Aw, poor Peeta. That last chapter was tough on him. But something really interesting happens in this one... What could it be? Hm...

How many times can I remind you? These characters and associated material belong to the ubiquitous Suzanne Collins, and the lyrics are credited as appropriate.

Happy reading!

Last time, in Smoke Rising...

Dr. Aurelius can tell that I'm running thin after a few runs, but he has me try one more time.

I feel so drained I can barely hold the remote to press play. Part of me wants to cry. I already know I will be spending the rest of the day in bed. But the clip plays, and I don't know if I'm just so defeated that I am watching everything from outside myself now, but I see the whole thing without a mutt or a shadow or a pause.

Katniss didn't light me on fire, but Cinna did. Then she held my hand, and we rode our chariot through the opening ceremonies. And I looked at her. And looked at her. And looked at her.

I don't remember this. What I remember is the hijacked version, and yet the Capitol clearly spent so little time and effort on reprogramming this memory. It's discouraging, knowing how much work must lie ahead of me. But the therapy works.

I can sort all this out. I can do it.

Slowly, carefully, I take the victory upstairs, and I let it sing me to sleep.

Smoke Rising Chapter 6: It's a Mistake

"I don't know what I wanna be yet
But I can show that I need to see this
No time for lies and empty fights
I'm on your side
Can we live a life of peace and happiness?
I don't think so
And looking I am scared to lose the things I love"
"You Fight Me," Breaking Benjamin

So, it turns out, Katniss and I fight. We fight a lot, actually. It's not every day, which I guess is good, but it's confusing. We can go days without any friction, just enjoying time together or even enjoying time apart. But then something happens – I bring breakfast and she insists she's not hungry, or I mention something about maybe not giving Haymitch any more white liquor – and it breaks down so quickly I lose track of what went wrong. She's a good fighter, too. She can really get her nails in me.

A fight might start about if it's going to rain or not (I wish I were making that up), but it always ends with her asking why I won't show her my paintings or if I'm going to set up a bakery again and how I'm putting too much pressure on her to get over her traumas and act normal.

I don't want her to act normal, I say. She's never acted normal in her entire life and I'm not expecting her to start now. But then she points out how I'm always trying to get her to talk, to me or to Dr. Aurelius.

I just want her to feel better, I say, and that's precisely her point. She's not feeling better soon enough for my comfort.

It's completely irrational for me to feel this way, since inside I am still a raggedy patchwork quilt of a person, so of course I deny it. I tell her she doesn't understand me, which feels like the truth, since I don't understand myself, and if she hasn't started screaming yet, that line always does it.

After the first fight, we didn't talk for almost a week. I was afraid that I would go mutt on her. I was afraid of the fact that she could bring the mutts back for me. I was afraid I would lose myself and hurt her. And I was afraid I had broken some integral part of our friendship and it no longer made sense for us to see each other. I told myself it had hardly made sense when we weren't fighting.

Now it seems that our friendship wouldn't make sense without the fighting, it's so ingrained in how we interact.

The summer was hot and dry and long, and it really took a toll on us. I had to re-learn that I wasn't about to strangle the girl, and she hid out for a while until her relapse of depression lessened. Then, by the time we could sit in a room together again, staying inside was unbearably stifling. Outdoor activities were no better. Week after week of Katniss's hunts being sticky and unyielding, week after week of me battling a wilting garden under a relentless sun: maybe it put us in bad moods, and we just aren't healthy enough yet to recover from bad moods so we can be civil. Maybe it's just growing pains, a symptom of our recovery like the itch under a bandage. It feels like it's us, though; apparently we are just the type who fight.

But a couple of weeks ago, she started talking about memories. It's this memory book that she wants to have, an encyclopedia of sorts, cataloging everyone who has touched our lives somehow and left the world behind for us. I mostly let her do the talking and remembering, since, as far as I know, she hasn't been doing any of that all year; but every now and then she asks me to add things myself. We write everything down, taking as much time and space as we like and taking care to leave nothing out.

It is such a great relief to open up these paths with Katniss that I can almost ignore how much I miss my video therapy. That is ugly work, ruining me for hours or days at a time, so I tend to save it for Katniss's bad days, especially if she goes hunting and is out of earshot in case I cry out during an attack. But with this memory book, she has been showing up at my house in the morning and not leaving till the evening, and I'm realizing that even though I kind of hate the video therapy because of how it makes me feel, I kind of love it, too, because of what it returns to me.

So it's been a few weeks since I've gotten to do my therapy, but there is more talking now, and some fighting, and some memories. I try to remember that I've come a long way since the hijacking, and Katniss tries not to be so depressed all the time.

It's a mild autumn evening when things change for good.

