A/N: Chapter 2 came quicker then i thought it would XD yush. it has been changed to the first person point of view following Sabrina. hope you enjoyed the last chapter, and if you did hope you enjoy this one just as much
I didn't want to move when I woke up. I was too comfortable under the layers of thick, warm blankets on the soft bed.
I just laid there for a few minutes before Effie came and knocked on my door. "Wake up, Sabrina! It's going to be a big, big, big day!" she trilled before going away.
I sighed and slowly got out of the bed. I had found night clothes in the dresser and decided to use them the night before, draping my day clothes over a chair in the room.
I took my time as I stripped of the warm silk night clothes and pulled on my cool faded jeans, royal blue t-shirt with sleeves to the elbow, and dangerously long scarf, which still had the mockingjay pin on it.
The coolness of the clothes felt good against my skin, which was a bit too warm for my liking. I mused about this shortly as I pulled on my blue trainers and looked at myself in the full length mirror.
I laughed as I notice how much blue I was wearing. Literally everything I was wearing was blue.
"Oh well, looks good with my blond hair, and it complements my eyes." I giggled to myself as I started towards the dining car.
Just before I reached the door to my room, I heard what everyone else would have thought to be the thin chains on my earrings chiming together, but was really a warning that somebody was trying to contact me.
I tapped the base of my earrings and waited a few seconds before my father's voice sounded.
"Having fun sweetheart?" He asked sarcastically.
"Of course, I love it here, the beds are quite comfortable. Although I miss my bunk bed on the TARDIS." I said, not awake enough to register his sarcasm.
"Listen, the person holding you here is going to sort of, download, fake memories into your mind, giving you a life before you came here. You'll remember growing up in district 12, you'll remember friends and family, but it wont be real, you've got to always remember that it isn't real and it will never be real." My father said sternly.
"You got it daddy. Anything else? I'm missing breakfast." I told him, chewing on my nails.
"Yes, I've found a way to create a psychic link with you so you and only you will hear what I say through your thoughts, although I wouldn't be able to hear your thoughts, so you'd still have to talk, or whisper really, and possibly make others think you're crazy. Would you like that?" He asked.
"Apsativly posolutly." I stated without hesitation.
"Alright, but the 'downloading' process will give you a splitting headache, and the creation of the psychic link will only make it worse." He warned.
"Okay, okay, fine, just make the link, I'll talk to ya later." I said absentmindedly, cutting off the communication and walking out of my room, making my way to the dining car.
I heard Haymitch talking to Peeta about something, but ignored it until I had gotten my food and sat between the two of them.
"Glad you made it to the survival lesson, sweetheart." Haymitch said sarcastically, nearly making me gag at the smell alcohol on his breath. He wasn't drunk, but he had been drinking recently.
"Lesson? Since when did we have lessons? Oh bother, I should had brought my notebook, I like being prepared for any tests." I said bemusedly, grinning at the glare Haymitch shot me.
"Anyway, we were just talking about how to find shelter since apparently building a fire's a death wish." Peeta explained.
"How do you find shelter?" I asked curiously, shaking my head slightly as the headache the Doctor had warned me about started coming on strong.
"Give me a chance to wake up, sweetheart." Haymitch sighed.
"How do you find shelter?" I asked again, more forcefully this time.
Haymitch ignored me and reached for a bottle of something and without thinking, I picked up the knife resting next to my plate and stabbed the table, just narrowly missing Haymitch's hand.
"That is mahogany!" Effie exclaimed.
"Congratulations, sweetheart, you just killed a place-mat." Haymitch said, slightly impressed with my outburst.
"Yeah, well don't expect me to kill anything else. I'm not a murderer." I muttered, pushing my food away from me and propping my elbow's up on the table, rubbing my temples to try and get rid of the splitting headache.
"You murder helpless animals." Haymitch said pointedly, making me look up at him like he was crazy.
"What?" I asked as the memories the person keeping me here was giving me slowly started to form together in my mind, almost like a chain of memories being strung together.
"You're a hunter, you go outside the fence despite the danger, and you hunt. That's murdering helpless animals."
I was about to tell Haymitch he was crazy before that memory was added. I had to risk my life to hunt to feed my family because...
"My brother Nicholas was in the Hunger Games." I stated, staring down at the table with large unblinking eyes as painful memory after painful memory was added to the chain. "He was the very first death in the 70th annual Hunger Games."
"Yeah, always sad when the first tribute to die is one of yours. Your brother was a good kid too, could have won if he listened to my initial instructions." Haymitch sighed.
"What were your initial instructions?" I asked, still staring unblinkingly at the table.
