Chapter 6: Two Lost Souls Brought Together
I wake up unfashionably early the morning the tributes are to be launched into the arena. Checking to make sure my mother is still asleep (as she was last night when I arrived home), I sweep out of my house in a huff, blood still bubbling over the revelation last night. Maybe it's my distrusting nature, but even without soliciting Peeta's secondary opinion, I have come to conclude that unless Mother presents me with hard evidence that she didn't sleep with the Baker, then I must presume that Prim is the product of their illicit union. That my sister is really, technically, my half-sister and that everything I've known to be true is a lie.
The sun is only barely in the sky by the time I've reached the center of Town. Peacekeepers are still cleaning the scaffolding and the Square from the night before. I quietly steal into the alley behind the Bakery and march up to the back loading dock. I nearly sigh with relief when it is Peeta, and not his mother (and if it had been his father, I don't think I would have been liable for my own actions), who answers the door.
"Morning," he smiles tiredly. The poor guy looks as though he slept as little as I did. Though his case of bedhead is still pronounced. It makes his blonde locks even more curly, and I have to tamp down a smile.
"Are… are you working?"
"Yeah, but we Mellarks are always early to rise. And I'll always have time for you." My face blooms pink and I distract myself by wringing my hands, bunching up the skirts of my blue dress until they are hopelessly creased. Lifting my eyes to his, I bite my lip.
"Please tell me she's going to be all right."
Peeta sends me an easy grin that makes my stomach do flip-flops. "She's going to be all right." He croons it, like a lover, almost. I smile nervously.
"Thank you. Um…. Rye will be OK, too." He might be an ass, but if what he said last night in his interview was true, then I have to care for him, for Prim's sake. For all we know, she is now competing against her half-brother.
Thinking back over these family secrets spilled, how my family has now been intertwined with his, I suddenly feel an odd sort of terror that causes me to blurt out, "We're not related, are we? You and me?"
Peeta's face quirks into a bemused expression. "Not directly, no. At best, we share a half-sibling, but that doesn't mean…" His face burns for some reason, while I exhale a sigh of relief.
"Good. Because otherwise it would make what happened the last time we were alone in an alley together really awkward." I blush. "I'm… I'm sorry I propositioned you."
To my shock, Peeta actually laughs. "Katty, I might seem like a mess, especially right now, but I'm still a guy. I didn't really mind it."
My grey eyes expand, blinking at him dolefully. "Oh," I squeak. Another unwieldy smile. "That's…. that's good." I cast my eyes down to my feet, recalling the other secret he revealed to me the night before. About how he went in to see his brother and all but ordered him to protect my sister's life. Recalling that Reaping Day, and recalling how he visited my sister as well, another wave of remorse lacerates me. "You know…. if I could do anything over again…"
"…. Other than getting to the Square on time?"
I smirk wetly, feeling a sob lodge in my throat at his reminder. "Yes, that. I…. I would have visited Rye. If I had known. I didn't learn who the boy tribute was until after I saw Primrose."
Peeta smiles softly. "Well, for what it's worth… I appreciate that." Somewhere in the corridor behind him, a noise pierces the still morning, causing him to cringe. "I gotta go. Save me a seat on the platform?"
"It's a promise," I grin. Then, without really thinking about it, we both lean in and hug, giggling like mad schoolchildren. "I… I better go," I murmur, even as I tarry with a buoyant grin on my face.
"See ya, Katty girl."
My precious sister might be mere hours away from death, and yet somehow that doesn't stop me from practically floating into the Square. The Peacekeeper officers don't mind that I'm the first one on the scaffolding, allowing me to take my seat as they clean up around me. I have an excellent view from up here, and I now get to watch unencumbered as sleepy neighbors from both Town and the Seam trickle in. When the Square is about a quarter full, the Mellarks file in, Delly in tow. Peeta wordlessly takes his seat next to me; his mother huffs past us both, turning up her nose and sniffing at the sight of me. As if it's somehow my fault that her husband and my mother went for a frantic roll in the hay and allegedly conceived a child from that fuck.
My teeth set, grinding. Speaking of my mother….
"Where's your mom?" Peeta has the politeness to be concerned, anxiously checking his wristwatch.
