Your response to the previous chapter was wonderful, thank you so much for making me feel slightly better about writing such a horrible scene. I'll have to ask you all to forgive me for this one, I'm not feeling myself at the moment and can tell my writing's not up to scratch, but didn't want to leave anyone hanging.

We, or rather I, hobbled into the boys' bathroom. Luckily there was no one inside – school had only just started and so we were alone.

I faced myself in the mirror.

My lip was split, and there was a mess of blood on my chin that made it seem like I had been coughing blood. My hair had come loose from my plait and there were yellow streaks of vomit in it. My eye was a dark purple and swollen more than I'd noticed; my cheekbone and brow bone had split too and blood meshed in my eyebrow. There were four long purple bruises along my throat. He'd choked me. I tried to keep my face calm, but tears streaked out and mingled with the blood and dirt on my cheeks, leaving clear lines. I pulled my hair from my face and began re-plaiting it, noticing the dried blood that encrusted my ear like one hundred tiny dark rubies. I dreaded to think what other atrocities Peeta's pullover hid.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly, trying not to startle me.

"No." I replied, tying my hair back into its usual plait.

"May I?" He asked, extending his arms to me. I wasn't quite sure what he was about to do and didn't reply, but he took this as acceptance. He lifted me gently up onto one of the sinks, and then disappeared into the stall. The cool metal soothed my bruised thighs.

He came out with a wad of the school economy paper that I knew was rough, and I blanched, preparing myself for pain, before he turned the faucet on the sink one down from my seat. He gently tucked my grimy hair behind my ears and cradled my jaw in his palm, while the other ran over my face, washing away the blood and sweat and sick. I only realised I was crying when he was done, and he wiped away the tears. "There's my Katniss," he smiled. "A bit beat up, but there."

I stiffened. "I'm not your Katniss."

"I- I didn't mean that," he stammered. "Just the sentiment. Our Katniss. The one we know. You know?"

I did know, and I didn't have enough energy for a fight, so I nodded.

"Why did he do it?" He asked gently, working on cleaning the blood from my fingernails.

I cleared my throat until I found my voice. "He wants me to live with him, be a, err, permanent fixture."

He looked torn.

"Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you this." I jumped down from the sink abruptly and crumpled at the pain. His arm was around me instantly. "Let's go back to class."

"Are you really ready?" He worried.

"Yeah. Thanks, Peeta."

We entered the classroom sheepishly and Ms Frost opened her mouth to shout at us for our tardiness before she saw me emerging from behind Peeta. Her mouth opened and closed, then pursed. "Take your seats."

Peeta and I sat in our usual seats and so he heard my gasp as I sat down. His head whipped around to me and I gave him a weak smile. The lesson passed in a blur; my head was down to the desk. I could only think that I'd received no money for my horror last night. It had been stolen from me.

Prim found me at lunch. She usually stayed with her friends but today I suspected she was scared to leave me alone. She bounded over as fast as her legs could carry her to mine and Madge Undersee's table.

"How are you?" She asked, nestling herself under the crook of my arm.

"I'm fine, Prim," I said, as convincingly as my split lip would allow.

"This would've been the worst birthday ever if it wasn't for the cake. I didn't get a chance to properly thank you for it."

I gawped. I had forgotten Prim's birthday. Every other birthday I'd woken up early and made her breakfast, and this birthday –the last one she had where she could wake up without fear of the Reaping, I'd ruined.

"I'm so, so, sorry Prim." Tears began to well in my eyes. "You know I didn't mean for this to happen." I stroked her hair. "Hang on, cake? What cake?"

"Peeta dropped it off this morning when he picked me up for school. He said you ordered it for me yesterday."

I looked up in his direction and he was staring back. I mouthed a thank you to him, and he tipped his head to me. "I wish I'd been there to see your face."

"I haven't eaten any yet," she said cheerfully. "I wasn't really hungry because I was so worried. And Peeta said I had to eat a proper breakfast in the morning, not cake. That's why he brought me the cheese buns. Where were you last night, Katniss? What happened?" Her young mind flitted from happy to sad so quickly. I wasn't sure how to broach the subject. Did she know what her sister did in the nights? Did she suspect?

