Archive of Our Own

Summer passes in fits and starts. The days are shapeless, bland things, with little to mark them other than the meals. Greasy Sae arrives in the mornings and cooks breakfast, then leaves until the evening, when she returns with dinner. Katniss dutifully calls the doctor every Monday, talks about the last week, reassures him that she’s eating and sleeping and taking the pills he sends on every train. The rest of the time is empty, left up to her to fill. On good days, she makes it into the woods and gathers berries until her fingers are stained and her bag is heavy at her hip. On bad days, she doesn’t get up from the couch — she just stays there, huddled beneath a pile of blankets, watching the fan move in lazy circles that never seem to do anything to move the thick, heavy air.

Still, it all helps. She no longer feels like she’s waiting for something; whatever the something was, it’s already come to pass. Now, she’s just existing, drifting through life like a ghost, the only living thing for miles. Something inside of her shifted when Peeta came back from the Capitol, the pain of loss becoming duller and more distant in her mind. It should comfort her, but instead, it only makes her feel emptier, more useless. She can’t even muster the strength for grief anymore. 

She doesn’t know what to make of Peeta. He comes to her house occasionally, usually in the mornings, bringing her bread or pastries. She isn’t angry at him anymore; she forgave him a long time ago, not sure what she was punishing him for in the first place. But she feels strange when he’s around. She never has enough to say to him, and he’s always busy asking a thousand questions about things they said during their first Games or unpacking baskets of food into her cupboards. It’s exciting, having him here, buzzing with energy and making her feel like she’s a real person with real memories. But it’s also a relief when he leaves and she can be alone again, when she doesn’t have to try so hard to seem like she’s still alive. He never stays long enough for her to be sure how much he’s changed, if there’s anything left of what used to exist between them. Their frenzied conversations only happen in the light of day. She still spends every night alone. He hasn’t ever come back into her bed, and she hasn’t asked him to. It’s good, anyway. Maybe he’s still afraid of her. Probably he is. She’s still a little bit afraid of herself. 

The days blur into each other, each one hotter than the last. Outside, the grass turns brown and the streams run dry. More people arrive on the train, and sounds of life begin to return to the district. An impromptu market of sorts even pops up one day in the square. Sometimes, during the afternoons, Katniss takes long walks through town, wandering between the alleyways, searching for a face she knows and drawing away whenever she spots a flash of recognition in someone else’s. There are several times she goes out and recognizes no one, which is unsettling, then understandable. Who else would want to return to a place like this, after everything? Who else would want to live in a ghost town, haunted by the bones that still line the Meadow? Even her own mother couldn’t stand it. It’s only people like her and Haymitch who would bother coming back. Empty shells of people with nowhere else to go. It’s easier to live with the ghosts when you might as well be one yourself. 

*

It’s a hairbrush that gets her. It’s mid-morning and she’s been possessed by the sudden urge to clean the house. She’s had several good days in a row, even shot a squirrel last week on a trip to the woods. Coming home, she’d presented it to Sae like a trophy, and that night there had been stew for dinner. The success of having done it at all had felt so monumental that she’d actually managed to finish a bowl.

She’s rooting around in the bathroom cabinet when it happens, looking for a bandage to cover the blister that’s been developing on her heel, when her fingers curl around it. It’s nothing, really; just a small wooden hairbrush with a few strands of blonde hair still tangled in the bristles. She pulls it down from the shelf and is just going to place it on the counter when it hits her.

For a moment, she just stares at the hairbrush like it’s some strange, unknown object from another world. It might as well be, anyway: a hairbrush from a world where she had a sister, where the bombs never went off, a world where Peeta loved her and Gale knew her and she’d never shot the president. 

The hairbrush clatters against the tiles. She falls to her knees, her hands searching wildly for it and coming up with nothing. She can feel the sobs coming on before they even begin, a rapid, expanding feeling that fills her up before the tears have even reached the back of her eyes. Her chest is heaving, her breath coming in shallow pants. The pain is blinding, ripping straight through her like an arrow, piercing her against the floor and holding her there. 

What is there left to do? Nowhere is safe anymore, nothing comforts her. And that’s just the problem – the answer is nothing. There’s nothing left to do. There’s just this, existing, trying to remember to eat and sleep and call the doctor, knowing that everything she’s ever loved is lost or locked away or dead. She has nothing left, and the worst part is, she knows she deserves it. How long will she have to live like this? A pathetic, ruined, half-alive girl that the world has chewed up and spit back out again, pacing the ruins of what was once her home, thinking she can manage it until she breaks, her mind snapping in pieces over hairbrushes and dead sisters. 

There’s no telling how long she stays like that, balled up on the ground while the waves of grief pull her under. She’s a wounded animal, howling out a cry for help that will never come. To kill her now would be an act of mercy. But there is no one there to throw the knife. 

But even this ends, too. Numbness remains. She finds the last bit of her strength and stands slowly, her head buzzing. Then, her body still shaking and her throat raw, she picks herself up off the ground and walks out of the bathroom, down the stairs, and out the front door. Before she knows what she’s doing, she’s crossed the path and is standing on Peeta’s front porch. One glance back at her own empty house solidifies her decision, and she reaches out and knocks sharply on the door, three times. When there’s no answer, she knocks again, louder this time, and receives nothing in response. Inexplicably annoyed at him, and unable to form a coherent thought about why she shouldn’t, she tries the handle. Surprised to find it unlocked, she opens it and pushes her way inside.

Peeta is sitting on his couch, his eyes trained on the television. When he sees her in the doorway, he shuts it off in a hurry and stands quickly, back straight, like a soldier waiting for orders. A long moment passes where neither of them speaks. He looks at her expectantly, but her mouth seems to have stopped working, and she just stares at him.

“Hey,” he says, cautiously after it becomes clear she’s not going to say anything.

She hadn’t prepared anything to say. She doesn’t even really know why she’s here, and her mind is so scattered that she just blurts out the first thing that crosses her mind. “What were you watching?” 

“It’s an update on the election,” he says. “We’re supposed to vote for a new mayor soon.”

The fact that there’s an election at all is news to Katniss. She hasn’t touched her television set since coming home, and she can’t imagine herself ever sitting down to watch anything, much less a report on local politics. Why Peeta is watching it is a mystery to her, and she wonders if this is something he does every day or if this is some kind of special report, and how he found out about it if it is.

“Katniss,” he says slowly when the moment stretches on too long again and she still hasn’t said anything. “Did you need something?”

