Trigger Warning: implied violence, gore, recreational alcohol consumption, death of a major character.
x.
It happens in early January. Greasy Sae is dead.
The words sit like curdled milk on her tongue, sour and heavy, and she needs to repeat them just to understand what they mean. Its seems impossible that Sae could have succumbed to anything other than a sonorous nap after a good helping of white liquor, and she finds herself drifting back to the Hob in numb shock.
There's nothing there now to suggest that it had once been a bustling market. She's been busy, hasn't been by in while, so she hasn't noticed until now that the rickety wooden structures that once made the booths and counters of the market have been smashed to jagged pieces and left out to alternate between freeze and rot.
Undoubtedly it had been left this way as a reminder.
Theres nothing you do that we can't see. Theres nothing so precious we won't take it from you.
They don't need to remind her. She knows.
Katniss wanders back. The funeral is today, and she's not dressed for it yet. Something about finally donning the clothes for Sae's funeral makes her death seem all the more permanent, as though the ritual of dressing was a decision to accept the unacceptable.
Prim is frustrated when she gets home, sitting at the kitchen table with breakfast already set out.
"You said you'd only be gone for a minute. I thought you were going into the backyard or something."
"Sorry duck."
Prim huffs and kicks Katniss' chair out with her foot.
"Sit down and eat. You're going to have to drink your tea cold now."
"I'll just heat up more water.
"Katniss," Prim whines, stretching out her name in a nasal tone. "I used orange peel in it. Don't waste it, we only have a little bit of peel left."
"Ok ," she says, flopping down in the chair, "But Prim, don't use the peel for tea next time. I don't need it and we probably won't see more oranges for a few months yet."
Prim fiddles with the crusts of her toast on her plate, piling cheese on them with a frown. Prim hates crust.
"I just wanted a nice breakfast with you. You're always so busy."
There's a sharp ache in her chest that makes swallowing the mouthful of toast she just bit off a little more difficult than she expects. She coughs and drinks down half of her tea.
"Its better cold. I can taste more of the orange."
Prim rolls her eyes, but can't hide her smile as she pops another piece of what's arguably more cheese than bread in her mouth and chews. Holding a self conscious hand over her mouth, she chastises Katniss through her food.
"Youre lying, but that's OK, because I know I make the best tea blends, even if you're too busy with your fake fiance to appreciate it."
"Prim!" she hisses, and slaps the table with her palm.
Prim stands up to clear the table mid-eyeroll.
"Calm down. It's just us here."
Telling Prim that the engagement was fake had been such a bad idea, but she had been beside herself when she heard, afraid Katniss would leave her. Where Prim had gotten the idea that she would ever do something like is beyond her... That is, until, she remembers her mother had abandoned Prim over and over and worse still, during a disaster that had almost claimed Katniss' life as well.
The worst part was she hadn't heard from Katniss herself. It had been Gale who told her when she was visiting the Hawthorne's. When no one contradicted what Gale said, Prim was devastated, assuming the worst of why Katniss hadn't told her, and wondering what would happen to her now that she would be all on her own.
When Katniss came home to find a sobbing Prim, she did the only thing she could think to do, which of course was revealing that the engagement was fake. That also meant she had to repeat the story of why it was necessary in the first place- skipping over certain details. Like the true nature of the tesserae.
Prim hadn't shut up about it since.
"Just stop talking about it," she snaps.
Elbow deep in breakfast dishes, Prim sighs.
"I will when you will."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Katniss you talk about him constantly."
"He's my boss. We work together. We spend a lot of time-"
"No one, and I mean no one, can ever be your boss in any sense of that word. I bet you've railroaded your way into bossing him around by now."
"I-"
Dammit. Prim was right.
Peeta was useless when they had a line of customers. He was slow to finish even the simplest tasks, and preferred to talk to each customer rather than get them in and out of the shop as quickly as possible. It was incredibly irritating. So yes, there'd been more than one occasion when she's snapped at him.
