Chapter 4

Scorched

Peeta

I don't even know if she likes coffee – but she doesn't say anything negative when I bring it to her.

Johanna is the one who wakes me – she can hear Clint screaming from her quarters. She never hangs around – Duke is so unpleasant to her ever since she broke it off with him that she, understandably, doesn't want to see him, but she can't leave Clint all alone. Her own nightmares are bad enough. She knows Katniss will go see him, but she also knows Katniss can't do it alone.

I wish I could be cold, I wish I could stand to just roll over and go back to sleep and leave Katniss to it, and wish ill on the victor's brother from District 10. But there are so many nights I wake up in a cold sweat, paralyzed with fear – and I wasn't tortured. I can't abandon him, I can't not want to help him.

One night when Johanna came to get me, I was apparently shaking in my sleep. She woke me from a terrible nightmare – I was back in the Arena, in Tony's pen. The electricity went out, the way the electricity went out in the District 12 fence all the time, and the mutts hopped the fence. Rue was screaming as the mutts – somehow even more monstrous in my dream than in real life – tore her apart. And it wasn't just Rue there – Prim was with us, and I was lying on top of her and Brandy, the tiny girl from 10, and stabbing desperately at mutts, sorry I couldn't get to Rue and Stephen too until I realized my attempt was hideously pointless as the mutts tore me apart. One long set of claws speared my body and Prim's all at once when Johanna shook me. When I woke up so suddenly, I lashed out at the hands on my shoulders, still feeling those claws in my ribcage. "Mellark, calm down," she hissed sharply. "It's just a dream." She was holding her hand over her eye – I clocked her pretty good.

"Johanna … I'm so sorry … is it Clint again?" I asked, trying to breathe slowly and calmly, embarrassed by my outburst.

"Yes but that's not important right now – how often do you have nightmares, Mellark?"
"Not very often," I lie.

"Right. You need to see the doctor – the shrink."

"What for? He's got people way worse off than me to worry about."

"So? He's got underlings, he'll get to you when he has time or give you to an intern."

"I'll go ask tomorrow." I didn't – and she's been bugging me ever since.

For instance, one week after Finnick's wedding, she's waiting for me when I meet Spruce for coffee and bacon (which probably is not actually bacon but came from a wild dog or coyote but you won't see us complaining, considering it's probably the only meat we'll eat this week) before I go off to my day of trying to be useful. Spruce, of course, doesn't have to try.

"She's just worried about you," Spruce, looking sharp in a white medic's outfit, tells me after she walks away from one more routine of her asking if I'd been, me admitting I hadn't, and her getting upset with me and storming off.

"She shouldn't be … she's got …" I started to say she already has Spruce to worry about, but thought better of it. "So many other things on her mind."
"But she's right," Spruce says, and looks down at his tray, not meeting my eye. "You've been through a lot."

"I haven't …"
"So other people have been through more. That doesn't lessen the tragedy of your circumstances," he says. "It's okay to admit you need help, Peeta. You're holding us all together." I shrug. He's just being nice.

"What's your schedule look like today?" I ask, changing the subject. He, Prim, and a handful of other young healers who've found their way to us are working as medics part of the day and going to classes the rest of the day. For most of them, that's just reading, writing, math, and science classes beyond what we have in the Districts for right now – but Spruce is way ahead of them since he got paid in books, because apparently the town doctor was such a quack that even the merchants and Peacekeepers took their chances with him, and they knew books were the way to his heart so they made a point of looking out for books to trade the next time they got sick or injured. He takes classes with aspiring doctors four or five years older than him – the equivalent of university classes. He looks at me sheepishly, and I'm suddenly aware he's been hiding his wrist from me. Why?

"Well today I've got the morning shift and then class …"

"You know what you're doing tomorrow then?" I ask.

"I'm uh … they're sending me out. I've got to go and get briefed today." That makes no sense – I've heard so many times Spruce is "too volatile" to be allowed to do gun training or sleep in the same room as his fiancée (even with sedatives), they almost didn't let him go to Finnick's wedding, and he has to have guards on duty around him twenty-four seven in case he gets overwhelmed. And they're sending him out to the fighting zones?

