Tonight, it's not the grisly horrors of the arena that startle me from my restless sleep, it's a rolling pin.
"You won't believe who tried to sell me a dead squirrel this week. That eldest Everdeen girl, you know the one that looks like a spooked bobcat?" My mother's voice shrills into my ears, making them buzz even in remembering it.
My nerves prickle with awareness, but I stare intently at the fondant I'm rolling out, smoothing every imperfection. Mother stands at the solid oak kitchen table, covered in flour from wrists to biceps, pounding the fight out of a bolillo loaf with ghost-white fists. In response, my father's voice comes from the back door: "How much did she want for it?"
Mother snorts. "Eight fifty! Can you believe it?"
I distinctly remember this conversation even as I'm dreaming the memory.
"That other kid charges me nine," Father says, "and that's still a good deal. He's the tall surly one. Isn't he her cousin?"
"No, he's not," I answer too quickly. Mother looks up from the table and father peers in through the doorway. "He's a Hawthorne." I try to look matter-of-fact, nonchalant.
"They look exactly alike anyway," mother grumbles. "They all do out there, all those miners' kids. They all interbreed and have kids that are probably each others' cousins without even knowing it."
The thought of Katniss Everdeen breeding with anyone puts a sour taste in my mouth, not to mention the way my mother talks about her like she would a stray dog. The fondant in front of me is as flawless as any batch I've ever seen, but I smooth it feverishly.
"Next time she comes by, take her up on it. Squirrel makes great sandwiches. Besides, she's keeping her whole family alive now that her father's dead."
"Let her marry that Hawthorne mutt, he can support both their mutt families on nine dollars per squirrel."
Suddenly the rolling pin hits the tile floor, jarring me awake. I throw my gaze around in confusion, realizing that my family's bakery has disappeared. In its place are the plush accommodations of my sleeping quarters on the train.
I'm still prickling with some kind of restlessness I can't quite place. I help myself to some milk from the dining car and pace the halls with it, not wanting to sit still for some reason. The train sways around me and I practice taking steady, balanced steps on my new leg. I need to learn to trust it again now that the floor moves beneath it.
I pause in the middle of the corridor, leaning against a wall for support and take another drag of milk from my glass. It feels like such a luxury, drinking milk. We used to save it just for the bread, and here I am drinking half a carton of it.
That's when I hear screaming. I set the milk down on a table in a hurry, knocking it over before it's even settled, and rush down the hall. I dread the realization that comes: it's Katniss. Her door isn't locked but I practically bash it down in making a dramatic entrance, hoping to intimidate whoever is attacking her. In an absurd moment of fascination, I observe that she screams in a perfect, musical soprano laced with the expected amount of terror. "No!" She screams over and over. "No! Stop it!"
I throw on the lights to find her bed a thrashing, conflicted mass of quilts and sheets. Blood boiling, I grab one corner and pull them all off in one swift swipe, ready to tear off someone's head. But it's just her in there, flailing wildly with her eyes squeezed shut.
"Hey, hey, hey!" I lunge for her. One bare knee pummels me in the gut and I grab at it while her hands slap at my shoulders and neck. "Katniss! Wake up!"
"No! NO!" She screams shrilly. This is when I remember the pills Effie's been giving her. Waking her up will be an ordeal, I'm sure, but I know that if I don't stop her, someone will find us and think I'm the one she's screaming at.
Carefully but firmly, I pin one of her arms across her body and use the leverage to crouch beside the bed and drag her, struggling all the while, into my lap on the floor. She's all arms and legs for a while, fighting me with all the adrenaline she can muster, but I wrap both arms around her and spoon her body against mine to keep her from hurting either of us.
"It's ok, sweetheart, it's ok. Calm down. Just a bad dream." Later I'll relish the memory of how soft and slender she is in my arms, or how her neck smells as I whisper into her hair. But for now I've got to keep this deadly girl from doing what she does best.
"Katniss, it's Peeta. I've got you, you're all right. You're on the train and I won't let anyone hurt you." I say it over and over as she struggles and gasps, until finally she relaxes and slumps against me, dead weight.
"Peeta?" She rasps.
"Yes, it's me. I'm here."
She sighs and her head rolls to rest against my neck. She smells so good, like grass and running water. I wonder what I smell like to her... probably food. Or paint. I'm breathing hard from the exertion, straining to hear any approaching footsteps that might come to rescue Katniss from me. Thankfully, no one comes.
"It was the mutts, Peeta, they were..." Her voice trembles; her whole body is trembling. I ache for her, realizing what I've expected all along is actually true: at the core of all her strength and ferocity is a woman, a girl. Awake, she's a wiry, fearsome warrior, all spine and barriers. In the dark of night with her nightmares to reckon with, she's a frightened girl, the very one I grew up staring at in school.
Whether she would admit it or want it or not, whether she loves me or not, she needs me now. She seems to reaffirm this as she twists her body in my arms to turn her face into my neck. I release her hands and they reach, still trembling, around my body to grasp at the back of my shirt.
I take a moment to plant my artificial leg on the carpet, then rise with her in my arms to turn the lights out. "What were they doing? The mutts?"
"They had you, they were... I don't know, they... you were bleeding, so much blood," her voice catches and she gasps against tears that I knew would come. Her eyes squeeze shut, but the tears spill out anyway, down her smooth cheeks and onto my undershirt.
"It's all right Katniss, I'm fine." I keep my voice low and soothing as I gently lower both of us into her bed. She clings to me all the while, drenching my shoulder with her tears. I'm touched that it really was me she was afraid for, my pain that made her scream. I crush her to my chest and she clings even harder, beginning to sob in earnest.
"I'm sorry," she wails.
"No, you go ahead and cry," I hush her, swaying slowly back and forth. "I'm here." Given permission, she disintegrates into sobs that shake her whole frame, and I hold her together. She feels so small here in my arms, and I realize suddenly that intimidation can make a person appear larger than they really are. I wonder if she always cries like this at night, if she's been hurting in the darkness without me all these weeks. I hold her until it's over and she's hiccuping drowsily against me.
"I can't do this anymore," she sighs in exhaustion. Her breath washes her warm scent over my face and I breathe it in with eyes shut.
"Yes you can," I murmur into her hair. "You can do anything."
Her head shakes weakly against my chest. "No, I'm not strong like you, Peeta. You go through all this, but you keep going. Nothing throws you."
I laugh warmly. "That's because I have you to fight for, Girl on Fire."
She considers this for a long time, until I wonder whether she's fallen asleep. But then she says "I have no idea what I'm fighting for."
I don't know what to say, so I give her a squeeze. "Get some sleep then. Mornings always come too soon anyway."
Her hand closes on the neck of my shirt, grasping desperately at me. "Stay," she whispers. "Please."
I sink down farther into the bed with her and she turns to entwine one smooth leg with both of mine. Then just like that she's out. I pry her fingers off my shirt, massaging them open until they rest peacefully on my chest, then brush the damp hair out of her face. "Always," I whisper.