2. The Baker's Eyes

I can hear myself breathing, further proof that I am rusty. I consciously try to steady them, but they are still ragged and uneven. The mockingjays fly overhead making no sounds. Maybe they have had no one to mimic in so long that they've forgotten how. Maybe they are just trying to distract me. Trying to save their fellow bird. I hear the arrow flying before I even realize that I've let it go. The loud squawk of the pheasant is enough to know that I've hit him. The arrow has pierced him through the stomach.

I stand up and walk over to the dead bird lying on the dead brown leaves; its eyes open as if asking me "Why?" Sadly, I don't even know. I no longer have the need to hunt for food, and I don't really feel like plucking this bird clean, either, but I know I'll have to be the one to do it. For a moment I just stand here, looking into the eyes of the bird who continues to hold me with its cold dead stare.

Suddenly, the eyes belong to the Peeta from my nightmare of days ago. The Peeta who was hanging from the tree, and I jump backwards, tripping over a branch. Get it together Katniss, I think, and I look down at my hand trembling over the string of my slightly raised bow. I lower the weapon, tell myself, Just a dream, like Peeta would say. Just a dream.

Well, just a nightmare anyway.

Listening to the silence that surrounds me, I am reminded that there aren't very many people here in District 12, anymore. From what I've seen on the news, however, people are soon going to begin migrating to live here once again. They are going to rebuild "A bigger and better District 12!" as Effie Trinket nearly screeched last night.

Effie's bright orange dress perfectly matched her bright orange hair as she smiled that blinding smile from her seat as head reporter for the evening. In a way, I think it's what she was always meant to do. Now that there are no more games to explain and chaperone, she needs some use for that ever-enthusiastic voice of hers. Anyone who doesn't know Effie probably just watches the small yet boisterous woman with the glittered face and Capitol accent and thinks her a silly fool. But I know better. Effie is changed, just like the rest of us. The changes are slight, and you can only find them by trying to in her eyes. The color remains the same of course, but they have lost most of their glimmer; most of their glow.

As I make my way into what is left of the town, I see already the carpenters building, the women hanging up laundry lines on the stakes that have been provided to them by the Capitol. Many stakes are just littered across the town. Some of them have been posted in the ground in fours and covered by large, thick tarps. Though the tarps vary in color, they all signify the same thing: residents of the former District 12, who have come back. Those who would rather sleep beneath a tarp on the thinly covered dirt as they wait for soldiers to rebuild, than to remain in the superficial Capitol, taken care of but regarded and treated like refugees. Even surrounded by rubble, the pride of the few District 12 residents remains, and whenever I see the townspeople, I can't help but to feel in awe of their principles. Principles I feel I lost long ago, somewhere in-between my first hunger games and the war.

The 30 or so women who chatter in the middle of the square seem to have a commonality as they cut up food and shake out clothes, behaving as if their outdoor chores are nothing out of the ordinary; they are trying to make this District a home again, a home like it once was.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a thin, laughing woman and I immediately recognize her: she is one of those who was already here when I returned home. I remember her because the first day I entered the square, she ran up to me and handed me a single fire-blackened arrow. As if she had been waiting for me.

"My husband," she said her voice low, but steady "he fought with you." And then she hugged me tight, before rushing back over to her small children, who pointed at me and smiled.

The Mockingjay. I was that before, during the war and some people seem to think that I still am. But, in reality, it was only ever just a title, and I was only ever just a pawn; a propaganda puppet for District 13, and the rebels. I try not to think of the massive role I played in the war, but it is people like this woman, with the sandy brown hair, the ashen skin, and the deep grey eyes, who remind me. The people here now keep me at arm's length. They look at me as if I am someone foreign and different. As if I haven't lived in District 12 my entire life.

I walk over to the woman, who is bent over a large pot cutting up potatoes, and before I think about it, I am holding up the bird by its wiry legs and nodding toward the children.

"For you." I say softly and the woman smiles up at me thanking me as her children huddle around and immediately begin snatching feathers from the bird.

I am not fully aware of where I am going, but when I get there, I know; the small, twisted mounds of metal and dirt that used to be the bakery. This is where Peeta and his family spent much of their time; Peeta, his father, his mother, and his two older brothers all of whom are gone now. It has been marked by the Capitol.

After the war, Plutarch, Beetee and several of the men from other districts who are landscapers and architects, conducted a survey of the land and created somewhat of a thin reconstruction, to set the groundwork for the district's rebuild. There is a small fence lining the place where the hob once stood. There are markers for every shop and storehouse and for the school. And for the bakery, there are four small posts, one for each corner and two for the doorway. There is also a grey tarp covering it with a small hole at the top, that lets in sunlight. I think this is meant to signify the chimney that let out the smoke from his old-fashioned bread oven. Aside from the hole in the roof, it looks very similar to the makeshift houses in the square.

I step through the wooden stakes that were once a door and survey the thick dusty ground, where there are spices scattered, and the floor is covered with a thick, grey powder. It looks like ash, but there is something different about it, lighter. I lean down and touch it with my fingers. Not ash, flour. Mixed with ash I suppose. I stare ahead and the same twisted lump of metal that signifies where the oven once stood. I wish they had taken it away but no. It still sits here as it did when I first came here from 13 what seems ages ago.

I always try not to think of Peeta's family, his 2 brothers, his ornery mother and his father, the baker. This of course means that I think of them often. But I think mostly of his father, who offered me a promise to care for my family and a small amount of cookies at the farewell for the first games. Maybe he thought that I would look out for Peeta. I never really understood that gift of cookies that I would eventually toss from the train windows thinking it surely some sort of trick. As I grew to know him better though, I truly understood that there was probably nothing behind them. That Peeta got his genuine goodness in large part from his father: the quiet, unassuming baker with the kind eyes.

After the Games, when Peeta and I were pretending to be so in love that we were now engaged, per President Snow's orders, I always knew in my heart, that the baker played a small part in that charade as well. It wasn't that he openly admitted to knowing. No one really knew the truth except Peeta, Haymitch and me. But there were times when I would be with Peeta, laughing and playing up the romance for the cameras, and from the corner of my eye I would see the baker looking at me with those bright blue eyes, and the look of resolute sadness was unmistakable; it was a look that implied that, whatever the truth, he was certain that his son would always care for me more than I did him. A look given with Peeta's same sad, blue eyes. I shudder as I think of it.

I move away from the stove and glance around at the dirt mixed with the flour ash that surrounds the "room". Nothing but debris and burned pieces of what I imagine to be wood. Examining the floor closely I see that there are bits of melted colorful plastic mixed into the dirt. One piece clings to a single whole plastic wheel. Toy cars, I imagine. Toys that I am guessing belonged to Peeta and his brothers, at some point. I stop short at what I see next because it makes little sense; there beneath the pile of plastic is a small, framed picture that seems intact but for the dust and dirt covering the frame.

I have been here a few times before, and I am sure that I have never seen it. I wonder briefly if Peeta came here and left it, as some sort of memorial, but still, I reach into the muck and pull it out. I blow off some dust and see that it is a painting of a single loaf of bread. I recognize it. The raisins, the nuts, the shape…It's the same bread that Peeta tossed me all those years ago. The bread from our first interaction. I close my eyes and I can still see him as a young boy, standing in the rain, his face bruised, never looking at me, but tossing it, giving me the bread. Giving me sustenance. Giving me hope.

It doesn't take a lot of thought before I quickly tuck the painting beneath my thick brown coat and turn to leave.

I stop and a small gasp emerges as my whole body freezes at the sight of him standing before me, watching me with a look of hollow interest.