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They had euphemisms for what they did to him. For what they did to all of them.
They called it Persuasive Techniques; they said they were Realigning their behavior, that the captives needed their overarching influence in order to help them bring glory to Panem.
Peeta's time in the bowels of The Capitol has taught him to think of his life in fifteen-minute increments. After Katniss is thrown in prison and Haymitch disappears back into the bottom of a bottle, the technique comes in handy.
-
He doesn't leave the small, tucked away sleeping quarters he's been issued on the second floor of the former president's house for the first three months of his stay. His room boasts a private bathroom (with a deep soaker tub), a television (that he hardly watches) and a closet full of clothes (in the richest fabrics he's ever put his hands on).
He gets to be alone here in a way that was never possible for him before, not with brothers and school, a mother who demanded perfection and a father who never spoke up. Whenever Peeta thinks of them (or of rooms where screams echo, or of being forced onto his stomach, or of being glad to hear others' screams because that meant they weren't coming for him), he sits on the window seat to the left of his bed and stares out into the backyard. He feels like the TV screen looks, in those rare instances when he switches it on: still but for moments of sharp, unexpected sound which make him jittery with apprehension. The only other people he meets carry trays with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and they often leave without a word.
He's happy with this set-up. Peeta doesn't have anything to say to anyone anyway.
He'd been ordered to attend daily sessions with Dr. Aurelius but the poor man has his hands full with an assassin and a trial and an endless array of insane hunger game winners.
It's only too easy for Peeta to let himself be forgotten.
-
There's a knock on his door one afternoon and it's been so long since someone's called on him he doesn't automatically recognize the sound.
The person bangs again, lets out a low, "Come on boy. I know you're in there!"
Peeta recognizes the grizzled voice, will never be able to forget it, and only hesitates a moment before getting up to let him in. When Peeta opens the door, Haymitch pushes past him with the pungent smell of white liquor wafting from every pore. He glances around the room slowly—breathing deeply, hands on hips—before turning to Peeta with a thin smile. "So how are you then? Doing all right?"
"I'm fine," Peeta replies and closes the door. "How about you?"
"Oh I'm all right," he says thickly and Peeta has the idea that it's taking everything the older man has in him not to lunge at his charge.
Peeta almost wishes he would—the thought of throwing a man, a fellow soldier, into a certain death flits across his mind—they have no idea what he's capable of anymore.
"I'm just wondering if you're ever planning on leaving this room."
Peeta sighs and goes to sit on his bed. "No, not really."
"Goddamnit!" he yells, showing the anger Peeta has felt radiating off him since he opened the door. "You can't just lock yourself away up here forever. We need you with us, boy!"
"Is that why you were going to let me bleed to death in an inch of mud?" It's a low blow, but Peeta doesn't consider himself above inflicting such wounds these days.
Haymitch's face hardens. "No, I did that because we needed a firebrand, not a statesman. I did it because I thought I had to make a choice." Then he looks flustered, sad, even, as he goes on. "You don't know how hard—"
"And you made the right one," Peeta cuts in, and means it. He doesn't want or need to hear how hard the choice was. The cause doesn't change the effect, but it's also the only reason he can't bring himself to hate Coin for what she did. It felt good to finally be someone's first pick. He looks at the older man calmly. "Now we all have to live with it."
He doesn't flinch when Haymitch slams the door on his way out.
-
Peeta waits until they're gone (he hears they sent her back home. Back to the barren wasteland that is District 12, and that the old man’s there too) before he begins to venture beyond the doorway of his bedroom.
He expected the luxury he finds but is still surprised that the president was able to live the way he did. Snow may have asked that the residents of the lands he presided over do without certain luxuries, but he obviously didn't follow his own edicts.
There are rooms lined floor to ceiling with shelves covered in leather-bound volumes, dozens of freezers filled to the brim with food, cases and cases of thick, fur-lined jackets. He thinks of the long walks he used to take to school with only a thin coat as protection but he doesn't feel angry. He doesn't feel anything.
