Hey, guys. I was just wonder again if you had any interest in this story, because honestly I think it would be fine ending here. So if you're interest, again, please review.
Citruszen: If you're reading this, I missed your review this time! They always encourage me so much!
DepressedUnicorn: I am very sorry I lied to you about when I was going to get this up :/
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.
*Katniss's POV*
I know I must apologize to Peeta. Tell him I understand one can only take so much. He just seems so strong, like he can handle anything. I guess we both have had to put on that façade in the past.
I pull myself off the window seat and stand in the shower for about an hour. I realize that I am subconsciously putting this off. Then I dress slowly and go down stairs. I am starving. I start pulling things from the fridge: milk, eggs, bread, cheese, juice.
"You know it's dinner time, don't you?" I look over and at the table is my mother. She hasn't exactly been living in District 12, though she does work at the hospital here. She goes back and forth to District 4, to the hospital she helped establish there. In fact, she goes there so often, I insisted that we get her a car so she doesn't have to go by train. The real challenge was teaching her to drive it. Peeta and I took countless hours explaining it to her and she seemed to know it all, but when she was behind the wheel it was a different story.
"It is dinner time," Haymitch notes. He's just come in, holding the baby, who is wrapped in a pink blanket my mother said her one her friends from the merchant class knitted for me years ago. "Let's have—"
"My mother is not your servant, Haymitch," I sniff. "You do know that, right?"
"Katniss, I really don't mind—"
"Mother, you're over worked, you should rest," I insist.
"Well, you're not making anything. And Peeta certainly isn't, so…"
"Where is Peeta anyway?" My mother asks.
I avert my eyes. Haymitch shifts the sleeping baby from arm to arm.
"He's in town," I say dumbly. "He had to go in to the bakery."
"On Sunday?" My mother inquires. By now she must have figured out something is going on. Peeta and I make it a point never to work on Sundays. But of course I didn't know it was Sunday.
"There was something important he had to take care of," Haymitch maintains for me.
"He'll be here soon?" Mother presses.
"I, err, I guess," Peeta has to come back sometime. He does live here. "But it could take a while."
"A very long while," Haymitch puts in. "Erm, Katniss, Little Guy could use some more blankets. Why don't you get them for me while I put her in bed?"
I get up and my mother looks at us like we're crazy. We probably are for trying to keep something this obvious from her.
I follow Haymitch into the nursery and puts the baby down. Then he says, "Peeta told me he was going to hole up at my place until he could "Collect himself."' He air quotes the last words.
"Great," I sigh.
"Do whatever you have to." He pats me on the shoulder and slumps downstairs, most likely for a drink.
I know Peeta can't last long at Haymitch's. It may be clean, but the place reeks of alcohol, which I know Peeta can't stand.
"Where'd Haymitch go?" I ask my mother when I come back down to the kitchen. She's put everything I had taken out away and replaced it with dinner ingredients. I realize I still haven't had anything to eat.
"He put in his order for dinner and left. If you would go hunting once in a while now maybe I would have something good to work with," she says teasingly.
I frown, ignoring that last jibe. I hadn't been hunting since I was pregnant, and just let Peeta buy meat from the butcher. "Why do you let Haymitch boss you around like this?" I demand.
She sighs, like she knew this was coming. "In a way, I can't really exist without Haymitch."
This comes as a shock to me. The implications she has just made fluster me. "H-how do you mean?"
Upon realizing what I think she meant, my mother rolls her eyes. "For a long time, Haymitch was the only person I could confide in," she says.
"You had me," I grumble.
