~ NIGHTINGALE ~
By SincerelyAlice
CHAPTER 2: FOR ALL I AM WORTH
[A/N] Hey there! ^-^ Thank you all for your patience, Chapter 2 is hereeeee! :D
I read all your reviews, and I have to say thank you for all that too!
I didn't mean to take so long on this chapter, but it ended up taking a long time. I literally have the book open in front of me so as to make this story as accurate as possible, keeping the characters as in character as possible.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I went back and edited some of Chapter 1. I had completely forgotten to have Effie Trinket ask for Gale's name! That's really all I changed besides a few minor errors.
As soon as the Panem national anthem was finished, Gale and I were led into the Justice Building by the Peacekeepers in white. Neither of us had ever been inside before. I also don't think either of us could have thought we would ever set foot in the Justice Building. My insides seemed to be revulsed by the ritziness of it all; from the bloody red carpets my shoes sunk into (it was like quicksand; I kept up the pace) to the golden drapes adorning the wide windows. Wide they were, but not one was open.
"Smells like money," said Gale, It did. His mind must have been on something along the same lines of mine. It was only typical. Having both grown up in the Seam, we were unused to such wealthy displays. I'd thought my dress shoes to be "nice"; looking down I could only figure the distance of carpet I'd tread had cost ten times more than they had. For all I am worth, I did not belong here.
When we reached an unlocked, vacant room, I was told that was where I would sit and wait for friends and family to arrive. That's right. Now was the time given to tributes to exchange their goodbyes with their last few loved ones before they were sent away to the Capitol. I still found it difficult connecting the word "tribute" with my own…
Gale was being sent somewhere else, but I didn't even get the chance to wave him off, perhaps send a small smile of encouragement his way. But that was okay, I guess; I'd be seeing him an hour from now. I sat on the sofa and, like the carpet, I sunk into it. Immediatally I stumbled back onto my feet. Was paranoia already working its way into my mind? Did I really feel as if I'd get eaten up by it all?
I took a deep breath before sitting back down, although lightly this time. My palms were sweaty against the soft velvet of the sofa. This was velvet, I knew the fabric. The collar of the dress I was wearing was also made out of velvet. Suddenly it felt suffocating as well; I undid two buttons from the top.
It was this place that did this, the perfume that I was breathing. But I willed myself to inhale, this was surely still oxygen. From this point onwards, I had to be fierce, I had to be determined, I had to be anything but what I was now. Inhale…exhale.
It wasn't too long before Prim and my mother entered together. Prim bound forward, flinging herself forcefully into my arms, and I had to grip the wooden arm of the sofa to keep myself up. She was hugging me real tight, but she wasn't crying anymore. She was trying so hard to be strong for me. I pat her blonde hair as she made herself more comfortable in my lap.
My mother came over towards us and then sat beside me. She brings her arms around me and around Prim, and for a few minutes no one has anything to say. No one wants to say something to admit to what is already happening, to lower their arms and then to let go. I can't blame them.
Finally, it is I that speaks. I remind the two of them what must be done while I'm gone. Not if I'm gone, I say it as while I'm gone. They also wouldn't have Gale, I tell them.
What was a good thing was that my mother had recently opened up a small apothecary business in the Seam. She'd gotten a huge turn-out actually, herbal medicines being sold in a place that so desperately needed it. Prim helped her out a lot.
Also, the two of them could more easily get by with Prim's goat. Gale and I had bought her one for her tenth birthday. Her name was Lady, and she was a sick little thing when we'd first gotten her. But Prim and my mother had worked hard- day and night- nursing it back to health. The man who'd sold her to Gale and I hadn't thought Lady would live much longer, but she was now in pristine condition. And she'd paid for herself many times over with her milk.
Prim's not like me, and by that I mean that she doesn't hunt. Once, a year or two ago I tried taking her out into the woods on one of my daily excursions. All I can say is that it didn't go over very well. Even aiming at an animal seemed to frighten her, where she'd unconsciously let out a small squeal sending my arrow at a tree ten yards over from my intended target.
Prim was a healer, like my mother, and so not a fighter. The Hunger Games was no place for her, especially at twelve years old. Just thinking about her in that kind of situation I couldn't fathom. I didn't have to think about it though, because I'd taken her place.
When I'd done telling them all I needed to, I turned to my mother.
"Listen to me. Are you listening to me?" I asked, gripping her arm hard, almost harder than I'd meant to.
My mother nodded, taken aback by the intensity of my words, my grip, my eyes.
"You can't leave again."
By again, I was referring to those months after my father died, after he was killed in a mining explosion.
"I know. I won't. I couldn't help what-"
"Well, you have to help it this time," I said, and all the distaste I'd felt towards her since my father died seemed to be seeping, like poison, into my words. "You can't go and clock out, you can't leave Prim on her own."
