It's my first real fight today. Nothing fancy, no weapons. Just bare hands.
I don't know my opponent. He's some sort of soldier, hand-picked by Coin to assess me. They pre-stocked my brain with fighting techniques, but no one has any idea how well I'll be able to carry them out.
That's what we're testing now.
The mat sinks and hisses under my bare feet. It's halfway between a foam and a gel, and it molds to the shape of my feet, sucking at my heels and toes. It's cold.
"Parameters?" I say to Beetee.
He looks at me over his glasses with his head tilted, seeming to deliberate. "Perform to the best of your ability," he says at last.
"But –" I cut off before frustration can seep into my voice, then start again. "But what is my objective?"
"Defeat your opponent. That's all I can tell you. Seeing as this is a preliminary assessment more than anything else, any more explicit instructions might adversely affect your performance." I must still look unsure, because he says, "Basically, we just need to see what you do, without us influencing your actions beforehand."
So, in other words, I'm on my own.
In a moment of uncertainty, my eyes find Peeta. He's on the sidelines, arms crossed, feet apart. He looks as uncomfortable as I feel. He should be here, next to Beetee, taking notes. Instead he was shuffled to the edge of the room by Jackson, a loud, crisp woman with a hard jaw and wispy brown hair stuffed up into a bun. His eyes meet mine and his expression snaps from one of brooding unease to false cheer. You'll do great, he mouths with a smile, but it's too late; I already saw the nerves behind his eyes.
The hiss of the mat pulls my attention back to my opponent, who has stepped forward. He's unzipped his navy-blue uniform down the front, knotting the sleeves around his waist, and it leaves only a gray tank top to cover his chest. His nametag is hidden in the folds of fabric, but I remember glancing at it as we approached the mat. Marvel Quaid, it read.
He's looking at me, and for a moment I hover between dropping my eyes and playing meek – the better to take him by surprise in the actual fight – and meeting his gaze head-on. I take the aggressive route, just to be safe, and lock eyes with him. My brain churns out descriptors automatically as we examine each other: male, lean, strong, tall, pallid, confident stance –
"Attention," Jackson barks. The soldier and I straighten and turn to watch her as she paces before the mat. "Today you will fight without weapons. Hand-to-hand combat only. You will remain within the borders of the mat. You will listen for my whistle." She touches a gleaming silver bar at the hollow of her throat. "One blast, you stop where you are. Three blasts, you disengage entirely and return to your start positions. Clear?"
"Clear," we echo back at her. Marvel's bark is a throaty tenor, bouncing off the distant concrete ceiling like the word itself wants to escape the gray walls. Either he's using volume to cover up nerves, or he's trying to intimidate me, or he's so confident in his abilities that he has no fear to begin with.
Jackson steps back and her arms fold at the elbows to overlap at the small of her back. Her chin lifts. "Begin."
I expect her to say more, so when my opponent darts at me, I'm caught off guard. But only for a moment. By the time his leg slices out to topple me, my body is already reacting. I dodge the strike, seize his upper arm before he can stop his own momentum and wrench his elbow back. He twists his arm away without so much as stumbling and swings an open palm at my cheek. Coin's colorless eyes flash through my mind and I flinch – but it was a feint; he shifts direction in a fraction of a second and my flinch carries me out of the way of a punch to the throat by a hair's breadth. I'm shaken, confused – of all the attacks and counters stored away in my mind, a slap isn't one of them – but my expression remains neutral as we separate, circle, asses.
I'm thinking too much. My head is a wasps' hive, droning with frenzied activity. I'm trying to think of every single attack and defense I know, and how I could apply them, and how he might apply them. The air is too thin, too cold in my throat, the foam too sticky under the bare arches of my feet.
He comes at me again. I shrink, freeze up, and two throbbing bruises open up at my ribs and cheek in quick succession. I didn't even see his fist come down. Peeta says something from the sidelines, but I can't make it out over a rush of blood and adrenaline in my ears. I'm aware of my knee hooking around his thigh and my hands shoving, hard, until he tumbles to his side. He's up again in no more than a moment, but it's enough time for me to ground myself. My body knows what to do, just as it knew how to speak and breathe and walk. I just need to shut off my frantic thoughts. If only I could flip a switch in my mind so easily.
I deflect a strike to the gut and sidestep a tackle, all the while grinding my teeth at the hot, rhythmic throb of fresh bruises. I've never suffered the initial pain of an intentional injury before, just the duller, stiffer aftermath. There's always been local anesthetic to shield me from the moment of impact, and now I'm bare and vulnerable without it. I don't know how to react to this. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I pull back into a defensive stance, leery of coming under his fist again.
In a flicker of motion he's before me again, so close I can smell the sour musk of his sweat, and this time I'm not prepared. His shoulder smashes directly into my solar plexus, the ground sweeps out from underneath my feet and my body flips over his shoulder like a ragdoll. Everything inside me flips, too – my stomach, my lungs, my very heart – and then my spine slams onto the mat. The back of my head follows a millisecond later and I swear I can feel my brain rebound off the inner walls of my skull. My ears ring with three short whistle blasts.
I can't move. I try to jackknife to my feet but all my body manages is a clumsy twitch before subsiding into prickling stiffness once more. And I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I try to inhale but it's like my lungs have shriveled up inside my chest and won't expand. My mouth opens in an airless gasp, and I can't inhale, can't exhale, can't do anything, and some part of me knows exactly what's happening but I panic, and I'm lying on my back, staring up at the white-hot lights of the ceiling and thinking, I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying, he killed me –
Air. Dry and cold but better than anything else I've ever felt. My breath and my movement return all at once and I roll to my feet with a gasp.
I don't mean to, but I look to Peeta first. He's several yards closer than I last saw him, and he cranes his neck to see between the heads of Dr. Abernathy and Cressida. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hands up as if holding him back. I look to Jackson next, meet her eyes and give a little nod in response to a quirk of eyebrows. She nods back. And then I face Marvel.
He's smiling.
I stop and stare at him. Why? Why is he smiling? Why is he looking at me like that?
And then I know. And blood rises hot in my cheeks. He's smiling because he knows. He saw my fear, smelled it, and now he knows. He knows I feel. He knows the terror I felt while I lay on the ground heaving in an attempt to breathe. He saw me flinch when he went to hit me.
