Caged Nightingale [Hunger Games Fanfic]

Senses and Lunar Phases (I)

Sight:

Everyone relies on their sight so much. Katniss honestly doesn't understand how she's so blind then, because though she knows Seneca has always been there, she hasn't seen how much she truly needs him.

She knows she does, but never the depth –and she ends up with the realization that she takes him for granted.

"I see you," he tells her one day. "I see you, and sometimes you're all I see. I become blinded to everything else. So it's okay. I can be a little blind too."

This is the reply she gets when she tells him she feels blind sometimes, but she doesn't elaborate on why.

She thinks that if she has to be blind, she wishes it was to be blind in the way he is –that all she could see is him and nothing else.

Hearing:

He hears her singing one time at home. It's beautiful...even starting to become haunting, especially with the song she'd chosen to sing. But the lyrics hit him hard and he's really listening to the words, his heart starting to clench in fear and he's rushing to her side.

She's sitting on their bed, making a rope necklace idly as she sings, but his mind is focused on the innocent-sounding words that truly fill him with terror.

"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it seem
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree~"

"Katniss," he practically chokes out and she turns her head to him in surprise, pausing her hands. "Please stop singing that song."

Is Peeta calling to you?

She furrows her eyebrows, about to stand up and go to him in confusion, when he goes over to her instead and holds her hands.

"Do you want to go to...him? Do you ever feel like that, Katniss? Really? I know life in the Capitol, being a literal prisoner in this home, in this society is hard –but surely not torturous enough that you would want to leave it all behind...permanently?"

He doesn't know what he would do if she took her life. He'd probably follow after her.

Light of understanding enters her eyes and she's shaking her head.

"No, I was just singing the song, Seneca. I mean...maybe in the beginning, this song would have meant much more and maybe I wouldn't have thought living this way was worth it, and would have tried to join Peeta –but you were here and I don't feel that way anymore," she confesses.

He tries to feel better, but the terror of the thoughts of her desire for suicide is still lingering and he can't do anything but bow his head over their held hands as his whole body shakes as he tries to calm down.

"Please just don't sing it again," he murmurs as she threads a hand through his hair, messing it up.

"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it seem,
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree," she sings the last verse and he looks up at her painfully, but she just puts the finished rope necklace over his neck.

"Okay," she smiles sadly at him. "But if you're gone, don't expect me to stick around," she tugs at the rope necklace around his neck meaningfully.

Though she doesn't know it, her words strike a cord within him and he resolves to live through anything for her, even if he has to fight tooth and nail, just to make sure she lives too.