Five to Twelve Chapter 22, a hunger games fanfic

A/N: Thank you everybody for all of the continued support, faves, follows and reviews. I just have to tell you that getting an email telling me there's a new follower, favor or review of the story is seriously better than Christmas.

Shout Out to english5672 for inspiring the song list. I lifted a lot of it from her awesome Gadge one-shot "I Think I Wanna Marry You."

Thanks, as always, to my MightyBeta team, dandelionsunset and evilgrinstar.

Chapter 21—recovery

After Katniss left to get Mr. Mellark, Mrs. Everdeen started working on Peeta, who was still leaning on Prim. Mrs. Everdeen was not the quiet, distracted woman he'd met just a couple of nights before. Instead, she was focused and business-like. She began by examining his knee. It didn't take long for her to conclude, like he had earlier, that he had given himself a bad bruise but nothing else.

His back, however...

Mrs. Everdeen and Prim helped Peeta lie on his stomach. "I need to determine whether any ribs have broken off. That means I have to touch your back. It won't be pleasant and I apologize for that," Mrs. Everdeen explained.

She poked and prodded. It felt like he was being stabbed with dull knives. Prim held his hand tightly. "Breathe, Peeta," she encouraged him. "I know it hurts, but breathe."

When Mrs. Everdeen pressed over the bruise on his lower back, it seemed like a good time to pass out for a few minutes. When he came to, Prim and Mrs. Everdeen were talking about things like "renal injury" and "fluid output." Prim was no longer holding his hand but she was resting one small hand on his head.

Mrs. Everdeen walked out of the room. Prim stepped back from the table and bent over at the waist so that she could look Peeta in the eye. Peeta tried not to smile at the look on her face. When Katniss scowled, it was fierce and sexy. When Prim scowled, it was the cutest thing he'd ever fucking seen.

"Peeta, you should have listened to Katniss! Why didn't you come here?"

Peeta tried to shrug but found he couldn't. "I needed to talk to her before I lost my nerve," he admitted.

This reason did not impress Primrose Everdeen. "Well, you're an idiot. You've made whatever damage your mother inflicted much worse. You're probably not leaving here for a few days. And Katniss blames herself."

"This isn't her fault. She wanted to bring me here right away, but I insisted we go," he protested.

"I know, but Katniss always feels responsible when the people she cares about are hurting."

Well, great, he thought. He finally grows a pair and tells her how he feels. How did he follow that up? He treated her like a heel by jumping to the wrong conclusion when she refused his drawing. Then he was so weak that she had to basically carry him to her mother for treatment. Now she blamed herself for the injuries his mother inflicted, and that Peeta himself exacerbated.

Mrs. Everdeen walked back in and asked Prim for help. They placed a sheet over the lower half of Peeta's body. Peeta could hear them working at the sink and the stove behind him. Mrs. Everdeen started talking. "Peeta, your kidney is bleeding, which means it's been damaged in some way. Hopefully, it's just a bruise and you'll be OK in a couple of days. If it's a puncture or laceration, that is much more serious and honestly, we can't do much, absent a trip to the Capitol." Because going to the Capitol required an invitation, that was as good as a death sentence. Or at least a sentence to a long, lingering, painful illness.

"I'm putting you on a liquid diet for the next day or so," Mrs. Everdeen continued. "You need a lot of fluids to keep your kidneys flushed out. With your father's permission, I'll keep you sedated on sleep syrup for day or two. It will restrict your movement and allow your kidney to heal up. All that walking around you did this morning irritated your kidney and likely caused more bleeding."

Mrs. Everdeen and Prim kept working. Peeta smelled something herbal, almost medicinal. Peeta dozed, never unaware of the pain he was in. He had almost completely fallen asleep when Rye, Katniss and his father walked in.

One look at Katniss' face told Peeta that Prim was right. Katniss blamed herself. This made him even angrier at his father, so when Farl placed his hand on Peeta's head, he snapped, "Don't." Farl didn't deserve to make himself feel better by offering comfort to Peeta.

Katniss, on the other hand, had nothing to be sorry for and he wanted her to know that. When she squeezed his hand, he kept holding on. If they hadn't been surrounded by people, he would have kissed it. Peeta drifted off again for awhile, then Katniss told him she needed to speak with Rye. He missed the warmth of her hand when she left. At some point, Mrs. Everdeen woke him up and said they were moving him to a cot. Rye and Katniss helped him sit up, and Mrs. Everdeen handed him a cup of what looked like tea. It tasted horrible, but he drank the whole thing without complaint. Prim informed him it was yarrow tea, and would help with the bleeding.

