i.

He hears it first from his brother Rye- 'Don't be sooty'.

'What's that?,' he asks.

'You know- sooty. Like Seam people. Dirty.'

ii.

It never seemed like that big of a deal. There was a difference between Seam and Merchant, but what that was he couldn't say. It was some kind of shadowy divide- almost like they spoke languages just different enough to understand one another, but not really get the whole picture. Seam people were poor and dark, merchants were rich and fair- and that was that. At dinner that night, Mom said it was because they were lazy and had more kids than they could feed, and Dad just said it had always been that way.

'Not our job to take care of every piglet those people pop out,' Mom growled.

Those people. It sounded like a cuss.

He frowned down at his food.

'Why?,' he pushed. 'I mean, why is it that way?'

Dad was strangely silent and chewed his food slowly. He wouldn't meet Peeta's eyes.

Mom huffed.

'Cuz' thats the way it is, boy. Now finish up. I didn't cook that food so you could let it get cold.'

iii.

Suddenly, it was all he noticed. Like the book he was reading suddenly switched genres, or he was drawing a pot only to find that the whole time it'd been a vase. It was everywhere, and he wondered if he was the only Merchant who saw it.

'Sooty' peppered Merchant conversation, like some kind of inside joke.

'Couldn't string two words together- dumb and sooty as a Seam woman, I swear.'

'- and she showed up shoeless. It was the sootiest thing I've ever seen'

'-five brothers and a child of his own by the time he was eighteen. If he hadn't been so blonde you would swear he was a soot.'

There was a truth underneath it all that would explain how this division started- there had to be. But no one he asked would tell him anything more than what his parents had said.

And asking too many questions could be dangerous.

But he refused to say it. He refused to laugh when someone else said it. He didn't want any part in it.

But he didn't tell them stop either.

iv.

'Did you see?'

'See what?'

'Leevy Davis' dress.'

Peeta frowned as he readjusted his bag. The hallway was a cacophony of students on their way to their next class, and he doubted anyone had heard Krop but him.

'No. What's wrong with it?'

'Not a goddamn thing,' he said with a dreamy smile, then snickered.

Peeta whacked him on the arm and rolled his eyes.

'Gotta love those sooty as hell Seam girls.'

His stomach twisted violently, but before he could muster up a response, Krop turned off into a classroom.

Someone knocked past him- a small girl, clutching her books tightly. Her black hair was pinned back tightly, but Peeta could see it was a little greasy, and her dress was worn and too short. It was Leevy.

It was lunch and a snippet of conversation caught his ear.

'Her mom?'

'Yeah. Up and died. Five kids and she's the oldest. She's dropping out, obviously.'

'For the baby?'

'Yeah. Dads in the mines all day and they can't afford to do anything else.'

'They can't even afford new clothes- let alone her books. Today is her last day. I'm really gonna miss her.'

'Damn. And Leevy was real smart, too.'

He felt too sick to finish his food.

v.

Delly wouldn't talk to him. She spent the week shooting him vicious glares across the classroom, or answering his attempts at conversation with haughty silences. She wouldn't walk next to him when they went home after school, and she didn't even look up when he offered her his cupcake during lunch.

Stranger still was that she was sitting alone when he had approached her. Alone wasn't really Delly's thing.

'Dell. You gotta' tell me what's wrong,' he pleaded.

She sniffed dangerously and wiped her cheek.

'You're a jerk, Peeta Mellark, and I wouldn't care if you dropped dead right this very minute.'

She burst out in tears, and Peeta didn't know what to do at all, so he sat gently down next to her and rubbed her back.

'Dell, why would you say that? You know I'm hopeless, you have to tell me when I'm being a jackass or god knows I'll just continue to bumble my way along and embarrass you, me and all of Twelve in front of the whole world.'

Delly hiccupped out a laugh and wiped her face with the back of her hand. He could see the internal battle that raged inside of her as it flashed across her face. She frowned horribly and pushed his arm away.

'No, Peeta, this time I am really and truly mad at you. You- you were just horrible and I feel like I don't know at all what to think.'

Peeta gave her a tremulous grin and put his hands in his lap.

'Why don't you start by telling me what I did this time.'

Delly took a deep breath and a blonde curl flopped haphazardly in her face, which she pushed back behind her ear.

'You let that total jerk Krop say those horrible things about Leevy, and she spent all afternoon in the bathroom crying, and now she's dropped out, probably forever, and she was having a hard enough time as it was and you had to go and just- just-,' she started to weep again, and Peeta felt heat prickle on the back of his neck and his stomach twist into knots.

'I'm sorry Dell, I really am. I never meant to- He walked away before I could-'

'You don't think that stuff about Seam people, Peeta. I know you. You couldn't. Not when- not when Katniss is-'

Peeta blushes horribly. His humiliation couldn't be more complete. He drops his gaze to his lap and scratches his cheek self consciously.

'No,' he breathes finally. 'I don't. Not a word. It's all bullshit.'

Delly bites her lip.

'Then why did you-'

Peeta can't move his eyes from his hands as the grip his knees.

'I was scared, Dell. That's why.'

Its horrible, and embarrassing, and true.

'She doesn't get to be scared Peeta,' she murmured, her eyes shimmering. 'Why do you?'

Peeta's voice caught in throat.

Delly bit the inside of her cheek and looked at him carefully.

