log: peeta+katniss WHO: Peeta Mellark + Katniss Everdeen WHEN: Right when the curse breaks! April 17. WHERE: The flower shop in Storybrooke WHAT: Peeta and Katniss both get snapped back to reality while still in Storybrooke, and Peeta does not handle it well at all. WARNINGS: N/A, references to Peeta's brainwashing/etc.
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Peter's relationship with Annie was strained lately, and he knew he had to make up for it. He still loved her, even if things were stressful and complicated, and they never fully resolved their fights. He wanted to be a better husband, a better father, and he knew that he'd been difficult with her when it came to allowing her to be a good mother. Before their next baby came, they needed to focus on each other and repairing their family.
Did he love her?
Yes. He did. Annie had been with him this whole time, almost his whole life, and she'd always been his friend. Maybe that was when things changed, when they got thrown into adulthood too early and Peter was suddenly taking care of a family and a business when he was far too young to be juggling it all. It made him resentful, it made him long to do the things that other young men his age were doing, and while he was always going to have the highest respect and admiration for Annie, was it love?
Romantic love, not just friendship. He knew Annie was his friend, but he didn't know if he loved her in the way that a husband was meant to love his wife. He didn't have any point of comparison.
He just knew that he'd done wrong and he wanted to make things right.
So he came to see Katrina at the florist, without Meadow in tow this time, and he was browsing the displays in an attempt to find something that Annie would really like. He didn't have much money to spend on frivolous things, but this didn't count as frivolous. This was a kind gesture that he was sure she needed.
--
There was no way he could have known it, but Katrina’s train of thought had been running along the same lines recently in regards to her marriage. They’d somewhat patched things up, though, so she was feeling a little bit steadier.
What she really wanted to know was what the hell her father was hiding. Why he’d called Neal by a different name, and why Henry had said that name, too. Why that same name had made her feel strange, as if she ought to know it, and know what it meant. That was impossible. She had never heard it before. But she had been turned it over in the back of her mind as she worked, clipping and arranging the flowers on display.
Until Peter had come in.
Despite her best efforts to ignore him, there was still something about him that held her attention, whether she liked it or not. She greeted him when he came in the door, but let him browse while she finished what she was doing. Once the rose bouquet was done and put in its place, she glanced over at him, biting her lip.
And then she moved over to stand nearby, putting her hands in her pockets. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
--
Peter glanced over, smiling faintly when he noticed that Katrina was close. He liked her. She always made his heart skip a little beat when she was nearby. "I, uh. Yeah, how do I say 'I want to figure our stuff out' in flowers?"
He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "Baby stuff. Annie and I are a little stressed out about things and I just want to say I'm sorry, and let her know that I …"
There was a flash, a rush of energy, something Peter wouldn't be able to explain or describe later because he was more concerned about the fact that everything in his brain seemed to just short-circuit for a second. He stopped mid-sentence, looking down at his hands, then around at his surroundings, then reached down to touch his prosthetic leg.
When he looked up again at Katrina, he said her name -- but it wasn't her name.
"--Katniss?" Quiet, uncertain, like he was trying it out for the first time. Katniss. Katrina. Katniss.
--
Katrina’s eyebrows raised, and then she quickly returned her expression to neutral. It was the first she’d heard that Annie and Peter’s marriage wasn’t as adorable and perfect as it seemed, and for some reason it made her feel better about everything that she and Finn had gone through recently. Even though their problems had absolutely nothing to do with babies.
She wasn’t entirely comfortable listening to him go into the details, though, so she glanced around, trying to think of a suggestion for him. There were different meanings for all the flowers, but she’d always thought many of them were stupid; flowers meant different things to different people. She’d always thought that roses, for instance, were way too overrated.
But before she could make any suggestions, everything changed. She was staring at a sunflower, thinking vaguely of Lynn and how much she’d liked them, wondering if Annie would like them, too -- and then the world seemed to shift around her. Except the world was the same; the change was inside her head, and she was seeing everything entirely differently. She caught a whiff of roses, and horror rose up inside her.
Then she heard her name, and turned her head, her gaze fixing on Peeta.
“Peeta.” Not Peter. And she was Katniss, not Katrina.
She barely realized she’d said his name aloud, but she moved forward immediately, reaching for him. The world looked different, and he was the most different of all. He wasn’t the boy who’d asked her to prom, the baker she’d admired from afar; he was her ally, her friend, her lover, her husband. And she knew that look in his eyes all too well; he was struggling to hang on to reality, to determine what was happening around him.
She couldn’t blame him for that. Their heads had been messed with, again. Her mind was relatively stable, she could be jolted back to reality -- whatever strange reality this was -- and make sense of the confusion, but there was still something fundamentally broken inside his head, something that made it difficult to tell what was real.
Her hands went to his chest, one of them near his shoulder, the other over his ribs. The touch was to steady her as much as it was him - if not more. “It’s me, I’m here. I’m real.”
--
But who was she?
