TW for this chapter: discussion of suicidal thoughts
When I wake the next morning, I see Peeta is up and looking at me, a goofy little smile on his face.
"What?" I say, giggling slightly through my sleepiness. He doesn't say anything, but just plants a kiss on my bare shoulder. As I wake up I process that we are both still entirely naked from last night. I have no problem with that, though. It's somewhat remarkable to me, actually, that after being so uncomfortable with nudity for so long, it has become my favorite state to be in when I'm with him.
Still too much in the throws of sleep to come up with much to say, I return his morning greeting by placing my lips lightly on his neck, peppering him with gentle kisses before placing a quick kiss on his nose. He beams and I laugh, and it all feels right.
For several minutes neither of us say much, but instead Peeta and I just lie next to each other, taking each other in and enjoying the peace of the morning together. I caress his cheek with my hand a bit and rub my thumb against his jaw and lips. He traces delicate patterns up my bare hip with his fingers, sometimes following the lines of scars, and other times creating a design that is entirely his own with my body as his canvas. I'm not entirely sure how long we stay like this, but I personally can't think of any better way to spend the morning.
Our calm is only broken when we hear something clattering from downstairs.
"Uh oh," Peeta says, both of us laughing a little bit. "I better get down there if Johanna or Haymitch is trying to cook, either one of them bears the risk of burning the house down." He gets up and I stretch out my arms to him, feeling too sleepy and lazy to bother moving.
"Oh, alright," he says with a chuckle, taking my hands and pulling me up onto my feet. I smile and kiss him quickly before turning to pick my clothes up off the floor, and he just laughs some more. We both dress fairly quickly before heading out of our room. I can hear Annie moving about her room, likely getting herself and Finn ready for the day.
When we get downstairs we see that Johanna and Gale are fumbling over something in the kitchen, while Haymitch stands to the side looking slightly bemused at the overflowing pot on the stove that is being utterly ignored by the pair in the kitchen.
"Umm, good morning," Peeta says. "Need some help?" He doesn't actually wait for either of them to respond, but just goes over immediately to turn down the heat of the burner and start cleaning up some of the overflowed water.
"What the hell were you even trying to make?" he asks, raising his eyebrows at Johanna.
"That is not abundantly clear," Haymitch says dryly. Johanna gives him a death glare.
"I don't know, Lover Boy, but I know it's your goddamn fault that I don't have a brain this morning," Johanna says, sounding peeved and deeply sleep deprived.
"Huh?"
"You and Brainless over there," she says, jabbing her finger at me, "need to fucking learn how to keep it down. I don't know if it escaped your horny little brains that your room shares a wall with ours, but it does. We could hear your headboard banging and your 'oh, oh, ohs!' until way too fucking late at night."
I feel my face flush with heat, absolutely burning in mortification. Johanna pulls no punches, imitating a breathy moan that I unfortunately think is a disturbingly accurate recreation of a sound I made last night, and alternating it with a lower sound that is surprisingly similar to Peeta's groans. I look to him and see that his face is bright pink, he's entirely embarrassed as well. Haymitch, on the other hand, is laughing harder than I've maybe ever seen him.
"Suddenly my couch has never looked like a better place to sleep," he gets out through his laughter. "At least I don't have to hear the kids fucking. I get enough of that at home." I whip my head around to Haymitch, anger and mortification abundant in the scowl on my face.
"No you don't!" I say, in a weak and nonsensical attempt to defend myself. "It's not like we all sleep in the same house at home!" I'm trying to appear confidently indignant, but one look at Haymitch's expression tells me he's not taking me seriously.
"No, but I do have the unfortunate experience of being your next door neighbor, and you two sleep with the goddamn window open," he says, and Johanna snorts as my face grows somehow hotter. "If I barricade myself up inside I'm alright, but sometimes I want to just drink outside on the porch with the geese at night, and I'm not allowed one fucking ounce of peace."
"Oh my God..." Peeta groans, evidently mortified.