I scrunch down a little in my seat, arms folded, stewing. "Don't know and don't care." Really, the anger at Mother's betrayal is all that is keeping me from coming apart in terror for Prim, so I allow the former to fester within me. Even when Mother comes dashing onto the scaffolding with only minutes to spare, I don't acknowledge her.
The Games are due to start at 10 AM, and when the first of those ten bongs begin to strike the hour, in the clock tower of the Justice Building, the giant screen goes live. We hear the sounds of excited screaming from those Capitol fools, jamming bars and thoroughfares hundreds of miles away to take in the action.
Then Caesar and Claudius cut away to where the tributes are just being lifted into the arena. The footage is being played from a tribute's perspective, so we can't tell who it is as the metal plate on the pedestal clicks into place, and the lens tracks like the tribute's eyes as he or she gets a first look at the arena.
The condemned children have been launched in a Meadow. There's the Cornucopia in the center of it, about a hundred yards away. A wide shot appears, panning, sweeping, and I hold in a breath when I see an expansive forest at the players' backs. I am loathe to admit it, but… had I made it to the Square on time, been allowed to volunteer in Prim's place, I have would been right at home here in this arena. I might have even won, come home the Victor.
My grey irises now start to scan along with the camera desperately, searching for any sign of my sister. For Peeta's sake, I also keep a sharp watch for Rye.
Come on…. come on…. Where are you?!
The rule for tributes is that you have to stay on your plate for at least sixty seconds until the gong sounds. Step off too early, and landmines blow your legs to bits. Barely half that precious time has expired when –
There!
My sister is about a third of the way around the semi-circle of pedestals. She's just beyond the lip of the horn, barely visible to the point where whoever is on the plate to what would be her right is partially obscured. But on the plate to the left, it's…
I lean into Peeta, chittering to him fretfully. "Why would the Gamemakers place district partners right next to each other?"
Peeta's analysis surprises and horrifies me. "It's a test. The Gamemakers want to see if Rye will stick to his promise to protect Prim… or if he'll kill her."
I tremble, gnawing at my bottom lip as I turn back to the screen. I find myself glaring at Rye whenever his image appears.
If you come home in place of my sister… if you kill her… I don't care what I might feel for Peeta – I'll kill YOU!
The gong sounds, and twenty-four petrified children run for their lives. Only a few make for the trees at their backs.
My heart momentarily ceases to beat when Rye turns on his plate and leaps down from it, less than a foot from my sister. He starts for her. I jump when next to me, I hear Peeta mutter a warning: "Rye? Don't you dare…."
He doesn't, instead holding out his arms to the little girl.
"Come on! Jump!"
Prim leaps into his arms, then suddenly goes rigid in the embrace. "Rye, LOOK OUT!"
Rye drops her to the ground lightning-fast. Sensing the opponent coming up behind him, he masterfully lets the other boy's inertia take him over his shoulder, and Rye flips him. The boy from 8, roughly sixteen and skinny, barely has time to shout before Rye has him pinned, snapping his neck in less than a second. Rye snatches up the pack his fallen adversary had with him.
"Come on," he pants to my sister.
Prim trustingly leaps back into his arms and Rye runs with her away from the Cornucopia. It's only when they reach the safety of the forest's treeline do I even register the tears streaming down my cheeks. I turn to Peeta in a debilitating way, feeling as though, once again, I owe him, however transitively.
"Thank you." I suddenly feel the urge to express my gratitude towards him some other way, and if we weren't surrounded by hundreds of people, I probably would….
I cast aside the thought, folding my hands and bowing my head into my lap, suddenly feeling terribly flustered and chiding with myself.
I don't lift my head again until I hear the cannons of the Bloodbath begin to sound.
In a completely illogical way, I get even more stressed the longer the days go by with both Peeta's and my sibling still alive. Though it would have been excruciating, I doubt I would have felt as much pain if both District 12 tributes went down at the Cornucopia, as they tend to do most years.
Half the competition is slaughtered at the Cornucopia. The Careers go a-hunting, their first victim the district partner of the boy Rye killed. They complete the murder not realizing that both of District 12's tributes are hiding in a tree mere steps away. Rye claps a hand over Prim's mouth to cut off her scream as the girl from 8's head is bashed in.
