When the Red X is on the Door

by MADAM BETH

Post Mockingjay. Katniss and Peeta rebuild their relationship while trying to deal with the trauma of having been through the horrors of their lives since being reaped into the Hunger Games. They are there for each other when nightmares creep in the dark, but how does Katniss know when it is not safe for Peeta to be near her because of his hijacking? When the red X is on the door.

8. Chapter 8

So Give me hope in the

Darkness that I will see the

Light

Cos' oh, they gave me such a

Fright

But I will hold on with all of my might

Just promise me we'll be

Alright

Mumford and Sons – Ghosts that we Knew

Chapter 8

(Peeta's POV)

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

This is a clock.

What bits and pieces of this time in my life I remember I'm more than happy to share if it helps even one other victim of the Capitol's hijacking. Unfortunately, the general idea behind hijacking is that it takes away everything that makes us human. Our memories, feelings…the capacity for physical and verbal restraint. It leaves you acting like a beaten dog, snapping at anyone who gets too close because you've been conditioned to fear everyone and everything that once made you feel safe, or loved.

I count myself as one of the lucky ones because I was able to salvage something of a life after my torture and I know for certain that not everyone is able to say the same. I know it may sound crazy that I could ever think of myself as lucky after two trips to the arena, a lost leg, weeks of torture, and then having a quarter of the skin on my body damaged by an explosion that left me in a burn unit recovering for weeks and with scars on most of my body.

But I am lucky.

What else do you call a guy who goes through all of that and still gets to marry the girl he's loved since he was five and then has two of the most beautiful children on earth with her?

Sure, there are still times when I have to hold onto the back of a chair or keep a distance from Katniss and the children until I feel like myself again, but in the grand scheme of things, I walked through Hell and came out the other side.

It's not easy to still be having these troubling thoughts twenty years after the fact, but I have Katniss to help me through it and when the devil on my shoulder is paying too close attention to her, I have our children. My sweet little Bow who draws me pictures (she's already demonstrating quite a talent for art which of course, has me ecstatic) and pushes them under the door when the red X hangs on the knob, trying anything she can to make me feel better. My boy who has inherited more than just his mother's eyes, wants so badly to take care of everyone in his home. He seems to be a sort of canary for my episodes, always coming to me and curling up in my lap when he senses a change in my mood. He asks me to make 'treats' and so we spend the next few hours baking together which helps distract me from those hijacked thoughts.

Katniss scolds me for the amount of sweets I dole out to our kids on a day-to-day basis. I argue, and Haymitch stands up for me, saying it's nice to see children in District 12 with chubby cheeks and plump little bellies.

Yes, Haymitch still lives next door, though I don't know why he doesn't just move in to our house since he spends most of his time there anyway. He continues to act as a surrogate father to Katniss and to me, both of us having lost our father's before we'd reached adulthood.

Our children know him as their 'Paw-Paw'.

Of course he pretends he's merely tolerating the name for the sake of the children. Katniss and I find that hard to believe when we find him sleeping in the old recliner in our living room a few nights a week after dinner, the same two little children he claims to find bothersome tucked under each arm sleeping as well.

He's aged well despite his continued dependence on white liquor and is at least able to refrain from drinking when watching the children when Katniss and I get out of the house for some time alone. But I still have my episodes and Katniss still has her nightmares. There are days when she finds it difficult just to get out of bed and face the day. If we can carry the scars of our past, I suppose Haymitch is entitled to do the same.

After all he's done for us over the years, we at least owe him that. He's been more than just a mentor since we all returned to 12, acting as a teacher, therapist, marriage counselor, referee, and of course, the unofficial keeper of the rules of the red X. Others have helped along the way, but Haymitch has remained the most steadfast presence in our adult lives. Though we may not say it, Katniss and I both appreciate him more than he'd ever truly be able to understand, or accept for that matter.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

This is a clock.

I mentioned that Haymitch had been there to help us both from the day I returned to 12. He knew that I wanted to repair my relationship with Katniss. That despite everything, I still loved her with all of my heart, even if my damaged mind didn't always agree. He was the one who had approved of my idea to plant primroses around Katniss' house and leant me the wheelbarrow and shovel to go dig them up.

I'd done pretty well in those first few months and was able to keep the bad thoughts away for the most part. Katniss and I had our routines of hunting and baking and when we came up with the idea for the memory book, it seemed to give us a shared purpose and made us feel like we were contributing something to this new post-Hunger Games world.

The hardest part was that sometimes there was no warning that an episode was coming. One minute I'd be fine, the next I'd snap. And when the fog finally lifted from my mind, I'd have missed several days. It used to scare me to death, now it's just something that I'm kind of…used to for lack of a better word. I wish my children weren't so used to it, but then they don't really know what that red X on the door means yet.

