Story: Cross My Stars and Hope to Die

Pairing(s): Katniss/Peeta

Summary: Peeta Mellark loves Katniss Everdeen, but who said love can't kill? Four times Peeta Mellark has a flashback, and one time it goes too far.

Rating: T for strong language, minor sexual situations, and violence

A/N: Bit of a tragedy, this one. All in one-shot. I've never tried anything like this before. Really starting to experiment these days. :) Hope you enjoy this. Keep in mind this is something a tad bit AU-ish.

...

Once, just once, and never again

Not anymore, never again

Ever-broken promises, again and again

...

"I want to see it again," is the first thing Katniss Everdeen says that fateful morning.

"See what?" Peeta Mellark asks sleepily, his naked body intertwined with hers. His thoughts flash to the night before.

It was their first time, his body moving perfectly in sync with the girl of his dreams, the sweetness of their kisses mixed with a bitter drop of her pain. Just the slightest drop.

In the end they lay together on the sticky sheets (they smelled just like her, just like the woods and her flowery shampoo), their rapid breathing the only thing they could hear, until Peeta asked, "You love me. Real or not real?"

Katniss smiled up at him, her cheeks glowing pink with pleasure. "Real," she said, and Peeta's world was complete.

Is complete.

Her words break into his thoughts when she says, "I want to see District Twelve again. I want to see the ruins."

Peeta sits up, attentive, as he gathers her in his arms. "Katniss, are you sure? Didn't you go just a few weeks ago –"

"No." Katniss shakes her head, looking up at him. "What I meant is...I want to see them with you." She runs a slender hand through his blonde hair, sending a shiver down his back. "Together," she finishes firmly.

Peeta smiles softly, nodding in agreement. "Let's get ready then."

He starts to get off the bed, but Katniss throws her arms around his neck, trapping him close to her body. "Wait," she murmurs, smirking, pressing her breasts against his chest. "There's something we need to do first..."

He grins and rolls his body over hers. The star-crossed lovers' stars seem to have uncrossed.

Or so they think.

Reconstruction is rampant throughout District 12, but there is much left to be done. The ashes that once used to be the Hob have spread and settled and are now nothing more than a few handfuls of dust tainting the clean earth. A few unlawful rebels left loitering about in a free world.

The comparison is fitting, Katniss thinks, as she and Peeta make their way about the district, silent under the gray canvas of the skies.

Slowly and steadily, they reach the ruins of the Mellarks' bakery. Katniss can't help but think the destroyed, burnt cement matches the melancholy clouds that loom above them.

She turns to embrace Peeta, to comfort him and be comforted, but what she sees stops her in her tracks.

Peeta falls to his knees on the ground, clutching at the few chunks of his home that litter the ground. His home, his home, his home.

"Father," he whispers hoarsely to himself. He remembers his father, round-bellied and good-natured, giving out free cookies to his friends. "Where are you, Dad?"

And then he remembers. She killed them. The mutt.

Another voice whispers to him, She didn't kill him –the Capitol did. You love her, for real. She loves you, for real. Real, real, real.

No. She's a mutt. A mutt, a mutt, an evil mutt.

He leaps up from the ground, stone in hand, and throws it in her direction. Katniss lets out a shriek, tripping back a few steps. A small trickle of blood oozes out of her left temple, the same place Johanna Mason had hit her an eternity ago.

No! the sensible voice screams at him. Stop, you fool, stop!

Some distant, detached part of him calls out, his voice angry and desperate, like a lost echo, "You love me! Real or not real?"

And he hears, "Real, Peeta, real! Always!"

He falls back on his knees and digs his nails into the crumbly dirt and debris, holding on to whatever is real, real, real.

Later that night, he cries when he sees the mark on his beloved's head.

...

Tell me you love me, I want to believe it

Whenever you're sorry, I want to believe it

On and on this goes, but will I ever believe it?

...

He haunts her dreams tonight (even after five years of never seeing him –she doesn't count his lifeless, plastic smiles on the television screen).

A grey-eyed hunter standing in the middle of the forest –their forest –the muscles in his arms rippling in the meager sunlight, the sky concealed by monstrous clouds of silver parachutes.

And out of nowhere, it rains fire.

She hears the grey-eyed hunter scream.

"Gale!" Katniss Mellark shrieks. "Gale!"

She bolts upright, her forehead sweating. "Gale, Gale, Gale," she whimpers into the dark of night, shivering (but not from the cold).

