PART ONE: THE AIR
CHATPER TWO
At the start, everything I do seems to take me hours.
Get out of bed, Peeta, I tell myself. OK, now wash yourself, Peeta. No, your face in the mirror isn't a muttation, Peeta.
Then there's the cooking and the eating and filling the rest of the hours of the day with goodness knows what. Greasy Sae visits once a day, in the mid-mornings, to deliver me bread, meat and anything else there is. The District is still getting up and running. A lot of what gets to my table is hard-earned, Sae tells me.
"The eggs come from Haymitch's geese - nothing to sniff at, goose egg. Would've bent over backwards for some goose eggs back in the Hob," she says.
"Haymitch has geese?"
"Sure does. Wiley little things but they keep him off the liquor, at least," Sae continues. "The meat is from Katniss. Only just managed to start bringing stuff back. Last few months, all she'd do is go out into that forest with a bow and arrow, bringing nothing but a sad look back with her."
Haymitch's eggs, Katniss' game... they sit on my table with ill-made bread next to them, presumably made by Sae or one of the miners men's wives, I'm sure, when it should be being made by me.
I pick the bread up and toss it between my hands. It's similar to the dense, flat brown loaves that people in the Seam often made with their tesserae grains. Ripping off one of the corners, I toss a piece into my mouth. It tastes exactly how it looks. My face curls slightly. Food was food to so many people in 12. In fact, they were lucky just to have a loaf of bread on the table, no matter what grains made it.
But still, I think. 12 is gone. The war is over. There's no more Hunger Games.
Food... can be fun. It can be joyful. I can do that.
I spend the day searching my cupboards to see what was leftover from when I left for the Quell, and what's still usable now. As expected, there's industrial sized bags of flour that I'd taken from the bakery and back to my own place to use instead of staying in the kitchens near my mother. They're all mostly still good, except the one I'd been using last and had been left open.
I still had yeast, salt, plenty of oil and other flavourings. All still good, as well. I wondered momentarily if ingredients that had survived a war would make for better tasting bread...
I'd need to get hold of cheese and eggs and more to make the bread really come to life - goodness knows how Sae was going to get her hands on all of that - but for now? I could make a start. With this, I could make bread.
As my hands got to work, my brain was busy with thought of baking. I made yeast starters - one to use now, and one to age and mellow for something with more of a sour kick to it, which was one of my favourite types of breads. I let the yeast bloom as I started on a simple recipe that used a lot of oil to create something tasty but simple. I flavoured it with everything I had to really make it shine.
The oven clicked back to life slowly, but once it was hot, the bread started to come to life. Once my yeast was ready, I started to make doughs and kneed until my arms ached. I'd lost a lot of muscle over the last year, and it felt good to use what I was left with. The pain was oddly welcome, for once. It was a nice pain, one that told me I was alive and that I was going to stay that way.
I barely realised that the sky had gone dark until I heard a knocking at my door. It's at this point that I also realise I haven't had a tracker jacker venom flashback attack all day. The baking has consumed me as much as it has consumed my kitchen - I have bread covering almost every surface - from oil-baked flatbreads, buns topped with flaky salt and rosemary that I'd found hiding in the back of a cupboard and hearty white loaves that would go well with any meal.
Dusting off my floury hands, I strode toward the door and opened it to find Haymitch staring back at me.
"I'm hungry." Haymitch starts to walk in, and I don't protest. He sniffs deeply. "You've been busy. The whole town can smell it, you know."
He walks over to the table sitting square in my kitchen and moves over some of the bread to lay down a basket with some more eggs in.
"Fancy making me something?"
"Doesn't Sae bring you enough?" I ask.
He grunts. "Cooking isn't my forte, boy."
I smile and take a couple of eggs in my hands. "Fine," I say, "but only because I've worked up an appetite."
Haymitch settles into a chair as I turn on my gas cooker and plop the eggs in. I tear off a few buns and slice them open to put the eggs in, which sizzle and crack as the pan they're cooking in gets hotter.
"Oh, look," he says, breaking the silence between us, "you got some game."
I swallow, my throat constricting in the same way it always does when the thought of Katniss enters my mind. The only problem is, I can never tell if it's because I'm scared, or if it's because I miss her.
"I never get game."
"Never?" I ask. "Sae says Katniss has started to bring a few bits back every now and then, from the forest."
Haymitch just shrugs. "Yeah, I guess. But only ever enough for just her or another, if we're lucky. Even then it's only been squirrels and the odd wild dog. She's still not herself."
I stay quiet, the thought of Katniss wandering the forest that borders 12 alone, directionless, not able to hit any game that comes her way. I remember the turkeys and fat birds she'd bring in to the bakery, always been shout through the eye as to not ruin the meat. It was an art - the same way that my bread and my cake is an art.
It's hard to think of her without that. I can't imagine what sits in her head all day.
"Is there anything we can do, Haymitch?" I ask.
"You could go see her, you know." he says.
Immediately, my stomach constricts. "I don't... I don't think she'd want that."
"Are you kidding? Of course she would."
"But the last time we saw each other..." I start, but I'm unable to finish. The last time I saw her, I wouldn't let her kill herself after she killed Coin. After... after Prim died.
The eggs demand my attention, and I'm grateful for it. I flip them over for one moment before putting them into the buns, one each for me and Haymitch, and hand a plate over to him. Despite the heat of the meal, Haymitch rips into his immediately. I wonder what on earth he could've been eating if he hasn't been cooking much for himself, and how he's coping without the constant supply of white liquor.
"You need to see her, Peeta," Haymitch says, inbetween bites. "She doesn't even know you're home yet."
"Even with the smell of my bread all over town, like you said?" I say.
"Even with that," he confirms. "She's... she's in her own world. She misses her sister. She's lonely, and I'm not enough. I'm too much like her. She needs you. And you know what?"
"What?"
Haymitch swallows his final bite of the cooked egg bun. "You need her."
