Author's Note: This is my first story for this fandom and it's been a while since I wrote anything so I apologize for all the mistakes. Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy! Feedback is always welcome! And a huge thank you to Anti-Kryptonite for the amazing name!
(No copyright infringement intended.)
The Light of a Soul
KnockKnock7
My name is Haymitch Abernathy. I was in the Hunger Games. I killed children. I won the Hunger Games. There are no more Hunger Games. Snow is dead. Coin is dead. I am alive. I live in District 12…
I wake from nightmares every night, usually multiple times. We all do—the Victors, I mean. I know what my nightmares are about: the gorgeous arena with its deadly traps and deceptive beauty. The people—no, the children that I watched die, the kids that I myself killed, the life and blood leaking out of the girl I once called friend. Everyone I loved dead because I turned their stupid force field into a weapon. The children that I couldn't save. The two kids who survived against all the odds.
I even know what Katniss's nightmares are about, most of them at least. Her own arena, her own death traps, her own victims of arrows and tracker jackers. Her family and friends and people she didn't even know who died for her. The friend she doesn't know anymore. The man she loves. Her sister who should have lived but instead burned to ashes in front of her eyes. Her mother who couldn't handle the death of her beloved daughter and see it reflected back in the eyes of the one who still lived on. The father that died underground. Screams and blood and pain and terror and fire. These and more are what plague her nights.
But what does Peeta Mellark dream about? What nightmares force their way into his mind and root themselves deep into his too-pure soul? Some I can guess, even know, because like all the other Victors—like Katniss and me—we all have the similar terrors, but some I can't even begin to wander about. There are those of the Games that he lived through, the nightmares of his own family burning to death, of losing Katniss due to something horrible no doubt, and even worse his own hands killing his beloved wife. These I can guess and I'm sure I'm right that he sees these atrocities when he closes his eyes. But surely they are not even the worst of his demons.
No, because Peeta paid the price of rebellion. Snow had him for eight (?) weeks. Weeks of torture—physically, emotionally, mentally. Weeks of hijacking. Weeks of seeing others get tortured, weeks of lies and confusion, pain and fear. Weeks.
Weeks because I didn't save him. Weeks because Katniss let him out of her sight. Weeks because Coin was playing her own game and didn't care about the consequences. Weeks because everyone who ever loved Peeta failed to rescue him.
And by the time he was rescued? Little resistance by Snow's forces, no attacks on the hovercraft, no attempts to follow or track the journey back. Why? Because Snow had had his fun and now his newest and deadliest weapon was ready: Peeta Mellark. A twisted and lethal weapon with only one clear thought in his head: to kill Katniss Everdeen. No, on a whole, his rescue didn't matter because I truly believe that if Coin hadn't finally understood that without the boy she didn't have the real Katniss Everdeen, Peeta would have found his way to us somehow. Dropped off in a District with strong Rebel forces or maybe even District 13 itself. We didn't save him.
But I should have. I should have tried harder, should have found a way to make Katniss stay with him all through that fateful night, should have found a way to make the hovercraft find him through the burning trees and falling wreckage. I should have made Coin understand that we needed Peeta—not just her precious Mockingjay, but the entire rebellion. I should have left District 13 and rescued him myself.
But I didn't. And Katniss didn't. And no one did.
Peeta has never held us accountable, of course. Never once looked at us with contempt and accusation in his eyes, never woven a net of words to entrap us with our guilt, never blamed us for our failure. And I am absolutely positive he has never even thought the words. Never believed that we should have rescued him. Because wasn't that what he had always done? Write himself off as dead so that Katniss could live and be safe. Refuse to lay the blame on anyone but himself. Of course it wasn't our fault that he had been captured—he was just happy that Katniss had not been captured as well. It wasn't our fault that he had been tortured and hijacked—it was his own for not being stronger. Of course it wasn't our fault.
But of course, it really was our fault.
Not just Katniss's. Not just mine. But the rebellion's as well. District 13. President Alma Coin. I didn't know it then, too sick with the million details of the complicated plan that hadn't gone right, the worry over whether or not Katniss was still alive and where and who would be with her if we could find her, the impatience to tell her the real plan but the nervousness that came with honesty. Of how I had manipulated her and used her. But now, now that those hours and days play over and over in my nightmares I begin to notice the small details that made up the true plot of the plan.
