A/N: Yes, this is real. Yes, it will be completed. Warning, the rest of the story includes discussion of abortion.
Chapter 7: Miss Trust
Katniss jumped, her beer sloshing around the rim of her glass right before she was able to take a sip. Across from her, Finnick Odair was telling an animated story she'd lost track of. One that required abruptly slamming his hand against the table every now and then. Katniss had all but given up trying to listen when Peeta nudged her in the side.
"Katniss, you ever heard of Pirate's Matey?" Finnick was asking her.
Her eyes widened and she looked to Peeta for clarification. "Who?" she said.
"Pirate's Matey," he repeated.
She shook her head, but Finnick hadn't given up. "The ska band?"
"She doesn't know who Pirate's Matey is," his girlfriend, Annie Cresta said beside him.
"No one knows who Pirate's Matey is," Peeta added.
"I don't," Katniss said timidly.
"See, of course Katniss doesn't know, she's got taste," Peeta said.
"Really? Katniss has taste?" Finnick said incredulously. "Then how does that explain her showing up here with you?"
"Ha. Ha," Peeta said flatly.
Katniss smiled politely and hid behind her beer while the conversation went on without her. She liked Peeta's friends. They seemed nice enough. But spending time with them was overwhelming. There were stories with characters she'd never heard of, in settings she could never dream of being in.
She imagined what it would be like if their roles were reversed and Peeta was sharing a booth with Gale and Rory. He would probably fall into conversation with them effortlessly, and afterward, Gale would complain that he was impossible to hate.
She felt the tug of a smile as she glanced at him through the corner of her eye.
"He's pretty great, isn't he?" she heard Annie say.
Katniss was embarrassed at being caught, but Annie had a gentleness to her that Katniss found easy to trust. "Yeah," she said honestly.
"He's been talking about you nonstop for weeks, we were starting to think you didn't exist," Annie's eyes cut to Finnick pointedly. "Well Finnick did, I always believed him."
Peeta and Finnick were still engaged in their own conversation, completely oblivious to Katniss and Annie's exchange. Katniss didn't really know what to talk about though, and knew it would be awkward if she didn't say anything back. She smiled tightly and reviewed a few possible pleasantries.
"So, um, how did you and Peeta meet?" she landed on.
Annie's expression faltered, and Katniss worried that she had said the wrong thing. Annie hesitated before her smile brightened again. "Summer camp," she said.
This caught Peeta's attention, and Katniss could feel him turn at her side to join in. "It's okay, she knows," he said.
"Oh," Annie said with an encouraging nod.
"Annie and I were at the same treatment facility my senior year," he explained.
"Oh," Katniss said. Feeling mortified, she dropped her gaze back to her beer. It was too overwhelming. She didn't want to be there anymore.
"What about you?" Annie said. "How did you two meet?"
"That dive bar on the edge of town during the last bar crawl," Peeta filled in. "We argued over the playlist on the jukebox."
"Peeta has terrible taste in music," Katniss said, recalling their first encounter with a small smile.
"See!" Finnick said with a whooping laugh. "Vindication!"
When the night was over, and Finnick and Annie had left, Peeta pulled out his phone and began to order a car. "You want to go to your place tonight?"
He always asked this, even though Katniss always said no.
"Let's go to yours," she said, following the script to a T. "I like it better."
"It's a dorm room," he said flatly. "Why haven't I ever seen your apartment?"
"It's out of the way," she said. "Yours is so much closer to work."
He laughed. "Oh, I see how it is." He pocketed his phone. "If communal bathrooms and twin sized beds is what the lady desires..." he trailed off to give her a kiss.
"Trust me, it's still nicer than my place."
"I'm beginning to wonder if you even have a place. Are you sure you don't live in a treehouse in the woods?"
"I've thought about it," she said.
They rode back to his place in silence, but it was the nice kind. The kind where she didn't think much about anything, except for the lights speeding past her window.
