Archive of Our Own

0.6

It’s slow going, Peeta’s return. He flinches more, head always on a swivel. Not unlike me, I suppose. Still, I hate the uneasiness. I hate that he feels like this, that this world has turned to gnashing teeth for him as well. That all the sounds and lights can press up against him. He don’t want to leave his own room, not often. We sit, talk, lay down together. Sometimes even that is too much, and he will screw his eyes shut, bury his head in his hands to hide from it all. “This is silly,” he sighs, shaking his head, “I don’t even know… I  don’t even know what got me worked up in the first place.”

“Mmm. Think it’d really matter?” This earns me a glare. “That sounds awful. I just mean, would it be any better to be able to pick at all of it, or just accept that sometimes you get sad out of nowhere now? Between the…well, between everything that happened, I feel like you’ve earned the right to be sad sometimes.”

“Being sad is worthless though. It don’t solve anything.” He blinks hard a few times, scrubs roughly at his face. 

I reach over for his hand “Maybe not. But sometimes letting yourself be sad helps.”

He scoffs. He’s not blowing me off, I know. It’s just that advice like this always sounds pointless in the moment. I hide us a little more, pulling the blanket up to block out the light. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

He starts to say no, nothing , but then. “Can you sing? I mean. Would you mind singin?” 

Would I mind? For him I would do anything, over and over again. “Of course. Any requests?”

He shakes his head. “Anything. Everything.” 

So I do. I start one song, blending into another, over and over, letting the lyrics fragment and create something new, because so few of the full songs I know I want to be reminded of right now. Peeta laughs softly when I pause. “Mockingjay singing. Mockingjays do that. Real or not real?”

“I guess they do. Real.”

“That’s your job title now? The Mockingjay?”

I blanch. “Yep. That’s what Coin wants me to be. I only agreed on the condition you’d be rescued.”

He takes a moment with that. “Mockingjays aren’t…they’re peaceful, right? Just songbirds?”

“I mean, in the grand scheme of things, yeah. They don’t hurt anything, they’re just. Little mistakes. Birds with generational trauma, I guess.”

We both laugh at that. We’ve been picking at the seams of our upbringings, slowly making sense of the senseless. Lots of hand holding and crying and reassurance. Peeta has a lot of complicated emotions about his mother. I would too. I do, actually, have complicated emotions about my mother. She don’t seem well too pleased about the ways I’m spending time with Peeta. Whatever. I’m not risking his recovery just because she thinks it’s improper. I guess that means I would choose him over her, just like she chose my father over her parents. I just hope it doesn’t come to that; that she doesn’t make me do that. But she might.

“I just need to get over it.” He squeezes my hand. “I’ll be fine. Promise.” 

The days stretch and shrink in such odd ways, like rubber, like the maple syrup candy I used to make with my dad, crushing us together and snapping us apart. I’m needed, elsewhere, not by his side and it is agony, agony of the highest order. Too many bad memories smear up around us when we’re apart. He always looks worse for the wear when I come and find him again. Because he goes missing sometimes. Just up and wanders off, and people let this happen. For whatever reason. Because he goes absent, because he’s grieving, and because now he is considered not a priority.

“He’s too weak.” Coin says one day and I nearly send my pen through her eye. “To be a love interest.” She elaborates, even though everyone shoots her a look to shut it, because I keep clicking this pen, and I keep looking at her, and they know, they all know, that no one gets anything from me unless they can protect Peeta and she’s done a real shitty job of it. 

“That’s too damn bad. I love him. That should be the only qualification, right?”

“It won’t read…it won’t read as well if he can’t join you on missions” she sighs, exasperated.

“If you think I’m going on a mission without him, you’re dumber than a sack of pickaxes. And if you think I’ll let him go into war, then you’re even dumber’n that.” My tone is flat and dead but my eyes are anything but. I stare, grey into grey. Scowl meeting scowl. “I just got him back. We ain’t goin nowhere.”

She says something, but I’m done. That was the end of the sentence, and the slamming of the door behind me should clue her in. At any rate no one follows. 

I get to play hide and seek now. I walk heavily(for me anyway) so I don’t scare him. I walk with heavy footsteps and humming, sometimes singing(never whistling) so he knows I’m coming before I’m there. These are things we had to learn together. He didn’t remember much of anything when he first came back, not of the…events or his life before. Memories come back and he doesn’t get to pick which ones. To remember how to mix paint to match my eyes he has to remember the time he murmured it to keep his head on straight while they were beating him. To remember how to bake he must remember burnt fingers. To remember the bread he gave me he must remember the blow he earned for it. Memory ain’t a line, ain’t a roll of film you can cut clips and phrases out of and reorder any way you like. It’s a web; snap one thread and it all collapses. Mend it back and every thread comes back with it. Well, not every thread, not every time. There’s holes in this web, much more lace than tapestry now. That’s okay. We can fix it, or work around it, or work through it. There’s always something can be done. If I can just find him today. 

He isn’t anywhere he’s supposed to be, not therapy, not the kitchens, not in a meeting. Nowhere. I swallow hard, forcing myself not to just run and scream for him. My face prickles in shame at the first time I did that, when he first started working in the kitchens. The look on his face, his eyes, vast and frozen, the tension that scraped over us. One more thing to add to the ever lengthening list of things I’ll never forgive myself for. I turn to my old room, ready to just collapse on the bed and have a good cry, resume my search in a moment, and there he is. Scrambling out from under the bed, face red. “Hi.”

