I'm currently beta-ing my own work. If anyone has a moment to spare, I would love to have a beta!
Along with being majorly inspired by The Hunger Games, a lot of concepts and ideas of war and it's influence on people in this piece has been inspired from 'Every Man in this Village is a Liar' By Megan Stack. It's a beautifully written book about the influence of war on both the powerful and the powerless.
All recognisable characters belong to Suzanne Collins.
I'm .com.
Home.
I used to think of it as the creaking floorboards that followed my every step. The naked trees that silently gazed through the bakery's windows, blocked by familiar walls. Dad's voice calling us in for supper as darkness fell.
But things change.
Walking through the door now, the floorboards no longer creak. The trees have been cut down and Dad is gone.
The silence of this place screams into my ears and my bones hang like shed snakeskin that refuses to fall away.
If your home is something that defines you, then I don't know who I am anymore.
Sitting in the backyard, we played with the plastic green soldiers, their tiny guns glued to their hands, their eyes blank.
"No, Peeta. You're going to be the bad guy this time!" Katniss exclaimed, pointing her short stubby finger into my chest.
"But I'm always the bad guy," I whined, crossing my arms across my chest.
"Fine. But next time I'm going play the hero." I nodded my head in agreement as she grinned widely, toppling my soldiers down.
That's what war was like in our naïve minds; a performance where the enemy was defeated and the hero came out proud and untouched.
"Katniss, I'm enlisting." I told her.
"I won't let you," she told him, her signature scowl painted across her mouth.
"How are you going to stop me?"
She looked straight into my eyes, challenging me. Suddenly, she kisses me. Before I can even respond, she pulls away. "If I can't stop you, I'll go with you."
It was the early evening momentary cool which came when the sun had just gone. We walked across the village centre, peering at the vendors. Katniss had been craving cheese-buns and warm Mellark's Bakery bread, but all we saw was Kabuli pilau.
Her stomach rumbled loudly and I chuckled. I led her over to the stand, buying a large bowl for us to share. Tentatively, we tasted the rice.
We were surprised. It was good.
Spoon after spoon, bowl after bowl, I began to savour the raw texture of the nuts, the sweetness of the plums and the invigorating sense of something different.
It began to rain softly, the water splashing against the sandy ground, making small puddles of mud. But it smelled fresh, like a new day.
We looked at each other. We hadn't talked about that day we kissed. We were stationed together, so any evidence of intimacy would prevent us from working together and not seeing Katniss for months at a time was not an option.
I looked over at her as she tried tasting the rain, looking ridiculous whilst sticking her tongue out. But she never looked more beautiful. She had never looked more radiant.
With the evening lamps flickering behind us, I pulled her drenched form closer to me, pushing away tendrils of hair that had come out of her braided bun.
"Mellark, Everdeen!" Thresh yelled across the sound of splashing water. We looked towards him, springing apart instantly. "Heavensbee wants you two back at base."
I nodded, watching Thresh walk away and took Katniss' small hand in mine as we walked back together.
We walked into a tight room and across the dirt floor, saw a door slightly ajar. Hearing music vibrating through the walls, Katniss walked closer, silently peering into the room. She called me over.
I saw pierced noses, brilliant eyes and dark hair woven into complicated braids. I saw scarves unravelling as the women twirled, burqas strewn across the room.
It was sensual. Joyful. Hypnotic. It was their own tiny revolt against the war.
Katniss nudged me as Mohammed walked in. We had been assigned to hear his concerns regarding our presence in his village.
But even after we left, we couldn't stop thinking of the dancing women.
"They aren't liberated," Katniss said, deep in thought, her gun strapped across her body. I nodded. Not many women in Afghanistan were. "But they danced."
We'd seen a lot since we came to Afghanistan. But never something as complicated and confusing as this.
Walking back to base with Katniss beside me, I wondered whether they danced for their fathers that had been murdered by the Taliban. Or if they danced for their Mothers who were beaten by the religious police. Whether they were dancing for their brothers who trained to be fighters against their repressors, unknowingly becoming them.
Katniss looked up at me, her grey eyes looking for answers. I didn't need to remind her that these women's brothers prowled the mountains underfed and shivering. That their brothers were underequipped and plagued by a lack of any real leadership or plan.
I didn't remind Katniss because it didn't matter.
"What matters is that these women are continuing to live their lives," Katniss said, as if she'd been reading my mind.
She was right. Whether it was dancing or fighting, the Afghanis offered a small sum of resistance to the unfortunate hand they had been dealt. They tried not to be a piece in someone else's game.
And that was beautiful.
"Hey Buddy, you should probably should read that on your own," I teased Finnick, handing him his mail. His wife, Annie, was pregnant and had been sending him every ultrasound result since he left. I caught him stroking the black and white picture a few times and had proceeded to call him a sap every chance I got. But I would be lying if I said I didn't want that with Katniss. To live together, to start a family.
Katniss walked in, snickering at Finnick holding his mail tightly. She sat down with us, sitting in the seat closest to mine.
"Whatever," he said dismissively. He looked between Katniss and I, a small smile forming across his face. "Don't think I don't hear both of you in the utility closet –"
They say light travels faster than the speed of sound. Maybe that's why I saw three hundred and five men explode into pieces before I heard their screams.
