.::Six: Gridlines::.
I am graciously allowed to sleep all the next day. No crisp crack of the curtains being pulled back to let in the morning sun, no creaking of the bed from Posy's weight as she scampers to get ready for school. I am dead to the entire world with a terrible migraine. I toss around in sweat-soaked sheets, and my organs feel thoroughly coated in acid.
Hazelle comes in to check on me around mid-afternoon, and I struggle to sit up on my elbows. I groan—a piss poor attempt at an apology—but she tuts and shakes her head as she sets a mug of tea with milk, and a jug full of water on the night table. She gently presses a palm to my shoulder for me to lie back down.
"Even the Mockingjay's no match for Ripper's legacy," she says as she sits at the foot of my bed. I groan louder—I hate that title. "Sometimes you gotta put evil in to get all the evil out, baby." She squeezes a foot. "I'm not makin' Rore do much of anything today either 'cause it's his birthday. This day's on me for the deer. Any more will cost ya."
Foggily, I reprimand myself for forgetting he turned sixteen today. I'll have to make it up to him.
"Yes ma'am," I manage to mutter before turning my face into the pillow.
Two weeks later, it is Rory who squeezes my foot to wake me. "Katniss, Katniss!" He hisses.
"What?" I quip and jerk my knee nearly to my chin.
"You ready to head out today?" His whisper comes from above.
"This early?" I squint at the window. The sky is still a dark blue canvas with tiny dots of light twinkling back at me. "Don't we have chores to do?"
He shakes his head, and his hair lops across his eyes. "Nah. Ma said we should spend as much time as we can out there while it's not too cold out. Winter's gonna be rough this year since it's been so warm up 'til now and there's a lot of mouths to feed. Trains might not make it this far out come late January."
I sit up immediately and swing my legs around. The sense of purpose knowing we can hunt all day uncensored pumps me full of adrenaline. Perhaps today I can give Rory his birthday present while we're out.
He drops a pile of clothes into my lap and tilts his head at it. "Gale's old long johns and a pullover. It's verra cold out today," he says. They're discolored from age but smell clean. I shiver, but it's uncertain to me if it's from the prospective weather or the mention of his brother's name.
Rory leaves and I get dressed. It takes several times to fold Gale's long johns along with my pants into the cuff of my boots. I slide on my hunting jacket and rub the collar against my top lip. It's an old habit but it puts me at ease.
Hazelle has a plate of eggs and bacon already steaming at the kitchen side table, and a mug of black coffee and orange juice to go with it. Rory's already three-fourths of the way through his meal when I sit down, and I can see him practically trembling to get out into the woods. It's only about a week since we've made it out there last, but if he's anything like me or his brother, it's been a week too long.
I strap my bow to my back and Hazelle comes over with our game bags to plant a kiss on both of our foreheads. As she slides it on her son's shoulder, he pulls his spear from the kitchen corner and situates it comfortably between the bag and his back. "Ya'll be safe out there. Forest gets squirrelly when things start to get cold. Give yourselfs enough time to be back an hour 'fore dark, understand?"
"Yes, mama," Rory groans.
"Here, I've packed an extra deerskin a piece with water. You ken still get dehydrated when it's fros—"
"MA. You were never like this when Gale went out!"
"Ah know, ah know," she shakes her hands at him to shoo him outside. "I can't afford to lose any more of my baby boys," she says.
"I'm not a baby anymore," he mumbles as he heads out the back door. I shrug at Hazelle and follow him into the frost. It cuts at my cheeks, and I hunker down into the fluffed collar of my sweater.
I can't help but laugh at the angry lines that make up Rory's shoulders. He is stomping along our worn trail to the woods, and without looking back he grunts, "Shut it, Katniss."
"She is right though. It's easy to let your guard down when the temperature's low. I've done it one time. I was lucky your brother was with me." He stops to look at me, frowning. I know he feels the same depressed disappointment anytime Gale is mentioned that I do.
Sometimes I forget that it is more than just me who lost their entire world when Prim died.
We take to the clearing that runs parallel to the tree line and make South in the direction of the meadow. Silence falls around us save for the crunching of our feet over frozen dew on grass and the hot plumes of our breath against the morning air. A dense fog blankets the meadow and moves like the slow pull of a dream.
