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Peeta Mellark is out of Panem. Real or not real? (peetanotpita) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2012-06-15 00:05:00

WHO: Peeta Mellark & Katniss Everdeen
WHAT: Awkward awkwardness and teenage angst
WHERE: Cindy's living room
WHEN: Backdated to Monday night 6/11/12
RATING: PG-13 — teenagers doing what teenagers do when left alone in the dark... uh. But nothing crazy.
STATUS: Complete


“I promised Cato if he let me have you, I’d give the audience a good show,” Clove says, her knees pinning Katniss’s shoulders into the mud. Katniss can smell the scent of dirt soaking in a fresh rain, feel it cool and pleasant against the back of her neck, even as she struggles, even as she eyes the tiny, delicate knife in Clove’s hand. She will die with her back pressed into the dirt, it will be slow, and Prim will be forced to watch it play out on television. Somewhere in a cave near a stream Peeta will wake in time to hear a canon sound and he will see her face projected into the sky and he will know that he will die alone in the dark because she left him. Katniss twists underneath the other girl, but she’s never even tried to train in hand-to-hand and Clove grips her like a vice with a wiry strength that’s as much unyielding cruelty as it is muscle, and she knows it’s useless. Blood and saliva churn in her mouth, her windpipe still feels bruised and crushed from the punch Clove drove into it earlier and she hasn’t swallowed since. In one last show of defiance she puckers her lips and spits into Clove’s face. The girl snarls but doesn’t even break eye contact. If anything her eyes grow colder, calmer.

“All right then. Let’s get started.”

This time Thresh doesn’t come. This time the pinprick of the knife spreads from one little cut into a constellation of pain lighting up all the most sensitive points on her skin, tracing her lips, digging down to her tongue. She screams like an Avox, a wordless gurgle, terrible with blood welling up then falling back into her throat. She’s choking but still trying to scream, beyond wanting to live now, but there’s Peeta, still in the cave, trapped with dwindling food and water, a slower death than this. Even though he’s too far away to hear she tries to scream a warning, as if this were a thing he could outrun.

On the couch in Cindy’s living room the dream had played out physically, shuddering across Katniss’s body as she lay, curled up tight and wedged almost into a corner. At some point in the night, either prompted by the dream or else prompting it by the change in position, she’d moved onto her back. As her mind had conjured up the memory and nightmare she’d begun twitching her limbs like she was pinned down and fighting back, knocking off the sheet she’d pulled over herself.

Her sleeping spot had been strategically picked. A bed had been found for Prim, and she’d seen her sister start to scoot over as soon as she’d gotten into it, expecting that Katniss would share with her and that Peeta would take the couch. The thought of waking Prim with one of the nightmares that was sure to come that night (they were always worse when Katniss was tired and between Peeta being missing and then their brief estrangement, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper night of sleep) was enough to make her plaster on the smile that had always fooled Prim when she was a little girl. “Oh you don’t want to share with me,” she’d said lightly, “I kick, I’d break you in half!” and then she’d darted her hands at Prim’s stomach, tickling the younger girl until she’d doubled in two, and then she’d laughed and run out into the living room before Prim could retaliate. Once Peeta had insisted she take the couch and made himself as comfortable as he could on the floor (she was still uneasy with their usual arrangement around Prim, and he seemed to respect that), she’d waited until he was asleep before taking the precaution she’d learned when she had been sleeping in the apartment with Prim while Peeta was missing or in his own, not there to wake her when the nightmares made her cry out. A pillowcase was stripped off its pillow and balled up, then she’d stuffed as much of it as would fit into her mouth, and breathed deeply through her nose as she had fallen into an uneasy sleep.

During the course of the dream her struggles had set her fists to clenching and unclenching against the upholstery and as it progressed she had bucked against the couch, arching her back against pressure that wasn’t there until she was contorted practically in two. Her screams, spilling over from dream into waking, were formless at first, just noise against the gag of the pillowcase, but eventually they formed a name, still muffled, but recognizable, however distorted.

