Chapter Text
Focusing on facts is what keeps us sane, and the most indisputable one is that everything Peeta is good at, I am not. Baking is not an exception.
After my hands uselessly flail against the dough for the fifth time, I give up by throwing them into the air and glaring at the pile of flour, oil and eggs on my kitchen counter. Peeta silently takes over, but I can see the small, smug smile on his face.
He never offered to teach me to bake. He just came over and began to do it, and I tried to copy his movements until inevitable failure.
The two of us don’t talk much at all. We appear in each other’s lives as we had before they became a story for someone else, quiet and almost in the background, but not quite. We don’t talk about the Games, or the Capitol, or family, or Gale, or kissing or nightmares or any of the things we worried about a few months prior. There’s not much to talk about outside of that, so we just talk about the weather, or what meal we think Greasy Sae will make that day. And then we do what we normally do, not quite alone, but not quite together.
“It’s okay,” he says, breaking the silence after a few minutes. There’s a glimmer of humor in his voice, and it hurts. “You don’t have to be good at everything.”
“I’m good at one thing,” I say, glaring at the way his hands effortlessly fold the dough. “Shooting. And look where that got me.”
He pauses for a second. I regret saying it immediately, because even though it’s unspoken, it’s still a rule that we don’t talk about the revolution. I wait for Peeta to bolt. Or try to strangle me. Or try to strangle himself.
Instead, he continues kneading the bread. My body relaxes. After weeks of spending time together, I’m just finally able to get myself to. “You’re great at plenty of things, Katniss.”
The sound of my name from his lips still sends tingles through my entire body. It’s embarrassing; we barely know each other now, but my body hasn’t seemed to understand that. I sometimes have to fight the urge to grasp onto his hand, or cling to him tightly, like he used to let me.
I wish I had chosen a new name, after everything. It would make this a lot less confusing.
“You’re great at milking goats. You would bring in goat cheese to school, with vegetables you probably found in the woods.”
“Real,” I say, even though he didn’t ask.
“You’re good at singing.” He smiles. “And you’re good at avoiding phone calls.”
“A very noble hobby,” I say, and he lets out a soft laugh. Everytime he laughs, I have to fight the urge to flinch. It still feels like there shouldn’t be anything good in this world, and that the Peeta in front of me should be screaming and trying to kill me, not laughing at a stupid joke I make. I brace myself for the insult, the snide remark I had come to expect from him in 13, but it doesn’t come. The smile lingers on his face. It doesn’t on mine.
Sometimes I resent Peeta, with how smiles and softness come so easily to him. That he seems to have reverted back to his old self so quickly, while I’m stuck here. Peeta was always easy to like, because it was hard to find someone who had anything to smile about in 12, but he did. It was why people liked Prim, too.
“I’m going to go hunting,” I say, and I can see the confused line of Peeta’s brow. He probably knows I’m running away, he just doesn’t know why.
“Oh, okay,” he says. “Haymitch asked for some duck.”
“I know.” I lug my sack over my shoulder and shoo Buttercup off my jacket, which is laying on the couch. He gives me an angry hiss that I have to fight returning in front of Peeta. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” he says, and if he says anything more, I don’t hear, because I’m out the door.
Peeta isn’t lying about me being really good at ignoring phones. It takes Dr. Aurelius seven calls before I finally pick up three days later, sitting in my living room alone.
He sounds vaguely shocked when the line connects. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Oh, how lovely to hear your voice, Katniss.”
A part of Dr. Aurelius I didn’t get to see before (mostly because he was asleep), was his pettiness. I appreciate it.
“Sorry.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are. I thought I’d check in to make sure your sleeping pills are still working?”
The sleeping pills I do not take. “Yeah, they’re fine.”
“And the antidepressants?”
I also don’t take those. “Mhm.”
He sighs. “Katniss, in order for you to improve, and to have a case for President Paylor that you are stable enough to ever leave District 12, you need to comply with the treatment plan. And that includes taking all your medication, and not playing phone tag with me every week.”
“I don’t need to leave 12,” I say. “I’ve been in worse prisons.”
“That’s true, but you will probably want to eventually want to leave the district. I know you and Johanna Mason were roommates back in District 13, perhaps you would like to be able to visit her. Plus, I heard Annie Cresta is expecting a baby soon.”
