Chapter 1: District 12 (1)
Summary:
In Which The Future Peeta Revisits The Past and the Present, And The Past-Present Again.
Notes:
TRIGGER WARNING: Scenes of violence and abuse.
Chapter Text
“In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.” — Faramir
- The Return of the King
J.R.R. Tolkien
I start my first real growth spurt on the day I turn twelve, waking with pains in my legs that have me crying as if they are both being amputated at once. Other standard side-effects follow in rapid succession, including an absolute inability to wake with the first half-chime of the alarm clock. My mother, of course, doesn’t appreciate this new development at all, and so works up the truly unpleasant habit of bodily hauling me out of bed by the hair and screaming painfully in my ear till I am fully awake.
It's one of the more annoying, if the least physically damaging, of her abusive habits, and, ironically enough, likely saves my life at least once in the first edition of the 74th Annual Hunger Games. During my stint as a pseudo-Career, not one of my so-called allies ever gets the jump on me, and despite the fact that I am in as deep a sleep as I’ve ever been at the crucial moment, I suffer minimally from the tracker-jackers when Katniss wakes us all up by dropping the hive on our heads. I am up and running at the first audible buzz, weapon and pack in hand before my eyes are fully open.
My therapist, of course, when introduced to me after the Games are over, expects me to mention, as my major regret, the death of my family. I don’t, and when he asks, I tell him that I grieve for my brothers every day, but rarely give my parents a passing thought. It's the truth, and as such, they rarely come up in any future sessions.
Then, when I am thirty two, my son Rye is born, and they are suddenly back to haunt my dreams and psyche with a vengeance.
It really isn’t that hard to figure out. Mom hadn’t minded having a boy as her first child; the bakery needed an inheritor after all, and Twelve was still backwards enough to sustain the belief that a woman couldn’t really be considered a woman till she’d provided her man with a son. That was Lavash. Brio was her backup, and that was alright too…. An inheritor, after all, needs a business partner. By the time I came along, though, she just wanted a girl - a pretty little girl with sparkling blue eyes and soft, curly blond hair, kind and good to all, insanely talented with the finer, more delicate particulars of our baked goods, and of course, popular and beloved by all her peers.
I came out exactly as ordered. Unfortunately, I also came with a penis, and at nearly twelve pounds, tore her up badly enough inside so that the doctor told her bluntly that another pregnancy would kill her. After she healed, she told my dad that that was that, then, and kicked him out of their bed. He slept on the sofa for the rest of his life, and I never once saw them hug, kiss, or hold hands. He made up for the lack, such as it was, by pouring his affection on the three of us, me in particular - but when she first kicked me down the stairs when I was two years old because I was in her way, he didn’t defend me either. Or the next time, or the next time, or…
“Do you think, then, that he resented you?” my therapist asks me, helping himself to an iced cookie. “After all? And that his refusal to defend you and to the certain extent, your brothers, was his silent revenge for her withdrawing physically?”
“No,” I say shortly. “He was just weak.”
“And what, exactly, do you think he should have done?”
I sit back, propping my feet up on my footstool, and proceed to offer him the list in exact and precise detail. Jo Mason had helped me work it up in anticipation of this exact question - he's her therapist too, and we often give each other tips on his running themes. By the time I wind up, he is staring at me, wide-eyed.
“Well,” he says finally. “That’s certainly comprehensive.”
“It’s a good word,” I agree. “I like it.” I do, too, if not quite as much as I like Johanna. “More tea?”
“Sure,” he says. “Why not. No, just leave the bag in. I wouldn’t want you to think of me as a man who veers toward weak again, rather than strong.”
No, it isn’t hard to understand at all, I think, as I look down at the bassinet beside my chair. The blond-curled, still blue-eyed mite - my absolute spitting image, even at that age - snortles peacefully, and yawns in his sleep. I’m not actually worried about turning out like my father, or Kat like my mother… but little Rye/Peeta is as innocent and vulnerable as I’d ever been, and the ghosts of my parents were bound to start lurking again once I’d been presented with, essentially, myself revisited. I know it’s only temporary. He has bits of Katniss in him too; her long fingers for one, and the bow of her upper lip for another, and I suspect it won’t be long before his eyes turn grey either... My mother, at least, is bound to do a runner as soon as the Seam heritage starts showing properly, and then that, as the saying goes, will be that.
It can’t, frankly, be soon enough for me.
“So why did you name your son after him?” my therapist is asking. “If you hated him so much?”
“I didn’t hate him,” I say. “There wasn’t enough of him left, past the point, to hate. She ate it all. Ate him. Ate him all up. Like the wicked witch in the gingerbread house, except we had a bakery. I didn’t really love him either, past that point, but… I did once. When I was small. Maybe that’s why. I figured …”
I stop.
“He was the most beautiful, perfect man I knew,” I say. “To me, when I was small. And Rye… He’s beautiful and perfect too. To me, too. And I just… I love him so much. It’s not a do-over; he is, and will be, his own man… But with him… I know our love won’t stop. My love for him, and hopefully, his for me. That’s everything. No one’s going to eat him. So he’ll grow up the way Dad should have. The way we all should have. Without hunger… Of any sort.”
It’s incoherent and inarticulate, but it’s sincere.
I reach down. My son curls his fingers around mine. Like Katniss curls her fingers around her bow. Like I curl mine around my paint brushes. He mewls at me fretfully. I lean down and pick him up… He’s not hungry or damp, and snuggles into my chest and goes back to sleep. My therapist watches us as he drinks his tea.
“He’s got the curls,” I say. “My hair. He’s small. And he looks just like me at that age.” I adjust the blanket, and kiss his ten round, bare, pink toes, one after the other after the other.
As the years pass and I age, I lose the habit of waking instantly: mostly, anyway. It helps to have Kat there; she's as early a riser as I’ve ever been, so I don't need an alarm clock after we move in together. And if she ever does get the urge to wake me properly by pulling my hair or screaming in my ear…
Well.
There are reasons, I tell her, time and time again, that you couldn’t pay me enough, in any three lifetimes, to revisit my unfortunate adolescence. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy being an adult. I enjoy it more with every passing year. Really, the occasional very bad dream only enhances the pleasure I take there, once I’ve woken and processed I’d not actually gone back in time, anyway.
Then, one morning the summer after I turn sixty-seven, after taking a shower, putting the coffee on, and tripping over the cat, I wake up to the alarm clock - ignoring it, because it is a dream, after all, and ignoring it is therapeutic, never mind the provided opportunity to dream-punch dream-Mom in the face with impunity. Sure enough, she barges in, grabs a double fistful of blond curl, and hauls, leaning in to squeal shrilly and painfully in my exposed ear as she does so. I consider the options on my list even as I flip over, grab back, jerk her down, headbutt her squarely between the eyes, shove her backwards, and roar up out of the bed, hauling back with my own fistful of stringy, bloody grey-blonde and slamming her hard in the nose. My hands are big enough that I catch her lip with it too, or rather, her front tooth, knocking it clear out.
She slides down against the wall with a thud. I stand over her, clad only in my dingy grey boxers, blinking and waiting to wake up. Really, I think, looking around, the dream is very detailed this time. I’d forgotten how the drab dawn light filtered through the curtain in patterns of scattered ferns across the floor, and the pilling on the bedspread, and the smell of Brio’s wrestling socks, and…
I examine my hands, clutched around bloody hanks of hair. My knuckles are sore too, and not all the blood on them is hers. Then she starts to scream and wail and curse it up, and Dad comes up the stairs, and sticks his head in.
“For Snow’s sake, Florence,” he says. “What…” He stops in his tracks, blinking stupidly. “What happened here?”
“She pulled me out of bed by my hair. And screamed in my ear. I was…” I scramble for the automatic cover story as I would have, back then. “Erhm. Having a dream. About wrestling.”
“Wrestling,” he repeats. I roll my own eyes at myself.
For God’s sake, Mellark. You’re sixty-seven years old, and this is a dream besides. Just say what you’re really thinking already.
“No,” I say firmly. “Actually. She jumped me, again, and I’d had enough, so I decided to show her what it feels like.” I examine my fistfuls of hair. Open my hands, turning them. The hair floats down, landing on…
Definitely a dream, I think, relieved. It lands on my feet. Feet, not foot.
“It’ll grow back,” I sneer at her, of the hair, not my foot again. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me, Mom? Snow’s balls, you’re just a classic, aren’t you? You give and give and give, and you can’t take it after all.”
Mom starts in then, and it’s about to become very unpleasant, but Dad interrupts.
“I told you,” he says to her. “I told you, didn’t I, that you could only push him so far? That one of these days he was going to be big enough to push back?’
“You’re bigger than I am,” I say rudely to him. “What’s been stopping you? No, wait. Sofa comfy there, Dad, because we all know you’ve made a career of not hitting it. I guess it carries over, mm?”
He blinks at me a bit owlishly. Weakly, in the growing morning light. He actually manages to look wounded.
“Get dressed, Peeta,” is all he says. “The coffee’s on, and the first loaves need proofing.”
And he steps out. I look down at Mom, and close my eyes. Open them again. She’s still there.
I look down at my feet. Plural.
They’re both still there too.
I sit on the edge of the bed, ignoring Mom, now squatted next to the wall as a wounded, manic gargoyle as she shrieks at me incoherently. The bloody grey-blonde hanks lie strewn at my feet like grubby false gold, or Rumpelstiltskin's straw… I watch my own toes curl into themselves, to avoid touching them.
Eventually, when she realizes that her shrill admonishments are getting her no more attention, Mom gets up and leaves. I stand, tentatively, testing my weight and balance. It feels odd, to say the least. I examine my right hand. The knuckles are bruised and swelling. I take a tentative step, then two. I yelp as I step on something sharp. I lean against the wall, and lift my right foot. Mom’s tooth is embedded in the bottom.
Oh, that’s subtle, I think. Now she’s eating me too? Starting with the one foot I’ve got left?
Except…
Both feet are there. Right there. Left and right. I pull the tooth out. My mind blanks a little, automatically, in self-protection.
Real or not real. Real or not real. Real or not...
I smell bread and coffee through the open door. I set the tooth down carefully on the night table, and flex my fingers in kneading motions.
Bread needs proofing.
I dress, automatically again, and head to the washroom to piss and clean up, tuning out all else around me. An impossibly young Brio - massive, thick-shouldered, fully a head taller than me, and ruddy-faced from chopping wood - offers me a small finger wiggle as he loads up the boxes and stokes the ovens. I avert my eyes hastily.
“Rough night?" he asks.
“I dunno,” I say vaguely as I reach for my apron. “I guess.” He hesitates, then…
“I saw Darius Rooke just now,” he says to my back, and lowering his voice… “He’s on the night shift, and his route passes her house. She’s still alive, Peet. Still fighting. It’s a good sign, alright? She’s not… She’s a fighter. And okay, Doc Palmer’s not treating her, not officially; he can’t, but Rooke said that Greasy Sae says that he did drop by on the down-low, and he says that if she can make it through the first seventy two hours…”
I turn and stare at him blankly.
“What,” I say stupidly. He actually comes over and gives me a rough little hug.
“Just... Get on the loaves, alright,” he says. “Keep busy. It’s the best thing.” He looks around. “Where’s Mom?”
“Upstairs,” I say, distracted from my confusion, and then, not without a certain pride… “I punched her in the face.”
“What? You... What?"
“I punched her in the face. She grabbed me by the hair and screamed in my ear, so I hauled myself up by her hair, and headbutted her. Then I punched her.”
He stares at me dumbly.
“Is she alright?" he asks finally.
“Is who alright?’ Lavash, lean and neat and immaculately shaven (his brand-new wife, Molly, isn’t fond of what she calls ‘the miner’s look', though, quite unusually for what the miners themselves call a ‘Merchie-Miss’, has no prejudices against the individuals themselves), enters briskly, case of accounting ledgers in hand.
“Mom,” Brio says. “Peet says she was giving him a rough time, so he headbutted her and punched her in the face.”
My eldest brother stops in his tracks and stares at me. I reach in my pocket, and hold out my hand. The broken (now washed) tooth sits there in all its fractured glory. I’m not quite sure what I plan to do with it, aside from ensure that its owner can’t find it before it’s too late for the dentist to employ it in his repair job, but Lavash doesn’t inquire. He just slams his case down on the table.
“You son of a bitch,” he says to me whole-heartedly. “You couldn’t have waited till I got here? No, never mind her. I just caught Darius Rooke, he told me that…”
“I told him already,” Brio cuts in, taking the tooth out of my palm and dropping it back in my pocket. “Come on, Peet.” He maneuvers me to the table. “Proof these. Think positive thoughts. It’s been...” He squints. “Sixteen hours since Hawthorne brought her in. What’s sixteen from seventy two, Lavash?"
“Fifty-six,” Lavash says. “Snow’s balls, man, you’re pathetic.”
“Fifty-six more hours, till she’s out of immediate danger,” Brio says to me, ignoring that last. My mind whirls, confused. None of this, none of this sounds familiar. I have no idea who he’s talking on, and…
My mind skids. I double over, struggling for breath, eyes wide with panic. Lavash is at my side immediately, hauling a chair over with his foot.
“Sit. Breathe, Peeta. Breathe. Shh. Breathe. In... Out... In… Out… Shhh. Shh. Breathe, little bro. In… Out…”
I breathe, but I struggle up. He fights me, but I get my way, holding onto the back of the chair and leaning in, breathing again. He rubs my back. Brio jitters hugely and anxiously. I try to formulate my thoughts in careful words.
“Do they know what happened yet,” I manage. “I’m sorry, I… If you told me, if anyone told me, I just… I don’t remember, I…”
“Shhh. Get him some coffee, Brio. Milk, triple sugar, and something sweet besides. No, not the crappy stale stuff, something good; he’s on the verge of passing out here. It’s alright, Peeta,” he says. “There are lots of theories, but Hawthorne’s insisting that she was clear on the story, for the moments she was conscious after he found her by the fence anyway. She says that she got attacked by Peacekeepers, crossing the Meadow on her way back from home and picking up her math book. With the train coming through… They think it was runaways.”
“But she’s going to be okay, right; she’s going to be…”
“Of course she is,” Lavash says firmly. “I’m not going to lie, Peet, she’s in for a rough go of it, blows to the head are no joking matter in any circumstance, but she’s going to be just fine. Hardest nut in District 12, that one, and you know how she is besides. You can knock her down, but she just gets right back up again. You’ll see.” He helps me sit, and to drink sweet milky coffee, dunking in a sweet roll in bits and stuffing them in my mouth after. I chew and swallow automatically as Brio cleans my hand carefully. Dad appears, tired and harassed.
“She won’t come downstairs,” he reports. “Brio, you’re going to have to run and get Doc Palmer. Looks like she’s got a broken nose to go with the broken tooth. You really don’t do things by halves, do you, Peeta?”
“Peeta has no idea what you’re talking about,” Lavash says immediately, before I can answer. “He’s been down here for over an hour, chopping wood for the stove. Really hacked up his knuckles too, see? How many times do I have to tell you, numb-nuts, wear the damned gloves! If you’re talking on Mom… She should really mind herself around doors.”
“She should,” Brio agrees. “I’ll be right back. Finish that coffee, Peet.” He slips out. Lavash hunkers before me, rubbing my hands. His blue eyes, lighter than mine, are anxious. I cover my own eyes. I can’t bear to look at him, to…
“You really are gone on her, aren’t you,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Peet. For all the times we teased you with it, for… But it’s not just a crush, is it? You’re in love with her.”
I burst into tears. He gives over and wraps me up.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he says in my ear. “I promise. Not even Molly. Shh.” He rocks me till I calm a little. “Come on. Let’s clean you up. After that… Brio’s right, yeah? Best thing to do is keep busy. Wash your face, then step outside and take a few deep breaths. No, don’t worry. I’ll proof the loaves for you. After that… What are the specials for today?"
“I don’t know, I don’t… What day is it, what…"
“Friday.”
“Apple-ginger strudel, then,” I say automatically. “Lemon-cream lush bars, and sausage rolls."
“Uh?" He pulls back and looks at me blankly.
“What, uh? Oh.” I gather myself hastily. “Sorry, sorry. I’ve just been … I’ve been thinking on a couple of new recipes, and… Um.”
“Well, if you want to give them a go, now’s the time,” he says. “With Mom hiding out and all. Work up a couple of small batches, and we’ll test ‘em out on the latest load of Peacekeepers from Two. They haven’t lost their taste buds to the coal dust yet, and will be able to tell you if they’d go over well with the Capitol crowd come Reaping Day."
“You think?"
“Definitely.” He straightens, and pats my shoulder as he rolls up his sleeves neatly and reaches for an apron. "Go on now.”
I go, smiling at him over my shoulder. The stench that meets me as I step over the threshold nearly makes me vomit. I look around, dumbstruck.
“What…"
“Mm?" He cranes his neck as he thumps and folds. “What is it?"
Realnotrealrealnotrealrealnotrealreal
I slam the door hastily, leaning against it.
“Sorry,” I manage. “Sorry, I…” I bolt to the side washroom and fall to my knees, puking violently, over and over and over, till the tears are pouring down my cheeks and I’m scarlet-faced and choking. My head spins, and my vision goes black, and…
“Shh, son." Doc Palmer is there, and Brio, so worried he’s almost crying himself now. "Shh. Here we go. Up you get. Brio…"
And Brio is supporting me, leading me to the chair again. Doc Palmer looks me over swiftly, checking my eyes, my pulse, my blood pressure.
“Looks like a good old-fashioned anxiety attack,” he says finally. “I see a lot of them this time of year. Goddamned Games; the end of the school year is supposed to relax you kids, not key you up.” He takes the cloth Brio offers, and washes my face clean. “There we go. Alright?"
“He’s worried about Katniss Everdeen,” Lavash says bluntly. “Have you heard anything else?" Doc Palmer’s face twists.
“She’s holding her own so far,” he says. “The next forty eight hours or so will be crucial. If anyone can get her through though, it’s Clara Everdeen. Better than I could, if I’m honest. There’s really not much anyone can do at this point, mind, even with the full training and access to medicine, and when it comes to it… Family’s what’s going to pull her through."
“Will she recover fully,” Brio says. “I mean.” He stumbles as Lavash glares at him viciously.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” the doctor says. “I’m sorry, Peeta. I wish I could give you more hopeful news, but…”
“Are they sending out search parties? For the runaways?"
“That’s just an unconfirmed hypothesis right now, son,” he says. “Yes, Hawthorne says that she said that’s what happened, but… She’s not exactly coherent right now. We can’t take anything she’s saying at face value." He hands off the cloth. “And don’t go quoting that particular rumor about town either. Cray’s not in the mood to hear it, if you get my drift. If you want to do something for her… Arrange for the occasional quiet delivery for her mother and sister. Best case scenario, she’ll be on her back for weeks, and it’ll really cut into her mother’s ability to work her other patients. Hawthorne will bring them what he can, I’m sure, but he has his own family to feed, and with the number of slips he’s got in the bowl this year, he’s going to be conserving as much as he can for them, just in case.”