“Peeta,” she cried, the warning and apology and pain fueling her voice, sending it boring through the layers of cloth (loosening now, a hair’s breadth from ineffective as a gag) and into the quiet of the living room.

Peeta had been having nightmares of his own — a dirty secret that he kept even from Katniss — since the first night he'd spent in the crypt. They always ended with him gasping for what he was sure was his last breath, only to wake to the darkness, wondering whether it was real or fake. Was he, he wondered those nights, really alive and dreaming, or had he expired for lack of food and water? It was difficult to tell with the same darkness enveloping him in his sleep as did in his waking hours. There were times when he'd been convinced it was over only to hear one of his fellow captives stir in her sleep.

When it happened back at the complex, he'd been morbidly relieved to note that Katniss had been too busy having her own to notice his. The night he and Katniss had fought and he'd gone home, he'd woken from the nightmare sticky with sweat and hadn't gone back to sleep the rest of the night. His bed was cold and empty without her, but he was torn between being glad she didn't know and wishing she'd been there to try to calm him. He found himself wondering, sometimes, whether the dreams would ever go away while he respected Katniss's decision for the two of them to set an example for Prim and refrain from sleeping in the same bed.

He'd been dreaming of Clove this night, though, for the first time. He resented the new girl whose face was the same; whose face prompted the change. He remembered the squabbles between Cato and Clove and wondered if, when he was out of earshot, whether they fought over who would get to kill him, too, once Katniss was gone. So, when he was awakened by the panicked sound of his own name, it was initially welcome. That was until he processed it fully and heard the tone.

Peeta sat up and moved to the couch, pulling the pillowcase from her mouth and putting hands on Katniss's shoulders. "Hey," he hissed at her. "Katniss, I'm here, it's okay," he insisted, attempting to shake her awake. "It's okay," he said again in a softer voice when her eyes shot open, wild and likely still in the moment of her nightmare. "...I'm right here." With that, Peeta pulled her into his arms and held her close. “Everything’s okay,” he whispered into her hair in as reassuring a voice as he could muster. “Everything’s fine. You’re safe.”

Katniss pulled back wildly at first, sucking in air as the gag was pulled away and her lungs expanded with relief, regaining oxygen she’d lost struggling and screaming while only breathing through her nose. Then she felt his heartbeat against her skin as he pressed her closer, the familiar rhythm like a Morse code signal sent out in the dark, this way out. She went still, and soon other sensations filtered in, his arms around her, the whisper of breath through her hair, the sound of his voice, and then finally the words themselves. She pulled back again, but more slowly this time, and raised a hand to her face, tracing the scar on her forehead where Clove’s knife had cut her in their first games before she slowly trailed her fingers down to the skin around her lips, the place where the dream had told her she would find another scar, a mutilated lump of tissue. When she found only skin, as unblemished as the finest plastic surgeons at the Capitol could make it, she sighed softly and moved forward again, pitched forward really, as if she’d been drunk or drugged, until her forehead rested against Peeta’s chest again.

Things were different for them after a nightmare, or for her anyway. The inhibitions and fears of the waking world were further away, her other obligations, to Prim, to Gale, to Peeta himself, were muted and faded and smoothed over by darkness and need. Different enough that she stayed like that for a while and let herself appreciate it without worrying about how effective being close to him was at soothing her, at least for a few minutes, at least while her heart rate slowed. “It was Clove,” she muttered into the darkness, too tired and confused to filter herself for his benefit, “and Thresh didn’t come and then she was… I couldn’t get back to you. I couldn’t get you out.” For a moment she lost the thread of her thoughts, wasn’t sure if she’d ended that sentence talking about a cave or a crypt, so she stopped talking all together and just tried to even out her breathing.

Eventually, however, she drew back again and pushed a hand through the hair that had come out of her braid before realizing the thing was hopeless and removing the tie, unraveling the whole braid so that she could re-do it more securely. Then her eyes fell on Peeta’s face, and she frowned slightly, fingers pausing in the middle of motions that were so habitual as to be forgotten. Even in the darkness she could see how haggard he looked, and she felt a stab of guilt for being the one to pull him out of whatever sleep he was getting that night. She forgot the braid entirely and made a frustrated noise as she abruptly became all angles again in her awkward, fierce concern.

