Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was too bright. Unnaturally bright.

The light was choking him. No. Wait. It was blinding him…and suffocating him.

That shouldn’t be right.

Disoriented, he brought a hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He squinted his eyes to slits in an attempt to focus better, simultaneously choking out a series of strangled coughs. Neither the new narrowed perspective nor the moisture that flooded his eyes at his lungs’ inability to oxygenate fully helped him see through the morphing cloud of hazy brilliant yellow white that apparently cocooned him. It appeared impenetrably dense and encroaching, menacing, smothering.

Through his dazed confusion, he attempted to keep calm, focused. Whatever the blinding haze that surrounded him was, it was obviously affecting his cognitive function- and his mobility. He tried taking shallow breaths through his nose to stifle his coughing fit and closed his eyes to assess his situation. He could move his right hand. That he knew because he’d just rubbed his face with it. His other arm felt weighed down by something his impaired vision made impossible to identify. But, he wiggled his fingers, tentatively. Yup. He definitely still had a left arm.

He frowned. Why would he think he’d be missing his arm? That was a randomly silly thing to think, wasn’t it?

Apprehension, the source of which he could not fathom, started coiling in the pit of his stomach as he continued his evaluation of his current condition. He was prone, somewhat. At least, it felt like he was horizontal, or at the very least, he was on his back, reclining over something slanted at a steep angle. His feet were dangling off it, whatever it was, from his knees down, and his right leg arched out at an uncomfortable angle. Realizing this, he tried readjusting it and registered for the first time the obstruction between his legs, impeding his movement. The object in question was heavy – stiflingly heavy – and it weighed down on the lower half of his body at least to his lower ribcage. It didn’t feel like it was crushing him and he was not in any particular discomfort from it, unless one counted a serious case of leg falling asleep discomfort, but he was impossibly pinned. Once again, when he opened his eyes and let them travel downward to where his torso should be to investigate further, he saw nothing but milky yellowish white. He let his head fall back against whatever that was behind it with an exasperated, wheezing groan.

He tried to get his sluggish thoughts to realign. Something had happened, obviously. Something fast. And, if the growing feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach was any kind of indication- something very, very bad. Focusing on his limited breaths, he tried to take his mind back to a few moments ago, or was it minutes? Hours?

He realized with a start that he had absolutely no bearing on time. Whatever this crap in the air was, it was really doing a number on his cognitive function. The knowledge did little to mitigate his growing anxiety. If someone didn’t find him soon, whatever this stuff was would likely either suffocated him or kill every brain cell he had.

Banging his head against whatever that was he laid on to vent some frustration, (Had that been a metallic clang he’d heard as his skull made violent impact? Or, was he already too delusional to discern sounds properly?) he tried once more to concentrate. He tried to remember the last thing he could before the bright white light.

                                                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You shouldn’t be arguing a point you could possibly never hope to understand, Mellark.” Madge’s eyes shone fierce with determination, even in the almost completely dim bus.

“Excuse you? How am I incapable of understanding? Oh, I get it. You’re making this a gender implicit thing,” Peeta responded with just as much candor. He knew the passionate student council president only referred to him by last name when she was especially frustrated, pissed or cornered in an argument – in this case, it was likely all three – but he wasn’t about to back down from this just because they were friends. He wasn’t captain of this debate team because he was pretty.

“So what? You’re saying a guy can’t get raped by a girl? That just because our bodies physiologically automatically respond to stimulation, regardless of our willingness or consent, making it easier for an accoster to take advantage, the violation is less intrusive, disgusting or real? Explain that one to me, Madge?”

The blonde in the seat behind his floundered, opening and closing her mouth several times, her eyes wide as she tried to compose a retort. The riposte eventually came from Bristel, however, who was seated across the aisle from her, her tanned arms crossed across her breasts and her legs stretched out and interlaced across the seat. She huffed out the words as if explaining it to a toddler. “No one is saying that, Peeta. But regardless how far we’ve come when it comes to gender equality, no one can expect a guy and a girl to respond to that the same way. We are emotionally wired differently than you guys are. Going through that… it can destroy everything a woman believes herself to be. Having to go to a hospital, open her legs, and have someone probe and photograph her after something like that. You can’t tell me you don’t understand how some women would just rather pretend it never happened and move on with their lives.”

He locked his intense electric azure eyes on her arctic greys to accentuate his response as soon as she’d finished speaking. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t just pretend that never happened. It’s a horrible crime. It’s a desecration and the victim deserves to heal as much as the perpetrator deserves punishment. Neither can happen if the crime is kept in the dark. Women who try to move on without admitting it to anyone just cause the damage to fester and become worse and worse with time. Without evidence or prosecution, the criminal who did this has no deterrent to keep him from doing it to someone else.”

When both girls remained quiet but pensive, the wheels in their heads obviously working to find a counter argument, he quickly continued, “At least, you guys have a rape kit to aid you in proving what was done to you actually happened. When it happens to us, we hide the shame because of the stigma that we know will inevitably come of it, tell someone and pray they won’t humiliate us or outright laugh in our face about it, or just plain call us liars. So, yes, there is merit in rallying for every female rape victim reporting the assault within the seventy-two hours allotted time, regardless whether it was a friend, a boyfriend, a complete stranger. It shouldn’t make a difference. It is a protection to you. None of you knows what kind of diseases the kind of bastard that will do something like this to you may have. The evidence collected can be used to prosecute the offender. And, if you choose not to press charges, that’ll be the end of it, anyway. But, at least there’s physical proof that what happened to you happened. You can never be branded a liar… and you can start to heal.”

Neither girl looked particularly convinced by his argument, not that he was surprised, they hadn’t just won their fifth debate competition this year on a fluke, after all. As far as he was concerned, these were the most brilliant argumentative minds in the state. And they were well on their way to proving it.

Just as Madge made a sound in the back of her throat to object his position, however, they felt the bus lurch forward rather violently, forcing theirs, their teacher coach Mr. Dalton’s and the eyes of the other seven kids on the bus to travel towards the driver. Most of those eyes had just startled to wakefulness, the ride already having taken an hour through the faintly falling snow and almost everyone catching up on some much-needed shut-eye since it would likely be past eleven when they reached the school and they still had classes tomorrow.

Before any of them could register what was happening, they heard the high-pitched squeal of all six of the vehicle’s tires simultaneous straining. Peeta thought he heard the driver frantically screaming back to them to hold on to anything they could, but who could tell over the shrill of the tires? A split second later, he felt himself catapult sideways… and… and upward? He definitely felt the weightlessness of being airborne for a moment. He also heard it.

The screams.

He was too disoriented to tell which scream was coming from who, but the world burst into a cacophony of sound an instant before his shoulder made hard impact with something, something that felt solid when he’d first hit it but became pliable with a discernible ‘crack’ instantly afterward and he was weightless again an instant later. The screaming seemed to augment after that, though it seemed to come from everywhere, surrounding him, tormenting him, accompanied by the deafening sound of warping metal and shattering glass.  In the proceeding seconds, parts of his body collided with several different things (and body parts- someone’s arm had caught him right between the legs and he was sure he’d caught a foot to the stomach at some point).

As the tumbling continued, he noticed the noises were changing. The horrified, pained screeches, gradually eclipsed almost completely by the sound of the bus coming apart. He found this terrified him far worse than the screams had and the next scream that resounded through the chaos was his own. It was a frantic wail, a plea to everyone, to anyone, to just hold on. That they would be safe.

He found his shout cut short when he landed with such force on what was now the ceiling of the bus; all the air left his lungs at once. It took him a second to catch a breath and try to sit up so he could look around, maybe help anyone else who was hurt. But the bus lurched sideways again and he found himself careening forward, his arms and legs reaching out for purchase to stop his momentum until he finally came to a halt, his legs spread and twisted awkwardly due to his previous flailing, dangling out two of the bus’ windows, precariously.

The instant he believed he would stop moving, he tried to sit up, get his bearings, try to help anyone in worse shape.

His next cry to his fellow bus occupants died on his lips when the seat just above his head, which had somehow managed to shift a full ninety degrees during the tumble, gave a strained metallic groan before plummeting toward him. He barely had a split second to react, propelling himself back and to the right with both his arms as fast as he could.

It wasn’t fast enough to keep the heavy seat from slamming down on his chest, unexpectedly propelling his head back with bruising force against the metal ceiling.

Darkness soon followed.

                                                                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh, thank god. We have one with a pulse over here! Jackson, bring the oxygen! I found one!”

Peeta strained his eyes open to find a shadow looming over him, almost nose to nose, in the mist of impossible white. Now, he was sure he was delusional.

“Hey, sweetie,” the figment of his oxygen-deprived imagination said in a very soft, unmistakably female whisper. “You are a very special little boy, you know that?” ‘Little boy’? How screwed up was he that this was the best endearment his mind could conjure? At the very least, something that would feed his ego instead of making him feel like he still wet his bed in his last few moments of life would’ve been nice. And why did his mirage sound like it was crying?

“Get this crap off of him, Mitchell. I can’t get proper vitals with him half buried under all this. And he’s freaking conscious. If under this his body looks like any of the oth-” Peeta heard his she-figment take a deep, choked breath. “Just get your butt back here and help me move this off him already!”

Within moments, he was feeling the weight on his torso lifted, a plastic mask being pulled gently over his mouth and nose so he could breathe more freely. Huh? Maybe this wasn’t all happening in his imagination, then?  ‘Oh, no!’ That meant everything he’d heard was real? Where was Madge? Where was Mr. Dalton, Bristel, Thom. God! Delly was going to kill him if he let something happen to Thom.

He sat up frantically, far too quickly, and immediately felt his head swirl from the gesture. The woman by his side, who’d apparently been looking away at something beside her, immediately turned back to him. He still couldn’t make her features out through the haze, but he definitely noted the panic in her voice as she trilled in chastisement, pulling him back to laying somewhat roughly by his shoulders, “What in the name of all that is holy are you doing, child? You could have a broken neck. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you to move in your condition?”

His condition? He felt just fine now that he could breathe, with the notable exception that all he saw was white blinding fog and blurry shadow people, of course. He wasn’t jumping to tell her that, though. “What is my condition?” He was shocked to note how raw and raspy his own voice sounded to his ears. What had he inhaled?

His shadowy rescuer seemed to hesitate shortly before answering curtly, “Your condition, young man, is lying on your back in an upside-down bus that tumbled eighty-three feet off an embankment, landed very precariously on an outcropping of pines and caught fire. Now, I need you to stay in ‘your condition’ for the next few minutes so that I can get a neck brace on you, figure out what else might be broken, dislocated or bleeding on or in you before I can haul you out of here. Because I definitely don’t want either of us in here if that fuel tank decides to explode instead of just sparking up a few more flames like before. You got me?”

Peeta was about to nod his assent, but decided against it after thinking better of it. If she thought he had a broken neck, nodding wasn’t exactly what she wanted him to do, was it? So he just settled for a subservient “Yes, ma’am” and allowed her to finish her assessment of his injuries. Once she was satisfied he was safe to move, she called two other figures, these decidedly male, to strap him to a board and carry him out of the bus through the back door. He could only stare up the entire time. His head immobilized by the neck brace.

He looked on as they passed row after row of seats, most twisted and bent almost beyond recognition. He looked on as, interspersed throughout all those seats and what used to be the floor of the bus, he saw the unmistakable splatter of crimson. So much red. He shut his eyes to the unsettling sight just as they cleared the threshold. When he opened them again it was to the view of clear night sky, flanked by pine brush sweeping by.

It was beautiful. It felt wrong.

Where was everyone else?

He could tell for the first time when they placed him on the crane to lift him up to the awaiting ambulance, just how far the bus had fallen. His stomach sunk further with this knowledge as he continued to wonder as to the whereabouts of his other debate teammates.

He didn’t bother asking the people who accompanied him on the ambulance on the trip to the hospital. Although he had a pretty good sense they knew, he doubted they had the pay grade to tell him anything.

So, he waited patiently, more quietly than he could remember ever having been in his entire life. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, it didn’t pass his notice the commotion outside the emergency room as he was unloaded onto a gurney and wheeled inside. He couldn’t see them, of course, but he could hear them. There were dozens of them, frantic. Screaming, asking, demanding to know who it was that had arrived. Who had been saved?

His stomach sank further.

By the time he’d been wheeled into the trauma room, he wasn’t shocked at the discovery his sideburns were saturated in his own tears.

“Oh, baby, you’re crying. Are you in pain? Does something hurt?” It was the same woman who’d first found him. She was standing directly over him, and he could see her clearly for the first time. She was in her late fifties with rich dark skin and kind, dark almond eyes that showed such deep concern. His heart only broke further looking at her, but he found it impossible to respond. Maybe, that’s why she continued in an encouraging tone, “My name is Doctor Seeder and I’m going to take such good care of you, baby, you hear?” He could feel her stroking his hair affectionately as she spoke. She cleared her throat and he noticed the moisture she blinked away, trying to sound stronger than she outwardly showed. “But, I need you to help me now, okay? I need you to tell me where it hurts so that I can make it better. And… and there are some folks here. Folks who would love to know you’re doing better, too. So, if you could tell me your name, I’d sure appreciate that, honey.”

That did it. He couldn’t keep flogging this poor woman, regardless of the fact she was a complete stranger. No one this kind deserved this.

“Peeta,” He moaned out hoarsely, pitifully, then cleared his throat and tried again more forcefully. However, the result wasn’t very loud, either way. His throat was just too raw from smoke inhalation and the horrible foreboding feeling twisting his insides. “My name is Peeta Mellark, Doctor Seeder. And nothing hurts. The tears… I think it’s just the shock of all this.”

The doctor nodded, a small smile inching up the side of her mouth before she sobered to spout instructions to the team surrounding her in the room.

“Okay, people. This boy needs a full panel. I want a scan of his chest and neck stat, x-rays on all extremities. Just because he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t mean something’s not fractured. The swelling could be blocking nerve impulse. I want him checked head to toe.”

Just as the orderlies wheeled him out to radiology, Peeta caught the last bit his doctor told the nurse, her voice sounding so different than it had inside the trauma room- haggard, impossibly defeated.

“Tell those folks out there, the reporters and… the parents. Tell them there was only one survivor of that damned overturned District Twelve High bus tonight.”

“And his name’s Peeta Mellark.”

Chapter Text

Pins and needles, mini continuous electrical jolts, vibes.

He’d never been able to place a name to the sensations that pulsed through him, rippled just below the surface of his skin, when he was in such close contact with so many people. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, really. He’d felt it all his life, as far as he could remember. He could just… feel people. Like, through his skin.

His father had tried to explain it to him as his being very, very in tune to how people around him were feeling when he’d first brought it up to him at the age of three. His old man hadn’t even batted an eye at him when he’d asked curiously if people made his skin tickle when they were near, too. He’d just laughed off what Peeta now knew to be a blatantly odd and distinctly unique idiosyncrasy with a nonchalant shrug of one shoulder, stating flippantly, “People are as different as snowflakes, little man. Whatever your normal is, that’s your normal. Mine is mine. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

So, at a very young age, he’d accepted that his skin ‘tingled’ around crowds… and that he could discern the kind of mood someone was in by touching them or, sometimes, just by being close to them. He’d read up on it as he’d gotten older, driven by curiosity. He’d learned all human beings generate chemical signals, heat and electrical impulses through their nervous systems and brains. And levels fluctuate as their emotions change. Now, most people can’t register other people’s… emissions? He wasn’t even sure what to call what people sent out that he picked up like some sort of ham radio on steroids, but he’d become completely comfortable with the fact that he had this ability to register and interpret what other people were, well, putting out. It made him a social creature. He always wanted to be around others, talk to them, engage them. It fascinated him how simple words could affect people. He’d adapted his entire personality to conform and accommodate this singular gift. He was perfectly comfortable with it.

The gargantuan exception to that being, of course… funerals.

Where could a hyper-empathic individual possibly feel less comfortable than an environment where there was a person who emitted zero, nada, zilch (which frankly creeped the heck out of him) and everyone else pretty much only sent out wave after wave of such unfathomable sorrow, he wasn’t sure if he wanted more to retch or claw his skin off?

No, no. He had an answer. There was a worse. That would be standing before ten freaking caskets (one of which was occupied by a friend), which in itself was the stuff that weaved his nightmares, while hundreds of inconsolable grievers blitzkrieg him with a tsunami of what he could best describe as hellion bile down his gullet, mixed with drain pipe cleaner dousing his skin.

Oh, and then there were the stares. It felt like every single person there was glaring at him for simply existing, begrudging him the fact that every inhale he took was inevitably going to be chased by an exhale. As if it were somehow his fault, he wasn’t an occupant of one of those caskets. 

Funny thing was (well not ha-ha funny but tragic-this-should-never-have-to-be funny), he could not even bring himself to fault them for their disparagement. They’d lost their children, friends, husband in such an entirely senseless and unexpected way. He could understand their need to place blame somewhere, anywhere- just so their overwhelming sorrow would not drive them beyond the brink of sanity. These people needed an outlet for the horror of all this or it would consume them, a scapegoat. He could suck it up and be that for them.

At least, he hoped he could.

He just needed to lose the full contents of his stomach (and maybe a little of the lining, just for good measure) the minute he found a restroom, or a remote bush. Anything would do at this point, really- and he’d be good to go.

He tried to ignore his growing gastronomic discomfort, venturing to creep his eyes from the patch of green by his shoes – where they’d adamantly been glued to avoid eye contact with anyone present – to look at the elegant mahogany casket not five feet before him. He’d never felt more grateful for a closed casket ceremony in his life. He had absolutely no desire to get a ‘last look’ at Madge before they laid her in her final resting place. He didn’t care that she was one of the few bodies the crews retrieved whole.  Strangely, he found himself mentally focusing, reaching out, hoping to feel something, anything coming from that awful box. His heart sank further at the void that answered his unvoiced call.

Attempting to distract himself from this fresh nuance of misery, he chanced a look to his side where he knew his best friend should be. He didn’t look up toward her face, though. He was nowhere near brave enough for that. The blue of his irises instead searched out the skirt of the black dress he’d seen her wearing to the affair. Upon finding it, he searched out her hands, which trembled as they clasped a single red rose. Without looking up at her, he reached out his hand to wrap around her elbow, giving it a subtle comforting squeeze. Within a second, her arms secured around his waist in what her strength would allow her to turn into a crushing embrace, her head buried in the crook of his neck as she saturated his black dress shirt with her sobs.

He placed a kiss to the crown of her head and again braved a look to the casket flanking Madge’s. Thom’s wasn’t as elaborate – his parents were of simpler means, well, everyone was of simpler means than the Mayor – but it was so beautifully decorated, no one would ever be the wiser. As he looked at the pretty wooden box, he tried to avoid thinking of the body within and found himself unable to think of anything else. Thom had been sleeping at the back of the bus when they’d hit the patch of black ice, the part that had caught fire. His was one of the families asked to provide dental records to identify the remains. Peeta could not fathom a fresher kind of hell for a parent.

Honestly, Thom’s casket was probably the one that made him the most uncomfortable of the macabre display before him, not just because he knew the state of the lifeless body within but because the boy that body had been before, well, the girl he currently held in his arms loved him. That knowledge alone would be enough to want that coffin as far as possible, but he’d specifically made the request to have it placed next to Madge’s, once he learned of the funeral arrangements for the accident victims.

So that the hundreds of students, Mr, Dalton’s family and the students’ families could attend, the school chose to hold it on the football field of their school. The ten caskets (the driver’s wife chose to hold his funeral at a separate venue), displayed side by side, and the closest family and friends allowed to stand or sit right up close on either side as the proceedings took place. The rest of the attendees would be seating up in the bleachers, listening to the eulogy spoken from the stage and podium set up on the right inzone.

Peeta was required to attend. It was some kind of unspoken moral obligation… and he was required to be front and center, even if it meant becoming the emotional punching bag for every bereft parent, friend and love interest in his immediate vicinity. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean he was without say in the matter and he’d immediately demanded to be in a position where he could simultaneously honor his friend’s memory while comforting his best friend during her time of need. It’d taken the funerary committee all of five minutes to acquiesce to placing Thom and Madge’s caskets next to each other.

He brought his hand up to rub absent comforting circles on Delly’s back, finally conjuring the nerve to raise his eyes far enough to scan the crowd immediately across Madge’s casket. His eye’s instantly locked on hers. Apparently, she’d been staring at him for quite some time, if the almost imperceptible twitch to her brows she only got when she was impatient was any indication.  He couldn’t help the flush that inevitably raced up his neck and quickly started heating his ears as she continued openly gaping at him.

He really wished she’d stop. She had absolutely no idea- no inkling the effect she had.

He could see too much when she looked at him like that, opened herself so completely. He saw longing, anger, grief, abandonment, confusion, loss… love.

Any onlooker here wouldn’t even think them a couple. After all, here he was, with a very blonde, pale, blue-eyed girl in his arms – could be his perfect counterpart, really – at the funeral of nine of their classmates. A funeral, he might add, which was the result of a horrific accident to which he was the sole survivor. While, there she stood, stoically holding the arm of a boy who’d be any Abercrombie & Fitch model’s rival for a catalogue cover. That is, of course, if Abercrombie & Fitch allotted for ethnic diversity, since both Katniss and the boy who’s arm she held had olive-skin and features distinct enough to brand them anything but Caucasian. 

He liked to think himself a pretty self-assured guy, but he wasn’t so much of a blowhard to believe the likes Gale Hawthorne wasn’t a far better match for someone like Katniss. They were kindred in every way, from appearance to life experience to preferred hobbies. He was fully aware the only reason her closeness to Gale didn’t rankle him more was the fact that the kid was in the midst of a losing battle over the reality that the girl he’d loved was lying in that coffin before them. And that’s why Katniss was there and he was here. Her best friend needed her because he’d just lost something irreplaceable, precious, just like his best friend had.

They still had one another. They still had time. They still had a second chance…

Six Weeks Prior…

He couldn’t understand why she was being so difficult about this.

“I’m not quitting, Katniss.”

The girl sitting in the passenger seat of his ninety-seven Town Car narrowed her eyes menacingly, bringing her arms up to cross over her chest. “Well, I’m not dating and certainly never marrying a professional athlete, Peeta. The moment those guys get to college level, they’re exposed to nothing but binge drinking, drugs and groupies throwing themselves at them, just for the thrill of bragging about banging someone on the team. They forget about wives, girlfriends…” she broke off with a snort at the disbelieving glare he shot her, looking away to finish irately, “You don’t even need an athletic scholarship. You take all AP classes, you’re in the student council, you’re president of the freaking debate team. Your GPA is ridiculous and your extra-curriculars… if Madge beats you out for Valedictorian, you’re a shoe-in for salutatorian. You can go out for an academic scholarship.”

He ran a frazzled hand through his too-long curls, pulling slightly to mitigate his growing frustration. He hated raising his voice at her. “And what do you propose I state as reason for needing financial aid if I went after the academic scholarship, Katniss? The fact that my father owns a successful business? The fact that my obvious whiteness is such a detriment to my getting a proper education in this country where my race is the majority? Please. Enlighten me. Oh, and while you’re at it, try to justify this believe that I would cheat on you the moment you turn your back. Because, the last eleven years of my being in love with you apparently never happened. So, the first girl that looks at me in college must make me drop my pants automatically. It’s not like I didn’t notice any other member of the female gender in the last eleven years it took until four months ago when I finally grew a pair and actually spoke to you. Thank you so much for the unwavering vote of confidence.”

She looked back at him; a chastened gleamed softening the mercury of her eyes as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. He tried to ignore how much that made him want to mimic the act as she spoke again more softly, “Then let your dad help, Peeta. But I still don’t want you to play after high school. I mean, look at me. The best I can hope for is a couple of years in community college while I work full time and, hopefully, save up enough so I can finish my degree in the cheapest local university. And we take the same classes. Heck, I’m even doing that stupid peer counseling thing to beef up my extra-curriculars so that I can maybe go after a partial academic scholarship. Me, Peeta, the girl with all the social skills of slow drying cement. I have to make sure Prim gets her shot at med school. And it’s not that I don’t believe you love me, Peeta. But, that environment… it’s such a temptation and you’re a normal guy. You’re an amazing guy, but no one’s infallible. Guys do stuff – stupid stuff – when they’re far from home, drunk and it’s all right there at their beck and call. I-I just wish sometimes we could’ve gotten together after college, you know. When none of that would’ve been an issue one way or the other, But that’s not what happened and this is an issue for me. We’re in the here and now and I see myself with you… I see my future with you. I want to protect that future so much. I see your playing college ball as a threat to us. Can’t you  just understand that?”

Peeta stared, at a loss. It dawned on him there was no way to explain this to her in a way that wouldn’t piss her off. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. She was right about her own situation, after all. She came from a single family home – her father had passed away in an industrial accident when she was eleven, same one that killed her best friend’s father – and her mother could never afford a decent education for her on her nurse’s salary alone. She was brilliant, hardworking and applied. She excelled in their shared AP courses and she’d have a solid shot at a full academic scholarship if she could play the ethnicity card, but she didn’t even have that.

It was evident to anyone with eyes that Katniss’s dark olive, almost bronze, skin, long neck, sharp nose and angular features, branded her a descendant of one of the many Native American tribes local to the District Twelve region of their state. However, Katniss’s father had been an orphan, adopted by Canadian imports that never bothered tracing their son’s roots, died before he reached his mid-twenties and no reputable school was going to accept a tribal claim without the tribe’s confirmation. Regardless of what she looked like, her birth certificate said she was born in Capitol Hospital, USA and the ethnicity on that actually stated she was white, error or not. Her only living blood relatives were a very blonde, blue-eyed mother and baby sister.  Katniss was screwed.

Then, again, the option to go to his father for help wasn’t as easily available to him as she’d nonchalantly asserted, either. He, his second oldest brother Rye and his oldest brother Flax had all been born within the course of four years. His mother had always been distant, at least from what he could remember as a seven-year-old, which is when she left their father. But, she’d still wrangled his old man into paying her alimony, even though she’d left him. Peeta had actually questioned this, of course, and at the ridiculously young age of nine.

His father explained his mother plunged into very bad postpartum depression after he was born, emphasizing that this was in no way his fault, and she was never able to recover. So, seven years later, she couldn’t take what she referred to as “being an emotional drain” on all of us anymore and left- asking for a divorce in the wake, of course. What Peeta was still wondering, but never bothered asking his father, was why she never bothered calling in the near decade since her so-called merciful departure. If there was anyone who understood depression, it was him. He could sense it plaguing half the people he passed by in the street on any given day. It was a debilitating disease no sufferer chose. But, everyone had a choice to completely ignore their children’s existence for a decade. His mother was full of it… and taking advantage of his father’s guilt over her condition. Like it didn’t take two people to engender a child.

Regardless, her omnipresent drain on his father’s finances and the knowledge that there was three of them made the brothers very aware of their need to find alternate funding for their educations. Therefore, they all wrestled and they all played football. All Mellark men were short, but they were broad and put on muscle with nearly laughable ease. This made them desirable commodities on the teams. Flax had already parlayed that into a scholarship to Dartmouth. Rye was only a junior, but had already received an early admission letter to UCLA, where he would be pre-med, planning to major in sports medicine. It’d been accompanied by a full athletic scholarship, as well.

His personal goals were far less ambitious than his brothers’. He had no interest in a complicated degree. He wanted to get into a good local University, somewhere within driving distance of Katniss. He planned to major in art history with a minor in physical fitness and nutrition. Then he wanted to take teaching job, specifically, he wanted to teach art or P. E., maybe coach. Mr. Dalton… well, all his teachers really, had always wanted him to go into law because of his penchant for orating. But Flax was already pre-law. Lord knew, no family deserved two lawyers.

So… a lawyer, a doctor and a teacher.

The Mellarks were going for that elusive trifecta where any girlfriend to a girl dating any of them who asked the cliché question, ‘Does he have a brother?’ would inevitably have to offer indentured servitude in exchange for a hook-up. Peeta had to choke back a snort at the notion. That scenario was very unlikely to happen with Flax. He was so overachieving and focused; he’d likely be married with two-point-three children by the time he graduated magna cum laude. And he’d been in love with the same girl since laying eyes on her in kindergarten. So, any girlfriends of girlfriends were going to end up getting referred to Rye- fickle, ever-changing flavor of the week toting, Rye. His second oldest brother may as well change his name to Rye Consolation Price Mellark now.

Peeta huffed out a slow breath, cautiously measuring exactly how he worded his next words. “Katniss, we know from Rye and Flax’s experiences that I can’t depend on dad to fund my education. You know Flax’s school is Ivy League. His scholarship isn’t enough to cover all his expenses. Dad’s already helping him. He’d have to mortgage the bakery, the bakery his grandfather paid off five decades ago, to help me. And we both know he’d do it in a heartbeat if I asked, but I can’t do that to my dad. I promise, I’ll play for a local school so I can live at home and you can visit me every day if you want.”