Relief floods over me but it’s short-lived, because I can’t get a read on what he’s feeling. He won’t show me. His whole face is wiped clean. “Hi.” My voice is brighter than it should be. I chew at my cheek and breathe, shifting in my boots slightly. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. 

“Real dusty under there. Don’t you ever clean?” He’s teasing but his voice is hard. The air around us feels thinner, and all I can focus on is the roaring silence between us.

“Been sleeping with you, silly. Don’t you remember?” What if he doesn’t remember? 

His face crinkles, takes on that lost look and I feel my heart fall out of my chest. “Now, when you say sleeping…”

“Sorry to disappoint, honey. We’re just sleeping.”

“Like we did on the train. Real or not real?” He’s pacing, as well as one can in these tiny little bunkers. He paces and paces and then stops, right in front of the window, facing away from me. 

“Yeah. Just like the train. Just sharin’ beds.” I walk over to him, looking at the tiny shard of sky. “Is this okay?”

He nods, almost imperceptively. “Yeah. And good. I mean. Not. Just. If we were doin’ more and I forgot…” He shakes his head. “Lost where that sentence was goin’.”

I lean against him, tracing my fingers over his heart, feeling the canvas of his jumpsuit all the way into my hand. “It’s okay, I can follow.” 

“ Katniss” he groans, eyes falling closed.

“What?”

“That’s sensitive.”

“I know. It’s why I do it.”

“No, it.” He groans. “It’s. Sensitive. You know. Like.” He turns bright red, clears his throat. The air around us gets tighter, warmer.

“I know.” I look into his eyes, heart racing.

“Oh.”

There’s a beat. Two. Four. Eight. 

“ Katniss.”

“What?”

“You can’t just say things like that and.”

“Why not?” I smile, continue stroking, nuzzling.

“ Because. It ain’t. It’s.”

“Sensitive. I know. It’s on purpose , Peeta. I’m trying to flirt with you. I’m trying to come on to you. I want you.” My voice is chewed-nail ragged. 

“What, now?” His eyes go wide, flitting around the room. 

“Maybe not in my mother and sister’s room.” I smirk. “But yeah. Eventually. I’m patient.” I’m not. I want him now. I wanted him on the beach, even if I didn’t know it just yet. But I don’t want to hurt him or scare him. There’s things he remembers that he doesn’t tell me. There’s unlabeled flinches and jumps, things I do that remind him too much of something, somewhere, done to him. I don’t want to think about that too hard. About why he can’t tell me what happened. Why he doesn’t trust me all the way. So he gets to make the decisions, all the firsts get to be when he decides. I can wait. I’ll be keyed up the whole time but I can wait.

“Can I ask you something?” I change the subject once it’s made obvious he doesn’t want to continue this line of thought. 

“Course” His eyes furrow, as if surprised I even had to ask.

“Why were you under” His eyes flash. I clear my throat and try again. “What happened?”

He shakes his head and sighs. “Got scared. I was in the kitchen and-” He stops himself. “Anyway. I had to take off.”

I grimace. “I should’ve been there”

He rolls his eyes again. “Katniss, you cain’t always be here to fight things inside my own head.”

“Cain’t I? How would we know? I haven’t been allowed to try.” 

It gets better, and it gets worse. The work picks up for both of us, and Peeta often spends hours reading and rereading, writing and rewriting his speeches for the propos. 

“They’ll turn out great.” I say, perched on our bed, wrapped up in scratchy blankets. 

“They won’t turn out at all if I don’t finish them.” He groans, running his hands through his hair, sending it sticking up. They’d just recently trimmed it. Apparently the curls didn’t read well on screen, made him look too innocent, not serious enough for war. Too childish, even. Hmm, you think? Almost like he is a child. Almost like that’s the point. I think to myself. It all rubs me the wrong way, scratching at me like velcro. 

I tug at a random strand of my own, picking any split or broken ends. “You will. Oh, maybe Delly could help. Or Prim.”

“Or you.” He says, half under his breath. 

“Oh, you don’t want me helpin’.” I laugh. “You shoulda seen me when I first got here, trying to come up with little ad-libs.”

He flinches, grips his pencil, but then eases. I focus on breathing and watching, breathing and watching, seeing if something happens. He hasn’t had an actual episode in a while, just these, just where he freezes. “Yeah” he says, voice flat and too still. “Yeah I should’ve.”

And now I realize how cruel I’d sounded. How careless and thoughtless my words were. “I’m sorry, I didn’t. I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, I know. And I ain’t blamin’ you. It was innocent enough.” He blinks a few times, but the tension is still in his shoulders.

“Come on. Come to bed. Let it rest a bit.” I plead, because the focus scares me. This ain’t the careful intensity he gets while drawing. It looks like he’s tearing his brain apart. “You’ll stress yourself out.”

He sighs again, that oh so familiar sigh that tells me I just don’t get it, but sure, he’ll humor me. “Alright. After this paragraph.”

 There’s times where we laugh together at lunch. There are times he grips the table, gritting his teeth. His eyes go frozen, Stygian blue, and I’ve since learned to announce before I touch him. Like calming a spooked horse. I’ll take spooked over rabid. “It’s okay.” I whisper. “I’m gonna pet your shoulder.” Touch is a language that doesn’t need as much translation. It slots in easier, no ulterior motives, long as I keep it light and chaste. Every time I think of why that must be, my brain flips in on itself, the wave of frigid revulsion crashing over me, leaving me choking on the salt. A younger, stupider, more insistent version of myself would plead with him to tell me why, to tell me what I need to do to fix it. But there ain’t any use in pushing. He’ll open up when he wants to. If he ever wants to. And I can’t fix it. 