She sways slightly, unsteady on her feet. “I didn’t know they were doing the news.”

“Usually they just talk about the weather.” He clears his throat. “Katniss, are you okay?”

She opens her mouth to reply, and to her horror, the only thing that comes out is another horrible, choking sob. She buries her face in her hands as another wave crashes over her, swallowing her again.

“Oh,” he says softly, and from behind her hands she can see the vague shape of him as he crosses the room to wrap an arm around her shoulders. It occurs to her that this might be the first time he’s really touched her since coming back, and this fact registers somewhere in the back of her mind as a good thing, though she can’t stop the sounds she’s making long enough to really appreciate the development. 

When this round of sobs subsides, she keeps her face hidden behind her hands, slumping against Peeta, pouring all her weight on him while he holds her upright. 

“Why don’t I run you a bath?” he says. She finally raises her face and stares at him blankly, not knowing what to think. She doesn’t know what she expected him to say or do, but it certainly wasn’t that. “Come on,” he adds gently, noticing her confusion, “it might help.”

He takes her into the bathroom that’s just off his bedroom. Peeta’s house is a perfect mirror image of hers, and she turns the wrong way as they walk up the stairs and bangs her hip against the railing. In the bathroom, Peeta helps her undress slowly, not even flinching when he sees the scars that cut across her body. For some reason, his lack of a reaction irritates her. She wishes that the sight of her would embarrass him in some way, that he would wince at her ragged skin, or perhaps that his breath would catch in his throat when his hand brushed against her ribcage, that he could at least pretend there’s still any chance of romance between them. 

She blinks. It’s a jarring realization that she might even still want him to want her like that, that she’s even capable of wanting anything anymore. Of all the things to be thinking about right now, how could her mind be turning to whether or not Peeta was affected by the sight of her naked body? Her cheeks grow hot as she watches him fill the bathtub and test the temperature of the water. When he’s finished, he gestures to the water and she slips in up to her neck. He sits down on the edge of the bathtub, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin on the tops of his knuckles, and closing his eyes. She fans her fingers out on the surface of the water, making tiny waves that slap against the sides and feels heavy sweat gather near her temples. 

Truthfully, she expects him to leave her there alone, but he stays sitting there, facing away from her and only occasionally glancing down at her with a tight expression. Maybe he’s worried she’s going to try to drown herself. She wants to tell him that if she was going to kill herself, she’d have done it already, then thinks saying that right now might only worry him more. Several times, he takes in a sharp breath like he’s going to say something, then shakes his head or furrows his brow and the silence stretches on, interrupted only by the irregular drip of the tap.

Finally, he speaks. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” she replies, then surprises herself when more words follow. “It was her hairbrush. I’d been doing better — staying busy, hunting, eating my meals — you know, all the things the doctor says to do. And then I found it in the back of a cupboard this morning and it was like I was right back there in the Capitol watching her die – like nothing had happened since then. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t move. I just cried and cried for hours.”

Peeta looks down at her again, his eyebrows drawing together.

“But the strange thing is, it felt good to know that she can still wreck me like that,” she goes on. “I guess some part of me was afraid that if I had too many good days it would mean I’d forgotten about her, that it would all mean nothing to me. I couldn’t bear that.”

“You won’t forget about her,” Peeta says firmly. 

“No, I won’t,” she agrees. “But some days, I don’t want to get better. I don’t want to get used to her being gone.”

She hasn’t verbalized any of these thoughts before, not even to the doctor, and she half-expects Peeta to reply with some empty platitude about how she’s being foolish, how healing is what Prim would’ve wanted, how she wouldn’t have wanted to see Katniss lose herself in her sister’s absence. But Peeta says nothing. He rests his elbows on his knees, fixes his gaze on the ceiling, and sighs.

“Sometimes I wish I had my old life back,” he says slowly, like the words are fragile, breakable things. “But then, sometimes I think I’ve changed so much I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it. Even if I woke up tomorrow and none of this had ever happened, I don’t think I could live the way I used to.”

“I’d take my old life back,” she says bitterly. “I wish none of it had ever happened.”

Peeta glances down at her again. “None of it?”

She’s just about to reply that of course she means none of it when it occurs to her what he’s really saying. There will be no reaping this summer, no Games to watch, no children to send to the Capitol to be made up and paraded around and then killed on television. That part is extraordinary, in a way. The thought has crossed her mind many times since the war. She doesn’t know how to reconcile any of it, the end of the Games, the end of the old Panem, with what she’s lost. And then there’s Peeta. So much of her is wrapped up in him now that she can’t picture her life without him in it, even her old life, the life before. She’d miss him if she didn’t have him. Or, she’d miss him, but she wouldn't know that she was missing anything at all. She’s about to try for an answer when the phone rings loudly in the other room. 

Peeta stands quickly. “Be right back.” 

He disappears into the bedroom, closing the door behind him and leaving her there alone. She can hear Peeta’s muffled voice behind the door, and without him in here with her, the quiet of the room feels like a physical force, pressing down on her and making it hard to breathe. 

Does she really wish none of this had happened? She tries to picture where she might be if it hadn’t. It’s summer now, but she’d be in school still, in her last year. She’d be sitting behind a desk, learning how to weigh out coal or listening to the Captiol-sent history lesson. She wouldn’t know about District Thirteen or clock arenas or muttations, or any of it. But she can’t picture herself going to school as normal, hunting with Gale, trading at the Hob. She knows she would’ve done it, but she’s become so distant from that life that it seems like a dream, something no longer real. 

Suddenly she has to get out of the water. The bath no longer feels warm and comforting but hot and oppressive, and she stands up too quickly, the water sloshing over the edge and onto the tiles. She stands there, breathing heavily, the cloudy water up to her knees, until Peeta reappears with a bath towel and wraps her in it. Then she follows him into the bedroom where he digs through a drawer and produces a set of soft pants and a thin shirt to match. Her hunting clothes must still be in a pile on the bathroom floor, and she takes Peeta’s gratefully, shivering slightly as the heat from the bath leaches from her body. Outside, the sun has long since set. The only light in the room comes from the lamp next to his bed, making everything look soft and out of focus. This is the first time she’s ever been in his bedroom, and she has to fight the urge to look at everything in the dim light, to memorize the shape of his life as it exists without her.

He turns away while she gets dressed, fiddling with something on the top of his dresser, and clears his throat. “Do you want to stay here tonight?”

The words are like a stone being lifted from her chest. “Yes,” she says, then adds softly, “please.”