"Yeah, sometimes it sounds like that," Haymitch quips, and he and Johanna both lose themselves laughing. I am simply frozen to my spot, wishing I could just turn into dust rather than have to face more of this embarrassment. Peeta turns to the stove and starts cooking with purpose, clearly needing something else to focus on to keep himself from combusting with mortification. I glance up to see an unreadable look on Gale's face. I can't quite place the expression, but I know he doesn't find any of this funny, and I don't think it's for the same reason I'm not laughing.
"You're not usually up this early, Haymitch," I interject, desperate to change the subject. He rolls his eyes, clearly recognizing my deflection but indulging me nonetheless.
"Yeah, Effie called here and it rings in the kitchen, so it woke me up," he says, sounding modestly annoyed. "She says there'll be trains stopping in 4 tomorrow that can take us all home, if we want."
I nod. I can't say exactly how I feel about leaving, but I think it generally feels right. While the time in the Capitol was horrible, I have still loved getting to spend time with our little hodge-podge family, and I will miss not having them around. Still, being able to go back home to 12 and fall into routine again does feel somewhat relieving. As much as I like it here in 4, being away from even a week after not leaving 12 for months has been a little bit draining. I'm glad to have been here, but I'll also be happy to be back where things are familiar.
As Peeta rids the stove of the overflowing pot and starts making pancakes, I sit down at the table, trying to put some distance between myself and Johanna and Haymitch in the hopes that the teasing will stop. Unfortunately, Johanna follows me to the table and sits down directly across from me.
"Johanna I swear to God if you make one more fucking sex noise at me I'm gonna lose it," I warn, and she laughs a little at that.
"Alright, alright," she says through her laughter. "In all seriousness, I don't care and I'm happy for you two. Just try to keep it down a little next time." I nod, desperate for this conversation to be over. It seems to be, until she adds "Although I will say that it's pretty clear you two do well for each other, so that's nice."
"Johanna!" I moan, and she cackles again. She glances around quickly, and then her expression changes when she sees no one is that close to us. She leans in before speaking again, and when she does her voice is quieter.
"Just so you know, Gale was fucking pissed last night," she says. "Honestly it made me pretty pissed at him too, because I don't know what right he thinks he has to get a say in who you fuck, and I told him that to his face. But he was fuming the whole time it was happening, not just because you two were loud. He didn't really say much that was actually coherent, he was just sort pacing the room in anger and occasionally making stupid comments. But it made me mad as hell, so I thought you should know."
I feel anger burgeoning in my chest at this. Johanna is right; Gale gets absolutely no say in whoever I do or don't sleep with, and the fact that some part of him thinks he deserves that makes me incredibly frustrated, because I thought we had started repairing our friendship a little bit over these past couple of days. If he actually thinks that he or really anyone other than myself deserves to give input on what I do with my body, then I do not want to be around him.
"That...makes me extremely upset," I say to Johanna, my words awkward as I try to parse what to say out of the storm of angry thoughts in my head. "But I'm glad you told me. I'd want to know." She nods, and we are silent for a moment before another thought occurs to me. "What did you say to him?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said you told him off, what did you say to him when you did that?" Johanna grins at this.
"Well, I think I said something along the lines of him being a misogynistic, chauvinist hypocrite, and that he's gonna find himself pretty short on girls to fuck if he thinks a good method for getting someone he wants is to judge her for who else she's been with." I laugh genuinely at that. Her ability to string together a well deserved insult is one of the many reasons I love Johanna.
"I'm sure that shut him up," I say.
"Yeah it worked pretty well," she says, and we both laugh together until Peeta brings over the pancakes and everyone gathers around the table.
Annie and Finn come down and we all eat together. It's a nice morning once we get passed the topic of Peeta and my sex life, and once I'm able to at least set aside my anger at Gale for a focus on better things. It's foggy out today, which Annie says is common during the winter months. Apparently the "marine layer" fog will burn off by the evening, and it'll be a nice night to have a bonfire out on the sand. Everyone agrees with that idea enthusiastically.
We spend the morning calmly enjoying our surroundings and each other's presence. Haymitch, Johanna, and Gale spend time inside the house, while Peeta, Annie, and I look out at the waves from the porch. Peeta and I are side by side on the porch swing, while Annie reclines in a chair with Finn nuzzled under her neck. I can see why, in addition to it being her home, 4 is the best place Annie could be. I sort of feel as if even in the moments of overwhelming panic that we all find ourselves in, sitting out here and listening to the constant ebb and flow of the tides would be somewhat grounding.
