Hunger Games 1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Hunger Games universe. All characters, names, and places belong to their respective owners. Originally written for the August 2014 edition of Prompts in Panem.**

* * *

_I'm in love with red. I think it's such a passionate color. Every flag of every country pretty much has red in it. It's power, there's no fence sitting with red. Either you love it or you don't. I think its blood and strength and life. - Bryan Batt_

I wasn't quite sure how I became a parlor girl. When I had signed up to serve on _The Mockingjay_, a glorious ship sailing across the seas to bring a handful of royals to the East, I had only expected to be a serving girl. I wasn't trained. Born in the slums of the country, I had been raised in a little apartment along with my mother and sister- my father too, until he died, leaving us destitute in the harsh surroundings of our birth.

Being the oldest child, I was the one who was forced to take up a job when our flour supplies ran low and the landlord started hackling us for his money. My mother- who could have made a decent living working at an apothecary or even healing locals, was too entrenched in her own grief to care for the needs of her children. So I, at just eleven years old, had taken up various jobs over the years to keep us out of the poorhouse.

It was my closest companion Gale who had directed me to the job on The Mockingjay. He too had lost his father at an early age, although his mother had kept it together and picked up a job as a laundress. We had met working as day laborers in a production house not too far from the slums, he was fourteen and I was twelve. It had been an instant friendship.

After a few years of working with the other children Gale had decided to become a sailor. He was skilled and handsome- it hadn't taken much for him to get a position on a ship. Sometimes I wished I was a boy, you had a lot more options that way. If I had been taller and bigger, I might have even pretended to be one for a job on a ship.

But instead I was stuck working with the women. Not that I was complaining, tending to the needs of the nobles was far better than sweating away in a work shop.

* * *

"You'll catch a cold if you stand out there," Sae, the ship's cook, called out to me. It was stormy outside, the rain was pouring down against The Mockingjay's deck. I could hear it even from the doorway of the kitchens- the sloshing of the water against the railings. It wasn't good, I knew that. The boys were working on the sails even now, pointlessly attempting to guide the ship in the other direction.

"What do you think will happen?" I asked Sae as the ship rocked sharply to the left, causing a few pans to clatter against the floor.

"It will subdue eventually," she wiped the sweat from her brow, "I've seen it a million times before-"

"She's right," says the mousy red headed scullery maid whose name I had never quite caught, "I don't think I've ever been on a trip that didn't have at least one big storm."

It calms me slightly. I will take their word for it, anyways. They were the ones with the experience.

"Here," says Sae, swinging around to hand me a silver platter lined with tender, roasted chicken and soft, stewed potatoes. Just looking at the food made my stomach roar. As servants, we were mainly fed salted beef and dried apples- "take this to the Prince's room."

I freeze. As a parlor maid I had never served the Prince. His Highness, Prince Peter, was the most important man on the ship and so that job was left to the prettiest girls with the most experience.

"The Prince?" I question her, "Isn't that usually Olivia's position?"

"Olivia is serving the Countess tonight, now hurry up, girl! Don't keep him waiting."

So I take the platter from her and carefully hurry down the dismal, tiny gray hallway that leads from the serving deck to the passenger rooms.

Hesitantly, I prop open the door to the Prince's room-

Much to my relief, I am alone.

The room itself is glorious, so different than the cramped bunks that the girls and I shared in the belly of the ship. Down there, even we could barely stand without bumping our heads, but up here, in the Prince's room, there is reasonable headspace for a grown man and windows! Oh, the windows! There had to be at least a half a dozen, this was probably the lightest place in the entire ship.

"Hello?" A voice questions, and I quickly snap back to reality.

I jump a little at my recognition- the blonde hair tucked carefully under his cap, the bright blue eyes. It's the Prince for sure, I've seen him around before- even encountered him once, on a night just like this.

"Your Highness," I say with a small bow as I turn to flee towards the exit.

"I didn't mean to startle you," he apologizes, annoying me. There is no reason to bother with polite conversation, he is a Prince and I am a serving girl. Why can't he just let me leave? "And it's Peeta," I give him a funny look, "a pet name my brothers used to call me when they couldn't quite pronounce their Rs, it just sort of stuck. Silly, I know."

