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francixoxoxo · 6 months ago

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⋆.˚☀︎︎ Both Arms Cradle You Now ✿ ˚⋆.

𝐏𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐗 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐚 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐞. 𝐀𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐦.

𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐜 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐨𝐨𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲!!

It’s been getting better, you thought.

It’s been years since the revolution. Your nightmares hadn’t gone away, but they weren’t as heart clenching, they weren’t as horribly paralyzing. Sometimes, you’d even have a good dream.

Peeta didn’t have that luxury.

You felt your lover stir in bed beside you, moving to sit up straight. You were an extremely light sleeper, a leftover from the Games. He was breathing heavily, a hand over his heart, so of course you immediately rolled over, groaning groggily and reaching your own hand for Peeta’s strong forearm.

“Peeta?” You murmured, squinting to look up at him. His chest was heaving as he whipped his head over his shoulder, eyes round and wide with fear.

Peeta shook his head, swallowing hard and grabbing your hand on his forearm. “Just a nightmare.” He gasped, blinking away the images from his dream and intertwining your fingers. You clicked your tongue against your teeth, drawing your brows together.

After a long, long minute of squeezing his hand, rubbing your splayed palm over his back, and willing him to breathe, you gently coaxed him to lay back down so that you could move him into your arms. Peeta nosed the crook of your neck, his strong weight familiar and comforting on you. He hooked a leg over one of yours, sighing. Peeta tended to run warm, and you were refreshingly cool.

“It’s okay. Nothing can hurt you anymore. You’re safe.” You promised, your lips ghosting the shell of his ear. Because it was true. You were living in a little cottage in District 12, comfortable, cozy and safe. Well. You were certain that any house with Peeta in it could become those things.

Peeta was a strong man. Especially after the revolution; he wasn’t jaded, he didn’t put on a farse. He was truly strong, he was forgiving and loving and perhaps that’s where he got his strength from. He was strong enough to feel no shame in the way tears came to his eyes, and his fingers divoted your hips from how close he was clutching you.

You didn’t have to ask what the nightmare was about to know it exactly. You let Peeta wipe his eyes on your shoulder, bared by your thin sleep-tank. Niether of you minded the time that passed, though soon enough the room was enveloped in a warm glow. “It was awful.” Peeta admitted raspily, after a long while of comfortable silence.

It put a dull yet furious ache in your heart, knowing what the Capitol put him through. How they changed him. Your sweet, good-hearted, and strong Peeta. Of all the people in the world, why him? God, how you wanted to cradle him ‘till he couldn’t remember a moment of that torture. Out of all the people in the world, Peeta was the absolute most important to you.

“I can tell.” You murmured gently, twirling a lock of golden hair around your finger. His hair seemed even lighter, the warm light slowly filtering through the curtains highlighting his blonde locks. “It’s over, though.”

“It’s over.” Peeta agreed lowly. He nosed the crook of your neck, pressing a kiss to your skin, whispering your name like a quiet prayer. “I’m sorry. I woke you up.”

You shake your head. He shouldn’t even be apologizing. “I don’t mind. I wouldn’t want you to handle it alone, Peeta.” That earned you another peck to the shoulder. “Never again.”

“Never again.” Peeta echoes you again, it’s as if in his fear-fogged mind, the words coming from your mouth are the only ones he can think. Well, until he pushes himself up on those strong arms, his nose nudging yours, those sweet, wideset brown eyes fond and warm. “It’s not too early for breakfast. I can make you something.”

You smiled up at him, your gaze flicking twixt those stupidly handsome eyes, those stupidly handsome lips. “No.. it’s not too late to fall back asleep, either. And are you sure you’re okay?”

Your husband gave a little chuckle through his nose, his lips curling into a lopsided smile to mirror yours. “I don’t need any more beauty sleep.” You couldn’t (and wouldn’t dare to) bite back the giggle that bubbled from you. “Baby, making something for you to eat will make me feel better than some shut eye.”

