Lovely people: thank you so much for the reviews! Though I'm generally not one to ask for them or get hung up on whether people review or not, I'm always so grateful for those who take the time to tell me what they think. It honestly makes my day!
The Hunger Games belong to Suzanne Collins, not to me, though I do enjoy playing with her characters.
They live together for two weeks before he has an episode. She's to the point where she thinks they've stopped, thinks he's all better, which is insane. She felt like her sanity was coming back, but clearly not if she thought a couple good weeks could make anything about them all better. Maybe she's not insane; she's just an idiot.
It happens as the sun is rising. She's lying in bed, awake from a nightmare where she couldn't stop seeing Finnick's eyes, seeing the last look he gave her, and she wakes up choking because the scent of roses is everywhere. It takes her a long time, lying in the darkness, to believe that it doesn't smell like roses, just like her: sweat and leaves. She likes it because it grounds her, makes her think of the woods, makes her think of safety. She thinks about going downstairs to get coffee or some food, but she doesn't want to wander around in the dark, so she just lies in her bed, her hand on her ribs to be sure she's still breathing, and tries to sort through facts in her mind. Peeta screams in his sleep, and she hears him moan, a terrible sound, like something inside of him is breaking. She stays where she is, as she always does, resisting the urge to go to him. She listens to him get out of bed and head downstairs, and she waits to hear his footsteps in the kitchen, making coffee, baking something. But she waits and waits, and the sun is still rising, and she can't hear anything. That can't be right because Peeta is so loud, and suddenly she feels the same stillness she did in the first Games, when she lost track of him and she could hear nothing, no wind to shake the trees, no answer to her signal, nothing at all until the cannon boomed and she started screaming.
She races downstairs, remembering that he was close to death then, sure he is close to death now. An arrow is already notched in the string of her bow, and she is trying to be silent but she knows she's making noise. Less noise than the last time this happened, because she hasn't screamed yet, so she considers it a victory. She's creeping into the kitchen, somehow believing that Snow is here, that he's hurting Peeta again, and she will kill him, she will kill him, she will…
She lowers her bow and turns, silently, to the living room. Peeta is alone, and he's silent but shaking, curled into a ball on the floor, his back to her couch. She stares at him, then presses herself against the wall as he shakes more violently and she sees that he's silent because he's stuffed his fist in his mouth, biting down. She wants to tell him that he doesn't have to do that, that she's heard him scream hundreds of times, but she can't speak, can't move. She watches as he shudders with memories, real and not real, and she has no idea what to do.
He shakes more violently, tilting toward the floor and his hands go out to catch himself, and he's making noises she's never heard: he's choking, but moaning, and it sounds as if he wants to scream but doesn't remember how. She can barely recognize this shell of Peeta: the boy with the bread is nowhere in sight. She doesn't know why, but suddenly, she finds herself dropping her bow and going to him, though surely she is the last person he wants.
She sinks to the floor beside him, and she's scared, because she can't stop remembering how his fingers feel on her throat. She's trying to think of better things, like burned bread and kisses and how his hands feel wrapped around hers, but the feel of his fingers around her neck keeps pushing through, forcing her to face it. She touches his shoulder, and he looks at her, looks through her for a moment, before he sees she's really there. There's a moment where nothing moves, neither of them breathing, and then he's grabbed her and pushed her underneath him, resting on his forearms. He's not crushing her, but he's strong, and she suddenly realizes how stupid this was, that he was programmed to kill her, and that now she's underneath him with nowhere to go.
He reaches toward her and she closes her eyes, sure this is it, the end she's dreamed about so many times, but he doesn't choke her. He touches her cheek, so gently it feels like a dream.
"Real or not real?" he asks, his fingers on her cheek. She stares at him, sees how far away he is.
"Real," she tells him. "Real. Real. Come back to me, please come back to me, please come back to me, please…"
She's crying, and he feels her tears on his fingers, pulls away to examine them more closely. And then he's collapsed, on top of her, his face on her chest, and she thinks he's sobbing but she can't be sure.
"They told me…they made me think…"
"Not real," she tells him. "Not real."
"I watched you kill my family," he says, and now she knows he's sobbing. "I watched it."
"Not real," she tells him, and she says it over and over as he sobs. "Not real."
Finally he shudders and lies still, but he's so big, so heavy, that she squirms, until he realizes what she's doing and sits up, pulling her into his lap. She wipes the tears from his face as he looks at her, drinking her in.
"You pretended to love me. Real or not real?"
She gapes at him, because she doesn't know what to say. She can barely remember this herself, is barely regaining her grasp on sanity. She can barely sort through her memories, still has no idea how much she was pretending and how much she really felt. Real or not real? He's looking at her, expecting an answer.
"Real," she chokes out, quickly followed by, "Not real. Real. Not real. Real. Not real. Real…"
She can't decide, can't make up her mind, feels like she's pulling petals off a flower hoping for the one that will decide it for her. He loves me, loves me not, loves me, loves me not…He loves her, she knows: he does or he did or he wants to. That one she knows, that one she can figure out, but real or not real?
She's sobbing, and without meaning to, she curls into him, her head on his shoulders, her legs around his waist, and he's soothing her. She doesn't know how they switched so quickly, how this all happened so quickly, can't remember how it started. He rubs her back but doesn't say anything, because he's desperately sorting through real and not real, and she is useless to him. She's like an ally in the Games that you didn't want but have to drag along because of some long-forgotten promise that is probably meaningless anyways.