Peeta is a perfect gentleman, holding my hand throughout. Every night, he gallantly walks me home and we decompress by talking about our deepest fears. When he lets me off on my front porch, he always bids me goodbye with a lingering peck on the cheek. The brush of his mouth along my skin makes me shiver.
I never give Mother the time of day. It goes unspoken that I expect her to get to the Square on her own. She's grown-up enough to make her own choices, however poor some of those choices might have been. Even so, the more I turn over Peeta's and my parents' alleged infidelity in my mind, I come to realize that if Mother and the Baker hadn't strayed, I wouldn't have Primrose.
I don't know how to reconcile that.
Peeta's and my loved ones make the Final Eight – one of the cleanest in years because it features a quartet of intact district pairs. 1, 2, 11 and 12. Rye's kill at the start of the Games was impressive enough that he and his little ally have gotten a sponsor gift or two – mostly sustenance, which I know from experience watching will not last forever. Prices on food spike the longer the Games go on. More tangible supplies are meager – a knife for Rye. A Healing kit for Prim so basic, the one used by my mother at home is more fruitful. A sleeping bag to keep them warm at night. It proves it's worth by allowing Prim and Rye to share their body heat when the after-dark temperatures drop to bitterly cold. One evening, I hear a Town boy in the crowd snicker, "Maybe Mellark should pin her down and show her another form of wrestling… Incestuous sex is the best, amirite?" Peeta has to hold me back from marching down there and bloodying the crude bastard's nose.
Peeta understands me well enough to not skitter across topics I'm not ready to deal with, giving me my space. One evening, as we are striding on home, I am sleepily resting my head on his shoulder when I mumble:
"I wonder how our parents met?" It's me just thinking out loud. Mother never before mentioned how she used to be close to the Baker, so I hardly expect Peeta to know. So I am shocked when he answers me.
"Well, I did know they used to date."
"Mmm-hmm," I murmur, snuggling into him. "You told me when I came over for dinner."
"Did I tell that I've known since we were five?"
I lift my head, my grey eyes flinty and laced with warning. "Peeta…"
"I didn't know that they'd had sex! I didn't know about their affair! That part is true," Peeta holds his hands up placatingly. "But… on the first day of school, my father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up. You were wearing a little red plaid dress, and your hair… it was actually in two braids instead of one."
My face is pink all over as I ogle him. "How do you remember all that?" For some reason, Peeta blushes too.
"My dad said, 'See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.' And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she could have had you?' And Dad replied, 'Because when he sings… even the birds stop to listen.'"
I bite my lip. "That's true. They do. I mean… they did." I sigh. "It sounds like Mother had him anyway…"
Peeta chuckles tightly. "Well…. that may be." Dipping his head, he dares to grin at me in amusement. Like he's surprised about something. "I never took you to be one to talk about sex even in euphemisms."
I arch an eyebrow prissily. "I don't. So unless you have something you want to say to me on the subject…"
"No." It's almost funny, how quickly he clears his throat. "Anyway, later that day in School Assembly, the teacher asked who knew the Valley Song. Your hand shot right up into the air. And she put you up on a stool to sing it for us. I swear, with Snow as my witness, every bird outside the window fell silent."
"Oh, please, they did not!" I trill out a laugh. The sound fades away as I turn his words over in my mind. We've slowed to a barely perceptible crawl now, while I take him in. "You have a remarkable memory."
Peeta's blue eyes nearly blind me, as does his smile, both of them shimmering in the moonlight. "I remember everything about you," he murmurs, his tone almost… sultry. "You just weren't paying attention."
A gooey warmth fills me, as I smile up at him, eyes shining. "I am now," I whisper.
The handsome young man, steps into me, in his eyes a question. I don't move, waiting expectantly, daring to be brave for once. My eyelids flutter, droop heavily as I feel him bend close –
"Katty…." The voice of my mother is soft, yet at the same time holds the force of a gunshot, and my eyes have to adjust to the sudden glare of amber light flooding from our front porch, to which Peeta and I have halted only yards from. "Say goodnight. Peeta needs to be back before curfew."
I want to smack her, yell and scream at her that she can't tell me what to do after how she disgraced my father. Instead, I sigh.
"Goodnight," I croon to my… my friend and I turn to go inside my house.
On the morning of the tenth day, Rye and Prim encounter the District 11 tribute's camp. Thresh and Rye get into a fistfight when the large black boy misinterprets Peeta's brother as stealing from him. It takes the smaller girls to pull them apart. A tentative alliance is reached.
