#request shop

They scream and they claw revenge on human souls for what they’ve done to the universe; for killing their brothers and sisters - their lovers in pursuit of greed.  For over a hundred years, Earth’s population has clambered to the top of the ladder, hands reaching for the stars and choking them- converting their wild, bright spirits into the broken, dull shape of weapons and power plants.  And for that, Earth has paid in ways it couldn’t fathom.  

For every star burned, its age is taken from the lives of humans; billions of years in debt etched into the wrists of every life.  A blissful future torn asunder.  A universal trade agreement no one signed off on, but must follow all the same.

Today, Katniss is twelve years old.  She sits in class, pencil limp on her desk as the cosmos uses its own imaginary quill on her wrist.  She watches the numbers scratch themselves onto her skin: 4381.

4381 Earth rotations.  4381 beautiful sunsets.  4381 hunts with Gale.  4381 goodnights to Prim.  4381 days until she must pay her debt to the stars.

Katniss has always excelled in mathematics, even if she isn’t paying attention to her teacher at the moment.  She knows she’ll be dead one day after her twenty-fourth birthday.

It’s shorter than some, longer than most of her class.  Long enough, she tries to tell herself.

Only one person in the room notices Katniss’s shaking fingers when she raises her hand to be excused.  Only he notices the numbers red and cruel on her pulse.

Peeta Mellark watches Katniss leave the classroom, back rigid, proper, and braids perfectly in place.  From the clenched knuckles, he knows her grasp on control will hold long enough to get her to the bathroom.

He raises his hand to be excused, too.

They say the stars are still kind and forgiving, just grieving over broken hearts.  They say if you hold someone’s hand, and wish it so, you can trade the days of your life for someone else’s.  That this is the stars’ lingering love for humanity.  Their final, bittersweet kiss.

It’s a cruel, cosmic joke.

Katniss gives her days to Prim.

She does it while Prim sleeps; her sister’s eyes flaring red and puffy, cheeks smudged and marked from crying into her pillow.  

She does it because she’s fucking angry, that’s why.  She’s quiet and seething, a churning lightening storm on the horizon, wanting to strike down on Earth even if her rage is made manifest in the heavens.  

What did she ever do to those stars anyway?  Her and Prim’s room is dark and dusty, small and poor, insignificant -like their family in the grand scheme of this nasty world.  Like her father was the day his numbers faded in a mine avalanche, a failed attempt to dig -not reach- for energy.  Everyone knew coal had long been pillaged and gone from Earth’s womb, long before suits and countries decided to look to space, not ground, for the answers.  Yet her father had tried, every day until only 1 day was left scratched on his wrist.  Yet the world’s debt was still asked from him.  And now they were asking it of Prim.

Today, Prim is twelve years old.  

Katniss holds her hand as she sleeps, finally, after wasting her birthday in absolute fear of certainty.  The certainty of that number on her dainty, pale wrist- the small, childish wrist Katniss steered through crowded streets as they walked home every day- the soft, agile wrist made for moving needles like their nurse mother- the wrist that was sprained only a month prior when Prim had gone running after her stupid, belligerent cat-

21.

21 sunrises.  21 “good morning” smiles.  21 braids, and bringing broken flowers home to frame, and falling asleep on the sofa while Katniss read to her, and soft hugs and sweet laughs and happiness and-

Katniss’s clasp on Prim tightens, her fingers nearly digging in between those little, light knuckles.  She demands the stars give her this one thing.  This one, damn thing.

2917 days is what Katniss has left.  It’ll have to do, even if it would never be long enough for her sister.  It would never be long enough for this soul.  Primrose’s soul is kind, where Katniss’s is apathetic.  Her sister is sweet and helpful to strangers, she mistrusting and cold.  Soft to hard.  Giving to taking.  Worthy to worthless.  Selfless savior to selfish survivor.  The world is filled with people like Katniss, and not enough wonders like Prim.  She thinks, maybe, the stars still love and long for people like Prim.  Maybe, with more like her, they would have never burned so hot with hatred and cruelty.  Maybe, they would see she was worth more days.  Worth all the days.  

Maybe they knew this, and were just as selfish as she, and wanted to have Prim as their own.

Katniss tells the stars to fuck off, and gives her days to Prim.

When she steps outside to breathe in the first of her last 21 nights, there is a boy.  She spots the back of him slumped on the foot of their doorstep, his blonde hair somehow softer than Prim’s in the moonlight, but his hands much rougher- wrists wider and able to bear more weight.  He’s wringing them.  He’s nervous.

