Peeta
Two full weeks pass before Delly speaks to me. I'm happy when she acknowledges me again. After all, I'd seen her almost every day from the day I got home to the day she found out about Cai. Her departure from my life was jarring. I couldn't blame her though. The shock, hurt, and anger she felt the night she found out the truth must have been as intense as the pain I feel at being separated from Cai. I know Delly loves me, and she has for a long time. The saddest part of it all is that I love her too. I simply love her differently than I love Cai, and I've made an unbreakable commitment to Cai that I desperately need and want to keep. Casually socializing with Delly minus the pressure of setting a date for a wedding slowly becomes a possibility for both of us, but our arrangement isn't free of uncomfortable moments.
The weight of Delly's eyes falls heavily on me from across sofa. She is waiting for something.
"So?" she asks again. "Are you going to tell me?"
How do you explain falling in love? I'm not even sure why Delly wants to know any more about Cai than she already does, but I suppose I owe her some kind of explanation.
"Cai rescued me after the crash, and we got closer as time went on," I begin. "I don't know how to make anybody understand."
"How did it start? I mean, the…uh…romance part. What made you do it, Peter?" Delly examines her hands where they rest in her lap, waiting for an excuse for my behavior that could never really be good enough.
"Did she tempt you?" Delly asks, lowering her voice to a whisper, "make you want her somehow?"
I scrub my face with my hands and then rest my cheek in my palm.
Delly inches closer. She places her hand on my arm and strokes it gently with her fingers, an affectionate gesture we've both learned is "safe" in our new unusual relationship, which subsists somewhere between friendship and romance.
"I missed you so much," she says. "I miss you so much." Her eyes start to glisten as tears filled them.
"I missed you too," I admit quietly, recalling nights sitting in cockpits when I'd retrieve Delly's picture from the pocket of my uniform and fall asleep to memories of her lovely face, longing for home and her arms.
"You have to tell me what happened, Peter. I need to understand." She pleads.
Answering seems pointless, and Delly leans closer. She links her arm with mine just like we used to do before…before everything that's happened.
"You know what I think?" Delly says. "I think you were very lonely. Maybe you were scared too. It'd be hard to admit that, I'm sure."
An awkward silence follows as I consider her theory and wonder where she is going with this.
"You wanted to feel better, and this woman…Cai…was there for you when I couldn't be." There is no anger, no animosity in her eyes as she continues, "and then things progressed because we're all human, Peter. I can see how that could happen."
I slowly let out a breath.
"That must have been part of it in the beginning, Delly. Loneliness can be very powerful. Cai was lonely too," I admit. "But…"
Delly doesn't wait for me to give her my take on the matter.
"My mother says I need to forgive you," she interupts. "She says you still love me. Is she right?" Delly's eyebrows lift hopefully.
I do love Delly, but I'm not sure how I love her. It isn't the same kind of love as my love for Cai. The blessing of Delly's impatient interruption is suddenly apparent to me. She doesn't want to understand my feelings for Cai. Recounting them might actually hurt Delly more. What Delly really wants is for me to forget them.
"I think my mother's right," Delly says softly. "You were in a terrible place, facing terrible things…and if you let me, I can make all that go away…right now, Peter."
She leans in closer still, the subtle smell of her perfume wafting through the space between us. Her body presses against mine, which seems to startle her as well as me, but she settles into the contact anyway. Her eyes flutter closed. She breathes out and turns her head just a bit. Old habits die hard. We were both younger and more naïve, but this was sort of the same as it always was. I feel my shoulders relax, my body light as my lips touch hers. She tries to deepen the kiss by angling her head. The brief respite from heartbreak seems tempting but also terrifying.
I loosen my hands from Delly's and pull back from the kiss.
Delly's lips press together firmly as she withdrawals from me, her pain at my rejection palpable.
I'm wracked with guilt…guilt for what I've done to Delly and guilt for failing to try to find my wife in all the time I've been home.
"We just can't be together like this anymore," I tell Delly, all the compassion I have for her evident in my voice. "I'm married to somebody else, and I can't do this."
Even through her tears Delly manages to roll her eyes, but I ignore that. Her lack of understanding doesn't make my marriage any less real.
"But you are wonderful, Delly. You are going to find someone who deserves all the dedication that I've wrongly let you heap on me these past few months."
She wipes the corner of each of her eyes gently with her fingers, perhaps trying not to smudge the eye make-up I don't remember her wearing before the war.
"I hope we can be friends, but I know that being friends might not be easy," I continue.
"I've known you my whole life," she whispers. "I don't want to lose you again, but I'm afraid I'm too much in love with you to be your friend."
Rubbing her shoulder gently I tell her I'd like to try, and she agrees.
/
Cai
"Anything?" I ask Ping, the landlord's servant, hoping for some good news.
"A little food. No news that would help us," he answers.
"We can move on then," I tell him.
"Cai! Walking through the countryside is more and more dangerous. Don't you understand that?"
"Then I will walk through the countryside by myself!"
