Chapter Eleven
The soft rustle of the wind whistling through the leaves gently roused Peeta from his sleep. He lay with his eyes closed, his body pressed against the hard plain beneath him. Any minute now, his mother would start hollering at him, at his brothers, to get up and start preparing for the morning shift. He enjoyed the few minutes of reprieve he got before having to get up to work. It was part of his routine. It was familiar. It was comfortable. It was-
"Peeta?"
Peeta opened his eyes. The sky above greeted him, clear and blue, almost inhumanly so. There was no way to tell what time it was, but if he had to hazard a guess, he would say that it was early afternoon.
Clove's face came into view. "Sleep any longer and you're going to fuck up your sleeping pattern for good. Come on, this isn't the napping games."
"Napping games?"
When Peeta drowsily pulled himself up into a sitting position, he saw Marvel sharpening his spear with a silly grin on his face. All the tents were set up now, forming a small cluster around each other. Marvel was seated in the middle of the cluster, close to what Peeta assumed would be the campfire come night fall.
It seemed Marvel and Clove were the only careers awake.
"That was the best that you could come up with?" he chuckled.
Peeta rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. "What time is it?"
"I don't know, did you bring a watch?" Clove asked back.
"I figured that you would have learned something as essential as time keeping in the wilderness in your career . . . school?" Peeta replied.
Clove laughed. "I was never good at all that rubbish! Cato was better at the survival work than I was. I revelled in the practical work."
Cato's name immediately captured Peeta's attention, like a sparkle of glitter on the surface of a sea of mud. Why it did this, he didn't know. He was infuriated with Cato for doing this to him, for putting him into such a horrendous position. Yet, his name still caught Peeta's interest the same way a biscuit catches the attention of a dog.
"Where is Cato?" Peeta asked.
"Sleeping." Marvel gestured to the huddle of tents. "Mr Incredible isn't so incredible after all."
"Did he . . ." Peeta struggled to find the right way to ask. "Did he . . ."
"Kill any more tributes?" Clove finished. Taking Peeta's silence as answer, she shook her head. "No. Probably raged at a tree for a few hours and tuckered himself out that way."
"His knuckles were bruised," Marvel added contemplatively. "Kinda bloody."
Clove nodded her head at Peeta's hands. "What happened you, anyways? Your hands are fucked."
Oh, this? My "girlfriend", the girl I'm supposed to be hopelessly in love with, pushed me into a vase, as a direct response to my confessing said hopeless love for her! Romantic, right?
Peeta wasn't bitter about what Katniss did. She apologised. That was what mattered. But he was going to have to think carefully about what he said next. Protect the love story and all that.
He still hadn't completely figured out why he still cared. His life was on the line and here he was trying to guard a stupid secret that wouldn't matter in the long run. In the grand scheme, only one person was getting out, and the odds for it being either one of the "star crossed lovers" were hilariously slim. So why bother with this bullshit?
Yet, he still did it.
"I fell a lot running from the bloodbath. Turns out the forest floor isn't very forgiving."
This excuse would suffice. The bandages that Portia had wrapped his hands in on the night before the launch had ripped and torn away during his escape from the bloodbath. All that remained were the ugly gashes that the sharp edges of the vase had given him.
Clove was clearly trying to hold in her laughter. Her cheeks were sucked in, and her lips kept twitching. Peeta supposed that to a career, an accident like that seemed hysterical. At least she bought it. Even Marvel seemed mildly amused.
"That water is freezing!" Glimmer made her entrance, clearly having been bathing in the lake. Her blonde hair was wet and tangled, and her clothes looked to have gotten a scrub as well.
"You certainly have your priorities in order," Clove commented drily.
"You can laugh now," Glimmer said as she disappeared into her tent. "But you won't be joking around when you're eating from the pockets of my sponsors." Clove groaned as the girl from 1 re-emerged with a hairbrush. "We all know why they're sponsoring me. I can't let what they're paying for slip."
"Jesus Henry Christ," Marvel said to himself, shaking his head with amusement.
Peeta examined Glimmer with interest. "Do you not feel . . . exposed . . . knowing that some viewers see you in that manner?" he asked her.
Glimmer looked at him and smiled. "Completely," she answered. "However, if my body gets me an extra slice of bread, or possibly a weapon near the end, then I must take advantage of that."
She spoke of exhibiting herself so openly, so without concern or worry, Peeta almost admired it. This was a life or death situation; taking advantage of what you had was the only way you could get yourself ahead. Peeta assumed that was why Haymitch made him fly with the love birds' story. It gave his tributes an edge. Why Haymitch suddenly cared was another question entirely. No one was interfering with his drinking now that his tributes were in the arena, so why bother?
"Yes, because if Glimmer makes it to the final two, she will be graciously given the gift of the weapon she specialises in! Like Jesus Henry himself swooped in!" Marvel sarcastically replied. "Come on, Glim, you're beautiful, but you're not Finnick Odair. What weapon do you even specialise in anyway?"
Glimmer threw her hairbrush at Marvel's head. He only just ducked in time to miss it. "You don't know!" she snapped back at him.