He’s familiar.

Usually, Katniss keeps to herself.  She barely talks to anyone outside of her sister and Gale, hardly grunts at her own mother- though her mind is always, aggressively blaring with thoughts.  With worry.

Usually, Katniss keeps to herself, but that was before she only had 21 days left to think, to talk.

When she sits down beside him, and spots the flutter of a smile on his face, she suddenly remembers his name.  Peeta Mellark, the boy with the longest life.  At least, in her town.  Though, surely, living until the ripe age of sixty was far longer than anyone could dream to hope for.

For a long time, she despised this boy without even knowing him.  But today she realizes what a curse a long life can be.

His eyes are sad when they turn to meet hers.

“Your sister, Primrose, she comes to the bakery every Saturday.  She mentioned today was her birthday, and didn’t come in, so I was worried-”

“She’s fine,” Katniss says rather curtly, defensively.  She loathes the sound of pity, but she likes the sound of his voice.  

“She’ll be fine,” Katniss adjusts and tries to be gentle, realizes with unnecessary dread that she’s just not good at it.

Peeta’s face is kind, like Prim’s, but hardened at the cheekbones.  They seem to turn to mush with her reassurance, crude as it was.  “Good,” is all he says, relief melting his broad shoulders from mountains to hills.  And Katniss is suddenly, strangely greedy to know why he cares so much, what he’s really thinking about, why he’s here.

Then there is a pastel orange box between them, firm hands placing it down with a gentleness that doesn’t compute with Katniss’s sharp senses.  The box is missing the stamp of his family’s bakery.  A birthday cake; half dark chocolate with blueberries, half butter-cake with strawberries, Katniss knows without needing to open.  It’s the same cake she’s found on her doorstep twice every year for the last four years.  She knew it was him, but never said anything.  

She’s not good with words.

But tonight she says “thank you,” though the words come out strangled and awkward.  Because it’s the last year she’ll get to taste her side of the cake.

When she reaches for the box, he doesn’t mention the sudden change on her wrist or the nail marks around that damn, miniscule number.  

Peeta says “you’re welcome” as she stands up and walks away, and Katniss watches him from behind stifling curtains.  He lingers on that lonely doorstep- as though he has so much more he wants to tell her.  When Peeta stands up, Katniss takes a pathetic step back into the shadows, ridiculously afraid and eager for him to knock on the door.  Instead, his footsteps recede into the night.  

He’s good with words.  Just not tonight.

They say stars are always born in pairs, when soulmates meet in the sky.  

A star hasn’t been born in over a century.  They just keep dying.

Prim is upset, and won’t talk to her.  Neither will Gale.  On the other hand, her mom seems to have regained some color to her cheeks, and Peeta Mellark finds excuses to be near.

Day 20 is spent in the forest, where Katniss just fits in better.  Animals don’t speak much, which makes them perfect companions.  Gale brought food over, so she finds no need to hunt, and a squirrel is more than ready to rub in her face how little it cares that she’s there.  It scurries under the bridge of her knees and makes off with a blueberry- right off the top of her cake slice.

“I thought you didn’t like to share,” a sweet breeze brushes against her right cheek and she looks up to see Peeta standing a short distance away.  He looks hesitant to approach, even though, somehow, he fits right in- more than she ever did.  She is a hunter, and her place amongst the trees is as a predator; necessary, but perhaps not always welcomed.  He, on the other hand, appears rooted to the ground like a flower; not exactly necessary, but beloved.  The soil hugs his feet, and the leaves caress him wherever they touch.

It’s obvious why the universe wants him around a little longer.

“I don’t,” she says, but it’s not as monotonous or hostile as usual; it’s nearly playful.  Peeta gets a glimpse of the girl he’d first seen when their wrists were bare and their tongues unknowing of the world’s bitterness.   He takes it as a small sliver of encouragement and sits down beside her.

She lets him take a few bites of the cake.  It is, technically, his anyway.

Day 19 starts rough, because Katniss wakes up to Prim gripping her arm.  Trying to give back what she doesn’t want, not if it means she can’t have her sister.

But Katniss is much more selfish and apparently the world is with her on this one, because the numbers remain the same on both their wrists.  Prim lives, Katniss won’t for long.

She ends up wandering aimlessly through town, and somehow ends up at the bakery.  Craving sweets.

