Chapter Text
Katniss didn’t cry. Not since she was a little kid. Even when she knew she should, even when she wanted to, there were no tears in her. Only a dull, miserable feeling that hurt her chest and soured her stomach. She had no tears, and no words, even when she needed them most. So she just stood, arms folded tightly across her chest, a cigarette burning between her fingers, while her life crumbled around her again.
When he walked in for another set of bags, she at least managed to speak. "So that's it, Peeta? You're just walking out?"
Peeta's voice hitched miserably, but he didn't stop. "I've been walking out for six months, Katniss. You just didn't notice. Or care."
She had noticed. She'd known something was wrong. But she didn't know how to fix it. And with all the softer feelings inside her frozen, all she had left was anger. "You're right. We should've quit a long time ago."
Peeta covered his face, a muffled sob escaping him, then he scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes and went back to shoving clothes into a bag with jerky movements that telegraphed his distress even to someone as emotionally inept as Katniss.
She bit her lip. She should at least try. "Look, I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know this is all my fault." He looked at her, eyes red and mouth tight, and she knew how stupid that had sounded. They both knew this was her fault. "I can't change who I am, Peeta. I wish I could, but I can't."
"No." She couldn't remember if he'd ever said no to her that way, so flat and final, Peeta who was always ready to compromise. "It's that you won't change. That's what hurts so much."
Maybe he was right. Maybe if she'd really tried, she could have opened up. Let what she felt show sometimes. But she hadn't, and it was all too late now, and she smoked silently while he loaded his car and left. When he was gone she finally moved over to the dresser. She emptied her pockets, phone and notepad and badge, and all the rest of it. The gun she set beside them with habitual care. Then she picked up the bottle of scotch that had been an early sign of things going wrong and grabbed her leather jacket.
She walked down the street towards the little old ball-park, her go-to place since she was a kid for thinking - or in this case, drinking and trying not to think about how much she hurt.. Maybe all the old, painful memories could take her mind off the fresh sting of the car door slamming and Peeta driving away.
Dad singing her the baseball song.
Playing Little League, the only girl on the team. Dad had fought for that. If she wanted to play, she should - and she'd been good enough that while the boys grumbled, they didn’t try to push her off the team.
Dad missing half of a game because of a fire, showing up at last smelling of smoke and burnt plastic with traces of soot on his neck, but smiling at her with so much pride on his face when she'd hit her big home run.
She sat on the bleachers and drank, staring up at the freak aurora rippling over the city with dry eyes, until the bottle was more than half empty and the usual bleak numbness had settled over old and new pain. Peeta had begged her to see someone, the one time she'd stumblingly tried to explain that numb emptiness - a counsellor, a shrink, something. Talked about PTSD and trauma. Maybe she should have listened, but it was all too late now.
When she got home, there was noise. Annoying noise. The TV, and a too-cheery young voice. "Hi, Aunt Katniss."
"I'm not your aunt, kid." Katniss set down the bottle and her keys. Just what she needed, people. Talking. Wanting things. She sank deeper into numbness, grateful for it.
"Hey, Katniss, that you?" The voice came from the kitchen, accompanied by the sizzle of something frying.
"Gale? What are you guys doing in my house?" Katniss walked - still perfectly steadily, she noted with a fleeting moment of pleasure - over to the couch and sat down. It could have been worse. At least Gale and Junior were undemanding company.
"My tv's out again. You wanna beer?"
"Yeah, sure." Beer on top of scotch. Why not? She watched Junior playing his baseball game on what was theoretically her system but which she never used. It'd been a gift. Mom? Prim? Someone who thought she should have more fun.
"Can you believe Madge still won't let me cook in the house? I melted one lousy frying pan. I'm a fireman, I can handle a stove..." Gale ambled in, with the sandwich he'd been frying and a couple of beers. She thought about objecting to the way he was making himself at home, but it was too much effort. Anyway, it wasn't as if she could change him now.
She and Gale had been friends since kindergarten, more or less. They'd lived next door to each other practically their whole lives.There'd been an awkward span in high school, after they'd tried dating and it'd crashed and burned, but once he'd gotten over the idea he was in love with her they'd been able to be friends again. She still thought Madge was a little nuts to have married him, but then Madge had never minded having to do the planning - and talking - for two. That was how she'd put up with Katniss for so long.
Junior looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Katniss, Dad's going to take me fishing this weekend. You wanna come?"