From the helicopter they looked likes smudges of ink, scribbled hurriedly across a page. Looking closer, I saw three boys in dull blue shalwaar kameez kicking a torn soccer ball across the bare dirt. I tried to imagine how the war looked to them. They looked innocent, but I was sure that the stench of blood and burnt flesh hadn't allowed them to be naïve.
"There is no need to hesitate," Commander Coin barked. "These men killed your brothers in arms. You're doing what's right."
I thought of Finnick, his body wrapped in a flag, sent home to his pregnant wife. I thought of Katniss in the infirmary, bruised and bloody. I thought of my own leg, shattered…gone.
I felt numb, light, as if my own body might vaporise if breathed.
I heard another order behind me and dropped the grenade.
The water beat over me, collecting and swirling down the drain like a tiny hurricane. Suddenly everything went red.
I stepped away, feeling cold wet tiles against my back, hoping to find a spot of dry ground. But the blood around me grew.
I gave up, letting it consume me, swallowing everything I was.
You become what you do and this new identity pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who I was.
I became a murderer.
Coming home war was strange. I knew I had been scrambled by the things I had seen but I had expected to return to a country transformed.
But it wasn't.
People still worried about the Kardashians and the latest prank video on YouTube and I realised that as Americans we have the gift of detaching ourselves and drifting on. We forget as Americans these actions belong to us.
I realised that I was still trying to get home.
"Did you see Osama Bin Laden?"
"Did you kill the Taliban?"
"Heard you saw a few men die… that true?"
Questions rolled off their tongues, drowning me in nouns, vowels and floating questions marks.
My mother looked at me, annoyed at my crutches balanced against the table. She wasn't coping well with the loss of my leg. Something about me being less of a man than I already was.
She never asked how I was coping. Didn't bother to ask if I was carrying my own fear around.
It wouldn't have mattered. I kept quiet, turned my ribs into prison bars to trap everything inside. It had seemed proper, to carry it there, unseen.
But then they looked at me, demanding answers and I looked for words in a mouthful of air. I couldn't remember it all and I couldn't explain why I did what I did over there.
I thought of telling them that even though I had lived through the bombings, the shootings, the raids, I hadn't survived the war.
I hugged her tight, crushing her head to my chest, while others at the airport looked at us, remembering their own happy reunions.
"Peeta, I'm not going to go anywhere," Katniss chuckled, her voice muffled by my chest. She pushed her arms against my chest, looking at my face. Her grey eyes were wet with tears. She didn't cry often.
"I won't ever leave you," I promised.
"Stay with me?" she asked, her voice tiny.
"Always."
A plane lumbered overhead and I ducked down, yelling for Katniss to take cover. I crouched down, hands over my ears and counted my breaths. In and out. In and out. In and out.
"Peeta, what are you doing?" she asked motioning for me to get up.
I looked around me, remembering that planes in America didn't drop bombs. Tears brimmed my eyes, but I wiped them away, looking towards the window.
"Nothing… I just thought…"
She walked closer to me, hugging me to her chest.
"It's okay Peeta. I get them too."
"We're so broken, Katniss," I tell her, placing my head in her lap, tears streaking down my face.
"We can't say that, Peeta."
I get frustrated. "Yes, yes we can. I hallucinate planes dropping bombs and you're awake half the screaming and –"
"I'm pregnant."
I look up at her face in shock. "What?"
"I was a few weeks late and I wanted to make sure before I told you. The doctor said I was 7 weeks," she said, looking uneasy. "Are you not happy? I thought you wanted –"
"No, No, Katniss," I tell her, getting up and taking her face in my hands. "I've always wanted this with you. I just can't believe this is happening. It just feels like a dream."
"A dream come true," she smiles.
"But, we're still so damaged…"
"I booked us an appointment with Dr. Aureluis."
I nodded. "You're right. We need to be there for her. Physically and mentally."
Katniss raises her eyebrows. "For her? You don't know if it's a girl."
"Call it a father's intuition," I grin.
"And what if it's a boy?"
"Then I will love him the same," I pull her closer to me, nuzzling my face in the space between her neck and chest. "Just the way I love his mommy."
"So when did the flashbacks start?" he asked.
"Uh, just after I came back."
"And what were they about?"
"I, um, lost a lot of brothers. My wife was injured in the attack…I remember her scream," I gulp. "Other times it's some of the things I had to do."
"What did you have to do?" I stared silently into my hands. He sighed, taking off his glasses. "You can't build a wall and expect to live on the other side of your memories.
"Our actions define us, Peeta. They become our identity. They become us. And I think you need to accept that."
"Just one more push!" the doctor exclaims, his hands beneath the curtain as Katniss yells through hospital walls.
It's like the tension in the room slips away when they hand her to me, cutting the umbilical cord.
She cries, furious to be separated from the safety of her mother's womb, clutching something that's already lost.
But she's here. Covered in blood, scintillating crimson underneath the fluorescent light, she opens her eyes and clear blue skies stare back at me.
I finally know where I'm supposed to be.