That’s been one of the hardest things to accept. I can’t fix it. I can’t snap my fingers and make it better. Bad as I want it to be so, true love can’t conquer all. I ain’t a good enough kisser to fix torture. 

On the days he’s less red and blue, on the days his eyes shift back to cloudless summer sky, it really is a sight to behold. He laughs more freely than he ever did before, warmth radiating from every word, light pouring from him as if he swallowed up the sun. These are days we almost forget everything around us, all the gray dissolving, when both of us see the colors of our friends. Sea green, bronze and gold, mahogany. We all laugh in major keys, even when the subjects turn dark. It helps, weirdly. 

Peeta manages to draw Annie out of that endless sea she lives in, gets her to talk to the rest of us instead of just muttering to Finnick, and the smile on Finnick’s face etches somewhere deep in my heart, ready to trace over for the bad days, the less even days, the days where we’re too filled up with blue. When Peeta screams how he wishes he was dead. “Knew I restarted your heart for a reason.” Finnick says one day at lunch, after a joke sends water from Annie’s nose.

Annie smiles and Finnick beams even more, and I’ve misjudged him once again. I thought Finnick was the sun in their relationship, Annie the moon, circling him. It’s the opposite. She’s the sun, and he only shines when she does. 

“Yeah, I was glad to have you” she says, “you made summer camp more fun.” Her eyes burn, her smile turning dark, and I have to bite back my shock. I don’t understand how she can joke like that. But it doesn’t rattle Finnick and it sends Johanna and Peeta into riotous laughter.

“Anytime, Annie. Though if it’s all the same, think I’ll just do it the once.” Peeta says with a bite of turnip.

“Ah, come on now, where’s yer sense of adventure?” Johanna brandishes her own bite of turnip. 

“Dead and buried somewhere out back behind the Training Center.” Peeta says, in an affect even flatter than mine. “Probably bein’ used as compost for roses”

I always keep quiet during these. This catharsis, this chelation between the three of them. Finnick too. Ain’t no sense in trying to relate to things we can’t. Eventually they will turn it back into something we can talk about too, but till then, we are there as audience members.

Annie looks back up from her imaginary scrawling on the table. “So, what’s the plans for today? Do you two have to go play soldier?”

“Mmm.” Finnick hums. “I think so, but I also think we could play hooky. Whatcha think, Katniss?”

“Well.” I start. These times were blocked out to hunt with Gale. Something that mysteriously isn’t happening anymore. He doesn’t even sit with us anymore, spending all his time in that bunker with Beetee. “I mean, I guess I can try and see if all y’all can go outside. I cain’t be makin’ no promises though.”

“Maybe if we have enough leverage” Finnick looks around. “Think if we have you, me, and Prim saying it’s necessary? For the mental wellbeing of the whole group or whatever?”

“Why just y’all?” Peeta furrows his brow. “Why can’t we ask too?”

“See, Peeta, you have to understand. We’re mentally ill now. We can’t possibly know what’s good for us.” Annie says with a toss of her head, voice spread thick with sarcasm. 

“Of course.” He rolls his eyes. “Silly me. I forgot.”

“Get used to it. If this sticks, I mean. People will always treat you differently, always second guess.” Annie says a little more seriously this time. 

0.7

By some miracle, it works. There's, of course, camera crews. A propo, or more likely a series of them, called something like We Do Heal or something else equally as eye rollingly false sincere, is scheduled and planned instead of whatever mission we were going to go on. Apparently with enough cajoling, Plutarch convinced Coin into seeing the value in us playing in grass instead of playing with guns. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. Laying in the grass, just breathing in fresh air. Annie and Finnick are running, frolicking like baby goats. Johanna is right up against the treeline. Peeta is squinting tight, though slowly opening his eyes, just looking around. I pluck a blade of grass.

“What color is this? How do you mix this color?” It’s become a game as much as real or not real has. Gets his brain thinking about something simple. 

He takes it and stares at it. “Mmm. Black, like a carbon black. Cad yellow. Maybe a bit of yellow ochre too? It’s more of a sagey green instead of emerald, so adding blue would be too blue.”

I smile. Blue. “How would you paint your eyes? What blue is that?” 

He blushes. “I’ve never painted my eyes, so I dunno. You’re getting pretty good at it. You tell me.”

“Me? I ain’t no artist.”

“Yes you are, Katniss. I can tell. Go ahead, tell me what color my eyes are.”

“I don’t know the way all them fancy colors mix though. I cain’t hold them in my mind like you do.” I grumble, but lean up to look. “Your eyes are like the sky. But somehow more blue than that. Like if you could take the night sky and mix it just with white. They’re” I falter on the fancy names, can’t tell if it’s Prussian or ultramarine or pthalo or whatever else, so I run through everything blue I can think of. “They’re chicory in the morning when you wake up. They’re forget-me-not when you’re happy. They’re blue moon phlox when you’re talking about something that you’re passionate about. Sometimes they’re more bluebell or blue sage, especially when you concentrate. They get darker when you’re angry, or when you’re sad. It’s how I can tell what’s going on even before you say something. Your eyes tell me first.”

He blinks several times, looks up at me. “You don’t like looking people in the eye, real or not real?”

I turn the question over in my mind. “Real. Ish. It’s not that I don’t like it, it just. It’s too much. Feels too intimate or something.” I’m still looking in his eyes. Only his eyes. “Almost like kissing.”

