CHAPTER 10: Alone

The smell of fresh baking bread filled the air in Katniss's house in the Victor's Village. Peeta's quiet work seemed loud in comparison to the silence in the kitchen - which felt small, even with just the two of them in it. Katniss drew a deep breath and clenched her jaw before returning to the task at hand - cleaning the cut of deer meat she had brought for the meal. Thanks to Peeta and Haymitch having empty iceboxes, the deer she had killed nearly a month ago hadn't all needed to be cooked into stews or dried into jerky.

Katniss still had her hunting to keep her busy, and her occasional singing. Peeta still baked, and painted. They seemed to spend an incredible amount of energy on doing things to keep themselves busy, perhaps to ignore the fact that between them, they only seemed to have silence. After Peeta had helped her plant the primroses around her house, she had thought he might come to live with her - not to stay in the same bed, of course, they were beyond the ability to return to the safety of that fantasy now, but at least in her mother's old room, or Prim's. She couldn't find the words to tell Peeta how lonely she was.

Anyway it seemed ridiculous. They spent a considerable amount of time together, even though they didn't talk much, and touched each other even less. Meals were often spent together, at least the preparation part.

For tonight's meal they would have a creamy deer meat stew with fresh baked bread - at least if between them they could manage the recipe. Peeta was an excellent baker, but had spent his whole life eating tough cooked squirrel meat. He didn't know any better than her when it came to preparing fancy meals. For some reason though, when they ate dinner with Haymitch, they tried.

Dr. Aurelius had assigned them, for their collective therapy, to have one dinner a week in which the three of them were "sober and present" to talk about the events that brought them to be "wherever they were." Wherever the hell that was supposed to be.

Dr. Aurelius told Katniss that it could be an assessment of her physical place, or her emotional place, or her mental place. Not surprisingly, Peeta did most of the talking - but it was never pretty. Most of the meals turned into extended Games of "real" or "not real" in which Peeta asked such personal or hurtful questions that everyone just ended up silent.

She knew it was not his fault, but after the third week in a row where Peeta couldn't remember whether they had ever had a baby or not, Katniss felt like the "Real or Not Real" game became the "Katniss is a bad person either way" game. Explaining the depth of that lie lead to explaining the marriage... and Peeta seemed to go back and forth on remembering whether or not that was real... which lead to awkward conversation, since Haymitch didn't, well, nobody knew that Katniss and Peeta really had gotten married.

She was the only person in the world who remembered that night, and it made her feel even more alone. She wished she had told Prim, it may have made her happy to know that Katniss would have someone even-

Katniss froze. The thought of her little sister tightened her chest and she had to grip the table to keep from crying out.

Fire seemed to swim in front of her eyes. Through the fire, she could just make out a figure, a girl with blonde hair reaching out towards her. Prim. The knife clattered out of her hand loudly, bringing her back to the reality of the baking bread and the blood-red meat and her home in the Victor's Village in the world where there was no Prim... not anymore.

She tried to bring herself back to her senses. "I am Katniss Everdeen," she whispered to herself. "I am 20 years old. My home is in District 12. My Mother is in District 13, my sister is dead. Haymitch is my neighbor, and Peeta is my hus-" she stopped, unable to say the word out loud in front of him. "My ally. Peeta is my ally."

Suddenly, she realized the quiet sounds that Peeta had been making had ceased, and that the room had in fact, become completely silent. Had he heard her, was that why he stopped?

Katniss suddenly came back full into her senses, hairs on the back of her neck standing up, chills climbing her spine in an icy and all-too-familiar rush. She turned around slowly, though her instinct was to do so quickly and saw Peeta, knelt over the knife that she had dropped, a wild look in his eyes.

He was crouched over the knife, body rigid, hands shaking just inches from the knife's handle.

"Peeta..." Katniss had also grown weary of dealing with this - hijacked Peeta. It would be okay if he had made progress, but he seemed to have plateaued in his progress back to being her Peeta, her ally, her secret husband - her reminder that there was spring, that there was hope.

