XIII
…
The damn cat became Haymitch's best friend. I swear the man was slipping it droplets of his alcohol supply into its water bowl or food or something. Or maybe it could have been their shared personality of being a pain in the ass that brought them so close.
Either way, Haymitch wasn't the only one that it seemed to be comfy around. The thing liked to curl up at Cato's feet. Sure it hissed at him every now and then, but for the most part they were pretty close.
…
Coming down off the steps, Buttercup is sitting, curling at the door. His head perks up as he hears the third stair from the bottom creak as I step off of it. He gives me a glare and lets a deathly hiss sneak through his teeth.
"I'll drown you," I hiss in a low hush voice at him.
His ears perk up at this and he keeps eye contact.
"Don't test me."
He lets at a soft hiss and cocks his head as if he is testing me, as if he doesn't believe I'll do it.
And so willing to prove him wrong, a smirk grows across my face. I take a quick step forward, causing a loud thud to ring through the hall. His spin perks up in fear and he quickly scampers to his feet, sprinting out of the room as quickly as his feet will carry him.
Smirking to myself, I retreat out of the hall and into the kitchen.
Haymitch stands at the counter, packing bottles from the cabinets into a wooden box.
"What are you doing?"
"Movin' out," he grunts, shutting the cabinet door as he takes the last bottle from it.
"Where to?"
He snorts. "I do have my own home, sweetheart. I lived fairly alone and well for the last twenty-four years before you showed up."
"Oh," I say, looking down. "Right."
"I'm not going far, sweetheart, I'll be right next door."
I nod.
"You okay with this?" He asks with a concerned tone.
I don't answer his question, but ask him a question in return. "Did I do something?"
"Did you do something," he repeats, raising his eyebrows in confusion.
I nod.
"No," he says. "It's just that you gotta start… living in a sense, again. I've been here over a month. And a lot has happened in that time, you're not as bad as you were when you arrived." He tells me bluntly, continuing, "Don't take that the wrong way, though, you're still screwed up… we're all screwed up, it don't ever change."
He pauses giving me a thin, sad smile.
"But I can't be sleeping in that rocking chair in your room forever, sweetheart. I'll fuck my back up even more than it already is and people will start to think badly about us. You've been getting better, but you ain't gonna get anymore better with me around watchin' your every move. Ya may be forever screwed, but y can always be forever less screwed." He snorts. "And I'm not always gonna be 'round, you gotta accept that sooner than later."
I nod, understanding what he's saying… but at the same time, not liking what he's saying, especially because it's the truth.
"I'm gonna be right next door," he promises me.
So watching him pick up the box of alcohol he gives me a smile, walking to the front door. Yet before he leaves, he turns and gives me another smile.
"Plus ya know I'll be over here most days," he quirks, "That cat makes a great drinking partner."
"You can take the cat with you." I offer.
Yet he shakes his head. "That little sucker needs ya, girl, and you need it, too, no matter how much you may wanna kill it."
I let out a huff, rolling my eyes and he smiles.
Then opening the door, he looks to me one last time- "You're not gonna be alone in this house without me around anyway, the boy's still here."
…
There's something off about Cato when I see him approaching the house later on. I spot him from the steps of my house walking toward the Village from quite a distance, but can still tell something it off. It's as he comes closer that I see it. There's a large forming black and blue bruise forming along the side of Cato's forehead.
I can tell he has tried to hide the bruise, maybe form me or Haymitch or maybe both of us, by the way his hairs combed towards it in a sad attempt to hid it.
And I don't know what overcomes me, but the moment he steps foot into the Village I am over and by his side.
"What happened?" I ask bluntly.
"Nothing, Katniss."
"That's not nothing," I tell him, pointing to the bruise.
He lets out a breath. "Katniss."
"No." I say in a stern voice.
He nods knowing I won't give in. "Not here, let's go inside."
And there knowing that if I don't agree this, whatever this was, would be blown out of proportion and or Cato wouldn't tell me how he got the bruise so all I could do was nod.
We fell silent then and retreated to the house. We went inside without a word and took off our jackets and boots without a word. We went into the kitchen without a word where Cato stood on one side of the counter and I stood on the bother, only the counter and the bag of groceries Cato had set on top of it separating us.
When I long moment had finally passed I ask, "How?"
He looked down at the bag and began to unpack its contents.
"I went down to town," he tells me, pulling things from the bag and setting them in certain places around the kitchen. "We were running low of things, especially since Mitch took just about every remnant of food with him when he moved out on Thursday. I went to the Justice Hall to see if there was any mail for you, general store for rice and dried plums, the butcher for some meat, and then-"
He stops, officially done empting the bag.
"Where?" I ask, a place coming to mind. A feared place of such wonder and horror.
He looks up at me, chin up and stature tall.
"I went to the bakery," he tells me. "Was going to buy a loaf of bread."
"And?"
"And it wasn't the older gentleman, Mr. Mellark I presume, as it had been the few times I had gone before."
