It's Katniss and Peeta for me, thank you. I try my best not to focus on the romance here, though I do like it very much, and do not like what Suzanne Collins did with it T.T
This story really doesn't sound like me. It sounds more like the books than me.
a flower's promise
We can't run from these ghosts forever. We can't let them chase us. Every time I turn, they're still there behind us with their fangs and claws—still waiting, as near as yesterday. I feel them breathing...
She woke from cyclic nightmares with screams on her lips—screams that didn't end even when light flooded her eyes.
It was smoke, smoke that smelt of the broken yesterdays that they thought they had left behind forever. Smoke, blurring the walls, blurring the windows, among long shadows cast by the dawn.
The flames were in the garden. Flames that engulfed the bushes beneath the window, raging across the garden of months' work, bringing everything down in crumbling blackness.
She felt as if the world were melting away around her. She feared that she would watch all this alone, her world of hope vanish into ash and soot.
Then there was that arm about her shoulders, as always—still smelling a little like the loaves he made yesterday night.
It must have hurt, more than I could understand, to have pain they inflicted upon you because of me. Because they wanted something from me.
You hated me at one point for it.
Why don't you still hate me?
Because you are the reason I survived.
A year ago.
The pillars of the Capitol are white and tall. When he looks at the night sky, he knows what is coming, a nameless terror. He tastes it in the alien food they offer, the false smiles that shine through those hazel windows around the table.
But in him, there is a gentle, mysterious warmth—a warmth that he safeguards from the world in his heart. And because it's all he has, he takes hold of it. It makes him smile.
It's a little like home, isn't it? A little like the ovens that Father used to stoke. Coals of our district. Coals from the blood mines, coals that bake the loaves, coals that are the reason we are warm at the end of the winter. I remember, mistily, scorching some bread to help her. I burnt my hands in the fire once.
Somehow he can smile, even though Father no longer stands tending the ovens. He glances down at the Capitol loaf in his hands. Baked in another oven, another world. A world of cold marble pillars and gilded drapery.
His smile is true and justified.
If they can bake, then there must be some warmth here, too—isn't that so? Even if it's so cold. So...dying. There must be something here, worth living for.
There is an oven here, somewhere. Warmth. And fire. Coal fire. Katniss.
He is in a forest, untouched by the winter, for it is populated with firs. There are far and unidentifiable voices through the branches, voices of creatures he can't see, calling out to tell him something.
He leans a little further, and hears their song.
They are saying that it will end. All these tears will end, and nothing can take that hope from you.
Mockingjay voices.
First day of forever.
The venom is seeping into his head, wrecking the world within his mind. The forests are growing claws—they melt, the firs moaning. The blood, his blood, is drowning the stars from the pristine dome above.
In the glacial winter of inhuman pain, his hold on that warmth becomes a grip, a clutch, a plea.
He watches the flowers die in the snow and the woods tearing into shreds, her face's every flaw drawn out, extrapolated, expanded, to fill the mold of a monster. He is forgetting that smile—how can he love this mask of a woman, this monster hiding behind a shadow?
The trees are crumbling around him. But not because they're burnt. He watches the firs crumble with decay in the deathly fingers of the cold, finally succumbing to a winter that will never end.
Snow, so much snow.
The birds, the Mockingjays—they are traitors, because though half their blood is from the earth, half of it is from the marble prisons of the Capitol. They are tearing in two and falling from the branches, and their voices have died in screams.
He watches as she is exposed before his eyes for every hate, every downfall, every deed and greed and sin. He watches her turn into another mutt.
That is who she really is! That is who I must hate to the core!
Look at the way she sends the wasps after me! Look at the way she drugs me, the way she glares at me with fire in her eyes!
Fire. I burnt my hands in the fire.
Then, he falls into a world of black and grey twilight. Though he screams for it not to happen, he is forgetting everything else. The night they spent together in the cave. The song in the treetops. The smile she smiled for him. The pearl he gave to her. The name of everyone but one—because there is this name Katniss that he is supposed to hate forever.
It's so cold. Every breath is heavier than the one before.
Snow. Nothing but snow.
He feels himself, slowly, scattering in the wind.
I might as well die. I want to die. Die.
