The Weariest River—A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Summary: You ask me to stay still, grow quiet as the mountains. I can hear the whispered prayers streaming from your mouth; they trickle from your lips to the mockingjays to the dry creak bed. But they will reach me only in my collapse, not because I can't go on, but because you have weighed me down.

Red fingerprints smear on the rocks I touch, the vibrant crimson dulling gradually into warmer earth tones as the wind dries the shiny circles I have made, my lower lip held precariously between my teeth, waiting, wild with anticipation yet unable to move. The rocks are growing redder by the hour, my anxiety sharpening and the constant motion of notch draw loose, notch draw loose, notch draw loose, the only thing keeping me sane as I try, anything, to stop tormented bodies burning, burning around me.

I lick my lips and taste the copper, feel how my tongue seems sticky against their dryness, imagine how they burn as if they're on fire, too. It has been years since Prim died, yet the explosion that killed her seems to burn within me every hour of every day, awake or asleep. After living my entire life for her, only for her—feeding her, volunteering as tribute, winning the games, staying alive, being strong—I find myself wandering through forests that burn, my projections of danger keeping me sane, my will to live only there when I have something—anything—to fight, to stay strong for.

But I know there are only so many hours I can sit and shoot at trees until my fingers bleed. I can only pretend for so long. Soon, I have to return to the house, the house that is being consumed—on the inside and out—by endless silence.

I stopped loving him long ago. I guess he never stopped, but we still don't speak.

I get up to retrieve my arrows, and just for this moment my reverie is broken. I can't pretend to run and fight something that isn't there forever. It wears on my mind and body, despite the hours I spend training as if I have to go to another games. As if I still have someone to fight for.

The sky is grey with the impending dawn. It's early enough that the birds are still quiet, the mockingjays that have flocked in fervor to my woods still nestled in sleep, the animals that come alive at night succumbing, finally, to the light. I pull my arrows out of the hard tree trunks and damp earth, trying to remember what I thought I was shooting at, but to no avail. My arms are trembling and my legs are liquid beneath me, the thought of returning to the house where I can no longer pretend makes me shudder. Things fight to overcome me whenever I blink my eyes, so I try to stay focused on the trodden path leading back to the fence, touching each damp tree, listening to each boot beat, fighting visions of the people I let die. There is so much fire. The blood on my hands is theirs. I hold my bow almost tenderly, imagining the old weapons found too late.

I drop to my knees. The grief is overwhelming. My throat stretches and stutters with words that won't come out, my body violently lurching, tears mingling with the dew perfectly formed on the grass below me. The explosions go off within me, tearing me apart, lifting memories from me I have fought so hard to keep down. I fall on the ground. The rocks become bodies, shaking the dirt off their backs where they have been buried. Shaking. Trembling. Remembering- I didn't bury her. A shuddering breath. Her body was torn to pieces.

The sobs are loud and not my own, but they resonate within my body with a different meaning, and I can somehow imagine it's her crying. So, so far away. I can do nothing. Memories, just memories. But- I could have done something.

My bitten nails dig into the dirt, pulling up the roots, willing my pain to leak from my body. I dig into the roots of a dying oak tree, the golden veined leaves turning wrinkled and grey, the once majestic trunk bent under the weight of its last sorrowful days. I want some part of its pain, to feel something other than everything I have known, for someone to take it away from me. Because I can't pretend I'm strong like I used to be—like I have any reason to be strong, with nothing to fight for or against. I have faded into weakness like the tree that used to be so strong.

I've always had to be careful what I wished for, because soon he comes. His arms are strong and thick, I can feel them coiling around me like snakes, and I want for the briefest of moments for them to hold me even tighter. He starts talking, in soothing, careful tones, as he carries me back to the house, indifferent to the oak tree's tragedy.

Outside of the forest, District 12 feels heavy under blinding white heat. Maybe it's just the heaviness of my own body, but everything feels agonizingly slow. The shimmering streaks of wind in the abandoned district, shot through with the naked heat of summer, writhe like bodies in the air, an intense struggle and passion arising in nothing but the deepest golden vein of day. I feel lost in the fire of high noon as Peeta carries me back to the house, fervid winds kissing our skin and making us sweat, sticky with streaks of sunlight, as if we were drenched in honey.

Each step feels jerkier and heavier than the last. I can feel layers shedding from his skin, left behind in the heavy abandonment of our district, strength and compassion leaving him like layers of clothes being torn away by the wind. Steps away from the door, the last layer sheds, and he sets me down shaking, not because I am too heavy, but because he can no longer pretend. Duty and devotion had been shed twenty feet back, and I cannot blame him for finally turning in on himself in grief when I have done nothing but that for months. He leaves me at the doorstep, knowing full well I will go back to where I was, and he will have to don a coat of lies and pretend he doesn't love me anymore until the weight becomes to much to bear.

I have no one but myself to blame.

I stand wearily, my legs still too soft to stand without heavy shaking, and make my way inside the house. I only want to sleep, to curl up and not remember for a night and a day, but an envelope on the counter in the dusty kitchen gives me pause. It wasn't there before. And anything new in our lives, anything at all, is progress.

