A/N: So, this is the first thing I've ever done like this. It's a bit AU, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games, or the song that inspired me.
This was inspired by Demi Lovato's 'Nightingale'
All she needs is someone to understand her. Someone who will speak to her, and hear the words she says, as though they hold the meaning she puts behind them. She knows that they are out there, singing their sweet melodies in hopes that she will somehow hear from miles and miles away. They just haven't realized that she can, in fact, hear them yet. But he will.
She lays in bed one night, hair fanned out on the pillow behind her, blankets pulled up to her collarbone, staring at her ceiling in a soporific haze, and yet with a wistful passion: like it holds all the secrets she is desperate to uncover.
For months she has sat alone and untouched in her vast home, with no one to break through the walls she has unintentionally built up around her house. It's as though she can feel the presence lingering on the right side of the bed, which lays empty. She can almost feel his arms curling around her in the way that drives all her nightmares away, and lets her truly rest peacefully.
It is nearly impossible for her to believe that even he is gone, in some unknown place, maybe as far from her as he can get. Why would he want to be anywhere near her anyway? She is a monster to him, a beast that brings nothing but danger and uncertainty to his once innocent and pure mind.
She can hear his beating heart as it echoes throughout the house, growing louder and louder, until it reverberates off the walls and closes in on her, suffocating her. Her fingers cling to the covers, pulling them to her face as she breathes in his scent, which is still ingrained into the comforter that he left behind. Everything in the room is his, the pillows, bed, dresser, clothes resting in the drawers.
She wears one of his old t-shirts now, a blue one that wasn't nearly as brilliant as the color of his eyes, but one of his favorites nonetheless. Memories of him, covered in flour and sweating over a blazing oven, yet with a contented smile on his face-one that only baking could really bring on, at least in her opinion- and wearing this shirt dance before her eyes, which have long since crusted and teared up from staring from so long.
She has a pair of his old sweats on too; the ones that still have faded paint stains in them, from when he would sit in front of an easel creating the most beautiful pictures she had ever seen. He would often twist around after a while, to find her leaning against the door frame, watching him with her deep grey eyes. He would smile at her, and after a moment she would return it, before padding across the room and winding her arms around his waist.
He would lean into her, and she can still feel the weight of him aching in her arms, which now lay uselessly by her sides. She wishes so desperately that she could hold him now, and run her hands through the hair at the back of his neck, wind her fingers in it. Her fingers twitch at the memory of his soft curls running through them, and she is filled with an indescribable longing that fills her entire being.
Not a coherent thought remains in her head, and all that is left in his old bedroom in her body, feeling for her, doing its best to remember the very thing that she has been trying so hard not to miss.
It's become unbearable, trying to block him out, and eventually she just gave in and trekked over to his house. It was still and silent, so unlike him, with his loud heavy steps that brought reality rushing back to her every time she threatened to topple over the edge.
There was nothing but ghosts left when she first arrived, and everything was just how he'd left it, and she had very much wanted to run back to her own house- she had never considered it a home anyway- but something compelled her to move forward.
She wandered in a trance through the house, until she found herself standing in his studio, face to face with a painting of herself. It may have been her on the canvas, but it was so him. She could feel him with every stroke of the brush, and for the first time she finally saw what he saw, as it was so clearly pictured on the canvas.
It was the girl he saw in the beginning, the one that provoked his unfailing love for her- a doomed love, she realizes, because they even managed to break that- and she had felt the world return in full force.
Tears had welled up in her eyes, bursting free with a loud choking sob that she didn't recognize in her own. And in that moment she hated her own skin more than ever and yet she loved it more than she had though possible. But because hate always seemed to win over love, even with them, she had felt the need to scrub away everything that made her who she was.
There was no point in returning to her carcass of a house, so she found herself in his bathroom, washing herself away with his soap, in his shower. She had dried with his towel, the one he had always used, and dressed in his clothes, which he had neatly folded on the dresser the last morning he was there.
For days she had stayed there, in his house, breathing him in, making sure that it was impossible to ever forget his scent, bringing back the memories in full force. His laugh, and smile, dimples, curls, warm hands that seemed to thaw the relentless cold that surrounded her, boyish charm and innocence that made her want to fold into his arms for the rest of her life.
There was no way to escape it, like she had been attempting to do for the last months, and she welcomed it heartily because there was no one else she would rather be immersed in. Not even her dear little sister, who would never again light up the world, for though she was loved, she wasn't a subject that was ready to be opened.
And that night, as she lays awake in his bed, surrounded by his scent, and everything that made him the boy she had really and finally loved-when it came down to it- something keeps her thinking.
