Chapter 3

Tree of life

I woke alone in the morning. Haymitch is up. I hear voices and make sure I made no floorboards shift as I listen from the top of the stairs. I did not socialize with people when Haymitch had guests. Only capital people ever wanted to see me. He let the doctors examine me, holding my hand to keep me calm. Others, he refused to allow near me.

The voice is just Peeta, but I sit silently to eavesdrop. I clean my fingernails as I listened to them talk about me.

"What does criminally insane mean to you Peeta? Did you think that you get to just show up here when you got around to it, and she would be all smiles and falling in your arms?" Haymitch is wearing his mean smile, I can tell from his tone. My lips curl at the image.

"I don't know, but never did I ever envision finding her in yours. I never hated you before Haymitch, not even when you left me. But, I have to say I am awfully close to that point right now. If she hadn't been so terrified of me, I would kill you, swear it on my word. I could beat you to death with a rock." Peeta's voice is hoarse.

"Well, your little girl has already tried that Peeta. Several times in fact. In the first two weeks she didn't move a muscle. Sae wouldn't care for her any longer if I didn't agree to keep her cleaned up. The first time she tried to kill me, we were sitting at this table. She finished her dinner and tried to stab me with her dinner knife. The rock bashing was one day on our way into town. You may not understand this Peeta, but she has come a vast distance. If you had told me you were coming, I could have prepared her. I would have prepared you as well. Instead your little surprise…"

Peeta interrupts, voice shaking and I can tell he's pacing. "Backfired. I tried not to think you could take advantage of her. But it is just too much, Haymitch. You sleep with her every night, both of you drunk beyond description. You bathe together. It makes me sick. Now you expect me to believe you have never gone beyond innocent noble care? I mean I have never been naked in the shower with her and we were to be married. I feel like I have been replaced. No, more than that, she is in fear of me."

Haymitch's voice is calm and mild, like he is with me."She fears your disapproval Peeta. Did you see her face when she left the couch? She came to you then. She gave you a chance and you treated her like she was dirty. She is far more perceptive than you can imagine. I had to win her trust. You can if you wish it. The way your acting now, she feels you are already gone and I have to say I was expecting you three months ago, when you were released."

Peeta laughs as if what Haymitch says is funny. I don't understand. Where has Peeta been all this time? Haymitch had told me he just couldn't come home yet. If he was released three months ago, then he didn't want to see me. Why had he bothered to show up now? I thought back to the last time I saw him. He had stopped me from taking the nightlock. It had gone through my head a thousand times, but I had never been able to say it. Now that I knew his eyes again, I accepted what he'd done, for what it was.

It wasn't that Peeta hadn't wanted me to die at all. He wanted to see it happen slowly. He wanted to see it happen the capital way. He wanted me to be tortured to death, to make up for what I had put him through. Gale knew what I begged him for and refused me. Peeta did too. That was why they had not come.

"Katniss has been right here Peeta. I have been here. Where were you? Where is her damned mother? Where is the brooding cousin now? Who is here for her? You breeze in here and dare to be concerned only if I have mauled her. If she needs bathing, I will do it. If she needs finding, feeding, fondling or forgiving. I seem to be the only option." I love Haymitch's voice when he is really in that place that he is so angry that he sounds calm. Nobody knows how truly deadly he can be when he speaks like that. I do.

I hold my breath for Peeta's response. I could feel my heart booming expecting to hear him go into another fury at my betrayal of him.

"What are you telling me Haymitch? Did you? Are you saying that you have, touched her? Is that what your trying so hard not to admit, but justify" Peeta's voice had a poisonous tone.

"I am telling you this. She is still a virgin Peeta. She will stay one so long as she has any hope of you existing in her life. But, she's filled with terror that you will find her ugly and that she will always remain alone. I am telling you that if you choose to walk away for any reason. I won't let that happen to her. I am not worth a Capital tattoo to her if you can love her. But if you call Kaniss your past, and think there is anything in this world more beautiful inside or out? Don't, for a moment, think I will let her fall into the sorrow of your failure. Don't think she will be unloved."

"So you do want her. Are you really that desperate?" Peeta is making fun of him. He doesn't know anything and he's making fun of Haymitch for caring about me. He's trying to make Haymitch think I am dirty too.

"Peeta. I am disappointed to hear you say that. Why is it beyond you to see us? What do I have? Could I love her? Don't be ridiculous, of course."

"What makes you think she would see you that way? Just because nothing else could want her, doesn't mean she could want you. She has always detested you." Peeta is cruel. I never thought that of him. I could have said it about Haymitch and I both, but never Peeta, until now.

