The murmurs of the crowd filtered through the closed wooden doors, setting off a fresh round of butterflies in her stomach. With each yell, each chant, each cry for justice to be served, the nerves continued to build inside of her. She still hadn't fully been able to comprehend what was about to happen - in a matter of hours, she'd gone from being able to do nothing but think about Peeta and Prim, to being able to think of nothing but Snow.
Of ending his life in front of the entirety of Panem.
Steeling her resolve and trying to settle her nerves, Katniss took in a deep breath, focused on the intricately carved wood of the door and allowed Effie to make an unnecessary adjustment to the way her hair curled over her shoulder. There wasn't much they'd been able to do, not after the fire from the bombs had ravaged it, had barely made it salvageable.
Her prep team had made that perfectly clear to her not an hour before.
She hadn't expected to see them again, had resolved herself to accept that they would have likely met the same fate as Cinna. But less than half an hour after Coin had swept from the library following her announcement, Katniss had found herself back in her room, and Venia, Flavius and Octavia had stumbled through the door, led by Effie, their tears of joy at seeing her alive mixed with their tears of horror at her skin, her hair, her fire ravaged body.
They weren't the same people they used to be, that much was obvious, in their more subdued mannerisms, the way their clothes and hair and skin were far less adorned than they used to be. But deep down, the Capitol way still snuck through. Appearances, after all, were what made everyone love you, and their comments made it clear that they had a lot of work to get her there.
They took her as close to Beauty Base Zero as they could without damaging her skin any more, managed to braid her hair as best they could while hiding the bald or singed spots that were a result of the bombs. And while they gently finished her makeup, they explained to her in hushed tones often interspersed with tears, that they were the only ones left, that thanks to advice from Plutarch before the Arena had blown, the three of them and Effie had gone into hiding with one of his contacts, an old stylist from years ago. That all the other prep teams and stylists and escorts were dead, put to death by Snow. He'd had no patience to determine those involved in the Rebellion, and those who weren't. In his eyes, they'd all become representative of one thing - the Games. And the Games meant Katniss Everdeen.
It made her sick, made her stomach line itself with dread. But she refused to let herself accept responsibility for those deaths. They were on the shoulders of one person only, and that person was Snow.
Effie was mostly silent, spent the majority of her time looking at the tablet she had in her hands, occasionally muttering to herself. While the hair was still bright purple, the dress was still outrageous, and the shoes were 6 inch stilts, there was something different about Effie. A vacantness. Her eyes, while bright, never seemed focused.
Katniss wondered if it was finally realising the full extent of what Snow and the Capitol was responsible for - after only ever knowing the barest of Rebellion essentials - or going into seclusion for what would have been months, that had caused it.
Finally, she was ready; her prep team tearfully hugged her and said they would see her soon before being escorted outside by Effie - the moment they were gone, Katniss let out a deep breath, relieved to have a moment of silence. She studied their work in the mirror, at the way they'd tried to make her into some semblance of the girl she used to be.
She wondered if she'd ever be that girl again. If she'd ever want to be.
"Hey Catnip."
Her eyes shifted until they were looking back into the room - in the mirror's reflection she could see Gale framed in the doorway.
"Gale," she murmured. She hadn't seen him in all the weeks she'd been living in the mansion, had expected him to appear at some time or another. She'd been told he'd been shot in the arm twice during the fighting, but he'd been released from the medical ward far earlier than she had. Yet he still hadn't come to see her.
She wondered if he had, would she be feeling the way she was now?
"Can I come in?"
Katniss shrugged. "If you want to."
He walked inside, his left hand gripped tightly around the bow Beetee had fashioned for her, a single arrow in the right. "I, uh, got asked to bring this to you. For the execution."
She nodded, but didn't turn around, kept looking at him through the mirror. "Why haven't I seen you before today?" It wasn't an accusation, but she could hear the accusatory tone in her voice regardless.
"I'm sorry." Gale laid the bow and arrow on the bed, shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've been helping with the clean up. They said you were fine, that you just needed some time to heal."
Her lips pursed together. "You couldn't see me, could you?" Katniss asked, and this time, her voice was icy.
Gale clenched his jaw. "No," he finally admitted.
The fear that had begun to bloom inside her the night before as she spoke to Snow suddenly exploded into life."Was it yours?" She blurted as she turned around, and he looked away, his shoulders lifting before dropping again despondently.
"I don't know."
"But you and Beetee built one, didn't you? You built a prototype."
She'd never paid much attention when Gale and Beetee and the other assorted engineers had talked back in Thirteen. Hadn't really listened too intently when they'd talked about ways for them to attack Two, to attack the Capitol. Hadn't registered when they'd talked about different types of ammunition, different kinds of weapons. Different kinds of bombs.