Katniss smiled a little at that. "Starting him young?" That was the other reason she and Gale had stayed so close for so long - all those camping trips with her dad or (the stab of loss never quite faded) with Gale's, after Dad was gone. The hunting, the trapping, the fishing. Learning to track. Dad and Butch's jokes about their glorious mixed heritage. Part Cherokee, part German, part a dozen other things, all Appalachian mountain mutt, that's what Dad had said. But she'd loved the woods. She didn't go back much, these days. "Not this time, Junior. But you catch me a big one."
"I was wondering if we could borrow your old gear." Gale took a bite of his sandwich. "You know, the kid-sized stuff."
"Yeah, sure. I think it's in the hall closet." Katniss gestured, and Junior ran for the closet. Of course Junior couldn't use his dad's old equipment... Gale had proved he was big and strong enough for an adult sized rod by accidentally snapping the old one in half trying to pull in what had turned out to be a submerged log. His dad had complained so much those few years, when Gale shot up to almost adult height at fourteen and couldn't seem to touch anything without breaking it.
Gale sipped his beer and glanced at her. "So Peeta called Madge," he said quietly.
Katniss nodded silently. They knew. Good. Gale didn't say anything else, for which she was grateful, just took his sandwich and went to help Junior excavate the closet.
It wasn't until Junior's excited "WHOA!" that Katniss remembered where she'd stored Dad's old shotgun. She got up, but Gale was already taking the gun away, shaking his head at her and putting it up on the high shelf.
"You're a cop, Katniss. Aren't you supposed to store this somewhere secure?"
"I'll get around to it." Katniss tried not to think about the one she'd left on the dresser. It wasn't as if there were any kids in this house other than Gale and Junior's occasional visits.
"Sure." Gale leaned over the old FDNY chest Junior was digging in. "Oh, my god... Katniss, look at this!"
Thank God for the alcohol. Floating on half a bottle of scotch as well as her pervasive numbness, Katniss could look at the old ham radio without flinching.
"Remember how we used to beg your dad to let us talk on it?" Gale lifted out the radio, handling it gently despite the casual tone. "And he always said - "
"This is not a toy," Katniss joined in on the chorus, managing a small smile.
"Can we try it out?" Junior asked hopefully, and he looked so much like Gale when they were young, before everything was awful, that Katniss found herself smiling at him.
"Sure, what the hell."
Gale was the one to set it up, checking that everything was plugged in right, and Katniss wondered how he even knew all this. She couldn't remember half of it. She listened with half an ear to Gale explaining it to Junior, about needing a license to use it, about talking to people all over the world long before the internet. They tried to get a signal, but didn't seem to have any luck. The whistles and hisses of the static brought plenty back, though...
It was Memories Central tonight.
It was a relief when she heard a calm, amused voice and looked up to find that Madge had walked in. "Hey, Gale. Do you know what time it is?"
Gale glanced guiltily at the clock. "Uh..."
Madge shook her head, smiling slightly. "Come on, Junior. It's past your bedtime." She looked at Katniss, and the mix of affection and disappointment was all too familiar. "Hey, Katniss." Madge and Peeta had been friends for a long time. She'd be hurting for him... but she knew Katniss, and she'd warned Peeta going in, just like Katniss had warned Madge about Gale when they started to date... except that had worked out perfectly, aside from the minor hiccup of Gale sneaking off and naming their son ‘Gale Junior’ while Madge was still sleeping off the delivery.
"Hey." Katniss drank more of her almost-forgotten beer. There was nothing else she could think of to say.
"I should head back too." Gale gripped her shoulder in silent sympathy. "Later, Catnip."
"Yeah."
When the house was empty, Katniss picked up the phone and was shamefully relieved that the call wasn't answered. "This is Primrose Everdeen," the message chirped in her ear. "I'm not in right now, so please leave a message."
"Hey, Prim," Katniss said softly. "Just checking in. I'll see you and Mom tomorrow night, okay?" She swallowed hard. "But, uh, Peeta can't make it. Work, you know. Anyway, I'll see you then. Love you."
She hung up, wishing the sting in her eyes didn't blink away so easily. That she could *feel* something, something besides dull anger and the numb chill that always came back no matter what she did. She loved Peeta. She thought she did anyway. Had she ever managed to say it? She wasn't even sure now. Maybe Prim was the only one who could pull those words out of her.
She went over to the box she'd already pulled out of a closet. She opened the old book, like she did every year. The pictures were faded. The newspapers were yellowing. She didn't even really need to look any more. She could summon up these images with her eyes closed, in her sleep...
