PART ONE | THE SPARK

CHAPTER ONE

I knead the dough beneath my hands in a therapeutic rhythm. Despite the frozen air, the door to the bakery is wide open. Chilly winds help keep the sweat from soaking me; all of the ovens are on and working hard, but not as hard as I am. There are piles and piles of bread, ready to be cooked and sold in the bakery. Occasionally, my mother comes into the kitchens, her stern face wishing she could tell me to stop wasting all of her ingredients, but what would be the point? We have enough money to buy more. We can always eat what we don't sell. There's no point any more.

By noon, everybody will be here. My prep team, my stylist, the cameramen, the reporters, Effie Trinket... Everybody. They'll dress me up and parade me for weeks on end for the victory tour; where I'll have no privacy or time to myself apart from when I get to sleep. Even then, in sleep, my nightmares keep me company. So there isn't much else I can do right but bake. Bake the Games away, bake the nightmares away, bake the Victory Tour away. Just bake.

If it were up to me, I would try to forget about the Hunger Games entirely. I've been catatonic, lying in bed and not wanting to eat for so many weeks after I came back. It isn't just heartbreak that has been beating me up, taking the life away from me. It's the flashbacks, the faces that haunt me, the cruel and cold hand of death on my shoulder. The Victory Tour makes forgetting impossible, though. Placed just a few months before the new Games begin and the last Games end, it's impossible to escape the grip of the Capitol for long enough to forget.

Not that I ever really could forget, anyway. Not truly.

Ever since coming back to District 12, Katniss and I have barely seen each other or talked to her. Whenever I do see her, she avoids my gaze as much as possible. Truthfully, I think she's avoiding me. Months have passed since I've last been able to kiss her, yet my heart still craves her love and affection with each passing day.

Deep down, I know she did what she thought was right. All she wanted was for us both to survive, so she played the Capitol but in turn, she played me. I can't help but forgive her, still. I'm here right now doing everything that I am because of what she did, but that doesn't it stop it hurting like hell. Even with all of this, though, there's a tiny part of me that niggles at my brain, reminding me of our last real kiss and how nobody, not even someone as skilled as Katniss, could fake what I felt in that kiss. It wasn't just me that put love into it; it was her, too.

The sun keeps rising, and soon I have to force myself to stop. As soon as I do, my muscles bark in protest, aching from overuse. I've gained back a lot of my muscle definition and weight from being back here, spoiled in money and riches and even living in a new house in the Victors Village. By the time I make it back, I've only got an hour or so until everybody arrives and chaos ensues around me. Instead of going home, I make my way over to Haymitch's house which is just a few doors down from my own house in the same vicinity. Flour naturally blows off my shirt and trousers as the chilly breeze blows around me, making goosebumps arrive all over my skin.

Haymitch's door is open when I arrive, and I hear both he and Katniss conversing. My heart is empty in my chest at the sound of her voice, the picture of her face. The emptiness replaced the pain a long time ago, or else there is no way I could be coping right now.

"Why am I all wet?" I hear Haymitch say.

"I couldn't shake you awake," Katniss grunts. "Look, if you wanted to be babied, you should have asked Peeta."

Hearing her saying my name sends a knot in my stomach, twisting with unpleasant emotions of heartbreak, sadness and a tiny bit of betrayal. "Ask me what?" I say, entering the room. Haymitch is lying on the table, empty bottles of liquor around him and soaking wet. Bits of water drip off the table slowly. Katniss stands over him, surveying me slowly. How long has it been since we've been in a room together, so close yet so far apart?

I cross the table, setting a loaf of freshly baked bread that I took from the bakery. I imagine doing that back before the Games - my mother would have killed me. Probably very literally killed me.

"Asked you to wake me without giving me pneumonia," Haymitch says, passing a knife over to me which I douse in some white liquor to clean it. I smile at him.

"Would you like a piece?" I ask Katniss. It's the first words I've said to her in months.

"No, I ate at the Hob," she says. "But thank you."

Her voice sounds so formal it takes me aback. "You're welcome," I say stiffly.

Haymitch's face crumples. "Brrr. You two have of a lot of warming up to do before showtime." he tells us.

He's right, of course. The last time the Capitol saw us, we were a pair of infatuated teenagers who would do (and did) literally anything to be with each other. Now, we're just two people who avoid each other like a disease made of pain and sorrow. "Take a bath, Haymitch." Katniss says, changing the subject before leaving through an open window.

Sighing, I turn back to Haymitch and keep cutting the bread. There's a thick silence between us. Not only have I barely seen Katniss, but I haven't seen Haymitch either. To be truthful, I've been hiding away in the bakery, taking up all of my time with decorating cakes and cooking. Whenever my mother actually does shoo me away from the kitchen, I paint. I try to paint away the pain of the Games, by soaking them up on a canvas.

The silence doesn't exactly last long. Haymitch breaks it. "Still unbearably in love with her?" he sayS. I give a small, impassable nod of the head. "If you don't mind me asking... Why exactly do you love her?"

"Haymitch-" I say, but he breaks me off.

"Is it the intolerable arrogance? The snarly attitude?" he says sarcastically.

"Look, I don't want to talk about this, OK?" I say.

He gets up from his seat, the wood scraping on the floor sending cutting chills through me. "Well too bad, Lover Boy," Haymitch retorts, using the nickname that the Careers gave me in the Games. "You're going to have to talk about for weeks on end, starting in just an hour. And not just talk about it. Live it. Feel it."

"But it's not real," I say. "It's... not real for her." A hard lump forms in my throat, and I feel almost like I'm going to cry but I can't. Not here, not now.

Haymitch gives me a hard look. "You know better than that."

Before I can question him any more than that, he walks off and up the stairs, taking a bottle of liquor with him and swigging it as he goes. After a minute, I hear the water start running into his bathtub, hitting hard against the porcelain. I recompose myself before leaving and heading back home where the prep team will no doubt await me.