Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Summary

Canon-Divergent in that none of the main characters were reaped for the Games. EVERLARK.

The annual Coal Dark festival is the one evening a year District Twelve actually celebrates life. It is a rite of passage, and often a night of courting, for those that have recently aged out of the reaping process. Tonight’s Coal Dark is bittersweet for Katniss Everdeen, because while it is the first Coal Dark her younger sister Primrose is no longer eligible for the Hunger Games, it also means she’s grown into a woman. When an unwanted dance partner informs Katniss that Peeta Mellark, the boy she’s been quietly in love with for years, plans to start his own future once the lights go out at the end of the night, and that Peeta’s target is Primrose, Katniss is left to wonder if a proposal from a man she doesn’t love is better than having no hope of a future at all. Written in response to Musician! Peeta Prompt on Tumblr.

Chapter 1

Tonight is Coal Dark, the fall celebration where the coal-coated, sweating humanity that is District Twelve comes out to socialize, drink, and dance to foot-tapping fiddling, jigs, reels, ballads, and laments. It’s when we take one night to pretend we’re not perpetually teetering on the brink of starvation.

It might even just be, aside from Reaping Day, the only day of the year where District Twelve actually feels like a community, like a family, instead of a conglomeration of individuals scrounging for daily bread.

The sun is only just beginning to set and the crowd won’t show up until the stars come out, but Prim and I are walking over early. She wants to help her friends who are supposed to set up the refreshments. Really, I’m sure she wants to gossip with them about which boys they each hope to dance with tonight.

I hear myself sigh. I feel the sting of her coming of age like stitch in my side after having run too far.

“Katniss, you don’t have to come until later,” Prim says to me. Maybe she interpreted my sigh as boredom, or a disinterest in attending.

Neither is true. I am painfully aware tonight is a special Coal Dark for her. But secretly, so secretly it’s like I’m an ember ready to go out from suffocation, I harbor a hope that tonight might be special for me as well.

It is true that we needn’t have walked together, since the festivities happen only three minutes’ walk from our house, in the wide dirt lane that runs between the two oldest rows of coal miner homes in the heart of the Seam. But I want to keep an eye on her, since I feel like this will be the last time I’ll have this responsibility, the last time I’ll have this privilege. The last time I might walk my sister to Coal Dark at all, instead of her walking here on the arm of a husband.

The imaginary stitch in my side worsens, and I lace my fingers through hers, for my own comfort. I instinctively look down at her as we walk, to look down into her face and give her a smile. But when I do, I’m looking at her arm and am reminded again she’s as tall as I am now.

When my eyes finally come up, she’s smiling at me sadly, and gives my hand a squeeze.

So sensitive, my no-longer-little Prim. She can tell this is hard on me.

I put my arm around her shoulder and ask her if she knows I love her. Of course she knows, she tells me by slipping her arm around my waist and holding us hip to hip. Without speaking, our pace slows together, for this one last walk.

It’s too soon before Prim and I turn a corner and we’ve arrived.

Long strands of low-hanging light bulbs are always the primary decoration and in the waning light, several clumps of people are working hastily to finish stringing them up. The not yet lit, lifeless strands run the entire length of the long street, and zig zag back and forth across it.

I see the stage, really just a rough platform, has been constructed in the middle of the street for the musicians. And near that, the tables with refreshments are being set up. Usually, the drinks are water or mint tea, things we can make in large amounts for free here in the Seam. There will be white liquor for sale, too, though most people who mean to drink tonight will have made their own home brew in anticipation.

That’s illegal, of course, just like my daily poaching beyond the fence is illegal. But the Peacekeepers get the good side of our trades and look the other way. Some of them are even alright, like Darius, who lacks the arrogance and hostility of many of his fellow Capitol enforcers. And I’m grateful, because it’s the trades I make after my hunting and gathering in the woods, together with my mother’s and Prim’s healing skills, that have kept me from having to work in the mines since I turned eighteen four years ago.

Also going up are the Merchant tables. The butcher has a grill and a smoker going and the general store sells small parcels of prepackaged food stuffs. And the bakery always has cupcakes and sugar cookies. And they make toast smeared with butter and jam. The thought of toast, of late, has been making me more and more hungry. Nearly ravenous. Or, anyway, the thought of one of the baker’s sons has.

This is food we in the Seam can’t really afford, but just for this one night every year, the Merchants sell cheaply enough so most can buy at least a little something.

Prim spots her friends and waves, her body tense with excitement and anticipation. I can’t help but smile and a contented laugh escapes me.

Yes, tonight’s Coal Dark is special. It is the first one that actually makes me feel a hint of celebration in my own spirit, because it is the first one since Prim’s last eligible reaping. She turned eighteen this summer, right after Reaping Day for the seventy-ninth Hunger Games came and went without her name being drawn from that awful fishbowl of death by that multicolored Trinket creature. She’s free.

But it’s not only Prim who has come through the Reaping unscathed. Every year, there’s an entire class of graduating seniors who’ve aged out of the reaping, and Coal Dark is really a sort of revered rite of passage. It’s a time when many young lives start entwining, where long held affections are voiced, risks taken, and agreements for courting, and even for marriage, are commonly exchanged.

This is bittersweet for me, knowing that Prim and her school friends have been looking forward to Coal Dark for exactly that reason. She’s denied it every time I’ve teased her, but her cheeks always flush and give her away. I’m not blind to the fact that my little Primrose blossomed into a beautiful young woman.

I just hope she chooses wisely. I fear she has too big of a heart.

I feel a pang of dread as I also think on the most pivotal moment of our Coal Dark festival, the moment from which the night gets its name. Aside from the music, the real draw is the second it’s over. When the last song is played, usually a romantic lament, and the very last note struck, the many strands of bright, cheerful bulbs are turned off all at once, bathing everyone in a sudden darkness as black as coal. Hence, Coal Dark.

And it’s in that moment of darkness, which you’re supposed to have spent the entire evening waiting for, that you hope to find yourself linked with the one person you want a goodnight kiss from, or the one person you want to sneak away in the dark holding hands with.

When the last note is struck, I’m usually leaning against one of the houses near the stage, a spot which conveniently gives me a view of the bakery table, with Prim in front of me and my arms wrapped around her shoulders. It hasn’t mattered that she’s grown taller as the years have passed, she’s still my Prim, and we’ve still ended each Coal Dark that way.

Except that tonight, I know she’s not going to let her over-protective sister corral her. And tonight, for once, I won’t try to.

We make our way further up the street.

Prim finally lets go of my waist, so she can quicken her own pace and join her friends.

“Prim,” I protest. But she ignores me, more focused on their calls than mine.

“Primrose Everdeen!” I yell, with a volume that could clear all the game from an entire wood.

I hide my satisfied smile as she freezes. I can tell from the line of her shoulders that she’s mortified. I don’t care. Coal Dark may be a night where futures are begun, but it’s also a night where a certain common mistake is made. I promised Prim beforehand that I’d trust her. But it’s hard not to give her one last warning.

She turns, begging with her lips, eyes and brows in a frantic pantomime to not embarrass her further.

I hear a man’s chuckle coming from the direction of stage, but I ignore it and curl my finger at her.

She obeys and comes back, slouching.

I lift her chin, straighten her collar and move my hands along her shoulders to even out the lay of her dress. I mean to make a show of being comically melodramatic, to cut the heaviness of what I’m about to remind her of for the fiftieth time, but when my eyes catch her face, I notice for the first time the care she’s taken in her appearance. She’s used berry pigments to make her cheeks and lips look beautifully rosy and well-defined, and she’s taken her hair out of its braids and has brushed its long, blond length so that it falls around her face like a soft curtain of gold. It frames her blue eyes perfectly.

My chest tightens.

I know in that instant that I’m not losing her. I’ve already lost her. Tonight is only the part where I force myself to finally start letting go.

As though it is written in the sunset that’s painting the sky behind her with warm oranges and fiery reds, I know in my heart that soon she will be in love, and too soon after that, engaged, and too soon for my breaking heart, there will be a toasting. Because unlike me, with my aloof, unfeminine demeanor and Seam-olive skin, she’s as radiant as the sun. Because unlike me, there will be a line of suitors for waiting for Prim.

A line of music, something hopeful with an edge of sadness, floats to me from the direction of that sunset, from the direction of the stage. The melody dances with too many notes, struck by fingers too swift, for my ear to track each one, yet the harmony of it sooths me. It makes it possible to swallow the warning I’d been about to needlessly repeat.

And anyway, I think with a smirk, mostly I’m relying on our understanding that if she ends up allowing a boy get a too frisky, I’ll bury him in the woods tomorrow where they’ll never find the body.

My hands hesitate on her shoulders as I try to burn the memory of her face into my mind. The song drifting over us voices perfectly the hopeful lament of my soul, and I realize with a skip in my heartbeat whose hands are creating that music. I can tell from the nature of the complex, deft hammer-ons, pull-offs, and palm thumpings that those hands belong to Peeta Mellark, one of the baker’s son.

My eyes shift so that I’m not watching Prim anymore, but Peeta on the stage in the distance behind her. I don’t even pause to question why he’s there instead of setting up the bakery’s table, because all I’m thinking about is what he looks like. I take in the exact angle of his shoulders and the jump and flex of his forearms as he coaxes the lament from his guitar, a guitar that is laying flat across his lap and submissively letting him finger and slap it like a hybrid dulcimer and drum.

My breath catches as I watch his fingers dance, the same fingers that had burnt two loaves of purpose for me when I was eleven, soaked by the rain and hungry. I had been rummaging in the bakery’s garbage like a gutter rat, looking for anything to rescue Prim and me, or at least Prim, from the starvation that threatened to kill us after my father had died and my mother had slipped away into an almost comatose depression.

Those fingers, those hands, saved our lives that day, when they threw me that bread on the sly.

I’d watched helplessly as he’d taken the abusive blow from his mother for his trouble.

