Pure Torture: a Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 103

Peeta

"I'll taste the devil's tears. Drink from his soul, but I'll never give up you." -Angus and Julia Stone

"Ready to go home?" I ask Katniss.
She lies in bed with me, practically on top of my body. She's always slept close to me, but now, since she's so distraught, she lies even closer.
I take her silence as a yes.

"Soon we can go home, then it'll be spring in a few weeks and you can start hunting again," I start talking aimlessly, just saying whatever comes to mind that could comfort her.
"All that matters is that you don't ever have to come back here if you don't want to. You can go home and maybe, you know, when the baby's born, we could go to 4. We could go see the beach or something," I say.

"How do you feel?" I ask quietly after being silent for a few moments.
"I'm alright," Katniss says softly. "I just like hearing you talk to me. I don't want to ruin by talking back."
I take a stray bit of her brown hair and twirl it around my fingers absentmindedly.

"What time is it?" She asks, her head resting on my chest.
"It's 6:45," I reply. "We can stay in bed until 8 before we have to start packing up."
"Good," she says.

We lie there for what seems like an eternity. In a good way.
"I remember lying like this with you before our second Games," she states. I try to figure out if she meant anything more than just relaying a memory to me. I decide she doesn't.
"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," I say, repeating the words I said to her that day.

"That's what you said to me the day before our games. Real, right?" She asks me, lifting her head to look at me sleepily.
"Real," I reply. "You look beautiful, by the way."
"Oh, shut up," she says.

"I love you," I remind her.
She grunts in reply, lying back down and deciding to go back to sleep.

I feel and listen as her body goes limp and her breaths even out. She's out like a light within minutes of closing her eyes. I think back to the nights where she never slept at all and used to lie awake in order to avoid the inevitable nightmares. My wife has come so far. She always talks about the baby being a miracle, but she's the real miracle to me.

Having gone through 2 Hunger Games, torture from the Capitol, rigorous therapy and side effects in 13, multiple suicide attempts and relapses, an unplanned pregnancy and seizures and other long term effects of her previous life... It's a miracle she made it out alive. Anyone else would have been dead their first Games. But not Katniss.

There's just something about her. Maybe it's how she was forced to be strong and provide for her family when she was just 11 years old. Maybe it always stuck with her. Maybe all of that never left her. Some people might call it luck that got her through. They could say that she was lucky I was with her or that whatever it was had impeccable timing or was a fortunate coincidence, but I of all people know it wasn't luck.

Katniss pushed through it herself, and it will always be herself that she'll have to thank for it at the end of the day.

--

Katniss, Willow, and I are escorted to the train station by Effie later that morning. Cameras flash on all sides of us and I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live in the Capitol with all of our fame. I'm surprised people haven't gotten tired of us yet.

"Katniss! Katniss! What's the baby's name going to be?"
"Peeta, how has the baby changed your relationship?"
People holding cameras ask bizarre questions over and over.