Chapter Text
I’m on my knees in the garden tending to the primroses when I spot it. A little brown and yellow wasp. It’s crawling up the petals of a flower, lazily moving about. Its stinger probing mindlessly at nothing.
An instinctive pang of fear shoots through me, and I slowly ease back on my haunches, ready to run if I need to. But it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Not a tracker jacker, not a Capitol mutt. There’s no golden body, no unnatural shine, no high-pitch squealing buzz. Just a regular wild animal, hanging around my garden.
Even still, I get to my feet. Step to my back foot, and quietly head back to the porch where Peeta’s been sitting with his sketchbook. He’s giving me a curious look, but he’s behaved, and listens to me when I tell him to head back inside.
“Katniss, are you alright?” He asks once I’ve shut the door behind us.
“Yeah, just…”
I’m not sure how wise it would be to tell Peeta about the wasp. He’s skittish around any sort of buzzing, I’ve noticed. Even just flies and the faint hum of electricity make him nervous. But I don’t want to keep this from him, either. How much worse would it be if he got stung, not knowing there were wasps about?
“I saw a wasp,” I say softly. Peeta’s face pales, and I hurry to reassure him. “Only the one, though. I reckon it’s just lost. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Peeta swallows hard, nods, then straightens himself out. He tugs at the hem of his shirt, rolls his shoulders, and breathes out slowly.
“You okay?” I ask. I take him by the free hand, lacing our fingers together.
“Yeah, yeah,” he nods again. He gives me a tight-lipped smile. “It’s just a bug. Nothing to worry about.”
I scan him over a moment. Watch each little motion. There’s the pinch in his lips, the crease between his eyebrows. Tell-tale signs of his stress. I can see the muscles in his neck move ever so slightly. A wild animal tensed to run. But I can also see the way he’s unwinding, trust put back in me. If I said it’s nothing to worry about, then he must really believe it’s nothing to worry about.
“Alright,” he says after a moment.
I get up on my toes, give him a gentle kiss. Peeta eases into it, his hand on my hips.
“I’m gonna round the goats up,” I tell him. “Make sure they won’t get stung.”
“Poor dears,” Peeta says.
“And I’ll poke around for a nest, too,” I say. “Okay? If I find anything, we can do something about it.”
“Okay, alright,” Peeta kisses me again. “I’ll get started on lunch, then, yeah?”
“Good plan.” I bump my hip against his as I pass. “Make use of some of the eggs, too, won’t you? I think they’re about to turn. We’ve had them a while.”
“You got it, boss.”
I smile to myself as I head back outside.
A few days ago, for our first anniversary, Peeta and I bought a mama goat named Tansy, and her only daughter, Marigold. The two of them have livened up my days considerably, as I’m the one who goes out to milk Tansy in the morning, and I walk them around the Meadow with Haymitch and his geese from time to time. Tansy has a harness, but Marigold doesn’t need one. She’s young enough to stick to her mother’s side, primarily.
Outside, I whistle for the goats. Tansy has her head buried in a patch of dandelions, her little daughter jumping through the grasses around her. Peeta and Delly worked to build the two of them a small shack that we’ve filled with hay and bedding and metal buckets of fresh water. I’m also the one who gets to change out the hay and water when it starts to get gross—which is often. They’re not the cleanest of animals.
Still, it’s good, busy work, and it keeps me occupied while Peeta’s working at the bakery.
“In you get,” I say. I herd Tansy into the enclosure, Marigold hot on her heels. Tansy bleats in displeasure. “I know, I know. It’s just a minute, while I look around.”
I shut the door behind them. There’s technically little windows that I should be worried about, but they’ve been inlaid with mesh for this exact reason—keeping bugs out. We’ve never had to lock the doors on them before. They’re pretty well behaved, and prefer to sleep sheltered than out in the open.
I’m careful where I step as I search around the perimeters of our house. I know painfully well that wasps can build nests under the ground just as much as they can built them in trees.
I’m not seeing any nests anywhere, which is good, but I do hear a faint buzzing on and off. I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t stressing me out. The memory of tracker jacker venom-induced hell still lingers at the back of my head. But it’s worse for Peeta, so I continue to search the lawn. It’s been years since I’ve really seen one, but I know exactly what a regular wasps nest looks like. Spirals of papery substance making up a thick, heavy fortress. We used to get them around our house in the Seam all the time. Though I don’t find one on my search.
I’m just passing under the window to our room when I feel a sharp pain on the back of my calf. I yank my leg up and smack much harder than I need to.
The dead wasp curls into my palm, crumpled wings fluttering helplessly. I stare at it for a second, as if I’m daring it to flash gold at me. But it doesn’t, so I toss the body into the bushes. I don’t want Buttercup finding and eating it. Regular wasps also have venom, and that stupid cat doesn’t need that.
