7

Peeta opens a brown envelope. It's got a District 7 return address on it.

It's a bottle of pills. Peeta isn't sure, but he's almost sure the bottle's got Haymitch's fingerprints all over it...and the pharmacisit's...and the pharmacist's assistants'...and the bottler's...and Effie's... Point being, this is the magic herb that once fixed Haymitch's marriage to Effie. With luck-and with the state of things, Peeta's going to need a LOT of it-it'll soon fix Peeta's to Katniss.

"Omega-101," Peeta mutters, while reading the label. "Take a high dose for premium effect. Do not take with high-protein foods. Caution: may trigger premature menopause in female angler fish..." Peeta chuckles. "Sounds like Panem herbalism has finally got super-desperate for new test subjects. Why don't they just use mice? Katniss does."

Peeta goes downstairs, gets a glass, and reaches for the tap. He hesitates, and sighs. This almost feels like too desperate a solution for a marital problem. Seriously; most men just divorce women who can't play by half their rules.

He looks out the back patio window. Katniss is still torturing mice before killing them. He's looking at her-but it's as if her intuition can't even tell he's looking at her. She used to care about him. She used to cry for him. She used to not be able to do work if she thought Peeta was in danger.

Once again, Buttercup gets too close to the mouse tank. Katniss notices, and gets another machete out of the machete can. Or rather, they're boomerang-shaped machetes now. She throws it away from Buttercup. It comes back around. Buttercup yowls while leaping out of the way at the last second.

Peeta screams as it barely flies past him. Katniss catches it, grins, and puts it back with the others.

"They're boomerangs now?!" Peeta gapes. "What has gotten into you, Katniss?! I've tolerated your milder hatred of Buttercup before, but now it really feels like you're trying to kill him!"

Below, Buttercup starts rubbing on Peeta's feet and lower legs. Seems like he prefers Peeta whenever Katniss isn't Katlanna.

Katniss acknowledges Buttercup at Peeta's feet, and chuckles. "Thanks for taking my side...husband."

"I want to talk about our marriage," Peeta confesses. "It's like we never spend time with one another anymore."

"This place's mouse infestation never ends, Peeta. And it won't after Buttercup leaves-if he ever does. And as soon as I'm done with this trap, I'm putting an arrow through that cat, and cooking him. BTW, I like what you did with those five hogs, over there."

The five wild boars, that Peeta accidentally called the other night, are hanging by their hind legs over respective barrels of booze. OMG; Katniss is so obsessed with Buttercup's replacement that she can't even take pride-let alone remember-her better acts.

"Katniss," Peeta begins to sob, "those boars attacked me! You saved them from me! You did such a good job of killing them that I thought you were going to kill me next! Katniss, please! I need you! Please, for once in the history of you working on that trap, STOP, AND SPEND TIME WITH ME!"

Katniss keeps working. She grabs another dart, and throws it at a dartboard. The dartboard's got a picture of Fievel Mousekewitz from an American Tail stapled over it. He's a Jewish mouse target for Katniss's ever-deteriorating Nazi heart.

"I miss you, Katniss. It's like I'm being tortured in the Capitol all over again."

"Look Peeta, if you're not going to help, then I'm sure you've got better things to do. Seriously; this is your weekend, and you're treating it like your job!"

So says the woman who can't take a day off from working on that mousetrap, Peeta thinks. He sighs, and leaves her alone.

So much for manual re-seduction. Peeta only has one option left. And it'd better work. If it doesn't, he's already got a divorce document upstairs with his own signature on it.

He gets a tall glass of water. He takes it upstairs. He opens the bottle of Omega-101. He empties the entire bottle into his hand. One handful at a time, he takes them. Once all the pills are gone, he drinks several glasses of water, in hopes to stabilize his blood pressure if the Omega-101 raises it; the bottle says it might.

The bottle also tells him to discontinue use if he starts seeing bacteria with a naked eye. Again, that doesn't make sense to him; but it worked for Haymitch, so it MUST work for Peeta.

He gives himself a moments, and waits for initial side effects. He feels fine. He smiles, and starts to go back downstairs. He stops, comes back, gets the half-signed divorce document, and resumes his quest.

