If Fire Caught

Chapter 38: Peeta

I wake from a nightmare and sit up abruptly, hitting my head on the railing I'm chained to. I groan and rub my head and I hear a chuckle to my left.

"Be careful Mellark," Gale says. "You're already messed up enough in the head without getting a concussion."

"Clever," I say. "Did you come up with that one on your own?"  He rolls his eyes and comes over to me. He unchained my hands from above my head and hands me a cup of water.

"Let's just cut the crap," he says. "I don't like you and you don't like me, but she made her choice. She doesn't need to have us to fight over her any longer."

"I never wanted to fight," I say. "I didn't want her to be yours, but if that would have made her happy, I would have let her go. But now she's mine and I'd die if anything happened to her."

"I know that," he says sitting down beside me. "You've made that clear a long time ago. But I love her too. And don't think I ever won't." He looks past me and I turn to see Katniss curled in a mass of black and red furs, her hand outstretched and clasping her bow, her head resting against my leg.

"How bad was she?" I ask him.

"Which time?" He asks. "When she lost you, when she lost the baby, or when you tried to kill her?" The way he says the last part so accusingly stings like a knife, but I ignore it.

"All of them," I say. "Because I don't think she was telling the truth when she told me." He looks at her and sighs.

"When we picked her up, she was dehydrated and barely conscious," he says. "Her eyes never really focused on anything, I doubt she had any idea what was happening. She woke up still geared to kill, looking for you so she could kill you and then herself so Snow couldn't torture you or your child. But when she found out about how they left you, how you both were lied to, she went apeshit crazy. She attacked Haymitch, something about some sort of deal she made with him to save you and not her."

"Yeah," I reply. "But I had my own deal. And he honored mine because she's worth more in this sick game."

"Right," he says uncomfortably. "Well, I stayed with her until she woke up and I told her about 12. She started crying and I thought it was just because she was upset, but then she started screaming and there was blood and when we got her to 13, it all just happened so fast. They tried, Peeta. They tried so hard to save him. But they got to him too late. She almost died open on that steel table. Her heart stopped once before they even got him out and then twice after that when they were trying to stop the bleeding." I look at him, horrified.

"Does she know?" I ask and he shakes his head.

"Of course not," he says. "She was already on suicide watch. She didn't need to know that they didn't let her go with her son." He stops then and looks seriously at me. "How much did she tell you about what happened after she found out about what happened to River?"

"That she insured on seeing him," I say looking down. "That she sang too him and fought to have him buried in Twelve." I then look up at him. "But that isn't all of it, is it? She was bad, really bad. I can see it in her eyes even after six months." He frowns.

"I wasn't there when she saw him," he says. "I left before she laid eyes on him. But Finnick was there. And he from what he told me, she held him, rocked and sang as though he were only sleeping. But then it came crashing down. She kept screaming and she wouldn't stop. She screamed for him to wake up and then she kept screaming for you. She wasn't Katniss anymore. She was just this shell for a really long time. But then one night, she wrote a statement to Coin that she'd be the Mockingjay on the condition that you'd have immunity." I look over at her and I sigh.

"I wanted nothing more than for her to stop loving me while I was there," I say. "They had me chained to the wall so I couldn't kill myself, but I wanted very much to be dead. Yet all she wanted was for me to live."

"She never stopped loving you," Gale says. "Even after you left those marks on her neck and Boggs had to knock you out, she cradled your head in her lap and cried. She didn't blame you. She blamed herself because she thought she should have been in your place."

"I don't trust myself around her," I say. "I'm terrified of what will happen if we all survive all this."

"We'll probably find notes on treatment for you if we do," he says. I just scoff.

"Unless it's a treatment that takes less than nine months, I'm still screwed," I say. He just stares at me for a minute before a glare crosses his face.

"She's pregnant?" He asks. "How the hell did you manage to do this to her not once but twice!"

"Keep your voice down," I say. "And I don't know. According to her, it was the night before I turned on her again, but I don't remember anything from that night. So now we're stuck. And you don't need to remind me about how she didn't want kids, because I do remember that one pretty clearly." He just stares at her helplessly.

"She can't lose this one," he says. "She wouldn't survive, and neither would you."

"You think I don't know that?" I ask. "Of course I do. But after last time, what if she starts bleeding again? What if she can't carry a child safely?"

"She'll be okay," he says, sounding like it's more for his own benefit than mine. "It's just these next few weeks, and then."

"The rest of our lives," I say reaching out and touching Katniss' hand gently. A small smile crosses her peaceful, sleeping face as it closes around my fingers.