"I think Anahita's family knew the Odairs . . ." Clove mused. She threw packets of crackers to everyone, Peeta included. She even ducked into Cato's tent to give him some. There was a grumble and then a, 'Shut up and eat your breakfast,' before she came back out. "Something about their grandparents living on the same patch of land by the beach? Shit, I don't know."
The mention of Anahita suddenly reminded Peeta of why Cato had stormed off last night. At least it was clear that he hadn't come back and torn up her tent . . .
He began to think about what Anahita had been saying that had gotten Cato so heated. She had been painting some sort of picture of the male tribute from 2 that made him look like a love-struck softie. Maybe it had been some sort of plot to emasculate him and make him out to be weaker than he liked to portray himself. Maybe to evade sponsors?
Peeta didn't know a lot about the careers, or about the environments they had been raised in, but if Anahita had been trying to ruin Cato's image as the terrifying brute from 2, portraying him as a man with emotions was surely the wrong way to go about it? Peeta sure as hell found the fact that a man who was capable of such destruction could also be capable of loving and living absolutely horrifying. But in the same breath, Peeta had never villainised emotions, even in terms of masculinity. He had no idea if the careers had the same viewpoint.
Whatever the case, Anahita had failed, because Peeta was sure that no one had believed her.
"Is Anahita sleeping?" he asked.
"No, she went into the woods to set some traps," Glimmer answered. She collected her hairbrush from where it had landed and seated herself beside Marvel.
Peeta stored the crackers that Clove had given him in one of the pockets in his pants. He was hungry, but he didn't know how long he would have to make these last. Besides, if he was lucky, he might have an opportunity to escape these guys, and if he did, he would need provisions.
"Surely you have plenty of food here, though," Peeta frowned.
Glimmer shrugged. "Ever since the six of us met at the training centre, she's been insisting that we hunt food even if we claim the cornucopia. Something about being prepared for everything or something or other."
"Yeah, she said she remembered watching a Games where all the food from the cornucopia rotted after a week or two," Marvel said. "In a way, she does have a point, but I can't see the Gamemakers repeating a strategy they have already used."
"Crazy bitch," Clove murmured. She cut her packet of crackers open with her knife and ate them without having to worry about running out or having to stock up. "She's wasting her energy on pointless escapades. I won't be saving her ass if she gets herself in trouble, just like she didn't do anything when Carrack was killed."
"That's not fair," Glimmer said quietly. "She didn't know."
"Yes, well, all the better for her then. Only one of us is getting out, right? She didn't have to be the one to make him croak."
Clove embodied what Peeta had always expected a career would be like. Yet, through all that bravado and front, he couldn't help wondering if it was all just an act. She was almost too much like what he had always expected a career to be like. Almost as if she was forcing herself into the shape that everyone wanted to see.
There was a rustle inside Cato's tent. Moments later, the man himself came out. Peeta had thought that he would look angry, like that was his default emotion. Instead, he just looked tired. How long had he stayed away from the group this morning? How much sleep had he gotten? Judging by the circles beneath his eyes, not a lot.
"Morning dipshit," Clove said. She didn't even look at him as she spoke, chucking another cracker into her mouth. "Or should I say afternoon."
"Any canons?" Cato asked. He examined his surroundings, making sure the camp was secure. "Any trouble?"
"No and no," Clove answered.
"Where is Anahita?"
"Setting up her stupid traps."
Cato didn't seem to care about Anahita or her traps. He didn't even look annoyed about the fact that she was doing it, not in the same way Clove seemed to be. "Whatever keeps her happy," he muttered. "They can be her responsibility. If she gets herself hurt then that's her problem to deal with."
Cato's exhausted gaze fell on Peeta. Peeta didn't see the older boy's gaze soften, because to the eye of an outsider, Cato's face still looked hard as a rock.
Cato sighed. "Have you been fed?"
Peeta nodded. "Y-yeah."
Cato nodded back, the gesture barely noticeable. "Good," he said. His eyes fell to Peeta's wrist, which was still tied to a peg in the ground. He frowned at it, as if he couldn't quite piece together what he was looking at. A second later, he pulled his sword from his sheath and approached him.
For one mortifyingly terrifying moment, Peeta thought that Cato had decided that his worth wasn't what he had first believed it to be. Now he was going to strike him down like he was nothing but a bug in his path.
Bizarrely, being faced with possible death thrust the image of their kiss into Peeta's mind. Not the heated kiss before the tribute interviews. The first one. The one in the corridor. The one that Cato had described as taking a chance because there wasn't much time left. Possibly for them both. It felt like it had been so long ago. Hundreds of years in the past in a completely different universe.
Now, the very same man was about to kill him.
When Cato crouched in front of Peeta, their eyes met. He was eerily calm. Peeta knew he would look the bastard in the eye until his final breath. He had messed with his emotions and fucked his perspective on everything, and Peeta would let him know that as he lay there dying.
Cato cut him free.
"Sorry; should have done that sooner," he muttered.
Peeta was baffled. He rubbed his wrist curiously, still prepared for the blow that wasn't going to come. He was too shocked to even thank him.
Cato stood up and looked back at the remaining. "Get ready, we're leaving for a hunt in five minutes."
A/N: This chapter is a bit shorter than my most recent ones, but it's setting up for the next chapter, where I'm planning some Peetato interaction :-)