It’s not even a real wound, but I find myself limping ever so slightly, nursing the leg with the sting. It throbs in dull pain.
Haymitch is sitting in the rocking chair on his porch, watching over his five geese, drinking from his flask. I wave him down as I hurry over. I have to skirt around the geese, who are very friendly with me and very annoying. It’s my own fault, I feed them more often than I should. Haymitch had told me that geese could be very opinionated about people, and if they didn’t like you, they were awful nasty to deal with. If I was going to live across from them, I figured they should like me plenty, right?
“You bust your ankle again?” Haymitch asks, gesturing with his chin towards my leg.
“Nah,” I haul myself up on the porch, twisting my leg around to show off the reddening, slightly swollen sting. It’s nowhere near the size of a tracker jacker lump, at least, but it still thrums. Itches, even. I flex my fingers to keep from scratching. “I got stung by a wasp.”
It takes a moment for that to really process in Haymitch’s head. He must be halfway to drunk already.
“Shit…” he says. I can tell his mind’s gone straight to Peeta. While Peeta’s done a lot of work to get where he is, there’s no telling how he might react if a wasp were too sting him. No matter how much progress he’s made, there’s some things I’m worried he simply might never get past. There’s certainly things I don’t think I’ll ever be over.
“I know. That’s what I’m thinking,” I kick my leg up on the arm of his rocking chair, pressing and squeezing the sting. It really, really hurts, actually. Tendrils of pain arc up and down my calf, the muscles clenching protectively, as if I can run away from the feeling. “I didn’t see any nests, but…I don’t know.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Haymitch promises. “Go get that sting cleaned up. Looks painful.”
“It is…” I groan.
“And stop fucking with it!” He smacks my hand away from the sting.
I hobble back to my own house, which might be a little dramatic on my part, but really it does hurt something terrible. Inside, I try to sneak past the kitchen without Peeta spotting me. We keep a small bottle of vinegar in the medicine cabinet in our downstairs bathroom, and that was how my mother used to treat fresh stings when we didn’t have any broadleaf or bee balm on hand. We don’t keep bee balm anymore, though.
I can’t get back the galley without Peeta noticing me, though. It’s become a force of habit for me to step on one of our creaky floorboards so I don’t startle Peeta while he’s working in the kitchen—but now that’s my undoing.
“Spot anything?” He asks.
For a moment I move my leg away so he can’t see the sting—but then I decide against it. He’s going to find out one way or another.
I just try to keep my voice as casual as possible as I complain: “Yeah, and the damn thing stung me.”
Peeta’s eyes widen. He gently sets the knife aside, pressing his palms flat against his thighs. I see him trying to reign himself in.
“It’s dead, now,” I reassure him. “I was just about to go clean the sting.”
Peeta looks uncomfortable, still. He’s sort of stepping back on his heels, like he can’t decide if he’s going to bolt or not.
“Here, look,” I twist my leg around, brandishing the back of my calf. “Ain’t so bad. Hurt like hell, though, I’ll say that sometimes.”
Peeta relaxes visibly. “Right. You need…help cleaning it?”
“I got myself,” I say gently, waving him off. I know Peeta don’t want his hands anywhere near this sting, no matter how noble or loving or tender as he wants to come off. “You just focus yourself on cooking. I’m starved.”
I hop myself on the counter in the bathroom, hooking my leg up over my knee to tend to the sting. Blotting it with vinegar stings to the high heavens, but it slowly begins to feel like the pain is leeching out. I’m hoping, as I quickly bandage up the sting, that it was just a one-off wasp. Sometimes bees and pollinators and the like flitter in from the Meadow when they catch scent of our primrose bushes. Surely a wasp could do just that too, right? They’re bugs all the same, they need their food and their drink like any old thing.
Peeta’s still cooking when I’m done with the sting. I pass him by, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“I’m gonna pop over, warn the other folks in the village,” I tell him.
“Oh, Johanna ain’t gonna be happy,” he says.
“Is she ever?”
That works a laugh out of Peeta, one of his bright, hearty ones, full of scrunched cheeks. It’s this that finally relaxes me, too. Peeta ain’t too wound up by the wasp to not enjoy himself. I take him by the chin, turn his head so I can plant a long kiss on his lips. Then I scurry out of the house.
I turn the goats loose, knock on the Hawthorne’s door to let them know to keep an eye out for wasps. It’s Rory who answers, looking tired, a mug of tea clasped in his hands. A while back, I’d ground up some St. John’s Wort into tea for Rory, to ease him through the aftershocks of the firebombing. I’m glad to see he’s still keeping up with it.
