oh! gravity.
peeta & prim
( leaning on broken shoulders )
:: written for Starvation forum's monthly oneshot challenge. prompt: epic. ::
disclaimer: i don't own.
e•pic: adj. heroic; majestic; impressively great.
He sees the look in her eyes and realizes a moment too late what she's doing. He tries to move, to stop her, but he's too slow, he's always too slow.
(oh and there's also the fact that he's bleeding out his life from the cut in his leg; he couldn't move fast if he wanted to.)
She dances away from him as she unlatches the pouch at her belt, continually backing up as he desperately tries to grab for it. He trips and falls on his side, breathing heavily.
"No! What are you doing?" He exclaims as he tries to get back up. His leg gives out and he falls once more.
She opens up the pouch, fishing out a handful of berries. "I won't let you die for me. You saved me once, now I'm saving you." She drops the bag on the ground with a sort of finality and inspects the fruit in her hand.
And it's so frustrating to him, because why can't she just understand that life isn't about repaying debts?
"Don't do this, Katniss!" He screams from his place in the dirt, fiercely trying to get up, only to fall again. He reaches forward to grab her leg, her ankle, anything, but she's too far away.
"We can't beat them, Peeta!" She yells back with equal fervor. "Can't you see? It's all just a big game to them! We lost! I lost!" She sighs and holds out the berries, palm up, fingers outstretched.
She gives him one last look. "Goodbye, Peeta."
He doesn't hear the trumpets, the loud voice over the speaker that proclaims Ladies&gentlemen, I present to you the victor of the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta Mellark, tribute of District 12!, doesn't hear the hovercraft. He only hears an awful, awful thud as her body hits the ground; a cannon shot; and an anguished scream that goes on&on&on&on.
The last thing he realizes before everything goes black is that the scream is his.
(and no matter what he does, he can't make it stop.)
Going back home is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. And he was stupid, stupid, if he actually thought that he would be able to make the trip back with Katniss.
(he doesn't think about the fact that he is making it back home with her, she's just cold and stiff and in a wooden coffin.)
He stares out the window at the passing countryside and ignores how the clickclack of the train wheels are chanting KatnissKatnissKatniss, over and over and over and over.
(I don't need a reminder, stupid wheels.)
Haymitch drops down into the seat across from him, sees the look on his face, and wordlessly thrusts his silver flask forward. Peeta takes it without hesitation and throws back a sip.
It burns like fire as it slides slowly down his throat.
(he doesn't care.)
His family greets him on the station platform in District 12, smiling and crying with joy. Inside, he laughs bitterly, because he knows it's all a show for the cameras. But he doesn't act like it, he smiles and cries along with them, because he's putting on a show for the cameras too.
"Peeta!" One of the reporters holds out her recorder for him to speak into. "What's it like to be back home?"
He leans forward to speak into the proffered device. "It's a relief, to be honest."
The reporter grins, pushes wispy, cobalt hair behind one ear. "Mrs. Mellark, you must be overjoyed that your family will remain a family of five for much, much longer."
Mrs. Mellark nods fiercely and hugs Peeta to her chest. "We will always be a family of five."
But Peeta's family has never been five, it's always been four plus one, because he's always been the one that's striving to be different, to be more. But Panem doesn't know that, nobody knows that. He accepted that a long, long time ago.
He squeezes his mom. Smiles.
(it hurts like hell.)
He sits outside her house for a good two hours before anyone notices him.
"Peeta?"
He starts, stands up from his place in the dirt and turns around to see Prim, standing in the path, her satchel heavy with textbooks. School must have just let out.
"Are you alright?"
He brushes off his pants and inhales deeply. "Um... yeah."
"What are you doing sitting in front of my house?" She cocks her head to the side as she shifts her bag.
He sighs. "It's stupid."
"Tell me." She sits down in the dirt next to him, sets her book bag in her lap and pats the spot next to her.
And she looks so friendly and caring and concerned, so he takes a seat. "Well..." he trails off, because it won't make sense to her, it can't make sense to her, because look at her, she's the picture of innocence, and he's sitting next to her with his hands stained red with blood.
"You can tell me anything," she says simply.
(he laughs, because he knows he can't.)
She starts visiting him in the bakery every day after school. She stands at the counter and asks Mr. Mellark if Peeta's in. After four consecutive visits, he just opens the door in the counter and lets her into the back.
She sits on a stool and watches him frost cakes. "You know," he says one day while he adds detail on a red rose, "the first thing my mom asked me when I got back home was if I could start work on the cakes again, because my brothers don't do as a good a job as I do." He laughs bitterly. "Some greeting, huh?"
She gives him a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She decides to change the subject. "You know, you never told me why you were sitting in front of my house that day."
He sighs, sets down the tube of red frosting, replacing it with a pink one. Quick as lightning, he squeezes out a coral-colored primrose on the cool, smooth counter in front of her.
"It's no big deal."
"Please." It's so simple, so plaintive, and he almost (almost) cracks.
He doesn't tell her that he was sitting there because he was envisioning Katniss in her old home; because he was wishing she was still alive; because he dreads every day now because it's one without her; because he feels so guilty.
He doesn't tell her.
Instead he picks up the red tube of frosting again and starts back on the cake, figuring that ignoring her is easier and a lot less painless.
(the butter-cream roses bleed red so he doesn't have to.)
She touches his arm.
"Peeta."
He breaks, and all the words he doesn't want to say and wishes so badly to say come flowing out of his mouth, keeping pace with the saltwater leaking from his eyes.
Prim comforts him, because that's what she's good at.
(he can't help but think about how different she is from Katniss.)
"Everybody expects me to be this epic hero," he says one day as he swirls color into a bowl of white frosting. "Victor of the Hunger Games, Peeta Mellark! He's conquered them all!" He laughs mirthlessly. "I didn't win."
Prim scrunches up her brow. "But you did."
He shakes his head. "But I didn't," he says, mimicking her tone. "Katniss did. At least," he rephrases, "she should have. She was supposed to." He takes the wooden spoon from the bowl, puts it in the sink. "And anyway," he adds, "everyone knows that it's not really a victory when it's handed to you."
She's quiet for a long time. "I guess, it was just... fate."
(he tells her that he hates fate, then.)
"You know," she says to him once, days later, "just because everybody expects you to be an epic hero doesn't mean that you have to be."
He nods. Because he knows. Because he's felt it.
(because when he's around her, he doesn't feel pressured to be one.)
So it's not love. It's friendship. And because if it were love, they both wouldn't feel as guilty for using each other as support.
(and also because when he looks at Prim he thinks Katniss, and when she looks at Peeta she thinks Your Fault.)
He will never be the epic hero she was supposed to be, and he knows it. He knows he's not strong enough.
(but he knows that while he's leaning on Prim, he's stronger.)