A/N: Oh hay, these chapters are getting kind of long. Since I'm using so much dialogue from the book in this part, it's about the same amount of Peeta thoughts, with stuff from the book for context and continuity, so maybe they won't feel as long.
Thoughts? YOU HAZ THEM, I KNOW YOU DO. Share.
Thanks as always to my beta lady Pippi Blondestockings.
The train took a long time. He was alone. He couldn't remember the last time he was alone in a room with no eyes, let alone restraints, on him.
It didn't help that he was on his way to join the Star Squad, and he was sure the reception would be less than warm. He mentally prepared himself for a variety of reactions. He expected they would take his gun, and he had no problem with that. They would probably put him under guard again, and he welcomed it. For now he was stranded in limbo, with no one to tell him what he could or couldn't do, no one to sedate him if he needed it, no one to talk to or scream at or ignore. His hands shook, his heart raced. He talked to himself. Not a compartmentalized himself, either. Just himself. Just to hear a voice. It was a long ride.
As expected he is met at the train station by Boggs and Katniss. It's clear that they weren't told he was the replacement. Boggs goes to make a call in vain to the president, and he and Katniss spend a few tense moments not looking at one another while they wait for him. She appears to be lost in thought, so it's probably more of a problem for him than her. He's wound up tight. But even though she is probably the last person in the world he wanted to be alone with, he is relieved to not be alone anymore.
Boggs returns, and he is livid. He doesn't need to explain why. They stomp in silence back to camp.
…
Jackson, Bogg's second in command, indicates he is to set up his tent in the center of camp. The whole camp buzzes with tension. He doesn't know what it was like before he got here, but he can feel every stomp and every hushed argument. Until one becomes not so hushed. It's Katniss. And she sounds furious.
"I wouldn't be shooting Peeta. He's gone. Johanna's right. It'd be just like shooting another of the Capitol's mutts."
Everything goes silent. His whole body reacts, not just his fists. Every cell in his body snaps back like a rubber band. His lips twist and scrunch up into a tight bloodless bundle. He's immobilized again. No moving, no breathing. He has no idea what the conversation is, what prompted such an outburst, but it almost doesn't matter. The words are out there. She couldn't take them back if she wanted to. And he suspects she doesn't.
So she has no qualms about shooting him. She's making sure everyone knows. That's great. Now for some reason she wants him to be humiliated as well. He remembers suddenly what happened after his very first interview with Caesar Flickerman, how angry she was. She thought that by admitting his feelings for her he had made her appear weak. Is it something like that again? Some kind of payback for a slight he can't even imagine? Or is it the one he can? That he is here?
He is tired, he is angry, he is vindicated, he is barely in control. He slowly relaxes his body and continues setting up his tent. When he's done it's time for dinner. A few people pat him on the back as they sit down. The physical contact makes him jump, but he appreciates the sentiment so he lets it go. That hasn't happened since before he was hijacked. He's used to people treating him as if he's a bomb that might go off at the slightest provocation. The meal is tense. Katniss disappears about half-way through and things lighten up a little. He sighs heavily. So it's not exactly him. It's her. Reacting to him.
Jackson "requests" that he sleep in the open in full view. He's cold and tired, and he has no intention of arguing. She sets up his guard and everyone settles in. He is finally comfortable. But his hands are still shaking. Leftover adrenaline, maybe. Or just his hands, being their new selves. Finnick comes over and sits down next to him.
"Hey Peeta."
"Oh, hey Finnick." He squeezes his hands together to keep them from flailing.
"Rope?" Finnick holds out a length of rope. He smiles, a wide, manic grin that is obviously intended to disarm him. It works, despite Peeta's best efforts to remain stoic. He reaches out and takes it. "Do you still remember how to do the knots from training?" Finnick asks.
"Some of them."
"It helps distract me. When I miss Annie, or I can't sleep."
"Thank you." Peeta says, working a basic fisherman's knot. They continue for a few moments in silence. "I'm sorry about what happened in the dining hall the other day." He says. "I didn't mean to be rude. Delly tells me I was pretty awful."
"It's okay. I understand."
"It's just that when we were...you know, in the Capitol...," he pauses. He doesn't want to be specific, it would hurt Finnick too much. "I wanted to help Annie but every time I tried to do anything, everyone had to pay for it. So when I see her with you, I feel terrible that I couldn't do what you do, protect her from things, help her deal with them. I felt so helpless. It makes me angry."
"I couldn't protect her either, Peeta!" Finnick says, making a sound that's kind of a half sigh, half sob. "It was horrible for me to be without her, knowing what they were probably doing to her." He pauses, considers saying something, then decides against it. "Let me know if you run out of knots and I'll teach you some more." He stands up and squeezes Peeta on the shoulder, turning to go back to his tent.
"Thanks, Finnick." Peeta says. Finnick turns around and smiles, nodding at him sadly.
…
Despite the therapeutic benefits of Finnick's rope, he's angry still. Furious, even. So when she comes out at midnight to take her shift on Peeta Watch, it's all he can do to keep his hands on his knots. At least they're occupied and she can't see them shaking. He'll have to remember to thank Finnick again next time he sees him. She doesn't speak. She stares at the knots in his hands for awhile, and then she avoids his gaze. For a long time. His sense of time is still kind of off kilter so he doesn't know exactly how long. He tends to forget that he has access to clocks now.
He holds out as long as he can. He needs to vent some of the venom in his system. "These last couple of years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth." He says. His anger at her is front and center, allowing Mutt Peeta full access to his mouth.