Rory stoops down abruptly and pulls the last of a dandelion from the ground. My breath catches in my throat and I'm surprised there's even one still lingering around in this bitter morning frost. He reaches over to my chin to check for yellow, an old Seam children's game, and satisfied, tucks it in his coat pocket. "Butter's in the pan."
"Fry it fast as you can," I reply with a voice both slow and soft. I wear a gentle smile as we continue to trudge on. There is no way Rory would know how much that little flower represents in my life, and despite the sadness that clings to me always, seeing one stand as a sentry at the entrance of my meadow gives me hope.
The wind pulls at us, not malevolently, but with a personified insistence, and I am thankful for the extra layers.
He stops again and speaks, soft and somber. "She's here, isn't she?"
"Yes," I say, closing my eyes and breathing her in. "All over the meadow."
"Thought so," he responds. "I feel her everywhere." I search his face for melancholy notes, but all I see is a quiet contentment as he too takes a deep hungry breath.
We don't speak any further as we make our way to the stream down at the bottom of the meadow, lost in our respective thoughts.
"What's that?" Rory says, pointing to a bit of broken brush. His eyes flash, the only sign of his excitement, and he rushes over.
It is undeniably an animal trail, well-worn and mid-size, with the telltale flattening of brush and snout-tracked dirt, and it looks to only be a few days old, but I can't recognize the animal responsible without the expertise of Gale. My skin prickles and I look to Rory, whom is so much like his brother from behind, but he remains oblivious to my thoughts as he bends down to take a closer look at a scuffed up track underneath the grass.
"Let's take a break here, Rore," I say. I need to gather my thoughts and prick my brain for conversations Gale and I had about different animal tracks and their transit tendencies. Much of the excited steam from this morning has now settled into a foggy uneasiness, but I manage to hide my scowl from Rory.
"Shall we practice shooting arrows from a tree?" I ask and take a swig of water from the deerskin before handing it to him.
"As much as I like climbin' trees, Katniss, I prolly should figure out how to shoot an arrow on the ground first. Plus, there's bound to be somethin' at the end of that trail," he says hopefully. He wants to capitalize on his success in finding it in the first place. I push down the anxious acid in my stomach.
"Fine fine, we'll stick to the ground," I say, and ready my bow in my hands. "Probably could snag some fish trying to travel last minute up the way, you got the string?"
He gives me a toothy grin and runs the twine through his fingers to make an accordion. "This ain't my first rodeo, Everdeen."
I stick my hand through the middle, and he pulls the line. We watch as it falls away cleanly, a trick Gale used to play with my sister. "Yeah, well, you barely remembered both your boots the first time we came out here. Since you're feeling so cocky, you get to carry the catch back," I smirk.
In no time we spear five or six fish and bag some winter greens. We follow the animal trail along the stream as it meanders somewhere off from our town, and I realize that I'm not entirely sure where we are. I haven't explored the woods in their entirety by a long shot, and the prospect of new ground both frightens and excites me. I pay particular attention to notable landmarks: a dip in the ground, a clustering of trees, a bend in the stream, so that we can backtrack successfully.
The sun sits high in the middle of an overcast sky, flecks of light peeking through the clouds and filtering through the branches of naked trees. We've followed the trail for about three miles, and at some point soon we'll have to turn around. Every so often we've stopped and marked up a tree with our hunting knives with patterns like gridlines in a map.
We set our rucksacks on the ground next to a hulking outcropping of rock and I decide now is a good a time as any to give Rory his present. He is quiet when I thrust at him the archery glove I made him out of deer hide. He tries it on, a perfect fit, and his eyes leap up to mine. I make a note of ignoring him as he pushes a darting finger underneath his eye and clenches his jaw.
He was largely ignored in the war, being too young, and as a Seam boy, I don't think he has received many gifts throughout his life.
"Thank you, Katniss," he says softly, and looks everywhere else but at me.
I shrug, and dissipate the awkward stalemate that inevitably occurs when someone Seam receives a gift or act of kindness and I spend the next hour or so helping Rory with his arrow work and sketching a crude map of where we've been so far on a piece of waterproof paper from a pad Effie sent me in last week's train. I pace around him, chewing on a cut of deer jerky as I tweak his posture, and adjust the bow so that he pulls the string to graze his cheek.
"The most important part of all this is the inhale," I tell him. "You want to be as still as possible, make the arrow an extension of your vision. When you're ready to shoot, Rory, relax your grip and allow your fingers to slip back. Be natural."
