-I own nothing of the Hunger Games. I wish I did, but I sadly don't and therefore have no Peeta to play with.

Chapter 1.

Katniss.

The sun's raising higher in the sky, peeking through the breaks in the trees and leaves to warm my skin. It's later in the day than I initially realized and there's a small part of me that thinks I should leave the sanctity of the woods and head home, but the larger part of me wishes to stay hidden in the greenery for all eternity. My body and heart want to stay laying in the soft, wild grass and just listen to the symphony of the birds singing in the canopy. My mind, however, keeps wandering back to just the other side of the fence where my small and rather pathetic looking house sits. Wanders to my little sister and what she's doing to entertain herself without my company.

Thoughts of my sister brings a small smile to my face. I can picture her now; wide smile splitting her face with exuberance, blond hair springing free from the braids trailing down to her back, beautiful blue eyes shining with childhood innocence, and – of course – hands either patting the matted fur of her mangy cat or busy with grinding herbs into medicine. Prim was so much like a contagion in her happiness that I could feel her influence even now, at least a mile or so into the dense forest.

"What's up with you?" asks Gale. He's peering at me sideways, half of his attention still cast into the woodlands surrounding us and hand curled tightly on the small knife he had concealed in his boot. Both were aspects of being a hunter, character traits that the pair of us shared.

I lazily look into his eyes, ash gray like mine, and shrug noncommittally. "What do you mean?"

Gale shifts so he's laying back with me, head resting on his arm, and mimics the movement of my shrug with his brawny shoulders. "You were scowling at the world just seconds ago and then you started smiling like a loon. So, my question is, what's going on in that head of yours?" he questions again. To any outsider, he would have appeared lighthearted in asking, but to my keen and sharp-witted eyes, I could see the underlying hardness in his mercurial depths. I could hear the slight desperation and worry in his deep rumble of a voice. What I couldn't decipher, was why these small things were present.

"Just thinking about Prim." I finally answer after a cool minute of silence. Well, as quiet as silence can get when sitting in a forest full of animals and wind-rustled leaves.

"Ah, the illustrious Primrose." he murmurs and there's a small, hidden smile lining his mouth as he shakes his head. Gale rarely smiles full blown grins, always opting for half-smiles and sideways glances. To some, he would seem cold and aloof, but I found him to be the best company in the world because he and I were so very alike. "What has she been up to? I haven't seen her much lately."

This pulls a frown to my face. I haven't really seen her all that much myself, but I had stopped asking anything of my mother years ago so I only assumed that Prim was out collecting plants and whatnot for their healing services. That isn't to say that my lack of sisterly bonding time is all on Prim's twelve year old shoulders. I've been just as busy, just as enthralled in my own life and business. "Don't know, really. I guess she's just doing mother dear's bidding." I say. I turn my head up to the sky, staring through the holes of the canopy and into what small bits of the clear, blue sky that lay beyond. It's warmer than yesterday and there aren't nearly as many puffy clouds littering the skyline. Spring was beginning to settle across the district and with it would come better hunting conditions and more food.

Gale doesn't say anything to my explanation and we lapse back into the sounds of the birds chirping and wind blowing along the chutes of grass and making the leaves dance. I drop back onto the bed of grass we're laying on, folding my hands behind my head and I close my eyes. The earthy smell of nature that can only come from the woods calms me more than any medication or herb my mother gives me when I can't sleep. Not that I would ever really consider coming all the way out here to nap or sleep through the night. That just doesn't seem logically sound.

I turn my thoughts back to the idea of Spring and what it means to me other than more game and more hunting. When I was little, I loved the feel of the soft breeze that always accompanied the term Spring. I would come out into the woods with my father and he would go over every detailed instruction of how to wield a bow and clean an animal after it's been caught in a snare or struck by an arrow. He would take me deep into the forest, off the worn path we used to always walk, and to the small lake and the concrete cabin nestled beside the water. On sunny days, when the mockingjays would perch on the branches of the trees that surrounded the lake, my father would sing to them, to me. The birds would instantly still and watch him, stop chattering amongst themselves and listen intently before picking up the song's tune and echoing it. It – he – always amazed me.

The spring just before I turned eleven was the last we spent together. He brought me out past the fence every single day no matter the weather's mood. That year he taught me to swim and tried to teach me how to make a bow from the wood of the tree trunks. I failed at every attempt, but he never gave up on trying to ingrain the instructions of how to whittle the wood and bend it to my will into my head. Swimming came rather easily, so he took upon himself the tedious task of teaching me various strokes in the water. I had a bit more trouble with those at first, but I improved and if put in a depth of water, I could cut across the glassy surface as though I had been born of the sea. My father used to tease me that one day I would be discovered, 'a mermaid among miners' he would call me and then he would say that I'd be taken from District 12 and fostered in District 4. Four is the seafaring district full of fisherman and their wives and it was bordered by the ocean. My father's teasing of sending me there should have terrified me, but the idea always excited me in some way.