He saw the renewed indignation ignite the silver in her eyes like a flame the moment he got the last word out. “You can’t guarantee where you’ll end up when you depend on a scholarship, Peeta, and you know it. Your brothers ended up on opposite ends of the freaking country and either place is hundreds of miles from here. I saw the scouts at your last game, Peeta. I saw you talking to that guy from Florida State… Florida freaking State, Peeta? How do you figure we can keep up a relationship if you’re in Florida for four years?”

He gaped at her as if she’d grown a second head, his mouth going slack for a moment before he found the words to respond to something that absurd. “It was a freaking JV game, for god’s sake? The scouts don’t get really serious about head hunting until Varsity level. And FSU has the reigning Heisman winner, Katniss, and he’s a freaking freshman. They’re good. The guy was just asking me a question about the coach and the formations. It’s not a big deal. For all I know, he’s scouting Coach Abernathy.”

Katniss brought both hands up to rub her face brusquely. When she spoke again, her tone was clipped and she didn’t bother lowering them, choosing to speak right through. He could still make out every icy word. “Don’t patronize me, Mellark. Winston’s a quarterback. You play runningback. By the time you’re ready to go, he’ll be a senior and getting ready to make his last run at the BCS Championship. Not to mention, they’ll be beefing up their freshman class for posterity. That scout was not asking you questions randomly. Give me a little more credit, huh?”

She then brought her hands down to land on her lap limply, her shoulders sagging in defeat. She finished in a barely hushed whisper, staring ahead so she did not have to meet his eyes. It didn’t stop him from seeing the anger, hurt and…desperation? swirling in those steel pools. “Thank you for bowling and dinner, Peeta. It was fun.”

She kept her eyes averted as she leaned over quickly to ghost his cheek with her lips, her hand already twisting the door handle so she could turn and be out the door a blink of an eye later, slamming the door before he could even fully register what had just happened.

They had barely seen each other since that night.

Well, that’s not true. They’d seen each other plenty. They shared almost every class, except electives. They had the same lunch. They didn’t have friends in common before they’d started dating outside of Madge, but they’d even started sharing those since. Not seeing each other was not an option, but their interactions when they did see each other had become strained, they’re conversations perfunctory. They barely spoke on the phone, they’d probably texted a total of six time in as many weeks. This was down from, at least, that many in one night.

It’d become obvious to both of them that this issue with him playing was strangling the life out of their relationship, but neither was willing to budge. Katniss didn’t understand how he could not see how the distance would hurt them, how it would hurt her. She could not understand why he didn’t care. Peeta figured the more space and time he gave her to cool off, the greater the chance she’d understand his perspective. After all, he would do everything in his power to stay close to her (she had to know that, right?) and everything he was doing was a means to secure their future together. How could she not see that?

So, the void between them continued to grow with everything they were either too stubborn or oblivious to voice to each other and the noose grew tighter and tighter.

That is, until that night three days ago when the activities bus hit that patch of ice.

Peeta had spent a full twelve hours getting poked, prodded, scanned- repeat.

He had no idea at what point he’d finally nodded off, but he’d woken to find her there, by his bedside, her chin braced on her crossed arms, which lay on the edge of his bed. Even through his sleep laden eyes, something about that wide-eyed, focused stare, made him sure she’d been watching him sleep.

The moment his eyes had fluttered open, Katniss’s breath caught in her throat. Obviously, she’d been expecting him to wake. She’d even received special dispensation from the school counselor for an excused absence to be by his side along with his family the moment he woke. His brothers and father had gotten restless and been in and out of his room at several points, needing to take walks, get coffee, get something to eat for themselves and her, use the bathroom… She’d been waiting by his bed unmoving all day. Even so, faced with the reality that those impossibly long, nearly transparent lashes had parted and that electric blue of his irises was really focused on her, her mouth simply wouldn’t produce the moisture necessary for speech. Or was that her neurons. Were her neurons just not firing after the night she’d spent shaking with more fear then she’d experienced in eleven years, since her father had passed? Could terror actually fry neural pathways?

“Hey, you. You look awful. Rough night?”

His voice actually startled her. It was so coarse, so raw. And, god, was he really trying to lighten her mood? That broke her.

“God, Peeta,”she gasped, as tears streamed down her face and she launched out of her seat to wrap her arms as best she could around his broad shoulders, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She continued speaking; her voice a garbled mess of sobs and hiccups, “They told us… they first told us no one had made it. Can you imagine, that, Peeta? C-can you imagine how it felt to be told I’d lost you forever? Th-then, hours later, they said someone was found b-but they wouldn’t say who and they wouldn’t say in what condition. And… a little glimmer of hope sparked, it sparked it in everyone who’d had someone they cared about on that bus. I stood outside for eight hours straight, Delly did, too. W-we stood out there in the snow, waiting for them to bring back whomever it was that survived, while they determined status after you arrived... It was freaking torture.” She paused here to let out a stuttering breath, gripping his hospital gown tight, then continued, “Madge’s mom got worried when she hadn’t called by twelve and asked her father to get a patrol to scout the route the bus was taking. The cruiser found the broken side rail. You guys derailed five miles from the school, do you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that, sweetheart, but thank you for telling m-, for telling me all of that. Thank you for being here when I woke up. It was a nice sight.” He responded in a barely there rumble, stroking soothing circles on her back with the hand not trapped under him.

She landed a kiss to his pulse point, where she’d been sobbing. Then trailed her lips upward to just below his ear, then the point where his jaw met his neck, then to mid jaw, then up to just beside his lips. She braced her forehead against his, their noses touching, her lips skimming his as she breathed her next words into his slightly open mouth. She made certain to keep her eyes locked with his, unblinking, while she spoke, “I don’t care where you go to school. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re here, whole. I’d rather worry about what you’re doing six hundred miles away than worry whether I’ll ever see you again. If you screw up, I’ll figure out a way to forgive, as long as there’s a you there to forgive. I need you, Peeta. Please just… I need you- just promise me. Promise me what I went through yesterday, the fear of living without you. Promise me I won’t go through that again. Promise me we will always be the two of us, you and me. Promise me you’ll stay.”

Her heart just about fluttered out of her ribcage with his breathy, soft response against her parched lips before he breeched the nothing distanced that separated their mouths.

“Always.” 

Chapter Text

“ We should take it slow, Peeta. You know? Fixing us? Making sure whatever this was that came between us, we never let it happen again- healing us. We have all the time in the world. You focus on getting better for right now and I’ll be there when you’re ready to mend us… Little by little. We have each other. We have time. We’ll go slow.”

That’s what she’d said as her parting words to him in that hospital room a week before, gently stroking his cheek with the pad of her thumb, a steady stream of moisture tracing a path down her cheeks. She’d kept her forehead braced to his the entire time they’d spoken (well, really, she’d mostly spoken because his throat was too raw to contribute much to the discourse), as if losing that physical contact with him were tantamount to losing him to some unseen abyss forever.

He’d wanted to disagree with her in that moment more than anything, tell her taking things slow with her was the last thing in the universe he wanted or needed. That almost dying only reaffirmed his resolve to spend every waking second he had with her in his arms. But either the heavy sedative drip pumping into his veins or the haggard, emotionally drained cast to her dark shadowed eyes – it could’ve been either or both, really – made the words an impossibility. In the end, he’d accepted her last lingering, reluctant kiss and watched her walk out of the room as Rye held the door open for her.

Then his ass of a second oldest brother’d cracked a heinously tasteless joke about his pretending to die to get some action and completely blown the atmosphere. At least Katniss had been out of the room and far enough out of earshot to miss it. Flax had immediately coldcocked him to the temple.

He’d gotten a sore, strained laugh out of that. The only positive of that nightmarish situation was his oldest brother getting out of school and driving out to be with him. Flax’s university had offered a full semester off, so he could help his baby brother cope with whatever injuries he’d suffered (they had no idea he’d suffered none) and the Mellark oldest was taking the institution up on it. He wasn’t about to put school before his family.

So, here they sat ten yards away from each other in a crowded cafeteria of subdued students, back after a nine day hiatus of mourning, enforced by the school for ‘psychological health’. Him with his usual group of friends and her in a far off corner alone with Gale, who’d condemned himself to a form of self-imposed excommunication from society since Madge’s death. The only person outside his family he spoke to was Katniss, his part-time job as a tech at a local small electronics shop not exactly exacting the most conversation skills.

Not that Peeta knew this because she was keeping close quarters, of course. True to her words, she’d made a conscious effort to keep physical distance from him for days, as if she no longer trusted herself around him. She chose instead to keep him apprised of her ongoings through a flood of constant texts and calls. It was an ignoble surrogate for really having her, sensing her. She was one of the most emotionally guarded, closed off people he’d ever encountered. It’d both fascinated and titillated him from the moment he’d noticed her the first day of school all those many years before. Every slight reaction, every spike in her pulse, acceleration to her breathing pattern, subtle softening in lines to the almost ever present scowl she wore around others; he saw all of it as a triumph when he coaxed these out of her with the right twist of a phrase, a smirk, a touch, a kiss.

He hadn’t even been sure what she was afraid of doing to him, but now, as he continued staring straight into her eyes that had been adamantly locked on his for the last ten minutes, that look of desperate, unbridled anxious longing, spoke volumes for her, of things she wasn’t telling him, terrified to tell him. He could feel the fine hairs on the forearm he rested casually on the table raise in reaction to it. She was terrified her words, her true feelings, would drive him to abandon her again. She was horrified of breaking him.

Somehow, he found that so much worse than any physical pain. How had he never seen this before?

“Hey brainless, you sure you didn’t suffer any brain damage in that crash?”

He snapped his head away abruptly at the grossly tactless jab, his incensed eyes landing on the dark haired girl leaning back on the stool across from him. “That is not even remotely funny, Jo. Be grateful Delly’s not back yet because she’d…”

“Cool your jewel’s, golden boy. I’ve been trying to get your attention forever while you’ve been off in La-La Land, staring at dark, short and emotionally constipated back there with the disproportionately gorgeous, wallowing sequoia. Desperate measures and all that jazz, you know. And Delly would do what if she were here, dude? Huff indignantly, slam her plate, harangue me with a sermon on my insensitivity as if I can somehow sprout filters in a week, then run off crying? Besides, if she were here, I’d make myself conspicuously absent, just to prevent that scene. That girl does not need my particular brand of salt in her wounds.”

“Or you can make a conscious effort to stay quite while in her presence, Jo. It’s not written in stone that you have to be a sarcastic, cynical smartass every waking moment.”

The Latina rounded on the petite brunette with the duel pigtails perched on the lap of the bronzed demi-god beside her, eyeing her with something akin to reverence. Annie seldom spoke and certainly never with that kind of moxie. “Well lordy-lord, is that what it takes to grow you some balls, girl? A bus full of mangled kids? Jeesh, you’re freaking demanding, Cresta. You can’t make due with just a pound of flesh? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure that was at least a ton…”

“Johanna!” Peeta’s hand came down on the table with such force, it groaned from the stress.

Finnick was the one to his feet and in the other girl’s face, however. His girlfriend too shocked and slack jawed to get any kind of retort out. “Do you really think that’s funny, Mason? What in that sick, twisted mind of yours tells you making light of a bunch of kids dying, completely needlessly, horribly, ten days ago would be humorous to any of us? Much less Peeta, who was actually freaking there. You’re an emotional oddity. We get it. Your sentimental meter has a screwed up needle that doesn’t sway far enough to allow you to feel crap the way the rest of us do. We can accept that. But have the decency to shut the hell up if you can’t understand how the rest of us aren’t in the mood to put up with your bull.”

Peeta registered the neural connectivity flare through Johanna the infinitesimal fraction of a second before her retort and knew just how off the mark Finnick’s comment was. ‘Feelings’ were definitely not something this girl lacked. “You know what, Finn? Screw the lot of you. I don’t need this. I don’t need any of this tearing up, bellyaching, ‘remember when she and remember that one time he’ crap everyone’s hung up on. You want to mope and burry yourselves in this pit of despair forever? Fine. But, don’t drag me down with you.” She finished, getting to her feet heatedly, grabbing her tray and stepping back as she leveled a venomous glare at the couple. So focused was she on her hasty retreat, she failed to notice the large hand that closed around her wrist to halt her until her wide set eyes diverted almost frenzied to its owner.

Peeta ignored the jolt akin to a hit to his funny bone that emanated from where their skin made contact, transcending the avalanche of guilt, sorrow and betrayal the touch unveiled. The emotion was so raw, so present, for a fraction of a moment it weaved itself into an actual image in his periphery, an image of a little girl crying under her bed, holding an even smaller boy. Both had their hands to their ears furiously as a male and female voice rang beyond her bedroom door. Then, the screaming escalated, there was a big boom and the little girl ran. She scrambled out the bedroom window and didn’t look back.

Then, in the same flash the image came, it went and Peeta found himself staring into Johanna’s seemingly angry eyes. Only, it was no longer anger he saw. It was confusion, attrition, self-deprecation- the enraged anarchism was a mask.

“Jo, don’t go. Please. We’re all just on a short fuse. I overreacted,” he tried, hoping to see that strength, that light of insubordination he now realized was her lifeline, come back to her eyes.

He thought he saw a flicker of it ignite the dark hazel before she flicked them away toward the tray return station, forcibly extracting her hand and turning. “Nah, dude. I’m sick of this negativity. I’m gonna go shoot some hoops or something at the gym. Least the jocks are shallow enough not to care about anything beyond sports. See ya around, Mellark.”

Peeta watched her walk away, realizing for the first time he’d never asked her why she never talked about her family. Yes, she always complained about how her grandmother was a pain in the butt who never let her have her way or buy the clothes she wanted to wear. But, beyond that, Johanna Mason, might as well not have had a past. He had no idea what that flash of an image he’d seen when he touched her had been. He’d never had that happen before. But he had a sinking feeling she was desperately trying to erase whatever that past had been.

“Watch it, pipsqueak!” Peeta literally fell out of his reverie and into the lunch table by his side, his hipbone making harsh impact. Bracing his arm to right himself, he followed the sound of mocking chuckling to the tall, muscular senior invading his personal space, flanked by another similarly built, if slightly leaner, upperclassman- both blondes, both pricks.

“So, I hear thanks to some bull Affirmative Action crap you’re being bumped up to the Varsity tournament tonight. That’s fair. No, that’s totally fair.”

Peeta had to angle his head quite a bit to return the sneer the older boy was brandishing upon him. He was hardly the shortest guy in his class and, at five six, he’d read somewhere he was right around average height for sixteen-year-olds. Nevertheless, he was decidedly the shortest guy on the wrestling team and the new Varsity captain since his oldest brother graduated, whom he was currently having this lovely chat with- this freak was six two. He just hoped he wasn’t in a chatty mood, he really didn’t need a stiff neck from talking to this jackass.

“For starters, Cato, Affirmative Action was instated in the sixties to protect minorities against discrimination. Now, my ancestry is Norwegian, I’m as white as it gets. So, if you’re going to say something ignorant and quite honestly idiotic? At least shoot for something that won’t come off as blatantly bigoted, too. ‘Cause, man, your last name’s Ulrich and I’m guessing your family doesn’t like talking about who was where doing what in the forties back in the old country.”

From their close proximity, the steadily swelling anger felt like the static charge of an inpending storm. “And the roster for tonight’s tournament was made last month. The accident had no bearing on it, but your sympathy is overwhelming… really. I weighed out of the JV weight classes. It’s that simple. The coach wants me on the heavier class because I honestly couldn’t lose the weight if I tried. I didn’t do anything to gain it. Look at me. I’m the shortest guy on the squad. So, before I hurt someone who’s my size but twenty pounds lighter, Coach decided to move me up. What do you care, anyway? I couldn’t possibly be a threat to you, right? I mean, it’s been my big brothers who’ve wiped the floor with you consistently for the last four years, not me.” He couldn’t help the obscene smirk that edged one side of his mouth as he finished his statement.

A moment later, he found himself on his back over the lunch table, Cato gripping the scruff of his shirt menacingly as he leaned over him, huffing irately, “Listen, you little jit. I don’t care what the coach’s reasoning is for putting you in our squad a year early. You get on the mat with me tonight, something’s breaking.”

By this point, Finnick was on the older boy’s back, trying to get him off Peeta. But, of course, regardless his impeccable physique as a swimmer, the senior had an easy fifty pounds on him. The fact that his accomplice took to his aide and wrapped Finnick in an impossible hold to subdue him didn’t help. What did help was the fact the conspirator seemed a little more aware than his friend.

“Cato, dude, he’s not worth getting suspended. The cafeteria monitor’s going to see you. Get off him.”

Katniss and Gale reached the table as Cato composed himself and none too gently made a show of straightening Peeta’s shirt as he sat up, both teens still staring daggers at each other. “You should thank Marvel here for saving your butt, Mellark.”

His unimpressed eyes flitting briefly to the leaner upperclassman who was in the process of relinquishing his hold on Finnick, Peeta offered icily, “There’s a lot of things I’d like to say to Marvel. But they’ll be time later this evening, right?”

Both boys snorted derisively, walking off in the direction of the exit with an air of superiority. Annie immediately came to Finnick’s side, fussing over him and not believing his repeated oaths of being unharmed as they walked away together. The trio that remained stayed in awkward, uncomfortable silence, watching them walk off until Katniss finally spoke.

“What was that, Peeta?”

“Spoiled puppy pissing on his favorite fire hydrant,” he said without looking away from the couple exiting the cafeteria double doors. But as he felt the hairs on his arm perk slightly, he turned back to find she had an eyebrow raised and her mouth wasn’t set in the usual thin line she always kept it in at school. One side ever slightly angled upward. He felt the familiar flutter in his stomach. She had no idea.

Gale cleared his throat and mumbled a barely discernible goodbye to Katniss and something about seeing her later to study. Peeta reminded himself the kid was in mourning and no threat to squelch the jealousy that threatened. Then, the older boy left them to their own devices.

Face to face for the first time since the hospital, they found they could barely meet each other’s eyes. It was really ridiculous.

Finally, Katniss huffed out a breath and stated unsurely, “I might as well be getting to creative writing, then…”

Something about her dismissive tone had him feeling she was shutting him out again and he went into panic mode. “Um, let me walk you there. It’s on the opposite side of the building from my next class, but I can use a walk to clear my head.”

She looked uncertainly from him to the door, then back, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth before replying with finality, “Sure. It’d be nice to walk with you a little while.”

They walked in complete, suffocating silence, that same sense of fear emanating off her in mild waves that made his skin crawl, until finally, they came across a staircase to the second floor. Without presage, he grabbed her arm, spinning her through the doorway and into the empty stairwell, locking the door behind them. A surprised squeak left her at his sudden action and at being shoved up against the wall, but his mouth descending on hers quickly silenced that.

She was too surprised to respond for a second, but soon her hands found their way to his hair, tangling in the longish waves at the nape of his neck to pull him closer. They knew this dance well and when he nipped softly at her bottom lip as she’d been doing earlier to herself before lightly running the tip of his tongue over her upper lip, she eagerly opened her mouth to grant him entry. It became a slow exploration, a relearning of every curve and angle, of becoming reacquainted with that peculiar sound that came from deep in her throat when he skimmed the bridge of her mouth from back all the way front. It was slow and full of that which went unspoken, fulfilling.

When they broke apart, they kept their foreheads joined the way he knew she needed it, that connection that kept her feeling safe, grounded. His words were a hushed, plea, “Come see tonight. I love it when you’re there with me at my meets.”

She breathed out slowly and already he could feel her slipping, closing off. He joined their mouths again. This time slanting his over hers while stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb, his other arm holding her flush to him almost crushingly; this was faster, an attempt to coax the acquiescence from the very source. His lips were rough as he ravaged her upper lip, taking it between his teeth to gain entry into her mouth where he dominated, conquered, elicited unwitting moan after moan from her.

Then he pulled away abruptly, causing her to chase after the feel of him, rue his absence on her swollen skin. Her eyes snapped open to find his boring into hers, beseeching, heated resolve like blue lava, coiling in what little of his irises was visible. She found herself getting lost in those eyes. She couldn’t deny him. “Fine, Peeta,” she huffed resigned.  “I’ll go. But I have to study with Gale after, okay.”

No. That wasn’t okay. He wanted her to stay with him afterward, not go off with some other guy, regardless of ‘friendzone’ status. But he was aware of the tenuous state of their relationship and the sizable concession she was making, considering her ambiguity with him and sports at the present. He could live with it.

“That sounds perfect,” he replied, gracing her with a brilliant smile.

She actually snorted in response. “Now walk me to writing class or Boggs is going to flay me.”

He raised her hand and placed a kiss to the underside of her wrist, causing her to flush in a way he didn’t have to be hyper empathic to feel through his skin. “As you command, sweetheart.”

She smacked him in the shoulder- hard. “You’re a cheesy idiot.”

It took them no time to get her to class and, this time, the silence was companionable. He raced down the quickly filling halls to his locker to get his books for his next class, health. Upon reaching it, he quickly turned the lock, and opened it, what looked like a business card launching out at him. Apparently, it’d been wedged in the crease of the door and he’d failed to see it in his rush.

He stooped down to pick it up and read the neat handwriting:

How many days of your life have you been sick?

Peeta looked up from the odd card, hoping to spy who might have left it. Not noting anyone paying particular attention to him, he shrugged and flipped it over. The other side wasn’t much more helpful:

limitededition-by-glass.tumblr.com

It was a freaking blog. Someone was screwing with him. He was so not in the mood for that. With an irritated huff, he shoved the card in his book, shut the locker and ran to class.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was why Katniss hated coming to these things. She felt closed-in around crowds, smothered. And she was about three seconds from rounding on the two idiots directly behind and above her on the bleachers, grabbing a fistful of each of their perfectly primped hair and dragging their screaming butts the six steps to the floor to accuse them of sexual harassment against their fellow students to the coach.

As it stood, she was drawing on all her quickly depleting equanimity just to remain seated, her legs twitching violently as she rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to focus of the matches. She would’ve preferred to sit just about anywhere else in the auditorium, but pickings were uncommonly slim for this event- apparently everyone in the school wanted a reprieve from the cloud of doom and gloom looming in the atmosphere- and a sporting event was a good distraction. Also, she’d figured if Peeta’d asked her there, he’d want her within easy sight, not up in the nosebleeds where she was most at ease. So, here she was, dab-smack in the middle of the fangirl-groupie-ex-girlfriend-current girlfriend-reject-wannabe-girlfriend section, right above where the wrestlers sat awaiting their next matches. If only the seemingly endless vacuum of nothing but crap and disgusting sexual innuendo behind her would give it a rest for five minutes.

“Bow down to these painted on wrestling uniforms, though, right?”

And you just had to love their eloquence.

“I know, right? I mean, Marvel’s got legs only poultry could envy, but Rye… those thighs… and everything else connected in his lower body… Do they wear cups or is that nature?”

She couldn’t help the pained moan that escaped her. She was certain Peeta’s brother would be one of the few people vain enough to find objectification like this flattering, but they were angling dangerously close…

“Pretty sure those are cups, Clove. You should know. We both know better than Cato being what’s advertised here,” the blonde she’d unwittingly learned to be Glimmer snickered mockingly, before continuing in a more appraising tone, “Baby brother’s not bad at all, though. A little on the shrimpy side and he’s got the whole sophomore thing going against him, but the massive back and chest make up for the height problem nicely. The lowerclassman thing can be overlooked for a body like that. And you know what they say about big things coming in small-”

That did it.

“You say one more word about Peeta Mellark and it’ll be hissed through missing teeth.” Regardless of her diminutive stature, the way Katniss loomed over them, her steel eyes fierce, challenging, arms crossed taught across her chest, managed to make both girls shrink into themselves. She was small for her age, but if she could field dress a young buck and haul it five miles to their beat-up old truck during hunting season, she was sure she was plenty strong enough to make good on her threat to these prima donnas.

Not surprisingly, she watched the rest of the meet in blissful silence.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He couldn’t keep what probably came off as an idiotic grin to everyone else off his face.

She was likely oblivious, well, she was usually oblivious to most things where reading others was concerned. So, it really was no surprise she was blissfully unaware to the fact that he’d heard her little confrontation with the girls behind her, even though he’d been in the middle of a match. Katniss was anything but reserved when her passionate side surfaced.

He’d already weathered some good natured ribbing from the guys on the team because of her outburst, including a delightful satire from Rye about finally understanding why he’d go for a girl that cold- she knew how to heat things up just right when properly motivated. His older brother probably meant to get more of a jab in, but the swift Charlie horse to his ribs had him doubled over, simultaneously gasping for air and laughing too hard for words to be plausible.

The smile was still plastered on his face when the coach announced the final two matches and he learned he’d be pitted against the team captain, having bested every other opponent that afternoon. His brother was on the parallel mat, facing a two hundred twenty-five pound senior named Thresh, who’d easily taken down guys a head taller and twenty pounds heavier than Rye. His brother was getting the shorter end of the stick there, if anyone were to ask him.

Casually walking up to the mat to take his place while stretching the slightly overused muscles of his arms by extending each in turn across his chest and holding his shoulder with the opposite hand, he graced his opponent with that same pleased smile.

“You used to your girlfriend fighting your battles for you, midget?”

Peeta’s smile only grew in size and insolence at the older boy’s transparent attempt to rattle him. “Pft, I wish. She’s terrifying when she’s ticked, man. And she has intimate knowledge of the use of sharp projectile objects. I think she made your girlfriends up there piss themselves.”

Cato made a dismissive sound as if he couldn’t possibly care, but the accelerated breathing and heartbeat he could pick up from the boy, told a very different story of the impact those words had on his volatile temper.

They got into their starting stance with Cato at the bottom, since he technically had the size advantage and the coach always did this at the start of matches. Peeta’s plan of attack was the same as it’d always been: get under, sweep the feet, pin. He’d gotten used over the years to using the girth of heavier, more muscular opponents against them and, being smaller, he had a better balanced center of gravity than the behemoth wrestlers he faced. They also tended to underestimate him, mistaking his small stature for weakness. Which was stupid to begin with, because they wouldn’t be wrestling each other in the first place if they didn’t fall within the same weight class range. This is how jocks ended up with a bad rap- athletes who never bothered learning the nuances of their own sport.

The moment the whistle rang, Cato twisted from beneath him, which he allowed easily. After all, he needed him on his feet take him down for a double score. Then, predictably, Cato went for his shoulders, attempting to use brute force to twist him onto the mat for a score and possible quick pin. However, anticipating this, Peeta bent his knees with his left foot slightly distended, locked his hand around the older boy’s neck just as their bodies collided, allowing Cato’s momentum to drive him full into him. Then, he used his greater speed and agility to twist his head into the other teen’s midsection, quickly bringing both hands down into the back of his knees and lifting, effectively taking Cato’s feet from under him before he could even react.

Cato instantly flipped onto his stomach, trying to find the purchase to get to his feet. But, Peeta was already on him the moment his body hit the mat, the entirety of his torso weighing the senior down at the upper back, his knees bent close to his body for leverage. He wanted this over as soon as possible. So, in the blink of an eye, he reached for the wrist Cato flailed to propel himself upward in an effort to push him off, yanking it forcefully into the boy’s upper chest while simultaneously wrenching his other arm under the older teen’s opposite armpit and completely across his neck to lock him in a half-Nelson. He then propelled them both forward using the powerful muscles in his legs, making sure to lift Cato’s elbow with his own as he flipped them and completed the pin, holding the older boy’s shoulder down to the mat with his broad upper body splayed across him without conceding an inch on the hold.

In the seconds it took to complete the maneuver, he could feel the violent currents anger and frustration coil through his opponent. He’d dealt with enough such onslaughts to ignore the resulting unsettling effect that reverberated through him. However, the moment he pinned him, it was as if the cascade of vicious bile hit an apex and, as it had happened ealier in the cafeteria with Johanna, like a flash of light, the sensation crystalized into a tangible image in his mind’s eye.

This was an image of Cato, much as he looked today in the cafeteria, drinking out of a beer bottle in the passenger seat of a pickup. As the scne shifted, he screamed excitedly to the driver as he saw someone in the upcoming corner- a girl, a young rather unpopular girl from their school who was chatting with friends. He hollered a command to the driver to speed up as they passed her. Then, Cato popped his entire upper body out the window, screaming obscenities at the girl. The moment she turned to look, the beer bottle he’d been drinking from shattered into her temple. The girl dropped to the floor with a hand to her bleeding head, the sound of Cato’s raucous laughter echoing in background as the pickup sped off.