“They won’t like that,” Brio says anxiously. “They’re really proud, Doc.”
“Find a way,” he says shortly. “Everyone else is."
“Uh?”
“She might not have a lot of friends,” he says. “But she’s got a lot of fans. She’s kept more than her own family alive over the years with her hunting; no amount of money makes a difference if if there’s nothing to buy, and a good half the Seam has decided, with this, that they consider themselves in her debt. The family won’t starve… But the less those helping them have to give, the less they’ll suffer themselves.”
We all look at each other.
“We’ll work something out,” Lavash says. “Alright, boys. You okay to get on with things, Peet?”
I am, most decidedly, not. My teenaged not-yet-wife is dying, and there’s nothing I can do but bake for…
My mind skids again.
Wait. This didn’t happen the last time. She wasn’t where she was the last time. I remember this. I remember this. She forgot her math book on the last day of school, and went back to get it, but she came right back to the school, and she took the road, not the Meadow. I remember. I was playing soccer over the lunch hour, and I looked up, right before the bell rang, and she was coming down the road. Not across the Meadow, but down the road.
But Hawthorne said he found her by the fence. At the edge of the Meadow, bordering the woods. And Kat went to the woods this morning, to hunt down her sacrificial token. If he found her there… He would never, ever have said so. He would have carried her through, through the hole near the culvert, and…
Oh my God. Oh my fucking God.
It’s not... She’s not...
She forgot the math book the year Prim was Reaped. The year I was Reaped.
“Hold on a sec,” I say. “I just…” I duck back into the bathroom. There is a tiny mirror hanging there, above the toilet. I’d assiduously avoided the one upstairs, the sight of the extra foot attached to my not-missing-leg had been enough to deal with, but now…
I close the curtain, and stare.
It’s the first day of summer. The summer after I turned sixteen.
I’m sixteen again, in body, if not in mind.
And I’m headed back to the Arena in six weeks. If Katniss hasn’t recovered by then… She’ll almost certainly get a medical dispensation.
And I’ll be headed back into that Arena with Prim.
Chapter Text
Past the (very short) point, it doesn’t occur to me for one moment that what I’m experiencing is a dream. What does occur to me (since actual time travel is obviously and completely ridiculous) is that I must have finally slipped my last mental disc when I hit my head on the table, and am now locked in some kind of ongoing psychotic episode.
As the days pass and I fail to emerge from that presumed episode, though, I’m forced to acknowledge that I’m in far deeper trouble than I thought - that ‘ongoing’ is well on its way to becoming ‘permanent’, and that if Katniss dies, that that episode will not only center around my reliving the hell of my youth in full, but without the company of my wife to make it remotely bearable.
And with that last conclusion, my therapeutically-trained instincts come roaring to the fore. If I’m aware enough to recognize the fact that I am in the throes of an episode, I reason, I’m capable of control over my own actions and reactions to the coming narrative. That being said, the coming narrative has one very large differential now… Me. And if I act and react consistently enough and in accordance with the truth of myself as I am as a man, not an inexperienced boy, one of my actions will eventually trigger a different, positive reaction in the parts of the hallucination that I don’t have control over. Eventually, I’ll have hijacked the entire scenario so thoroughly with my preferred version of events that all will be made acceptable again, and I’ll emerge back into reality.
That being said… There’s a problem there.
There’s a very good chance that I won’t be Reaped at all. I have only five slips in the bowl, and changed circumstances could very well dictate that Effie Trinket’s hand will pluck another boy’s name entirely. I could volunteer, of course, but if Kat is still incapacitated, or worse, by the time the Games roll around…
A certain tall, dark and brooding Seam-dweller might just decide that it’s his job to offer himself up as knight to his damsel-in-distress’ sister- in-distress in the Arena. He wouldn’t volunteer under any other circumstance - hell, with his overblown sense of self-importance (and yes, I’m fully aware that as a Merchie, I’m speaking from a position of relative absolute privilege, never mind personal bias, but after fifty years in which the man never changed, I do feel entitled), he probably wouldn’t volunteer for his own brothers. If Katniss is incapable of saving Prim herself, though, and is yet lying in her sickbed all of her injured, tragic glory…
Well.
Hawthorne’s delusions of her affections for him aside, he’s swaggered his way into a rather uncomfortable little corner. Given the way that he’s been swanning around promoting himself as the hero of the hour, first by saving Katniss’ life and then by bringing home enough food with that buck of his to feed half the District again, District Twelve will never forgive him if Prim were Reaped and he didn’t volunteer to go in to protect her. They might understand it, but they’d never forgive him.
Actually, I’m not sure he’s actually processed that yet - or that he will, until, or even at, the last moment. Living as does the majority of Twelve on that literally hour-to-hour and day-to-day basis, he has absolutely no sense of the long, or even moderate term repercussions of his actions, or a grasp on anything but the immediate. He can’t afford to, especially at this point in his life. It’s too much a distraction from the focus needed to survive.
If he does process it, and still decides to go for it, I will, I decide, just have to beat him to the punch. Because whether I’m Reaped or whether I volunteer -
There is no dream or delusion or hallucination in existence wherein I will allow that sulky, arrogant, self-righteous little pissant Gale fucking Hawthorne to go into the Arena with Primrose Everdeen. His idea of ‘taking care of her for Katniss’ would likely entail her death before she ever got off her pedestal.
I will be on that train. My personal motives aside, and whether I go in with Kat, or Prim, or someone else entirely… I’m back in prime condition; I’ve got nearly seventy years of life experience under my baker’s apron, and Coriolanus Snow has no secrets from me now. The hidden cache of personal journals discovered and published a few years after his death have ensured that, and as a result, I know things about the man, his motives and crimes and his past that no one else alive here can even begin to imagine. If I’m really stuck here, things are going to change.
Before all that goes down though, I have a few, much more immediate issues to attend to.
Day 2 (Three days after Katniss is attacked)
The sign over our door reads 'Mellark’s Quality Baked Goods.' That’s all that is quality there, though. The place, as it is, is an utter shithole. Extensive modifications, of course, will be out of the question till after I come home from the Games, but even given the time and conditions, there are things that can be done now. Even a simple fresh coat of whitewash and a few hanging pots of herbs, I think, would improve things immeasurably. And with Mom out of commission, and Dad being… Well... Dad…
I set out to make it happen. I ran the place longer than he’s been alive. I’m claiming seniority.
The morning after my return, I shovel the latest round of loaves in the oven, and straightening, roll my shoulders in anticipation.
“Lavash,” I call. “You got the latest inventory lists there?”
“Sec.” My half-baker half-bookkeeper of a brother emerges from the tiny side office - more of a cupboard - and passes a folder over. I rinse my hands, dry them on my apron, and flip and skim rapidly.
“Alright,” I say. “I’ll be back in an hour. Keep an eye on the timers for me, will you, Molly, and remember, the doors on oven three come open as the alarm goes, not after. No cooling racks; just leave them on the pans, and don’t restoke the fire after. I’ll -” - I deliberately don’t say ‘us’ or ‘we’ll' - “need a slightly cooler temp for the next.”
“Got it.” Molly salutes me snappily as she whips a huge bowl of egg-whites to stiff, rigid, militarized peaks. She’s as efficient and brisk as Lavash, and I’d thought her a bit cold the first time around, but now, I’m able to see that she’s just really focused. It’s an excellent quality in a baker’s assistant, and speaks volumes for the quality of her meringue.
“Where are you going?’ Dad asks me. Mom, of course, has nothing to say on the matter, but I can see her shadow on the turn of the stairs even from where I stand, and can feel her blackened, beady eyes boring through me. I shoot her the discreet finger as I turn.
“Out,” I say. “I need a few things for another couple more of the new recipes I’ll be testing.”
“Peeta, we can’t afford…”
I ignore him, taking off my apron and reaching in the cash drawer for a pad and pencil. I step out the door, and am just turning the last corner toward the Community House when I spot a young Delly Cartwright tearing toward me. I brace myself.
“Peeta!” she calls. “Peeta!”
“Delly!” I hail. “How’s the most beautiful girl in District Twelve?”
“Awake,” she says breathlessly, skidding to a halt before me. “I just caught Primrose Everdeen, and she said Katniss is awake, Peeta!”
“What?” I nearly fall over. Realnotrealrealnotrealrealnotrealpleaseplease please …..
“Katniss,” she says. “Probably not now, she went back to sleep, but it’s real sleep, not… And she says they had a real conversation, not a long one, but her mom asked her questions, and she answered them, clear as anything!“
“Oh my God.” I clutch my hair. She’sawakeshe’sawakeshe’sawakeI’mnotalone - “You’re sure? Does that mean that there’s no brain damage?”
“It’s a miracle,” she confirms. “On all fronts, but it doesn’t look like it, no. The location of the bump… Mrs. Everdeen and Doc Palmer both said that it was really just a question of how much there’d be, if she survived at all, but her eyes focused right in, and she didn’t slur her words, and she knew who they were, and who she was, and she’s got some memory blanks, but… Primrose says that she’s definitely herself, and she’s turned the corner, Peeta, and now she just has to rest, and… It’ll take weeks and weeks, probably, but she’s going to be alright! She’s really, really, really going to be alright!”
And she is crying, bless her, her face absolutely radiant with pure and simple joy. I whoop, wrapping her up and lifting her, spinning dizzily. She grabs me by the ears and plants a kiss squarely on my lips, hugging me.
“Are you going to see her?” I demand as I set her down.
“Madge is," she says. “Day after tomorrow. I’ll go as soon as she tells me that her mom says she’s up for other visitors. I have to go, okay? I told Prim I’d go to the Hob and tell everyone.”
“Delly, you can’t go to the Hob! Are you crazy?”
“I’m the bearer of good news, Peeta. Nobody’s going to hurt me.”
And she dashes off. My lips twitch fondly as I watch her go. She’s right, of course. No one will hurt her, under any circumstances. Delly, like Prim, is one of the few residents of District Twelve that people, Seam and Merchie alike, just accept and love without thinking about it. She's not harmless though, oh no. She’s quite possibly the scariest woman in Panem, if only because she does wield her absolute power over sunshine, rainbows, kittens and unicorns for unrelenting and absolute good.
I continue on, rubbing my hip absently. Having two good legs again, after over fifty years of wearing a prosthetic, is really messing with my gait.
I’ll have to work on that.
My new recipes are a spectacular success.
“What are those? ” Brio asks dubiously, peering over my shoulder at yet another one of my ‘test batches’ - a tray of savory tarts. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Peet, but they smell kind of funny. I think you may be working with a bad batch of meat there.”
“It’s not the meat, it’s the ground wild herbs in the meat.” My hands fly. “There’s nothing there we’ve worked with before, but I really think they might be popular with the Peacekeepers. They should be coming in off their shifts soon; set up a couple of plates of samples, would you?”
“I was being polite when I said ‘kind of funny’, Peet. They just smell bad.”
“They’ll go over like hotcakes, trust me.”
And they do. Most of the Peacekeepers in Twelve have come in from Two, and were raised on a particular spice called curry. It had taken a bit of creativity; we don’t carry it ourselves, but after all the decades, I know my substitutes. I’d caught a couple of Community House kids after I’d met up with Delly, drawn a couple of little pictures, and sent them off foraging for herbs for me. When they’d returned, I’d offered them both a dozen sausage rolls and a dozen cookies apiece. They’d tried to insist it was too much, and I’d shaken my head.
“They’re new recipes,” I’d explained. “For the Capitol crowd. I need testers. You’re doing me a favor, really. Take those back to your friends, and come back and tell me honestly what they think. Just have them fill out this form…” I’d produced it… “And bring it back tomorrow. If you’re all really honest, and don’t just say ‘it’s good,’ I might have some more for you some time.”
They hadn’t taken much persuasion… They’d bolted. They’d appeared promptly the next morning, and I’d examined the sheets.
“Excellent,” I said approvingly. “Alright. New kind of cookie.” I’d passed off a packet, and another sheet. “Like I said, I won’t have them every day, but…Same deal.”
Some of the comments had even been helpful.
It tastes good, but it melts too fast in my mouth. I want the taste to last longer.
It needs nuts for crunch. I like nuts. But not walnuts. They make my mouth sting like bees. Use another kind of nuts.
It’s good, but it’s too hard. Too hard makes my teeth hurt and sticks in the holes. Make it more melty, not chewy.
And one in very small letters…
Yor mum looks gode in blak. She shud wear it mor oftin. Just our opinoin.
I’d laughed myself stupid at that one. All day long.
The tarts don’t turn out exactly as they might with the finer herbs, but they’re close enough to make every one of the Peacekeepers pause.
“These are amazing, man!” Darius Rooke raves. “They taste like home! Except better! Where’d you get the recipe?”
“I was just fooling around,” I say, and innocently… “How d’you mean, like home?”
“It’s the particular spice mix we use,” he explains. “In our cooking. Want me to write and get the name for you, along with a couple samples, because if you made these with it, you could make a living just selling them to us and to the guys coming in on the trains."
“That’d be great,” I say. “Thanks, Darius.”
Soon I have the spice mix in hand, and together with the ground up hunk of venison from Hawthorne’s buck that I 'persuade' Dad to buy, I send word out down to the barracks that I’ll be setting out my first trays. There’s practically a stampede. They’re gone in ten minutes.
“Damn, Mellark,” Purnia says around a huge mouthful. “Just… Damn.” Darius mm’s in agreement. I glance around, and palm over a brown package. He winks and tucks it in his pocket, handing over a few coins in return.
“What? No, I…"
“Better if the books balance,” he murmurs. “They have a way of forgetting once the bruises fade, and you don’t need to get into trouble.”
I say nothing, but tuck the coin in my pocket. That evening, when doing the last round of deliveries, I see Cray eyeing up one of the Seam girls. I note the look on her face when she hefts the bag she carries home on her tesserae day, and the look on his face as she passes by him. I bump into her intentionally a bit further down the road, and shove the money in her hand.
I feel her eyes on me, but I don’t look back.
As more time passes, my anger grows.
This is my District. My District in more than the one way; I’d been Mayor of New Appalachia, after all, for over thirty five years. I may be a baker rather than a gardener, but one of Haymitch’s nicknames, given the emphasis on New Appalachia’s medicinal greenhouse line, when my obsession with Tolkien (never mind my wife’s family’s tradition of floral names) came out was Mayor Gamgee.
Nobody in their right mind ever called Kat Rosie Cotton, mind, not even Johanna or Haymitch, though Annie Cresta claimed that if Finnick had lived, she’s absolutely sure he never would have called her anything else. She’s probably right, too, and Kat would have probably taken it from him, albeit with the ongoing habitual threats to his manhood, of course. She still makes them, even after all the years, to me whenever I call her ‘baby girl’, reminding me that if I ever use the endearment in public, she’ll poke me with her arrows. She’s become so accustomed to hearing it, though, that she doesn’t process that I rarely call her anything else now, anywhere, no matter who’s around or not.
My anger, I know, is part projection that I can’t see her. My initial relief at Delly’s news returned to worry again when she reported to me that she seem to have had a relapse, and spends most of her days sleeping. I actually stop Doc Palmer in the street and ask him about it. He reassures me that it’s perfectly normal, that she’s out of danger, yes, and recognizes her closest friends and family so far, but that ‘out of danger’ is a far, far cry from ‘healed’, or even ‘better’. It could be months, he tells me gently, before she’s properly up and about again, and even when she is, there could be aftereffects - headaches, balance issues, coordination issues, short-term memory problems, seizures - for the rest of her life.
I lie in bed that night and stare at the ceiling in the darkness, trying to imagine it. Trying to be objective on the subject, and what it means for us. Because I know, with a deep, unshakeable certainty that she is my Kat, my baby girl, and no matter how injured she is…
I don’t care.
She will, though.
Across from me, Brio breathes quietly. I roll on my side, staring at the wall, trying to refocus. Remembering.
“Who was that?" my lovely wife inquires as she emerges from the kitchen, wrapped in her dark green bathrobe, her silvering hair damp and loosely braided, and a torn-off paper towel with a pair of fresh cheese buns in hand. Napkins, she’d informed an appalled Flavius the last time he’d visited, were so last season.
“Effie,” I say, putting the phone down. “Right on schedule.”
“For God’s sake.” Kat plops on her favorite chair, slinging a long, ungraceful leg over the arm as she peels off a huge wad of melted cheese and stuffs it in her mouth. “Haymitch really needs to cut off her train pass. It’s the same thing every time she goes to visit her friends in the Capitol, and no matter how sensible she is between trips, she falls for their vision every time.”
“Mm.” I perch on the arm opposite her leg and lean down. She tilts her chin up to offer me a buttery, garlicky kiss. “But I’d make such a truly speck- tacular President!”
“And who’d be First Lady again?” she inquires sardonically. “Me, or my bow? No, wait, neither of us, because I’d shoot myself first, and come back as a ghost - temporarily, extremely temporarily - to dispose of the suicide weapon so they couldn’t stick the poor thing in a dusty, moldering museum somewhere for all eternity. Don’t think I’m kidding there either.”
“‘Born free,’” I hum. “Free as the wind blows...’ You’d have to take me out with you,” I say, with absolute sincerity. “Bleh.” I shudder. I’m quite happy to offer the occasional bit of insight to the national incumbents-of-the-day, but Panem’s tendency to think that Kat and I owe it something more than what we’ve already offered up is a recurring theme, and obnoxious, to say the least. Never mind that I don’t need my therapist to tell me that returning to Capitol permanently would be psychologically inadvisable. I have enough problems, given my literally torturous associations with the place, with visiting. I nod to the ravaged cheese buns. “How are they?”
“Really good,” she says with her mouth full, as she always does. “Best batch yet.”
“You’re cute.”
“That’s me,” she agrees. “Cuteness Everdeen-Mellark.” I lean down and kiss her again, and slip down beside her. She feeds me bits of bun as I wrap her up in my arms.
“Kids awake yet?” she asks.
“Nope. They’re teenagers now. They’ll sleep till noon if we let them.”
“Bad, bad baker’s children.” The last of the first cheese bun disappears. “And hunter’s children.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I say. I rearrange her a bit, and slip a hand under her belted bathrobe. “Why Miss Cuteness! What have - or haven’t - we here?”
“Laundry day.” She sets the second bun aside and dips a hand into my pajama pants. I lift my hips slightly. Seconds later, she is on her knees before me, and I’m gasping and gasping, hands wound in her hair, leaning in and shoving hard. She leaves off a moment and catches my mouth, nipping my bottom lip hard with her teeth before returning to the task at hand… Seconds later, I jerk and jerk, biting back a shout, and collapse, moaning. She clambers back up into my lap, and retrieves the second cheese bun again, nibbling.
