This was a submission for Day 3 of the Prompts in Panem visual prompts week, a one-shot I was stuck on that sorted itself out when I changed the setting to the prompted location.
....
"What do you want from life?"
The question came out of nowhere, and yet, Peeta obviously knew that it also didn't. Not given where they were. Not given what day it was.
Katniss knelt on the ground, her eyes still focused on the stone in front of her. Peeta knelt next to her, holding her around the shoulders, offering silent comfort. Katniss always offered to come here alone, and Peeta always insisted on accompanying her. Some days he waited on the bench at the end of the row, giving her some privacy. Some days, like today, she let him come with her to the stone itself. While she still argued that he should let her come by herself, secretly she was grateful that he never did. She knew she needed him to support her, even if she wasn't ready to admit it.
They had been there for more than an hour, and Peeta knew they'd probably be there for a while longer. They usually were. Katniss often spent hours here when she had a bad day, and what other kind of day could today be?
Today was the anniversary, after all.
Primrose Everdeen
Beloved By All Who Knew Her
June 15, 1994 – March 27, 2012
Her eighteenth birthday. High school graduation. College. Medical school. Marriage. Children. A long and happy life. These were all things that Prim had missed out on, and every one of them ate at Katniss.
One year ago Prim had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, killed while walking home after spending the night at Katniss and Peeta's following their engagement party. Four days of police investigation and one tearful confession later and the hit and run driver had been revealed as Katniss's best friend Gale, who it turned out had always had a secret crush on Katniss and had spent the night after the party drinking, trying to drown the pain of watching her get engaged to another man.
Katniss had spent weeks after the funeral barely responsive. Even now, a full year later, she was still trying to put herself back together. She still had days when she couldn't get out of bed, and other days when all she did was come to Prim's grave and cry. She still blamed herself sometimes, believing that somehow she should have known that her friend's pain and rage would, through a quirk of circumstance, cost her her sister's life.
So when Katniss asked big questions about the purpose of life while staring at the grave of her sister, Peeta knew it didn't just come out of nowhere. He knew what she was thinking about. What she was always thinking about. What she couldn't stop thinking about.
He considered the question for a long moment before answering. "To be honest, I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you."
As was often the case lately when Peeta said something that could be construed as tender or romantic, Katniss reacted with annoyance. "I was being serious, Peeta," she snapped.
"So was I," Peeta said gently, rubbing her far shoulder with the hand that was draped there. "I know some people have grand dreams. They want to save the rain forests, or they want to walk on Mars, or something like that. I really don't have any big dreams like that. I never have. My dreams have always been simpler than that. I don't care if nobody knows my name. I just want to be happy."
"Then why didn't you just say that?" Katniss asked, still using annoyance and aggravation to avoid dealing with her real feelings. Anger she knew how to handle. Sadness she too often let overwhelm her, and love… love only lead to pain. "Why did you have to drag me into it?"
"Because you make me happy," Peeta said. Katniss rolled her eyes and tried to keep up her wall of annoyance; in her fragile emotional state it was the only thing holding the tears at bay. "I like to bake, I like to paint, and I love you," Peeta continued softly. "As long as I have those three things, I'll be happy. Now, I can bake anywhere there's a kitchen, and I can paint anywhere there's light, but I can only love you wherever you are. Between kitchens, light, and you, you're the only one that I could lose. So, if you're asking me what's the one thing I want most from life, it's you." He spoke so easily, so confidently, so genuinely. Not only did he know exactly what he wanted, but he wasn't afraid to share those desires, to bear his inner self to her. Part of Katniss burned with jealousy over that, for she could remember a time when she had felt that sure of herself, a time when the sister she had raised was alive and well and going off to school and she had a man who she had grown to love and trust despite all the emotional scar tissue she had built up over the years. A brief moment in time when her future seemed bright for the first time in over a decade. An all too brief moment that had ended abruptly less than a day after she had shared the best news she had ever had to share.
Peeta could see the emotions battling behind her stormy eyes. He was afraid she was about to turn in on herself again, so he tried to lighten the mood a bit. "Heck, give me you in a kitchen with good lighting and I'll be set for life."
The ghost of a smile flickered across her features, but Katniss remained somber. However, she did stay focused on the present. "All I ever wanted was to take care of Prim," she said after a long pause, reaching out and stroking her name on the stone. "For so many years, she was my whole life. And now, I just feel like I'm… aimless. Like I'm drifting. Like I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm doing it anymore."
