burnwithus | (peeta) the sea's wine red; this is the death of beauty

(peeta) the sea's wine red; this is the death of beauty

I hate hospitals. I spent far too much time in them in District 13, but until Gale wakes up there's nothing to do but wait. I've been sitting in this chair for hours, given a lot of time to wonder why and how everything went so wrong. Trying to figure out what he'll remember when he does wake up, or what he'll expect of me but I can't go back to being the girl that he used to know. There's a point crossed where that becomes impossible.

My back aches from sitting too long. I should stretch my legs before they fall asleep. But before I get the chance to, the door of the room opens.

It's Peeta.

Just the sight of him is enough to cause an uncomfortable twist in my stomach. Peeta, who was so willing to throw his lot in with mine despite how angry he was with me. Hospitals remind me of him, too. Of how much time I spent in them, trying not to think about what the Capitol was doing to Peeta. Images of him being beaten and electrocuted like Johanna or forced to live constantly in the nightmares that tracker jacker venom brings. I tried not to think about what the rebels were doing to undo it, as if I wasn't sure it would work. As if I should prepare myself for losing him. That's something else I haven't told him about, something I should tell him, but-

I have to swallow before looking at him, regaining composure. "Peeta...what are you doing here?" He doesn't have to be here. He knows that, probably. But he is, because that's who this Peeta used to be.

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He hadn't seen much of her since Gale arrived. It had been a mess of a day, full of gore that he could remember all too well. Peeta hoped that one day he would no longer be able to stomach the sight of so much blood and flesh torn raw. One day he might start becoming normal.

Still he felt the need to check in on her. To see how Gale was doing, and by extension Katniss. They are all that was left of District 12 and while he might not have known the older boy, he knew that had something, someone important in common.

"I came to see if you both were alright." His hands are in his pockets and looks at her and then the figure in the bed. "I can go if you'd like me to."

The Boy with the Bread is slipping away. This is entirely my fault, but it's true. There used to be a time when we would stave off the nightmares together, but this feels more like the time when we returned home from the first arena. When Peeta was angry at me, but for a different reason.

I'll add it to the list of words I use to figure you out.

This is somewhere in-between.

"It was his bomb," the words are out before I can retract them, and I realize how stupid it was to say that when Gale could wake up at any moment. I get up anyways, moving towards him so I can lower my voice, although it doesn't stop the words from pouring out. "His bomb that killed her. I can't prove it but I'll always be thinking it," Gale said so himself. It's too small in this room, too stuffy and I can't breathe with the tight feeling in my chest that always comes up when I think of Prim.

"I can't stay here," I tell him, before running out less than gracefully, but does it really matter?

He could never turn his back on her. Not fully. It simply wasn’t the sort of person that he was. Peeta didn’t hate, not truly. He was hurt and he was upset and felt betrayed in a way that was similar to and nothing like what had happened in that first arena. The first time she had hurt him it had been due to faking a love that was real to him, of conspiring to keep him alive when he would have died for her. This time it was about something so much bigger than either of them. It was about the loss that they had both shared that she had kept to herself.

It is more than just about them. It always had been. He wanted to shake her and tell her to stop. To stop feeling awful when she was a victim like they all were. They had been manipulated, played and how could she not just see that?

Instead he stood in the doorway, looking at her and then at the boy in the bed. Then her words him in like a ton of brick. Involuntarily he took a step backwards, staring at her and then at Gale. She was trying to get away and he knew that and reached for her arm. Catching it he turned towards her.

“What?” A new set of emotions was hitting him. “What? Does he know? How long have you known?”

He grabs my wrist and it makes me remember the moments leading up to my arrival on the island. How he'd ruined my plan and wouldn't let me go, even when the guards were moving in. Even as I was screaming for Gale to shoot me. I should resent him for it, but can't bring myself to. Not when he was still holding on, wanting me to live for some strange reason I can't understand. No, I don't resent him for it.

I want to struggle, to break his grip, but for once I had the chance to make good on the promise that I wouldn't keep anything else from him, even if the future was too horrible to imagine. So instead, I force myself to breathe through the stuffiness of the room. "He doesn't know." I want to tell Peeta that I have no intention of telling him, but now I'm not so sure. It hadn't worked before, and the island seemed to want to make sure that everyone knew my secrets. Fine. If he wanted to know, I wouldn't keep it from him.

"We were fighting a war. He designed a bomb that preyed on human compassion. They would go off first, and as the medics swarmed in to help, they'd explode a second time. In the Capitol. There was a pen full of children and - and Prim wanted to help." Prim, who was meant to be a doctor and go on to live in this new world we'd all fought to create. But there might as well not be a world if Prim wasn't in it. I dig deep with my fingernails in the skin of my palm, letting the sting of it bring me back to reality. "It was the same bomb that burned us." Us. Peeta was a fire-mutt now too.