“I do declare, Miss Cuteness,” I manage, once I manage to catch my breath.
“You do declare... What?”
“Nothing. That’s all I’ve got.”
“That’s a shame.” She pulls my head back, leaves off the bun, and nibbles at my pulse point. “Because it’s certainly not all I’ve got. I’ll need coffee to go with the rest of this first, though, if I’m going to demonstrate.”
“You’re on top,” I point out. “Kitchen’s that way.”
“I’m on top,” she points out. “That means that you have to do things my way.”
“Flip you for it,” I offer, and do. She squawks as we land on the floor. Upstairs, the pipes hum quite abruptly. I curse, and push myself up. She catches me.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” she purrs. It’s a bit funny, really, I reflect, how everyone always assumes - mistakenly - that I employ the nickname ‘Kat’ as a shortened version of Katniss… Then again, I’m not about to tell them the truth - that I offered it to her the first time she was curled up in my lap, purring fit to beat the band again as I licked her cream off my fingers.
“They’re awake.”
“So?”
“So they’re teenagers now! They're supposed to sleep to noon!”
“Guess the huntery-bakery genes run true after all. Relax, Merchie. They still average ninety three minutes per shower apiece. We’re fine.”
“And what about your coffee?’
She sighs.
“Fine,” she says. “We’ll go to the kitchen, and you can get me my coffee while I adjourn to the counter.”
“You can’t drink coffee and adjourn to the counter at the same time, woman. Coffee’s hot.”
“Lids,” Cuteness Everdeen-Mellark informs me. “Straws. They’re things, even here at the back-ass end of nowhere.”
God, I love my wife.
I open my eyes again, and thump on my thin pillow in frustration, eyes burning. To see my bit of Paradise, my life’s work, my home, my Shire, negated… Erased... Returned to this obscenity of dust and ash and pain and blood…
If this isn’t actually a psychotic episode, I think, and this is actually an exercise in deliberate retro-temporal distortion, there’d better be a damned good reason for it. Like, end-of-times reasons, because when I get hold of whoever is responsible… I will not accept any other excuse.
The next afternoon I take a break from rolling pastry to fetch cloves from the storage cupboard on the landing, and hear Mom talking loudly to Dad in our sitting room. They’re discussing Katniss. Dad is trying to hush her, but she won’t be hushed, and it takes less than two seconds to realize why. She can’t attack me physically any more, so she’s going for outright psychological castration. I block out the particulars of what she’s saying as best I can, at least for the moment, and let the anger roll in again.
“Enjoying ourselves, are we?" I inquire coldly, arms crossed and leaning against the door frame. Dad goes ashen. I don’t spare him a glance. “You know, I used to think you were sick, Mom. Now… Now I know better. Now I know you’re just wrong."
“Peeta...”
“Shut your mouth,” I say to him, without looking at him. “If you can’t see - no, if you can’t admit - that this entire little show was for my personal benefit… Arranged specifically to cause me pain…”
Fast as lighting, I move. She yelps as I dive into the pocket of her apron, removing the missing container of cloves.
“You knew I’d need this for the pies,” I accuse her. “So you nicked the supply from the downstairs cabinet before everyone got up, watched from the turn of the stairs till I was at the point where I’d need them, and came back up here and waited to bring this up till I came up. If you don’t kick her out,” I say to Dad. “Today… I’m leaving. I’ll go stay with Lavash and Molly; they’ve said more than once that they’d be happy to have me, and when I’m finished school, I’ll go Seam-side. Because I swear to God, I would rather risk my life in the mines than live under the same roof with her one more hour.”
“Peeta…"
“Don’t ‘Peeta' me," I cut him off. “Twenty years you’ve sat on your ass and watched her beat on your children in every way there is. Well, here… Here’s the line. My line. You may not have one, but I do. And if you don’t man up, I’m gone.”
“Me too,” a voice says. I turn. Brio is suddenly standing behind me, huge and hulking, his jaw set. “If Peet goes, I’m going with him.”
“Son…” It is almost imploring.
And then the shit really hits the fan.
“Which son are you addressing again?” Lavash inquires coolly from behind him. Lean and narrow, gold hair neat and shining, he leans against the doorframe I've just vacated, his receipt book in hand. I blink at him, startled. I hadn’t expected him, but apparently, my rebellious, good, and grown up example is having positive effects already. “Because I’m afraid that, under the circumstances… Those circumstances where, again, you allow her to stay… I wouldn’t qualify as one of either of yours any longer either. So take your pick, Dad. Her, or us. And keep this in mind too; leaving doesn’t just mean leaving the house. It means leaving you without assistants, because I’ll be good goddamned before I ever put my talents toward enabling her shit - or allow my brothers to put theirs toward it - again. Without us, you’ll be out of business in a month - and never mind the mines, we’ll find a way to start up our own place. Without her, or you.”
“We will?" Brio says to him dubiously. I recover quickly, encouraged.
“Yes,” I say, and in a fit of admittedly nasty-minded inspiration… “We’ll go to Haymitch Abernathy. He’s entitled to start a business in the name of his Victors’ talent - the talent he hasn’t got, and the Capitol’s always ragging on - and he wouldn’t have to do a thing but sit back and drink and watch us work to pay off the investment.”
My parents stare at me, thunderstruck. Lavash looks both thoughtful and scientific.
“Do you know,” he muses. “That could actually work? I could draw up a feasible proposal, easy, and okay, we’re young, but we’re not exactly untried, are we? He wouldn’t be risking anything on us; we’ve all been trained in every aspect of the business since birth and as a proven team yet too. We wouldn’t be able to use the family recipes, but... You’ve got all those ideas for new ones, Peet; I’ve got the book-keeping skills, Brio’s got the construction and maintenance skills... With the established customer base, never mind that Molly’s father is Mayor Undersee’s secretary… We could hire Delly Cartwright and Primrose Everdeen as our front-people, and we’d have it made. We might even be able to manage some actual Capitol exposure. Make a few specialty cakes, have Madge and Molly convince Mayor Undersee to show them off at a few official meetings, and who knows how far we could go?”
Dad dithers, but between the three of us, we have him over every flour barrel we own, and he knows it. In the end, Mom is the one that goes to Lavash and Molly’s. She does insist on waiting till it’s almost dark to leave. She doesn’t want anyone seeing her face.
“I suggest that you adjust your standard demeanor,” Lavash says pleasantly as she packs her things that evening. I can’t help but think how much fun Johanna and I would have had with him in our ongoing purple-prose fests. “While you’re with us. Molly and I would have utterly no problem if you were to, say, decide that you’d be more comfortable booking a room at the boarding house during your convalescence. Or at any point following.”
I wave goodbye as she leaves, rather snidely, and I see my Community Housers lurking. Their eyes widen at the sight of her scarf-swathed face.... I wink at them. Their own gap-toothed smirks warm the cockles of my heart. I wait until Mom and Lavash are out of sight, and beckon them in, packing a bag of the day’s leftovers and passing it over, along with…
“My invoice,” I tell them. “And you only want the petals from the third one. Not the leaves, or the rest of the plants. And mind the centers, those are for the bees.”
“Bees are bad."
“No they’re not. They pollinate all sorts of plants, including ones you can eat again.”
The next morning I get up an hour earlier, as has too become my new wont, and make my way to the Meadow. Darius Rooke finally spots me out and about, and arches an eyebrow.
"Branching out, are we?" he inquires. He has, I think, a lovely speaking voice.
“It’s a one time thing,” I lie. “I want to start a few hanging pots of herbs that don’t grow inside the District. Maybe spore a couple logs with mushrooms.”
“Mm,” he says. “Mushrooms.” I just slip under the fence. I know the woods inside out now, never mind most of Kat’s techniques… It doesn’t take me long to check the few basic snares I’ve set, and to collect the plants I’m looking for. The last snare hosts a spotted hare. I wrap it swiftly, and tuck it into the bottom of the bag under a load of sour crabapples.
I’m back in record time. Soon, the hare is baking in a huge savory herbed pie. Purnia and her crew nearly turn themselves inside out sniffing.
“Oh my God,” she says. “How much for a slice?”
“Sorry. It’s a special order,” I say, my hands flying.
“Damn. Oooh. What are those?"
“Spiced crabapple puffs,” I say. “Make a delivery for me, and I’ll throw one in."
“You’re on."
I wrap up her order, and the pie.
“The Everdeens again?" she inquires.
“No. they’re alright for now,” I say, and thinking of certain news I’d heard on my unofficial rounds, and of my private analysis of just who’s most likely to be Reaped if Kat and Prim aren’t… “This goes to the Ingises.”
“The Ingises? The over-the-Seam Ingises?”
“Yes. Mr. Ingis sprained his ankle two days ago. He’s off the mines for at least a week.”
“How am I supposed to explain it?"
“That it’s not charity. Tell him to send his eldest over. Payment in advance. I’ve always got lots of wood to chop, and we need a new coat of whitewash besides." I tuck an extra crabapple puff in her pastry bag. “For Rooke."
The oldest Ingis girl, Nara, shows up less than thirty minutes later.
“Dad says I’m to help you every afternoon for the next week,” she says without preamble. “Where’s the wood?”
I escort her out to the yard. “Go to it,” I say. ”How’s your dad? And his foot?”
“Grumpy. You’d think he’d cut the thing off, the way he’s going on.”
I laugh. The axe rings steadily. I watch her a moment... In the end, I can't help myself.
“Here,” I say. “Like this.” I adjust her fingers.
“What… That’s no good!"
“For chopping wood, no. But If you get Reaped,” I say. “You’re less likely to lose your grip.”
She stares at me.
“How do you know?" she say finally, of the new grip again.
“We had a Peacekeeper from Seven for awhile when I was a bit younger than you,” I lie. “He watched me chop, and showed me the same trick. Feel free to pass it around."
“He tell you anything else?"
“Yeah. No matter how fast you think you are… They’re faster. If you’re stuck beside a Career, go backwards, not forwards, off the pedestal. Everybody gets told that, and nobody ever does. Also? Water runs downhill. If you’re looking for it, climb up, not down, and follow the animals. And if they get you down… Go for the tendon on the back of the ankle or knee. You might still die, but it’ll do them in too."
“What about sponsors?”
“You know Delly Cartwright?’
“Yes."
“You pretend you’re her,” I say. “Everybody likes her. They can’t help it. And if people like you, they’ll sponsor you. If they don’t, or even if they’re neutral, they won’t.”
“They will if you’re pretty.” It’s more than a bit sour.
“Is Delly pretty?’
“No.”
“So you don’t need that. Neat, tidy, patriotic… Look ‘em straight in the eye and smile. I’ll make you a list. Share that around too.”
“Why?"
“Why what?’
“Why are you helping me.”
“Because you’re the oldest of five and have more tesserae than a dog has fleas, and if you are called up… Haymitch won’t,” I say bluntly. “So it’s up to us to help each other out instead. We’ve watched the Games all our lives; it’s not like we don’t know the ropes.”
“Is that why you brought the pie over,” she asks. “As an excuse to get me here?"
“You’re popular,” I say. “The Seam kids like you. You can pass them what I’m passing on.”
“You’re a Merchie. Why do you care?” She isn’t just talking about the pie, I know.
“Because I’ve spent my life living with someone who doesn’t,” I say. “And now that I’m big enough to make the point that we don’t, and will never, agree on certain things, it’s my new life’s mission to piss her off.”
She considers that. Her lips quirk at me appreciatively.
“Where’d you get the rabbit for the pie?"
“From a hat. Isn’t that where all rabbits come from?"
She snorts. I toss her my work gloves.
“Protect your hands and feet,” I instruct her. “At all costs. One bad blister, and you’re dead.”
“What do you think the Arena will be like this year?" She places a log and splits it neatly.
I pretend to consider that.
“Simple,” I say. “Natural. It’s the year before the Quarter Quell. You know they’ll be spending a fortune on the Arena next year, so they’re not going to go all out in the artificial design. So they’ll pick a spot that has a lot of different natural features again, to mix things up on its own. Not a city or urban environment; they had that last year.”
“You planning on going in?” she asks without looking at me. I stare at her blankly.
Where the hell did that come from?
“You could do it, you know,” she says, before I can muster a reply. “Make it home, I mean. All the kids at the Community House think so. You’re smart, athletic, you know how to work people…"
“A good chance is not an absolute chance.” I say, recovering. “And that’s the only kind I’d be willing to take there.”
She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t look at me again either.
Only later... Much later, in the Arena, after the first Capitol drop during the Capitol-sanctioned interlude… Do I think back, and wonder if she was trying, obliquely, to warn me. The Ingises don’t live that far from Cray’s house at all, and have a perfect cross-fence view of his back porch besides - that porch where all the girls - and the occasional hunter bearing a wild turkey or a delivery of completely unquestioned haunch of wild buck - come knocking on that regular basis. I certainly don’t think anything of it when I emerge from the Justice Building and catch that hunter’s eyes as I am escorted to the waiting car. I’m far too distracted by my memories of my final exchanges in the room behind me to note that his eyes drop first, darting away, not as the predator he’s always prided himself on being, but as prey. And I don’t think of it on the train, when I’m lying on my bed, trying to think on just who would have the kind of influence with the Capitol to ensure that my name was drawn again.
No, Gale Hawthorne doesn’t even enter my mind. The eighteen-year-old version of the man had had no interest in me, after all. I barely processed on his radar until the Games save for as a rich Merchie kid with constant access to food. He’d tried to bully me for it once or twice when we were younger, making predictably disparaging remarks on my physique, but then his father had died, and he hadn’t had time or energy for anything but chronic simmering resentment. I didn’t interact with him much this time, only enough to determine that he wasn’t a fellow time-traveler. He’s just not that good an actor, at any age, and would have given himself away, I reasoned, especially since I was looking for it.
Before that drop does come, though...
The Justice Building
"Wow.” I try to keep it dry and sarcastic. “Way to be supportive. Bitch."
“Peeta…"
“She just told me how she’s just thrilled that my competition might bring it home, Dad," I say as she slams out. "How do you expect me to react, exactly?"
“We still have to live with her.”
“And I should just let it go because I’m on my way out?"
He presses his fingers to his temple.
“You don’t have to live with her,” I tell him. “You could divorce her. We’re all grown now. You don’t have to accept her emasculating you at every turn for the sake of your kids. We don’t want you to, Dad. We never did.’
Still, he says nothing. He might be in the upper ten percent of District Twelve, but really, it’s no wonder Kat’s mom gave him over for a Seam miner. He dithers a bit more, and I think he might actually say something meaningful, now that Mom is gone… But all he does is to ask me to send him my new recipes.
“Forget it,” I say immediately. “They’re mine. I’ll be leaving copies, yes, but I’ll be leaving them with Haymitch Abernathy. If I die, they go to Clara Everdeen. If you want them, you’ll have to buy them from her. For what they’re worth, which is obviously more to you than I am if you can think of them at a time like this.”
And he, too, leaves without another word. I watch him go, my stomach knotted. Brio comes and hugs me tight.
“Be careful, Peet,’ he says. “I love you.”
“Promise me something,” I say to them abruptly. "All of you?”
“Anything,” Lavash says immediately. “Anything, little brother.”
“That when I come back, you’ll all come and live with me?"
“What?"
“I don’t want to have to deal with Mom and Dad anymore.” I swipe at my eyes. “For any of us to have to deal with them anymore. I’m never giving them those recipes. Any of them; I have a lot more than … And I’ll have enough money to start my own business. If you’ll come live with me, I’ll buy them out, they can fuck off and be miserable together for the rest of their lives, and it’ll just be us. The three- no, the four of us.” The tears run freely… I don’t know why I'd hoped that things would be different this time. That he’d be different.
“Oh, Peeta.” Molly says. Her voice cracks. “You don’t have to bribe us, love. Just… Come home safely, and we’re in.”
Maybe, I think, it’ll make the difference in that I’m making them promise before I go this time, instead of leaving them all to make excuses in front of Mom and Dad later.
“Don’t let her get to you, little bro,” Lavash says softly in my ear. “You need to focus on yourself now. For your own sake. For us.”
I know he’s not talking about Mom.
They leave. Nara Ingis comes, and my Community Housers. I pass around a couple of bags of cookies, and a hefty pocketful of coins that I’d filched from the register right before we left. They all stand awkwardly, not quite sure what to say.
“Don’t worry,” I reassure them. “I’m coming home. And when I do, I’ll have jobs for you. Real jobs. You just have to wait a bit longer, alright?”
“What can we do?"
“Lavash and Brio and I will be starting up our own version of the bakery,” I say. “And I’ll need a few people to help me around my new house besides. There’ll be work for everyone who wants it.”
And I give over and hug them. They’re fragile enough to bring tears to my own eyes. From the uncertain way they hold themselves as I embrace them, I wonder if they’ve ever been hugged in their lives. They scooch off, waving… Nara lingers.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For… “
She doesn’t finish the sentence, just leans in and kisses me on the mouth. Not strongly or forcefully, but …
“Give ‘em hell, Merchie,” she says.
"I will," I promise. "I..."
But she is gone before I can say anything else.
The Arena
Day Nine
“Rules?” Graham Madden repeats derisively.
I am, I think, way too old for this shit.
“Yes, District Nine. Rules. Might I remind you, again, that this is my camping site, not yours? Mine, my wife’s, and my ally’s, who, for the record, is not you?”
“He got a point,” Thresh says lazily, and gleams as he sprawls by the fire and cracks nuts into a bowl with Denim Alignak’s hammer. He’s really internalizing his inner panther. “The only ones actually invited here were me and Rue. The rest of you just showed up.”
“We’re under truce!”
“So go be under truce somewhere else,” Katniss snaps. “There’s a whole big Arena out there, and you’re welcome to stake your claim on any given spot if you don’t like it here.”
“I’m not going with you,” Queenie Marconi informs her District partner as she scrubs dishes obviously. “If you do decide to stomp off.”
“You just want his food,” Graham snarks.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m also not ashamed to lower myself to work for my share of it, and for a spot by the fire.” She rinses the pot, setting it to dry. “Considering that someone dropped all our matches in the creek, because someone didn’t lace their backpack properly the very first morning we were here!”
“I didn’t leave it unlaced. I told you, Bobbin must have loosened it before she took off!”
More squabbling breaks out. Kat clenches her jaw, takes two strides, grabs the pot, fills it with water, and dumps it over the fire. It hisses and steams wildly. Everyone turns to face her, startled.
“What…”
“I am sick to death,” she informs them between clenched teeth. “Of the whining. You two.” She points to Rue and Thresh. “Go pick berries and edibles. You two -” She points to Jude and Eliza. “Go collect more burdock leaves and cattails. You can’t miss them; they look like fuzzy brown penises on sticks. You two… She points to Denim and Finch. “Go that way, and check the snare lines. And as for you two…” She glares at Queenie and Graham. “I do not care what you do, as long as you do it somewhere else. Away from me. Away from Peeta. Away from Hal. Away from… HERE!”
