Chapter 1

Peeta walked through the agora, trying to avoid eye contact with as many people as possible. He hated any type of market conversation. Too many people were trying to sell him things; fish, shells, a new pair of sandals. He'd just bought his necessities; grains, a few bits of rabbit and pork. He didn't need any of what they were selling. He was happy to live the life of a man with slight wealth. Not too much, just enough to get by and have a bit more. His bakery provided more than enough money for him, Peeta practically ran through the streets, winding down the hills. People waved at him and greeted him with a shock of politeness.

Athens was a polite place, usually. After the war began, and the plague hit, people weren't friendly much. In fact, they were usually rude, and if they bothered they were half-hearted with his effort at conversation. These people's cheerful exterior had a nice effect of Peeta's mood. He slowed his walk slightly, and tried to enjoy what was left of his city.

He reached his home finally, after 30 minutes of brisk walking. As he reached his home, he frowned slightly. Two men dressed in military armour were waiting for him. They carried a scroll, and straightened up when they saw Peeta arriving.

Peeta was no small man. He was of average male height for his city, and was a broad man from his height. His days of kneading bread had left him built and extraordinarily strong. These men were very tall, almost touching his doorway. They were broader than he was, too. They were like two pillars, blocking his entrance to his temple.

'Excuse me, gentlemen. Can I help you?' Peeta asked. There was no need to be impolite, so he retained his cheerful smile. The men (guards, he'd figured) did not return it.

'Mr Mellark?' The one on the left spoke. His voice was gravelly and low, and his breath was rancid.

'Yes. Can I help you?' he repeated himself.

'May we come in, sir? Your father sent us.'

The mention of his father sent chills down Peeta's spine. There was only one reason his father would make a visit, and he was not looking forward to it.

Peeta unlocked his wooden door and lead the men to his open plaza. They took two wicker seats in the corner, and Peeta sat at his chair.

'Now will you tell me what I can do for you?' He was getting anxious now. He disliked when people kept things from him, especially now his father was involved.

A guard cleared his throat and lifted the scroll. As he unrolled in, Peeta saw the monogram on the back. A three headed dog, with vicious eyes. He felt sick to his stomach, this could only mean bad things.

'My dearest son, Peeta. It has been a year since I saw you last, and I feel a visit is overdue.' Peeta groaned out loud at this. The guard looked at him, and he blushed. Waving his hand to continue the letter, he held his mouth tightly shut. 'Since I am extraordinarily busy, this annual visit may need to be postponed. In an apology for my absence, I have sent a gift. Enjoy it and treat it wisely. Sincerely, Father.'

The guard closed the scroll clumsily, and looked expectantly at Peeta.

Peeta closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. A visit from his father was avoided? That was good. A gift had been bestowed instead? This was not so good. He raised his head and looked at the guards.

'You can go now. Thank you for your letter. I shall send a few drachmae for you when you return to myfather.'

With that, the guards handed him the scroll and quick-stepped out of the plaza, swinging the door behind them.

Peeta clasped the scroll in his now sweaty hands. He hated his father, and especially hated the gifts that came with him. He walked across his gardens, to the kitchen. He swung the saloon door out, and hit something with a great oomph.

'Watch it!'

'I'm sorry!'

They both shouted at the same time. Peeta whipped around, to catch this voice. It was husky and fast, he didn't recognise it.

The first thing he saw was a mass of dark wavy hair, wrapped into a braid. He then saw grey eyes and a pursed mouth.

'Ah,' he said. 'You must be my gift.'

She smirked, and pouted again.

'If you can say that. I'm Katniss.' She held out her hand, and Peeta took it.

'Peeta.'

They shook for a moment, he noticed her slightly calloused hands. 'How come you came to be in my home?' he asked. She just shook her head, and with a vicious tone to her, she said

'Wouldn't you like to know?'

Chapter 2

Katniss' smile was crooked; one side lifting higher than the other. She had a scar in her left eyebrow. Peeta wondered how it got there, but shook his mind of it. Later, he thought.

'So how did you come to be in my gallery and plaza?' He asked. He smiled what he hoped was a cheeky smile. She returned it.

