Two mornings later, I'm sitting on top of the counter at Peeta's house as he bakes. The two of us had a very...enjoyable night together last night, to say the least. While we didn't do anything we hadn't done before, I would say that we've gotten pretty damn close to perfecting the moves we know, and I'm nowhere near bored of them. Frankly, I doubt I ever will be.
As Peeta bends down to take a loaf of bread out of the oven, I can't help myself; I kick his ass with my foot while he's bent over. When he gets up he turns to look at me with an expression so surprised it's adorable.
"What was that for?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. I giggle in a way I don't think I ever did before this part of my relationship with Peeta, but that seems to be escaping me more and more now.
"Just 'cause," I say, and he moves closer to me until he's standing in between my legs, while running his hands up and down my sides. I sling my arms around his neck and pull him in until his mouth meets mine. I hum into the kiss, feeling instantly the desire for more beginning to grow in me. I'm thinking I may just have to start undressing him right here in the kitchen when we're interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing. I groan and Peeta chuckles at me a little bit.
"Can't we just ignore it?" I ask.
"I shouldn't," Peeta says, heading over to grab the phone off the wall. "Hello? Oh my God, Annie! That's incredible!" I look up at him and he makes eye contact with me, whispering "Annie had the baby!" I walk over to him and he holds the receiver so we can both hear.
"He was born last night," I hear her say on the other end. "I named him Finnick after his father. He has his eyes."
"That's wonderful Annie!" I say.
"Oh Katniss, is that you?" she asks.
"Yeah, yeah I'm here," I say.
"Katniss, your mother has been so helpful to me. She was one of the nurses at the hospital during my delivery, and she was with me the whole way through. I was scared, and I was alone, and she was so kind. She loves Finn already, I think she'll come over to see him a lot."
"Th-that's nice, Annie," I say, but I fall silent soon after and let Peeta take over the conversation because I feel pain start to swell in my chest. I hate myself for it.
I should be happy for Annie, this woman hardly older than me and who has lost so much in her life, but is finally happy with her new son. I should be happy for her. Instead, I'm heartbroken, jealous, distraught, angry, because my mother seems to have found someone else who she's willing to parent rather than me. God, it's so stupid. I feel so petty. I'm disgusted at myself, but I can't help it. I am deeply and irrationally upset by this.
I feel myself starting to slip as I vaguely listen to Peeta and Annie conversing about her delivery process, how she's feeling, how Finn looks, all of the things that any decent person would be happy to ask of a new mother, especially one who has had to go through this entire daunting process alone. The fact that I'm actually upset that Annie found comfort in my mother, that I'm not automatically thrilled that she was able to have someone take care of her when she desperately needed it, makes me feel selfish and weak. I am selfish and weak.
I want to be alone. I mumble something to Peeta about needing to go take a shower and slip out of his house, heading back to my own. I don't want to be around him right now.
It isn't fair, in fact it's objectively the wrong choice. If I'm around Peeta, he will know something is wrong, and odds are he'll get me to talk about it. He'll give good advice, and he'll be understanding, and he'll assure me that I'm not selfish. But he's wrong. I am incredibly selfish. I don't want him to try to convince me otherwise right now. I just want to stew by myself and disappear into the feelings of self loathing.
I do end up deciding to take a shower, more to guarantee myself alone time than anything else. I stand under the pommel of water and just let the droplets echo the thoughts in my mind.
Drip. I am angry at my mother, for leaving me at the worst moment in my life, not checking in and not taking care of me, and then finding that she's perfectly able to care for another young woman, just not her daughter. Not the daughter who should have died, so the other daughter could stay alive.
Drip. I am angry at myself for being selfish, and for blaming anyone else when it is my fault that I'm even in this situation. I shouldn't let myself get mad at things like this. I should be happy for Annie. I shouldn't be bitter or jealous. I shouldn't need anyone to take care of me. I shouldn't take up that kind of space, be that kind of burden on people. I shouldn't...
