Chapter Text
As the first slivers of dawn begin to stretch across the vast forest, Katniss stifles a yawn, rubbing her cold, scratchy eyes on the cuff of her worn leather jacket. Sleep, elusive even when her belly is full instead of its usual state of half-empty, has been especially tough to come by lately, the upcoming anniversary of the date of her father’s death weighing heavily on her mind.
Has it really been five years since Katniss last saw him? Last wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her nose into his shoulder as he lifted her off his feet and hummed a few bars of his favourite song in her ear, telling her he’d see her that night when he got home?
In some ways, it seems like it was only yesterday that he kissed her and Prim goodbye on his way out the door, heading to the mines to scratch a living out of the rocks underground. Only yesterday that Katniss last looked into the grey eyes so like her own as he smiled down at her, and told her not to forget to help her mother gather herbs after school.
Only yesterday that Katniss’s family was still whole, instead of the two semi-halves that it is now.
“Hey? You awake over there?” Gale asks in a loud whisper, breaking the serenity of the forest. Katniss tosses him a scowl as she repositions her foot that’s fallen asleep, grunting softly as it’s suddenly flooded with the prickly pins-and-needles sensation that somehow makes her feel even colder.
“Yeah?” she says as she leans forward, squinting into the seemingly endless sea of trees, her breaths little puffs of white in the still, frigid air.
“Why?”
Instead of answering, Gale notches an arrow into his bow and fires, landing it directly into the neck of a wild turkey.
“‘Cause that’s at least the third turkey that’s wandered by that you didn't notice,” he says with a rather triumphant grin. He hooks the bow over his shoulder and jumps down from the tree, yanking his arrow out of the dead bird. “Something on your mind?”
“Mmm,” Katniss grumbles as she notches an arrow, letting out a triumphant, “Hmph” as it lands directly between the eyes of a nice, fat squirrel just before it could race up the trunk of a nearby tree. Jumping down, she picks up the squirrel, holding it up as Gale shakes his head.
“Yeah, okay,” he says as he pulls out the arrow, handing it back to Katniss. “I got it.”
No, Gale doesn’t get it, but since Katniss doesn’t feel like trying to explain anything to him at the moment, she remains quiet.
There's more than enough talking back at the house. She wants to enjoy the quiet in the forest while she can.
Thankfully, Gale takes the hint, keeping the conversation to the absolute minimum for the next few hours as they snag a second turkey, three more squirrels, and two nice-sized rabbits from Gale’s snares. By the time they pack up their kills and stash the bows and arrows into their hiding places, the sun is shining brightly overhead, doing what it can to warm the chilly, tree-covered landscape.
“So, got any guesses on what Snow’s gonna announce tonight?” Gale asks as they head towards the fence.
Katniss shrugs. Capitol business doesn’t really interest her.
“No, not really.”
“Mmm,” Gale mutters. “Well, I can guarantee you it’s not gonna be better safety protocols for the mines.”
Katniss whips around, her eyes narrowing as she opens her mouth to retort, slamming it closed at the very last second.
Sometimes it’s hard for her to remember that in the very same explosion that took her dad’s life, Gale lost his own father, leaving him the man of the house at the tender age of thirteen.
And, that on every day of the week besides Sundays, Gale spends twelve hours deep inside those very same mines, working to support their combined family of eight.
“You never know,” Katniss finally says. “Didn't Cray mention that he’s running short on new Peacekeeper recruits from Two last week?”
“Yeah? So?”
“Well, he also said that it’s because there was a cave-in at the main training facility that killed a bunch of ‘em,” says Katniss. “So maybe Snow’s finally starting to realise that killing off your entire workforce is a bad idea.”
“Ha!” retorts Gale. “The day Snow realises that killing off the district citizens is a bad idea is the day he decides the Hunger Games aren’t fun to watch anymore.”
Katniss rolls her eyes, but doesn’t say anything else. There's no point when Gale’s in one of his moods.
Which lately seems to be whenever he’s awake. But that’s another point that’s not worth mentioning.
Arriving at the fence, they duck behind a post as a pair of Peacekeepers walk by, their pristine white uniforms a sharp contrast to the coal-dust-covered ground. Despite the frigid cold that’s gripped the district for the last several weeks, there’s been less snowfall than the typical winter season, which means the ever-present layer of coal dust is even thicker than usual for this time of year.
Dull, ugly grey. The perfect colour for such a miserable district.
After Gale tosses a stick at the fence to ensure it’s not powered, they slip underneath, making a beeline towards the Seam. Passing the rows of modular houses, all in various stages of dilapidation, they round the corner to find Prim bursting through their front door carrying a bowl of bloodied water, the groans of agony emanating from inside sending goosebumps pebbling down Katniss’s arms.
Mom must have a patient.
“What happened?” Gale asks as Prim dumps the bowl out next to the cracked sidewalk.
