Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story

Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.

AN: A break from my usual narrative style of alternating between Katniss' POV and a third-person chapter, but since the Avengers are just training at this point, I thought it was important to show how a certain '100' character is reacting to events back on Earth, so I hope you like the results

Falling Hope, Rising Threat

What does it say about me that I hate it when things are going well?

Raven recognised that she was exaggerating her issues, but it felt like the simplest way to consider her feelings on the events of the last few days. Ever since that last attack on the dropship by the Grounders, Raven had been forcing herself to keep going as much as possible to try and keep the rest of the 100 alive, even if her back injury had made that difficult, but now that the Avengers had arrived on the scene, she found herself resenting their presence more than she appreciated it.

It wasn't that she didn't appreciate that the former residents of the Ark would be in trouble if they tried to go after Mount Weather on their own- even with the grounders to make up the numbers, they'd have trouble coping with the mountain's defences on several levels- but the fact that she knew they needed help on this one just left her feeling even more useless.

She didn't like to think of herself as conceited, but she'd been such a major part of events on the ground since she'd arrived here in that escape capsule that it felt like she'd been demoted back to some dumb kid ever since Mockingjay flew in with Clarke and the rest. Now Finn was dead, Clarke was flying around as part of a genuine team of freaking superheroes, Octavia was off in some other dimension with a man who was king of that place and a woman with an artificial arm, and Raven was still trying to work out how she could walk with this goddamn leg…

OK, so she'd picked up that transmission from Monty back in the mountain, but that was just accessing the Ark's old radios and listening out; anyone with any kind of technical ability could have done that. It was like she'd taken several steps back in ability after that idiot shot her; she wasn't getting anything done and she didn't even have a clear idea what she could do to sort that out.

Shit, she thought, as she slumped down against the nearest suitably-sized box in the camp. Everything's building up to some big showdown, and I'm having trouble just staying on my feet while the tech goes beyond anything I ever worked with…

"Problem?" someone asked. Looking up, Raven saw the gold-and-red figure of Iron Man walking up towards her, his helmet raised to reveal a surprisingly young face with fair hair.

"Just… stuff, y'know?" Raven shrugged.

"Been there," Iron Man smiled, reaching up to remove the helmet completely as he leaned against the wall to smile at her. "By the way, I'm not sure we've been properly introduced; Peeta Mellark."

"Raven Reyes," Raven replied, looking at him with a brief smile; she still might have some issues about Finnick's death, but even the darkest part of her recognised that Iron Man in particular hadn't had any clear role in that decision. "Thought you hero types were meant to have secret identities?"

"We're alternating on that a bit, considering that part of our reputation depends on what we did as people before we started wearing these suits, but since you're so close to Clarke already there's not much point in keeping things from you even if we did believe in that policy," Peeta replied, before looking at her in a quizzical manner. "So, what's wrong?"

"Wrong?"

"You're sitting out here while half your friends are in Mount Weather and the other half are training to help us get them out," Peeta said, holding up a defensive hand as Raven glared at him. "I'm not saying that you don't have reasons for staying out of it right now, considering that you've got that leg to deal with, but I've heard enough to know that your mind's your best asset-"

"Compared to what you're packing?"

"Excuse me?" Peeta looked at Raven in confusion.

"God, I get that I'm useless; you don't have to rub it in-"

"Look, if this is about your injury, I already said that your mind's your best asset, and once we've dealt with Mount Weather I'm sure we can get one of our doctors back in the old Capitol to take a look at your back-"

"The back I can work with; it's the tech I have a problem with!"

"Tech?" Peeta repeated in confusion.

"I mean, look at what you're wearing!" Raven yelled, indicating the red and gold armour the young Avenger was wearing. "That thing might as well be bolts and iron held together by magic as far as I'm concerned, but you can fly around wherever you want and go head-to-head with a freakin' god as long as you're wearing it!"

"It's not like I can actually beat Thor in this thing-"

"But you can still fight him!" Raven protested. "I'm meant to be some genius mechanic, and now I don't have a clue how that stupid suit of yours works-!"

"Hey, do you think I know what I'm doing with this thing?" Peeta cut in with a broad smile.

"You… you don't?" Raven asked, looking at the armoured Avenger in confusion. "But… I heard you talking about creating some stealth suit-"

"I had the original idea and offer some input in how it'll look once it's ready; I can't actually create one myself," Peeta smiled, tapping his armoured chest nonchalantly. "Our tech guys stuck this armour together from surviving components from Tony Stark's original suits; I've been working with some of the best people we've got to learn how this works ever since we killed the Maestro and I'm still barely qualified on my own to do more than reattach the plates when this thing takes a serious beating, never mind actually making any additions to it! I only really got on this team in the first place because we needed someone who could talk to the crowd if we needed to win people over; if I didn't have the armour, everyone else on the team would crush me in a fight!"

"And… that doesn't bother you?" Raven asked, looking at him in surprise.

"Not really," Peeta smiled at her. "I don't think of it as me being the weak link in the chain; I think of it as me being the one who has the chance to grow alongside the rest of them."

"Eh?"

"Just because I couldn't fight when I joined the team doesn't mean I can't learn how to do it now," Peeta explained. "I may not be the best in any field, but I'm working with three people who proved themselves against trained warriors before they had something to stand for, and I'm picking up more than a few new skills from everyone working on the armour with me."

"Right…" Raven said, nodding uncertainly as she took in Peeta's words.

"And anyway," Peeta smiled at her, "from what I've heard about you, you've got something that can't exactly be taught."

"What?"

"A natural knack for technology," Peeta smiled. "I mean, from what I've heard from Clarke, you didn't exactly have a lot of spare parts to work with stuck on that station up there, and yet you've not only managed to make it all the way down here in something that nobody believed could work, but you followed it up by making explosives and turning the original ship into a weapon when you couldn't have exactly had time to practise doing any of that up in space."

"It's not like it worked perfectly-"

"Focus on the fact that any of the things you tried down here worked at all; if you're going to start judging yourself because you're not perfect, then you're never going to get anywhere," Peeta said firmly. "You're not stupid because you don't know how to do anything with our technology; you're ignorant because you haven't had the chance to work with any of it yet. If you want to improve, talk with Kat- Mockingjay when you have a moment; we could always use more technical support with these things."

"Tech support?"

"We've only got a couple of experts and a few assistants working on this stuff at the moment," Peeta smiled at her as he indicated his armour. "Add in all the equipment we have to keep in order back at the base, based on what I've seen since I got here and Clarke joined our sessions, with the right training, you can definitely go on to become an expert in that stuff once you've been instructed in what you're working with."

"I'll… I'll remember that," Raven said, nodding at Peeta with a growing smile. "Thanks."

"No problem," Peeta smiled at her, before looking back at her leg with a slight smile. "And hey, at least you've still got your leg."

"What do-?" Raven began, before his eyes flicked down to his left and the pieces fell into place. "You?"

"It was done before I got the armour, so it's a fairly simple prosthetic compared to Bloodaxe's arm, but it still hurt at the time…" Peeta began, before he gave Raven a new smile. "The point is, if I can get a new leg, they can certainly do something when your only problem is a damaged connection."

It was an awkward way of putting it, but despite how morbid the topic was, Raven could appreciate the sentiment behind it.

For the first time since Clarke flew into the camp, she felt like she could think about how she might be able to help everyone by getting better, rather than brooding over how she'd screwed up so far and was feeling like such a goddamn idiot…