Something in me teeters and falls, and all at once the chill of fear is swept away by something thick and molten-hot. He – he – he knew, and he did it anyway, he – no. Not anyway. Because. He did it to upset me. Purposefully. And I –
Why? Why would he do that? Why is he smiling?
Because he enjoys seeing me vulnerable. That's why. I can see it. He stood there and watched while I twitched on the ground like the shiny beetles Beetee keeps in little glass boxes to experiment on. He stood there, and watched, and smiled.
My chest rises and falls, rapidly, speeding to match the hard squeeze in my chest. I'm not scared anymore. I'm too full of this new thing to find any place for fear. I'm angry. I want to – to – I don't know. Hit things, rip things. I want him to hurt. I want him to feel all the pain and fear and helplessness that I did. And something darker, more instinctual inside me, whispers that I want him to bleed.
"Ready," Jackson calls, and we sink further into our centers of gravity. "Begin."
There's a heartbeat of silence, of stillness, as we take each other in. Me, small and blank-faced and panting, and him, standing alert and not bothering to hide a smirk. His eyes are cold. Cold like Coin's, cold like Seneca's. And I hate it, I hate him, I hate him –
He catches my fist easily, smirk opening up into a mocking grin.
"Oho," he says, "Tiger, ti–"
The crunch of my heel against his jaw garbles the word, and then he's too busy deflecting a swipe of nails at his eyes to finish it. I lash out, snap my teeth at his ear when he gets too close, push him into a corner of the mat. I don't care about correct stances or moves or counter-moves anymore. I don't even care about shielding myself from pain anymore. I have one goal, and every part of my body, organic and synthetic alike, strains towards it.
He pushes back, abruptly, and in trying to attack at the same time I end up twisting our arms together. His hand clamps down around my wrist, locking us together, and while I struggle to twist away he leans close – close enough that I cringe, even with all the hot, rich blood pounding through me – and mutters, "So you want to make this fun, huh? Okay. We'll have some fun."
"This is not a conversation," I inform him, and then bring my knee up in a swift arc into his groin. A cheap trick, maybe, but an effective one; his grip gives way, but not before he snarls a hand into my braid and uses his full weight to yank me down with him. My eyes water and I stumble to my feet, drawing back instinctually. He's taunting me again, saying something about me crying, and then the heel of my hand is driving into his nose with a crackle and a dribble of thick, dark liquid.
He's not smiling anymore.
Blood runs over his lips and down his throat in a shining path, and he smears it across his face and hand both when he swipes at it. The scent reaches me a moment later: bright and warm and metallic. My lips part to taste it on the air.
I feign uncertainty as he heaves himself to his feet with a wince, but he isn't standing for long. Before he can react I sprint across the mat in a muscle-wrenching surge and launch myself at him. The trajectory of my jump sends me crashing onto his shoulders – he stumbles, cursing – my legs lock around his torso and I wrench my weight sideways to further unbalance him. Once again we topple together, but this time I have the upper hand. This time, I make sure his head takes the worst of the fall. That's for pulling my hair, I think, and roll to my feet.
I've fallen into something between muscle memory and instinct. The world has narrowed, constricting into a pinprick until all I know is slickness of sweat and the thump of blood in my ears and the hot burst of pain over my fist as I hit him, again, again, again. There's a savage kind of delight in the motions, in the ache of muscles, in the sight of my prey weakening before me. The same savage delight that touched me when I first knew my own strength. It courses through me now as I jump again, light and agile, and deliver a powerful kick to his chest with both feet. The force of my kick throws him to the edge of the mat and me onto the floor, where I land on my shoulders and jackknife to my feet again. He charges at me, slips past a defensive kick, hooks an arm around my middle and yanks me backwards. I twist my arms back, wrap them around his shoulders and use him as leverage to kick myself into a horizontal position. Then I bring my legs down, hard, and flip him onto the mat in front of me. I still have a firm grasp of one of his arms, so dislocating his shoulder is a simple matter of throwing my weight back as momentum takes him forward.
I feel the grating shift of bones under my hands as the joint pops out of place. A hollow gasp sucks past Marvel's lips and his eyes burn with fury as well as pain. Sometime after he lost his smile – I don't know when exactly – his scent changed. Now the smell of his sweat is stronger, and mixed with the coppery tang of blood, and tinged with something else. Something faint but pungent. That savage, animal part of me knows what it is before the rest of me does. He stinks of fear.
I'm not exactly sure how it happens, but all at once it's over. My prey – no, my opponent – is sprawled before me, no longer fighting, no longer doing anything. I wait, in case it's a trap, but he doesn't appear to be planning on getting back up.
I did it!
I give a little hop, giddy with triumph, and spin to face the small group of spectators. I have to bury my grin, but I'm sure my proud posture and bright eyes say it all.
But there are no words of praise to greet me. No nods, no enthusiastic reviews of my performance. Not even a smile. Jackson's skin has gone sallow and her hand is fisted around the silver whistle. Dr. Abernathy's palm veils the lower half of his face. I look to Peeta for a clue, a sign, any hint of what I did wrong, but he's not looking at me. It's like he can't look at me. His face is just as pale as Jackson's and his eyes are on the floor, but he keeps glancing at my downed opponent. My stomach twists. Did I do that badly?
I look back at Marvel. I frown. He still hasn't gotten up. Shouldn't he have, by now? I think I remember a snap, deep and thick and final, just before he went down. And his neck isn't right. It's warped, distorted into an angle it shouldn't be, and his head is facing the wrong way for how the rest of him is lying.
All right. So I broke him. Maybe I wasn't supposed to do that. But it can't be that bad, can it? Dr. Everdeen can fix it.
"I passed the test, didn't I?" I probe. They all avoid my eyes. "I did what you told me to. I defeated my opponent." The words seem too small, too weak in this huge space, like maybe they won't even reach the ears of the people standing just fifteen feet from me. I step off the mat, towards them, and both Cressida and Jackson flinch.
No one's answering me. Why isn't anyone answering me? What did I do wrong?
"Evidently," Beetee finally says, more to Peeta and the others than to me, "I should have been more careful to make a distinction between 'defeat' and 'kill' in my instructions."
Like all new concepts, this one takes me a few moments to process, and once I do I'm almost certain I'm going to vomit again. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't think… I didn't mean… No.
