A/N:
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games or the characters.
See you at the bottom...
Enjoy!
She should get up. She should move, but yet she stays in her place. The feeling in her hands has gone numb, telling her she's been out there for a while. Even the flask in her hands is cold. She doesn't care though, she doesn't want to go back to the Victor's Village and face what is to come today.
The reporters, the camera crews, even Effie Trinket, her old escort, will have made their way to District 12 from the Capitol. She wonders if Effie will still be wearing something out of the ordinary like that crazy pink wig she wore last time.
The others will be waiting, too. A staff to cater to her every need on the long train trip. A prep team to beautify her for public appearance. Her stylist and friend, Cinna, who designed the gorgeous outfit that first made the audience take notice of her in the Hunger Games
The only good thing that is to come is Cato. He'll be coming with everybody else. He had left a few months ago to go visit his mother back in District 2 and told her he'll be back on the day of the Victory Tour. The twins were sad, cried even, when he left, so she knows that they'll be happy to see him when he comes.
She is still in disbelief at how well Skye and Raven took to their father, especially Raven. Katniss knew Raven was going to be a daddy's girl from the start. She acts just like her father and she has him wrapped around her little finger, along with Skye.
Cato thought it was a good idea to take the twins with them on the Victory Tour. Katniss isn't that all for it because she doesn't want her children anywhere near the Capitol and there grimy hands, but Cato reasoned that it would look great with appearance wise so she grudgingly agreed.
If it was up to her, she would forget all about the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. But the Victory Tour makes it impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are they in districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, they are forced to celebrate it. And this year, she and Hagan are the stars of the show. She will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe her. To look down into their faces of the families whose children she has killed….
She can see the sun rising from where she sits in the forest, so she makes herself stand and leave. She picks up her game bag that is relatively full today; eight rabbits, two squirrels, and a beaver that swam into a wire contraption Gale designed himself.
Gale. He should be clocking in at the mines at this time. Katniss told him that he didn't need to get a job there, that she has enough money to support every one of their family members, but Gale didn't want the Hunger Games money that her and Hagan nearly died trying to get. He'd rather work for his own money himself and provide for his family on his own than take that blood money, his words not hers.
Katniss thinks it's just his pride talking, so since she isn't doing anything in the day she takes it upon herself to go hunting and give what she caught to Aunt Hazelle, Gale's mother. Knowing Gale won't take anything she has to offer, so she makes sure he has already left for the mines to stop by and give Hazelle her game.
The only time she's able to meet up with Gale is on Sunday's, but any other days of the week she can always go meet Rye or Peeta or even Uncle Caleb.
By the time she makes it back to the fence that surrounds District 12, the sun is well up. As always, she listens a moment, but there's no telltale hum of an electrical current running through the chain link. She slips under, now out in the Seam, and makes her way to Gale's house with her game bag.
Hazelle, seeing Katniss through her window, opens the door for her before she even has a chance to knock and envelops her niece in a warm hug. Katniss returns her embrace before letting go and Hazelle invites her in for a cup of tea. Katniss pulls the beaver out and hands it over to Hazelle. She takes it by the tail, weighing it before smiling.
"He's going to make a nice stew." Unlike Gale, she has no problem with Katniss helping them along with Uncle Caleb.
"Good pelt, too." Katniss answers. Hazelle pours her a mug of herb tea, which Katniss wraps chilled fingers around gratefully. "You know when I get back from tour, I was thinking taking Rory out with me sometimes. After school. Teach him to shoot."
Hazelle nods as she sips her own tea, "That'll be good. Gale means well, but he likes to spend his Sunday's with you."
Katniss gulps the rest of her tea, scorching her tongue in the process, before standing, "Right, I better get going and make my rounds over to the bakery and the Hob before the twins wake up."
The older woman nods before pulling her niece in for one last hug and then lets her go on her way. Katniss leaves after that with her game bag and walks over to the Hob. Although they never mention it, she owes the people who frequent the Hob. Gale told her that Greasy Sae, the old woman who serves up soup, started a collection to sponsor Hagan and her during the Games. It was supposed to be a Hob thing, but word got out around the district and a lot of people chipped in.
She walks in the warehouse place and makes her way over to different stalls, spreading out her purchases of coffee, buns, eggs, yarn, and oil. She finally settles down on the counter of Greasy Sae's stall and pulls out five of the eight rabbits she caught and hands them over to the old woman.
"You should really let me pay you for what you bring in like I use to." The old woman sighs as she shakes her head, but still takes the rabbits Katniss gave her.
Katniss shoots a small smile, "No can do. I have enough money and time on my hands as it is. Trust me, you are doing me a favor for letting me do this for you."
The old woman nods, "Well, I would really like some wild dog to make soup from. So go catch me one of those then I'll stop bugging you about me paying you." She says after afterthought.
