His curtains stay closed.
They never open to let in the morning rays, or to let a sliver of moonlight slip through them at night. No, the thick drapes stay where they are, never moving. The window doesn't shift, doesn't budge.
I wonder if he still sleeps in that room now.
It used to be his room before we left, before we came back. I used to be able to see the fabric fluttering in the breeze from the window he always left open. Now, whenever I look towards it and wonder if he'll ever open them and look back at me, I see nothing.
He's been back a week - 6 days since he planted the bushes, 6 days since he first arrived in my kitchen with a loaf of bread in his hands, wrapped in the butchers paper the bakery always served their bread in. I'd wondered at the time where he'd gotten it from, and then I'd remembered that he'd been given reams of it when we came back from the tour. "For baking or drawing, or any of those fun things you like to do!" Effie had trilled. At the time, we hadn't known whether to laugh or cry at her enthusiasm.
I think we may have done a little of both.
They still haven't opened.
If I bothered to answer the phone when Dr Aurelius called, he'd probably have some fancy doctor term for why it concerns me so much. But I don't, so instead I sit on my window seat, stare out through the glass. Sometimes, when the sun hits it in a certain way, I can see my reflection. Hair that sits just below my shoulder blades, worn in a scraggly thin braid. Grey eyes that look tired, and a mouth firmed in a straight line.
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me.
We're mostly quiet at the dinner table. Sae is there, and tries to get us to talk, but we rarely say more than a few sentences. I wonder where he's gone, that boy with words that I used to know.
I hear the screams the next night, and I remember where the boy went. He went into the Arena. And sometimes, he's still there.
Just like me.
It takes a month, but I make my first kill. It's not clean, and not through the eye, and is accompanied by a bout of terror that almost paralyses me, but it's progression. We eat it that night - Peeta, Greasy Sae, her granddaughter and I - and there are smiles on our faces and grease on our chins.
Peeta reaches out and wipes at a dab of gravy on my cheek without thinking, and we both freeze. It's odd, having him touch me again, when once upon a time we'd done it so often it felt like breathing. His fingers ghost across my cheek, and then his hand returns to his lap.
The moment is gone, and then we're both looking down at our plates, pushing our food around.
But I think I see a hint of a smile on his face. And when I look in the bathroom mirror later, my own lips are curved.
It's barely an inch, but they're open. The window sash has been lifted, ever so slightly, and I can see the movement of the drapes. The breeze is brisk this morning, but I know that won't bother him. He prefers it that way - a little cool to enable him to snuggle deeper into the blankets.
It's just one of the things I remember.
The bruise blooms violet and deep purple and yellow, and graces his forearm like a tattoo. It makes me think of the times when I'd see him in school, and I knew his mother had taken a hand - or a rolling pin - to him.
It aches, and an instinct in me wants me to soothe the hurt, run my fingers lightly across the bruise, and raise it to my lips. To kiss it better.
Instead, I quietly ask what happened, and in a halting voice, he tells me of a flashback that started with him in his bedroom on the second floor, and ended with his body in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. There's another bruise, he tells me, on the side of his hip.
I reach out and squeeze his hand across the table, across the pencils and pieces of parchment that's spread across it.
He squeezes back.
The curtains are only slightly parted, but the window is wide open.
I can hear music.
It's soft, but the tune is lively, filled with fiddles and violins. Like the songs they used to play at the Harvest Festival, long ago. Like the ones they played at Finnick and Annie's wedding.
I wonder if that's what he thinks about when he hears the music too.
I wonder if he thinks of Finnick.
A week later he asks me to take him into the woods, and I can't say no to him. His gait is slow and steady and loud as we make our way through the trees, but I don't mind. I'm not here to hunt.
I'm here for him, because I know he needs this. He needs the separation from the Village, from the town square. He needs to be somewhere safe.
I know, because he had nightmares last night. I heard him scream, even with two walls and metres of garden between us.
And I know, because I had nightmares too.
We spend the day drawing and writing, and this time, it's of Prim. I want to die, want to curl up in a ball and wither away until there's nothing left. But Peeta's crying too, fat, wet tears that stream down his cheeks. He brushes my tears away with his thumbs, tells me it will be ok.
When he curves his hand around my cheek, and his palm brushes against my mouth, I don't hesitate to press my lips against the soft, tear dampened flesh.
He only freezes for half a second, and then his forehead lowers to mine.
He breathes in deep, and we stay that way for hours.
It's midnight when he comes bursting into my room, pulling me into his arms, brushing a hand down my hair and making shushing noises. Just like the ones Mom would make to crying babies when they visited her for treatment.
My throat aches, and my voice is hoarse from where I've been screaming. Screaming for Rue, for Prim, for Finnick.
For Peeta.
We lay down, and he curls himself around me. Our fingers clench and entwine, and rest gently on my stomach. His breath is warm against my neck as he softly tells me that he's here, that it's ok.
I ask him to stay, and he tells me always.
I wake the next morning to find him still there. He's snoring gently, and his fingers are still looped through mine.
Just like the nights on the train.
I gently slip from the bed, pad towards the bathroom, and absently glance out my window towards his house.
The first thing I notice is the window. The second is the drapes.
They're open.
I lie quietly, and I watch his face as he sleeps, watch the way his hand protectively rests against my thigh, the way his foot is tangled up between mine.
It feels right here, and while I still feel like fragmented pieces of my old self, the pieces aren't as far apart anymore. I'm healing. We're healing.
I'd known I'd been waiting for something, back when I used to do nothing but sit in front of the fire and think of my end, of my death, of leaving this world for good.
It was Peeta. It always had been.