He moves to turn the blankets down for her, then goes to the window and closes the shutters while she gets in and pulls the sheets over her face. The bed smells like Peeta, and she screws her eyes shut, trying hard not to cry again. She feels him sit heavily on the edge of the bed. There’s a beat, and he squeezes her shoulder, then gets up to leave. She throws the blankets down, turning her face into the pillow so she doesn’t have to look directly at him.

“Peeta,” she manages. “I meant, you know. With you.”

She forces herself to look up at him, and he holds her gaze from across the room. There must be some miniature war that plays out in his head while they look at each other, but eventually, he gives it up and climbs into the bed beside her, switching out the light and pulling the sheets up to cover them both. For a moment, while they’re both just laying next to each other on their backs, the distance between them feels impossibly large, the few spare inches between their elbows an insurmountable obstacle. Then he sighs and rolls closer, pulling her against his chest, his arm wrapping around her waist. She shivers against him despite the warmth of the bed, listening to his breath until it settles into the rhythm of sleep. 

They stay like that all night, curled into each other like they’re back on the train on their Victory Tour, Peeta’s soft breath against her neck the only thing between her and the horrors that await her in her dreams. For some reason, the thought of that train — their horrible Tour, the hideous dresses and makeup, and their clumsy attempts at being in love — fills her with inexplicable longing.

*

In the morning, she wakes up alone. She swallows hard, sure that Peeta has fled, woken up next to her, and run away, regretting ever inviting her into his house, into his bed. But before long, she hears the sounds of him moving around downstairs, and she gets up slowly and makes her way out of the bedroom, moving carefully, afraid to disturb any of Peeta’s belongings.

When she makes it down the stairs, she waits and watches him for a moment from the kitchen doorway before he notices her, moving between the oven and the counters, humming an unfamiliar tune. He catches sight of her and pauses, an empty tray dangling from his right hand.

“Good morning,” he says, probably too cheerful for the hour, but she doesn’t fault him for it. He must have been awake for a long time already. The counters are covered in flour. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” she says. “Well, better than I have in months, actually.”

“Good,” he says, then hands her a roll that’s been cooling on the counter. No, not a roll – it’s one of the cheese buns she’d developed an obsession with after their Victory Tour.

She stares at it. “You remembered.”

He smiles. “It was one of the first things you told me when I came back – how much you loved these. You made sure I wouldn’t forget even if I tried.”

She doesn’t really know what to do with herself, and he’s busy cleaning up, so she slides past him and sits down at the kitchen table to get to work on the bun, eating it slowly, savoring the sweet familiar flavor. Peeta is still cleaning when she finishes eating, and, feeling awkward and unsure what to do with her hands, she picks up the salt shaker and turns it upside down.

“Who was it that called last night?” It’s an invasive question, one that she doesn’t even really have the right to know the answer to, but she can’t help herself from asking.

“Johanna,” Peeta says, drying a plate and stacking it with the others. “She calls me now and then, just to talk.”

The salt starts forming a little mound on the table's edge. “Where is she?”

“In Seven,” Peeta replies. “You know what it’s like. She just wanted to go home.”

The salt runs out and she puts the shaker back down, staring at the pile of crystals she’s just made, stark white and glowing slightly in a sunbeam. Peeta finishes with the dishes and throws the towel over his shoulder, looking out of the window above his sink. In Katniss’ house, her mother hung a bird feeder outside their kitchen window, and she used to stand and watch the birds every morning when she’d finished with her tea. Surely nobody has touched it since the war, so it must still be hanging there, empty, another ghost where something alive used to be. Katniss wonders offhand if the birds are still coming to it, looking for seeds and finding nothing. She’s just thinking that she should look into filling it back up when Peeta speaks again.

“Real or not real,” he says. “The cave was on the right side of the creek. In our first Games.”

Katniss thinks about it. She tries to remember and finds she can’t conjure an image of it. In her memory, she can see either one just as clearly, can see them turning to the left or to the right as she dragged him down the stream.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Probably the right.”

“Or was it the left?” Peeta says. She isn’t even sure if he heard her answer. 

“I’m sure there’s a tape or something,” she says stupidly. 

He’s starting to get agitated, drumming his fingers against the edge of the sink and staring down at the drain. “I just need to know which side it was on.”

“I don’t remember,” she says. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? It wouldn’t change what happened. We were still in it either way.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. As soon as she’s said them, she wants to grab the words out of the air and stuff them back in her mouth, but they’re already out there, hanging between them, making everything worse. Peeta grips the edge of the sink and screws his eyes shut. She’s suddenly afraid he’s going to keel over or something, and she’s about to stand up and call for help when the moment passes. 

“No,” he says, a rough edge creeping into his voice. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

She relaxes slightly, relieved that he’s let it go so easily, but the softness of the morning is over. The dishes are cleaned and neatly piled up on the counter, the only mess that’s left is the one she’s made on the table. Peeta’s face is hard when he turns back around, and Katniss stands up, banging her knee against the table leg. 

“I’m going out,” she says impulsively. It’s not that she had planned to leave so soon; there’s nothing that needs doing today. But she can’t stand being in here another minute.

“Fine,” he says sharply, and she leaves without another word.

Outside, it’s another dreadfully hot day. Confused and rootless, she decides to walk to the train station under the pretense of checking if there have been any deliveries. It’s a long enough walk that it fills most of the morning, and by the time she reaches the station, the sun is beating down hard on her back. In the mailbox, there’s nothing for her, a package for Haymitch that must contain whatever pills he’s being sent from the Capitol, and a letter for Peeta from Delly, who is staying in Five. She takes the pills and leaves the letter. 

Later, when she reaches the square, she stops and buys a new bag of salt, starting to feel guilty for pouring out all of Peeta’s this morning. The burst of anxious energy that had taken her to the train station is fading, and she’s left with the awkward heaviness of knowing she should apologize and not knowing how to begin. She shouldn’t have left him so quickly, she thinks. When she’d come to him yesterday in crisis, he’d given her a bath and let her into his bed, but as soon as he’d shown any kind of weakness, she’d run away. Some friend she is to him; she wouldn’t be surprised if he never wants to see her again after this. Still, the least she can do is replace the salt. Then it will be as if it never happened at all. Nothing more owed.

