Somewhere, there are white walls. Four of them, tall and padded and unyielding. In those white walls, there is a girl who used to sing but now only screams. Within that room, there are echoes that circle and rebound until eventually they are swallowed up by the confines themselves.
The room is bloated on the shrieks that leave her throat bleeding.
The girl doesn't always scream. Sometimes, she is silent. Sometimes, she listens to the ghosts of someone else's screams.
Occasionally, she rages.
The walls drink in, equally, her blood and her fury and her grief.
Katniss is already struggling to regulate her breathing even before she becomes aware that she has woken from another nightmare. Prim stirs beside her but doesn't wake, and Katniss lets out a sigh of relief. Her shoulders ache with tension when she sits up and hunches over her knees, rubbing the heels of her palms against her eyes to blot out the lingering nightmare.
It's early. The sky is just beginning to brighten with dawn, blue and purple and the beginnings of that pale orange that always catches her attention.
Ignoring her exhaustion, Katniss slips out of bed and tightens the blanket around Prim. No need for her sister's rest to be disturbed. It's important that Prim get to experience nicer things in life, like sleeping in past dawn (like not being haunted by nightmares that make no sense).
In only a few moments, Katniss is dressed and heading out of the house toward the hole in the fence.
Her mother and sister will need to eat tonight.
The woods are quiet and still. She moves through them like a wraith, picking and choosing her targets with ease, long habit ensuring that each one she aims at ends up in her game bag. When the day has begun and the sun is past the rim of the horizon, she meets up with Gale, who's checking his snare lines.
"Good day?" he asks, and Katniss smiles (it's easier to smile out here, beyond the fence, in the quiet, where she has never had a nightmare).
"All right," she says, and he smiles back.
She doesn't remember exactly how long she and Gale have been friends (partners, really, out here, allies against the constant threat of starvation), but she's glad for him. The woods are quiet and still, and she would have them no other way, but it's nice, occasionally, to have a couple words of conversation and a companionable smile.
Gale takes his share home to his mother and three younger siblings. Katniss heads into town.
The merchants are all early risers, usually up and busy before the Seam rouses and spits out its tribute of coal miners for the subterranean depths. Katniss makes her rounds along the back doors of the square, saving the baker until the end. She managed to bag four squirrels, and she's hoping he's desperate enough for meat to take them all.
"Katniss," he greets her when he opens the door to her knock. He's always kind, the baker, always generous with his trades. "What do you have for me today?"
"Four squirrels," she says (never show timidity, she learned that years ago).
"Four?" He hesitates, but then smiles. "All right. How about two loaves of bread and some new buns my son's trying out?"
"Sounds good," she says. She hoped for cookies, to surprise Prim with, but anything with bread and some form of sweetness is treat enough. Besides, she's too afraid that he'll decide he doesn't need all four squirrels if she tries to haggle.
When the baker leaves the doorway to gather her bread, Katniss sees into the bakery. She's surprised to realize that he's not alone. His youngest son is kneading some dough at an island in the middle of the kitchen. It's warm in the bakery (the heat is emanating out toward her, thawing the chill in her brittle fingers) so she supposes that's why Peeta's cheeks are flushed as he darts sidelong glances at her.
Katniss shifts uncomfortably. Peeta's always made her…awkward. Clumsy. Unsure. She doesn't know why. Or rather, she never lets herself think on why. Better just to ignore him and avoid the whole uncomfortable situation altogether.
"H-hey," Peeta stutters after a minute. Katniss jumps. She doesn't remember him ever speaking to her before.
"Hey," she mutters, and is grateful when the baker returns with her food.
"Here you are," he says. "Be sure to let me know what you think of the cheese buns. Peeta's sure they're going to be a hit, but I'm not so certain. You'll decide for us, right?"
This seems like a lot of pressure when all she wants is to get some bread for her sister, but Katniss can't afford to upset the baker. Not when he's her best customer.
"Yeah," she finally says. "I'm sure they're good."
"Let us know." The baker winks down at her. "I know Peeta will be glad to have your opinion."
Katniss has never been so happy to leave the bakery before.
(But at least the witch wasn't there.)
The cheese buns are, Katniss decides after one bite, the best thing she has ever tasted. They are rich and salty and filling all at once, and Katniss eats one, then eats another, then wishes she didn't have to share them with her mother. But Prim loves them too. Her face glows as she eats, she savors each bite with tiny, fastidious movements, and when they are all gone, she wonders aloud if they could make anything like it with the tesserae grain and the cheese Lady provides them.
