Ricochet
Chapter 2: Barely breaking even
Author: Carla, aka cali-chan
Rating: Most likely PG-13. Nothing worse than what's in the books.
Genre: Adventure/suspense/drama/romance... again, pretty much what's in the books.
Pairings: Peeta/Katniss, Rory/Prim... and probably others. You'll see soon.
Canon/timeline: Same-context AU- this fic still happens in the same world as THG, but the actual events in the books never happened. I'm adding about five years to the characters from the age they were at the beginning of The Hunger Games. Katniss is 21.
Disclaimer:Yeah, just let me go get my transfer laser and switch bodies with Suzanne Collins.
Note: I've never really tried this before (and I'm sure it will eventually come back and bite me in the behind), but each chapter will be from the PoV of a different character. You should be able to tell whose PoV it is fairly easily, though.
Summary: "Primrose Everdeen." This can't be happening, Katniss thought. She desperately pushed through the crowd. I volunteer!, she wanted to scream. I volunteer as tribute! But she couldn't, because she wasn't eligible for the reaping anymore. There was nothing she could do.
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Since all the numbers were starting to swim from side to side in his field of vision, Peeta decided to take a breather for a minute and closed his eyes tightly in an attempt to make the pounding headache a little better. He dimly thought about all the horrible things the Capitol imposed on the people from the districts: letting them starve, forcing them to watch their own children die... making them do accounting...
Alright, maybe I'm being a tad overdramatic, he thought with a tired chuckle. But in his defense, even someone as patient as him would be irritable after spending all night poring over accounting ledgers. Still, the financials had to be worked out and presented to City Hall by the end of the week, and... well, better him than his mother.
His eyes fell on the two slices of bare toast he had laid out on a plate, which had gone untouched since dinnertime. They were cold by now. He belatedly realized he wasn't really hungry, but he wasn't going to let them go to waste, so he pulled the plate toward him and started munching on the bread half-heartedly. It wasn't terribly exciting; his meals included stale bread practically every day, nothing new about it. But maybe eating something would help with the headache, at least.
Who was he kidding, anyway. It wasn't like his life was terribly exciting in general. Sometimes he went out for a beer with some of his old friends from school, but it wasn't that often. The highlight of his week- maybe even his month- happened four days previous, and he couldn't be sure it would happen again anytime soon; who knew when she'd catch a squirrel again? The rest of his days consisted of baking, tending the store and crunching out numbers. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It wasn't horrible or anything. He knew it was more than most people in the district got, and he should be thankful for it. And maybe if things were doing better, he would be. He genuinely loved baking, and he loved the bakery; it was the main reason his brothers left primary ownership to him in the first place. But now he was thinking maybe they shouldn't have. Having nothing but red numbers stare back at him at the end of every day just wouldn't let him enjoy the parts of the trade he had once loved.
Taking another bite of toast, he picked up his pencil and continued working. He had to keep his pace, or he'd never finish on time. Once again, the day ended with a barely positive balance- not as bad as the past three days, but not nearly enough to cover all of their home expenses. He'd have to figure out which of his belongings he could sell in order to get some cash. Again.
Normally it would be his mother who took care of the accounting. Since she developed rheumatoid arthritis, her joints, especially her knees and ankles, hurt a lot. Because of that, she couldn't bake or work at the storefront anymore, and so her only task those days was to handle the financials. Now that those were less than glowing, though, Peeta had scrambled to take the task from her. He didn't need her reminding him every day how he was destroying the family business. He did enough of that on his own.
As if he'd willed it by his thoughts, his mother's voice came screeching from upstairs. "Boy!" Peeta cringed. He knew it was painful for her to walk down the stairs so instead she stayed up and had to yell, but he wished, for the thousandth time, that she could be a little nicer about it. Her tone made him feel like cattle. "Don't forget to get the dough for tomorrow ready! I'm going to bed now so DON'T make noise!" That loving remark was followed by the sound of her bedroom door slamming closed.
He sighed. He didn't know why she felt the need to keep reminding him how to do things around the bakery, like his life hadn't consisted of the exact same routine for the last seventeen or so years. She insisted on treating him like he was five. He'd heard from his friends sometimes parents did that because they didn't want to acknowledge their "little ones" had grown up; unfortunately in his case, his mother really thought he would mess everything up if she wasn't constantly around to supervise. Sometimes he thought his brothers had the right idea, getting the hell away from her as soon as they could. If only he could do the same...
