Katniss Everdeen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stillplaying) wrote2012-08-19 01:01 pm
stillplaying) wrote2012-08-19 01:01 pm
Entry tags:
7th Game [action/voice]
[Action]
[The bakery is a mess. She never meant for it to end up that way. It just sort of happened. Flour covering hair and body, the smell of something burning from the kitchen, flecks of pink frosting teasing her cheeks. Peeta's normally presentable window displays are less than ideal; a poor attempt at recreating the alluring cakes that always caught her attention back in District Twelve. The frosting's melted from the summer heat on one that's sat out since Friday. Another is poorly covered with a grey color -- an attempt at mixing food dyes gone horribly wrong.
Ingredients for various baked goods have somehow escaped the kitchen, piled up on the counters, half covering the note cards Peeta had left for her. Cookbooks borrowed from the library lie open elsewhere, pages now far from pristine. Half baked pretzels stock the shelves along with burnt chocolate chip cookies. Deformed cheese breads and crumbled brownie bites still in their trays sit nearby. Even Buttercup, easily pleased by any free food, ignores the easy pickings.
She tried. She had tried so hard. Peeta had left her recipes. Had tried to teach her how to bake on lazy days when she was more content to spend time with him in the bakery than go about her own thing. It seems that every lesson has been forgotten. Any skill she might have had in the kitchen, utterly gone.
The rain pours outside as she plucks at the rock hard shortbread cookies she's recently retrieved from the oven, trying her best to peel them from the tray. It's a halfhearted effort as she leans her head against her hand and stares out the window. She'd rather be hunting. But it's been raining ever since Peeta left for his mission, raining so hard, all she's been able to do is check a couple of the traps in the river behind their house. And she had promised, hadn't she? Promised she'd look after the bakery?
Look how miserably she failed, the worry making it hard to breathe, harder to concentrate. Shouldn't he be back by now? Shouldn't he?
Every few minutes, she checks the journal for signs of life. Ignores Buttercup begging for real food. Glances at the door to see if Peeta's finally return. No luck. No luck at all. He's supposed to be back today. Why isn't he back yet?]
[Voice]
Why do you bother? [The words aren't meant to be recorded in the journal, but they are, anyway. It barely processes to Katniss that she's left it laying open, close enough to pick up any mutterings.] Going on these missions? Being a piece in their games?
It's stupid. This is all stupid.
[ooc: timed to after mission is over, when people start arriving home. but if you want to tag during -- feel free to have katniss in the bakery making a mess from friday on!
also, edit for warning of sexual content in the Peeta thread.]
[The bakery is a mess. She never meant for it to end up that way. It just sort of happened. Flour covering hair and body, the smell of something burning from the kitchen, flecks of pink frosting teasing her cheeks. Peeta's normally presentable window displays are less than ideal; a poor attempt at recreating the alluring cakes that always caught her attention back in District Twelve. The frosting's melted from the summer heat on one that's sat out since Friday. Another is poorly covered with a grey color -- an attempt at mixing food dyes gone horribly wrong.
Ingredients for various baked goods have somehow escaped the kitchen, piled up on the counters, half covering the note cards Peeta had left for her. Cookbooks borrowed from the library lie open elsewhere, pages now far from pristine. Half baked pretzels stock the shelves along with burnt chocolate chip cookies. Deformed cheese breads and crumbled brownie bites still in their trays sit nearby. Even Buttercup, easily pleased by any free food, ignores the easy pickings.
She tried. She had tried so hard. Peeta had left her recipes. Had tried to teach her how to bake on lazy days when she was more content to spend time with him in the bakery than go about her own thing. It seems that every lesson has been forgotten. Any skill she might have had in the kitchen, utterly gone.
The rain pours outside as she plucks at the rock hard shortbread cookies she's recently retrieved from the oven, trying her best to peel them from the tray. It's a halfhearted effort as she leans her head against her hand and stares out the window. She'd rather be hunting. But it's been raining ever since Peeta left for his mission, raining so hard, all she's been able to do is check a couple of the traps in the river behind their house. And she had promised, hadn't she? Promised she'd look after the bakery?
Look how miserably she failed, the worry making it hard to breathe, harder to concentrate. Shouldn't he be back by now? Shouldn't he?
Every few minutes, she checks the journal for signs of life. Ignores Buttercup begging for real food. Glances at the door to see if Peeta's finally return. No luck. No luck at all. He's supposed to be back today. Why isn't he back yet?]
[Voice]
Why do you bother? [The words aren't meant to be recorded in the journal, but they are, anyway. It barely processes to Katniss that she's left it laying open, close enough to pick up any mutterings.] Going on these missions? Being a piece in their games?
It's stupid. This is all stupid.
[ooc: timed to after mission is over, when people start arriving home. but if you want to tag during -- feel free to have katniss in the bakery making a mess from friday on!
also, edit for warning of sexual content in the Peeta thread.]
action:
So, she offers it.]
Some of us don't know how to do anything else.
[Like me.
She was trained to fight, taught to kill. This was another Arena, a different game, but it's all she knows she can do.]
action:
She knows now that wasn't anything more than a lie.
At least in Twelve, they learned other skills. Most learned how to survive in the coal mines. She was lucky. She learned to hunt. Peeta learned to bake. They had other skills. Transferable skills.
But the girl's words make her curious. There's still so much she doesn't know about some of the other Districts.]
What would you have done? If you never entered the arena?
action:
[Clove is picking through the ruins of the bakery's interior, sampling pieces that have fallen off the various cooking projects. If she minds the tastes, she doesn't show it.
Probably because, with most of them, she doesn't know how it's supposed to taste.