Peeta emerged from the split second vision to the sound of agonized screaming and the site of the EMT’s that always stood by for sporting events charging toward him. It took him a moment to realize the screaming was coming from the boy in his grasp and another to register the awkward, angular lump to Cato’s limp shoulders before quickly releasing him and scurrying a few feet back as if he’d been physically damaged by the contact, shock widening his blue eyes.

He hadn’t even heard the bone snap.

Chapter Text

Peeta stormed through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

“Ouch, god dude, watch it! How’d you think I was getting in the house? Through a window? You almost broke my freaking nose. We got here in the same car, you prick.”

He stopped at the landing, just as he was setting foot on the first step and turned partway to send a withering glare at his older brother. “No, Rye. I’m fed up with your crap. There’s nothing funny about what I did. That kid’s in the hospital. Stop cracking jokes to make me feel better. It’s not freaking working and you’re pissing me off!”

“Whoa, what’s going on?”

Both teens turned to face their oldest brother as he entered the foyer, sporting nothing but pajama bottoms, socks and a cup of something steaming.

“Flax, man, aren’t you supposed to be helping dad out at the bakery while you’re here instead of moping around all day? This is a super busy time of the year for him.”

Bracing his weight on his arm against the banister, the Mellark oldest shrugged a shoulder casually before answering, aloofly, “Bite me, Rye. Dad has plenty of help down there and I haven’t had a decent vacation since before I started high school. It’s all been internships and summer jobs with dad since I was thirteen. Because I had to set the example for you jerks. I’m milking this. Now, what were you saying about sending some kid to the hospital, Peeta?”

Before he could respond, Rye volunteered with an obscenely inappropriate amount of excitement, “He broke Ulrich’s clavicle today in a match. Didn’t even need the floor for counter leverage, snapped the bone with his bare hands like a freaking twig. It was brutal. Awesome.”

His violet eyes widening in surprise, Flax turned back to his baby brother, failing to keep the astonishment out of his deep baritone, “Always knew Cato’d piss someone off to the point he’d end up bleeding or broken. But, dude, I never figure it’d be you.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Peeta wasn’t sure why he felt so defensive, but he was finding the accusation of doing that to someone, unhinged him. “I didn’t even notice I was holding him that tight. I phase out for a nanosecond and the next thing I know, he’s screaming bloody murder and the paramedics are trying to immobilize his arms to keep the bone from diverting and puncturing his lung.” He felt queasy just describing it. “Look, I’ve dealt with too much of people getting hurt or dying around me. I’m going to take a nap or something before dinner.”

Before he could dash up the stairs, Flax put a hand on his shoulder, effectively regaining his attention. “Peeta, it happens… all the time. Rye and I both have broken or fractured someone’s shoulder blade or their arm. Albeit, not that easily, but… it’s part of the sport. Heck, it’s even happened to us. Remember that time I bruised my calf so bad it was in a brace for a month?

“And I’ve broken three fingers in my left hand- pinky and thumb on my right, playing tightend”, Rye supplied in a hopeful tone with a ridiculous smirk, as if sports-induced bodily harm were a medal of honor or something.

Peeta suppressed a grin at his infantile optimism, stubbornly determined to hold on to his contrition-induced foul mood. But his brothers’ words did bring the odd card currently tucked away in his health book to the forefront of his mind. He tried thinking quickly of a time, a game, where he’d been injured, but drew a complete blank. So, he scrutinized his brothers briefly before asking, “What about me, guys? Do you remember me ever getting hurt?”

Rye instantly opened his mouth to respond, having the quickest whit of the three and, by far, the most photographic memory, but shut it with a snap and a befuddled expression a second later. He focused his eyes on Flax as if the older boy’s face concealed the answer, bringing his hand up to scratch his chin in thought. Flax’s expression was almost a mirror (especially considering how much all three siblings resembled each other), only he tapped all fingers in a sequential pattern on the banister to help him think.

They both seemed to be coming up empty.

“Nah, man,” Rye finally spoke up after several moments of introspective silence. “I don’t think you’ve ever been hurt playing sports. I’d remember. You’ve always had the odds in your favor, you little bastard.”

Peeta let out a disappointed breath and turned to go up the stairs to his bedroom, calling over his shoulder to his brothers, “Thanks anyway, guys. And, Rye? We have the same biological parents, so every time you call me a bastard, you’re insulting your own mother, moron.”

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard the retort.

“I’m more than fine with that, smartass.”

Peeta finally let out the snort he’d been repressing. None of them was particularly fond of their matriarch.

First thing he did upon reaching his room and securing the door, was going for his window, bracing it wide open. He had no idea why Flax liked keeping it seventy-five degrees whenever it dropped below sixty outside. It was like his oldest brother was reptilian. Peeta was always suffocating two minutes after setting foot in that house whenever Flax commandeered the thermostat. He settled the duffle bag with his wrestling uniform into his closet (he’d throw the uniform in the wash later) and set his book bag next to his laptop for easy access when he started on his homework later.

He made quick work of the now stifling thin knit sweater vest and long-sleeve button-down he’d worn to school, leaving him in a wife beater and corduroys. He was working on the fly to the pants when he heard the telltale beep of his cell, alerting him to a new text.

Shrugging the sweltering garment off quickly, he ruffled through the back pocket for his phone and unceremoniously plunged himself on his bed to answer the message, side-eying the pieces of clothing he’d left scattered on his floor in his haste. He was anal about not picking up after himself. Something about not having a maternal figure to take care of that kind of stuff for him, he’d always figured. But, then again, Rye was a pig who cleaned his room once a year because their dad literally twisted his arm and the man kept insisting they derived from the same genetic material, and they’d both definitely been abandoned by half its composition, so there were some very obvious holes in that theory. Maybe he just had OCD… or his brother was a lazy, disgusting jerk. He was leaning toward the latter.

Katniss: Are you okay?// You didn’t look so hot when they took Cato to the hospital // You need me to come over after I finish helping Gale out with his essay?// We can just talk

‘Oh, god, yes! For the love of all that is holy, please come over. Come over right now. Screw Gale. Wait. No. Don’t screw Gale. But, yes. Come over!’

Of course, that’s what his heart and likely some other teenage hormone driven areas screamed at his brain to answer her the instant he saw what she’d written. He took a minute to write, delete and rewrite his response, however, allotting for areas of his anatomy which were properly oxygenated to dictate the content of the message.

He needed her. There was no denying that. But, he knew she was trying to figure stuff out, too. And overwhelming her with everything he wanted to share with her, everything he’d experienced that day, what he thought he’d seen with Jo and Cato, the crushing guilt he was feeling over what he’d done to him. The even greater attrition he felt over not feeling nearly guilty enough about what he did to Cato, not after that flash of whatever that was he’d witnessed…

How could he explain all of that to her without driving her off? Without having her label him a freak? Especially, when they were just starting to feel somewhat comfortable with each other again. Yes, she was the first person outside his family he’d ever trusted enough to tell about his ‘quirk’. But this was different and, as their relationship stood, he simply wasn’t sure he should risk it.

Peeta: I’m fine// Just shaken// That’s never happened before to me but it happens all the time in wrestling// I’ll send the jerk a get well e-card or something ;p

He hoped that read more chipper than he felt. He waited a moment for her reply, bringing a hand up to run through his hair roughly, eying the clothes on the floor again. He was beginning to rise to get them to the hamper when the phone beeped again and he brought it up, smiling at her reply.

Katniss: LOL// Okay// Don’t believe the e-card thing// See you tomorrow// Walk me to class?// XOXOXO

This time his response was spontaneous.

Peeta: Always <3

Still smiling (he had still to figure out how she always managed to get him out of a funk), he got out of bed, scooped up the discarded clothes, joined them with the uniform in his duffle bag and threw them in the hamper of the Jack and Jill bathroom he shared with Rye. Then, he plopped down at the chair at his desk, still in just his boxer briefs and wife beater, bringing his book bag to his lap to unzip it. He figured he might as well get homework out of the way early. There was no way he was getting a nap in before his father got home for dinner, not that he believed his restless thoughts would allow him the respite necessary for sleep. He could already smell the signs of their nightly meal wafting up from the chef’s kitchen downstairs.

Technically, it was his night to cook. His dad had made sure to teach all of them the culinary arts right along with baking pretty much since they could see over the counter. It was a survival skill in a household dominated by testosterone and the overactive metabolisms of growing athletes.

So, a schedule had been instated since their mother had bailed, along with their list of chores to keep the house from falling apart, indicating which boy prepared meals on which day of the week- except for Sundays. Sundays were always daddy-cooking days. It was the reason the man demolished their formal dining room to extend the kitchen into the massive room it now was, with double industrial ovens, a sub-zero freezer, two refrigerators and an eat-in counter, large enough to sit eight comfortably. 

However, since Flax was home and loved to do it anyway, he was volunteering to take over the duties for his younger siblings during his stay.

From the smell of it, big brother was making ham-stuffed chicken breasts. Peeta’s stomach rumbled in anticipation. He’d have to raid the fridge for a snack before dinner. Flax was killing him.

Doing his best to ignore the aroma permeating the house, he started pulling out books one by one until he came upon his health book and paused. Frowning, he opened it to the front page and found that odd card staring back at him. He sat back, tossing the book on his desk with the others as he flipped the card through his fingers, looking around his room at the plethora of awards and plaques his father insisted on using as wall décor. His eyes settled on a framed perfect attendance certificate from fourth grade and instinctually, he sought out another from seventh nearby, then another from second, kindergarten, last year… he realized he had one for every year he’d gone to school.

That was odd, wasn’t it? Never having missed a single day of school sick? He remembered Flax staying home with chicken pox when he’d been around four. His mother had made such a fuss about having him and Peeta home all day and having to take care of such a sick child. She was definitely not winning any mother of the year awards, that one. He also recalled that Rye had caught it from him the very next week and his mom had just about blown a gasket. She’d gone to stay with her sister. Their dad closed the bakery to look after his older brothers until they got better. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember having caught it himself.

And he was pretty sure his father made a conscious effort to infect him when Rye first caught it, too. He remembered sharing weird oatmeal baths with an itchy five-year-old, who kept squeezing disgusting boils time after time, even though their father kept telling him not to. His brother’s back still bared the jigsaw puzzle evidence of his obstinate idiocy.

What was stranger still, Peeta couldn’t recall a cold, a serious cough, anything beyond a mild headache after getting knocked on his head. But he remembered sitting through all of those with his brothers at some point or another. He’d felt pain. That much he knew. He’d cut and burned himself plenty of times cooking or baking. It was a hazard of learning the Mellark trade. But, he couldn’t remember getting sick.

The crease between his brows deepening, he reached forward and powered up his laptop. He had a Tumblr, too, but barely used it. Mostly, he followed artists for inspiration with his own work, to hone his technique. He’d taken art classes since he’d first shown his father his rudimentary drawings from art time in pre-K. His dad had always nurtured any kind of artistic talent he or his brothers showed. Flax considered his glee club membership a conversation starter to hit on girls and made it a point to show off his range- to anyone. Inhibition didn’t exactly run rampant in their family. Rye could’ve been a concert pianist if it weren’t for his penchant for breaking fingers. Well, that and his complete lax when it came to actual practicing. He had an amazing natural talent, though.

Their old man even divided the basement into a music and art room with an easel, art supplies and a grand piano on one end and a playroom with a pool table, projection TV and row of theatre seats at the other. His father basically dedicated himself to becoming mother and father to them for the last decade, making sure their every emotional, intellectual and physical need was met. The man was irreplaceable.

And Katniss believed he had any kind of desire to move away from home after high school?

Truth be told, if he could have his way, he’d just forgo college altogether and take over the bakery so his dad could retire early. But, the man was only forty and loved what he did. It’d basically be an insult to ask him to retire any time soon, tantamount to rendering him obsolete. The best he could do was study close to home, something that could earn him a good steady salary in a field he enjoyed, until his dad was ready to leave the shop behind. Then, he’d take over so the old man wouldn’t have to worry about their family’s legacy going to some stranger who’d run it into the ground. He owed the man that and infinitely more.

Once the laptop booted, he immediately clicked into the browser and typed the address on the card. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but somehow, the minimalistic, almost sterile theme with post after post of comic book characters sketches, was decidedly not it. He allowed his eyes to roam the page toward the URL icon and they immediately widened in recognition.

Why would he of all people leave a card like this in his locker?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He had no idea why he was so apprehensive about approaching this dude. He was just another dude.

No. That wasn’t true. He wasn’t any ordinary dude. He was some creepy senior who’d left a card in his locker instead of approaching like a normal person.

And then there was the other thing. The elephant in the room thing. Seriously, how many kids had a Segway parked beside them all the time in school? The only period he shared with Beetee Malhotra was study hall and he’d never spoken to him. As far as he knew, no one in the school had. He sat alone, perpetually reading something or another on an electronic pad or on hard copy. For all Peeta knew the kid was mute. He had to be differently abled in some way. The school didn’t make concessions for his expensive mode of conveyance and the elevator key he obviously employed to maneuver it from floor to floor, otherwise.

He’d only known of him for as long as they’d shared study period, which was barely half a year, but both his brothers had been in classes with him longer and had shared rumors about him. Apparently, his parents were both government-contracted engineers and wealthy enough that he had no reason to attend a public school like District Twelve. The way the stories went, he’d been in private schools, likely specialized for whatever was wrong with him, until he started high school, at which point his parents decided it was in his best interest to finish his education here.

Peeta could not fathom how this place could possibly ever compare to a fancy private school, but he wasn’t going to question someone else’s choices. After all, Madge’s father was major of their town and one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the state, but he still honored his daughter’s wishes to have what she considered a ‘normal’ high school experience and allowed her to come here. Peeta now wished he hadn’t. He would never have met her but she’d still be around.

Approaching the table in the solitary corner of the library the eighteen-year-old sat at with a caution that, once again, had him internally kicking himself, he cleared his throat. When the boy with distinct, angular, south Indian features that should likely have been a dark copper shade but were ashen from sun deprivation (probably from far too many hours spent indoors), moved his almond, shadowed eyes slightly away from his reading material to acknowledge his presence without really looking at him dead on; he immediately outstretched a hand.

“Hello, I think you left something in my locker,” he fumbled uncertainly.

The older boy’s eyes flitted with a degree of curiosity from his hand back down to his magazine, his lips a thin line before he spoke, not bothering to accept his greeting, “If you’re that uncertain I left it, I highly doubt I did.”

Peeta found himself transfixed by this young man. Not so much by his outward rudeness. After all, having your reading interrupted by a stranger could be construed as rude, also. What fascinated him was the fact that he was putting off next to nothing- no emotional charge, no neural activity. He was at some sort of flat line. He wasn’t close enough to sense a heartbeat, but something told him he’d be unable to register even that if he were. He’d never met someone with this level of control over their body’s normal responses. It was as if he was in a coma. It was so bizarre.

At the sound of the older teen’s icy retort, however, he managed to break out of his stupor. “The card… whoever left it… it had your Tumblr on it and a question. It asked if I’d ever been sick.”

This got the boy’s attention. He sat forward in his chair, closing his reading material, which Peeta could now see was a comic book, in order to focus his eyes more properly on his face, analytically. Even with the outward shift in demeanor, Peeta still registered nothing. “So, have you ever taken ill?”

“Dude, that’s a pretty freaking weird and honestly creepy thing to ask a random stranger you’ve never met before… and on an anonymous card.”

To Peeta’s surprise, especially since it did not register in any way as a spike in his emotions, Beetee’s frown deepened as he interlaced his gloved fingers - black leather Isotoner touch screen gloves, he noted… neat. “A card with a webpage address is hardly anonymous. And besides, is there anything about my outward appearance that strikes you as ordinary, Peeta?”

He had to admit, he had him there. “Good point. Still creepy.”

“I’m not much of a socializer. My skills are rudimentary at best. Take a seat, please,” Beetee motioned to the seat across from him with a slight head gesture and, if out of nothing but morbid curiosity, the younger teen found himself settling into it. “Now, can you please answer the simple question?”

Peeta bounced the fingers of his right hand on the table, narrowing his eyes and huffing out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know how to answer it, man. I’ve never missed school because I was sick and I don’t remember getting any normal childhood diseases like my brothers did. I couldn’t give you a definite number of days, though. I don’t remember. Why would you ask me of all people that in the first place?”

An eyebrow quirked on the older boy at his question, but he just continued as if he had not asked it. “Well that doesn’t give me a vote confidence…” Peeta wasn’t sure he was still directing himself at him, the way his voice seemed to trail off pensively, his gaze unfocused. Then he locked those cold onyx eyes on him to ask his next question. “I assume you’ve never been injured, would I be wrong in that assumption?”

Peeta could do nothing but glower in confounded fascination at this void of a boy for a fraction of a moment before snorting out in aggravation, “Dude, I was raised in a bakery. Of course, I’ve gotten burns and knicks. It’s part of baking!”

The boy before him sat back in his chair, a slow breath escaping him and, once again, Peeta was at a loss. The kid showed every outward sign of frustration, yet no inward reactions. What kind of person could function like this?

“I’m going to be extremely skeptical of all this.”

Okay, he’d had enough. This dork needed to stop speaking in this Jedi knight bull language he was using. He didn’t want to be mean, but he had better things to do. “Yeah, look Beetee, I’m supposed to be studying for an AP Euro History test next period, so if you’re not going to tell me why you left that note in my locker…” He was getting up to leave when the sudden drop to the tone the boy used as he spoke his next words made him pause and straighten in his chair to listen.

“I’ve studied the form of comic books intimately, Peeta. I’ve spent most of my life confined to hospital bed after hospital bed with nothing to do but read. At the age of nine, due to my condition, I refused to walk out my own home. Therefore, my mother, in an attempt to draw me out of my own fears, placed a gift on the bench in a small playground facing our home. If I wanted it, I had to go out there and get it. Well, at that age, desire certainly outweighed reason, so I ventured out onto that park, onto that bench and, folded in fine giftwrapping, was a limited edition Amazing Spiderman comic book. My mother sat beside me as I looked upon it with awe and promised a new one every day I ventured out to that bench. And so began my fascination with this medium. I believe comics are a last link to an ancient way of passing on history. The ancient egyptians drew on walls, many civilizations all over the world still tell stories through pictorial form, the aboriginals in Australia... You’re an artist yourself. You can sympathize with this, can you not?”

Peeta found himself nodding absently, enraptured by the unaffected passion in the teenager’s words, something in the back of his mind questioning how this kid knew his favorite hobby.

“I further believe comics are a form of history, something someone at some point experienced, drew, set down in ink and paper. Then, of course, the commercial machinery distorted it, blew it up, cartoonized it to make it marketable. This small town of ours has seen its share of disasters. Do you know why I’m here in this school, Peeta? My parents hoped to find a ‘safer’ environment for me. You see, I’ve had the misfortune of being a firsthand witness to some of these at my previous schools. When I was ten, there was a fire in my grade school. It was after hours and the only casualties were a small group of six children in the afterschool program, plus the aide who looked after them. This was a state of the art magnet school. Nothing but the best for my parents’ sickly only child. The automatic doors to the room they were all in malfunctioned. The smoke seeped in through the AC vents. They all suffocated.”

“In seventh grade, this didn’t even have anything to do with the school, really. It could’ve happened anywhere. Pure happenstance allowed it to occur on a weekend class trip to the falls, on a tour of the hydroelectric plant. My parents only allowed me to participate because it was a learning experience they thought important. They’ve always imparted a respect for mechanics and engineering in me. The spa at the resort we all stayed at shorted out with nine students in it. All were electrocuted.”

Peeta swallowed thickly, uncomfortable. Though, he wasn’t sure if it was because of the morbid undertone of the conversation or the fact that the blatantly emotive redaction was coming from this vacuum of a living being. The boy, however, continued, either oblivious or uncaring of his discomfort at the topic so soon after his own ordeal.

“I’m an observer. I watched the aftermath of that fire. I watched the ambulance cart the bodies of those children off to the morgue. I watched the news, waiting to hear a very specific combination of words, but they never came. Then, several days ago, I saw the news story about an overturned bus from my very own school and I heard them: ‘There is a single survivor and he is miraculously, unharmed.”

Beetee let out a relieved scoff, as if the retelling had been as much an ordeal for him to share as it was for Peeta to hear. The complete lack of flux in the upperclassman’s output, made him seriously doubt it had, however.

After that brief interlude to exhale, the older boy continued in the same unaffected manner, “I have something called osteogenesis imperfecta. It’s a genetic disorder. My body doesn’t produce sufficient levels of a specific protein, causing my bones to be very low in density- very easy to break. I’ve had twenty-one breaks in my life and I have the tamest version of this disorder… type one. There are type two, type three, type four… type fours don’t last very long.”

“So, that’s how the concept struck me. If someone like me exists in this world and I’m at one end of the spectrum, hypothetically, couldn’t there be someone else opposite of me at the other end? Someone who doesn’t get sick, who doesn’t get hurt like the rest of us?” Beetee leveled a pointed look at him, his voice changing in tenor with his vehemence to be understood, “And this person probably doesn’t even know it. The kind of person,” he gestured at his closed comic book with an open gloved palm, “these stories are about. A person put here to protect the rest of us… to guard us.” He finished with a beseeching glare at the younger boy.

Peeta gaped in return, unsure how to respond to, well… the absurdity of all of that. Mostly, he just felt sorry for the kid, obviously lonely, isolated, suffering a horrible disease. He could understand how he would conjure up such an outlandish fantasy- such an impossible theory. But, he’d gone there that day seeking answers, hoping whoever left that invasive note had somehow read into him the way he read into others and could help figure out why he was so unique- not some lonely weirdo looking for someone to play World of Warcraft with and feed ridiculous bull. He’d actually woken up hopeful that day. Now, he was just irrationally angry and disappointed.

Knowing he’d likely feel guilty later for letting that disillusioned anger out on this poor kid, he responded in a scornful huff, “So what? You think I can fly, scale walls? That’s wonderful.” He violently pushed away from the table, getting ready to leave.

“I never said that,” Beetee exclaimed urgently with that same eerie aloofness. “It’s just a possibility, one with many holes,” he tried to convince him.

Peeta rounded on him, the last of his patience wading. Forgetting the fact, he was talking to someone ill. “Look, I don’t want to be part of whatever social experiment you’re conducting out of boredom or desperation or whatever. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I’ve lost friends. That question you asked… thinking about it made me feel… I don’t know… less sad somehow. I don’t know why and I was hoping whoever thought it up could help somehow, but you obviously have some other crap going on. So please don’t leave any more junk in my locker. If you knew anything at all about me, you’d know clutter’s a pet peeve.”

He turned to walk away to another section of the library in the hopes to get some study done before his next period, when Beetee’s parting remark met him. “I hear congratulations are in order, Peeta. Getting into Florida State as a sophomore is no small feat. Your family must be so proud, as must be that pretty dark haired girl you favor.”

That halted his progress. He’d received a formal recruitment email from the university less than twelve hours before, letting him know of their interest in him, that they’d be sending a formal acceptance letter with details about his scholarship in the mail in a few weeks. He hadn’t even discussed it with Katniss, yet. Not because he wanted to keep it from her, necessarily. He just didn’t know how to tell her, needed time to think up the right words. That and he was holding out on a couple other local universities, anyway. There was no rush to jump the gun. Not when he knew her feelings on the matter already and could foresee the unpleasant way that conversation would undoubtedly play out.

The question was, how did this kid he’d just met for the first time in his life not ten minutes ago know about it? He turned back to face him, his brow furrowed in prelude to his inquiry, when Beetee beat him to it.

“As my blog page says, Peeta. I’m a tinkerer… and as you learned today, I am an observer. My page has a URL tracker. That paired with a little computer skill…”

“Were you even going to tell her? Or, are you willing to sacrifice it, your plans, your desires, all for her without so much as letting her know? Give up what you want for the woman you love, such altruism… Sounds like the stuff of stories to me.”

Trapped in a whirlwind of conflicting reactions: confusion, outrage, admiration, invasion, speculation, skepticism… Peeta settled on lashing out as a blind defense mechanism, stomping away fuming.

“Stay out of my computer, man. I swear, I’ll turn you in to the cops for cyber invasion. That’s so not okay. And while you’re at it, stay the hell away from me, too.”

Chapter Text

“What are you doing, Peeta?”

“Nothing,” he replied, shamelessly lilting his voice in mock innocence, unimpeded in his task of unraveling her braid to run his fingers through the thick strands of ebony as he’d yearned to do all morning.

Cracking open one eye to send a very ineffective glare up at him – considering she had to tilt her head up drastically from its position splayed across his lap to accomplish it – she tried to keep her tone chastising through the smile threatening the edges of her mouth. “That doesn’t feel like nothing, Peeta. That feels like you’re going to lull me to sleep soon… and tangle my hair while you’re at it. You wouldn’t be trying to sedate me to try to take advantage, then take off on your own, would you?”

He laughed full out, the sound rich and heart-felt, reverberating through the greenery surrounding them, disturbing the serenity. She didn’t mind the disruption to their tranquil setting one bit, however. She relished the sound.

He didn’t stop his soothing assault on her tresses once he’d caught his breath enough to respond, incredulity lazing his words, “As tempting as crossing that line into full out sexual predator is, sweetheart, if I were to strand you here, in the middle of this wilderness you’ve so deviously swindled me to? Yeah, I’d probably die eaten by rabbits, or mauled to death by squirrels, while kneeling over to take a dump... something duly undignified. The kind of thing that would cause anyone hearing about it in the news to say, ‘Wow, that poor dumb city slicker bastard got duped into that forest, just to die like that?’”

Katniss had started snickering at the beginning of his statement, but by the end, she was in a fetal position, both arms folded over her quaking abdomen, smothering guffaws into his stomach. He joined her, reveling in both the lyrical sound of her oh-so-rare laughter and the sensations her heightened emotions and the chortles she breathed into his middle, sent blaring through every nerve ending in his body.

She was open here, uninhibited. Her smiles and laughs came much easier than anywhere else. She belonged here, in this untamed place, a child of the wild, feral… beautiful.

He admired her as she braced an elbow on his leg to prop herself up on her side facing him, wiping with her free hand the moisture that had escaped her eyes as she laughed. “Yup, you’re pretty useless out here.” She stuck out her lip in a mocking pout. “Is wittle Peeta still fraidy of the mean ole’ chipmunk?”

Unable to resist, he launched forward, capturing that bottom lip she so haphazardly flaunted between his teeth in a gentle nibble, before sucking it into his mouth and running the tip of his tongue over it. She let out a strangled groan and he responded by digging both hands into her scalp, one near the nape of her neck and the other just above, in order to tip her head further back. She gasped against his mouth, the feeling of his short nails scraping across her scalp euphoric, and he took the opportunity to invade, teasing and caressing her tongue with his. It escalated to a duel of sorts, a slow rhythmic struggle for dominance that neither wanted to win or lose- not really. The thrill lay in relishing the sounds they could force out of one another.

They were breathless when they parted, lost in the seemingly synchronized pitter-patter of their hearts and panting breaths. Peeta was the first to break the spell of the moment, an impish smirk splitting his flushed features. “That little bastard was nuts, though. He just attacked me. He could’ve had rabies. It was a completely rational reaction.”

Katniss leaned forward again, ghosting her lips over his and sharing his breaths. She responded with a teasing smile of her own, “Screaming like a little girl and flailing like you’re having a seizure when the wild animal you’re trying to get to eat out of your hand jumps at you, after your girlfriend specifically warned you not to try it… That’s really hot, Mellark.”

In a heartbeat, he’d used one of those indiscernible wrestling moves to somehow flipped her onto her back on the bamboo mat they’d settled over the snow-covered bank and layered with a thermal blanket. He pinned both her outstretched arms over her head by her slim wrists with one hand as he angled over her, using his free hand to continue treading his finger through her loose hair. She bit her lip to keep from snorting at the obviously fake, pained expression he sported as he lowered his face close to hers. “That really hurts my feelings, Katniss. You denouncing my fear of small woodland creatures is very emasculating. My ego may be shattered beyond repair.”

She spared him another blatantly patronizing, sardonic moue before pecking him quickly on the nose and snorting out, “You’d think someone so in touch with the inner workings of living beings would have a better report with said woodland creatures. But, really, I think you’d freeze to death out here long before the animals got to you. And even then, I’m guessing you’d go by way of wild dog or mountain lion- not rodent.” 

Peeta frowned down on her, not one bit amused. “I only commune with higher life forms, Everdeen. Apparently, I’m a species-elitist freak of nature. And glad you’ve given thought to the varied ways this wondrous haven of yours can murder me. Remind me never to piss you off… or let you pick where we go on dates again, for that matter. For all I know, you’re scouting out a good dump site out here. They’d never find me.”

