Pieces, a hunger games fanfic

i: rules

It hurts her, seeing him so helpless. It tears and tugs at her heartstrings, till she feels they might snap; they're already strings pulled too taut. She watches as he screams out in anguish and begs her to help him. But she is powerless, and they're both nothing but pieces of the Capitol's games. He cries out again and Katniss is close to sobbing. Every blow he takes is one she takes as well, and she knows now, what real torture is. He is dragged away, whimpering her name. She tries to follow him, but, of course, she can't. She screams for Peeta and shouts for Peeta and punches for Peeta and kicks for Peeta, but it's all useless, because he's already gone.

you say you know love / but you are just reflecting words you hear

He's putting away the letters he wrote to her in the Capitol when she comes in, so quick he doesn't see her clearly.
He only feels her, clinging to him, but in her strange Katniss way, the one that always makes him feel like he's being kept at a slight distance. He doesn't care, he's just glad to have her here, warm and alive and...he frowns suddenly.
"Katniss? What's wrong?"
She doesn't answer, just pulls away a bit, looking embarrassed and more than a little awkward.
"Nothing," she manages, and he sees the guarded look return to her eyes.
"I just- I really- goodnight."
And she leaves without finishing her sentence.

no iron in your veins could give you any sense of pain or fear

She doesn't know what's wrong with her.
That's a lie.
She does know what's wrong with her; it's been eating away at her insides for so long it's become almost normal.
She misses Peeta.
She misses his eyes, their vivid shade of blue. She misses the looks he used to give her when he thought she wasn't looking. She misses the smiles he would give her in the mornings, the ones that made her feel like she had given him all the gold in the world just by waking up.
But she knows that the Peeta in the house next to hers is not her Peeta. He is the Capitol's Peeta. He is the Peeta who has tried to kill her and will try again.
Her Peeta is gone, and will never come back.

it's just another lie / it's just another calculation

He misses Katniss, so badly it hurts.
He tries to ignore it, to do things to distract himself. He does more baking in the weeks that follow than in his entire life before the Games.
It doesn't work as a distraction technique, because he finds himself baking dozens upon dozens of cheesy buns.
And they're Katniss' favourites.
So, really, nothing works, and he misses Katniss, so badly it hurts.

and when the power's out / we're just another old sensation

She is avoiding him, of course, but she won't admit that to anyone, least of all herself. She doesn't want to get her hopes up. She doesn't want to go knocking on his door, hoping subconsciously for Peeta, for her boy with the bread, and find someone else, a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes and a love for baking, but still not her Peeta. She knows that the blonde hair will be too blonde, he will knead the dough in a different way, and his eyes will be empty.
She is wasting away; waiting for a Peeta she knows will never be there.

this book keeps me alive / but what is it that runs through you?

Peeta can't bear having to leave her alone. But he knows it's what she wants, so he settles for watching her. He watches as she wakes up in the morning. He watches as she wolfs down her breakfast. He watches as she laces up her boots, and notices she only does them with a single knot. He watches as she grabs her bow and quiver, then leaves, always out the back door.
Once she's left, he feels empty.
He always feels empty, really.
He never stops baking, even though he realised a long time ago that it doesn't really help him. He knows that there's really only one thing- one person- who can help him.
And she doesn't want to.

electricity and wires, dictating everything you do

The nightmares become too much to handle, so she stops sleeping, because she can't have nightmares if she is awake, can she?
It turns out she is wrong, because she ends up just living the nightmares instead. Prim stands by her as she feeds Lady, and is berating her when she curses Buttercup. Cinna is there when she leafs through her wardrobe, searching for something that looks exactly the same as what she wore before. Her mother is with her when she bandages a hunting injury. Gale runs with her when she is hunting. And Peeta...
Peeta is everywhere.

