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Katniss despises this house. She hates its opulence. She hates the wasted space. She hates the tightly-laced expectations that line every wall and suffuse the very air itself. She hates the flickering lamplight and the idle sounds of the piano as Effie plucks away at the keys. She hates the faint scent of whiskey that seeps from Haymitch's pores and drifts across the room, borne aloft by his rattling snores.
And, perhaps most importantly of all, she absolutely loathes the man sitting before her. It is not an entirely personal grudge, but nonetheless, Peeta Mellark has been forced to bear the brunt of it, as any man unfortunate enough to be in his position would have done.
Peeta is not quite a stranger, all things considered, but that does not mean that Katniss knows him well. The Mellarks run in different circles than the Everdeens. They are titled. They are monied. They do not find themselves mending their own clothes or doing their own laundry or lapsing into periods when food is difficult to come by. The Everdeens, on the other hand, being a family that has been entirely without a patriarch or a male heir for some time now, have been almost entirely disavowed by society and the privileges that come alongside it. Indeed, many have decided that Haymitch Abernathy taking in Katniss and sponsoring her through the duration of the social season in the hopes of bettering both her family’s and her sister’s fortunes is either a small miracle, a gross misstep, or an incredible act of charity.
Katniss, however, thinks that it’s a nice idea in theory, but a dreadful exercise in practice. She would have greatly preferred to simply accept a cash handout or baskets of food, which — though they provide little long term security — would have meant that she need not debase herself by allowing Haymitch’s staff to shove her into uncomfortable dresses and too-tight shoes and pretend to be interested in the men that scribble their names on her dance card and try to engage her in conversations that do not interest her.
Peeta is not one of those men. He was never on her dance card. He never brought her punch or whispered half-formulated compliments in her ear. As far as Katniss knows, he is only here due to the unfortunate circumstances that bind them together, and he is even less enthused about this twist of fate than she is, but honestly, she doesn’t know much. Insight has never been her strong suit, and outside of that scandalous moment when they were caught alone together in the gardens at a party, she has had little contact with him.
She wouldn't even know his name were it not for the gossip and the duty-driven proposal that followed it.
“Are you going to say something?” Katniss asks, growing suddenly tired of the silence that lurks between them. The words seem to snap as they collide with the tense air — like the crack of a whip or the crash of a fist on an opponent’s jaw.
Conversation is not her strong suit either.
Peeta starts at the noise, ripping his eyes away from his nervously twining fingers in his lap and wetting his lips with his tongue. “What would you like me to say, Katniss?”
A breath whistles through her nostrils — caught somewhere between huff and sigh. She feels as though she should have an answer to that question, feels as though she ought to know what she wants, but what she wants is to be anywhere but here, with anyone else, without the pressure of an unwanted proposal batting about her ears.
“I do not know,” she says after a long pause.
Peeta idly raises his hand and flexes his finger, as if gathering whatever emotions he feels and channeling them somewhere else. Katniss doesn’t like this habit of his. She would rather be yelled at, would rather bear the brunt of the truth even if it’s painful, just to know where he stands. She doesn’t know how she’s expected to marry a man who won’t give her the courtesy of openness.
Of course, she wouldn’t have to marry him at all if she hadn’t been so foolish as to wander about the gardens at night, collide with him by chance, and then get caught — but she can’t change that. Standing on top of a table in the middle of a ballroom and loudly declaring her innocence hadn’t done anything to help, after all.
If anything, it had made everyone even more aware of the scandal and been the final nail in her coffin.
Katniss looks away from Peeta, casting a judgmental glance at Haymitch’s prone, snoring body before jumping to her feet and striding to the door.
Effie, Haymitch’s sometimes suitor and Peeta’s current chaperone, pauses in her piano playing to ask, “Miss Everdeen, where exactly do you think you are going?”
Katniss does not bother to so much as glance back over her shoulder before replying, “I am in great need of a breath of fresh air.”
Effie does not hesitate. “Take Peeta with you.”
With a groan, Katniss stops misstep, shoulders slouching and knees sinking towards the ground as her skirt pools against the hardwood floor below her feet. She does not bother to look at Peeta, instead fixing her gaze on Effie’s coiffed hair, powered face, and pursed lips. “I would very much like to be alone.
“Need I remind you that being alone is what dragged you both into the sorry mess in the first place? Take Peeta. He will be an absolute gentleman, won’t he?” The woman’s eyebrows contract into a sharp v as she eyes her charge.
Katniss hears the sofa shift slightly as Peeta stands, but still, she does her best not to acknowledge his presence.
