A/N: Super tired right now . This is a really short update, but didn't go with the other stuff I have, so yeah. The next one should be longer.
Review Replies:
XoLovelyWonderXo: I'm glad you gave the story a chance! I was originally going to use Cinna, but ultimately I decided he was for the girls and Portia went with Peeta, so that decided it for me. Cinna is getting more of a role than I had anticipated though. Thanks for the reviews! :)
KatnissMellark: Haha, well, I don't know that you'll get a whole lot of Pet fluff, but I'll certainly give you something. ;) Anyway, thanks again for reviewing!
Illuminatedillusions: You'll get a bit of KatCAM, but it'll be farther in and I haven't really decided how much. It's ironic, I hadn't really intended for this to be from Peeta's POV, but here we are. xP Thanks for the review!
CHAPTER 4: DELILAH'S HANDS
Effie Trinket stood between Peeta and Madge, speaking rapidly about the spectacle that was the Capitol, but it was falling on mostly deaf ears. They had twelve floors to not listen to her as they moved down to the training room. Katniss had squeezed herself into a back corner of the elevator, arms crossed, and looking as she had since this years reaping. Angry with a heavy splash of determination.
Every floor was sectioned off for a different district. The basement below was the training grounds for the tributes. That was where they were currently headed to. Today was the first day of training; Peeta noticed Haymitch was not in the elevator with them.
Effie shooed them affectionately out of the elevator—Peeta didn't have it in him to dislike the strange, shallow woman—before waving and heading back up behind a ding of metal doors.
They stood there for a few moments together, a group of three children, two tributes and a mentor. Finally, Madge offered Peeta a hesitant smile, a glance at Katniss, and then headed off to pick one of the training stations.
She seemed aimless in her choices, looking first at knot-tying, then at the plant station, then one of the weight lifting ones. She didn't seem to have any idea where she was going.
And Haymitch wasn't there to help her.
Peeta looked back at Katniss, planning on asking what they could do to help, but stopping before the words ever left his lips.
Her expression was dark, fixed on Madge.
"Damnit," he heard her mutter under her breath.
"Where's Haymitch?" Peeta asked, drawing her attention. She frowned and shook her head in response.
"C'mon," she told him, surging forward into the training room.
It was neither required nor discouraged for mentors to be present with their tributes during the training. They were permitted to help in any way possible with the exceptions of the individual training scores, the interviews, and the actual Games. Everything else was fair game.
Still, mentors seemed to be about half and half. Some tributes had their mentors there, helping tributes at the stations, some had their mentors merely watching from the sidelines, even chatting amongst themselves. Others, like Madge, had no one there at all beyond their fellow tribute, and Peeta didn't like the feeling that Madge didn't even have that.
He wanted to ask Katniss to train them both, but he knew her response. She wouldn't do it.
"Where do you want to start?" she asked him, glancing around to get a feel of the stations. Her eyes lingered where Madge was sitting cross-legged with a book of plants open on her lap.
"I don't really know," Peeta admitted. He wished he could understand what was going through her head, why it was so impossible to help them both.
…
They had spent hours there. Hours tying knots, practicing with a bow and arrow—Katniss' trademark from her Game—and a sword, which although Peeta had no natural talent for, he could at least wield it steadily. Katniss told him his skill would likely be strength and that it would only get him so far.
"Be smart," she had said, while he tried to follow her on a balance beam for the seventh time in a row. He fell another six times before she had them move on to a station that imitated a cliff face that she told him to climb.
They took a break for lunch, during which Katniss had gone over strategy after strategy until Peeta was left wondering if blowing up the entire arena wasn't just the safest bet...
She probably would have kept going, if an unexpected guest hadn't appeared in the elevator. Cinna did not exit the elevator even when the doors open. He merely stood there, one hand keeping them open, staring at Katniss. With a nod, Katniss got up.
"Eat well. You need to keep your strength up."
Then she gave him a short list of the other stations she wanted him to visit and left. He watched as she entered the elevator and began what seemed to be a casual, friendly, dare he say intimate conversation with Madge's stylist.
Peeta frowned.
She was gone only a moment when he felt the pang of her absence. This was not a fun experience. Training was grueling and exhausting. Getting one foot in front of the other without falling into despair was often a challenge. But spending the day with her kind of made it all worth it. Now that she had left, well, he didn't feel much like doing anything.
What was the point really?
He picked at the bread on his plate, eating only halfheartedly, when he noticed someone sit down across from him. When he glanced up to see who it was, he found Madge sitting hesitantly opposite him. She smiled hesitantly, as though ready to leave quickly should he not return it.
But he did return it.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
After that day, Katniss continued to leave with Cinna and Madge would sit to eat with him during lunch. Peeta didn't hide it from Katniss, and she was never happy with it, but she didn't stop him and she still left every day with Cinna.
It was an odd tradeoff that Peeta couldn't quite figure out how he felt about it. But every time it happened, Peeta would make suggestions to Madge. What she should do, what station to go to, how she should play the Games...
Katniss wouldn't be happy, but someone had to help the poor girl. So he never told Katniss, and Katniss didn't bother telling him not to, even though she knew. She had to know, because the looks she gave him every night when she left him just outside the door to his room, she gave him that look that said she knew what he was doing and she was annoyed that he was undermining her hard work.
And that she was maybe, just maybe, the tiniest bit proud of him for doing it.
