A/N: The italicized dialogue is taken directly from Mockingjay (pp. 242–243) because it's my fanfiction and I can do whatever I want. Thanks to Elricsister for beta-ing the first few drafts of this chapter.
Peeta's presence in my life is inconsistent and forced. He comes to my house for meals now, bringing with him fresh bread and the forced liveliness of somebody so naturally charismatic that they can't help but make small talk even when every aspect of their life should be making them absolutely miserable.
Sometimes, I wonder if this is now all that we'll ever be; if this is the way we are now going to co-exist forever; if our relationship has just become this on-and-off, impersonal companionship.
What are we when the cameras are off, when the act isn't needed, when nobody else is around? What will we become without the pressure of a nation on our shoulders? Although we no longer touch or kiss or even speak, it still feels sometimes as if he is all that I have left. Without Prim's light or Gale's fire, there is only Peeta's warmth that can comfort me. But comfort me he never does, and I don't comfort him either. All we do is sit, eat, exchange in only the most surface-level conversations.
He's right next to me, but he feels even farther away than he did when I was in Thirteen and he was in the Capitol. There is no television screen separating us, no roles being played, but he is so out of my reach that he might as well be a figment of my imagination.
Sometimes, I just want to shout at him. To scream and cause a scene and make him react to me, make him see me, make him calm me like he used to. I want to pound my fists against the broadness of his chest and send things crashing off the table and onto the ground. I want to cause such a ruckus that guards come and sedate me. I want Haymitch to tell me off on being cruel and Effie to lecture me on my poor manners.
He's here. We're right next to each other. We're eating from the same loaf of bread and drinking from the same faucet. But he's not making jokes in my ear. He's not clutching my hand under the table. He's not giving me that smile, that special smile that used to make the redness start in my cheeks and burn all the way down to my chest. I want him to follow me up to my bedroom even though it's not appropriate and I want him to play with my braid while I lie on his chest. I want him to tell me he loves me, say it so sincerely that my throat closes up and my eyes look away and I can't whisper a response beyond "I know."
I want him to be the boy in my memories again but I don't have the means of restoration.
He's definitely getting better, but he's not the same. The boy I kissed on the beach is long dead and gone, beaten to death in the dungeons deep beneath the earth of the Capitol and left to decay in his quarters somewhere in the Presidential Mansion. He may gain weight and his scars may fade and his eyes may become clearer as the therapy and medications sooth his mind, but I remember things between us that he may never recall again. It's like I have parts of him in my memory that he doesn't even realize he's missing. The things you can't see on camera; the smell of sweat, blood, grime, and streamwater in the cave in our first arena. Slimy raw oysters and lukewarm freshwater with a metallic taste from the spiel, the best meal you've ever tasted, enjoyed on the moist beach in the Quell. Kissing when I was wearing lipstick and running my fingers through his hair when it was gelled, the star-crossed lovers of District Twelve and their shameless public displays of affection at Capitol parties.
Words cannot explain all these details, so mundane under ordinary circumstances but heightened and unforgettable within the vivid context of our Games and public appearances, events lived through with a beating heart and a twisting stomach, moments when I was sure I would collapse if he hadn't always been holding my hand.
And then there's all the quiet moments between us, moments with no words and no audiences. Mistakenly tranquil and weirdly domestic. Him unzipping my dress while I held the front of the garment to my chest with the iron grip of embarrassment. Us brushing our teeth side by side in the morning and scrubbing the makeup off our faces at night. Him always offering to comb my wet hair after I showered. Me caressing the stump below his knee, cautiously, both of us holding our breath, when he took his prosthetic off for the first time so that he could sleep beside me without dealing with the pain in the morning. Both of us, waking up to Effie knocking on the door in the morning, pretending not to notice the evidence of his want pressed into my ass.
I think about his comment back in Thirteen. It was in the dining hall, at what meal, I'm not quite sure. But it was the first time I'd seen him since we'd both gotten out of the hospital. He was still wearing handcuffs. Two guards escorted him to our table—my family, the Hawthornes, the Odairs, Delly, and I—and he had to ask for permission to sit. I granted it.
Peeta had made a comment towards Annie, something Finnick didn't like. "You be nice to her, Finnick. Or I might try and take her away from you." It could've been a joke, if he hadn't said it so coldly.
"Oh, Peeta," said Finnick lightly. "Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart."
"He did save your life, Peeta," Delly reminded him once Finnick and Annie had left. "More than once."
"For her." He'd given me a brief nod. "For the rebellion. Not for me. I don't owe him anything."
I shouldn't have risen to the bait, but I did. "Maybe not. But Mags is dead and you're still here. That should count for something."
"Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don't seem to, Katniss. I've got some memories I can't make sense of, and I don't think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance," he had said.
I glance over at him now, where he's sitting beside me at my kitchen island. He ignores me, pushing around the scrambled eggs on his plate absentmindedly while him and Sae make their usual small talk.
I wonder if he really couldn't make sense of our nights together, if his jumbled-up mind and mixed-up memories had somehow convinced him that we had done something more than sleep beside one another. If so, I wonder if he still thinks that now. Does he think we…?
I look away from him quickly at the thought, putting my head down and letting my loose hair fall down on the side of my face, obscuring me from view while I stare intensely at my toast and try to will the blush away from my cheeks.
If he can't even remember if we slept together—which we never did, not in that way anyway, although I doubt it didn't cross both our minds at some point—then what does he think of the nature of our relationship as a whole? Does he have false memories of our alleged toasting ceremony, our performative attempts to escape the Capitol parties for some "alone time," our baby? Surely, he must realize that it was all a ruse. But...even then, it wasn't always. We did have our fair share of honest moments. His story in the cave for example, about kindergarten and my little plaid dress, as far as I'm aware, he really did see me in that way from that point forward. And I never lied to him for a moment when we were alone. At least, not about anything that mattered. During the nights on the train and the afternoons in my bedroom, it never even crossed my mind to be anything but honest with him. And I always assumed he was just as honest with me.
Thinking about it for too long, my head starts to spin. It's so confusing, all of it, even before Prim was reaped, it was still confusing. There's so many layers to all we have experienced together. Even the bread he threw to me that first spring after my father died had a larger motive. That we are supposed to eat together now, to converse lightly about meaningless topics like town gossip and the weather, it's an almost laughable expectation, because nothing between us has ever been anything even remotely ordinary or simple.
"Excuse me," I stand up from the island, pushing my plate away from me even though I've had barely a bite of my toast, "I'm not feeling well." I basically run up the stairs, opening and closing my bedroom door with a flourish and burrowing into my comforters. I stay like this for some time, just rolled into a ball beneath my sheets, but neither he nor Sae come and check on me and in the end, I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or relieved.
A/N: This chapter is emotion-driven rather than plot-driven, so I'm sorry if you were looking forward to something more exciting. Just know that we're working with slowburn here and in order to do that, I needed to put all of Katniss's cards on the table first.
