DEAD IS DEAD ━━ peeta mellark

chapter three.

the puppets dance.

Glory was starved of sleep. What little she got was plagued by the faces of those lost to the carnage of the games. The nights leading up to the first glimpse of the arena were always the worst. Ten-minute nightmares on repeat. She would dream of the seventy-second games; her games. She'd wake with the taste of ash and salt on her tongue, in the air was the scent of something floral, her nose raw, and she'd lean over to her bedside table and gulp water. She'd sleep again, then wake feverish, heart thundering, feeling her own unrelenting and ruthless need to win and the expectation of it from her father. The pressure to bring them a better life was craved compared to the desolation of now.

The shadows in her room became hives for her tormentors; their bloody limbs crept out like spider legs. She wished she carved them into chunks when she had the chance. Her eyebrows pulled together in the dark.

She thought one was supposed to grow out of horridness. But it seemed she couldn't. It was deep down in her- an abyss of silence, a pool of stagnant water and rotting weeds. Once, when she had still been a child, it had just been a pit, empty and black and somewhere between then and now it had become foul. She suspected the cause wasn't just one thing but a multitude. Her mind chewing and gnawing on day-to-day life. A glare, a snide comment, a lack of love. It's always the small cruelties that get you in the end.

When her mind began to replay the whimpers of her district partner she sat upright with a sigh. The inky darkness she craved wasn't coming tonight.

Her socks were slippery on the tiles. The entire penthouse was cold and quiet, and outside, down on the street the Capitolites cheered as they placed bets on their favourite tributes, they would drink and eat until they were sick and then go and eat some more. Glory couldn't see the line odds but she could imagine Cato, the brute from Two would have the best of them all. His physicality spoke for him- broad shoulders, muscular arms, he towers over his district partner; Clove- it tells them he's here to become the next Victor. The cheering and betting will only increase as the days pass, it will spike as training scores are announced and will continue to rise and fall once the tribute interviews air, the bloodbath concludes and then lastly when there are only six tributes remaining. But it was all just a hum right now, background noise, like a rotating fan.

She thought she would only have the Avoxes for company, but she found Haymitch in the lounge room with the television on, volume low. It was the Caesar Flickerman all-night show. He was half asleep when she sat down on the opposite end of the lounge, and neither offered any acknowledgement to the other. Haymitch shifted position and ice clinked. This was the punishment for winning.

When the television lit up his face she saw him looking at her. Now she'd washed off the makeup he could see how tired she looked, which wasn't the right word, hollow was closer. She imagined she looked just as he did. Which is to say, not good. Haymitch held his drink out for her to take.

The liquid burnt on the way down. It wasn't her first taste of alcohol. On dinner dates sometimes they gave her a wine they said paired well with her meal- which she'd sip slowly between mouthfuls of food and gaps in conversation, she'd sip it to be polite but never fast enough to feel the effects she saw Haymitch suffering from. She'd never tasted this before. The bottle sitting on the table in front of them read Whiskey.

"Where's your mother?"

It was the drink that brought tears to her eyes, not his question that had caught her off guard. A cruel thing to ask considering what had happened to his own family. Once again, the punishment for winning. The rest of Haymitch's drink went down in a gulp.