"No," I say, my mouth turning up in the slightest of smiles, "it's not silly."

As I turn towards the door, Prin- Peeta, calls out to me, "I'm sorry, it's Katniss, right?"

Just as I open my mouth in response, a big crash, one that could never be summed up into words, filters through my brain. The sound itself is deafening, and my find myself flying back against the light blue wooden walls as the entire room turns itself upside down.

My ears ring in protest as I try to collect myself- attempt to figure out exactly what is going on. My body slams against something sharp, a lamp perhaps, as I struggle to pull myself up. I'm almost certain I'm standing on a wall, I can feel the way it croaks when I press against the door-

And that's when I'm almost certain I am going to die, the ship turns violently downward and immediately I can hear the screams- the terrified cries for god's deliverance. I myself say a silent prayer as I slump against the wall, my body splayed in the direction of the water. I can just feel my leg go through the wall as the planks crack, I can feel the hem of my undergarments catch the broken wood as I fall downward-

And then I hear it, the terrified voice of my deliverer, "Katniss!"

* * *

My vision is the first thing to come back. Spots of light blur my vision, I can see the redness under my closed eyes- the type that only comes from the burning sun.

Then it's my ears. I can hear it, the ocean, just faintly swaying in the background- and a voice! I'm not alone, at least. I can hear the person's desperate to God for my salvation.

"Oh, don't die on me." The voice rattles my body and I groan in response, "You're awake! She's awake," it cries out to nobody in particular as I feel what can only be a kiss pressed hard against my cheek, "Dear God," the voice says with firm resolution, "I am not alone, I am not alone."

I know who it is as instantly as I open my eyes. He's staring over me, those same bright blue eyes shining in my direction as I squint in his direction, the saltwater still marring my vision.

"You're-" I start, my voice shaking as he gently lifts my body upwards.

"I know. Katniss, right?" the Prince, who has very perilously instructed me to call him 'Peeta', says to me.

I nod, "What happened?" I ask, daring to give him the question that has been burning in my brain. I'm not quite sure if I even want to know the answer.

"There was a storm, do you remember? And then, I don't even know what happened. We crashed, I suppose-" his voice catches and he pulls me closer to him, "y-you're the only one I've seen since."

The first thing I do is take in my surroundings. We're on a beach, and for as far as I can see there is nothing but ocean in front of us. Wreckage too, I can see the remnants of whatever left me here. A lady's purse and scarf strewn across the sand, a slightly broken table halfway upright in the water. All indicators of the civilization that we currently lack.

"The first thing we need to do is find water," I say, my chest compressing tightly as a fit of coughing hits my body.

"Funny, last time I checked we were surrounded by it," Peeta says with a chuckle.

I give him the devil's glare as I hack up a bit of sea water, "This isn't funny, you know that, right? We're stranded god knows where doing god knows what and to the best of our knowledge everybody is dead, just as we will be if we don't find water."

"I'm sorry," he says, he tone softening as he pulls and releases clumps of sand in his hand, "I have a tendency to do that. It's better to laugh than to cry."

I shrug him off, hesitantly pulling myself up. My arms are weak, so are my legs. I can almost feel the way they must have been battered by the water, but I don't complain to Peeta, I just pull him with me as we both journey away from the beach and into the surrounding foliage.

After much protest on Peeta's behalf, we decide to take separate directions in our search, arranging to meet up on the beach when the sun starts to set.

The woods begin to evolve, and the pines are intermixed with a variety of trees, some I recognize, some completely foreign to me. At one point, I hear a noise and pull my knife, thinking I may have to defend myself, but I've only startled a rabbit. "Good to see you," I whisper quietly as Peeta journey's in another direction. If there's one rabbit, there could be hundreds just waiting to be snared.

The ground slopes down. I don't particularly like this. Valleys make me feel trapped. I want to be high, like in the hills around District 12, the name given to the section of land in which I was raised, where I can see my enemies approaching. But I have no choice but to keep going.

