One-Shot: Katniss Mellark, the Baker's Daughter
Katniss is the first one up in her family's Bakery.
Her father has always had a saying: Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Snow only knows where the saying come from, but coming from Papa, it has always sounded practical.
Plodding down the stairs from the loft where she sleeps with her parents and her little sister, Primrose, Katniss shucks on an apron over the blue dress she always puts on. Mother wouldn't be pleased with Katniss wearing this one – a frock that she wears to the Reaping for the Hunger Games almost every year, but a little bit of flour always gets somewhere no matter how hard you try and that's what their Capitol-imported washer and dryer is for, isn't it?
She starts in on the kneading for tomorrow's batch, which is always good to get the blood pumping. Then she unloads the leavened bread that was left in the ovens to rise overnight, now just about ready for selling.
Slowly, the Bakery comes alive around her.
Her mother grants Katniss a warm smile. Prim more or less skips down the stairs and then around the counter, sweeping up in the front and making a pattern dance with her broom as a partner. Katniss turns into him and blushes with a pretty smile as her father kisses the crown of her hair.
"Morning, Papa."
Katniss can feel her mother watching the exchange with a soft grin. Mother had been raised in the Town apothecary in her youth. The transition to being a Baker's wife when she and Wheaton Mellark had Toasted the bread was mostly seamless – brewing medicines and baking aren't all that different, really. It's all chemistry.
They've already had the first customer of the day before Katniss faintly hears a knock on the door leading to the back loading dock.
"I'll get it," Papa says, shuffling past where Primrose is carefully arranging the iced cookies she designs in the display window. Katniss slaps her hands together to clear them of dough and peeks back into the narrow rear hallway leading to the back of the shop.
"Ah! Gale. Good…."
The moment Katniss hears the name, she can feel the blood thundering in her ears. Unconsciously, she unbraids her hair, then re-braids it at lightning speed; it's always been a nervous habit of hers. She floats back to the rear loading dock door and peers around where her father is haggling a price with the tall, strapping hunter.
Gale Hawthorne lives on the other side of the tracks, in the place most commonly known as the Seam. He was situated two grades above Katniss in school up until a year or so ago.
"…. Whatever you can spare, sir," Gale is murmuring, in that low baritone. Then his grey eyes shift and land on her.
Katniss unconsciously sucks in a breath. His face is blank, not quite stormy. Altogether, the man strikes an intimidating and handsome figure, with those eyes like thunderclouds. Probably all the women in the Seam and certainly have the girls in Town think so.
In all her life, Katniss Mellark has never beheld a man so striking as Gale Hawthorne.
"Katty, my girl, be a dear and fetch me two loaves of that sourdough? The day old," Papa requests.
Katniss frowns a little, but she does as her father asks. She can't see why Papa won't just give Gale a fresh loaf or two from today's batch – it's plenty warm and it seems like something more requisite for the fine meat that boy always traffics in. Her family gets meat where they can, mostly from their neighbor, the butcher, but Katniss knows she has never tasted finer venison than the squirrel the Hawthorne boy always brings by.
Still, this arrangement has always seemed to be what the large and beautiful, mysterious Seam boy prefers, as Katniss returns, bypassing her father to hand Gale the loaves directly. When he hands off two squirrels, she picks one up by the tail and makes a show of inspecting it.
"Right in the eye, every time!" she praises. She earns exactly one bemused frown from the man. Better than normal – some days when she's made a bit out of this, he's scowled at her. Or studied her as though she has three heads. Unconsciously, Katniss feels her cheeks burn.
She glances back to her papa as if for approval, but he's already moved back towards the front of the shop, leaving her momentarily alone with this tall, dark Seamer.
"You don't have to act all impressed, you know," Gale pipes up suddenly, causing Katniss to jerk and blink at him. "I get in from enough corners."
Katniss swallows. Yes, she's sure he does, though she wagers it isn't about his hunting skills. She's heard Merchant girls her age whispering about the eldest Hawthorne. Rumors that he'll take willing girls of any class, Merchant or Seam, out to the Slag Heap to do…. married people things. She shrugs, trying to pass it off as nonchalant.
