Well, this was supposed to be a one-shot, but it turned into something longer and completely out of my comfort zone. Hope you guys like my second attempt at canon divergence!
Breakdown: This is story is already finished, with eight chapters, but postings will vary. No set schedule this time.
Thank you Chelzie, Court, iLoVeRynMar, and Misshoneywell. Also happy birthday, Kika! This first chapter is dedicated to you ;)
Disclaimer: I do not own THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy. It belongs to Suzanne Collins. I merely want to spend more time with her characters.
Music: "Blinding" by Florence and the Machine.
ENEMY
The little shit just won't die.
When he fails to drown, Katniss scowls at the arena hologram. When he recovers from the force field, she rips off her blazer and loosens the top button of her blouse, then barks at one of her minions to turn the air up. When that suicidal morphling throws herself in front of Peeta to save him from the rabid baboons, Katniss flings her arm out and swats the nearest tray of refreshments in frustration. Crystal goblets and a decanter crash to the ground, splintering into shards of glass.
Ever since this boy and his berry trick bested Katniss in the first Games, painting her into a fool for the whole of Panem, she vowed to make him pay. Most gamemakers would have stopped breathing by that time, punished in secret ways that involved locked doors and orchestrated lies. But not her. She has immunity on her side. For now, at least.
Yet that doesn't make up for being professionally lanced by Peeta Mellark, a boy with the bluest eyes she's ever seen. Eyes that had caused her to lose her concentration in the first arena, when she should have blown him and his friend, Delly Cartwright, to bits.
Katniss wants to shut those eyes of his permanently. They're courageous, compassionate, and dangerous. As if she doesn't have enough to prove by being the youngest gamemaker in history, newly eighteen, she has to deal with this burden of a victor. This boy who's become a symbol for the people, a threat to her way of life.
If any gamemaker should know how to eliminate him, it should be one his age, but people in the Capitol are beginning to laugh at her behind her back. She blames that boy, that Mockingjay, with his infuriating heroism and talent with words, both of which have sidetracked her far too often. She cannot let him win a second time. There's no telling whether she'll be able to avoid the consequences twice in a row, no matter what her relation is to the powers that be.
"Miss Everdeen-Snow," a guard says, marching into the control room.
Katniss grinds her teeth. Great. It seems her concerns have manifested into reality.
She whirls away from the hologram and crosses her arms. "What?" she snaps, though she already knows.
"The president would like to see you."
She follows the guard and his glossy spectacle of a uniform through a gilded hallway and into a solarium. The room is deceptively sunny and filled with potted rose bushes. Standing beside one of those bushes is an older man with a hive of shocking white hair.
He has his back facing her. He speaks without turning. "My dear, I thought I warned you to contain him."
She folds her arms behind her back respectfully. "I have."
"And I do believe we agreed not to lie to each other. You haven't contained him. Don't state otherwise."
Fine. She may not have contained Mellark, but there is time yet. The Cartwright girl died yesterday. She wasn't the boy's lover, nor did either of them want to be lovers, even though they pretended as much. Still, Cartwright was a good friend, and now he's lost her. That has certainly weakened him a notch.
Katniss is about to point that out when Snow holds up a pair of scissors and snips one of his roses. The bud lands on the floor, making her think of a severed head. "When I employed you, people had their doubts. A female gamemaker, and not only that, but an adolescent. A well-bred, vicious one, skilled at manipulation and strategy—but still, a young woman. One who sometimes has trouble following orders."
She swallows but keeps her head high. The man spins around, placing the rose in his lapel. He beckons her with his cupped palm, and she approaches obediently while festering inside.
"What else did we agree to?" he quizzes her.
"That I would convince the people I'm worthy of this job," she answers mechanically.
"And have you?"
"I will, President Snow."
"No need to be so formal when we're alone." His bushy brows rise. "Now . . . you will what?"
"I'll convince them."
"No. You'll convince me." He gives her a false grin. "The boy is having an effect on you, and you don't seem aware of it."
Oh, but she is aware of it. She recalls every dark look that has passed between her and Peeta Mellark, every hard glare he aimed her way in the training room while he displayed his strength in tight-fitting clothes. Plus that one time they were forced to dance in the ballroom during the Victory Tour, when his jaw locked and the discord radiated between them—as well as something else, something that had to do with the disturbing way Peeta had stared at her braid and how their bodies moved an inch closer to one another.
He's been affecting her for longer than the president knows, longer than she'd actually dare to admit. Going back even further, to a time before the first Games.
"Prove me wrong, dear," Snow finishes, snapping her out of it.
A hot wave of embarrassment and fury races up Katniss's throat. She stifles her temper and nods.
"Good. Now go back to work." He tilts his cheek toward her, waiting.
Katniss steps forward and pecks his wrinkled skin. "Yes, Grandfather."
