Edited. Tenses changed to improve flow. Dec. 2024
"Morning!" Peeta calls brightly into her house, closing the front door behind him. "Katniss? I'm here."
"Good morning, Peeta" Sae walks out from the kitchen. She looks at him with pleasant surprise. "I didn't know you'd be here this morning."
"Morning, ma'am" Peeta smiles at the older lady. "Katniss asked me to walk her to town yesterday. Figured I might as well get to it early."
"Well, that's mighty decent of you. Helping a friend and all," she motions towards the wrapped package in his arms. "Is that bread? I can toast it for her now. She hasn't eaten yet."
"Oh, no, for once it's not bread," he chuckles and unwraps a corner of his load. "I brought her a gift."
Greasy Sae peeks into the fabric and leans back with a laugh. "Smart, though, I doubt she'll take you up on it."
"What?" He looks up just in time to catch Katniss rushing down the stairs, "what won't I like?"
"Oh… nothing," Peeta shoots her a half smile. "It can wait for you to eat breakfast if you want."
She stares at him with suspicion but heads towards the kitchen all the same. They bypass the dinning room and return to the breakfast nook in the kitchen.
"Alright, girl. I've got your breakfast here," Sae passes along a dish of eggs and sausage. "I'll be going now. Take care."
"Thank you, Sae, I- uh, we will," Katniss smiles after the older woman and settles down to eat.
After a moment of silence, she looks up at Peeta who is leaning against the kitchen counter and staring out the window.
"Did you eat already?" she asks.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. I've been up for a while."
She looks at the bundle in his arms, "are you ever going to show me what you brought?"
He smiles sheepishly, eyes flashing down towards the floor before falling on her face again. She avoids his direct gaze again; it's too early for that.
"Okay, but you gotta promise to not make fun of me from bringing it, and, you have to promise to actually consider using it."
"Uh-oh, that's not a great introduction." She puts her fork down and considers the bundle, it's small. How offensive could it be?
"Alright, so it's two things…" he set it on the counter and untied the thing open. "Here, first thing, the easiest one."
At first Katniss thinks it's just an ordinary apron and is taken aback by how careful he's been about the whole thing. Am I really this fragile? But then, she realizes it isn't just any apron, it is one of the pair of aprons he keeps in his kitchen. They are basically priceless to him because they are the last two left from the Mellark's bakery.
Long white cotton stares at her, Mellark's Bakery printed across the front.
"I thought I should ask if you'd let me hire you, you know, once the bakery opens." He looks quite unsure, almost worried he'll be rejected. "I know baking isn't your thing, but you said you'd prefer to be included. I thought, you know, here's the thing I'm going to obsess over for the next year to… rest of my life so… I don't- what do you think?"
Her mouth is hanging open now. Hastily she closes it. Peeta shuffles his weight around, feeling nervous under her consideration.
"Oh… Peeta, I…. Wow. Um, yeah. Yeah, I'll help you out but, you know me, I'm no good with baking."
"Great!" He grins and puts the apron down next to the improvised bag. "Okay, now for the hard part."
He pauses and chews on his bottom lip nervously, "Okay before I show it to you, you can't hate me over it."
"Peeta… I could never hate you, it's okay."
"Um, so…" He pulls out something big and… brown? And leather?
"Is that my jacket?" She stands up and walks over to him, looking at it closer. It is, it's her father's old jacket.
"You left it at my house that day you came over." He motions towards the buttons, "I was going to bring it right back, but then I saw that the buttons here were loose and it was torn in the back… so I mended it for you."
She snatches it back to touch it gently, checking her fathers' jacket for signs of injury. Her eyes jump to his face and he's smiling sheepishly. She can see where Peeta mended it, near the hem. It must have been difficult, hand sewing leather hurts.
"I didn't realize…" she drifts off.
"You were right, I was being distant for no good reason when you obviously need a friend right now." He sighs, "I mean, this is your most prized possession. You left it behind without noticing and you were walking around with it and didn't notice how damaged it was. You're not okay, I'm sorry I've been so distant this past year."
She hugs her father's jacket to her chest, "you've been very present in my life, it's okay." She sighs. "Plus, I think it's important you set boundaries with me, I'm the type of person who would easily take advantage of you."
He shakes his head, "that's not true, you're too nice." He looks over her head towards the breakfast nook, "you haven't touched your food, go ahead. I'll wait."
She pulls the jacket on and heads back to her breakfast. Peeta ambles over and sits across from her.
"Thank you, by the way." She mumbles while moving her eggs around, "you know for the jacket, and apologizing."
Peeta grins, "anytime."
Not even ten minutes later her and Peeta are out the door. She feels somewhat exposed being out and about. She is okay in the woods, but the village and the town made her feel like untethered. Out in the open.
Peeta isn't filling the empty spaces between them with chatter, and she is thankful. He can sense how serious this moment is for her. She wants to take his hand, but she's worried about crossing their new platonic only boundary when Peeta takes hers.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he offers by way of explanation. She lets out a deep breath.
