Know Your Enemy - Chapter 2

Peeta wasn't afraid. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Sure, his back was on fire, the flames curling upwards to lick at the nape of his neck, but he wasn't afraid. As Portia had promised, they didn't hurt at all, just tickled at his skin in a soft way that was almost comforting.

Outside, away from the tunnel where the chariots were queued up, concealed from public eye, he could hear the roar of the crowd as they awaited their first glimpse of the Tributes. It was probably the highlight of their year, if the cheers and excited screams were anything to go by. They were loud enough to drown out the sound of Peeta's heavy heart pounding against his ribs as the wheels beneath him began to slowly turn, rolling them forwards.

Portia waved to him as they went, mouthing 'Good luck!' as the distance between them steadily increased. He nodded once, smiling back at her confidently. He knew he could do this.

Beside him, on the other side of District 12's chariot, he noticed that Cinna was watching Katniss with an anxious expression. Turning to look at her, Peeta quickly realized why. The girl next to him seemed like a complete stranger, vulnerable and barely recognizable as the plain-looking hunter from his district. The Capitol had made her strikingly beautiful but, despite this, her confidence seemed to have deserted her. She was scared, very obviously so.

Up close, Peeta could see that her face was pale beneath the thick layers of makeup that covered it and that her hands were shaking. As they rolled steadily closer to the crowd, Katniss looked more and more like she was going to throw up. He offered her a comforting smile, knowing that if she went out there looking scared, she'd drag his reputation down with hers. He hadn't been expecting her to be so weak.

They were near the mouth of the passage when the deafening screams of the crowd finally hit him. There was only one other chariot in front of them and he watched as they disappeared into the hungry sea of colourful people. Above them hung a large screen, the image on it flickering between the other chariots. He glanced up at it just in time to see Cato smiling confidently, the almost-bare torso of his costume accentuating his rippling muscles as he waved and winked to the crowd.

Peeta clenched his jaw, the familiar feeling of jealousy washing over him. That's what they needed to be like. That's what would get them sponsors. Edging closer to Katniss, he grabbed one of her hands to stop them from shaking as he whispered to her harshly. "Stop that. You've got to pull yourself together."

She turned to him with wide eyes, her terror obvious. It was their turn to go out. "You're going to make both of us look bad if you keep on frowning like that," he explained in a slightly gentler tone, giving her fingers a comforting squeeze. "Smile. That will make them like you. You're going to be fine."

Katniss nodded, forcing a small smile, and Peeta dropped her hand in favour of waving out to the crowd. Just seconds later, he felt her fingers twine with his in mid-air, joining their hands together. He turned to her quizzically, confused. "Please," she whispered back, "I need this."

"Okay," he told her, grinning and holding their hands up to the sky proudly, as if they had already won. The people around them gasped, a whole new wave of cheers erupting with every person they passed. The crowd was left breathless as they caught sight of District 12; all eyes in the courtyard were immediately trained on the chariot on fire and the burning Tributes it held within. Peeta turned to Katniss, shooting her a smug smile, a moment that was captured by every camera and played out to the crowd from every direction as the surrounding screens lit up with striking images of their faces. Illuminated by the flames, they looked fierce, determined and unstoppable.

Ahead of them the other contestants rolled on, long forgotten by the Capitol and quite literally outshone by the burning costumes. Peeta felt like he was on top of the world, knowing that they'd stolen the limelight.

He'd be willing to bet anything that Cato was fuming.

His head was spinning when he stepped off the chariot almost an hour later, his legs stiff from being held still for so long and his fingers red and bruised from Katniss's vice-like grip on them. She smiled at him sheepishly, and Peeta wondered if this meant they were friends now or something. He hoped not.

"You did it!" Effie trilled, tottering over to them in her six-inch stilettos and pulling them both into her sparkly green arms. "You were amazing, you were the talk of the night! I am so proud of you both!"

"Nice touch with the handholding there, sweetheart," Haymitch agreed, smirking over at Katniss, who blushed a little and then looked away. "Very cute indeed. The crowd absolutely loved it!"

