A/N: I know this is kind of late but, Happy Thanksgiving Canada! And I know the latter part of Ch 6 was a bit of a punch in the stomach, sorry about that, and if anyone felt like swinging a pan at my head, and you know, not just any type of pan, I meant one of those heavy wrought-iron ones, the Creuset type, it's absolutely understandable I'm cool with that. All I could suggest to keep in mind is that the story ain't over yet! Happy face!
For Thanksgiving I am thankful for all the support, and a big, big, big hug to janeeyre54, jflowera, and cat813 for wonderful feedback and words of encouragement, for accompanying me in my story :)
I feel everything around me swirl, rotate, and pulsate, but I am immobile. I hear harrowing noises everywhere, but I don't see anything. Gusts of wind try and blow me away from different corners of the dark, making my ears ring, and I still can't move, my feet anchored down into deep ravines of a massive unknown.
A beam of piercing white light blinds me, and when I open my eyes, I am watching myself from a distance, limping, trying to run through the rain, gasping for air. Strands of wet hair are plastered to my face as I shake droplets of water from my eyebrows and my lashes. The soles of my shoes have worn thin, and I try to ignore the pain that is inflicted upon me as my feet graze over small rocks on the ground.
The burnt bread is warm against my chest, tucked inside my jacket, as I keep an arm secure over my torso. I'm heaving heavily, my lungs starting to sting, the rain beating down hard at me, unforgiving. I hug the bread closer, desperate to send it home with me. The happiness that lifts me at the thought of providing dinner for my family is unequivocal. And my thoughts start to dance around the kind boy standing outside the bakery door.
I hear my own echo rumble through my body.
"Endure a little more, Katniss. Everything is going to be okay."
My breath hitches in my throat as I almost slam into the front door of my parents' house, eager to duck in, my fingers splayed over the door knob. I turn it and push the door open.
Suddenly, Peeta materializes from behind the door, looking timid and somewhat unsure. He is donned in a simple white undershirt, and black shorts, and offers me a quick smile before he steps forward as I allow space to let him inside my dimly lit room. I close the door and look on as he walks towards my bed, and then he glances back at me as he takes his seat. I adjust the straps of my tank top and subconsciously tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.
I don't care about the flying rumours on this train. I don't care about Effie's dense comments that mildly embarrass me over dinner. Peeta is here again, and he will help ward off the nightmares that visit me in the night, and that is all that matters.
I crawl in bed and snuggle up next to him as he covers me in thin blanket, and I rest my head on his arm, watch as he breathes through his mouth, I feel my eyelids flutter, and the world shuts down.
I hear whispers of my name as my vision weakly resets. I am engulfed in an endless blur as I try to blink it away. My senses unite, creeping back to me as I realize I am lying down on a hard surface, being rolled over the floor.
"Katniss…"
"Katniss Everdeen…"
It's on everyone's lips. And I'm not sure if they are repeating it out of recognition, or out of alarm. I let another wave of darkness claim me down to nothing.
My mother has not stopped fussing over me since I have returned home from the hospital and now risen off my back, sitting comfortably against a giant pillow behind me. I have asked her to open the curtains of my window to let some natural light inside the room but she tells me the sunlight is too intense since the sun rays tend to bounce off the snow on the ground and reflect up, and that it 'might start a new round of headache for me'.
I sigh as she hovers over me some more, asking if I want more tea, or if the huge bandage covering my left shoulder needs refreshing. I've had about four mugs of tea by now, and getting to and from the bathroom on a wheelchair is already quite a feat.
"Mom if you keep poking at it, it might start a new round of bleeding for me." I feel the need to kick myself for being mean to her. I know she's worried about me and she just wants to help me recover, and that I should be grateful. And then my soft thoughts get replaced by the fact that I can probably do without her. And I have.
My left shoulder has been feeling very sore, as if there is a big boulder resting on it. If Peeta shot me three inches to the right, I would probably have to resort to haunting him in his sleep, pulling him into nightmares every night. It has been three days since I found myself face to face with a deranged and armed Peeta, three days that I have been bedridden, and three days of thirst for any news regarding him and his seizure. On the fourth day, I sit up and request if I could look out the window.
