Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The shirt buttoned up to Peeta’s throat. Stiff and restrictive compared to his usual bakery t-shirts. Given everything he owned belonged to his brothers before him, by the time clothes graced his back they were a soft, loose fit. This new shirt, the one he’d received at his father’s insistence for starting school, felt tight against his neck but he daren’t pull at it again. His mother’s fingers had flexed, lips twisting when he tugged at it. Perhaps it was his father’s rare presence at the breakfast table that stayed her hand. Perhaps she’d still lash out if he proved enough of a source of irritation. Despite longing to pop the top button, sure it was the shirt’s fault when even softened with tea, the hunk of stale cob roll stuck in his throat, he didn't dare. Her look was more than enough to chastise him. His father drained the last of his tea and then his hand came down on Peeta’s shoulder.

“Time to go.”

Dropping the half-eaten roll, he pushed away from the table and from the atmosphere his mother could create without saying a word. Grabbing his jacket, he waited outside the backdoor.

Early September light dappled the ground under the apple tree at the bottom of their yard. Its leaves flaunting their spectrum of autumn colours. The paint set his brother Rye’d been given three birthdays ago but carelessly tossed Peeta’s way when he’d grown bored with it, had those colours. The yellows, greens, oranges and browns. They were close but not quite right for the russet that curled up the edges of the leaves. On scraps of paper, old receipts and torn bakery bags, he practised blending colours. He wanted nothing more than to learn the secret of how to make the colours bleed one into the other, they way they did on the leaves. Sometimes a leaf, beautiful for a moment, displayed every shade before the wind blew it from the branches. He tried to recreate the medley of colours but so far, he’d only ended up with various shades of brown. His father told him there might be art lessons at school. Not many, as it wasn’t as important as history or practical lessons, but the promise of even one lesson every now and then made him eager to start school despite the new shirt.

Both Rye and Bannock had left earlier to be in school for the first bell. New students started ten minutes later on their first day. When he and his father got to the school yard only the youngest children stood outside. A mix of seam and merchant children clung to their guardian’s hands, waiting to be called into the squat grey building that would house them for the duration of their education here in district twelve. The yard was a spare bit of land in front of the building, with cracks in the once tarmacked ground where weeds poked through. No one played and time dragged.

Peeta smiled shyly at some of the other kids he knew from going on deliveries with his father. Delly Cartwright, the cobbler’s daughter who lived two doors down from the bakery, beamed at him and waved. He hadn’t seen many of the kids from the seam before and their ‘seam look,’ so different from the townies, fascinated him. They were less robust, many with hollowed cheeks. They didn’t look over to the merchant children. Every overture of a friendly smile he’d made was met with down cast eyes. Peeta looked up at his father and perhaps the older Mellark could see the question forming in his heart that hadn’t quite reached his lips yet. Perhaps it was fear of awkward questions over why so many of his future classmates looked like they were starving that made his father cut him off with a tale that seemed more fairy tale than fact.

“Do you see that little girl there?”

His father pointed to a wisp of a girl with two braids of the darkest brown hair. Not black. No, there was none of the flatness of solid black but rather the richness of bitter dark chocolate. The bakery sometimes made blood orange and dark chocolate torte for when the hunger games victor’s tour rolled into district twelve in the winter. Its taste was a stranger to him. There was only ever enough ingredients for one torte, and it would grace the mayor’s table. With two older and stronger brothers, coupled with his mother’s dislike of him, meant there was never any stray swipes of left-over batter from the bowl or the beaters for him. The smell though was heady. A depth of flavour he could almost taste on the air when his father baked it. The girl turned to look up at her father, her nose small and straight, eyebrows dark above grey seam eyes. It was a pretty face. A happy face.

“Yes.”

“Well, when I was young, I nearly married her mother.”

His dad tucked his hand into his pocket afraid to be caught pointing at the other family.

What? What other woman? There was his father and his mother and that was the way it was meant to be, wasn’t it? His father was unlucky with his mother, but he’d no other choice, that’s what Peeta had always thought. Why else would he marry a woman so quick with her fists and obvious with her dislike? To know there had been other choices for his father stunned him. For a brief moment Peeta thought what his life might’ve been like with another mother.

One that wanted him.

He studied the man that’d stolen his potential other life from him. The dad was dark like the girl and when he smiled down at her, Peeta knew she was treasured. It made it difficult to look at them.

“Why didn’t you?”

His father gave a cough and shifted his feet, “Ah, well,” he looked like he regretted starting this story, “she fell in love with a miner, and you know…”

No, Peeta did not know. His father was a merchant, this man with the dark hair, dark eyes and wide smile was just a miner. His mother was always clear that miners were beneath merchant families. It was painful the thought that he could’ve had a different family if this unknown woman had just married his father instead. The idea of it was like the torte, an elusive something he wanted so much he could almost taste it.

“Why did she want him when she could’ve had you? You’re a baker, he’s just a miner.”

His father’s eyes took on a far away look, “Because when he sings all the birds stop to listen,” he gave Peeta sad smile.