“Morning, Katniss,” he says.
“Hey,” I nod to him. “Y’all keep your eyes peeled for wasp nests, alright? I saw one buzzing about.”
“Ugh,” Rory frowns. “I’ll tell Posy. She’s always stickin’ her hands where they don’t belong.”
“Right,” I laugh softly, “I got stung just minding myself. If she goes looking for trouble, I’m sure she’ll find it.”
Rory shakes his head, “She always does. You ain’t heard about the tussle she got into at school?”
“No, what?” I lean up against the porch fence. “What happened?”
Rory regales me with a story about how Posy got into a spat with another little girl at school, because Posy was playing with her toys during quiet time, and the other girl came up and snatched one of them away without asking. Posy, who’d been brought up on manners from her mother, tore the girl a new one.
After, I have to go warn Johanna about the potential of wasps too. She’s been living in our Victor’s Village for months, now, having hopped a train from Seven to be closer to people she knew. For a while she was posted up in our house, taking up our food and our space, but eventually I had to force her to get her own place to live, if just for my own sanity.
She’s not particularly interested in the wasps, though she does have plenty of jabs and questions about the new goats. I tell her she’s welcome to come visit them whenever she wants, and she rolls her eyes at me (which I take to mean, she’ll be over as soon as possible to hang out with the little one).
Peeta’s done lunch by the time I get back, and the two of us curl up on the couch to eat, the issue with the wasp seemingly put out of our heads.
I had expected Peeta’s nightmares to be a little worse that night, of course. He’s usually good at sleeping through them, but sometimes when he’s reminded of something particularly bad, they grip him harder. Hijacking is the usual culprit of these increased nightmares, so this makes plenty of sense. He jolted me awake accidentally, and I let him curl up in my arms, soothing and petting his hair while he drifted back off.
What I hadn’t expected, was for the nightmares to last.
They continue in their worsened state for the next week. By the time July rolls around, Peeta’s looking worse for wear. He’s not been sleeping well, huddling up next to me for most of the night, but jerking awake at random, even going so far as to take a walk around the house to clear his head before he can go back to sleep. Then he’s still getting up ripe early at 4am to head in to the bakery, coming home late and barely sleeping then.
So I’m the one cooking breakfast on July 1st. We’re both tense—the lead up to reaping day has never been pleasant, of course—but he’s doing worse than I’ve seen him in a while. For some reason, I hadn’t thought he would be this strung out by a single wasp.
“Hey, you,” I say. I kiss his temple as I set a plate of eggs and roast vegetables in front of him.
“It’s July,” he responds. His leg is bouncing so hard the table’s jittering.
“Sure is,” I take the seat next to him, instead of across the table like I usually do. I set my hand on his jumping knee. “How did you sleep?”
Peeta laughs, “Guess.”
I click my tongue. “Do you think you need to double up on your sleep syrup?”
He shakes his head, “No, it’s not the falling asleep that’s getting to me. I just keep—” he gestures vaguely with his hand, “—having these same dreams. Buzzing. Don’t you hear it?”
I blink up at him, my brow furrowed. “I can’t hear into your dreams, Peeta.”
“No, no,” he insists, “Not into my dreams, in—when I’m awake, I swear I still hear it. Buzzing.”
Now I’m frowning deeper. He’d been having dreams of buzzing a few weeks back, but I’d chalked that up to regular nightmares. Now, though, the gears in my head are turning. “I’ll…check for a nest again, okay?”
“Okay,” Peeta nods.
“In the meantime,” I bring a hand up to his hair, running my fingers through his curls. He leans into my palm. “Do you want to try sleeping downstairs? On the couch, or in the guest room? In case there is a nest somewhere near our room.”
He looks a little dismayed by that. “I don’t like sleeping without you.”
“We can move the bedding to another room,” I offer. “There’s the spare room down here we could use, or my mother’s old room.”
Peeta looks uncertain, but eventually, he slowly nods.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” I suggest, “While I go take another look outside.”
I finish off my breakfast, set a pot on the stove for tea, then leave Peeta with a kiss on the head to go look for nests. Again.
The goats trail behind me while I circle the house. I spend extra time around our bedroom window, examining the windowsill, the roof, the bushes and the ground, but I don’t see a single sign of a wasps nest. My sting has long faded, and I haven’t had another one since, but if Peeta says he hears buzzing, I’m damned to believe him. I still don’t fully trust my own hearing, even after all of the Capitol reconstruction. What with all of the bombings I’ve been around, I’d be surprised if I haven’t sustained a little damage.