I take a few more steps forward, away from Marvel, and Jackson slips past me to press the pads of her fingers into his throat, and then his wrist. Then she lifts her face and gives her head a slight shake.
I look back to the group. I'm only just beginning to grasp the meaning of what I did, and my eyes flit from one face to another for reassurance. I didn't mean to. They have to know that. Did I even pass the test? Did I even do that?
"Kid," Dr. Abernathy says at last. He flaps a hand when I turn to him, beckoning me towards the elevator.
I look at Peeta again, but he's gripping his tablet hard enough to crack it, staring down at it instead of meeting my gaze.
I go with Haymitch.
It's a relief, in some ways, to escape that huge, echoing room. The elevator is marginally warmer, and small enough that I can take in all four corners at a glance. And if Haymitch is regarding me with an expression I can't identify, well, at least the scrutiny of one is better than the horror of many.
I thumb the stop button before we reach level six.
"Dr. Abernathy –"
"Haymitch'll do."
"Haymitch," I concede, "Was my performance unsatisfactory?"
He finally gives up staring at me to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and pinch it over his nose. "On the contrary, Sweetheart. You're wicked-fast, strong as hell and smart enough to know just where to hit a man to kill 'im within seconds."
I consider this. The way Haymitch says it, it seems like what I did was a positive outcome. But the gray faces of my observers – and the icy, sinking feeling somewhere below my stomach – tell me otherwise.
"Evidentially that's why you all looked so very pleased with me," I intone.
"Well, what do you know, she does have a sense of humor." Haymitch chuckles roughly and stuffs the handkerchief back in his pocket.
"I don't understand."
He leans back to regard me through his bangs. "It's because you scared the shit outta them, kid. They saw what an efficient killing machine they had created and feared for their mortal souls. Kinda late in the game for that, if you ask me, but there you have it."
I choose to ignore the implications within that statement, though I inwardly squirm, instead focusing on the issue at hand. "So you're saying I performed… too well."
"That's about the long and short of it."
I turn towards the elevator doors to absorb this, and then give a short nod. I hit the button again and our upward motion continues.
The doors open and I'm just about to head back to Beetee's lab to wait for him when Haymitch sets a hand on my shoulder. "Look. I honestly don't know what the hell goes on up there –" he gestures to my forehead – "but don't blame yourself for that."
I nod blankly, and though a grimace of guilt nearly breaks through the mask, my voice is empty and robotic when I say, "Beetee's instructions were unclear."
He gives a nod of agreement, then squeezes my shoulder. "Just let's – let's try not to kill anyone else, yeah? That one –" he jerks a thumb in the direction of the elevator – "that one's on us. The whole no-murdering thing should have been a rule from the beginning. You didn't know."
I let my head twist away, avoiding his gaze as I swallow down bile. "I didn't know. I didn't think he'd break so easily."
Haymitch's hand finally lifts from my shoulder and he steps back into the elevator. "Yeah, well, us humans can be pretty fragile. Like I said, let's just try not to repeat this whole adventure."
I wait until after the doors close to look down at my hands. The creases are stained rusty red. I spit into my palms and rub them together, furiously, but all it does is spread the stain.
My combat skills are never nearly as advanced as they were that first day. The exact reason remains a subject of debate among the members of the Project Mockingjay team.
I allow myself to be punched when I could have dodged; I miss a mark or two; I land a back flip sloppily. I intentionally slip up every once in a while in the hopes that the team will count that first fight as a fluke. And, after a while, they do. They blame Marvel, saying that he was distracted that morning and shouldn't have underestimated me, and they blame Beetee, for his vague instructions.
But I know. I know that I carry the blame for that man's death. And I'm reminded of it, every time one of Coin's soldiers steps onto the mat with a glint of fear already in their eyes. Beetee always makes sure to rope me in with a laundry list of restrictions and instructions, now, but that doesn't seem to ease anyone's nerves. They still keep their newfound distance; they still won't touch me unless absolutely necessary.
All except Peeta, and Primrose, and Gloss. Gloss has no qualms about getting within arm's reach as he swabs down a spot on my side, preparing it for a shot of local anesthetic and then a mild electric shock. He flicks off the plastic cap, revealing the wire-thin needle, and though it's a familiar sight I still have to fight not to squirm.
"Not this time."
He pauses with uplifted eyebrows. "What?"
I swallow. "If I'm to improve my combat skills I need to acclimate myself to pain. My previous performance suffered because I was unused to the sensation."
I neither need nor want to improve my combat skills, but Gloss accepts this explanation without comment. I wrap my fingers around the arms of the reclined chair, readying myself. Maybe this will be enough to make up for what I did. And if not, maybe it can at least distract me from it.
Never again, I decide, while Dr. Gloss sets aside the unused syringe. I'll never kill again. Never, because I may not know much about death, but I know what it is, and what I took from that young guard without even meaning to or realizing it. And because I never want Peeta to look at me like that again.
I slept on the metal table that night, not even protesting when Beetee hooked me up to an IV that kept me unconscious until morning. Because if Peeta couldn't even look at me, how could he possibly sleep while I was there beside him? Me, the… How did Haymitch say it? "Effective killing machine." Of course he wouldn't want me near him, let alone sleeping in his bed.
That goes on for three days, each worse than the last, until Peeta finally pulls me aside after a test.
"Why are you avoiding me?" he asks, cornering me in the lab before Beetee returns from the restroom.
I keep my head down and my hands visible – in order to appear as least threatening as possible – so I can't see his reaction when I reply, "You appeared upset after my first combat assessment. I wanted to avoid upsetting you further."
I swear I hear his breath hitch, just slightly, before his hand lifts to scrub at his face. I want so badly to look up, to meet his eyes, but – No. Eye contact can be interpreted as a sign of aggression. So I keep my eyes down, and my head bent, and my hands folded loosely at my stomach. I won't hurt you, I say with my body. Please. I didn't mean to. Please don't be afraid.
Effective killing machine.
I'm sorry.
Not designed for emotional experience. Incapable of sympathy or mercy.
I won't hurt you.
Machine. Object.
I don't want to hurt you.
Thing.