That’s it? That’s what made this potential other mother run away? Singing? Peeta wanted to scoff but the look on his father’s face stopped him. He concentrated back on the seam family and the way the man gently tucked an escaped strand of hair behind the girl’s ear and wondered what made his mother think she was better than this man.

Their teacher, a lined woman with steel grey hair in a bun, pulled open the double doors and soon his father was patting him on the shoulder and handing him a crumpled paper sack with his lunch in it. The children followed the teacher in a crocodile into the building and Peeta kept his eyes on the red plaid dress and the double braids of the girl as she made her way into the classroom. Curiosity at what her home life might be like was enough to make him watch and listen to see which name she responded to during registration. That’s how he learned she was Katniss Everdeen. This girl with the double braids, a father that worked in the mines and a mother that had left his own father behind.

The novelty of how her homelife somehow linked with his would’ve captured his imagination, held it for perhaps a day or two, nothing more. Except when she stood on a stool and sang the valley song.

And then Peeta understood Mrs Everdeen. He understood a woman he’d never met.

Katniss stood on that stool and sang in a voice that wound its way around his heart and squeezed. Everyone and everything else fell away and there was only Katniss. Her father had gifted her the magic of his voice because not one single bird outside of the classroom window tweeted or whistled as she sang. She finished, shyly ducking her head as she made her way back to her seat and that’s when the mockingjays started. They mimicked the clear high notes of her voice sending it back into the room. Chirps and birdsong layering one on top of the other until they swelled into a wall of sound that resounded deep within his heart. How easy it would be to leave everything he knew and follow her anywhere. Like Mrs Everdeen, he was a goner. Never could he regret Mrs Everdeen’s choice to leave his father. For without it, there would be no Katniss and to Peeta, a world without Katniss would be like living in a world without colour.

Chapter Text

There’s a tradition in the Mellark family. If it’s your birthday, then it’s celebrated with a single vanilla sponge cupcake.

No frosting.

No jam or buttercream filling at the centre.

Just plain vanilla sponge. One scoop of batter baked in a paper case, but it’s one scoop that’s totally, selfishly, yours. Sometimes if there’s any demerara sugar going spare, then there might be a dusting on top so the cupcake gains a darker toasted caramel flavour in the oven. These cupcakes, the birthday cupcakes, are hoarded and treasured for days. Peeta in particular always stretched his cupcake to last three, maybe four days. Any longer and it took on the stale quality of his everyday food albeit sweeter than what he was used to. No, it was a balancing act to make it last but still taste good.

There’s also an unspoken rule regarding birthday cupcakes.

No one steals someone else’s cupcake.

The Mellark boys stole any old shit off of each other because that’s what brothers do, right? But they never stole each other’s birthday treat. They’d respectfully watch as the cupcake owner savoured bite after bite until nothing, not even crumbs, remained. You might be able to taste it in your mind but you sure as hell weren’t tasting it in your mouth because that was your brother’s. When your birthday rolled around then you knew your cupcake would demand the same deference from the others despite their covetous looks.

For those few golden days, you got to know what life must be like for the wealthy, the well-fed. But just like a sugar high, there was always the inevitable crash in the days after. Those were the worst, knowing it would be a whole year before you got another taste again. Another three hundred and sixty-odd days of stale bread after experiencing cake in all its forms. From the barest dab of batter left in the bowl to baked sponge hot and fragrant from the oven, and finally those few sweet and moist last morsels. It was a tough transition, but Peeta reasoned, you managed. He, like the rest of his family, knew a hard crust of roll dipped and softened in tea wasn’t too bad. It filled your belly and that was a lot more than some of the others in district twelve had. A year wasn’t so long to wait for another cupcake, not that long really when he reasoned he was lucky to get a treat when so many had to go hungry.

Peeta pissed Rye off when he spoke like that. Rye wanted everything and now, but Peeta didn’t have the same ambitions. Peeta needed very little. If he got through his bakery chores before school and didn’t attract the kind of attention that resulted in a wooden spoon rapping off his knuckles or a rolling pin to the elbow – that was pain – then it was a good day.

The only other thing he needed really was a glimpse of her. Katniss. Not so that he could approach her. God, no. They didn’t talk in school. Merchant kids didn’t mix with seam kids. It was the way it’d always been and what would they even have to talk about anyway? When he tried to think of something, anything, his brain stuttered to a stop and his tongue seemed to loll a useless thing in his mouth. Not once had he spoken in her presence. No little phrases like, ‘Good morning,’ or, ‘Did you drop this?’ passed his lips for her to hear. It was amazing really that for the last six years, he’d managed to convey anything he ever needed to say to her with a head nod or a chin movement. No words. Sometimes when she looked up and those grey eyes caught on him for a fraction of a moment it would give him a sickening thrill of fear and make him think, ‘maybe today, maybe today, she’ll talk to me.’

She never did.

It was the 24^th of January when the claxon, obnoxious in its bellowing sound, pulled every head up from the maths task they’d been working on. Miss Lorwood stood, and took a few steps towards the classroom door, wiping her palms down the side of her skirt once, twice as she went. Her nerves did little to soothe the panic of the seam kids.

