Unconditional

Banner by akai-echo. The loudest shout-out to eala-musings, who beta'd this in no time. She's such a champion. Thank you!

Loosely based on the film Journey to the Shore, a 2015 Japanese romantic drama film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It is adapted from the novel Kishibe no Tabi by Japanese writer Kazumi Yumoto.

Written for thegirlfromacrossthepond, who has a birthday today. You are one of my best friends, a brilliant writer, and a wonderful person. I hope you enjoy this offering. It's a little on the heavy side but I thought it would make an interesting, if somewhat poignant, Everlark offering.

Warning - Major Character Death before opening of the story.

Part 1 - Lost

Madge dabbed at the corner of her mouth with the linen table napkin. I don't know how my best friend always managed to eat without smudging her lipstick while I only managed to look like a half-done up clown, but it was one of the many superpowers that I begrudgingly envied her.

"He's a financial consultant with Capitol Funds. His family has a house in almost every District. Gale has known him since college."

It was her latest set-up – some nice man of marrying age with more money than God and an impeccable pedigree. Someone to take her widowed best friend off of her hands.

I crossed and uncrossed my legs as she spoke. It was a nervous habit I possessed of late. I hated being the center of any kind of attention, especially that of my best friend. There was no definition of persistence that had been invented to describe her.

"Madge-" I began, with the same voice I used to turn down magazine subscriptions at Barnes & Noble.

"Katniss…" she mocked in the same tone. "It's been three years. You could just try it. You know, the dating thing? Let him take you out?"

"I'm not interested – "

"Bullshit!" she spat as she passed our empty plates to the waiter who, to his credit, did an excellent job of maintaining a poker face. "You won't know if you're interested if you don't give it a try!"

"I can't manufacture interest in dating if I'm simply not interested in dating!"

"Fake it till you make it," she said, pulling the glass of ice water and lemon towards her. "You aren't even making an effort."

"I never had to fake anything with Peeta." I sipped my wine to mask my growing anger. How could Madge understand? From the first moment I met Peeta, I knew I'd never have to say anything again in my life without meaning it. He could take it. He could take me.

"Peeta is dead!" Madge exploded, heads turning to see why the stylish blond was suddenly as purple as the radishes in their salad. She dropped her voice but continued. "He has been gone for three years and you-"

"I what?" Are you going to tell me that I'm still young? I can still go out and try to find a replacement for what I had with him? Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that I should just fake it with a man I barely give two shits about in the hopes that he will help me forget my husband?" I shoved my chair back as I stood. "I am tired of you and Effie and Johanna and everyone trying to set me up!" I grabbed my wallet, tears blinding me as I dug around for cash so that I had no idea what I threw down on the table. "I will mourn him until I am good and ready not to, and everybody else can just fuck off!"

I wheeled around, nearly slamming into our same, poker-face waiter, dodging him at the last moment of impact and hurtling out of the restaurant. I had to get home.

My feet carried me automatically down four city blocks before I remembered I could actually take a cab and get home faster. However, I was still too wound up for the strategizing required to flag down a cab near Capitol Circle. So I kept moving through the brisk, fall air, focusing my racing thoughts on just getting home.

I caught glimpses of myself in passing shop windows, stomping like vengeance herself down the street. I had made a serious effort for Madge –taupe-colored dress with matching jacket and a sharp, black belt, matching designer platforms, straightened hair, mascara, eyebrows. Maybe that was the problem. I was so good at looking put together in public that people logically conclude I was okay, that somehow I was ready to become more than just Peeta Mellark's widow.

Impatient now, I didn't bother to wait for the bellboy to open the door to the apartment building, flinging myself inside, slipping as if by predesign through a closing elevator door. I jabbed the number 12 until my thumb ached, counting backwards from fifty to stave off a sudden onslaught of panic. I got them a lot ever since Peeta died and I'd had to visit the behavioral therapist to learn to deal with it. To deal with being alone. After Peeta died, it was the only thing that kept me together. I had a nearly complete breakdown when the news of his death was brought to me. And Madge thought I should move the hell on?

The doors swished open when I'd made it to the 12th floor. With key in hand, I strode to the door of my apartment. Mrs. Dallows, the elderly woman who owned the apartment down the hall from me stepped into the corridor, an expectant smile on her face that meant she wanted to exchange some gossip. But I simply pasted a bland smile on my face, hurtling inexorably towards my home. I crushed the key into the keyhole opened the door to find silence within.

The door had barely slammed shut behind her when I'd kicked off my shoes and searched the apartment, frantically racing from room to room until I found him sitting on the balcony, shielded from view of the surrounding apartment buildings by the wilting ivy of the iron latticework railing.

"Why are you out here?" I snapped, so relieved, I climbed onto his lap and folding myself as compactly as I could.

"Hey, even I need some air sometimes," he said, his hands the whisper of the wind over my hair. It was his way of calming me down. He could just tell when things weren't right with me.

"I thought you'd left," I said, nuzzing his neck, still taken aback by how familiar and real his smell was.

