Peeta Mellark {does not have nightmares} (hauntedbypast) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-07-31 01:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, katniss everdeen, peeta mellark |
WHO: Peeta & Katniss
WHAT: The feelings never cease. No really. They never will.
WHEN: {backdated} 7/22; late evening
WHERE: Everlark apartment
RATING|STATUS: warnings: mentions of torture, death, blah blah usual Hunger Games things | Completed log
Katniss had all but moved in with Peeta and Prim. The cats were here, her clothing was here, most of her belongings were here — all the ones that mattered, at least. What was left in her old apartment was mostly Finnick and Annie’s stuff, which she didn’t have the heart to get rid of. Even (maybe especially) the empty crib. She didn’t want to deal with those memories. She liked coming home to Peeta and Prim, to cupcakes and cheese buns, to the cats that still insisted on clinging to her legs even though Prim was much nicer to them than she was. And at the very end of the day, she’d gotten into the habit of stealing one of Peeta’s shirts from his closet and curling up in the bed they shared, either with him or one of the cats. This time, Gigi was the first to notice that she was lying down, and took full advantage of it, jumping up and attempting to tangle herself in Katniss’s hair. With a put-upon sigh and the ease of long practice, Katniss grabbed her before she could get too wrapped up in it, and Gigi settled down beside her head, instead. When Peeta came in, she shifted to make room for him, tucking her limbs in closer to her body instead of sprawling across the bed. There had been a lot more danger than usual at work recently, and it had gotten her adrenaline going again, her survival instinct roaring back to life, and it was bring back bad memories, making her feel sometimes as though she was still in the arena, playing the game, fighting for her life. She was able to take it mostly in stride because of Peeta, whose strong arms still held her close at night and helped her put it aside to sleep, but it didn’t make everything going on inside her mind disappear. Tonight, though, her mind was preoccupied with him. He helped her through everything, but she still had no idea how he had gotten through so much. “How did you do it?” she asked, out of the blue, before she had thought it through. “Get over the… hijacking.” She didn’t know why she hadn’t asked before. Probably because it had so little impact on her day to day life now that she didn’t tend to think about it. He was vastly different from the Peeta she’d read about in the book, different even from the one who’d been here before, from a different point in time. In truth, she was sometimes able to forget it had even happened to him. -- Just as he’d said he would, Peeta had gone to all the bakeries he could find within walking distance and applied to work there. Most of them were at least willing to let him apply, even though he wasn’t from this world, and after a couple days, he’d heard back from two of them. A handful of interviews and sample baked goods later, and he’d found a job at a bakery he liked, and he thought he was settling in pretty well. The people seemed nice and were willing to help him learn what he was missing, but he’d had a pretty thorough education working with his parents, so he knew a couple tricks even they didn’t know. It was nice, really, to be working, doing something other than simply existing. He felt useful again, and not just in the way that someone needed him to keep nightmares away--which was a good job, honestly, but this was something he could do for himself, that he enjoyed doing. It almost didn’t even feel like work either. The first thing he did when he returned was go to his--their--room so he could change his clothes. There he found Katniss curled up with one of the cats. It made him smile, at least until she asked the question about his recovery. Peeta didn’t answer at first; he turned to face the chest of drawers that held his clothing and pulled his shirt over his head. “A lot of talking with the therapist from 13,” he finally settled on, not sure how to explain the rest. Oh he could tell her the steps he actually took, but all of the mental work was harder. --- She’d chosen the wrong moment to ask that question, Katniss could tell that immediately. But was there really a right moment to ask? Would it have been easier to talk about at a moment when he was currently dealing with the lingering effects of having been brainwashed? Maybe. Or maybe it would have been worse. As it was, she didn’t want to press him, but she knew there had to be more to it than that. A therapist couldn’t convince him that she wasn’t a mutt, a monster to be feared. Could they? “Oh,” was all she said, her curiosity obviously unsatisfied, but willing to let the topic go if it was too hard for him to talk about. She felt cat claws dig into the back of her neck, and lifted a hand to brush them away, almost absentmindedly. -- It wasn’t really that it was too hard, because it wasn’t as hard as it would have been three or six months ago, it was just a little hard to explain, that was all. And he wanted to, because she was clearly very curious--maybe it was more than simple curiosity; maybe she needed