you tell me that you hear me / and all your memories are real

He wakes up one night to feel cold toes brushing against his own, and he takes in a sharp breath, because he knows these toes.
They are Katniss' toes.
He looks down and sees her there, asleep next to him. Her face is clear: of scowls, of frowns, of ghosts of the people she has loved and lost.
He thinks to himself that they have done this before, slept in the same bed and warded off bad dreams together, and he feels the sudden compulsion to wake her and ask her, ask her if this memory is real or not real. He stops himself; if she wakes up, he feels like this moment will be shattered into pieces, ones so tiny he can't pick them up and put them back together again.
He is right.
Her eyes flutter open slowly, and his breath catches. He expects her to say something, but she doesn't, because Katniss never was one for talking. She just stares at him silently, and Peeta sees something completely unfamiliar in her eyes.
Fear.
She is scared of him, of what will happen now that they are both awake and lying in his bed.
"Katniss?" he ventures breathlessly.
And the moment shatters, just like he knew it would, and Peeta has absolutely no hope of piecing it back together.
"I'm sorry," she says, and he flinches at the cold edge in her voice. "I have- I have no idea what came over me. I-I won't bother you again."
She throws back the covers and gets out of the bed and leaves abruptly, and Peeta spends the rest of the night wondering how a person can stutter and still sound so proud and cold and sure of themselves.

but how do i know / you don't just feel what you've been told to feel?

She replays the moment in her head so many times it becomes routine. She hates herself for being so stupid, so dependent, so weak.
It's pathetic, she thinks to herself. You're pathetic.
But each time she watches it in her head, she notices more and more how this Peeta isn't too different from her Peeta. Sometimes she catches glimpses of him as he bakes, and realises that he does knead his dough in the same way. His hair is just as blonde (it still looks like some sort of liquid gold, when the sunlight gleams across it). And his eyes weren't empty that night. They were full of emotions she couldn't understand, and a tenderness that almost made her heart break into more pieces than it's already broken into, because she knows that is exactly how her Peeta would look at her.
So now, when he is watching her (because she knows he has been watching her, every day), she looks back, instead of ignoring him. When she does so for the first time, he blinks in surprise and smiles at her tentatively.
She doesn't smile back, because no matter how similar he may be, he's not her Peeta.

we run around the rules / we run around the rules / we run around the rules

The first day she looks back, he thinks that he must be imagining things. But she makes eye-contact with him the next day, and the day after that, and Peeta thinks that if he is imagining things, he must have a very vivid imagination, to imagine the strand of hair that always springs out of her braid, and the little marks the twigs and brambles make on her boots, and how her lips are sometimes chapped from the cold.
He desperately hopes that he isn't imagining things.

round and round / two by two / we run around the rules

Each time Katniss looks at Peeta, she wonders what he is thinking, because he is always wearing an expression she can't quite decipher, which is different, because usually she can read people's emotions easily, and Peeta's especially so.
But now, she finds it difficult, bordering on impossible. She notices that he often keeps his face devoid of emotion, even when he is alone, much like she knows she does. She thinks that this is probably what he did in the Capitol; erased his face of all emotion, evidence that they are winning. That they have stolen his sanity, along with everything else.
She remembers that they did take it away, they took her Peeta away, and her heart breaks all over again.

there's water in your eyes and i know i'm the reason that it's there

He is waiting for Katniss to open up, like she did before. He remembers the first time that they met, properly. Aside from the bread incident, which he can remember too, he knows that they did not speak properly, not until the Reaping and the Games themselves. She had opened up eventually, hadn't she? He distinctly remembers kissing her, in a cave. Not just once, several times. He remembers thinking that it was the best few days of his life, even if he was sick and wounded she was tired and they were both in the Hunger Games, because those were the days he got to kiss Katniss Everdeen.

But then she told me it was all pretend. Fake.

Not real.

And then the episode happens, and he sees Katniss, but she is a different Katniss because she is trying to kill him and torture him and his family. The part of his mind that is still his tries to be rid of it. Not real, he chants quietly. Not real not real not real not real.

