Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games or its characters.
Chapter 1
It's been two months. Two months since my world came crashing down around me. Two months since the one good thing in my life that I had hope for was taken from me, forever. Peeta. He's gone. He's gone and I am never getting him back.
I was so consumed with joy from seeing him that I didn't notice the change in his eyes. How they turned cold and menacing. I didn't see him take on a defensive stance. I saw his arms reaching out to me and I ran to him without hesitation. It took many seconds for me to realize that he wasn't holding me around my neck to hug me. He was choking me. He had his hands wrapped around my neck and he was quickly crushing the life right out of me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered the feral scream, felt the warm blood splatter on my face. But it wasn't until I regained consciousness that I learned what happened.
My mom had killed Peeta. She was coming in to check on him right as he attacked me. She lunged at him and jammed her pen into his carotid artery. He was dead in three and a half minutes. There are still some injuries that even the doctors can't heal.
He wasn't my Peeta anymore, they say. He had been hijacked by the Capitol, turned into a Mutt. They say my Peeta no longer existed. That all that was in him that made him Peeta died while he was held prisoner. But he looked like my Peeta. Smelled like my Peeta. Felt like my Peeta. How could they say that my Peeta was gone when I was staring at his lifeless body lying on the morgue table in front of me? His sweet, innocent face was void of any pain or suffering. My love, my life, was lying dead before me and my brain couldn't process this. Didn't want to. Two months later it still didn't want to.
I'm back in 12 now and I more or less live with Haymitch. He came back to watch over me and tried leaving me at home the first three days, alone. When he finally came to check on me he saw that I hadn't moved an inch on the couch, still curled into the same ball he'd left me in three days prior. He packed some of my clothes, picked me up, and carried me to his house. I haven't left since. I shower, I eat, I sleep in his bed. He now sleeps on the couch. At first I didn't want to even bother with moving, but when Haymitch started to undress me to put me in the bath I snapped out of my trance and ran into the bathroom, locking the door, and bathed myself. But beyond basic necessities I am pretty much worthless. On especially bad nights he'll come into the room and rock me back to sleep after a nightmare has me screaming awake. We don't talk. He drinks. I started drinking too after the third week back home.
Home. This wasn't home. Peeta was home. Peeta was dead and cold 6 feet in the ground. Why won't they let me join him? I just want to go home. But I can't. I tried. In 13 they restrained me to a hospital bed to keep me from harming myself. I can't do it back here in 12, either. Haymitch caught me once cutting pretty, straight lines on my wrists and he yelled and screamed at me so loud, throwing the knife into the wall between two panels like I did on the train to my first Hunger Games that I was scared he was going to finish me off himself. I almost asked him to. Almost begged him. Until he whispered "Please sweetheart, I can't lose you too." The tears I saw falling from his eyes hit me harder than a slap in the face. I couldn't be responsible for one more death. Not my own and especially not his. I'd killed enough people as it was. I didn't need another notch in my bow to add to the countless ones already there.
The rebellion went on without me. Johanna killed Coin instead of Snow, who died anyway moments later. Coin deployed bombs that killed innocent, unarmed Capitol children and she wanted to continue the Games with them as well. Johanna said she was no better than Snow. Her trial was quick and she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. How fitting. She and Gale bonded during the war and she lives with him now in 2. I'm glad they have each other. I am glad he has someone, because he could never have me. Not after finding out that the bombs that killed those poor, poor children had been the ones he created with Beetee.
My sister, Prim, is studying to be a doctor in 4 with our mother. I won't let her visit me. I am not ready to see blond hair and blue eyes on anyone, yet. I'm glad Haymitch is from the Seam. His gray eyes don't remind me of Peeta, most of the time. But sometimes I'll catch him staring at me and I know what he's thinking. He's missing Peeta, just as I am, and only stays coherent enough to keep me alive. I'm his one last connection to Peeta. Haymitch is all I have left of Peeta, too, of our shared love and memories of him. Being around each other is painful. We only remind each other of all the people we've loved and lost. But being apart is unbearable. I guess you could say we couldn't survive without each other, though I wouldn't say what we're doing is surviving. More like going through the motions of staying alive.
