War, Terrible War - Prompts in Panem Submission
The great war of our time was not started by religion, by race, by ideologies that divided us.
It was started by something minuscule, something you can't even see. It tore the seams of our social fabric, ripping us from everything we understood and lived by. Without even showing us its face.
The great war of our time was a result of two species interacting and creating a scenario that could not be controlled. When the racoon with the foaming mouth bit the man with the flu, nobody knew what was taking place. They say the nail in the coffin was that the man could not afford the medicines. That he kept selling his kills in the Hob in hopes that he could soon afford the syrup that would wet his tongue and lower the swelling in his arm.
But no amount of meat, no quart of berries, would get him close enough to affording the pills that could have saved us all.
The man was delirious in the end, his lips bloody and his body seizing as it tried to expel the choking red liquid that filled his lungs. His wife, the healer, could do nothing but watch as he fell before her. She was the first victim of his disease. Of the virus that killed half of Panem. She was Patient Zero.
And her daughter saved us all.
Katniss.
My body bolts upwards in bed as the sound of the horde awakens me. My skin is slick with sweat and had I not been in quarantine for the past week I'd have thought I was infected. But it was just a dream.
Just a nightmare. Her thinning frame, limbs being torn and devoured.
Pulling myself from the damp sheets I creep to the window and look down at the streets that are littered with the walking dead. Friends, neighbours, kids from the square - all shining in the glow of the moon. Beyond the brick I watch as another family home was invaded and the beasts take them alive. I was safe here, I knew it, but it wasn't enough. Watching the scene before me, the dread in my gut swelled.
Katniss was out there on duty, shooting the people - no, the infected - down with her bow. And I was up here hiding out, waiting for her to come home to me.
As the scene of brutality unfolded before me, I had no choice but to turn away. I couldn't watch the Cartwright's be pulled apart no more than I could bear the thought that this war was happening all around me and I was stuck here with a cold. I was useless to do anything but watch each night as Katniss stripped down out of her hunting jacket and worn winter flannels. As she woke to nightmares of her sister falling to her mother's infected bite.
In quarantine, I could do nothing but watch as she fought the battles without me.
Weeks passed. It was a month before she finally came to the barred door of the attic and unlatched the lock. For a long time we stood there, staring at each other, before she stepped into my arms and held me as though she'd never let me go. We find each other that night. We don't dream that night. And when the horde swarmed the square and we watched as another safe room was found, Katniss crawled onto my lap and tucked her head against my chest. My strong warrior, falling apart in my arms. My strong warrior each day loading her bow and piercing another friendly face until her fingers bled and her replacement came.
We both knew that night that it was only a matter of time before our safe house was raided.
We find each other twice that night.
District 12 was barren of life. Haymitch Abernathy had moved the remaining survivors onto his land, an old house in the village, easily defendable from all angles. Katniss hated the man, but he kept us safe. Gale Hawthorne and his sister, young Posy, as well as Madge Undersee, the Mayor's daughter, and a handful of others were all within the house eating supper as Katniss walked the borders and I guarded from the porch. As I guarded her.
"Has she told you yet?" Haymitch muttered from the darkness behind me. I was used to it now, the way he almost snuck up on you.
"Told me what?" I questioned quietly, my eyes never leaving Katniss shadow as she paced the fence. She hadn't slept well last night and my anxieties were high.
"That winter is coming." Haymitch returns.
"They freeze in the winter, I hear. Is it true?" He has half of my attention now. I hear him shift behind me.
"She seems to think so. She'd know best, she watched it happen to her mother. She's seen the way they shut down."
"Then that's when we strike. We escape. We run." Out in the distance, Katniss pauses and raises her bow. I tense as she watches the darkness, ready to run to her should she need it.
"You know that we wouldn't make it five miles. The trees are crawling with them. All we can do is keep fighting. Keep living." Katniss lowers her bow as Haymitch stops talking. We both relax.
"You think we need to pretend? That we need to act like we can move on?" I reply, slightly surprised at his proposition.
"I'm saying you need to make that girl see you. I know it's not an act for you. Make her live for something. Or else you'll both fall to this war." With that, Haymitch disappears back into the house and leaves me to watch over Katniss as she continues to pace.
Haymitch is right. I would give my life for this woman, but she barely sees me. I'm an end to a means, a need fulfilled. I try to stuff the feeling of a clawing ache back down and I return my focus to keeping her alive.
"I love you." I whisper into her hair as we lay together that night. I feel her body stiffen slightly as her head shifts and I feel her eyes on me.
"No, you don't." She replies quietly. I almost have to stifle a laugh.
"I do. I don't need you to feel it for me. I just needed you to know." My fingers crawl up her arm to where they play with her loose hair that's fallen from her braid. It's a long while before she speaks again, but it's sorrowful and sad.
"We're at war. There's no time to love me."
"You're wrong." It's simple to me. "Now is the best time to love. Now is the only time we have. It doesn't matter to me that we're in a war - I've loved you for so long. That's not going to stop just because of the infected." She flinches at my mention and pulls away.
"How can you say that? How can you say it's the best time when I have to shoot my neighbours down because they'll never get better? When I have to watch my sister die and my mother start it all." She sounds accosted by my words and my stomach clenches. Sitting up, I face her head on, my knees touching hers.
"This is the best time for exactly that reason. You need love because-" Her hand collides with my cheek as she interrupts my words. I refuse to move. We need to talk about this.
"Don't tell me what I need, Peeta Mellark." She hisses.
"Fine. I need to love you. I need you to know that I love you because I'm terrified that you'll get hurt and you won't remember what it feels like to be loved. I need you to live. Katniss, you aren't responsible. You didn't do this." My hands have taken her arms and I'm close to shaking her or pulling her close. But I do neither as she stares at my hands.
"I can't risk you." She says it so quietly that I barely hear it. But it kills me inside.
"You don't need to protect me, Katniss. Let me love you. That will be enough. We will survive this war. Together." I don't move. I feel like we're on a precipice and these few words we've spoken have moved us miles forward. Or backwards.
"Together? You'll stay with me?" My arms wrap around her and press her body to mine.
"Always. Always." I repeat into her hair, my breathing heavy as I feel her crawl against me.
We make love first time that night.
The war rages on. We move, District to District. We fight. It seems unending. It's years before there's a light at the end of the tunnel. It comes in the rounding of her belly and the peace of the desolate forest we settle in. She never gives in, not once. She fights and becomes the symbol of survival.
It's been twenty-one months since we saw our last infected. We have more help now to protect ourselves in the safety of what was once District 13. More fighters, more watchers. More life.
There's a hope now, that we will see the end.
But for now, we keep fighting, we keep living. We keep loving. Because the war isn't yet over.