Room 403 | Friday Afternoon

[district12baker]

School week over with, Peeta headed back to his room to read the few bits of mail he had managed to get from home. Mail between the districts was strictly forbidden but messages were passed directly through 12 often enough. Michetta had sent letters on a whim and they somehow reached Fandom through some sort of magic or system that Peeta didn't

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[yinandyango]

Fawn came back to the room after her classes, with red stuff all over her hands and arms from Art and a full stomach from Court, and when she opened the door with the constant trepidation that went along with never wanting to disturb your roommate and saw that Peeta was reading, she tried to be particularly unobtrusive and quiet. She did a poor imitation of a shadow shuffling over to her desk, pulling out the chair, and sitting down after setting her stuff on it. And then she pulled out her notebook as if to write something, realizing that it was super weird trying to write with someone else in the room, pushed back her chair, got up again, and started gathering her things again, and wondering if, honestly, she could be any more awkward.

Sorry, Peeta.

[yinandyango]

And, behold. More staring. A lot more staring.

"Oh, sure," said Fawn, eventually, when she finally seemed able to muster up enough disbelief to do the dry statement justice, "let's take hope and change and then make them kill each other so their parents behave and we can have a good show. That's kind of sick, Peeta."

[district12baker]

"I know that, but I don't think the people in the Capitol know that. They've never been to the districts, they don't see us as real people." Unlike his future Games partner, Peeta did have a grip on what the average Capitol citizen must have thought. "The government plays it off like playing in the Games is an honor. They only know what is put on the television screen."

"That's not to say I approve or that none of them understand what's going on," Peeta said. "I just find it hard to believe that the entire population of the Capitol would let the Games keep going if they knew what was really happening."

Ever the optimist, yep.

[yinandyango]

Did he really? Fawn realized she almost wished she could believe something like that, too. Granted, she didn't know anything about his world except for what he was telling her now, but she knew, having grown up the way she did, that people could turn a blind eye to a lot of really terrible things. Especially when they lived in fear.

For a second, as her thoughts started to delve deeper and deeper with each connected though, her body twitched, muscles tightening, one knee kicking up, and she knew that, if Peeta caught it, he might have seen her contorted witch's face, but she forced it down before it turned into anything more and he breathed out nice and slow to settle down.

Maybe she should have just kept going out the door instead of sitting down.

"You should make them all cupcakes," she suggested, "and poison them all. If there's no one to watch the Games, then would there still be one?"

[district12baker]

Peeta smiled a little sadly. "I think killing them all would only start a cycle of something worse. Besides, I'm not that guy. I'm not trying to say that I wouldn't kill if I got picked to play in the Games...I just wouldn't take out a whole bunch of people without sitting down and talking to them first."

[yinandyango]

"Talking...usually doesn't work very well in a war," Fawn said, returning Peeta's small smile, because, really, that's what it was. A war against themselves, a war against their minds. She started to wonder how she would do if she was chosen for something like Peeta's Games, and she figured she wouldn't do very well at all. She wondered if how that would work, too, if they chose one boy and one girl. If they drew her name, they'd have both in one package. She started twisting her fingers in her hand, tightly, pulling on them slightly.

"And I take it if you were chosen and you did something like kill yourself to get out of it, there'd be repercussions for that, too."

[district12baker]

"I would think you would be under very, very close supervision. I don't know the details for sure, the Capitol is pretty hush hush about it," Peeta explained. "Besides, I wouldn't kill myself. I'd probably try to help out the other person from my district."

He really couldn't think of any girl in District 12 that he'd be willing to kill, even if his own life was on the line.

"Though I'm sure you must think that's silly."

[yinandyango]

"No," Fawn said, shaking her head. "I don't think it's silly. Pointless, maybe, in the long run, but definitely not silly. I think if I could help, I'd probably do the same. I know I definitely couldn't kill someone, though."

[district12baker]

"I used to think I wouldn't be able to," Peeta admitted. "But I've seen enough of the Games to know that everybody ends up doing it. Or trying, anyway."

[yinandyango]

"I don't know," Fawn said. "Maybe I haven't seen enough,"--and she was okay with that--"but I still can't see me being able to."

She could see plenty of other gruesome outcomes for herself if she was inexplicably thrown into the Games, but they all centered around her complete inability to kill...and everyone else's inevitable ability to do it.

[district12baker]

"Luckily it's not something you have to worry about," Peeta said, smiling again. "And I only have three more Reapings to go before I'm in the clear."

Of course the older he got the more likely his chance of being chosen but he wasn't about to mention that.