Prim's POV:
How is this possible? How on earth is it that I was able to earn an 11 out of all scores? I completely out shined all of the other tributes, especially the Careers, and especially Cato. I'm wondering whether he would be upset at me while everyone pulls me in for hugs and congratulations.
He'd probably be upset, him along with the other Careers. Why wouldn't he be? I'm a tiny 14 year old girl from District 12, not 1, 2, or 4, that never had to fight a day in her life and wield a weapon nonetheless, yet I just proved to be way more skilled than any of them could be. This is exciting, but I know for fact that I'm going to be a target. The one that appears to be the strongest is going to be the one that everyone wants to get rid of just to prove some point. Maybe that he/she is actually the strongest.. I don't know. All I know is that I have to be careful.
"But.. how on earth is this possible?" I stutter, still in complete awe. Getting an 11, more than anything that I could ever imagine.
"What did you do anyway?" Haymitch asks. I go into a completely detailed explanation of what happened in the training room during my assessment, even the horrible part where I shot the arrow at them, basically threatening their lives.
"That's why you took so long? Most people don't even use all of their time," Haymitch mutters.
I nod, I guess in agreement. "And, that was all that happened. I said thank you and I walked out quickly," I finish explaining. Everyone is looking at me wide eyed.
"You.. you shot an arrow at the Gamemakers?" Effie asks in horror. I frown and nod quickly, suddenly feeling ashamed of what I did. "Do you not understand how much danger you have put yourself in?" She asks.
I shrug. Obviously I'm already in danger. "They were being completely disrespectful and would not give me the time of day, so I did what I thought was necessary to earn my attention," I explained, defending myself against her accusations. She doesn't have a right. She didn't experience what I had to in that room.
"I can't even bear to look at you right now," Effie scoffs, rising from her seat.
"But Effie-"
"You completely disrespect the Capitol after everything that they have done.. all the sacrifices they had to make," she continues, but her words don't make me feel any worse than the sliver of remorse for threatening people.
"I don't care about disrespecting the Capitol. They disrespected me," I retort, my defense completely up. After what they do to families every year, they do not deserve any praise. Not from me at least.
"You are so ungrateful, but one day, you will realize," Effie stammers. "I'm retreating to my corridor," she says scurrying out on her ridiculously high shoes.
I sense my expression going from fairly neutral to sad. I didn't mean to make Effie upset, not intentionally. She just doesn't understand the way that people that are like me and lived like I did think. I just acted out of impulse, and I guess they liked it. Obviously they did, or else I wouldn't get an 11.
But, maybe they gave me a high score just so that I could be a target because they were offended and wanted to take me out without them getting the actual blame for it. They're probably mad about what I did and want to punish me.
Oh well. I'm already being punished enough. What could be worse? Death?
Ha.
"Don't worry about what Effie said, sweetheart. I think what you did was brave," Haymitch says, giving me my first real compliment since I got here as he usually showered me with sarcastic remarks and insults.
"But, why would they give me an eleven?" I asked, still perplexed. Up until that point, no one had been able to give me a successful explanation as to why I was given the highest score of the entire batch of tributes, especially considering my lack of expertise in the killing aspect. I was in no position to earn an eleven.
"They liked your bravery. They want to see tributes that are hungry for a fight, hungry for a kill. Especially coming from someone like you, it amazed them," he explains.
"What do you mean, 'someone like me'?" I ask.
"Well, sweetheart, you're not the strongest, biggest, or anything really of the group," he says. I nod. He's right. Totally. "Really, I'm amazed, too. I think you did an amazing job," he says.
I smile, a genuine smile for once. "Thank you Haymitch."
"You're welcome. I think you deserved that eleven," he says. "The fact that after you shot the arrow, you still did your job proves that there is more to you than meets the eye," Haymitch explains, causing me to blush.
"One thing that's for sure is that now, you have to be careful, because you are going to be a target and no other tribute is going to think twice about ripping out your throat when they get the chance," Haymitch says. "You need to be quick, smart. Don't underestimate anyone," he advises.
I say nothing more as he bids me goodnight. He walks away, leaving me alone with Peeta. I was still nervous to be around him alone for more than a couple of minutes, but the reason behind that had to remain inside of my and Cato's head. For now at least.
"Wow Prim, I can't believe you got an eleven," he says. I smile politely as he continues. "I'm sure that everyone back at the Seam is proud of you, just like I am." A blush creeps up his face and I have to look away, embarrassed that I still feel nothing towards him.
"Thank you, Peeta. It means a lot," I say, trying to be polite.
"But really though, you shot an arrow at them?" He asks, smirking and holding a laugh in.
