A/N: So I thought I was going to leave these characters behind for a while. But no, I was struck with inspiration shortly after I finished In Fire and Blood and well, here it is!
This is a companion piece to my fic Young Blood and it starts off with Peeta's recovery in the Capitol in the days and weeks after the rebellion. It's just my take on how his treatment might have gone, and then I hope to explore his move back to District 12 and his interactions with Katniss. The first chapters will be about his therapy, and then I'll move on from there.
And just like my two other multi-chapter Hunger Games fanfics, the story does not always follow a linear path. So I hope it's not too confusing!
And please, PLEASE read and review! I have had so much wonderful feedback for my other fics, and this one started so suddenly I would REALLY appreciate knowing everyone's opinion, if you like it or not, whether I should continue it, etc. The first chapter is short, but the second (which I have already written and will upload shortly after this one) is quite a bit longer. So hope you all enjoy! It definitely feels good to be writing again.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, places, etc. mentioned. They all belong to Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games.
A black wave pulled him under.
He remembered one day, back in the in between time – as he had started calling it – when Katniss had hurt her foot from jumping over the electric fence that served as the boundary between District 12 and the wilderness. It was winter, and Katniss had been resting for weeks, unable to put much weight on the appendage under the watchful eyes of her mother and sister.
So Peeta was there every day, bringing her cookies and helping her with her family's plant book, sketching in pictures to accompany the information – flowers varying in shades from vermillion to blush, stalks and leaves of verdant greens and woody browns.
He enjoyed those evenings with her, quiet and comfortable as her mood was then. She was letting him take up space in her life, and that was all he could ask for, and perhaps wish for something more.
But then he showed up one evening, pushing through the unlocked kitchen door as he was wont to do, setting the box of cookies on the counter and shedding his outermost layers before searching for Katniss. Mrs. Everdeen and Prim were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they were in town or visiting with Hazelle and her children. Peeta might have left, thinking that Katniss was with them, if it weren't for her injury. He heard noise from upstairs, and so he headed toward her room.
The door was ajar just a few inches, but the sight that caught his eye made his stomach drop, his heart clench, and something akin to rage boil up inside of him.
Olive skin on olive skin, lips meeting lips, sheets twisted around their bodies but still revealing too much – Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne were locked in the throes of passion on her bed, the sound of her pleasure echoing through the house.
Peeta moved to turn, but his prosthetic leg betrayed him, clunking loudly on the doorframe. Katniss looked up then, her gray eyes meeting his. There was no remorse in her gaze, no real surprise. No, her lips curved up into a mocking smile when she saw him there, his mouth agape in bewilderment, his eyes filled with pain.
All of those weeks he'd spent with her, entertaining her while she healed, bringing her treats from the bakery – it had all been a lie. Her affection lied elsewhere, with Gale, and Peeta himself had played the fool.
Rage like a wildfire consuming everything in its path flared within him. He was shaking, he was so angry, the sound that escaped him something inhuman and tortured.
But there was a soothing voice from somewhere far off, someone speaking to him, trying to bring him back to the present moment. And then he was no longer in Katniss's house in the Victor's Village, watching that terrible scene unfold, but in a sparse room with one small window to his left, a desk directly across from where he was seated.
There was a man sitting at the desk, a doctor. The head doctor. Dr. Aurelius.
"You came back from that one much more quickly, Peeta," Dr. Aurelius spoke, his voice even.
Peeta was still breathing hard, though, trying to get his bearings about him. He was a long way from District 12. He had been for quite some time. He was seated on a cot – no, a hospital bed, his bed. The light that filtered in through the tiny window with enough layers of glass to protect from within and without was not the light of District Twelve. It wasn't even the light of District Thirteen – forever incandescent in that district's underground dwellings. No, it was the Capitol. He was being treated in the Capitol now that the rebellion had succeeded. He could even take part of the credit, if he wanted to. But he didn't.