When they got back to his dorm, she slipped off her shoes, and accepted the toothbrush he extended to her. One of his drawers had a few of her clothes in it too, and she thought about it far more often than she cared to admit. While they brushed their teeth, she always watched his reflection in the mirror. He was usually looking at her too, and on the brief instances, when she caught a quick glimpse of herself, she looked happy. She was okay with seeing that version.
She climbed into bed while he pushed the window open, even though it was freezing out. She pulled the covers up instead of asking why he always slept with the window open. It could be snowing out, or there could be a hurricane, and he'd still have the window open, she was sure.
He placed his glasses on his desk then pulled his shirt over his head to toss in his hamper. "Are you cold?" he said, noticing her shiver.
"A little," she admitted.
He slipped beneath the covers and rolled his body toward hers. "Want me to warm you up?" he murmured.
His bed was too small, but she liked the way they fit together. Her hands flattened against his bare chest, then moved to trace across his shoulders and down his arms. There were splotches of discolored skin on his forearms, which seemed to be more pronounced from the sun.
"Lye accident," he said, when he caught her staring. "We were making pretzels - when I was a kid. And the key to getting them that golden brown color is to dip them in lye first. It makes them brown faster, so the inside stays soft. We'd spent all morning preparing the dough and rolling them out perfectly, and we were about to drop the pretzels into the bath, when I dropped the whole tray."
"Right into the dangerous chemicals?" she said.
"No," he said. "On my mother's foot. She got so mad, she dumped the ruined pretzels into the lye mixture all at once, and it splashed everywhere. Mostly on me."
She lifted his hand and kissed the discolored skin. "Why would she do that?"
"She has a bit of a temper."
She felt his lips touch her pulse point like a beacon to life. He trusted her with his deepest secrets, and it never felt like he was testing her.
Katniss drew back the blanket and placed his hand on her thigh, which was freckled with misshapen purple dots.
"Chicken pox scars," he said. That's what she'd told him when he asked. He hadn't believed her, but pretended that he did.
"Cigarette butts," she admitted.
His fingertips were calloused, and scratched across the smooth skin. "Bad boyfriend?"
"Temporary guardian," she said. "He had a temper too."
He looked at her with careful eyes. "You want to talk about it?"
"Not yet," she said, tucking her chin into the crook of his neck so that she didn't have to look at him. She closed her eyes, only focusing on his touch, ghosting across her thigh.
"You can tell me anything, you know. You're not going to scare me off."
She rolled back enough to sneak a glance at him. "Is that a promise?" she said.
He kissed her forehead. "Always," he whispered against her skin.
It was raining out, the droplets heavy enough to pelt loudly against the glass, even though it was hidden behind the heavy vertical blinds.
Katniss stared at the window, studying the gaps between the blinds to watch the stream of water drip down the smooth surface. Her eyes flitted towards Haymitch, who had taken to reviewing papers. He'd occasionally mark something with a red pen, before flipping to the next page.
"I told him," she said.
Haymitch lifted his eyebrows. He obviously had no clue what she was talking about.
"I told Peeta," she elaborated.
"Oh. Is that still going on?"
"Yes," she said. "And it's getting serious. He's got problems too, but we're making it work."
"Good for you," he said. He went back to grading papers, and it annoyed her that he didn't seem to care. She was having a good day, and it didn't seem to matter at all.
He set his paper aside, and sighed. "You get a new shirt?"he said.
Katniss was wearing one of the new blouses she'd bought with her paycheck. It had been sitting in her drawer with the tags on for nearly two weeks, but this morning she put it on for the first time.
"Effie took me shopping," she said.
"Now that's a story I'd like to hear," he said with a gruff chuckle.
"It was like a makeover montage in one of those corny movies," she said. "Maybe next time she'll take me to a beauty salon, and I'll come in here looking like Miss America."
"That's a stretch."
"Stranger things have happened."
"I'm sure you'll be on a brunch date in no time," he said, and she was taken aback by the lack of sarcasm dripping from his voice.
