This is the sort of shit far from his expertise. He and Katniss spoke the same language; which sometimes involved not speaking at all. Hunting was hardly the time for conversation. Even still they made it work; there was an ease between them, one he wasn't even sure how they'd managed to build it.
He didn't know Peeta. Not like he knew his girls, anyway. The sweet things. Even at his worst, agitated at the day or too tired to do much more than sit on the worn couch, he'd loved and cherished every moment.
Raising a hand to either one of them had never crossed his mind. He couldn't remember discussing it at all with Asterid, but they'd both seemed to be on the same page. Surely they must have at some point over the years.
His gaze drops to the cuts on Peeta's arms, his palms, before going back up to the boy's face, and remembers stories of Rhoda. Of what most in Twelve knew but didn't discuss. The things Asterid told him when Peeta and Katniss were hardly knee high to a grasshopper.
Now, Peeta looks younger than his sixteen years and Burdock can't help but see Katniss all those years ago, hiding beneath the honeysuckle bush, scared all because Asterid had raised her voice at him.
He lets Peeta go on and on. There's hardly a point for interjection and even if there were Burdie's got no clue what to say. His eyes drift through the wall, thinking of the Everdeen place across the street, just for a moment before looking back at Peeta. How different things were for the two families. But he'd known that before now, hadn't he?
He can't let himself react to the attempt at a joke, though he's made similar jokes to his wife. Peeta repeating his mother's words, though, stays with him. “...Your ma said that to you?” There's anger beneath the calm demeanor. And a twinge of sadness.
Did Rhoda's cruelty really go so far as to wish her son would have never come home from the games? For hostility at her child being gifted a pair of boots? Again he thinks of the stories Asterid shared with him when he and Katniss were just babes.
Burd sighed and rubbed at his forehead as he takes it all in, trying to figure out where to start. He leans forwards, brows pinched together, and decides maybe the beginning would be best.
“You didn't do nothin' to make her do all this.”
Nothing but be born into it, he supposed. The scars he bore now came from his desire to help his brothers. The same way he seemed insistent on helping those in the Seam despite the unwelcome beginnings. Despite the extra food from his and Katniss winning the Games and the strange looks early on.
“She ain't right y'know. Sounds full o' shit t' me. She–” Burdock stops himself before going on. He didn't know much about Rhoda or the Waldrops until he'd started dating Asterid. She'd colored his perception long before he'd said more than two words to her.
They'd had their own history; reasons to enter the bakery only when she wasn't around, or to meet Otho out back. He wondered if Rhoda was angry when her husband bought a squirrel from him or Katniss. Or when he brought home goat cheese from Prim. There weren't many from town willing to come to the Seam, let alone the Hob. Another thing Peeta had gotten from his father.
He sighed, shakes his head from his earlier thoughts. That he and Asterid had known how horribly she'd treated him since he was a tyke. “She don't matter.” But he knew there was no sense in hiding from one's blood. She was still his mother. There was no running. Not from her or from his father or from the ties he felt to protect his brothers.
Peeta's return felt complicated, his being so tied to Katniss was undeniable. Hard for any of the Everdeens to shake. But maybe he's tied himself to the boy too over the last few weeks.
Burdock's brows are furrowed, concerned, yes, but frustrated. With Rhoda. With himself for not having the right words. Asterid would be better at this.
“You're a good kid,” he offers, finally. And though he's not particularly pleased with it, it's all he's got. “Ain't right for her to do any o' that to ya. No mother worth her weight in salt'd act that way.”
