Chapter 10

Disclaimer: All Hunger Games characters and core personality traits are the property of SC. I own nothing, nor do I plan on profiting from using her work. No copyright infringement is intended.

Chapter Ten

Ironically, Katniss didn’t sleep much the remainder of the night. She’d gotten such a large amount unintentional rest during her lapses in consciousness that she didn’t have the exhaustion necessary to shut down such a thoroughly troubled mind.

Being awake for so many darkened hours did give her practical insight into Peeta’s sleeping habits, which was useful. The Career kept her close to his body with an unwavering arm wrapped around her middle. Had she not been so tightly pressed against him, she wouldn’t have known he had slept at all. Any twitch, any movement, any sound she made throughout the night had his thumb rubbing rhythmically across her hip in instantaneous response. Although the touch was meant to be a tender gesture, protective even, it was also a very clear message.

“I’m awake. I feel you. Don’t try anything stupid,” that caressing digit told her.

When she’d stay perfectly still in his arms she could feel his breathing stabilize against her neck, his body loosening infinitesimally as it recharged. Again and again she tested her findings by making tiny movements between periods of total stillness and every time Peeta reacted in kind, petting her gently and even pressing the occasional kiss into her hair before settling back into a cursory slumber.

By morning she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the boy was the world’s lightest sleeper.

He seemed to be programmed like a human motion sensor; turning on immediately at the slightest disturbance in the field around him but just as quickly shutting down to save precious energy when action was not needed. A small, hidden portion of his mind never rested. Katniss didn’t know how those things worked anymore than she understood how Peeta was capable of maintaining it but she was able to gather that attacking the Career while he slept was unlikely to be a viable game plan for her.

She was briefly amused by the idea that sharing a room with Prim would probably send him into a psychotic stupor by keeping him from ever achieving REM with her constant nocturnal fidgeting. Though she was very used to it and wouldn’t have it any other way, Katniss’ kid sister was a horrible sleep partner.

The thought of Peeta near Prim made her mouth run dry.

Weak, filtered light had just begun to pour through the draped fabric at the entrance to the cornucopia in long, thin rays when the male tribute woke permanently for the first full day in the Arena. His bedmate could feel his arousal against her backside and squirmed with anxiety at his unknown plans for the morning, awkwardly shifting away from it—so as not to entice it—as inconspicuously as possible. His expectations of her had always been quite clear but the soreness between her legs had not abated and the thought of a repeat performance in her current state made her stomach pit with dread.

There was a rumble from the back of Mellark’s throat that could have passed for a laugh.

“I told you I have no intention of causing you pain-“ he pulled away from her to demonstrate his benign intentions, “in that regard,” he added with a wry grin.

He stretched his way out of the warm bed as naked as the day he was born and despite Katniss having very intimate knowledge of the man’s body, she shyly averted her gaze, in contrast holding the blanket to her chest as she sat up against the wall.

Shifting her body hurt and she winced as she settled herself upright. Used to Peeta’s eyes on her, she attempted to hide the temporary vulnerability but spotting weakness was a Career’s bread and butter. He sighed and shook his head.

“I need a healing cream,” he told the open air with a strong, clear voice as he pulled on his pants. Katniss didn’t know how to respond to that, and further more, felt inexplicably like he wasn’t speaking to her at all. “The good shit, Cashmere. I know the difference. Don’t cheap out on me.”

The beauty in his bed stared at him with large, confused eyes.

Not bothering with a shirt, he leaned down to drop a kiss onto the crown of her head.

“Don’t move,” he ordered, firm, “No indoor plumbing, I’m afraid. I’m going to go water a tree and pick up our mail.”

Perplexed, Katniss did as she was told and watched him disappear through the drapery.

She was unprepared for how vulnerable she felt without Peeta in her field of vision. The labor district tribute experienced a tingling up her spine at the thought of him walking out of their shelter and getting skillfully ambushed by the rest of their alliance. Images of Glimmer running in and finding her undressed and unarmed sent her scrambling for the knife Peeta had picked for her, still attached to her pants on the bedside floor.

She held the sharp blade to her chest in bed, cringing at the thought of having to fight for her life entirely nude; as absolutely gleeful as that event would make the Game Makers.

