Winter comes, stays, lingers frostily like a tedious guest unaware that they have overstayed their welcome. Gale works seven days a week, most weeks, and the weeks that he does have Sundays off he spends with his family. I know from Hazelle, who comes to clean Haymitch's house every third day now, that he's taken the tesserae again. We don't talk about this, much in the same way that we don't talk about Rory doing the same, the one thing he swore he would make sure never happen. Mostly we don't talk at all.
In the absence of my best friend I have thrown myself into the life of a victor. I live as a victor should live: I stay in with Peeta, adding to my father's book of plants and herbs. I take walks with Prim in the meadow, collecting herbs and watching for the first dandelions of spring. I visit Haymitch, make sure he is eating. I do not go into the woods. I do not hunt. I do not go to the Hob, where my absence has surely been put down to my being a victor now, too good to deal with any of them.
In short, I do not live.
It's easy to become frustrated in this world, where I feel like everything is made of glass. One push, one scream, one unrestrained moment might destroy it and shards of razor sharp Snow will cut us to ribbons. I try so hard not to snap because what if fragments of the version of me who does not belong in this perfect fragile world should break free? Someone could get hurt.
I think sometimes that it is like living inside one of Haymitch's liquor bottles, perfectly preserved and deceptively transparent – like water, almost. You wouldn't know that inside that water-like liquid lurks a hidden poison.
I find this out on a night that the nightmares have been particularly bad. Peeta has gone to dinner with his parents and will be coming home late. I wait up for him, straining to hear his soft familiar steps on the landing, but I know that he will not come here. When he has been to see his parents Peeta always wants to be alone. So I am alone tonight, and it is perhaps because of this that the nightmares attack with a vigour that cannot be easily dissuaded. I can't remember them when I wake, nor can I speak, and I can tell by the overwhelming silence in the house that I have screamed more than just myself awake.
So I slip out of the house, away from sympathetic thoughts and looks. Sympathy is not what I need. Empathy is what I need tonight. I realise as I pass Peeta's house without meaning to that I intend to mix empathy with good hard liquor. If it works for Haymitch, why can't it work for me?
When I cross Haymitch's threshold without a sound, it is almost as if he has been expecting me. His eyes find me in the shadows and stay with me, glinting eerily from the flickering fire that is the only source of light. Haymitch does not sleep when it is dark out. Why should we submit to the night when we can defeat it, watch the sun come up in half-conscious defiance? He goes to make a sarcastic question but instead takes in the blood on my chin from where I have bitten my lip in an effort to restrain the screams, sees the glazed, set eyes, and passes me the bottle without speaking. When I sit beside him on the loveseat, he knows to speak first.
"I could hear you from here, sweetheart," he says, and the term of endearment is no longer sarcastic but is what it is meant to be: soft, sad, soothing. This isn't the Haymitch I know. But have I ever really known Haymitch? The only one I have met is the drunken, sarcastic, conspiring Haymitch born out of the Games. Just like the only Katniss he knows is the manipulative, violent one who nine times out of ten is covered with blood when he sees her. I don't know the old Haymitch. I'm not sure if he does, either. I wipe the trickle of blood from my cheek and do not respond, passing him the bottle.
"You don't deserve him, you know."
It's true, but it still hurts. I take the bottle from his still dry lips and swallow it without letting it touch my tongue. "I know."
"You're going to break his heart."
He takes the bottle back, forces me to reply. "I know."
"You're going to end up killing him."
I can't respond, this time. Haymitch shakes his head at me. We sit in silence for a while. It is a surprise when he speaks again.
"Maysilee Donner was a friend of your mother's," he whispers. I frown: the name is familiar, but I can't place it. What does she have to do with anything? "I expect she hasn't mentioned her. No one does, not anymore." He chokes out a bitter laugh and takes a swig from the bottle. "When you lose the Games, you don't just die. You disappear."
Something clicks – a clip from a past Game, perhaps, one of the less frequent ones from the stream of news bulletins on our television sets that play nothing else. "Maysilee… was in the arena with you?" I am hesitant, but the instant I say it Haymitch sighs so heavily it is as if his body is deflating, and I know that I am right.
"We were allies for a while." His voice is soft, like I've never heard it before, and I cling to his every word. "We got down to the final few. I didn't want to have to kill her, and I'd like to think she didn't want to have to kill me either. Guess I'll never know." He pauses to take a swig from the bottle. I frown into the flames, hypnotised by the way the fire caresses the coal so sensually before it digs its smoking claws into the fuel, sustaining its own life by the destruction of meaningless lumps of dull, colourless coal. I shake my head. It's only coal, Katniss.
"So… you split up?" I ask. Haymitch nods.
"She went her way, I went mine." There is a pause, and when I take the bottle from him I dare not comment on the way that his face is slick with unrestrained tears that both scare and please me – it's good to know that whatever Haymitch might pretend, a victor can never be totally soulless. "Only took a moment or so for the screams to start. I held her hand while she died." The liquor burns my throat. I like it. It numbs the feeling elsewhere until the only pain is in my neck and the hole where my heart should be. "Should've been me. Should've been me. And look at me now. Waste of a life. I know that's what her sister thought, when I went to the mayor's house on the Victory Tour."
A pause.
"I could save a hundred thousand lives and still I'll be nowhere close to Peeta. Because he had the courage to die, if that's what it took for you to live." He shakes his head. His nails are digging into his palms so hard that they draw blood. "Should've been me."
