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“You love Haymitch,” Peeta suddenly breaks the silence. “Real or not real?”
Katniss looks up from her current knitting project. She started to pick knitting up around… three months ago? Was it five? Even though she personally thinks it’s such a transparently old lady hobby, it’s something to do with her hands when the thought of trekking into the woods sounds more like a chore than an escape. The first time she stomped into Peeta’s house with a tangled ball of yarn trailing behind her, he just blinked and dragged a comfortable cushioned chair next to his easel. Peeta bakes and Katniss hunts, and when Peeta paints, Katniss knits parallel to him.
She gave her first finished project, a gray scarf that is more clumps of yarn and holes of missing stitches to be any effective wearable clothing, to Haymitch. He took one look at it and told her she should just continue trying to pass off Cinna’s designs as her own. She threw it to a puddle of recently dried vomit and hasn't been to his house since.
In her silence, Peeta’s eyes are still trained to his canvas. A field of bright, colorful flowers is spreading across the page. There's a slight furrow to his eyebrows. His tone doesn't indicate this question is one where he’s scrambling for confirmation on what’s real or not in this reality he lives in, but confusing enough he feels the need to tack the key phrase at the end.
Katniss finally asks, “Define this ‘love’ for him that you're talking about?”
Peeta glances at her. A wry smile plays on his lips. “Do you really need me to, or are you just stalling?”
She huffs. That’s fair. She turns back to her needles. “Real, I guess.”
“You guess,” Peeta says. It doesn't sound resentful. Nowadays, Peeta is more willing to meet her halfway in challenge, but it's never with hatred. Katniss can't say that she minds. It makes up for when she doesn't feel like rising up to a challenge at all. “See, this is why I’m not sure with you two, sometimes.”
“You're not sure we care for each other?”
“I’m not sure that between the two of you, you can express that care without this…” Peeta trails off. He picks up his words again as his brush adds a new scribble. “Venom, exchanged between you.”
Katniss frowns. The thin needles click against each other’s wood surface. “And that's on me to fix?”
Peeta shifts. Katniss can tell that he's stopped painting and has turned to watch her, but she refuses to look up from the yarn twisting and locking around each other. “I didn't say that. I’m not even saying it’s something that needed fixing, Katniss. I’m just saying that sometimes it still makes me feel like I’m out of the loop,” he explains.
“Feel free to pick up a vice and—” be meaner to everyone, was what she was trying to say. But it calls to her mind another Peeta, locking his hands around her throat with a murderous look. She hunches further into herself. That Peeta is no longer here, but that Katniss, who learned to shoot back at Peeta with unkind words, apparently never left. She only knows how to be venomous and deadly to everything around her. “And copy us,” she finishes lamely.
Thankfully, Peeta doesn't touch her, probably sensing the change in her mood. “Tried. Don’t think it's for me.”
Katniss sends a half-hearted kick to his side. He easily twists his body to avoid it. There's a smile in his voice as he says, “You know I’m not critiquing either of you, Katniss. I’m just trying to understand.”
“You already understand me and Haymitch better than anyone out there ever could,” she mutters sullenly.
“But not in the way you two understand each other.”
Doesn't he? Maybe he doesn't. He doesn't have the nonverbal understanding she and Haymitch share, where they can communicate by just exchanging a look, by even the wordless silver parachutes falling into the arena. But that's simply because he’s Peeta. He's still the best and the kindest between all of them. Snow tried to take that away from them, before. And still Peeta bounced back, dandelion blooming along with the spring. Stubborn brightness growing between the cracks of Katniss’ dark world.
For Peeta to understand what Katniss and Haymitch share that he doesn't, he would need to share their rot. The acid of hunger, rising from the stomach, spat out of the tongue. Meant to hurt. Meant to keep distance. Peeta knows hunger, but he also knows how to share what little he has. People like Katniss and Haymitch, what little they have is never enough. What little they have is always taken away. Katniss would never wish that fate on Peeta, ever.
She doesn't know how to articulate this with the warranted honesty, though, not without the promise of Peeta raising his eyebrows in response, which would then indicate that he’s subtly trying to suggest she should call Dr. Aurelius again. So she just shrugs, and says, “We love you the way you are, Peeta.”
Peeta laughs lightly. “Well, I know that one’s real,” he says.
Katniss finds that she’s also smiling without meaning to. She looks up again. Peeta has drawn a pair of doves taking flight from a tree off-canvas, across the field of flowers, heading into the sunset.
She also finds that she's still thinking about it, even after their arts and crafts session of the day is over. Her relationship with Haymitch. She knows for certain that they care about each other, at least. Even after everything that went down, she still considers him her family. She can't help it. The list is short enough as it is, the living ones she’s still in contact with even shorter. Katniss and Haymitch, though, just about anyone can see that their relationship isn't… the warmest.