"You can count on it." Katniss says as a Peacekeeper, Darius, comes up and buys a bowl of soup. He's one of her favorites. Never really throwing his weight around, usually good for a joke. He's probably in his twenties, but he doesn't seem much older than she does. Something about his smile, his red hair that sticks out every which way, gives him a boyish quality.
"Aren't you supposed to be on a train?" he ask her.
"They're collecting me at noon."
"Shouldn't you look better?" he ask in a loud whisper. She cracks a smile at his teasing, in spite of her foul mood. "Maybe a ribbon in your hair or something?" he flicks her braid with his hand and she brushes him away.
"Don't worry. By the time they get through with me I'll be unrecognizable." She says.
"Good." He says, "Let's show a little district pride for a change, Miss Everdeen. Hm?" he shakes his head at Greasy Sae in mock disapproval and walks off to join his friends.
"I'll want my bowl back!" The old woman yells after him, but since she's laughing, she doesn't sound particularly stern.
"I'll be taking my leave now. I need to hurry over to the Bakery before heading home before the twins wake up." Katniss sighs as she gets down from where she was sitting on.
The old woman nods, "You taking them with you? Cato going too?"
She nods grimly, "Yea, they're coming with us. I just want the whole thing to be over with." She whispers the last part.
"I know," Greasy Sae nods in understand, "But you've got to go through it to get to the end of it. Better not be late."
A light snow starts to fall on her walk back to the Victor's Village, after she left from giving Uncle Caleb what was left in her game bag. It's about a half-mile walk from the square in the center of town, but it seems like another world entirely. It's a separate community built around a green, dotted with flowering bushes. There are twelve houses, each large enough to hold ten of the one she was raised in. Nine stand empty, seeing as how Haymitch, her and Cato with the twins, and Hagan, Prim, and their mom, each own one.
She walks the trail up to Haymitch's house and opens the unlocked front door. There's no point in locking the doors. No one in their right minds would ever think about stealing from a Hunger Games Victor in District 12.
It's dirty in his house. There's trash all over the floor, but at least it doesn't stink. Ever since Haymitch promised to stop drink he has been going through withdrawal, so he's not in the best-of-shape right now.
Haymitch is still dead to the world when she finds him asleep on the couch. And since nothing else has worked, she grabs a bucket that was littering the unclean floor and fills it to the brisk with cold water, dumps all of it on his head before jumping out-of-the-way.
A guttural animal sound comes from his throat as he jumps up, kicking the trash that is around him, wielding a knife that he always sleeps with clutched in his hand. He spews curse words as he slashes the air for a moment before coming to his senses. He wipes his face on the front of his shirt and turns to the windowsill where I Katniss is perched, just in case she needed to make a quick exit.
"What the hell? Why are you all the way over there? Actually better question is why the hell am I all wet?" he sputters.
"You told me to wake you before the cameras get here."
"What?"
"You're idea." She insist.
"Well, you could have done it without the chances of giving me pneumonia." He grunts.
She rolls her eyes as she puts one leg out his windowsill, getting ready to leave. "Whatever, look the twins should be waking up by now. I'm leaving and you should take a bath, Haymitch."
With her parting words she leaves and makes her way to her house that she shares with Cato. Yes, she and he live together now with their children. It was only reasonable that they moved in together, seeing as Cato was going to be staying with her and the fact that they had kids together.
She shakes the snow from her boots off before walking into her home and places them by the door, so she won't leave a wet trail into the house. She pauses when something doesn't feel right to her. Like someone else is here besides her and the twins.
That's when the smell hits her like a ton of brick and she takes off, running up the stairs, taking two at a time. She runs down the hallway while she takes off her coat and leaves it behind her in the hallway. She only stops herself short when she is at the twins bedroom door, where the scent is the most strongest.
Roses and blood.
She smells roses and blood. And there is only one person she knows that has a strong smell of roses and blood. So with that thought in mind, she burst through Skye and Raven's bedroom door and the scene before her makes her freeze.
President Snow is here. The thing that makes her breath catch in her throat is the fact that he has Raven, who has woken up, sitting in his lap as he sits in a rocking chair by Skye's crib. President Snow looks at her as a slow smile crosses his face.
"Ah, I was wondering when you would get here. I've been sitting here quite a while and little Raven just woke up while Skye is still fast asleep." He says.
She wonders what he is doing here. Why is he holding Raven? Did he come alone or are there people here with him? But if he made the journey all the way from his city, it can only mean one thing. She's in serious trouble. And if she is, then so is her family. She feels the blood drain from her face as she pales at the thought and also at the sight of him holding Raven in his vile hands that have so much blood on them from past years.
She stares into his snake-like eyes. The pair that will always despise her. Because she outsmarted him, not once, but twice. One being his sadistic Hunger Games that made the Capitol look foolish, sick and consequently undermined his control. And second being how she got out of having her body bought from various Capitol people.
