Chapter Text
District 12
“You going to the wedding then?” Haymitch asks. He clearly tries very hard to sound casual as he stands in the kitchen door and watches her pluck the feathers off a pheasant.
Katniss tries to ignore him but he doesn’t budge. It has been five years since they were forced to get acquainted, half of which he spent as a drunk slob, the other half he took it upon himself to act as a father figure she never asked for. He often leaves her to herself, only to get naggy whenever he feels like it.
“Are you?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Not every day I get to meet all my former protégés in one place.”
She scoffs because she doubts that to be his main motivation. He was never exactly the most reliable of mentors. Instead, it’s probably the prospect of all the wine he can’t get in the permanent construction site that is District 12. But his flimsy excuse at least answers another question. Unlike her, Haymitch is still in contact with Gale.
“So which one is it you don’t want to see?” he asks.
She rolls her eyes. The answer is simple. All of them. Everyone she knows who is invited would have been someone from the past she tries to put behind her. But she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of talking about her feelings. Instead, she says, “There’s still a chance that Peeta has a relapse and tries to kill me.”
“That would indeed ruin everyone’s day,” Haymitch says with a nod. “However, he didn’t try to do that when he came here last year, so you might want to take that into consideration.”
She plucks out a handful of wispy feathers with a little too much force and sends some flying across the table. “Finnick was with him and distracted him.”
“Indeed,” Haymitch says and strokes his chin in a gesture filled with so much mockery, it takes her all her effort not to throw the whole pheasant at him. “I think he might be there this time, too, though, it being his wedding and all.”
She presses her lips together to stop herself from snapping and he lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and an exaggerated sigh.
He probably knows that she won’t stay behind even though she genuinely doesn’t want to go. In the three years since her banishment to District 12, she hasn’t left even once. Her being in exile was always a good excuse not to see anyone. Even if it’s not the same as when she grew up, there’s nowhere she’d rather be than the woods behind the district. It’s the only place where she feels alive. She doesn’t want to abandon it for whatever madness lies in the rest of Panem.
That’s one reason.
The other is that she left too many broken relationships behind. She doesn’t know how to look Gale in the eye since he became a stranger because her old affection is still there, buried by the horror and resentment she can’t ignore. She hasn’t seen her mother since she decided to stay in District 4 as a nurse either. As much as she loves her, being with her mother has not given her any peace in a decade. And then there’s Peeta and he’s–
Peeta is–
He’s the reason why she’s alive. But it’s not just a matter of being indebted to him because he was her mentor. She wants to see him and that in itself is wrong. Her heart skipped a beat when she received the invitation and saw his name on it. It’s a feeling she never really understood and that she still doesn’t know how to shake.
She wants to see him. It’s why she doesn’t want to go. It’s why she knows she will go.
“I have nothing to wear,” she says.
This time, Haymitch full-on laughs. “I’ll let Effie know. She can probably spare a dress.”
She groans at the image. Capitol fashion is still something that gives her nightmares. But it would be nice to see Effie again. That’s maybe good enough.
District 2
“The District 4 government is just too permissive with their laws sometimes,” Maxima says as she puts her long hair in a loose braid. It always mesmerizes Gale when she does that. She usually puts it in a tight bun for work but when she braids it, it looks soft like dark silk. It curls on her white nightgown like a spell.
When he doesn’t immediately reply, she shoots him a look with arched brows.
“Why, because they let two men marry?” he asks, snapping back into reality. “I didn’t think you were on the side of those nutcases who think that they have the right to tell people what to do in their bedrooms.”
He knows he’s being brusque but he hears these things every day. It all comes down to control. Forcing people into being a certain way reminds him too much of what the Capitol did to him when he was the designated Starcrossed Lover.
Maxima doesn’t look amused. “People can certainly do what they want in the privacy of their homes. But marriage isn’t just about sexual preferences, it’s an economic institution. After the war, all the districts were economically devastated and things like this will only encourage birth rates to drop even further.”
When she ties a hairband around the end of her braid and throws it over her shoulder, he lets himself fall back on the bed. It’s tiring. He never realized that when the people he grew up with ignored him whenever he talked about politics. A simple digression in world views leads to discussions that never end. He wanted to make a change, not be stuck spinning in a circle. But here he is, with the perfect woman who won’t even let him take a break after a long day of meetings.
“So I take it you don’t want to come with me?” he asks.
She sighs. “Of course I do.”