I had always appreciated him for that. It took me until our last year of school to realize that my appreciation had gradually evolved into something more resembling attraction, but I had never plucked up the courage to speak with him. He’d stared at me a lot during those years too, I’d noticed. But he’d never tried to approach me. His looks most likely had more to do with pity than anything else, tracking how well the poor, starving Seam girl was managing.

In the four years since we graduated, I have still been watching him. Peeta doesn’t have a wife, hasn’t had a toasting, District Twelve’s version of a commitment celebration, yet. And as far as I can tell, he doesn’t seem to be courting anyone, though how that has been allowed to happen, I can’t guess.

Whenever I hear that he’ll be out playing guitar in the Merchant Square, bearing his soul to our too-harsh world, I make a point of showing up, even though I take care to stand where I don’t look like I’m obsessed with him.

And this year, since his father has been ill, I’ve seen Peeta a bit more. I’ve been bringing a couple of squirrels by the bakery for him every other week for the last six months. It’s my way of repaying what he did for us back when we needed his charity. During Prim’s and my leanest years, once I’d taken up hunting, Peeta’s father had been more than generous in our squirrel-for-bread trades.

Because his dad keeps mostly to his sick bed, Peeta’s is the face I see most often when I come by the bakery’s back door to delivery my kills.

Peeta always tries to give me bread in trade, tells me to at least take some to Prim, but I always push it back. Sometimes I graze his hand or forearm intentionally when I do, just to know what it feels like to touch him. I am usually embarrassed by how gruff my introversion makes me sound, and if I’m honest, I’m embarrassed at how talking to him makes me flush and feel flustered.

I usually rush off before too many words can slip out between us.

It’s only recently I’ve let myself admit how much the thought of him matters. Before, I knew that if Prim was ever reaped, in my devastation I would self-destruct and burn to the ground anyone and anything next to me.

But now? I’ve finally admitted other impulses alive in my head and body are just as strong as that instinct. This is the first year I’ve indulged in a hope that my life might amount to more.

I realize I’m still holding Prim’s shoulders. It’s time to let her go.

I press a kiss to her lips, hug her, tell her again I love her, and then turn her around and push her off towards her friends with a playful shove. She looks back over her shoulder and flashes me a smile that both rends me and mends me.

Now I’m alone.

With Prim walking away from me, there’s nothing between Peeta and I except for a stretch of empty dirt road.

He’s still playing. I know he’s not playing for me. He’s just playing to warm up. But I give him a weak smile anyway.

The warm hues of the sunset’s red and orange bathe Peeta in an unearthly glow because of where he sits elevated on the stage. They give his blond hair a tint, like it’s catching fire. He looks something from a dream.

The song slows into a final refrain and then he puts his guitar down. It looks like he might be staring at me, and he even raises a hand in a sort of hesitant wave.

I turn my head to check behind me, to see if he’s motioning to someone else.

There’s no one else. Just me.

I hear that same chuckle again. It’s his. I feel myself smile, a bit embarrassed.

Just as I build the courage to walk up and say hello, Haymitch Abernathy climbs the steps onto the platform and hijacks Peeta’s attention. My shoulders sag as I watch him put Peeta to work moving chairs and stands and drums around on the stage. It makes me mad. Those hands should be doing more important things.

But least Abernathy’s sober.

Three years ago District Twelve finally had a victor. It had been Rory Hawthorne, one of my friend and hunting partner Gale’s little brothers. He might not have been a Career, one of those kids from the low numbered Districts that illegally train to be tributes, but Gale and I had been taking his two younger brothers and Prim secretly out into the woods once a month after each one’s eleventh birthday. We’d taught them what skills we had which we thought might be useful in an arena, in case they were ever reaped. His little sister, Posy, is still too young to be trained.

The Hawthornes might be surly, stubborn and opinionated, but they are nothing if not are determined survivors. Between what Gale and I had offered Rory by the time he was reaped at sixteen, and whatever help Abernathy had been, he’d come out alive. Though maimed for life with the loss of a hand and bad scarring along one side of his body, and still carrying the emotional trauma of the arena with him, he is still, miraculously, the victor.

Which makes the Hawthorne boys desirable matches, what with the sheer amount of prize money and food supply Rory receives every year, not to mention his extravagant house in Victor’s Village.

I worry for Prim. I detected an affinity growing in Rory for her during our training time beyond the fence. And Prim didn’t help. She is always so sweet, and so kind, I don’t think she realizes that her own behavior towards him could be misinterpreted as more than just friendly care. It doesn’t bother me about his physical injuries, but I worry about the mental ones. If anyone would be a good match for Rory, it would be someone with a healer’s spirit like Prim’s. But it doesn’t mean I want that extra burden for her. Because of the law of recency, Rory also has the unfortunate luck of bing District Twelve’s new tribute mentor.

Whether because Abernathy was finally off the hook as mentor, or because he felt he’d finally made penance for all the District Twelve children he’s lost, or for the tributes he killed in his games, he started his long trek to sobriety when Rory came home alive. He even accepted the role of master of ceremony for Coal Dark that year, and has been in the same role since.

The sun has finally sunk behind the horizon and I’m frustrated as I watch Peeta continues to labor under Abernathy’s direction. The light is fading fast, and it doesn’t look like his servitude is going to let up before the festivities begin.

I sigh.

I could go up and offer Peeta a hand. That might be the thing to do. But I’ve never gotten on well with Abernathy and don’t fancy the idea of being where he is. I spot a cluster of people working with the last of light strands and meander towards them instead. They accept my help, and offer smiles and joking conversation as we work.

As the last hint of dusk fades, the lights all come on at once and create a rare atmosphere of cheer.

My work has brought me close to the stage. I turn to see if Peeta is still there. He is, but so are the rest of the musicians. They are all in their positions, and their instruments come suddenly alive with sounds of being tuned to one another.

I lean against the wall of a nearby house, crossing my arms as I listen to them. It’s impossible not to stare at Peeta’s youthful grin.

Dark falls completely in a matter of minutes, and just as the first stars dance and twinkle in the sky above our heads, people begin to fill the street. Abernathy makes a short, if crude, commencement speech, including a few jokes that make me snort, and then the music and the evening begin…

_______

Chapter 2

I keep to the edge of the festivities. Tonight, there’s no little Prim for me to shoulder through the crowds to keep an eye on.

There would be no need, anyway. She’s been dancing near the front of the stage for almost a solid hour and is already on her third partner.

Wait, make that the fourth. The young man dancing with her now is about to lose his place following the third refrain of “may I cut in” I’ve seen tonight.

Prim’s comically uncomfortable expression is priceless. It’s clear to me she isn’t interested in any of the young men who’ve managed so far to snag her hand. But somehow, she can’t seem to find a polite way to say no.

She spots me and mouths the word “help” just as the song turns from an upbeat waltz into a slow and romantic fiddle.

I shake my head resolutely. You’re all grown up now, I remind her with my pitiless grin. Her eyes grow wide with horror as her new partner slips his hand around her waist and leans in close.

I let out a piercing bark of laughter so loud that several people between us, and even her partner, turn. I shrug at them. They lose interest immediately. But I’m still grinning, especially now that Prim’s face and neck are beet red. She averts her eyes to avoid any further embarrassment I can devise.

I turn my attention back to my evening’s main activity, watching Peeta Mellark coax the most incredible arrangement of music from his guitar. The way he plays most songs, the instrument is balanced on his knees and his hands dance in a combination of strikes, strums, thumps, and taps on both its strings and its body. He’s somehow able to make it, a thing made from little more than the wood of a felled tree, sound like a flock of delicate song birds singing harmony in one moment, while in another make it shout and knock like pelting rain against a house.

I am not his only enthusiast, I’ve realized with irritation. Standing by the edge of the stage, near where Prim has been all evening, is a cluster of girls. They smile, clap, sway, and perform whatever other bodily gesticulation is appropriate for the meter of the song he happens to play. The population of his little group of admirers has been rotating for the last hour, but has never decreased. Peeta usually has his head bent over the guitar, focusing, and rarely has spare time to look up. But for this song, he’s sitting with it against his chest and seems able to freely scan out over the crowd below. It’s impossible for him not to notice the flirtatious young women. He gives them a few nods and smiles.

Peeta also spots Prim. He seems to sense her discomfort and gives her a fortifying wink and a grin. She smiles back and I’m grateful that his effort immediately eases some of the anxiety from her face.

But fate would have intervened on her behalf anyway. A communal dance breaks out and Prim, and the boy with her, are swept up into the large, fast moving circle. Soon I lose sight of them. Amid its frenetic pace, she should be able to break free and dissolve into the crowd in no time.

I settle back and focus only on Peeta. I try and will him to turn his head my direction and catch me staring at him. But even though the sweep of his gaze moves back and forth over the crowd, it never reaches me.

It almost must be intentional, considering how close I am to the stage and how I’d purposeful I’d been to place myself within his easy line of sight.

I don’t like it. It makes me feel twisted up inside, and anxious. And not like I did about Prim tonight. This is worse. It’s the first time I feel an edge of panic strong enough to make me think twice whether I have the courage to risk rejection.

“Hey Katnip.”

I don’t turn to see whose taken up standing beside me. I know who it is. It’s Gale.

I sigh.

Of course, I couldn’t go an entire Coal Dark without seeing Gale.

It’s not as though we’re not friends. But since I’d rejected his offer of marriage after my graduation, and he’d then gone and found himself a wife before a half year had passed, that friendship has been strained. We’ve both wanted things to go back like they were before, but his wife doesn’t like the idea of him spending time in the woods hunting with with me. And since he’d had to start working in the mines, aside from training our siblings, he barely has time for anything. We still talk like friends when we’re alone, although our conversations are reserved. But when we’re around anyone other than our younger sisters and brothers, it’s always halting and a little awkward.

“Hey Gale,” I say, sparing him a friendly, but weak, smile.

