It's late morning. She's paring katniss roots on the kitchen table. They're in her house.
i would have waited for you, you know, he says, his voice quiet. She understands. Past informs the present, or something like that, and his father waited for someone else and then came his mother, and that was that. Three boys and unhappiness festering like a tree trunk, rotted in the middle. (Everything leads back to the woods.) He doesn't look at her and she slices her finger with the edge of the blade.
That was always his problem. He says things and expects her to look at him and judge him, and all she can think is that she was never good enough for him in the first place. (Not the real him. Before the Capitol. Before the Games. Before.)
She doesn't say anything. A bird taps at the sill of the window, looking for seed. Prim doesn't feed the birds any longer.
i can peel, he says. you're bleeding.
This is how communication functions now: Haymitch drinks until he can't see straight and falls asleep on the floor of his house; she spends days not speaking; and Peeta talks too much (to everyone, to himself, to the other parts of himself that don't belong).
He doesn't talk when he's at her house. Just spends his time kneading dough on the floured countertop with his dusted knuckles. Bread dough, pastry dough, anything he can bury the tips of his fingers into, anything yielding. It reminds him of gentleness. (It reminds her of flesh.)
She whittles arrows in the meantime, and they don't speak. The windows are left open, the hum of cicadas loud enough to drown out anything they might be feeling. She makes weapons she isn't quite ready to use, and he bakes food for everyone else in the district to eat.
you're quite a pair, Haymitch growls over a hangover. She slides bottles of white liquor across the floor and doesn't smile. star-crossed lovers.
She hates the term.
Maybe it fits.
She doesn't know if she loves him (that's a lie, she does), but the nights she can't sleep, she sits on the stoop of his house and watches him through the window. Or listens for the sound of his breathing, light and uneven on the night breeze.
The honeysuckle rustles against the side of the house, and her feet grow cold. The spring planting hasn't grown roots. The dirt still clumps in her hand. She has never planted anything worth staying (always Prim); killing for sport's always been her better feature.
Peeta tries his hand, and the primrose bush outside her house is scraggly and thin. The earth is hardier than the both of them.
She keeps a knife with her for those visits. There are still wild dogs in the woods. She hears them.
Peeta laughs over mid-morning breakfast, over weak, bitter coffee and cold toast. you don't have to stay here. in the victor's village. you can stop pretending.
She takes a long draught of her cup of coffee and savors the burnt taste on the back of her tongue. There aren't any words for this either. They've given speeches, both of them, and lied, and occasionally slipped the truth. The war has stopped, but the cannons are still loud outside the brick walls of their houses. She's waiting for something to feel like home again. Or peace, if home is too much to ask for. She knows he's waiting. It's unfair.
She's never been fair.
i'm not pretending. not on purpose.
His laugh is cold. i guess that's what I get then. let me know when you know if you're lying to me.
The line of his jaw is pronounced, and she reaches out with a finger to trace the underside. His eyes close at her touch. It's never been fair. She knows that.
She presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth and says, that's the best i can do.
i know, katniss. i'm just tired of not having answers.
She squints, and the wind blows grit against her cheeks.
She's drunk the first night she invites him into her bed. (Oh, not that way.)
It's been a night of terse conversation with Haymitch, punctuated more with shots of white liquor than revelation, and she stumbles towards her house late at night with the sky blurring together with the roof of her house, and the lights looking gold and celestial overhead. Nothing artificial like the Capitol, but pure. Holy.
It doesn't touch her, but she feels good enough to get that close.
The old phones are tinny, the lines thin, and she listens to it ring and ring. Her teeth scrape the edge of her bottom lip, and it bleeds a little. The sting is good. Memorable. Familiar. When he picks up the phone, his voice sounds strange. Like he's picking up the phone from three years ago. Like this isn't real.
hello?
come over, she says.
His feet are cold when he slides under the covers next to her. His hair's grown long and when she runs her fingers through it, it's softer than she remembers.
He closes his eyes and sighs.
His breathing is uneven. She matches hers to its jagged rhythm.
She rolls over onto her side, slips her leg between his, her hands clasped around his chest.
is this all right? he asks. She can't see his face. The little light that comes through the window just illuminates his profile. She's forgotten the smooth lines of his face, the touch of softness in it.
She falls asleep first. It's the first time she sleeps through the night in a long time.
The window for penance has passed. He knows that.
There's a list of sins he's collected against himself, and she's somewhere on the list. Maybe he's just working to redeem whatever good part of him is left. She's quiet upstairs, and there's no food in the cupboards, and his hands are shaking.
Worse this morning than other days.
(He tells Haymitch once, or thinks about telling Haymitch. The man pours him a tall glass of liquor, and he sits and sips at it, and doesn't talk.
christ, it's more obvious now than ever, Haymitch says, dryly.
He doesn't ask any questions, just watches the way Haymitch's mouth turns up at the corners. He can't help wondering how long they're supposed to wear these assigned mantles – mentor, tribute, volunteer, lover, ally, enemy – but sometimes he recalls the feeling of her throat under his hand, and it takes the entire glass to wipe it from his memory.
you think she'll forgive me?
you think you'll forgive yourself?
does it matter?
then what does it matter if she forgives you or not? Haymitch snorts.
He pours another bit of liquor for himself, and doesn't ask any more questions. They're rebuilding. They're supposed to be fixing themselves.
There are no ablutions left. The land is dry. The skin on the back of his hand is still healing.)
She leaves her hair loose and doesn't go hunting. Lives off of katniss roots and other plants for a while. The picking, she doesn't mind.