Rye and Katniss helped Peeta walk to a medical cot which had been set up perpendicular to the sofa, so that they formed an "L." Mrs. Everdeen gave him a dose of sleep syrup and told him he'd probably sleep until supper.

Katniss and Rye helped him settle on his side. Rye and Katniss shared a look, then Rye left the room. Katniss tucked a blanket around Peeta's legs and his front, leaving his back untouched. She brushed the hair off of his face.

He glanced up at her. She had tears in her eyes. He felt like kicking himself. All he'd ever wanted was to cherish her and let her know how wonderful she was. Instead, he'd made her feel bad about things that weren't her fault and she'd spent most of her morning crying. "Please don't cry, Katniss. Not your fault," he mumbled. But before he could say anything else, he felt the pull of the syrup and surrendered to sleep.

When Peeta woke up, he saw Rye sitting on the Everdeen's sofa, tuning his guitar. Prim sat on the floor facing Rye, discussing the band's songlist with him. It was night, and the room was softly lit with candles. Peeta watched Prim and Rye for a few moments before attempting to speak. Rye had a gentle look on his face that Peeta rarely saw. Prim seemed to bring out the best in everybody.

Peeta was about to say something when Katniss walked in. She looked at him, and called over her shoulder to tell her mother that Peeta was awake.

Rye put down his guitar and came over to Peeta. "I'm under orders from Mrs. Everdeen to get you to the bathroom, and help you pee into a bowl," Rye said. "So, lucky me. Let's go."

Rye helped him to the bathroom, then let out a string of very quiet and extremely profane curses when he saw how much blood was in Peeta's urine. He handed Peeta a change of shorts and a pair of sweatpants. He'd also brought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a stick of deodorant. "I went back home and got you a couple of changes of clothes. You can wear a shirt if you want, but Mrs. E. says it'll be easier if you don't have to keep taking it on and off. And I figured you'd like to smell decent as long as you're here."

"Can't hurt. I don't imagine I've left all that great an impression on Katniss today."

"Oh, I don't know," Rye mused as Peeta brushed his teeth. "She sure tucked you in a lot while you slept, ran her fingers through your hair when she thought nobody was paying attention. She kept looking at you like she wanted to pick you up and cuddle you."

"That's just guilt. She blames herself for this," Peeta confided as he spat toothpaste into the sink. "I thought Prim was going to slap me earlier today for making Katniss feel bad." He managed to get a couple of swipes of deodorant under each arm. He wasn't daisy-fresh or anything, but at least he didn't smell like a corpse.

After Peeta washed his hands, he and Rye came out to find all three Everdeen women in the kitchen. Mrs. Everdeen ordered Peeta to sit at the table, where a large mug of steaming broth and a glass of water were waiting for him. "We've all had our dinner, but that's for you. Drink all of it, please," she said, before walking into the bathroom.

Peeta looked a little forlornly at the broth. He was in a lot of pain and only wanted to lie down again. Katniss must have seen the look on his face, because she said, "Just drink it up and get it over with. Gag it down if you have to. Otherwise, you'll be sitting here all night."

Katniss, Rye and Prim sat with him and made small talk while he drank his turkey broth and water. He learned that Rye had stayed for dinner, which was turkey, dandelion salad and mashed katniss.

If he'd been feeling better, he would have been jealous of Rye. He'd only had turkey once or twice in his life.

Still, the broth was actually delicious. "It's a shame neither of us hunts," he told Rye. "Turkey broth would improve stale bread quite a bit." The girls look confused, so Rye explained that for the most part, they only ate the baked goods that were too stale to sell.

Mrs. Everdeen came back in and told Peeta that the bleeding had not improved yet but that she didn't expect to see results until tomorrow. He was ordered back to the cot. "Be as still as you can for another hour or so before I give you a dose of syrup for the night. Don't forget to empty your bladder first." Mrs. Everdeen continued to explain which of his bodily functions she was concerned about. Peeta didn't consider himself squeamish, but Rosemary's clinical detachment was a little off-putting.

