Catching Fire - Peeta's POV

Chapter Nine - Fairies and Everdeens

Watching Mrs Everdeen and Prim work is like watching fairies come to life. From the books that I've heard from school, their eyes glisten and they are somehow scurried to their own world. The doctors, who crush herbs and clear the dining room table, are forbidden to only acknowledging the patient and themselves. The rest of us can wait.

The closets are lined with various coloured herbs and liquids in tiny bottles. Gale moans and whimpers, until Mrs Everdeen finally pulls out a syringe and a medium sized bottle of clear liquid. I'm guessing it's morphling, the sedation that is most commonly used in District 6. She shakily fills the syringe with an amount of the liquid, before setting the bottle aside and plunging the syringe into one of Gale's scars. He relaxes, and quickly falls into unconsiousness. I manage to catch Haymitch pouring the morphling into one of his intricately designed flasks, but I don't try to stop him from sauntering away with it, as this magic that the blonde Everdeens can do is fascinating.

The only people that seem worthy of supporting Gale are the Everdeens. Even though his friend from the mines shows up, and even his family, Katniss secures the chair next to the table as her own. It seemed rude to leave the house, when perhaps a dying patient was about to do - something - anything. So we made ourselves comfortable, drank tea, and talked on the sofas in an adjacent room to the dining room. Gale's friend Thom and I seemed to have a lot to talk about.

Apparently, when Katniss was reaped for the Games, Thom was the only one who really knew how he felt. Of course, Gale had to keep strong for Prim, otherwise she would shatter apart as easily as glass. But once he had finished talking to the Everdeens, and gotten the fresh meat in their pots, ready for supper, he confined himself to Thom.

They were friends from school, and Thom was always like Delly, in a way. Delly is really the only person who not only sees me as broken, but also sees the pieces that she can fit back together. Thom listened to Gale in the woods, as he ranted off about the Capitol more than ever, now that one of his best friends was in the Games herself. But mostly, he just sat on a squishy piece of moss, staring into a landscape of trees, before hurrying back to the district when the howl of a wild dog sent them. Thom actually picked up a few bits of hunting skills there, as Gale rarely did so, and he seemed to have a knack for it.

When the house has emptied of all but 6 from a previous 13, Thom and I had resorted to watching the fireplace. It does seem tedious, but I think of it as a sort of studying, for my "unfinished" painting of Maryar. Gale lies unconscious on the dining room table, Mrs Everdeen has gone upstairs to lie down, Prim clears and organizes the herbs, and Katniss strokes Gale's cold hand gently.

Hearing a squeak from the floorboards above me, I am immediately pulled back into the arena. Where any unnatural sound shouldn't be questioned, just feared. I pull Thom by his arm, and sneak out through the backdoor, which leads to a path that then further leads us to the central Victor's Village. Thom doesn't question this, he just wildly follows. My breathing is doubled in time but no oxygen is drawn in. Why? I am breathing but I am not. I loop in between the different houses, until I find a comfortable spot behind the dumpster of one of the unused houses. Once I have fashioned a spear from a thrown away, slender piece of wood, half eaten tring, and a jagged rock, Thom finally asks what happened.

"You didn't hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Someone was sneaking around upstairs. They were going to come and kill us!" I whisper back, confused as to how he doesn't understand.

"No, but I did hear Mrs Everdeen moving from her room to the bathroom, probably quietly to avoid waking up Gale." He raises one eyebrow at me, probably thinking I am delusional. But he hasn't been in the arena, and I have.

"Obviously it wasn't. Why did she go upstairs, huh? I bet she has a weapon up there, and was coming downstairs to finish us off! We need to go back! We need to get Katniss and Prim and Gale!" I am about to dash back through the snow, but Thom snatches the spear from me, and drops it lamely into the snow. Lunging back for it, Thom stops me by holding out a foot, which causes me to trip and land in the plush snow.

"Calm down!" And then out of nowhere, I start trembling. Trembling not only from my fingers, which are now turning blue, but from the thought of just the arena. Once I seem to have reduced the trembling to a small shake, and Thom has dismantled the spear, he sits down next to me.

"The arena messed you up real bad, huh?" I don't reply verbally. I just nod my head agreeingly.

"Messes everyone up real bad." Is all I say.

Sitting in the snow is actually quite tranquil. The heavy downfall has become light, and the absence of wind makes the air a tolerable temperature. The snow is pristine white, untouched, beautiful. Thom went inside and got us blankets to wrap around myself, and he has convinced me for now that I am in District 12, not the deadly arena.

When the sun is nearing the horizon, footsteps sound from a few houses over. Instinctively, I stumble behind the dumpster to provide a better hiding spot, but I am quickly brought back to my senses, and instead I become intrigued at whose footsteps they are.

Not much of the conversation is teligable. Only murmurs and the constant shovelling of snow is apparent.

Later, when the snow has completely stopped falling, the voices become understandable.

"Something has changed since the last Games. I can feel it." That voice sounds mature, like they have lived 100 years and has seen all that life has to offer. But it is also squeaky, young and fresh.

"What? What can you see." That particular voice I know. The entirety of Panem knows it. This conversation is between Prim and Katniss.

"Hope." Hope? Has there been hope since the last Games? Was the last Games different than the other ones?

"You know everything I do comes back to you and mum, right?"

"I know, but you don't need to worry about us anymore. We can take care of ourselves." And then I catch a glimpse as the two embrace, before walking inside with a full bucket of snow.