I shut my eyes, remembering Finnick’s screams. The cake at his wedding. Me and Prim dancing. Him leaving with Peeta during the Quell. Losing Mags. Him resuscitating Peeta, while I pointed an arrow at his heart. I’m glad I didn’t put sugar cubes into the tea sitting beside the couch.
“Johanna and I aren’t exactly friends,” I say, because it’s the much easier topic.
“I’m sure you could be. It may be good to have relationships with the people who understand your unique experiences.”
Peeta, Haymitch, and I have only made each other worse, so I highly doubt it, but I don’t say that.
“I think leaving the district could be a good idea for you to work towards,” Dr Aurelius continues. “Goal-setting can be important, in order to give you a sense of purpose.”
“I already told you, I don’t care about leaving the district.” Johanna has a unique talent for insulting me, and I don’t think I can stomach seeing Finnick and Annie’s baby. So I really, really don’t.
“Alright,” Dr. Aurelius says, in a tone that makes me believe this was some weird victory for him, “Then what do you want, Katniss?”
I toy with the cord of the phone. “Is for you to leave me alone an acceptable answer?”
Dr. Aurelius laughs, but it’s not as bold and bright as Peeta’s. “No. Though I suppose, if you mean to get into a stable enough state for me to not need to call you, perhaps.”
“Then I don’t know. That’s all I really need right now.”
“I see.” He’s silent for a minute, and I hope against hope he’s fallen asleep. Unfortunately, his voice comes back through the receiver. “What did you want before you returned to 12?”
“I don’t know. It depended.”
“How about before your first reaping. What did you want?”
I stare at the wall, refusing to answer. This conversation is stupid. It’s pointless. Because all I ever wanted was to keep my family safe and fed, but now I have a mother across the country, a sister turned to ash, and a stupid fucking cat who begs for scraps and hisses at me if I pet him by the ears. And it’s just me, the cat, and a house I won from killing children. And then after the reaping, I added on keeping Peeta alive to all of that, which I barely managed.
And anyway, Peeta doesn’t need help from me anymore.
“There must have been something you wanted outside of survival, Katniss,” Dr. Aurelius says. Again, stupid conversation, since he already knew what I was thinking. “Now’s your time to get it.”
I remember, briefly, the hunger that came over me by the lake. Then I squash it down, because it’s not possible, and it’s not fair. So many people died. Why am I still alive? Why can’t I just die? Why was I the one who lived, and not her? She was the one I did it all for, why, why why…
I don’t remember when it began, but suddenly I am hyperventilating. And I think I really am going to die, finally. I can’t catch my breath, and everything around me and in me is shaking. I’m gulping for air but it's never enough, it feels like I’m drowning, falling beneath the waves of the lake, I can hear a clock in my head going tick-tock-tick-tock, and I can feel that it’s over, I can just feel it, I am dying, and I feel some relief from it but also mainly fear because why can’t I breathe–
“Katniss!” A voice breaks through the panic. Dr. Aurelius is calling to me through the phone. I am in my living room. I am curled up onto a ball on my couch, my feet are digging into the cushion and my hands are clutching onto the arm. The phone is hanging between my ear and my neck, half lodged between my body and the couch.
My breathing is still rapid, and I feel a bit like I’m choking. Dr. Aurelius counts down and tells me to take deep breaths. I do, only because I’ve now realized I’m not actually going to die, and if I’m not actually going to stop breathing, I might as well try and even it out.
It takes several minutes, but I’m no longer gulping for air. I lay on the couch fully, exhausted, the phone barely reaching my ear.
“I don’t want anything,” I say, once I feel like words can actually come from my mouth. They sound spiteful, but I don’t care. “I just wish I was dead so I can be done with all of this.”
Apparently, Dr. Aurelius considered the last part of our conversation concerning enough to ask Haymitch to be my bodyguard. He shows up half an hour later, grumbling about how I need to find a way to leave him out of my insanity, and passes out on my couch.
Peeta shows up an hour after that with rosemary bread and a tight expression.
“The doctor called,” he tells me as he sets the bread down. He puts a slice of it on a plate and slides it to me, too. I eat it, because it looks good, and it’s the least demanding thing I’ve been asked to do all day.
“Yeah, he called me too,” I say. The bread is good, especially with the butter he spread on it for me.
“He told me what you said at the end.” He hasn’t taken a bite. We always eat together.
“I’m pretty sure that breaches patient confidentiality.”