This morning the same policemen who arrested and dragged Peeta to the police station visited me in my home for an interview, inquiring about the events that led to the shooting in the cemetery. They inform me that he will be serving prison time for possession of an illegal firearm, and backed up by the fact that the weapon was supposed to be housed in District 13 makes the offence more serious. After subjecting the gun to a weapons analysis test, the investigative unit has verified that the firearm is registered under an Ashton Bentall. Ashton showed up at the police station first thing in the morning and came forward, before his apartment was broken into by the investigative team. In turn, Peeta's sentence is reduced to a few months. The police urged me to press charges against Peeta for shooting me in the shoulder, and I refused vehemently.
"Miss Everdeen, once Peeta Mellark grabs the next available weapon closest to him and hurts another person, you may be deemed an accessory to the crime if you don't cooperate with us. Do you understand?" the policeman asks, he has carried a chair into my bedroom and is sitting by my bedside, his partner standing behind him with hands on his hips.
"I assure you he will not commit a crime. He would not just randomly shoot innocent people," I pause to shake my head. "It's different. I'm...," I am suddenly finding it difficult to finish my sentence. "...I was his only target."
"From what we have gathered, you two are involved in a relationship," the other policeman asks, now pacing back and forth. "Any problems recently?" I fidget in my seat.
"No. Our relationship was fine, thank you," and that is all I plan to feed them about my personal life.
The policemen shoot each other a look I can not decipher.
"So he just...shot you because he felt like it?" the police man in front of me asks with furrowed brows, and whips out his notepad and starts jotting down his notes.
I take a deep breath and try to measure the amount of information I will have to reveal to them about Peeta and his flashbacks.
"He used to have issues, from more than a decade ago, chemical imbalances that were triggered somehow in his brain, in which I thought were resolved."
The policeman taking notes is looking at me like I have grown an extra head on my shoulder, while his partner has stopped walking and is now crossing his arms.
"Miss Everdeen. This man imposes danger to you. We strongly suggest you apply restraining order on him since you decline to press charges. But we can not help you without your consent."
"I don't need your help. Please get out of my house." My face is set on stone, my eyes unfocused and staring out the window.
"Katniss." I hear a small, yet stern voice coming from the doorway, and see my mother standing by the doorway slightly shaking her head at me.
And so the policemen left, followed by my mother's apologies and half-hearted offer of tea or coffee in which they politely refused.
I lay back down in my bed and ready my blanket for another nap, exhausted from talking, and if I was tuned in correctly with my body, I'm glad to declare that the throbbing of my shoulder is diminishing.
I resurface from sleep, my head feeling a little cloudy from confusion as I wake up reaching out for Peeta. I calm the heartbeats and sit up again, fluffing the pillow behind me without asking for my mother's assistance this time. I rub my eyes and yawn, the clock on the wall reading 3:30. The curtains are still mostly covering my window, only giving me a small slit of view of the sky outside, and the sunlight trying to pour completely into my room.
My mother enters the room with a tray holding a steaming bowl. She places it down on the end table and looks down on me. "You have to eat something," she tells me. I peer down on the cream of broccoli soup, inviting and rich. But I lift my chin at it.
"I don't like broccoli. I never did." My gaze flies right back at the window in front of me and my stomach is starting to growl.
"You can't afford to be picky right now Katniss. You either eat, or die of hunger, if that bullet wasn't enough to kill you!" her tone is rising and so is my anger.
This holds my attention and I am glaring at her, agape.
She whips around before I'm able to see her fully cringe and starts folding my clothes that have formed into a pile on an end table, footsteps heavy. "Damn it, Katniss."
She looks determined, ensuring that the fabric is well flattened before she lifts corners up and neatly folds them over to the opposite end. She puts my shirt away and picks up the next garment, which happens to be Peeta's old shirt. She holds it up, confused first, then her face moulds into a realization. Her eyes dart at me first before she places it on the flat surface and smooths the fabric. I have a reinvigorated desire for the cream of broccoli soup still steaming on the bedside table and I reach for the spoon.
"I don't know...I wouldn't be so sure..." she begins and pauses, and I turn my head to face her as I wait for her to finish, with the spoon still lodged in mouth. "...about Peeta. I don't think you should see him anymore."
I gulp down the soup and feel the warmth down my throat and let out a sigh of contentment.
"Mom. Since when were you interested in my love life?" I ask her. She drops a pair of pants and turns around, facing the wall, her hands finding her hips.
"He's no good for you Katniss," she insists, as if she knew, talking to the air in front of her. "You could have died-"
"Since when were you interested in anything about me?!" My face sours behind her back and I abandon the spoon into the bowl of soup in irritation.
