Chapter Seventeen

Haymitch grabs Katniss' wrist in anticipation of her reaction, but, after a highly-charged moment in which we are all frozen in place, she shakes him off and runs to her room. I stare transfixed at the young man who I didn't know that well, and, yes, he was a Peacekeeper - but still, he belonged to 12 and - this - a permanent dismemberment of his voice - seems like a brutally unjust punishment. I make a move - I don't know if it's toward Darius, or to get past him, maybe, but Haymitch says, "Watch it boy, we're all in enough trouble as it is."

Speaking to the Avoxes, unless in relationship to their assigned serving responsibilities, is forbidden in the Training Center. I just gape at Darius and shake my head sorrowfully, until Haymitch pushes me into the suite.

I go back to my room - it's down the hall from Katniss', separated by the two rooms Haymitch and Effie will be using - switch and pull off my costume and take a shower. The oily lotions dribble off my skin.

Katniss' dinner freeze-out is so remarkably familiar that sometimes during the meal I wonder if haven't just dreamed all of the past year. While everyone talks about the opening ceremonies and the success we were again, I just look at Katniss, and she just looks at her food - shutting me, shutting everyone out again. When we watch the Reaping, she makes a point of sitting far away from me and saying nothing at all until it's over. Then she formally thanks Portia and Cinna for their work and heads back to her bedroom.

I don't know what she wants from me - to take back what happened on the elevator - to take back what happened to Darius? Everything impossible, but nonetheless, I have to try. I follow her back and knock on her bedroom door, but there's no response.

My dreams that night are not so much the standard nightmares, but uneasy vignettes. There's a lot of nudity, some of it pleasant enough (Johanna's not bad to look at, in dreams or real life) - some of it uncomfortable, like walking around and realizing I'm not wearing any clothes. I think my dream is mostly spent trying to keep Katniss from entering a room before I can find my clothes, but when I wake up, the details slip away and I just feel an odd combination of gross, guilty - and vulnerable. I suppose it's just the natural result of yesterday's overload of suggestiveness. Not to mention my fruitless efforts to repress this particular feeling - to rationalize it away, to concentrate on the really important stuff. No matter what I do, it's always just there.

Plus, there's this new information - everything I learned on the elevator last night about Katniss' feelings about me. What does it mean? And what does it matter? I'll be dead in weeks - sex isn't actually a thing I will ever do.

After showering, I go out and meet Haymitch and Effie for breakfast. Katniss remains stubbornly barricaded in her room and Haymitch's temperature rises visibly with every fifteen minutes that pass without her presence. Finally, Effie gets up to leave.

"I was hoping you'd be in a better mood for this," she says, delicately coughing. "But I've got that bangle for you." She hands Haymitch a small box, which he takes with a frown. "Because we're a team, yes? Now I just have to find something for Peeta," she concludes, with a smile.

"Maybe not an ankle bracelet," I tell her.

"Maybe a locket - you can carry a picture of Katniss into the arena."

Conflicting emotions clutch at me - the lovesick kid in me thinks the idea is kind of cool; the more realistic boy winces at the idea of Katniss ever finding out about such a thing. Mortifying. But …. "Sure," I say to Effie. "That might work." It fits the script, at any rate.

Haymitch pulls out a gold bangle that's accented with flames and is really like a cuff more than a bracelet. He grimaces, but, to my surprise, goes ahead and puts it on.

He and I wait through the rest of the eight o'clock hour for Katniss, making light, distracted talk about strategy … then nine o'clock comes and that's when his face starts transitioning from red to purple. Training starts at ten, so she is definitely cutting things close. At nine-thirty, he goes down the hall and pounds on her door, demanding she get out immediately. Even so, it's five minutes before she joins us.

"You're late," he snarls at her.

"Sorry," she says, looking down at the table. "I slept in after the mutilated tongue nightmares kept me up half the night."

He scowls - but the scowl melts away until his expression is merely sad. This is a difference from last year. "All right, never mind. Today, in training, you've got two jobs. One, stay in love."

