Remade (After Mockingjay Story)

Chapter 13 - The Storm

Katniss

A few nights after Peeta returned, there was a big storm that came over District 12. Peeta and I both sleep in my house, but in separate rooms. We hadn't really talked about it, I guess we're still trying to figure out what our relationship is exactly. After I'd finally managed to fall asleep a loud crack of thunder jolted me awake. For a few moments I just laid there, staring at the wall of my dark room, trying to process what has just happened.
A flashback of fiery bombs had flashed by when I woke, I think I'd cried out when it happened, but I can't remember. Another loud boom of thunder suddenly goes off and pure fear starts to shoots through my body like I'd been shot. Vivid memories of fire and explosions force their way into my mind. My hands make panicky movements across my skin, itching the imaginary burns that had healed months ago. My eyes fearfully scan the room, everything is still. The windows repeatedly blink with flashing light. I stare at the shapes the light makes through the windows when it appears on the walls. It's the only thing that can distract me from the darkness.
Normally I'm not bothered by the dark, but when I'm terrified it only makes the fear worse. While I stare at the walls, something catches my eye–a shadow in the corner of the room. For a brief moment I look at the corner, curious about this shadow I hadn't noticed before. When the blinking light comes back, I'm looking into the eyes of my dead sister. My head dives under the covers of my bed. This time I know I cried out. The fear might've drowned out the moment's memory but the fresh sting in my throat was enough to know.

"Katniss, are you alright?"

I didn't hear my door open. Peeta's light voice breaks me out of my panicked trance. I turn my head out of the covers to the doorway; Peeta's standing there in the kind of position that looks like he'd rushed over, his eyes are concerned but they're widened enough for me to tell that he's terrified as well.

"Peeta, come here. Please."

I wonder how many more times this will happen, where we sleep in separate beds then when we get too scared, we decide not to. Peeta climbs into my bed, but he doesn't snuggle in, put an arm around me or anything. He just lies next me so that we're face to face.

"I can't stop seeing the blood, or hearing the screams," He says. "When I hid from the explosions I saw an arm laying on the ground right next to me. Just an arm."

His eyes are staring right past me, his mind is reliving the memory.

"I saw my dead sister." I say.

His eyes refocus on me.

"She was standing in the corner of my room. There was blood running down her face."

Peeta doesn't say anything. For a few minutes we just lie there in silence, until another loud boom of thunder erupts outside. We both grimace and fidget around in our spots. I can feel the intense energy between us, we both feel like reaching out but neither one of us actually does it. I stare at Peeta as he forcefully squeezes his eyes shut, his arms are clenched together, twitching and shaking. There must be something that could distract us from this storm, there's no way we could think of anything happy right now, but expressing our fears might not be so bad if we expressed them together.

"What do you see?" I ask quietly.

"What?"

"When you're afraid, what do you see?"

Peeta says nothing, he looks past me at the wall, giving it a puzzled stare. It seems like he knows what I mean, but wonders why I said it. Maybe he's wondering if he actually wants to tell me.

"I see the arena. It always takes me back to that constant fear. That unsafe feeling that never goes away because there's still someone out there that wants to kill you. I see Marvel, the light leaving his eyes because I killed him. And Rue, she's always there. I feel the guilt and helplessness all over again. I think of all the tributes I watched die in both Hunger Games, and how I wasn't among them. What was I that was more deserving of life than them? I see the chaos from the Capitol too, the bodies, the blood, and the monsters. I see my sister engulfed in flames, and feel the uselessness flood through me over and over. Everything I did, everything I went through, it was all for her. The fear seems permanent doesn't it? Sometimes when I'm out in the woods I suddenly get scared when I think of the mutations that were made specifically to kill me. And somehow, they killed Finnick instead. I even see Cato, the one that I felt so threatened by that I kept hoping would die, but when he did I didn't feel any victory at all. Now I'm disgusted at myself. I also see you, after you were rescued, how tortured you looked and that strong look of hatred always comes back. Whenever I think back at how much you struggled, I think of how it should've been me. You put your everything into keeping me safe, and I should've done the same for you. I know you tell me not to blame myself for everything that happened to you but it's so hard. I'm sorry that I got mad at you and I'm sorry that I said I didn't need you Peeta, I didn't mean it."

"But you were right." He says back.

"I was just mad, I wasn't thinking when I said it."

"You never needed me Katniss, you could've done everything without me. I only held you back."

"That's not true at all." I shoot back.

Peeta pauses, then sighs. He leans his head back to look at the ceiling. I notice that he's not shaking anymore.

"Look, before I say anything else, you have to promise me you won't blame yourself again okay? I'm not going to explain again why you shouldn't."

"Fine, I won't." I tell him. I know his argument very well, but even if I told myself over and over again that it wasn't my fault, the guilt would still be there.

"Everyone's been telling me to talk about what happened, but I just wanted to forget about it. I never wanted to revisit it, but we have to face our fears I guess." Peeta says, still gazing at the dark ceiling.

"Yeah, we can't do it alone," I add. It's odd to see myself say this. Me, the girl who'd always wanted to do everything alone. But it's better that I didn't, I don't think I would've survived in the end if I did. Peeta rolls over to face me again, when I look in his eyes they look distant. When he speaks, his voice is quiet and coarse,

"Whenever I lie down, I think of the cold, hard floor I had to sleep on for weeks. My cell didn't have a ceiling, none of them did. They were all connected walls but the ceiling  was one big separate thing. They wanted us to hear each other's screams throughout that entire underground prison. There was no windows, no sunlight. It was always dark except for the dim lanterns on the aisle walls. They fed me slop in a bowl, like I was an animal. They barely even fed me, I would starve for hours.
I never got any sleep, there was always something keeping me up. There'd be someone screaming, or I'd be in pain, or starving, or drugged. They tortured people around me just to torture me. Peacekeepers would beat me senseless if I ever spoke up but I felt so guilty about them hurting the others that I just did it to redirect their attention. They would call me names, laugh at me, and spit in my face. The worst part was when they took me to the labs. They'd poke me with so many needles, and they would attach all these machines to me, then I would have these endless hallucinations and gave me these awful headaches. I hated it, that stuff was so powerful it made me forget who I was at times. That drug's main effect was fear, I was so afraid all the time and I couldn't control it. They directed all that pain and confusion to you. They made me hate you so much, but at the same time I was so afraid of you."

Peeta's words make my insides twist, but I keep my expressions serious and unnerving. Somewhere deep inside I had always hoped that Peeta's torture wasn't as bad as I'd thought, but what he's saying completely extinguishes that hope.

"You know one of the things I hate the most is that I couldn't say goodbye to my family," Peeta says.

"Me too, Prim was gone so suddenly, my dad too, I feel like everything was left unfinished with them. There was so much that I would've said to them."

After that, we lie in silence. Just as I'd thought, after being distracted for so long, the thunder didn't bother us anymore.