And so, I breathe. Go through the motions of life and hope they might start to mean something again. Living with Haymitch is like living alone. He said he'd visit, but his promises are quickly forgotten in the depths of his bottles.
Alone like this, with Prim and Gale and even Mother gone, with District 12 alive with nothing but ghosts, nothing to keep my nightmares at bay, I dream of the faces of those killed by my hand, the faces of those long gone. I awake huddled on the floor, wrenching at my door, staggering down the hall, never in my bed. Always trying to escape.
Always unable.
But then something changes.
Maybe this is the something I'd been waiting for after all.
Three nights after Gale departs, I double-take out my living room window at lights dancing in the former Mellark residence, no doubt from a small fire in the hearth. I linger, wondering if some squatter has decided to live large in a Victor's house. In Peeta's house. The thought angers me, makes me wish for the first time I had my bow within reach.
A few rummagings in closets later, I do. One of my old bows, whittled by my father's hand, made of only coarse materials available then in District 12. It feels more natural in my palm than an arsenal of high-tech Capitol weapons.
Only when I'm clutching the weapon do I realize how loathe I am to use it. How loathe I am to point it at another human being. Even if that person is desecrating Peeta's home.
I decide to consult Haymitch.
It's late, but that doesn't mean much. He's as likely to be awake now as ever.
"What?" he barks when he picks up his phone. On the tenth ring. Not comatose, then. Not yet. Which might explain the irritation.
I ask him about the lights at Peeta's place.
He's outraged. "You called me about some lights?"
I'm impatient. "Do I need to go and encourage the person to move along?"
"If you want. It's Peeta."
My stomach drops out.
Peeta.
Peeta's here.
Haymitch says something about the doctors finally releasing him, he's as cured as he's gonna get, and he's stopped by to say hello already. Three days ago.
Then he hangs up.
Questions cluster around my brain like vultures. How did Peeta arrive without me noticing? Why did he stop by to see Haymitch first? Why hasn't he said hello to me?
There are any number of reasons: He hates me. He doesn't want to see me. He doesn't remember me.
Why did he come back?
That's the only question I think I can answer. He came back for the same reason I did. To put maximum distance (11 other Districts) between himself and the Capitol. To come home. Perhaps his doctors suggested familiar surroundings to speed his continued recovery.
He hasn't said hello to me for a reason. Whatever that reason is, I will respect it. And I won't say hello to him, either.
I'm too afraid it won't be my Peeta who says hello back.
Ø
Days pass, and I don't see Peeta.
But I see where he's been. I see his boot prints in the soot that blankets the town square, trace his pilgrimage to each of our old haunts, to the site of his family's bakery, where only the brick skeleton of the ovens remain, to our school, and even to the shack in the Seam where I had lived. The last gives me pause, as I don't recall ever seeing him on this side of town. I'm surprised he knows where I lived once. I'm surprised he can find it now.
I don't know why he came.
Where he's been, I see freshly dug mounds of dark earth.
There are too many for him to bury alone.
Yet still he tries.
Ø
I dream that night of Prim, somewhere on the front lines of a battle. There's danger, but she doesn't seem to see it, waddling around like a little duck, bobbing to and fro. I'm there, too, but I can't reach her, can't save her. Not this time.
I can't move, can't speak. I can only watch as she burns right up, a human torch. She's still smiling at me as she dies. They bury what's left of her, crumbling bits of ash.
When I wake, there are tears on my face. My throat is raw.
A dream, I tell myself. It was just a dream.
Yet the noise continues—the shallow ring of earth against a shovel. Somewhere close. In my yard or nearby. I peek out my window, but I can't see anything from this angle. Definitely close, right below my room.
It's too early for Haymitch. And manual labor isn't quite his style.
Throwing on my robe, I head downstairs and open the side door to see that someone is indeed digging a grave. Someone so wasted, shrunken somehow, I almost don't recognize him. But it's him. I know it by the color of his hair, darker now than when we were children. I know it by the strength of his jaw. And I know it by how he's coaxing the earth as gently as if herding downy goslings.