He lets off a couple of arrows, and they thock into a tree about 25 feet off with loud woody thunks. I smile. He's come a long way with a bow this year, and my chest swells with warmth.
"Nice work," I say as I retrieve the arrows. He picks at the string where it connects to the bow and looks down at the ground—neither of us are good at compliments, but we both know as a young man perfecting a craft that he deserves the praise. His face is gentle, just a wisp of a smile, and he studies the ground in silence.
"So where'd you learn to fiddle, Rory?" I pipe up as we meander our way back through the underbrush. Several rabbits swing from each of our bags.
"Pa taught me, a couple a years before he died," Rory says, and hikes his heavy game bag to a more comfortable place on his back. "Yer Pa and my Pa… they was in a band that played at weddings and the rare occasional party when they was a little younger, accordin' to Ma. My uncle worked the violin, and Mr. Thom's older brother had the banjo. Yers played the cello and a' course the vocals."
I take a moment of silence to ruminate on the memory of our fathers. Instead of sadness, the woods, his woods, fill me with a sense of content accomplishment, and I try and imagine what their music might have sounded like. Probably a lot like the night at the festival when Rory played.
It is time for us to start making our way back to Town-our bags are fat with catch and the sun has already started making its descent. There is no way I'm going to give Hazelle any reason to renege her offer for us to hunt instead of do chores, and I fully intend on coming back an hour before sunset, as she instructed.
I look to Rory, who is still eager to shoot and push a reluctant breath through my teeth. Perhaps we can stay out a few minutes more.
"Think you can snatch a flying target? That brush over there looks like a hiding spot to me." Snow is surely on the forecast for tonight and the next couple of days. The world is awash with early winter overbrightness, and there's a crisp smell to the air that always comes before heavy precipitation. As a result, it's been eerily quiet today—critters know early on to hide from storms. Animals have always been smarter than humans in that respect.
"'S worth a shot, prolly," he says.
I hunker down low, plodding along the creek toward the crop of tall winter grass, my bow hanging loosely in my left hand. My boots are nearly soundless as I shift along the sand until I wait for the right moment to rough up the nest. I pick up a handful of stream side pebbles and with a deep breath, I fling them into the brush with a spray of sound.
Instead of wings beating, the forest erupts with the sound of squealing wails and crunching leaves as a nest of baby boars explode out of the foliage. Their shrieking is God-awful, like babies wailing after being frightened by a loud noise, or worse. I stumble backwards and land hard on my tailbone.
"Katniss!" Rory says, nocking an arrow. I pull myself up, rubbing my sore backside and watch as the pigs scrabble away from us in the opposite direction. Before I have time to realize what he's doing, he lets one fly at them. The squealing that comes after is infinitely worse.
"Rory, no!" I cry. The mother. She can't be too far behind, they never are...
And sure enough, in the silent seconds that follow his arrow, we hear a war cry and a thundering crash through the forest as some large body barrels towards us. Her massive, wiry-haired body comes into view, steam pluming from her mouth as she greedily pulls in air with ragged snarls. She's huge, all hair, mud and heaving muscle; I can't even compare her size to any animal that I've come across. Two yellow tusks peek very slightly through her black lips, and her beaded eye swirls around in her face, darting between the two of us to figure out which is the bigger threat.
"R-Rory," I whisper, pulling an arrow across the string as silently and slowly as I could so as not to attract her attention to me. "Walk away slowly, towards me." The adrenaline rushing through me did not dilute the familiarity of coaching Peeta away from those angry wild mutts in the Quarter Quell. I see the white of his eye cresting over his shoulder as he tries to look at me while maintaining an open, predatory posture to the sow. He grips his spear with heavy knuckles.
The boar snorts a nasty puff at the ground, pawing at the dirt and crumbled leaves. The air is crisp, and time seems to slow down—both she and I smell the metallic twinge of impending action, and my hunter's instinct senses her inertia before it happens, so I make the first move.
It all happens so fast.
I let the arrow fly, and it whizzes close to Rory's leg to run clean through her eye, but I know it's not enough to quell her immediately. She lets out a roaring shriek right as I scream his name, and she dives at his leg with an open mouth. While sow tusks are significantly smaller than their male counterparts, they can still inflict heavy damage with their bite and I watch, mortified, in the few seconds it takes for her teeth to connect with Rory's calf. The forest is silent, save for the crunch of his leg in her jaws. He is flung to the ground, and she thrashes, but he lands a heavy blow with a rock to her head and she lets go. I've sent three arrows deep into her side at this point, and finally she slows and slumps to the ground, still struggling to get up.
