I watch the clock while the boys sleep. My mind races. When it's nearly one, I reach over a shake Peeta. His eyes open blearily and he looks up at me.
"You okay?" he whispers.
"We have to go," I whisper back, then I remember the listening devices. Meet Finnick, I mouth silently. Peeta looks confused for a moment, still half asleep.
"Right this second?" he asks. He knows Finnick was trying to communicate with me earlier. It's why he helped with the whole charade of them fighting over me. Peeta's eyes drop to Arin, who has somehow worked his way on top of Peeta's arm. "I can't, Katniss. What if Arin wakes up and we're both gone?"
I exhale with some exacerbation.
"Fine," I say, swinging myself out of bed.
"Katniss," Peeta says and I turn back to him.
I've never wanted to get married. I've never wanted kids. But in this moment, when I look back and Peeta has this little boy curled up beside him, I imagine what it might be like for Peeta to be a dad. With Arin's mop of blonde curls, wilder than Peeta's but the same gold hue, they could be family. Something in my chest swells uncomfortably.
"Yeah?" I ask.
"Tell me what they say," he asks more than says. He doesn't trust that I will. Before I can answer I hear a dull buzzing sound coming from across the room.
"What is that?" I ask. Arin sits up and rubs his eyes. I follow the sound until I reach my jump suit. It's buzzing like there's a june bug stuck in the fabric somewhere. I run my hands over the suit and realize there's something hard in the pocket. I pull it out and find a coin, humming and hot to the touch. I stare at the coin's face – a metal portrait of Snow. Even in such a rudimentary sketch he looks like he's keeping a secret. When I run my thumb over the face the buzzing stops and the heat from the metal evaporates.
"Arin, Peeta and I have to go for a little bit," I say. Arin looks perplexed, but sleepy. "We'll only be gone a little while. Do you think you could stay here and guard my room for me? I need someone brave. Could you do that?"
Arin sits up, his back straight. "I could guard your room for you. I could keep it safe," he says insistently.
"Good," I respond, looking at Peeta. He chuckles a little and gets out of bed. He tussles Arin's hair a little before the two of us slip out of my room and leave the suite.
"What is that?" Peeta asks and I drop the coin in his palm. Cold and still, it looks like a normal five-piece. We walk to the end of the hall to the north stairwell. I'm still not sure what we're doing here, how we aren't going to get caught. It seems a little conspicuous to me to have Victors roaming the lit halls at night. Surely we'll be caught on camera, our footsteps picked up by listening devices.
I open the stairwell door and find Finnick, Haymitch, the victor from District 7, and a man with grayish skin I recognize from this morning as one of the tributes from District 3.
"Get in," Finnick says with a boyish grin, grabbing my wrist and closing the door.
"What is this?" I ask, holding the coin in my hand.
"Clever isn't it?" the man from District 3 boasts.
"I like the fuck you to Snow part," Johanna Mason smirks, flipping the coin across her fingers, Snow's face flashing and hiding with each rotation.
"It interferes with the monitoring systems. Overrides the cameras with video of a pre-programmed undetectable loop from earlier in the evening. Runs white noise over the microphones. It will even disable motion sensors within a one-hundred foot radius, give or take a few inches," the man adds, pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Beetee Latier, right?" Peeta asks and the man nods. Peeta offers his hand and Beetee shakes it awkwardly. He doesn't seem to know how to respond to even the most normal of pleasantries and shoves his hands into his pockets as soon as he can.
"Keep it with you at all times. When you feel the coin heat up suddenly, that means we meet here at this time," Beetee instructs.
"Neat," Peeta says, turning the coin over in his palm. I assume Finnick planted one on Peeta during their skirmish earlier.
That seems to be about all Beetee is currently willing to offer as he turns his attention to Haymitch. I follow his gaze and look at the old man expectantly. I'm not sure what we are doing here. When we talked on the train, it was pretty clear Peeta was to be left out of it, yet here he is, standing in the stairwell, sharing winks with Finnick at the parade. My eyes focus on Haymitch.
"We need to do something," Haymitch says assertively. "Snow reaped Victors because he wanted to eliminate our presence in the Districts. Many resistance leaders are found among the Victor ranks."
"Duh," Johanna says, shifting her feet impatiently.
"He reaped the children to ruin you. To tear down any chance of unity between the Districts. It's one thing to watch children kill one another out of a desperation to live, it's another to watch an adult kill a helpless kid," Haymitch reiterates what he's already said to Peeta and me in private. I think of little Arin, asleep in my bed back in our suite. I would never, could never, kill him. And if someone does, if someone tries, I would hate them with every fiber of my being. "You all need to band together and keep those kids away from the Careers," Haymitch orders.
