A/N: Hey! Oh my goodness, it's been too long since I have updated. :O I went away for a month on vacation and then came school. XP Luckily, I've found some time to write and subsequently update. And now, I currently present to you the next belated installment. It's a bit of a filler chapter, but there's more to come, I promise. So… Enjoy!
Peeta's POV
Thirteen mintues until eight.
I glance at the vanity over Delly's shoulder, and catch a glimpse of a man that I don't know.
His face is drawn, and slightly gaunt. He looks about 25 or so, although that certainly isn't his age. He looks a bit weathered, and worn, his sanity tested and eroded by the torture and loss, both of a physical and psychological nature, but he's still good-looking, nonetheless.
His hair is the color of faded wheat and his skin is like refined flour, adulterated but preferred; it's no longer good and wholesome and natural, but commercial and with the times. His best feature is the barely alert set of dull cornflower orbs that are as empty as the drains at the bottom of his bathtubs—not quite as dark and endless as the abysses of the Seam-folk, but close.
He notices Delly watching him. She's as radiant as the sun, her almost white blonde hair in elegantly braided bun fixture atop her head. Her large round cheeks are as sumptuously apricot as ever, the perfect contrast and yet, somehow, he still feels hollow. The softness is wrong, the sweetness is too sweet, everything is far too perfect…
"Excited?" she asks in that endlessly excited way of hers.
"Yes," he answers, closing the gap between them. His arms link gently around her neck, like an ever-condemning flesh and blood noose as he bends down to embrace her. It isn't right to lead her on like this, not for so long. It's not her noose, though; it's his.
A kiss is planted on her cheek. "You look lovely," he recites, his emptiness disguised by a bread-winning District 12 smile.
"As do you," replies Delly sweetly, adjusting his tie, so sweetly it almost made him sick.
It makes me sick. It's always made me sick. In fact, it's going to make me sick for the rest of my life unless I do something about it. Tonight.