The winter that followed that Summer, claimed more than just the vegetation of the woods. My father was always a hero in my eyes and in some morbid way, his death cemented that idea evermore. He was a miner as many people who lived in the poorer part of this meager district – the Seam – were and rather than dying off from old age, inhalation of coal dust, or starvation, he was blown to pieces along with his crew in the shafts of the coal mines. That same explosion took Gale's father's life as well. Another thing we have in common.

His death completely rocked mine and my family's world. We were not only emotionally lost, but Prim and I were starving skeletal beings that once were human and thriving. Our mother was worse than us when it came to the emotional devastation and after the ceremony where I was presented with my father's medal of honor was long over, after the month that was allotted to her for grieving was gone and past, she was still unreachable. I was eleven, months away from turning twelve and being eligible for submitting my name for the Capitol given tesserae. I had no idea what to do, how to live, and I certainly didn't know how to feed my sister.

Then it happened. Spring came back and promised life as the plants my father had told me were okay to eat began sprouting up in the meadow and animals crept out of hibernation. I took up hunting again, though I was thoroughly petrified of being alone in the trees with all kinds of unknown factors staring me down. It got a lot easier when Gale happened to find me in the woods on a hunt. We hit it off. Not immediately, but gradually we let our guards down and opened up to each other. Thus, our complex relationship unfolded.

Life was hard in those days leading up to finding Gale, following my father's death, but I wouldn't wish them away no matter what. They make up who I am more than the carefree experiences I shared with my father. I am a hunter, a provider. I am unemotional. I don't involve myself with the petty dramas that circulate around the school's rumor mill. I don't exist unless I am taking care of my sister or in the dense forest with Gale.

And, I'm okay with that.

"Can you believe it's already here? I'm dreading tomorrow." comments Gale, pulling me from my mental monologue. I want so badly to glare at him or maybe even hit him for bringing up what tomorrow is, but I can't find it in me to even open my eyes. "How many times are you entered?" he asks quietly and I can hear the desperation once again, hear the need in his voice – a need for me to lie.

"Twenty." I answer, truthfully. I don't lie. It isn't even that I just don't like the idea of withholding the truth, which I do, but I suck at it. There's always a tremor in my voice or my eyes look around or I'm just unconvincing. I tried lying to Gale once when I was thirteen and he was fourteen. We had been having a rough time bringing in food; the animals had grown scarce and the plants had dried up because there hadn't been any rain. Gale had stumbled across a berry bush and I took them from him while his back was turned, took them for Prim. He caught me and I denied it, but I had given up some feeble lie. I haven't lied to him since. "You?"

"Forty-two times."

My eyes snap open instantly. Forty-two. Forty-two. I knew he was the breadwinner for his family and had put his name in at least twice a year since he had turned twelve, but I never imagined that my best friend, the person who kept me grounded, would have such a high number. Such a high risk of being chosen. Of being reaped. "Tell me this is some kind of sick joke." I respond in a hollow voice.

I think I'm in shock or panicking. I can't be certain because I have no past experience to compare notes with, but I'm pretty sure this is what a panic attack feels like. I can hear my heartbeat thundering in my ears like distant echoes of drums. I can feel only a tingling numbness resonating in my hands, arms, feet, and legs. There's a hollow presence in my chest that reminds of the time I was under water for too long and thought that I wouldn't break the surface in time to catch my breath. Yes, this feels so very much like what I've imagined panic and chaos to feel like if it were in a cage.

"Why would I joke about this?" I vaguely hear Gale say. I pull myself up into a sitting position and force myself to turn to face him and I see my fear mirrored in the lines of his flesh, in the furrow of his dark eyebrows.

Why would he joke about the Reaping, the Hunger Games, of all things? Logically – realistically – I know he wouldn't dare. I know that he isn't. That he really does have forty-two slips of bleach white paper with his name printed on it in the lottery. The odds, as Effie Trinket would say, weren't in his favor.

"We should just run away from here and never look back. We know the forest so well, we could get pretty far. We could live a better life." exclaims Gale.

I stare at him as if he were crazy, and I'm honestly beginning to think that he is in at least one or two ways. "We would get caught, Gale, and the consequences would be worse than death. You know that, I know that. Don't be stupid." I counter and push off the ground, dusting my pants free of grass and dirt. I spin around and spot my bow leaning against a fallen over tree and move to grab it, slinging it and my quiver of arrows over my shoulder. "It's late, we should go." I say to Gale as I walk past him, into the greenery.

