Warning: suicidal ideation, brief mention of disordered eating.
A/N: Thanks to Elricsister for beta-ing and my friend for their unwavering support :)
District Twelve is so small now, so much more vast and lonely than it ever was before. Out of the eight hundred that survived the bombing, only two hundred or so returned home, and we are spread sporadically throughout what used to be such a close-knit district. Sometimes, I walk for hours through the remains of empty streets, no destination in mind, no errands to be run, and I am just overwhelmed by the feeling of loneliness that seems to accompany every previously familiar turn, every once busy road.
Again and again, I find myself walking aimlessly only to end up standing in the ashes of my old house, and sometimes I sit in the soot, wishing myself into a fantasy where I am resting in front of the fireplace with my sister, and my father will soon be home.
My own house in the Victor's Village feels so foreign now. All the rooms I did not decorate and the items I did not choose seem misplaced and confusing. Often, I feel like a stranger walking through a museum, seeing the long abandoned rooms and wondering what type of people used to dwell there.
I begin to spend more and more time outside, leaving immediately after breakfast and not coming back until well after dinner. I don't bother to try and hunt anymore. Most days, I don't even let myself eat. I just lie in the grass between the meadow and the mouth of the woods, letting my body sink into the earth beneath me, drifting in and out of consciousness under the heat of the sun.
Over the course of a few weeks, the exposed skin on my hands, face, and neck return to a deep olive I haven't seen on myself since immediately after my second Games. My cheeks become sunken and hollow, my stomach concave, and my knees knobby. My hair matted, my clothes dirty, my lips dry and cracking, and my breath rank. I look more Seam than I have in almost two years. Physically, my prepubescent fifteen-year-old self and I are nearly one in the same. But if she could have seen me then, denying myself nutrients with virtually all the world's privileges at my fingertips, she would be disgusted.
Sun tired and half-dazed, I am only sure of my existence in the moments when I let myself completely become one with the woods. Sink my nails into the soft earth and dig the heels of my boots into the meadow's grass. Take a deep breath in through my nose and exhale out my mouth. Close my eyes and tilt my face towards the sun. Make believe that this is my final resting place. Tell myself that there will be no walk home later tonight, no breakfast with Peeta and Sae in the morning. It's a comforting thought and I dwell on it almost daily. Everyday, it makes it harder and harder for me to force myself to go home when the sun goes down.
My walks home have become a race with the setting sun. On the sole occasion that I lost, I find myself stumbling blindly through town, relying on muscle memory until the soft glow of the Victor's Village becomes visible in the distance.
I am exhausted by the time I got to the gate, and am ready to go to sleep in my hunting jacket and jeans—a situation which is becoming far too common—when I hear his voice coming from behind me.
"You're getting home late." I turn to see Peeta sitting on the steps of his porch in pajamas, his eyes bloodshot and his tiredness visible in the dark shadows on his face.
"Why are you up?" I ask, deflecting his question.
He shrugs nonchalantly. "Couldn't sleep."
"Nightmares?"
"What else?" He slumps against his steps, the bottom of his shirt riding up with the movement to reveal the impossibly white skin of his lower abdomen. I avert my eyes.
"You should go inside," I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
"I could say the same to you."
I sigh, far too tired to deal with him when he's being difficult. "Fine, sit on your front steps all night like a weirdo, see if I care." I'm getting agitated over nothing, but it's late and I'm drained and I'm beyond exasperated with constantly doing this dance with him.
Wanting nothing more than to go upstairs and cry myself to sleep, I shove my key into the lock of the front door. As if to spite me, the damned piece of useless metal won't turn. Growing quickly aggravated, I begin to shake the doorknob angrily to no avail. I'm about five seconds away from starting to kick at the wood with my boots when Peeta comes up beside me.
"Need some help, Katniss?" He asks. There's the smallest hint of amusement on his face and it piques me. How dare he ignore me all these past weeks, demote me to a role of forced acquaintance, and then return to my side exhibiting the same levity he always used to when I had gotten myself worked up for no reason.
"I'm fine, thank you," I say through gritted teeth, and, much to my indignation, he chuckles lightly at my vexation, placing his hand over mine to stop me from ripping the knob off my front door. What should just be gentle physical contact startles me and I jerk back as if I've been electrocuted.
He puts his hands up as if to say "whoa there, calm down," and then gets to work on trying to open the door himself.
This goes on for a few minutes before I see that his luck isn't any better than mine, and then it's my turn to laugh at his expense.
"Need some help, Peeta?" I tease.
He laughs and I display a rare smile.
"Do you have a key to the back door?"
I shake my head and he lets out a frustrated sigh. I don't think the back door's ever even been opened. If a key for it does exist, I wouldn't know where to find it. Gnawing on an already-too-short nail, I rack my brain for other points of entry.
"I could crawl through the kitchen window," I suggest.
"I guess." Peeta runs his hands through his hair, pulling at the roots, and I'm worried for a moment that he might rip some of it out.
"Come on," I say, wanting to distract him. Hesitantly, I take his hand in mine, leading the way to the back of the house where I always leave a kitchen window cracked open for Buttercup.
