The chase is all they know
The Chase is all we know
PG
Katniss/Peeta, loosely following the epilogue's timeline.
Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark cannot seem to remember when they just were. There is no wave crashing down on them, no ticking tock to push them into survival mode. This is a strange place to be, (the calm before the storm), but there is no storm coming, and the thought scares them both.
What the hell are they, if not victors fighting for their life?
"I remember you describing me, once." Katniss says, her eyes fluttering open in the dead of night (too infrequently she has the power to end the nightmare and wake up) in his arms.
"I remember." Peeta says it softly, his eyes opened, he hasn't found sleep yet and the act of remembering who he was when hijacked… He would shudder, but Peeta knows it will disturb the woman half asleep besides him. Katniss is not fragile, but the nightmares they both have (of the games, of the revolution, of the people they have lost because of it) make them suffer enough, repressing a shudder is at least in his control.
"What are we now?" Katniss looks up at Peeta, she sees his restless eyes, the dark circles. He doesn't answer her, but wraps his arms firmly around her.
We are broken.
It happens somehow, between trying to live, and (closing your eyes, willing yourself not to see fire) just being. They find each other again. It is not like before the Quarter Quell, not like before the games (they had nothing before the games, if it were not for the games…they don't think of that thought. Too much pain drips from it).
It has happened: they have found each other, (grown together, fallen in love) but they are not whole.
Days trickle, and mold, and form years very quickly when you are healing.
"How is it that you've never been here?" Katniss has stripped to her underclothes (District 12 is still haunted with the ashes of what where, and not yet the voices of what will be,-hardly anyone lives here-and its not like Peeta hasn't seen her wearing less than this). She is swimming in her secret place; this is where her father taught her to swim, this is where she ran to and considered running from it all, here is where she jumps in and holds her breath when she considers giving up.
Peeta dives in the water, (upsetting the soft ripples made by the wind), and small waves form. "I've seen it before, once or twice when I've managed to find where you are hiding." He says and shrugs it off.
"You never let on." She leans back into the water and floats.
"Everyone needs a secret safe place."
She turns her head and looks at him and smiles. She doesn't say thank you, but he understands. The two bask in the sunlight and enjoy the water. When the silence is broken by a mockingjay (some still repeat Rue's tune-but this one doesn't-it just sings playful pitches), Peeta splashes Katniss, and soon it is an all out battle. When splashing turns to kissing, she whispers in his ear, "This can be your secret safe place too."
I don't know fully who I am-sometimes I think you know more than me-I'd have it no other way.
They yell and scream and fight and doors are slammed, in the months before spring. On either side of them are empty houses, but after that, the houses are filling up. Almost two new families move in every day. Fifteen years is a long time, and the world doesn't stop turning just because you don't know what to do.
"Maybe I'll just go to my mothers!" She shouts and walks towards the door.
"Maybe you should!"
The words they say are hollow, someone else should be saying it, not them, not the star-crossed lovers of district 12. What would the neighbors think, if they knew Peeta was banished to sleep on the couch? At seventeen they didn't care what the capitol thought, so why should they care what people from the Seam thought? They didn't.
He has moved from the couch to the guest bedroom, it is closer to hers, in case she has a nightmare (but if anyone asks, it's because he is the man and this bed has the television and larger mattress).
Add an extra 40 pounds and she can still sneak around without anyone (especially not Peeta) knowing. But when his glass measuring cup breaks, and the sound of shards of it echoes throughout the house, Peeta wakes up.
"What are you doing?" Peeta rushes down to the kitchen, only to find his (albeit irritated but) wife nonetheless sweeping shards of glass into a pile.
"Cleaning things up."
"There is flour all over the counter." There is flour all over the counter, and his bread pans on the oven (the only thing of his family's that he has) and a large bowl of…something. She has made a mess of his kitchen, and broken his measuring cup. This will take hours to clean up. He wants to yell and scream and-"Where you making bread?" The thought stops him, like the sound of her singing always does.
"Yes." Her hair is braided like she did when she was a teen.
She is no longer a teen, is what Peeta is thinking.
I wanted to make you bread; and try to fix this, is what Katniss wants to tell him.
"Let me help you." He starts by dampening a cloth and wiping the flour off her face, then kissing her lips lightly. "I should have taught you how to bake years ago." It is a statement (and a regret at the same time), Katniss can add nothing to that so she gets a cloth and wipes the counter down.
"We've only ever been fighting someone, or trying to heal from the fight, now fighting each other." Her words come out naturally, as if part of her has been thinking on this for a while. "These last few years things have been too good."
I'm still scared, is that ok? Can we be whole, and in love, and still be afraid?
He wraps her arms around her; they rest on her growing stomach-it is almost time. The two don't say a word, but she breathes deep breaths. In, and out, in, and out. People often forget how healing deep breaths are.
"What if, after all this chasing and running and trying, i-if it just leaves to nothing?"
"Do you remember that night on the beach?"
There has only ever been one night on the beach, and it's a good-bad memory. The two have many of those. "Yes."
He waits for her to speak, to remember what he told him. But she doesn't. He suspects she is fast-forwarding the memories, reliving the painful ones. "What did I tell you?"
If Peeta is Katniss' anchor, then what is she? How does she help him? By just being? "That I would make a good mother."
Katniss gives Peeta something to live for. She is his everything. She reminds him to stay strong and never give up. She is his anchor to reality when the demons take over. "I still think that, and you do to, or else you would have never gotten pregnant." Peeta says. She is safe now. He pours out the mixture and gets a new bowl.
She still isn't completely sure, if, after all this chasing, and pain and hurt and healing and fighting (between themselves now), if she can fully live without these habits. It's the only pattern she's known for so long.
"Pass me the flour."
She does, and Peeta pours it in, without even measuring it. He see's her look at her with admiration. "I'll teach you how to eyeball it."
It is the beginning of another stage of healing, another part in their life, and she sleeps soundly (warm bread helps, but) when Peeta is besides her, caressing her, his hand resting on her stomach- - that helps even more.
I am ok, Katniss thinks, and smiles.
"So this means no more fighting?" His voice is a whisper (and here she thought he was already sleeping).
"Yes, no more fighting." Katniss says, what she doesn't say is; I think I finally know what we are.
Just you and me, destined to be
Prompt:
the spring blooms, and you find the love that's true
but you don't know what now to do,
'cause the chase is all you know
and she stopped running months ago.
9/21/10
Notes: Started at 11pm finished at 1:16am. haha can't seem to not write fic after one. And yea, weird infinite tense is weird, but I like it.