Author's Note - Another Chapter

Chapter 2

Fixing Shattered

~Peeta spent most of his waking house helping Prim and Mrs. Everdeen with Katniss, and every sleeping moment within reach of her searching hands. In some ways, his reasons for sticking around so close were selfish, but there were those endless scream-filled night where only his touch calmed her to silence and Peeta Mellark became a near permanent feature in the Everdeen household.

~"So where is she?" Haymitch asked, taking a nice long swig from his clear glass filled to the brim with something Peeta didn't know the name of.

~"Hunting," he was relaxing on the older game victor's front porch, watching the man's geese waddle and meander around the yard.

~"Sweetcheeks finally went outside, huh?"

~"It'll be good for her. She needs to get out of this… rut she's been in."

~Haymitch nodded and took another drink. At this rate, he would be drunk and useless before sundown. "I see you spending a lot of time over there. Don't you have a home?" His words weren't unkind and anyone who knew the old dog well enough knew his poor humor was harmless.

~"I can't leave her at night. Prim doesn't know how to calm her and their mom just ignores Katniss until the nightmare passes. She breaking, Haymitch, and I don't know what to do."

~"You can't fix broken, kid. Might as well get that through your head now. If Sweetcheeks doesn't or can't be fixed, it's best to just leave the pieces alone."

~"You can't honestly mean that. She's your girl on fire, the mockingjay you passed off to all the sponsors as part of your star-crossed lovers."

~Haymitch rolled his eyes and turned his dishwater blonde head towards the younger male, "if you're starting to believe your own bullshit, loverly, you're in for a rude awakening. Life isn't flowers and fluffy rainbow kittens. Some people are cut out to survive life and some fall apart. Katniss is falling apart."

~"Well, I see you two gossiping about me, plan on sharing?" The very girl on fire noisily slammed down her heavy hunting pack on the end of the porch and climbed over the railing like some wild animal. She let herself down easily and dragged the fifty something pound bag towards the other two before plopping herself down beside Peeta and opening the toggle top.

~"I should just keep your dinner, Haymitch, seeing as how you're all ready drinking it. I thought you were going to cut back, isn't the VictoryTour coming up soon?" A fire twinkled in Kat's eyes, something neither of the men had seen in awhile and it made a smile twitch at the corners of Haymitch's lips.

~"I'll cut back when I'm dead." To reiterate his point, he downed the rest of his glass and made loud smacking sounds with his lips.

~Katniss rolled her steely Seam gray eyes and got up to put the two rabbits she'd snared into his kitchen. While she was momentarily occupied, a familiar face came purposefully striding down Victor's Alley. Gale Hathorne held his own pack and strode from the same direction Katniss had come. He looked angry and dejected, and on his left side, he sported a quickly forming black eye.

~"Wonder what that was about," Peeta began.

~Haymitch immediately shook his head and waggled his finger at the boy, "don't get involved. Keep your nose out of it unless you want to end up the same way."

~From the kitchen, Katniss gripped tight to the counter until her knuckles were white. She still couldn't believe it, couldn't comprehend what made her do what she'd done to Gale in the forest.

~"Catnip. I think the log snare caught the rabbit." Gale was all ready coming slowly through some thick foliage that was just barely gaining it's autumn coat, and he noticed Kat holding something in her hand a few steps away. He drew closer to see it was the pin she wore in the games, the one Madge had given her.

~"Catnip. Hey! Are you listening?" He watched as Kat's attention lazily drifted towards him and there was a moment of blankness hiding in her eyes, but she recovered and shook her head to clear it.

~"Huh?"

~"Rabbit. Caught. Log snare."

~"Oh," she got to her feet and hulked her game bag up and onto her should. "Sorry, I'm still out of it. I'm not getting much sleep." She followed behind him, her nearly silent footfalls were the only sound besides Gale's own steps that could be heard.

~"I thought 'Peeta' was helping you with that." The apparent venom in his voice was unmistakable. He hated how much time Mellark was spending with her, but there wasn't anything he could do about it so long as Katniss continued to choose him.

~"He can't hold my hand at night every night. He has a home and things to do too. Just like you do." She hopped over a quail sized rock and shoved her bow up higher on her arm to steady it.