'We don't get to be scared,' she whispered fearfully. 'Those of us who are- different. We have to just be. And- and live with whatever cruelty that brings us, whether or not its fair.'

Peeta's eyes snapped to hers.

'What's going on?,' he rasped, and she kept her careful eyes trained on him while biting her cheek to shreds.

'Can I trust you, Peeta?,' she said. 'Can I tell you what I am?'

'Of course! Whatever it is- I promise- I won't tell. You can trust me.'

She didn't say anything, just kept chewing anxiously on her cheek.

'What are you Dell?,' he breathed. 'You can trust me, I swear.'

She cupped her hand around his ear and whispered it to him slowly, fearfully, like he would flinch away from her.

Or like he would hurt her.

'Peeta, I like girls- just like you like girls'.

Delly was a rebel by circumstance, and it was who she loved that made her that way. Peeta had never known of anything more poetic in his life.

vi.

He was there when Katniss hauled off and broke Jude Miller's nose in the middle of the hall, students swarming around her like flies. The triumphant smirk that played on her lips, the flash of her eyes- he swore he fell in love all over again.

Katniss Everdeen took down a senior boy nearly twice her size with a well placed fist to the bulb of his nose, and Peeta joined the Seam kids who were clapping and hollering for her without a second thought.

'What happened?,' he asked the boy beside him.

'Jude Miller called Katniss Everdeen sooty- that dumb asshole.'

Jude Miller was a dumb asshole. And that made Peeta Mellark cowardly asshole.

Delly's words floated through his head, and he felt ashamed of himself and damn proud of Katniss all at once.

'She doesn't get to be scared, Peeta… Why do you?'

vii.

He came at Rye hard, and he knew he had the match in the bag if he could overbalance his much taller brother before he could find a firm stance.

'Damn Peet,' his brother grunted in his ear. 'You got good real fast.'

Peeta didn't respond, opting instead to throw more of his weight against him.

'Fuck,' Rye ground out, as Peeta slammed him flat against the mat.

The crowd in the school auditorium held its breath. It would be over in a few seconds, Peeta just needed to concentrate.

His brother hooked a leg around him and flipped them.

'You didn't think I'd let you win that easily,' he huffed. Rye pressed him into the mat, and Peeta dragged in a few labored breaths before he flipped them again.

Rye laughed.

'You really want this, huh?'

He twisted, and they rolled back and forth for a minute before Rye secured the upper hand.

'Did you see her in the audience? That Seam girl you always draw is watching.'

Peeta's heart leapt into his throat.

'Shut up, Rye.'

Rye lets out a cross between a grunt and a laugh.

'If I let you win, she'll have to fuck you.'

Peeta ground his teeth and tried to ignore him. He pushed up and they sprang away from each other, circling around the mat once again, fingers drumming the air in anticipation.

Rye came at him first this time, but miscalculated Peeta's stance and Peeta had him flat against the mat in seconds.

'Sooty girls are easy like that,' Rye snickers breathlessly, and something in Peeta snaps. It was like he was watching someone else punch his brother in the jaw and walk away from the match. He ripped the band holding his hair back off his forehead and threw it to the ground, glaring furiously over his shoulder.

But he had never been more proud to lose in front of the whole school.

viii.

He was floating for days after that. Rye had a black eye and a gold trophy, but Peeta got the appraising gaze of Katniss Everdeen in the hallway the next day- like she was checking up on him, to see if he was alright.

It was one hell of a consolation prize.

ix.

'Why'd you do it?,' Rye asked one morning as they kneaded huge lumps of yeasty dough. 'I don't get it. I was just trying to psych you out. I didn't know you'd get so-'

'Just don't say shit like that,' Peeta snapped.

Rye was silent for a long while after that. He kneaded the dough thoughtfully, mulling over what Peeta had said with almost comical concentration.

Peeta decided to cut him some slack.

'It's bullshit, and you sound like Mom.'

Rye paled and his hands stilled anxiously in the dough.

'That's why?,' he said and looked at Peeta carefully. 'I sounded like Mom?'

'No,' Peeta sighed. 'Because you're a good guy, and you know better that to say those things about other people. It's not funny. It's just plain cruel.'

Rye stared at his younger brother, as though seeing him for the first time.

'You never said anything about all this before. I never knew it bothered you so much,' he grumbled.

'Yeah, well... Not saying anything at all can be just as bad as saying it yourself. So I'm guilty too.'

x.

Katniss was beautiful.

It wasn't her dark hair, even though he loved her braid. He dreamed of untying the leather cord at the end of her braid, running his hands through her hair as it tumbled like a curtain around her shoulders and down her back.

It wasn't her eyes, so smokey they were very nearly, but not quite, black. Eyes that were burned so clearly into his mind they had branded themselves there. Branded him.

And it wasn't her skin, smooth and dark, the color of rich black tea with a splash of milk and honey- and probably just as silken.

Everything about Katniss Everdeen made her beautiful.

She was a casually rebellious girl who rarely spoke. She was a terrible speaker, but she had a beautiful voice. She was shrewdly intelligent, but didn't think much of their Capital issue textbooks. And she was a proud young girl from the Seam.

She was graceful and strong and passionate and stubborn, and he wasn't brave like she was, like she had to be, but he liked to think he had at least taken a step in the right direction.