Hi guys (: I know I basically abandoned this story for a large duration of time but this previous year has been pretty hard for me and I'm sorry, but I was unable to keep up. I wish to finish this story this summer so updates will be quicker from now. I am so thankful to everyone who has stuck to the story till now and to everyone who is willing to stick up with it further :)
And a huge shout out to my beta C.J. Ellison who is still bearing with me. You are absolutely amazing!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.
Chapter Ten
Katniss
This time, he's gonna wear an iron suit.
This time, she's gonna fix her heart and make it bullet proof.
Twang!
Katniss sucked in a sharp breath as she watched the arrow loose from her place amidst a thicket of spiny bushes. She closed her eyes tightly and pressed her trembling hands to her mouth, her breathing becoming too fast and too loud for her liking. The revulsion she felt when she opened her eyes overtook her unexpectedly and she had to battle to keep the meagre amount of food she had eaten contained within her stomach. She had been standing there for no longer than ten minutes, watching with large horrified eyes as Peeta all but handed his life out to the Careers, neatly laid out on a silver platter. As soon as her eyes absorbed the sight, she wanted to look away but she couldn't find it in herself to do so. She watched in horrified fascination as Peeta aimed an arrow straight at Cato's sternum, his posture taught with tension yet holding an eerie kind of ease to it. At that moment she wasn't sure which was worse- Peeta getting killed by the Careers or Peeta brutally murdering all the Careers for her sake. She knew with a dreadful certainty that, either way, she wasn't going to get her Peeta back. A corpse sure, or a killing machine, but not her Peeta.
The realization left her leaning heavily against a tree trunk and struggling profoundly for breath, taking large gulps of the warm fresh air of the forest. She allowed her heart to calm down and commanded herself to think rationally. Even if Peeta somehow managed to survive, she knew that he wouldn't turn into a heartless killer. She knew Peeta; she knew about the goodness in his heart no matter how well obscured he kept it. And yet a small treacherous part of her mind couldn't help but replay the scene again and again before her eyes; Peeta landing a kill without even an ounce of hesitation. His arm had moved as easily as the way it did when he shot down a rabbit. Like killing a person was as easy as deciding what food to put on the table for a Sunday. As to provide evidence against an argument, her mind bombarded her with images of the boy from Four, laying in a motionless heap on the ground, his blood pooling around the ground and seeping into the fresh mud.
When Katniss found the courage to look again, she prepared herself for the worst. A lethal brawl, a few dead bodies, Peeta's dead body, but she could never have been prepared for the view that met her eyes. She almost cried with relief when she saw Peeta, still standing and unharmed except for the laceration on his left bicep where, thankfully, the blood had finally stopped its flow. But as her eyes broadened their tunneled vision, she saw Cato standing face to face with Peeta, both of them engaged in some kind of dialogue. Besides them, the rest of the Careers had closed in, in a rough circle with their weapons lowered and facing towards the ground.
And then, as if the scene wasn't astounding enough, she watched as Peeta and Cato shook hands and exchanged a rather terse nod.
Katniss didn't know what happened next- only that she started running. She wanted to get as far away as possible. She needed to get as far away as possible. She ran through the trees, stumbling over vines and tangling herself in bushes. She only stopped when her lungs started to burn for air, her legs felt brittle and she tripped over a stray branch, face planting straight into the ground. For a few seconds she just laid there, breathing heavily and blinking away the sudden tears that were blurring her vision.
We will stay together and if we don't, I swear I will find you.
Her mind threw his words back at her mockingly; they echoed and spun around in her brain until she clenched her teeth and forced herself to stop thinking. Numbly, she stood and commanded herself to assess her surroundings. She had landed herself in a small clearing, somewhere in the middle of the woods. She knew that she hadn't run too far; she estimated that her run had lasted only ten minutes. That would probably take her twenty to walk. She walked another fifteen minutes, still trying to calm her rapidly pacing heart and found a spot that was more secluded. She seated herself on a fallen log and started to look through the orange colored backpack she had managed to grab along with a single long bladed knife, a loaf of bread and a plastic sheet.