Suddenly, the cheese buns sit heavy in her gut.
Because this means she will have to go back to the bakery.
(It means she will have to talk to Peeta.)
Somewhere, in a room made of white walls grown fat with despair, a girl stares blankly ahead. She is tiny and shrunken in the middle of this colorless prison, her hands shaking as they make repetitive movements against the floor.
"Prim," she keens. "Prim. Prim."
The echoes of past screams fade and quiet, their impact made paltry in comparison to the grief soaking this name.
There is nothing in the world save for this room, and this whisper, and this broken girl with the blackened nails.
The nightmares have been worse lately, and Katniss knows why. It's been a week since the baker traded her the cheese buns. A week since she's known that she needs to go back and see Peeta (ask for a favor when she already owes him). A week that she's managed to put it off, deliberately ignoring the squirrels that chitter in the trees above her.
But today, there's nothing besides squirrels. She's not sure if it's her guilt that makes her miss everything else, or if it's just one of those days, but by the end of the day she has only one rabbit to take home (thanks to a snare Gale taught her) and three squirrels.
Time, then, to go back to the bakery.
Besides, she reminds herself, she owes the baker an opinion on the cheese buns anyway.
It's still early enough that Gale hasn't emerged from the depths of the earth yet, for which Katniss is thankful. Sometimes he likes to go with her on her trades, both to build his rapport with the merchants for the days when he brings meat to their doors and because he doesn't trust the townies. Bad enough she has to ask a favor, no need to do it in front of him and earn a lecture on how they're all out to get her (the baker in particular, toward whom Gale seems to hold a particular distrust on account of his generous trades).
"Katniss," the baker says when he opens the door. He's using his hushed voice, gives her his muted smile, and Katniss doesn't need to hear the shrill voice in the front of the store to know that the witch is there.
A stone plops heavy and cold to the pit of her stomach.
"I have a squirrel," she murmurs (she traded the other two to Greasy Sae down at the Hob), and offers it.
"Ah." He checks over his shoulder as he takes the squirrel, then seems to brighten. "How about a loaf of bread? We have extra of the rye."
"All right."
"Peeta," the baker says suddenly, making Katniss startle. "Get the bread for Katniss and take it out to her. And don't forget to ask her about the cheese buns."
From behind the baker, Peeta emerges, wiping his hands (are they shaking?) on his flour-streaked apron.
For the first time, Katniss wonders how often Peeta has been there, in the kitchen, hidden and silent, while she trades with his father.
(She wonders why he never speaks.)
The apple tree draws her gaze. She's loitering in the alley, waiting for her bread, but her eyes keep going straight back to the tree and the space just beneath it. It's thin and stunted, as everything in District Twelve is, but it's shelter enough from the rain.
"Katniss?"
She turns, surprised she didn't hear the door open.
Peeta's eyes fall immediately to the ground.
His mother is the witch. His skin is often adorned with black and blue and green, a canvas of pain. It would make sense to assume he's shy and timid because of those things, but she's seen him at school. He is always half-hidden by a pack of friends swarming around him. He's quiet there, too, but friendly and personable (or so she assumes, from tiny sidelong glances stolen while trying to avoid his attention). Always ready with a smile and a kind word for anyone he encounters. But here, with her, he is meek. Cowed. At school and in the square, she will feel his eyes on her from a distance, though when she turns, he is always looking away.
"Hey," she says (because she has to start somewhere).
"Sorry about…that." He waves a hand vaguely over his shoulder.
"It's fine."
His eyes fly to hers before he seems to catch himself and direct them back to the ground.
(Katniss is startled, her breath oddly ragged. She's never seen his eyes so close. She never realized before just how blue they are.)
"Anyway, h-here you go," he mutters, holding out a loaf of bread wrapped in paper.
Katniss stares.
Suddenly, she is back here and the sky is pouring rain and hunger is chewing through her flesh. And this boy is standing in the rain, watching her, seeing her, and there is bread on the ground, muddy but hot, hot, hot in her hands and against her stomach.
Her hands shake when she reaches out to take the bread from him.
"Thanks," she manages to say (and she wonders if he knows that she's thanking him, always, for that day so long ago).
There's a smudge of flour on his cheek. It's placed so haphazardly, probably unknowingly—it marks the spot exactly where he'd borne a blueish welt the day after that rain-speckled bread.
