bigapplesauce | Rude Awakening [CLOSED]

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Rude Awakening [CLOSED]

Peeta jerks awake in the dark hours of the morning, falling out of a nightmare that has become all too familiar and into the gloom of his base quarters. He fumbles for the bedside lamp as he shifts to sit on the edge of the bed, running one hand over his face as the other finally finds the lamp switch. Sitting in the warm circle of light, he tries to push away the dream - the memories - of Daine dying in the Games.

A glance at the clock on the nightstand causes him to wince. It is bitterly early, but there isn't any possibility of him getting more sleep tonight, not with Daine's death fresh in his mind. He knows it was just a nightmare, has already lived through waking from that horror to find Daine alive and well and at his side. Having relived in raw detail, however, it's difficult for him to let it go. What he wants - what he needs - is to find Daine, to see for himself that she's okay. He almost convinces himself that he could slip down the hall and peek into her room without waking her or the dogs, but he refuses to risk it. There is no reason for her to lose sleep over his troubles.

Instead, he rises and dresses, knowing that the sooner he finds something to occupy his mind, the better. It's early yet, even for bakers, but he decides to head to the kitchens, purposefully taking a route that keeps him away from Daine's room.

After puttering around aimlessly for a little while, checking the stock and pondering recipes using some of the new ingredients he's discovered in this world, he decides to start on the day's bread. The mindless routine helps calm his anxiety, drawing him into the steadying, soothing rhythm of the task. For a while, he forgets the terror that woke him.

Then, as he is kneading some uncooperative dough, he has a flash of hard, unyielding dirt beneath his hands. For a split second, he feels as if the wind has been knocked out of him. Breathing through the sudden pain in his chest, he kneads more purposefully, distracting himself by mentally reciting every recipe he can remember. Daine is fine, he tells himself angrily. He feels better by the time some of the other kitchen staff appear, but he can't help but glance up every time he catches sight of someone entering the cafeteria.

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Peeta returns Quickbeak's nod before she flies off, amazed at the fact that he just had a conversation with a crow.

He didn't miss Sarge's whine, and he's tearing off a hunk of bread for him when Daine relays Quickbeak's thanks - and Peeta's new name. The boy with the bread echoes in his mind and for the space of a heartbeat he is that boy again, tossing burned bread to a starving girl. He can feel the cool rain on his swelling cheek, smell the scent of damp earth mingling with that of the bakery. Then he blinks, and with only a slight hesitation to indicate his inner thoughts, hands the bread to Daine.

"That's me," he says, a wry smile on his lips. He tears off another bit of bread and offers it to Molly, who takes it gently from his fingers. "Should I leave any for the others?" he asks Daine, waving a hand in the direction Quickbeak took.

Daine hesitates as well before taking the bread, feeling as if she's just missed something important, but unable to guess what it might have been. Sarge shifts in place and whines again - an improvement over the Sarge of a few months ago, who would have just gone for it - and Daine makes him sit before handing it over.

"I'm sure they'd appreciate it," Daine says. She doesn't add that it would solidify his nickname. She's a little concerned that he doesn't like it. Well, it's not as if any of the crows are going to call him anything aloud, in words he'd understand, so perhaps it doesn't matter.

Noticing Daine's hesitation, Peeta gives her a small, but genuine, smile. There is no way she could know what just happened, but there's no reason for it to upset the mood of their excursion.

He tears off a larger hunk of the loaf before wrapping the rest and tucking it back in his bag. "Where should I leave it?" he asks, already breaking the bread into smaller chunks.

Daine's not entirely convinced, but she also doesn't want to press the issue. She invited Peeta along so he could get some fresh air and meet more of her friends, not so she could pester him about things he'd rather not discuss.

"Over here," she advises, leading him a ways off the path. She's yet to get caught feeding animals, in part because she knows it's frowned upon and tries to be discreet. The two-legger paths aren't especially safe places for the People to be, anyway - too many bikes and skateboards and other wheeled contraptions that could crush anyone caught unawares. Daine pauses in a little clearing and gestures around. "Here's all right." The flock has followed them, and the branches above them are thick with glossy black bodies and bright, curious eyes.

As Peeta follows Daine, he's aware of the flock following them both. It's a strange feeling, being aware of animals following you, and despite knowing that they're friends of Daine's, he can't help but feel a thrill of unease when he looks up to find the trees full of birds.

It's a fleeting sensation, though, quickly replaced by a sense of wonder. The effect of feathers shining amidst the branches is beautiful. He wants to stop and sketch them, but he knows Daine has other charges to check on, and he doubts the crows would hang around long enough for him to draw the scene anyway. He'll have to draw it from memory, which won't be difficult - it's a vivid image.