God, I love my wife.
Chapter 3: Day Nine Again
Summary:
In Which Secrets are NOT revealed, and Realizations Are Made
Notes:
Warnings: references to acute homophobia and bashing
SMUT WARNING
Chapter Text
I may love my wife, but I’m also becoming increasingly worried about her.
The first few days after all of the kids arrive at Skull Island are, in actuality, no more stressful than could reasonably be expected. Every one of them, after all, is a) surrounded by a group of mandated potential murderers, b) living in the middle of a nightmarish neo-natural landscape constructed by gleeful, glad-eyed sadists, c) subject to an absolutely unprecedented set of circumstances, and d) privy to absolutely no information on anything whatsoever. It’s no wonder, really, that they’re all a bit tense, and, hormonal teenagers that they are, are taking it out on each other.
Under normal circumstances, the older Kat wouldn’t have blinked an eye at any of the adolescent squabbling and whining, if only because we’d both become entirely resistant to the effects after raising Rye and Willow. As sweet as both of our kids are individually, they were absolute masters at picking at each other as teens for every perceived offense, up to and including each other’s habit of breathing too loudly for the other’s tender sensibilities. It was only when, absolutely irritated out, we’d shipped Willow off to Annie for the summer that she turned seventeen (on the principle that if she proved seasick she’d likely vomit out every last bit of adolescent vitriol) and Rye off to Jo (where he learned that a mandated out-of-District vacation meant the absence not only of his sister, but of his boyfriend) that they learned to be civil to each other. They became excellent friends as they grew up, but the fact remained. The trial by fire that we, as their parents, suffered in making certain that it happened left both of us with absolutely immunity to adolescent angst.
“You alright there?" I inquire of my wife, when I catch up with her after she stalks off, almost in tears, after her outburst at the camp. She hadn’t bothered waiting for any of them to reply; she’d just grabbed her bow and bolted. Hal lurched up immediately, alarmed and panicked, but I’d just shushed him, giving him a quick, hard hug as I'd hunkered down to talk to him face-to-face.
“I’ll go after her,” I reassure him. “She just needs to cool off a bit. She’s stressed too, yeah, with all of this, no matter how calm and collected she’s seemed, and she told you, didn't she, that she’s known back home for having a bit of a temper besides? I know from experience in watching her all these years that this is what she does whenever she’s upset and isn’t in any position to pick a fight. She just goes for a run by herself till she’s got herself together again. Do you think you can manage a bit, little minnow, if I go check on her?”
“Yar, of course,” he says anxiously again. “Go, go.”
“Excellent.” I kiss his nose. “Thresh will keep an eye out for you for me, won’t you, Thresh?”
“Of course,” Thresh rumbles. The big boy is rapidly becoming my second-in-command, and not just because of his size or because we invited him in first. That’s a part of it, of course, but he’s also very good at stepping in to quietly ensure that even the most rattled of the Tributes behave civilly when Kat and I are distracted with Hal - and there’s been a fair amount there to distract. I don’t want to leave him even now, but there are two of them and one of me, and right now, Kat is the one who needs my immediate attention. She hasn’t been sleeping any better the last couple of nights than Hal has again, and her appetite has dropped sharply too. Neither of those are good signs, and they’re both very, very familiar to me... Just as I have certain symptoms that warn her that I’m about to suffer my version of trauma-induced panic attacks, she does too. And even if it was her idea to build the signal fires, it’s fairly obvious to me, at least, that the constant presence of the nine new additions are now only serving to remind her of the eleven-plus-two who won’t be coming.
I hug Hal one last time, and grabbing my spear and water bottle, take off down the river to catch up with my wife.
*
It doesn’t take long to find her. She’s not bothering to try and evade me, and I fall into step beside her. I keep my hands in my pockets at first, but eventually, reach out to take her hand. She doesn’t push me away, and we walk for a good half-hour, deeper into the wood, without talking. Gradually, I feel the tension easing out of her, and if peace doesn’t settle on her, calm eventually does… I look sideways at her and smile. In spite of herself, she smiles back, at least a little.
“Sorry,” she says. “I just…” She gestures vaguely.
I wave her off, and help her over a fallen log. Then we turn a corner, such as it is, and we both stop, delighted and charmed. We’re in a part of the Arena that I’m fairly certain none of the others have discovered yet - a section on the edge of the forest now completely devastated by the restructuring, but at the same time, still green and verdant, and with quite manageable (if accidental) passages through. There is a tiny stream burbling, diverted from the main river, I think, from the restructuring again, and a little bank of wildflowers. All is enclosed and sweet-smelling, much like Hal’s former ‘tent’ back at Skull Island.
I glance over at Katniss. She glances back. I can tell from her expression that she’s made the connections there too. My smile turns to a conspiratorial, seductive grin. She rolls her eyes, but the corners of her lips are tugging upward too, more so than they had been even a moment before.
“Nice spot,” I say, invitingly again. “Don’t you think? Do you think anyone is watching now? Personally I shouldn't think so; the level of destruction here..."
“I think you should shut up and take your clothes off,” she tells me, dropping her bow and arrows. “I’ve had enough of the rhetorical and redundant chatter for one day.”
And I laugh and seize her, hauling her in and kissing her hard as I shove her up against a tree, my hands flashing out to grab her wrists and pin them up over her head. She allows it for approximately two seconds before shoving me off and forward, harder. I land obligingly on my back, and she’s on me, pinning my hands and kissing me, teeth clamping down on my lip. I melt immediately, moaning.
“Ah, Kat…”
Within seconds, my jacket is gone, and my pants undone. She rises fluidly, stripping off her own jacket while still standing astride me, and kicks her boots and trousers aside. Then my hands are pinned again, and she’s slipping down, and then my back arches so hard I can hear my spine pop.
I’m fairly sure that we actually land in the stream at one point, but honestly, I can’t be sure. My vision is whiting blissfully as she slams down again and again, twisting and shoving and rolling with me, and then her teeth sink into my neck, deep and hard, and I howl, and the world whites out along with my vision, and we are both immediately falling into a deep, hard slumber.
*
I wake up less than an hour later, and watch her sleep. She looks exhausted yet, and is scowling slightly and unhappily even at rest. She mumbles something as I trace a cheekbone and tuck a tendril of hair back. Like Hal’s, and mine for that matter, it’s curling slightly at the shortened ends. She mumbles again, and I lean in to listen, but she is quiet again: perhaps aware, even in her sleep now, that someone is listening, and withdrawing automatically as she always has at the prospect of being questioned.
I pull her close, and close my eyes again, trying to sleep again. I don’t know whether I succeed, but my mind does relax enough to slow and wander, not just through the present but through my memories of the no-longer future. It slows even more, and I find my older self once more, but this time, though I am in the company of a woman, it is not with my wife.
New Appalachia
Peeta's 65th Birthday Weekend
Johanna Mason’s unwed pregnancy was announced on the live-streams when she was thirty-eight and I was thirty-three, the year after Rye was born. She made no secret whatsoever of the identity of the father, though that was as far as she’d go in talking on the subject. As a result, everyone in Panem just assumed that the former District Seven’s most notorious Victor had got suckered in by the quintessentially broody, rebellious bad-boy-and-celebrated-war-hero, Gale Hawthorne.
I knew the whole truth, of course - eventually, anyway. Jo had always known exactly how I felt about the man in question, and made a special trip to New Appalachia to inform me of the details of her delicate condition before she told everyone else. It was a mark of both the regard that she had for me and for the strength of our friendship that she openly admitted from that first meeting that she’d managed the seduction and pregnancy on purpose, even if, again, she did know exactly how much, and why, I despised him.
It took one or two more visits before the entire story came out, mostly, again, because of my initial virulent reaction. The screaming on both parts was absolutely epic (if private, she always did respect my aversion to public scenes), and in the end, I actually thought that I’d convinced her to hold off on making any kind of commitment there. His ongoing reaction to her pregnancy alone would be enough to open her eyes and send her running, I'd reasoned... In the end, I thought I’d been right, and that while the twin boys that resulted were enough to forge permanent ties, they hadn't been enough to convince her to make the permanent commitment. Gale, of course, sulked over that one for the rest of his life. He hadn’t actually wanted to marry her, but from his point of view, that wasn’t really the point. The point was that Jo was the one who told him that she didn’t want to marry him.
It didn’t take him long to recover. By the time the twins, Blaze and Briar, were six months old, he’d met and married a woman named Riesa from the former District One. An odd choice for such a stubborn and perpetual Outlier as Hawthorne, one might think, but her stunning tits and waist-length, ice-white tresses obviously outweighed his prejudices against her background as a citizen of one of Snow’s two favored Districts. As it turned out, they never had children themselves. It was, Riesa informed us more than once when she and Jo came to visit us with the babes in tow, one of the only reasons she put up with her chronic neanderthal of a husband’s attitude. She got kids out of the deal.
After a few more months passed, I came to realize exactly what else she was getting. Jo, after giving me a bit of time to cool off, came back to New Appalachia, and, after making me promise to actually sit and listen to her this time instead of flying off the strictly reactive handle, sat me down and slowly and painfully proceeded to tell me a few things about herself that she’d never voiced to another living soul. By the time she was finished I felt like the biggest shit in the history of our benighted country, and both of us were in tears.
Johanna Mason was a lesbian.
It took me a bit to process why, exactly, she assumed that the revelation would be such a big deal to me, or, for that matter, to anyone. Homosexuality was pretty much a non-subject in most of the Old Districts - one of the few absolute rights and freedoms that all citizens of Old Panem had had, as Katniss had once noted, was the right to love and marry whomever we wanted. As it turned out, though, Jo had had the acute bad fortune to be born in one of the exceptions to the rule. District Seven, as she described it to me that evening, was nothing short of hell for anyone born anything other than completely and absolutely straight. Coming out there, as Blight Gavin had discovered as a boy, was a one-way ticket to the dumpsters in the alleys behind the District loggers’ bars. He and his boyfriend had been caught a bare week before their last Reaping, and his boyfriend’s mangled, tortured and burned-out husk of a body was found in a dumpster the morning after. Blight’s own position as the son of one of the managers of the District’s biggest pulp mills required a bit more delicate handling. His Reaping ended up being a lesson (as it had been intended to be) for every queer kid in the entire District. Even his victory hadn’t made a difference. He was still in more danger at home than he’d ever been in the Arena, and spent most of his life in the Capitol as a result.
Jo herself had been very, very careful growing up, but that being said, she was, above all and eternally Jo, and decided early on that she had no intention of catering to her District’s prejudices her entire life if she had the option at all. Her Reaping therefore, was, in a way, her golden ticket out of a lifetime in the closet. As soon as she’d processed the implications, she’d decided to take the extremely public opportunity to demonstrate to everyone in Seven just why it would be a bad, bad idea to come after her should she make it back. Blight didn’t get a chance to warn her though, of just how it was for Victors before she went to see Snow for her post-Victory interview… Her refusal to cooperate with his proposed line-up of arranged blind dates meant that her family paid the price. As a result, she buried her preferences for women all her life - and even amongst like-minded friends, and those who truly didn’t give a damn, the scars from the consequences of her abject selfishness, as she saw it, were just too deep for her to ever let them go.
Gale, of course, though not actually (or at least actively) homophobic, was the type who couldn’t even begin to imagine that any woman would truly prefer another woman over a man (any man), or who would ‘indulge’ herself on anything but her man’s encouragement. He was very pretty, though, as Jo had observed, with good healthy genes, and she’d had a built-in excuse not to marry him in her absolute disinclination to humor him by giving up her Victors’ salary in exchange for the privilege of living on his military income. Riesa, too, was the practical sort… Her looks ensured that no one would ever take her seriously in the workplace. She’d left every job she had due to sexual harassment, but in the end, she too found her own solution. She married a man that no other man would dare cross in approaching her -
And who would never see another woman coming.
As far as I know, I’m the only one Jo ever physically told about her preferences. She'd never even broken on the subject in the Capitol torture chambers. It was another reason why she visited so often, with the kids again. She and Riesa wanted to ensure the boys had an alternate role model, and I was their effective, if not actual, godfather. Gale was happy enough to have Kat as godmother, with the excuse that it was at Johanna’s insistence, but even he wasn’t stupid enough to suggest that I do the official honors there after he got Prim killed.
In short, Jo was, beyond a doubt, the best friend I ever had, and unlike Kat, I wasn’t shy on claiming those I loved. On the evening of the day after my sixty-fifth birthday, therefore, she was sitting with me at one of the tables at the bakery, uncharacteristically quiet as she watched me putter around, when she abruptly stood, coming up and putting her arms around me. Surprised - no absolutely shocked; no matter our profound fondness for each other, it was the first time in our lives that she’d done more than offer me an awkward, one-armed squeezelet - I reflexively put my own arms around her. At seventy years old, her wit was was as fierce and sharp as ever, but physically, she was far frailer and more fragile than Katniss, with her vigorous daily regimen of hiking and hunting, would ever be. I, too, at sixty-five again, was as physically as sturdy and strong as I’d ever been, so I did try to be careful with her, but she’d have none of it. Her grip tightened convulsively as she pressed her face into my neck, pressing against me and almost visibly willing me with the force of it to crush her back.
“Hey now,” I teased her. “What’s all this?” Her mumbled words shocked me to the core.
“I love you too, Jo,” I say gently. “So much.”
And she pulled back, but only a bit, her face wet.
“I wanted you, you know,” she said.
“Uh?"
“I wanted you to be the boys’ father. It wasn’t like that… It’s never been like that... But after what we went through in the Capitol together…”
I kissed the top of her head.
“I know,” I said. Then, again, and for the thousandth plaintive time… “Hawthorne? Really?” For the thousandth time, she shrugged. This time though, and for the first time, I didn't let it go.
“Come on, Jo,” I said. “There had to be another reason besides the pretty face and the good genes. I know you. I know us. At the risk of sounding self-centered, and however much Kat irked your ass back then, I know I’m your best friend in the world, alright, and was even then again. And you knew that I felt the same way about you. You’d never ever have even considered him as a candidate, knowing how much it would hurt me, if there hadn’t been something else going on in your spiky little head. Something that trumped… Everything.”
And she sighed.
“That was it, really. All of it, right there. I wanted to be part of your family,” she said bluntly. “Officially. Part of a family that I loved, and that loved me, and that survived. Gale was - is - a moron, and I knew you hated him and would- could - never forgive him for what he did, but his mother and brothers and sister were all really nice anyway. Sensible, and I knew that you and Katniss had never blamed them for his sins, and that you did consider them family at least. I figured… I don’t know what I figured. I just…” Her thin shoulders tightened. “He looks so much like Katniss. All of the Hawthornes do. And yes, she irked my ass back then, and still does, but it was never really personal, you know? I thought… I wanted it to be you. More than anything. But I just… Didn’t have the guts to ask. If you’d said no… I don’t think I could have taken it as anything but personal rejection again. So I just went around, and chose him, because if they couldn’t be yours… They might end up looking like her. And you’d be their godfather, and what’s left to the word, really, if you just happen to be a dyed-in-the-wool cynical bitch of an atheist?’
I sat down slowly, digesting that. She sat opposite.
“It never would have worked,” I said finally. “Because you’re right. I would have said no. Not because I wouldn’t have wanted to - but because I knew the truth by then."
“The truth? ’ She wrinkled her nose at me warily. “The truth about… What?”
I hesitated. The ensuing pause stretched out for rather more than a moment as I struggled with, bar none, the most difficult decision of my life.
“You have to promise me, Jo,” I said finally. “That what I tell you stays between us. Absolutely, absolutely between us. I’ve never told any of my therapists. Even Kat doesn’t know."
“Uh?"
“You heard me. If you can’t promise me, atheist or not, on everything, everything, that you hold most sacred in this world that you’ll go to your grave without telling anyone…”
She looked me over.
“It’s really that serious?”
“Yes. It would change... Everything, if it ever got out. Everywhere. And not, not in a good way. It might have helped things along once… But not anymore. And if I didn’t love you as much as I do - if I didn’t know, after the time we did spend as Snow’s guests in the Capitol, exactly how tough you really are…”
The bakery was very quiet.
“Alright,” she said finally. “You have my word. On… On the memory, and the scars, of the events of everything that we two went through together, as Snow’s party guests."
And I closed my eyes and told her. When it was done, I opened my eyes. Her face was as white as bleached flour as she stared at me. I hadn’t, I thought detachedly, seen that particular look on anyone’s face in going on fifty years now. Not since I last watched the live expressions of District children being Reaped.
“How long have you known?”
“I found out a couple of months before you got pregnant.”
The best friend I ever had in my life buried her face in her hands. When she removed them, she rose and came over and sat on my knee. I put an arm around her as she put her arms around my neck again, and pressed her face to my hair.
“I still would have asked you,” she said, muffled. “And I would have meant it.”
“I still would have said no.”
“I know. That’s not the point.”
I tugged her hair lightly.
“Though you still would have had to ask Brainless,” she adds. “And she never would have agreed.”
“You underestimate her,” I said, amused. “Really. She wouldn’t have let you sleep with me, but she totally would have been up for me donating. Anonymously, of course, to preserve everyone’s privacy, but then again, I would have insisted on that too.”
“I’m not stupid. It would have been a condition all around.” Jo crossed her eyes at me. “Really? You think?”
“I know. She loves you.”
“She loves Annie. She tolerates me.”
“Katniss doesn’t tolerate people,” I said bluntly. “She either loves them, is completely neutral on them, or hates them. If she hates them, they know it. If she’s neutral on them, she’s polite to them. Is she polite to you?’
“No,” Jo admitted.
“Do you think she hates you?”
“No. But…”
“Then that only leaves one option.” I reached around. She yelped and swatted me.
“Oi! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I held up the faded, tattered handkerchief that I’d just fished out of her back pocket, wrapped and knotted tightly around a bundle of fresh pine needles.
“Still on the original, I see,” I observed. She grabbed and glared. “Why haven’t you ever traded it in?”
“Shut up,” she snapped, and tried to move off my lap. I held her still.
“If you’d asked us,” I said to her again. “I would have had to say no, and now you know why. But Katniss would have said yes, Jo. She doesn’t just love you. She likes you.”
“Would you have said yes if what you just told me wasn’t relevant?’
“Not unless you’d both agreed that we could manage it naturally. It would have required a lab, and I don’t have good associations with children and labs.”
“Turkey baster?” she suggested. “I know this is a bakery, but you had to have had one in a drawer somewhere.”
I just laughed. She wrapped her arms around me again at that. The bakery door banged open. The fresh spring wind blasted in, along with my absolutely filthy wife, clad in muddy shoes, torn jeans, a knee-length red and black flannel lumber jacket, and her bow and quiver. Over her shoulder was a stuffed-to-overflowing game bag.
