Chapter Ten

"I really do think we should have a party - or something."

I very carefully let my face remain in its neutral lines while my three lunch guests look at me eagerly. In the week since my return, there's been such an astonishing amount of interest in my upcoming nuptials - much more than I would have guessed. Maybe I should have. Romance sells outside the Capitol, too, I suppose. I'd just become so accustomed to the fiction of it all; I'd not expected that we could have fooled so many people at home.

"I think the Capitol is going to be in charge of that," I say wearily.

"But," says Delly, confused. "But what about your family and Katniss' family - and everyone here? None of us have ever really met Katniss."

"What are you talking about?" I say. "You went to school with her for ten years."

"What are you talking about?" she counters. "So did you and you never even spoke to her until last year. I didn't even know Gale Hawthorne was her cousin."

"Mmm," I reply shortly. Another fiction - devised by the Everdeens and Hawthornes last year, when Katniss and I were in the Games. Camera crews came to interview our friends and family, and, in light of the romance strategy, some more innocent cover story was needed to account for Gale. The funny thing about that is - I always used to think they were cousins. But a part of me knew that was only wishful thinking - so, here again, it is a surprise to find it now suddenly accepted as fact.

"Peeta," says Lily. "Why aren't you happier?"

I open my mouth to answer that question, then realize just how vast it is. Happiness has been buried under a pile of misery so enormous, I'll be picking through it for years. To the pre-existing conditions of haunting memories of the Games and unrequited love has been added the weight of Panem's restless districts, and Snow's still-unresolved threat hanging over us, and the wedding, and the upcoming Quell. But I finally just say, "I'm sorry - I don't mean to seem unhappy. I'm still just so exhausted from the tour."

"It looked fun," says Delly.

"Yeah, but -." I bite my lip. "That's just what you saw here - a condensed version of our days; what, maybe an hour or so a day? What you see on TV - all kind of boiled down and stuff - is only a small percentage of what goes on, and it's only what they think the audience wants to see. Just imagine, being on a train all day and all night except for a couple of hours in a different district – for weeks. It's - exhausting."

"Uh, we've never even been on a train," says Aster. "How are we supposed to imagine it? You've seen the ocean. You've been to the mountains. You've seen the Capitol. We don't envy you the Games, but - we're stuck here."

"I love District 12," I say. "I missed it." I can't tell them about the rest of it - about how no one anywhere is happy, not even the people in the Capitol who think they are.

The girls leave shortly after, and Delly is the last to go. I hold the door open as she steps out onto my porch.

"We have to do something to celebrate your engagement," she insists again.

I stare at her a moment, thinking how desperately I need someone to confide in about this - someone who isn't Katniss. But it's too dangerous to be my friend, now. Especially when it comes to sharing confidences about my fictional love life. I just smile. "Thanks, Delly. For looking out for me."

As she walks through the patches of snow, back towards town, I watch her with a curious sense of detachment. There was never anything between me and Delly - she came into my life so early that she might as well have been a sister. Temptation to think of her as something more never came into it. But - damn, if it wouldn't make my life much easier now.

I get my coat on and head out myself. I've just reached the gate when Katniss comes into view, walking toward home. She's wearing her leather jacket and boots and when she sees me, she quickens her pace to meet up with me - and, as she approaches, everything about her makes dust out of the very notion of being with any other girl.

"Been hunting?" I ask her, trying to sound neutral about it.

"Not really. Going to town?"

"Yes. I'm supposed to eat dinner with my family."

"Oh, well, I can at least walk you in," she says.

I glance at her as she falls in next to me. She looks agitated. But she doesn't say anything until we are almost back in town.

"Peeta, if I asked you to run away from the district with me, would you?

I stop abruptly and take her arm, so she has to stop, too. My instinctive response - an absolute affirmative at the idea of escaping with her forever into the wild - has to be weighed, as everything does, against the larger mission. "Depends on why you're asking," I reply.

Her response tumbles out, softly but urgently. "President Snow wasn't convinced by me. There's an uprising in District 8. We have to get out."

I don't ask how she knows this, or when she found out. I just know by her voice that it's true. "By 'we' do you mean just you and me? No. Who else would be going?"

"My family. Yours, if they want to come. Haymitch, maybe."

Whoever she thinks will be punished if we flee. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the weather. "What about Gale?" I ask.

"I don't know," she replies evasively. "He might have other plans."

By this I can tell that she has already asked Gale - probably just now, in the woods. And he said no. No, he doesn't strike me as one to run away from trouble, especially if he knew her plans included me. But then, he hasn't really seen what we've seen. Katniss is right, though. If she goes, he needs to go, too, every bit as much as me. If there really are punishments to be handed out. But I can't worry about Gale on top of everything else. "I bet he does," I say. "Sure, Katniss, I'll go."

Her face relaxes. "You will?"