#THG#

As Gale and I walk through town, there's an icy and silent tension settling over us. We don't speak, or rather, I don't respond to anything he says. I don't know why I'm mad, why his words of running away shook me up so much and taunted the inner anger I so rarely felt. There was just something about his voice that lit a fuse nestled deep inside me. He spoke with such clear conviction and certainty of what our future in the woods held. He talked as though we didn't have siblings or mothers to care for, to feed.

Prim didn't take to being in the trees the way I did. She was no huntress, she wasn't meant for my life. How could Gale forget about that or them? How could he not think about how swiftly death would descend upon my baby sister or his own? Everything I do is all about ensuring their survival and taking them into the dark of the woods would counteract all of my life's actions. All of my father's.

Then again, there may be more to it than that. I could be angry with my best friend because he has intentions of stealing me away from the best part of my days. Taking away the only other real interaction with a person that I can keep up a two-sided conversation with.

It wasn't any secret that Gale had an aversion to most of the merchants and townspeople, but he had an unjustified hatred for the baker's son, Peeta Mellark. I wasn't foolish enough to not question his motives for disliking the boy, wasn't as blind as many people believed. I could see the hardness in Gale's eyes whenever he looked at Peeta, but it was more than mere hard eyes. There was jealousy hidden behind that masked indifference, he felt threatened by Peeta.

At school rumors flew around that Gale and I were a couple. We were always together, so it wasn't much of a stretch for the imagination and the idea had honestly crossed my mind a few times to overstep our friendship boundaries, but I didn't think it would feel right. Along with the gossip of our unfounded love, there were the whispers of Gale's unfaithfulness to me. I knew what he did every week. Knew that he was, in fact, a teenage boy with needs and that he wouldn't wait around for me to return his not so hidden feelings. He did what every guy in the school wanted to do and took girls out by the slag heap to do intimate things that I could barely even dream about.

Gale once asked me if I was aware that Peeta had feelings for me. I told him I didn't think that was plausible, given that he's one of the more attractive boys in the whole school and could therefore have his pick. I don't consider what I said as a lie. I didn't notice it at the time, but after Gale brought it to my attention, it became painstakingly obvious that the baker's son did like me in a romantic way. I think Gale caught on that I began taking notice of Peeta a bit more because he seemed to hover closely to me whenever we would go to the back door of the bakery to trade. I suppose, in his demented mind, he was staking a claim.

That thought made me feel uneasy. I wasn't sure of my feelings for Peeta like I was sure I would never return Gale's interest. There was something the blond boy had that Gale didn't, a kindness in his baby blue eyes that I haven't ever seen light up Gale's slate orbs. Sure, Gale broke the law on a daily basis to keep food in his family's stomachs, but he hadn't risked getting swatted by his witch of a mother to help a Seam girl he barely knew.

I guarantee no one would understand when I say that I owe Peeta Mellark my life. If I told them how he had burnt bread and thrown it out to me knowing full well what would happen to him if he did, they would only hear that he gave me bread and burnt bread at that. No one would hear that he didn't just save mine and Prim's life by pulling us out of starvation but also gave me hope. Hope, such a rare thing to find in darkness, was bestowed on me by this boy's selfless actions. He let me know there were still good people in the world as he showed me the first dandelion of the new Spring.

I didn't talk to him much. Just when Gale and I traded our squirrels for bread and he happened to answer the door instead of his father. In the classes we shared in school, we didn't bother letting on that we even knew each other. There was an unspoken disgrace that came with merchant kids dating or fraternizing with Seam kids and vice versa. It was stupid and ridiculous in my mind, but it was the social way in District 12.

"You know," I hear Gale start saying and he stops walking to turn to me, but I try to brush past him only to be stopped by him grabbing my arm. "I didn't mean to upset you, Catnip. I was just suggesting an option, a way out." he says softly. I can still hear his resolve in his voice, but he's playing dirty by calling me his stupid though beloved nickname.

I won't buckle so easily. I will not give him the satisfaction of having won this debate. "Don't bother apologizing when you think you've done nothing wrong." I say and yank my arm out of his firm grasp. I don't wait for him to respond before setting back to walking toward the bakery. I know he's following by the barely perceptible footfalls that are trailing behind me.

"Katniss!" calls Gale. I ignore him again though and choose to keep trekking across the town square. I'm not usually so hostile in mine and Gale's fights, but I can't seem to shake the feeling that he had suggested running out of a more selfish reason than just offering an unorthodox form of salvation. "Katniss, wait up!" Gale yells again and this time it attracts looks of alarm and distaste from the few people milling about the town.

"What?" I yell back, whirling around to glare at him. "What do you want, Gale?"

"Will you please let me explain?" asks Gale. He comes to a stop just in front of me and his cheeks are slightly colored by the crisp wind, offsetting his naturally sooty looks.

