I can't hate the ones who made me - You and Me at Six, Bite my Tongue
The hovercraft lands with an empty sigh. From one huge window to my right, District 12 is just as hollow. Barren and gray, ash heaps the span of the district and I heave deeply as well. I don't know what I was expecting—to make a life in the Capitol? Abandon all pretense, become everything everyone said I'd be?
Two peacekeepers arrive from a swinging door in front of me. My reluctance to leave must show on my face as they don't hesitate before hoisting me up by my armpits and removing me from the hovercraft. I don't fight them.
Albeit their grasp on me remains, they lead me in respectful silence. They both have removed their helmets and look forward in reverence. I try to appease them with my silence as well. Just like a blade after many dulling kills, the peacekeepers have lost their edge since the fall of the Capitol.
My heart pounds in my ribcage as we near the Seam. The town had taken the least of the attacks, and it seems as though everyone had left before the bombs came. I see no bodies here.
In the Seam, skulls litter the dust and ash, seeming to rise from the rubble as we near them. I have to hold my mouth to keep from vomiting. The peacekeeper to my right, the palest one, takes deep, shutting breaths, pulling my arm tighter as he hastens his tread.
We make it all the way from what used to be the square to the Victor's Village before I begin to protest. Although, now it seems obvious. The rest of the district is completely uninhabitable with the slag clotting the air. And that's what scares me the most—the inevitability of this all.
"No," I say, struggling against both peacekeepers. They only grip me tighter. "I can't live here. Please."
I trash violently in attempt to escape their forceful grasps. A ten foot wall of cement displays a welcome—the entrance to the Victor's Village. They have to pin me against it to steady their hold. I scream and kick, and the pale one presses a green button on a device strapped to his belt. They hold me against the sign, pressing me firmly into what awaits for my future—again, one I didn't decide for myself—until two more arrive.
The pale one must have called to them on his device. My heart sinks. Outnumbered, I stand against my nightmares.
This is the place I vowed never to go back to. The bombs turned the district blemished by ash, rotten with corpses, its only inhabitants being the ghosts of those who once called it home. The ghosts of families I knew personally, some I didn't know at all. The ghosts of my own family.
I let out a cry, trying to force myself from the wall. I know this is my fault.
My Games were the banes of these people lives.
But it was also her fault. The girl. She lit the spark that soiled the nation leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces, sopping in our own tears. She was the girl on fire—everyone knew that. But what no one could ever predict is that she let us all burn with her.
I scream, fight, abandoning all feelings of respect for these peacekeepers. That's all they are anyway. That's all they ever were and will be, Capitol or none. I flail, but one of the new ones presses my head into the cement.
The shortest one, one of the first two, pulls the guy's hand away. "We're not going to hurt the kid," he says.
Twice they shove me into the cement, three times the try to get me to enter the Victor's Village. I try to relent each time. On the third attempt, though, I seek the barrier between the residences and me but come up short. They push me further.
I believe it is a ghost when I hear the voice. We are a good distance inside, enough that if I do break free and run, the peacekeepers will be able to catch me before I make it ten feet from the entrance. I fight so violently, seeing nothing but my goal-to leave-and the images that come with being back here, that I don't even notice that we aren't alone. Someone appears from one of the houses, probably disturbed, is my first thought, by the fight and the noise. I continue to flay, despite. But then I hear his voice, hoarse now, probably from lack of his usual fluids.
My head snaps up at his voice, the most familiar I've heard in a long time. "I've got him," he says. The peacekeepers don't relinquish their hold on me though.
So Haymitch stands, palms out, negotiating. He looks much like he did the day Gale was whipped. The memory burns in my mind, as does the sight of him in front of me, as does the fact that I'm standing here at all, peacekeepers in tow. I push back into the arms holding me, further from Haymitch.
"I look bad, I know," he sniffs, though looks offended when I balk. "You've seen worse."
I curl inward, away from my addled mind. Away from those whom I have learned to fear, to hate. Haymitch had been here all this time. He left me, to live alone in the Victor's Village, his bottles and stupors being his only company. I know he wasn't forced back here. He can live wherever he pleases. He appears uncharacteristically sober, and titters a nervous glance at the house next to his, next to mine. Hers. And I understand that he didn't come here alone. He came for her. He left me in the Capitol to protect her.