I worry for a moment that I'll never find water. That I will be trapped here forever to die on the beach, my family never knowing what happened. I'm about to panic when I remember the rabbit I startled earlier today. It has to drink, too. I just have to find out where.

* * *

Sunset is about to close in in and I am ill at ease. I'm disoriented which makes tracking animals harder when I need their trails to find water. And I'm still heading downhill, deeper and deeper into a valley that seems endless.

I'm hungry, too, but I don't bother attempting to figure out which of the plants around the area are edible. Instead, I use my fingernails to work on a pine tree, cutting away the outer bark and scraping off a large handful of the softer inner bark. I slowly chew the stuff as I walk along. After a month of salted meats and fried potatoes, it's a little hard to choke down. But I've eaten plenty of pine in my life. I'll adjust quickly.

Fatigue is beginning to settle on me, but it's not the usual tiredness that follows a long hike. I have to stop and rest frequently, although I know the only cure for what ails me requires continued searching. I try a new tactic - climbing a tree as high as I dare in my shaky state - to look for any signs of water. But as far as I can see in any direction, there's the same unrelenting stretch of forest and beach.

Disgruntled, I attempt to remove myself from the tree, but somehow in my disoriented state I find myself slipping half way down.

Immediately my body floods with pain as I hit the ground. I'm going to die, I think. I'm going to die.

This is not so bad here. The air is less hot, signifying evening's approach. There's a slight, sweet scent that reminds me of lilies. My fingers stroke the smooth ground, sliding easily across the top. This is an okay place to die, I think.

My fingertips make small swirling patterns in the cool, slippery earth. I love mud, I think. How many times I've tracked game with the help of its soft, readable surface. Good for bee stings, too. Mud. Mud. Mud! My eyes fly open and I dig my fingers into the earth. It is mud! My nose lifts in the air. And those are lilies! Pond lilies!

I crawl now, through the mud, dragging myself toward the scent. Five yards from where I fell, I crawl through a tangle of plants into a pond. Floating on the top, yellow flowers in bloom, are my beautiful lilies.

It's all I can do not to plunge my face into the water and gulp down as much as I can hold. But I have just enough sense left to abstain. With trembling hands, I pull open my skirts and fill them with water.

The relief is instant, the feeling of the cool, clean water flowing down my sore, salty throat is one that I will remember forever- so after drinking to my full I pull myself up and call out to my companion.

"Peeta!" I scream on the top of my lungs.

* * *

Peeta finds me not less than ten minutes later and after carefully marking the land (at my instruction, of course) he drags me back to the beach.

"We're going to need to set up a camp," I say, adjusting my body. Nothing is broken, I'm just badly bruised, but with everything that has happened my body just doesn't feel right.

"We can sleep here tonight," Peeta agrees. It's odd, really, to think about how I'm sitting here, stranded on some island with a Prince of all people.

"We don't really have much choice," I look out towards the beach, "I can already hear the hoots and howls coming from the woods. There are predators on this island, tonight we can each take watch, but in the morning we can go through the wreckage and figure out what we can salvage."

So we dig out little safe spots in the sand in an attempt to make things a little comfortable. Peeta decides that I get to sleep first, considering that I was a woman and still weary from my fall. Usually I would have argued with him, but I'm so tired that I just give in.

I don't know what tomorrow will hold, I don't know when I will finally get the chance to grieve over what has happened to us. But I do know this, Peeta and I must stick together if we are ever going to survive.

* * *

_Author's Note: This is going to be a series. Feel free to let me know what you think! Also, you can find me on tumblr at starveinsafety._


	2. Chapter 2

_"Orange? Like Effie's hair?" I say. "A bit more muted," he says. "More like sunset." - Suzanne Collins_

* * *

The sun is raging when I wake up, curled against Peeta's body in a way that could only be described as improper. We've been sleeping for a while. There is no way of telling the time, I suppose it's still early- but sunset is already long past.