He smiles small. “That makes sense. That’s how I’ve always felt, when you look into my eyes. Like you can see the inside of my head.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t look me in the eyes, you stare . You… gaze. You fix your eyes on mine and hardly blink. Like you’re studying me.”

I laugh, break away, chew at my nails. Hearing myself described is…embarrassing isn’t the right word, but. How he just gets me, how he can talk about me. How he’s noticed things I don’t even know about myself. It’s very revealing. I feel naked, exposed, and I have to cover back up, just a bit while I talk about it. “I am, a little bit. I have to. It takes me so long to know people sometimes. I feel like everyone else got a head start, like everyone else speaks a different language, and I have to translate it, except I ain’t the best translator and things fall through the cracks. So I have to study harder than anyone else. You know me so well, so easily. You see right through how I make myself out in public, just cut through any mask I’ve set up, and it.” I swallow. “It’s astonishing, and mesmerizing, and I feel like I’ve gotta catch up. I’ve gotta study you back. You’ve always had all these hidden worlds in you and I wanna be the one to discover it all.”

The way he’s looking at me is unreadable, completely unreadable, which ain’t helping the situation. This thing I’ve never told anyone, that I didn’t know I needed to tell anyone, that I didn’t even know was different about me for so long…and he’s just laying there, face shifting softly like the clouds. I screw my eyes tight before picking at my braid, feeling once again that barrier slam up around me. That thing that separates me from everyone else, even him. A fat tear falls on my knee. 

“Hey…hey, what is it? What’s wrong? What happened?” I’m being scooped up into his arms before I know it, and I’m just shaking my head. Even the scent of him isn’t enough to smooth over all this, this ragged edge of me. “You can tell me. Promise.” He whispers in my hair.

“I can’t. There ain’t words for it.” And there ain’t. It’s swirling and spinning around in my head and I can’t grasp a single word to pin down and hold onto long enough to say it. Tears stream down silently and I just bury my face in his chest, lip quivering. 

“Shhhhh. It’s okay.” He rocks us slowly. “I’ve got you. I’m here. I love you. Every day you do something and I swear I love you more.” When I can stand it I look back up at him, and there it is. There’s a smile. I smile back, roughly and all smeared. “So I didn’t say anything wrong?”

“What? No, no.” He kisses my forehead, crushing me into his chest again. “God no. Why would you think that?”

“Because, I. And then.” I groan at myself. Why can’t I just say things ? “I didn’t know what you were thinking, and you were so quiet . I thought…I thought maybe you thought I was creepy or something. I don’t know.”

He shakes his head. “No. I was just thinkin bout what you said is all. How I’ve wanted to figure you out my whole life, and how no one ever really wanted to know me.” He kisses my forehead again. “No one except you.”

I reach up to kiss him properly. Deeply. Slowly. He lays back in the grass and I don’t stop kissing, even though I know there’s cameras. It don’t matter. We can taste each other's smiles. It doesn’t bother me as much, now, with the cameras, not since we’ve been staying together. Not since we’ve had dozens of kisses no one’s ever seen. 

It does still bother me, but not as much.

Our outings, like all things, come to an end. We are to be serious soldiers now, trained up for a fight I’m not sure I want to fight anymore. My ire has cooled, for the moment, and all I feel is stuck or pushed around, affixed and reaffixed so many times I’m getting fuzzy, like old Velcro. The chattering, planning, talking talking talking picks at me. Coin talks. Plutarch talks. The commanders talk. Gale talks.  Everyone wants and orders and demands and looks at me and I can’t take it anymore. I snap somewhere, somewhere grey or green or anemic tangerine, and I don’t know how I get there but I’m in a hidey hole of ventilation, roaring air and dust motes and grey grey grey until. Until there is blue. “You found me this time? How’d you do that?”

He rolls chicory and high noon eyes. Warm. So warm. “I think I know you well enough to find you now. Closest thing we have around here to a tree or rushing water.”

“I’d’ve hoped I was more original” I tease, and he laughs too. It echoes across his face and across time almost, to the boy with a heart of gold he used to be, before all this. 

“I wouldn’t. I like that you have patterns. Everything loops back together for you. People think you’re so unpredictable but it’s cos they ain’t paying attention. Which is a really good thing” he says as raises his arms, reaching for me like a stray kitten that’s got itself too far up a tree. “If they did, they’d be able to fake you real easily.”

I slide into his arms as the world opens up a little. I watch his smile spread, the rising sun of him dawning across his face, casting light all around us. It makes it easier to take everything in, including all the chewed bits of my nails as they catch at his jumpsuit. The thrumming of my own heart, a half beat off the fan. Taking a slow breath into his neck(even though he no longer smells like cinnamon) helps open up the world, slides some walls down without making everything too rough and raw. “So they made a bad copy?” I catch myself asking. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t have. My heart wrenches as I watch him fracture.

He licks over his teeth, nice and slow. He breathes very slowly, and eyes widen and narrow. He’s fighting something silently, the only clue is the microscopic shifts in degrees of blue, the tiniest of flinches, no stronger than a hummingbird’s wing beat. He swallows around something, shivers, and seems to be done with it. Whatever happened behind thalassic eyes is gone now. “Yes. They made a bad copy.” He kisses my forehead. “A very bad copy. But you don’t need to worry about that.”

I stare back into his eyes. “Will you ever tell me?”

“ No .” He says, serious as a heart attack, an oath so strong I flinch. “No. You don’t need to worry about that. I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Do what to me?” I haven’t dropped my gaze. I see each eyelash, each freckle in his eye. I feel my jaw set. 

