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A twenty-foot tall kangaroo crushes six golf carts in one hop. A lion triple it’s normal size lets out a roar that shakes the ground.
Oddly enough, this is not one of Peeta Mellark’s strangest days.
“Hawkeye, how is it going on civilian evacuation?” He says into his communicator, throwing his shield at an oversized ostrich and successfully distracting the animal from escaping through a hole in the zoo’s fence.
“Got a full pavilion. Sure I can’t help you take them out?” Gale always itches to shoot his bow.
“We’re not taking them out, we’re trying to contain them until Iron Man can figure out this…growth…thing.
“Aw Cap, I love it when you talk science to me.” Even in the middle of this chaos, Finnick Odair has a way of always sounding completely at ease. “Plus, the public would likely not approve of us killing their beloved zoo animals. Bad image for the Avengers.”
“You’d know all about bad images, Odair.” A female voice fills their ears and Peeta bites down a smile.
“Widow, what’s your status?”
“I’ve got him in the World of Birds tower. He says he can’t reverse the rays, but I am being very…” there’s a pause and a muffled cry of pain “…persuasive.”
“Aw, shit. Literally. A camel the size of Queens just took a dump right outside the pavilion.” Gale complains. “Thresh, you want to do something about this?”
“I do not think striking the foul pile with lightning will do you any good, my friend.”
“What is the point of being a demi-god if you can’t magic poop away?”
“Immorality is nice.”
“Alright, cut the chatter.” Peeta ducks a roundhouse kick from the kangaroo. “Iron Man, when the machine is fixed I need you to fly around and get these animals back to normal. The rest of us will work on containment by distraction. We can’t let a single one of them escape the zoo.”
“I still think we should let Beetee out on this one. The Hulk could definitely take these tigers. And have I mentioned I’m never going to look at a box of Frosted Flakes the same again?”
“Chatter, Iron Man. Everyone else in positions.”
In the end, the animals go back to normal size, only a few guests are injured and S.H.I.E.L.D takes the too-smart-and-destructive-for-his-own-good teenager into custody. Peeta considers the mission a win: some days they aren’t so lucky.
“I’m thinking beer and pizza.” Gale announces upon arrival at Avengers Tower.
“I’m so shocked.” Katniss deadpans and Gale nudges her side. The two former assassins have a long history together: ordered by S.H.I.E.L.D to take out the mysterious and deadly Black Widow, Gale made a different call. Neither of them elaborates on why, but with the help of Haymitch Abernathy (Gale’s former handler and now the Avenger’s liaison with the covert organization) they turned her into the finest agent S.H.I.E.L.D has.
“We could order in from that Thai place?” Beetee suggests. There was no ‘code green’ today and the scientist looks relieved--the Hulk is not always predictable in battle.
“Burgers!” Thresh booms. Thresh is fascinated by burgers; it’s on his list of things Earth does better than Asgard.
“JARVIS, feast mode.” Finnick emerges from the basement, free of his suit and makes a beeline to the fridge.
“Certainly sir.” It took weeks for Peeta to stop looking at the ceiling every time he heard the crisp British accent of the AI. “Miss Cresta would like me to remind you that you promised to go to the Firefighter benefit tonight.”
“Well you can kindly tell Annie that I’ve had a long and tiring day.”
“Miss Cresta would like to remind you it is only 2:00 pm-“
“Miss Cresta didn’t spend her whole morning avoiding real animals the size of parade floats!”
“Miss Cresta thinks the Odair Industries stockholders meeting may have been harder.” Finnick grins.
“She’s definitely right.” He pops the caps off of two beer bottles and hands one to Peeta. “To an interesting Thursday.”
“Cheers.”
Peeta has to hand it to Finnick Odair: the man barely blinked at inviting their rag tag gang to live in his tower. Two former assassins, a demi-god, a Hulk and him: the soldier out of time.
The Smithsonian can run the “Welcome Back Cap” exhibit as long as they like, but he still didn’t feel fully a part of this strange new decade. The plane went down in 1944 and he woke up in 2012 to find a completely different world. Sure, he learned to use an iPod and has a wonderful appreciation for the advances in civil rights, but Peeta Mellark never truly feels like he belongs.
“We’re not watching Goonies again.” Finnick yanks the remote from Gale’s hands.
“Odair are you serious? You can actually get deported for not liking Goonies enough.”
“That’s not true. Is that true Cap?” Two pairs of wild eyes swing to him and Peeta takes a long sip of his beer before answering.
