SWAN UPON LEDA; hunger games

chapter 3

[act two; chapter three     -     always on top]

    The training center wasn't exactly...homey, not that Leda had expected it to be. But, more than anything, it was cold. Sterile and gray. Typically, there would be some kind of color, some strange, exotic variation, as there usually was all around the Capitol. Her and Finnick were, as usual, two of the first to arrive. They were never last. Never.

    Finnick, ever the leach, clung to her, following her wherever she went. It wasn't that he didn't trust her, it was just...she wasn't quite sure. It was as though he was afraid to leave her alone, to leave unaccompanied in a place full of enemies and friends. She figured that part of him forgot that those who they were surrounded by, people like Cashmere or Johanna or Beetee, were their friends. Which was why, with her hand passing over his back, Leda left him. She found herself wandering towards the rope tying section, one she figured was meant for her and Finnick as the district 4 tributes.

    She had been so focused on the rope in her hands that she hadn't noticed a blonde boy approach her until he stood at her side. Peeta Mellark smiled kindly; too kind for this world, Leda knew. She smiled back. She wouldn't, usually. But she knew that she could trust this boy. That he would not stab her in the back unless she stabbed Katniss first. Something of which she had no intention of doing. Not then, at least.

    "Could you teach me how to tie those?" He looked down at the rope in her hands, then back up at her face.

    "Why do you want to learn?" She asked him.

    A test. Peeta smiled. "Could make a good noose, just in case."

    "For someone else or for you?"

    He looked down. "Someone else."

    "Mhm," she hummed. She believed him, of course she did. She also figured, then, that he remembers watching her own games. Seeing how she had used the rope once, in the same way that he now wanted to understand it. "You want the ends to meet here, just in this spot so that they connect up here..."

    Finnick watched from across the room. Watched as she immersed herself in a life that she had spent so long trying to escape. The same life that he, himself, had been trying to escape. His eyes had been so focused on her, on her smile and the way she instructed Peeta with quiet murmurs, that he hadn't noticed Fern Hart until she nudged her elbow against his arm. He flinched at first, but quickly relaxed as he noticed her. His old friend.