The first episode that brought up the idea for the red X ended with me grabbing onto Katniss' wrists so hard that she was bruised for a week. I had been showing her how to bake her beloved cheese buns when out of nowhere, I had her on the floor and was pinning both of her hands to the ground above her head, hard. Katniss had blown it off in the way she'd been doing during smaller episodes in the months since I'd been back but I insisted on having some kind of signal, some way for Katniss to know when it wasn't safe to be around me. With Katniss, I knew it had to be something physical, something tangible that she could see and touch that would force her to stay away no matter how badly she wanted to help. Even now, when I'm as far gone as I am during the worst episodes, I'm the only one that can help find my way back. Well, most of the time that's true, with very few exceptions in the past 20 years. Katniss has helped me during some lesser episodes, and Haymitch with some of the worse ones. I never would have expected it in a million years, but the person who helped me through one of the worst ones after I'd first returned home, was none other than Gale Hawthorne.

(20 years earlier)

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

This is a clock.

It's amazing the way time passes without you noticing it sometimes. When I was in my cell in the Capitol, I used the number of houses of cards I could build between visits from my armed guards to give me a rough estimation of the time. When they'd finally left behind any pretense that they were treating me well and I was kept in what amounted to a 6 foot by 6 foot cage, left dirty and starved between beatings and hijackings, I told the time by the pattern of screams I heard from the cells around me. Johanna's torture took place generally in the morning, a few hours before my own. Annie Cresta's time was usually a little after they slid a small jug of water and a single chicken leg under the door to me (the one meal per day that I received). Hers was mostly emotional and mental torture, but that didn't make it any less difficult to listen to night, after night, after night.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

This is a clock.

It was while staring across the room I shared with Katniss in her home in Victor's Village at the clock on the wall thinking of my time in my cell, that I heard someone enter the house downstairs. I assumed it was Haymitch coming back to check on me. I would have rolled my eyes if even that simple movement didn't cause me pain after the emotionally draining day and night I'd had because of seeing Katniss and Gale hugging at the bottom of the steps the morning before. I'd like to think that I'd come a little farther in my recuperation than to be set off just by seeing Katniss hug her oldest friend, but I'm sure most of my reaction could be attributed to the fact that it was on the heels of our first night having sex.

Yeah, talk about lousy timing.

"Go away, Haymitch! I haven't hung myself or…swallowed a gallon of paint or anything yet!" I bellowed from my position curled up in the corner of the bedroom with the throw Katniss had slept wrapped in two nights ago around my shoulders. I was in a pair of boxer shorts, but that was as far as I'd gotten towards getting dressed in the last day and a half. I didn't even have my prosthetic leg on anymore.

The door opened suddenly and my eyes almost bugged out of my head when Gale slipped into the room. "I think the fact that you came up with those two ways to off yourself so quickly warrants at least a 'how ya feeling?'." He said with a careful smirk, making sure not to make any sort of movement towards me.

"Wow. It must be pretty bad if you're the best plan those two could come up with." I said with just enough of an edge in my voice to let Gale know he was smart not to approach me.

Of course he ignored the threat, instead choosing to look around at the damage I'd done to the bedroom. Paintings of mine hung sideways on the walls, the bedside lamp lay broken on the floor, the shade that had been over top of it was somehow above the bed, skewered and spinning on the end of the ceiling fan there. Oh, and I'd torn our bed linens to pieces. I'd have to try to remember to have some new ones ordered when I stopped not giving a damn.

"Damn…" Gale said with a whistle as he started slowly moving around the room in the opposite direction from the corner I was still sitting on the floor in. "I sure hope you did all this yourself and it wasn't you and Katniss…" he trailed off and cut a glance my way.

I knew he was trying to break the ice, letting me know he was aware of the developments in mine and Katniss' love life (like that we had a real one now and not the ruse we'd been playing since the first games) but that didn't stop 'hijacked Peeta' from twisting the knife a little.

"Jealous?" I asked with what I'm sure was a mean and dangerous smile considering the way Gale reacted. I barely gave him a second to respond before the next awful thing I didn't want to say came out of my mouth without permission.

"Because you should know; she's a fantastic lay." I really didn't want to say that. The real Peeta cringed somewhere deep inside of me and scolded 'hijacked Peeta' for such bad form.

Despite keeping his face completely neutral, I saw Gale's hands ball into fists where they hung against his legs and he took a long moment to respond. Just long enough for me to get one last dig in.

