Hello lovelies! As always, thank you for your marvelous reviews (and the favorite-ing). You make my smile so big!
So, the end of this chapter gets a bit lemony. I think I'm still ok with a T-rating (it's far from explicit), but if you're sensitive to that, stop reading at the page break. I guarantee you'll miss nothing plot-wise.
The Hunger Games belong to Suzanne Collins, not to me, though I do enjoy playing with her characters.
They're leaving tomorrow, less than a week after Johanna and Gale arrived. At first she questioned the quick schedule, but then she realized that no one expected it to be a long conversation. They'd either say yes or no, and that would be that. She still isn't sure, as she throws their clothes into a suitcase, that they said the right thing. But they did. A Capitol full of Victors telling their stories, their real stories, not lying for the camera, is heartening. This is the hope that stirs in a world with no Games. Maybe this will be the one that sticks; isn't that what she's supposed to be hoping for?
But she has one more trial to get through: today they're pulling the fence down around her woods. She doesn't know how she feels about that. Just because she's gotten used to the idea doesn't mean she wants it. She wishes she'd been allowed to keep one thing: either stay here, watch the rest of them on TV and lose her woods or go to the Capitol and keep her woods. It seems unfair, asking her to give up both.
She and Gale went to say good-bye this morning: sat and ate blackberries and Peeta's bread at their old spot, wandered all the way down to the lake, said good-bye to big moments, like the time they caught their first buck, and smaller ones, like when she learned a knot for a certain snare, when she'd dug up katniss roots for the first time. Then she sits by the fence, watches as he shouts orders that are followed without hesitation. He's powerful, she realizes. He always has been, but to see it realized, to see his orders actually followed…this is the kind of change a rebellion brings.
After five minutes, she can't stand it anymore, so she leaves, without a word to Gale or anyone else. Maybe she does just leave when things get tough. She goes to find Peeta in town, where he and Greasy Sae have just moved their shop from her house to where the old bakery was, the new building much bigger. It's her first foray into town since she met Thom. She hates being there, still feels like she can smell the decaying bodies, the roses, the ashes, the ghosts...
He's not there, anyways. Instead she finds Johanna.
"What are you doing here?" she demands. Johanna smirks.
"Sent your boy home to drink with Haymitch. He was shaking like a leaf. I finished the ledger for him."
Katniss nods. "He didn't have an episode, did he?" Johanna shakes her head.
"Nah. Just started messing up all the orders." Something in Johanna's tone makes Katniss furious.
"He does an amazing job with those orders, considering he never finished school," she snaps at Johanna. The older girl's eyebrows go up.
"Never said he didn't," she muttered. "And I didn't finish school either, brainless. None of us did. Victors don't finish school."
Katniss shrugs, sits down on the steps that lead to the bakery. She can hear Greasy Sae singing, probably to her granddaughter, as Johanna sinks down beside her.
"So, we gonna talk about this or what?" Katniss wants to object at the idea that there's anything to talk about, but truly, she feels like hiding from Johanna is pointless. It takes energy to hide from people, and this girl can see through her so well that it's like carrying an extra backpack around the arena. Energy she can't afford to waste.
"Sure," Katniss mutters, grabbing a stick and drawing senseless patterns in the dirt with it. "What'd you wanna talk about?"
Johanna rolls her eyes. Sometimes it feels like they're competing for the most sarcastic girl in Panem award. Katniss is pretty confident she'd win if she really tried. (Good thing she and Prim never competed for anything, because this is exhausting).
"About freaking butterflies, moron," sighs Johanna, rolling her eyes and holding out a bag to Katniss. It has pastries in it. She takes one, Johanna takes one, and they sit in silence for a while. In a thoroughly unexpected way, Katniss misses her.
"He's not really here for the fence, is he?" she finally asks. Johanna rolls her eyes. "Haymitch told me you were smarter than you look. Why the hell are you asking that?"
"What are you even doing here?" Katniss bursts out suddenly. Damn, she'd meant to work her way up to that question. Oh, well. Too late now. Johanna is quiet for a long time.