I become, as the seconds pass, acutely aware of the two natures inside me, one cool and knowledgeable and methodical and the other near-feral and pulsing with distress. They go around and around, blending into one and then shattering into two again, one churning out calm accusations and the other sobbing your mate hates you, your mate hates you, your mate fears you and he should, he should fear you because you're dangerous, fear, fear hate fear don't show it don't show it or they'll know – And suddenly it's so loud in the silence of my own skull that I want to beat at my temples with the heels of my hands and fold myself into a lump on the floor and scream shut up, shut up, shut –!
"It wasn't your fault."
My eyes flash up in surprise, meeting his for the first time in days. My ears ring with the silence, and there's an itching kind of heat behind my eyes and in my nose. There's something pushing its way up my throat and into my face, and I don't know what it is but I can't risk Peeta seeing it, so I turn away to wipe down the spotless counter. Ripples of blue light bloom under the sanitation rag, spreading as the interactive countertop comes to life. My throat feels wrong – tight and gummy – and I don't want to risk speaking in case my voice gives away the malfunction.
I startle at the touch of a palm between my shoulder blades. My body and half of my mind strain towards it, all but demanding comfort, but the other half holds me back.
"Are you afraid of me?" I say. My voice comes out reedy and strange.
"What?"
I turn to face him and take a step closer, watching for the slightest flinch, the smallest dilation of his pupils. "Are you afraid of me?"
The tightness in my throat has turned to an ache, and it takes everything in me to stop myself from burrowing into his chest as I did that first day, but I won't. Not unless I know he wants me there.
"Katniss." His eyes crinkle with worry. He takes a step of his own, tilting his head down to look me in the eyes, and his hands hover just over my waist. "No. Of course not."
This time I can't stop myself. I press myself against him tight enough that I can feel his heartbeat through my palms. My face nestles into the curve of his neck – a safe little nook where I can hide my blood-pink cheeks and expel my uneven breaths. He's solid and warm and, oh, I missed him in these past few days. I wonder, fleetingly, if he missed me too, but all at once another surge of instinct takes hold of me and I arch up onto my toes. I push my cheek along his jaw with closed eyes, draw back, gently butt my forehead against his chin, and start again on the other side. I'm only vaguely aware of what I'm doing, caught up in the warmth and the smell of him and the comfort of skin-on-skin as I am, but something in the back of my mind recites, scent-marking: the act of depositing a pheromone, or "scent mark," often used by mammals to identify territory, offspring or mates.
Humans don't have scent glands the way other mammals do, and I know that, but it feels too right to stop. I shouldn't be nuzzling against him like this, or even allowing him to hold me – Beetee could return any second – but I've been so starved for affection in the past few days that I can't help but knot my hands at the small of his back and release a satisfied whimper. And plus, if his little hums of approval and the way his arms tighten around me in turn are anything to go by, he doesn't exactly mind.
"Katniss," he says again, and I pause long enough to lift my eyes to his. His face is bone-pale in the dim light of the lab, and the faint blue glow of the countertop turns his hair from sunny gold to cobalt on one side of his head. I reach up to slide a curl between two fingers, as if I could feel the color on my fingertips. His eyes close at my touch. His throat constricts in a swallow. "I…"
After all the glass and metal and plastic of level six, his hair is the softest thing I've touched in three days. I don't want to move my hand away. I want to keep it there and go back to rubbing my cheek against his. I want to touch our foreheads together. I want to touch mouths. Kiss – that's the word. It's been weeks since I allowed myself to even consider it. Nearly my whole life. I remember standing in the middle of the weaponry floor, just after talking to Pollux for the first time, and turning to find myself face-to-face with Peeta. I wanted to kiss him then, too. It seems so long ago. That was back when the curious, warm ache in my ribs had just barely started – the ache that I've tried my best to ignore, despite how strong it's grown since.
Peeta lifts his own hand to fold his fingers around mine – briefly – and then lets go, abruptly, as if remembering himself. For a moment his expression clouds, but then he takes a step back and meets my frown of confusion with a smile.
"I want to show you something."
I have to wait four hours, through weapons training and a dance lesson with Effie, before I can meet Peeta in our room. He still hasn't told me what it is that he wants to show me, and it's been all I can think about through the afternoon.
He greets me with a grin when I get through the door. In his hands are two dinner trays, and a blanket from the bed is draped over one shoulder like a very long, bulky scarf.
"So," I prod, "What are we doing?"
Instead of answering, he hands me one of the trays, then links our unoccupied hands – slowly, with his eyes locked on mine, as if asking permission. Though I don't know why he'd ask permission now. He's taken my hand before, usually to lead me through a crowd in the rare times we visit level four.
"Shall we?"
He leads me out into the hallway and to the elevator, where he covers my eyes so I can't see what button he pushes. We begin to ascend. My eyes lift to the softly glowing ceiling, as if I could see through it to our destination. I've never been above level twelve before. Actually, I'm not entirely sure how many floors there are in this building. The elevator has fourteen listed, but that doesn't necessarily mean there are fourteen floors only. There could be more above, or below – floors that can only be accessed by certain personnel. This is a government-run building, after all. I wouldn't put it past them.
"I couldn't find a basket," Peeta says with an apologetic shrug, pulling me out of my thoughts. "But I got a blanket, at least."
I have no idea how those two things could possibly be related, but he looks so eager that I can't help but feel an answering thrill of excitement.
The elevator is still moving. I watch the display above the doors tick from thirteen to fourteen to –
We stop. Part of me is disappointed. I almost wanted to keep rising forever. Endless floors to discover, to explore, and perhaps even beyond – perhaps the elevator would slip through the roof and rise in a bronze column into the sky.
Even before the doors are fully open I'm aware of the difference. The light is brighter, more piercing; the air gushes in through the widening crack in the doors, warm and flowing and saturated with a thousand smells. Warm concrete, green growth, flowers, metal. It smells like the open window. It smells like outside.
I'm moving forward before my eyes can adjust to the brightness, even before the doors are entirely open. I barely register Peeta's fingers slipping away from mine and the tray lifting from my other hand. It's bright, so bright, but I'm aware of the flow of air all around me and the delicious warmth of sunlight and an openness, a vast emptiness unlike anything I've ever known. My eyes lift far before they've adjusted, and though the light stings and causes moisture to pool, I don't look away. I've never seen so much of anything. So much blue, so much space… I keep straining to find the ceiling, the ending, but there just isn't one. The only thing to break the impossible plane of emptiness is the occasional trailing mass of bright-white. Clouds, my mind murmurs.