Peeta's favorite place is a small windowless room on the top most floor. He accidentally runs across it one afternoon and he doesn't think anyone else is aware of its existence. The door is mostly hidden behind a high dresser in the former president’s office and it’s a complete accident when he notices the slightly uneven wallpaper hiding its opening. Peeta knows a man like Snow would never allow such an imperfection. Unless he had a reason to.
He moves toward it and drags his hand down the paper, heart hammering in his chest when he finds a faintly raised edge. A gentle push is all it takes to make the door swing open with a hermetically sealed pop. He shoves the large piece of furniture forward only enough to squeeze behind it, and doesn’t hesitate before slipping into the room it conceals. He flips the switch and the flood of light reveals endless piles of discs stacked haphazardly around the room. This place lacks the decadence of the library and the efficiency of the kitchen. Peeta thinks this may be the one room in the house that was truly President Snow's. The one area that wasn't for show.
There's a large, black, leather chair placed front and center before a viewing screen and Peeta takes a seat. The remote is still on the arm of the chair where he imagines the president left it and, after a moment of thought, he hits play.
Peeta has seen films before—ones he and his classmates had to watch while he was in school. Ones about the Districts' responsibility to Panem and the courage of their land's fearless leader—but what comes onto the screen is nothing like that. It’s nothing about the uprising or District 13 or The Hunger Games. It’s about a little girl in a boarding school with a dead mother and a father at war.
When it’s over, he stares at the empty screen. Peeta’s never seen anything like it.
For the next week, all he does is watch movies, sometimes three or four of them a day. Ones that make him laugh, ones that scare him, ones that make his heart hurt. The room has been his secret for less than a month when he reaches over for a new movie and picks up something in a clear case only labeled with a neat, handwritten date. Peeta turns it over in his hands, shrugs and puts it in the player.
There's nothing but static for over two minutes and just when he's about to change the disk, a familiar room appears on screen. One with a stainless steel table, a door with no handle, and a concrete floor with a drain at its center.
He feels nothing at first, simply stares uncomprehendingly at the screen when the camera moves a little to the right and a naked, gagged girl comes into the shot. He goes limp, drops the remote as fear makes itself at home in his chest.
Even with her face down, even with the freshly shaved head, he recognizes her.
Peeta feels his vision begin to waver around the edges, realizes he's holding his breath, that he's going to pass out if he doesn't breathe and forces himself to inhale. In the video, Johanna's chin is against her chest but when someone offscreen laughs, she raises her bruised face in defiance. Peeta knows the man behind the camera as their head behavioral modifier.
After being taken, Enobaria had disappeared almost immediately and he hadn't been particularly interested in the Avoxes they'd brought along, but the man had loved Peeta and Johanna. After a session one day—when they were torn and weak and broken—he'd told them why. He said it was because they were young and they were beautiful and they were strong and they were disposable.
He'd said those were his favorite kinds of people.
A voice on the screen says, "Bring him in," and it drags Peeta from his memories. He knows what's coming but he's frozen, can't move an inch as he watches his own nude body being dragged into frame. He's limp as they pull him up onto one knee and tie his wrists above his head next to Johanna. He touches his left knee reflexively. They'd taken his artificial leg as soon as he was captured and he'd been forced to balance on his good one for hours. Even though his knee had healed, it still pains him sometimes.
There's no time stamp on the recorder but he recognizes the fuzzy, pained, yet empty look in his eyes.
Tracker Jacker venom.
This is when they were in the process of hijacking him.
He reaches blindly for the remote, remembers that he dropped it and cuts the power source instead. He goes to the piles of movies, quickly skims each tower for more disks and finds another… and another and another and Peeta thinks he may do something stupid if he doesn't get out of that room right now. He tears through the door and down the short, steep stairway leading to the second floor. He stops at Dr. Aurelius' office for a moment before heading further down the hallway and knocking on another.
