entitled: Nightlock
pairing: Peeta/Katniss
summary: She's playing with death.
rating: T
disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games.
notes: Set after Prim's death.
Sometimes, Peeta finds nightlock in her bed, the juice staining the white sheets a vivid purple-blue.
He finds them today.
His fists clench and his jaw tightens and his eyes close shut, his whole body trying to erase itself.
He's angry, but mostly, he's exhausted. He's tired of waking every morning and running to her house, bounding up the stairs and into her bedroom and praying that Katniss isn't lying there dead.
That Prim's death hasn't killed her again.
Peeta thinks back to the first month when her screams filled the house and the nightmares bled into her waking consciousness and the times when she would drift off for hours, staring at nothingness while her stomach caved in on itself. He thinks of the crying and the tearing down of everything she's ever known, because her life was mostly Prim and Prim was gone.
And then suddenly, out of the blue, Katniss became a little calmer, a little more herself. And that's when he began to find the berries in jars in the kitchen cupboard, sprinkled in the drawers of her vanity, poured along the medicine cabinet of her bathroom, in her bed, smeared across the covers, that vibrant purple-blue.
And his insides twist and he wants to vomit, because God, Katniss, please don't leave me here alone.
He wouldn't make it through her funeral, much less through the rest of his life.
Peeta picks up a small berry and lets it roll around in his palm.
fin.