"I'm scared and I don't know why," she shakes her head to clear it. They are still in the Victors Village, just a few paces away from her house.
"That's okay," he soothes, squeezing her palm. "Feel your feelings, it's okay."
She looks past him, towards town. She can do this. She can go look at it, it can't look the way it looked last time she was there; it's been too long.
"Okay, let's go."
They start walking again, heading down the hill that separates the village from the rest of the District. A part of her half expects to see the top of the Justice building as they reach the Victors Village gate, but it isn't there.
With another squeeze from Peeta's hand, Katniss takes her first step into town after a year. She turns to look at Peeta and sees that he's watching her, one corner of his lip turned up in the shadow of a smile. In her emotional state she forgets that she isn't supposed to really look at him and sees that his eyes are watery.
"Why are you crying?" she smiles and goes to reach for his face before she thinks better of it.
"I am?" he reaches up towards his face himself with a free hand. "Embarrassing. Sorry about that, just proud of you, is all." He shakes his head. "Okay, I'm good, let's do this."
She takes another deep breath and keeps walking. There isn't much to see, other than scorched trees and flattened terrain. The debris itself has already been cleared away, although she spots a few collapsed buildings in the distance. By then, they are standing where the town square used to be. All that is left there is the train station in the distance. It had been burned to the ground in the fire, but the tracks and its concrete foundation remain.
"It's so much smaller than I remember," she whispers, looking around. "That's where the shoe shop used to be, right?"
"Mmhmm," Peeta nods. He motions with his chin in the other direction, "bakery, grocer, butcher all along that side."
She follows his gaze. There is nothing there other than, somehow, the gnarled remains of Peeta's apple tree.
"I think the buildings created an optical illusion," he comments, staring at the blackened tree. "The District was pretty small and we didn't have many people to begin with. Now that it's all gone…"
"Yeah," she whispers, tugging on his arm. "I think that's enough for today, let's go back."
"Alright."
Peeta drops her off on her porch. He wants to come in because he's worried about the emotional impact the walk will have on her, but she tells him she intends to call Dr. Aurelius about it. It gets him to leave. She figures that gives her at least thirty minutes before he realizes she can't be trusted, calls her house, and realizes the phone isn't busy.
In the meantime, she heads up to her bedroom, into her bathroom and draws herself a bath.
She stands at the medicine cabinet; did I take my pills last night? She reaches for the bottle and shakes out the usual dosage. The water is steaming, too hot for her injured skin but she goes in anyways. She sighs. The phone is nearby, for when Peeta calls.
She doesn't have any bad intentions at first. She just so tired. The exhaustion was pulls her down, down, down.
The phone rings.
That's too early. She springs back up from under the water and reaches for the phone.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Peeta?" she asks in confusion. Can he see me right now?
"I had a bad feeling about leaving you alone, you're not on the phone like you said. There's no lights on in your house. What are you doing?"
"N-nothing" but even to her ears, her voice is off.
"I'm coming over." He hangs up.
Well, she thinks, looking around her dark bathroom. Maybe next time. She takes the plug out of the bath and stands up. It's hard to find a towel in the dark, but she manages. Once dry she stumbles out of the bathroom and into her closet to get dressed.
"Katniss, where are you?" She hears Peeta's voice downstairs, the door shutting behind him.
"I'm upstairs!" she shouts back, her throat hoarse from the bath, and finishes pulling on a shirt. She ties the drawstring of her pants tight and wanders out of the closet.
"What-" She stops short once Peeta turns on the light, blinding her with the intensity.
"What happened?" He looks at her suspiciously, taking in her wet hair, the darkness of the room, her face.
"Nothing," she shrugs. "You're overreacting."
"Yeah, am I?" he walks past her and into the bathroom. There's nothing to see other than the wet bathtub and the phone on the floor.
"See? I just took a bath," she smiles but she feels a little dazed, unsteady.
"Did you just try to drown yourself?" his tone is pure accusation. She stares at him as if he just said something ridiculous.
"What? Me? No, I'm fine, you're projecting." She shakes her head. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. "You're probably just emotional from taking me to town."
He gets really close to her. He looks mad, but also scared, somehow. "Katniss," his voice breaks. "I swear if you're lying to me, I don't know what I'll do."
She shrugs.
He hugs her for a while, but she's still really dazed and doesn't notice much about it. Is she crying?
"Are you crying?"
"No," he's openly sobbing by now, "and you just took a bath, right?"
She nods.
He hugs her again for a while before he takes her by the hand and leads her down the stairs. He sets her up on the couch, covers her in her blanket and turns on the lights.
"I'm going to make dinner," he announces. She nods. She must be really tired because it takes her a moment to remember about Greasy Sae.
"Wait, Peeta," she calls. He looks at her from the kitchen. "Sae's coming to cook later."
"Yeah, its fine. I'll tell her to go home. Stay there," he points at her and goes back to pulling stuff out of the fridge.
"Can we have soup?"
