It happens suddenly. One minute, you're sure of nothing, and the next of everything.
She knows that this feeling happens rarely. Once, on Reaping Day, the opposite of this happened
They're sitting on a park bench, staring at the new wall in 12. It is black stone, polished to a high shine, names written in clear, even script – names she recognizes, names like Primrose Everdeen. Peeta takes her hand, always hesitant, always fighting his own brain for her with his bruised-and-beaten heart.
"It shouldn't be black." She looks at him blankly. "The wall. It shouldn't be black."
Katniss takes in a short, startled breath. It resembles a laugh, but only barely. She is always shocked by the artist in him, the soul that recognizes outlines of beauty when she is trying desperately to forget ugliness. "Well, what color should it be, then?"
"Green," he says decisively.
"Why green?"
"Because it's your favorite color." He looks at her as if it should have been obvious, such wide-eyed devotion that she has to stop herself from running.
"Why not orange, your favorite?" she asks. He sighs and she sees him begin to pull back. It hurts him, she knows, when she is flippant like that, when she tries to return his heart to him. When he stands up, still slightly shaky from his war injuries, she doesn't stop him or hold him steady.
She instantly regrets it.
She watches him traverse the path to their house, tired and alone. When he gets to the door, he turns and looks at her, every type of pain in one glance, and goes inside.
Before she knows it, she is at the top of the hill, in the doorway of their home. And she's telling him something she never thought she'd say out loud.
"I never saw a sunset before you." The words rush out, jumbled and sticking to the roof of her dry mouth.
He slowly turns back to her, looks at her, and waits.
"I mean, I had seen them before. But until the day you told me that you liked the orange in sunsets, I never saw their colors. You made me look." It isn't much, but we both know that it is more than anything I've ever said.
Slowly, painfully, he takes a step forward. "I only liked orange because it reminded me of sunsets. I only liked sunset because it was my favorite time of day, before. You would come home from the woods, with the orange reflecting off of your hair. I would make excuses to stand on the porch every night at sunset, just to watch it. You made me look at sunsets too."
He takes another step, carefully, like I'm an animal who will run away if he makes any sudden movements. And I know what he's going to say like he's reading from a script I've already memorized.
"You love me. Real or not real?" His voice is thick, as if the wrong answer will break him. It just might.
"Real," I answer softly, but firmly. His answering smile is blinding, and when he kisses me, it feels like singing to mockingjays and Prim's cool herbs on my skin after sunburn and Greasy Sae's warm stew when my stomach's empty and the glow of synthetic flames framing us in heat.
It feels like sunset.