"Peeta." She tried again, more firmly. "You are Peeta Mellark. Real. You are 20 years old. Real. You live in District 12 in the Victor's Village. Real." Peeta's version of Dr. Aurelius's "find yourself" mantra was a bit more tedious, because you had to say "real" after each sentence. "Haymitch is your neighbor and I am your...," Katniss didn't know what to say. Then, it came to her, like the kiss in the sewers of the Capitol, she would have to do something rash to get through to him. "I'm your wife. Real."

"Not real." Peeta muttered, his voice small and tight, as if coming from somewhere very far away.

"What?"

For some reason, Peeta's rejection of this took her off-guard. Granted she had never told him that their marriage was real before, only that the one that they had planned to stage for the Capitol had been "not real."

"Katniss is a mutt, not real." She continued. "Katniss wants to hurt me. Not real."

"Katniss is not a mutt." he repeated.

At least he wasn't going to challenge that one.

"We were in the Hunger Games. Twice." She waited for him to respond this time.

"Real." He answered.

"Good, Peeta," Katniss stooped to where he crouched and tried to make eye contact with him. His eyes had started to glaze over, which was better than the wild look, but not what Katniss wanted right now.

"Peeta... Peeta... Peeta!" She said to him, not wanting to touch him, but wanting him to look at her, she waved a hand close to his face. His head followed it jerkily until their eyes made contact.

"Peeta, come back to me." She hated saying that. It made her feel helpless, like he might not come back someday... He might stay glossy-eyed and silent forever, and that there would be nothing she could do about it.

"Peeta..." She took a breath and moved her hand towards his. He still hadn't been able to pull his hands away from their hovering point above the knife. She caught one of his, and held it fast, even as he tried to jerk it away. His face looked pained, as if she was touching him with something that burned him, like the fire she was so famous for. She wondered with no amusement what-so-ever if the Capitol used her "Girl on Fire" nickname in Peeta's hijacking to make him believe that she could burn him with just a touch.

"Peeta." She licked her lips, and leaned her head as close to his as she dared, aching to lean her forehead on his. "Peeta, its me. It's Katniss. Your wife."

"Not real," he struggled and attempted to pull away from her.

"Real, Peeta. I'm your wife."

"It's not real! It's not real!" He finally dislodged himself from her grip and fell back away from her. He was shouting. "It's not real! You never wanted to marry me, and you never had to!"

"Peeta, yes! Yes it is! That night, on the Capitol train! The night after our engagement party at President Snow's mansion!" The mention of the site of her sister's murder and the holocaust of the Captiol's children made her sick to her stomach. She had to swallow to keep from vomiting.

"Peeta, you are my husband, real or not real?"

He stared at her, and as the realization of Katniss's question hit him, color flushed back into his face, and tears of awareness came to his eyes. "Real?" he asked her. She knew if she tried to take back her rash reasoning, it would break his heart. Too late to turn back, or pretend he had imagined it in his hijacked state.

"Real, Peeta."

For a moment, everything in the room seemed frozen in place. In the stillness, Katniss could swear that she could have heard Peeta's heart beating, if her own wasn't pounding so damn loud in her ears. Was it a mistake? Should she have let him come back on his own, as she usually did?

"Peeta?"

At the mention of his name, Peeta lunged at her from his sitting position until he was on top of her, as graceless as he had always moved. Katniss had time to get her hand on the kitchen knife before he- kissed her. Her heart fell into her stomach, then jumped back into her throat.

It had been months... years even since they had kissed. She couldn't remember the last time. His lips were firm, but he was trembling all over. He tasted like butter and flour and all the wonderful things he was always covered with from his baking, and his body felt so good pressed against hers that it brought a surge of tingles between her thighs and an ache in the pit of her stomach.

She dropped the knife and threw her arms around him, pulling at the shirt on his back to try to close the impossibly small distance that remained in the cracks between their bodies. His arms too, strong and - not as steady as they used to be - pressing the small of her back, her butt, her thighs into him. Perhaps she wasn't the only one who was lonely. He grew hard, and she could feel his sex pressing into her thigh.

Finally, they broke the kiss, but not without protest from both parties - they might have passed out otherwise, seeing as they had been kissing and rolling around on the floor for longer than they should have been able to hold their breaths.