Peeta shuffles his feet, then whirls and hurries back toward the door. She is watching him, waiting for him to disappear behind the door and this opportunity to thank him (really thank him) to slip away like all the rest, when he suddenly stops. He looks over his shoulder toward her (she thinks his eyes are resting on that same apple tree).
"Um…the cheese buns. Were they okay?"
He's oddly vulnerable. Strangely fragile. Desperately hopeful.
Katniss is uncomfortable and impatient and her skin itches with the need to flee. But he turns even further and actually, really looks at her. He's not tall, but he's sturdier than she remembers noticing before, broader and stronger.
"They were amazing," she says honestly. "Really, Peeta, they're the best things I've ever eaten."
His eyes shine as his lips curve into a smile. Smaller than the ones he throws around at school to everyone but her, it is wholly genuine (real enough to make her wonder if the bigger, shinier ones are fake) and sweet enough to make something catch in her throat.
"Thanks, Katniss," he says shyly.
The bread is hot, hot, hot in her hands.
She is halfway home when she realizes she forgot to ask him her question.
Sometimes, when the girl is hovering between that grief-drenched name and anguished screams, she sings. A croaking, throaty humming with words she croons but doesn't know, can't remember, can't process. Those are the times the walls lean away, these are the sounds they will not swallow up and retain and echo back to her in endless misery.
When she sings, the other voice falls silent. There are only her broken melodies and the intent silence of a listening ear.
Gale's happy. It irritates Katniss, who's tired and cranky and heavy with exhaustion. It's been days since she's had more than a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep. The nightmares are getting worse, bleeding even into her waking moments. The day before, Prim had asked her why she was singing a forbidden song under her breath.
"What's your plan for today?" Gale asks.
It's Sunday, his one day off from the mines. Katniss looks at him and tries to be happy with him. He only gets one full day out in the woods, only gets these few precious hours of relative freedom; she doesn't want to ruin it for him.
"Just hunting," she says shortly. (Why does he always try to talk to her while they're hunting? He used to remember the value of silence.)
"Going in to trade?"
"Just to the Hob. Prim needs new clothes."
He grimaces. "They outgrow them too fast."
"Posy can have her old ones." Katniss doesn't look behind to see him struggle to accept that. She has no doubt that he'll make sure something from his snare lines ends up in her bag, but she wishes he'd just take the clothes without quibbling.
(She wishes they didn't have to worry so much about debts owed and paid and owed again.)
"You guys want to come over to ours for dinner?" he asks after a moment.
She doesn't. She's tired. She wants to go home and curl up in bed around Prim and sleep without nightmares.
But Gale's happy, and that's rare.
"Sure," she says. "We'll bring some cheese and a rabbit."
"I'll have Mom make some of those crackers to go with the cheese."
"Sure."
They go back to silence, prowling the woods and hunting survival.
A corner of the bakery is just visible from outside the Hob. Katniss watches it for a moment before turning away with a shake of her head. She does need to go back there, needs to screw up her courage and just ask Peeta her one question. As soon as she gets it over with, they can go back to the way things have been forever (back to companionable silence and mutual avoidance).
But not today. Not on Sunday when Gale's around. She's not quite sure why, but Gale and Peeta don't coexist well in her head.
"Ready?" Gale asks.
"Ready," she says.
The bakery disappears, eclipsed by the Seam.
There's a tiny bit of cheese, wrapped in cloth and tied with ribbon, left on the table for her. Katniss's first reaction is a lump in her throat (because Prim is so kind, so good). But then (she can't help it) she finds herself calculating how much they could get for the little pieces of cheese Prim has left for her over the years since she first brought Lady home.
And then, worst of all, she remembers what she'd meant to do for Prim. The question she was supposed to ask Peeta. The favor on top of the debt she already owes.
Katniss pockets the cheese, firms her resolve, and heads for the woods.
No squirrel today, but two rabbits. With only a fleeting thought of what Sae would give her for the meat, Katniss ducks back under the fence and heads for the bakery.
For just an instant, she pauses beside the old and shrunken apple tree (shivers deeper into her father's jacket at the memory of cold rain). Snorting slightly at her own foolishness, Katniss closes her hand around the cheese in her pocket (a talisman against the specter of starvation) and steps to the back door.
The baker opens the door with his usual smile. "Katniss," he says loudly (she relaxes slightly at this proof the witch is absent). "You're early today."