Peeta stared at her like he knew her but didn't know why. His heart was pounding underneath Katniss's hand, his breaths starting to come in rapid, shallow gasps. He didn't know this place. There was no shop with flowers in Mount Weather. But there was no Mount Weather. There was … where was District Twelve? Who was Katrina? She was Katrina. No, she wasn't.
The rush of thoughts in his head went unspoken. His brain couldn't sort out his thoughts. It was like the bread slicer in his shop: feed it one loaf and it would slice things easily. Shove too many things into the slicer too fast and it wasn't able to keep up and it would just destroy the bread entirely.
He stared at her still, his eyes glassy, and then he had to tear his eyes away from her and look around the shop. There was a clock and rack of cards behind him. He knew that even though he hadn't turned around. He knew this place, but he'd never been here.
--
Reassuring him of who she was - that was something she’d had to do more than once. But he was looking at her differently now. Usually, when he forgot her, he looked absolutely terrified of her. Now, he knew her, but he still looked completely disoriented.
Katniss did the only thing she could think of, what her doctors had once told her to do. “Your name is Peeta Mellark,” she said quietly. “You’re from District Twelve. We were in Mount Weather. Now we’re in… Storybrooke.”
She knew that name. Not from the life she’d supposedly had here - she’d heard it before that. “This place is… magical, I think. Magic made you think you were someone else. Peter Rusk, the baker.” Peter, who was married to Annie. Who had kids. She should have said that out loud, but it made her heart wrench so painfully that she couldn’t.
Closing her eyes briefly, she took a small step closer to him. “I thought I was Katrina. Katrina Magby. I’m not. I’m Katniss Everdeen. Katniss Mellark.”
--
Peeta brought his attention back to her, still staring at her like he didn't get it. "I'm…" All of these named made sense to him. All of these things seemed right, they all seemed real, and that couldn't be true. He was only one person, he couldn't be two.
"Stop talking," he snapped, lifting his hands and covering his ears. Katniss. Katniss. Katniss had done things to hurt him. He knew that. That was real? No, it wasn't. Yes, it was. Don't trust Katniss. Don't believe Katniss. She was a liar. She wasn't Katrina. She wasn't who she said she was.
Those were logical thoughts, but they all came in a mess, one on top of another, and Peeta turned away to pace the length of the room like a frightened, caged animal.
--
It was the first time in her life that Katniss had ever felt anything other than afraid, hollow, and full of dread to see him like this. It was a strange feeling, watching him struggle, watching him pace, to realize how relieved she was. He was a mess, but he was himself. Her Peeta. Not Peter, the person he’d been for weeks, who belonged to someone else. Unpleasant as this was to watch, it was familiar territory.
“Peeta, listen to me.” She knew he didn’t want to, and she also knew that was because the wrong part of his mind had gotten control of him for a moment. She followed after him, putting herself in front of him. “The Capitol hijacked your mind, made it hard to trust me. This place, this magic-- it gave you even more false memories. I know that’s confusing, I know it’s hard to sort it all out, but try.”
Staring into his face, at his wild eyes, all she could feel was how much she’d missed him. It was an ache so powerful that it felt like homesickness, like the emptiness of starvation, all rolled into one. He would figure this out and come back to her, because he had to; she wouldn’t accept any other possibility.
She couldn’t help but keep pushing at him, needing him to remember, needing to get through to him. “Do you remember me? Do you remember us, together? That's real. The most real and important thing.”
--
Peeta searched her expression. He knew who she was. He had too many memories of her, too many pieces that just didn't fit. Two -- no, three -- versions of events were competing for space, smashing together.
"Meadow," he said quietly, his gaze shifting past her and toward the door.
--
Katniss couldn’t tell what that silent gaze meant, but he didn’t seem to be afraid of her. That was something, at least. She held his gaze, unsure what else he needed from her.
Until he said his daughter’s name and looked away, and then her gaze dropped towards the floor. Of course he was worried about Meadow. She was even a little worried about the little girl, whether she was Peeta’s actual daughter or not. But most of all, she was painfully, jealously aware of the fact that whoever Meadow was, she was Peeta’s family, and not Katniss’s.
“Yeah,” she said, making herself speak. “She was… here. I don’t know if she still is.”
--
"She's real?"
Peeta didn't know what 'real' meant anymore, if that was the case. Katniss said he wasn't really Peter Rusk, but he really had a daughter. There was a little girl, and he was her father, and that didn't match up with the rest of the pieces. Was she … imaginary? Was she not really his? He couldn't wrap his head around her simply not existing. He'd held her when she was born, he'd fathered her. The memories were fuzzy, and every time he thought about them they were fuzzier, but they were there.
--
“She…” Katniss didn’t know how to answer that. “She was here, and she was your daughter in the same way that Annie was your wife. I don’t know where she came from, or who she really is.”
That probably didn’t make him feel better, or answer what he really wanted to know, but all she could give him was the truth. Some of the roles in their lives had been filled by people they already knew, but she had never seen Meadow before they’d come here to Storybrooke.