Bombs that had a two-pronged approach, a delayed reaction.
Bombs like the one that had killed Prim.
No, she hadn't paid enough attention. Not until President Snow had sat there and smiled as he dropped hints and made it clear that she'd been oblivious to what had been right under her nose.
He looked back at her, sorrow in his eyes. "We did, but I don't know if-"
"It doesn't matter." Katniss cut him off, felt her hands clench into fists at her sides. "I doesn't matter if it was yours or not. I'm always going to think it was, because you helped create it."
"I had no idea Coin would use it for something like that!" Gale burst out. "Do you think if I had, I would have let her?"
The anger, and the grief, built up inside of her until it bubbled over. "Let her? Gale, she was the damned leader of the District. She's the damned President. Do you think she'd let you stop her from doing anything?!" She shook her head. "You and Beetee designed it with the intention of taking it to Two."
"Only as a last resort," he argued. "I wanted to win this war, Katniss!"
"And we would have. We didn't need your bombs." Almost as quickly as the fire had come, it was gone again, and she felt herself deflate. "I can't speak to you right now."
"Right now? Or ever again?"
Katniss opened her mouth, closed it again, wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach as if to hold herself together. "I don't know," she finally admitted.
She watched as his throat bobbed, as a muscle in his cheek twitched. "I'm sorry, Katniss. But I lost her too, you know - Prim was family to me as well."
"But she wasn't your only sister. She wasn't your only sibling," she croaked out.
Whether it was fortuitous timing or not, Effie decided at that moment to burst back through the doors, her arms open wide. "Come now, Katniss, no more time for dilly-dallying!" Effie said brightly - almost too brightly - and smiled flippantly at Gale. "It's a big, big, big day indeed, and we can't be late!"
No. She couldn't be late.
"Katniss, can we talk about this later?" he begged, and she shook her head.
"I don't want to talk about it ever again," she said firmly. "I...I need to go."
Gale stared at her for a moment, before nodding his head reluctantly. "Okay, Catnip. Just - shoot straight."
This time, her shoulders straightened, her eyes steely with intensity. "I will," Katniss said firmly, and followed Effie from the room.
She didn't look back.
He stood as part of the group assembled on the balcony - Coin, front and centre, her shoulders straight and her hands folded calmly in front of her, the remaining Victors and members of the Star Squad flanking her. She looked proud, victorious.
Peeta wanted to throw her off the balcony with his bare hands.
The words Finnick had murmured in his ear not ten minutes before had turned his blood to ice. That Coin had told the remaining Victors that she had decided to host another Games, a Games with children from the Capitol, a new opportunity for children to kill each other just for sport, for entertainment. All to teach them a lesson. A lesson to children who were just as innocent as every other child handpicked over 74 years.
Peeta had been devastated. All of that work, all of that Rebellion, and for what?
Apparently absolutely nothing.
He watched as the doors across the courtyard below opened, as Snow was dragged out, his hands and feet bound in chains, the short grey stubble that had begun to cover his chin flecked with blood. The crowd booed and hissed; some yelled out abuse, curses; even more chanted Katniss' name over and over again. On the balcony, Annie's hand slipped into Finnick's, Johanna folded her arms across her chest, Cressida murmured discreetly into a comm. Coin didn't move a muscle.
The moment Snow was tied to the post in the middle of the square in front of the mansion, Katniss stepped outside, her posture ramrod straight, her eyes focused. Even from here, Peeta could see the determination on her face, the absolute concentration. Her eyes didn't waver from the target in front of her as she walked towards him, did nothing but stare Snow down the closer she got.
She got to her mark, nocked her lone arrow, and raised the bow. She stood there for a moment, as though taking in the importance of it, the seriousness of it, the finality of it. And then she looked up. Right at Peeta.
And in a sense of absolute surety he knew he would never be able to explain, he knew what she wanted to do.
Peeta nodded once, and her head dipped slightly in recognition.
Her bow shifted, aimed.
He wasn't sorry to see Coin tumble, head over feet, over the balcony to the street below.
It was so quiet Peeta could practically hear every single tick of the old fashioned clock situated on the top of the fireplace mantle, every single movement of the hand as it made its way around the face.
Tick, tick, tick.