“Not when you’re threatening to kill yourself. You can’t say that, Katniss.”
The way he says my name now sends red hot spikes of fury from my chest. He sounds angry, and frustrated, a Peeta I’m more accustomed to now. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
“I’m serious. That’s really–I don’t know what I’d do if you did that.” He’s looking at me with his big blue eyes and long blonde eyelashes and I can sort of believe we’re the same people for a second. I hate that he has the same face as Peeta, but isn’t him. “You shouldn’t say it.”
“But it’s true,” I say, and he looks like he’s been slapped across the face.
“You can’t mean that.” His voice has lost any desperation. It’s cold and frosty, and Haymitch’s loud snore can’t cut through it.
“I do,” I say. “I don’t want to be here. I wish I was dead. I tried to kill myself, but nobody let me.”
He glares at me, like it’s the deepest personal offense I could think of to hurt him, and then he storms towards the door. Haymitch has finally woken up to the sound of his boots stomping on the ground, and rubs his eyes.
“Make sure she doesn’t do anything,” Peeta says fiercely into his face, and then yanks the door open, and lets it slam shut as he rushes through the door.
“What the hell?” Haymitch grumbles, just before grabbing a slice of bread. I take that as my cue to storm up my staircase, run into my bed, and scream into my pillow.
It takes me probably an hour to calm down and realize that I probably wasn’t that nice to Peeta, considering he was saying that he doesn’t want me to be dead. Which is, all things considered, a pretty good thing to say to someone, even if I can’t really relate.
Peeta still returns for dinner, as he always does, which is one small miracle I don’t really deserve. He arrives with some pastry stuffed with cheese and the chives I gathered in the forest for him. If it’s a peace offering, he doesn’t say anything about it, but he’s giving me space and makes sure I get the last piece.
Greasy Sae and him carry the conversation, but that’s normal. I chime in when Sae asks me to, but I otherwise focus on my food. Haymitch glowers and eats before he rushes to the bathroom, probably to get sick. The pastries are good, but I can’t savor the flavor when Peeta’s gaze flickers away from mine every time we make eye contact.
If Greasy Sae notices any tension, she doesn’t show it, but she does leave early, saying she has to get back to her granddaughter. Peeta cleans his dish and waves goodnight to me a few minutes after she’s left, and neither of us breach the silence.
I curl up in my bed that night. My windows are open, because it’s starting to feel like summer, but it just reminds me of Peeta keeping his own open. I fight the urge to shut them, only based on the logic of me not wanting to wake up from my already rocky sleep from overheating.
With the windows open, I can hear a lot from both Haymitch and Peeta’s houses. Victor’s Village is still the quietest part of 12, and the only sound for a long while is Buttercup’s huffs of annoyance as he tries to curl up on the corner of my bed. He isn’t adjusting well to the weather, either, and making it my problem by shedding everywhere.
After maybe an hour of me laying, unable to fall into sleep from my brain replaying today’s events, I hear a crash. I lurch up, but it’s quickly followed by a loud “shit!” from Haymitch. Probably him dropping a bottle of liquor. I settle back down and try to ignore the implications of him drinking this late. Does he really need to be drunk to get to sleep? Is that the solution to my own problem? I hadn’t really liked the feeling of being drunk that one time before the Quell, but I’m getting tired of my nightly routine of insomnia.
I drift into sleep debating the merits of alcoholism.
Breakfast the next day is a quiet affair, but Peeta waits until Haymitch has gone back to his house, declaring me not at risk, to corner me into a conversation.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Peeta says. “I can’t say I don’t understand what you’re feeling, and I think it just hurts to hear it from you when I’ve been trying so hard to keep myself from feeling it.” He’s fiddling with his hands. “I wasn’t trying to police what you say, or anything like that. Not really. Honesty is probably important, after everything.”
“It’s fine,” I say, because it really is. My anger at him has simmered down to almost 0, and that tiny bit that still cares is only because I’m a bit too prideful to not hold a grudge. “I could have probably worded it better.”
Peeta laughs. “Maybe.” He’s still fiddling with his hands, and I realize it’s the way he used to move his wrists against the handcuffs. I have to keep myself from wrapping my fingers against his wrists to keep them still.
“I wish Dr. Aurelius didn’t tell you,” I confess.
“He seemed pretty concerned. I think he has to, if he’s worried about your safety.”
“He told Haymitch. He didn’t have to tell you.”