"I love him," she whispers, looking at Katniss, stricken. "I don't want to. I don't like it. It's…it makes me feel weak, needing him." (A feeling Katniss knows all too well, though she's stayed away from the needing part. But love makes her feel weak.)
"But…he's the only one who makes me feel like I'm not dealing with all this alone. So it's worth it." Katniss nods.
"What are you doing here?" Johanna mimics, sucking back another pastry.
"Same reason you are, brainless," she sighs. "He even makes me…happy….sometimes." Johanna nods.
"I never thought we, of all people, were actually gonna fall in love," she muses. "Not messed up star-crossed lovers faking, and not just sex to fill a void," (Katniss barely represses a shudder at that: has this girl never heard of over-sharing?) "but love. And the kid…" She trails off, and Katniss can see that her thoughts are far away in a Capitol dungeon.
"They were awful to him," Katniss whispers. Johanna looks like she wants to be sarcastic, but she just nods.
"They were mostly trying to mess with you," she mutters.
"It worked. Being separated from him…not just then, but during his episodes? It's the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with." She hadn't realized it until she said it aloud, but now that she has it's undeniably true.
"Yeah, from what I hear, you and gorgeous had it pretty easy before that." Ah, there's the sarcasm she was looking for.
Katniss just shrugs.
"Did you love him?"
The way Johanna asks makes it sound as if the question were ripped from her against her will. She probably only wants to know the answer if it's the answer she wants. But Katniss has come to value honesty, so she thinks about it. She probably did, but everything was so confusing…every time she even kissed Gale there was either pain or violence involved. Usually both, like after his whipping.
"I don't know," she mutters finally. "I don't anymore."
"Not what I asked," Johanna reminds her. "But thanks for that."
"I…everything is so mixed up. I didn't before the arena. And after…" Katniss sighs. Johanna seems to take this as confirmation: that she did, that a part of her still does, always will. Katniss doesn't bother to argue with her. She doesn't want to say Prim's name aloud.
"Haymitch thinks we have more in common than we're willing to admit."
"We don't have anything in common," Katniss snaps immediately, further put out by Johanna throwing back her head in laughter.
"That's what I told him," she smiles, getting off the porch. "C'mon, let's go find lover boy."
"Don't call him that when he's in the room," Katniss warns as she takes Johanna's hand, is pulled to her feet. Johanna rolls her eyes.
"Yeah, thanks for the memo. I'd completely forgotten the way he almost stabbed himself in the leg with a fork the other night."
In spite of herself, the younger girl smiles.
They find him on Haymitch's porch. He's made them bread. They're drinking, eating the bread and laughing, about what she's not sure. He stands when he sees her, holding her for a moment, pressing a kiss to her forehead before he slices her some bread and pours her a drink. She eyes it cautiously.
"Bit early, isn't it?" she asks. Haymitch laughs, Johanna makes a comment, but she doesn't hear her because she isn't asking them. Peeta shrugs. He's made tea, too, is pouring her some carefully.
"Big day, isn't it?" he counters. She nods, ignores the tea, and takes the drink, swallowing it in one go, letting it burn its way down her throat. They took away her woods today.
"Not for you," she mutters, but she settles into the chair next to him, takes the bread he offers her.
"When are you going to figure out that you can't separate him from you?" Haymitch demands. He's wasted.
"Whatever," she mutters. "I'm the one losing my woods. What the hell's wrong with the rest of you?" Johanna sniggers, pours herself a drink.
"We're all heading to the Capitol tomorrow, in case it slipped your mind," she drawls out sarcastically.
"Oh, yeah, I was distracted by the butterflies," she mutters, quietly, hoping it won't quite reach Haymitch. It does, of course. She cuts off his sarcastic remark by flicking her bread knife at him. It sticks in the arm of his chair. Admittedly an overreaction, but she's having a rough day. Peeta rolls his eyes.