'Well, I met this guy who looked a lot like you, actually. But he had dark hair and smelled awful.' Katniss chuckled but Peeta didn't move. His eyes turned glassy, and he swallowed his smile.

'That, my be my father.' he said. Katniss lost her smile too. 'I am sorry about him. He just shows up sometimes, can't get rid of him.' She smiled. 'I hope he didn't tear you away from anything too important..'

Katniss baulked at this, and Peeta kicked himself. Why would he say something like that? Of course she would be in something important. She probably had a family, a husband.

Katniss had moved her gaze, and was shuffling on the spot.

'I have to go.' She mumbled. Katniss shot out of the room, brushing past Peeta and forcing herself through the door.

Peeta was still whirling from his moment with Katniss. Was she from Sparta? Or from Persia? She certainly didn't look dark enough to be from Persia. Sure, she had dark, almost black hair, and she had olive skin and grey eyes, but she wasn't swarthy enough to be Persian. Maybe she was from the outskirts of the polis. He didn't care where she was from. He needed to know more.

Katniss ran through the plaza, sniffing and brushing her hair from her face. Her sandals were old and worn, having seen many dusty roads and hill tops. They carried her to the outside world, where men walked the streets discussing politicians, and where women carried their families food for the day.

After walking a few miles to the bottom of Peeta's villa, she settled beneath an olive tree. Her toga was dirty and her feet hurt but she didn't care.

How could Peeta be so careless, as to mention the family she was ripped from?

Her mother, her sister, her husband. All of them were back in Lamia, chained to the walls of the city. Primessa, her sister, only 14. Airlea, her mother, still reeling from her husbands death. Galetus, her husband, newly married and not yet consummated.

All of them were chained by Peeta's father. He came in through the door like a breeze, cold and unforgiving. He shaped himself into a man's figure, who looked exactly like Peeta, only with black hair and the stench of rotten fish with him. He never fully formed as a man. He kept himself still slightly transparent.

Forcing them to the wall, he immediately set eyes on Prim. She was blonde, unlike Katniss, and had only started to bleed the year before. She had budding breasts and dainty features. As he grabbed her hand, Katniss screamed. He couldn't take her sister, the only pure soul she could think of. Katniss was sure that Athena herself had birthed Prim, and had sent her as a grace to the Everdeen family. As the man grabbed Prim's wrist, Katniss pulled on the chains. She was screaming, spitting, giving herself blisters from the chains.

The man turned to look at her, with dead, white eyes.

'I volunteer!' she screamed. 'I volunteer to take her place!'

The man kept staring.

'She's only 14. Just turned two weeks ago. You cannot take her, she is to be married. Take me, I am vestial. Please.'

Katniss was begging.

The man let go of Prim, and grabbed Katniss. '

'Okay.' He hissed. His rotten breath filled Katniss' nose. Before she could think, she had been transported to Athens. Her head was spinning. Her nose was filled with strange smells; coal, fish, olives. It was a foreign place. She was in a doorway, the man gone. There was just a bruise on her arm.

How did she get here?

She was welcomed into the house she was in the way of. A nice villa, terracotta tile floors. They lead her upstairs, to a bath of rosewater and lemon. She slept for four days.

When she woke, she was in a state of disbelief.

She sighed, and shifted her feet in the ground.

Why was she so affronted when she was asked?

He was bound to ask.

Why was she so upset?

Peeta was very confused. He had only mentioned her family.

Her family.

He nearly vomited onto the villa tiles. Why did he have to mention her family? His father had probably torn her from he husbands arms, from her mothers loving grasp. Did she have a sister? A brother? A child?

No. If she had a child, then her father would not have brought her to him. He had a penchant for bringing virgins to him, as an offering or as a gift.

Sure, Peeta had sired many children over the years. What god hadn't? If you hadn't sired a child by 100, other gods started to think you were impotent. Peeta had sired around 9 in his time, though he had only ever met one, a girl named Rue. She was pretty, her mother was from the great continent, and had travelled miles for work. Although Athens was not entirely accepting of foreigners, Peeta had taken to her mothers dark, warm skin, and her beautiful black her. He marvelled what had happened to dear Celeste. Perhaps he would send an owl.