Ping sighs. He doesn't want us to be separated. We are the only two who we know survived the raid on our landlord's property, a horrible time that's etched in my mind forever…
Many of the soldiers who were holding us outside our home went with Peeta when he was marched away, but more soldiers brought our neighbors to stand beside us where they held them at gunpoint also. Gradually, we began to outnumber our captors. As the sun set several of the men glanced at each other knowingly, and I became suspicious that they might try to escape. Had they known how cruelly those who were caught could be treated they might have decided to stay still, but at the time an attempt to escape seemed like a reasonable option even to me. When one of the men shouted in Chinese to run I grabbed Min's hand and headed for the woods, but her hand slipped from mine moments later. I turned to look for her and harshly called her name. Then I felt a tug on my ankle and fell to the ground with a thud. A hand quickly covered my mouth, ending my calls for my sister.
"Stop. Don't draw attention to yourself. They'll find us," Ping cautioned. He held the gun in his other hand.
I tried to raise my head to look for my sister, but Ping pushed me further down and encouraged me to peek through the underbrush instead.
"Where is…" I tried to say despite his hand over my mouth. Ping only held me tighter, keeping me from making a sound. For a long time I hated him for causing me to lose sight of Min, but in time I understood that he was only trying to prevent us from being discovered by the soldiers.
He explained later, "they would have killed you both! This way we gave her a chance and we gave ourselves a chance."
The sounds of soldiers shouting, gunshots and screaming echoed in our ears for what seemed liked hours. I could never be sure if I heard Min in the chaos. The violent interrogation of our landlord followed. Ping and I heard more attempts to escape, but by then we couldn't see who was left to try to run away. Exhausted I laid my cheek against the dirt. Ping no longer had to hold me down. I knew making my location known would only hurt me and anyone I loved. In the morning the soldiers marched those they hadn't killed away. They hadn't bothered to dispose of the bodies, so we could see the remains of our friends and neighbors strewn everywhere when we ventured out of our hiding place hours later. Min and my mother were not among the bodies, nor was Ping's wife who he'd married only a few months before the raid.
Ping and I searched for more survivors for half a day, against Ping's better judgment. When he proposed leaving I laid down on the ground and sobbed. Ping sat down beside me, his hands across his bent knees. While he understood my grief, he didn't understand what he perceived as my stubbornness. None-the-less the following day I convinced Ping that we could try to track the soldiers and stay far enough away to remain undetected. He had doubts, calling the plan suicide, but he followed me down the path the soldiers had taken.
We took the gun, dug up the gold rings that belonged to Peeta's friends, and scavenged the landlord's house for anything of value. The we set out with the foolish plan of buying back our loved ones.
"We've lost them. We lost them long ago," Ping announced many hours later after the trail had gone cold.
"No. No," I told him. "We have to keep looking."
I scanned the woods for evidence that humans had traveled through the area, gradually concluding that there was none.
When Ping suggested a route to the nearest city I protested.
"No! We're going where Peeta told me I should go if we were ever separated!"
"Where is that?"
I pulled out the map, a treasured item I'd kept with my clothing in the house. Apparently the Japanese soldiers had not found it very interesting. Ping looked at the map and shook his head.
"This place is too far, Cai. Too far and too dangerous. We need to stay away from the Japanese. We should move inland. I should probably join the army. Now I understand the fight even more."
"You do as you please. This is where I'm going," I told him, snatching the map from his hand and walking away.
"Do you even know how to read that map?" He shouted after me.
I stopped.
"Do you?" I countered.
He sighed.
"Between the two of us I think we can figure it out, but we are less likely to stay alive if we go that way."
"Death has come to our doorstep, and we've survived."
So we went the way Peeta had suggested. I believed that Peeta wouldn't lead me to a place that was among the least safe, but I also understood Ping's hesitation.
The soldiers had taken all the food they could find during the raid, but Ping and I knew about hidden and buried food, and we took as much of that as we could carry.
We both know how to ration, but walking makes us very hungry. When we reached this first city on our route Ping naturally wanted to stay and try our luck here rather than risk traveling again.
"Maybe we can find someone who has information about our families," he explained. That hasn't proven true. We sleeping under a set of wooden stairs in an alleyway, hoping we'll be left alone. The alley is very dark, dirty, and narrow making it an undesirable location even for the desperate.
Tonight the rain is trickling down on me from the stairs above as I restlessly sleep underneath a discarded rice bag. Ping sleeps nearby, more peacefully. My third attempt to sleep is the least successful, and I wake up screaming with Ping on his knees beside me attempting to calm me down. Too much disruption of the peace might cause us to be chased off from our sleeping place, and we both know it. His hands rest on my shoulders, and his face is near mine as he explains that we are safe. He is the only person I know in this city, and I don't wish to meet anyone else. I only wish to find my family.
I settle down and Ping sleeps beside me this time. As he nods off his soft, regular breaths remind me of the pleasure of sleeping beside my husband. I miss him…so much. I feel my eyes growing wet. Is he dead? I know they probably killed him already. Thinking about it brings a new onslaught of tears. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force the bad thoughts away. I can't afford to think like that.
Ping turns over, which is difficult given the narrowness of the alley and the lack of light.