He takes a swig from a bottle of something I guess is home brew. He offers it to me for a tasting. I wave it away politely and for a time we don’t say anything. Apparently, he notices I’m watching Peeta.

“You’re still carrying a torch for that Mellark kid,” he observes, with an extra hint of condescension. Gale’s father died in the same mining accident as mine, only Gale had more siblings to feed once the coal dust had settled. Since then, his attitude towards the better fed and more affluent merchant class has been testily resentful at best.

I don’t bite. Instead, I pull my arms in tighter around my chest.

“Sorry,” he mumbles an apology to me. “You should talk to him tonight, you know? Do something about it for once, if you’re still… leaning that way.”

I look at him again, and study to see whether he’s being serious. It’s a surprising suggestion coming from him. His dark eyes, framed by thick brows and thick, strong cheekbones, look heartfelt. Even tender. I’m attacked by a stab of regret that I refused his proposal with so little thought, but I remember quickly that I never felt that type of warmth for him, and wipe it away.

No, we were always going to be comrades, never lovers.

The thought of being lovers with anyone makes me look back towards Peeta. He’s back to playing the guitar in his usual percussive manner instead of the rhythmic style he’d been at for the song before. I feel relief wash away some of my earlier jealousy. He can’t encourage the pack of giggling girls while his head is bent monogamously over the instrument on his lap.

I feel flushed suddenly and hold a hand out for Gale’s bottle. He offers it without comment.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say when I pass it back. It occurs to me that at least a minute has passed since Gale said anything at all, and so my delay is self-incriminating.

“Uh huh,” he says. But it carries a sigh underneath it. Part of him still loves me.

I sigh too, feeling guilt. I’ve wondered many times whether my own unreserved and carefree attitude with Gale during our earlier years had sent a message I hadn’t intended. Maybe that’s why I’d been so quick to pick up on Prim’s making the same unintentional mistake with Rory.

“Nice outfit, Katniss,” he says, but not teasing, and not unkind.

In our shorthanded language, he’s telling me I’m not as untouched by longing as I pretend.

“Thanks,” I manage, though the word comes awkward up my throat.

He takes another swig from his bottle, asks if I want to hold onto it, which I don’t, and then says he’ll see me later. We both know he won’t. The offer of the bottle was tonight’s parting of ways.

And once more, I’m alone.

When he’s gone, I look down at my dress, self-conscious. It’s a simple white linen thing with long sleeves I’ve rolled up to my elbows because of the evening’s warm humidity. It should be off-white from the coal dust native to the air of District Twelve and washings in tannin-heavy water. But I wear dresses so rarely, almost never, that it looks almost new. To make the outfit seem not so plain, Prim had woven a circlet of daisies and buttercups and rue into my hair right before we’d left our house. I’d protested on the basis of hating the fancy of it, but truthfully it made me painfully aware of just how boyish and unfeminine I was by nature.

But she’d made those eyes, the same ones she’d made over every feral or sick animal she’d ever asked to keep and nurture back to life, so I’d had to agree. She claims I look pretty tonight.

My fingers gently caress the flowers and leaves to make sure her handiwork is still sitting right.

I feel myself blush, feeling silly, even though no one is looking at me. I’ve never handled dressing up well.

I realize the music has stopped and Abernathy is prattling on about something to do with the graduating class. I tune him out and look instead for Peeta. He has just stood up from his seat and is unfolding his body in a full stretch. I swear those hands of his reach so far up into the sky that they touch a few of the stars.

I decide to take my chance, terrified but determined, and walk over towards the steps he’ll have to descend.

A little kid, maybe three years old, runs straight into me, bouncing himself to the ground and halting my progress. He looks stunned, but then he grins up at me with wide, blinking eyes. We share a laugh. I recognize him, though I don’t know him by name.

“Looking for your momma,” I ask.

He nods and I bend and lift him easily. A flutter of warmth draws over my belly and chest when I realize how snugly he fits on my hip and in my arms. I can’t resist, and press a kiss to his temple and sway with him in my arms.

“See her anywhere?” I rotate us so he can scan the crowd. His mother is only a dozen feet away and spots us, sending a wave and a smile. I help him wave back, grinning like a fool, and few seconds later she is here taking him from me.

I get her thanks, but the warmth I feel cools suddenly cold as ice as I watch her nuzzle her nose to the little boy’s and them both disappear into the crowd.

I’m alone again. And somehow this moment feels worse than when Prim ran after her friends earlier.

I look back towards the stage. Peeta’s not there.

“Well if it isn’t Katniss Everdeen.”

I turn around, and see blond hair and that familiar stocky build. The man’s head is hanging, like he’s staring at my hands.

“Peeta!”

When he looks up, I see the blue eyes, but also my mistake.

It’s not Peeta. It’s Rye, his older brother.

“And here Peeta thinks you don’t even know he exists.”

“Of course I know he exists,” I snap defensively, although I don’t know why I should be defensive with him.

He throws his hands up, taking a mocking step back but fixing me with an infuriatingly teasing grin.

“Say, you have a…” He points to where he had been looking and I follow, “a big swatch of dirt on your dress just there.”

The boy who’d taken a spill. Everywhere he’d touched me, sat on my hip, leaned against my side, nestled in my arm, there is dirt. I do my best to beat it off, but some of it smears.

When I’m done, Rye appraises my success with an slow visual rake of me from foot to forehead. He gives me an approving nod, clearly unrelated to my now soiled dress, and a grin so lecherous I’m tempted to punch him. I feel myself redden with embarrassment.

“Want to share the next dance, when the music starts back?”

“I’d rather dance with a drunk Abernathy,” I say curtly, crossing my arms and looking away to scan for Peeta. Somehow, I manage to add with acid politeness, “But thank you.”

He laughs.

“Alright, alright. I can take a hint. Little cat has another mouse it wants to hunt tonight instead of me.”

Damn right.

When I notice he doesn’t move, I turn back to him.

“Can I help you,” I ask with as much irritation as I can muster, which is a lot.

“No. No, you can’t.”

His mocking is gone, replaced with a more serious expression. For some reason, he finds me interesting tonight. I can’t think of why. We’ve barely shared a dozen words our entire lives, and I only know who he is because he’s Peeta’s brother.

I feel awkward glaring at him. And I’m getting frustrated, because I still haven’t managed to get to Peeta. So I look back out over the people. This break won’t last more than a few more minutes, and there’s only one more break before the lights go out, so I’ll have no chance of finding Peeta after that.

Eventually, Rye turns and stares out at the crowd with me.

“You know, you and my brother have a lot in common.”

I turn to him again, and keep my expression guarded.

“You’re both prickly little things, though grant it I know you only by reputation. Both hard willed. Determined. You both have never married. You’re both aloof when it comes to courting. And it’s even like you were both planted at the same time, because tonight, out of the blue, to look at you, both of you are almost screaming that you actually care about having a future after all.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

I can tell he’s dying for me to ask. I feel like I’ll lose self-respect for it, but I do it anyway.

“And by that you mean what?”

He looks at me, clearly feigning surprise that I’m actually interested.

“Oh, I thought you’d know, of anyone.”

Could he mean Peeta has been talking about me? My heart races instantly. It’s almost as hard to breathe as it is to keep my expression neutral.

“Why’s that,” I ask after too long, which is the time it takes me to speak without my voice cracking or sounding overeager.

“Well, my little brother has a dandelion in mind to pluck tonight. In fact, there he is right now.” He motions with his jaw out off to the side of the crowd. “And if I’m not mistaken, that’s your fair-haired sister.”

Yes. I can see. It’s Peeta.

Talking to Prim.

Leaning close to her as she cooperatively turns her head so he can say something into her ear.

They’re both smiling.

They share a laugh.

I feel like I just fell out of a tree and landed flat on my back. A winding. A seizure of my diaphragm like I’ve been punched in the chest where my heart is.

I don’t even notice when Rye disappears into the crowd. I don’t notice, and I don’t care.

I am planted to the spot, like a lone tree in the middle of a field, its leafless, gnarled limbs drooping low with an agony no one else can perceive. My eyes glaze over and I see nothing.

Until someone jostles into me. And then another person.

And then I’m awake.

I edge backwards with small, shuffling steps, still half-stunned by the news that he- now I can’t even say his name in my mind without my heart rupturing inside me- that he is interested in not just someone else, but Prim.

Of course he was never interested in me. Those looks across the school yard when we were kids, and across the classroom and hall in the years after, they weren’t interest in me except to the extent that I was Prim’s sister.

Maybe even the burned bread hadn’t been real.

Maybe he’d tossed it to me only so it would get to her.

A hole widens inside me like the pupil of a deer’s eye that dilates after I’ve shot it. I think back to his insistence this summer that I ‘at least take some bread back for Prim’ when I’d been bringing squirrels by for his dad, and I see again with new eyes the way he was watching Prim only minutes ago while she was dancing.

My cheeks and chest catch fire and suddenly the crowd makes me claustrophobic. I want to melt into the mass. Melt through it like water draining away through a crack in the dry earth. And then run.

Run for the woods. For the meadow. Not the sad one that people here go to lay down in when they’re moments or hours away from dying of starvation, though maybe that’s exactly what’s about to happen to me. But I want to be in my meadow. Deep in my woods. Damn that it is nighttime and I shouldn’t go out past the fence in the dark. Damn this dance.

Damn the hope that brought me here just to snap me into so many pieces of firewood and tinder like the dry branch I am.

What was I thinking, to come here tonight?

“What was I thinking,” I whimper angrily between grit teeth.

In my back-stepping, I bump into someone tall and stout enough that I teeter. A hand grabs my arm to steady me from the impact.

“You were just about to tell me, I hope.”

I know that voice.

Warm. Confident. Slightly teasing, but not with the leer or cruelty of its sibling.

Peeta.

Of course, I bump into the last person I want to see. The one person I want to run from. The one person whose face will kill me.

I determine not to look at him. But his hand on my arm applies a polite, neighborly pressure and my feet shuffle around without asking me.