I'm outside. I'm out of the building. I'm out.
The soles of my feet touch down on something that isn't concrete or carpet or tile. Something much softer. I drop my watering eyes and the world shifts hues from blue to green. Deep, rich green. I reach for the color with both hands, ending up on my knees, and comb my fingers through the… grass, my mind identifies. It's spongy and deep and sun-warmed, and at least part of that wonderful green-growth smell is rising from it in waves. I rock forward with a small moan, breathing in as much of it as I can with my face inches from the ground and my fingers knotted in the long blades. When I rise, my vision has cleared enough for me to properly take in my surroundings.
It's a garden. Elegant and immaculately landscaped and at least twice as large as the entire weapons development room. It must take up the entire roof.
The roof. I'm on the roof. A jolt of both elation and disappointment runs through me. I'm outside, yes, but I am still confined to the building.
But my disappointment lasts only for a moment. Then I'm standing, head swinging this way and that, dizzy with the flood of new information to take in. I pace first one way, then another on indecisive feet, then –
Wait.
I look back at Peeta, pausing when I catch sight of the sadness in his eyes. There's a smile on his lips, though, and his head bobs in a go ahead gesture, and with that there's nothing left holding me back. I turn and plunge into the garden.
The space near the center of the roof, where the elevator comes up, is mostly open lawns, but that's not what I'm interested in. I've already seen the grass, already felt it. I head farther out, where the ground is terraced into several half-levels and the space dissolves into a maze of painted planter boxes and gauzy screens and roses climbing trellises and low, artistically curved brick walls. Glass stairs spiral upwards, providing access to the lofted sitting areas. Flower pots of all sizes, both standing and hanging, spill over with frothy blossoms. Sheets of water, smooth as glass, shoot from slots in a rough-stone fountain. Behind the waterfall, a shallow pool ripples with golden-orange shadows. Fish. I want to stop and try to catch one in my hands, but there's too much else to see, so I settle for dragging a finger through the plane of crystalline water as I pass. I follow swirling pebble-paths through countless little alcoves of vine curtains and rose-tangled archways and fountains and, here and there, real little trees in pots twice as wide as I am tall.
And then, all at once, the maze ends and the space opens up into grass again. There are some yards of grass, some plastic-covered and labeled planters, hanging silver tubes that chime and tinkle in the breeze, a waist-high wall, and then nothing. I've reached the edge of the roof.
I approach the wall on halting legs. The sky is making me dizzy enough; I'm not quite sure what will happen when I look over the edge. Still, I have to see.
The tips of other buildings rise into view, first, and it nearly stops me short. Entire other buildings, as big as this one or even bigger. They may as well be whole other planets. This building has always been my entire world. All that there is. And now I'm gazing out at countless more. My gaze follows the shining windows down, down, down, and suddenly I'm looking at the streets hundreds of feet below. Tiny colorful beetles – cars – swarm between the buildings in geometric patterns, and even tinier smudges move around and between them. I guess those must be people. More people than I've ever seen in one place, even on level four. More people than I ever knew existed. The motion and distance is so overwhelming that I have to step back from the wall.
My gaze traces back up the shining spires. They glisten and wink in the slanting light, one side of each heavily shadowed while the other glares bright gold. Of course – the sun must be setting. I knew it was evening, but in my excitement I had forgotten. I spin on a heel and immediately throw a hand up to block the light. Even then the sun glows through the flesh of my fingers, turning the edges molten orange and spilling out around my palm. I've never seen a flame, save for the tiny, blue thing that licks at the glass of the Bunsen burner in Beetee's lab, but I swear the sky is aflame.
The sun sets in the west, the calm part of me pipes up. It's oddly comforting, knowing which direction I'm facing. The elevator is west. The city, behind me, is east. To the south, in the far corner, is a curious patch of deeper-green grass, little flowers, two rectangular gray blocks and the largest tree I've seen yet – a willow. And, approaching from the northwest, is Peeta. He must have gone around the gardens to meet me here, at the edge.
"It's so…" I say when he's near enough. "Big."
"What?"
"Everything."
There it is again – that strange expression on his face. That sad smile. "Yeah," he mumbles, but he isn't looking out at the city. He's still looking at me. And all at once I feel like I'm standing before the mirrors in Cinna's workroom again. Like he's looking through my eyes and into my mind again.
"Want to find a place to sit down and eat?" he says, and the moment slips away in the breeze.
It takes us a while to settle anywhere, because to me every prospective location is worth thorough examination and consideration, but we finally end up near the southeast corner. Peeta spreads the blanket on the grass, just at the edge of the maze-like garden, and puts our dinner trays down in the middle of it. He throws his hands up in mock-exasperation when I tell him I'd rather sit on the grass than on the blanket, so in retaliation I sprawl over as much of the blanket as possible, leaving only a small corner for him. He squeezes himself onto the corner and pretends to pout. I throw a noodle at him. We end up side-by-side, him on the blanket and me with one leg stretched out in the grass, trays balanced on our knees.
The sun falls as we eat. Our shadows crawl over the edge of the blanket and towards the wall. I watch the sky turn from blue to violet to indigo. The air turns cool, but I refuse to go back inside when Peeta asks. He holds out his arms when he sees me shiver and I crawl into his lap. I don't want to leave. Maybe I can even spend the night here. I could curl up on one of those cushioned benches, or that hammock I didn't try because I got distracted by an insect, or even just here on the grass. After drinking in the unending sky for so long, I don't know if I could breathe again under a ceiling, let alone sleep.
"Just about everything up here is genetically enhanced in some way," Peeta is saying. "That's why the garden is here. It's all one big experiment. Or, really, a lot of little experiments. Those –" he points to the covered and marked planter boxes near the wall. "Those are some seedlings they're working on down on level eleven. Berries, I think. Poison ones. They plan on planting them in the wilderness between here and the rebel troops." He stops rather abruptly. I've never heard Peeta talk about the war before. Beetee mentioned it once or twice, and the weapons team brings it up sometimes, but their answers are always vague. I wait for him to go on, but instead of saying anything more about the war he just says, "You're hair's all tangled."
He's right. I took my braid down sometime before we ate, because I wanted to see what it would feel like to let the wind blow my hair around my shoulders, and now it hangs down my back in a tousled mass.