Peeta stops where Daine indicates and begins tossing breadcrumbs around the area. He tears the hunk of bread in half and hands part of it to Daine, so that she can help.

Daine smiles when Peeta hands her a chunk of the bread, then starts to tear it into manageable pieces. Rather than toss them to the ground, though, she flicks them up into the air. There's no need to aim anywhere in particular; the crows are quick, and they dart through the branches to catch the morsels before they hit the ground. Sarge tracks each piece of bread with his eyes, and sighs heavily when he realizes none are being dropped.

"You've already had some," Daine reminds him, speaking aloud for Peeta's benefit. Sarge just gives her a put-upon look.

Noticing what Daine is doing, Peeta does the same with the last few pieces of bread he has and tosses them into the air. He dusts his hands on his pants as the birds swoop above them.

He gives Sarge's head a rub and shifts his bag on his shoulder. "Where to now?" he asks Daine, throwing a parting wave at the trees.

Daine calls a silent farewell to the birds, then shifts her focus to the Ramble, checking for any waiting animals. There are three today - a squirrel with an injured tail, a goose with a limp, and a stray dog that seems to have picked up some kind of cough. "The Ramble," she says, heading back to the path at a more purposeful pace than before. "Feels like I have some work to do." She glances over at Peeta and adds, "At least you'll be able to do some sketching."

Peeta frowns in concern as they regain the path. "Nothing serious, I hope?" As much as he would like the opportunity to sketch the crows while they are still so fresh in his mind - and to watch Daine work - he knows that getting it means injured animals.

"No, nothing too terrible," she says reassuringly. Most of the creatures who meet her in the Ramble aren't in very bad shape, by virtue of the fact that they can make it there at all. "Only three today. That's not bad at all compared to how it was when I first got here."

At the brisk pace Daine's set, it doesn't take too long to reach the Ramble. The goose is closest, and Daine leads Peeta some ways off the path until she finds the bird behind a tree, up the hill from the lake.

The goose lets out a soft, alarmed hiss at the sight of Peeta and the dogs, but Daine speaks to it soothingly. "It's all right. They're friends. No one's going to hurt you." She passes Peeta Sarge's leash, then picks her way closer to the goose and sits down a few feet away from it. "Why don't you let me have a look?"

Just keep those dogs back, the goose requests, giving Sarge in particular a mistrustful look. Then it rises to its feet and crosses to Daine, limping noticeably. Daine winces in sympathy, then gently gathers the bird into her lap.

She glances back at Peeta as she strokes the bird's neck feathers. "It'll be a little while."

Peeta winces slightly too as the goose makes its way to Daine, wondering what caused its injury. "We'll be close by," he tells Daine.

Leashes in hand, he steps over to a nearby tree, close enough to watch Daine but far enough away to ease the goose's visible agitation about the dogs. Lowering himself to the ground, he leans against the tree trunk and waits for Sarge and Molly to settle on either side of him. Though he knows they won't run off, he makes the effort to secure their leashes under his bag before pulling out his sketchbook.

He watches Daine for a few minutes, then starts sketching the crows, soon losing himself in the sketch.

The goose can't tell her what it stepped on, but Daine suspects broken glass. Closing her eyes, she sinks herself into the injury, burning out infection and knitting skin and muscle back together. Nothing is broken, at least, but the infection's had some time to run rampant, and it takes Daine some time to root it all out.

When she lifts her head, a good twenty minutes have gone by, and the goose has tucked its head behind one of its wings - though its eyes are still open in case the dogs should get restless. Daine runs a hand over the bird's back, smiling as it untucks its beak and gives her fingers a fond nibble. "Better?" she murmurs.

Much, thank you. The goose gets to its feet and steps out onto the grass, no longer favoring one foot. It stretches, foot and wing extended, then resettles itself with a ruffling of feathers. Daine digs a handful of dried corn out of one pocket and offers it to the goose, who daintily plucks the kernels off of her flattened palm. Then, the bird waddles back down toward the lake, and Daine gets to her feet to see what Peeta's up to.

She pauses a few feet away from him, not wanting to poke her nose into whatever he's working on if he'd rather she didn't. "How's the drawing?"

Daine's voice pulls Peeta out of his sketch, like being wakened out of a dream. He blinks up at her for a few seconds, then stretches his back and gives her a smile. "Not bad," he replies, turning his pad around so that she can see.