“Give you more details. More prompts for future nightmares. I ain’t so naive to know you already do, that your mind must race in fear of what could’ve been done to me, but right now, all of that is possibility , not reality.” He clears his throat. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve told the doctors. But you don’t need to know.”

I feel as if I’ve just been slapped. The side of my face almost burns, and I catch my hand raising up to cover my mouth. “Out of everyone to keep secrets from me, I didn’t think you’d be it. I never imagined that.” Fat tears roll down my cheeks and I push my way out of his arms. Another tear falls when he doesn’t fight to keep me there. When he lets me go. 

“They’re not secrets” his voice is smooth but there’s an edge. It’s trained, responding with no emotion like that. That way you weren’t punished for having an ‘emotional outburst’. I recognize it well, even though I hardly ever manage to control such outbursts. “They’re not secrets,” he repeats. “I just refuse to put those images in your head.” 

“But.” I try and organize the static in my head, this buzzing and bouncing around like a hive. To get some of these raging thoughts into words. “I want to know. I want to help.”

“It isn’t going to help if you know.” He says more evenly, harder this time though. “Please, don’t ask again.” 

I don’t.

0.8

There’s haze up between us now. Touches are shrugged off, jokes are hummed at, not laughed at, and I’m so afraid I’ve lost him that I shut back down too. I see it all too late, the way I’m nothing but body and over sensitive skin. A collection of nerves that gets passed around when all I want to do is sit and scream till my throat gives out. But it’s all smoke in my head. Nothing can condense down into words, nothing can flow, it is hot, burning, acrid smoke in myself and I cannot make anything bloom. 

I try. I try so hard, but it’s like trying to turn coal to diamonds with a vise grip. I can press and press and press but I just end up shattered, with bleeding hands and a dirty face. The breaking point is him asking for space. Suggesting maybe we not sleep together tonight. I let my feet lead, gears turning automatically. I expect to land near my mother’s room. I end up somewhere else. I don’t even have the wherewithal to care where. 

“If you keep thinkin’ that loud your head will explode, sweetheart.” Haymitch leans against the wall next to me. “Coal-penny for your thoughts?”

I roll my eyes, sigh, and feel the world bloom in front of me again. Metal and concrete and vents slush together like stained snow. So much of everything that was faded into nothingness peeks out but I’m ultimately treated to more nothingness. This nothingness has texture, at least, so I’ll go with it. “It’s nothing.”

“Now, look, kid, don’t just go blowing me off.”

“No, I mean.” I press my head into my hands, then gesture to all this cluttered emptiness, this ever changing sameness, this roaring silence. “There’s nothing. It’s nothing. He’s. And I’m nothing.” I bite the edge of my sleeve to keep from shredding my cheeks, stare blankly as I slide down the wall. 

I can feel a hand grip at my shoulder; it’s my only clue that Haymitch didn’t leave. I can’t hold too much in my brain. Every thought slips away, right in front of glazed eyes. “Hey now. That boy loves you. He just don’t know how to show it.”

Joy’s ghost ripples through me as I roll my eyes. “Haymitch, that’s what you say to battered women. When their husband’s too rich to run away from. I ain’t battered.”

“No, guess not. I just. Damn it, girl. I just mean he’s.”

“He went through something.” I spit. Anger was always easier for me to pull forward. “I know. I get it. I just.”

“What? Want to hold his hand while he cries and colors?” He scoffs. “Look. It ain’t gonna be easy. Ever again. If Prim and your mother hadn’t seen it, would you talk about the Games?” He says slowly, like I myself am slow. Maybe I am now. Maybe all that head trauma made my whole brain hot mush, and it only took till now to realize it. It would explain the feeling. 

I look up, a fraction. “Why do you gotta be right about shit? It’s annoying.”

“Yeah, well.” He pulls me into a hug, and even though I’m a little caught off guard I stay there. Let him hold me like I’m his little girl. “When you’ve lived this long past your expiration date you pick up on shit.”

I laugh a little. 

He strokes the top of my head. “Just because it’s gonna be different don’t mean he ain’t worth it. Right?”

I mumble in agreement.

“What did you say, sweetheart? I couldn’t hear you.” He glares, though the effect is ruined by his smile.

“Ugh. I said ‘right.’ God, you’re impossible.”

“Yep. I know I am. Good thing, too, or we’d all be dead.” 

Flickers of the old fire flash in me again. Sometimes I can almost feel like a person again, instead of a collection of vapors. I play my part, I do my job. I keep out of his way, and stay where he puts me, next to him and apart from him. Two bodies under sheets, not touching. It’s a holding pattern, no variations.

So, when it’s time for us all to be called once again into Coin’s war room a few days later, it completely takes me by surprise. “What?”

“With all due respect, Madam President” Haymitch says, voice sliding over the room thick and slimy, like too much margarine on toast. Fake. Artificial. “I cain’t for the life of me figure out why you’d send the symbols of revolution on the front lines.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Plutarch’s voice rumbles with some strange shade of merriment. “It’s the best publicity. Our favorite rebels, taking down the government, ripping apart the Capitol bit by bit. It has a very” he flourishes his hand “dramatic quality to it, does it not?”

“Yeah well drama and ratings ain’t exactly my concern here.” Haymitch grumbles. “Look, Annie, Jo, Finnick, y’all can do whatever y’all choose. Y’all are grown. I wouldn’t, but it ain’t for me to say.” He swivels around and points at Peeta and me. “These two. These two are still kids.”