We have been working on the book, as usual, and we've more or less avoided fighting all day. She insists we go outside for part of the afternoon, so I walk our gardens, pulling weeds and checking on the vegetables that should be ready for harvesting soon. Katniss keeps teasing me for gardening when I can't tell poisonous berries from good ones, and I tease her back for running around barefoot like a dog so much lately. But now as the sky turns a hazy purple, we stand in my kitchen, waiting for our stew to simmer down so we can have dinner, and the laughing has retreated into a quiet contentedness.

As I gather our dishes and utensils, Katniss watches at my shoulder. She stares at me, intense and focused, as though peering into my brain. It's pretty creepy, actually, the way she looks and looks without blinking or saying anything, and I feel a nervous tic coming on; but just as I turn to her, about to say something, she reaches out and touches my cheek.

It's a soft touch. Her thumb slides toward my mouth as her fingers slip down to my chin.

"You're doing better, aren't you?" asks Katniss.

"Sometimes."

She nods, leaving her hand where it is, but her eyes sweep over my face, slowly inspecting. "I'm glad," she murmurs, and I can smell her signature, earthy fragrance as she breathes. Her process takes several long minutes. Somehow, it's calming. I don't object. "You're different," she declares at last, with a note of satisfaction in her voice.

"Is that a good thing?" I ask cautiously. What I really want to ask is, "Different from what?" Does she mean my traumas have changed me? Did she like the boy from the arenas better? But what I ask is if the change is good, and what she tells me is that it is.

I wasn't aware of moving my hands, but I feel now that they are on her back, my fingers spread wide.

"You've lost weight." I blurt it out, but at least I don't sound as alarmed as I feel.

Katniss narrows her eyes at me. "You have, too."

"Have I?" I wonder. "But I've been eating enough..." My mental tally of Calories runs automatically and falls short. Just because I eat three times a day does not mean that I'm eating three meals a day. Certainly not the way I used to. Katniss clearly knows this, but she doesn't call me out on it, simply keeps watching me.

She is standing close to me, and I can feel her angles and curves and growing waves of heat. A pesky memory that this sort of thing used to be dangerous and impossible attempts to distract me – so recently I was afraid of the mutts - but I brush it away so I can enjoy the moment.

Her hand drops to my chest, and her eyes follow, and I wonder if she is noticing how hard my heart is beating, but what she says is, "You haven't let yourself hold me in a long time."

And when she looks up, her gray eyes wide and searching, her mouth is just right there in front of mine, and I can't help but kiss her.

It's a mistake, but so natural. I know her lips. It feels like a dream that I remember, rather than something we used to do, but my body can't tell the difference; it knows her face well.

My fingers feel her breathing through her ribs. My chest is thinking of ripping apart. This moment could go on forever, and I would never question it, never wonder how our bipolar relationship has brought us here, never wonder how I got so lucky. Our lips part, but I just kiss her again, and it's not enough for whatever is possessing me. A thousand kisses would never be enough.

There is a knock at the door and Katniss jumps back. One second she is in my arms, and the next she is watching me from the end of my counter. I stare at her, trying to gather my breath or my thoughts or some good sense, when the knock comes again. Neither of us says anything as I turn and walk away.

Haymitch gives me a long look when I answer the door, then catches sight of Katniss behind me and lets his eyes flick between us until he is satisfied with whatever he sees before explaining his visit: "You don't have any goose food, do you?"

"What?" I ask, genuinely surprised. And this is Haymitch we're talking about, so that's something.

"Goose food. Food for... geese. I seem to have gotten some baby geese." He scratches his neck self-consciously.

"Goslings," I say, trying to suppress a smile. "I have some oats. Do they eat oats?"

"I don't know," he replies, nonplussed. I lead the way to my pantry and he follows. "They don't come with directions. Good evening, sweetheart." He gives Katniss a nod.

"Why do you have baby geese?" she asks. She has perched herself on my counter, looking for all the world as though she sits there all the time, even though I didn't know until now that she could even hoist herself up that high on anything without branches and roots.

"It was an accident," Haymitch grumbles as I measure out a tin full of rolled oats. "The eggs showed up in the spring, but the parents have been watching 'em. Both parents, too; I didn't even know birds did that – raised kids together. There are five of them... the babies, that is."

"Goslings," I mumble. I can tell Katniss hears.

"But the parents, they're just gone. All summer, they were here, marching the family all around my house, and now all of a sudden, poof! Disappeared." There's a moment of quiet.

"So you're gonna raise the goslings?" Katniss asks, kicking her legs from the counter in an endearing, childish gesture.

"I gotta feed 'em, anyhow. I can't have these things just dying in my yard." Haymitch evaluates his tin of oats and nods to me. "Well, thank you much. I guess I'll go see if they eat this stuff."

"We can always try something else," I say. "I have all kinds of food we can try. We won't let them starve."

"No, we sure won't," he replies. I don't think he means to, but he looks at my thin middle and Katniss's bony legs as he says it.