"Yeah…go ahead and do it." I said resting my head back against the wall and pulling the blanket around me a little better with a shrug. "Beat up her crippled boyfriend, you already killed her little sister. That would just be the icing on the proverbial cake." I even yawned at the end of the sentence while 'real Peeta' begged me to stop hurting Katniss' oldest friend.

"Listen, Mellark." Gale said taking just one step closer to me. His voice was icy cold and his calm exterior showed just a hint of fracturing. "I don't know what the 'voices in your head' told you that you saw yesterday morning…" He said moving slowly to sit on the edge of the bed closest to me. "But it was not real." He emphasized the 'not real' in the same way he and the other soldiers in the Star Squad had on those nights I asked question after question around the fire at our campsite.

This was just enough to make me lift my head and glare at him. "You don't know what I saw." I spat out and cursed the angry tears that welled in my eyes. "You don't kn…nobody knows, nobody could ever know." I dropped my head forward so that my chin was to my chest trying to hide the tears. Unfortunately, gravity took over and as soon as my eyes fell to my lap, so did my tears. I sniffed them back and wiped my eyes quickly before turning them to stare at a point on the wall.

"You're right." He said quietly, the gentle tone he'd been using before my outburst returning slowly to his voice. "I don't know." He admitted. "My torture…" he said and shifted his shoulders unconsciously, probably thinking of the pain he'd felt each time that whip had come down on his back. "While pretty damn painful, only lasted a few minutes. You were tortured for weeks and in more ways than just physical." He hadn't moved any closer than the end of the bed and both Peeta's fighting for control in my head appreciated that.

"You don't know what I saw, man." I said again but without the venom of the last time. "I know…I know you did kiss her, in the woods one day in 12 before the Victory Tour." It wasn't so hard for me to believe that he would do something like that in a last ditch effort to show Katniss how he felt after a few years of budding, unrequited love. Hell, I would have done exactly the same thing if I was in his position so how could I blame him?

Gale just nodded, not even trying to pretend like it didn't happen. "Yeah, I did." He said with a sigh and looked out the bedroom window, surely remembering that day outside of the fence.

"I just…had to. The Victory Tour was coming up, I knew even before I think you two did that the Capitol would expect you to keep up the charade. I just...felt like I was going to miss my chance to ever show her how I felt if I didn't do it right that second." He smiled sadly. "She looked pretty damn surprised." He said with a chuckle.

I smiled and swiped the corner of the throw under my nose with a sniff and tried to get my emotions under control. It was one thing to be this way in front of Katniss, or have Haymitch take care of me, but Gale and I had a strange connection to each other rooted in our mutual affection for Katniss. It was both a common bond and a point of contention between us.

I couldn't blame the guy though. I hadn't exactly been forthcoming with my feelings for her in all of the years leading up to the first Games we were in together.

"Yeah…I bet." I said with a short laugh and shook my head. "Probably just as surprised as when I told all of Panem I was in love with her on live television. Though I doubt she tried to break your neck after you kissed her."

Gale laughed at that too and shook his head. "Nah, she didn't do anything…" He gave a mirthless laugh at that and cast his eyes to the floor. "I guess that should have given me some idea of where she stood."

I sat up a little better and stretched my good leg out in front of me, reaching down to try and rub some feeling back into it.

"I don't think so." I argued and looked up at him where he still sat on the corner of the bed. "I think it's just that she has a very difficult time sharing how she feels. She's been so concerned with taking care of her family since her father died that she hasn't had time to think like a normal teenage girl."

Gale's brow furrowed and he shrugged his shoulders. "My father died the same time as hers. I've been pre-occupied with taking care of my family too and I still had time to think about…her." He said and I smiled my first real smile in almost 2 days.

"Yeah, well we're guys…" I said as if that explained everything. "We can think about girls even if we're performing brain surgery."

Gale laughed heartily and nodded. "Well I guess you've got me there." He said and looked me over critically in much the way I imagine he'd check over a wounded animal in the forest to assess how hurt it was. "So…you…need anything? Food? Water?..." another smile played at his lips and his eyes fell to the stump where my leg ended just above the knee. "…a leg?"

We both burst out laughing at this and I used the wall and bedside table to slowly pull myself to my feet and Gale stepped forward to grab my arm at the elbow and keep me steady.

"Thanks." I whispered and hopped back over to sit down on my side of the bed, reaching behind me and lifting a piece of the shredded top sheet. "I'm uh…I'm sorry about what I said when you first came in here." I mumbled and looked up to meet his eyes. "This…this thing…I can't control what I do or say when I'm in its grip and…" Gale held up a hand to silence me.