"What's your name?" he barks, still abrupt.
Katniss's tongue chooses this moment to briefly get stuck. Ducking her head shyly, she mumbles, "Katniss….."
"Well, Catnip, it's rude to stare into space especially when there's a body in the way, or hadn't you heard?"
She shakes her head. "It's Katniss," she corrects. "And sounds to me like you've been out alone in the woods too long."
"Yeah, and it sounds to me like you've never been in them woods a day in your life," Gale banters back, and is it her imagination, or is this his way of being playful?
"Those woods," she corrects his grammar without even thinking about it, and immediately, she kicks herself. The last thing he wants to hear from her is some elitist put-down regarding the proper way to speak.
Gale snorts, looking askance and shaking his head. "Bet you couldn't last one day out there…." At least that's what Katniss thinks she hears him mumble.
"I could so!" she folds her arms prissily over her blue bodice, frowning.
"Wanna bet?"
"Sure," Katniss clips bravely, and from the way his grey eyes blink at her, she's caught him off-guard. She smirks, appearing braver than she feels. "Teach me how to hunt, hunter boy. Impress me." Turning, she moves to flounce back into the bakery, casting back on last comment over her shoulder. "We start at dawn."
She hears Gale let out a shocked little laugh at her back. "I look forward to it…."
From the way Gale lifts his eyebrows at her the next morning, as Katniss struggles to crawl under the fence bordering the outskirts of the Seam with the Meadow, the man probably didn't expect her to show. But being a Baker's daughter, getting up before the sun isn't the problem. Getting here was.
Katniss has never been this far into the Seam before. Certainly, she's been out of Town proper before, but usually only to help Papa run errands of surplus foodstuffs to the orphans at the Community Home. The bread they give away to the needy children is even older than the loaves her father trades to Gale, but so long as she and her family don't run afoul of the Capitol's stringent philanthropy laws, the arrangement works fine.
Rising, Katniss flashes a flummoxed Gale her best smile. "Good morning! I'm ready for my first lesson."
Gale ponders her, bemused, and she wonders if she sounds too bubbly. Great. The last thing she needs is for the most handsome man in the district to think she's just another Delly Cartwright.
"Aren't you going to teach me how to shoot?"
Gale snorts. "Not out here, I'm not. We'd be asking for a Peacekeeper to run us down." He gives a jerk of his head. "Follow me."
He leads Katniss deeper into the woods. The Baker's daughter recalls how when she was younger, her mother used to discipline her and her sister by claiming that the spirit of District 12's very first Victor, Lucy Gray Baird, haunts these trees. Katniss has long ago stopped believing in the folklore, but as a little girl, the thought of Victors haunting her acted as enough of a deterrent.
It was her curiosity that had refused to die.
Katniss watches as Gale moves ahead of her, kneeling intermittently every few feet to tug on some small coils of rope that would otherwise have been invisible to her. When the man catches her staring, he smirks.
"Snare lines. Get mostly rabbits that way. Not that I would expect a Townie to understand."
Katniss bristles. His turn of phrase isn't quite a slur, but it's been heard more than once by resentful Seamers, especially the most hard-luck who can't seem to get past the perception that some have it better and some have it worse when really, this is the Capitol and this is Twelve – everyone has it bad. Particularly in a district where you can starve to death in safety.
Katniss decides that maybe Gale has spent enough time around Merchants, except for trading with a few in game. Much like yesterday when she called his bluff, she isn't sure where she finds the nerve, but she holds out her hand for his bow. It takes him a beat to catch her meaning and he almost warily passes the thing and an arrow to her.
In a manner that is probably more flamboyant than necessary, Katniss strings the arrow in the notch, until she realizes that she doesn't know what she should be aiming for. Wanting to act like she is in control, she picks a random tree and lines up her shot, firing quickly.
The arrow's tip actually manages to graze the trunk, glancing off it from some twenty yards away. Katniss bites back a curse, yet when she steals a glance at Gale, he actually is pursing his lips in a way that might be…. impressed.