It's not that he doesn't believe in the Omega-101. It's just that nothing else has worked, and he can't say he likes his chances.

Keeping the divorce document just inside the back patio door, he goes outside. He tries to embrace Katniss from behind...

"What, did you get attacked by tracker-jackers again?!" Katniss shakes him off. "I told you to give me my space! I don't know if you can tell, but this trap is still far from finished!"

And so, Plan X has failed. It's time to resort to Plan Y: the one where Peeta desperately tries to get divorced, and hopes against hope that Katniss doesn't try to stop him on his way down Divorce Highway.

Plan Z, of course, is where Peeta kills Katniss, because all else has failed. Alas, he'll never have the willpower to kill a woman he's loved for so long, so at this point, it's either Y, or suicide...assuming Katlanna doesn't kill him first, that is.

He grabs the document, scurries in, and tells Katniss to sign it. Blindly, Katniss smashes her thumb against the proper spot on the document-which Peeta points out.

"Finally," Katniss mutters, "you ask me for something simple." She pulls her thumb away, and goes back to work.

Peeta's out in a flash. Time passes. Katniss keeps working on the trap. Katniss blinks. That starts to seem unusual to her. For the longest time, Peeta keeps hounding her for quality time, and now he just wants her to sign a document?! This feels just a little too good to be true..."

She stands, and opens the back door. "Hey Peeta," she shouts, "what did I sign?"

There's no reply. She shouts the question; no reply. She shouts it so loud that one of the paintings falls off the wall. Peeta doesn't answer.

She runs out the front door, looking for him. She shouts his name. He doesn't reply. "PEETA, YOU GET BACK HERE! I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU! WHATEVER FUNNY BUSINESS YOU'RE TRYING TO PULL ON ME, IT WON'T WORK! NOW GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE! I'LL HAVE IT WITH A CATTLE PROD STUCK IN IT IF YOU DON'T!"

Far away, Divorce Court sits atop a tall hill. It also sits atop a pyramid of four different plethoras of stairs-one on each side.

Peeta's gotten weaker since he left Katniss at the house. He's at the base of the hill. High above, the steps loom away and over him. He's got the divorce document in his hand...and both are trembling.

Don't stress, Peeta. Remember what your folks used to tell you: that the beginning of a journey of a thousand miles is a single step. You know where the single step is. Now up you...

He trips over the first step, and falls on his forehead. He loses the divorce document.

Okay fine, take two. And this time, put a little more effort into your eyesight.

He staggers up the steps. He falls down them a few times. At times, they feel like they get bigger. He's lost all awareness of the divorce document-which is still at the bottom of the steps, where he dropped it the first time he fell.

He's not even halfway up the steps. He's not even a tenth of the way. He's tired. The world's getting too big all around him. His blood pressure's making him dizzy. He lies across the flattest thing he can find, and takes a nap.

Peeta wakes. It's cooler. He's underdressed. And something really strong and really painful is squeezing his midriff. And he feels dizzy. But at least he's got his back curled back, where it feels best after work.

Slowly, his eyes open. He screams when he sees what's around him.

Empty space is around him. The ground flies past him...and it's small. He's in a giant bird's beak. The bird is a mockingjay.

This bird is huge. Peeta wonders why District 12 hasn't called out the android militia to shoot it down.

The bird lands. As it does, everything around it gets bigger-TOO big. He leaves Peeta in an open spot of soil, and flies away. The nearest weed, to Peeta, is as tall as a tree-if not taller.

This is the side of a hill. To Peeta, it's like the stairway he remembers having tried to climb before passing out.

Down here, all alone, surrounded by boulder-sized soil pebbles, Peeta must embrace his scary new reality. The mockingjay isn't a giant; he's the size of a worm.

With that said, he's lucky the mockingjay didn't eat him. It's almost as if the mockingjay could tell that he's... But that's not likely. A mockingjay is a wild animal; it's not like every mockingjay in Panem is Katniss's avatar, after all.

Don't people have to be dead to have avatars? Or is that just in some ancient religions?