It was part of his routine now, had become part of it since the moment Katniss had loosed an arrow and sent it into the heart of President Coin, sending her to trial for murder. Four times a week, he sat in a study, tucked away in the corner of the Presidential mansion, and talked about how he was feeling, what he was thinking, how he was recovering, took part in round after round of what felt like useless memory testing. It wasn't something Peeta had particularly liked at first - because Prim had played such a huge part of his sessions back in Thirteen, each one made him think of her, made him think of the times she'd tried to jog his memory of Katniss with a million stories and jokes, and playful sisterly-like comments.
After a week of sessions that yielded no results and left Peeta feeling more miserable than when he'd started, he and Dr Aurelius had arrived at an unspoken truce - at least one out of the four sessions would be spent napping in their respective chairs, the silence golden to both of them. Therefore, in the other three sessions, they had to give at least some semblance of an impression that Aurelius was doing the job he'd been retrieved from Thirteen to do, and that Peeta was actually participating.
Slowly, as the sessions continued over the weeks, Peeta found that it began to get easier, began to feel a little less harrowing. They were still bad, still made him talk about things he didn't want to talk about, but at least he didn't feel a sharp pain anymore when he thought of Prim; now, it was more a dull ache underneath his breastbone.
"So how are the nightmares going, Peeta?" Dr Aurelius finally ventured after close to ten minutes of silence, crossing his right leg over his left and settling more comfortably in his chair.
Peeta shrugged, brushed his palms along the thighs of his pants. Thought about how he'd hardly slept the night before for thinking of his family dying in the basement of one of their bakery suppliers. "They're okay."
"And your burns?"
"Still healing." Same introductory questions and answers, all the time, every time.
"Are you still using the salve they gave you?"
"Yeah. It helps. The scars will never heal completely, but I guess...I guess I'm okay with that." Peeta blinked, surprised that he'd been so forthcoming. He'd yet to share with the doctor what the scars had begun to represent to him, but the words had tumbled out before he'd even realised they were there to be said.
The doctor's eyebrow raised in question. "You are?"
"Yeah. I…" He trailed off, but Aurelius nodded his head, encouraging Peeta to continue. He fidgeted nervously in his seat. "I think because each time I look down at them now, I'm no longer thinking of Prim."
"What are you thinking of, then?"
Peeta felt his heart beat a little harder in his chest, tracked his gaze back to the clock that continued to tick. "I, uh, think of Katniss."
Even from the corner of his eye, he could see the surprise on the doctor's face. "You do?"
"Yeah. I think of how I've got these because I saved her. That if I hadn't stopped her, she might have ended up like Prim as well."
"And you don't like the thought of that."
"No."
He spent a lot of time thinking about Katniss Everdeen, whether he wanted to or not. Whenever he wasn't in a session with Aurelius, he was in his room, had nothing to do but think. While everyone else had gone - Finnick and Annie had returned to Four, Cressida and Pollux had relocated to Two to begin work on establishing a new Panem-wide Communications and Media Headquarters based there - he'd remained behind, with no home to go to. His own apartment had been obliterated during the fighting and while the bakery still stood, there was no way he could ever return there. And as the rest of Panem still saw him as the partner of Katniss Everdeen, the knowledge of his specific amnesia restricted to only those who already knew, they had all agreed he should stay in the Capitol, for appearances sake.
And for the continued sessions with Aurelius, of course.
But all that spare time meant he had nothing to do but think. And for hours upon hours he would rack his brain for thoughts and memories of Katniss, trying to find the connection that he'd obviously had with her at one time or another. He knew it was there - the occasional vague memory of her that surfaced unexpectedly, the weird flipping of his stomach and the burning in his chest every time he remembered that first kiss in the snow, the absolute loyalty he unconsciously felt whenever he heard someone speak ill of her, the knowledge that he'd followed her into a battle on a rogue mission, no questions asked.
And all of that from someone who was meant to be a stranger to him.
"How is she, anyway? Has she improved at all?" Peeta asked, shifting so that he was looking at Aurelius again.
"She's not well," Aurelius admitted. "She's still refusing to eat, spends most of her days staring out the window, singing. You know her skin grafts were severely damaged after the altercations following Coin's and Snow's deaths, so at first she was put on a high level dose of morphling. But they've recently begun to reduce it...the concern is there that she has a complete disregard for the possibility of continued life."
Peeta felt his stomach drop. "They think she wants to die," he said flatly.
"It appears that way," Aurelius replied softly.
"And people still aren't allowed to see her, knowing this?" He hated knowing that Katniss was alone - he'd hated it from the first moment he'd been told, the same day her trial had been unceremoniously announced to the entire country. That she'd been sequestered in the old Training Centre, in solitary confinement, where she was to await her fate. Not even Haymitch had been given permission to see her.