God, he is smiling so broadly it brings out his dimples. And his blue eyes twinkle as they catch flecks of light from the bulbs strung over our heads.

I want to die. I will go to my meadow, sit against the tree trunk, draw in a deep breath of the warm night air, and simply stop being.

“Well?”

He is still grinning, and I suddenly hate him.

And his hand is still on my arm.

I stare at him dumbly, not understanding the question. All I understand is that my misery is complete.

What had I been thinking? Rye is right. My fair-haired sister is a dandelion. Just like Peeta. Both of them full of healing and joy and warmth. And yellow headed dandelions don’t belong with muddy, misshapen Katniss roots. They’re a different class.

A different race.

My parents, after all, had tried. And all it had brought them was tragedy.

He keeps staring at me, this Peeta, as I circle lower and lower in my thoughts of self-loathing. It takes a surprisingly long time, but his grin finally mirrors my own descent and morphs into a frown.

I want to look away. But I have never been this close to him, so still for so long, that I can see the detail of his eyes or the way his eyelashes kiss each other when he blinks. It is too precious to waste, even if it’s a memory that will torture me for the rest of my life. As will the burn on my arm from where he is still touching it.

“Katniss?”

I swallow, not thinking of a single word to say, and finally break away from his eyes to stare down at the dirt between our feet.

“Katniss, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh.” He hesitates. “It’s just that I saw my brother bothering you…” His hand finally comes off my arm, and the sudden loss of contact makes me look up at him again. He uses that hand to rub the back of his neck, which I know from my many covert observations is muscled and has a tan line from the collar of his shirts. I also know the exact angle at which the short hairs at the bottom of his haircut taper down that neck and form a vee.

I feel suddenly dirty for those thoughts. For every thought I’ve ever had.

“Rye can be a real nice guy sometimes,” he say, sounding apologetic. “And by ‘nice,’ I mean a real jerk.”

“I’m fine,” I say again. Dishonestly. Too sharply.

“Oh.” His arm drops to his side and he exhales quickly through his nose. The breeze of it makes the few stray hairs on my forehead dance.

Neither of us moves, until it becomes awkward.

“It was… good to see you, Peeta,” I half-whisper, not able to handle the tension. I hear my voice try to tell him I had just been leaving, but his face lights up like a firework and he speaks over me.

“Hey! You remembered my name!”

Why is he grinning?

“Of course I know your name,” I growl, self-conscious and embarrassed.

Damn that grin of his. I just want to shove him against something, press my forearm to his neck, and force it off his stupid face.

“Well, it’s just that you never really talk to me, aside from when you bring those squirrels by. And then you’re off like a shot every time.”

Well, you never talk to me, I bite back in my private thoughts. He’s laughing at some joke he’s just made that has gone over my head. I register that it’s something to do with my hunting. I feel resentment rising.

I don’t make fun of his playing guitar.

At the thought of him playing guitar, my eyes dart instinctively to his forearm, which hangs loosely against his ribs. The arm attached to the hand which had been touching me only moments before.

The sleeve of his shirt is pushed up, up close to the elbow, with the fabric of the ribbed cuff stretched. My eyes travel down to his wrist, and then to his knuckles covered with fine blond hairs, and then finally down to his fingers, mysterious things that dance so lithely along the neck of the guitar he lays across his lap, and which I imagine are calloused from the tension and abrasive resistance of the metal strings.

I want to touch them. Just reach out and touch them. Graze them with the backs of my own fingers and see if they will respond. But it would be suicide on so many levels, with what Rye told me. Like the Greek myth I’d learned in school. Like Icarus who’d dared to fly to the sun on wax wings that melted once he got too close.

“Uh, Katniss?”

“Yeah?”

I look up at him while inhaling deeply, suddenly far away. Or else, everywhere at once. The night air is full of the smell of dust and a distant, coming rain shower. Crickets are buzzing from the weedy edges of the houses around us. My skin is slick with a fine sheen of sweat from the humidity, and I can feel the heavy beats of my heart against my ribcage right where it sits half-tucked under my left breast. There’s a slight tang of salt on my tongue after it runs slowly over the roughness of my oft-chewed lower lip.

How is the world suddenly so alive and so peaceful, when it’s burning down around me? Is it nature comforting me? Are my senses reaching out for the protective womb of its smells and sounds and tastes?

Peeta clears his throat and says my name again. Suddenly I’m awake from whatever trance I’d been lulled into, and back swirling in a black pool of misery.

He rubs his neck again, and looks slightly embarrassed. Searing, burning heat dances up my chest and climbs my neck and cheeks at the realization of how transparent my thoughts must have been if they were able to embarrass him.

“I have to go,” I say quickly, needing to bolt. “Good luck with… with…”

I can’t even say my sister’s name.

I start to push past him, tears threatening at the corners of my eyes, but he nimbly hops sideways to keep up with me.

“Wait. You’re not leaving already?”

I have nothing I am willing to say to the boy with the bread. I simply keep walking.

He turns around to match my step, so I speed up, dodging around chatting idlers in order to force him away from me. But he’s persistent. Somehow, he finds me again, and his shoulder bumps roughly into mine as he veers my way to avoid my next attempt at using a bystander to wedge us apart.

He finally stops me, clamping his hand on my shoulder, pulling me around and then clamping his other hand on my other shoulder.

“Don’t go so soon.” His eyes are darker now, probably because I’ve led us several paces off the street and away from the abundance of festive lighting. He isn’t frowning, but he also isn’t grinning.

The same fingers I’d been staring at and dreaming of since pretty much the first time I’d seen them dance and flit and coax song out of a guitar, press into my skin through the thin linen of my dirt-smeared, white dress.

He might as well punch me, because the way each of his rough thumbs finds the dip behind my clavicles, just on the inside of my collar, leaves me without air.
I wait for him to say something, or do something, because I can’t do anything.

But he says nothing, because someone is yelling, hollering, from somewhere distant, like the threatening buzz of a wasp. I recognize the voice, though it takes me a second. It is Abernathy.

“Peeta!”

Peeta’s eyes snap away from mine and back towards the revelers.

“Come on, break’s over! Get your maiden-swooning fingers back on stage before all the girls start leavin’!”

His words shoot me through the heart.

Peeta looks back to me, his lips pressed thin. He clearly has something to say to me.

“Don’t go yet, Katniss? Please? I need to ask you something.”

I feel cold and shaky as it occurs to me, immediately, what it is he wants to ask.

Permission.

I’m as good as Prim’s mother, in many ways. He wants my permission to… court her?

Having now guessed at it, I can read it clearly on his face.

His eyes blaze with intensity, and his fingers squeeze at me with a near painful urgency, when Abernathy yells for him again. The other musicians are already back on stage, making sporadic, lilting music as they re-tune and adjust their instruments.

“Stay?”

I nod agreement, for Prim’s sake, but I loathe myself for it.

“Great, thanks.”

His fingers pull off me, too easily, and he grins, free and comfortable again.

My stomach lurches and grows heavy as a bucket of coal. Instantly, I decide to take my agreement back, so I can flee to my woods.

But as nimbly as he’d chased me, Peeta Mellark is already gone and weaving back through the crowd towards the stage.

This time, I am really alone.

________

It’ll be nearly an hour before there’s another break for the musicians, an hour I’ll have to suffer this dread that Peeta means to ask my blessing to court Prim.

A thought occurs to me and my teeth pinch my bottom lip until it almost bleeds. As I recall the easy manner of their shared whispers and laughs, and the way Prim stayed close by him when she was dancing, I wonder whether the courting might already have happened under my nose. Maybe the request will be for approval of something more… final.

I again consider breaking the promise to Peeta that I will stay. But I’ve always honored my word and so instead I try and work out what I can do with myself until then. Preferably, it will be something to keep me from thinking.

The smell of roasting meat and toasting bread registers.

I’m not hungry. Far from it. And I’m not even sure I could eat if I was, because my stomach feels as small and hard as a peach stone. But, the vendor tables are also where the liquor sales are, and the taste of Gale’s home brew is still floating on my breath. It might be time to artificially numb myself.

As I walk up along the edge of the street, enough people have already spent their energy dancing that my way is intermittently blocked. I’m forced to cut across people’s porches where I can, although most of those are filled with older residents who sit on chairs they were able to move out from their homes. They smile at me, many of them toothless and wrinkled. Life in District Twelve is difficult, and while it’s rare to age well, it’s a feat just to have reached an advanced age at all.

I cross a porch where an old married couple is sitting on a rough cut bench together, thigh pressed to thigh. The old man is holding one of his blind wife’s hands in both of his, describing for her the festivities taking place in front of them.

I return the enthusiastic greeting he gives me, although the warmth of their life only reminds me of how cold my own is.

The music swells as I get closer to the stage. I have no choice but to pass by it to get to the vendor tables and when I do, I’m aware the other musicians have toned down their volume so Peeta’s guitar can take precedence. It’s a lovely tune, energetically hopeful. I recognize it. I know there are words to it, though no one is singing them. It’s something about lovers and moons and naked grass bathed in dew.

I can’t prevent myself. I stop to watch him.

Once again, the music he draws out from his soul, the way his whole body moves, tenses, and releases to accomplish its evocation, and the lines of absolute concentration on his face capture every beat of my heart and make it hard to breathe.

Damn the music, I think harshly, as soon as I realize I’ve stepped into that snare line. My chest is as painfully tight as it ever was, but now it’s also knotting with a sense of anger and betrayal. I don’t care if it is unjustified. I embrace it and let it build until it’s strong enough I can turn my head away and walk by. Instead of cooperatively gliding by people in my way now though, I savor the harsh, unfriendly bumps I mete out as I push my way through to the vendor area.

