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I do not own the Hunger Games.
They carry on in this pattern for several weeks: Peeta will push himself, whether it's a painting of Annie and Finnick or of Rue, whether it's weeding the primrose bushes or adding cinnamon to bread like his mother did, something will set him off, remind him of the past, and she'll find him rocking back and forth, choking on nothing, terrified and lost and altogether broken. She's stopped thinking Snow is there physically, stopped pulling out her bow and arrow every time Peeta goes quiet. And she's stopped believing that he could hurt her. The only way he can hurt her is disappearing.
Her pattern of pulling him out of them never varies: she sinks down beside him, touches his shoulder, and he pulls her quickly, desperately, underneath him. Then he will touch her face, her neck, her shoulder, her hair; something to ground himself, and they'll play real or not real until something brings him back to himself, shaking and sobbing on top of her. She knows that their enemies are getting everything they hoped for in the emptiness behind his eyes, the way he can't focus, the way he shudders on top of her afterwards, unable to breathe unless he's buried in her. Her scent seems to soothe him so one night, before he's gone to bed, she switches one of his pillows with her own. Neither of them mentions it the next day, because she's embarrassed to admit that his scent soothes her too, that she buried her face in his pillow and thought about what it felt like when he kissed her on the beach.
Finally, she gets frustrated, when she comes home one day after hunting to find a painting of a mutilated Boggs on his easel and one of President Snow himself sitting on the coffee table. She shrieks when she sees it and he raises an eyebrow at her from where he is in the kitchen, cinnamon bread on the table, milk poured, and she sees that he is frosting cupcakes the way his father used whenever his sons had birthdays. What the hell are they even going to do with cupcakes?
She slams her game bag on the table, her bow and quiver following.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demands, and he passes her a cupcake. She throws it at the wall. That gets his attention. Her screams do nothing for him, but God forbid she mess up a little frosting.
"I'm baking," he tells her, "and painting. What does it look like I'm doing?"
"It looks like you're trying to push yourself into another episode," she challenges, chin raised. He may be more talented, charismatic, an all-around better person, but she will always win in a fight, because she is meaner. She can tell she's hit the right spot by the way his jaw tightens.
"You have to stop," she tells him, walking towards him, taking the knife from his hand and throwing it into the sink. She likes throwing things when she's mad.
"I'm sick of coming home to paintings that are designed to toss you over the edge or to have you trying to haul your parents' ghosts into our house. What are you doing?"
He says nothing, waiting, biding his time. Or maybe he just can't speak because he won't lie to her. Because he wants to protect her.
"Do you think this is fun for me?" she asks, taunting. "To come home to you rocking back and forth, to have you ask me stupid questions as you sort through reality, to have you collapse on me every single time?"
"Do you think this is fun for me?" he yells, losing his temper as she describes his weakness this way. She was expecting to feel regret or shame but she feels nothing but victory over having brought him a little closer to her darkness.
"Do you think I like losing control? That I like being brought out of them by you every time? Do you think I'm enjoying this?"
"It would seem that you are," she tells him, caustically, poison in her voice, "since you are trying to make them happen, Peeta! You want them to happen and I don't know why you're so goddamn intent on torturing us, but if you could lay off for—"
"Excuse me for not wanting to live like this," he hisses, "for trying to find a breaking point so it'll stop or I'll make progress or something. Forgive me for trying to force myself to work through it so I'll know what's real and not real for next time!"
"But you don't remember!" she screams. Her cheeks are hot with her anger, her throat tight, but she can't seem to stop.
"You ask me the same things, time and time again. I don't think there is a breaking point, Peeta, there's just you, pinning me down asking me: 'Did we get married? Did I choke you? Did you light on fire?' How the hell do you think it makes me feel—"
"How do you think it makes me feel that they're all about you?" he asks, and finally, she can see, she's broken him. He is angry, eyes flashing, cheeks hot.
"Everything mixed up in my head, everything I'm confused about, is about you, Katniss. I can't remember if we got married or if you killed my parents, so forgive me for trying to sort that out!"
There's a pause, where she's not sure what to shout next, but he picks it up, anger radiating from him now, like heat.
"So, yeah, I'm pushing myself to have 'episodes' while you're still here, because we both know you're not sticking around forever."
And he's gone, not even staying long enough to see that she has a tear on her cheek, that she's already sorry, that she shouldn't have started it. She hears him banging around the living room, and she hopes he's moving the painting. She stays where she is, not turning to face him and admit she was wrong, but not moving for the liquor either, which is her usual escape route.
She wonders if he'll have an episode now, after trying to provoke one and then getting into a screaming match with her. She sinks into a chair in the kitchen, listens as she hears him stomp up the stairs and then around his bedroom for a while. She's still mad at him, but she knows she was wrong, that she's the one who should apologize. He's just trying to survive, same as she is, and he's smart enough to use her for survival while she's still here.
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