A/N: I know it's been forever since I posted something. I'm sorry, I've had a bit of writer's block. I can't say I'm happy with this piece (I should probably say that AFTER you try to read it, but...) but wanted to try it as an exercise to get me back into the swing of writing. It's for Everlarkrecs Fairy Tale challenge, and is loosely based on Beauty and the Beast.
It's the early hours of the morning, three days after Peeta's rescue, when a package from the Capitol is delivered to District Thirteen. It's not a fiery rain of destruction, as Thirteen had expected in retaliation. No, this is a small glass box encasing a perfectly preserved rose with a note that reads:
Miss Everdeen, perhaps I'm not the one who needs convincing."
Finnick recognizes it as one of Snow's signature time bombs. The rose is not attached to explosives, rather genetically modified to mirror the health of its host, usually victims who have been poisoned by the president. The message to Katniss is clear. Someone will wilt away like the rose in the glass box.
Peeta.
It's the game they've been playing for over a year now. A fate she can not escape. There can only be one victor, and as long as she lives, Peeta will be meant to die.
"The Capitol can't touch him now," Haymitch reminds her, after she's stormed out of the command center, her feet carrying her to the psychiatric ward without thought, where she stands before his cell. The words ring hollow, because that mutt tied up on the other side of the padded wall isn't Peeta Mellark. Peeta Mellark may as well be dead.
Yet, as she stares at him through the two way mirror, his dark, vacant eyes looking back at her even though it is impossible for him to see her on the other side, she can't bring herself to end his life.
And she doesn't know why.
"The boy's as stubborn as you," he says when met with silence. "He's cheated death twice now. I'm sure he can beat the odds."
Katniss isn't sure she believes him, and before she allows herself to think about it too much, she leaves for District Two.
A week after their meeting during Finnick and Annie's wedding, Katniss sees him again in the cafeteria. She thinks she's imagining it, and based off the stunned expressions from the rest of the table, nobody expected to see Peeta Mellark walking free either.
He's shackled at his wrists and escorted by two large guards. His head is bowed, his once broad shoulders slumped dejectedly, and his eyes are sunken and tired looking.
She watches him carefully as he moves past their table, but he doesn't spare even a glance in her direction. It's as if she doesn't exist to him. Instead he moves to an empty table on the far side of the room where he sits to eat.
"They let him out?" Katniss says, no longer able to distract herself with the tasteless sludge on her plate.
"They've started acclimating him with the standard schedule," Delly explains.
Katniss feels her throat tighten at the thought of his hands around her neck. "Is that safe?" Prim's kept her updated on Peeta's progress, but Haymitch's reports are never nearly as optimistic.
"Are any of us safe to be around?" Johanna asks from across the table.
The discussion ends abruptly when a loud commotion draws their attention. A crowd has formed in the corner where Peeta was sitting, and when she pushes her way through it, she finds what everyone is fussing over.
Peeta, laying lifeless on the floor.
The white petals begin to shrivel and the edges have turned to a rotting shade of brown. Katniss sits listlessly beside the rose, leaving smudges along the glass where her fingers softly stroke the surface. She's refused to leave the medical wing – Haymitch too, and they sit in a sterile room on hard metal chairs in complete silence. Waiting.
When the doctor enters, neither one sits up in acknowledgment. They're too tired for pleasantries, and even so, they were never much for those to begin with.
The doctor opens his chart and begins to systematically read off the bullet points of Peeta's diagnosis.
The tracker jacker venom is affecting more than his memories and behavior. The production of key hormones have been paralyzed, and in some cases are mimicking chemicals found in the venom. They've been able to synthesize and stabilize some of his levels using steroids but his cardiovascular system is shutting down.
The words jumble in her head as if spoken in another language. She wishes Prim was with her to translate and put her at ease, but as usual, her only source for comfort is Haymitch. She looks at him expectantly and he sighs before putting it into terms she'll understand.
"Loverboy's dying of a broken heart," he says gruffly, shaking his head in disbelief. "How poetic."
She can't help but feel responsible.
A thousand screams echo in her mind. One voice for each soul who's been laid to rest by her hand. She can't add Peeta to that list. She wouldn't be able to bear it.
There's only one thing left to do. She's what's driving him mad, and the beast that's holding him hostage won't leg go until she's dead.
