[Summary: Peeta's courageous efforts to return to Katniss & the real reasons he wants to see her so badly.]
(Peeta's Point of View)
Once I found out how sick Katniss was, all I could think about was getting back to her. At the time of the reaping I had already had a crush on Katniss for a decade, and I'd cherished that child-like yet romantic form of affection over the years even when it pained me to do it. I made such sacrifices for her in the games, but I'd muddled through what I did for her not fully understanding why I did it other than that I "loved" her. Like so much in my life, my love for Katniss had matured during the past few years, and as I healed that realization opened up a whole new world to me.
Katniss once said that what we did was protect each other, and I believed that. Considerations of whether or not Katniss liked me or loved me paled in comparison to concerns over her safety. I hoped she loved me, but mostly I just wanted Katniss to be safe and healthy. Maybe I could even hope for happiness for her. Sometimes I still lapsed into uncertainties, feeling like a child pulling petals off a daisy saying, "she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not." When that happened, I reminded myself that I was on a mission help Katniss, to save her sanity and maybe her life. Much more was at stake than just my feelings.
Dr. Aurelius explained clearly that I was going to have to work hard to be able to go back home any time soon. He warned me that returning home unauthorized and unprepared might make everything worse for me and for Katniss, but I was determined to get prepared as soon as possible. So Dr. Aurelius and I started meeting for hour-long sessions three times a week. Unfortunately, most of them involved trying to trigger the memories altered by the Capitol's tracker jacker torture and then learning to deal with the inevitable terror and pain. This approach carried risks because if I couldn't cope with the feelings the triggers brought out, I might end up losing my mind the way I did when I first arrived in District 13. That didn't happen, but soon I was having many more bad memories than usual popping into my mind for no apparent reason. I managed some well, but some were so awful that I feared I would never learn to cope with them. Dr. Aurelius said that was not unexpected. Things were going to get worse before they got better. Since we were taking an accelerated approach to the recovery techniques, things were going to get much worse before they got better.
Sometimes when it all became too much, I imagined what it would have been like if Snow had just left us alone or if the Hunger Games had never happened at all. Maybe Katniss would have fallen in love with me as much as I was in love with her. It would have been amazing. It was in my mind anyway. I imagined kissing her soft lips, holding her shapely waist, and touching her skin wherever she'd allow it. I imagined all our friends and family at our wedding, even though most of them were dead now. The toasting was moving, of course. I always loved that tradition, being a baker. I imagined making sure Katniss felt safe, and warm, and satisfied as I passionately made love to her. In my mind, Katniss was pretty passionate herself. She was wonderful. Being a young man, I couldn't help but linger on those intimate moments. I imagined patting her swollen belly as a baby really did grow inside it. In my mind, knowing that I was responsible for that life was exhilarating. How beautiful her children would be. Surprisingly, I didn't feel guilty about thinking of Katniss in these ways. In my imagination, I fully intended to make Katniss my wife and love her forever. That kind of blissful happiness seemed impossible in reality now. Pain and destruction had robbed me of that prospective life, and now I could only visualize it as an elusive distraction.
In addition to preparing for tracker jacker torture triggers, I had to plan for how I'd deal with the devastation of my home. Having only passed by District 12 on my way to the Capitol during the war, I had little personal knowledge of the destruction. Most of what I knew I'd learned from videos of the devastation. Dr. Aurelius encouraged me to watch those videos repeatedly, and he showed me more videos of the mass grave and clean-up efforts. Thoughts of my home and my people reduced to mere bones, soot, and dust haunted me day and night for a while. Shivering, I'd wonder if any of the remains in the videos belonged to people I knew and if I'd accidently trudge through them when I returned home. My friends? My parents? My brothers?
My nightmares, which had once been dominated by fears of losing Katniss, became filled with visions of the bombing. Images of my family dying agonizing deaths unsettled me most. I hoped they had died from the smoke and not the fire. While I was in prison Snow tormented me with his version of the story, which was that my brother bled to death while the rest of my family burned alive. I kept thinking of how helpless my brother must have felt if he had cogent thoughts at all at the time. Seeing his own wife and baby along with his parents being murdered in such a horrible way right in front of him, he'd have been completely unable to do anything to stop it. The fact that I would never know for sure exactly what happened to my family proved both merciful and devastating for me. While it separated me from their pain somewhat it also lead to endless speculation.
Through my preparations I started to realize that returning home involved much more than "being there" for Katniss, and I also started to wonder why anyone would see fit to send Katniss home. Perhaps they really just wanted to isolate her and what better place to do that than a remote and decimated district? But District 12 did seem like an unlikely place for her to heal. Then again there were probably many people who didn't want her to heal. Others would not miss her if she took her life or died of natural causes.