A vendor area I had forgotten is relatively cramped. I want to stand in line for the alcohol, but its table is nestled cruelly between the baker’s table and the water and tea table. With my bad luck holding, Rye is at the one, with one of the other Mellark brothers, and Prim has retreated from the dance and is hovering behind the other, talking with her friends. I see her exchange energetic whispers with one of them and they both giggle. For a sound that used to melt my heart, it now has a surprisingly opposite effect.

Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to notice me, or my glare, since she would disapprove of me buying booze. But then I realize, bitter, that it doesn’t matter if she does disapprove. As of tonight, our lives are no longer entwined the way they have always been. So I make the decision and get in the line.

Perhaps not the best choice, since there’s several Peacekeepers in it. But at least I recognize the messy red hair of the one immediately in front of me as a friendly.

“Hey, Darius.”

He turns around, his face brightening with a smile as soon as he does. At least someone tonight is happy to see me for me, and not because I can do something for them or because I’m related to Prim.

“Katniss! I’ve been hoping to see you tonight, and here you’ve managed to find me.” He looks pleased.

“I’m surprised drinking on duty is allowed for you white shirts.”

He shrugs. “Boss encouraged us to buy from the food vendors tonight and said we could each have one bottle of the beer. Says it helps keep the goodwill going so people won’t start picking on us.” He laughs easily, and then adds, “I’m surprised to see you in line, though. Never took you for much of a drinker.”

Of all the Peacekeepers, Darius knows me the best, and I him. He and I often share jokes and barbs in the Hob and on the street when we encounter each other, and he sometimes trades actual currency with me for berries and rabbit. That’s excellent for me. Capitol sanctioned currency is hard to come by in my trades, and it lets me buy supplies from the Merchants who refuse to barter.

Even though he has four, maybe five years on me, he’s got an easy going manner and has never felt like he’s anything other than someone I might have gone to school with. That is, if his lot hadn’t forced him into the Peacekeeper force. I don’t even know how he ended up there, whether he was a volunteer for the twenty year term of servitude, or if he was forced there as punishment or to pay off debts. All I know is he is originally from the Capitol and seems happy to be away from it.

I’ve always found him gentle and good natured.

The line moves forward. I step up beside him as it progresses. I’m sure it looks like I’ve done it so it’s easier for us to talk. But really, I’m using him as a human shield so Prim is less likely to see me.

Rye, working the bakery table on my exposed side, spots me. He gives me another leer and I narrow my eyes at him before pointedly looking straight forward. He can go rot.

But I realize with my thoughts on Prim and Rye I’ve missed something Darius has said.

“Huh?”

“I said, you look pretty tonight.”

I look up at him, dumb and confused by the compliment.

I see his eyes catch on the crown of flowers Prim made for me, before he measures my dress. It’s a quick survey that ends in a friendly, if awkward, smile a thousand miles away from the lecherous grin I’d suffered from Peeta’s brother.

The compliment embarrasses me, but was also given with sense of genuineness that makes me feel reluctantly flattered.

I can’t come up with anything to say back, so when the line moves again and we step forward together, he leans in conspiratorially to whisper.

“But, I’m afraid I’ll have to warn you against public brawling, miss.” He nods down to the dirt streaking the side and front of my dress.

Yes, it does look like I’ve been rolling on the ground and fighting with someone. It’s ironic that the state of my dress reflects the evening’s emotional battles.

He chuckles, “Fighting’s a punishable offense, you know. And I might be forced to drag you away from tonight’s wonderful festivities if you persist in being so… lively.”

That almost sounded like it carried an undercurrent of flirtation. But I know that it didn’t, that it wouldn’t. Peacekeepers aren’t allowed to marry or have any sort of a family at all. And if Darius is one of the many Peacekeepers who manage to find occasional illicit pleasure at the slag heap or wherever they go, I’ve never heard that rumor about him. And I’m certain he knows me better than to believe I’d be one of those girls for the asking.

But my cheeks have heated, nevertheless.

The line moves again without me speaking. We’re almost to the table.

“You’re unusually quiet tonight,” he observes.

“It’s been a long night,” I say, honestly. “I’m tired and wish I could go run away into the woods.”

I wince. Even though he knows where I go to poach, everyone does, really, it probably wasn’t wise to speak so casually of violating the fence. Especially since there’s another Peacekeeper in line two people behind us.

The line moves and we’re finally at the table. I look over towards Prim nervously and am relieved that she still hasn’t noticed me.

Darius orders two bottles. I start to order mine as soon as he’s paid, but he holds the second bottle out for me. I’m as stunned by the act of him offering it as I am by the act of him paying for it. Except for misery and coal dust, things in the Seam don’t usually come free.

I take it more because I don’t know how to respond than because I actually want to accept it. He tilts his head back towards the stage and I find myself walking beside him.

“Same story here,” he says, once we’re away from the vendors and around the other side of the stage. For some reason, the giggling girls have disbanded and the nearest reveler is at least twenty feet away. His voice is raised for me to hear above the music being produced right over our heads.

He takes a pull of his drink. A long one. Half his bottle is gone in that one attempt.

When I take a cautious sip of mine, I realize he’s staring at me.

“Same story here,” he repeats, as though I hadn’t heard him.

“What is,” I half-yell back.

He leans in a bit closer so he doesn’t have to shout, though his voice is still raised. There’s a sort seriousness in his eyes despite his smile. I’m sure I’m supposed to understand, but I don’t.

I’m sure I don’t.

I hope I don’t.

“Being tired and wanting to disappear into the woods forever.”

The music above us goes discordant for a moment, jerking my attention and giving me a reason to look away from Darius without it being obvious.

I hadn’t mentioned anything about disappearing forever. I’d just meant I wanted some space to think.

The music rights itself without me seeing what the problem was, so I look out into the crowd and pretend to be pleasantly distracted. I bob my head and move my shoulders to match the rhythm of the others in the crowd, hoping my actions convince him that I’m not really listening to him.

It feels like a good time to take a longer drink of my own beverage. I find I’m just as capable as Darius at downing half of it in one go. I feel it burn in my empty stomach, and the warmth of it climbs my throat and branches out along my shoulders.

“I’d ask you to dance,” he’s still talking to me, “but I don’t think a Peacekeeper’s uniform would be much appreciated mixing in. By residents or my fellow Peacekeepers.”

What is he thinking?

I have an instinct to take the bottle away from him and ask if he’s already been drinking. But as I study him sideways, he doesn’t look intoxicated. He looks exceptionally alert.

My heart starts pounding and I’m near to panic. I can’t move. Where my stomach had been warm and loosening a moment before, it is twisting tightly around itself now.

The song ends. In the sudden quiet, he leans his head close to mine.

“Katniss. I mean that. About moving on. Your sister is old enough to take care of herself.”

My mind is blanking. I don’t understand what he is saying or why, just that it has to do with me. I say the only thing that makes any sense, even though it seems crazy that this particular man would be angling for it.

“I’m not one of those slag heap girls, Darius.”

“I know you’re not,” he says quickly. “You’re many things. Clever. Funny. Warm.”

Warm?

I try to joke. To interrupt him. To stop him.

“Right,” I laugh, although it’s an uncomfortable laugh, “I’m about as warm as yesterday’s burnt toast.”

“And you’re brave,” he continues, not deflected.

I tip my bottle bottom-up and start downing the rest of my liquor. It’s the only thing I can think to do.

“Brave enough maybe to disappear forever into the woods and make a new life with someone.”

A crash nearby our heads startles both of us. I jump and what liquor I haven’t yet chugged pours from my bottle onto my dress.

Darius, being a Peacekeeper, has a different reflex. He turns around with his hand automatically on the handle of the billy club sticking out of his belt.

Peeta’s face is suddenly visible over the edge of the stage above, giving us a weak smile. He’s bright red, and I realize he had to have overheard Darius because apparently we’re standing right next to where he sits.

I’m immediately afraid. There’s a thousand terrible things that could happen. To Peeta. To Darius. To me.

Darius shouldn’t be having those thoughts. And he certainly shouldn’t have spoken them aloud in public, even if it did look like there was no one within earshot. He could easily be executed for words like that, as could I for just being perceived as receptive. And though it isn’t Peeta’s fault they were said within his hearing, he’s a potential threat now to Darius, which makes Darius a threat to him.

I can practically see the fear coursing through Darius as he looks from Peeta to me, trying to decide what to do. His shoulders are tight and his biceps bulge with tension against the thin fabric of his uniform.

I give Peeta a look that communicates for him to pretend like nothing’s happened, while I lay my hand gently on Darius’ arm and try and soothe him.

“Sorry, I’m always dropping things,” Peeta says, with a convincing level of innocence. He reaches for his guitar, which is upside down on the stage.

“He does always drop things,” I say with a bit of a chuckle, slipping my fingers under Darius’ arm and subtly pulling him as though sharing a joke. “You should see how many loaves of bread Peeta accidentally drops into the fire. His mother used to beat him for it, poor kid.”

“Katniss, you remember that?”

My gaze rises over the top of Darius’ red hair to meet Peeta’s eyes. I scowl at him for talking. I wasn’t trying to dredge up history, it was the only example I could think of to normalize the situation for all three of us. Why doesn’t he just let the moment pass rather than lengthen it?

But Peeta’s expression, though I can’t read it well, intensely demands an answer from me.

“Of course I do,” I say quietly, right before I chew my bottom lip and look away from him.

But in looking away I see that Darius is looking at me for an answer as well.

It’s an answer I can’t give him. He has to know the best thing I can do for all three of us is to pretend he never said those things.

An idea occurs to me.

I look back up to Peeta and smile stupidly, “Abernathy hasn’t done the graduation dance yet.”

I feel a wave of relief when Peeta nods in understanding. He goes over to Abernathy to whisper into his ear. The older man scratches the stubble on his chin before giving Peeta a nod and then stepping to the edge of the stage directly above Darius and me.

“Ladies and not-so-gentlemen!” Abernathy flicks long blond bangs out of his eyes and then raises his hands dramatically. “It’s been brought to my attention we haven’t yet had the traditional graduating class dance!”