She rummaged through the backpack and took out a sleeping bag, two steel bottles that were meant for water but were currently empty, a miniature bottle of iodine to disinfect impure water, a small plastic container with strips of cooked beef, a box of matches, a coil of thin copper wire and a length of strong sturdy rope. She stuffed the things back inside along with her plastic sheet and the loaf of bread which squashed a little as she forced it into the bag. She didn't care though, as long as the stuff was edible. Next, she strapped the knife along her belt and concentrated on camouflaging the blatantly orange backpack. The orange would attract Careers faster than honey attracted bees.
Once she was done, she was pretty satisfied. Every patch of orange had been successfully covered with mud or leaves and once she slung it over her shoulders she was pretty sure that it blended perfectly into the forest. She headed downwards again, already starting to feel the dryness coating her tongue in the humid weather, and decided there and then to keep her eyes open for any kind of water source that the trees might be obscuring. The ground started to get more rugged as she half-walked half-jogged down the decline -where she knew she had the most chance of finding water. She tried to be quiet against the sound of her heavy footfalls but she had never mastered the art of walking silently, unlike Peeta. He could almost always manage to sneak up on her every time without fail and no matter how many times he had taught her to position her feet a certain way, she had grudgingly accepted the fact that she just couldn't walk quietly.
"The trick is to watch where you step." He had told her after witnessing her scare off a large buck capable of feeding both their families for a week. He grabbed both her hands in his silently and walked backwards, making her retrace his steps. She concentrated on stepping only where his feet had touched the ground but she was entirely too aware of his hands grasping hers, his dark sun-burnished skin contrasting against her pale fingers, his calloused palms holding hers almost gently. It had been a week since they had gotten together but her skin still tingled whenever he intertwined their fingers and she blushed every time his lips would meet hers. It was ironic considering she had been the one who had made the first move. But that huge burst of confidence had vanished entirely too quickly leaving her flushed and easily flustered, something that Peeta found highly entertaining. Sometimes she wondered if he did it deliberately, just to see if he could set her heart fluttering.
She winced every time she stepped on a branch and it cracked under her feet with a loud snap. Ten minutes later she had successfully managed to scare away every bird, animal and insect in near vicinity and Peeta was struggling to hide his smile as he told her to make her toes touch the ground first instead of her whole feet.
"You're laughing at me!" She whined and his face broke into a huge grin that he had been trying to conceal. He moved closer and encircled his arms around her waist, his eyes twinkling with suppressed humor. She felt a strange kind of warmth gliding languidly up her spine and quickly spreading to every end of her nerves, like small tendrils of happiness blossoming through her veins. Seeing the smile on his face and knowing that she was the one that had caused it felt amazing even if it had been at the expanse of her own pride.
"I'm not laughing," he said- but his quirked lips told her otherwise. "Your absolute incapability to be silent is astoundingly endearing."
She frowned at him and his smile grew even wider before he closed the distance between their faces. She closed her eyes instinctively, the frown melting right off her face and suddenly all her frustration faded away. As she ran a thumb along his jawline and hummed into his mouth, she felt a jolt of security, of certainty and belief; belief that she could get through this if she was with him. She could bear the three Reapings that they still had left, and she could bear the poverty that had been enslaved upon their district, and she could bear the cruelty and injustice imposed on them by the Capitol. Just as long as she was there with him encircled within his arms and surrounded by the fresh scent of leaves and bark.
"We could make it, you know." Peeta spoke as they parted, his ashy eyes focused into hers. Katniss blinked, still dazed by the ghost of his mouth on hers, barely processing what he was saying. "We could run away. Live in the woods. You and me, we could make it."
The humor vanished from his face and for a moment he looked at her with such seriousness that she couldn't help but imagine it all inside her head. Just the two of them, enclosed within the warm embrace of their woods, without the reapings, without the Hunger Games, free to do and live as they wished. They would hunt and he would sing to her and they would be free to fly, like the mockingjays in the spring. She imagined what it would feel like, opening her wings, feeling the wind underneath her soaring body and flying deep into the unknown. To feel as though the world was limitless. For a split second she wanted to say yes, wanted to intertwine his fingers in hers and lead him into the depth of the forest and vanish- but the crushing reality was something that rammed hard again and again against the walls of her brain.
"What about my parents and Prim?" She asked, forcing the words out of her mouth. The possibility was so sweet; she couldn't even bear to shatter a fantasy that had never happened. "And Gale, and Madge? We can't just leave them."