Peeta's a little delirious as he awakes. He looks so different here. Hair mussed in ten different directions, his fine clothes worn by salt and sand. If you watch him doing tiny things, just rubbing his eyes or stretching a little, you wouldn't be able to tell he's a Prince. But then he rises and there is something there. The way he walks, the smooth, even tone of his voice. Everything about him seems to radiate in a way that I can never quite grasp.

But it doesn't matter anyways, because we're stuck in the middle of nowhere. Even if he ruled all of the world, a crown wasn't going to do anything for him on this island. Here we are equals, bound only by the values that would enable our survival. Peeta was strong, his arms broad and toned with muscle. He had the strength of a fully grown man, something that would surely come in handy. I was smaller, of course, but I knew the land. I understood woods and survival, I could even hunt or fish. I was used to living with little and it wouldn't take much to feed me. Peeta, on the hand, would have a hard time adjusting to this way of life.

"Good morning," Peeta says, greeting me as he pulls himself from slumber.

"Good morning," I reply. "We should probably start heading out, might as well take advantage of the light while it lasts."

Peeta nods, pulling himself up and gently dusting his body of sand.

"Where are we going to go," he says, staring out into our open environment. There are so many possible routes to take. Surely we could walk farther along the beach, try to see what was on the other end, but that would take too much energy. It was best to stick close to our supplies and remain within the parts of this island we had already assured were safe.

"Away from here. It would be best to keep near our water supply, even if we have to sleep in the trees. Somewhere we can hide until I'm stronger and we figure a way to hunt," I reply.

So we journey into the forest where we found water, carefully searching the area for things that could be made useful. I introduce Peeta to eating bark, which he-a man who has never been without finds absolutely revolting, before continuing on the path we left last night.

It's Peeta who is the first to find our water source. "Here!" he calls as he discovers one of the markers we left, "I think this is the spot."

I survey the area. Of course, if I was alone I'd love to hole up in a tree, but that's not going to happen. It could be worse though. Some of the rocks form small cavelike structures. I set my sights on one about twenty yards above our source of water. Really, I'd like to look around for a better place, but this one will have to do because Peeta insists we need to rest.

"Katniss, don't you think we should call it a day? We know we will have some protection tonight, the cave is fine. Shouldn't we be rummaging through the wreckage for something salvageable? For all we know it will rain tonight and the rummage will flow back into the ocean," he glances downwards, lowering his voice, "Besides, perhaps we should take some time to look for survivors."

I look at him incredulously.

"Survivors?" I say with a raise of my eyebrow that says, 'Are you serious?'

He looks straight at me, "Well, we survived, didn't we? Who's to say that we are the only ones. They could be stranded on the beach, just like you were, with nobody to help?" his voice changes into a plea, "Shouldn't we at least look?"

"It's a waste of time," I tell him, brushing his idea off. We certainly didn't need another mouth to feed. Anybody we 'rescued' would be weak, dehydrated, maybe even injured. They would be dead with a couple of days, even with our help.

Hadn't we been traumatized enough?

"It's not a waste of time," he says, "where would we be without each other? Having another person would be invaluable?"

"They would hog the resources," I tell him, crossing my arms. And then I remember, I had once been the person swept up on the shore, weak and frail. But Peeta had rescued me, he had cared for me even when he could have been gathering supplies or looking for water-

"We can't lose our humanity simply because we are away from civilization," Peeta winces. "There might be another human being out there, and it is our responsibility to give it a shot."

A flood of guilt washes over me. "Fine," I say, "but we can't spend too long on that effort."

* * *

The journey back to the beach takes shorter than expected. Now that we don't have to search for markers, it's a lot easier to navigate our way through the surrounding foliage.

There was a fairly decent amount of supplies that had washed up. There were a few small pieces of furniture, which could come in handy. Knick knacks, a bit of jewelry, odds and ends of rope. I even find a trunk full of clothes, both men's and women's, with a few blankets stuffed here and there. But I really hit the jackpot when I stop to investigate a shiny object laying in the sand.

It's a knife, glistening under the heat of the sun. It's the only good thing that has happened to me all day- with a knife, we might actually have a shot at salvation. We could hunt, cook, maybe even work on building a more permanent structure.