“You haven’t been sleeping well either, I shouldn’t have woken you up.”

She hadn’t been able to help but notice the changes in Peeta recently, the hopelessness, the sort of beaten down resignation. She’d felt helpless in the face of it, unable to do anything but try not to make it worse, and, seemingly to fail miserably. After the week he’d had, Katniss doubted that all of Peeta’s nightmares were still about losing her, that being woken up by her was in any way soothing for him.

Before Katniss even said it, Peeta knew by the way she touched her scar what she'd been dreaming about. A frown crossed his face as she dropped forward again, pressing her face against his chest and he reached a hand up to stroke the back of her head gently. He didn't often have nightmares about the Games anymore, save tonight. Peeta had been lucky enough to find a way to channel those memories into something more positive by painting. Katniss hadn't been as fortunate and Peeta hated not knowing how to fix it. He knew just as well as she did that no matter how many times he held her until she fell asleep again, it wouldn't make the dreams stop. Peeta didn't know how to help her and it was the only sort of helplessness that made his heart ache the way it did.

"I'm right here, Katniss, I'm fine," Peeta reassured her, the way he always did. It was all, really, he could think to do when she had these nightmares; remind her that he was alive and well and right there beside her.

Eventually, Katniss sat up again and Peeta let his arms fall to his sides, one hand on the couch and the other on his knee, watching her face. He was checking to see if she was all right or if she would need him again in a minute when she realized she wasn't. Her eyes met his and she stopped fussing with her hair, then. Peeta looked down, ashamed, when she pointed out that he hadn't been sleeping well, either.

"You didn't mean to," he pointed out, looking back up at her after a moment. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me," he added with a smile that failed to meet his eyes, even when he tried to force it. He leaned forward just slightly and put a hand to the side of her face, looking her in the eye. "We're safe here," he said and the words felt wrong in his mouth now, after the crypt. "I'm not gonna leave you. You're not gonna lose me. Okay?"

Katniss’s mother had once told her, in one of the rare moments when Mrs. Everdeen had dared even implicitly chastise her daughter in the years after Katniss became the family’s sole provider, that sleeplessness could affect the mind as strongly as drunkenness. Katniss had stayed up all night making new snares, had been off the next day in the woods, and so had stayed out longer trying to catch game through her clumsiness, had stayed up the next night again trying to repair the snare she’d broken that day. It had become a vicious cycle that had ended with her mother keeping her home from school when she couldn’t walk out the front door without weaving on her feet. ”You’re as bad as Haymitch Abernathy like this,” her mother had said as she’d guided Katniss firmly back to bed, years before either of them knew Haymitch. It was funny, in a grim sort of way, to remember these days when she sometimes wondered if the way she’d end up would make Haymitch look well-adjusted.

At the moment, however, her mentor was the furthest thing from Katniss’s mind and the only trace of her mother was a half-remembered warning that seemed like something she would have said about how going too long without sleep made you like a drunk. She felt like one now, holding herself so carefully on the couch to avoid trembling again, staring back at Peeta with desperate concentration as she tried to see some way past what he wouldn’t say, what she couldn’t ask, to the boy who was usually stable enough for both of them, and even with all of that suddenly realizing how close they were in the dark and thinking, I haven’t kissed him since the beach. She let out a noise, half-sigh, half-growl of irritation at the memory, at the way it co-existed inappropriately yet insistently with the fear and concern and made her feel like the weight of his hand on her cheek was magnified, every little cell of skin that fell under his stealing sensation away from the rest of her body to concentrate it there.

