"Who do you think you are? WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?" No waiting to be greeted or invited in, Katniss storms into the house the second the door is open enough for her to fit through.
"Katniss…?" My brain is still trying to make sense of her presence in front of me and the reason behind her furious gaze, when, without stopping to hear an answer to her questions, I see a fist fast approaching my face.
My now heighten reflexes, have me instantly pull my arms up and cross my hands in front of my face in a protective stance. With my right hand still closed around the knife, the arm crossing motion drives it into my left arm, lightly puncturing it and immediately drawing blood.
The sight of the knife disorients her making her stop merely 10 inches away from my face, while I flinch when the realization and pain finally reach me
"Auch" I pull the knife out and a very fine river of blood follows it. I look at it and it doesn't look serious.
Seeing it and my arm, she stops looks in horror and asks surprise to the knife and the damage it left on me: "Why did you have a knife in your hand?"
She moves forward, instinctively to try to help, while I drop the knife and hold my right hand on top of the puncture wound.
"I was…making soup..." It's the best plausible explanation I'm able to come up with. "Do you mind grabbing me a towel from the bathroom? It's the first door on the left."
Not believing me for a second, she nods, her eyebrow raid suspiciously and dashes for the bathroom. I pick up the knife and walk to the kitchen, throwing it into the sink and putting my arm under the faucet's cold water.
"Peeta?" She calls. "In here" I reply, hoping the sound of my voice is enough to guide her from the hallway to the living room, to the kitchen.
"Do you have a first aid kit?" she finds me hands me the towel, which I wrap around my arm. "Yes, but this is nothing". The vastness of the house and the size as well as the running water of the kitchen leave her baffled for one second, with her rapidly recomposing herself.
She sights loudly and moves up to me "Let me take a look" she orders "It's going to need disinfecting and a bandage. Where do you keep them?"
"In the bathroom. But it's nothing really, no need to fuss about it. I can manage" The last thing I want is to give her more work and worry. I'm already taking to much of her time, time she needs to take care of her family.
But, as usually, Katniss does what she thinks is best. She hears none of it, goes away and rapidly comes back and starts working on my arm. Although she rarely assists her mother, unlike her sister Prim, she has the same care and aptitude to dress wounds.
"Why did you have a knife anyway? And don't give the making soup excuse, 'case this counter is as clean as freshly fallen snow. There was no way you were cooking here." She stops bandaging my arm to look at me for a second.
"I was about to start…" But I'm already seeing she's not buying even before I finish the sentence, so I sigh heavily and start over "I didn't know who it was" I simply shrug.
She looks at me puzzled "Who could it possibly be to justify the use of the knife? There are some bad apples in the district, but none who would wish or even act in any way to harm you" she retorts. As bad as her life as been, and there's no contesting that, she doesn't really understand what is like to know someone is trying to kill you and the marks it leaves even after technically the danger is past.
To be so hunted you're unable to sleep. To know that the time you bought by surviving the arena is counted and sooner or later someone will come to collect.
"I not afraid of anyone in the district" and before she can ask, I continue "Look… Being in the games, knowing for certain that you are not coming back home, that you'll may die at any moment and that your death will be broadcasted, reviewed, and betted upon on live television, for millions of people to watch… It just stays with you. You stop trusting in everyone but you. Until this day, Haymitch still sleeps with a knife, I've come to accept the same will happen with me…The knife becomes a necessity, a natural extension of your arm. Being suspicious and extra cautions with your actions and others is…I'm sorry, I'm scaring you. It wasn't my intention" She's eying me intensely, no doubt I shouldn't have said a thing.
"No, it's just, I didn't think. I didn't know – I don't know what to say" She looks down at my arm and gives it an approving look. "That will do. But you really should have my mother look at it. It may infect" all doctor now, but I know she expects an answer.
"Yes, well, I shouldn't have said anything, anyway. You have your own ordeals; I don't want to burden you" She breaks eye contact and starts swiftly packing the supplies she used to treat my arm. Looking at her I'm reminded of how disconcerting it is to have Katniss Everdeen in my house, in my kitchen. We had never exchanged more than a couple of words and now not only is she within arm's reach, but she also sounds like she's worried about me. Me!
Taking a moment to really look at her, I remember how much I missed her - the girl I never thought I do see again and the one person I most wanted to. She's exactly as I remembered her, her beautiful long dark hair tucked into her signature braid, the grey eyes that always let on what's on her mind... Her olive-toned skin now mostly covered by dark green dusty shirt and trousers, which along with the dirt under her fingernails tells me she'd been hunting before. It all turns her into the most beautiful girl I have ever seen…
Realizing that I still didn't know why I got to have her right in front of me and the way she sounded so mad when she came here, let's questioning why? And what did she need?
So, risking ruining this estrange truce (on her part) I ask: "Katniss… Why are you here? Do you need something? Can I help you with anything?" Coming back home, when I finally accepted that I was coming back, I always thought about helping her and her family, in doing anything and everything I can to make sure they have a better life, a less worrisome one, but I was sure she wouldn't accept any help, unless I made it look like a trade… Did anything change?
"I ah… I was mad at you. But looking at what just happened, hearing what you just said – and I know it was probably much worst -I now understand that you did what you did to survive. And that I know a thing or two about. I can't blame you. I can respect that; I just wish you hadn't used me"
"Used you?" I was expecting almost anything but this. How can she think that I used her? "How?"
"The things you said in the games" she blushes "About me…"
Oh… I knew she wouldn't like to hear that, but to think I was just saying that to get sponsors… Does she think I couldn't possibly mean what I was saying? That it was just means to an end?
"Katniss, no… I would never use you, or anyone for that matter, even if it could potentially help me bring in more sponsors. I'm not that person. I've always known I wasn't going to leave that arena, but the one thing I could do was to live (and die) under my principles. That, the Capitol could never take away..." I rapidly revert, I can't let her think she means so little to me I would user like that.
"Then why…?" I was in that arena, I saw people die, and even so, this, being right in front of her and having to tell her how much she really means to me is the hardest thing I'll ever do and for sure can hurt me more than anything on that arena.
"Because I'm a coward. Because in the nine years we've known one another I never had the courage to step up and talk to you. To do more to help than to throw that stupid bread. I should have done more… You deserved so much more…
Because it took me facing death to realize that I couldn't go without you learning what you really mean to me…" I pause and look at her "I'm sorry… I'm sorry I put you on the spot and revealed you to the entire country. It was selfish of me, and I had no right to let what I feel be a burden to you, or even leave you thinking and dealing with it when I was going to be dead. But at the time, it just felt like something I had to say, something I wanted to say for years but never could." Did I just condemn any change I had of us becoming friends? Or any sort of acquaintances even? I'm cursing inside… I finally get her to come to me, to talk to me and I do this? I've probably scared he of for good.
She stays still for a long time and then suddenly jumps to her feet, while I look back at her feeling defeated. "You owe me nothing, it's me who has the debt. What you did with the bread, it may not mean a lot to you, but it saved me, it saved my family, it gave me the strength I forgot I had, to et up and start to take care of them. And for that I'll never stop owing you." How can she possibly think that I would've and still would have done anything given her anything I could if that meant I could help her.
She starts walking back to the door and before I can say anything, she adds "You should really get that looked up by my mother. She knows what she's doing" And with that she closes the door after her.