She thinks about what he said. She's not angry. Not defensive. This is new. He expected a fight. Instead she sighs sadly and says, "I never wanted to kill you. Except when I thought you were helping the Careers kill me. After that, I always thought of you as…an ally." It's so confusing, he's still angry even though her lack of reaction has deflated it somewhat. His mind is muddled, he still has the great big puzzle of her in front of him, and none of the pieces are connected. He has what he's been told, he has what he remembers. None of it is clear. All he has are labels. Empty slots.
"Ally." The world rolls around in his mouth. He tests it, to see how it feels. He adds it to his other labels. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out. The problem is, I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's made up."
There's a weighted silence. He rolls the words around again in his head to see if anything clicks. Nothing does.
"Then you should ask, Peeta. That's what Annie does." Finnick's voice shakes him out of his confusion. He hadn't noticed the others were awake, but the squad sits up as if on cue, their cover blown.
"Ask who? Who can I trust?" Katniss? Gale? He scoffs. His defenses have slammed up. No, there's no one he can trust. Not even himself.
"Well us for starters. We're your squad," says Jackson.
"You're my guards," he points out.
"That, too," she says. "But you saved a lot of lives in Thirteen. It's not the kind of thing we forget."
He thinks about how difficult it was for him to get that warning out. What it had cost him. Back when he was still sure about anything. He doesn't remember what he knew, only that he didn't doubt himself like he does now. He remembers trusting his senses, his mind. It would be a foreign feeling now. It feels like he's never been any other way, even though he knows he was.
Katniss is looking at him strangely. Her expression is almost sympathetic. Little Peeta throws him a bone. He remembers asking her what her favorite color was. Remembers knowing that they'd kill for one another but he'd had no idea what color she preferred. Green. It was green. Of course. The woods.
"Your favorite color…it's green?" He asks, hoping she'll be able to confirm. He feels a small sense of triumph over his mutt self.
"That's right. And yours is orange." She says. There's a light in her eyes now that twists something inside his chest.
But he doesn't remember. Orange. He thinks of all the orange things he knows. Pumpkins. No. Fall leaves. Maybe. Warning signs. No. He doesn't remember preferring any of those things.
"Not bright orange," she says, seeing his confusion. "But soft. Like the sunset. At least that's what you told me once."
"Oh. Thank you." He is searching for anything, anything to help him latch onto what she's telling him. He doesn't find it, but it feels...right.
A strange intensity grips her expression, almost like she's holding back an entire ocean of words. "You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces." Her voice is tight with emotion. She gets up and ends her shift, ducking into her tent before he can get in a reply. He feels for his boots inside his sleeping bag; he forgot to take them off. They are double knotted. They all sit in dumbfounded silence for awhile, then the new Peeta Watch shift starts, and there's a whole new set of questions burning a hole in his brain.
…
They come up with a game, using Finnick's trick. They call it real or not real. It's useful. He spends the rest of the morning attempting to reconstruct some kind of basic framework in his head. Jackson sets up his guards so that there's always someone he knows, someone who can answer questions about home, or the games, and when Katniss is on, all the smallest details that he knows won't shatter the fragile peace they have established. Her attitude has changed. He wonders what happened, when she disappeared during dinner that night. Something has changed her, literally overnight.
People start talking to him like he's a real person again. They still have guns, and he knows they'd use them, but he feels more at ease than he has in a long time. It's comfortable to be under guard, and people are treating him like a human being. Not a patient, not a time bomb. It's nice. There are moments when his head scrambles reflexively and he has to take breaks. He understands now why Annie puts her hands over her ears. Because one more shred of sensory input, one more tiny sound or movement or touch will push him over the edge. He's constantly skating overload. But he has to know. He needs answers as much as he needs air and food and water.
There was a fire in Twelve. No one believes it was his fault. No one blames Katniss either, which surprises him, although maybe it shouldn't. He thinks it was Snow who planted that notion. The squad defends her. But he gets the feeling that they might defend him now too. There's a loose bond between them. They're a unit. They watch out for one another, even if they fight amongst themselves. The film crew seems to be included in this fluid camaraderie. They're not soldiers, but they spend all their time together.
The next day they're preparing to shoot a promo, when he notices something about one of the camera men. One of them is different in a familiar way, something that he knows he should be able to place. Then it hits him. He's never seen him speak. Never heard him utter a sound, in fact.
"You're an Avox, aren't you?" He says, eying him curiously. "I can tell by the way you swallow." He tells them about Darius and Lavinina. His emotions spiral. He keeps seeing Lavinia's eyes cloud, her head drop to her chest, red hair plastered to her face, her heart stopped. And Darius...he can't even think about Darius if he wants to stay sane. Someone must know if those images he sees are true. "Real or not real?" He demands. No one says a word. Their expressions are blank slates. "Real or not real?" He demands again, his patience growing thin.
Boggs finally answers. Boggs had headed up his rescue team, they tell him. "Real, to the best of my knowledge...real." He says gently but firmly, a little perplexed, and still a little shocked. You're a soldier! He wants to scream. It killed him to think that he'd seen worse things in his short life than a battle-hardened commander with a high-up position in a national war.
"I thought so," he says, picking out the detail that separated that memory from so many others. "There was nothing...shiny about it." And then the vision of Darius grips him again and he wanders off, needing a drink and a place to lie down before they start shooting. It might help, but he doubts it.