Hello again to all of you in fanfiction land. This would be my second offering in the Hunger Games fandom. This little bit wouldn't get out of my head and it demanded to be written. After reading the description of what she and Peeta both looked like after the war and returned home, I felt that this had to be written. This is defiantly a one shot only, there won't be anymore to this. But there will be a total of three chapters in Cinna's Last Gift if you would like to read something else by me. I hope you enjoy this and remember, reviews make my day! Enjoy!
Summary: Katniss reflects on what she sees in the mirror and how it has changed over the years of her life. Epilogue compliant, set after war and before epilogue.
Mosaic – noun - a picture or decoration made of small, usually colored pieces of inlaid stone, glass, etc.
I used to hate the way I looked; hated the patchwork of mismatched skin and deep scars that covered my body from my neck to my feet. I remembered a time, long ago, before the Hunger Games when my skin was not perfect, but my own. When each blemish and scar was something rightly earned, a lesson in life learned, not to be forgotten. Each callous meant that I had worked my way up to feeding my family from the rub of the bowstring between my fingers, each scar where I had learned to skin an animal or myself from falling from a tree. Each scar was perhaps not a trophy, but a testament to my ability to survive.
Then, it was all wiped away by the Capital. They did a full body polish, erasing the girl I once was and replacing it with a broken young woman with a shining exterior. I looked beautiful on the outside, but on the inside I was a broken mess. My only consolation, my only anchor to keep me sane had been Peeta. He was equally broken and equally beautiful. The Capital had taken his past written on his skin away as well. All the Capital cared about was the outside of us, they cared little for the fact that as they wiped away the outside blemishes they created and covered up gashes and broken places deep within. We looked good for the cameras, that was the important part. We found solace and comfort within each other's arms. Two broken people holding each other up, like two dead trees fallen together resting against each other without falling over. Once I had come to my senses and realized that I could let Peeta in, life got perhaps not easier, but slightly more bearable.
Then, once we both began to believe that things might get better we were thrown into the arena again, but this time we survived to fight the Capital, those who caused our deep unseen scars to begin with. It was not necessarily the arena that left the scars this time, but the war and its realities. It was as if the arena had exploded and engulfed the whole of Panem, and the rules had changed. The number who could walk away with their lives was always uncertain.
It was the fire that caused my scars. It would seem it had been my destiny to be burned by fire. They have always said that those who play with fire will always get burned by it. I have learned that lesson the hard way. I began as the Girl on Fire and ended the same way, though in the end it was myself and those that I cared about most that became fuel for the flames. They had healed me, but they did not polish me as they had before. I was no longer a Victor of the Hunger Games, I was the now used up symbol for the rebellion and uprising. They no longer needed me to look pretty, they really no longer needed me.
They didn't need Peeta either. I learned later that he was also a patchwork of scars and pieces of new and old and damaged skin. We looked like we were pieced together to create the people we were now. Pieces of our former lives, pieces of the lives we could have lived and pieces that were grafted in, things that were not exactly us but sadly could no longer be separated from ourselves anymore, like the nightmares that permeated our sleep and the flashbacks that stalked during the day.
I no longer hate my scars, my patchwork of skin and mismatched pieces of myself. I still do not like to look at myself in the mirror and see what I was, what I am and what I could have been, had the Hunger Games not devourered me, but I no longer hate what I see. My view changed the first time Peeta and I made love. As we lay side by side, chest to chest, catching our breaths after the emotional and physical roller coaster that had lead to this point. I realized how very similar we looked, and how despite the patchiness of both our skins, we matched and our scars fit together, almost like a puzzle; his lines and my lines coming together to form something bigger than ourselves alone. It was as if we were two halves to a greater picture, on our own we were a jumble of bits that did not make sense, but together, side by side and in each other's arms we combined to make a beautiful picture, a whole greater than the parts. It was a picture seen only as we lay together in love and acceptance of the other; missing and jumbled pieces and all. And a picture that is now completed and expanded by our children as they run and play in the meadow before us.
They are pieces of both Peeta and I, but unbroken, unblemished and unworn by the world. A world that no longer contains the Hunger Games or the rebellion that crushed and shatters a person. Perhaps someday our children will realize that what we look like is not normal for all families, but as they grow and learn about the past, they will see the mosaic of love and pain that went into changing the world so that they can paint their own pictures without fear of having them broken. I may not like what I seen in the mirror when I look at my skin and body, but I would not change how I look anymore if I was offered or paid to do so, just as I would not want Peeta to get polished either. What we have become since our first time in the arena may not be perfect and may not be pretty, but it is who we are, who we have become and it is a place to build on for the future, whatever that may look like. And in our scars we hold the memories of the past so that it will never be forgotten, and never be repeated.
Well I hope you all liked this little one shot, I know I had fun writing it. Somehow it felt right to help Katniss come to terms with how she looked and even come to wear her scars as perhaps not a trophy, but as a way to remember all that she had lost and even all that she had gained with her time with Peeta. Hope to see lots of lovely reviews and if you want more I will be posting the second chapter of Cinna's Last Gift on Friday or Saturday. Live, Laugh, Love! Dragons Quill