A/N: I don't claim ownership of any characters or ideas created by Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games trilogies, nor do I claim to be responsible for the original plot points, any original dialogue or ideas taken from The Hunger Games and the movie Stick It! I had this craving for a story about Katniss in the world of gymnastics and Peeta as a hockey player, and I couldn't help but try to come up with an original story about their relationship unfolding in this scenario. I want to specifically add that Melting The Ice by tacosandflowers first made me fall in love with the idea of Peeta as a hockey player. It's lovely, and I recommend you read that fic as it updates! Please enjoy and review, I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!
If there was one thing Katniss was sure of, it was the forest. It always sang to her in the summertime, especially on hot mornings like this one when the sky was clear and blue. A forest teeming with the sound of wildlife meant total privacy, and she was glad. Her plans for the day required a little isolation — and what better place to find it than on an abandoned piece of land in the middle of the woods?
Katniss ducked under a chain-link fence that was covered with weeds and twisted to reach into her backpack. She shoved her hand inside it without taking her eyes off the ground, even though her position made her pace a little awkward, and ran through her mental checklist again. Extra clothes. Towel. Waterproof watch. Reusable water bottle. Car keys — nowhere to be found. Katniss sighed and slowed her pace. She could already hear engines running, as well as two eager voices shouting for her to hurry up, but she knelt and dug around in the backpack's other pockets.
"Of course," Katniss huffed, pulling her keys out of a tiny pocket on the side of the bag. Prim always put them in a secure spot after borrowing the family car. Little Prim, who wasn't so little anymore since she was in high school, who still made sure to inspect each tire before getting into the car and buckling her seatbelt. Katniss hated letting her drive the car — she wanted to tape a warning sign on the bumper so people would drove more cautiously when Prim was on the road. Not that anyone would ever dream of hurting the youngest Everdeen in the first place.
The sound of revving engines pricked at Katniss' ears and pulled her into a standing position, and she continued up the hill, following the freshly printed tread marks on the ground beneath her feet.
"I'm almost up, calm down!"
Two all-terrain vehicles were waiting for her up in The Meadow. It wasn't an actual meadow so much as a sad pile of dirt and pine needles, but Thom thought the name was funny and so it stuck. At least, it made for a good story when his parents asked where he was taking their four-wheeler on the weekends. Katniss made her way over to Gale's four-wheeler, which was the cleaner of the two, and slid in front of him onto the seat. She pulled his spare helmet over her head and settled in.
"You ready, Catnip?" He asked, bracing the pedals with his large feet and tightening his gloves. She nodded, pulling the straps of her backpack down and gripping the front of her seat. "You two ready?" Thom had Bristel on the seat behind him, already wearing her helmet and holding on to his waist. The forest went silent as rocks started shifting underneath Gale's tires and the four-wheelers took off crashing through the trees.
The rules of physics are simple: stay balanced and don't let your center of gravity tip too far, or else you'll go flying through the air and end up crashing into the ground. Gale and Thom have rules, too: first one to slow their vehicle down loses. The first person to get forcefully ejected from their vehicle also loses, but in a different way. Gale and Thom were more than willing to test their luck, especially on a warm summer day like this one when a pair of girls was watching their every move.
Katniss could hear Bristel shrieking ahead of them, yelling for Thom to slow down. Thom was obviously a more experienced four-wheeler than Gale, and he was clearly swerving through trees on purpose. Katniss grinned, pushing up in her seat so she could see the hills ahead. Gale was taking them closer and closer to the edge of the woods, where the road cut momentarily through the trees in a way that made their game particularly dangerous. For one thing, it was easy to spot a couple of kids trespassing on private land from the nearby overpass. For another, they could just as easily crash into the middle of the road and be killed.
"Don't you think you're pushing it a little close?" Katniss yelled in Gale's ear. His hair tickled the edge of her nose. "We should at least turn around."
"Can't do it, Catnip, I bet money on this! We're already behind!" He called back, pushing the throttle forward. Thom and Bristel were up ahead, both yelling something unintelligible. Gale drove up and over one final rocky hill and spit out a loud curse. An empty, beat-up old pickup truck sat just yards from the road, right at the edge of the tree line. Someone was hunting, and they were right in Gale's path.