Prim smirks at her over her shoulder.
"Thought so."
Theres no way she'll win this one.
"I need to get dressed."
Katniss stomps out of the kitchen and rummages through her mother's drawers until she finds an appropriate black dress, tugging it over her head. Prim wanders back too and watches her as her hands flit through the motions of rebraiding her hair.
"Where are you off to?," she asks.
"Funeral."
"Oh my god," breathes Prim, "Who died? How come you never said anything about someone dying?"
"She was someone I knew from the Hob."
Katniss skirts around answering the trickier parts of Prim's questions, but feels all the worse for it. Sae deserved to be remembered for something more than just what she did to survive. They all did.
"She was-"
But she can't find words that are good enough to explain why or how Sae was important outside of being the perpetually the most senior member of Twelve. How could she explain to Prim that Sae had been one of the only constants in her life, year after year?
Katniss wonders how she would be remembered when she died. The surly wife of a baker who sold liquor from the backdoor?
A chill washes over her as she ties off her braid.
"I'll be back this afternoon," she says, and sets off for Sae's shack on the southern edge of the Seam.
Along the way, she stops to buy a single lump of coal. Its a tradition in Twelve to bring coal to a funeral. There are no graves yards in Twelve, besides the few very ancient ones from long before Panem, and recently even those are disappearing as the Capitol cleared even more land. Bodies in Twelve were burned nearly as soon as they hit the dirt. Funerals were usually held in the family's home, but only Merchant families could afford to have flowers and food.
Most Seam families were too poor to take time off from work, even if it was their family member who had died. That didn't mean that deaths went unmourned- the family of the deceased just swung their front door open and let their neighbors stop by to pay their respects as they could. At some point, it became tradition to bring a lump of coal to a funeral. The coal brought to the family was meant to provide for the family where the deceased no longer could, and to stand in place of the grave the deceased would never have.
At least until it was burned in winter.
Katniss knows she's stalling when she starts to get picky about the size of the lump of coal as she digs through the pile at the distribution center. A cramped house of teary-eyed mourners awaits her and with every passing moment she dreads it more.
Nonetheless, that's where she finds herself not even twenty minutes later, surrounded by quiet sniffles and the musky scent of wet wool and stale sweat. Her lump of coal joins a mound of others on the kitchen table, and she means to duck out as soon as she can make it through the crush of people packed into the tiny house, but Ripper, who's standing on the gently lopsided porch, grabs her before she can get away.
"Never thought I'd see the day. It's a damn shame," she croaks around her pipe, smoke seeping from between her clenched teeth.
Suddenly unable to trust her voice not to crack, Katniss nods in response and crosses her arms over her chest. Ripper's pipe clatters from one side of her mouth to the other as she leans her back against the house and sighs. In a bathrobe and a man's patched trenchcoat, with her face swollen and red, the normally unflappable woman seems much more vulnerable.
"She was a fan of yours, you know," she continues, watching the constant stream of mourners enter and exit the house, "I think you got your reputation from that woman alone."
What was Ripper talking about? What reputation?
She must look confused, because Ripper shakes her head.
"You got a lot of spirit, girl. Sae liked that."
Her beaten up boots and greying, patched tights swim in her vision as she trains her eyes downward. Sae thought she had spirit. What did that even mean?
Whatever it meant, it couldn't be entirely bad. It implied that Sae had thought she was a fighter, which meant other people did too. It was strange to think that was how people saw her, when all she was able to see in herself was desperation. A desperation to live. A desperation that Prim live too. Could she really be that much of a fighter if all she was willing to fight for were the lives of a very few people?
By that logic, Peeta had at least ten times the spirit she had, even if he wouldn't fight to save himself.
In a quiet sort of way, he did, she decides. There is an intensity in him she sees only fleetingly, when he frosts a cake, or works on a page in one of his many handmade sketchbooks. She has never seen the inside of these books, but there isn't a moment when Peeta thinks he is alone that he doesn't have his nose buried in one. She is both curious and terrified of what she will find should she ever have the chance to see what was inside of them.