She is ignoring what I'm trying to say and makes sure she gets her point across "...And I am not losing the only daughter I have left." She stops abruptly and subconsciously straightens her dress, and takes a deep breath to calm herself down. She doesn't bother to look at me as she takes a step forward and leaves the room.
I don't twitch a muscle, and let my chest rise and fall at each breath, simmering in the silence caused by my mother's sudden lack of presence. I blink and wait if a tear is forming in my eye, and conclude that there is none. I refocus on the bowl of soup, now exuding just a little bit of steam, and hold it underneath my chin, and all I am thinking now is how to make it myself as I eat another spoonful.
I assume the sun is setting as I try to gauge the light coming through the slit in between the curtains over my window. I fidget and groan out of boredom, my feet finding the floor as I finally, and slowly, stand up. I stretch happily, and tread towards the window quietly. Just as I reach for the window ledge, I hear my mother march back into my bedroom.
"Your legs holding you up alright?" she asks me casually. She has a basket of clean laundry in her arms and she puts it down on the floor.
"The last time I checked, I wasn't injured there, so I guess I'm alright." I glance back at her and give her a small smile. She gives it back to me.
"Mom, what do you miss most about dad?" I ask her as I start to circle the room to keep my body moving, a reward after being idle for days.
Her smile turns sad but she doesn't need to think twice about her response.
"Your father...," she clears her throat, "...he used to come home and bring me flowers from the market place on Sundays. It was never for special events or holidays. It was one of the ways your father showed me he loved me. Peach carnations," she says. I start to walk back to my bed and sit down. She prepares my medication and hands me a glass of water. She is good with monitoring time for my pills. "And he had quite a zest for life."
She now positions herself over my wound and opens the bandage carefully. I keep my eyes off of my shoulder and watch Pebbles sneak into my room and sit by the door, looking up at my mother. She proceeds to clean and then cover my wound again, applying new bandage.
She leaves my side and busies herself again with anything she could find scattered on the floor, picking them up and putting them away. She watches as Pebbles stops from stalking her around the room and disappears under my bed, making noises as if she is bumping into something. My mother disappears from my sight and bends over, trying to catch my dog with both hands, and as she gets ahold of her, I hear more rattling and my mother coming across some type of revelation.
She straightens up, holding my closed shoebox of compilation of Peeta's notes over the years. I give her a disapproving look like she is not supposed to touch it.
"Oh. Sorry for scooping around. Here, I'll put it right back down underneath..." she trails and starts to put it away, Pebbles is being Pebbles, nipping insistently at her heels.
"No, it's ok, just leave it here on my bed. Thanks," I say, contemplating if I should open the box at this point in time.
"What's in it?" she asks me, her mood has completely improved and she sounds more like a friend. I'm holding the box, running my finger along its sides.
"One of the ways Peeta has shown me he loves me," I tell her with a grin, right before I open the cover.
I hear myself gasp, my hand lifting up to cover my mouth as soon as my eyes settle at what I see inside the box, sitting on top of the old, hand-written notes. It's a dying red tulip, aged with black spots, wilting and curling around the edges. I can't exactly estimate how long it's been hiding in here. I don't know when Peeta placed this flower behind my back, and I can't believe I only spotted it now. He has finally figured out that I have kept his notes after all these years. I pick up the fading flower and twirl it in my fingers, a new note sitting atop the old ones, catching my eyes.
I love you, to the moon and back.
My hands begin to tremble, and I am surprised by how quickly my tears materialized, gushing violently out of my eyes. I let out one desperate sob, my face writhing in pain, as the dead flower drops on my lap, and I hang on to the note. My mother looks stunned with worry as she sits on my right, placing a hand on my good shoulder. She keeps her distance as she tries to read me, and I can sense her mind overworking, trying to figure out words to comfort me, then just decides to remain silent because she has accepted that she doesn't know how, rubbing my shoulder gently up and down, and lets me weep for Peeta.
The next day I walk my mother out of the house as she leaves to travel back to District Four. Before she goes through the door, she turns to me and softly pulls me into an embrace, and reminds me to see where my thoughts mostly take me, and that's usually where my heart is. I ask if she will visit me again in the future, and she smiles at me and tells me that she thinks of me a lot, more than I can ever imagine.