"Are. These apply to you too. As soon as the gong sounds, run away from the cornucopia. Don't go anywhere near it at first, I don't want you two caught up in the bloodbath." Haymitch said sternly.
"You don't have to tell me twice." I scoffed, looking up at Haymitch's snort of disbelief.
"You say that now, you're you're strong willed and thick headed. Always have been, always will be. Just like your brother." Haymitch said, making me roll my eyes.
"So, strengths, weaknesses, I want to know them. What are you two good at?" Haymitch asked, starting to get serious.
"Sabrina can shoot. Like, really well." Peeta said after a moment of silence. "My dad buys her squirrels all the time." He added when I looked at him with a how-would-you-know-that look.
I looked down at the table again, my headache still strong with the "downloading" memories and my dad trying to create a psychic link with me.
"Peeta's strong. He can lift a hundred pound sack of flour over his head. I've seen it." I said quickly.
"Yes, and there will be plenty of bags of flour to throw at people in the arena." Peeta said sarcastically.
"There's always hand to hand combat, Peeta, if somebody comes at me and I don't have a knife, or some sort of weapon, I'll be dead. You at least have a chance." I sighed, trying to get the attention off of myself.
"No, I don't stand a chance. You'll just be up in a tree, eating raw squirrels and picking the others off one by one with arrows!" Peeta snapped. "My mom said this year district twelve might finally have a winner. She wasn't talking about me Sabrina, she was talking about you. 'She's a fighter that one is' she told me."
"I wish my own mother had as much faith in me. All she cares about is Elizabeth this, and Elizabeth that, she doesn't even think about me because I'm the oldest! I doubt she even cares that I'm going to my death!" I growled.
Peeta simply glared at me and I ducked my head, slumping down in my chair and hissing in pain as my headache spiked up intensely. "When to we get to the capitol?" I asked, mumbling so I could barely be heard.
"Right now." Peeta said, and I realized he had stood up and walked over to one of the windows.
I stood and walked over to stand at the window, watching the crowd with a blank expression, while Peeta smiled and waved at the people of the Capitol.
"Try to learn from him sweetheart, he knows what he's doing." Haymitch said quietly, startling me.
"Please, I know how to please the crowd. I'm just... shy." I scoffed.
"Trust me sweetheart, you're not shy. Just stick with Peeta and you'll be fine." Haymitch said, also staring out at the crowd with a blank expression.
"What, present us as a team when we'll be fighting to the death?" I asked, completely confused.
"Exactly."
I shook my head and decided against questioning him. The last thing Haymitch told us before we were "escorted" off the train was not to object to anything the prep teams and stylists did to us.
As soon as I saw what was waiting for me, I knew exactly what Haymitch meant. There were three of the most ridiculous humans waiting for me, and that was saying something.
The first one I noticed was Venia, a woman who was thin and angular with aqua spiked hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows.
Then I looked around as saw the other two, Flavius, a male with orange corkscrew curls and purple lipstick, and Octavia, a plump woman whose entire body has been dyed a light pea green.
"Ever heard of a haircut? That's the longest hair I've ever seen." Venia said as soon as I had set foot into the room.
"If you can manage to straighten it, it'll be nearly to the floor." I said in a matter-of-fact tone, twirling my curly hair with my fingers.
"Maybe later, lets just work on getting all the dirt out of it for now." Flavius said, taking a small section of my hair and examining it.
"That's not dirt, that just the color my hair is. What, don't at least some Capitol people have naturally colored hair?" I asked, laughing at the looks the prep team shot me.
"Maybe Cinna will let us dye it a more appealing color." Flavius murmured to Venia as they led me to a bath of a thick purple liquid.
I had to bite my lip to keep from protesting each time they stuck me into another horrible smelling bath of a weird color, or talked about doing something crazy with my hair.
"Despite being from district twelve, you're hair's really quite soft, and nearly completely free of knots despite the curls." Flavius stated as he washed my hair for the fourth time in the past six hours.
"Well I wasn't raised in a barn. I know what a hairbrush is, and I use it daily." I sighed, getting used to the weirdness of it all. Specifically the weirdness of being naked in front of total strangers, of whom one was a guy.
I pretended to listen to their endless chatter until they finally stopped putting me in baths and let me put a robe on.
Flavius brushed out my hair, but kept it curled. Octavia filed my nails into perfect ovals and applied a clear nail polish meant to keep them from breaking. Venia applied a very minimal amount of make-up, which I was thankful for, and they all cleared out when Cinna came in.
Cinna had dark skin and hair, green eyes, and gold eyeliner, which was the most absurd thing about him. I was slightly shocked. I expected him to be just as crazy as the prep team, if not crazier.