It's always just Katniss.
I imagine her perched at her windowsill, watching this all, reveling in my moments of weakness.
Too close. We're too close.
I can hear the ticking of her claws against the window pane, her malevolent grin at the fear she knows swirls around my head.
But she doesn't have claws, I try, she's not a mutt.
But I remember them, her blade-like nails twisting from their beds, drawing the blood from my cheek and chin, from her own. Scratching, clawing at herself and me. Her tears mingling with the blood until it seemed as if that was what was slipping from her eyes instead.
I remember.
Bile rises in my throat. I retch on the cobblestone at the peacekeepers' feet. They abhor, releasing me quickly. I don't take it as opportunity to flee, however. I fall to my knees immediately, as their hands on me were the only things keeping me upright.
Visions of the Games, the Capitol, the train flash before my eyes, rushing toward me like a thundering rollercoaster that I have no ability to thwart. Each one passes and a new terror takes its place. I shut my eyes so tight that an assault of whetted colors squirm behind my eyelids. I wrap my arms around myself in an attempt to steady my shuddering body. The tremors are violent, causing my teeth to chatter and a tight whimper to tumble past my lips.
"Peeta," Haymitch cautions, a hand on my shoulder. He rarely says my name, and the thought startles me, causing my convulsions to tear through me and words to fly from my mouth.
The peacekeepers have left. I'm not sure when.
The only impression they leave is the chill that runs through me as the hovercraft pushes on overhead.
It's a while before I realize what I've been saying, muttering about how he left, how I'm not safe, never have been, nonsense. Muttering, shaking. I cry and Haymitch crouches down in front of me, his arms encircling me after a few minutes. This is how we stay for a long time.
Her eyes seem to penetrate my mind the entire time, never leaving where I quiver and sputter for her to see.
For a long while, I don't move from where I stand in the sitting room. For long minutes, painstaking hours, my feet stay planted in the middle ofthe room. All the while, the floors echo with footsteps never taken.
I can hear them everywhere. I still smell the scent of my father—he smelled like the bakery and spent most of his time there, too. I can hear my brothers' constant criticism, smile at the thought. I can feel the sting of my mother's gaze, of her hand. I don't miss her any less.
I return everything I touch to wherever I found it, hoping to keep their spirits alive. I try to leave the house clean, the way my mother would have liked since having guests over became a regular occurrence. And even after a couple of weeks, almost everything is still covered in a thick jacket of dust.
Now that I live here again, most of my thoughts are spent on my family. Katniss still invades my dreams, but my waking hours are filled with the love I once knew.
Nevertheless, they still trigger unbidden hallucinations. In them, skin burns and blood boils and my family always dies. And even when they're alive in my dreams I know to wake and find them dead.
I do try attempt to clear my mind of those thoughts. I decide to convert the spare room into an art studio. I spend hours standing in this room as well, though for different reasons. Better ones. I imagine painting the walls, but can't figure what. And this does ease my mind, allowing me to order many different palates from the Capitol, painting on spaces of the wall and repainting them when they don't seem to fit. Most nights, still, I leave the room with a blank, white wall.
Some days, though, days when I do paint on it, I look out of my window at the house to the right of mine. I feel her presence in the twenty-five feet separating us, a haunting feeling despite the way her residence seems to slouch in void. Oftentimes, I can see her silhouette at the window, rocking slightly in her rocking chair, idling, suffering. It's as if she never moves except for the soft intake of breath, the slight rock back and forth. I stare for long periods of time even though I may be caught. From the summer I begin to watch her, to the crispness that is the harbinger of winter, when my breath is visible against the window where I stand so close.
She never notices me. I bite my tongue bloody to keep from yelling to her; I grind my fists to keep from running over and doing the same to her skin.
Those nights, the nights when I stare for what feels like days, minutes, I transfer her likeliness from my mind onto the wall. Sometimes she's singing. Others, she's killing. Most times she's dying.