When Peeta finds us in the morning, I am curled against Haymitch's chest with my feet tucked up on the sofa and his arm is wrapped around my shoulders. Our position is a desperately painful repetition of the way Peeta and I looked on the loveseat at our last interview with Caesar. Peeta looks at me questioningly but I shake my head, allow myself to be helped out of the door and into his home, into his bed, where he tucks me in and strokes my hair until I fall asleep. I am distinctly aware of a sense of self-hatred, so keen it makes my stomach churn. What was I doing, thinking I could let Peeta die if it meant saving myself? What was Haymitch doing, thinking only to save me if he could in the arena? Haymitch is right. Neither he nor I will ever match up to Peeta. If anyone of us was going to live, I would rather it was him.
"It should've been you," is the last thing I mutter before sleep and alcohol take me over.
-x-
The first thing I am aware of is three pairs of sparkling eyes, staring at me as I sleep in Peeta's arms.
The second thing is the vomit forcing its way up from my protesting stomach.
I push my way past my startled prep team – "Surprise!" they squeal – without pausing to acknowledge them and make it to the bathroom just on time to thrust my head into the sink. The liquor may have numbed me on its way down but on its way back up it burns every part of me. The bathroom is tilting, tipping me from side to side so that it is all I can do to cling onto the cool ceramic and try not to fall over – but then his arms are around me, and I am steady. I grasp at him, drink in his solidity. I am too grateful for his presence to feel even mildly ashamed as the acidic contents of my stomach force their way out.
"Katniss?"
I groan on the inside at the sound of that squeaky, timid voice. Octavia is the less queasy of the three (which she informed my many times while she hosed me down the first time we met, which I still don't know if I should have taken personally). Sure enough when I glance into the mirror, there she is: with her eyes so wide it just adds to the electric blue impression that her hair, standing up in a halo of wavy spikes around her head, gives of being permanently shocked. It would be comical, but all I can do is groan and spit into the basin again. This is too much even for Octavia, who turns on her heel and runs squealing down the stairs.
"Photo shoot day." Peeta smiles, kisses the top of my head.
"Photo shoot day," I mutter. For me, it's twelve hours of being stripped of my hair like a wild rabbit, forced to stand in ridiculous shoes and trying "not to look so hostile" (as Haymitch puts it) for the camera. For Peeta, it's a chance to chat and laugh with his stylists, smile effortlessly as he always does and… I can see in the reflection of his eyes, suddenly bright with excitement, that it's just another step closer to marrying me.
I groan and heave bile into the stainless white sink.
By the time I am done, I am too empty and too lifeless even to move, but my prep team coax and bully me out of the house and into the one next door where they proceed to shave, pluck and paint me from head to toe. Their attempts to make small talk make my ears ring, so the torture takes place in a deathly silence that is even worse than the noise, as I can hear every moan, every tut as they despair over my effortless self-neglect. I am too busy keeping down the tea that my mother has forced me to drink, though, to care.
The photo shoots seem to take an age, but finally they are gone and when I am free of all make-up and hair product – which I can honestly say I had no idea even existed before the Games began – I shoot downstairs, gratefully take the proffered bowl of stew my mother offers. "I'm going to eat this at Peeta's, is that okay?" I shout over my shoulder, my hand already on the door handle.
"I had hoped you might stick around and talk to me, first." A soft voice from behind me makes me whirl around. Cinna. It takes me a moment to remember why the sight of him makes me so anxious, so defensive. Of course – he'll want to talk about Peeta.
Oh, no.
"Shall we?" He's smiling as he gestures to the empty living room, but the tone of his voice leaves no room for disagreement. My minute rebellion is slouching and dragging my feet as I drag myself past him through the door, but I cannot resist him. He shuts the door behind us. Taking my hand, he leads me to the sofa, pulls me down beside him. "So," he says softly.
"So," I whisper back. Then, without warning, I'm crying and my arms are around his neck.
I talk.
I tell him how happy I am, honestly, whenever I'm in Peeta's presence. How guilty I feel to think of Gale when I'm with him. How amazing Peeta is, the boy who had the courage to die for me if that's what it took for me to go on living even if he wasn't there to see it.
How much I miss my best friend.
How little I deserve to miss him, when that is all that I can give him.
I tell Cinna that I am scared – beyond terrified – about so many things. About what Snow meant when he told me to enjoy my time left with Peeta while I still could. About what Peeta would feel if he even got the hint that I wasn't quite as in love with him as he supposed. About our wedding day, and what that would do to Gale. Gale, who has kept me alive all these years, who loves me and looks after me and would do anything for me, given the chance.
I tell him that I am so, so confused. Because no matter how bad I feel about Gale, the thought of not being with Peeta makes my head spin. I need him. He keeps me alive, the boy with the bread, in more ways than one. "But that's not enough reason for me to make him stay with me, is it?" I hear, for the first time, the desperation in my voice, and I fall silent. It comes to me that despite all my confusion over the whole situation, this is the first time that I've cried or spoken about it since that first night with Peeta on the train.
He strokes my hair. Says nothing. We sit like this, with his arms around me, until my tears have stopped and the pathetic sniffling that follows have almost died out. Cinna finally speaks.
"Does he make you happy, Katniss?" A nod. "Could you live without him? Honestly?" A definite shake of the head. "Then I think you have your answer." He smiles as I lift my head of his chest, frowning, to face him. What answer? "I can't tell you. But what I can tell you is that you're very, very lucky."
Then he's kissing me on the head, pulling himself away and leaving, making excuses to my mother about having aggravated Effie enough already by making the train wait. And then he's gone, leaving me more confused than I have ever felt in my life.
AN: Ahh I can't tell you how frustrating it is to write "confused Katniss" style when it's so clear in everyone's head! I just wanted to get across the feeling of battling loyalties and that she's so indebted to Gale for keeping her alive that she can't let herself abandon him (because we know what a thing Katniss has for debts). Anywho, sorry for the delay in posting, the next chapter should be soon. Thanks for reading, please review!HaH