After moments that seem like lifetimes, he catches my silhouette in the doorway, and this is the moment. The moment where I see Peeta's eyes—or I don't.
He straightens, wipes an arm across his brow, muscles playing under raw skin, and looks up.
And I see.
Eyes the color of sky after storm. Clear, pure, and drinking me in. Those eyes look at me for a long, long time, all of me.
"How's Gale?" he asks, as though he's asking about the weather. His eyes are weary and wary, but they're his eyes. They're still open and kind. They're still giving me a way out.
I think I know now why Peeta didn't stop by to say hello when he arrived. Looks like he and Gale must have come in on the same train. What must Peeta have thought, to see Gale also returning to District 12? And why hadn't Gale mentioned it? Perhaps he hadn't known.
"Gale's gone," is all I can choke out.
"Ah," he says, turning back to the earth. I stand watching as he finishes supplanting the last in a series of small bushes that are now lining the side of my house. Then he stands back and admires his handiwork, leaning on his shovel.
He doesn't explain why he's gardening on this fine morning, and I don't ask. Perhaps he just needed an excuse to approach me. Perhaps, like me, he needed something with which to occupy his hands.
Now that he's here, now that I've seen him, I don't want him to leave.
"Would you like some breakfast?" I ask.
He turns to ponder me for a moment, eyes distant.
Then he smiles.
Ø
Our lives flow together, weak trickles uniting to a steady stream.
The days go thus: I destroy, he creates; I hunt, he bakes. We consume. We bury our dead. We make plans to rebuild, pacing off the town square and throwing out ideas for this and that.
After a simple supper of my meat and his bread, we watch the monitor. Most of Plutarch's new programming is too still upbeat, too bright, tooCapitol for us to truly appreciate, but we do religiously watch the news segment. We've stepped back from the world, yes, but we know too readily how quickly apathy can slip into atrocity.
We watch as President Coin's administration stumbles to its feet, less the newborn colt that she would wish and more the awakening of a drunkard. We watch as she advocates a final Hunger Games using children from the Capitol, including one granddaughter of the ex-President Snow. We look at each other, horrified, death in our eyes. Three phone calls later, we learn we're not the only ones who vehemently oppose this idea. We're not the only ones sickened by death, by retaliation, by District 13's callous disregard for life.
We also learn that the Mockingjay's call is still answered.
Tune in next week, and we see Alma Coin impeached from office. My hand finds Peeta's, the first time our skin has touched since he's come home. We watch as Coin is dragged from behind her desk by her own soldiers, ice-gray hair wild, askew.
That night, we're giddy. We're smiling and we're laughing and we're celebrating. I haven't seen Peeta smile this much since…ever.
He's humming to himself in the kitchen, whipping up something. "It's a surprise," he says, shooing me out. So I head down to the cellar and carve a hunk out of the hindquarters of the latest buck I'd brought down. With newfound time and freedom, I can devote myself to bigger game. I'd stalked this one for three days in the forest and finally slid it home using a makeshift sled fashioned from tree branches. Gale would have been proud.
In half an hour, Peeta pokes his head into the dining room to see what I'm up to. His hair is tousled and damp from heat, and there's a streak of flour on his cheek. When he spies the venison splayed on the table, his nose crinkles, though his eyes twinkle.
"What, no squirrel?" It's a rhetorical question, as he knows I haven't been killing vermin recently. Peeta's got a soft spot for squirrel. Fond memories from childhood, and all that.
I toss a chunk of gristle at him. It splats against the wall at least a foot away from where Peeta is smirking at me. He doesn't even blink.
"Best stick to arrows," he says, then ducks back into the kitchen before I can launch my next missile.
I call after him, "And you'd best stick to the kitchen." The oven creaks, and a delightful smell wafts my way. I know this smell. "Wouldn't want your so-called special surprise to burn."
I expect some witty retort of the ilk we've been trading all night. Something about how, as a chef extraordinaire, his cuisine can't possibly burn. It would just as soon hop out of the oven on its own before it dared.