“Hey Jo,” she greeted Johanna, and, leaning around her head, kissed my upturned lips warmly. Her breath tasted of spearmint, her chapped cheeks and lips were rosy and chilled, her fingernails were black with mud, and her thick, greying hair, half out of its braid, was messy and tangled. The half-braid sported a single random prickle-burr near the end of the tail. “Hey, Merchie.”
“Hey, baby girl. How were - are - the winter traplines?"
“Cleared and reset for the most part now, though there’s a lot of matted brush yet over the eastern flank of Helm’s Deep near the train tracks. I’ll have to recruit a couple of the younguns to go out with me one day soon and clear it out. Here, let me just put this game in the freezers in the back and wash up a bit, and I’ll be right with you.”
“Good haul?” My shoulder was growing somewhat damp, if quietly so.
“Not bad at all.” And she disappeared, humming. Jo pulled away, wiping her face hastily. I grabbed her and reseated her firmly.
“She’ll shoot me once she’s dealt with the game,” she protested. “Let me go, so I can run and hide.”
“Too late.” Katniss reappeared, on her way to the side washroom. “Why am I shooting you again?"
“Because you just caught us alone, and I’m sitting in your husband’s lap?”
She offered her an odd look. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you like women?’
“Um. What? ” She looked caught out and panicked. “Who told you that, who…” My wife just rolled her eyes.
“Nobody told me. Nobody had to. You slept with Gale,” she says plainly. “Alright, he was bound to make pretty babies, if only because he looks like me, but nobody, his wife especially, would put up with his crap as long as she has if she didn’t have someone with an actual sense of humor and personality on the side. You may be a pain in my ass, but there’s no denying that you’ve got both, never mind the cover of proximity, the kids and the established friendship, and it’s not like you’d be risking him catching you out, would you, because he’d never admit, or rather, process, that it was even possible that she could be banging another woman on the side. Because, Gale.”
“Oh.” Jo deflated. “Well… Why haven’t you ever said anything about it before?”
“Why would I? It’s absolutely nobody’s business what anyone else gets up to in the bedroom, or on the counters, or wherever, except for the people directly and physically involved. Also, Gale’s an idiot and probably got my sister killed, and alright, I might not hate him anymore, most days anyway, but it’s still fun to see him chronically screwed over.” Jo gawped as she patted her on the shoulder, and did a double-take, plucking the tattered handkerchief out of her hand. “You’re still on the first one? For God’s sake, woman, the holes there have got holes in them.” She dug into her pocket and retrieved a clean, if virulently wrinkled, blue bandanna. “Here. Fresh from the laundry, if not from my pocket, no worries. Use this from now on, and you won’t be leaking pine needles everywhere and risking the father of your children tracking you to his wife’s bed.”
And Jo took the bandanna, bemused, and watched her as she hummed her way out, quiver and game bag over her shoulder and bow in her hand.
“Most days?’ she inquired of me.
“She saves the actual hate for the pertinent anniversaries and is studiously neutral the rest of the time. Not that he’s ever noticed. Good thing the boys did get your brains, eh?”
“Mm,” she agreed. “I never had any illusions there, anyway. He’d never have made it out of the Arena.”
I snorted. “No. He wouldn’t have. All of the Careers would have ganged up on his pedestal before his boots ever hit the ground. Not because he was a threat, even, but just because he’s so goddamned annoying.”
“Nah. Snow would have ordered his death personally. He never would have been able to keep his mouth shut on his hatred for the Capitol to himself at the Interviews, and even if he had, his body language totally would have given him away.”
“I like you too,” I told her, and kissed her nose again, and her spikes. “You need to move now, though. You’re not heavy or anything, but… Sixty-five. I’m officially old and feeble now.”
“Uh huh.” She moved though, and watched as I untied my apron and hang it neatly. “Peeta.”
“Mm?”
“Thanks. For trusting me.”
“Trusting you with what?”
She just smiled a little, crookedly, and stuffed the bandanna in her pocket. I pushed the door open and slung an arm around her shoulder as we left, making our way down the main street. I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me. Nobody would dare steal anything in New Appalachia these days, or any day, for that matter. They were all far too respectful of my wife and her tracking skills. Even as the thought completed itself, Katniss ducked out of the sweet shop and joined us.
“Whatcha get me?” I asked, releasing Jo, but only to reach out to untangle the little burr in her hair.
“I got us cinnamon hearts.” She popped several in my mouth. I mmmed. “Happy day-after-your- birthday, Merchie.”
“Thank you, baby girl.” I stopped to kiss her. Johanna gagged rudely. Katniss pulled back a bit, sticking out her tongue, complete with half-dissolved cinnamon hearts, at her, before resuming our hot and dirty embrace.
“Aren’t you supposed to be against public displays of affection?” Jo inquired. “On prudish principle?”
“We have those contingent codicils built into the contract, yeah?” I pointed with my little finger, discreetly, around Kat's shoulder. Down the street, Gale was approaching with Riesa, glowering. Katniss grinned against my lips.
“When’s your birthday again?” she says around a mouthful of tongue, to the sniggering Jo.
“January fourteenth. Why?”
“I’m late with your gift, then,” and she hauled me back to the bakery, flicking on the lights as she did so, and locked the door.
“Kat, what…”
“Shh.” Back to the window, she wriggled out of her boots and jeans, unzipped her long coat, and ducked behind the counter. She boosted herself up, back to the window again. “Get over here. No, in front of me, that’s it.”
“What are you doing, woman?’ It was completely rhetorical. I knew exactly what she was doing.
“Making it look like you’re fucking me on the bakery counter. He’ll look; he won’t be able to help himself, so make it good.”
“No one can see anything with your coat loose like that,” I point out. “I actually could fuck you on the bakery counter. Never mind that it’s my birthday weekend.”
“Is it?” She kissed me again. The cinnamon hearts were losing cohesion fast. “Well, then.”
I reached for my belt buckle.
Gale left New Appalachia first thing the next morning, on the early train. Jo and Riesa come in for brunch together, Effie and Annie in tow. All looked completely unperturbed.
“Where’s the hubby this lovely A.M?” I inquired of the single married woman in the lot as I approached. Haymitch had died five years before, and Effie no longer lived in New Appalachia, but she was still a regular visitor.
“He went home,” Riesa said blithely. “He tried to convince me, at least, to come with him, instead of heading out tonight as planned, but I said that we couldn’t both leave without saying goodbye, and it would be too expensive to trade in both of our tickets besides. Jo offered to pay for an earlier one for me out of her Victors’ salary, but he declined on my behalf. We’re supposed to offer you his regrets, and to tell you that he got called in for an emergency consultation on…” She waved a hand. “Something.”
“Oh dear,” I said, as Effie sniffed in disapproval. “What can you do. Hey, baby girl.” I waved to Katniss as she ducked in, smelling of pine and the mountains, and… “What the hell is that?”
“A spored log,” she said of the giant branch over her shoulder. “And…” She produced a foraging bag. I opened it.
“Holy crap! I didn’t know there with this many morel mushrooms in all of New Appalachia! Where’d you find them all?”
“Gondor Gulch. It’s absolutely infested this year for some reason; those were just half of one patch of the free-standing ones. Find a spot for the log itself in one of the greenhouses, or better yet, build a new one and cultivate a few more to be going on with, and you’ll have ‘em as often as you can convince them it’s spring, Mayor Gamgee.”
“I’m retired now, remember?”
“You’d think,” Baz, our dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-bearded, long and lively son-in-law agreed as he came in from the back. “For heaven’s sake, Poppa, take off the apron and sit down already. We have a perfectly good staff; you hired them all yourself, remember? RYE! POPPA IS INSISTING ON RUNNING THE TABLES, AND IT’S NOT NOON YET! COME TELL HIM HE’S RETIRED AGAIN!”
“You’re retired again, Poppa,” Rye obliged, appearing. “Come on, hand over the apron and… Ma? Why are you carrying a tree around, and why is it where all the food is?”
“Because it’s food too. It’s a morel mushroom log,” Katniss informed him, kissing his cheek. “And all of its little friends. Coffee? Cheese buns?”
“Take it outside first. No, not the bag of mushrooms, just the log. Sit down, Poppa! You can come out of retirement again in time for the lunch rush, same as always.”
I rolled my eyes, but sat.
“Excellent. Now. What can I get you pretty ladies? No, I am not talking to you,” my son said to me. “I know what you want, and what you’ve already had, for that matter, last night, anyway. Dare I hope you at least bleached the counter afterwards?”
“They didn’t actually have sex on it, Rye.” Baz returned with the coffee. “They were just pretending, to get Hawthorne’s goat with it again. God, he’s stupid. Sorry, Auntie Riesa. They’ve done the same thing every single time he comes into town for as long as I can remember, and he falls for it every single time.”
“That’s fine; I know that, but not on the counters again, okay? Just… Urgh.”
“Sure thing, my little whistlepig.” I reached up and patted his cheek. He swatted me off. Baz laughed.
“Whistlepig?” Reisa guffawed.
“Groundhog,” Annie translated. “It was the first thing Katniss said when they put him in her arms. “Lor’ love a duck, and laws-a-mercy, he ain’t no bigger than a half-growed whistlepig!”
“It was an emotional moment.” Katniss slung off her coat and plonked down beside me. “I go all back-holler mountain mama when I’m emotional. Either that, or I go out and hunt something, but I’d just gone through thirty hours of back labor. I was in a killing mood alright, but I didn’t have the energy.” She slurped at her first cup of coffee. Daintily, before looking around. “Where’re Willow and Cas and the kids?’
“They took off about an hour after you did, with a picnic,” Baz told her. “To the lake. They took all of ours with them too.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “But they’re all only here for another four days! What about Granny Kat and Peety-Pop time?’
“Granny Kat and Peety-Pop are the ones that drove them all away. The details pertaining to our countertops are now all over town, and you’re officially old now too. It goes beyond merely embarrassing to ‘Sweet Baby Poseidon, that’s just unnatural; how will we ever survive the shame.’”
“But,” she protested, patently unconvincingly. “It wasn’t real sex! We were just annoying Gale with it! Sorry, Riesa.” Riesa waved her off, helping herself to a delicately sugar- powdered almond twist, and offering half to Jo.
“Nice try,” Jo said, accepting it. “It was totally real sex, because it was his birthday weekend.”
“That’s all you know. We had the real sex when we got home. To our bed. In our house, behind closed doors.”
“Ma,” Rye said, pained, as he brought Effie her hand-brewed mint tea. “Please.”
“You know,” I mused to my wife. “I’ve never quite figured out that particular tone of his. Is he embarrassed because we admit that we still do it, or embarrassed because we’re decent, ostensibly boring, and appropriately private with it?’
“AAAAHHHHHHHH! WILL YOU STOP? YOU ARE MY PARENTS!”
‘It’s all your fault,” his mother informed him cheerfully, around her mouthful of cheese bun. “If you didn’t keep insisting your father’s retirement extend itself every day till noon, he wouldn’t have nearly as much spare time and energy to spend on his conjugal duties as he does now.”
“And what’s your excuse?”
“Really, Rye?” Effie sniffed disapprovingly. “I raised you better than that.”
“Sorry, Granny Effie. I won’t do it again.”
“Wonderful.” She patted his hand. “Now. I’d just love a poached egg and a bit of fresh fruit to go with my tea, dear. I know you have people for that, but … Would you mind terribly? No one poaches an egg the way you do.”
“Of course.” He stomped off, in a manner absolutely, absolutely reminiscent of his mother. I craned my neck as I watched him go. As soon as he was out of earshot, all the women collapsed into giggles. Katniss just continued to slurp her coffee and to strip the cheese off the top of her breakfast buns, completely unperturbed.
“You’re so mean,” Annie told her when she’d recovered. “I’ve never traumatized Little Finny like that.”
“That’s because he was always too preoccupied with traumatizing you.” Jo slathered chocolate spread on another croissant. “You raised a total man-slut, woman.”
“I did not! I raised a son who understood just how important it was to me that, given his father’s absence in our lives, he carry on the family name and legacy. And he’s a good son, and he loves and respects his mother, so he did. Has.”
“Uh huh. Maaaaan-slut.” She bit deep, and chewed at her obnoxiously.
“Never mind that he was too busy carrying on the family name and legacy to notice any traumatizing behavior emanating from his mother’s direction,” Katniss noted. Annie sniffed at her.
“I loved Finnick,” she informed us all loftily. “I will always love Finnick. But he would be most upset with me if I’d given up on all of life’s little pleasures after he passed. And I would never marry again; of course I wouldn’t, but…”
She paused.
“Raising children is stressful?” I suggested helpfully as I spread goat cheese on a round of warm herbed flatbread. “Especially on your own?”
“I’ve never been alone.” She offered me a soft look. “You’ve been a wonderful godfather to him, Peeta, even if you are so old-fashioned, and Katniss so…”
“Traditional?” Katniss suggested.
“Selfish,” Jo corrected. “It’s not like she would have wanted to keep him.”
“Sorry. No, wait. I’m not. Also? We are not discussing this any more. It’s irrelevant, and a violation of the sacred premises of marriage, and completely inappropriate besides. My son is right here.” She punctuated that last with a gigantic mouthful of pure melted cheese.
“Your son has four different children by four different mothers,” Jo pointed out. “Also? Ew, Brainless. Gross, much?”
“Don’t insult my husband’s baking, woman, or I’ll take my bandanna back. And four different fathers. None of whom he slept with or married.”
Jo waved that off as Rye appeared with Effie’s poached egg, fruit, and a gigantic heart-shaped double-iced triple-spiced cinnamon bun.
“I didn’t order this, Rye dear.”
“No, I know.” He offered her a winning smile. That, he’d gotten from me. It went particularly well with the curls. He really, I observed as I sipped my own coffee, needed another haircut. “But I did make it just for you, Granny Effie. Just because I knew you were coming in for Poppa’s birthday.”
“Oh, darling. You’re so sweet, but really, I shouldn’t. My doctor said…”
He just looked at her sadly. She patted his hand, straightening her wig and squaring her shoulders.
“I’m so ungrateful. Of course I’ll eat it, darling; since you did make it just for me. It looks positively sinful. De - lectably so. I shall enjoy every bite.”
And she dove in avidly, if delicately. Rye beamed… It was Prim’s beam. Even after all the years, my heart tore with it. Watching Katniss out of the corner of my eye, I could almost feel hers do the same.
The next time Gale and Riesa visited, I thought savagely, I was going to park them in the room next to ours and make my wife scream loudly enough for them to hear her all the way across goddamn New Appalachia. All night long. With any luck, it would be enough to keep the bastard in the former District Two till one of us kicked the proverbial bucket.
The Arena Again
In the crook of my arm, cropped dark head on my shoulder and under the blanket of our jackets, Katniss murmurs in her sleep. I turn my head and kiss the corner of her mouth lightly. She opens an eye, and, minding the jackets, props herself up on her elbow.
“Everything alright?" she asks sleepily. I just smile at her. I suspect it doesn’t reach my eyes, because she just frowns at me.
“I’m fine,” I reassure her. “We should get back.”
“What is it?”
“Just a bit worried,” I evade. “About Hal.” And you. We maneuver around, tugging on our clothes as discreetly as we can manage it. The tiny clearing we’ve chosen as our retreat may be more incidental than man-made, a tiny oasis in the middle of a tangle of fallen and crashed and overhanging trees, and yes, I’d place the odds of working cameras in the vicinity at approximately zero, but still. “Kat?"
“Mm?’
“How are you feeling, really? With your head and all?"
“Uh? Oh. I’m fine. Haven’t had so much as a twinge there in days. Well, not from the bump, anyway. If Queenie doesn’t knock off the whining, I may have to share the remembered pain." She tugs on her socks. “Even Willow wasn’t so…’
She cuts herself off abruptly. I watch her carefully. She avoids my eyes as she laces her left boot, but it’s harder now, because she can’t hide behind her hair.
“It’s alright to talk about them here,” I say quietly. “There are no cameras around.”
“I don’t want to talk about them.” It is blunt. Cold, really, and the sudden sea of desolation behind her words is more tsunami than ocean, and absolutely takes my breath away. I flounder, near-drowning in my own sudden pain myself, and double over, sinking down and putting my head between my knees. I am literally gasping for breath.
After a minute I sense her sit beside me. She rubs my back lightly. We say nothing.
Finally…
“We have children and grandchildren. Real or not real,” she says abruptly.
“I,” I manage. “I don’t…”
I clench my eyes shut. Her hand removes itself. When I open them again, she is huddled into herself, her right boot held loosely.
“Real,” I whisper, as much to myself as to her. “No matter what happened, or happens. It’s… They’re… Real.”
“Tell that to my body.” It is rife with bitterness.
“What?” I sound stupid, even to myself.
“I was a virgin again. A virgin. Virgins don’t have children, Peeta. They don’t… And you knew, you knew, that’s why…”
Her face twists, and for the first time, I myself process - really, really process - just why I reacted so badly at the pain I caused her on the rooftop. My psyche had been screaming, not at what we’d regained in that moment of reunion, but at confirmation of what we’ve lost.
I shuffle over, pulling her close.
“Do you have any idea,” I say unsteadily. “The odds against us having absolutely identical psychotic delusions? It has to be time travel, then.”
“We’re here. The odds do not appear to be in our favor, Peeta. Not on any of this.” She wipes her dry face, her burning eyes. “I want to go home. If it’s selfish, and everybody has to die as a result again… I don’t care. I just want to go home.”
“I do too,” I say. “Oh, Kat. I do too.” My voice breaks. “We’ll find a way back. We will.”
“Time travel is based on the theory of the closed loop, Merchie. Too much has happened. Too much has changed. We can’t go back, because there’s no back to go back to anymore. There’s only the new future.” She struggles. “Who would do this to us, who would… And why? And why would they apologize to me for it?”
“I don’t…” I pause, struck as the universe implodes around me. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Kat.”
“What, what?’
“I am so stupid, we’re so stupid; I know who did it. I know. I don’t know why, but I know who.”
“What?"
“We’ve been assuming all along that the Reapings were rigged,” I say. “And maybe they were... But ... That would mean that it had to be someone with enough power to affect things on the national level, because that’s how it usually happens, right? And that would mean Plutarch, or Snow, or Beetee, or…”
“Peeta…”
“We thought it would have to be someone with power and influence,” I persist. “But it didn’t have to be someone like that at all. It just had to be someone who knew enough to read our names off of the goddamn slips.’
She stares at me. The mockingjays all around us sing triumphantly.
“Effie?’ she says blankly. “You think Effie did this?’