"I found something!" I call out, motioning for Peeta to come to me. He's working on another patch of debris not too far away from me.

I'm scared at first when I see him stumbling through the sand in my direction. Shaky and pale, almost sheet white as he speaks to me. There is a dead, empty look in his eyes too. An expression that made it look like everything good inside has been wiped away.

"Peeta," I say, placing a hand on his shoulder, "are you hurt?"

"No-!" he raises his voice in protest, "I just-" he breaks down against the sand, I can hear the sobs wracking his throat, "I found something, Katniss." His voice is barely above a whisper as he stares blankly towards the open ocean.

"What, what did you find?" I say, wrinkling my forehead. I try to wrack my brain for possible answers, what exactly could draw this reaction from a grown man?

"I can't tell you," he breathes.

"You can't tell me?" I raise an eyebrow, curious, "Fine, then I will take a look for myself."

"Don't!" he cries, grabbing my skirt as I stand up, "That isn't something awoman ought to see."

And then it hits me. I know what he must have found, there is no other explanation.

* * *

She's a noble, I can tell immediately by the deep satin dress that is billowing over her now cold, bloated body. Blonde, too.

"Is it?" I ask, making a silent reference to Countess Delilah, the woman who Peeta had been engaged to since he was practically a child.

"No." he interjects, "But I knew her," Peeta trails off.

"We'll have to bury her," I say, averting my eyes, "it will start smelling in a little while."

Peeta nods, sighing, "You're right, we can't leave her here. Watch the body, I'm going to see if I can find anything to dig with."

* * *

Peeta spends the rest of the daylight, nearly five hours, burying the girl. He picks a dry spot on high ground and lays her to rest, fashioning a small cross out of branches and vines. I leave him to his peace, even joining in on the simple ceremony he holds in her honor. _The search for survivors is long forgotten. _After finding that woman's body, I think even he recognized the reality of our situation.

Later that night, after our respects are paid and an arrangement of flowers are left on the grave, we bring some of the lighter salvage back to our cave, leaving the heavier items- such as the errant furniture and trunks, along the shore.

I force Peeta to go to bed before I do. He's seen more than his sensibilities can handle, and frankly, I'm scared he is going to break. But he just lies there, his eyes trained on my body as I build a sort of blind out of vines to conceal the mouth of the cave. The result is unsatisfactory, even after stuffing my 'cover' with leaves and moss it doesn't do much to conceal us from the elements. Tomorrow we could try finding some sort of lumber to work with. Now that we had a knife, everything could change for us.

"Peeta," I say. I turn over to him and brush a strand away from his face. "Thanks for finding me."

He had done more than find me in reality- he had saved me, given me whatever 'life' I would be allotted on this island.

"You would have done the same for me if you had the chance," he says.

I'm doubtful if that's true. Would I have risked my own life to save another? I was reluctant to even search for survivors earlier, and that had required minimal effort.

So I just shrug and hastily change the conversation, "Did you love her? Your Countess, Delilah, I mean?" It's probably not my place to ask, considering that she's dead- but I can't help myself.

Peeta gives a shallow laugh, "We were playmates as children, and I enjoyed her company, but I didn't love her. Losing her has been the worst part of this ordeal, though. Her and my guard

Darius were the only people I really knew. What about you? Did you lose anybody in the wreck?"

"This was my first job on a ship. I didn't know any of the crew," I bite my lip, "A friend of mine, Gale, was supposed to be a sailor on this ship, he backed out last minute. I suppose that was lucky, all things considered. I worry mostly for my family and my sister, Prim, I'll never get to see her again and she'll think me dead for the rest of her life. You don't know what that will do to her."

For the first time I really think about the devastation that will result from his journey. My family would be heartbroken, destitute too. Hopefully the company would give some reparations to them, that much I could hope for.

What would Prim do? With her mother holed up and her father dead, I was practically the only piece of family she had left.

Peeta wraps an arm around my body and I don't even bother to resist, "You don't know that," he says as I press my head into his shirt, "Who says we will be here forever?"

