Hello everyone! I am so sorry it took me so long to update! It was a VERY busy week! But it's over now, and that means it's time to write! :) So a few reviewers had some questions that I tried to address in this chapter. I can guarantee there is a reason I didn't write in much conversation last chapter, which i hope you will understand in this one. If you don't, just PM me or review and ask and I'll answer all of your questions :) Also, thank you all SO much for the great reviews and the favorites/story alerts! I am truly honored!
This chapter focuses more on the day/night of and the beginning of the party as well as Katniss and Peeta's relationship. Plus, of course, all of that inner turmoil!
I hope you enjoy!
Both Katniss and I cannot sleep, not with Snow's mysterious plan looming over their heads. He looked so frustrated and angry, which was very unlike him. Snow usually has a menacing, mischievous air about him, never losing his cool. I want to applaud whatever was able to wipe that smug off of his snakelike face.
Katniss and I lay side by side on our respective cots, the only barrier between us the metal grid of the divider. We lay in silence for a while, contemplating our fate and organizing our thoughts. Her thoughts probably consist of all she has lost and what else she will lose. But me? All I can think of is a little girl in a red plaid dress and a song. A song I had watched her sing to Pollux in the woods on a screen in thirteen during my recovery. A song I had heard she also sang to him as he died. A song I once heard her father singing as he left the bakery after trading with my father.
The words dance somberly around in my head.
A slow, mournful waltz.
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three
"Peeta?" her voice is barely a whisper, but I jump at the sound of her voice. "What do you think will happen to us?"
I turn to face her. I stare at her for a while, thinking. What will happen to us? If this so-called "party" turns out to be our execution, that would be okay. I could accept that. It would all be over. The pain, the emptiness, the loss. We would be free. We would be able to see our families again.
The image of a healthy, glowing Katniss twirling a laughing prim in an embrace pops into my head, along with others. Finnick, grinning that stupid suggestive grin as my mother slaps him almost playfully on the arm. Pollux and his brother, singing the valley song with deep booming voices that echo around the walls of my mind. My brothers, tackling me to the ground in a bear hug, ruffling my hair. My father, grasping my hand and helping me up, pulling me into a tight hug and whispering into my hair, "I'm so proud of you, Peeta."
But what if he wasn't going to kill us?
No. If he doesn't kill us tomorrow night, I will find a way for us to die, to free us. Or at least, I will find a way to free Katniss.
But first… I will find a way to kill President Snow. Or at least, I will try.
"I have a feeling that whatever it is, we'll never see this place again," she whispers, her fingers reaching through the wire and weaving in my own. It's as if she had read my mind.
We sit in silence for a while. There is just so much we need to talk about, so much that we haven't said. We've been letting ourselves be consumed with our own torments, with our own thoughts and nightmares, rather than confronting the many questions we each need to be answered. About our families, about our friends.
Personally, I have a lot of questions about her.
About us.
I've remembered so much since I was last able to really talk to her, to ask her questions. And honestly, I'm not sure how much is completely real.
Plus we need to talk about the future, particularly about how we are going to escape whatever Snow has in store for us.
We're both terrified to say the wrong thing, because in this setting, saying the wrong thing means pain. It means that they will hurt her. It means that they will hurt me. Our shiny metal cage seems even more daunting and dangerous now.
I definitely can't say anything about my plan, or lack thereof, to kill Snow. Or her. Or myself.
She turns around to face me, sitting Indian-style on her cot. I do the same. She glances at me shyly.
Expectantly.
So I start with something safe. Something that, although I'd never admit it, I actually miss. Someone that I actually miss.
"Haymitch's house in the victors village smelled awful. Like mildew and rotting food. Real or not real?"
A grin spreads across her face as her eyes cloud with memories.