Hoping to hear his return, prepared to hear signs of a struggle, she was shocked when her keen ears picked up a chiming she only knew from mandatory viewings of pervious year’s games.

A sponsor gift.

Moments later a very calm, very much alive Peeta sauntered in, carrying a familiar metal case he had undoubtedly plucked from a fallen parachute just outside the entrance.

“Ahh,” Katniss tilted her head up, finally understanding Mellark’s earlier words but not quiet believing their outcome. “Did you- place an order,” she asked in disbelief.

Peeta’s eyes found her with her readied weapon, his sculpted brow cocking lazily, “Is that meant for me? Killing before breakfast is uncouth, Katniss.”

She reddened, quickly abandoning the knife beside her on the sheets.

“Smart girl,” he praised reluctantly, “Not a flattering amount of confidence in me… but still a good practice. Never let yourself be caught unarmed.”

“Plan B or die,” she mumbled, repeating his pervious day’s lecture.

He sat beside her on the edge of the mattress and popped open the capsule, turning it upside down until it dropped a tiny slip of paper and a small tin into his palm. He straighten the note and exhaled from his nose a stifled laugh.

Katniss grabbed for it tentatively and he passed it over without a fight.

Anything for our delicate Princess. -Cash and Gloss 

She groaned and pulled the blanket up to her nose to hide a cringe. Her show in the arena hadn’t been the strongest thus far and it was disheartening to see evidence that she wasn’t the only one that thought she wasn’t up to par with the Careers around her.

“Don’t mind them,” he grinned, “They don’t like taking orders, but they’ll do as they’re told.”

Katniss eyed the remaining item. It was silver and unlabeled but she had heard what Peeta had asked for. “They just sent it to you? Just like that? That had to cost thousands.”

He shrugged, opening the tin to expose a clear, shinny gel.

“Honestly, Peeta, you shouldn’t have wasted resources like that. The… discomfort isn’t unbearable.”

He narrowed his chilling eyes at her and it was obvious that his mentors weren’t the only ones that didn’t like being told what to do.

“I’ll spend my district’s allocation as I see fit,” he brushed her off, “You’re playing with the big boys, Girl on Fire. Sponsor gifts aren’t the rarity they are for the double digit districts.”

She looked dubious, feeling as though he had used his only major boon to heal her minor ache. He grabbed Katniss’ knife off the bed and she squeaked at his sudden yielding of a weapon so near to her.

The Career rolled his eyes.

Peeta turned the blade on himself, making a shallow but bleeding laceration across the top of his forearm without so much as a grimace.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, springing forward to cover the slash with their blanket and apply pressure. “Are you insane?”

The handsome boy looked touched at her concerned, giving her a warm, easy smile that made her breath hitch.

“Quite sane, my dear. So clear of mind, in fact, that I’m sure my mentors knew I would be testing something they sent me on myself before I put it on a tribute from a competing district,” he said loudly to the room around them, his tone challenging.

After a long stretch of silence, he seemed satisfied that his mentors would have paid for a desperate message to intervene before he used something on himself they may have poisoned in an attempt to eliminate his distressful choice in company. Katniss felt a little winded at the lengths he seemed willing to go in order to keep her safe. It was a heady risk considering that One had an heir and a spare in the games still.

He pushed the blanket away and they both looked at the unimpressive cut on his arm; a shocking red against the porcelain of his coloring but objectively harmless. Peeta took a tiny portion of the glaze and rubbed it into the broken flesh.

In front of their eyes, the dark line bleached of color as the skin knitted together and healed in an instant, leaving only a thin whitish line and dried blood.

Katniss gasped.

“Just like magic, right?” he winked, mistaking her surprise for wonder.

In truth, seeing the result of the healed cut brought to realization that the entire boy was covered in similar silvery scars of varying shapes and sizes. Easy to overlook against his pale skin, they crisscrossed paths up his arms and torso, his shoulders and all she could see of his back from her positioning; a road map of cruelty that even the Capital’s most effective salves couldn’t quite erase. A wide, predominant line that had a home on the young male’s rib cage was absolutely sure to have been a life threatening lung puncture in it’s original condition.

