He tried for days to apologize for the kiss, but I wouldn't hear of it. I was miffed that he thought there was anything to apologize for, but I tried to understand where he was coming from. Peeta had been a perfect gentleman, letting me set the pace of how I wanted our relationship to play out for the viewers in the Capitol. It only made sense that now he would act the same.
Still unsure precisely how I felt about it, I did my best to simply ignore it. We were caught in the moment, I reasoned, and we had both allowed ourselves to be selfish. It didn't have to mean anything more than that, at least not yet. We hadn't even been home for six months, and we had a lifetime ahead of us to figure it out.
The kiss became a distant memory, and we fell back into the repetition of the daily lives we had built for ourselves since returning back home to District Twelve. I spent my time hunting, gathering, and even occasionally fishing. Peeta worked from dawn to dusk on the bakery, which broke ground quicker than I thought possible. Greasy Sae came by when she thought we needed her, and we tried to visit Haymitch just enough to keep him from being constantly drunk but not enough that he felt the need to usher us out of his house by tossing empty bottles at us. It was a delicate balance.
My sessions with Dr. Aurelius became less of a responsibility and more of a welcome release of tension once a week. It took a while to warm up to him, but he saw past the Girl on Fire. He didn't just see Katniss Everdeen, Victor from District Twelve. He saw each and every side of me, even the bad ones. Particularly the bad ones, it often felt like. He wasn't afraid to call me out for being selfish, and he wasn't afraid to push me past my comfort zone. As he liked to put it, I had worked so hard to make conditions better for the people in the districts that I ought to live my life to the new standards I had fought so hard to achieve.
It wasn't easy, of course. I woke almost every other night to the same dreams, even though Peeta kept the bed warm with me. Though I was able to leave Gale out of my life and my thoughts and conversations, he still plagued my subconscious. And though time passed steadily quicker and quicker which each passing day, not a single one made the slightest effort to repair the gaping hole in my heart. I talked with my mother as infrequently as possible; even though I had grown closer to her during my second Games and the war, I tried to avoid her now to distance myself from that resentment that flared up every time I thought about her abandonment. Peeta and Haymitch were perhaps the only parts of my former life that didn't add on to the guilt and the pain I felt with each passing day. It was something the good doctor was making it his sole mission to fix.
Somedays, I found myself hopeful that I could be fixed. Perhaps there was a miracle cure out there that could heal a pessimistic, broken teenage girl. Maybe there was a drink that could make me sociable and care. I doubted it, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at it if we ever crossed paths. One evening, when Haymitch was on the tail end of his expectation for a delivery from the Capitol, he told me it must be exhausting. When I asked him to elaborate, though Peeta shot me a look that suggested we were better off not engaging, he told me that my constant work to stay pissed off at the world had to take its toll on me. Realizing Peeta was right, I snapped back with a comment about how easy it was for him to say, when he made no effort at all. It snowballed from there, and Peeta had to usher me home.
I got so angry at Haymitch when he worked himself into those states, far more than Peeta. But I think it was because I understood why he did it. He did it to escape from the realities of life. Like me, he found it hard to shoulder the immense weight of the guilt and sorrow for friends and family lost. Haymitch was living proof that time did not heal all scars. And it made me furious, because his ability to loose himself in the bottom of a bottle was the easiest way to forget himself. It was something I had contemplated dozens of times, but unlike Haymitch I guess I figured I deserved the pain my regrets caused. I wouldn't let the bottle take anyway my guilt.
I wanted to explain these feelings to Peeta, but every time I thought about it, I couldn't find a way to bring it up. It was easier during my therapy sessions, because I didn't care what the doctor thought of me. He was just some faceless stranger in the Capitol. But Peeta? After the fight we'd already had and the estrangement it had caused, however brief, I was too cowardly to admit the truth, afraid of what he might think of me if he knew it. For some reason, I was able to even confess this truth to the doc, even though I couldn't tell Peeta. His advice? He told me to take it one day at a time; that as I grew to understand myself, Peeta and I would grow back together.
I didn't bother correcting his assumption. I didn't dive into the lie that we had spun to try to save ourselves from Snow. I didn't say the marriage, the miscarriage, all of it was a lie. Because when he said that to me, in that exact instant, for the first time since the end of the war I felt hope. Or at least I think that's what it was. I hoped that he could be right. Even though I didn't deserve it, I hoped that maybe we would be able to figure it all out, and that someday I might even get to be happy. It was a long shot, I knew, despite the optimism in his voice, but for the first time I wanted to believe.