"We actually have," Katniss said with an edge of laughter. "It was breakfast though, and at the school cafeteria. Not one of those fancy places with bottomless mimosas."
"Only bottomless Jello," he said.
She nodded a few times, a frown settling across her lips. This was where she usually stopped talking, but the words were itching at the back of her throat, too determined to be ignored. "I can't eat Jello," she said.
Haymitch sat up in his chair. "Jello?" he repeated.
"Yes, it's awful," she said. She bit her lip, her eyes darting up to the clock on the wall. "They always used to serve it in the group homes because it's so cheap. They'd make it in these huge batches but they never had all the same flavor so they'd just mix them up and it was this gross shade of brown. The ladies called it root beer flavored, but it tasted like cherry lime."
"That doesn't sound too terrible."
"It wasn't," she shrugged. "The bad part was the plastic film on top that tasted like the rest of the refrigerator."
Haymitch chuckled gruffly. "Why does it do that?"
"I don't know. It's been around for what - 150 years? You'd think people would have figured it out by now."
"Well you make it out of here, and I'll have Effie make you a nice bowl of Jello to celebrate."
"That's some motivation!" Katniss said with a bark of laughter. "You trying to get me into trouble?"
"I don't think you need much coaxing for that," he said. She scowled at him, but couldn't hold her glare for long. "Anything else you want to tell me about."
Whatever courage she had had seemed to fade in an instant and she deflated against her chair with slumped shoulders. "Not really," she said.
"You still have ten minutes," he said. He leaned behind his desk to open the drawer to his makeshift liquor cabinet. The bottles clinked as the drawer buckled along its rusted track. He retrieved a foggy looking glass and set it on the table.
Katniss shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and let out an impatient sigh. Her fingertips brushed against the soft edges of the worn scraps of paper she kept folded in her pocket. That was a safe memory too. She could talk about that.
"There's this thing I used to do," she began timidly. "I don't do it much anymore, but I used to do it all the time." She slipped the fold of papers from her pocket and leafed through the blank pages. "I used to feel the need to write everything down."
"Like a journal?" he said. He dropped the amber bottle back into his drawer without filling his glass and slid in shut.
"Kind of," she said. She never wrote down her feelings or anything. Just observations mostly.
"When did you start doing that?"
Katniss kept her eyes trained on her lap. "When CPS first picked us up, we were able to grab a few personal belongings, but not many things. Then we started bouncing around houses a lot. Sometimes you could tell when you were overstaying your welcome, but other times it would come out of nowhere. An agent would come and tap their foot impatiently while you shoved all your clothes into a trash bag, and things would just fall between the cracks. And after a while, I started to forget things. The street I grew up on. My mother's first name. My birthday... I was afraid I'd forget, so I wrote it all down."
"You said you stopped though, why?"
"It got to the point that nothing was worth remembering anymore," she said.
Haymitch set his jaw, his lips pressing into a flat line before he reached out a hand. "Here, give me one," he said.
She was momentarily caught off guard, but complied, extending the first sheet off the stack to him. He flattened the page against his desk, smoothing out the creases, his pen bouncing a few times off his chin before he began to write.
"For your collection," he said, handing it back.
The script was nearly illegible - almost childlike, but she was still able to make out the words.
'Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.'
"Vonnegut?" she said. She'd heard this quote before.
"Iain Thomas," he said. "It's about a cat."
"What makes you say that?"
"He wrote it under a picture of one," he said plainly. "Sure sounds pretty though, don't it?"
"Thanks," she mumbled, slipping the paper back into her pocket.
Effie was waiting for her in one of the chairs outside, diligently tapping out an e-mail. "We have to get back to the office," she said. "Plutarch wants to have a meeting."
Katniss cringed. She'd been falling behind on her research, and she mentally mapped out a summary of her findings, so it sounded like she had made some progress, even though there wasn't much.
