Family

The second lunch was very similar to the first. Once again the only people who were sitting in a group were the careers and me and Jett. Also once again Caden wasn't there when Jett and I entered the dining room. I couldn't help but smile as I walked in. I have an ally! I practically wanted to scream it out loud and watch the reactions of the faces of everybody else, particularly the snobs from two whose names I no longer remembered. I must actually be doing something right, because as Rubin said, Jett is one of the favourites to win this thing. Perhaps with his help, and some good luck, I might just make it home.

"So know that we're partners and all," I started as Jett and I sat down at the same table we had yesterday, "Are you going to tell me what your super secret talent is?"

He smiled at my dramatic tone, "Like I said, it's a secret I'll take with me to the grave."

"You know in our current context that really isn't that funny."

He laughed but still wasn't talking.

"Come on," I said, not able to hide the pleading tone in my voice, "What if there's only one of your weapon and it's on the wrong side of the Cornucopia from you but I can get it. How can I help you if I don't have a clue what it actually is you want."

He groaned, "Fine but if I'm telling you mine then you're going to tell me yours."

"Deal."

"You're not even going to know what it is."

I laughed, "Not if you don't tell me I won't."

He took a deep breath, "Have you ever heard of a...shoge?"

"Nope, never."

"I told you you wouldn't know what it is."

I rolled my eyes, "Well perhaps you could explain it to me then I would know what it is."

"It's basically a double edged knife with another blade attached ninety degrees to the bottom of it, that is connected to a long rope or chain with a metal circle at the end of it."

"Oh so simple."

He laughed at my sarcasm and continued, "If you saw it you would think it was simple."

I frowned, "How on earth did you learn to use it?"

He smiled innocently, "You're not going to like it."

I gave a small laugh, I should have known.

"Career in name, career in nature."

He acted hurt, "Come on you've got to let me explain."

I made a dramatic show of lightly bitting my lip and placing a finger on my lips to make it look like I was thinking really hard. Finally I sighed and said, "Oh all right."

He smiled, "So my Grandfather was like, oh I don't know, twenty-five or something, during the dark days. He wasn't a soldier and he didn't fight in the actual wars but he needed a way to protect himself against any potential threat. So he got his friend who actually was a soldier to try and sneak him out some kind of weapon. His friend couldn't steal a gun for him but what he had managed to take was this shoge. So my grandfather got really good at using it and when an attacker did come he managed to take him down easily with the shoge. So when my dad was old enough he taught him how to use it, and ever since I was ten years old my father has been teaching me."

"And if you make it home, you'll teach your kids?" I asked.

"Well I didn't want to say that in front of you but yes, I would teach my eldest son."

I was a little bit confused at that. Not just the eldest son thing, which made no sense at all because a) I'm sure his daughters had just as much reason to need to use a weapon as any of his sons and b) why just the eldest? But also why he didn't want to say that in front of me, I mean did he think I'd be offended by the fact that he was only going to teach his skill to a male member of his family? Well actually that did offend me just a little bit but it's not really something to worry yourself over. Then I understood: for him to make it home, get married and have kids, I would have to be dead. Ah.

I frowned, "So you didn't learn so you'd have a weapon to use in the Hunger Games, but because it's got some kind of sentimental value to it?"

"Yeah."

"So does that mean you're the eldest son of an eldest son?" I asked after I'd taken a huge sip of some red sugary drink.

"I'm the only son of an eldest son," he said with a smile.

"Oh," I said with a tad too much surprise in my voice.

He laughed, "Surprised?"

"Well...yes." I said and when he raised one eyebrow to question me I said, "Well you're just not the type I picture to be an only child."

"I never said I was an only child," he said with a chuckle, "Just the only son. I'm actually the youngest of five."

"You have four sisters!" I said a little bit too loud. In district twelve anyone with a family that big struggled, I mean it was hard enough to keep my tiny family of three satisfied let alone seven. Mind you district one is one of the richest districts in Panem.

He laughed, "Yep. Savana, Essence, Destiny and Patience, the four perfect Emerson sisters. Savana's the oldest, she just got married and had her first baby actually."

I couldn't help but laugh at that, "You're an uncle?"

He smirked, "Hey no laughing. I could be a great uncle. Unluckily chances are that I'll never even learn my little nephews name because Savana is so damn picky that the baby had been born for almost a month and they still hadn't picked out a name for him yet."

"Well I'm sorry but my uncle is kind of a sore spot for me, so I find it hard to picture what a 'great uncle' actually is."