She answers it after the second knock, looking annoyed in a tank top and panties with a toothbrush in her right hand. "Yeah?"
Peeta doesn't answer or ask permission to enter Johanna's room, just pushes past her—ignoring her startled, "Hey!"—and slides the disk into her player, hits play.
He feels rather than sees her tense up on the side of him when the both of them appear on screen. Their torturer moves into the shot and pulls Peeta's head back by his hair. The man had liked to make sure his captives lasted as long as possible and would send them for full body polishes after particularly brutal sessions. The Peeta on screen looks totally healthy if not completely sane.
The man runs his thumb across Peeta's forehead and chin, over the lids of both eyes and his bottom lip before pulling away and walking out of the shot.
"Untie them," the man whose name they never learned orders, and Peeta feels like he's there again. As if the nausea and the fear and the hate and the sweat are all as real now as they were then. He quickly presses stop and is surprised when he reaches up and feels tears running down his face. Peeta can't remember the last time he cried but he's sure that, if he wanted to find out, all he'd need to do was press play.
Johanna's shove is completely unexpected and pushes him back a step or two. He feels someone else's ideas force themselves to surface of his mind. kill her, they order. She's a threat they say but he counts back from 10 intead, just like the Dr. taught him. Takes deep breathes until he is calm.
"What did you do that for?!" she screams.
"You shouldn't watch…" Peeta trails off before continuing with more force. "We don't need to see what happened to us when we remember it well enough."
"Then why would you show me at all?"
He has no answer for that, or he does, but it's not a good one. It’s a weak, selfish one so he doesn’t say it. He shakes his head and starts to pace instead. Stops and stares at her before asking, "Why would he have this?!"
"What?" Johanna asks sharply, hands on hips, but he doesn't take her biting tone to heart. He can see her shaking. "If you're surprised he probably jerked off watching what they did to us then you haven't been paying attention."
"Johanna—"
"Move, Peeta," she orders but he ignores it.
"No," he says, practically begging. "Don't watch it!"
"Don't tell me what to do," she growls. "If you don't want to see it, go wait outside."
"Johanna—!"
"Get out!"
A part of him says to stay. That he shouldn't leave her alone. Shouldn't let her watch those tapes but he knows continuing this conversation will lead them nowhere and Peeta's not strong enough, or crazy enough, or self-loathing enough to stick it out for her. He walks into the hallway, quietly shuts the door behind himself and leans against the wall to wait.
He can hear it when she starts the tape and all Peeta wants to do is run. To get away from the evidence of what they went through but he makes himself stay put. Covers his ears and squeezes his eyes shut instead.
Peeta can't watch it with her, but he'll be here when she's through.
-
It feels like he's been out here forever when she finally steps through the door. He drops his hands to his sides and studies her, asks, “You’re okay?”
It’s a dumb question but he needs to say something. She nods, yes, but she’s too calm, too stiff and blank-faced for him to actually believe it. He doesn't call her on it."Where did you find these?"
He leads Johanna up to the room, wordlessly pushes the dresser the rest of the way from the entrance and ushers her in. The first thing she does is shove the recliner in front of the door behind them before getting to her knees and going through each pile of cases slowly. Methodically searches each one, and finds four more discs in clear cases marked only with a date. That’s eight all together. Hours and hours of their torture saved for posterity.
She exits the room as if he isn’t there and Peeta follows her back down the two flights of stairs and out the back door. It's freezing outside, and the wind makes it feel even colder, but even though neither of them are wearing a coat—and she’s still in a tank and panties—they don’t notice the chill. The pile of brush and debris the staff burns once a month is settled in one corner of the garden and Johanna tosses the discs onto it. He stays put as she disappears around the corner and comes back with some lighter fluid and a box of matches. She holds each of them out to him.
"Choose."
