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The next morning, Katniss feels none of the impetus she felt the day before. She doesn't want to meet for negotiations. She doesn't even want to get out of bed or go for a walk before she has any obligations. It felt like every time she spoke, more problems piled onto her existing problems, so she buries herself deeper under the covers.
"Hey, I'm going to Johanna's," Peeta says, leaning down to talk quietly to her. She can see from his cuff that he's already dressed.
She wants to ask what he's doing, why he would go over to the home of the person who obviously is just pouring gasoline on this disaster of a strike, but Peeta always saw things a little differently than she did. Or maybe he really just wanted to use her oven. Either way, she can't muster the effort to question him, and waves him off. She feels bad about it after, that he must think she's so dismissive of the obvious efforts he is making to actually complete the mission they were sent here for, but she doesn't know how to stop being the way that she is.
Eventually she gets up, unsure if it's been minutes or hours since Peeta left. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, unfamiliar with her appearance after purposely avoiding it most of the time. The scars are visible now, with her short-sleeved sleep shirt: warped, discolored skin on both her forearms, and more burns that she still had covered on her chest.
Her hair is long, almost unruly, especially since she doesn't even bother to braid it every day anymore. But besides that, she's still herself. She's lost some muscle, perhaps, after a year of sitting around, but she still tended the garden and heaved the bags of flour from the market alongside Peeta. Even a lazy life in District 12 came with some strain.
She takes a shower, though the water never quite gets hot, then brushes out her hair and puts it in a neat braid. Then she gets dressed, brushes her teeth, and goes to the Canteen. Haymitch is there, so she sits with him, though she isn't sure she has much to say to him. "Where's Peeta?" he asks. "Plutarch was looking for him."
"Plutarch was?"
Haymitch shrugs. "Something about Paylor's person calling back. Oh, and he's got an earful for us about the Barons, but I told him to save it for later."
It must be a call about the surplus equipment. "Peeta went to Johanna's."
"Why?"
She shrugs. She's hungry, she can feel it in her stomach, but her mouth doesn't want to accept the food. There's something off-putting about everything, about eating, about talking, and she just wants to leave, but she can't even do that, thanks to the blockade. "I don't know. I'll let him know Plutarch is looking for him."
"I'll go with you." He stands, picking up his empty dishes, and she follows. She hasn't eaten much, but even without him there, she can feel the residents' eyes on her. They had seen the confrontation on the train platform the night before. They saw her as a representative of the Capitol, an impediment to getting what they wanted. She tosses her uneaten food and follows Haymitch down the path.
"You've been here before?"
He ignores her for a moment, before answering without looking back. "We were here on your Victory Tour."
"We didn't go to the Victor's Village."
"I did."
She realizes that he often left them, either to see friends, like Chaff, or to go to the local tavern. By the time they'd gotten to 7, she wouldn't have even questioned it. She imagines him sleeping with Johanna on the Victory Tour, the weird relationship mentors must have when they can only see each other for a month every year. She paints over the memory, imagining him smoking tobacco with Blight instead.
When they arrive, it's obvious that only one house is lived in. The others are all boarded up, while Johanna's has the windows thrown open and what looks to be a greenhouse in the back. The door is open but Katniss knocks on the screen door.
"Peeta?" Katniss calls, though she can already smell the bread baking. She can hear Johanna laughing, and it irritates her, how the two of them can get along while all she can do is get upset. Logically, she knows this is unfair, that Johanna and Peeta's relationship started in what might be the worst possible way, so if they can be friends now, who is she to stop them, but she has so little now that she holds onto Peeta tightly, possessively.
"I'm in here, Katniss," he calls back.
Still, she hesitates, because this is Johanna's house, and she had fought with Johanna last night. But Johanna herself comes to the door, this time in flannel pajama pants and a tank top, her hair a little mussed, as if Peeta arrived before she was properly ready to start her day. But he probably did, Katniss realizes. His baker instincts kept an early schedule. "You can come in," Johanna says. "Both of you."
When Johanna extends her arm to open the door, Katniss can see them, the veins swollen from morphling abuse. But then she's turned away, and Johanna is back to her conversation with Peeta, Katniss and Haymitch training behind.
It appears Peeta has taken over the kitchen, which didn't look particularly well-used in the first place. The rest of the house, on the other hand, wasn't exactly neat, with clothes strewn about, papers here and there, and most notably, tobacco on just about every surface.
Johanna was perched at the dining table, hand-rolling cigarettes on a little tray while Peeta leaned against the counter, his loaves of bread apparently in the oven already. Katniss could see racks of dried tobacco in the sitting room, and stacks of already-rolled cigarettes here and there. "Is this what you do?" she asks.
