Chapter Text
i. the village
When Katniss was seven years old, her father showed her the first of many corpses.
It was a stag, its antlers long and proud even half-buried in the mulch of the woods. Its eyes were replaced with half-formed clumps of wet leaves, and its fur and skin were exchanged for green moss soft as the blonde down on Prim’s toddler head. Where moss didn’t cover, mushrooms did, dotting its flank where white spots did as a fawn. What caught Katniss’s eye most, however, was the young beech tree growing through the cavern of the stag’s pelvis, bark bone-white and tender leaves a gentler green than the moss.
Her father knelt beside it, and Katniss leaned against the butter-soft leather of his jacket, not wanting to get closer to the bones than she had to. “Do you know what happened here, Katniss?”
“It died.”
Her father chuckled. “It did. A long time ago, looks like. What kind of mushrooms are these?” He nudged her off his shoulder, an unsubtle go on, get closer.
Katniss knelt cautiously on the mulch beside him, still a good foot away from the deer. She noted the characteristic hollows across the tall, skinny caps of the mushrooms, and her mouth watered. “Morels.”
Her father kissed the side of her head. “Good job.” He pulled a small canvas bag off his belt and opened it. “Now–why did the morels grow on the deer?” He methodically harvested the morels, plucking them not just on top of the bones, but where they grew underneath as well.
Katniss picked a few from behind the deer’s skull. “I don’t know.”
“Because, Katniss,” her father said. “When bodies die, things grow well where they were. Life taking after death. That tree and these mushrooms see what the deer left behind in its meat and skin and bones, and they decide that they can use it.” Her father tied up the bag and wiped the dust on his pants. “And then we get to use it, and make your mother happy.” He stood up and offered Katniss the half-full bag of mushrooms. “You wanna give ‘em to her?”
Katniss took the bag, grinning.
That evening, they cooked up the mushrooms with the squirrel her father caught and the dandelion greens Katniss picked, and they fell asleep with full bellies. For just a while longer, Katniss did not think of death and bodies and what is left behind.
The place that had been District 12 grows from the death that had filled it. It takes time to sift the charred bones from the glass-and-stone rubble, but they do–those from District 12 who returned, and those from 8 and 11 and 4 and even 13 who decided to follow the Mockingjay to rebuild from ash. It doesn’t take long for them to learn that Katniss is not the Mockingjay here, and that the Mockingjay is no longer needed. Here, she is Katniss Everdeen, digging graves in the Meadow because she can’t look at the bones without dry heaving, but she’s going to do something to fix her home. Delly digs beside her, and Peeta brings quick bread to everyone digging and pitchers of water to drink or to wash their hands of ashes, and the old goat man brings a wheelbarrow of bones with a gruff nod, and Katniss digs until her hands form callouses and the Meadow becomes a graveyard.
The people from District 11 teach them how to till the ashes into the soil, and the next summer wheat and corn grow where children had once stood, fearing they would be reaped and discarded like chaff and cob.
Not anymore, Katniss thinks, as she walks down the cut-through path to home. The breeze brushes the stalks of corn against each other, and she turns her formerly-deaf ear to hear it. Good thing: there are no Hunger Games. Good thing: they taught us to grow food.
She looks toward the lit-up windows of the homes in the formerly Victor’s Village, now just the Village. It’s drawing dusk, but three children chase each other between the wildflower-spotted lawns. One of them is a toddler, no more than three, and her thighs are fat-round as she clumsily runs after the other children. Good thing: babies have fat thighs. Good thing: no one makes kids stop playing.
All the houses in Victor’s Village are filled. Almost all by multiple families, living together in community the way they’d never been able to before. Children whose parents build the medical factory or sow the fields are watched by other people who live with them, strangers from other Districts, from opposite ends of Twelve, turned aunts and uncles and cousins. An improbability, an impossibility, happening where, if Snow had had his way, nothing would have been, ever again. Good thing, she thinks. People help each other.
The door to her home creaks slightly as she enters, and she takes in the smell of bread and stew. “Home,” she calls. She hangs her game bag on the hook. Nothing today–she didn't hunt, really, this time. That’s a still-unfamiliar privilege: being able to go to the woods just to sit in the summer breeze.