“If you have a parent that works in the mines, line up,” but the kids were already out of their seats jostling to get to the door, “The rest of you, stay here,” she said as a seething mass of limbs and panicked faces swarmed her on their way out into the corridor.

Accident, accident at the mine. The whispers ricocheted around the classroom. He knew what it meant, they all did, but until he saw the panic carved into Katniss’s face by shock, he hadn’t understood, not really, what it meant. It wasn’t his family down there in the dark, but it was hers. His dread of what might’ve happened could only be a pale shadow of the fears rolling through her mind.

Peeta’s chair scrapped loudly against the wooden floor, and he was one of the first to make it to the classroom window. Face pressed against the glass trying to see what was going on in the yard below. He was pushed from behind and almost lost his footing as other bodies crowded around him, excited chatter falling from their lips, but he couldn’t hear them. It was almost like he wasn’t there. He was lining up in the yard two steps behind where Katniss had her little sister – Primrose – in a steely grip and was hauling her out of the school ready to make the two-mile walk toward the mine. He could see the panic like a wild thing taking control of her limbs as she pulled her sister along, but a teacher gestured to her, some kind of reprimand he guessed, for trying to overtake the teachers leading the crocodile of children. Her answering scowl was a thing of beauty and he hated himself a little for noticing. Every one of his thoughts should’ve been with her, her family, and the hope that at the end of the day, they’d all be together in a little seam house, safe. He watched until no one could be seen in the street heading toward the mine.

The rest of the school, the merchant kids, were let out early. He ran to the bakery and tried to be casual as he asked his mother if he could go to the mine entrance and wait like everyone else. She narrowed her eyes at him and as she took her time deciding if he could, his need to be at that gaping mouth of the mine waiting to see if it would spew out Katniss’s loved one twisted through him. It wasn’t like he could do anything, but he didn’t want her to be alone. It felt important that he stood vigil with her even if she never knew he was there. A silent nobody on the periphery of her life who wanted everything to work out for her. God, he was pathetic. He tried giving his mother a weak smile to encourage her to speak.

No, there was no need she said. Those miners were nothing to them and besides, it gave them time to get some extra prep for tomorrow done.

Her words sucked the very breath from him. He thought to protest but the pursing of her lips held his words in check. He grabbed his apron, washed his hands, and was soon kneaded and rolled dough, punching it in anger at being trapped here. He should have been there like the rest of the town waiting and hoping. He couldn’t explain to his mother why it was important he went to lend silent support to a seam girl. It would have horrified her if she knew and probably would have led to him being grounded for life. As the dough stretched and pulled back on itself under the heel of his hands, the rhythm of the work beat out, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ in his mind. He was sorry he couldn’t be there; he was sorry he wasn’t her friend; he was sorry he didn’t have the right to hold her hand, squeeze it as if to say, ‘hey, I’m here, I’ve got you.’

It wasn’t until the next day that other children told him in shocked voices how she and her family waited and waited, and no father appeared. He wondered at what point did you give up and abandon your post at the mouth of the mine? Did she fight the other miners when they said there was no one left to be rescued? Did she believe them straight away or did she cling to a vanishing hope for a few minutes more? Did her mother have the presence of mind to guide her daughters back home knowing the smiling dark-haired man would never return to them again? What did his imaginings matter when he couldn’t do anything to ease the pain the loss of her father must be causing Katniss?

It was a long week without her in class. When she did return to school, she looked different. Colder, harder but brittle as if one push would cause her to fall to the ground and shatter. Perhaps others couldn’t see it, but he could. The softness that lived inside Katniss Everdeen snuffed out like a canary in a mine losing its consciousness due to bad air.

Days and weeks went by. Glimpses of her no longer made his day. They filled him with anxiety instead. Each day she seemed diminished like she was evaporating in front of him. He worried that soon she would be like her father, a person who now only existed in memory. In his panic he tried to memorise her, but she kept changing. The colour in her cheeks gave way to hollowness and pallor, her red lips to chapped ones. He didn’t want to remember her this way, didn’t want her to only grace his memories for that would be a cold and lonely place for her to live.

Selfishly, he needed her to live here, in this world where he might one day have the courage to talk to her, to apologise for not being brave enough to be there for her on that awful day. Maybe just knowing somebody cared, wanted to look out for her would have meant something to her. Not that she would have wanted that person to be him. He was just being stupid like his mother said. No one needed him, especially not someone like Katniss. His mother was right, he was a mistake, just one more mouth to feed.

Just one more mouth to feed.

He’d give up everything he had if he could feed Katniss because he could see the way the bones in her wrists protruded when she was copying down instructions from the classroom board. He didn’t have to imagine what starving looked like. He’d seen it often enough in district twelve and here he was seeing it happening again to someone important to him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

March had been long, cold, and bleak and even the turn into April hadn’t chased winter out of district twelve. The rain hadn’t stopped for the last two days. In a way, working by the ovens was less torturous when the outside temperature was low as it almost made the heat from the ovens welcome. His peel had been slipping into the oven and pulling out loaves, setting them on the cooling racks when he saw his mother throw down her dishcloth and storm to the back door. He didn’t know what she’d seen through the window that had made her irate but when he heard her explode in a tirade about seam brats, he couldn’t help but move towards the door and glance around her shoulder.