"Not bad, for a Baker's girl. But you'd have been even better if your stance wasn't all wrong."
He begins to move towards her, and she shies away like a skittish deer, her cheeks staining rouge. "What…. what are you doing?"
He rolls his eyes. "I'm gonna teach you the proper stance."
She frowns, embarrassed and then barely manages to suppress a pleasured shudder as Gale takes her by the shoulders and begins to manipulate her into position. She stumbles about, following him, letting herself be steered by him and just hoping she isn't messing it up.
"Um…. who taught you, then?"
She feels his digits still along her shoulder blades. A long pause in which Katniss wonders if he is going to answer, then:
"My father."
She nods. "Clearly he taught you well." An awkward pause, and then: "Your mother was a huntress too?"
"She's a laundress," Gale corrects. "It keeps your papa's bread on the table, anyway. Five mouths to feed and all."
"So, it's you and three siblings then?" Katniss casts a glance over her shoulder.
He peers at her, almost as if he's amused. He shakes his head. "You're more of a chatty Cathy than I expected."
"Thanks. You're less intimidating than I was expecting." He blinks, and Katniss smiles at how this observation actually seems to disappoint him. Suddenly, he is grabbing her forearms and maneuvering them up and flat, as though Katniss is a puppet and he's the puppeteer. "Now: bowstring tight into your shoulder, with your other arm to support it….. No, you've got to have the other arm in to support it." He's more or less having to embrace her to keep her body streamlined and Katniss has to acknowledge the rush that she feels being in his strong and burly arms like this.
Gale seems to sense the awkward position in which they now find themselves and chuckles awkwardly. "Hope you don't mind, princess…."
Katniss simply smirks. "Why do you think I wanted you to teach me?"
It's bold, far too bold. It's the kind of flirtation that Delly or Made Undersee would be more relied upon to try. Still, Katniss is surprised that Gale doesn't spurn her immediately as just another Townie girl attempting to make the play. In fact, he is turning her into him, grey eyes boring intensely into hers, and she stares back. From his gaze, it's almost as if he wants to….
The spell is suddenly broken and Gale turns away in a huff. "Let's take it again."
He drills Katniss on stance and proper breathing and how to release on the exhale until she can do it in her sleep. By the time she returns to the Bakery, it is nearly dark and supper will soon be waiting upon the table.
"There you are!" Mother chides Katniss the moment she steps through the front door. "Upstairs, quickly, and get changed! The Cartwrights are coming over!"
"The shoemakers?"
"Yes. They want to introduce you to their son." Mother eyes Katniss pointedly. "You'll be aged out of the Reaping next summer, my pet. A gentleman caller could lead to an advantageous match."
Katniss bites down a groan. Not this again! Most Merchant families like theirs tend to parade their children around, betrothing the younger generation to each other while mocking up Toastings in their heads. Katniss has never been particularly enthused at the prospect of marriage, but if she ever did marry, she would want it to be for love, and for all that they are, arranged Merchant marriages are not about love. If nothing else, they are about forging business alliances and keeping wealth in the family. As the eldest, Katniss will be expected to take over the Bakery, unless of course, a prospective suitor/husband wishes for her to learn his family's trade instead. That was what had happened to Mother when she wed Papa, at least that's what Katniss has always assumed. Mother has never really talked about her days growing up in the Apothecary, before her courtship and marriage led her to become the Baker's wife.
At the moment, Katniss is surprised about the Cartwrights wanting to consider her as a bride for their family. She wasn't even aware the cobblers had a son. She knows a Delly Cartwright, a classmate and occasional seatmate in the cafeteria at school. Not a close girl friend by any means, but about the only one who could be construed as. All Katniss knows is that the Cartwrights live on the opposite, far side of Town, and that the father can often be called upon to play his fiddle at Toastings.
The thought of being married to a cobbler, inhaling the fumes of shoe polish, nearly makes her wretch, but she stomps upstairs and changes from her blue Reaping frock into something more suitable.