Portia, Cinna, and the two prep teams crowded around them too, patting them on their (now extinguished and no longer burning) backs and congratulating the pair on their impressive entrance into the games. Peeta could have sworn he saw Ryden shed a tear or two of joy, but when questioned the man swore it was just the poor lighting.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the less enthused parties that surrounded the other contestants offering sympathetic pats on the shoulders and commiserations to their Tributes who, for the most part, looked somewhat crestfallen.

"It's okay, you're going to be fine," he overheard one stylist tell a sobbing girl in an attempt to calm her down. District 4 always got the worst outfits. The girl in question was dressed as a giant fish. "Not everything is decided on your first night, you can still win them over."

Craning his neck around, Peeta's eyes landed on just the person he wanted to see. Cato stood in the corner of the room, scowling at anyone who came within a five-meter radius of him. His hand was curled into a tight fist at his side, and even the rest of his team left a fair bit of distance between themselves and him. It seemed as though they were worried that he'd lash out and kill them if they got too close.

Then, as if he knew he was being watched, Cato's cold eyes turned to meet Peeta's.

Maybe he should have been embarrassed to be caught staring, but he wasn't. Still on a high from the success of their opening night, he raised his chin defiantly and shot Cato a challenging smirk. The other boy's face contorted in disgust, and he raised a finger to his own throat, slowly miming slitting it open as he mouthed 'you're dead, twelve' back at him.

Peeta gulped and averted his eyes quickly, realizing just a little too late that it was probably a bad idea to get on the wrong side of this year's strongest contestant before they'd even started training. He was screwed.

"…We've got no time to waste, you have to go and get ready or we'll be late!" Effie was babbling as she ushered them back into the elevator, her silly shoes not slowing her down even slightly. Peeta hadn't even known that she was talking.

"Late for what?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing together in confusion. There wasn't anything else to do that night, he was sure of it. Effie paused mid-stride, turning to look at him incredulously.

"Well, if you had been listening to me the first three times I told you, you'd have known that there's a Tribute's dinner tonight," she told him with a disapproving glare. "It isn't televised, so not many of the public are aware of it."

"It's an opportunity for you to all get to know each other more, ah, intimately before your training begins," Haymitch chimed in with a smirk. Next to him, Effie repeatedly pressed the button that would get them to the correct floor with an impatient sigh, as if she could make the elevator move faster through sheer force of will. She really didn't cope well with tardiness. "You'd better use it. The better you know your enemy, the more chance you have of survival."

"You have an hour to get ready," Effie warned as the doors slid open at their floor, and then the prep team all but assaulted Peeta when he stepped past the threshold of the room. They appeared to be hell bent on redesigning his entire image before he even set foot in the penthouse, tugging the clothes from his back and dousing him in a sticky hairspray.

He allowed himself to be dragged, dressed and groomed by them, letting his mind wander as they tugged him into a snug dress shirt and tight-fitting black pants. The hour had turned into a handful of minutes before he had time to blink. Dinner with the other tributes. For some reason he was nervous, even more so than he had been earlier when he was standing in the chariot and waiting to face the Capitol. Maybe the nerves were due to Cato's death threat.

He heard Effie's insistent calls of "it's time to go!" from the next room. With a sigh and one final glimpse in the mirror he squared his shoulders, stood up a little straighter and attempted to shake away the butterflies that scrambled manically around his stomach.

It's not like he could turn up there looking weak – not when he had a point to prove.

Dinner was a stagnant affair at first and, for the most part, each of the Tributes hovered awkwardly alongside their counterpart from the same District, avoiding the gaze of their opponents as they slurped their fancy Capitol soup or gnawed at their bread.

Katniss was sat beside him quietly, shoveling her food into her mouth as if it were about to run away from her. Although she no longer looked at him as if he had just murdered her little sister, the atmosphere wasn't friendly enough for him to feel comfortable with the silence. He sought to distract himself from it by watching the other Tributes, sizing them up as he did so.

The movements of the Careers really caught his attention. He hadn't noticed it at first, not until he started paying attention, but they had spread themselves out amongst the other Tributes and seized the opportunity to do what they did best – intimidate the hell out of the opposition.

A few places to his left, he could see the blond from District 1, Glimmer, stick her chest out and flutter her eyelids at the boy from 7 as she spoke to him. He was pretty uncomfortable, blushing beet red and trying hard to look at anything other than her cleavage. Poor guy.

