A/n: So this first bit is an adventure in stream of consciousness. The following chapters take on a much more normal narrative structure.
As of 2/20/14, this piece has been edited for style, but no additional content has been added.
"Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather and I can fuck up anything, anything. It was a wonderful life that we had together and now I fucked up every little goddamn thing." (Frank Turner, 2013).
There are accusations from bodies that have no right to point fingers. His knocks me backwards like a slap. So carefully planned and insidiously plotted. I didn't even see his hand until it knocked me down. It was never a debate. His answer was mine to swallow.
I judge, you judge. "There is only so much hypocrisy I can be a part of."
Sidelong glances across kitchen tables. Bloated pauses in conversation. They were cataloging every word. Counting the slurs and slides. Trying to read the secrets in my eyes. I'm realizing now, I've played the deal all square.
The wind blows my hair across my face, into my eyes and mouth. I stare through the dark strands into his eyes. He wants to send me away. I search out his lips with my eyes, as he continues to talk, to explain, to twist his lies to lessen his pain. I watched his teeth, tongue, and lips move together flawlessly, spinning untruths with practiced ease. I feel his words fall from his lips and hit me. Haymitch relinquishes the grip he had on my upper arms. I hadn't even felt his hands.
I did love him or at least I tried to. I wanted to. They said I would never deserve him and I think they were right. I let him take my virginity. He smelled like sweat and hope and paint. He brushed my hair from my eyes and whispered declarations of love into my neck. I smiled and he kissed me again. I stared at the ceiling until it was safe to untangle my limbs from his. The harsh light of the bathroom revealed no discernible difference in my face. Unfamiliar dark eyes still stared back at me. The invasion of my body didn't change me like I hoped it would. I slid back between the cool sheets and I bit back the urge to cry. Emotion I was afraid to broach hung heavy in my throat. I let his limbs entwine with mine once more. He was gentle and he was kind. I should have loved him, but I didn't.
I cut my teeth on his heart. I learned the ways of the body in his embrace. I wanted to slip my skin and make a home inside of him. I tried to love him, but I could never catch the feeling. Peeta's not the only casualty of the carelessness of me.
The past lingers on in flashbacks and nightmares. Sometimes I am sure my flesh is blistering, crackling, melting; the girl who was on fire is still on fire. I was the face of their revolution. I was their girl on fire, their Mockingjay, but that story is done now. I'm yesterday's girl.
"Are you happy here?" He asked.
He kisses me hard and I let him because I want to, because it's something to do, because I am afraid no one else ever will. He's watching me now, irritating in his kindness. The words erupt from my throat without my consent,
"I can keep playing with your heart and you can keep letting me or you can walk away. I'm not here for you to save." The drugs make brave. I can't hear his response, but I can hear the walls and taste the stars.
"When did I become your responsibility?" I mumble. "Why is your way of living so superior to mine? There aren't any rules. You can't say how I should live my life with any certainty." He leaves the room. I shrug. This is obligation dressed as love. I wasted so much time trying to force that piece that didn't fit. He knowingly linked his fingers with my greedy hand and his fate with my fickle heart, yet he's still surprised to find the taste of dirt in his mouth.
"You were an ordinary girl, I made you a hero." He taunts me in my dreams.
"You didn't make me anything. I made me." I want to yell, but he cannot hear because we promised not to lie.
I wake up with the taste of blood in mouth. There are things I can't remember. Feelings unattached to experience linger half-formed and blurred, dancing in the ether of remembered and forgotten. We don't talk about it. Life has been forever fractured into before and after. I stare into the mirror. The tile is cold against my feet. That girl isn't me, but she's wearing my face. The needle settles in the sink.
I'm falling in slow motion. Life coalesces like melted wax. The smell of cold and sunshine mixed with a blur of colors and of sound. I sink onto the cold, hard ground and feel the cut of my teeth catching my tongue. My face is flush against the tile. His arms are around my waist. I'm captured once again. I'm stranded on that stage once again. Too bright, too hot, too loud. Too many bodies pushing. Too many hands that want. I'll pretend to be anything they want me to be. People carve themselves into my skin. I let them. I don't know the face in the mirror anymore, so let them paint me and mold me. The show must go on.
He drags me into the shower. The next few days are all hot showers, tasteless food, and sidelong glances. My life spread like the remains of a party gone horribly awry, everything strewn across the dirty kitchen floor. Night is static, is problematic. My body hums. I can't sit. I can't stand. Life is still, mockingly so. These summer nights are beautiful. Where is the rain? Where is the wind? I feel dangerous surrounded in tranquility. Everything has stopped, but I'm still spinning, unraveling with every revolution. Exhaustion masquerading as restlessness rubs me raw. It was an insignificant glance. It wouldn't haunt me if it hadn't been the last. My thoughts are a constant string of commentary rehashing and re-remembering. I'm trying to reframe senseless violence in an organized way. I talk to her even though she'll never hear. I sneak a hit. Oblivion is sweet and forgiving.