I still can't forget those bedridden mornings into nights…her laying there, seemingly deaf to Prim's cries. The blank looks Prim received, when what she'd needed more than anything was someone to tell her it was going to be okay.
But no. That was me. And maybe Prim was, but I definitely wasn't so quick to forgive.
"There's no me now to keep you both alive."
The one drying Prim's tears, the one forcing our mother to swallow food, the one who held the house up, had been me. I didn't want me, I didn't want Prim to be sent away to a community home. And so I did everything to keep us in that house.
"It doesn't matter what happens. Whatever you see on the screen. You have to promise me you'll fight through it!"
By the time I'd concluded my spiel, my voice had risen to shouting. My fists were clenched at my sides, and I didn't yet unclench them.
"I was ill," said my mother, now moved to anger as I was. "I could have treated myself if I'd had the medicine I have now."
I unclenched my fists. Prim had shrunk into herself amidst all the yelling. I dismissed the hostility for her sake and my own, I could no longer argue with my mother over this. The last trace of bitterness left me with me with these words.
"Then take it. And take care of her!"
"I'll be alright, Katniss," Prim said, her hands reaching for my face. They're small and they're soft, not yet worn by life, a very obvious contrast to the bruises and blisters that define my own.
"But you have to take care, too!" Prim continued in a louder voice, while pressing her hands harder against my cheeks. She'd noticed my distraction. "You're so fast and brave. Maybe you can win."
"Maybe," I reply to her, although I very well knew my chances were little to none. Some districts, the wealthier ones, sent in tributes who'd trained all their lives for the Games. These were the kinds of people I'd be pitted against. What did I know about fighting? What did I know about anything?
"Or maybe Gale will come back home," I said, more to myself than to Prim.
"I don't want Gale, I…" said Prim instantly, and then she cut herself short almost as if realizing she'd gone and said the wrong thing. Her blue eyes are downcast, but she refuses to let tears come, and she let go of the handfuls of my dress she'd grabbed in her sudden outburst. "I mean, of course I love him, but you…you…I want you back home, Katniss. I'd rather… have you."
Prim, being thrust into the middle, having to hope for one to win over the other, having to hold back tears. And I'd have to go and do that, put my survival before Gale's… These Games…! No. I couldn't be going and thinking like that. Here I was, telling my mother not to give up when I was considering doing the same. I had to fight, I had to try, for Prim.
"I'll try my hardest then," I said to Prim, now taking her hands in mine. I squeezed them gently. "I swear it." And I make this promise just in the knick of time too, because a Peacekeeper is coming at the door, meaning that my time with them is up.
Desperately we all reach for each other, as we feel the last grains of sand hit the bottom of the hour glass. I'm telling them I love them, and they are saying that back to me. Prim and my mother must be ordered that they leave, and practically shoved out the door. Even then they are telling me how they much they love me, screaming it until I can't hear it anymore.
And now they're gone, and it hits me hard that that may have been the last time I'd ever see them again. Why did I have to go and get angry at my mother, go and scare Prim? I clutched at the velvet pillow as if it was the Capitol itself, directing my rage towards the puppeteers who held us all by the strings.
I almost wanted to wrip the pillow to pieces, except I had no fingernails. They were gnawed to the nub, everyone in the Seam had these nails, except many were blackened from working with the coal. I then again thought of Effie Trinket's fingernails, painted fuschia with not a speckle of dirt. I sigh, put down the pillow and calm myself.
The next person to come in is Mr. Mellark. He's the baker, Peeta's father. A big man, and he sure did look a lot like Peeta. He knew me from trading at the Hob, and he knew Prim even better. It was only this morning that Gale and I had sat on the hill, eating his bread that Gale had gotten for a squirrel. It seemed years ago from now.
Mr. Mellark had in his hands a white cardboard box. When he noticed me giving the box a look over, he smiled warmly at me.
"It's a cake. Peeta frosted it himself. Thought you might want to have it."
"A whole cake?" I asked incredously, standing from my seat. I went over to where Mr. Mellark was standing. He popped the lid of the box so that I could see the cake myself. It was iced beautifully; the design was an intricate illustration of a field of bright yellow dandelions.
"I can't," I told Mr. Mellark, closing the lid. It was too much. "Not this. Br-bring it to my mother and Prim, alright? I'll be fed plenty in the Capitol before I go into the Games, I know that."
Prim and I had always, whenever we strolled by the bakery, looked into the shop window and gazed in wonder, our noses pressed against the glass, at all the iced cakes on display. They were set out for holidays. Prim especially loved them, thought them to be so pretty, but of course we could never have been able to afford one. So it was Peeta who did those? We'd also seen Peeta lifting trays, hauling bags of flour, who would have thought that along with having big, strong hands they were capable of creating fine design, along with having brute strength he had an eye for art?