Not real. I am Peeta Mellark. I am a painter. I am a baker. My favourite colour is orange. I like to sleep with the windows open. I never take sugar in my tea. I double-knot my shoelaces.

I love Katniss Everdeen.

He says it over and over, until the phrase is reduced to but eight words.

I am Peeta Mellark. I love Katniss Everdeen.

And he realises that this is who he is, Katniss is who he is, because he loves her, so hard and so much that it's almost unreal. And for a few precious moments, he forgets that she doesn't love him back.

but still i don't feel bad / because i know that you have more to spare

Katniss is hunting. It feels good to preserve some bit of her life before the Games; the normalcy, the escape. A voice in the back of her head tells her that it isn't the same, not really; Gale is not here, and the game she brings back is only for herself.

She ignores it. Hunters work better alone, anyway.

In her distracted state, she steps on a stray twig and scares away the deer she has been stalking.

She sighs and rests her forehead against the trunk of the nearest tree. I'm becoming like Peeta, she thinks with dry amusement, remembering how loud his footfalls are, and how she can hear him from several metres away.

The smile that has inched its way onto her face disappears once she remembers who she is thinking about.

and just behind your eyes / are switches that can turn back on

Peeta doesn't know what he's done wrong.

One day, Katniss is making eye-contact with him. He sometimes feels her eyes on him, through her window directly opposite his, while he is baking, or painting, and smiles quietly to himself. Yesterday, he had said good morning. And she had muttered a reply.

The next day, she is ignoring him completely.

He doesn't understand her, not at all. He knew it isn't much, but he felt like they were closer to becoming...something.

But now...

Peeta doesn't know what he's done wrong.

to clear away today / till all your memories are gone

She doesn't know what she was thinking. She had been lying one night in her far too large bed, and suddenly realised she was starting to become closer to Peeta, the one next door, even though he is most definitely not the real Peeta.

What was she thinking?

She spends almost all her time hunting now, making sure to leave early before he is awake and arrive late. It means that he can't watch her.

And she can't watch him.

It means she can't be weak. She can't like him, or love him, love something the Capitol has created from the remnants of the sweetest, kindest boy who had ever lived in Twelve.

we run around the rules

He gives up on baking, because he can't get rid of all this food that fast, and starts painting instead. He lashes out with fiery shades of orange, red and yellow, releasing all the frustration he has felt build up in him since he returned from the Capitol. He doesn't look at what he's doing, justcloses his eyes and feels, feels the paint that is on his fingertips and his face and the canvas.

When he opens his eyes, he has painted the girl on fire.

we run around the rules

Katniss tries not to look, but she can't help herself, and glances at the canvas resting on the window sill. She takes in a sharp breath at the sight.

It is her.

She looks again, properly this time, and the colours jump out at her, shocking shades of orange and red. She stares and stares and stares, and realises that Peeta has made her look beautiful.

She tears her eyes away from the painting and they meet with deep blue ones. She swallows thickly as she stares at him and he stares at her, unmoving.

What must be but a few seconds but feels like several years passes, and she moves away, turns her back to the window, and closes the blinds so violently she thinks she might have broken them.

She will not play into his hands. She will not be weak.

we run around the rules

Katniss is leaving for hunting, and finds a large but thin rectangular package on her doorstep. She frowns, because who would leave her anything on the back doorstep?

Unless they knew that she went out this way?

She rips off the cloth, and her eyes widen when it slips away to reveal splashes of life and colour so real it's surreal. She studies it. It is her. She is standing on the stage they would erect for the Reaping. Effie is next to her. She looks closer, and catches the look of cold pride in her eyes. She remembers this. This is what started it all. Two words. I volunteer.

She turns it over, and sees faint pencilled writing.

I remember.

Peeta

She stiffens (even though, really, she knew it was him all along), and wraps the cloth around the canvas tightly. She sets it down in the dining room she never uses, and runs out the back door to the woods.

Because Peeta remembers, but she wants to forget.

round and round

He doesn't know what he has to do. To prove to her that this is real.