"Now Peeta, what is the question today?" Dr. Aurelius asked softly, folding his hands together as his elbows rested on the metal desk. It took Peeta a moment before he could respond.
"Katniss…and Gale…" Peeta started, the names harder to say with what he had just experienced. "Katniss and Gale…" were they lovers? Katniss and Gale, did they have sex…? His mind asked the question that his mouth couldn't form the words to.
Ever since the doctors had learned the game that Peeta had started playing with his squad, Real or Not Real, Dr. Aurelius and the others who worked with Peeta had begun to use it as a way of deciphering his true memories from the false, hijacked ones, as well. Only the doctors had an arsenal of powerful medications at their disposal as well, allowing Peeta's cognition to become more lucid, his thoughts and feelings to rise to the surface and tangle together until there was no choice but to pull each strand apart and inspect it for validity.
"Why don't you just tell me what came to mind?" Dr. Aurelius suggested.
And so Peeta explained the painful memory and the vivid images that came along with it while Dr. Aurelius listened. There was a notepad and a pen on the desk, but the doctor rarely wrote anything down.
"And do you think this memory is a false memory or a real one…?" The older man asked after Peeta paused, the episode recounted in full.
Peeta felt his head swim. It was the medication they gave him, he knew, to help him be more receptive to therapy. He had to focus on the one memory as thousands more threatened to take its place. He closed his eyes tightly and went back over the scene in his head.
Real or not real?
It seemed so real. It fit right in with that time period in their lives. The span of months between the 74th Hunger Games and the Quarter Quell. It had been after the Victory Tour, when they were back on speaking terms. When they had agreed that friendship was better than cold stares and silence. Katniss had broken her foot – her heel – from jumping over the fence once the new, stricter Peacekeepers had turned the electricity back on. He had spent time with her while she was recovering, drawing in her family's plant book as she described the different herbs and edible mushrooms and flowers in detail.
But there was something off about that particular memory. Actually, there were several things off. Mrs. Everdeen and Prim rarely left Katniss's side during those few weeks. They would not have both left her for the evening.
And the cookies. That was wrong. It hadn't been cookies at all, but cheese buns that he used to bring her. Those were her favorite. And there were other, more subtle things off about the memory. The shade of Katniss's skin had been a little too dark for that deep into winter. Her eyes had held something sinister in them, something Peeta had never seen except in other fabricated memories. Yes, it was definitely Not Real.
"False," Peeta replied, unsure how long it had actually been since Dr. Aurelius had first posed the question. The older man sat up straighter in his chair, and Peeta almost imagined that if he'd taken any longer to sort things out, the doctor might have dozed off where he sat.
And so Peeta explained his rationale, the medication making his words flow out into almost-tangible ribbons of sentences, each one coursing from his lips like a string of dandelion seeds dancing in the wind. He had to shake that thought from his head. It was just the medication.
Dr. Aurelius seemed pleased with Peeta's explanation, and Peeta himself felt some tight cord deep within him loosen.
A few minutes after Dr. Aurelius excused himself, a generically dressed medic entered Peeta's room and handed him a paper cup filled with pills. The medic stayed just long enough to watch Peeta take a drink of water from the plastic cup on his bedside table and empty the little paper container of its contents.
He set the cup of water back down as the medic left, studying the bandage on his hand. His fingers stroked the material idly, and almost reverently, as he thought of the wound that lay underneath. He knew that it was the perfect half moon of her teeth, each sunk in enough to break skin and draw blood and warrant a covering, but not enough to require stitches.
She had tried to reach the Nightlock pill and kill herself, after she had assassinated Coin. And she had almost succeeded. Almost. But he had been there before he even fully understood what was happening. And he'd blocked her mouth, made sure that she couldn't end her life that way.
He had saved her. Again.
Even if it was from herself, he had saved her. She was alive because he had acted quickly. And so stroking the bandage gently, knowing that the memory from earlier wasn't real but some nightmare the Capitol had conjured up to turn him against her, Peeta let the drugs take him into a somewhat restful oblivion.