Peeta was nearly 300 years old, still a teenager in divine standards. Many of his demi-gods roamed the Earth, gifted in bakery, gifted in harvesting, gifted with extraordinary emotions. All his mothers talents.

Peeta thought back to Katniss. He thought of her crooked smile, her wild, wavy hair. He smiled. She was beautiful. Angry, but beautiful.

He wondered where she was right now, where she had ran to. She didn't know the city at all. Athens was a big place, it had taken him nearly 90 years to work his way around the agora and the winding villages.

Peeta sighed, figuring he should probably go after her and find her.

He walked through the villa and onto the orange dirt road. His sandals were slightly worn, but he didn't care. His toga was surely covered in road dust, but he didn't care for that either. Items were frivolous when you were immortal, and he was sure his mother could weave a new one for him. He reached the olive tree, and saw a dark patch in the ground. Someone had been sat there, he was sure. Peeta tried to look for footprints, but the track was a well used one. He looked at the ground, and spotted some boar tracks. Deciding to follow them, he turned left, and picked up the pace. The tracks in the ground were slowly getting deeper and wetter, so he carried on.

A clearing appeared, with a deep blue lagoon in the middle of it. He spotted a worn toga and some dirty sandals on the shoreline. Peeta squinted, creating a shield from the burning sun with his hand. Who was in the lagoon?

That's when he heard it. A scream, a distressing, blood curdling scream. He whipped round on his heel, looking for the noise. Nothing was behind him, so he took off running towards the lake.

Towards the edge of the lake, he saw the water ripple, and a dark figure under the water. Peeta stripped off his toga and jumped into the abyss. Grabbing the figure by the waist, he yanked them up to the waters break, and immediately tried to work out who it was.

When he opened his eyes and cleared all water from them, his heart sank. It was Katniss, she was blue with cold. He started to perform a routine only seen by his uncle Apollo in the Olympic palace. He pressed hard on her chest, ignoring her breasts and cold dampness of her toga.

Katniss wasn't responding, and Peeta began to get nervous. He had only ever seen this manoeuvre, never actually performed it. He opened Katniss mouth, and took a deep breath. He started to blow his air into her throat, hoping, praying to his uncle that it would work.

Katniss jerked beneath him, and coughed vigorously. Peeta jumped off her, blue eyes awash with worry. Katniss was still coughing, eyes red and glassy from the water, hair frizzy from the salt.

She looked at him, wide and strangely.

'Peeta?'

'Katniss! What were you doing? Why? You nearly caused my death!'

She looked down and her face went red. Her voice was raspy and air-stricken.

'I was swimming, and I guess I forgot I wasn't a strong enough swimmer. The water looked smooth...' she tailed off. 'I thought I could handle the waves, but the current was too strong.' Katniss finished the sentence lamely.

'I'm sorry, Peeta.' she coughed again. He was looking relieved, but his baby blue eyes were stormy.

'So you're telling me, that you ran into a countryside you didn't know, got in a lagoon you didn't know, and tried to swim?' he shook his head. 'We should get you back and take you to an apothecary, Katniss.'

The use of her name made her heart swell. She didn't know why, she didn't get that feeling with Gale. Not even when Aristophon kissed her cheek that time on the olive fields.

'Let's go, for the Gods sake.' she said.

Peeta didn't know why he saved Katniss. Something told him he should. Sure, he'd seen many girls drown in his day. This was Athens, after all. There was always a battle somewhere, a navy tumbling over somewhere.

He remembered when he accompanied the Sicilian expedition. General Lamachus had fallen in a ditch, and broken his leg. Peeta and another hoplite, Demosthenes, had carried him back to Bromia, and tended to his wounds. Peeta prayed to his uncle Apollo, asking for advice - but nothing came. Lamachus died on the way back to Athens. Around 400 men died that day, and their desperate wives threw themselves into the sea, wailing and screaming. Many girls like Katniss died that day, screeching and shouting.

He wondered if Katniss' husband had ever been to battle.

'Katniss?' he asked.

'Yes?'

'Where are you from?'

Katniss sighed. 'I told you. Lamia. ' Peeta looked at her.

