"Katniss? Katniss!"
Though Peeta's concern was unmistakable, it was the touch of his hand on hers that broke Katniss' reverie. "Hmm?" she mumbled, somewhat confused at his urgency.
"Are you okay? Haymitch tried to get your attention before he left, but you didn't respond to him." Peeta continued to scrutinize her, looking for any sign that something was amiss.
"Haymitch is gone?" She looked wildly at the seat opposite her and Peeta: sure enough, there was no sign of their mentor. Before she could even wonder at her own inattention, she was next distracted by the sight of Peeta's frown deepening. "Peeta, I'm fine. Really. I was just thinking about this evening."
Katniss was relieved to see Peeta relax and nod in understanding. After completing their session at the healing station, the District Six and Twelve tributes had parted ways for the remainder of the afternoon. True to Amy's prediction, she and Rory seemed to have gotten over their disagreement, and they had wandered off together in order to practice climbing. Katniss and Peeta had decided to separate in order to continue interacting with the other victors. As agreed at lunch, all had reunited at the end of the day so Amy could show Peeta the ancient artwork. Katniss and Peeta had just been sat down on a sofa that faced the entrance to the suite when that very door had been flung open.
"AMY! RORY! MELODY'S LOOKING FOR YOU AND SHE'S NOT HAPPY. SHE'S EXTREMELY VERY NOT HAPPY…oh, you're here already. That was fast. I didn't expect you to be so prompt. You usually never listen to me." The District Six mentor scanned the room excitedly and then noticed Peeta and Katniss on the sofa. "And we have company-how wonderful. Hello again, District Twelve!"
"Doctor?" Amy asked, drawing out both syllables of the word.
The Doctor sighed. "Melody will be here shortly with new outfits for the each of you to try on for your interviews, and she's determined that you'll finally stop ignoring her and make your decision already."
Both Rory and Amy seemed to be confused by this information. "Make our decision?" Rory inquired. "About our outfits? As the stylist, isn't that supposed to be her job?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Apparently, she's been inspired by the not-terrible reception that you lot got at the parade, so she's been furiously whipping up some new designs. As you would know if you had been paying the slightest attention to her." He turned to Rory. "There's one that she particularly likes for you. She described it as 'something that would make even Finnick Odair blush.'"
"Oh, hell no!" Rory exclaimed. At that very moment, the front door was again flung open, and a woman entered the room pushing a cart laden with garment bags. Rory stomped over and grabbed the four bags labeled with his name. Without further adieu, he marched past Katniss and Peeta, and, from the door slam, Katniss assumed that he was now headed to his bedroom to try on the outfits. Amy smirked as she picked up the remaining garment bags and also left the room. The woman-presumably Melody-looked questioningly at the Doctor.
"Let's just say that I made sure that Rory realized that it was in his best interest to cooperate. Although it's entirely possible that I might have ever so slightly misrepresented some of your intentions. Which may or may not have involved taking Finnick Odair's name in vain." The woman rolled her eyes as she too disappeared behind the door in search of her tributes. As the Doctor started to follow her, Katniss turned to Peeta and mouthed "we should go." Peeta nodded, but then a soft whirring sound led both to snap their heads in the direction of the Doctor, just in time to see him fumbling with something in his pocket. His grin somehow became even bigger when he caught their eyes.
"I don't think that it'll take too long," he commented as he strode over to the seating area and sat down opposite them. His expression, which had been jovial just a few seconds ago, now became serious as he regarded the District Twelve tributes, seemingly with great curiosity. To be fair, Katniss was similarly fascinated by this mentor whose demeanor made Haymitch look even-keeled and sober. The Doctor began to fiddle with his watch, and he tapped the face to an irregular beat. Katniss frowned and, vaguely remembering Plutarch Heavensbee's watch at that long-ago party, wondered if a mockingjay might spring forth. The Doctor noticed her fascination and stopped.
"So, what brings the two of you to the sixth floor? It's rather…unorthodox for tributes to visit one another."
"Amy wanted to show us some art that she thought we would like," Peeta responded.
"Did she now?" The Doctor's gaze drifted over the table and settled upon a leather portfolio. "I'm guessing that this would be the artwork in question." He opened up the portfolio and fanned a set of cards before him. "Oh, Amy. I should have guessed." He smiled as he quickly arranged the cards in the folder, although the actual content was still shielded from Katniss and Peeta's view. "And, voilà," intoned the Doctor as he replaced the portfolio on the table and slid it over to Katniss and Peeta.
