms, and at the nape of her neck, to spike in anticipation.

For the nth time in the last few years, Katniss could not help wonder, 'In anticipation of what?' The bridge of her nose wrinkled as she glared at the increasingly threatening atmosphere beyond the glass.

She couldn't place when she'd become aware of it, as far as she could remember, it had started sometime between the middle of fifth grade and the start of sixth. No one could fault her recollection of those months for their obscurity. Right around that same time, she'd had her world upended.

It had crept in slowly, unnoticeable, until it was too acute to ignore: the odd, expectant… anxiety, whenever a storm threatened. It horripilated her skin and knotted her insides. Over the last eighteen months or so, the sensation had sharpened to a level where she could discern minute differences between one storm and the last, things like severity, motion… duration.

It made her wonder at times if maybe Dr. Aurelius was onto something when he'd told her that, statistically, children who'd suffered traumatic loss at a young age were much more likely to develop other neuroses. Maybe, she was going insane, her unbalanced brain volunteering false realities as a warped coping mechanism to her father blasting himself unrecognizable in a freak lab accident.

But… she didn't feel unstable. Not that she entertained the theory that psychotic people were aware of their insanity. She could very well have been certifiable and blissfully unaware. But, about ninety-five percent of the time... she felt perfectly normal.

It was just that remaining five percent…when she sensed storms. Or, something within them, anyway... pulling at some unexplored nook inside her… something that wanted out during storms.

Yeah, that would never feature among the topics of discussion at the monthly psychiatric sessions she'd been subjected to since she was eleven, courtesy of her father's overtly magnanimous employer's ridiculously comprehensive life insurance plan.

Time seemed to lose all sway on her as she glared out the window, her reverie snapping only when a decidedly different—and about just as familiar—paresthesia swept over her, forcing her eyes away. They narrowed upon landing on the boy whose desk stood at the front of the three-table row opposite to hers.

The only indication she got—the only indication there ever was—that Peeta Mellark's sapphire gaze had been on her, was the subtle shift of curls settling over his golden brows; which, at that moment, pinched in an impressive show of looking enthralled in his note taking.

A slow breath escaped Katniss's flared nostrils.

Tribute High School prided itself in being progressive and the seating arrangement in the classrooms spoke to that. Instead of having row after row of seats, lined one behind the next; the seating was arranged into five rows of three desks on either side of the space. The opposing rows faced each other, separated by a five foot wide lane that ranged from the teacher's desk at the front, to the back wall. This allowed the instructors to pace the length of the room as they spoke. In theory, the arrangement encouraged better surveillance of the learning environment.

Katniss had considered all that at the start of the school year. She'd chosen the most remote seat in the classroom (her custom in every class). Her desk sat tucked in the furthest corner from the door, at the end of her three-table row. The location had appeared the most conducive to a measure of solitude and seclusion—just as she liked it. However, because the single Honors Algebra class only had nineteen students, the first and middle seat in her row stood unoccupied.

This left her with an unobstructed view of Peeta. And he, in turn, had the same vantage. She often tested the limits of her fraying sanity toughing out the mechanics of that.

Logistically, the odds of Peeta—or anyone, for that matter—finding a seat with an unimpeded view of her should have been a near null. But, forfeiting unlikelihood, there they were. And this phenomena wasn't isolated to third period, either. In the other two classes they shared in the course the school day, he'd claimed desks at the head of their respective rows (because, yeah, he was a total teacher's pet), with the most improbable of angles, bizarrely placing him at almost perfect line of sight to her.

It wasn't just his obtrusive position that galled her; it was how unbalanced the arrangement left her. She was aware his seating choice could have been completely coincidental, which made her feel pompous and foolish for thinking she'd had any bearing on it. But, then she'd feel his eyes on her and the frustrating doubts would seep in.

It shouldn't have bothered her. It wasn't as if everyone didn't feel entitled to gape at her... all the time. She was quite the novelty. In a town of less than three thousand, where everyone said 'hello', 'good morning' and 'good evening' to everyone they crossed because everyone knew each other… she was a social outcast. The sullen girl who couldn't bother with congeniality, whose resting expression was perpetually etched in a scowl. The whispered comments were impossible to ignore: "Such a lovely girl, if only she'd smile…" "It's been years, why is she still so forlorn?" "Surely, in a community like ours, there should be a medicinal solution to her antipathy…"

Ugh!

