**** This takes places after the end of the war and the assassination of Coin. Katniss has been kept in the old Training Centre since the assassination ****
After Plutarch's chummy visit where he explained to me what's been happening in Panem while I've been locked in this room I'm boarded onto a hovercraft. I'm being sent back to 12 and will be pardoned for my crimes when the time is right. As I enter the hovercraft I see Haymitch stood before me. A much bigger and squishier Pearl is in his arms. Instant dread fills my body, I never planned on seeing my daughter again and now the time I've let pass without her is visible to me in her physical changes.
"She doesn't have to come with us. We have other arrangements if you need some time. But I will say I've grown quite fond of the little thing." Says Haymitch tickling her stomach until she giggles.
I answer him by rushing over and pulling her into my arms. She comes easily as if she remembers me. I press her into my chest like I did when I said goodbye to her and brush my lips against the top of her head, "I'm so sorry." I whisper to her. Haymitch gives me the curtesy of pretending not to hear me and we settle down into our seats.
We arrive back in 12 by late afternoon and walk from what used to be the town centre to the Victors Village without speaking. They must have sent people to do some kind of clean up because all of the bodies burned to bone are gone and the rubble has been moved to create a path. I've already figured out that my mother isn't coming back, I knew it the moment Haymitch told me he was coming back to 12 too. To watch over me. His job as a mentor still isn't over. I add the guilt of making him come back to our destroyed home to my list of people's lives I've ruined.
Pearl lies asleep, curled into Haymitch's shoulder. He wasn't lying about becoming fond of her. When we reach his house he offers to take her for the night, I agree knowing my first night back in 12 will be a restless one.
And this is how we carry on for most of our days, taking shifts pulling ourselves together to look after Pearl. Greasy Sae is back in 12 too, she comes to the house twice a day to cook meals for me and remind me to shower. Sometimes I wonder if she's really only doing it for Pearl but, even when Pearl is with Haymitch, Greasy Sae still arrives right on schedule every day. I don't have the energy to show how truly grateful I am for her. But I think she knows.
One evening when Pearl is being too fussy to eat her dinner and all I can do is start to cry, she walks calmly over to me from the kitchen. Wipes my tears with a rag and lifts Pearl into her arms and carries her into the other room with her bowl of food. I stay sat at the table in some kind of trance. I hear Pearl wailing in protest over eating her food and Greasy Sae offering words of encouragement. After a while the wailing turns to laughter and then to silence as Pearl falls asleep in her crib. Greasy Sae returns from the kitchen and leads me by the arm up the stairs to my bed. She lays me down and pecks me lightly on the cheek before disappearing for the night. We never mention it, but from then on I understand her intentions. She truly does care for me.
On the days that Haymitch takes Pearl I barely move from my bed. I feel Prims absence most in the first few rays of daylight when I'm hardly awake. For a moment I expect her to be lying next to me in the bed like she has been from the time she was born. Instead I find it empty and the gaping hole inside my chest rips open a little bit wider. The days I open my eyes to see Pearl act as a bandage, but not a cure.
After finding Buttercup, alive and well, and back in 12 looking for Prim the hole in my chest rips so wide I think it might kill me. Surprisingly, it does the opposite. It starts to stitch back together. Soon, the mornings don't bring dread and emptiness. They bring smiles and laughter as Pearl places her pudgy hands on my cheeks and squeals for the day to start.
I start hunting again. At first it's strange without the fence, without anyone to trade with, without Gale. But like everything, I learn to live with it. I bring Greasy Sae fresh game and finally begin to feel like I'm paying back my debt to her. When spring rolls around I return from the woods to see a man crouched down by the steps to my house. I grip my bow a little tighter out of instinct until I notice Haymitch appear from around the corner with a mud-covered Pearl in his arms. He lifts up a hand to wave pointing the attending of the crouching man towards me. That's when I notice the blonde curls and that unmistakable sweet smile, its Peeta. I drop my bow to the ground at out disbelief and quicken my pace towards them, Haymitch makes his way up the stairs and into my house with Pearl, I hear him utter "Let's get you cleaned up for mommy" as his excuse for leaving.
Finally, I'm face to face with Peeta. Living in that better world that he promised me when we said goodbye at Tigris's shop.
"You came home." I look down at his hands to see he's planting flowers, they run in a line around the walls of my house. He follows my eyes.
"I found them by the woods. They're primrose." I fall into his arms and we embrace, I don't know how long for and I don't know how I'll ever pull away. He's back. I hadn't fully let myself feel how much I missed the safety of his arms until this moment. They're not as steady as they once were but with every second I feel them getting stronger.
We allow ourselves to grow back together slowly. The four of us make a habit of eating together every night and soon I don't need to rely on Greasy Sae anymore, although I continue to bring her fresh game as a thank you for helping me survive some of the worst months of my life.
Peeta still needs mine and Haymitch's help every now and then to sort the shiny memories from the real ones but mostly he figures them out just fine on his own. He starts baking again, he remembers that my favourite are cheese buns and soon I have a fresh basket every morning. For Pearl's first birthday he bakes and decorates a cake, its green with orange flowers. Something tells me the colours are less for Pearl and more for us, to let me know that he's on his way back to me.
We take each day as it comes, the same with the nights. The nightmares lessen when I let Peeta back into my bed. He tells me that his are better too when he only has to open his eyes to remind him that I'm safe.
On a winters night, when the howling of a storm means that Pearl has to lay on Peeta's chest next to my head for us all to be able to doze off he whispers something in the darkness.
"You love me. Real or not real?"
And because there isn't a doubt in my mind, I tell him. "Real."
YOU ARE READING
MOCKINGJAY: REIMAGINED
FanfictionA continuation of 'Catching Fire: Reimagined'. Katniss has been rescued from the arena by the rebels and now faces the rest of her pregnancy during a war and without Peeta by her side.