He’ll think I’m just irritated, she told herself to ward off embarrassment at her reaction, because I know he’s lying, because I know he isn’t okay and that he doesn’t think we’re safe here. She wanted to grab Peeta’s shoulders and shake him, curled her fingers against the fabric of the couch like she was preparing to actually do it, to grab him and make him understand that he was already leaving her, that he was pulling away into his mind, that she recognized it because she was the one who always did it and he was the one who always came out to meet her more than half way, to draw her out. The circles under his eyes, the shame in the way he ducked his head, and his obvious concern for her nightmares stopped her, even as they made her feel even more impotently, fearfully angry. What would he do for me? she thought, unconsciously reaching up to cover his hand with hers as her frown deepened so that she knew she must look ugly, glaring into the dark.

The problem was, she knew what he would do for her. She knew he would have held her like after a nightmare and made her believe she was safe, but she didn’t know if she was even capable of that. She was scared for him, she missed being close to him even if she wouldn’t let herself think about why beyond the fact that she had never pretended she wasn’t attracted to him, and she was so tired that nothing seemed real anymore, not even this moment, not even the warning bells and whistles going off in her mind.

She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him. She was tentative at first, as if she expected to be pushed away, but then that thing that had happened to her on the beach (she still thought of it like that, vaguely, in a way that would probably have made Peeta laugh at her “purity” some more) roared up again with unexpected ferocity and suddenly she was pulling him insistently closer and she didn’t have room to worry about that, or, just for a moment, about anything else.

For what seemed like an eternity, the two of them sat in silence. Katniss stared back at him in the darkness and he thought he could see doubt in her eyes; that she didn't believe him. Peeta forced himself to believe he was seeing things that weren't there. That the darkness was skewing his ability to read her expression. It was better if she did believe him and if she let it drop. Peeta didn't want to talk about it with her. He had no desire to sound as weak as he felt. Not to Katniss.

She broke the silence, finally, with a sort of growl that Peeta didn't really understand. Whether it was words he'd missed in a mumble or just a sound, he wasn't sure, and his brow knit slightly with confusion at it. But then Katniss was kissing him and Peeta froze for a split second in confusion before closing his eyes and relaxing into it. There were no cameras. There were no sponsors to whom they needed to prove the facade of the star-crossed lovers. And still, Katniss was kissing him.

At first, she almost seemed hesitant and a tiny part of Peeta almost pulled away from her to ask her why she was kissing him at all if she didn't want to be. Before he could, though, she was pulling at him and Peeta found himself forgetting that she didn't love him; ignoring that something felt wrong with this picture and he was kissing her back. The world around them seemed to stop for Peeta. Cindy and Prim must be sleeping and the silence in the darkness of the living room was pounding in his ears. ...or maybe that was his racing heart.

Peeta moved his free hand to Katniss's waist and the hand on her face slid back, fingers catching in her hair. He started to lean back, bringing Katniss with him, then. He wanted her to have the control and leaning forward to meet her meant if she wanted to stop, she'd have to push him away rather than pull back from him. If she ended it, he wanted not to be pushed away from her; that would hurt more than he wanted to bear in that moment than it would for her to simply sit back. Whatever her reason, Peeta wasn’t going to question it. He was going to give her what she seemed to want and kiss her back...and he was going to let himself enjoy something for the first time since he’d been kidnapped.

Katniss let Peeta draw her towards him, moved with the slight press of his hand against her waist and shifted closer against him, using his body to support her weight as he guided her past the position she’d been huddled in with her legs curled up underneath her. Though she’d been insistent a moment before, she seemed content to move with him now and all her eagerness was directed towards responding to the pressure of his hands so that in a moment he was settled against the couch and she was stretched out with her body covering his. For a long moment there was no fear or worry or second-guessing, no scanning his face and finding something missing, something closed away from her. During the kiss there was only their bodies, and Katniss had always known instinctively how to take cues with hers, did that now as easily and thoughtlessly as she had divorced her mind from the process of guiding her feet around broken twigs in the woods.