It terrified and confused him that someone that fragile could still be alive. The way Katniss looked, he’d seen it in others before, and knew what the inevitable end outcome would be. His mother hadn’t even finished shouting at Katniss when he'd gone back in and using the edge of the peel pushed two loaves into the coals. His palms sweated not from the heat of the oven but with the thought that he might be too late. What if she left? The smell of carbonisation, instantly recognisable alerted his mother as soon as she closed the backdoor behind her. The wooden spoon snatched up from the worktable – better at least than the rolling pin he thought – cracked against his cheekbone in retribution for the burnt bread but he almost didn’t feel it. Not if it meant he could throw this bread out, outside where Katniss was waiting. His mother was nothing if not predictable, yes, he was stupid, and yes, the bread was ruined. He’d heard all of these complaints a million times and he wasn’t listening as he scooped the bread out of the charcoals.

Katniss was still there. Huddled beneath the bare branches of the apple tree that offered no protection from the slanting rain. Her grey eyes clouded by exhaustion and hunger met his for a moment and ashamed he looked away. He couldn’t give the bread to her, couldn’t hand them over like any decent human being with a care for another staving person would. No, he had to play act that the bread was for the pig that sickenly ate better than Katniss and her sister. He’d seen the way both Everdeen girls were disappearing in front of everyone’s eyes and no one did anything to help. He tore as little off the loaves as he could, slowly feeding the blackened bits to the pig, waiting on his mother to leave. How Katniss must hate him for feeding an animal whilst she sat there watching. The moment the bell over the bakery front door rang, he knew he had his chance. Heart pounding, he threw the bread at her feet and ran to get back inside not waiting to see if she picked them up but rushing to close the door so that his mother would not chance to glance out and see who the real recipient of the bread was.

‘Pick them up, Katniss, pick them up and leave,’ he thought to himself but he didn’t dare draw attention to the outside by looking out of the window. Blood throbbed hot and painful in his cheekbone making the pain of the blow known to him but he’d take a thousand hits if it meant she had a chance to survive.

Maybe tomorrow at school he would speak to her after all, tomorrow would be a good day. It was his birthday, they surely had something to talk about now. Some connection. He went to bed dreaming of Katniss being well-fed and smiling at him, maybe he’d even share his birthday cupcake with her. It would be his after all. He could do what he wanted with it and if what he wanted was to share it with a girl in school then no one in his family needed to know.

Except when he woke there was no cupcake, only a badly bruised face and an eye so swollen he couldn’t see out of it. The loss of income from the two loaves he’d burned had to be recouped somehow his mother said. His father wore a look of guilt that seemed to live on his face as once again he let his wife take the lead on all matters of the family. His brothers gaped at his mother’s announcement.  No Mellark birthday cake was unheard of but still, he clung to the belief that the day wasn’t ruined. There was still the chance that Katniss would speak to him at school.

He didn’t need her to thank him, it wasn’t like that, it was just now there would be something he could talk about. Maybe he’d go with, ‘Did you enjoy the bread?’ but when he saw her looking at the battered side of his face, his confidence came unstuck. When she looked his way all he could feel was shame for not handing the bread to her.

It wasn’t until the last bell of the school day rang and he hung about like he always did, waiting to see Katniss collect her younger sister and walk back towards the seam that she glanced his way and their eyes held for a moment longer than usual. There was no animosity in them. No recrimination for the way he acted. Then she looked away, down at a clump of dandelions and a smile crept onto her face.

Maybe it wasn’t for him but the first smile he had seen grace her face in weeks was the most treasured birthday present he could get. So what if he didn’t get his cake? He got a few more days of Katniss here and alive and maybe in some small way he might have helped to put that smile onto her face and if so, it was the best birthday present he’d ever receive.

Chapter Text

Bakers kept the worst hours. The ovens had to be warm by 6 am or the dough that proved overnight wouldn’t have time to bake. Then came the choreographed dance of utilising every inch of oven and prep space. The second batch of bread dough kneaded and left to rise. Then it's on to creating the doughs and batters for the various scones, breakfast rolls, and cakes that were popular in the morning rush.

Timing is everything.

The first batch of bread comes out of the oven, and scones and rolls go in. By 8 am the shelves are stocked with first bakes. Peeta Mellark’s life is run by the timer on the ovens. If it’s a school day, Peeta with his brothers will quickly shape the second batch of loaves before heading off to school. If it’s a weekend they simply work through. Baking second and third-batch loaves as well as special-order cakes. Even the shop doors closing at 4 pm don’t signal the end of the day. After an early dinner, the next morning’s dough needed to be prepared and only then can the whole family retire to bed. All so they can wake early and do it all again whilst the rest of the district sleeps.

The resentment to having such a structured life hit Peeta in his teens.

Everyone in town worked in their family business. No one complained. It’s just the way in district twelve. Children brought blessings to a family in the form of unpaid graft. Peeta didn’t mind hard work, but did it have to start so damn early?

