It's been eleven days since Peeta's last attack. Eleven perfect days.
During those days I've taught him how to fish at my favorite spot by the lake, and he let me try my hand at baking breads with the herbs we collect from the garden beneath his kitchen window. We laughed together, we sat in comfortable silence together, we took long walks together, but in the back of our minds was always the lingering dread that he will loose himself again. It's never a question of if, only when.
He never remembers the things he says and does, and the truth is I don't have the heart to tell him. The look of anguish on his face when he sees the cuts and bruises that litter my body is more than I can bear, and I can't help but feel guilty for the part I've played in all of this. If I had just eaten those berries, Peeta's family would still be alive. My precious Prim would still be alive. Hell, ninety percent of what used to be District 12 would still be alive. I could have prevented everything that I caused. But as much as I'd love to daydream about an alternative, there is no point. Things have progressed so far since that night in the arena. We were sent back to the Games. Peeta was tortured by the Capitol. I became the Mockingjay. We overthrew the Capitol. We moved back to District 12. We are trying to start over.
Instead, I lock him in whatever room of the house he happens to loose his grip on reality and wait to hear the sound of him slumping to the floor, unconscious, before I dare go in. Sitting outside the door, listening to his screams, I feel guilty for not being in there with him. But the few times I tried to ride this out with him in the past I've ended up in the hospital. The last time, he pushed me down the stairs. I woke up in the hospital a week and a half later to an almost catatonic Peeta. He couldn't forgive himself for what had happened. It took weeks of begging before I could get him to spend any appreciable time with me. He just sat in his house staring at the fireplace, and, one one occasion, opened the door when Haymitch showed up with an 80 year old single malt whiskey. I can't let that happened again. I need him too much.
So I just sit on the other side of the door and talk him. I tell him about our time in the cave, when I was so scared he wouldn't make it. I tell him about the guilt I felt when I first saw the metal contraption that replaced his left leg. I tell him about when I first realized I loved him. I do all of this in hopes that he will return to me. Because the person in that room is not Peeta. He is not the boy who kept my family from starving after my father died. Or the one who gave me a pearl and a promise to always love me on the beach in the second arena. This is a creation of the Capitol. A sick, twisted version of the boy I've grown to love.
To be frank, this version of Peeta scares me. And I know he scares Peeta. We're still not entirely sure what it is the "doctors" in the Capitol did to him, but its like a flip switches in his brain when the hijacking takes over. He's not himself, and I maintain he can't be held responsible for his actions. He screams, he cries, he throws furniture. He tells me how much he hates me, how he dreams of killing me, how the only pleasure he gets in life is from the thought that I will one day be dead. I do my best to ignore everything he says. Once the vision has run his course, or he fights his way back to me, his mind is spent and he is physically exhausted. I wait until I'm sure he's out before I go in to collect the pieces.
Peeta has a good fifty pounds on me, so getting him into the bed is not exactly an option. All I can do is try to make him as comfortable as possible. I unstrap his prosthetic leg and lean it against the wall, because I know its uncomfortable for him to sleep with it attached. The contraption is four years old now, practically ancient technology by Capitol standards, and I can see the red marks along what remains of his left leg from where the metal brace digs into his flesh. I go to bathroom and retrieve some salve to rub into the wounds. A conscious Peeta would never allow me to do this. Once I've covered the open sores with bandages, I walk to the linen cupboard and grab the quilt my grandmother stitched as a wedding gift to my parents. It's one of the few things I was able to recover from what little remained of my childhood home after the bombings. I spread it over his prone form and then pull his head into my lap. These are the nights his nightmares are at their worst. These are the nights when he needs me the most.
He doesn't scream or thrash about like I do, but I can feel every muscle in his body tense and I wipe away the tears that silently stream down his face. I gently massage the tight muscles in his back, desperate to spare him some of the pain he always feels in the morning, and whisper things I can only hope will calm him down. He refuses to take the muscle relaxers prescribed to him, complaining they leave him feeling hazy and drugged, so I do my best to work out all of the kinks with my hands. I lift up his shirt, admiring the definition that comes from years of lifting heavy sacks of flower, and press strong circles with my thumbs, feeling for knots and twitches as I work my from his neck to his lower back. This is the only thing I can do to ease his suffering.
On rare occasions, he tries to claw his way out of the nightmares. Literally. I do my best to pin his arms against the floor, but I am no match for his strength. These are the times he wakes up the next morning to find me bruised and bloody. Thankfully tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight I just sit here, holding his head in my hands, and stare at his prone form.
It breaks my heart to see him like this and I have to force myself to keep from crying. Ten days out of eleven Peeta does everything in his power to be strong for me, I must be strong for him today.
The nightmares reach a peak in the early hours of the morning and usually startle him awake. I feed his shaking form a cocktail of pills prescribed by the doctors in District 13, and it doesn't take long to feel him slowly relax against me. That's when I lead him into our room and guide him onto the bed. His whole body glistens with sweat, so I bring a bowl of cool water and a soft cloth from the bathroom and sit down on the bed next to him. As gently as I can manage, I press the cloth against his forehead, admiring how handsome and relaxed he looks in his drugged sleep. I mop the sweat from his body, making my way from his cheeks to his neck, down his strong shoulders and forearms until I reach his hands. I always pause for a minute at his hands. I love his hands. Once I've finished I pull the covers over him and move to my side of the bed.
On these nights we fall asleep together, my arms around him for a change. I brush the ash blond hair off of his forehead and sing softly to him as I trace the light pink scars that carve trails down the side of his forehead. He's been forced to endure so much. It's on these nights that I sleep with my hand over his heart. Scared that one day he might not wake up from all of this. The continuous stress and fear of what he might do, who he might hurt, and the horrible scenes he is forced to relive are more than the average person could bear. But my Peeta isn't average. He pushes through this, never complaining and always there to help me when I can't pull myself together. He is always there beside me. It's only on nights when the thick smell of rain cascades through the open window of our bedroom and the faint clap of thunder can be heard in the distance, that I wake up to a half-empty bed. On those nights I find him next to the fire, carefully studying pictures of his family and re-reading the letters his father wrote to him during the first games. Peeta's father would write him letters of encouragement, anecdotes from his childhood, or generous expressions of fatherly love and then store them in a box. Knowing they could never be delivered. Waiting for the day he hoped Peeta would come home. Peeta said this was his father's way of coping with being so helpless. His way of trying to give his son some comfort. Watching Peeta in these moments breaks my heart. His entire family is gone and this box is all that remains of them. Yet he never complains. Everything else was destroyed in the firebombing. Not even the bodies of his parents and two brothers were recovered, only the remains of their molten jewelry to prove their bodies must have been reduced to ash beneath the rubble of their bakery. I stand quietly undetected in the doorway, giving Peeta the silence and space he needs to process everything that has happened.
Peeta has been broken, his short life wrought with so much pain and hardship. But I'm broken too, so maybe that's why we fit so well together. Our jagged edges meld together to form one solid structure. Always on the brink of shattering, but whole.
One day out of eleven is bad, but I live for the other ten days. For the days when I can imaging a full life with Peeta. Our children picking wildflowers in the field, while Peeta teaches them how to forage for berries and I teach them to hunt. And nights where he sits by their beds and tells them fairytale stories as they fall asleep, then comes to bed and holds me. Those are the days we live for. That's what gets us through the eleventh day.
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This is a product of a 17 hour flight from Dubai. It turns out there are only so many episodes of 30 Rock and Ryan Gosling movies a girl can take before she gets bored. Who knew?
Anyway, what did y'all think? Was it too much mushy? Feel free to leave a review with comments/criticisms.
Thanks for reading! R&R