His hand grazes my chest, which I at first believe to be an accident. Soon I know better though. His breathing changes and his hands wander a bit more boldly. The reactions are simultaneously familiar and foreign…different yet the same.
I shake my head but then realize that he can't see me. We can only feel one another.
"No," I whisper.
"Even out of sadness," he answers after a brief pause. "It would give us comfort."
"No."
His head rests against my chest now, and I realize how much he must be suffering too. Still, I'm offended by his assumption that what he's doing is acceptable.
"I can do it well. I was married too," he offers. "It'll help us sleep."
My eyes close as flashes of being with Peeta seize me. I bury my face against the top of Ping's head.
"No," I tell him firmly, my voice full of pain.
"She was a good wife," he says mournfully. "I was worried about the match, but she was everything…everything."
He's given up on his wife, and I wonder if I've given up on Peeta. If I had why would I be trying so hard to find the places on the map.
Finally Ping and I do fall asleep, innocently huddled together, wishing we were with someone else but glad that we aren't alone.
The next day we sell a piece of fabric from the landlord's house, buy some supplies, and make our way out of the city.
/
Peeta
My mother's birthday marks the first post-war family gathering that includes my brother Michael. Armed with the knowledge that I have a wife in China he's more badly-behaved than usual. At first his questions aren't very intrusive, but then he crosses a line.
"So what's she like?" Michael asks me.
I don't really want to tell Michael about Cai, but the fact that he's asking about her makes me feel obligated.
"She's smart. Very practical. She was always taking good care of everybody, and I wanted to do the same for her," I told him.
"And she's pretty?" he asks. "For a Chinese girl?"
"She's pretty for any kind of girl," I answer, narrowing my eyes at him. What's he trying to say about Chinese girls?
"And she's good?" he asks me.
"Good?" I frown. I don't understand the question.
"You know. That kind of good," he goes on, thrusting his hips forward suggestively.
I recoil angrily.
"I've never asked you anything like that about Rose," I tell him, becoming more indignant by the second.
"What do you want to know?" He lifts an eyebrow.
I stare at him, dumbfounded.
"You deserve better than a fling with a girl in a foreign country, Peter," He goes on. "Look at Delly. Anybody would want Delly."
"Stop it!"
"I'm just saying…"
"Stop saying…" I begin, realizing I don't want Michael talking about Delly anymore than I want to tell him about Cai.
"Pete, I'm thinking that this girl was your first, right?"
"Michael…" He's definitely into territory that is absolutely none of his business now.
"You don't have to marry the first one, Pete. It's okay. She'll be alright. You should have just kept all this to yourself. You think I'm going to tell Rose everything that happened in France?"
I stop, bewildered by his comment. Surely he means the fighting. Or does he? On second thought, I don't want to know. It has nothing to do with Cai or me.
"I was very happy with Cai," I stammer.
"Of course you were. You don't know anything different, and she made you feel good. Didn't she? Plenty of women can do that. Plenty of women right here, and you'd have much more in common with them. She's not 'special' if that's what you are thinking."
Heat rushes to my face, and I don't know how much longer I can stand still. My fists tighten.
"Cai's my wife. Would you want me to say that about Rose? To say that you could have what you have with her with plenty of women?"
He shrugs.
"It's probably true even for Rose and me," he answers. "I know more than you about this, Pete. Marriage isn't what you think."
"I'm married!"
"For what? A few months? Then you got separated from this girl and put in a prison where you pined for her even though your life with her was awful. Poor girl. She's probably dead, Pete. Even if she's not you'll never see her again. Dad's too kind to tell you these things. He doesn't want to see your reaction, but I'm not afraid of that. I think telling you the truth is kinder. She's gone. She taught you about women and about yourself, and that's something you'll have for the rest of your life. Those memories. Take what she taught you and go love Delly."
His stern expression softens a little when I take a step back, my heel hitting the first step on the stairs.
"Or whoever you want," he adds. "It doesn't have to be Delly just because that's what Mom and Dad want."
I turn to walk up the stairs.
"Hey, wait a minute…" Michael says, reaching for my arm.
I stop to glare at him.
"Don't touch me! And don't ever talk about Cai again. Ever!"
"Peter, she's a native girl. She probably had this thing for you because you were from far away and different. Isn't that one reason you liked her? Her dark hair and eyes. Her skin. The way she was shaped differently than most of the girls you were used to seeing. Am I right? With the French girls it was their accents and the way they moved. They acted different than most American girls."
I shake my head. "Cai is just Cai to me. I never thought of her as 'different' like that."
Michael chuckles. "Of course you did. Don't lie to me."
"I just fell for her. Like you would any girl," I continue, knowing he probably won't believe me. "She is beautiful, but not because she's 'different.'"
"Well, you've been falling for Delly for years. Don't forget that."
Michael lets go of my arm as I begin to walk up the stairs, not able to stay in his presence a second longer without yelling or cursing at him, neither of which would help the situation.
"What's going on?" I hear my Dad ask.
"Nothing. Peter's just going upstairs," my brother answers.