Hi, I'm XPocketfullofFreakingSunshin eX! This is my first Hunger Games Fic so just roll with me…
I never really like the idea of Peeta and Katniss so I started reading Cato and Katniss fics and loved them!
And the idea of this was stuck in my head and annoying me until I started writing it.
And don't except me to update every day I have 3 other stories to work on so…
So read on!
Summary: After Katniss blows up the Careers supply, she is knocked out and Cato says if she wants to see her sister again, she has to stay with them. Will she ever get away and get back to Rue? Prim? Does she even want to go away after a mind-blowing kiss in the training center? And what about Cato? How does he feel about the Girl on Fire?
~I know what to do. I move into range and give myself three arrows to get the job done. I place my feet carefully, block out the rest of the world as I take meticulous aim, The first arrow tears through the side of the bag near the top, leaving a split in the burlap. The second widens it to a gaping hole. I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap of burlap and ripping it from the bag. For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air.~
~The Hunger Games: Chapter 16.~
Katniss POV
"Primrose Everdeen!"
One time, when I was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, I dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on my back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from my lungs, and I lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, and to do anything. That's how I feel now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of my skull. Someone is gripping my arm, a boy from the Seam, and I think maybe I started to fall and he caught me. There must have been some mistake. This can't be happening. Prim was one slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I'd not even bothered to worry about her. Hadn't I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered. Somewhere far away, I can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair. And then I see her, the blood drained from her face, hands clenched in fists at her sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing me, and I see the back of her blouse has become untucked and hangs out over her skirt. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a ducktail that brings me back to myself.
"Prim!" The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again. "Prim!" I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.
"I volunteer!" I gasp. "I volunteer as tribute!" There's some confusion on the stage. District 12hasn't had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute's name has been pulled from the ball, another eligible boy, if a boy's name has been read, or girl, if a girl's name has been read, can step forward to take his or her place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, the volunteering is complicated.
But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.
"Lovely!" says Effie Trinket. "But I believe there's a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um..." she trails off, unsure herself.
"What does it matter?" says the mayor. He's looking at me with a pained expression on his face. He doesn't know me really, but there's a faint recognition there. I am the girl who brings the strawberries. The girl his daughter might have spoken of on occasion. The girl who five years ago stood huddled with her mother and sister, as he presented her, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for her father, vaporized in the mines. Does he remember that?
"What does it matter?" he repeats gruffly. "Let her come forward." Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She's wrapped her skinny arms around me like a vice. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"
"Prim, let go," I say harshly, because this is upsetting me and I don't want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of my tears, and I'll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. I will give no one that satisfaction.
"Let go!" I can feel someone pulling her from my back. I turn and see Gale has lifted Prim off the ground and she's thrashing in his arms. "Up you go, Catnip," he says, in a voice he's fighting to keep steady, and then he carries Prim off toward my mother. I steel myself and climb the steps.
"Well, bravo!" gushes Effie Trinket. "That's the spirit of the Games!" She's pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. "What's your name?"
I swallow hard. "Katniss Everdeen," I say.
"I bet my buttons that was your sister. Don't want her to steal all the glory, do we? Come on, everybody! Let's give a big round of applause to our newest tribute!" trills Effie Trinket. To the everlasting credit of the people of District12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.
Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.
Now I am truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Haymitch chooses this time to come staggering across the stage to congratulate me. "Look at her. Look at this one!" he hollers, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He's surprisingly strong for such a wreck.
"I like her!" His breath reeks of liquor and it's been a long time since he's bathed. "Lots of…" He can't think of the word for a while. "Spunk!" he says triumphantly. "More than you!" he releases me and starts for the front of the stage. "More than you!" he shouts, pointing directly into a camera. Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? I'll never know because just as he's opening his mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.
He's disgusting, but I'm grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I have just enough time to release the small, choked sound in my throat and compose myself. Input my hands behind my back and stare into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a moment, I yearn for something... the idea of us leaving the district... making our way in the woods... but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Prim?
Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie Trinket is trying to get the ball rolling again. "What an exciting day!" she warbles as she attempts to straighten her wig, which has listed severely to the right. "But more excitement to come! It's time to choose our boy tribute!" Clearly hoping to contain her tenuous hair situation, she plants one hand on her head as she crosses to the ball that contains the boys' names and grabs the first slip she encounters. She zips back to the podium, and I don't even have time to wish for Gale's safety when she's reading the name.
"Peeta Mellark."
Peeta Mellark! Oh, no, I think. Not him. Because I recognize this name, although I have never spoken directly to its owner.