“A dislike of Goonies might not be grounds for deportation, but if you knock on The Sandlot you can start packing your things now.” He settles on a loveseat next to Katniss and they share a small smile. She was the one who introduced him to that movie after all.
It’s not quite home, but it feels a little more like it.
--
Katniss flips Peeta over her thigh and he falls to the mat with a deafening thud.
“You’re favoring your left side.” God does she even break a sweat?
“Maybe I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t taken out my right leg five minutes ago.” He grumbles. She shrugs and reaches a hand down to help him up.
The Black Widow’s skillset is legendary: sharper than a knife, faster than a bullet and just as smart as she is lethal. None of them go easy on her in training and yet they still all end up on the ground. She’s that good.
Katniss Everdeen is even harder to figure out. In the year of living in the tower and working as a team, Peeta only knows a handful of things about her. She likes the color green, she folds her pizza in half before eating, she hates reality television and when she sings even the birds stop to listen.
Peeta only knows the last one because a month into officially being Avengers he found himself wandering around the tower in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence: super soldiers need less sleep and his dreams were never happy ones anyway.
He noticed a light on in the kitchen and headed towards it before a soft, melodic sound stopped him in his tracks.
“Rock-a-bye my baby, somewhere there may be, a land that’s free for you and me and a Russian lullaby.”
He’d been a goner ever since.
“Well as enjoyable as this is, I’ve got a meeting with Haymitch.” Katniss slings a towel over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. Peeta chuckles and hands her a water bottle.
“I’ve got Effie this morning. She needs my approval on some new marketing material.” Technically Effie Trinket worked for Odair Industries, but she was practically the Avengers full time publicist.
“Another line of action figures?”
“Bed sheets.” He shakes his head and hears snickering from above. Gale peeks his head out of the vent. Finnick hates when he crawls in them, which only makes him do it more.
“I can see it now; ‘want to sleep with Captain America? Head to your local Bed, Bath and Beyond!’ There’s gonna be stampedes, man.”
With a smile and a wave, Katniss leaves the gym. Peeta doesn’t realize he is watching her go until Gale lands next to him and elbows him in the side.
“You got it bad.”
“Not sure what you mean.” He runs a towel through his sweaty hair so he can pretend to have a reason not to look at Gale.
“C’mon Cap, you’ve been making googly eyes at her for month. You look like the heart eye emoji.”
“I do not.”
“Sure, sure. Wanna toss around the shield?”
They spend the rest of the morning throwing the shield back and forth and it goes great right up until Gale misses a throw and it cuts a training dummy in half.
“Oops.” Gale snickers and the boys (he wonders if can he consider himself a boy when he was born almost a century ago?) dissolve into laughter.
--
Peeta wakes in a sweat. His teeth begin to chatter and he looks wildly around the room.
He hates dreams about the ice, of reliving the plane crash and feeling the water fill his lungs. He was alive longer than he should have been down there. They called him a hero for the lives he saved that day but all he remembers is pure terror. For all the bravery he thought he had, his last few minutes were spent fighting against the water, desperately trying not to die.
“Jarvis?” His voice is small.
“It is 4:42 AM on November 18th, 2015, Captain. You are in Avengers Tower and you are safe.” Peeta feels his heartbeat start to slow.
“Teammates?”
“Mr. Odair and Ms. Cresta are in their quarters sleeping soundly. Dr. Latier fell asleep on his workshop desk. Thresh and Agent Hawthorne are on the communal room couches sleeping and Agent Everdeen is sleeping in her room. All are safe.”
“Thank you Jarvis.” All are safe he repeats to himself as he stretches and takes a few more calming breaths. His teammates are safe and he hasn’t let them down.
Not like Cato, reminds the voice in the back of his head. He takes another steadying breath, pushing the thought out of the way: reliving one horrific memory was quite enough.
He gets out of bed. He runs for miles through the quiet streets of Manhattan and by the time he comes back to the tower the sun is high in the sky.
“Good morning,” He greets Annie and Beetee in the kitchen, feeling more normal after a workout. Thresh is at the oven wearing his favorite ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron.
“Peeta! May I interest you in an stack of pancakes?”
“Absolutely.” Peeta refills his water bottle and slides onto a barstool. “Chocolate chip?”
“I can do that.” It’s a sight to see, the demi-god working his way around the kitchen in a silly apron and a goofy smile. Annie gets herself more coffee and returns with a mug for Peeta.
“Thanks Annie.” She gives his shoulder a squeeze. It’s peaceful for a minute until the Avengers Alarm goes off.
“SERIOUSLY!” Gale calls from the couch. “It’s not even 10:00!”