Haymitch, he’s not her father, who taught her of melodies that silence the birds and arrows that pierce the woods. Not her mother, who is a skilled healer, but an even bigger expert in the art of disappearing. Not Cinna, not Boggs, who both had betted on her until their bitter ends. He’s hers and Peeta’s mentor, but she's starting to think that she's not quite sure what that title entails, when the arenas are destroyed and the current president doesn't thirst for children’s blood to spill in the name of peacekeeping.
Haymitch is the old drunk of a neighbor, Katniss thinks with exasperation. To his credit, he's been getting better with the alcohol intake, recently. But there are still days where he gets into a certain bender and drowns himself in white liquor again. They all have bad days. It's a small mercy that the bad days now happen here and there, more odd dates than not, instead of every day, all around the year.
She seems to have caught him on one of those benders today. Katniss bangs on his door, more to announce her presence than from actually expecting him to invite her in. True to form, no one answers the door. She enters anyway. Crosses the room, avoiding the glass shards, to the backyard. Throws some feed to the geese so they lessen the volume of the honking before they get neighbor complaints. Not that anyone in their right mind would ever complain about what Haymitch Abernathy does in his house. Even the craziest District Twelve citizen—whoever still survived and chose to come back, anyway, which, let's be honest, Katniss probably holds the crown now—would know that it's a lost cause.
Throughout all of this, Haymitch doesn't stir where he is snoring on his dinner table. He’s surrounded by shattered bottles, the space rank with the smell of spirits and body fluids. Katniss stands on the doorway and watches him for a moment. It's still a miserable state of life, but that's never stopped her from reaching out before. She is even less inclined to be judgemental towards him in her current situation.
She gives him the grace of shaking his shoulders. When he predictably doesn't wake, she splashes water on top of his head. Katniss takes a few steps back as Haymitch does his waking up routine: open eyes, slash the air, scream. His eyes slowly focus onto her. She tries to keep the expression on her face as mild as possible. He goes back to laying face down with a groan.
“What?” he grumbles to the wood grain.
Katniss considers this. “Did you throw away my scarf?” she asks.
“I thought Peeta’s the one with memory problems, sweetheart, not you,” Haymitch says. She keeps looking at him. “You've never left your things here. Other than the geese.”
“Haymitch,” Katniss calls with more force.
He grumbles some more unintelligible words to the table, their biting tone conveyed enough. “Laundry,” he grunts out finally.
“You have never done laundry,” Katniss reminds him.
Haymitch doesn't correct her, but he also doesn't give more explanation. Katniss briskly walks away from the dining room.
Not a chance she’s about to sift through Haymitch’s dirty laundry. First of all, they're all over the place. So her second best guess is the quote unquote “laundry room” that the houses in Victor’s Village have. It’s just another room in the back of the house, really. It doesn't have the Capitol’s advanced washing machine. But it’s a well-ventilated room, with a working tap and its drain, a few buckets, and a washing board. Clothing lines are installed from one wall crossing to the other.
Only one item hangs on Haymitch’s clothing line. Katniss approaches it, carefully touching the yarn. It’s almost dry, and smells faintly of detergent. She didn't even know Haymitch has detergent in his house. She drops her hand.
When she returns to the dining room, Haymitch has moved from the dinner table, if just to sit on the chair with an arm over his eyes as he periodically makes pained moans. Katniss finds the cleanest glass around and fills it with water. Haymitch still doesn't open his eyes as she sets it in front of him with a few tabs of common painkillers.
“Peeta expects you for dinner tonight,” Katniss tells him.
“Okay, see you later,” Haymitch replies, too quick for it to be genuine.
“You're not that drunk to forget that this isn't optional.” She kicks his chair. Haymitch removes his arm to glare at her. “I’m just here to give an early warning. You know Peeta will drag you by force if he has to.”
“You’re both very delightful company,” Haymitch says, picking up Effie’s lexicon without any care for the proper mannerisms. “Did you find your scarf?”
Katniss matches his scowl. “No.” Then she adds, with a little difficulty, “Only one of yours.”
“Hm,” Haymitch says. She bristles at his squint-eyed look. “Must’ve left it somewhere else, then.”
“Yeah,” she agrees shortly.
Haymitch turns to drink his water. That's when he pauses as he sees the other new thing on the table. Under the glass full of water is a bright yellow knitted coaster. It’s only slightly neater than the gray scarf. It looks totally out of place among the dull mess on top of the table. Haymitch slowly takes sips of the water as he picks the coaster with his other hand. He dangles it by the edge as if inspecting a particularly weird bug.
“Is this gonna be your new hobby now?” he asks. “Peeta would be more appreciative of gifts. Especially from you.”
“He’ll get one after I perfect my skills.”
“Ah, so I’m your practice dummy,” Haymitch says. He puts the coaster down again. Katniss doesn't point out that he’s setting it on a relatively clean spot on the table. “Really flattering me, sweetheart.”