Ripper claps a sudden hand down on her shoulder, startling her.
"This is no place for young people. Get out of here. Go on and cause some trouble somewhere."
There is nothing she wants to do less than cause trouble. A long walk is what she needs, maybe a cup of tea.
"Oh shoot. Almost forgot. She left something for you…" Ripper digs around her coat pocket and withdraws and piece of paper folded into a square. On the front, in crude, shaking handwriting, is her name.
Tonight is not the night to read letters from the dead. She tucks it into her coat pocket.
"Go on now. Git," Ripper says, shooing her away with her hands. "And don't you do nothing but fix yourself something stiff to drink and go find that boy of yours. He'll know what to do with you."
Sick with sudden fury, Katniss storms off the porch to Ripper's raucous laughter, which follows her until she turns off Sae's street. How Peeta can stand that woman is a total mystery. Katniss is sure she's never hated anyone more.
Without meaning to, her feet lead her to the back door of the bakery. As much as she wants to walk to clear her head, its cold and her need to be somewhere warm and familiar overrides everything else. Realizing suddenly that she followed Ripper's advice to find Peeta, she grinds her teeth and is about to stalk away when the back door swings open. Just her luck.
"Hey," Peeta says in surprise, running a hand through his sweaty curls. "What are you doing here?"
It infuriates her further to find that Ripper had been right about finding Peeta. It was exactly the right thing to do.
"I was on a walk and ended up here."
"Are you ok?"
"Little cold."
He moves to usher her inside, but she catches a glimpse of Delly and Thistle in the kitchen with a few tiny pots of multi-colored dyes spread out on the table.
"Never mind. I should go."
"Wait, Katniss- are you sure you're ok?"
"I'm fine."
"Should I… Do you want me to come by later?"
"Yes," she blurts before she can stop herself. And then, because the thought of being alone is unbearable, adds, "Don't keep me waiting."
She spins on her heel and strides away quickly, not looking back.
When she gets home, Prim is gone. There is a note on the table explaining that she is with Rory, and will be home soon. Silent and empty, her house feels as though it is shrinking all around her. Too small. Too stuffy. Too dark. She swings open the back door, where the still, which Peeta has painted into the shadows, sits dormant and cold. Arms wrapped around herself, she steps into the frigid afternoon air on her back porch.
This is no place to live an entire life, she decides. In the same house. The same District. Never knowing anything but this. Greasy Sae had spent her whole life here. She had never known anything else. Would she live her life like that? She longs for the woods for just a moment, but the woods mean Gale, and she is not ready to touch that. Not now.
The woods obviously can no longer be her sanctuary.
Its all too much. She can't breathe. She needs air. Needs to be anywhere but here. She needs to be up.
The roof. It is colder up here, but the view of the roofs of the other houses in the Seam, rising up to break the skyline, fill her with a sense of ease. Here there is space to breathe. On her way to the roof, she had snagged a bottle of her own rotgut, which she had yet to try. Ripper had already been right once today, who said lightning couldn't strike twice?
The woman was hateful, but she had seen her fair share of death. Maybe her comment had been less off-handed than she had thought.
Unscrewing the lid on the mason jar, she downs her first gulp with a heaving gag. The liquid snakes a fiery trail down her mouth and throat, before burning in her stomach. She likes it.
The wait for Peeta takes longer than she thought it would, but eventually he turns down her street, looking rushed and worried.
She stays silent. Watches him as he approaches her house. Clean, pale and wide-eyed, its obvious even from a distance that he isn't Seam. Merchants normally don't venture to the other side of Twelve, and if they do, it was only during the day. Peeta's anxious countenance and observant gaze would be dead giveaways, even if his pale skin and hair weren't.
They had a saying for that: "Open eyes catch flies."
Tonight, thinking that while watching him is unbearable.
