Mentors

2

It takes roughly a day and a half to get to district 11 by train. Our trip had to start, exactly a day and a half early because district 12 is so far from the rest. I see the familiar surroundings and food. The trip is twelve days long, and it wraps up with a party in the Capitol. I set my shoes on the floor next to the table, and get an immediate look from Effie, her eyes call me out on manners, so I take my shoes and place them in my room on the floor against the bed. When I walk back into the food cart, Effie, Haymitch and Peeta aren't here. I leave the room with a mug of hot chocolate and sit on a couch. It caught me by surprise, but Peeta was also on the couch beside me, curled up super tiny, with his hands around his knees with a blanket. The temperature drops and it leaves the train freezing. I look at him, and I feel a wave of guilt power over me. I put my empty mug down and turn towards his feet. His one real foot hangs over the sofa. Placing it back, I readjust the blanket so it covers all of him except his face. Peeta's eyes are open, but just the slightest bit. I tuck the covers in some places, realizing he's shivering. Seeing how cold he still is, I end up just laying beside him and warming him up with my body heat. I take his arm and use it as a pillow and fall asleep. We both must have, because Haymitch wakes us for dinner. Peeta is sweating, but shivering. He claims he isn't hungry. I skip dinner myself, and sit opposite him on the floor.
"You don't look so great." I feel his forehead.
"I don't feel too great, ether." I let him place his head on my lap, while he rubs his stomach. Mine growls but I ignore it. "You can go eat." he whispers, as if that's all he can get out.
I shrug off his offer.
Haymitch comes wobbling in, nearly tripping over the both of us and spills his liquor on the floor near me.
"Watch it, sweetheart. What's wrong with the boy?" I explain how he feels awful and Effie suggests I take him to his room. Haymitch offers to help him off the floor when he stands up.
"I'm not that vulnerable, and I can do it on my own." He starts toward his room. I exchange a quick glance with Effie and Haymitch, because no one was expecting those words from his mouth. I quickly follow Peeta to his bedroom. He leaps onto the mattress, face first. I sit on the edge of the bed, quiet for a few minutes when he speaks. "You don't have to keep me company, I'm fine really."
Before I can stop myself, I respond so truthfully without meaning to.
"Listen, I know how vulnerable you may secretly think you are, but I don't believe it's you that needs anyone, I think I am the one who wants your company."
"And why's that?" he asks me, sitting up and moving closer towards the front of the bed. I spit it out.
"Because I'm scared." he doesn't ask anything else, although I know he wants to.
It's true, I am scared. Ever since Haymitch said that they don't take defying the Capitol very easy, I have some prediction, that President Snow will find some way to punish me or worse, Peeta and my family. I tell Peeta this. He explains how he won't let anything happen.
He wraps his arms around me tiredly, and I bury myself in his sweater for a moment.
"I don't feel good, I don't know if you should be in here," he says.
"Where was I when you were sick in the arena?" I ask him.
I was pulling off a freakshow that he didn't want to be a part of. That's where I was. He knows this, but I was hinting that I was right by his side when he nearly died.
He caves in and lays down. I pull the blanket over him and sit to keep him company. We talk about random things for a while, until he closes his eyes. I adjust the covers so that it goes up to his neck, and I kiss his forehead before leaving his room. Heading toward the food cart, I grab a plate and fill it up high, as I get various stares from Haymitch and Effie.
"Hey guys.." I awkwardly say, as I sit down at the table next across from them. "What the hell was that crazy meltdown from the boy?" Haymitch pauses his poor job with the piece of bread he's picking at. Effie gives him a glare that is mixed between annoyance and admiration and then she looks back at me. I shrug. "I wouldn't call it a meltdown."
"How you two survived this long is beyond me."
"Haymitch!" Effie scolds.
"Listen, you two are mentors now. With these new tributes that'll be needing your help for slaughter, you two will need to step up your love game. Got that?"
I nod understandingly, but I don't look up from my lamb stew and cheese buns. These cheese buns aren't even close to the ones Peeta bakes.
"I'm sure they aren't." Haymitch says. I look up at them. That was not my head I said that in. I had spoken it.
"Nope, not even remotely close." I say, as I bite into it.