Peeta Mellark. No, the odds are not in my favor today. I watch him as he makes his way toward the stage. Medium height, stocky build, ashy blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, you can see his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm I've seen so often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place. Effie Trinket asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older brothers, I know, I've seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other won't. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What I did was the radical thing. The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year at this point—it's required—but I'm not listening to a word.
Why him?
"Suppose we tie some knots," I say.
"Right you are," says Peeta. We cross to an empty station where the trainer seems pleased to have students. You get the feeling that the knot-tying class is not the Hunger games hot spot. When he realizes I know something about snares, he shows us a simple, excellent trap that will leave a human competitor dangling by a leg from a tree. We concentrate on this one skill for an hour until both of us have mastered it. Then we move on to camouflage. Peeta genuinely seems to enjoy this station, swirling a combination of mud and clay and berry juices around on his pale skin, weaving disguises from vines and leaves. The trainer who runs the camouflage station is full of enthusiasm at his work.
"I do the cakes," he admits to me.
"The cakes?" I ask. I've been preoccupied with watching the boy from District 2 send a spear through a dummy's heart from fifteen yards. "What cakes?"
"At home. The iced ones, for the bakery," he says. He means the ones they display in the windows. Fancy cakes with flowers and pretty things painted in frosting. They're for birthdays and New Year's Day. When we're in the square, Prim always drags me over to admire them, although we'd never be able to afford one. There's little enough beauty in District 12, though, so I can hardly deny her this. I look more critically at the design on Peeta's arm. The alternating pattern of light and dark suggests sunlight falling through the leaves in the woods. I wonder how he knows this, since I doubt he's ever been beyond the fence. Has he been able to pick this up from just that scraggly old apple tree in his backyard? Somehow the whole thing—his skill, those inaccessible cakes, the praise of the camouflage expert—annoys me.
"It's lovely. If only you could frost someone to death," I say.
"Don't be so superior. You can never tell what you'll find in the arena. Say it's actually a gigantic cake—" begins Peeta.
"Say we move on," I break in.
"Where's my knife?" District 2 guy asked District 9.
"I don't have your knife." He said.
"Your such a fucking lair, where is my goddamn knife!" He shouted.
"Dude, I don't have your knife!"
"Then who the hell has it?" Someone snickered. I looked up and saw Rue hiding, with Cato's knife. She smiled at me and carefully handed me the knife. I smiled.
"Not me." I threw knife between their face and on the wall right beside them. They both of them looked at the knife as I crossed my arms and they looked at me, shocked.
"You took my knife?" Cato asked.
"No, you just put in the wrong place." I said. He took the knife from the wall and pointed it at me.
"You better watch your back, firegirl."
"Hey, firegirl." Cato called as I was walking back to my floor. I rolled my eyes and kept walking. He grabbed my waist and pinned me against the wall with my hands above my head. I looked at him shocked and tried to get away from him but I couldn't move. "How about you become my ally when we're in the arena?"
"Why should I do that?" I asked. He smirked.
"Because of this." He quickly pressed his lips to mine. I was shocked and froze but then I started kissing him back. I threw my arms around his neck and in his hair. It was the best kiss I ever had. Hell, it's the only kiss I had. His hands ran all over my body and I didn't care. I moaned against the kiss and he smiled. He pulled back and smirked.
"That's why."
"I'll think about." I said, breathless.
I don't know how long I was out. But when I woke up, I was on a blanket and my bow and arrows was gone. I was still at the Cornucopia and the blown-up supply was right in front of me. Great. I sat up, looking around. I had nothing to use as a weapon in here. Everything I had was gone; bow and arrows, my backpack, medicine. Someone took them. I had to get them back and get back to Rue. God, I hope she's okay.
"Glad your awake, firegirl." Someone said. I turned around and saw District 2, Cato. He smirked at me. Clove stood beside him with my bow in her hands. I glared at both of them. They laughed at me. I couldn't help but ask, "What happen?" Cato looked at me, like he really wants to kill me. Well, I had no weapon, no way to defend myself. They could me without breaking a sweat. If looks could kill, I would be in hell right now.
"You blew up all of our supply, thanks a lot." Cato said. I smirked.
"This is the Hunger Games after all. Your welcome." I said, smirking. He lunged at me and slapped me on my face. He stepped back as I glared at him again. He grabbed his sword and had it pointed at my heart. I froze. He smirked.
"Looks like you got a problem, firegirl." He said. "You don't have choice, if you want to see your little sister again. Prim, right?" I looked at him, wide eyed. He actually knew my Prim's name.
"Don't you dare talk about my sister like that." I snarled. He used his sword and lifted my chin up with it. That stupid smirk was still on his face.
"You don't have a choice. You have to stay with us."
"Until?" He smirked again.
"Until I decide to kill you." I sighed. I would find a way back to Rue. If it's the last thing I do.
Any good? Should I go on?