Peeta had already known this, he'd have to be blind and stupid to live with Katniss for the past year and not know that, but hearing her say it herself was a step in the right direction, he hoped. Admitting there's a problem was the first step in solving the problem, right?
"Do you have anything you want to do? Any grand dreams you'd like to accomplish?" he asked her. "Do you want to lead an army or take down the government or something?"
Katniss shook her head. "No. The more I think about it, the more I can't come up with anything. Isn't that sad?" she asked, her voice starting to grow more frantic as she continued her self-destructive rant. "Isn't that pathetic? Prim had goals. Prim wanted to be a doctor. Prim wanted to help people. Prim would have made this world a better place, one patient at a time. But she can't do that now, because she's dead. I'm still alive, and I have nothing to do. Life is a gift, and I'm wasting it!"
Peeta tried to be reassuring. "Not everyone has a dream like that. I think it's okay to have smaller dreams."
"I feel like I owe it to her," Katniss said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I'm here, and she's not, and I owe it to her to do something with this opportunity that she never had."
"It's okay to just be happy," Peeta reiterated. "Prim would want you to be happy." At Katniss's skeptical look, he elaborated. "I know Prim wanted to be a doctor. But even more than that, she wanted to make you proud of her."
"Prim never had to work to make me proud of her," Katniss said.
"And you don't have to work to make her proud of you either," Peeta said. "Prim loved you, just as much as you loved her. As much as you wanted her to be happy, that's how much she wanted you to be happy. Think about it, why did you work so hard to make sure Prim got into a good pre-med program? Why was it so important to you that she could become a doctor?"
"Because that's what she wanted," Katniss said, not understanding Peeta's point.
"Exactly. You did it because it's what she wanted. You did it to make her happy. Not because it was important to you that she accomplish something great, but because it was important to you that she was happy. And she wanted the same for you." Peeta's voice faltered just the tiniest bit as he finished his thought. "We all want the people we love to be happy."
It was a long moment before Katniss responded, and again her voice was barely audible. "Part of me wants to be happy. Part of me is sick of being miserable all the time. Part of me hates myself for putting you through all of this.
"Katniss, you're not-" Peeta began before he was interrupted.
"Yes, I am! Don't try to deny it! I know what's going on, Peeta. I know I'm putting you through hell." She took a deep breath and shook her head, and when she spoke again her voice was sad and defeated. "I don't understand why you don't just leave me behind so you can finally be happy."
Deciding to take the risk, Peeta reached over to her chin and turned her head away from the gravestone until she was looking at him. He wiped some of her tears away with his thumb. "Didn't you hear what I said before?" he asked tenderly. "I can't be happy without you."
"I don't know if I can be happy," she said.
"You can, it'll just take time," he told her. When she didn't respond, he added in a desperate voice, "Let me help you, Katniss. I'll do anything to help you."
After a moment, Katniss replied, "Marry me."
Peeta sputtered for a moment, certain that he had misheard her. Or maybe imagined the whole thing. "W-What?" he stammered out.
Katniss swallowed heavily. She was never very good at expressing herself with words, but she needed him to understand her now. "I- I want to move forward. I want to live. I want the life we were planning a year ago. I don't want to live in the past anymore. I want to get started on the future." She reached out and took his free hand in her own. "You're my future, Peeta. You always have been. I think that's why I've been trying to push you away, because I didn't want my future anymore if Prim wasn't in it. I wanted to stay where she was, in the past. But I can't do that. It's killing me. Even worse, it's killing us. And you're right, Prim would hate it. Prim would want me to be happy. And you make me happy. You're the only thing left that does."
Peeta didn't know what to say. He was feeling too many things at once, thinking too many things at once. Finally he blurted out, "Do you want to say our vows here?"
Katniss blinked, dumbfounded. "What? In the cemetery?"
Peeta rushed to explain himself. "I mean, obviously we'll have to sign a license, and perform vows with a minister or a judge or something. But I was just thinking – if you want to – we could say vows to each other. Here. Now. And then, in a way, Prim could be at the wedding."
Once Katniss understood what Peeta was saying, she could feel her tears beginning to fall once more. Leave it to Peeta to take a horrible tragedy and a creepy graveyard and turn them into something beautiful. Something perfect. Beautiful and perfect, just like Prim. Just like him.
"We don't have rings," she blurted out. When she saw his face fall, she realized how she sounded. Like she was still looking for reasons to put off the wedding. "I mean, we need something to exchange. Something to symbolize a part of ourselves. I don't have anything with me."
