a/n; I never mentioned this before, but I'm not a dancing expert and only know what I know from cursory studying on the internet. Wanted to throw that disclaimer out there in case I got anything wrong with descriptions of the dances.
Chapter Four: year two, dance one – tango
A few months later, and Katniss finds herself in the auditorium again, dancing a pointless dance called a tango. A ballroom tango, Madame Corinne's voice inside her head corrects.
"This is a simplified version of the original type of tango," she had told them all on the first day back in rehearsal, after the Games had ended. "So that you children can attempt something that takes years for a professional dancer to master."
This is the first dance that had the option of getting closer to your partner, which Katniss is absolutely petrified of, but space in between is still allowed for it, if a person so chose. That little fact is her saving grace. She can't stand breathing in someone else's breath. There is also much more emphasis on leading and following, and the aggressiveness is indeed something to get used to.
It's a level up, that's for sure. It demands more confidence and more surety of movement. It forces the boys, more than the girls (though the girls must build their self-confidence as well), to be bold, self-assured, and poised. At least, in theory. It's hard to accomplish one of those things from a teenager, let alone an entire District full of them.
The expectations for the dances are higher in this second year, as well. Since the first was only an experiment, and a success according to Snow and his advisors, the second would be monitored more closely. More Peacekeepers will be stationed in and around the auditorium walls, Madame Corinne will be watching the dances to make sure everyone is in full cooperation and fulfilling the dances correctly—not that this is anything new. She has been there the first dances, too, but had been drinking and laughing with the other teachers in the background instead of actually participating in the affairs of the students.
But the worst thing to be put in place? The absolutely worst idea any advisor of Snow's or Snow himself could have had? Each student can only sit out a total of three times. Three. That's it. Katniss sat out more than half of the dances the preceding year. Now, she'll be forced to dance for nearly two hours straight. When she heard of this news, she thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad to put her name in the Reaping two more times. Gale's was nearly three times as bad as hers—surely she'll be fine. He'll cushion her names with his, isn't that what he said? He'll be the perfect gentleman. It's nearly the equivalent of saving her from a burning building.
Alas, it doesn't happen that way. Her mother forbids any notion of the sort—and she only heard wind of it from Prim, the traitor. Never is she going to complain to Prim again about sacrificing her life more than she has to. Now, here she is, dancing with Peeta, attempting a tango-like dance, and feeling much too aware of all of the Peacekeepers standing vigil along the walls. It feels like they have an audience now. It's unsettling. She blows a few stray bangs out of her eyes in frustration.
"You think any of them are taking a nap?" Peeta asks her, following her glance to the walls.
She shakes her head. "I wish all of them were."
"It does make this kind of…weirder than it normally is."
Yeah. Weirder is one word for it.
"I don't understand why this is such a big deal. We're dancing."
"Who knows," Peeta says, smiling slightly. "Maybe they think we'll start a riot by dancing uncontrollably. That'll show them."
Katniss cracks a small smile at the thought.
She ends up dancing with way too many boys, floating along and trying to not think about it too hard. It's kind of like a ladder, the next open, partner-less boy an empty rung that she grapples onto. She dances with tall boys, short boys, older boys, the boys in her homeroom class, and boys she's never acknowledged to exist (most of which she doesn't know the names of, which in turn make her slightly embarrassed when they know her name and she can't remember what their name starts with). They're almost all more talkative than she is, more direct in aimless conversation, and she's never been so okay with her complete lack of ability in initiating small talk.
It isn't all bad—some of the boys are pleasant and amiable. The few that are as quiet as she are the dances that become slightly awkward and painful, but other times, she doesn't feel uncomfortable. She relishes these moments when they occur, as they are few and far between. You'd think after a year of this she'd be fine, she thinks with annoyance. But then, it's not the easiest thing to hold a dozen sweaty hands for two hours.
Once she finally finds her stride through the ladder rungs, nodding a goodbye to the last boy and nearly feeling good enough to smile, she runs into the next boy without a partner.
"Would you like to—" she begins to say. If a boy doesn't start to ask or notice her (they usually don't, she's so efficient in grabbing them), she'll ask them first. The same five words over and over again. Would you like to dance?
It's too bad that all the Seam boys look the same from behind. Gale turns and looks down at her, eyebrows raised at the half-question before they both realize they are who they are and are, in fact, standing so close. His stare turns from surprise to distaste, and she takes a giant step backward. She accidentally hits someone, and she apologizes under her breath without turning around.
They become rooted in a glaring battle.
"Would I like to what? To dance?" he asks, finishing her question with a sneer. "I'm flattered, but I'm afraid I've already checked you off my list."