Even though all she was doing was trying to keep herself and Hagan alive, any act of rebellion was purely, okay somewhat, coincidental. But when the Capitol decree that only one tribute can live and you have the audacity to challenge it, she guess that's a rebellion in itself. Her only defense was sacrificing herself that made Hagan try to kill himself to be with her, even though she planned it. So they were both allowed to live. To be crowned victors. To go home and celebrate and wave goodbye to the cameras and be left alone. Until now.
Katniss doesn't say anything. She just stands there and looks at him with her daughter sitting in his lap. Surprisingly, Raven has cried out for her yet, only looking curiously at the man that's holding her.
"I think we'll make this whole situation a lot simpler by agreeing not to lie to each other," he says. "What do you think?"
Her tongue lays heavily in her mouth and speech is impossible, so she surprises herself by answering back in a steady voice, "Yes, I think that would save time."
President Snow smiles and she notices his lips for the first time. She was expecting snake lips, which is to say none. But his are overly full, the skin stretched too tight. If it was altered to make him more appealing, then he wasted his time because it doesn't. "My advisors were concerned you would be difficult, but you're not planning on being difficult, are you?" he ask, arching a white eyebrow at her.
"No."
"That's what I thought. I said any girl who goes to such lengths to preserve her and her brother's life isn't going to be interested in throwing it away with both hands. And then there's her family to think of. Her mother, her sister, her brother, her own children, and all those…cousins." By the way he says 'cousins' makes it seem like he's threatening them.
Katniss doesn't say anything as he continues, "I have a problem, Miss Everdeen. A problem that began the moment you turned the knife on yourself to save your brother, who in turn tried to kill himself in that arena." He says as he runs his filthy fingers through Raven's chocolate hair.
That was the moment when she guessed that if the Gamemakers had to choose between letting her bleed to death and Hagan killing himself- which would mean no victor- and letting them both live, they would take the latter.
"If the Head Gamemaker, Seneca Crane, had any brains, he'd just have blown you to dust right then. But he had an unfortunate sentimental streak. So here you are. Can you guess where he is?"
Six feet under.
She doesn't say that thought, only nods. Seneca Crane has been executed. The smell of roses and blood has grown stronger now and all she wants to do is snatch Raven and Skye and run to the woods, get as far away from President Snow as possible.
"After that, I thought I could use you. But, you twisted your way into my grandsons head years ago and somehow had his children and used this to get out of that. To make yourself safe, knowing everyone would just love how you and my grandson love each other and had children's. So I let you play your little scenario.
And you were pretty good, too, with the protective sister/ single mother who wanted her kids to know who their father was. The people were quite convinced. Unfortunately, not everyone in the districts believed you fully. Even though it may not be an act, but yet they don't know that."
She must look at him in bewilderment, because he addresses it.
"This, of course, you don't know. You have no access to information about the mood in other districts. In several of them, however, people viewed your little trick with the knives as an act of defiance, even if you wanted to save your brother. They think your relationship with my grandson is a sham and that you only said that the kids where his to show me up, get under my skin. And if a girl from District Twelve of all places can defy the Capitol and walk away unharmed, what is to stop them from doing the same?" he says. "What is to prevent, say, uprising?"
It takes a moment for his words to sink in, and trust, they sink to the bottom of her stomach where the dread sits. "There's an uprising?" she can't help but squeak out.
"Not yet. But they'll follow if the course of things doesn't change. And uprisings have been known to lead to revolution." President Snow rubs a spot over his left eyebrow, the very spot she herself get headaches. "Do you have any idea what that would mean? How many people would die? What conditions those left would have to face? Whatever problems anyone may have with the Capitol, believe me when I say that if it released its grip on the districts for even a short time, the entire system would collapse."
She's taken aback at how President Snow actually sounds sincere about the welfare of the citizens in Panem, but then she rights herself when she remembers that he doesn't, he's only playing her to get her on his side. "It must be very fragile, if a single knife can bring it down." She says in a steady voice, cautious of her words.
There's a long pause as he examines her. Then simply says, "It is fragile, but not the way that you suppose."
A cry comes from Skye's crib as the little boy stands on in two chubby legs and rubs his eyes with his small fist. If it wasn't for the fact that President Snow is in here with her, Katniss would have awed at this moment with Skye's hair sticking every-which-way, looking just so adorable.
"Ah, it looks like the other little one finally woke up." President Snow states as he looks at Skye while Raven is still in his lap, looking up at him curiously.
"Momma. Up." Skye says after he stops rubbing the sleep from his eyes and raises his arms out toward her.
She quickly walks over to where he is and swoops him up in her arms as she kisses his forehead before turning back to President Snow, who was watching her closely. "I didn't mean to start an uprising." She tells him.