"Then this shouldn't be hard after all." he states, although I have no idea what he means. I don't ask.
After I eat, I decide it's time for me to try to sleep.
I get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often that I should be used to them by now. I'm not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares. People say that dreams can come true, but forget to mention that nightmares are dreams, too. Only they are true, because the games haunt me. My worst enemy is my memory. With all that happens inside my head when I sleep, I'm almost positive they will never go away. And sometimes if you can't wake up from a nightmare, maybe you're not asleep. Today we arrive to district 11. I've been trying for such a long time to write a eulogy for Rue and Thresh, but every time I start writing, I can never gather what words to say, and I always end up crumpling the paper in frustration only to flatten it out again, since wasting paper isn't exactly the best thing to do.
I get to the food cart to find everyone, including Cinna and my prep team, who are sitting and chatting with Haymitch and Effie, while Peeta awkwardly says nothing. That's not like him. He's always engaged in conversation, even if he doesn't want to be. I serve myself at the buffet of breakfast, and sit next to Peeta. I try and greet them hello, but they're so caught up in what Peeta and I will be wearing this afternoon, when we read a speech from Effie's cue card and then have dinner in the justice building. I realize that the both of us are being shut out completely. I try and say something to Cinna, but Effie keeps babbling her mouth. "They've been ignoring me for fifteen minutes." Says Peeta. Effie goes on and on about today's schedule and every little detail, I honestly can't stand it. With her shutting out my communication with Cinna, and not letting Peeta speak at all, as I know in which he would like to. 
"This is.. Ridiculous." I mutter.
Peeta gives me a glance, before resting his face in his hand, as his elbow hits the table.
Effie has not stopped talking, she's so concerned about what table mats they will have and how the curtains will be shaped at dinner. I'm so fed up, that Peeta can most likely see the heat coming off me. I'm on fire, not in the good way.
"No one cares, Effie!" I slam my glass of orange juice down onto where I stabbed a place mat. I finally caught a silence, along with stares.
"Well, no one does! And it's not fair on our part that you have to shut me and Peeta out on your adult talk that should be a conversation for five year olds! Did any of you even greet us good morning? Why don't you use your manners, Effie!" I stand up and power walk straight out of there before I can be lectured. I don't know where I'm going, just forward. I end up at the front of the train, and I watch the green trees go by, and instantly feel jailed, not free. "I'll be on this train forever." I tell myself.
I hear the door slide open behind me.
"I'm really not in the mood for a lecture." I comb my hair with my fingers.
"I'll keep it brief." I turn my head, and Peeta is walking towards the front of the train. "Sorry, thought you were Haymitch. I'll apologize to Effie later." He just cocks his eyebrow before sitting down next to me. "You don't have to apologize to anyone, including me." he says which makes me look at him questionably. "You know, it's not all that fair of me to hold you to things you said in the games. You saved us, I know that." I go to say something, how he shouldn't feel like I hate him, but he continues. "And I can't go on, acting for the cameras, and ignoring each other in real life. You know if you stop looking at me like I'm wounded, then I can quit acting like it. Then maybe, we have a shot at being friends. You know that's what I wanted from the beginning and I never wanted to force you into anything."
"I've never... been very good at friends." I state. I think back to school, how I would eat alone and ignore the peers around me.
"Well, it does help if you know the person, I hardly know anything about you. You know, the way the whole friendship works is that you have to tell each other..." he thinks for a second, "the deep stuff."
"The deep stuff.." I repeat. "Uh oh, like what?"
"Well let's see, um. What's your favorite color?"
"Oh you've stepped over the line." I smile. "There it is, that rare smile that's been hidden by your stubbornness all this time. Seriously, what's your favorite color?"
"Green." I say. "What's yours?"
"Orange." he says, like he's not proud of it.
"Like Effie's hair?" I say, which he laughs. "Not that kind of orange, more like a sunset type of color."
"That's a pretty deep, dark secret." I say.
He smiles at me, and jokingly agrees. I feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulder. He's right, I can finally stop looking at him like he's a sick boy in a cave. I can see him as a friend, and I'm grateful that he is alive.
"Cinna told me that you've been working on new paintings in the train?" I say.
"Would you like to see?"