Her jaw grinds together, her teeth vibrating like loose gravel in her skull.
"No," she says, liking to think she exudes ferocity from her pores. "I was going to ask if you would like to move out of my way so that I could dance with someone decent."
He raises his hands in a mock display of defeat. "Wow, I don't think I can recover from the rejection," he says, then slips around her. She's so shocked that he doesn't put up a fight that she whirls on him.
"Hey!" she calls, her body acting on its own.
He pauses, glancing over his shoulder. She stomps up to him, drawing herself up to full height and landing right on the dip of his collarbone. "You didn't even fight back!"
His lips part, curved in a befuddled line. "Was I supposed to?"
She blinks, her sudden burst of indignation fading into nothing more than a dull spark. Self-preservation rears up in her belly like a reprimand. Katniss! What are you doing? "I—I guess not."
She averts her eyes, feeling so awkward and so out of place, and who knows why she can't simply walk away. He eyes her, stares at her, and the staring makes it much, much worse. Like he's thinking. She fidgets, struck dumb for a second. Then she ducks her head, forcing her way through a clogged path to an empty chair before the music begins to play.
She blows out the bangs from her eyes and shoves her chin in her hand, resting her elbow on her knee. How embarrassing. Why is she like that? Wanting to pick a fight for absolutely no reason?
"Katniss," someone nice pipes up beside her. She feels an easy sense of relief as she looks to the side.
Peeta takes a seat next to her. "Break time?"
More like break time from shame. "Yeah, I suppose so. You too?"
"Yeah. I keep stepping on every girl's toes," he laughs. "The tango is complicated."
She agrees. The tango is a lot of movement, a lot of pressing forward and back. Madame Corinne would lament about how children couldn't understand the complexity or the concepts (and how nearly the entire population of school children chose the large-space-in- between tango instead of the closer, more intimate tango). Her scolding burns in her ears even now. Katniss, longer strides. Katniss, keep your shoulders back. Katniss, where is the romance in your hold?
She grunts at her thoughts. It's hard enough to concentrate on doing all the steps correctly, let alone adding any type of emotion to them. How does one go about doing that? Madame Corinne will say, reach inside yourself. And Katniss has no idea how to do that without throwing up.
"I'm no good, either," she sighs. The boys she's been dancing with are mostly the same. Unsure, stilted, robotic. Just going through the motions as she is. A few would take the lead better, and some would even let her fall into a couple of dips. Those are terrifying—yet also, it hurts deeply to admit, fun.
The dance is only as good as the partners, she thinks. Some boys are better at spinning, better at the strides. Some are even, dare she say, confident. Only handfuls have stepped on her feet, which is probably a definite improvement to the first year. She wouldn't really know—she only danced with a few the past year. Too bad she can't add to their improvements at all.
"You're not all that bad," Peeta says, smiling at her. She gives him a look. He laughs and caves. "Okay, you're not the worst. Trust me."
Hard to believe, but she only shakes her head. "Gee, thanks."
He looks at her for a second. The music has already been playing for a while, but he says, "C'mon, let's dance again, see if we've improved in the last hour."
She rolls her eyes, but it's light-hearted. She finds herself unable to refuse.
It turns out they haven't improved. The stumble around, and Peeta tries not to step on her toes, and she tries to gain rhythm from the music around her, but they fail and laugh while they're failing.
It's fun, and when it's over she thanks him. He might blush, but Katniss isn't worried about that. She's amazed that she's in a good mood from dancing of all things.
Then again, she thinks, it seems a lot of things depend on the partner you have.
She floats along, after that, falling into the comfort of her new habit. Her mood propels her through the dances, and they no longer feel tedious. She compares them for fun, noticing different quirks and mannerisms. She compares the feel of their holds and the pressure of their hands. What shocks her most is that she can even feel a difference in the energies between them, too. What once always felt like an uncomfortable cloud of body heat cushioning the distance now has a strange, interactive feel to it. Some are cold and closed off, but some are open and warm. Some upbeat, some blasé. Withdrawn, fully immersive.
She inevitably stumbles upon Gale again—it turns out that there are only so many males present in the area—and she opens her mouth. She intelligently says…nothing. She feels a distinct likeness to a fish. His eyes pass over her, like they had earlier that evening, and he opens his mouth and says, "It's gonna be the last dance."
His face is set in some type of determination, and his chest rises in a breath. "So, uh, you want to dance? For the hell of it."