There is an immediate chorus of applause, hoots and hollers. The graduating class dance is another big set dance, like the gigantic ring that saved Prim earlier from her fourth dance partner. The rest of us will be forced to move off the center of the street to make a space wide enough for them.

The crowd automatically starts ebbing back in anticipation, and a group of new graduates begins forming near the center, linking arms up under Abernathy’s direction.

I hear a muted whistle from the stage and twist to look up. It was Peeta. He’s moved to the far side of the stage and is waving someone around frantically, sending them earnest whispers. His face tracks the person’s movement, and I realize it’s Prim he’s communicating with as soon as she rounds the corner of the stage.

A moment ago I was grateful for our unspoken teamwork, but this feels like a slap in the face since it reminds me my world is falling apart tonight and Peeta is at the epicenter of it.

“Now, this year we’re going to do something a bit different! We’re going to add siblings into the mix and see if we can’t get the ring twice as big as the last one!”

I only half hear Abernathy. And that’s because I make the mistake of letting my eyes drift until they accidentally catch Darius’ again. The desperation I see in his face touches my heart someplace deep. He’s in pain. And now that I’m really looking at him, I recognize the same crushing weight of hope and fear I’ve been feeling all evening.

When did this happen for him? How had I missed it? It can’t be love, I know. It’s only that I’m a woodsy girl, and what other type of woman could a Peacekeeper possibly hope to risk breaking away with except one capable of surviving outside the reach of Panem’s long arm?

Prim does something with my bottle, grabs my arm and starts to shuffle me off.

I know I should be grateful for being rescued. I am grateful, both for her manhandling me and for what was no doubt Peeta’s idea to add in siblings. But I find I can’t break the eye contact with Darius, which is forcing Prim to pull me backwards.

How can I not empathize with a good man willing to risk his life to break free from the controlling leash of the Capitol? Haven’t I felt that same desperation all my life? The drive to survive and preserve my family by whatever means necessary? Isn’t that what had driven me to hunt beyond the fence to feed Prim and myself? Wasn’t that what had driven my dad there when I was a child?

My identification with that need rouses a pity so sudden and so intense that it pierces me like one of my own arrows.

__________

Chapter 4

My identification with Darius rouses a pity so sudden and so intense that it pierces me like one of my own arrows.

Darius’ expression falls the further Prim drags me away. I do the only thing I can, a mercy kill. I shake my head and mouth the words, I’m sorry.

His head ducks in shame, turns around and walks away.

Above him, Peeta is staring at me too. Or maybe he’s staring at Prim as she manhandles me away from what is danger for all of us. His expression is one I still can’t read, except that it is dark and serious.

The dance ring forms, and I’m held firmly in place on one side by Prim and on the other by someone I don’t recognize.

The music begins, driven by the fiddle. It’s a fast tune, a fast moving circle. By the time I’ve been forced to complete just one rotation of the dance, I’m crying, my head is spinning, and I feel like vomiting.

I can’t take it. Any of it.

I pull my arms free and stumble out of the ring, off balance as I leave the dance’s powerful momentum. But as soon as I’m sure I can keep my feet under me, I bolt down a dark gap between the two nearest houses.

And I run.

Even though it’s dark, I easily find my way over the grass and the dirt piles and the stray refuse of our poverty-stricken District until I slam into the fence that separates me from the freedom and comfort of the woods and meadows. My fingers claw and find purchase as I half sag against the chain link. It’s a good thing the electricity doesn’t happen to be on. I’d failed to check it before embracing it.

I’m sobbing. It’s an emotional hemorrhage I can’t hold back. But no one is around to judge me, so I don’t try. I sink to the earth on my knees, pressing my forehead the fence. I wish more than ever that my father was here, that I could wrap myself into into arms that both want me and are wanted by me.

All I can think about is Darius, and Prim, and Peeta. Somehow, they all feel related to one another. Not like family, but like puzzle pieces, or causal links.

I see Peeta’s worried expression in my mind following Darius’ bold suggestion. I can only assume he fears any trouble that it might cause for him and Prim. Could he marry the sister of a fugitive? Would he want to? Without question, if I committed an act of rebellion as crazy as running away into the woods with a Peacekeeper, it would stain the Mellark name badly, a Merchant name that requires the patronage of people who feed off the hind teat of the Capitol. Would it be too much of a risk for him to pursue Prim, the sister of a rebel guilty of an execution-level offense?

And what about Darius? The look in his eyes as I allowed Prim to pull me away, it was so broken. So hopeless. So desperate. Yes, Darius might not have to worry about his future meals, about starvation or working in the coal mines. But in return, the Capitol will see to it he lives, and most likely dies, alone.

I fear for him. If he really is ready to desert, I know he won’t make it on his own.

I think back year ago, to a day in the field when Gale and I saw two people on the run being apprehended by a Capitol hovercraft. How the boy had been killed, and the girl taken alive, screaming in terror. They weren’t District Twelve, so they’d made some progress on their own from wherever they’d started.

But they’d still been caught.

And no effort would be spared to recover a deserter from the Peacekeeper force.

No, Darius needs me if he plans to run. He wouldn’t make it more than a few days without me to help him evade, hide, and navigate. I may think very little of myself, but I know there is not another me. There’s not another person in District Twelve with whom any Peacekeeper could hope to find a path of their own making beyond the fence I currently grip between my fingers.

But Darius hasn’t just asked for my help to escape, has he?

He’s asked me for more than that.

I can’t help but feel a spark inside my belly. I wonder what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the desperation I saw in his eyes.

Maybe he’s been on the idea for a while, and I’ve been oblivious during our joking and making fun of one another, like Prim is when it comes to the looks Rory gives her. It’s hard to believe that somehow I’ve had any sort of effect on him. But I find myself holding my breath as I remember what he said.

Pretty.

Clever.

Funny.

Warm.

Brave enough to make a new life with someone.

No one has ever said anything like that to me. Well, I suppose Gale might count, but not really. His proposal was more along the lines of an awkward, “We’re a good fit and I like you. We should get married.”

I’m pretty sure, with the number of girls Gale had taken to the slag heap over the course of high school, that his ‘I like you’ had meant something slightly more than mere attraction, but how was one to know for sure?

There had been something so much easier, and earnest, about Darius’ praise of me. And had I heard right? He’d been waiting for Prim to age out of the reaping, so he knew I wouldn’t worry for her? Might he actually have been postponing a gamble with his own fate until he felt my sister would be alright, and that I would be alright leaving her?

That was more perceptive than Gale had ever been, and he’s my best friend.

Pretty, clever, funny, warm, brave.

No, no one has ever said those things to me. Not Gale. Not a single boy at school. Certainly not Peeta, who is apparently intrigued by girls blonder than me, and prettier than me, and younger than me.

In fact, no one has ever even thought them about me. And the one instance in which I’ve thought otherwise, actually forced myself to interact with someone because I liked him and believed it possible he could take an interest in me… Well, his designs on Prim are proof enough that my prospects in District Twelve are fairly limited.

Start a new life with me is what he had really said.

I hear the words, so powerful, no matter how hard I try not to. So I let myself cry a bit more, and hope that the intensity of the physical act itself will clear my thoughts.

When I feel fully expended several minutes later, I try to find a weakness in the fence, but there isn’t one. I’m a ways away from the place I normally slip through, so I resign myself and sit cross-legged in the dirt. My dress is ruined anyway, so what does it matter?

The breeze cools my skin where I’m covered in sweat, and kisses my face where tears have wet it. It refreshes me, and I close my eyes and try to center myself.

I inhale and catch the same scents from earlier. The dust. And the rain that is nearer now. But this near the woods, I also smell the sickly sweet aroma of grass and the floral scent of the daffodils I know grow along here.

I haven’t come nearly far enough away from the heart of the Seam to escape the music of Coal Dark, but it is faint enough that it plays second fiddle to the nature around me. The swaying, gentle rustle of leaves sings softly to me. There’s even a pleasing, melodic clinking from the fence as the wind plays against it. And the crickets are a symphony all their own.

A snap causes my eyes to fly open.

“Katniss?”

I twist. There’s no moon yet, so I can’t see who it is, but I know my sister’s voice anywhere.

“Prim.”

I manage to keep back the sigh I feel pressing inside me.

Unlike my dress, hers is still pristine, so she comes around and stands in front of me rather than sitting in the dirt. She pulls her arms around her stomach. I guess she finds the breeze chilling.

“Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” It sounds unconvincing even to me.

“The way you ran off.” I don’t explain my actions, so she asks, “Was Darius bothering you? I know he likes you, but I never thought he’d try to… do anything about it.”

“Who told you he likes me,” I snap at her. Every person who knows it, or suspects it, puts Darius in further danger. And me. And her. And Peeta. I may have no romantic feelings for Darius, at least not yet, but I do consider him a sort of friend. I don’t want any of us hurt.

She takes a step back at the harshness in my voice.

“No one. It just seemed like something was going on right before the dance. Peeta told me to hurry and come around to get you. And after you left, he found me and asked me if you were alright.”

My eyes focus on her, even though it’s dark.

“Peeta asked you if I was alright?”

“No, Darius did.”

I sigh, disappointed. Though, what was I supposed to expect?

Prim continues, “I… got the sense maybe he’d tried to… to…”

After more verbal stumbling, I realize my modest little Prim is trying to find a delicate way of asking if Darius had propositioned me for physical intimacy. I burst out laughing.

“I don’t see how that’s funny,” she says, mortified.

“You wouldn’t,” I say, though I don’t mean anything by it except to tease her. “And he didn’t,” I emphasize.

“Oh.”

She doesn’t sound convinced, and from her tone I can hear how anxious she is really, “Peeta looked like he thought Darius was causing trouble.”

Peeta thought it might be a problem.