"Her?"
He confirms, "Mrs. Mellark? Yes."
"How?" I press, tears building at the corners of my eyes.
"I came in and I was the only one there. She mumbled something about you, I didn't catch what she really said, but I knew it wasn't anything nice. I brushed it off and asked for one of the loaves of bread they had in the display case. It was when she came back to the counter to wrap it I gave her my condolences. Next thing I knew she had hit me across the head with a rolling pin and a boy who looked about my age was restraining her. She just thrashed and screamed. And so I apologized to her and the boy, her son I assume, and left."
I shake my head, tears now streaming down my cheeks. I try to wipe them away, but it does no good.
"Hey," I hear Cato say, coming around to my side of the counter to pull me into a hug. "I'm okay. Everything's fine."
I shake my head against his chest. "No."
"No what?"
"Everything's not okay. She - she use to do that - do that to Peeta. Hit him."
And I'm not sure if he really knows what I am trying to say, but when his arms give my tiny frame a soft squeeze I know that on some level he understands.
He understands.
…
When I calm down Cato makes some rice for us, serving me a small bowl.
It takes a lot of effort and a lot of stern looks, but over time, like always he gets me to eat.
Yet, I make him make a deal with me to get what he wants, for me to eat.
And so he willingly agrees to report Mrs. Mellark to the Peacekeepers if she attacks him.
…
It's dark when there's a knock at the door.
Haymitch had left hours ago after having a good laugh when Buttercup had pawed Cato's now yellowing bruise. And Cato had not gone out as far as I knew.
It was odd. A thousand things ran through my head as I watched from a distance as Cato went to open the door.
Mrs. Mellark?
Gale?
Thread?
Sae?
Claudius?
Rory?
Madge?
Hazel?
My mother?
Cinna?
Effie?
President Snow?
Caesar?
Yet when the Cato pulled open the door I didn't see the figure that stood on the other side of the frame.
But I assumed it was someone Cato knew as they talked for a few minutes. Muttered words I could not make out. I could have taken a few steps forward from where I stood to get a better ear for what was being conversed yet I feared I would be seen by whomever stood talking to Cato and it would just end badly.
So I stood still and waited.
When they were done talking, something was handed to Cato, wrapped in a thin wrapping of white paper. He nodded his head in approval before shutting the door.
He came down the hall in silence.
It was when he was just feet from me I knew what was in the thin wrapping of white paper. It wasn't by the look of it, it was by the smell. It was the smell of grains and flour and fire and freshness that I always remembered smelling when Gale and I would go behind the bakery and the back door would open when Mr. Mellark came out to trade with us.
It was bread.
Then as he placed the bread on the counter before retreating back to spot on the armchair it hit me-
"Was it her?"
He shakes his head, sitting down. "The boy, Rye."
I nod to myself.
And then he adds, "He said his father would be stopping by soon to talk to you."
…
"You gonna come down, 12, or are you gonna be difficult?" The boy from 2, Ramsey sneered.
I sit in there tree silently in my branch, watching the scramble below, trying to figure how to kill me, at the very least how to get me out of the tree.
"We won't bit," his district partner, Clove, smiles. "At least not that much," she says, flashing me her pearly white.
"Com'on," Ramsey says, "It won't be so bad. We'll play nice, we'll make it painless if you come down now rather than later."
I stay where I am through. Leaning into the trunk of the tree as if I was trying to become one with it I know there's no way I would be willingly leaving my well protected spot in the tree.
It's in that moment I hear Peeta's voice over the others.
"Katniss," he pleads, eyes looking to with me such concern and sorrow.
And then I see the glint of the edge of a knife before the boy from 1, Marvel, smiles and stabs the knife through the back of Peeta's neck.
Everything freezes and steads up. Peeta's body stands up straight as if a thousand volts of electricity had gone through his spine. He opens his mouth as if he was going to scream, but he doesn't, choking on his own blood.
The canon sounds.
"No!" I scream, shooting up from my bed.
My body in panic as my throat burns and heart pounds, hairs sticks to my sweat covered forehead and muscles seem to petrified, my chest contrast and mind running out of control, vision blurred and joints solidify, I through myself against the headboard in fear when the door to my room slams open with a bang!
"Katniss," I hear a concerned voice ask.
I shake my head, curling into the fetal position, and allowing the tears to slip down my cheeks as I squeeze my eyes shut. "No."
"No what?" Cato ask, hands running up and a down my shoulders in a soothing motion.
"No," I repeat, shaking my head.
He lets a breath, sinking onto the bed, and pulling me against his chest.
"It's okay. You're fine. It's only a dream."
I continue to shake my head, now blubbering worse than before. My cheeks like a waterfall, my eyes blurred form the excessive amount of tears, and my nose dripping slim.
He continues to shhh me and whispers soothing words and rubs my arms and makes circles along my back while I continue to cry and sniffle and shake and mumble.