Never Be Mine

By: Michelle Rose Landau

Summary: The only way she'll notice me, the only way I'll know she's interested either way, is if I just talk to her...Love, sex, marriage, and family in 12.

Genre: Romance/AU; there's still Hunger Games, but Katniss and Peeta won't be Tributes.

Pairing(s)/Characters: eventual Peeta/Katniss, Gale/Katniss, Gale/Madge, Peeta/OC

Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games series. They are the sole creative property of Suzanne Collins.

A/N: This story is told mostly in Peeta's point of view, with Katniss' and other characters' point of view sprinkled in. It'll go AU when neither he or Katniss are chosen as Tributes for the Hunger Games each year. I wanted to explore what direction Peeta and Katniss would go in if they'd been allowed to fall in love like (mostly) normal teenagers without the influence of the Capitol and the Games, and what their roles would be in the Rebellion. I wandered into this fandom a few weeks ago after a looong writer's block. This is my first Hunger Games fanfic, and I'm excited about sharing it. Enjoy.

~one~

There are certain moments that happen in life that you're just sure you're going to remember, and keep close to your heart because it gives you hope and solace from the burdens of the world.

I learned this early on.

District Twelve isn't exactly a place where happy memories are made for many of the people that live here.

I live in a place called Panem. It's a complicated story that's retold in our history classes in about 50 or so ridiculously long chapters spread out through the school years.

Every year, the discussions (more like the teacher dictating to us) about it become more detailed, more complex.

Panem is located in a place that used to be called North America. Before our time, a nuclear war broke out all around the world, and it reshaped governments, landscapes, and people. Millions were instantly killed by the bombs, and many more millions lost their lives due to other causes. After that, the radiation wiped out another large chunk of the population, and changed the earth's weather patterns.

What followed was a hundred years' worth of devastating rains, storms, freezes, droughts, and floods. The sea level rose and swallowed up whole parts of the worlds major continents. According to the maps, there are now only three large landmasses. The rest are broken into large islands and archipelagos, and everything else is buried under water.

Panem is the only known "civilized" nation.

People settled in Panem, and then a government arose and the districts were formed, but there were few resources going to the districts, but plenty were leaving them.

People were starving, desperate, and frustrated with the emerging government.

They rebelled. The government, run from a place called the Capitol, won.

Then the Treaty of Treason was signed into law, which instituted the Hunger Games.

Even though it's brutal, I find our history fascinating.

There are other parts of history we discuss too: The American Revolutionary War, the formation of the fifty states, other countries' customs, what the weather and various regions used to look like, what people used to do and wear, the customs.

There used to be these odd celebrations like Columbus Day, Independence Day, and these things called Super Bowls. A nation called China used to celebrate the new year with animals. A place called the Vatican used to be the center of the Catholic Church. There used to be all kinds of religions unique to every country of the world.

But mostly, it's the history of Panem, and a constant reminder of how fragile our lives are.

How can there be happiness when more times than not, for most of the people that live here, there's barely enough to eat? When every parent of children between twelve and eighteen years old has to bear the possibility and the sight of their child dying?

Sometimes I wonder, is it even possible to eventually be happy? Is there even room for such emotions in the world that we live in?

The desperation is constantly around me, and I'm reminded everyday to thank whatever deity there might be out there for the small favor of my family's business.

Our bakery keeps the five of us adequately fed, and I can honestly say that in my sixteen years, I've never really wanted for anything, not the basic stuff, anyway.

My brothers and I have always been cared for physically-good clothes, regular meals, shoes, school supplies, and a bit of spending money given to us by our father-but where our emotional stability is concerned, well, as long as we can haul inventory, follow the recipes, and keep the bread and pastries coming, that's about as far as my parents' concern for our emotional health goes.

But even the small mercy I've been granted since birth doesn't keep the possibility of my name being drawn for the Reaping from happening. I've still got three more years before I'm too old for the reaping and am no longer eligible to be offered up as Tribute for the Games.

I try not to think about it.

Instead, I think about the moments I vividly remember, that made an impression on me...the moments I keep in my heart and frequently ponder.

The school bell rings, and we all get up and make our way outside and start heading our separate ways for home.

My brother Arden reminds me not to be late to the bakery, and I nod as I linger behind with some of my friends, hands in my pockets.

I hang around the schoolyard, watching the stragglers and teachers emerging from the gray building, faintly listening to the conversation my friends are having.

