just close your eyes
"Peeta," I whisper. "Peeta, I'm sorry. So sorry."
He looks up at me. He lies crumpled on the floor, head clutched in grappling hands. His expression is so fearful, so terrified, that I want to cry. I nearly do. "You're a monster," he hisses. And then pauses. "No. You - you. It hurts, Katniss." His voice is thick, heavy, and makes my chest constrict. "Make it stop."
"Peeta," I begin, but my voice breaks, and I can't continue.
"I'll - go," I say instead.
"No," he gasps. "No, stay, please. Katniss, don't leave me, please, please, please-"
He looks so weak, so different from the boy I once knew, as he sits there, rocking back and forth. I want to wrap my arms around him, make all the lies and evil go away. I want to show him that the world isn't this cruel-it's not always so bitter. But I'm frozen. I'm frozen to the spot, watching the boy I love break before my eyes.
"I'm so sorry," I say again, and leave, closing the door softly behind me.
the sun is going down
"You two are like something from a joke, y'know?" Haymitch confides as we sit at the kitchen table. His voice slurs, thick with alcohol. Peeta is sleeping, and I don't want to bother him.
Partly because I don't want him to wake up terrified. Seeing my face, and thinking of his monsters, the ones deep inside him. I don't want to hurt him again.
"You two - you're messed up," Haymitch continues. "Broken. Like little toy soldiers - you've been made to fight so long and hard in a war," at which point he laughs, "that doesn't even make sense. Doesn't exist. Yet you've pushed on. And those kids, the ones who hold your strings, they hang onto you until you're bruised and battered, so worn that your hinges rust and break." He seems to think this is a perfectly comforting thing to say.
He adds, almost as an afterthought, "We can't ever be fixed, Katniss. You, me, Peeta. We're broken and scarred. We're the pariahs, the heroes without the glory." He takes a swig from his liquor, the bottle that Peeta had hidden from him and yet he should know that nothing comes between Haymitch and his alcohol, and grunts. "Some joke."
I can't help but agree.
you'll be alright
I breathe softly. It's late, probably verging on early, but sleep evades me. Peeta lies next to me, whispering words to me, though I'm sure he thinks I am asleep. I don't give up the pretense of being so. Peeta is never guarded when he thinks nobody is listening.
"Katniss," Peeta whispers, so soft I almost mistake it for the sound of the wind whistling through the crack in the window. "I'm sorry. I love you, you know that? I've loved you since the very first day, the very first time I saw you. You're brave, so, so brave. You're like fire. They say you're the girl on fire, y'know, but you're not. You're the fire. You burn so bright it makes me feel insignificant next to you, and yet honoured to be next to you."
He pauses, and then barrels on, "I see the look in your eyes when I have the flashbacks, Katniss. I know you think that it's your fault, that I could be with somebody else, somebody better, somebody who doesn't make me have waking nightmares. What you don't understand is that there is nobody else for me."
"You are the one I could ever love, sweetheart," he says softly, his breath gentle and warm against my cheek. "You are the blinding brightness in a world of darkness. I could never love anybody else. No matter how many nightmares I have, flashbacks I suffer, I would never give you up for relief."
"We'll be alright," he says, his voice slow now, like he's drifting off to sleep, and I feel myself being dragged under, too. "You'll see."
no-one can hurt you now
He feels warm and soft against me, his breathing slow. He mutters random words every now and then, "Katniss" and "hate" and then "love" and "lies" and "arena."
It pains me that we have no life apart from this. There will always be this thing - this block between us and normality, between us and happiness. How could we ever have kids?
"Children," I could just imagine myself saying, "Your father hates me at times. But he loves me, too. Don't worry. It's not his fault."
Haymitch is right. We are broken. We are the survivors. The ones who held strong and broke and put ourselves back together again and then broke all over again. We are the damaged, the weak, the strong, the worthy and the unworthy.
Fear suddenly grips me. It's irrational, I know, but it squeezes at me until I feel like I'm suffocating.
I don't realise I'm crying until Peeta shifts, eyes opening sleepily, and wraps his arms around me.
"It's okay," he whispers to me, his lip pressed against my forehead. "No-one can hurt you now. No-one will ever hurt you again." He sighs, hugging me tightly. "I won't let them."
come morning light
"Today is the day," I whisper roughly as Peeta comes up behind me. I stare out the window, feeling the breeze on my face. It feels painfully cold against my skin. "The day we entered the arena."
Peeta sighs. I can feel his pain, practically radiating off him, and it only worsens mine. My cheeks feel wet, and I know his are too, and we stand together, strong and weak and true, just like we always have.
you and i'll be safe and sound
"You're like the sun," Peeta tells me one day, drowsy with contentment. We lie on a picnic blanket on the grass outside the house, and his body is sprawled next to mine, pressed against me at every point. "You shine and shine and shine and occasionally, a shadow goes over you - but you always come back. You never disappear. You always come back." His voice is full of wonder.
I smile softly. "For you," I tell him, the words barely audible. "It's all for you."
I'm not sure if he hears, but then a smile spreads across his face and his eyes light up, and I know he does.