Work Text:
The phone is ringing.
Peeta sets his paintbrush down on the easel. It isn't his favorite painting he's ever done, a modest but detailed piece of the study window sitting just beyond the canvas. His recreation of the blizzard outside is grey and lifeless, a hodgepodge of white shades layered on top of each other to replicate sweeping snowdrifts, all smattered with messy flakes so thickly condensed it looks like TV static.
It could use some more color, but - where? A lonesome yellow star? A brown leaf leftover from autumn? A bright red smear across the snow, slowly melting a hole in the sheet?
But no, not yet, because the phone is still ringing. That's right, he needs to answer it.
When he turns away from the window, he hears the slosh of water, feels the weight of it around his ankles. It's dark and muddy, a grey so deep it's almost black, the same shade as the cup of liquid where he rinses his brushes. Peeta trudges through it, following the ringing out the study doors and across the hall, to where his telephone is mounted on the wall. Even when he isn't moving, the water still circles his shins in waves, a small, foggy black sea. He imagines a boat, helplessly tossed in a dark whirlpool swirled by the fingers of some malevolent God. Maybe that's what he'll paint next.
But now, Peeta picks up the phone.
"Hey."
Katniss.
"I just wanted to make sure you got home."
That strikes him as odd. If he's honest, some part of it irks him. Even in Twelve, she has to be the one to check up on him, to make sure he's safe, to take his hand and pull him through rain and fire and back again.
"Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he reminds her.
Her answer is a little bit shier. "I know, but with the weather and all."
Emotion gives way to reason for a moment. He remembers Gale's flogging, helping Haymitch drag her from the kitchen kicking and screaming. Perhaps that's why she's calling. To talk. To be comforted. That is Peeta's job in this arrangement, after all. She's the one who fights, who staves off the storm with sharp arrows and sharper words. He's the one who soothes it, tosses an anchor into the sea for them both to cling to, and promises it'll pass.
"Well, I'm fine. Thank you for checking," he assures her, voice softening on instinct. "How's Gale?"
She pauses. "All right. My mother and Prim are giving him snow coat now."
The response is short and quick, the details absent, skimmed over out of necessity. She does this often, speaks short and clipped, not wanting to linger. He recalls how the whip had looked, slick with blood, as Thread wound it around his hands. Katniss had taken a lash for Gale. Peeta tries to imagine what he would've felt if she'd been the one in the square, and knows inherently—like a second instinct—that he would've done the same thing for her as she'd done for Gale. The idea brings him no comfort, just sits at the back of his throat, a bitter taste, like iron.
"And your face?" he asks.
"I've got some too."
The conversation lulls, and Peeta shuffles his feet, only to hear the movement of the water around his knees. It looks like it's risen a little, though he isn't sure if he's imagining it. He hopes that Katniss hadn't heard it too.
"Have you seen Haymitch today?" she ventures.
He's grateful for the question. It's something to focus on other than the rising tide. Haymitch—When was the last time he saw him? There have been countless times that Peeta has walked into their mentor's house, after receiving no answer at the door, and found Haymitch draped over the kitchen table, arms splayed out, knife under his hand. It feels recent enough that it could've been today. Peeta would've lit the fireplace, cooked a meal, washed the dishes. Soothed the storm.
The water rises.
"I checked in on him," Peeta replies, distracted. He forces himself to remember the details. "Dead drunk. But I built up his fire and left him some bread."
"I wanted to talk to—to both of you."
About running away? Maybe. But Katniss isn't going to leave without Gale, and he's in no condition to travel. Not that Peeta ever expected that they would go through with it to begin with. It isn't just Gale; Katniss wouldn't jump ship unless her whole family were behind her, and Peeta has always found it hard to imagine her mother and Prim abandoning their District, all their patients.
So that must mean the plan is off, then.
Peeta isn't sure why he's disappointed. Maybe it's that they've been backed into this same corner, pressed against the same gilded bars of this cage, nothing to do but sing this same old song until the Capitol comes up with a new creative way to have them killed.
Maybe it's fear that he's tasting. Bitter like blood and slick like saliva, pooling at the back of his mouth. Its smell is like the chemical fumes of oil paint. Odd, because he's always preferred watercolor.
He tangles one hand in his hair, trying to remember the script. He's supposed to tell her that they'll talk later—just as soon as the weather improves, just as soon as Gale's condition is stable—and that the world will wait for them until then.
