You've caught me in the act;
I'm losing myself.
Falling in love is like falling apart,
and now I'm in so many pieces.
A/N: That came to my mind when I thought of Peeta, and I didn't know where to put it. So there you go. Anyway, this story was supposed to be a Oneshot, but Peeta wouldn't let me leave the computer without this being written, and he stubbornly forced me to tack it on to my already written story. So here you go, Peeta.
Disclaimer: The characters and blah, blah, blah, belong to Suzanne Collins. I am just molding the clay that she made, blah, blah, blah.
I don't know how it happened. One minute I'm turning down the street in front of the bakery, Gale left speechless behind me, and the next I'm sitting on a rock listening to the rare buzz of the electric fence. It's just my luck that the one time I actually want to leave District 12, the fence is turned on. I imagine Katniss stranded out there somewhere. I know that Gale isn't with her. But maybe she isn't there at all, maybe she's safe at home; at least as safe as she'll ever be.
My thoughts travel away from Katniss and to myself. I want to throw myself into the fence, feel the electricity surging in my veins, experience death. Maybe I would just get shocked, though, then I would only feel stupid. So I don't throw myself into the fence, and I don't do anything else either. I sit on a rock and I think. Not about anything particular, not really about anything at all.
Blood and death cross my mind. I shudder at the fact that I had just wished to feel death. I had fought so hard to live, and now I was throwing back my survival in... whoever's face. I shouldn't feel like this. I got what I wanted. Katniss is alive. I am alive. But I feel like a part of me has died.
When I was younger and I had never spoken to Katniss, I had always been able to retain that hope, that one day, maybe, she could feel about me the way I felt about her. That hope had been placed in my hands during the Games, and then abruptly shattered afterward. Katniss would never love me. She could have anyone, any boy she wanted, why would she choose me? But she wasn't choosing any other boy either. I had thought that she was choosing Gale. Going back to what she knew before our worlds fell together and apart in the same heartbeat. But she wasn't; Gale had just said so. He didn't even see her every week. I had only seen her a few times in the months that we'd been back from the Capitol, but I had expected Gale to have seen her every day, even though he worked most of the time now.
It doesn't matter. I tell myself, because it doesn't. She can go on not liking every single boy she meets, but that won't make her like me any more than she does. I stand abruptly, hearing a shuffling sound that comes from the other side of the electric fence. I see gray eyes and I think of her. But it isn't her. It's some sort of wild animal that lives in the woods by District 12. That's all.
Since I'm up anyway, I decide to go back to my house in Victor's Village. I don't spend very much time there. My family stays in our home at the Bakery, and there is nothing for me at this new foreign house. Katniss is close by, but she doesn't want me, and being rejected in such close proximity seems to make the aching in my chest worse.
As I walk, the air seems to be getting cooler. I don't think anything of it. Some days, the weather represents itself to me as omens of my feelings, but today it is just weather. Not much has meaning to me right now. I flip back and forth from such vivid meaning in everything that it brings me to the point of pain to just feel, to numbness so overwhelming, that breathing chokes me. It is one of those numb days. Maybe that is why I want the electric fence to wrap its hateful embrace around me. At least it cares enough to give me some kind of feeling.
My mom doesn't speak to me any more than she did before the Games, but she doesn't beat me now. My dad has lost his cool, collected demeanor, and has turned to something discreet and unsettling. He tries not to show it to me, but I catch glimpses of it here or there. When he lets his guard down, I can see that he is an unraveled man. My older brother seems to hate me for winning the Games. I don't know why, but that is how it is. Katniss obviously doesn't want anything to do with me. Haymitch is always drunk. That leaves me alone. I am always alone.
Except on Sundays. Those are the days that someone can break through my self-inflicted shell of solitude, and elicit a positive feeling from me. Once a week, a sweet little girl whose face makes my heart break, comes to my house and talks to me for an hour or so. More if I ask her to stay. Primrose Everdeen. She reminds me so much of her sister, but she is so different. She is everything I love about Katniss, and everything I wish Katniss was.
One day, I asked her why she only came on Sundays. She told me that she doesn't have school on Sundays, so I pointed out the fact that she doesn't have school on Saturdays, either. She said the words: "Yes, but on Saturday's Ka-," before she realized that what she was about to say wasn't meant for my ears. I dropped the subject swiftly, knowing what she meant. "Yes, but on Saturday's Katniss is home." Katniss clearly doesn't know that her precious sister is meeting with me once a week. Katniss clearly wouldn't approve. And Katniss hunts on Sundays.
Prim and I do not talk about Katniss. I want her to. I want her to tell me every little detail of the girl I love's life. Painful or not, I want to know. But Prim is a healer, like her mother, and as such, she will not intentionally inflict pain on anyone, let alone the boy to whom she gives credit for her sister's life.
I refuse to take that credit. I did not save Katniss, Katniss saved me. I mean, before she threw me to the metaphorical mutts. I realize, of course, that this pain isn't anything like Cato had experienced when the dead tribute muttations tore him slowly apart, but that is how I describe my pain to myself. I am being slowly ripped apart, and no one can save me, without losing themselves in the process.
No one but Katniss. She could put me out of my misery, like she did for Cato. If she would just tell me for sure that I had no chance, whether with words or by choosing someone else, I could at least lessen the torment. If I knew that there was nothing I could do, at least some of the pressure would slip off my shoulders, and I could hold up my head for a little while. But she won't do that. She won't choose, and it leaves Gale in pain as well as myself.
I arrive at the gates to Victor's Village, and she is standing there, in front of her house. She looks beautiful and miserable, and I want to run to her and wrap my arms around her. But my legs don't respond, and I stop moving, my prosthetic leg bucking an unsubstantial amount under the sudden halting of my body.
She looks at me, horrified, and I fear for a second that she is going to run back inside, leaving me all alone. But she doesn't, she starts walking towards me, her lips slowly moving, mouthing words that I can't catch. Seeing her tears away the layer of foggy numbness that surrounds me today. Everything is brilliant and painful again.
"Peeta." Her voice is shaky as she says my name. It makes my eyes sting, my ears feel on fire at the sound of my name on her lips. She reaches out her hand towards me, but she is holding something back. Her index finger goes out in a point, not accusing me, but pointing over my shoulder. I turn around to see a dark figure standing on the road behind me.
I can't tell who it is, and my entire body is screaming at me to turn around and look at Katniss again. I obey. My mouth is parted, preparing for speech, as I turn. But no one is there to catch my words.
A/N: I hope you like it!!! :) Please, please, please review this, even if you think it sucks! Thanks for reading!