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Peeta finds Annie is woefully understocked for the baking she plans to do. So while she prepares tea and breakfast, he goes to the market district to obtain extra flour, eggs, sugar, and butter. It's early yet. He had left Katniss sleeping in the guest room of the house they were staying in, and now he passes by the house on the other side of Annie's, the little shack-like house that Johanna lived in.
He hears voices and as he follows the path, he sees her in the garden, speaking to someone, both of them obviously angry, but trying to keep their voices down.
"I said no!" she says, looking exasperated. She's in pajama pants and a tank top, and he sees the swollen veins at the crook of her arm. "We can figure this out in a few days, once everyone leaves."
"Come on, babe, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important," the man says. He reaches out to grab her shoulder, but she shrugs away, hugging her arms around herself. "Jo, don't be like that, seriously?"
Peeta steps forward, not exactly happy to get involved in Johanna's domestic issues, but because of some sick sense of duty that doesn't let him walk away from a situation where someone might be in trouble. "Johanna, is everything alright?" he asks.
She reacts how he knows she will, with a glare that is anything but appreciative. "I'm fine," she says coolly, glancing back at the man as if challenging him to dispute this. "I was just going back inside." And she does, leaving him standing with the other man.
He looks up, expecting to see someone frustrated or angry, but instead, he just sees a lost expression on the other man's face. "I'm Peeta Mellark," he introduces. "Are you alright?"
"Ryder Nautis. I think I need a drink."
Ryder walks to town with Peeta, and Peeta learns he's the widower of Finnick's oldest sister, Margot. It appears he's in some sort of gambling debt, but Peeta can't really parse together more than this, or how Johanna is involved. When they part, he shakes Peeta's hand. "Thanks for being cool, back there," he says, and Peeta wonders what kind of reaction he had expected. "I'll see you at the party tomorrow."
When Peeta returns with the groceries, he wants to approach the topic of Ryder with Annie, but he's not exactly sure where to start. Seamus is at school, so the two of them sip tea and plan how to approach her list: rolls, two kinds of cookies, and a cake. Peeta starts a basic bread dough so they can get it proofing while they work on the cookies, and they save the cake for last. Peeta listens to Annie talk about Seamus, about how he's doing in school, about the drawings he makes, about his closest friends, and about how he's a surprisingly slow swimmer.
He doesn't understand what's coming over him, but he tucks the bowl of dough into the warm corner of the kitchen to proof and sits down, head in his hands.
"What's wrong, Peeta? Do you have a headache or something?" Annie is beside him in a moment, with a glass of water and a hand to his forehead.
"I'm alright," he says, even though her presence crouching beside him is only making it worse. He's been doing all the work so far, baking-wise, but she is wearing an apron and has her hair clipped up, and looks the part of baker all the same. "I… I got emotional for a second," he admits.
"Oh," Annie says, and she gives him some space, sitting back down at the table. "Was it something I said?"
Peeta shrugs. "It was all of it, really. My mom… she wouldn't have known any of that. She wouldn't have known how I was doing in school, or my closest friends' names, or what my favorite hobbies were, and the things I was bad at, she would just tear into me over them, she wouldn't say it with any affection. I just… I think you're a really good mom."
Annie smiles, a little sadly. "Thank you, Peeta. I think I was probably pretty terrible at first. But I'm the only parent Seamus has, so I want to do a good job."
Peeta wants to deny that Annie was ever terrible, but the words get caught in his throat. He thinks about Finnick in the Capitol, thinks about the moments before his death. It's still there, in his mind, all these years later. "I want to have kids, I just worry that I'll be like my mother. That I'll hurt them."
Annie softens, leaning closer to Peeta. "You? Peeta, you fought off the poison they gave you to be violent. You're the strongest person I know."
"I fought it off after I attacked Katniss!" he says, but the protest is weak, because he heard what she said and it latched on, somewhere.
"You do things every day that show you'd be a great parent. You can't just walk past things that are unjust. You help people. You're patient. You look for the solution that helps the most people. I know you, Peeta." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "All parents have anxiety. Everyone thinks what they have will be taken away. But you have to do your best to be kind anyways."