“Avengers.” Haymitch’s gruff voice announces. “Reports of AIM attack in Tribeca. They are riding on hover board-like platforms and are shooting into the streets.”
“Motive?” Peeta jogs into their changing room and starts pulling on the uniform.
“Pure chaos from the looks of it. Need you here ASAP.”
“C’mon Cap.” Peeta has just enough time to grab his shield before Finnick, in full Iron Man armor, picks him up and they zoom out the window. With his free hand, Peeta hits his earpiece.
“Jarvis, what have we got?”
“Public cameras show over twenty AIM members who have no plan but destruction. They have now added homemade small bombs to their arsenal and have thrown one into a bank.”
“I thought these guys were supposed to be science terrorists. This seems a little thug for them.” Finnick and Peeta zoom through Soho and as they approach Tribeca he can see smoke rising.
“Maybe they’re imposters? Or rogue members. Either way, we need to stop them. Drop me off when you see a cluster.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
They find them. Peeta sends his shield flying and knocks two of them off their hover board and Finnick blasts it with his replusors before it knocks into a building. Peeta chases one of them on foot and finally tackles him in an alley.
He hears the roar of the Hulk and see a flash of lightning. The rest of the team has arrived.
It’s not easy – between the chaos of the hover boards, the civilians running for their lives and smoke from the cherry bombs filling the streets, Peeta voice is hoarse form shouting orders.
“Seven on Pier 25.” Katniss reports and the sound of bullets echo.
“On my way,” He runs at full speed towards the pier. Katniss has taken four of them out and Peeta launches his shield to knock another one to the ground.
There’s a sound and Peeta sees a small jet rise from the volleyball courts. He grabs his shield and sprints, leaping into the air and throwing himself on the back before the door closes.
“Cap, what the hell!”
“I’m not letting them get away!”
There are five AIM agents on board and it takes him less than two minutes to take them all down. He charges to the front and the pilot presses a button on the controls and then another on his seat: the roof opens and he is ejected from the plane.
The wind from above causes Peeta to lose balance for a second before he gets a clear view of the screens.
“What’s going on?” Katniss shouts.
“He dismantled the controls.” Peeta looks around at the flashing screens and the plane starts to descend. He throws himself at the controls but the buttons are jammed and all he sees is flashing red from the emergency light above.
The panic sets in and he can see the water in front of him, getting closer with every second.
“Not again…” he whispers just before impact.
The last thing he hears from his communicator is a cry of “PEETA!”
--
A flash of red and gold.
The howl of the wind and the impossible feeling he’s getting colder.
A voice that oddly sounds like Katniss, repeating his name over and over.
The rush of water to his lungs.
Peeta sits up with a gasp and has only a second to take in his surroundings (on land, team here, no ice) before he starting vomiting up gallons of water.
“That’s it man, just get it out.” Gale claps him on the back. Eventually the water stops coming up and the shivering sets in. There’s a S.H.I.E.L.D medical team at his side and they wrap him in blankets, but he feels no different. He looks around to asses his team for injuries, but a warm hand on his shoulder stops him.
“We’re all here.” Katniss says softly and Peeta swallows hard before he does something stupid, like cry.
--
The nightmare is longer this time and with the memories so fresh in his mind, Peeta wakes up screaming and gasping for air.
“Peeta!” He barely registers the soft voice as he thrashes in his sheets. “Peeta, it’s okay. You’re okay, it was a dream Peeta.”
“Katniss?” He’s sweating and is aware the lights are turned on full brightness. “Are you…is it…it felt so real.” He starts coughing and feels the bed slightly sink next to him. She rubs small circles on his back.
“It was a dream Peeta, I’m here right now. This is real.” She keeps rubbing his back and though Peeta starts to calm down from the nightmare, the mortification starts to sink in.
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to see me like…this.”
“You’ve had a difficult day.” The simple way she says it almost makes him laugh.
“Yeah. Guess I have.” A glance at the bedside clock tells him it’s barely past one in the morning. “I think I’m just going to shower and…watch a movie or something.”
“I’ll make the popcorn.” He looks over at her, surprised and she raises an eyebrow.
“Yeah…okay.”
They watch Clueless because though he’s seen every sports movie from the 90’s, no one caught him up on the teen movies. Katniss tells him she learned a lot of her English from secretly watching American movies. He tells her about learning German in the war and how he’s still trying to get the hang of French.
They sprawl out on the sectional, Katniss laying on one side and Peeta on the other, but their heads meet in the corner and Peeta doubts he’ll actually be able to fall asleep when he’s so close to her.
But he does, and he dreams of a hand running through his hair and someone singing a soft lullaby.
