《Broken (Peeta Mellark Fanfiction)》Chapter 5 - Trust
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It's hard to sleep, I don't know if it's the two guards that shift every hour, or the buzzing thoughts in my head, but I'm completely wide awake. For a few hours I fumbled around with the rope Finnick gave me, with the sound of sobs coming from one of the tents to break the nighttime silence. When they sent me here, they briefly told me about the other members of the squad, and they mentioned that the person I was replacing had a sister that was also in this group. I'm assuming that the depressed sobs would be the sister mourning her sibling's death. It sounds like she's trying to hold it back, but theres a point in time where you just can't anymore, and the walls come crashing down. It reminds me very faintly about the hopeless crying from the helpless prisoners in the Capitol prison. I tie the knots tighter, trying to think about something else.
At midnight, Katniss takes a seat near me as a guard for the next shift. I'm surprised they allowed her to do it, she probably can't wait to shoot me if I get out of control. This thought makes me uneasy, and my fingers start to get sore as I yank at the rope.
The sobs have finally stopped, now the only thing I hear is the sound of soldiers breathing, it doesn't seem like anyone is really asleep. I can feel her gaze on me, I wonder if she's contemplating on how soon she should kill me, or what she would say to get me to leave somehow. I can still sense the anger and annoyance radiating off of her. Does she really want to kill me? I can never really tell. It's hard to know exactly what she's thinking. Something urges me to say something, and I think it's my overwhelming curiosity. It's one of the most annoying things these days, always wondering something and never getting an answer that makes sense. Something's different this time though, when I look at Katniss right now this kind of curiosity is like an irritated old feeling that was never really resolved. I decide to break the silence,
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"These last couple years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth." There's a cutting edge in my voice, a tone that has the same coldness I've spoken with every time I talk to her. This sharp bitterness always seems to just come out without much effort, every time I look at her something inside me churns angrily. I instantly expect her to give me a stubborn excuse, but instead comes out a steady confession,
"I never wanted to kill you. Except when I thought you were helping the Careers kill me. After that, I always thought of you as... an ally."
When I look at her through the shadows, her expression is nonthreatening, not murderous like I'd thought before. Her words do not help though, she might be denying this now, but she might change her mind later. For as long as I've been aquatinted with her, she's shown all different kinds of love and hate to me, and every time it's all so believable to me that I don't know what to get from it, or what to make of her. And I don't even know what parts of it are real and not real, so that makes it even harder. Her comment about our first Games triggers a flow of old memories into my mind. After all we've been through and done together, she only thinks of me as an ally?
"Ally." I repeat slowly, absorbing the word. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancé. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out."
I weave the rope in and out of my fingers.
"The problem is, I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's made up." I add.
That's all they need to know in order to figure me out, because that's all that seems to take over my thoughts. Finnick's voice rises from one of the tents in the darkness,
"Then you should ask, Peeta. That's what Annie does."
My doctors told me that only I could sort out my memories, that only I could rule out what's real and what's not, but they also said that asking others about certain events would help a lot. At the time when they told me about it I immediately shot down the idea, because I thought that there was no one I really knew, or could trust.
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"Ask who?" I ask. "Who can I trust?"
"Well, us for starters. We're your squad," says Soldier Jackson, my other guard.
"You're my guards," I point out.
"That too, but you saved a lot of lives in Thirteen. That's not the kind of thing we forget." She says.
It's not enough, I saw all of the dirty looks they all gave me when I arrived. If they don't trust me, why should I trust them? But everything is still unclear, and I remember how I used to be even more messed up, like when I thought Snow made some sense and Katniss was a killer mutt. I still don't even know who I am, or was, that's one of the things that bothers me the most. I can only remember what I was made into, what I am now, and that's a murderous Capitol-made mutation. I know some of the things I did, like in the Games, in District 12, on the victory tour, but I don't know why I did it, and some of those memories might not even be real. If these people are offering help, maybe I should accept it. I need to accept the fact that these people are not as much of an enemy as Snow is.
Nobody says anything else, I dive into my thoughts once again, trying to find some sense, but it's still a jumbled mess that leaves me scared and confused in the end. I need to focus on the important things, some of the things I'd thought were important before the hijacking have stayed a little clear. I dig deep into my mind, what did I value so much before? Something simple, that can't be turned into a nightmare, there has to be something...
A thought enters my mind, followed by a memory, but I don't know if it's real. I turn to Katniss,
"Your favorite color... it's green?"
Katniss' eyes light up. "That's right." She says. "And yours is orange."
"Orange?"
My apparent fascination with the color orange does not ring a bell, how could I not remember my own favorite color?
Katniss notices my confusion. "Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset," she explains. "At least, that's what you told me once."
"Oh."
She waves it off, but she says it with such sincerity there's no way I can't believe her. I close my eyes, and try to create an image of a sunset, it's warm, calming, safe, a goodbye but also a promise of the future. That's it. That's my favorite color. I nod my head with approval, trying not to smile from the relief of an undeniable answer.
"Thank you." I tell her.
Some hopefulness and a little excitement flashes over Katniss' face, she keeps talking,
"You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces."
Then suddenly she looks sad, she forces the words away and dives into her tent. It's all so confusing to me. I stare at the spot where she was sitting moments before. I've never been given so much information about myself before. When I think about it, it all makes sense, it's all true, they're all so simple, and true. I would've never thought that of all people, Katniss Everdeen would've noticed those type of things about me, and cared enough to keep it in mind.
She looked like she actually cared, unlike the looks she'd been giving me hours before. This is exactly what I'd claimed earlier, her emotions change drastically all the time, especially with me. It's always been like that, I remember. Although, that look of care she just gave me looked almost familiar, I've seen it before. That might not have been the first time.
This might prove that out of everyone on earth right now, Katniss Everdeen might be the one who knows the most about me, or at least, who I was before.
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The Oath of Oblivion
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