"Obviously," she retorts.

I'll stay in love, she'll tolerate it - that's what he really means - what they both mean - I think to myself resentfully, before I can help it.

"And two," he continues, "make some friends."

"No. I don't trust them, I can't stand any of them, and I'd rather operate with just the two of us."

Well, at least I'm still part of the equation. "That's what I said at first, but -."

"But it won't be enough," concludes Haymitch. "You're going to need more allies this time around."

"Why?"

"Because you're at a distinct disadvantage. Your competitors have known each other for years. So who do you think they're going to target first?"

"Us. And nothing we're going to do is going to override any old friendship. So why bother?"

"Because you can fight. You're popular with the crowd. That could still make you desirable allies, but only if you let the others know you're willing to team up with them.

"You mean you want us in the Career pack this year?" she asks in disbelief.

"That's been our strategy," he counters. "To train like Careers. And who makes up the Career pack is generally agreed upon before the Games begin. Peeta barely got in with them last year."

"So, we're to try to get in with Finnick and Brutus?" she says, with distaste. "Is that what you're saying?"

"Not necessarily. Everyone's a victor. Make your own pack if you'd rather - choose who you like. I'd suggest Chaff and Seeder. Although Finnick's not to be ignored. Find someone to team up with who might be of some use to you. Remember, you're not in a ring full of trembling children anymore. These people are all experienced killers, no matter what shape they appear to be in."

While I watch the conflict in Katniss' face, I wonder if I should argue the point with Haymitch. That Katniss doesn't feel - neither do I, for that matter - like making allegiances that can only end in betrayal. But I can't challenge Haymitch. Not when it comes to the Games. Not when it comes to getting Katniss to the end of them.

"All right, I'll try," she says sullenly.

Effie arrives again to accompany us down to the training center gym, but Haymitch nixes it. We're already the youngest competitors there, we don't have to arrive with a babysitter. So, she just walks us over to the elevator, fussing over us and our matching training outfits, and pushes the basement floor button for us.

On the way down, Katniss takes my hand, but she doesn't say anything. I adore the silent treatment.

When we get down to the gym, we find ourselves alone there except for the District 2 tributes, Brutus and Enobaria who, so far, are the only tributes I've actually seen take this whole thing seriously - aside from us. They're reacquainting themselves with the equipment available when it turns ten and Atala, the woman in charge of training, rattles off the rules and timeframes, same as she does every year. Maybe half of the tributes have even volunteered to show.

"Let's split up and cover more territory," Katniss says. In this she's right; last year, we were glued to each other in training - going from station to station together, trying not to show off too much of our combat strengths. Now, we're schmoozing potential allies. Still - I feel like the longer we spend apart, the longer she's going to stay mad at me.

I look around for Chaff - who I know she won't approach, but who Haymitch will definitely want us to ally with - and see him throwing spears with Brutus. Trying not to think too much about throwing spears last year with Katniss - or about hurling that trident into Cato - I join them at their station.

Meanwhile, Katniss goes over to the knot-tying station by herself. So much for covering more territory.

After spears, we go to knife throwing. Neither of these stations are my strong suit - as they involve aim over distance - but from practicing over the summer, I'm better than I used to be. Anyway, hardly anyone is paying attention. I talk to Chaff - try to get to know this guy Haymitch likes so much - and we make jokes about missing limbs that Katniss might not have liked, but feel kind of cathartic to me - and then he has a whole series of jokes about my bringing a lover right into the arena that Katniss definitely would not like. But again - they're a bit cathartic.

Cashmere, Enobaria and a tribute from 10 join us and we all just have a good time throwing knives. It's weird, but - even knowing that we're all going to be competing with each other to the death in a few days, there's a strange camaraderie. Only victors know what each other have been through.

After a while, Chaff elbows me and nods his head in the direction of the wrestling ring. Johanna is naked again and oiling herself up for wrestling - the Capitol attendant with whom she is about to spar is gaping at her, and she's not grinning, exactly, but her face is lit up with wicked humor.