"Can you come over?" Peeta blurts instead.
Katniss is quiet for a long moment. "No one should be out in this storm, Peeta."
His body is cold. He can feel even the phantom chill of it through the plastic of his prosthetic leg.
"Please."
It's selfish and wrong and he shouldn't be asking. He's supposed to let himself sink to keep her afloat. Yes, it's what they all expect of him, because he's broadcasted his bleeding heart on national television, because he's given his life to her multiple times over, because she's the fire and he's just another agitator whose death will act as kindling.
The Capitol thinks it's all by their design, but it's by his too. Keeping Katniss Everdeen alive is more self-serving than they know. Standing next to her means a companionable warmth at his side, a kinship and understanding he never knew he needed. It means someone fighting faithfully at his back and facing down cameras and lights from the front. A voice to sing away the nightmares and a matching hand to hold.
Even if he was never supposed to have any of this, even if he doesn't deserve it, he can't help but want it. Can't help but reach for her in the dark, as the water pours in, as his mouth fills with blood and his veins sear with venom.
"Please," Peeta asks again.
Katniss goes quiet. There is a trace of an apology in her voice when she says, "I can't."
Something about it is a little too soft, a little too resigned. Not at all like Katniss. It makes him uneasy.
"Why?"
"Peeta," she whispers. "You know why."
He'd been hopeful for awhile. He really had. Being here, listening to her voice, seemed so real. He looks down at the waves and tracks the ripples with his eyes, sees his blurred reflection with the blue eyes and the rosy face. It's what he remembers of himself, but probably isn't true anymore. Then again, was it ever?
"You can't come because you're not in Twelve," Peeta remembers. "You're in District 13."
"Yeah."
The winter wind batters the roof and sends the shutters rattling. He chokes on something and turns it into a chuckle.
"That must mean I'm not in Twelve either."
"No one is."
There it is again. That short, clipped manner of speaking, factual and to the point. It's amazing how well he's able to recall it, even now, in this hazy, dreamlike place. But it still isn't perfect, too passive, too defeated. Too empty.
Maybe he doesn't remember her as well as he thought. It's been a long time.
"I'm sorry," Katniss says.
Peeta nods, even though she can't see it. "I know."
"I wish Haymitch had saved you too."
That can't be real. It's too open, too raw. Too much like what Peeta would say, and not enough like something Katniss would say. Still, he can't help but ask,
"Why couldn't he?"
Selfish, he thinks again. It isn't Haymitch’s fault. It's no one's. Though some part of him wishes there were someone to blame.
"I don't know," Katniss admits, then adds, "He cares about you, you know."
Inside, Peeta knows this is true. But on the outside he huffs out a weak laugh, cutting and bitter, as if it's absurd, the idea that Haymitch could love or want for anything besides a bottle in his hand. It makes him feel better, to imagine their mentor this way. Peeta can't feel betrayed if there was nothing to betray in the first place.
"Right."
"And you care about him," Katniss insists. "You care about both of us. Otherwise, you wouldn't have risked sending that warning."
Peeta turns his head to the kitchen window, catching a glimpse of the storm outside. It doesn't look like snow anymore. The flakes fall thick and grey, like ash.
"Was it enough?" he mumbles.
"Was what enough?"
"My warning. Was it enough? To save you?"
She is silent for a long time, during which Peeta wonders if he can even trust her answer. Knowing won't change anything, but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe he just needs to hear it, needs to know that he's done his job, that this—the water and the loneliness and the pain—was all worth something. That he was worth something.
"Yes, Peeta. It was enough."
The voice on the other end of the phone has given up trying to speak like Katniss. But that's okay, he thinks, because she's said everything he'd wanted her to, even through the grainy static of the worsening reception.
It was enough.
If nothing else, maybe this is the thought he can take with him. It feels like a release, something to hang onto at the same time as he's letting go. Peeta can't swim, but then again, he isn't supposed to.
Even so, fear persists. It always does.
"Katniss?" he says, before she can hang up, and swallows the burning lump in his throat. "Will you... Will you stay with me?"
The ocean waves slosh against his chest, his neck, the bottoms of his ears. She says what he wills her to say, what he knows the real Katniss would never be able to.
"Yeah." It's distorted and faraway. There are so many sounds, the rush of the wind and the swell of the water, a faint ringing in his head. A single word cuts through it all, "Always."
It gives him the strength to sink.