He knows her voice, of course, would even if he hadn't spent most of the last few days trying to win her over into an alliance. Everyone in Panem's seen Katniss Evederdeen this and Peeta Mellark that for the past year, even if Peeta's the talker of the two. And Katniss, more than anything or anyone else, more even than his own survival, is his mission here.
But there's something wrong. This isn't Katniss as he expected to see her. She's not wearing the thin jumpsuit he'd dressed in this morning, and she doesn't have the just-groomed perfection in her appearance that anyone associated with the Games learns to recognize. Not like Finnick, with his hair artfully tousled though it may only last moments in the arena.
This is wrong, a sense of wrongness that shifts, subtly, in the world around them, that makes a fear he rarely feels for his own sake grip at his chest. Why is he here, not in the Games? Where is here?
He's suddenly unsettled, unsure of his surroundings and himself, and that gets you killed in the arena. Or in the Capitol.
"Katniss." His voice is wary, and though the tension in him relaxes just a fraction, he keeps his arm, with Haymitch's bangle, raised. There's something strange in her voice, something very different from any words she's ever spoken to him before.
no subject
He knows her voice, of course, would even if he hadn't spent most of the last few days trying to win her over into an alliance. Everyone in Panem's seen Katniss Evederdeen this and Peeta Mellark that for the past year, even if Peeta's the talker of the two. And Katniss, more than anything or anyone else, more even than his own survival, is his mission here.
But there's something wrong. This isn't Katniss as he expected to see her. She's not wearing the thin jumpsuit he'd dressed in this morning, and she doesn't have the just-groomed perfection in her appearance that anyone associated with the Games learns to recognize. Not like Finnick, with his hair artfully tousled though it may only last moments in the arena.
This is wrong, a sense of wrongness that shifts, subtly, in the world around them, that makes a fear he rarely feels for his own sake grip at his chest. Why is he here, not in the Games? Where is here?
He's suddenly unsettled, unsure of his surroundings and himself, and that gets you killed in the arena. Or in the Capitol.
"Katniss." His voice is wary, and though the tension in him relaxes just a fraction, he keeps his arm, with Haymitch's bangle, raised. There's something strange in her voice, something very different from any words she's ever spoken to him before.
"What's going on?"