Day 18, the bakery comes to her during lunch, that soft orange box presented with a less nervous smile than before.  He’s still a little jittery and knocks his knee before he sits across from her, but girls are staring- envious, and Katniss has never really paid much attention to Peeta Mellark’s charming and pretty school persona.  She didn’t really care to, but now her days are ticking down fast and she’s developed a curious interest.  Enough so that she talks to him more than she eats.

By the end of school, Katniss decides Peeta is sweeter than sugar and, even though she’s never had a sweet tooth before, she enjoys his company.  More than she should.

When he walks her home, Katniss realizes he enjoys her company a little too much, too.  His hand brushes against hers.  Instinct drives her to hide in the pockets of her jacket.  But it’s also instinct that makes her say “yes” when he asks:

“Can I walk with you to school tomorrow?”

He keeps asking every afternoon, and she keeps saying yes, even though they don’t converse much and even though both their days are numbered- hers drastically more so than his.  But Peeta is comfortable with her silence, seems to know where it comes from, and she enjoys listening to him tell her stories about the bakery, about classmates she doesn’t really know the names of, about himself- those stories she likes the most.  

By the end of the week, Katniss decides Peeta is a complete stranger, yet scarily familiar- damn near making her nostalgic for a home she’s pretty sure she’s never had.  

He’s a mix of shy and social butterfly; has a way with words that puts icing over Katniss’s blunt, and sometimes jagged speech; always knows what she means, even when she doesn’t say a thing.  She realizes with a little too much shock that he’s funny, and likes her own laughter when she’s around him; the blush on his cheeks shows he likes it, too.  And just as shockingly, Katniss forgets about the slimming number on her wrist when he’s around; she forgets they exist on his, too- on everyone.  They never bring it up but, even when it isn’t brought up, those numbers tend to dangle over everyone’s head like an ax- but never with him.

He is peace to her turmoil, and Katniss decides that’s what she needs most in her last days.

The last two weeks are split between Prim, Gale and Peeta.  The first two finally stop giving her the cold shoulder, realizing it’s a waste of time, and start hogging all her personal space; a part of her thinks they’re compensating for the absence of her mother- who shuts herself into her room, staring at the clock.  

The last, Peeta, doesn’t start off so clingy.  He noted how Katniss hid her hands, and takes his time to approach her.  They walk feet apart, then inches, then barely any space between them at all.  She talks more, though still not much, and only when a thought gets so bothersome she throws it out into the open.  Peeta is always there to catch it, and works with what she gives him.  She wants to give him more, and the thoughts are piling up in there with nowhere to go and so little time to ponder, but she’s afraid of overwhelming him- overwhelming herself, and then having to go before the feeling can settle.

They work with what little they have, and Peeta finds excuses to stay close by: coming over to drop off bread and dessert -Prim hastily inviting him in for dinner, joining her in the woods -even though he turns pale when she hunts, sitting by her at school and bringing her lunch, walking her to and from home, and on one occasion stumbling upon her in the dark.

It happens on Day 5, and Katniss’s heart is pounding; what the hell is bravery but a stupid tale in a dusty book?  She isn’t brave, like her sister keeps saying every night they go to bed.  She isn’t brave, and that’s why - when she woke from a nightmare of overwhelming nothing - she bolted and hid away amongst the trees.  She should’ve known this is where Peeta Mellark slept, amongst the dandelions and mother nature’s other beloveds.  

Quietly, he sits beside her, knows better than to touch her.  He waits as Katniss tries to breathe in more regularly, to still the panic into something more manageable.  He takes deep breaths himself, modeling calm for her, and she uses his pulse to steady her own.

“I’m scared,” she admits when her chest doesn’t feel like it’s tearing open, when her lungs aren’t being scorched by hellfire.  Katniss knows she didn’t have to say anything, that Peeta can feel everything she thinks- but she says it anyway, because there’s five days left and her brain is screaming.

“It doesn’t mean you aren’t brave.”

And at that moment, she laughs because there he goes- knowing.  And how is it that when he says it, she believes him?  She always believes what he says, takes comfort in his words and even the absence of them, and she’s suddenly so damn afraid of never hearing him again.  And she’s laughing so rambunctiously, her smile unhinged and wild, that she almost doesn’t hear the desperate whisper of a heartbroken star.

But she does, and it makes her smile even wider, and the tears finally break through.

Katniss lets Peeta hold her, neither making to move when a night mist comes- as though the stars were crying, too.  

Day 1 eases onto the horizon in hushed tones of pink and purple, with her mother and Prim at her bedside when she wakes.  It eases just as softly out, the sky the same color as those bakery boxes, with Peeta at her side.  They sit in those same rooted spots in the forest, watching the night sky between the veins of the tree canopy.