~"You and him hold hands?" Gale felt the green monster of jealousy rearing its ugly head.

~"It makes the nightmares go away," she was shrugging it off as if it wasn't anything more than a nightly ritual, no more important than brushing her teeth or her hair.

~"If you need someone there, Catnip, you could always call me."

~"We've been through this, Gale. You work the mines and I don't need you being too tired from listening to me scream and cry all night. Plus, we've tried it, remember? It didn't work." Katniss felt bad bringing up that particular night, She'd fallen asleep with Gale dozing at her back and throughout the night she'd awoken in tears, the fears only seemed to be appeased when Peeta's presence was nearby.

~Gale grumbled, muttering something under his breath, but Kat caught it and snatched up the fabric of his arm. "What's wrong with you? Stop acting like an ass."

~"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me!?" Gale's loud tone startled some grouse from the bushes, but neither of the hunters noticed. "Katniss, Peeta says he's loved you since he was five. He's dong this to get closer to you in hopes that you'll return his puppy love-sick crap."

~"Peeta hasn't done anything that you wouldn't have done for me if you could, Gale. He's being a good friend."

~"A friend doesn't sleep in the same bed as you. A friend doesn't claim some 'star-crossed lover' bull, bring you flowers, or kiss you on national television."

~"It was for the games, Gale. You know that!"

~"I know better than that, Catnip. He loves you and either you're blind to not see it, or just ignoring it because you're being selfish."

~There were two things Katniss knew right at that moment. She was angry for one, an coming to grips with Peeta's true feelings for the second. "How do you know how he really feels?" Of course she knew Peeta's feelings, he'd told her as much on the train ride home and she'd cruelly shot him down.

~"Because he looks at you the same way I do."

~Kat's eyes widened in surprise. She'd always wondered about Gale's feelings, but he'd been surrounded by so many girls his entire life that she never pursued the thought of it beyond a very close friendship. Now here he was, practically confessing and the only person Katniss could think about was Peeta. His sky blue eyes, his sandy blonde hair that fell over his face, and his strong chest and arms that comforted her in her darkest moments.

~"I… I don't know what to say." She was quickly floundering, being torn between hurting her best friend and hurting the only person who understood her nightmares and could appease them. Her head was spinning wildly and she rubbed her temple to ease the sudden migraine.

~ Setting his face in a cold, hard stare, Gale suddenly dropped his bag with a dull thud and grabbed Katniss' shoulder.

~She though he was going to shake some sense into her, but instead a pair of warm, chapped lips pressed hard against hers. All in an instant, a million thoughts crossed her mind. She smelled oranges and thought his skin was bathed in it. His dark hair tickled her face, but not the way she liked it. And finally, Gale Hawthorne's kiss didn't leave her breathless, it only made the uncomfortable knot in her stomach snap. She yanked herself away and before Katniss Everdeen could control herself, she doubled her right fist and punched Gale as hard as she could muster.

~She stared at his reddening cheek, her mouth dropping open into a silent 'O'. He touched his face, rubbing the spot as if disbelieving what Katniss had just done, but said nothing.

~"I'm so sorry-"

~"Stop, Katniss. I get it. You chose him."

~She ran from him after that, leaving her friend sitting where she'd knocked him on his ass and she once looked back.

~"Kat!" Peeta yelled from the porch, "you mom's yelling at us to come for dinner."

~Katniss pulled herself out of the ring of memories and turned to leave, exiting Haymitch's house and greeting a drunk victor, but no Peeta.

~"Loverboy went to your house," his words slurred and he poured himself another drink, but Katniss took it swiftly and downed it without really tasting it. "Hey!" He shouted, fumbling around to grab the glass from her, though the alcohol had impaired both his motor skills and his depth perception. His missed terribly.

~"That stuff will kill you," he warned, hugging his flask away from the thief incase she wanted that too.

~"That shit is foul, I have no idea how you drink it." She coughed as the strong vapors wafted up to her nose and made her eyes water. A bit of liquid leaked out of the corner of her mouth and she wiped the pungent alcohol away.

~"Don't cuss," Haymitch ordered, although his tone sounded more derelict than anything else.

