A/N: Guys you have no idea how sorry I'am for taking so long with this! I hit a brick wall and had terrible writer's block for ages. I got there though. Please don't kill me?

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

Chapter Ten

"What do you believe about the country?"

I sit on the lawn, cross legged, while Peeta digs up some weeds from between the fence and the garden. His back is healing slowly. As soon as Effie discovered it had healed enough for him to work she immediately gave him a million and one tasks to do. He doesn't remember what I said to him in the basement . . . he was too out of it.

I don't know whether this is a good thing or not.

I lean back on my elbows and squint up at the sun. What does he mean? "What?" I ask.

"You heard me. What do you believe about the country?" Peeta says, pulling up a bunch of dandelions.

A woman walks past the house and eyes us both curiously so I raise my voice and say, "Don't forget that clump of weeds over by the end of the fence there." She nods to herself in statisfaction and walks on. Nosey Cow. "Why would you ask such a random question?" I whisper once she's completely gone.

"Because I want to know," Peeta says.

I watch him as he pulls up more weeds. This boy saved my life and he doesn't even remember it. How could I not have realized it sooner anyway? I'm an idiot. A big idiot. I want to ask him why; why me? Why did he throw me the bread? Why did he get himself hurt just for some scrawny girl sitting under the bakery tree? He saved my life . . . that's twice now. I don't understand it.

Worst of all is he can't remember doing it. He doesn't remember me.

"You know what I wanna know?" I ask. "Why did you leave 5?"

Peeta eyes me curiously over his shoulder. Another hunk of weeds gets ripped from the ground and I catch him wince because of the force of the pull, his back scars still raw. "How about an answer for an answer?" he suggests.

"Who answers first?"

"Well, I asked first."

I sigh and shake my head. "But your answer would be shorter." Peeta sighs and turns his head away from me, yanking more and more weeds out agressively.

"I did something," he answers. "Something stupid but also something I don't regret. My," he pauses before sighing, "mother had always been sick of me but I guess doing that one thing finally pushed her over the edge. She shipped me back off to the Capitol Compound . . . I spent years there before Effie bought me."

"I'm sorry," I say. "That's awful."

"To you it's awful. Labour and punishment is as common to a slave as brushing your teeth and combing your hair is to a woman . . . it's life."

My heart aches. How can someone live like this without fighting back? Without doing something about it? Isn't there someone else out there who thinks like me? Someone who could speak out? This country is getting ridiculous. What this country needs . . . is someone to say no.

"It's your turn to answer," Peeta states. "What do you believe about this country?"

I mull the question over for a moment. It's a big question. A big question whose answer I never thought I'd be able to speak out loud because of the consquences of the words.

"This country is in ruin. It is broken. It is sick. I'am disgusted to have been born here." I speak quietly, so no one else hears it but Peeta. "I don't understand what makes you different. Just because you have a dick doesn't mean you should be tortured and killed." I never normally swear but the word immediately comes to mind without myself realizing it. "Why can't we share labour? Divide up the work? There is no excuse why not because the reason is that this country is the way it is because women are sick, demented human beings who take pride in the enjoyment of hurting and beating and raping men just because they're different."

"You're not," Peeta says quietly. "You're different."

"I mustn't have gotten enough oxygen at birth or something," I mutter, tucking my knees under my chin.

"I'm glad then." Peeta holds a handful of soil and daisies, staring at them as if unsure of what to do with them. "Because if you hadn't . . . I wouldn't know what it meant to feel alive."

Heat rises to my cheeks in embarressment. His words are so kind and sweet like honey. I know what he means though. Apart from my father, I have never spoken to a man. Even though I believed male slavery was wrong a part of my mind still thought of them as alien creatures who weren't like us. It wasn't a part of my mind I was proud of but it was still there.

But then I met Peeta and I realized they weren't different. They were like us . . . and not just that, my first enounter with a non-relative male was with the most down to earth person I've ever met. How someone can actually look right into those incredible blue eyes and still be capable of beating him is beyond me. Everytime our eyes lock together, my insides melt in that millisecond before they flit away quickly. I don't understand the feeling and I fear what it means.

I wrap my arms around my legs, taking a deep breath and steeling myself before I ask my next question. "What is the Capitol Compound like?"