A snicker finally broke through her defenses and he answered it with a triumphant grin, placing a gentle kiss to the very edge of her mouth as she responded, “At least I took care of it for you. That evil chipmunk won’t ever bother you or anyone else again.”

“Yeah. That brings up another issue. I swear, I can still smell those things,” he stopped his ministrations on her hair to sweep his arm to their general left, along the vicinity where she’d left her game bag about fifteen yards away.

He’d never gone hunting with her. He’d never gone hunting, at all. He’d been camping with his family a few times, but they’d had gear- tents, sleeping bags, lanterns. All she’d asked him to bring when she’d suggested he pick her up for their first date since the accident that Saturday morning eighteen days after the event, was a basket lunch for two and a thermos of his special hot cocoa. He should’ve smelled a trap when she asked him to pick her up at five in the morning. But after what felt like an eternity of tentative smiles and stolen moments at school, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

He’d at least had the foresight to ask Rye to lend him his eighty-six Bronco, figuring wherever she’d want to go at dawn, he’d likely need a four-by-four to get there and he wasn’t going to ruin the transmission on his own car. His hunch had played out. The paved road with actual road signs had ended an hour before they’d reached the place they’d ‘parked’ and that last fifty miles was a barely traversable trail or rock and melting slurry. Then, they’d hiked another hour through varying levels of slush to get to the quasi frozen lake they now sat before.

He had no idea where they were.

Katniss had surprised him at her doorway that morning with her bow and sheath flung over one shoulder, her game bag slung over the other and the mat with the blanket they currently rested on strapped to her back, along with a backpack full of ‘necessities’. He’d been mortified when she’d excitedly revealed where she wanted to take him, but thought he’d bore the shock of the thing rather well. Especially, when he’d learned on the drive over that necessities only comprised of baby wipes, a large cast iron pot, salt, the largest hunting knife he’d ever laid eyes upon, a six-pack of bottled water, iodine, matches and a compass.

It didn’t assuage his nerves any when she’d explained there was no point in the cell phone he’d brought… no reception where they were heading. He made sure to fill the tank and the emergency canister his brother kept in the back of the truck at the last station he saw before losing sight of civilization. There was no way he was getting stranded out there.

Most of his fears settled once they reached the end of the dirt road and started their trek through the trees. Katniss merged with the habitat flawlessly. She handed him the game bag and mat, taking off every fifteen minutes or so after what to him seemed an invisible trail. She’d always ask him to stay behind, explaining his tread was impossibly heavy. Loud. ‘Loud? How could she possibly find anything in this deafening silence anything but loud’ he’d pondered petulantly after she’d left him behind for the third time.

What was worse, every time she returned, she had something bloody and very dead - run through the neck or eye with one of her arrows - she’d ask him to hold her game bag open for her to deposit. By the time they’d reached the clearing with the breathtaking view of the frozen lake, gleaming in the early morning sun, the body count he lugged in that bag consisted of three wild turkeys, two rabbits and the unfortunate chipmunk he’d tried feeding a crumb of bread to in his boredom waiting for her.

She’d mercifully deposited the bag of her victims in a large snow bank a distance she’d promised him would keep the stench of newly vanquished at bay during their picnic.

It wasn’t working.

Katniss let out an exasperated sigh, trying to crease her brows back into her usual scowl in spite of her good mood. Peeta found the resulting expression adorable, something between a grimace and a glower. He brought his lips down right where her brows met to smooth it.

“You know, you’re awfully picky about your food sources. You’re spoiled. I don’t remember any complaints when we brought down that big buck two months ago and you got those venison steaks. You have no idea how much these trips help supplement our groceries. There was, like, nothing in our freezer this morning and by this afternoon, I’ll have two weeks’ worth of meals for us. That’ll carry us well into mom’s next paycheck.”

His heart wrenched as she told him this. Likely unbeknownst to her, as she’d spoken, her heartrate sped up steadily- a clear indication of growing apprehension. She was worried, terrified her sister and mother didn’t have enough to eat. She was hiding from him again, downplaying her own trials to spare him for some reason.

“Don’t do that.”

He allowed an eyebrow to rise on what he’d consciously kept a blank expression, the only indication of feigned confusion. “Don’t do what?”

She shut her eyes, turning her face away from him so she wouldn’t have to look into those impossibly blue, infuriatingly sympathetic pools when she opened them again, narrowed in aggravation. “Don’t do that thing where you get quite when I tell you about stuff at home. Then, suspiciously, I find a hundred dollar bill right outside my door the next day. It’s not your responsibility to take care of my family, Peeta. It’s my mother’s and, failing her, it’s mine. I don’t need charity. We find a way to make due. My mom had to pay the taxes on the house in November. It always leaves us lean for luxuries when we have big expenses like that. We’ll be fine in a few days. Madge’s dad… he’s willing to hire me part time to do filing and stuff after school for him. I start next week. It’ll help pay some stuff, maybe put something away for school. Madge used to do it, but now… ” Her statement broke off unevenly.

Peeta brought his hand under her cheek, forcing her to face him. Not surprisingly, she found no pity in his eyes. She saw anger. “Having enough for your twelve-year-old, developing sister to eat is not a luxury, Katniss. It’s a necessity. You’re taking home everything in there.” He gestured with his head toward the woven basket he’d filled with ham sandwiches, butter cookies, a quarter wheel of gouda, a bag of grapes and the thermos of hot chocolate she’d requested.

Just as she drew the indignant breath to protest, he covered her mouth with his, swallowing the retort even as she wreathed beneath him to free herself. The more he deepened the kiss, nipping and caressing her lips, however, the more half-hearted her struggles became. Until, finally, she gave up entirely and relented entry to his probing tongue, losing herself to that alternate universe of sensation. The moment he lifted away, though, she tried again to speak and found his hand clamped securely over her swollen lips. She sneered up at him, voicelessly conveying everything his hand was impeding.

Peeta smirked down at her lovingly. She really had no idea how beautiful she was when she got this pissed. “And, furthermore, your family’s coming over to my place for dinner tomorrow after you go see my game.” His smile grew exponentially, noting the fire roiling through the mercury in her eyes at his gall, presuming he could tell her what to do. He believed she would willingly boil him with that stare in that moment if she could. “Because, you’re giving me one of those hideous birds in that bag – plucked and gutted and whatever you need to do to make it look edible – and dad’s going to make it for all of us.”

Katniss’s eyes softened as she realized what he was offering. He was bargaining a trade. Yes, a very unusual trade, but a trade, nonetheless. A turkey and her arguably unwitting company at his next football game in exchange for accepting his hospitality. He was capitulating to her unwillingness to accept charity and offering a compromise. Attrition and the fading vestiges of her previous indignation warring with gratitude at his ingenious artifice for getting her family fed while respecting her pride, she bit down on his finger, hoping he’d release her.

Her unexpected response was a very distinct darkening of his irises and an irresistible twitching up at one end of his mouth. “Did you just bite me? That hurt.”

In a blink, his hand was in her hair again, tugging lightly and angling her mouth up toward his. He skimmed his lips over hers. “I’m going to have to bite you back now, you know,” he heaved into her parted lips. She smiled into the gesture when he started nibbling lightly at the cleft of her upper lip then moved downward, imparting gentle nips to left side of her upper lip before working his way to the bottom. Straining to focus her addled thoughts, she huffed against his lips, “I need my hands, Peeta.”

Too distracted by his current undertaking, he automatically released his hold on her wrists, running that hand down the length of her arm and relishing the goose bumps he could sense forming even through the thick leather hunting jacket and fleece sweater she wore.

Katniss, however, had other plans. The moment her arms were free, she leveraged them to roll out from beneath and to the left of him, quickly getting to her feet and turning in the direction of her hunting bag. She loosely re-braided her hair with the speed and skill years of habit instilled as she made her way, knowing the long locks would hinder her.

His brain still not receiving the full quota of circulation conducive to proper function, due to their previous activities, it took Peeta a second to register her absence, glowering after her in confusion when he did. “What are you doing?”

“You want a prepped bird, don’t you? You think those happen magically?”

He sat up slowly, still perplexed, watching her pull the large pot out of her camping bag and fill it with snow from the bank, then pour a few drops of iodine into it before choosing one of the fat, ugly birds from her bag.

“Wha- you’re doing that now? In front of me?” He couldn’t have kept the outraged disgust out of his voice if he’d tried.

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, continuing to break off twigs from a nearby dry oak for kindling, one eyebrow raised in amusement. “You’re not going to faint on me at the site of a few feathers and entrails, are you, Mellark? What do you think happens at the butcher’s?”

He sent her a withering glare. “If the inclination to find out were ever to hit, I’d become a butcher, thanks. And why are you cooking it?”

She scoffed, bestowing an overbearing sideways grin upon him. “Not cooking it, city boy. The feathers come off easier when you soak it in lukewarm water. You really would die out here if I left you, wouldn’t you?”

His frown deepened into an insulted sneer and he brought both knees up to rest his folded arms on. “You know what? I’ve decided Gale can have this… this traipsing through the wilds, roughing it with you. You can both have fun living it up like savages up here.”

She gasped out a loud laugh, coming to kneel on her haunches before him, almost nose to nose. “Well, I wasn’t asking for permission, but thank you for your benevolence,” she smirked derisively. “But, just for your general education, this,” she gestured back with a casual thumb over her shoulder at the bag of carcasses,” is all Gale’s ever gotten out of me out here. You definitely have the sweeter deal going out here. You’ve reaped all the rewards of my company without barely lifting a finger.” An introspective, almost yearning cast then clouded her eyes that made his stomach clench uncomfortably as she finished absently, “He’s an amazing trapper. Hares and wild boars aren’t the brightest, but they’re super-fast, sometimes too fast to line a decent shot. He’s brilliant at predicting their natural instincts, they’re reactions, where they’ll scurry off to- using it against them. If he were out here with us, we would’ve made out like bandits today, probably three or four more rabbits, maybe a fox and probably an otter…”

That clenching in his stomach knotting into a familiar if unwarranted covet, Peeta allowed the next words to flow from his mouth unhindered, uncharacteristically guileless, fueled by possessiveness. He regretted them before he’d finished the breath it took to state them.

“I got a recruitment email from FSU.”

It was as if a nuclear plant had a meltdown announced, how quickly the protective barriers came up. The core (her heart), seemingly doused with the freezing water that would impeded it’s deterioration. He couldn’t even feel her breaths once she stiffened at his words, her mouth a thin line, her steel eyes dull with the emptiness he knew was prelude to the tempest forthcoming. Wordlessly, she turned away, stood, and paced back to the now strong flame, placing the potted snow over the warmth.

Bringing both hands up to rub his face roughly, he fell backward on the mat, his head making harsh impact. He slammed it down a few more times for good measure, inwardly cursing himself at his own idiocy until her soft-spoken words diverted his attrition-filled eyes back to her.

She was still kneeling close to the pot, knees bent to her chest, arms folded tightly around them. Her back faced him as her words met his ears- harsh, obviously hurt whispers, “I didn’t tell you about Gale to belittle you, Peeta. We need each other in a different way than you and I do. He’s my brother. We’ve helped each other through such horrible things… I just… feel things for him differently. I never once begrudged you your friendship with Delly. She’s the sister you never had. I can understand that because of Gale.” He heard her sniff and wasn’t entirely convinced it was because of the twenty degree weather.

He was a grade-A ass.

He fought the urge to go to her, wrap her in his arms, beg forgiveness. She wouldn’t allow it even if he tried. She was hurt, sure. But he knew her well enough to know she was murderously enraged, too. And, with her, anger always won out… at least, at first. He needed the blaze to burn itself out before she’d allow herself to be assuaged.

He startled when she turned abruptly, suddenly losing the tenuous grasp on her defenses, allowing the flood of emotions coiling through her to cascade off and slam into him like a speeding semi. Disillusion, fear, anger, resentment, love, hope, betrayal… too many to decipher, crawled through him, drawing the air from his lungs, as she pinned his with the inferno dancing in her stricken eyes. “Are you going?”

It was not so much a question as an accusation. It took him a moment to navigate her onslaught, the same moment it took her to rein it in, before he stuttered out a weak, “God, no, Katniss. At least… I really don’t want to go there. It would be an absolute, no-other-school-will-take-me last resort. I’m waiting to hear back from a bunch of other local schools, honest. I don’t- I don’t want to leave you, at all. I’m sorry, I told you that way. I’m sorry I got jealous of what you have with Gale. The rational part of me knows it’s platonic, but the part of me that wants to spend every waking moment with you, can’t negotiate you spending a second with another guy. It’s not cool. I know that. I want to stop feeling that way, really I do, but I can’t seem to. I think it’s something related to my balls? I’m sorry.”

“Well, we can’t have you hacking off your nuts.”

He hadn’t been looking at her as he’d spoken, unable to maintain eye contact, a mix of his shame and the intensity of her glare prohibiting it. But when his eyes locked with hers now, he noted an iota of amusement lancing the fire. She was still frowning, but it had softened at the edges of her mouth and eyes. He allowed himself an exhale.

“Yeah. I might need those in the future. Our kids will be grateful.”

“You presume way too much, Mellark,” she rolled unimpressed eyes back to the now simmering pot. She lifted it off the fire and placed the turkey in it, the smell of death intensifying in his nostrils. She began ripping plumage brusquely.

“You’re going to stink like plucked poultry. Sexy.”

She side-eyed him dangerously, scoffing, “Oh, you pretty much sailed that ship. What I smell like should be the least of your worries. You pissed off the only person who knows the way back to the truck.”

He wisely decided to remain silent after that, leaving her to her gory task. Hopefully, she’d forfeit the plans of experimenting how long he could traipse lost through the woods without her if he allowed her time to further defuse. He allowed his mind to wander in order to ignore the stench of what she was doing and found it diverting back to his conversation with Beetee several days before in school. In spite of how hard he’d tried, he couldn’t stop ruminating about what the older teen theorized, that someone must exist that was the opposite of him- someone who couldn’t get hurt. He’d spent the days following their interaction both avoiding him and attempting to remember a time he’d been ill. So far, only one of those two enterprises had proven successful. He’d seen neither hide nor hair of the odd senior in a week.

“Do you remember me ever getting sick or hurt?” he finally broke the silence after about fifteen minutes of fruitless introspection.

She turned a fully confounded expression on him, obviously unprepared for his out-in-left-field inquiry. Her response was almost automatic if slightly caustic, however, “You mean besides drowning?”

This had him shooting straight up to a sitting position, lightning quick, his azure eyes round with bewilderment. “What?”

At his blatant distress, she realized he wasn’t joking and turned fully to regard him with a softer, more tentative influx to her voice, “You really don’t remember?”

When he shook his head dully, she sighed, further softening her visage to explain, “Remember this summer when we came to the far end of this lake with your family where they have, like, all those picnic tables and bar-b-cue pits for tourists a day trippers?” This, he nodded ascension to, so she continued, “Well, you refused go swimming with me. Even after you saw the faux leather two-piece that I’d never in million years wear, but Madge talked me into just for that trip. You said you just wanted to work on getting sun, which is ridiculous ‘cause you don’t tan, you burn.” She couldn’t help rolling her eyes slightly when a lecherous gleam came to his eyes, coupled with a lopsided smirk. He definitely remembered the swimwear.

 “So, I asked your brothers to help me tackle you into the water, because, let’s face it, I wasn’t going to get you in there on my own. You’ve got fifty pounds and years of hand-to-hand combat practice onme. They both balked at the idea, told me you can’t swim and freak out at the idea of going anywhere near a body of water that deep. Something about you drowning when your dad took the three of you to learn how to swim at the Y when you were three. Apparently, the two of them started fooling around with you and didn’t notice you didn’t surface when they dunked you. According to your brothers, your heart stopped, Peeta… for a couple minutes. The only reason you’re still around is the fact the teacher noticed you at the bottom of the pool and knew CPR. He got your blood circulating again, but you ended up in the hospital on oxygen. Rye and Flax say you’re traumatized about learning to swim after that, so I never brought it up. You really don’t remember any of that?”

Actually, as she’d spoken, the faint memory of being surrounded, weighed down, suffocating, powerless, did flicker through the outer fringes of his mind. Apparently, he’d blocked the incident out as some sort of defense mechanism. His brothers likely never brought it up out of some fear of triggering him. They were pricks to one another half the time, but they always looked out for each other when it mattered.

He didn’t even notice her moving closer to him, lost in his own recollection and its possible implications, until she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, warranting his attention. Her eyes were once again unguarded and full of concern. “You’re really freaked out by that, aren’t you? I’m sorry I reminded you of it. I don’t think I was ever supposed to. I didn’t realize it was such a thing for you, you know?”

He considered her, his skin rippling in response to her dread over what she believed to be an awful ordeal for him and a real, reassuring smile - one that ignited his eyes with optimism - found its way to his features. He brought her back into his arms, settling her over his crossed legs and placing a soft kiss to her temple.

“Nah, sweetheart. It’s actually kinda nice to remember I’m a regular guy like everyone else, every once in a while.”

Chapter Text

“Nice job on that route, Mellark. Keep running it like that and Capitol won’t know what hit ‘em. Now come get your gear on. Other team bus just got here and security’s lettin’ the crowd in. Can’t have you naked on the field.”

Peeta ignored the taunts and snickers from the handful of teammates who’d ventured out to run practice drills for the game as early as he preferred to, sending a sneer at his coach for the jab as he passed him on his way to the quickly filling bleachers to collect his jersey from the bench. The man feigned engrossment in his game book with a sideways smirk. Only Coach Abernathy would conjure up a slight equating practicing in full under armor and pads, but forsaking a top, to nudity.

He was hot. Yes, he understood the temperatures were in the low fifties and half the guys on the field were sporting sleeves, as were most of the players slowly trickling out from the locker room. But that had nothing to do with him. If he grew uncomfortable in a room with no windows when he was static, he was definitely suffocating after fifteen minutes of non-stop, arduous activity. He couldn’t figure out how his teammates could stand to wear the stifling padding with the full uniform the entire game and to pre-game practice. He was sweltering as it stood.

The old man should be thanking him for sporting bottoms, in all honesty. Usually, when the weather was warmer, he didn’t even bother with those to practice. He just wore a sleeveless compression shirt and matching compression shorts. He had dozens of each from wrestling prep and the team’s gym days. Those really left nothing to the imagination.

“Yes, bread boy. We don’t need the crowd getting distracted by anything other than the glory that is I.”

Speaking of leaving nothing to the imagination...

 Peeta struggled his head through the neck hole of his jersey, shifting it in place over the cumbersome shoulder pads as he quirked an amused brow at Finnick, who had sidled over at some point while he straightened the garment so it was most functional to pull on. The gold and white uniform he wore was at least a size too small (by design) and looked practically molded to every nook and cranny that was his athletically muscled body.

The copper-haired senior was one of only three male cheerleaders on the Varsity squad and, with his quintessential type B personality, relished the attention this wrought- both negative and positive. Technically, he shouldn’t even have been at this game, seeing as it was JV. But the JV cheerleading squad had no males, so the Varsity guys did double duty in games. Not that Finn cared. Most of the reason he’d joined was a certain brunette – soft-spoken but gifted gymnast –freshman, who’d tried out and made it as a flyer two years before. She, now a sophomore, was stretching with the rest of the squad at the other end of the field. Basically, this kid cared more about the ability to grab his girlfriend’s butt publicly during a routine then he cared about the stigma that inevitably followed male cheerleading.

He was something of a personal hero to Peeta.

Because of his gumption and because he was parlaying his amazing flexibility and talent on the squad, coupled with his prowess on the swim team into a double scholarship to the University of California Berkeley, where he planned to major in psychology, of all things. Finnick always said he was fascinated with learning people’s secrets. He had a deep-rooted believe that what people hid, even subconsciously, eventually led to their mental health suffering. He was determined to prove his theory.

How could anyone help but look up to this unabashed peacock?

“I can’t believe they have you out here for this game, man. It’s a little too soon to be ‘cheering’ the crowd, don’t you think?”

The senior gave a tired shrug and his already half-hearted smirk lost most of its luster as he ran a hand through his hair, further tousling it, while surveying the line of people filtering into the stands through the gates at the back parking lot of the school. “Yeah, well, if you have to be out here playing, we have to be here pretending you running up and down the field with that piece of rubber clutched under your arm is the next best thing to sliced bread. And we have to make them,” he gestured offhandedly toward the amassing crowd, “believe it. It’s our lot. Dirty job but someone ridiculously handsome has to do it, right?” That heartbreaker smirk was back full force.

Unbidden, Peeta found himself returning it. “Couldn’t think of a better man for the job, Odair.”

“Preach, brother,” Finn responded, snapping the fingers in one hand and swerving his hips in a decidedly feminine way as he spun with feline grace in the direction of his squad. He strutted away as if he was walking a runway… and not as the male model, Peeta knew him to moonlight as to make extra money for school.

He could barely get out the catcall whistle he directed at him through his chuckling. Finnick turned and blew a kiss back over his shoulder.

Still laughing to himself at his friend’s antics, Peeta took a moment to survey the bleachers, hoping to find Katniss. He doubted she’d get there until just before kickoff if she could help it. But, his hopelessly romantic, pubescent heart made him yearn otherwise. His eyes drifted across the scattered spectators from one end to the other with no success, until he reached the very end, closest to the entry gate, the very bottom row. And there they froze when they landed on him.

He’d never seen him at a game before. Honestly, he’d never seen him out in sunlight before. For all intents and purposes, as far as he knew, Beetee Malhotra was a vampire. A shudder ran through him at the notion. That was not funny, especially when he sensed about as much out of the kid as he’d hypothetically imagined he’d get out of the undead.

And the odd teenager was staring right at him. Had this kid no notion how creepy he was?

Peeta inwardly shook off the ridiculous jitters the boy’s presence evoked and started making his way toward him. He’d actually felt bad about how he’d spoken to him the first time they’d met. He was under tremendous emotional turmoil and having someone throw some fantastical theory about his quirks into the mix, hadn’t made for the best reaction. He was hoping to run into the senior in study hall on Monday to apologize, but, since was already there…

“That is something you do not see every day,” he said in form of greeting, his eyes shifting to an apparently crystalline walking stick Beetee used to brace himself to his feet upon his approach.

The upperclassman smirked (still nothing), swinging the cane up to balance between his open palms, so Peeta could get a better look at it. It gleamed blue in the dull winter sun. The older teen appraised it as he responded, “It is an ironic allegory to my younger years- Swarovski crystal… another of my parents’ imaginative ways to counteract the many psychological pitfalls of my condition. The children in elementary school used to call me Mr. Glass, because I’d break like glass if I took a spill.”

As was becoming norm, Peeta found himself feeling commiseration for this kid, in spite of his words failing to trigger any kind of corresponding reaction from his body. “That sucks, man. Why didn’t you bring your Segway… or a wheelchair?”

The boy focused those onyx eyes on him curious, as if no one had ever expressed this level of concern. He found the look only heightened his sympathy.

“My usual mode of transportation is more suited for hard surfaces than the uneven lawns of a football field and I have explained what will happen were the vehicle to tip. I am steadier on my own two feet on this turf. And the use of wheelchairs is not recommended for those of us afflicted with my ailment. Lack of use of our muscles atrophies them, further leaving our fragile bones unprotected. Walking is, in essence, quite good for me. I only use the Segway when making my way through the hallways, since another student rushing to class could easily push me over. It is a protection. As for what the children called me when I was younger… children can be cruel, I have learned.”

Peeta fiddled with his hands anxiously, the more he learned about this kid’s life, the more remorse he felt over how he’d treated him. “Maybe, you shouldn’t be out here, then. You know, if it’s so dangerous for you.”

That strange appraising look that triggered nothing within him crossing his features, Beetee answered flippantly, “I told you, I’m an observer, Peeta. And I have a vested interest in you. A curiosity, let’s call it. Besides, the way I hear it, quite a few schools are expecting you to be a white Maurice Jones-Drew. That’s quite the compliment if you ignore the possibly racist undertones. Have you thought that maybe, I just want to watch an emerging star before he makes it too big to ever speak to the likes of me again?”

“Yeah, about that, it really isn’t cool to go into my computer, dude. I can understand your curiosity and everything, but cyber stalking me is not cool.” Regardless of his guilt over how he’d treated the kid, he couldn’t overlook the eerie fact he knew so many intimate details about him. He was going to let him know there were boundaries he was not going to allow crossed.

Beetee regarded him with something akin to respect. “I’ve never been in your computer, Peeta.” There was something to the completely unaffected tone he used – almost a scoff – that made Peeta consider the words true.

“Now, this school’s database, I have accessed in order to learn more about you. That led me to several universities’ registrars systems, which is where I found your recruitment email. I learned several of the schools you have applied to are planning to send scouts out here soon. I also know you have not responded to that first one. You see, Peeta, you can learn so much from a person without technically invading their privacy. I could learn your taste in TV shows and movies by accessing Netflix’s order history to your URL. By the way, you watch surprisingly very little explicit content for a boy your age.” At the expected outraged upward arching of Peeta’s eyebrows, Beetee quickly added, dryly, “That last one was a joke.”

Peeta ignored the tragically poor attempt at humor and heaved out a long breath; trying to figure out just how he was supposed to let this kid down easy, let him know he wasn’t that counter he’d been seeking so arduously. He wasn’t impervious to getting hurt- that he’d almost died as a toddler. He was opening his mouth to explain this – hopefully in the most innocuous way possible – when he caught sight of a familiar face just outside the fence, in line to enter the field. His face fell into a consternated frown. Why would he show up at this game? So soon?

Without hesitation, he excused himself and walked quickly to the fence, aware Beetee was slowly lagging behind him. Likely confused as to why he’d disrupted their conversation so curtly. When he made it there, he jumped over the chain blocking off the opening that would be used as the exit later that night, the one opposite where two school security personnel surveyed who entered the premises to make sure kids weren’t sneaking in booze or worse for the game. A school police cruiser parked just within the fence oversaw them, two officers sitting on the hood, chatting amicably.

He ignored the curious glances from everyone else in line, heading straight for the jittery man in the camouflage hoody, who avoided his unfocused eyes to the ground. Yes. There was something distinctly wrong radiating off him. Thom was the only other victim of the accident who was also on the football team, a benchwarmer. Peeta had encountered his father many times in the past through Delly. He owned the hardware store in the town square, close to his father’s bakery. This man should not be here, stinking drunk, in obvious emotional turmoil over his fresh loss and…

“Hey, Mr. Robinson! I didn’t think you’d be able to catch our game against Capitol. We weren’t able to talk at the service, but I wanted to tell you how deeply sorry I am for your loss.” He extended his hand almost frantically at the man, who mumbled something unintelligible- barely focusing his eyes on him as he clumsily grappled for the outstretched appendage.

And there it was. You would think he’d expect it by now, would’ve started getting acquainted with it. But it still caught him off balance when the world around him disappeared in a wave of nauseating misery to consolidate into an image of Thom’s father, in the exact clothes he wore before him. He sat at the edge of what seemed to be Thom’s bed, in his untouched bedroom, sobbing and taking heavy pulls from a bottle too large to be beer. Suddenly, the bottle went flying against the wall, devoid of contents, and Mr. Robinson brought his other hand up, brandishing a rifle- the barrel of which he placed in his mouth, his sobs intensifying. Then, shoulders slumping, his hand fell along with the gun and he doubled over in anguish. The last thing Peeta saw before the light pulled him back to himself was Thom’s father, pulling himself haggardly off the bed, tucking the weapon in the waistband of his pants and making his way on unsteady feet out the door.

With a shuddering exhale, Peeta dropped the man’s hand and forced a smile on his face he hoped disguised his growing panic, keeping the edge out of his voice. “It really is great to see you out and about, Mr. Robinson. Enjoy the game.”

With that, he vaulted away, back across the chain, heading straight for the officers. He had no idea what that was he’d just seen- couldn’t decipher it. He didn’t know what any of what he was experiencing lately with the likes of Jo and Cato was. Was he reading peoples thoughts? Were these their memories? Their desires? He had no idea. No point of reference. All he knew was that something in his gut screamed that that man, in that line, in the middle of that crowd, felt very, very wrong.

He didn’t even notice Beetee had caught up to him until he spoke. He was pretty quick for someone with such an obvious limp and necessitating the aid of a cane. “What is it, Peeta?”

There was no way he could explain this to him. He didn’t even understand it himself, so he just ignored him and continued toward the snickering Ginger officer on the hood of the police car.

“Hey, Officer Darius,” he addressed the patrolman, barely in his early twenties, who always volunteered to work security detail for sporting events, since he’d played himself when a student there. “I think someone in the line is… I don’t know… he doesn’t look right. I think he might be hiding something. Could you ask Jackson and Leeg to do random pat downs? You know, just to see what he does? He’s probably harmless. Just lost a kid in that overturned bus, but I want to be sure. Is that weird?”