'I mean what house are you from. I assume you aren't peasant, as you are in too good condition to be peasant. '

Katniss side-eyed him.

'I'm from the Everdeen family, originally. I was married at 12, to a close family friend who was two years older than me. His name was Gale. Gale Hawthorne.' She sniffed, and started shivering. During Peeta's musing, it had dropped suddenly in temperature.

Peeta looked up, surprised.

'Gale? You're married to Gale Hawthorne?' His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

'Yes, I did just say that.' Katniss looked very confused, and a little angry she had to repeat herself. Peeta laughed to himself, it was beginning to be her permanent state of mind.

'You'll never believe this, but I served with him. In 424, against Sparta.'

Katniss' mouth gaped open.

'I... 424? You're sure? At Kydonia?' her eyes glittered. She must love him a lot, Peeta thought.

'Yeah, we were in the same trench together. He was commended for bravery, you know. We fought together. He's a good man, Katniss.'

Katniss looked at him, with a sad smile on her face. 'He never talks about it, I only knew he went because I overheard the Assembly the day he was sent. He never told me. He just received his package from Pericles and didn't return for a year.'

Peeta smiled back.

'It was a difficult year.' he coughed, and cleared his throat. 'Maybe he'll tell you one day.'

'I was hoping you would tell me.'

Peeta shook his head.

'It's not my place to tell, Katniss. When I return you, you can ask him yourself.

Katniss blanched. She imagined Gale's face when she returned with another man. She had sacrificed herself for Prim, and she was not expected to return.

She felt sad thinking of Prim. She was her only sister, her only other real family member. When her father, Platonican, had died, her mother went into a deep depression. She would open her apothecary daily, but no conversation passed her lips. She passed no comment, did not reply to any questions about her children. She didn't even reply to the I'm So Sorry's that were passed to her by customers.

Her mother's family were politicians and mathematicians. They wanted to marry her to an aristocratic family, but her mother fell in love with Platonican. He was a fisherman, who mined in his spare time. They struggled at times, but they had a cosy house.

When her father gave her to Gale to marry, she only moved next door, but she missed him terribly. Gale was good to Katniss. He was a metal worker and part-time miner, so his money was decent. He bought her gifts, bought her food and wine from the agora.
They never actually consummated the marriage. Gale had known Katniss since the day she was born. He was there when her mother went into labour. To try and impregnate her with his son was a horrible image to him, much less her. They had only married because the thought of her marrying someone else who could be unfeeling and cruel was awful to Gale.

Sex nearly happened once or twice, when she was 14, and when she was 16. Both times they had been drunk on Thracian wine. Now she was 18, a fully fledged woman with her own thoughts and ideas. Katniss was a live wire, almost obsessed with her family.

The day her father died was the worst day of her life. His fishing boat had gone over in the Megarian sea. Gale's father was on it too, and some of the other village people.

Gale and Katniss had gone into mourning that day, and Katniss had never come out of it completely, and her mother was still under its hold. A deep depression had been cast over the Hawthorne household, and the Everdeen household.

Airlea became almost comatose, she tended only to the apothecary. Prim had to be schooled by the servants and Katniss visited every day.

She went to the forests that bordered Lamia and hunted the wild boar and cattle there. It fed them all comfortably.

They arrived back at Peeta's villa well after night had fallen. Only two servants were waiting, a petite blonde woman with an intricate bun named Effie, and a drunkard with dirty blonde hair named Haymitch. When Peeta and Katniss entered, the servants were squabbling over what had happened and who Katniss was. Peeta ordered Effie to take care of her and ascended the stairs to his bedroom, with Haymitch closely following.

Effie took Katniss by the elbow and practically dragged her upstairs.

'My dear! You're frozen! What happened?' her voice was high, lilting and comforting. The only thing that threw Katniss was the accent. When she didn't answer, Effie continued. 'We can get you a fresh gown and maybe some new sandals. We have prepared a guest room for you, at the back of the villa. Would you like some food? We kept some pork for you and Mr. Peeta.'

She kept going, and Katniss answered to nothing. When she was shown to her room she practically collapsed on the feather and straw mattress.