What The Games Couldn't Take
Summary: The Games had done more than take the lives of innocent children.
It had also warped whole generations of them.
Oneshot: Katniss x Peeta, rated K+
Author's Note: Found this old file on my computer, and though I don't write fanfic anymore, I thought I'd share it.
The Games had done more than take the lives of innocent children.
It had also warped whole generations of them.
Katniss couldn't count on both hands the things that The Games had taken, had slowly wrenched out, had corrupted, plagued, and tortured her with. She could not, would not, tell you the nightmares she was besieged with nightly. Or the tremors that shook her body at the oddest trigger. She couldn't speak to you about the glassiness that covered her eyes with her body and head fixated over the field her two children played on, as the newly grown grass poked up between the fingers of decomposing flesh and bone she knew was still buried there. With a gasp or a grimace, she'd steel her heart whenever the lingering doubt would seep its way into her soul. That perhaps none of this was real. Perhaps she was jacked up on tracker jacket venom. Or perhaps The Games had never truly ended...
No. Katniss could tell you none of this. Of the reasons behind the fear within her eyes.
Nor could she adequately explain in words the reasons behind her sorrow. Of the things lost which could never be grasped in the first place. She couldn't describe how the games had slowly intensified the hunter instincts within her best friend. Or turned a good man into a killer. Had changed a boy into a solider. How a girl who was not quite yet an adult came to lead a rebellion. And at the same time found a compassion and humanity which wasn't mirrored in others. She couldn't voice how her stomach churned at the display. Or how a teenager forgot how to trust, the emotion replaced only with regret. She couldn't mourn the loss of the Boy With the Bread. Nor could she deny the faltering existence of him. She couldn't testify to his daily struggles to stay within the safety of the realms of reality. What she could do is choke up at the mention of relationships lost, or merely grimace, her mouth forming a taut line with the edges turning down.
Peeta was always better with words. He might be able to tell you of the gnawing need for someone, anyone, who could simply feel and understand. Of the dizzying visions in which his lover became a horror. Of the world in which his children didn't exist and he was surrounded by beasts. Of the fear that gripped him so tight that the whites of his knuckles would show and the blood pounded in his head as the veins rose in anger and terror. He might find the sentences that could communicate his dual existence as he straddled the line between real and make-believe. Of the demons he fought in his mind while his hands simultaneously fought the urge to enclose around her neck.
He could show you his paintings, once full of oranges, pinks, and blues, now bloodied and red. Or the empty cake tins which he'd been meaning to start using again. He could tell of the late night embraces, half full of love, half full of survival. In which each clung to the other; the warmest monster repellent he'd ever found. He might even shyly smile, the right corner of his lips turned up at the mention of his wife. It was the one thing The Games couldn't take.
Real or not?