to know. Especially if that were the case, he could find the words to explain at least some of the process. “I watched footage of us from the archives,” he told her, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to her, forgetting about replacing his dirty shirt. “Stuff they used in the broadcasts of the Games, stuff they didn’t. We, the therapist and I, watched and talked about it. I knew academically that what I was feeling was based on lies and torture, so we used the truth to change how I felt.” He looked at her, cuddling the cat, and recalled the sheer strength of his hatred and fear for her. “There was also some medication involved,” he admitted. It wasn’t something he particularly liked telling people, mostly because he didn’t very much like to admit he’d been brainwashed by torture and had tried to commit murder a handful of times, and that he’d actually succeeded once. That was something Peeta tried not to think about very often, but it was hard to forget when his nightmares wouldn’t let him; not only did he dream of the arenas, of the war in the Capitol, and the continuous stinging of the trackerjacker venom, but more often than the others, he saw the face of the man he’d killed. It was almost harder to forgive himself for that than it had been to convince himself that Katniss was a person he loved, especially since he wasn’t always convinced he’d succeeded. It was different when he’d killed in the Games, that was self-defense. This was murder, plain and simple. --- “How did you know?” Katniss asked, before she could stop herself. It just seemed too simple. The Peeta she’d read about had been so out of control that she couldn’t imagine anyone getting through to him logically. Even when he’d been here the first time, he’d still seemed so concerned about losing control and doing her harm. That must have been before the work with the therapist had really set in. Before he’d watched the footage, before he’d really pushed himself to understand the truth. But how had he reached even that point? Katniss couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would have taken to get through to him. But she could see the tension in his body, and there was something in his expression, too, that made her wonder if she should have asked. “Is this one of the things you don’t think I want to know?” -- Katniss could probably handle the news that he’d killed someone with no trouble at all, that wasn’t the problem with telling her. The problem was that he didn’t want her to know. He knew she mustn’t have known, because she wouldn’t have phrased the question like that if she had; she’d have known that her handling the news wasn’t as big as her simply knowing the truth that Peeta was capable of murder. It didn’t matter that he’d been hijacked and out of control. If he’d been stronger, able to take the torture, Mitchell would still be alive and he wouldn’t have tried to kill her multiple times. Katniss would have withstood it, he was sure of it. “How much do you know about the days we spent in the Capitol, trying to kill Snow?” he asked instead, shaking his head at her question. He knew she knew about some of the things that she did while they were there, that she had killed Coin instead of Snow, but they’d always danced around the subject of being hijacked, and he wasn’t even sure he know how much he’d hurt her. Even now, he sometimes had the slightest fear that he’d slip or snap and he’d nearly kill her all over again, but he trusted in his own strength, trusted in the comfort that she brought him at night when he wasn’t even awake, to keep any resurfacing urges away, at least while she was in his embrace. If he did ever hurt her...well, there’d probably be no coming back from that. --- There was so much Katniss didn’t know, and when she thought too much about it, it threatened to drive her crazy. Her imagination could come up with plenty of horrible things, each more nightmarish than the last, and she knew there was something horrible to come in the future. She’d gotten pretty good at putting it out of her mind. But there was no avoiding it now. “I know,” she said, slowly, “Finnick died. I know I didn’t kill Snow. I killed Coin.” That bothered her, although not as much as it probably should have. Coin had tried to use her in much the same way Snow had, and yet that didn’t explain why killing her would be a higher priority than killing him. She looked up at Peeta. “I didn’t know you were there.” She’d assumed that he’d been in the hospital. That he’d been too unstable, too dangerous, to be a part of the fighting. Had he gotten better that quickly? Or had Coin purposefully put him into danger? Was that why Katniss had killed her? -- So basically she didn’t really know much at all, just a couple of the highlights, and nothing about anything involving him. That was both a comfort and a burden; if she’d already known, then he wouldn’t have had to say anything, and he wouldn’t have had to carry it alone. Since she didn’t, she couldn’t have passed judgment on him, but that also meant he had a secret, and not just one she chose to let him keep. Peeta didn’t want her to know about that trip to the Capitol, but if Finnick or someone else had told her, at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about telling