* * *

_Author's Note: This was a tad shorter than the previous edition, but I had to write this chapter today in order to link the other pieces I had written, so you will have to forgive the length and any errors it may include. (Pieces adapted from the book)_

_If you would like you can check me out on tumblr at starveinsafety._


	3. Chapter 3

_"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it." - Alice Walker_

_"And when I fall in love," I began, "I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes." - V.C. Andrews_

_"Indigo has a purifying, stabilizing, cleansing effect when fear, repression, and obsessions have disturbed your mental body. Indigo food vibrations are: blackberries, blue plums, blueberries, purple brocoli, beetroot, and purple grapes." - Tae Yun Kim_

Over the passing days we make out little cave comfortable. Peeta brings some of the lighter furniture, and eventually one of the larger trunks, into our little home. The bed we share is simple. I wash some of the lighter blankets I found in the river, laying them over a thin padding of collected straw. I decide to save the heavier blankets and knitted coverlets for later, it is warm on our little island and besides, folded up and bound they make for decent pillows.

As days pass into what must be a couple of months I find myself settling into a routine. I hunt, Peeta fishes. Sometimes we work on gathering plants, only touching what the animals themselves will eat.

Our life revolves around survival, nothing more, nothing less. I think it bothers Peeta, a man whose life has only revolved around pleasure, because he readily suggests we set aside two hours a day to explore the island. He claims that it is all for the purpose of discovering new food sources, but I can tell from the way his eyes light up when I agree- he's looking for some sort of adventure.

"Katniss," he tells me one morning as we putting together a measly breakfast, "I think that we should explore a bit- get out a bit, don't you agree?"

I look up at him, "Fine." I tell him. I think he's surprised at first, that I give in so easily. Usually I bicker with him long before I agree to his ideas, but I don't have the effort to uphold our dynamic right now. I too was dying to do something, anything, but this.

I manage to shed myself of my dark overdress, carefully removing the bottom portion of my undershift with a knife so that we can eventually reuse it. These days I wear mostly breeches, but the ones I found in the trunks were heavy and far too warm for the climate.

"Don't stare." I say to him as I tie off the bottom portion of the shift, fashioning some sort of half dress/half pants shift. His eyes are wide, his bright blue irises disappearing into the dark, pitch black color of his pupils.

He turns his eyes away, cheeks staining red as he swipes the knife from the top of our 'dresser' and heads out the entrance of the cave, giving me privacy.

I decide to slip on my boots. Peeta is wearing his shoes- so I can assume wherever he is bringing me must have a rocky terrain. Most days we stick to the beach or the soft, wet floor of the land that surrounded the pond. There was no real point in wearing shoes there, and besides, the last thing I needed was to wear out the only thing I had to protect my feet.

* * *

We walk along the stretch of the beach in silence. By now, most of the debris and salvage had been taken care of. We had found one more body, this one was rotten, half eaten to the point that it was barely recognizable. I had barely gotten a peek before Peeta shooed me away and taken care of it. I wasn't sure, maybe my brain was playing tricks on me- but with the remnants of a black dress and bits of red hair, I had thought for a second that it just might have been the redheaded scullery maid who had worked with me and Sae.

Other than the body, nothing else of interest had washed up on shore. I had found a Bible once, but it was barely legible, the pages had crumpled up and the ink was mainly gone- but you could still read some parts and that was entertainment enough for a few nights.

As we journey farther along the water the beach slowly changes. Where we once had long stretches of even sand there is now an arrangement of large rocks and broken shells. The forest itself was closer than ever, with its tall overbearing branches practically spilling over into the ocean.

Eventually the beach comes to a stark curve and I can tell that soon the shore will turn into swamp, something I had no interest in.

"Peeta," I say, catching up to his stride, "Shouldn't we head back? If we want to start preparing for the meal…"

The blonde haired, blue eyed boy grins and grabs my hand, pulling me farther away from the beach, "I have something to show you, I found it a few days ago when I was fishing. _Trust me_, alright?"

Peeta leads me through the edge of the forest, his arm swinging mine in glee- much like the way a child would. It's entertaining to see him so happy, so alive. There had been such little joy in our world since the wreck.