Even though its the stars doing this to her, punishing her for the crimes of others, Katniss can’t seem to muster any anger anymore.  She’s calm, the feeling of loss coming and going in slow waves.  She’s able to remain steady when they hit because of the boy sitting next to her.  The boy she wants very much to hold onto.

Katniss thinks back to the brush of his hand on hers, and curses herself for ever hiding away.

Abruptly, she seizes his hand, and instead of jumping away from her brashness, Peeta smiles and Katniss’s chest feels like it’s tearing open again.  Her lungs are on fire, but it’s nothing compared to where her skin touches his.

In the twilight of her days, she’s never felt quite so alive.  And so very afraid.  Of losing him.  Of dying.  Of whatever comes after.  Because they say there’s an after.

“Stay with me?”  She rushes it out, before time slips completely away from her.  She can feel that stupid number fading from her wrist even at that moment, when her blood is rushing louder than rapids in her ears, her heart pounding as if just after a chase- even when she feels most here, she can feel herself slipping over there.  And she knows he can’t stay with her over there, so as long as she’s here-

His fingers hook around hers, and the crushing strength of his hold makes her wonder if maybe she will see him over there.  If maybe-

“Always.”

Peeta’s eyes are dangerously shimmering, and flaring a sun’s goodbye.  

Katniss falls asleep listening to his heartbeat, pleasantly distracted from her own.

But when she wakes, it’s her heartbeat she hears.  

But why is she waking at all?

She can feel the grass prickling at the exposed skin of her hip, at her ankles.  There’s morning dew, and it’s light out with just a few stars peering down- almost guilty, the edges of her vision hazy, green with life, real.  Her hand is still holding someone’s-

“Peeta?”  

The desperate sound of it mimicks that whisper she’d heard five days ago.  For a second, she wonders if maybe he didn’t hear her- as she nearly hadn’t heard them five days ago.

Katniss sits up on her elbow and peers down at him, the most welcomed and beautiful sight; his eyes closed and smiling like his lips, the most miniscule glisten of something wet down the sides of his cheeks- morning dew; just morning dew.  He’s sleeping, so calm and perfectly fit snug in the folds of grass that his chest doesn’t even rise- so as not to bother the peace.  Just sleeping.

“Peeta?”

Just as desperate as-

Peeta Mellark.

She shakes him then, rough- knowing he won’t mind.  Of course he won’t.  But his eyes remain closed and smiling.  So peaceful, even as tears are burning down her cheeks, fear ripping at her throat.

There’s something off about her wrist, something dark and long drawn over her pulse.

And Katniss realizes why, deep down, she always tried to keep him from holding her hand.  Why he was always there, with her.  Why she can’t bear to let him go now.

16057.

16057 sunsets to remind her of him.  16057 walks home alone.  16057 pastel orange boxes she’d never receive.  16057 chances to hold his hand she’d never get.

Peeta Mellark, the boy with the longest life - the boy whose name a star whispered into her ear - is gone.  Even when he said he’d stay, always.  So she stays with him, instead.  Until Gale comes, and even then, she doesn’t really leave.

They say stars are always born in pairs, when soulmates meet in the sky.

Today, Prim is 20 years old.  She and Katniss sit in a field of dandelions, where nearly eight years before Katniss had slept beside a boy.  The few stars that are still around are out on a clear and kind night, and they look so much gentler than they did years ago.  They are much more giving to children now, but it doesn’t stop the tears from coming as two sisters say goodbye.

Katniss gives Peeta’s days to Prim.

Prim doesn’t see her sister go, not in the way she’d thought she would.  

Her eyes are to the sky, waiting as she holds her sister close even as Katniss’s strong embrace drifts and falls limp, and swears she sees two flickering lights where once there was only darkness.

You don’t dance as a lady should. 

 “And?”

Toes bloody and crooked, Arya wondered at the critique.  She left the ballet studio frustrated with yet another instructor.  

Of course she didn’t dance like a lady.  Her mind wasn’t that of a lady’s, and her feet sure as hell weren’t.

She remembered a video: of knives dragging across a piano, a ballerina twirling on a dagger’s edge.  She remembered, at first, not understanding why it felt so familiar to her - but then realization knocked her upside the head: it was a projection of herself.  

Every move she made on stage felt like an attack on her body, yet there was never anyone to fight- just gravity, and the question:

Why am I doing this to myself?