Drip. I shouldn't be alive. I am angry that I'm alive and Prim is dead. I know that if I had died instead of Prim, my mother wouldn't have disappeared like this. She braced for my death three times over. She might have struggled, but Prim would have known how to bring her back. She was the only one who was good at that. They would have worked together, grown together, healed together. It should have been her who lived.
I let these thoughts consume me. They don't all even make sense; I shouldn't be able to be angry at my mother, and yet angry at myself for being angry at her at the same time, but that doesn't seem to stop my mind from doing it all anyway.
I stay standing under the water until all of my fingers are pruned, at which point I get out and throw on clothes before taking a seat at my window seat. This was a common habit of mine when I first returned to 12, when I was lost inside myself. I would just sit here for hours on end, staring blankly out the window, watching the sky turn from light to dark.
I think it's a little past midday now. There's a chance I can avoid seeing anyone until around dinner. Peeta might assume I went to hunt, or to meet with Thom or something. There's no way I'll be able to escape him once we get to dinner, though. We don't spend nights alone. Nights alone are nights of torture and darkness in our dreams.
It's a sort of grey day out. The sky is foggy and the air is humid and muggy with humidity. The clouds and the dullness of the light feels oppressive, so different from the open expanses of night sky and stars that I observed from this same spot not very long ago. Things change far too fast. I was happy this morning. I need to get a grip.
I'm right in my prediction; Peeta doesn't come to disturb my silent meltdown, and I am able to sit uninterrupted in my negative thoughts. Good. That's what I want. That's what I deserve. Just as the sky is starting to grow darker, I hear my door open downstairs.
"Katniss?" I hear Peeta call. I don't say anything, but I do get up. I don't want to make it too obvious that I'm feeling badly. If he knows he'll fawn over me trying to take care of me, and that's the last thing I want right now.
I walk down the stairs to find him in my kitchen, starting to cook. I usually love it that he feels at home enough to cook here on a whim, I find it comforting and familiar. Right now it just feels intrusive.
"Hi," he says. "I wasn't sure where you'd gone. Did you have a planning meeting today?"
"No," I say, shaking my head and sitting at the table. Normally I'd sit at the counter while he cooks, but I want a little more distance today so he can't read my expressions as well. "I was here, I was just tired."
"Annie kept me on the phone for ages," Peeta says, although he looks nothing but happy about it. "She hasn't really had...you know...the sort of people you'd want to adore your new baby. They aren't in her life anymore. I'm happy to listen as much as she wants. She says she'll send us a picture soon, and that she hopes we'll come visit them in 4 some time."
"That's nice," I mumble.
"Are you sure you're alright, Katniss?" Peeta asks, looking at me.
"Yes," I say, a little too harshly. "I'm fine. I just..." I'm struggling to come up with an excuse to explain my bad mood that won't reveal more than I want. "I don't like babies. I just never know what to do around them, they feel so breakable. I guess I just don't get the same excitement out of it all as everyone else does."
It's not true, not really. I've never wanted to have a baby of my own, but I do like them in the abstract. I loved when Prim was little. I spent a lot of time with Posy too, who I loved and whom I'm fairly certain adored me in return. I don't mind kids as long as they aren't mine, and as long as they can't be reaped.
"Well, that's ok," Peeta says. "I'm sure you're still happy for Annie that she and Finn are both healthy."
Peeta looks a little uncomfortable, and I realize I've accidentally broached another tense subject without meaning to. Peeta wants kids. He's always known I didn't, but we haven't talked about it at all, mainly because I haven't really thought there was anything to discuss. It didn't occur to me that he might have forgotten my thoughts on the matter in the hijacking, or that he might be thinking I could change my mind after the war.
To be honest, it never really occurred to me that I could change my mind after the war either. I just never thought about it; not wanting kids was so ingrained in me for so long, it just became a sort of automatic response. I know without a doubt that I am nowhere near ready for a child now, but it never actually occurred to me to reconsider anything for the future. It still doesn't feel like the time to even think about it, even though all the reasons for my fear have sort of been invalidated.