I’m rounding the side of the house, when I see a familiar, elaborately dressed woman hurrying up the village path. She’s carrying a pretty spring green suitcase with her, and a bag of the same shade on her shoulder.
“Effie!?” I call out.
Her head whips around, and she gives me a blindingly white smile. I hurry over, pulling her into a quick hug. She smells of fruity perfume and she kisses both my cheeks, smearing me with lipstick, but I don’t care. It’s been months since I’ve last seen Effie, and when I did, I wasn’t doing much of my best. Now, she’s not wearing a wig, which is strange, and her outfit, on second inspection—while still colorful and garish by district standards—seems rather toned down for her.
“Katniss, my sweet girl!” She says, holding me by the shoulders, “How are you doing? How have you been! It has just been ages since I last saw you.” She appraises me, brushing her hands over my arms, patting my face, touching my hair and my hands and inspecting my nails. “Oh, you look so healthy, now! My goodness.”
“I’ve been good,” I tell her, and it’s hard to believe that I really, truly mean it. “What’s got you in town? The memorial ceremony ain’t for another another few weeks.”
“I’m not here the ceremonies just yet!” Effie says, and she nudges me with her elbow, as if we’re sharing a conspiratorial secret. “I felt I should pop by for someone’s birthday, don’t you think?”
I frown in confusion. Peeta’s birthday passed back in March, and mine was back in May. “Who’s?”
Effie looks horrified—scandalized, even, as she says, “Haymitch’s, of course! Who else’s!?”
I’m stunned for a moment as I realize, I don’t know when Haymitch’s birthday is. After all this time of knowing him, I never managed to get a birthday from him. I supposed I didn’t think of him as much of a celebratory person. He’s bought me gifts plenty, I guess. Maybe I should have asked him.
“Oh, right…!” I nod, as if I’ve known this whole time. “Haymitch’s birthday, on…?”
“On Wednesday, my dear!” Effie straightens out the loose strands of hair hanging around my face, so she’s trained full force on me as she sees me go pale. Today’s Sunday. The 1st of July. Wednesday…that would be the 4th.
Reaping day.
“Oh,” is all I can get out. I shove my shaking hands in my pockets. “Right. Yeah. How…could I forget…? Does he know you’re here?”
“Of course!” Effie once again looks astonished. She lays a manicured hand over her heart. “I would never show up unannounced.”
I hang around Effie, waiting while she raps her knuckles on Haymitch’s door.
“You really don’t have to knock,” I tell her. “We never do.”
“No manners, the lot of you,” she says, shaking her head in disappointment.
Haymitch answers the door, looking sober, bathed, and incredibly irritated. He catches sight of me, and pinches the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowed tight.
“Morning, Effie,” he says. “Katniss.”
“Haymitch,” I nod to him.
“Go set your shit up in the back,” Haymitch says to Effie. She squeezes her way inside, laying a hand on Haymitch’s shoulder as she passes him. Then, he rounds on me. “Why the hell are you here?”
“I live across the green,” I answer. “I saw Effie coming by. We got to talking, and whatnot.”
Immediately, I can see it in Haymitch’s eye that he knows I know. He sizes me up a moment, debating something internally. Maybe if he wants to shoo me away all nice and polite, or just smack me upside the head. I hold his gaze. Square my shoulders off. He lies a fair bit, but once we catch him, he tends to lay off.
“So,” I say, and Haymitch grimaces. “Your birthday?”
“Ain’t none of your business,” he nearly growls. “I can’t shake Effie on it, I do not need the two of y’all up my ass about a day I’d really rather fucking forget.”
I’m startled at the intensity in his voice, before it really makes sense. He’s what, 43 this year? That’s decades upon decades of watching children get carted off to their deaths for his birthday. Just seventeen years of it was enough to ruin me. And for twenty five of those years, he had to be the one coaching the children? We’ve only had four victors in Twelve. Two of us came from the same set of Games.
My heart sinks in my chest. I’m surprised as anything, then, that Haymitch has managed to stay sober for the morning, enough to welcome Effie into his house.
So I throw my arms around his neck, pulling him into a tight hug. Haymitch grunts, patting my back.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “It ain’t fair.”
“Wasn’t meant to be,” he says.
I squeeze him closer. “Good luck with Effie. Feel free to send her over to ours if you need the day.”
That gets Haymitch to laugh softly, much to my surprise. “Yeah, yeah, don’t you worry about it. I got her. We’ve been doing this song and dance since I was your age.”
“Old man,” I say. I step back, then jump up on my toes to kiss him on the forehead. “Take care of yourself, Haymitch. And keep an eye out for wasps.”