He knew the instinct that she was fighting. He loved many things about her, but this had never been one of them. There was a time to run, to hide and flee but sometimes staying was the best thing to do. He wasn’t about to let her tell him this and then run from it. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

Hand still on her wrist, he stared at her. This wasn’t her fault, just like it wasn’t the fault of that broken boy in the bed. It would eventually be his fault, in a world where Gale lived past the burning of District 12, but that hadn’t happened yet. “You have to tell him. Not now, but he has a right to know,” Peeta said firmly. If it had been him who made such things, then he would want to know. Even if he was powerless to change it, he would still want to know.

Exhaling roughly, hard lines forming on his face he shot a glance at the bed. There was nothing that could justify such a weapon. To victimize people who were already hurt, to tell people that compassion was so dangerous it was better to let everyone die rather than help a few. That was disgusting. Those were weapons both sides wanted to exist. To paint the enemy as the monsters they wanted them to be.

Letting out a grunt of frustration, he was left temporarily speechless. Peeta who had always been so good with words had no idea what to say. “That’s...what?” He turned back to her, taking in her scarred skin. “You didn’t tell me. Why?”

"I know he does, but I can't even...look at him without seeing it," the moment is always there, trapped behind my eyelids to emerge every time they close. Every time I glance over in Gale's direction. He looks smaller and younger sleeping, curled in on himself slightly with the injuries on his back. It's never been more evident that he is not Soldier Hawthorne from District 13, the one who sentenced people to the same deaths our father experienced, but still. Still. My mind isn't nearly as rational, slipping into rounds of paranoia like in the days after the City Square. Could I prove it wasn't him? Had Coin ordered the death of my sister? She was dead now, so it shouldn't matter, but it does. Her death doesn't bring Prim back. It doesn't make it hurt less.

Why didn't I tell him? If I'm being honest, it was just a detail that slipped my mind in the wake of everything else I had to tell him. "Prim was more important," and that was true. I didn't care about the burns on my own skin, only the memories that the explosion hadn't wiped from me. I extricate my arm from his grip, slowly so that he knows that I won't be going anywhere. "There's something I have to tell you," Gale has a right to know, yes, but so does Peeta. His own terrible future, a future that I shoulder the blame for. Yes, Haymitch should have rescued him instead of me, but Snow tortured Peeta to get to me and no one else. Like most things, I'm to blame.

Was there a choice in this? Was it really as simple as staying the Capitol's slaves or rebelling and watching thousands die? I suppose I'll never know now.

Berries. It all started with a handful of berries and the need to keep him alive. In all that's happened, that hasn't changed.

Feeling her tug against his grip, Peeta relaxed releasing her. The slowness in her gesture told him that she wasn't about to try running. Even if she did, after what she had just said he didn't have it in him to stop her.

Looking at Gale in the bed and back at her, he leaned against the doorframe. This was yet another thing scarring her. Hadn't they all been through enough? When were they going to be able to stop, to achieve some sort of normalcy? Were they always going to be burdened by things that had happened?

Sighing, he nodded. He had no family left and even before they were gone, he had never felt the same amount of closeness to them as Katniss did to Prim. He couldn't imagine what the loss of her sister had done to her. More than enough.

"What?" Part of him wanted to know so that there would be an end to the things that she was keeping from him. The rest of him had no desire to know. For every one thing that he learned, there seemed to be another waiting in the wings to make all others look small by comparison. He was just tired of it all.

I had to say it. He would want to know. If it came down to our roles being reversed, maybe I'd want to know too. Even if there was nothing I could do about it, even if it was ineveitable. But Peeta has a chance here for something that was impossible in Panem. Peace. Happiness. Normalcy. Gale could have it too, if he wanted to. The kind of life everyone is supposed to want. It's too late for me, but not for Peeta.

Not this Peeta.

I realize that I want to protect him from this, even. Though I failed to do so back home, when it really mattered. I would have died to keep him alive, had the rebels not interfered. Yet he doesn't want to be protected, and that was where I was wrong all along. Do I have the right to this? Is it his choice? I don't know. The lines between right and wrong are so thoroughly blurred in my mind.

I take a deep breath to keep it together, but it takes energy that I no longer have. "After the Quell. After I shot the arrow. The Capitol took you."

That in itself says so much, but not enough. It doesn't reveal the long nights spent with Finnick, desperately trying to hang on to something sane. Rope burns and bleeding fingers. Seeing Peeta on the television and yet having no power to help him. But this isn't about me - it's about him. It's about the total destruction of everything he believed in.

Of course he remembered that arrow. It was just after it had been fired, with the ground upheaving itself and fire everywhere that he came to this place. Parts of that last day in the arena might be blurry, with blank spots from being knocked out at various times. It might not be a complete picture, but it was enough to send an emotional shockwave through him.

The Capitol got him.

He had survived it to be burned along with Katniss, he had at least made it that far. But what happened between those two points was a mystery to him. He was almost too afraid to ask.

It was too late, the door was open now. He couldn't close it yet. "Oh..." he breathed. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rubbed his temples with his hands. "Oh."

