Chapter Four
There is always a happy tone in her voice when we go to the Bakery. It was the happiest place that she could think of in the District. When you really think about it, the old house where Katniss grew up with Prim and her mother was too hard of a place to go and visit. It was renovated about ten years ago and in an act that could only be described as something that Katniss would do, she gave it back to the District so that someone else can live in it. She would always tell me that it was just a house, and the memories were all up in her mind, the good and of course the bad.
The Bakery though, it was a place that she had come with her sister to get breads and of course later to sneak a cupcake here or there. After it was burned to the ground in the attack of District Twelve, it was rebuilt as a symbol that although gone, it will never be forgotten. It was what rallied the whole District to come back from the brink of destruction after the War. Now it sits run and operated by people from the Institute who come from other Districts to learn the tools and trade that they so desired to learn. I never knew how many people wanted to become bakers. It always make me laugh.
The streets have very few people on them. There are still the some workers of the nearby shops walking as it is still very early. We walk until the view of the Justice Building comes to view. The columns jet up from the ground as if it is growing from the ground, holding the glass boxes in the sky. In front of the Justice Building sits a fountain that was built in what would have been the 100th Games as a symbol that there would never be another Reaping in District Twelve. It was one of the last acts of the then Mayor, my friend Thom.
The businesses that surround the fountain all have bright colors and porches for people to be able to sit in front of. The now bare trees, when spring comes around will burst with color, complimenting the style of the buildings. In the summer time, the fountain benches are removed and the fountain becomes a sort of fun place for kids to run through the jets of water. I still remember those days.
I stop her and she turns to look at me.
"Do you remember, when Lilly was six and Thomas was only four and we came here," I say bringing her close to me. It was such a happy memory that I always held it close to my heart.
"You mean the day they ran through the fountain so many times, that we thought for sure that they would never leave?" She counters with a smile.
It was what they asked all day, it was what they wanted. So that day we packed up a good picnic and headed from the house at the Victor's Village over to the Square. They couldn't help it, they ran as fast as their little legs could laughing, filled with happiness. The way the warm breeze moved through the trees, I can still remember it like it happened yesterday.
"Remember how happy they were," I say hearing the bell ring of a door opening. I can just see the Bakery, and can see people coming and going. It has become a popular place to get bakery goods and coffee. The strong smell of the coffee bean tugs at our noses and we are for a moment looking over at the Bakery.
"What do you say, we take a small vacation over to your Mothers?" I say.
She smiles and nods before we continue to walk over to the Bakery. The benches are still outside, where people sit and just people watch. It is the newer things that I wish we could have had back when my family was still alive. It was those things that I think might have changed the way my mother thought about the District. Once at the door, I still can see the picture of the tree that I painted for him. He hung it so proudly and wouldn't let me my mother take it down. It is like the drawings that litter our walls, Katniss would never take them down, or give them away, they will forever be hung there as a symbol of how much we are proud of them.
The bell chimed as we walked inside. The young girl behind the counter looks up and waves are us.
"Good morning," she says. "Welcome to the Mellark Bakery."
She is new probably only a couple of years older than Lilly. We wave at her and walk over to Lilly and Thomas sitting at a table with Delly.
"So," Delly says carefully. "Everything...okay?"
I nod and playfully nudge her.
"You know," I say. "You are my friend first."
"I know, but I am their Aunt first," she says placing her arms around both Lilly and Thomas, who of course are eating their fill of sugar. I drop a finger on the icings of Lilly's pink cupcake. She of course gives me a look of disbelief, and all I can do is smile. Bringing up the icing to my lips, I make a detour and place the icing squarely on the tip of Katniss's nose.
She lets out a sigh of relief as she reaches for a napkin on the center of the table. I stop her hand and lean in to kiss the tip of her nose, causing her to wriggle it.
"Yum," I say. "Always loved icing, but now I love it even more."
"Delly," Katniss says getting a napkin and removing the rest of the icing that I missed. "Is everything ready?"
She looks at me and then her eyes look at the kids. It is true that I know the reason why Katniss called Delly, but I have still no clue what we are doing here or what Delly is doing to help us. The way she looks at the children, it is obvious that she is asking should we tell the children. I look over to Katniss and she nods no.