Haymitch shakes his head at me, but he’s smiling faintly now, too. He waves for me to leave. “Sure thing. Now go on, beat it.”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
I head back across the green, shooting a worried glance over my shoulder. But Haymitch has already retreated back into his house, where I can hear him calling out for Effie not to mess with his shit.
I kick my boots off when I get home, calling out for Peeta. He doesn’t answer right away, so I go poking around the house for him. Eventually, I find Peeta fast asleep on the couch, his arm tucked under his head, the cat curled up on his back. I can’t help but laugh at him a little. His other arm is dangling off the side of the couch, his knuckles brushing the ground. He’s snoring softly.
I make my way around him, slipping my fingers under his pin sleeve to detach his prosthetic. I leave it propped up against the coffee table, right within his line of sight, so he doesn’t try to stand while still half asleep and bust his head. I kiss his temple, settling down in the armchair and flipping the television on at a very low volume.
The whole morning, I keep a careful eye on Peeta. He’s still twitchy and uncomfortable looking while he sleeps, his shoulders tensing, his brow bunched, the occasional grimace crossing his face. But for the most part he seems to get some genuine rest.
He naps until late in the afternoon. I’m half to dozing myself, my hands folded over my stomach, my head tipped back in the chair. Peeta lets out a low little groan, stretching himself out so hard Buttercup jumps up off his back. His collar jingles as he runs off.
“Hey there,” I say to him. “You sleep alright?”
Peeta drags his hand along his face, smothering a yawn into his palm. “I guess. Not great…”
“You look better,” I move over to him as he sits up. “Effie’s showed up early. She’s staying at Haymitch’s place.”
Yawning again, Peeta drops his head on my shoulder. “Why for?”
I hesitate a second, before saying “Haymitch’s birthday is reaping day, she’s paying him a visit.”
“No,” Peeta puts his hand over his mouth. He tips his head back to look at me. “Are you serious?”
I nod, “He seemed real mad about it. Doesn’t want us doing nothing at all.”
“Can’t blame him,” he says, nestling back down against me.
Peeta confessed to me a while back how he hated celebrating his birthday. When his mother spent the whole day being all nice to him as a kid, he knew she was able, and chose to be cruel. Left a bad taste in his mouth, so to speak. If anyone understands hating a birthday, it’s got to be him.
Peeta finally connects his prosthetic, pushing himself to his feet. He offers out a hand for me. “Come on, it’d be a shame to waste a nice day.”
I take his hand, pulling myself up. I can’t help the instinctive rise of worry in my chest. My eyes flit between the tired look on Peeta’s face, the slight tremor in his hands. It wouldn’t be fair to keep him cooped up inside because of a single wasp, would it?
“Sounds like a good idea,” I give him a smile. “What did you have in mind?”
We gather up some of the herbal remedies I’ve ground up, some of Tansy’s milk, a jar of butter we struggled through making, and a couple bagfuls of wild onions and ramps. Then we head down to the trading center. It’s a squat little building that was put up this past winter, taking on the role the Hob used to fill. Delly and her team of town-planners had poured everything they had into it. This place hadn’t been right without the Hob. I didn’t know how much I’d missed it until I’d had a place to go and trade with people again. A place to be around people without a trove of expectations. Either you’re trading, you’re selling, or you’re buying. No one expects anything else of you.
I stop by the table of the man who sells fabric and yarn. I need to get some more of my clothes hemmed out and fitted, which Hazelle will do mostly for free—but I feel less guilty about asking her favors if I bring her the supplies she’ll need.
“What are you asking for a bolt of fabric?” I ask the man, taking the bag off Peeta’s shoulder. Peeta mostly comes with me to carry my things, and sometimes to trade for sugar or flour if he needs to restock.
“Depends on what you’re looking for.” The man crosses his arms. “Patterned or plain?”
I scan over the fabric scraps he has on display at the front of the table. There’s a couple that are different colors of plaid, a few gingham, some with spots, some paisley, others still with spatters and swirls of color. I need Hazelle to expand the waist and thighs on a pair of hunting pants I wear frequently. They’re not meant to be fancy, so I reckon I don’t need to focus on matching the color exactly. So instead, my fingers find a light orange gingham, a pretty color I know Peeta would like.
“This one?” I ask, raising my eyebrows up at the man. “I’ll give you fresh milk, already boiled clean. And…” I look him over. He works with fabric. I reckon he sews. Hazelle sews loads, and she’s always pricking her fingers. “Salve for bleeding.”
The man quirks a brow, and I know I’ve got him. Still, he asks: “How much milk?”
I pull one of the jars from the bag, setting it on the table. “About a quart.”
He nods, “And the salve?”
I have to rummage around through the bag a little more to dig it out. I set the tiny jar on top of the larger one. “Third of a cup. But it lasts you a while.”