I chuckle. "Technically it was aimed at the pig," I say, and he bursts out in laughter. The awkward tension seems to dissolve in those few seconds, which I was happy about because I didn't enjoy it.
"Same thing. All I did was throw a couple of heavy sacks around, but what you did was just.." he drifts off, shaking his head and smiling.
"What?"
"I can't even explain. Just great job. That's just epic," he says.
"Thanks!"
"You're welcome. Shall we head to sleep?" he asks. I nod and he follows me to the corridor that holds our rooms. While walking, I still kept a safe distance from him because it fell silent and the awkwardness seemed to reappear almost instantly. I could sense the hesitation in his movements and his approach towards me.
For some reason, I felt that Peeta believed that his feelings for me were completely genuine, but in my opinion, I think that he was using me as a replacement for Katniss. It's like he's trying to convince himself that he likes me but all I am is Katniss, or just a smaller version. I don't think that's fair, not only for Katniss, but for him as well because he's only hurting himself in the end because sadly, I'm not interested. Peeta's a sweet guy, I'm definitely not going to deny that, but the spark just is not there.
We reach our doors and an even more awkward silence falls between us.
"Well.. goodnight," I try to say normally, but it only comes out as a small squeal.
Peeta leans in and kisses my cheek. "Goodnight, Primrose," he says before retreating into his room.
I walk into my own room and switch off all the lights. I change into pajama clothing and lay down in the bed, letting all the thoughts of this entire process consume me. I have no clue how I'm going to face the interviews tomorrow.
I have absolutely no clue.
Slowly, my eyelids go heavy and I fall into a deep slumber.
"Wake up. Come on, Rose, you have to wake up now," I hear a voice whisper in a soothing tone.
I groan in response, feeling too tired to open my eyelids.
"Come on, baby, we're going to miss the shower if you don't move," the voice says again. I feel cool lips being planted on mine, causing my eyelids to flutter open. Cato is hovering above me, his hands planted on either side of me on the bed.
"I don't want to," I complain, burying myself deeper into the warm sheets of the bed.
Cato smiles and pulls the sheets off of me. "But you have to be there. My beautiful wife has to accept the gifts for our little girl," he says, placing his hands on my stomach.
I look down and see my protruding 8 month belly forming a huge bump in the sheets. I place my hands around Cato's neck and pull him closer.
"I'm still not convinced," I whisper, my lips close to him. I look at my reflection in a nearby mirror. It's funny how much time has passed. I'm married to Cato and about to have my first baby. I did not expect my life to end up like this.
"Oh really? I think I can convince you," he smirks, licking his lips. I giggle as he leans down and captures my lips, letting our tongues dance in a slow kiss.
"Are you convinced now?" he whispers against my lips, my eyes still closed. I can feel his breath on my lips.
My eyes slowly open and I jump back as Peeta's face is smiling down at me. I push my palms against his chest and scurry backwards, my back hitting the wall. Peeta smirks and starts to laugh as the dead bodies of my family and loved ones stack up on the floor in a pool of blood. I scream my head off for someone to help.
Peeta pulls out a knife.
"This is for rejecting me, for rejecting what we could have been," he says, inching the knife closer. He swings the knife and..
I wake up in my bed, drenched in a pool of sweat. My hair is stuck to my head and my breathing is ragged. I glance around the room in a panic, checking to make sure there was no pool of blood, no dead family, and no Peeta.
After I was sure that there was no monster in my closet and under the bed, I laid back down, trying my hardest to let my eyelids flutter closed, but I couldn't get myself to go back to sleep, especially after that dream. The first part of it was wonderful, but the ending was horrid.
My mind was stuck on that horrible dream as I force myself to get up from the perfectly comfortable and rare (for me) silk sheets that encompassed my body. I pull them from my body and groggily walk to the bathroom attached to my room, pulling off the clothes from my sticky body, mostly due to the amount of sweat that I was drenched in when I woke up.
I take a quick shower, scrubbing my hair, in some sense to get it clean, but mostly to try to scrub the horrible ending to probably the best dream that I've ever had.
It kind of spooked me at the same time though, because while I was happy about dreaming that I would have a future with him, even after the Games, it implied certain things that my mind, and body, is not ready for. We seemed happy, extremely happy, in fact, but the thought if having any type of future with Cato other than death seems just like a dream. One thing is pretty simple: either I die, or he does, but it's obvious that I would be the one to come to said fate.
It seemed as if the shower and shampoo could not help to relieve my brain of the pleasure and ache of the dream, so I shut the shower down and step out, wrapping a towel around myself.
I pressed the button in the bathroom that dried my hair immediately and pressed another that blew my body dry.