her or not telling her. “Yeah, I was there. Coin sent me with you at the last minute.” He didn’t want to tell her that he’d been sent with the hope that he’d attack and kill her; he hadn’t been there so he himself would be in danger, he’d been there so that Katniss was in more danger. “That trip...didn’t end so well for me,” he said after a long pause, trying to find the right words. Because he didn’t want to tell her how bad it had gotten, he was trying to be vague, but if she asked a direct question, he wasn’t going to lie to her, even if the truth was hard to admit. “It made me realize just how out of control and broken I was, and I didn’t want to be that way. So I decided I wasn’t going to be, even if it took years.” --- Katniss’s eyes narrowed. There weren’t many possible reasons why Peeta had been sent with them, and it obviously wasn’t because he had been deemed fit for battle. He’d still been out of control. Which meant… Coin had wanted him to kill her, just as Snow had. It still didn’t add up to a reason to kill Coin instead of Snow. He’d been the one orchestrating the Games. He’d brainwashed Peeta, bombed District 12, and sold Finnick — probably other victors, too — after they’d gotten out of their Games. He’d directly tormented her, manipulated her, taunted her, and it sounded like all Coin had done was simply used one of his pawns to try to take out Katniss when she’d stopped being useful. (Or had become some kind of a threat. Katniss didn’t know how she would pose a threat to Coin, but she certainly hadn’t made the woman’s life easy, either.) “You tried to hurt me again,” she said, quietly. It seemed better to guess at what he meant by the trip ‘not ending well’ than to make him say it out loud. “You can tell me that, Peeta. It’s okay.” It wasn’t really okay, she knew it wasn’t, but she meant that she wasn’t going to hold it against him. She knew it hadn’t been him, not really. Snow, Coin, both of them trying to use him as a weapon against her — and failed, which was to his credit. Also to the credit of anyone who’d stopped him, probably. Katniss wasn’t sure that it would have been her. She didn’t have the strength to fight him off hand to hand, and she doubted she’d actually be able to hurt him any other way, even in self-defense. -- No, Katniss had never been the one to stop him when he’d gone into a rage and attacked her, but not because she didn’t have the strength--it was because she didn’t have the willpower, he was sure. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him when he wasn’t in control of himself. For that he was fortunate, that she understood him, possibly a little too well, but also unfortunate and tragic, because it meant if he ever snapped and they were alone, it was quite possible he’d actually kill her. That was his greatest fear these days, and just one of the many sources of his nightmares. “Someone else, too,” he replied just as quietly, looking away from her and down at his hands. It really wasn’t okay, not by a long shot, unless she meant that it was okay to tell him, that she could handle it and not change her mind about him being better than she was; not that Peeta needed Katniss to think he was better than she, he just needed her to to not think him capable of murder or of hurting her. He didn’t want to be capable of those things. This conversation was making him feel especially vulnerable, especially since he hadn’t replaced his shirt, so, partly for something to do with his hands, he stood and went back to his clothes, picked out a shirt, and pulled it on. --- When it really came down to it, Katniss knew that neither of them were very good people. They were victors; good people never really came out of the arena alive. Except, maybe, Annie — and Peeta was probably the next closest thing. She didn’t so much think of him as better than her, as it seemed to her that he’d come out of the Games with much more of his morality and compassion intact. He’d even managed to regain it after being hijacked, and she felt almost certain that she would never have managed it. Fear had ruled her for too long, if they’d made it worse… well, it wasn’t worth thinking about. She’d gotten the answers she wanted, not in detail, but enough to understand a little bit more of what had happened to him. When he got up, she took it as a signal that the conversation was over, and felt guilty for having made him relive it. It was probably much worse for him to say than it was for her to hear. She was tempted to get up, move over to him, wrap her arms around him, but if he was putting more clothes on, she had the feeling he might not want to be touched, at least not immediately. As much as she wanted to hold him, she couldn’t really blame him for that. Instead, she said, “Come back to bed, Peeta.” Her tone was gentle enough that it sounded more like a request than an order for him to do anything. She understood, at least a little bit, what must be going through his head, and if he needed to leave — get some fresh air, clear his mind, bake something — she wouldn’t stop him. She’d join him, if he wanted her there. But it was late, and she was tired, and the best cure she knew was to curl up close to him and let him banish her fears away. She wanted to do the same thing for him, if she