If Fire Caught

Chapter 30: Peeta

I play with the shackles around my wrists, flexing them so they dug into my skin whenever reality became blurry. Katniss is supposed to come today after Annie and Finnick's wedding. I wasn't allowed to go because they were afraid I'd snap around so many people. I hear the doorknob turn and Katniss' tiny figure slips in.

"Hey," I say.

"Hey," she replies awkwardly. She obviously still doesn't quite know what to make of me. "I saw the cake. It was beautiful."

"I offered to decorate it," I say. "They made it part of my treatment." She smiles and sits down next to me.

"So tell me honestly," she says. "How are you doing?"

"Better," I say. "Not much better, but better than I was."

"That's good, I guess," She says. "You look like you've gained some of your weight back. That makes me feel better. You didn't look very good last time I saw you."

"Yeah, well I guess getting real food does that," I say. "In the, in the Capitol, they only gave us moldy, stale bread and water every other day." I see tears in Katniss' eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

"Kitten, it wasn't your fault," I say but she shakes her head.

"He did this to you to break me," she cries. "I was already shattered and he just did this to hurt both of us even more. We already lost our baby. I knew he was cruel, but why you too. Haven't we suffered enough." She can't anymore because she's crying so hard. I try to reach out and embrace her, but I can't because of the shackles. So I just lift my arms and Katiss doesn't hesitate to crawl on my lap between them. She wraps her arms around my neck and sobs into my chest.

"It's over now Katniss," I whisper as I stroke her hair. "We can get past all this." The war is practically over now. Then we can go home, get on with our lives."

"But what about River?" she asks. "He was our baby. Our son. We will never be able to get him back. We can heal, but he can't. I don't even know what color his eyes were. He died inside me. He never even got to take his first breath."

"How did it happen?" I ask her.

"I thought you knew," she says, pulling away enough to look at me.

"Only the bare minimum," I say. "Not everything you went through though."

"It was just after they pulled me from the Quell. I went nuts when I found out about you being captured. So nuts that I had to be sedated after giving Haymitch those claw marks down his face. When I woke up, Gale told me about Twelve. I felt a crap and there was blood and I blacked out. I woke up the next day in the hospital here with stitches in my abdomen. My mother was sitting there and the way she was staring at me, I knew something was wrong. She told me what happened, how they tried but he was already dead before they got him out. And I cried. I asked to see him and after Finnick offered to take me, she let us go. Gale was there when I got there and he told me about the promise he made to you. He's the one that helped me get River laid to rest in Twelve. I just held him in my arms and screamed. I begged him to wake up. I screamed for you and then I just fell off the deep end. I sang to him and rocked him as though he really was just asleep. But he was cold. So very, very cold. We buried him beneath a willow tree near the lake in the woods," she says and then slips something over her head. I recognize it as the locket I gave her in the Quell she opens it and smiles sadly before pulling out a picture and showing it to me.

"Is this him?" I ask her as I recognize the picture as a newborn baby. She nods and wipes a tear from her cheek and kisses the picture before placing it back in the locket and closing it.

"He looked like you," she says. "He had my nose and dark hair, but the rest was all you. I cried for him for weeks. I'll have the scar from his birth for the rest of my life. But that's nothing compared to the emptiness left in my heart when I had to lay him to rest. The pain I felt when I saw nothing left of the house I grew up in but ashes, nothing left of the bakery but a building collapsed into itself."

"My family?" I ask and she shakes her head.

"Gale said they refused to leave the bakery," she says. "They're most likely still in the rubble." I feel my hands clench into fists. "Peeta? Your face is getting really sweaty and you're shaking."

"You need to get out of here," I say.

"What? Why?" she asks.

"Just get out of here!" I yell at her. "Get out now!" She slips out of my arms and kisses my cheek before starting for the door and shutting it tightly behind her. I clutch my hair and start rocking back and forth, fighting the demons inside.

"She's a mutt! She left your family to die! She doesn't deserve to live! Find her! Snap her neck and leave her body for the vultures!" the tormenting voice taunts.

"No! She loves me! I love her! We were having a child together!" I cry out in desperation.

"And she killed him!" the voice hisses. "She killed her own son Peeta! She killed your son! She needs to be punished! Kill her! Avenge your son!"

"He died inside her," I cry back. "There was nothing anyone could do. If anything, Snow killed him. Snow's the one that did this to me! He deserves to die!"

"She showed you no proof! She says she has a scar, yet she never showed you, did she?" the voice reasons.

"No," I admit to myself. "She didn't."

"She killed him Peeta," the voice coos. "Now you must kill her. End her life! She's a mutt! She must die! You must avenge your son!"

I leap up and start slamming my fists against the door. I yell and shout things, terrible things. Things I would never say about Katniss if I was in my right mind. After my fit is over, I slide to the ground, my back resting against the door.

"Oh Katniss," I whisper, the venom's attack subsiding. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we'll never move on."

Because I fear, if we do get to the point where we are living together as we imagined, I might snap and kill the only one left in this world who truly loves me.