Chapter Text
“You need a break?” Rye asks, entering a room. Peeta just finished writing down details from another survivor. His legs were going numb, the hunger made him dizzy, and constant talking for hours – hoarse.
“I was hoping to finish first,” he replies, but Rye just shakes his head sadly. “You can finish for today, but they keep bringing them in,” he puts a glass of water in front of Peeta. “Come on, let’s take an hour.”
Peeta wants to protest, but thinks better of it. If what Rye says is true, he is going to need his strength for many more hours. Rye calls Jackson on his comunnicof and informs her they are both off to eat dinner.
The former training center has been adapted to house survivors, all the people taken by the Capitol through the years. With Snow dead and the Capitol fallen just days ago, everything was still chaotic. What was most important for the Mellark brothers, they found Graham’s little girl on the very first day.
As if Hunger Games weren’t enough, the Capitol kept robbing the District of their children. First, when Peeta was still a child, they cleared all the communito houses. They needed their slaves, help, avoxes. Children never returned; no one ever heard of them. But just a year ago, they decided some randomly chosen babies should also be offered to the Capitol, and that eventually sparked a revolution. The youngest Mellark, Peeta' 2 y.o. niece, was taken a year ago. The memory of the relief he felt when they found Molly was still making his knees weak.
“I wish we were getting back already,” Peeta says. There is not much left of 12; he is sure everyone will be useful for rebuilding efforts. He wants to see his Dad stand behind the worktable in the bakery, feel some sense of normality.
“We have to wait and see if they will find someone from 12 to go with us,” Rye says quietly. They both know it’s unlikely that it will happen. For some reason, kids from 12 were sent to the most difficult, dangerous jobs, or maybe just killed on the site? Besides Molly, who was stolen from Graham and Cathy to be presented to a couple who couldn’t have children themselves, there was no other survivor from 12.
The dinner is a strange mixture of army supplies and delicacies found in the Capitol. The mood in the temporary canteen varies from euphoric to solemn. All that Peeta can feel is just exhaustion.
It’s the same the next day.
And the next.
But then, when Rye comes in to take him for dinner, he says instead. “Have you heard? They found a girl from 12.”