I shake my head and turn back to the knives. This time, I take up the larger blades - the machete that I'm pretty comfortable with - and practice some moves and stances, but mostly I'm just listening in as more victors gather in a group - latecomers arrive and people just make small talk, of all things, reminding each other of stuff they did when they were all here together in the Capitol last year. I just jump in when I can, hoping to make enough people comfortable with me so they can approach me later, if they want. When Johanna joins us, smelling of sweat and sandalwood, everyone greets her with catcalls and laughter that she just turns back on them.

"Hey, Loverboy," she says to me. That of course was my nickname in last year's games.

"Hey, Johanna."

"When are we going to see you wrestle?" she asks with a wink, and everyone laughs.

When we file into the cafeteria for lunch, there's a lot of laughing and eye rolling. Brutus and Gloss put a few tables together so everyone can sit together and keep on talking. I look around for Katniss and see her serving herself up some food. I hurry over to join her. "How's it going?"

She makes a face like she can't believe I'm bothering her and I get a massive dose of deja vu. "Good. Fine. I like the District Three victors. Wiress and Beetee."

"Really? They're something of a joke to the others." Of course, so is just about everything.

"Why does that not surprise me?" she replies, icily.

"Johanna's nicknamed them Nuts and Volts. I think - she's Nuts and he's Volts."

Her nostrils flare. "And so I'm stupid for thinking they might be useful. Because of something Johanna Mason said while she was oiling up her breasts for wrestling."

I bite my tongue on a laugh. "Actually, I think the nickname's been around for years. And I didn't mean that as an insult. I'm just sharing information."

"Well, Wiress and Beetee are smart. They invent things. They could tell by sight that a force field had been put up between us and the Gamemakers. And if we have to have allies, I want them." As if for emphasis, she tosses the ladle she's been clutching all this time back into a pot of stew, splattering both of us.

"What are you so angry about?" I ask her at last, wiping myself off. "Because I teased you on the elevator? I'm sorry. I thought you would just laugh about it."

"Forget it," she says stubbornly. "It's a lot of things."

Oh, she is so frustrating. At least last year she kept up an emotional distance from me because she was planning to kill me, and thought I was planning to kill her. Things should be different now – they are different. "Darius," I say, determined to get her to talk to me.

"Darius. The Games. Haymitch making us team up with the others."

"It can just be you and me, you know."

"I know. But maybe Haymitch is right. Don't tell him I said so, but he usually is, where the Games are concerned."

"Well, you can have final say about our allies. But right now, I'm leaning toward Chaff and Seeder."

"I'm OK with Seeder, not Chaff. Not yet, anyway." But I detect a defrosting in her tone.

"Come on and eat with him. I promise, I won't let him kiss you again." Katniss narrows her eyes as if suspecting that I'm making fun of her again, but she takes my offered hand.

Lunch goes well, and after that I hang out with Wiress and Beetee, trying to see what Katniss sees in them. I glance over and see Katniss talking to Finnick for the second time today - maybe she's not the only one who should be jealous ….

While Beetee is trying to engage me in a discussion about electric magnets - and my head starts spinning - we're all distracted by a sudden realization that the gym has gone quiet. It doesn't take long for me to realize that Katniss is at the heart of the atmospheric change in the room, and I run over to see what's going on. She's at the archery station, shooting down wave after wave of fake birds being launched in the air by the station attendant. She's so quick, and each motion is so fluid and natural - it's like watching Clove throw knives, but less brutal, somehow. Katniss is lost in the exercise - the art - of it all.

Back upstairs, the suite is actually deserted - I guess Haymitch and Effie are getting a head start with the sponsors - and Katniss and I just hang out in the living room, comparing notes. She steers clear of mentioning Johanna, and I only say that Finnick seems like he still has the skills he was known for in his games - trident-throwing and ropes.

She curls her lip. "And arrogance."

As dinner is served, Haymitch and Effie appear and, when we sit down, Haymitch turns to Katniss with a grin. "So, at least half the victors have instructed their mentors to request you as an ally. I know it can't be your sunny personality."

