Disclaimer: It isn't mine.
In honor of the upcoming HG movie.
Listen to: More Than Life by Whitley, which reminds me of Peeta every time. Happy reading.
Dinner was quiet that evening, with a bit of bread from me and a bit of squirrel from her, with no Haymitch around to distract us from our thoughts, and we didn't know what to do to distract each other. My house in the Victor's Village glowed like a pearl in the setting sun, but just inside, in the kitchen, the table was an open wound. We dared not speak or move too much for fear we might infect it.
Crunch. Good bread crunches like that, except normally there's good conversation to go with the crunch. There is laughter and maybe music. This crunch almost echoed in the hollowness of the house, in the hollowness of ourselves.
I glanced up at Katniss to see she was chewing at her plate, with her hands formed into loose fists on the tabletop, her shoulders slumped, braid flipped tiredly over he left shoulder. She'd brought a handful of wildflowers from the woods and tossed them in the centerpiece bowl. Baby's breath, Ironweed, Black Eyed Susan. The fresh colors rested over the withered stems from weeks before.
Is the bread good? How was your day? Did anything wonderful happen on your hunt? Why won't you look at me? All questions I wanted to ask. Instead, I sliced away at some squirrel, skewered it on my fork, brought it to my mouth- this was how I functioned. One tiny step at a time. Slice, skewer, lift, bite. Chew was the next step, but I just let the meat sit on my tongue and sour.
Crunch. She must have liked the bread, to take a second bite. This was how I measured passion. A second bite means acceptance.
The doctors said we could heal each other, but we just wallowed beside each other in our own separate versions of hell. They said we could heal. Around the edges my sight grew shiny, and I gripped the edge of the table, waiting for the jackers to come. Come along, then. Take me. Take me away. Take Peeta away.
"I had a nightmare last night," Katniss interrupted. How rude of her. Couldn't she see I was busy?
I couldn't reply with the squirrel still souring on the roof of my mouth, but I nodded, gesturing for her to continue, and began to chew.
"Prim had a wolf muttation, like from the cornucopia. It had her eyes." She didn't go into any more detail, and I didn't want her to. Poor little Primrose. I wanted to remember her pure, beyond the Capitol now.
Chew. Swallow. Comfort. "She's safe now. No one can hurt her. No one can touch her."
Katniss pushed her plate away. "It was all for her, everything. The stupid clothes, the killing, the rebellion, the filming. And she died anyway. Peeta…we should have behaved, we should have stayed in the clock arena and let them kill us like they wanted."
I remained silent long enough for her words to sink into her. Then I said, "Don't you dare. Don't you dare belittle what she sacrificed. What we all sacrificed." Shoving my own plate away, I folded my hands over hers and glared until she looked me in the eyes. "This. Is. Better." I willed her to see how much better off we all were. I willed myself to see.
With a clenching jaw she jerked her hands away and folded them into her armpits. "I'm not hungry anymore," she said.
"I've lost my appetite as well," I said without missing a beat.
Katniss turned away to watch the last ripples of the sun settle behind the horizon. Soft clouds were rolling in with a promise of one of those long, soft, soaking rains that wipes the smudges from the air. I studied her in profile for the millionth time in my sorry existence, and I wanted so much to kiss her.
So I did. I stood up and limped around the table and stole her taste for myself. "I'm tired," I said. "Stay over here tonight and I'll keep the mutts away."
"Promise?"
"As long as you do the same for me."
The night began like any other. I faced the wall, she the window, with the blankets tucked up to our chins to ward off the memories. We didn't speak, but eventually her hand found mine, and I rolled over to wrap my arm around her soft stomach. The rain started. Patters on the roof. We dozed. My dreams soaked in the smell of her.
Then came the thunder, bringing with it a flashback of explosions and heat in the dense palm trees, and the descending hovercrafts. The lies they told me, the syringes, those empty white white walls. Rose petals and videos and audio recordings. She hates you, Peeta. She poisoned you in the arena. She used you to live. She never put those berries in her mouth. She doesn't love you. She never loved you, Peeta.
I came back with her hand on my forehead.
"You're all sweaty."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
Her clammy palms pressed against my fevered eyelids, but that wasn't enough for me. I nuzzled my lips to her own, and with persistent little flutters encouraged her to let me in. Her tongue was glazed with the sweetness of sleep, like the nectar of life I dined upon her, and she upon me. Moist breath upon my cheek.
"It's hot." The blankets slumped to the floor. My whole body was overheating, and I sought desperately for relief by running my fiery palms along her soft, cool belly. Up, up along the rib cage. Higher. Sometimes she let me. That night she did. And I worshipped her with my hands as I always imagined I might back in school.
It went on like that, with our lips on each others' necks, for many rolls of thunder.
"Peeta."
"Katniss?"
We sized each other up, eyes reflecting the lighting that threaded down every once in a while, and it seemed she decided something. She unpeeled me from my shirt. I returned the favor. Not a word was spoken beyond that point, but everything was said. She traced the track marks from the syringes, kissed them. I silently apologized to her that she had t look at these. The thick raised lacerations around both wrists from the hand-cuffs in the Capitol. These I did not apologize for, because they kept me present and sharp during the war. Sometimes only pain could do that.
Skin grafts and burns, missing pieces. We were patchwork people. We worked steadily, tirelessly, to learn each other, until we had tasted each and every one of our partner's scars. Tasted the salt from each others' skins. And that was it. I pressed my torso against hers, the touch like feathers in the wind, and I showed her in no uncertain terms that I wanted everything. And she nodded.
We clamored from our cocoons, and there, completely exposed to the room and to each other, and so quietly and so angrily we took everything we wanted from each other. Arched together, coiled, I pinned her hands like a butterfly, and her body was safety for me, warmth and protection. Ecstasy. Our eyes never left each other, not through any of it, and with each second I read more about her.
Lovemaking was an understated and unbalanced thing. People always thought about it as a fiery pursuit, but I couldn't see how, when it felt so earthy. Like the separate plates of solid ground faulting and colliding and pulling apart, sinking deep into the viscous center. And oh, so, slowly,
we drowned in each other.
When I collapsed away from her, the quiet remained. Heavier now, cooling. But I could feel myself, the me inside of this raw body, floating up, rising like the steam from my skin. My muscles were light and airy, my bones hollow. And in this state I transcended the shining film that so often curled around the edges of my consciousness. And I saw.
Katniss, hands blooming with dandelion suns, palms staining yellow and green. Katniss, smoothing little Primrose's hair before the reaping. This was true, this was right, this was what I wanted.
They were all wrong. She wasn't the Mockingjay. Not the Girl on Fire. Not to me no, she was neither flight nor fire.
She was water: life-giving yet dangerous, patient and powerful, pure as well as deep.
She was what I needed to survive. To heal. To grow.
Katniss shifted to face the window, and I curled around her, moving to fit her shape. Our heartbeats played tag along the expanses of our overlapping skin, diving between each other.
ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-ba-boom-boom
I followed her eyes to the undulating sky through the windowpane. We traded air. We did not speak. I laid my head against hers. Pulsing artery to pulsing artery, brain to brain, I felt drunk of her.
I could sense the shine coming back, and with it that hallucinogenic whirl of non-reality. Quick. I needed proof.
"You love me. Real or not real?"
The answer was.