"What? I already told you, I sell cigarettes," she says. "Liquor is in the tall cabinet," she says, without looking up from her work. Katniss supposes this comment was not directed at her, as Haymitch goes to the directed spot and grabs the bottle of white liquor and finds two glasses, pouring a couple fingers in one and a proper half glass in the other. He hands the lighter pour to Johanna.
"Seriously? It's like 10AM," Peeta complains.
Johanna shrugs, sipping, and Haymitch takes the seat across from her at the table. Katniss is confused by their domesticity, for two people who allegedly have issues to deal with. "I thought that was when you were a kid," she says, trying to keep the conversation on track.
Finally, Johanna looks up, and Katniss feels unmoored, the only one not sitting or leaning on something. "Well, what am I supposed to do?" Johanna asks. "The victor's pension is off the table, and I don't have any fucking skills."
Katniss is saved from answering by a knock at the door. "Who is it?" Johanna calls out.
"It's Poppy and Dax!"
"Come in!"
Katniss watches as a couple comes in, maybe in their early 30s. She smiles politely at Katniss and comes up to the table where Johanna is sitting. "Look what we brought!" she says, presenting something in a glass jar.
"Poppy, what is that?"
"Currant jam! Bet you haven't had any in ages!"
Johanna smiles, and it's like Katniss is looking at a different person. "No, I was always at the Games during the season. Peeta, how long until that bread is done?"
"Only a few minutes now," he reports.
"Oh, I have something for you, too," Johanna says, reaching behind her into a basket. She pulls out a little sachet and hands it over. "You wanted the flaky salt, right?"
"You remembered!"
Now, Johanna stands, going to the other room. "What will it be? Two dozen?"
"Make it three, we've been stressed," the man says, his voice nervous. "We have savings to go without work, of course, but someone said the President is down in 2. If she brings the Peacekeepers up here…"
It seemed that the two of them didn't know who Katniss and Peeta were, or at least why they were there. "They'll cave before that happens," Johanna says. "Here, 3 dozen, but just pay me for 2. Strike-era discount."
For the first time, Katniss wonders if Johanna's theory has any merit. Was Paylor just going to suppress insurrections, or was this the insurrection, and she was readying force if need be? After arguing over the price a bit, Poppy and Dax leave, but Katniss realizes that Haymitch doesn't protest what Johanna has said this time. Had he changed his mind, or had he just been making a show of arguing in front of Plutarch?
"Oh, Peeta, Plutarch said Paylor's assistant had called for you," Katniss says, remembering finally why she had come.
He stands up straight, all focus. "Ok, I better get to that. Johanna, you don't have a phone, do you?"
She shakes her head. "Stolen, just like my television."
He looks around, forming a plan. "Katniss, you know how to pull the bread, can you take it out in four minutes?"
She nods, a little unsure about being left with Haymitch and Johanna, but there is little she wouldn't do as a favor to Peeta. "And bring one loaf back for us!" he says, shoving on his shoes and dashing off.
Before the 4 minutes are even up, a second person comes to pick up tobacco, though this man is older and wants loose tobacco for his pipe. "Yeah, I weighed it last night before I went to bed, I have it," Johanna says, climbing over what looks to be a stack of books to get to the envelope.
"You didn't have to do that," he says, chuckling a bit. "You moved all that lumber onto the tracks then came home and weighed out the orders? Gonna make yourself sick again."
"You know I didn't move shit," she says, sticking her tongue out at him.
"Oh, here, Acer said to give you these, but they'll be the last ones for a while." He hands her a bag, and she thanks him, and Katniss notices that with this man also, Johanna refuses to accept the full price he tries to offer her.
Once he's gone, she opens the bag and inspects the contents. It's just scraps of paper as far as Katniss can tell, but the four minutes is up, so she takes a kitchen towel to protect her hands and removes the bread from the oven.
"What are those?" Haymitch asks.
"Industrial waste," Johanna says. She takes a sip of the liquor as she sits down again. "Really thin slips of paper that come out of Acer's mill. I use them as rolling papers."
"You were sick?"
Johanna's hands freeze where she had been tying the bag back up at Haymitch's question, and Katniss wishes she was still clanging around in the oven to take away from the overwhelming silence that fills the house suddenly. She shakes her head. "No worse than in the war," she says, as if that was saying anything, as if Johanna's condition in District 13 was much better than 'alive'.
She places the bag down in the floor and sits up again, straighter than before, and sighs. "You know, I used to think the people here hated me. I used to only talk to Blight and Jackson, because I thought no one wanted me around, or they resented me, or I was horrible because I never mentored anyone to victory. I don't know."
She sips the liquor again, finishing the glass. Again, the wince that Katniss isn't sure she'll ever get used to. "But I realized that I just hated myself. I don't know if I've ever felt worse than I did at the end of the war. But the people here are kind, and generous, and they took care of me. So all I want to do is make sure Panem works for them, too."
