Chapter Text
Unlike last time, when they had jumped into a hovercraft right in front of the dormitories, they now landed far outside the fence in the wilderness Peeta had been taught to fear all his life. It was a sweltering afternoon when he climbed out of the hold. All the unfamiliar sounds instantly made him uncomfortable. He had thought that he understood the summer chorus of buzzing insects and songbirds but now that it was intensified and mixed in with echoing creaks, shrills, and rustles, he realized how little he had really known. He was no better than the inhabitants of District 13 who feared the surface. His prison had allowed him to see the sky but he was still terrified of the world outside the fence.
He hovered in the shadow of the hovercraft because he didn’t dare step away while Finnick was already about to disappear behind the clearing. He always made it look simple to plunge into the unknown. Peeta hadn’t wanted him to come along for this because it was too dangerous and Finnick too important. But without him, Peeta maybe wouldn’t even have been able to leave the hovercraft.
It sometimes worried him to be so reliant.
‘She isn’t here,’ Finnick said after circling the treeline and listening to the humming of the forest.
Peeta looked at his watch. The time was right but with communications reduced to short transmitted messages, this had been a risk from the start. They had agreed on coordinates based on the proximity to a lake Katniss had pointed out but had no way to reach her while she was on her way there. He doubted she was lost but they couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t been held up.
‘We can go without her,’ Finnick said. He looked up to the cockpit where the pilot probably motioned for them to hurry up. He was supposed to drop them off and then pick them up again at midnight.
Peeta pulled a grimace and looked at the looming shadows of the trees. There was no discernable route through the thicket. He felt his skin crawling when he thought of the monsters that were supposed to inhabit the dark.
He was about to suggest to wait a little bit longer when Finnick turned his head and fixed his gaze on the forest.
“What?” Peeta asked and tried not to sound like a startled child.
And then Katniss stepped out of the underbrush like a mystic figure from a fairytale.
Her expression was as unreadable as always when she looked from Finnick to Peeta to the hovercraft and asked, “There’s enough room for all of us on that thing?”
There was something oddly reassuring about her not wasting any time on pleasantries. They were on a mission. If they followed all the steps in order, they could do this.
He felt a little lighter when he said, “It’s bigger than it looks.”
It would be all right. It would all work out in the end. That was what he kept telling himself. But as they were on their way to the fence, he also realized more and more that he wasn’t made for operations like this.
They were on a slope when he stepped on a fallen branch that cracked and made him lose his footing. He tried to get a hold of a thin tree, only to end up hurtling down the slope with a dead branch in his hands. He was about to completely topple over when something caused him to jerk back.
He stared down at the rugged hollow he would have fallen into and then up to Finnick who held onto an exposed root with one hand and the back of Peeta’s vest with the other, just as if he had caught a kitten.
“I would have–” he said when Finnick hauled him back up. His heart beat like a drum. It would have been more than stupid to die like this.
‘Are you hurt?’ Finnick asked when Peeta was up on his feet. He seemed concerned, so although Peeta thought he was fine, he still patted his torso for potential injuries.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
Finnick sighed in relief and just shook his head as he brushed the dead leaves off Peeta’s shoulder.
At the top of the slope, Katniss waited for them with an impatient expression. She only commented when they were close enough that she didn’t have to yell. “You’re loud.”
When he finally spotted the fence in the distance, the sun had already started setting and dyed the world in a warm glow. Just a few more hundreds steps and he would be home. He couldn’t decide how to feel about that.
Katniss stopped at a group of trees close to a hole in the fence. Peeta had heard that, after the Reaping, people had opened holes all around the district to try and escape, so this likely wasn’t the most conspicuous one. Otherwise, Katniss wouldn’t have chosen to enter this way.
“I suggest that this is where we’ll regroup,” she said with her hand on the trunk of a massive oak. “You’ll have to get here on your own. If you’re late, we’ll leave without you. Understood?”
She said it to Peeta but after scanning him up and down, she didn’t wait for his confirmation and instead looked at Finnick. It had taken only one hike and she had clearly formed her opinion on which of them was the pathfinder. Peeta couldn’t blame her. He had stumbled more than once and something had stung him, so he kept scratching his arm. Finnick, meanwhile, looked as vibrant as ever.
Finnick shrugged to motion that it was not a big deal and Katniss nodded because she seemed content with that response. They were alike in an odd way and it hit Peeta that him obsessively watching them both for years probably said more about him than anything.