"You were laughing when I walked up," she reminds them, trying to pull attention away from what she doesn't want to think about. She has to share her woods now. She can't pretend she's here for the familiar surroundings, because they don't belong to her anymore. If she could survive without him, would she be here?
Peeta looks sheepish. "We were talking about the Quell," he admits. She looks at him sharply, suddenly understands the alcohol.
"Why?" she demands, angry.
"We were talking about when Johanna had your back and saved Nuts and Volts," Haymitch explains.
"And how Finnick had to give her a bit of…persuasion to be…nice to you," finishes Peeta in his careful way. And now she laughs with them, taking her next drink gratefully.
"You were never nice to me," she counters, "not until I was letting you take my morphling."
"Thanks for that, by the way," says Johanna, toasting her. She smirks.
"I never had an older sister," she explains, "and I've always wondered what it would be like to have a sister that really hated you. I thought I'd test my theories on you."
They all laugh at this, and suddenly she's glad, that they're taking joy in things that were never joyful. She's not sure what happens after that, not sure how much time passes because she still has trouble following conversations that aren't with Peeta, but she does know that by the time Gale shows up on the porch, they're all unquestionably drunk.
"What the hell are you doing?" he demands, which causes them all the collapse into giggles.
"Hey, you're not supposed to be here!" exclaims Peeta. "Hunger Games Victors only, don't ya know?"
This causes the other three to giggle, but Katniss pulls herself together enough to say, "Oh, let him stay. He did survive the 76th Hunger Games."
Gale chuckles; their mood must be infectious. He takes the drink and the bread that Peeta gives him, somewhat grudgingly.
"Shouldn't count," declares Johanna, though she's thrown her legs over him, clearly intending to keep him there. "That was just running through a field of daises, right, gorgeous?" He laughs, tipping back his drink. He sips alcohol, Katniss notes, not the way she and Peeta gulp theirs, hoping to get rid of their demons.
"How's my field of daises?" she asks, hoping she's not so drunk that she doesn't make sense. He smiles at her.
"They're going to take care of it," he promises, "and it's not like you won't still have the best game."
"Whatever," she mutters, finishing her glass, hoping to drown out the sorrow she feels at this before she has to make the trip to the place of her nightmares.
They talk about things that seem to span every topic in the world: drinking, the Quell, the cave Peeta and Katniss were in during the first Games, Johanna's habit of taking her clothes of, how Haymitch always sleeps with a knife. It seems to her that the more alcohol they consume, the more open they are, the more willing to share details they never would talk about sober. Peeta gets up multiple times to get more bread, so that by the time the sun sets, they've all had nothing but bread and liquor all day. They head inside to go to bed, though no one's the least bit tired.
"Tomorrow's going to be a big, big, big day!" Katniss chirps at Haymitch as they teeter off. He moves to slap her but misses, falling into one of his deck chairs. They laugh as Peeta hauls him onto his shoulder in a much-practiced gesture.
"I'll be right there," he tells Katniss, and she nods. She bids Gale and Johanna goodnight and heads to her bedroom. Peeta's there soon enough, pulling off his clothes and crawling in beside her.
"Did you put him to bed with his knife?" she asks, though it's slurred. Peeta can always understand her, though. He's the only one who always understands.
"Always," he mutters, and now his hands are on her under the covers. "If I don't piss him off, he'll send me more parachutes."
She giggles, wants to remind him that Haymitch never sent him parachutes, only her, but then his lips are on her stomach and her mind isn't really focused on anything but how he makes her feel.
She'd wondered if he was still jealous of Gale, but that night she knows it. She puts both hands over her mouth to cover the sounds she's making, the sounds he's bringing out of her, but when he pushes her hands firmly into the bed, bringing louder noises out of her that she's never made before and that she can't cover up, she knows he wants Gale to hear, to know that she belongs to Peeta, always has.
When it's over and they roll apart, gasping, she can't help it. She turns to face him, trying to lower the pitch of her voice so it mimics his.
"You are so hot when you're jealous," she drawls, smirking at him.
He rolls his eyes and tickles her until she takes it back.
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