4.

"You're going to do wonderfully, Belle," Archie Hopper, her soft spoken stylist, told her as his team put the finishing touches on her costume. Belle wanted to shake with nerves, wanted to go to pieces, but she couldn't let herself. If she started crying now, she would never stop. Do the brave thing, and bravery will follow, she thought, taking a deep breath.

"Do you really think so?" Belle couldn't help asking, hating the way her voice shook.

"Oh, yes," the red haired man replied with a shy smile. He was strangely plain for a Capitolite, with just a hint of blue eye shadow around his eyes, but Belle found that reassuring compared to her bizarre looking prep team. She'd find it even more heartening once she saw Gaston's wild-eyed stylist, Jabber Wocky, who looked like she'd come from another world, not just from the Capitol. "I think that volunteering for your friend was very brave."

Belle grimaced, thinking of how her father had promised to look after Babette and Webster, and wondering if Moe French would keep that promise. Her father wasn't a bad man, but he had a bad case of black lung from his work in the mines, which meant he wasn't terribly inclined towards charity. "People volunteer every year," she pointed out.

"Not to save others," Archie countered. "Tributes from the Career districts volunteer because they want to be in the Games, because they're trained to be. You volunteered out of love for a friend. Personally, I think that's extraordinary."

Her face felt hot, and Belle looked down to study her feet. Her voice was a whisper. "Thank you."

"You're already the most courageous tribute out there," Archie replied, squeezing her arm. "Now let me help you show everyone else that."

Then he showed her how to turn her suit on, and Belle felt her heart leap into her chest. She knew from watching past Games that the tributes who got the most attention received the most sponsorships, and Archie and Jabber's ideas were amazing. By the end of the day, the Capitol was calling her the Girl on Fire, and she knew that she actually might have a chance.

The first two days in the Capitol were a whirlwind. Belle didn't quite know what to do with herself, with the sudden adoration of the crowd after their chariot ride—and amazing costumes!—and Gaston's sudden distant anger.

"You stole my spotlight," he accused her on the first day of training, wheeling away from Belle after shooting her a glare. Gaston promptly marched away to the weapons stand, grabbing a spear and pairing off with one of the trainers as Belle headed for edible plants. Later, her district partner blatantly ignored Gold's advice and showed off his (rather impressive) strength, heaving weights around like they were nothing.

Belle, meanwhile, avoided the bow and arrows, no matter how tempting they were. Gold had told her to try them out on the last day, just to make a shot or two and make sure that the bow had the right pull for her (how he knew enough about bows to make that remark, she didn't know), but for now, Belle steered clear of her best weapon. Meanwhile, she learned to use knives for more than just skinning animals, working with one of the trainers to find a body's weak spots. Spots where someone her size could take down someone a hundred pounds heavier than she was and a foot taller.

Not Gaston. He might be an oaf, but he's from home. I hope I don't have to kill him. Two days earlier, Belle would never have even contemplated the possibility of killing anyone, but now she was determined. Just one conversation with Gold, when he'd asked her if she had something worth fighting for, had crystalized that purpose in her mind. Belle was going home. She was going to live.

So, she let Gaston's grumbling roll off her and just shrugged when they got in the elevator together that evening, heading up for the "penthouse" apartment. Belle had spent the day befriending Rapunzel from District Eleven, and she already liked the dark-skinned girl a lot better than she'd ever liked Gaston. In some ways, Rapunzel reminded her of Babette: sweet, caring, and far too good for these Games. Belle wasn't exactly a cruel person herself, but she was determined, and she'd been hunting for enough years to have seen bloodshed. She had never killed anyone, of course, but she wasn't as innocent as Gold had laughingly labeled her, either.

"You didn't even do anything useful today," Gaston sneered as soon as the elevator doors clicked shut. "Just looked at plants and talked to that skinny girl from Eleven. She's useless."

"She has a name, and it's Rapunzel," Belle snapped back, goaded into defending her new friend. "And she knows a lot about what you can eat and what you can't, and she's better at sneaking into places than you'llever be. She's an expert climber, too, far better than me."

Gaston snorted. "Who needs to sneak around or search for food when you're strong enough to go into the cornucopia and get whatever you need?"

"You do know that people die in the bloodbath, right?" she countered.

"I won't."

"Anything can happen in the Games." Belle barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but Gaston wasn't listening, anyway.

"To you, maybe," he retorted. "In fact, maybe it's good that you're being useless. Then nobody back home will expect me to look after you for too long."

