After finishing my first ever fanfic last night, I've been going through an odd stage of withdrawal all afternoon, and I tried to drown my feelings in Tumblr and peppermint tea. Unfortunately, I saw this quoteon Tumblr that I see waaaaay too often and, naturally, my THG-oriented mind connected it to Peeta, and voila, a little rambling of a one-shot was produced.
(Sorry, it's a little incoherent, but oh well. Happy readings!)
The doctor had told him the same thing a million times over, until it was engrained in the front of his mind, carved into stone, permanent, and he couldn't forget the words.
She has to love herself first.
But what does that mean? That she had to start seeing the beauty in herself before he was allowed to? That she had to begin to notice every little magnificent facet of her being—every unique tick, every act, every personal element—in the way that he had always seen her before he was allowed to love her again? That she had to love herself before she could possibly deserve the love he wanted to give her?
Katniss Everdeen was broken. She was a patchwork of shattered, jagged puzzle pieces, scored with scars and burns from the rebellion. When he came back to Twelve, he was told he should give her space, because she was too unhinged and too shattered to deal with any more conflict in her already crumbling world. Greasy Sae was responsible for feeding her, and dusting, and laundry, until Katniss was up on her feet again. Until she was magically healed, as if recovery is so simple. As if damaged souls can drift to sleep one night and wake in the morning with every fissure sealed.
But Katniss's grievances were not self-repairing. She was not a starfish with a severed leg. Time does not heal all wounds. Prim was not a 'wound' that would mend itself with the passing of the seasons, with the rising and sinking of the sun. Katniss had lost every reason to persevere, every reason to trust and every reason to love.
'She has to love herself first.'
How futile.
He knew Katniss was strong, which was one of the millions of things he loved about her—although is he not allowed to do that anymore?—but she was like a puppy that had been kicked one too many times. Regardless of her capacity for strength, she was absolutely void of energy now, with no will to recover. She hardly had the drive to keep her chin up.
He saw her only once that first day—not for as long as he would've liked—when he came back to Twelve. Not outside, as she was never outside anymore, he was told. He'd walked by her empty mansion to see her perched on the windowsill, those grey eyes vacant of all emotion, those full lips that he could remember kissing when he tried hard enough pressed firmly together, olive skin pallid, translucent. Her flesh clung to every bone, her once tough frame adopting sickly, jagged edges. Bruises under her eyes. She was skeletal now, despite Sae's hearty meals.
But he still thought she was beautiful. Even in her ailing condition, she was so divine, because she was Katniss. She is Katniss And he loves her. He loves her even with her brittle hair which used to be so lush and dark, even with every scar, because they make her Katniss Everdeen, and they make her special. She may be broken, but he would always see her as a canvas: empty but brimming with potential. He wishes he could paint over her with kisses, color her in with the gentle strokes of his fingertips, and bring her to life by any means possible. He wants to love the life back into her.
But she has to love herself first.
"She'll chew you up and spit you out," Haymitch tells him the morning after he returns as they sit together in the lounge overflowing with the pungent scent of booze. "She won't be able to trust you, not after the entire world has betrayed her. She won't be able to love you until she loves herself."
And then he's had it, he's had it with that phrase, that stupid saying that even he can't decode. The world has been teeming with broken souls since the beginning of time itself, but their decaying state was never satisfactory justification to give up on them. And he will not give up on Katniss.
She does not have to love herself first. She will have to love herself, yes, eventually; by his hand, if he can help it. But not before he is allowed to love her. She may not love her own quiet resolve, or her stubborn determination, or her inability to articulate her feelings effectively, or the way she blushes whenever he stares at her for longer than five seconds, or how her jaw strains whenever she's angry, or the way her toes would intuitively curl around his when they would sleep in the same bed, but he loves those things about her, among millions of others. And he will fight his way into the grave loving the love right back into her drained systems, loving the light back into those grey eyes he could never forget, not even millions of years and pints of tracker jacker venom later. When he was taken by the Capitol, they distorted his memories of Katniss so that he believed she was using him, but they didn't think to rid him of his little perceptions of her. He remembered little more than the strangest details of her being, but it was just those details that brought him back to her in the end.
He fills his mind with all the little things he adores about her as he ventures, pushing a wheelbarrow through Twelve, the entire district crumbled and charred from the firebombing but still repairable, and he thinks that Katniss is like this, too. She is shattered and fragile but still very retrievable, and he will go to the ends of this earth to bring her back to life.
Just outside where the Hob used to be, he reaches the skirt of that hallowed meadow that Katniss used to love so much. He hardly ruminates over exactly what he's doing as his calloused fingers pry into the cold earth at the base of a flowered bush, but he exhumes it, grasping the shrub with both hands.
Katniss is not in the window when he returns to the Victor's Village, but that is alright. She's probably still asleep, he thinks. He takes a shovel from the side of Haymitch's house and carries it to hers where he pounds at the cold dirt beside the foundation. His muscles are rigid and knotted but it feels wonderful to finally use them again, for something productive, and it compels him to keep chipping away at the earth.