Effie is right, and Katniss knows that she is right, but that does not make anymore receptive to the ridiculous rules and expectations that govern society. Back home, she could go for whatever walks she liked, with whoever she pleased, and no one would bother to cast aspersions on her for doing so.
No one in the country cares what the children of fading widows do.
It is the nosy tenants of the city that are the problem.
“Fine,” Katniss says sharply — a single syllable marking the point where arguing no longer seems worth it. “But I refuse to be held responsible if he cannot keep pace with me.”
This time, Peeta speaks on his own behalf. "I think that I can manage.” The claim is carried om a small laugh that most women would find charming. Katniss, however, is not most women, and she merely pivots on the heel of her shoe and takes several long-legged strides towards the door.
Katniss does not bother to grab a wrap on her way out of the house. She doesn’t want to give Peeta an opportunity to stall and get his coat. Maybe if his delicate skin stares to freeze, he will turn around and return home, and she will be free to do what she likes.
The wind cuts across the walkway, sneaking beneath her skirts, wrapping around her legs, and tugging wispy strands of dark brown hair free from their constricting style.
“You can leave and do whatever you would like, you know,” Katniss says, casting a sideways glance at Peeta who, much to her chagrin, is not struggling to keep up with her. “I will not tell Effie. Your secret is more than safe with me.”
“You may be a good liar,” Peeta says, though the way in which the phrase lilts up at the end suggests that he thinks that she is anything but a gifted liar, “But I am not. For all her eccentricities, Effie is enormously perceptive, and she would smell deception on me in an instant.”
“Does it matter? Is there any punishment worse than being wedded to someone you neither know nor care about? What other consequences could there possibly be?”
Peeta sighs — a great heavy sigh that seems to leech the energy from his expression and the stiffness from her posture. “This sort of scandal has a much greater effect on the woman involved than on the man. I am doing you a favor.”
“It does not much feel as if you are doing me a favor,” Katniss snaps back, her tongue sharp and words even sharper.
“Have you noticed,” Peeta says, words slow and deliberate, “That even before the scandal, men were growing ever less inclined to affiliate with you at events?”
“I did, and I quite preferred that to the alternative.”
Peeta is unfazed by Katniss is bristling defense as he continues, “I was under the impression that you were pursuing marriage to help pull your mother and sister out of their current position. Surely an absence of suitors is a problem.”
“On the contrary, I was forced into doing this by Haymitch. If it was entirely up to me, I would not be here at all. My sister Prim is much better suited to this sort of thing. She is far prettier and a great deal more pleasant, and when she is a bit older, she will probably take to the idea of marriage like a little duck to water.”
It is, perhaps, an overgeneralized and carefully curated depiction of her sister. In truth, Prim has always been more interested in books and healing than in boys. She knows the apothecary shelves better than most, and she tends her own garden of useful herbs and plant. As far as Katniss knows, Prim has not shown the slightest interest in boys, except for occasionally engaging in polite smiles and conversation.
Still, that is more than Katniss can manage, especially in the present moment.
If today has proven anything, conversation and smiles both lie far beyond her purview.
“And so she might,” Peeta agrees. He raises his chin slightly and clasps his hands behind his back as they walk. “But that does not help you in the meantime, does it?”
“We have always managed to get by, and maybe if society was kinder to widows and women, we would not have been in this position in the first place.” Both Katniss’s tone and her gaze turn frosty. She does not like it when people try to prove her wrong, and she likes it even less when she starts to believe them.
Several steps and a good number of pounding heartbeats mark the duration of Peeta’s thoughtful pause. “I am very, very sorry that you three had to suffer the loss of your father.”
“Do not offer me your pity.” Katniss bites back. “It does not make me like you.”
They pass a couple, who incline their heads in their direction, pretending that they have not overheard or laid witness to Katniss’s anger, though their tongues will surely wag as soon as they retreat to the privacy of their own parlor.
Peeta nods politely back at them.
Katniss does not bother.
“I am not trying to be liked,” Peeta corrects once the couple has gone, and they are once again as alone as one can be when promenading on a residential street. “I am merely trying to do my duty.”
“Is your duty as a future husband not to be liked?”
Peeta laughs — a full-chested, genuine laugh that tilts him so wildly off-balance that he has to brush against Katniss’s arm for stability. Katniss stares at him, slightly unnerved by the display, but she does not shove his touch away, under the justification that he is warm and the weather is not.
“I know a great number of married couples who do not bother to pretend as though they like each other. Surely you have noticed them as well.”
Katniss turns her eyes away.
The touch lingers on her arm.
“I would not know the difference.”
