Paint happiness, not blood
A "The Hunger Games" Fanfiction
By- An Unknown Foreign Beauty
She likes when he paints. Sitting into the enchanting background of the meadow, which has turned green in many months after the war, she likes to see the way his fingers moves over the canvas, and the concentration in his bright blue eyes sometimes reminds her of the sky above, which is not grey or dusty anymore with the ashes of the ruined district or the smokes of the bombs. With the swift motion of a hunter she moves behind him, so that she can see the painting without breaking his concentration. His lips are pursed a bit when he finishes another stroke over the canvas. She can see the smile in his lips, she loves the way when the rays of the dying sun reflect on his dark pupil, and even sometimes she feels like blushing.
Cold wind blowing from the north swirls around her, leaving Goosebumps wherever it touches. She can see a small frown appearing in his face as his finger moves to the last portion of the canvas.
And then the paint brush drops from his hand, spilling the paint everywhere.
He tears the canvas away from the easel, and rolls the paper into a small ball until his knuckles turn white. He clenches his jaw and his whole body twitches.
She is at his side before the canvas is torn into pieces. "It's okay." She soothes "It's not real."
He opens his eyes long enough to take her in. Even his pupils twitch.
"Katniss." His whisper is strained.
He is painting the games, like she has thought. And it always brings back bad memories.
Katniss rests her head on the back of Peeta's shoulder, and rubs her hand down his arm. It's what he does to calm her down, when she has nightmares. She hates the moments like this. He collapses and motions for her to sit down next to him. And he holds her.
The painting is still lying forgotten on the ground, rolling aimlessly with the wind. Katniss catches it before it flies further away.
She doesn't want see it, but she can't stop staring at it.
Peeta's nightmares.
The canvas is covered with black, blue and red, and bright oranges. In the background- water is dripping from the crack of the cave, the dry pond bed, a pair of hands digging for roots, his own, the golden horn of Cornucopia, Clove arranging the knives inside her jacket, a green eyed mutt, unmistakably Glimmer is snarling at her and others…
The memories… She hates the memories of the games. She can smell blood dripping from the canvas….she just hates to remember them….
Prim's face represents every features Katniss can remember, but her face is twisted with so much pain and anguish….seeing her like this, brings back the sorrow and the helplessness of the moment..
'"Don't look." It's Peeta's voice which startles her.
"But, Peeta..why?" Katniss's voice reflects the helplessness, as she points at the picture of Finnick, where his head isn't attached to his body anymore. She knows this moment, because she watched it begin to happen. But she didn't know Peeta had seen it from above her.
"Because I see them every night." Peeta tries to smile, but it is so fake that almost reminds her off Effie.
Katniss does know what it means, because she has them too. Nightmares- she knows them well since the games. The memories, the flames that consumed Prim, her helpless effort to save Rue, Finnick was being torn by mutts…..
"But Peeta why do you paint them?" She looks at him, trying to understand why he would paint such horrible things.
"They just come…" Peeta gives a half moan, half grunt. He's curled around his knees now, pulling at his hair until it looks ready to come out in great chunks. "And I…" He swallows thickly "I can't forget them."
Katniss can feel the helplessness in his voice. She swallows thickly, as her eyes moves to the progression of the art. The colors swirl and twist around Johanna, who is strapped to a chair, Haymitch shot in his head, and….and….her eyes stops at the end…
It is her.
Emerging from a silvery mist that matches exactly the colors of her eyes.
"Is that how you see me in your flashbacks?" Katniss raises her eyes from the painting; a drop of tear is shining at the corner of her eyes.
"No, it's not how I want to see you." Peeta tenses next to her and his hand darts out, slashing the painting to shreds with the knife she didn't see him holding. Maybe she should be afraid, fear for her life, but she can't right now. She can't tear her eyes away from the ruined, crumpled mess they've made of her wonderful Peeta. This is truly a mutation of the worst kind. They took a boy who gave himself all for love and taught him how to hate so deeply that it has tainted everything he used to cherish most.
She turns her face away, not wanting to see it. She hates to see the mutt Peeta, but still she can't take her eyes off the wonderful recreation of her face on the torn canvas amongst the silvery mist.
'It's alright." She wraps her arms around the wonderful ruined boy, fighting the flashbacks.
"No," the hardness is back. With his arms around her waist, Peeta forces Katniss to stand up from the ground. She doesn't fight. Even being wrapped in his arms feels so good again, with his hand entwined in hers. Not for show, but in actual friendship. Sometimes she wishes to be wrapped in his arms, all day long.
He forces her to his bedroom, which is almost dark. On the table, there is a lamp; the shade is turned away, leaving the bare light casting a strange shadow across the room.