I am a series of broken promises, systemic, chronic instability. I wield my label of mentally disordered like sword. Parrying any attempts to touch me, help me, or fix me. I don't hurt the way he does. It was so many things and he never did say. The scars were gone, but the ache remained. We were dancing to different music. I could only understand his life in terms of mine. The smell of fire, of sweat, and dirt. The mumbling of a man close enough to hear, but never close enough to touch. I remember thinking I was going to die. I wake up in a cold sweat, the battery acid taste of fear fresh in my mouth.
I am aimless and inept, a half person wandering in the dark, my hands thrown out searching for a handhold. I need something to keep me here rather than there. I am in untethered freefall. Tomorrow, I could be anywhere. I could be anyone. Today, I am a lost girl swallowed completely by a wave of synthetic happiness. Disappearing in the wash, return date unknown. I've been treading water, but my legs are tired now. I could always ride the lows farther than the highs. Candy sweetness rushes through my veins.
You talk, I talk, but neither of us is interesting. Nothing we say matters. I talk, you talk. It's tedious and annoying. Pausing in between, waiting your turn to speak. Holding my thought until you finish yours. Maybe they can tell I don't care. Maybe they can tell I don't really hear them and I hardly ever consider them. That would explain the distance that seems to have fallen between me and ever one else, that ever expanding crevice that is making it harder and harder to care about any of them. I tried to say the right words and think how they think. I tried to be like everybody else, but I could not quite understand the rules. I could never grasp the moments in between motion, in between the words.
It's like losing a word on the tip of your tongue. I know she existed. That girl I was. I know it, but I just can't get it back. Every night I fall asleep, praying I wake up me again.
"Our begrudging champion."
"She doesn't have to like it. She just has to do it."
"It would be easier if we were all on the same page."
"She'll fall in line or she won't."'
I can hear them. All the things they never said. I am light. I am good and sure. The lightness fades like lights always do. It's dark and everything is hard and sharp again. Things cut and prick the skin marring delicate flesh with memories and remember-whens. Why isn't the violence of my life written in the smooth lines of my skin? A needle tears a new track.
Scissors slip and cut the skin. Stop the blood, clean the cut, wish everything whole again. Skin mends. I mend. The high comes again. It's a playground now. Who can play where bodies once burned?
It's an affectation, the celebrity of me. The intention of my movements was never fame. Still it came, like a tidal wave. Slowly the shoreline receded and I realized I wasn't wading anymore. The water is rushing over me now and I am tangled in the undertow. I hear a voice screaming and I know it is my own. He's hiding in his room when I seek him out.
"I don't have anything for you." He's cold and hard. It's a foreign feeling.
"That's fine because I don't want anything from you." I taunt.
"Get out of here, Katniss."
I dance in the doorway, childlike, afraid. "I don't want to."
"Well, I'm really not in the mood for you and your mind games bullshit. You love me and then you don't. You want me and then you don't. I can't keep up." He won't look at me.
My fingers tangle in my hair, "I'm allowed to be unsure, to need to work out my feelings." I dance towards him and then back again. My hands itch to touch him.
"You are, but, you do it without consideration to me! To my feelings! I loved you. I gave you everything you wanted and you don't…" I can read the sadness in the slump of his shoulders.
"I didn't mean—"
He turns violently and cuts me off, "You did. You meant it. You liked that I loved you! That I let you take everything and you didn't have to give anything back."
His face is pressed close to mine. "I'm sorry." I say to the ground.
He grips my arms. "I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to decide. I need that from you. Are you staying or going?"
"I don't know."
"Make a choice."
"I can't."
I let it linger too long and now it has festered. I can smell it, the fetid, putrid stench of the carelessness of me.
"What are you doing, Peeta?"
"I don't know what you mean."
What is the current state of you and me? We're a corrosive dance of codependency.
"Don't you think this is all a little unhealthy?"
"Haymitch, I love her."
"That doesn't mean you have to give her everything. She doesn't make you better."
"Have you ever fallen asleep in one world and woke up gasping in another?" He doesn't know.
"This girl isn't me, but she's wearing my face." He never understands.
"They made you love me. It was just a story. It was all just a story." Because it was.
"But, it's our story." He replies, soft and sad.
"It's what I was supposed to do." I whisper. He clutches my hand as my body fails and words run dry.