Still, she did take issue with where Peeta Mellark chose to sit. It aggravated her that his glare infringed on her awareness whenever the urge struck him, but she'd never once caught him when she'd flinch his way, no matter how fast she was. And it vexed her that she couldn't decipher why he chose to torment her.

Was he trying to drive her mad? Was the town's bane really so fascinating?

Katniss couldn't fathom another explanation for his interest, not when he'd made every effort to avoid speaking to her for years… ever since the fever. And that had been a decade before. When all but a few of the then-fledgling scientific community's children under the age of of eight had fallen ill and never recovered, Katniss and Peeta had barely been older than toddlers, a couple of years removed from mastering speech.

That was what had made the illness so cruel. It had targeted almost exclusively the very young. Even the few pregnancies in progress when the fever struck were lost to miscarriage or early term stillbirth. Only one adult victim had been lost to it: Peeta's mother.

Once the blight had run its course, Peeta's father, CapCorp Laboratory's head of research and one of the country's foremost gifted bioengineers, retired at the unimaginable age of thirty-three. Grief-stricken, he took over one of the shops in the town square that predated the fabrication of the sprawling research center: his parents' bakery. The only one in town.

Katniss wondered if that was why Peeta fixated on her. Did he blame her for that? Did he think his father's breakdown was her fault? Did he resent her for surviving when his mother had not?

'Well', Katniss scoffed inwardly. 'If that's how he feels... he should blame his brothers, too.'

That notion, even in passing, only succeeded in triggering a swift bout of grief and guilt, however. Because it hadn't been a seven and six-year-old's fault that disease had ravaged their little town, leaving a death toll of dozens—mostly infants and toddlers.

And it hadn't been Peeta's fault... or his father's—in stark contradiction to what the grieving parents had insinuated after the tragedy, when the scientist failed to save the bulk of the town's children but somehow miraculously had his own boys pull through.

And it certainly hadn't been Katniss's fault.

But Peeta made figuring out any motives beyond those impossible. Outwardly, he showed no signs the trauma of his early life had damaged him. Not even after his father pulled him and his brothers out of school, home tutoring them until the boys' protests became so that he'd had to allow them to rejoin the public schooling system when they reached middle school age.

It had taken only weeks for CapCorp to replace (and even add to) the many distraught researchers who'd deserted after the fever swept through. Most in the science field would have given anything for the honor of a position at Twelve Glades. And the greenhorns brought their families—hundreds of new children. Katniss had grown up, studied and played with many of them—until her father's accident, anyway.

Peeta had been as gregarious as ever from the moment their sixth grade teacher had introduced him to the class—the new kid in their grade who almost no one knew because they had migrated to town after he'd left. His charisma—punctuated by a dimpled, disarming smile—forced even the most reticent of wallflowers to migrate toward him, enticed by the warmth he radiated. Within weeks, he was a welcome fixture in every clique, always surrounded by friends, telling jokes in the hallways between classes.

Of course, he never smiled at Katniss. The few time's she'd caught his eye in the halls, always at unguarded moments, he'd lowered his gaze, blue eyes quickly dashing away to volunteer a witty retort to whatever someone in the group around him had said. Then they'd all burst into laughter.

No, he didn't share his warmth with her. She was only spared the radiated heat of clandestine glances. The kind she could neither confirm nor ignore. Because Peeta obviously did not find her worthy of more than the kind of furtive glimpses not even he wanted to acknowledge.

Well, she didn't need his gawking. She didn't need his judgment or his ambiguous contempt, and she definitely didn't need his smiles.