"I'm happy to have gotten to see what your life here is like, Annie," I tell her. "I'm happy things seem good, or at least, as good as they can be given the circumstances." She smiles at me.
"It's been so nice having you all here," she says. "I love it here, and I do have some close friends, like your mom, but it can still get lonely. It's been really lovely to have more people around."
"Will you be ok when everyone leaves?" Peeta asks, looking a bit concerned, but Annie's face is calm.
"Oh yes," she says, a sort of wistful, knowing look in her eyes. "I actually think things will only be getting better from here on out."
"What do you mean?" I ask, not wanting to say I disagree with her, but also not being entirely sure as to where her confidence comes from. Given the lives we've lived, I find it odd when anyone makes bets on the future that are too optimistic. It just doesn't feel possible, even after all this time.
"Finn will grow," she says simply. "And he'll develop and learn and become his own person, and I'll get to watch that all happen. I'll see parts of me, parts of Finnick, and parts that are entirely his own in everything he does. That gives me something that I can deeply look forward to. Something that's actually exciting."
Peeta and I both smile at that. Annie, in her strange way, can actually be incredibly wise. She sort of feels innate truths about the world in a way that the rest of us don't. I think it comes along both with her inherent goodness and with the amount of time she spends inside her own head. She's forced to always think, even when she'd rather turn her mind off, and because of that she's very skilled at introspection.
At around midday, I see a figure heading up the road toward us, and realize soon enough that it's my mom. She sees us out on the porch and comes over.
"Hi everyone," she says, still seeming somewhat nervous even after dinner last night.
"How are you, Mrs. Everdeen?" Peeta asks, always the polite one.
"Oh I'm just fine, Peeta," she says, smiling slightly. There's an awkward pause, and then Annie gets up from her chair, holding Finn in her arms.
"Take my seat," she says kindly. "You should have some one on one time with your daughter." Annie leaves smoothly while my mom shifts her gaze somewhat awkwardly back and forth between us and Annie before sitting down. I don't think I was particularly nervous about seeing her today before she arrived, but her discomfort makes me feel uncomfortable in turn, as if she doesn't really want to see me.
"Do you want me to give you some space?" Peeta asks me softly.
"Absolutely not," I say instantly, and he chuckles quietly before putting his arm around my shoulders. The movement rocks the swing and we move back and forth gently, and it's calming. It helps me center my focus back on the serenity of the ocean.
"It's been so nice to get to see you, Katniss," my mom starts. "I realize we haven't actually talked too much about our lives more than our work, but I saw your interviews from this past weekend on television."
I feel slightly uncomfortable about that. It makes perfect sense that she would have seen them, everything was broadcast to the whole country, but it reminds me too much of the Games, my mom finding things out about me, true or otherwise, through national media rather than conversation. As uncomfortable as it makes me, I feel like if I want to have any hope at moving forward with her and repairing our deeply fractured relationship, I have to be honest and actually tell her about things.
"I can talk about anything you want to know," I offer, somewhat apprehensively. "Just ask."
"Well..." she says, pausing. "Just, how are you doing, really? Both of you, actually. I just want to know that you're okay, that you're some degree of happy. Just what life has really been like, no matter what you had to put in front of the cameras."
I take a deep breath, not entirely sure about where to even begin in this. I was relatively honest in the interviews, there are just more personal details that I left out. Probably the thing that I brushed over the most was the topic of how bad I was doing in the first months after the war, and I don't really want to linger on that now, both because it's painful to talk about and because addressing my loneliness and depression will be impossible without at least somewhat guilting my mother. Even after all of the pain that she has caused me, I don't really want to do that.
"Well, I guess most things I said were pretty true," I start. "But I sort of didn't want to go into too much detail about it all on TV, but you can know those things." My words seem awkward and stilted, and the feeling makes me uncomfortable.
"Are you doing better than before?" she asks.