In the morning Katniss is gone and the only sign she was every there at all is the neatly folded blanket at the foot of the couch.
--
The nightmares get worse as the week goes on.
“NO!” He screams and sits up. The image of Cato, of Delly, and the rest of the Howling Commandos stuck under the ice is fresh in his mind. His eyes fill with tears and there’s a warm hand at his back.
Katniss comes back every night.
“They’re all gone. I couldn’t save them but it doesn’t matter because they aren’t here anyway.” The tears fall freely and Katniss does something he has never seen her do before: she pulls him into a hug.
A sob escapes his throat and she holds on tighter. She smells like lavender and honey.
He takes a deep breath to calm himself and pulls back a little. He worries he crossed a line and searches her face for any kind of uncertainty.
As always, Katniss seems to read his mind and she pushes him back down. She lies down next to him and they face each other on the bed. Her hand softly goes up and down his arm and his eyelids start to get heavy again.
“I’m so tired, Katniss.”
“I know. Sleep, solnyshko.” And then she starts to softly hum the tune he heard her sing in the kitchen.
She’s gone when he wakes up but the pillow beside him smells faintly of lavender.
“JARVIS?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“What does solyshko mean?"
“I believe it is a Russian term of endearment, sir. It means ‘sun.’”
He smiles.
--
“Captain Mellark, Sir has requested your presence in the lab.”
Peeta throws one last punch at the heavy bag. His breathing is heavy; he’s been at this for well over an hour but the Kevlar (and god knows what else Odair put in it) bag still has yet to break.
He doesn’t know if it’s more or less satisfying than when he used to have a stack of broken punching bags next to him when he lived at S.H.I.E.L.D.
“Alright, JARVIS. Thanks.” He unwraps his hands and runs a towel through his hair. It’s been ten days since he crashed into the Atlantic and the nightmares haven’t stopped.
Katniss shows up every time. She scowls when he tries to tell her she doesn’t have to help him every night, so he’s stopped protesting.
Finnick Odair’s workshop is part auto/armor garage and part laboratory with the latest engineering technology working on scientific breakthroughs. It fascinates Peeta: he’s drawn it at least a dozen times (Finnick hangs the sketches on the walls) but every time he’s in here he finds a new detail, an addition that wasn’t there an hour before.
Like Iron Man, the workshop is constantly evolving.
“What’s crackin, Spangles?” Finnick hits a few buttons on the holographic screens and turns to him.
“JARVIS said you rang?” Peeta’s comfortable enough in the workshop that he sits in one of the leather chairs.
“That’s right, that’s right.” Finnick leans against the workbench and studies him. “So you and Everdeen, huh?”
“Uh,” Peeta flushes. In a rare display of tact, Finnick does not laugh.
“Did you know they used water torture on me in Afghanistan? Totally sucked, I was freaked of showers for months. Still won’t get in a pool or a hot tub and if you knew 90’s me, I was all about the hot tubs. I used to wake up feeling like I was swallowing the water all over again.”
“It’s been…worse. Since that day. Katniss has been helping me with the nightmares. She…she tells me what’s real.” They are quiet for a minute before Finnick clears his throat.
“I’ve known Katniss Everdeen a while--comfort isn’t her forte. So if she’s doing it for you then that’s a pretty big deal. You okay with that?” Peeta nods. “Good, because she can kill you with her thighs and I do not mean in the pleasurable way.” He claps his hands together and the mood of the room changes. “Alright, that meets my feelings quota for the year. Put that super strength of yours to use and help me move shit around.”
Peeta smiles and he and Finnick spend an hour rearranging things and listening to rock music. He thinks that maybe this is it, between the boxing and the lifting maybe this will be a night he can sleep though.
--
He’s wrong.
It takes longer for him to pull out of the nightmare, to separate the shiny and horrific memories from his past with the girl with the braid repeating his name in the present.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Katniss asks tentatively when the shaking has ceased and his breathing returns to normal.
“It was you. It was you under the ice and I couldn’t save you. You kept yelling for me, asking why I just stood there frozen. But I couldn’t move.”
“Not real.” She shakes her head lightly. “You’d unstick yourself from tar if it meant getting to one of your teammates.”
“We fought in tar before…”
“Real.” A smile dances across her lips. “Remember Gale fell on his back and when Thresh got him out of it his clothes were stuck to his body for hours?”
“He winced every time he sat down for a week.”
“And complained for twice as long.” She gives his shoulder a rub. “Do you want to watch a movie tonight or stay here?”
