In case this story looks familiar, it was originally posted last spring. I removed it for personal reasons, but recently stumbled upon it and decided to re-upload.
One week.
A labyrinth of scars. That's what he sees. That's what he's forced to look at, to glare and gawp and frown at, when he steps before a mirror. Peeta tries to avoid it. He doesn't turn on the bathroom light, or trim his ever-growing stubble, or—hell, he'll occasionally take a leak in the backyard, just to avoid that mirror.
Peeta knows he's being ridiculous. They're just scars. Just rigid threads of white amongst jagged pink. But he hates them. Not because he's superficial; he couldn't give a damn that they've marred his skin. He doesn't have anyone to impress—at least, not anymore. No, it's because they're reminders. Each scar is a souvenir of pain, of heartbreak and loss, and of her.
Then again, Peeta doesn't need an incentive to remember her.
He hates her. No, you don't. Well, he wants to hate her. He wants to blame her for what happened. She manipulated and lied and condescended. She broke him. And the sad part, the really pathetic part, the part that makes him scream and thrash and grab at his mottled skin, is that he still loves her. And he probably always will.
Peeta scoffs at their situation. Well, at his situation. Because there is no "they," no "their," and definitely no "our." Just his and hers. She'd made it perfectly clear that she wants nothing to do with him. He thought that they could be friends. He thought that she'd want to… Well, he doesn't know what he thought. But when he ventured to her house, bearing primroses to plant in Prim's honor, she'd looked at him with such scorn, such fear, as if he might rip her at the seams.
What she doesn't know, and what he's been too ashamed to mention, is that he couldn't hurt her. Sure, he still has episodes, but he also has love. A stupid, never-ending, infuriating love.
Back in the Capitol, after she'd shot Coin, he watched as she tried to swallow that pill of nightlock. And he was consumed with anger. Not because he'd wanted her dead, but because she couldn't do that to him. She couldn't leave him. Not after what he'd done to find his way back to her, digging through the recesses of his polluted mind, dismantling and re-building every memory, discovering a love that he'd believed was gone. So he stopped her. He preserved her life so that they could have a life. Together.
Once again, he'd been wrong. She didn't want him. Or the possibility of a life with him.
If he could believe in a deity—and he can't, not after… everything—Peeta would be certain that he'd angered the fates. Some merciless god must be smirking at his misery. Peeta pictures him—this unpitying god—watching, cackling, as Peeta spirals. As if it were entertainment, as if it were another game.
The uprising may be over. The smoke may have cleared. The bodies may be buried. But the repercussions—the aftershocks of grief—are far from faded. They're comfortably seated in the eyes of broken families, in the rubble of towns, and on his skin. All over his scarred, burned, irreparably ruined skin.
Sitting in his bed at night, unsleeping, he lies in a mess of sheets. He can't remember the last time that he rested. Was it two days ago? Or a week? The hours bleed into one another. The night blurs into morning and the morning quickly becomes noon.
He's been going through the motions, developing a routine at Dr. Aurelius's request. He'll bake in the morning, paint in the afternoon, stare at walls in the evening, and fail to sleep at night. The nights are the worst; it's when he can't help but think about Katniss.
Katniss.
He's been avoiding her name. Because when he does think it—or worse, say it—he can't help but do it again. And again. He'll repeat it over and over, like a perverse mantra.
Katniss. Katniss. Katniss.
It distorts as he continues. Syllables fuse together.
Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.
He tries not to think about their kisses, the moments that they shared in the Games and Quell and during the Victory Tour. He knows that they didn't mean anything. But in the still of night, it takes all of his willpower—too much willpower to forget. And far too often, he'll lose himself in the memory of her lips, a whisper against his own. Light, but unyielding. The slightest taste of licorice.
Frustrated and aroused, his hand will ghost over an erection. With increasing speed, he'll stroke and he'll grunt and he'll wish—no, he'll pretend—that it's her hand on his cock. He comes to the memory of one-sided kisses—empty kisses. And it's not surprising that when he's done, when he's cleaned up and seated himself among sweaty sheets, he, too, feels empty.
Tonight, awake and too weary to jerk off, Peeta leaves his bed. He wanders to an adjacent window and stares, as if by reflex, at her house. Her lights are on. She isn't sleeping either. He wishes he could go to her, to sit by her or look at her or something.
But he doesn't. He can't. And he knows that she won't come to him.