The afternoon is already fading into twilight by the time she returns to the Victor’s Village. She has no idea how long she was gone. Her stomach growls loudly and she presses a hand against it and watches the sun drop low behind the roofs. She stops first at Haymitch’s house where she leaves the pills on his kitchen table, clearing a spot between the mess of papers and dirty cups. Haymitch himself is nowhere to be found, but there’s a day-old loaf of bread on his counter and a bag of apples next to it. At least he’s eating, she thinks, then hates Peeta a little bit for being good enough to take the time to deliver loaves of fresh bread to Haymitch while she does nothing. She should call him, she thinks, or at least make more of an effort to see him, make sure he’s alive and bathing himself. But, she reminds herself, it’s not as if he’s making an effort to see her either. The pills are enough for now. She locks his door for him when she leaves.

On the doorstep of Peeta’s house, she takes a long breath to steady herself, then pushes inside. He’s left the door unlocked. Perhaps he was hoping she’d come back, she thinks, then stops herself. He wants nothing to do with her. She’s only here to settle the last remaining debt. 

The house is empty when she steps inside, but he appears from one of the back rooms when he hears the door. She can smell paint clinging to him, and wonders briefly if he was painting the Games. 

“Hey. Um. I brought you this,” she says, holding out the salt. “Sorry about this morning.” It doesn’t feel like enough, now that he’s actually here, but she has nothing else to offer.

Peeta stares at the bag blankly for a moment, then barks out a short laugh. “Katniss, you didn’t have to do that. It’s just salt. I have more in the pantry.”

She blinks. “Oh.”

“I appreciate it, though,” he says, taking the salt from her and setting it down on the table. “Thanks.” It’s a small comfort that he doesn’t seem too angry with her, and she twists her hands together, running her thumbnail along the ridge of her knuckles.

“I really am sorry about this morning,” she says quickly, staring down at her boots.

“It’s alright,” he says, but she doesn’t feel like she’s earned the forgiveness. She looks around the room, trying to pick out some reason to stay, and comes up blank.

“I guess I should go,” she says finally.

“You don’t have to.”

“It’s late. Sae will be worried about me.”

Peeta coughs. “I, uh, might have called her while you were out. Told her you’d be with me for dinner tonight.”

All the tension collapses out of her body, but the feeling that follows isn’t relief, it’s shame. Of course, he wasn’t angry with her; it’s only Katniss who is determined to see the worst in people, to shut down and cut him off the second things get hard. Not Peeta. Not the boy who still bakes bread for Haymitch every morning, though she doubts he’s ever been thanked for doing it. She’d been so sure he was finished with her, and instead, all this time, he’d been making phone calls and dinner plans for the two of them.

She’s so overwhelmed that she can’t look at him any longer. 

“Let me just go home to get a change of clothes,” she says in the general direction of her boots. 

“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you need.”

Back in her house, she’s filled with an odd thrill as she sheds her dirty clothes and stuffs a bag full of sleeping clothes and soft sweaters. She changes into a simple top and pants, then wonders if she should wear something prettier. Almost immediately the idea is laughable. Stupid, she thinks, and gives her head a little shake to clear it. Then, feeling excited and vaguely embarrassed at the same time, she opens the bag one more time and packs a toothbrush, too.

When she gets back to Peeta’s, he’s already finished cooking dinner and is sitting at the table, an array of dishes laid out and waiting for her. She stashes her bag in a corner of the living room and sits down across from him, helping herself to a large bowl of some kind of soup while he slices her a thick piece of heavy, rich bread to dip in it. She’s so hungry from walking all day and going without lunch that she has to remind herself to slow down so she doesn’t burn her tongue.

The meal is surprisingly peaceful and without any of the animosity she’d expected after their argument in the morning. Peeta makes small talk about his day, telling her directionless stories about different types of bread and his visit to Haymitch’s house. She tries to keep up her end of things, asking questions in the right places, but she gets the sense that he knows it’s taking all her effort to participate. Undeterred, he soldiers on with a seemingly endless supply of anecdotes.

“Did I tell you Effie sent me a recipe book?” he says, picking the crust off another piece of bread. “She called me a few weeks ago to ask if I wanted one, and I said sure, so she said she’d mark some of her favorite recipes for me to try. When it came in the mail, I opened it to one of her bookmarks and I just laughed. The very first ingredient was lobster.”

That makes her grin into her soup, and Peeta leans back in his chair, looking pleased with himself. After dinner, they clear their plates and he goes into the living room and turns on the television. True to his word from yesterday, they’re talking about the weather. Apparently, the summer heat won’t break for another few weeks. She curls up in one of the armchairs by the fireplace, picking up a book from one of the side tables and flipping through it, mostly just looking at the pictures. It’s a book of animals she’s never seen before, each page covered in anatomical drawings of strange birds with bright-colored feathers and huge, leathery creatures with wide, flat ears. She wonders where Peeta got it, and why. She’s studying a picture of what looks like a fat horse with a spike on its nose when Peeta flips off the television and stands up.

“I’m going to bed,” he says.

“I’ll come,” she says quickly — too quickly — and they both look down at the carpet, blushing. 

Upstairs, they brush their teeth side by side and it occurs to her that she can’t remember ever doing this with him before. On the train, he used to get ready in his room and come to her after all the lights were out and everyone else was asleep, and on those few precious nights that they had together before the Quell, she can’t remember if they’d even bothered with brushing their teeth. It didn’t seem important when they were supposed to be dead a week later. When their eyes meet in the mirror, her heart beats so hard against her ribs that she feels like her chest might crack in two.

There’s no hesitation when they settle into bed beside one another tonight, Peeta’s arms coming around her waist, wrapping her up in his warmth. It’s strange to think that just two days ago she was sleeping alone; she doesn’t know how she managed it. Now that she’s back in bed with Peeta, she knows she won’t return to her own, not without him there with her. For a long time, she listens to him breathe, but she knows he’s not sleeping from the way his arms still feel stiff against her body, the way his breaths are still sharp and distinct from one another.

“The cave was on the right,” he says finally in the dark. “If you were wondering.”

She curls her body into itself. She should’ve known he was still thinking about it. It had been naive to assume his mood at dinner had meant that things were fine.

“I’m sorry,” she says, feeling a hole open up in her stomach. “I never should have said it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right though,” he replies. “It doesn’t matter. At least, you’re right that it wouldn’t change anything. My mind just gets stuck sometimes. I get caught on one thing, and I can’t get out.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, wishing she had anything better to say. She knows he still struggles with whether or not he should believe his own reality. How could he not? Sometimes it shocks her that he’s even here at all, that he even tried to fight his way out of the hijacking. She doesn’t know if she would have done it – frankly, if she could have done it – if their positions were reversed. It’s just another reminder that he’s the superior one between the two of them. 