The trees in the surrounding path of foliage are odd. Their trunks and branches are bare and a nearly gray color. It's almost beautiful in a way I can't quite describe.

"What is this place?" I ask Peeta, following him as he leads me through the woods and back along the shore. I can just spot it, a little cove of bright blue water sitting directly between a towering array of rocks.

"A cove of sorts," he explains, "I just stumbled upon it one day. This whole part of the island is like this- very different than the mainland, I dare say." As we move closer I notice the way the water dips underneath the cliffs, a sort of private oasis forming under the cathedral-like ceiling of the caverns.

I toss my boots off my feet, attempting to avert my eyes as Peeta strips free of his shirt- the planes of his chest meeting the bright, warm gaze of the sun. While he is still undressing I move towards the water, wriggling my feet in the wet, mushy sand before taking the plunge and pushing myself into the ocean.

"Last one in…" I call out to Peeta before bursting underneath the water and swimming away from the shore. I manage to get pretty far out, just past the point where my toes no longer touch, before Peeta finds me, his arms wrapping around the entirety of my body and dunking me under the water against my pleas of protest.

"Hey," he says, laughing as he pulls me up. By now I probably look like a drowned rat, "I didn't know you could swim."

We had avoided the ocean for the most part. Other than the quick, private baths we had taken in the pond neither of us had bothered to explore the water. The last thing we needed was for one of us to drown.

"Well, I can. My father taught me," as my gaze meets the expanding horizon I can't help but wonder. "Do you ever think anybody will come for us?" I ask him, shifting the mood to a more serious topic. My thoughts are filled with my father, who never made it back to us. Would I be just like him? Leaving my mother and sister to fend for themselves.

Peeta hesitates before speaking, "I-I don't know, Katniss."

"I'm sure they will send ships," I say, attempting to console myself, "You're their Crown Prince, after all."

"Perhaps," Peeta says, mainly for my benefit. We never talked about it, neither of us wanted to confront the reality that we would most likely spend the rest of whatever life we had together on this island.

And then he just does it, no warning, no chance for me to think- he just presses his lips against mine, his arms wrapping around my waist as he pulls our bodies closer in the water. The kiss itself is gentle, cautious almost, not that I have much experience. The only other boy who had kissed me was Gale, and he hardly counted.

"Why-" I say, glancing downwards as I hastily draw myself away from him, "why would you do that?"

He points my chin upward, forcing me to look at him, "I don't know, I just- I wanted to. Is that so wrong?"

"Dont." I say to him, "We shouldn't, we can't do that." I can still feel him on my lips. The warmth itself- the companionship his closeness promised.

"Why?" He questions me, cautiously releasing his grip on my body. I'mpractically naked right now, my thin shift itself covered so little of my body- and wet, this close to a boy? I couldn't imagine what my mother would say.

"Because," I tell him, anxiously feeling the wet, muddy bottom of the cove with my feet. "Look at us, look at who you are. Island or not, you will always be a Crown Prince and who am I? If we are rescued, if we make it out of here alive?" I flush, anger radiating through my body, "You would never give me a second glance. I'm not as silly as you may think, I'm not going to give myself to you at your pleasure, if that's what you are assuming."

"It's _just_ a kiss, Katniss. None of that matters, look around where we are now? Do you honestly think it makes a difference if I was a Lord or a Prince or even a King? I'm not trying to sleep with you, to get you into my bed because you happen to be the only woman around," he turns briefly and stares at the water, "With everything that has happened between us, we're together for eternity."

And so this time I let him- let him kiss me and touch me, let his hands explore my bodies in ways that even I never had. He was right, after all. We might be together for eternity- and I wasn't going to deprive myself of what little companionship I could get.

* * *

_This is a little preview of what is to come! You can read and follow the full story at The Isolated Heart on , where I will be continuing this series. If you would like, feel free to hit me up on starveinsafety (my tumblr account). What did you think of the kiss? I feel like it might have been a little bit too soon? Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think!_


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Hunger Games, Adventure, Romance