Still, there is the awful screaming as she mourns the loss of her ability to protect her offspring. Where there's one boar, there is more, and I cup two sweaty palms underneath Rory's armpit and pull us fast and far away from the nest. We are living on borrowed time at this point, and I know the sow's coven will be fresh to our scent soon.
"Rory, come on!" I hiss and try not to watch the blood gush from underneath the fingers of his clamped hand. I pull us toward the stream and rip open his pant leg with my knife. I dip my hands into the water and trickle it over his wounds to wash the dirt out, and the blood pools up from his wounds quicker than I can wash it away. His shaky hands hover over his destroyed leg and he is babbling.
"Katniss, tell my Ma that I'm sorry, shoulda never let Pa die," is the only thing I could make out from the mumbling. I ignore him with a shake of my head and cut off his pant leg. I rush around grabbing some heavy sticks and set about making a splint and tourniquet, tying a swath of my shirt and his pants tight around the largest gash. I dig into our packs for more cloth to rip and tie around his leg to staunch the bleeding. I am thankful it's not a compound fracture, although I know for sure his bones are broken.
"Ka'niss," he says, his face a white sheet. I know he's still not fully-aware of the pain.
"Rory, you need to focus." I am harsh and loud, but it brings his clouded eyes to zoom into my face. "I'm tying this up, but you need to keep pressure on it. Can you do that?"
He nods dumbly, and I watch his pupils dilate and constrict.
"You're not going to like this, but we have to walk a little ways to that outcrop of rock, where I gave you your present. Remember that?" He nods feebly. "It's the best shelter we've got. Are you ready?" He responds with another nod, but I get the sense he has no idea what I'm saying. I wrap his arm over my shoulder and I brace myself to take the brunt of his weight.
"Count of three, Rore," I warn. His skin is incredibly cold and wet, and tiny sweat droplets bead in a perfect line along his forehead and upper lip.
"Three!" I say and wrench us up and he is screaming. He helps me as much as he can, and we are off, stumbling towards the rock lip, making a slow and lurching tread over the rock bed. By the time I have him propped up against the rock, he is soundless, save for a few breathy whimpers. His shallow breathing worries me. I survey my tourniquet work, tightening the tie and readjusting the stick, and he barely notices.
Snow falls, and it's so quiet I can hear the sound of flakes as they make their buttery flight to the ground.
"Ka'niss," he slurs, looking at a point beyond my shoulder. He takes a shaky breath. "Prim's my fault. I told her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. Juss like you, stubbernn... n things. I shoulda made her stay."
I grip his shoulders, swallowing the avalanche of sadness that crashes over me. "It's nobody's fault, least of all yours. I need you to focus on staying awake and with me. I am going to get help." I rip off my jacket and cover him with it, along with several branches to conceal his location. I pull out Cinna's music box Effie gave me, flick on the screen to put it on shuffle and stuff a little earbud into his ear.
"Stay awake," I say firmly. He gives me a half nod and closes his eyes, laying his head against the rock. His chest pumps up and down, like he can't get enough oxygen, but I have to trust him to stay away while I'm gone.
"I'm going to go get help, Rore! Hang tight!" I yell.
I am off and running wildly at this point, chasing after the waning sun as it dips toward the mountains in the distant horizon. Ripping off my bag and quiver, I have little regard for what lies before me except getting into town as quickly as possible. I am covered in Rory's blood and my own pounds in my ears. Snow continues in a steady fall, and I crash through trees. I underestimate a dip in the ground and am flung into the air and roll down a hillside, coming to a stop at the fringe of the meadow with a twist in my ankle between a rock and log.
"Shit." I pull myself up and despite the crippling pain, I think of Rory lying there alone in the forest with bones sticking out of his calf while wolves circle him and I press on. Victor's Village comes into view, and I realize just how far we had traveled during our hunt today if I end up on this side of Town. The only lights on are inside Haymitch's house.
"H-Haymitch!" I cry, stumbling through his door with a deafening crash and into the living room. I fall to my knees, pain searing through my ankle.
