Chapter 8: Peeta's Locked Room

The paint never fully came out of his knuckles.

Peeta noticed this years ago and stopped noticing it shortly after — the way the pigment settled into the creases of his hands, the small crescents of color beneath his nails that no amount of scrubbing entirely removed. His handlers in the Capitol had suggested something. A treatment, a solution, the name of someone who handled cosmetic concerns for the victor circuit. He had smiled and thanked them and done nothing, and they had not mentioned it again, because the hands were always hidden in interviews and the color was always dark enough to read as shadow on camera.

In the locked room in District 12, the hands were the first thing you noticed.