How Coin had wanted Peeta, believed that he could be the rallying point to the rebellion, even more effective than the Mockingjay. In a way I agreed with her, his flawless way with words, the ability to blend in with everyone, the talent he has to connect with each and every person he meets made him invaluable. But Plutarch insisted that it was Katniss—since she had pulled out the berries, since she had made Rue's death beautiful with her voice and flowers, since her last kill had been one of mercy and not of violence—it was the Girl on Fire that the Districts needed to see. And the leaders of the rebellion had agreed with him. And though Coin didn't listen to me often, she had waited to hear my voice and yes, for the sake of freedom I agreed that Katniss should be the focus—it was her spontaneity and her courage that were reaching people already—but I had stressed for the sake of keeping them both alive that she would never cooperate without Peeta. Perhaps I stressed it too much because I'm sure that's what caused it all.
How best to make sure that Katniss accepted the role of the Mockingjay and voluntarily became the face of the rebellion? Hold something over her. Something so powerful she couldn't possibly refuse to accept. Or rather, someone. And Katniss, in the Quarter Quell of all times, finally proved just how much she loved the boy with the bread, how much she needed him, how far she was willing to go to save him. So who better to hold over her than Peeta himself?
It wasn't obvious at first but then with Coin nothing was. When Katniss's arrow flew into the force field, everything went crazy. The arena was falling apart, Katniss and Peeta were nowhere near each other, and all the orders said were to extract Katniss, Finnick, Beetee and Johanna. And no one else. No Peeta. I heard, noted that his name was missing but I assumed I didn't hear it. Was sure that I must have been mistaken. But I wasn't. Once President Alma Coin made her choice of whom to rescue from the 75th Hunger Games she never planned to rescue the other Star Crossed Lover from District 12. And now…She had her Mockingjay.
But she was wrong. Because what she didn't understand, what the rebellion didn't realize, what I didn't truly understand, what even Katniss didn't know was that without the Voice you couldn't have the Spark.
We figured it out pretty quick though.
For a while before Peeta's 'rescue' I don't think anyone really understood that but me. Because Katniss had finally agreed to be the Mockingjay, to film the propos, and rally the rebels. But she didn't agree to it until after Peeta's first interview—if that's what people still want to call it, I call it just another form of torture. Peeta, whom she now knew to be alive and seemingly well. Peeta, whom the Capitol was using to rally the Capitol or so it seemed. And that's when she finally stepped up and agreed with conditions: mainly that Peeta be rescued and given full immunity.
More than that though: there are very few times that I know of that Katniss's fiery words and deadly actions weren't due to Peeta. Because Katniss may have been the face of the rebellion but as everyone—including me—seemed to forget she wasn't the only one who refused to play the Games or even the first in those 74th nightmarish Games. .
Peeta Mellark: the man who refused to play the Hunger Games, the Gamemakers, and President Snow but instead made his own Game and made everyone—in the Districts and in the Capitol itself—play by his rules. Peeta who was clearly risking his life to save Katniss Everdeen from the beginning. Teaming up with the Careers, knowing that any moment they might figure out his plan and kill him. Watching her in the tree all night, making sure that no more harm could come to her. Saving her from Cato, thereby ruining his fragile alliance with them and resulting in a deadly injury. Trying to stop her from risking her life to save him. Giving up the arrow in his tourniquet so that she could give Cato an end to the torture. Telling her to kill him when the rules were changed again.
But it wasn't just what he did for Katniss. The moment for me, was a moment so overlooked many have forgotten it even happened. It was tiny, just a few brief, uneventful minutes, when I knew that Peeta Mellark was too good for the world we live in. The time when he went back to 'finish' off the girl that Cato had stabbed. But he didn't kill her as he said he would, instead he sat next to her and he took her hand and he whispered words I don't remember and he stayed with her until her eyes glazed over. He smiled sadly, closed her eyes, and whispered, "I'm sorry." And that was the moment that I knew what I was dealing with. That moment for me was the start of the rebellion. When Peeta Mellark showed that he wasn't just a piece in the Hunger Games and he didn't have to play by the rules. That kindness still existed in our dark world. That light could still shine even in the darkest of places.
And that light didn't always have to be a fire.