Hey, thanks for the review Alice :) Leanne's personality is that she is very outspoken, she says what she wants, but over the course of the story she IS learning to bite her tongue, and the only dialogue similar is supposed to be Peeta's I wanted my FF to start the same as the proper hunger games, but instead of Katniss volunteering, Leanne does because her sister was killed in the previous games and her father was the other district winner who killed himself after his daughter's death and she want's to be killed the same way her sister was. That's why she doesn't care what she says at first because she WANTS to die. It's only when Peeta made her see sense she realised what she had done was stupid.
In a way, I needed her to be a hunter and very agile which is kinda Katniss like, but unlike Katniss her motivation towards the games is completely different, and some of the stuff she says about Peeta is similar, but I needed to show that she wasn't as closed off as she thought she was to the world after her ordeal, and making her show interest in somebody made sense.
And the thing about the central text made me laugh a little because it annoys me when text is to the side on a computer! Haha. Anyway, thanks for the review, :)
Another thing is that though Katniss doesn't like the capitol, that's because of how they treat everybody. At first, Leanne only cares about how they treat her and how they treated her sister who was her best friend and the only person she could truly be herself with.
Chapter Three
Nightmares
""I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?"
-John Lennon
I layed in bed that night, the soft mattress was so different from the cold, hard floor I was used to. I didn't know if it was too soft, too unlike what I was used to because in my mind it was almost uncomfortable. I missed the smell and the feel of the earth beneath my body. All I could feel was the soft mattress and the clicking of the train as it sped along the tracks at high speed.
I turned over and fell asleep.
I looked around the dark empty space and all of a sudden I knew I was dreaming. I knew this because out of the dark fog my sister walked, she looked scared and on her cheek she had a slash, running from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth.
"Run!" She shouted to me, I froze as she ran towards me, "RUN!" She screamed frantically as a boy with black hair and eyes the colour of coal chased her towards me, a knife held high above his head.
"No!" I screamed as I ran towards her, she didn't seem to notice me though, she ran to a tree, grabbing the branch in her small grubby hands, hoisting herself up into the canopy.
The black haired boy roared animalistically and I Knew what I was watching was a replay of her death. I couldn't be seen for some reason, I screamed and screamed at the boy to leave my sister alone, but he began to lug himself up the tree, tying a knot in a rope he drew out of his back pack.
He made it into a lasso shape, and he threw it towards my sister. The first time he threw it, my sister managed to dart out of the way just in time. The second time she was not so lucky.
It clipped around both of her delicate ankles, she looked at the boy with her wide blue eyes and gasped as he yanked on the rope, sending her plummeting off the branch and towards the ground.
What happened next was unthinkable. The rope caught on a branch and she was suspended around 4ft off the ground, hanging by her feet.
There was nothing she could do as the boy jumped from the tree and landed on the balls of his feet at the side of her. He took out his knife, and with what she said next, I began to sob, "Remember who the enemy is!" She snarled to the boy, and then he plunged his knife into her stomach and dragged it down her body, making a deep gash that ran from her belly button to the end of her chin and then he plunged his hand into the deep wound and pulled out her heart like he was gutting a fish.
I screamed.
"Leanne?! Leanne, wake up!" Somebody called as they shook my shoulders. In the dark I had no idea who it was, so I grabbed the boot knife off the side of my draws and was about to stab whoever was in my room when the person grabbed my hand and stopped me. "Woah! It's me!"
"Peeta?" I whispered, my voice teetering on the edge of a sob.
"The one and only." He smiled and then sat on the end of my bed while I was clutching the knife in my hand. "I heard you screaming, I thought you were in danger."
"So you came to rescue me?" I said with more than a little scepticism in my voice.
"Something like that." Peeta muttered and then he frowned, "What's wrong?"
"I had a nightmare." I whispered almost too low for him to hear. What was it about this boy that made me want to spill my soul to him?
"About what?" Peeta asked, I looked away from him, trying not to make eye contact, but he reached out and pulled my face up to look into his eyes, "About what, Leanne?" He asked again with more power.
"About my sister's death." I whispered, everything in the dream had happened, all of Panem had seen her heart getting ripped out of her chest, but usually that kind of stuff wasn't allowed.