“Maybe not alone, she couldn’t have got back alone, but… She had the sobriety pills for Haymitch on the train, Katniss,” I say. “And she yelled at us for laughing at Clove. Since when would anyone from the Capitol, even Effie, ever label what Brutus did to her as sexual assault? He meant it as a disciplinary measure, not as… No one, no one saw it as sexual, not even us, and we only were ashamed after the fact because she reminded us through her lecture again that we did, and do, know better, because we were coming in from a society that had had the leisure to process the implications outside of the culturally dictated moment in history . And she knew how to make meringue, and how to ice marzipan, like a goddamn pro, I said to Hal, remember, and how many hours did she spend in the bakery the year after Haymitch died, learning how to bake so she wouldn’t have to think?”
“But…” She struggles. “There’s no way, no way, Effie would intentionally risk the new world, Peeta! That she’d risk the success of the second war, of … Or our family, of… Our family was her family! Rye and Willow were practically her babies! No, they were her babies! Hers and Haymitch’s both, she always said that Willow had his hair and that Rye had his eyes, not mine, and... Maybe it was all an accident after all, maybe… “
“It was intentional,” I ride over her ruthlessly. “It had to be intentional, because your attackers apologized to you, remember? And gave you the injection that saved your life, after they brained you. I was asleep, they could have snuck in after you left that morning and got me with a similar injection in my sleep with no need for violence, yeah? There’s a reason we’re here. A reason beyond the Games, beyond the war, beyond us, beyond… Everything. That’s the only kind of reason Effie would ever have gotten involved, because you’re right on one thing. Absolutely right. She wouldn’t have agreed to it, wouldn’t have agreed to sacrifice everyone else, unless it was literally, literally, the only valid option.” I press my fingers to my temple, thinking as hard as I can.
“Do you think she came back alone, then?” Katniss ventures. “I mean… Do you think she brought anyone with her, besides us? I mean… She might be recruiting people to help her with… Whatever… But… Do you think it’s just the three of us, then?”
“I don’t…”
And the world explodes around me. Again.
“Jo,” I breathe. “Jo.”
“What?"
“I don’t know if the one here now is our Jo… But she had to know about it.”
Katniss looks at me blankly. I turn to face her, taking her hands.
“Katniss,” I say. “Do you trust me?’
Her eyes narrow at me, in that manner I know - and dread - so well.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she surmises. “Something you haven’t told me. And if Jo knew…. Knows… It goes back. Way, way, way back.”
“Yes. There is. And it does.”
“And why, pray tell, am I, your wife, only finding out about this deliberate miscommunication of the ages now?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Her eyes narrow at me even further. “Yet,” I temporize. “I can’t tell you yet.”
“Why not? There are no cameras here.”
“Because I can’t. You’re a better liar than you’ve ever been, Katniss, but you’re just not that good an actor. Even I wouldn’t be, if I found out from me now.”
“Mm.” Her eyes are now slits. “But you will tell me? As soon as is humanly and temporally possible?’
“Yes,” I say unhesitatingly. “I will.” I really, really don’t want to, and you may divorce me for it, never mind kill me, but… I will tell you. If only because it’s already too late not to. It will come out, it can’t not, now, and…
“Alright,” she says. “But it better be good, Merchie. I mean it. It better be damned good.”
“It’s not,” I say honestly. “It’s horrible, really. Honestly? It could not possibly, possibly be worse. Unfortunately, we’re also at the only point in Panem’s history right now where the information could possibly prove useful.”
“And that’s why you didn’t tell me before now? Because it was horrible, but not useful anymore?”
“Yes. It could have… It would have… Brought down everything around us.”
Katniss sits back and contemplates that, and me.
“And Jo was the only other person who ever knew?” she tests.
“Yes. As far as I know, anyway, and that’s pretty damned far. All-the-way far. And she never would have told anyone, even in extremis. She might have acted a certain way, towards certain ends,” I say carefully. “Promoting certain actions, given that she did have the information to work with… But she never, never would have told anyone the details. She never even would have hinted at it.”
“And it would explain why we’re here? We two? Even without knowing … Everything else? Because you’re the only person who’d be able to use the information constructively, at this one crucial and necessary point in time?”
I open my mouth, and close it again.
Goddammit, Jo. You knew I wouldn’t be able to resist, even if you didn’t tell anyone else on the other end. Not if something had to change anyway: something that risked everything, and if I thought Kat and I were truly stuck here together with no guaranteed way for both of us to emerge from the Arena again. Definitely not with what we could, and would gain with it afterwards, if I were to use the information properly. And you were right, weren't you? I didn’t even think before I pulled the particular card out of my sleeve at my meeting with Snow, I didn’t even…
It would just be the logical thing to do. The only thing to do.
I don’t know whether to kill you or kiss you.
“Yes,” I say bluntly. “It would. Given another, crucial and absolute reason to manage the trip back at all… An independent reason, apart from everything we two knew… The information could be used to manipulate events around whatever the major aim was, in order to facilitate the appropriate original ending - our joint survival, the end of the Games, the end of the war, and Snow’s downfall.”
We sit silently as we both process the implications there.
“So there was something that needed doing,” she summarizes finally. “That affected everything in our future, including the continued viable existence of our families and all the people who were born after the war, as a result, really, of the war… But if they came back to fix it, they couldn’t guarantee that things wouldn’t change enough to change the established, politically happy ending. So they brought you in, and me with you, because we’d remember everything too, as adults, and would be able to…” She gestures. “Work with it all?’
“I would say so, yes. I mean, we could be totally, totally off, but…”
“Then why don’t we remember anything about it?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“You’re sure you can’t tell me the rest?” she persists. “I mean… Wouldn’t I need to know? Don’t I need to know?”
“Katniss…” I close my eyes. “Look. I know all the theory of archery. I’ve seen you shoot, I know where to put my hands, my fingers, the stance, the angles… But even with all that… I don’t have the instincts, the gift, that allowed you to set all this into motion at the Bloodbath. Please don’t take this the wrong way, baby girl, and forgive me for… Everything related… But if I told you now… It would be as if you had put the bow into my hands and told me to take care of things based on my theoretical knowledge of how to use it. I would have fucked it up.”
Surprisingly, she doesn’t explode, just sighs.
“In other words, it involves emotional and social subtlety,” she says, resigned. “And the finer and instinctive employment thereof.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Right.” She pulls her second boot on and boosts herself up. “As you were, then.” She collects her things. “You know, weirdly… I don’t feel any better, really, but I do, at the same time, knowing that it was Effie again, at least in part. We might not remember anything about it, but she would have made sure everything was wrapped up on our end first. Thoroughly, with all the people we all knew.”
“Yes” I agree. “She would have.” I follow her as she begins to clamber over the fallen trees. “Jo wouldn’t have let anything there pass either. Nohow, no way, no universe.’
We head back, hand in hand, under the bright summer sky. As we walk, my mind spins again, harder and harder.
Then why don’t we remember anything about it?
My stomach clenches with anxiety.
Why don’t we remember anything about it?
It’s hard to tell certain things with Katniss. From the one point of view, on the one hand, her standard hand… She avoids thinking, even at our age now, too deeply on things that evoke disturbing, turbulent emotion. Her psychiatrist has helped her a lot with that over the years, but it’s still her default, and now that we’ve rejuvenated, she was bound, and is bound, to backslide there horrendously. The proof is right here - has been right here - in the way she’s been assiduously avoiding even thinking on, much less discussing, the fact that she, an aging and loving mother and grandmother, killed eleven underaged children in cold blood, quite likely for no reason at all, and again, now, in how she’s obviously been refusing to even contemplate the possibility that we’ll never see our family again. Refusing to contemplate them at all, as that’s the only way she can manage it.
Time travel is one thing. A wildly, wildly, impossible, unlikely thing, but… Beetee did leave dozens of notebooks of random scientific gibberish behind, and so did Wiress for that matter, in boxes that the scientist had stowed till his own death. No one else could make heads or tails of them, but at the same time… Someone was eventually bound to crack the codes there. Presupposing that someone had managed to crack the code - proof probably-positive in our presence here now- we yet didn’t remember what had happened. Effie did though, and possibly Jo too, if she’d returned along with Effie, and not just directed quietly from the other end.
I just can’t imagine any good reason why they wouldnt have told us, or had wiped our memories. It could be done, even with current Capitol technology, though the techniques aren’t terribly refined at this point, but… I just can’t imagine why they would bother. We’d certainly have been far, far less traumatized if we’d come back with the information of any mission intact, and that could only have worked toward the good in terms of planning our moves and strategy.
I glance at my wife. She’s walking backwards and in circles now, sighting along a drawn arrow. Distracting herself. I look away again, as we spot the camp in the distance.
No, memory wipes don’t make sense at all.
“PEET!” Hal hails, pelting towards us. I catch him up automatically, swinging him around and laughing. I set him down and tuck him comfortably under my arm as we walk.
“Any problems?’ I inquire of him as Katniss wends her way back in the distance. Rue is running toward her, a quick, bright and birdlike flash. She doesn’t hug her, but she does fall into step beside her, and after a moment, takes her hand, swinging it as I’d seen Prim do hundreds of times. Even from the distance again, I can see Kat smile affectionately down at her.
“Nar. Thresh didn’t have to threaten anybody, but Finch got tired of Queenie’s whining and tripped her so she fell into the river. Then they got rude with each other, so he told them to go to their corners.”
“He did, did he.” I can’t help but be amused. “How does that work?"
“They both went for walks to cool off. In opposite directions. Graham went with Queenie, and Eliza went with Finch. They’re not back yet.”
“Ah. And you’re alright yourself?”
“Yar,” he says vaguely. “I just took a nap. Slept through the whole thing. Rue told me about it after.” He follows my gaze. “Is Mrs. Mellark okay now?"
“Sure, why?"
“I dunno.” He hesitates. “I woke up once last night, and I think she was crying in her sleep. I didn’t say anything, but… I was worried. Do you think it’s her head again?”
I rub my own head. “No. I heard her too, buddy, and I asked her while we were walking and she said it hadn’t bothered her in a few days.”
“And you believe her?” he probes.
“Yes.”
Hal’s face clouds over. I collect myself and ruffle his rough, fuzzy curls.
“I’m keeping an eye out,” I reassure him. Still he hesitates, glancing around unnecessarily.
“What is it," I ask again.
“I found a bundle of arrows in the cave,” he says in a low voice. “Behind the rest of the piled stuff. I counted them, Peet. There were twelve of them. Twelve, like…”
I blink at him. He jitters.
“I think they’re the ones she used to…” He gestures. “I don’t think she wants to hunt for food with them. I don’t blame her, but… Did she tell you that she wasn’t carrying them anymore?"
“No,” I say. “No. She didn’t.” And I didn’t notice, because all the feathers of the arrows blur together in the quiver, and who but the archer who uses them counts them anyway? Hal fidgets.
“I’ll be alright sleeping by myself,” he blurts. “If you want to… I mean… You’re married, yar? You shouldn’t have a kid sleeping in the bed with you.”
“Actually,” I say, diverted. “We like it. We both do.”
“You… Do?”
“Yes. Kat slept with Prim at home; they shared a bed, and you’re just about her size. I think she finds it comforting.”
“And what about you?”
“Will you stop worrying?" I can’t help but be amused. “Please? Contrary to public opinion, married people, even newlyweds, can manage to survive happily without abusing your-eyes-your-eyes-your-poor-innocent-eyes every night.” He snorts with startled giggles at that. “If we ever want conjugal privacy, we’ll just do what we did today. Go for a walk. To places without, say, cameras?"
“Ah.” He looks guilty. I eye him sideways. “Erhm.”
“What did you do, Minnow?"
“I broke it,” he confesses. I stop in my tracks.
“What?“
"I broke it.”
“You broke... The camera? The camera in the cave? On purpose?’
“Yar.” He looks at me defiantly. “It wasn’t gentlemanly. You’re married. Nobody should have an eye into your bedroom, and I’m not the only person who thinks so either. I mean… As long as we’re on truce, it’s not anybody’s concern, is it? It shouldn’t be even if we weren’t on truce, but for now, it really isn’t. So I borrowed Denim’s hammer, and just…” He gestures.
“Tripped?" I supply.
“Nar,” he says. “I pounded the tar out of it.”
“Pounded the tar out of what?" Katniss inquires as she approaches with Rue.
“Oh,” Rue says. “That. The camera in your cave. Your cave that’s your bedroom, and we all voted and agreed that as long as we’re on truce, nobody on the outside should be snooping around anybody’s bedroom. Yours because you’re married again, and then Eliza said it should be the same for the rest of us too, because we’re all underage children, and it’s illegal and disgusting. Finch offered to unwire it, and took the casing off, but there wasn’t actually any wiring; it was all sensors and remote circuitry, so it was just easier to…” She gestures. “And we let Hal do it, because of all of us, he needs to work off the stress the most.”
‘Huh.” Katniss says. “Well, I can’t say that I disagree with the illegal and disgusting bit, though we did build all the lean-tos, and there are no cameras there at least."
“No, but it does bolster the argument for destroying the camera in the cave again,” the younger girl says. “Since Hal sleeps in there with you, and he’s only twelve.”
“Ah.” Kat ruffles Hal’s hair. He leans in briefly.
“Do you feel better?” he asks her solicitously. “Thresh really told everyone off after you left. I mean, really told everyone off. He used Panem-standard sentence structure and everything, and Rue said she wasn’t even sure he knew it, after. Why do you think he uses the other?" he asks diverted.
I shrug. “Every Zone in every District has its own historical dialects,” I say. “That the people use among each other, I expect. You don’t think about it, you just use them unless you’re in a place or situation where it’s obviously not appropriate. He probably figured that if he spoke the other, it’d get your attention more readily.”
‘Do you have different dialects in Twelve?" He bounces along around us.
“No. We only have eight thousand people, all in the one settlement. There are different neighborhoods and all, and people who work certain jobs tend to live all together in groups, but otherwise, there’s not much variation as you’re thinking on it.”
“Weird,” he pronounces. Rue takes Katniss’ hand again and then mine, swinging them as she trots between us.
“I shouldn’t have laughed,” she tells us. “But it was really funny when Finch tripped Queenie and she face-planted in the river. Thresh pulled my ear for it, though, so…"
“Did he?”
“Yes.” She bops a bit, like Hal. “There was a rumor going around that the Mayor and the Head Peacekeeper chose him to be a Zone foreman, last spring. I mean, he’s not from my Zone, but words on the lists do get out. He’d be a really good one, I think, don’t you?”
“Mm,” I agree. “Is that something that you aspire to?"
“Me? No. I’d never have made it,” she says matter-of-factly. “Even if I’d wanted it."
“Why not?”
“Girls don’t. Not in Eleven.”
“What? Why not?" Hal actually stops in his tracks.
“Because once we’re married, we have to settle in and have babies,” she says. “We produce most of the food for all of Panem, and with no immigration, the population has to sustain an appropriately consistent and numbered working force. So women can’t do lots of the jobs that men are allowed, and being a foreman involves lots of traveling.”
“Well, that’s not fair!” Hal sputters indignantly. “Women are just as good as men! At everything! Look at Mrs. Mellark, and alright, Finch is a pain, but she’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, and Queenie’s even more of a pain, but she’s managed to get this far without offing Madden, even though she doesn’t have to anymore, and that’s like, medal-worthy self-restraint, and all without her coffee! And Eliza’s mom is a Head Supervisor at her factory; she told us that, yar, and you travel trees like rigging, better than any boy I’ve ever met except me! You can even use them as a highway like I do! You’d be fantastic on any kind of vessel involving rigging again, or on the ocean at all, for that matter, and with that, you could have your pick of careers in Four!’ No matter what Zone you were from, you’d just have to apply through your foreman again!”
Rue just lifts her shoulder. “I didn’t say that we weren’t as good as men,” she says. “Just that we’re the ones who have the babies. It’s biology. At least that’s what they tell us, anyway.”
Hal growls and stomps off. She stands on her toes and cranes her neck, watching him go.
“He’s so nice,” she observes. “He’d get in a lot of trouble back in Eleven though, with that attitude.”
“Would he?” Kat swings her hand.
“Yes. My mom has to swat my dad regularly to get him to be quiet on it. I’ve got four sisters, and he wants us to be able to do anything. Still in the District, of course, but everybody - all of his friends - say they’re sorry for him because he doesn’t have any boys to help earn us out of our income level. Just girls, to make more mouths to feed. He punched one of them once, for saying that, so hard he had to go to the doctor, not just the local healer. Broke his jaw and everything. Mom nearly broke him for that one.”
“Mm,” she says, and eyes me, with the clear message - Change the subject, Merchie. Now. Even as she does so, she drops Rue’s hand and brings her bow up, swift as lightning. She draws an arrow, and fires up, twice. A pair of spotted wood grouse, rising in sudden flight, fall like stones.
“Get those for me, will you, sweetie,” she says to the younger girl. Rue pelts off obligingly. My stomach tightens as I eye her quiver.
“Where are the rest of your arrows, Kat?" I say abruptly.
“Uh?” She looks at me, startled.
“You’re missing a few there. What happened to them?"
“I’m not missing any. What are you talking about?"
“You started with twenty-two. You’ve got a dozen there, at most.”
The incoming glare that follows that statement is epic.
“I don’t need more than that,” she evades grudgingly. “And this way I don’t risk losing or breaking any unnecessarily.”
“Katniss…”
But she just snarls at me, and stomps off after Rue.
Chapter 4: Days 9-14
Summary:
In Which There Are Both Problems And Progress
Notes:
'Sunrise on the Reaping' considered, I've decided to mix things up a bit, and will be amending the relevant notes in the References and Notes section: Chapter Three. Katniss' grandmother is now Barb Azure, and the explanation for the changes in her father's canon name - Burdock to Davy Russet/Dane - are included in this chapter.
Chapter Text
Katniss simmers blackly as she stomps about the camp for the remainder of the evening, the roiling cloud of her bad mood wrapped about her and trailing behind her as a sweeping, if not exactly majestic, train. By morning, she’s got her active displeasure under control (if only for Hal’s sake), but the clouds are yet hovering at a discreet distance: not just ready, but eager to roll in at the barest twang of the psychological bowstring.
She manages to maintain that control over the course of the next several days - well enough so that those not there to experience her in person might not realize that there’s something off at all - and I have real hope in the aftermath of Orpheus Phair’s delivery of the contract and her parents’ rings that we’ve managed to banish her agitation entirely. For whatever reason, though, the clouds are back in force by bedtime that same day.
None of the kids, despite my carefully quiet and private reassurances, are certain on how to react. She’s been so calm and pleasant for the cameras that this foray into the snarling, sullen realms of her typical teenaged personality is more than a bit alarming.
Finally, over dinner on the fifth night - our fourteenth evening in the Arena - Eliza Wong of Six, typically quiet, but of a keen-eyed and watchful nature, lowers her round of grilled flatbread and turns to face her glowering hostess.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” she inquires directly. “On that practical level? Because - and please don’t take this the wrong way - you’re being a real bitch.”
Katniss actually looks up from intimidating her dinner at that. Everyone else just sits, paralyzed.
