Chapter Text
When the hovercraft picks them up, Katniss can do nothing but watch the blood flow freely from Peeta's leg, and even the electrical current keeping the three of them locked onto the ladder can't make her heart stop pounding.
When they take Peeta away from her and Rue, she screams. She fights these mutts, clawing and biting at them - she won't let them take Peeta from her, she won't let them take Rue from her. She can’t, she won’t let them die, not after everything she’s been through, not after how hard the three of them have worked to stay alive.
It's not until she notices the white coats does she see that they're not mutts.
They're doctors, trying to save Peeta and his leg.
She slumps against the glass that separates them, throat raw and burning, cradling Rue in her arms. A man comes by, gives them two glasses of orange juice. She looks at the cup, the juxtaposition between the clear, clean crystal and her filthy, blood and dirt covered hands. She sees her reflection in the pane of glass that separates her and Rue from Peeta.
No, the doctors are not mutts. But her, with her hollow, bloodshot eyes, sunken cheeks, and wild hair, face covered in scratches and dirt, just might be.
She lowers the glass to the floor. She doesn't pick it back up again.
Recovering takes a while, as she starved quite a bit in the Games, as thin as she was in those awful, terrifying months after her father’s death.
But when she wakes alone, at first she thinks the entire thing has been one long, strange nightmare. That she'll see Prim and her mother's long blonde hair tangled together, and Buttercup's ugly mashed face watching over them.
But then the Avox girl comes back, the one she and Gale failed to save, and she knows it was all very, very real.
The one plus is that her hearing is back.
In front of the cameras, it feels like they continue to play house.
Rue is forever sitting on Katniss's lap, holding Peeta's hand. She's dressed in the same gossamer fabrics that she wore during her initial interview, and it works well for her image now, of just a young girl who wants to go home to her family.
It doesn't work so well for Katniss. She knows this is true not just when Haymitch warns her about the rumors of her actions causing whispers of a rebellion back in the districts, or when Cinna looks at the extra Peacekeepers that accompany her everywhere for just a little too long, but when President Snow himself hugs her after presenting her, Rue, and Peeta with their own crowns.
He smelled like blood and roses.
The look in his eyes is that of a snake staring down prey.
Katniss stares back. Later, on the train, she’ll wonder how wise that really was.
The first week after the Games are almost as awful as the Game itself. All the Capitol people want to see are those star-crossed lovers from District 12, and so she and Peeta dance and play it up for the cameras, this tango of twisted lies. Rue receives plenty of attention herself, being the youngest Victor in the history of the games, beating out the previous winner of that title, Finnick Odair, by a full two years.
There’s a few moments that stand out to Katniss as genuine. All of her interactions with Rue are on there, of course.
But so is the moment she finds out Peeta's leg has been amputated.
She feels, in that moment, a sadness she can’t explain, and buries her face in Peeta’s soft dress shirt. It’s much nicer than facing the cameras, and so it’s not until the recap comes on that they’re able to coax her out, and even then, she only allows it because of what Snow might do if she doesn’t act right.
The recaps of their Game are particularly awful. Watching the tributes she killed, the pain she was in, it’s a special kind of torture.
But there are shining moments for her, ones that just might be enough to convince Snow that she was just a silly, love-struck girl wanting to save her friend and lover. Like the fight in the cave, or the story with Peeta falling in love with her.
Her best moment has to be on the hovercraft of course. They show the whole thing, the rabid behavior and her screaming Peeta’s name, covered in blood, fighting the doctors to get to him. They show the whole fight, up until she falls asleep with her palm on the glass, her other arm wrapped protectively around Rue’s small frame.
In terms of survival, it’s her best moment all night.
Caesar Flickerman actually cries watching it, and there’s loud sobs in the crowd. There’s jokes made about it too, of course. The Games are meant to be entertaining, not depressing. Can’t have the delicate people of the Capitol upset for too long, after all.
And then there's the fact that it's maddening, having to kiss Peeta in front of all these strangers, joke with him, laugh and hold his hand, knowing that once the cameras go away, she can finally stop. But until then, she has to keep the facade up.
Maybe some part of her doesn’t want to pretend though. The rest of her is too tired of all the acting and lying to dwell on that thought for long.
There’s feasts aplenty, both in the Capitol and back home, and it makes Katniss want to scream, even as she grits her teeth and forces herself to smile and play nice.
Where was all this food when she was a kid, starving after her father was killed in the mines? When families from the Seam brought in famished child after child, and her mother could only prescribe what they didn’t have: more food? Where was all of this when people dropped dead out in the fields, on the roads, in their homes, all from malnourishment?