In Haymitch's absence, an awkwardness fills the room. Katniss shows signs of bolting, but our stew is about ready, so I make some excuses to go upstairs, hoping she will stay and eat. Once I'm in my room, however, I feel so chagrined that I can't make myself go back down again.

Why did I have to kiss her? She was just starting to really talk to me! Now, the moment she gets observant about how I'm doing, I have to go and kiss her?

I kick the foot of my bedframe with my newer leg. It doesn't make me feel better, so I kick it with my original leg. That doesn't exactly make me feel better either, but I'm too busy cursing and hobbling to the bathroom for a bandage to think about the kiss. For a few minutes, anyway. Then it's back to mortification, as before.

I pace around the bathroom, trying to pluck up some courage and make myself go back downstairs, but it takes me so long that, by the time I've returned, Katniss is gone. Her dirty bowl is in my sink, though. At least she ate before she left.

It's raining in the morning, but I hear Katniss go down to hunt despite the weather. She's avoiding me, of course. She doesn't have to eat breakfast with me if she's on a hunt.

Souls! I don't think I've ever acted so stupid in my whole life! It wasn't even a year ago that I tried to strangle her, and here I go kissing her. I didn't even ask her permission – I just took her in my arms and kissed her, like I had the right. As if she wanted to play lovers again.

The worst part is, I can't stop thinking about how it felt to hold her like that. The feeling of her bony, fragile body in my arms, the chafe of our rough lips against each other – it sounds so unappealing in my head, but my heart thumps at the memory. The more I try to focus on mundane tasks like baking, even laundry, the harder it gets to ignore how badly I want to kiss her again.

And I have no right to touch her. No right to even hope. Kissing would only make things worse.

Since she's hunting for the first time in weeks, I try to do my therapy, but I'm so consumed with my thoughts that I don't even know which clip I'm watching. It's not my day to call Dr. Aurelius, and I'm not in crisis, so that's out. I dig something out of the basement and paint for a while, then hide it from myself as usual. I eat an early lunch.

With nothing else to do, I find myself on Haymitch's back stoop, watching the young geese play in puddles.

"Ate those oats right up," comes Haymitch's voice from the door behind me.

"I'm glad I could help," I say. One of the geese has found a deep spot and is half-floating in his puddle. "They aren't as young as I thought, by your description."

"No, I guess not," he agrees. "It seems like they should be flying south soon, though, and I don't know if they'll do it without someone to show 'em how."

"It doesn't get too cold around here. Maybe they won't need to migrate," I say, trying to be optimistic. Haymitch just grunts.

"I guess it helps to have someone older help you navigate," I add thoughtfully.

There is a pause before Haymitch clears his throat.

"You figured it out yet?" he asks, leaning against the railing opposite my perch on the stoop.

"Figured what out?" I return.

"That you love her," he says. He gives me a sidelong smirk before throwing some crumbled, stale bread toward the puddles.

"I don't love her," I protest. He guffaws. "I don't – not like that – I can't. She and I barely talk. I still have trouble remembering who she is." None of this sounds convincing. I'm usually good with words, but my mouth is moving faster than my brain.

Haymitch, meanwhile, is shaking his head and chuckling quietly to himself. "Always, you've done everything you could for that girl, no matter how little you talked, or who she was, or who she was pretending to be. If you think you don't love her, you're going to have to give me better reasons than that."

I can't love her because I tried to kill her, I think. I can't love her because I still see her sometimes with machinery for cheekbones or a trickle of blood at her mouth. I can't love her because some days, I believe the lies, I think she's killed my family, I think she's trying to murder me.

I swallow and ask, "What makes you think I love her?"

"I know how you used to look at her," he says. "Even used to see it big and pretty on screen, didn't I? Well, you're looking at her that way now. They took some things from you, kid, but they couldn't take that."

I watch the geese quietly for a moment, unsure of what to say.

"Does she love me?" I ask.

"What do I look like, a mind-reader?" he laughs.

"You think you have me all figured out," I remind him.

"Some people are just easy to read," says Haymitch. He squints out into the rain and pinches some more crumbs off for the geese.

"But you two are so alike. You're saying you can't read her?"

He pauses for a moment before answering, "I suppose she feels the same about you as she did before. They didn't take anything from her like they did you." He taps his head with a crusty finger.

"Well there's a frustrating answer," I sigh. "I might as well ask a flower if she loves-me-not."

"If the answer means that much to you, why don't you ask her yourself?"

"It doesn't matter to me." I pull myself up from the stoop and back into the rain. "I told you, I can't love her. So it doesn't matter."

"You might not remember, but it never mattered before, either," Haymitch calls after me. "You went right on feelin' how you felt without regards to if she loved you back." His bread crumbs scatter past me, right up to the half-swimming goose.

Bread being tossed in the rain – now, that I remember.

"I'm not the one you want, babe,
I'm not the one you need."
- "It Ain't Me, Babe," Bob Dylan