CHAPTER 8: The Valley Song

Peeta believed that someday Katniss Everdeen would stop surprising him, or start surprising him, one of the two. It was all very, very messy. He was there, of course, witnessing Katniss pull the bow back, aiming precisely, then twisting her body radically and letting a single arrow fly directly into President Coin's chest. He watched her face the entire time. It was eerie. And he knew what she would do, he knew about the nightlock pill, kept her alive, again, one last time, he told himself.

Peeta considered later that watching Katniss' trial was probably not the best thing for his mental health. It brought all of his questions about the Nature of Katniss into the light. It was almost as though someone had dug into his brain and shaken all of the arguments out.

She's a heartless killer, a justicemaker would argue.

Please, another would shout back, she's a child, she's confused, there's been insurmountable trauma in her life.

Confused enough to hit the president square in the heart from one hundred yards away!

After all she's been through, the first would respond, are you truly surprised?

Peeta wasn't sure. In his mind the arguments had more to do with Gale Hawthorne and kisses in caves, nights on speeding Capitol trains. Did she feel anything for him in those first games? Did she feel anything for him, even after they had been engaged in the Captiol? Was she really that horribly selfish? Peeta just wasn't sure. The Jury didn't seem to be either.

Peeta wasn't sure what took him to wandering around that afternoon. He was pretty dedicated to his daily routine. Dr. Aurelius was pretty insistent that he stick to doing something constructive every day, getting some exercise, getting outside, and having a conversation. Peeta wasn't sure where his day went off course. It started with a humming he heard at breakfast. He wasn't sure if that was something he really heard, or part of the weirdness that seemed to have taken over his brain.

Later, while having a nice discussion with one of the cooks, he heard it again.

"What is that?"

"The singing?"

"Yeah, that noise." Peeta tilted his head and strained to listen over the bustle of the kitchen.

"Just someone else in the house. Singing."

Singing. Peeta, his usual helpful self, said goodbye to the kitchen staff after offering to help with their breakfast clean up (and getting thoroughly turned down, of course), Peeta stood outside the back door to the kitchen and listened closely. It was harder to hear in the hallway, where the plush carpets and thick wallpaper soaked up some of the sounds. But he could hear it. As he walked down the hallway, trying to step lightly, he listened. He took another hallway and chose an open room. No, quieter in here. Back into the hallway, into another room. A little louder, but coming from above. It went on like this.

The singing came to its loudest as Peeta realized that this was perhaps, the first time in his life he had actually tracked something. Hunted something. Not that it was exactly hunting. It lead to a door. Perhaps he hadn't been thinking about what the singing might be, but it was only with the combination of the singing and the thought of hunting that he realized what he had found.

Katniss.

Without thinking, he opened the door, and there she was, wild-haired, wild-eyed, sitting on the sill of the window, singing.

Singing, singing, singing. He hadn't heard her sing in so long. She didn't seem to see him, even though they were looking right at one another. She was singing a song he had never heard before, but it was hazy. A few notes of it made their way through the nets and the haze of his mind, but the title of the song and the lyrics eluded him. He shook his focus clear of the lingering notes and tried to take in what was in front of him. He had walked here in such a daze that he hadn't considered what the consequences of bursting in on the "Mockingjay who'd flown the coop" as the Capitol's lowest-common-denominator tabloids were calling her.

Her braid was gone. Her hair was all angry knots and tangled fury. Her eyes were as he had never seen them - unfocused, miles, years away even. He had seen Katniss in many states, but she was always thinking, calculating, and yes, even feeling with those grey eyes. Today, they were empty, hollow, as if the girl behind them had never been on fire at all. He knew what Katniss looked like when things were bad. This was worse.

He remembered so many, many things about Katniss, he wasn't sure which things were true or which were false, but Peeta did trust the present. Whatever Katniss had done in the past, whether or not she was guilty or not guilty, right now, she was hurting, badly, and he had never been good at standing by and watch her hurt.

It occurred to him how strange it was that he could hear her way down in the kitchen, because he could barely make out the words that rasped out from her chapped lips now, standing so close to her. Her mouth moved, but her voice was growing weaker. Perhaps he sensed her presence, though, if she did, she didn't show it beyond quieting her voice, but that could have been from exhaustion, or completely arbitrary.

Peeta had no clue what he was doing here. What had he come here to do? He could do nothing but watch her; this scarred, fragile creature hardly registered as Katniss to him - Mutt, human, or otherwise.

"Katniss?" he heard himself whisper, almost involuntarily.

She paid him no mind, but continued staring off into that far off place, where he could guess she saw nothing but pain.

Pity. Pity must have been what drove him to take a step towards her, which he regretted almost instantly. Katniss flew off of the windowsill where she had been huddled. It was not an agile, Katniss type leap, but a desperate scrambling, which resulted in her hitting the floor on all fours, hard.