Katniss is clomping down the back stairs when there is a knock on the rear loading dock. Papa answers and ushers the Cartwrights in, Katniss nodding to Delly politely even as she inwardly cringes when the parents stand aside to show off their son….
…. Who doesn't even come up to Katniss's chest, smiling at her with a tooth-gapped grin. A twelve year old, not even her sister's age!
Katniss can't help but smile with facetious glee, her grey eyes twinkling with laughter. "We're getting married!" she faux gushes to the lad, still practically a baby. At his deer-in-headlights stare, she takes pity on him, rolling her eyes. "Come on – you can help me set out the rolls."
Guiding little Davey Cartwright by the hand, Katniss ignores how her sister is all but holding her sides with laughter, hooting all the harder at Papa's flummoxed looks.
"I thought you said you had a son….!" He is whispering to Eli Cartwright as Davey pulls out a chair that is twice his height for Katniss. Amused, she flicks back her skirts and takes a seat.
Gale is cool and aloof when Katniss steals away and meets him in the Meadow the following Sunday. He had explained that it was his only day off from the mines, and Katniss had readily agreed to make herself available for her hunting lessons whenever he was.
"I was hawking me some strawberries out by the mayoral residence and Undersee's daughter tells me your parents have you getting hitched to some shoe-shiner!" He spits upon the ground with something that might be bitterness.
Katniss blinks dumbly at him for a moment before she smiles. "Oh…. no, no….. there was a misunderstanding. Most Merchants don't believe in child grooms – or at least, not grooms who aren't old enough to shave."
He appears shocked and disgusted on her behalf anyway. "And yet they apparently believe in child brides, schlepping you and that sister of yours off to the highest bidder? Make it make sense, please."
"It's not like that!" Katniss insists. Though, if truth were known…. "It is a little weird, I'll allow. Arranged marriages."
Gale snorts. "More than a little."
"Well, what do they do in the Seam, then?"
He shakes his head at her in wonder, baffled by her. "Just…. Toast a bit of bread with the one you love, is all."
"So do we," Katniss blinks.
He seems startled by this, and for the first time since Katniss has known him, he seems less sure of himself as he sloughs it off. "Yeah, but I'm sure you'd rather that you knew the person you were getting hitched to. That's what my parents' marriage was about."
Katniss frowns, picking up on the past tense. "Was….?" But he's already talking right past her.
"…. What any marriage should be about. Not – bartering you off to a little wee sprite!"
"Davey's just a little boy," Katniss shakes her head at him. She isn't sure why the prospect of her marrying – even via an arranged match – is leaving usually cool Gale bothered so much.
She attempts to distract him by having him teach her fishing, followed by some more archery instruction. By the time they traipse back into the Meadow, the sun is setting and Katniss has actually managed to catch some game of her own.
"I'll give these squirrels to Papa, Gale, and tomorrow maybe we can work on setting snare lines. And then we can….. Mmmmmm…"
Katniss makes a startled, odd little noise in the back of her throat as Gale suddenly takes her face in his hands, tilts her head back and kisses her deeply on the lips.
She is completely unprepared. True, she's always had cause to wonder about Gale's lips or what it would feel like pressed to hers. Or, if his hands, which can set the most complex of snares, could entrap her as easily as they do now, gliding about her waist and pulling her flush into him.
"Mmmmhmmmmm….." Before she can melt into the embrace too much, the kiss has broken as quickly as it began. All Katniss can do is gaze up at her teacher in the dying light, her grey orbs blinking, thunderstruck.
"I had to do that…." Gale murmurs sadly. "At least once." He sounds strangely sad.
Gale starts to move away, perhaps intent on leaving Katniss to ponder how she felt about the kiss, whether she liked it or resented it.
"Gale! ….. Wait…."
He whirls around and suddenly he is back on her, kissing her, kissing her and Katniss is kissing him back. She moans pleasurably, the sound pitching into a nervous whimper as Gale deliberately leans her back until both are sinking to their knees and sprawling in the tall meadow grasses.
Gale moves on top of her, rolling back her blue skirts until they're up and over her hips.
Locking gazes, Katniss quietly spreads her legs for him.