Every time her father clapped in the audience, and her brothers cheered a little too rambunctiously, the question faded to white noise.

You don’t fight as a lady should.

“Okay?”

Sweat stuck small hairs to the back of her neck, made both hers and Gendry’s shirts two shades darker than they’d been before.  He sounded almost shocked when he said it; a lower, pleasing note of approval hidden in there somewhere.  He always sounded so shocked when she came back to the gym, day after day after day; after getting her ass handed to her, after getting his ass handed right back to him.  His tone of surprise hadn’t lessened since the evening he’d found her hidden behind the dumpster of his building.  The night her parents were killed murdered.

“You.”  Gendry’s trash bag dropped to the ground, a stream of curses shitting out of him at a speed and magnitude even Rob’s Marine brain would’ve blushed at; if he were still around.

Arya was still in her leotard, having ran blindly from the studio the second cops showed up with that face - that run-of-the-mill “we regret to inform you” face she’d grown too used to seeing.  While in the process of changing, she’d heard on the radio of a horrific car accident.  Arya wasn’t stupid.  She knew, the second two cops stood where two parents should have been, that nothing was going to be the same again.

“You’re a boxer, right?”  Arya hated the crack in her voice, the evidence of tears in her bloodshot eyes.  But she glared this boy down, determined to toughness.  If she could prance around for two hours on her tiptoes, she could get through this.

“You look familiar,” had been Gendry’s only reply.  He wrung the towel at his neck and squinted at the dainty dancer in front of him- looking completely photoshopped into that alley.  

Of course he didn’t remember her, but what mattered is she remembered him.  The governor’s bastard son, hidden away in the gritty nooks of Chicago city.   Arya had heard her father speak of him once or twice, the controversy of it when knowledge of his existence leaked to the press.  A boy angry and abandoned in the streets, turned boxer.  Or so the papers and her mother had said.

“Teach me how to fight.”  

Arya’s demand was more throttling than finding her by a dumpster, and without really thinking about it, Gendry agreed.  “Okay.”

You dance like a fighter, and you fight like a dancer.

“Yeah?”

Knuckles cracked and groaned, as clothe was weaved away by Gendry’s careful hands.  Arya usually undid her own wrappings but, for whatever reason, this time she didn’t protest when his fingers peeled at the layers.  

They were seated in the ring, legs splayed and dangerously close.  She didn’t care that they were completely gross, smelling of spice and must, or that she wasn’t practicing controlled breathing.  It was only in this space that Arya allowed herself to completely let go of everything- her body, her rage, her despair.  Here, she allowed herself to feel vulnerable, with every layer of wrapping that Gendry unbound her from.

“Boxing isn’t so different from ballet,” Arya said, raising her eyebrows in challenge when Gendry snorted in disagreement.  Even though boxing had blasted Arya’s boundaries wide open, and pumped her blood with living when all she felt was hollow, ballet was still a home to her.  After her parents’ assassination - no matter what the media said - she’d been transferred from foster home to foster home, separated from her siblings.  Until finally she’d ran away and crashed in the gym office (unbeknownst still to Gendry).  Sometimes, when she was completely restless, she returned to the dance studio and danced until the blisters on her feet and the ache in her ankles screamed at her to just, fucking, stop.

Arya still performed in shows, an unhealthy wish to hear her father’s clap and her brothers’ cheers - even to see her mother and sister’s, finally, approving smile - pulling her back every time for the next program.

“No one sees the hits you take in ballet.”

Gendry’s palms were warm and rough on her wrists, massaging the strain out of them- as much as he could.  She was always too restless, tense for another fight.

His touch lingered, holding her, thinking; eyes pointed at her shoes.  Then his hands were drifting low, never asking permission, never needing it in this space, to her thighs, raising them up to place her feet on his knees.

Arya’s pulse pounded, a million fists slamming at her punchbag heart; the adrenaline rush he gave her at times was so confounding- something between the crush of knuckle to cheek, the sweep of a winding fall to the mat, the breathless freedom of a pas de chat.

Her sneakers and socks were off, and those toes bruised and crooked were finally seen.  He did not cringe at the brutality of bunions and swollen joints.  When Gendry placed his hands to her feet, and started to work them like any other part of her body after a fight, the lacerations on his knuckles and fingers blended in damn near perfectly into her battlefield.  

Gendry smiled - not the cock-eyed sly shit he pulled in the middle of a fight he knew he was going to win - but the soft, nervous rare gem that Arya knocked out of him when he lost.

Teach me how to dance.