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Sometimes, Peeta still wakes from nightmares. He knows Katniss does, too.
Dr. Aurelius assures him – and Katniss too – that this is normal. In her letters and visits, Annie confides that she feels much the same, that her nightmares cover a wide array of horrors. He knows better than to ask Johanna or Haymitch, but he has his own private suspicions.
It’s been years since he’s stepped foot in an Arena – years since the last Arena was destroyed. At first, he’d naively hoped that the nightmares would stop with Katniss by his side. Eventually, he’d reasoned, it would sink in that Katniss was safe. That they were safe. That Katniss was here.
It turns out that the mind doesn’t quite work that way.
And now, on top of losing Katniss, his nightmares have added something new.
He asks Delly after the second nightmare like this, because she’s the only person he feels like he can ask. “You remember my mother,” he says in a roundabout way. Her daughter is in school, and her husband is at work, so she’s stopped by the bakery to say hello.
“Yes,” Delly says slowly. “I remember your mother.”
Maybe it’s unfair of him to ask Delly, who never has an unkind word to say to anyone. But she knew, back when it was happening. Everyone he was friends with knew. Hell, he thinks all of the merchant kids probably knew, at least on some level.
It was hardly as if anyone thought his dad was the one giving him black eyes, and his brothers never went for his face.
“Do you think…” He trails off, unable to finish the sentence.
“Do I think what?” she asks gently. Delly is always gentle.
Maybe she’s not the best person to ask about this, after all. “I won’t end up like her, right?”
He sees the surprise flash across her face before she purses her lips in an uncharacteristic frown. “Peeta, you’re one of the best people I know. If – if you and Katniss do decide to have children…” – because everyone knows that’s a big if – “I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful father. You’re nothing like your mother.”
It’s the closest he ever hears Delly get to speaking ill about someone.
He doesn’t tell her about the episodes he still has, where he has to grip the back of a chair until it passes, and how that terrifies him, so he thanks her and they return to talking about nothing of consequence.
The concerns still weigh on him.
He asks Haymitch, who rolls his eyes and tells him he worries too much.
He writes to Annie, who tells him that she can’t relate – how could she? – but she’s sympathetic, and for what it’s worth, she thinks Peeta would be a good father if he and Katniss decide to choose that path. He feels guilty that Annie has to do this without Finnick; he doesn’t know how he’d go on without Katniss.
So in the end, he has no choice but to ask Katniss.
He waits until they’re in bed, after they’ve had sex. It’s not that he’s planned it that way, but he has a difficult time saying no when Katniss wants to be with him, and maybe he’s grateful for the extra time. That’s not a crime. It’s not anything he should feel guilty over.
“Katniss,” he says softly.
“Yeah?”
He has a brief moment of panic. It took enough effort to convince Katniss that they were safe enough to risk this. Will this just make her change her mind?
But she’s his wife – his partner – and he can’t hide this fear from her. (That’s Annie’s advice coming through, but Peeta has to admit that it makes sense.)
“Do you think I’m anything like my mother? That I could be anything like my mother?”
She props herself up to meet his gaze. “Absolutely not,” she says firmly.
“With my episodes?”
“You never hurt me.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“Right out of the Capitol. Peeta, that was years ago. And for what it’s worth, I tried to kill you first.”
It’s a joke, a dark one, meant to alleviate his anxiety. It doesn’t work. “You’re an adult. You know me. You know what it looks like when I’m about to have an episode. Our baby… they’re not going to know that.”
“Peeta,” she says. “You’re not your mother. You’re kind, and gentle, and good.”
He doesn’t feel good. He’s killed people, and maybe that was necessary for his survival – for Katniss’s survival – or in the haze of a brainwashed episode courtesy of the Capitol (and Katniss insists that he can’t blame himself for that), but it doesn’t make those people any less dead.
Evidently, she can read his thoughts, or close enough to it, because she kisses him. “I know you better than anyone. You’re a wonderful person, and I don’t deserve you. I could never deserve you.”
“That’s bullshit,” he says softly.
“Haymitch and I talk about it all the time, actually. How you’re too good for me.” There’s a touch of irony to her voice, but he doesn’t doubt that she’s serious.
“Katniss…”
“I know. You’ve loved me ever since we were five years old. Love isn’t about deserving it. You’ve killed people. I know, Peeta. That’s part of why you’re too good for me.” She kisses him again. “You could never be anything like her,” she says in such a tone that he knows she’s thinking about the bread.
After all these years.
“We’re going to have to tell our kids about the Games eventually. It’s not like they don’t teach about it in school now. Isn’t Delly’s daughter already asking about it? I remember you were telling her about how you got your prosthetic leg. You made me sound much more heroic in that story than I actually was, by the way.”
He’s too stuck on one word she said to focus on the time he told Delly’s daughter about his prosthetic, or correct Katniss about her heroism. “Kids? Plural?” he repeats. He’s had all of his hopes set on one.
“Well,” Katniss says softly. “Let’s see how this one goes. But you’re going to be a wonderful father. You wouldn’t be this worried about it otherwise.”
Maybe she has a point. He starts to relax, just a little bit.
She kisses him yet again. “Get some sleep. I’m here.”
And when he wakes up from another nightmare, he finds her sound asleep in his arms. Maybe everything will work out just fine.
All he can do is his best, and he knows Katniss knows that, too. Maybe together, their best will be enough.