Lovely readers: I'm so sorry my updates have been slower. I've been agonizing over some stuff, more for the next chapter than this one, but it's slowing me down. I won't ever let it go more than a few days. Promise!
Also- your reviews make my life better. Although I do "have a life and all", I promise not to make Peeta magically healed just because he's "getting laid and has company". Seriously, you people make me smile like I just won the lottery.
Oh. Hunger games. Not mine.
Haymitch never again enters their house without knocking. This annoys her beyond reason, because his impromptu visits were made better by his terrible manners, and now he stands and waits patiently at the door even when he knows Peeta isn't home.
She's coming to find herself, and her sanity, more and more. She tells herself it has nothing to do with Peeta, the way he wraps around her while she's sleeping, making her feel safe. It has nothing to do with how happy he makes her, the hope he gives her. That is not why her sanity is coming back: it's…it's something else, and that's all there is to it.
They're told that, despite the fact that new houses are built and ready to move into in town, Victor's Village will stay filled with people, because a new group is arriving as soon as this one moves into town, and they'll need somewhere to live. The bakery for Peeta and Greasy Sae is almost finished. She'll live above the shop and a family will move into Peeta's old house. Katniss isn't sure how she feels about there being children here.
She's become part of the team, hunting and digging up plants. Delly has asked her twice if she can help with the plants, but thus far, Katniss hasn't found it in herself to let anyone else into the woods with her. Part of her wants other people there, wants to let Delly in because then she might be less lonely…but it is her graveyard, the place she goes to mourn, and she isn't ready for it to be filled with living people quite yet.
It's cold out the day she has a terrible encounter with Thom when she goes wandering through what used to be town to see the new bakery. Peeta won't stop raving about it but she wants to look at it alone, without him. She's still desperately clinging to her independence. Thom is wheeling a cart and she waves as he gets closer. Then, as she sees the dead, decayed, skeletal bodies that fill his cart, she turns and vomits into the dirt. Thom sighs, sympathetic, and pats her on the back.
"Where are you putting them?" she asks.
She needs to know where she can and can't go. Part of regaining her sanity has been sorting through reality, playing the real and not real game, even without Peeta. The reality is that she simply cannot handle seeing dead bodies.
Thom's face registers shock as he answers her.
"We've dug a mass grave in the Meadow. Didn't you know?" She stares at him, shakes her head numbly. True, she doesn't wander the entire woods, is afraid to venture too far from her snare line and the lake. But…
She's throwing up again, somehow on her knees, retching into the dirt, unable to get the smell of decayed bodies and putrid roses out. Thom tries to rub her back, maybe he does rub her back and she's just too far gone to feel it. She stands and runs, faster than she knew she could, into Peeta's old house, where he and Greasy Sae have made pots of turkey soup and fresh dill bread.
His face lights up when he sees her, as it always does. But his expression quickly changes as she slaps him.
"What was that for?" he demands, angry. She's crying so hard she can barely breathe, and she collapses into his arms. She's pretty sure he holds her fairly begrudgingly.
"Why'd you keep talking about town?" she demands, as soon as she's coherent enough to be capable of speech. Greasy Sae has pretended she needs something in the pantry, giving them their privacy.
"Why did you tell me to go somewhere that isn't a town, just a graveyard, just a reminder of all the people I've killed?" She's sobbing, hard, and he clings to her tightly.
"I didn't," he whispers. "I didn't tell you to go there. I never imagined you'd go there on your own, and I wasn't going to take you until—"
"Of course I went on my own!" she snarls. She's wild, a feral animal. "I don't need you to take me places or tell me things I already know. I don't need you at all."
He looks more hurt than when she'd slapped him.
"I never said you did," he whispers, after it's clear that she's not going to apologize or take it back. "I just meant…I didn't think you'd go on your own. I didn't mean to hold out on you. I'm sorry."
"They're burying them in my Meadow," she whispers, and he wipes the tears off her cheeks. She feels guilty, ashamed: shouldn't she be comforting him? Or is she not allowed to comfort him when she's the one hurting him?
"I know," he whispers. "I'm sorry."
She gets up, wiping away her tears furiously. She doesn't want his apologies.
"Don't ever hold out on me again," she tells him, and she leaves.
That night, in bed, after she's refused to acknowledge him, turning to face the wall, tucking her knees into her chin, he whispers sweet things to her until she rolls over, meets his eyes.
"I didn't know you'd try," he said. "I didn't know you were…"
"Stable enough? Sane enough? Stupid enough?" she offers, when words fail him. Since when do words fail him?
"…listening," he admits. "I didn't know you cared. I thought you tuned me out whenever I talked about there being people here."
"I don't tune you out," she whispers, guilty again, her hands on his face. "I don't know how anymore."
He kisses her and she lets him. But as he pulls her on top of him, she knows her words are echoing in both of their heads.
I don't need you at all.