"You mean…?" He trailed off as I looked away again, trying not to relive the nightmare again. It was one I often had, it didn't surprise me that I had the nightmare, more that somebody seemed to care that I had nightmares.
"Yes." I answered with disdain in my voice.
"Are you afraid it might happen to you?" Peeta asked me as he placed his hand over mine, I felt my hand twitch in an automatic reaction to move his hand, but I forced my brain to accept his touch and feel comforted.
"Not really, things like that don't usually happen, it just haunts me that I wasn't there to volunteer for her when she needed me to." I squeezed my eyes together stopping the flow of tears, I hated crying.
"But think of what you did this year, you stopped another twelve year old getting reaped. You saved her life." Peeta said to me, and suddenly I was filled with something other than regret for volunteering.
"You're right Peeta, but for how long?" I asked, "Someday another twelve year old will be reaped, in fact, there was one who was reaped this year. I mean, how could I kill somebody that young? How could I manage to cold bloodedly do what that man did to my sister to her?" I whispered pulling my hand away.
"I know, Leanne. I know." He sighed, "Just try not to let it play on your conscience too much. If you do it will eat away at your soul." Peeta said to me, he half smiled trying to get some response out of me.
"What if it's already eaten away at my soul, Peeta?" I asked, I looked forward, not into his eyes, but not at anything in particular.
"Then you fix it." He answered.
"You can't always fix what is broken, though." I sighed and began to fumble with my knife in my hand, stroking the blade with my hand.
"But maybe you can be fixed." Peeta smiled slightly, looking into my eyes, I felt something pass between us, like some kind of lightening bolt. The eye contact lasted a few mere seconds but it seemed to last for a very long time.
"Oww!" I yelled as the blade sliced my hand, it began to bleed from the small cut and I managed to drag my eyes away from Peeta to examine the cut.
It wasn't too deep, but it was on the section of my hand that bleeds a hell of a lot, the part between my index finger and thumb.
"That's going to need a bandage." Peeta sighed as he looked at my hand. He took it in his own, his hand getting slightly smudged with my blood. "I know where the medical room is, here, follow me." He said as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me up with relative ease.
"Peeta, my hand will be fine." I rolled my eyes as I tried to sit back down.
"Leanne, let me take care of you." He said with a bite of his lip like he was almost nervous. I froze at those words. Nobody had ever wanted to take care of me apart from my little sister, and that was only because I took care of her, even my father who was the best father I could have hoped for never really 'took care' of me because he saw that as a mother's job, and my mother had died in childbirth with my sister, so I could hardly remember her.
I sighed and then took a steady step forward with Peeta's hand firmly around my waist as we walked to the medical room.
I had to admit, I liked his hand on my waist, it felt nice.
"Here we are." Peeta said as he let go of my waist with a little sigh, by now the blood was gushing down my arm and onto the edges of the frilly white nightgown the Capitol had bestowed upon me.
He opened the door to the medical room, apart from the clicking of the tracks and the buzzing of the lights, the room was perfectly still and silent, various medicines lined the cupboards and I could see just about everything you would need right here for a medical emergency.
"Right, I'll find some bandages. You just sit tight on that bed over there." Peeta pointed to the medical bed over in the corner of the room and I couldn't help but smile and shake my head at him.
I climbed onto the bed, realising it was made of leather and it was quite a thin mattress, it was somewhere in between the hard ground I usually slept on and the amazingly plump beds in the room I was sleeping in. I realised this bed was the most comfortable of the lot, and the leather smelled nice.
"Here we go, hold out your hand, I have to wiped the blood away first, then we'll put some antiseptic cream on it, a gauze and then the final bandage." Peeta said to me as he took my hand and began to wipe it with a damp sponge. As I looked at my hand in his I realised something I had only ever realised with my father. I had tiny hands, Peeta's were huge, like they could have enveloped mine completely if he closed it.
I tensed as Peeta brushed the sponge over my cut, "Shh, it'll be okay." He said as if I was a fawn who would dart away at any moment. Usually I would find that patronizing, but coming from Peeta's mouth it sounded endearing.
As he finished dabbing away the blood, he took some wet wipes that smelled like vinegar and used them to wipe over the cut to get rid of the rest of the blood. I took a sharp breath at the stinging pain and Peeta pulled the wipe off my hand and said, "Done, now we just need to use this cream and wrap it." He said showing me a bottle of salve that would make the cut heal faster than it would normally.
