Deadman's Wanderland
entitled: Speak
pairing: Peeta/Johanna!friendship
summary: Johanna wants to see him do something more than just breathe. She wants to hear something more than his screams.
rating: T
disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games.
"So you really love her or what?" Johanna Mason can barely breathe, but she clutches her stomach and wheezes, "You think this is worth it?"
The boy in the cell beside her stares blankly at the metal-plated ceiling. From where she's lying, she can see the steady rise of his chest, the flicker of his lashes, but he doesn't respond. He hasn't responded in a while.
"There's gotta be an easier way than this, right? Are we even living?" She tries to chuckle but her voice sounds like steel rubbing together. "Just give in already."
Peeta is broken in a lot of ways. He's tired and angry and weak. He doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want to listen, and on some days, he just holds his breathe, praying for the end.
But the end never comes and he's left gasping for air.
Today, he manages a grin. "You sound like you're slipping, Johanna. The torture's becoming too much for a badass like you?" Two full sentences. He hasn't spoken two full, functional sentences in the month they've been locked up. But Johanna isn't impressed.
It takes all her facial muscles, but she arches her brow. "You have got to be fucking kidding me," Johanna says, clearer than she's spoken in weeks. She rolls from where she's lying, biting her bottom lip to stomp out the scream dying to tear from her throat. She moves all the way to the iron bars that separate their cells.
Then she's glaring at him.
"Don't even think for a second that you're stronger than me, Mellark, because you're not." She's absolutely livid. "You're nothing more than a lovesick boy and I'm the one who's going to survives this. You got that?" And then she's screaming like those first few days before the torture became routine. "I'm not gonna fucking break! You got that?"
Peeta chuckles and it hurts every inch of his body. "Loud and clear, sweetheart."
fin.