She turns to Peeta for comfort, but he is already awake and standing, his body shaking violently. He holds onto the headboard for support, forsanity, but it's not enough. He is losing himself.

"You mutt," he snarls at her. "You whore. You're a fucking whore, aren't you?"

Katniss is speechless, because this is not Peeta Mellark. This is not her Peeta Mellark.

"Peeta," she whispers fearfully.

"Don't say my name like that!" he roars at her, his hands still clutching the headboard tightly. "Fucking slut. You think about him at night, don't you? When you're with me? You think about him!"

"No, Peeta, no," Katniss answers, her voice firm but afraid. "It's you, only you."

"You're cheating on me, aren't you?" Peeta says, his blue eyes aflame even in the dark. "You cheating mutt." One of his hands lets go of the headboard and Katniss stiffens, expecting the worst. But suddenly there's a glimmer of recognition in his eyes and he moves his hand back to the headboard, his eyes squeezed shut, his legs still trembling.

There are apologies the next morning. There are kisses. There are sweet, sweaty, sticky minutes spent in their bed. There are promises of "real, real, real."

(They never mention this again.)

...

Tear me apart, it's nothing new

Hell on earth, it's nothing new

Reap my children, it's nothing new

Ever-painful kisses, it's nothing new

End a life, it's nothing new

...

It was never supposed to happen. Never, never, never.

But when your stars cross, they only uncross on their terms.

(Katniss Mellark has yet to accept that, even ten years after the War.)

She puts on a hand on her belly, gently rubbing it, acutely aware of the child growing inside of her. A horrible flame of fear threatens to consume her and burn her senses alive, but Peeta is there.

Her boy with the bread, her dandelion, her light spring rain that cools her when her fire burns too bright.

She looks to him for reassurance, for comfort, for hope. And he gives it to her.

Most of the time.

"I'm scared, Peeta," she tells him honestly one night after dinner as they're washing the dishes. Haymitch is sitting somewhere in the living room, drowning in his alcohol as usual. She looks up at her husband, wanting to be kissed and held and told it will be alright, and that she'd have him, always.

But that doesn't come.

What she sees instead is Peeta Mellark gripping the side of the kitchen table, eyes shut and nostrils flaring.

No, Katniss thinks, her heart racing and sinking at the same time. No, please, no...

When his eyes open, they're two blocks of sapphire ice, just begging to pierce into her. "You'll kill it," he whispers hoarsely, his expression bitter and unforgiving. "You'll kill my child, you filthy mutt! I won't let you!" His words end in a shout of anger as he releases himself from the table and lunges for his wife.

Hunter skills partially intact, Katniss sidesteps his attack and runs to the corner of the kitchen –there's no other place to go. He backs her into the wall. "Peeta," Katniss pleads. Her cries are desperate, her voice choking. Why doesn't he see her, why, why why? "Peeta, no –I love you, Peeta, I love you!"

This time, though, the words are not enough.

He rams into her, fist landing in her stomach. Hard.

She falls to the ground, clutching at her belly, trying to breathe, trying to crawl away. She screams in terror as her husband's foot raises above her, ready to meet her side, when suddenly he is wrenched back with an almighty force.

Katniss looks up to see Haymitch Abernathy dragging a psychotic, screaming Peeta away from her.

"Snap the hell out of it!" Haymitch shouts at Peeta, restraining him with a force that makes Katniss wonder whether he is really drunk at all.

The older man does not let go of the younger one until all his shiny memories have dissolved, leaving him sick and horrified and lying on the floor, drowning in a pool of his tears.

Katniss Mellark doesn't cry much these days. She sweats and shakes and screams after horrific nightmares and the relentless memories that reemerge from the depths of her mind, never truly going away.

But she cries when she finds that the child inside her is no more.

(There are no words for what Peeta Mellark feels.)

...

Forgive me please, I'm trying

Once, just once, I'm trying

Understand, I'm trying

Real or not, I'm trying

...

It is not yet dawn when Katniss Mellark goes into labor, five years after her first and only miscarriage.

She lies in her bed, her mother soothing her and offering her morphling. Katniss takes it readily, eager to be rid of the pain that threatens to tear her body apart.

But most of all, Katniss Mellark wants the morphling so she can forget. She wants to forget her husband is in the adjoining room, being restrained by Haymitch Abernathy, all because he thinks she's a mutant monster out to kill him. Out to kill her own husband.

She screams in pain as Mrs. Everdeen encourages her to push harder. The pain that racks her body is like no other, only slightly dimmed by the effects of the morphling (because Mrs. Everdeen knows all too well what her daughter wants the drugs for).