Aurelius shook his head sadly. "No. No one sees her, speaks with her; that hasn't changed. They're just using internal monitors to keep an eye on her. You have to remember that she's a prisoner, Peeta, one charged with murder. Charged with assassinating the President of Panem. They won't allow her special privileges."
"But that's bullshit," Peeta snapped. "Anyone could see that Katniss was just doing the right thing, doing what needed to be done. You heard the decision Coin had come to, hadn't you? There was no way that could have been allowed to happen. And now they're just going to let her die?"
"Yes I did hear," Aurelius said calmly. "And I agree with you. Coin might have been my leader in Thirteen, but this decision was not one that should have been made, even considered. But let me reassure you that I'm continuing to do all I can to try and make sure that Katniss isn't convicted of the charges. And we won't let her die." He chanced a glance at the clock, sighed quietly. "I'm sorry, Peeta, it's almost time for me to go. But before I do, I wanted to check if you'd given any more thought to what I asked you last session?"
"What's that?"
"Have you decided what you're going to do? Where you're going to go?"
It had been one of their constant conversations over the past few weeks - Peeta's innate sense of displacement, his not knowing where he belonged, wondering where he should go. The only thing he did know was that staying in the Capitol was not an option.
"I...I've thought about it a lot," Peeta admitted. It's all he did think about, when he wasn't thinking about Katniss. "I still just don't know."
"You have options," Aurelius said smoothly. "You can return to Thirteen if you wish, or Two, and work with Cressida and Pollux at the CMH when it's up and running. I'm certain Finnick and Annie would love to have you live in Four near them."
"Yeah, I know," Peeta nodded. Finnick and Annie had told him, just before they'd left, that he was welcome anytime. "I just need to think about it a little more."
"Okay," Aurelius acquiesced. "Just remember what I told you, though."
"What's that?"
The doctor rose, adjusted the sleeves of his jacket so they sat back over his wrists. "Just try and pick somewhere that feels like home. After everything you've been through, you deserve that."
Peeta watched him walk away, and wondered if he'd ever find anywhere that felt like home again.
It could have been weeks, months, years, that had passed - she didn't know for sure. All she knew was that the feeling of Haymitch's chest against her cheek and his arm under her bony knees felt like the first human contact Katniss had ever had.
Her skin resembled sandpaper, dry and coarse. Her throat felt parched, her stomach emptier than it had ever been in her life. She was thin, thin enough that her thumb and forefinger easily looped around her wrist with ample room to spare, her ribs clear enough to be counted individually, her hipbones protruding at sharp angles.
She was a mess, barely coping without the morphling they'd slowly weaned her off. But she was alive.
And she was going home.
Her old quarters in the Training Centre - empty of furnishings, barely even a sheet on the bed - had been her jail cell while she waited to be told if she was to meet the same fate as President Coin. She'd resolved herself to die, whether by her choice or theirs.
But then Haymitch had come in, scooped her battered body into his arms, and carried her outside to a waiting hovercraft that lifted into the air with barely a sound.
His words were inflection free as he told her everything that had happened in the 5 weeks since her trial had begun. How, with the assistance of rousing testimonies from Plutarch and Dr Aurelius, she'd been painted as a girl gone mad with grief, and the atrocities of war. How she'd not been fully aware of what she was doing, the actions she'd been taking, when she'd chosen to take the life of Coin instead of Snow.
She'd been acquitted, due to insanity, but with the condition that she return to Twelve and not leave there again for a period of no less than ten years. He'd been appointed her official guardian.
Regardless of whether Twelve existed in the way she remembered it or not, Katniss thought it was the best news she'd heard in a long time. To be sequestered to Twelve. To be removed from the Capitol. To not have to see any of these people again.
She welcomed it.
Haymitch told her everything else he knew: Snow was dead, a victim of asphyxiation following the riots that ensued post-Coin's death. Commander Paylor had been sworn in as President, Commander Lyme the new head of Panem National Security. Plutarch, meanwhile, had parlayed his role in the Rebellion into the position of Minister for Communication.
The Odairs had returned to Four and were expecting a child; Johanna had gone back to Seven with little fanfare and a promise she'd never return to the Capitol for as long as she lived. Cressida and Pollux were in Two, setting up a new media centre and coordinating media coverage in the Districts as they began to recover. Gale was there too, helping to establish order in the Peacekeeper training barracks, and would likely remain there long-term.
Her mother had gone to Four to help out at a new hospital, and part of Katniss wondered if she'd ever see her again. Twelve probably held too many bad memories, and Katniss was restricted from leaving. Without explicitly saying so, it was clear why Haymitch had been designated as her guardian over her mother - Alice was done with Twelve.