Damn it. Of course, of course. She has to know that I'd do just about anything she asked. But loyalty is a two-way street with her. And Gale's is the longer alliance. She'd never leave him behind. "Yeah," I say, gently squeezing her arm. "But I don't think for a minute you will."

This angers her. She jerks away from me. "Then you don't know me. Be ready. It could be any time." She takes off again and I follow her more slowly, surprised by the intensity of her response.

"Katniss. Katniss, hold up!"

She stops and waits for me, kicking at the ground.

"I really will go, if you want me to. I just think we better talk it through with Haymitch. Make sure we won't be making things worse for everyone." Haymitch will assuredly be hard to convince. But it would be poor play not to try.

As I'm thinking about Haymitch, I hear a sound that chills me with its long familiarity. The snap of leather meeting flesh. It's faint, but distinct, and coming from the direction of town. "What's that?"

Katniss looks puzzled and just shakes her head.

"Come on," I say, grabbing her hand and hurrying her on to the town square. A crowd has gathered there, along the edges, as if it's Reaping Day, and I can't see what's going on. I finally find an empty crate against one of the shop walls and jump on top of it. I offer a hand up to Katniss, then stop when I finally see what's happening in the square, and push her back down. "Get down! Get out of here!"

There's another crack of leather as the whip whistles in the air. Another hiss as it meets flesh. Gale Hawthorne is tied to a post in the square, slumped all the way down, his bare back laced with bloody stripes, while a Peacekeeper stands over him with a whip.

"Go home!" I tell Katniss. "I'll be there in a minute, I swear!"

But she doesn't listen to me; she darts through the crowd until she stands in the front of it. I can see her, in that moment, trying to take everything in, to understand what is going on. Then, with a cry, she springs forward to put herself between Gale and the whip, and takes a lash herself.

Blood rushes to my head and I jump down off of the crate and fight my own way through the crowd. I'm far more awkward than Katniss is, and people are trying to hold me back, but I finally stumble my way into the square and see Haymitch approaching from the other side, probably coming from the Hob.

"Stop it!" cries Katniss. "You'll kill him!"

A gun is pulled on her and I lurch forward, frantically. Haymitch trips over someone already lying on the ground. "Hold it!" he shouts.

He and I reach Katniss around the same time, but his eyes command me to freeze. He catches his breath and pulls Katniss to her feet, all the while looking straight at this Peacekeeper who I've never seen before. "Oh, excellent," Haymitch says, sarcastically. I can feel the crowd around us watch in fascinated horror, holding its collective breath. "She's got a photo shoot next week modeling wedding dresses. What am I supposed to tell her stylist?"

I glance beyond him to the Peacekeeper lying on the ground. It's Darius, one of the younger and more friendly of the lot. I venture a close look at this new, unfamiliar Peacekeeper and realize that he is wearing the uniform of a Head Peacekeeper, but he's not Cray, who's been the Head here for as long as I can remember. He's lean and hard muscled and his eyes are cold. "She interrupted the punishment of a confessed criminal," he says in a voice that somehow carries throughout the square despite his clenched jaw.

Haymitch is neither impressed nor intimidated. "I don't care if she blew up the blasted Justice Building! Look at her cheek! Think that will be camera-ready in a week?"

I have to admire Haymitch's quick thinking, because, behind the absurdity of the whole thing, he's using our only possible defense. Katniss belongs to the Capitol, now; she's not under this guy's jurisdiction.

"That's not my problem," says the Peacekeeper, but in a less strident tone.

"No? Well it's about to be," says Haymitch, doubling down. "The first call I make when I get home is to the Capitol. Find out who authorized you to mess up my victor's pretty little face!"

"He was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?"

Katniss stirs, but I grab her arm. "He's her cousin," I say quickly. "And she's my fiancée. So, if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us."

Haymitch glances at me unhappily, but I will not - I will not - let him leave me out again. Whatever happens, I'm a victor, and I have to stand with them. It doesn't matter that my winning was unintentional, and that my survival was catastrophic. This is the only identity I have left.

The Head Peacekeeper looks at me for a second, in recognition, then turns to the line of Peacekeepers that stand behind him. These are familiar faces, and unhappy. One of them steps forward, suddenly. "I believe, for a first offense, the required number of lashes has been dispensed, sir. Unless your sentence is death, which we would carry out by firing squad."

"Is that the standard protocol here?"

The assembled Peacekeepers confirm it with ragged nods of assent. For a moment, the situation could go either way, then the new Head barks at us to take Gale away. He wipes the length of the whip with his gloved hands and we are spattered by Gale's blood.