And so this happens a few more times. Katniss ventures to knit something a little more challenging each time. To varying degrees of success. Peeta makes it known that he finds all of this very sweet. Very rich, coming from the boy who, without fail, delivers both her and Haymitch fresh bread every single day. One time, when the three of them go on a picnic to the Meadow, Haymitch strolls late with one of the geese wearing an oversized knitted summer hat on its back. Peeta snorts so loudly the water he was drinking comes shooting out of his nose. Katniss pettily doesn't pat his back at the following coughing fit.
She knits proper geese-sized summer hats next. She makes a few of them. The same number as the amount of geese now parading around Haymitch’s backyard, since they're very small sized anyway. Peeta is there the whole process, grin permanently fixed on his face as he paints.
Of course, there are days when her hands shake too hard to even pick up the needles. Days where even Peeta’s presence doesn't help, and it's all she can do to send him away without yelling and throwing things and saying terrible things at him. Because it's not his fault, and he doesn't deserve it. It’s always her fault. Everything that went wrong is still her fault.
Then Haymitch materializes by her bedroom’s doorway anyway, despite the fact that she’s sure she locked the door. He ducks from the pillow and other nearby things that she lobbed at him. Katniss yells terrible things at him. It's a surprise that he doesn't shoot back. He just enters the room, sits beside her on the bed, and says nothing. Not even reaching out to comfort her.
“Why are you here?” Katniss asks to her knees, where her head is buried between them.
“Peeta asked,” Haymitch replies.
Of course. “Just leave me alone.”
“I don't think I will, sweetheart.”
That nickname. She recalls a memory, from early on, when she thought it was meant to be demeaning and patronizing. But at some point, it stopped sounding like that to her ears. It’s Haymitch, quipping back at her. It's Haymitch, offering support for her.
Haymitch still gets drunk. He sleeps with his knife and wakes swinging it. He’s dreadful company, really, and a worse role model. He raises geese and Peeta drags him over for dinners between three lonely houses. He grudgingly gives valuable lessons when asked for it. I’m still your mentor, he had said, a war and a lifetime ago.
Katniss lets her body tilt to the side. Haymitch’s arm is there to wrap around her.
It’s hours before either of them speaks again. “I’m not good at this,” Katniss whispers.
She is sure Haymitch has dozed off a few times, but he answers without too long of a pause after her words. “At what?”
You love Haymitch. Real or not real? “Surviving. Supporting. Loving.” She looks up at Haymitch at last. He looks exhausted. She can see the thin scar lines from where she clawed at his face a long time ago. She looks down at her hands. There’s no blood under her fingernails. She can still see the blood under her fingernails; the blood all over her hands. “Either. All of them.”
Haymitch huffs a laugh under his breath. “For the record, I think you're doing just great.”
“I can't do it.” Haymitch seems ready to launch into a spiel, so Katniss continues speaking before he could. “I can't do it without messing up. I can't do it without thinking it’ll end in a disaster again, Haymitch, because it will. Because it's all my fault.”
Haymitch doesn't respond for a minute. His arm just tightens around her. They mirror a scene from another time. Still in this same district, where victors can come home—with the catch that home has changed, and they have, too.
All he has to say is the same words as before: “I know.”
Haymitch is terrible at comfort, when it's questions that also plague him still. Downsides of being too similar to each other.
Katniss sniffles wetly. “I want Peeta now.”
“Oh, yes, you always want him, even when you weren't aware about it,” Haymitch says. Katniss shoves at him roughly. “Okay, okay. Just celebrating my freedom here.”
Despite his words, he keeps his arm in its position as he drags her out of the bedroom. Peeta is downstairs, a basket of bread still wafting steam on the table in front of him. He stops restlessly doodling on his sketchbook as they appear, looking up with a worried expression. Haymitch just grabs him by the arm and drags both of them now. He deposits them on the couch.
They sit side by side, Katniss flanked by Peeta and Haymitch, until she stops choking on phantom ash.
Between the bad days, all the more uneventful days pass. Katniss goes hunting. She improves her knitting. She finishes the first project that she actually feels proud of. She gifts the gentle orange scarf patterned with white flowers to Peeta. His lips tremble like he’s about to cry, and she kisses it away.
She visits Haymitch’s house again. Against all odds, he’s not drunk or even nursing a hangover today. She joins him, sitting on the steps of his back door to watch the geese and the sunset. He raises an eyebrow at the green-and-orange scarf she drops on his lap. It is Reaping Day, but there hasn’t been any reaping in years, and there will never be anymore. It is simply Haymitch’s birthday, and Peeta made them a great feast today, and Katniss thinks of the question, you love Haymitch, real or not real?
Despite it being too warm, Haymitch throws the scarf loosely around his neck. Katniss laughs, a sound that she is relearning to voice out, and presses their sides together.
Real, without a doubt.