Oh This Was So So Lovely - Tumblr Posts

AN: Okay so I finally finished a drabble again yay 🥳🥳🥳🥳 everyone cheered. I don’t have a ton of comments aside from my usual if you are really nice and you read this and like it and reblog it, I’ll love you forever and send you loves across the internet 🤍🤍🤍🤍. The idea for this drabble came from one of my other prompts actually. I wrote a request a while ago for a non hijacked Everlark reunion in 13 but in the request it also gave the option for role reversal and Katniss being the one captured and rescued. Non hijacked ofc. This also works as a soft sequel to my one oneshot where the roles are reversed and Peeta watches Katniss’ interview in the Capitol from his place in District 13.

Oh and also, yes I have the next chapter to Katniss and Peeta bonding in Catching Fire coming up soon, don’t worry. 😊 Anyways without further adoooo :

summary : role reversal, Katniss is the one kidnapped and rescued in Mockingjay. Everlark’s reunion. No hijacking. Might write a part 3 to this. 😉

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It’s after midnight when they come back. Gale is still being held in his quarters on lockdown. A light punishment, all things considered, after his scuffle with Boggs upon hearing of Coin’s rescue mission.

Moreover, upon hearing that Coin’s rescue mission didn’t include either one of us. In her eyes, neither me nor Gale belong on Katniss’ extraction team and there was no argument to be had. She had officially decided long before we received the memo and she was, of course, the judge, jury and executioner of Thirteen.

Deep down, I always knew what her decision would be. I always saw it coming somehow. I haven’t liked Alma Coin since the first moment I arrived in Thirteen. Ever since my first meeting with the woman there was something inhumane about her. Something off-putting to me. Something disingenuous and unfeeling and oddly familiar.

And it went beyond just my dislike for the woman. It went far deeper than that. There was just something about Coin that was downright impossible for me to trust. Something about her made every survival instinct in my body go on alert like a bright red siren.

And she could see it too. Right away, she could see I didn’t like her. And just the same, from that first meeting on, she made it abundantly clear she didn’t like me much either.

Gale, on the other hand, was well respected by the president of Thirteen. He was one of her “most promising soldiers” — which I outright told him sounded like no compliment to me. Not when coming out of her mouth — and as a result, her dismissal of his demand that me and him be allowed onto the mission came as a stinging betrayal.

I don’t know what Gale’s going through at the moment, furious and bitter and confined to his quarters until the mission is declared officially finished, but I can’t imagine it’s much worse than what I’ve been feeling in the last few hours, sitting helplessly beside Finnick with nothing else to do but wait. We filmed propos to be broadcast all across Panem while the soldiers attempt to rescue the captives unnoticed, we’ve tied extensive and intricate knots, we’ve both even tried to sleep and eat and bathe. But in the end, I’m frozen in place, able to do absolutely nothing but merely take up space in this overflowing compound, paralyzed until I know she’s been rescued.

Paralyzed until I know she’s alright. Until I know that she’s here and safe and secure and far, far out of Snow’s reach.

Something tells me if the mission goes south, if the operation fails and Katniss is killed alongside Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta — and every soldier Coin handpicked to retrieve her Mockingjay — this is how I’ll always be. This is what my whole reality will become. Moving distantly from one task to the next, no meaning, no feeling, no life left inside my body to force me to go on.

“A person cannot live without a heart, Peeta,” my father once said. I didn’t realize then how wise he was. How true those words could be. I didn’t realize then that he wasn’t speaking literally. That he understood more about love than I ever gave him credit for.

I wish it wasn’t too late now to tell him I’m sorry. To tell him I’m so sorry. For all the things I never truly heard. For everything about him that I never understood.

-

It’s impossible to miss their arrival. Haymitch is the one who alerts us they’re back, that they’re in the hospital wing and we need to hurry up and get there as fast as we can.

I want to ask him about a million questions. I want to shake Haymitch down until he gives me a definitive answer, until he says that Katniss specifically was saved, that she’s here and alive and alright, but I can barely breathe, let alone speak. The very thought of seeing her again has my vocal cords tied in a knot, nerves suddenly welling up within me for reasons that don’t make sense and I’ll probably never be able to articulate to anyone. Not even to myself.

I follow behind Haymitch, feeling as dazed as Finnick looks. I feel as if my brain has been gutted, like someone came along and tore it apart and stuffed it with cotton.

We walk through Special Forces and take the elevator all the way to the hospital wing. It’s the elevator that moves to the side as well as up and down but the jarring ride leaves my stomach unaffected for the first time.

We are met with complete chaos as soon as we exit the doors. Gurneys are flying down halls and in and out of rooms, doctors and nurses and soldiers are everywhere, orders are being shouted across the vicinity, making it unclear who’s speaking to who.