Not that Peeta wanted to stifle that beautiful sound, but he leaned down to press a lingering yet chaste kiss to your lips. You hummed contentedly against him, your fingers threading back into his hair. The kiss was getting to be much, much longer and deeper than he intended, and he shook his head, pulling away from you. “Okay. If I don’t get up now, I never will.”

You huff indignantly, pulling him for another peck. Peeta hums happily, but with some reluctance from you breaks the kiss again, grinning as you chase his lips. “Pancakes?”

“Yes, please.” You smile, rubbing your hand gently up and down the strong tone of his bicep, the other hand in his soft hair. God, he was handsome. Everything about him was so stupid handsome.

Peeta can’t help but give your sugar sweet lips another peck, then another, and another, until he’s pushing himself away and chuckling, “Okay, seriously. I’m going.”

Peeta gently pulled the covers back over you, willing you to fall back asleep while he cooked you breakfast. Promising to bring it to you, promising that he loved you.

Oh, you’d never deserve that boy.

Btw totally inspired by this amazing edit by lilsfilm on tt, the lyrics “Villain and Violent, Infant and Innocent, baby, both arms cradle you now,” literally KILL ME

Honorable mention to this edit by them also

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theaawalker · 2 months ago

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the last snow to fall ❆ peeta mellark

Pairing: Peeta Mellark x fem!oc Song Inspo: Tethered by Sleeping at Last Word Count: 2,348 Summary: Snow is dead, but his heiress still lives. Does she deserve to be executed? Coin is dead, but her successors still want to have the Capitol Games. How can Peeta Mallark, still recovering from the loss of Katniss, stop it and save her? Warnings: mentions of family death, mentions of whipping, mentions of public executions, mentions of massacres Masterlist: see fandoms (pc-friendly)

"They found the girl," said the nurse.

"What girl?" asked Peeta. He didn't really care, what he wanted was news of Katniss. But he wanted to be polite, and the nurse was careful to keep him up to date on the news while he was stuck in the hospital.

"President Snow's grand-daughter. She disappeared the day of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Turns out that her nanny was hiding her. I hear, that they're both going to be whipped, at the least."

"WHIPPED?" echoed Peeta, his attention suddenly caught.

Peeta frequently thought in visual images, an advantage to a painter. The word WHIP evoked the horrible day in District 12 when Thread was torturing Gale at the whipping post, and Katniss accidentally got hit in the face by the lash trying to rescue her friend. Now take the image of Gale's bleeding back, and imagine a frail Primrose-like girl being tortured instead, and you got an image of utter horror. "Why would they whip them?"

"I don't know," said the nurse. She seemed nonchalant. Maybe she was from a District where beatings were common. Or, more likely, she was numbed by all the recent events: the invasion of the Capitol by the Districts, the Pods that didn't seem to care if they shot innocent bystanders along with the invaders, the Slaughter of the Innocents, the announcement of new Games, the assassination of Coin, dying within minutes of her defeated enemy. But the nurse had promised to bring Peeta news: Peeta was her patient and a Victor and she wanted to keep him happy. "Do you want me to ask?"

Peeta thought about it. It was likely that the city was still in chaos, there was still no reliable news service, and it would be impossible for the nurse to get a credible story.

"No. But please send a message to Plutarch Heavensbee, and tell him that I need to talk to him."

Her eyes opened wide. "HEAVENSBEE? He's involved in all sorts of government business – probably impossible to pull away –"

"Please. Just send the message and I'll see what happens."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, you're being very helpful." It wasn't her fault that civilization was crashing around them.

After she went out Peeta sank back in the hospital bed, feeling helpless. The last coherent thing he remembered was preventing Katniss from taking the suicide pill, after the assassination of Coin. He had thought that he was saving her life, but had he just saved her for a worse fate?

He had blacked out frequently since then. It was a combination of the pain medicine that he was taking to soothe his burns, and the residual effects of his hijacking. "At least now you're going catatonic instead of flying into homicidal rages," Dr, Aurelius had observed. "I suppose that's an improvement."