"Ever one for dramatics, aren't you, Sweetheart? What is it this time?" Haymitch calls from the kitchen and lumbers into view. A slurry smirk is painted on his face for a split second before being replaced by a white sheet of terror. He drops his tin of liquor on the ground.
"Rory's hurt, in the forest-"
"Katniss, what happened?" He is sober in an instant and rushes over to me. "You're hurt, damnit!" He growls and leans in to pick me up with shaky hands.
"No, not me," I growl and shove my hands at him. "No time—Rory, forest, blood—"
"Katniss?" Peeta says in a watery voice from the kitchen doorway, his face creased with panic lines. It's his look that blows the air from my lungs—I've seen it so many times before. He's holding a dishrag, and a canvas apron is tied loosely around his waist, splotched with sauce, oil, and flour. I watch his eyes flick over me as muscle memory, lingering on the smears of blood and torn shirt, his instincts driving him to constantly assess me for injuries. His eyes are wild, whites flashing like a spooked horse's and briefly I fear that the sight of me covered in blood will bring on a relapse of something sinister.
At this point, considering his impeccable timing with everything, I shouldn't be startled that he's here. District 12 is his home, after all, and as long as I share a part of the world with him, I'll never escape his presence.
In a room, he's always been so big—especially now, as his uneven steps hurriedly thrump over to me. Before I can regain my wits, I am pulled up and into his arms like a baby.
"No!" I screech and thrash around, but his hold on me is firm and comforting, and my body is a traitor to my mind. He stands there and lets me throw a fit to its conclusion and I feel his muscles bulge. I find my head sinking against his chest. He shifts his weight tentatively to his good leg, making sure not to make sudden movements lest I find a crack to escape or thrash again.
"Katniss, I'm going to lay you down on the couch now," Peeta says and lumbers over to Haymitch's filthy living room ensemble with me in tow. I bide my time carefully.
As soon as he lets me down, I scramble for the door. "Rory needs help, I need to get Hazelle! We have to go get him, now!" Their lack of urgency has me convinced that they are not going to help me. But he pulls me back and sits me down with the commandeering presence that he sometimes is, and kneels in front of me with my ankle on his knee. With deft fingers, he loosens the tie on my boot, taking it off, and folds up my pant cuff and Gale's leggings. I have little left within me to care that he sees the patchy scarred skin-my own gridlines like those on the gnarled bark of a tree. I hiss as he prods my swollen joint, and he murmurs his apology.
"Same one as before," I swear I hear him whisper, tapping two fingers in a rhythm on my toes, and gently rolls my foot around with two warm hands.
"What?" I shriek at him.
"I'm going to go get some ice," he replies, leaping to his feet with a metallic click, completely oblivious to what he's said, and trudges off into the kitchen.
"Take a deep breath and tell us what happened," Haymitch says.
I follow his instruction. "Two miles South of the meadow, we came upon a sow's nest-I underestimated the danger and Rory's leg is torn up. Weather's getting bad and I couldn't bring him all the way, so I ran here, and my bad ankle..." I peter out lamely as Peeta comes back in with an armful of first aid supplies. Panic surges again as I think of the snow tirelessly falling and Rory bleeding out.
"Gonna call Thom and Hazelle now, Sweetheart, you just sit tight," Haymitch growls as he lumbers into the kitchen.
"It's... not pretty, but doesn't look too bad, thankfully," he says assuredly, rubbing the length of my leg and moving the joint around. "Probably just grade II sprain." Peeta gets to work on wrapping my ankle with his steady hands, and I wonder where he picked up such a healer's skill.
"From Ms. Everdeen," he replies, and it's only then that I realize I've spoken out loud. I need to be more careful around him about saying what's on my mind. His voice is calm and even, lulling like my mother's was when she tended to patients in our Seam kitchen. "She worked in the hospital officially, but people would often come by after hours and seek her skills. Clairen's been her apprentice for a little over a year, and it's hard to not learn a thing or two with a house full of nurses, you know?"
I make a non-committal noise from my gut.
Oh, I know. I know full-well what it's like living with nurses, and how to purposefully avoid any kind of nurse apprenticeship by running off to the woods with Gale and making the pains to feed my starving family instead.
But he has the nimble fingers and pleasant bedside disposition for it, I realize. I sketch the soft lines of his face as he ties off a makeshift splint with a broken chair leg (those aren't too hard to come by in Haymitch's house). My face burns and my heart thunders-the War has taken so much from him. He truly could be good at anything that he wanted to do. He has the patience, the skill, and dedication...had such a promising future, before he tossed the bread to me instead of the pig. Just like he said on that hospital bed. My thoughts go dark.