The minute she leaves the solarium, she belts out a string of curses before stomping off to the control room, the spikes of her heels stabbing the floor. Her flat palms smack the door with enough force to blow it open. Perfect timing, as reinforcements have supplied her with another Avox and a fresh tray of drinks. Ignoring the looks of the controllers, she swipes a fluted glass of whatever from the Avox's salver and swallows the purple liquid in one gulp, then drops it back onto the tray.
She prowls the circumference of the hologram, her silence explosive even to her own ears. Finally, she stalks to the rim of the arena and braces her hands there, drumming her fingernails in thought. She leans forward to get a better look, her eyes zeroing in on the number 12. He's gathered with his allies at the Cornucopia. They've just figured out the arena is a clock.
A grin spreads across her face. Well, let's see them tell time after this.
Pushing back from the hologram, she addresses the controller to her right by twirling her finger. "Change it up. Spin it."
Just wait. She'll teach that boy not to fuck with her.
kpkpkpkpkp
She has him. She has him now.
Katniss feels her eyes gleaming as she keeps them peeled to the Cornucopia spinning like a disc. It would be so easy to watch the TV screens instead, but she chooses to focus on the hologram.
As for the details that the hologram can't show her, she relies on her exceptional imagination. After all, it was her knack for creativity, aside from her bloodroots and violent prowess, which won her this job.
She watches the number 12 and envisions the inferior Mellark falling victim to her tactics. In her mind, he's clinging for dear life to the serrated crevices of the hill, the landscape roaring by with a vengeance and blinding him with its speed. He's thinking, of all things, of her. Katniss, the sinister but darkly attractive gamemaker, whom he hates. The blades of her irises haunt him, sharpened by an old, stubborn memory between them. Irises that he will never see again, if he dies.
Katniss pictures Peeta tightening his grip on the hill, even more motivated to stay alive. The tendons of his hands strain to keep from flopping around, every part of his body resisting the maelstrom lashing out at him. And to her bafflement, this elicits a rather tingly response inside her. Literally inside her. That his determination to live is because of some absurd notion about seeing her eyes again . . . Well, the fantasy is enough to make her wretch. That she, Katniss, would entertain such an idea. Ugh.
She's so outraged by it that it takes Mellark's actual demise to jolt her back to reality. In the hologram, he loses the battle, the air vacuuming him up and launching him into the sea.
For a second, the sight revives her. The impending, reliable sound of a canon resounds in her head. This is her moment. The spinning Cornucopia will suck him down into the abyss. Tonight, his beautiful boy-face will be a firework in the sky. His beautiful face. Oh, how beautiful. That determined jaw, which had ticked as they waltzed in the ballroom, that deep-set bedroom stare, and his buttery smile—directed at others, of course—which had made him look like a puppy and a deity at the same time, melting women at the gala into a puddle.
Fuck him. Once he's drowned, everyone will regret doubting her. They will praise her, and her grandfather will finally, for once in her life, be proud of her. He will love her. Finally. Yes.
No!
Katniss blinks. No? No?
It's only after the words, "Okay, that's enough," have mindlessly shot from her lips, echoing in the control room, that she realizes what she's done. She's even gone so far as to lift her hand, palm up, to signal her minions without realizing it.
Stricken, she glares at the hologram. The water has settled, allowing Mellark to breach the surface and crawl back onto the hill. Goddammit! What has she been thinking? She had the boy at her mercy, but she let him go. She gave him another chance.
The controllers gawk at her, their features all asking the same thing: Why the hell did she tell them to stop?
Katniss rams her nails into her forehead in a panic. "Wait. Wait, I—I . . ."
There's still time to repeat the order. She can send him spinning again. He's fatigued and will fly back into the waves even faster. She can—
The door sweeps open. The minions rise in unison as her grandfather glides into the room, wearing a neutral expression that she distrusts immediately. Behind him, filling the doorway to capacity, is Plutarch Heavensbee, that propaganda troll with the boxy shoulders and invisible neck.
Katniss curls her lips into a silent snarl.
"My dear," Snow says, his voice as cold as ice. "Come with me, please. Plutarch can take over for now."
"But," she begins, then shuts her mouth when her grandfather freezes her with a private, blustery look. Once more, she leaves the room, purposefully knocking her shoulder into Heavensbee on her way out, just for good measure.
Snow is eerily quiet as he guides her out of the building, where her car and regular driver idle on the street. Her grandfather opens the back door for her. Repressing the urge to protest, she slips into the leather interior, swallowing as he leans in. "Get some rest," he says. "You're exhausting your resources."
With that, he slams the door. The car rumbles to life and glides down the street.
She's escorted back to her suite at the presidential mansion, where she throws a proper fit, pacing the span of the bedroom in a black silk ankle-length nightgown and matching robe, her bare feet wearing out the ornate, dandelion-patterned rug. Demoted—that's what she is. That pompous son of a bitch Plutarch, the man she beat for her position, had stared at her as though he expected this to happen. He expected her to fail and give him the opportunity to sink his talons into her job. Hell, he's had plenty of time to manipulate Snow into losing faith in her.
That couldn't have been difficult, not with her idiotic mistake regarding Mellark. This is all his fault. He's the reason she hasn't slept in days.