"Then the first few months? Oh absolutely," I say. "That's one thing I can say confidently. At the beginning..." I trail off, looking down at my hands. I want to be honest with her about how I was doing, because she already knows it was bad so there's really no point in hiding it. But I don't want to hurt her, and even though it doesn't matter anymore, even though she is my own mother, I'm still worried about appearing vulnerable.
"At the beginning things were really bad, Mom" I get out, my voice something of a small squeak. "I just couldn't bring myself to take care of myself. I hardly ate, I didn't shower or change clothes or touch my hair, I barely talked to anyone. I was lucky that people still wanted to help me and take care of me. Greasy Sae was a lifesaver, she cooked for me everyday and tried to make sure I ate. Haymitch was here for me as much as he could be, but he was struggling a lot too, you know what his drinking is like. I just...every little aspect of life felt so hard that it was overwhelming. I didn't know how to live without Prim. She was always both the thing that made me happy, and the reason that I kept fighting. Without her I had no happiness and no fight left in me. I sort of..."
I pause for a moment, because while obvious to me and likely obvious to those close to me, the words that are about to come out of my mouth represent something I've never actually said out loud before. My voice is even quieter than before when I speak again.
"I sort of just wanted to let myself wither away, or disappear. I didn't want to live anymore."
I feel Peeta's arm tighten around my shoulder, and his other hand takes my own into his lap. I give him a small smile, trying to reassure him that I'm okay. I am okay. I feel okay now, most of the time. I still have bad moments, frequent nightmares, and some days where the world is overwhelming. But I feel okay for the most part, and that is a victory in and of itself.
"Oh Katniss..." my mother says, looking somewhat heartbroken. "I need to tell you, I'm so sorry you were alone during that, that I couldn't be there for you. You are a strong girl Katniss, stronger than me. You always have been. I don't think I would have survived back in 12, surrounded by all those memories. I do think it was the right decision for me to come out here, but I failed you by not doing more to make sure you were managing after so much pain. I am so, so sorry."
My chest aches and I feel tears start to well in my eyes. I don't want to cry, but I can't seem to help it. For so long I've wanted to hear her say this, hear her apologize. I am still incredibly glad to hear it, but I also feel as if I owe her an apology in my own right.
"I'm sorry too, Mom," I say, sniffling as tears fall down my face. "I held it against you for so long, the way you were after Dad died, but then I did the exact same thing after Prim. I'm no stronger, I'm no better. I'm sorry for holding that grudge, and for not understanding why you needed to have some space from 12. I made it all about me in my head and it was selfish. I'm sorry." My mom wipes her eyes, which have tears falling from them as well, and shakes her head.
"No, Katniss, you have every right to have been angry with me. You and your sister needed me and I failed you. Both of you. And you are stronger than me, that much is entirely obvious." I'm about to counter but she continues talking. "I don't mean that to be self-deprecating or to make you pity me," she says. "It's just abundantly clear. After the years of hell you endured, you managed to pull yourself out of the darkness and build a life. I never was able to do that, even after a lot more time had passed. And you're so young. You should never have had to do it, but you did, and you've done so well." I sniffle and give her a small smile.
"I couldn't have managed to pull myself out if it wasn't for other people's help," I say, looking up at Peeta. "Like I said, Sae and Haymitch were massively helpful, and Peeta..." I trail off because I can't find words that come even close to describing the life-altering positive impact Peeta has had on me since the war. I think my mom can see it in my eyes, though, because she smiles.
"He helps you," she offers.
"We help each other," says Peeta, and I smile too.
"I don't think I would have found my way back to a real life, one that wasn't just despair and exhaustion, if he hadn't come back," I say. "It's not some sort of magical thing, of him coming back and fixing everything in one fell swoop. It's just...no one understands what we've been through more than each other, and it's incredibly comforting to have that presence. Having that, and having his positive outlook and encouragement and kindness, it brings me hope. It helps make the process of healing a little less terrifying."