Johanna is frustrated from meeting up with Ryder that morning. She didn't want to buy more morphling until Enobaria left, until everyone left, but of course he needed the money and she was in pain. It is ten years since the war ended and she's still in pain nearly every day.
It's mostly the headaches. The spikes of pain behind her eyes that settle to a pulsing pain across the top of her head for hours at a time, blurring her vision and making her sensitive to light and loud noises. But sometimes there is the nerve pain that gets triggered by humidity or sleeping in an odd position or moving her neck too quickly, and then there's shooting pain into her limbs as well. She knows it's from that Capitol prison. That if she was never electrocuted, that if someone didn't slam her head into a table a bunch of times while insisting she answer questions then this never would have happened ten years on.
Sometimes she thinks of killing herself. It hurts badly enough that she doesn't really feel like being alive. It's why she moved to 4, really. She couldn't do it if Annie and the baby needed her. She stayed with them at first, but once found a dealer in Ryder and was back on morphling, she needed her own place: she wasn't going to do that around a baby. So she lives next door and goes near Annie and the baby when she's sober, meaning, when she has less pain. She knows Annie understands the arrangement, and she appreciates that she still lets Johanna around.
But, frustratingly, this morning she's hitting her limit for what she can tolerate without chemical assistance, and before lunch she closes her bedroom door and injects the last of her morphling. She'll have to get more from Ryder tomorrow, as much as she doesn't want to do a drug deal at Seamus's birthday party. But after she feels calmer, able to function without crippling pain, able to think about something besides wanting to die.
She looks for Enobaria, but she's not in the house, nor out in the yard. Haymitch is on Annie's porch on one of the rocking chairs, sipping on something, and gestures at her to come over. She doesn't want to - she thinks he'll almost definitely know she's on morphling from her walk or her speech - but she doesn't really have a reason not to go. It's not like she has a real job.
"Hey, Jo," he says, too comfortable. She thinks he's sipping white liquor and lemonade.
She sits in the other chair, a little too stiffly. "Hey." She doesn't really want to talk to him, so she leans back, letting her eyes drift shut, the sunlight nice now that it isn't causing her head to pound incessantly.
"Are you strung out?"
She's embarrassed not because she's used the drugs, but because to explain it would involve explaining how ten years later, she is still miserable every day from the torture in that prison, the one he was partially responsible for her getting captured in, and then he would pour all his guilt and shame onto her, and she would have to absolve him, tell him yes, Katniss was the priority, but can I just shoot up in peace? So she just shrugs, because she knows it will annoy him, and him being annoyed is better than his pity.
"Jo, you don't look good."
Well, now he's pissing her off, and she wonders why she did come over here and not ignore him like he did her for 10 years. There hasn't been one call, one visit, not anything in all that time, and now he wants to come here and be concerned about her drug habit or how she's eating or whatever else? She turns to him, her movements slowed a bit by the morphling. "Listen. We're both adults. There's no more mentoring, no more meeting up every year. We don't have any reason to see each other. So it's fine."
He looks at her, uncomprehendingly. "What's fine?"
"This. You don't call, you don't visit, you don't have to waste your guilt or pity on me. And in exchange, I do what I want, and I don't have to think about you either."
He looks like he wants to contest this, like this isn't at all what he wants, but the truth is he hasn't called, he hasn't done shit in ten years, so he stays quiet.
Enobaria comes back, a bottle of wine in hand, and Johanna realizes she must have gone to the market. She thinks, maybe, the plan for tonight was a bonfire on the beach to cook some shellfish, but there's a few hours before dinner yet. She stands to return to her own house, to head Enobaria off before she gets trapped even longer in a conversation with Haymitch, and is surprised when he grabs her hand.
"I…" he seems to falter, and she doesn't know if he's aiming for an apology or some sort of confession, but she doesn't want to hear it. She has too many thoughts about Haymitch that have festered for too many years, feelings of being used, being abandoned, years and years of pain that can only be quashed with morphling, and no words he says will be enough to make it ok.