With that, the 11-12 alliance starts to spy on the Career camp. Rue gets the idea to start obvious fires intermittently up in the foothills, on the chance that it could draw at least some, if not all, of the Careers away, and then their group can steal food. Thresh tepidly endorses the plan, and Rue disappears into the trees.
Less than an hour later, Marvel shouts that he sees smoke in the distance. Suspicious, only Cato goes off alone to investigate. Rye and Thresh look at each other. Between two such large boys like themselves, they seem to figure that could take the remaining three in the Pack. I nearly have a heart attack when Prim wants to help and Rye – clearly against his better judgment – gives her one of his spare knives.
Our trio attacks the other. Prim goes for Clove, the vicious little pixie from 2, and the girls roll around in the grass, clawing and biting. Just as Clove closes in for the kill, the sound of a cannon in the distance distracts her, just long enough for my sister to skewer her enemy's liver.
Four more cannons go off. District 1 is now dead, but Thresh has the tip of a spear in his gut, lying facedown in the dirt. Rye is the only one standing, panting and winded but alive. He hauls Prim to her feet.
"Run…. Run!" he whispers urgently.
They do, taking off together.
District 12 stays up all night, too filled with hope (however false it may yet prove to be) to have both of our tributes in the Top Three. When the faces of the dead appear in the sky, we realize tragically that Cato must have found and disposed of Rue. None of the remaining trio of competitors gets any rest too, as a vengeful Cato is intent on pursuing my sister and… and her half-brother through the night and the underbrush.
They finally meet again at dawn, back where they started in the Meadow before the Cornucopia. Keeping my sister behind him, Rye duels and wrestles with Cato fiercely. Neither gives an inch for a time.
But while Cato has been illegally trained, Rye was the wrestling champion of his entire district. Peeta's brother makes the pin, snaps a neck. The cannon sounds.
The district is cheering. We're guaranteed a Victor. Peeta and I are clutching each other, eyes glued to the screen, hardly daring to breathe. Rye and Prim look at each other. I'm moved to see that my sister is crying.
"I can't kill you!" she sobs.
"Neither can I," Rye murmurs. "Even if I could, I wouldn't be a winner for long. Your sister would kill me soon as look at me, and then there'd be no Victor."
Something about how Rye says that sends a lightbulb off in Prim's mind. Casting her eyes about, she spies a bush full of berries and begins to pick a handful.
"What's she doing?" Peeta breathes in my ear. I'm practically straddling his lap, we're gripping each other so tightly.
I can only shake my head, just as much at a loss. At least until Prim opens her fingers and I get a good look at those berries.
"Nightlock," I breathe. Anyone who ingests these poisonous berries – ironically native to the woods outside District 12 – they'd be dead in less than a minute.
Prim now pours some of the berries into Rye's hand, watching him. "Do you trust me?"
"Of course," Rye states, actually sounding serious for once.
"On the count of three, then. One…. Two…."
Rye smirks. "Three."
The berries are floating towards both their lips when –
"Stop! STOP! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the joint winners of the 74th Annual Hunger Games: Primrose Everdeen and Rye Mellark!"
Bedlam in the Square. Tears clinging to my cheeks, I let out a happy shout, and throw my arms around Peeta's neck. "They did it! They really did it!"
Peeta chuckles. "Well, Katty girl, looks like we're going to be neighbors in the Victors' Village."
I pull back out of our hug to look down at him, suddenly flustered. Slowly, my arms, which are still looped across Peeta's shoulders, shift up so I'm now framing his face in my hands. Peeta's own palms are tangled in my hair. Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, our faces come quite close…
Delly ruins the moment, colliding into us both and knocking our chairs over, dumping me unceremoniously from Peeta's lap. "He's coming home! He's coming home, Peeta!" she throws her arms around him, squealing. Then, seeming to remember my presence, she turns back to me, even helping me to my feet. "I mean they. They're coming home."
I actually throw back my head and laugh. "Oh, Delly…" And I hug my new friend, much to the happy-go-lucky girl's delight.
The Capitol is beside itself with delight to watch two siblings – well half-siblings – emerge from the arena alive. The same arena. Not even the remarkable feat of twins from District 1 winning consecutive Games when Peeta and I were little caused this much excitement.
