Who: Katniss & Thalia What: New house visits Where: Katniss, Prim, and Mitsuko's town house When: Monday Warnings: Nope Status: complete gdoc
Domesticity took a lot of effort, Thalia had realized. Even though she and Luke rarely bothered with cooking, there was still cleaning to be done, laundry to be folded, and all the other things that came with being an adult. She didn’t mind it, really. Being boring and domestic also meant not living in constant fear of monsters jumping out at them from the shadows.
Then again, there was such a thing as too boring, especially for demigods who had been bred for war. Without those monsters to fight, they got twitchy. Thalia dealt with it by practicing her weaponry, and also her archery. It was how she’d gotten to know Katniss, and that Katniss had recently moved after losing her boyfriend.
That sucked, the way the dome indiscriminately sent people home no matter how happy they were in their lives here. Thalia still worried that Luke would go one day, and she’d be left behind. She couldn’t imagine what Katniss was going through, especially when the prickly human was so wary about who she let in. Ash must’ve been a hell of a guy to make Katniss’s face soften every time she talked about him.
Since Thalia couldn’t bring him back, though, she figured she’d be there for Katniss. Which meant visiting her new townhouse with a gift box of the least work-intensive household cleaners she could discover. Everyone could save time wiping down tiles.
***
Moving was a lot of work, but Katniss was looking forward to a fresh start in a new house with Prim and Mitsuko. Inviting the other girl to live with them had been a whim that seemed to be working out pretty well. She and Prim were uniquely able to understand the things that Mitsuko dealt with in her home world and she was comfortable letting the girl have her autonomy.
There were still a handful of boxes around and Katniss had a list on the fridge of things that she needed to pick up next time she went to WalMart, but things were starting to come together. The girls were both at school, so when someone knocked on the door, she headed into the living room and opened it.
“Thalia,” she said, a little surprised to find her friend standing there. They’d bonded over archery and Katniss appreciated the friendship, but hadn’t been expecting a visitor and she was a little confused by it. “Come in.”
***
“Thanks.” Thalia stepped in, undeterred by Katniss’s surprise. It was her experience that Katniss didn’t ever expect social things to happen, because she didn’t expect nice things to happen to her. That was how awful her life had been.
“I know you’re supposed to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, but…” she waved her box at Katniss. “You’re getting something anyway. Happy housewarming.”
***
The warning meant nothing to Katniss and she was momentarily puzzled by Thalia’s remark, but she accepted the box and managed a smile. “Thank you,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
It was still hard for her sometimes to accept that good things could happen and that everyone didn’t have ulterior motives for being nice. She trusted Thalia though, one of the few people in town she could say that about unequivocally, so she did appreciate the gesture.
“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing towards the newly purchased living room furniture. “Do you want something to drink?”
***
“Yeah, I’ll have some cold water,” Thalia said, going over to test out the springiness of the sofa cushion. Hmm, nice.
“I see you’ve made some headway into setting up,” she remarked, looking around as Katniss went to get the water. “I’m impressed. Me and Luke still have boxes around the place, and it’s been almost a year since we moved.”
***
It was probably easier for Katniss to settle in since she still had the District 12 mentality of only owning what you absolutely needed. Resources had always been scarce growing up and then her time in Thirteen reiterated the necessity of lean living so despite being here for three years, she hadn’t accumulated a lot of stuff.
“We’re getting there,” she said as she returned with a bottle of water from the fridge and handed it to Thalia. “There’s a lot of stuff we still need to get though.”
***
“Good luck with that,” Thalia told her as she accepted the bottle. She popped it open, but didn’t take a drink yet. She was studying Katniss, trying to judge her mood. She knew Ash’s departure had been hard on the other archer, despite the brave face she put on about it.
“How are things?” She left it general, so Katniss could respond how she wanted. Whoever said Thalia couldn’t be diplomatic?
***
Katniss shrugged. She never knew how to answer that question. No matter how bad life in Madison Valley got, it was never worse than Panem. “Okay,” she said. “I invited a young woman named Mitsuko to live with me and Prim here. She’s from a world similar to ours.” It was incredibly frustrating to know there were other places out there that thought it was acceptable to have children kill each other for entertainment.
“I think moving out of the house was a good idea. There were too many memories there.” Of Ash, of the potential future kids they’d met, of Johanna nearly dying.
***
“Ooh yeah, there was that girl.”
Or was she thinking of the other one, the one who liked fashion? Thalia realized she'd been here so long that the people coming and going were starting to blur. She couldn't imagine what it would've been like to still be immortal and see people come and go like that. No wonder the Hunters tended to stay away from outside influences. It got overwhelming after a while.
