I sit parked under an oak tree.

I've been here a while.

Long enough for the heat to have seeped from my car, and for my breaths to turn to smoke in front of my face. My fingers are pale and clenched around the steering wheel probably stiff and aching but I don't feel them.

I don't feel much of anything.

The past twelve hours seem to have dissolved into a mist of frantic heart beats, headlights as I drove away, and a panic that feels like a caged bird inside me desperately wanting to be set free.

He wants to marry me?

He wants to get married…

Peeta asked me to marry him.

Here it comes again. Dark and feathered it stretches and unfurls, and the wings begin to beat violently beneath my ribs as I lose the ability to breathe.

Each gasp hurts. Hanging my head I pull air in and each time I push it out I see his face.

His beautiful face.

His smile.

My favorite smile in the entire world.

Warm blue eyes that I've spent the last fifteen years of my life falling into.

Falling in love with.

His mouth that makes me fall apart and that worships me with the poetry of his words.

That last night over champagne bubbling gold in candlelight whispered three simple words.

Words that made me run.

I love Peeta.

I love him so much.

I've loved him since before I understood what it meant and my heart was still young and tender in my chest.

But how can I ask him to stay with me if what he needs is something I can't give?

How do I make a new family when I am all that is left of mine? To trust enough to take that final leap towards hope and believing that what lies ahead can be good when what lies behind me is so messy?

I need air.

Shoving my door open I stumble slightly and lean against the side of my car letting my head fall back and the fresh air in. The ice of it burns.

Blinking I look up into the early morning sun. The sky is blue and heavy with clouds. Taking it in I just wish I knew somehow that they could see me.

Angry tears that I rarely let myself cry fill my eyes and I slam my car door shut. The sound is loud and intrusive in the quiet of this place but it feels satisfying and matches the storm inside me.

Snow lies thick on the ground; fresh white froths of it cover bushes and crystallize the stone and iron of the wall beyond them.

It makes me think of Peeta.

Of his pink nose when we were eleven and how he chased me until we were both breathless. He told me I looked like an angel with snowflakes in my hair. I kissed his flushed round cheek before we crashed into the sea of white to move our arms and legs. We were still young enough to believe in heavenly creatures. Then we clambered inside in a flurry of slush and laughter and he grinned at me all afternoon while we shared hot chocolate.

There was another snowy day years later. When he came home from school for winter break and I ran across the parking lot my heart feeling like it was going to burst. Because I had missed him and he was suddenly here. He'd smiled at me so wide. With no scarf and no coat I leaped into the heat of his open arms. He smelled like Peeta. Like spices and cotton and home. I hit him with such force he lost his balance on the ice and we fell to the ground graceless with me on top of his chest.

I remember the cold of the snow on my neck and the heat of his breath on my cheek. But it was the darkening in his eyes and the way he looked at my lips that made my heart race. There laying in a pile of slush and snow in the parking lot of my first apartment building Peeta Mellark kissed me.

He called me his snow angel. We've been kissing ever since.

Rounding the gate I look past the carved letters that read Panem State Cemetery to see a statue above a row of gravestones.

Peeta was wrong. I am no angel.

Looking up at her stone face I see we share the same serious expression.

But I lack her wings.

Wings that allow flight and freedom and the promise of hope. Mine burned away with the innocence of losing those I loved.

I don't fly. I leave my feet here on the ground.

How can he ask me this?

How do I get married in a world where Prim can't wear something frivolously pretty in the same shade of her eyes?

Where she can't twirl as the music plays?

How do I walk down an aisle towards Peeta when there is no one to give me away?

No mother to kiss my cheek. No father to cradle me to his chest as we sway to the music while he calls me his little girl.

Tears wet my cheeks as slush soaks the hem of my jeans. I feel exhausted. Each step I drag through the snow is weighted and weary until I reach the small line of stones I know so well.

Their names gleam in the sun along with the date that haunts me like a ghost on my heels. The day I lost so much.

I say high to my mom. Tell her I've been better but that she shouldn't worry.

In front of Prim I sink to my knees and let out a choke of pure anguish because she'd know that I'm not. I'm not fine at all.

She always saw too much but I know she can keep my secrets.

I ask her what it was like to see dad again. I ask if she's been watching me.

If she laughed when it took me years to notice that as I was looking forward my best friend was looking at me.

Did she see him holding me the day she left?

How he didn't let go for weeks?

I tell her I am sorry I haven't visited in a while just that life has been so good. When I wasn't looking Peeta snuck in and made it all good again and now I am going to ruin it because I am terrified.