Mr. Mellark looked sad when he spoke again. He set the box on a small table. "Gale wouldn't take the cake, either. Our family…we wanted to, again, express our thanks to him somehow. We thought maybe you'd at least take the cake."
Mr. Mellark must have just been to see Gale.
"We…We'll be taking extra care of your families," said Mr. Mellark. "I always loved your sister's goat cheese. And we really can't thank you enough."
"Your gratitude is received!" I said, trying to smile. "Gale knows."
"I think I have to give a word of thanks also. Not just for your friend – he is a good friend of yours, isn't he? – obviously taking Peeta's place, but I think…well… I think my wife has finally gone and seen how close she'd gotten to losing her son. I think things will be getting better at home. What I mean to say is, not just our son was saved, I think our whole family was."
"No need to thank me," I said, putting up my hands. It wasn't me that deserved all this. "It was all Gale's doing."
That's right. It was all Gale's doing.
"Maybe so," said the baker, finally sitting on the opposite chair. He let out a sigh as he sat down. He took the box with the sheet cake and stared into it pensively. "Maybe so."
Mr. Mellark wasn't one for talking, and so until the Peacekeepers came back as his escort out he did not say anything more.
Madge Undersee comes in afterwards. Yes, Undersee as in Mayor Undersee. She's the mayor's daughter, and a classmate of mine. I'd seen her just this morning when Gale and I had gone to sell strawberries to the mayor.
Gale had gone and insulted her, almost blaming her because of the unfair reaping system. He was right in what he'd said, but it really wasn't Madge's fault the system was how it was. Once you're eligible to enter the reaping (at twelve years old) you also have the option of signing up for a year of tessarae in exchange for your name being put into the reaping another time. Tessarae is a thin sort of grain you can use to make a flat bread, not particularly appetizing but it was food and it was something. And to many people, a year's worth of grain and oil was worth the risk, worth the rolling of the loaded dice. This is available to all districts, although this being a poorer district it predominates here, especially in the Seam. And so the Games go on, at the ever-expense of the poor.
And so you could see why Gale could come to resent someone like Madge, who's never had to worry about putting dinner on the table, someone who would never have to sign up for tessarae. Gale had his name in an accumulative forty-two times by now, having yearly opted for the meager amounts of tessarae for his entire family. "What can you have?" Gale had said, standing before Madge. "Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old."
You'd think that Madge would be a snob, but she's actually very quiet at school. If anything she was considered a bit of a social outcast from her status alone. We always end up working together on assignments, running into each other, eating lunch at the same table, sitting next to each other in class… it's not like we're best friends but we kind of look out for each other in our own quiet ways. And we're both fine with it.
Madge walks towards me where I'm sitting in the sofa, and I stand to meet her. She is still wearing her pink dress with the ribbons, her blonde hair all done up. There are just a few loose strands that fall in front of her face.
"They let you wear one thing from your district in the arena," said Madge, in her even tone. Her hand goes to her pink dress as she pulls at something. "One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?"
It's the golden pin that she'd been wearing, that Gale and I had noticed earlier. She held it for me to see. I hadn't had a good look at it then, but seeing it so close I could see that it was a little bird with its wide wings spread, the tips of the feathers touching the golden ring around it.
"Your pin?" I ask, not wanting to touch it, taint it with my dirtied hands. The pin was a gleaming gold, presumably priceless. I hadn't even thought about the district token. Every female tribute is to wear something as a symbol of their district.
"Here, I'll put it on your dress, all right?" says Madge, noticing my hesitation. She pins the small bird to my blue dress, right underneath the collar. I'm still unsure of what to say in response.
"Promise you'll wear it into the arena, Katniss? Promise?"
"Yes," I say to Madge, and this promise seems a bit easier to keep than my last one.
Madge manages the smallest of smiles. "And tell Gale I send...I send him the best of regards."
Then Madge gives me a kiss on the cheek and leaves, giving me not a moment to ask about this particular request. I watch Madge as she goes. Hmm. Perhaps all this time, she'd really thought of me as something more…as a friend perhaps…
I look at the little bird again. I see that it's a mockingjay. There's a window in this dismal room, but it's locked shut. Had tributes tried to escape? I was like the mockingjay, a mockingjay trapped in an impervious cage made out of gold.
Next to come in is Hazelle, Hazelle Hawthorne. She's Gale's mother, and from the way she held herself I know that she'd just been to see her son. Her eyes were red and it seems that between leaving him and coming to see me she'd only had the short interval of the tread from across the hall she'd only been able to wipe away a few stray tears. When she sees me she smiles nonetheless.