That secret world inside of him, the one she can only catch passing glimpses of- was that one more real to him than this one? What did he see, when he looked around this place? She saw hungry children. She saw the Reaping. She saw missing fathers and dead mothers.
As he goes to mount the stairs to get to her front door she stops him by swinging her legs. The movement catches his eye, and he finally looks up.
"Hey," he says, looking up and squinting. "What are you doing all the way up there?"
She shrugs.
"What are you doing all the way down there?"
He smiles slightly.
"Haha. Funny. OK, really. Come down."
Her grin broadens.
"Why don't you come up?"
He tries to, but he's just not as nimble as she is. It takes him a few minutes to hoist himself up the tree, and then another few to shimmy his way across the branch. Everytime she thinks he's going to give up and beg her to come down instead, he surprises her by gritting his teeth and doubling his effort.
When he finally plops down next to her he glares.
"OK. What are we doing?"
"Causing trouble."
He drops his head into his hands. When he looks up she's drinking from the wide mouth of a mason jar.
"Jesus Christ, Katniss! There's ice everywhere up here! You're going to fall off!"
She raises both her eyebrows pointedly.
"Nope. No. Were getting down. Now. Good job, you have had what I am sure is the worst idea of all time."
He goes to stand and she grabs his sleeve and yanks him back down.
"I'll be fine," she mutter, "I'm not going to fall off."
"You don't know that. This isn't safe."
"Its fine. Sit down."
He groans in frustration and sits down next to her.
"If you fall, I'm not going to be the one to tell Prim the reason why her sister is a pancake."
In response, she offers a him a drink from the jar, which he turns down immediately.
"At least one of us to be sober," he grumbles as she takes another long drink from the jar. "Want to tell me the real reason you're up here?"
She pauses, squinting out across the jagged roofline of the Seam.
"See that house out there?," she says, pointing toward one that rose above all the rest. "That's Ripper's house."
He follows her finger along the jumble of houses until he spies it- the only two story house in the Seam.
She then points just slightly to the left of that house.
"And that," she says, "is where I was today."
She silent for a moment before she continues.
"I went to a funeral."
"A funeral for who?"
"A woman named Greasy Sae. You would have liked her, I think."
"Who was she?"
Good question.
"A vendor at the Hob. The oldest living person in Twelve. And apparently, a fan of mine."
"Its hard not to be. A fan of yours, I mean."
She snorts and takes another long drink from the jar. The spirit burns in her nose and throat as it slides down, then spreads a cozy heat through her limbs.
"Tell me our story," she says.
"What story?"
"How we met. The first time we kissed. How you asked me to marry you."
Peeta is quiet for a minute, fixing an oddly thoughtful stare at his shoes.
"Why don't you tell me, Katniss? How would it have happened?"
"I'm no good at this. But you are, and-" she clears her throat, which has suddenly gone dry. "-and we really should iron out these details."
Shes sleepy and warm, and suddenly wants nothing more than to close her eyes. Lying back against the roof, her gaze drifts across the darkening sky. In all of those books of his, had he ever imagined this? Had he ever tried to keep track of their lies? There had been so many- it was dizzying to try to keep up with them all.
So what were a few more? She wants to know- she has to know- what story had he imagined?
"It started at school. I'd watch you sometimes. I was curious. Maybe- maybe it was a little bit of a crush."
Her arms raise over her head and she tucks her face against the one closest to him.
"And then, the fire. We both lost so much, and I couldn't even dream of getting to see you again, much less talk to you. And I really did want to, but I was terrified at the same time. I had built you up so much that you just became utterly unreachable. I gave up and settled for just watching you, because I still had to know you."
The cocoon of warmth between her face and the smooth leather of her jacket becomes her world. This warmth, Peeta's words, and the sky, big and open and just out of reach. If only there was a way climb there. If only there was a way out of the fences that surrounded Twelve that wouldn't lead to death or torture. Perhaps Peeta had found the only way, inside of himself.