“Of course you know the difference,” Peeta declares with such confidence that it must, by nature, be the truth. “Everyone knows the difference. Have you ever seen Viscountess in the vicinity of the Viscount? Or the duchess looking at the duke with anything but a curled lip and a furrowed brow? They do not labor under any such illusions that they are in love, nor do they bother to fool anyone else. I am not pretending to love you, Katniss, nor am I asking you to like me, but I respect you enough to be polite, which is the least I can do under the circumstances.”
Katniss bristles.
She does not want Peeta to be nice to her. Indeed, this entire affair would be far easier to handle if they resented each other equally. She wants to scream and fight and yell and have someone scream and fight and yell back at her, just to prove that she is not alone in her fear and her rage and her struggle.
“Don’t you resent me?” she asks, now actively looking for conflict. “Don’t you wish we had never stumbled across each other in that garden? Don’t you wish that you had never met me? That you could spend your life blissfully married to whatever lady happened to catch your eye?”
Katniss stumbles over the hem of her skirts, and with a great huff of frustration, bends over to tear a strip of fabric from the bottom, leaving it jagged and messy but far easier to walk in. No doubt Effie will be scandalized when they finally make their way back to the house — even though Katniss sincerely doubts that Haymitch will notice — and any dressmaker in the town would faint upon witnessing the petty act fo vandalism, but it makes her feel slightly better.
She can move easier. Breathe easier. Some of the tension has fled her body, channeled into the act of destroying something and improving it at the same time.
Peeta merely watches her, and offers her an arm when she rises, in case she needs the support.
She does not take it.
Instead, she shoves the offending strip of extra fabric into the breast pocket of his jacket. The ragged edge peeks out its edge mischeiviously, ruining is too-perfect image.
“There, that belongs to you now, do what you like with it.”
“I have read stories where ladies offered knights tokens of affection at tournaments and they tucked them in their armor for luck, but I believe that most of those tokens were clean handkerchiefs and not the muddy and torn hems of their dresses.”
It is not a complaint. Even Katniss, with her distinct lack of human awareness, can tell that.
Peeta is being playful, and Katniss isn’t sure whether or not she appreciates it.
“You do not desire my rags, and I do not desire your marriage. Turnabout is fair play, as they say.” Katniss walks a bit faster as she speaks, seeking to put space between herself and an inexplicable warmth that she does not understand.
However, Peeta refuses to be left behind. He pulls his suit coat tighter around him as he matches her step for step, obviously wishing for the jacket that Katniss did not allow him time to grab. Her lips tighten into a small, satisfied smile at the thought. If she has to be uncomfortable, it seems only fair that he be uncomfortable as well.
“Why is the idea of being married to me so abhorrent?” Peeta asks after a moment’s pause. “Or is it just marriage in general that’s the problem?”
Katniss does not dare to look over at him. She is afraid — terribly, horribly afraid — that if she makes eye contact with him, she might see something in his gaze that reminds her of her younger sister, Prim. They have the same eye color — Prim and Peeta — and Prim is, perhaps, the person in the world that Katniss cares for the most.
If Prim asked her to get married to secure safety and security for the family, Katniss would have done it in an instant. But it wasn’t Prim’s idea, it was Haymitch’s. Prim had merely fixed Katniss with those kind eyes, containing wisdom far beyond her years, and shrugged, saying that their little family has managed to get by so far, and that she does not want to see Katniss trapped in an arrangement that makes her miserable. Katniss had weaponized that support in protest, but Haymitch won in the end.
She could tell Peeta about this — could raise her voice and go on and on about the many wrongdoings that she has been subjected to since the very moment that this cursed idea had been introduced into her life — but she does not. Katniss is not a woman of very many words. Speaking things aloud gives them power, and she doesn’t want to offer Peeta any sort of leverage over her, even if it comes in the form of something as simple and easily guessed as her love for her sister.
Instead, she casts a wide net woven from assumptions and hypotheticals. “It is ridiculous that the only way you people think a woman can serve her family is through marriage.”
“You people?” Amusement curls around the words, and Katniss can practically hear the laugh that gets suppressed somewhere deep in Peeta’s throat.
Katniss raises a hand, gesturing at the city street and the grand houses that line it.
A carriage rumbles past them — something that the people in her small country town could never afford. In the country, carriages are for the people who own the land, the people with titles and money or extraordinarily popular shops. They are not for widows and their disenfranchised daughters. They are not for the people who struggle and starve and work the land. They are not for people with calloused fingers and one good dress that they wear to all of the festivals until it wears thin and develops holes and runs and burns.
“These people. Do not pretend to be ignorant. It does not suit you.”
