Chapter 11: Training and Interviews

I speak quickly but clearly at breakfast the next morning, as though I can't get the words out fast enough, because I can't. My four charges will only have three hours, not three days, to train and absorb as many things as possible, before they break for lunch and then spend much of the afternoon in their private sessions with the Gamemakers. The training scores will be returned late tonight, after which there is a full day tomorrow where I will coach my quartet in how to shine during their interview with Caesar Flickerman the following evening.

Zeus and Ariadne are attentive; Io and Sperantia take in what I say with glares and grunts. I finally take them down to training feeling as though it is all out of my hands. I meet Peeta heading back to the elevators and we take the same car up.

"How are you holding up?" I ask him gently.

He shudders. "OK. I guess. I had a flashback last night and scared my teams half to death. Haymitch has now started to come up from the fifth floor to help me, running himself ragged. He's half-drunk and he's taking on quadruple the workload practically and doing better than me!"

I pat his shoulder. "You and I are new at this."

"Yeah, but you aren't the one who still has to shift through memories." He bows his head low, jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists before finally easing somewhat, enough to ask, "You kissed me in the cave because you were playing for the cameras, not because you wanted to. Real or Not Real?"

The way he phrases it… how to answer him? I decide to punt: "Both."

He turns to face me fully, blinking. "Huh? That's not an answer."

"Who says it can't be?" I shrug. "Real and Not Real. Yes, it's real that I kissed you for the cameras… but it's Not Real that I didn't want to. It took a couple, but pretty soon, I wanted to kiss you. I liked kissing you, and you kissing me – it was like we've been kissing each others for years when really, we still barely knew each other. You… stirred something in me, in that cave, Peeta."

The elevator grinds to a stop at Floor Ten, but we don't feel it, still staring at each other heatedly.

I can't tell which of us moves first, and I don't care.

We collide violently, crushing our lips to each other in the most passionate, bruising kiss we've ever shared. The elevator cars ding open onto an empty floor to us making out. Turning me, Peeta braces me roughly against the archway of the elevator, pressing against me so that I'm holding the door with my body. I boldly hitch my leg high to wind it around his torso and lift my hips up towards his.

BEEEEEEEP!... The elevator alarm suddenly sounds to signal us we've been blocking the door too long.

Peeta and I roughly break apart, our arms still around each other and in a very compromising position. Peeta sets me down from where he had been half-lifting me up the wall and pecks my lips once, hurrying off onto his floor quickly before he loses control again. The doors slide behind me and I continue on to the penthouse suite. When I get off at Floor Twelve, I lick my lips, stunned.

"What was that?" Of my own accord, my flushed and very kissed lips upturn into an almost giddy smile. "And why do I want to do it again?"

My four charges return from Training and their private sessions well past nightfall, and shortly thereafter, their corresponding scores are also returned.

I don't really pay attention to the other teams, though I have to be proud of my fellow Victors from 12 and the crop they have culled. Haymitch's in Teams 5 and 6 all score 8s, 9s and one 10. Peeta's for Teams 9 and 10 do about the same, maybe a tad lower – 7s and 8s. Enobaria's Capitol kids playacting as Careers score high. Low to medium for the rest, watched over by Beetee and Johanna.

For me, Io does incredibly; he manages an 11 – once considered Career territory. Sperantia Blackstone nets a 9. Zeus does the worst, with a paltry 4. Ariadne is about average, with a 7. Watching her from down the length of the couch, I can tell: she is deeply scared.

We have to be at the Capitol studios for the interviews, lined up, by 7:00 PM. Waking everyone up at 6 AM, I only have twelve hours to make all four of them presentable for live television – that's three hours per kid. Io and Sperantia's accomplishments allow me to keep things simple: "let Caesar wax on and on emphasizing your high scores, but do not reveal how exactly you got them. Not only is it not allowed – trust me, I know from experience – it would be unwise. Leave the others in fear of you, which you'll be able to do all the more effectively if they don't know what's coming next." For Io in particular, I impart this advice:

"Show off your physical prowess. Intimidate the audience. Do that, and you'll intimidate all the other tributes as well."

I know at the top of my session with Zeus that the kid is pretty much a hopeless case, but I will myself to be as helpful as I can be. Comforting – he'll be dead in less than 24 hours.

"Play up the cuteness factor. You represent the children the Capitol is losing. Make them pity you and want to sponsor you. They can't stand it when really little kids go in. They couldn't stand it when Rue died. That's your angle."

Ariadne Snow is last of all, and though I try to myself I am helping my tributes equally, I know I work with her the most. Unfortunately, she seems resigned to her fate, which she sums up quite simply.

"I'm Ariadne Snow, Katniss. Ariadne Snow. Granddaughter of a President in disgrace. The districts…. States…. Will all be begging to see me dead. Even folks in the Capitol turned on him once things got bad enough and the rationing started."

I don't sugarcoat it. "Yeah, they probably will. So if you want to get sponsors and stay alive, this is what you need to do. Emphasize, point out, hit them over the head with it: you are not your grandfather. You are your own person. They hate your grandpa, but that doesn't mean they should hate you. Remind them of that."