Though the districts were forbidden by law to train tributes for the Hunger Games, it was so well accepted that wealthy districts extensively honed prospects that the ordinance might as well be rewritten to state that only districts 5-12 be forbidden to give their kids any chance of survival. In their faux defense, the Capital’s institutionalized impoverishment of the lower groupings did give the children plenty of experience with surviving chronic, desperate hunger.

Looking at Peeta’s secretly ravaged body, she was almost glad she had grown up excluded from the kind of “training” that would lead to that kind of damage; even if it included 3 square meals a day.

“Time to right a wrong,” he declared, grinning wide, “lay back and open up, baby.”

Katniss balked at the suggestion, “I’m more than capable of applying that myself, thank you ,” she grabbed for the medicine and caught only open air as his reflexes effortlessly slipped it out of grasp.

“No, no,” he admonished with a shake of his head, “Greedy. This was a gift for both of us, you see. I’m very invested in having you fully operational again and I can’t leave these matters to a novice.”

Ultimately, she knew fighting him on it was futile at best, dangerous at worst, but there was something particularly demoralizing about having the arena’s Alpha applying healing cream there.

She sulked as she moved down the bed until she was able to lay flat, keeping the cover over as much of herself as possible. Though the Capital’s cameras were able to see through the dark as clearly as day, the illusion of privacy was a psychological aid now missing. Peeta didn’t try to press the issue as he coated his index finger in a generous, costly, portion of the balm and pursued her core without lifting the blanket high enough to expose her.

Katniss winced for a moment as he penetrated the irritated flesh, but found that the pain alleviation was immediate. The older, athletic, teen hadn’t had much of a hymn left to begin with and suspected her pain was derived more from her tight muscles succumbing to Peeta’s girth than actual torn maidenhead but the treatment helped regardless. She closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

“Good,” he intoned somewhat thickly, pressing further into her than was probably necessary with slow oscillation.

Within seconds, she could no longer feel him at all. She looked up at him, alarmed.

“It’s meant to address emergency flesh wounds and provide quick relief to avoid shock from pain,” he soothed her fears, “You’re going to feel numbness for a few hours…which is unfortunate.”

He reluctantly withdrew his hand from beneath the bedding and landed a playful smack on a section of her exposed leg before he stood. Peeta made a show of adjusting the proud evidence of his arousal to a less burdensome position in his pants but Katniss could see the outline of the eager appendage cut a thick figure in the fit of the fabric.

He gathered her clothes off the floor and tossed them onto the bed beside her.

“I’m sure you have a few things you’d like to tend to by now,” he phrased delicately and gestured to a far corner of the room’s supplies, “Help yourself to any toiletries you need. I’m going to speak to the other’s while you have some time in here. When you need to use the restroom come out and I’ll point you to a safe place.”

Katniss hadn’t taken in much liquid since the beginning of the battle but upon his reminder, she did note the uncomfortable fullness of her bladder. She felt ridiculous as she shimmied into her clothing under the blanket but believed firmly that she had given the Capital enough of a show for the time being.

As a district 12 viewer, she had a general awareness of the perks the Career’s enjoyed but her majority experience had always been watching the games with her heart in her throat, hoping without much actual hope that the familiar faces on the screen died in a way that was as quick and as dignified as possible.

Looking over the wealth of supplies Peeta had retained, she was struct by how comfortable the privileged few were compared to the rest. Katniss had seen tributes die agonizingly in the first 3 days, unable to find a drop of liquid to sate them. In front of her were more cases of clear, clean water in wasteful plastic bottles than the Career’s could drink in 2 months of gluttonous consumption.

She grabbed one from a case that had already been opened and used it to brush her teeth with a new tooth brush before forcing herself to slowly drink down the remainder. Only fate knew if these supplies would be available to her in the future and Haymitch would probably happily watch her die if she squandered any more advantages.

Making herself drink the water wasn’t nearly as difficult as it was for the pragmatic survivalist to force herself to spend time on her appearance but deep down she knew that holding Peeta’s and the Capital’s attention was paramount to thriving there. She ran a brush through her hair with no small amount of effort, cursing Peeta for making her abandon her perfectly practical braid. Extra pleased with herself for getting the majority of the tangles out of her breast-length mop, she hit her roots with dry shampoo she had to read the directions on to use and placed a thin layer of clear chapstick on her lips.

