Story idea that wouldn't shut up today.

Sacrifice has always come too easy for him, especially when I was involved. He was a born martyr. I never asked it of him. In fact, I have despised him for it on more than one occasion. In the end, though, despising him just made me feel guilty: guilty because I have never deserved his relentless and overwhelming love.

When I'd first returned to District 12 I had been alone: stuck in my own head, a desperately horrific place. I moved only from the floor of the living room, the carpet dingy and dirty, to the bathroom. I never turned on the lights. I had smashed out the mirror in the bathroom at some point. Someone must have tidied the shards of glass. I picked listlessly at the food that appeared in front of me now and again. I would breathe. I would cry out. I would writhe in agony. I would shiver, not from the cold, but from the mind numbing memories that played like a broken recording in my mind. It lasted forever. It just kept going and refused to change.

At some point I heard his voice. A hundred years of lying on the floor, hearing nothing but the wails pouring from my heart, I heard him. It was close behind me and still carried that warmth and soothing grace it always had.

"Katnis. I'm here. I'm back." I felt his hand softly touch the back of my head, sweeping from the roots to the tip, like I was some lame abandoned mutt.

I retreated from the contact. The idea that I could be physically touched mortified me. My personal bubble ought to be made of steel. I wrapped my arms more tightly around my body and pulled my knees to my chest and focused intently on my breathing, staring hard at the doorknob of the bathroom door.

"What can I do?" His question meant for me, for the room, for himself. I felt the tips of his fingers floating just about me, repelled by my hostile force field.

"I tried to come back sooner." His voice trembled a little, sticking and tripping on the words as they spewed from him and all over me. "They wouldn't let me leave. I had to stay; it was part of the deal to get you out. I had to promote the new leadership; I had to convince the districts… I wanted to… I tried calling… are you ok? How can I help?..."

I wanted to hate Peeta then. But I couldn't feel anything. It was like the feeling had finally died in me. I had nothing to feel with. My heart was gone.

I smiled then. It was a mechanical smile. I knew I should be happy that I could feel nothing, but the beauty of feeling nothing, is that you feel nothing. My accomplishment deserved a smile, but I didn't have any real ones left. My muscle memory lifted the corners of my lips, but that was the extent of the gesture.

Peeta stood and walked around my rigid body and crouched down to face me. He was beautiful. They had fixed him since I'd seen him last. Apparently the camera's needed a pretty spokesman, so they must have sent Peeta back to the fancy Capital physicians. The light seemed to catch him just right. The blonde of his hair like a halo, his blue eyes sparkling, his lips red and full, almost womanly. I had a momentary urge to reach out and touch his face, feel the warmth I knew was behind his creamy skin. The need rushed through me and was gone as quickly as it had come.

His face distorted on seeing me. I, unlike Peeta had not been designed again. Additionally, I had not looked in the mirror, eaten, bathed, or cared for myself in any way in what I felt was certainly a millennium. I ought to be ashamed of myself. I ought to recoil at the thought of myself this way. But I just lay there, staring up at him.

"I can't see you like this." His voice low and broken sounding, like he were about to cry.

I wanted to spit back, "then leave and you won't have to." I hated him in that moment for been whole and alive, while I was dying on my living room floor and slowly becoming the carpet beneath me.

He stood then and walked into the bathroom and I was angrier at being abandoned. There was nothing he could do to make me happy. There was nothing anyone could do.

Later, a few minutes, maybe hours, he reappeared through the bathroom door. He stepped too close to me. He leaned closer and scoped me off the floor. I tried resisting and first, but my muscles were so atrophied I barely moved. My breathing took on a frantic pace and my body shook in anger and surprise.

The air in the bathroom was warm and wet feeling. It was heavy and smelled like lavender.

The bath was filled with steaming water. Peeta set me in the tub fully clothed, rolled up his sleeves and began washing my hair.

I noticed then that there was a horrible crying noise, overwhelming and tragic. It was my own voice. My breathing continued irregularly, but instead of fighting off my cleaner, I lay perfectly still and closed my eyes, blocking as much sensory stimuli as possible.

He washed my hair, peeled off the out layer of clothes caked against my skin and scrubbed with gentleness. My nurse was professional, focused, and soft. I played dead. It wasn't hard to do, for I really felt it.

He dried me, redressed me. He came back at me with food and force-fed me for a while. He left me there, on the couch in the living room and rubbed tirelessly at the rotting area of carpet that had been my home for so long.

Before leaving he knelt before me and sighed, "I'll do whatever it takes."

The resignation was there. I saw the determination and fervor in his steely blue gaze. Peeta could be disturbingly persistent and unhealthily resolute. But, so could I.