"No worries…" he said passing me my prosthetic which a quickly attached and then stood from the bed again. "Well, how about we start with cleaning this place up? I can't imagine Katniss is gonna be real happy when she comes home and it looks like a pack of wild dogs ran through here." He laughed and I shook my head with a sad smile.

"Nah, just one wild dog." I said trying to joke and Gale shrugged.

"Something tells me she'll probably forgive you." He said handing me a shirt as I tossed the throw back onto the pile of ruined blankets. I could feel his eyes sweep over my scarred skin as I pulled on the shirt. I wasn't used to seeing anyone's reaction to the melted looking skin that covered a good portion of my torso and parts of my arms and legs. Katniss was the only one who saw them regularly and she had similar scarring on a lot of her body as well.

I nodded but said nothing as I grabbed a pair of pants off the floor and pulled them on as well.

"I've got some stew Haymitch left for me down in the refrigerator. I think we'll have some of that first and then worry about cleaning this up." I said heading for the door. I knew letting Gale stay and help me was for the best. I'd never admit it to Katniss or Haymitch lest they start thinking all of their crazy ideas make sense, but I had to admit, talking to someone who loved Katniss as much as I did helped me to remember what I felt for her before the hijacking. Seeing those feelings I knew were somewhere inside me reflecting back in his eyes reminded me why I fell in love with Katniss in the first place. It reminded me of that pretty girl with the braids who had no idea the effect she could have on a boy from the Seam, a boy from Town, or on a nation who would fight in her name for the freedom they so desperately longed for.

"That sounds like a great idea. I don't think I'll ever get tired of having food so readily available like it is now." Gale admitted and followed me down to the kitchen. "Oh, hey, wait. I have something for you." He said and I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to face him. I frowned watching him dig around in his pants pocket, wondering what he possibly could have to give me.

"You're not gonna…pull your hand out and punch me in the face are you?" I asked backing away a little, raising my hands good-naturedly in surrender. "Cause I had two older brothers and they used to do that to me all the time…I'm onto that trick."

Gale shook his head and laughed. "I used to do that to my little brothers too. They hated it." He said opening his hand to reveal Katniss' pearl necklace I'd give her two nights ago right before we had…

Gale laughed softly and placed it in my hand. "Katniss blushed too, when she told me to give it to you." He said rolling his eyes slightly. "I'd ask what that's all about but after what you're less congenial alter ego said to me when I first came over here, I'll just ask you to keep that between you and her instead." He said clapping me on the shoulder which made me look up into his face. "She said to remember when you gave it to her the other night and to let it help you find your way back to her." He said and cleared his throat. I saw a quick flash of sadness pass over his face that I immediately recognized. Getting over Katniss Everdeen was a process I was pretty familiar with.

"Thanks." I said clearing my own throat and waited until he was walking away towards the kitchen to latch the chain around my neck, stopping to toy with the pearl. I peeked towards the kitchen before bringing it to my lips and rolling it back and forth a few times before I whispered 'Always' softly to myself and then followed Gale into the kitchen.

We ended up talking for so long over our afternoon meal that it was after dark when we finally remembered that we were going to clean up the upstairs.

We talked about our old lives in 12, about school and friends, most of whom were now gone. We shared stories about our families, gaining some insight from each other on what it was to be the oldest and the youngest in a family of boys, or in Gale's case, mostly boys. We talked about painting, and hunting, and wrestling, and baking, but the topic that snuck up on us between every other story, was Katniss.

We each shared the first time we'd seen her, when we first met her, when we first knew we'd loved her. I heard the story of their first meeting in the woods when Gale had thought she said her name was Catnip and how it had just stuck as a nickname from then on.

I told him about the night he was whipped and how I'd seen how much she cared for him then. I told him about our first meeting with Haymitch when I'd had to clean him up because he was covered in his own vomit, and about the sleeping together on the train because we helped each other with the nightmares plaguing us since the Games. He laughed when I told him about how scandalized Effie was by the whole thing, mistaking traumatized kids for hormonally crazed teens.

"Wow, we better get to work…it's almost 9 o'clock." Gale said with a groan and stretched his arms over his head. He didn't mention anything about going to see Katniss or Haymitch and I appreciated that. We headed back up the stairs together and he thanked me for the meal and the conversation.

"No problem, and thanks for helping me clean up here. I really do appreciate it…especially since it…might not just be the bedroom that I destroyed…" I murmured as we strode down the hallway.

Gale threw a look over his shoulder at me and stopped to look up and down the hall. "Meaning?" he asked stretching out his arms and back in anticipation of the task to come.

"Well…I might have also destroyed part of my art room here…though it's not as big as the one in my old house if that makes any difference…" I chuckled and headed into the bedroom and over to the bed to start pulling the sheets off.