Peeta freezes and sits down on the back of his legs. My eyes trail over him and pause at his hands, which I realize are trembling slightly.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," I say. "You don't have to answer that-"

"It's fine," he replies. "It's a hundred storey building. The first floor is a reception area. The next nineteen are made up of training areas-each area designated for a different task we must be taught to become a well trained slave, fit for use. After that is twenty stories of dorms where we are kept when not being trained. We weren't allowed to speak to each other . . . our spare time was just spent staring at the ceiling, wondering how much longer this would last . . ."

A lump forces it's way into my throat and when I swallow, it aches. It sounds so awful, and he hasn't even finished yet . . .

"The following twenty floors is another set of training areas but"-there's a long pause and he drops the weeds to the ground-"not the convential chore training." I bite my lip in horror. I chew on it until it draws blood. "Then there's another set of twenty floors for dorms." He stops completely and I wonder whether that's it. But he said a hunderd floors . . . right? That's only eighty.

"What about the last twenty?" I ask quietly.

Another long pause. What if he breaks down from talking about this? If a slave is deemed mentally unfit then they shall be sent back to the Capitol Compound, like a broken appliance sent back to the store.

"The torture floors."

The word torture makes my heart drop into my stomach. My hand goes to my throat as the aching lump grows and tears prick in the corner of my eyes.

"If a rule was broken or someone stepped out of line then they were sent up there to be put back in their place," Peeta explains, his voice low. "I was in the second set of dorm rooms. If everyone was quiet enough . . . you could hear the people's screams."

"Did you ever get sent up there?" I ask, my voice pitchy and high.

Peeta laughs to himself. "Of course. Everyone ends up there at least once. I was sent more than once though. I had a habit of not being able to keep my mouth shut." I think of his compliant silence when I first arrived here in 12 and wonder how this can be right. "I know what you're thinking. Can't tell from me now, can you?"

I silently nod.

"One day a friend of mine couldn't work. His hands were cracked and bloody. His knuckles were swollen. He couldn't do any more. But they just kept pushing him. Screaming at him and whipping him to the point that I thought he was going to bleed out. I just . . . cracked and yelled at them. I told them to lay off and couldn't they see that he was dying? It wasn't the first time I'd gotten mouthy at them. Only this time was the first time they did something about it."

I take one of his trembling hands in both of mine. He looks at me, his blue eyes watery and sparkling in the sunlight and I smile at him reassuringly. He looks kind of deflated, like telling me all this is like ridding a burden of some sort.

"What did they do Peeta?" I ask.

"Stuck duct tape on my mouth for three whole months. The only thing I could breath out of was my nose. They'd do stuff to me and laugh when I couldn't shout at them like I'd normally do. I learnt not to speak out without permission after that." He clenches his fists and I swipe my thumb over his knuckles. He looks at our joined hands and seems to be a trance of some sort.

"That is ridiculous!" I exclaim. "They can't do that! It's just . . . sick! And unjust!"

"I can't even go near duct tape anymore," Peeta murmers quietly.

"We need a catalyst!" I declare. "Someone to speak out. Someone to say no."

Peeta frowns and looks me in the eye. "Why can't you do it?" he asks. "Be the catalyst?"

I scoff. "Me? That's hilarious."

"I believe you could do it."

I sigh and tuck a stray hair behind my ear. "Uh-huh, sure I could," I say sarcastically.

"We need someone like you to stand up for the little guys," Peeta insists. "Because it doesn't just stop with duct tape. It gets worse and worse as time passes. Right now more and more people are tortured for no reason other than the fact that we're not the same as them. That we're different and it's not fair." Peeta stands up and gathers up the weeds. I watch him as he dumps them into the garden bin and heads to the backyard fence. He turns back and looks at me with sad eyes. "It's not fair," he repeats. "Please think about it Katniss."

Peeta disappears into the backyard and I hug my knees tighter. Could I do it? Could I be the person who stands up for the males of the country? Speak out and do something?

Be a catalyst?

A bird glides over and perches on the garden gate. It sings my lullaby and I smile.

A mockingjay.

A/N: Once again, sorry about the long wait. I hope it was worth it?

Please R&R! ^_^