But though he is wasted and ragged and almost-dead—he suddenly realizes that the cold is not everywhere, dizzying and overwhelming as it is. There it is—that warmth again.
He cannot walk on. It exists. There's a little spark in his heart—just like…like knowing that there are ovens in the Capitol. Coal…fire. There's that song, one that he simply cannot place.
It will end.
He tries to reason, to tell himself why he should die—but it's tugging at something in his wasted heart, something that hasn't yet crumbled with the firs.
It will end.
There is warmth there. And though he can't remember what that warmth is, though he can't remember why he's clinging to it—clinging so tight that his fingers are blistered—he doesn't let go.
It will end, and no one can take that hope from you.
Even though the mockingjays are dead, their voices are immortal.
Now.
Now he knows what that warmth was. This young woman who stands now ever beside him—she kept him alive.
He remembers that day in the pale gleaming hospital, when she reached out for him at last, eyes hoping for an embrace—smiling. Smiling to see him. Like he had always wanted her to.
He remembers how he lunged at her with hate in his eyes, how he almost let himself murder her.
He didn't recognize the warmth when he saw it.
Since then, she has never blamed him. Since then, she has glared and snapped and frowned, but she has never blamed him.
She blinks the tears from her eyes, kneeling among the charred primrose bushes, searching in the blackened soil for a hope that fell among the roots and sank away.
The girl who was on fire. He sees that fire whenever she smiles—but those moments are rare and far between. Her flame has dwindled, but still it burns in that heart of hers, refusing with all its might to die.
Like the coals in the oven—glowing warm and beautiful.
He asked for an engagement just a week ago, and she hasn't answered yet. But she allows him into her room anyway, so they don't have to dream alone.
Part of her hesitance must be for fear, he figures. But things have changed, and there is nothing to fear, is there?
Only fear of her own imprisonment, of the motherhood that she watched her own mother suffer so palpably for.
He tells her that he finds it strange and beautiful that every district has its own special bread. Like pieces of their identity. Something that forms a little of who they are. Is it because it is the symbol of sustenance?
And then she asks, isn't it strange that everything we do is ultimately for want of money, or power—
Or stability, he puts in, gently as he can. For a sustainable joy. For sustenance. All these things are because we want to survive, to rise, to make a change, a mark. To be remembered.
Self-preservation and persistence must be a part of every soul, then—right? An important part. The part that doesn't want to let go and let death come. The part that keeps us coming back. Again and again. Living. And defying. And growing.
"Katniss, I—"
That is when he decides to tell her that he lived because of her. That he chose not to die, because of her.
And she glares back, and says that he is stupid for that—stupid for suffering for her, stupid for loving her this much, stupid for thinking she's worth it.
But he can see, by the way her eyes shimmer, that she is harboring tears, tears she will not shed.
Their silence is filled with the rustling of ash, maybe the sounds of rebuilding efforts somewhere a little further away, on the next street.
She finally admits to him as well. That he must stop suffering for her, because she wants to stop owing him for things she cannot repay. Owing him for the bread, those five years back. For saving her life every time. For being so madly noble for an egocentric jerklike her.
"But you don't owe me anything!" he answers. "You understand, don't you?" He sighs within her silence. "You've sacrificed yourself before. For your sister."
From where she kneels she swallows, and doesn't want to agree. Prim is gone. Burnt. Dead. Now the primroses are burnt and dead too. The herbs of healing. The green grass that came—curious, uninvited—from the Meadow. All dead in the fire.
But then she does know. She did do that for Prim.
It hurts so much, to know he did the same for her.
His fingers curl, gently, through her hair. "You understand. You made that sacrifice because you loved her. Because you wanted her to live, more than you wanted to yourself." Then his hands come to take hers—and she doesn't know if it's just a part of another act, to get her to forgive herself. "I love you that much."
She turns away, wishing the ashes wouldn't swirl like that, like ghosts of children who will never play on the swings.
"Does love grow so fast?" she asks then, heart aching, wanting to understand the strength in him.
He gazes vaguely at the scorched ruins of the garden, the herbs that will never heal anyone again. Down he comes, kneeling beside her. Searching in the earth for something as well.
"Yes, it does," he murmurs in response, "if we give it what it needs."