The window isn't up that high, but the ground floor of the house is still a little tall and I'm more than a little short. Buttercup has no problem jumping in and out as he pleases though, so how hard can it really be?
Peeta offers to hoist me up but I reject him. I'm at chest-level with the window and I should be strong enough to pull myself up with my arms. Or, at least, I was strong enough months ago before a second Games, a myriad of injuries, a few weeks of self-starvation, and a month of inactivity took a toll on my body.
With all the strength my attenuated frame can muster, I try to pull myself up onto the windowsill, but the angle is awkward and I can't find a way to get my entire body up there.
"Let me try," Peeta says.
"I don't need you to lift me," I insist stubbornly.
"I mean, let me try climbing in."
"You're joking," I say.
"Why would I be joking? I'm like seven inches taller than you."
You also have about half as many legs as I do, I think, but I bite my tongue. Seemingly satisfied with my lack of verbal resistance, Peeta throws himself at my window with a determination that only a former high school athlete can possess and eats shit almost immediately, the windowsill slipping right out from his grasp and his leg giving out as he falls to the dirt with a thump.
Startled, I burst out laughing. It's an unattractive, sharp cackle, a noise I wasn't previously aware I was still capable of making, something pre-war, pre-Games, maybe even pre-Gale. A noise associated with childhood and my father, one that would mix with Prim's high-pitched giggle. It's the type of laugh that comes with a feeling, a pain in the chest from the rapid expanding and contracting of the lungs, but a pain completely bearable and maybe even yearned for because of its corresponded glee. Peeta seems alarmed, disturbed even by my spontaneous elation, and the look of worry on his face only makes me laugh harder, laugh until we hear Haymitch slamming open a front-facing window and yelling at me to "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and then Peeta's laughing too.
Our manic chortling goes on for some time before we are able to sit completely still beside one another in the grass, catching our breath, without glancing at one another and immediately breaking back out into hysterics. We have no doubt interrupted Haymitch's already fitful sleep, but he hasn't yelled from his window or made himself known otherwise since, so we are left alone in the quiet of the night when the moment of perceived hilarity passes.
It's a miracle to me that Peeta was even able to survive such a startle as the one he no doubt experienced when he fell and I burst out laughing without having a flashback. The Peeta I left behind in the Capitol would've been pulling his hair out and sinking his own teeth into his flesh to ward away a breakdown just from the fall alone.
I look at him curiously now, unsure what I'm looking for in his blue eyes but definitely looking for something, and he must be uncomfortable under my evaluating gaze, because he draws my attention back to the dilemma of how to get into my locked house. I look away, embarrassed that he caught me looking me at him again. I really need to work on not staring.
"So…" he says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand and looking at me with a sheepish, boyish expression. "What's our next move?"
Our next move. I gnaw on my bottom lip, a blush starting in my cheeks as I admit defeat with my next words. "I guess you could give me a boost."
"Oh," he says playfully, "so you wouldn't let me help lift you before, but now that you've gotten to laugh at me falling, you'll let me give you a hand? How generous, Katniss."
"Sorry," I apologize in a meek voice and his teasing expression softens.
"It's alright," he says sincerely. "It's not like you told me to throw myself at your kitchen window."
I open my mouth to protest but he stands before I can begin, offering a hand. I accept it, pulling myself up on his weight.
After brainstorming a few different ways that Peeta could get me to the window—most of which I veto because they involve me using him as a human step ladder—we come up with the type of solution which only two sleep-deprived teenagers could manage.
Taking a slight running start, I jump up as far as I can onto the windowsill and he grabs me by the waist, pushing me up until my upper half is on the counter in my kitchen and I'm able to flip onto my back and push the window the rest of the way up, bringing in my legs and rolling awkwardly onto the linoleum floor; only landing somewhat on my feet. This is not a graceful experience by any means, nor is it particularly touching or intimate, but it's more teamwork than we've exhibited together in a while.
Reaching my head out the now wide-open window to thank him profusely and bid him farewell, he puts his hand up for a high five and I surprise even myself by going in for a hug instead. It's an awkward hug, one that would have Haymitch lecturing me back on the train about under-performing had we been on-camera at that moment, and the window ledge between us is no help. It takes him a moment to return my tight embrace, and he's unsure at first before we give into one another completely. It's nice, really nice, an all-encompassing warmth that I never knew to be grateful for until it was taken away from me.
And later, when I'm lying in bed and finally falling asleep, I can still feel that warmth all around me.
A/N: Sorry this chapter took so fucking long. I rewrote it—no joke—about seven times over several months before I was satisfied with it. To quote Sylvia Plath, "the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt," and holy shit, am I filled to the brim with it.
Fortunately for all of us, the chapter proceeding this one has been finalized since August and so I won't be posting this one and then disappearing for almost four(?) months again. I'll still make you guys wait like a week though, just to build anticipation ;)
Also, if anyone's interested, I headcanon Katniss as 5'0" (154.4 cm) and Peeta as around 5'7" (170.9 cm).