The bread has cooled a bit, so Katniss tips one loaf out of the pan. Johanna eyes it with obvious interest, and finds a knife that could function as a bread knife, Katniss supposes, and cuts into it. Then she opens the currant jam and spreads some on top. "Oh it's amazing, you have to try some!"
So Katniss does, and then Haymitch does, and she has to admit, it is a very good combination. Katniss gathers that this is more or less what Johanna does all day: run a discount tobacco trading post, chats with her neighbors, and rolls cigarettes. It's not that much different from her life in 12, really, except that she has Peeta and stays away from town usually, and Johanna has no one and doesn't seem at all averse to trips to town or trips to District 4, even.
She gets the second loaf of bread out of the pan, and Johanna offers her a tea towel to wrap it in. Johanna also hands Haymitch a couple cigarettes. "Is this a bribe?" he asks her, his tone more lighthearted than Katniss has heard it all trip.
"Why? Will it work? You can have more if it's working," she teases back.
And there's something almost painful in their comfort level, in the way that he almost reaches to tuck her hair behind her ear and then stops himself, and how she clocks the gesture and bites her lip, so Katniss turns away to give them a second if they want it. Seeing them together, she wonders how she ever doubted the authenticity of the claim that they had once been lovers.
And a minute later, Haymitch is in stride with Katniss, walking back to town, lighting up one of the cigarettes that Johanna rolled. "You could have stayed," Katniss says.
He shakes his head. "You heard her. She needed me, and I couldn't be there." He takes a drag and pulls the cigarette out to exhale, continuing on before she can respond. "I don't regret it!" he says. "I needed to see the war out to the end, I needed to get you home. My personal life came second. But these are the consequences to deal with."
That day for lunch, Katniss goes to a different restaurant, chosen only because she sees they have a television. She has come to realize that televisions are not common in District 7, which is probably why someone stole Johanna's. She sits at the counter and eats her sandwich, watching the Capitol News Network show some stories about the delays in rebuilding due to the lumber shortage, the travel blockade to 7, and the travel ban to 2, due to 'irregular military activity'. It is more or less what she expects, but she's relieved when she doesn't see protests, burning buildings, troops mobilizing. Then again, those things could be happening, but just not given national television airtime.
A man sits down beside her and orders a coffee, and she almost moves over to put a space between them when she realizes it was intentional, and he means to speak with her. He's not wearing a suit, but he does have a tailored shirt and pants, and looks much better dressed than the majority of people she's seen in District 7 so far. She wonders if the Capitol sent someone else in, if they aren't moving quickly enough.
"Hello, you're Katniss Everdeen, aren't you?"
She supposes she is still recognizable to most of Panem. She nods, unsure what else to do. There's no point in denying it. "I'm Reed Billups," he says, "And I own the mill down on the west bank of the river. I heard you were here from the Capitol to get things opened again."
Again, she nods. Vaguely, she realizes he must be one of the so-called Timber Barons. "Yes, we would like to get lumber to the rest of Panem."
"Then you and I are on the same side," he says, but this sentence curls in her stomach. "Now listen careful. They ain't gonna let me into the curated 'talks', but I'm glad I caught you here. You're the one with the gumption to get things done. The only way to get things going is with the Peacekeepers," he says. "There's been no Peacekeeper here since the war, and people are getting too lax, too greedy. You get a few guys with guns here, and everyone will be happy to go back to work. Next, you put up the gallows again. You don't have to hang nobody, but if they see it, they'll remember the last person they saw up there — Jackson Stand. They won't want themselves or their last, precious victor hanged."
They're interrupted as the waitress sets down the coffee, and Reed waves her away. "Last, you use your camera people to film mobs. Angry people, dying people, all over Panem. If District 7 thinks everyone hates them, if they're the reason everyone else is suffering, you bet your ass they're going to move that blockade and send out the lumber."
Katniss leaves the restaurant in a fog. She isn't sure how she said goodbye to Reed, or even if she did. His words, his plan is echoing in her head, and she can't help but understand the logic of it. These people were afraid of guns. They were afraid of death. They didn't want to be the scapegoat, they just wanted a better life. There were ways to get them to back down, and truthfully, Katniss had considered some of them. She walks back across the square to the memorial with the saplings. She hadn't realized Jackson, the other victor had been hanged. Had it been the last Peacekeeper in 7?
She wonders if that man had connections in the Capitol, if he would become desperate enough to get his mill running that he could call for military assistance. If Johanna intrinsically understood this, and that was why she didn't say that Poppy and Dax's fears were unfounded.
There is another meeting for negotiations that evening, but Katniss wonders if there's any to avoid such a bad end as Reed is envisioning. And if that comes to be, can she still say she supports the government she helped put into power? And if not, what was this all for?