“Kitchen!” Peeta responds. He steps forward to stand in the entryway–sleeves rolled up, towel over his shoulder, wooden spoon in hand.
She swipes her finger up the bowl of the spoon, licks the gravy off. “That’s good,” she says. Peeta smiles. Good thing: sometimes I make Peeta smile.
“About damn time, sweetheart.” Haymitch sits at the kitchen table, legs kicked up on the spare fourth kitchen chair. “We took all this time to make dinner, and you’re late.”
“I made dinner,” Peeta says unnecessarily.
“I stirred.”
Katniss takes the spoon from Peeta. “Sit. I’ll dish.”
The stew is thick and brown, full of carrots and potatoes and chunks of meat. Probably from the squirrels she brought in yesterday. The carrots, though… “Carrots?”
“Tulsee’s garden grew a million,” Peeta says. “She wouldn’t even take anything–she just told me to take them away. There’s even more in the pantry.”
“I’m looking into distilling carrot liquor,” Haymitch says. When Katniss and Peeta both glare at him, he holds his hands up in mercy. “Joking.”
She ladles the stew into bowls and tears a chunk of bread off for each; today’s is seeded and thick-crusted, and still warm. She sets the bowls down, and the three of them eat. With spoons, despite what Effie thought years ago, though Katniss thinks she could lick the bowl clean. She settles for using the bread to sop up the remaining gravy.
The bread is one of Haymitch’s favorites, as is the stew. They won’t acknowledge it, just as there won’t be a birthday cake or a birthday song. She’d left him a new pocketknife by his pillow this morning; he has it tucked into his belt where his old knife used to sit. Peeta made sweet buns this morning, another of Haymitch’s favorites. His birthday, she understood, was still difficult, even when the sun no longer rose on the reaping.
Conversation flows as easy as breathing, with the lulls natural with someone as non-talkative as Katniss feeling comfortable instead of awkward. When they finish eating, it’s Haymitch who collects the dishes and washes them in the sink, and his hands don’t shake.
It didn’t used to be so easy. Before Peeta came home, when Katniss couldn’t drag herself off the couch, let alone down to Haymitch’s own house, she’d only eat if Greasy Sae cooked for her, and Haymitch subsisted off what he could make for himself. Once Peeta came, they drew back together. Peeta was always the glue, after all.
It was her idea for Haymitch to move in, though. Once Peeta started cooking, he came over for dinner nearly every night, and would relax on their couch until he finally decided to go back home, long into the evening. More than once, he ended up falling asleep there. Neither minded. They were just glad he slept from normal tiredness instead of passing out from drink. He still drinks, of course, but most times he drinks less. When he slept there, they just covered him with a knit blanket and made sure he had his pocketknife in his hand, and were glad if he stayed in the morning.
“He should just stay,” Katniss said, one night in their bed. They lay together, her back to Peeta’s front, and maybe that’s why she could talk about something like this–because she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see the softening in his creek-blue eyes. “I don’t–like him being alone.”
“Me neither.” Peeta’s hand tightened around her stomach.
“We have too much room anyway. And his house–if we clean it up, someone else could take it.”
“Katniss–”
“He could drink too much and choke–”
Peeta nipped her shoulder through her nightshirt, and that caught her off guard enough to shut her up. “Katniss. It’s a good idea.”
Of course, Peeta was the one who told him, after breakfast, once Haymitch made noises about going back home for the day. “Let me go with you.”
Haymitch’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Peeta shrugged. “So I can help you grab your things. You’re moving in.”
“I’m not–”
“Yes, you are,” Katniss said. “There’s five bedrooms here. Take one.”
“Unless you prefer the couch,” Peeta offered.
Haymitch opened his mouth and raised a finger as if to retort, but it all faded. “You… want me to stay here?”
“You’re here half the time anyway,” Katniss said.
Peeta puts an arm in front of her. “ Yes, Haymitch. We do.”
“Won’t be, ah–in the way of your love-nest?”
"Love-nest? ” Katniss said.
“You’re lovebirds!” Haymitch argued. “This is a love-nest!”
Peeta put himself between Katniss and Haymitch. “You’re moving in.” He looked between the two of them, a hesitant half-smile on his face. “We stick together, yeah? Real or not real?”