Every one of his friends does a full day’s work and yet it felt to Peeta that they had the luxury of more free time. It was hard not to be jealous of his friends when he’d worked a third of his day before most of their parents had even opened their shop doors. So Peeta grumbled along with Rye and Bannock as they wiped the sleep from their eyes and made their way through the well-practiced steps before the sun rose or they’d even come into full consciousness.

There were only two days in the week when Peeta was first downstairs. Monday through Friday he clung to those few extra minutes in bed and often only just made it down before his mother but come Saturday and Sunday? Those days saw him hauling flour sacks and filling the bins in preparation for the day ahead. Eight thirty sharp would find him in the kitchen. All his storeroom or front-of-store tasks done.

Peeta knew that timing was everything.

That’s why he’d be first at the prep table, kneading dough or mixing a batter, claiming the side of the workbench that let him glance out the window that overlooking the back lane. The weekends were when they came to trade. The day could vary but the timing of the visits didn’t. It was the one measure of time in this kitchen he didn’t resent. He never knew which day they would come. Sometimes a Saturday or sometimes a Sunday. If it was summer and they’d had a successful morning, he might see them two days in a row.

Not that he cared about seeing Gale. At least, he tried not to care about Gale.

Except it was hard when even Peeta could see Gale was everything Katniss needed in her life, and he most definitely wasn’t. Peeta didn’t have any of the survival skills Gale had. He couldn’t even stand up to his mother let alone an attacking pack of wild dogs. Oh yes, the tale of Gale rescuing Katniss from a tree surrounded by rabid dogs had gone around school a couple of months ago boosting Gale’s reputation. As if it needed any boosting. Besides, Peeta was sure Katniss could've easily picked off the animals with her well-placed arrows. Katniss Everdeen was the last person in district twelve who needed rescuing but oh, how he burned to have been the one to have rescued her.

Silly really. When would there ever be a situation where Katniss was dependent on him? A flash of cold rain, fragile bones, and dull grey eyes came to him, but he pushed it away. He never wanted to think of her as she was then. That she’d survived, that she’d grown stronger only confirmed to him that Katniss needed no one and certainly not someone like him.

Peeta couldn’t speak to Katniss at school, all those eyes watching them meant he’d never brave the possibility of rejection in public. When she came to the back door of the bakery it was his father who conducted the trade. Sometimes with her, sometimes with Gale. There was never an opportunity for Peeta to run the trade. Never a chance for him to speak to her, mainly because he had been too generous in the first few trades he’d made with others. His mother had been so incensed by his failing to drive a hard bargain she’d called him a fool, slapped him on the back of the head and told him to stay away from the backdoor.

It was a shame really, because this was his favourite version of Katniss. Whilst he shaped the breakfast rolls, he could see both Katniss and Gale as they made their way up the lane behind the merchant houses and it was the one time in the week he could expect to see her looking happy. Less weighted with responsibilities. As much as he hated it, he knew Gale was part of that. How much a part of it Peeta didn’t know and he tried not to torture himself as he second-guessed over it.

Even though he did. He’d play their interactions with each other over and over in his head.

How close did they stand to each other?

Were they closer than friends?

Or was it just a mutually beneficial partnership?

At seventeen Gale had a reputation. There were always names linked to him, but Peeta had never seen him in public with anyone but Katniss. If Peeta had been with Katniss, he wouldn’t have wanted any other girl either. Perhaps that was how it was for Gale? Or was he was so determined to feed his family that he didn’t realise how many of district twelve’s female population looked at him with longing? Did he not even notice Katniss as a girl but only as a hunting partner? Was that how it was?

Peeta’s mind twisted and writhed over the thought. No matter how sophisticated the arguments he created to tell himself they weren’t together, he still couldn’t find any irrefutable proof to dismiss the idea either. Even he had to admit he'd never seen Katniss with any other boy but Gale. That had to mean something. Katniss was notorious for keeping to herself. Apart from Gale, the only people she spent any time with were her sister, Primrose, and on the odd occasion at school, Madge Undersee.

Peeta watched as the backs of their hands brushed against each other as they came through the gate at the end of the yard. It didn’t seem to trigger any kind of response from Katniss, but then how would he know? He didn't know her.

The heavy rap of Gale’s knuckles against the wooden door. His father wiped his hands on a white dish cloth and placed it on the draining board before he opened the door. Peeta craned his neck just enough to make out the curve of her cheekbone as she looked down into her hunting bag.

“This stinks. Empty it.”

Rye used his foot to push the food waste bucket they kept under the work table to collect scraps for the pigs in Peeta’s direction.

“No, you do it,” Peeta shaped and patted the dough he was working on.

Rye huffed and in a slow and deliberate voice repeated, “You should go feed the pigs,” he made a movement with his head that let Peeta know that all his subtle glances out the window at the weekends hadn’t been subtle at all.

“What? Now?” He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t push his way out there whilst she was on the back steps.

“Yes, now,” Rye’s eyes glittered with amusement, “or maybe you’d prefer I went? Got chatting?”

He didn’t need to be any clearer with his intentions.

“Going,” Peeta reached down and grabbed the handle.

The contents shifted and the smell of rotting food wafted towards him. He touched his father on the small of his back and the baker shifted to let him by.