One of Peeta's hands goes to the crown of my skull, then slips down the length of my hair, all the way from head to tailbone. It's a comforting sensation, and one I'm familiar with. Often, before we go to sleep, he'll smooth down my hair as he just did before flopping down onto his pillow with a tired groan.
But this time he doesn't stop there. He repositions me slightly, so I'm sitting facing away from him, my crossed legs resting atop his, and slides both of his hands up my neck and into my hair. His fingertips push up, past my ears and towards the top of my head, and then pull down. His pinky catches, first, and he pauses to work through the tangle before it can tug on my scalp. The motion of his hands on my head – the slight, constant tugging at my hair – sends pleasant, ticklish shivers running down my neck and through the rest of my body. Once that knot has been unraveled, Peeta continues to drag his fingers through my hair until he encounters another one. One by one, he works through the knots. I've been watching the sky darken, but now my eyes slip closed. His attentions have fallen into a delicious pattern: fingertips drag along my scalp, down my neck, down my shoulders and back until a small tug halts them. Then one warm palm presses firmly into the sheet of my hair just above the tangle, so it won't pull at my scalp as he works it loose. Then, once he's done, his hand lifts and returns to my part, where the pattern begins again.
Once he's located and carefully worked through every tangle, his fingers begin combing down the length of my hair in long, slow, smooth strokes, one after the other. Just as one hand slides past the feathery tips of my hair, the other starts at my scalp again. It's a constant waterfall of sensation, and one that has me inexplicably and dangerously close to panting. Since the prep team came in on that first day, no one has combed my hair except myself, and certainly not with their bare hands. And really, this doesn't even compare. When Octavia brushed and braided my hair, it was rough, businesslike. This is nothing like that. Peeta takes his time, combing and smoothing and arranging my hair with obvious care. He doesn't even need to be combing my hair anymore, really. The tangles are out. And yet he doesn't stop.
Not that I'm complaining. I don't want him to stop. It feels wonderful, and moreover, that feeling is back. The strange, needy, base-instinct, itching-to-move ache that I've only ever felt a small handful of times. Once again I'm haunted by indistinct yet powerful impressions. The immediate warmth of skin-to-skin contact. Deep, heaving breaths. The ache settles low in my belly, nearly between my legs, and turns thick and sweet. My temperature has risen; I'm no longer cold, though the chill of the breeze hasn't abated.
And still, Peeta's hands keep moving. He isn't just combing anymore. He tugs lightly at sections of hair, massages his fingertips across every inch of my scalp, traces the shell of one ear with a thumb, braids and unbraids and starts again. I'm shivering, by now, but it has nothing to do with the temperature. It's when he gently scratches his nails down the base of my skull and the back of my neck that my lips part involuntarily. His nails trace slow circles over the bare skin of my shoulders, then brush over my tank top until they reach the hem. And then his fingers have slipped under the fabric, just slightly, fingernails running over the skin of my lower back from hip to hip. My spine arches with a deep shudder and something at the apex of my thighs gives a warm, damp throb. My breath catches, and without knowing why I think, yes, but then his fingers trace back up and he starts kneading the tension out of my neck.
He doesn't touch my anywhere below the shoulders again, but it's too late. Whatever happened when his touch strayed near my tailbone doesn't go away. In fact, it only grows stronger. The ache has manifested itself low in the cradle of my hips, and there it stays, pulsing with my heartbeat and sending out little tendrils that take up root in my chest until my breasts feel heavy and tender and strange, the tips taut as they would be when exposed to cold air. The flesh between my thighs is slick and hot.
It's a bit uncomfortable, but not bad, per se, so I decide not to be concerned about it. I'm not malfunctioning; this is supposed to happen. I know that. I don't know how I know, but somehow I do. I can tell. There's an urgency there. A want – no, a need, not unlike the times when my body needs food or sleep or water. I can't identify what it's trying to tell me now, though.
And then suddenly, I do. My mind fits together the symptoms like puzzle pieces and calmly informs me, You're aroused.
My eyes open in surprise, as if someone had spoken the words aloud. There's no denying it, now that I've put together the pieces. My body is shivering, squirming, all but crawling out of its own skin with the urge to mate, and Peeta's gentle, innocent touches are the cause. The idea is startling, at first. I never considered mating with Peeta – or did I? Maybe not consciously, but isn't that what my body has been all but straining towards nearly every time we're this close? In fact, didn't the Mockingjay team predict it when I sought out his bed? This ache, though separate from the one that has spilled from between my ribs since my second day alive, drives me to him just as the first does. But while the first ache craves conversation and affection and closeness, this one craves something much more primal.
But Peeta couldn't want me. I have to remember that. It's no use allowing myself to get worked up like this. I'm a synth. A thing, not a person. Peeta cares for me, but surely the idea of so much as kissing me would disgust him.
My emotions have taken a sharp turn, and I can feel them bubbling up my throat. They've become so unpredictable, lately. Unstable, like fizzing chemicals locked in a glass tube much too small to contain their reaction. I can't let them out as a sob or a moan, so instead I stare up at the first pinpricks of light against the deep-blue sky and begin to sing.
I've taken to singing quite often, recently, when Beetee isn't near. At first it was with Primrose. She's been teaching me songs line-by-line, singing them to me and having me repeat them back to her as she checks my pulse or blood sugar. My voice, after a few weeks of practice, has smoothed, and I can match nearly all of her notes. Now, as Peeta's hands go still against my neck, I find myself quietly singing one of her tunes. The song is, she tells me, about a young woman walking through the forest and coming upon the remains of what was once a home. Or, at least, that's how she imagines it. It's about fire, and a war, and a sunset. The lyrics are sad, though they promise safety and comfort, and I can't help but wonder if the speaker truly believes that the listener will be all right come morning, or simply beyond harm.
We're both silent for several moments after the song ends, and then Peeta interrupts the distant drone of traffic by saying, "I've never heard you sing before."
No, I suppose he hasn't. I hadn't realized.
We sit in silence for a few moments more until a cricket draws my attention towards the nearest corner of the roof. I gesture to the two little gray-ish rectangles under the willow's draping canopy.
"What are those?"
"Oh." He begins picking at the grass. "That's where the others are buried."
"Others?" I say, while I think, Buried?