And suddenly he hears a voice by the front of the house. It's a voice that makes his blood swell, his stomach curl, because he knows that melodic timber anywhere. Even with the emptiness of her tone, her words are still musical. He always thought she sounded like she was singing even in monotone.
"You're back," she says.
He hasn't been this close to her in what feels like years, and the notion is both gratifying and horrifying. She appears even thinner from five feet away, her frail arms folding delicately over her chest, matted hair tumbling in front of those guarded, grey eyes. But he's silently thankful even for the suspicion in her expression, because at least it's something, some indication that her mind is still turning.
"Dr. Aurelius wouldn't let me leave the Capitol until yesterday," he tells her quietly, automatically brushing the soil from his shirt. "By the way, he said to tell you he can't keep pretending he's treating you forever. You have to pick up the phone." He thinks, He also told me to leave you be so you can 'go through the motions,' but clearly, both of us are being a little defiant.
He watches as she appraises him and assesses her in turn. Her elbows are so sharp, her cheekbones prominent; he has an immediate desire to fill her house with cheese buns until she's gained fifty pounds or so. As he looks her over, suddenly, her jaw hardens as she lifts a trembling hand to push her hair from her face, eyes flickering to the wheelbarrow full of primrose bushes at his side.
"What are you doing?" Her voice is flat, defensive.
Apologetically, he blurts, "I went to the woods this morning and dug these up. For her." For Prim. For you, too. "I thought we could plant them along the side of the house."
Those silver pools grow stale as they inspect the shrubs, and suddenly they widen, flashing with anger, and his stomach flips because he thinks he's upset her, and how is he supposed to fix her if he only shatters her more? In apology, his body wills his foot to step toward her, but then her entire face grows smooth. She quickly nods before darting back for the front door.
He's left feeling so empty and so feeble. He just wanted to remind her that not all love is lost. He thought the bushes could serve as a small token… not as something that would replace her sister, but as a symbol to prove that Prim will always be there, with Katniss, in that weak, broken heart of hers that he wants to heal.
That he will heal.
So, even after one failed attempt at reconciliation, he keeps his chin held up and tries again. Not that day, and not the next, but one morning he bakes a loaf of bread for Katniss—one with cheese jammed in small pockets, because not only does she love that kind, but because it's unhealthy and God knows Katniss is in dire need of junk food—and she surprises him by inviting him inside. She lets him cook her breakfast, and even though she doesn't eat much he rejoices in the fact that he's here and she's here and they're here, together.
Life goes on. Unlike what Dr. Aurelius wanted, Katniss doesn't learn to love herself in the immediate months after the rebellion, but Peeta does. He takes those millions of features he loved about her before it all came crumbling down and adds to them, day by day, with new things to adore her for. He loves the way she props herself up on the counter as he cleans her dishes, too wearied to help him but still willing to spend that portion of an hour with him without any reason. He loves the way she visits his house to watch him as he paints. He loves the way she asks him, every night, if he'll light a fire by the hearth, and he loves the way she lets him tuck her in a blanket before the embers, as if the flame isn't warm enough on its own.
And he loves the way she begins to unfold before him. He loves how she, during their nightly fire, will tell him of her nightmares, and ask about his. He loves how she begins to let him hold her while they talk, how she lets him untangle her braid, and rub the knots from her shoulder muscles. And most of all, he loves how, in the heart of the winter months, she begins to ask him if he can stay the night to help ward off her nightmares, and how they never spend a night apart afterward.
He incorporates his ardor for her into every deed, every action he carries, every word he speaks. Not to make her uncomfortable, but to make her see that she is beautiful and magnificent. Because she is.
As winter blossoms into spring, and then spring to summer, her chin begins to lift just a little bit higher and her eyes begin to grow just a little bit brighter. She smiles more, too. He knows she is not healed, as she may never be, but she is growing. Not only does she ask him to hold her, but she begins to lean into his embraces as well, and she doesn't let him go.
Those embraces grow longer each night, tighter by morning, and eventually they transform to kisses, and even though she doesn't say it he knows that she's beginning to feel a flicker of something again. So he tells her that he loves her. He doesn't want there to be any room for doubt in her pretty little mind. Those words that were branded into the front of his brain, She has to love herself first, begin to unwind themselves. He knows that she doesn't have to love herself to be deserving of love. Those who need love the most are those who have lost it.
And so, there is not a day in which he does not shower her with devotion and with trust. With reason to trust. He builds her up from the inside out just as the world around them is reconstructing simultaneously. Everything will be alright, he tells her, over and over again, until she believes it.
So when she tells him what he's been dreaming of hearing for years, for lifetimes, he believes it, too. She tells him that she loves him, and he knows she does, however impossible it seems. And it makes him love her even more, because she's strong, she's resilient, and that beautiful patchwork heart of hers has finally begun to beat again. She has learned to love again.
And she didn't have to love herself first.