The rebellion doesn't need her. Sure she's a great shot, but if Coin wants a Mockingjay, she's far better off with Peeta Mellark as her symbol. The last time Katniss tried to play the part, she ended up with a bullet in her side.
When she goes to Coin's office, everyone of importance is there. Plutarch, Haymitch, Finnick, Gale, and a few other officials. Katniss doesn't waste time acknowledging them all. Instead, she steps directly to President Coin's desk and offers to kill herself.
When no one listens, she reaches for a pen from her desk, ready to plunge it into her neck.
Katniss's "psychotic break" earns her another stay at the hospital with a special bracelet around her wrist. They dull her mind with morphling and keep her locked away before word catches that their mockingjay is nothing but a cuckoo bird..
In her drug hazed dreams Peeta – her Peeta – comes to see her, looking just as handsome as the last time she saw him. His blue eyes are so bright, they sparkle still, even in the foggy twilight.
"Don't desert me, Katniss," he says, his tone pleading. "Not until you've saved me from this cruel misery."
She reaches out to touch him but he's always just out of grasp. "I can't," she says. "I don't know how."
"Stay with me," he tells her.
It's surprising, even with a bracelet that claims her to be mentally unsound that as the Mockingjay, Katniss has access to rooms that are usually restricted. When she presses her palm to the scanner beside the door, the lights flash green and the locks click open.
Peeta's no longer being kept in a high security cell, in fact his compartment isn't much different from hers – only three rooms down, and she's startled to find that the thick leather straps once used to restrain him have been removed.
He sits at a small desk in the corner, hunched over a sketchbook, which he scribbles in with sharp strokes of his pencil. When she makes no move to announce herself, he glances up from his work.
His eyes narrow at the sight of her, flitting towards the door like a wild animal who's been cornered and is looking for an escape. Then his posture eases, and a smirk slants his lips. "Here to finish me off, sweetheart?" he asks coolly, turning his attention back to his drawing.
She stumbles back a step, catching herself against the wall before she falls. Her throat tightens and it feels impossible to speak. What was she thinking by coming here?
"I hear you're doing that well enough yourself," she says. She flinches at the harshness of her words, but Peeta finds it amusing.
"You like that, don't you? Finally a casualty you can't take credit for."
"That's not true," she mumbles.
"Of course not. This is all about you after all."
She feels her blood boil at his taunting tone. She hates him. Whoever this stranger is, she despises him. She turns to leave, admonishing herself for chasing after a dream. Praying for her nightmares to return so she won't be fooled again.
"I never asked for any of this," she says, pressing her forehead against the door.
All she ever wanted was for her sister to be safe and for Peeta to make it out alive. Her sister doesn't need her anymore, but Peeta does. Abruptly, she crosses the room, falling to her knees before him. She takes his hands and wraps them around her neck, urging him to tighten his grip.
He stares at her with slightly crazed bewilderment, his fingers flexing against her pulse but never tightening. His breath quickens suddenly and his hands begin to tremble. She meets his eyes, to see that the irises have been swallowed by his wide pupils.
"Get out of here, Katniss," he growls.
"Do it, please," she says, clinging desperately to his wrists. "You'll be free."
He shakes away her grasp and turns in his chair to return to his sketch.
"Sounds like a brilliant plan," he says drily. "The deranged mutt snapping the Mockingjay's neck? I'd be a free man for sure." He shakes his head and let's out a tired sigh. "I don't want to kill you, Katniss."
"You don't?" she says, and for a moment she's disappointed.
He looks at her, his eyes scanning her face, lingering on her mouth. His fingers clench the edge of his desk and he wets his lips. "Honestly, I don't know what I want to do to you," he says uneasily.
She feels an unexpected warmth in her chest. Something vaguely familiar. A tingle that frightening, yet exciting. She blinks away the thoughts.
The thoughts of a hunger. A kiss. And by the way he looks at her, he's hungry too.
She hurries to the door and doesn't allow herself to look back.
The night is too long and the morphling isn't enough to bring her sleep. She wraps herself in her blankets and buries her face beneath the limp pillow.
She flips restlessly against the mattress, her mind drifting to places it shouldn't. She hates the boy who is pretending to be Peeta. He's violent and cruel and he'll let Peeta die if she doesn't stop him.