"Peeta?" Katniss whispers, but he doesn't bother to answer her question. Instead he pulls out a bundle of canvases from the drawer and throws them to her.
"Look." He whispers, his voice is still pained.
With shaky hand, Katniss takes the paper from him and looks at them.
And what she sees is- herself.
Everywhere. High up in a tree. Beating a shirt against a stone in the stream. Lying unconscious in a pool of blood. There is one she can't place. Lying in the background of the meadow, wrapped in primroses, she can barely recognize herself. Because she is….
Naked.
"That's how you want to see me?" Katniss feels her cheeks getting hotter.
"Y..yes…" Peeta whispers back, his tone is so thick. Even in the inadequate light of the room, Katniss can see the reddish tints in his cheeks. "But..I…"
Katniss looks at the painting again; drawn in soft lines and curves, and muted colors, she inspects her nude self in the painting. Peeta is a wonderful painter, no doubt, but the weird lines that shaped her own body make her to feel uncomfortable.
"I think my legs are not so shapely." Katniss tries to smile, still blushing, looking at Peeta who shifts uncomfortably on his legs. "And my body isn't so curved…and….and…'" Katniss tries not to look at Peeta, and her body trembles a little "My breasts are not that perfect…"
She feels really bad when she sees the disappointment in his eyes. But the blush in his cheeks isn't gone. "I didn't know how you really look like. It's just my imagination…" He swallows. Then suddenly he warps his arms around her. That's all he wants, she guesses now—to wrap his arms around her and squeeze. Katniss shivers to his touch. She forces her eyes open to look at the boy she doesn't know if she loves or not. His eyes are still haunted, but she can see only longing there.
"I hate when those visions come to me." He rests his forehead against hers. "I hate that I can't stop seeing these things. I don't like you to see as a mutt. So I paint you like that. I can't stop hating and loving you at the same time."
Katniss feels her cheeks growing hotter and hotter as she moves close to Peeta, and places her hand on his chest. She slowly fumbles with the upper button of his shirt, and then unbuttons it. "Do you want to see how I really look like?"
She feels him trembling a bit under her fingers. She is blushing so heavily that she can't even look into Peeta's eyes. She feels his fingers slowly moving under her chin, tilting her head upward, so that he can look at her.
"Do you really want to show me?"
Katniss nods. Thousands of emotions are engulfing her mind like sea waves. It isn't easy, she knows. She moves closer to him, she feels him shivering under her touch. Her hand is warm in his, when their skin slides together. His side presses against hers, and Katniss shivers from the contrast of the cold October afternoon and the heat from the man she is falling in love with all over again.
"Are you choosing me?" he whispers. His breath is hot against her skin.
"I can live without anyone Peeta." She whispers the words and they're salvation and more pain all at once. "I don't want to live without you."
She leans closer to him and licks her lips. They haven't kissed in a very long time. She can feel that, a part of him wants it more than anything, and yet the shiny memories makes it tougher than before. He flinches at first and closes his eyes, but he leans into her touch anyway.
His heat consumes her, igniting the fire that she thinks has gone out. It hasn't. She can still feel it, still see it in his eyes at times. She wants to show him that she may be broken, but she's not beaten. Everything that they did to her—to all of them—didn't ruin them forever.
The kiss goes on and on. His hands are hot on her skin, hers are cold against his as she finds the few places he's not covered by the woolen jacket—his face, the length of his neck, his hands, just inside the jacket where his shirt and pants meet.
His hands fumble with the buttons of her shirt, asking if it is okay to open them. She nods. Peeta's eyes lights up, he bents down to kiss her, first rubbing his lips at the corner of her mouth, then he moves to her lips. He slides her father's hunting jacket off her shoulders, and she leans closer to kiss him again, her hands are unconsciously find their way to the buttons of his shirt.
"Do you want to take that off?" Peeta looks confused. But Katniss nods again; her chest is rising and falling heavily with each breath. It is a huge decision, but she has decided.
"Yes." She whispers briefly, unbuttoning his shirt. Now his scars are all wide open to her. She looks at her own skin, and the half opened shirt. She quickly takes Peeta's hands and rests them on the buttons. "Take it off."
Peeta follows. He slowly opens rest of the buttons of her shirt; she shakes it off her shoulders. Now her everything is open to him- all the scars, all the fire, and everything.
She can see her own reflection on the mirror, at the corner of the room; she looks nothing like Peeta's painting. She is scarred, broken and….
She covers her eyes with her hands. Haymitch is right. Peeta does deserve better.
"You're gorgeous, Katniss." She feels Peeta's hands on her bare back. Slowly he pries her hands from her face, and wraps his arms around her waist.