Thinking about the way his arms wrapped around her waist, the steadiness they brought her, and the way his eyebrows arched when he thought something was funny, before he burst into laughter- which truly was her medicine. She felt as though he was nearer than ever, and that maybe, just maybe, he might be thinking of her too.
Improbable as it was, considering the circumstances, she can't get the idea to leave her alone, and it had plagued her the entire day.
There is no reason for him to be near, and yet, as his heartbeat finally withers away in her ears and the night is silent once more, the feeling is stronger than ever. She realizes that this must be her tipping point, that at any moment her heart is going to spasm, lurch and die. Because she loved- loves- him, with everything she is- which isn't very much anymore.
And she just can't take this hollow emptiness, this blank void where he should be, that place in her heart that always rightfully belonged to him. Maybe you feel hopeful before you die, which is what compelled him to tell her that he loved her in front of everyone, and kiss her, even on his deathbed.
All this feeling is, is her heart desperately trying to find some shred of real emotion to cling to before it finally gives up and gives in. There is nothing for it to fight for anymore, with her sister dead, and her one true love gone. Sappy as it sounds, she knows without a doubt that he really was-is- the one for her, that there would never have been another to capture her heart.
Another thing that comes with dying, perhaps- absolute honesty.
She tries desperately to remember the feeling of his lips on hers, and his hands in her hair. His voice is everywhere, filling her up and overflowing. She can clearly hear everything he mumbled to her as sleep took him. Sweet nothings, her mother would have called them.
But they weren't nothing, she knows that now, knows that they were everything she wishes to hear now. She tries to feel bitter about the fact that she really has turned into her mother, except she knows that she has no one depending on her, and she justifies it with that.
So lost in that kiss they shared on the beach, and all the chaste ones during the chaos that ensued afterwards, she hardly feels the presence growing stronger by the second. He was so loving and tender, so gentle with her- something she resented at first, but later found it was one of the things that she loved the most about him.
And then, just as she relives that moment in the weeks after the whipping, where he whispered to her as she drifted away, the door swings and creaks open.
He doesn't even realize that she is there as he flips on the light switch, bag in hand, eyes tired and drooping from the long train ride. But she knows it's him before she even has the chance to sit up.
Then he sees her, and is immediately shrouded by a shiny memory. He tosses is away as soon as he sees her condition, starved and nearly dead before him.
There's a moment where everything is still, and they can do nothing but search each other's eyes and minds in disbelief. He looks so much better, and she realizes that maybe he wasn't gone for months without purpose. Could they have possibly found a way to make him better, turn him back into the person she loved-loves- so much?
"Katniss," He whispers.
"Peeta," She forces out, her voice cracking from disuse. He has never heard a more beautiful sound.
Without another moment to spare, they're leaping towards each other, doing anything to close the space, colliding together halfway, just to be sure the other is real.
Peeta's bag falls to the ground, forgotten as he winds his arms around her waist, desperate to feel her in some way.
She sobs into his chest, burying her fingers in his curls and stroking the hair in the back of his neck. He's crying to, pressing kisses to the crown of her head, breathing in her scent, even though she had thought it was masked by his own.
They are unsure of the exact amount of time spent standing there, but they know it was hours.
Sleep forces them both to collapse onto the bed, still sobbing and just feeling each other, as though the other might disappear if they don't hold on hard enough. It has happened before and she doesn't plan on letting it happen again. Not ever.
They eventually drift off, wrapped in each other's arms, still clinging to the other for dear life, as if they could live off of each other. She believes they can.
When they wake in the morning, both still thinking that their encounter last night was some sort of twisted dream to ease them into the cruel reality that awaits, they burst into tears again, just at the sight of the other.
He presses his lips to hers, and she feels it again, that thing she thought she had lost forever. She pulls away, kissing his forehead, eyes, cheeks, head- just needing to be near him. Because for her, he is life. He is the dandelion in the spring, and he came back to her, just as he always has.
He finally realized that she could hear his sweet melodies, even from miles and miles away. He is her sanity, the warmth that can thaw even the cold that surrounds her. He is the boy with the bread. For so long, he was just a piece in the games, even to her, to some extent. But she loves him with everything she is, and that is the one thing that divides them from the rest of the world. The one thing that ended the game for good. There was never any question as to whether he loved her, but to have her love him just as faithfully, is what really burst Snow into flames.
No matter what Snow did, Peeta came back.
"Stay with me," She whispers, listening to his actual heartbeat beneath her ear.
"Always." And for the first time, she believes it.
A/N: So, there you have it. I'm sure there are grammar mistakes, I am writing this at two in the morning after all, sorry about those. I also realize that it's a little AU. Maybe it's a lot AU- does it really matter? I just really, really hope you like. Please tell me what you thought in the reviews, I want to know if I am any good at this kind of thing. It's the first thing I've done like this. Great, thanks -Knifethrower