"You must be so scared," she cooed to him in faux sympathy, stretching her hand out to caress the hairs at the nape of his neck. He flinched away from her and shook his head. "Oh, you're not scared? You must be brave not to be," she continued, her tone sugar-sweet but her words laced with venom. "A poor, defenseless boy like you going into that arena, you ought to be scared. Terrified, even. It looks to me as though you won't last a minute."

She continued on in this manner until the boy looked completely broken, scared out of his wits. Peeta averted his eyes guiltily, fighting down his first instinct to go and comfort the kid. It wasn't the time for being the nice guy now. In this environment, nice was as good as synonymous for 'weak' and 'already dead'. He sighed, deciding to distract himself by looking around for his own biggest threat.

He was surprised to see that Cato was closer than he had thought, only a few paces away, leaning against the wall just behind him and positively growling at anyone who dared to glance in his direction. He met Peeta's inquisitive gaze with a stone cold one of his own then smirked threateningly as he pushed away from the wall, striding quickly towards the other boy.

"You," he snapped, but his eyes were focused on the small boy from 9 sitting at Peeta's right, who squeaked and froze in place as he realized that the other boy was addressing him. "Move." Cato commanded. The boy didn't, probably couldn't.

"I'm not gonna ask you twice," the Career told him before shoving him out of his place. The boy hit the floor with a dull thump, and Cato slipped into his chair before he even had time to scramble back up to his feet. "I need to sit here so I can talk to twelve," he told the boy. "Scram."

Glancing around, he noticed that Katniss had deserted him some time over the last few minutes. She was hovering on the other side of the room, away from the danger. A part of him couldn't believe she'd leave him to deal with this alone after all the help he gave her on the chariot. His fingers were still sore. Bitch.

"Missing your girlfriend already?" Cato taunted from beside him, and Peeta shrugged. He didn't want take the bait and play into whatever game the Career was trying to play with him. He couldn't allow himself to look weak like that, so instead he feigned nonchalance and continued to watch Katniss. She smiled at the young girl from 11 across the table.

"Hey," the Career beside him snapped angrily, slamming a palm down on the table and pulling Peeta's attention back towards him. "You look at me when I'm talking to you, do you understand?"

"Sure," Peeta agreed with a shrug, turning back to the other boy slowly and offering him a friendly smile. "Whatever makes you happy."

"You're not doing it to please me," Cato fumed beside him. "You're doing it because I told you to." This was clearly not the reaction that he was expecting from the other boy.

"Of course I am," Peeta assured him in the most patronizing tone he could muster before schooling his confidence to ask a question of his own. "Did you want something?"

The older boy looked perturbed by the question for a second, as if he wasn't expecting Peeta to actually participate in their conversation at all. He composed himself quickly, though. "Yes," he snapped back, "I wanted to congratulate you and your girlfriend on such an amazing entrance to the Games, and to remind you that you still don't have a chance of winning."

"Thank you, that's very kind. If you really believed that I don't have a chance of winning, though, you wouldn't be over here trying to convince me of it. You feel threatened, don't you?" Peeta raised a questioning eyebrow at him, and then cut him off before he had a chance to deny it. "Oh, and by the way, she," he gestured over to Katniss, "is not my girlfriend."

Pushing his empty soup bowl away, he dismissed himself from their half-finished conversation as he rose to his feet. There was no point in wasting any more time there with Cato, not when he could be gathering information about the other Tributes like Haymitch had told him to. He strolled away, wandering over to a lonely looking girl and sitting down next to her with an easy smile, leaving a furious Career in his wake. Little did he know that he was the first person who had ever had the audacity to walk away when Cato was talking to them.

Cato was going to kill him.

Peeta knocked on Haymitch's room apprehensively. He had waited until Katniss had gone to bed before he sought out Haymitch: whatever the outcome of this, Katniss would either not need to know or not want to. There was a grunt of "One sec," before Haymitch popped his upper torso around the door. "Oh. It's you. What do you want?" He blearily looked at Peeta without stepping out from behind the frame. "It's midnight."

