Peeta's hands were stained a dozen different colours, the tips of his fingers bright blue from the latest jar of food colouring that now lay shattered on the floor. Angrily he ran his hands across his face, wiping at the tears that now ran in blue streaks down his cheeks. With a loud smash the next glass jar hit the wall, its crimson contents leaking out into the mess of colours that ran down the once stark white surface.

A door slammed behind him and Peeta spun round, a jar of burnt sienna already in his hand. Haymitch barely glanced at him as he swung past the distraught boy, glass crunching beneath his boots as he swaggered through the living room and into the kitchen.

Peeta stood frozen, his arm still raised and his fingers shaking around the small glass jar. He stared at the retreating, filthy back of his former mentor, seething. The jar of food colouring slipped from his grasp, clattering to the marble floor and rolling into the hallway towards the crisp white envelope that lay unopened at the front door.

"Boy!"

Peeta sank to his knees, shards of glass digging into his skin through his jeans. He rested his hands on the floor. Small drops of crimson blood swelled from his vibrant fingers.

"Boy!"

Sweeping them through the mess on the floor he piled the shards of stained coloured glass onto a heap. Smears of colour spread across the marble surface, streaked with blood and tears.

"BOY!"

He rose slowly, with a glazed look and his brow furrowed in either annoyance or pain, he wasn't sure which. Haymitch was about to bellow again when he entered the kitchen, and instead sat there with his mouth gaping horribly and the anger brought on by white spirit clear on his face. In his hands was a slab of cake, which he had been smothering with generous amounts of white icing.

"Why are you here, Haymitch?" Peeta whispered, and for some reason his voice shook. It might have been his anger from earlier, or was that pain, or worse, fear? It might have been the adrenaline, or the loss of blood. The cake definitely had something to do with it. The cake that Haymitch was stuffing his face on. The cake, and the envelope.

Haymitch had sliced himself another slab of cake with his pocket knife, pulling it apart with his hands and stuffing it into his mouth. He ran his fingers along the rim of the bowl of icing and continued shovelling cake without so much as glancing at Peeta.

"What do you-?"

"I tried to call you. To ask. You didn't listen so, helped myself to cake," he grumbled drunkenly, and Peeta wished he'd hurled the jars of food colouring at his old mentor instead of at the wall. Disgusted, he opened his mouth to start shouting at the drunken fool, the insensitive bastard, when Haymitch spoke again.

"You got mail." This time he looked right into Peeta's eyes, and for a moment he was as sober as he could get. What he saw in those eyes scared Peeta, for they were filled with the same emotions he was feeling. Anger. Fear. Pain. Loss. No, not loss. Not yet.

With a heavy heart, he knew that it was time to do what he'd been dreading from the moment he heard the squeak of the letter box and seen the envelope lying on the simple brown welcome mat. Peeta walked back through the living room, leaving bright coloured footsteps and crushed glass in his wake. He heard Haymitch get up behind him, the crunch of his heavy boots on glass as he followed Peeta to the front door. For a moment he just stood there, staring at the envelope that lay so innocently at his feet. He took a deep breath. Then another. All the while he couldn't turn to face Haymitch, whose stare burned a hole in his back. Finally he knelt down and lifted it up. Staring back up at him was a symbol that sent another wave of paralyzing emotions over Peeta.

A gold ring, with at its centre a mockingjay.