Katniss wakes up screaming, her mind ringing with fractured images that are all too familiar and just as horrifying as they were in real life- grotesque mutts tearing at the flesh of a screaming boy, fire ravaging the skin of hundreds of men and women, her own sister's last screams. She is shaking and trying to get her breath back when she feels Peeta's strong arms around her. She is startled, and for a moment looks at him with total confusion and unrecognition. Then she is flooded with relief and a feeling of security that is still so surprising and foreign to her.
"Shh. Shh. It's okay," he murmurs, smoothing her hair from her face, kissing her forehead. They stay locked together while she chokes back the last of her tears and the morning light streams in the bedroom window.
"Peeta," she says at last, turning to him. "These nightmares… I can't live with them anymore. I just can't." She is distraught, her hands grasped onto his so tight her knuckles have turned white.
"Katniss," he whispers calmly. He has soothed her like this many times before, knows that she has given so much of her strength to the world that she has so little left for herself. "Don't say that. You're a fighter, you always have been. Neither of us would be here if it wasn't for that fire in you." She quickly averts her gaze, and her breathing begins to speed up again. Stupid. He should know better than to bring up the past, to remind her of the horrors they have barely scraped through together.
"It's over," he says gently, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear, his hand lingering against her cheek. "Nothing can hurt us anymore. I know how much the memories hurt, believe me, but we can't let them stop us from feeling safe now. We can't let them win." She knows he's right. He is always right, his words always exactly what she needs to hear. "We aren't broken, Katniss."
In the afternoon, Peeta goes out for a walk with a sad, hazy look in his eyes that Katniss knows means he wants to be by himself for a little while. It's rare that he wants to face his loss alone- they have learned to cling to each other, to illuminate each other's darkness, to intertwine their grief so closely in an attempt to persuade themselves of the truth they cannot yet believe: that they will never again be torn apart. But there are certain kinds of hurt they cannot share- though war has scarred them both, each of their wounds are different.
Katniss doesn't want to dwell on her own pain, to think of the sister she has lost and the countless others who suffered at her hands. At times like these, when she feels an overwhelming homesickness and longing for what has long been destroyed, she opts for hunting. The cool wind in her face and soft pad of the grass underfoot serve as a sharp reminder of the immediacy of the physical world that exists, that she has helped save, and her hunting skills are by now so refined that when it comes to the time of the kill, she can tune out every thought that churns and spits in her mind. But today the idea of taking another life, even that of a helpless small animal, faintly nauseates her. The thought of death is too harshly imprinted on her mind for her to put herself anywhere near it.
Katniss isn't much of a reader- it's Peeta who keeps small stacks of dog-eared paperbacks in every room, who whispers stories in her ear that lull her to sleep when she needs his voice to remind herself that she is safe- but she resolves to find a book she once started and now can barely remember. Anything to try to distract herself.
She paces through the creaking floorboards of their empty house, looking for the book. She was sure she'd put it down on the dusty desk in the corner of the bedroom, but it's not here, and the drawer below it is locked. They keep all of their keys hanging up beside the front door, and it doesn't take her long to find the right one. When she turns it in the lock, the drawer springs open as though it has been waiting for her, and she is so confused by what's inside that she opens and closes it again to make sure she has it right, that this isn't just a trick of the light or some kind of illusion.
The drawer is filled with paintings of her, stacks of them, some in relatively good condition and others that are old, crinkled, and faded with time. It's only when she actually looks at what each painting contains that she realises what they mean. There are some of her from what must be years ago. Her throat turns dry when she finds one of her much younger self, smiling happily, having not yet been made to know what it is like to lose everything you love. No, she reminds herself. Not everything.
When Peeta comes home he finds Katniss sitting cross legged on the floor with the paintings spread around her. He sits beside her and picks up one of the newer ones, portraying her sleeping in their bed, her hair loose and sprawling from her head like a halo, illuminated only by a single bedside candle.
"I did this one a couple of weeks ago," he says softly. "I couldn't sleep."
She looks at him. In her hands she holds a painting of her and Prim, laughing and hanging up their laundry outside their old home while their mother is just barely visible through the window. "This is my favourite," she murmurs.
He smiles. "Yeah," he says, "yeah, I like that one too. There's another one like that in here somewhere…"
For the rest of the afternoon their troubles are forgotten as they go through the paintings, quietly discussing their own recollections of each moment they portray until they become so intertwined their memories cannot be separated. Through these relics of their past, he helps her finally begin to turn her gaze to the future.
Later, Katniss helps Peeta bake a loaf of bread (yet again- the process seems to soothe him so much that she can never complain), and when the dough is ready for kneading, he steps aside.
"Like this?" she asks, fumbling with the dough.
"Yeah, kind of," he says. "You have to flick your wrists. Like this." He stands behind, his arms around her waist to guide her hands.
She smells like flour, and like earth, and like the other scent that just belongs to her, that he could never put a name to but that has haunted him for as long as he can remember. He puts his face against her neck, breathing her in. She stops kneading.
He reaches up and undoes her braid, lets her hair fall down her shoulder, runs his fingers through it. When it's smoothed out and his hand is at the small of her waist where her hair ends, he begins tracing patterns on her skin with his fingertips, like a secret code only she can understand.
She turns around, and they kiss, soft and sweet and lingering. They are living in a world they built together and this is their language.
They forget about the bread.
That night, Katniss lies in Peeta's arms, and is really, truly content for the first time she can remember. Her happiness is a jewel that she doesn't know what to do with but knows is precious. All she can do is lie there and listen to the breathing of the boy she loves as he sleeps.
It sounds like home.