But silence is my only answer. And the silence does not smile. A beat later, metal clatters to the floor, magnified and loud against the tile. From somewhere, Buttercup yowls. I expect to hear Peeta's laughter, as he assures me that everything's okay, he just tripped over the cat. It's Buttercup's favorite game, darting about underfoot when you least expect him.
But still I hear nothing.
It's too quiet.
The wrong kind of quiet.
I surge up from the dining table and round into the kitchen. Peeta is nowhere to be seen. The oven is gaping wide, heat pouring from its maw. A bake pan is upended nearby, buns spilled on the floor. Stepping gingerly around them, I find Peeta crouched against the kitchen island, as if hiding from something. Or someone.
"Peeta?" There's still a hint of a laugh in my voice, but it fades when he flinches at the sound, eyes screwed closed. His skin is pale and clammy, a far cry from the ruddy face that had been teasing me but a minute earlier. He's still wearing a pink, frilly oven mitt. My hands skim the air above his broad shoulders, bunched and hunched, uncertain what's wrong. "Did you burn yourself?"
His eyes wrench open at that, cold and wild. And then the oven mitt is warm over my mouth and nose, and Peeta's forearm is against my throat. He slams me, hard, into a nearby cabinet. Wood cuts into my lower back.
There's still flour on his cheek.
I can't say any words, can hardly breathe. I mouth his name against his hand (a muffled ee-a), but he can't hear. He can't hear anything at all. He's intent, laser-focused on his arm pressing into my neck.
This is serious. Dead serious.
Instinct kicks in, and I go feral, lunging and scratching at any body part in reach. Peeta grunts and slaps away my increasingly feeble attempts. He's not as strong as he once was, but he's still a lot stronger than I am. So strong that I can't breathe.
Panic. I think of my knife from earlier. But it's useless, sitting too far away on the table where I'd left it. And there's nothing else nearby, nothing within reach on these impeccable cabinets. Through long-standing habit, Peeta keeps a spotless kitchen.
Peeta, I try again, but there's no sound, there's no breath. My eyes are heavy, I can't keep them open. The world is spinning, my vision swimming with darkness.
Peeta's killing me.
I slump, my head lolling to the side.
And I fall. Down, down, until the ground is all that's holding me up. The pressure is gone, and I'm sucking in air. I look up to see Peeta still right there, crouched low, arms outstretched as if to restrain me still. But he's not touching me now. He let me go. He let me fall.
For a beat, we stare at each other.
There's blood on his face and his shirt. And probably on my face, my clothes now, too. It's just the blood that had been on my hands, from the deer, but Peeta focuses on it in horror, eyes still tinged in madness.
"Peeta," I try to say, but I can only cough, low and hoarse. My throat and lungs burn.
Wordless, he shoves away from me, explodes out the kitchen door, leaving it ajar, and stumbles into the night. I want to follow, but I'm still dizzy, still gasping for breath. My legs won't hold my weight when I try.
In his wake, he leaves several cheese buns, trampled on the floor.
Ø
I don't even try to sleep, too worried about Peeta and where he's gone. Not into the forest, please, oh please. So many ways that he can hurt himself there. I agonize about whether I should try to go after him now, despite the darkness.
Instead, I sit on the couch until dawn, and I trust. Trust that he won't do it. Trust that he can't do it.
Our next move…is to kill me.
He'd said that to me, once. And he'd meant it.
I sit and I rock and I wait, until the sky has warmed enough to show me the way he's gone. Then I follow the signs of his passing, all the way to the house across from mine. Thankfully, he didn't go far. He didn't need to go far. He just needed to get away from me.
Haymitch answers before I can knock.
"He's here," he gruffs. "Sleeping."
I ignore his grimace at my appearance. "You can't let him hurt himself. You can't." It's a fact. It's not even the slightest bit a request.
Haymitch just nods. We understand each other.
I nod, not trusting my voice further, then turn away.
"Katniss," he calls after me. "I'll take care of him."
It's a promise. But we both know it's a shaky one at best. Shaky because this is Haymitch. Shaky because this is Peeta. The doctors said that Peeta was as healed as he was going to get.
I guess this is what they meant.