So…not a oneshot!
Courixoxo: thanks so much for your review! It made my whole day
I don't own the Hunger Games.
She lets the alcohol pull her under when she can't keep the facts straight. She's lying on the couch, trying so hard not to sleep, but she fails. She always fails when it matters. She succeeds when there can be two victors. When only one of them can be rescued, that's when she fails. When it comes to preventing his pain, preventing him from being captured and tortured, she's useless. Why the hell did she let him out of her sight? She can't remember because since the moment they separated at the Cornucopia in the first Games, she can't remember a time she truly felt separate from him…
Prim's walking towards her, and she tries to scream, to warn her that it's a trap, but nothing comes out of her throat. She's choking over her own words, words she can't get out, and Prim walks past wildflowers exactly like the wildflowers that she laid on Rue's grave. Prim is singing, about a man hanging from a tree, and Katniss wants to tell her that they can't sing that song but she can't tell her because she can't breathe. Prim's walking into the trap, and Katniss can't remember what the trap is until the fire starts, coming between them, and Prim is screaming, and Katniss is running to her but it's so hot, and then there's no fire, just charred flesh everywhere. She sorts through it, quickly, no time to stop and think or apologize, because it's all her fault, it's always her fault. She won't accept Prim is dead until someone proves it, until she finds her body, but there are no whole bodies here, just pieces. 'I don't want to be just another piece in their Games', she thinks, and where the hell is Peeta? He's the only one who knows what that means…
And then Peeta is there, and she's so relieved, because he'll protect her, that's what they do. And she wants to sink into him, but he's looking too, looking for his family, and then he looks at her, and she sees that this isn't Peeta, it is but it isn't, because he's been taken from her. This is not the real Peeta. Not real. Not real. But it's too late, because his hands are closing over her throat, and his hands are on fire, or made of fire…Girl on Fire…she can't breathe, she's choking, she might die, she might finally die…
She wakes gasping for air, choking on nothing, disorientated not because she's sleeping on the couch but because this has never been her home. The sun hasn't risen yet, so she didn't sleep for long, but she slept, and she hadn't meant to. She'd told Peeta she wouldn't. Why is she always lying to him?
She's angry, more angry than scared, because even now, she's still a piece in their Games. Her nightmares are always about the people she loves most: Prim, her mother, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, her father…They're never about people she hates. And on top of that, they're never simple flashbacks of the hell she's already been through. Instead they twist reality until she can't breathe, until everything seems worse, and it was pretty damn awful to begin with. She hates that now, so far removed, she is still a piece in their Games: they tell her when to sleep, when to drink, who to love. Or who not to love, because she can't love this hijacked shell of who Peeta was. She can't love a boy who wraps his hands around her throat in her nightmares. It would break her and she's already broken.
She listens for him now, because he must have heard her screaming. She always screams in her sleep. She can't hear him, figures he must not want to check on her, must not want to get dragged into her darkness because he's got enough darkness on his own. She wishes he would come to her, because her nightmares are so much better when he's there. She likes having him there when she wakes, the real Peeta, not the one from her nightmares. He can comfort her as no one else can, better even than Prim: his hands know where to hold her because he knows what she's been through. He's the only one who knows where it hurts. But he didn't come to her, now, as she screamed and writhed on the couch. And it doesn't matter, because she's not going back to sleep, so he doesn't need to hold her.
She sighs and pads into the kitchen, making coffee and waiting as it drips into the pot. They get supplies delivered here once a month and they had originally given all the coffee to Haymitch, since it helps with hangovers. But little by little, she had begun taking the coffee. And then Peeta had too, never telling Haymitch that they weren't taking it for hangovers, but because it helped them evade sleep, evade the monsters in their nightmares.
She hears a noise from upstairs and listens, carefully. Peeta's never quiet: he mutters in his sleep, talks too much while he's awake, scares away game when he walks. But he's not muttering in his sleep, he's screaming. She thinks about going to him, but he didn't come to her, and what would she offer him anyways? Not comfort: his nightmares are probably about her. She just makes coffee, sits at the table to sip it, listening to him scream.
Eventually it stops and she hears him coming down the stairs, so she pours him a mug. The sun hasn't risen but neither of them are going back to sleep. He stands in the entranceway of her kitchen, leaning against the wall. He's covered in sweat. He just stares at her, drinking her in. She finishes fussing over their coffees and meets his gaze. She can see, without needing words, that he dreamt she was dead and that right now he just needs to see her, alive, still breathing, not on fire, and that's what will comfort him. After what feels like an eternity, he comes to the table, takes the coffee with a nod, and they sit together in silence.
There's nothing to say now, in the dark, both of them trying not to think of their own nightmares and each other's screams. They both sip their coffee. They sip coffee and gulp liquor; that's what they do. The Boy with the Bread. The Girl on Fire.
Katniss will choose whoever she thinks she can't survive without.
She can survive without him. She can, but she wants him near. Not because she needs him (she doesn't need anyone) but because the house is so much less empty when he's here. When he's here, she knows he's not a ghost, and it comforts her. Maybe she needs comfort.
"You should move in," she tells him. He looks at her, and she sees he can't tell what she means, what, exactly, she's asking him for.
"We have huge houses, and they're empty," she explains. "There are lots of bedrooms. You could have the spare bedroom upstairs." She can't offer her mother's or Prim's, because Prim is dead and her mother might as well be.
"I have stuff," he says, abruptly. He's struggling, she can tell: he's not sure if this is real or not real. "Paints, and baking supplies, and…I have lots of stuff."
"I don't have stuff," she tells him. "Not really. I'd like…stuff here. That'd be…it'd be less empty."
He nods. He knows what it's like to have an empty house, even with all of his stuff. And so, before the sun has risen, they've moved his stuff into her house: his clothes and baking supplies, his paints and his easels. She started moving his canvases, but she saw the one with Rue and burst into tears. After that he moved them, putting all of them into the office downstairs, turning it into a studio, and she organized his things in the kitchen. By the time the sun is rising, it doesn't feel so empty anymore. She knows it is empty, save for ghosts, but it doesn't feel that way. And with her house a little less empty, she begins to feel as if maybe, maybe, she won't always be so empty.