"FXFC-5 and LVNA-9."
I stare at the two little gray blocks until my vision tunnels. I knew they existed. I knew they died. But I didn't know they were buried, let alone here, just yards from where I sit. I always imagined the Project Mockingjay team taking samples of the half-formed bodies and then shoving the rest into plastic bags and down a garbage chute. Seeing the physical location of their remains shifts something inside of me. Before, they were concepts; names only. Now they're so much more real.
"Tell me about them."
Peeta expels a breath. "Well. FXFC-5 was first. The team had just started working on her when I was apprenticed. You know how that all works, right?"
"Not really."
"Oh. Well, basically, when you're around thirteen you start training as an apprentice. Usually kids are apprenticed to their parents –"
"Like Primrose," I guess.
"Right."
"Not you?"
"I have two older brothers. They were both apprenticed at the bakery where my parents worked, and there wasn't really room for one more, so… Well, here I am. My dad knew Beetee in school, so when my mom decided I needed to go somewhere else, he made a few phone calls. Really, I'm lucky. I could have been stuck with a sanitation job or something."
"Did you ever see them again?"
"My family? Yeah, a few times. They moved away from the city just before the war started, though, and after that inter-district civilian travel was restricted pretty badly."
I twist in his lap to look back at him. "Do you miss them?"
"Sometimes. Not as much now as when I first got here, though. You know, I actually joined the project just in time. Government facilities like this closed their doors to just about anyone around the same time that travel shut down – even apprentices, unless they were the kid of someone already in the facility. And then Project Mockingjay got off the ground just a few months after Beetee agreed to take me."
"So you've been working on the project since you got here?"
"Pretty much." He nods, gazing off at the rainbow shifting, winking of city lights as if seeing something entirely different. "Anyway. Got off on a little tangent, there, uh… Oh, right. So, Foxy. We called her Foxy. She was the first Mockingjay. She was more synthetic, percentage-wise. About seventy-five percent." He looks down at me and aims a playful poke at my side. "You're about fifty-fifty."
"I know."
"Right."
"What was she like?" He frowns slightly and I rephrase, "Did she look like me?"
"No. At least, she wouldn't have. She died before her systems could fuse, but her hair would have been kind of orangey-red, and her eyes would have been tilted up a bit. That's why she got her nickname."
He goes quiet. I don't want to push him – talking about it obviously upsets him, to some degree – but if I can claim any kind of family at all, it's the two failed experiments in that miniature graveyard. I have to know more about them. Who they would have been. Why they didn't get a chance to be.
"LVNA-9?" I prompt quietly.
Peeta's lips curve up. "Lavinia. She was mainly organic, with minimal synthetic reinforcements. We actually got to see what she looked like. Her hair was red, too, but dark red. Like cherries, or blood. She would have been a real beauty." He pulls up another fistful of grass and scatters it to the wind. "She almost made it. There were just a couple months left before she was scheduled to be initialized, and then, all at once… Gone. There was an unforeseen complication in the splices of her brain. It happened so fast we didn't even get –" His voice breaks and I roll onto my knees before him, reaching out to cover his mouth, but he speaks against my fingertips. "We didn't even get to try to save her. By the time we got there it was too late."
Staring at the distant headstones, I feel a trembling stab of pity for my fallen predecessors, dead before they ever opened their eyes. I wonder if they were aware at all. I wonder if I was. I try to push further back in my memory, before the coldness and brightness and noise, searching for any fragment of memory. The sensation of floating, maybe, or the whir and thump of the machines keeping my various body parts alive. But there's nothing. I am glad, I think. It would have been worse if they were aware. This way, the half-formed bodies in those graves were nothing but empty vessels.
And then a chilling thought creeps through me. "They… You said they both died before they were initialized."
"Right." He pushes down my hand and expels a long breath. "They were never awake."
"Did they die in the gestation chamber?"
He glances at me, puzzled. "Yes."
"The same gestation chamber?"
"Yes."
"My gestation chamber?"
"Yes," he says for a third time.
I close my eyes, feeling sick, and the dark gleam of the chamber flashes behind my eyelids. It's no wonder I've always hated it. It leeched the life out of my sisters. Now it waits for me.
A hand lights on my shoulder, and when I open my eyes Peeta is already looking at me. His hand flexes. "I'm really glad you're here, Katniss."
"Me, too. Thank you for showing it to me."
"No, not – not the roof. I mean, I'm glad you got to see it, yeah, but I meant – I meant alive. When the others died, it was… bad. I was always so afraid we'd lose you too."
"You slept beside the chamber," I recall.
His head drops as he chuckles. "Beetee told you about that, huh? Yeah, I did. I wanted to be there, just in case." His palm slips down my arm and for the second time today he takes my hand. "I used to lie awake for hours. I barely got any sleep."
"Why?" For some reason, it comes out a whisper.
"I was listening. Watching your vital stats. Sometimes I'd dream that the alarms went off and I'd jerk awake only to find that you were fine. That's why I couldn't sleep in my room. My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm okay once I realize you're here."
I frown, picking up on the use of present tense. "Do you still have nightmares?"
"Oh, yeah. If anything they're worse. Before, you were just - you know. A twitching body suspended in gallons of synthetic amniotic fluid. You weren't you yet. And now…" He gathers up my other hand and holds them both between us. "Now you're a person, with likes and interests and dreams and emotions –"
I snap both of my hands away. "Inaccurate. I was not designed for emotional experience."
His expression shifts from one of uncertainty to something akin to wonder. "You do, don't you?"
No. No, he can't know.
I can feel my heartbeat in my entire body. For the first time in my life, Peeta's proximity is no longer a source of comfort, but a threat. The hands that only seconds ago cradled my own now reach for me again, but now I shrink from them as I would a blade.
"I was not designed for emotional experience."
He looks at me, head tilted slightly, as if considering me. "No, you weren't. But I think maybe you do anyway."
My lungs jerk inside my chest and my skin shivers with a cold sweat and every single thing I've pushed down since my first moments is frothing, roiling, hissing, trying to get out, but I can't, I can't let it out, I can't show it, I can't –
"I was not designed for emotional experience."
"Katniss, it's okay. It's okay if you do."
No. No, no, no.