"Actually…" Katniss swallows (tastes burned bread and walnuts) and tries not to peek around the baker at the rest of the room. "I was hoping I could talk to Peeta. About the cheese buns."
For some reason, the baker's smile grows wider. He looks absurdly pleased for no reason at all that Katniss can tell, especially since he says, "I'm sorry, I sent Peeta off on a few errands. I'll be sure to let him know that you're looking for him, though."
"No!" Katniss feels a quick burst of panic. "That's okay. I'm sure I'll see him around."
With a last awkward thank you, Katniss scuttles away.
At least, she tells herself, she tried.
That evening, when there's a knock at the door, Katniss doesn't even look up from the rabbit stew she's stirring. Patients come to her mother at all hours, none of them convenient.
"Katniss," Prim says, "it's for you."
"For me?" She looks over to the door (expecting Gale) and sees Peeta standing on the threshold, hovering nervously.
Vertigo makes Katniss suddenly dizzy. She feels as if the whole world has been suddenly inverted, herself in a kitchen with food on the table and Peeta out in the dark, the cold, uncertain of his welcome.
(She hates it.)
"M-my dad said you wanted to see me?" It's a statement, but he makes it sound like a question.
And he's still standing in the doorway (him, who saved them, who helped them, who ensured their survival).
"Come in!" she blurts out, just to destroy this unsettling tableau (to try to begin paying for those long ago loaves of bread). "Please. We were just about to have dinner. You can join us."
(It's the least she can do; the cheese was her lunch and the second rabbit is long gone, traded away for a few more necessities.)
Peeta stops mid-step, still near the doorway but at least inside where it's light and warm (he belongs near a hearth, she thinks fiercely, not out in the rain). "Oh, no," he says, "I'm sorry, I-I didn't know—I don't want to intrude."
He's reaching back for the door. There's a bruise on his wrist, peeking out from under the ragged sleeve of his jacket. I sent Peeta off on a few errands, the baker said, but maybe he only meant he sent him somewhere out of sight.
Katniss forgets her mom and Prim's eyes, surprised and wondering, on her. She forgets that she is afraid of talking to Peeta. She even forgets about the bread lying like a great gulf between them. In that moment, with the sight of his bruises and the shine of his golden hair out in the cold night, Katniss is completely overwhelmed by the sudden, searing desire to take Peeta and put him somewhere safe, somewhere no one can reach him and hurt him. (She imagines, for just an instant, absurd as it is, sneaking him to the woods, to her father's lake, setting him up in that tiny shack and feeding him dandelion salad.)
"Eat with us," she says, almost tersely, and pulls out a chair for him at the table.
Tugging his sleeves down self-consciously, Peeta sits. He keeps his shoulders hunched tight (makes himself small and as unobtrusive as a large merchant boy can be in their house) but smiles bright and wide at her mom and Prim.
"Thank you for having me," he says, as if this is a planned occurrence.
"Of course," her mom murmurs, and she sets out their single extra bowl and spoon.
"Katniss!" Prim hisses, and Katniss jerks her eyes away from the sight of those dishes (four places at the table instead of three; a man there, like before, but not really, not at all).
"It's just stew," she says.
"It smells delicious."
She has never heard Peeta speak so many words. His stutter is evening out, his eyes grow less wary (a contrast that makes her realize just how guarded he usually is), and gradually, as they dish him out a portion of their dinner, his shoulders straighten.
A knot in the pit of her belly (one she didn't even realize was there) loosens, just a bit, to see him here, safe, eating. (It's still a role reversal, but not as bad as the one before.)
Peeta is gracious all through dinner. Aside from a mention that he's never tasted rabbit before (Katniss regrets that second rabbit again), he eats the stew with every appearance of pleasure. He asks Prim about school and talks genially to her mom of the merchants she might remember. His eyes dart to Katniss, quickly and often, but he doesn't say much to her aside from complimenting the dinner with a gleam in his eye that makes her think he means for more than just stirring it.
(She tries not to care that they have no bread to offer him.)
When the dishes are cleared, her mom mentions that it's getting late. As if this is a cue he recognizes, Peeta immediately rises and begins buttoning his jacket. With each button, his body seems to remember the tension he let slip so temporarily until he is once more small and self-contained near the door.
"Thanks for dinner," he says to the room at large.
Katniss lunges for the door and opens it for him. "I'll walk you out," she mutters, then closes the door behind them (avoiding, for the moment, her family's curiosity).