"Look." Suddenly Katniss finds herself standing before the mirror. She hasn't seen her own body like this for a long time. She looks at their reflection- one blond haired boy, one grey eyed girl, both covered with scars, and the curses from Capitol. She hasn't seen Peeta's scars like this before, and for the first time she begins to feel another resemblance between them.
"See, we match." Peeta's hand is now on her breast, gently tracing the heart shaped scar over her collarbone. His hand undoes her braid, and the dark hair spills over her back.
"Yes we do." She tilts her head to look into his amazing blue eyes. Behind the haunted look, she can still feel the old Peeta residing somewhere. And she knows even Capitol can't take him away from her. She moves closer, and kisses a scar on Peeta's chest.
"But Katniss," She rises her head from the warmth of his chest, because his voice is full of confusion again, "What if I lose control again? What if I hurt you?"
Suddenly she feels her own vision turning foggy from sadness, confusion, and helplessness, but witnessing Peeta's only brings anger.
Snow used him and hurt him specifically to break her. He sat here in this very house, in the parlor downstairs where she rarely goes, and told her to convince him that she loved Peeta. It didn't work on the victory tour; it didn't work with their performances back here in the District. She knows, now, that Snow saw her true feelings; he saw her falling in love with Peeta. And then he used him, horribly. He hijacked his memories, filled him with anger and loathing, all to ruin him.
Parts of him they could never change, because Peeta was always much stronger than he took credit for. She can see it again and it makes her burn inside.
"You won't." she says firmly, holding his shoulders in her arms, "You were more in control than you realized," She corrects. "And everything is about taking it one day at a time, anyway. You may lose control. I may fall apart and forget to eat, or breathe again."
Peeta looks convinced, because he kisses her again, "I trust you, Katniss. I want to trust you."
"Always." She whispers back.
She sees an innocent smile lacing his lips, and when he gazes down at her, she thinks that she has gone to the heaven. She lifts her hand, then stops when it nears his chest and gives him a swift look of inquiry. He nods slightly, smiling at the sheer joy of her; she put her hand on his rib cage, slowly spreading her fingers, sliding them upward toward his nipple, and then she put her other hand beside it. He is beautiful, she realizes, her sweet old Peeta, even with the scars, and the hijacked memories. As her hands slides upward and her fingers brushes his small nipples, the muscles beneath her questing fingers leaps reflexively and she stops instantly. "You don't like it?" she asks, looking into those heavy-lidded smoldering blue eyes.
"I like it," he says almost gruffly "Just stay."
"Always." She whispers, as he begins kissing her again, on eyes, on lips, on nose, on shoulders, on her belly buttons, on her inner thighs. She can feel the joy running in her bloodstream like Capitol liquor.
Faces of dead parades before her eyes as she closes her eyes briefly, staring at her with their lifeless eyes, she grasps Peeta tightly to wipe them away. She feels him shivering in her embrace, when the shiny memories threaten to come back.
They hold on to each other, to escape from memories and death, their tears mingle together. They cry for their past, and when they look into each other's eyes suddenly they can see the future.
"When?" Katniss asks, with a fear in her mind if the answer is someday, but no. He tips her chin with his thick fingers and whispers "Now."
Peeta lifts her up in his arms and leads her to the bed, he slides his hand around her shoulders, holding her breast, teasing the nipple, feeling it harden into a taut bud while the soft globe seems to swell to fill his hand… And his erection swells and hardens with it….
And she feels that thing again. The hunger that overtook her on the beach, she knows this would have happened anyway. That what she needs to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. She has plenty of fire herself. What she needs is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad her losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give her that.
So, when he is inside her, the universe explodes in a burst of pleasure that tears a sobbing moan from her, she feels her body shuddering again and again with the force of the explosion, she tells him.
"Stay."
"Always." The love of the universe shines in his eyes.
She finds him sitting before the canvas again, she can see her nude self on the canvas, but this time not wrapped in a silvery mist, but is drawn in bold lines and strokes- depicting her scarred features perfectly. Even he hasn't missed the small butterfly shaped scar over her right breast. For the first time Peeta's painting isn't covered with dark, red or orange, instead she can smell happiness in the background which blends the colors of the sunset.
He smiles, when their eyes meet. And the morning sun reflects upon his blue iris, when he asks, "You love me. Real or not real?"
For a moment, she can see her future in those clear blue eyes.
She answers, "Real."
The end
Written in 20 minutes. If you're looking for smut, I'm sorry it isn't of that kind. For my first ever M rated fics, you better consider me kindly. And of course, all the grammatical and spelling errors, you better consider them too. Because English isn't my native language.
Reviews/ Faves…Plz plz plz….. I love them a lot. (But don't flame. It burns.)