In the dark, she hears him sniffling and she realizes he’s crying. A horrible, aching feeling sweeps across her body and she unravels herself and pulls his head into her chest, winds her fingers in his hair, and holds him close until he finally falls asleep.

*

The heat lingers into September, and they fall into a routine where they spend the mornings apart and the nights together. She hunts and takes long walks in the woods and through the district while he bakes and paints and tries to keep the house cool. In the evenings, they eat together and then they’ll sit together in the living room after, reading or watching the weather report. Sometimes they play cards.

Haymitch finally emerges from his house on one warm evening, and she and Peeta sit with him on his front porch while he drinks wine and complains about a flock of geese that have migrated into his backyard for the coming autumn. Apparently, they’ve been waking him up with the sunrise, squawking and flapping their wings outside his window, and Katniss smiles at the image of a disheveled Haymitch glaring out of his window at the birds wreaking havoc below. Peeta teases Haymitch about the geese, and he drinks and sends half-hearted glares at them until he falls asleep in his chair and they have to drag him inside. Neither of them really wants to take him to his bedroom, so they just leave him to sleep on the couch. Peeta fills a water glass and sets it down beside him, and they go home laughing and trading jokes about geese and old mentors. 

Halfway into the month, Katniss gets sick. Nothing seems seriously wrong with her, but she runs a high fever and Peeta commands her to stay inside, and she’s so tired that she doesn’t have the energy to argue with him. But her convalescence is boring; her only entertainment is the arc of the sun as it moves across the sky, casting sunbeams in shapes across the floor, and she finds herself feeling jealous of Haymitch and his geese. In the illness, she finds herself wishing for her mother, the pain of which is compounded by the knowledge that she cannot have her. Peeta comes in and out of the bedroom at odd intervals, bringing her tea and stroking her hair. Once, in the delirium of fever, she kisses his palm.

Eventually, the fever breaks and so does the summer. By the time she’s well enough to leave the house again, she can feel in the air that the season is coming to an end. Now, in the mornings, she wakes up cold, and crawls into Peeta’s arms for warmth until he gets up to make breakfast, and in the evenings, they start lighting a fire again. 

It’s on one of these crisp autumn nights that she’s flipping through the animal book again while Peeta tends to the fire when he stands up suddenly and puts his hands on his hips.

“Real or not real,” he says, “we danced together in the Capitol at the end of our Victory Tour.”

“Real,” she answers, closing the book. A memory stirs. “You started talking about rebelling in the middle of it.”

“Did I?” 

“Yes,” she says. “You said maybe we were wrong to subdue things in the districts and told me sometimes you were so mad that you didn't know what you would do.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I said all that? In the middle of the Capitol? That was very brave of me.”

“Yes, well,” she replies. “You were always the brave one.”

“Now, that’s definitely not true,” he says, then brushes his hands on his shirt and holds one of them out to her. “Let’s do it again.”

She gapes at him. “What?”

“Come on. Let’s do it right now. Let’s dance and this time we won’t think about any of it, we won’t think about the Capitol or the war or the past or anything. Just you and me, let’s dance.” 

She’s so stunned that she actually takes his hand, standing slowly and letting him pull her in. It’s easy enough to get in position; they’ve done this a thousand times before. But when he lifts her hand in his and wraps the other around her waist, she can’t move.

“There’s no music.”

“Then sing something,” he murmurs in her ear. 

She tries to think of a song: something light, fast, meant for dancing. But she can’t think of anything that doesn’t have a connection to someone dead. 

“I can’t remember any,” she lies, starting to step away.

“Make something up,” he says, pulling her back in. 

Her heart clenches, and she knows she’ll never deny him anything again, that he could ask her for the moon and she’d find a way to get it for him. So she sings. 

It’s an awful song; there’s no melody, no rhythm, and her voice cracks on all the high notes, but she keeps going, letting Peeta spin her around. Sometimes she just hums, but she tries to come up with words, a sloppy amalgamation of all the old standards she knows. She sings about mountains and birds and falling in love, sunsets and heartbreak and long laments. None of it makes any sense, and when she gets confused and starts singing the same thing over and over, Peeta laughs, and she laughs too. He spins her out and pulls her back in close, leaning her back over his arm until the tip of her braid brushes the floor. When she comes back up, they’re nose to nose, and for some reason, she can’t focus on anything but the fact that Peeta’s cheeks are pink. It would be the easiest thing in the world to kiss him right now, she thinks. 

Stupid! It’s as if someone has dumped cold water over her head. He doesn’t want her that way. She moves away, her blood roaring in her ears. Peeta looks confused, and she takes another step back, trying to put more distance between them, terrified of how badly she wants him.

“It’s time for bed,” she says quickly.

Peeta hesitates, then drops his arms. His face seems to age ten years in the dim light. 

“Okay, Katniss,” he says and turns back to the fire. 

*

Autumn slides into winter and the days grow short and cold. Snow blankets the district, making it hard to do much of anything, and there are some stretches where Katniss sees nobody but Peeta for weeks. Bored, craving the woods, and trapped inside the house, she picks fights about pointless things like how many logs to put on the fire and how best to arrange the chairs in the living room, and he humors her by pretending to care. The fights are half-hearted anyway, and both of them know it. They still find each other’s arms every night. 

The problem is that it’s getting harder and harder to pretend her feelings for Peeta are nothing more than friendship. In the mornings, when he curls his body around hers, she presses the length of her spine against him and tries to ignore the ache she feels when he presses his lips to her hair. 

There are still days when she feels like she’s dying, days where she feels like she’s dead already. Prim’s birthday. Her parents’ wedding day. She can’t even look Peeta in the eye on those days, just bolts herself in one of his spare bedrooms and stares at the walls. Sometimes she cries, but most of the time, she just sits there in silence, letting the pain rake over her body. Most of the month of February is lost to the anniversary of the bombs, the memories of the horrible month she spent in the Capitol’s twisted rooms. Trying to kill Snow, failing, killing Coin, trying to kill herself, failing again. Peeta moves gently around her while it happens. There is always food waiting for her, extra blankets, cups of tea. She doesn’t know how to thank him, so she doesn’t. Instead, she takes the teas and the cookies without a word, taking from him with nothing to offer in exchange, just as she always has. 

The snow melts and the wind blows cold and hard through the valleys. More people return to the district, and she now often spots familiar faces in the crowds in the square. Buildings and shops crop up around the edges of the old roads. Twelve starts to feel less like her place of exile and once again like a home — a real place with real, living people in it. 

