I come skidding to a halt when I get to his hallway, where I see that he is out of his room, escorted by one big male nurse, a guard and has padded handcuffs on. His eyes widen for a moment and then settle at the sight of my labored breathing. He reaches out with both hands and one of the men stop him, so he just puts them back in front of himself. "Why were you running? Won't that hurt the baby?"
"Can….we ….sit somewhere?" I wheeze out, I shouldn't have run through those last two hallways, but I was too excited. He looks at his guards and they just motion back to his room. I follow them in and take a seat at one end of the bed while he does the same at the other, just like the night before. I try to catch my breath, fully aware of all three men watching me. Peeta seems concerned which is a step in the right direction.
"Should I get the doctor Miss Everdeen?" The nurse asks me. I just shake my head and hold up my finger.
"Just…a ….minute." I take two more breaths and I feel okay, but the baby didn't care too much for that and is kicking up a storm. "Oh wow, your baby knows how to hit."
Peeta looks down at where my hands have rested on my sides. I lift up my shirt enough so he can see my stomach and obviously see where the baby is moving. He puts his hands out again, but of course the guard stops him.
"It's okay, he can touch me. It's his baby." I look at Peeta, hold my hand out to him, "Really. It's okay, I think you should feel him or her. Whatever the baby is, it's got a strong kick."
He leans forward on the bed, and gently puts his hands to my tummy. I take his hands and move them slightly to the side, "There, much better."
The baby gives a final kick, one that Peeta would never be able to deny is real. His eyes get wide and looks at me with a shy smile. "That's my baby?"
He sounds so young and innocent. I wish he had been there when I found out, with the first kick, and every night since the Quell had started. Damn Snow for taking all that away from him! From taking Peeta away from me! I keep myself from crying yet again by answering, "Yep, that's your baby. Our baby."
He pulls his hands away and I lower my shirt. He goes back to his corner on the bed, but faces me this time. "Thank you."
"For what? Guys, do you think you could take those off of him? He didn't have them on last night and we were just fine." The guard gives me a dirty look but the male nurse just nods his head, "Yeah, sure. We'll be right outside the door though."
"Thank you." Once the handcuffs are removed and they leave, Peeta just rubs his wrists. "So, what was it that you were thanking me for exactly?"
He looks up, those blue eyes confused for a moment but soft. "That you trust me enough to let me touch you. The baby."
"Peeta, this baby is half you whether you like it or not and I think that you should be able to enjoy some part of it." I turn myself on the bed, one leg up on it.
"I'm sorry I haven't been here for it." He looks down, as if any of what happened is his fault.
"No, shouldn't be sorry for any of it, Peeta!" I scream out. I startle him and his eyes go wide from fear, anger. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell."
I put my hands up as if surrendering. "I'm not mad at you Peeta, I promise. I'm mad that Snow caught you before they could get you out, I'm mad that no one told us what was going on but most of all, I'm mad that you can't remember what happened with us because….because, you mean everything to me, Peeta. I didn't know that before, in the first Games, I kind of felt it during the tour, and as much as I didn't care for the training part for the Quell, I knew that it was you who I trusted more than anyone and that I would always want to be with you and I love you. I just need to figure out how to get you to remember that."
I get up and start to pace, which isn't saying very much because the room is small and only has the bed and a nightstand really. I unconsciously rub my stomach, something I do when I am nervous, anxious, you name it, the belly gets rubbed. I look at him, trying to figure out what he might be thinking, but his face seems so different and yet the same. Hardened unfortunately not by age, but by sadness and hurt. He watchs me go back and forth for a minute, and then grabs his notebook, turning to a particular page in it. Holding it up for me to see, he asks,
"Did this happen?" I look at it and have to sit on the bed to really look at it. It is a drawing of us, in the cave. Well, me in the cave, his arm wrapped around me as I slept. I smile and I could see that this makes him happy, well, happier.
"Yes, that was when we were in the cave in the first Games. After I had gotten you the medicine that healed the blood poisoning from the cut on your leg."
"After I told you not to and you drugged me?" I give a humble smile and nod. "And this was because of the mutts?" He asked, putting the notebook down and pulling up his pantleg to show his prosethic. I nod again. He lets the pantleg drop back down and flips to another page in the notebook. It was me as a little girl, from when he said he first fell in love with me. Even though it's in black and white, he somehow got the pattern on the dress just right and my hair in the two braids to look perfect. "This is you, right?"
"You told me that that was when you fell in love with me, after you heard me sing." I could feel the blush rising on my face. "I didn't believe you because we were so young and I had no idea you even noticed me until…."
"….The bread in the rain?" The look on his face made me think he was in some kind of pain.
"Yes. Are you okay?" I reached out to him again, but stopped short. His eyes were closed, lips pursed, he was trying to remember, sort things through. When he opened his eyes, there were tears in them. "They couldn't touch these because they were never on any kind of film. I just didn't know if they were real."
"Well, we can try something. You show me a picture and I'll tell you where it's from, if I know it, what happened, that sort of thing."
"If it's real or not?" He starts flipping through again and I gasp at it. It was me, but I was holding a knife over him. It looked like we were still in the cave. The edges were fuzzy though, not solid like the other two drawings he showed me. "This one isn't, is it? It's cloudy."