They have sex, concealed by the tall grasses.
When Gale cums hard inside her, he pants out a proposal. "Marry me….."
Katniss stuns herself when, upon being brought to orgasm herself, she accepts. "Yes."
Wrapped in post-coital bliss, Katniss and Gale stay out past dark, making plans. They finally decide that an elopement followed by a Toasting will do nicely. They'll live with his mother and siblings until they have the nerve to file a marriage license and stand before the District Justice of the Peace, so that they may be wed in the eyes of the district law and thus assigned a dwelling.
The hardest task will be spiriting the bride out of the Merchant Quarter, but Gale says he has a plan for that, involving friends and loyal pals who can be whipped into action.
Katniss and Gale set a night for two weekends hence. They won't meet to hunt between now and the wedding, lest her parents become suspicious.
Those same weeks pass by in silent agony, as slow as the drip, drip of Prim perfecting her molasses glaze technique on the hot cross buns for which her father has perfected the recipe.
Finally, Saturday night two weeks after she and the handsome Seam hunter kissed and made love for the first time, Katniss steals from the bed she shares with her sister, well aware that this time tomorrow night, she will be sharing her bed with a man. A man who has pledged that he shall be her husband.
Stealing down the rear stairs, Katniss listens for the agreed-upon knock. She opens the door to find the man she loves cast in sharp relief under a single torchlight. Surrounding him are the large and dark shapes of men who she takes to be Gale's buddies on his digging crew, including two slightly younger but sprouting lads that must be his brothers, Rory and Vick.
Smiling, eyes shining, Katniss flings herself into Gale's arms. Settling against his strong chest, she murmurs, "I love you…."
Before the miner can steal away with his bride into the night, another figure suddenly materializes from the darkness of the Bakery, brandishing a large bread knife. It would be almost comical if not for the hurt and rage flashing in Wheaton Mellark's eyes.
"HOLD!" The Baker's eyes swivel to chastise his eldest daughter. "Pretty daughter of mine, I insist upon knowing where you may be going with these sons of the mines!"
To his credit, Gale stands straight-backed, tall and proud. "Good sir, I love your daughter. If she'll have me, I intend to marry her tonight. Or, if I have to, right here…" he smiles down at a lovesick Katniss. "Right now."
Wheaton Mellark is speechless, not even registering how his wife and youngest child have now appeared at his back in their nightdresses.
"It's true, Father!" Katniss pleads her case. "Gale is as good and decent District 12 man as there could ever be! He is just as good as you! I love him!"
Wheaton is spluttering before finally leveling his protective stare on Gale. The Baker is shaking, barely able to suppress his rage. "In uttering a reprobation to any Seamer tar, I've tired to speak in moderation, but you have gone too far. I'm very sorry to disparage a humble miner's lad. But to seek my eldest daughter in marriage?... Why, DAMME, it's too bad!"
Gale, his brothers and all his assembled buddies gasp. Katniss draws both hands to her mouth in mortified astonishment. "Papa!"
"Yes, DAMME, it's too bad! Yes, damme, it's too bad!" Wheaton thunders, with an intrigued and even gleeful Primrose joining in on using such foul language that would ordinarily never be permitted in their house.
It is at this moment that a flustered Wheaton seems to realize that his littlest girl and his wife are behind him and have heard everything. Belle Mellark appears utterly gobsmacked at her husband so forgetting himself.
"Why, Wheaton! I'm ashamed of you! Swearing like this for all the Town to hear!"
Wheaton at least as the decency to look shamefaced. "My love, the facts are not before you. The word was injudicious, I allow. But hear my explanation, I implore you, and you will be indignant too, I vow!"
Belle glowers at him, chastising. "Husband, I will hear of no defense. No! – attempt none, if you're sensible. You taking leave of all your sense, is frankly, reprehensible!" She beckons Katniss to her. "Come, my child." A terrified Katniss flies into her mother's arms, glancing back once piningly to Gale. "The rest of you, wait here!"
"Shall I call the Peacekeepers?" Wheaton asks hopefully.