The red-head tipped his head slightly, his grin growing lopsided and his gaze appraising as he considered the request. Then, he shrugged haphazardly, hopping off the car. “Sure thing, kid. Wouldn’t want your nerves screwing with your game today, after all. Anything for your peace of mind,” he stated casually, slightly teasingly, as he walked over to the security guards and whispered something in each of their ears in turn. They immediately announced they’d be patting down coats for contraband before entry into the game and began doing so with the next two people to step forward.

“What’s going on?” Beetee asked as they stood side-by-side, watching security run the quick frisk of each person who passed through the entry.

Peeta gave a weak shrug of one shoulder, supplying unsurely, “Just got a feeling. If someone’s trying to sneak something in here they’re not supposed to, they’ll step out of line before allowing themselves to be checked, right?”

As they continued to watch, Thom’s father inched closer and closer to the checkpoint… and grew visibly more and more agitated. Until, finally, he coughed into a hand, drew up the hoody on his sweater and dodged clumsily out of the line, back toward the filling parking lot.

Beetee turned round, intrigued eyes on Peeta, who simply rounded back in the direction of the field without a look back. He had to process what it was that had just happened.

“How did you know that man would step out of line?”

“Huh?” He’d almost forgotten the odd older boy was there. He barely felt his presence. There were no inner workings to the kid.

“You knew he had something on him. That’s why you asked the police officer to check the crowd. How did you know?”

Peeta fumbled through his mind for a believable lie, but honestly, he was too confused about the entire ordeal himself to conjure one up, so he decided to be as vague as possible. “It didn’t seem right, you know? For someone who just lost a kid to be at the first game afterwards. And he owns a hardware store- easy access to knives and stuff he could hide in that jacket… and he was drunk. Not a good combination.”

Beetee’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. “So, you thought he was hiding a knife?”

Peeta let out a huff, growing flustered with this line of questioning. But, simultaneously, finding it helped put in better prospective what he’d seen when he’d been in contact with the man - negotiate it, organize the images into congruent, logical patterns. He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought I saw… I don’t know. Like a vision… of a silver gun with a black grip, tucked into his pants. Like you always see on TV, you know?” He tried a weak scoff to make the statement sound slightly less bizarre.

The senior drew back, as if shocked at the revelation. His tone, however, bellied nothing but the utmost interest, “Is this common for you? You have good instincts for things like that? For knowing when someone is doing something wrong?”

Peeta fixed him with a deeply perplexed frown. He had no idea what he was talking about. Knowing when someone is doing something wrong...? No. Is that what he’d been sensing from people? He’d always been able to feel people out, read them… understand them. This… whatever this was that he was sensing now in certain people, was far more intense, focused. It was as if every sensation he could usually feel (the negative ones) coalesced into a focused, tangible awareness. And, yes, now that he thought about it, he could read what that awareness highlighted about that particular person, their intent.

Oh, god, he knew what his answer to the senior should be.

There was no way he was telling him that.

“Yeah… I guess I’ve always been good at reading people.”

The senior’s follow-up was immediate, almost frantic, “Have you ever tried to develop it?”

What? Alright, he was in no mood to figure out what that was even supposed to mean. He was what he was. He never actively tried to do anything. “I have no idea what you mean, dude.”

Beetee’s brow furrowed in what he could only imagine was frustration, since nothing registered chemically or biologically, “Comic book characters are often attributed special powers. Telekinesis, invisibility, things of that nature…”

Peeta didn’t even bother hiding his weary eye roll, breathing out heavily, “I don’t want to play these games with you anymore, man.”

Sensing he was losing him, the older teen quickly rushed to explain, “It is an exaggeration of the truth… Maybe, it stems from something as simple as instinct.”

“Hey, Mellark! I asked you to put on a jersey, not go for a bloody tour of the grounds. Get your butt back in the formation.”

Peeta sent a sidelong glance at the persnickety dark-haired man with the clipboard barking orders at a few other players who were just making their way onto the field. “Be right over, Coach!” then turning back to Beetee, he added, “I need to go, man. Mr. Robinson might not have been carrying anything on him. I could be wrong.”

As he turned to leave, the finality to Beetee’s tenor caused him to pause and glance back. “Or, he could have been carrying a silver gun with a black grip, tucked in his pants.”

Peeta heaved a sigh. If the kid wanted to grip the illusion, who was he to dash it?

“One more question before you go, Peeta?” He locked eyes with him inquisitively. “I was wondering since I saw, why have you not responded to FSU? It would seem like a far superior choice than the other five schools you have applied to.”

Peeta considered the question. It was personal, but he could see no harm in answering truthfully. He wasn’t ashamed of his reasons, not after telling her about the email the day before. “My girlfriend. She’s not crazy about me playing college ball. Thinks it’ll take me too far from her. And Florida is definitely far. I’ll take my chances with a smaller school if it’ll keep me close to home- close to her. She needs me here.”

Then, with a wave, he turned and ran out to the field to join his congregating teammates…

Completely missing the self-satisfied smirk that pierced the upperclassman’s face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He’d left almost as soon as Peeta dismissed himself to return to his pre-game drills. In truth, he’d never paid much attention sports, never needed to. There was no purpose in such pastimes for the likes of him. What little he knew, he’d learned as part of his research into the sixteen-year-old. But, he was a quick enough study to realize the boy was unique- special. The schools had noticed… something. They had a keen interest in him. There had to be a good reason for a learning institution to be that eager to invest in such an undersized, unassuming child.

He was placing the key in the ignition of his sixty-seven, custom upholstered for extra cushioning, ford mustang, when he saw him out his rearview mirror, staggering across the parking lot.

The man in the camouflage hoody, who’d stepped out of line at the game.

Immediately, he grabbed his crutch, which he’d just sat down on the passenger seat and sprung out after him. The visibly frazzled man must have sat out in the parking lot for some reason instead of going home right away, he ventured. Now, instead of heading for one of the parked cars, he wobbly, yet with impressive speed for someone in his state, made his way past, out of the parking lot and into the street, narrowly missing a passing vehicle.

As quickly as his injury-shortened gait would allow, Beetee followed him across and down the block to the subway station. That made sense. He was obviously too inebriated to drive. The subway would be a logical alternative.

He called out to him before he entered the tunnel, but the man was either too distracted, or too upset, or just plain too incapacitated from spirits to hear. So, the teenager ventured forth into the station after him, hoping to catch up, to ask him something, anything, that would stall him long enough to learn what he needed to know.

When he cornered the entrance, however, he came face to face with a steep incline of stairs – a short landing interjecting it midway – leading to the terminal. He saw the man he shadowed quickly if uncoordinated descend them. “Wait, please! I just want to ask you something,” he pleaded down to him, hoping against hope he’d listen before forcing him to take the perilous trek down. But, of course, the man didn’t even acknowledge his presence, merely moving along his course towards the trains.

Drawing on his resolve, Beetee started down the staircase after him, as quickly as his limited range of motion permitted, bracing one hand steadfastly on the handrail. He was aware he was moving far too quickly, his shoes barely making firm contact with the last step before reaching for the next. But he was desperate to reach that man, know what he needed to know.

He was a dozen steps down when his left foot missed the next step, the inevitable realization of what was forthcoming dawning instantly. The crystal cane shattered spectacularly against the steps, a foreshadow of what was to become of its master. He felt every excruciating crack of his fibula and tibia as they made hard contact at an impossible angle with the edged concrete. One, two, three… he stopped counting the breaks after five. By then, his hands, which he’d instinctively used to cushion the fall as he’d toppled, were in too much pain from their own fractures to keep the focus on just his mangle lower body.

Eventually, (after what felt like eternity) the excruciating plummet down the unyielding, jagged slope ended. He’d landed back first on the stairs, an agonized groan escaping his split, bloodied lips as he tried to focus his moisture-filled eyes. His body’s blood flow slowly diverted toward to his head, disorienting, due to its inclined position two steps from the landing.

That’s when he saw him again.

The man he’d risked this fate to follow had stopped; apparently distracted by the commotion his pained screams reverberating of the dark stairwell walls had caused. He now stood at the base of the stairs staring at him, his eyes empty, devoid. Then, he mutely turned back to jump over the turnstile, obviously sober enough to know he did not want to pay fare for his passage, and as he jumped, his jacket swung up high on his torso with the momentum.

The last thing Beetee saw before the anguish dragged him into a world of blissful oblivion was a silver gun with a black grip, secured to the man’s belt.

Chapter Text

She loathed peer counseling… had no proclivity for it.

If Madge hadn’t volunteered to do it with her, she never would’ve agreed to it. Good old, overachieving Madge, whose college applications decidedly did not need the padding, but had always been there to provide that swift kick in the rear off that metaphorical cliff. Were it offering her time to counsel her fellow troubled classmates or finally dredging up the nerve to lock onto those electric blues that endlessly if admittedly inconspicuously, tracked her from class to class, challenging their owner to vocalize that which they propositioned… Madge was always her catalyst.

Oh, how she missed her friend.

Oh, and how she abhorred Johanna Mason for suggesting this torture in the first place. Jo was the only one out of Peeta’s small group of friends she was pretty sure despised her. It wasn’t as if the pixie-haired girl veiled her disdain. If there was one thing she could respect about the girl, it was definitely her candor. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing in irritation at the memory of that conversation three months ago in that lunchroom- the one that landed her in her current predicament…

“Okay people, thinking caps on extra hard. Katniss needs an extra-curricular to pad her college apps,” Delly’s exuberant, hit-pitched squeal made every eye along the long, narrow lunch table turn on her, varying degrees of annoyance on display.

“God, Delly, we are none of us hard of hearing. Bring the manic down a notch. Did someone forget to take their lithium today?”

The strawberry blonde sent a withering glare at the shorthaired tomboy. “That’s very insulting to those who really suffer from bipolar disease, Jo.” Then, her brows shot up and her eyes rounded in exhilarated realization as she shrieked excitedly, “Hey! Maybe you can get her into the paper. That counts as a club!”

Johanna doubled over in exaggerated laughter, pointing a finger at the peeved, steel-eyed girl staring daggers at her from across the table. She was junior editor of the school newspaper. She had the clout to get her a position if she so chose. “What about her am I supposed to pander to the editor exactly, chuckles? Her non-existent writing skills? Her amazing report with the student body? Her eagerness to get out there in the thick of things at school events? She’s a freaking hermit. She only ever speaks three words and they’re usually directed at bread boy, Barbie or tall, dark and may-have-just-killed-and-buried-the-evidence-in-his-backyard over there,” she finished caustically, gesturing with a wave of her hand toward where Gale sat next to Madge.

“Nothing I kill’s useful to me buried in my backyard.”

“Dude, that is so not helping your case,” Finnick sent a hopeless grimace the senior’s way.

The edge to Gale’s mouth came up a smidge in response, his mercury gaze intense but tinged with amusement.

“Johanna shuddered – not quite sure if out of exhilaration or mortification – before turning back to Katniss with a pointed look. “My suggestion would be trying something were you don’t have to speak. Speaking isn’t your forte. I’m guessing that’s why you like her, Mellark?” She now turned to the blonde trying to hide his widening smirk behind his sandwich beside the conspicuously fuming girl. “You know, you get to spew all your endless dribble without ever getting interrupted. Your conversations must be riveting.”

Peeta swallowed hard on his bite of food, a pained expression warping his features. There was no way he was letting Johanna Mason bait him into whatever this was she was instigating between herself and the one girl it’d taken him a decade to work up the nerve to speak to and finally cajole into go out with him, “Don’t drag me into this, dude.”

Of course, it was already too late.

“Oh, thanks for defending me, Peeta.”

Uh-uh, no. He was not letting this happen. He leveled a blank expression right back at his girlfriend in response to her offended sneer. “Defend what, Katniss? You’re taking a creative writing elective because you want to work on your skills before college. I commend you for that, but you’re not at article writing level… are you?” He waited for her eyes to divert petulantly to the table, a clear indication of her assent, before continuing in the same matter-of-fact tone, “You don’t like crowds, you hate school-sponsored events. I’m hoping to drag you to Junior prom next year, if that. Jo has all the diplomatic delivery skills of farting into the speaker’s podium mic at the UN, but nothing she said is exactly off target. If you get on the paper, you’ll be kicked out in a week. And it’ll be one miserable week to boot.”

Her shoulders slumped in defeat and her frown deepened, but she didn’t respond. He was right, after all. Not that she’d give anyone at that table the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

“Yeah, thanks for the support, Mellark. Remind me to recruit you as PR manager if I ever want to sabotage a run for political office in the future, ‘kay? Anyway, brainless, why don’t you try the peer counseling hippy conglomerate? Annie over here’s one of ‘em. She can get a word in for you.”

“Giving people a shoulder to cry on and an ear when they need it does not constitute being a hippy, Jo,” the soft-spoken brunette with emerald eyes chastised, before turning a softer, almost motherly look and smile on Katniss. “We’d love you to join us. So many kids have no one to talk to about their issues. All you’d really have to do is show up and hour after or before school – whichever is most convenient for you – and share some time with a person who has no one else. It means the world to them.”

She stared at her like a deer stuck in headlights. She had no bedside manner. As far as her family was concerned, that quality evaded her altogether to dominate her sister’s personality in droves. Prim was the caregiver, the healer, the sympathetic one. She could barely stand it when a stranger sat in the seat directly beside her at assemblies. This is why she usually sat all the way in the back row of the auditorium, in the last seat in the isle, closest to the exit. Something about knowing she could make a hasty retreat gave her solace when surrounded by others.

“I-I really don’t thi-”

“That’s a great idea, Jo,” Madge interjected, sensing her utter mortification at the prospect. “I’ll sign up with Katniss and we’ll make sure we have the same appointment schedule, so she knows there’s someone who has her back while she’s doing it… and she’ll get that extr-curricular.”

She then turned a sideways, impish grin and wink at very noticeably green around the gills Katniss, adding, conspiratorially, “It’ll be fun, Katniss. You and me. We’ll be the best counselors this school has ever seen. You’ll wonder how you never thought it up before… promise.”

But, there were promises that were beyond even the best people in the world’s ability to keep, weren’t there?

Oh, how she missed her friend.

She sniffed back a sob, blinking away the moisture that threatened behind her eyes. It would not do for her appointment to find her puffy-eyed, after all. She was stronger than that. Madge believed she was capable of doing this and she owed it to honor her friend’s memory by sticking with it.

And she never crapped out on a debt.

“Hey, Katniss, your six-o-clock is here,” Annie’s siren voice shattered her reverie, a decidedly welcome reprieve from her dark thoughts and she tried to reward her with a smile. Though she knew it probably came off as more of a wince to the pretty girl with waist long, cascading waves that reminded her of a turbulent sea.

Annie approached the desk she occupied in that graceful yet demure way of hers with a shy but grateful smile. She began moving the tables and chairs leading from the doorway to her as she progressed – which frankly perplexed her – until the ethereal girl explained carefully, “This student has been through a rough few days. His health is not the best to start, but he took a bad fall a week ago. He was just released from the hospital yesterday. He’s… well, you’ll see…”

Annie locked pleading eyes with her, making something in her stomach tighten uncomfortably. “This is going to be a rough one, Katniss. I would’ve liked to handle him, personally. Because I really don’t think you’re ready for something like this. But, I believe he needs a permanent assignment, someone to focus just on him. And I’m juggling six other cases right now, I can’t afford to drop my other students for this new one. They already depend on me. Rue has three. Leevy has four. So, I need you to do me this favor and just listen to him. Ask the questions on the prepared outline if he’s not talkative, but please… he really could use support from a fellow student right now.”

Her anxiety growing with every word the girl spoke, Katniss found herself gripping the clipboard in her hands to the point her knuckles whitened. She managed a choked “Okay” and Annie’s smile grew exponentially as she glided back toward the door to let her appointment in.

This was decidedly not what she’d expected.

Yes, he was injured. The wheelchair designed to elevate and distend his right leg, which showcased dozens of pins – likely piercing skin, fibrous tissue and bone – was a dead giveaway as to his poor physical condition… as was the soft cast encasing his hand and wrist, and the sling flung over his shoulder supporting it. However, what most struck her about the boy propelling the mechanical chair toward her through the flick of a switch using his one useful hand… was his completely composed and honestly august demeanor.

Expecting this boy, who’d Annie had described as sickly to be… deformed or something was cliché, she knew, but she hadn’t been able to help the preconception. As he made his slow approach in her direction, she masked her scrutiny of him with a concerned furrow to her eyebrows. He had angular features, defined cheekbones and a dominant, angular jaw. His large, almond, charcoal eyes were dark-rimmed, but it seemed more an ethnic attribute than a side effect of his ailment. He had an unusual tinge to his skin – almost jaundiced – as if he should’ve been darker, but had not benefitted from the proper nourishment sunlight would endow his skin’s pigment. All in all, gnarly foot aside, Katniss decided anyone would judge the boy handsome, especially since he carried himself with such poise in spite of the amount of pain he had to be suffering.

She felt found a fledgling respect for this boy.

“It’s Beetee, right? Hello, my name is Katniss, but I guess you already knew that from the school counselor setting this thing up, huh?” She always felt so awkward introducing herself to new people, regardless of the fact sheet with his personal data she held in her hands. The intense way he stared at her as she fumbled was not especially helpful, either. She fidgeted with her hands on the pad, as she cleared her throat and avoided those piercing dark eyes to continue, “Miss Trinket probably told you my schedule. We will meet in the mornings, whenever you feel you need to talk about,” her eyes veered of their own accord to his injured leg and she immediately refocused them on his face, “anything… I mean, you probably have a lot on your mind. I’m not much of a talker, but I’ve been told I’m a decent listener.”

“I’ve seen you around school. You have a boyfriend, do you not?”

She was expecting neither the blunt personal question, nor the aloof, chilly way he phrased it. She found herself becoming guarded instantly and took a soothing breath before answering, attempting to reply with as little animosity as possible. “This is not a dating service, guy. I’m sorry you’ve been through some obviously messed up crap, but the point of this is for you to talk about your issues, not for you to hit on me or whatever.”

His eyebrows shot up into a placating grimace and he smiled contritely. “I meant no disrespect, I assure you. I’m just a little nervous. You seem to be, as well. I tend to prattle when I’m nervous, myself. I figured if you started off by telling me something about yourself, it could break the ice, but I understand if the topic of your current relationship is one that makes you uncomfortable.”

Something about the way he’d worded his apology seemed off to her, but his expression seemed genuinely apologetic enough. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, ruminating what he’d implied. Was she uncomfortable discussing Peeta with people? No. She was just uncomfortable with people in general. Then again, the whole purpose of this peer-counseling thing was establishing a report…

“Five months,” she croaked defiantly, “I’ve known him most of my life. We’ve always been in class together since kindergarten, but I really noticed him when my dad died. Things got bad because those jerks at the insurance company contested my mother’s claim on his life insurance. It took six months to settle. My mother… she lost herself in the grief… lost her job. We almost lost the house. We were barely eating,” she breathed the rest out in a rush, as if stopping for air would make her think twice about telling him- probably would.

Then, she took a lung full of air, released it slowly and continued more deliberately, getting lost in the recollection, “Peeta, he noticed how thin I was getting. He started leaving baked goods and a few dollars – I think it was his allowance money – at my back door every day. He thinks I don’t know it was him, but I caught him once as he was walking away. He lumbered like a bear, even at eleven,” her eyes glinted with fondness at the memory. “He never knew how much that little bit of food helped, gave me hope. But I would often catch him staring at me in class and flitting his eyes away when I’d notice. Until a few months ago, that is. He finally worked up the courage to ask me out. He’s really great,” her semi-smile faltered into a thin line as she finished in a more even tone, “He wrestles and plays football here- Junior Varsity.  He’s hoping to get recruited into a school nearby, on a scholarship.”

His head tipped slightly, his eyes analytical as he pried further, “No offense, but you do not seem particularly enthusiastic about him playing, may I ask why this is so?”

Katniss hesitated, growing uncomfortable with the shift in the conversation, so she chose to deflect the inquiry with one of her own. “How bad are you injured Beetee? Those pins in your leg look vicious.”

The senior smiled congenially if sadly at her, responding flippantly, “I took a rather nasty spill down a flight of stairs. I sustained a fracture of the fifth metacarpal of my right hand as well as multiple fractures of the fifth, seventh and eight ribs. The worse of the damage came to my right leg, in the form of a spiral fracture of over fourteen breaks. I essentially shattered it. I am on substantial doses of pain medication and confined to this chair. I am also undergoing extensive physical therapy. However, my parents believed it would be beneficial to my emotional health for me to speak to someone about the emotional impact of the injury and, since I have grown weary of psychologists over the years, I figured I’d try you. Do you have something against the sport itself or are you intimidated by his prowess, his ability on the field? Envious?”

Once again, she found herself speechless at both his forwardness and the intimacy of his question. But even more so, to imply she’d be jealous of Peeta’s amazing athleticism was beyond laughable. She didn’t bother checking the venom that slipped unbidden into her tone, “I am in awe of the way he plays. I admire the amount of skill the sport of football involves. I admire him. I’m proud of him. But good guys go away to these schools and they forget the things that make them amazing beyond what they can do on the field. He’s an artist, a baker, an orator. But all this school will highlight and praise is his ability to rain punishment and dominate an opponent. I’m afraid it will change him- all that negative attention.” She bit her bottom lip again, contemplating the other reason she had for not wanting Peeta to play. Ultimately, she sniffed out, quietly, “I’m not crazy about sharing him, either. And if he’s recruited by an out of state school, he’ll get a lot of attention from other girls. I may be a tad bit possessive,” she finished feebly.

“So, as long as he holds out for a local school, you have a chance at a ‘happily ever after’.”

Katniss’s brow furrowed. Peeta staying close would certainly make her feel a lot less anxiety about his playing his way through school, but that was hardly what she wanted, not really. And him settling for a lesser school just to stay close couldn’t possibly be what he wanted, could it?

“Yeah, I guess,” she found the uncertain response slipping from her lips.

“So, has Peeta contacted FSU yet to reject their offer?”

Her gaze shot up from the clipboard where it’d diverted in her introspection instantly, ardently locking with his.

“Who said my boyfriend’s name is Peeta?”

            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What could he say? He was curious.

Ever since that chat with Beetee a week before he’d been wondering about what he’d said about ‘developing’ his skill. Was that even possible?

He’d figured it could not hurt to try. So, there he was, standing in the middle of the subway terminal at six thirty in the morning, black hoody drawn over his head tight around his face to obscure it. He pretended to read a text on his phone, when he was really focusing out, trying to home in on whatever it was that had triggered what he’d experienced with Cato, Jo and Mr. Robinson.

He had to be at school in half an hour, so he didn’t have much time for this little exercise. So far, he was picking up so much emotional clutter, it was too overwhelming to filter. He was in the process of sorting out what felt like those people closest to him, when a woman grasping the wrist of a preschooler bumped into him and suddenly, he felt fear and rage knot his stomach, the echoes of that same child ringing in his ears… crying, begging, promising to behave. The sound of hard impact on soft flesh accompanied it.

He turned to look after the woman and child, nauseated by the experience. He’d only had a mother the first seven years of his life, but he certainly commiserated with the poor kid on that particular level.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Six children and their afterschool teacher die suffocated in a fire, nine kids cook in a malfunctioning hot tub- all dead. A bus with twelve passengers skids off an overpass- one survivor. He is unharmed. I have spoken to Peeta about his miraculous survival that day, Katniss. I suggested a rather outlandish explanation for it. Since then, I have come to believe that possibility, regardless how hard it might be to believe, is now more a probability.”

The longer she sat near this obviously delusional boy, the more her skin crawled. However, Katniss put forth her best effort to maintain outwardly unaffected by his creepy stare, the ominous undertone to his speech. She tried to feign genuine interest in what she was sure would be some crack theory that would have her either guffawing or shuddering, “And what did you suggest to Peeta?”

He continued to burn his gaze into her, as if searching the depths of her very soul. “Everything going on in the world extinguishes hope within its populace, Katniss. People find it harder and harder to believe there are extraordinary things inside themselves, as well as others. I hope you can keep an open mind.”

She couldn’t decide if the elated gleam in his maniacal gaze should thrill or petrify her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He had to go. He could make it just in time for the first bell if he ran. The school was only a block away, after all. He was almost to the stairs when someone bumped into his shoulder from behind and he was engulfed in a wave of anxiety, shifting into an image of the same man who’d grazed him washing his hands at one of the terminal bathrooms, as another man finished in the stall and dropped something in the trash near him. The man waited for the other to depart, then reached into the trash for whatever it was he’d deposited, pocketing it in his jacket.

Peeta came to and shook the odd image from the fringes of his mind. That one hadn’t even attempted to make sense. He quickly made his way up the stairwell and toward class. He briefly looked around before entering, a strange gut feeling compelling him, and he noticed the man who’d bumped into him last, rushing toward the basketball court near the high school. There, he met up with a shady character who took the package and, looking around nervously, handed the man a large wad of cash.

‘Okay’, Peeta thought ruefully. Maybe, developing this idiosyncrasy wasn’t the best idea, after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She was no longer certain which she felt the strongest… concerned, angry, fascinated, angry, intrigued, angry, creeped out, angry, wounded…

Sitting through Beetee Malhotra’s theories on what he believed Peeta to be that morning had been excruciating. The rest of her school day was sacrificed to ruminations and the thorough wracking of her brain, attempting to negotiate the myriad emotional responses to a coherent thought thread that would rationalize that one-hour conversation. Hopefully, none of her teachers tried to actually teach her anything in those wasted eight hours.

And she was still pondering it, even as she paced briskly, with purpose, the few blocks from the school to the Mellark residence. After Beetee had excused himself to leave to class after their session, she’d been overwhelmed by a strange numbness. That lasted all of a minute before the indignation filtered in. She was angry at Peeta for keeping from her the fact that this exceedingly disturbing guy knew about his… unique sensibility. How could he keep something like that from her? He’d told her himself nobody beyond his family, and now her, knew about that. He wasn’t comfortable flaunting it, didn’t want to be branded a freak, he’d said.

That thought had inevitably fueled the anxiety that now headlined the frazzled cluster that was her mind, because if Peeta had not volunteered this information to this obviously unstable boy, if this kid had figured all of this out just from the fact that he’d survived that accident- the guy was a freaking stalker, and irrationally fixated on her boyfriend.

The thought of Beetee’s obsessing over Peeta added a new dimension to her flummoxed mental equation, however. Yes, the child had lived a life she would not wish on her worse enemy due to his illness. And the pain levels he’d had to live with mixed with the medications he inevitably took to mitigate them were obviously making his grasp on reality tentative at best. But, no one who listened to that boy speak for five minutes could argue he was anything but genius. This ignited that spark of curiosity within her, captivated her. Even if the rational majority of her intellect screamed that what this semi-deranged boy proposed was preposterous, there was a tiny voice, deep within her psyche, that whispered, ceaselessly, ‘What if what you’ve always believed impossible is actually real?’

She had to get to the bottom of this. She’d even skipped lunch in a conscious effort to avoid seeing Peeta, still upset at what she wasn’t sure he had or had not kept from her, too vexed to confront him about it, either way. She’d texted him some lame excuse about having to study and hidden out in the library, where her rampaging inner monsters could at least flog her in peace and quiet.

By the end of the day, though, she was also at the end of her wits and instead of heading home, she found herself heading in the direction of his place, uninvited. They were going to settle this today.

She wasn’t shocked when Peeta’s oldest brother answered her in what appeared to be nothing but a “Kiss Me, I’m Hot” apron. At least, not as shocked as anyone else would have been in that scenario, anyway. The nineteen-year-old was equally nonchalant about letting her into through his back door (as opposed to the front, where ‘normal’ guests usually arrived) in what she could now appreciate were boxers, thick wool socks and the aforementioned apron. All he seemed to care about was ushering her into the mudroom before she ‘let out all the heat out of the house’… his words, verbatim. Not for the first time, she inwardly mused with fondness at the bizarre dynamic she’d established with the Mellark clan.

She shrugged off her jacket, hanging it on the hook by the door before following him into the adjacent kitchen he’d run off to immediately after letting her in.

“Hey, Flax. Is Peeta ho-” she stopped mid inquiry to saturate her lungs with the tantalizing aromas of herbs and spices infusing the atmosphere around her, “Oh, dear god, what is that?”

The eldest Mellark fixed her with a seductive half grin, opening the top of their double ovens and making a show of basting its contents, allowing her a scintillating peak. “Oh, this? Orange glazed ham, paired with rosemary potatoes au gratin and a baby spinach, endive salad with balsamic red wine vinaigrette dressing. I also have a loaf of garlic bread going down here.”