could, especially since she’d been the one to make him dwell on those fears to begin with. -- There was literally nothing Peeta wanted more than to curl up in bed and go to sleep holding her. That was all he wanted for most nights, but it was especially true after filling her in on a little of what he’d gone though. He hadn’t necessarily meant to close down on her and end the conversation if she wanted to know more, but part of him couldn’t help but be relieved when she didn’t ask another question, and instead told him to come to bed. Which he did, as soon as he stripped off his jeans, shoes, and socks, and removed his leg; he slipped under the covers and slid down next to her until he could wrap his arms around her waist, but rest his cheek comfortably on her upper arm (or chest, if she’d allow it). “How was your day then?” he asked, changing the subject. --- Katniss was relieved, too, when he didn’t leave. She shifted to accommodate him on the bed beside her, her arms going around his shoulders, letting him pull her close and rest his head wherever he wanted. She really hated that he had been used against her so much, that he still had to carry around the guilt of it — it was almost as if Snow had known what he’d said to her on the roof, that he hadn’t wanted them to change him, and purposefully arranged it to break him that way. The fact that he’d been turned against her, well, that required a lot less work to figure out that it would damage him. He’d made sure everyone in Panem knew that he loved her. (Not that trying to keep it a secret would have helped him, probably. Snow would have noticed.) She wasn’t intending to ask any more questions, but she wasn’t quite ready to change the subject either. “It was fine,” she said, and the way she said it made it obvious that she wasn’t going to elaborate. She wasn’t annoyed, though, and she lowered her head to press a kiss to his temple. More quietly, she added, “I’m sorry, Peeta.” It was heartfelt, and yet, there were so many things that she felt the need to apologize for that it really didn’t feel like enough. She was sorry for having brought up the conversation, of course, but also for letting him be captured by the Capitol and hijacked in the first place. For not being able to stop him from losing control, hurting her, hurting someone else. She at least had survived it, but from his tone, she had a bad feeling that the other person hadn’t. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t, not really. He hadn’t been himself, hadn’t been in control of his actions. But she knew he had expected — or at least hoped — that he’d be strong enough not to let them change him, and so reminding him that they’d managed it didn’t seem like it would be much comfort. -- The thing about their public love story was that, while it was born out of legitimate feelings, Peeta could never have anticipated things turning out like this. There was no way he could have known that she would go along with it so well that there was no choice but to let them both leave the arena, no way any of them could have predicted that that small act of rebellion could spark a fire that would burn the Capitol down and end the reign of tyranny of Snow. And after everything was said and done, after all the confrontations and the deaths, even his own hijacking, he couldn’t honestly say that the ends did not justify the means. It would suck and be extremely hard to do it again, but if the choice was to go through everything again or go back to having Snow in charge of it all, he would take the torture and the heartbreak and, yes, he would kill Mitchell and attempt to kill Katniss again. But he wasn’t thinking about any of that at the moment. He was still a little preoccupied with the deaths he’d caused and almost caused, but lying in her arms, he could start to relax. Slowly, but it would happen, even if they kept talking about unhappy things. Katniss’ arms around him always made him feel safer, regardless of what was going on outside of that embrace. “It’s alright. If I was going to tell anyone, it’d be you.” --- The tension in his body was starting to drain away, and Katniss felt herself relax in turn, though she didn’t relax her grip. If she’d had the option, she would have chosen to stay in moments like this forever, in his arms, where everything was safe and warm. Nothing could harm them, nothing in the world, not even their own sleeping or waking nightmares, from the dark and terrifying corners inside their heads. The world kept turning, and eventually she’d have to get up, but in this world, she didn’t dread the rising of the sun. Each new day was more time with Peeta, with Prim, with Johanna and her other friends; there would be food on the table and money in her pocket, thanks to her job. There was the threat of disappearing back to their own world, or to somewhere worse, like the arena she and Annie and Finnick had gotten trapped in — but it wasn’t nearly so present and horrible a fear as the Games or the Capitol. There was much more hope to counteract it. And she was able to feel, for the first time, relatively content. Things weren’t perfect, but they were close. There were a lot of people missing, but the two people she loved most were here. Prim, safe in her bedroom, not far away. Peeta, here