"The way you came barreling in here…" he trailed off, chuckling. "You're happy I'm here, aren't you?" The humor in his words masked his constant need for affirmation. He couldn't stay otherwise unless I were absolutely explicit about wanting him there. Those were the rules. And I had to follow them to the absolute letter.

"Yes," I sighed. "Peeta, I'll take you anyway I can have you."

XXXXX

Peeta's death had not made national news. It was just one of a thousand that took place each year, An early morning swim. The undertow of the riptide current. A body that was never found. My first reaction was to get angry. In fact, I was so angry, I could spit. But it was hard to stay angry when there was no corpse to get angry at. It had been sudden, unexpected and despite its lack of glamour, Peeta's death had put an end to life as I knew it.

I once read that the Japanese have a belief that to call a spirit of a loved one back to us, we should literally beg for it to come. Invite it into our home. Give it all the comforts it once enjoyed in life.. Latin-American Catholics believed that burning incense and praying to sacred objects dedicated to the dead would entice their attention and return them to the world of the living for only one night.

I never believed in such things. I believed it even less when Peeta was taken away, because the idea of a benevolent universe had been shattered by his departure.

But after that first year of relentless grief, I gave in to one night, one black night of methodical madness. I was drinking alone, which I never did before but now I did all the time. I set about to make the most elaborate meal I'd ever prepared in my life. Every manner of dish that Peeta had once enjoyed - my beef stew, fresh sourdough bread, steamed greens in garlic and olive oil drizzled in lemon, a casserole and chocolate pie (since I would never be able to bake an actual dessert like he could). It was more food than I'd be able to eat in one week, let alone in one night.

I sat down at my usual place, staring at his empty seat, the one caddy corner from me. We did not sit at each end of the formal dining room table. No, we took our dinner together in the kitchen, at the small table with four places (six, if you pulled the panel in the middle that expanded it). And he always took the chair closest to me.

"Peeta," I said, addressing the empty seat. I could barely even say his name so it came out in this harsh whisper. I tried again.

"Peeta? I...cooked. I thought you'd like that." I smoothed down my soft orange dress, the summer one with the spaghetti straps. "I pulled out the dress I wore when we went to see Finnick and Annie in District 4. Remember that one weekend we'd plan on going out on the boat and fish but it ended up raining the whole time we were there? How it finally stopped ten minutes before we were supposed to leave?" I looked down, noticing that I was balling the fabric of the dress on my lap.

I thought that deep down inside, I didn't really expect anyone to answer. So when my voice bounced off of the walls and landed back on my ears, I was surprised to realize that I was profoundly disappointed by the silence that followed.

"Madge and Gale got married, about a year after you...left. It was...she wanted me to be in the bridal party...but I couldn't." I scanned the empty apartment we shared ever since we graduated from Panem State College, walls still covered with his favorite paintings, his knick knacks scattered between books on the shelves. Even his sneakers were still on the bench near the door. We had always talked about going back home, to the mountains of District 12, and taking over Peeta's family bakery. We had been so close to putting our plan in place...

"She understood that I was still grieving. I am, you know, still...grieving." I gulped at my wine, my heart racing. "But the truth is, I was angry at her, too - angry that she was going to be happy, that she would be getting married, moving on with her life while my life had ended. I thought it should end for everybody, not just for me." I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It shook.

I waited. I downed three-quarters of another bottle of wine, picking at my food. And still, I waited. My thinking became foggy with wine and disappointment and finally, a hefty dose of self-loathing at the entire concept of the evening.

"Who fucking sits at a table and talks to an empty chair, Peeta? Who? A deranged fucking lunatic, that's who!" I stood suddenly, the chair tipping backwards while I swayed on my feet. The grief came back to me in one long, relentless blow to my chest. I picked up my plate and flung it at the chair where Peeta should have been sitting. Where he should still be alive and breathing and eating, making those small noises in his throat when he was enjoying his meal, knocking something over because his words were smooth as honey but his movements were like those of an elephant.

I threw my wine glass, shattering it as it missed his chair and hit the divider behind it. "You aren't supposed to be dead!" I screamed, throwing every dish on the table against the wall, shoving glasses onto the floor, overturning chairs and finally, tipping the table itself onto its side. I screamed and wailed and threw what I could find, a whirlwind of madness that ended when I slipped on soup broth and landed hard on my ass.

I tried to survey the carnage but the world was spinning. Nausea climbed up my throat and embittered my mouth but I didn't remember actually throwing up until I woke up the next morning and discovered my dress, my beautiful dress caked, in the shit. My kitchen was trashed, I was hung over worse than Johanna after a Saturday night binge and my dress was covered in puke. At the time, I cursed myself, thinking it had not been one of my better ideas, because every time I fell apart, it took me ten times as long to put myself back together again.

XXXXX

The first time he appeared, it was only a few days later. I was alone in the kitchen, baking cheese buns, the only thing I'd bothered to learn how to make from Peeta when he was still alive. He was the best baker in all of Panem, and he taught me to love cheese buns dunked in hot chocolate. For more than a year after his death, I couldn't bring myself to even look at them.