They'll get in trouble for this. They'll be watched and analyzed and interrogated over it when all Peeta really wants is to be left alone. Knowing all of that, he still reaches for the box of matches. She gives a sharp nod before dousing the pile with lighter fluid and Peeta strikes the match.
It feels like he's moving in stop motion when he throws it onto the pile. As if he's in one of the old black and white movies he found in Snow's secret room. He's so disconnected from the act itself that the sudden whoosh and heat of the fire they started surprises him.
"Do you think anyone else saw those?" he asks, unaware that the thought had even crossed his mind until the question had been asked.
She shrugs. "Most likely, but they'll never admit it now. It'll be okay," Johanna mutters more to herself than to him. "Soon enough, we'll forget any of this ever even happened."
The thought of that should be comforting but it scares him instead. This is all he has—the fear and the uncertainty and the pain—and it's his. He doesn't want to give it up.
"No," he declares. "I don't want to forget what they did. They tortured us, Johanna!" He can barely keep himself from screaming. "They…" the rest of his sentence gets stuck in the back of his throat, too clogged with heavy words like ruin and blood and shame for him to say. But he doesn't need to. She knows. "Doesn't it bother you that they're out there?" he asks instead. "That some of the people who did this to us are running around free and clear?"
Her face tightens, then cracks right before his eyes. She turns to face away from him and he wants to reach for her but the sentiment wouldn't be appreciated. He pretends like he doesn't see instead.
"It's not fair but I've been a victor longer than you have, Peeta. Believe me, you'll get used to it being that way. Just be happy we're the last ones who'll have to deal with it."
They don’t speak again and the burning plastic smells caustic but neither of them moves to leave. They stay to make sure the tapes burn.
-
The day after they're released from 24-hour supervision, Johanna's gone. He can't blame her. Peeta would leave too if he had anywhere else to go.
-
"She sent him away, you know. Your competition… He's gone."
Johanna's always come and gone from the mansion as she pleased and it's been two weeks since their last meeting but he doesn't smile when he turns and meets her gaze. "Gale?"
Her mouth does something then that's a cross between a sneer and a smirk. "No, Haymitch."
"When?" he asks. Ignoring the snark in her response.
"Forever ago. No one told you about what he did? About what happened with Prim?"
Peeta swallows. "I know about Prim. I don't know what he has to do with it though."
Then Johanna tells him the story of an idea, an idea that birthed a bomb and killed a kid sister and a maybe romance in the process. Peeta doesn't say anything afterward and Johanna looks a little disappointed.
"You don't look very happy."
"What's there to be happy about?"
"Katniss, of course," she says flatly. "Now you can have her all to yourself."
"I didn't want it like that."
"Who cares how you wanted it? It's here. Now what are you going to do about it?"
Peeta takes a breath before looking away. "Nothing."
"What did you just say?"
"I said I'm not going to do anything about it." Peeta mutters as he turns back to face Johanna, resolved.
"So after everything you've done you're just… giving up?!"
"Maybe I'm finally listening to her," he replies flatly. Katniss has never claimed to love him. To want to be with him in the same way he's made it known that he wants to be with her. He doesn't want to go back to the way it was. To loving someone who always had backup waiting in the wings.
Johanna stares at him before shaking her head. "No, that's not it," she says with certainty. "I know you."
"No you don't," Peeta declares with just as much confidence.
"Oh," she responds with force. "Yes I do."
"I don't think—".
She grabs his face between her hands. "I. Know. You. I was there. I heard you scream and beg and laugh like a psycho and fight and cry. I heard you try to bargain, I heard you blubbering for them to stop and I know you resisted so much sometimes that they had to beat you within an inch of your life to make you take it."
He's shaking. He can feel the fine tremor of it just beneath the surface of his skin but he doesn't acknowledge it and neither does she. "I know you, Peeta. You know me, too."
She softens her hold, and then does something that startles him so much he doesn't react.
She kisses him.