Sometimes he was glad that, despite all their other apparent skills, neither of them could read thoughts. Had Aaron been there, he would have said something by now. It would have taken one look and he wouldn’t have shut up about Peeta’s apparent thing for survival experts.
Still, he would have preferred Aaron to be with him now that the fence was so close.
They started off from a corner of the district he had never been to, so at first, it wasn’t so different from reaching District 4 two weeks earlier. He had come with a purpose. Katniss disappeared in the shadows toward the Seam and he had to make his way toward town. Simple steps.
But the closer they got, the more familiar the scenery became. The smells. The street layout. The houses of people whose names he knew. The school all his family members had attended. It was like falling into a dream.
They had to creep through back alleys to avoid being seen by patrolling Peacekeepers and it confused him how well he still knew them. He had spent days playing hide-and-seek in them as a kid but those days seemed centuries away. And yet, the streets hadn’t changed.
He stopped when he saw the Justice Building in the distance. It looked almost exactly the way it had done a year ago. If anything, it seemed a little bigger. They had rebuilt the Justice Building but couldn’t pay the miners. It had sounded bizarre when Gale had talked about that but it was even worse to see it and grasp how massive it was.
He was about to point that out but Finnick pulled him along. He also knew these streets. Something about that realization allowed Peeta to focus on what this trip really meant. He hadn’t come back. He had come to leave for good.
The shop would have been closed for an hour, which meant that, normally, Reese wouldn’t have gone home yet. Peeta could only pray that his mother hadn’t been right and that they weren’t faster cleaning up without Aaron and Peeta wasting time after all.
He crept through the back door. The lights were turned on but he didn’t see anyone around. He motioned Finnick to follow him because he figured that he couldn’t keep him standing outside in plain sight. Finnick seemed hesitant.
‘You wanted to come,’ Peeta said.
Finnick grimaced and put his hands in his pockets as he strolled inside with a wary expression. There was something off about seeing him in the kitchen. He had the wrong dimensions. Like a light bulb with a different color in the middle of a long corridor.
He tried not to dwell on that.
Sounds were coming from the shop in the front. Knocking. Muffled voices. He cautiously walked in the direction and sprinted when he heard a scream.
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Liesa yelled as she stood with her back to him. She accusingly waved her hand at Reese who stood in front of her and tried to catch it like a fly. “That’s the third time today. I’ll probably die of blood poisoning at this point.”
Reese sighed and wrapped a cloth around her hand.
Their parents were both in front of one of the windows. The rightmost one had broken, so a few wooden panels had been crudely fixated in front of it and made the room darker than usual. Their father grappled with a panel while their mother swept up shards.
“Reese, I told your wife to wear gloves,” their mother said dismissively.
Liesa gasped in offense. “Right, we’re doing this again? Reese, how about you tell your mother that I did wear gloves but that didn’t exactly stop one of those shards from ripping right through it, did it? And while we’re on the topic of good advice, how about we talk about how I suggested to bar the windows a week ago and how she decided against it because it might repel customers? What customers? The looters? I’m sure they don’t mind if they can’t have a look inside. They can smell the damn bread.”
Reese grimaced the way he always did when he had to choose between Liesa and his mother. He opened his mouth, probably about to give a perfect non-answer, when he noticed Peeta in the corridor. He didn’t say anything but his expression was enough for Liesa to immediately swivel around.
“Peeta?” she asked with a start.
His parents both looked up. He couldn’t meet their gaze and probably wouldn’t have known what to do if not for Liesa bustling over to him. She tried to cup his face with her hands and then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m bleeding.” She fumbled with the cloth and then gave up and threw her arms around his neck. “It’s really you. You idiot. We were all so scared. We didn’t even know where you’ve been.” He could barely return the embrace when she already pushed him away enough to look him up and down. “You’re pale though. Paler than usual.”
“Right. I was–” he said but couldn’t even explain it before she already turned to Reese.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Why am I the one hugging your brother? Oh, this family. All cold as ice.” She rubbed Peeta’s arm with her unhurt hand, either to comfort him or in an attempt to melt him. “They’re all horrible. I am so sorry.”
Peeta quickly held up his hands. “No, no, it’s fine.”
Reese came a little closer with an aghast expression. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah. Just pale,” Peeta said with a shrug that caused Liesa to slap his arm and Reese to smile in relief.
He cautiously looked at his parents but his father was already back to fixing the window and his mother stared at a spot behind him with a hateful expression that was much too familiar. He suspected that Finnick had decided to check up on them.