Outside, the Careers were once again enjoying the camp like they’d luckily happened upon a great spot while on a spontaneous hiking trip. There were strong smells of breakfast foods floating on the light breeze—eggs, ham, coffee—that she hoped weren’t drifting far enough to taunt empty bellies hiding in the distance.

Clove shoveled down amounts of food that contradicted her petite frame; a heaping plate that would have been a banquet for Katniss’ entire house hold. Glimmer was perched on the lap of a very tense looking Marvel, though her eyes were narrowed and relentlessly pursing Peeta. She had on a perfect mask of subtle, fresh makeup and Katniss wondered if One’s female tribute had placed a request with her mentors as well, as she doubted there had been a full cosmetic kit in the survival supplies. Her skillfully enhanced beauty made quick work of demolishing Katniss’ pride in her own inadequate efforts but she felt prioritizing something so frivolous was either indicative of over confidence or poor judgement.

The blonde leader was speaking with Cato but his gaze had been fixed on the entrance to their shelter and found her the moment she stepped into view. Even from a distance, she could see the slight curve of the edge of his mouth as he took her in and her stomach flipped oddly at the appreciation in his stare.

Cato turned, following Peeta’s attention, and broke into a huge grin in response to her attendance.

He released a long, low whistle. “Mornin’, Kitten. I heard some sweet little cries coming from your direction last night.”

“Kitten cries,” Glimmer sneered prettily against her male perch, “sounded more to me like a coyote caught a raccoon.”

Katniss turned away, letting her long, newly brushed hair hide her face and she grimaced at even more evidence of the complete lack of privacy. She wondered if the blonde female’s acid towards her was born from the territorial nature of a Career or genuine affection for her co-tribute. Mellark was inarguably stunning and being from the some region would make her less perturbed by his sociopathic quirks.

Peeta sauntered over to her and threaded his fingers through hers.

“There is a pretty modest outhouse just behind those trees,” he gestured to a far corner of the field with their joined hands. “Career perk but it’s nothing fancy, if I’m being honest.”

“Thank you,” she gave him a small smile and went to pursue his suggestion but his grip wrapped around her wrist, his iron hold causing her to pull her own arm against its socket painfully. She looked up at him, expectant.

“You’re fast, Katniss,” He said quietly, his excruciatingly sharp eyes darting between hers as though they were trying to force his message straight into her skull, “You are fast and you are intelligent and you might even be able to survive out there all on your own.”

He leaned in close, so near that she could feel his warmth against her skin and smell only his unique masculine scent over the powerful pine of the forest, “But none of that matters because you are mine, and there isn’t a single corner of this world where you will be safe if you run from me.”

The perfect boy lifted her hand to his face and pressed a kiss onto the inside of her wrist. “Are we clear?”

Katniss watched the imprint of his long fingers bloom red against her pale complexion when he released her.

“Crystal,” she muttered.

——————

Peeta had secured her a plate with more food than she could have stomached on a good day by the time she’d returned from a very short solo trip to relieve herself.

She settled onto a log-cum-bench beside him and went to work on a piece of toast. He wrapped his arm around her and gave her a small squeeze; a silent, positive reinforcement for her quick and voluntary return.

Katniss felt more kinship towards the sour looking district 3 tribute as she watched the others settle into easy conversation.

They spoke, under the broadcast of dozens of cameras streaming directly to the Capital, with a hundred times more candor than many in 12 felt safe doing in the darkest shadows of their district, to their most trusted friends.

She listened to the Careers laugh heartily at Cato’s unflattering impersonations of some of the Capital’s most powerful dignitaries and sunk further and further into her seat at the dangerous conversation.

“All I’m saying, is if Crane spends that much time and effort on his beard, the man’s pubes are probably hedged more intricately than Snow’s precious rose bushes,” the careless boy joked to the delight of most of his peers.

The district 2 male looked over at her uncomfortable posture and frowned, “You’re a tough crowd, Katniss,” he feigned an airing of his collar like a comedian sweating under the gaze of an unresponsive audience.

“You shouldn’t be talking like that,” Katniss practically breathed out, “You’re going to get us all killed.”

The Careers laughed, even Marvel, and Glimmer rolled her eyes like Katniss was the very definition of stupidity.

