A short little Katniss/Peeta fanfic. I imagine it taking place sometime shortly before the "you love me, real or not real?" hope you enjoy!
-Sarah
They lie on the bed, not quite touching. Its dawn outside, and the first hint of sun sends a line of light across the bed.
"What are you thinking about?" he whispers to the ceiling.
She's thinking of bombs dotting the sky. Parachutes falling from the clear blue, holding food and medicine and bombs. Bombs. She's thinking of fire raging through the woods, taking down a city. She's seeing a white shirt untucked in the back, making a ducktail, all at once turning into flames. Seeing primrose's wilting, the petals falling to the abandoned ground.
"Everything."
He takes her hand then, and she reflexively curls her fingers around his. Their clothing alight, the carriage rocking as the crowd goes wild. Her face unrecognizable on the screen. No, don't let go of me. Please. I might fall out of this thing.
"What are you thinking about?" She whispers back, looking at the sun lighting up the ceiling and all the while seeing bows and arrows and knives and blood. Hearing screams, the harsh bangs of the cannon. One. Two. Three. Four. Faces in the sky, etched across her brain.
He doesn't answer at first. Then, finally,
"Bread."
Bread. Warm bread, crackling in an oven. Slightly burnt, hot under her jacket as she carried it through the rain. Bread. Fish shaped with seaweed and crescent moon shaped with seeds. My thanks to the people of District Eleven. Bread. Twenty-four loafs from District 3. Bread. A side to lamb and dried plum stew, shared in a cave and still in the taste of his lips as they kiss.
Bread. Out of all of the things to be thinking about, and he's thinking about bread.
And, for the first time in months, she laughs.