He would have thought that she might cry out, or at least stop her hoarse singing, but she didn't. She simply huddled against the wall and let more feeble notes escape her lips.

"Katniss," he said again, his voice full of almost as much pain as her eyes.

Instead of risking another step forward, he knelt, as slowly as he could and strained his ears to make out the words of the melody that was obviously her sanity, clinging by a single precarious thread. The wrong move and he may find himself forced to chose whether to save her again or... or what... to let her die? Would he... could he let Katniss Everdeen die?

After what felt like a long time waiting, her voice began to pick up in volume, and Peeta was able to make out a few words.

"Deep in the meadow," she sang. "Under the willow..."

As the words of the song began to register in his brain, Peeta let out a soft gasp, as the song struck a chord with him and he could remember...

"A bed of... grass, a soft green pillow..."

Peeta looked at his own hands, turning them over and over again as he recalled, in vivid detail himself, painting on the floor of the training center. He could remember mixing all sorts of muds and berry stains to capture the innocent face of the girl from District 11, Rue.

"Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes... And when again they open, the sun will rise."

He speckled her dark hair with bits of color... with flowers. He painted in her hair the flower wreath that Katniss Everdeen had adorned her with as she lay dying. Katniss had... Katniss had sung the girl a farewell lullaby, and not let her death in the arena be ugly, or lonely, or in vain... but beautiful and meaningful. Katniss had not left the girl's side until... until she was sure that Rue was shown love and respect for her sacrifice. Until the hovercraft came to take her tiny body away, Katniss stayed with her.

"Here it's safe," Katniss's voice sang on, but her words were empty... meaningless. "Here it's warm."

Katniss had stayed with her, even though it had nothing to do with her survival. In fact, it could have easily proved a hindrance to it. Katniss stayed because... because she loved Rue. Because she was... good.

Peeta wasn't entirely sure how sound this logic was. Surely someone could love and be evil... or selfish... But clearly, this moment with Rue had touched Peeta then, enough that he risked his life by painting it in front of the Game Makers. Perhaps right now, looking at this hollow, lifeless Katniss, he could justify believing that she was good simply because he wanted to. It made it easier to believe that he hadn't been a blind fool every time he risked his life for her, or uttered the words, "I love you" to her.

"Here the daisies guard you from every harm."

Peeta moved towards her on all fours rather clumsily, almost as a child would do. After all, they were still children - not yet 18, either of them. He moved slowly, and by the time he was close enough to touch her, she had gotten through another few lines of the song.

"Here your dreams are sweet, and... tomorrow brings them true... Here is the place where... I... love you."

Peeta reached out a shaky hand to her, intending only to touch her arm or her hand at most, but he found it travelling, as if of its own accord, to her face. He brushed her cheek as lightly and delicately as he could manage, not wanting to scare her.

It didn't work, her song stopped dead, and she threw his hand away. She was positioned between the wall, the bed, and a dresser, and he realized in the second it took her to throw his hand off, that her only route of escape was through him. She might kill him after all.

Peeta braced himself, closed his eyes even, ready for the worst. After a moment of silence, what he heard broke his heart.

A whimper.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the back of Katniss's head. Her entire body was shaking, and she was pawing uselessly at the wall, as if trying to dig further into it. It was only then the he saw the blood smeared down her fingers, and caked underneath her nails. He took a closer look at the wall behind her and saw bloody scratches interrupting the calm pattern of the Capitol wallpaper.

"Katniss!"

Without thinking, he grabbed her hand to try to take a closer look at the damage she had done to herself. She jerked away from him, writhing, struggling, and making a series of cries that sounded almost animal with despair. She was so weak in her current state that her struggling did no good, not that Peeta ever would have had trouble restraining her in the past, he just never had reason to.

Through some maneuvering, Peeta was able to plant his back against the wall and steady himself. He used the leverage this position afforded him to turned Katniss so that her back was pressed against his chest. With one hand, he held both her wrists tight to her body, and with the other, he attempted to push the matte of hair back from her forehead.

She was still whimpering and struggling, but also seemed resigned to her fate. Her struggling died down, but she kept trembling.

"What am I doing here?" Peeta thought, kicking himself for not leaving the second he opened the door. He seemed to be doing nothing but rapidly making the situation worse for both of them, but it was too late to just leave now.

He tried his best to calm her. He tried to breathe deeply so that she could match her breathing to his, but she continued to near hyperventilate even as he coaxed her, "Come on Katniss, breathe. Breathe with me."

He tried telling her over and over again, in every soothing tone he could find that it would be okay. He even tried just shushing her gently, but nothing seemed to calm her. After a while, she began to cry, and so did he. Huddled in this strange cubby in Katniss's assigned compartment in the Capitol, Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen could do nothing to comfort each other but ensure that the other wasn't shedding tears alone.

