She watched her daughter, her beautiful daughter, leave the house on the arm of a boy she knew from school, a boy whose family had moved into the District a few years ago, someone who had no memory of the time before. Sometimes she resented the new residents, resented how they didn't understand that the ground they walked, the trees they saw, they were all memorials to lives unlived, lives cut short.
She was drifting into anger, into reminiscence, into worlds best left unexplored, when she heard Peeta come up behind her. He could never walk so silently as she did, even before he lost his leg, before his joints began to stiffen, before his hair began to go grey (not that you could see it in his blonde hair, not like you could in her dark hair).
"We went to a school dance once. Not together. You went. And I went. Real or not real?" he quizzed quietly, because there was no end to the memories the Capital might have meddled with, not even tiny memories like school dances.
"Real," she confirmed shortly, because she didn't want to think about school dances, about how she'd actually gone to one once.
"You had your hair in a braid, just like always, but with the prettiest ribbon around the end," Peeta continued, since she'd confirmed the overarching memory was real. Now he wanted to understand the details.
She smiled at that. She hadn't wanted to go, hadn't wanted to do her hair at all, had refused to do anything but braid it, so the ribbon was a concession to prettiness, something she'd done for Prim's sake rather than her own.
"Real," she admitted.
"You didn't stay long, and you glared at everyone you looked at," he tried. "Like you were trying to scare everyone into not talking to you so you'd have an excuse to leave early."
"Real," she admitted again, although a smile was playing around her mouth, because that was more true than just an event memory. That was emotional memory, the memory of a boy who'd been in love with her then, despite her glares, and was in love with her now, despite the same.
"And you thought I was the handsomest boy at the dance," he finished, and she tossed an incredulous look over her shoulder at his smile.
"Not real," she said repressively, but it wasn't going to work. He looked too pleased with himself, too secure from years of knowing that the still-tiny soft core inside of her had room for him.
"I thought I'd give it a shot," he suggested innocently, and she lightly thwapped his still-firm stomach as they moved away from the window and into the house to eat dinner - her game and his bread, as always.
Life wasn't normal. Life would never be normal, but maybe it was as close to normal as she might ever get.