"I know," Peeta said, wringing his hands together, "It's just I need some advice. And you're the one to give it, right?" He laughed slightly derisively.

Haymitch inspected him with narrowed eyes. "Okay then kid. Let me put on some pants, and meet me in the kitchen. Make sure there's a coffee waiting."

Peeta sipped his hot chocolate anxiously for a few minutes before Haymitch sauntered in fully clothed (thankfully), and plonked himself down on the chair opposite Peeta.

"What's wrong then, boy? What is it that you couldn't tell me in front of our little ice princess, huh?"

Peeta didn't know where to begin. It was all such a blur, the makeover, the fire, the dinner and the words of warning from none other than Cato himself.

"Well, it's just...I'm struggling at deciding which... angle I should play." Peeta sighed, "I wanted to be a Career and all—I thought that would be my, you know, best chance of survival but... Well, they don't seem to like me all too much." Peeta recalled Cato's snarl as vividly as if that moment was happening again. He then remembered what else Cato had said and wrinkled his nose. "They also seem to think I like Katniss."

Haymitch stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Okay kid, tell me exactly what the Careers said to you."

Peeta relayed the information back to Haymitch from the edge of distress, finally allowing his head to just sink into his hands in despair. "What should I do?" came the muffled voice of the confused teenage boy. Haymitch started laughing.

"You really think the Careers don't like you because of that? Seriously kid, the Careers don't like anyone, it pretty much goes with the territory. A death threat from them is a good thing more than anything else. It represents them noticing you." He reached over to get a muffin and Peeta felt a few faint stirrings of hope.

"You can still get in with them, if you want to." With this he cupped the boy's chin in his hand and raised Peeta's head so he could look him directly in the eye. "You've got some good strength. I saw that. But was that the peak of it? Somehow I don't think so." He smiled ever so slightly before becoming serious, the mentor within him beginning to emerge. Peeta could tell that side of him had been worn away slowly by endless losses of the tributes he became close to. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was glad he was coaxing it out of him. Haymitch must really think he was worth saving.

"You're going to have to do some damn good lifting in training to convince them to ally with you. And hand to hand combat, if you can. Have you had any experience?"

"Um..." Peeta coughed awkwardly, "A little...?"

"Just tell me kid. It's not any use being modest or I won't know your actual skills."

"Well I won the wrestling competition at my school. I once fought a boy for hurting my friend and he went home with a broken jaw and nose."

"And you?"

"Not a scratch."

Haymitch stroked his chin again and laughed. "Well you had better get right on the case and show them what you can do. Stick with the things you're really good at when they're watching you. You have to gain their respect. But also, try and branch out a little in the other areas: brutal weaponry will attract the careers to you but you need to spend some time working on survival skills as well." He broke off, as if trying to figure out the perfect solution.

"Haymi-"

Haymitch held up a finger to silence him as he carried on thinking. But Peeta was scared, scared of the Careers for the first time and scared of the games. Scared that he would die before anyone else. That he would humiliate himself. What would he do if they didn't want him?

"I've got it." Haymitch grinned slyly. "What did you say they thought about you and Katniss?"

"That they thought I liked her, but-"

"Then play up to that. The sponsors will love it." He grinned at Peeta, his eyes calculating and dancing with mischief as the boy looked back at him doubtfully. "What I'm saying is, you should stick to Katniss when you're training your survival skills. From what I've heard about her, she can probably help you with that."

"She wouldn't agree to work with me," Peeta sighed, dismissing the idea quickly. Haymitch waved his hand as if to dismiss the boy's worries about this.

"Don't worry, I'll get her to agree. That way you can test out a few brutal weapons here and there, but only when the careers aren't looking at you too much. It doesn't matter if they notice you unless you're brilliant. If you're terrible it shouldn't matter too much because they're not expecting you to be anything special." He finished the last bite of his muffin. "But go into the middle whenever you feel confident enough and throw some weights around. Fight with assistants. Give them a show. Channel that inner diva, just like you did the other day. If you can impress me, you can impress them."

He winked at Peeta. "Just make sure they don't overlook you."

A/N: Hi everyone and thank you all for reading! we're working pretty hard at this, so we'd love it if you left a review and let us know what you think!