It's from the Capitol.

Or, what used to be the Capitol.

I have not been there in over five years. Everything I don't want to remember about my past resides in the Capitol; namely, Gale and my mother. I have spent all these years trying to forget them, to forget Prim, to immerse myself in Peeta, because, after all, he is the only thing in my life I can consider…well, not my distant past.

It's an invitation, as I suspected, to the Anniversary Gala of the downfall of the Capitol. Held, ironically, in the Capitol—in President Snow's former home. What a nice, intimate touch.

Peeta must have been out looking for me when it arrived. I peer out of the kitchen window to see if he is still outside, hunched in grief, but he has left without notice like I so often do. Unlike him, however, I'm not one to be concerned and go looking.

I run my fingers over the invitation, trying to imagine what it would be like to go back to the Capitol after all these years. If I can't walk in the familiarity of District 12 without falling to pieces upon seeing the burnt ruins of my former home, how am I supposed to handle seeing the place where everything—everything—fell to ruin?

Complete, utter ruin.

There is a thin piece of glass enclosed in the envelope. The late afternoon light is reflected as a perfect glare, and when I turn it slightly, I can see my eyes. There are dark shadows under them that no amount of minimal reflection or glare can conceal. My eyelashes are clumped together, my eyelids puffy, the quintessence of sadness. Everything I have lost. I remember, as if it were millions of years ago, how strong I once was. I remember it, wish for it, every day. Weakness meant death, and was to be avoided at all cost. I had to be strong to live. I had to be strong for Prim.

But, when your very reasons for existing are gone, what is the point of being strong anymore?

I lifted the piece of glass to my face, fingering the edges carefully.

Thumbprint on the left, attending.

I lifted my eyes for the briefest of moments, just in time to catch a black and white flash across the window, a fleeting shadow across my face- a sweetly-singing mockingjay that has known nothing of fire.

Thumbprint on the right, not attending.

The flames of the rebellion have consumed it all—Prim, all of my friends, my former life, my relationships, my everything.

I had another reason to be strong. They wouldn't consume me.

The next morning Peeta wakes me. He brushes his calloused hand over my bare shoulder, the weight of his body pulling me to the other side of the mattress, but I stay rigid, unable to even feign affection anymore. It's not like it used to be, when he climbed into my bed to chase away the nightmares that consumed us both, with the weary streams of moonlight filtering through dirt-caked windows, still barely able to chase away the darkness. That was years ago, and now every night I lie in bed awake through the night, listening to his breathing, waiting for dawn when he will leave and I can finally sleep alone. I can feel the chill in the air, as it is barely dawn, so I draw the heavy covers up over my chin and moan that I'm awake, he can say whatever he wants. Needing to make eye contact with me is a whole different battle.

"Katniss," he says, his voice more stern than I have heard it in a while, "you are not going back to the Capitol. You can't."

I rub my fingers over my eyes, trying to push the sleep from them, and wonder what my response is supposed to be. I've decided to be stronger, for myself, but is it strength to let the boy who still loves me command me? It might have been the strength of self-sacrifice if it was something mutual, but now all I see us as are bedmates with a scarred past and an obligatory future together.

"I'm going, Peeta," I say. I sit up against the wall, the mattress groaning with the movement. His left hand is closed around the invitation glass with a thumbprint on the left, dirty veins on sunlight reflecting on his blonde hair that I still find so beautiful.

"It's only going to open up new wounds. Everything you see will upset you."

"I can't stay here for the rest of my life. Just waiting, wondering what pain the next day will bring. What regrets."

"All of that is in the past, Katniss. All you have to do is forget and be happy."

"You make it sound so simple, Peeta, but it's not! I can't just move on and be happy, no matter how much you want me to!"

"You can't just try for me, can you? All you want to do is run into the woods and pretend you're fighting enemies that aren't there anymore, or back hunting with Gale. But all of that was years ago! There isn't anyone—"

"It doesn't matter that there's nothing left to do, because there's no one left to do it for!"

His face falls, the anger faltering for an infinitesimal moment, his eyes betraying his sadness. "There's me, Katniss. I still love you, yet every single day you do nothing but push me away."

"Peeta," I say, because I can't turn back now, I can't give him hope that one day things will be different, "you don't—"

"Don't tell me I don't, Katniss, because you know I do. I went through everything you did. But once again, all you do is think of yourself. You say you've lost everyone, but I'm still here."

"Peeta, I love you," I say, meaning, somewhere, some part of it…, "but I have to do this. I can't be weighed down anymore, not by my past, not by sadness, not by you…."

"Then go," he says. He turns away from me, the muscles on his back taut with the movement, his skin golden and smooth. His eyes meet mine one last time before he closes the door. "You're like a river that can't be stopped, a flame that still can't be put out…. But Katniss, you have to tire sometime. I hope, when you do, it will be here with me."

Only once you have weighed me down, I think. Only when I have accepted defeat.

I hope that day will never come.

AN: The next chapter will be out in the next couple of days! It got too long to make it a oneshot, so it's now a twoshot! Please, please, please review. All feedback is needed and appreciated.