At 6am on Monday morning...
Peeta shifted the first batch of bread into the ovens an hour ahead of his customary schedule, having abandoned his efforts to sleep after a tremendous mutt hybrid flattened him to the ground and flagrantly defied his previous assumption that death could not claim a dreamer. Instead of succumbing to the prickling anxiety about his upcoming breakfast engagement, he started taking inventory of his kitchen, making a particular note to request more cinnamon. He wondered what kinds of flavors Katniss preferred, and the ensuing frustration at the determined absence of answers his mind could produce prompted such a spike of anger that he had to abandon the errand altogether to avoid instigating an episode.
Haymitch pulled a face as the square of buttery light indicating sunrise finally finished its migration across the floor to settle on the side of his face. He supposed he ought to locate a suitable slumber surface for his nocturnal tuck-in, but the couch was so far away, and the carpet suited him just fine. A strange, stale smell emanated from a bag of something discarded to his left, so he simply turned his head to the right and let nothingness claim him.
Buttercup gleefully thrust herself from her perch on a dusty chest in the basement toward the floor, cinching her front paws around a breakfast that squealed and struggled to escape. After polishing off the rodent, she set about intensively cleaning her limbs and attempted to determine where to deposit the ensuing hairball to most effectively annoy her human cohabitant.
Katniss dimly registered the foreign substance pouring through the windows as a supreme aggravation insofar as it rudely infringed upon her wallowing. Her face pinched in annoyance and she briefly considered rising to draw the blinds before summarily dismissing the notion as requiring the kind of initiative and effort she just plain couldn't summon anymore. Instead, she shifted onto her stomach to burrow her face straight into the pillow. Maybe the odds would be in her favor for once and she would suffocate.
Katniss reluctantly shuffled to her bathroom, well aware of Sae's command that she actually migrate to the kitchen for breakfast this morning as opposed to perfecting the body-shaped divot in her mattress. Something about improving mentality, and inspiring hope, and reclaiming what was lost…. In any event, it somehow necessitated Katniss' presence, and while she couldn't imagine how she would inspire anything but suicidal tendencies in anyone, she knew Sae's Seam-stubbornness rivaled and possibly exceeded her own, honed by additional years in the miserable conditions of this life, and that resistance would be futile.
She studiously avoided the mirror, instead sloshing her face with water and grimacing, as ever, at the patched skin of her lower arms. Permanent evidence of her failure, forever etched in the portions of her limbs she had to consistently view.
She wondered about the other fellow who shared these markings, whose arrival yesterday had inspired her first shower in months. Her hair had required three hours of subtle coaxing punctuated by the occasional frustrated yank to free itself from its exuberant matting while Buttercup watched on with something resembling amusement. It seemed that all the will and drive remaining in her useless body had migrated to her hair, which utilized the energy to smash itself together in one giant mass of knots. Was he baking? Plying Seam citizens into accepting free bread with his seemingly infinite charm? In the throngs of a flashback? She supposed she had no right to wonder anymore, no right to know. She had failed him. In her one job, she had failed spectacularly, and she well deserved any misery that ensued.
She was dimly aware, however, in some buried, ignored portion of her psyche, that his arrival had somehow punctured the endless, dark-in-dark waiting that pervaded after Haymitch had escorted her on the train and deposited her unceremoniously back in District 12. Through a thick fog of misery, she occasionally perceived a hushed, breathless sense of… something percolating gently on the horizon, a tiny star glistening through the dense fog of night. Perhaps… hope? Who could tell. She experienced difficulty differentiating anything anymore.
Her bare feet stuck slightly to the wooden steps as she descended the stairwell, her arms tucked protectively over her chest as though if she folded herself in enough times she would eventually wink away to nothingness. Low voices echoed from the kitchen, one of each gender, and she wondered how Sae had convinced Haymitch to attend breakfast when he preferred to spend the daylight hours safely ensconced in an alcohol-fused stupor.
But as she shuffled into the kitchen, a familiar boy with vibrant yellow hair and eyes that just plain didn't know how not to shine with life immediately turned to her from his position at the dining table that hadn't seen use since before the Quell. He had gained back a good portion of the weight his tenure at the Capital had shaved off of him, and seemed on his way back to the stocky frame that had provided the weight and steadiness to anchor her throughout the turmoil of recent years. Those stupid, stupid eyes gleamed even brighter as he smiled at her, the ensuing voice clanging deep inside of her like a tremendous bell, shattering frozen corners of her and infusing them with light.
"Good morning, Katniss."