"I believe you. It doesn't matter. Your stylist turned out to be prophetic in his wardrobe choice. Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroys Panem." He says.
"Why don't you just kill me now?" she blurts out as Skye puts his head in the crook of her neck and watched the man in front of him closely, just like his sister.
"Publicly?" he ask. "That would only add to the fuel of the flames."
"Arrange an accident then." She says.
"Who would buy it?" he ask. "Not you, if you were watching."
"Then just tell me what you want me to do. I'll do it." She says.
"If only it was that simple." He sighs as he twirls a lock of Raven's straight hair around his finger, like he's examining it. "She has lovely, soft, straight hair. She takes after you?"
Katniss shakes her head slowly, "No, he father."
"Ah, Cato, yes. I don't know how I didn't see it before. How has my grandson been lately?" he ask.
"Good."
"And how's the love life?" he ask.
"Good." She says slowly, not knowing where he is going with this.
"And at what point did you realize his indifference? Is that why he left to go visit his mother back in District 2?"
She looks at him confused, "Indifferent? He's not indifferent. And that's not the reason why he went to go visit her." She fumes.
"But perhaps not as taken with you as you would have the country to believe. Some…..even think that your kids aren't even his."
She looks shocked by this, "Really? Why would I lie about who the father of my children are? You would have to be blind to not see the resemblance."
He merely shrugs as he gazes over Raven's face before doing the same to Skye, "You're a pretty good lair when you want to be Katniss, but you can't lie when you don't have any facts to back it up with. Remember when I told you this would go smoothly if we wouldn't lie to each other? So when I ask you, who the real father of Skye and Raven are, you will answer me honestly?"
"Yes, without hesitation." She says firmly.
"Alright, so who is the father?"
"Cato."
He locks eyes with her, "How are all those…..cousins?"
Her eyebrows furrow, "Fine. How does any of this have to do with what we are discussing?"
"It has plenty to do with it. What are the older ones names? Rye, Peeta, Gale? Am I correct?"
She nods, "You seem quite close to them. You know your district is one for marrying a distance family member. Likes to keep it in the family." He says slowly.
This is true, but her family doesn't do that.
"Your kids look very much like Gale or Rye. So much resemblance. I wonder which one's the father." He says as he stares at her.
"I don't…don't…..w-what…I….." The image that he has created in her head is so appalling that bile rises to her throat, making it hard for her to get her words out.
"Speak, Miss Everdeen. Them I can easily kill off if we don't come to a happy resolution." He says, "You aren't doing them a favor by disappearing into the woods with them."
"Please don't hurt them." She finally whispers. "They aren't the fathers, I swear to you Cato is. My family isn't into marrying in the family."
"I'm only interested in knowing the truth and how it affects your dynamics with Cato, thereby affecting the mood of the districts. That being said, I would like to try a blood test just to be sure you aren't lying.' He says.
"It will be the same on the tour. Your grandson and I are in love and these are his children. You can do as many blood test as you like, but you will just end up with the same result every time President Snow." She shrugs.
"And you're sure?"
"Positive." She confirms.
He nods, "If they are his then do better so the uprising can be averted." he says. "This tour will be your only chance to turn things around."
"I know. I will. I'll convince everyone in the districts that I wasn't defying the Capitol, that I just wanted to save my brother and that I'm not faking my love for Cato and that these are his kids." She says firmly.
President Snow rises, bringing Raven with him in his arms. "Aim higher in case you fall short."
"What do you mean? How can I possibly aim higher?" she ask.
"Convince me." He says. He puts Raven down on her feet and she walks over to her mother, wrapping her arms around her leg. President Snow leaves out the door, but not before saying, "I'll be doing the blood test when you arrive in the Capitol as your last stop on your Victory Tour." Then the door clicks shut behind him.
A/N:
I'm back! What has it been? A week since I finished the first book? Anyways, I finally finished the first chapter for the second book. Whoohoo!
Okay, so I know this chapter might be a little boring, but I had to explain everything and set things up. So bare with me for the next few chapters as I get this story going. Also, I did have to take some things from the book so I could set everything right. But don't worry about that, it won't happen too often to the point where you feel like you're reading Catching Fire. I have a lot of twists and turns up my sleeve! Be Aware!
School has started back, so don't count on me updating too often. I probably won't be updating anymore this month and half of next month because I want to write the rest of the chapters and have them done, so I can start back to updating every Friday. So don't freak out on me when you find out that I haven't updated in like two months and just left you hanging with the first chapter. Rest assured that I will be coming back either at the end of September or at the very beginning of October with basically half of the second book finished.
Hopefully I will finish this book by the end of the school year and then start on the last book at the start of summer.
I'll be back soon!
Please review for me, so I won't lose inspiration in writing this sequel!