Aged 16—the Reaping

The day of the Reaping was difficult for Peeta, not in the way it was for everyone else—chance made it near impossible that his name would be chosen—but because, in the moment between the plucking of the names and their reading, when everyone else was willing, willing, willing it not to be them, Peeta would know. The pull would focus, congeal, solidify and it would be like a spotlight was shining on the poor kid.

And it was so hard not to do anything.

Every year, especially when the name called was one he knew, Peeta itched to reshuffle the odds, but he couldn't. What would he do, pin it on someone else? And who deserved to go to the Games? It was a death sentence.

Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades and down his back, making him shiver despite the heat. It was funny, this reaction, shivering in the heat, just like the festive banners flapped in the hot gusts of air, in an atmosphere that felt like a funeral.

This was the eighth Reaping he'd attended, the fourth with his name in the Reaping bowl. His father had started bringing him when his eldest brother turned twelve. It was good exercise, his father had said, for practicing self-control. His father was big on self-control, at least for everybody else. He was always hardest on Peeta, even though it was Hagan who used chance to show-off.

His father never got over what happened when he was five and saw Katniss for the first time.

Today, Peeta didn't need his eyes to find Katniss in the crowd. She was standing to his left in the area roped out for the girls in their year. Her emotions pulsed like a beacon in his mind: worry, fear, and anger.

"Peeta, don't tell me you're worried." Delly wrapped her arms around him from behind and squeezed.

"Well, Dell, today's not the happiest day, is it? Someone will end up going to the Games."

"I suppose you're right. And it is ever so serious, but it makes me happy to know that you're safe. You're like a brother to me, you know." She gave him a bright smile.

Peeta looked around to see if anyone was listening to them, but no one was paying attention. "No one's safe, Delly. Everyone whose name is in the Reaping bowl has a chance to be reaped. It's just that some of us have more of a chance."

"It won't be you, Peeta."

"It may not be me, but it could be someone we know." Peeta found himself looking over at the cluster of girls where Katniss was standing. She wore a blue dress and her hair was up in an intricate knot of braids. It had been a reflex, looking at her, seeking her out in the crowd.

Delly followed his eyes.

"It won't be her any more than it will be you," Delly whispered. "Don't think I don't know you shake up the odds for her."

"Delly…"

"And…even if she did go to the Games, I think she'd come home again. She's excellent at killing things."

"And if it's you?"

She smiled again, a little too wide for a human smile. "Oh, I think you know I'd come home."

"The Games would never be the same," he mused. Delly would have demolished the Games, ripped up every rule, turned everything into a weapon or a tool.

Delly nodded her blonde curls. "Exactly. If I ended up there, the Capitol might end them completely. My gift to the districts of Panem."

Peeta chuckled in the heat of that dreadful day and squeezed Delly's hand as she made her way to the other side of the square were the girls were stationed. He let the anxiety he'd been feeling roll away from him. After all, Delly was right. He'd been using chance to protect Katniss since they were both twelve.

It wasn't exactly fair. By nudging the odds in her favor, it put more weight on each of the other names in the girl's reaping bowl. He tried to spread the extra weight evenly across the names, but he still felt guilty every year.

As soon as the town clock finishes striking two, the mayor moved up to the makeshift stage and began his long speech. It's the same every year and Mayor Undersee reads it in a monotone until it almost becomes background noise. It was the story of the time before Panem existed, when disasters ravaged the earth and later, of the Dark Days when the districts rebelled against the Capitol leading to the creation of the Hunger Games. That was the official story, at least the way the humans remembered it. The story passed down in Peeta's family was different.

It started long before the account told by Mayor Undersee, centuries earlier when humans began to hunt the elves and the piskies and the imps and all the creatures who were not human but lived beside them, whose abilities helped to balance the world. It told of how they were driven into the far places or forced to pass in human societies. It was then that the humans began fighting for dominance among themselves. They fought so hard and for so long, they finally broke the world.

All the non-human people struggled at the fringes of the world. Those who survived were trapped along with them and forced to integrate into their small encampments. Most humans had forgotten about their existence; those who remembered thought of them as myths. And that was the way it needed to stay.

The last words of Mayor Undersee's speech echoed through the square and Peeta felt the thousands of bodies surrounding him tense, as if made up of one flesh, of one creature, as Effie Trinket walked up to the stage.

The Capitol escort, Effie Trinket took the two children, one boy and one girl, back with her to the Capitol to take part in the Hunger Games, an annual slaughtering of the district's children for the amusement of the people in the Capitol. The last kid left standing gets to go home again. Effie was beautiful despite the wig and the face paint and all the bizarre outfits, but her association with the Games made her seem like a monster.

She gave her yearly introductions and greetings, giving us the Capitol's warmest welcome in this, the 74th annual Hunger Games. Her voice was a high-pitched warble, sing-song and affected, just like everyone in the Capitol.

Chance flickered with her every movement, the tilt of her hand, the shift of the frosting-pink wig perched on top of her head. The odds were diffused now, but in a minute, they would crystallize into reality and there would be nothing Peeta could do to stop it.