Katniss waived away Rye's offer to help Peeta back onto the cot. She rolled one of the extra blankets up to support Peeta's back. She sat down on the floor and leaned her back against the cot, about even with his stomach. He placed his hand on her shoulder and caressed it with his thumb. She didn't seem to mind. "Rye needs to teach me some new songs," she explained to Peeta, "so we're going to have kind of a mini-rehearsal here. Hope that's alright."

Prim sat at one end of the sofa and Rye sat at the other. For the next hour, Rye and Katniss worked on songs. Every few minutes, Mrs. Everdeen would stand in the doorway for a moment, one hand on the doorjamb, head down, eyes closed, listening to Katniss sing. Then she'd step back into the kitchen. Peeta knew that Mrs. Everdeen had all but abandoned her daughters a few years ago, but he still wondered what it would be like to live with a mother who could just stop and enjoy her child's talent instead of tearing it down every opportunity she had.

Rye worked on a few songs that Katniss already knew, but had her learn a few new ones, too. Apparently, Rye was looking for Katniss to add more love songs to her repertoire, because he taught her "A Thousand Years", "Barefoot", "Come Away With Me" and "The Air that I Breathe." Rye asked her to make a few changes here and there, but for the most part, Rye seemed happy with Katniss' musical instincts.

Peeta knew he would never tire of hearing her voice. For a girl who struggled to express herself with words, she had an uncanny way of making a song speak directly to the listener. He wondered if she was even aware of how much emotion she put into her singing.

But as much as Peeta didn't want to miss a single moment of her singing, exhaustion and pain kept dragging him into a weird half-sleep. He wasn't asleep enough to escape the pain, but he wasn't awake enough to enjoy being with Katniss. Once, he awoke to find that he had pulled the end of her braid up onto the cot and tangled his fingers into it. Katniss hadn't complained, or taken it out of his hand, or even woken him up. Instead, she'd just removed the elastic on the end of her braid so it would have a little more give.

After an hour or so, Mrs. Everdeen made him get up and use the restroom. Then Rye said he needed to leave. He told Peeta he would stop by tomorrow, and asked whether he needed anything.

Peeta did. "Tell Bannock I need to speak with him."

"Bannock? Why the hell do you want to talk to Bannock?" Rye and Bannock didn't get along well.

"To see if I can live with him and Nikki," explained Peeta. Rye said he'd deliver the message on his way home tonight, and left.

Mrs. Everdeen gave Peeta his sleep syrup, then went to bed. Prim also told Peeta goodnight and practically sprinted from the room. Katniss walked around the living room, blowing out candles. Her braid had come completely undone and her black hair hung in silky waves over her shoulders and down her back. Peeta couldn't help but stare at her.

When there was only one candle left burning, Katniss knelt next to his cot and gently tucked him in. She ran her fingers through his hair, brushing his bangs from his face like she had earlier. He could still see guilt on her face, so he took her other hand and kissed her knuckles. Before she could do anything more than gasp a little, he said, "Stop blaming yourself."

Katniss sighed, "She was angry with me and my mother. I hate that she took it out on you."

"Katniss, if she was angry with my father, she took it out on us. If she was angry with a customer, she took it out on us. If she was in a bad mood, she took it out on us. It's always been like this. The only differences between this beating and all the others are that I finally stood up to her, and I'm here instead of Bay's apothecary. You are not at fault for any of this."

"Neither are you, Peeta." She stopped stroking his bangs and let her hand rest on his jaw and cheek.

He was looking at her face when she said this. All those years of reading her emotions finally paid off now that he had the context to put them in. The little crease in between her eyebrows said she was worried about him. The bottom lip caught in her teeth showed that she was holding onto lingering guilt. The tension in her shoulders and neck proved that she was angry at his parents. And the tenderness in her eyes meant that she cared about him. She cared.

He'd have given anything right then to have had the ability to sit up and pull her into a kiss. He settled for kissing her hand one more time.

"Mom gave you enough sleep syrup to get you through the night but if anything goes wrong, or if you need help, Prim and I are just one room over. Call out and one of us will come right out, OK?"

Peeta nodded and whispered his thanks. Katniss stayed there, humming softly until he fell asleep. And even though he was exhausted and in deep pain, for the first time in his life, Peeta felt genuinely and honestly loved.

Chapter songlist