“Deal,” he hands me a bolt of the orange gingham from under the table. I look it over with a smile, running my fingers across the soft ends. I tuck the bolt into the bag as best I can, adjusting it so it won’t hit Peeta while we walk.
“Thank you, sir,” I offer the man a smile—they’re coming more naturally to me, nowadays—and take Peeta’s hand. As we’re walking off, I gesture to the fabric, turning my smile up at Peeta, next. “It’s your orange!”
“What’s it for?” Peeta asks. He’s smiling now too.
“Hazelle needs to expand the waist on some of my pants,” I tell him, “Your fault, by the way. So why not make it your favorite color?”
“My fault?” Peeta scoffs playfully. “I’ve been helping!”
My weight’s been oscillating this past year, and only recently have I finally been able to crawl my way towards something healthier. Most of it has been from the help of my friends. Peeta’s been keeping me on a strict meal plan, and Greasy Sae and Haymitch haven’t let me work myself into too much of a spiral to forget to eat.
“That’s all I needed,” I tell him, “Anything else we need to pick up?”
“We need more vinegar,” Peeta says.
I straighten up a bit. I could have sworn up and down that I just bought us some more vinegar the last time I went to the trading center. “Again?”
“There’s only so many times we can screw up making cheese before we run out of vinegar,” he says.
Heat crawls across my face. “Prim made it look so easy!”
“It probably is easy,” Peeta gives me one of those teasing looks, I swat at his arm while he talks. “How closely did you pay attention to the instructions?”
“Close enough!”
“Clearly not, if we already need more vinegar.”
I scoff, moving to walk a few feet ahead of him. Peeta’s totally right, I’ve fudged the process a handful of times because it kept taking me longer than I thought it would, and I lost my patience with it.
Peeta trades some more of Tansy’s milk for vinegar. He’s terrible at trading, but he’s good at striking up a conversation long enough that the people he’s trading with are willing to give him a bit of a friendly discount. Besides, the rapport he works up with people has helped us in the long run.
I’m still working up my courage in public. We’d been hiding the truth of our relationship for a while now, out of my fear that it would somehow sneak back to the Capitol and become the next big story. Still, I’m holding his hand while he talks with the bootlegger. I’m not certain of her name, but I’ve heard people around call her Moose.
“Vinegar?” She asks Peeta, setting another bottle of the stuff on her counter. “Again, you two?”
“Someone here is real bad at reading instructions,” he says. I drive a well-aimed elbow into his ribs, but it doesn’t stop him from laughing. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep her on track, this time.”
“Oh, you’ll keep me on track?”
I can see it in his eyes, he can’t help but grin at me. There’s a shine to him that I haven’t seen much of this past week, between the wasps and the lack of sleep. I’m smiling up at him, too, barely paying Moose much mind.
Peeta’s focused on his trade, though, and offers her out two jars of milk in return. I wrap my hand back up in his, leaning my head on his shoulder while the two of them talk. It takes a lot of effort out of me not to remain wound up tight, but Peeta’s voice is soft, and Moose doesn’t seem to care either way, so long as she’s getting a good trade out of us.
In hindsight, it’s a terrible trade. But I don’t scold Peeta on it too much.
“You’re practically giving milk away,” I admonish.
“I think you’re just too stingy with it,” he says. He swaps the bag to his other shoulder, then slings an arm around me, pressing a kiss to my head. Peeta’s been thrilled about my newfound laxness about our relationship. I think he’s wanted to be able to show me off for a while now, holding back primarily for my sake.
“We’re not the only people who bring in goat’s milk,” he continues. “If we’re generous with it, we become like, prime, go-to milk folk.”
“Do you want to be known as the milk folk?”
“I think our names still proceed just being the milk folk,” Peeta grins, “But I don’t know, it could be fun! Known for goat milk.”
“Known for goat milk,” I grumble under my breath. “I’m a hunter, not a farmer.”
“Yes, yes, you kept the district in meat and greens,” Peeta says, squeezing my arm. “And now you can keep them in milk, too.”
We snip back and forth on the way home, laughing ourselves stupid. I try to take in as much of him like this as I can, the boisterousness, the shine, because the second we step back into our house something in him seems to shift off kilter. It’s like he lists to the side, his expression fading to something just a little dimmer.
He settles the bag on our table, digs out the bolt of fabric and quietly goes to run it over to the Hawthorne’s place, along with the clothing I need fixed up. While he’s out, I get started on dinner, tossing some of our miscellaneous leftovers into a pot for some soup. It’s still pretty hot out, especially for soup, but it’s such an easy, comforting food.