Jett stopped for a second, "How very rude of me. I've been talking all this time and haven't asked you a single question about your family."

"Trust me, my family isn't anything like yours at all."

He leaned back on his chair, placed both of his feet on the table, crossed his ankles and said, "Enlighten me."I

"I don't know where to start."

"Why don't you tell me about your mum and dad."

I took a deep breath. I hated talking about my parents but Jett was probably the first person I knew who didn't know a thing about either of them. I thought for a small second that I should just lie, tell him that I had a happy, whole family with two happily married parents. But I figured that if the two of us were going to work together then we needed to be able to trust each other, and lying about stupid things like my family, was definitely not a good way to build trust.

"My father died when I was three years old so I don't really remember him that well," I started and Jett's smile had very quickly become erased from his face, " My mother remarried when I was eleven and quickly got pregnant. My stepfather was killed in the mines soon after and the stress caused my mother to go into premature labour. She died giving birth to my two twin sisters, Dori and Raine."

For the first time I could remember Jett didn't look happy and confident. His face was sympathetic and pitiful. When he looked up into my eyes, his eyes had lost their usual spark and it was obvious to see he didn't mean to make me talk about such painful memories like this. He felt sorry for me. Well that made one of us. I'd long ago learned that feeling sorry for myself was just going to make it harder for me to endure all the tragedies in my life. The only way to survive was simply to accept that what had happened was in the past and I could never change it.

I kept going, "My sisters and I got left in the care of my uncle, a horrible, weedy drunkard who had no interest or idea on how to take care of children. It only took a few...events to see that the three of us could not live with him. So instead I took Dori and Raine back to my old home and my uncle would give us money every month to live on. We probably wouldn't have made it without the help of my best friend, Alara, who lived downstairs."

"And now you're here," Jett whispered.

"And now I'm here," I said with a sad smile, "I warned you that my family isn't like yours."

"It's just so..." Jett frowned as he tried to find the right words, "I mean it's cruel for someone to lose even one parent. But for you to lose three..."

"It's alright. It was a long time ago."

The two of us finished the rest of our food in silence, neither of us really willing to make pathetic chit chat after the sudden realisation of the two very different worlds we had previously lived in. I didn't resent Jett for being born into a more privileged life than mine, I mean I could, but what's the point really? Lots of my friends from school all used to wish that they lived in the capitol or district one with more money and nicer possessions but I never did. Wanting something like that wouldn't change the fact that they weren't born in district one, it would just make them dislike their present life more.

Caden still hadn't shown up by the time that Jett and I had finished and I kind of wanted to wait for him because, even though I didn't really know anything about Caden's family, he was from my world, from district twelve and it would be nice to be able to hear about his family as well. Then again I already knew he had a mother and father because I'd met them both and I didn't want to depress him with my woe is me life like I had done to Jett. He did finally show up just as Jett and I were walking out of the dining room and going back out to train.

"What took you so long?" I asked as I saw him.

"Just trying to get in as much practice as I can," he said with a smile, "Trust me I need it."

"You know what else you need, food. Take advantage of the constant feasts available to put on few extra kilos while you're here. I plan to."

"Shall do," he said and with a quick, "I'll see you later," he walked into the dining room.

Later came approximately four hours later, before Haymitch, Macie, Rubin and Verity had all come back from whatever it was they had been doing all day. It was almost eerie being left alone in a room with so many gadgets to play with and probably break. Caden quickly disappeared into his room so I decided to try and check out what was on the television, who knows perhaps there was some information on the games. What was I saying, of course there was going to be something on the games. Now let me set the record straight in case you haven't figured this much out already, I am not good with technology. I'm the kind of girl who falls over in elevators and can't work showers with millions of buttons and now apparently can't work high tech televisions. I was at the point of literally throwing the damn remote that was supposedly controlling the television when Caden came up behind me and took it from me. He took one look at it, pressed one button and it turned on. I stared at him in awe.

"How did you do that?"

He laughed, "I pressed the button with 'on' written on it."

I glared at him, "I hate you, just so you know."

He laughed again and sat down on the couch next to me. On the television was some young girl who had obviously had extensive amounts of plastic surgery on her face. She was interviewing a previous victor from somewhere who had come to the capitol to do something, oh I don't know, it was so ridiculously fake and boring that it was almost painful to watch. After ten minutes or so I took back the remote and searched endlessly for the button that said off. When I couldn't find it I passed the remote to Caden and once again the first button he pressed worked.

"I really hate you."

He smirked, "Whatever you say."

