Work Text:
In Her Place
The air was thin. It shouldn’t have been, it should have been heavy and humid, but he could barely breathe so all the oxygen he got was emaciated. His chest was empty.
So was his stomach. His mother didn’t let him have breakfast this morning. “Just in case,” she’d said. “Why waste it?” That’s what he was to her: a waste. Another mouth to feed. Even so, there would be lunch waiting for him when he got back. If he got back.
His chances were good. Peeta hadn’t had to put his name in extra times. His family weren’t well off, but they weren’t starving, not like a lot of the people living in the Seam. Much of that was due to his mother and her strict rules.
It’s why Peeta followed them. It’s why he was alive. The sun was bright, a pale white that burned brightly around him. He stood in line, slightly shorter than the boys around him, but broader. Shoulders straighter, stronger. Every one of them looked more like a scrapper than he was.
Peeta hadn’t never been a fighter. Not in school, not in life. He’d ignored the bullies when he was younger, smaller, and once he wasn’t anymore, they had begun to ignore him right back. Everyone did. Customers, Peacekeepers, schoolmates.
Even her. Peeta peered around the line of boys to the girls side. Katniss Everdeen was stood taut and tense. Her neck was arched and Peeta held his breath as he tracked the curve of it. She had her long waves pinned up at the back of her head, like the women did.
But she wasn’t a woman. She was just a girl. Her severe expression made her look older than her years, but she was the same age as him. Except Katniss had lived harder in her sixteen years than Peeta had. At least she looked fed these days. He wasn’t sure how she was doing it, she’d nearly starved a few years ago.
She’d been worth the beating. She had been worth much more than that and Peeta had risked it all, hoping that if he fed her once, she’d come back. The feral cats always did. They gotten right friendly with him after a while. But Katniss wasn’t a lonely stray and after she’d devoured the bread he’s thrown her, he hadn’t seen her again.
Not for a long time. The next time he did, he had been delivering a cake to some Peacekeepers. It was someone’s birthday and he’d stayed up all night putting the precise details on it, making it look exactly like one of their uniforms. His mother had told him it needed to be perfect, that if he messed it up, he was out. Gone. For good.
He’d been walking slow, his arms aching as he kept the cake steady in them. It was precisely because he was taking his time that he’d seen Gale selling a couple skinny birds to one of their Peacekeepers. The money exchanged was a meager amount, a mere fraction of what his mother had been paid for the cake, but as Gale pocketed it and headed back around the building, Peeta had seen Katniss waiting on him.
She beamed as he pulled the money back out, showing it to her. Then Katniss wrapped her hand around Gale’s closed them both over the money, and tugged on his sleeve for him to follow her down the alley. Peeta’s stomach had dropped somewhere between his knees and he’d been lucky he didn’t drop the cake. When the Peacekeeper handed over the small stack of cash, Peeta had felt its bulge in his pocket all the way back to the bakery.
He felt a similar lump in his throat now. The waiting was the worst part of it. Standing here, stacked in a row, waiting to be told which of them was going to die. Peeta looked around again, wondering who he’d watch bleed out on a tv screen in just a couple of weeks. Gale was a few rows ahead of him, his height clearly marking him out. Whether it would make him a victor or a victim, Peeta didn’t know.
All he did know was Gale was looking over at Katniss, mouthing something to her that finally cracked the stony look on her face. Something cracked in him too. Right down to his core. She didn’t even see him. Even if she had looked his way, there’d be no one in his place.
Still, as the Capital representative welcomed them to the 74th Hunger Games, all Peeta could think was “Not her. Anyone but her.” He didn’t even have time to be nervous for himself with all the worry he had that Katniss Everdeen’s name would be called.
“Let’s start with the girls.”
“Not Katniss. Not her. Anyone but her.”
“Primrose,” Effie called out and Peeta released the breath he had been holding. “Everdeen!”
The blood rushed to his head so fast it hurt. His ears pricked, trying to listen for some explanation, but there were whispers around him blocking out all other sounds for a moment and then… then he heard her.
“Prim!” Katniss shouted. Her voice was panicky and shrill. Full of terror. But when Peeta looked in her place, Katniss was gone.
“Prim!” Katniss was running towards a small, blonde girl who was being led up to the stage. Peacekeepers surged forward, separating them before they reached each other. “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!”
No. Not her. She wasn’t called. But she was going. Katniss Everdeen was going to be District 12’s tribute in her sister’s place.
Her sister. There wasn’t much, but Peeta could see some family resemblance between them. The small blonde girl was ignored, left to run towards her mother, while Katniss was walked to the stage.
Peeta was numb. He couldn’t feel his legs, his hands, his heart. Katniss didn’t belong up there, she had a family who needed her, who wanted her, and Peeta… with a deep yearning, he wished he too could volunteer in her place. Let her go back to her sister. To her mother. To her life.
She had one. Peeta didn’t.
And right now, he’d give anything to be in her place.
He was so focused on her, on the look of stunned terror on her face, that he didn’t even notice Effie had reached in to pull out a boy’s name until it was called.
He was called.
All the blood ran from Peeta’s head, making his ears ring with a deafening, shrill silence.
He was dead.
He was dead before his life had even began.
He was dead before he even knew who he was supposed to be or what he was supposed to do.
Die, a voice told him. You’re going to die.
How he was walking, he didn’t know. But he was. Then he was going up a short set of stairs and standing in the stage. He looked back out into the crowd of faces and didn’t see a single one. Not until he turned his head and she was looking at him.
Katniss was looking at him dead in the eye and… she saw him. He knew it. She knew him. He was the boy who had fed her, who had kept her alive when she should have died.
And that’s when Peeta knew what he had to do. If this was to be his life, if he was going to die in a few short weeks, then he’d live how he wish he had. He’d spend every day, every moment, making sure Katniss stayed alive for as long as she could.
She looked back out into the crowd. Back at Gale. Back at her sister, then, back at him.
Peeta took a deep breath, feeling it finally fill his chest. It would be one of his last, but… that was okay. No one needed him, but… he needed her. He needed her to win. To live. And he’d do whatever it took to make that happen. Even if he had to die in her place.