victorbychance | OOC: Luceti Appointments

[She looks down at the out held hand. A hand that's not going to kill her. A hand that's meant to comfort, not harm. Comfort her.

She wants to take that hand. Wants to. So much.]

We were, though. You. Me. [Rue and Clove.

She takes his hand, for a split second, and then moves it away. Looks away. Whatever it took to break her.] You tried to kill me the last time. After the Quarter Quell.

[Now, for the first time, he falters. The hand wavers, but he doesn't withdraw it.]

You were dreaming.

Remembering.

[The word is whispered. Not entirely true. The dream had meshed memories together.

She wants to say more. Needs to say more. But the words are hard to form. Hard to say aloud. It's Peeta. She's Katniss. He's maybe the only person she doesn't have to be strong around. The dandelion in the spring.]

Remembering you being hijacked. And being sent back to District Thirteen. To kill me.

[He stares at her now. For a long, long time, he watches her.]

But I didn't. I wouldn't.

[The dead can come back here, but he can't imagine, can't believe, that all she's been saying about the future has been a lie.]

[She's quiet. Deathly quiet. Unable to speak, unable to meet his gaze. Eyes flicker back to the outstretched hand again. A hand she wants to take in her own. Hold tightly and never let go.]

You wouldn't. [She's had months now. Months to reconcile with this.] But you weren't you.

[If I'm gonna die, I still want to be me. That had been his dying wish, he'd thought. To die as himself. The only thing, in the end, that he really wanted. To keep himself to the end.

Katniss is awake. Calmer. Quiet. She's serious. That's the scariest part. She's been keeping this from him, and why shouldn't she? They can't prevent it. He's going back to...to this. To death without dying. And he'll be so thoroughly dead that he'll lay a hand on her.

His hand withdraws. He'd like to say it's because his arm is tired, but...no, the rift he couldn't see before is too wide. His touch...]

What happened?

[He sounds agitated. In a moment, he'll be upset, then angry. Before he goes hysterical, he has to know what happened. He has to know it turned out okay.]

[She watches as he moves his hand away. Tries not to recoil. Tries not to let the pain show on her face. The hurt. The fear that he'll pull away from her if she tells him this. That he'll no longer see her the way he does now.

Will he see her as something horrible now? A creature of the Capitol? Will he look at her and only think of this? A harbinger of future atrocities? It'll be like her with Gale again. Thinking of him and always wondering. Would she be able to survive that?]

There was a rescue attempt. At the end of the Quarter Quell. Haymitch and Plutarch... Finnick and Beetee and Johanna. They all knew. Maybe Mags, too. [She can't look at him now. Not as she sees Mags stepping into the fog all over again. Sacrificing her life for Peeta.] But we got separated. They needed me. They needed the Mockingjay.

So you and Johanna were left behind.

[Good. If anyone would be left behind...but that was back when he was facing merely death. No, there's no horror he wouldn't endure for Katniss, he thinks. But this horror endangered her?]

Then what?

[How can she ever explain? Explain the whole rebellion? How each District eventually rose up and actually fought? All the people... All the people that died in the process. The Victors and the stylists, anyone suspected of conspiracy, the soldiers on both sides. All the people that died because of the Mockingjay.

And Peeta. Peeta.

Whatever it would take to break her.]

Hijacking in the Capitol isn't what it is here. This is... almost peaceful in comparison. Beetee says they use trackerjacker venom. Torture. They distorted your memories. Injected the venom into your bloodstream as they played you footage from the arena. You thought I was a mutt, Peeta. You thought I was...

[Everything she really is. Not all that nice. Not very pretty. A horrible person. Someone who didn't deserve to live.]

[A week ago, he was her husband. She was his wife. They were comfortable and happy and lazy and content to lie in each others' arms.]

I don't think it now.

[It's so lame, to say something like that. But it's the point, if there is one. Part of him is saying it just to get her to stop. Because of everything he could possibly have imagined lurking in his future, none of it could have seemed so bad...except for this. His treasured memories of her, corrupted. The one truly sacred thing in his life.

As a kid, he used to think of her whenever things were bad at home. He liked to imagine being somewhere far away, where any wrong word or movement wouldn't set off an explosion, or a chain reaction leading to one. Home was so careful, so tense, but in the Seam there lived a beautiful girl with a voice that silenced the birds and the courage to go into the woods almost every day. The opposite of the quiet carefulness that ruled his home with an iron fist. To survive, Katniss had learned how to hunt, while Peeta had learned how to lie. Katniss never needed to be anything she wasn't.

But the lying hadn't really troubled him when it was necessary. It hadn't troubled him because he'd known the truth. He knew who he was. He held on to that internal truth like a lifeline to peace. It was all he had, in the end, that absolutely no one could take away from him. It was the one thing he knew, in all the chaos, that he could control.

Not anymore.]

No. You were dreaming, Katniss.

[A week ago, everything was perfect. She had never heard of a nation called Panem. She had no enemies. Knew no one who wanted her dead. Played no games. Mourned lost family: a sister and both parents. But had new family to make up for it. A best friend who still had her back. A good life. A happy life.

A life contrary to all her childhood expectations. A life she did not deserve.

But that had been the dream, hadn't it? Her nightmare only a jumbled up version of reality. It'll never be different. She'll never deserve that kind of peace.]

No.

[The word comes out harsh. Her face contorts into a desperate, angry mask. He has to understand. He's the boy with the bread. The boy willing to sacrifice anything for her. The boy she owes everything to. She doesn't know if she loves him. Loves him like he loves her. Her emotions had been manipulated too much over the past two years to know for certain if that is what she's feeling. But she owes him. It's just as important.