One afternoon, she comes back from the woods to find Peeta in the kitchen, rolling huge sheets of dough out over the counter. She moves behind him to grab a glass and fills it from the tap.

“Johanna called earlier,” he says without looking up. “She’s in love.”

Katniss drops the glass. It shatters and sends shards skittering across the room, water covering the floor. “What?”

“Yeah,” he says, folding the dough over itself and rolling it again. “You’ll have to clean that up, you know.”

“What do you mean, ‘she’s in love’?” Katniss bends down to pick up some of the larger shards. 

“I mean she’s fallen in love with someone. That’s what she told me, at least.”

“Who?”

“Some woman she met in Seven. I guess she’s some kind of specialist for trees,” he shrugs. “She didn’t really give me that many details.”

The floor is still wet, and she throws down a towel to soak up some of the water. When she shoves the towel around with her socked foot, Peeta frowns. 

“She did ask about you, though,” he adds, handing her the broom. “You should call her. I think she would like that.”

Katniss sweeps up the rest of the glass in a daze, trying to process this news. Truthfully, she knows she should’ve called Johanna months ago. Peeta speaks to her at least once a month, often more. It’s difficult for Katniss to call anyone other than the doctor, really, so she hasn’t tried. It had taken until November for her to even call her mother, and they’ve only spoken twice since. The only person she regularly speaks to outside of Peeta is the doctor. She mumbles out some promise to call Johanna, knowing it will never happen.

A few days later, though, Peeta is painting all day and it’s raining too hard to hunt. She’s read through the animal book already, cleaned all her hunting gear, and it’s only early afternoon. Rootless and bored, she bangs around in the kitchen until Peeta asks her to keep it down. An hour later, she gives in and goes into the study, dialing the number that Peeta has written next to the phone.

Johanna picks up after a few rings. “Hello?”

“Johanna,” Katniss croaks.

“Look who finally figured out how the phone works!” Johanna’s voice is so loud that the phone pops and buzzes, and Katniss has to move it away from her ear. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Katniss answers, surprised to find that it feels true. 

“It’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve heard just about every story about you that a person can tell from Peeta. Doesn’t sound like you do all that much.”

Although it’s half an insult, Katniss is filled with a rush of affection for Johanna. She hadn’t realized she had missed her so much. 

“I keep busy,” she says, and Johanna’s sharp laugh comes through the static.

“Whatever you say. We all have to do something. Those rabbits aren’t going to kill themselves, I guess.” Katniss grins against the receiver, wishing she could see Johanna’s face. “So, what’s the big occasion? Why’d you suddenly decide to call?”

“I missed you,” she says. This much is true, but they both know Katniss wouldn’t call just because she was feeling sentimental. “And Peeta said something. That you’re in love.”

She can almost hear Johanna’s smile through the phone. “Did he say that?” There’s another popping sound, and then the connection stabilizes. “Well, it’s true. I’m in love.”

“What’s her name?”

“Vee. She’s from Ten originally but she ended up here somehow after the war. She’s a biologist, did Peeta tell you that? She’s trying to invent a new kind of fruit. She’s some kind of tree genius or something.” Johanna sighs, more tenderly than Katniss could ever have imagined her sounding. “I know, I know – pigs are flying, Johanna’s in love. But it’s really happening.”

“Johanna, that’s –”

“Don’t tell me how amazing it is. First of all, I already know. And second of all, I know you’re only saying it because you’re so surprised that it happened at all.”

“That’s not true,” Katniss says, though she can’t deny that there is a part of her that never would have expected Johanna to trust anyone that much again.

“Well, I’ll pretend to believe you,” Johanna says. “Anyway, it is a surprise. Not all of us get to meet our boyfriends in the arena. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“I’m happy for you,” Katniss says, and she really means it. “And Peeta isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Don’t I know it.” There’s a rustling sound on Johanna’s end. “You know you’re allowed to be happy, right?”

“I am happy,” Katniss mumbles, twisting the cord of the phone around her finger. “I’m trying to be, at least.”

“Whatever. Keep telling yourself that,” Johanna says. “Can I tell you a secret, though? This happiness thing – it’s so boring. I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but it’s like my mind wants something to go wrong. Every morning when I wake up and it’s just the same, I’m still in love, and she still loves me…” Johanna trails off. “There’s a part of me that’s just bored to death with it all.”

Katniss doesn’t know what to say. She hasn’t allowed herself to be happy enough to get bored with it; she still wakes up every morning half-expecting Peeta to have run away, or to be sent back to the Capitol, or to just decide that he’s done with her and send her back to her house and end whatever it is that’s going on between them. What Johanna is describing is something completely different – something deeper, more pure.

When the silence stretches on, Johanna continues, more gently this time. “I know you probably feel like anything good has to be taken away. And you know what, maybe you’re right. Maybe it will. But you can’t live like that forever. One day you just have to decide it’s enough. Katniss, they’ve already taken so much from you. Don’t let them take this, too.”

Katniss shakes her head, even though Johanna can’t see. “It’s not like that, though,” she says. “He needs me. And I need him. But he doesn’t love me like that, not anymore.”

“Oh, Katniss,” Johanna groans, but her voice is still soft. “Even you can’t be that stupid.”

*

Everything feels laden with significance after her conversation with Johanna: Peeta cooking eggs in the mornings, helping her put away the heavy winter blankets on high shelves, making small talk at dinner. She finds herself looking for some secret signal that he loves her in every conversation, some proof that Johanna was telling the truth, but finds nothing. Nothing has changed since that very first day when he came home. Surely, she would be able to tell if his feelings toward her had changed. No, she tells herself, he doesn’t love her anymore. What she said to Johanna was true: they need each other, but the love they used to have will never come back. She swallows it, holding it inside of her stomach like a hot burning coal.

Something shifts as the days get warmer. She isn’t sure if the change is in the weather or in herself, but she’s surprised to find herself humming while she sweeps the cobwebs from the corners of the kitchen. The dead of winter has ended, taking the worst of things with it. She can smell spring in the air when she’s in the woods, the sunshine warming the treetops, flowers pushing their way up through the earth. Outside, Peeta’s primroses bloom again.

The lake thaws completely, and she starts spending the warmer days fishing. Usually, it takes all day, and she’ll announce to Peeta that she's leaving for the lake and won’t be home until late. She’ll set up a series of nets, tied in knots that Finnick taught her, and spend the afternoon gorging herself on berries and sweeping the corners of the little house on the shore. When the nets are full, she’ll bring heavy baskets of the fish home and Peeta will bake it with slices of lemon and a rich, salty sauce.

