Hey everyone. So...this has been a really long update. I'm so sorry, I got busy and then kind of forgot about this story. I started working on it again a few weeks ago, and now this chapter is up. I'm not going to promise to update every few days or anything, but I'll try not to update every nine months, lol.

So, here's Chapter Seven. I wasn't really in love with writing this chapter, but I hope you enjoy.


The days grow into weeks and months, until it has been three months since I came back from the Capitol. In the time after my conversation with Haymitch, all I do is sit around the house, doing nothing very different than I have the past few months. I can't move around very much because of my bad leg, so I just alternate between rooms on the first floor. Prim is with me most of the time, but sometimes she leaves me for a few hours every now and then to see her friends. Whenever she's gone, usually my mother stays with me, which doesn't suit me at all. We've been extremely cool to each other since Haymitch was here, and although my mother apologized for lying to me and obeying Haymitch, I still haven't forgiven her. It feels like too much of a betrayal for her to have conferred in secret with him right after I got back home.

Gale and Madge come by most days out of the week. Gale and I continue to skin game and clean out the greens, and Madge and I eat the strawberries Gale has gotten from the woods. One time when Madge is here, she tells me that the entire district really doesn't hate me, and that it is only Mrs. Mellark and her friends that do.

"Everyone else...feels sorry for you, Katniss. They don't hate you."

"But how can that be true?"

"Katniss, you made it to the very end of the Hunger Games. We all saw the position you were in. It's happened, and there's nothing anyone can do about it now." Madge strokes my hand, and smiles. I feel a little better, and we continue eating Gale's strawberries.

Madge says something else, though. "And Katniss…you don't need to punish yourself."

I look up from the strawberries. "Punish myself…about what?"

She sighs, and looks down at her hands, colored red from the strawberries. "I think you know, Katniss." She looks up at me, waiting for some sort of reaction, but I give her none. I know very well what she's talking about, but I won't listen to her. I can't. Not yet.

I nod, just to appease her, and we go back to our strawberries. My hands, I notice, are colored red like blood.

XXX

The following Sunday, Gale comes to the house. When he sees me sitting in the living room, my bad leg propped up on a footrest, he smiles.

"Katniss." He comes and kisses me on the cheek. I smile, knowing that it is a chaste kiss that a friend would give to another friend. I have missed this closeness with Gale, I realize. Despite my wanting to be alone, isolated from the world, I miss him and the friendship we had before the Games.

He sits in the chair next to me, and takes my hand. "Katniss...do you want to go to the Seam? See your old house?"

I almost pull my hand away. "The Seam? Why, Gale?"

"Just to see it. You haven't been there in so long." It's true that I haven't, but I don't understand why he wants to bring me there right now, all of a sudden.

"I...my leg is bad, I don't know if I can walk-"

"Don't worry about that. I'll help you there."

"I...I don't know..."

"Just for a little while, then we can come right back here."

I sigh, mulling it over. I have a feeling Gale won't take no for an answer. I plaster a smile on my face and say, "Fine. Let's go to the Seam."

Gale helps me up from the chair. He fishes my father's old hunting jacket out from the closet, and helps me into it. He leads me along, and I lean on him as we walk out of the front door, away from the Victor's Village and towards the rest of District Twelve. We walk in alleyways and behind houses, avoiding the people of the district. I shiver in the cold, goose bumps coming up along my arms despite the jacket. It's too cold for autumn, I think.

Finally, we make our way into the Seam. I look around, noticing not much has changed. The miners are all home, since its Sunday. Children run around behind houses, having fun and making the most of this sunny Sunday afternoon. The streets are still black with coal and cinder, and the area is grimy and misshapen as always.

We pass Gale's house. Hazelle Hawthorne, Gale's mother, is washing dishes by the kitchen sink, and she sees us pass by through her open window. Gale waves and smiles, and I bring up my hand to wave, too. She grins warmly at us, and looks like she is about to say something, but we keep walking until she is no longer in sight.

Finally, we make it to my old home. I gaze out at the house where I was raised, noting that it hasn't really changed in the months I've been gone. Small, gray and squat, as always. The only thing that has changed is the new, numerous weeds sprouting around the outside walls. We walk closer to the house, and Gale opens the back door for me. I limp inside, and lean against the wall for support as I look in at the room.

The kitchen, of course, is empty, and a fine layer of dust has settled on the table and chairs. Gale comes in and helps me to the tiny living room. I put my hand out on the wall, and when I pull it back, much dust has settled on my fingers. I blow the dust off my hand; the dust particles fly around in my face, and I cough. I walk into the old bedroom, where I used to sleep with Prim. The furniture is all bare, the clothes and sheets all taken away. I walk back out, standing again in what used to be my quaint living room. While I look around the room again, I notice something fuzzy comes up against my foot. I look down and see Buttercup, Prim's cat.

"What are you doing here?" I blurt out. I've always hated this cat, and it's always hated me. Buttercup is living at the new house in the Victor's Village now because of Prim, but its here, as if it's followed me all the way to the Seam.

I can't help but asking, "You don't like the new house either, do you?" The cat hisses and nudges my leg, and I recoil. I kick him away with my good leg, and he runs into the bedroom.