“Not in Thirteen.” Coin says, voice as cold and precise as ice.

“They ain’t from here, they’re from Twelve. Hell they should still be in high school. Worried about test scores.” Haymitch scoffs. “Whatever. Ain’t like I really get a say, ain’t that right?”

Plutarch tries to take the lead, cut through all the burning steel glares glancing off everyone. “Now, I can assure you, this is just for the propos. None of you will be in active duty, not truly. We’re just going to look like we will be.”

I’ve just barely paid attention, letting everyone’s words wash over me, waves on some distant shore. “But there’s still a chance we could get hurt?”

Plutarch laughs. So does Coin. They both fucking laugh in our faces. “Of course! Did you assume the Capitol would be fighting this with toys? I assure you though, we should be able to keep you mostly safe.”

Hmm. Something about that feels an awful like wishing the odds are in our favor. Looking around at Annie, at Finnick, at Johanna, they know it too. 

“So when do we ship out?”

“End of the month, I think would be best. After the wedding.”

Peeta stiffens next to me, and even though I do too, I resent him for it. Do I want to be married right this second, here , for television most likely? Of fucking course not. Still he stiffened . He. He’s kept me distant and now he stiffens in fear at the idea of marrying me and I know, I know. Believe me, I fucking get it. Shoe is on the other foot. I could’ve had this all along. I’m the reason we’re in this situation. I know. Don’t make me wanna stomp my feet and pout any less.

 “Oh!” Plutarch huffs a boisterous laugh that goes thin at the edges with breathlessness. “Not you two. Oh goodness no. Not to worry. Annie and Finnick want to get married. It’ll be their wedding.”

My eyes don’t flick over to the happy couple. I’m looking at Peeta, measuring his reactions. He smiles big, warm, but shallow. “Congratulations, you two.” 

I grit my teeth and sink against the chair, swallow against a smoldering ember. Fighting between being helpful and pouting. I sigh. Helpful wins out. I even look between everyone, barely hearing the internal countdown to make sure I get it right. “You should do the cake, Peeta. They were beautiful.” I turn more to Finnick and Annie. “Seriously. The things he can do with frosting.”

I only just barely catch him say it. “Final defense of the dying.” He says it like the next line of a song, automatic, maybe not even really realizing he’s saying it. I feel that little ember glow a little stronger. 

Finnick chuckles softly. He must remember it too. It’s easy to forget that almost every moment I’ve spent with Peeta was broadcast to the whole country. That all these clever little one liners he said aren’t just between us. Little inside jokes that we didn’t get to keep inside. “I hope you’ll make it prettier than your camouflage.” Finnick continues. “Or your paintings. They’re beautiful but they’re scary.”

Peeta laughs, a veneer cracks. He closes his eyes and remembers and laughs again in a major key. “Most things are both, you know.”

Finnick pulls Annie to him dramatically, kissing the top of her head. “Don’t we all know it.” It throws the rest of the adults for a bit of a loop, because they don’t know Annie. She makes plenty sure of it. The more and more I know her myself I’m certain she could’ve won even without being the fastest swimmer. No one decent wins the Games. Except for Peeta. 

They laugh again and I feel left out of the joke, because I’m not pulled close. I’m not playfully nudged. “So are we done here? Can we leave?” That same rush of roaring silence, everyone’s fractured expectations swarm around me and I have to leave. I push myself away and do what I have become so incredibly good at. I run and hide. I run and hide under my own bed, rubbing the pearl against my lips, both wishing for him to find me and wishing I could just stay here forever.

When a flash of blonde flips over the bed my heart jumps into my mouth. But it isn’t him. It’s Prim. “You know, Buttercup’s gonna fight you for that spot. Far as he’s concerned that’s his.”

“Mmm.” I say and go back to tracing over the outline of my lips, let the feeling vibrate all the way into my skin.

“What’re you doing?” She says, sighing. Great, now I am being huffed at by my little sister too.

“Meditating. It’s good for your brain or somethin’. But it needs quiet.”

“You want me to leave?” She raises an eyebrow.

“…No. You can stay.” I don’t really want her to, but I’m not in the habit of shoving her away.

“Good.” She lays on top of the bed, in silence. I can feel it on my skin. I let it stretch on as long as I can.

“ Prim .”

“What? You said you wanted quiet, well I’m bein’ quiet.”

I sigh. “Didn’t think you’d actually listen.”

“So what is it you want then?” 

What do I want? Him. I want him before all this. And I can’t ever get it back. And it’s so unbelievably selfish to even think that because of course he’d want to be fixed too. That’s the only thing he wanted. He wanted to still be Peeta . He would’ve died rather than let this happen. And I’m keeping him here, because I don’t want to let go of him.

“He’s still in there. He’s still the boy that gave you bread.” It’s only when Prim answers that I realize I’ve been saying it all out loud, instead of just babbling in my head. “Might not feel like it some days, but he’s still there.”

I shake my head. “He wouldn’t run from me before.”

“Well, yes he did. Right after the first Games he did. Didn’t talk to you for weeks, right?”

Guilt hits my chest. “Yeah, s’pose you got me there.” 

“So he needs a break. He’ll come around. You’ll see.”

But I don’t want a break. 