"I got into a fight with a wild dog." I lied through my teeth. Madge squeezed my hand from across the table, staring at me sadly. Did she know what it was costing me to lie? "I went to collect some eggs in the woods for breakfast and didn't realise how dangerous it was."

"It's my fault!" Prim wailed.

"No! It's not your fault, don't ever think that. I do the things I do out of love for you, and in no way is anything that ever happens to me your fault." I hoped when she finally found out that her sister was a cheap prostitute she'd remember my words.

On Sunday, I ventured into the woods with Gale. My lip, cheek and brow were all healing, as was my now green tinged eye. I still looked horrible, but not as bad. Gale still balked when he saw me.

"Catnip Everdeen," he nodded as I approached. "Your father worked with mine in the mines. Before."

I understood now, his offer. His father and mine had been work friends, and had died together, and that is the sort of bond which tethers people to one another when they're floating in grief. Gale did not seem to be floating any more; he'd found a boat and was tugging me into safety.

Our first lesson was with a bow. Despite Gale's bravado in the Hob, I realised he wasn't as good with a bow as my father had been, but any instruction I could get would help. Between us, we shot down a squirrel. Rather, Gale shot down a squirrel (one that looked still enough to be asleep) and I achieved welts from the snap of the bow.

Gale was quiet, and I liked that. He didn't ask questions nor offer any 'tuts' of sympathy when he surveyed my face. I think he liked that I was a girl of few words, too. We became something close to friends.

I returned to Cray on the Tuesday after Prim's birthday. He offered me no money for our last meeting, nor condolences. I wondered briefly if he remembered the horrible things he'd done at all, but when he made me scrub at the stains my vomit had left on the carpet, I realised he had. I also understood that any semblance of tenderness between he and I were forgotten. This also meant that I had to survey my options.

Peeta had said that I could get out of my situation; so had Greasy Sae and numerous others. But did they really understand the depth of my current relationship with the Head Peacekeeper? The only authority above Cray in District 12 was the Mayor, who turned a blind eye to most goings on in District 12. He knew of Cray's night-time activities, and possibly my involvement in them, but did nothing. I neither wanted nor expected him to.

Without the money I received from Cray, my family would return to the brink of death. Even though hunting in the woods now seemed a viable option once I had practiced, I knew that with the Head Peacekeeper against me, I would be whipped and eventually sentenced to death. I could not provide for my family if I was dead.

"I've thought some more about your proposition," I said, once I was finished scrubbing the carpet clean of my pollution.

"And?"

"I wouldn't be able to stay with you here. I would have to stay home to look after Primrose and my mother."

"They could live here too."

"No!" And have him take advantage of them both, too? I noticed his expression and softened my tone. "No, I couldn't put that burden on you. My mother is desperately sick – she hasn't recovered since the explosion in the mine. We lost my father. And she wouldn't want to leave his house. Prim is too young, I'd need to walk her to school."

He drank deeply from the glass he held in his tight grasp.

"But I could become more permanent if you'd like. If that's what you want."

His dark eyes shone. "And you'd be contracted to me? You'll sleep with no-one else."

"As you wish."

"How often will I see you?"

"Twice a week?" I ventured.

"Double that."

"Okay. How much money would I receive?"

"Half of my earnings."

I froze. Half of his earnings were an extraordinary amount. Nothing in comparison to the Mayor's, not even a speck of dust on the amount Victors had, but in comparison to what we lived on – it was a fortune.

I agreed instantly.

Three months later was the Reaping of the 72nd Hunger Games. I prayed it wouldn't be me, and prayed it would be at the same time. It was not: Hazel Green, a 12 year old, took the female spot, and Sider Trace took the male. Neither came home.

We still lived in the Seam, but my income was so vast for a family of three that had lived on nothing for so long, and become accustomed to it, that we could have easily moved to the Merchant quarter had we saved for a while. My mother had gradually begun to return to her old self. She became a healer once more, and it became her duty, more often than not, to sanitise and stitch her daughter when she returned home, broken.

Yet she never attempted to stop me.

Prim thoroughly enjoyed her last year of childhood – a real childhood, without fear of Reaping – as she now flitted around with fuller cheeks in gorgeous dresses with ribbons in her hair, none the wiser as to how her sister provided for her. I however became a pariah.