It drove her crazy. The officials didn't care, which didn’t surprise her. Peeta was more upset by it though, and it was one of the few things they were able to bond on during their conversations hidden by wind chimes or by cicadas, the greed of the Capitol, their disgust at how much excess was wasted for the sake of appearances.
Sometimes, it was like having a friend. It was like when she talked with Gale, or Prim.
So when Haymitch lands a hand on her shoulder and informs her they’re doing well, at Peeta’s confusion, she confesses, the moment arising when the train’s stopped for repairs.
“The Capitol. They didn’t like our stunt with the berries.” She blurts out, suddenly unable to focus on the flowers he’s given her.
“What? What are you talking about?
“It seemed too rebellious. So Haymitch… he’s been coaching me, these last few days. Helping me so I don’t make things worse.”
“Coaching you?” Peeta looks as puzzled as she's ever seen him. “He hasn’t been coaching me.”
“Only because you didn’t need it.” She says, burying her face in her hands. “You were smart enough to get it right.”
“I didn’t know there was anything to get right.” There’s hurt in Peeta’s voice, and Katniss feels strangely guilty for putting it there. “So what you’re saying is that…. Well now, and even back in the arena… that was just some strategy you two worked out?”
“No.” Katniss answers, lifting her head to look at him. “I mean, it’s not like I could talk to him, while I was in there.”
“But you knew what he wanted you to do, didn’t you?”
She bites her lip, heart pounding. “Katniss?” Peeta asks, and she shakes her head when he asks if it was all for the Games, then.
But not all of it was an act. The fear she felt when he was bleeding out atop the Cornucopia, and when the doctors were working on his leg, all of that was as real as anything she’s ever felt. Even some of the kisses were nice, she may as well admit that too.
But Peeta’s asking questions she doesn’t have the answers to, and she can’t tell him how afraid she is. For Rue, little Rue, who just won the Games and saw things no twelve year old ever should. For Prim and her mother, who had to watch her get hunted like an animal in the Games. For Gale in his family, his mother, his brothers and baby Posy. All of them, she can guarantee, are being watched closely by Snow.
Too close for her comfort.
And then the next day comes, the day they’re finally back home.
They have to play pretend one final time, and Katniss feels like they're strangers once more.
Nightmares plague her every night, so she stops sleeping. The circles under her eyes become as dark as her hair almost, and her mother frets and worries like she has no other time before in Katniss’s life. Prim insists on staying with her sister at night, and it helps the nightmares.
Somewhat.
On the worst nights, she slips out from Prim’s arms (still thin, but so much less so than before) and dons her boots, her father’s good hunting bow and arrows, and heads for the woods. Sometimes, Buttercup follows, and it’s the only time they seem to get along, those two hunters in the moonlight.
Peeta’s nearly as bad, when she sees him, which isn’t often. They nod heads towards each other, usually around dawn or dusk, and Katniss can feel the distance between them as if it was a physical barrier separating them, their relationship growing colder and more frosty as the weather does too.
It’s surprisingly painful, but she forces herself to get over it. She calls and writes to Rue as often as she can, with increasing frequency as the Victor’s Tour looms on the horizon, smack near the middle of her Games and the next one, but there’s only so much that can be said when every day, she fears Snow watching her.
There’s few positives in her life currently, but she tries to focus on the few that she knows are for certain.
The first was Parcel Day. Once a month, every month, for the first year she and Peeta had won their games, every person in her district would receive food straight from the Capitol. Cans of applesauce, tins of meat, she even saw sugar sticks and candy in the fists of the younger Seam kids. The fact that those kids, once starving, would now be fed, helped her immensely. It was one of the few times she had actually felt good about winning the Games.
The second was hunting. She now had all the time in the world to hunt, and with Hazel, Gale’s mother, and Gale himself both refusing a single coin from her, it gave her an excuse to hunt even more, to support his family. They were all determined that the boys, twelve year-old Rory and ten year-old Vick, as well as the baby, little four year-old Posy, never have to sign up for the tesserae.
The third, albeit only somewhat, was the Victor’s Tour. There she would see Rue again in District 11, and the thought brought her a small measure of happiness. She always worried for her little friend, and the phone and letters they exchanged, she knew, would pale to them meeting in person once more.
Today, she’s out in the woods again, though she hasn’t fired a single arrow. It’s the first day of the Tour, and she’s honestly unsure how it’s going to go, dreading the cameras, the parading around, and the recommence of lies once again.
She hopes she’s ready.
But she knows she’s not.