SPOILERS through the end of Mockingjay.
This title probably isn't very original, lol. But I wrote this more because I couldn't stop thinking about what happened to Peeta than because I wanted to think of an original title. I just couldn't hold it in, I guess. Still I felt like a horrible person for parts of this...
And... that awkward moment when you post your second-to-last draft without noticing. Fixed now. Differences are minor. Plot unchanged.
"Not Real"
It still happens sometimes. Not when he least expects it because to expect it he would have to be ready for it. He never is though, never can be. Then Katniss walks through the door with a load of groceries and a smile, but he sees something else. He sees the dark glint in her grey eyes, red with hate like the blood of her kills seeping in over her soul. The smile twists to promise suffering for not just Peeta, but everyone Katniss ever has or ever will touch.
She is a monster, he remembers in the moment when he clutches the back of the kitchen chair so hard the wood splinters. How had she fooled him? After everything she's done, all the people she's killed, he should know better. He does know better except that she's found some way to control him, to twist him. How much of what he remembers since she captured him again is real?
Carrots and dandelions spill across the floor when Katniss drops her sack. Peeta can see a sheen on their surface that tells him she didn't even wait to prepare his food before poisoning it. But why would she have waited so long to kill him? Has he finally served his purpose? He wants to know. After all the time she has controlled him, kept him around for her own plots, he deserves to know which piece of her game he is. When he opens his mouth to ask, all that comes out is a snarl.
She advances on him, and Peeta sees the bow. It's black. He can hear it purring. The drawn arrow has a red shaft, and purple smoke rises from the tip. "Peeta, are you okay?" She asks, mocking him. He would be okay if only he could get his hands around her throat, but he can't let go of the chair because the house is spinning, spinning, spinning like the cornucopia of the seventy-fifth Hunger Games.
"Tick tock," he says, remembering how Katniss laughed and shoved him straight into the barrier around the arena. Only she had known where it was, but maybe Finnick had lied about not knowing. He had been working for Katniss all along. Splinters dig into his fingers as he rips the broken bar across the back of the chair free. He needs a weapon.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Peeta," she lies, arrow pointed at his heart, and he can see the berries now, hanging from her bow, the arrow, her ears and neck like perverse jewelry. He knows now she always meant it to end this way. "Just put it down, okay, sweetheart."
He laughs. As horrible as the truth is, at least the lies have fallen away now. Peeta raises the splintered wood between himself and Katniss. Some part of him remembers that the Capitol is gone, but that must have been either part of her scheme or part of her lies. The laughter dies on his lips and sinks, rotting, back down his throat as Peeta remembers that he is alone. Katniss turned everyone against him years ago.
She always acted so innocent in the interviews. No one would have expected the truth, but Peeta remembers now. She was too strong, too fast, too good with that damn bow, and too heartless to be human. He knows he has to keep his attention on Katniss, but suddenly he stands in Snow's mansion. The old man dabs his lips with a napkin that comes away smelling of roses and blood.
"She was our greatest creation," he says in the way Peeta might have said there was water in the well. "Looks utterly human, doesn't she? But when you get in close enough, as close as you have, Mr. Mellark, you start to see the cracks. The pieces of Katniss Everdeen that are beyond humanity." He laughs softly and sips wine the color of bile.
"Mutt," he snarls, backing away before he remembers that he needs to get in close so she can't use the bow. He needs to charge.
Sunlight reflects in the mirror, too sharp for the soft orange sky. Peeta drops to the ground, expecting an attack. He covers his head to protect it.
"Oh, Peeta." It's all that comes. He begins to rise, still holding onto his pitiful weapon, but Katniss' bow is gone now. He has a chance. A smirk finds its way to Peeta's lips, and Katniss looks worried at last.
Someone takes him from behind, or tries to. Peeta doesn't have time to worry who. It could be anyone; she's fooled them all. He spins and slams whoever it is against the floor. Katniss, is his first thought, but she still stands to his left, screaming now. He tightens his fingers around the neck of his attacker.
The neck. It's too small. She's trying to talk, clawing at his arm with too-small fingers. A child.
Peeta flinches back, crying out. He drops the shard of chair and clutches his head in both hands. "No," he tries to say, but it comes out as the same animal sound the Avoxes made when Snow tortured them. He doesn't kill children, he doesn't. He's not the monster. Katniss is. Katniss. She's the monster. She's helping the girl up, giving her water, kissing her throat, asking if she can talk.
From here, Peeta looks like the monster.
"She attacked me," he croaks. He means it for himself, but Katniss answers.
