Chapter Text
Clouds cannot cover secret places, nor denials conceal truth.
-DEMOSTHENES, attributed, Day's Collacon
Peeta was in the hospital garden, hands in the dirt planting herbs, when the good Dr. Aurelius came to tell him he could go home.
“Where will you be going now?” he asked, and only Peeta could hear the undercurrent of excitement that laced the question. There it is, he thought wearily. Even the man who knows my deepest, darkest secrets expects me to go running back to District 12. To her.
He was tired of it; tired of the strange sort of ownership everyone around him--particularly the Capitolites--seemed to feel. As if he owed it to them to be with Katniss, because they had become so very invested in their love, and wasn’t he the one who’d made them all fall in love in the first place? He could hear it in their voices, see it in the glassy glint of their eyes as they spoke to him of how The Star-Crossed Lovers of District 12 had impacted their lives, made them realize that the citizens of the Districts were neither cattle to feed them or chattel to own.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I think I'm just going to travel for a bit.”
He could almost hear the doctor’s heart breaking over the sound of his own.
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He packed a light bag, one of the ridiculous "credit cards" that was Panem's new form of currency, and the document that proudly declared him to be Peeta Mellark: Victor and War Hero, and provided special dispensation that allowed him access to just about anyywhere short of President Paylor's private washroom. All he wanted was a train ticket.
“Where to, sir?” the young Capitol woman at the station asked him, slightly breathless at meeting the famous Peeta Mellark, and, he thought with startled realization, flirting quite shamelessly with him as she leaned over the counter to display her ample, colorfully-tattooed bosom.
“Doesn't matter,” he said with his trademark golden smile, chuckling internally to hear her breath hitch as he turned the full force of it her way. “The first train out of here.”
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His first stop was District Nine, which he knew little about and had no connections to.
He immediately loved the lonely beauty of the vast grain fields; the endlessness of the land and the openness of the sky were a comfort to him after the months spent in torture chambers, or underground, or in hospital rooms. He still couldn’t sleep, so he would often seek an empty field to lie in and watch the stars for hours at a time, long enough to track their slow circuit across the night sky. Surely, in the millennia these stars had spent traversing the heavens, they had seen every kind of human suffering and triumph, and it made him feel just the tiniest bit better to think that he couldn’t possibly be alone in his despair.
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It took Haymitch almost a year to track him down. Peeta couldn’t say he was particularly surprised when, upon emerging from his usual path through the overgrown cornfield, he found the old drunk sitting on the porch, but he was disappointed to be found so soon.
“Hello, Haymitch,” he said calmly, though he couldn’t quite keep his hands from clenching into fists, or his jaw from tightening.
Haymitch looked him up and down. “Well, kid,” he finally nodded. “That’s certainly a new look you got there.”
Peeta was, for lack of a better description, still both famous and infamous, and he hated the attention it inevitably brought him. In desperation, he’d taken to ordering expensive bottles of hair dye from the Capitol and coloring his famous golden curls a dark brown. He couldn’t hide those tell-tale blue eyes, but the hair was usually enough of a distraction that most people didn’t immediately realize who he was, and left him alone. And he was alone. A lot.
When he found the solitude becoming more oppressive than healing, he decided to look for gainful employment, more to keep himself busy than anything else, since he still had all that Victor money he didn’t know what to do with. As much as he longed to do it, he realized that anything related to baking was too much of a giveaway, so he’d made the difficult decision to avoid it at all costs. Eventually, he’d begun working on a farm neighboring the abandoned homestead where he’d been squatting, helping with the planting and the harvest. So he worked, and worked, and worked, alongside the men and women of Nine, who were fortunate enough to have been little-touched by the war despite openly siding with the rebels. It helped. When autumn rolled around, his hands and heart ached to do nothing but sit in the fields and paint everything, but he threw himself instead into the back-breaking work of harvesting grain from fields which stretched into the horizon.
His neighbors were good, generous, and much-used to labor, and they reminded him (at times painfully so) of his own close-knit little district. They readily accepted him, as they had with the few other transplants who had shown up after the war. He lived with them, and ate with them, even singing alongside them and learning the bawdy songs they’d sing to keep the rhythm of their hands steady and their spirits lifted as they toiled. When they’d inevitably run out of songs to sing long before running out of fields to harvest, he returned the favor by making up some of his own and teaching them to his new friends. They laughed affectionately at him, and wondered out loud with teasing grins at how a boy so silver-tongued with speech could be such an astoundingly terrible singer. At times, the men--with their broad shoulders and gentle ribbing --reminded him of his father or brothers so much that he’d feign discomfort in his mechanical leg and lock himself up in his house to deal with their ghosts in private. Usually though, he took pleasure in it, and would briefly allow himself to pretend that the ribald comments were coming from his brothers.
If any of his neighbors had figured out who he really was, they were kind enough--and discreet enough--to pretend they hadn’t. As the days passed his fair skin burned in the sun, then tanned; with the dark hair and the sudden growth spurt he’d had around his eighteenth birthday, he was almost unrecognizable. Although, apparently, not to Haymitch.
Peeta walked past him and into the house, his former mentor entering without invitation and following Peeta into the kitchen.
“So, how are things?” Peeta asked mildly as he pulled off his worn tee-shirt, running the cloth over his face to wipe away the sweat and dirt.