"I think it's really brave what you did back there. With a girl you didn't even know. I am Cinna." Cinna said, extending his hand out to me.
"Sabrina." I replied simply, shaking his hand.
"I'm sorry that this happened to you. I'm here to help you in any way that I can." He said, sitting down near me.
"Most people just congratulate me." I said after a moment of silence.
"Well, I don't see the point in that." Cinna stated bluntly.
"You're a new stylist right? I've never seen you before." I stated.
"Yes, this is my first year." Cinna confirmed
"Auto-assigned to District twelve? Most new stylist's are."
"I asked to be district twelve's stylist." He corrected. "So tonight, they have the Tribute Parade. Take you out and show you to the world."
"So you're here to make me look pretty?" I asked with a sigh.
"I'm here to help you make an impression" Cinna corrected. I was starting to think I should just keep my mouth shut and let him explain things instead of make assumptions and being corrected.
"Pity, the prep team was so excited to dye my hair some whacky color." I said, a smile the only indicator that I was joking around
My ability to make jokes at a time like this made Cinna smile "Now usually, they dress people in the clothes from their district." He said.
"Yes, and as district twelve, we've always been coal miners... or coal... please tell me you don't plan on striping me and covering me in coal dust like they did with those tributes a few years back." I said, cringing at the thought.
Cinna chuckled at my horror of the thought of wearing nothing but coal dust in front of the whole of Panem. "No, I don't wanna focus on the coal miners, or the coal. I wanna do something they're going to remember. Did they explain about getting sponsors?" He asked.
"Yeah, but I'm not that great at making friends." I sighed. No matter how much I denied it I just was not good at making friends.
"We'll see about that." Cinna said. "Tell me Sabrina, are you afraid of fire?"
"Depends. What are you planing?" I asked, my stomach churning.
"I'm planning to light you on fire. Me and Portia, the other district twelve stylist, have been working to create a synthetic fire that won't burn you." Cinna explained, smiling at my look of unease.
I couldn't believe it, he was really going to light me on fire.
I stood by my chariot with Peeta, both of us in a black outfit that vaguely resembled battle armor.
We both had capes which were to be lit on fire when we were supposed to go out and start pleasing the crowd for what was probably the rest of our lives.
I had to restrain from biting my nails, a bad habit that often presented itself when I was bored or nervous.
I couldn't find anything to keep my hands busy. My hair was up in an elaborate braid type deal that started behind my left ear and wrapped around the back of my head, falling over my right shoulder and hanging down around the top of my waist. It looked nice with my curly hair, but it restricted me from twirling my hair around my fingers to keep me from biting my nails.
I couldn't fiddle with the necklace my mother gave me, I refused to take it off so it was tucked inside my outfit, completely out of sight.
I didn't notice the chariots had started going out until I heard the crowd's roaring applause and Cinna and Portia ushered me and Peeta onto the district twelve chariot and lit our capes.
I expected to feel my flesh burning and my hair singeing, but surprisingly, I felt nothing. This impressed me.
As the chariot started going Cinna shouted something I just barely couldn't hear.
"What did he say?" I asked Peeta, hoping he had heard Cinna.
"I think he said to hold hands." Peeta said slowly.
I blushed a deep red and hoped Peeta couldn't tell with how the synthetic fire cast shadow's on our faces.
I took Peeta's hand and looked back at Cinna, who gave us a nod of approval, before the chariot rolled out and the crowd went berserk at our outfits.
I smiled and raised my and Peeta's hands up in the air, making the crowd even crazier.
I smiled at Peeta and quickly turned my attention to the audience, blushing, when he smiled back at me.
One woman in the crowd in particular caught my attention. She didn't look Capitol, not at all, but everyone in the districts was watching from home, as movement between districts and to the Capitol is forbidden.
The woman was grinning and screaming my name. I knew I had met the woman before, but couldn't recall who she was.
The woman's screaming set off a chain reaction, as the whole crowd started chanting my name.
"They absolutely love you." Peeta said, almost shouting to be heard over the roar of approval from the crowd.
"I don't think that's necessarily a good thing." I replied, watching the other tributes, who were giving both of us the death glare, warily.
Peeta and I lowered our hands as the chariot came to a stop in front of President Snow's mansion, but neither let go of the other.
"Welcome, tributes, to the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games!" President Snow said when the cheering of the crowd died down.
My blood ran cold as I heard the President's voice. I had heard it before, and although I had only heard recordings, I could still tell it was the same voice.
I looked up and sure enough, it was the same person. From the blond hair to the brown eyes.
President Snow was the Master.
A/N: Please please PLEASE tell me it wasn't as obvious as I think it was that Snow was the Master! please R&R! expect chapter 3 soon.