She leans into his chest, slants chapped lips over his own and it’s awkward and wonderful and scary. No one has touched him in a long time. They’ve been too afraid. That thought breaks the spell. Peeta grabs her forearms gently and pushes her away, his eyes wide with surprise.
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I wanted to."
Peeta's immediate response is disbelief but there are no cameras here. No one watching with bated breath and open wallets. There's no reason for subterfuge and she looks so soft and small when she says it, so much like a girl that he's an inch away from telling her things he doesn't mean and doing something he'll likely regret.
"Johanna…"
"Look, Peeta. I don't have any ulterior motives. I just… I wanted to see."
It's exactly what he's always wanted to hear, if not from the person he's always wanted to hear it from. How can he say no? So he doesn't even try, he kisses her again. Pulls her up onto her tiptoes and crushes her to him until he meets her at knees, hips, and breast. Peeta's kissed a few girls before, even fooled around with one or two, but he's afraid. Too many things have happened between now and then for him not to be.
He takes a breath and licks his lips. "We could—"
"Here's what you're going to do," she orders as if he hasn't spoken at all. "You're going to start going to your therapy sessions, you're going to do whatever it takes for Dr. Aurelius to believe you're better, then you're going to go home—"
"Hold on—"
"—you're going to go see her because we both know she's too stupid to make the first move."
"What about…"
"What?"
He barely avoids saying us. "This."
"What about it?" Her voice sounds so different than it did before, so cold, that he lets her go and takes a step back.
"We don't love each other, Peeta. I think we could, I mean, you want Katniss so you obviously like difficult women, but it wouldn't be the same would it?"
As much as he sometimes wishes that weren't true—he thinks of scripted moments in a dark, dank cave. Of wanting things it seems like he'll never have—she's right, it wouldn't be. He stays quiet and she laughs bitterly.
"You know why she sent him away, right?" Johanna goes on. "They're too much alike, too dark. Girls like her need sweetness."
Peeta turns that word over in his mind. Sweetness. She means he's gentle when she describes him that way. That he's good. Once upon a time, Peeta would've said that description was accurate. He wouldn't say that anymore. Not after what he's done and he says so.
"We did what we had to do to survive. You think you're the only one? Katniss has killed too!"
But she doesn't know what it's like to feel your knuckles crack against someone's jaw, Peeta thinks. To wrap your hands around their throat, to feel them struggle for their life beneath you and to just. Keep. Squeezing (tighter and tighter and tighter…) She doesn't know that when you slide a blade across someone's throat, their skin separates as easy as a zipper being pulled down. She doesn't know just how hot blood is when it comes directly from the source. He feels himself getting lost in it again. In that feeling of gut twisting horror and is barely able to pull himself free.
They've both killed, but it's not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.
"She didn't choose me, Johanna," he whispers instead, because nobody wants to hear that other stuff and he's the last one who'd want to say it.
"But she didn't send you away either."
Peeta thinks he's in a sorry state when that's all it takes to give him hope.
-
It takes a long time for Dr. Aurelius to let him leave and—when he finally does—Peeta thinks it has more to do with the old man being tired then with Peeta being well. That's okay; he'll take what he can get.
-
Peeta decides he can think of his love for Katniss in one of two ways.
He can believe that it's destroyed his life. That it's made sharp and pointy edges of places that were once smooth and round. That it's humiliated him, made him feel used. That it's broken something vital, hollowed him out, made him desperate and hateful but he can't remember if that's The Capitol talking or his own mind and that's just another loss he adds to the growing pile.
He can also believe that it's made him stronger. That it's—she's—the only reason he didn't die when they had him. When they cut him and shocked him and touched him. When they made him watch as they did the same to the others. When they made him join in.
Peeta Mellark steps onto the train platform on the outskirts of District 12 and decides the answer doesn't have to be one or the other. That it can be a mixture of both. That just because his love for her hurts, doesn't mean it's not worth the pain.