"Mentors?" Peeta wondered. "How the hell are they going to get mentors if we can't even be with them!"
Katniss nodded but was a little annoyed at Peeta stating the obvious. The children were getting the short end of the stick if they ended up with mentors who had never actually been in the arena.
Oh no, she thought. This is really happening.
Haymitch put his head on the table and seemed to sigh in defeat. The atmosphere in the room was heavy. What do they do now? Obviously this woman was intent on making them suffer by watching their children participate in her version of the games. But whom do they tell? Was this being broadcasted all over Panem or just those related to the tributes?
Suddenly a knock came at the door. Peeta look at Katniss and Haymitch and, deciding that neither was able or willing to move, he slowly made his way to the front of the house. His prosthetic leg truly pained him more than it had in 15 years. When he opened the door he looked around from side to side, seeing the houses surrounding them but no one in front of him. He then, in a moment of intuit, looked down. There was a package laying on the floor, with no post-marks whatsoever. It simply read,
"To: The Mentors of District 12".
Peeta grabbed the box and started yelling.
"They were here! They were here!"
Katniss sprinted to the door, took one look at the package, and tried to dash off. Peeta was not far behind her, ready to sprint, when a pair of hands, unnaturally strong, grabbed their shirt collars.
"Haymitch, if you don't let go, I swear I'll skin you!" Katniss yelled. Flailing her arms about. Haymitch merely tightened his hold.
"For once, I agree with her," Peeta spat. "Let us go! They have our kids!"
"And my grandkids," Haymitch growled. "But you will be no help to them trying to find a delivery man who I bet, if Clytemnestra, is smart, he won't have any valuable information. You will just start an unnecessary panic!"
Peeta was the first to sop struggling, but Katniss could not help but jerk and let out a frustrated scream. She hated this! Hated being weak, unable to protect her children! They were the people she was supposed give everything for, give up her life for, and now she was being forced to watch them go through what she swore she would never let happen to them.
"We never should have had children," she whispered.
Peeta's eyes brimmed with tears.
Briar was lead into a room that was much plusher than the cell he had occupied. White, clean walls, white tile floors, plush chairs, a couch, and a long steel dining table. It was framed by a decorative, steel kitchen, a grand crystal chandelier, a flat screen TV in the living room, and tons of artificial light. There were no windows. It made Briar sick.
Briar whipped around when he heard the door open again but there he saw Crescent. Her hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders, her blue eyes wide with fright, and her olive toned skin ashen in the light. He dashed over to her and pulled her into his arms. She began to sob, trying her best to hold them in but she ended up making the most pitiful choking sound that Briar wished she would just cry. She was trying to be strong, like her mother and father, but she was so frightened, so gentle, and too compassionate.
"I can't do it Briar," she wept. "I can't kill people. I can't kill children!"
"I won't let you, I promise. As long as I'm alive, I won't let you," he said softly.
He was a full foot taller than her, and as he let her bury her nose into the crook of his neck, he hoped he could keep that promise. Her tears were hot on his skin.
"But I can't even defend myself!"
"That's where you're wrong," he said fiercly. Pulling her away from him he looked her dead in the eyes, Seam grey meeting that lovely blue. "You may be the biggest daddy's girl I know but that didn't stop dad from making you carry 100 pound bags of flour around the bakery. It didn't stop mom from teaching you what she could about hunting. It never stopped you from studying the book on plants day and night because you loved to see what you could make so dad's headaches would go away."
Crescent looked up at him, hope shining in her eyes.
"You really think I can make it?"
Briar pulled her back into his embrace.
"I know you will."
Because I'll die trying.
The moments stretched into what felt like hours. They stood there, inhaling each others scent that so much resembled their parents own. Crescent sought her mother with that forest scent, so enveloped in pines and lake water. Briar tried to find remnants of his father's warm, musky smell of dough and different mixtures of paint and ink.
The TV crackled and fizzed, snapping them out of their reverie as faces appeared on the screen.
"Mom? Dad?" Briar breathed.