"No," Belle sniffs shortly. She guides Katniss into the front of the Bakery and sits her down on a stool before the hearth.
There is a long silence in which Katniss glances down at her feet. Belle Mellark sighs.
"Katty, dear….. Do you love this man?"
Katniss nods, tears gathering behind her eyes. "With all my heart."
Another sigh from her mother. "Then…. you must go with him."
Katniss lifts her head, speechless. "What did you say?"
"You must go with he who is to be your husband. It is where you belong." Belle fixes her daughter with an intense stare that oddly leaves Katniss with goosebumps all over. "Where you've always belonged."
Katniss shies back warily. "What do you mean….?"
"Katniss, haven't you ever wondered why you look so in contrast with your sister?"
Katniss frowns. Yes, she has wondered about it sometime. Prim inherited such fair looks, the Merchant looks, from both their parents, whereas she has sometimes been mistaken for a Seamer, even in class, what with her olive skin and her grey….
She gapes, as all the pieces fall into place in moments. "Mother….?" She breathes, hardly daring to whisper more.
Belle Mellark nods solemnly. "You are part Seam, my darling. I conceived you with a handsome young Seam man who I took as a lover."
The Bakery itself seems to tilt. Katniss's head is swimming. "Wha…. What? How? What….?"
"His name was Glen Everdeen – a good and honest miner's hand. He could sing until the mockingjays themselves stopped to listen. Our affair was all the more scandalous because I was engaged to your father… Wheaton….. at the time. Well, when your grandparents learned I was pregnant with you, they cast me out of the Apothecary. And Wheaton's parents, they nearly made him break it off with me. But your father stood by and we got married. We had your sister four years later."
Katniss feels wetness slipping down her cheeks, and she starts when she realizes it is because she is crying. "What….?" she sniffles. "What happened? To my father?"
Belle lets out a shaky breath. "He died. In that terrible mining collapse when you were about 11. Incidentally, that blast was the same one that took Gale's father."
Katniss stares. "Gale's father?"
Belle takes her daughter's hands in hers. "Katty girl…. I've been blessed to fall in love with two men in this life. I can now see you have had even greater fortune, finding your one true soulmate. I don't regret anything that happened with your father or Wheaton, or you girls, but I made some mistakes, and then was ostracized for it. You shouldn't have to suffer that same fate. Make your own mistakes! There will be plenty of them, believe me. Whatever choice you make…. Let it come from your heart."
Katniss throws her arms around her mother with an emotional growl that covers for a sob. Then she dashes out past her family and onto the back loading dock to meet her future.
Gale places his intended on the back of a rented cart, which he pulls by hand through most of the night, to reach his mama's place in the Seam.
Hazelle Hawthorne greets her future daughter-in-law warmly, and as the sun rises, Katniss stands before her lover clad in her blue Reaping dress and with he in a pair of pressed slacks.
Katniss and Gale solemnly Toast a bit of bread and share it. The coals and the firelight dancing in her grey orbs, Katniss….. Hawthorne is solemn as, tilting her head, she permits her…. her husband to kiss her. The newlywed couple embraces.
Later, with her parents' blessing, Gale and Katniss marry for a second time, in a formal ceremony in the Justice Building before the District Justice of the Peace.
Nine months after the wedding, Katniss goes into labor with her and Gale's first child.
Harboring some skill as Healers, Mother and Primrose come running halfway across the district to help with the birth. Katniss is beside herself with pain and swearing like a drunken District 12 miner on leave as she bears down and attempts to push her and Gale's daughter out of her womb. The expecting mother's temper isn't helped by how her sister is clearly flirting with Rory Hawthorne, her one brother-in-law. In any other context, Katniss might actually find it adorable, but not now.
It is a tradition in the Seam for its children to be named for the plants of the field and the colors the rainbow. Nursing her baby at her breast, Katniss solemnly names her little girl Focaccia Marigold Hawthorne.
The first name is actually taken from a type of bread, so that the infant and its mother shall never forget where they came from, nor….. Katniss glances to her husband with love in her eyes, reaching up to kiss him ….. nor where they have gone and are going.