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[conscriptur]

peeta mellark verses;

VERSE I. peeta is the baker's son on the merchant side of district twelve. he is quiet but still has a large friend group. his hardships lies with his family, the normalcy of them for what is expected takes a tole on him as he has a lot to live up to, mainly his two older brothers who thrive in their life expectations. oh and he has a crush on a girl, whose singing will have the birds stop their own voices to listen to her. but he will never approach her, he simply will watch her from afar.

VERSE II. it was quite a shock when the name primrose everdeen left effie trinket's mouth with that capitol shrill. he knew that name, the younger sister of katniss, the girl he liked and before he could really process the fact her little sister had been reaped, he heard her frantic shouts and he could only stare at the dust that cakes his dress shoes. his eyes remained trained on his shoes that he did not even take note to register his own name coming from that same shrill voice. unimaginable to have his face pale more than the color already lacking in his skin as he stumbled upon the stage next to that girl, katniss everdeen, who occupied his mind in the most innocent love. ladies and gentlemen let the 74th hunger games begin.

VERSE III. they made it out once. glad to be alive but at what cost? the list ran long for him; the nightmares, the ghostly pain of his leg against the metal of his newly improved one, the play-up of love that led to his heartbreak. but at the announcement made the next summer, he found himself back in the arena already, in misery to save the girl that he could not help but still love with each ache of his heart. he would volunteer if it came to it, but he was also prepared to take on the role of mentor if haymitch was allowed to volunteer for him. alas, peeta made his claim on volunteering and they were back to last year, a more intense version of their games. the 75th hunger games: the quarter quell.

VERSE IV. he remembers bits and pieces of the tail end before the arena went to pieces. the shouts from katniss before the explosion had left him numb, on the verge of unconscious. now, he has woken up with the urge to find katniss but all of this was not right. he was greeted with peacekeepers and his prep team to prepare him for an interview. he is in the capitol while katniss has been taken in with the rebels.

VERSE V. hijacked. that is what they whisper to each other, the doctors that surround him. he does not really know the meaning of it as his focus resides on katniss. katniss everdeen. the girl on fire. a murderer. a mutt. he hated her. the idea of her filled his body with rage. beyond the rage there was sedation. rage. and then sedation. a vicious cycle. he was trapped in thirteen where he knew she was also roaming around. and then he's on squad four five one along with the girl he hated headed into the capitol where the depth of his trauma was buried. there was loss and suffering and confusion. but somehow. he made it out even though he begged to die along with the rest of them.

VERSE VI. the war is over. snow and coin are dead. now all that is left is the three of them in district twelve. that's how it feels even as the citizens of twelve that took refuge in thirteen begin to trickle in as the three of them; peeta, katniss, and haymitch live in their secluded homes in the victor village. peeta spends his time learning how to be okay with his mind, his body in these years. he finds reason to bring normalcy in helping put back the crumbling pieces of the district and make it a newly found home for everyone.

VERSE VII. the freedom games. his anger resides with katniss and haymitch as his only family left in the world, they chose to allow this to go through initially. peeta believes if they had disagreed with coin's decision to begin with, then maybe the new government would not have given it a second thought after the assassination. but here they were sending capitol children to death as they had once experienced. and it seemed eerily similar to the hunger games, with them reeling the victors of the hunger games to be the mentors for these kids. how he hated it, and how the peace he pleaded for only seemed to grow further away as this all became a reminder of what he experienced. affiliated with @hvbris

[conscriptur]

Why would he do it? He had nothing but rage inside of him when the passing thought of her grandfather and the orders he gave to cause destruction within Peeta. Playing pretend with the girl when first released from the cage of the arena. Worry over Katniss was replaced by the con of being on the side of the Capitol. And then further replaced by the belief that it should not have been worry he had for Katniss Everdeen but vengeance.