"Finnick is a Career," I point out. He feigns looking offended but I'm not wrong. Districts 1, 2 and 4 have some kind of alliance the rest of us can't penetrate.
"I'm not a baby sitter," Johanna says defiantly.
"Define child," Beetee asks precisely, and we all turn our heads to him. His eyebrows perch. "Do you mean all of the new tributes? Do you mean any individual still within reaping age? That could include these two," he says, gesturing to Peeta and me. Johanna cackles out a laugh.
"I don't need anyone sacrificing themselves for me," Peeta says to the group, but he finishes with a pointed look at me.
"Wait, are we talking sacrificing ourselves? Or just keeping them alive long enough to die of some Capitol-trap instead of by a Victor?" Johanna spits out.
"Shut up!" Haymitch bellows and we all fall silent. "I'm asking you to keep them safe as best you can. I'm asking you to recruit other Districts to do the same. I'm asking you to have the self-control not to kill them," he says, directing that last sentence at Johanna.
"So who wins?" Johanna asks. "Which one of us gets to stay alive?"
We're all silent. It's actually Beetee who finally speaks.
"The Arena will decide. It always does."
When we get back to my room, Arin is pacing the space. He has a hairbrush clutched defensively in his fist. When he sees us, a smile breaks out on his face and his grip on the brush loosens. I told him on the train to find a weapon. If he's in the Arena and he has to face someone, his size is not to his advantage. Find a rock, find a stick, anything to do damage or provide some distance. When I see his knuckles white around the hairbrush, I can't help but feel a mix of pride and potent sadness. Arin goes back to sleep in his room, a new sense of faith in himself now that we showed some confidence in him.
If only I had confidence in myself. Peeta sits on the edge of my bed and watches me as I pace the room.
"Kat–"
"I don't think I can do this again," I whisper. I'm not sure if it's to Peeta or to myself, but I'm reliving a nightmare. I think of Rue – her bright smile, her small hands, her clever wit. I held her. I held her as she slept in my sleeping bag. I held her tiny body when her life slipped out of it. And now Arin… "I can't," I choke. I feel like my throat is filling with sludge and I can't breathe. It's like I'm drowning. I gasp for air but I feel as though I'm in a vacuum. Peeta is up from the bed and his arms are wrapped around me.
"I know," he says, but I can't breathe. My chest throbs and I think my heart might stop beating for lack of air. Peeta's hands cup my face. I can feel my skin burn red with exertion. "Look at me. Look at me," he orders. I try but my eyes are stinging with tears and when I blink they stream down my cheeks. "Purse your lips like this. Like your blowing out a candle." I try but I'm starting to get dizzy. "In through your nose. With me, Katniss. In through your nose." Peeta draws breath slowly and I try to copy. "Now out," he says softly, blowing the air through his lips. I try but it comes out a shaky mess. "Again," he says, watching me carefully. In. Out through my mouth.
When I'm managing on my own, Peeta presses a kiss to my forehead and it's so tender that I feel my hate for the world harden in my chest. What a cruel place we live in, that someone like Peeta is forced into an Arena to kill. Someone who let his mother beat him senseless rather than raise a hand to her, who loved her despite her viciousness. Who loved me despite my flaws. Who loved Prim even if she represented a rift so large it broke his family. Who saw through Haymitch when all I could see was a drunken wreck. Someone whose every instinct is to nurture and love being forced into a massacre.
Peeta's arms wrap around me and he squeezes me tight. When I pull back there's a tear running down his cheek. His hand quickly wipes it away as he turns his body from me. I've never seen him cry. Not through any of it. His resolve breaks for just a moment, but he takes in a shallow breath and recovers before I'm even sure it really happened.
"Come on, let's get some sleep," he says. We crawl back into bed and I stare at the ceiling in the dark.
"Effie's gonna be mad at you," I whisper with a small smile.
"I don't care," Peeta replies back, finding my hand under the blankets and weaving his fingers in with mine.
In the morning I force Peeta back to his room. I can't deal with the disapproving stare that will linger all day. I'm pleasantly surprised when Arin keeps his mouth shut – not only about our secret meeting in the middle of the night, but about Peeta's whereabouts in our suite.
"You have ten minutes to change and then we will head down to training," Effie harps. Haymitch groans a little and nurses his coffee as if it were an elixir of life. Madge and I march diligently upstairs. I find my training clothes hanging in the closet, the number 12 on my arm. Changing and brushing my teeth takes all of two minutes, but if I can avoid Effie's high-pitched orders for 8 more minutes, I'll take it. I lay on the bed and bury my head under the pillow, blocking out the light. A tight rapping rings on my door a few minutes later.
