Stimulus: "You lack the season of all natures, sleep"

POV: Katniss

Dedication: My lovely English teacher, who got me to love Macbeth and gives me cake.

AN: Should anyone be confused by the overuse of Shakespeare in here, holler and I'll try to humbly sort things out for you. Sorry for this one, I was in a grim mood.

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

Odd, really, how the time when the world is finally at complete peace with itself is the time that mine comes crashing down on its fragile supports, tearing itself apart from the inside with claws and teeth sharpened to ravenous points.

Peeta thinks that it is the silence that does it. The silence in our minds leaves a space for the screaming to begin. And once it has begun, it is impossible to keep it inside.

Haymitch, beloved Uncle Haymitch, has a theory that within us all there resides a personal, snarling beast that sleeps in the day, twitches and growls in the night time. If we let it, it will tear us to pieces, and we will bleed tears through the sleepless nights.

I do not tell them, but I know that they are wrong. Both of them, wrong. Because it isn't the silent tranquillity of the night or the raging creature within that keeps me up at night. It's me.

It's all my fault.

The girl who was on fire: what was once a nickname to keep me alive has become the phrase that haunts me day and night in memories and dreams that burn me like wild fire. I, like a human torch, have lit everything that I have touched. Rue. District Twelve. The rebels. The children in Snow's garden. Prim, with her wings on fire.

I look at Peeta, grimacing and groaning from the unimaginable tortures that wait for him when he closes his eyes, and I know that even now, I burn him too.

I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not.

I am in blood stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.

I have gone too far, now, to turn back the clock, the douse the fires with apologetic tears, to fly away to lands unknown where none can feel the feather-light touch of my death-wing.

Sleep no more: Katniss, not Macbeth, doth murder sleep.

I mention this to Peeta one day. I have not slept, now, for four nights. Peeta brings me bowls of broth that I do not eat. He strokes my hair and does not tell me that I am a fool, or tell me not to think about it. He tells me that although I have been a part of pain and death, I have given life and joy. Leads me to our children's bedroom, where sleep is still blissfully complete. These things do not feel like

One stirs. A bad dream, perhaps. "Daddy?" she groans. The threat of tears is on her voice and in my eyes once I have heard this: but why shouldn't she call Peeta? I do. I freeze, unsure of the etiquette of late night horrors – should I get Peeta? The thought shocks me because it accompanies the realisation that although these children have lived inside me, fed from me, taken life from me, they do not feel like mine. Surely these creatures, so peaceful and perfect in their design, cannot be mine? Where are their scars, their burns?

I know now that I cannot call Peeta. To do so would be a sign of defeat. Mustering what little life I can with so little nourishment to sustain me, I slip into her bed, pull her close. Brush her hair out of her eyes. Ignore her surprise that it's not daddy's firm arms but mummy's soft ones that weave around her. I'm here, I whisper. I'm here.

And for the first time in years, as I fall asleep with my daughter in my arms, I really am.