Peeta’s brow creases. “You and Haymitch promised not to keep any more secrets from me.”
Buttercup nudges against my foot, and I realize I still have bacon left on my plate. I let it drop unceremoniously to his feet. He doesn’t even give me a meow of appreciation. “I know.”
“I’m not angry at you for how you feel,” he says.
“Okay.”
“I’m serious. I got scared, because you and Haymitch are all I have left, and Haymitch is really bad company without you around.”
I laugh, barely, but it still surprises me enough for it to stop short and for my cheeks to redden. Peeta is grinning now, his eyes twinkling. He’s so pretty. That’s probably another reason everyone liked him.
I look away from him before he can notice my gaze, and clean off my plate. Buttercup jumps onto the counter and watches me, probably to make sure I don’t forget a spare crumb.
“Do you want me to do anything?” Peeta asks, and I’m not sure if he’s asking about cleaning up or about helping me.
Either way, I say, “No.” I don’t know what I want anymore.
“Hello, Katniss.”
“Hi.”
“I’m sorry about last week. I heard a lot of drama unfolded.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you like to elaborate?”
“No.”
“Will you use more than one word with me?”
“No.”
Dr. Aurelius lets out a deep sigh. “I am sorry, for what it’s worth, that you had a panic attack, and that I had to call your neighbors. I didn’t mean to push you that hard.”
“What were you trying to do?” There’s a bite to my voice.
“Well, you’re diagnosed with a multitude of things, including depression. Having attainable goals can help in treatment, so I was hoping we could come up with one together. I will say, I’m not a fan of the goal you proposed last week.”
“Shockingly, no one else is, either,” I mumble.
“Yes. Curious thing, that. Have you thought any more about it?”
“Not really.”
“Hm. Maybe you could ask Peeta’s his, for inspiration.”
“What about Haymitch?”
Dr. Aurelius pauses. “I think Peeta would be a good choice.”
I fight back a laugh. Haymitch and I always were more alike than we wanted to admit.
That night, I’m sitting on a stool in Peeta’s kitchen while he bakes cinnamon buns. I’m not usually in his house this late, or at all, really. But Greasy Sae sent a note saying her granddaughter was sick and she couldn’t bring over dinner, and Peeta said he wanted company while he baked, so I half watch him, half doodle on a piece of paper he left on the counter. I find I do not have much artistic talent.
“Does this look like Buttercup?” I ask him, holding up the paper for him to see. He takes his gaze from the pastries, but almost immediately begins laughing at my scribble. My cheeks flush, and a rush of irritation comes through me. “I guess that’s my answer.”
I flip the paper over, intending to start over, but find it’s already covered with a sketch. This one is obviously Peeta’s, but it’s not of Buttercup. It looks more like the small glimpses of the bakery I would see when trading squirrels or walking by the windows with…her.
I must be silent for a while, because Peeta lifts his head up from twisting the dough with his eyebrows furrowed, until his eyes land on the paper.
He clears his throat. “I didn’t want to forget what it looked like. I’m sure I already forgot a lot about it.”
“I never actually went inside,” I say. “But it looks right to me.”
He smiles, but it looks sad. “I might send it to Delly and ask her to correct it, just to make sure.”
“Can she draw?”
Peeta chuckles. “No. Not at all. But at least she can tell me what I’m missing.”
I wring my hands. “Right. That makes sense.”
Peeta goes back to rolling the dough, and I study the drawing again. If I hadn’t been so stubborn after the first Games and actually plucked up the courage to talk to him first, I could’ve seen inside the bakery. I knew he would work on Mondays and Fridays, and his mother couldn’t exactly kick me out for being poor anymore. The first time I’ve even seen the ovens is right now.
“Dr. Aurelius asked me to tell you about my goal. That’s mine.”
I look up at him, but he’s still focused on the cinnamon rolls. “Drawing the bakery?”
He shrugs. “Drawing as much as I can remember. Of 12, at least. I think I have enough paintings of the first Games, so maybe the Quarter Quell, too.”
“The Quell’s on video.”
Peeta glances at me. “I don’t really like watching the videos.”
Right. The hijacking. That was stupid of me, I can’t even think of a time since Peeta’s returned where his TV has been on. And it’s not like I’ve watched the recap of our first Games since we were forced to with Caesar. Watching the other Games before the Quell was horrible enough.
“What would you want to paint from the arena?”