"Well kids," Katniss starts to get up. "You okay if we go with Auntie Delly to the Institute?"
Thomas and Lilly both nod. Katniss places her hand on mines and gives me a nod to get going. I stand and rustle Thomas's hair. He looks at me for a second and then finally smiles.
"When I get back," I say to them both. "Will you help me convince your mother to go see your Grandmother?"
They both look at each other and then back to us with a smile. They know exactly what that means, and that District Four at this time of the year is not winter at all. They love visiting their grandma and always beg to stay just a little bit longer. Katniss's mother never says no and always asks if we could stay longer.
We walk outside and then I look over to Delly and Katniss.
"So," I say. "Seeing how it is my injury, don't you think I should know the plan?"
Delly looks to Katniss and she lets out a sigh and nods for her to tell me.
"Well, we have the doctors waiting for you at the institute to take a couple of umm…test," she says nervously. "But don't worry, it is totally safe."
Katniss looks at me and places two hands on mine. She could see my apprehension for any kind of tests, especially when it comes to my mind. The nightmares of that place, the look of doctors all around me. It is the things that they did, that almost killed me, and now it seems continue to try.
I feel the thumb of her finger rub my palm. It is our sign, that everything will be okay. I look at her and know that she would never let anything happen to her family, just like I wouldn't. It is the reason why she didn't tell me, because she knew I wouldn't go. I hate hospitals, and worst of all, I hated Doctors. The only one that I liked, well there were two actually, Katniss's mother and Doctor Aurelius. Every year, I have had to go, first to the Capitol for the first couple of years, and then finally District Four, when I couldn't stomach the Capitol any longer. They were always trying to reverse what Snow did to me and although the medicines have gotten better at suppressing the attacks, the episodes have come back more frequent.
"From injections, to pills, to crèmes, to finally a tea," I say to Katniss. "What more can they do? Even Doctor Aurelius last time I talked to him, was beginning to lose hope. He didn't really say it, but we are all thinking it."
I turn away from them and begin to walk. I mean, I can't go back, I can't. I have worked and worked and worked, to be better, to keep myself, you know, to be myself again. I don't know, what to do, how can I go back? I can't, my hands, they can't do that again.
I feel her hand on my shoulder. I close my eyes and finally stop walking, stop thinking, and just stop. I look down at my hands shaking, I can't lose control, I can't hurt her. I won't. I feel her hands move down my arms and then to my hands. I can feel her pressed on my back. Even through the thick jacket, I can still feel her, can feel her presence behind me.
"I don't want to go back," I say. My mouth is moving but my mind isn't controlling it. I sound like a lunatic, and it is always the same thing whenever they want to run any test. I start to pace and Katniss has to make sure to always be next to me. She has done everything from distracting me with stories, to kissing me, to keep my mind from realizing that is happening at the moment.
"You won't," she says. "I am here with you, just like you said, you are not going anywhere."
It is the truth, she is here, and I should be thankful for it. But it is like I can't get this one memory out of my mind. The rage that was building up so much, that I lost it, and all I can see is my hands around her throat. I didn't know. I didn't know. What…what, they did. I can't go back.
Focus. Peeta. Focus. Listen to her breathing. Let your mind come to a place where you can control it.
"I don't want to lose control," I say struggling through the words. It is hard but I can feel her around me. It is a safe place to be. She is my safe place. It is the place that I would go when I was there. To escape the pain, the torture, my safe place was her, to our house by the lake. It kept me going, it kept me from going over the edge.
"You won't, because I won't let you," she says coming around to me.
"I can still feel it," I say. "The things they did, and the things that I did."
"Peeta," she says. "I promise, I will be with you the whole time."
I look at her, and I know that she will keep her promise. It isn't that I do not want her there, it is that I scared every morning, that something will happen, and that suddenly I won't have the medicine to keep it away. I don't want to lose her, even if it means that I cannot be near her.
"Okay," I say.