There is suddenly silence in the other room. "Is that Katniss screaming?" she hears Peeta ask Haymitch.

"Yes," Haymitch replies, his voice softer and calmer. "It is."

Katniss feels a wave of relief run through her. Her husband is back, he's back, and he'll be here any moment to hold her hand and –

There is a burst of sharp, cruel laughter. The sound sends chills down her back, and her eyes flood with tears when she realizes the wretched sound came from none other than Peeta himself.

"Good," he snarls viciously. "I like hearing her scream. She deserves it, she fucking deserves it, the evil mutt."

Tears run down Mrs. Everdeen's face, but it does not distract her from the task at hand.

Katniss screams again, followed closely by another one of Peeta's sick, mirthless chortles of sick, mirthless pleasure.

When the worst of her pain has passed, Peeta hurries to his wife's side, so full of regret and remorse he wants to die.

He clutches her hand, and she looks up at his tear-streaked face.

"I'm so, so, sorry," Peeta whispers numbly into her palm.

She squeezes his hands, her eyes rimmed in red. "Stay with me. Please."

Peeta makes sure his voice doesn't break as he promises her, "Always."

As they hold their precious baby girl together, the joy that floods their hearts overtakes any fears that plague their souls.

Katniss looks up from her suckling bundle of joy to her husband and smiles tiredly. "You love us, Daddy Mellark. Real or not real?"

The smile that lights up his face is brighter than any star that's ever had the nerve to cross them. "Real, Mommy Mellark and Baby Mellark. So, so, so real."

...

Forever no more, 'cause it's too late

It's not your fault, but it's too late

Voices whispering, it's too late

Ever-crossed stars, it's too late

...

Peeta Mellark does not have another flashback for many years –decades actually. At least not a particularly memorable one (and that is a good thing, obviously).

But volcanoes do not stay dormant forever.

It happens on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Haymitch Abernathy passes away, for no reason other than the inevitable state of being old.

It's a quiet affair, the funeral (if you want to call it that). They bury him in the night, simply and silently, their tears making no noise. Only Katniss, Peeta, and Hazelle are there to send him off to...Wherever.

There is no headstone and there are no speeches –Peeta can't, he just can't –but Katniss makes sure to leave a bottle of white liquor in his coffin before he is left to his eternal slumber beneath the earth.

Hours later, Katniss and Peeta are left to mourn alone under the light of the full moon.

Peeta gazes at the grave, feeling empty. He is suddenly aware of his wife's presence beside him and a long-forgotten (or maybe just long-buried) wave of anger rolls over him as he looks up at her.

His wife.

Katniss.

Mutt.

"You killed him, didn't you?" he rasps out. Katniss snaps her head up at him, bewildered. "You killed him!"

"Peeta–"

"Mutt! You're going to kill me next, aren't you?" he demands, a horrific, panicky fear rising in him, threatening to swallow him whole. My wife killed him, she killed him, she'll kill me.

Fuck, he needs to do this. He needs to do this now.

Before Katniss can say or do anything, Peeta wraps his hands around her throat.

"Peeta," Katniss pleads as her husband towers over her, his eyes cold and mad. "Peeta, I love you! We're real, this is real, Peeta!"

Her words register in his mind –just a little bit –but then his eyes land on Haymitch Abernathy's grave and he is sure.

(He should've done this so, so long ago.)

He squeezes his wife's neck. Hard.

She is buried next to her mentor, the Girl on Fire finally burnt out.

Peeta Mellark kneels at his beloved's grave (he demanded headstones for them, for the drunkard and his pupil both), sobbing and saying things that make no sense to passersby, things that (if you listen closely, very closely) sound like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you, I love you, real realreal.

But his cries and his words are in vain. She can't hear her. (He knows that. That doesn't stop him from pretending.)

The mockingjays are silent as they mourn, distraught, but they carry on –eventually. They carry on for their queen.

Days later, the citizens of Twelve can hear the chilling notes of a distant bird song, and sometimes –sometimes – they sing along.

...are you, are you coming to the tree...

He never does have a flashback again.

(But what good does that do him now?)

Years later, Peeta Mellark dies. He is buried right beside the woman of his dreams, his corpse heavy with old age and a heart full of love and regret.

They all like to think they're in a better place now. Maybe they are.

Maybe the star-crossed lovers have met once again, this time in the place where their stars first crossed.

A/N: Reviews are appreciated.