First Entrance

[real_or_notreal]

It only takes one step.

To know this is not his house in Victor's Village.
Not any place found in District 12.
Not Seam or Merchant or Hob.






Peeta's not one of the best people for random surprise locations.
Especially after The Capital & The Arena & Victor's Village.



[Tiny!Victor Tag: Peeta Mellark
Everyone's thread to take place after Gale's.]

Comments

[real_or_notreal]

District 12 had security. Lax, and never above having a blind-eye for certain things, but it was always there. This room was far nicer than most of the ones in the District just by being clean and so well set up.

Before one started noticing just how many people were eating and drinking and carrying on without a care in the world. That was The Capitol. Not the District. And that would mean a lot more security.




Whether it was seen or not. And wasn't it so much easier to control people by not showing your strength?

"Convenient." Is pitched just a shades above expectant annoyance.

[setsthetrap]

Gale lets out a wry laugh.

"Yeah."

Because it is weirdly convenient.

The only thing that keeps Gale from heading back to District 12 right away, maybe to warn his family, maybe to warn someone is ... well, Katniss.

The fact that he's seen her here and she assured him that he wasn't going insane, and that this wasn't the Capitol is all he's got to go on right now.

He's still deliberating whether or not that's good enough. But until then ...

"In any case, it's definitely not District 12. And it's not the Capitol."

[real_or_notreal]

Peeta's expression, very very subtly, with a flick of his blue eyes back to Gale, questions the validity and sanity of that statement.

Especially from someone who hadn't been to The Capitol.

It wasn't as though there'd ever been a shortage in crazy in their district. Truly starved, grief stricken, people had a tendency to veer often enough in that direction.

Gale didn't look someone anywhere near crazy.
Settling toward something else, closer to home.



"Why are you still here?"




Why were they both there to begin with?

[setsthetrap]

Gale would like to think he isn't crazy; and even still, he's holding onto the belief that Katniss was real, that this - as bizarre and messed up as it is - is all real too.

In any case. That's a good question, one Gale is still trying to figure out himself - even as they speak.

He shrugs.

"I guess I'm curious," he answers. "I'm trying to figure out if you can be bored in a hallucination."

[real_or_notreal]

There's a twist to his mouth. Deprecatingly sarcastic.
"I don't think you'd hallucinate me by choice."


Peeta was still looking across the room.

"Nothing this big is ever free."

[setsthetrap]

Gale looks at Peeta for a moment, his expression serious.

Then a smile breaks out and he shakes his head.

"Yeah. You know what, you're right."

Another point of proof that this isn't a hallucination, then. He isn't sure he's relieved by that.


"No," he agrees, before he reluctantly adds, "you get a tab at the ... bar."

[real_or_notreal]

That gets a look back.

Very what?

[setsthetrap]

Gale gives Peeta a questioning look for clarification.

"What?"

[real_or_notreal]

"A tab."

For paying. Later.

[setsthetrap]

Oh.

"Yeah," Gale says, nodding. "It makes me uncomfortable, the way they do things here, but I'm sure the bar won't reject a pay-as-you-go plan either."

[real_or_notreal]

"You sound very-" And there's a hesitation for a change in expression rather focused on Gale. "-sure of this place for someone who's only been here a few hours."


Not calm for acceptably informative.

[setsthetrap]

"I had a ... convincing source of information," Gale admits.

He really hoped he wouldn't have to bring her up in this conversation, but ... maybe it's inevitable.

[real_or_notreal]

"How convenient." And not at all convincing to hear. Maybe he's the one hallucinating all of this. Though why he'd ever pick Gale either.


Except maybe as a point to whole lunacy.

[setsthetrap]

Convenient?

That's what he says?

Gale looks at Peeta, for a moment deliberating keeping the truth from him.

But there's a part of him that just wants to see the expression on his face. It's immature, and even falls along the lines of 'asshole' but -

"Yeah. You might know her."

[real_or_notreal]

And Peeta chest, like his face seizes, even when he forces himself to hold still. They know a lot of different girls in common. A lot of them. They went through a lot of years of school only two years off from each other. They live in the same very tiny, sparsely populated, never to be traveled from, District.





Why should it matter that only one comes to mind.

[setsthetrap]

Because she's the one who matters.

That much is clear.

In fact, Gale doesn't even have to say anything else because he knows Peeta understands who he's referring to.

[real_or_notreal]

Here. They both come here.

Because illegal, publicly known and sanctioned trip to the woods, outings aren't enough. They both come here. He'd really like to wipe what he's interpreting as silent smugness off the face in front of him.

All of it helps to remind him, he's really not anything to them.


It's frosty, even when he forces himself. "Katniss was here."

[setsthetrap]

Please. Peeta's the one who got to spend lonely, rainy, stormy nights in caves with Gale's best friend.

He's the one she kissed over and over again, the one she ran into the Cornucopia for, if only to retrieve a tiny syringe of medicine that wasn't even guaranteed to save his life.

He knows he had a duty to fulfill back home, taking care of Prim and Mrs Everdeen; and he'd be scared shitless, but it should have been him out there in the Games.



"Yeah. She was here. She's been here longer than you and I. A few weeks, she told me."

[real_or_notreal]

His brow furrowed.


He hates that his first thought -- the very first one -- is that would mean that either Gale knew before finding Milliways, or Katniss hadn't told either of them. But Gale's mistrust of Milliways, even with his saying it wasn't crazy, leaned to the later.


And he hated feeling he was in the same boat with Gale the next second after hating him for being here with her.
She had a magnanimous power for breaking down his logic.







"She's gone now?"
The frown is more curve than line. He's trying to be logical.

[setsthetrap]

He nods.

He's quickly learning that logic and this place don't exactly mesh. If anything, he's been forced to hang his logic up by the coat-racks because doing otherwise only frustrates him.


"Yeah," he answers. "She went back home. I had to stay here, though. Just to see if I hadn't hallucinated this whole thing."

[real_or_notreal]

Peeta is trying to shove away that Gale even saw her. It's a Sunday, anyway. Which works mostly not at all when combine with the relief (and regret) that she isn't here. It isn't as though he hasn't half-mastered avoiding her while she's living right next to him.




A dark neutral is really where he's settling.


"What'd she think of it?"

[setsthetrap]

"Same as us, I think," he says slowly. "Thought she was going crazy. She looks like she's had time to get used to it though."

The faintest of smiles quirks at his lips.

"She was having breakfast when I first saw her."

[real_or_notreal]

She was eating the food. The food on the tabs. In the random, impossible building, in their district and no where. It's so innocuous, and rebellious, so...

So Katniss.




Had been here a while.

Peeta that over, looking at the room.
"Then we may be stuck with this for a while."

[setsthetrap]

"Yeah," he agrees. "Looks like."

Gale isn't sure how he feels about that right now.

But he's wondering about Peeta.

"You going be okay with that?"

[real_or_notreal]

His answer is bitter, but quiet, and not directed at Gale. It's directed at several things, several situations in his life, that don't all preclude Gale, but it's not at Gale.


"Never mattered before."

And it wouldn't, even if he wasn't, again.