First, there is desire.

All eyes are ice. Ghostly spectators watch, a myriad of spectres that haunt, rather than participate, in the world around them. The girl in the centre of the floor, the girl set alight, smells of combustion and something else, sweet and life-giving, akin to both honey and death. She does not think not think to move at all, paralysed in want to the boy before her, but instead smiles, so rare and far between, but torn from her soul. Somewhere, he can hear violins, and as Peeta draws nearer, he becomes intoxicated by her, the scent of her skin and some foreign flowers.

Then, there is passion.

Without words, she brings him into a lustful kiss, her hands set like stone, one on his shoulder, and the other on the small of his back. Peeta doesn't feel nervous, for the first time in ages. His calm radiates throughout the room. Steady, she calls him, always steady. And not one of them trembles, so natural, so comfortable. Her hair is dark and smells like rose root, jasmine and the florist shop, in summer. When she meets his eyes, there is only certainty and want, the kind that remain fixed on Peeta while the rest of the world burns.

The spectres make such beautiful music, and Peeta can feel himself being swayed, the sensation passing through her, and then him, and he feels like half of the heart, assured that the chambers and the valves pump the sentiment to her when hi words cannot. Not swaying, anymore, he realizes suddenly that they're dancing, and her breath is tickling his neck. Love, he thinks, love after all of this, and so long. It comes like falling asleep. Slow, at first, but then consuming and comfortable.

Nobody else dares to penetrate the silence. As she twirls, her skirt brushed against Peeta's legs and he can feel these gentle, romantic flames licking at the fabric and romancing the skin. He could burn here, like this. He could turn to ash in her arms and it would be enough. It's so sudden that they're kissing again, his hand stroking the nape of her neck and sighing. It's real. It's real and he needs this, it's like oxygen and he breathes he in like she's about to disappear. The flames still kiss at his shins, making his strength go weak at the knees, held up in her steadfastness.

She spins out, and Peeta's still a bit shaken, but she's spinning too far and too fast and wildly, too gone for his hands to reach, and she spins away into the dreadful silence, and this darkness and dust is gathering from her feet and clouding the air. Peeta is about to be left along, he doesn't want her to leave him here, not on his own, not as useless as this. He can't seem to move, sinking into the wood as he screams out, hopelessly.

"Katniss!" He screams, and suddenly it's not just him, his voice is lost over the rabble of people and they are crushing him, too close, too tightly packed in. Can't breathe. Can't breathe because his lungs are on fire and she's gone, Christ, where has she gone? How far has she spun that she might not spin again? "Katniss!" But now she's disappeared into the darkness of boys and he tried to scream again, he loves her and he can't breathe and the blue is cold, the red explosive and suddenly he's not the only one screaming— "Katni-"

High on the stage, the pink-haired lady mocks them. "Katniss Everdeen." And it's too late; she's gone, slipped out of Peeta's fingers like liquid sunshine. Peeta's hearing is shot and he's sinking into the ground, drowning and struggling, and unable to breathe. But that's not the worst part. No, that's not the worst part at all.

"Peeta Mellark."

And suddenly it's not Effie on the stage, bright and bubbly, but Clove, in her orange dress, with her hair pulled away from her face, face fixed in a grimace. The crowd is dead with silence and she's looking right at him, right into his soul and tearing it apart, laughing at all of his thoughts because he's worthless and embarrassing. Her eyes pass behind him, into the nothingness of the crowd and she smiles, like a wound wide open. No more flowers, no more rose root and jasmine, but blood, the foul stench that makes Peeta think of pulp and flesh, of embedded time.

He tried to get away, his feet begin to backpedal and he thinks they'll forget h, he's free, he's getting away and it' all going to be okay, it's all going to be-

Peeta screams in anguish, he watches as the other end of the blade glints, bursting through his heart, where sentiment is no longer found, and Katniss is screaming but Peeta cannot hear her, he cannot save her and he hears a whisper in his ear, hot and tormented and as sharp as the sword, belonging to his owner.

"I can still do this." Cato hisses, breathless. "One more kill."

He draws he blade out of Peeta's chest, and he's coughing up blood, choking, dying, the universe collapsing and expanding before his eyes.

"Katniss…" He gasps, a bloody hand clawing at the floor.

Only the wind dares volunteer take his place.

Peeta wakes in a horrified sweat at exactly three o'clock. It's quiet, in the house, with only the sound of his breathing to comfort him. There is n Katniss, no Girl on Fire dancing for him. There's no reaping, he's not going to die in the arena. It's the only comfort he has, and he clings to it. Not all of the dream was so fabricated. Peeta knows, and he's scared, because through the house and up the stairs, curled around a dagger, Clove is sleeping, and she's laying besides Cato, brutish, macabre Cato. They feel no remorse in killing, Peeta has seen it.

