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There's something beautiful about not being entirely whole, Katniss decides while she sits in a supply closet, hoping that the thin white door can shield her from her responsibilities.
She certainly isn't whole. Not in the slightest.
The games hold a part of her heart hostage. The death of her father and every single day she worried about having enough to eat chipped away at the small thing. The rescue and the losses and the pain and the fear. Her heart isn't whole anymore.
But maybe the small, little, shriveled thing has never been hers. . Maybe it has always belonged to a boy who smells of bread and cinnamon and ash; a boy who smiles even when the world is burning around her. A boy who can kiss like the world is ending. A boy who, hopefully, still loves her after everything. Small heart and all.
Her hand fits in his, the space between his fingers the size of hers and their palms lining in a comical way. Small and calloused against large and softly burned.
Her head lays perfectly in the gap between his shoulder and his head. His golden curls tickle her ear and jaw and, for once, she feels safe enough to fall asleep beside him.
Someone along the sick journey they shared, he became her safe haven. The place where she can rest, even if it was tragedy that brought them together.
There has to be something beautiful in there, Katniss thinks to herself. It has to be beautiful because what else can it be? Tragic?
Tragedy sells well, but so does beautiful. Romance sells and horror sells.
Everything is an ink-dripped story if you make it tragic enough. If you make it beautiful enough, watching through rose glasses, maybe you can cry enough to feel better again.
Three sharp knocks on the supply closet door, the last one a hesitation after the first two.
"I'm not coming out!" She yells back, curling into herself as if she's young and small and innocent again.
"I think you might want to this time around." Haymitch replies. She can almost hear the grin on his face, the slight smirk hiding the fear.
"Are they-" Katniss doesn't finish her thought, just in case she's wrong.
"They're back." Haymitch confirms.
Katniss sucks in a breath quickly and jumps up on unsteady feet. She pulls at the supply closet door, which takes too long to open. She swings it open and comes face to face with Haymitch, who smiles.
He pats her shoulder. "At least we know how to get you out of there, now." He teases.
Kayniss scowls, anger flooding her beating heart, thump, thump, crack. "That isn't funny. Don't joke about this." She growls at Haymitch and shoves his hand away.
Haymitch shrugs with a small frown on his face. "If I don't joke, what will I do instead?"
Hunt. Paint. Drink. Maybe he does have a point.
Katniss sighs, bouncing up and down on her toes absentmindedly. "Just- very well. Where are they?" She questions impatiently.
Haymitch nods. "They were by the hovercrafts. Should be near the hospital wing soon. They brought him in first, I think." He tells her.
Katniss doesn't, can't, wait. Instead, she begins to sprint down the corridor at maximum speed, heart pounding bitterly against her chest.
Haymitch calls after her, Katniss pausing at the end of the corridor to hear his words of, hopefully, wisdom.
"Sweetheart, be careful with your boy, okay? We don't know what they did to him or-" He exhales and rubs her temple. Katniss stays watching, bouncing ever the while. "Be easy on him."
Katniss nods her head, up and down like a lame bobblehead that the Capitol sometimes produces of the Victors, then rushes off again.
Thump.
The corridor is empty enough. Just Finnick running beside her, hands knotted with rope and eyes dull with worry that used to spike in pain.
They exchange a look, one of understanding of the bitter thing they call their heart and one of pain for each other because all they can feel is never for themselves. Always for others.
Thump.
Finnick collides with Annie, and suddenly he's whole again. Arms wrapped around her trail body and tears moulding together, words fuddled over each other. They kiss, a promise of forever. Something Kayniss can never find herself to give. Not forever. Not even a day. Never.
Johanna keeps pushing away from the nurses, a dark scowl marking her face, etched in stone like long ago laws that dreamed of immortality. Long forgotten morality.
Katniss meets Gale's eyes and it feels like she might explode. Emotions rush through her, veins filled, with regret being the most prevelant one. So much happened between them. A chasm of lost opportunities. So much left between them, so many memories left in the past, ready to he forgotten. Maybe it's for the best that they turn away from each other after one second without even a stiff greeting or awkward gratitude. Maybe they were always destined to break.
Katniss continues down the corridor. Step after step, one at a time. Any more and she gets overwhelmed at the enormity of it all. He's so close, he has to be, but he feels so far away. A world away, perhaps.
