Peeta's POV
This had been the best and worst day of my life. For two hours Katniss and I lay on the half-thawed ground, her head on my stomach, just staying still and listening to the birds. I was tempted to say something, anything. Thousands of questions zoomed through my head at top speed, wanting to burst forwards and pummel Katniss raw. But that would have been mean, so I kept quiet.
It was around eight o'clock I found out Katniss was asleep. Her head was lolled off to the side, breathing slow and even. Her eyelids fluttered around, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. Laying there so beautiful and peaceful, I would never have guessed what she had been through.
An empty grumble interrupted my reverie and I was reminded that we had skipped breakfast. Maybe, since Katniss was asleep, I could zip back to the house, grab a few blankets and something to eat, and then come back. Of course, this idea presented itself as crazy at first.
I remembered months ago what happened every time I was out of her sight. She would scream and thrash and horrible visions of blood and such (or so I'm told). Eventually she needed a major operation to fix that.
Yet, it was freezing out. Even though the warmth of our bodies was shared in the chilly spring air, there were undeniable goose bumps freckling our exposed skin. It wouldn't be long before we would start shivering. It would be better to be gone for a minute and have her be warm than stay with her to watch her freeze.
As gently and as quiet as I could, I unzipped my jacket and slid Katniss' head off my lap, resting it on the jacket. She mumbled something incoherent and kept sleeping.
This is wrong, I thought as I snuck quickly away from the lake towards the Victors' Village. Everything about it was wrong. After the months of torture she went through, it isn't normal for someone to just be okay. Sure, I loved having her head resting on me again, and hearing her talk as she explained what had happened. For the first three seconds I was thrilled, and everything was back to the way things were.
The feeling of uneasiness had settled on me, nice and tight now. There had to be a catch for her behavior. There is no way Katniss is going to be like this for long, acting as though she hadn't nearly died, been alone for half a year, tried killing herself, and everything turning out marvelously .
Swallowing my unease, I entered the house. There, I gathered two blankets from the closet and hastily made a few sandwiches. After packing it up nice and tightly in a cloth bag, I made my way back to the lake.
Don't ask me how I know where it is; it's a long story. It involves a night of terrifying dreams, sleepwalking, and a very stupid squirrel. Honestly, you don't want to know.
I was trudging through the forest, heaving along the bag of necessities behind me, when a noise made my ears prick. I blinked once and strained my ears, searching for the noise again. A small whimper burst from the trees in front of me. A very familiar whimper, might I add.
Dropping the sack all of a sudden, I jogged towards the noise, curious. "Katniss? Katniss, is that you?"
"Peeta!" A frightened voice called out my name and I flat out ran.
Adrenaline surged wildly through my veins, but I only got about twenty feet when I saw her. I was surprised. She was just standing by a tree—the lake visible in between two trees—standing alone clutching her elbows in her hands. The piteous look in her eyes was darting back and forth, and when she heard me crash into the tiny clearing, scared grey eyes flicked up to mine.
I reached out my arms to her to pull the small body to my chest, but instead of fright and despair she came at me with, it was anger.
"You promised!" She half-yelled-half-sobbed, only detaching her hands from her elbows to grip the front of my shirt. "You promised!"
Katniss was sobbing, and I was unable to talk due to the thoughts whirring around in my skull. "Why—? Katniss, I—"
"You promised me!" Her voice was a tear-filled shriek, and she let go of me with a shudder. "You promised you would never leave me! You said you wouldn't—" A noise like a wounded animal escaped her throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth. The next words were whispered through a scratchy throat. "You weren't—"
I wanted to pull her close to me and comfort her, letting her know I was only gone for a few minutes, but she turned around and left before I could pull her into me.
Into the lake clearing she stomped, weeping quietly, but the tenseness of her shoulders warned me to stay away. I jogged a little faster and touched her shoulder, but she shrank away immediately and ran towards the small cement house some ten feet away.