He thought of his brothers as he ate the rest of his toast. His eldest brother, Brith, had gotten married last year, and was planning to have children soon, so he had decided to branch out. Peeta understood that decision; the bakery had been doing well back then, but it wasn't enough to support two families. So when he got married, he decided to go work in his wife's family business.
His other brother, Crispen, still worked at the bakery, but he no longer lived with them. As soon as Brith was out the door, he'd put in the paperwork to get his own place, and promptly moved out. He came in every day in the mornings, when it was the hardest to shuffle baking and selling at the same time. Still, at the end of the week, he took his share of the profits and took off. Peeta couldn't exactly force him to help if he didn't want to.
And that was part of the problem. It wasn't that Peeta was mismanaging the place, or that he'd made bad decisions. He was doing everything right, just like his father had taught him, but running a business wasn't easy and balancing supply and demand was tricky.
They sold bread by piece, which usually favored bakers to quickly make up for their expenses with a high margin of profit per piece. But that was because each piece was more air than actual bread. His father never approved of that; he felt it was cheating their customers, so he'd begun a strict method of weight control for all their products, and charged fair price for them. What that meant for them as bakers was a smaller margin of profit per piece, but the more they sold, the higher their overall profit. And that method had worked well for them, as far as he could remember.
Only now, his father was dead, his mother couldn't help anymore, Brith was out of the business and Crispen could only offer so much help. People were still buying (at least that hadn't changed), but with just the two of them, they could barely bake enough to break even. If things continued this way, he'd have to do something drastic, but he didn't want to have to change their sales model. It stood against everything his father ever taught him, and most people from the Seam already couldn't afford to buy bread. He wasn't going to make that even worse.
He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair as he marked numbers in red. He didn't know what to do. Not for the first time, he wished his father was there with him. But he wasn't, and his death had come so suddenly, they didn't even have time to make any plans... and now Peeta couldn't help but feel he was letting his old man down. That was the worst part of it.
That, and he didn't know how long he could hide it from his mother. He would have to tell her soon. He had no illusion of her actually having any positive input for their problem, but well, they did say people had their best ideas under pressure. Maybe the threat of her throwing things at him would be enough to give him the solution he so desperately needed.
Finished with today's accounting, he closed the ledger and stood up, stretching a bit as he did. His every muscle protested- how long had he been sitting there? Four, five hours? He took his plate and washed it in the sink, drinking a glass of water before he picked up his apron and got ready to start on tomorrow's dough. The actual baking part made him feel a little bit better, almost like therapy. And, he thought as he mixed all the ingredients for the dough and then kneaded it a bit, at least one good thing came out of this. He half-smiled, remembering last Monday afternoon.
Katniss.
Sometimes it felt like he'd been in love with her forever. He could barely remember a time when he wasn't. It was quite pathetic, really, which is why he'd never told anyone, though he had a feeling his father had suspected it. He had tried not to be too obvious about it, but it wasn't easy. When they were in school, he tried to avoid her, made lists in his head of reasons why he shouldn't feel this way for her, even dated other girls. But then he'd catch a glimpse of her in class, or walking home with her sister, or trading with his father at the back door of the bakery, and that was all it took for him to be back on the hook.
If Crispen knew, Peeta was sure his brother would have no qualms telling him how much like a girl he sounded. And it was true, he had to admit. Most people his age wouldn't remember anything from the time they were five, but Peeta knew the day he fell in love with Katniss would be forever imprinted in his mind.
It wasn't necessarily the singing. Oh, she had the most beautiful voice, of course, and he could remember being entranced by it even at an age when most kids wouldn't be able to sit quietly for two minutes. And never again had he witnessed mockingjays go quiet that way, almost like their silence was a sign of respect. She wasn't particularly pretty either, not in the classical sense of beauty. But it was more than that. There was something about her that just... shone. An undefined quality, a vibrancy, a strength. She was special. She didn't even realize she was, but she simply stood there and sang and she took his breath away.
Even after her father died and she became the more silent and withdrawn person she was these days, she still had that. Something about the set of her shoulders, the determination in her liquid steel eyes, the hold of her hand as she held her sister protectively. Everything about her said "I'm here. Do not dismiss me."
Peeta wished he could be like that. He would never be special, as his mother was always quick to remind him. He was friendly enough, and smart enough, and okay, he could decorate a cake, but what good was that? That could be any other guy from town, as far as he was concerned. He wasn't even that brave; he'd spent the last sixteen years of his life trying to pluck up the courage to talk to the girl he liked, and when he finally did, it wasn't even on his own initiative. How's that for irony?