"I'm seeing someone," she says, before he can finish his thought. It's a lie, of course. She might sleep with Ryder from time to time, but that was mostly just when she didn't have enough money for the morphling. But he didn't need to know that. The effect is instant, and he drops her hand. She walks off the porch without waiting for a response, frustrated with herself. Embarrassed, though she isn't sure of what, and mad at him for transgressions spanning 20 years, some of which really were his fault.
When she gets back to her house, she has tears in her eyes. Enobaria quirks an eyebrow, but she just continues on to the back garden, where she's out of sight of the other houses, especially Annie's. To her surprise, Enobaria follows. There's no 'you alright?' or similar question, like Peeta had asked just that morning. Enobaria just waits, as annoyingly straight-backed and perfect as she has been since the day Johanna met her.
"Want a cigarette?" Johanna asks. She taps one of for herself, and to her surprise, Enobaria nods, so she lights it and hands it to Enobaria, then lights a second for herself.
"I remember you roll a good cigarette," Enobaria says.
These were her own, pre-rolled a few days ago, and she thinks of the last time she rolled a cigarette for Enobaria, at the end of the war on the steps of Snow's mansion. "Fuck," she sighs, exhaling smoke. She turns to Enobaria. "You don't really have any vices, huh?"
"I drink a fair bit of wine."
"That hardly counts. I mean, you don't smoke. No drugs, no lovers, or maybe just one. No laws broken."
Enobaria laughs a little as she exhales. "I live in District 2. It's not as easy to just do as you like."
"I think it'd be fun to see you live a little. That's what always pissed me off about you. That you were so… uptight."
Enobaria's eyes flash, just for a moment. "If I am uptight, you are far too uninhibited."
"Yeah, probably could use some straightening out. But I think it would be fun to see you let loose, just for a bit."
Annie goes down to the beach early to help Jude and Odessa set up for dinner. Seamus tags along, tossing a ball back and forth with Simon, though he's not nearly as good as Simon at throwing or catching, even compensating for age. Every day, Annie is grateful for how the war ended, that Finnick and everyone else's sacrifices kept Seamus from a future where he would ever have his name in a reaping ball, because she is certain her son would be like a lamb in the slaughter. He is too gentle, too curious about the world, too much thinking and too little action. She adores him, but she fears for him in a world that is any less peaceful than the one he was born into. He is all the best parts of herself and Finnick.
"What did Katniss end up doing today?" Odessa asks, setting a grate over one of the fire pits.
Annie shrugs. "She asked for a map, and a couple recommendations of places to visit. Said she wanted to do a self-guided tour."
"Ryder was drunk by the time I got in from the boat," Jude says, clicking his tongue. "You think he's under pressure from Regan's boys, or is he fighting with Jo again?"
Annie glances to make sure Seamus is out of earshot, and sees that the boys have switched to digging a trench in the beach some distance away. "Couldn't say. Jo is secretive when she wants to be." She considers the situation, and thinks that Johanna probably won't be able to go without morphling for a full four days, but she won't want Haymitch to know how bad things have gotten. She looks up, and sees the others coming down to the beach, a slow, detached line. "Oh look, they're coming now."
Seamus runs up to Johanna, and she wraps him in a hug. Annie catches the way she stumbles, the morphling likely dulling her reactions, but she doesn't comment on it to Jude. "Look at our sandcastle!" Seamus says, dragging Johanna along the beach to look at what he and Simon have been crafting.
Beetee and Haymitch come next, folding chairs under their arms, and set up near the fire pit. Annie sits with them while Peeta and Katniss take a walk along the sea shore and Enobaria, Jude, and Odessa work on the meal.
"It's very nice here, Annie, thank you for inviting us," Beetee says, settling into the chair. Haymitch pulls out a flask and sips from it, and Annie lays out a towel, sitting beside them.
"You're welcome. We have the space, so I'm glad you could come."