Whenever he got coherent and asked about Katniss, he was told that she was still in prison, and seemed to having severe psychological problems of her own. Peeta wanted to help her, but how? And now he had a new worry.

To the nurse's astonishment, Plutarch came the next day – and what's more, made no complaint of being dragged away from important tasks.

"I know that you want to know about Katniss," said Plutarch, "but there's been no change in her legal situation, though basically the debaters have formed two factions. Irene Gold was one of Coin's most trusted assistants, and she wants Katniss executed as an assassin. Paylor claims that Katniss was a hero who cracked under the strain, and can't be held responsible. Popular opinion seems to be on Paylor's side, but nobody has enough power to override the other side."

Peeta was careful not to ask what "side" Plutarch was on. He knew that the old schemer was trying to play one faction against another and try to remain on top. But as far as Katniss was concerned, Peeta knew that Plutarch wanted to save the Mockingjay, even if it required some political chicanery, and Peeta would simply have to trust him.

"There's something else that I wanted to ask. I heard that Snow's grand-daughter has been found and they want to whip her for committing a crime. What's that about?"

"It has to do with the proposed Hunger Games. Gold insists on carrying out Coin's wishes and having a Games with tributes from the Capitol. The rules for the Capitol tributes have not been drawn up yet, but the grand-daughter is an obvious target, and Gold says that she was trying to flee getting reaped into the Games. It's a powerful accusation. What happened in the Districts when somebody eligible for reaping didn't show up?"

"It never happened in 12 – nobody dared," replied Peeta. "But I suppose something nasty would happen to them."

"It's happened occasionally in other districts, and yes, it could be pretty nasty. So now that the shoe is on the other foot, Gold is saying that the Snow girl should be treated equally badly. It's a popular stand, in the Districts."

"But the girl did nothing. She's just a scapegoat."

"So were you. The Hunger Games was always about scapegoats."

Peeta thought it over. "What's Paylor's take on this?"

"She challenges the validity of the vote that you Victors made. She interprets it like this: if Katniss's sanity is in question, her YES vote should be thrown out. Heymitch said he was following Katniss's choice, so his YES vote should also be thrown out. That leaves a 3-2 vote AGAINST the Games. But it's rather legalistic, and popular opinion in the Districts favor the Games. The Capitol doesn't get a choice, of course."

"What's your stand?"

"I don't think I can stop the Games, so I don't think I'll try," Plutarch said frankly. "But until they're set up, you can't accuse the girl of trying to escape them. I tell people that it was perfectly natural for an innocent girl to want to disappear when her grand-father was about to be publicly executed. But I'm not getting many takers. Too much hate going around."

Peeta thought through it. Why was he so concerned about Snow's grand-daughter, of whom he knew nothing? For all he knew, she could be a spoiled brat. But that very lack of knowledge enabled Peeta to think of her as a symbol. She was a child caught up in somebody else's vicious quarrel, just like Rue, like Prim, like -

An idea started forming in his head.

"Plutarch, could you arrange for me to make a speech to the whole nation?"

"A speech? Yes, I'm in the communications ministry, and since you're one of the few remaining Victors, people will be curious about what you have to say. But I don't think you should get involved in the fray at this point. You don't want to make an enemy of Irene Gold."

"I'm not going to challenge Ms. Gold. I'm not even going to talk about Snow's grand-daughter."

"Then what DO you want to say?"

Peeta told him.

"People of Panem, I'm Peeta Mallark, co-Victor of the 74th Hunger Games, and I want to talk to you about those games." It was a weak beginning from the narrative-hook point of view, but Peeta was counting on the public curiosity about Hunger Games Victors, and the 74th Games in particular.

"I'm not going to talk about me, or about Katniss, but about another tribute. Katniss and I didn't even know her name; we called her Foxface, because she was red-headed and smart as a fox. She was the girl from District 5."

"Foxface had high ethical principles. She never touched a weapon during the Games, never tried to hurt anybody. Sheer hunger drove her to pilfer food, but she took only what she needed to survive, and left the rest to the "owner". But as the Games wound down, the food supplies dwindled, and she started to starve. Eventually she became so desperate that she ate some unfamiliar berries, and died."