"And just when I had given up entirely on ever seeing you again, you showed up at the bakery just as I was closing up. I stayed open for you, so you could buy bread, and I was dying to say something, anything to keep you there…"
Its all there in her mind, just as he describes. It was more than maybe. It really could have been this way. There is a leaden lump in her throat that makes it hard to swallow.
"I told you how I felt that night, even though I was scared. And I told you not to worry. That I would take care of you, if you allowed it."
"And what did I do?" she croaks. "What did I say?"
Peeta lies down next to her, and when she sneaks a look at him over her jacket, those blue eyes are trained on her, only her. This world he's built, where she buys bread instead of stealing it, where she is unreachable but desired- she could disappear into it.
"I don't know, Katniss. What did you say?"
Closing her eyes again, she lives that night the way Peeta describes. She sees herself in the bakery as he confesses, and immediately she knows what she does next. But saying it would ruin the world that Peeta has so carefully crafted. This is a world where he loves her, so could it be a world where she could let herself love him?
No, she decides. In no world real or imagined could she ever see herself as capable of that.
"I say: I don't need anyone to survive."
Peeta laughs.
"And that's how it starts," he says.
"That's how?" she asks incredulously.
"Yes. A story's never any good without conflict."
"So you... what? You convince me that I need you?"
"No," he laughs. "I convince you that we need each other."
Peeta words jumble together until its not his voice she's hearing, just the story he paints. There are walks together through the snow. They play cards. He cooks for her. Their first kiss is at sunset, in the garden in the back of the bakery. There are fights. Gifts. Small things. Real things. Whether its the alcohol in her veins or the soft drone of his voice she can't be sure, but at some point she drifts off. The fantasy isn't over though. Her mind, or Peeta's words, keep supplying the images.
Nights during the winter where they watch the snow fall out of the window in the apartment on top of the bakery, talking about nothing for hours. He teaches her to bake, which she is predictably short-tempered with. She nurses him back to health after a nasty cold. There is no hunger here in Peeta's fictional winter, no Capitol posters, no tesserae and no peacekeepers. This world is real, but softer. Gentler.
She is bobbing gently in the dark waters between sleeping and not when she feels herself being lifted and carried. Her head lolls against something warm, and she burrows her face into it. There is movement around her. Panicked whispers. A long series of wooden creaks. Peeta's rushed voice rumbling against her- Is this the ladder you brought him on? How is he?
He carries her somewhere warm, and a crowd of voices is waiting for them. Peeta sits her down on the couch and someone screams, feet pound on the stairs, and the light prickles and bleeds into balls of long spines all around her.
Someone is asking where Gale is, and ordering that water be boiled and fresh rags be brought out.
Why are so many people here? Something is telling her that its late. They were breaking curfew. Risking arrest. Or worse.
Delly is screaming over and over that Peeta lied to her, that he knew what was happening in the square, and Prim is sobbing airlessly. Something is wrong. She stands up and the room spins violently. Why is Haymitch here? She takes a step forward and is overwhelmed by a heavy, cloying scent. Nausea washes through her.
"Oh for fuck's sake- Is she drunk?!" Haymitch snaps.
At first, it doesn't make sense. And then, she realizes. This is real. This is not a dream.
That smell. It's blood.
Peeta notices that she is standing and moves toward her.
"Katniss, wait. You shouldn't-"
She shrugs him off and walks further into the kitchen. Prim is the first person her eyes find. Her face is pale, her eyes wide and glassy, and she is shaking violently while she grips a dark-stained rag in a tight fist over her left eye.
"Prim!," she cries, and rushes forward. As she does, her eyes catch on a dark figure laid on his stomach on the kitchen table. She's not sure what she's looking at until she right in front of it. It's boy's back, only barely recognizable as such. It's mutilated, the skin torn open in long trails, oozing blood over his sides on onto the table below.
"Who?" she croaks dizzily.
"Rory," Prim sobs.
A/N: Huge thanks to my beta Opaque for another 24 hour turn around!
To my readers and reviewers, you guys are fantastic! See you next week!