She thickly swallowed back the saliva that pooled in her mouth at the menu he’d dictated. “Seriously, Flax? A law degree and cooking like that? And just look at you? How many ovaries are you planning on exploding before you can legally drink?”

The blush that crept up the bit of chest the apron exposed, through his muscled neck to light his ears and checks a bright pink was almost painfully comical. He averted his eyes to the stove with a shyness Katniss had never witnessed before, playing off his obvious discomfort with a dismissive snort. “Actually, spending three months away from school has given me more free time than I know what to do with. I may have become addicted to the food channel. This is the tragic outcome. These bastards are reaping the fruits of my boredom. Also, I have a weight class to maintain if I want to keep my scholarship, so I can’t exactly lax on the calories or the exercise regimen, regardless of the university giving me this hiatus. We didn’t all get in on football scholarships.”

When her face fell at his last comment, he immediately mentally kicked himself for bringing it up. His baby brother hadn’t mentioned any relationship problems, but, between school and practices, they’d barely had time to really sit down and talk since he’d gotten back three weeks prior. He had no idea sports were a sensitive topic for these two.

He quickly covered his faux pas with one of his most enchanting smiles. “Stay for dinner as long as you’re here, Katniss.” At her obvious discomfited hesitation, he amended instantly, “We’ll call Prim and let her know you’re bringing dinner home for her and your mom. Please, man. Help me out here. Look at all the crap I made. I may have a problem. I’m terrified to leave to the grocery store only to return to an intervention of all my friends and family prattling on about how worried they are about my dependence on mirepoix.”

That broke her and she had to bring a hand up to stifle the escaping chortle. She would never know what it was about these Mellak boys… “Fine. Is Peeta home?” She attempted an annoyed glare, but found it impossible in the face of his infectious humor.

He rounded the counter and led her toward the open door adjoining the kitchen, leading down to their basement with a hand on her shoulder, chatting amicably, “Wrestling practice got cancelled. Coach Brutus had a thing. So, he actually made it home early today. He’s anal about keeping up his workout routine, though. So he’s down here hitting the weights on his own,” he finished mockingly, likely knowing the younger teen could hear him.

“You of all people are calling me ‘anal’, di-” Peeta halted mid statement, noting his brother’s companion, “Hey, Katniss,” he huffed out in exhilarated awe, sitting up on the weightlifting bench to get a better look at her.

At the sight of him, clad in nothing but those infernal navy compression shorts, a thin sheen of perspiration coating every mound and valley that was his immaculately sculpted shoulders, pectoral area and abdomen, she found her mouth unable to produce the lubrication necessary for speech. Not that she could form cogent enough thoughts to thread together whatever it was she’d come here to tell him, anyway. He was exceptional.

“Okay, kiddies,” Flax’s deep baritone broke her out of her likely inappropriate gawking. “Dad’s rules go, whether he’s home or not. Doors stay open as long as chicks are in the house. Don’t look at me like that, Peeta. Brothers don’t let brothers do stupid.” He easily caught the towel that came flying directly at his head, leveling an evil smirk at his baby brother, who couldn’t see it anyway, as he was in the process of covering his reddening face with both hands in mortification while flopping back onto the bench.

“Dude, you’re so crass. And regardless how much you look like her, you’re not my mother,” Peeta scoffed out from behind his hands, then peeked a spiteful sneer at him through his fingers, adding, caustically, “And even if I were sick enough to try that with you right upstairs, where down here could that even go down, moron?”

Flax’s response was instant, “Floor, piano, pool table, seats in the theater room. Though seriously, we all use those, so gross…”

Peeta let his hands fall away from his face, his expression warped in outraged, slack jawed embarrassment. “Katniss, for the love of all that is holy, please hit him for me,” he pleaded, helplessly.

Katniss turned an upraised eyebrow at the older boy, foregoing her boyfriend’s request to ask, curiously, “Pool table?”

Flax’s response was a shrug of one shoulder as he started up the stairs, tossing over his shoulder, casually, “Told you I get bored here, way too much thinking time. I come up with weird crap. But just for knowledge’s sake, that thing can’t hold any of us guys’ weight… trust me. And it was ridiculously expensive, so dad would be royally pissed if you actually tried it.”

Katniss couldn’t help letting her eyes travel to the aforementioned piece of furniture across the basement, an amused twitch to one end of her lip.

“Fratricide should not be illegal within certain gene pools.”

She focused her silver eyes back on the reason for her visit. “I’m sure he’s thought the same thing about you more than once, Mellark. I’ve certainly wanted your head on occasion,” she tried to keep her tone emotionless, but found the wounded indignation she’d struggled against all day returning as she moved closer.

“Not that I’m complaining, sweetheart. Far be it for me to complain when you’re anywhere near, but why are you here? I got the sense you weren’t feeling well today.”

Katniss’s anger flared inexplicably at his choice of words… and something else. She circled around behind him on the bench, eyeing the stack of weights on the floor with morbid curiosity while worrying her lower lip. She made up her mind as – with no small degree of difficulty – she picked two iron discs of equal size randomly and responded, “You mean you sensed there was something wrong in that literal, concerned way a boyfriend would worry about his girlfriend if she’s suddenly distant or ‘sensed’ in that way only you can sense anything, Peeta?” She sent him pointed look that registered upside down, as he was lying beneath the bar. She could see his confusion at her cryptic question flit through the azure of his eyes, though he did not respond.

She finished placing the disks at either end of the bar and sighed, “I just needed to see you- spend some time with you… to figure some stuff out that’s been going through my head. Do you mind if I spot you while you work out?”

He shook his head at her and smiled gratefully, jovially from his prone position, causing guilt to tighten her gut at what she’d done. If she was wrong, she hoped to god she could scream loud enough to get Flax down there fast enough to help him, because there was no way she could lift that off him.

She stood back and watched as he reached for the barbell, the thick braided rope of defined muscles on his biceps distending. Her stomach dropped when he lifted it from its rack with a soft outtake of breath, a command to stop him on the tip of her tongue. Then, with a rushed exhale, he brought the bar down to just above where his pectoral muscles strained marvelously with the exertion of maintaining the controlled balance for a five-second count. Then, seemingly every pronounced, jutting muscle in his chest, upper stomach and arms, coiled gracefully, powerfully, as he lifted the bar back over his head and onto its resting place.

She released a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding. So, beautiful.

Peeta sat up to look back at her, his voice slightly winded as he asked, “That was harder than usual. How much did you put on the bar?”

She could only stare back in dumbfounded awe, the answer escaping her without conscious thought, “I-I honestly have no idea.”

Peeta ventured a look back at the bar, quickly calculating the weight plates on each end. He didn’t meet her eyes, not wanting her to feel as if she’d done anything wrong as he breathlessly remarked, “You put too much. That’s two hundred and fifty pounds.”

She was still in something of a shock when she followed up with, “How much can you lift, Peeta?”

He shrugged, meeting her eyes almost bashfully. “That’s the most I’ve ever lifted, the most I’ve ever even tried to lift.” He now ran a hand through his hair, letting out a slow breath. He wasn’t sure how comfortable he felt with the knowledge he could bench seventy pounds above his bodyweight without feeling barely winded. And he definitely didn’t need an audience as he pondered the ramifications of this new information about himself. “Maybe, you should go upstairs and hang out with Flax, while I finish up down here. I promise I’ll be up there in fifteen minutes…” he offered hopefully, his cerulean eyes diverting once more to the floor.

For some unknown reason, she found panic swell within her at his suggestion. She didn’t want to be sent away. Something in the back of her mind told her to stay with him- it was imperative that she be by his side, witness whatever this was he was doing here. “I’ll take them off,” she all but squeaked – a sound so unbecoming of her – moving to the bars behind him, “I’ll help you right. I’m just hopeless at this weight training crap, you know.”

She watched as his shoulders slumped in resignation at her words, obviously lost in his own thoughts, and wondered what he was thinking. Once she started sliding the smaller plates off the bar one by one and placing them on the floor in a neat stack, however, that eagerness compelled her again. She found herself taking the largest iron weights – ones she had to employ both hands to carry – and rolling them onto the bar… all of them.

Then, she watched in expectant, ebullient horror as Peeta leaned back trustingly. Securing the barbell in both gloved hands without so much as a second glance at what she’d done.

She was the worst kind of person. She was sure of it. Why was this such a rush for her? What was she planning to do if he couldn’t do it this time? Could Flax even get that off him?

She was jolted from her self-fulmination when she heard Peeta grunt, the veins mapping his arms, neck and chest highlighted brilliantly as he repeated the motion from before with what appeared to her as only marginally more effort. And then, she only attributed the added struggle to the fact he repeated the press twice this time around. It wasn’t until he sat up, wiping at his brow with the back of his hand, that the trance was broken.

“Christ, sweetheart, how much did you take off?” he attempted to infuse humor into his pants.

In the face of such an open, unguarded expression, something within Katniss snapped. She couldn’t do this to him anymore. She let out a shuddering breath, whispering, “I lied, Peeta.”

To her surprise, Peeta’s response wasn’t anger, but confusion as he turned to look at the iron weights at each end of the bar.

“How much is it?” Katniss came around to ask, tentatively.

He didn’t take his eyes away from the barbell as he gasped out, “Two hundred seventy pounds.”

He fought back a shudder when he felt her small hand run through his sweat slicked hair, gaining his attention. “Let’s add more.” The mercury in her eyes blazed dark with an anxious excitement he’d never seen in them before. He found himself drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

“Okay”, he whispered, helplessly lost in those pools of molten steel, hoping never to be rescued.

It was a half hour later when he set the bar down on its rack for a final time, his arm muscles aching from the duress, but, curiously, not feeling overly exerted as he’d expected. Katniss came to sit on the bench before him, straddling it, wrapping her arms around him, uncaring that he was sweaty mess. Her mouth descended on his almost viciously, depleting him of what short breaths he had. Thankfully, she pulled away quickly, conscious of his need for oxygen. “How much is it, Peeta?”

He looked over his shoulder at the barbell, humorously weighed down with two paint cans for one of his dad’s future remodeling projects at each end. They’d systematically worked their way through the entire stack of iron plates and, when those all dominated the bar, Katniss found the paint cans to strap on with duct tape in an obscure corner. He had committed to memory her varied looks of wonderment after each bench-press with successive increment in weight. He would treasure those forever. He turned tired, but triumphant eyes back to her, declaring almost smugly, “It’s about three hundred and fifty pounds, close to twice my bodyweight.”

He watched her worry her bottom lip as she often did when she concentrated or worried or because she enjoyed torturing him. He was still not sure. Her brow furrowed as her eyes grew distant and he could tell she was waging some sort of inner battle, though she was consciously guarding her inner walls to keep him out. When he leaned forward to place a soft kiss to the tip of her nose, she seemed to come to, determination lighting her eyes. Though her shaky tone bellied her insecurity as she said, “I know Beetee knows about your… gifts, Peeta. He came to peer counseling with me this morning. He told me everything. He told me what he thinks you are.”

Peeta’s irises darkened in a rage he notoriously infrequently allowed himself to indulge. How dare the weirdo bring Katniss in to this outlandish fantasy of his? He immediately launched himself from the bench, heading for the stairs. He knew of only one way to contact this freak outside of shool, but he was decidedly getting a piece of his mind.

He made it as far as the first step when Katniss’s hand tugging at his elbow stifled him. He turned softer eyes on her, but a crease knitted his brow at the emotions he felt radiating off her. She’d unwittingly let her barriers down in her haste to stop him. Guilt, excitement, apprehension, concern… these all warred for dominance in a flash and he knew what her next words would be before she spoke them. Hearing them did nothing to assuage the flaming boulder that settled in the pit of his stomach.

“He’s unstable, Peeta. I was pissed at him, too… at first. Because, he’s creepy, I know you would never tell him the things he knows… and then, he told me that far-out concept of how people inspire legends and it was all just overwhelming, you know?” She now came to stand on the step with him, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek, stroking it lightly and he tried, lord did he try, to allow that soothing touch to mitigate his growing fury. She had no idea. “But I know you and after seeing all you did this afternoon, Peeta… I think I believe it.”

That did it.

Beetee Malhotra likely had a good idea how fragile his body could be, but if he came within a yard of Katniss again, Peeta would introduce him to an entirely new nuance to his conception of ‘broken’.

Chapter Text

“Stay away from her.”

Beetee set his pad on his lap, swerving his chair away from the window, the light source of which he’d been using to aid his reading, to focus a stern expression on the younger boy looming threateningly within his personal space. The delivery of the command was not boisterous – their present confines being a library and all – but the menacing undertone did not escape his notice, nonetheless. He regarded the teenager with clinical scrutiny, noting his defensive posture, the ramrod straight shoulders, the muscles coiled and ready. He was a sentinel, harkening for the first sign of iniquity to spring forth and adjudicate corresponding penance… and he had absolutely no inkling.

“I followed the man who stepped out of line in your game, Peeta,” he stated matter-of-factly, casually, as if the boy before him was not staring venomous blue ice at him. Unaffected by the flicker of confusion that flashed in those spite filled eyes, he continued in the same aloof tone, “He had a silver gun with a black grip tucked in the belt of his pants. I had to chase him down, lose the ability to walk for close to a year to see it- but I saw it. And now I am more convinced than ever.”

Peeta brought a hand up to rub the bridge of his nose wearily, managing to mitigate his angry frustration at the older boy into a rumbled groan deep in his throat, as opposed to the roar he really wanted to unleash. He’d always considered himself patient. Losing his cool was a final option for him. He’d learned firsthand from the few years he’d had with his mother the kind of damage a person could inflict on another in untempered wrath. But, this kid was testing even his limits.

“You’re protecting her, even right now, you have no tangible proof I have any ill will towards Katniss beyond revealing my honest believes about you to her, but you’re defending her against what you perceive as a threat. She does not feel ‘confortable’ with you going too far to college for some ridiculous and honestly likely self-serving reason related to your playing a sport you love and you’re giving up your own prospects to capitulate to her whims out of some augmented, romanticized notion of chivalry- altruism. Yet you do not see what should be painfully obvious.”

Peeta let out an exasperated breath, spitting out irately, “Dude, most guns have either a brown or black handle. There was a fifty-fifty shot of me guessing that right-”

“That’s not what I witnessed,” Beetee attempted once more to cut him off, but Peeta was well beyond the point of pissed where he was allowing it.

“STOP!” he vociferated loud enough to turn the curious stares of a few other students several yards away in their direction. Then he took a brief, soothing exhale through his nose to continue slightly more tacitly, “Stop screwing with me, dude. Stop screwing with my life. Stop screwing with my girlfriend’s head. She’s freaked out enough trying to deal with the fact that I survived that crash in the first place without you throwing this bull on her and confusing things even worse. You have her so twisted up, part of her actually believed I was invincible or something and she could have freaking crushed me to death yesterday, man. She didn’t even realize how dangerous what she was doing was. She could’ve killed me.”

“I never said you were invincible. I have witnessed three tragedies and you were the only one unhar-” the upperclassman tried again to interject, to expunge his actions with Katniss, but found himself trumped by the next words that fell from the younger boy’s lips so callously.

“I have been sick,” Peeta blazed his gaze into the senior’s as if he knew that statement would shatter his insides and had simply lost the will to care. Beetee could only stare back in abject adjuration. “When I was three, I almost drowned- spent a week in the hospital getting better from pneumonia. My dad had taken my brothers and me to learn how to swim. They started goofing around, dunking me and I swallowed some water. It almost killed me- a little bit of water in my lungs. Heroes don’t get killed like that, man. Normal people do, right?” he finished in softer, more sympathetic voice. Because, in spite of the drama this kid had put him through the last few days (and the fact that he still registered a complete void as far as his body’s chemical and electrical responses went), the way his face crumbled at his words, still tugged at his heart. He wasn’t cruel. He just needed the guy to get over his unhealthy fixation and on with his life.

He turned heel, avoiding eye contact with the now downtrodden boy as he headed for the other side of the library to catch up on some homework, his final words to Beetee Malhotra floating softly over his shoulder.

“I don’t need to see you anymore, okay. Please stay away from me and Katniss.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, you just blew him off? Just like that?” Katniss whispered into the crook of his neck, further shrinking into his body to relish the heat his skins radiated even through the thin polyester button-down and khakis he wore.

He secured his letterman jacket, which she’d pretty much burrowed into to the point of sharing with him, tighter around her, before responding slightly defensive, “You make it sound like I was purposely trying to wound him or something. I told him the truth. I told him I have been sick in the past. I can be hurt. I’m not whatever mythical legend he believes me to be and I asked him to stay away from the both of us. I likely did him a favor. Anyone else would’ve ridiculed him from the get-go for even suggesting something so ridiculous.”

At his words, she shot up away from him; coming to sit cross-legged on the hood at a distance purposely intended to avoid contact with him. She kept her eyes set on the first twinkling lights appearing in the town below them. It was the first night in weeks where neither snow nor freezing rain impeded the view from their favorite lookout spot in the hills. They’d have to leave soon. She had work in a couple of hours at the Justice Building, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity of coming up here after school when he’d offered.

“So, if he’s so laughable for coming up with it, what does that make me for falling for any of it?” Her tone was clipped, curt, dangerous.

Peeta ran a hand roughly down his face, measuring his words carefully, still staring at the blazing orange purple sky, freshly speckling over with stars. “I think it makes you more sympathetic than you think and probably a better peer counselor than you give yourself credit for. The kid’s had a nightmare of a life. You felt bad for him and actually listened to him. You can’t blame yourself for him getting to you. Plus, you’ve been dealing with all of this” he gestured broadly with his hand between them, knowing she could register it out of her periphery, “between us, since the accident. I think he took advantage of a weak time for you. He’s the jerk in all this, Katniss. I don’t feel bad about what I said to him.”

She turned back to face him, arms still crossed, that ever-present frown prominent, but something else tingeing it. He couldn’t put his finger on just what it was, since she had such rigid control on her barriers, but he could almost swear… Was that despair?

“I couldn’t give less of a crap about Beetee Malhotra, Peeta,” the shuddering edge to her voice ratified his previous assumption. But, the unyielding resolve in her steel gaze, spoke of the statement’s incontrovertible sincerity. “I believe what he said about you, because it makes sense. I’m not slow. I figured out he was mind jerking me right around the time you bolted from the basement that night so pissed off you wouldn’t come down to eat with us.” She lowered her eyes to his thighs, splayed wide across the hood, “I really am sorry I experimented on you in such an idiotically dangerous way. If something would’ve happened to you because of my moronic ideas…”

His mouth on hers dispersed the thought. She hadn’t even noticed him sitting up until his hand lay buried in the hair at the nape of her neck to angle her face sideways for better access. The other wrapped protectively around her, crushing her to the solid mass of heated muscle that was his torso. The kiss was languid, leisurely- his obvious attempt at both helping her forget and making his forgiveness tangible.

It worked. By the time they pulled apart – him with a final swipe of his tongue across her swollen cleft – she wasn’t sure what her name was, much less what she’d been upset about before. It took a moment of panting against his flushed cheek, her breath visible in the fading light, before she breathed softly, “I believe you’re exceptional, Peeta. I think there’s some merit to what Beetee said.”

He shifted so that he could send a skeptical look at her. “You know, some of what he said was that you’re selfish for wanting me here with you, instead of going off to play in the best school that offers, right? He also implied I’m a pussy whipped idiot for going along with it as opposed to embracing my ‘true calling’ or whatever nonsense. So, yeah. No. Still calling bull on that weirdo.”

“She bit her lip, studying carefully before chancing, “Peeta, I do have a selfish reason for wanting you to stay close and not play during college. I don’t want to share you. There’s no one else like you… anywhere. I mean, literally. I love you, yes, but I also know how impossibly… unique you are. We will never last if you resent me for keeping you from becoming who you’re really supposed to be, though. And it may not happen right away, but ten, fifteen years from now, you’ll be waking up every day with an unexplained sadness, just because you’re not fulfilling your purpose.”

Peeta let out a soft scoff at this, placing a light kiss to her temple. A note of mocking sarcasm bled into his voice. “Sorry to shatter your little fantasy, sweetheart, but it’s never been a life ambition to dawn spandex and uphold justice in the American way.”

She allowed a snort to escape, slapping him hard in the middle. “I’m serious, Peeta. Why are you really staying here? What’s your real ambition? Do you to want play for FSU? I think I can support you if that’s what you really want, as long as we – you and me – are endgame.”

He looked at her incredulously, a lopsided smirk twisting his mouth, before he answered with amusement, “I don’t care where I play, Katniss. Football is a means to an end. I want to teach elementary school kids. I want to coach peewee sports. I want to take over the bakery so that my dad can finally retire and stop putting up with my extortionist mother. And, most of all, I want to stay here and be with you, take care of you, make you happy. If I wanted to protect people like Beetee suggests, I’d aspire to become a cop, or a fireman, wouldn’t I?”

It was amazing how instantaneously the illumination struck her. It was so crystalline, so obvious. How he’d never realized, she couldn’t fathom.

“No, Peeta. You couldn’t possibly ever become a policeman. You’d be forced to use deadly force against others if you were a cop, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t even speak to me when you accidentally hurt Cato in a freaking school sponsored sporting event. You could never negotiate having to do that every day, not with your heightened sensibility. And how could you put yourself in the danger of running into burning buildings constantly, knowing how my father died? In your subconscious, you must have figured, if I can’t even bear the thought of you going away to school, how would I feel about you having a job that dangerous? And elementary school teacher? Not middle school, not high school, but primary? You consciously want to be in a position to oversee those who are weakest, before the damage from things like what your mom did to you becomes irreversible. Then, there’s your wish to retire your father to “save” him from you witch of a mother… Peeta, have you ever wanted anything that doesn’t involve looking out for other people? Has the prospect of doing anything else with your life even appealed to you in passing?”

He didn’t answer her. Because, really, as she nuzzled her nose back into the crook of his neck, cocooning back into his coat against his body, he was convinced the last thing she expected or even desired was a reply. So, he just wrapped her up in his arms tightly, protectively, reclining them back onto the hood and ghosting a kiss to the crown of her head. He looked up at the beaming stars, allowing his thought to drift among the igniting giants, ruminating her questions.

He’d never thought of his ambitions in the light she’d exposed them. Was it all that thoughtful to want to help people if that was what made him happy? He’d never thought so. He wasn’t anything special. Lots of people gave of themselves, their time, their means to help those in need. Those were the real heroes, not him- not some freak with a hyperactive instinct for picking up on creep vibes.

So, why was that annoying little voice in the back of his head making a mantra of calling ‘Bull’?

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Batman, Superman, Amazing Spiderman, Venom, Teen Titans, Gen 13…

For so long these bound parchments of storytelling, unfolded in ink and colored masterpieces had been his solace- his fortress.

Aquaman, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Watchmen, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Ironman, Avengers…

Not even finding himself encased as he was in the myriad of titles, he found, was doing anything to mitigate his descending mood, as he’d become so accustomed to the case being.

Static Shock, The Avengers, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, The Maxx, Green Lantern, Daredevil…

How could he have gotten this so wrong? He’d searched so long, been so sagacious about his research. He’d believed every variable had been accounted for, every radical foreseen.

Young Blood, Solar, Punisher, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel…

“Dude, time to choose, it’s twenty after. I have to get,” the clerk in his early twenties (obviously a college kid working a part time to make ends meet) at the front of the counter, strained toward the back corner where his solitary patron dwelled. Kid may as well have been talking to the wall for the despondency of his audience.

“Man, seriously, you better not be rubbing out an easy one to the manga back there!”

When he was greeted once more by total lack of acknowledgement, the young man swiftly slammed shut the till he’d been counting and furiously paced around the counter toward the back of the store. He stopped dead in his tracks when he turned the tall rack of comics and got a proper view of his ‘guest’. Ah… look, man… I didn’t know you were in a…” he ran his hand through his hair nervously, making it a point to avert his eyes from the teenager’s conveyance as if that somehow made it less obvious how uncomfortable he was with the awkwardness of the situation, “just choose something, okay?”

Beetee remained unfazed, eyes unmoving, fixed on some empty space between the racks before him. He barely registered the peon before him.

How could he have miscalculated so egregiously? All the evidence was there. Peeta had the strength, the durability, the character traits- the infallibility. Others had even taken notice… the schools. He was reticent to accept his role, yes. But that could be corrected with time. There had to be a mistake. He could not have wasted so many years… made so many sacrifices…

“Okay, look, I’m just gonna wheel you out, okay? You can think about stuff out there. I have a killer trig test to study for and I have to get some Thai in me,” poor comic store clerk tried with cautious, pleading eyes as he came around to grab hold of the manual bars on the chair. So lost in his own brooding was the eighteen year old, he didn’t even register they were moving the first few seconds. Then, all at once, he was overcome by outraged if misplaced anger at the idea of being moved from his place of comfort. And, even knowing he was behaving like a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum, he twitched his left wrist on the control switch, effectively locking the wheels and causing the chair to lurch to the right unexpectedly, sending his distended leg barreling into a rack of neatly stacked comics…Which the clerk behind him now had to collect before going home.

“Oh, you’ve got to be sh…” he heard the young man huff irately from behind him and he had to admit the sound carried a certain degree of schadenfreude satisfaction. So, he was sinfully petty when this disenfranchised.

Without another word of complaint beyond a very disgruntled heave, he felt the clerk take hold of the bars to his seat again, attempting to propel him toward the exit. If this had been another time and some other circumstance, he might have found the young man’s tenacity commendable. However, as it stood, he was in much too antagonistic a mood to afford such mercies and, this time, when the chair lurched violently to the opposite side, the metallic bracing for his foot nearly cracked the glass display case they were facing.  

“Okay, dude. Wheelchair or not, you do that again and I’m calling 5-0 on you,” the frazzled store clerk cried out. When Beetee remained completely stoic, unresponsive, eyes still focused somewhere in the front of the store, he grabbed the bars gruffly again. They made it about five more feet before the boy’s leg careened into the next high rack of comic books, sending stacks raining upon both of them. He felt when the man behind him released his chair with an indignant shove and gasp.

“That’s it, loser! You’ll be sitting your butt in jail now,” he spouted, walking around him to the counter to where the phone lay.

Beetee watched him walk away, uncaring as to the repercussions of his actions. He felt numb, hollow, lost… without purpose for the first time in more than a decade of his lifetime. Listlessly, he allowed his eyes to roll to the side, where they landed by pure happenstance on a comic – one of the many he’d pummeled with his last act of rebellion against the comic store – which landed on his lap. He turned it toward him properly, his eyes narrowing on the title, ‘JLA: Tower of Babel’, and suddenly a gleam of hope ignited the coal of his dark eyes. He lifted it, crowing triumphantly at the store clerk, “How much for this one?”

The college student turned unbelieving eyes back to him, the receiver still held up to his ear as he dialed the last ‘one’. He just hung up and swore under his breath, trying to remember from last term’s political sciences class just how many hate crimes beating the crap out of what appeared to be a crippled Palestinian would equate.

Nope. Not worth the trouble.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He loved spending time with her. He felt… complete with her, accepted- normal. So, when they arrived back from the bluff overlooking town and he had to say goodbye so she could take off for work… yeah, he felt overtly protective.

Maybe, he excused inwardly, that’s why he had not told her what the three message beeps he’d received while they were driving back really were. Sure, he’d told her they were emails and nothing worth paying attention to while driving. He’d conspicuously failed to mention two were from out of state schools he’d looked into and a third was from Beetee Malhotra.

There was no point telling her about the schools until he could sit down at his computer and properly read what they’d sent him. It’d likely just upset her and ruin the night’s pleasant mood. And Beetee… he was ambivalent about the kid. Katniss kept siding with him, wanting to believe him. Or, more precisely, wanting to believe the crackpot possibility that he was some kind of natural paladin. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint her and she did make some valid points. But, hadn’t they already disproven the older boy’s theory?

With a soft outtake of air, Peeta ran a hand through his wayward curls and plopped down on his desk chair, booting his laptop. He slumped, thumbing through the contacts on his phone, ready to compose a message to Katniss with whatever news the colleges had sent him. As soon he pulled up his email and read the first two, he groaned, typing out the quick missive.

Peeta: Hey you// Got email from FSU requesting response to last email still ignoring//Also got recruitment email from CalTech… ignoring

It took less than a minute for the response to come, a clear indication of just how bored she was at her job.

Katniss: Thank you for telling me// Don’t ignore// Say you are considering all your options// XOXO

He couldn’t help the smile that split his face at that. She hated the prospect of either of these schools, but was really willing to let him go if it was in his best interest. He felt a pleasant tightening in his chest at the notion.

He clicked on the last email, the one from Beetee, setting down the phone to read. He hadn’t expect it to be this long.