The walk towards the Institute was short and very uneventful. The pounding of my heart though counted every step I took towards them. The white coats and the eye glasses. The clean hallways and the clipboards. The needles and the machines that beeped when you move. It is sometimes the worst feeling in the world, the hospitals. Good thing we had the kids in our home with Katniss's mother and a nurse, I don't think that I could have made it in a hospital.
The research and development wing of the Institute was constructed a couple of years ago, to fund research into making alternate means of energy. It was a vision that many of the people from our District had. The fact that the coal from the nearby mountains would bring heat into the homes of others, it was necessary to find a way to do safely. Plus District Twelve never had a hospital, the most we could have hoped for, was a healer that lived in the Seam. I know that she would never admit it, but I suspect that Katniss would have wanted her mother to come back home, when they finally opened.
The hallways are white and very bright. It is the same hallways that hospitals have, the same lights. They look the same, I can feel my heart begin to beat harder and my breathing begins to short in between. I feel my hands tighten and then can hear her begin to hum a tune. I turn to her and see that she is smiling.
"Remember that time we were out in the woods," she says. "And we spent the day just singing out songs to the Mockingjays?"
It was a couple of years ago when Katniss's mother had come to visit. She spent the day with the children taking care of them. It was the first time in a while that we were finally able to go out alone, enjoy some time together. We of course snuck out of the house running to the nearest exit when given the chance. With a picnic in tow, we made it to a clearing, setting the bows to the side we placed a blanket on the ground and just spent the day like we did back in the roof-top garden of the Training Center.
At first all we did was watch the sunlight trickle through the trees and play the game of locating the nearest game by sound. The thing is that after a while all we heard was the Mockingjays. I could still feel her arms grab mine as she took a small nap. My fingers intertwined in hair as she napped next to me. It is then that saw a small little Mockingjay land on a nearby branch. The little bird just looked at me, as if waiting for me to sing. At first I just started to hum the songs that I knew, but after a while it just looked me waiting for a song.
It was then that I heard her move just a little.
"You have to sing to them, if not they cannot join in," she says.
"Can't," I admit.
"Come on," she urges me. "You have done it before."
I don't know or even how I did it but something inside of me just stirred and I started to sing the first verse of the Hanging Tree. The bird just looked at me and then as if on cue, it started to mimic the tone. We spent the next hour just singing back and forth verses that we knew and some that we made up.
"I still think everything went silent when you sang," I say looking at her. She turned and smile, before nudging me with her shoulder. It was the truth, and though she would never do it publicly, her singing always made everything better.
"How's it going Sweet…Heart," a surly voice says, emphasizing on the word heart. The rudeness behind it always was his signature, sober or not. Even the word 'sweetheart' was always banned from my lips. Once I called her that, in a loving matter, and of course she didn't see that way and I spent the next couple of days sleeping on the sofa. The word always has this sting to it, never genuine but always condescending.
He stands at the end of hallway obviously upset because it was early morning and he was probably dead drunk. His good mornings are always in the afternoons, and by then he is a little bit less sour. It could be the reason why he used the word that irritates Katniss, seeing how she would be the only one to call him.
"I am fine, Haymitch" Katniss says with a strong tone. "How are you?"
"I am fine Sweetheart, but what is up with the limping" he says pointing to me. "Doesn't surprise me though, we have all had our limps and bruises."
"Want another," Katniss says.
He just lets out a smirk and opens the door for us as we walk toward him. It is the relationship that we have had grown into with Haymitch. He has been our mentor for years and even now after the uprising and the War, we have continue to be friends. Although the banter sometimes there is a fine line that one always crosses and of course I have to be the referee.
Once we are through the door, the tension is palpable. Two doctors and three nurses all greet us there in the large room. There are no monitors, there are no machines, but only the lovely clipboards that they always have, but oddly enough no white coats. The one who spoke up seemed to be the oldest of the group, the small hint of the grey hairs reminds me a little of Doctor Aurelius.
"Mr. Mellark, Mrs. Mellark, Mr. Abernathy, please have a seat," the doctor gestures to the nearby sofa. I look over to her and she gives me a reassuring squeeze of the hand. We walk over to the sofa and as I sit down, the doctors sit on the chair opposite to us.