Gale was on the top step, bag slung over his back, arms crossed.

“There’s a patch of wild strawberries and we’d be able to get you at least enough for two or three tarts but the problem is the Mayor is partial to strawberries, and he pays in coin,” he left the implication hanging. He barely moved to let Peeta pass so fixed was his attention on the baker.

“Excuse me,” Peeta mumbled as his Dad made noises that suggested he was considering the trade. He probably was. The Mayor wasn’t the only person who liked strawberries and lots of individual tarts would bring in plenty of coin as opposed to large tarts that no one could afford. In the end he was too busy keeping his eyes cast down, avoiding her, and watching where he placed his feet he didn’t hear if the trade was made.

As he approached, Katniss stepped back clearing the stairs for him, and let her hand drop down from where it’d been resting on the strap of her bag. Was it bad timing or the most amazing stroke of luck? The back of Peeta’s free hand - the one without the bucket thank God - skimmed against hers.

It was barely anything. Nothing in the scheme of things. Hell, he’d watched as her hand had grazed Gale’s as they’d made their way into the backyard this morning. It was just something that happened sometimes and yet it felt like the most significant thing to happen to him in his fifteen years.

His eyes flew to her face as he apologised.

Pink spots appeared high on her cheeks.

“S’okay,” she said quietly but she was already turning to leave.

Peeta’s attention was on his hand, buzzing with the flesh memory of her warmth against his skin as he slung the contents of the bucket into the pen. The pigs fell on the scraps but the wet slap of their jaws and the stench of the rotting food were ignored by Peeta as he risked one more glance in her direction.

Katniss waited as Gale slipped through the gate but as she waited her hand, the hand he’d touched, flexed into a fist, and then, instead of relaxing, she splayed her fingers as if she too was feeling the effect of his skin against hers. As if there was a tingling sensation she was trying to shake out of her hand. She didn’t look his way as she made her way towards the backdoor of the butchers. Didn’t acknowledge him. He tried to quash it but that little movement, that indicator that she'd felt something made a bubble of hope in his chest.

He’d never seen her do anything like that in all the little touches he’d witnessed between her and Gale. The left side of his mouth pulled into a half smile as he thought to himself, perhaps it wasn't bad luck, perhaps timing really was everything.

Chapter Text

A low hanging sun with its soft orange rays melted into stretches of lavender clouds skimming the tops of the hills. The colours deepened in hue the closer to the valley they got until there was nothing but the deepest green of the forest left. Almost but not quite reaching black. It’s a view Peeta normally wouldn’t see unless he snuck out onto the roof. Balanced as he was on the top step of the A-frame ladder, with one bucket of plain rinsing water and another frothy with bubbles, he was gifted with more of the view than he’d get from street level. He should be cleaning the Bakery windows but…that sunset. How could he not admire it? He held the ladder rungs and took a few lungfuls of the resiny smell of pines. The forest had baked under the summer sun and only now in the relative cool of a July evening was the scent drifting in from the forest. The mines closed at five the day before reaping, allowing fresher air than the usual heavy soot that seemed to wreath Twelve at all times. The mines wouldn’t crank up again until after the tributes had been picked. They’d stand silent along with everyone else bearing witness to the Capitol’s ability to control every aspect of life here in Twelve.

It was getting on for close to ten now, but hardly anyone had turned in. Few kids would sleep tonight and their parents even less so. Peeta’s last task of the day was to wash the windows, and then to try to get some rest even though he knew that’d be impossible. He’d volunteered to wash the windows in the hope of burning through his nervous energy. Coal dust coats everything in twelve. There’s no escaping it. Even in town tiny flecks of black drifted in on the breeze and stuck to every surface. You’d never know it’d only been three days since he last did this. The Bakery windows were washed with glorious repetition every Friday evening so they gleamed over the weekend for shoppers but now it was Monday the third of July, and Peeta had to ensure the bakery looked its best in case it got caught on camera tomorrow.

Water ran black from where Peeta’s sodden rag passed over the surface. Dripping down like tears through coal dust on a miner’s face he thought as he swiped in a reoccurring figure of eight movement. He knew thinking this way was fanciful. A waste of time his mother would call it. Pretty words for ugly emotions.

Of course, by the morning all the residents of twelve would be scrubbed clean of the sooty residue so as to appear presentable as they lined the streets and waited to see which children of the district would die. The tears might still run down their faces, but they wouldn’t stand out in such stark relief. He can’t imagine being a parent trapped on the sidelines and hoping his child would survive. Peeta peered through the soapy residue sliding down the glass into the darkened bakery. Light from the kitchen illuminated his parents at the dining table, not speaking, not even looking at one another as they poured over the books. If his name was called out tomorrow, would his mother even care? At nineteen, Bannock was safe and wouldn’t be taking his place down the front. Each year that crept Bannock ever closer to the stage used to terrify Peeta. Closer to that woman.

She dressed as if the reaping was a parade. A fine show of Capitol might. In her dresses of violent colours she never once acknowledged that the display only served to remind people how easily they could be crushed. Her carefully constructed beauty was a vile mask.