The plan was simple in theory. He just had to get them to quickly pack only the most necessary possessions and then follow him to the hovercraft waiting for them in the woods.
The problem was that he had never convinced any of his family members to do anything.
They sat around the dining table upstairs, the way they had always done for special occasions. Aaron’s seat was empty. Finnick was still downstairs in the kitchen.
He thought it was a good sign when they at least all gathered to listen but the moment he finished explaining the necessary steps, his father said, “We’re not going.”
His tone was definite. In any other situation, Peeta wouldn’t have dared to argue. But this wasn’t about a new sales item or about whether or not they needed to get the oven repaired, it was about life and death. It was about District 13 intelligence indicating that the Capitol was likely to use District 12 to set an example.
He wanted to argue but Liesa, ignoring her father-in-law, jumped in. “What about my parents? Or my sister and her family? Are you telling me to leave them behind?”
It immediately derailed the conversation.
“For now, yes,” he said and knew it sounded horrible. “There will be more hovercrafts once it’s clear what the status is but–”
“So you’re not sure if this retaliation thing is happening at all?” she asked.
“It’s likely to happen,” he said. She clearly wasn’t happy with that answer, so he quickly added, “I want to save everyone, I do. We’ll come back and pick up as many people as we can but for now, I want to be sure that you’re all safe.”
She sighed and rubbed her hastily bandaged hand with her unhurt one. She would understand that their options were limited. The truth was that he had not fully considered her. These decisions were impossible to make. People would get hurt and there was nothing he could do, he could just focus on saving individuals. He could think of Liesa as his family but not of the people who were dear to her.
He looked at his father who had his arms folded in front of his chest and who likely wouldn’t budge. Knowing him, he was prepared to die buried in the ruins of his childhood home.
His mother seemed about to retort something and he braced himself for insults.
“Where is your brother?” she asked and sounded suspiciously composed.
Peeta looked at Reese although he knew who this was about. It was another question that wouldn’t get them anywhere. It was also another thing he blamed himself for.
“Your good-for-nothing brother,” his mother said impatiently. “Where is he? Did he send you because he doesn’t even have the decency to come here himself? Instead, you had to bring a stranger?”
“No, that’s not–” he said but couldn’t finish the sentence because she talked herself into a rage.
“That boy hasn’t changed one bit. He never owns his mistakes and runs the moment something doesn’t go his way. I don’t know what I have done to deserve–”
“Aaron couldn’t come because he’s hurt,” Peeta said a little louder than intended.
His mother stared at him with wide eyes.
“He will be okay but he was–” He licked his lips. He didn’t want to make it worse. “He got hurt. So it’s not that he didn’t want to be here, he couldn’t.”
Liesa sharply sucked the air through her teeth and put her hands in front of her mouth.
The worst part was that it wasn’t the full truth. Aaron was currently still stuck in a clinic bed with a broken leg and severe burns. But Peeta couldn’t be sure that he would have wanted to see their family if given the choice. There hadn’t even been time to discuss this with him.
“What did he do to himself?” his mother asked and it still sounded like an accusation but her expression betrayed her.
“He was in District 1 for the Reaping,” he said. “Things there didn’t quite go as planned.”
“District 1?” Reese asked.
Peeta grimaced because he wasn’t sure how to explain it. He didn’t want to mention Gloss. There was no version of the story that didn’t provoke questions. “He was needed there,” he said vaguely and knew that it wasn’t a proper answer.
He didn’t know how to solve this. He didn’t know what he could possibly say to convince them. All their discussions as a family had been like this. They had moved in circles and had ultimately always done exactly what his father had decided from the start.
Which meant that they wouldn’t come with him.
His mother stood up and he was sure that she would walk away to prove that point. But instead, she turned to his father and said, “Robb Mellark, if you want, you can stay here.”
She paused for effect. Peeta’s father frowned at her.
She seemed perfectly calm when she continued. “You’re an adult, so who am I to deny you the chance to crawl into your beloved oven and die like a rat? But my sons and I will not be torn apart again. We’re going.”
He glared at her but she didn’t wait for him to argue. She seemed more determined than ever before. Without missing a beat, she nodded at Reese and said, “Go and pick up some of Aaron’s clothes. You’re all built the same and I have seen that den of a house you live in. There’s nothing of worth there anyway.”
“Excuse me?” Liesa asked but Peeta’s mother just took off her apron and put it on her chair before leaving the room.
Reese seemed confused and threw his father a cautious glance but eventually got up and said to Peeta, “She didn’t move anything in your room, so you can probably get some of your stuff, too.” He looked toward the staircase. “Maybe your–” He trailed off as if he couldn’t think of the right word.