Still pressed against her, he barely took another breath before asking, "You love me, real or not real?"

Katniss froze, and instead of feeling close to him, she just felt stifled and claustrophobic. She didn't know what to say. Did she love him? Hadn't she chosen him over Gale, or was he just the one who had returned? Was he just the one who hadn't been responsible for her sister's death? She didn't know. They had barely spoken, and, though they practically lived together, she felt more that they were living alongside each other, rather than with one another. She could love him, but at this point, she would have no idea.

She decided that pulling away would send the wrong message, so she tried another approach. She took his face in her hands and stared him directly in the eyes. "Peeta, I..." she faltered, and that was enough for him.

He rose abruptly, knocking her on her ass in the middle of the kitchen floor, looking as helpless and as ridiculous as she felt.

"Peeta!" She shouted.

Peeta said nothing, only yanked his bread out of the oven, threw it on a cooling rack, and stormed out of the kitchen. As he did so, he stopped to slam his fist against the doorway, and let out a pained cry, despite himself. One of the less healthy ways he used sometimes to bring himself back to reality - pain.

"Peeta!"

She felt tears come to her own eyes as she saw the spatter of blood from his hand begin to drip down the door frame. She brought her knees to her chin and closed her eyes.

"I am Katniss Everdeen. I am 20 years old. My home is in District 12. My mother is in District 13. My sister is dead. Haymitch is my neighbor. Peeta is my husband." She took a deep breath, and with her exhale came wild sobs, and through them in broken voice she continued, "I am Katniss Everdeen. I wish I had someone to talk to. I wish I had a friend... Finnick is dead... JoAnna is crazy... Gale's trap is responsible for the death of my little sister... and Madge is dead. I am Katniss Everdeen. I am alone..."

The true depth of the loneliness she felt was only revealed to her in full that night when neither Haymitch nor Peeta showed up to dinner. Katniss sat alone at her table, which she had set for 3, eating overcooked deer meat stew. The silence, which usually didn't do much to unnerve Katniss, seemed to be deafening in its completeness. It wasn't just as if a quiet had fallen over her house - peacefully, but rather that some mysterious force had sucked all the sound from it.

In order to combat the pain and claustrophobia that the silence caused her, Katniss turned on her television. This was incredibly rare, but she wanted some sound, some whisper of human voices so she could remember that she wasn't the only one living in the whole nation. What she saw - she wasn't sure whether it made her feel worse, or better. The first face she saw on the Capitol's broadcasting network was Gale's.

He looked worse for wear that she remembered, not physically of course. It was apparent from his strong jawline and well fitting clothes that he was being well cared for, and of course, he shone like a polished stone in the make up the capitol had no doubt slathered on him before allowing him on TV.

Katniss knew Gale well enough to recognize the haunted look in his eyes - the one that would always be there; it was not entirely unlike the look she saw in her own eyes in the mirror each morning, or in Haymitch's when he was sober. Despite the fact that Gale was smiling, she could tell it was through gritted teeth and a scarred heart.

"Gale, what are you doing back in the limelight?" Katniss asked him, as if he could answer.

He was sitting in a chair and next to him sat a girl in stylish slate grey dress. They were being interviewed, strangely enough, by Caesar Flickerman. The sight of it actually made Katniss laugh until she got a better look at the girl. Something uncanny about her caught Katniss's voice in her throat. She was sure she hadn't seen her before, she was a slight girl, she looked as if she were recovering from some type of illness - eyes just a bit tired, smile just a bit too tight-lipped. Her arm was linked with Gale's, and for a just one startling moment, Katniss felt a stab of jealousy, but she had no idea whether it was linked to Gale specifically, or just to the obvious intimate bond between them.

The girl nodded politely, and Katniss finally began to tune in to what it was they were talking about, but slowly. She didn't spend much time talking to anyone these days, and it was as if her brain were having trouble keeping up with the cheerful back and forth banter of these Capitol citizens. An election. They were talking about an election.

