Katniss is awake. She's with Prim now, holding her so tightly that I don't think the little girl will ever be let go. Mrs Everdeen watches from the side, every once in a while hastily wiping a tear from her cheek or shooting an inconspicuous look of disdain in my direction.
She doesn't quite trust me this time around. I couldn't blame her.
"How did you get here?" Katniss asks again, still hazy from the drugs coursing through her system. I watch from my own bed, lying down with my head resting on my arm.
"They destroyed District 12," Mrs Everdeen whispers. Katniss barely stalls, her fingers continuing to stroke her sisters tears from her cheeks.
"How did you know where to go?"
"They came and found us after Gale got us all out. He saved us." They, as in District 13.
I try to ignore the jealous way I think her mother makes Gale sound better for her. Stuffing down the idea, I focus on how I actually knew Gale to be a good person. Hadn't I promised to get Katniss home so that he could take care of her?
"Where is he?" Katniss asks quietly. Rolling over onto my back, I stifle the sigh that escapes from my chest. It was a terrible idea to stick around for this conversation but I knew that I couldn't leave her. Not now, not ever.
"He's in training. District 13 put him in the military!" Prim perks up, lifting herself up from where she's been burrowed into her sister's side. I can't stop the way my eyes keep flicking in their direction. "They've got me training in the hospital even!"
The squeal of laughter and the sound of Katniss' choking pull my wavering attention back. When I look over, she's grasping at her side and Prim is moving away to let her mother pull down her dressing. The woman 'tsks' to herself and presses a few buttons on the machine by the bedside.
"Should have told me your dose was so low," She huffs under her breath. Katniss only scoffs as her eyes begin to droop.
"Didn't want to sleep, wanted to see..." She fades out at the end, morphling pulling her under before she could finish the sentence.
When she's effectively asleep, Mrs Everdeen turns to me, trying best to hide her scowl. The same scowl that Katniss wears so often.
"If I so much as get word-" She starts but is interrupted by her daughter.
"Mum!" Prim shouts. The woman clamps her mouth shut, watching me warily before stomping from the room. The little girl looks at me sadly after her departure, sliding over to my bedside and resting a hand on my shoulder. "She doesn't mean anything by it Peeta – she's just worried. They didn't really explain on TV what happened to you in there, just kept saying it was a surprise. She doesn't know what to expect, is all."
"And what do you expect?" I mumble, watching her. She's so young. So innocent. I don't anticipate the answer I get.
"You love her too much to hurt her, no matter what they've done to you."
It's short and simple and honest. I don't know if I trust her but I want to, so badly. Prim grins at me.
"You can go sleep with her now, I'll keep mum busy until tomorrow," Her hand squeezes my shoulder, insisting that I get to my feet and join her on her bed. Hesitating at first, I find myself staggering in next to her as Prim leaves us alone.
I try not to think of the train and how good it feels to have her pressed against me again.
We're staring at each other, buck naked, in a mirror in some communal bathroom off the corridor of some hallway that we wandered down through at some point in the day.
In all honesty, we got here because being cooped up in our room, hooked up to machines that beeped and buzzed for hours, just seemed to be making us stir crazy. So we'd run. We'd pulled the power, then the wires, then pressed the buttons as we realized that the screeching sound of alarms going off wouldn't pass anytime soon. I'd pushed Katniss into the wheelchair near the door and had headed out into the hallway, speed walking with all the energy I could muster.
They'd probably let us run away on purpose. We hadn't nearly been fast enough to truly escape. But it didn't matter, not really. We'd needed to get out of there, to have a moment to ourselves. To look at each other, to look at ourselves, in a mirror.
Her ribs were too sharp. Her cheek bones were prominent. A vibrant red scar spanned six inches on the side of her abdomen and burn marks from the explosion were still pink as they flickered up from her wrist. Her arm was still slightly torn up from when the knife had removed the tracker from her. She was beautiful.
I wasn't so good. The muscle mass from the Volunteer program hadn't disappeared which made my shoulders and arms look unreal and foreign to me. My false leg, now fully embedded in the muscle of my thigh was stark grey steel against the pale skin. The thick scar near my shoulder blazed in the fluorescent light, faintly reminding me that I was still in a game somehow. I was pale, I was thin, and I looked ghastly.
But it didn't matter. Looking up from my personal assessment, I stared into the mirror and met Katniss' calm grey eyes, watching steadily as her body swayed slightly. This was her first real adventure out of that room since we'd been rescued and she was determined to keep standing.