For the hell of it. A thought dashes through her mind, something Teresa (or Tiffany, she's got to figure out her name soon, this has gotten ridiculous) said, praising Gale on his supposed smooth talking ways. Her lips nearly quirk in a smile at the absurdity. Yeah, she might even swoon. For the hell of it.
"Guess it won't kill me," she mutters under her breath. A year ago the words would have floored her. Dancing wouldn't kill her? She wouldn't want to hide in the bathroom?
Regardless of the partner, though she does wish it isn't him (and a thought niggles in the back of her mind that she told herself this would never, ever happen again, so help her—but she ignores it), she's not in a terrible state of remorse about it. It's the residual lingering of her good mood. She thinks of Peeta for a second, experiencing a pang at the loss of a fun, enjoyable last dance of the season.
This one won't be fun, and she should go find Peeta because Peeta will make it fun.
Instead, she lets him lead her to a less crowded area, and they take up their respective positions and hand placements. Oddly enough, she feels a little anxious glancing at his steely face and eyes. It's how his words affected her last time, she thinks, biting the inner meat of her lip. It's because she still feels raw about that, being so honest with him—a stranger, in all respects. Judging him by word of mouth. Then going up to him earlier this evening to build up some kind of argument, rub up against the wound to make it deeper. She doesn't understand herself, sometimes.
The fact of the matter is, she knows she needs to apologize. She stares up at him, looking off at something interesting to the far side of the room, and is intimidated.
Another fact of the matter is that she's always been a bit awful at it. Her eyes fall to his collar. It's pale blue, the left lip curled in a cotton sneer. It reminds her of Prim's little duck tails, and she absently flicks the lip down.
Gale notices. "What are you doing?"
"Uh," she squeaks, then clears her throat. "I, uh, fixed your collar."
He merely looks at her. She glances away to his shoulder, then her eyes make their eventual way down to their feet. They're moving well, somehow. She has no trouble following him and the lead he sets. The space between them isn't as large as she would like, but she's found that it varies with each partner.
Her face bunches up. She fidgets in a continuous spasm until she's able to say, "About earlier…" Though she's not sure if earlier means earlier tonight or earlier at the last dance.
Gale, however, needs no distinction. "It's forgotten."
She almost snorts out loud. As if. He must notice, because he says, "Really. Don't worry about it."
She looks up at him, is intimidated again, and looks away. She can't seem to make herself catch courage. Isn't it like a yawn? She glances around, trying to be inspired by some boy and some girl doing something meaningful—but she doesn't find it.
As if to prove his point, he changes the subject entirely. "You're not a bad dancer."
She jerks her head at him, and she almost chokes. "Oh, I'm terrible."
"I saw you dancing almost all night."
She shakes her head, the mirthful tone spilling out of her. "Doesn't mean I'm good. I only did it because I can't sit out the whole time anymore." She glances out to the audience of Peacekeepers. The glass face pieces shine back.
"Must have been good practice. I don't think you're bad."
She can't hold back an eye roll. "Tell that to Madame Corinne."
"Madame Corinne wouldn't be impressed even if you were a professional."
"What about you?" she asks, and her voice edges into that condescending tone it likes taking on when she's around him. "I bet she thinks you're so—"
It's miraculous when she halts herself. I bet she thinks you're so great like every other girl on the planet just doesn't seem like the best choice of words to use, and her brain is ahead of her mouth for once.
"You bet she what?" he says. It doesn't seem to matter. His eyes gain a mean glint to them. "Thinks I'm good? I forget that you know everything about me."
She bites her tongue, hard, but she still can't keep herself from spewing, "Look, will you drop it? I wasn't—you said it was forgotten, okay?"
He glances out above her head. "Fine."
They're silent for ten, very long seconds. Katniss feels her stomach slowly eating itself.
"She hates me," he says after the short eternity. "Madame Corinne, I mean."
Katniss would be lying if she said she wasn't relieved at how calm his voice is. She sighs.
"Really?"
He nods. "I have potential that I don't use, according to her."
Katniss blinks. "She says that to me all the time, too."
"And even when you get something right, there's something else you get wrong."
She shakes her head. "Exactly. I get the steps, but I don't have any rhythm."
"That's funny—I've got the rhythm, but the steps take me a little longer."
She glances down at their feet again. She's not sure she believes him. "You lead well. Without that, I'm usually useless by myself."
She misses the look he gives her as she watches their bottom halves move. "Just listen to the music," he says. "It's my favorite part about this whole thing. Everything about the music," he nods toward the three people on the makeshift stage, "is free. We don't have to move the way they want us to. We could do whatever we wanted. It's not like they can beat us for dancing wrong since…well, they implemented it in the first place."