Though they don't have fresh game for a few weeks after that incident, she eventually sneaks under the fence again. This time she goes looking for it. She shakes violently when she sees it, this gaping hole in her Meadow, a pit filled with a thousand unspoken apologies she should have said when she had the chance. This is her personal graveyard; she is responsible for every single one of those deaths. It is her fault. Somewhere in the pit of decayed bones is Madge, Madge's parents, Peeta's family…
She's throwing up again, screaming into the dirt, saying words she's never heard herself say, words that are worse than Johanna's curses when she was coming off the morphling. Her screams do nothing, but she feels like maybe the throwing up helps. Perhaps her body is trying to draw out the poison; poison that was never in her body, always in her mind. She cries for a long time under the hot sun. Then she gets up and shoots three squirrels. At first she leaves them, unable to face any more death today, but then she feels like she's adding to her list of kills, putting more corpses in her precious woods. Tears blind her by the time she's shoving them, fur and all, at Peeta, and he leaves work immediately to sit on their couch and hold her until she stops crying. It takes a long time for her to hunt without feeling like a murderer. She wonders if she is a murderer, sits long hours in the sun, finally comes to the conclusion that it has so much to do with survival and intention. She would never kill anyone unless it was necessary for her survival (or Peeta's). She had never intended to destroy District 12. She is an inferno, causing destruction that she certainly can't control, but that she never, ever intends to happen. Eventually, they pour the dirt back in, cover up the grave. She won't walk on it. She still won't go into town.
She hadn't realized how much she'd been relying on Peeta until he doesn't come home one night. She'd finished hunting in the morning, dropped her game off with Greasy Sae, spent the afternoon washing their sheets down by the lake. Night is falling by the time she's finished supper, but she isn't really worried about him. He often works late, baking after they close so he can feed people breakfast and not get up at the crack of dawn. And besides, she's almost sure the days are getting shorter. But as time drags on…she begins to worry.
They've refused clocks since the Quell (and for her, 13, with that goddamn schedule on her arm), so she has no idea what time it is, but when she hears that Haymitch is up and yelling, she realizes that it is very, very late and Peeta hasn't come home.
She has no idea what to do: where to search, what to think. Perhaps he's off sleeping with Delly or that gorgeous blonde girl who frequents the bakery far more than she probably needs to. But she can't focus on the jealousy because deep down, she knows he wouldn't choose someone else when he can still have her. Deep down, she knows something is very wrong. So, Katniss does what she's learned to do in any crisis involving Peeta: she runs for Haymitch as though her life depends on it.
"Sweetheart, I've got better things to do than listen to stories about your love life," he slurs when she comes in the door without knocking.
"I don't know where he is," she snaps, "and you told me that I need to protect him."
Haymitch's eyes are unfocused and bloodshot. He's probably been through more alcohol tonight than she and Peeta could handle together in a month. She grabs his shoulders, shakes him. He pushes her off.
"So protect him," he slurs, gulping more. "I sure as hell can't do it. You two don't need me. You need each other."
"I don't need anyone," she corrects him, uncomfortable with how quickly drunk Haymitch can get to the heart of her most heart-wrenching dilemmas.
"Sure you don't, sweetheart," he laughs, "you don't need people at all. You pretty much just need woods and birds and a weapon."
He isn't making a whole lot of sense, but something in what he's saying is making her tremble.
"I don't need birds," she spits at him. He laughs.
"You're the Mockingjay!" he says, but it sounds more like he's singing it. He's so far gone, so shattered.
"And I sure as hell don't need my woods right now," she mutters, blushing. He nods.
"They buried some people out there," he tells her. As if she needs to be reminded. "People we killed, sweetheart. Let's drink to that."
That's what's making her shake. They killed them, she and Haymitch, his involvement in the rebellion during the Quell, her arrow sent into the forcefield. They killed Peeta's family.
And then, of course, she knows where he is.
"Bye, sweetheart!" calls Haymitch as he takes off. She's not sure, but he might have toasted her as she left. Sometimes, she thinks he's more broken than she and Peeta put together.
Peeta's lying in the dirt on top of the grave. She feels both disgusted and ashamed, can barely breathe, but she lies down beside him anyways. She touches his shoulder. He takes her hand in his. He's shaking violently.
"I killed my family," he whispers.
"Not real."
"I'm not having a flashback, Katniss!" he yells, and his anger sounds so much louder out here than it does in their house. "I'm just telling the truth. It's my fault they're dead."
"It was Haymitch and I," she whispers. "His role in the rebellion. My arrow in the forcefield. Peeta, we killed your family."
He laughs, but she barely recognizes the sound. That is not what his laugh sounds like: mirthless, angry, cruel.
"Snow wasn't lying to me after all then," he mutters, and it's a knife in her heart. Because…whatever Peeta saw her as after the hijacking, that's what she was really like. She distinctly remembers hating him because he finally saw her as she truly was.
She sighs, lets the tears run down her face, says nothing. And then he's up, screaming into the night, throwing branches at the grave, kicking rocks up in an angry outburst she has never seen from him. He's not murderous, not hijacked: he's just angry. She vaguely remembers him angry and smashing things in 11 on the Tour, but that was nothing compared to this. She can't make out any of the words he's screaming, realizes he might not be screaming words at all. And then he's fallen, into the dirt, crawled back to her, and she cradles him into her chest. She's worried for a moment that he might hurt her, that the anger might trigger a hijacked-Peeta kind of rage. But he isn't raging anymore. Instead, he's crying. He's sobbing like an abandoned child, like a little boy who was orphaned and never got to say good-bye. She holds him tighter.
"They…they took so much from us," he weeps. "They took my family, our friends, our sanity, our hope. And we never blame them. We blame ourselves, go round and round in circles of hatred and anger and doubt. Every time we blame ourselves, they win."
She's sobbing now, 're just frightened children, clinging together because togetherness is the only way they can fight back.
"We need to blame them, Katniss," he tells her. "They killed my parents, hijacked me, reaped us, turned us into murderers. Please, please, could we blame them instead of ourselves?"
"Yes," she whispers, with all the conviction she can give it. "I don't want to be a piece in their Games anymore, Peeta."
He nods, sighs into her, takes her hand and lies beside her, looking at the stars. Both of them know they're not sleeping tonight.
Reviews make me smile.