in her arms. His sentiment evoked a different one in her, one that she hadn’t been expecting. She threaded the fingers of one hand into his hair, and closed her eyes, resting her head against his. “I think,” she said quietly, “If I was going to be with anyone, it was going to be you, too.” -- ‘If she was going to be with anyone,’ she said. The wording almost made Peeta think things had regressed--or at least hadn’t progressed as far as he’d thought--but instead of the worst case scenario, he chose to believe she was just using the same wording he’d chosen. If he were to tell anyone what had happened to him. He had told her, at least some of it--more than he’d ever told anyone else outside of the therapist who had actually been there for part of it and had heard about the rest. So it wasn’t like they weren’t already together even if they hadn’t officially discussed it or put a label on it. They were, Peeta just had demons, and sometimes he couldn’t ignore them. He lifted his head to look at her face and said, even though she wouldn’t truly get it, “We are together though...real or not real?” Everything about those words was a question, the very nature of their relationship resting in her hands, completely up to her. He would still love her regardless of her response, still share a bed with her and kiss her and cook for her, but it might all be with a little less enthusiasm if she said being together wasn’t real. --- At first it seemed like a strange thing to ask, right after she’d intended to confirm that she was with him, that she wanted him and not just because he was the one that was here. But maybe her sentiment hadn’t been clear, or maybe he just needed to hear it outright. She realized that she hadn’t actually said they were together, not in those exact words. She’d told him she loved him, that she wanted and needed him, she’d claimed his room and his bed and his love for her own, but never told him what he really needed to hear. “Real,” she said, without hesitation, pressing her forehead against his. It was important that he understand this, more crucial than ever that he knew she was his, too, that this bed and this room and this life that they had here were being shared. That she wasn’t just taking from him and not giving anything back, anymore. “It’s real, Peeta.” -- The relief he felt was instantaneous, and he moved his hand to the back of her neck to pull her down and anchor her for a kiss that was also real and full of his emotions. He’d wanted to believe that everything she’d said meant they were together, that they had a future, but to hear her actually say it made the whole day and night and everything in between perfect. There was no more uncertainty, no more guessing, and Peeta could finally let himself be blissfully happy...as long as he wasn’t remembering all the reasons he should still be feeling guilty. Those regrets and that guilt were still lurking in his mind, but the word ‘real’ had pushed them toward the back, allowing himself, and her, this victory that was by no means small. “Are you tired?” he asked against her lips, unable to help himself. They’d been together a lot since that first time, but for his part, Peeta couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Now that she was willing to be his, as far she she could be claimed by anyone, he just wanted her all the time, and she hadn’t yet complained. --- Katniss’s eyes closed, feeling a little bit of guilt but also relief. She hadn’t been realized he’d still been waiting for her to say something like that, that he’d needed to hear it, or she would have offered it before. She couldn’t imagine how he would think that she’d have gone this far, expressed as much emotion as she had, without it being real. But it was more than just about trying to figure out her intentions, she knew. More than just the fact that she’d actually fooled him the first time they’d been in the arena. His whole memory and idea of her had been thrown into doubt, and on some level she understood how it could be easy to doubt the reality of it. Maybe because after everything it just seemed to be good to be true. Certainly it seemed that way to her sometimes. She probably hadn’t helped things by bringing all his memories of being hijacked to the surface. Now he knew for sure, so the guilt didn’t last long. The relief followed soon after, because she could sense his confidence in them, in her, in the kiss. She returned it wholeheartedly, her fingers threading into his hair, curling into the back of his neck as the heat rose between them. The question made her smile, her lips curving up against his. “No,” she said, even though it wasn’t entirely true. She was tired, but not too tired for this, for him, which was really what he was asking. She rolled over onto her back, drawing him with her, and kissed him again. What she really wanted was for the night to end on a good note, for the adrenaline from her day to fade away, for the memories of the hijacking and the divide that had been created between them to be banished, at least for now. They would probably never get away from those things entirely, but in moments like this, when they were together, she got so lost in him that she could forget that even the worst times of their lives had never happened. |