"I was not –" My voice breaks hideously and the emotions surge through the crack, building just behind my mask until the pressure hurts too much to contain. "I wasn't –"
He's still looking at me with the same expression, as if I confirmed his statement instead of denying it, and the oxygen in my lungs is suddenly not enough to supply my brain. I go lightheaded.
No, no, no no nonononono –
Somehow I'm on my feet, moving, but my legs are wooden clubs and my vision warps and blurs until I'm as good as blind. The hard pound of my heels against the ground rattles the ringing from my ears, allowing me to hear the rasping wheeze that scrapes through my throat. "I'm malfunctioning, I'm malfunctioning, I'm –"
There's a sharp, tearing pain in my calf, and then my arms slam into the ground. My body twists into itself in a last desperate act of self-preservation, and I pitch back and forth in time with gasps of, "They'll kill me, they'll kill me, they're going to cut me open, they're going to kill me…"
Something touches me. I scream. It wraps around me, restricting my movements, and I fight back. I writhe, kick, wail. I want to live. I want to live. I will not let them take me now. But too soon fatigue burns through my muscles, amplified by the emotions that pour from me, and exhaustion weighs down my limbs all at once. I go limp with a moan of defeat. The bonds that hold me loosen, just enough that their pressure no longer causes much discomfort, and my torso begins to sway. Back and forth, back and forth, slow and smooth. They're rocking me.
Gradually, my vision clears. The all-encompassing, white-hot bolt of fear recedes. I become aware of the ugly, desperate noises that wrench themselves from my throat – sobs, my mind explains, part of me cold and detached even now – and of a throbbing pain in my calf. I must have torn the skin open when I tripped. My foot and lower leg are sticky with cooling blood. I can smell it on the air.
I can also smell Peeta.
"I'm n-not sup-p-posed to feel, Peeta," I gasp. Every syllable is a struggle, but I don't care. I just. Don't. Care. I've given up. I can't hide it anymore. I don't want to hide it anymore. Not from him. "Why do I f-feel? Why d-d-do I h-have to feel? It would be s-so easy if I didn't ha-ave to feel."
He rocks me.
I shudder and twitch and gasp until I've spent every drop of energy and moisture in my body.
I mop my face with some spare napkins Peeta had tucked away in his pocket for dinner and then forgotten about.
And then, just as my breaths are beginning to steady, it happens. It feels like something gives way, and something else slips into place, and for the first time all the different parts of me are working in tandem, bound by the strongest urge I've ever felt. My body strains towards its mate, and that definitely-organic part of my mind is sending out wave after wave of that warm, golden ache, and the detached part of my mind agrees that Peeta is an adequate and necessary provider of support and protection.
My mouth has bumped clumsily against his before I even realize I decided to move.
I lurch back immediately, horrified with what I allowed myself to do. "I'm sorry," I breathe.
But he catches the words in his own mouth before I can say anything else. He whispers my name, so close I can feel his breath on my tongue, and I slump against him. His fingers are in my hair again, and my arms have a death-grip on his shoulders. He uses his grip on my hair to tilt my head, and then his lips press to mine.
Oh. Oh. Our lips slip together, then open as our jaws slacken. We disconnect, take a deep breath or two, and come together again. Our limbs shift and twine until our torsos are flush as we explore this new thing together. It's slow, and sweet, and wonderful. And strange, too. Who was the first, I wonder, to discover that the joining of lips and tongues could bring such comfort?
And if we aren't quite sure how to line up our faces, and if our teeth scrape together for one jarring instant, and if both of us could face severe consequences for doing this, it doesn't matter, because yes yes yes this is what I need.
I swallow the first moan out of habit, but the second I release against his lips. Because I can. I can sigh, and smile, and cry, and it's at once terrifying and deeply reassuring to be so vulnerable before him. Finally I can let everything show. Finally – finally – I can relax. The relief is so palpable that fresh tears lace our kisses with salt.
It takes an hour before I've calmed enough for my eyes to lose their puffiness and my face to lose its flush. In that time we return to the blanket to stare up at the stars and, admittedly, slow our progress quite a bit by adding the flush back into both of our faces and turning our lips slick and swollen. But then at last we have no more excuses. We have to go back inside, no matter how much I want to wrap us both in the blanket and fall asleep right here.
We're halfway to the elevator when a bone-deep rumble starts in the west. The rumble builds into a roar and at least two dozen winged shapes cut through the sky, nothing but blacker-than-black patches against the faint city stars. Hovercrafts on their way to the front lines. I've heard them pass before, but never so close. The war must be getting nearer.
We have to stop by level six to retrieve a forgotten tablet before returning to Peeta's room for the night. I yawn and lean into his shoulder as the elevator sinks past floor after floor.
The doors open and I go stiff.
"Ah, Peeta." Beetee adjusts his glasses. "I was just about to come looking for you. I have some good news, actually."
I slide slightly behind Peeta with the pretense of looking at something on the back wall of the elevator. If no one moves, maybe I can keep my scraped-up arms and leg hidden, not to mention the dirt and grass on my clothes and the state of my hair.
"Oh?" Peeta's voice gives away nothing, and I suddenly wonder if I'm not the only one adept at hiding what's in my mind.
"The team has been talking it over, and this evening we came to the conclusion that while KTNS-12 has been an encouraging trial run, the model is too unpredictable. Obviously there are some defects to patch up in the next design. Oh, don't look so worried. We're not anywhere near done with this one yet, just shifting focus."
"What do," Peeta says haltingly, sounding just as numb as I feel, "you mean?"
"I mean that Project Mockingjay has moved on to the development of its next trial, and you seem to be attached to this one, so I'm handing it over to your jurisdiction. As a reward, you understand, since you've done so well in these past years." He pulls Peeta's tablet from a pocket and offers it to him. "Here's all its information. We've already come to our conclusions, so do with it what you will."
Peeta accepts the tablet with uncoordinated fingers. "Why wasn't I informed?"
"I determined that your emotional attachment would skew the data, so we proceeded without your input." Beetee takes off his glasses to clean them on his coat, avoiding Peeta's gaze. "I'm sorry. You'll be back in the loop as soon as development of the next model begins. In the meantime, you'll be in charge of completing this trial. I expect daily reports. Stay within the set parameters. Otherwise, KTNS-12 is yours." He fits the glasses back over his eyes and observes us both keenly. "Congratulations."