"I'm sorry I didn't save you," I blurt out, knowing that this was what I've been meaning to say for a while now. There's more, though. There's always more. He still doesn't know about the hijacking, but even the thought of that is terrible and tinged with memories. Peeta, pushing Jackson into a pod and killing him. Peeta, whispering my name in time with the mutts, eyes wild. We put him in handcuffs and put him in a closet. But that was before he begged us to shoot him.

Selfishly, I didn't. At the time I justified in saying that doing so would be letting President Snow win. But I knew that in the end my fate was so tied to his. That even a Peeta who hated me was better than knowing he was gone from this world.

Finnick had once told me that he almost wished we were all dead at times. Beyond the reach of the Capitol. It was typical Victor thinking to see that the arena expanded beyond the Games, like the man in the Hanging Tree urging his lover to come with him to safety.

But I could never wish it on somebody I loved, no matter how selfish that made me.

“What?”

He found himself asking that question a lot more these days. It was a question motivated by surprise, by disbelief. Maybe if he asked it enough the answer would change. Katniss would stop coming up with things that surprised him, stop having secrets about his life and his future.

Peeta had to stop thinking like that. It was dangerous focusing on what had been, what he could have lived through. He wouldn’t, some other version of himself would and despite how much that pained him there was nothing he could do about it. He could switch places with that version of himself. Both were going to live their lives, as different as they could be.

“What would you have done? Katniss...stop thinking like that.” It didn’t matter. He hadn’t been saved and maybe he was here, saved from it in a way he didn’t understand. Frustration mounting, he combed his fingers through his hair causing to stand on end. “Just stop apologizing.”

One hand automatically touches my neck, against bruises that were faded enough they were barely visible at all. Peeta had done this, just like he had done a lot of things that he'd never dream of normally and I wonder if I should stop there. Leave out the hijacking and all the rest that came after it. "No, you don't understand," I tell him, and even as my voice becomes rough from frustration I know that is isn't his fault. How could he know? None of us expected it. I could never have thought that Peeta could be broken in the way he was.

Just thinking about how he will never be the same again hurts enough to make me catch my breath. There were traces of him still left, of course, and they pushed through the madness at times. When I'd kissed him, he said he'd always stay.

Why do I feel as though I've lost him already? For the second time.

"There's more, and it's worse," but it isn't my right to decide what he hears. "Do you want me to tell you?" Let the choice be in Peeta's hands. I've decided enough for him already. So has the Capitol, and President Snow when they tried to change who he was.

Let him choose, for once.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Peeta took a deep breath. He was preparing himself, steeling himself against this situation. He was tired. It was too much, had been too much for a long time now. It was almost impossible to move on when he kept being dragged back into it.

It was like he was stuck in a loop, running around a track that he didn't ask for.

Shaking his head, he opened his eyes. "No," he said firmly looking her in the eyes. "I'm sick of this. I'm sick of everything Katniss. I'm not that guy. I'm going to be that version who went through all of that. I'm sorry, you know I am, that you got stuck in it. But I can't live if I'm being dragged back."

His shoulders slumped and he looked back at Gale in the bed. Another shake of his head. "I'm sorry."

There's a weight in my chest for some reason, one that makes each dragging breath harder, but I keep his gaze for the moment. One hand reaches up to touch his cheek, on instinct and I'm not sure why. But it's only seconds after that I pull away and nod slowly, understanding Peeta's need to move on here. Since he's the only one of us that can. "No, you're right. You should live and..." I feel my eyes flutter closed and everything is torn between letting him go and fighting to keep him close.

I should let him go. It's for his own good, and he...he doesn't need me, not anymore. Not like I admit to needing him.

"Live and be happy," it hurts and I blink quickly, but I'm not going to cry. Not here, not in front of him. I've lost so many people so far, but this is less permanent than death and it's better than anything I can give. The Quell had been about keeping him alive. That, I could do. Happiness, I couldn't.

Edited 2011-01-29 17:00 (UTC)

The look on her face pained him. He had done this. The words that he prided himself on having a way with had done this to her. Peeta had wanted many things, had asked for so little and so much that he cannot help hating himself a little for doing this to her.

He had to. He couldn't have stayed in that place where he didn't know what answers were coming next. What parts of his life might be upended. It was better this way. He just wished it didn't have to come at this cost.

"Katniss," he said softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "You deserve to be happy too. You need to live."

Taking a step forward, he planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. "Do that for me."

Letting his hand fall back to his side, he turned and walked slowly from the room. He had done enough damage for today. It was better if he just left now.

"Always."

I don't know where the word comes from, but it slips out before I can stop it because it's the only thing I remember. The one word that I couldn't hear, that night we fell asleep. But it's quiet enough that he probably didn't hear it, and maybe I didn't want him to hear it because this way he can forget about the Games and all the things that were done to us. He's free to go and do whatever he likes with the pretty blonde girl and her perfect curls.

In short, free to forget about me. But this is better, I tell myself. For him. Better for Peeta's well-being in general.

I turn away from the door, but not back towards Gale either. To a wall, waiting for Peeta to leave so I can.

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(peeta) the sea's wine red; this is the death of beauty

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