Maybe It Can Be Real

Chapter 3

ALL RIGHTS GO TO SUZANNE COLLINS. I OWN NOTHING.

Peeta is coming home in two weeks (or so I've heard from Greasy Sae. I don't know how she found out). I don't know what I'm going to do. Does he still love me? Does he see me as the monster that I truly am? I don't know. I guess I'll have to find out the hard way: waiting until he returns.

Over the next couple days I can only think about what will happen when I finally do see him. When I stare into space, his face is on my mind and his name on my lips. My fingers have been moving almost nonstop on the rope.

Since I know he will be back soon, my nightmares have been spiraling downward, even worse than before. I lose hours of sleep because of them. No one is there to comfort me. I sleep so little during the night that my mind no longer stays on Peeta, but drifts away to other things.

My nightmares.

What I see at night sometimes comes 'alive' during the day. When Sae isn't making me eat, I am huddled on my couch, tying knots in the rope. I try to redirect my thoughts, but the nightmares haunt me so much that it doesn't work.

I'm not learning to cope at all. I'm just getting worse and worse.

Eventually my life becomes a dream-like state. Nothing feels like reality anymore. I attempt to sleep, wake up from nightmares, eat the food Sae gives me, and sit there. That's my life.

Sae tells me to check down the hall where items from my past are waiting for me. I debate about it, then after a while of silent arguments in my head, I walk quietly down the hall. I open the creaky door and peer inside. I gasp at what I see. Things I thought had been left behind in Thirteen: my father's hunting jacket, our plant book, my parents' wedding photo, the spile Haymitch sent in, the locket Peeta gave me with so much meaning behind it, two bows, and a sheath of arrows.

{A/N: Now I'm going to use a excerpt from 'Mockingjay.' Quotation marks (") will surround the part from the book, while apostrophes (') will surround quotes from the part of the book. I DO NOT OWN THE PLOT! OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER! Now that I've finished rambling, here is the excerpt!!!! 😃}

"I put on the hunting jacket and leave the rest of the stuff untouched. I fall asleep on the sofa in the formal living room. A terrible nightmare follows, where I'm lying at the bottom of a deep grave, and every dead person I know by name comes by and throws a shovel full of ashes on me. It's quite a long dream, considering the list of people, and the deeper I'm buried, the harder it is to breathe. I try to call out, begging them to stop, but the ashes fill my mouth and nose and I can't make any sound. Still the shovel scrapes on and on and on....

I wake with a start. Pale morning light comes around the edges of the shutters. The scraping of the shovel continues. Still half in the nightmare, I run down the hall, out the front door, and around the side of the house, because now I'm pretty sure I can scream at the dead. When I see him, I pull up short. His face is flushed from digging up the ground under the windows. In a wheelbarrow are five scraggly bushes.

'You're back,' I say.

'Dr. Aurelius wouldn't let me leave the Capitol until yesterday,' Peeta says. 'By the way, he said to tell you he can't keep pretending he's treating you forever. You have to pick up the phone.'

He looks well. Thin and covered with burn scars like me, but his eyes have lost that clouded, tortured look. He's frowning slightly, though, as he takes me in. I make a half-hearted effort to push my hair out of my eyes and realize it's matted into clumps. I feel defensive. 'What are you doing?'

'I went into the woods this morning and dug these up. For her,' he says. 'I thought we could plant them along the side of the house.'

I look at the bushes, the clods of dirt hanging from their roots, and catch my breath as the word "rose" registers. I'm about to yell vicious things at Peeta when the full name comes to me. Not plain rose but evening primrose. The flower my sister was named for. I give Peeta a nod of assent and hurry back into the house, locking the door behind me. But the evil thing is inside, not out. Trembling with weakness and anxiety, I run up the stairs. My foot catches on the last step and I crash onto the floor. I force myself to rise and enter my room."

(A/N: Excerpt from 'Mockingjay' over)

When I walk in my room, I slam the door shut and walk to my bed trembling. I stumble over my own feet and grasp the bedpost to keep standing. I walk over to my window and throw it open to try in a futile attempt to breathe in the faraway woods. It obviously doesn't work; my legs feel like jelly. I collapse on the floor and curl into a ball. I really need the rope to tie myself together, but it's all the way downstairs. I don't have the strength to go get it, so I entangle my fingers in my hair - well, the strands of it that aren't in clumps. Which isn't very much.

I replay our conversation in my head over and over. Looking back on it, it was a bit awkward.

He may be thin and covered in scars, but that doesn't make him any less handsome. No scar, bruise, or imperfection could take away his looks. He will always be attractive with his blue eyes, curly blonde hair, and muscular arms. He can still be the boy with the bread that I unconsciously fell in love with.

If it hadn't taken me as long to realize how deep that affection went, I could've saved him from his hijacking. I could've saved him from being tortured.

I bury my face in my hands, the guilt being especially strong now that I've seen him in person. I start to shake and my throat closes up. I know I'm going to cry, so I push the heels of my hands into my eyes to try and push the tears back. No amount of force could hold the tears back, so I let them out. For how long, I don't know. I just know that I laid there for a long time, sobs racking my body, choked sounds coming out of my mouth.

Hours on end I lay there, sobbing deep into the night, sure Peeta or Haymitch could hear me. Well, Haymitch could if he isn't passed out drunk and his window's open. Peeta sleeps with his windows open, so he can hear me being as close as he is.

25 yards, to be exact. I softly smile at the memory through my tears. I notice that I've calmed down a little bit, so I push myself off the dusty floor. I flop myself onto the bed and wrap the blankets around me. I continue to cry. Early morning light comes in through my window and I'm still crying.

I start shivering from the cold so I walk over to the window to shut it. When I walk over to it I falter. I see Peeta sitting in a chair by his window that is across from mine. His cheek is resting on his fist, eyes softly closed like he just fell asleep.

I slide down the wall and wrap my arms around my legs. Peeta was there for who knows how long, listening to me crying. He's still trying to protect me.

**********************************************************************************************************

Hey guys!!!! Thanks for reading!!

IM SO SORRY I HAVENT UPDATED IN FOREVER!!!! I've just recently found time to write! This chapter was extra long! I hope you enjoyed it! I don't think I'll be able to post again before the new year.

Which reminds me.... MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY EARLY NEW YEAR!!!! Consider this super long chapter as my gift to you all.

By the time you guys have read this, I will have started on the next chapter!!!! :D

Please take time to comment and vote!!

OMG THIS IS GOING TO SOUND PATHETIC BUT THANK YOU FOR 43 READS!!! I LOVE YOU ALL! I didn't think I was going to get 2! I knew I was getting one cause my friend told me she would read it. THANKS AGAIN!

Shoot straight and be brave,

Weezabeth <3