"When did this come down?" I ask. He looks miserable.

"This morning. They … They're sending me with Katniss."

"Sending you with Katniss? So you're going to District 10?"

"Well yes … and then 7." District 7 isn't a high priority like 5, 6, and the agricultural districts – both sides can do without new tables and ration paper for a little while – so there's not much fighting there, and the locals are pretty friendly to us. I feel better, until his next sentence. "They're … they're taking me to Muleshoe." It's all I can do not to gasp.

"Are you going to be okay?" I ask. He nods, but he doesn't look very certain.

"I'll be fine," he insists.

"How long will you be gone?" I ask.

"Several weeks – we're going to District 10 and 11 first," he says. My heart stops – if they're going to 11, and going to the part of 11 where Thresh is, they might not make it to District 7. At least, Katniss won't – Spruce will probably turn into that thing when the bullets start to fly. But Katniss isn't invincible … she's just a squishy human like the rest of us. And … can Clint make it without her that long? It's the second thought I choose to voice.

"What about Clint? Doesn't he need her here?"
"I guess Fury thinks … that the districts need her more."

"That's … probably very true. I'll take care of him," I promise, since Spruce cares about Clint quite a lot after what they went through together. "If you promise you'll take care of Katniss for me." He nods with a sad smile – he's the only one besides Dad and Haymitch that knows the whole truth about that situation.

"I will, I promise. The Other Guy will help." That's what he calls … well, not exactly the thing he becomes. The Other Guy was there before, apparently, and Samson's trying to bring Spruce and the other person in his brain together so they can be one person – it's sort of spooky to think about, so I try not to. "Gale's going with us too."

"If he makes a move on her … I don't know, defend her honor I guess," I say, getting distracted halfway through, not entirely sure why I'm more jealous of Gale than Clint. Probably because it's hard to be jealous of someone who wakes up screaming every other night. Spruce laughs.

"Okay, I'll do that."

We part ways and I head through the doors into the kitchens to examine the provisions we've gotten today. I find Greasy Sae already working away on a stew with no meat. "When are those kids supposed to be going hunting again?" she asks as I step over to the crates. "Don't waste your time – no sugar today, very little flour." That's fine – I can make do with the minimal flour.

"Katniss and Gale are both shipping out tomorrow – they're going to be gone for several weeks," I say, trying to pretend I'm not nervous and depressed about the development. She's annoyed at the news.

"They don't let Clint go by himself … don't know what they think's going to happen." That he'll slip back if he's unguarded and lie in wait for Tony, that he'll kill himself, that he'll run off for a life of solitude in the wilds. I choose not to say any of these out loud. "But you know they got a bear last week." I remember – it was surprisingly good, even if it was only a mouthful that I got. With District 10 still under Capitol control, the only meat we get is either from the chickens raised in 13 that the little self-sufficient District can spare and 11 (some workers there were able to raise them despite their otherwise deplorable conditions) and what Katniss and Gale, and now Clint, are able to hunt … and, as you can imagine, when you have as many rebels on base as we do, even a bear doesn't go very far. Greasy Sae complains about the lack of imagination in the provisions they're sent – if she had her way, she'd have all the kids picking dandelions and catching mice for stew. Maybe it's not such a bad idea.

I set to work with the flour we got – Greasy Sae did not misrepresent how little it is – and the ration grain smuggled from 9, which we try to use as sparingly as possible since everyone is having such a hard time as it is. This is how I'll spend most of my day – making bread and making it as good as I can with what we're given because morale can be improved dramatically just by having good food. In the afternoon, I'll stop and go to training – but I know very well they're not planning to send me to the front lines. Dad joins me before too long – we don't talk as we just pound out dough. We're almost out of yeast so we decide to make flat bread. I remember Dr. Samson likes the flat bread, and I smile to think he'll like it. He deserves all the happiness I can give him for everything he's done for Spruce and Clint.

Clint ...