Yet he looks like Peeta, and sounds like Peeta, and smells like Peeta. She squeezes her eyes shut, a shiver trembling through her body.
She reaches into the drawer of her bedside table to retrieve her pearl. The only memory of him that she's certain of. She presses the small bead to her lips, and falls asleep.
He comes to her again in her dreams begging for her to find him. They're somewhere in the clouds, or a dense, never ending fog. She doesn't know where they are or how she'd find this place again.
"I don't know where to look," she tells him sadly.
"I'm closer than you think," he promises her.
The haze turns into thick, dark plumes of smoke, with flames licking up around their feet. Katniss is still looking for an escape when a mutt emerges from the fire, tackling Peeta and ripping him apart before she can stop it.
She shrieks, thrashing and clawing against the mutt when it turns on her, until she's trapped in its arms.
"Katniss!"
She wakes, clutched against Peeta's chest. A nightmare. It was only a nightmare.
She clings to him for dear life, tears burning her cheeks. Even in the darkness, her mouth finds his, hoping to erase every cruel memory her mind has haunted her with. She can't lose him again. She won't lose him.
She gives into the hunger, the need, the want. But something's different. The way he touches her, the way he moves. It's wild and frenzied like an animal. Like a mutt.
He rips away her clothing to claim every inch of her body, his mouth closing around each of her breasts. She knows she should stop him. That this isn't her Peeta, but she can't. She needs him.
Before she realizes it, she's naked – him too, and he's flipped her over so that her hands and knees are pressed against the mattress. When he pushes into her from behind, she isn't expecting it, and she cries out at the sharp pinch.
He pushes into her again and again until discomfort subsides and the only sounds in the room is their heavy breaths, his hips slapping against hers, and the creaking of the small cot.
The pearl presses against the palm of her hand. The only anchor that keeps her tethered to her body. The only connection she feels to him, even when their bodies are joined.
He stretches and fills her in a way she's never imagined, and when she comes, she's not sure if the pleasure is from him moving inside her, or the pain of being ripped in two and freeing her from her nightmares.
Her arms collapse beneath her weight, boneless, and she's so delirious, she barely registers the pearl as it rolls off the bed and clatters to the floor. The sound of it scattering across the concrete is silenced when it's crushed beneath the sole of his foot.
She panics, tangling herself in the sheets as she scrambles to retrieve it. Terrified that he'll take it from her when he recognizes it. He lifts his heel and picks it up off the floor, eying the tiny bead curiously before handing it back to her without a word.
Her heart pounds in her ears even after she's pressed the pearl safely against her chest.
"Stay," she says, before she's had a chance to think.
She wishes she could take it back, but then he climbs into the bed. "This isn't safe," he warns her.
She chains his wrists to the bedpost with a pair of handcuffs and selfishly curls into his chest, only letting go when the District Thirteen guards separate them in the morning.
Even with her perceived lapse in mental stability, there's still a war to prepare for and propos to be filmed. Target practice for Squad 451 becomes monotonous. Everyone hits their marks on dead center, and Katniss can even strike the farthest target with a rifle when a few weeks ago, she could barely fire one.
Her mind is a thousand miles away – somewhere in the clouds, while she stares off into the distance where Boggs and Jackson are reorganizing the course to make it more difficult. She's too distracted by what happened with Peeta, she barely notices the light tap on her shoulder. She gasps, turning quickly on her toes to find nothing but empty air. Gale chuckles from her other side, and when her head snaps to meet his playful gray eyes, he innocently waves the fletching of the arrow in his hand and taps her shoulder with it again.
Katniss shoves him, but cannot suppress the smile that curls her lips. He jabs an elbow into her side and she elbows him back. It's strange to feel carefree, but for a brief instant she allows herself to forget about the war, and the Games, and what's happened with Peeta. For the first time in recent memory, she laughs.
That is until she notices the squad that has gathered on the far side of the training field. They stand in a circle watching pairs of soldiers practice hand to hand combat in the center. One soldier is focused beyond the crowd, and watching her with cold, hard eyes. She chokes on her laughter and forgets how to breathe.
Peeta's hands are balled into fists, and he licks his lips as he steps to the center of the mat, his eyes never leaving hers as he pins his opponent to the ground with ease. His instructor praises him for his technique, but Peeta only nods absently. His gaze holds a different story. It's a promise that he hasn't conquered his last target, and it makes Katniss's heart stop.