Peeta smiled at her fondly, if not patronizingly, “Between twenty-four possible tributes, there are hundreds of hours of footage each day that they’ll have to edit down into a single viewing,” he explained. “The Capital footage is also practically half advertisements. It’s their most profitable program of the year.”

“Our editors are in our district’s pocket,” Clove bragged between mouthfuls of meat, “They want us to present as well as possible, they’ll pull and delete anything that would make us lose sponsors…or our heads.”

“With you incessantly following Peeta around and your district male already dead,” Glimmer reminded Katniss of the brutal death of the small boy with a sickly sweet smirk, “Whatever apes they had pushing buttons for district twelve have been sent back to their cages.”

“I’d bet my left nut that the 74th Annual Hunger Games has been thirty second death clips tucked into twenty consecutive hours of Mellark pawing at the Girl on Fire,” Cato declared, sending himself and Clove into peels of laughter.

While not thrilled by the notion that she was the focus of the Capital’s cameras, she knew it was the best thing any tribute could hope for. What Peeta had done for them was a monumental new strategy that had broken over seven decades of very little variation. If there was anything the Capital loved with wanton disregard, it was a novelty.

The idea that she could sneak in a few moments that would be safe from dangerous sets of ears was a relief, as there were many things she wanted to ask Mellark that she wouldn’t dare say in front of the likes of Snow. For someone fumbling through her first days in the arena as hopelessly as she was, the idea of a flattering editor was a Godsend.

“I was thinking,” Katniss started carefully after a large bite of egg to please Peeta’s insistence that she eat, “We have dozens of traps in the cornucopia that are just hanging on the wall. I’d like to set them up today, at the edge of the clearing. I don’t think we should wait until we are out off food before we start bringing in what the arena has to offer.”

In truth, she wanted a task that gave her some time away from the group and also made her useful in a fashion that didn’t require sending an arrow through a 15 year old girl’s heart. They had plenty of packed survival foods like bars and nuts but the meats and fresh fruit would spoil after the first few days when the ice packs thawed. The game markers put the equipment there for a reason; the arena probably stocked a nice supply of hare and squirrel.

“Missing your district cuisine?” Glimmer hissed, “I know vermin eat vermin but the real Careers aren’t interested in your rats.”

The district 12 beauty angled her head to hide her flush. There had been plenty of sparse weeks when she’d been absolutely ecstatic to find a rat inside the snares she’d leave overnight. Like most in her district, if it had calories and could keep you alive, it was a blessing.

“Fuck it, I’d eat a rat,” Cato winked at Katniss, pulling from the Career’s propensity towards mind reading, “little salt, little butter. The new white meat; sneaky, night chickens.”

Clove snickered.

Scowling at his teammate, Peeta opened his mouth to bite into her for the comment but Katniss had enough irritation inside her to save him the effort.

“I’d hunt us a deer if you’d lend me that bow,” she gestured to the harnessed weapon and quiver the other female had fixed to her back like the perfect last touch to her flashy black uniform.

The vicious beauty queen practically snarled, “Why don’t you come over here and take it from me,” she urged, her tone announcing the threat.

Katniss shrugged indifferently, “If you aren’t interested in taking big risks, you don’t deserve big rewards. So we’re all going to have to settle for small game, your majesty.”

The District Two jokesters cackled.

Glimmers body jutted forwards but Marvel wrapped his arms around her waist and held firm. His face remained unperturbed, as if his hold on her had been a passing fancy, but the muscles in his arms strained with the force of keeping her in place. She was the only one even mildly in favor of his inclusion in the group and he had no interest in letting her get them both slaughtered over a petty rivalry.

“Glimmer, you’re done with breakfast. Take your surprisingly smarter half and run our perimeter,” Peeta ordered. “Handle anyone you find on sight, no more strays,” he added, doubling both as another stab at Marvel’s presence and assurance that Glimmer not drag a victim back to camp and kill it in front of his soft-hearted non-Career mate.

The vapid girl was visibly interested in pressing the issue but after a moment’s assessment of the way Peeta’s massive body curved around Katniss like a shield, she flipped her golden curls loftily and pulled Marvel away from camp with a clawed hand digging into the meat of his arm.

