Last Time in Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged:
He freezes and regards me with serious gray eyes. "Do you really think someone will kill you if I pay you that?"
"I don't know. It depends on if someone gets desperate enough." I think about the attack on our house. If those bottles had been filled with kerosene rather than urine, that would've been the end of us. It could happen again. I shiver.
"You think it'll paint a target on your back."
I nod.
"Fine. I'll pay you fifty. But anything, and I do mean anything, from your clothes to Prim's sweets to the Squirt's toys, I'm paying for." His gray eyes bore into me, telling me louder than any words that he's serious. "If you want it, I buy it. And that's not negotiable."
"...Okay," I say after several long moments.
"Good." He leans back and the tension lifts. "Now what's a man got to do around here to get some dessert?"
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Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged
by RoseFyre & FanficAllergy
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Chapter Twenty-Six: Out of Suffering
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"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
― Khalil Gibran
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The extra money helps. I'm able to start building my stores again in a way I haven't been able to all winter. Even though I don't have as much time to hunt - I'm too busy working for Haymitch - I'm able to buy more, store more. Not to mention, Haymitch keeps sending me home with food. Our cupboards are no longer bare. They're not full yet, but I can visualize a time when they will be.
It's a relief.
By mid-April, the weather is nice. Well, mostly. It's still muddy. Really muddy. The spring rains have started. But it's warmer than it was, and flowers are starting to bloom. I suppose, it's a good trade-off for all of the mud.
Unfortunately, the rain brings things other than mud. Like spring colds. Delly had one. Thom had one. And unfortunately, Haymitch has one. Unlike my best friends who manage to power through the illness, the cold knocks him on his ass. He feels miserable - and not the usual misery of a hangover - and he's not afraid to show it. For the last few days, Haymitch has been confined to his bed. He's grumpy, he's tired, and he's not in a good mood. A mood that was made worse when I informed him after the first coughing fit that Aven wasn't setting foot in his house until Haymitch was healthy.
I swear he likes my brother more than he likes anyone else, including me.
I think my ultimatum was the start of his current temper tantrum. He's like an exhausted child who won't fall asleep even though that's the one thing that will make him feel better. Haymitch doesn't want anyone around. Not that I blame him. The old drunk sounds more like an old goat. Bleating and sputtering with every breath. Nothing I do seems to help and even what's left of my mother's "cold tea" doesn't seem to do much good. Short of going and getting the Capitol doctor, there's not a lot I can do. And Haymitch nixed that idea when I brought it up.
The Victor fixes me with a bleary, red-eyed stare. "You get yourself home before you get sick too." He coughs several times into an already grimy handkerchief. "If you get sick, then who will take care of everyone?"
Haymitch has a point. I've got a lot of people depending on me. More than just my family. Unfortunately, one of those people is Haymitch despite his protestations otherwise. It's for that reason that I'm here long enough to make some soup, so Haymitch will have something to eat for the next few days. But after that, I'm leaving. I can't afford to get sick.
As I'm finishing up, Peeta stops by with the day's bread delivery. He watches me closely while I put it away.
"Everything okay?" he asks, eyeing the door to the living room. Behind it, Haymitch is coughing and sneezing, punctured by occasional groans.
"He's sick."
"Hangover?"
"A cold. Maybe bronchitis." I know what pneumonia sounds like, and Haymitch definitely doesn't have that.
Peeta leans against a counter. "Ah."
There's a clomping noise and the door opens to reveal Haymitch. He looks terrible. His eyes are runny, his nose is pink, and he's shaky at best. "What are you still doing here? Didn't I tell you to leave?"
"I made you soup."
He scowls at me. "Go on, get. And don't come back 'til Monday at the earliest."
That's two days away. Two whole days off will be a welcome break from all of the cleaning and caregiving. Time to spend with Peeta, with Prim and Aven, and maybe even go into the woods. I could go hunting.
That decides me. I take off my apron, draping it over the nearest chair. "There's bread in the breadbox," I say. "And soup in the refrigerator." My tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar Capitol word.
"I survived on my own for twenty years; I'll be fine." He coughs again.
Peeta tugs on my hand and I follow him out of the house, leaving Haymitch alone - as he clearly wants to be. "I didn't think it was possible," Peeta says, "but he's even grumpier than before."
I shrug. "He's in a better mood today. Yesterday was…" I trail off with a shudder. "So…" I look down at our joined hands. "How's school?"
Peeta launches into a rambling story about yesterday's wrestling tryouts complete with several asides to bring up people that I'm not quite sure what relevance they have to the main story, but they're important to Peeta, so I nod along. As far as I can figure out from Peeta's labyrinth-like tale, his brother divided everybody up into two teams and made them wrestle in some sort of tournament, ultimately culminating with Peeta wrestling Johnny.
"So what happened?"
"I won."
I deliberately bump into him. "Of course you won. You're the best wrestler in the district. Give me a little more - like how'd you win?"
Peeta gives me the play-by-play, using what I can only guess are wrestling terms like suplex or chokehold. Sometimes he even half-demonstrates one of the moves. The pride stains his cheeks pink with pleasure as he describes the match.
