Hey Guys!

First off, thank you so much for the positive response to the Intro Chappie! So many of you have reviewed, followed and favourited.

Here is the next chapter, and going forward I aim to update weekly, usually on a Sunday.

Hope y'all enjoy!

Xo

Disclaimer: This is a just for fun, not for profit piece of fan fiction. The characters belong to Suzanne Collins, I am merely borrowing them for a bit, and will return them all in one piece (hopefully!) :-)

Katniss almost collapsed into her seat on the train, earning her some strange looks from the other passengers in the compartment. She was oblivious to those looks, however, as her head was swimming with everything that had happened that morning.

Soon enough the train began pulling out of Capitol station and began speeding its way through the country on its way to Seam. The gentle hum of the tracks, and the soft rocking motion of the train combined with the 4am start had Katniss drifting off into a fractured sleep.

She awoke in the pouring rain, cold, tired and hungry. A few measly coins jingling in her sodden pocket. Not enough to buy even a fraction of the food they needed. People hurried about their business around her, moving quickly so as to avoid the rain. She was in the wealthier part of town, the part of town they so rarely came to now that her father was….

She swallowed the lump in her throat as she looked around for a brief shelter from the rain. Spying the awning hanging over a neat, but understandably empty patio area outside the bakery, she made her way over to stop, regroup and figure out what to do next.

Her father was gone. Dead. Not coming back. Never again would he accompany her to the pool before the day had even started. Never again would they sing nonsense songs together. Never again would he sit and watch her train. Never again would he….

Her hand clamped over her mouth as if it could prevent the sob from escaping. Her father was dead, killed in a car accident. Her mother had shut herself off from the world, from everyone, even from her own daughters. Her younger sister Prim was a growing girl; she needed food, new clothes, and new shoes. Things that the meagre amount in her pocket would never cover.

That was why she was were, in the merchant part of town, swallowing her pride she had rounded up several of their possessions that might be worth something, hoping that someone would be willing to trade with her so that they might survive another day…and then maybe, just maybe, she could get her mother to come to her senses, return to her nursing job and get them back on their feet as a family.

So far she had had no luck, shopkeepers took one look at her bedraggled state, soaking wet from the rain, and shooed her right back out of the door, leaving her with no chance to make a trade. A sympathetic passer by had mistaken her for a beggar and flung a few coins at her, the same coins that jingled in her pocket.

The tears that she had kept locked away for so long began pricking at the corner of her eyes, she had failed. She couldn't take care of her own family. But what more could she do, she was only eleven, such responsibility was never meant to fall upon her shoulders at such an age. Her father was not supposed to die, her mother was not supposed to be too consumed in her grief to see her daughters slowly starving in front of her….

"Hey! What do you think you are doing?!" A shrill voice cuts across her reverie "Get away you piece of scum!"

The baker's wife's head had appeared out of their doorway, as she yelled for Katniss to move, her arms moving emphatically to further support her statement.

"Get away from here! We don't do charity! Take your begging to someone who cares!"

Katniss simply stared, as indifferently as she could muster, at the shrill woman as she continued to berate Katniss as a filthy beggar. It was only as her eyes caught movement inside the bakery and she spotted Peeta Mellark, the baker's son, the blonde haired, popular boy in her class at school, staring pityingly at the unfolding scene that the façade broke. Someone from school knew what she had been reduced to, surely he would tell everyone...

Katniss turned and fled down the alleyway at the side of the bakery, escaping from the harsh shrieks of Mrs Mellark, and the pitying gaze of Peeta. Hiding in a recessed doorway she broke down, crouching on the wet ground she was too tired to move, too tired to think, too tired to stop the tears streaming down her face or prevent the sounds of her sobs echoing into the afternoon.

So caught up was she in her desolation that Katniss did not notice the door slowly open, and with furtive glance behind him, Peeta Mellark slipped out, almost tripping over the crumpled body of the broken girl.

"Katniss...Katniss?" he said gaining no response.

Stooping down to her level he put his hand on her shoulder and gently raised her face to his.

"Katniss. This is for you." He said simply. Handing her a Mellark's bakery bag. "Take it. Please. Take it and go before my mother comes."

The pleading tone she heard focused her attention, and she looked in the bag. There were two hearty loaves of bread, a slab of cheese, and tucked into the corner were bank notes. She immediately balked.

"Don't!" He cut her off "Please take it. I am so sorry about your father, he was always very nice to me and put some coins in my jar"

"Peeta!" His mother's shrill voice interrupted the moment.

"Please, take it. Take it and go, quickly." He urged, dragging her to her feet and pushing her back out into the rain. "GO!"

"Peeta! What do you think..." His mother, carrying flour and a rolling pin, stopped at the sight of her son handing over a bag of bakery goods to Katniss. "How DARE you?!"

"Katniss, go!" Peeta urged giving her one more push and stepping between her and his mother.

Katniss' mind finally recognised the command and she began to move, picking up speed to get out of the alley and away with the precious bundle in her arms. She stopped at the top of the alley, turning to see Peeta one last time.

"You foolish boy!" she heard his mother cry, and Katniss had turned just at the right moment to witness Mrs Mellark land a blow across Peeta's face with the end of the rolling pin.

She gasped as he uttered not one single sound, and she fled.

"Next stop Seam!" The conductor's voice boomed over the tannoy, startling Katniss awake.