"No, it's not real. Well, not me anyway. That looks like what Clove did to me when I went to get the medicine, when Thresh let me go. What do you mean, cloudy?" I didn't want to look at this one anymore, I looked mean and like I was enjoying the pain that was going to come, but he touched the page, the edges of it.
"See here?" I nod as he traces the outline with his fingers, "You're face is blurry like when I had the hallucinations from the trackerjackers in the first Games. It was shiny almost and I couldn't tell what was true or not. But the other two, you can see the difference, can't you?"
"Yeah, I see them. And I know what you're talking about, with the venom because I was stung that morning too. You told me to run."
"Why'd you drop them on me?" He begins to flip through again, he has drawn a lot of pictures in the last few weeks since I had seen him.
"It wasn't just on you. It was the Careers and you were with them. I didn't know that you were actually protecting me from them. I didn't know much until I found you in the mud." His head snapped up at that and he flew through the pages quickly.
"This is real then?" A picture of us by the stream where I found him and cleaned him up. It was Peeta's point of view for sure, looking over his feet, watching me fill canteens with water and washing his clothes.
"Yes, real. You were caked in mud and I had to get you clean. You insisted that you didn't mind being naked in front of me…" I tried to sound like it didn't bother me, but he knew better.
"But you didn't like that. Kind of a prude aren't you?" His lip curled up, lighting up those blue eyes. I just shook my head,
"Yeah, well, you said it was me being pure and that you liked it." I could tell he was getting a lot from this and I was thrilled that he was going along with this when the door opened. He dropped the book and just looked at the doctor who came in.
"You're okay, Peeta. This is working for you and Katniss is probably the only one who can tell you about most of these pictures. I just want to check your vitals, if that's okay?" I stand up and he pats my shoudler, "No, no, you sit. This won't take long. Peeta, your arm please?"
He sticks his arm out, lets the doctor do what he has to as he checks his pressure and eyes. He listens to his heart and smiles, "You seem a little excited, you're pressure's a little higher, but I think you'll be fine. Katniss, Peeta, I'll come back in an hour or so, maybe we can all get some lunch?"
"I'm pretty much always hungry now," I watch Peeta smile at this statement. It doesn't truly reach his eyes, but it's still a step in the right direction. When he doctor leaves us, I can see the guard sulking across the hall when the door closes on him. "Well, are there some more pictures you want to go through?"
"Actually, a question first." He picks up the book again, aimlessly going through the pages. "The night we were together, did you tell me you loved me?"
"Yes, I did." My voice is low, though I'm sure why.
"Did you mean it?" I look up at his blue eyes, they seem darker right now. He's also stopped fiddling with the book.
"Of course."
"But you lied about it before?" His hands were shaking just a bit.
"Yes, during the first Games, I played along with it to get sponsors, food, medicine. To survive."
"So, how do I know you weren't lying then, or lying now?"
"Because I didn't even know how to love back then. I knew during the tour, the small things that you did, held me together after the nightmares, those things built up and I knew that I was falling in love with you. And sometimes when we were kissing….I wanted more sometimes." I was blushing again, but I wanted him to know everything, even if there were other people listening to us on the other side of the mirror.
"I think I probably always wanted more." He snorted. I giggle at this and his eyebrows scrunch together.
"From what I hear from Johanna, guys always want more." He laughs. It was probably the first time he's done it since being caught by Snow because it seems to startle him. He goes back to the notebook, finds what he wants and turns it to me. It's me again, as if he's looking down at me. I have a smile on my face, eyes clearly looking at him. I'm not sure, because I didn't see my face, but I think it's from our one night together. "Is that? What is this from?"
"You have to tell me. I just know that it's you and when I drew it, I felt good." He flips to the next page, "I drew this right after."
Yep, it was our night together. He's drawn me in all my glory, hair spread out in ripples on a pillow, arms raised as if I was waiting for someone to be in them, waiting for him to be in them. There's a slight smile on my lips, which look swollen, maybe from all the kissing? How is it that my eyes look like they're twinkling when it's in black and white and shades of gray? It goes lower, to my breasts that look like two ripe melons really, nipples hard and ready to be touched, down my flat stomach. He had the decency not to go further with the image of me. He has a talent that has been wasted on terrors from before.
"Well, I think it's from our night before the Quarter Quell. I can only know what you looked like, really." He thinks about this, realizing that it would be impossible for me to see myself from that angle. He nods, closing the book. "That's it, no more?"
"No, there's a lot more, but I'm kind of tired. That's a lot to go through. I have a lot to think about." He puts the notebook on the nightstand and looks back at me. "Can you go please?"
I'm a little hurt by the request, but he has gotten a lot of information in the last half hour or so. I start to get up, bracing myself on the bed rail when he stands up and holds out his hand. I look at him and put mine in it and he helps me up. Once up, my belly is almost touching him and I lean in a bit. He steps back though and I know I've gone too far. "I'm sorry. I'll go now, can I come back later?"
"I think they said I could go to the cafeteria for lunch later, maybe I can sit with you then?"
I go to the door, open it and turn back, "Of course, Peeta."