"There isn't anything to explain. You're being an ass once again. Nothing new there, nothing I haven't come to expect. So, just let it go." There's a flash of something – hurt? – in his eyes as his ears pick up on the harsh tone of my voice and the look, however awful it may be, gives me a sense of delight. I want him to know exactly how angry I am and how hurt and all those other things I felt. I want him to feel just as bad and just as confused. "Now, I have a job to do and if you can't keep your opinions and ideas to yourself, leave." I snap and stare at him for a few icy moments, daring him to either leave or say something. He does neither and gestures for me to continue, which I do with a resigned roll of my eyes.

The time it takes to cross the square and come up the back of the bakery evaporates fast and suddenly I'm facing the back screen door and inhaling the heady scent of fresh bread. Part of me wants to dash away as I realize that among the voices filtering out of the open aired door, Bannock Mellark was not among them. I would have to face the broad shouldered, blond boy that sometimes starred in distant dreams. With Gale's morose company.

Oh, joy.

I have to pool all my courage into my fist in order to even manage knocking. Almost immediately all laughter and sounds of conversation cease and there's a scuttling of feet and I see the fair features of Peeta become distinctly clearer as he comes near the door.

A smile breaks on his lips as he opens the spring loaded door and stoppers it to keep it from snapping back before leaning against the door jamb. "I was wondering where you were. You're very late." he comments with a light, teasing voice.

He's right though, I am late. I usually stop by his house in early morning with game to trade, but since I chose to lie around in the sunlight it was more like late afternoon now. "Sorry, lost track of time." I respond, returning his smile as best I can with my muddled thoughts and feelings.

"You're here now, though. That's what matters."

He's flirting with me and I think I'm honestly flirting back with him. Suddenly, it's like my hearing is ultra sensitive because I can hear Gale shuffling his feet and sighing behind me. This could turn into a nightmare if I don't watch my step. "I am," I agree hesitantly, "but, given the lateness of the hour, I need to keep to my schedule and get over to the Hob before nightfall. So, let's get this over with, shall we?" I say and though I regret the severity of my voice, it has the desired effect and Peeta's carefree expression shifts to one of seriousness.

The blue of Peeta's eyes shift to look over my shoulder to where Gale stands and I don't miss the flicker of suspicion laced with contempt that passes through them. "Right. What do you have today?" he asks and moves to stand straight, pushing away from the jamb.

Pulling my game bag from my hip, I dig through the corpses of animals I've shot down earlier this morning and produce three squirrels. Peeta's father is one of the few people in Twelve that like my squirrels, always buys them. "Three." I answer and then drop them to the ground by Peeta's feet before opening a small compartment of my game bag to pull out a pack filled with strawberries.

"Well, that's a surprise." comments Peeta as he reaches out and grabs the pack from my hands. I try not to let it show, but a shiver runs through me as his rough, burned hand grazes my fingertips. "What brought this on?" he questions, pawing through the fresh berries.

"Just thought you could use them more than I could. Prim's allergic and I don't feel right when I bring home things she can't eat."

"Uh huh. Well, thank you. Wait here and I'll get your bread."

Peeta disappears and reappears in the doorway faster than I could have imagined. He hands me three loaves of bread, one and a half each for Gale and I, and with a mischievous smile he hands me a plastic wrapped package of at least a dozen cookies. I take one out of the wrapping and marvel at it's unique texture that feels so foreign in my hand. Before the tantalizing scent of sweet buttercream icing can fully captivate my senses, I shove the cookie back into the packaging and push the cookies down into a small bag that's hanging at my hip.

"Thank you, Peeta." I reply with a small smile. "These will drive Prim wild."

Peeta nods at my words and bends down to grab the squirrels and I watch as he sets them on a counter just inside the door. "I figured I should return the favor since you brought me something sweet." he responds with a smirk that looks quite attractive with his devilishly painted together looks. Maintaining his crooked smile, Peeta leans out from his place atop the stair and grabs for my hand. "Thank you." he murmurs and stares lingeringly into my eyes and I barely get a glimpse of the mischievous twinkle.

When he pulls back and once again vanishes through the doorway, I finally register the crinkled feeling of parchment in my hand. Frowning, I look down to my hands and pull the paper out, smoothing it enough to read. What I see, in elegantly printed script, makes my blood sound like waves in my ears and my heart feel like it's sprinting a race.

If you can manage it, meet me in the meadow at midnight tonight.

P.S.

Don't bring your boyfriend.

#THG#

So, I've had a few false starts on different stories, but I'm excited about this one the most. I have quite a plenty of twists and turns that will play out in this story.

Read and enjoy, read and review. Either is perfect with me.

~R.