"Later, stopping at District 5 on our Victory Tour, I tried to learn more about her." That was hard to do, because Snow was trying to make it difficult for the pair to contact fellow Victors, or rebels in general, but Foxface was unimportant enough that Snow didn't mind Peeta's inquiries. "Her real name was Finch. She was studying engineering, so that she could get a job in District 5's power industries when she grew up. Her teachers told me that she was one of their best students, even working on a new battery that would store energy better. But before she could finish her work, she was reaped into the Hunger Games and spent her last days dodging murderous tributes in a forest arena and dying of hunger when she could have been advancing science. What did the inventive, decent girl do to deserve such a horrible fate? Nothing. She was the descendant of a generation and district who had rebelled against the Capitol, and that was enough to make her life worthless in the eyes of the Capitol."

"So once more we talking once more about having a Hunger Games. About declaring a group of children worthless and throwing their lives away. Is that how we want to start the new Panem, slaughtering innocents again? Think about it."

"Your speech worked," said Plutarch. "The Council responded to the new public mood, and abandoned the planned Games. Gold eventually gave in, but only after losing a lot of support. Paylor's more powerful now, and maybe she can protect Katniss. And from a much broader view, I think you've persuaded the empire not to stick to Panem's bloody path, but to try to transcend them."

"Good. But I can't claim all the credit. I just encouraged people to think it through."

"Whatever. Now, I've brought a guest who wants to meet you." Plutarch went to the door of the hospital room and brought in a young blonde girl who was wearing her hair in a one-sided braid like Katniss's.

"Hello, Mr. Mellark," she said respectfully. "I'm Jan Snow. I wanted to thank you for saving me and the other Capitol kids. Mr. Heavensbee said all this started because you were shocked about the threat to me, so I owe you special thanks."

"You're welcome."

"There are a couple of things I think you should know. My mother was assassinated when I was a baby, you know. Just recently I was able to get hold of some letters she wrote to friends. She told them that she hated the carnage of the Games, and that she would try to reform them if she became President. I think somebody learned about her views, and murdered her to keep the Games going. It – it might even have been Grandpa."

"Sounds like your mother is a hero, then."

"There's another thing. I'm grateful for your attempts to protect me from punishment, but I've decided to let them w-whip me." She shuddered.

"WHAT? You were innocent!"

"Am I? I've heard a lot about the suffering out in the Districts. Children dying in infancy, or being malnourished, or killed in the Games, or beaten for not following orders, all so that Capitol kids like me could be spoiled rotten. People hate the Capitol, and particularly my Grandpa, for a reason. I ought to pay for it."

"No, no, no. If you've done something wrong and feel guilty, that's one thing. But you – you're acting like Katniss. She keeps feeling guilty about killing tributes in the Games, or encouraging fighting in the rebellion, and supposedly provoking Snow into bombing District 12. Katniss can't see the big picture, that she was caught up in a worldwide crisis. It's healthy to feel responsibility, but not to seek out punishment for stuff that was far beyond your control."

"But—"

Peeta felt sorry for the girl. Katniss had been guided by the inspiring memory of her dead father. Jan Show had had no moral guidance at all but an evil grandfather. She was now learning horrid stuff that she had probably been hidden from her during most of her life, and was trying to figure the right thing to do. Maybe Peeta could give her that guideance.

"I saw a friend tied to a whipping post and flogged. Nothing moral or redeeming about it. It just HURT him, a lot. It was part of a Panem that doesn't exist anymore. The nightmare is OVER. No more Games. We're going to build a new Panem now. You want to do penance for something? Help build it!"

A month later Paylor was elected President of Panem, defeating her rival Irene Gold. She confirmed the abolition of the Games, banned the use of whips for punishment, and commuted Katniss Everdeen's sentence to exile on the grounds of diminished mental capacity. And along with some supporters, she is hailed in history books for leading Panem into a new enlightened age.

THE END

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