There's lots of us that run together, but my core group of friends are all Merchant sons: Batter Pritchett (his dad owns the haberdashery), Theo Harker (his parents own the sweet-shop), and Sander Cole (his mother owns the boutique and laundry service).

They're alright guys, and we've been coming up together in school. Our families know each other fairly well, and they are loyal.

We all of us work for our parents, so that doesn't leave a whole lot of time to socialize, but when we do, it's a good time.

I know I'll end up being late to the bakery, but I have to see her.

Finally, she appears, and the one moment that always stands out the most in my mind when I see her is the moment when I heard this girl, Katniss Everdeen, sing the Valley Song.

I've been watching her leave home from school ever since.

We were five years old then, and she was meek and smart, and deceptively strong. She still is, eleven years later, only without the two braids and dingy dresses.

She's a Seam girl, and Merchants' sons and daughters don't date for too long, or marry, Seam workers' sons and daughters. It's not exactly forbidden, it's happened before, it's just looked at as a step down. It's a strange sort of caste in our District that's never completely made sense to me.

At school, Seam girls and Merchant girls don't associate with one another. I figure it has to be a girl thing because us guys could give a shit. We hang together, play sports, and rough around, but things can get pretty heated over girls. Seams get territorial over their women, especially when it comes to a Merchant boy and a Seam girl. Seams don't let their women get their hopes up, if they had any at all.

There's just something so backwards about it, but that's just the way things are.

The first day of kindergarten, I saw Katniss, and my dad pointed her out to me. Told me about how she would have been my sister if he'd had the occasion to marry her mother. He told me how Katniss' mother broke the rules and fell in love with a Seam worker's son and married him.

Apparently, the Seam worker's redeeming quality was his singing. Being only five, I couldn't really wrap my brain around my dad's little love story...hell, I barely even understood what love was.

But then it started to make sense to me when I heard her sing. It was then that I understood how a song could make someone fall in love.

Katniss wears her hair in one braid now, intricately plaited to flow down over one shoulder, her right shoulder, and she seems partial to slacks and leggings, boots, and button down blouses these days. I'm partial to them too, they show off her figure better than the dresses she wears from time to time. I like the one braid, but I like the rare times she wears her hair down.

She's not alone.

Her sister is walking beside her; Prim is her name, I think. Short for Primrose, I've heard, but I'm not sure. They're close, I can tell. On the other side of her, is Gale Hawthorne.

The two of them are inseparable, and I can't help but feel jealous. Almost every guy in our grade and the next is jealous because Katniss is one of the more attractive girls in the school, especially for her being a Seam girl.

Most Seam girls forever smell like coal dust, are often too skinny, and too dingy. There's a rawness, a wildness to them that is, more times than not, off-putting. Still, they are smarter than the Merchant girls, more industrious, and have survival hardwired in their genetics. They're not the prettiest things around, but on a much more crude note, I've heard that they're more willing to uh...give of themselves, so to speak, than Merchant girls. I can see why a Merchant boy would be interested.

But Katniss is different. Her attractiveness comes from her part Merchant stock. Even at her skinniest, she's still well built and strong. She's definitely got skills, too. I hear how she hunts, how she's fierce with a bow and arrow.

Katniss provides us with squirrels for the stew my mom often makes.

She doesn't smell like the other Seam girls; she smells like soap, and the woods, and just clean.

What makes her even more attractive is the fact that she doesn't seem to acknowledge it, often downplays it, that and the fact that with Gale, she gives the impression that she's perpetually unavailable.

Other girls are jealous of her because she's in Gale's company, and often garners attention from other Merchant boys.

Even to a Merchant girl, Gale is a good candidate. He's only got one more Reaping, and then he won't be eligible for the Games anymore. So, for other girls who are also in their last year of eligibility, he's a prime choice.

The way he looks at her, though, everyone is starting to think that if she manages to escape the Reaping and age out, that they will marry soon after that.

It's what we call "set".

That means that when a guy and a girl go together long enough, and they both escape the reaping, and the parents approve, a wedding is bound to be right around the corner. Sometimes, parents are so confident that both of their children will not be reaped, that they'll begin saving up money to pay for the wedding.

The odd thing about it all is that Katniss is unreadable. Sure, she smiles and laughs more around the guy, but she gives away little else. Honestly, I'm beginning to think that his feelings are deeper than hers. She's very guarded, but the one thing that's clear is that Katniss is all about her sister, and trying to keep her family together.

I can respect that.

At the end of the day, family's all any of us has got.

She glances over in my direction as she chats with Gale, and on impulse, I duck my head, but I highly doubt that she notices me looking at her.