"I missed you," I say quietly, the words echoing in the room behind us. It's the first time we've been really, truly, completely alone in a very long time. There's no cameras here, no hiding microphones to record us. I watch as she licks her lip hesitantly, biting her cheek as her eyes flicker over my reflection in the mirror. When her gaze returns to mine, she grins sheepishly and my pale skin flushes. "Come here." The words tumble from my lips, my hands seeking her out and finding purchase on her lips as I turn her until she's seated on the counter, my legs pressed in between hers.
She gasps. I groan.
My lips find her in a rush, crashing down upon hers as my tongue escapes into her mouth. She tastes like medicine and iron but it doesn't matter because the feel of her under my fingertips as they run along her thigh makes me grow hard in a heartbeat.
"Careful," She hisses, lifting her leg up until it hooks around my waist. I pull back slightly at her words, my hands coming to cup her jaw as I look into her foggy eyes, gauging her pain and her pleasure and truly seeing if this is something she wants and not just a whim because we're both naked and alone.
I stare for too long. I get lost in her eyes. Her hand coming up to brush against my cheek startles me as I realize her fingers leave damp. I wasn't expecting to cry. The sad smile she gives me and the unshed tears in her own eyes brings me back to reality, my body pressing into hers as our lips meet in a quiet kiss.
"I love you too much," I whisper under my breath, almost too low to be audible.
It's so fucking true. I'd kill if it meant to save her. I'd die if it meant she lived. I was so far gone it was unreal.
"Show me," Her words surprise me, pulling me out of my reflection and into a lust filled haze as we push into each other and grasp. My hands cup her breasts, squeezing as she lets out a sigh, shifting her hips until I feel her wet center brush against my length. It's my turn to bite my lip as her breath tickles my ear and her hand wraps around my length, pulling and teasing with every stroke. When it gets to be almost too much, I move my hips away from her reach and pull a nipple into my mouth, biting lightly as my fingers trace her abdominal scar. The grunt of pain she lets out has me stumbling backwards, giving us some space to breathe.
"I don't want to hurt you," I mutter, my hands in my hair and pulling tightly.
"You won't," The words are so certain, so calm, that I nearly moan as she reaches out towards me. "Come back."
I don't hesitate. I'll give her everything.
When we touch, her skin burns and her kisses turn frantic. Wrapping her legs around me again her fingers graze my stomach, running through the hair at my navel and sliding down until she's gripping me firmly in her hand and brushing my length against her core. I step closer, slipping myself inside and feeling her skin stretch to accommodate me. She's on fire and I'm burning with her.
We move together slowly, my body stroking her inside and out.
"Ugh, Peeta, I love this," She groans into my ear and I feel her hand playing at where we join, her fingers rubbing against herself in a bold move. I take the opportunity to lean back and watch us move together before my hand cups hers and replaces her motions. My lips on her mouth silence her words, forcing her breath into my lungs.
I pick up speed, feeling her body clench around mine as we near the tell-tale cliff that we'll both jump off too soon.
"Kat-" Her nails are biting the skin of my shoulder.
"Fuck me, just... Dammit," She gasps as her face tightens and she squeezes her eyes shut, her mouth falling open slightly. I'm almost frantic at her now, pushing myself into her deeper as I feel her walls pull at my length. Her brutal words and the look on her face of pure ecstasy nearly throw me over the edge. I grip her hips in my hands, thrusting into her as her moans spark higher. "Peeta, I'm gunna... Again..."
I feel it then, the rush and the shaking of her legs as her body seizes me in a tight grip. The hands on my shoulder pull me close as I feel her muscles surrounding me, milking my length.
Pull out.
I can't say a thing as I pull myself away, my hand gripping me tightly as my release spurts across the floor.
The voice in my head sets me on edge as I try to breathe, noticing that I didn't have much control of what's just happened.
Dammit, we had to be more careful than this. I had to be more careful.
We stand apart from each other, listening to the sounds of our laboured breathing while we both come down from our high.
"Why'd you pull away?" Katniss startles me with her question. It's direct and there's not a hint of fear or reservation in it. My returning look, the one I give her when I turn to see her, melts from my face as I take in the sight of her. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair has fallen from its braid as her heels kick off the cabinet below.
Never in a million years did I expect us to be so casual about this. Doesn't that mean something? What the hell are we even doing in this foreign place, mucking around in some bathroom like uncontrollable animals?
More importantly, what was I doing? Putting her at risk by hiding us away from everyone so she'd be alone if I... No. I can't think about it.
I don't say anything in response to her question. I just stare. She just stares in return. At least until there's a knock at the door and a man shouting about common space and locks and stupid District 12 citizens.