I trudge back into the kitchen, where Gale is sitting at the table. He looks up at me, concern creasing his forehead.

"Are you alright, Katniss?" he asks.

I nod. "It's just so weird, with no one living here anymore."

"I know. I just wanted you to see it. To remind you of your life here."

I look down at the floor. Truthfully, due to the morphling and everything else, I have somewhat forgotten my life. I've been so caught up in the Games, Peeta's death and everything else that my old life in Twelve really hasn't registered in my mind.

"I can't go back to my old life, Gale." It's true. There's no way that after going through everything I have, that I can again become that young girl from the Seam. The one that hunted in the woods, traded in the Hob, and did everything she could to provide for her sister and mother. I think about what Madge said a few days ago, about me punishing myself. Is it possible Gale and Madge are both thinking the same thing, and they're both trying to make me move on?

He looks down at the table, making patterns in the wood with his finger. Gale gets up, and looks deep into my eyes. "I know that. But I just wanted you to remember that despite everything, you had a life worth living, and you still do, Katniss."

I accept this, and nod. I don't want to argue over it, so I just let it be. I stay standing in the room for a few more moments, gazing about. I breathe deeply, then ask Gale to help me out through the back door. We make our way out of the house, through the Seam, and back to the Victor's Village. When we get back to my new house, I notice that Buttercup arrives just seconds after we do, hissing and running through the front door just before Gale closes it.

XXX

A few weeks before the start of the Victory Tour, when my mother is not home and it's only me and Prim there, I ask her to look for the paper with Cinna's phone number on it. I realize that I have missed Cinna, and after all that has happened, and what event is still to come, I need to talk to him. It was so easy talking to Cinna back in the Capitol, it makes me think that maybe it would be easy to open up to him now.

I still have my cast on, so there's no way I could bend down and look for the paper anywhere. Prim searches my room, and after an hour, finds it under my bed near my almost-empty box of morphling. She hands it to me, and she helps me downstairs to the telephone. After she departs to the living room, I dial the number on the paper, and after three rings, it picks up.

"Hello?" I smile immediately, so happy to hear Cinna's voice.

"Cinna? It's Katniss Everdeen."

There is a pause, and then he answers. "Katniss. Katniss, it's so good to hear from you. How are you?"

"I'm…I'm okay. I just…I remember you giving me your number, and I just wanted to talk to you…"

"Of course, Katniss. We can talk."

I smile again. "Good." We begin to have a long conversation. I find, like I suspected, that it is so easy to open up to him. First, I tell him about my first two months back in District Twelve, how I did nothing but lie in my bed taking morphling.

"Katniss, are you still taking as much as you were before?"

"N-no. I'm still taking a little…but not as much. I've gotten off it a bit."

"Can I ask…why exactly were you taking it?"

I swallow the lump in my throat. "So I didn't feel the pain. So I could see him in my…in my dreams."

I can imagine Cinna nodding, all the way back in the Capitol. "I understand. Since you're still taking it now…do you still see him?"

I nod. "Yes. I do. Every time."

We continue talking. I tell him about Gale and Madge visiting me almost every day. I tell him that my mother and I are no longer on good terms. I tell him about my confrontation with Mrs. Mellark, and about Haymitch's visit a day later.

"I'm so sorry, Katniss. Please believe me, your entire district doesn't hate you."

"I'm not so sure." My voice breaks on the last word.

"Katniss, they know what you went through. They know, they saw. His mother is only acting like that because she wasn't very nice to begin with, and…she's very distraught. Any mother would be. She just takes it to a different level."

"I...I guess so."

We continue talking. Cinna tells me about himself, his new fashion projects and designs, his day-to-day life, and I tell him just a little bit more about my life. It is so easy to talk to Cinna, to let him know what's going on. It feels good to talk again, to talk so much at one time that my voice hurts after I speak.

Too soon, Cinna says he has to leave. He has to visit a store to get more silk for his dresses, and they're opening up now, since the Capitol is a few hours behind District Twelve.

"Oh, before I leave, Katniss, I have to ask. Do you have a talent?"

"A what?"

"A talent, for the Victory Tour."

I flinch. Now that Cinna has said it, it makes it feel so real, so close. And it is close; it is only a few weeks away, just a blink of an eye.

"Not unless you count illegally hunting in the woods."

Cinna laughs. "No, I don't think that counts. Anything else?"

I try to think of something. I think of singing, but I don't think I'm that great, especially with how croaky my voice has become. And the only songs I know are mountain songs my father taught me, and those are too private to reveal to Panem.

"No, I don't think so."

"Hmm, how about this: we pretend that your talent is fashion. But I'll make you some things, and we'll just pretend you made them. I'll give you note cards on them too."

"Okay, that sounds good with me." I laugh a little.

"Great, its set then. I have to go now, Katniss. It was so great to hear from you. We can talk any time you want, whenever you can."

"It was great hearing from you too, Cinna. Yes, and I'll call you if I need to."

"Wonderful. Goodbye, Katniss."

"Goodbye."


So, how was it? Please review! Chapter Eight should be up relatively soon. The next chapter, the story picks up, I promise.