Ariadne lifts her eyes to mine, biting her lip. "Do you hate me, Katniss?"

It's a fair question. I hated her grandfather as much as anyone. Her grandfather who was ready to send my sister to death until I intervened. Her grandfather who tried to control my life, and then kill me again, when I became too much a symbol of resistance. Her grandfather, who stole away the man I love and who I am still trying to get back from the lingering torture he inflicted on him.

But none of that means that I hate Ariadne, just because of who her family is and what they did. So I tell her so.

"No, Ariadne. I don't hate you. I genuinely want to help you. But that partially starts with you helping yourself. We'll help each other. You have to believe you can win. Do you? Do you believe?"

Ariadne takes a long time answering. But then her jaw sets with determination.

"Yes. I do."

I sit with Peeta and Haymitch in the studio audience that night, making sure to keep as many seats as possible between my lover and Johanna, both of whom seem only too happy to oblige.

Much of the tributes run by in a blur. Enobaria in particular got a good haul – even if they don't exactly look like Careers, they are still Capitol kids, well-fed who have clearly taken to heart their mentor's instruction to at least act like Careers. At least two of Johanna's kids are the same way. Same for Haymitch.

I resist the urge to throw up. At least seven or eight kids this year – nine, if I count my own boy, Io - have the fierceness to make a formidable Career pack. I don't know what went on in the brief training, if there was even time for the bigger kids to form an alliance, but if they did, Ariadne and the others have to avoid and outlast them.

Teams 11 and 12 go on last. Sperantia Blackstone plays along with Caesar talking up her fine training score, even boasting about it. But she ends with this line that is sure to piss the victorious rebels off.

"When I get out, those district scum will wish they hadn't done this to me!" The kids from Team 1, Clio Wellforge and Leto Nighthorn, said much the same thing earlier tonight, and worse.

Zeus is pitiful and cries halfway through, which I am not sure about until I see Capitol mothers reaching for their tissues. The wails are worse than we heard from the audience with the previous Victors last year. Then the buzzer is sounding, and I'm crossing my fingers as the granddaughter of the deposed President takes the stage.

"And here's a name I'm sure we will all recognize: Ariadne Snow! Now, Ariadne: how did you feel about being Reaped?"

At least Ariadne is honest – maybe a bit too much. She shrugs and states, "I wasn't surprised at all, Caesar."

"7 is an excellent score, I must say – how did you manage that?"

Ariadne told me in our private coaching session – she is really handy with knives, honed in years of sneaking down to the kitchens. It will also lend to hiding, if she is of the mind to. But she doesn't, can't go into such detail here.

"I'm not the pampered princess everyone in the di…. States and in the media have painted me as, Caesar. I don't intend to go down without a fight."

"Like your grandfather?" And I want to smack Caesar for undermining our interview strategy.

Ariadne saves herself though from such a blatant comparison. "No. I'm better. I'm a better person than that." Considering how much of a spot she was put into, I can't say I could have gotten out of it more skillfully.

Io rounds out the night by grunting a lot and flexing his muscles and shooting the tributes dirty looks. Most of them are quaking in their boots thinking about his 11, except for the Careers wannabes of Teams 1, 2, 5, 7 and 8. They're clearly thinking: bring it!

Arriving back at the penthouse, I immediately dismiss everyone to bed. Ariadne hangs back, like before. "Thank you," she says sincerely.

There's that twist in my gut again, and I've never more wanted to take back my vote than right now. All I can manage instead is, "You're welcome, sweetheart. Get some sleep."

I don't get any of my own.

I bid my four charges goodbye on the roof of the Training Center the next morning. It will be a short hovercraft ride to the Capitol Arena on the city's outskirts.

"Run. Find water," I instruct them, though recalling our tour, I know they won't have very far to run, seeing as they'll be literally walled in. Hopefully, that is where the tunnels will come in; it will be the hiding that draws this out. "The rest will follow." I hug only Ariadne and Zeus, letting the embrace linger with the former. As soon as the plane bearing my tributes is out of sight, I take the elevator down to the ground level and meet up with Haymitch.

"Peeta's already there. I dropped him off at Control Central and then circled back to get you."

We hail a cab down to the complex where the mentors would always meet to aid their protégés. When we get inside, Enobaria and Johanna are laughing uproariously and toasting a bit of champagne. Beetee has a holophone to his ear, speaking quietly – calling a sponsor, perhaps? I figure that's the case, until I hear the older man murmur, "I love you too."

Huh? Who tells a sponsor that they love them? Or is Beetee involved with someone? I never took him to be interested in romance.

Peeta is in a far corner in front of the 9 and 10 team screens, folded into a ball and looking morose. Haymitch claps him on the shoulder, and I am right on his heels with a kiss to my love's cheek.

"We're here for you."

"Yeah. Sure," he huffs. I frown, wondering if he's back to taking it out on us for being the reason we're even here in the first place.

10 AM. Top of the hour. The screens go live, revealing the Capitol arena and the empty stands of the stadium, and then there is Claudius Templesmith's (also released temporarily from where he's been awaiting trial) announcing:

"Ladies and gentlemen: let the 76th Annual Hunger Games – the Capitol Games – begin! May the odds be ever in your favor!"