Haymitch watches the waves for a while, and Beetee watches Simon and Seamus, who are still working on their sandcastle. Johanna has plopped down nearby and is chatting with them while they work. "Annie, I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," Haymitch says.
Annie can feel her teeth clench, and she can feel the way the old habits are bubbling up inside her like a sneeze that she has to let out. Tap tap tap. Stomp your foot. Hold your breath. And then, once she finishes that routine, his words are left echoing in her head. Soon-er. Sooner. Soon. Er. How much sooner? Ten years ago? Five? And what was he expecting would be different? She feels annoyance that she tries to quell, just as she tries to stem the compulsions by doing the tapping quietly, behind her, in the sand.
"We've been alright," she assures him. "I know you had to look after Katniss and Peeta. And I tried to look after Jo." Something tells her that's really why he's apologizing. Whether it's because he feels guilty about how things turned out with Johanna or because she's the one who's ended up with Johanna, she can't be sure. But this doesn't feel like he's apologizing because she's been left in District 4 with a baby after Finnick died. She bites the inside of her cheek, annoyed at the apology, really. Because here she is, reassuring him, assuaging his guilt so he can go back to his life. She hadn't asked for the apology, and she certainly hadn't asked for Haymitch's assistance. But now that he is half-assing it, she is frustrated.
"I know it couldn't have been easy, with a baby, right after the war," he says. He's looking right at her, and she thinks that maybe he is trying to apologize for how the war turned out, for what part he had in it.
She nods. "It was hard at first. I relied on Odessa and Jude for just about everything. And once Jo came, when Seamus was a year old, I leaned on her probably more than I should have. But we're doing a lot better now. I can put food on the table, and Seamus is brilliant and kind."
"I saw your paintings," Beetee says. "They're beautiful."
She smiles. The painting had been a distraction, something to help her forget about Finnick and the poverty and Johanna's suffering and how slow District 4 was to recover from the war, but ended up encapsulating all of that, abstract pieces that combined her anger and her hope. There was something there, the dealer she worked with told her, she had a vision, and when he brought them to the Capitol, they sold for more money than she had made the previous year.
Now, some of her paintings did well and some garnered no interest, but selling a few was enough to keep herself and Seamus secure. It was a small miracle that her hobby ended up being profitable. "Thank you," she tells Beetee. "It's nice to live in a world where we can think about art again."
Haymitch's eyes wander to Johanna, who's laughing at something Simon is saying as the two of them slowly bury Seamus's legs under the sand. Annie cringes a bit thinking about how she's going to have to rinse the wet, gritty sand off of Seamus before he goes inside, but the smile on his face makes it worth it.
"How is she?" he asks.
Annie thinks of when Johanna arrived, quiet and suspicious off the train from District 7. Annie had been in touch since the war, calling Johanna as some tether to Finnick, however tenuous, because she knew Johanna held the other half of Finnick's heart. But she had grown depressed after her pregnancy, the cascade of hormones and the realization that she had a human to raise alone prompting her into a fearful sort of melancholy. And Johanna had seemed to echo her, her responses on the calls often short, or she'd complain of pain and other symptoms, she'd lament the cold and endless winter of District 7.
Annie had had a dream when Seamus was about to turn 1, that Johanna was dead in a snowbank in District 7. It was spring, this didn't make sense, but she called Johanna the next morning and she answered in a slow, groggy voice that Annie now knew was the sound of morphling.
"I really need help with the baby," Annie said. She hadn't planned on saying this, and in fact she had finally gotten the hang of most of Seamus's care, really. But she needed to set eyes on Johanna, to make sure she wasn't going to disappear. "Can you come here, just for a bit?"
And so Johanna came, and never left. She moved out soon enough, ashamed of her morphling habit, Annie suspected, though Annie wasn't going to fault her. She was in the prison, too. She had seen the way they had tortured Johanna, it was enough to make her want to retch with the memory. Annie turns to Haymitch. "I think it's enough that she's still here," she says honestly, because she's seen the pain bring Johanna to her knees, keep her in bed for days, make her ask Annie to bring her morphling. But she's also seen Johanna scoop Seamus up and spin him around, teach him how to climb a tree, just sit with him for hours as he reads or draws or babbles to her.
