In The Chasm Between

Peeta POV

Someone tell me the conversation on the tracks didn't happen. Please, someone tell me she didn't say that. Tell me, please, that she didn't. Of course, I know she did. I knew some of it was an act. I knew it I knew it I knew it. Why do I never listen to myself? I KNEW something was wrong. But she said not all of it, but I chose not to hear that, I chose to ask the one question I knew would destroy me and then I destroyed her with my response. I can feel it in her. She's standing so close I can feel the vibrations as she closes her eyes and swallows hard. I swear she looks like she's going to…but she won't, she's Katniss, she won't. She never cried in the Games, well, only when she needed to. To please Haymitch. How I ever thought to trust them. But I still trust her. I know she loves me somewhere, somehow. I don't care anymore, there's nothing more I can give. But I can't give up. Not on her. Not on the mockingjay. She saved my life. She saved me. And that's what's running through my mind as I hold out my hand to her, swallow hard, and say the words I never want to say again. "One more time? For the audience?" she flinches, but takes my hand, grips it tight. I love her. The grip in her hand seems to tell me she does love me too, but how am I ever going to see that through the pain of knowing she and Haymitch concocted some of our 'romance' from thin air based on my own love and foolish admission on live TV.

I've hurt her. I can't help but feel it in the tight grip of her hand in mine, the tremor running through her frame as she tries to hold herself together. And then there's me. Stoic and strong. There's nothing I can do. I just have to survive. She must hate me. I've really messed things up this time. Why else would she look at me with that amount of pain in her eyes? I hate myself.

But I didn't do anything. Except tell the whole of Panem that I've loved Katniss since I was 5. Except get close to her. Except save her life. Except accepting her show of love in the arena and then ruin everything in the one moment she most needs support.

What have I done?

~#~

I hear her screams three houses away. They're loud and clear and blood-curdling and ear-splitting and I know the terror and I know the pain and I just want to be able to hold her close and wake her up and calm her down and love her until she calms and sleeps in my arms, nestled against my body, sharing my body heat in a tight sleeping bag in a cave by a river in the arena which ruined our lives. Or in the narrow bed in her train car knowing we'll be woken by Effie or an Avox or simply wake up naturally having shared a night of mutual terror and love.

What have I done?

There is nothing more to do. I must live, loving her, and carry on saving her life.