"They could come." Peeta replied, still staring at her intently, just waiting for her word with his eyes. He looked so hopeful, with wide childlike cat eyes. It was the first time she had seen him like this, so alive with hope, with a fire kindling in his eyes that was burning passionately from underneath the gray.
"They'll catch us," she said with regret lacing her voice, for once being the rational one between the two of them. "We wouldn't last five miles."
"We could," he replied softly, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes sliding shut. "You and me. We could."
She almost wished that she had said yes at that time, as tears started to sting her eyes again. Maybe then she'd be in a different forest, striving to live, not struggling to survive.
But then again- maybe she'd still be here, but with additional scars of punishment lacing her back.
By dusk, Katniss had slowed down her pace to a lazy stroll; her joints were aching, the soles of her feet sore and her mouth was as dry as parchment. But she kept trudging through the forests, taking large steps to cover more distance in compensation for her speed and halting occasionally to replenish her strength. Once she found a tree that looked sturdy enough, she scaled its length, albeit with a little difficulty– she hadn't had much practice since Peeta hardly ever climbed trees. She was a little unsteady on her feet and gripped the trunk so tightly with her fingers, her nails scratched painfully against the coarse bark. She reached a respectable vantage point and looked around, circling the entire perimeter within her field of vision multiple times with her eyes.
Her efforts were futile; she couldn't spot an ounce of water anywhere, not a pond, not a stream. She could feel her heart deflating slowly in her chest. No, the lake couldn't be the only source of water in the arena. No, she hadn't come this far to walk all the way back. There must be water someplace else; maybe the thick shrubbery was obscuring it. Yes, that seemed more plausible. Just because she couldn't see it didn't mean that it didn't exist.
With a newfound determination, Katniss climbed down the tree cautiously and landed unsteadily on the leafy ground below. She accidentally scratched the palm of her right hand on her way down, a thin line of blood already peeking through the raised swell of skin. She brushed her hands against her pants, ignoring the persistent sting, and began her search anew.
It took her nearly an hour before she finally spotted some foul tasting yet edible berries that she recognized from the edible plant station from training. After picking a few handfuls and stuffing them unceremoniously in her pockets, she continued on her way, munching on the odd cherries slowly, savoring the sour and slightly nauseating juice that dribbled onto her tongue. The juice managed to abate her thirst a little, but not a substantial amount- and so about the time that it was well past dark, she could feel the fatigue pulling at her bones from the hours of persistent walking.
She wished she hadn't walked for so long so she could have saved some strength. At this rate, she didn't know whether she would survive the next day. She couldn't help but feel exceptionally weak and wondered what the people back at Twelve thought of her obvious lack of survival skills.
The sudden loud snap of a twig set her fumbling for the knife at her belt and whipping around in the direction of the noise. She looked around left and right, her eyes raking through the thicket of trees. It could have been an animal, certainly, the Gamemakers always threw an abundant amount of wildlife into the Arena, but something about the noise made Katniss think that it was human; an odd kind of hunch, the root of which she couldn't identify. When she heard another twig snap, her suspicions were only confirmed.
"Who's there?" she called, which might have not been the smartest move on her part. She could hear the fear permeating her voice and instantly called out again, trying and failing to be sharper and louder. "Come out and show yourself!"
She braced her shoulders and tried to forget all about the fatigue that was previously weighing her down. The knife in her fingers felt alien and yet with the little practice she had had with similar weapons during the private training session, she knew that she had more chances of scoring her target than not. But the element of surprise was clearly working against her. In her mind, she processed all the faces of the Tributes that could be following her. She felt safe in the knowledge that it was none of the Careers, and yet with Thresh still somewhere out there she could never be too confident. And who knew- someone might as well be pulling a Johanna Mason.
There was quiet for a while and no one answered. Katniss stood absolutely still, pulse going haywire with the increased amounts of adrenaline and fear flooding her veins.
"To your left." A voice said, cutting through the silence, distinctively female, making Katniss jump although she had been on a lookout. She turned immediately to her right instead, in the direction of the voice, her knife raised bracingly in front of her chest. She could see nothing instead of the scattering rows of tress, no sign of a peeking boot nor a sparse tendril of hair. She was too riled up to give much attention to the words being spoken, although the confusion still registered in some part of her brain.
"Show yourself!" She called again, much louder, much harsher but still containing an ounce of shakiness that she had tried to dispel.