After training, Katniss barely makes it past the stairwell before a pair of arms grab her and thrust her against the wall. Her shriek is swallowed by a mouth pressed against hers, and even if it had managed to echo through the darkened corridor, nobody is around to hear. Her eyes widen when she feels his groin stiff against her thigh.
The growl that rings from the back of Peeta's throat courses through her body as his hands claw at her loose fitting uniform, stretching away the fabric to touch her heated skin.
"You're mine," he says, unfastening the button on her slacks and slipping his fingers into her underwear. "Not Gale's. Mine. Say it."
She keels over when he pushes against her firmly with the pad of his thumb, refusing to relent until she gives into his demand.
Was that what upset him before? Her and Gale teasing one another like friends during target practice. It makes her angry because she knows she did nothing wrong. But then she remembers the months of uncertainty,when she pretended to be Peeta's lover with no intention of loving him back. It's why he's the way he is now. She'd poisoned his mind long before the toxins did.
"I'm yours," she cries, knees buckling when he begins to draw slow circles around her wanting bundle of nerves.
He cuffs her wrists above her head against the wall, his other hand buried between her legs, fingers swirling furiously through her folds. Her back arches from the cool concrete, but he pins her down with his hip.
When she closes her eyes she pictures her Peeta. Huddled together for safety in the cave. A tender moment on the train. Their final kiss on the beach. Will these memories be twisted and washed away by the animal before her? Is this what it feels like to be hijacked?
He draws his mouth to her pulse point, sucking the vein between his teeth. She can feel her heart flutter where he holds her fate between his lips. If he pinches her jugular just right, he could kill her in an instant. The sweetest release she can imagine. She comes with a shout, imagining the mutts from the first arena tearing apart her throat.
That night, in the foggy recesses of her mind, she doesn't find Peeta waiting for her, not as she has in the past. Instead she stumbles upon a memory. One from the winter, before the Quell announcement when she was drowsy from sleep syrup and Peeta had carried her to bed.
She'd asked him a question but had fallen asleep before he could answer, but now in this twilight, she can remember.
"Stay with me?" she had said, just like the Peeta who follows her dreams.
"Always."
But he didn't. He couldn't. He was captured and brainwashed and destroyed. All that's left of him is a shell of a person, and that shell hates her. He goes mad at the thought of her. Hungers for the thought of her in pain. He's an unfeeling beast. A mutt.
That didn't explain him waking her from her nightmares or staying with her through the night. That was something Peeta would do.
He's closer than she thinks, she remembers him telling her. Maybe he's been there all along.
She's no longer being held in the psych ward, as she's been found to be mentally fit regardless of her recent episodes. Peeta's still there though, and the next afternoon she goes to see him.
He sits on his bed, fumbling with a tattered length of string she recognizes to be Finnick's. He looks up at her strangely, like he didn't expect to see her.
"Making knots?" she asks, when he says nothing.
"Trying to," he says. "Maybe I'd be better at it if I were tying you up."
"That wouldn't be much use." She takes the rope from him and unravels the knot with ease.
"No wonder I'm the one always needing rescued," he notes.
"I've had a lot of practice." He raises his eyebrows at this. "With the knots that is," she says, handing the rope back to him.
He twists the string around his finger and begins to tie it again. It's quiet for a moment before he speaks again.
"Look, I'm sorry about the other day, at training." He shrugs his shoulders, but still continues to look at his hands in his lap. "The other night too, I guess."
She feels her throat tighten and she swallows thickly to clear it. She hadn't expected him to bring it up, and she's not sure she wants to talk about it either. "For what?"
His eyes meet hers, stormy and dark even beneath the bright florescent light overhead. "You know what," he says.
"We've kissed plenty before," she says. "And it didn't mean much then."
"Yes. I remember most of them now. The mechanics anyway. I remember the way we touched with our hands and mouths, but I don't remember how it felt."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know," he says with a sigh. "Maybe it's because it was all pretend, but sometimes I recall this overwhelming urge – like this instinctual need..."
It's a feeling she knows all to well. One that she was only beginning to understand that night on the beach, and one that confuses her more and more since his return.