I wish I could've been there to see it. Peeta wrestling Johnny. Why, that's more entertaining than a hundred Hunger Games. I hum encouragingly at what I think are the appropriate moments. I'm not sure, but I like watching Peeta like this. I like seeing him filled with excitement and pride over something he's done. I like sharing this with him. "I wish I could've been there," I say out loud giving voice to my earlier thoughts.
His eyes steal over to me. "Is it wrong that part of me is glad you weren't?"
"Why?" I ask, unable to stop the hurt from seeping into my tone.
The blush heightens. "So I may have won because Johnny got distracted."
The hurt fades slightly. "Oh?"
"I may have been the one who pointed out the distraction. But in my defense, Madge was standing right there! And the sun happened to come out right behind her, and it's not my fault she wasn't wearing a slip!" His cheeks turn outright red. "And you could see the outline of pretty much everything."
I chuckle. "And so of course you told Johnny about it."
"I might have." The evasiveness in his voice tells me he definitely did.
"And?"
"He looked."
"And?"
"I pinned him."
"So that's how you won." I bump his shoulder. "You took advantage of your brother's love interest."
He bumps mine back. "To be fair, he would've done the same thing to me if you'd been there."
And now I'm blushing.
"So," Peeta says changing the subject, "did my ears deceive me or do you have the weekend off?"
A smile tugs at my lips. "I maybe might have the weekend off. Of course, there's lots of things at home I should be doing."
"Nuh-uh." He squeezes my hand and pulls me closer. "You and me. We're going on a date."
"A date. You mean this-" I lift our hands and sort of point vaguely at the path in front of us "-isn't a date?"
He drops my hand to slip his arm around my shoulders. "It can be if you want it to be. But I was thinking more in terms of me getting to show my successful and talented girlfriend off to the rest of the district."
"Oh." I snuggle closer. "And how would you do that?"
Peeta starts to describe a date consisting of us going from merchant to merchant, shop to shop, picking out little silly things. A fan, a ribbon, a flower to go behind my ear. Before ending up at the district's lone restaurant. A place which normally only serves other merchants when they have a special occasion like a birthday or a wedding. Most Peacekeepers eat in their barracks or at the Hob: the food's better. Not that I've actually been to the restaurant. We never had the money, and the owners are even more snobbish than Peeta's mother. But there's got to be a reason why even the Head Peacekeeper prefers Greasy Sae's cooking to whatever McDonald's is serving.
The description lasts us all the way back to my house. When we get there, I don't want to say goodbye. I haven't had a day off - a real day off - in so long. And thanks to Haymitch being sick, I can actually have some time to myself. Time I can spend with Peeta.
But unfortunately Peeta doesn't have the same luxury. The district needs bread. And his family provides it.
My hand snakes out to entwine with his. "I don't want you to leave."
"I don't want to leave."
"But you have to."
He nods.
I take a step forward, tilting my head up in invitation.
An invitation Peeta accepts happily. His lips cover mine in a chaste yet heated kiss. Our hands entwine together at our sides.
I don't ever want the kiss to end. But it has to.
A few drops of cold moisture splatter against my face. "It's raining," I say inanely.
"Is it?" Peeta seems as dazed and distracted as I am.
"Yeah. It is." I glance up at the clouds, dark and heavy. The skies are about to open up. "You should go before it starts pouring."
He pulls away, our hands entwined until distance forces them to separate. "I'll see you tomorrow." His voice is husky like someone has stolen his breath away.
That's okay; my voice is husky too. I just have enough sense not to say anything. Instead I wave at him, blowing a kiss when I think no one will see.
Before I do something even more ill-advised, I open my door and slip inside. The house is quiet with that sickly sweet smell that I've come to identify as my mother's unwashed body.
Speaking of my mother, I should probably check on her. I've been forcing Prim to do it since by the time I get home from Haymitch's, I barely have the energy to take care of myself, let alone what's left of my mother.
As I enter the bedroom, I sense something's wrong. The quiet is deep. All-consuming. Wrong.
As if to fill the unearthly silence, my heart pounds in my chest so loudly that I can't even hear the sound of my footsteps on the worn wood floor. The panicked sound is not an improvement.
My eyes locked upon my mother's still form, I take the five steps necessary to get to her side. She's there. But at the same time… not… in a way that I can't quite put my finger on.
Almost of its own accord, my hand slithers forward to feel at her forehead. Everybody else in Twelve is sick; maybe she came down with something too.
But her forehead's not hot.
It's cold.
I stumble backward until the back of my legs collide with the bed Prim and I share. I sit down heavily, my eyes never leaving my mother.
My mother is dead.
My mother. Is. Dead.
And there's the Gamemaker twist.
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AN:
Written: 3/24/19
Revised: 4/9/19
So, uh, we killed Katniss's mom. It's been a long time coming. We'll go into the exact reasons why later, but the easiest explanation is one that Katniss herself gave early on in the story: her mother willed herself to die. As someone who's had family members do this, it isn't a pretty process.
But at least there was cute Everlark before we killed her? And now you get to see that in this universe, Peeta is the best wrestler in the district? That's because we subscribe to the fanon that Peeta's brother distracted him with Katniss. Since Katniss wasn't there… Peeta turned the tables on Johnny.
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