We hastily dress, throwing our medical robes on. Katniss pulls her hair loose from what remains of its braid as she hobbles to the chair, awkwardly carrying her body after what we've just done. A rush of guilt pools in my gut knowing that I might have hurt her even more. It's another five minutes before I pull open the door and wheel her into the hallway, mumbling about needing an emergency toilet.
The man doesn't even bother to acknowledge us.
Back in the ward, Haymitch is waiting, sitting in the chair in the corner and tapping his foot against the floor. He looks dishevelled and fraught with something that almost looks like... concern? Sadness, maybe? I help Katniss casually back into her bed, my fingers loitering on her hips for a moment too long before she laughs lightly at my touch.
Haymitch notices – the man doesn't miss a beat. His raised eyebrow results in a blush from Katniss and a shrug from me. We don't need to explain ourselves. I don't think we could, even if we had to.
"Up to no good?" He snarks. I merely choose to sit on my own bed on the other side of the room after hooking up Katniss' meds again to her IV. "Fine, don't play. Doesn't matter."
She fades quickly, falling back under the spell of the morphling drip that the doctors insist she has. I look to Haymitch then, meeting his gaze.
"What's going on?" I ask after a while, giving in to the power struggle for silence.
"We found Chaff's tracker," He whispers after a moment of strained silence. There's no way his eyes will meet mine as his hands clench on his knee. I do my best to suffocate the panic that curls inside of me.
"Where?" I can't hide the shakes in my voice.
"It's in his brain," Haymitch looks at me then, his brow furrowed as though looking for something that he can't find.
The panic doesn't ebb. My brain? Has a tracker in it? The memory unfurls before I can stop it, pushing forward so that I can even feel the pain of the device being shoved up my nose. I'd nearly forgotten the intrusion, all of it blurring together as one long suffering torture. Hell, I thought I'd even imagined it after all of the videos that I'd seen of similar tortures.
"How?"
The stare I get in response sends a chill down my spine. Instantly, I regret asking. The man before me shakes his head and kicks his heel into the ground, avoiding my gaze.
"How, Haymitch?" I ask again, desperation creeping in.
"An autopsy was performed," He croaks. In that moment I realize that the break in his voice is him gulping for air, quietly gasping in the sorrow that claims him.
Chaff, the old Victor of District 11, Haymitch's friend, has died.
I don't want to ask. Not really. Not ever. But I need to know how the Victor Volunteer died. I need to know my own fate. What happens to me with this chip in my brain and this control that I don't have any of?
"I'm sorry," I whisper quietly, trying to think of how to phrase my questions without being insensitive. The man is hurting and all I can think of is myself. Carefully, I slip from the bed and approach him, kneeling down beside his chair reluctantly.
"I know what you're thinking, kid," He grumbles, surprising me as he looks up from his hands. "He did it himself – not a real surprise, but the guy had to try real hard. Apparently talked the nurse into dosing him with too much morphling and then he hung himself off the side of the bed."
I picture it instantly, my artful brain painting the picture in my mind's eye of the man lying on the floor with his head in a noose, slowly suffocating with his own body weight, too drugged to maneuver himself free.
It made me sick to my stomach.
"Stupid man shouldn't have gone back in, but Seeder talked him into it. Got him to volunteer. Stupid," Haymitch grunts and I watch as he rubs his hand across his face, smearing his snot and tears into his unkempt beard. My hand on his knee, quietly comforting, seems to smack him out of his moment. "Don't you dare do anything so fucking stupid," He urges, trying to grab me by my collar before I react instinctively and push him backwards.
I don't know if it's me and a flashback of my mother's violent tendencies towards me, or the new 'training' that I've received since. Either way, Haymitch merely watches me, his steady gaze intensely burning into my skin.
"Still have some fight," He mumbles, getting to his feet. I watch him go, stopping to quietly squeeze Katniss' exposed foot before he disappears out the door and leaves me to sit on the floor with my head in my hands.
AN: So I'm sitting here, listening to the June bugs harass the tree outside my window and I think, sometimes when I start to write a new chapter I have to go back and re-read the last, simply because I've started writing something for one of the other two stories I'm working on. It's a pretty weird experience.
On another note, The Storm won Best Alternative POV and Long Way Out got the Best Alternative Pairing in the 2012 Pearl Awards – thank you everyone who voted and read and favourite'd and nominated and just all of you. Seriously, this has been an exhausting week both personally and in the community as I watch some of my favourite authors get sassed for their writing. Please take a moment to check out the great migration to AO3 (if you can) and support your favourite authors with a review or a PM or something to let them know that you're out there. Again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this bit (the second part will come when I get back from my canoe trip, hopefully rejuvenated and less bitter).
Oh, and folks, I am over at AO3, same name etc. If worst comes to worst, track me down there if you're so interested.