~"Don't drink." But they both knew that wouldn't be happening any time soon.

~Katniss picked up her bow and pack, wordlessly stalking her way down the porch steps. She turned only when she heard her name called.

~"You know you don't deserve him, right?" Their eyes met and there was a momentary battle of wills, but Haymitch's won out in the end and Katniss looked away.

~"No, I don't I know that."

~"He loves you, honestly loves you and you hurt him at every turn."

~Kat's eyes darkened slightly and Haymitch could almost see the inner demons working overtime within her mind. "He wants something I can't give him."

~"Can't or won't?"

~"He'll want to get married, have kids, be a family. I can't do that, Haymitch! I don't know how to be a family. I've spent too long being everything for Prim that I don't know how to do it for anyone else. And the Capitol keeps taking everything away from me. I refuse to bring more children into a world where we offer them up like stuck pigs on a platter." She didn't care who was listening, the liquid fire in her veins had all ready intoxicated her mind. "I don't want to hurt him, but I don't see how I can't end up doing that."

~Suddenly, Haymitch smiled, throwing Katniss off-guard, "you 'do' love him."

~Her eyes betrayed her feelings, there was no way to get out of this one, she was a bad liar. Everyone knew that.

~"I have a feeling that everything will be fine," he said cryptically, climbing out of his chair and almost crawling back into the house.

~Katniss lamented on her mentor's words the entire way back home, but by the time she'd made it to the entry way and had begun digging through her pack to hide her catch, the thoughts had diminished down to mush. Her first brush with strong alcohol had caused a fuzzy haze to descend upon her mind, laying siege to any clear minded thoughts.

~"Kat," Peeta said from the kitchen's threshold, "Prim's made rosemary rabbit stew. Come on." He watched her stare up at him, a strange look contorting her face, a cross between confusion and another expression he couldn't decipher, "Kat?"

~She climbed to her feet, bag forgotten and walked over to the sandy blonde who watched her closely. Her body came to stand directly in front of his, head upturned to be able to hold eye contact. Without warning, she flung her arms around his neck and slanted her mouth against his in a crushing kiss.

~There was a long moment where Katniss felt like she was floating, as if everything around her had come to a screeching halt, but then she realized too late that they were falling. Peeta had lost his balance thanks to her over exuberant force and his poor balance on his fake leg, sending them both careening to the hardwood floor. They hit hard, Kat's mother and sister looking on from the table with concern, but neither moved.

~To say Peeta was surprised was an understatement, though he quickly recovered enough to kiss her back. He even laid his hands on her hips to hold her as tightly as he could muster.

~When they finally broke apart to catch their breath, it was Katniss who spoke first. She laid her head in the crook of his neck and whispered, "I'm sorry I'm selfish an I'm sorry I need you to survive… I do…" She was struggling to say it, fighting with the part of her that was so terrified to let anyone but Primrose in. "…I do… love… you."

~Katniss' mother cleared her throat above them and both hormonally charged teenagers looked up, but only Kat had the good sense to blush. Peeta remained dreamily lying on the floor with a silly smile plastered to his face. They disentangled themselves from each other and scrambled to their feet. The following hour was spent eating in electrically charged silence, Prim and Mrs. Everdeen throwing each other glances while Peeta couldn't wipe the dopey smile off his face, and Katniss picked queasily through her food with fervor.

~A normal mother with a normal child would have sent Peeta home as the night drew on and bedtime was getting closer, but Lilly Everdeen knew that to send Peeta home, even the young man with a love interest in her daughter, would have been a condemning sentence for her oldest. She just prayed that this 'interest' wouldn't blossom further until it was the right time.

~"Did you mean what you said?" Peeta whispered lowly so no one would hear them. He lay facing Katniss, a hand tightly clasped to hers while she lay on her stomach, head towards him.

~"Yes," She offered no more of an explanation and the Mellark boy didn't press for one. He leaned forward to kiss her forehead and settled down into one of the happiest sleeps he had ever had before and in seconds, her was out, leaving Katniss to wonder what mental rules she had broken and what consequences would lay ahead for them.

Author's Note - No R&Rs dang. I have more chapters to upload. Here you go.