"You don't have a jacket on," he observes quietly.
"I won't be long." But she crosses her arms over her chest anyway. It's colder out than she thought (she'll need more firewood, more coal, more blankets to keep Prim warm).
"I am sorry," he says, his voice as soft as the starlight. "I didn't mean to horn in on your dinner."
Katniss shrugs uncomfortably. "Don't apologize. I told your dad he didn't have to tell you—I never meant to make you come here—"
"I don't mind."
He sounds completely genuine, this merchant boy standing in air polluted by coal dust. His hair is haloed like light itself, brilliant against the black sky. His eyes are locked on hers, not falling away when she looks at him. It makes her feel nervous, to be the recipient of his total attention.
"Really," he says. "I…I couldn't figure out why you'd be looking for me."
(Is he waiting for gratitude? For that thank you she could never get out past awe and anxiety?)
"If you need something, I'll be more than happy to get it for you if I can."
Her eyes fly to his. (She wonders if things will ever change, because for all that their positions were reversed, it is still him offering her help with his flesh marked in pain.)
"I…" Katniss straightens (reminds herself this is a business deal). "It's about the cheese buns."
He blinks. "Oh."
"It's just that Prim loved them." Her words tumble out of her now, too fast, too unwieldy. "And she makes goat cheese, and we have tesserae grain, and I…well, I know it's a lot to ask, but I was hoping I could get the recipe. See if it's something we could try to replicate."
"Her birthday's coming up."
She begins to believe that he will never stop surprising her.
"What?"
"Prim's birthday." Peeta's lips curve up in a small smile. "You always try to get her something special."
How does he know that?
"Okay," he says before she can get the question past her shock. "I'll bring the recipe and I'll teach you how to make it."
"You don't have to," she mumbles, backing toward the door. "If you just tell it to me—"
"I'll show you."
It's strange, after all this time, to see him so decisive. So steady.
She firms her jaw, makes herself meet his eyes (refuses to show weakness). "I'll pay you. How many squirrels—"
"It's a gift."
Katniss scowls, her spine rigid, her fists clenched tight. "No. I'm not going to owe you anymore than I already do."
His brow crinkles, his eyes turning cloudy. "Owe me? What do you mean?"
"I'll pay you," she repeats, and then she darts inside the house, the door a barrier between any further haggling (between his questions and her revelations).
Her mom and Prim look at her expectantly.
(Katniss resists the urge to flee again.)
Surrounded by white walls, enclosed in the echo of her own screams, the girl's hands occasionally pause in their frantic movements. The black fingernails, the singed fingertips, the blistered palms, they still and fall motionless. The screams die away. The humming, singing, keening fades until there's an oppressive silence.
Only in those moments, rare though they are, does the other voice take up where she left off. No screams. No songs. Just words. Silvery, clarion words that spiral and build and comfort, erecting beautiful constructs in her mind.
If ever this mad girl finds sanity, it is when the other voice weaves it for her.
But sometimes…sometimes, even in the silence, there is no voice.
Sometimes there are only matching screams.
The nightmares grow more detailed, more vivid, until Katniss wakes with her heart hammering in her chest like a rabbit's, thundering and fast, while her breath jackknifes through the bedroom. Something stirs next to her, a warm body, gentle hands, a quiet whisper.
"Katniss? Are you okay?"
Katniss tenses and whips around.
It's a girl. Young and beautiful and blonde-haired.
"Katniss?" she says, all sleepy and innocent, and Katniss's heart lodges in her throat.
"Prim," she says. "Prim, you're alive."
Prim would say more but Katniss pulls her into a hug so tight they both have to fight to breathe.
(Katniss tries not to wonder why she is so surprised to find her sister alive.)
She meets Gale in the woods. For the first time since that autumn day they met, Katniss is nervous when she sees him.
"Good day for hunting," he says, then shrugs on a sheath of arrows.
She means to tell him about her deal with Peeta—opens her mouth with a short explanation ready.
Her mind freezes, blurred by exhaustion (by a strange indecision). It is a good day to hunt, she tells herself, and if she tells Gale, he'll ruin it by getting angry and raising his voice to rant against the merchants (against Peeta).
Katniss closes her mouth, checks that her own quiver is secure, and glides forward soundlessly.
She will tell him later.
It doesn't occur to her until Peeta shows up on her doorstep exactly a week after their dinner that they never set a time for this baking lesson.