Because, when all was said and done, Peeta Mellark was nothing to her.

~~~O~~~

In Twelve Glades, the longest it took to get anywhere on foot was an hour. And that was a slow foot. Driving, one had to venture forty miles south to reach the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as Crayston, the next closest of the same kind of Podunk town. Which was only marginally bigger because it boasted a Target® and a half dozen car dealerships.

And the only megaplex for a few dozen more miles.

Heading north led straight into the mountains, which offered little more than patchy roads that dead-ended at the handful of boarded-up entries to the abandoned mine. That and less than a dozen almost impassible trails, monopolized by a bevy of wild animals, that hedged the mountain range from east to west—a couple for hundreds of miles.

Two decades earlier, before CapCorp built their pharmaceutical research facility, Twelve Glades had been little more than a dying mountain village, the kind that—in its heyday—had housed and catered to a thriving population of miners who'd worked in the recently closed mine, many for generations. When the only real source of income dried up, anyone still able-bodied moved on, taking their families with them.

After the exodus, barely anyone besides the two dozen business owners composing the town square remained. They were a tiny, mostly aging, cluster of merchants and artisans who'd inherited their craft and trade from their forefathers, usually from several generations back. Those few townsfolk stubbornly held to the town's traditions and their ties to the wilderness surrounding their valley home.

It wasn't the kind of site a multi-billion dollar syndicate like CapCorp would customarily scout for their newest lab, but their board had been cajoled into considering the region by a hotshot, newly contracted bioengineer, who'd been born and raised in the secluded township, back when it had been a thriving mining hob. The man had been very vocal about how the influx of population and job diversity would breathe life into his hometown's struggling economy. The positive PR practically wrote itself.

Dr. Dannel Mellark had been very persuasive.

And CapCorp had been hard pressed to keep their enterprising young theoretical bioengineer content. The prodigy had caused quite the stir in the scientific community with his thesis on countering infertility through selective gene sequencing and manipulation. Then he'd stunned them awed when his theories panned out in preliminary trials. Dr. Mellark was their proverbial cash cow.

The tiny town had provided a very rudimentary infrastructure for CapCorp, mostly a single highway leading through the square into the mountains, flanked by miles and miles of ancient wooden electrical and telephone poles... and a functioning well system.

Prior to constructing their facility, it had been necessary for CapCorp to plumb and update the sewer system along the road running through the square, as well as those servicing the homes that made up the village's perimeter, for several miles in circumference. They'd also paved the old dirt roads leading from the orbiting Craftsman style homes to the center of town. The renovations rounded out with the installation of a communication tower a few miles outside the town's boundaries, much augmenting the availability of Wi-Fi, internet and cellular connectivity.

Once the infrastructure was laid, CapCorp had gone to work on building the expansive, multi-structure research facility on five acres of land, almost at the very base of the hills. Roughly five miles southwest, within easy commuting distance, they'd broken ground on a residential community, envisioned to house the hundreds of researchers, technicians, assistants and support staff the lab would need.

There, at 451 Tribute Lane, sat Katniss and her mother's modest, ranch-style home.

Her parents, like most scientists who lived and worked at Twelve Glades, had been drawn by the allure of participating in cutting-edge research; the kind that lead to unequaled breakthroughs in medicine. Though her mother had also felt motivated to transfer for more personal reasons.

During pre-med school, Katniss's mother had learned that she and the Mellarks were several-generations-removed distant kin. The young medical student had made the discovery when she'd studied with, and briefly dated, Dannel Mellark, during a genealogical lab project they'd been assigned as partners.

Back before Katniss's father died, her mother had enjoyed riling him up, retelling stories about her college days, when she'd been beguiled by Dr. Mellark's keen intellect and magnetic charisma. "It never led anywhere", her mother would recount with a sigh. "At that age, all the real estate in Dannel's heart was occupied by his work. But it turned out better for me. I met your dad."

Katniss's mother had transferred to a teaching hospital closer to her elderly parents for her trauma medicine residency. And there, she'd met her father. From how they both told it, they'd been inseparable from the moment they'd met. And, they were married eight months later.

The invitation from Dr. Mellark had come four years after and, at that point, every attempt on the young couple's part to conceive had met with failure. At the time, it had been rumored in certain scientific circles, that Dr. Mellark was holed up in his new state-of-the-art facility, cooking up a radical new fertility treatment, something experimental—not yet slated for human trials. It only fueled the rumor mill that Dr. Mellark had very quickly married his fresh-out of-grad-school lab assistant and she'd given birth to two sons within twenty-two months—coinciding perfectly with the length of time the mystery procedure had been speculated to be in existence. There was even talk the researcher's wife was already carrying their third child.

Katniss's parents hadn't harbored any false hopes when they'd migrated to Twelve Glades so her father could take a position as head of theoretical neurological studies and her mother could join the staff of the newly built hospital. However, before her parents had celebrated their first anniversary in the community of Victor's Promenade, they'd driven home with Katniss swathed in a fluffy yellow blanket she kept until she was nine.

Katniss could never get a straight answer from her parents when she'd asked whether Dr. Mellark assisted in her conception somehow or not, but the families had remained close.

Right until the fever swept.

~~~O~~~

Katniss huffed out a breath, hiking the large vinyl shopping bag further up her shoulder as she trailed her way home, cutting behind the line of quaint shops to avoid the main avenue. Not that she'd have to worry about encountering other commuters that afternoon. No one was insane enough to venture out in rain so intense, it stung like needles wherever it touched uncovered flesh.