Thom and Bristel had apparently slowed down in time to veer off to the side of the truck, but Gale was speeding up. He tried to force the vehicle into a hard left turn, but his wheel snagged on an exposed tree root. Katniss could feel the wheels of the vehicle lifting off the ground, and her survival instincts kicked in. She tucked her limbs and head toward her body and snapped her eyes shut as the ground rushed up to meet her. Gale's all-terrain vehicle crashed into the side of the truck with a thunderous, cannon-like boom and continued to ring.
Katniss slowly realized those were her ears that were ringing. She rolled onto her side and groaned as sirens began to wail in the distance. Small rocks were pressing painfully into the side of her face, and the underside of her hands were severely scraped, but she pushed up off the ground anyway and broke into a run. Bristel and Thom were nowhere to be seen and Gale was a good three hundred yards ahead of her already. The truck's alarm was going off and the sirens, not nearly so distant as before, joined it to create more noise. Katniss slowed her run down to a jog as blue and red lights colored the leaves on the trees around her and readjusted the backpack on her shoulders. This wasn't the song she'd had in mind when she'd come into the woods.
"All together, she's accumulated about fifteen grand in property damages, not counting the trespassing charge."
"Thank you, bailiff." The court judge looked to be a younger man, maybe in his mid-forties. He parted his hair in a severe line and sat with unbelievable stillness as he looked down at Katniss in her seat. She sighed and kept her eyes on the ceiling, ignoring him and her mother behind her. "Katniss, I don't think anyone wants to see you sent off to jail for something like this. You're clearly a bright girl, and close to graduation. Lucky for you, the odds are in your favor." Katniss let her eyes drift down, focusing on the judge's ridiculous middle part. Was she really getting off with a warning? "The court is willing to grant you an alternative — you may volunteer to spend the next several weeks at an athletic training and wellness facility. Are you familiar with Haymitch Abernathy's Gymnastics Academy?"
Katniss' eyes shot to his. "You call that lucky? Are you kidding me?" she cried sharply.
Her judge sat back in his chair and shrugged calmly. "It's that, or time in a correctional facility, which will be marked permanently on your record. It's your choice, Miss Everdeen."
Katniss let her eyes go steely and threw several mental daggers at him. She couldn't afford to go to jail, not when her university scholarship required a clean record. They both knew she had no real choice in the matter. Judge Crane smacked his gavel against his block.
"Fifteen weeks at AGA it is. Thank you, Miss Everdeen. Court dismissed."
The ride home was short and quiet. Katniss leaned her forehead against the car window and absentmindedly stroked the scratches on her palms. A full week had passed, but the physical evidence of her criminal activity still lingered all over her. She could feel Prim's eyes watching her nervously and shifted, even though it made the seatbelt dig into her neck.
"It's a long drive to Houston," Mrs. Everdeen said suddenly. They were parked in the driveway and her mother lingered in the driver's seat, looking at Katniss through the rear view mirror. She sounded unsure, as if she was asking a question. Katniss hadn't offered more than a handful of words to her mother since the police escorted her home last weekend, so she probably was. Her mother always had such appropriate timing. She and Gale and Thom and Bristel had been so careless, and she deserved to be screamed at now, not looked after. Not worried about. Certainly not pitied.
"I'll be fine," she replied roughly, yanking the car door open and rushing inside before Prim could ask her what was wrong. Heaven help her if they heard the quaking in her voice; it certainly wouldn't help anyone. She went inside to pack her things and sat on her bed after she finished, staring at the door.
"Come on in, I know you're waiting in the hall," Katniss called with an empty chuckle. Prim shuffled into the room with a sheepish grin on her face and an anxious look in her eyes. "Hey, come here," she said, reaching for Prim's hand and tugging her closer. "Remember what I said outside in the car? You don't have to worry about me."
"I know." Katniss gathered her into a loose hug and ran her fingers through Prim's wispy blonde hair. "I'm gonna miss you."
"And I'll miss you just as much," Katniss replied before pulling away. The longer she stalled, the harder it would be to leave. "But it's only a couple of weeks."