The girl tucked a stray curl behind her ear to join the mess of golden curls that were tied in a loose updo on her head. She seemed to consider, with her intelligent eyes before letting her peach-pink lips invite the audience to share her thoughts. She, like Peeta, was good with the crowd. Gale looked about as comfortable as Katniss herself ever felt being interviewed.

"It's because of our daughter. That's why Gale and I want to play a big role in the election."

Their daughter? Gale's daughter? Gale has a daughter? Katniss began to hyperventilate.

"When she was born, Gale was fighting alongside the rebels, and I- I felt so powerless to protect my little Maysilee from the unfairness and cruelty of the world. When I heard there was going to be an election to decide the next President of Panem, I realized that I could do something - I could help control the outcome of the election, thereby affecting the world that my- that our daughter would be subjected to. My father, as the mayor of District 12, had to do his best in the face of many limitations placed on him by the Capitol ruler at that time..."

The girl continued, but Katniss couldn't make out the words as they came out of her mouth. Instead, her sensory focus turned to studying Madge. It was Madge, her friend from District 12, who had brought medicine to Gale, who played the piano and wanted to go into the woods... Madge, who she thought was dead. Madge, who she thought that Gale despised... Madge who... had a daughter? Whose daughter did she have?

Katniss struggled to make herself focus, to make herself understand what was being said miles away in what seemed like an entirely different lifetime.

"It's good to see that some of the war heroes from the Rebellion got their happy endings after all." Caeser smiled his off-putting white smile. "After the tragedies that befell Finnick O'Daire - leaving his wife Annie and their son and... of course, the star-crossed lovers from District 12..." The audience in the Capitol let out a collective sigh, and it would have been funny to Katniss that they still cared, maybe if Finnick's name hadn't been mentioned. She saw a brief flash of a blue so brilliant, she knew it could only be the eyes of her friend Finnick in his last moments. She closed her eyes tightly, and tried to block out the onsetting panic and listen to Caeser ramble on about "another set of star-crossed lovers from 12" who were "suffering alongside Katniss and Peeta in silence."

"Is little Maysilee here with you tonight? I'm sure all our friends in the Capitol would just love to see her." Ceaser cooed. Gale nodded tensely, and Madge set a hand on his arm.

"She is, and we'd just love for everyone to meet her." As if she had been waiting fer her cue, a tiny girl, no older than 3 toddled out onto the stage from behind a curtain. She had Gale's hair, and... she had his eyes. She had Seam eyes, like Katniss, like Gale... like her father... Eyes that could only belong to someone from District 12. She was... beautiful.

She made her way to the couch where her mother and father sat, arms linked, seemingly oblivious to the oo's and aw's of the crowds. No sooner had her tiny hands connected with the couch, than had Gale swooped her up into his arms and kissed her on the nose. The crowd went mad. It took them a few minutes to calm down, and all the while, Katniss merely stared, feeling emptier and emptier with each passing second, watching the man whom she had once loved - at least as much as their situation allowed, with his daughter and Madge - whom she had also loved more than she ever knew until she thought she was gone.

When the crowd finally calmed down, Ceasar made note of when the Presidential candidates would be announced. It was to be a special program that would be broadcast all around Panem. Replays would be made available, so that everyone could be part of shaping the world their children would live in. At this, Madge scooped Maysilee into her arms and cradled her, crying in relief that their announcement to be part of the election process seemed successful.

At this, Gale rose, and offered his hand towards Madge, seeming satisfied at the result as well. Katniss's trained eye caught, suddenly, something that she had missed in the confusion she felt at seeing some much of her past displayed in front of her so quickly. A small, plain, metal band on Gale's fourth finger, matching one on the same finger on the same hand as Madge. Katniss knew that this meant something - she had heard that in wealthier Districts, like 1 and 2, and of course, the Capitol, people used rings like these to announce engagement to one another.

It hit her, even harder, as Gale wrapped a protective arm around Madge, and the cameras followed them to the edge of the stage, that Madge and Gale were engaged to be married.

Then Katniss felt completely numb, empty, hollowed out. She didn't feel alone, in fact... she felt nothing at all. In the hollow cavern of her mind, one word echoed endlessly - familiar, but so distant that she couldn't quite grasp at its meaning - election.