Have you ever stopped to think about how Katniss acts in Mockingjay. Peeta is taken and she has lost “the will to live.” She can’t bare the thought of him being hurt at her expense. I’d quote the scene but it would probably result in me crying and this never getting posted.
But just think about it. You can’t read Mockingjay without clearly seeing how much she loves Peeta. Is palpable. No one loves Peeta more than her. But in that scene when she finally breaks. Who is it whose arms she goes to? Haymitch. “Because Haymitch loves Peeta, too.” The only person that can call her out on her bullshit about how awful she’s been treating Peeta is Haymitch. They are together for this. They promised each other that they’d look out for Peeta, and she’d given up.
Now think for a moment about Peeta, how it must have made him feel. He’s confused about his memories, but I think as the venom starts to lose its power he’s reminded of how much he loves her. Think of how abandoned he must feel. She just left him. She didn’t try to get him back. She didn’t go visit him to try to recover their relationship. And yes I believe it was a relationship. I saw someone say, and for the moment I can’t remember who they were, but when Katniss leaves Peeta at the lightning tree in Catching Fire, she goes to him and kisses him. She didn’t have to do that. But after their make out session on the beach, things are forever different. Because Katniss needs Peeta. She’s never needed anyone, but she needs Peeta. That’s as close to “I love you” as she’ll get before she plans on dying.
But back to Mockingjay, when they meet up at the train station and after Haymitch calls her out she changes. She realizes that she’s the one whose fault it is that Peeta’s behaving how he is. Because she gave up on him. “Reconstructing his memory of me is excruciating. Perhaps it isn’t even possible after what Snow did to him. But it does feel right to help him try.” She’s finally fighting for him. To wrestle his mind back from the venom.
He pleads with her to kill him more than once. He knows that no one would do it without her approval. And she denies those requests. Because even in this mindset she needs him. She needs Peeta. I don’t think that ever changes from this point on.
"That’s what you and I do. Protect each other."
“I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss,” says Peeta. “Even if my mother isn’t a healer.”
I’m jolted back in time, to another wound, another set of bandages. “You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?”
“Real,” he says. “And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?”
“Real.” I shrug. “You were the reason I was alive to do it.”
“Was I?” The comment throws him into confusion. Some shiny memory must be fighting for his attention, because his body tenses and his newly bandaged wrists strain against the metal cuffs. Then all the energy saps from his body. “I’m so tired, Katniss.”
This is so powerful. She can’t say I love you. Both for her sanity and for his. But what does she do even before that?
“It’s a long shot, it’s suicide maybe, but I do the only thing I can think of. I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. “Don’t let him take you from me.”
Peeta’s panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. “No. I don’t want to …”
I clench his hands to the point of pain. “Stay with me.”
His pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. “Always,” he murmurs.
Their story is so heartbreaking. They go through so much. But here in the fogginess of things he can’t remember, he remember this. He remembers, “always.” I don’t think Katniss was the only one fighting for his memories. I think the part of him that still existed, that still loved her, was fight too. But it’s hard to fight any battle alone.
Towards the end of the book, after Katniss kills Coin she tries to take the nightlock pill, to commit suicide. But Peeta stops her.
He’s still there, and even though she seems to have given up, he’s still fighting. Because he loves her. When he comes back to Twelve, what does he do? He plants primroses. He slowly comes back to her. No, he’ll never be the same as he once was, but he does come back to her. Even if it’s just in gradual pieces, he comes back.
And then comes my absolute favorite part of the book…
“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, “You love me. Real or not real?”
So I suppose she doesn’t say I love you. But if they still have to play this game every once in awhile, when he’s fighting whatever memory…she couldn’t have answered him better than this.
"I thought he wanted this anyways."
"Not like this, he wanted it to be real."
And at the end of the book, it is.