Once more she was only met with silence.
Deciding that she could stand still no longer, she moved in the direction of the voice, grasping her knife tightly between her fingers, holding in a breath.
"To your left."
Katniss hurled around again; this time the voice was coming from a different direction altogether. Her fear slipped slightly into annoyance and she gritted her teeth, irritated at the Tribute's insistence on toying her around. She debated for a few moments before fixing her grip on her knife and letting it fly into a tree in the direction of the voice, hoping to spook the Tribute out into the open. She was met with a complete lack of reaction besides the resounding thunk that her knife made as it dug itself into the thick bark. Katniss thought she heard a sharp intake of breath.
She waited for a few more minutes, still on alert for the barest hint of movement but it seemed that the Tribute had ran off. She launched a few empty threats into the air– none of which she could actually act upon- and waited for a reply or another bizarre message but none were forthcoming. She headed back to the trail she had been following, not bothering to hang her knife back on her belt and then stopped short as the girl's mysterious words came back to her.
To your left.
What was that supposed to mean? What was to her left? Should she head that way? Was it a trap? A trip wire or perhaps a snare designed specifically for humans? For a moment, she just stood there, heavily debating upon the words. The adrenaline seemed to be fading from her bloodstream and suddenly she felt lightheaded from a mixture of exhaustion and dehydration. She leaned heavily against a tree and knew that she had to retire for the night. She wasn't going to find anything in the sudden blackness that had taken the whole arena in its embrace. It wasn't like a gradual sunset; she swore that there was a reasonable amount of light an hour ago but now navigating her way through the forest had become almost impossible.
Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was curiosity or maybe the strange words were still echoing in her mind but Katniss headed to her left, foregoing all caution the reasonable side of her mind threw at her. It was a moment before Katniss realized that she was walking downwards on a steep slope unlike the gentle decline she had been following earlier. She kept a reasonable place, heels digging into the dirt to stable the momentum of her body. It was getting harder to walk on the steep decline and her feet kept sinking into the soft mud.
Wait.
Mud?
Katniss's head snapped upwards, realization suddenly dawning on her. She almost jogged the rest of the way down, on the edge of tripping multiple times- but even before she reached the end of the slope, she could heard the soft churning sound of water flowing leisurely downhill in a small stream and gathering in a shallow pool just a few feet away from where she stood.
Katniss let out a little laugh of relief, her parched throat aching. At least now, she wasn't going to die of thirst. She wondered whether Haymitch was proud of her, observing all the way from the Capitol, but then she remembered the fact that she hadn't found the stream by herself. The Tribute, whoever it had been, had been helping her. An unknown Tribute, a girl Tribute, whomever it was, was actually guiding her to the direction of the steam instead of springing her into a trap. She suddenly felt uncomfortable; she had long since accepted her long list of enemies in the arena but she had never imagined that there would actually be a friend too.
As she fumbled with the contents of her backpack, she mentally ran through all the names of the female Tributes she could remember. At least she knew that it wasn't anyone from the Careers- that would be strange, and incomprehensible beyond her imagining- but until the anthem played the pictures of all of the dead Tributes, she had no chance of narrowing it down any further. Shaking her head, she pulled out the empty canteen and the miniature bottle of iodine from her backpack, filling both the bottles from the stream and tipping in a few drops of iodine. She left them on the bank for a while, while she splashed the cold water onto her face and washed her hands, still coated with the berry juice from earlier.
She waited impatiently for a few more minutes before taking one of the bottles and gulping down almost half of it in one swallow. She drank the rest of the bottle more slowly and could feel the slightly rejuvenating effects of the water spreading through her body. She let out a small sigh of relief; the constant fear that she might not be able to find water had finally ceased. It was at that time that she recognized the slight gnawing at the walls of her stomach as surefire signs of hunger. She cursed her stupidity for not eating earlier; the hunger combined with her thirst had surely contributed to her fatigue.