"Katniss," he says, watching me in an intense blue, nothing like the tornado gray they had been on District Thirteen's gurney. He is frozen in a defensive posture, and his eyes flick down to where I have his wrist in a white-knuckled vice grip.
I have always been emotionally stinted-which is largely a part of the problem-but after the war, it's as if a bunch of fire bombs detonated in my mind. Where I used to be able to feign a collected allure and suffer underneath a silent scowl, I now act entirely on impulse governed by untimely surges of hormones. Even knowing that fills me with rage, and I thrust his arm away from me.
"Katniss-" He says again, but I hear white noise as I struggle to get up from the couch. I swivel my head around to look out the window, and the grime caked on the glass and the bottles scattered on the sill only gives me partial view, but I see enough white to know I have to make a move fast if Rory is going to survive.
Haymitch chooses this moment to come in, and if he's seen anything, he doesn't say, but instead ignores the angry waves pulsating from me. "Called Thom and he's putting together a search party. Hazelle is glad you made it back, and wants you to sta-"
"The hell I will," I growl in a low voice. "Rory's my responsibility! I've been away long enough as it is, and I'll be damned if I'm going to just sit here and wait like a nursemaid while everyone else does all the work!"
"Oh that's right, Sweetheart! Let me just tell everyone to put things on hold while you hobble back out there on your own, and then we'll be looking for two idiots!" Haymitch sneers.
"Idiots? That's funny, coming from you," I snarl and force myself up from the couch. "If by idiots, you mean, the only people actively trying to take care everyone-"
"Katniss," Peeta hisses. "You need to sit there and let other people help you. The whole district knows you're strong and capable, but you're no use to Rory trying to find him with an injured leg. I'm going out to help find him. And Haymitch." He whirls on the old man, who is taken aback. I, meanwhile, just sit there and blink. "Stop antagonizing her. You're not helping."
Haymitch and I look at each other, instantly reminded of training before the Quarter Quell and both wondering the same thing: does he remember me, and what fallout will occur?
"Katniss, can you remember where you left him and what condition he was in?" Peeta turns to me, expression urgent but softer.
"Yes, I actually tracked our path for later," I say, and fist around in my pants pocket, gritting my teeth as it puts a strain on my ankle, and bring out the waterproof pad I had crudely sketched our trails in. With a grease charcoal, I thicken the lines and scratch an X near the rocks I hid Rory in.
"He's hidden a little ways off a rock bed from the stream, and there are two boulders that jut upwards like this," I mumble while trying to poorly sketch out what mine and Gale's rock look like. "His leg is torn open, she ran him clean through the calf with her tusks, and it's probably broken in a few places, but I made a tourniquet."
Peeta takes the book from me and stuffs it down the front pocket of his plaid. "Good, this will help. Thank you, Katniss," he says. My name is mesmerizing on his tongue, and I swear he seems to be saying it so frequently as though it will unlock some secret about me.
Haymitch is silent, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him shake his head. He thinks I cannot see the concern he has for the both of us, and I look away. This is a dangerous game, and I shouldn't be here with Peeta, because bad things always happen so fast-
"Haymitch, get what you need and follow me," Peeta commands. He goes to the closet beside the front door and shoulders on a heavy jacket and stuffs his feet into a pair of black duck boots. I have no time to think, let alone protest before he is sweeping me up and over his shoulder. He is very careful of my leg as he situates me.
"I'm bringing you to my house," he explains as he kicks open the front porch screen. "Haymitch never turns on the heat in his house, and there isn't an actual blanket besides half a table cloth, and I don't think you need to freeze." His feet fall into a rhythm of uneven crunching in the snow as he makes his way across the yard. I lay my head against his shoulder, meaty and soft, and let the smell of basil, dill and tomato sauce encapsulate my senses. I provide a very feeble attempt at rebelling my situation.
"It's really not necessary, I-"
"Shhh." The door creaks open and I am met with a blast of warm doughy air. His home is a menagerie of delightful smells: cloves of cinnamon and rosemary sprigs sitting in glass bowls, crisp linen curtains washed by Hazelle, vanilla candles and freshly-cut firewood by the fireplace.