I looked up as Gale moved over to the other side of the bed to help me and noticed he had stopped dead and was staring down at the bed where I'd just removed the blankets to reveal the spots of blood from the other night. Jeez.

"Awkward." I said finally after almost a full minute of silence from both of us. Gale's eyes shifted up to mine and we both reached up to scratch the backs of our necks embarrassedly.

"Uh…I'm gonna go start on the art room." Gale said pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

"Cool. See ya later." I said quickly after, just wanting this moment to pass as quickly as possible.

I watched him go and as soon as I heard the door to the art room open and close, I quickly grabbed the fitted sheet and yanked it off the bed, throwing it in the pile of ruined bed clothes on the floor.

I stared at the pile for a moment before my eyes moved slowly around the rest of the room, surveying the damage I'd done. "Well evil Peeta." I said to myself and folded my arms over my chest. "At least I can rest easy knowing you're in here too and have to help me with the work." I growled and stretched my own arms and back before setting to work.

Gale and I found each other around 3 a.m., back in the kitchen grabbing a drink of water and a quick bite. "I'm about finished in there." I said and Gale nodded while swallowing a mouthful of cheese bun.

"Same here, I was just going to head back to your old house, I…I hope it's okay with you that I stayed there last night…" he asked and I excused him with a wave of my hand.

"Yeah, no worries I only go over there to bake for the town now anyway and I can't really do that until I'm feeling myself again." I shrugged and propped my prosthetic up on the extra kitchen chair. "You could stay here if you wanted, take the couch or one of the extra rooms. I feel a little better when someone else is in the house with me anyway." I admitted around a mouthful of bread.

Gale thought on this for a minute while he chewed on the last of his cheese bun. "Got any more of these for the morning?" he asked with raised eyebrows and I smiled and nodded.

"Katniss eats them with almost every meal so I keep a pretty steady stream of them baking throughout the week." I explained and he nodded. It was settled. In a very manly, grunt and scratch kind of way, but settled nonetheless.

We headed out into the living room, Gale plopping down on the couch and me into the recliner with the thought that we'd watch a little T.V. until we were tired.

Haymitch found us in the same place when he stopped by to check on us in the morning.

"Hey, Hawthorne." He said starling us both awake as he kicked one of Gale's feet off of the coffee table where it was propped. "You were supposed to call us yesterday so we knew the kid didn't off ya." He growled and looked between the two of us, not quite sure what to make of the situation.

Gale sat up with a yawn and stretched his arms behind his head. "He didn't off me." He said with a smirk and I grinned at Haymitch just because he was scowling and I wanted to get a rise out of him.

"Miss me?" I asked and punched him gently in the shoulder as I walked past him on my way to the downstairs bathroom. Haymitch just rolled his eyes and headed for the kitchen, probably to start a pot of coffee for the three of us.

"Well you look better." He called after me and I left the door open a smidge so I could hear him while I relieved my aching bladder.

"Thanks, you look chipper as always, Haymitch!" I called back and heard him grumble something and then Gale reply but couldn't make out the words. I washed my hands and headed for the kitchen, dropping into my usual chair as Haymitch placed a mug of tea in front of me and a mug of coffee in front of Gale who was sitting in Katniss' seat.

"Feel up to a visit from the girl?" he asked and I shook my head vehemently, surprising both Haymitch and Gale. I just didn't feel like enough time had passed considering the how bad I was only days before. The idea that I could possibly hurt Katniss was even more abhorrent to me now that we were physically involved than before. I reached up and touched the pearl resting against my throat and looked down into my mug of tea.

"I just don't feel like it's safe yet. I mean…not that I didn't work some stuff out with Gale last night…and I feel better today…but I just think I need another day or so to make sure I'm really, totally back." I said still looking into the tea. I knew Haymitch and Gale were exchanging a look that meant they'd talk later.

"Are you sure that's what you want?" Haymitch asked and I released an exasperated sigh and glared at him.

"Of course it's not what I want!" I yelled and then took a deep breath to calm myself down. "What I want is to be able to see her and…and hold her and tell her everything is alright, but I'm just a little bit worried that I might try to strangle her if I see her right now, so you can understand my hesitance."

Haymitch and Gale shared another look and then Haymitch reached for the flask he'd set on the table, and raised it in my direction. "Point taken." He said pouring some liquor into his coffee with one hand. "Cheese bun?" he asked holding the tray out to me with the other.

I reached out and grabbed one from the pile and then leaned back in my chair and took a bite as I stared out the kitchen window at Haymitch's front door, wondering if there would ever be a time in my life when hurting Katniss wouldn't be something I feared.