Yes, there is my final answer to the Darius question. Anything that can hurt Prim is unacceptable, including ruining her chance at romantic happiness by smearing the Everdeen name with an act of treason. And just the mention of Peeta’s name reminds me that whatever spark I felt at Darius’ words are nothing compared to the cruel wildfire still charing my heart to ash, each heartbeat a puff at the billows.

“We were just sharing a drink,” I lie. I can’t let her walk away from this conversation thinking there was anything unusual about my time with Darius. And I realize that as things take their course there will probably be opportunity to revisit the idea after it can no longer affect Prim’s marriageability.

In fact, it might even be nice to have more encounters at the Hob first, to see if Darius’ and my joking starts to carry more meaning naturally with time.

“I didn’t have anything on my stomach,” I add, “so I felt pretty sick pretty fast. And with you and Abernathy forcing me to dance in a circle, that was the last straw.”

“Oh,” she says again. But I can tell this explanation sits better with her.

My shoulders sag with relief.

“That stuff is nasty,” she says. Do I hear an edge of anger and not just simple disapproval from her? “I know you drink sometimes with Gale, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

I wonder how she knows that. I rarely drink. Almost never. And while it is true that it’s usually Gale’s home brew when I do, it’s never around her.

“Are you coming back to the dance,” she asks me after we’re both silent for a minute.

“I don’t see why I should.” I ignore the fact that I promised Peeta I’d stay. Darius has at least had the effect of making me feel a bit more of my own self-worth. And maybe that is worth not dragging my heart through the mud just to make up for those two burned loaves of bread. And after all, if Peeta gets his wife, isn’t that payment enough for them?

“There’s nothing there for me. And you’re doing fine all on your own.”

“Maybe.”

That quiet voice sounds like the little Primrose, not the grown up one.

“Is something wrong, Prim?”

She hesitates and then, “Nothing’s wrong.”

I hear the lie in it. I know it’s a lie because it’s the exact same tone I used every day for years after father died. The one I always used to tell her that nothing was wrong and that we were going to be alright, even though there were plenty of times I didn’t think we were going to make it through the month.

“We can talk about it,” I offer. “If you want.”

I really don’t want to talk about it, actually, now that I think about it.

“No, it’s alright. But maybe you could walk back with me?”

It’s not a big request, so I get up and we start back together. Prim doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. In fact, at the snail’s pace she sets it’s going to take us at least ten minutes to cover the distance I probably made in two.

“Katniss?”

“Yes, Prim?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

I fall out of that same imaginary tree I did earlier, emotionally winded as I hit the ground. It’s good she’s set a slow walking pace back to the street, because it’s hard to think of what to say as my mind tumbles with how I’m supposed to deal with my own hurt and jealousy and somehow still be a supportive sister.

“Yes, Prim. I’ve loved someone,” I settle on the truth. I keep my voice calm, gentle. I try to channel away everything else and imagine I’m speaking to the seven year old girl I’d cradled in my arms after the mining accident, the little angel into whose hair I’d whispered comforts even though our father had just died and I had been hurting just as badly as she had been.

The one I swore to myself I’d do and suffer anything for to make sure she was alright.

“I don’t mean me,” she says as though I had misunderstood or was sidestepping her question. “Or our parents. That doesn’t count.”

“I know you didn’t mean that, Prim.”

She thinks on this for a long time.

“Who, then? Who did you love?”

There is absolutely no correct way to say, The man who is in love with you instead of me.

So I draw in a deep breath and say simply, “Just a boy, Prim. From a long time ago.” And then I release that same breath slowly.

“What happened?”

“He didn’t love me back.”

“That’s terrible!” She stops and stares at me. “Why didn’t you ever tell me!” We are close enough to the beginning of the street that some of the ambient light lets me get a shadowy idea of her expression. I’d laugh at how earnest she looks if it wasn’t so tragic.

“Come on, Prim,” I pull her close with my arm around her shoulders and encourage her to keep walking.

“It was Gale Hawthorne, wasn’t it? It had to be, with how much time you spent with him.”

Now I really do laugh.

“No, Prim,” I shake my head with conviction. “It most definitely wasn’t Gale. I think our roles were reversed in that regard.”

“You don’t care that everyone thinks so?”

Why ‘everyone’ should care about my love life escapes me. But, “No, I don’t really care what people think.”

She looks at me strangely.

“Maybe you should.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind, Primrose, instead of dancing around it.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s embarrassing.”

“Why?”

I roll my eyes, even though she can’t see.

“Because it’s embarrassing to love someone and them not love you back. It’s like a secret you need to keep for yourself. Sometimes even from yourself. Because if other people know it, or if you think about it too much, it makes you feel weak and even more alone than you did to begin with.”

She looks at me, her beautiful face so serious and sad. I’ve never seen her pity me before, but I think that’s what I see in her expression now.

“What if someone loved you and you didn’t know it?”

Like Darius, I ask myself with sad sarcasm. But I can’t have anyone else knowing about that, so instead I say what I know will deflect her away from the affairs of my heart back to hers.

“Sort of like you and Rory?”

She stops again, and pulls herself out from under my arm.

“What you do mean like Rory and me,” she snaps with a fire I rarely see in her. I can almost hear my own capacity for irritation in its quality, so different from Prim’s typical gentleness.

“Well, you know… I’ve been trying to tell you for awhile that I think he likes you. I know you don’t like him in that way, but you’re always so friendly and open with everyone that it can be confusing to boys. I know you don’t mean to encourage him, but I think he may have a different idea. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in the same spot I was.”

“That Rory will marry someone else, like Gale did instead of you?”

I’m not sure why the conversation is taking a wrong turn, but it is.

“Prim, I mean you’ll end up hurting Rory. I’m relieved that Gale married someone else. He wanted to marry me, not the other way around.” I know I never shared about Gale’s proposal with her. Neither he or I ever talk about it to anyone because we’re both too embarrassed. But I’d have thought Prim capable of intuiting what had happened. Maybe I’m better at keeping secrets than I thought.

“Alright.”

She seems calmed, but it still takes her a full minute to say anything. By now we’re making our way up the street, passing couples and little clumps of people here and there. The music that drifts to us is still upbeat and lively. The next break should be happening shortly. After that, the melodies traditionally slow so the couples who have formed can spend more time together talking and being close rather than sweating and trading off partners.

“Katniss, I think I’m in love with someone.”

I pretend to be happy, “Well that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think you’ll be happy about it. And I don’t think he loves me. Oh, Katniss, it’s Rory!”

Suddenly, she’s holding onto me and crying profusely. Add mucus to the list of things staining my dress. I don’t know how to respond, as the revelation fills me with both relief and dread, so I just hold her.

“You may think he likes me, but he wouldn’t even look at me straight in the eye this week. Every time we talked, and I tried to ask him if he was coming to Coal Dark, he made some excuse as to why he couldn’t.”

“That might be a good thing,” I venture.

She pulls back from me, furious. “How can that be a good thing?”

“Prim, he’s been through the arena.”

“I don’t care about the scars, or the hand.”

“I’m more worried about the mental and emotional damage. I’ve been going out to Victor’s Village these last several years with Gale. To get any ideas from Rory we could to help with training you and Vick, and eventually Posy. He’s not the same young man you used to know going out into the woods. He’s… older. His temperament is different. More sullen. Shorter.”

“I know exactly what it’s like,” she yells at me. I look around, glad that the music is still going. We’re far enough down the lane from the main crowd that her shouting hasn’t disrupted the flow, but it is catching some attention.

“I see him more than you do!” she yells at me. “And if you and Gale would stop bringing that damned alcohol by-”

“Wait, what do you mean you see him more than I do?” My voice sounds almost comical to me in its calmness, compared to her.

“I go see him, Katniss. Ever since last year. We have tea, and play cards, and sometimes go for walks along the fence line.” She’s still yelling, and I can’t tell if she’s unaware she’s making a scene, or if this is a Prim I’ve never seen that doesn’t care that she’s making one. Either way, this is entirely new territory for me.

I could actually hear myself blinking if it weren’t for the music.

“I know what he was like when he came back. Angry and closed off. I know how hard it is on him when the reaping happens and he has to take the tributes to the Capitol. I know how he wishes every time one of them dies that it’s him dying instead. I know the things they do to him there, in the Capitol, and you don’t even have a clue. They’re monsters, all of them! And you don’t even have a clue, Katniss!”

She’s worked herself up to screaming now, a wild thing I never thought she could be. I know she’s upset and hurting, and I feel badly for her, but I also find myself fighting an urge to smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen hot Everdeen blood stymie that healer’s gentleness of hers and I feel a rush of pride.

And anyway, some floodgate of deep emotion has burst in her so even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could stop it.

I notice that the music has stopped finally and that most everyone is staring.

“Prim,” I reach my hand out to touch her shoulder gently, but she pulls back.

“And you and Gale bring that stuff by, and when I find him afterward, he’s just in a stupor for the whole day. You just pick his brain for information and don’t even try to help him.”

Apparently Prim has known she’s making a scene, because she turns to face the revelers District Twelve like she is pronouncing the end of the world upon them.

“I love him!” she screams at them, face red and contorted. “And while all of you called him a hero and gobbled up the extra food rations his blood, tears and loss of innocence brought you, you treat him like he’s a leaper! Just like you treated Haymitch! All Rory did was get unlucky enough to come home alive!”

Her words leave every single person in the street silent. Some people nod. Others looks away nervously. A few heads even drop in shame, as though they felt she’d singled them out.

I see that up on the stage Peeta and Abernathy are talking furtively. I realize Peeta’s just probably received the same blow I’d taken earlier.

Abernathy waves the musicians to play again, and slowly enough that it’s clear Prim has made her point, the people in the crowd eventually return their attention to each other.

I’m proud of her.

“Prim,” I touch her shoulder again. This time she doesn’t recoil. “Prim, why don’t we go home? We neither of us need to stay here until the end of the night.”