Liesa let out a dramatic sigh. “You go ahead. I’ll get your friend. He looks strong enough. Might as well make himself useful.”
They all started busying themselves but Peeta didn’t move. His father looked at him from across the table. It wasn’t always easy to tell with him but he was definitely mad. His jaw muscles tightly worked under his skin. Their mother and Reese had eventually learned how to ignore him but Peeta didn’t know how. It was still his house.
It was Liesa who broke that spell when she pushed Finnick through the open door and said, “You are really tall from up close.”
Peeta looked up. He didn’t mean to but had to choke out a laugh when Finnick seemed confused while Liesa very openly felt his biceps as if she inspected the quality of a meat delivery.
That was probably the whole trick.
His father had maybe always been easy to ignore but they had all spent their lives giving him the power to decide their every move.
He understood why Katniss would have thought of him as loud because his family as a whole was almost impossible to sneak around with. They left when the streets were significantly more quiet, so every sound was like the fall of a hammer. When his father talked, he refused to lower his voice, only to be hissed at by his mother. Reese dropped his backpack with tools that shattered to the ground like thunder and Liesa yelped when she stepped into what she assumed to be dog poop. “Oh, it stinks,” she said through her gritted teeth while Reese rattled with his bag as he tried to pull her along.
It was a miracle that they didn’t run into anyone.
‘The rebels are mostly miners,’ Finnick said when they reached the dirt road that would lead them toward the fence. Peeta’s family noisily shuffled behind them, so he kept throwing them nervous glances.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘So that’s where the Peacekeepers probably are. They were never strict on the people from your part of town.’
Peeta grimaced. It was laughable. He was still so privileged that he didn’t even see the privileges anymore. It made sense. His life had never been like anything Gale or any of the Avoxes had described.
‘I hope Katniss and her family are okay,’ he said when he realized what this would mean for her.
Finnick shrugged with a grin. ‘If they are anything like her, they’re probably better at this than you.’
Peeta scoffed. ‘Rude.’
He tried to act offended but Finnick snorted a laugh and he was really glad that he didn’t have to do this on his own while his family was as noisy as a herd of cows.
When they found Katniss and her family, only his father seemed happy to see them. Peeta had considered using that as an argument. If he had told him about Mrs. Everdeen coming with them, his father maybe would have abandoned the bakery without a second thought. But by doing that, Peeta would have lost his mother who now had to decide who to glare at, her husband’s first love or the Avox who had picked her up and lifted her through the broken fence when she had struggled with her skirt.
“Why are there five of us and six of them?” Liesa whispered to Reese. She obviously didn’t count Finnick.
“There were supposed to be eight of them,” Peeta said.
Liesa had the decency not to respond. She would know about that, too. It was an unpleasant thought.
Like them, the Hawthornes and the Everdeens had accidentally become part of something bigger than any of them could fathom. Unlike them, however, they had already lost something. Aaron getting hurt in District 1 was nothing compared to Gale who had been taken into custody while his brother had been reaped. It was always uncomfortable to personally know a tribute but to be aware that they hadn’t been chosen by accident was even worse.
“Let’s go,” Katniss said when she skimmed over the Mellarks with a resigned expression and turned away from the fence with her sister right by her side.
The forest was even worse at night.
They had all brought flashlights but Katniss decided that it was too risky to use them, so instead, they stumbled across the mossy ground, illuminated only by the eerie full moon. Reese’s backpack repeatedly got stuck in branches and filled the night with a metallic rattling when Liesa pulled him free. Animals screamed in the distance. The wind made the trees creak to a degree that Peeta feared they would tumble down and smash them. No matter how far they walked, his eyes didn’t fully adjust. Finnick ended up carrying Posy, Gale’s little sister, when she couldn’t walk any longer and Peeta had to catch his mother before she could fall into a ditch after staring at his father and Mrs. Everdeen instead of the path.
It took them even longer than in the afternoon and Katniss got visibly exasperated.
“Are they going to wait?” she asked and nodded at the sky when her sister Prim was preoccupied with politely trying to stop Finnick from taking the bundle her mother had dropped.
“You really don’t have to,” Prim said but Finnick just slung it over his shoulder while Posy giggled on his back.
“Not for us but for him,” Peeta said in a low voice. Katniss seemed doubtful, so he added, “That’s why he’s here. He’s a pawn. They need him as a symbol to keep the support of the people in District 4, so if he wants to go on a rescue mission, they have to make sure he makes it out.”