I am waiting impatiently as the prison warden reads over documents and recites to me the rules and regulations for visiting a prisoner. I am permitted a contact visit, and we venture through dingy hallways until we reach a gray door monitored by a giant of a guard. They exchange some inside jokes, then good-heartedly snipe at each other, the guard finally unlocking the door behind him. And right before I enter a large visiting room furnished with tables and chairs, I catch one of the policemen who has interviewed me earlier in the week, standing on the other end of the hallway, and gives me a quick nod.
I was excited when I was on my way to the prison, and now that I am sitting here on one of the many chairs in the very end of a long table waiting, I am drenched in cold sweat and my fingers have not stopped playing with the handle of my bag. I watch as the second hand of the wall clock ticks along.
I nearly jump out of my seat when the door creaks open and two security guards appear and walk in, with Peeta walking closely behind them in a gray uniform, head hanging low. I spring up on my feet as the guards continue to walk and leave us alone as soon as they reach my end of the table. Peeta is standing still, hands locked behind him by a handcuff, his breathing calm and even. He slowly lifts his head up to finally look at me.
"Katniss-"
And I crush into him, my hands encircling around him and touching him as much as I could, my head burrowing into the crook of his neck, a joyous type of shiver running down my back. I hear a guard huff from behind and order us to sit down across each other, and that we are only allowed a measured amount of physical contact. We conform and I tear away from him, glancing at the guard with dismay.
Peeta has not stopped staring at my shoulder.
"How are you feeling?" he asks me awkwardly, glossed over with concern.
"I'm very well, yeah," I nod at him, glancing at my shoulder. "I'm healing at a good rate. My mother flew in from Four and I pretty much did not leave her sight." I shoot him a smile to reassure him. His eyes seem to be darting everywhere at me, from my hair, to my lips, to my neck, the button of my shirt. Anywhere but my eyes.
"Katniss. I am so sorry. I didn't mean it..." he finally refocuses his blue eyes onto me. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he is talking in a hushed voice, trying to compose himself. "Please forgive me." There is hurt in his eyes, and regret, and an infinite sadness that it boomerangs and hurts me back, adding to the melancholy that I am already submerged in. There are shadows on his face that were never there before.
"I'm fine, I'm recovering quickly, Peeta. Please don't worry about me," I yearn for his hand but it's out of reach for me. I extend my arm over the table and run my hand around his face instead, thrilled by the contact of his skin against mine. "I forgive you," I tell him, and hope that it would stop him from over-worrying.
He closes his eyes and his head tilts to the side and leans further into my hand, his lips kissing my open palm.
"I think this is how far I could kiss you. I'm not allowed to steal one from the lips," and for the first time since the beginning of the visit, he allows me a small smile that flashed a little bit too quickly.
"I liked it. I'll take anything I could get," I tell him and try to smile back at him but his head suddenly dips low again, and I am left staring at the swirls of his blonde hair. I give him a moment and before I could reach out to him again, his head swings back up at me and his eyes are bordered with silent tears. I could hear the security guard behind him telling us to wrap things up and he needs to go back to his jail cell.
"Katniss, I don't know if I could ever forgive myself," his lips are quivering and my heart has almost stopped beating at the sight of him, my once kind and gentle Peeta, so broken, and hopeless. "I almost killed you..."
The security guard is adamant at reminding us to finish the visit, and continues to mumble something, but we don't pay him attention.
"Peeta..."
"...And I thought wrong. I'm sorry, I got it all wrong," he struggles maintaining eye contact with me. "...I thought I was ready, and I thought I wanted it, but...I...uhmm..." he trails and has started to hiccup, my eyes feeling wet from another set of tears that are ready to fall. "...I'm not fit to be a father. I'm sorry...," and as quick as a first tear rolls down his cheek, the same security guard grabs the handcuffs behind him and gathers a fistful of the collar of his uniform before he hauls him upwards and drags him off his seat, and away from me.
I watch helplessly as he is being pushed out of the room, his head appearing and disappearing over the guards' broad shoulders as he is forced to walk away, trying to look back at me one last time, calling out my name. I could feel my own hand move and clutch at the fabric of my shirt, over where my heart is supposed to be, and wonder if it is possible to die from a broken heart.
A/N:
The Scientist (by Coldplay)
Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry. You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you. Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions. Let's go back to the start
Running in circles, coming in tails. Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy. It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard
Take me back to the start.
I was just guessing at numbers and figures. Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart
And tell me you love me, come back and haunt me. Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles, chasing tails. Coming back as we are.
Nobody said it was easy. It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start.