Mellark watched them intently until they were out of sight before turning to his female with a long suffering sigh.

“You know, if you make me kill her before it’s socially acceptable, my mentors are going to be cross with me,” he mentioned without any note of actual concern in his voice, curling a strand of her glossy hair around his finger.

“I’ll do it,” Cato offered, “She’s so derogatory. All her negative energy is really killin’ the vibe here.”

Katniss snorted a laugh, despite her best efforts, humored by the notion that it was Glimmer’s foul temper tainting the good Qi of their murder game.

Cato gave her his best mad-man grin, genuinely thrilled at her attention, “I knew you’d warm to me eventually, Kitten.”

The dominant male beside her didn’t care for that comment at all, his body stiffening with more malice than had been rendered by Glimmers threat of physical harm. His arm pulled Katniss against his ribs.

“Looks like your finished as well, District Two,” he snapped. “You may clean up now.”

Clove looked crestfallen upon her partially unfinished plate but didn’t hesitate with Mellark‘s tone, only voicing her disappointment by smacking Cato in the back of the head as she rose.

——————————

Peeta hauled out the equipment for her and set them down passed the edge of the tree line, refusing to allow her to do the slightly-heavy lifting herself.

It was too much to hope for, that he’d leave her to her own devices in placing the traps, but she was still grateful to have her company back down to a more palatable single Career.

She taught him the best places to position the traps and how best to camouflage them from the tiny, paranoid eyes of the forest’s prey animals. There was a learning curve for her as well, as she figured out the mechanics of the Capital-provided advanced machinery; a far cry from the scrap her and Gale fashioned into some semblance of usefulness back home.

After a while he’d let her drift away from him to start a new site while he finished work on his own. She was sure his loosening grip was due to confidence instead of trust but even the small distances felt liberating. She’d casually wind around trees until he was out of sight before choosing her new spots, taking a few moments to experience the balm of nostalgia as she pretended the woods around her were her own.

And although he appeared to take no notice of her departures, he found her within minutes each time. Never needing to call out for her through the dense expanse of identical trees, he simply gravitated towards her with an eerie ease that made his earlier promise all the more believable.

“That’s enough,” he declared after nearly a dozen deposits; and although he was referring to the number of traps, she could sense he was also talking about her little bids for space from him.

“I don’t know, we could catch a fat squirrel in every one of these traps and we still wouldn’t be able to feed Clove,” she joked dryly, gathering the leftover materials.

“She’s lucky she won’t live long enough to see that appetite run her fat,” he hummed in agreement, slipping the burden off her shoulder just seconds after she’d placed it there and transferring it to his own back.

“So lucky,” Katniss nodded sarcastically at the ludicrous statement, sure she’d never grow accustomed to the Career’s cavalier attitude toward death. “Now all we have to do is wait. They need to be checked every few hours. Nothing more upsetting than coming back too late and finding something has stolen your catch.”

“I could think of nothing worse than someone stealing something that belongs to me.”

She chanced a glance at him and immediately regretted it, his predatory stare chilled its way up her spine and she dropped her eyes to her boots to hide from some of his constant, unyielding intensity. Part of her knew he was talking about Cato and she’d need to watch her interactions with him going forward. It did not surprise her that the testosterone pumped boy had a jealous side.

The Career grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards the camp, back to the spot in the Arena her instincts wanted to be the very least. It took half a second for her feet to stop fighting the journey and his hold jolted her body forward.

She wouldn’t call it relief necessarily; what she felt when Peeta stopped just short of the tree-line and dropped his burden to pull a small blanket out and spread it on a patch of soft earth. Katniss thought it unlikely she would ever view alone time with the terrifying boy as a relief, but she did acknowledge that she was pleased to stave off the larger group for a bit longer.

Mellark dropped his large body to the ground somewhat inelegantly, like a lazy male lion plopping down in a patch of sun.

He held a hand up to her and she obediently met it with her own, allowing him to pull her down onto the blanket beside him.

She laid flat on the thin fabric, eyes studying a fake sky so convincing that she could vividly imagine a balloon floating unhindered into the clouds and disappearing into the heavens instead of meeting the electrically charged fate of reality.