Katniss looked at him for a moment, the way she had done when she had quizzed him about Finnick for the first time. She still didn’t trust either of them to be reliable.
“I would hate that,” she finally said.
“Yeah,” Peeta said because Finnick did, too, and because deep down, Peeta understood that he was the worst for taking advantage of the whole situation.
It was a relief to finally be on the hovercraft. Peeta hated the smell and the sounds but it beat being lost in the woods.
Mrs. Hawthorne quickly fell asleep with Posy on her lap and Rory’s head on her shoulder. Peeta’s father tried to chat up Mrs. Everdeen until she decidedly turned away to braid Prim’s hair when she noticed Peeta’s mother glaring at her. Katniss occasionally looked at her sister as if to check that she was still there, only to then spend the rest of her time staring at the ceiling.
It took a while until Peeta stopped feeling tense. There was just something about these small familiar moments that made him antsy. They were fine. They were all fine. But after months underground and all the worries weighing him down, that was still hard to fathom.
He was busy scratching the bright red insect bite on his arm when, next to him, Reese said, “I’m Reese by the way.”
He threw him a quizzical glance. Reese had leaned forward to address Finnick on Peeta’s left side.
“We’re brothers,” Reese said loudly and motioned at Peeta.
“He isn’t deaf, you know,” Liesa said in annoyance before Peeta could. Reese shot her a look and then frowned at Finnick.
Finnick, a little taken aback, signed his response.
“Nice to meet you,” Peeta translated. He was so used to interpreting for the people around him that he didn’t immediately understand Reese’s confused expression.
Liesa groaned and slapped Reese’s arm. “Don’t act more stupid than you really are,” she said. “Do you think Peeta only goes for someone because he has nice, strong arms? Obviously, he can talk but not to you. So here we go. You’re Peeta’s brother Reese and he,” she pointed at Finnick, “is happy to meet you.”
Reese grimaced in discomfort. Peeta could empathize. He had wondered how much they would have pieced together since he had left but Liesa seemed to have the right idea.
“What’s your name by the way? I don’t think Peeta mentioned it,” Liesa said and leaned across Reese’s lap while squeezing his knee. “I’m Liesa. I’m married to this oaf.”
“Finnick,” Peeta said.
Liesa nodded. “Good name. Suits you.” She looked him up and down in a way that Peeta probably would have thought of as vaguely predatory if he didn’t know her. Finnick, not used to that, threw him a questioning look which clearly amused her in return. “You have to forgive old people like us. We’re more direct because we’re long past our prime.”
Reese scoffed.
‘How old is she?’ Finnick asked.
‘Thirty I think,’ Peeta said.
‘How is that old?’
Peeta shrugged.
Liesa narrowed her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I told him your age and he doesn’t think you’re old,” Peeta said.
He didn’t know how he expected her to react but when she reached across Reese and slapped his leg, he yelped in surprise. “What, you just told him? What have I ever done to you?”
Across from them, Katniss threw them an annoyed glance, so Peeta got distracted and didn’t immediately notice Finnick signing.
“What’s he saying?” Liesa asked.
Peeta quickly looked at Finnick. “He says if you’re old, so is he. He’s twenty-nine.”
There was a pause.
“What?” Reese asked in that sharp brotherly tone he had constantly used when Peeta had been little.
“What?” Liesa also asked but directed it at Reese. She poked her finger into his chest. “See, I told you to take better care of yourself. That’s how you could have looked, too. But no, you’re instead telling me that every guy past twenty-five gets a little belly pooch. Do you want me to check if he has a little belly pooch? Because I highly doubt it.”
Peeta didn’t mean to but had to laugh and startled Finnick who was in the middle of trying to explain why he would have loved to gain weight and Reese who tried to argue that not everyone had the same metabolism.
He couldn’t remember when he had last laughed like that. Probably before all of this had happened. When they had just been a family living out their small lives. Before the rebellion and the whole world turning upside down.
“Oh, honey,” Liesa said softly and he only realized that he was crying when she leaned on Reese and used her sleeve to wipe Peeta’s face. “I know. One day, you’ll get old, too, and you’re more likely to age like your brother. It’s really sad.”
Reese just shook his head in exasperation but leaned back to allow her more space.
Peeta had missed them. He had missed them so much that the sudden realization felt like a slap in the face. Aaron would feel like this, too. He just had to see them and things would be all right.
But in the end, Reese and Liesa had never been the problem.