"Not real."
The pressure of his palms against his eyelids doesn't make it all go away. "I attacked a little girl." When he says it, his hands begin shaking.
Katniss hesitates. "Real."
The shaking spreads through his arms, his chest, his legs until Peeta can only hold it back by curling in on himself like he used to when he was cold or wanted to cry without his mother hearing. "Her name is Rue," he says, even though the shaking has taken his lips.
"Real." Katniss kisses the girls forehead. There's something more. Something so close. He knows suddenly the girl has a brother, but that's not it, not quite.
"Rue is my daughter." His voice breaks, though he's not sure into what. "Our daughter." He remembers now.
"Real," Katniss says softly, and Peeta can hear the tears in her voice before he looks up to see them in her eyes.
"But I…" Peeta can't hold back the sobs. They're all crying now, all four of them, though he hadn't noticed the boy frozen in the doorway until now. "I wouldn't. I'd never hurt her, not Rue."
Katniss has been holding back the tears, trying to be strong for their children, but one more glance at Rue breaks her down. "Not real," she sobs as the beautiful little girl with the hand-shaped bruises starting to show around her neck reaches out to comfort her.
He has to go. He doesn't know where, just that he can't be near his children if there's even the smallest chance of his hurting them. Katniss screams something after him, but he runs on. He runs and runs and doesn't stop until he doesn't know where he is anymore. Somewhere in the woods outside the district, somewhere he can't hurt anyone. The trees cast only dim shadows in the fading light as Peeta collapses in the snow. He lies there, hoping he'll freeze to death or at least lose his good foot to frostbite.
Haymitch finds him eventually and drags him to one of the many empty rooms in his house. At least he didn't try to take Peeta to the house he shares with Katniss, Rue, and little Cinna. Peeta only considers the bottle Haymitch holds out to him long enough to remember there won't be enough for him to die of alcohol poisoning.
"Is she okay?" he asks when he remembers he can still speak.
"Rue will be fine. She keeps forgetting not to talk and asking about you." Haymitch sneers. "Stupid girl. If you did that to me I wouldn't want you near my house."
"I have done that to you," Peeta says. Then he pauses. "Real or not real?"
Haymitch barks out a short, bitter laugh. "Real. But I stabbed you so we call it even."
Peeta nods. He remembers that and reaches to trace the scar of Haymitch's retaliation. "I don't know what to do now." He can't go home.
"Katniss told me to keep you here for now. So stay out of my way and don't cross the street." He stands and stumbles off to his room. Peeta sits in the dark.
He doesn't leave the house. If he does, he might see them again. He doesn't deserve to see his family again. He couldn't bear it anyway. A voice newly unearthed from deep in his mind keeps reminding him that what he deserves is a gruesome death. Sometimes it helps him plan one. Sometimes he tells it to shut up so loudly that Haymitch screams, "No, you shut up," from across the house.
Weeks pass before she comes to see him. Even then, Peeta tries to make her leave.
"It's not your fault," Katniss says with tears in her eyes. "You won't do it again," she insists with her hands clenched around his.
"You don't know that."
"No, I do. It only happened because Rue tried to help you up, but if we just make sure the kids stay away from you when—"
"When I turn into a crazed murderer, you mean?" He pours the bitterness of knowing she wants him for the way he wraps his arms around her and not for love into the words. Gale understood Katniss well enough to get away. Peeta should have done the same before he let her keep him around long enough to start hurting people. Hurting children.
"This is the first attack you've had in months, Peeta. You're doing better, so much better. I can help you more. Maybe see a doctor. It will be okay."
"You don't need me anymore, Katniss. You have them now." Someone new to take care of.
This pulls her up short; he can see it. She knows what he means, probably hears an echo of Gale's voice telling her she'll choose who she needs, not who she loves. Peeta has never used that against her, swore to himself he never would. But he needs her to let him go now. It's the only way.
Instead of leaving, she cups his face in her hands. "I will always need you." She takes a slow breath, staring into his eyes. "Always."
"There is some way to make you let me go. I will find it." Already he doesn't want to. He knows Katniss will take him back, Rue will tell him it's okay, Cinna will forget and laugh again while Peeta spins him in the air in the center of the meadow. It's so much harder knowing he's the only one ready to give up on himself because he knows it will hurt them to lose him.
"Not real," she says.
Peeta cries because he believes her. As she pulls him away from the dusty chairs and empty bottles of Haymitch's house, Peeta swears this will never happen again. Before he can rebury it, the deep voice swears that if it does happen, Peeta won't survive it.