Mentors

4

He looks up at me. "Did you just call me-"
"Yes. Now let's get along with my plan, Peeta."
"Which is?"
"We hookup the television in your room and we watch the tape in there tonight."
"That's it?" He says.
"We have to put it back before the Capitol party, which is in two days. That's enough time to watch it."
"What if it's not?"
"What's with the twenty questions?Then we put it back and buy a tape from the Capitol. They sell them as movies everywhere." I tell him.
"Good enough plan." he says, sitting next to me on the bed.
We end up playing a card game while waiting for Effie and Haymitch to go to bed. They've been talking for hours. I play laying upside down, drooping off the bed while Peeta sits crosslegged on the floor. "Got any 7s?" I ask.
"No."
"This is getting boring." I state.
"Well what do you want to do?"
I look at him from upside down and I carefully flip off the bed and onto the floor. "Well, what I just did was fun." I say, which he laughs. We mostly just play children's tag around the train for the remainder of the time that Haymitch is awake. We're also around him so he would give in and go to sleep.

"Why don't you stop skipping around like five year olds and go to bed. Make out, get pregnant or something." he says, refilling his glass of wine.
His words hit me in a hard way. He sees the look on my face and he instantly regrets saying it.
"I will." I spit at him.
"Sweetheart.."
"Don't sweetheart me, don't talk to me ether."
I grab Peeta and pull him to his room and I shut the door before regretful words come. Luckily none do.
"Don't worry about what he says, he's drunk." Peeta assures me.
"You know he's drunk 90% of the time, what makes this any different?" I sit on the floor, he sits beside me.
"He's just trying to push your buttons because you were happy. Something he hasn't been lately." His hand slips into mine. I look into his eyes, and see the love and affection in them. This boy really cares about me. I close my eyes and just as my lips touch his, a loud knock on the door separates us.
"Come in." I say, aggravated.
Effie walks in, hugging us both goodnight. After she finally leaves, Peeta and I walk into my room to get the tape. "I'm going to change, could you get the tape?" Before he could answer, I take pajamas and walk into the bathroom. I come out a minute later and see him still on the bed.
"Why didn't you get it?" I ask.
"Remember the last time I went in your drawer?" he reminds me.
I glare at him, and then reach into the drawer and grab the tape.
"Catch." I throw it to him.
We walk to his room and spend ten minutes plugging in the TV.
We cover the bed in countless amounts of pillows and blankets.
"I'll be right back." I leave the room and come back with popcorn, candy and drinks. "Where did you get all that?" he questions, climbing into bed.
"I asked an assistant." I say, guiltily.
He tosses me the tape and I put it in the TV. I turn off the lights, laying down with him.
"I've never watched reruns of the hunger games before, there's never been any depressing reason to." he says, covering us with the same blanket as the screen opens to the Capitol's anthem.
The dreadful reaping shows the twelve districts being dragged from their families. The quarter quell has multiplied the number of tributes.
Haymitch must being upon them. By the time we get to district 12, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids going to certain death. There's a woman, who isn't Effie, calling the names in 12, but she still begins with "Ladies first!" She calls the name of a girl from the seam, you can tell just by looking at her, and then afterwards I hear the name. "'Maysilee Donner."
"Oh!" I say. "She was my mothers friend." She was. The camera pans on her, holding onto two blonde girls.
"I think that's your mother hugging her." Says Peeta quietly, pointing to the girl on her left. He is right. I catch a glimpse of my mother at my age, and no one has exaggerated her beauty. Holding Maysilee Donner's other hand is a girl who looks just like Maysilee. But much like someone else, too.
"Madge," I say.
"That's her mother. She and Maysilee were twins or something." Peeta looks at me. "My dad mentioned it once."
I swallow hard, as I think of them being in a close friendship with my mother. Haymitch's name is called last. It is shocking to see him young and strong. His dark and curly hair, those gray eyes bright, and even then, dangerous.