Katniss rummaged through her backpack, took out the large loaf of bread she had grabbed on the run from the bloodbath and tore out a small piece, chewing slowly and being frugal with each bite. She knew that she had to find some edible plants or figure out a way to catch some prey because the bread wasn't going to last her two days. As Katniss restocked her backpack and started to scrounge around for the berries she had found earlier, she realized that she never thought she might have to face this predicament. She had always assumed that she and Peeta would be together and he would do all the hunting for her. Trying to hunt with only her knife throwing skills would be a challenge- she would probably have to rely on snares, which meant she was going to have to use her wire or-
Suddenly the sky blared into life and Katniss's attention was caught by the large glaring Capitol seal that glowered down upon her. The loud music of the anthem then filled the dead silence and Katniss watched as one by one the faces of the deceased Tributes flashed across the sky. The first face to appear was the girl from District Three- which meant that both the tributes from One and Two were alive, but Katniss already knew that; she had seen the aftermath of the bloodbath unfold right in front of her eyes. The next image was of the boy from District Four that Peeta had shot down and Katniss resisted the nausea that was steadily creeping up her gut. Peeta had killed that boy. Peeta had killed that person. Peeta had killed somebody's son, maybe a brother, maybe even a lover. Suddenly she didn't know how she felt. Would she have killed the boy, too, if she had been is Peeta's place?
The stream of pictures continued. The boy from Five. Boy from Six. Both from Seventh. The girl from Eight. Both from Nine and finally the girl from Ten. With the final resounding blare of music, the sky dissolved into darkness. Ten. The first day and they were already almost halfway through. Katniss let out a small gasp when she realized that both the tributes from District Eleven and Twelve had made it through the initial bloodbath. Her and Peeta and Thresh and Rue.
And then she recounted the list of all the girls that were still alive. All the Career girls, Crimson– the foxlike girl from Five whose name Katniss had finally caught during the interviews the night before, the one from Six, and little Rue from Eleven. Somehow, she couldn't see any one of them actually meaning to help her. And why would they? Why had anyone helped her at all?
Still puzzling over the conundrum, Katniss rubbed her fingers over her eyes, suddenly overcome with a deep sense of fatigue that centered itself to a dull throbbing in the center of her brain. Her stomach was still more empty than full but she knew she had absolutely no chance of finding anything edible in this stark artificial darkness that had taken the whole arena in its bleak embrace. She went through the cumbersome task of stuffing the contents of her backpack back inside, with the exception of the sleeping bag and the long length of rope. She then felt her way through the trees and when she found one sturdy enough, she attempted to climb it.
A loud hiss escaped her mouth when her already wounded palm connected with the rough bark. She continued on nonetheless and by the time she reached her desired place among the high branches, her palm was bleeding, she was badly scratched in several places and her hand was shaking badly from the pain that was cutting through the soft flesh. Biting her lip and blinking back tears, she shakily tore a small piece of fabric from the bottom of her shirt. She washed the cut with some water from her bottle and proceeded to bandage her palm the way she had seen her mother do countless times to a number of people who knocked on the backdoor of the bakery. As she carefully settled herself into her sleeping bag and struggled to tie the rope around her to secure her to the tree, she wished desperately for the small wound to get better till the morning. If the cut had been on some other part of her body, she could have borne it with significantly less difficulty but since her palm had been scratched open, she felt seriously disabled.
Even though she felt dead to the very marrow of her bones, it took Katniss some time to fall asleep; and then, for the first time, the gray eyes that haunted her dreams were far from pleasant.
Peeta
Peeta looked up as the earth-shattering booms of the death-cannon filled the air. The bloodbath was done; he was alive. Eight… nine… ten. Ten were people dead in a single day, in a single hour. He snapped his neck away, suddenly overwhelmed with a strong feeling of nausea as he looked at the limp bodies of all the dead Tributes, the antipathy rolling over in his stomach in waves. The grass was soaked with wide daubs and stippled strips of sickening crimson, the bodies splattered around with varying degrees of damage, all still, all unmoving, pale and unearthly in the synthetic sunlight. He battled with his stomach to keep the contents inside, determined not to show weakness in front of the Careers. As the last bong sounded, the Careers waited before bursting into cheers and hoots, giving high-fives and clapping each other on the backs on a on a job well done.
Peeta turned his back, truly repelled. He stalked over to the bank of the lake, clutching his bow tightly in his fingers and tried to breathe. He wondered what the people of District Twelve had made of his alliance. They would understand- right? That it was the only thing he could've done to save himself, that the alliance was only a faux arrangement until he could get away. He imagined how he would have felt if anybody else from District Twelve had pulled a similar stunt and it didn't help his conflicting emotions when he realized he would have been totally untrusting, even reviled by his people. He swiveled around when he heard footsteps, the adrenaline already making a retreat into his system.