But then Haymitch comes to an abrupt stop at a random door. Boggs is standing beside it, looking exhausted and bleary and I can’t hear what he’s saying because Finnick is shouting and breaking from the group, running down the hall and out of sight. I make a half-hearted attempt to glance over my shoulder, to see him disappear into the crowd and commotion, to hear a loud crash and then a voice — a female voice — screaming out his name.

But I don’t have the energy to process any of this at all. Selfishly, my focus is gone and I don’t have the capability to take any of the events surrounding me in. Because something within me realizes with extreme certainty that it is her on the other side of the door. And once I realize that, I can’t stand to wait another second.

When I reach to turn the knob, neither Haymitch nor Boggs stop me. They watch on, both looking somewhat cautious, as I open the door and reveal Katniss sitting on the edge of her bed, with a trio of doctors surrounding her.

She doesn’t seem to notice me at first. No, the doctors are holding her focus, checking her pulse and blood pressure, speaking to her in quiet, hushed voices, writing things down on clipboards.

And then one flashes a light into her eyes and she flinches, shoving the light away violently. Jerking her head away, bringing her palms up to her face, hiding herself behind her hands.

“Katniss,” I whisper, my voice almost inaudible.

One of the doctors places their hand firmly on my shoulder, a clear warning to stay back. But I can’t be deterred and I shake him off without hesitation.

“She hasn’t spoken a word,” another one of the doctors informs me. Unlike their colleague, their eyes silently invite me closer, as if wanting to see what Katniss will do in my presence. As if I’m here as an experiment. “Not even when they rescued her. And she’s refusing to open her mouth for us to check for her tongue.”

Unfortunately I suddenly understand the implication all too well. They think she’s an Avox, that Snow ordered her tongue be removed as a punishment.

In a completely twisted way, that would make sense for him to do. Katniss cannot be the Mockingjay if she cannot speak.

But I don’t have the time to dwell on what-ifs right now. Because she’s right in front of me and even if she lost her tongue, I’m still completely overjoyed to see her here, alive and breathing and in one piece. And out of Snow’s reach.

I get as close to her as I dare — as close as I can get without feeling like I’m about to frighten her — before kneeling down to meet her eye level.

I see her face up close for the first time. I see the bruises that cover all around her eyes and a large gash bleeding across her forehead. I see the angry, pink color to the skin across her nose and the large finger marks dotting her neck. I spot the dried blood in her ears and the corner of her mouth and I can feel my eyes blur over with thousands of tears as I whisper her name aloud, once again, “Katniss.”

When I touch her cheek lightly with the back of my hand, she instinctively flinches. Like a flighty animal, she flinches and throws herself back. She crashes backwards against the exam table she’s seated upon and her eyes flash to mine in terror. Her eyes flash upwards to mine for the very first time since the last night in Quell and I can see the recognition seep right into her haunted gaze.

“Peeta,” she croaks, the word one, my name, sounding so petrified and so unlike herself. “Peeta,” she says again, clearer this time and I nod in confirmation before I even realize it.

“Yeah, Katniss, it’s me,” I promise, bringing my hand up again to brush her cheek. “I’m right here. It’s me.”

This time, instead of acting like it burns, she greedily leans into it. I cup the side of her bruised and battered face and she leans into it, drinking it in like the food and water her malnourished body has clearly been deprived of.

“So she still has her tongue,” Haymitch murmurs and the relief in his voice is palpable to everyone in the room.

“It would seem so,” one of the doctors says, taking a step closer to Katniss and me. “May I?” He asks, gesturing with his chin for me to take a step back.

And I don’t want to oblige, I don’t want to ever let Katniss go again, but it’s not like there’s a lot of room for argument. Haymitch takes a step closer, placing a hand on my shoulder and I swallow hard on the lump that’s built up in my throat as I force myself to move away.

Katniss’ swollen and exhausted — so very exhausted — eyes follow me for a long moment before the doctor touches her chin, maneuvering it in his direction.

She frantically jerks her head away, batting at him with shaking hands, but doesn’t make a single audible sound.

For the most part, she manages to cooperate with their requests. When they tell her to turn her neck or show them her back or lift her arm, she obligates. She does it rather slow and hesitantly, but she does it just the same.

It’s the verbal questions she outright refuses. No matter what they ask, about her pain levels or her hearing or the unsteadiness to her breathing, she doesn’t utter a word. She doesn’t even open her mouth to try.

“She’s not feeling very talkative,” Haymitch finally says, stating the obvious to everyone in the room. At some point, Boggs seems to have slipped out without me noticing. I wonder in the back of my mind what made him flee. If he had a real reason or if this scene before us was just too hard to swallow.

All three doctors act as if Haymitch hadn’t spoke. “I’m going to check your eyes again,” one of them tells Katniss and pulls out a tiny handheld light from the pocket of their white coat. “Try to follow the light,” he murmurs, flashing the beam into her bleary gray eyes, moving it from one side to the other.