He could barely watch the game this year. Not with Katniss, whom he had loved so truly, whom he had never even spoken with. She'd done so well, she could have won. But he supposes it was inevitable, for them to win. The inhuman duo of District 2, the Careers. Peeta was sure they felt nothing; he was so sure they deserved to die, for slaying his youthful love, but then they saw it. The world saw what they both had strived so hard to hide.

She's screamed. She thought she would die, and Clove no longer cared about being weak of objectified or desirable, she was facing death and she wanted Cato to save her, to hold her hand as she slipped into the darkness. Her voice was taut and frayed.

"Cato!" Her eyes were squeezed shut, but her assailant, the boy from eleven, cared none. His name was Thresh, and he did not deserve to die the way he did, unceremoniously. "Cato!" Again, she cried out, Thresh was sure to kill her, all while Katniss watched, terrified, helpless.

"Clove!" From the thicket, his voice came. It was the only time during the games, save for maybe the finale, that Peeta could be sure Cato felt anything but aggression. It seemed he felt a great deal more than that, and he appeared in a second, leaning on his heels, throwing the spear (Marvel's, not his, but Cato used it anyway. Peeta had heard him say 'it wasn't' as if Marvel was coming back to claim it'). The lance pierced Thresh's back and drove itself in to the hilt. In a second, he dropped Clove, who was spluttering and gasping for air. In a second, Katniss was gone. They let her go. It seemed Cato had only focus enough for Clove.

"It's okay." He said to her. It was anything but, though she seemed to believe him. "You're okay, we're okay." For a second, he looked as if he would slip into malice again and pursue Katniss, but instead he gripped Clove's arms and kissed her, ferocious and passionate and scared.

After that, they went back to machines again. Had they ever grown out of it?

Peeta is afraid that they'll kill him. He's a Surplus, now, after all, and it wouldn't be the first time. He has heard the way they talk to each other, heaven forbid, an actual married couple, threats to kill and insults and ironic pet names. He can' help but think of his mother, who's philosophy on relationships always was 'you can kill them with kindness'. So she never bothered.

Upstairs, Clove is restless and she cannot sleep. It's that Surplus' eyes, those sad, blue eyes that make her feel very cold inside. Maybe that's just the house, and the way there's nothing in most of the rooms, just the sound of the District wind whistling through it, trying to strike up the Mockingjays. What makes her feel alone, most of all, is Cato, just a body in the sheets. She wants to say that she loves him, that it's the same as it was in the arena, where she'd scream for him, and live and die by his side.

The truth is, of course, that Clove isn't sure she feels anything anymore. But, here, married, she is resigned to this fate, wasting away months in this empty house, and then at night, in the arms of a man she does not love, counting the kicks from a child that will bind them together.

The Surplus might ease her loneliness. He can't be entirely useless he must know how to speak or garden or cook. His only skill can't be blubbering pathetically. All of the others had time embedded and were taken from their families, and they managed to keep it together. The boy is weak, she thinks, but he'll soon toughen up. With Cato, as sadistic as he can be, the Surplus will have to.

She thinks about the feast at the cornucopia, and how Cao was so quickly upon her, how he kissed her. They have never kissed like that again, not even on their wedding night. They fuck, often enough that she doesn't search for physical attention outside of him. But that's all it is, an action. He doesn't feel or speak. It's a silent contest not to make a noise, not to let the other win. Clove often bites her lip in victory, grinning to herself as Cato grunts through his orgasm. He loses, she thinks, but that's the only thing he ever lets her win at.

Clove cannot help despising Cato as he sleeps, no nightmares tonight, but probably dreams of somewhere else with somebody else. He's beautiful, she knows, and can afford no better term for him. Even now, I sleep, his flaxen shock of hair looks soft and his lips look inviting. His enormous arms never fix themselves around her, and she wonders, for the longest time, isn't she pretty enough, isn't funny enough, isn't enough for him. It's the worst feeling in the world.

Unable to stand the sound of his breathing any longer, she tries herself out of the sheets and into the hallway, adjusting her nightgown (silk with gossamer end, which Cato had brought her from District 8, the thing so expensive that the people couldn't believe they had sold it). It's always cold here, in this house, and there are no flowers, nothing to fill the smell of paint, and unhappiness. It's not as if Cato sees any of it, ever, anyway, he's always at the academy, sword-fighting and fencing or in town, finding a spot to drink and be admired.

The irony lies in the fat that Cato loves Clove more than she loves him. He's just not good with words. He's just better with violence.

Clove can't bear to think of him no longer and she calls down to the boy who sleeps in the pantry, the other blonde, quite cute, but not with that arrogance Clove used to love. The one that she initially fell for. "Surplus." Her voice is shot down the darkening stairs and projected back at her. "Surplus Peeta?"