.9

He spends longer in the kitchens and longer at the desk in our room, his nose in his binder for speeches, bouncing his leg and muttering formulations. He draws cake designs in the margins of future speeches. I’m trying not to hover over, but I want to watch. I want to be involved. I want to be asked. I never ask if he wants any help with anything. He never asks for help. He just mutters to himself and then crawls into the bed, pressed up as far against the wall as possible. He flinches if I touch so I don’t touch. And nothing in me wants to sing again. Is this how everything happens? Fires rage but slowly choke to death. Was this all too soon? Was it all too much? Did we chew through all our allotted time together on television, and now we’re just smoldering together, next to each other but apart? Or are we already ashes, cold, done, waiting to be swept away? I’m choking next to him and I cannot bear it a second longer. “Alright. Fine.”

“Fine, what?” He asks the wall. I have to close my eyes and breathe not to scream. 

“Just fine. I’m going to sleep in my room.” I throw off the sheets, covering his face with them. 

I hear him push them off but I don’t look over. I just shove my feet in my boots. 

“Fine.” He says eventually.

“Fine” I say right back, because I want the last word. I always do. This was my decision, it damn well needs to feel like it was. I walk out, careful not to let the door slam. I want to shake the whole bunker but that’s childish behavior, and besides, I’m not overly fond of loud noises to begin with. Not worth it just to get a thrill. 

I know I’m overreacting. I know I’m not being fair. I know I’m making things harder for myself, for him. For everyone, for all the pretty little war plans everyone has. That, in the grand scheme of things, I shouldn't be worried about all this. We are still young, after all. Presumably, if all of us make it through this, we all have time. Time to go other places, meet new people.

 I love him. I love him so much my bones burn from it. It is all I think about, day after day. Maybe that’s not enough. I open the door and slide into my old bed, displacing an angry cat. Fine. I suppose I’ll sleep completely alone. I hate Buttercup anyway. I press my face into the small grey pillow and wait to be dragged into oblivion. 

I don’t get so lucky. Nightmares come, but since there’s no strong arms next to me, nothing to keep me company, they play out, uninterrupted. I’m laying face down in a dried up lake bed, being eaten alive by tracker jackers. One by one they sting and then bite. Everything melts in woozy ways for what seems like hours before a crack as loud as lightning thuds through me and I’m dragged to the upper theater, to watch my own body from above. But it’s not me. It’s him, in the lake bed, or more accurately by the creek. Leg rotting, flesh sliding off his femur like well roasted meat. Then the mutts come in, start ripping him apart. Then the doctors hacking off parts of him, filling him up with glowing yellow liquid. I watch him die, over and over again, hear his cannon boom over and over again, except it’s not some horrible thing my subconscious cooked up. It’s real. It’s all the ways he’s almost died.

The last scene is in some white room, stained red, with peacekeepers standing over him. He looks at me as he spits his teeth out, recoiling from a jaw shattering blow from the peacekeeper’s baton. “I told you. You don’t wanna know.” 

When I come to, my head aches so badly it’s as if I was the one that was hit. I rub at my neck, feel the bones crack, the tendons sliding over my windpipe. It only chases the pain lower, so I stretch my shoulders, working on the years of knots, move to my hands, then right along my spine, but it’s of no use. I’m restless. Thin early morning light streams in one unbroken shaft from the window. The only way to get the tension out is to get out . Out of bed, out of this room. Out of here.  

I stand up on the desk. This could be a bad idea.

I pull myself up onto the windowsill. What’s gonna happen when they catch me?

I slide onto the ground, crawling on my belly, just like sneaking under the fence back home. I’m the Mockingjay. They won’t do anything. 

It’s a moment where I feel a piece of me looking back at myself. Now what? I don’t have a bow. I don’t even have a knife. I’m in what basically amounts to pajamas, barefoot, with dew soaking each pant leg. It’s also freezing. My teeth clack together. I walk a little while longer anyway. Pay attention to the golden mist instead of the grass sticking to my feet. Each second brings more light. My eyes sweep across the scrubby little grass patch, into the woods. A breeze blows wet and cold and. Wait a second? Did I? I could’ve sworn I just saw—no. I know better’n that. These might not be the same exact woods as back home, but they’re connected. “ If you see something in the woods, no you didn’t. If you see someone in the trees, no you didn’t.” It’s the first rule my daddy ever taught me about hunting. That there’s far more out here than mountain lions and deer. I exhale, watching as my breath puffs frozen above me. Yep, time to go back in.

Slipping back in is more difficult than it was crawling out. I land a little too hard and cringe, waiting to see if Prim or my mother stirs. Nothing. I crawl back into my bed and stay awake till morning.

The nightmares get worse. I knew they would.  I lose myself again, even when I can feel the little flicks of blue looking over at me. I’m wiped clean, a body with nothing in it. As tasteless as boiled turnip mash. Everyone is excited, everyone is chattering. The wedding is coming up. Someone else’s mouth promises Annie my dress, and I can only just hear Peeta promise Finnick one of his suits. They’re talking about alterations. That it’ll have to be taken in at the shoulders, maybe they can do something with the hem, make the legs longer. They’ll need to take padding out of mine, padding Annie doesn’t really need, but I can’t say it. I stare barely blinking at my cup of water, just listening. No, hearing. Just hearing. Listening would imply something was soaking in. Everything is sliding off. 

I blink and the wedding is here. I have a (non-alcoholic) drink pressed in my hand, my hair in loose curls. I suppose I look good. I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror enough to really know for sure. I can’t even look myself in the eye. I drain my juice and take a walk. God, what I wouldn’t do for all those patios in the Capitol. All those little places to slip away and collect oneself. I need a rooftop. And a bottle of wine. And a boy. 

