This is a little one-shot I did partly for my own closure on the Hunger Games story. Like a lot of other people I felt like the last chapter was rushed and not very satisfying for the end of the Katniss/Peeta story. My main problem was how different Peeta was. Collins says Katniss and Peeta "grew back together" but never really explained how. This is bit of a deeper look into the Peeta we love came back.
The first few weeks it was all we could do to keep busy and hold off the wall of painful memories that threatened to engulf us the moment we let our guard down. The faces of the dead would overcome me; they'd crowd my mind until Finnick's eyes and the back of Prim's untucked blouse were a physical weight I couldn't hold back because I was so weak and they were supernaturally strong.
In the initial few weeks we were back together, a comforting arm, shoulder, hand, was what we needed to keep a handhold on reality. If it wasn't for that small physical contact I knew my memories would consume me, my sense of the world would disappear completely, and the past would possess me.
I was the one to suggest we move in together, though I knew if I didn't Peeta would have. If it wasn't for Peeta I had a feeling I'd lose every sense, my vision would go first, then my taste and hearing. Function by function would leave until I would live in the past purely because it would feel more substantial than reality. When Peeta told me talk to him about anything, what Greasy Sae was making for dinner, or what we were planting next in our vegetable patch, I knew that he needed the same foundation in the present.
In fact, as bad as it was for me, I knew it had to be worse for him, because he had two kinds of memories to contend with. He saw the destruction and the horrors we shared together, but the highjacker memories had an inexplicable otherworldly effect on him. It was a credit to the Capitol's exploitation of incessant, prolonged torture, that even after going through so much additional trauma after he had escaped, he was still haunted by the muttation girl who belittled, twisted and tormented his mind in the arena.
When jacker poison gripped him, the worst thing I could do was attempt to comfort him. The first time it happened I reached out to him and he reflexively pushed me away so hard I fell back into a glass coffee table. My hand took my weight and the glass corner broke off, slicing my hand open as I hit the ground.
My cry of alarm brought him back to the present. I saw the glazed cloud retreat from his eyes, and the boy with the bread returned. But he wasn't innocent anymore and seeing the blood racked him with horrified guilt. There wasn't anything I could do to help, he said he was dangerous and I should stay away from him and that was that. I couldn't say a thing to change his mind. That grounding physical contact we offered each other briefly left and we both felt more alone than ever.
After that when he could feel the jacker memories returning he told me to leave. Initially I refused but then he turned on me and his eyes were rabid with hysteria. I knew he wasn't seeing the real me then, only the personified personal hell the Capitol had tailor made for him and I knew it was best to leave. It was more for his sake than my own, what was it to me if I got one more scar? After what I'd been through, there wasn't anything Peeta could do, physically at least, that would hurt me. When he turned on me though, I saw something else in his eyes, I saw a new kind of fear and I realised he was terrified that he couldn't control himself.
He confirmed it once. "I wouldn't care as much if someone else took over and they forced my body to bake a cake. But it's the fact that if I'm not in control my body does the last thing I'd ever want to do." When he said that I knew this wasn't really about me, it was something he needed to overcome himself. So I did what he said and let him face his demons in our dark house alone. In the meantime I roamed around the district, longing for so many things they weren't even worth mentioning to myself anymore.
After a while we had a routine; Peeta's hands would curl into fists, the warmness in his eyes would flitter away, he'd squeeze out a warning "Katniss!" through clenched teeth and I would have to leave. Knowing how much I needed him when this happened to me and seeing him confront his fears alone began to etch a wound in my barely healing chest. It was like the Capitol, even though it had gone up in flames, had still managed to steal my last hope for happiness.
These feelings eventually left, however temporarily. Soon we were back together, going about our lives, planting seeds in a new garden we'd put together or helping the returned residents clear out the remains of the district. But always at the back of my mind was a lingering feeling that the actions of the Capitol would dictate our lives for as long as Peeta experienced these flashbacks.
This attitude started to disintegrate when I was helping Gale's mother and a few others clear out what was left of our old school art room. It was mostly a three-walled blackened shell. The charred remains of table legs and chair backs littered the ground. Half of the waist-high supply cupboards that used to line the classroom wall were no more than chunks of charcoal.
I was musing over the loss of my years of mediocre artwork when two men lifted the classroom door away from where it had rested and burned against the supply cupboards. Underneath was one remaining cupboard. Amazingly, the classroom door must have protected it from the bombings. A part of the wood wasn't even significantly burned. I cautiously bent down; hardly daring to believe what I thought might be in there. I grasped the intact handle and pulled the door off its hinges. Inside was the closest thing to a miracle I had experienced in a long time. I took the contents without consulting anyone and rushed home.
I was gone by the time Peeta had emerged from his flashback, he had been so consumed he hadn't noticed my rummaging around in the lounge room. I knew my efforts had paid off when I returned a few hours later. Hanging on the wall was the first artistic creation of Peeta's I'd seen since he'd decorated Annie and Finnick's wedding cake. It was me, my skin twinkling like I remember Peeta's doing when I'd been stung by the trackerjackers but with one major exception. The effect the poison had that made me look hideous and unnatural had been turned into something beautiful, something brimming with life. I was radiant. And pinned to my chest wasn't my token mockingjay, but a single, yellow dandelion.
What was best was it was just like one of the portraits he'd painted of me before we'd gone into the arena for the Quarter Quell. Except with the addition of the trackerjacker sparkle, it was more beautiful than ever. The boy with the bread wasn't gone, he'd evolved into something new. And the Katniss in his eyes and changed with him, all for the better. It felt like a battle had been won.
I found him asleep on the couch, streaks of paint on his hands. I didn't bother waking him; just lay down next to him. His arms instinctively wrapped around my body and I took his hands in mine. We both slept better than we had in months that night.