These will be quite a bit shorter than my normal installments, but Katniss and Peeta just won't get out of my head. Coupled with a hauntingly beautiful Appalachian melody (called My Father's Father) by the incredible Civil Wars, they're downright demanding. I imagine Katniss singing it to herself as she watches her life slowly take on the shape she thought she'd never live to see.
I know it's all been done before, but there is nothing new under the sun, people. So here's another installment to add to the growing pile of 'Katniss & Peeta grow together again' stories. If you're bored, move on. If you're not, give it a read. I'll be updating daily with another verse of the song (there are four total).
Enjoy.
I hear somethin' hangin' on the wind
I see black smoke up around the bend
I got my ticket and I'm going to go
home
Katniss watches.
She sits in a rocking chair, wrapped in a blanket, and leans her head against the window frame. The chill of late autumn creeps its way through the miniscule gaps between glass and wood and wraps itself around her form, fighting to sneak its way under the ratty quilt.
The old woman shudders and pulls the cloth tighter about her thin shoulders. Exhausted eyes blink slowly, almost deliberately, as they resolve themselves in the glass. She stares at the face and has to remind herself, once more, that the young, scarred, emotionless reflection is her own.
She supposes that the space between her house and Peeta's is quite beautiful; or, it would be, if she could perceive anything but a gray that is somehow more tired and more alien than her father's eyes. She knows the world outside the slightly frosted pane is afire with color from the lightest butter yellow to the deepest crimson, but she cannot see it. Not really. Not without –
She grabs the careless thought and throttles it as she would a groosling. The motion is familiar, even if her hands do not move. She puts it away in the game bag of her thoughts, to be brought out and dealt with later.
When the snow begins to fall, she slowly notices a difference. The scattered white makes the dark gray orange again.
Muted. Like the sunset, she thinks, and can't help when she looks into Peeta's window.
He is standing there in the warm light of his kitchen, kneading some speckled dough. He punches it and a puff of flour floats up, making him sneeze into the crook of his left elbow. When the sneeze has subsided and he opens his bright blue eyes to see her sitting there, staring at him, Katniss finds that she can't breathe.
She is confused when he grins sardonically at her, but then realizes that the old/young woman in the window is smiling in a very, very small way, too.