But he didn't have to worry- the person walking over to him was the almost pitifully scrawny boy from District Three, who had somehow managed to convince the Careers to let him live; he claimed that he could reactivate the dormant mines embedded in the earth beneath the metal plates where the Tributes had stood at the start. Peeta didn't know whether he believed the boy or not but as long as the kid didn't get in his way, he didn't care. He was on his periphery, right now, with the pack of Careers now snarling right at his heels.
The kid walked over to the lake and washed the blood of a small gash on his wrist, wincing as he dipped his arm under the water. He stood up and looked around the supplies strewn across the Cornucopia, his eyes landing on a large first-aid kit sitting beside the display of spears almost instantly. He gaze then travelled over to the Careers who were already starting to gather the supplies and turned away, deeming the kit unworthy of the trouble it would surely lead to. The gash had started to bleed again and Peeta finally decided to take pity on the kid just because the blood was making him queasy.
He sauntered over to Cornucopia towards the first-aid kit, the confidence in his walk contrasting completely with how he was feeling inside. He could feel the eyes of the Careers boring into his neck but he paid them no attention, as if he thought they didn't have the guts to skewer him behind his back. He knelt down to open the kit and take the supplies he needed, concentrating more on keeping a tab on the Careers from the corner of his eyes rather than on the task at hand. He picked out few dabs of antiseptic, a salve that the bottle claimed could be used instead of actual stiches and a thick wad of gauze. He stalked back to the lake, relieved that a sword hadn't flown right through his spine.
He washed his own wound first, a few inches down his left bicep, because even though it wasn't anything major, it hurt like hell. He applied the antiseptic and the salve although the cut wasn't deep enough to demand stiches and proceeded to wrap it up in the white gauze. He was sloppy at best but the little spikes of pain that he had been ignoring for the past hour had already started to diminish. He then used another antiseptic to wipe at several scratches that he now adorned, the result from the brawl with the boy from District Four. When he was done, he was relieved to find that the Careers were off his back and silently, he handed the supplies to the boy from Three who had been watching Peeta intently the whole time. The boy's eyes widened but he didn't protest, hastening to take the aid from Peeta's hands.
Peeta didn't watch the kid dress his wound, having seen enough blood for one day. He took a seat on the grassy ground, not really eager to help the Careers sort out the supplies; from their faces, he knew that they didn't want him anywhere near 'their' stuff anyway. Instead he took out an arrow from his quiver and turned it between his fingers, analyzing the streamlined object. He knew that his shot at the boy from District Four had been lucky; he wasn't used to these arrows, nor this bow. He plucked at the taught string of the bow, measuring the spring, analyzing the strain.
His thoughts drifted and suddenly, he could see the dead face of the boy from District Four. He knew even before he volunteered that he would have to kill, but nothing could have prepared him from seeing the life drain out of the boy's eyes. He felt queasy again and he tried unsuccessfully to rid his mind of the horrendous image of the boy's immobile body. A huge deluge of guilt had dug a hole right in his chest and he knew that it was going to be a while before it completely evaporated. But the thing that was weighing the most heavily on Peeta's mind was the fact that killing a person had felt no different that killing an animal. He had known precisely where to shoot, know precisely where his arrow would strike and he had done it anyway.
He was glad when the boy from District Three spoke, desperately seeking out any distraction that was presented to him.
"I thought you were different," the kid said from besides Peeta. He was staring oddly in Peeta's direction as if trying to solve some unique conundrum. Peeta resisted the urge to tell at him to look away.
"Yeah?" Peeta said dryly, immediately knowing the route that this conversation was going to take. "What gave you that idea?"
The boy shrugged, his too-long hair falling into his eyes that he batted away with his now untidily bandaged wrist. "I don't know. You seemed different," the boy said, playing with the ragged edge of his gauze. "Not like the Careers."
Peeta could feel the annoyance slithering up his gut. He had just stopped the boy from bleeding into oblivion and he repaid Peeta by telling him that he was just like the Careers. Cold. Cruel. Heartless. It was not one of the best thank-yous Peeta had received.