The thought has never crossed her mind before. She glances toward the Peacekeepers, new light shed across their meaning.
"Is that why they're here, now, watching us this time?" she whispers. "Do you think they'll start to punish us when we move wrong?"
His eyes shadow, a veil falling across his features like a thunderous cloud. "If they do, what would be the point? This is supposed to pacify us."
"What do you mean? Pacify us?"
"To make us feel like we have some kind of control," he shakes his head. "Choosing who we dance with, socializing, giving us this feeling of hope…" he trails. "That's…that's how it makes me feel, anyway. Giving me a hope of a future, dancing like this."
Katniss can't, for the life of her, understand these feelings. Dancing can be fun—she's felt that, the fleeting burst of merriment in what she used to dread in totality. But to take away so much from simple movement and steps?
She looks at Gale, possibly stares at him like he had stared at her before. She thinks she might see some of him—who he really is—in this quiet, sheltered moment.
He's glancing off to the side, toward the wall of Peacekeepers. "I could be wrong," he says when she doesn't reply. "It's because I like this like I like hunting. And hunting is illegal."
She gives an abrupt laugh, and he looks as startled by it as she feels. "I…see what you mean. This being Snow's idea makes it kind of…fishy."
His lips turn up in a half-smile. "I think I just want a rebellion, is all."
She chokes, hissing out a whisper. "Don't say that! Are you crazy?"
At this, he really smiles. The music begins to get louder, and he jerks his head toward it. "Look, I'll get you into the rhythm."
"But you're leading and that's the same thing!" she splutters, unnerved at the sudden change of pace.
"Hardly," he says, and she's thrown into the other tango—the close, intimate tango. Her throat is restricted while her mind is all mush and befuddlement, his lead too authoritative to counter. All she manages is a yelp while her feet struggle to keep up.
"But—" she starts, but he cuts her off.
"Go with the flow," he says, and this must be where the smooth comes in. They're chest to chest now, going forward and backward and turning. Following the music? Yeah, right. She can hardly concentrate on the music when so focused on the routine that is not the rehearsal room anymore. It is their own, and it's new.
She becomes breathless in no time, and it doesn't help that her chest pushes against his every time she gets some air in her. And the air she does get is his air, and it's unsettling. Unsettling. Her heart begins to thud against her sternum, the small of her back becoming slightly damp with sweat. Couples in her periphery seem to zoom by, and she starts panicking.
We better not hit anyone, or I'll…
She's actually not sure what she'll do if they hit people.
He glances down at her face, and his eyes fill with pure amusement and that passion. "Fun, isn't it?"
"No," she gasps, but he either doesn't listen or ignores her, because he leads her into one more twirl, then a second, a marathon of steps running along with the crescendo of the music, and then as abruptly as this all started—
It's over. The music ends, and Katniss is digging her fingers into his shoulder for dear life, his other hand more than likely turning blue from lack of circulation. She huffs, shakes her head, and peels her nails away. She takes a cautious step backward, not that she's afraid that she'll lose her balance or embarrass herself or anything of the sort. Being cautious is being safe, after all.
People are beginning to disperse now that it's over. A few couples linger, a few even leave together, and she's not sure if she's noticed that before. "Uh," she starts, realizing that he's staring at her again. She rubs at her arms, detecting a discomforting chill from the cooling sweat on her back. That's what she blames her goosebumps on. "Well, I danced with you again," she announces.
"Yeah," he says. "I thought you'd say no."
Not knowing what to say to that, she shrugs. "I thought I would, too."
"I'm glad you didn't."
She wraps her arms tighter around her waist. He's being nice, and she doesn't know why. It makes the guilt build up like bile in her throat, and she throws up a few messy words. "I'm sorry, you know. About assuming. It was unfair."
He only shakes his head. "Don't be. You were right on a lot of things. I never get called out about them, and it hurt my pride. I got mad." He gives a short laugh. "Hearing it from you is what really got me, because you didn't know a single thing about me. Then it turned out you did."
"Oh," she mumbles. She takes a breath, and she doesn't realize that she's worried about it until she asks, "Were you really disappointed?"
His face slackens, and it's worrisome in the seconds he doesn't answer straight away.
"No," he draws out. "Not anymore."
Something about the transpired dance and this conversation following it makes her nervous. "Okay. Good. Then I'll see you next time."
His mouth parts and he reaches out, but she swivels on her heel and dashes. She doesn't stop until she's out the door and enfolded into the chilled, nighttime air.
She isn't inhaling his presence anymore. The mere acknowledgment of that fact defogs her mind, and she can think clearly.
What is happening to her?