I watch her smile-God, that smile-and laugh when Gale picks Prim up and she sits on his shoulders.

I feel a shove to my shoulder.

"You know she's Gale's girl, right?" Batter asks.

"I know," I say.

"She's pretty stuck up for a Seam chick," Sander chimes in.

"Her mother was the apothecary's daughter," I explain. "She's got Merchant blood in her."

"She's pretty hot," Batter says. "But she's probably set."

Just the thought that Katniss may just marry Gale if she doesn't get reaped feeds the jealous part of me. It also makes me doubt my own feelings about her.

Is it possible to be completely in love with a girl from the age of five? Is it even realistic? I mean, the feelings that I've had for her, they've never gone away, they've only grown as I've gotten older. Maybe one day they will fade, whether through being reaped, or just growing up, but right now, Katniss Everdeen is the girl I see myself being truly happy with.

It's crazy that I'm thinking all this because she barely acknowledges me.

I watch as they head down the gravel road to the Seam.

I look up at the clock and realize that I'm late.

"Peet, where you been? Mom's pissed, and I'm not getting my ass kicked for you again," Arden frets.

Arden is my second oldest brother; he's eighteen, and my oldest brother, Sal, is nineteen.

I walk around to the back, grab an apron, wash my hands, and my dad, Hearn, taps the watch on his wrist.

"I know, dad," I say. "I'm sorry."

Just then, my mother comes into the kitchen, fury in her eyes.

"Where the hell have you been?" She inquires.

"I left school late," I explain. "I-"

I'm interrupted when she smacks the side of my head.

Mom's a slight woman, for the most part, but I'll be damned if she didn't have a good swing in both her arms. Then again, she's had years of practice. Me and my brothers have been swatted plenty of times by her.

My mother, Lenora, doesn't have an ounce of fear in her, and us boys figured out pretty much from a young age that nurturing isn't exactly her thing.

She's all about work, and she doesn't tolerate any kind of nonsense on her time.

My brothers and I have to be downstairs by six in the morning so that we can get the prep done for mom and dad, then Arden and I head off to school.

Both my parents work from eight to three, with Sal's help, but once my brother and I arrive from school, we work the last part of the day and we work all day on weekends except Sundays.

It stays busy, and we work pretty well together.

Sal takes care of the front, Arden does the cooking with my dad, and I do the cooking, heavy lifting, and handle the money.

Even though I'm the youngest, I'm the strongest. I'm not saying that because I'm vain, it's just one of those weird family trait things. Me and my dad are strong so we both haul stuff around.

Since I was old enough to see over the counter, I've been taught to handle the money. By the time I turned fourteen, my parents handed the books over to me, and I take care of the bills, finances, and I run the register in the front.

My brothers kind of resent that, but they know that I didn't ask for the responsibility.

"Get your ass here on time, boy," she hisses. "You hear me?"

"Yes ma'am."

She points to the cellar. "I need two bags of flour."

"Yes ma'am."

I rush over to the cellar, and I hear her scolding Arden.

"I don't care if you have to chain him and drag him," she tells him. "You get him here on time...what the hell has he been doing, anyways?"

"I don't know, Mom," Arden shrugs. "Honest."

I can't hear the rest of their conversation about me, but when I emerge from the cellar with two sacks of flour on my shoulders, I hear my mother fussing.

"That boy's always had his head in the damn clouds."

Have I?

I guess it might be true of me, but it's mostly on my time.

When I have to work, I work. I have a good work ethic, I think. Even still, everyone needs a diversion.

I put the flour sacks on the floor, and use my pocket knife to cut them open.

We fill the orders and Sal gives them to our delivery guy.

The thing that makes our business unique is that everything is same-day fresh. We never serve day old bread.

Somehow, my dad has this down to a science. We make just enough throughout the day to sell out and rarely have leftovers. Whatever leftovers we do have end up going to the Seam or to the Hob.

Even though it's only a few hours' work, it's not easy.

After we close up the shop, we go upstairs to our apartment. It's a good size-three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room big enough for hosting, and a living room-and it's roomy enough to where we don't feel like we're living on top of each other. Me and Arden share a bedroom, and Sal has always had his own bedroom, being the oldest, but all three of us share the bathroom.

One would expect that it would look disgusting with three boys using it, but my brothers and I keep it, and our rooms, spotless. Mom makes us clean some part of the the apartment everyday.

We don't neglect our chores because that brings trouble.

