Title: Tabula Rasa
Rating: T
Summary: Cinna designs, Peeta bakes, and Katniss just survives. Before, after, and what happened in between.
Genre: Drama/General
Spoilers: Mild ones for the end.
Words: 2170
Disclaimer: I know an old lady who swallowed a disclaimer. I don't know why she swallowed a disclaimer. I guess she'll die. But at least she won't have any lawsuits brought against her for borrowing other people's characters.
A/N: I took part in a charity auction that donated money to people for the Queensland flood in Australia. This was written for angel_in_tears on LiveJournal, who asked for something with Peeta, Katniss, and/or Cinna.
Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa n., pl., tab·u·lae ra·saea
a. The mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience
b. The unformed, featureless mind in the philosophy of John Locke
c. A need or an opportunity to start from the beginning
It takes four months for her ears to stop ringing.
Katniss tries to tell herself that her mother must've called during that time, must've wondered how her oldest – (only) – daughter was doing in such a big house so far away from it all. It's supposed to feel like home. But all District Twelve feels like now is a place from a distant dream that she might have, possibly, once been able to call home. And when she realizes that the reason she didn't hear her mother call wasn't because she couldn't hear it from her poor hearing, but because the phone never rang at all – all she can think of is how having her mother back around the house would just make it harder to ignore people, anyway.
She doesn't quite envy Peeta's ability to want to forget, to shove it all under the rug in order to look calm and collected and sane enough to spend the days baking bread or running down to the town square to help with construction. That's just Peeta, she tells herself, he'll be fine. He knows how to take care of himself. He doesn't need you anymore.
And she still doesn't care if Gale wants forgiveness. It doesn't even seem as if he cares all that much, either. All she knows is that she doesn't quite have it in her to hate or love him – or love or hate much of anything – anymore. Her heart feels like it's frozen, exhausted, suspended high above the rest of them all. She doesn't want to run the nation or help rebuild it. She just wants to sleep.
Peeta knows his time is running short.
Glimmer doesn't trust him, anyway. She sends him looks as they hike through the trees, distrusting glances that reminds him of how much it's worth it, keeping these people away from Katniss, if he can just keep himself alive to see her victory through to the end.
The District 4 girl, Reese, had spat on his shoe when he came to them with his proposition. In case the worst should happen, he imagines he could stall her: she's swift, but he is strong, and he could detain her, at least, if she were to go after Katniss. It'll have to do.
Clove doesn't seem to care that he's joined their party. She spends most of her time sharpening her knives, testing the blades on her skin to makes sure they draw the most blood with the least amount of force. She's ruthless, but she's not invincible. Katniss could easily handle her.
He doesn't even bother trying to assess Cato's weaknesses. All Cato does is ask questions about Katniss – questions designed to make him uncomfortable, to let weakness shine through, but Peeta wouldn't respond to them even if he knew the answers.
Peeta knows he doesn't stand a chance against any of these opponents in a hand-to-hand fight. But he has brains, and the least he can do is use them – this long-term plan is all he has, and Haymitch had told him that the star-crossed lovers' image is gold: he just has to drag it out as long as he can and then pass the baton to Katniss when it's her time to kill him.
The audience will love it.
Cinna Roland was offered to style for the tributes of Districts Four, Seven, and Eight before they finally agreed to let him settle with Twelve. His mother had been appalled.
"How could you work for that filth?" she screeched at him as he moved through the house, packing up what little things he was taking with him to his new apartment in the Capitol. "The shame – disgrace – my own son – my sister was killed in those damn Games! And now you're working for them!"
Of course, he was going anyway. He hadn't stayed up in the night sketching designs and stuffed extra clothing underneath the floorboards of his room for years just to be told no at the last minute by his mother, of all people. Or his brothers. Which would be even worse.
"I've seen what stylists look like afterwards – and they look ridiculous, cat ears and tails and green skin – "
Such a large difference in the "fashionable" physical appearances of the stylists themselves had to be addressed, of course. Unfortunately, the most he could afford to dress himself up for his Capitol entrance was a slather of some rare hair gel he'd saved up for and decorations of gold eyeliner highlighting his green eyes. He knew it would be pointless to fit in, and he wasn't trying to convince anyone he belonged there, anyway. He just wanted to design. It would have to do.
" – and I hope you rot there, end up like the rest of them! Those old Games stylists – once they use you for all you're worth, you're useless, and you could get us all murdered, one false slip of the tongue – "
Ah, that was it. She wasn't worried about it because he might be hurt – but because the family might be murdered. Well, no matter. It wasn't in his interest getting messed up in the affairs of rebels or anti-Capitol groups, really. He wasn't an idiot.
Her hair was frizzed, her forehead sweaty and her cheeks pale. A bit of spit flew out of her mouth as she took another stab at cracking his resolve, trying to convince him to stay at home, stay to take care of her. Be his slave, instead of the Capitol's. At least, if he worked with the Games, he could make a mark with his fashion. He would do more than cook and clean for a mother that sat around and screamed insults at the back of his head.