Dr. Aurelius gave me some medicine as part of his plan to help me recover faster. I had tried not to take any before because I had been on so much medicine while recovering from the burns. Dr. Aurelius said the medicines he gave me were different, explaining that they would keep my mind more "grounded" while I tried to sort out the distorted tracker jacker memories. He assured me that the medicines were not addictive which made me feel more confident. The last thing I wanted was to end up back home acting like a morphling addict. It had taken long enough to wean myself from the morphling that I needed to recover from the burns. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be addicted to the stuff.
Every day I took a white pill and a blue pill that Dr. Aurelius prescribed, and they did seem to help my mind feel more, well, grounded. I wondered if Katniss had tried any medicine. Dr. Aurelius would not tell me that when I asked because it was private information. I suspected that Katniss had refused medication. Maybe I could try to convince her to at least consider it once I got home.
I also had to negotiate with my burn doctor to go home. He didn't really want to send me back so soon. He said he could do so much more to make the burns look better. I refused to have any more skin grafts or procedures because I wanted to be ready to leave whenever Dr. Aurelius would let me go. So finally my burn doctor had to admit that since my burns were technically healed, there was no medical reason not to send me home. I did wonder what Katniss might think about the burns. She'd seen the ones on my hands and face in a partial state of healing on the day Snow died, but there were many other burns she hadn't seen. I wasn't exactly disfigured, but anyone paying attention could see I'd been burned. I wondered if I would wish that I'd listened to my burn doctor when I saw Katniss face to face. Would I feel self-conscious about my scars if Katniss and I ever became more than friends? I remembered how the Capitol polished our skin and made us look so perfect for the first Hunger Games. Everything was so different now. We are both scarred inside and outside.
I was encouraged that thinking about Katniss didn't usually trigger bad memories anymore. Mostly the triggers were things that reminded me of the videos they showed me during the tracker jacker torture. The videos were mostly of Katniss and me in the arena. So certain kinds of trees, plants, sunsets, animals, rocks, and the sound of water trickling were the strange things that triggered episodes.
The worst episodes happened when the wind blew against my lips a certain way or the air conditioner made my arms feel like they were being touched. I'd think for a moment that these sensations were the imaginary mutation version of Katniss trying to deceive me with her kisses and caresses. Since there were tender memories of moments between Katniss and me that the Capitol could never alter, I tried to replace the disturbing false memories with happy ones. Instead of the tracker-jacker-tainted kisses in the cave, I'd think of the kiss during the Battle of the Capitol. It was a kiss that probably saved my life. Instead of the mutation version of Katniss touching my arms, I'd remember playing with Katniss' hair while we held each other on the victory tour train.
Sometimes I unwillingly re-lived the beatings and the druggings that I had experienced in prison. During those times, it was as if I could almost feel diminished versions of the blows, the needles, the warm rushes up my arm, and my head swimming. My body somehow remembered all those sensations. I decided that just letting myself feel all the feelings that came with re-living those moments was the best way to deal with them. Dr. Aurelius said that I was very brave to do that, but I didn't feel brave. I felt helpless. He kept assuring me that my work was paying off. One day he handed me a piece of paper.
"This is a plan for your home-coming, Peeta." He said. "I think that if you do these things then you can go home." The "plan" listed the two medicines that I was taking, frequent phone calls with Dr. Aurelius and something called a "safety plan."
"And here's your train ticket," he said, smiling at me. "You can change the date to whenever you feel ready if tomorrow feels too soon."
Amazed and a little panic-stricken, I couldn't believe what was happening. I was going home? I was going to see Katniss?
Dr. Aurelius added, "You'll need to develop that "safety plan" I mentioned on the list. A "safety plan" refers to what you plan to do if you have a particularly bad episode. You need a place to go that's away from Katniss, for example. I know you live close to her, and your house might not be far enough away. It would be tragic for you to hurt Katniss or yourself after all you have accomplished. You also need to prepare for the fact that Katniss might not want to see you at all and know in advance what you are going to do if that happens. Those are the things I wanted to talk about today."
I thought the safety plan was a good idea, though I certainly hoped I'd never need to use it. I hadn't really considered that Katniss wouldn't want to see me at all because Haymith said Katniss just sat in a rocking chair with a blanket over her. Up to this point I'd imagined sitting on the sofa nearby while Katniss ignored me for a while. Now that Dr. Aurelius pointed out this new possibility, I imagined Katniss throwing a book at me and telling me to "get out." The thought didn't dampen my mood much though, and it didn't change my resolve to help Katniss. Nothing ever changed that.
(Thanks to "Katnissinme" for her excellent work as a beta for this chapter)