I nod. Peeta stands up and offers his hand to me and I thankfully take it, and we walk hand in hand to a cart on the train with his paintings on it. It's not for the cameras, it's for friendship. It feels good. Something I didn't know I had wanted until now. We enter a cart with colors everywhere, all over the walls. The sight makes my stomach drop to the floor, and a wave of trauma hits me. I then get it. Peeta has painted the games. He sees the fear in my eyes, so he squeezes my hand and carefully leads me through the room. "Do you like them?" he asks me.
"I hate them," I pause, "but they're incredible. How do you remember all of this so clearly?"
He stares at the wall. "I see them every night."
I don't know what he means until I realize, he gets nightmares.
"It helps to paint them." he continues.
"Because you're talented." I carefully stroke the painted cave on the wall with my free hand. "How's your talent coming along?" He asks.
"I must remind you that Cinna is doing a fantastic job on it." I say, and he laughs.
"It's too bad beauty can't be your talent," he says. He sees my smile, but I pay attention to the beautiful woods he has brought to life. "It certainly is yours, I mean, look at this. It looks like I can actually climb this tree." I point to another side of the wall." I pause. "But let's get out of here before this finds a way to taunt me in my nightmares." He agrees, and we leave, entering where Effie and Haymitch are. I apologize to Effie, and she tells me that it's on her part too, to say good morning and acknowledge us. As if that's the only thing she should say sorry about.

She preps us on what to say and do when we read from a cue card written by her. Our first stop must be district 11? It's where I have to see the family of Rue and Thresh. Where they will blame me for not keep their children alive. Peeta says he could do the talking, in which I gladly thank him. We are briefly introduced and we stand in front of not even half of 11, since most of the population must be in the fields working. As Peeta speaks, I grab his hand, he will think it is for the cameras, only it is because I am nervous and if I let go, then I will lose my balance. I am shaking. I take a look at Rue's family. So many younger siblings, only one mother. Each child is just like Rue in a different way. Come to think, out of all the people in this district, how had it come to the possibility of Rue standing where I am, with no one to take her place? Rue, and in fact Prim.. their names were only in once. My head spins, and I look away and adjust my eyes to Thresh's family. Only two women. Peeta concludes Effie's cue cards, and we start to leave, when one of Rue's sisters looks straight at me. I must say something. Something. I stumble back to the podium. I start with Thresh, thanking him for sparing my life, it was a debt I could never repay. The words I said for Rue drew me to tears. As I finish, an old skinny man, does the three finger salute. As the population of the crowd, as like it was planned, press three fingers to their lips; holding it out to my general direction.

Before I can blink, peacekeepers have the man in their grasp, guns pointed. I run towards them. Yelling to leave the elderly man alone. Peeta leaps after me, as we are lifted and pushed back into the justice building. Right before the doors shut, I see it. A bullet goes straight through his head. I am screaming. A peacekeeper shuts me up, by shoving me into Peeta, and the impact is hard. Which causes us both to collapse to the floor. The large doors slam shut. Haymitch and Effie rush to us. "What the hell were you thinking!" I don't answer, I hold my head as I stand. I grab Peeta's arm, helping him up. Haymitch gets a hold of us both, as he leads us up spiral stairs, and through a twist of hallways into an old abandoned attic. We stand near a boarded up window. "What the hell were you thinking!" He exclaims again.
"I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt, I was only thinking of Rue! What wrong is that!" Tears stir up in my eyes.
"Sweetheart." He tries to calm me down. Peeta sits on a couch, filled with dust. He looks like he is in pain. I try to wipe my tears and look at him clearly. "What's wrong?" I ask, in a small voice.
"A peacekeeper hit me in the balls." He says, painfully embarrassed. I hold my hand over my mouth. My tears mix with silent chuckles. Haymitch drunkenly screams of laughter. It's hard to think that we all might be in danger when a peacekeeper kicks someone in the balls. Funny it being Peeta. "Not a time to be laughing. We just killed someone!" He gives us a dirty look, and leaves the attic.
"Mr. Balls is right, we have a tour to finish. Let's not waste anymore time on feelings up on that stage." Haymitch says, prying the dry tears from my cheeks. I say nothing.