The riot of color was nothing like Katniss had ever seen before: the paintings could hardly be called realistic, but the passion and emotion, life and death, ecstasy and fear in each fervent brushstroke were evident even in these reproductions. If this art could provoke such a response in her, she could only imagine Peeta's reaction to the paintings. She tore her eyes from the table in order to fully look at Peeta. In contrast to yesterday, this time Katniss allowed herself to fully smile as she observed Peeta's rapt interest in the vibrant pictures before him. He seemed to sense her gaze, and he turned to her with an almost bashful smile. Her fond expression, however, did not falter, and all the shyness melted from his countenance. Katniss didn't know how long they were staring at each other until she heard a faint cough from the third occupant of the room.
"I take it that this is the first time that you've seen anything by van Gogh?"
Katniss and Peeta both nodded. "It might have been different in District Six, but the arts were definitely not emphasized in the District Twelve curriculum. I mean, you'd think that we'd get charcoals for drawing at the very least, but no," Peeta explained. "I definitely would have remembered these." He picked up a postcard of a nighttime sky for further inspection.
"Is it different in District Six?" Katniss asked. "How did Amy know about these?"
The Doctor smiled. "I can't really speak for Amy, but I do know that they were very important to her during a very difficult time in her life. It was as if she had lost her memories of all the good things that had ever happened to her. There was so much sadness, and there was nothing that I could do to help her. But, eventually, she finally remembered some of the good things that had happened to her. And while they couldn't take away from the pain of the bad, those good memories did help to bring back some parts of her that she thought she had lost forever." The Doctor extended his hand over the portfolio, hovering for just a second, before selecting one of the pictures to place on top of the pile. "This one ended up being of particular comfort and hope to Amy."
Katniss' eyes widened at the picture before her, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by an affinity for this girl who had also found unlikely solace in a common yellow flower. She stared at the card, with her mind's eye replacing each sunflower with a dandelion. After some moments, she looked away in order to collect her thoughts, but then her eyes immediately fell upon a picture of a young child in a meadow, which also struck a chord in her for some reason. She suddenly sat up straight and away from the pictures, feeling that the only safe place was to look was her lap. After some moments of silence, the Doctor spoke.
"It's all too obvious, it's all too convenient. They've only made the barest of pretenses." Katniss looked up, both uncertain of and confused by what she had just heard. She saw that Peeta also was now staring at the District Six mentor. The Doctor, who had been sitting back in his chair, suddenly leaned forward.
"You two are much stronger than I had realized."
Katniss was even more confused by this statement. Instinctively, her left hand reached out for Peeta's right hand, and she finally breathed again once he had grasped hers. Before she could further consider the motives underlying the Doctor's words, he leaned back in his seat and continued.
"Seventy five years of child sacrifice in order to try to break the will of they people, but they've failed. And you two are the most prominent evidence of that failure. You two refused to concede the meager scrap of hope that they gave you last year. And this refusal, in turn, strengthened the will of the Districts. And yet, somehow, the government thinks that they can finally break their people with this Quell. But they're wrong, oh, how they're wrong. Because they haven't bothered to notice that even after seventy-five years of terror and atrocities, that the children always want to live. Even coming from the most desperate of circumstances, even after generations of suffering and punishment, not one tribute gives up without some sort of fight, not one tribute doesn't at least try to survive to the best of their ability. They think that they'll break your spirits by taking away the one illusory hope that they have given, but they're wrong. All they've done is to ensure that the people think that there is nothing left to lose. That won't make them desperate, that will make them angry. And they should be very, very afraid of that anger."
It was almost too much for Katniss to process. What the Doctor had said was so dangerous, so nakedly seditious. But he was right, at least from Katniss' view: she had seen the people on the Victory Tour and even she had realized how nothing she or Peeta could do could soothe the anger. She had also realized that she was undoubtedly marked for death in the arena, but she couldn't understand why the Capitol was so determined to create at least twenty-two other martyrs. She had always assumed that there must have been some larger strategy at play, but…maybe not. Maybe the government was so blind to its own excesses that they couldn't see that the wholesale execution of the victors-the one class of District citizens guaranteed to be safe-would inflame the citizenry, not break it. Katniss' train of thought was only broken by the sound of a door jangling; in fact, it seemed to be the door separating the seating area from the bedrooms. The Doctor, however, seemed either not to have heard the noise or to be wholly indifferent to the commotion.
"But here I am rambling on and talking when you must be desperate to get back to your rooms to clean up before dinner. I expect it's been a very long day, and your mentor probably can't wait to discuss all sorts of mentory things." He waited for Katniss and Peeta to stand, and he led them to the elevator. "It has been my very great pleasure to meet you, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark," the Doctor stated as he shook each of their hands. "I can only wish that it had been under better circumstances."
Katniss and Peeta were both silent as they traveled to the twelfth floor. Immediately upon entrance, they were accosted by Haymitch. "Finally decided to show up, eh? Would you mind letting me know where you've been?"
"Just talking to the District Six victors," Peeta replied casually.