“Not everyone here are the selfish creatures that you would assume them to be. Many of them devote themselves to charitable causes, and I know for a fact that there is more than one family that has pledged their fortunes to helping those who are less well off than they.”
Katniss scoffs. “And I suppose that erases the selfishness of everyone else, does it?”
“No, but it is some goodness in a place that might otherwise be cruel.”
Peeta stops in the middle of the pavement, and several long strides carry Katniss past him before she realizes that he has ground to a halt. Earlier in the conversation, she might have abandoned him altogether — stalked off in the general direction of the park with every intention of allowing him to return to Effie and Haymitch with his tail shamefully tucked between his legs — but something has shifted since them.
She is curious.
So she stops and circles back, coming to rest directly in front of him, impatiently awaiting an explanation.
Eventually, it comes, borne on the tired wind of a weary sigh. “What do you think of me, Katniss?”
Dark eyebrows raise, creeping up towards her tightly coiffed hair. “What do I think of you?”
Though it is not an inherently silly question, there is something about it that seems to lie almost beyond her comprehension. Very few people have ever cared what she thinks. In the eyes of the world, she is less of a person than she is an empty vessel upon which other people might be able to project their dreams, standards, and expectations. Her heart creeps towards the back of her throat, and she swallows once, hard.
Peeta averts his eyes, intently considering first the toes of his own shoes and then the muddied and torn hem of Katniss’ gown. “Where do you think I come from? Do you know what I think? What I believe? What I might be like in a marriage?”
“I know you are here, now, and that you are probably here every season. I know you think you are helping me. I know you think that you are right, like everyone else in your position. Having power just means jostling to be the loudest person in the world.”
The corner of Peeta’s mouth twitches slightly, and Katniss does not know whether it is a nervous gesture or an apologetic one. “No one who has a house here is from here, Katniss. I live up north with my family. It is an inherited estate, but it is not mine to inherit. The struggle of being a second son.”
There is a pause, as if to allow for a moment of laughter, but Katniss does not indulge him. Peeta licks his lips and hurries on, seeking to banish the awkward silence. “We are more fortunate than most, but my parents have long held a habit of baking for the village. We bring them bread and scones and cakes on Sundays. I make the treats for the children. Sometimes, I ice them with fantastic creatures and daring knights and other beasts of legend. You should see their faces light up, Katniss. Most of them would never have access to such things were it not for us. Most people in other towns get nothing from their lords.”
Katniss is impassive. She knows what it is like to subsist on very little. She knows what it is like to scrounge scraps from other people’s garbage and illegally stalk game in royally held forests. When they had flour, it was coarse, vile stuff, but it filled the belly and made bread that kept mold at bay and took a long time to grow stale. However, there is the faintest fluttering in her chest — a warmth that makes her feel for him. It dulls some of the rage that has so long threatened to destroy her.
It does not make her want to marry him.
She does not want to slip her hand in the crook of his arm and titter about a honeymoon.
But there is, perhaps, a glimmer of fondness.
“I am sure they are grateful,” she says carefully, stepping around the words with uncharacteristic levels of diplomacy. “Most people die with less.”
Peeta clears his throat and continues speaking, still not quite willing to meet her eyes. “I do not presume to know what is right for you, but I have seen people destroyed for lesser sins. I know how this world works. I have walked in it, even if I do not always feel as though I am a part of it. I do not think that I am helping you, nor would I dare to force my help upon you, but if you would let me extend a hand in camaraderie and friendship, I would.”
There is a softness in his expression, a gentleness, and guilt forces Katniss’s gaze to join his on the ground.
After a pause and a deep breath, Peeta goes on. “Marriage does not mean love. It does not have to mean that. It does not even have to mean family, if you do not want that. For many people, marriage is a partnership. We can be as close or as far apart as you would like. I would give you access to my wealth. I can give you companionship when you want it and solitude when you ask. I can give your sister and your mother safety and a home and food.”
He wets his lips again. “You do not even have to agree to marry me now. It is only a betrothal. If at the end of your stay, you indeed find me so intolerable that you cannot bear to accept my help or share my resources, then I can release you from it, and we will go our separate ways without guilt or anger. One thing need not immediately jump to the next. You can always say no.”
There is silence between them.
The wind rises, cutting through the fabric of their clothes and sending a shiver throughout Katniss’ body.
She lifts her chin and dares to look at Peeta properly, even though he is still decidedly infatuated with the ground. With narrowed eyes, she scrutinizes the lines and angles of his face — the tiny muscles that push and pull beneath the skin and betray intention and secret malice that might otherwise go ignored and unnoticed.
As hard as she looks, she sees nothing but kindness.