Hazelle works as a washerwoman, collecting and cleaning clothes between caring for her four children. The youngest one, I believe, is only four years old. Posy. Hazelle's practically my second mother. Many times when I've been over Gale's, for a cup of tea or just for an ear to listen. Gale's father had died years ago, in the same mining accident that had taken my own father. That's when the similarities between my mother and Hazelle ended, on that fateful day. I think I knew it early as then.
Hazelle is strong. Yes, Gale did have to take up hunting in order to support the household. But aside from that Hazelle took on everything else. Hazelle never gave up. She opens her arms up to me, and I rise from the sofa and I run into them. I come to her. I would never say that I wished I'd had her as a mother instead- I'd really lost the need to have one. I had to assume that role in my own home. But it was still nice having a womanly figure when the only other woman in my life wasn't substantial in the least.
Being in her arms made me feel like I was home again, in a place that so was not. She smelled of maple.
Hazelle knew all this too, I think. And maybe, just maybe, she thought of me almost as another daughter.
When we finally pulled away from each other, I saw that she was crying again. I didn't want her crying anymore, not over me. I brushed away some of her dark curly hair and some fresh tears. Still a few clung to her long eyelashes.
"You really are a lovely girl, Katniss," breathed Hazelle, gazing deeply, lovingly, into my eyes. Where had that come from? I must have looked confused.
"I wish you all of luck," Hazelle continued, giving me another tight squeeze before she was led out by a Peacekeeper. She wasn't crying anymore, she seemed almost at peace with herself. I muttered a word of thanks, but by then she was out the door, she couldn't have heard it…
All Hazelle's visit seemed to do was shake me, and I clutched my forehead. I won't blackout.
How could she wish me all of luck? That would be wishing Gale none of it!
I stumbled back onto the couch, I had to maintain control of my thoughts. Just had to… I couldn't lose myself this early…this won't stop, 'til I say so.
This, I felt with complete finality, was my last visitor. In walked Peeta, the baker's son, the tribute that had almost been going to the Hunger Games with me. Perhaps he'd spoken to Gale, but I saw no reason why he'd come to speak with me.
"Katniss, I think you can win," said Peeta. Like Madge, at least he was being direct. That much was appreciated.
But that still didn't change the fact that I completely disagreed with him. I just shook my head, still trying to regain the feeling in my hands. They were balled in tight fists at my sides, wripping at the velvet of the sofa.
"No!" cried Peeta, standing up abruptly. His outburst caused me to very visibly flinch, but release my grip on the velvet. My knuckles went from white back to their normal color as the blood flowed back into them.
I knew Peeta from around, saw him around school and town. He was generally easy-going. He was also incredibly kind, from what I'd gathered about him. What I'd never seen was him so angry.
"No," said Peeta again, but now he's lowered his voice after seeing my reaction to speaking so harshly. "I know you can. My dad...he buys your meat. He's always complimenting your catches, saying how your arrow always goes right through the eye."
I don't say anything. Gale was a better hunter than me, and the baker bought his meat just as often.
Peeta continues, thinking that I was actually considering his words. "I've seen you…I've seen you with a bow and arrow. From the apple tree in my backyard. Oh, and Gale also. Our district definitely has a chance this year."
"You can't root for both of us," I mutter under my breath, and you can't miss the hostility in my voice. My hands are back at the fabric again.
Peeta doesn't get angry again. Instead he just sighs. He tries to think a few seconds before speaking again, and I'm shocked at what comes out of his mouth instead of something about my comment.
"I still can't believe…I still can't…" Peeta's eyes are blue as any sky, but now they look as if they've clouded over. "I wouldn't have done well in these Games anyway."
"What do you mean?" I ask. Better yet, what was he getting at?
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm a baker's son! Can you imagine…me winning? First victory by rolling pin!"
"Peeta…"
"No," said Peeta, and his voice has resumed that old tone again. He begins walking towards the door; he's said enough. "He was right."
"Who was right?" I asked, standing to my feet. I have to catch myself from going after him, shaking him by the shoulders and demanding an answer when he didn't give me one. "Wait! Peeta!"
But by now there's a group of Peacekeepers assembled at the door. But that meant…no! My hour couldn't be up already!
"Goodbye, Katniss," said Peeta. I can just see him over the shoulder of one of the Peacekeepers, they were what separated the two of us. His mouth opens as if he is going to say something, but then he closes it as he turns back around.
"G-goodbye?"
This was goodbye?
A second glance from Peeta and I could clearly see that his eyes were struck with stone cold conviction. He looked me over as one would somebody already dead to them.
[A/N] Thank you for reading! What do you think of Peeta?
Don't tell me you didn't laugh at that rolling pin part...
Thanks again! -Alice