“Why do you help me every night?” His question is quiet but she hesitates. “You don’t have to tell me. I just wonder.”
“You helped me. After that day in the park...”
He remembers.
It was a Tuesday in July and the team was enjoying ice cream in Central Park (at the insistence of Effie ‘for the good of your image’). A group of young girls stood off to the side, giggling and pointing.
“I find it highly unfair I have to sit near these two.” Finnick motioned to Thresh and Peeta.
“Afraid you’re not the best looking one in the group?” Beetee asked.
“Absolutely not! I just feel short.” They laughed but Peeta noticed Katniss had her eye on someone just past the group of giggling teens.
It happened all at once.
A man took out a gun and fired at them. He was sloppy and erratic and Thresh had him pinned to the ground in a minute. But his bullets had hit one of girls and when Peeta turned he saw Katniss holding her body.
“You’re going to be okay, just stay with me. It’s going to be okay.” He could hear the cracks in her voice and the blonde girl blinked up at her. “Just stay with me, it’s going to be alright.”
But it was too late.
“I locked myself in my room for days. But every time I opened the door, there was soup and fresh baked bread. And then on the third day, a note and it said-“
“’It wasn’t your fault’.” Peeta lifts his head to look into her eyes. “It wasn’t, Katniss.” She didn’t argue with him but she didn’t agree either. “You don’t…you don’t have to do this…” he gestures to her laying in his bed “…because you feel like you have to repay me. You don’t owe me anything.”
She’s quiet and he starts to drift off to sleep. He’s near the edge of sleep, the strange point where everything blends together, when he feels a hand go through his hair and a soft voice say, “You’re wrong.”
--
It’s over two weeks before he sleeps though the night. He awakes to the sun shining brightly through the window and the forgotten feeling of being well rested.
He sees Katniss in the living room when he heads out to go for a run and stops,
“Hi.” He waves with the hand holding his water and automatically feels like a fool.
“Hi.”
“No nightmares.” Peeta says with a smile.
“That’s really good.” The corners of her mouth turn up. There’s a couch between them but Peeta feels more distance, though the mood is pleasant. He rubs the back of his neck.
“How did you sleep?”
“Fine.” It’s quiet again and though he knows he should leave, he stays. He opens his mouth but she beats him to it. “I…I usually woke up in your arms. And it was…nice.”
Peeta knows he must look like an idiot with his eyes wide with surprise.
“Really?” His voice cracks on the word and he flushes. She takes a few steps closer to him.
“Yeah…I missed it.” For a split second he wonders if he’s actually having a good dream for once, but he can smell the lavender and honey and he knows somehow this is actually happening.
“I’ve, uh, never gotten the chance. To wake up with you in my arms.” He aims for a charming smile but he’s pretty sure it comes out dopey. Katniss doesn’t seem to mind: in fact, she’s wearing a dopey smile of her own.
“We could try that.”
“Oh my god. It’s like watching thirteen year olds flirt.” Gale’s voice comes from above, but barely a second goes by before Katniss grabs a coaster from the coffee table and flings it though the vent. There’s a yelp of pain and Peeta chuckles.
Katniss takes a final step closer to him, close enough to run a hand through his hair and bring it to rest upon his cheek.
"This is real, right?” He can’t help but ask.
“Real.” She whispers before bringing her lips to his.
--
For the second day in a row, he wakes up from a well-rested and nightmare-free sleep.
It doesn’t hurt that he has the most beautiful girl in the world in his arms.
He feels her stir and he kisses the top of her head.
“Good morning.” Her voice is thick with sleep and Peeta wonders if it’s possible to freeze this moment and live in it forever.
“Good morning.” Gray eyes meet blue and they smile. “JARVIS, what’s everyone up to?”
“Sir is currently attempting to surprise Ms. Cresta with waffles in bed. He has enlisted the help of Dr. Latier. Agent Hawthorne and Thresh are playing Mario Kart.”
“Is the television still in tact?” Katniss raises an eyebrow.
“So far, however Agent Hawthorne has warned Thresh if he plants one more banana he will ‘kick his ass all the way back to Asgard.’”
“Situation normal then.” Katniss curls into Peeta’s chest and his heart swells. The sun shines through the blinds and he runs a hand up and down her back.
It’s not long before they hear a crash from the living room and the shrill sound of the fire alarm. Finnick swears and yells over the sound: “Jesus Jarvis, turn that off! They aren’t that burnt!”
Peeta feels Katniss giggle against his chest and he leans down to capture her lips with his. They share long, slow kisses and an overwhelming feeling of contentment washes over Peeta.
He finally feels warm and he finally feels at home.