I hear Haymitch laugh. "That is private Peeta. Between her and I."

I know my face is brilliant red. I was terrified Haymitch was going to say that I had kissed him, or talked to him or watched him in the shower. I was so glad they couldn't see me and I was also glad that he had said what he did. I wondered what Peeta would say. I could see in his eyes, how he felt. He was here to try to kill me. Not with blood or in a way others could see. But, he was here to kill me. He would use my heart to do it if he could. Now that I knew his weapon, I could beat my enemy.

"Private?" He scoffed. "You normally fall for lethal girls? What if she tries to kill you again? Your as crazy as she is."

"But that isn't where we are now. The last time she hit me over the head with a pan. The last thing I remember was her coming at me with a broken bottle, which I realized was being shoved rather unmercifully into my chest. This was the result."

"That looks nasty. Who saved you?"

"Apparently she did. To my surprise, I awoke. Stitched up and with a little tear-streaked face, begging me to forgive her. Yesterday, I handed her my razor, closed my eyes and ask her to shave me. That is where we are now. I don't just have her trust Peeta. She has mine. I don't trust her not to wander to town and dig through the ashes – and believe me there is no image as spectacular as coming upon her and her findings in the darkness."

"That's why you sleep with her?"

"Thats why. Until I did that, she was down there every night – there was one night I saw her leave in a storm. It took me four hours to find her and she was trapped under a collapsed chimney. From that point on, she slept here. Now if you consider my action to be so heinous that you think I have no right to care for her. Take my place. If you don't want to? Then walk out that door and try me."

"I don't know what I think. I am just so shocked by this entire thing. You never mentioned any of this. I mean maybe she should be in a…"

"Don't you say it. If you, of all people, think she belongs in one of those places then get out. Don't show your face here. I would rather see her dead than that."

"I'd rather see her dead than under you every morning!" Peeta shouts.

I get up and walk down the stairs so that they know they have been heard. I glare at Peeta. I search for cheese bread and sit under the table with it. They follow quietly.

Haymitch peeks under the table at me and smiles at me, eyes full of love. He holds out his hand to me. I take it and stand up. Bumping my head on the edge of the table. I refuse to look at Peeta and hide my face in my friends shoulder. "He hates me Haymitch. The games are still being played. Only one can win. Will he leave soon?"

"I don't know what he's doing, sweetheart. But I am taking you hunting today. I want him to see you at your most beautiful darling. Maybe he will stay then. He's just confused, be patient with him." Haymitch says to me. I nod and use one eye to peer around his shoulder at the boy who doesn't like me now.

"He will scare all the game away. He's very loud." I say surprised he is not looking at me quite so mean this morning.

"Sit and finish your bread. You like his cheese bread. He made that just for you. Let him come with us and maybe he will make more of it for you."

"I will Katniss. I will make you all you want. I am sorry I have been a jerk Katniss. I didn't mean to make you afraid of me." Peeta says and his eyes mean it. He didn't mean to let me see what he is doing. Haymitch doesn't understand. I know it is not love that drives Peeta to me.

I use both eyes to look at him now. "You can go. But don't you say nasty stuff about him any more. I don't belong to you. Your alive and I don't have to listen to you if you say mean things about us. He needs me. They need me and you need to hear things before you talk."

I see tears and know I hurt him. I don't care that I hurt him. I have to many real tears to dry for his to matter. If I kill him, then his tears would matter. I open Haymitch's shirt and kiss the scars I put there. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." I say looking at him.

"Didn't mean to kill me or didn't mean to save me?" He kisses me on the forehead so I know he is trying to make me smile.

"I will think about it and let you know." I say seriously, but his eyes tell me he knows I am teasing him.

"Go get our bows." He scoots me toward our hunting closet.

I hand Haymitch his bow and I can hardly wait to start. Peeta seems surprised that Haymitch has a bow just like mine but larger.

"Did she teach you?" He asks as we walk into town.

"Peeta, Gales Father and Katniss' were my friends. Did you assume I was always nothing but a drunk?" Haymitch winks at Peeta.

In the meadow, I feel life return to me. This is the place where the voices rest. They are silent as the daisies that have swept through the fields with hope. I try to wait for Peeta and Haymitch, but I finally can't stand it and I run toward my woods, heading to my rock.

I hear Peeta call out to me, but Haymitch stays with him and they continue to walk slowly following my trail of broken flowers. I am up the tree, buy the time they arrive. I watch them come closer. Haymitch is telling Peeta about how this place feeds me. It's true. This place has no voices of the dead. Only here, can I feel almost like believing that girl in the ashes was alive. Here, she never spoke about who she could have been. By this tree, she filled me with who she was.