Plutarch was waiting for them in his office when they arrived. "I think we're onto something," he said. His lips were pressed together tightly to suppress his smile. "Something big. Bigger than the Nobel even."
Effie gasped.
"Buildings on this campus will be named after us," he said to Katniss. "I want it all documented."
"I've been keeping all of my notes in the books you gave me," she said. "Is there a different way you want it formatted?"
"No. On film! A filmmaker reached out to me. Cressida Jones. She's interested in making a movie about you."
Katniss felt the muscles around her neck tighten with a weight that stretched up to her ears. She was glad she was already sitting down. "About the project, you mean."
"Well, yes," Plutarch said. "That would be the overarching theme, but it would be centered around you." He leaned against his desk and swept his hand across the room to paint a picture. "A hidden genius, lost within the system, destined to make one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time."
She could feel the walls of his office starting to close in on her. This wasn't a part of the deal. Maybe her name would show up on some published papers, and she'd write that on her resume, but that was it. No one would see her face, and she could stay invisible, the way she liked it.
"I don't think I can," she said.
"Nonsense, Katniss," Plutarch said. "Your story will inspire millions."
She felt like she was going to be sick, and then she realized she was sick. She stumbled out of Plutarch's office and darted down the hall, barely making it to the bathroom before she vomited in the first stall.
She sat on the dirty floor and leaned against the cool tiled wall, too weak to stand. She wasn't sure how much time had passed. A minute maybe more. She pulled herself to her feet and leaned against the sink, washing her hands and then splashing her face with water. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, pale and delirious, and quickly looked away.
Outside the door, she could hear the shrill pitch of Effie Trinket's voice. She was yelling, which Katniss didn't think was possible. She opened up the door a crack to hear.
"She's finally making progress, and you spring this on her?" Effie was saying.
"This exposure could double, possibly triple our funding," Plutarch countered. "The opportunities are endless!"
"She doesn't want any of that. This is all about you, can't you see? She just wants a chance at a normal life, and you're taking that away!"
It was quiet then, and Katniss started to close the door before she was caught, but then she heard Effie's voice again.
"I'll get her lawyer involved if I have to. There won't be any cameras."
"We'll discuss it again later," Plutarch acquiesced.
She could hear the unmistakable click of Effie's sensible pumps, and she pushed past the bathroom door to catch her.
"Thank you, Effie," she said.
Effie frowned at the sight of her. "Are you all right?" she said carefully. "You look feverish. Is it the flu?"
"Could be. Who knows what I could pick up in Haymitch's office. The bubonic plague could be festering in there."
"Let me take you home. Have you eaten?"
Katniss felt her stomach roll at the thought of food. "No, I think I just need to lie down for a while."
Effie seemed to still be wired from her argument, and she practically clomped across the parking lot. "The nerve of him, really," she was muttering under her breath after she'd started her car, and they were pulling out of the lot. "I mean has he ever sat down and had a conversation with you, where he wasn't looking at you like some lab rat?"
The words stung, and even though Katniss was wearing her new clothes, and her hair was clean from some fruity smelling shampoo and conditioner for once, she felt dirty and worthless again.
"You'll do great things, Katniss Everdeen," Effie said when they'd rolled to a stop light. She waited for Katniss to look at her before she continued. "On your own terms."
Katniss felt like she was going to cry, and hated when she felt a hot tear roll down her cheek. She let her head rest against the passenger window and hid her face behind her hand for the rest of the drive.
No one else had stepped foot in Katniss's rowhouse since she'd moved in, not even Gale. But when Effie pulled up to the curb, she insisted. "You don't look well, Katniss, let me get you settled."
Katniss was feeling too tired to argue, and didn't stop Effie when she followed her inside. She could hear Effie slamming all of her open cabinets shut as Katniss headed to her room and collapsed on her bed.
"Is there anyone I could call?" Effie called out from the other room. Katniss could hear what sounded like a spray bottle. Effie had no doubt found some cleaner under the sink, and was in the process of disinfecting every surface before she touched it.