“Um,” she says inelegantly. “What?”
“You’re being a bitch,” Eliza enunciates. “We did all swear to at least attempt mutual civility from hereon in, did we not? Until we can’t anymore? And Snow only knows that of all of us besides Hal you have absolutely, absolutely the most cause to be stressed and traumatized, and I am in no way, no way, trying to minimize that, but… Maybe you’d feel a bit better if you just screamed insults and threw things like the rest of us do? Instead of. You know. Skulking around and slamming all those invisible doors? We won’t take it personally, we promise.”
And even as we all watch, the glower fades to a look of acute, confused embarrassment.
“Um,” Katniss says. “I. Um.” She puts her spoon down, pushes her dish aside and buries her face in her hands. Even from across and down the table, I can see them shaking.
“You don’t have to apologize or anything,” Eliza reassures her. “Like I said, we all understand. But again. If you do need to let off steam in a more productive manner, or if we can help things along in any other way… Honestly, it’s probably not a good idea to let your tensions eat at you like you’re doing. For any of us again, not just you, but especially here, where we’re not equipped to treat stomach ulcers.”
“I’m not very good with emotions.” It’s a bit of a mumble. “I never have been. It’s just… Easier not to think about things.”
“You need a girls’ night,” Queenie informs her briskly, from down the bench. Everyone offers her identical strange looks. “What? She does. You can’t vent properly with boys right there. Specially when you so obviously need to vent about them.’’
“I don’t need to vent about Peeta.” Katniss actually recovers enough to roll her eyes.
“Oh, please.” Queenie rolls her eyes right back at her. “Do too. You stomped off in that first pissy mood last week and came back in an even pissier one, and you’ve been offering him the cold shoulder ever since. Even that little honeymoon trip you two took after Phair’s delivery didn’t cheer you up for long.” She dunks her own flatbread into her groosling stew. “Not that it’s that hard to figure out. I don’t know how you stand it, really. Not him, he’s nice enough, but it.”
“It?”
“The bossiness, duh.” The girl from Nine chews at her in emphasis. “He’s the bossiest boss that ever bossed. He’s so bossy that he won’t even let us call you by your first name.”
“What? I have no problem with that; what are you talking about?”
“Well, it was his idea, wasn’t it? His and Hal’s? I mean, the Interviews were one thing, but here? Your current mood aside, you just don’t come across as someone who really cares about the finer social niceties. At all. Essential generalized courtesy, sure. The social niceties? No. Did they even consult with you before informing all of us of their rule there the microsecond we arrived?”
“Erhm.” Katniss looks off-balance. “No?”
“Mm. I didn’t think so. We all understand why he needs it, obviously, Hal, I mean…”
“We do?” Hal says involuntarily.
“Sure. It’s got to do with your mother again. Mrs. Mellark’s obviously a bit like your mom here in the Arena, but mostly you’re equating the two of them because of the attack Caesar talked about. You know, the one where she was jumped by those Peacekeepers?”
Hal’s mouth falls opens a little. Queenie just chews at him, inquiring eyebrows at half-mast.
“How the hell did you know that?” Katniss demands sharply, sitting up. “I never mentioned that in the interviews! I’ve never mentioned that to anyone!”
“I didn’t know. I just suspected,” Queenie informs her kindly. “Lots of people did. Do. It would make sense, wouldn’t it, considering how deeply and immediately and completely to heart your honeyboo took Hal’s situation again? To the point where he stormed the President’s office and demanded justice for him and his mother, and maybe, just maybe, by projected proxy… You? His wife, and, by extension and not-particularly subtle proxy again… The potential mother of his children?”
And this time, it is Kat’s mouth that opens and shuts like a fish’s.
“It wasn’t any of ours,” she mutters finally.
“Any of your… What?”
“Any of our Peacekeepers.” She glares defiantly around the table. “I don’t know what it’s like in all of your Districts, but they don’t do that sort of thing in Twelve. And not just because it’s small there, and you can’t get away with it. If you break the rules, they do their job, sure, but on the day-to-day level, they’re better than that. Every single one of them. There isn’t one of them, not one, who, deliberately, and without extreme, extreme provocation - and probably even then, only in vital self-defense - would hurt a District girl like that. Who would knock her over the head and leave her in a ditch to die. Not. One.”
“But…”
“You figure it out,” my wife snaps. “You, with your Peacekeepers who aren’t decent, and who would stoop to that level. Who would sneak up behind you with it, not even giving you the chance to run away."
There is an uneasy silence at the last, extremely pointed two words. Kat stabs a wild carrot viciously, then slams her fork down.
“They’re better than that,” she reiterates. “I don’t necessarily like all of them, and my mom told me it hasn’t always been the way it is now - that it’s been, for as long as I can remember - but I can count on the fingers of one hand the ones who’ve come through that I didn’t trust to do the right thing by us. And none of them, none of those, are stationed there now. Those types… They might last for awhile, but sooner or later - usually sooner - they get shipped out. Because the rest of their buddies don’t, and won’t, tolerate that kind of shit, and they make sure - they work together to make sure - that they leave.”
Even I’m a bit shocked by that. When I stop to think about it though…
“It’s true,” I affirm as they all sneak little looks at me. “They were all as concerned as anyone else in the District when Kat was attacked, and not just because she’d identified a pair of them as her attackers. And they weren’t just concerned; they helped. They helped her family in every single way they could, as much as they possibly could without cutting corners or breaking rules and regulations. And that… That was a lot. They were - are - decent, and as kind as they can afford to be, and I am not, I am not saying that for the cameras, or for any other reason besides the fact that, again in Twelve, at least, it’s absolutely, absolutely true.”
The sneaked looks turn a bit…
“Okay,” Queenie says finally. “If you say so. Anyway. As long as she is Mrs. Mellark,” she tells Hal. “You’re informing all of Panem that she’s romantically and socially and physically off limits. As a married woman that belongs to, and is under the protection of, a man. Two men, really, because it’s not just Peeta, it’s you actively protecting her, as a gentleman. As her proxy son. You know, the way you couldn’t protect your own mom? You’re trying to redefine, not just what happened to her - your mother again - but your own role in things there: not as the weapon that which ultimately killed her, but her savior.”
“Um.”
“Mm,” she agrees. “An especially relevant factor here in the Arena again, where, let’s face it, if there was still the single Victor clause, and we were operating on the standard format, it would be more than likely that it would come down to you and Mrs. Mellark again.. After which, in order for her to survive, you would have to die for her, not her for you. Now… Now things are a bit different, aren’t they, and by making us all call her Mrs. Mellark, you’re making us all promise not to hurt her either. Peeta’s not going to hurt her. You’re not going to hurt her. What else does that leave, but her emerging as alive from the Arena - and on that first level again, the birthing bed does qualify as another Arena, both psychologically and physically - as you wish your mom still was?”
“Erhm,” he squeaks. “What?”
“We outliers do come in with our talents, secrets and strategies,” she informs him kindly. “We just don’t often get our chances to… How did she put it at the Bloodbath… Show them what we’ve got? I sure wasn’t about to let on to the Capitol and Careers that I have a knack for on-the-spot strategic psychological analysis before then. It would have been more than enough to up my odds of being taken out at the Bloodbath, even before Twelve got her bow and arrows.”
“You mean you’ve been faking being annoying?” Graham demands of his partner as everyone stares at her dumbly. “All this time?”
‘No. That’s my other secret superpower. I was planning on irritating you all to death with the combination of my whining and natural stunning vapidity.” His District partner pushes a lock of pole-straight strawberry blonde out of her eyes and helps herself to a bit more stew. Distracted, I eye her scalp covertly. That hair had been plain dull light brown at the Reaping. There wasn’t a trace of a root showing, though, even now, so she had to have been given the full and permanent, follicular adaptation treatment at her Remake - a heinously expensive and heinously painful procedure that involved literally burning your scalp off with neo-acid. Usually, patients simply wore wigs for about a month after, all while walking about in a morphling-induced haze, and anesthesia wraps after the ensuing implants, but it was possible, if you were in a hurry, for one reason or another, to follow the first procedure immediately with the second.
Unpleasant, but possible. Wigs, of course, are not an option in the Arena, and waiting would not have been an option in any case.
I glance sideways at Eliza. She, I remember, had had dead black hair when her name was called. Now, she is as blonde as Glimmer had been, though her team had more than obviously missed about a third of her left eyebrow.
“Now, though?” Queenie continues. “What the hell. I’m probably never going to get the chance to use my talents to help anyone out there, so I might as well help all of you here. She was introduced as Mrs. Everdeen-Mellark,” she informs the stunned little boy. “Her husband’s equal. And your request is reducing her, specially since you’re not asking us to call him ‘Mr.” She sighs heavily at his uncertain look. “I understand , okay? That you see it as a matter of respect. But as long as we’re discussing respect… You need to respect her, and demand other people respect her for her accomplishments, and her ability to take care of herself, not just for her gender or marital status. He -” She points at me, emphatically. “Didn’t save our lives at the Bloodbath. She did. He cooks like a boss, yes, but he’d have nothing to cook without her. If some mutt comes storming the camp, whose arrows are going to save our butts? So if she wants us to call her Katniss, I for one, vote she makes the decision, not anyone else. It’s her name, not his to share or dispense with.”
“Um,” is all Hal says again.
“You’re taking her choices away,” Queenie says distinctly. “Just like your father took your mother’s. You don’t realize you’re doing it because you think you’re protecting her, not hurting her, but you’re still doing it. By not consulting with her, you’re taking her choices away. You’re doing it because you’re thinking that you can ensure that she’ll live that way, because you are worried she’ll kill herself to bring you out. Like your mom did, in childbirth. You’re even partnering up with Peeta to ensure it doesn’t happen.”
Kat looks outright shocked now. Hal just opens his mouth again, and shuts it, his visible agitation settling to merely and analytically disconcerted. I can’t help but wonder what, exactly, on the expressions are right now on the faces of the viewers across the Capitol.
This girl… This girl, Queenie Marconi - the fluffiest, most irritating (and that’s including Finch Jones), and likely lowest ranking outlier of the entire year - isn’t just shrewd, or even smart, after all.
She’s brilliant. As naturally brilliant, at barely fifteen years old, as any fully trained Capitol psychiatrist, not excluding any that I myself have ever worked with in over half a century.
And every single so-called, supposedly and naturally relative intellectual phenomenon in the Capitol - including Corialanus Snow again, and not even excluding, as I happen to know from historical hindsight, Plutarch Heavensbee -
Has missed it. Missed her. Missed her - even given a full two weeks of focused observational field time now, as opposed to the two minutes she’d gotten last time before going down at the Bloodbath - as badly and remarkably as the entire country had missed Johanna Mason of her year.
Carpe diem, indeed. The major difference there, and here, is that Queenie is seizing her moment, and her day, not to kill others or save her own life, but help Halyard Kanaka understand his nationally recognized and mourned pain and trauma.
To help him get better. To live.
So much for Snow’s - and Panem’s - theories, and excuses, on how stress and the Arena and pointed and revelatory and designed circumstance will demonstrate that overarching human tendency to natural and murderous barbarism in the name of self-preservation.
All hail the Queen, I think, in the moment. The Queen Bitch, as Panem will, I’m sure, have nicknamed her by now, who has just proven the entire premise of the Eternal War, and the Hunger Games, along with it, baseless.
“She’s not wrong,” Rue observes. “If it’s what you’re comfortable with, Mrs. Everdeen- Mellark, we’ll continue of course. But you were talking awhile back about men and women being just as good as each other, Hal. If you really believe that, it should be her decision. Not Peeta’s, and not yours. No offense.”
“Nar, none taken,” Hal says, and collecting himself, turns to Katniss again. “Um. I’m so sorry, I guess I didn’t ask you, at that. What… What would you prefer?” It is, admittedly, rather tentative.
“My name is Katniss,” Katniss says after a moment. “If you want to call me Mrs. Mellark, Hal, that’s fine. But Queenie’s right, and if everyone else wants to call me by my first name, I’m fine with that too. Also,” she adds irritably to me. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you and all your ‘baby girling’. Didn’t I tell you that if you kept on with that in front of other people that I’d poke you with my arrows?”
“You’ve never said anything since the first time!” I protest.
“And? I should only have had to say it once.” She glares. Eliza pats her back supportively.
“I’m sorry,” I say humbly.
“No you’re not. But you will be, if you do it again.” She sniffs at me, recovering a bit a la Effie Trinket. “It is not appropriate."
“Also, kind of demeaning,” Queenie adds. “She’s not a baby.”
“So we can call you Katniss now?” Rue asks hopefully.
“Yes,” Katniss says firmly, and then… “A girls’ night would be nice, actually. What do you do on one of those?”
They all look blank.
“Don’t look at me,” Finch says, speaking for the first time. “I may be smart, but the psychological strategic really isn’t my thing. All of Panem knows by now just how socially maladjusted I am, or do you really think I’m the type to be invited over to someone’s house to giggle and gossip and paint little smiley-faces on my fellow teens’ toenails?”
“I’m only twelve,” Rue offers. “And for someone who’s such a counter-traditionalist when it comes to women’s roles, my dad is super overprotective. Also, I’m pretty sure we don’t have toenail polish in Eleven. It doesn’t go with the drab. Eliza?”
“I’m not allowed to go to sleepovers either,” Eliza tells her. “My mom’s at least as strict as your dad, I promise. Then again, she has to be, being the manager of her factory and all. All eyes on you, and one mistake from one member in your family, and you’re back rolling tires down the tread line or stamping the backs of license plates with ‘Love from District Six’. Queenie?”
“Sleepovers and girls’ nights require refreshments. You folks just have to eat the tessera grain. We get to grow it. There is not one food item in Nine, not one, that doesn’t somehow include the byproducts in the recipe.”
Everyone looks appropriately and sympathetically nauseated.
“What about in Twelve?”
“My mom’s not actually that strict,” Katniss admits. “Well, she is, but not about that kind of thing. She’d probably be absolutely thrilled if I had friends to toe-polish it up with. As it is… I only really have one, Madge - two now, I guess, with Delly Cartwright - and Madge is the Mayor’s daughter. We mostly interact at school.’
“Why only one? Or two? And you’ve never gone to her house?"
“I dunno.” She pokes at her stew. “They’re both Merchie-Misses, but that doesn’t really have much to do with it when it comes right down to it. I’m just not really the sociable sort at heart. And I have gone over a few times. To Madge’s, I mean. She plays the piano for me. It’s nice. She’s really good. I asked her how she got so good, and she says she has nothing to do but practice, because she’s not unsociable, but she is a bit shy, never mind that people are really over-aware of her dad’s status, so Delly and I are really her only friends too. She told me about the stylists here, so I was pre-warned. And she gave me the Mockingjay pin for my token. Her Aunt Maysilee was in the second Quarter Quell with Haymitch, and it was hers.”
“Aren’t we a sad lot,” Queenie commiserates. “Hmmph. I’ll bet the sleepovers in One are something else. Lots of sociable girly-girls there. Though I’ve heard they don’t have sleepovers at the Academy in Two, at least.”
“Why not?”
“They’re super strict there. The students are not only not allowed to fraternize socially with their preferred gender - we’re talking expulsion if they’re caught noodling - they’re not allowed desserts. They’re not even allowed meat. Not even fish, and any eggs they eat can’t be fertilized.”
“Why not?”
“No idea. It doesn’t seem to affect their growth any, though.”
“Nero Takeuchi started it,” Finch informs us. “The Victor of the Ninth Games? He’s the Director Emeritus, and the inheriting administration kept on with it all because he had such spectacular results with it all. He was raised as a strict vegetarian by the old mountain man who adopted him as a baby before the Rebellion, and has followed the principles of old Buddhism that he was raised on his whole life. It’s not really a religion,” she adds hastily. Religion, as a legal entity, is most decidedly frowned upon by our Beloved Totalitarian Dictator. “More of a philosophy and way of life. Buddhism, that is. The vegetarianism is part of it.”
“That’s just sad,” I say. “No desserts at all?”
“No good desserts,” Finch temporizes. “There’s fruit and stuff, I’m sure. The gardens and orchards are spectacular. Takeuchi was responsible for those too, and they extend right into the Victors’ Village as part of the organically-flowing-and-growing garden theme they’ve got going on there. They barely have to import anything from Eleven on that level at all, and… ”
“You hush,” Queenie orders me. “No boys allowed in this conversation. Really?” she says to Katniss. “You’re not sociable? But you were amazing in your interview, and the last few days aside, you’ve been so…” She gestures. “Collected. Smooth. Not icky smooth, but…”
“I watch people a lot,” Katniss explains. “It’s kind of my hobby. I pick up on stuff, and stow it away for reference. There are a few people back in Twelve who are just really, really good with everyone, Seam or Merchie or Peacekeepers, and I’ve watched them all the time in particular, to see how they do it. I’ve used almost everything I’ve ever learned there, really, since coming to the Capitol, one way or the other. And you might laugh, but…”
“What?” Eliza looks fascinated.
“I’ve watched Caesar Flickerman pretty closely over the years,” she confesses .“I always knew I’d be coming to the Games, remember. One way or the other. He can be kind of over the top, but he’s always, always, on point with people, ‘specially people who are uncomfortable. Sometimes I’d pretend I was him. Or being interviewed by him, when I went out for walks, right, at home. And I’d practice. Not what I’d say, but… My reactions.” She looks more than a bit uncomfortable now. “Some people train physically, right? For the possibility. I always had that down, I’ve always been athletic, and I’m always on the go, one way or the other. It was the other part - the socializing part - that was always going to cause me problems. We don’t have a whaddayacallit … A venue. A public venue - for the kind of interaction and etiquette that you work with in the Capitol. Especially if you’re a Seam-Sider. So I just watched again.”
“Could have fooled me,” Queenie says frankly. “And did.”
“I didn’t fool anyone.” It is decidedly irritated now. “I just improvised, and taught myself. From the resources I had available to me. I meant everything I said there. And I can’t act to save my life, literally, so I’ve meant everything I’ve said here. I’ve just … Phrased it all differently than I’m inclined to do at home. The way someone else would, if they had natural social skills.”
“That’s what acting is, girl! Honestly, what did you think it was?”
“Um. In this context? Minding other people’s comfort levels on the active level.”’
It’s a direct quote from her psychiatrist.
“You care what people’s comfort levels are? Or… You don’t?”
That one rates a definite pause. It drags out, rather. Just as I’m about to step in to smooth things out a bit…
“It’s not that I don’t care. I’m just not very good at it. So, yes and no? It depends. Everything has consequences,” Katniss says finally. “I don’t enjoy seeing people in pain. Some people say other people deserve it, but… I don’t think that works out well, in the long run. I’ve hurt people in my life, and sometimes they bite back, but usually, I just get to watch them suffer for me being such a naturally vengeful grouchy bitch. It’s satisfying for a little while, maybe. But then you just start being uncomfortable with it. With their pain. It was like that with my mom, right? And you just want to forgive and forget about it, or at the very least… Move on. And sometimes, they’ve been saying they’re sorry all along, but that’s not enough either. You want to hear it, but usually, and don’t get me wrong, it’s annoying too… You feel like you should apologize as well. For hanging on to things, and enjoying their pain. Not just the rightful punishment, but their pain with it. That’s not justice. That’s just being a bitch again.”