As Katniss thinks of an appropriate comeback, I step in. "They saw her shoot. Actually, I saw her shoot, for real, for the first time. I'm about to put in a formal request myself."

"You're that good? So good that Brutus wants you?"

She shrugs. "I don't want Brutus. I want Mags and District Three."

I keep my smile to myself and Haymitch sighs and orders a bottle of wine. "I'll tell everybody you're still making up your mind." He shoots me a look like I need to get her back in line or something, and I just shake my head.

The next day, Katniss and I spend the day paired up at different stations. We start at the camouflage station, which I was itching to get my hands on all day yesterday, but was occupied the whole time by the two District 6 tributes everyone calls the "morphlings." They're addicted to the painkiller. They also just like to spend all day finger painting, apparently, as they're back again, but this time we join them. What I find is that they are not talkative, but both very artistic, and we can speak in short-hand with colors. We spend the morning painting yellow flowers on the training room floor, with Katniss huffing impatiently - then we justify it all by camouflaging her within the flower field. I take a great deal of pleasure in having her close her eyes while I apply the yellows and greens and browns to her skin. Relinquishing control like this makes her jittery. But it makes a nice change for me.

In the afternoon, Finnick offers to exchange an hour of trident lessons with Katniss for archery lessons. Up close, I suddenly realize that Finnick is the mentor who got me in with the Careers last year. He looks different in person than he does on TV - less plastic, or something.

"You could probably use some time, too, Peeta," he tells me, spearing a dummy with his trident three times in rapid succession. "It wasn't bad for a first attempt, and under tracker jacker influence, but you could have saved yourself a world of trouble if you had offed Cato then and there."

I wince at the brashness of his words; these things I only think to myself in private.

Katniss doesn't let anyone criticize her friends, even mildly. "Then we would have had trouble of another kind, with Thresh. The important thing is he lived to tell about it."

I crook up my mouth.

"And you, right?" Finnick adds sarcastically. "It was all for the Girl on Fire, wasn't it?"

He looks from Katniss to me and back. Katniss and I just look at each other. I mean - it's out there, proclaimed on stage and screen: the saga of the star-crossed lovers. But we don't talk about it outside of cameras and audience. Katniss just says, "Ha, ha," and goes back to thrusting nervously at the training dummy. Hand-to-hand or close combat just isn't her thing.

Dinner that night is more relaxed than usual - even, a little fun. Since we are able to honestly say that we're engaging all the tributes, as ordered, and he's got a hot commodity in Katniss, Haymitch is in a much better mood than this time last year, when every grueling day of tense station-hopping and miserable lunch with Katniss concluded with sarcastic questioning from Haymitch over dinner. Katniss and I try to ruffle Effie's feathers, and that's one of Haymitch's few pleasures in life, so he's actually downright cheerful.

On the final day of training, we all don't do much of anything. Sub-groups have formed - ominously, Districts 1 and 2 are spending an increasing amount of time together - but there is basically free movement among everyone, as far as socializing goes. Since she's not a natural at it, Katniss sticks with me again today, but we spend the most time with her picks for allies, who are still, as they were from the beginning, Mags, Beetee and Wiress. I keep trying to put a word in for Chaff because I honestly think that he would be willing to protect Haymitch's tributes, but I don't press it too hard. She's incredibly protective of her private space - which makes our friendship a minor miracle - and she has no trust in people who don't understand that.

The afternoon of the final training day is given over to the private sessions with the Gamemakers. I've ignored the Gamemakers almost entirely - they spend the three training days hovering above us, on the balcony level of the gym - and it seems I'm not the only one. While we're all gathered in the cafeteria for lunch, waiting for the calls to begin, everyone starts talking about what they're going to do. It's all a bit of a joke - like this whole process is, really. The victors are adults, some of them elderly, forced to perform some routine for the Gamemakers in order to start the betting lines. Which have been going full force since the Quell was announced anyway.