The 'In Memoriam' page. The photo of all the guys at Dad's firehouse, his face solemn because he felt stupid smiling in photographs. The headline 'AMAZINGS WIN GAME 2', that would have made Dad so happy and that he'd never seen. And in a little box in the bottom right hand corner of the front page 'WAREHOUSE FIRE CLAIMS FIREMAN'.
Thirty years. It'd been thirty years come the day after tomorrow. Surely it should hurt less by now. She stared blankly at the tv that Junior had left on. They were talking about sunspots or something else scientific and completely unable to hold her attention right now.
The ham radio buzzed and warbled, and then a voice came through half-buried in static "CQ15... W2...YV" Gale must have left it switched on.
She picked up the half-empty beer again and headed over to the thing. Okay, this much she remembered, you had to hold down the thing on the microphone. "Uh, hello?"
"W2QYV here, who have I got?" The voice was still distorted by static, but it sounded friendly enough. Male, probably somewhere between twenty and forty, strong New York accent with a hint of something else behind it.
"Uh... name's Kat." She never introduced herself with Katniss. It took too long to explain, and she didn't have the energy tonight.
The voice developed a stern edge. "License to broadcast?"
License... oh, right. "I don't... I barely remember how this thing works," she admitted.
"Look, lady, you gotta have a license to broadcast. If you don't have a license, unless you got an emergency, you gotta get off the band."
Katniss smiled sourly. "Hey, buddy, my whole life's an emergency."
The voice softened a bit. "Yeah? Where are you broadcasting from?"
"Queens, New York."
"Well, whaddya know. Bayside, born and raised." The voice sounded like the guy was smiling.
Katniss laughed a little. "Really? Man, I thought this thing was for talking around the world."
"Yeah, well, the fifteen band closes down at night, but during the day you can chew the fat with China if you want." The guy sounded friendly enough. "So how come you got a machine but don't know how to broadcast?"
She shrugged, even though he couldn't see her. "It was my dad's. Found it going through some of his stuff and wondered if it still worked, y'know? I didn't think anyone used these things any more."
"Yeah, I get it. No harm done, I guess." He sounded sympathetic, but not cloyingly or uncomfortably so. "So, Queens, you psyched for the series?"
Well, at least he wasn't the kind of guy who assumed a woman wouldn't be interested in baseball. "Nah, I don't really follow baseball anymore."
He sounded stunned. "What?"
Katniss laughed, fleeting but genuine amusement cutting through her numb despair for a moment. "I just got tired of all the bullshit, you know?"
"What're you talking about?" Shock had melted into outrage. "Listen, a thousand years from now, when school-kids are studying about America, they're gonna learn about three things. The Constitution, rock and roll, and baseball." She could almost see him shaking his head. "How can you live in Queens and not love the Amazings?"
Katniss glanced through the door into the sitting room, where the old yellowed paper still lay on the open scrapbook, and found herself smiling. There was a bitter edge to the memories, but they didn't hurt like some of the others. "The Amazing Mets? The '69 series? Man, I will love Ron Swoboda till the day I die."
The man chuckled. "Okay, now I'm with you! He's got the heart of a lion. Mets can't win game one without him." Static rose, hissing and shrieking. "Hey, can you hear me?"
Katniss blinked. Three-quarters-drunk and exhausted she might be, but she could recite the stats for the ‘69 series, and the events of every inning in every game, when she was falling down drunk or unconscious - and had, according to Peeta. "Game one? What're you talking about? It was all over after Buford nailed Seaver's second pitch out of the park." The hissing and screeching was getting louder.
"No way, buddy... not gonna happ..." and then the static overwhelmed the voice.
The signal was gone. Katniss stared at the old radio, then shook her head, rubbing a hand over her face. "Who the hell was that?" God, she needed to sleep.
She wandered over to the couch and lay down, only half aware that she was humming 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame'.
*
"Huh." Glen shook his head. Well, whoever Queens was, he seemed to've lost her.
Ruth leaned in, and he looked up and smiled at her. "What's up?"
She smiled back, and it was still the sweetest smile he'd ever seen, tired as she was. "Come on, leave the radio alone for a while. Your daughters want you to say goodnight."
"Yeah, sure." He took one last drag on his cigarette and got up. "I'm coming."
Upstairs, he sat on the edge of Katniss's bed. She snuggled against his side, and Primrose reached across from her bed to squeeze his hand while she hugged her plush rabbit. "Take me out to the ball-game," he sang softly, the song he sang every night to the daughter who loved baseball as much as he did, and the one who just liked to hear him sing. "Take me out to the show...'