For the first time since he’d gone missing, Peeta’s arms around her seemed secure instead of hesitant, and with the way he drew her closer it was easy to forget that there had ever been any awkwardness, any estrangement between them. He felt strong and immediate and present in a way she’d missed since the kidnapping but hadn’t been able to articulate. It was the beach from the Quarter Quell all over again, with nothing to stop them except each other. This time there was no Finnick to change the watch, no lightning to crackle out of the sky and remind them that most of Panem was tuned in on their television screens to this moment.

She would blush later, thinking that things might have gone beyond those kisses if it weren’t for a noise outside the window, nothing really, a neighbor coming home or a car backfiring on the street. She couldn’t have said what it was except that suddenly she was jolted back into awareness.

She jerked herself away from Peeta as if he were a live current and came up hard against the opposite arm of the couch, face red and eyes wide, as if she’d just been slapped instead of kissed. Idiot, you idiot, she thought as her mind, kickstarted from exhaustion with pure adrenaline, reminded her that to Peeta, with how he felt, a kiss was more than just a kiss. The self-satisfied conviction that she was helping him, that they were giving each other what they each needed, suddenly seemed worse than laughable, an excuse for hurting him more than he already had been.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, voice low and frantic and pained, “sorry, I wasn’t…I shouldn’t have done that,” she scrambled to her feet and gathered her sheet up with her, eyes darting towards the hall as she began to back away. “I’ll go, I’ll sleep with Prim, sorry,” she added, her voice almost mechanical with forced restraint.

Any surprise in the way that Katniss moved with him melted away from Peeta's mind as he found that one moment they were sitting and he was leaning...and the next, he was lying back and Katniss was blanketing his body with her own. The hand Peeta had on her waist moved to drape around her, holding her closer, failing to care if she noticed the way his body was responding to her at that moment. All that mattered was the way she felt against him and the fact that things felt right to him, just then.

Peeta felt like time had stopped entirely and nothing in the world mattered at all — not the Autons, not the blood water; not Prim and Cindy somewhere else in the house able to walk into the living room and interrupt them the way Finnick had back on the beach — except kissing Katniss.

But one moment she was there and the next, she was gone, pushed up against the other end of the couch looking like a frightened animal. Peeta sat up, too, looking back at her with concern. "Katniss, wh—"

Before he could even finish getting out his question of what had happened and why she had so suddenly distanced herself from him, she was apologizing. "No, it's okay," he protested, but Katniss was already getting to her feet and gathering her things. She was going to leave. He knew that before she even said it. "Don't..." he said pathetically. "You don't have to. ...I don't want you to," he admitted quietly, knitting his brow and frowning, looking like a beaten dog who still desperately wanted the attention he'd been getting a moment before the strike.

Katniss wavered in the mouth of the hallway, gripping the sheet she’d swept off the couch so hard that her knuckles went white. The confused pain in Peeta’s voice had stopped her as easily and effectively as a snare, and it held her even as she wanted to run, to lose herself in the darkness of the hallway and then the safe haven of Prim’s room, where she could at least comfort one person she cared for uncomplicatedly. She wasn’t equipped for this, for comforting, for any kind of healing, not just physical. It was Prim who always had the right words, who could take someone’s hand and hold it just so, whisper something quietly, and they’d drop off back to sleep on the Everdeens’ kitchen table. In the same situation, Katniss ran to the woods with her bow.

Still, after all they’d been through together, it wasn’t in her to be able to leave Peeta when he begged her not to. The tone of his voice, the pleading, the naked hurt, worried her more than his anger or silence would have. No matter what he felt for her, Peeta had always been so careful not to make it a demand, to let her control the pace at which they did everything from kissing to comforting each other after their nightmares. He’d seen her choose Gale back in District 12, that night she’d spent holding her old hunting partner’s hand, and he hadn’t done anything to make her feel guilty, hadn’t even acknowledged it really, though she knew from the hurt in his eyes for several days afterwards that he’d seen and understood the gesture. During the quarter quell he’d still been willing to die for her, had all but begged her to go home and marry Gale, and he’d never asked anything of her. Now he was asking, and even if she had felt nothing but tolerance for this boy, she wouldn’t have been able to refuse him when she owed him so much.