"You seemed to really care about that girl." The boy continued, not noticing how Peeta's face hardened at the comment. "The girl with the braid. Your District partner. I mean, it looked like you- but I guess it was all just an act."
Peeta felt his irritation building up steadily; he was already regretting his decision to say anything to the boy at all. The fact that people thought his feelings for Katniss were an act made his gut clench in guilt. Even if it was the guileless kid or the hordes of mindless Capitol dolls glued to a screen. If the kid wasn't already in a deadly arena, possibly going to be killed within the next day, Peeta would've done the deed himself. Lucky for him, Peeta was feeling quite sympathetic.
Peeta shrugged. "Who knows what's real these days."
"You helped me." The boy stated, his words taking up an undertone of gratitude. He was still looking at Peeta quizzically, like he was trying to decipher the pieces of an insolvable puzzle.
"I don't like blood," Peeta replied, albeit a little uncomfortably. He was used to dealing with accusations on a daily basis ,but gratitude? The concept was almost alien.
The boy snorted at Peeta's words but he decided to drop it, not wanting to prolong either of their discomfort. There was a momentary pause before the boy said, "I'm Axel, by the way."
Peeta nodded. "Peeta."
"Oh, I know that already."
"You seem quite chatty for someone so small," Peeta said. Maybe it was the fact that they both had somehow managed to squeeze their way into the Career pack or maybe because the boy was so small, Peeta hardly saw him as a threat at all, just a periphery being on a greater battlefield, like a sparrow amongst wolves. But he felt oddly curious about the boy, like he knew more than he was letting on.
"You seem quite rude for someone so in love," Axel replied, raising his eyebrows in a challenge. Peeta actually grinned, surprising himself even more than the boy seated beside him. At least the kid had some balls; Peeta wasn't sure, but he had been told in the past that he could look quite intimidating. And the boy had managed to convince the Careers to let him in. Even though Peeta would never admit it, it was pretty impressive especially considering the kid couldn't use even the smallest of weapons.
A commotion from nearby startled Peeta. He looked over to the Careers who had now managed to successfully pile the majority of the supplies into a mammoth mound that sat a little ways beside the Cornucopia. His eyes landed on the loud figures of Clove and Glimmer who were fighting over the rights to a switchblade that Glimmer had discovered from amongst the plethora of weapons at their disposal. Peeta stared dumbly for a moment before he realized what the fight was actually about. It wasn't just a normal switchblade; it opened up to at least seven different kinds of knives varying to types and shapes that Peeta hadn't known existed. He watched the scene unfold with a muted fascination, bordering more on abhorrence than actual interest. The girls fought over the weapon like it was a pretty dress that both of them wanted to wear at the same party, like it couldn't easily cut a jugular open like tissue paper.
"These people disgust me." Axel said, his voice pooling with revulsion. His small eyes widened as he realized what he had just admitted to Peeta. Peeta wasn't surprised though, his own thoughts had been swimming much along the same track. He didn't take his eyes of the Careers and spoke before Axel found the words to refute his mistake.
"Yeah, well," Peeta adjusted the quiver slung across his back, the caution unconsciously flooding his blood. "You'd do well to keep that little tidbit to yourself."
Axel nodded hastily, any traces of his former flippant humor completely disappearing. He suddenly looked terrified of Peeta and Peeta realized he was clutching his bow a little too harshly between his fingers. He felt sorry when he saw the terror splotched around the eyes of the small boy and he let his grip loosen. He had many enemies in this arena but the small boy didn't pose enough of a threat to be one of them.
Peeta sat back and kept quiet, allowing his mind to wander. He sat there for a while, decidedly having gone through enough trouble for a day. Eventually the commotion stopped as the fight was resolved but he still, he tried best to keep the Careers within his sights and tried to hear the snippets of conversation here and there. If Axel wanted to say anything, he didn't, and Peeta was thankful for that.
After sometime, Axel went to dig the mines from the ground, pointedly looking in Peeta's direction, wondering if he would offer to help. Peeta almost did but he didn't want the Careers to think he was getting a little too chummy with the boy, so he decided to stay put. He finally got up to stretch his legs after a while and to grab something to eat from the supplies; he could easily hunt something out without going too deep into the forest but he had enough claim over the supplies as any of the Careers and he planned to make full use of it. The Careers had their backs turned away from him and Peeta's limbs relaxed as he approached the Cornucopia. He walked silently, feeling thankful for his mastery of stealth from the years of hunting.