The thought of hunting or traps leaves her mouth dry, makes her see the thick blood against Snow's white beard or the glassy delicate wetness of a rabbit's eye. She doesn't look at her reflection anymore. Not even in the windows.
The truth is he slips out of her bed and there's an empty pang in her chest and she carves the edge of the knife into the butt of her palm. They're supposed to be better than this now. Better than blood, and leaving, and violence.
The war is over.
(Two days later, after dinner, he catches her on the way into the makeshift town they've established, and he sees the scar on her palm.
i didn't want to overstay, he says. And she nods, her face betraying nothing.
i understand.
katniss. Her name is still another flimsy thing floating on the wind, like dandelion seeds blown from the boll.)
It's midnight, and she can't sleep. The lights are off.
There's a frantic knock at her door and she runs downstairs, the grooved knife handle a comfort in her hand, but it's only Peeta. His face looks especially gaunt in the thin moonlight, his cheekbones prominent through the skin, and she wonders if he eats enough.
He wipes his hands against the front of his thighs. I wanted to bring you something, but I didn't know what.
She furrows her brow. What? What are you talking about?
I wanted to bring you something. I'm sorry. I love you.
Her hands cup his face, and she stills. He loves her – she still doesn't know what that means, or what is expected of her in return. Is that simply a statement? Is she allowed to let it sit without replying? No, love is something more insidious: it burrows, and it festers, and she has to address it or it'll possess something – possess her – and they will never be able to move on; or, maybe, it is weakness, or a twisted form of strength, or something she has never learned to equip; the word is short enough to hang her. She shakes her head, and her hair is tousled from lying in bed and trying to sleep, and he doesn't look anywhere but her eyes.
You don't have to say anything, he says.
I don't know what to say, she says, and it comes out as a hiss. Everything she says still feels like a counterattack. Like someone will burst through the door and remind her she's still being watched by thousands of other people, too invested in her own false shadow of happiness than anything else.
You don't have to say anything.
Her teeth click together. I don't want you to go, she says. Is that enough? A long pause. I'm – she bites down hard on her lip. I don't want you to go. That's unfair.
Is that love?
Her right hand trails further down his neck, index finger barely able to feel the thready pulse beneath the skin. She leans in, her nose brushing his, and kisses him once. Softly. Chastely. The way children kiss – pressing their lips against each other, closed-mouthed and dry.
I don't want to hurt you, he says.
She leans in, presses another kiss to his mouth. His jaw tics. He doesn't move.
It's okay, she says.
The third kiss is less clumsy, and she keeps her hand against his jaw, waiting for his mouth to open to her; it's new steps to a dance they've already done, and his hands slip into her hair then, just as she licks against the edge of his lips, just as her tongue slips into his mouth and his throat gives a soft, low noise that sends a tingle up her spine.
Is that love?
She pulls away from him and his blue eyes seem exceptionally dark. It doesn't make her scared. Instead, her hand moves down to take his, and she curls her fingers around his and smiles.
What do you want to do? he asks.
They shift to the floor, still clothed, hands delicately grazing each other's faces. They kiss, and shift along the floor, and she wonders how she could have forgotten how sweet the weight of his body could be, leaning just so heavy against her; she forgets the taste of his mouth, and the way that he kisses, soft with a hint of the demanding underneath it; she forgets the quiet sound of creaking wood and finding each other's weaknesses.
I'm so sorry, he says, when they pull apart. She rests her forehead against his, and their breathing is loud in the dark.
She kisses his forehead, and his hand tremors.
(Is that forgiveness?)
The morning comes. They wake a few hours later, asleep on her living room floor, staring up at the ceiling.
His hand is curled against the line of her hip.
What do we do?
Tomorrow.
He stays, and stays, and stays. It becomes a pattern of behavior. (It always was a pattern of behavior.)
She smiles – not as much as would be noticeable, but smaller ones; tiny gems that escape once or twice during the day, that catch the light and catch Peeta off-guard and surprise Haymitch. She does not write her mother. He does not loiter at the unofficial stones he's decided stand in for his parents and brothers.
There are small fires, and burning coals, and warm hearths. (He considers walking over the coals once. To prove something. She doesn't say anything.)
The clocks in the house stop keeping time.
The dandelions are carried over from the neighbors, busy planting crop yields for themselves and for the District.
They spread across the front lawn of her house, erupting in bright yellow and white.
He tells her he loves her. He stays.
She starts to head back into the woods.
On his birthday, she sits naked on the edge of the bed and waits for him to wake up. He presses a kiss to her bare shoulder, his glee barely disguised, and she laughs.
Wait, she says.
The knife slides easily into his hand.
It was a part of me, she says. Now it's yours.
(Is that love?)
Thank you.
This is what they keep: dried herbs in the pantry, and the memorial book on the coffee table, secrets somewhere in the distance between his lips and hers, or, sometimes, locked within tight embraces during nightmares.
They keep watch.
Time slips through their fingers, and she forgets the rules of the game – one of them, anyway, but there are others – and the memories are buried and grow roots of their own. Weak, scraggly things that grow stronger the more years pass by.
She doesn't forget, but she doesn't remember.
She kisses him, and he sleeps in her bed, and he stays, and she stays, and this is a truth unto itself. (And the truth, she's learned, is a difficult thing to win, and a prize to itself.)
Maybe it's love, maybe it isn't, maybe she'll never know when it is or when it isn't, but the truth is he holds her, and the dandelions grow in the yard, and the sun sets and rises again, and it's enough.