He'd already completed a rough outline of the crows filling the trees and had started on a more detailed sketch of Quickbeak when Daine interrupted. There's only a faint silhouette of the body, but a good portion of Quickbeak's head is present.

"Everything go okay with the goose, I guess?" he asks, a quick glance around revealing Daine's charge to be gone. "You weren't waiting on me, were you?" he adds in concern, flipping the sketchbook closed and tucking it back into his bag. Pulling the bag onto his shoulder and picking up the leashes, he stands and brushes off his pants.

Daine's face splits into a delighted smile when she sees the progress he's made. "Oh, but that's wondrous!" she gasps, crouching so she can get a closer look. "You did all that just from memory?"

Her smile softens at his question. "Yes, the goose is all right, now. I only just finished." She straightens when he does, then feels out her next patient. "The squirrel's this way," she says, picking her way through the trees. It's not a very far hike; the animal felt her nearby and made the extra effort of heading her way. She finds it perched on a tree branch, an evident kink in its tail.

"Too slow getting away from a bicyclist," she translates, making a face as she holds her hands up for the creature. It climbs from the branch into her open palms, and she cradles it against her chest as she finds a place to sit.

This time, once he and the dogs are settled, Peeta finds himself drawn to Daine.

His encounter with Quickbeak and the crows had commanded his attention, but getting the initial sketches of them down had helped to ease that need. Now, watching Daine with the squirrel, he's reminded of the first time he watched her heal, back in the dream that he is definitely not thinking about any more.

He sighs softly, rubbing a hand down Molly's back when she drops her head on his knee.

As Daine works, he begins sketching, focusing first on the curve of her hands, the sleekness of the squirrel's fur in the sunlight. It takes him a little while to capture the expression on her face - eyes closed, somehow both inwardly and outwardly focused. Then he works on her hair, the light and shadow of the curls and the way they frame her face.

The squirrel is a more complicated job than the goose was; he wasn't quite fast enough getting out of the way of an oncoming bike, and some of the vertebrae in his tail have been shattered by the tires. Putting the bones back together is intricate work: a complex, fragile puzzle. It takes the better part of an hour for her to nudge the bone shards back into their proper place and knit them together. Both of the dogs are dozing by the time she heals the skin abrasions and encourages the fur in the bald spot to regrow a little (she doesn't need it to fill in completely, she's just trying to make sure he can grow fur and won't have a bald spot forever).

Finally a little over an hour after she started, she blinks her eyes open and looks down at the squirrel, curled trustingly in her hands. How are you feeling? she asks, tickling his belly gently.

Hungry, the squirrel replies, blinking up at her.

Cracking a smile, Daine digs out a few shelled peanuts and offers them to the squirrel. He takes one between his forepaws and starts to nibble, giving his tail an experimental flap.

Daine sits up straighter, wincing a little as her neck objects to the sudden movement. Odd's bobs - how long as she been hunched over the creature? Rubbing the back of her neck with one hand, she glances upward, trying to judge how much the sun has moved since she started. It's a little hard to tell under all this tree cover, and she ends up looking to Peeta, instead. The dogs are asleep, but at least he's still awake. Hopefully he hasn't been bored witless. "Sorry," she says sheepishly. "I wasn't -- it hasn't been hours, has it?"

Peeta glances up, a little dazed from focusing on his drawing. The squirrel is still in Daine's hand, but from the way it's flicking its tail, it seems healed. He smiles faintly as he watches it devour the nut it's holding.

It takes a moment for Peeta's brain to catch up to the question Daine asks. "No, I -" He pauses, uncertain himself, and checks his watch. "No, not hours. Almost an hour, I think?"

He realizes his leg is asleep where Sarge is laying on it, and gently nudges him off so he can give the leg a shake.

Daine figures the fact that Peeta's also lost track of the time is a good sign. At least it means he wasn't checking his watch every other minute. She's also glad to hear that it was only an hour. That's still a long time for such an ostensibly minor injury, and she's going to want a snack and a drink before she tackles the dog, but it could've been worse.

"Good," she breathes as the squirrel finishes his snack, scampers up to her shoulder, and gives her cheek a little nuzzle before heading back up into the trees.

Now is as good a time as any for her to have a snack, and perhaps Peeta will want one, too. Daine scoots over to the rest of the group and starts to rummage through her bag for two-legger food. She glances at in the sketchbook's direction, but stops short of actually leaning over to peer at whatever's on the page. "Still working on the crows?" she asks as she pulls out a pair of granola bars and offers one of them to Peeta.

Peeta takes the offered granola bar, setting his sketchbook on the grass beside him in the process, where Daine can see it. His sketch of her and the squirrel is almost complete. "No, I started something new," he says.