This was horrible, I didn't mean to… A tiny, cold droplet of saltwater escaped my eyelashes. I didn't raise my hand to wipe it away.
Katniss hunched against the wall of the shack and for a second, I thought she would regain her composure and stand back up straight. But, to my surprise and disdain, she began slamming her forehead, again and again, onto the wall. Now, that was going too far.
I ran up to her and tugged her away from the cabin angrily, and saw the blood pour from a gash on her hairline. Fury rose in my chest and I dabbed my sleeve against the wound. "Why do you do this to yourself? What are you accomplishing slicing your head open on things?"
Katniss stayed silent, tears still racing each other down her pale cheeks. Though I took it as a positive sign she didn't flinch away.
"I can't bear you hurting yourself…" I swallowed slightly and gave up on my wiping my sleeve against the blood. It was flowing too much. "We should get back to the house. You're freezing and bleeding too much for my sleeve.
He shook her head. "Not…not yet. I need…." She leaned away from me, but not in an aggressive fashion. "I need some time alone."
Frustrated, I let out a noise of exasperation. "You just got done screaming with me for leaving you alone! That surgery was supposed to fix your breakdowns." The last part I added was just an afterthought, but nonetheless true.
"That was different, Peeta!" Katniss' voice was hurt, but not quite a shout. "I couldn't control that. When I told myself you were coming back it didn't work! But this time—" She sucked in a harsh breath. "I didn't think you were there at all. I was afraid that I had dreamt your return and it scared me more than anything, Peeta, to be alone again."
"Then why do you want me to let you go wandering off into the woods again?" Though I understood exactly what she said and meant, the same was for me as well. I didn't want her out of my sight for longer than a few minutes for the same reason; I was afraid.
"I need time to mull this over, but only with the reassurance of your being on my mind. I need time to be alone when I don't feel like committing suicide."
Should I be reassured? I gulped again, unsure whether to trust her, to trust myself. But finally, I had to give in. "Fine, but come back soon. I can't be away from you for too long."
After blinking her wide, teary eyes at me once, she reached up and pressed her lips to my cheek. "I'm sorry for screaming at you. See you in a bit."
And I watched as the delicate figure of Katniss Everdeen slinked into the woods and disappeared from view.
KATNISS' POV
I jogged along the forest floor, still upset, trying to void off the sinking feeling. Inside, I had hoped for Peeta to have not let me be alone at all and had dragged me off to be back at home with him. But the other part of me was glad he didn't, because I was getting a despondent headache due to stress. And though I was overjoyed having my Peeta back, something was wrong.
My running slowed until I was left standing in the middle of the woods, feeling near-hysteria growing in my throat. Not because Peeta was gone, but because of the dead rabbit hanging in front of me. A rusted snare was looped tightly around its neck, and if it weren't for the patches of white fur on the scrawny feet, I wouldn't have known it was a rabbit at all.
Nearly all of the flesh had been picked clean by predators, frozen and thawed many times, and frozen once more to stay. In fact, I wouldn't put it past myself to just label it as a year-old skeleton. It was disgusting and decayed, but that wasn't what bothered me the most.
I knew that snare design like it was my own. It was a work of art done only by the hands of a hunter I once knew, beautiful and dark, who had been murdered soon after my daughter was born. Of course, neither of those facts mattered, because they were both gone.
This snare was probably planted just a few days before the bombing on District 12 or right after, but when D13 hovercrafts came to pick the survivors up, the rabbit was left to rot, forgotten.
I doubled over on the ground and threw up what very little I had in my stomach. Come to think of it, there wasn't anything in there, so I didn't even want to know what the heck those little red chunks were in the pile of sick left on the forest floor.
After cleaning out my stomach, I bolted. That wasn't a very smart idea because I hadn't gone fifteen feet before a wave of vertigo hit me like a wrecking ball. I was sent flying into the ground, grinding mud slush into my face, hair, and the front of my shirt. When I had hit the ground, something caught the leg of my trousers and ripped a good-sized hole in the knee.