I felt and smelled clean, but my mind still wasn't.
I was in the process of getting on clothing when a knock came to my door.
"Primrose, darling, be out of your room in five minutes! We need to begin preparation for your interviews tomorrow!" I hear Effie screech from the other side of the door.
I scrunch my face at the pain that shoots through my ears and yell back an 'okay' before getting ready with a little bit more motivation, a little. At least she doesn't seem to be upset at me anymore. That's a relief.
Not really.
After getting the clothes on, I scurry to the dining area where Haymitch and Effie are sitting, with no sign of Peeta anywhere. I sigh in immediate relief, lucky that I don't have to now see two images of him run through my mind. Although, I'm still a bit curious as to why he's not here.
"Morning," I mumble, sitting down in my appropriate seat as an Avox serves my meal. I really feel horrible for these people. Getting their tongues cut out for some social wrong that they did in opposition of the Capitol surely should not earn them a lifetime of suffering because I believe that their actions were justified after all the Capitol has done.
Now, let someone figure out my thoughts and the Capitol may just dye my hair red and cut out my tongue as well. I think being a slave to the Capitol is way worse than suffering through the Games.
Haymitch mumbles something in response and goes back to picking at what appears to be a blueberry muffin.
"Uh, where's Peeta?" I ask them, sipping on orange juice. I think I love orange juice. I have it everyday.
Effie frowns and Haymitch looks me directly in the eye for the first time since I walked in.
"Oh, well it appears as if Peeta has requested that you two practice separately," Effie says with an expression of mere sadness. Her expression questions me but I don't really understand why. If things were different, I would probably be hurt, and if Katniss was here she would too, but it just saves me from the embarrassing and awkward moments that we were bound to share.
"Why would he do that?" I ask, try to hide the spark of relief that flooding my entire body.
"There are some things that he would rather discuss alone," Haymitch says, finally speaking up outside of his occasional grunts.
"Oh," I mutter. What could he possibly want to discuss with either one of them that he would talk to me about first? I didn't think that he could trust either Effie or Haymitch, more for Haymitch, to keep something that apparently seemed to be so personal that I couldn't be there to experience it with him as well.
It says silent for a while, the only sounds being the clinking of the cups and plates or the sound of chewing of drinking. There seemed to be some awkward tension, possibly due to the fact that it was obvious that both Haymitch and Effie thought that I possibly felt bad for Peeta not wanting to train for the interview with me. I admit that it did hurt a little bit that he didn't trust the one person from his district that experienced the same life as him, but I don't think that I would be able to practice with him after the kiss and the dream.
"Well," Effie starts, interrupting me from my thoughts, "Primrose, finish eating and meet me in meeting room two so that we can begin your training."
I nod as she stands up and walk away, the sound of her abnormally high shoes clacking along with every step she took. I was left alone with Haymitch, who paid no real attention to me. I gulped down the rest of my orange juice and stood up, quickly walking in the direction of the meeting room without so much as a head nod towards Haymitch. If he was going to keep secrets with Peeta from me, he'll get the silent treatment. He probably wouldn't care anyway.
I push open the door and walk into the small meeting room, which was still even more luxurious than my home even though there was nothing in it but two chairs. Effie was sitting in one, holding a huge stack of notecards.
"Please, sit down Primrose," she says, motioning to the empty chair, "I want to get started right away."
I sit in the chair silently, and Effie automatically rambles on about the way I sit and how it was not 'how a proper young lady should sit'. She stands and pushes my back into the hard seat, taking her fingers and pushing my chin up. Effie then takes my legs and crosses them in the most uncomfortable position possible. My hands are placed on my crosses knees, and let me tell you, this is the most uncomfortable position I've ever been in. It's so bad that it's hard for me to breathe. To make that worse, Effie tells me not to breathe too hard, which I find hard to do considering I can barely breathe in the first place.
"Okay," Effie screeches after taking almost twenty minutes to position me, "time for the questioning."
I roll my eyes, hoping that she didn't see, and luckily she didn't.
"First question, what do you think that you can bring to the Games that no one has ever seen before?" Effie asks.
I fight the urge to breathe in huge. "Well," I start, but my voice sounds rugged, probably due to my lack of breath, so I clear my throat, which causes Effie to scowl. "I think that the amount of skill I have with a certain weapon will surprise many people because I definitely do not seem like the type to use something like it."
"No. No, no, no," Effie chastises, "your voice is in no manner feminine! You need to appear to be proper and disciplined, even though you're not because then the sponsors will appeal to well-mannered people."