"I knew it." She spat at his shirt. He squeezed past her through the hallway and headed out the door (don't respond she'll only yell more and if you speak you know she'll convince you to stay whatever you do don't start another argument you're so close to freedom you're this close), carrying the last suitcase. "You're as worthless as that bastard I married – good riddance, too, you disgusting pig – "
Cinna knew that she would be fine without him, knew that his older brothers could take care of her just fine, even if they liked to push the task onto the youngest: he was the designer, the artist. In his family, you were encouraged to do whatever you wanted – as long as you wanted to become a Peacekeeper. Consideration of any other occupation was practically a cardinal sin.
"Should've kicked you out as soon as you were dismissed from the Peacekeeper Training Squad – "
He'd submitted some of his designs for consideration to be a stylist for the 74th Hunger Games. Apparently, in the year following the 73rd, one had gone missing. Not many were sure why, and those who knew, of course, were keeping quiet. All he knew for sure was that that man had made the mistake a week earlier of sharing stories his grandfather would tell him about life before the Dark Days. Before the Games.
"What a goddamn waste you've been – Terren and Nathaniel were good boys, upstanding, they would never betray their family, their own mother – I knew you were the odd one, the weak link – "
This was the sort of thing people waited for their entire lives, wasn't it? So of course he'd taken the job. He'd seen Terren and Nathaniel smoking on street corners, spending their money on booze and nightclubs while claiming to be looking for jobs, wanting success without having to work for it. He'd thought that telling them he was leaving would be the worst confrontation he'd face, but he had, of course, forgotten to consider his mother's wrath. And he understood why his mother was upset, he did. It just wasn't enough to convince him to stay.
Cinna threw the last case in the back of his car and climbed in. His mother screamed useless obscenities from the porch – no longer an attempt at getting him to stay as much as it was just force of habit by now.
He didn't understand why they hated him so much. He was just going after what they wanted for themselves.
Her dreams are filled with blood that screams, voices and ghosts that drag her down into that chasm in the Capitol streets that had nearly swallowed her whole – but she knows they're only night terrors, even if she can't wake up. Telling herself they aren't real doesn't help all that much, but Peeta doesn't show up, can't show up (he fights his own battles at night, Katniss, don't be selfish, you can't have him to yourself all the time), and she trudges on through the horrors alone.
She wants to be able to call up Gale and tell him how much she misses him, talk about how much he must care that they never talk anymore, remind him of how much they once loved each other. Perhaps not like lovers, perhaps not like just friends – but they had loved each other still the same, hadn't they? She thought it had mattered. She thought they could do anything. A little thing like love seems like nothing compared to what they've done now.
She sees pictures on the television, broadcasts speaking about the casualties of war. She sees patients with missing limbs, eyes gouged out with fingernails, people whose skin has been peeled off and burned and shredded. She scratches her heart, trying to find something there that might resemble compassion, or horror, or outrage. Nothing.
Katniss doesn't know if she wants to be loved – she just wants to know if she can be.
Peeta wants to believe he's here for a reason: perhaps to die for the rebel cause, perhaps to give all of what he has into protecting Katniss again – but all evidence points otherwise, because he can't think of any reason why he's here, why it should be him, why he might have been chosen for this life –
"Peeta!"
He ducks Brutus's claw-like hand, a fist large and heavy enough to serve as a paperweight coming towards him at an alarming speed –
Finnick jabs with his trident, grazes Brutus's forearm –
It's not a matter of winning and losing, Peeta realizes, gritting his teeth as he feels Cashmere's inch-long nails pierce his skin in a vice-like grip from behind. Reasoning doesn't matter once you're dead. It is just lasting it out, it is just taking care of your priorities. Doing what you can to make it to the next sunrise, making sure your family has bread on the table. It is surviving.
And in a world like this, that is all anybody expects from you, anyway.
He'd came with good intentions, sure. And it would be all too easy to design her outfit like the others', with those ridiculous coal-themed suits that would just serve as humiliation for her and that Peeta boy – but that wasn't his job, to choose the easy way out, and he didn't come to the Capitol to do what was expected. He wanted to make a difference in his artwork. He just wanted to be smart about it.
"Don't fuck this up," Haymitch Abernathy had told him when they had met the week before the reaping of the 74th Hunger Games. "I don't want a repeat of last year. The rebel groups are getting antsy and they're looking to recruit the next winners that aren't Careers. A district poor like 12, needy, suffering from the Capitol's tyranny, is what they're aiming for. I want you to make this year's District 12 tributes unforgettable. Give them a chance in the arena. Can you do that for me?"
"Of course," Cinna said patiently, "but my job is not to give these rebels what they want. I'm not interested in getting involved with this revolution stuff. I just want to design."
Haymitch had paused, then snorted and said, "You'd be surprised how many said the same thing before running off to District 13."
And he'd met Katniss. Katniss, who had been forced to stand before him, nude and shivering for him to inspect, for the sake of art and fashion; Katniss, who had sacrificed herself for her little sister; Katniss, who was a fighter and a survivor and who was not, he knew, going to be taken down in the bloodbath and the Cornucopia. Katniss was going to make it. Perhaps not all the way. Perhaps not to see the end of the Capitol's tyranny. But Cinna knew the rebels were getting restless, were going to move soon, and if there was one thing he could do for them, it might be to give them a warrior they were looking for.
He had told himself he wouldn't get involved with any anti-government movements or propaganda. Even Haymitch hadn't been able to convince him otherwise. But Katniss… perhaps, for someone like Katniss Everdeen, he would consider it.