Each time her gait shifted her soaked through underwear with a disturbing slush, she'd yearn for the day she'd turn sixteen and get her license.

She would never have heard the end of it if her mother learned she'd been out and about in the storm. She could envision the woman's voice hitting that ungodly pissed parent pitch as she harangued about how Katniss would one day catch her death of pneumonia through sheer disregard of the elements.

Well, it wasn't as if she'd really had a choice. For the last few weeks, whenever her mom managed a few hours to come home, she was too exhausted to do little more than sleep. It'd been well over a month since their last proper grocery run. Their fridge was bare, excepting a questionably aged label-less bottle of mayonnaise and that jar of brine juice with the one last pickle neither of them was eager to have, but somehow perpetuated the existence of the container in the fridge.

It was either chance-it through the rain to get some food, or gnaw at her cuticles while immersing herself in a paperback to ignore the hunger pangs. Katniss chose the rain.

Besides, when she managed to ignore the abusive, pelting deluge—the storm had its allure. It had begun thundering a few minutes after she'd left Dalton's and lightning brightened the darkened late afternoon sky every few seconds.

She'd slowed her pace through the sprawling meadow behind the shops to revel in it. Every current arcing down to impact the ground seemed to reverberate through her veins, temporarily rushing superheated blood to her core.

A few yards past the hardware store—the last of the shops on that side of the main avenue—she stopped, palms lifting upward as if pleading with the storm.

Pleading for what, she could not fathom. All the same, she felt the current in the air spike in response to her eagerness. The lightning that had previously split the sky randomly, interspersedly, began streaking with something akin to… uniformity.

Katniss watched as swirls of brilliantly charged light kissed the ground, ranging from the copse of trees a few miles off on either side of the road to a few yards from where she stood.

The strikes were steadying into a pattern—something familiar—that seemed to thrum from deep in her chest outward. Every bolt reaching land, splintered out immediately with an echoing burst. Then, a split moment after, within a few yards of her, the event would repeat.

Zrr…thrap! Zrr…thrap! Zrr…thrap!

The origin of the bone-rattling cacophony lost relevancy. Whether it was a product of the dangerously near surges or her skyrocketing pulse, Katniss was far too enraptured in the light suffusing her to care.

Lost in the euphoria, she was only vaguely aware of the increasing tempo to the lightning strikes around her, how each clash made impact inexorably closer, inch-by-inch. Until her head swung back, glistening gray eyes riveted to the dazzlingly illuminated sky.

The blinding, scorching white forced her lids to flicker, but they widened a fluttered heartbeat later... when the swell pierced her chest.

It could have been a second or it could have been eternity. Time became immaterial as the supercharged particles surged through her, saturating every cell.

There was no pain, no shock—only utter completion.

And, then, everything went still. In the deafening silence, the surge ebbed, bleeding into the ground beneath her, leaving her at once relieved and bereft.

Her lungs aching for oxygen, a gasped breath escaped lips she had not noticed hung agape. Awareness settled in far more slowly than reasonable, with a strumming of pins and needles across her still extended arms.

When had she fallen to her knees?

When had she closed her eyes?

Those parted wide with her next intake of breath, only to narrow with a flinch at the unexpected sting of heat and smoke. It took another moment for the haze inhibiting both her mind and vision to clear enough to realize she was staring at something a few yards off, in the alley behind the last shop.

No. Not something, her addled mind struggled to process. Someone.

The body-shaped mass, silhouetted by the rain-haloed light from the street lamps of the square beyond, was growing. Another heartbeat lapsed before she could reconcile that meant it was coming closer. Fast.

Whoever that was, they were sprinting toward her through the still-bruising storm.

Some synapse far in the recess of Katniss's mind tried to spark, communicate that she should feel panicked at that. She should react. Her predicament was precarious. But movement was unfathomable to the rest of her mind and her barely there motor function.

Therefore, there she knelt—staring lackadaisically; her splintered thoughts fading into an apothic void that encroached at the edges of her vision.

Detached numbness bled through her, a welcome companion.

One last cogent notion eked through as the shadowed form filled her quickly abridging visual spectrum.

How odd those eyes, such opaque a hue of blue, could glint so bright through the darkness.


Author's Note:

Thank you to my wonderful beta Opacity for the feedback and editing.

This will be the slowest story I have ever written. I usually post a whole fic within a month. The updates to this will come much slower because the story is coming to me in bits and pieces, and not in linear format. But I can promise the story will develop in a very interesting way.