White Rose: A Hunger Games Continuation

Chapter Three

I slam the phone on the table. Gale is coming next week. How long? I forgot to ask him. Hazelle and her all kids are coming back to twelve. To stay. And what will I say when Rory wants to visit Prim? I sigh. Nothing to say, I guess. He'll find out she's dead.

I have a strange urge to call Peeta. Or see Peeta. Maybe I should. Even if he will probably just get mad again. It was my fault, anyway. Why should I dump my problems on him when he has so many of his own? It was unfair, and it might have resulted in a flashback, which would have made it entirely my fault. I should check on him- no, apologize. Maybe he will understand in only the way Peeta can. The real Peeta.

I don't bother changing, but I do make enough effort to wash my face and hands, then get my braid back into some sort of shape. I still look terrible, but not like a complete waste of space. I still don't know where Buttercup is, but he is so thin now he might be dead; its not my fault I can't feed him, I can't even feed myself. I miss morphling.

I creak open my front door slowly, and peek my face out. Then I open it a bit more, until my whole body is crammed in the little space between the door and my wall. Going to see Peeta. Not going to chicken out.

I slip my body, nimble and fast, through the crack and shut the door behind me. Then I lock it. No mutts allowed in to haunt me today. I step down the front stairs and pat my bare feet along the path to Peeta's house. It's hardly any distance, but it feels like an eternity walking there. I am so mentally gone that I nearly smack into him as he is coming down the path. "Katniss?" He asks, dumbfounded. I stare at him, forgetting all my reasons for coming. He looks so much better. His blue eyes twinkling, his blond hair wavy. No longer broken, although still scarred, but he looks clean and fresh and... happy. How?

"Peeta." I respond blankly. We stand there, sizing each other up. After a while he says. "Were you going to see Haymitch?" I shake my head. "Were you?" He takes a breath and says "Actually, I was on my way to see you. To check..." He looks uncomfortable. "I wanted to apologize for pushing you to tell me, Haymitch said you were very upset. And I'm sorry for telling Haymitch too. You see-"

I cut him off, sense returning to my brain. "It's not your fault. It's mine. I'm sorry, I shouldn't dump my problems on you like that, it has nothing to do with you. I was going to see you too. I just wanted to make sure I didn't effect your... recovery." I say. He looks at me with his blue eyes of his and shakes his head. "It obviously had a bigger effect on you. And no- I didn't have any... flashbacks." He says carefully. I give a curt nod, and my messy braid becomes undone and tangled over my eyes. "I'm getting better, Katniss. Much better. I hardly ever get them now. Maybe you can get better, too." Embarrassed in my half-hearted attempt to push it out of my eyes I say as loud as I can. "Good. That's good." He nods back and looks at me pityingly. "Uh, Katniss?" he asks. I look at him through my hair. "Yeah?"

"If you need help with... anything, let me know. I'm always here for you." I nod once and almost feel...safe and protected. By Peeta. That's when I push the idea out of my mind. We turn around awkwardly around and walk back home. I turn around in the middle of walking to see him staring at me. "What?" I say. "You look so sad." He says. "Even in the way you walk."

I don't answer, just shrug and walk back into the house without anything else. But I do watch him from the window. I watch the way his shoulders no longer droop, his head pointed upwards. I don't know how he does it.

But he's doing it. And I'm not. He's better, I'm worse. Is it always going to be this way? One of us going crazy, the other fine. Always switching places. He is listening to the doctors, taking his meds, treading carefully. How delicate his world must be, how carefully plotted to make sure it doesn't shatter into oblivion again.

I pad down the hallway after I watch him enter his house.

Maybe it's me. Maybe it's my fault that everything is falling apart. Well, whatever. Nothing I can do but watch it fall apart even more. Peeta can have his well-deserved happily ever after and Gale will continue his life free of my burdens, my mother can find peace and silence in her job, and Haymitch will be satisfied with his drunken state. I can wallow away in my well-deserved confinement prison. Fine with me.

I find Buttercup lying underneath the table again, skinny as ever and bored out of his mind. I walk into the kitchen taking deep breaths as to not cry, and am oblivious to the remains of shattered glass and water. My foot slides out from under me from the slippery water and my whole body tumbles forward. I give a brief cry of surprise, but not before my head slams against the glass scattered floor. A sharp pain fills my legs and blood blooms, snaking through the water and registering in my mind. I seem so feeble, so weak, compared to who I used to be. A girl who could conquer what ever was thrown her way. The girl with the dangerous, rebellious spirit. I know one thing for certain, over everything else that jumbles my disoriented mind.

The Mockingjay is dead.

The blood tinges the water pink, dripping off the shards stuck painfully in my leg. The back of my head swells in a dull ache. A groan comes out of my lips. Why does this always happen to me? I lumber painfully into an awkward sitting position and pull some shard out of my leg.

Ouch. I try hard not to say it out loud. I keep yanking glass from my leg, until the blood is all over my hands. I can smell it, the tang that means so much to me. So many memories tumble into my eyes as I look and inhale the sticky red liquid on my hands. Me. Rue. Peeta. Clove. Cato. Wiress. Finnick. Coin. Snow. PRIM. I have so many memories of them associated with blood, so many I shouldn't. But I have them, and I can't do anything about it.

I never could in the first place.