She had not dreamt about the day that Peeta saved her family for a long time. Usually her dreams were filled with the day her father died, witnessing the moment the drunk driver veered across his lane and into her father's car, forcing it off of the road and into the rocky gulley below.

The bread and cheese that Peeta had given her that day, lasted them a week, a week in which her mother, shocked by her eldest daughter's appearance that very day, had come to her senses. The money had helped too, just tiding them over, and most importantly of all, it had given Katniss hope that life could go on without her father, it would never be the same and it would never stop hurting, but she could go on.

And go on she had. It was always a dream between her and her father for Katniss to win a swimming medal, so she pressed on with her training diligently, and when money issues prevented her from taking part in bigger competitions that would gain her more notice, she simply shrugged and quietly pushed her dream aside in order to focus on helping Prim be the best that she could be. She never stopped swimming though. When she turned 16 she took a job at a local diner, Sae's, and began contributing to the household herself, supplementing her mother's meagre nursing income and putting her tips aside in a jar labelled 'Prim's college fund' so that her sister could pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.

In all of this swimming became her escape. Cutting so effortlessly through the water allowed her to clear her mind, to breathe, to free herself from being Katniss Everdeen the girl with no father and no prospects, working herself to the bone for those she loved. Swimming allowed her to just be, and she loved that feeling.

This morning's meeting with Haymitch Abernathy, the reclusive coach of the District 12 team, had come as quite a shock to her. Cinna, her local swimming coach, had called her aside and said that Abernathy wanted to meet with her. Katniss had immediately laughed it off as some kind of prank; it took Cinna and his assistant Portia the majority of the afternoon to convince her that it was legitimate.

What Haymitch was offering her also seemed too good to be true. Things like this never happened to her, or her family. The sensible level headed Katniss, thought logically that it would be too much upheaval at this point in Prim's school year to move to Capitol, but at the same time she would receive a higher standard of education there and probably be in a better position to get a good scholarship to study medicine.

In all the weighing up of the pros and cons, not once did Katniss actually stop and think what it could mean for herself. That part of her that held out hope for herself had been firmly shut away for too long. Katniss was too concerned with the implications of this for her family; would Prim even want to move? Could her mother even be convinced away?

Her head was buzzing as she stepped off of the train at the end of the line. Seam station was its usual dingy self; nothing had changed, despite and offer that had turned her world upside down.

"Hey! Catnip!" There was only one person in the world that would dare use that name.

"Gale? Shouldn't you be at work?" she ambled over to greet the tall, lean, brooding man that was her best friend.

"I swapped shifts after I heard on the grapevine that someone had a meeting in Capitol with some big shot swimming coach." He eyed her knowingly.

"The grapevine?"

"Prim told Rory, Rory told my mum, and mum told me" His tone held a slight accusation. He resented receiving the news third or fourth hand.

"Uuurgh! I should have made Prim swear to secrecy. I did not want anyone knowing in case it amounted to nothing. That way I wouldn't have to deal with this."

"This being?"

"You. Here. All expectant. The expectations of everyone. I do not want to have to disappoint them." She sighed.

"So I take it the meeting did not go well?"

"What? No, it did go well. At least, I think so…maybe….oh I don't know! I have a lot to think about. Haymitch Abernathy says that the Elite pool in Capitol will sponsor my training…"

"What?! Catnip that's great news!" Gale exclaimed, going to catch his friend in a celebratory hug.

"Wait, Gale. I would need to move there. They would cover my training costs; provide us with a place to live and a living allowance for me and Prim and my mother. But I would be leaving Seam."

"Oh."

"Yeah. But Abernathy reckons that I have a shot at the Panem Games if I do it…but is it too late in the school year to move Prim all that way? And you know what my mum is like. I doubt I could convince her to leave Seam, given my dad. And then there is you, and the rest of the Hawthornes…." She trailed off and looked over at Gale who was staring at her and hooting with laughter. "I do not see what is so funny about this, Gale."

"The situation isn't funny Catnip, you are. Here you have been handed a golden opportunity and you are not even thinking about yourself and what it could mean for you. Anyone else would be jumping at this chance, and here you are slipping one little line in about the Panem Games, before going off and thinking about everyone else again. You are just so you."

"Gale, don't start, I have too much to consider to put up with you taking the piss too."

"I'm not Catnip. This is a great offer, and I think you should go for it. Now come on, I have the car so you can tell me more about it all on the way home."

In silence they began heading out of the station and into the car park. Katniss was debating telling Gale about the blast from the past she had had running into Peeta Mellark at the Elite pools, but she held her tongue, she wanted to keep that for herself, she did not want to share her brief interaction with him with anyone else just yet.

The ride home was filled with Katniss and Gale bickering back and forth about the offer and why she should or should not take it. Gale waited until she was getting out of the car before playing his trump card though.

"Katniss." He used her full name to get her attention. "Your dad would have wanted you to take this, you know that, right?"

Katniss opened her mouth, and for a moment Gale thought he was about to get a verbal lashing from her sharp tongue, but instead she sighed, and looked at the ground.

"I know." She said softly. "See you later Gale. I will call you and let you know what I decide once I have talked it over with Prim. And my mother."

Turning away and walking up the short path to her house, Katniss thought about what Gale had said. It was the one thing she had purposefully avoided thinking about, for the sole reason that she would have accepted Haymitch's offer on the spot. Something like this is exactly what her father would have wanted for her. Sighing, she unlocked the front door and headed inside to wait for Prim to return from school and her mum to return from work before she sat down and had a long talk with both of them.