--
"That doesn't make sense," Peeta mumbled, turning away and raking a hand back through his hair. "None of this makes sense."
--
“I know.”
Katniss’ voice came out rough, and she crossed her arms across her chest, her hands going to her upper arms. She felt vulnerable, and helpless when it came to explaining everything, and the combination of the two was miserable. She wanted to do something that would make this easier on him, at least, but she had no idea what that could be.
“It’s just… magic. It must be. Except instead of taking me back to a different point in my life, it -- gave all of us a whole new life. And then took it away again.”
--
"Why?" Peeta snapped, though he wasn't angry with her. There were too many thoughts, too many ideas, and Peeta felt so overwhelmed that the only thing he could do was shout.
The answer to his question wouldn't have made him feel better. He leaned against the counter before sinking down to sit on the floor, his eyes staring out but seeing little. Magic. Magic. Magic wasn't real.
--
Katniss had no answer to that - except for I don’t know - so she said nothing. Logically, she was fairly certain the tone wasn’t really intended for her, but since she was already hurting, it was hard not to take it personally.
But after staying where she was for a moment, she moved over to him and sat down beside him. She really wanted to lean against him, but she left a little bit of space in between them. All of his body language had been to look away, turn away, and she didn’t want to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with.
Maybe she should have put more distance between them, but she really didn’t want to. Nothing she said seemed to be helping, either, so she sat there, quietly, waiting.
--
It was difficult to watch. Peeta was doing his best to try and sort it out in his mind, but he was crumbling in on himself, covering his ears like that would block out his thoughts. It didn't feel like the last few weeks had been a dream. It felt like the last few weeks had been real. This place was real, so why weren't their lives?
He shook his head, wiping clumsily at his eyes and trying his best to hide the growing panic he was feeling. "I want to go home," he said instinctively, but he didn't know where that was.
--
“Which one?” Katniss asked, quietly. “We could probably go back to the bakery - your bakery, The Upper Crust. Or the magic might take us back to Mount Weather soon. I - don’t know if we can get back to Panem.”
And if they did go back to Panem, they’d forget all of this. But maybe that was preferable to the alternative.
--
Peeta stared at her. Those answers didn't do anything to inform him of what his real home was. Panem. He was born there. But he was also born in Storybrooke. These were two things he knew to be true, though one felt more true than the other. And yet, they weren't in Panem. They were in Storybrooke. That either meant that his memories of growing up in District Twelve were wrong, or he was hallucinating this whole place.
"Fine," he said quietly.
--
“Which one do you want, Peeta?” Katniss understood that the reality of each of them was confusing, but the truth was, each was real in its own way. He wanted to go home, and she needed to know what that meant - which home he missed. If it was one of the homes - and lives - where she was part of his life, or not.
She knew which one she wanted. She missed their room in Mount Weather, and the life they’d made there. But that didn’t mean much if he wanted something different. And, ultimately, it didn’t matter where they wanted to be, because they might not get it. She just needed to know how to recreate that feeling of being home for him, as much as was possible.
“If you could be anywhere right now, somewhere that you felt safe, where would it be?”
--
Peeta glanced at her, his brow furrowed. He didn't answer right away, because he didn't have anything to say that made him feel certain.
After a moment, he reached out and touched her hand, then squeezed it. He stopped trying to rely on facts, and tried to rely on his instincts and feelings — and those instincts were saying that it didn't matter where he was, as long as Katniss was there. That was safe.
--
Katniss’ fingers curled around his immediately, and she offered him a small smile, although her eyes were stinging a little bit. It was the first sign that he felt something positive about having regained his memories of her, instead of just confusion and upset. She could hardly blame him for that, but still, the gesture meant a lot to her.
“I’m here,” she repeated, voice rough with emotion. “Wherever we end up, I’m here. I -- missed you.”
--
"I missed you, too," Peeta murmured. He knew that. He knew that something hadn't been right. He knew that she was the person he wanted to spend his time with, that Katniss was his home. He knew that people had tried to break that, had tried to take him from her and make him hate her, but that wasn't real. He knew that much, even if he couldn't reconcile his surroundings with what he thought he knew.
He squeezed her hand tightly, holding on like a lifeline. "I… I don't know what's going on," he breathed, his voice shaking. "But I know you."
--
Katniss shifted over, closing the small distance between them. She’d asked him to tell her where he felt like home, and he’d reached for her. The same was true for her, too, only she wasn’t satisfied by just holding onto his hand. She let go of it only to wrap her arms around his shoulders instead, leaning into him, pressing the side of her face against his neck.
“I don’t know what’s going on, either,” she said honestly. It was easier for her, because she could distinguish the strangeness around her from the confusion inside her mind, but that didn’t mean she understood what had happened to them. “But I know you, too. That’s the most important thing. We’ll figure everything else out, okay?”
--
"Okay," Peeta breathed. That, at least, he knew to be true.