"H-hi, Katniss," he stutters, his eyes downcast as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. "Is now a good time for you? For the cheese buns?"
If she wants to surprise Prim, it's a great time. Both Prim and her mom left just over an hour before to assist in a birth. If she wants to keep her composure around Peeta, however, it's a terrible time. She feels suddenly very awkward to think of being alone in her house with Peeta.
"I can come back later?" he offers. He reaches his free arm up to run through his hair, dusting away snowflakes, and Katniss finds herself automatically scanning his wrist, his face, anywhere she can see, for bruises. Which reminds her that he's still standing in the cold.
"Now's fine," she says, and stands aside for him to enter. When she notices the basket he's holding, she scowls (she already owes him so much). "What is that?" she demands.
Peeta startles back a step, his shoulders hunching, and Katniss freezes in place. In the light of the house, away from the darkness so foreign to him, he seems brighter, more real, limned in gold. He shouldn't look anything but happy and healthy, certainly not frightened (not of her).
"It-it's some pans, mixing bowls, and measuring cups," he says. "I wasn't sure what you had."
"Oh." She doesn't think she's ever felt so ungracious in her life. "Sorry. I just thought…"
He stares at her, unblinking, waiting for her to finish the truncated sentence.
"I already owe you," she finally says (and wonders why it doesn't feel like enough, why it tastes like a half-truth).
"You really don't," he says quietly. "It's just a recipe."
"Your family's livelihood is recipes," she retorts, abruptly irritated with his kindness (or is it just obliviousness? has he forgotten the bread? did it mean anything at all to him?).
"I made this one up and we can't afford the cheese for it often, so it will mostly go unused."
Katniss gapes at him. "What?"
"We can only afford to make the things people will buy." Peeta shrugs and sets the basket down on the table. "Most people just want bread."
"But what about the cakes? The cookies?"
"Sure, if anyone's going to save up for something and splurge on it, they want the sweet stuff. The cheese buns just don't have that big a draw in comparison."
"They do to me," she offers, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
His smile is small but radiant (genuine and warm). "I know. I'm glad."
He seems bigger, broader, his eyes bluer, his words more assured, his expression more composed. It's strange, the way it always seems to take a few minutes for him to come into focus, as if she sees only a dim reflection of him before she blinks and he resolves into who he really is.
"I probably should have given you a list of ingredients before I showed up." A crease forms on his brow as he looks down at the basket. "But I guess we can experiment."
Katniss's stomach twists unpleasantly. Prim deserves every good thing, of course, but they can't afford to experiment with food. As much as the woods provide, they only ever have just enough, not extra to throw away on multiple servings of makeshift cheese buns.
This might have been a mistake.
But Peeta's already pulling out his measuring cups and a few pans, a mixing bowl, some small containers he sets aside without opening. "Do you have flour?" he asks.
Nothing for it now. He's intent, resolved, determined in a way she's never seen in him before (except maybe once, hazed through rain and blurred by starvation).
"I'll get it," she says, and retrieves the coarse tesserae flour.
For all her trips to the bakery through the years (for all the times she's stolen glimpses of Peeta), she's never actually seen Peeta bake. He brings a single-minded intensity to it that reminds her of herself in the woods. His eyes are sharp behind long lashes, his hands steady and strong, his movements so economical and purposeful that it draws (and keeps) all of her attention. She finds herself staring openly, unable to look away. And though he speaks often (a deep voice she finds inexplicably familiar, disconcertingly soothing), she doesn't take in all the details he's imparting, the measurements and order of process and heating temperature. Instead, she memorizes the way he looks as if there are whole unknowable worlds spinning behind his expressive face and blue eyes.
His 'experimentation' turns out to all take place before they even add the cheese. He sifts his fingers through the flour, weighs the dough in his burn-scarred palm, adds a pinch of something from one of those containers he tries to keep hidden behind his broad form.
Finally, almost too soon, they have six buns wrapped around Prim's precious goat chest, resting in the oven on a couple of Peeta's gleaming pans.
Peeta turns back to his basket (Katniss is beginning to think it has unlimited space within) and pulls out an index card and a pen. "If these turn out," he says, "we'll write down the final recipe."
Katniss jerks her eyes up to his. "They might not turn out?"
They already smell so good (maybe the most delicious smell her house has ever hosted since that long ago new year's orange), and she already has images of Prim's excited laughter dancing in her head. And, of course, there is no more cheese to try again.
"Well…" Peeta shifts his weight. "They should. I think they will. But usually a recipe takes a couple tries before it's perfect."
"Oh." Katniss relaxes. "It doesn't have to be perfect, just edible."
Peeta regards her for a long moment, so long that Katniss belatedly realizes she just insulted all his effort and the care he took that she mostly just tuned out.
"I mean," she adds quickly, "I'm sure they'll be fine, but…well, it's tesserae flour, after all. It won't be as good as what you're used to."
His lashes (long and dusted with a few grains of flour that make her fingers itch to reach out and brush away) fall to conceal his eyes. "Right," he says with the suggestion of a snort. "Us merchants are really living it up over in the Town two steps away from the Seam."
She scowls. "You don't make your breads with sub-standard flour, do you?"
"No, I don't. But we have to make enough to afford that flour, which means I don't eat 'my' bread."
"What?" Her hand stills in the swirl she's been making in the flour residue left on the table.
Peeta takes a deep breath before he looks at her, his expression as bland as it is at school when surrounded by that faceless crowd of blond kids. "Nothing. Forget it."
"Why don't you eat your own bread?"
"I do." He shrugs, all his focus seemingly needed to line the pen up precisely with the edge of the index card. "We do get to eat the bread once it's too stale to sell. And I'm thankful for it, really. It just…it bothers me that everyone seems more than happy to hold onto meaningless prejudices. Merchants disdain coal dust; Seam folk scorn perceived riches. Why can't we all just help each other out no matter what color eyes we have or where in District 12 we live?"
Katniss has listened to hours and hours of Gale ranting about similar things out in the woods. But somehow, in some way she can't explain, these few words, spoken so evenly, so softly, mean more than all those angry lectures.
"You help," she says quietly to the flour coated over her fingertips (she has the sudden mental image of drawing it over his cheek, where that welt once lay, as if the pale dusting can allay the wound he took for her sake). "You're helping me now."
"Yeah, but you said you'd pay me." There's a wistful note in his voice she's never heard before. "So it's still more about debts and lines not being crossed than freely helping."
It takes all her courage, plus the memory of him standing on her cold doorstep a week ago, for her to meet his eyes and say, "But you helped me before, when we were kids, and I never even said thank you."
Peeta's face drains of all color save two red spots at the crown of his cheeks. He clenches the back of their kitchen chair with white-knuckled fists. "Th-the bread? From when we were kids? But…but you shouldn't even remember that!"
Katniss feels her own face burn, though she does her best to off-set it by frowning. "How could I forget? Peeta, that bread saved our lives."
"But…" A shadow passes across his eyes as he gives a short shake of his head. "I just threw it to you. It fell in the mud. That's…that's not really kind or heroic. I should have—"
"Don't. Don't say that. That bread was the first food we'd eaten in… It meant everything. And then, when I saw you at school, there was a dandelion."
"A dandelion," he repeats. Seriously. Intently. He's listening to her, actually taking in her stumbling attempt to explain how he made her world turn from dark to light. (She wonders if his focus on her brings up that same look of hidden worlds, but can't bear to look up from the flour on her finger to find out.)
"Yes," she says. "A dandelion. You can eat them, you know. They're very nourishing, and they grow everywhere, even in the places nothing else survives. Anyway, when I saw that dandelion, I remembered the woods and everything my father taught me. But it was only because of the bread." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Because of you."
"You would have seen the dandelion anyway," he says in a strangely hoarse voice. "You're so strong, Katniss. You would have found a way to survive."
"No!" She takes a frustrated step nearer him, her hands reaching out as if to actually grab hold of him (to ease his grip on that chair and protect him, from his mom, from this world, from his own self-deprecation). She's not explaining this well, and she hates trying to find the right words for things too big to be confined to a few sentences. But it's anathema to her that Peeta not know how much he helped her, that he saved her and Prim, that his kindness is what made that dandelion so important (it makes her whole chest ache, to think of that bruised little boy condemning himself all these years for throwing the very bread that was her salvation).
"Peeta," she says brokenly, "you…you were the dandelion. You helped me when no one else would, and that…that's what made me find a way for us to live. Because if there was still kindness, still good things left in the world, then…then it was worth it to survive."
For a long moment, there is silence broken only by her ragged pants, her body wrung dry of any more words. Peeta's speechless (and she only heard his voice for the first time a few weeks ago, and he stutters and stumbles every time they talk, but for some reason, it seems momentous to her that she has brought him to silence).