I sigh and slouch, which only earns me another scolding. I go over the same answer to the same question over and over again until Effie believes that I'm 'feminine enough' and I'm finally allowed to move on.
"Alright, now that that treacherous answer is over, let's move on. What do you think your experience preparing for the Games has has helped you realize about yourself?"
Effie, your tone and your attitude are really starting to annoy me, even more than you already do, especially with these pro-Capitol questions.
I want to say that it makes me realize how much I hate it here and how it only makes me despise the Capitol even more than I already do, but that would just earn another one of Effie's long rambles about how I need to 'respect the Capitol for all that it does for me'. I would rather avoid that and saying something out of tongue about the Capitol.
"Maybe that I'm stronger than I thought I was," I answer.
"And..?" Effie asks, obviously pushing me to try and praise the Capitol some more.
"And what?"
Effie rolls her eyes and sucks in a breath. "Your answers need to be lengthier so that it appears as if you want the audience to be a central component to the conversation," she says.
"But I don't want them to, and frankly I don't care. I'm not going to praise the Capitol," I tell her. And being the crazy person that she is, Effie recites the speech made in the video they showed at the reaping, and then went on to explain the significance of the words and the appraisal of the Capitol and the Games. It took everything in me not to continuously roll these to eyeballs attached to my head.
Effie and the Capitol really are full of themselves.
After her rant, Effie moves on, but the annoyance and aggravation in her voice is very apparent.
"Next question, what is your most favorite thing about being in the Capitol?"
I gulp. It's obvious what my favorite thing about being here is, but I obviously can't say that because.. well.. I really don't know why I wouldn't be able to say it, but for some reason, I don't think it's appropriate because it appears as if me and Cato are trying to keep whatever we have a secret.
I could say that the luxury is my favorite part, but then that could imply that I love being here instead of living in the conditions that I have, had, at home. I definitely do not want to say that because I do not want to disappoint my family and friends. I do not want it to appear as if I'm betraying them in any way because of how I feel about extravagance.
So, instead of saying any of those things, I say..
"The orange juice."
"No! You're supposed to say the courtesy of the Capitol and all that it does for you!" Effie scolds, yet again.
"Why would I say that? The Capitol has done nothing but hurt families and send me to my death," I snap at her. Looks like we're about to have a repeat of the conversation from yesterday. How dare she say that the Capitol is 'courteous'? They've done nothing but kill innocent people and watch others starve while they've had all they can eat buffets? I will never say that I'm thankful of the Capitol.
"Don't you dare talk about the Capitol in that way! We have done our hardest to make sure that the Districts have everything they need," Effie defends.
"Well, if that means food, clothing, and homes, then we must be talking about a completely different place, because you guys haven't done shit!" I swear, using the only swear word that I know, hearing it in the Hob multiple times. I don't even feel bad for saying it to her. I stand up and walk out of the room and immediately run to mine, slamming the door very loudly.
At this point, I don't even care about how Effie or anyone feels about what I did. She was giving the entire Capitol credit for the actions that they never took. In my District, and I'm sure in other Districts as well, we had to rely on people like Katniss to get them food and other resources that were so greedily used, overused, or just plain thrown away.
I don't want anyone to come into this room, asking me to talk things out, apologize for cursing the Capitol, apologize to Effie.. or anything really. I lock my door and plop down, turning on the television to the only channel that calmed me, the channel on herbs. I would watch this whenever I had the chance to just relax, and it made me feel at home, like I was in the kitchen with my mother and she was teaching me how to create a new herbal medicine. Sometimes I even watched the channel that showcased the woods, just because it reminded me of Katniss and how she would spend endless hours away with Gale and come back with some small present for me.
After two naps and countless hours staring at the screen, I get too homesick and decide to find somewhere to escape and not think about how my life completely turned for the worst, well, almost worst. I silently walk out my room into the dark hallway where I find a doorway that has a staircase inside. I push the door open and sneak inside, careful that no one saw me.
I walked up the stairs slowly and quietly until I reached a door at the top. I struggled and pushed it open to find a large greenhouse setting. Plants, flowers, and other herbs dominated most of the huge area above the building. I could identify every herb, flower, and spice that grew. It was so breathtaking.
I took a walk around the huge greenhouse, touching flowers and watching small insects invade them. I found a huge bunch of primrose flowers and for some reason, a reason completely unknown to me, as I reached out to touch the beautiful plant, I started to cry. I stood there and shed silent tears.
"What are you doing here?"
A\N
So, who do you think is in the greenhouse with Prim? Or rather, who would you want it to be?
This one is long.. Very long.
Uhh.
Thanks for reading..
Uh yeah.
Bye.
Ilysm.
Cheers.
Myesha xx