Enobaria comes by to set some shrimp and clams over the grate, and checks with Jude that she's doing it correctly. Haymitch puts his head in his hands, massaging his forehead. "She's still the same," he says, after she walks away.
"So?" Beetee asks. "She didn't sign up for any of this."
Finally, it's time to eat, and Annie moves over to sit with Katniss and Peeta. "Thanks for loaning Peeta to me today," she says, and Katniss says something offhand about how she's grateful to have him out of her hair. But Annie knows this is only a joke, that Katniss doesn't want to be alone, that her eyes seek Peeta out the moment they are a few feet apart. She understands, because she still searches for Finnick in a crowd all these years later. It had been nice to have Peeta in her kitchen, someone to chat with and pretend at domesticity with for a few hours, but then she had to give him back. And it's not the same anyways, she doesn't love Peeta. "Where did you end up going today?"
She sees the way Katniss looks at Peeta, the secret language they can share with just glances. It pains her. Even with her child, she doesn't have this skill. "I went to the hospital," Katniss says, after a pause. "I heard… someone said my mother was working there."
It might be true. Annie avoided the hospital after being locked there against her will, and Odessa was a midwife, so she didn't have to go to give birth to Seamus. She might stop by the clinic for minor aches and or sicknesses, but that was a smaller building, separate from the large, imposing hospital. "Was she there?" She wonders what this would be like. Her own mother was declared missing after the war, and she wanted desperately to find her, to know what had happened, even if she was dead. But she knew for Katniss things were more complicated than that.
"I didn't go in." Katniss bites into a piece of bread, taking her time chewing. When she finally swallows, she continues. "I just thought… she knows where I live. She knows how to get in touch. If she is here, she hasn't done that in ten years. Why should I?" She turns her head away to look at the tide, beautiful now with the sun setting over it. "But maybe that's just because I'm still immature."
Annie thinks of Haymitch, who hasn't called or visited in 10 years, and now wants to pry into their lives. But that's different, she reasons, than a mother and daughter. It is a parent's responsibility to look after their child, their living child, and not run away when things get difficult. But she wonders how much she can judge, having never experienced the war as a mother. "I think that you've grown into an adult without her," Annie says, because it's growing increasingly obvious that Katniss is waiting for her opinion. "So if you think it's not worth finding her now, then I think that's fine."
Seamus approaches them then, settling onto the towel beside Annie. He has a plate in his hands, laden with shrimp and potatoes and whatever else was being cooked over the fire, and he is eating it with the one hand that wasn't sandy. Annie searches around for Johanna. "Did Jo leave?" she asks Seamus.
He nods. "With the old man."
Katniss laughs at this, especially once they see that Beetee is still there, so this could only mean Haymitch. "That's Haymitch," Annie corrects. "You better not call him Old Man to his face."
"I know that," Seamus says, whining a bit as he turns back to his meal.
Annie wonders what they're talking about, but truthfully, it's only for selfish reasons. She's come to rely on Johanna, in the same way she relies on Jude and Odessa. They're part of her village, part of the family she has here. If Haymitch wants to swoop in and steal Johanna back to District 12, she's going to be frustrated about it, even if it's ultimately Johanna's decision. She looks up to see both Katniss and Peeta watching her, or maybe Seamus, with intent. "What is it?" she asks.
"How do you know what do to?" Peeta asks. "How to be a good parent?"
It's more or less the conversation they had that morning, but with Katniss beside him, and after she went to visit her mother, it takes on a new meaning. She shrugs. "I just try my best, I guess. I trust and believe that I can do right in Finnick's memory. And I make mistakes." She nudges Seamus. "Remember that time I told you I could cut your hair myself?"
Seamus rolls his eyes. "They still tease me at school!" he says, dramatically flopping over onto her lap.