"When did you get so good at healing?" I smirked as he took a small dollop of the salve and began to massage it into my hand where the cut was, this made my body feel like it was melting, and I tried not to slur as I spoke, but his fingers really were magic.
"I guess it's a talent I've always had." Peeta shrugged and then pulled his fingers away to get the gauze, much to my disappointment.
"That was one of my father's talents too." I murmured out loud, not really meaning to say it.
"That's nice," Peeta grinned at me and then he picked up the bandages.
"He stopped after my mother died though, because he thought that if he couldn't save her he couldn't save anybody." I said sadly, "My mother used to call him 'Doctor Doctor.'" I laughed genuinely for the first time in what seemed like months, wondering why I was even telling Peeta these things.
"Well, I've finished." Peeta laughed with me and I felt a smirk come to my lips.
"Thanks, Doctor Doctor." I smiled at him and then inspected his handy work. The bandages were arranged very neatly and perfectly. The cut would heal in no time.
"You're welcome, Leanne, now maybe we should get you back to bed." Peeta said as he scooped me up into his arms, I felt my cheeks begin to burn as he prepared to carry me to my room.
"Peeta, it's my hand what's hurt, not my legs." I blushed and I saw Peeta smile.
"Doesn't matter, you're still hurt, and I'm not going to make one of my patients walk back to their room with a hurt hand." He smirked at his own joke, calling me a patient because I had called him a doctor.
"Oh, you're so not funny Peeta Mellark." I frowned heavily trying to hide my laughter.
"On the contrary, I think I am hilarious, Leanne DiMera." Peeta grinned at me and I began to chuckle quietly, Peeta was completely infectious.
He finally got back to my bedroom, and as he opened the door I felt a cold chill run down my spine. This room would have been one of the last places my sister had slept in the previous hunger games, right before… I sighed as he placed me onto the bed, my face turning hard again.
"What's wrong now?" Peeta asked with a slight furrow in my eyebrows.
"This was one of the last place my sister would have been before she died. She probably slept in the same bed as I am now." I shivered at the thought and I tried not to picture her corpse laying in the bed, disemboweled with all of her organs pouring out of her stomach, but I couldn't get the picture out of my mind.
"I'm going to head back to the medical room, I'll sleep in there." I felt my skin go pale as I stood up to walk out of the creepy room.
"Stay with me." Peeta said, I looked towards him quickly and then looked back at the bed.
"Are you sure?" I asked quickly. Under normal circumstances I would have said no, but the thought that this may have been one of my sister's final resting places seemed to haunt me.
"Yes, come on, it's just next door." Peeta was about to pick me back up, but I took a step back.
"I can walk to the next room Peeta." I rolled my eyes sarcastically and he shook his head as me as I walked out of the door.
The room was amazing, almost identical to mine with the same kind of furniture, and in the corner of the room was some kind of love seat. I headed over to it and sat down, and as I was about to lay down and go to sleep, Peeta said, "What are you doing?"
"Going to sleep." I frowned.
"Do you really think I'm going to let an injured woman sleep on the couch? Get in the bed. I'll take the couch." Peeta said as he walked towards the couch waiting for me to move.
"Peeta, I'm not taking your bed." I frowned, turning over on the couch to make my decision final, and then I felt his strong arms lift me up and he was carrying me to the bed!
He dropped me on the bed carefully.
"Yes you are." He said and walked over to the couch, sitting firmly on it looking at me.
"Peeta!" I growled and I stood up, stomping over to him and the couch and trying to stare him down, "I'm not taking your bed!"
"Yes you are." He said stubbornly, "That's what gentlemen do."
I felt my brow furrow, "Peeta, don't be a pain in the ass, just let me sleep on the damned couch!" I yelled.
"No. You're not sleeping on the couch." He challenged.
"Neither are you!" I growled.
"You're sleeping in the bed!" He yelled at me, and then I narrowed my eyes.
"Fine!" I hissed and I saw his look of confusion.
"What?" He said a little shocked.
"You heard me." I said as I pulled back the cover's on Peeta's bed and I laid in the bed, too angry and pissed off at Peeta for not listening to me.
"Good night, Leanne." Peeta said with a hint of a smile in his voice.
"Night." I said rolling my eyes and then I sighed, "Good night, Peeta."