"Look 'after'me? Really?" The elevator doors opened as she gaped, and Belle strode through them without looking back. "I don't need some burly brute to protect me, Gaston, and if I did, I wouldn't want it to be you!"

"Fine, then. Have it your way. I was going to offer you a bit of comfort and companionship before you die, in exchange for my protection, but I suppose you aren't worth it," he growled as the doors to the Twelve apartment opened in front of them. "But then again, once I go home as a victor, I suppose I can have anyone I want."

"You make me sick, you know that, Gaston?" Belle sighed, pushing past the pair of avoxes and striding for her own room. The last person she wanted to share air with right now was Gaston; she couldn't believe that he acted like she should be grateful that he wanted to have sex with her before the Games. As if she'd ever wanted him!

Belle wasn't expecting to be jerked up short by a hand that gripped her arm like iron, almost yanking her right off her feet.

"Well, that's too bad, because you need me in there, don't you? Because you're not even going to make a good showing without me. I always knew that you were only hunting with Loxsley to get into his pants. Everyone always wondered why he hasn't remarried, given that he makes a good living blasting in the mines, but you've been angling to change that, haven't you?"

"I—what?" she gaped, unable to even process those ludicrous words. Robin was her friend, and although Belle knew she could do a lot worse, everyone knew he was still pining after Marian, dead these last two years from the winter sickness.

"That's enough, Gaston," a new voice cut in even as her district partner laughed. "Let her go."

"Stay out of this, drunk."

Rumple Gold snorted. "I hate to disappoint you, dearie, but I'm not drunk," he drawled, standing there without his cane and somehow radiating danger. "And what you are is in danger of needing reconstruction on those hands of yours before the Games can begin."

"What?" Gaston asked, blinking with confusion. But Belle had already seen the knife in Gold's hand, and she wondered if he really would use it on one of his own tributes.

He won the Games, she reminded herself. Don't forget that he must have killed people, other kids, to do that. That was years ago, and everyone back home assumed Gold was washed up and drunk, but the intensity in his eyes said otherwise. Yes, Belle decided, Gold probably would twist Gaston into a knot, particularly judging from the light and practiced way in which he held the knife. The only real question was if he'd nick her—or worse—in the process.

"I killed three careers with nothing but a knife in my own games, boy, and it's a talent I've kept up with," Gold replied coldly, his dark eyes never leaving Gaston's face. "So, unless you prefer me to call the Peacekeepers up here to deal with you trying to harm your fellow tribute, which is expressly against the rules"—he twirled his free hand ever so slightly, and Belle found the gesture oddly mesmerizing—"you'll be dealing with me. And you don't want to do that, now, do you, dearie?"

Growling under his breath, Gaston let Belle go and then stalked off without another word, leaving her standing in the foyer facing their coldly casual mentor.

"Thank you," she said quietly, a little unnerved by the sudden way that the 'irresponsible drunk' had proven dangerous.

"Of course," he replied with a shrug, and then gestured at her room. "You'd best clean yourself up for dinner. We can't have poor Tink getting into a tizzy because she has to see a tiny bit of sweat at the dinner table."

Despite herself, and the bruises forming on her left forearm, Belle snorted out a giggle. "Oh, the horrors."

"Indeed." Gold quirked a smile, and Belle was suddenly struck by how much the expression changed his face. She found herself smiling back, but Gold was the one who turned away with a self-conscious shrug and disappeared in the direction of the giant room with the television screen, leaving Belle to wonder what kind of man really lay underneath the prickly exterior.

She shouldn't bother trying to puzzle her enigmatic mentor out, of course. Belle knew she should focus on the Games, should focus on her survival, and yet there was something about Gold that intrigued her.

"You have an appointment tonight," Tink said to Gold later that evening, her voice surprisingly soft and normal sounding. "Glinda Goodwin called."

Gold went oddly tense as she handed him a folded piece of expensive paper, but it was Gaston who butted in while Belle watched.

"Appointment for what?" her district partner asked aggressively, and Tink's sober expression flashed over into a bright smile.

"To get the two of you sponsors, of course!" she trilled. "But with two tributes like you, there'll be no difficulty at all, right, Rumple?"

Their mentor snorted. "Right."

Without a further word, he vanished into his own bedroom, and came out twenty minutes later dressed in a fancier suit than Belle would have thought he liked at all. It fit him perfectly and made him look both dangerous and handsome, but there was something in the all-too-casual way he wore it that just seemed…off.

He had his cane again, too.

A/N: Next up: The aftermath of Gold's 'appointment', and Belle being compassionately Belle.