He outdid himself, I’ll have to give him that. The cake is phenomenal. If I didn’t know him, if I didn’t know it was possible, if I’d never seen his hands create something from nothing, I’d think every shell was found. That real sand covered the bottom tier. That someone hand-carved dolphins, not just piped them. But this is what Peeta does. He creates. I stab through a starfish on my piece, take a bite that just feels like sand. He creates. And I destroy. 

I destroyed this. Whatever our this was, whatever particular situation we had entangled ourselves in. It was too soon. It was too late. I pushed him too soon. And maybe he really did love me, I think with another stab through some filigree. Maybe he loved me until he really met me. He dug to the depths of me and then decided he didn’t want me anymore. I stuff the last bits of cake in my mouth, physically incapable of throwing it away, even when that’s all I want to do. My plate clatters in a dishpan and I run out the door. 

I hit something solid, fall right onto my ass. I blink a few times. 

“Well, ain’t’cha gonna say something?” 

“Oh, he speaks.” I snarl. Peeta’s on the floor, same as me. I dust myself off, and because no matter how angry I am at him, I can’t not, I offer him a hand up. 

“Oh my god, Katniss, I’ve got it. I can get off a damned floor. ” He snaps. It takes a bit of maneuvering, but he stands up.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t” I wave my hands in the air. “Do that. Don’t think I pity you.”

He laughs. “Oh, believe me, I’ve been thoroughly disillusioned of that notion. You don’t pity nothing . Last time you did pity anything was Rue.”

Alright. Shitty time to bring that up, but if he wants to fight, here, with a wedding not 20 feet from us, I can do that. “That’s right. You know me now. You know everything. Every version of me, you’ve got up in your head. And it don’t matter anyway. Some things cain’t be fixed, I guess. So you go on. Have all your different Katnisses. Have em all, and leave me the hell alone.” 

His face twists with something, and if we ever speak again, I’m going to regret saying that for the rest of my life. Price I’m willing to pay, because he has things I’ll never forget either. Maybe we’ll get fantastically lucky and he’ll forget this in the morning. It’s only the second time I look at him I notice how dark his eye circles are. He ain’t been sleeping neither. “Is that what you want? Because for the life of me, Katniss, I can’t figure out what the hell you want.”

“Has it not been obvious? You, stupid. You. ‘Cept, apparently, I’m a shitty girlfriend. Already knew I was a shitty friend. That’s not leavin’ much left. But it’s always you.” A tear falls onto my lips. 

His eyes drop to the floor. 

I step forward.

He steps back. “Katniss, it ain’t cos you’re a bad girlfriend. That’s not the reason.”

I pinch my nose. “Then what is it? Do you not love me anymore?” My voice catches at the end, some desperate little whine I haven’t heard myself make in years, not since I was a very little girl. “Do you not even like me anymore?”

“That’s not it either.” He sighs, eyes flickering all around, scanning, scanning. “I can’t….I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t tell you.” His eyes screw shut and he flinches. Hard . Like he was struck. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen this before. I can close my eyes and see her standing over him. A ragged gasp fills the air, and I can almost be certain that that’s the same memory he’s replaying too. He didn’t get to forget that one. To remember giving me the bread, he had to remember being hit for burning it in the first place. This is what I do. I make him remember. There’s too much bad to outweigh whatever good there ever may have been.

This is an excellent time to run away. But, for whatever reason, my feet stay glued to the ground. I cannot stay. I cannot go. I am at an impasse, one I’ve been at time and time again, one I thought was solved with berries and kisses and declarations. I have moved every which way, always moving. And I can’t move anymore. I just can’t. “Do you love me?”

“What?” He genuinely seems not to be able to understand the question.

“Do you love me?” I ask again.

He shakes his head, sighs, spins on his heel. “It’s not that simple!”

“Yes it is. It is to me. If you don’t love me, then I’ll go. I’ll go to Coin, start being her good little Mockingjay, and after that…well, who knows what would happen after that, but I’ll do it alone. I can do it alone.” It ain’t the being alone. I’ve always been good on my own. “But you have to look at me and tell me that I’m utterly alone in this world. You have to tell me you don’t love me.” My voice is ratcheting ever higher, very near a shout.

He’s shaking like a leaf, tears streaming down. Pacing back and forth, a caged dog again. His eyes cycle between every shade of blue I’ve seen. When he does speak, his voice quakes. “I’m a danger , Katniss. There’s different worlds pouring in. Different versions of me, different versions of you. I don’t even know where I am. The heavens and the earth collide and I don’t know where I stand.”

Nuh-uh. Not good enough. Not enough of an excuse for me. If Annie and Finnick can do it, we can do it too. “I will tell you where you are. I will tell you what’s real and what’s not real. I will stand with you between the heavens and the earth. Do you love me?"

“Yes!” He cries, gripping my arms. “Since the moment I saw you, I loved you. And I fell in love with you again, in the hospital room.” My heart swells and I pull him closer, crushing us together. He eases us down to the floor again, settling me into my place in his chest. His thumb brushes away a tear and I rush to kiss him. “I love you. I can’t breathe when you’re away from me. I love you.”

“We can do this.” I kiss away the tears on his face, where freckles have started to bloom again. “We can do this. It’s you and me. Alright?”

He sniffles, presses his lips to mine again desperately. I don’t break, the fire that first flickered in the cave, that hunger that nearly overtook us on the beach ravages through my bones, burning so much deeper than any lack of oxygen could. It’s only when the stars prick at the corner of my eyes do I part. 

"Alright."