The Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark (1)

}26{ - Checkmate

Livia spewed the berries from her mouth, wiping her tongue with the end of her shirt to make sure no juice remained.

Peeta pulled her to the lake where they both flushed their mouths with water and then collapsed into each other's arms.

"You didn't swallow any?" Livia asked him.

He shook his head, "You?"

"Guess I'd be dead by now if I did." Livia muttered.

She could see his lips moving in reply, but she couldn't hear him over the roar of the crowd in the Capitol that they were playing live over the speakers.

The hovercraft materialized overhead and two ladders dropped, only there was no way Livia was letting go of Peeta.

She kept one arm around him as she helped him up, and they each placed a foot on the first rung of the ladder.

The electric current froze them in place, and this time she was glad because she was not really sure Peeta could hang on for the whole ride.

And since her eyes were looking down, she could see that while their muscles were immobile, nothing was preventing the blood from draining out of Peeta's leg.

Sure enough, the minute the door closed behind them and the current stopped, he slumped to the floor unconscious.

Livia's fingers were still gripping the back of his jacket so tightly that when they took him away it tore, leaving her with a fistful of black fabric.

Doctors in sterile white, masked and gloved, already prepped to operate, went into action.

Peeta was so pale and still on a silver table, tubes and wires springing out of him every which way, and for a moment Livia forget they were out of the Games.

She saw the doctors as just one more threat, one more pack of mutts designed to kill him.

Petrified, she lunged for him, but she was caught and thrust back into another room- a glass door sealed between them.

Livia pounded on the glass, screaming her head off.

Everyone ignored her except for some Capitol attendant who appeared behind her and offered her a beverage.

Livia slumped down on the floor, her face against the door, staring uncomprehendingly at the crystal glass in her hand.

Icy cold, filled with orange juice, a straw with a frilly white collar.

How wrong it looks in her bloody, filthy hand with its dirt-caked nails and scars.

Livia's mouth watered at the smell, but she placed it carefully on the floor, not trusting anything so clean and pretty.

Through the glass, she could the doctors working feverishly on Peeta, their brows creased in concentration.

She could see the flow of liquids, pumping through the tubes and watch a wall of dials and lights that meant nothing to her.

She was not sure, but she thought his heart stoped twice.

It was like being home again, when they brought in the hopelessly mangled person from the quarry explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia.