Trigger Warnings: Discussion of starvation and indirect examination of relationships to food.
I'm standing at the kitchen sink, the bowl Effie sent with the tiny holes in my hands. It's filled with black beans. I bought them off Sae the last time she came by to clean. She had glanced at me concerned. Each time I attempted this and failed I became more and more agitated, but despite the advice of my therapist, Haymitch and Sae, I refuse to give up. I can still hear Sae's voice echoing in my head, repeating the instructions for me one more time, as she writes them down. First I have to sort through the dried beans, removing any stones, pebbles or damaged beans. I did that, tossing things into the trash as I went. Then I had to leave them in cold water overnight. This morning I woke up, and dumped the fruit of my labor into the bowl that Effie calls a colander. She sent it along with a few other things she declared to be vital for a functional kitchen.
Even thought it's not listed in the step, I'm running fresh cold water over them. Every once and a while my hand twitches, causing the beans to jump around in their container as the water runs over them. My mind is whirring. The beans keep sliding in and out of focus. I have to do this. I have to do this. Images begin to cloud my head. I'm being foolish wasting food, when we have so little to spare. I keep failing and she's going to starve to death. Not real.
"What's not real?" I jump, not having realized I said the last words out loud, or that I wasn't alone in the kitchen. Turning I see Katniss, hair in her usual braid, leaning against the frame of the door. She looks like skin and bone. I shake my head. No she's full, curved, fed and standing before me.
"I keep wasting food. It'll be my fault when we starve to death." She inhales deeply.
"We're not going to starve to death," she whispers, but once the words are out of her mouth she moves over the pantry and opens it. I watch as she counts the cans of food, our favorites from the Capitol. Her fingers trail over the packs of sugar and flour. She pauses opening a jar of peanuts and popping one in her mouth as she looks over the rest of the cabinet. It's stocked full of food, as is the one at my house, but I still watch her do this at least once a week. The therapists and psychologists say that she's reassuring herself.
They tell both of us the more we handle our own food the more in control of it we'll feel. They say it's because our lives have always been dominated by food. Katniss once lived meal to meal, while I spent all my time in a house that constantly produced food I could not eat. It didn't help that we were then bombarded with the riches foods the country had to offer in the Capitol multiple times before being thrown into an arena, where we were constantly in danger of starving to death, not to mention the regimented control of food in District 13. Our head psychologist, Dr. Aurelius, told us both that in the past when we have controlled our food, we've controlled our lives. He believes that if we bound with what we eat so to speak, it could give us new life, and become what it is meant to be, that which nourishes us as we heal and recover and move forward.
Katniss took to this suggestion very well. She started hunting again, with fervor. Every day she'd come back with at least three squirrels from the woods, which she'd skin and gut before giving them to Sae to cook. The meat reminds me of my father, and how he used to give me a little extra when the bread was too stale to choke down. Sometimes as a treat, he'd make black beans to go with the squirrel and the bread, if we could afford. I wanted to start baking again, but found that my hands still shake too much to measure everything as precisely as I need. The poison the Capitol pumped into me still flows through me, active and persistent. I've ruined even the simplest recipes I've tried to make, the ones that I was able to make perfectly at the age of seven. Now I'm standing over a colander full of uncooked beans, trying to learn the much less precise art of cooking, a task made even more difficult because I feel even more useless than I did when I was seven.
"My pantry is full of food, and I'm pretty sure your pantry is full of food," Katniss continues, interrupting my self-deprecating thoughts. "No one is starving to death." She stands beside me at the sink, watching. My hands twitch again causing the beans to jump. "That's not a step," she adds.
"Doesn't matter," I tell her. We're not touching. We've started touching again, hugging even. There have been nights when we've fallen asleep watching the fire together, sleeping sounder those nights, but we're not touching right now. She probably doesn't want to touch a failure. "I'm not going to get it right this time either." I feel like her gaze is drilling a hole into my skin, she stares at me so hard.
I've tried to make beans three times before this, and each time I've failed. The first time they burned. The second time, my hand twitched causing the finished beans to spill all over the floor before I could taste them. The third time, they were disgusting, completely inedible, a pot full of mush. After each attempt I trashed the kitchen in a hijacked rage, till someone found me. The experts in the Capitol say the process is agitating me. They changed their tune, suggesting I take more time before trying again, but I refuse to give up. If I can make the beans, like my father used to make them, then maybe I can be in control again.
"You should go to the woods," I tell her.
"No," she says. "I shot extra squirrels yesterday so we'd have enough left over for bread and black beans today." I scoff.
"Then I'll finish this at home," I say. I was only here this early because we fell asleep on the couch last night. Sae had also left the beans with Katniss, probably hoping that she would talk me out of it. "I don't want to be in your way if you're staying here all day."
"I don't think you should cook these at your house," she breathes quietly.
"You sound like everyone else. They keep telling me to do something easier like pasta with canned tomatoes," I say angrily.
"I didn't say that. I know this is important to you. I just said you shouldn't do it at your house. You'd be all alone…I know that makes it harder for you to keep your mind clear." I don't answer but my hand twitches again. "What comes after the soaking?"
"I'm supposed to put them in a sauce pan then add fresh water." She nods and reaches out a hand. I allow her to take the beans from me, before I turn off the water and start fishing around for a saucepan. She keeps them in the cabinet in the corner of the kitchen, or more likely that's where her mother put them when they moved in. Katniss never has been much of a cook. I set the pan on the counter next to the sink, taking the beans from her. She moves past me, to sit down at the small table in the kitchen. I dump the beans into the pan and turn the tap back on, adding the extra water Sae stressed I include.
It takes me five minutes to get control of my hands to light the stove, but I manage it. Katniss offers to help, but I refuse, insisting that I want to do this one my own. I need help with too many things now, with my unsteady shaking and fragile mental state. Half the time I need someone with me to remind me if what I'm looking at is real. I take a pinch of the seaweed from the pantry, which Sae said I should boil wit the beans. Annie sent me a bag. I watch it float in the water above the beans. Katniss doesn't say anything. She simply stares at me intently. Nothing happens. I look up at her, desperate.
"It's not boiling," I say. Even my voice sound dead and dejected.
"That's because you're watching it. Give it a minute. Talk to me instead. Tell me what needs to happen after the water boils."
"They need to boil for about two minutes." She makes a noncommittal noise to show she's following. "Then I'm supposed to reduce the heat to low, and either cover them or uncover them depending on the texture I want at the end."
"What texture do you want at the end?" I stare at her nonplused. I have no idea what covering or uncovering the beans would do to the texture.
"I don't know, but…my father always left them uncovered."
"So you've been leaving them uncovered." I nod dully, only half listening to her. "So you lower the heat and then leave them uncovered."
"Right," I say, picking up on her invitation to continue. "Then I check back often to see if they're ready. It should take somewhere between an hour or two."
"So they'll be ready for lunch." I shrug. She's staring at me intently. I look back down at the pot. It's still not boiling. My concern must show on my face. "The time would go by faster if you don't stand over them." She pauses, seeming to consider something.
"How long would it take you to make a loaf of bread?" I bite my lip.
"I can't make a loaf of bread Katniss," I snap, turning my back on her, so she can't see the pain crossing my face.
"In general. Could someone finish a loaf of bread by lunch?"
"Theoretically, but that person would need full control of their hands. They would need to be able to measure things out and hold steady. In other words they can't have tracker jacker venom seeping into their blood stream all the time!" I scream the last words, rounding on her, my whole body shaking in rage. I'm not yelling at her though. I'm yelling at the Capitol, the faceless guards and scientists who did this to me, at a president who has been dead for almost a year.
"What if…what if I did all the measuring?" I pause. She's ignored my outburst completely, for which I'm grateful, but I'm surprised at the kindness in her voice, which is normally so guarded. She seems softer, watching me struggle to do what I love. "You know how to do it, and I have steady hands. We'd be good partners." I can't help but laugh at her choice of words.
"I don't want your help Katniss. I want to be able to do things on my own."
"Why?" she asks, confused. "People work better in teams. You and I did better in the games when we were in the alliance during the Quell or when we had each other. Gale and I caught more game when we worked together. You can accomplish more with two people than with one. Needing help is nothing to be ashamed of." I look her up and down brow furrowed. "Please Peeta," she adds. "You're not the only one who misses fresh bread."
"Right because I believe this is just about the bread and not about you pitying me."
"I don't pity you," she corrects me quickly. I scoff. She scowls. "Your water is boiling." She's right. I take a deep breath, slowly stretching out my hand, focusing all my energy on keeping the twitches at bay. I grasp the nob to the stove and slowly turn it down. The instant I let go a sight of relief escapes my lips. My hands give a violent tremor. I look back up at Katniss. Her arms are crossed, scowl still in place.
"Alright," I agree. She stands up curtly, arms still crossed. "We need flour and sugar, oil, and water. Do you have any loaf pans? I can go get some from my house if you don't."
"My mother kept one around," Katniss says slowly. We begin opening all the cabinets searching. I'm just about to suggest Katniss call her mother to ask, which I know might well reduce her to tears, when she finds it in the back of the cabinet where I found the saucepot. Relief washes over me.
I pull out the flour, sugar, oil and yeast from her pantry she washes her hands in the sink. Once all the ingredients are on the counter next to her, I quickly rush to check the beans. Not done.
"They definitely need more time," she tells me, drying her hands off. "Think about something else. How do we do this?"
"We need to activate the yeast, so the dough will rise. You do that in warm water." I watch carefully as Katniss measures out the water and drops the yeast into it. While the yeast begins to froth in the water, Katniss fills the cup measurer to the brim with flour. I shake my head.
"You've got to even it out, so that it doesn't spill over the top like that."
"And how does one do that?" she asks, annoyed.
"Flat edge of a butter knife normally works." It takes a few minutes, but eventually the flour isn't over flowing, but rather resting, perfectly even with edges of the cup measure.
"Flat enough for you?"
"I'm satisfied." She rolls her eyes. She measures out all the ingredients, and combines them, before finally passing me the mixing bowl. Hands shaking for excitement, I take her mixer in one hand, and guide it around the ingredients, twisting the bowl in the way my father showed me with my free hand. It comes together, forming a goopy looking paste, and bubbles begin to pop as the yeast takes effect. A smile crosses my face. The smell of the flour and yeast fill the room. My heartbeat feels slower for the first time in months.
"What now?"
"Kneading." I slowly dump out flour on the clear counter top, coating my hands it in, taking a few extra seconds to run the powder between my fingers. The texture feels familiar, soothing. Just as I'm reaching for the dough though my hands twitch, nearly knocking it to the floor, but thankfully Katniss and her killer reflexes, catches it.
I twist away from her, instantly embarrassed. There's a soft thunk, as she sets the bowl back on the counter. I shift so I'm standing over the beans. I can hardly tell that the water below is bubbling. There's just the occasional ripple as the air bursts out of bubbles. For an instant I understand how the surface of the water must feel. All seems smooth, peaceful, surreal, until a bubble bursts, shifting the surface, making your hands shake uncontrollable, a constant reminder of what you've been through and what's happening bellow your surface. My heart stops as Katniss slides her small hand into my own, drawing me away from the beans.
"They aren't done," she whispers. Her hand that isn't holding mine finds my cheek and turns my face towards her. "Come knead the dough. I can hold your hands while you do it…try to keep them steady." I never fight her touching me. She positions me so I'm standing before the dough, which she patted down with flour, and placed in the middle of the space I made for it earlier. Standing behind me, she presses her forehead into the middle of my back, sliding her hands down my forearms till her palms are resting on the top of the back of my hand. She curls her fingers between the space of my own fingers, holding my hands steady, but allowing me complete control. I push the dough down with the heels of my palms. Her hands move with me as the dough surrenders to my touch.
My heart bet slows as we fall into a rhythm. I push the dough out, while holding some of it back, before rolling it all back together and pushing all of it away. The feeling of this activity is soothing. I feel like a child again, just learning the magical healing power of bread making. This is what kept me going when my mother would beat me. This is what kept me alive when I was trying to recover emotionally from the first games. This is the feeling of safety my twitching hands have been unable to give me. Even though I begin to move my whole body with the dough, Katniss remains flexible behind me, moving with me. Her grip on my hands is firm. My mind never strays, focusing on the dough and how it looks and the feeling of Katniss skin on mine. Her touch feels like weight, keeping me grounded. She and the dough feel like the first real occupants of this new world. I over knead the dough, not wanting this feeling to end.
"Thank you," I whisper, as I take the ball of dough, placing it in back in the bowl, covering it with a towel. Katniss never lets go of me. I can feel her breath on my back. "It needs to rise.
"Okay," she whispers. I turn, forcing her to finally release my hands. She grips the counter on either side of my hips, standing up straight, but keeping me between her arms. She's so close to me now. We both lean at the same time, catching each other's lips as they bravely careen forward. It's our first kiss since the war, since the Capitol, since her trail, since Prim, since all of it. Her lips are smoother than I remember. They give into my pressure, molding themselves against my own mouth, before pushing back. My lips mold to hers in return. I'm delirious. My heart is almost fluttering in my chest. I'm so excited. Her mouth, her taste, and her smell…everything finally seems real. I wrap my arms around her waist, covering her back in flour, but she doesn't stop. She places her hands on my cheeks. Our lips part slowly, but our bodies stay pressed together. We sway back and forth. I imagine her being as shocked and content as myself. For the first time in months my hands are not trembling.
"Peeta," she whispers. I moan softly into her hair, as I inhale the sent of her deeply. "The beans." The contentment washes away from me quickly, as I let go of her, my body sliding away from her own. I test the softness of the beans. They aren't there yet. Turning to her, I shake my head. She nods, keeping her distance from me. I feel a moment of panic before reminding myself that at least she's still in the room. The Katniss from before the war would have fled to the woods after a display like that. I consider bring it up, asking if she wants to talk but hold back.