Peeta understood her meaning. "All I have is lunch," he said, taking the bag he had brought and placing it between them. "I grabbed a few rolls before we left. I figured we'd be here a while."
Katniss smiled at him. "You always think of everything." She pulled out a roll and examined it. It was like everything else Peeta baked, a beautiful golden brown on the outside. She could only remember once when she'd seen anything Peeta baked that wasn't.
"Do you think we could start a fire?"
"What, here?" Peeta asked in surprise, looking around to see if anyone would see them.
"Just a little one," she said, looking up to meet Peeta's questioning gaze. "There was a time when a burned piece of bread saved my life. Now I want to give my life to you."
Peeta nodded in understanding. They didn't often talk about that night, when she had been close to giving up and he had saved her, but somehow it was always present between them. In a way they had been irrevocably bonded ever since that night, even if they never spoke again until years later. It was only fitting that the night they met, the night they bonded, play into their private wedding.
Together they gathered up sticks and twigs that had fallen from some nearby trees, and together with the wrappings from the rolls and the lighter Peeta always had in a pocket for lighting the ovens at the bakery, they made a small fire in front of Prim's grave.
Katniss was about to say something, but before she could Peeta took the roll she was holding and tore it in half, keeping one piece and returning the other. "I need some too. I'm giving my life to you too," he explained.
Katniss nodded, and he was sure he could see a small smile creep onto her face. She held her half of the roll over their small flame, and looked up into Peeta's eyes.
"Peeta, I love you. Never, never doubt that. Even when I suck at showing it. I promise I'll try harder. I'll try to be the wife you deserve. I can't promise I'll ever be okay, but I promise I'll never shut you out. And I'll love you forever." She smiled a small smile, and gestured to the headstones around them. "In front of all these witnesses, do you take me as your decidedly unlawfully wedded wife?"
Peeta returned her smile. "I do."
Katniss held up her half of the bread roll. It was nicely toasted, just a little blackened at the edges. "Then with this bread, I thee wed." She held the bread out to his lips, and he ate the piece, chewing and swallowing before he extended his own piece over the fire.
"Katniss, I feel like I've already loved you forever. I don't know how to not love you. I can't remember a time when I didn't love you, and I don't want to. I meant every word I said before: I want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you. You don't have to be okay and you don't have to be the perfect wife. All you have to be is you, and you'll make me the happiest man alive. I promise I'll take care of you, I'll stay with you when you can't get out of bed and I'll cry with you when the bad memories are too much and I'll make you laugh when you're sad. And I'll spend my whole life trying to make you as happy as you make me. So in front of all these witnesses, do you take me as your unlawfully wedded husband?" he finished, mimicking her words.
Katniss was crying again, but she smiled through her tears. "I do."
"Then with this bread, I thee wed," Peeta said, continuing to follow Katniss's lead for the formalities of their impromptu ceremony. He fed her his half of the roll. She chewed and swallowed, then flashed him the brightest smile he could remember seeing on her in a year.
"That's it," she said. "We're married. Husband."
The full weight of it finally hit him. He spoke in utter awe. "Katniss. My wife." He didn't get to say anything more, because Katniss closed the distance between them and crashed their lips together.
Her kiss was hungry, desperate, demanding. He returned it, in every measure. She was trying to make up for all the kisses they should have shared in the past year. He didn't think she needed to, but he didn't say anything, because the truth was that he had missed this. He had missed feeling like Katniss wanted him as much as he wanted her. He had missed the feeling of her hands in his hair, her tongue in his mouth, her legs draped over his. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her ass resting in his hands.
When they broke apart, both breathing heavily, Katniss was the first to speak. "Let's go home, Peeta."
He gave her a questioning look. "It's still the anniversary. Are you sure you don't want to stay out here a bit longer?"
Katniss just shook her head. "I'm glad Prim could be part of our ceremony, but she doesn't need to be there for our wedding night."
Peeta started for a moment, then grinned at his new wife. She grinned back at him. They shared one more quick kiss before they both stood. Peeta gathered his bag and the remaining rolls while Katniss stamped out their fire and kicked the ashes away. Then they walked hand in hand back to the car.
Not everything was fixed, of course. There would still be good days and bad. There would still be days when grief consumed her. They still needed to marry officially. Telling his mother that he had married by toasting bread at a cemetery was not an experience he was looking forward to.
But they were together. They always would be, and in a way they always had been. They were together, and on that day, that was enough.