He smiles at her when she lies down next to him.
There’s a nagging feeling he tries to ignore.
He hasn’t seen any of the others in three years. He never combined his old life with his current one and part of him hoped that it would stay that way, that Maxima would be too busy. It's the same part that knows that she’s just a substitute for another girl with a long braid.
District 7
“Ugh, they’re the worst, really,” Johanna says and puts her work gloves on the bench in the locker room. Her skin feels stiff and raw from hours of inspecting trees in the sweltering heat. Summer just isn’t the time to wear gloves. “I mean, I’ve known both of them for ages and they hooked up before I met either of them, so props to them for making it work I guess. But, ugh, they’re so idiotic. People have this image of Finnick being a cool guy but when I went to District 4 to visit them, he was clingy like a mother hen. I bet Peeta can’t even poop without Finnick following him. Ridiculous.”
Ivy barks out a laugh like rumbling thunder. “You sure it’s not just jealousy?”
Johanna scoffs. “Jealousy of what? Of being harassed day and night?”
Ivy laughs even more and shakes her head as she peels herself out of her overall.
The truth is that she’s right but Johanna isn’t going to admit that. It’s not that she doesn’t think that Peeta and Finnick deserve each other. They do. She’s happy for them. She’s not even sure she wants that kind of intimacy. It still sometimes makes her queasy when people get too close.
But there’s just something about that boundless affection that makes her want to ruin everyone’s day. The idea that they both found someone who just accepts them. Despite the ugly parts. Despite the opposition they would have faced. In District 7, Ivy is the only person who has an idea of who Johanna is but it’s not the same. They’re barely more than work friends. To be with each other was never worth consideration.
“What about that cousin?” Ivy asks. Johanna probably looks confused, so she adds, “The one you were introduced to. Are you looking forward to seeing her again?”
“Ah,” Johanna says because she almost forgot about that. She shrugs. “No. You can’t just force a connection that’s not there.”
Ivy raises her brows, so she turns away. The problem with Ivy is that she’s good at detecting lies. It’s why it didn’t take her long to bring up the issue of Johanna not showing any interest in any of the men in their unit. Most people don’t take that mental leap and just assume that Johanna is alone because she’s mean.
Two years earlier, Finnick kept his promise of introducing Johanna to his cousin Coira, the pearl diver. That was the main reason why Johanna visited in the first place, not because she was hellbent on joining the big summer party of the Odair clan. She got lured in by the promise of finding the same kind of happiness Peeta did, only to then make a complete fool of herself.
Because Coira Odair was just so…
Johanna doesn’t even know how to describe it. It made her feel vaguely bad for all the years she made fun of Peeta’s obsession with the version of Finnick that prowled around the Capitol. Coira knocked the wind out of her chest just by being in the same room.
“I’ve become you,” she said after an awkward introduction during which Coira had looked down upon her like a mountain on the fool that tries to climb it.
Peeta laughed and she slapped his arm rather than ask pathetic questions about how he had managed to seduce someone like that. She probably wouldn’t have liked the answer. Peeta had met Finnick in the worst possible place, so desperation would have played a part. But in the end, the main difference between Peeta and her is that he’s generally more likable. It’s not a trait she misses in herself but one that she knows has swayed many others toward him.
“I’m sure it will be fun,” Ivy says in the tone of someone who knows that something doesn’t concern them in the least.
“Yeah,” Johanna says and it hits her that she truly doesn’t want to go.
District 4
“I’m happy,” Peeta says to his reflection.
He’s wearing a suit that reminds him too much of the last one the Capitol made him wear. It’s shimmering like ember, designed by one of Effie’s friends to remind everyone of Peeta’s origins. It’s still always just a cursory observation of who he is. He had an uncle who was a miner and whom no one liked to talk to because he was the husband of his father’s sister who married someone outside her own social circle. That’s all that connects him to the mines but in District 4, he’s still that guy from District 12.
He meant to joke about wearing a white apron and a matching skull cap instead but couldn’t when the memories crushed down on him. His father’s arms covered in flour, Reese’s lucky apron with the yellow stains, his mother wiping the sweat from her brows on sweltering summer days, Aeron’s back when he kneaded dough. The memory fragments are always the worst because they hit out of nowhere.
He wants to talk to Finnick about it but Finnick is still out at sea.
“I’m getting married, so I’m happy,” he says again and practices the smile he knows he will have to keep up for hours.