Disclaimer: All characters mentioned are in rightful ownership of the awesome Suzanne Collins.
Reviews are always welcome, and enjoy!
His fingers are still wrapped around my throat. I'm begging him, but I don't know whether it's to let me go or to just keep going, squeezing tighter and tighter so the dark spots in front of my eyes mold into nothingness, and I'll slip right into it and drift away.
But my lips are moving, and I know I'm still fighting to breathe.
"I told you to let me go," I gasp, but no sound escapes my broken throat. All I know is that I will die if he doesn't let go.
Please let go.
"I can't."
It's as if those two words break through the mist and fog in my mind, and they sound so horrible and so small that for a moment I stop, allowing him to grip me tighter than before.
"I can't." He's sobbing now, and suddenly his fingers loosen and I screech in an icy breath of air, crying out as it scalds my throat. The black spots are disappearing, and I feel my knees hit the ground. My hands search for something, anything that I can use to get him away from me.
I find nothing. Nothing but his crumpled body. I squint and see that he's curled up on his side, on the floor of the living room, clutching his head in his hands and screaming.
"Peeta," I whisper, breathing in and out so violently my lungs almost burst. I reach for him, and when my fingers land on his shoulder, I realize how viciously he's shaking.
He shrieks, convulsing at my touch. My hand snaps back, but he's already crawling away to the corner of the room.
"Peeta," I cry out again. On my hands and knees, I know it's a bad idea to follow him. So I stay where I am, crouched on the floor.
"Mutt!" he turns around and howls at me. "You murdering animal!"
When the blurriness disappears completely, I get a good look at his face before he turns away again. His blue eyes are wide and glistening, tearstains streak down his cheeks and his blond hair in a strangled mess on his head.
"Animal!" he screams again, before colliding into a wall on the opposite side of the room. He slides to the ground again, in a crumpled heap facing the wall. I hear his whimpers go on and on.
They don't stop. They don't stop for hours. I lean against the wall nearest to the door and farthest from him, clutching my knees to my chest and coughing in my arms to block out his noises. It's nearly three in the morning, and the open curtains allow the moonlight to stab its way into our home and streak across our floor like splattered blood. Through the white glow I can see his silhouette, shaking visibly even from where I sit.
This is how most of our nights go, I suppose. It's been two weeks since he returned to Twelve, all calm and composed with his baking tray in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.
This is the second time he has tried to kill me. I have not told anyone. Peeta hardly remembers it when he wakes in the mornings, and I brush off his confused looks at the bruises on my arms and legs, muttering something about hunting accidents.
I don't know why. Sometimes I think it's the same reason all those years ago; because I did not want to lose the boy with the bread.
Sometimes I think he's already been lost.
An hour later, I wake up screaming. This was also normal.
When I'm fully awake, I look around and find myself in the same position I slept in. The moonlight still stabs the floor around me, accusing me with its menacing glow.
My eyes swivel to the other side of the room and land on Peeta's broad shoulders, illuminated in the shine. He's turned around in his sleep, and his features stand out from the shadows in his cheekbones and jaw line.
All at once the breath is swept out of me, and this time it's because of desire. He looks so calm and at peace when he sleeps; it's as if there's no ground underneath him, no sky above him and he's just floating away, drifting to a place where dreams live and thrive and breathe the most beautiful things into your thoughts.
But I feel as if it will last for less than a second if I don't move.
Before realizing what I'm doing, I push myself onto my hands and knees and crawl towards him, moving slowly as to not disturb his peaceful slumber. After covering the length of the room, I reach my arm out and brush the blond strands out of his eyes. Then I lay down on my side, so that we are both curled up, facing each other. My fingers find his and I entangle our hands together, and finally, finally, I find the energy to whisper his name.
"Peeta."
The word escapes my lips like a feather, floating in midair for a moment before shattering into tiny glass pieces onto the ground around us.
For just a tiny second, I'm expecting him to wake up and whisper my name back to me, but he's still asleep.
It's only me and my voice, and no one can hear me at all.
When the sunlight shines through the glass windows of the living room, he is the first to wake. I'm up almost seconds later, thanks to the surprised cry he lets out after realizing we are crumpled on the floor in the middle of our house.
Before I can move, his arms go underneath me and he scoops me up, carrying me to the couch and setting me gently into the cushions. He doesn't say a word, just crouches down to my eye-level for a second. But I have pretended to fall back asleep again, and soon he sighs and gets up, disappearing from my view.
Later that day, he asks me what had happened.
"You don't remember?" I snap in my usual tone that I save for mornings slept in. "You were looking for your paintbrushes and ended up falling asleep behind the couch. I had to pull you out on my own."
I don't meet his eyes, and immediately realize my mistake. He presses on, and when I don't answer, he holds my hands and looks at me dead straight in the eye.
"Katniss," he whispers, and suddenly I am furious with him, furious because he won't let it go, furious because I can't tell him, and furious because he hadn't whispered my name when I needed him too, when we were a crumpled mess on the floor and had nothing but the moonlight to hold us together.
But the next thing he asks me sets me off guard.
"Have I gotten any better?"
Have I stopped killing you?
Some days right after he returned to Twelve, I would walk into a room and catch him with an unguarded look on his face, always when he's painting or writing or sketching. And it's that look, filled with such vulnerability and desperation that reminds me why he's here, and why I'm here with him. It was the only thing that broke me out of my speechless days and nights sitting in front of the fireplace, breathing and eating and doing nothing more.
So when he asks me his question, I answer for both of us. And I lie.
"Yes," I tell him. "It's fine. You're perfectly fine."