"Katniss," he finally whispers, almost helplessly.
And then they both jump as the little timer he brought chimes once, twice, four, eight, twelve times.
The cheese buns taste amazing, so much better than she thinks they should (deep down, buried beneath realism and pragmatism, a part of her half believes that Peeta's touch is somewhat magic, able to transform mud and rain into walnuts and raisins and tesserae grain into white flour). Peeta watches her eat that first cheese bun, and with each bite, his hands relax a bit more until, finally, he lets go of the chair altogether.
"Aren't you going to have one?" she asks when her mouth isn't full.
His eyes dart away from her mouth (she brushes at it with her sleeve in case he was staring at crumbs) and down to the index card where neatly scripted words flow (like magic) from the pen to the paper.
"No," he says. "This way, there's two each for you, Prim, and your mom."
"Take one." Katniss sets her jaw and plunks her second bun in front of him. "As a thank you."
The cheese bun sits between them. More words appear on the card as his fingers direct the pen. No, not words, a doodle of six tiny cheese buns on a plate, steam wafting up from them. A knot forms and tightens in the pit of Katniss's stomach (over and over again, he gives her food, and over and over again, she has no way to give back to him).
"Please," she whispers (she hates herself for her weakness, for the crack in her voice, for the sudden desire she has to reach out and…and…do something with him, for him).
"All right," Peeta finally says. And he sets down the pen. Picks up the cheese bun. And eats it.
(Katniss turns away under the pretense of cleaning up their mess before she can do something stupid, like cry just at the sight of this boy eating.)
When there are only four cheese buns left, placed prettily on a plate, Peeta begins to pack everything back up in his basket. Katniss watches her flour swirls disappear beneath her rag until there's nothing left to do but watch Peeta place a towel over the cheese buns and pick up his basket.
"Katniss," he says softly, "please don't feel like you have to thank me or pay me back for the bread. For anything. Knowing that you're alive, seeing you okay…that's payment enough, all right? That's all I want."
He's so earnest, so sincere, that she can only nod, and is rewarded for it with one of his small, real smiles.
"Here you are." He offers her the recipe card, and by the time she looks up from the life-like picture, he's already at the door. "Goodbye, Katniss."
(It sounds so final she can't return the sentiment.)
Then the door closes between them and she's alone.
Katniss runs her fingers over the ink words Peeta formed and stares at the covered plate.
The other voice doesn't scream as much anymore. The girl in the engorged walls is glad of it, one tiny thing to be thankful for in this place of endless nightmares.
But then, as the walls grow so glutted they cannot echo agony back, she realizes, somewhere between her own screaming and her grieving, that the other voice isn't speaking as much anymore either.
The silver clarion sound that builds up sanity for her has a fleck of rust, a dulling of dust, a chip along its edge.
Her fingers still spin, ceaselessly, roaming, searching for something she cannot find, but she lets her own voice quiet and fade so she can listen harder, better, more.
Not that it matters.
Hope is never rewarded, and nothing good ever lasts. Not in here, and not out there.
Prim is ecstatic to receive the cheese buns and can hardly believe she gets two whole ones all to herself.
"Two for you, two for me," she says gleefully, and Katniss smiles.
"And more later," she says, offering her the recipe card. Prim shrieks and kisses the card, then laughs at herself and sets the table as if it is a grand meal.
Katniss plays along because Prim should always be this happy, this pure, this safe.
With knives and forks and affected manners, they make the cheese buns last for nearly an hour, savoring each bite while Prim makes plans for more cheese.
Once, Katniss finds herself staring at the third chair at the table, as if she thinks someone should be sitting there. But Prim laughs, and Katniss's eyes swing automatically to her so she can drink in the sight of her joy, and Katniss forgets why anything should seem wrong.
It's her and Prim against the world. It's always been her and Prim. It will always be her and Prim (even if the rest of the world burns).
"Happy birthday, little duck," she says when the last crumb is gone.
"Thank you, Katniss!" Prim throws her arms around her in a buoyant hug. Katniss holds on (and knows she will never let go).
A/N: I have no idea what this is at all. It's an odd mix of things and it would. not. leave. me. alone. So here we are, almost thirty thousand words and four chapters later and hopefully there's something in this mess that is worth reading. As always, it's all because of my absolute and unending love for the Hunger Games, with thanks to my sister who beta-ed it for me and who got me into the fandom in the first place. Thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear what you think of it!
No copyright infringement is intended!