Hysterical laughter comes out with a cloud of air from my mouth. Because to her I was invincible. Her big sister and her hero and she always thought nothing scared me.

I tell her she was wrong.

That I am a coward. That I am not ready. That I can't fly forward because what if I fall? What if I crash to the earth and lose the last thing I love? What if it just slips away?

Reaching forward I run my fingers over the dried petals of a bunch of primrose flowers. Peeta used to bring them every week. I didn't know he was still doing it.

But I remember the first time he did.

The funeral had been over for hours but I refused to leave.

There wasn't a home to go to anyway.

Eventually the guests and the priest and the concerned faded away.

The sun had begun to set until the sky seemed to catch fire and looked like it was burning. I was too numb to feel. My cheeks were dry with salt and my bare legs beneath my dress scratched and covered in dirt as I lay over the earth that covered everyone I had loved for the last sixteen years.

Well almost everyone.

I didn't hear him coming which should have been impossible because his tread was so heavy. I had other things to focus on I suppose. Like how to breathe in and out and to wonder how my heart was still actually beating.

Peeta didn't say anything he just set flowers next to Prims grave and sank to the grass and soil lying down in front of me. He moved until there were merely inches between us and our noses were nearly touching. The tear that rolled down mine fell onto his cheeks and over the freckles there.

He blinked and I noticed how long his eyelashes were and how they tangled and turned gold in the setting sun. Our legs twisted together and our hands linked at our sides and we didn't say anything for the longest time.

He breathed out and I breathed in and his eyes never looked away.

Dazed and a little lost I looked out across the sky.

A flock of birds took flight. Just flew away.

Oh how I envied them.

I whispered softly not even sure he was listening, "This is your favorite color."

Turning back to him I watched words leave his lips as he squeezed my fingers. "It is."

I sniffed and I realized my nose and my mouth and my skin ached. "And the flowers?"

His eyes closed as emotion made his voice soft. "For her."

Nodding I felt my face crumple. Heat began to fill my chest and the crush of pain burned. It burned so much. Tears choked in my mouth and my forehead met his as his lips brushed my hair.

Sobbing I said, "They're beautiful."

I cried and he held me. I screamed and he held me. I ran out of sound and could only breathe in the smell of his skin and the soil beneath my cheek and he held me.

The sky burned until the flames died out and stars began to shine.

When I ran out of tears I whispered, "Stay with me?"

His arms tightened and I drifted to sleep with his words soft against my ear, "Always Katniss."

Mud cakes in my nails. It feels cold against the warmth of my fingertips and in stretching them out I notice the envelope. It's the color of buttercream pressed and sealed leaning against my father's name.

I tense and my spine straightens as I rub the tears from my face with my sleeve.

Looking around I hesitate for some reason. Maybe because talking to my daddy is so much harder.

He left me first. Maybe because sometimes I need to pretend he is still here.

Reaching forward with a trembling hand I take it into my fingers.

My voice fails me and I whimper when I notice the handwriting.

I peel back the flap and ease the creased paper out and it shakes in front of my eyes.

I begin to cry before I even manage to begin to read.

Mr. Everdeen,

I miss you. I was so small in the years I knew you but managed to love you in such a big way.

Maybe because to Katniss you were the universe.

Her universe.

She misses you so much.

She always will sir you should know that.

I am here for a specific and very selfish reason.

I am so sorry for that.

I am here because I want to spend the rest of my life with your daughter.

She's my whole world.

But sir I fucked up.

I know her.

I know her better than anyone but was so focused on me and my fears and what I see ahead for us I forgot for a moment to focus on her…so I thought here…with you…I could make up for it.

I asked her to marry me.

To be my wife.

But I forgot to ask her what she needed.

I used to be so good at that.

I'm not sure where it went for a moment.

Mr. Everdeen I love Katniss.

I've loved her since the moment I saw her. I know you knew. There was a way you smiled at me that told me so. Like you understood that I got it. That she was the best thing I would ever find and you were happy I found it.

I always thought I would have years to prove to you that I deserved her. Hell I always thought she would catch on so much sooner than she did. Your daughter is a mystery sometimes sir and I …god I wouldn't change a thing.

I loved her when we were five, and ten, and fifteen…I loved her when she lost you, and Prim and her Mom years later, and then herself completely.

I want to be her husband. But what I forgot to tell her is that I will love her even if that isn't what she wants. That loving her in any way is enough.

So.

This letter is to say I am sorry. To ask your permission to love her forever and apologize.

For failing you.

For failing her.

To ask your forgiveness and because I need to tell her that her driving away means nothing…

… the word falls from my mouth as I read it out loud and becomes drowned out by the voice of another. By a voice that I know better than my own.