"Real. But you took bread to him anyway. Every day. And when Hazelle started coming over to take care of the place, it actually started to smell nice. Like an actual living person lived there instead of a rotting corpse," her grin immediately falls when she realizes her choice of words. Images of Haymitch's decaying carcass flash across my eyes. Shiny memories prick at the back of my head. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Not real.
I open them and look over at Katniss. She seems to be trying to convince herself the same thing. Her eyes pool with tears as she looks down at her trembling hands in her lap.
"He could still be alive. Real or not real?" She mutters. She looks so hopeless, so sad. The darkness and guilt in her eyes leads me to believe she doesn't only mean Haymitch.
She also means Gale.
I open my mouth to speak, but I can't find the words. This never used to happen to me before the tracker-jacker venom. My ability to manipulate words, to intricately weave them together to form whatever needed by the listener, was my one true weapon. The one thing that I was able to do to keep us alive.
However, I've learned over the past few years that sometimes words just aren't enough.
"I…I honestly don't know, Katniss. I mean… I just wish… There's just no way either of us would be able to know…" I stammer, trying to make put my thoughts into words that sound right. She slowly nods, her gaze drifting towards the ceiling.
But I can't. Because there really isn't any way we'd be able to know. We've been locked in the Capitol's stronghold for a year, our only outside contact being peacekeepers, doctors, and Snow. All of who refuse to relinquish even the smallest pieces of information about what may have happened to the rebels still in thirteen after their forced retreat. Are they still alive, stuck underground? Have they even made an attempt to rescue us? Does the rebellion still even exist? Or has the capture of the Mockingjay and her star-crossed lover squelched their fire?
I hate this perpetual uncertainty.
She slowly nods, her gaze drifting towards the ceiling.
"After they told me Prim was dead… after they told me you were dead… it was so much easier…" She looks up at my puzzled expression and I swear I could almost see her blush. She shakily treks on.
"I…I had nothing else to live for. Nothing else to hope for. My sister and my… you were dead. The two people on this entire planet that I could have never imagined just not living anymore. The only two people that have ever made me believe this merciless world was worth living in. Worth fighting for. They had taken you and Prim away from me, and along with you my will to live. I looked forward to the end. To death. I waited for it, willed it to take me. Death consumed me. I stopped feeling. I was catatonic for months…"
My heart is racing. The look in her eyes. It was so familiar. Heartbreak. I've seen it before. I've felt it before. When she volunteered for Prim. When I was reaped. After the first games. After Gales whipping. On the beach during the quell. When I overheard her by the tent in the capitol. When she kissed me to bring me back to reality during the mission. When I watched peacekeepers take her outside of Tigris's shop. When I heard her scream. Every day. For so long.
I feel it now.
"It was so easy to pretend they were all dead. Haymitch, My mother, Gale." she shudders. Her breathing begins to quicken and tears spill from her eyes as she chokes back sobs. I want so badly to reach her, to hold her… but I am paralyzed, fighting back the shiny memories that try to jar me from this moment. "But then a-all of a sudden y-you were a-alive again…and… and it's so much harder to j-just k-keep pretending now that…n-now that you… You're alive, Peeta…" She clings to the wire, her eyes wild and desperate. "That has to mean something." We are both crying now, our foreheads pressed against the cold metal that keeps us from one another. We grasp desperately at each other's hands through the wire and I raise my face to hers. Our noses brush through the grid, causing us both to throw away any and all inhibitions. Our lips crash and move together hungrily, clumsy with desperation and longing, and wet with desire and tears.
I can taste nothing but Katniss. I can smell nothing but Katniss. I can feel nothing but Katniss.
Katniss. Katniss. Katniss.
I love you, Katniss.
Always.
I know this isn't the right time. I know we are both broken and confused. But I have to tell her. I have to make sure she knows. Because if I am going to die, I am going to die loving Katniss Everdeen with everything I have.
I pry myself out of the kiss, almost without success when I open my eyes and see the dark, wild look in her eyes. My head is foggy, but I have to do this. I have to tell her.