Katniss pulled her comforter over her head. She thought about calling Peeta, who would rush over in a heartbeat to nurse her back to health. She almost smiled at the thought.
"I made you some tea," Effie said, close enough that she must have been standing in the doorway now. There was a hesitant pause, probably because Effie realized her room was nothing but a boxspring and mattress on the floor, surrounded by piles of things, and no place to set down a mug. "I'll leave it in the kitchen for you."
Katniss pulled back the blanket to look at her. "Thank you," she said.
"I'll mark you as a personal day. Get some rest."
Katniss stared at the ceiling, listening as the front door opened and closed. She needed to get up to fasten all the locks, but her body refused to move. She took it one step at a time. Lift head. Lift arms. Sit up. Stand up. Walk.
She flipped the locks, then looked at the tea, balanced awkwardly on her two burner stove, since there really wasn't a counter to put it on either. She stared into the mug and willed herself to take a sip, but ended up dumping it in the sink.
She couldn't figure out why she was still on edge. Effie told her that the movie wouldn't happen, and Katniss believed her. Katniss trusted her.
Maybe that was the problem. Katniss wasn't used to trusting people. Her body just needed to catch up with her head.
When she laid back in bed, there was a message from Peeta on her phone, asking if she wanted to come over. She'd spent nearly every night at his place over the last few weeks, she'd almost forgotten what it was like to sleep on her own.
A thought began to tickle the back of her mind. A few weeks. She hadn't had her period. Her eyes shut tightly. Her cycle had never been normal. It could last anywhere from 27 days to 60, and there never seemed to be a rhyme or reason behind it. She was stressed. She wasn't eating enough. It would come eventually. But she wasn't having sex then.
She shut her eyes tightly and shook the thoughts out of her head. She was stressed, she reminded herself. She was stressed, and hadn't ovulated and just needed some encouragement. She picked up her phone, ignoring another message from Peeta, to open a web browser and began to carefully craft a search term. She typed a few words then promptly deleted them. Finally she settled on: Encouraging your period, and followed countless links until her eyes were blurry and she fell asleep.
Katniss wasn't feeling any better in the morning. She forced herself to eat a bowl of oatmeal, and then stared at a glass full of water as if it were poison. She was supposed to get paid yesterday, but Effie hadn't dropped off an envelope. She counted what money she had left - $23, and shoved it in her pocket before heading out the door.
At the grocery store, she picked up some gatorade, crackers, and a couple of cans of soup. They didn't have the parsley tea she was looking for, so she grabbed a few bunches from the produce department along with a lemon. Then she headed for the health and wellness aisle and grabbed the largest bottle of Vitamin C she could afford.
Back at her place, she took a handful of vitamins and sipped tea between nibbles of crackers. The soup was left untouched on the stove, but she finally found the nerve to sip some around dinner time.
The rest of the day she spent behind her books, fanning them all out on her bed, hoping that one of them would catch her attention enough to distract her.
There were more texts from Peeta, which seemed silly to ignore, because nothing was wrong.
Not feeling well, she replied.
Want me to come over? I think I have a sexy nurse outfit in the back of my closet somewhere.
Unless it's a sexy hazmat suit, you should probably stay away.
The next day, she still didn't feel any better. She popped another handful of vitamins and drank parsley tea until she was sure she'd turn green, and then she headed into the lab, even though it was a Saturday. She was starting to feel a little crampy, and was hoping that was a good thing. Her period would come any day now, and she'd look back at this and remember how stupid she was to worry about the whole thing.
Katniss had forgotten that she had a mail folder at the lab, and found her paycheck waiting in an envelope. She also grabbed some books that she'd left at her desk, then headed back home.
She thought about calling Peeta, but something gnawed at her that told her she couldn't see him until she knew for sure. The stress. She was just stressed. She drank more parsley tea and went to bed early.
"You look awful," Haymitch told her during their Tuesday appointment.
"Thanks," she said. "I haven't been feeling well. I'm hoping it's contagious." She pretended to cough.