He needs Katniss. He doesn't need me, or Johanna, or anyone else – he needs her. But Fury says the districts need her more …

Well, so far, she's been great in 10 – they love her there. She visits people in hospitals and helps hand out the provisions they've managed to get from 11, and they reach out to her like she's the best thing ever. I think it's because of Clint – they're going to be over the moon when they see the band on her finger.

I try not to think about that, and instead lament the state of the team. I thought the whole point was supposed to be District unity or something – how much good does that do when they're never in the same room, except when they're taking blatantly staged photographs and watching propos together?

Of course, District unity is kind of a joke anyway. Fulvia Cardew – one of the Capitol traitors – had this really brilliant idea to do bits on the tributes who've been lost over the years. They target the districts the kids were from – I didn't see anything wrong with that until Tony and Katniss pointed it out on one of the few times all the Avengers were together. We had just seen the spot for Amp – mostly Tony talking about him, but also his parents, and instead of just footage from the Games, there was footage Tony's parents had taken of the two of them playing together when they were little, so you could actually hear Amp's voice outside of the context of the Games and see his real personality. (He really was like Spruce – I see why Tony likes Spruce so much.) That's extremely rare, obviously – if you can't afford food you're not exactly looking to buy a video camera. It ended the way it had to – with an arrow in the eye. They don't show Duke trying to arrange his corpse, and I wish they did, just to reinforce who the enemy really is – Duke was just trying to get home to keep his brother alive, and it almost destroyed him. I looked over at Tony and saw he was crying a little bit, but he ducked his head down so you couldn't see it. Because it's not like any of us would understand him crying over his best friend after seeing him die for … how many times has Tony been forced to watch this? I vowed to not go so hard on him about the drinking for a whole day. Fulvia, however, didn't mind showing her tears – she wiped one away dramatically.

"So we'll be showing this in District 3 tonight …"

"Why only show Amp in 3?" Tony asked in anger.

"Yeah – why shouldn't you broadcast this nationwide?" Katniss piped up. "Show that in the Capitol – rub it in their faces they probably cheered when he died, force them to look at him as a person …" And they were right. Absolutely right.

"Well – we will eventually," Fulvia cut them off, to the annoyance of both. I was just glad they finally agreed on something. "But let's build some momentum first. Also for District 3 – we have this piece dedicated to little Rei Hitachi …" Howard Stark immediately stood up to leave the room, and I wondered what was wrong, and looked to Tony. He looked just as confused as me until we saw a very young Howard – Tony resembles him a lot – taking a tiny girl's hand on District 3's reaping platform. She was his district partner the year he won. Katniss grabbed my arm – I know she was immediately wondering if Howard was the one who killed her. The propo framed it around Rei and how very, very wrong it was that she was there – she was the gentle sort who wouldn't hurt a flea. She was lovely, a little flower in a field of blood and horror. They made sure to emphasize she was her mother's only child, and the mother killed herself a few years later. An adult Howard's voice described how her mother asked him to kill her after the Reaping, just to make sure it was quick and painless, rather than see her be tortured to death. He talked about how he thought about throwing them both off the training center roof as mercy for her and as a final act of defiance – but the force field on the roof was in place even then. I looked over at Tony and all the color was out of his face. The Arena was an ocean that year – meant obviously for District 4, but Howard and Rei bunkered down on the lone island, and Howard was actually able to strip wiring from cameras that were hidden in trees and caves to build defenses (I'm sure they put things in place to prevent that from happening again, just like they did with the force fields after Haymitch's victory). Despite that, an incredibly tall girl who was bigger than me from District 1 slipped past the defenses and ended up driving them into the water. The tributes had life vests to keep them afloat but Rei hadn't had time to grab hers, so she had to hold on to Howard to stay afloat. The girl swam after them – all Careers must train for swimming – and I'm not sure what happened since that, of course, isn't as important as what happened to Rei, but it was down to those two – both tributes from 3. He tried to give her his life jacket but she couldn't even stay afloat long enough for him to get if off – she was so starved, before and during the Games, that there wasn't much fat to keep her afloat. Those of us too young to remember these Games thought that was it – that he must have pried her fingers from his shoulders and let her drown or snapped her neck or stabbed her with the fishing knife. Instead, he waited until she went to sleep, drifting there in the ocean, and when he was sure she could keep her grip even in sleep, he slit his wrists, intending to let her win. I looked up at Tony again – he was in tears. He'd obviously never seen this, or even known it. It's not like they show it on highlights – I'm pretty sure what Howard did was treason or something, and I'm surprised they didn't arrange a tragic "accident" for him as soon as his Victory Tour was done. But he didn't cut deep enough, and the Gamemakers, probably completely panicked at the prospect of such a blatant martyr, sent a storm. The propo focused on Rei's face – her look of terror and confusion both about the storm and why her protector's arms were slick with blood – as Howard lost his grip on her and she slipped underneath the waves despite a desperate struggle, and I almost couldn't stand to watch it knowing that she drowned before he bled out, making him the victor, and I was watching the last moments of her life before she slipped out of view of the cameras. I'm sure the footage was cut differently when it was aired back in that year, but the footage as it appears in the propo is this image of Howard floating, gray-faced from blood loss and head barely above the water, surrounded by his own blood with this hollow look in his eyes because he knows he failed to save her. Tony says he was drunk most of his childhood – now we all know why. I could see Tony shaking from across the table.