She needs him, Katniss realises to the pitter-patter of her heart. She needs him like the tides need the moon. Like the roses need people fawning over them. Like the world needs to spin. Like the sun needs innocent children, how the monsters also need them too. How the darkness feeds on hearts so unlike hers.
Crack.
And then she sees him.
The world doesn't right itself.
Katniss doesn't feel whole. She feels hollow, like something inexplicably important is missing from her. Her heart. Maybe her heart's finally done everyone a favour and died off.
This is what happens to those Katniss Everdeen loves. This is the result of her devotion, a powerful poison, stronger than the berries that tied them together. This is her fault.
Peeta sits on a hospital bed, looking around with wild eyes. Like a cornered animal. Scared and alone. His pale skin is covered in bruises, some yellowing but most a fresh blossom purple. He's small, so skinny. Nothing but bones and no muscle.
His prothstetic is off and the exposed skin is chaffed and an even worse mess of scar tissue than it was before.
And his hand.
The bones jut out at awkward angles, all out of place and twisted awfully. It's covered on bruises and thin lashes run the length, one on top of each other. His wrist is hardly more than a twig surrounded by scarred flesh, warped and an angered red.
"Peeta." The word, his name, escapes without Katniss realizing. Maybe it's because the heart will want what it wants, but the words are a wish upon her lips. They resonate with a staccato in her chest, drip after drip.
Her name on his lips is an exhale, one of pain, but it feels like a blessing to her.
Thump.
Thump.
"Katniss."
She can't help but run to him.
When she gets to him, Katniss pauses. So much of him is injured and she doesn't want to, can't, make it worse. The last thing she wants to do if hurt Peeta, even if somehow that's all she ends up doing, like some twisted destiny.
Tears fall down Peeta's bruised cheeks, almost silver in the harsh hospital lighting. Drip-drop. Katniss reaches out and runs a finger over his jaw, catching the tear drops on the pad of her index finger.
Peeta flinches away from her touch, even as soft as it is. "You're not real." He tells her, voice quavering.
Katniss swallows the lump in her throat. "Of course I'm real, Peeta." She whispers to him. "Listen, I'm here, see?"
She places a hand on his cheek, what was meant to be an action of peace, docile and friendly, careful.
He screams, a lung-ripping noise that feels like a dagger to her heart, tearing flesh away and exposing her for what she truly is.
"Peeta, it's me! Katniss!" She tells him, scrambling as he thrashes around on the bed, hitting himself with weak fists.
"Liar! Liar!" He cries back.
The doctors and nurses push past Katniss, and for a moment she feel invisible. Forgotten as they yell instructions to each other in medical terms she doesn't understand.
She understands the determination in their eyes, the frantic way they love. She understands tragedy. She understands pain and heartbreak and how it isn't the triumphs that define you, it's the fire who carves you. That's what makes you who you are. Tragedy.
There's something beautiful somewhere in that. There has to be.
"Katniss, it's best if you leave." Someone whispers. Peeta is still screaming in his dagger hoarse voice and Katniss can't focus. Not when he's in pain. "Katniss?"
She turns to face Prim, who's face is one of concern for her older sister.
Katniss can feel herself shaking as she takes Prim's hand in her own. "Why isn't he happy to see me?" She asks quietly.
Prim shakes her head, not quite an answer. "We're not sure. Katniss, it's mostly to be expected-"
"You knew this would happen?" Katniss interrupts, words tearing from her throat frantically.
"Not this exactly." Prim amends. "But Peeta's been tortured and we can't expect him to be the same, okay? Katniss, you want to help him. I know that. But currently, we need you out of the room so we can assess his physical and mental state, okay? Is that going to be okay? This is all to help Peeta." She promises.
Liar, Liar.
Thump, thump, crack.
Where's the beauty in this?
Katniss nods. She doesn't trust herself to talk, just to put one foot in front of the other and somehow keep walking. So she does exactly that, away from Peeta. To help him, she tells the bubble of guilt in her abdomen.
To help him.
She waits for him by the window, watching as the doctors and nurses finally subdue him and begin bandaging his wounds, applying creams and setting up IVs.
"I finally understand why people used to stay and watch when Mamma had patients." Katniss says to no one in particular. Perhaps Prim, who stands beside her. Perhaps to Peeta, who can't hear her. Perhaps to the world, as if there was anyone who would ever believe her words.
"There's no other option. You have to watch because if you don't, what if that's the last moment you had with them? You can't live with yourself if you never got to say goodbye. How can you live with yourself then." She whispers. Not exactly a question, since there is no answer.
