ghosts that we knew: A mockingjay fanfiction

39

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 39

Katniss

I do not move a muscle until I am certain that he is gone.

Because if I try to move, and Haymitch is still in sight, I'll run right to him. I will cry, and scream, and act like an even bigger baby than I have just acted. I will become a puddle of the composed, capable mother I have been trying so hard to act as these past five weeks. I will be inconsolable, weak, and hopeless with just a scrape away at my shell.

Simply put, if I bend at all, I will break.

My Mentor disappears around the corner. Exhaling at last, I sink to the ground in a mess of tears and tremors.

Haymitch was right. I'm scared. Prim was right. I'm not happy. Even Madge was right. Peeta is never going to get better unless he is helped.

Every word, every heed of caution, every silent plea has made perfect, logical sense in my heart, but my head always seemed to be two steps behind, fighting back with the stubborn tenacity expected of someone who shouldn't care.

But I do care. Everyone else seems to realize that. As for me? I've built myself a wall so impenetrable that no one can break through, and I have hidden my daughter and my best friend behind the wall with me as reinforcements.

Haymitch, no matter how harshly he managed to put it, is correct: I am on a one-way path to destruction at the rate at which I am building my towering fortress. The higher the wall becomes, the more lethal it will be when it crumples down.

I've just been too terrified to admit aloud that I agree with him, or with any of them, for that matter. I am terrified of possibilities in which he is taken away from me again, by Capitol hovercraft in the night, by Snow himself, or even by losing himself in his own hijacked mind. I am terrified that Arden's life will be put at risk, due to her unfortunate draw of a hand of cards in which she has not one, but two unstable parents who can throw her into the crossfire of rebellion with a single step out of line.

What I am most terrified of is perhaps the most trivial fear of them all, yet the thought of it shakes me to my core and keeps me up at all hours of the night. I am terrified of scorn, rejection, hatred from the boy with the bread who I worry I have lost to Snow and the Capitol.

Arden's cries grow in volume and fervor, and I am reminded that despite all of my fears, there is one person who has kept me from flying off the edge these past weeks.

She's small, but mighty as I curl her warm body against mine in my bed. Touching my lips to the downy tufts of raven-colored hair on her delicate head, I let my daughter do the comforting for the both of us.

To Peeta, I am a Mutt. To Haymitch, Prim, and Madge, I am negligent. To Gale, I am a safety net. But to my baby girl, I am just boring old Mom.

Never in my wildest nightmares would I have imagined that being caregiver to an infant would be what made me feel most secure. I'll take Mom any day over the new crop of identities I have drudged up since becoming Mom.

My bundle of joy, my light in the darkness, catches me off guard entirely when her shouting stops short and she fixates over something that has caught her eye on my person. Her dazzling sapphire eyes ablaze with curiosity, Arden reaches a small fist out to the object, latches on, and yanks.

My heart jumps into my throat when I realize what my daughter has captured in her hands.

My locket. The locket Peeta gave to me almost a year ago. I had faithfully kept it around my neck for so long that I had forgotten that I had been wearing it.