It’s one of these days when she comes home early after the lake had been too rough to fish. The wind had been whipping at the surface of the water, and the sun struggled all day to break through the haze, leaving the air cold and biting. Her fishing bag empty, she bangs open the front door, wiping the mud from her boots. She’s just about to call out to Peeta that she’s home when she spots him, hunched on the kitchen floor, his hands knotted in his hair, making a horrible sound that’s somewhere between a cough and a whimper.

She drops her bag and throws her boots in the corner. “Peeta,” she calls out. He doesn’t move or respond, and her heartbeat quickens. “Peeta!”

Still, he doesn’t move or change positions. His fingers twist tighter in his hair like he’s actually trying to tear it out, and she presses her back against the wall to steady herself. She should go get Haymitch, or call someone for help. If he’s in the middle of a flashback, he’ll think she’s a mutt, come to kill him, and he’ll do anything to kill her first. But there’s no time for that. Who knows what could happen in the time it takes her to find someone? He could kill himself before she even gets back. She takes a deep breath and moves toward him.

“Peeta,” she says again, quieter this time. How long has this been happening? She’s never seen it this bad before. This isn’t the frustration over the cave that made him grip the sink and close his eyes for a second or two. This is something much worse. His head is between his knees and he’s crumpled in front of the oven, still making that horrible, awful sound.

She finally reaches him. Probably she shouldn’t touch him, but she reaches out all the same, working slowly, first untwisting his fingers from his hair, loosening his grip. He could lash out at any time, though the possibility seems unlikely given the state he’s in. Besides, she’s regained some of her body weight since the war, and although he’s still bigger than her, she figures can move fast enough to outmaneuver him if he tries to choke her. And – stupidly, inexplicably, foolishly – she trusts him. For some reason, against all logic, she genuinely believes that he won’t hurt her. No matter how deep in his head he is, he won’t kill her. Not now. 

Eventually, she works his fingers loose and takes his hands, clasping them between her own. She’s kneeling beside him on the tiles, and she manages to get a look at his face. His eyes are blank, fixed on some invisible point in the distance. She focuses on the blue, the same color she’d seen shining up at her in the riverbed when she’d found him in the first Games.

She’s at a loss for what to say to help him. What could bring him out of a flashback, out of the dark place the Capitol put in him? What helped him before? Real or not real, starting at the beginning. Katniss, I remember about the bread. He must be reliving their Games, something that he watched back on camera. But there are things only she knows – moments only the two of them shared, no cameras around, that the Capitol couldn’t have touched. Without thinking, she just starts talking as fast as she can, trying to recall every moment she’d been with him when no one else was around.

She coughs, slightly. “Peeta. Remember the bread? Remember you tossed it to me, in the rain on that day when I was so hungry that I thought I would die, and remember your mother hit you for burning it? And how you brought it to me anyway?” Her voice sounds high and thin, and she takes a deep breath and continues, louder this time. 

“Remember on the train, when Haymitch threw up and you said you’d take care of him? I thought you must have been stupid or something, trying to butter him up like that when he was drunk, but you weren’t. You were just being kind. He had no idea it was even happening, but you took care of him anyway, you wouldn’t even let the Capitol people help.” Now that she’s going, she can’t stop. She brushes his hair back from his eyes, the words coming easily. “Remember how you would always dip your bread in the hot chocolate? I started doing it, too, because I saw you do it. I could’ve eaten that forever if they’d let me. Maybe tomorrow we can do that, make hot chocolate and we can make fresh bread to dip in it. Or not. We don’t have to, I don’t know.” 

She’s rambling now; there’s no point to anything she’s saying. Peeta still doesn’t move. His body is rigid, eyes blank and unseeing. She’s getting desperate now, and she presses a kiss to his temple.

“Remember when I hurt my foot, and we spent all those hours in my room working on the plant book? And you drew the worst thistle I’d ever seen, and I made you redraw it six times before I let you draw it in the book? I thought you must have hated me for making you do it over and over, but last week I found all six of those drawings in a drawer in your desk. What did you keep those for? It’s stupid, really, that you kept those drawings. But they’re beautiful. I don’t know what I was being so picky about back then.”

He still doesn’t move. It scares her. He’s been like this for too long now. She thinks, in a panic, of what will happen if he never comes back. She’s crying for real now, her face wet with tears, and she leans forward and kisses his cheeks, his nose, his jaw. “Please, Peeta. Please come back.” Her voice drops lower, barely a whisper. “I love you.”

She doesn’t mean to say it, but it’s already slipped out before she can stop herself. She bites her tongue, hard, hoping he’s far enough gone that he won’t remember it, and braces herself for another speech when suddenly, Peeta slumps forward. She reaches out to catch him, opening her arms and looping them around his neck. He buries his forehead in the crook of her neck, and she lets out a sob, then feels ridiculous for doing it. He’s the one that’s suffering and yet she’s the one that’s crying about it. For a long time, they don’t move, tangled up together on the kitchen floor, holding on to each other like they’re the last living things on earth.

“Katniss,” he mumbles into her shoulder, finally. “I’m so tired.”

“Let’s get you to bed, then,” she says, trying to keep her tone light, cursing the way her voice breaks on the last word.

She half-drags, half-carries him up the stairs, helps him undress, lays him down in the bed, and pulls the blankets up around him. In the bathroom, she wets a cloth and places it across his forehead, feeling helpless and weak for not doing more, remembering the same gesture from when he was sick and dying in the first arena. Before long, he’s asleep, and she just sits on the edge of the bed and watches him for a long time, his eyes twitching behind his eyelids. She can’t imagine what his dreams will be tonight, but she can’t leave him to face them alone. Still, it doesn’t feel right to crawl into bed with him now, not after what happened in the kitchen.

She drags one of the chairs from the corner of the room next to the bed and curls up in it, resting her head on the arm so she can still watch him, though as the night wears on, nothing else happens. Eventually, without trying, she slips into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

It must be two or three in the morning when she wakes up. Her mouth is dry, and the night outside the window is pitch black. Cursing herself for falling asleep, she clambers her way back up to a seated position, vowing not to leave Peeta for the rest of the night, when she notices him staring at her.

“What are you doing?” he whispers.

She shifts in her chair. The air in the room feels thick and metallic, like the air just before a thunderstorm.

“I wasn’t sure – if you would want me.” In the bed with you, is what she means, but everything feels blurry and far away, like she’s looking at him through several panes of glass.