“So where do the comfort levels come into it?” Jude says cautiously. I can’t help but note that Queenie doesn’t come down on him for being a boy.
“You don’t apologize to someone in a way that’s meaningful to you,” Katniss says shortly. “You apologize to someone in a way that’s meaningful to them. Because they’re the ones who were hurt. Your way might not even mean anything to them, though you think it must, because it’s what you know. All you know, sometimes. But your way isn’t the one that counts, is it? If you want someone to understand, really understand, where you’re coming from, in any context, it means a lot more if you make the extra effort to speak to them in their own languages. Or according to their traditions, or needs. In some circumstances, from one point of view, that’s called hypocrisy. From another… It shows you mean it. I’m a lot of things. I’m .. Not a lot of other things. But whatever I am, or aren’t… I’m a person who when I do have something to say, I don’t lie about it or nice it up to cover my own butt. I say what I mean.” She stabs at a chunk of groosling. “Eventually, anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Hal says miserably, as she finishes up.
“For what?” She looks over again, her face immediately and noticeably softening.
“For projecting all of my problems on you? And taking your choices away, and making people think you couldn’t take care of yourself? I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t think that. I…’
He dries up. Katniss just gets up and comes around and sits beside him as takes his hand, brushing his hair back.
“We all need a little help now and again,” she says. “To see things more clearly, yar?” The last is light and teasing, and earns her a real smile.
“You said that just like a real Four.”
“Did I? Well, you never know, do you? I might have a bit of mermaid in me, somewhere. More likely siren.”
“Uh?’
“You’ve heard of the Covey?”
“Yar, of course. Peet and me were talking about it the night after…” He gestures vaguely. He said you might know some of their songs?’
“I know all of their songs.”
“You do? How?”
"My granny was Covey,” my wife says matter-of-factly. “My dad’s mother. She taught him all the songs, and they both taught me. She was born before the war, when her branch of the Covey again - her parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and a few of their friends that they called extended family - were still allowed to travel all over Panem. When she grew up, she got married twice. Her wife first: she died in the mines, and then she married my grandfather a bit later on, and they had my dad.”
“What was her name?” Jude asks.
“Barb. Barb Azure. That’s the Covey tradition. They all have two given names that act as one: the first for a person in an old ballad, and the second a color. My dad actually had three, though - the traditional Covey two-parter from Granny Bab - that’s what we called her: Bab, not Barb: B-A-B for Barb Azure Baird - Davy Russet, and the one on his legal birth certificate. Burdock. His dad’s side called him Burdock, and his mom’s side called him Davy Russet.”
“Why would he have three?”
“Oh well. A lot of the families in Twelve have themed naming traditions. And most of them are really, really stuck on them, to the point where they literally have to have the Mayor, and no, I’m not joking, flip a coin. It wasn’t really about that, though, in Dad’s case. My Papaw Jack Everdeen loved Granny Bab to bits, but there’s no getting round the fact that Covey members don’t do well historically, in Twelve, and yes, it is because they are Covey. Openly. Most have died before they were twenty-five, and he didn’t want to risk that for his son, did he? So in the end, they chose two names, or rather, Papaw Jack chose one, officially, that went on the birth certificate again, and Granny Bab’s people just called him the other. After Dad’s favourite cousin died of appendicitis around the Fiftieth Games, though - Granny Bab’s niece; her name was Lenore Dove - he started asking people to call him Davy Russet officially, in her memory. They were the same age, and really close. By the time he aged out of the Reaping himself, it had turned into Dane, as an amalgamation of Davy Russet Everdeen.”
“And they did? People did? Call him that, I mean?”
“Yes. It took awhile to catch on, but eventually… It did. Mostly after he started up at the mines, and was working with people outside his former personal social circle who’d never called him the other. By the time I was a year old, only a few people ever called him Burdock. Mom always called him Burdie, as a pet name, and that only when we were alone as a family. That was really more because he sang like a bird, though.”
“Do you have a Covey name, then?” Denim wants to know. Katniss, oddly, hesitates.
“Sort of,” she says eventually, much to my surprise. “I guess? Maybe?”
“You guess? Maybe?”
“Well, there’s the first half of my name, right? Kat. There are a lot of old ballads that use Kate or Katherine. And the second half of Prim’s is a color. Rose. I don’t know whether my dad did it intentionally, but there it is. It’s worked out anyway. Together… We’ve always been the whole."
And that’s all.
Except it’s not all. There’s more there, I know. You can’t hide - anything, really - after fifty years of intimacy. It’s all right there, to me at least, in that one split second of hesitation. In the way she’s not... Avoiding my eyes now, as if she’d do if she was fibbing, but diverting away from the fact that there’s something more underneath.
“Do you still have cousins?” Eliza asks, before I can pursue the mental observation.
“No,” she says immediately. Quickly. Too quickly. Yes, I think. She’s definitely diverting. “They’re all dead now. They all died young, like I said, except for Granny Bab and a couple of the Covey men - no blood relation - who never had kids. They’re getting on now, and after they go, Prim and I will be the last.”
And that brings an end to that particular conversational segue, with an almost audible screech. I really, in spite of myself, do have to admire her applied technique there.
The easiest way to divert nosy, bright-eyed, would-be historical documentarians on the verge of provoking (inadvertently or not) a panic attack is remind them that death, eventually will get them too. Not exactly an entirely tactful tactic in the Arena, and her particular phrasing there doesn’t have quite the same effect on a group of teenagers the way it does on near-middle-aged reporters desperate to make their immortal mark before they’re officially dismissed from the immortal public eye as So Last Season, but then, it’s not meant to hurt them. Just to force the change of subject. As it immediately and helpfully does.
“What about you, Peet?” Hal asks, turning away, thoughtfully, from what he obviously thinks is the now sensitive subject. “Do you have cousins?"
“Nope.” I ruffle his hair. “The Mellarks haven’t exactly been reliable long term prospects till this generation. My dad had a younger sister and brother, but they both died the same winter… ‘53, I think.” I count back. “Yeah. ‘53. He’s forty-seven now, and was twenty six then, so… Yeah. ‘53. Just a few months before he and my mom had my first brother, Lavash. I’m not sure how old his sister was, but his brother was just turned twenty-one. She was somewhere in between.”
“That must have been tough on your grandparents, yar? Two of them at once?”
“Yes and no? His sister, yes - she died of pneumonia, but his brother… He wasn’t…” I grimace. “He managed alright as long as the family kept an eye on him, but he was…” I search for the right word. “Simple. The kind of simple that comes with physical problematics like chronic heart conditions. He was a big boy, and a big man, halfway between me and Thresh maybe, but he was never strong with it. He was like one of those kids - the little kids, four or five, maybe, who gets caught up in a fear of the dark. Except it never went away. Twelve’s a bad place for that kind of obsession. All the coal dust: everything’s black all the time. He could manage life and his little jobs in the bakery because it was clean and predictable and smelled good, and he could live above it and rarely had to go out, but that was about it. Would have been about it for him, no matter how long he lived. Like my dad said, he was best out of it. All of it. That he - the whole family, really - was actually really relieved when he went up one morning to wake him, and saw that he’d passed in his sleep. It wasn’t mean. It was just… True.”
Hal’s face clears immediately. “Ah,” he says, and that’s all. There’s no more needed, really. Every District has its equivalents. “And your mom?”
“She had a brother too. My uncle Anson. He died of a stroke about ten years ago, in his early forties. High blood pressure; it runs in her family- got her father and grandfather too, both before they were fifty - and Doc Palmer is always nagging me and Brio and Lavash about it. We’re fine, but it’s still something he said we’ll likely have to watch as we get older.”
“So your grandmother- the one who taught you to dance - was…”
“My dad’s mom again. No problems with health there, unless you count the fact that she went wandering so early.’
“Wandering?” he queries.
“Old people lose their memories a lot, right, through age or disease? We call it wandering, because it’s like the walls of time and place that hold your mind together crumble, and you go wandering. No borders between the past or present, or, as it advances, in terms of identifying specific faces or names.”
He nods. Despite the deliberately distracting, and self-distracting, conversations, though, he still looks tense. I don’t have to wonder for a second what he’s really thinking on. I just pull him close.
“I’m not your dad,” I say to him gently. “Katniss isn’t your mom. But we’re still family, minnow, and always will be.'
“Everybody’s your family. You said."
“There’s family and then there’s family.” I hold him tighter.
“You could be our brother,” Katniss suggests.
“Huh?”
“I don’t have a brother. Okay, I do now, with Lavash and Brio, but… Historically speaking. And I’ll bet Peeta would tell you he’s always wondered what it might be like to have one younger than he is. He’s always been the baby of the family. And you’ve both got the curls.” She touches his, already coming back in. “You’re the perfect age for it. You could be Prim’s twin! You’re only a few weeks younger than she is; she was born in May. We both were.”
“Do you think she’d like that?” Hal looks uncertain.
“Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And my mom? My mom would- no she already does, I promise you - absolutely adore you.”
“I am rather adorable,” he concedes modestly. He snuggles in. “I’m pretty messed up, aren’t I.”
“The first step to getting better,” I intone. “Is to recognize that you are messed up. And how. Then you can start sorting it all out.” I poke him. “Practical therapy: first step. Say hello to your primary support team.”
“Who, you and Mrs. Mellark?”
“No, minnow.” I laugh. “Your parents.”
“My… What?”
“Your parents. You know, the man and woman who raised you? You did rather make the point to us, when we all first allied, that you do consider them your mother and father.”
“Oh. I did, didn’t I. Okay. Hey, Auntie Ollie!” He waves. “Hey, Uncle Carrick!”
“Ollie?” Finch repeats.
“Short for Opaline.”
“Ah. And nope.” I shake my head. “Try again.”
“Um.” He hesitates. “Um.”
“Just spit it out,” I encourage. “It’s not a betrayal, Hal. She’d want you to love them, just that much.”
“You’re sure?“ he persists. “Really, really sure?”
“Why are you asking him?” Queenie asks, before I can answer. “He’s a boy. Ask someone who’d actually know what a mom would want. Ask her.” She nods to Katniss.
“She’s not a mom,” Finch points out.
“Maybe not, but she’s a girl,” Queenie retorts. “And she's proven herself one there, or as good as, hasn’t she? She volunteered for her little sister, after all, and even if she did promise to come home with it, she did know- had to know, and yes, has to know, even now - that there was, and is, a damned good chance that that will result in dying for her. And that’s not even counting the fact that she almost died herself, only a few weeks before. That can only mean that she had context on what could be waiting. Which makes it even more of a sacrifice. She got the preview.”
"Um." Hal looks over.
“Yes,” is all Katniss says. “I would. I mean, yes. I’d want that. I’d want you to. As a mother.”
It does the trick. Hal looks up immediately, and waves. “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad.'
“Good job. Now introduce us.”
“What?"
“Introduce us. To your parents.”
“Um. This is Peet. He’s adopting me too, as his brother.” He takes a deep breath. “This is his wife. Mrs…”
He struggles. We wait, holding our breaths.
“Katniss,” he blurts finally. “Mrs. Katniss Everdeen-Mellark.”
And Katniss bodily picks him up and hugs him, as everyone cheers. Queenie grins fatly as she helps herself to more flatbread. As for me... As as a father and a grandfather, I can’t help myself. I stand, come round the table, bodily haul her up, and give her a huge hug of her own, along with a kiss on the cheek and the last, coveted helping of groosling stew. Surprisingly, she hugs me back enthusiastically, grinning at me from ear to ear as she does so. From this distance, I actually can see the faint web of acid scars underneath her hair. Nothing that even Base Beauty Zero will even begin to touch, I know, and, putting down the pot, hug her again.
“Give Eliza one too,” she says into my ear. “We didn’t bring you into it, but she lost the vote for the first face-off after we all went berry-picking this morning.”
I turn to oblige her, but Eliza, as it turns out, is busy… Hoots and hollers rise as Thresh leans in to slide his hand around the back of her head and offer her a deep, sizzling kiss. Rue squeaks, and giggles madly.
“Really, Thresh?” she finally manages. ‘On television? Live in front of the whole country? What would your grandmother say!”
“Not bad, bit wet, needs work,” Eliza opines. Thresh just winks at her.
“Later,” he says, and then, a bit diffidently... “We could go for a walk with it, if you like?”
“Now, now,” she says. Then, blushing furiously, if yet composedly… “Sure. That would be nice.”
And our brand new dining table nearly cracks under the force of all the thumping and whooping and mug-banging that follows.
“Kat?" I say later, in the darkness of our cave. Hal is snoring so deeply between us that I actually have to speak over him.
“Yeah?" Her voice is absolutely wide awake.
“Are you actually mad at me? I mean… When you were venting… Were you venting about Queenie’s suggestions, or…"
“I was and I wasn’t,” she says. “It didn't start that way, but… I’m not going to lie. I went along with it for Hal’s sake. The name thing, I mean, and she was right. You absolutely should have asked me what I thought before just taking it away like that, particularly after I spent so much time trying to get him to call me the other in the first place. You’re a good guy, Merchie, and you know I love your paternal-family-man-and-even-and-occasionally-piggish side, but you really have been overcompensating there. A lot." She turns on her side to face me. “Actually, you have been for awhile now."
“Huh?"
“Since you retired,” she says. “You got bored working half-time, and granted yourself absolute paterfamilias status to compensate. It was kind of cute most of the time but… Not always. And no, I haven’t poked you with my arrows for it, mostly because it amused me to see Jo gag on it, but the baby girl thing? You promised that you’d only ever use it in private, Peeta. Absolute private.’
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. Prove it. Retire it, and find another less annoying term.” She rolls on her back again, staring up at the ceiling. I prop myself on my elbow.
“I will,” I promise. “I mean, I’ll try. Really hard. It’s just…” I sigh. “Not before, but now… I’ve been using it as a way to keep myself grounded, I guess. To keep them. And what we had."
“And so have I,” she returns. “But again. Queenie’s right. I’m starting to choke on it.” She closes her eyes. “They’re real. And they’re not what we had. We still have them. But… We can’t go back. I’m not even at the stage where I can even begin to process that, much less accept it… But some things… We do have to be aware of them, of what we’re doing, because they just… Won’t help. In either the short or the long run. We both know that much. Never mind that they’re really annoying all on their own."
“Yes, well,” I say. “You can be annoying too, you know?"
“I’m all sweetness and light!” she protests. “How am I being annoying?"
“I like it when we fight,” I say honestly. “Well, not when we fight, but when you snark. I only go over all patriarchal and piggish when you let me, Katniss.”
“What, so it’s my fault?’ she snaps. “And before you answer… You might want to remember this: pigs are for dinner, Merchie, not dessert.”
“No. I’m not … It’s not conscious, really, but… My shrink did point it out. Many times. At least part of this… Of me being provoking with it, has likely been me trying to get you to react. Bland… Bland and sweet worries me, and I know we’re presenting for the cameras, but…"
“You think we should stage a fight?" she says doubtfully. “That might really upset Hal."
“I don’t think we should stage anything,” I say. “But the kid’s obviously got a very idealized and self-cultivated image of relationships, of men and women and how they should interact, and that’s not healthy. At all. And we’re feeding into it with our dynamic, aren’t we? We’re going to all get out of here and go back to the real world, and he just… He needs to see that conflict and disagreement between the sexes doesn’t equal violence and rape and death."
Her brow wrinkles. “He’s seen the people in the counseling tours on his ships,” she says cautiously. “Yeah?"
“They’re all Capitols. He wouldn’t really. I mean… For him, they’re probably part of the presented entertainment. His entertainment. I can just see the drama and theatrics there. Never mind the carefully selected outfits that are meant to set and enhance the tone for each session."
“That’s true,” she concedes. “I mean, really. They’ve got those mandated, HOA approved social checklists for everything. The luxury cruise-slash-marriage-counselling would definitely be on the ‘oh my dear Muffy, should we, shouldn’t we; yes, dear, of course, but before we make the announcement on the livestreams, we have to be able to prove to the neighbors that we did EVERYTHING POSSIBLE, because shipside seminars with the Kanakas are so the fashion this season, and to forgo there just wouldn’t DO, my dear!”
I cackle. Loudly, and suppress it quickly. Hal just snores placidly.
“I love you,” I say. “Really."
“I love you too.” She mock-scowls at me, ferociously.
“So. How should we do this?"
“We shouldn’t do anything. We’ve been doing it. We need to stop. Some,” she qualifies.
We lie in silence. I sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“For what.” It’s not really a question. More a demand for the list.
“I’ve gotten used to running things,” I say. “All the things. And I’m good at talking. And you never have been. So… I’ve talked for both of us over the years. Presuming on what you think, what you’ll say… It’s become a habit. A bad habit."
“Talk’s cheap,” she says. She tucks an arm under her head. “Queenie was right, you know. And Eliza, and Finch. All of the girls. It’s coming back, looking at them. They’re so young. Fiery. Desperate to live. I'd forgotten what it is to be desperate. It was who, and what I was. My foundation. And nothing else ever really fit. I am old.” It's morose. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be hungry, not just for food, but for life. Not just in the context of history, but in general."
I can’t help but eye her.
“And now?" I test.
“I make myself sick,” she admits. “Eurgh. I would have hated older me at this age, just for my complacency. My passivity. For letting you get away with all your shit that I do, without even noticing I was doing it. Mostly… I just hate that you can talk and I can’t. I feel like I’ve already lost every fight with you before it ever started, because your words have gotten better with age, and I’ve just gone obsolete.”
“Oh, Katniss.”
“Stop feeling sorry for me!" It is profoundly irritated. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself."
“I’m a bit afraid now,” I confess. “Also, turned on.”
“Good. On the afraid part. Because as long as we’re talking about turn-ons… You’re a lot cuter when you’ve got fear in your eyes.”
I snort with laughter.
“Also,” she adds. “I meant it, about the damned baby-girling. It stops. Now.”
“What if I slip?"
“You’ll find out when you do. Now shush. I’ve got a big, big day tomorrow, and I’m tired, and I’m going to sleep."
“What are you doing tomorrow?"
“I’m taking the girls hunting,” she says. “Make sure the shed’s built by the time we get back. Never mind Hal and the broken camera, there's barely enough room in here to breathe with all these new supplies, much less to spelunk it up."
“Yes, ma’am,” I say humbly. She just grunts at me again, and rolls over, her back to me. Hal snores resoundingly, rolls over in turn and throws an arm and a leg over her. She moves his hand firmly. I snigger.
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