A/N: You had to expect this coming. You had to. Peeta starts.
"No." That's my first and immediate response. We were so close to being perfectly happy. So close. ~
"Yes. If they need me, I'll be doing it for you. I'll fight for you, Peeta." ~
"Haven't we fought and suffered enough?!" I sit up. I can't let him do this. I won't. ~
"I can do it, though!" I'm so sure I can get it done. Whatever Coin wants me to do, I'll do it. "It's something that I have to do!" ~
"You've done so much already!" I cry. "You said you'd only do this if I didn't get hurt, and I have the same condition! I'm not helping them if you insist on fighting." I whisper the last part. ~
"Peeta, I want to! The more I help, the faster we can get over this and we can live a normal life finally." I sit up and climb out of the bed. "Isn't that what you wanted?!" ~
"Not at risk of your life!" I snap. "That is not what I wanted! I'm willing to wait as long as I know we're safe!" ~
"I'm doing it for me, too, okay?!" I'm raising my voice more and more. "This isn't all about what you want!" ~
"I never said it was! You asked if it was what I wanted.. And it wasn't." I sigh. "It's not at all." I turn away from him. ~
"Listen to me! If I'm asked to do something, I'll do it. Even if I'm not..." This is something that I need to do. No matter what Peeta says, it probably won't change my mind. This is bigger than the two of us. "I want to kill him, Peeta." ~
"Even if it meant leaving me? Maybe forever?" I whisper, tucking my legs up to my chest. ~
"I could never leave you forever. All I'm saying is that I need to do this no matter what, okay? I love you Peeta, but..." ~
"...but there are more important things. I get it." I put my head on my knees. "What if you die out there?" ~
"No, no! You're the most important thing, I swear! But...they're the reason for all of the bad things that have happened to you. It's personal now." ~
"I never asked you to put your life on the line for me like this," I mutter. "I don't want you to." I may be acting selfish, but I don't care. ~
"You didn't have to." I walk over next to him and reach up to play with his hair in an attempt to calm him down. "I'm sorry." ~
I want to turn and hug him. Hold him and never let him go, never let him go to fight. But I can't. Maybe if he thinks I don't care, he'll stop caring enough to not go and fight. Maybe if I stay upset long enough, he'll stay safe until this is all over. "I think you should go to bed. It's been a long day." I know it isn't nighttime, but I just don't want to talk about this or think about this anymore. ~
"I'm not tired, though...and we aren't finished with this." ~
"I'm finished with this, Cato." ~
I grab his wrist and forcibly turn him to face me. "Well, I'm not!" ~
"Let. Go. Of. Me." I hiss, glaring at him. I don't let out the yelp of pain I wanted to when he grabbed me, but I wouldn't, and my eyes water just slightly. I'm hurt. That's what I feel. I'm hurt. ~
"No!" I pull him closer to me. "We're not done talking about this! At least I'm even letting you know!" ~
"I'm done talking," I get out. ~
Going by instinct, I grab him and throw him onto the bed. Then, I climb on top and pin his arms down to the mattress so that he couldn't get out. "Peeta!" ~
I clamp my mouth shut and shake my head. I won't give into this. I can't lose him. He can't die. Even if it makes him hate me, I won't let him die. ~
"You can't stop me." ~
"Then what do you want me to say?" ~
"I WAS JUST LETTING YOU FUCKING KNOW WHAT I WANTED TO DO!" ~
"AND I SAID WHAT I THOUGHT! THERE'S NOTHING MORE TO SAY, CATO! I DON'T FUCKING CARE!" ~
"Shut the fuck up, you asshole!" I look out the door because he's drawing attention to us. And he only swears like that when he's very angry with me. I don't care. "I don't care what you want me to do, or what you don't want me to do." ~
"Now I'm an asshole, great. And I don't care what you do anymore." I pause and think before saying what I'm going to say. It could save his life. That's all I care about right now. "I don't give a damn what you do. Go out there, fight. Get yourself killed for all I care." ~
Alright, that's it. "Fine. You know what? I'll make it out alive." I get off of him and begin walking over to one of the empty beds about twenty feet away from his. "And I won't come back for you, if that's how you feel." ~