"We should preheat the oven and maybe clean up a bit." She bobs her head again, eyes wide, like a lost animal. We move around the kitchen, cleaning up flower and pots and pans, not speaking. By the time the dough is done rising the kitchen is practically spotless. I manage to get the dough into the loaf pan without her help and slide it into the oven. Once it's closed I check the beans. After sticking my fork into the water, I find them to be as soft as I remembered the ones my father made being.
"Do you need the colander? " Katniss voice breaks through my nerves. I nod. "You dump and I'll hold it." I glance behind me. She has the colander poised above the sink so the water will simply drain away. I turn the heat off. My hands give a small twitch, but I barely notice. We're almost done. I pick up the pot by the handles on the side and move quickly, hoping my hands will be more likely to hold up if I'm going fast. I aim for the colander as I pour the water out and her the splat of the beans as they hit the bottom. I look at Katniss' hands to see that they're gripping a colander full of cooked black beans, steam coming off them.
"Well," Katniss prompts. "What are you waiting for? Get a fork and try them." I look at her, eyes wide, fearful. "It's going to be okay," she tells me. "Sae has plenty more black beans, and I'll make sure she sells them to you, if you need to try again." I want to laugh, but my throat is too tight and closed off. I find the fork on the counter behind me, before rounding on the beans once more. I stab a few with the fork and bring them slowly to my mouth, past the lips that were touching Katniss' less than an hour ago.
"How are they?" she asks, worriedly. I take a minute to think it over.
"Bland," I tell her honestly. "Edible, but very bland. Just the way my father used to make them." She sighs, her muscles unclenching and her whole body relaxing.
"That sounds perfect," she whispers. It almost sounds like a breath instead of words. The ding of the oven stops me from answering. Wordlessly I pull the bread out of the oven, leaving it on the racks to cool. Katniss pulls out the seasoned and cooked squirrel meat the Sae left us. I transfer the beans to a bowl and place it one the table while Katniss gets plates. I slice the bread open, as she sets the table, bring the meat over last. She provided the meat. I cooked the beans, and we made the bread together. This is the first meal we've ever eaten together, where we are both equally responsible for everything on the table. This thought calms me as I sit down with the woman, who has kept me alive, who I have always loved. She covers her slice of bread with beans and meat before taking a huge bite.
"Not bad," she says. "I mean it's not a Capitol delicacy, but I can see how this would have been a treat for you and your brothers." Sadness courses through me. I miss them, yet I seem to have a piece of them in front of me. I cover my own slice the way Katniss did, and take a bite. It tastes like my favorite dinner from my childhood. I realize as I chew that I closed my eyes. Upon opening them I'm almost surprised not to see my father and mother and brothers, but Katniss smiles at me. I don't feel alone in this world. We eat and eat and eat, until there is no more bread left, no more meat, and my first successful batch of beans is nothing but a memory.
"Maybe we should tell Sae not to come and make us dinner," Katniss says, leaning back in her chair. "I'm so full I don't know if I'll want to eat for the rest of the day." A vision flashes before my eyes. She's younger, half dead, underneath a tree. Her face is gaunt and you can almost see every bone in her body. She seems too weak to move. This is how I saw her earlier today, when she first entered the kitchen. I can almost feel the bread leave my hands, burned and bouncing till it's as close to her as I can safely get it. I don't need to ask her if it's real. She's burned that way in my mind and I can't seem to stop seeing it. I'm compelled forward grabbing her hand, drinking in the sight of present day Katniss, fed and strong.
"You're really full?" I ask so quickly I'm not sure if she's understood me, but her eyes light up. She touches the side of my cheek and nods. Tears begin to fall.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I'm just really happy you aren't hungry." She leans her forehead against mine.
"I'm glad you're not hungry too," she whispers, before pressing her lips against mine, just for an instant. I feel alive. My hands aren't trembling. I feel steady. I feel fed. I feel in control.
AN: I got the idea for this story when I was asked to share what helped me manage stress and feel in control for work. I always feel better about myself and more confident in my ability to handle my busy schedule when I've got a lot of healthy homemade food in the fridge just waiting to be heated up. Shortly after this I was making black bean tacos and listening to the Hunger Games audio book. I started thinking about how it probably felt for Peeta and Katniss to start becoming more independent in regards to food as they healed. Food was always a huge part of their stories and their struggles, and it struck me that preparing it would probably be closely related to how they healed after the war.
I'm also going to be honest. I had to google how to make black beans and bread from scratch because I always buy them canned/premade. That seemed out of character for Peeta though. He'd be more old fashioned with his methods, being a baker's son. I hope that you enjoyed it, and please feel free to leave a comment!