After a long pause, Peeta shuffles out from the surly pantry floor and into the hallway, behind the kitchen. He's still in white, the same, standard white that they all wear, as Surpluses. He wears this set for three days as his work clothes, and then his recreational whites become his work clothes until they get washed. It saves water, which they don't want to waste on lowly scum form outline Districts. A lump of coal is worth so much back home. Here, Clove takes no note that she has enough to eat, and it makes Peeta want to scream.

"How can I help you, miss?" He says, trying to sound breezy and upbeat, trying to brighten up the place, as young Surpluses are supposed to do. The duty to be beautiful. She stares at him, more of a glare, and considers what to say.

"Make me a drink." At last, the lady speaks. He keeps thinking she'll call out his name and he'll feel Katniss' fire against his legs, but she never looked this way, she never cared. The girl on the stairs is hard to see as so cold and bloodless; her face is flushed and she's swaying, quite a bit. A far cry from that girl on the screen, the one who screamed for her love, and what love? Peeta nods, knowing his Place.

"Certainly. Would your husband like anything?" There is no personality to his tone. Clove grimaces.

"I'm sure he can go without." She assures him. The silence between them is awkward and embarrassing. What can Peeta say? He's vastly uninteresting, and Clove won't care about his nightmares just as he doesn't ask about hers. He wants to keep a low profile anyway, he wants to lip their minds so that if Cato goes into a fit of rage he won't come looking for his Surplus, who 'deserves it'. "Water, please." She does not look so well, and he thinks it might help her.

Peeta nods his head and turns away, going back into the kitchen. What he sees makes him sick: full cupboards and fresh breads. Meats and spices and processed foods, which are rare, back at home, expensive, unpopular. There is no squirrel, fresh from the woods, and no stew with dog's meat carelessly tossed in. It makes Peeta feel faint just to see it, and he wonders if he could somehow get it home, to his brothers, to Prim, the girl who suffered most out of Clove's victory.

They have literally nothing in their cheese box, either. Over here, and in most rich Districts, they call it a refrigerator and put eggs and margarine and perishables in the cool, with their one, processed, measly bit of cheddar. Peeta loved to sample all the different kinds at home. He would sometimes rise early and bake pear tart with gruyere stuffed crust.

She follows after him, and Peeta snaps out of his trance, working on the task at hand, ignoring the throbbing in his wrist. It hurts, and it might always hurt, but nobody in these Districts buys a Surplus because they think of them as actual people. That would be absurd, to find intelligent life in the humans of District 12. Well, Peeta cannot find any humanity here, so he supposes it evens out.

Worst comes to worst when Clove takes a seat at the diner and holds her head. "Get me an aspirin." She orders him. "I've such a headache."

They gave one to Peeta when they tore out the flesh of his am. How curious that they take pills so carelessly here. Not even the Peacekeepers can afford to buy aspirin at home. He has memorised the kitchen, so that he'll not make a mistake and earn a beating out of the venomous career still sleeping. So far as first days, or mornings, go, this has been bearable.

When he returns, Clove looks dangerously pale. Her eyes are bloodshot and they roll around in their pink sockets, looking anywhere but Peeta, as if he evokes some kind of horrible memory, as if he cannot stand the sight of her.

"Thankyou." She says, dismissing him when he's done his job. Clove hates the way his eyes look or the way he stares at her, and worst of all, the past he unearths, of being owned, and commodified. How has Cato so easily forgotten when it still plagues her horribly?

She sways, again, and grips the side. "Peeta." She hisses, urgently. Within a minute, he's at her side. "Surplus, help me."

The helpless woman can barely hold herself up against the table's surface and looks so desperately at Peeta, expecting miracles, expecting knowledge from the Baker's son, and Peeta is reminded of his mother again because he cannot help. Useless Peeta, stupid, stupid by and she was right about him always, it just takes this to prove it. He flounders, doubling back to the hall. ~

"I should wake your husband." He says, afraid. "He'll be able to help you."

"No-" Clove's voice is just a whisper. She closes her eyes, and Peeta is scared that she might not open them so quickly if she continues like this. "Not Cato," She begs him. Not the husband she despises, because he is always looking at other beauties, other blondes but he never turns to Clove to say 'I only nee' because it's not her, it's never her, and it makes any love between them once afraid, petrified and stunted.

Peeta looks at her, exasperated. He looks back down the hall and shakes his head. "I'm so sorry." And he goes to leave her, just like that.

Clove stands up, shakily, after him, and starts to shout. "Don't you dare, Surplus, I'll have you dead!" love steadies herself against the doorframe. Her face has gone purple. She takes a fistful of Peeta's collar and shakes him, weakly.

"Sir?" He calls up, again and again, trying to rouse the huntsman to seek worthier prey, and his wife, and happy nights to happier days but none come too quick. Clove slaps him.

"You will not disobey me!" She screams. Her eyes go flush and her grip loosens. "You will not-" She gets no further. Her body softens and she completely falls, slack, into Peeta. Her eyes slip shut and she fades from consciousness.

A noise breaks from the silence of upstairs. Cato is awake.