A piercing scream blows up the charged silence as 4 peacekeepers burst through the doors at the each end of the hall.
"Prep time!" one booms through the corridor.
Tick.
Tock.
Nothing…
Time's up.
I have to do this quick. They are coming.
"I love you Katniss! I always have, and I always will!"
Two of the peacekeepers crash through the door of my cell with a loud clang.
"No matter what! No matter what I am, no matter where you are, no matter what I do!"
They grab me by the back of the shirt and yank me up, causing me to yelp and Katniss to claw madly at the divider, gasping my name.
"Please! Always remember! Always!"
The two other peacekeepers charge into her cell and pick her up by the arms. She grits her teeth, refusing to break eye contact with me. The lightness of her blind eye pierces the darkness.
And for the first time in a year, I get a glimpse of her, the old Katniss.
The girl in the red plaid dress.
The girl who was on fire.
A fire that I cannot live without.
"Peeta!" She screams as they start dragging her out of the cell. And to the door opposite the one I am being led to. "Nightlock!"
Nightlock…
Katniss's voice echoes in my head as I conjure up her song.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
My memory flashes to a handful of berries. I am holding them up so that the Capitol can see. So all of Panem can see. So President Snow can see that I will not live in a world where Katniss Everdeen exists. That I will not be a pawn in his disgusting games.
Katniss and I are not going to play Snow's games. Not any more. We will die first. Together.
If we met up at midnight at the hanging tree
"Nightlock!" I yell in reply as I am yanked through a doorway, my last glimpse of Katniss being a triumphant, toothy grin.
After I am prepped, I am brought down to a room similar to the one underneath the stage where they held all of the interviews, complete with a glass platform, although, this room is substantially smaller and I can hear murmurs of a crowd conversing happily and excitedly above my head. I try to make out what they are saying, but their accents are so affected and their voices are so muffled that I can only make out a few words and have to give up.
It only took about 4 hours to get me fully prepped instead of the 8 it took last year before the Quell. Unlike my last prep team however, these 3 preps were very intimidating. All three were men with sparkly pale skin, just like the woman who led me to the white room, and black hair that had been slicked back from their faces. They were extremely large, with square jaws and identical emotionless features; Triplets, I presume. They were a lot rougher, too, working very quickly, ignoring all of the scars on my body and focusing on my face. The small amount of scruff that finally started to grow back after they chemically removed it before the last games was removed. My scars and bruises were expertly covered up and they brought me to what Cinna and Portia used to refer to as 'beauty-base zero'. Once they finished, they tossed a garment bag at me and stormed out of the room, leaving me to finish dressing myself.
I look at my reflection in the glass of the platform.
I am dressed in a very sleek dark-red tuxedo that shimmers when it catches the light. I fill it out surprisingly well, seeing as I am still pretty thin. I'm sure they added some padding or something to help add some muscle to my now weak frame.
A peacekeeper, who had been standing stoically in the corner of the room when I arrived, shoves me onto the platform and my heart begins to race. My heart is thumping wildly in my chest. I feel like I am once again about to enter the arena, which I guess isn't too far off from what this is probably going to be like.
I need to find Katniss.
I need to find a weapon.
I need to kill Snow.
And if I fail,
I need to kill us both.
A loud voice booms over the speakers above me. Snow's high voice echoes around me.
"Ladies and Gentlemen! Citizens of the beloved Capitol! It is my honor to welcome you to a very special 50th annual White Rose Live Auction!"
Time stops.
All I can hear is a shrill ringing in my ears.
I once again lose the ability to breathe as my heart plummets into my gut.
We, Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, the star-crossed lovers of District Twelve, are about to be sold.
Well, now you know what Snow's "party" really is! But why would he want to auction off the two most famous rebels in Panem? You'll have to wait until the next chapter to find out :) I get chapter 9 out either tomorrow or Sunday. Now, go review!
