I woke up thrashing around wildly, my forehead had a thin sheen of sweat covering it. I was trying to chase away the dark images the nightmare had left behind. My fingers probed the soft sheets, but came up empty. The spot where Peeta slept was still warm, so he couldn't have been gone long. Alone in the darkness of my bedroom I could still smell the scent of the bloody white rose President Snow had left behind when I visited District 12 after he destroyed it. The smell of that memory sent me into another fit. I writhed again, contorting my body and shrieking in an effort to the shake the scent from my nose. The bedroom door opened and suddenly Peeta was beside me, his warm arms around my waist and his lips at my ear.
"Shh," He said in a calming voice, while tightening his grip on me. "I'm here. You're okay."
I let my body sink against Peeta's and relaxed my tense muscles. In that instant I knew I was okay, because he was right: he was here now and that meant the bad dreams were gone. He warded them off with his strong arms and whispered promises. He always had...the first time in the arena, at the Capitol before the second games. Peeta was always there, protecting me no matter what the cost. Even if it was his own life...
Peeta and I were both living in my house on Victor's Village. It wasn't official in the town records and he still used his own house occasionally, but his clothes have taken up a permanent residence in my mother's old closet. It was too painful, sleeping alone after Prim's death, my mother's inevitable descendant back to her awful dark days, and Gale was out of the question because of his possible involvement in the bombing that murdered my sister. That left Peeta, Haymitch, and me. Haymitch had drunk himself into an everlasting stupor after the war with the Capitol and although he lived next door we hardly heard from him. Just like inside the arena Peeta and I were left to fend for ourselves. We'd gotten good at it.
I walked into our house after a long day in the woods. My game bag was full of fresh kill. Peeta and I still had access to our Victor's endless trust fund, but we outwardly denied it, choosing to kill and cook our own food. The house smelled like Peeta's paints, which had become it's permanent perfume. It was eerily silent as I slung my father's old hunting jacket on the coatrack beside the door and made my way through the house. It was dark; the only light was a single candle burning in the kitchen and the natural light streaming through the windows, given off by the setting sun.
Peeta was in the kitchen. He leaned against the sink in one of the tuxedos he wore on our Victor's Tour. The candle was placed in the center of our small kitchen table. I took in the whole scene, wondering what was going on. Peeta was a hopeless romantic, so this shouldn't surprise me, but it did and I couldn't figure out what was really happening.
"Sit," He said, walking over to scrape my chair away from the table.
I plopped down feeling completely underdressed in my jeans and white tee shirt, but Peeta didn't seem to mind so I remained silent. He slid a porcelain plate in front of me. It was piled high with my favorite Capitol lamb dish, complete with plums, spaced decoratively around the plate, which was no doubt Peeta's doing. He must have swallowed a lot of pride to get the food, because he hated taking from the Capitol almost as much as I did. The war had not really changed anything. It was just another power hungry person at the head of our nation. Why give them the satisfaction? It was like saying; we need you to survive! The two of us most certainly did not. We were doing fine on our own.
Peeta sat down across from me with his own plate of lamb. The sun coming through the window and the candle light made his eyes especially beautiful and even more irresistible. I had a hard time looking away, like a child fixated on a shiny object. Even his golden hair was brighter in the light, which added to his beauty. Then I remembered what was going on and that we were sitting opposite each other at a candlelight dinner.
"What's all this?" I gestured to the decorative table and fancy food dishes.
Peeta shrugged nonchalantly. "I felt like you deserved it," He replied, although his answer seemed weighted, like that was not the only reason behind the extravagant meal. He held up his wine glass for a toast. I lifted my own glass and reached across the table to clink it together with his. The soft musical note only two glass could make filled the air. I sipped the soda and settled back into my chair, grabbing my utensils and digging in. The warm lamb made my taste buds tingle, but filled my head with horrible memories of the first time the two of us had been forced into the arena, our Capitol stay, and my interview with Ceasar Flickerman, when I stupidly mentioned that my favorite part of the Capitol was this meal.
"How is it?" Peeta asked, motioning to my plate with his fork.
I swallowed my bite, then continued. "Ah, it's incredible. Thank you, Peeta." He waved his hand dismissively like it was no big deal, but we both knew how much effort he had put in just to fill our two plates. "It was nothing."
I rolled my eyes, because I knew he was downplaying the while thing, then took another scalding bite, savoring the taste. We sat in silence for a moment, both of us reminiscing about the dark days in the Capitol and the even darker ones that followed in the arena. We rarely talked about the Games. We didn't like to dwell on the blood filled, murderous memories. The only sound in the room was the intervals of forks scraping the plates as we shuffled food into our mouths.
The quiet continued for a moment, then I cracked a smile, which quickly turned into a laud guffawing laugh. I didn't know why I was laughing exactly, but the simple, forgotten sound made me feel lighter. Within seconds Peeta joined in. We sat over our fancy Capitol meals, under our roof in the house we shared, and laughed. Minutes passed and we kept going, carefully catching each other's eyes, then bursting out harder. My sides ached when we stopped. Peeta's brows raised questioningly as if to ask what it meant for me.
"We have created these very serious lives for ourselves," I gestured to the food and the huge house we kept. "We're seventeen, own a house, kill and cook our own food, have witnessed more tragedy and history in seventeen years then most people do in a whole lifetime," I shook my head. "I don't know. I guess sometimes I just sit back and wonder; how did we get dealt this card?"
Peeta smiled like he was keeping a secret, like he knew how to make this all go away. I smiled back unsure, waiting for him to reply to my little speech. It was silent for a long time again. I watched as Peeta made his way around the table. His prosthetic leg clicking against the tiled floor. He took my plate and his, then carefully slid them into the sink. I rolled my slate gray eyes, because I knew I would have to be the one to clean them.
"You know, we might not have eaten my game today, but I still took a lot of effort to kill! I'm not cleaning those!" I joked, yelling at Peeta because he was bent over the refrigerator. He didn't answer. Instead he turned around revealing a huge sheet cake. It was decorated in green flowers, my favorite color. When he placed it in front of me I gasped. The words 'Katniss, will you marry me?' were sprawled across the center. I turned to Peeta with my hand covering my mouth in awe. My heart was racing and my palms were sweaty with nervousness. It wasn't the same nervousness that had overcome when he'd proposed in the Capitol on national television. There it was all about performing, but in the privacy of our small kitchen I could react naturally.
Peeta was kneeling beside me holding a black velvet jewelry box. Nestled inside was a gold banded diamond ring. I nodded profusely, too excited to form words, then flung myself forward, wrapping my arms around Peeta's neck. Tears of joy streamed down my face for the first time in my life. Peeta pulled away and slipped the ring onto my third finger. It felt perfect there, not like the gaudy Capitol ring that was awkward and ill-fitting.
"I wanted to do this right," He told me as I examined the ring in a million different ways. "I had to propose before the games to keep us alive, but this time it's real."
I nodded again. The tears were still streaming down my face. I remembered Haymitch telling me that Peeta was upset after the first proposal because he did not want to do it like that. He wanted it to be private and romantic. Peeta certainly got his wish today and so did I.
I beamed at Peeta over my ring. "I know," I managed and leaned forward to hug him again. "I love you," I whispered.
"I love you, too," He replied, squeezing me tight against his chest.
There was another long pause. Neither of us spoke. We sat there in each other's arms savoring the moment. I did not want it to end. I replayed the night in my head, trying to commit every perfect moment to memory. I didn't want to ever forget anything. The huge Capitol proposal on national television was nothing in comparison to tonight.