"Can you tell me why that wouldn't move someone in 10 or 6 as much as in 3?" Thresh asks skeptically, breaking the silence that's fallen over us.

"Not to mention shame everyone else for their comparative lack of balls," Haymitch adds – he looks solemn but not as shell-shocked as all the younger viewers. He watched these Games live ten years before he won himself – it's probably the first year he really remembers.

"Well, eventually …" Fulvia says, and I wonder if "eventually" means "never." The sad part is, I know that despite Thresh's question, it will be different in different districts – they'll feel it the most in 3. Not just that they lost this kind little girl, but that their other tribute, who's now a public figure, tried, oh so very hard, to defy the Capitol and keep that little bit of humanity, only to be forcefully denied. It would move anyone with a soul but it'll bring a special hurt to the people of District 3 since they know at least one of the people involved. But maybe that should be the point – to make us know their hurt.

That was a hard, hard day – they had at least two "We Remember" sketches targeted at every District except 1 and 2. They're still so firmly rooted in their Career system and loyalty to the Capitol – all though 1 is starting to crumble. The spots were draining to watch – the whole time, I felt Coin's cold gray eyes on me. I know she was watching all of us for our reaction – wanting to know which of us, if any, are going to break.

We saw footage of ourselves too. For the others, I imagine that's impressive. For me it's just kind of … dull. The most impressive thing I do is run around like a mother hen looking after the others or bake cakes to cheer everyone up on the rare occasion we get sugar. I was assured this is important – I remain unconvinced even now. At least they didn't try to make baking bread look exciting or dramatic.

I'm lost in thought, thinking about Katniss going away and remembering all those propos, and I burn my hand on the oven. Of course – this day gets better and better.

Author's Note

I originally wrote part of a full-length story about the Games Howard won and then realized there was very little point in terms of a crossover, so I'll just summarize the ideas as needed. It was not just for his own sake that Howard tried to let Rei win – he had lied during the Games to convince a potential ally that he was genuinely trying to protect Rei (so she would trust him more), telling her he was in love with Rei's very young mother. Given that, killing her would have made him look so despicable he'd be a pariah at home and across Panem, and the Gamemakers had stupidly let them get down to just the two of them and refused to use a storm or anything else to kill them so they were slowly going to die of the elements. (Rei probably would have gone first, but it's not like that was guaranteed, and even had she died first would have required both of them suffer for days on end.) So that wasn't an entirely selfless act – he did care about trying to save her, but that wasn't the only motive. The look of hollowness on his face was also fear for himself – he knew there was a very strong chance he was about to get killed. It's much more complicated, but the rebels can shave it down for propaganda purposes, just like the Capitol did – they spun it as a love story (oh he's not a traitor, he was just too in love with her to mom to think straight), sort of like what happened with Katniss and Peeta in canon.