“A fresh start is always good,” she added. “I'm glad you got someone else, though. It sucks to think there's another world like yours.” One was enough - but she didn't have to tell Katniss that.
***
“Thanks,” Katniss said. “How’ve you been?”
Small talk definitely didn’t come naturally to her, but she genuinely wanted to know how her friend was. They didn’t get to spend a lot of time together because of their busy schedules, but Thalia was one of the few people in town that had been around longer than Katniss.
***
Thalia shrugged. “You know, about the same. It’s nice that I don’t have to live in fear for my life all the time, but it’s hard to be a demigod with no monsters to fight, you know? We’re just not geared for peace. Which is kind of sad, if you think about it.”
Katniss had been forced into violence, which was bad enough. But demigods? They were born for it.
***
It was hard to shake those constant feelings of danger. Katniss understood better than most people probably would despite the differences in their circumstances. “Do you feel like if you let your guard down, something bad will happen?” she asked. She frequently felt that day even though there wasn’t much reason to believe it was true in Madison Valley.
Then again, they did have occasional bouts of craziness that could result in danger, so maybe it wasn’t completely ridiculous to maintain that slight edge.
***
“Pretty much, yeah,” Thalia said. “Like...part of me doesn’t trust that I can cross the street and not get ambushed by a basilisk. But…” She paused, trying to figure out how to explain it. “We have these battle-ready senses, right? That’s the only thing that kept us alive, most times. Like we’re always alert and ready to go, and it’s not something that we can turn off. When we’re on the run from monsters, it’s great. When I have to stand in line at Walmart…”
She made a face. “Sometimes I want to crawl out of my skin.”
***
Standing in line at WalMart probably wanted to make everyone violent, regardless of their background. But Katniss understood what Thalia was saying.
“It’s hard to shake that habit of constantly being on guard. Ash helped a lot with that.” It would be very easy for her to slip back into those old habits now that he was gone, but she was making an effort not to do that. She wanted him to be proud of the progress that she’d made and was continuing to make.
***
“It sucks that he’s gone,” Thalia said. She kept it matter-of-fact, knowing Katniss wouldn’t want her sympathy. It did suck, though. She didn’t know Ash all that well, from what she’d seen, he seemed like a cool guy. And he’d made Katniss happy, which was the main thing. Without him, Katniss seemed...grimmer. Stalwart as always, but grimmer.
“You’re still safe, though - and that’s the important part.”
***
“Prim is still safe,” Katniss said. Her sister’s well being was far more important to her than her own. Everything she’d done since her father’s death was to protect her sister. It was devastating for her to know that she failed at her task, that when Prim eventually left this town, she had no life to return to. She hoped whatever power was responsible for them being here would allow her sister to have the chance she deserved.
She missed Ash and was grateful that she’d had the time she did with him, but losing him wasn’t the gutting experience that losing Prim would be.
***
“Both of you are safe,” Thalia allowed. She didn’t know Prim that well, only that Katniss loved her with a fierce protectiveness. But it seemed to her that sometimes Katniss forgot she existed as a person too, and not just Prim’s Protector. That was what Ash had done: brought Katniss out as her own person. She hoped Katniss could keep that up and not fall back into existing just to keep Prim safe.
Then again, she wasn’t exactly one to talk. She’d made a suicidal run at a bunch of hellhounds to protect the people she loved.
She finished off her water. “Hey, can I get a tour of the place?”
***
Right, a tour. That was something normal people did when someone visited their new home. Katniss stood. “Of course,” she said. “It’s pretty much the same as the place where Darcy and Haymitch used to live.”
All the townhouses had a very similar floor plan, but she didn’t mind showing Thalia around.
***
“I wanna see how you live,” Thalia pointed out. All the townhouses had similar layouts - this one wasn’t too different from the one Thalia and Luke were in - but different people laid out their rooms differently. Katniss had two people living with her; Luke and Thalia had turned their extra bedrooms into workout rooms.
“By the way,” she added as she got up, “I’m serious about that offer. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you get settled in. Or anything, in general.”
She knew enough about Katniss to know that the other woman tended to carry the weight of everything on her own shoulders, but hopefully she’ll eventually get that she didn’t have to, here.
***
“Thank you,” Katniss said. It meant a lot to her to have friends that she could count on if things went bad. She wasn’t used to having a support network other than Gale, but she was trying. “Okay, we’ll start upstairs.”