“The baker’s son burned his leg,” she replies, hurrying back towards the door. “Mom says it’s pretty bad.”
Gale shoots Katniss a look as he opens the door, allowing Prim to rush inside in front of him. While the baker’s third son is no stranger to Mom’s healer’s table, thanks to a childhood injury that left him with a pretty pronounced limp, Katniss has never heard him cry out like this before.
Like he’s dying. Or wishes he was.
For a moment, Katniss can’t help but wonder if her father’s final seconds were spent wishing for the very same thing. Thanks to Mom’s work as a healer, Katniss has borne witness to everything from fevers and lung illnesses to sprains and broken bones. But none of them, not the highest, delirium-causing fever or the most compounded of leg fractures have ever seemed as painful as the injuries that are caused by fire.
And for someone who already has super-sensitised nerves, like the baker’s youngest son, the kind of severe burn one can get while working in a bakery must hurt even worse.
Fighting her instincts to turn on her heel and rush back into the sanctity of the woods, Katniss swallows hard and steps inside the house, right into the middle of the pandemonium one might expect for such an injury. The boy, Peeta, lies flat on the table, with his father holding down his shoulders and Vick, one of Gale’s younger brothers, lying across his waist, trying to keep him as still as possible as Mom prepares to peel away a soaked, blood-stained cloth from his left ankle.
“Steady now!” Mom calls as she slips her fingertips beneath the fabric. She looks up at the baker, pursing her lips as she nods once.
“Here we go, son,” the baker says as he tightens his grip on Peeta’s shoulders. “One, two, three!”
The scream of agony that follows the baker’s countdown is so gut-wrenchingly horrible that the meagre breakfast Katniss and Gale shared in the woods threatens to make a reappearance. Clapping her hand over her mouth, Katniss races through the house and out the back door, dropping to her knees in the dirt as she gulps in air.
She honestly has no idea how her mother can handle being the cause of such cries, even though deep down, she knows they are necessary.
Burns can’t heal unless the dead skin is removed first, allowing new skin to form in its place. Otherwise, the new skin becomes suffocated, infection sets in, and the cycle perpetuates.
The sound of the back door bouncing closed causes Katniss to look up, and she hops out of the way as Vick and Posy race by her on their way to the water pump. Gale quickly follows, pumping water into the bucket Vick’s carrying as Peeta lets out another blood-curdling scream. As soon as he helps the younger kids back inside with the water, Gale returns, tossing their game bags in Katniss’s direction.
“Here. Thought we could work on these out here while…” He trails off, but Katniss catches his meaning anyway.
And, despite the frigid temperature, Katniss is grateful for it. Because Gale understands that while Katniss can gut and clean a dead squirrel or pluck a wild turkey in about three minutes flat, just the whiff of burnt flesh or the sight of the smallest drop of human blood is enough to send her scurrying.
And the fact that it’s his flesh, and his blood, and his cries that are carrying across the entire Seam and likely all the way back to the bakery, makes it even worse.
Bad things shouldn't happen to kind people. And yet, based on what Katniss has seen, in District 12, bad things only seem to happen to kind people.
Especially him.
Which is why Katniss isn’t a kind person.
Grimacing as another of Peeta’s screams pierces the air, Katniss ducks down, channelling all of her concentration into gutting the two rabbits Gale caught in his snares while Gale gets to work on the turkeys. By the time they’re done prepping the meat and storing the extra away in the cellar, a light snow has begun to fall, and Peeta’s cries have faded into the occasional choked-off whimper. Soft and exhausted, but still pained enough to chip away a tiny piece of Katniss’s heart each and every time.
Peeta will likely be okay enough to return to school within the next week or so, and continue his work in the bakery, shuffling around on the wooden cane he often uses to get around. He’ll probably even get to stay on the wrestling team, a sport he excels at despite only having one good leg.
But once he turns eighteen and is forced to start supporting himself, there's no telling what will happen.
And if he happens to get reaped before then, well… that’ll just be a death sentence. Wrestling champion or not, there's no way someone with a bum leg like Peeta’s could ever survive more than a few minutes inside a Hunger Games arena.
The sun is just starting to dip behind the distant trees when Prim exits the house, carrying a small bar of lard soap.
“We got Peeta stabilised, so Mom says we can eat now,” she says as she starts scrubbing the blood and gore from her hands. “He’s gonna be spending the night though.”
Katniss nods. It’s not unusual for one of Mom’s patients to bunk at the house overnight so she can keep an eye on them. Especially if she’s concerned about a lack of proper care once they’re released.
“So… how’s he doing?” Katniss asks as Prim dries her hands on her stained apron. She tries desperately to keep her question lighthearted, like she’s simply curious, but the look on Prim’s face and the slight catch in her voice are too obvious to overlook.