Before opening the bar, he digs out two small hunks of his loaf and feeds one each to Sarge and Molly.

When Daine sees the sketch, she does a double-take and freezes midway through opening her wrapper. "Oh," she says quietly, eyes widening as she realizes he's been sketching her - and managing an excellent likeness, as far as she can tell. He did that in under an hour?

"Is that what I look like when I'm working?" she asks in self-conscious fascination. She's never been able to watch herself while she's at it, for obvious reasons, but since her universe lacks cameras, no one else has ever captured an image of her working, either. And while she knows of some folk back home who might be capable of such a thing (court artists and the like), she doesn't know anyone personally who could do something like this in so short a time.

Though Peeta has sketched and painted for years now, he is still getting used to other people seeing his work. His family never understood, so he hadn't shared it with them much. Katniss saw more of his work than anyone, and Haymitch saw most of the paintings when he stopped by Peeta's house. But of course their reactions had been so heavily influenced by circumstances, and by the things he painted there. And while he technically exhibited his paintings for all of Panem (at least the ones the Capitol would let them see), that isn't the same as sharing it with someone he knows.

So the way people react to his work is still new to him. It's pleasing when someone appreciates the images he creates, even more so when they are the subject. There is something about seeing yourself through someone else's eyes that is unlike anything else in the world. He sees it in Daine's face as she stares at herself.

"Pretty much," he replies around a bite of granola bar. He swallows and tilts his head slightly to better scrutinize the sketch. "Sometimes your expression is a little more intense," he explains, adjusting the sketch in his mind to that level, "but this is generally what you look like."

He takes another bite of the bar and studies her for a moment before making a decision. "I'll hold on to it for now to keep it from getting damaged, but remind me when we get back to the base and I'll give it to you."

Daine does a double-take when Peeta offers to just give it to her. For a moment, it's as if she's thirteen again and Numair is presenting her with her first anatomy book. In Tortall, most of the 'art' that normal folk have is simple and functional - like a nicely decorated pot or carvings on the lintel. Or it might double as a toy, like a clay horse or the wooden puppets her grandfather had carved and strung together for her.

But this - a drawing that only exists for its own sake, and one so masterfully done - that's the sort of thing only rich folk can afford. It's good enough to be framed in a palace or something (presuming anyone would want a picture of a girl holding a squirrel on their wall). She's come a long way since Snowsdale, in more ways than one, but as she stares down at the drawing, she finds herself unable to entirely dismiss the thought that it's too good for the likes of her.

She shakes her head, not denying the offer, but not quite believing it, either. "No one back home would just... give something like this," she says, worrying her still wrapped granola bar between her fingers.

From what Daine has told him of her world, Peeta can guess the reasons behind her reaction. His world isn't so different. Art - like so many other things - is an empty luxury for much of Panem, something neither needed nor desired. Only people in the Capitol consider it a necessity of life.

"I draw all the time," he says, thumbing the edges of the sketchbook sheets to illustrate his point. "I could even do something more formal, if you'd like. Draw you with Sarge and Molly, maybe?"

He pauses, giving her a measuring look as a thought dawns on him. "You've never seen any of your animal shapes, have you?"

Daine can't help gaping a little, and at the suggestion that she and the dogs sit for a portrait, she blushes. That sort of thing isn't just for the rich, but for royalty. Kings and queens sit for portraits; the thought of an assistant horsemistress doing so is laughable.

When he mentions her shapes, though, she shuts her mouth, reconsidering. It would be quicker and easier to just take photos with her phone or somesuch, but they're so tiny. "I haven't," she admits. She's caught glimpses of herself in reflections, of course - it's hard not to with so many ponds and polished windows around the city - but she's never just sat and looked at herself. Which isn't to say she hasn't been curious - but without any easy means of capturing her own likeness back home, she'd accepted that she'd probably never get a proper look at herself when in a shape (not least of all because some shapes have better eyesight than others) and stopped wishing for it.

Now, though… a faint smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. "I'd like to, though." Hastily, she adds, "if you're sure it wouldn't be a bother."

Peeta smiles, watching the expressions wash over Daine's face as she considers his offer. He'll readily admit it was made as much for his own curiosity as it was a gift for Daine. He's seen a number of her forms, but he knows there are many more, including animals he's never seen before. It will be interesting both to see them, and to attempt drawing them.

"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't mind," he says gently. "I'd actually really like the chance to draw some of your animals forms." He smiles crookedly. "It would be good practice."

Rude Awakening [CLOSED]

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