"Oh. Peeta, you don't think he killed Maysilee, do you?" I burst out. I can't stand the thought of it.
"Hm, with forty-eight players? I'd say the odds are against it," says Peeta.
The opening ceremonies were a whole new type of awful, and then the interviews come.
His interview comes last.
"So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?" Caesar Flickerman asks.
Haymitch shrugs. "I don't see that it makes much of a difference. They'll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure my odds will be roughly the same."
The audience laughs, and Haymitch gives a half smile. Snarky. Arrogant. Indifferent.
"He didn't have to reach far for that, did he?" I curl up next to Peeta, as he strokes his fingers soothingly through my hair. "I'm not surprised," says Peeta.
It is the morning of their games, and we watch from the point of view of one of the tributes as she rises up through the tube from the Launch Room and into the arena. A chill runs through me, knowing that the girl is now dead. I can't help but slightly gasp at the scenery of the arena. The players are in disbelief. It's breathtaking. The golden cornucopia sits in the middle of a green meadow with patches of beautiful flowers. The sky is blue with puffy white clouds, similar clouds I've seen in the woods at the lake. By the way tributes are sniffing, the aroma of nature must be amazing. Far in the distance, in one direction, there seems to be a woods, and in the other, a snowcapped mountain. The beauty of the arena distracts many of the players, because when the gong sounds, most of them seem like they're trying to wake from a dream. Not Haymitch. He makes a break for the cornucopia and arms himself with weapons and a backpack. He heads for the woods before most of the others have stepped off their plates.
Eighteen are killed in the bloodbath. Others begin to die off and it becomes clear that everything in the beautiful arena, the fruit in the trees, the water in the streams, even the scent of flowers when inhaled directly- is deadly poisonous. Only the rain water and the food at the cornucopia are safe to consume.
"Katniss, I'd be dead the first day if our games were like that." Peeta says.
"Me, too." I confess. I think back to our games, how we roughly depended on the animals I shot and the plants we picked.
There is a career pack of ten well stocked tributes that hunt the arena for victims. Haymitch has his own distractions in the woods. He persists on moving forward. Maysilee Donner turns out to be resourceful herself. She had left the bloodbath with only a small backpack, which had a bowl, a syringe that can take the poison out of animals, some dried beef, and a blowgun with two dozen darts. She drips the darts in lethal substances and shoots them into her opponents flesh.
Four days in, and a volcano wipes out another dozen players, taking half the career pack.
Haymitch encounters three of the careers and pulls his knife. They are bigger and stronger but Haymitch is much faster and has already killed two when the third disarms him. The career is about to slit his throat when a dart drops him to the ground. Dead. Maysilee Donner steps out of the woods. "We'd live longer with two of us."
"Guess you just proved that," says Haymitch, rubbing his neck. "Allies?" She nods.
Just like Peeta and me, they do better together. But Haymitch is still determined to keep moving on.
Maysilee keeps asking why, and he ignores her until she stops walking until she gets an answer.
"This place must end somewhere." says Haymitch. "The arena can't go on forever."
"What do you expect to find?" she asks.
"I don't know, but maybe something useful."
They do get to the end of the arena. They stand on a flat, dry surface that leads to a cliff. Over the edge you see jagged rocks.
"Let's go back." says Maysilee.
"No, I'm staying here," he says.
"There's only five left, may as well say goodbye now, anyway. I don't want it to come down to you and me."
"Okay." he agrees. She walks away.
His foot kicks a pebble and it falls into the abyss, apparently gone. But a minute later, as he sits to rest, the pebble shoots back up and hits him on the side of the head. Dumbfounded, he picks up a rock the size of his fist and lobs it over the edge and waits. When it flies back out and right into his hand, he starts laughing.
Not for long, though. That's when we hear Maysilee begin to scream. The alliance had ended, but Haymitch runs for her, anyway. A flock of candy pink birds, with long thin beaks, skewer through her neck. He holds her hand while she dies. I have a mental flashback to Rue, and how it was too late to save her, too.