"A hunger," she says, and she's not sure if it's out loud or deep in her thoughts.
"Yeah," he says. "I guess that's it. It's like there are two voices in my head, pushing me in different directions. I don't know what I did to stop it back then, and I keep on trying to fight this monster inside of me, but he always wins."
She thinks about her own darkness. She was able to kill in the Games without thought if it meant her survival. Why was her life more important than Marvel and Cato and the others?
Peeta's always been different though. Even Haymitch and Finnick could see it. He was better than the other victors because he was inherently good. At least that's how she always saw him. But maybe that's because she didn't want to see the alternative.
"Maybe it's always been a part of you," she says.
"What?"
"The monster," she says. "Maybe that anger has always been there, deep down."
"Sometimes I feel like her," he says, and she can tell he means his mother, even though he doesn't say it. "She allowed herself to become so bitter because of the way her life turned out. That's why she was so cruel. That's how I used to feel when I looked at you, once I wasn't afraid of you anymore. I was mad that you never loved me and the more I was around you the more foolish I felt for not noticing before. It made me angry all over again."
"I wish you would have gotten angry," she says. "I deserved it."
"It wouldn't have done any good."
"I think it would have." She's still standing at the foot of his bed, and she leans against the wall beside it. "There are walls we build to protect ourselves, never realizing that the things that terrify us may be something that we need."
"What are you afraid of?" he asks, his fingernail picking at the clumpy knot he's woven.
"Hurting people," she says.
He laughs. "That's not true. You do that all the time. It takes one to know one."
She frowns, inching towards the door. "Come on, tell me," he says.
Falling hopelessly and madly in love, she thinks, and hurries out of the room before she does something stupid like say it out loud.
He's getting better. She's not sure how, but that's what the doctors say, and they seem to understand these things far more than she ever could.
It's a shift in brain chemistry, or something. The latest brain scan shows active regions that were previously dormant. At first, they were seeing spikes in activity associated with addiction and obsession, triggered from the tracker jacker venom they assumed, but even after his system was cleansed, the striatum persisted to light up in all of his scans.
Katniss thought that was the problem. That his obsession and paranoia were what impeded his other functions and that was what put a strain on his heart.
They show her another scan that is meaningless to her, one they had taken earlier in the day, and they point at it excitedly.
"The ventral tegmental," one of the doctors says, tracing his finger up the middle of the image. "It's associated with calmness and pain management, and when we show him images and videos that once excited the striatum, now the activity has shifted to here."
She nods as if she understands, and the doctor continues when she doesn't speak. "Past research indicates this sort of activity is associated with romantic love."
Her eyes widen. Peeta still loves her.
She goes into the forest that afternoon collecting berries, plants, and flowers, which she grinds into different pastes and smears against a flat plank of wood. When she's content with the pallet, she returns to Thirteen, stopping in one of the supply closets to grab a can of white paint, before returning to Peeta's compartment.
She extends the plank and can of paint, smiling weakly. "Not as fancy as the stuff they used to send you from the Capitol, but hopefully it's a step up from the pencils."
His wide grin makes her stomach knot, and when he asks if she'd like to sit with him for a while, she nods a bit too eagerly.
He doesn't have a paintbrush, so he uses his fingers, and she watches intently as he dips his finger into each dye, swirling it into a puddle of white paint until a new, brilliant color is formed.
When he's finished, he presents it to her, and the sight makes her heart stand still.
It's of their picnic, before the games, on the training center roof when they watched the sunset for the last time. Every detail is captured vividly from the crown of flowers to the color of her dress. But what's most magnificent is the sky, which captures the harsh, mysterious darkness of night and the gentle light of day, separated by a beautiful, warm band of orange.
It's you," she says, her hand hovering over the image, too delicate to touch.
"What?"
"Peeta," she says, cupping his round face in her hands. "It's you." She kisses him. Soft, tender, unlike any kiss they've shared before, and when he returns it, it's not the constant steadiness of their staged kisses, or the primal lust that consumed him after the hijacking, it's passionate and sturdy. It's Peeta.
When they pull apart, gasping for breath, she sees his pupils as they widen and contract wildly between pinpoints and saucers. His grip on her tightens, anchoring him to reality. "Katniss," he says, his voice strained. "You stayed."
"Always," she replies.