I strain my ears all the while, but for the life of me I don’t hear any buzzing. I can hear the hum of the electricity, a faint scratching sound that I assume must be the cat trying to get into a room he’s locked out of. But nothing I would call buzzing. When Peeta gets back, he quietly slips up behind me. He sets his hands on my hips, resting his forehead on top of my scalp. He lets out a low sigh.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask. A while ago that became our shorthand to ask the other if they’re having a hard time. There’s an unspoken agreement that whatever we say will be taken completely seriously, no matter how small it might seem.
“You’re sure you didn’t see anything?” His voice comes out shockingly small.
“Positive.”
Peeta makes a dissatisfied little noise, like he’s halfway to irritated. I check the burner beneath the pot, then turn around in Peeta’s arms, wriggling so I can take his face in my hands.
“Do you want to come check with me?” I ask. I run my fingers over his cheeks, up to his hairline. “Maybe I need a second set of eyes.”
“No,” Peeta shakes his head. “I don’t want to see it, if it’s there.”
I frown. There’s not anywhere else I could possibly think to look to find any sneaky, hidden wasps nests. If there were one nearby, wouldn’t more of us have been stung? It’s a bit hard to wrap my mind around the difference between average wasps and tracker jackers, now. After being stung by tracker jackers, and all of Beetee and Plutarch’s explanations of hijacking, it’s difficult for me to remember that wasps are generally just insects. They don’t hunt us down, they don’t seek us out.
“Okay, you keep an eye on this,” I scoot out of the way, nodding to the pot. “I’m going to get Haymitch. He can look with me.”
A few expressions cross Peeta’s face, but he finally settles on grateful. I kiss his cheek, detangling myself from his arms.
Across the green, Haymitch does not seem pleased to see me. Still, he comes with when I drag him out to check for wasps nests. Again.
“Peeta says he still hears buzzing,” I tell him as we walk the perimeter of my house. I’m becoming very familiar with this route, now.
“Y’all sure it’s even wasps?” Haymitch asks. He takes a swig from his flask. One of his geese has taken to following us, honking. This one’s got a green ribbon around her neck. Her name is Nettle.
“I got stung,” I glance down at the back of my leg, as if the sting were still visible. “I guess I was pretty certain. What else could it be?”
“Electricity?” Haymitch suggests. “Some other type of bugs? Or maybe the kid’s just finally lost his mind.”
I smack Haymitch’s arm. “Don’t say that. He’s been doing good.”
Still, my concern only balloons and swells twice its size as we dig around the gardens. Haymitch is really looking, on his knees even, inspecting around the foundation—and that’s just got me worried more. Haymitch wouldn’t risk his knees or his back if he wasn’t concerned.
“He’s been doing good,” I repeat myself. “Dr. Aurelius didn’t think it was anything to worry about, at least when I asked him. Said relapses happen.”
“Don’t I know it,” Haymitch mutters as he hefts himself back to his feet. He dusts himself off, keeping his eyes trained firm on the ground. Then he turns to me with that expression he uses when he’s letting me down slow. I got familiar with that look down in Thirteen, but I ain’t seen it in a while. I frown at him.
“Look, Katniss,” he starts.
“Haymitch…”
“These things happen,” he says, walking off along the side of the house. He touches the base of a low level window, looking around the edges, under the spot that’s meant to hold a flower box. “We never knew if hijacking was really reversible. You know it might not be, don’t you?”
“But he’s—” I gesture faintly towards the house, choking on my distress. “He’s been doing…he’s been so well.”
“Beetee never knew if it was permanent,” Haymitch says, “That morphling idea was a long shot. And he ain’t had any of those treatments in a good while.”
“No, he says he hears buzzing, it has to be—” I huff around the lump in my throat. Peeta’s been doing so well, this past year. He’s been clearly doing everything he could to get around his hijacking, even if he still had his episodes and his flashbacks and his nightmares. He still was doing better. Really! “It’s real. It has to be real. I saw two wasps around, we didn’t see any last year.”
“That you were aware of.”
“Haymitch, please,” I know I’m starting to sound whiny, but this wouldn’t be fair! Not after everything Peeta’s done to better himself. “There’s gotta be wasps.”
Haymitch looks me over, making a face I can’t quite understand. “Right. There’s gotta be.”
“You don’t think he’s gonna—?” I ask. Peeta losing himself back into that old state of hijacked confusion brings up…plenty of worrisome memories for me. His hands around my throat, the butt of his gun slamming into the earth inches from my skull, his wrists bloodied and torn as he fights desperately against himself to stay in control.
Haymitch is quiet for too long for my liking.
“He’s not dangerous,” I insist. I can’t even entertain the idea.
“He’s not,” Haymitch agrees, but I can hear that twinge of doubt in his voice.