Like I said, she's not much for nurturing, compassion...or patience. She is primal in her mothering, but I never doubt that she loves me and my brothers. She's just a product of the kind of household she grew up in. Her mother, our grandmother, is the exact same way, and they simply cannot stand each other.

Mom has dinner laid out for us, and we all sit down to eat.

"Did you hear that Madge Undersee has been seen with that Hawthorne boy?" My mother says, more to my father than to me and my brothers. "I think they need to squash that before something more serious happens."

"They're teenagers," my dad shrugs off as he spears a carrot with his fork. "Let them have their bit of amusement while it lasts."

"It's more than just amusement, Hearn. You more than anyone knows what happens when one of our girls marries a Seam worker..."

I push the slimy pieces of duck around on my plate and keep the focus there, and my brothers follow suit because that kind of barb from my mother is the only thing that really hurts my dad.

I know she does it on purpose. She'll never forgive my dad for making her his second choice.

Sometimes I think my dad is still in love with Mrs. Everdeen.

"Hearn, you know I didn't mean it," Mom waves off. "You know what my point is."

"Yeah," Dad sighs. "Like I said, though. It's just teenagers being teenagers. There's worse things than Madge Undersee and the Hawthorne boy seeing each other."

"It's not true at all, though," Arden joins in. "Just ask Peet. He knows."

Dammit, I hate my brother sometimes.

"Knows what?" Mom asks, her interest piqued.

"Nothing, Mom," I say, glaring at Arden.

She snorts. "I should've known better. You are clueless, boy."

The smirk on Arden's face lets me know that he's just going to go all the way and be a real son of a bitch this evening.

"That's why he's been late," Arden reveals.

"Why?" Dad asks, and then all eyes are on me, and I want to murder my brother right now.

I know that I have to tell the truth.

"Gale's not interested in Madge," I explain. "He's close to Katniss Everdeen."

"What does that have to do with you being late, Peeta?" Mom asks me, irritation in her tone and in her eyes.

"I...I..."

"Spit it out."

How much more embarrassing can this get?

"He runs into her sister Prim," Arden fills in. "Prim's got a little crush on him, so he indulges her. Carries her bags, waits around with her until her sister and Gale show up to walk her home. That's why he's been late."

Mom frowns. "Both of them just rub me the wrong way, especially that Katniss. She looks like a trouble maker. Ugh...Seam girls. Either way, you know what your priorities are. Get to work on time."

"Yes ma'am."

The rest of dinner carries on with sparse conversation. There's a couple of questions about school for me and Arden, Sal eases in to asking Mom and Dad if he could have the day off this weekend for his "date" with this girl by the name of Constance.

"Constance Fills?" Mom inquires.

"Yes ma'am," Sal confirms.

"No," she answers, and Sal looks down at his plate.

"Lenora, the boy needs to get out," Dad argues. "All of 'em do."

"Not with Constance," Mom says firmly.

"What's wrong with her?" Dad questions. "She's a sweet girl."

"She's only interested in our business," Mom explains. "You know her father has tried to partner with us for years."

I'm not sure if my mother realizes this or not, but that's what she's said (or something similar to it) about almost every girl Sal, Arden, and I have tried to date.

Seam girls are out of the question, but no Merchant girls are good enough.

My mother is dooming us to perpetual bachelorhood.

After dinner, it's my turn to clean up the kitchen. My parents retreat to the living room to have some coffee and listen to some music on the radio. Sal heads up to his room for the evening, and Arden comes into the kitchen again.

"Why'd you bring up Katniss and Gale and then lie?" I ask outright.

He shrugs. "I guess I never realized how important Katniss is to you, even though she barely acknowledges you, until I brought her up."

"You sure it's not just 'cause you're an asshole?"

"Look, I'm sorry, Peet," Arden says sincerely. "I thought about what I was about to do to you, and I thought twice."

"Thanks," I say.

"Now, will you do me a favor?"

"Maybe," I say, putting the dishes in the rack.

"Stop being creepy and just talk to her already," he challenges. "You're killin' me with your lovesick puppy dog drama."

I shake my head. "I can't."

"C'mon, Peet. Don't be such a girl about it," he huffs, and I roll my eyes. "First of all, she's a Seam girl, I'm sure she'll be happy about the attention. Second of all, you're alright, but you're never going to be as good looking as me..."

"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," I joke.

"I will," Arden laughs, then he sobers. "And third of all, I'm not saying she's gonna realize that you've been crazy about her since kindergarten and fall instantly in love with you and marry you and have babies. Just talk to her."

With that, my brother goes upstairs.