It's an obvious cause for something she doesn't like to call attention to-- she doesn't want to look at Twelve. She doesn't want to meet her eyes. Not while answering a question just about herself. About District Two or her training or anything like that, she'd be bold and sure. But something personal...]
I wanted to teach at the Academy.
[That's all she'd have been good for, if she hadn't been a tribute. At least, the way she saw it.]
action:
She's far more interested in the girl's response than any of the baking goods in front of her.]
Could you?
action:
I probably could have started after the year I turned eighteen. After the Games that year, when a new term started up.
action:
At eighteen, most of the children of Twelve would be entering the mines. Katniss could never be a teacher herself. But if she had a choice, anything would be better than entering those mines.]
Sounds nice.
[She actually means it, too.]
action:
There might be other positions for the athletics that didn't go to the Games, but those were the most common. They weren't trained for any sort of labor or any skills. They weren't trained for anything but fighting.
She knows she shouldn't ask. They aren't friends. But--]
What about you?
[The district provides coal, she knows that, but that can't be the only job available, so she's curious.]
action:
Housewife or coal miner. And she had vowed never to have a family. Promised herself never to go through the pain of losing a husband to a cave in, or children to the Games.
It's different now. She knows that. And she knows, too, how her priorities changed. But she doubts that's what Clove is asking.
So she shrugs, looking nonchalant.] I wouldn't have stayed.
action:
Clove is sure she can't be serious.
And yet, her voice is sincere (if a bit cautious) as she asks another question.]
Where would you have gone?
[The Capitol had eyes everywhere. Somehow getting out... escaping...
Clove is used to the Academy, then the Capitol itself. Where someone was always watching. Bed checks and high stone walls.]
action:
[She and Gale had had it all worked out. Someday, when all the children were grown, they would just leave. Stowe into the forest beyond the fence and never look back.
It doesn't hurt so much to think about that anymore. To wonder if the bitterness would still have cropped between them. If their mutual fires would have consumed them or help in survival. It'll never happen now, but it's okay, she thinks. Okay to wonder.]
action:
[She knows it wouldn't have been easy. She knows she wouldn't have been able to get food, not as she was in the Academy or in the Games. Now... now she's learning.
But to hear the idea presented that easily. Even if she knows there are no more Games. Twelve told her that much. But she never escaped them herself. And to think about running... taking the chance it would be to try and escape.
It's suicidal, in Clove's mind. Yet the spark is there. A fire that could catch.
Perhaps it would have been worth the risk. To at least try.]
action:
It wouldn't have been that easy. It would have meant saying goodbye to their families, to everyone and everything they ever knew. But to live free from Panem? From Snow and the Hunger Games?
It would have been worth it.]
Maybe before the Games. After... No. Snow kept too much of a tab on us.
action:
[It's not even a question. If the Girl on Fire had never made herself known to the rest of Panem... She would have disappeared into the forest.
It's weird, but Clove likes the idea.
That someone would have gotten out of their district. She'd have been in Two her whole life if she hadn't become a tribute, but that's not so bad. Teaching at the Academy, preparing future tributes and Peacekeepers and instructors.]
action:
But they didn't. And a girl from District Twelve volunteered to take her sister's place in the Reaping. Went to the Hunger Games and saved the boy who had been sent with her. And in the process, sparked a revolution.
There's no use dwelling on any of that, though. Nothing will ever change it. What happened, happened. And here she is now, working in the bakery while she waits for Peeta to come home from that damned mission.]
action:
Clove knows it, all too well. Understands it. Respects it, even.
Which is why her curiosity has gone back to the baked goods. The ones that don't look like someone took a hammer to them while they were cooking. One, in particular, has caught her attention.
It smells like apples.]
What's this?
[Without waiting for a reply, she takes a small bite.]
action:
Apple bars. [She hesitates for a second before adding in:] Peeta made them.
[Therefore: edible.]
action:
[She's claimed the bar and is, despite the sticky filling, picking it apart piece by piece to eat it.
Apples and sweets. This may have replaced cinnamon rolls as her favorite dessert in the bakery. Not that she doesn't still plan on trying anything new.
Made by Lover Boy. Not Twelve.]
They're good.
action:
[Even though the words are said with a shrug, there still is an underlining meaning to them. It's Peeta. He's the very definition of good to Katniss. Even after the hijacking, he was still that boy. That dandelion in the spring. The one that was optimistic. The one that still somehow learned to see the good in her that she couldn't find himself. The one worth dying for.
He was good. And good at whatever he put his mind to.]
Have you tried his cheese buns?
action:
[She’s skeptical, in her own way.
Bread and cheese she knows. She’s had that nearly every meal at the Academy. It’s sweets that were usually denied them, and she was discouraged from trying anything in the village even on free days.
Still. It was Lover Boy. And from what she’d tasted so far, his food was always worth trying.]
action:
But Peeta's supposed to be back soon. He can always make more. And everyone deserves to try this food at least one.
As she bends down to pull out the try, she still keeps an eye on the other girl. There's the treaty but is the treaty still enough to protect her? She quickly stands with the tray and places it on the counter.]
Try one.
action:
They have a truce. It won't be poison. Rationally, she knows this. Yet, there's some inner concern about the matter, some lingering suspicion. She overrules the paranoia and takes a roll, tearing off a corner of it. She puts it in her mouth, chews, and swallows, considering the taste.
...Much better than just bread and cheese, which was what she was expecting. Some kind of better presentation of what was a typical part of an Academy meal. But no. There's something different about it, something very good. There's a rich flavor and a softness she's only just getting used to here.
She tears off a second bite and nods, voicing what really doesn't need to be said.]
It's good.
action:
No matter how delicious it looked.
She picks one up for herself as the girl, rips off a piece, and takes a small bite from that piece. Lips curl into a small smile at the compliment.]
They're the best.