Now, his blue eyes looked at Cassia questioning himself. His inner dialogue asks him just as she did why he would work to help her make it out alive. Just by looking at her, Peeta is overcome with a wave of sickness. She looked so much like him, President Snow, and yet he had that reminder float to the forefront of his memories when he walked into the room with her pleasant greeting to him. His number-one fan. That was what she had been before the war. Just a naive child from the Capitol enthralled with an older boy who on screen he guessed had seemed perfect?

"Because I don't want this," Peeta responded with heat behind the words. It was as if he was still arguing for the vote to go against the Freedom Games at the table with Coin. "Because it's not right just to send more kids to their deaths for retribution for what he did." Hadn't the people been through enough as the war was brought right to their doorsteps? The bombing had not been as detrimental as it had been to his home, where District Twelve barely held a semblance of a population it once had. But children and innocent lives were lost on that final day. The boy had seen it with his own eyes. Watched as people went up into flames, bursting like fireworks right in front of him. His own flesh, crisp with the effects of those bombs.

He had to look elsewhere, the walls first and then down to his own hands as fingernails dug into his palms. His attempt to draw himself back from the swarm of agony that inhabited a world of mania inside him. The torture. The screams echoed through the walls that trapped him now rang in his ears. It was a mixture of his own and the fellow Victors he struggled with each day they remained in the Capitol. His breathing grew heavy as he endured the ringing of screams.

Stop! You're no longer there. Stop. Stop. Stop. Peeta scolded himself in his thoughts.

"I," Peeta began to reply to Cassia focusing on the sharp discomfort of fingernails digging into his skin. "I don't know why you would think I would gloat and your sister shouldn't either if she cared about you." A picture popped up of his brothers in the room with him before he got on the train after he was Reaped, tears that threatened to drop from their eyes. His brother who could have volunteered just like Katniss had, had become withdrawn in that room as they said their final goodbye. "This is all wrong. You weren't responsible for the pain inflicted on me and these other kids aren't either."

Peeta unclinched his hands from the tight fists they had made themselves into. Slowly he dragged his head up to look at the girl again. So, they would work together on this. Let the others be damned that he was attempting to save a girl that everyone hated for the wrong reasons. "I'll help you train like conditioning for it and if sponsors are still a thing for these Games. I'll talk you up just like my own interviews and you have to work with that, make it believable." He didn't want to say something so obvious but with how she looked to Peeta now, completely changed from their first meeting, it had to be said. "Make them see that you're not like him and you deserve to live."

𝐏𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐀 & 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐀 @conscriptur

"Why would you do that?"

Cassia glared at Peeta. It was eerie, to think of the last time they had met, how happy and thrilled she was then. The excited girl was long gone now, she had died with her grandfather, she had died with her mother. And whatever crumbs of the old her had remained, the reaping had destroyed those too.

She was angry, now. It was an icy, feezing anger. Cold like snow. Her brown eyes had been warm and joyful once, and now they felt like metal. Even the way she carried herself was different. In a strange, troubling way, she almost looked like her grandfather, now. Something in the tension in her eyebrows, the thin line of her lips.

The truth was, she found comfort in mimicking him. She didn't know how to process the guilt, the fear, the despair. In the span of a few weeks, she had lost everything: the two people she loved most in the world, her life, her home... And how to cope with Cornelia, smiling on the day of the reaping, when she heard that Cassia was doomed?

Cassia was all alone in the world now. She had no one. She could trust no one. Why would she trust Peeta Mellark, when he had so many reasons to hate her?

"Why do you want me to get out alive? You should be gloating. I am not a fool, Mr. Mellark. You were tortured in my grandfather's palace."

She examined him in silence for a moment, soft blond eyebrows knitted together. It made her look older than her age, jaded. "My own sister was gloating." A dry scoff, and she looked away to hide the pain in her eyes.

But she wanted to win. She wanted to survive. She wanted to land on top. So, she turned toward him again, hesitation troubling her features. "What kind of advantage?" He had won his Games, after all. He was strong. Could he really help her?