Prim sighs. "Peeta's going to be okay-"
Liar, Liar.
"He's stable, Katniss. We're not loosing him." Prim promises firmly.
Liar, Liar.
When Katniss doesn't reply, too tightly wound to think about talking again, another sigh escapes Prim's lips. "Katniss, it's meal time. I think we should head to the cafeteria."
"I'm staying with him." Katniss jabs in, leaning closer to the window as though, physically, she is drawn to Peeta. Like a moth to light. Like the monsters and sun to young children. Like roses and death.
"You also need to eat."
She also needs him, but Katniss can't bring herself to say that. She shakes her head instead.
"I'll stay here. Watch over him." She insists. She needs to feel whole. She needs that feeling of rightness that has to come with Peeta. If he doesn't make her feel whole, who else will? Who else could possibly love her, aside from the boy with eyes like the sky and a heart of gold?
Prim nods curtly. "Okay. I'll get you some food. You still need to eat." She reminds her.
Of course Katniss needs to eat. Her stomach rumbles with hunger, uncontainable and irrationally strong. She needs food like she needs to feel the groves of Peeta's palm under her finger, like she needs to see his golden eyelashes flutter open to reveal azulean eyes. She needs him like the sand needs the ocean. Like the tides need the moon. Like he needs her, she needs him. That's how the world works.
She needs him, he needs her. Isn't that beautiful. Two people perfectly crafted for each other, imperfect and broken. Stone carved figures with cracked scars like lines on a treasure map. Beautiful and tragic. A story waiting to be told.
"Can I see him?" Katniss asks a nurse, while Prim is getting food.
The nurse bites her lip. "I'm not sure." She replies hesitantly, looking back at Peeta's hospital room and the closed door.
"I'm his fiance. Wife, basically." Katniss reminds her. The words sound hollow in her ears. Bones of a child who grew up too quickly. Slight and fragile. Easily broken. Brittle like hope
Liar, Liar.
She isn't his fiance. She isn't technically his, not properly, not officially. But she is his, somewhere along the way she became his everything and he became hers. With no other options, who else, besides the woods and flowers, would ever love her?
The nurse sighs wearily. "I'm aware. Listen, I'll go back in and ask him, alright? If he refuses, then I will have to ask you to leave. If he says yes, you can visit until visiting hours end. Does that sound fair?" She offers with a slight shrug.
"Of course." Katniss answers breathlessly. The idea of seeing Peeta, of feeling his hand on hers, makes her lungs hollow out. It sweeps her off her feet. It dances with her, leading her on until reality comes crashing back in. Waves against cliffs. Tides and the moon. So beautiful. So tragic.
The nurse re enters Peeta's hospital room, and the door swings closed again. It's silent, which Katniss takes as a good sign. No screaming. No yelling, so hopefully that was a one time thing.
Hopefully he'll let her in, let her break down their walls brick by brick, together as limbs blend into one under the harsh hospital light. She wants him in a way she's never wanted before. She needs him in a way that feels so familiar and yet so foreign.
She needs him.
She loves him. Tragically and beautifully, she's in love with Peeta Mellark and she can't escape it.
It feels like drowning in the gentlest way possible. Suffocating and heavy, it hangs on her heart like an anchor, keeping her grounded. It keeps her feet down flat against the hospital tiles. It is love that keeps her small heart beating. It is because of Peeta that her veins are filled with a song of hope and not destruction.
It isn't just love for Peeta.
It is love for a country she is at war for. It is love for a future she was never promised. It is love for children all across Panem who need her.
It is love that keeps Katniss down on the ground. It is love that lets her soar. A mockingjay. A songbird, free at last. A proper bird, not just a symbol to be used.
Katniss jumps when the nurse quickly exits Peeta's room. She raises one eyebrow at the nurse , a silent question she's too afraid to voice out loud.
The nurse smiles. "He said that you're more than welcome to come in. Plus, he's sorry for his outburst earlier."
The corners of Katniss' mouth dip down. "He doesn't need to apologise." She says in a small voice. "He was scared, and I understand that."
"Of course he doesn't." The nurse says with a sad smile, hazel eyes slightly teary. "His words not mine. But he'll be glad to see you. Kept asking us, over and over again, if you were actually real."
Katniss swallows the lump in her throat at the vivid image that springs up in he head like a jack rabbit. "What did Snow do to him?" She wonders out loud.