Peeta pulls himself up, shaking his head. “Katniss,” he says, his voice low and wrecked, breaking down the last of her resolve. “Of course I want you.” 

She isn’t sure who moves first, only that they meet somewhere in the middle, her lips crashing against his with enough force to bruise them both. She grabs at his face while his arms wind around her, pulling her close and pressing their bodies together. She lets out a soft sound of pleasure, and he breathes out hard into her mouth, moving them both so that she’s lying underneath him while he holds himself up on his elbows. She arches her body up to meet his and twists one of her legs around his waist, trying to pull him even closer, unable to be away from him for another minute. 

They shouldn’t be doing this, she thinks. She should stop this now before she does something she’ll regret. She should wait until she’s sure he’s alright again, until the tension of earlier has passed, until both of their heads are clear enough to know what’s happening. 

But then, what are they waiting for? It’s like Johanna said — there will always be something around the corner, something waiting to go wrong, some crisis she can’t anticipate. What does she have left to lose? Other than him, what?

Peeta eases her shirt over her shoulders, and – yes, there it is, the catch of his breath when he sees her body moving beneath him. A shudder runs through her when he puts his mouth against her collarbone, and she pulls him down into her, hiding her face, unable to look at him, overwhelmed with how much she needs him.

It’s so easy, so simple, that when she falls apart beneath him, she lets out a breathless sort of laugh, throws her head back, gives over to him the last remaining parts of her that were left to give. It would be funny, really, if it wasn’t so real.

He tangles his fingers in her hair and drops down into her with a groan. He cries. She kisses his shoulder. And then it’s over.

For a long time, after, they just stay there, unmoving, their legs tangled together. His arm rests heavy across her bare stomach, and she’s just about to drift off when he looks up at her.

“You love me. Real or not real?”

So he had heard her, before, in the kitchen. It should scare her. She should run, now, or at least want to run, but instead, a wave of calm washes over her. She leans down and bumps their noses together, bringing him close and kissing him one more time. 

“Real.”

*

In the morning, she wakes up to the sound of him brushing his teeth. Without bothering to get dressed, she leaves the blankets in a heap and makes her way into the bathroom, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her nose between his shoulder blades.

“We should invite Haymitch over for dinner tonight,” she says into his skin.

Peeta freezes, a blob of toothpaste on his chin. “What? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”

“I don’t know,” she says, pulling back, giddy and light-headed. “I feel like celebrating.”

“Okay,” he says, grinning and shaking his head, pushing her off so he can wash his face. “Fine. Sure. Whatever you want. I’ll call him in a bit.”

She goes downstairs to make breakfast, slicing up day-old pastries and sweet fruits while Peeta makes the phone call. For whatever reason, Haymitch agrees to come, so they spend the day cleaning the house and preparing a meal that’s far too elaborate for just the three of them. Not that Haymitch would care – or even notice – if the house was filthy or the food was stale, but Katniss sings while she sweeps and Peeta frosts a dozen cookies and bakes a three-tier cake. 

By the time Haymitch arrives, they’ve been cooking for hours, and the whole table is covered with dishes: steaming plates of fish, fresh rolls, and some kind of tart that Peeta has constructed with apples and cinnamon.

“What are we, feeding the whole district?” Haymitch grumbles, but he sits across from them and fills their glasses with rich, dark wine and pretends he doesn’t see how Katniss locks her ankle around Peeta’s leg underneath the table. The dinner stretches long into the night, all of them laughing and swapping stories. When they finish, Peeta gets up and clears the dishes, and Katniss, feeling heavy and soft from the wine, rests her cheek on the tablecloth and watches the candles burn low. 

She offers to walk Haymitch home, and to her surprise, he doesn’t complain or protest. He even offers her his elbow when they walk down the steps of the porch.

They walk in silence for a bit; the days are warm but the air is still cold during the nights, and she shivers, pulling her sweater more tightly around her body.

“So,” she says finally, “what did you think?” 

“What did I think of what?”

“Of us. Peeta and me.” Sometimes she still feels like she needs an observer, someone to confirm that she’s doing this correctly, that she’s playing to the right camera. 

Haymitch is quiet for a long moment. They reach his house, and he leans against the edge of his gate. “I thought –” he hesitates. “I thought, I’m glad they’re alive.”

Katniss looks up at him. The moon is full, and in the brightness, she can see all the contours of Haymitch’s face, the deep-set wrinkles, the years he’s lived.

“I’m really proud of you, sweetheart,” he says, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder.

“For what?” she says, though a part of her already knows.

Haymitch gives her shoulder one last squeeze. “For staying alive.”

He’s gone then, disappearing into his house. She walks home alone, thinking of Peeta waiting there with the dirty dishes and the half-eaten cakes, loving him more with every step. It’s true, what Johanna said: one day she’ll get bored of this, one day the thought of Peeta waiting for her will seem so natural that it will hold no power over her. So instead of rushing, she takes her time, savoring the newness of the feeling, wishing she could press it like a flower and keep it safe somewhere forever. She can’t, of course. This feeling, too, will leave her. When she gets home, she kisses Peeta over the soap bubbles.

That night, he pulls her close in bed and kisses her soft and slow like they have all the time in the world. And for the first time, it occurs to her, they do. It’s Peeta’s last gift to her: time, that luxury that was never afforded to her father, to her sister, to her friends, the one thing that she never thought could be hers to claim. From the minute they met, she’s been prepared to lose him to the arena, to the Capitol, to her own fears. She knows she would die for him tomorrow without thinking twice. But for the first time, she doesn’t have to. Instead, when she wakes up, she knows without a shred of doubt that he’ll be there. Where she once was afraid, she now feels calm. Where there once was death, there’s life.

“If the weather is nice tomorrow, we should do something,” he says. “Have a picnic, or go for a hike or something. Whatever you like.”

“Okay,” she says easily, leaning up to kiss the bottom of his jaw. He wraps an arm around her and they settle back into the pillows. She buries her face in his neck and imagines packing up the last of his cookies from earlier, placing them in a basket and bringing them into the woods, eating together in the grass, listening to the wind, and watching the world in bloom. It will be a perfect day, if perfect days can exist in this world, after everything that’s happened. She’s still a girl with no sister – a burn-scarred fire mutt, a victor, a tribute, a nobody. But she’s no longer a ghost. Somewhere, in between the bombs and the primroses and the sweet springtime, she came back to life.

In the morning, she feels the warmth of sunlight spilling across her face, and she smiles before she even opens her eyes.