But he can only manage this for a few seconds before Katniss shoves the tool away once again. Just as she did before, she violently pushes back against the blinding light, this time knocking it from the doctor’s hands, before cowering away, desperately trying to escape the exam and the doctors and the entire room now.

And I can’t stand back any longer. Just as when I heard her cry out during the night on the Victory Tour or she was trapped with the jabberjays in the Quell — or all those times she was publicly interviewed from the inside of Snow’s mansion — I instinctively try to get to her, try to reach her and protect her, the moment I realize she’s in pain.

She blindly grapples for me, like she knows I’m there before I even touch her, and within a moment’s passing, she’s in my arms, wrapped up and secured tight in my embrace. Where it feels like nothing and no one else can touch her. Not without going through me.

The doctors here in Thirteen are quick, I’ll give them that. They are fast to back away, clearing my path just in time to avoid a collision. I can hear them murmuring quietly amongst themselves. Too low for me to hear, demanding too much effort for me to even try.

Haymitch clears his throat then, muttering something I also cannot understand — because he’s choking up, I realize as an afterthought. He would never admit it but he’s becoming overwhelmed with emotion — and following the doctors out the door without more preamble.

With everyone else gone, Katniss finally lets out an audible cry. It sounds almost animalistic to my ears, like it’s been boiling inside her the entire duration of time she was trapped in the Capitol.

“It’s okay,” I whisper to her, sitting down on the bed, pulling her to me, holding her on my lap. I revel silently in the familiar feeling of her laying her ear against my heart. “It’s okay, Katniss,” I say again, knowing these empty words are not going to do much more to help her now than they did even before Snow captured her.

She stays against me for a long time, her breathing uneven while her tears relentlessly dampen my shirt. “Peeta?” She mumbles faintly, sniffling as she pulls back from my hold.

“Yeah?” I wipe the tears from her bruised and bloody face, as gently as I can, doing everything in my power to be tender. To not to add to her pain at all.

“Are they going to come for me?” She asks, her voice as small as I’ve ever heard it, her big, bloodshot eyes looking like they hurt. Like they sting so badly, from the inside out.

And though I don’t know who she’s referring to, I don’t know who specifically she’s afraid of, or who she thinks is about to break into an underground military compound, I know exactly what she needs to hear.

“No,” I promise, putting every emphasis I can on that one single word. My eyes bore deeply into her’s, assuring her of my sincerity. “No one is going to touch you again. Ever.”

Her eyes glaze over though and I catch a glimpse of the girl I know. The girl I know so well. “You can’t promise that, Peeta,” she murmurs, her tone darkening with every syllable.

And I hate it. I hate so much that my plan to die for her in the arena failed, that I failed, that I failed to protect her from Snow.

I hate what I let him do to her.

And then the promises are pouring out before I think better of it. “Yes, I can,” I say, a fire sparking to life within me. “No one’s going to come for you, Katniss. No one. I will not let them.” I touch her chin lightly, holding it, urging her to make eye contact. “Okay?”

She nods slowly, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me. And there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing I can do to make her believe me, to make what happened to her in the Capitol okay.

“Peeta,” she murmurs softly after a stretch of silence. She leans her head against my shoulder again, even more lethargic now. “Can we sleep?”

My brows knit together in surprise, wanting to ask her more, wanting to know who hurt her and what they did and every last detail about what she went through. But I can’t do that. Not to her, not right now, when she looks so exhausted.

My hand instinctively reaches up to tuck her hair behind her left ear, repeating the motion several times until her eyes fall shut. I feel a wave of gratitude spread throughout me as her expression relaxes a little from the simple gesture.

“Yeah, we can sleep,” I say, guiding her to lay on the hospital bed, already made up and waiting for her.

I plan on just getting her situated and sleeping before slipping out but Katniss has other plans. And she’s very adamant about it too. She uses all the force still left in her body to tug me towards her, making it clear she doesn’t intend to fall asleep without me.

“You sure you want to share your bed with me?” I ask as she pulls my arm beneath her head, using it in place of her pillow. Like she used to do on the train at night. “They don’t offer much bedspace here in Thirteen.”

She doesn’t respond to my question, doesn’t even acknowledge it, but I don’t press her further. Instead my hand moves to touch her cheek, to cup it again. To feel that she is here with me now, that she’s real. That she survived what surely would have killed anyone else in her place.

When she speaks again, it’s not a reply to my question. Instead it’s a confession of sorts, like I’m the only person in the world she trusts and the only one she can tell this to and she has to get it off her chest or she’ll explode.

“Peeta?” She whispers.

“Yeah?”

“I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired.”

“I know.” My voice is barely above a breath now, sensing that she’s not finished yet. But she waits for my prompting to keep going, her eyes full of storm clouds as stares past me, at the blank wall behind my head.

“So tired,” she says again, as if it’s a chant she’s repeating to herself and no one else. “I’m so tired. And sometimes I get so angry.”

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