Caged Nightingale [Hunger Games Fanfic]

Body Parts (II)

Eyebrow:

When Katniss wakes up early in the morning, too early and knows it by how dark it still is outside, she sneaks away from Seneca's sleeping figure and heads to the kitchen for something to eat. She woke up hungry and is craving something sweet.

She's just opened the lights in her kitchen and finds Brutus at her fridge rummaging through it. But once she makes her entrance, he straightens up and looks embarrassed.

She raises an eyebrow at him that he pointedly ignores as he looks out the kitchen window nonchalantly.

"I'm not even going to ask. Hand over the chocolate ice cream."

He goes for the freezer immediately and snatches the ice cream tub.

By the time Seneca is awake, the two of them are passed out at the table, tub of ice cream mostly gone and the rest melted.

He raises his own eyebrow at their sleeping bodies.

Arm:

If her arm hurts, it hurts. She has no problem masking the pain and not revealing anything. She knew if she did, come hell or heaven, she has too many people that would raise a fuss and do something about it. Do something to who caused it.

But Katniss says nothing about her arm, letting how it ached and throbbed be just a thought in her head. She just forgets that Finnick has a matching pain in his own arm, and they are both casualties of the same session.

Finnick has no qualms telling the others.

Katniss finds herself surrounded by the others, and she and Finnick are treated to a harem of victors who playfully act like servants and pretend that Katniss is Cleopatra (like her stupid moniker) and Gloss begrudgingly allows Finnick use of "Marc Antony".

Her ever loving "Caesar" laughs it all off in bed that night, caressing her pained arm in deep thought.

She doesn't know what's going through his head.

Eye:

Plutarch has always had a good eye about catching things. Like how he knew there had been something very, very tangible between Seneca and Katniss even before their engagement was announced. He never saw it as superficial, never believed that it had started as anything but sincere.

He knows they didn't get attached to each other after being forced together, like some members of the rebellion thought. Nor was it ever a farce, and to the naysayers still about, he'd like to smack some sense into them and show that it was all very real between those two, thank you very much.

The truth is, this very tangible bond between the two didn't even start when Katniss was forcibly kept away from her home and made a resident of the Capitol.

It started when Katniss volunteered for her sister, and Plutarch entered the control room one of the days of the Hunger Games to see Seneca watching her avidly on screen with familiar steel blue eyes that usually radiated ice but melted under the force of the Girl on Fire's warmth.

From that moment, Plutarch understands the inescapable grasp she has on Seneca and how it culminates in a new rule that would have otherwise caused Seneca's death, had Peeta Mellark survived.

It is only because he had not, that Seneca is alive today.

He needs only one eye to see and figure all of this out. And it makes him wonder what would have happened if things had gone the other way...if Peeta had lived, would Seneca be dead? Would Katniss be as stable and have so much support, especially from those so unlikely?