But eventually, I began to long for them. They reminded me of him, of his family's bakery back in District 12. There was a persistent smell of cooked cheese, the lingering aroma of parsley and rosemary, the slick oil that coated the dough, the baking tray and, when you plucked them fresh from the pan, onto the tips of your fingers.

My sister, Prim, was spending the weekend with me, as she often did, worrying about my being alone. She'd turned in for the night and it was just me in my kitchen which had only just recovered from my tantrum of a few nights earlier. To her credit, she'd helped me collect and toss the broken dishes, scrub the floors and counters and replace the dinnerware that had been destroyed. She even ran my dress down to the cleaners. Much as I scolded her for the expense of taking the train from her college in District 4 to come and tend to me in the Capitol, I secretly appreciated having someone make decisions and take care of things for a change.

Just after midnight, I was pouring myself the hot cocoa and setting the dishes on the table when a familiar shuffle at the front door arrested my movements. Wiping my hands on my apron, I made my way to the entryway in time to hear a loud rapping at the door - a rhythmic combination of short taps and pauses that only one person had ever used. It was enough to make me dizzy from a sudden longing.

I pulled the door open with enough force to send the handle into the drywall, if I had allowed it to get away from me.

"Hello," he said.

I was unable to muster enough wherewithal to do more than step aside and let Peeta in, as if he were coming home from a business trip. As if the moment did not merit so much more.

"You came back," I gasped, wondering why I wasn't howling from the clear evidence of my loss of sanity. He simply stared at me with those unforgettable blue eyes that seemed to bore right through me and see to the other end of time.

"Katniss?" came Prim's voice from the guest bedroom. For a moment, I didn't know where to look or what to do. I broke off my shocked gaze to glance down the hallway where a tiny, seashell night light was used to illuminate the darkness because I hated the darkness most of all. When I looked back the spot where Peeta stood, he was no longer there.

I took a shaky breath, barely able to stanch the flow of tears as I hurried down the corridor to assure my sister that I was okay, even if I was a million miles from anyplace that was even remotely close to okay.

XXXXX

The next time he appeared, he didn't knock. I lay curled on the sofa, listening to one of his favorite songs by The Civil Wars. That haunting melody must have been a beacon because soon, he was toeing his boots off, sliding them over to the bench as was his habit, long before everything had happened and my world had veered into an abyss of solitude. His hair was windswept, his cheeks ruddy and pink. He looked like he'd gotten some sun, which gave me pause. Where the fuck were dead people supposed to get sun? I sat up, unable to move any further, sure that I had gone slap crazy and I'd have to check myself into Capitol General in the morning.

"How long have I been gone?" he asked.

I tried to talk but the only thing that came out was a squeak so I cleared my throat and tried again. "Three years, four months, twelve days, give or take a few. Sometimes I mix the days up."

He nodded, his face so welcome and warm, I wanted to sink into the unthinkable and float like a buoy out to the endless sea. But it wasn't possible. None of this was possible and I knew it. And yet…

He wandered about the living room, touching things here and there. He was not a ghost. The bronze statue of the Eiffel Tower that we'd brought back from our summer European vacation was now off by several inches where'd he set it down after examining it. I wanted to launch myself at him, to ask him if he was really my Peeta or just a figment of my broken mind. I took in his virility instead, his health and steadfastness. The ache I'd been carrying over my heart like bad plaster covering a deep crack became brittle and threatened to crumble, releasing all my animal grief. I panted, trying to keep the cracks from opening and spreading further.

He took the seat next to me, turning his attention towards me. "I guess the best place to start is to tell you how I died."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speech. I could smell him - the aroma of the man I knew as Peeta, a whiff of aftershave and the very faintest smell of sweat, not at all unpleasant. Is this what my mind had chosen to conjure up?

"That morning, you were sleeping so well," he said. "I didn't want to wake you up so I thought I'd go out for an early morning swim."

"What happened?" I croaked out.

"Rip tide. I got over-confident and went beyond the rocks," he said, shaking his head as if he were describing running over someone's foot with a supermarket wagon and not the manner of his exit from the world.

"They never...they never found…" I tried but I couldn't say it.

"Find my body? No, I've been digested a thousand times over. My bones have been picked clean."

I didn't like the image he put in my head, didn't want to imagine Peeta being gnawed at by crabs and other sea creatures. "Why wait three years?"

Peeta looked at me with those bottomless blue eyes, a look I hadn't seen in years, and my heart took a dive into the deep end of insanity. I had begun to forget what that smile was like, the effect if could have. Photos were a poor substitute. "I had to travel to get to you. It's not as easy as the movies make it out to be."

I couldn't stand it anymore. If I was crazy, I figured, why fight it? Why fight this, of all the things in the world to overcome?"

"How do I make you stay?" I whispered.

He smiled, and what remained of the ligaments holding me together melted into insubstantiality. I leaned forward and he quickly took my hand, steadying me.

"You have to simply want it, more than anything else in the world."

I knew that would be the easy part.

Part 2 coming soon.