"Yeah, of course" he's back to sounding angry. She looks towards the television, where is the remote?
Buttercup comes into the room. Her eyes lock on the cat. She blinks slowly. It jumps up onto the coffee table, then towards the armchair and then onto the end table where-
"No!" That takes her right out of her funk. The cat steps on the remote and the television turns on.
"What? What happened?" Peeta comes running into the room just as the Hunger Games start playing on the TV.
She looks at him, feeling scared about how he's going to react. Is he going to be mad? Have a flashback? Make her call the doctor again?
"Why do you have the games on TV?" he looks at the screen. She's getting pelted by fireballs.
She shrugs.
"Why is it already started?" He pauses the program and notices it's at least a quarter of the way started. He walks towards the console to see if she had a physical tape in. "Have you been watching this? Why?"
"Uh-"
"This- today wasn't sudden, was it? You've been torturing yourself?" he sounds pissed.
"Um."
"How could you do this to yourself?" Okay, now he's yelling. "To me, after everything."
"It's my life," she says but she has no conviction in her voice.
"Like hell it is," he pointes at her again. He has a spoon in his hand. "This ends now."
"What-"
"I'm not going to let you kill yourself, not today, not ever" he turns the TV off. "You've always said I'm selfless, well now its time for me to be selfish as hell. You're going to get better, and I'm going to make you get better, okay?"
There's a knock on the door. She stares towards it with her mouth hanging open.
"That's Sae," he takes a deep breath. He's trying to calm down. "Stay there" With a glare special for her, he jogs towards the front door.
She turns away from the sound of their voices and stares at her hands.
He comes back into the room, "Come on, get up."
She looks up, surprised, but he is motioning for her to follow him into the kitchen. Once there, he settles her on a stool at the island. He takes the kettle off the burner. When did he put it there? There's a warm cup of tea next to her. She looks at it strangely. He's somewhere behind her, moving things. Suddenly two carrots are sitting next to her.
"Peel these," he says, giving her the peeler. "I'm going to watch you, so don't even think about doing anything with that thing."
She's surprised he'd think she could injure herself with it, but doesn't say anything, just peels the carrots with clumsy fingers.
"Here," he puts a potato in front of her. She grabs it. He's cutting the carrots, and an onion. He puts those aside and cuts the potato too.
Once that's done, he pulls out something that looks like raw meat from her fridge.
"What animal is that?" she asks curiously, it's pink, like squirrel. She wraps her hands around her mug.
"Chicken," he says without looking up, cubing the chicken breast. "Everyone got chicken with rations this week. People were pretty excited."
"Oh, I bet." She's never had chicken outside of the Capitol.
It's quiet in the kitchen. Peeta starts browning the chicken in the bottom of a soup pan.
She coughs, "Uh, I'm sorry you know."
He grunts.
"I didn't even mean to do it, not really." She sighs, "It's just… I'm tired."
He tosses the onions in with the chicken and the smell fills the room. "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's really hard, sometimes, to get out of depression when… when there doesn't seem to be a point to."
He pulls open her spice cabinet and basically shoves his head into it. He pulls out some garlic powder, salt, pepper.
Her heart clenches at the idea… of. "You too?"
"Yeah," he says shortly throwing more stuff into the pan. Eventually he starts to pour water in for it to all boil. "I wish you had chicken stock, its going to taste like water-"
She'd rushed to hug him. She can tell just how angry he still is, but he hugs her back anyways. "Okay," he breathes, "Okay."
"You can cry, if you want."
"No," he squeezes her, "I'm mad."
Now she's laugh-crying, "thanks for coming, for calling."
"Of course, always" he hugs her again before he gently pushes her towards the island again, "go, get a bowl help me set the table or something."
Later, they're eating the soup, siting close together at the backdoor of her house. Peeta wanted to eat at the table, but she said that she hadn't looked at the stars in a while, so he opened the door and sat down in the doorway. They've been sitting there in silence for a while. The soup isn't bad at all, although she wishes he'd tossed rice in it though, might fill her stomach better.
"Do you know any constellations?" He asks quietly, looking at the stars still.
"Not really," she admits. "I mean, not by their real names at least. I made some stuff up when I was pretty young and just assumed it to be true."
"Like what?"
She looks up and points at a grouping of stars, "see those six stars, all crowded together?"
"Yeah?"
"I decided they were six birds, on a branch because they're in a straight line," she smiles "not very creative but" she shrugs.
"No that's good," he disagrees. "Oh, I got one, look." He points towards a group of starts which form a diamond shape "a pearl."
She laughs, remembering Effie's comment from all those years ago. "I'm going to tell people that someday and make you sound insane."
He smirks, "good thing I am crazy, you know."
"Hm," she puts her soup bowl to her lips and tips the last of it into her mouth. "Guess this house is full of crazies, huh?"
"Guess so."
"Will you stay today?" she looks over at him, he looks uneasy.
"Yeah, yeah of course," he shakes his head and looks back up at the stars. "I'll stay."