The day in the arena goes on, and it comes down to Haymitch and a career from district 1. She is bigger than Haymitch and just as fast. When the fight comes, it is vitally bloody. Haymitch is then disarmed. He staggers through the woods, holding his intestines in, while she stumbles after him, carrying an ax. Haymitch makes a beeline for that cliff and he's just reached the edge when she throws the ax. He collapses to the ground, in time, too. The ax flies off the cliff. The girl just stands there, trying to stop the flow of blood pouring from her empty eye socket. She thinks that she could outlast Haymitch, get a fake eye in the Capitol, maybe a new foot, too. Only she doesn't know, where as Haymitch does. That the ax will return.
When it flies back over the ledge, it buries itself in her head. I squeeze Peeta's arm at the sound of the slice through her skull. The cannon sounds, her body is removed, and the trumpets blow, announcing Haymitch's victory.
Peeta clicks off the tape and we sit there in silence for a while, staring at the blank screen. I say something.
"What the actual hell was that?"
Finally Peeta says, "That force field at the bottom of the cliff, it was like the one on the roof of the training center. The one that throws you back if you try to jump off and commit suicide. In which Haymitch found a way to turn it into a weapon."
"Not only against the tributes, but the Capitol." I say.
Peeta nods.
"It's almost as bad as us and the berries!" I exclaim.
"I'll say, but not quite." Peeta shakes his head.
The train stops for its refuel schedule. We have arrived at the next district, which is district 2.
"Would you like to go outside, for a walk?" he asks me.
"Isn't it snowing?" I say.
"You can wear one of my jackets, if you would like to."
We both layer in an extra pair of sweatpants, and he buttons one of his coats around me, adding a scarf for my neck. As we open the door to the cart, our boots step into the snow, which sparkles from the full moon.
He grabs my cold hand, warming it with his as we walk past the train. It's a silent walk, but our glances do the talking for us. We get about twenty minutes past where we left when we both sit down in the freshly fallen snow. We end up laying in each others arms, looking up at the sky. I close my eyes a moment before saying, "I wish the train would just leave us here."
"Yeah, I'm half asleep." says Peeta, burying his face in my scarf. I watch the snow fall on my face until I have no choice but to wipe it off. I want to stay here until someone finds us. Hopefully no one beyond miles will. It's the most peaceful, quiet place I've been lately. Peeta's presence is, as a bonus, comforting.
He looks up me, and I gently move the hair out of his face with my fingers.
About five seconds later, I find my face filled with snow. I gasp, wiping it off as he starts to laugh. I would normally be beyond angry, but his laugh. Is that what his actual laugh sounds like? I have never been able to listen to it. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my entire life. This is even more warming than Prim's cute laugh. Every once in awhile he will squeak, and it makes me physically melt.
"Your laugh is too adorable, I can't even get you back!" I say, wiping my face with his sleeve.
What was once quiet before, outside is now filled with our laughter. I manage to pick up a chunk of snow with my stiff fingers and shove it down his shirt which is under his jacket. He shrieks, standing up to get it out. I chuckle, sitting crosslegged in the snow. He shivers, so I stand up, and wrap my arms around him. His hands snake around my waist, and his head rests on my shoulder. His prosthetic leg gives out and I fall in between his legs as we hit the ground, my face nearly smashing into his.
"I'm sorry, are you alright?" He looks at me. Our faces are so close, that I close the gap between us. The kiss is snowflakey and surprisingly warm. His hand finds my cheek, and my fingers lock into his hair. Our lips slowly part and then disconnect.
His eyes meet mine. "I've been waiting for that." I whisper. He smiles, closing the space separating us again.

{•~•}
•a/n- hi I don't usually do a/n's but I have not updated in a while so if you could comment how often you want me to post a chapter and also vote and comment your thoughts, id love to hear them. thanks to all who are reading this new book.
-j