Caesar opens the final interview with Rye and Prim by announcing something we've been all wondering about: after cross-referencing DNA tests of the two Victors' blood, it's been conclusively proven that Rye Mellark and Primrose Everdeen are indeed half-siblings.
The morning the train bearing our two Victors is due at Lucy Gray Baird train station (the terminal was named for our very first Victor from nearly 65 years ago), the platform is packed with people. I stick close to Peeta, more than a little amused at how my…. my friend is trying to crane his neck to see over the Peacekeepers forming a line at the platform's edge.
"If only I was an inch or two taller…" he grumbles.
I smile sympathetically. "Try to get higher," I point to a nearby stantion underpinning the terminal's roof, which Peeta now partially scales. He peers off into the short distance, hands pressed to his brows. "Still nothing."
At his post, Darius notices. "Mr. Mellark, I'd stay on solid footing if I were you…"
"Darius!" I gawp, laughing.
Our friendly neighborhood Peacekeeper looks like he wants to press the point when Peeta suddenly gives a shout: "THERE SHE BLOWS, EVERYBODY! SHE'S ROUNDING THE BEND!"
A great cheer goes up and the sea of humanity presses in behind us and up into the Peacekeepers, the officers having to nudge people back to prevent someone from being knocked over onto the tracks. A few people shimmy onto the terminal roof, which is already crammed with people hoping to get an exclusive glimpse of our first Victors in close to a quarter of a century.
The steamer pulls into the station sleekly, silently, though with how everyone is cheering themselves hoarse, we couldn't hear it anyway. When the doors hiss open, revealing our Victors, the platform explodes with noise. Hands seize a shocked Prim and Rye and pull them into the crowd, before almost immediately lifting them both onto their shoulders. Old Haymitch Abernathy is left in the lurch, bellowing ignored pleas that we be gentle with his first successful tributes.
"You'll kill them!"
The rest of the district is too exuberant to care, though they are quick to set my sister and Peeta's brother down in front of us, their loved ones. In a truly made-for-camera moment, Prim steps forward and actually embraces the Baker, her biological father, first.
"I love you," she murmurs. The Baker looks taken aback but moved too, and when his eyes lift to mine, I finally decide to let go whatever anger I had. If my Prim, so understanding and forgiving, can see past whatever wrong choices brought us here…. well then….
Prim turns her attention next to Mother and me and flings herself into our arms. We sink to the concrete, clutching her and kissing her, weeping into her blonde curls.
"My baby…. My baby…." Mother is sobbing. I burrow my face into Prim's sweet-smelling hair.
"I love you, Primmy."
When we finally disengage and stand up, I see Peeta and Leven practically attacking their middle brother, roughhousing with him. Rye quickly shakes them off, striding forward to where Delly has been hovering close by. The beautiful redhead smiles at him radiantly, breathless.
"Welcome home, you clown."
Growling, Rye suddenly yanks Delly close. My friend barely has time to whimper in astonishment before the Victor is kissing her – hard - causing her bright green eyes to pop. Next instant, Delly's entire body goes water-soft as she compliantly melts up into her lover with a blissful groan, her mouth molding and opening to his as she kisses Rye back. At her swoon, her eyes drooping shut as she deepens the kiss, the whole of the district sends up a happy cheer.
Smiling contentedly at the couple as they embrace, I nearly jump when I feel Peeta's presence sidle up beside me. "No doubt they'll be a Toasting for those two soon."
I turn to smirk at him, eyes twinkling. "But won't they have to wait until after Delly's last Reaping next year?"
"Maybe. But when they do set a date… fancy going to the Toasting with me?"
I take him in, blinking in shock. "Like…. like on a date?"
He shrugs, smile dancing. "Only if you want it to be."
I smirk again, amused. "You sure plan ahead, don't you, Mr. Mellark?"
His answering wink nearly makes my heart stutter to a stop. "I have to be, to catch up with you."
Not bothering to hide my smile, I nod my head Yes, agreeing to attend on his arm for his brother's Toasting that hasn't even happened yet, and ignoring completely how my little sister is now looking between me and her handsome half-brother curiously.
I don't think I could answer for myself, much less her, just what has gone on, what is happening, which will surely make my little Prim wonder all the more.