He watched the two braids slowly morph into one. Watched as she slowly stopped singing in school until one day when she was eleven and stopped altogether. Watched her ribs show through her tattered shirt as she turned into flesh stretched over bone. He stood with her on that stage. Feared for his life in that chariot when they were set on fire. He was there when she became their girl on fire. He stood dumb folded (and admittedly brainwashed) when an entire rebellion asked her to be its poster girl, its darling hope.
They'd been together through the worst of it. Held each other when the world had crumbled around them.
And he loved her. Had to. He always had, hadn't he? It wasn't the tracker jacker venom ever present in his mind that prevented him from taking the primrose flowers and planting them where they belonged.
The flowers sit in his kitchen, a notion his mother would have been horrified with had she not been burnt to a crisp, until they too begin to wilt. Just like his family. Just like little Prim.
He doesn't see her. Sae says she doesn't move hardly. Sits there all day. Can't even be bothered to change her clothing.
Peeta keeps busy. Cleaning. Baking. Trying not to strangle the girl next door.
Delly visits sometimes. Sweet Delly who always has a kind word or a lovely nostalgic story. But he usually scares her away with his muttering. She's a champ though and is usually there for him just as Sae is there for her.
Sometimes he hates her.
Other times a familiar feeling of love washes over him. It's easy to slip into that old feeling of loving her. Comfortable. What he felt before and even during the games. Not after. After the games that love he held for her felt tainted. Wrong. Forced.
He tries to draw her.
Above the bakery in the room he shared with his brothers? Sure, there was a notebook worth of sketches all dedicated to her. A simple dandelion in her calloused hands. A girl in a meadow with a small and rare smile. A girl at the back door of the bakery, a scruffy bag hanging at her side filled with squirrels.
Never her in the woods. He'd never been in the woods before the Hunger Games and after he was much less inclined to think of the dense forest that trapped him in that nightmare. Besides, he wasn't meant for the woodland like her and Gale.
He tries to draw her. He really does. He can get her braid and that's it.
Just as the woods were not meant for him he begins to suspect she was not meant for him.
As the winter slowly rolls in he burns all of those braid drawings. She wasn't the fierce and sweet girl who sang in class. He wasn't the bakers son, popular and one of the friendliest kids in school.
He was Peeta and she was Katniss.
When he asks Delly to sit one day so that he can draw her he knows what he feels for his old friend, whatever that may be, is real. What he felt for Katniss was a boy's fantasy.
Not love.
And maybe that's okay.