Prim lets out a sigh. “We don't know yet, Katniss. It’s a pretty bad burn,” she says softly. “Mom managed to get most of the damaged tissue cleared away, so now we just have to make sure the wound doesn’t get infected. That's the main reason why she’s keeping him overnight. If we had some of her ointment to send home with him, it’d be different. But since we don't… she doesn’t want to chance it”
“Yeah,” Katniss whispers, because she knows what Prim is saying between the lines.
Even if it wasn't the middle of winter, and they did have a decent supply of the healing lavender ointment Mom likes to use for burns, sending some of it home with Peeta wouldn’t guarantee that it would actually get used.
Knowing Peeta’s witch of a mother, she’d try and use it on her frown lines or something, leaving her poor son to suffer.
Like she always does.
After washing her own hands, Katniss gathers up the rabbit and tromps back into the house behind Prim. Her breath catches as she sees Peeta lying stretched out on the table, covered in one of Mom’s scratchy blankets with his bandaged left leg propped up on a folded-over pillow. His head is lolled towards the windows and his eyes are closed, but Katniss can tell he’s not quite asleep.
Not when his hands are clenched into such tight fists that his knuckles are as white as the falling snowflakes.
Swallowing back the knot in her throat, Katniss turns towards the stove, where Hazelle, Gale’s mother, is working over a pot of water set to boil. Handing her the rabbit, Katniss stretches out her hands over the pot, trying to steam some warmth back into her frozen fingers.
“Don't you worry, dear,” Hazelle says a moment or so later as she drops chunks of rabbit into the pot, along with some dried herbs and roots from the cellar. “He’s going to be fine.”
“What? Who?” Katniss says, a bit too quickly when Hazelle gives her a funny look.
“The boy.” Hazelle glances over her shoulder, jerking her head towards the table before leaning closer. “Rory and I were in Town when it happened, heard the ruckus coming from inside the bakery. Few minutes later, the baker comes rushing out, carrying the boy in his arms and racing right for the Seam. He knew right where to come, you see? Old Mellark knew your momma would take good care of his boy.” She drops her gaze to the pot, stirring the bubbling stew with a wooden spoon as her eyebrows knit together into a frown. “And the whole time, his own momma’s yelling, wondering how she’s gonna take care of all the orders they had for today. Like they don't have two more full-bodied sons who can help.”
“But I thought the other sons already helped?” Katniss asks. “I know the oldest is too old for the reaping, but—?”
“Eh, that middle boy still sticks his head in from time to time, when he’s not out and about chasing skirts,” says Hazelle. “But the oldest, he’s got his own family now. Just married the cobbler’s oldest daughter not three weeks ago, and there are whispers about that she’s already with child.”
Katniss raises her eyebrows. While it’s not surprising to her at all that the oldest Mellark son’s new wife is already expecting, she just can’t bring herself to understand how anyone could want to bring children into a world like District 12.
District 12. Where you can either starve to death in safety, or grow up just enough to be reaped for the Hunger Games.
And if by some chance you’re able to avoid all that, then it’s marriage, children, and working yourself to death for the rest of your life, all while worrying that your children will either starve to death or be reaped for the Hunger Games.
No, thank you, Katniss thinks. While she hasn’t exactly worked out what she’ll do once she’s eighteen and no longer allowed to live with her mother, she is absolutely certain she’ll only have to worry about herself.
And Prim, of course. But since Prim still has over five years before she’s eighteen and actually wants her own family someday, then as long as she’s able to make it through without being reaped, hopefully she’ll be okay.
With any luck, Prim will marry a Town boy. At least then her children will be less likely to go hungry.
As the rabbit stews, Katniss remains next to the stove, enjoying the radiating warmth after spending the entire day outside in the cold and trying not to watch Peeta’s chest slowly rising and falling with his laboured breaths.
She can only imagine the kind of pain that he’s in, tempered only by the tiny dose of morphling her mother could spare. With a single vial of the pain-killing medicine costing more than an entire week’s worth of Gale’s salary, Mom has to ration it carefully.
Supporting eight people on a miner’s wages isn’t easy.
Actually, without Mom’s work as a healer and their illegal hunting and trading to bring meat and other essentials into the household, it would be nearly impossible. And that’s with both Katniss and Rory receiving tesserae rations every month.
All while the citizens of the Capitol live in luxury, with medicines to treat each and every possible ailment, and never knowing the ache of trying to sleep with an empty stomach.
Or the fear that their children will be thrown into an arena for sport.
Once the rabbit’s done, they all eat in relative silence, not wishing to disturb Peeta as he tries to rest. As soon as Prim is done, she wakes Peeta and helps him eat a small bowl of the stew while Katniss discreetly observes, trying to ignore the turmoil raging between her mind and her heart.