Thankfully, it hadn't been as awkward as he'd imagined it would be. She was quiet, of course; for any other person, that would barely qualify as an actual conversation, but he knew when it came to Katniss, even just a few words were a triumph. She caught him off guard a couple times, namely when she first walked in out of the blue, and then when she brought up the topic of squirrels- Be real, Peeta. Like she's going to walk in here to declare her undying love for you. That only happens in your dreams. Of course this is about squirrels. He managed not to stumble too much through it, though.
He shouldn't have given her that extra loaf of bread. He shouldn't have because, one: in the situation he was in financially, every loaf counted. And two: even though he truly did believe her squirrels were worth three loaves, he knew she would be the type to take it as charity, and she would not appreciate that. He had seen the suspicion in her eyes and he'd scrambled to come up with a cover story... he'd had to lie to get her to accept it, and it ate at him. But he couldn't help it. Not after the first time he gave her bread, back when they were just kids.
It was another one of those moments he would never forget. Seeing malnourished children in District 12 wasn't exactly an uncommon occurrence; kids from the Seam always had that underfed quality to them, with hollow cheeks and protruding bones, and he'd had to see it every day at school. They even had some of them come into the bakery to beg for scraps, sometimes. Peeta, being such a sensitive boy, had always felt a bit sick to know things like that could happen, but there wasn't much he could do about it.
But then it was her, and he couldn't just stand there and watch. This girl, who had once been so fearless, so resilient despite her circumstances, was now standing in front of him in pieces. The tear tracks on her cheeks were discernible even if she was covered in mud and wet from the rain. She stumbled with every step she took. And she looked so thin, so frail, that he was afraid she would disappear in the blink of an eye. He kept himself hidden behind his mother's form not because he was shy, but because he feared looking at her directly would actually make that happen.
But the exhaustion and desperation in her eyes, that was real. And it made him feel so many things, to this day he didn't know how his knees hadn't buckled. He had felt stunned, completely unprepared... and horribly guilty, his entire belief system shaken in just one second. He also felt so angry, angrier than he had ever been in his life, at the injustice of it all and his impotence to solve it. But most of all, he was scared out of his wits. She could die. Katniss, she might... she could really die.
To say that it marked him would be an understatement. Because of the Capitol, even twelve-year-olds were faced with the prospect of their own mortality on a yearly basis... but being confronted with hers almost destroyed him. He would've withstood his mother's rolling pin a thousand times if it meant helping her survive.
And that instinct stayed with him, even to this day. He knew Katniss and her sister were in a much better position now than they had been back then, that she could hunt, and her sister was a healer so they had a somewhat regular income (in fact, he'd been the one to suggest taking his father to Primrose, just to get a second opinion about his illness. His mother never knew). Still, it didn't hurt to make sure, hence the extra loaf of bread.
He snapped out of his reminiscing when he realized the dough had had enough time to start the rising period. He kneaded it just a little bit more, covered it with the usual cloth and put the large container inside their ice box, where it would continue rising slowly until the morning.
After that, he decided to go to bed. He had to wake up earlier than usual, so he'd have enough time to start the baking and take the accounting down to City Hall, and then get back to help Crispen with the last of the breakfast crowd. With a little bit of luck the extra time would allow him to increase their output a little bit, and maybe they wouldn't be in the red tomorrow.
His last thought before succumbing to sleep was that he might see Katniss again soon. Talk to her, maybe. There were no guarantees, of course, but just the possibility of it gave him a reason to tackle the next day with enthusiasm, for once. Something to look forward to...
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Author's note- Just so you know ('cause I'm a nerd like that), in my headcanon Peeta's brothers are both named after types of bread, as you'd expect:
"Brith" comes from Bara Brith, a Welsh bread. The name literally means "speckled," because Bara Brith is enriched with dried fruit. I guess I've always assumed Peeta's eldest brother is freckly or something, and that's how he got the name. ;) On the other hand, "Crispen" comes from Crisp bread, a Nordic cracker-type flatbread. It's made with rye flour and, according to Wikipedia, it's pretty much a staple food in Finland and Sweden.
PS: I know nothing about business. Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not an economist. xD If you happen to know a thing or two about business and realize that the model I proposed above makes no sense, please don't kill me. ^^;;;
PS2: As always, reviews are more than appreciated! See y'all in the next chapter.