"Fifteen," Prim replied softly. "What are you going to do about school?" Katniss hadn't thought that far ahead yet. The University of Texas at Dallas wasn't a far drive from home, but she would still be missing class for a few weeks because of her court-mandated vacation time.
"I'll figure something out. C'mon. Mom wants me out of the house and on the road." Katniss picked up her duffel bag and her backpack and slung them both over her shoulder, refusing Prim's offer to help. Her own personal cab to Hell had arrived, and Gale and Thom were parked right behind it.
"We seriously owe you one, Katniss," Thom apologized as he stepped out of the car.
"Yeah, well I'll be sure to call you up to return the favor someday," Katniss grunted, tossing her bags into the trunk of the taxi cab. "Neither of you would have said anything if it'd been you."
"We still owe you," Gale said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He towered over her. "Find some way to keep in touch, okay? We'll try to spring you free as soon as we can." Katniss looked up at him with a small grin and tried to swallow her guilt. She'd told Gale and Thom that she was being sent to a correctional facility in Houston, because the alternative was ridiculously embarrassing. Half of her was still in denial over the whole issue.
"I'll hold you to that."
Katniss stared out the cab window and watched her home disappear. For fifteen weeks, she would be at the mercy of Haymitch Abernathy — assuming she lasted the entire time. It was more likely that the people there would rip her to pieces the minute she arrived. Katniss Everdeen wasn't exactly a popular name in the world of competitive gymnastics.
Yet, three years ago, Katniss had been one of them — a leotard-wearing, beam-balancing, chalk-clapping gymnast. And she'd been good. Good enough to earn a spot on the American Women's team at the Capitol Championships, the highest level of competition in gymnastics besides the Olympics. Three years ago, Katniss might have been proud to attend AGA and meet the famous Haymitch Abernathy, but a lot of things change when you walk out on your team during a national championship. A lot of things change afterwards, too.
Katniss sighed and dug her shoe into the upholstery of the cab floor. She never wanted to see the bright-lit world of gymnastics again, and now she was being forced back into it. One wrong move and she wouldn't just be hitting the ground, she'd be hitting a cot in state prison. No pressure.
The thought of meeting Haymitch Abernathy in the flesh was just as exciting. Once a famous and skilled gymnast himself, Abernathy had retired. Haymitch Abernathy's Gymnastics Academy trained a few of the best gymnasts the United States of America had ever seen, but that was before he took a dive off the deep end. A couple of girls on his team got injured and he took to training safe routines and drinking on the weekends. Nobody knew what his problem was, but he was obviously still good at business, because his gym kept growing and growing even after he lost his popularity. He brought in physical therapists to attend to his clients and bought some regular gymnasium equipment for his team to use. Eventually regular clients came in too, and he took their money with a smile plastered firmly to his once-handsome face.
Katniss thought about sleeping the rest of her ride away, but she wanted to draw out her remaining freedom for as long as she could. Two-thirds of her drive had already passed and it felt like nothing. Bribing the driver to turn around hadn't worked, either. Instead, she focused on counting mile markers and street lamps, wishing for a miracle to take her back home where she belonged.
The Abernathy Gymnastics Academy was sleeker than she was expecting it to look — the parking lot was bigger than the courtroom she'd been sentenced in. There were four handicapped parking spots at the door, and Katniss wondered who would possibly be using those as she hoisted her bags out of the trunk. Two wheelchair ramps flanked the front porch of the gym, and the doors automatically slid open as she stepped in front of the building. An overly cheerful woman checked her in, and Katniss felt a nervous wave roll through her stomach. Sure, the receptionist was nice, but she was like the lamp on the end of an anglerfish, and Katniss was its prey.
The gym's receptionist pointed her through another set of glass doors and turned back to her computer, clicking noisily at her keyboard. Katniss wrinkled her nose in distaste and pulled up her bags, looking backward at the door. If she knew her surroundings, she could just take off running. She was fast. She could get a couple of miles away before they caught up to her. Katniss noticed the receptionist eyeing her again, so she reluctantly stepped forward. Of course, she didn't make it more than five feet into the gym before a gravelly voice stopped her.
"Pleasure to finally meet you, sweetheart."