Covered in mud and sobbing, I forced myself to get up on my hands and knees and craw a few more feet before I threw up again. Nothing but bile came out. His name kept running over and over in my head, slamming against one another, making me cry even harder.
He was gone, Gale was gone…
Those six words have run through my head before, and ran again. Distressing cries split the three-o'clock air like daggers. Shaking violently, I crawled under a large, fanned-out spruce tree and curled up in the puddle of mud, bits of brown ice soaking into my clothes. I was freezing and numb, unable to stop the shivers raking themselves against my spine.
I closed my eyes, wishing that I would just go to sleep. Though the sleep that found me wasn't sleep. After all, blacking out was not unusual when slamming one's head against the trunk of a tree.
PEETA'S POV
It had been three hours. Three hours since I had bade Katniss goodbye and told her to come home soon. It was nearing six, and if she wasn't back by then I was going out and getting her myself. All sorts of wild animals were out lurking at this time of night. Of course, Katniss was perfectly capable of handling herself, but under the emotional stress she's been in, I highly doubted a small 18-and-a-half year old girl could take on a pack of wild dogs.
I paced the room nervously, glancing at the clock frequently, but at 5:50, I couldn't wait. Grabbing a flashlight and a dagger I kept stored hidden in a downstairs cupboard, I exited the Victors Village house and back into the woods.
As I walked, a sinking feeling settled down on my lungs, making it hard to breath. Katniss wasn't at the lake, alright. But I didn't know the woods. What if she hurt herself and was lying in a puddle of her own blood, waiting for me to save her, and I don't know where I'm going? Swallowing hard, I began with where she ran off into the woods. There was a small scuffle of leaves from where she took off running, but that's about it.
I'm becoming a nervous wreck. Breathing becoming shallow, I jogged further into the forest, sure I was getting lost. For half an hour I jogged, which doesn't seem like such a long time, but it really was when the thoughts of a wounded girl awaiting for you to save her made every second longer than it really was.
After squeezing my eyes shut once, I opened them back, and found myself staring up at a bird. Black with scattered white feathers, a narrow head, and pointed tail, that could only be a mockingjay. I blinked once at it and opened its mouth.
The lifesaver, at that moment, was me deciding to stay and see what it said instead of running again.
The mockingjay started crying, gurgling coming from its throat so familiar and heartbroken. How come mockingjays can do that? Maybe, if it heard crying, it could fly off and lead me to where Katniss is. Really stupid idea, obviously. The bird just ruffled its feathers and blinked again at me.
Crap. Well, I couldn't waste time hoping this bird would waddle off into the forest wanting me to follow. I just kept running the direction I was going. The ground here was getting really disgusting. It was half-thawed brown muck with flecks of frozen ice and twigs in it. I slowed my running, and stopped to rest against a tree.
As I was panting my lungs out, I let my eyes wander off into the trees in front of me. Wide, frozen limbs stretched over the disgusting ground, mounds of icy moss in the process of melting. But when my eyes fell again on a particularly large mound of grimy moss. That wasn't moss.
Curious, I detached myself from the side of the tree and went around to the other side of the tree, where I could see the front of the 'lump of moss'. A pale, cold face stared blankly out over the ground, lips blue and frozen. Thin arms were locked around her chest, afraid, and near-frozen tears cut tracks in the grime on her face.
The half-frozen body of Katniss was curled under a tree, covered in mud, and I had to get her back home before she became more than just frozen. Ever so gently, I slid my arms around the filthy, cold body and cradled her to my chest.
Before, I would have been worried about getting lost in the woods, but honestly? I didn't need to think twice of where to go to get my girl to safety.
oOo
Nyyaaaa I didn't like the ending so much, but oh well. Now you see why I chose to post these two chapters at the same time? If I had just updated the last one, people would be all, "Katniss would not have been that happy after something like that happened to her" but I wanted to get the message across that she isn't. I think I'm confusing myself, so I'll go now. Remember; REVIEW!