"Before you. Even before your father. My friend who died in the Games, he was close to her for a little while." About a day or two, I think, remembering the time Peeta and I watched Haymitch's games before the Quarter Quell. It was a long while ago, but I remember like it was yesterday. "I didn't take it well when she died," my mother continued. "And her family, who had treated me like family for as long as I remembered, they just locked me out. My parents just told me to get over it. We had a Victor and I should be happy, even if it was a Seam boy. But she was my best friend…" My mother launches into a story of how my father, also a Seam boy she had fallen in love with, had been friends with Haymitch, and how they had talked for hours a week about Mayilee, cried over her, remembered her, how they were friends, having bonded over a common loss, comforting each other. Then Haymitch had locked her out too, after a while,too. He had all the comfort he needed in drink. And all the solitude. How she had tried to go to him after my father had died—I remember her leaving the house once or twice directly after that—but all he had done was blow her off again. How hard feelings between them had never led to real or sincere apologies when they once again had a common connection—Me. "After a while, he broke and made an apology to me," she shrugs. "I guess I feel like I owe him for unloading so much onto him. It was more than he could handle. It was me who drove him to seclusion. It was just too much for him to handle."
I had to agree with my mother, though what Haymitch did to himself was purely himself and the Capitol. A person can only take so much before they have to depend on something, morphling, alcohol, whatever the case may be. They can only take so much before they break. I know that full well.
"Oh, Mother, it's not your fault!" I say softly.
"No? Whose could it be?" My mother looks inconsolable in way. She's sure of this. So I just sigh and move on, though I know Haymitch would've relapsed with or without her.
"So, where is Peeta?" My mother presses.
"I don't know," I mumble. Because actually, I don't know.
My mother frowns. "You don't know," she repeats. "You and Peeta have been virtually inseparable since you made up and you don't know where he is?"
I pick at my finger nails and chew my lip, willing myself not to cry. Because it's unbearable have someone you love so much this angry at you.
"I sort of had a break down," I admit. "For three days."
"Haymitch told me about that," she says, chopping a carrot, probably for a stew.
"Haymitch thinks I'm being insensitive to everybody else by wallowing in grief and not thinking how it will "affect others." Peeta thinks so, too."
"Have you ever fought with Peeta?"
I shake my head. "Not since we were married. Petty disagreements, but nothing—" I swallow—"like this.
"You must really love each other, then," my mother tells me. "If you've never fought before now."
I do love Peeta. I can't stress it enough. I love him more than anything in the world.
"He doesn't think I do," I sniff.
"He doesn't think that," insists my mother vehemently.
"When I fell in love with your father, I doubted in my mind, but never in my heart. I always knew. Just like he always knows he loves you." She's right. Peeta always knew, deep down, he loved me. Even when he didn't know who he was, even when he didn't believe he was in love with me, he still knew.
I, on the other hand, am despicable. I doubted with my heart. I wanted to forget what I felt those few times. Those times when I knew I was in love with Peeta, but I didn't admit it to myself. I knew I loved him from that first kiss in the cave. From the first time my eyes locked on his. But I buried it deep and denied it.
I want to apologize. I also want to hurt myself for hurting my beloved Peeta. Without another word to my mother, I pull my coat off the rack and rush out the door. I take a quick glace behind me to see if the door has shut. And run directly into Peeta.
He looks startled, but I throw my arms around him. He holds me tight. "I'm sorry!" we both blubber at the same time. I pull away. He eyes are red, like he's been crying. I start wailing something unintelligible about how I'm sorry I ever doubted, but I don't think he can understand me.
He strokes my hair and murmurs to me. "It's ok, it's ok."
"But I was insensitive!" I cry. "I wasn't thinking about anyone else!"
"It doesn't matter," he croons. "I thought it over. You were just overwhelmed. And you know what?"
"What?" I sniffle.
"I don't care. We've stopped living in the past. It doesn't matter anymore." This is what I want to believe. The past doesn't matter. And right now, it doesn't. Nothing matters but Peeta is in my arms, holding me and loving me.
Alrightee. If you've forgotten in the time it took to read this, I am not starting on a new chapter until I get at least some interested people reviewing. So, if you are interested, please review. And I thought I should tell you all that this has no plot and I just sort of made it up as I went along. But I'm glad you like it! :)
So, I'm hoping to get some more reviews on this. Have a good one!