There's a collective hum as he turns his back and walks toward the Justice Building. Most of the audience scurries away. There's no time for us to relax. We all know we have to get out of that square just as soon as possible. I find someone with a knife, Haymitch finds a board for sale and while Katniss stands, dazed, with the cut on her face swelling and bleeding, we cut Gale down and place him carefully on the board. I'm reminded forcibly of Cato's mangled body. I had hoped never to see things like this again, out of the arena. A couple of guys - miners around Gale's age - step forward to help Haymitch and I carry him. As we lift him, I glance back at the girl.

"Come on, Katniss!" I hiss at her, when she stands, still dazed, like when she was stung by tracker jackers. She jumps back to life, and at that moment, one of her friends from the Seam grabs her arm. "Need help?"

"No, but can you get Hazelle? Send her over to my house. Don't let her bring the kids!"

"Get some snow on that," Haymitch tells her.

After we leave the town and are back on the empty road to Victors' Village, Haymitch asks one of the miners, "What happened?"

"As best we can tell, he went to sell a turkey he got to Cray. But he found this new guy - Romulus Thread is his name. No one knows what happened to Cray."

"I saw him this morning in the Hob," says Haymitch grimly.

"Anyway, Thread had him taken to the square immediately, made him confess to poaching at gun point and ordered the whipping. I think he got in at least forty lashes."

"Lucky he only had the one turkey on him. If he'd had his usual haul, would've been much worse."

"He told Thread he found it wandering around the Seam, as if it got over the fence and he'd stabbed it with a stick. Still a crime, but if they'd known he'd been in the woods with weapons, they'd have killed him for sure."

"What about Darius?" I ask.

"He stepped in after about twenty lashes, saying that was enough. Only he didn't do it smart and official, like Purnia. He grabbed Thread's arm and got hit in the head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him."

"Doesn't sound like much good for any of us," says Haymitch ominously.

It begins to snow, adding to the overall misery. I wonder if this is it, the beginning of the crackdown. Who will they start with, to punish Katniss? Gale, probably, he's put himself out there. Me? My family?

We get to Katniss' house and I get to see it in action, for the first time: her mother and sister's work as healers. Her mother comes to life, takes command of all of us. We lay Gale on the table, Prim is sent for the medications. She crumbles herbs and adds droplets of liquid from small bottles into a basin of boiling water. Cloths are soaked in the water, then she approaches her patient, thoughtfully, dispassionately.

"Did it cut your eye?" she asks Katniss, suddenly, as if she can take in all of the room at once.

"No, it's just swelled shut."

I look at her, concerned. It's ugly, purple and swollen. I'm not sure she would be honest in this moment, but I can't even see her eye to tell if it's injured.

"Get more snow on it."

"Can you save him?" she asks - and I hate myself for this, but the tone of her voice makes my blood run cold.

"Don't worry." It's Haymitch who responds. "Used to be a lot of whipping before Cray. She's the one we took them to."

I glance between him and Katniss' mother. In light of the current crisis, it's hard to remember that these troubles have always existed, will always exist, long before we were born, long after we all are gone. I sigh, grab a clean dish towel and go outside for snow. Of which there is an abundance, it is coming down so thickly now. I pack a ball of it into the towel, go back inside, and do what I do - look after Katniss. She's unresisting as I lead her to one of the chairs pushed back from the table, set her down and put the snow to her face. She feels about as far from me as she ever has and I just try to ignore this - push it down, push it down.

Haymitch dismisses the two miners who came with us with money, warning them that he's not sure about what will happen to their team. Gale's mother shows up and she wordlessly, soundlessly, pulls a stool up to the table, and takes his hand. Katniss' mother works around her, cleaning the wounds with her herbal concoction, arranging the tattered skin, applying a salve and then wrapping bandages.

By the time the bandaging is almost done, Gale finally starts to pull out of unconsciousness. I know how horrible it is to wake up out of sleep into blinding pain and even I feel for him a bit. Katniss stiffens at the sound of his moans.

"He's waking up," Katniss' mother says, turning to Prim, "so let's make him something he can drink, for the pain."

"That won't be enough," says Katniss suddenly. "That won't be enough. I know how it feels. That will barely knock out a headache."

"We'll combine it with sleep syrup, Katniss, and he'll manage it. The herbs are more for inflammation…."

"Just give him the medicine!" she screams. "Give it to him! Who are you, anyway, to decide how much pain he can stand!"

Gale begins to stir and moan even more.

"Take her out."

Katniss thrashes and screams in protest as Haymitch and I grab her by the arms and start hauling her away. I've never heard the words before - not from her mouth - that she uses to curse her mother. We take her to the downstairs bedroom and hold her there, on the bed, until she stops fighting and collapses, her face wet with her tears. Even then, we know better than to trust her acquiescence, and keep her pinned down.

I find it hard to look at her, so I glance over at Haymitch, and see just how gray his face is.

"Haymitch, I'm worried," I whisper.

He glances at me and some trick of the light makes his expression almost sad.