The nurse, Mya- her silvered name tag reads, chuckles bitterly. "I can give you a full run down of what we know, or what our guesses are, but I doubt you want to hear it. Plus, patient confidentiality." She rubs her temple and looks at Katniss, dead on the eye, almost green meeting sharp molten metal. "I can't wait for this war to be over."
Neither can Katniss, but she just nods her head. She wants it to be over and she wants those she cares about to be safe. She wants the fighting to stop, but a twisted part of her still wants revenge. She wants to be the one to drive the blade home into Snow's chest, to watch the blood dribble down his paper-white chest. She wants to make the kill. She wants to be the one to end it. She wants to be a jabberjay, not a mockingjay.
She enters the hospital room, not silent enough to scare Peeta, making sure that he's aware of her presence.
He's lying on the hospital bed, slight sat up and supported by a multitude of pale pillows. His wounds are bandaged, though the rugged bruises peek through everywhere. A feeding tube runs along his cheek and into his nose, taped off with medical adhesive. He's still all bones, but he looks better, Katniss decides. Plus, he isn't screaming.
"Peeta." She whispers, the words nothing more than a whisper in the wind, a three note whistle tune.
He looks at her with sad eyes, blue eyes that hurt like blood and feel like drowning. They're beautiful and they're tragic.
His voice is nothing more than an exhale, tired and hoarse from screaming for someone to help, but she can't help but love them.
"Katniss. I'm sorry."
She shakes her head with more determination than she's every felt in her whole life. "Don't apologise. You have nothing to apologise for. This isn't your fault."
Peeta shrugs slightly. "It isn't yours either." He offers.
Katniss lets out a tinny laugh, fake like the Capitol. "Of course. Right. Somehow, when anything good happens, I am the catalyst. I'm the mockingjay. I inspire freedom and hope, but when something bad happens? Not my fault. I couldn't help it. I am the mockingjay, bringer of justice, yet I can't be held accountable? Where's the justice in that?" She asks.
Peeta flinches then looks down at his hands, one heavily bandaged and the other just thin.
"I'm sorry." Katniss says. She means it from the bottom of her heart, with all the power left in it after all the years. She means it, finally.
Peeta seems to crumble, spine collapsing and curling in on himself. His breath hitches and for a strange second, Katniss thinks he's laughing.
He looks up at her with tear-stained eyes. "Please. Promise me you're real. Promise me that this isn't just a dream."
"I promise. I'm real. You're not dreaming. You're safe." She tells him. She wants to cross over the line she's mentally drawn. Katniss wants to step over and feel Peeta against her, know that he's real and she's real and they're both safe, if just for a second or two until reality comes in swinging.
"I-" Peeta begins, then looks down shamefully. "It's stupid, but I want to know that you're real. Can I-"
He doesn't finish the question. He doesn't have to. Katniss knows, instinctually, pluck of a fiddle string, what he wants because she wants it too. Needs it. Needs it like roses need attention, the moon needs odes, the sun needs monsters. Beauty needs tragedy.
She moves forward in a quick motion, and slowly, giving Peeta enough time to object, reaches her hand out. It meets his cheek.
Electric.
Instant crackle of passion, a familiar feeling running through Katniss's bones. Down her body and back to where she connects with Peeta. Hand against cheek. Olive against pale. Love against love.
They are the sparks to a fire, beautiful and burning. They are alive in all of the ugly ways, for better or for worse. They are real and the tragedy is real. The sad thing is, Katniss would never have it any other way.
All of the heartbreak, she'd do it again just for this moment, hearts beating in tandem.
Thump, thump, click.
It is a steady tune, Katniss thinks as she closes her eyes. It is a lullaby, a three whistle tune that screams of revolution and whispers of love. It is everything.
She can fall asleep next to him. Vunerable, that is what she feels. Every part of her on display, no holding back. Anyone could hurt her.
He doesn't.
He leans into her touch and smiles softly.
They are messy and ugly, so incomplete. Nothing about them is whole. Unlovable hearts trying so desperately to reach out, on the same wavelength.
They are in it together, though. Through the beauty and the tragedy, they have each other. And that shall be enough.
(Sparks start and burn, burn until nothing is left, bar them. Just them, imperfect and catalysts for ruination. To the end, they have each other. Scarred and messy. Ugly and unlovable and entirely alone in the ashes of their world.)