“I-“ she started, then shook her head and took a few cautious steps back into the living room, approached the couch like it was about to burst into flames, and then settled herself as far from Peeta as she could get without actually perching on the arm. Just because her mind had suddenly remembered all the reasons that kissing Peeta was a very bad idea didn’t mean that her body had gotten the memo, and if she lost control again she wouldn’t be doing him any favors, no matter what she tried to convince herself of. Why do you do this to yourself, she wanted to ask him, I’m not the prettiest girl back home or here, even you’d have to admit that, and I’m not kind or patient or gifted at anything except killing. Why would you love someone who doesn’t know how to love anyone back? Instead, she wrapped the sheet around herself and hugged her knees in to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, trying to find the words to explain. “I missed…you. That. I don’t know. It was a bad idea. I’m sorry.” Her voice was short now, clipped and closed off, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Are you still having nightmares?” she asked, as if she hoped she could change the subject to, ironically, the concern that had started all of this in the first place.

A large part of Peeta wished he hadn't asked her to come back when her body language screamed that she'd rather be anywhere but with him just then. She came back but it was with reluctance and with words that showed Peeta nothing other than regret for her actions. Katniss admitted she missed it, but apologized and declared it a bad idea, anyway.

He opened his mouth to protest but closed it again when he realized all that was going to come out was a resigned, "oh," because he understood it, just then. He remembered the way she'd chosen Gale; remembered that she only ever let herself close to him when she was afraid or worried.

It was at that moment that Peeta realized he was nothing to her. He would give his life for her, but all Katniss seemed to want in return was safety and comfort, if anything at all. They were a team, but only on Katniss's terms. He looked down. "Stop apologizing, please," he said in a quiet, even tone, getting to his feet only to settle back on the floor, rolling onto his back, stuffing the pillow unceremoniously under his head and staring up at the ceiling in the darkness.

"No," he lied in response to her question about the nightmares. "I paint, remember?" he pointed out. He and Doreah had agreed that there was no one to talk to about the crypt except one another and maybe Jenny. Jenny hadn't been as afraid as he and Doreah had been; Jenny hadn't lost hope until much closer to the end of it. He and Doreah had agreed that talking to anyone else about the way they felt about the kidnapping or the crypt wouldn't help their situations because no one else could truly understand what they'd been through or how it had affected them. He certainly didn't want to test the theory on Katniss.

Katniss, who closed herself off to the world. Katniss, who didn't actually ask unless she felt like she had to. Katniss, the Girl on Fire, who came to Peeta when it suited her and ran away when it didn't. He couldn't stop the way he felt about her...but sometimes — times like this — he wished he could. "Go back to sleep," he suggested softly rather than ordered the way he wanted to. "I'm right here if you need me."

When Peeta spoke it was with a voice that froze Katniss to the couch as if he’d pinned her there. He was quiet, polite, even solicitous, and anyone who had just met him, anyone who knew him well but who hadn’t fought and almost died with him, would have taken him at his word. Katniss, however, had seen him charm cameras too many times not know when she was being charmed herself. She realized then that her clumsy, fumbled attempts to break through the barrier he was building between them had worse than failed, that he’d stopped bricking up the remaining holes and simply slammed the blast doors shut against her. What the hunger games and lies and an apocalypse had failed to do, she’d managed with a kiss, and she had to dig her nails into her thighs as hard as she could to keep herself from doing something else stupid from, trying to explain again.

”I just wanted to do something protect you,” the words would have been stupid and hollow and nonsensical, because they were the reason she’d kissed him and the reason she’d stopped all wrapped up into one, and because she still didn’t understand why she’d done what she had. “Ok,” she said instead, trying to make her voice angry, to convince herself that if Peeta didn’t want to be allies then he could go rot, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Instead she simply sounded exactly as tired as she felt, too tired even for the fear that stabbed at her when she thought about losing her teammate, her friend.

She turned over on the couch and curled herself up, trying to even out her breathing into an approximation of sleep.