Here, in Twelve, death was almost an absence of colour. The dark void of a collapsed mining pit, the stark pallor of all skin tones when one was sick and starving. Death was a drab ugly thing sent to steal beauty. Only the Capitol would have a form of Death swathed in artificially bright shades and it revolts him.

It revolts him that there’s no way out of this.

Peeta swirls his cloth in the rinsing bucket before stopping and glancing back up at the hills. They’re stark against the horizon as the sun fought against slipping behind them. It tried valiantly to throw the last of its colour out but the tide of the night sky was rushing up fast to meet it. You could disappear into those hills he thought. If you knew how. He doesn’t. He never will, but there’s one who does.

Katniss.

It’s crossed his mind more than once that she should go. Pack her bow and arrow and live like the wild thing she is. Hidden away in the forest that’s provided for her for years. Would he forgive her if she left? Yes, if it meant she survived. If it meant she’d a life that was more than this inescapable round of fear and hardship doled out again and again by the Capitol.

He dropped the cloth into the soapy water and straightened, pushing his hair away from his face with the back of his wet hand, and really looked out, thinking. She could do it. He knows she could. Should he say? Would she listen? Would he be able to tell her how he feels before she goes? No, that would be for him, not for her. He could tell her to leave as a friend, no, an acquaintance but he couldn’t be selfish and burden her with his feelings too. Sighing he reached into the bucket for the cloth. If he could bear to live without her here, does that mean he loves her more or less than those who are supposed to care for her? Could he bear to live without ever seeing her again? Or, if he was honest, would he only be telling her to go so that he wouldn’t have to suffer as he watched her create a life with someone else? Someone who’d never be him? Was he only wishing she could escape to save himself from such a future? Frowning he wrung the rag out and slapped it against the glass, making the same movements as before cleaning away more coal dust.

His mother turns a page, and he watched her as her eyes flick down what must be columns of numbers. He watches this woman and thinks how he cares more for a girl that’s almost a stranger to him than his mother does for him. His own mother and she wouldn’t care if his name got called tomorrow. This thought no longer makes him want to scream with rage or cry at the unfairness of it all. It’s just how it is. His mother was a woman of small capabilities, and she only had enough love in her for one child, Bannock, maybe a spot of affection for Rye but Peeta doesn’t even seem to figure for her at all. He is only an annoyance. A reminder of what is missing in her life. The daughter she should’ve had to call her own. Not another stocky, clumsy boy. She’s attended every reaping of Bannock’s, and Rye’s but if it was only Peeta in that pool of potential tributes, and if attendance wasn’t compulsory, he doubted she would attend for his sake. His father would but she wouldn’t if she had a choice.

The movement of his hand slowed as he tried to figure her out. She wasn’t doing anything different from what she usually did, just sitting and checking the accounts but even from this distance he could see the discontent radiating from her. The way she held herself screamed her unhappiness. His father never stood a chance with a woman that deliberately shut herself off from anything good in the world. Sighing he rinsed out his cloth again and slapped it wet against the glass. It splattered back and trapped as he was on the ladder, soaked his trousers with the worst of the spray. He muttered a curse word Rye’d used at the dinner table last week and got a clip around the ear for his efforts.

Peeta tried with his mother. His whole life he’d tried to make her happy. If she had wanted him quiet, he was quiet. If she wanted him to work hard, he worked hard. The only thing he couldn’t be was whatever she felt was missing from her life. It was something he’d thought about often. What was she seeking? What was it she needed to be happy? Could it really be as simple as not having a daughter or if she had, would she have found other reasons to be dissatisfied with her life?

A door shut further up the street and Peeta turned away from his work to glance at the source of the noise. Gale Hawthorn walked away from the Cartwright’s, a pair of re-soled shoes in his hands. Of course, everyone had to look their best for the morning. The dark-haired boy nodded briefly in Peeta’s direction as he made his way back towards the Seam, Peeta returned the gesture but didn’t return to his work. He watched the eldest Hawthorn walk away and thought of futures; ones possible for Gale and ones impossible for him.

Would Peeta end up like his mother? If his father had told him about his interest – or was it love? – of Mrs Everdeen, who was to say that his mother didn’t know as well? It’d certainly explain her dislike of Katniss. Even Primrose. More than once he’d seen his mother shoo the little girl away when she stopped to look in the shop window. She didn’t like any of the Seam kids, but most were allowed to look in the window. The Everdeen girls were, however, encouraged to move on. Not that many kids lingered if they knew his mother was working the shop front. He let out a light snort and felt a smirk form on his face. He couldn’t blame them. If he could get away with avoiding his mother, he would’ve.

Peeta pulled the window blade out of his back pocket and started to repeat his movements with the blade swiping away all of the water clinging to the glass, leaving it clean and dry. Each thought landed heavier than the last. Was his miserable family life his father’s fault? Did his mother grow cold and angry when she realised she wasn’t the one whom his father wanted? Was she bitter because she saw herself as a poor imitation of the woman his father loved before?

Delly Cartwright’s blonde head popped out of the upstairs window above the Cobbler’s shop.

