Title: Wandering
Author: tromana
Rating: T
Characters: Katniss/Peeta
Summary: He thrived on routine. He needed it to keep a grasp on reality. Without it, he got lost in the pits of his mind. Katniss hated trying to coax him out of these moments.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written using a prompt from Miss Peg in a meme on LiveJournal.
Wandering
Idiotic. That was what he was.
When Haymitch had casually dropped by, asking her if she'd received her daily loaf of bread, she had realized. Their routine had been thrown out of balance, Peeta was behaving differently. And when Peeta behaved differently, Katniss knew it was time to panic.
He thrived on routine now. He needed it to keep a grasp on reality. Without it, he got lost in the pits of his mind. Katniss hated trying to coax him out of these moments. It was tiring, hard work. It wasn't as if she didn't have her own demons to contend with either.
It didn't take her long to work out where he had gone. Somehow, despite surviving two Hunger Games, despite the rigorous training from District 13 and despite living in the fall of the Capitol, Peeta had never learned to cover his tracks. Some people would have said he was lucky. Not Katniss, though. She understood all too well that Peeta was damaged and always would be.
Some things just couldn't be repaired and he was one of them.
This part of the woods was unfamiliar. That didn't mean she was lost. No, Katniss knew exactly where she was. It was just a case that this was a place she never particularly bothered to stray during her times in the woodland. The game didn't cross this path; the trees produced less fruit and nuts. The water supply was irregular. And the Tracker-Jacker nests were more frequent too. It was just too risky. Infertile soil, her father would have said. Too much effort for too little reward. She blinked; it wasn't worth thinking about the past. Not now, not while she had a task in hand.
Find Peeta. Bring him home.
Make sure he is in one piece, if not happy.
A crack of a foot breaking a twig caused her to wheel around, bow and arrow neatly poised. Just because it hadn't been able to support (useful) life for a while, it didn't mean that the land wouldn't eventually heal over. Of course, the scars would always be there, but it didn't mean it couldn't grow into something new. Her whole body was evidence enough of that.
When she saw Peeta instead of a rabbit or deer, she instantly relaxed. She was still angry with him though. If she hadn't have been behaving so cautiously, she might have fired the shot and then, it would have been too late. The odds most certainly wouldn't have been in Peeta's favor.
She took a step closer to him, but it was Peeta who closed the gap first. The relief of something strong, something familiar was evident in his features. And thus, Katniss too, was relieved. At least this little excursion hadn't sent him into a frenzy. At least he seemed okay. That was the main thing.
"I am lost in the woods," Peeta asked nervously.
"Real," Katniss confirmed automatically. "But I know the way out."
"We're still in the Hunger Games," he continued.
"Not real. They ended years ago."
This old game is draining now. For years, Katniss has had to play this with him. Though Peeta was mostly back, back with her, there was some part of him that would always be lost in the woods. Tracker-jacker venom had destroyed the connections in his brains, the ones that could make sense of the world around him. Sometimes, he still woke up, believing she was the enemy, that she was a mutt. On those occasions, it took the assistance of Haymitch to help calm him down, to remind him of what was real and what was not.
Still, the irony of the fact he was literally lost in the woods at this specific moment in time wasn't lost on her either.
Regardless of how much she loathed giving him constant reassurance that he was safe, well, and that she wasn't a monster created by the Capitol, she still loved him. And she couldn't blame him for still carrying the battle scars from the Hunger Games when she had more than enough of her own to contend with too.
"Why did you come out here?"
She didn't look at him as she asked her question. Instead, she slung her game bag carelessly onto the floor. Once she had worked out where Peeta had gone, she'd suspected he'd have been hungry. And besides, she had gathered a few nuts and berries as she had tracked him. Multitasking had never grown old. Despite having her bow and arrow at the ready, no game had crossed paths with her. Katniss knew that she needed to do some hunting soon, meat was growing relatively scarce. But not with Peeta; they both knew just how hopeless a task that would be.
"I wanted to see the world through your eyes, Katniss," he whispered. "You're so strong, so brave, so…"
Katniss let out a hoarse laugh at his words. Usually, when he praised her, saw her through his rose-tinted glasses, it made her feel uncomfortable. The words he'd uttered, though, they were nonsensical. She wasn't any of those things, except when she had to be. Now, she was just a husk of the woman she once could have been. The past had made her that, just as it had made Peeta disappear into the recesses of his mind.
"And you're mad at me."
"No, I'm not," she corrected him, but she could tell he wanted to argue the fact. "Eat these. We'll get some more on the way back home."
He nodded his thanks and fell into a state of silence. She'd been right; he hadn't dared eat a scrap during his stint in the woods. Peeta had probably been too scared, had believed that everything had been poison or a trap. Had thought he was back in the Hunger Games.
As she took his hand, she smiled weakly.
Sometimes, she wondered if there was ever going to be such a thing as them being truly out of the Games.
end