"Don't!" I yell back to him. "I don't want you to come back!" It's breaking my heart. But...it's for our own good. And, at the last moment where I need to stay sane...I break. "I don't care about you!" My voice is shaking and.. "I won't follow you anymore!" It cracks. ~
"I never wanted you to!" I hate him. I hate him. I hate Peeta Mellark. That's what I'm thinking, but it's more like I hate how he's acting right now. "You couldn't have just died in the Games like I wanted you to?!" I don't know what I feel right now, but it isn't exactly happiness and pretty rainbows. "You should've just stayed dead!" Now I'm just horrible. I'm completely out of my mind, now. ~
"Guess it was just your luck, right?! Then why did you stick around?! Just to fuck with me? Maybe I am better off dead." I'm about to break into tears. I turn away from him and lay on the bed, cold and alone. "I hate you, Cato. Get out of my life." ~
He hates me. Just what I wanted. And maybe, maybe I hate how he's acting a little bit, too. No matter how I feel, love him or hate him, I can't stop the stream of horrible comments from leaving my mouth. "I hope that before I kill him, he finds you and beats your scrawny ass to a bloody pulp." I just wanted to go fight for him, for me...and he refuses to let me make my own decision. That's all I wanted. "I stuck around because I thought you were special, but you're not! Now I see what everyone else in Twelve saw in you. NOTHING!" I kick the leg of the bed near me and jump onto the mattress. "I hope your ugly ass never gets better. You won't be able to get along without me. You need me. But you won't have me ever again, if that's how you'd like it to be?" ~
If there were scars to reopen, he opened every one of them. "I hope I die here. I hope I die here, and you regret it for the rest of your life. That this is how you go. That this...this was the last moment of us." I'm crying now. I'm crying because I don't know how something so perfect could have gone wrong. He is perfect. But he loves me too much. More than he loves himself. That he'll die for me. And I can't let him. I may say it, but I could never hate him. When I said forever...I meant forever. But he had to hate me. It was the only way he could live, and, subsequently, the only way I could live. "We're done." ~
"Stop crying! Goddamn it, just stop crying!" I don't know if I hate him for being such a crybaby, or if it breaks my heart to hear him cry. "We're far past done! I hate you so fucking much I can't even stand it!" I don't know if I do or not, or what I'm doing... "And you want to die here? That's quite alright with me. I'd hold you to that." ~
"Why?! Hate to admit you actually cared about me at one point?!" I cry out. "I...could never hate you. I will always love you. I promise." I whisper out of his earshot. ~
"I never cared about you!" I can't remember the time when I did.
No, I do care.
"You were just...a mistake!" The biggest mistake of my life.
No, this is the biggest mistake of my life. Shut up!
"I don't know what came over me, to have saved your ass all those times." Every time. "When I make it out, I can't wait to go back to District Two so that I could be as far away from your whiny ass as much as possible." ~
I stand up not saying a word. "Fuck off." I go to run out of the room, despite protests from the doctor and nurses, but before I reach the elevator my legs give out from beneath me-just as I feared-and I smash to the ground with a cry of pain. Fuck, it hurts. Now that I think about it...they did tell me not to try and stand. ~
I'm not even gonna help him up. "Serves you right!" I don't care, I do care. I hate him, I love him. I don't even want to care or love him anymore. It's too hard and I feel like dying right now. ~
Tears are pouring down my face as the doctors come to pick me up from the ground-from both emotional and physical pain. They lay me in the bed and tell me not to move and to stop yelling, and put some kind of iv in my arm. So I look over to Cato, and say loud enough for him to hear, but without straining my voice, "Emotional and physical checkmate, Cato." ~
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