“No,” she says with a pout. “I’m staying here. I told Rory he’s to be here tonight when the lights go out. I told him I’m waiting for him and he’d better not disappoint me. And even though he said he’s not coming, I’m going to keep my word and wait. Because even if he breaks my heart, at least when I see him next I can look him in the eye and call him a coward and tell him I didn’t pick someone else even though I could have.”

__________

Chapter 5

Prim walks away from me and disappears into the crowd, which splits for her like she was breathing fire.

At least her protest of love for Rory definitely frees me from my obligation to Peeta. Neither he or I may like her choice, but she’s made it abundantly clear she isn’t choosing anyone else.

I look down and catch sight of how truly disgusting my dress has become. I’ve nothing else to do with myself, so I decide to head for home and change.

White dresses and flowers were never destined to fit me anyway.

I’m nearly to my front door when I hear the heavy footfalls of someone running. My first thought is that it’s Darius, which would be unfortunate. My second it that it’s Gale, which might actually be helpful if I decide to go see Rory about Prim.

But instead, I can see by the cast of the porch light that it’s the very last person I want to see.

“Katniss!”

Peeta’s out of breath, his stocky, wide-chested build not meant for running. He might be able to throw me around as easily as a sack flour, but I could lap him twice in a mile race. I watch as he rests his hands on his knees and takes in deep breaths. He’s probably here to ask whether I think there’s any chance for him if Rory doesn’t show up.

I consider turning my back and stepping into my house. But I don’t. I wait for him to get his breath back enough that he can stand up straight.

“Katniss, are you going to find Rory?”

“No,” I try to sound like he’s nothing more than an unwanted bother, “I’m going to change out of this dress.”

“I can help.”

His thoughts are clearly firmly stuck on Prim and Rory. Call it bitterness, or desperation, but I can’t help myself.

“Peeta. I can handle dressing and undressing on my own.”

He rubs the back of his neck, furiously, and works through an embarrassed stutter that gives me a stab of satisfaction, “I didn’t mean… I mean, I meant… Not that I wouldn’t… Oh God, never mind.”

He turns in a quick circle, still rubbing his neck. His hand finally drops and slaps heavily against his thigh.

“I meant about Prim.”

Even in the dim light of the porch lamp, all I see is red. For Prim, and for me.

I come up to him so I can whisper, just in case my mother is near enough the door or window to overhear.

“Look,” I warn, feeling dangerous. “If you think I would back you over Rory now that Prim’s made it clear she loves him and not you, you’re in way over your head.” I shove his chest with both hands just enough to threaten his balance but not destroy it. “If you try to interfere and she gets hurt, I will bury you, Peeta Mellark. Do you understand me?”

“Katniss, you think…” He looks down for what feels like too long. He sighs and looks back up at me. We’re close enough that I see every crease on his face as he frowns.

“You think I’d hurt Prim?”

“Rye told me how you feel,” I accuse him. “And it’s fairly obvious without that that you care for her, Peeta. Always telling me to take bread to her when I come by with the squirrels for your father. The way you ask after her. The way you stood close and laughed with her during the break, watched her while she was dancing tonight.”

He wisely takes a step back and stares at our feet.

When he looks back up, I recognize the hopelessness in his eyes. It’s the same look I know has been in my own eyes tonight. The same that was in Darius’.

“And you were willing to support me in that?”

“Yes, I was. Because I’m willing to do anything, at any time, anywhere, to secure her happiness.”

Even if that means ripping my own heart out and roasting it on a spit, I feel like adding.

I feel like shoving him again, just because, but this time hard enough to make him crash into the dirt. Or else kissing him maybe, in an angry protest against fate. But I don’t.

“I understand, Katniss,” he says softly. “I’ll wait.”

I don’t understand.

“You’ll wait for what?”

“For you… To change, I mean.”

“I didn’t say I was going to find Rory, Peeta. And even if I do, you can’t come with me. Didn’t you just hear what I said?”

“I can help,” he says, dropping his eyes again. “You won’t find him at his house, either, I don’t think. But I may know where he’ll be. You need me for this, Katniss. He’ll listen to me.”

“Why? Why would you try to put them together?”

He bites his bottom lip.

“Just let me help, Katniss, alright?”

The defeated softness in his voice makes my stomach hurt, and my chest.

Because it’s not for me. That’s the reason it hurts so damn much.

I try to remind my lungs to breathe in and out instead of sitting limply behind my ribcage, and I swallow, loud enough I’m sure he has to hear it. Common sense tells me that it’s not alright to accept his help in this. But it’s also hard for me to believe that the man in front of me, the man who was once the boy that took a beating to help me, is lying.

Because to me, Peeta has always represented goodness, charity, selflessness. A new beginning. Isn’t that what had first made me fall in love with him?

I feel my lungs finally restart and I suck in air hungrily.

“Alright, Peeta.” Because I don’t have the emotional reserve left to try and offer any sort of comfort for his pain, I add, “Thank you.”

I duck inside and change into my usual outfit of trousers, boots, and a blouse. It’s really too warm tonight to wear my hunting jacket, but I foresee the possibility of wandering beyond the fence tonight and I might want it then, so I slip into it anyway. Peeta is sitting on my porch step when I come out, his back to the door and his shoulders hunched. He’s found a flower weed and is slowly ripping it to pieces.

I step down slowly, and wait for him to get up. He’s sluggish, but finally rises. I let him lead the way and we start off on a pace that’s little better than the one Prim had set earlier. We head in the direction of Victors’ Village even though he said Rory wouldn’t be at his house, but I don’t question his leading.

At least the moon has started to rise, and it gives our feet a little light.

“Shouldn’t you be doing the music?” I ask him, uncomfortable with the silence as it grows long.

He waves the question away, “They’ll be fine without me. Everyone always is.”

I should just keep my mouth shut. I’m afraid that since this is the first time I’ve been alone with him, my heart might bleed through into my voice and say things I mean to keep to myself. But I want to talk with him.

“You shouldn’t say that.”

He looks at me for clarification.

“Prim and I would both be dead if you hadn’t given me that bread. Or, at least, we’d have been taken into a home.”

He laughs, but it’s bitter. “Don’t, Katniss. It was just bread. I should have found a way to do more.”

“It’s true, though,” I protest. How much should I bare to him? Maybe tonight, after everything that has happened, I should finally let myself really thank him for what he did.

I let myself talk slowly, partly to fill the time, but also because the language of trees is as slow and silent as their growth, and when it comes to something like this, I’m the same way.

“There wasn’t anything you could have done more. We were both only eleven, remember?”

I look over and wait for him to acknowledge me.

“But it was enough. It was everything, Peeta. I was at the end. How was an eleven year old girl supposed to take care of herself and her sister with her father dead and her mother as good as? The bread you gave me came the very moment I’d decided to turn myself and Prim into the authorities for care-taking. Do you know how horrible that would have been?”

He nods. Everyone knows.

“But after that filled our stomachs, I felt hope again. I started thinking that maybe I wasn’t fated to die or be helpless after all. That’s when I got up the courage to start going beyond the fence alone.”

Peeta stops walking and studies me in the low light of the moon.

“How come you never told me? You never talk to me.”

I shrug, “Well I wouldn’t, would I?”

“Why not?”

The answer is obvious to me, but too embarrassing to say aloud, so I don’t answer.

We pass through the gate of Victors’ Village. Rory’s is about half way down the lane, so we still have a few houses to go.

“Do you… Are you thinking about leaving with that Peacekeeper?”

I grab his arm and yank him violently to a stop.

“You must never, ever talk about that, Peeta. Do you hear?”

He looks over my shoulder instead of directly at me.

“I know that. I’m not stupid.” I’ve clearly insulted him.

“Good.”

When I let go of his arm, his eyes finally focus on me.

“But it’s just us here now. And I’d like to know. I’d really like to know, Katniss.”

I see disapproval. Condemnation?

I feel knots inside me, emptiness, cold, heat, pain.

“You didn’t talk to many people in school except for Gale Hawthorne and Madge. Certainly you never spoke to me. You barely say five words when you come by the bakery. So you’ll have to forgive me if you having an easy drink with a Peacekeeper who’s comfortable enough to ask if you’d go on the run as… as… lovers… catches my attention.”

“He’s not a Peacekeeper,” I shoot back.

Peeta’s mouth hangs open and he looks at me like I’ve got tree limbs growing from my ears.

“I just mean he’s a good guy, is all,” I say more quietly. “You know, not all Peacekeepers are there because they want to be.”

“Yeah, I get it, Katniss.”

He looks away and starts walking again, but this time he’s moving at a fast clip. I jog to catch up.

“Why does it concern you,” I want to know. If he is honest about giving way to Rory, then I don’t see why it should matter to him.

“It doesn’t,” he says curtly, not slowing.

I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t know why his disapproval should matter to me at this point anyway.

Although of course I know why his disapproval matters. Because I’m broken.

“Peeta-”

“We’re here,” he cuts me off.

And sure enough, we’re in front of Rory’s yard. Peeta runs up the little walk and mounts the steps two at a time before beating against the door with the sides of both his fists. There are lights on inside, though I don’t see any movement.

“Rory! Are you in there?”

He walks around the porch and peers in through the windows.

“I don’t think he’s here.”

I’m still standing at the edge of the yard as Peeta comes back. He lets his shoulder jam savagely against mine as he passes by and stalks back onto the main path. I’ve never seen this side of Peeta. The only time I’ve seen him look so determined and hostile was during his wrestling matches in high school.

It hurts me as much as a gut punch.

I match his pace as soon as I recover.

“What’s your problem, Mellark?”

He doesn’t answer.

I try pulling him to a stop, but he jerks his arm free and breaks almost into a run. I out-pace him without even trying and get in front of him. He stops rather than crash into me.

“Peeta!”

His blue eyes look black in the moonlight.

“Do you want to help Prim or not,” he demands, wiping harshly at the edge of his mouth with his arm when he realizes spittle has caught there in his anger.

I nod. Of course I do.

“Then, Katniss Everdeen, get out of my way.”