"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes sweetheart?" A gruff voice answered my hesitant knocks. I push myself in past him and walk toward the kitchen dodging vomit and broken bottles.
"Do you have any of these that you haven't broken?" I asked impatiently, sifting through the various liquor bottles, broken and empty on the tile floor. He laughed humorlessly.
"You lookin' for a drink?" I didn't answer. "Well, you're looking in the wrong place. I'm all out 'til the next train and you can be damn sure that when the choo choo comes, you won't be getting any of my stash. The boy would kill me." I looked down at the floor, feeling a little ashamed.
"Well, who says it's any of Peeta's business?" I ask trying to keep an edge in my voice. Since when did I answer to Peeta? I think about our phone call and reconsider whether or not I want to accept his advice. What I really need is to think, and drink, and think some more. Haymitch ignores my question.
"He's got his act together. He's started the bakery up. What are you doing? You're not even alive. You're cold and lifeless. You're a corpse. A corpse, Katniss" He says evenly and directly. I feel a sting in my chest.
"I am not a corpse. I wish to god I could say I was a corpse. Everyone I know is a corpse." I say regretfully, the faces reappear. I see Prim. Fire. Parachutes. Blood.
"Everyone you know, but PEETA. Everyone you know, but ME. We're not dead yet, don't count us out." He yelled angrily. I am wordless. He continues. "Where do you get the right to mope around so pathetically? You think that everyone who died offered up their life so that you can have a staring match with the wall for days on end? You're pathetic. Peeta lost more than you, INCLUDING HIS OWN MIND, and he isn't whining. He isn't wearing last month's underwear and cold fish eyes to match. He's moving on with his life. Because he realizes that to move forward, you have to walk. And here you come to drink yourself into oblivion. Well, sorry sister, not here. I won't let you do this. You can't…" He chokes on his words. I look up from the ground and from behind my glassy tear filled eyes, I see him struggling to keep his own tears within. "You can't become me." He says with finality.
"Peeta said that to me earlier…about moving on" I clarified. I didn't know what to say.
"You know I told you that you could live a thousand lives and not deserve him, but I was wrong. You could live one hundred billion lives and still not even come close to deserving him." The second he spoke these words, I knew they were true. Peeta was this rare form of goodness—untouchable and unwavering even in the midst of a mental theft. He is a beautiful, shining, radiant good that no one could ever attain save for him. And even though I have given him no reason to love me or trust me or even care if I breathe, he does. Even though his mind told him that I was evil and not to be trusted, he fought it until he was mostly back to old Peeta who thought I was flawless. Hijacked Peeta had it right. I am a mutt, a horrible girl who has misused and abused his love, who manipulated him to live and who broke his heart a million times. I wonder idly how it is that I still cannot bring myself to use the word "love." Yes. I care about Peeta. Yes. It would destroy me if anything further happened to the boy with the bread. Yes. He is my best friend, only friend, and sometimes I miss him so much I can't breathe. But does all that equate to loving him?
"How do I get better?" I ask quietly, humbly.
"To get better, you gotta stop being bitter." He says simply.
"Aren't you being even a tad hypocritical?" I ask, thinking of his bitter, absent, drunken rampages. I look around at the beat up home; green striped wallpaper torn off the dining room walls in places, broken plates on the kitchen floor with broken bottles, holes in various walls and doors…Haymitch is still a mess. Always has been. And yet here he is telling me how to run my life?
"I'm saving you a lifetime of pain and self loathing. Get over your issues and get on with life. That's my advice. Take it or leave it." He says as he crosses over to his front door and opens it, a clear sign that I have worn out my welcome.
I exit and begin to walk mindlessly into town. The air is not bitterly cold like the last time I had been out. It is comfortable, breezy, and welcoming. I breathed in one of the first real breaths of fresh air that I had taken in months. My breathing came easier and my steps were sure, even though they were undirected. It was just nice to be outside.
I was at the bakery before I even realized I was going there. It smelled of warm, fresh bread. I walked into the front of the shop; looking around me I saw that this bakery was very Peeta. It wasn't much like the old bakery if you forgive its namesake. The walls were painted orange, sunset orange with different shades as you got closer to the base of the wall. It was a sunset only Peeta could capture. Suddenly I was reminded of our night on the beach in district four. I clutched my pocket where I held my money and the pearl. I always had the pearl on me. I don't know why.
Just as I think of this, I look to the other side where a large, nearly identical pearl was painted on the wall. My breath hitched. I turned to focus on the treats instead of getting emotional. Inside the large display case were the iced cakes Prim and I used to look longingly at so often, well, until the Baker's witch of wife would run us off. I stepped up to the counter, eyeing a pink cupcake that screamed Prim to me. I would eat in remembrance of her, she would like that.
I lightly touch the service bell and suddenly a blonde haired man is before me. He is much more muscular than I remembered. He is as beautiful as ever. His eyes are the same piercing blue, but underneath them the skin is bruised and discolored. I expect this is because of the nightmares. I assume that I have them too, I'm sure he does not miss the bags and dark circles under my eyes. He smiles, gently.
"Katniss," he breathes. "What a surprise! What can I get for you today?" He asks genially. Of course, how else would Peeta react? Peeta is the kindest person there ever was.
"The shop looks perfect. It reminds me of district four." I blurted out. He seems surprised by my outburst, but laughs anyway.
"Well, that's what I had in mind. It's a fonder memory for me." He smiles. I know we are both thinking of the pearl and the kiss that made me hungrier than a lack of food ever had.
"I still have the pearl. Even now. Right now, actually…in my pocket." I keep saying things, I don't know if Peeta cares. If he doesn't, he is polite as ever. His eyes open widely and he smiles.
"Do you really?" His smile is infectious, and it has spread to my face so easily.
"Yeah" I admit quietly. "In thirteen, I would roll it through my fingers when you were…gone. And it helped me. So, thank you."
"Of course. I'm glad I could…help you get through that." He said tentatively. I needed to change the subject. We couldn't talk about the hijacking right here, right now. On our first reunion.
"I want the pink cupcake, please" I dug my hand into my pocket and fished out several coins. I looked down at the price, and started sorting out my coins.
"No charge" Peeta says, handing me the cake.
"Nonsense. Its three bits and some, right?" Peeta looked at me with raised eyebrows and nudged the cupcake toward me, still.
"Katniss, please no charge." He says again. He smiles, but it does not reach his eyes. "Take it."
"Okay."
I go and sit down at one of the few tables. Peeta, surprisingly, sits down and joins me. It is awkward at first, but soon enough we meld back into old Katniss and Peeta, albeit broken and scarred, but the same people. I laugh at his jokes and a story about a mishap with yeast and dough. He smiles when I show him the pearl. I look sympathetically at him as he tells me of his nightmares and flashbacks. He reaches his hand toward mine when I tear up about Prim and how she would love the cupcake and new district twelve. I also thank him for the primroses and cheese buns. He smiles, I smile. He laughs, I laugh. We talk until well after close of business, and he walks me home. We nervously hug, I pull back much too soon. I go to sleep after brushing my teeth for the first time in at least a month. I think about the day until I fall asleep. I dream of pearls and sunsets.
The nightmares return, as always, but for the first time since the war—I make it until the morning. When I look out the window in the morning, I could swear that there in the yard, just one dandelion has sprouted.