It was a stupid idea, but in the depths of his sorrow, it was the only one that came to him. He had never been much of a singer; he thought he sounded downright funny, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he could remember sitting on Katniss's bed after she fractured her ankle in the Winter before the Quarter Quell. She taught him the lyrics to a few of the songs her father had taught her, and smiled patiently as he stuttered his way through them.

He licked his lips, took a deep breath, and began to sing, quietly, and probably off key, but it didn't matter. Katniss was the only one who would hear, and who knew if she could hear him anyway?

"Deep in the meadow, hidden far away... A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray"

Katniss's shaking came to an abrupt halt. Maybe she was listening after all. Peeta cleared his throat, and continued, absurd as it seemed.

"Forget your woes and let your troubles lay, and when again it's morning, they'll wash away."

Suddenly, this idea seemed silly and childish. Peeta's voice seemed to leave him. What was he hoping to accomplish by singing to her? Maybe it would just dredge up all sorts of memories of Prim and Rue and make everything worse.

"Please...," she voice begged in a tiny, desperate voice. "Don't stop..."

Peeta was dumbfounded. It was working. She was lucid enough to know at least that he was here and he was singing to her. He chanced letting go of her wrists to adjust his position against the wall. His back had begun to ache. Katniss stayed, but wrapped her free arms around herself, trying, Peeta could tell, to make herself smaller.

Peeta hesitantly wrapped his arms around her. This whole thing didn't even seem real. Peeta let his eyes drift out of focus and continued the song.

"Here it's safe, here it's warm... Here the daisies guard you from every harm… Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true..."

Katniss began to mouth the words along with him, barely a whisper escaping her lips, but he could feel her breath calming, syncing with his. He couldn't help but pause before the song's next line, but was so relieved at Katniss's improvement, that he continued on.

"Here is the place where I love you."

Katniss spread her arms out in front of her, spreading her injured fingers idly. He wrapped his big hands around hers, which were surprisingly petite. He had always been amazed at how small Katniss's hands were, seeing as she did such big, amazing things with them. Here, now, engulfed in his large, clumsy hands, they looked more delicate than ever. It didn't help that they were shaking. He put as much concentration as he could spare into keeping his arms steady, so that she would feel secure, rather than trapped, and on they sang, together.

"Here it's safe..."

But why?

"Here it's warm..."

Why was he here?

"Here the daisies guard you from every harm..."

What was he doing?

"Here your dreams are sweet..."

Why had he saved her in the square?

"And tomorrow brings them true..."

Why was he trying to save her now? They were no longer in the arena...

"Here is the place where I love you..."

Wasn't he done owing her yet?

"Here it's safe..."

What else could she take from him?

"Here it's warm..."

Maybe it wasn't about owing her... maybe it was just about keeping her alive...

"Here the daisies guard you from every harm..."

Like she had done with him in the Capitol when he had begged her just to let him kill himself... end it all...

"Here your dreams are sweet..."

Maybe that's what it had always been about...

"And tomorrow brings them true..."

Because Katniss Everdeen was his... ally. No matter what else she wasn't... she was his ally.

"Here is the place where I love you..."

And she always had been.

He realized that both of them had stopped singing. He let his focus, or lack thereof wander from the wall to Katniss's face, and though he could only see it in strained peripheral, he could see that her eyes were closed. She was... sleeping.

Peeta set her hands down gently, and she curled into him. Peeta stared at her for a long time, trying to make peace with his most recent assessment of her. His eye caught something, a small scar just above her eyebrow. A scar she got getting him life-saving medicine in the first games. He traced her brows over to another scar on her left temple, that she got in the Quarter Quell from Beetee's spool of wire clocking her in the side of the head. Just underneath that, he could make out one of a few a burn scars the crept from her face down her neck and he knew must continue all over her body. Even the capitol's make-up couldn't work the magic it would take to erase the traces of the fire mutt she had become in the bombing.

"Here... is the place where I I love you." Peeta whispered, "Real."

Peeta would never be able to put his finger on when it was exactly that he drifted off. It only added to his confusion when he awoke in his own bed, in his own room, in his own house in the Victor's Village of District 12. He must have been out for days if he had truly been transported from the Capitol to District 12. It took a few days by train, and even on the off chance that he was considered important enough to take by Hovercraft it would have take several hours.

Unless... he sat up quickly and placed his hands in a beam of light that was streaming through a crack in the curtains. They were shiny, un-naturally and beautifully shiny. He flexed them, and his fingers seem to ghost, a sort of delayed slow motion image following his shimmering fingers.

He brought his hands to his head and even as he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyelids, shining swirls seems to dance in the blackness behind them. The swirls began to blur, and his eyes began to sting, as tears came to his eyes, and started to sob. Through his sobs, he choked, to no one in particular, "Real or not real... real or not real... real... or not real..."

The only answer was his own sobs.