He placed a hand on her belly and smoothed his palm down her body until his fingers pressed in on her sex through the canvas of her pants. Her breath hitched with the quickening of her heart.

“Who were you saving this for, Katniss?” he asked with indifference that felt ingenious.

She had to make an effort to think clearly enough to answer while her mind tried to malfunction in reaction to his touch.

“No one,” she said honestly, “it just- I never wanted to,” she answered in a way that negated telling him that she hadn’t found interest in her male peers before his potent form of insanity entered her life.

“Someone that looks like you…I couldn’t have expected that with anyone from One.”

She wondered how many partners he had before her to base that experience on but didn’t want to know the answer enough to ask.

“There’s a lot of- experimenting,” she said tastefully, thinking of the others at school who’d been caught indulging their youthful urges, “but- well, what we did last night, that’s extremely discouraged in 12, until we’re of age. The only thing worse than sending a teen girl off to die each year would be sending a pregnant teen off to die.”

She winced, knowing that The Capital would throw one in for slaughter without any misgivings and that no one in her district would jump in front of that bullet, even then.

Peeta looked thoughtful, “There’s plenty of ways to prevent pregnancy, although I understand the precaution. Our female careers are surgically altered when they enter puberty. They invest too much money on us to lose a girl’s usefulness to that kind of accident.”

Katniss thought that was awful, to have that kind of decision made for you so you could best serve such a savage purpose. She felt herself soften towards Glimmer who was likely an inevitable byproduct of her up bringing.

“We don’t really have those in 12. Not in The Seam, at least” she said quietly, thinking of how badly her mom would covet the ability to help her patients prevent such risky pregnancies that year after year added mouths to families without the means to feed them. “In a labor district, proliferation of workers is important, I guess.”

“What a terrible loss for your district,” his eyes glinted with satisfaction as he dipped his head down and nuzzled his nose against her throat. “I’ve stolen away their loveliest little broodmare.”

She scrunched her nose at his less than flattering summary of her previous future but shrugged instead of protesting. “They sent me here. I doubt they’ll miss me.”

The boy gave her a beautiful, condonation shaped grin. “My district sent me here, ridiculous girl. You were stollen from yours.”

Katniss turned and looked to the tree line to hide her embarrassment. His claim might have seemed far fetched but when she thought back to the Reaping Day videos, she remembered the tear filled eyes and stoney faces in the audience of District 12 and held them in juxtaposition with the boisterous cheers when the Careers took their place on the stage. She had aways taken the reaction as a vote of confidence but it was true that Peeta’s district came across as crassly eager to send their tributes out when in the very best of scenarios, at least one of them would be dead by the end of the month.

She couldn’t help but develop the inkling that Mellark held a bit of resentment towards his homeland, if he had come to that same observation, but didn’t think it prudent or safe to explore the thought with eyes from that very district responsible for presenting them as the most intelligent choice to the sponsors.

“If you were taken from me, I’d fight till my last breath to get you back,” he vowed quietly, “I’m sure if they thought they had even the slightest chance at success, they’d have done the same.”

She was nearly positive the sentiment couldn’t be true for the expert charmer but emotion caught in her chest at his assurance that some in 12 would have fought to keep her home if doing so didn’t come with the unquestionable certainty of death.

Life in The Seam was a numbers game; what terrible option would lead to the least amount of suffering, the least amount of death?

“There was no chance,” she acknowledged aloud.

Not for them out there,” he agreed, “but in here, there is no one who can protect you like I can, baby, not even yourself.”

He laid his head back onto the blanket and curled his arm until it held her tightly against his side. Pushing past a general awkwardness, she did what she assumed would please him and rested a splayed palm and her head atop his broad chest. His heart beat was so slow she could guess three of her own would pass between a single set of his.

The position was unnervingly comfortable and with such close proximity, there was no hiding her yawn.

His trunk vibrated slightly against her in turn with his laugh and the Career began stroking his fingers through the strands of her hair.

“Rest, love,” he ordered softly, “I know you didn’t sleep last night and you need a fast lesson in trusting me. I’ll wake you when it’s time to check your traps.”

Katniss’ haughty defiance lasted all of ten minutes. Peeta’s gentle affections and the wonderfully familiar sounds of the forest lulled the uneasy female into one of the most restful sleeps she could remember.

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