I don't say it out loud, but I realize as I sit here that Peeta has always brought me hope, since the bread that saved my life and the dandelion in the spring. Even though the majority of our relationship was defined by circumstances of fear - starvation, the Games, his capture, the war, the lasting impacts of torture and trauma - he has always been able to bring to me a sense of hope that no one else has. I don't really know what I would do without it, without him. He seems to have somehow worked his way into my lifeblood. This terrifies me and excites me at the same time. So much of my brain tells me to run, that it's too dangerous to be this attached, and yet I feel emboldened at the same time, that after years of uncertainty and ineptitude at parsing my own emotions, at least now I know, and that knowledge gives me power.
"I'm so glad you two have each other," my mother says, bringing me back to reality. I smile at her, and we continue to catch up, sharing interesting stories from our time apart, as well as more information about her work and the rebuilding in 12. We even manage to talk about Prim. It's painful and we both end up crying again, but there's something of a rose blush to even the painful topics, because we are finding a way to work through it and heal with each other's help. For the second time while we've been here in 4, I get the feeling that Prim would be extremely happy if she could be here right now. The feeling is good because it helps me feel her here with me. I want to try to live my life in a way where I can keep this feeling with me as much as possible.
When my mom gets up to leave, I get up too, and we share the most genuine hug I can remember us having in years.
"I love you, Katniss," she whispers to me.
"I love you too," I murmur back. When we part she cups my cheek in her hand and looks at me for a moment with a small smile. Her eyes seem as if they are searching my face and are happy with what they are finding.
"Your father would be so proud of you," she says, and gives Peeta and I one more quick goodbye before turning back towards the road. I feel incredibly warm, but also tired and a little overwhelmed just by the sheer amount of emotional exertion that just happened. I sit back down on the porch swing next to Peeta and he pulls me into his arms. I adjust so that I am seated with my back leaning against his side, and his arm is around me. I lean my head back onto his shoulder and he kisses my forehead.
"I cannot begin to tell you..." he says, pausing to place another kiss. "...how proud I am of you..." he kisses me again. "How amazing you did..." another one. "...and how much I love you." I smile at him, but for some reason I find my eyes are filled with tears again. I really don't know why, because I don't feel bad, not at all. I'm genuinely happy with the way that went. I'm just so tired.
"Hey," Peeta says gently, taking his thumb and rubbing a tear away from my cheek. "It's okay."
"I'm sorry," I moan childishly through tears. "I don't know why I'm crying! I'm happy, that went really well and I'm happy. I'm just...also sad! And tired and confused. I don't understand..." Peeta moves himself so his back is against the arm of the swing, and pulls me into his chest.
"It's okay," he says, holding me tight against him. I revel at the warmth, craving the calm that I can only get from his touch. "That makes total sense, Katniss. That went well, absolutely, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a difficult thing to go through emotionally. You had to talk about so many hard things to start healing, but you did it. You did so well. It's okay to both be happy to have done well and sad about the people you miss and exhausted from the effort. All of those things can be true at once. It's okay."
I sniffle and nod and curl myself up further into him. I listen to the beat of his heart in his chest as I try to calm myself down. Eventually my sobs subside, and I rest my head back on his shoulder again, my back in complete contact with his chest.
"Thank you for being here for me, through all of this," I say softly. "I don't know how I'd do it without you."
"There's nowhere else I'd want to be," he says simply. "I help you through the hard things and you help me. It's just what we do."
I nod, but I realize that he's somewhat misunderstood. He thought I was thanking him for being with me while I talked to my mom. While I am incredibly thankful for that, and while it is true that I needed him to be able to do it, that's not all that I mean. What I mean scares me just a little too much to say out loud, but I feel it deeply in my bones. No, it's not just this conversation, just this day, or just this trip that I need him for. I couldn't get through any of it without him. I couldn't get through life without him.
My dependency on him should scare me even more than it does, I think. It goes against the way I conditioned myself to operate for so many years. But at this point the fear almost feels obsolete. What's done is done. It's simply too late now for me to not need him. That ship has sailed long ago. There was really no chance of getting it back after our first Games, but if I'm being honest with myself, we've been here since the bread. Even without the Games, this would have happened anyway.
For some reason that thought calms me, and I feel myself start to drift off to sleep, the beat of Peeta's heart strong in my ear.