I look up as Peeta steps in front of me. Tears shine in his blue eyes and his cheeks and nose are pink from the cold. His curls are a mess and I can tell he hasn't slept. He steps closer until he can sink to his knees in front of me.

My knees shake with relief that he is here.

Our fingers brush as he takes the letter from me and continues to read.

She can run from me. She can hide. She can come back. I will always love her.

A tears runs down his cheek.

Sir you have missed so much and I am so sorry. As someone who has loved her every moment since you had to leave let me tell you that your daughter is a miracle.

His voice shakes as he reads.

I've seen her work two jobs, and relearn to laugh, and remember how to sing.

She's protected me and loved me when I was left wondering why and she gets lost sometimes, but she finds her way back and holds my hand because for some reason she chose my fingers as her anchor.

She failed her driving test twice.

His lips twitch into a smile as he reads.

She was so pissed.

I feel my own lift as I wipe my cheek.

God she was pissed and that night I swore she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I swore to myself I would tell her. But I was such a coward. Your daughter is so damn stubborn and intimidating and I was terrified to fuck it up.

He licks his lips and looks at me.

So years went by.

She studied and walked across a stage with only me as her family clapping my hands. She got into college and works to stay there. She laughs at old comedies with Chevy Chase and cries watching Disney films. She sings when she cleans and snores when she sleeps and sir I have never stopped looking at her.

I can't.

I stared at her when she looked away and smiled when she frowned and if she called I was ready to show up.

I've been ruined for Katniss Everdeen since kindergarten.

Her silver eyes make me breathless. Her voice silent…

But it is her heart…you remember it. I know you must. It is steady and it beats sometimes when she wishes it would stop.

But it is pure and full of fire and love and…

Well…

I can only hope it belongs to me.

New tears begin to fall but not from pain or panic. The wings in my chest go still as he looks at me.

His face falls and he takes my hands crushing the letter in our fingers.

He begins to sobs the words to me.

I look back and she is all that I see. I look ahead and she's all I want.

Mr. Everdeen with your blessing I just want to love her if she will let me.

In whatever way she wants.

I just want to stay.

His hands come up to hold my face and we cry and our heads come together as our fingers climb arms and wrap around each other until our tears run from cheeks onto necks and I can feel his lips near my ear.

"I love you."

I laugh through my sobs and kiss his neck.

"I love you so much Peeta. I'm so sorry."

He holds me tighter. "I'm sorry too."

We stay there for a long time.

Wrapped up together with our clothes wet from snow and our faces from tears.

Almost a mirror image of our sixteen year old selves from nine years before.

We go home. We take a shower and we take our time making love over the sheets until the moon is full in the sky.

His fingers run through my hair and then he reaches over and pulls a small box out of his nightstand drawer. He rolls over until he can look at me.

"When I opened this last night I asked you to marry me. I will always want to marry you Katniss but that's not what this ring stands for. It just means I want to love you. To love you every single day for the rest of my life if you'll allow it and it will always be here but you never have to put it on. I will be here. Every day."

Leaning forward he kisses me and soon we come together and fall apart for the second time tonight. I map his skin with my mouth and whisper words we both need to hear into his hair and as he's moving inside me I know this is real and all I will ever need.

It is hours later as I lay listening to his breathing and looking at his face in the moonlight that I realize that maybe angels are real.

Maybe they fill a girls childhood with friendship and wrap their arms around her when's broken.

Maybe they love her silently, and patiently and later passionately.

Maybe they love her despite her lack of wings and never expect her to fly swearing to carry her instead.

As the sun begins to filter through the curtains I reach across Peeta taking the small box in my hands. Flipping it open the slim band gleams in the early morning light. A white pearl sits atop a sea of diamonds and as I slip it onto my finger a smile slips onto my lips.

I look at it on my hand and have never felt more certain and safe as I fall asleep with my hand over Peeta's heart.

His lips on my fingers wake me up.

My eyelashes flutter open to meet his warm wet eyes and he smiles at me.

He kisses me and pulling me into his arms begins to whisper how much he loves me and that he never needed a wedding and I have to pull back and push my finger to his lips to silence him.

Because he doesn't understand and now I do.

Holding his face in my hands I ask him one more time for always. I have a family. He's my family and I ask him if he will stay with me.

Swallowing and blinking at me he whispers, "You want to marry me?"

I grin at him and nod my head yes.

With a shuddering breath he leans forward and asks against my lips, "Katniss Everdeen. Let me spend the rest of our lives loving you. Will you please be my wife?"

In my between our giddy laughter and kisses I say, "I'll allow it."

"Always Peeta."