#cate writes

He chances a glance at the pair on the couch, something he hasn’t been able to do for the past hour, and wishes he hadn’t.

Her eyes are wide, and she’s still as a stone, knees drawn to her chest. The boy’s fingers, laid on an open page of the memorial book, dig into his palms, then release, over and over, compulsively and involuntarily.

“Well,” their mentor says, standing slowly, that old scar twinging around his midsection. He wants to make some sort of deflecting remark, something about “Same time tomorrow?” — but he can’t.

Truth be told, he feels about as exposed as he did with his guts out.

“Haymitch …” She whispers it, and it’s all she seems able to say. Then the furniture springs creak and her arms are around him.

The boy is up too, colored pencils spilling onto the floor.

Big hands grip his shoulders; small hands fist in the fabric of his jacket. Haymitch doesn’t remember the last time someone held him like this. It makes him feel sick and shaky, like withdrawal symptoms.

“Don’t you two get sappy on me,” he manages, but there’s a distinct catch on the last word, and he shuts up.

They don’t say anything. They don’t thank him for sharing his story. He’s grateful for that.

He was a lot better at sharing before the fire, before the gumdrops, before the eternal train rides, before the coffins. Sharing is something Sid’s brother and Louella’s sweetheart would do. Could do. Not him. Not until now.

[nineteen; post-mockingjay]

When the toy shop sets up in town, it almost makes Katniss cry. She can imagine that to Capitol children this wouldn’t mean much. But the children of Twelve never had something so wonderful as a toy shop. They’re running errands, but when they pass the door, she has to go inside.

She watches as small hands examine colorful kites, bright marbles, dolls, plush animals — and feels a lump in her throat.

Peeta bumps her shoulder gently. “What would you like, birthday girl?”

“What? No, no. I just love seeing them happy.”

“Katniss,” he repeats, not backing down, “what would you like?” His look says everything else. She never had a proper childhood; she’s allowed to reclaim some of it.

“Peach?”

Cool fingers touch his cheek, and he presses against them, desperate, though he has no idea why, for their comfort. He smells sharp antiseptic — and under it, honeysuckle and patina.

Lenore Dove smacks her small hammer down on the piece of clear glass and it breaks neatly down the line she’s scored.

“What are you making?” he asks, leaning his elbows against her work table. Above, the trees tremble in a stormy autumn breeze. But his mentor’s wife seems unbothered by the oncoming rain as she sands the edges of her project with a scrap of rough paper.

“Sun-catcher,” she says, lifting the glass up. “To hang in the window. We can capture the light, make it do what we want, like paint. That way—yes, look!”

Peeta smiles as colors play on the side of the house. “We can make rainbows,” he says.

He lets his heavy eyelids slide open, and all he sees is white. No rainbows can live here. His body aches, and something nags at the back of his mind, something important, the most important.

Katniss. His dying wish. His promise.

But he’s not dead. Where is he?

He hears mechanical beeping somewhere to his left as his heart rate speeds.

“Peeta,” comes the voice again. “You’re okay.”

No, no, no. Something is wrong. Something is so very wrong. He shouldn’t be alive. Shouldn’t be here, the place where no rainbows can live: a Capitol hospital.

But … but it doesn’t make sense. If he’s in a Capitol hospital, then how — ?

Her face comes into focus: dark skin, curly auburn hair streaked with gray and tied with a faded blue kerchief; her hands, cupping his jaw, smoothing his hair, are shackled by a thin chain. Her lip is cut and her eyes are red, as if from crying, or exposure to smoke.

“Lenore Dove?” he rasps. “What are you doing here?”

or “the one where Lenore Dove lives” inspired by @itsajollyjester’s post here

November drifts into December, and the streets become hard and slick. Two nights before the tour, my wife invites the kids over for dinner.

When Haymitch Abernathy returns to District 12 with newly victorious Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, Lenore Dove is waiting. [A Lenore Dove lives AU].

They’re at the kitchen table. The latest shipment from the train is piled in unattended seats: some feed for the geese, amber whiskey, a crate of plums, and their usual regimen of pills. Peeta is working on the memory book, and the soft sound of the watercolor brush when he taps it on the jar of water beside him is the only thing that has broken the hush until now. The tip of Katniss’s tongue sticks out in concentration as she carefully rethreads the laces of her newly cleaned boots.

They frown at each other.

“You?” he asks.

“No. I’ll get it.”

The man standing there is old, long gray hair pulled back at the nape of his neck, many care lines etching his face. Over his back is slung a traveling case for an instrument. Katniss recognizes him. The fiddler. He must have made it back too.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hello,” says the fiddler. “I know you don’t know me. But I - I know you.”

Peeta stands up, a bit wary, and comes to stand at his girl’s side.

“Everyone knows us,” Katniss says dismissively.

“I don’t want to talk,” the boy says, sitting on the floor of his train compartment with a pad of paper balanced on his knees. “I’m doing it, okay?”