Just as he reached the Cornucopia, Peeta overheard the distinct phrase "Lover Boy" uttered between spiffs of conversation and halted dead in his tracks.
He immediately darted to the side, and pressed his back against the hard aluminum wall of the Cornucopia, straining his ears to listen. He tilted his head to the side, capturing a slice of the scene beyond. The Careers were huddled in a group, talking in hushed voices and toying casually with their weapons. Clove sat on a big crate of supplies that most probably contained food and wiped off the stale blood on one of her knives, the red flaking away like rust. Cato and the girl from District Four sat at her feet and Marvel and Glimmer stood beside them, Marvel leaning his left arm on the butt his spear.
"… is a disgrace." Cato spat angrily. Peeta moved a little, trying to hear more clearly. "District Twelve in the Career pack. Twelve. The runts of Panem."
The rest of them nodded and muttered their assents. It was the girl from Four that spoke next.
"I want him dead," she said, her words laced with menace. Her wild bronze hair was sprinkled with dirt and her rampant eyes combined with the three parallel nail scratches that ran along her right cheek made her look wild and lethal. "He killed Trent," she said viciously. "I'm gonna slice that little wannabe into pieces and make sure that his little lover is here to see his rotting corpse, before the hovercraft takes what's left of him."
Peeta shivered unconsciously; there was something so acidic in the girl's voice that shot tingles through Peeta's spine, reopening the floodgates to the guilt he had been feeling earlier. It was different knowing that people wanted to kill you than actually hearing it described brutally in words.
Marvel sniggered at the girl's heated words. "Yeah I'd love to see that, shorty," he remarked condescendingly.
District Four glowered at Marvel but then she eyed his spear that was digging a hole in the ground and didn't say anything. She crossed her arms over her chest instead and shot him a heated glare.
"No way, Indra." Cato said to District Four girl, his voice holding an authority that visibly washed over the rest of the group. "Lover Boy is mine. You can have the girl if you want."
"The hell, Cato?" Marvel rebutted angrily. His eyes tightened, his face contorted into an almost feral kind of superiority. "I'm the one that sucker shot an arrow at. If anyone gets to kills him it's me."
"Whoa! Hold on," Clove interrupted just as Cato opened his mouth to reply. She wiped a stain off her knife rather vigorously, hoping to intimidate her comrades and then looked directly at both of the boys. "Don't get too ahead of yourselves, boys. I thought we agreed that all of us here are equally capable."
"Yeah," Glimmer finally decided to step in. She looked the least haggard; her flaxen hair looked almost perfect, her hand placed at her slightly jutting-out hip. "No dibs. The kill goes to whoever gets it first."
Cato snorted, arrogance splaying across his every feature. "You girls really think you can aim or run better than me?"
Glimmer scrunched her nose, the only hint that she had even remotely taken Cato's comment to heart. "With all that hulk you're carrying around? Most definitely."
Cato growled, making a move to stand up only to be thwarted by one of Clove's knives waving dangerously beneath his nose. Glimmer tried unsuccessfully to hide her smirk.
"Calm down, Cato," Clove rolled her eyes, not removing the knife from in front of his face until he sat back down. "Nobody's killing anyone before we get the other Tributes out of the way."
"Yeah." The girl from District Four- Indra- said. She untied the band holding her hair together and then retied it into a slightly less-haggard ponytail. "First we take down all the others than we'll see who can outlast who."
Peeta turned back as voices rose up to argue Indra's statement. He silently made his way back to the lake and went through the conversation in his head. He could never had imagined that the Careers wanted him dead with such intensity. He felt a tiny bit scared at their threats –at least three Careers had a personal vendetta against him- but mostly he felt quite pleased with himself. For the first time, he allowed himself to feel proud about his skill, about his ability to give the Career pack some semblance of a threat. He then wandered to the Cornucopia again, this time making his presence known by his loud footsteps.
When the Career turned back to look at him, he knew that he was going to have to escape this alliance, one way or another. But first- he was going to figure out how to break the Careers.
Hope you enjoyed! Please tell me what you think, especially about the characters like Axel and Indra who are largely the product of my own imagination. Every insight is helpful :)
The song used above is Broken Arrow by The Script.
Always with love,
-EG.