Haymitch looked intrigued. "Really? They've been bothering to give you the time of day?"
"Yes, some people actually find us worthy of their time," Katniss replied irritably. "Why are you so surprised?"
Haymitch shrugged. "No skin off my nose, sweetheart. Their mentor has made it clear that he's not interested in forming an alliance with any other district. Been a bit standoffish, so it wouldn't have surprised me if the tributes had been the same way."
This tidbit of information surprised Katniss. If anything, Amy and Rory had been actively trying to talk to her and Peeta-their behavior made no sense unless their mentor was keeping them completely in the dark about his intended strategy.
"And don't get any ideas, you two," Haymitch growled. "You both still need to ally with other victors if either of you wants any shot at making it out of the arena again. I don't have the patience to discuss alliances with you this evening-I suspect Katniss might have her eye on a potted plant that she took a liking to in the training room. Right now, I'm starving, so run along and wash up for dinner."
And it had been all of this that had preoccupied Katniss' thoughts during the meal. She fiddled with her napkin. "What the Doctor said…about the Districts…you must think its true." She looked up at Peeta, who merely raised an eyebrow at her. At this, she continued. "I mean, like you said on the train, people aren't happy, even people that I wouldn't have expected to care the slightest bit. You realized that, and you made me realize that. Why don't they realize that?"
Peeta sighed, and he began to doodle designs on the table with his finger. "I can't even begin to understand. But he's also right about it being all a little too convenient. We're all just so many fish in a barrel. What?" Peeta had looked up in time to see a smile creep over Katniss' face, a smile that was rather incongruous with the serious subject matter at hand.
"Nothing," she shook her head while still smiling. "It's just that, well, the only person that I've ever heard use that phrase was my father. I wouldn't have expected you to have been familiar with it."
"Did I not use it correctly? I mean, it's never really made much sense to me-why would you shoot fish in the first place, especially when they've already been caught?-but I must have read it somewhere…I can't really remember where, though."
Katniss began to chuckle. "And now you're babbling." A blush began to creep over Peeta's face. "No, really, it was actually kind of nice to be reminded of my dad," Katniss quickly tried to reassure him. "It was just unexpected, that's all. But nice all the same."
"Okay," replied Peeta, somewhat doubtfully. As he had last night, he poured a cup of tea for both himself and Katniss, and he passed the sugar bowl along to her as well. As she added a spoonful of sugar to her tea, Katniss was suddenly struck by another realization.
"You don't ever take sugar in your tea, do you?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"No, I can't say that I do," Peeta answered slowly. "Not that we drank much tea at home, but when we did, we saved the sugar for the bakery. I had it with sugar a couple of times last year, just to try, but it tasted strange. I didn't like it."
"The baker without a sweet tooth-you're really quite full of surprises," Katniss lightly teased, but then she fell silent. Where was this behavior coming from? She stirred her tea as she tried to figure it out.
"You bite your lip a lot when you're thinking," Peeta broke in. "If we're sharing random observations, which it seems like we are. You did that a lot when you were writing in the plant book or if you were deciding whether my pictures were accurate enough to include."
Katniss then understood: now that her life could be measured in days, she wanted to revel in the normal memories that she had, especially the ones that she involved the boy sitting next to her. She didn't expect that they'd have any opportunities to make new memories-at least, any good ones-over the next few days, but maybe it would be possible to enjoy the ones that she did have, and maybe to get to know him just a little bit better. If nothing else, she reasoned, it would help strengthen her conviction that her plan of self-sacrifice was the right choice. She took a sip of tea before continuing.
"You always double-knot your laces, even when you're wearing dress shoes, like on the Tour. Why's that?" Katniss was then treated to a rather pathetically funny story of a four-year-old Peeta insisting on joining a game of tag that his brothers had been playing, only to end up tripping on his untied shoelaces and finding himself at the bottom of a pile after being tackled by both brothers. And even though Peeta took pains to point out how his four-year-old self had been very brave and not cried even though his brothers were big and heavy, his oldest brother had nonetheless felt very guilty and showed him how to double tie his shoes, and the habit had simply stuck.
The conversation, full of laughter and teasing, lasted throughout the evening. And so, without intending to, Katniss and Peeta each added to their piles of good things.
...
I'm a huge fan of van Gogh, so I naturally needed to work in copious references to Vincent and the Doctor. In addition to the references to Starry Night and Sunflowers as artwork that was included in the episode, doing a google image search for the following terms will bring up artwork that I thought might particularly speak to Katniss:
-child with orange van gogh-this struck me as being a decent representation of the imagery of her dream after the beach scene.
-undergrowth with lily van gogh- and -tree trunks with ivy van gogh-Both are forest scenes, and they kind of reminded me of how Katniss described Peeta's light-dappled camouflage during the training for their first Games.