He pauses. “I guess the small things. Like how your hair looked in the sunrise, or what you and Finnick’s faces looked like when you woke me up. How the lightning lit up everything. Stuff they couldn’t get from a camera unless they stuck one in my eye. It’s easier to think about the small stuff, than to try and remember the big stuff.”
“I try not to think about it at all,” I mumble. I hope I can forget the small things. I can’t forget the big ones: Rue dying, Cato’s screams, Mags, Peeta’s heart stopping. But if I can live without some of it in me, it’s for the better.
“I can’t not think about it. I think it’s what they did to me. I’m fixated on it, I can’t get it out of my brain. I just have to live with it.” Peeta places the cinnamon rolls in the oven, and then turns to me. We look at each other awkwardly for a minute without the distraction of baking, until he takes a seat on the opposite end of the counter from me, sitting back on a stool. “And I was thinking yesterday, District 12 started with one victor before us, and now there’s three. We now have the most living victors in a District. And if I don’t try to remember everything, pretty soon no one will.”
I can feel his leg shaking against the table. No one would remember what the Games were really like. Well, honestly, that’s a relief for me. I don’t think anyone really needs to know that. But that would mean if Peeta has a lapse in memory, if he couldn’t tell reality from the hijacking, he would have to figure it out himself. And it sounds like he doesn’t trust that.
I’m actively fighting the urge to bolt out the door. I don’t think about this. We don’t talk about this. We talk about the weather and Haymitch. And apparently me wanting to commit suicide and what the Games are like.
If I run out now, it’s just going to be another excruciating few days of us feeling guilty until one of us apologizes for pushing too hard or not pushing enough, and I’m almost okay with resigning myself to that fate when I feel Peeta’s leg pick up in speed, and it’s like I can feel the anxiety coming from it.
“I’m here to tell you what’s real or not,” I say to him. His eyes lock onto mine.
“I thought you didn’t like talking about that stuff,” he says, and I have to look away now.
“I don’t,” I confirm. “But I can do it.”
Peeta studies me, I can tell, but I don’t try to look back at him. “I don’t want to make you upset just because you feel like you have to help me.”
“I won’t get upset.” I try a weak smile.
“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “I guess it’s fair, you talk about your feelings, and I talk about mine.”
“Well you like talking about feelings, so I wouldn’t call it fair.”
Peeta chuckles. “I guess not.”
I look back at the drawing of the bakery. It really is realistic, life-like. I once saw a program on TV of a museum tour of the time before the Dark Ages, with all these pictures of what life looked like. The drawing reminded me of that. A memorial to an age long gone.
“Maybe I should have picked up an actual talent,” I say.
“I was always surprised you didn’t choose music.”
I flinch, slightly. The hazy image of my father, half the photographs of him that somehow survived the war, half my own childhood memories, comes into vision. Newer and harsher memories come with it; Rue’s dead body, Pollux in the woods. I just shrug.
“Do you want help coming up with an idea?” Peeta asks as he whisks.
I have a sudden idea. A perfect one, if I want to get the doctor off my back with the least amount of effort possible. “Do you think Dr. Aurelius would let us team up for my project?” I ask Peeta. He stops whisking the frosting, and looks up at me.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have a goal,” I say, biting my lip as I look back at his drawing.
“I know.”
“I could help you with yours. I could write everything I know about what you draw, as many details as I can remember. Every true story I know. So it’s documented, and you can look at it. We could make it into a book.”
He considers me for a moment, and to duck away from his gaze, I point at the drawing. “There were new cakes in the window every other day. Some of the kids from the Seam walked by the bakery on their way home, even though it was out of the way, because even a glimpse at all the frosting made them feel better. There was a back door that led to the pigpen, and if you burnt the bread you had to throw it out there, but one day I was there and you threw it to me instead. You told me before the Quell that you and your brothers were sharing a room above the bakery and they were probably happy you moved out because there was one less person there.”
I take a breath, and a smile has been slowly growing on Peeta’s face as I talk. I continue, “You told me in the winter you’d go to bed overheating and wake up freezing because the ovens had cooled off. You iced the cakes which is why you’re so good at art. Your father bought squirrels from me from the back door, because your mother would get mad if she found out. Sometimes I could see you and your brothers working in the kitchen from the door.”
My brain fumbles for more memories, and in the silence Peeta hands me a new piece of paper.
“Can you write all of that down?” he asks.