Author's Note: Blah, sorry this chapter is significantly shorter than the others! I just wanted to expand upon the last chapter and where I ended up seemed like a good stopping point. Thank you to all those who have favorited me or added me to story alerts. I'm flattered.
Also, it needs to be said: I'm loving reading others' fan fiction, but I'm intentionally avoiding reading other post-MJ pre-epilogue stories similar to my own so I'm not unwittingly influenced by others. I would hate to think I incorporated something brilliant into my story only to later realize I had actually read it somewhere else. I'm sure it happens!
Anyway, onward! I'll try to update sooner rather than later since this one's short. I hope I don't work more than 40 hours this week!
CHAPTER 11
I snatch one of the magazines out of a customer's hands, deaf to her protest and walk back into the kitchen. On my way there, I find the article and its accompanying pictures. There are shots of Peeta and I casually snuggled against one another as he sketches; another of Peeta handing me a customer's order as I was waitressing; one of me in my robe, talking to Peeta outside my window as he is planting; one of us tending to our vegetable and herb garden. Who had taken these pictures? I never noticed any photographers but then again, there are so many migrants from other more populated districts coming to District 12 to research pharmaceuticals. Unfamiliar faces are so commonplace nowadays that I pay no mind to them.
Once I'm inside the kitchen, I lay the magazine on the countertop and begin to delve into the article.
After their famous and highly publicized feigned relationship, Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen of Hunger Games fame, both now 19 years old, appear to be awfully chummy these days. Although their courtship during the 74th and 75th Hunger Games was a cleverly devised plan to further the cause of the Rebellion, there now appears to have been some kernel of truth to the popularized teen romance. The two lovebirds have been seen—
Someone snatches the magazine out of my hands. Haymitch.
"Don't read this garbage," he warns, tossing the rag into the trash bin. "This is why I told the two of you to control yourselves. The world is still watching you."
I just stare at Haymitch, not knowing what to say.
"How can they just publish stuff about us like this without our permission?" Peeta asks from behind me.
"Did they ask your permission before sending you to your death in the Hunger Games?"
"Things are different now," Peeta ventures. "This isn't the old hegemonic Panem anymore. It's a new republic."
"Watch how little things change," Haymitch spits. "I'll believe it when I see it in the finalized Constitution, my boy. Until then, nothing has changed."
"These are our lives and they just trivialize it by turning it into entertainment," I say.
"It would have been that way anyway for you as Victors," Haymitch sighs. "My advice? Just get married and get boring. There's no surer way for your star to self-destruct."
"I don't want the government any more involved in my life than it already has been. I don't need a piece of paper from the government telling me who is and who is not part of my family, with whom I can and cannot live, with whom I can and cannot have a sexual relationship—" and then I stop because in my great declaration of anarchism, I forget that I'm thinking out loud and yesterday is still on my mind. And Haymitch is standing there and the fewer details he has, the better.
"You're a celebrity, sweetheart," Haymitch pats me on the head. "While the nation was recovering from the rebellion, it gave you your space while you recovered, too. Now that we're all back on our feet, the world wants to know what you've been up to."
"Who cares! Does no one have anything better to do? Peeta and I, we're boring now as it is. We're not fighting for our lives or causing political upheaval. We're working in a diner."
"Have you already forgotten what got people watching in the first place?" Haymitch laughs.
"You really have no idea the effect you have on people, Katniss," Peeta says as he reaches for my hand.
"Oh, come on, Peeta. Really, Katniss just turns you into an idiot. It's not her they want. It's you."
"Me?" Peeta asks.
"No," Haymitch corrects. "You. Plural. They want the happy ending."
This infuriates me to no end.
"I find this hard to believe since just a few years ago they were practically salivating at the idea of Peeta and I murdering each other in cold blood," I huff.
"Well, but you changed their minds, didn't you?" Haymitch said. "You showed them the Districts didn't have just second-class citizens. You're just as human as they are. You aren't roosters in a cock fighting ring. You're children! Children that have hopes and dreams and can love. You both made people see that no one can do anything alone but together..." Haymitch pushes us closer.
"Together we changed the rules of the game," Peeta says silently while gripping my hand.
It's overwhelming and I feel weak in my knees. This is too much power to place in the hands of two kids in the precipice of adulthood. I want to disappear from the world and just go back to the place where I went so unnoticed that no one bothered to feed me.
Who said anything about love and happy endings and together? Where I'd left off, we were two best friends that happened to have a lot of sexual tension and slept together once. Well, not once, but one day. I once again find myself being told what I'm feeling and being pushed back toward Peeta. You could do a lot worse. I don't like being pushed and I want to push back.
Haymitch huddles the two of us in his arms in what I believe to be a rare display of emotion. He appears to lean in to kiss each of us tenderly on the cheek but instead squeezes us impossibly closer yet and whispers so only we can hear him, "In the new game, make sure the odds stay ever in your favor."
Peeta and I exchange looks of confusion.
"Remember," he winks. "The world will be watching."