The few people left in District 12 who would talk to me were Greasy Sae, my mother and sister, Haymitch Abernathy, Hubris Cray, Madge Undersee, the butcher, Gale Hawthorne, and Peeta Mellark.

Greasy Sae treated me as she always had, as an adoptive daughter. She took my tainted money and fed me each day, and she took whatever game I managed to shoot, however messy the kill.

Haymitch Abernathy would chuckle and call me Sweetheart whenever we bumped into each other at the Hob.

Cray continued to use my body for sexual gratification in turn for money, but he also beat me savagely when he had too much to drink, and treated me as a housekeeper. I had very little time to myself.

Madge Undersee spent her free time in school with me, and became the closest thing I had to a girl-friend. Despite the looks she suffered, and probably the arguments with her father she suffered, she stood by me, silently albeit – but that was how I enjoyed my time spent without Cray. In turn I gave her strawberries.

The butcher bought my cleaner kills and sold to me on occasions I could not catch a morsel even from my snares. He never looked me in the eye, but he was agreeable.

Gale Hawthorne was my best friend. We spent each Sunday together, and we walked from school together, and became so close that I took a savage beating from Cray for giving myself to another man – even though I hadn't. Gale taught me to hunt until I knew to hunt alone, after which time our Sunday meetings became a time for reflection and companionship. While Delly and Bristel could be heard giggling about Gale's looks, I noticed nothing.

Peeta Mellark could not be called my friend. By the month of my 15th birthday, I had become so successful at hunting that I would trade with his father (when his mother was not around) for bread. But in the winter months, when game was scarce, I dipped into Cray's money more and more for bread, and Peeta and I worked up a rapport. I never thanked him outright for Prim's birthday, but when I returned his pullover he refused it, and said it suited me more than him. We very rarely had close encounters, but my 15th birthday was an exception.

It was my day with Hubris, unfortunately, and though I had spent the day before with my family inside due to dismal weather, I trudged to his house unwillingly, as was my routine. I knocked the door and he smiled.

"You're early. I haven't finished setting up."

It was twelve o' clock, my usual time to visit on a Saturday since I didn't have school. I pottered around, cleaning, while he poured himself a stiff drink and a glass of water for me, and set them at the table. "We're going to have breakfast. Happy birthday, Katniss."

I hated to say I'd already had breakfast, and nodded my thanks. He went upstairs to wash.

The door knocker rapped gently and as was my custom, I opened the door. Outside was Peeta Mellark. He had with him a box of cheese buns (I would recognise the box anywhere) and a ridiculously beautiful cake.

"Happy birthday," he smiled, his tone gentler than Cray's had been moments before. I gawped at the cake and him until he cleared his throat. "I'm here to make a delivery?"

I ushered him inside and he deposited the cheese buns first, then the cake, onto the round table which held mine and Cray's glasses.

"I'm sorry you can't spend your birthday with your family." Tears sprang to my eyes.

"The cake is beautiful," I deflected.

"I spent a while on it, Cray spent good money on it." His brow furrowed for a second and he kicked at nothing.

I surveyed the cake. It was a beautiful orange, the colour of the sunset, adorned with dark leaves so real they looked as though they might have sprung from a tree in the forest. Aside from the sunset, it was very much a me cake, if ever there was one.

"I didn't know you iced the cakes," I said flatly. "It's wonderful, Peeta."

"Leave him, Katniss." His blue eyes were piercing and urgent, and I heard footsteps upstairs.

"You know I can't!" I hissed.

"You have enough money now to be rid of him, you can be free!" He took a step closer until I could feel his desperate breaths against my cheek.

"I will never be free of him Peeta! You don't understand how this works!"

"Do you love him?" His voice grew louder. "Is that why you won't leave?"

"Of course I don't! Why do you even care?" I growled.

"Because I love you, Katniss!" His lips pressed against mine and for a second, mine moved with his. The boy with the bread claimed to love me.

No-one loved me unless they wanted something from me.

"Get away!" I pushed him with all the force I could muster, and he stumbled back, narrowly missing the cake. "I don't know what you want from me, but I'm not for sale any more!"

I shoved him out of the door just in time to see my owner huffing down the stairs, bottle in hand.