"Just before this happened, she told me that Snow wasn't convinced by us, that there's already an uprising in district 8. She wants us all to run."

Haymitch raises his eyebrows, then shrugs. Whatever he thinks about this, he won't discuss it.

Eventually, Katniss' mother comes in to treat her, and we both straighten up. I look at Katniss now, see the raw despair on her face. Her mother applies some of that herbal ointment and salve to her cut. Then she just holds her hand and strokes her arm, while Haymitch tells her what happened in the square.

"So, it's starting again?" she says. "Like before?"

"By the looks of it," he answers, and I deflate. Half of me hoped that Haymitch would dismiss this all as a fluke - a simple matter of District discipline that got out of hand. If even he can't sugarcoat this, it must be bad. "Who'd have thought we'd ever be sorry to see old Cray go?"

That echoes something that I had contemplated during the tour, where I saw the clear signs that some districts were guarded with a far more heavy hand than District 12. Our mayor is a gentle non-entity. Our Head Peacekeeper, Cray, didn't have the taste for punishment. He had a taste for alcohol, for the young and desperate district girls, for fresh game - no matter where it came from. But not for enforcing the laws against the criminal activities – such as poaching – that benefited him as much as anyone.

The doorbell rings and we all jump. Katniss leaps from her bed. "They can't have him."

"Might be you they're after," says Haymitch, with a touch of wryness back in his voice.

"Or you," she retorts.

"Not my house. But I'll get the door."

"No, I'll get it," says Katniss' mother.

We all go together, following her down the hallway, holding breath while she answers the door. It's almost more of a shock to see, not a Peacekeeper, but a young woman - Madge Undersee, the mayor's daughter, with a green cloak flung carelessly over her head. She finds Katniss and pulls a small box out to hand to her. "Use these for your friend. They're my mother's. She said I could take them. Use them, please." And she turns and runs back out into the storm.

"Crazy girl," says Haymitch.

Back in the kitchen, Katniss mutely hands the damp box to her mother; it is filled with small vials of clear liquid. She fills a syringe with the contents of one of the vials, then injects it into Gale's arm. I know that Katniss and Madge are friends, but that in itself doesn't seem to explain what is going on.

"What is that stuff?" I ask.

"It's from the Capitol. It's called morphling."

Gale's face, which had been shiny, sweaty and knotted in pain, relaxes at once.

"I didn't even know Madge knew Gale," I say out loud. I look to Katniss for confirmation, and there's a strange, possessive look on her face.

"We used to sell her strawberries," she says shortly.

"She must have quite a taste for them," says Haymitch, in a tone that none of us can mistake. I track back over our years at school, try to find some clue that confirms what he is saying. There were girls enough who talked about Gale, who claimed to have made out with him. Handsome, aloof, forbidden fruit - especially to the girls I hung out with - Gale had always been the subject of rumors that may or may not have been true. But Madge was every bit as much of a loner as Katniss was. If I exchanged more than a few words with her during the course of a school year, it was just because she was the mayor's kid, after all, and she didn't scowl in return - she would just nod and move on. I certainly never heard or saw anything to connect her to Gale.

"She's my friend," says Katniss firmly.

Prim says, "Why doesn't everyone go into the sitting room, and I'll bring you some stew."

Haymitch, Katniss and I sit together, eating dinner. But each of us is in our own world. I'm surprised I'm not more depressed by tonight's events - all I feel right now is numb. Worried and numb. I know this is a temporary salve. I dread going home tonight because there the more important things will fade away, and my heart will crack open again and I will forget everything I promised her, everything I promised myself - and be at the mercy of my hurt and jealousy.

Haymitch and I leave together. There is already a heavy carpet of snow on the ground and the new snow is falling in a thick curtain at a sharp angle. We're in for another good one; this endless winter. I'm not dressed for the storm, and by the time I reach my house, I'm soaked through and my hands are turning blue. With automatic motions, I stir up the fire, add more coal. In the kitchen, I see the remnants of my lunch with the girls, and I wash up, trying to even remember their faces, so much has happened in the meanwhile.

The floor is slick with the dishwater and the snow that has melted off of me, and I take an awkward step, lose my footing and slip down onto the kitchen floor. I just sit there, angry at myself, at Katniss, at Haymitch. I pull at the prosthetic leg, the remnant of that damn arena, and a symbol of everything that has gone wrong with my life. Unwanted, unloved - unlovable, probably. Stuck here - in this house, in this district - with formless horrors guarding all escapes. For all my troubles - for all the acting, for the sword I took and the jaws of the muttation - for having my heart broken on the train tracks in the middle of nowhere - for all that she curled into me in the night - for all of that, I'm going to die anyway, probably executed in the town square, just under my old bedroom window, as an example for the youth of Panem not to defy the Capitol in even the least of ways.

And as I throw the prosthesis away from myself, I just hope it comes sooner rather than later.