“Good luck tomorrow Peeta,” she said with a wistful sort of smile.

She began pulling the window closed as he shouted back, “You too, Dells.”

For a moment he saw her smile widen before the glass was back in position and all he could see was the reflection of the sun’s setting rays on the pane. It would be so easy to smile at Delly in such a way that she’d feel encouraged by him. She’d be easy to step out with, easy to marry. He knew she was sweet on him, and Delly was one of the kindest people Peeta knew. He shook the excess water off the blade and went back to drying the glass.

No one would question him and Dell. It’d be what everyone expected. They were two people who could always make the best of a bad situation, but would that be condemning Delly to play the role of his mother and he the role of his father? Would he spend a lifetime hating her and then hating himself for what he had done to her? Or would they bump along amiably, friends more than lovers?

Peeta climbed down the ladder and finished off the window. He glanced back up to the Cartwright’s and the sun had dipped a little lower allowing him to see into their house. Delly was near the window watching him and he pretended not to see. No, it would be wrong to start anything with Delly. He sloshed the water from the buckets watching it drain away across the cobbled road and run down into the drain. He stacked the empty buckets and folded the ladder. No, it’d be wrong when he knew that tomorrow as he stood in the square there would be only one name that he would be repeating over and over again in his mind hoping and wishing he’d never hear it from the lips of that woman from the Capitol and it wouldn’t be the name ‘Delly Cartwright’.

Chapter Text

The medical aide’s parting is sharp. A clean white strip of scalp between magenta strands of hair. Peeta stares at it. Wonders how it was possible to be that precise as she and her tweezers hover over his hands and pick out a few slivers of pottery still embedded in the skin. Her head twists this way and that as she double-checks her work.

He should have known this would backfire. Should’ve listened when Haymitch advised him against this particular idea this morning. The problem was, he could've imagine everyone’s reactions to his words except hers. That’s why her rage was so unexpected and so thrilling for him to be her full focus for once.

No, Peeta could easily imagine Rhy laughing, commenting on his appalling timing. Dad would’ve let that soft smile he thinks he hides so well whenever he thinks about the Everdeen family drift onto his face. His Mom? Well, she’d be disgusted, and Bannock would just have been surprised. He doesn’t pay enough attention to Peeta to have picked up on his ludicrous crush. Not like Rhy. Not like Gale.

Maybe it’s a guy thing but Gale knew.

It’s in his eyes. Something that screams ‘back off,’ and he wouldn’t be giving Peeta those signals if he didn’t think there was a chance the quiet bakery boy might one day force himself to approach Katniss. Well, jokes on you Gale, Peeta thinks, I did have the balls to say something, and I made it count. Or at least, he hoped it counted. Katniss wasn’t a fool; you could see she was coming around to the idea of ‘star-crossed lovers,’ before Peeta had to come here and let little miss perfect parting patch up his hands. The aide spreads an iodine-based ointment on the cuts. The smarting in his palms ramps up at the contact and the treatment stains the surrounding skin yellow. He winced, more from the realisation he's going to feel much greater pain than this in the arena, than because of the small cuts in his hands. She ignores the tribute as he ignores her, and starts to sort through packets of gauze bandages.

Yes, minor cuts and scraps were nothing compared to the arena. Will it hurt to die? Peeta almost snatched his hand back but she fixes him with shockingly turquoise eyes that must be lenses and with a firm pull repositions his hands so she can start to bind them.

Perta knows he is many things, but one thing he is not is a fool. Perhaps it was the only thing Katniss and he had in common. Of course it will hurt to die. His death will not come as the result of a minor scrape. His death is to be televised for entertainment so it will be brutal. He’ll be slashed to death by swords, bludgeoned by stones or whatever that hideously spiked ball thing they had in the training center was called. His mind flicks through all the ways he'd watched tributes die and he doesn’t move. Can’t move. The fear paralyzing but the aide gives him a small smile, pleased at how well he's co-operating. Over and over, clips from games of the past play out until finally his mind settles on an image he's never seen. Never borne witness to but had seen the end result countless times. An arrow swift and sure. A clean kill. Through the eye and into the brain. No time to register fear or pain or even if there was, it would be brief. A moment of crystalized shock and then nothingness.

“Let’s get something to eat, Peeta,” Portia touched him on the shoulder signalling the treatment is over. He lookedat her stupidly as if he can’t understand why he's here in this room. Why they are even bothering to patch him up if they are only waiting to tear him apart again once there is a camera on him, “Peeta?”

“Food, right,” his hands feel clumsy and awkward. Peeta nods his thanks to the medical aide.

“In two hours you’ll be able to remove the bandages and the wounds will have healed,” she says packing away her items, “Keep your hands dry until then.”

Portia leads the way back to the dining room. They don’t speak as they make their way there. Perhaps she too is thinking of the futility of this particular exercise, he thinks.

when Peeta steps into the room, Katniss’s eyes flash with guilt as she looks at his hands. It’s nothing he wants to say. It’s nothing compared to what I want to ask you now. Will you kill me Katniss Everdeen? Will you make my ending as pain-free a death as it is possible to imagine in that arena?

But he doesn’t ask.