"Grandpa Haymitch!" Crescent squealed. Her excitement died and she frowned, "Oh, you look as drunk as ever."
Haymitch snorted through the screen.
"More so, probably," he commented.
There was a silence before what was happening before them truly sank in. Crescent and Briar rushed to the screen, trying to touch what was not there. Who was not there. There hands only touched the television screen yet they vainly held onto the hope that they would eventually feel skin.
"Daddy! Mommy!" Crescent cried as if she was five years old again.
"Oh my little girl," Peeta choked, his throat closing up with emotion.
Katniss reached a hand out to the screen and Briar and Crescent reached out their hands to meet hers.
"No crying now," she said sternly. "Shhhhhhh, Crescent. You have to listen to us now. We only have an hour."
"An hour for what?" Briar asked.
"To mentor you," Haymitch commented, taking a long draft from his liquor bottle.
Briar wrinkled his nose and Crescent looked sick.
"Could you at least do us the favor of being sober, you old drunk?"
"Sorry brat, have to be inebriated for this sort of thing."
Peeta waved Haymitch off and began to talk rapidly.
"The note we got with this new machine… what was it called? A laptop? Anyways, this is how we can communicate with you until the games, during designated hours. After that we use it to communicate with your sponsors,"
"Sponsors?" Crescent asked. "How has this Snow woman acquired sponsors?"
"How has she pulled this whole thing off?" Katniss said. "She must have gotten the money somewhere, and I bet she found it in old, Capitol citizens who miss the old government. I wouldn't put it past the Career districts either?"
"District's one and two?" Briar asked.
"And four," Peeta said. "Never underestimate four."
"Its possible she hired foreign, bored, rich investors looking for some sick entertainment," Haymitch commented dryly. "Panem has just recently re-discovered the outside world in the last twelve years. There are some sick people in this world, even if they don't overtly rule the nation like President Snow did."
"Anyways," Peeta said, steering the conversation back to the matter at hand. "You have to make them like you, remember you."
"So this is a popularity contest?" Briar asked, disgusted.
Peeta looked at his son solemnly.
"Yes."
"We're doomed," Crescent muttered. "Neither of us are very sociable."
Briar looked at his sister as if she had grown a second head.
"I may not be very social, but you are. Everyone flocks to you because you're so… so…" Briar tried to look for a word.
"Pure," Katniss said flatly. "That may help her attract some sponsors, but she's going to have to turn up the charm."
"I'm not so worried about her getting sponsors as I am about the boy," Haymitch said. "He's about as good an actor as you ever were, sweetheart."
Katniss simply glared at Haymitch. Peeta rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"You'll be fine, son," he said. "If you be yourself, tell the truth without telling the whole truth, you'll be okay."
"Not against Finnick's son," Haymitch bit out. "That boy is just as blessed with looks, not too mention his skill with a trident. Plus he did get wits from his mother, before she went cuckoo."
Crescent flushed, but no one but Briar seemed to notice. Briar snorted. They were right. Despite the fact they were friends with Kai, he was their opponent for now. He was as gorgeous as his father had supposedly been with his tan skin and bronze colored hair. The only thing that was different was that he possessed his mother's sea green eyes, which possessed an uncharacteristic sense of humility that Finnick's had never had.
To Briar, it just made him more dangerous.
They all continued to talk in this way. About the possible tributes skills, considering the Academy's for the Careers were demolished years ago. The possible arenas, anything they could fit into the span of an hour that flew by too quickly.
As the screen began to fizzle again, Katniss and Peeta tried to devour their kid's faces before they disappeared.
"We love you so much," Peeta said softly, as gently as he could without breaking.
Katniss's throat seemed to swell up, an unbearable pressure weighing on her chest. So she simply nodded. Haymitch just looked at them, with a great sense of pain in his eyes as he said,
"Don't get killed."
The screen went black.
A/N: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WORK THIS TIME! I'm sorry for the trouble, guys.
Oh, and please review. I know there's a lot of you by all the favorites. PLEASE.