Work Text:
He did his best to minimise it.
The thoughts in his head liked to rattle around and cause a fuss, much more than he ever showed to anyone but Annie. The usual suspects of his time-occupying hobbies, sailing, fishing, knot tying, none of them helped the way they used to.
Not now when he rigged a net and remembered the terrified faces of the other tributes caught in his traps, knowing they were only seconds away from death. Not now when he speared a fish and felt the spray of blood on his face in the flying droplets of the sea.
Annie helped though. They helped each other.
When holding a knife in the context of cooking felt too much like in the Arena, and she fell into a fit, he was there, pulling her gently into his arms and rocking her back in forth slowly on the floor, helping her breath in rhythmic breaths.
When he woke from sleep with gasping breaths, fingernails clawing at his skin because it was dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, get it off get it off get it off-. Annie was there, pulling his hands away from his scratched skin, holding them gently, but firmly in her hands, keeping a distance because she knows the last thing he wants right now is to be touched.
It never solved it. It never went away. It helped, but only briefly. He felt like he was broken into a million pieces, then scattered, too broken to ever be fully repaired.
For every comfort from Annie, every night spent safe in her arms, there was a week more spent in the Capital, laid out in a different stranger’s bed every night.
One step forward and two steps back, as the saying went.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter how much he scrambled for the pieces of the metaphorical shattered vase that was his mind. He was just another pretty boy victor turned sex doll for the Capital.
(No one ever really won the games.)
It would just be easier to leave the fragments where they were. Maybe he would’ve been better off if he’d died in the Arena. Maybe he’d be better off if he died now. But he couldn’t do that to Annie, or his mother or two brothers. He needed to stay alive, because for every rich Capital man or woman he bedded, was another day of protection for those he cared about.
And then came Katniss Everdeen. She didn’t change much for him personally, except blow him away just a little, until the quarter quell. Until they make their escape from the Arena, though bruised and battered.
And he finally has time. But not with Annie. With her in the Capital he has never been more worried and there’s nothing he can do, nobody he can sleep with to guarantee her safety. He’s useless, sitting in a bed in the infirmary left to tie knots with rope.
And then they get her back. And it finally feels like, maybe, maybe just this once, he’ll be alright. They’ll both be alright. Together.
They have time to heal.
He doesn’t get enough time.