"Truly, Katniss, what could you possibly be doing to make us late?" Effie flutters about. I follow her back downstairs and meet our team at the elevator door. All four of us are in matching outfits. When the elevator door opens, we step inside, but Haymitch catches Effie's elbow before she joins us.
"Let them go," he says.
"But I am their escort! It's my job, Haymitch!" Effie nearly screeches like an owl.
"They are already the youngest tributes. Don't make them look like they need a babysitter. We need to show that Katniss and Peeta can fend for themselves and their tributes," Haymitch explains. Effie's mouth hangs open as if to express her next line of protest, but instead she snaps it shut and steps back from the door. The elevator closes and the four of us are alone.
I expect the training center to be full to the point of capacity, but when the doors open I'm surprised to find very few victors have decided to bother at all. The young tributes are all here, most looking wide-eyed and lost. Across the room I see Johanna with two children following her like baby ducks. When she stops abruptly to grab a staff, the closest slams into her back and Johanna whirls around and starts screaming at the shocked tribute. Finnick is standing in the far corner with his two tributes, quizzing them on edible roots. The two tributes from 3 are also present as well. The tributes from 1 and 2 are sparring. I see a woman I recognize from the Reaping video. Her children clutched to her legs as her name was called and she had to extricate herself from their sobbing, clinging bodies. I think she was from 8. Is from 8, I correct my own thinking, but I know we are all dead. I can't help but place us all in some kind of preemptive past tense.
"What should we do?" Madge asks, scanning the room. In this moment I have a choice. Learn something new that might improve Peeta's survival, or teach Arin and Madge the basics. My mouth feels dry.
"Come on," Peeta says before I have a chance to speak. "Katniss is really good at making fires. Let's see if she can show us a thing or two." Peeta takes off for the fire-making station and I follow dutifully. Peeta plays dumb, although we worked on survival skills all summer. "Then I strike the flint like this?" Peeta purposefully does it wrong so Arin and Madge watch more closely as I correct him. "I propose a race. You two versus me and Katniss. Whoever gets their fire going first wins."
"But–" Arin starts to protest.
"But–" Peeta interjects, a grin on his face. "You get the flint," he finishes, dropping it in Arin's palm. The four of us get to work hurriedly building our tinder nests out of leaves and small sticks and bark. I catch Peeta watching me and accuse him of cheating.
"Why are you all laughing?" I hear a voice spit out as smoke begins to rise from my kindling, then a flame. I look up and find the boy from District 1. He's tall with wide shoulders. He's a year older than me, even though this is his first trip into the Arena.
I'm about to stand for a confrontation when I hear Peeta say, "You can join us, but I've got to warn you, Katniss is pretty fast and you probably aren't going to win."
"Win what?" the tribute probes with a mix of viciousness and curiosity.
"The Quell," Madge answers coldly, speaking over Peeta's playful response. While Peeta was moments away from diffusing the situation, Madge has just sent a warning shot to the Careers.
"What did you say to me, girl?" the tribute hisses.
"Too slow to follow?" Madge incites. His face turns red. He lunges forward and Madge springs to her feet and takes off. The boy scrambles over her ruined fire and shoot after her. The trainer blows their whistle but the boy does not let up his pursuit. Madge sprints across the gym, hurdling obstacles effortlessly as the Career plows through them in her wake as though they were made from paper. Madge remains just past his fingertips. The instructors are yelling now but Madge isn't going to stop running first. They reach an open space and both pick up pace. I turn toward the weapons station, ready to intervene, when Peeta grabs my elbow.
"Look," he whispers.
When I turn back around Madge is running toward the freestanding handrails that run along the entrance of the training area. She ducks and slides gracefully underneath when the ogre of a boy crashes into the railing at full speed. The bar catches his just below his stomach and he folds around it like a shirt being hung to dry on a clothesline. A noise escapes his mouth as the air is pushed from his lungs and he crumples and falls to the floor. Madge scurries to her feet and runs back to us. The instructor marches toward her with a face flushed with anger.
"She didn't touch him," Peeta insists, and we all know it's true. The instructor stands there, mouth agape, but there is no recourse to be had. Madge didn't touch that boy. He injured himself.
A whistle blows.
"That ends morning sessions. Please report back to your appropriate suite," the instructor bellows.
I look over at the boy who has finally slid himself onto his back and is being looked at by a medic in a white shirt.
One down.
Either that, or a target on Madge's back.
A/N - I had a little Hermione Granger/Dumbledore's Army influence here... ;)