"Is it about the documentary?"
"The documentary isn't going to happen."
"I know," he said. "I've never seen Effie more passionate about something than coordinating her wardrobe, and that's saying something."
Katniss couldn't stop the smile that tugged on her lips. "She was so mad," she said. "I think she almost said a curse word."
"We're in your corner, kid."
She nodded.
He stared at her for a moment. "You do any writing lately?"
She reached into her pocket and pulled out some scraps of paper, sorting through them until she found the one she was looking for. "I've started a list," she said.
He took it, and started looking it over. "A list of names."
"Yeah, it's my birthday next month, you're throwing a party, right?"
He chuckled. "Okay, let's see these names. Gale, Cinna, Effie, Haymitch, and Peeta. This still doesn't sound like much of a party."
"They're my allies," she said. "The people I know I can trust. I carry it with me to remind myself."
"That's good," he said.
She met Effie out in the hall, and they drove back to campus. Katniss still had the list folded in her hand. She unfolded it to review it and then folded it again. Then she did it one more time.
"I think I need help," she finally said.
They had just reached the parking lot for the science building, and Effie killed the engine.
"Finding a new place," she said. "I know, I've already got some listings pulled together for you."
"I think I'm pregnant."
The keys slipped from the ignition and got lost between the center console. "Oh," was all Effie could say, lifting her eyebrows in surprise. "I hadn't realized you were..."
"I have a boyfriend," she felt the need to say. Already she could feel the judgement and wanted to take it all back. "He goes to Capitol," she added. "He's smart."
"Not smart enough for a condom though."
"Forget it," Katniss said, pushing open her car door.
"Katniss, wait," Effie said. Her keys were still lost somewhere on the floor, but she slammed the door anyway to follow after her. "Have you taken a test?"
She shook her head.
"Okay, let's start there."
Effie led her to the other side of campus, where the residential buildings were, along with the health clinic. At the main counter, there were rows of pamphlets, and Effie picked through them, then handed the pile to Katniss.
"She needs a test," she said discreetly to the woman behind the counter.
"STD or pregnancy?"
Effie glanced at Katniss. "Both, probably, but let's start with pregnancy for now."
They pulled a small packet from under the desk and slipped it across the counter. "There are plastic cups in the bathroom," she instructed. "Dip up to the line for five seconds, then wait three to five minutes." She flipped the packet over. "It's all written on the back."
Effie guided Katniss toward the bathroom.
"You know, I think I'm just going to wait a few more days," Katniss said, still staring at the test. "It's probably nothing, really."
"Then you'll feel better finding that out now," Effie said.
Katniss was expecting a public restroom with stalls and a long counter full of sinks, but it was a private bathroom, with a little cabinet on the wall for passing urine samples through. She picked up a cup and stared at it for a minute, then looked around the room. She wished there was a window to escape through. There was no use running though. She'd be carrying the problem with her, whether she wanted to or not.
She filled the cup then dipped the test, and sat crouched in the corner of the bathroom to wait. After a few minutes, Effie tapped on the door, and Katniss let her inside. Effie glanced at the test.
"It's positive," Katniss said, even though she hadn't looked.
Effie nodded. "Do you have a doctor?" she asked carefully.
"What do you think?" .
Effie placed her hand on the counter, then drew it away, horrified by the obvious grime she'd encountered. She stared at Katniss for a moment, then carefully crouched down to sit beside her. Her pristine dress was probably ruined.
"Katniss, I want you to come stay with me," she said. "I have a spare room. I don't think you should be alone right now."
Katniss looked up long enough to meet her eye and then quickly looked away.
"Do you want me to call your boyfriend?"
Katniss remembered the last night they'd spent together, wrapped around each other, his lips against her forehead whispering always. He was never testing her, but she was always testing him. He told her she couldn't scare him off, and then she went off and got pregnant. She was about to ruin his life, when they were so close to something good.
"He doesn't need to know."