We circle the rest of the house in silence. Even with Haymitch’s eyes and Nettle’s curious beak digging around, we didn’t find anything really indicating wasps. There was one of the things buzzing around the side of the house, but Haymitch was quick to swat it dead. He holds it out by the wings, then tosses it to the ground where Nettle can peck it up.
“See?” I try to keep the desperation out of my voice. “We’ve got wasps. Somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Haymitch doesn’t sound like he agrees.
He declines my invitation for dinner, which I shouldn’t be surprised by. He’s been in a sour mood all week. Still, it’s hard not to interpret it somewhat as his being afraid of Peeta. As him thinking he’s back to being truly unstable.
But he ain’t. He can’t be. Not after everything he’s worked through to get where he is. He can’t just…go back, can he? I’d been spending this past year operating on the idea that no matter how hard things were, we would at least consistently be getting better. That’s what Aurelius had promised me. He’d said that healing wasn’t linear, but that we were on the right track. But is it possible that…that’s just not true? Is it possible that Peeta’s mind suffered too much damage, and that without the consistent re-needling of his brain, trying to constantly rework how he thinks, that he’s doomed to melt back into insanity?
I lean against the side of the house, chewing my thumb nail. The goats are playing in the tall grasses, Marigold bleating, hopping around her mother for attention. Off in the distance I can hear Haymitch scolding his geese as they swarm him for their dinner. I wonder how Effie’s faring with all of the animals around.
I take a deep breath.
No, Peeta has to be getting better. I’ve been watching it first hand. He has to be.
Back inside, much to my dismay, Peeta’s taken a bowl of soup and sat himself on the floor of the dining room, Buttercup curled up beside him. The two of them are tucked away in the corner. Peeta’s expression is distant, but he at the very least perks up and smiles at me when I sit next to him.
“Didn’t find anything,” I tell him regretfully.
Peeta nods. “Maybe there’s nothing.”
“There has to be,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder. “If you’re hearing something, there’s got to be something, right?”
For a moment, Peeta doesn’t answer. Then, in much of the same tone Haymitch used, he says: “I don’t know. There doesn’t have to be. You know I’m not…”
“You’re fine,” I put my hand on his knee, giving him a firm little squeeze. “You’ve been doing so well.”
Peeta settles up against me, resting his cheek in my hair. I slip my arm around his shoulders, holding him close to me, as if I were able to shield him from whatever’s been getting under his skin.
“Lets move the bedding to my mom’s room,” I say. “Maybe you’ll be able to get some real sleep in there.”
Peeta nods, and we eat in relative silence. Buttercup’s purring faintly. He’s taken somewhat to comforting the two of us, whenever we’ve gone off the deep end. It’s a bit strange, relying on a cat for some modicum of support, but he’s proving to be worth the irritation of being covered in fur, at least.
We clean up from dinner, bring our blankets and pillows into my mother’s old room, then make to get ready for bed. It’s hard for me to let Peeta out of my line of sight, but we’ve not exactly hit the stage where we can just change in front of each other without a little bit of embarrassment. He’s seen every bit of me, and still, the idea of him watching me get dressed makes my face burn.
By the time we’re both curled up in the new bed—it still smells faintly of my mother’s shampoo, which is odd to lay on top of—Peeta seems to be relaxing somewhat. I’m able to convince him to lay down against me, settling his head in the crook of my neck, his cheek on my collarbone. One of his arms is tucked up under my back, the other laid across my stomach. This isn’t a position we’ll be able to keep up all night, but for now, it’s comfortable.
I run my fingers through his hair, kissing the top of his head.
“Should we leave Haymitch be on his birthday, you reckon?” Peeta asks quietly.
“Maybe.” I trace my nails along his scalp, “We could just…do what we did last year?”
Peeta snickers, his shoulders shaking slightly. I savor the sound. “Didn’t you shout at him last year?”
“He deserved it!”
“Oh, I’m sure he did,” Peeta murmurs. He tips his head a bit, kissing my shoulder. “But maybe let’s refrain, this year.”
I grumble, mock-irritated. I can hardly remember what Haymitch and I had been fighting about, last year. All I know is that we’d shouted, then ceded, and both of us still showed up to dinner anyway.
Peeta lets out a contented sigh, stretching himself out a bit, before curling back in. He’s getting heavier against me, his breathing beginning to slow.
“Comfortable?” I ask.
“Very.” He lazily reaches up, his hand finding mine. “You’re getting softer.”
“Your fault,” I nestle down, planting a kiss in his hair. Peeta’s little laugh sounds far away as he starts to drift off. I kiss his head again, just because I can. “Goodnight.”
He’s already fast asleep.