She shouldn't have said that. Told him about the future, the hijacking. It's not like telling Rue there are no more Games. Rue's dead back home. He isn't. But after last week, after this hijacking, she knew she couldn't hid the truth from him anymore, either.

Still. Maybe, maybe, this time? This time she can make things turn out all right.]

No, Peeta, it wasn't a dream. It happened. It will happen. Snow will capture you. Use you to break me. And then, when I'm supposed to kill him, I kill Coin. I try to kill myself but you? You stop me. Because whatever Snow did... However effective the hijacking was, it wasn't. You'll try to kill me. But in the end? You'll never let me die. I can't forget that, Peeta. I can't ever forget that.

[Neither can he, now. Not ever. Not with something like this lurking around the corner. Somewhere in there he hears, and recoils from, the news that Katniss tried to kill herself. Tried. Past tense, because it is in the past of this Katniss. This isn't the same girl he knows.

Then he'll have to learn the new Katniss. But for now...

For now, his days as himself are numbered. Coming to Luceti has given him time before that happens. As bad as the Malnosso are, at least their hijacking is temporary. Brief. It made him happy.

He wants to go back to his room. Maybe cry. But he doesn't want to leave her, either. She needs him. And just as immediately, he needs her. She never has realized how much he has needed her in order to be okay. She thinks he's strong for her, when his strength comes from her. She always has been the strong one. Instead, he sits quietly, hunched, glassy eyes boring a hole into the floor.]

[He doesn't say anything. She can't blame him for that. That he's even still here is some kind of miracle. She would've fled. Would have run to hide in the library. Or to stalk prey in the woods. Just like she did yesterday upon waking. Incapable of handling what had happened. Incapable of lying peacefully next to Peeta in bed.

And now it's so different. Now rather than slumbering contently, he sits there with that haunted look that isn't so different from the tortured boy she had left in District Twelve. But he isn't that tortured boy yet. The broken, hijacked boy. Hadn't been, anyway, until she had told him his future.

She's not so used to this. Being the one to comfort him. But slowly, cautiously, she extends her hand.]

[He doesn't notice it at first. He's looking away. When out of the corner of his eye he sees something moving, he jumps--but it's just her, reaching for him. And when he takes her hand, everything falls apart.

If she lets him, he will wrap his arms around her and lie back with her on the bed, face buried in her hair, curling against her like a scared child. She doesn't understand, does she? That he's only okay because of her. That sleeping apart from her has been murder, but he does it because she won't let him into her room at night. He wakes up, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to scream, without her weight in his arms to assure him she's okay, he hasn't failed, she's still alive, he hasn't lost her.

Has he lost her?]

[She lets him. It's awkward at first, a little stiff. Though she spent every night of the last week in his arms, that hadn't been her. Not really. It had been some strange hijacked version of herself. A girl happy with her life, with family and love.

Not her.

It's been months since the Quarter Quell. Since the last time she let him hold her. The last time she was actually able to. She's almost forgotten what it feels like, even as she has to remind herself that he own't kill her. She closes her eyes and wraps her arms around him in return. Clinging. Hoping he will forgive her.]

I'm sorry, Peeta.

[He simply breathes, frightened, tense but not shaking yet. There's more to the story. There's more, and his aching stomach has to hear it.]

You said I kept you from...hurting yourself. [He can't even bring himself to say it out loud.] Do I come back? Are we at least friends again?

[She notices it. The alteration in her phrase. The way he can't seem to mention her attempted death. Maybe she shouldn't be so surprised. His only goal in both games had been to keep her alive.

And how many times did she only wonder if she'd have to finally kill him?]

I think so. [She keeps her words quiet, trying to quell her own shaking fear.] You came back. Planted roses for Prim.

[It's better to know that, at least. But it doesn't lessen the terror, or the...yes, grief. Grief for a lost self. Preemptive, but there.]

I don't want to go home anymore.

[It's true. He doesn't want to go back to that, and he can't understand why Katniss thinks he'll be safer in Panem than he is here. Not anymore.]

[The threats in Panem are still threats she understands. Threats she knows how to fight. She still doesn't know how to counter the shifts. How to truly fight against the Malnosso's games. And keep them all safe.

She'll do everything in her power to keep Peeta safe. Fulfill the promise she had made to keep him alive even above her own life.

She snuggles closer, tries to hide her head against his chest.] It's a game. What choice do we have?

It's not a game. [He takes a deep breath.] It's not even the same world. There's no winner here, it's just life. More like everyday life in District Twelve than the arena.

[Oh, Peeta. Can't you see? This is as every much of a game as those they were forced to play in Panem. She's never stopped being a game piece. Neither has he.

She looks up at him, worry hardening her features.] Then what do you call last week?

A demonstration of power.

Just like all the games we've ever played.

[They've been about hunger. About death. About paying for crimes committed long ago in the past.

But there's no mistaking the fight for dominance. For power. Between the Capitol over the Districts. Between tributes in any given Game. Between Snow and Coin for the fate of Panem. The power can hold. She learned that lesson too late.]

Just like our whole lives before our names were ever drawn. And look--no one was hurt. No one was killed. It was scary afterwards, but we're okay. You and me. We're here, we're ourselves. Compared to what we've been through? That's a prank.

[He might be right. They aren't fighting to the death here. There are no Peacekeepers. No struggle to quench hunger. But he hasn't lived through it yet. His hijacking.

She shifts in his arms, trying to sit. Needing to look steadily at him.]

How can you be so calm after everything I just told you? It wasn't a prank. It was a hijacking!

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