Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine. No infringement meant.
Timeline: Post-Mockingjay, Pre-Epilogue.

Chapter 1: Waiting for Katniss

We worked on the Book today. A train from District 4 came today, together with dried seaweed, salted fish - and a letter from Annie. With the amazing news that she had given birth to a son. Her son. Finnick's son. He looks like the perfect mash-up of Finnick, Annie, and -strangely- Mags.

We stuck the photo into the page carefully, waiting for our tears to stop falling before attempting to write in it.

"What can we write?" she asked. Words always seem so inadequate when we think of what to pen down. What we wish we could say to our friends, lost to us now.

Victims of war, they call them. Collateral damage. Our glorious dead. The Unforgotten Ones.

We called them friends. Allies. And all we know is that they are now gone, torn from their worlds unwillingly, leaving behind wide rents in the fabric of our lives. Tattered rags fluttering in the wind. Like Haymitch. Like Annie. Like Finnick's son.

Like us.

"Hope," I told her, as she continued to study the picture. "He's hope."

Her gaze at Finnick's son glazes over, and I know she's no longer with me, not right at this moment. She's gone away, remembering those days long past, but not long enough. Days together with Finnick in the Games. Or perhaps she's remembering fighting in the Capitol with him. The final moments that flashed by when she had a strange moment of empathy with Finn before the mutts got him.

Or maybe she's just taking one of those moments when she's just not there. Because the pain's too much, and you just have to shut down for a while. Just for a bit. Before the nightmares catch you and trip you up in the middle of the day, and you have to scream or lash out at someone for the excruciating pain that the memories bring you.

I know what it's like, for I do it too. It's alright. Dr. Aurelius explained to the both of us that we'd be having episodes like this for a while. "Not exactly blackouts, but an temporary escape," he told us. "It takes time."

I know from experience that she'll come back to me eventually. Just like she did. Just like we're both doing now. In the meantime, I wait, as I have always done. Waiting for Katniss.

I look at her face - so familiar, so beautiful - but her blank eyes remind me that she is damaged, just as I am damaged. The Games have reaped a harvest from us: four harvests from the both of us, two for each Games. I wasn't lying when I told Caesar that taking a life costs everything that you are. It does. And we have paid the Styx ferryman Charon's toll many, many times over. For it costs - oh how much it costs! - everything, everything, everything that you are to take an innocent life.

Rue. Foxface. Glimmer. Cato. Marvel. So many names. So many faces. And we've paid the toll, over and over again. Is it any wonder that we'd want to drink in a bit of the Lethe? To forget who we are and what we've done, even if it is for a while?

"Dandelion."

I look at her face. She's woken up again, her face tear-streaked but animated. She repeats again, "Dandelion."

"Yes," I tell her, reaching for her hand even as she stretches out for mine and pulled me to my feet. Surprised but yielding to her desires (for when have I not given her everything?), we step outside, and I see why: she wants to pull dandelions to press for the book. She doesn't need help, but these days, it's hard to get by without each other's presence.

She bends down to grab a careful handful of them, cowering under the shade of the primroses I've planted. They grow well in her garden, our garden, in the Victor's Village. Just like Prim should have grown here, in the Seam. Officially, we're still District 12 - but old habits die hard, even if the mines are no longer our sole source of income, and the villagers who have returned have brought with them the old names. The Seam. Greasy Sae. The Goat Man.

We return to the house, and pen down an entry for dandelions - how they emerge at the end of the cold winter, bringing spring with them. How they taste well in a salad, and how they bring rebirth and life with their seeds despite their fragile appearance. How they signify hope at the end of the dreary grey season. The cold season. The hollow, hungry season. She writes all this down in slow, careful handwriting, and sticks the stem of the dandelion near the bottom right of the page, signifying the end of the entry.

I stand behind her, stroking her hair as she writes. I love her hair - so long, so soft, so...perfectly Katniss. With her head bent over the book, all I can see is Finn's son's picture - smiling and standing, looking somewhat wobbly as he reaches out his arms towards the photographer. From my position, his head looks like it has hair... her hair.

My breath catches slightly with this sudden yearning in me, and I stop myself before I go too far. But it surprises me, this sudden want. Not for Katniss (for that never ends), but the jolt of envy of the dead that I feel. Envy of Finn, for his son, even though he's not here anymore. I force myself to relax, even as Katniss turns around and eyes me quizzically, having heard the change in my breathing.

I bury my face in her hair and breathe in the scent of her shampoo to mask my slip-up, and she gives me a small smile when I emerge from her tresses. "I think we're done for today," she says. I nod assent, and together, we close the book, and leave it on its place of honour, in the middle of the table, in the middle of the living room. In the middle of both our lives.

But only for now. Only for now. Because the book is nearly finished - or at least, we have finished with the beginning of the book.

That night, I watch her sleep, just like I have, countless nights before. I've always loved watching her sleep. To see her take breath - in, out, in, out. I watched her all those nights on the train. Helping her keep her nightmares at bay. Watching her helped keep me grounded and safe in a world without logic or reason.

I know I love her, and I know she knows I love her. I know she knows she loves me too. I see her love as she reaches for me every morning when she wakes up. I feel her love in her gaze when she thinks I'm not looking. I know she's not ready to face it. We're both not ready to deal with anything more emotional than sticking pictures in a scrapbook these days. But I know. And I'll wait for her, for us.

In my more self-pitying moments, I wonder if she loves me only because he's not here. If things had been different, if Gale had not been part of the war games - would she still have chosen me? Am I the consolation prize, the one who stayed for her? In times of self-doubt, Gale's words comfort me: Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.

And I know that she would have chosen Gale, had things remained the same in the Seam. When there was still coal to fire up. When there were still electrical fences to evade, and Peacekeepers to jolly around. When there was still Prim to think about.

But Prim is dead, and Gale is gone, and District 12 is no longer the same... and neither are we. The Reaping was well-named, empty husks that we are. We have poured out ourselves over and over again in the Games, but even though they're abolished, the Games isn't done with us yet, for it continues to reap our souls in nightmares and in panic attacks. Every bit of ourselves that we've won back - these dreams and hallucinations exact their pound of flesh from us.

Our continued existence is our defiance. Take our all, take everything, take our selves away from us again and again - and yet we still stand tall. We may be broken, but we are still here. And we will not be cowed.

Katniss shifts in her sleep, and moans softly. I stroke her hair, and she turns her face into my hands, settling down into sleep once again. The wings of my beloved are broken, but they are mending. I am mending. And once I am done mending, I want to build, just as others are busy rebuilding the Seam. I want to join our victor houses, to have one big compound. To have a huge garden, with primroses all around. To have a big lawn, so that our children can play.

I think I may be ready to dream again. Of houses and horses. Of weddings and bread toasts. Of little blonde boys and tiny fingers. But the wings of my beloved though mending, are still broken. And so I wait for my beloved patiently, as I have waited since I was 5. Waiting for her to turn around and catch my eye. Waiting for her to say hello. Waiting for her love. For Katniss.