Chapter 3: Twelve's Living Ghost

The train slows to a stop at the District 12 station. Turning to Effie, I give her a parting hug, before stepping off onto the platform. I can hear the locomotive pulling away behind me, but I don't glance back. Better to put it out of my mind as quickly as possible - at least for another year.

The area around the station and along the dirt road that is the District's Main Street is bustling. Despite my celebrity, hardly anyone notices me, or that the train just arrived from the Capitol. The few who do register my presence give me wary glances, perhaps a curt nod here or there. The only thing that would make this isolation less bearable is if I had to come home with the bodies of my failed tributes. Alexis and John will be cleaned up, and their remains sent here for private funerals with their families later on.

The way it has always happened for the last thirteen years.

All at once, I feel a body crash into me at about my stomach. I jump, skittish as a rabbit when I'm jarred from my thoughts. Looking down, I see a crop of black hair, followed by green eyes. The same shade of green as...

"Sorry, Miss Katniss!"

I give the tiniest twitch of a smile. "That's OK, Abel," I say quietly. I watch him run over to his father, Rory Hawthorne - Gale's brother. Rory gives me a cordial nod. In another lifetime, Abel might have been my nephew; Rory always carried a torch for my sister, and the feeling was probably mutual. If she had lived, they would have gotten married.

Sighing, I turn away and trudge up the path to my place of exile - the Victors' Village. An entire section of the district all to my lonesome self. Hardly anyone visits me here. To associate with me at all is practically taboo.

Except for the man who I now see sitting on my mansion's front stoop. Muscular, stocky build. Ashy blond hair. And his eyes as blue as the summer sky...

Peeta Mellark, the Baker, smiles and rises when he sees me approach. "Welcome home!"

I can't help but smile at his attempt to be so chipper, as if I just came home from a vacation and not an abysmal failure. I like Peeta. We've been friends since before I was reaped the first time. He was also the only person who cared to check on me in the wake of my sister's death.

"Don't you have customers waiting?" I tease. I am usually a moody, even surly person, but with Peeta... something about him makes me more playful.

Peeta dismisses this with a wave of his hand. "Barrabus can hold down the fort while I'm gone."

I grin, touched that he took off work to come here. "You didn't have to give me a homecoming..." I mumble, touched.

"Actually, I did have to. If by homecoming, you mean our appointment to fix your oven."

"Oh, shit! I forgot!" I say, sliding past him to the door and putting the key in the lock. I had asked Peeta to fix it just before the Reaping.

"That's all right. I know you've been... busy," he offers up gently. I ignore the unspoken implications hanging in the air, and yet I know Peeta means nothing passive-agressive by this. I find it sweet that he views my job as work that is respectable. I let him pretend, because I know he's doing it for my sake.

I lead Peeta back to the kitchen and show him the oven. He paces once across it, then again, before opening the hatch and peering inside. "Yup, OK. I think I see what the problem is." He readies his toolbox. I take a seat at the kitchen table.

I like watching Peeta work. Even if this particular work does not involve baking bread, he is still really good with his hands. I wonder where he learned to be such a handyman. His father, maybe?

I feel a pang of guilt thinking this. His father. Mother. Two brothers. All of them died in the firebombings of our district after I won the Quarter Quell.

"OK, I think that does it," Peeta announces, slamming the oven door shut. "Let's give her a try." He turns it on, and the machine starts right up. "Bingo!" He then starts looking through the cabinets. I eye him curiously, amused.

"What are you doing?"

"Celebrating," Peeta banters back. And now is when the real fun begins. Peeta sets to work baking. I lose myself in watching him knead the dough he's probably been handling since he was a toddler. All at once, I wonder what his hands feel like. Probably calloused, from all the heat he's been around from the ovens. Strong, yet warm. I can hypothesize that much.

Shaking my head to clear it, I see that Peeta has finished his concoction and put it in the repaired oven. After about twenty minutes during which Peeta and I sit at the table and make small talk, the timer dings. Peeta removes his baking results from the oven.

"Now we know it's up and running!" he says triumphantly. I see what he has completed and smile.

"Cheese buns?"

"Your favorite," he smiles back, setting the pan on the table.

"Well, I know what this calls for..." but I have hardly dived for my wallet when Peeta's voice stops me.

"Oh no you don't!"

"I want to..."

"Absolutely not! This is my treat!"

I try to eye him sternly, but can't help the smirk forcing its way onto my face. "Peeta: you know how I hate owing someone."

"Yes, and I also know how great you are at trading. So how about this: I come watch you hunt in the woods, and we'll call it even. Deal?"

It doesn't sound like a fair trade to me. There should be more that I could do. Like pay him! But, I'll take what I can get. I stand.

"Sure. I was just about to go out anyway. Come on." I don my father's hunting jacket and grab my bow and game bag, knowing that Peeta will follow me.