Peeta and I eat in relative silence; he talks a little and I give short, one word answers when I have to. It's not hard for me to see that he knows something is wrong. The expression on his face is obvious to me, I can see that he's concerned but trying not to push me. I can see that he's looking at me closely, trying to read me and figure out what's wrong without making me explain. He's doing everything right, but I just don't want him to.
I don't eat much, but once I've taken enough bites and moved my fork around my plate enough that it isn't obvious I get up and clear my plate. I throw myself down onto the couch when I'm done. I just want to disappear. I close my eyes and the blank canvas starts creeping in.
"Katniss," I hear Peeta say gently. I open my eyes and see that he's standing at the end of the couch by my feet.
"What?!" I snap at him.
"What's wrong?" he says softly. He's moved past asking if there is something wrong, he already knows there is. He just wants to know what it is and what he can do about it.
"I really don't want to talk, Peeta," I say. He looks concerned and a little conflicted.
"That's ok, Katniss, you don't have to," he says. "Just know that I'm here if you want to, or even if you don't want to talk and just want to be comforted, or be distracted, I'm here for you. I want to take care of you."
His kind, supportive words are exactly what I don't want to hear. It's entirely irrational, but I just don't want to be comforted right now. I'm not sad, I'm mad, but I hate why I'm mad and don't want to explain it to anyone.
My heart pangs as I realize I wouldn't mind being comforted right now if it was by my mother, if she would show that she cares about me at all. Peeta wants to take care of me, why doesn't my own mother? She can take care of other people but not me, never me.
I am pulled out of this cycle of thinking by one overwhelming thought: I am pathetic.
"Peeta, just leave me alone!" I shout at him. I feel myself breaking. I don't think I actually want him to leave, I think I need him to stay, but I'm not ready for that.
"Katniss, I'm not going to let you run away. I know you're hurting, and you shouldn't be alone," he says. His voice is steady and calm, in complete opposition to my own. He's right and at this moment I hate him for it.
"Stop treating me like I'm a child, like I'm some stupid, fragile, breakable thing!" I scream.
"I'm not trying to do that, Katniss, I just want to figure out how I can help you!" he says, his voice now starting to elevate a little bit, though he's having much more success in modulating it than I am.
"I don't want help! I don't need help!" I yell, statements that are completely at odds with every thought that has entered my head today.
"Well I don't want to see you hurting!" Peeta retorts.
"Then I guess we're at an impasse," I say to him bitterly. He looks extremely hurt at this, but I'm feeling some sort of entirely misplaced vengeful fury.
"Stop trying to think you can fix me, Peeta. You're always going to fail," I say, my voice a strange mix of cold and desperate.
"I..." he starts, but for once he's at a loss for words. "I don't want to fix you. I just want to love you as you are and help you when I can."
"Just stop!" I scream at him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice is begging me to stop, to stop ruining everything good that we have left in the world. But I don't deserve good. I'm on a tirade. "Leave me alone!"
There's a book resting on the coffee table in front of me, and in a moment of blind and unfounded rage I hurl it at him. It's not a very good throw and the impact won't hurt him, but as the book hits his arm and falls to the floor I see the look in his eyes and I immediately realize my mistake. I've gone too far.
The expression on his face hurts me more than any of the thoughts I've had today, because it's one of complete and utter brokenness. This boy, this deeply good boy, who was beaten and hit by the person who was supposed to love him the most for so much of his life, is now facing that again with me. He sees the loveless, brutal mutt desiring to hurt him that the Capitol created, but now the image is right in front of him rather than behind his eyelids.
"Peeta," I start, my voice broken, desperate for some way to make up for what I've done but entirely at a loss.
"I have to go," he mutters, and quickly turns and leaves. I have been asking, begging him to leave all night, but the minute he does I feel worse than I could have possibly imagined. Within moments I'm sobbing. I hate myself. I realize that I've managed to succeed in doing what even Snow and his torture ultimately failed to do:
I've pushed him away from me.