Traitorous body.
He spreads me out on a blue and white couch and pulls a throw off the back to wrap around my legs. "You're cold," he says with a blink. "Hold tight!"
It's only now that I realize I am shaking and wet as the adrenaline dissipates into the comforting heat of his house. I peel off my outer shirt and hear him thunk up the stairs for a brief moment. He comes back with a stack of clothes. A small sallow part of me prays they don't belong to his girlfriend.
"These are for you." He sets a blue-and-gold flannel shirt, pair of woolen socks, and moss green chino pants with a warn grey sweater on top of the coffee table and takes a peek at my ankle. They look warm and soft and inviting, everything that Peeta is.
"Haymitch should be here soon to keep you company," he says while throwing together some food, water, a flashlight and other basic supplies into a leather rucksack. He stops and kneels down next to me and gives me an earnest look. "Please don't leave to search for him. I need you to stay here."
I grip his hand hard. "He can't die," I say, fighting back sudden waterworks. "His life is my responsibility. I took him out there with me, I have to bring him back. If he...if he dies..." I swallow hard and look into the warmth of Peeta's eyes.
"I can't lose another one. He's all I have left." My words are shaky and desperate, but Peeta nods and squeezes my hand, always understanding. It is unclear to me which of them I am actually talking about.
"We'll get him, Katniss. I promise you that." His hand lingers in mine, and he stares at me just like that night in the arena before I lost him for good. I bite my lip, hard, and have to look away. Anger and regret and embarrassment are welling up within me like water from a sinkhole.
I close my eyes and lean my head back on the armrest and listen to him leave. "God damnit," I say to his furniture. The pain arcs up the nerves of my leg when I move it too fast and brings attention to my predicament. My foot tingles from the ice pack, and the whole right side of my throbs from where I fell.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I look around the room. A warm beachy interior with subtle signs of a domestic house life makes it apparent that Clairen spends a good bit of time here. White lace throw pillows, soft plush carpet, little tan and blue seashells placed thoughtfully on tabletops and in glass vases make my head swim. I don't look too closely at the pictures of the two of them spread out over the mantle because the mere thought of it makes the acid surge in the bottom of my throat.
Haymitch stumbles in, loud like an explosion. "Look at you all snug as a bug in a rug." There is a scoff laugh sound as he drops several bags down at the door and falls into a chair, his mouth already at a bottle. He kicks off his trashed slippers and throws both feet on top of the coffee table. His toe wiggles through a hole in his yellow sock.
"It doesn't take you long to make yourself comfortable either," I sneer.
"Yeah, well, I'm actually over here quite often," he says. "You know how Peeta is, always the make-yourself-at-home type."
I look away from him, knowing he's trying to rile me up. "I'd rather not be here, if I had the choice," I say in a faraway voice.
He sighs, realizing his mistake. "I know, Sweetheart. I don't know how shit always happens to the two of you that makes you go through this so often. God's a cruel author, I suppose."
I grunt, and we fall into our companionable silence, accentuated by one of us making a guttural exclamation every now and again. But I find after fifteen minutes that I need to keep some sort of conversation going because my mind is on a movie-reel-loop about all of the things I should be worried about at the moment.
"Do you know what's out West? Has anyone ever been out that far?"
Haymitch's eyes critique me. His mentor mind flicks on, and he's watching me intently through a screen making survival decisions down in the arena. "No. West's inhabitable. Prewar nuclear bombs made the whole West Coast irradiated," is all he offers.
"Irradiated?"
"You think the fire bombs were bad? Just be glad Snow didn't get his hands on any nuclear tech. That shit makes people disappear into thin air in a blink of white light. There weren't even any skeletons to bury."
I am horrified, but I press on. "But that was so long ago. How do you know there aren't people out there if no one's been?"
"Because you don't just go walking on ground soaked with radiation. Fries all of your organs and liquefies them and then you die." He sits up in his chair. "So whatever little solo field trip you have whirrin' around in your brain you can just forget about. I know the stunts you like to pull, and I'm saying no."
I shrug and this infuriates him. "You can't tell me what to do, you're not my mentor anymore."
"I may not be your mentor, but you need someone to talk some damn sense into you every once in a while," he says evenly and nods the bottle to my leg. "You're not going anywhere on that for a while."
But even as he speaks, I look out the window and watch the snow and the sun fall, my thoughts encircling an escape plan.