Eventually, after several hours, Seeder is called away, leaving Katniss and I alone. Unlike last year, when we ended up sitting on opposite ends of the room, we're facing each other across a table. Katniss sighs and I take her hands.

"Decided what to do for the Gamemakers, yet?" I ask her.

"I can't really use them for target practice this year, with the force field up and all. Maybe make some fishhooks. What about you?"

"Not a clue. I keep wishing I could bake a cake or something."

"Do some more camouflage."

"If the morphlings have left me anything to work with. They've been glued to that station since training started." I think of the morphlings - going back in the arena after years of destroying their bodies and minds just to forget the first time. How they will be dead soon.

Katniss' thoughts track with mine. "How are we going to kill these people, Peeta?" she asks, with an ache in her voice.

I lean down and put my forehead on our entwined hands. "I don't know," is all I can think to say.

"I don't want them as allies. Why did Haymitch want us to get to know them? It'll make it so much harder than last time. Except for Rue, maybe. But I guess I never really could've killed her anyway. She was just too much like Prim."

I look up at her. This is the thing that I remember about that feverish, befuddled time spent in the ground, waiting on the slow pace of death: how my primary source of comfort in that time of pain and weakness was the knowledge that Katniss would make a very different kind of Victor. Forget the rebellion - Snow - Haymitch. Forget everything they expect - or dread - of her. Forget the symbols. Mockingjays, fire, arrows. This is the thing that I remember: that it is kindness and fairness that motivates this girl. Friendship and allegiance - in itself a very selfless form of love - that informs her. It was these that saved my life. And I don't care what she thinks I ever did for her - it's nothing at all to what she means to me.

All I say to her is, "Her death was the most despicable, wasn't it?"

"None of them were very pretty."

On that, they call my name and I give her an encouraging squeeze and exit.

In contrast to last year, the Gamemakers are standing in place, looking down at the training center floor with rapt attention. I suppose it is that we are all so much more interesting now - celebrities, not random kids. I look up at Plutarch Heavensbee and I think about how these people - these sick people - are actually judging me. How twisted and backward; how without logic or emotional sense. All I ever did was nothing, except try to save a girl, who turned around and returned the favor.

There's a cough and I realize I haven't introduced myself, yet - as if they don't know who I am. "Peeta Mellark, District 12," I mutter resentfully.

I still don't know what I'm going to do, so I head over to the camouflage station, since it's the last thing Katniss mentioned. The problem is - they've seen this from me, and in the arena, too.

I see a nice blue ink - dark in shade but bright in intensity. Maybe I'll just paint my face. I mean, it couldn't possibly matter less. I don't give a shit about my training score. But by the time I collect all the paints I want and go back to the middle of the floor, a completely different idea has taken me. They are all jumbled in together - Rue, Katniss. The boy with the spear. The district with the bread. Everyone pays, I think to myself. Everyone should be made to pay.

I've never painted so rapidly in my life, and at such an angle. Half bent over, half kneeling, I paint that little girl on the concrete surface of the gym floor. Rue. Dead. Not dead as I saw her, tangled in netting with a spear through her middle. Dead as they saw her - the Gamemakers - and made sure the rest of us couldn't see. But I know it - I've heard the uncensored account. I paint her as Katniss honored her, enshrouded in wildflowers. And maybe she even looked younger than she did the day she was reaped. A small child, worked like a dog until she was taken away and killed. By them - the monsters in the balcony.

"Time's up, Mr. Mellark," I hear, but I wave it off. I'm not finished yet, and my sorrow-soaked rage is still carrying me along. Fine, I think - take me out by force, drag me, beat me, target me in the arena. Take your one victor.

Then I finish, and I am on my knees, back to the Gamemakers, trying to look at the picture, objectively, before I leave. They'll destroy it first thing, a thought that brings sudden tears to my eyes. This is an ephemeral statement. Even in my memory it won't last very long, because I'll soon be dead.

"Mr. Mel-."

"I know. I'm going."

And I get up and leave.