"Did you see, her highness Angora introduced herself to me," I said with fake humbleness

"I didn't see," he said laughing, "Such an honour on one as lowly as you."

"Yes ones as lowly as us can only dream of meeting people like her highness. Oh and I also met their majesties Tripp and Dahlia from two."

"I met Dahlia yesterday actually," he said dropping the whole humble facade, "She's horrible."

"I know, the pair of them acted like they were so much better than me, like I was scum or something."

"Well I spent an hour or two with Keenan from five. He's an alright guy but he's not someone I could picture myself spending a long period of time with."

"Have you met Porter from ten?"

"No, why?"

"He is possibly the nicest kid you will ever meet. Mind you I think he could talk for hours on end and not even think of slowing down but he's possibly the least bothered by all of this out of everyone here. You would think this is just a normal week for him."

Caden laughed for a second before quickly going silent. All the humour left his face and I was about to ask him what was wrong when he turned and looked straight into my eyes. For a small second I thought he might kiss me again but I reminded myself that was stupid. Caden kissed me once, and only once, to prove a point. And it's not like I wanted him to kiss me again, I think. Besides, if my theory was right, which I was pretty sure it was, Caden was in love with a girl who was back in district twelve and a guy who cares about a girl so much that he volunteers in the hunger games to get him to notice her doesn't just go around kissing girls. So you can imagine that I was completely unprepared when he said,

"Do you want to work together?"

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped.

"What?"

"Do you want to work together?"

"You want to form an alliance."

"Yes."

I was again totally confused.

"Why?"

He frowned, "Pardon."

"Why do you want me as an ally?"

He looked deep into my eyes, his big blue eyes as penetrating as ever.

He took a deep breath, "I could never kill you Eora," he said quietly, "So I figure if I'm not going to kill you why not work with you."

As much as I hated to admit it, it made sense. I liked Caden, he was sweet and nice and smart and if you handed me a gun and told me to shoot him I'm not sure I could do it. And he obviously liked me to because he had been the one to suggest an alliance. We'd done what Rubin had told me not to, we'd made friends. Even though an alliance like this couldn't last forever because no matter what, at best, only one of us was going to make it back to district twelve, he was right, we should work together while we could.

"I'd like that Caden," I said looking back at him.

He smiled at me and I smiled back. I quickly cursed at myself for trying to get through his stupid emotionless shell because if I hadn't neither of us would be in this mess. I wasn't really all that sorry though. Then I remembered one important thing.

"Wait, I just remembered," I said with a small frown, "I've already agreed to ally with someone."

Caden stood up and grimaced, "Ten guesses who."

"I gave Jett my word Caden," I said, standing up as well. It was obvious that Caden didn't like Jett, I'd picked as much up yesterday at lunch, but I wasn't asking him to.

"He's a career Eora," he yelled.

"So?" I shouted back.

"So how much do you really know about him?"

"More than I know about you actually."

Caden glared at me and turned around to face the wall, his back to me.

"Caden," I pleaded, all the anger draining out of me. He turned back around, his face dim. I shrugged my shoulders, "Let's face it, I'm not a threat. As Haymitch keeps on pointing out, I'm not big. I'm not particularly good at anything, and the only two things I have going for me are that I can run fast and throw knives. You, you are a threat. You're strong and smart and you have a natural flair for hacking a huge sword at people," I smiled at him but he didn't smile back, "And Jett, Jett is a threat. He's strong, he's smart and he's fast. He is good at absolutely everything and he's completely likeable. He's a threat, and therefore I'd rather have him on my team then on somebody else's. Please Caden, I'd really like you on my team as well," I begged, "Please Caden, please."

He sighed and hung his head. When he looked up his eyes were wide and doubtful.

"I don't trust him Eora," he finally said.

"I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to work with him."

Caden looked around the room slowly as if he needed to look away from me to weigh his options.

"I won't be on his team Eora, but if it's the only way to be on yours, then I'll work with him."

I beamed at him and threw my arms around him. His body stiffened for a moment before he slowly moved his arms around my body.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"You're welcome partner," he said as his grip around me tightened.

Hey everybody this is Cottoncandychoctop. I just wanted to tell everybody that I'm going away for the holidays so I won't be able to update for like a whole month! Sorry! However I made sure that this last chapter was finished before I left and I hope you like it. I was going to break it in half and finish the second half with Caden and Eora when I got back but I thought it was important you all got to read it if you had to wait for so long. I promise to get the next chapter up ASAP. But I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a happy new year!