While she herself may not be kind, kind people do have a way of burrowing themselves into her heart. And in her eyes, besides Prim, there’s no kinder person in all of District 12 than the baker’s youngest son.
Anyone who risks being beaten to save the life of a “Seam street rat” has to be some kind of special, even if Katniss will never understand why he did it.
Peeta’s just fallen asleep again when an alarm suddenly sounds from the viewscreen. Katniss turns to face it as it comes to life, the anthem of Panem playing in the background as the perfectly groomed visage of Panem’s illustrious leader, President Corliolanus Snow, blinks into view.
In all the excitement of that afternoon and evening, she completely forgot about President Snow’s scheduled announcement.
“Can’t wait to hear this,” Gale mutters as he sits down on the floor next to Rory.
“Now, now,” Hazelle gently admonishes, her eyes flicking to Posy who’s nestled on her lap. “Let’s see what it’s about first, hmm?”
Katniss settles in next to Prim, scowling as the screen flickers a couple of times before clearing. The president is sitting at his desk, his white hair and beard perfectly groomed and his gloved hands folded on the polished surface in front of him, with his ever-present white rose pinned to the lapel of his jacket. If Katniss didn't know any better, one might believe him to be a kindly grandfather preparing to share news he considers to be good.
Whether or not anyone else will believe that to be true remains to be seen.
“Good evening, citizens of Panem,” Snow begins, the corners of his artificially full lips curling up ever-so-slightly at the corners. “I come to you this evening full of tidings of peace and joy.”
“Yeah. I bet it’s easy to have peace and joy when you’re the one sitting there all high on the hill,” Gale spits out, earning another hissed, “Hush!” from his mother.
“Due to the continued decline in the birth rate in several districts, as well as a few recent unavoidable accidents, my advisors have recommended the following changes to Panem law: Upon the sixteenth birthday of any district citizen, in lieu of presenting him or herself for the annual Hunger Games reaping, he or she may instead choose to be joined in marriage with another district citizen—”
“What?” Gale exclaims, sending Katniss’s heart directly into her throat. “They’re changing the legal marriage age to sixteen? Why?”
“—The only requirements of this new law are as follows,” Snow continues. “One, both citizens must be of age sixteen or older at the time of marriage. And two, by the end of the first wedded year, a child must be either born or be imminent. If either of these two conditions are not met, the marriage will be considered forfeit, and both parties will have their names reentered into the reaping, regardless of age or state of well-being.”
Snow pauses, allowing his bombshell announcement to sink in for a few seconds.
And a bombshell it is, indeed. Katniss can only imagine the uproar it’s already causing in the hundreds of Seam households across Twelve. There’s no doubt in her mind that as soon as their screens go blank, families will be scrambling to arrange marriages for their of-age sons and daughters before Snow realises what a mistake he’s made and changes it back.
Especially since the last time a person from the Seam won the Hunger Games—or anyone from District 12, for that matter—was over twenty years ago.
In District 12, getting reaped doesn’t just mean the odds are not in your favour, it is literally a death sentence. And any good parent would do whatever it took to keep their child from dying.
It’s what Katniss would do, if she were to ever have children of her own.
But since she’s not, she supposes it doesn’t matter.
As President Snow concludes his address and her entire household erupts in a flurry of hushed whispers, Katniss’s gaze is drawn over to the table, and the injured boy who’s stretched out on top of it. Surely if his father loves Peeta as much as he appears to, he’ll no doubt attempt to find a wife for him, to save him from potentially being reaped.
It would at least prolong his life for a year or so, until he’s thrown out of his family’s bakery on his eighteenth birthday and is forced to find a job of his own.
Which, given Peeta’s position as the third son, will probably end up being in the mines.
And if Gale—big, strong Gale—can barely handle the backbreaking work deep in the bowels of District 12, then how could anyone expect someone with only one good leg to survive for more than a few days?
It’s completely unfair, is what it is. And yet, for District 12, it’s nothing more than reality.
But as she helps Prim and Hazelle wash out the stew bowls and prepare the pallets on the floor for sleeping, Katniss can’t help but feel a slight twinge of… something at the thought of Peeta Mellark getting married, and possibly having a child.
It’s not jealousy, though. Jealousy would imply that Katniss has feelings for the kind, blond-haired and blue-eyed boy who once saved her life when she was at her absolute lowest. It would imply that the looks she sometimes catches Peeta giving her during school, or whenever she trades with his father at the back door of the bakery, mean something more than just polite acknowledgment.
It would mean that, if they happened to live in another place or in another time, Katniss might actually be able to imagine marrying and having children, and living the kind of life her parents lived until her father was taken from them.
But since she does live in Panem, in the poorest district, with her entire extended family because her mother can’t be trusted to care for her daughters by herself, it’s not even worth thinking about.
Dreams are a luxury Katniss cannot afford to have.
So she simply chooses not to have them.