“Let’s cut the shit, kid.” Haymitch grunted. He dropped down onto one of the rickety chairs at the dining table and promptly pulled out a flask. “You know what I’m here for.” He took a deep pull. “She needs you.”
“I think we both know she doesn’t need anybody.”
Haymitch snorted. “If you really think that, then you’re almost as stupid as she is. Listen,” he started, suddenly serious. “She’s not doing well. It took us six months to get her out of that damned house, and even then it was only to get her on a hovercraft to the nearest hospital.” He sighed. “She was malnourished—finally had enough food, mind you, just wouldn’t eat it—and she had a terrible infection from not taking care of her skin grafts.”
Peeta listened silently.
“Sae and I did everything we could to just get her out, get her around the living again, but whatever sickness it is that shut her mama down after Katniss’ pa died, well—it’s in her blood too.”
No response.
Haymitch was rambling now, half talking to himself. “She needs you. She thinks she's mourning Prim, because she's an idiot, and, sure, a part of her is--but we all know what's killing her is missing you. You know she’s too proud, and too foolish, and too convinced she doesn’t deserve you, to come get you herself. But what’s keeping you away? What’s keeping you away from her now that there isn’t anything standing in your way?”
Peeta stiffened. There it was. That ownership; as if he and Katniss were still a product offered up for public consumption, and he owed it to Panem to provide the happy ending it so desperately wanted. “Nothing standing in our way? Are you mad? We’ve got an entire bombed out district between us now,” he growled at Haymitch. “We’ve got Prim, and my mother, and my father, and Willem, and Christiaan, and a thousand other ghosts standing between me and Katniss.” He was shouting now, the frustration and the heartbreak cresting over and engulfing him. “We've got years of lies and secrets and..and.. humiliation. And in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve got a tracker jacker nest full of venom still running through my veins, and oh yeah, a little bit of programming shoved in here," he jammed a forefinger roughly into the side of his head,"that makes me want to kill her. You know, not much.” Peeta threw up his arms in disgust, whirled around, and stalked out the back door into the overgrown field. He ignored Haymitch’s calls, and kept walking until his half-metal leg gave out.
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Things got pretty bad after that first visit, and Peeta found himself locked in a severe bout of depression, which then triggered episodes, which only depressed him further. After a few weeks, he found himself picking up old habits he'd long ago sworn to give up. He started drinking again, like after the first Games, and often found himself under the skirts of one eagerly mewling girl or another, trying to soothe the dull ache of his loss between their thighs. As if the sounds of their pleasure could drown out the doubt in his head, or the slick fluid of their their arousal act as a balm; as if he could exorcise some of the grief within him by spilling it across their bellies with his semen.
Sickened at himself, Peeta eventually swallowed his pride to write Dr. Aurelius. Within days, a full complement of medicines arrived at his door, along with a portable phone that he was instructed was so he could resume regular therapy sessions. Peeta woke one morning feeling more refreshed than he had in months, the medication finally having kicked in enough to allow him to step back and see his behavior for what it was--destructive, dangerous, and in direct opposition of what he needed in order to continue his healing. His time in Nine had been had been a welcome respite from the unending tumult of the last few years, and he’d reconnected with parts of himself that had nothing to do with the Games, or even with Katniss. It was a much-needed reminder that he existed outside of her, beyond her, without her. He thought wistfully that perhaps this is how he could have been, if he’d never seen her that day in her red dress and dark braids.
But he did, and his tender crush had grown into admiration and respect for the steely-eyed girl. And he would never--could never--regret his decision to spin his affections into an act of defiance so perfect executed and timed (though of course he had no idea of any of this while he spilling his guts onstage with Flickerman), that it spurred a nation into rebellion. Nor would he ever regret their relationship blossoming into love. Love! While the world fell apart and burned at their feet, he had fallen in love, and felt fairly certain that Katniss was falling right alongside him. Their nights together on the train during the Victory Tour were a revelation, and he learned the taste of Katniss’ tears along with the taste of her lips; learned the curve of her slight body against his while they slept, anchoring him in reality when too often he found himself drifting back to the arena, convinced that he was still hidden in the stream bank, delirious and dying, and everything that had come after was just a fevered dream....
Then, the madness of the Quell, and his extended stay at the Capitol’s finest torture chambers. Where they took him apart, piece by piece, and rebuilt him as they wished. Sometimes they put him back together just as he was; sometimes, they put him together again, but just slightly different, so that he was off-balance, and couldn’t trust himself. They did this--over and over--until they hit upon the perfect combination: Peeta, with his love twisted into fear and hate. It haunted him, the things they’d done. The things he’d done. It was something that Katniss could never understand, and for that he was grateful, that she need never know the depths a person could be brought to; never need to learn that there is no bottom, no threshold to be crossed where pain stops--there is always somewhere lower, always some fresh misery to be discovered. Katniss could never understand; very few people still living ever could.
But he didn’t let them win then, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let them win now. He was not going to do them the favor of destroying himself, not after he’d fought tooth and nail to hold on to the smallest scraps of himself that he could salvage. And as much as he loved the vastness of Nine, he yearned to be somewhere that felt like home, and missed the closeness and darkness of the woods; somewhere he could sort through the things he’d learned during his peaceful introspection in Nine. So he packed up his cards and his document, his portable phone, and a couple of bottles of hair coloring (just in case), and set off to bid his neighbors farewell, promising he would return, and meaning every word.
He was at the train station in time to catch the first train to District Seven.