Peeta,

It was so obvious! It was this one issue that brought it back for me: JLA issue 43 ‘Tower of Babel’. In it, Ra's al Ghul, in order to defeat them, steals the files Batman keeps on all his allies in the Justice League’s weaknesses, because they all have one… just like you. Your bones are inordinately dense. They don’t break. Mine do. That’s clear. Your immune system reacts to viruses and bacteria differently. You don’t get ill, I do. However, for some odd reason, we both react the exact same way to water. We swallow it too fast... we choke. We get some in our lungs... we drown. However unfeasible it may seem, we are connected- you and I. We are on the same curve… just on opposite ends.

The point of all this is that we now know something we did not know before: you have a weakness. Water.

It’s like your kryptonite.

It just cut off like that. No closing. This guy really was a weirdo. So, why did his eyes travel over the email six times before he lifted his phone from the desk where he’d set it down? Even then, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything beyond stare at the screen, before he pocketed, grabbing his hoody, raincoat and keys.

He was down the stairs and out the door in the newly falling drizzle moments later.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He wasn’t sure what he was doing here beyond trespassing on private property… private police property, he corrected himself inwardly, shifting gears to park with the headlights illuminating the ruined vehicle just across the chain link fence. He made quick work of the lock with the bolt cutter his father inexplicably kept as part of his home improvement tools back home. He had to have a serious sit-down with his old man about his chosen pastimes of yesteryears at some point in the near future.

He hadn’t thought about how he’d feel once he’d made it to the site of this massacre again. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t allowed himself to think much of anything about any of what he was doing. He was going on pure gut with this one.

The thing was missing the back door. He wasn’t sure if that was due to the crash or due to the jaws of life that were obviously used to widen the opening, since the entire last forth of it was a concaved, blackened mess of jagged metal. He stepped inside, consciously avoiding the vicious spokes. Last thing he needed was a tetanus shot. He didn’t care who thought he was impervious to what.

As he made his way with no undo amount of care through isle after isle of warped, unhinged, barely recognizable seats, the color of which he was eternally grateful the nighttime made impossible to discern, his mind travelled back to those mortifying moments of perfect lucidity when everything was transpiring. He remembered the weightlessness of flying through the air, unfettered, gravity no longer a factor, no longer a guardian. He remembered the screams, the suffocating fear he’d registered from all around him, the physical pain. It’d been too much for him to process in those brief seconds, too much for him to understand. He’d never known anything like that… such suffering… such loss… such death.

He realized how his breathing had quickened when the puffs of white before him appeared as if clouds of steam, his pulse so fast it pounded deafeningly in his ears. He must have survived this for something. This took so many, broke so many homes, so many lives.

It had to have left him whole for a purpose.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was surprised when he heard his desktop beep, indicating he had an incoming email.

He rarely received communication through email, rarely gave his address out- little to no need. Therefore, anyone who would’ve witnessed the way his eyes protruded from his face in astonishment when he noted the sender, would likely have held their side laughing in hysterics. The message was concise, curt, purposeful. Everything he could ever hope for.

Beetee,

Okay. So, I’ve never been sick. I’ve never been hurt…

What am I supposed to do?

Chapter Text

If anyone bothered asking him to rifle through his admittedly impressive lexicon for a word that best described how he felt… inevitably, the most apt he could have found would’ve been existential.

Enlightened, accomplished, actualized… these all came close, but fell short to capture the totality of the sheer life-asserting energy coursing through every cell in his being. Yes, he was anxious, wary, tense, daunted by the immensity of what he was experiencing. But, wasn’t everything new intimidating at first? 

And, who could blame him? It wasn’t as if anything Beetee offered as response to his inquiry proffered any comfort. Though, he was beyond expecting such niceties from the obviously socially stunted teenager. Now, as he mused over the short, clinical, emailed communiqué, he could better appreciate the value to the older boy’s guidance.

Peeta,

Go to where there are many people- different kinds… all rocks. You will not have to look very long. It will find you.

It’s fine if you’re afraid, because this part won’t be like a comic book. This is real.

Real life does not fit into the little boxes that were drawn for it.

Such an oversimplification – that short directive seemed to him now – as he stood in the middle of the subway terminal at midday Saturday. He was clad in dark wash jeans, the flap of his black hoody cast over his head and drawn over his face as far as possible for anonymity, accompanied by a deep charcoal raincoat, necessitated by the gales of freezing rain pouring outside. He’d only been there five minutes, just barely stepped off the last rung of steps leading to the promenade, when the sea of weekend commuters consumed him… inside and out.

He wasn’t sure what the catalyst for the change had been. Perhaps, it was his acceptance that this was something that had to be… something he had to concede as his reality that triggered it. But, the moment the swarm of other human beings engulfed him, he could have sworn he felt himself truly alive for the first time in his life. It was as if he was experiencing the world in Technicolor. Every emotion, every heartbeat, every neural impulse, even the body heat all those around him radiated, he could hone in on like beacons.

It was exhilarating and terrifying at once.

As a few moments passed, he shut his eyes and focused, concentrating to magnify and centralize the sensations coursing through his body. He realized with no undue amusement, it was much like tuning out background noise in a busy restaurant in order to hear the person speaking on the other end of a cell phone. Once he had a handle on that, he opened his palms at his sides, instinctively- something within compelling him to do so, as if his subconscious knew how to find what he sought.

It was a testament to how densely packed that depot was with harried, frenzied people, trying to get out of that storm above and on with their routines, that a kid standing nonchalantly, unmoving amongst them, went completely unnoticed. It only took another few moments, standing steadfastly in the currents of travelers, before someone bumped into his shoulder harshly as they passed by in a rush.

His eyes snapping open at the sharp contact, Peeta saw a blur of a woman in a deep crimson shirt pass him by. He found his eyes glued to her as she quickly made her way up the landing, his eyes growing unfocused as the image morphed into one of the same woman sitting in a front of what appeared to be the display booth at a posh jewelry boutique. The clerk had the door to the bottom glass case opened, his hands inside to showcase a diamond necklace. Then, the woman pointed at another far more exuberant necklace on the display just over the clerk’s shoulder, behind him. He instantly dropped the one he was showing her and turned to retrieve the piece that had now piqued her interest. The second the man started the turning motion, the woman in the red shirt reached over the glass counter into the open display and snatched the necklace next to the one the man had been showing her, quickly shoving it in her purse as she continued making idle conversation with the oblivious store clerk.

Peeta came to himself in that now familiar flash of hazy brilliance, his eyes narrowing on the woman who’d nudged him. There wasn’t much he could do about her, he ventured. He had no idea what store she’d robbed and could hardly ask a cop to search her without cause… and he sincerely doubted anyone would consider ‘I saw her ripping off a jewelry store in a vision’ palpable cause for anything beyond deeming him a complete lunatic. He let out a soft breath, realizing this would be tougher than he’d previously thought.

Making the hesitant decision to disregard anything too petty or simply too logistically implausible for him to do anything about, he went back to concentrating. This time keeping his eyes open. He wanted at least to get a good look at these people. All he’d gotten of chick-with-the-red-shirt was a glance of the back of her retreating head. The realization dawned on him that his visions did not afford him faces to go with the deeds he was privy to if he did not acquire the data for his brain to process the old fashioned way- through his eyes.

He surveyed the passersby with acute interest, allowing their emotions and reactions to ebb and flow through him, learning how to refine his sensibility through focus, maybe he could even build filters. He was in the process of testing out that theory, his mind wandering, when an overwhelming feeling of guilt twisted his stomach, seemingly out of the blue. Next thing he knew, he was in a darkened bedroom. A very young woman in a party dress lay sprawled haphazardly on the bed while a young man kneeled on his haunches beside her. Peeta could hear the raging music of what was likely a lively party coming from beyond the room’s open door as the guy asked the nearly despondent girl if she was okay. Her response was a moan. She seemed unable to move. Peeta heard something about the woman having had too much to drink leave the young man before he slowly got to his feet, shut and locked the door to room they both occupied, then turned back to the paralyzed girl on the bed with interest.

He gasped as he came back to; his blue eyes frantically scanning the crowd for the human source of that imagery, infinitely grateful whatever that was had cut off where it had. Was that how this was going to be? Was he going to be a firsthand witness to these kinds of debased acts? He tried to slow his rampaging pulse as his sight fixated on what should have been an endearing display. A middle aged couple was welcoming their son home, what he presumed was the mother held the boy in a tight hug… a boy wearing the exact same electric green jacket he’d seen the guy in his image shrugging off as he shut the door to the rest of the party.

Peeta ran a hand roughly up and down his face as he watched the family depart, the father throwing his son’s duffle over one shoulder. ‘Let it go, dude’, he thought with disgust. This was another unpursuable crime. Whoever that poor girl at that party was would have to be her own advocate with that one. He couldn’t help the helpless feeling that churned his stomach at the prospect of letting someone like that bastard walk away without an impromptu jaw realignment, though. He found himself even more surprised he itched to be the person to administer it.

He’d always had a distaste for violence, something the few years spent under the heavy hand of his mother instilled in him. He believed grievances should be solved with words, one of the many reasons he’d invested so expansively in honing his diplomatic and oratory skills. However, at the moment, he could not for the life of him imagine speaking three words to that guy with the green jacket before ramming his fist through his teeth for what he did to that girl.

Attempting once more to center his thoughts away from unwarranted dentistry on rapists, he let out a long breath through his nose and allowed his eyes to roam the crowds again, his anxiety level now exponentially higher. He shouldn’t allow those first few attempts to undermine the overall purpose of what he was accomplishing here. Yes, this was all very new and it would take him time and deep reflection to figure out the nuances to prosecuting the violators in a logical, legal way that would neither out him as a complete freak nor leave the perpetrators free to keep committing these crimes, due to a total lack of substantiated evidence. He had time. He’d figure it out.

Okay. It wasn’t working.

None of what he told himself helped assuage his escalating nerves, anymore. It was time to admit it. He was overwhelmed. He should have taken this one step at a time and he’d overreached on the very first try.

So, with that mindset, he started pacing backwards, toward the landing leading out of the terminal. He could try again next weekend, learn a little more, figure out a better way…

He might have seen it coming if he’d been watching where he was going. But one can hardly watch their step when backtracking. He definitely felt all the air leave his lungs in one humongous exhale, however. The raw, unbridled hatred, envy, rancor and spite that barreled into him might as well have been a physical punch to the ribcage. To date, it’d never happened quite so abruptly, the image so intense, so graphic.

There was an unassuming door and a man who appeared just about ready to leave for a day at the office came to answer it, casually. On the other side of the screen door stood a man in a simple, orange custodian’s jumpsuit.

“Can I come in?” the man at the door asked casually, conversationally.

The homeowner looked confused for a moment, likely trying to place the man’s face due to his familiarity with him. “Who are you?” he asked, obviously trying not to sound rude.

“I like your house. Can I come in?” came the cryptic reply from the man in the jumpsuit at the door in that same detached tone.

“What is this?” The homeowner’s tenor now sounded slightly outraged, maybe a little intimidated- definitely more than just confused. All the same, he looked the visitor straight on, stating firmly after a pause, “No, you can’t come in.”

“Are you sure?”

The next moment, the man was struggling to keep the screen door shut as the stranger forced it open. The last image Peeta saw before the violent jolt to reality was that of the homeowner sprawled at the bottom of what looked like basement steps, unmoving- the image was echoed by a shrill – distinctly female – cry for help.

‘Oh, god!’ his mind sputtered wildly, all thoughts of retreat abandoned. He let out a few shuddering breaths, venturing a look around to find the man whose touch had fomented that nightmare, willing his heart to stop thumping out of his chest. It didn’t take him long, though he somehow wished it had. It was as if the man’s bile had imprinted on him. He could almost smell it oozing off him. He found him a few yards away, removing a full black trash bag from a can and placing it in a plastic bin he wheeled away casually soon after.

He had no idea what he was doing. He should leave. This… whatever this was… this was so far out of his league. Never mind, he’d still to figure out just what his league was.

So, when he started following the orange suited man around the rest of the afternoon, no one was more surprised than him.

Especially, once he found himself pacing behind the guy in the dark and thickly falling rain a couple of hours later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He had a deathwish. What kind of idiot followed someone like this home? No. Correct that. Not home. This was decidedly not this bastard’s home. People didn’t reach the front of their house, look around twitchily, then edge around the back like this guy had done.

Peeta swallowed the nervous moisture that had built up in his mouth as he’d observed the orange-clad custodian from the depot disappear into the house from a respectable distance. He didn’t have to do this. He had options. He could call the authorities, alert them to what was going on in that house.

But, there was something, a gut feeling, that told him the police would be too late to save whoever it was whose shriek for help kept reverberating through his mind if he didn’t get in there. He brought his head down to look at his hands, covered in spandex utility gloves he’d found in the janitor’s closet while tailing his mark. He hadn’t known at the time why something in the back of his consciousness had cajoled him to take those, he’d only gone with his instinct in that split second. Now, as he made his way steadily toward the house, taking the same circuitous route the man he’d followed had trekked, he could fathom a half dozen good reasons he’d want to leave as little evidence of his presence here as possible. The gloves were a godsend once he reached a dripping hand for the doorknob to the familiar back door. He could have sworn there was some kind of residue smeared all over it, shrouded by the darkness and beading moisture of the rain. His stomach lurched at the knowledge.

He wasn’t sure whether he should be surprised or not to find the door unlocked. He couldn’t think of a reason a person who’d forced himself into someone else’s house without anyone else’s knowledge would feel the need to lock the door after himself. Then again, it was rather presumptuous of the criminal to think he was beyond the possibility of being caught- either that or he was incredibly over confident. Hubris he considered an advantage. He’d taken down enough idiots in wrestling who thought too much of themselves to give their opponent the consideration they warranted. This guy’s cockiness made him brash enough to forgo locking the door. He could work with this.

As he cautiously opened the door, he noted it led to a darkened mudroom – much like in his own home – with an attached laundry nook. By the moonlight that streamed in from the open door, he could see an overturned plastic hamper and laundry littering the entryway- this augured nothing good. He took a few tentative steps forward, letting his eyes adjust to the darkened hallway of the mudroom. The sounds of a television blasting from somewhere nearby – likely the familyroom – mingling with the lights coming from the kitchen just around the bend from where he stood, congealed into a form of frenzied sensory overload, completely at odds with the dreary darkness that surrounded him.

He heard the sound of a bottle dropping to the floor somewhere overhead on the second floor and released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, though he still froze for a moment before taking the next few steps. At least, he knew the man was not downstairs and he doubted any of his victims would be dropping bottles. He still held hopes of finding whoever had screamed for help and getting them out of there without a confrontation with that psychopath.

He hesitated in front of a door, just off the mudroom, a few steps before the landing to the staircase, opposite the kitchen. His insides clenched unpleasantly as he turned the knob, recognizing this as the door to the basement. His misgivings were confirmed when he turned the switch to expose the homeowner at the bottom of the steps, a deep gash through his temple and his head twisted at an impossible angle. He quickly closed the door, not even bothering with the light, forcefully swallowing back the lunch that was making a valiant attempt at making a reappearance.

He continued his tenuous survey of the first floor, grateful for the raucous of the television and the intermittent sounds of what sounded like beer bottles splattering against the walls overhead. Katniss had complained about his heavy tread scaring off game when he’d taken her hunting. She’d made it painfully clear he was not built for stealth, so he was thankful for the white noise.

When it became apparent there was no one to be found downstairs, he took a centering breath and slowly made his way to the second floor. He consciously avoided the only room with a light on, heading for the first dark room off the stairs, instead. When he turned on the light, he found the walls decorated almost end to end with posters of every popular boy band and young actor in Hollywood- obviously a tween or young teen girl’s room. The very feminine, mortified sob he heard emanate from the door adjacent the far end of the room, both caught his attention and confirmed his assumption. He strutted that way, posthaste. Opening that door, he found two children, a boy and a girl (probably eleven and twelve respectively, from what he could gather), bound to the towel bars of the En suite by their wrists with wire ties. They faced each other, both their faces slicked with tears and their sweaty, unkempt hair stuck to it. They turned frightened eyes on him the moment the door opened, straining them against the light they’d probably become unaccustomed to after being corralled in that dark bathroom for lord knows how long to decipher whether their visitor was a new tormentor.

Peeta immediately dropped to his knees before the little girl, unpocketing his Swiss army knife to make quick work of the ties around her wrist, making soft, soothing, shushing sounds as she whimpered pitifully when the rough plastic rubbed against the angry, inflamed rings of raw flesh around her wrists as he worked to free her. The moment her hands dropped, he moved on to her brother, ignoring her gentle, relieved sobs. He was just as quick to cut the boy down, then sat back on his haunches, really analyzing the pair as they unraveled the restraints from around themselves and caressed the tender flesh.

They didn’t appear the worse for wear. He was certain they’d need more therapy than he could even wrap his head around to begin to function with any semblance of normalcy after whatever it was they’d been through, but at least they’d survived their ordeal. It was when he noticed them squinting at him in awed bewilderment that he realized they likely couldn’t make out anything beyond an undecipherable silhouette against the brightness of the room beyond from their vantage point.

Good, he didn’t necessarily want any notoriety from what he was trying to pull off here. The less they saw of him the better.

“Okay,” he whispered softly, “I need you guys to stay here, in this room, no matter what you hear outside. I noticed you have a phone in your room,” he nodded in the direction of the little girl, who was now visibly shaking. “I want you to call the cops. Tell them to get here as soon as possible. Do you know if there is anyone else left in the house?”

“Our… our mom,” the answer came in a hushed whimper from the boy, whose breaking baritone confirmed him somewhere around thirteen. “He’s keeping her in our parents’ room… We hear stuff, sounds, awful things, coming from there. Please get her out of there.”

Peeta swallowed back the growl that threatened at the back of his throat, getting to his feet and quickly heading for the door. He made sure to flip off the lights before shutting it so that the actions of the children within would go unnoticed.

He no longer heard the sound of bottles hitting surfaces as he approached the half-opened doors to the lit room he deduced was the master bedroom. He steeled himself for a physical confrontation. He’d seized up his would-be opponent during his reconnaissance at the terminal. The man was massive, carried himself like ex-military. So, he probably had some combat training. He had a solid foot height advantage on him, too. He’d have to depend on his greater speed and agility if the guy assaulted him… and hoped he was drunk enough to hinder his coordination, assuming those bottles he’d been hearing since he’d arrived were liquor, of course. He also hoped the man was unarmed. He didn’t care what Beetee believed, he couldn’t deflect bullets and he doubted he was fast enough to evade a blade wielded by someone skilled at brandishing it. He had no aspiration towards becoming another casualty here.

He looked into the room circumspectly; all senses on alert for the man who’d invaded this home. His eyes roamed the room entirley before he opened the door more fully and stepped a few feet inside. He immediately noticed the woman in her late thirties, bruised, battered and with her thin satin robe barely hanging off her body, tied by the wrists as the children had been to the radiator in the corner near the open balcony door. He held a finger up to his mouth, a gesture asking her to keep silent as he moved to the open door with the wildly swaying curtains to close it. The rain outside was encroaching and she was woefully underdressed for the harsh cold he knew was getting in.

He took a moment to step out onto the stoop, making sure the man he’d followed was not out there. He’d just reached the balustrade when he sensed it, turning just in time to see the last person he wanted to emerge from the obscurity of the sheer curtains to barrel violently into his chest, unbalancing him, causing him to lose his footing over the edge of the veranda.

For the second time in his life, he felt that weightless sensation of gravity depravation as darkness consumed him and he was certain he was falling to his death. But, instead, and to his immeasurable surprise, he fell on something… malleable? Malleable and very wet, he realized, as the shock that he had survived subsided to be replaced by the escalating dread of the unwelcome new knowledge that whatever he’d landed on was becoming exponentially more saturated and far less solid with every passing second.

Frantically, he attempted to brace his arms on whatever it was he was splayed across to sit up, but only managed to bring his face up marginally to gather his surroundings in the stinging rain. His heart dropped at what he saw. All around him, as his eyes canvassed his surroundings; the speckled light of the moon uncovered the edges of a pool tarp, systematically collapsing into the water’s edge to expose aquamarine tiles. It was collapsing under him- pulling him under.

He was barely able to choke in a frantic lungful before he sank like a stone.

He flailed his arms desperately, still partially wrapped in the pool cover. He’d obviously fallen into the deep end. He wasn’t the tallest person, but if this was the shallow end, he would’ve touched bottom by now. His lungs aching, he finally released the breath he’d been holding and, without any discipline as to how he was supposed to prevent it, immediately started choking on the water that replaced it.

He continued flailing in the blinding fluid that now burned his insides, refusing to surrender to what he knew was inevitable without a fight. He couldn’t believe his stupidity in attempting this. He could just see his father losing it with grief over this. He fleetingly wondered if Flax’s school would give him another semester off to help his old man deal- to help him deal. Man, he still had Rye’s library copy of The Giver! Maybe, he’d have the presence of mind to riffle through his gym locker for it so Ms. Weiress wouldn’t flip her crap on him. Most of all, he hoped Katniss forgave him after. Maybe… maybe she could find some solace with Gale.

God, he didn’t want to die like this!

He really didn’t want Katniss ending up with Gale freaking Hawthorne, because he was too stupid to stay away from a blatantly dangerous situation and too incompetent to survive it.

Suddenly, his left arm made contact with something thin and solid. Instinctively, he grasped onto it, his second arm following soon after. It took him a spilt second to refocus his thoughts enough to realize he could pull himself to the surface, but as soon as he did, he was breaking the top and inhaling greedy lungfuls. Once he was oxygenated enough to think rationally, he looked up toward the far end of what he grasped and found the two children he’d untied from the bathroom holding the pool skimmer steadily with identical hopeful expressions. He used the pole to leverage himself over the edge and out of the water, still gagging out water.

He laid a hand softly on each of the sibling’s shoulders as he passed them on his way back to the house.

The sadistic bastard was standing over her, spitting beer through the gap in the disdainful sneer he brandished upon her.

He hadn’t bothered locking the door again. Hadn’t even bothered closing it.

Arrogant prick.

He was not going to feel the smallest bit of remorse for taking this monster out.

He wasn’t quiet as he made his way across the room toward him. He was too pissed to care if the murderer heard him. As it turned out, he was far too drunk to tell he was there until he was right beside him and his fist made satisfying, crunching contact with his jawbone.

As he’d calculated, insanity an adrenaline fueled the maniac’s stamina to disproportionate levels, even this inebriated, and the hit barely phased him before he rallied with a solid punch to Peeta’s abdomen, one the teen had more than been expecting and braced for. Using the momentum of turning his heavily muscled oblique to the man to weather the brunt of the blow, he delivered a well-placed kick to the back of his knee while simultaneously landing a marring jab to his kidney.

The behemoth responded with little more than a grunt as he fell to one knee, continuing to rain punishment with both pork shoulder sized fists on the teenager’s torso. Peeta managed another solid strike to the man’s face, which distracted him long enough for him to maneuver behind him entirely, wedging his arms under his armpits and around his neck to lock into a sleeper hold.

Obviously, the man recognized his predicament, because the moment the move was complete, he released an enraged sound that nothing human should ever emit and focused all the considerable strength he had left in his legs to propel them both backward, toward the wall. Peeta could feel the drywall cave in around the indentation his back left. But, thankfully, that’s all he could really register (likely due to his own system being flooded with adrenaline, as well), as he held on steadfast to the massive man’s arms and neck, feeling the blood flow to his brain ebb slowly in response to the technique. Even as the man continued to ram them both into the man shaped hole behind him, he could feel his pulse slowing, his synapses disengaging, his efforts becoming sluggish. It wouldn’t be long now.

After a few more moments, the man finally lost consciousness and went limp in Peeta’s arms. For the first time since the confrontation began, making it possible for the boy to register just how large he was. The dude had to weigh at least two-hundred seventy-five pounds. He felt like a ton in his over-exerted arms. This poor family stood no change against this thing- forget whether they opened the door to him willingly or not. If he wanted in… he was getting in.

Peeta dropped the dead weight of a man to the floor and made quick work of securing his ankles to his wrists behind his back with the bed linens in case he woke before the authorities arrived. Then, he stepped away to cut the wire ties of the woman who’d remained ominously silent and unresponsive through the entire ordeal, her curtain of hair hiding her face. The moment he finished slicing his way through the plastic, the appendages fell limply over the pale, abused knees she held up to her chest and, as he stared in mortification, the rest of her toppled over soon after… in the exact same position. Once on the floor, her flaxen tresses parted to reveal open, hollow eyes, frozen in an expression of hopeless despair. Releasing a choked sob, Peeta reached out to smooth her frozen lids over them, certain this visual would haunt his nightmares to the end of his days.

He reached the landing on wobbly legs, holding the banister for dear life and hoping against all hope he could keep from vomiting all over the paisley carpeting of the foyer. Not that he believed in the slightest his bodily fluids would be the most sinister to make contact with that fabric in recent history. He looked up to find two shaken, unspeakably beholden, cherubical faces gleaming at him.

He could already hear the telltale sounds of encroaching sirens as he reached up to secure the hood of his raincoat over his head, turning his face away from the children as best he could, even fully aware how futile an attempt at obscurity the gesture was at this point. He cleared his throat gruffly, swallowing down his own discomfort as best he could, trying to sound both reassuring and authoritarian for their benefit, “Don’t… don’t tell them too much about me. Just tell them some neighborhood kid followed him in here ‘cause, you know, he thought it was weird he was sneaking round back and all. They’ll… they’ll take care of you. You got family? Uncles? Grandparents?” He couldn’t help how his voice choked as he finished. They were beyond terrified- at everything. He could feel it rolling off them. He was drowning in it, burning in it. His heart went out to them. Such unspeakable, senseless loss.

The little girl tentatively nodded, fat tears tracing paths down her red, swollen cheeks, her green eyes round with innocence lost and a million questions he could not begin to answer for her. “W-why can’t we tell them about you?” she gasped in an almost inaudible sob.

He locked soft eyes with her, trying not to drown in the despair roiling through those emerald irises. “Because I no idea what I just did. I’m just a kid like you. I need you to help me, too. Can you do that for me?”

Wordlessly, the little girl closed the few steps between them and crushed her arms around him, burying her face in his still dripping, raincoat-clad chest. He thought he heard her choke out a promise to comply with his request as he hesitantly brought his arms up to her back, not quite sure how to return the gesture. She broke away a second later, wiping furiously at her eyes as the foyer came inundated with red and blue swirling lights from the windows flanking the front door. The police had arrived.

“You have to go now, don’t you?” the young teen boy said in a hushed voice, adding reverently through his own tears, “Thank you.”

Peeta ruffled his hair, offering the best smile he could muster and turned quickly for the mudroom.

He made out the flashlight of the officer coming around the corner of the home just as he jumped the fence to the connecting yard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She’d barely opened the door when wet, freezing vinyl engulfed her, jerking her through the doorjamb and, before she could react, she’d found herself backed into the exterior wall on her porch, a very moist, very cold mouth pressed insistently to hers.

Had the feel of the muscles pinning her, the lips moving fervently over hers, the tip of the tongue treading the seam of her mouth, not been so achingly familiar… this would definitely be cause for panic. As it stood, however, she found herself slumping boneless into his steady hold on her waist, acquiescing to his tongue’s silent plead for entry. She could ask questions later.

When he finally broke away, eliciting a groaning gasp from her sore skin at the loss of his heated presence there, he bore eyes so intense into hers; she could have sworn all the blue was gone, swallowed up in those enormous, infinitely onyx half spheres. His voice lowered to a register previously unknown to her, setting her veins ablaze with simultaneous exhilaration and deference, igniting every nerve ending in her body.

“I did it, sweetheart.”

Chapter Text

Katniss continued her relentless assault on the pathetic little thread that’d had the reckless gumption to fray away from its brethren at the fringes of the coat Peeta barely gave her enough time to pull over the sweat pants and tank she’d been wearing for bed before practically shoving her out into his idling car. Abusing the unwitting length of fabric hanging off the weathered wool jacket gave her restless fingers something to do beyond what her traitorous thoughts kept compelling her towards… namely, slapping that infuriating, knowing, lopsided smirk off the face of the blonde in the driver’s seat next to her.

Under other circumstances, she found that goofy grin endearing, even captivating, but not tonight. She was cold, wet and confused. Every attempted at wresting information out of Peeta from the moment he’d shown up at her front door, soaked, frozen and delirious had been met with nothing but a suffocating kiss and a dismissive ‘You’ll see when we get there.’

She loathed surprises. She hated feeling out of control in any given situation. It made her feel helpless, useless. And all that little hitch to the edge of this bastard’s mouth was accomplishing was to cement within her the incontrovertible certainty that he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

The jerk deserved what was coming to him.