That he is real.

two by two

Every day, there is a new painting. It is always of her. It is always of a moment she tries hard to forget.

It always has the faint pencil writing on the back. It is always the same two words.

A pile is beginning to grow in the dining room. Katniss tries her best to ignore it.

we run around the rules

He paints until his hand hurts. His brushes become old. He buys new ones.

He runs out of canvas and paint; he goes to buy more.

He never runs out of memories.

we run around the rules

I remember.

It doesn't matter. He is not her Peeta.

we run around the rules

I remember.

He wants her to understand. He wants her to realise.

He thinks that perhaps she never will.

And yet, he still paints, and leaves her a new painting every morning. He will wait forever if he has to.

we run around the rules

She has begun to put them in the spare room at the back of the house, because she is running out of space in the dining room.

I remember.

we run around the rules

His brush strokes tell stories.

But they are not stories, they are memories.

I remember.

He is reminding Katniss, too. Just in case she has forgotten.

round and round

I remember.

She closes her eyes and tries to forget.

two by two

He is painting her with her mockingjay pin when he snaps.

He realises that it's pointless. They are running around in circles. He leaves her memories on her doorstep, but she tucks them away, and tries to make herself forget.

we run around the rules

Katniss has just come back from hunting when there is a loud knock on her door. She frowns, because she never ever has visitors.

She briefly considers not answering, but curiosity gets the better of her, and she opens the door.

Her eyes widen slightly, because Peeta is there, standing on her doorstep.

"We need to stop this, Katniss!" he says, his voice shaking with anger and dejection and unreleased emotion.

Her eyes narrow, and her guard goes up. She says nothing. Peeta continues.

"We have to stop this, running around in circles! You can't keep using me like this! And I can't take it anymore! I can't take seeing you every day and not being able to talk to you, or even smile at you! Why can't we- why can't we just be like we were before?" His tone is helpless and pitiful. But Katniss tells herself that she doesn't care, not any more.

"What would you know about before?" she retorts, her eyes furious.

"Everything!"

"No! Not everything! You aren't Peeta!" She knows she is saying too much, but she can't stop herself. "You aren't the real Peeta. You are the Capitol's Peeta. You're not real."

"I am! This is what you don't understand, Katniss! I am Peeta. I am Peeta Mellark. My father was a baker. I live in District Twelve. I paint, and I bake. I like to sleep with the windows open, I never take sugar in my tea, and I always double-knot my shoelaces."

"I am Peeta Mellark. I am a painter. I am a baker. I like to sleep with the windows open, I never take sugar in my tea, and I always double-knot my shoelaces."

She stares at him. He is looking at her with pained eyes, and when she hears his voice again, it is a whisper. She knows he is repeating it not just for her, but for himself as well.

"I am Peeta Mellark. I am a painter. I am a baker. I like sleep with the windows open, I never take sugar in my tea, and I always double-knot my shoelaces. And I...I love Katniss Everdeen."

She swallows and blinks. He speaks again. His voice is cold. His eyes are empty. His face is that of one who has given up.

"And you don't love me back Katniss, I know. I just-I wanted- I thought-"

And suddenly, his blank face is gone; his eyes are full of emotion again, because Peeta is lost for words. Eloquent Peeta, the one whose words just fall out of his mouth, is speechless. He tries to start again, and conjures up monosyllables, stuttering as he tries to find something to say as she stares at him.

And suddenly, there is silence, because Katniss has stilled his lips with her own.

And as she presses her lips to his, the world disappears, and there is nothing but Peeta, her Peeta. She pushes, harder, until she feels him pushing back. She runs her hands through his hair and clings to the fine ones on the nape of his neck, feels him shiver. She deepens the kiss; she longs to taste more, to touch more, to feel more of Peeta. He runs his hands up and down her back.

And the world has disappeared, and there is only Peeta.

we run around the rules

It is never really the same; he is never really the Peeta he was before.

But it doesn't matter, because this Peeta is hers too.

And she is his.