She flings herself onto her bed and screams into an embroidered pillow. Somewhere in the middle of it, she passes out from exhaustion.
kpkpkpkpkp
She reclines in the sand, in a shoreline away from home. The beach is circular, with a cornucopia in the center, the waves constantly receding, never approaching. Someone's in the water, beckoning her to come, come closer, come find him.
Find him. He raises his arm and holds something tiny between his fingers, from so far away that she normally shouldn't be able to see it. It's a pearl. He's using it to bribe her.
Shapes—figures—surround her suddenly, blocking out the boy in the water. The bodies are clouds, no different from one another, no better or worse, not evil or good. Sometimes she hears their gauzy pleas, their blurry screams, asking why she did this to them, why she trapped them here. She wants them to shut up, because they're hurting her ears.
The sea glitters. The shapes vanish.
The boy is still there, floating with the pearl, waiting for her. "I'm here. Always," he says in a luminescent voice. "And you? Are you with me?"
Yes. She's with him. She's never been anywhere else.
But no. That's a lie. This isn't real!
She must have said that out loud because the shape bobs further and further from her, coasting toward the opposite side of the beach. It makes her cry out in regret. She squeezes her fist as though the pearl has somehow ended up in her hand.
He disappears. He's gone.
The sea changes. It shrinks into a lake, glistening in front of a log cabin, and the shore becomes a different kind of shore, one Katniss has never seen before, with cattails and grass and a forest beyond the fringes of the water. Her fingers tingle. A strong hand bounds itself to her, just for a moment. She worships and loathes the touch.
The hand must know this, too. Because it releases her, leaves her alone once again . . .
Shouts and gunfire from the corridor jolt her awake. Lurching upright, her pulse hammers in her throat. Her eyes widen at the crackling orange flames of the stack-stone fireplace across from her bed. Her home is under attack. By whom?
The clamor of footsteps rushing in all directions, bullets snapping, people howling, and bodies thudding to the ground invade the room. Tearing out of bed, Katniss grabs the bow and single arrow displayed over the fireplace just as the door to her private veranda flies open.
A man in a gray jumpsuit barges in with a gun strapped to his chest. They point their weapons at each other.
"Careful, sweetheart," the man drawls. "Mine's faster than yours."
Katniss pauses in shock. Shadows consume his face, but she knows that grainy voice and wry tone. They belong to Mellark's mentor, Haymitch Abernathy.
What is happening?
She doesn't have time to ask because someone from behind drops a blindfold over her head, and her arm feels the pinprick of a needle.
kpkpkpkpkp
When she wakes up, the cloth is still over her head. She thrashes about, growling and not caring if it makes her look like a lunatic.
"Ahh. The brat's up," slurs the same voice from her bedroom. "Morning, sweetheart."
She's yanked roughly to her feet. The blindfold pops from her head, the wands of light marching across the ceiling and disorienting her. The space is drenched in white, from the walls to the cold tiles beneath her feet, giving her goose bumps.
Awareness comes in bits and pieces. Handcuffs bite into her wrists. The side of her face throbs. Her fingers reach up and discover a bandage near her cheekbone—she vaguely recalls going ballistic and trying to fight back before that needle knocked her out. During her scuffle, some hothead lacking patience for the serum to work its magic must have taken the opportunity to hit her.
What the hell did they need to keep a cloth over her head for? She could have suffocated. There damn well better have been air holes in the blindfold.
Her dark hair is a nest of tangles. She's clad only in her black nightgown and robe, and there's a tear in the hem. A fucking tear! A Cinna LaRue original ruined!
Furious, she glares up and finds herself face-to-face with that swine, Abernathy, whose uniform, not to mention his very soul, reeks of drunkenness. He relishes her evident disgust. "Have a good rest?"
Movement alerts her to other occupants in the room. Her eyes cut across the space to Plutarch Heavensbee and that poppycock victor, Finnick Odair, who's looking less than stellar in his torn tribute uniform, and with his haunted expression . . . How is Odair here and not in the arena?
Katniss is nothing if not astute. After a swift assessment of the men's faces, and the fact that her wrists are bound, she catches on. The victor got out with Heavensbee and Abernathy's help, but they're not here to help her because she's the enemy. She belongs to them now.
This is a rebellion, just as her grandfather feared.
I'm Katniss Everdeen-Snow. I'm eighteen years old. I'm the president's granddaughter and the youngest gamemaker Panem has ever known. I'm dangerous and trained to kill, and I'm not going down without a good, long, hard fight. So go on. Give me everything you've got. I can take anyone.
Anyone.
And then she feels another pair of eyes on her. A looming presence in the vicinity that draws her gaze from the men and over to the exit door, where a broad, stocky figure leans against it, his arms crossed over his taut muscles. Yes, his eyes are certainly on her, watching the scene with a sidelong glance. They're intense, calculating blue eyes, and their message is clear: If he could, he would sweep everyone aside and wrap his hands around her throat.
Peeta Mellark. The Mockingjay.
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