“Come on, we’re going to miss it if we don’t hurry.”

His voice derailed her unholy thoughts and she startled slightly when she noticed him unbuckling his seatbelt while reaching for the door handle. It took her a split second to realize the car had stopped completely, behind a late model black Ford Pick Up. They were at Peeta’s house.

She turned back to him with a confounded frown, only to find his door slamming. Huffing in exasperation, she made her way out, barely shutting the door before he was beside her again, pulling at her arm with all the exuberance of a toddler at Toys ‘R’ Us. God, if only she had it in her to stay upset at him when he was this jacked up. She still made an obstinate effort at keeping the crease in her brow as he ushered her up the driveway, up the porch stairs and into his house. It was principle.

The Mellark foyer was a barely noticeable blur of subdued lighting and the pleasant smells of whatever dinner had been, thanks to Peeta barely pausing there to rid her of her coat and the mess that was his tattered raincoat, before veering them into the family room. Judging by the overall darkened ambience, it was obvious everyone had settled for the night.

Well, almost everyone.

“Dude, I was watching that, di… hey, Katniss!”

She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep the chuckle from escaping. To his credit, Rye put up a commendable fight, considering he was ambushed from behind in the dark and those Avengers boxers (which were all he sported) seemed hell-bent on becoming casualties to the brotherly skirmish for the remote to the entertainment center before them.

In the end, the older teen just endowed her with a wolfish, upside down smirk from his pinned position under his little brother on the sectional; trying to pull the aforementioned piece of clothing further up his pelvis to save whatever was left of his modesty one-handedly while trying to jostle the younger boy off with the other. Katniss doubted very much any of these boys cared how much skin they displayed to her anymore. All but Peeta stopped registering her as female long ago.

“Yeah, you can watch Extreme Cougar Wives whenever, man. You DVR the entire crappy TLC lineup. I need to catch something in the news,” Peeta commented distractedly, flipping through the guide to the local channels, still perched on his older brother’s thighs, batting lazily at his assaults.

“I wasn’t watching that, you prick,” Rye defended, though the crimson Katniss could see flooding his neck up to his ears, discredited the claim pretty readily. “I DVR Next Great Baker and Baker Boss. It ain’t my fault the stupid dish screws up the scheduling and downloads that other crap.”

Katniss could no longer hold the snicker, when her boyfriend turned those impossibly cerulean eyes back on the boy beneath him, narrowed into the most disbelieving sneer she’d ever seen him level. “You are so full of it, man. The dish will record the wrong show once… twice, maybe. You have this junk scheduled for every new episode. Buying Naked, My Strange Addiction, Cheer Perfection, 90 Day Fiancé, Say Yes to The Dress… that’s not even… is there something you want to tell me, Rye?”

She was gasping for air, now, bracing herself against the arm of the sofa. She loved these guys.

“Dude, I think your girl over here’s having a seizure,” the Mellark middle child deflected masterfully, gesturing with a jerk of his head where she reclined, amusement gleaming in his baby blues. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh that hard.”

Peeta’s gaze diverted up to meet Katniss’s now moist one as he finally clicked on the channel he was looking for. “Yeah. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?”

Whether it was the timber to his voice, the offhanded compliment he’d paid, or the sheer heat in the intensity of his stare, she was loath to tell. But she found her giggling fit ebbing as she lost herself in that lapse, her throat growing tight at the fluttering in her stomach.

“Eeww! Are you guys having a moment or some crap right over me?” the older boy whined scandalized. “Get a room. Or better yet, get off me and go to your own freaking room. It’s just upstairs, jerk.”

“Oh, that’s definitely not happening.”

All three teens snapped their heads – in Rye’s case, this required him lurching up on his elbows to look over the back of the sofa – toward the Mellark patriarch, who stood at the base of the stairwell, reclining heavily against it with his muscled arms crossed over his broad, white tee-shirt clad chest. Flax finished the last few steps to land beside him, a confused yet amused expression on his face.

“Katniss, it’s almost eleven,” Mr. Mellark stated conversationally, evenly, as he entered the family room. Though, he kept his eyes focused squarely on his youngest son as he spoke, leaving no question as to who he was really addressing. “Now, you are always welcome here. You know that. But, I don’t know how your mother would feel about you being here at this hour in nothing but your pajamas.”

She cleared her throat with some effort. She’d never found the baker particularly intimidating- quite the opposite. He was… well… right down jolly, really. And handsome. She could readily admit that.

At forty, he looked like an older version of Peeta, just with more crinkles around his slightly paler blue eyes and over his brow. She was sure he had similar lines around his mouth, but the perfectly trimmed flaxen goatee hid those. One might figure the shaven head would add a roguish edge to the man’s demeanor- he’d chosen to be rid of his hair the moment it’d started thinning a few years back, figuring if nature was going to take it, he’d help it along in one fell swoop. But, intriguingly, it didn’t. All that’d ever managed to do, as far as Katniss was concerned, was to help her envision how amazing Peeta would look if he ever chose to forgo his wayward curls. Mr. Mellark had to be the hottest bald man she’d ever seen.

So, why did she suddenly find this sweet, congenial man so threatening? “M-my mother’s working a double tonight. We kinda left in a hurry. I’ll be back before she notices I’m gone,” she sputtered nervously. She noticeably flinched when Peeta’s father arched a very pale eyebrow at her in response.

“Oh, Katniss, no. Wrong thing. Don’t speak anymore,” Flax shook his head vehemently at her, his oceanic eyes wide with a mix of condolence and poorly disguised mirth.

“Dad,” Peeta all but squeaked, effectively diverting attention away from his girlfriend as he dropped the remote and came around the couch to stand beside her. He didn’t dare bring his arm around her as he longed to, however. The hole his poor planning had dug for them did not need expansion. “I didn’t realize how little she was wearing...” When his father let out an impatient breath, rolling his eyes in clear disbelieve, he amended quickly, “I don’t mean it literally. Obviously, I noticed how little she’s wearing. I brought her over in a coat. It’s freezing out. I just didn’t realize how messed up this would all look to you… this late at night.” He finally let out an exasperated huff, allowing his shoulders to slump dejectedly. “I wasn’t really thinking much, at all. I just needed her with me to see something right now.”

Peeta could see his father’s eyes softening, the tension in his broad frame uncoiling as he ran a hand pensively over his beard and shifted his scrutinizing gaze between them. Finally, he relented with a shrug of one shoulder and the faintest quirk to the edge of his mouth. “If her mother finds out she’s here at this hour, I have to be the adult and explain why I allowed it, you know? She doesn’t leave my sight as long as she’s here tonight. Got it?”

“I could explain it to Mrs. Everdeen,” Peeta found the need to defend.

His father leveled an unimpressed sneer his way, affirming flatly, “No you couldn’t. You’re an irresponsible child, who got so caught up in whatever he’s up to tonight; he couldn’t figure bringing his half-dressed girlfriend home at almost midnight might cause tensions.” He took a moment to let out a snort at the affronted scowl his youngest sent him before adding, “You’re five minutes out from learning to wipe after yourself and I’ve done your laundry… I’m worried Jackson Pollock’s people are going to come at us for all the forgeries you keep leaving. Got a long way to go, son.”

Peeta could only stare, mouth agape, mortified heat rushing up his neck as the room exploded into laughter at his expense. He could even make out Katniss bringing a hand up to her mouth out of his periphery, though he doubted the embarrassment locking his joints would make turning to her a possibility at any point in the foreseeable future.

Had his father seriously done this to him in front of her? Sure, he’d screwed up. He could see how he deserved some form of correction. But, punish him. Take away his laptop, his phone… his car. Make him work the entire weekend shift at the bakery. Anything would’ve been more humane than that!

“Chill, man,” he felt his oldest brother’s arm drape over his shoulder. “He could’ve done worse. Remember that time he used the tracker on my cell to find out I skipped school to drive Kalmia Rosen to the lake with a couple of the guys? He closed the bakery, showed up down there at eight in the morning, stripped to nearly nothing like some deranged yeti…”

“Katniss doesn’t need a retelling of that, Flax,” their father’s warning tone cut in.

Katniss perked up, turning beseeching eyes first on her boyfriend, then on his elder brother, finally setting them on their father. She most decidedly needed to hear whatever that was had transpired between the baker, Flax and Kalmia Rosen.

With a self-deprecating chortle, the oldest Mellark brought a hand up to scratch the back of his neck, supplying sheepishly, “Let’s just say, that poor girl ran from that shore screaming every expletive she knew, trying to flag down a cab for all she was worth… And I had to plead my way out of an indecent exposure allegation, ‘cause that was definitely not that kind of camp site.” He finished with a disparaging look at his oldest son.

“Who told you to go all creepy, old nudist enthusiast to embarrass me straight? We weren’t even doing anything! I couldn’t get another girl to talk to me for the rest of the year, much less look at me without cringing.”

“Me neither,” Rye snorted derisively. When all eyes turned on him, he elaborated, flailing his arm expansively as if it should’ve been obvious, “I was his freshman little brother. We have the same last name. It got all over and everyone looked at me as if I had inherited diseased genes or something, which I honestly started believing I had for a few months. Thanks for crippling our social lives, Dad.”

Their father shrugged aloofly, the sinister smirk prominently displayed. “Pft, it worked. And, for the record, I’m not old. You should all hope to look half this good at my age, asses. I apologize for nothing. When you three have to deal with half the crap you put me through with your kids, then we can talk.”

“Hey, Peeta, is this what you were waiting to see, man?”

The odd, somewhat unhinged edge to Rye’s voice drew the attention of his family and Katniss to where he leaned forward on the couch, reaching the remote toward the television as if that would somehow cause the sensor and eye to connect better and raise the volume quicker. Their cumulative gazes inched up to the screen, where the newsroom backdrop with a very somber anchorman was just cutting off, the camera expanding on the inset of a home with police tape behind him. A female on-scene reporter who stood before the home began speaking the moment the backdrop of the darkened home with several patrol cars filled the screen.

A banner in large, bold, red letters dominated the bottom of the screen, flashing the message ‘Unknown Hero Saves Two Children’ in frequent intervals with ‘Children Owe Lives to Selfless Stranger’.

“Thank you, Andrew. The children are in shock from their harrowing ordeal, dehydrated and hungry after nearly fifty-two hours without any kind of food or water. But, thanks to this amazing young person, who they say followed the man that charged this quiet East Seam neighborhood home and rescued them, they are now at Capitol General receiving care for minor wounds. We are expecting a full recovery.”

As the screen once again split to display both the field scene and the news desk so that the anchors could further probe into the details of the developing story, Peeta found Katniss’s arms winding around his neck, one hand clamping down on the longish curls at the nape. With a tug, their foreheads met- the lock between cerulean and steel unwavering. Her countenance radiated unmitigated veneration and he noted moisture accumulating at the base of her lashes, though she creased her brow obstinately to keep it at bay, even as a radiant smile broke across her mien.

“You were right”, he mouthed against her lips in a breath and she shuddered, shutting her eyes tight at the overwhelming jumble of elation, anxiety, anticipation… amongst countless other emotions those words evoked. The gesture caused stubborn, fat driblets to break away from the edges of her eyes to trace lazy paths down her cheeks.

“What are we looking at here, son?” his father’s anxious baritone broke their reprieve, reminding them they had an audience.

It took his older brothers’ frenzied exclamations a second later for him and Katniss to snap back towards the screen. She released an astonished gasp of her own.

The reporters were gone and, in their place, were two photos. One was of the man Peeta recognized as the invader he’d followed to that home earlier that day and the other was a pencil sketch – obviously a police artist rendition – of a young man in a dark raincoat pulled over his face to shadow it. They all gaped as the female reporter continued her redaction.

“… was taken in for questioning and psychological evaluation in the brutal murder of thirty-eight year old Castor Cray and his wife, thirty-six year old Cecilia Cray. Authorities are holding the suspect without bail at this time and we have no information as to his motives for committing such a vicious attack on this family. We can only be grateful for this Good Samaritan, whom the couple’s children (whose names we cannot divulge due to their age) have described to police as ‘just a neighborhood kid, someone who noticed something wrong and wanted to help out, but did not want to come forward to seek recognition.’”

The camera panned back to a close-up shot of the field reporter, who looked dead into the lens and finished earnestly, “Well, this reporter certainly wants to say ‘thank you’ to whoever this brave young man is. You’ve given these children an immeasurable gift. They owe you their lives. You are my hero. Back to you, Andrew.”

The television clicked off and Peeta counted to three, holding his breath, before Rye predictably turned his entire body on the sofa toward them, outrage roiling through his saucer-sized eyes. “What in the Hell did you do, Peeta? Are you insane? That lunatic could’ve killed you!”

He shifted Katniss in his arms, opening his mouth to respond, but never got the chance.

“And did you see the size of the dude? Was that a mug shot? Is this guy a repeat offender? Did he see you, man? What if he gets out and comes after you?” Flax barely got one word out before exhaling the next, groping him roughly and pulling up his shirt to survey for damage as Peeta tried failingly to fend him off and keep his hold on Katniss. Once he was satisfied his baby brother was uninjured, he let out a relieved sigh, and, without warning, smacked the younger boy squarely upside the head.

“What were you thinking, moron?” Then, before Peeta could react to either the hit or the insult, his oldest brother wrapped him in a smothering bear hug, wrenching him out of Katniss’s grasp. The older boy struggled to keep his deep baritone even. “You stupid, prick. You saved them. You could’ve been killed, you total idiot. Where would that leave us, huh? Mourning your dumb, noble ass? I hate you so much, man.” Then, he pressed a rough kiss to the boy’s head before releasing him with a non-too gentle shove toward his girlfriend.

Katniss snickered, wrapping her arms around Peeta from behind as he narrowed his eyes into a leery glare at his now smirking older brother.

“Is this…” his father cleared his throat roughly, diverting the attention of all the room’s occupants to where he stood, using both outstretched arms to support his leaning frame heavily on the back of the sofa, his expression distant, introspective. “Is this sort of thing going to be commonplace for you, Peeta?”

He slowly turned away from the dark screen to focus nearly mirror eyes on his youngest son, a mix of wonder and sorrow warring for dominance in the azure depths. He tried for a smile, but no mirth made it through to those pools of blue. “You’ve always had something different to offer the world, Peeta- something singular. I’d be lying if I told you this is what I thought it would turn out to be. I always pegged you for a shrink or something, maybe an inspirational speaker- I certainly never fathomed this. But, I can’t and won’t keep you from doing what no one can deny you are distinctly designed to do. We’re your family. We’re behind you no matter what. You know that. But this… this can be dangerous- possibly for all of us if it’s not done carefully, right. And even then… So, I need to know right know… is this going to become a routine of yours I need to be aware of?”

Shifting Katniss in his arms so that she wrapped around him from the front, he met her encouraging gaze with an unsure one of his own. Finding the reaffirmation of what he already knew in those mercurial irises, he placed a soft, chaste kiss to her lips and responded to his father with resolve, “You boxed in college, right, Dad? I think I need you to teach me some better self-defense.”

“I’m going to need it.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He could count on one hand without running out of digits the times he’d ventured into the Thirteenth District. His family was not poorly off, by any means. They were likely upper middle class. But the people who populated this small, gated, patrolled community were in an entirely different socio-economic class, altogether.

The homes here were gigantic- mansions, the plots they lay upon were acres of intricately manicured landscapes.  To say the drive was impressive was an understatement. He’d felt inadequate from the moment the snobbish security guard sneered at his car when he’d asked for his ID to allow him entry through the lavish, ivy laden iron gates.

That sentiment was immediately superseded by anger at himself.

He had nothing to feel inferior about here. So he did not have the same fancy things the people here did. So what? He’d worked his butt off for his car. All his brothers had. His father insisted they pay for their cars out of their own part time wages at the bakery and their allowances. Gas and the exorbitant premiums he paid for insurance due to his age, also came out of his salary. So, maybe he did not have the fanciest car, but at least he’d earned it. That was more than any brat wealthy enough to live in this place on daddy’s buck could boast.

Of course, he found he berated himself for that thought as soon as it’d presented itself, as well. Especially, in light of the person he was here to see. There was certainly nothing enviable about his life, regardless of whatever material possessions he may or may not have at his disposal… and Madge had lived here. Her family still lived here. If he grouped everyone in this social class into one faceless cliché, he was no better than that self-important prick who’d turned his nose up at him at the gate.

With these thoughts weaving through his head, he pulled up to the circular driveway of the impressive two-story brick Colonial the navigator on his phone indicated corresponded to the address he’d been given with a much more positive, open-minded attitude. Honestly, this mindset was much more amenable to his present endeavor.

A soft hissing sound caused him to venture a look up and to the left of the intricately carved doorway with curiosity after ringing the silent doorbell. A small, inconspicuous security camera pivoted on its stand in his direction. A moment later, a female voice, accented by computerized feedback, invited amicably, “Please come in, Mr. Mellark. I am in the study at the end of the hall. Make yourself confortable. I will meet you there shortly.”

Then, he heard a magnetic clank and the double wooden doors to the home parted for him. He could not hold back his impressed outtake of breath, reminding himself whom he was here to see. There was nothing about this kid’s life he should justifiably covet. Yet still, there was no denying, that was the coolest door he’d seen in his sixteen years.

Stepping into the cavernous, cylindrical, high ceilinged foyer, he could not keep his eyes from roaming the immaculately white walls adorned with artwork of every size and style. He noted with awe the oils and inks on the pieces were far too crisp, too raw, to be anything but original. This collection alone had to be worth more than his house.

Taking an exhaustive tour of the entry, before moving on to the adjacent hallway as instructed, he noted the artwork progressed from the traditional mediums of oils, inks and photography to almost exclusively sketches. Specifically, the hallway headlined comic book prints- original prints, some dating back as far as the Second World War.

He stopped before an especially detailed drawing of his all-time favorite villain, appreciating the detail the artist put into every detail, the camera the character held with that signature mocking, threating smile, especially.

“That’s some of Frank Miller’s finest work,” a lyrical voice came from over his shoulder. He shifted upturned brows to a beautiful South Indian woman in her early forties, clad in a golden silk sari. A long, ebony mane hung loose to her waist in a straight, gleaming curtain.  

“Notice how even squinting, you can see a rounder edge to the eyes as opposed to the hero. It hints at a skewed view on the world,” she continued informatively, gesturing with a soft slope of her long neck at the sketch.

Peeta skimmed his eyes over the drawing once more, comparing what she’d pointed out with the drawings surrounding it, which, he noted with curiosity, were all by the same artist. He realized he’d never taken the time to look for those kinds of minutia in these works before. The input was fascinating.

“He doesn’t look scary here, though. You get the feeling Miller wasn’t going for that. More like he was going for shock value,” he commented, still analyzing the sketch.

“That’s the same thing I told my son,” she answered with a tinge of humor. “But he says there are two types of bad guys. There’s the soldier villain, who tries to defeat the hero using brawn and then there’s the far more dangerous arch nemesis, who uses intellect. I think it’s safe to say The Joker blurs the lines between those categories, however. He’s just as confortable devising a convoluted scheme to infect the entire city’s water supply with chemical agents as he is throwing down, punch for punch… He said you had an eye for art.”

Peeta turned a disarming smirk on her. “I wish he would ‘ve mentioned his mother was so striking. Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Peeta Mellark,” he charmed, extending a hand.

Once she grasped it, giving it a firm if gentle shake (her cheeks reddening at the compliment), he turned somewhat toward the wall of art and continued, “You introduced him to all this? He has some brilliant notions about it. He’s certainly changed the way I look at it.”

She angled her chin up, pride radiating in her large onyx eyes like beacons. “I did what any mother would do for her sick boy, Peeta. I found a way to instill hope in him, give him something to look forward to.” Her eyes took on a doleful haze as she looked somewhere off over his shoulder and continued in a softer voice, “He’s had some bad spills in his life, some that I feared had broken him…” She then met his gaze again, that proud fire reigniting. “But he always found a way to pull through. It’s been a lonely road for him. I’m glad you’re becoming friends.”

Peeta found her fervor and devotion contagious and his smirk turned reverent as he spoke. “He’s definitely one of a kind.”

Mrs. Malhotra patted his shoulder obligingly, blinking rapidly to stave off the moisture that had built at their brief interaction.

“Let me take you to Beetee.”

~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x

Following the wheelchair-bound eighteen-year-old down the sloped walkway to his private den was not unlike walking through the young readers section at Barnes&Noble, Peeta noted with humor. The kid had comics – still encased in their original cellophane – decorating every square inch of available wall real estate on one wall of the corridor they traversed and the other ‘wall’ appeared composed entirely of shelves, dedicated to showcasing ever more of his expansive collection. The space between was just wide enough to allow the passage of the wheelchair and one other person. Talk about having an obsession for collecting.

Beetee made it to the bottom of the gentle slant first, aided by the swift wheels of his conveyance and the fact that his attention did not divert to the hundreds of literary material crowding the room every other second as me made his way. He quickly reached for a newspaper on the desk Peeta noticed was littered with dozens of books, double computer screens and countless mechanical doohickeys, the function of which he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

He held up the newspaper over his chest and the younger teen noted it held the same police sketch of him from the home where he’d rescued the children the previous night. The humongous, bold headline read ‘SAVED’.

“It has begun,” Beetee stated in an undisputable tone. He let his hands fall to his laps with the paper still grasped within and inquired further, “Tell me, Peeta, when you woke up this morning, was it still there? The uncertainty? The guilt? The sadness?”

Peeta took a second to consider the question. Yes, he’d felt a crushing guilt since the accident, a sadness, a burden. Those amassed accusatory eyes on him at the funeral hadn’t helped. They’d only served to augment that voice in the back of his mind that began screaming at him the moment he realized he’d been the lone survivor that fateful night… that voice that compelled him to make his survival and their sacrifice matter. The way his idiosyncrasy had spiked in correspondence to the event had only exacerbated the effect. And the positive turn his and Katniss’s relationship had taken as a result only served to further seed his remorse at knowing so many would never have what he was miraculously gifted.

The only true respite from that dread since that bus overturned had come when that home invader had grown limp in his arms and he knew that man could no longer harm that family. He’d felt he could truly exhale without a weight on his chest for the first time in weeks.

“No,” came the simple respond.

With a heavy, satiated outtake of breath, Beetee relaxed his entire frame as if he’d been freed of a stifling weight, as well. He leveled infinitely obliged, round eyes at the younger teen before him, extending his ever-gloved hand.

“I think this is where we shake hands…”

There wasn’t even a split second hesitation on Peeta’s part. Within a step, he had a firm but gentle grasp on the older teen’s hand, conscious not to put too much pressure lest he hurt the fragile young man.

It was absolutely foreign, this… whatever in the fifth circle of Dante’s Inferno this was.

It had to have taken but a split second, but the sensation (or lack thereof), stretched seemingly indefinitely in Peeta’s psyche. It was a vacuum, a nothingness, a cold that froze his blood and stole his breath.

It twisted and morphed into shapes, blurs, a cacophony of intermingling sounds and voices – all blazing by too quickly to decipher. Until, finally, they started slowing, eventually centering on an image of a much younger Beetee – maybe eight or nine – sitting alone in an oddly futuristic-looking sterile classroom, staring out the window at a dozen or so children frolicking outside in the yard. The little boy didn’t bother turning to acknowledge two men clad in utilitarian overalls who entered the room, only as far as the doorjamb, removed a panel and continued their previous conversation, oblivious to his presence.

“…on me to get this done before lunch. Pft, like I don’t know why the rush. I know all this place’s secrets,” one man huffed to the other in annoyance.

“Like what kind of secrets?” the co-worker handing him tools inquired, curiously.

The first man quirked a knowing smirk, “Like the fact that if this state-of-the-art door jams in a fire? The genius who designed this room didn’t put a proper ventilation system in it and those high-end security windows don’t open. If there’s a fire anywhere in this building and this door won’t open, no one in here makes it out. Oh, perfect. We didn’t turn off the supply. I’m not getting electrocuted here… ”

Peeta watched as the men scrambled out of the room, leaving the metallic door panel on the floor in their haste. As the lights went out, he watched the little boy whose arm he could now see sported a cast, move toward the exposed circuitry in the wall near the door. Something unreadable flashed in his eyes before he reached his hand inside.

The image submerged into the vacuousness to be quickly replaced by another of a slightly older Beetee – maybe thirteen – strolling casually with the aide of his crutch through the sparsely populated lobby of a homey lodge, away from the pool area. A minute later, a young woman dashed in from the same direction, her head sweeping the large room frantically.

“Oh, god! Someone call 911! The spa shorted out! There’s, like, a bunch of kids in there! Does someone know CPR? Help, someone. Please! God!”

Gurney after gurney carrying something so akin to gnarled kindling that the white blankets strewn over them did a piss-poor job to disguise their horror, wheeled toward a dozen awaiting ambulances was the last Peeta saw before the darkness overtook him.

Strangely, the image that supplanted it was eerily familiar. In it, Beetee, much as he was today, gingerly stepped off a yellow activity bus at the large space at the rear lot of the school, where it routinely stopped for pickups, just as the bus driver was walking up. The same driver – Peeta noted – who lost his life when his bus ran the embankment.

“Hey, kid. You can’t be in there without supervision,” the middle aged man chastised as they pass each other. “If you’re on that debate team thing, you can wait until four to board like the rest of your friends.”

Beetee did nothing more than wave him off, wordlessly, continuing on his way.

As the image blurred into nothing, Peeta finds his mind inundated by echoes, the agonized screams of his dying teammates as that bus plummeted down that hill. The last he ever heard of any of them.

He came to from the void with a gasp, flinching out of the older boy’s grip as if burned by it. Truth be told, he’d decidedly sustained some kind of damage from it, if his heart trying to beat its way out of his ribcage and his inability to oxygenate, regardless how hard he’d hyperventilated, was any indication.

His mind working a mile a minute to negotiate the images he’d just been privy to, his eyes for the first time frenetically canvased his surroundings beyond what lay immediately opposite the corridor. He had to make a concentrated effort to keep the contents of his stomach in check at what he saw.

Lining the wall above the L-shaped office unit, were dozens of newspaper clippings, all highlighting grotesque catastrophes, each more horrid than the last. He shifted his gaze to one of the beaming computer screens to find some kind of schematics of a Yellowbird school bus, coming to the repulsed realization some of those mechanical parts cluttering the desk he could not find a function for when he’d first stepped in the room, looked strikingly like components of the vehicle’s braking system.

He averted his eyes to focus them with distressed grief on the older boy, who’d turned his chair away from him. He could still make out his expression from his profile, however. He looked positively downtrodden. How could someone so devoid even achieve that?

“You know what the scariest thing is?” Beetee sighed, his voice enigmatically ringing of the emotion he envoked, though Peeta was now certain this kid completely incapable of it. “To not know your place in this world… not know why you’re here. That? That’s just an awful feeling.”

“What have you done?”, he groaned out pathetically, locking a denunciatory glare with the unrepentant obsidian of the older teenager before him, he was sure the older boy could register out of his periphery.

Beetee didn’t bother turning to him, continuing his rhetoric as if he hadn’t uttered a word, “I almost gave up hope. So many times I questioned myself.”

Peeta brought both hands up to run through his hair, tugging in frustration. His vision grew hazy with unshed tears and the queasiness knotting his stomach was torturous. “You killed all those kids,” he all but whimpered, choking back a sob that itched at the back of his throat. This was a bloody nightmare!

“But, I found you… So, many sacrifices, just to find you.”

The eighteen-year-old actually sniffed, on the verge of his own tears, and Peeta realized this was his normal. This was how he viewed the world, so he’d adapted, emulated. This was the closest Beetee Malhotra would ever come to sentiment. But, it wasn’t real and it was nowhere near enough to make him realize just how despicable killing dozens on the remote chance his theory was even plausible actually was.

Peeta felt a tear escape at the wretched revelation. “Christ.”

Beetee turned to him now, irrepressible determination drawn across his somber demeanor. “Now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I’m not a mistake.”

He could no longer meet those eyes that moments before had instilled a new sense of optimism and now only weighed him with the newfound burden of knowing the hefty price his ultimate enlightenment had levied. Knowing the deaths of Madge, Thom, so many others – were all collaterally on his hands, because this lunatic had to find ‘purpose’… the idea of even attempting to atone for all that was beyond overwhelming.

On unsteady legs, he fumbled up the ramp leading to the exit, trying to ignore the words Beetee vociferated at his retreating form, but finding he could focus on nothing else.

“It all makes sense, Peeta. In a comic, do you know how you can tell who the arch villain’s going to be? He’s the exact opposite of the hero… and most times, they are even friends like you and me. I should have known all along. You know why, Peeta? Because of what the children in school always called me…”

“They called me Mr. Glass.”