“Real,” Katniss said automatically.
They both looked to Haymitch. His grey Seam eyes darted uncertainly between them. “Real. Just–” he raised his hands to his chest defensively. “If you have kids, I’m not babysitting. And I don’t cook.”
“Good,” Katniss said, ignoring the pang of panic at the kids comment. “I don’t want us to get food poisoning.”
“Then it’s a deal,” Peeta said. “The Victors of District 12, housemates.”
And it, somehow, works. Against all odds, works. Now, when Haymitch has a nightmare, he is not alone in an echoey, too-big house. Half the time, when he wakes up from one and goes to the kitchen for tea and liquor and distraction, Katniss is there, or Peeta, or both of them. Some nights turn into morning, all three sipping tea in nightclothes, silent or talking, until dawn breaks through the gauzy kitchen curtains. One-eared Buttercup sits in the windowsill when he’s not exploring town and begging for scraps, and Katniss is finally able to look at him without wanting to sob.
Haymitch’s geese graze in the backyard, each named after someone they know. Johanna is, naturally, the most crotchety goose, and Peeta has a bum leg, and Finnick defends the flock and is somehow goose-handsome. The one named Sid is the smallest, and the one named Lenore Dove is the most beautiful.
Deciding to find him geese was easy. It had been another bedtime conversation that Katniss broached facing away. Peeta reckoned he could fashion an incubator–”Basically an oven, yeah?”--and Katniss knew she could find goose eggs by the lake in the spring. Getting the eggs was another store entirely. Geese, much like many former tributes, are sharp-eyed, mean creatures who don’t take well to their flock being disturbed. Katniss had to hide out in the trees and shoot an arrow at one goose in order to get the laying goose to squawk and run in defense just so she could swoop in and scoop up an egg or two. It worked a couple times, but the last mamma goose wasn’t so easily fooled, and Katniss had to put an arrow through her eye. Made a good dinner, though, and she only had two eggs in the first place. She wasn’t upset, and any qualms she could have had were thoroughly quashed when she revealed the pile of eggs to Haymitch and his face fell to pure, childlike joy. He’d enjoyed the roast, too.
They share cups of tea, now. The dishes are washed and put away, the leftover stew stored in the icebox, and the three of them sit comfortably in the living room. “The Meadow’s growing back in,” she says. “There’s wildflowers all over.”
There is no marker for the mass grave in the Meadow. Cold stone would have never felt like a right memorial. Instead, the people of Twelve live on in the stories of the people who escaped, in the coal dust still surrounding the empty mine, in the flowers just starting to peek out of the upturned dirt of the Meadow.
The poetry of it feels almost heavy-handed, like something Plutarch would have come up with in a propo. The Meadow had saved Twelve, once, when Gale led whoever he could there, out of the fire and ash of the Capitol’s bombs. The people that the Meadow couldn’t save feed it, growing it greener and brighter than it ever had before. She thinks of her father, walking her through that Meadow to get home with their bounty of morels. Life taking after death, she remembers.
She wonders if there can ever be enough life to take back all that death.
“There’s primrose growing,” Katniss murmurs. “In the Meadow.”
Peeta takes her hand in his, kisses the back, runs his thumb over her knuckles. “And it’ll keep growing.”
“It better.” Haymitch leans forward, hands intertwined between his legs. “No one likes a muddy graveyard.” He knocks his tea back like a shot and sets the cup on the low table between them before standing up. “Goin’ to bed.” He moves stiffly towards the stairs, but stops and touches Katniss’s shoulder. “You’re… we’re doing good, sweetheart.” He shakes her shoulder. “Real good.” He points at Peeta. “Real.”
When he leaves, Peeta settles against the couch, and Katniss lays against him. He plays with the end of her braid, and Katniss thinks she could melt into him. “Do you want more primrose in front of the house?” She can feel the quiet rumble of his voice in his chest. “We can dig some up tomorrow.”
Prim’s bones aren’t here. She doesn’t know where they are, and she never will. She can almost be fine with that, with primrose growing deep in the Meadow, under a willow.
She kisses him, and he, as always, understands it as yes.