Peeta obviously means every word of what he is saying, and she does not know whether or not she resents his genuineness or appreciates it. The world is certainly easier to deal with when you carry the belief that everyone in it is malicious and malevolent, but it is also a heavier burden to bear. It creates and atmosphere of hostility, and a boiling rage that slowly threatens to burn you alive from the inside out. Kindness makes the world a bit more complicated, a bit harder to navigate, but it is also a relief — a bit of sunlight after a long winter’s night.
Katniss does not know if she wants the simpler, darker world or the complicated, happier one.
But perhaps that choice is not hers to make.
The world simply exists as it is, whether she chooses to believe in it or not.
At her side, her fingers tighten into a fist. One by one, she cracks the knuckles of her hand, the way she would if she was loosening up for a hunt or a fight. Every pop represents a thought dismissed, a question that will never have an answer, a dream forgotten by the time morning comes.
It may not be the worst thing to see an engagement to its end, no matter what that end might be. It would likely be enough to keep Haymitch from drunkenly harping on her faults and claiming to see himself reflected back in her. It would be enough to help Prim’s prospects, should she ever wish to follow in Katniss’ footsteps and do a season in the city. It might even be enough to keep the scandal from beating them all into the ground.
If she cannot keep herself from going into the garden alone that night and being seen, she can at least take an escape when it is being handed to her.
And, despite her disinclination towards everything that she thought he represents, there is something deep within in her soul that does not wish to cast Peeta aside. If he is everything he claims to be, if he can keep the many promises that spilled from his lips and spun into the air like so many snowflakes, perhaps a marriage with him, should things come to that, would not be the worst fate.
As much as she might be loathe to admit it, there are far worse people who she might have bumped into in the hedges.
Katniss braces herself with a deep breath and leans forward.
Her lips brush against his cheek in a chaste kiss that is still thoroughly inappropriate given the public nature of the setting and the current lack of vows between them.
He flinches in surprise, eyes finally darting up to meet her own, but he does not pull away.
Katniss takes a step back, burying her hands in the folds of her skirt, seeking to stave off the worst of the cold.
It takes Peeta a moment to find his tongue, and even when he does, he stumbles slightly over the words, like a young boy from home talking to a girl for the first time. “Is that a yes, then?”
Katniss cranes her neck towards the sky, squinting at the grey clouds that blanket the city.
One drop at a time, rain begins to fall — droplets bouncing off of their bare faces and hands and burying themselves in their hair like glittering gems.
Katniss smiles. “It might be.”
All at once, the sky opens.
Sheets upon sheets of rain pound into them, drenching their clothes and deepening the chill that already shakes them to the bone. It takes them a long moment to rouse themselves to action — stunned both by the shift between them and the sudden turn of the weather — but eventually, Peeta reaches out to grab Katniss and begins to pull her back in the direction of Haymitch’s home.
As they run together, the world around them is no longer one of selfishly grand second houses and expensive horses and flickering streetlights, but one of rain and nature and joy.
A laugh bubbles from Katniss’ chest, but it is swept away by the wind and the rain, never to be heard by Peeta.
And perhaps it is her imagination — some wild daydream better suited for girls who doodle in the margins of their books and stitch hearts and flowers onto their sleeves — but she thinks that she hears Peeta laugh, too.
And suddenly, they’re both laughing, even though only one of them knows it. The rain stands between them, keeping the from being entirely together in the moment of relief and joy and roaring storms.
When they tumble through the front door of Haymitch’s house, they leave puddles on the marble floor. Katniss wrings out her hair and Peeta shakes the water of his jacket, and Effie emerges from the parlor to fuss over the damage that they have done to the home and their clothes and ‘whatever you two do, do not sit on the furniture.’
Servants bring them towels a moment later, and as Katniss blots her face and body dry, trying her best to hide the ripped hem of her dress from Effie’s view, lest she suddenly find herself lectured about that, too.
Haymitch emerges from the parlor at his leisure, leaning against the wall with his arms crosses as his eyes flick between the three of them. Though there is a slowness to the movement — no doubt muddled by the copious amount of alcohol that he has consumed — the shrewdness that lurks beneath his gaze is unmatched.
Katniss knows that he is gauging the relationship between them, calculating the odds of all the possible events that might have unfolded on the walk, and deciding whether or not the match might be a viable one.
After a long moment, those sharp eyes meet Katniss’ questioning ones, and he winks.
“There might be hope for you two, yet,” he says before disappearing into back into the parlor.
And for the first time, Katniss feels like maybe — just maybe — Haymitch might have had her best interests at heart when he proposed this idea, no matter how much she might have disliked it.
Maybe this time spent in the city will not so vile after all.