And his fingers show her a single primrose seed, dirty with soot, but carrying a promise yet.
There are times when they wonder if things would have been better, in another future—if there had been no war. No sacrifice. No beginning. Maybe some things that should never have been done would not have been. Maybe there would still be a District 12, a civilized Capitol, a thousand more families still alive to celebrate the beginning of spring.
I instigated this. I lit the spark. Peeta and I. We began the war.
Yet that would never have been the case, would it?
Change can be such a bitter thing, when you know nothing can ever be the same again, that nothing can ever be viewed the way it was before. And who is to know if this is an improvement? Who is to know that this rebellion has brought us a better age? Paylor is a better president, but she is human. And even if she carries the task, she will end someday. And someone will come to take her place. Then someone else. Until another dictator ascends, to raze the world to the ground once more.
Just the way the dynasty beneath our feet was destroyed. America. Just like the people before that.
Haymitch seems to know it well, the principles of the world. Things come in circles. The old and flawed, will fall for the new, and this in turn will fall again. Worlds end for new worlds to begin—until perfection has risen, and that will be when the last human is dead. Again and again. It never ends.
Humans are simply filthy that way.
The old drunkard. He knows it never ends, just the way the seasons progress through the frost and fronds and afternoon rain, the leaves changing and falling and sprouting fresh once more. His daily intoxication isn't a problem, if you know why it happens; he's trying to run from that circle. Trapping himself in a circle of his own. Then his flighted geese will flee that circle in a straight flight, and show him something that he ignores.
They meet their old friends every year, at the festival of Snow's end. And how appropriate, that name, for a day at the end of winter.
They watch the old champions, hugging each other and sobbing for a joy that they all share and understand. They see President Paylor at the brilliantly-lit balcony, her gaze austere and empty because she cannot let her mind be seen.
She will meet her prep team again, and they will talk of the things they remember, of the brilliant man named Cinna whose soaring, sparkling dreams brought them together. And he, the humble baker's son, will be there to hold her hand, calling her to dance, falling in love all over again.
Then they will watch as Gale arrives with a new girl, and his eyes seem to smile as they pass. They watch as Annie drifts away, gazing into the turquoise pool below the fountain, and wonder if she is thinking of Finnick's eyes.
And at last, together, people of every district will sing Rue's lullaby in its haunting, rising tones. She leads because it's only right, because it helps her feel like she's doing her lost friend a little justice—and he is always beaming brilliantly at her from the audience, as if to tell her without words that her voice is beautiful.
The event has only happened once, but both of them know they won't get through it a single time without shedding a tear. Seeing old friends brings the memories back, just like the Mockingjay melodies.
Half engineered and unnatural. But half belonging, truly, to the world of the wild. Just like me. And my friends. And my home. And my world.
But the firs haven't died, and high in their evergreen boughs, the Mockingjays are still singing, peering between the fir needles and trying to learn to talk.
You said once that your favourite colour was green. But that never really matched up with my expectations—because green is the colour of life, and you are a killer.
But I can't forget that green is the colour of the forest home that nurtured you. Just like mine was orange, orange with the glow of bread on silver trays, orange in the oven fires. Coal fires.
He doesn't tell her, but he wishes all the time that they could relive their first Hunger Games parade.
His dreams are mainly dark and horrible—but they are interspersed with short, happy ones.
In them, he takes her hand and sits waiting in the carriage, dressed like a god, her grip tight around his hand. Then the other tributes rise to take the stage—not strangers now, but friends. All friends.
They see themselves on the screen. They are beautiful. King and queen.
And how he wishes he could live that hour again—but it's slipped away, just like everything else. All he has left are shreds of memory, and he doesn't know whether he wants to keep them forever, or let them scatter into the wind like dandelion seeds.
"Well, the garden was a mess anyway."
He presses the primrose seeds into her hand, and makes a promise—
That somewhere here, somewhere in this garden, there are seeds hidden in the ground, waiting for the spring to come, waiting to grow into trees, tall trees that might house Mockingjays and their ancient songs. He promises all this, with nothing but a gaze and a kiss.
And his smile is so optimistic, so certain—that she finds her eyes unable to hold those tears any longer.