The audience tensed even more as she walked over to one of a pair of large glass bowls that held the girl's names. "Ladies First." She smiled her bloodless smile, showing teeth bleached even whiter than then her pale face powder.

She reached down to whisk her long-nailed hand through the large globe and the choices, names and faces, flipped through Peeta's mind like flipping through the pages of a books. The moment dragged.

Effie's hand was still rummaging through the globe when the pull fixed itself on one girl in the audience. A girl with a single dark braid and wide-set gray eyes.

Panic burned through Peeta and chance lashed out without his conscious direction. He couldn't talk to Katniss, couldn't interact with her, but whatever lived inside him couldn't let this happen. He couldn't let them choose Katniss for the Games.

He slashed at the force pulling at Katniss, willing it to detach, to find someone else. It was almost inevitable. The pull was very strong, but there was a tiny crack and Peeta focused on it, forced chance. He wrestled with it, pushed chance further than he ever had, willed it, willed it, willed it until he couldn't see the square in front of him or the other children surrounding him. He was red-lining his powers, but what did it matter if he passed out, if he could get this away from Katniss….

It came away with a ripping feeling in his mind, a final snapping release, and then there was only the sound of his blood pounding through his veins.

Effie Trinket had her slip of paper now and was making her way back to the microphone.

Peeta closed his eyes and tried not to think about what he'd just done. Some other girl would be going to the Games. He'd sacrificed her, threw her away to save his match. Whoever the girl was he'd killed her just as surely as the Capitol would.

Guilty and shame burned holes in his stomach while the ground seemed to dance underneath him. He'd never done something so immoral.

But it was for Katniss. How could he have done nothing and let her be reaped?

The microphone let off a shrill whine as Effie Trinket picked it back up. She took her time unfolding the paper, Peeta could hear the slight rustle.

Maybe there was some way he could help whoever this girl was. He couldn't manipulate chance from across the country, he'd tried in secret years ago, watching the Games, trying to help some sympathetic tribute, but it didn't work. He could bind some chance into a cake or cookies and give them to her. It might help. Maybe even enough to bring her home.

"The female tribute representing District 12 will be…" Another pause. Whoever it was, Peeta promised himself, he would help her. He'd do his best to keep her alive. He'd bind chance to five cookies and give them to her before the Capitol people took her away. Five is the number of health. She'd have a fighting chance at getting back home. He'd collect donation and sponsor her. He'd steal the money if he had to.

Effie's voice was clear and loud as she read the name on the paper and as soon as Peeta heard it, Peeta sensed what he'd been too shaken to notice before—the pull hadn't detached completely from Katniss. It had stretched gossamer thin, but was poised to snap back into place.

But, in the meantime, it had found a temporary resting place. The name that echoed in the air and hung there like a poisonous fog wasn't Katniss, but it might as well have been.

"Primrose Everdeen."

Katniss' shock was crushing him. Peeta had to lean over, hands on his knees to breathe through his match's pain. Peeta hadn't realized her little sister was old enough for the Reaping. She must have turned twelve in the last month.

He still remembered her as a tiny baby on his first day of school. His father bought goat cheese from her like he bought game from Katniss.

But, Prim wasn't going to the Games. The pull didn't want Prim; it wanted Katniss

Under the shock and anguish he could feel his match's determination and her love for her sister. And that was it. He couldn't do anything about; he couldn't stop it.

Katniss' voice rang out in the arena, strangled and gasping, but loud, like she was afraid no one would listen. "I volunteer. I volunteer as tribute."

She was walking now, towards the stage, head up, eyes forward and Effie was congratulating her on volunteering for the Games. Prim was screaming in the background, clawing at the shoulders of Gale who was carrying her to where the adults stood in the back.

Peeta felt the blood drain from his extremities, felt his fingertips go numb. He had to swallow the words rising in his throat. They couldn't do this.

On stage, Effie had finished asking Katniss some silly question and the audience was stirring, bristling with shock and anger. Someone out in the center of the crowd answered Effie's ridiculous warble by raising his left hand, stick straight into the air, other hands went up around him, but he was looking at his match. The crowd was saluting her sacrifice in the way of their district. For the barest second her face crumbled and she almost gave into tears before every emotion disappeared from her face.

The link between them pulled like a chain and an atavistic urge had Peeta taking a step forward.

Effie, still smiling tittered over to the bowl holding the boy's names. Peeta was still looking at Katniss, at the blank way she stared out into the crowd of people whose hands were still in the air.

Effie's hand wave over the bowl of names.

The pull between him and Katniss pulled taut. He could feel his own name there, pulsing faintly among the choices.

He pushed it. Forced his name up through the wall of other names that swamped his. He did it quick, without thinking, just instinct. It was easy, easier than it should have been to push his name to the fore, drawn along be the influence of his match.

Effie plucked a piece of paper from the bowl.

It was in that moment between Effie taking the paper and her making it back to the microphone that Peeta realized what he had just done.

She unfolded the paper, leaned into the microphone and smiled her scary, skeleton smile. "Peeta Mellark."

And he began to shake like a rabbit.