As for Peeta...his family was gone, killed during the fighting. He'd refused Paylor's offer of retaining the role of Official Photographer, but was staying in the Capitol for the foreseeable future. Haymitch hadn't seen him in weeks.
She mentally quashed the small kernel of hope that had bloomed inside her that he'd have remembered her - and them - by now, that he would be waiting in Twelve for her. But there was no more hope. They were over. Done.
In the end, there were only three question she wanted to ask Haymitch in return.
"Was it theirs?" She asked, in a voice rusty and broken with disuse. He didn't even need her to clarify.
"I don't know for sure. But...it does look like their prototype was used."
"You didn't know what was going to happen?" He shook his head firmly, and she swallowed heavily as she prepared herself for the next question. "And did you know...did you know they sent her there?"
She watched as his face turned to stone, as his hand slipped into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a small flask with an unsteady hand. "I would have razed Thirteen to the ground if I'd known before they sent her," he growled, lifting the flask to his lips and swallowing deeply. The detox in Thirteen hadn't lasted, but she couldn't blame him. Maybe he'd been right all along, and dulling the pain into oblivion was the right way to go. "Still tossed that damned conference room of hers to shit when I did find out."
She stared at him for a moment, imagined him turning over tables, kicking at chairs, smashing the electronic boards to smithereens over her sister. "Okay," she finally said quietly, and with nothing left to say, closed her eyes.
Katniss slept the rest of the way home.
She continued on much like she had in the Capitol. She barely ate, barely drank, barely slept. And when she did, the nightmares chased her out again just as quickly, reminding her that she could never escape them. Her nightmares were an Arena she was never getting out of.
She didn't shower, her singed hair a matted mess on her head, her healing skin sticking to the thin pants and top she'd left the Capitol in. She stared at the unused fireplace, the idea of setting it alight sending fear through her every time she thought about it. So instead she huddled under the blanket she'd dragged from her bed, never quite getting warm enough, and still not caring.
Sae visited her twice a day, put food on the table that Katniss reluctantly picked at, tried to initiate conversation here and there until it was clear Katniss had no intention of speaking back. But even though she never spoke to her, the old woman still came, without fail, every day. And despite everything, Katniss felt some kind of comfort in that knowledge. If she had nothing else, at least she had Sae.
A month had passed when she heard the scratching at the back door late in the afternoon. At first she thought it was Sae, having forgotten whatever key she had to let herself in, and did nothing, simply waited for the woman to give up and go away. But when it continued incessantly, accompanied by a high pitched screech that failed to end, Katniss finally dragged herself off the sofa, the blanket draped over her like a cape, and crossed to open the door.
She didn't expect to see the mangy orange fur, the sharp teeth, this hissing breath. The eyes that, unexpectedly, spoke of sadness. Somehow, the dumb, stupid cat of her sister's had travelled all the way from Thirteen to Twelve.
He'd come home to find Prim. And instead, he'd found Katniss.
At first they hissed at each other, scowled at each other, and if he'd been human, he probably would have yelled at Katniss right back when she began to scream at him. But later that night, in an unspoken truce borne only from their joined grief at losing Prim, Katniss and Buttercup laid on her sofa, and cried themselves to sleep.
The hum of the hovercraft was subtle, a soft drone that wasn't unpleasant - he was used to it by now. But the thrill of the feeling of lifting into the air, the slight jump he'd always used to feel in his stomach, had all but disappeared. These days, there was nothing fun about hovercrafts. They just made him think of things he didn't want to think about.
Peeta took that final step off the gangplank, the ground soft and spongy under his feet; the grass was green, the dirt slightly damp, telling him it had rained recently. Even while he was focusing on that, he could hear the hovercraft begin to lift into the air, and disappear into the sky.
There was no going back now.
He hitched his bag higher up on his shoulder, the lone piece of luggage he'd brought with him. It carried little more than his cameras, and a few changes of clothes - everything else he'd owned was gone, and nothing in the mansion had held any interest for to him take.
In the end, there'd only been one option that made sense to him. Four, despite the appeal of living close to Finnick and Annie, didn't feel like home in the week he'd spent there a month earlier, seeing if it was 'right'. Johanna had half-heartedly extended an invitation to him to live in Seven, though both knew she did it out of obligation more than wanting to. But when he'd actually sat down for a moment and closed his eyes, focusing on the word home, there was only one place that had come to mind.
Aurelius hadn't been shocked when he'd told him his decision. Over the 6 weeks following the end of Katniss' trial, he'd continued with their sessions, allowing the doctor to trial additional types of tests and exercises, hoping they could rebuild those missing parts of his memory. Nothing had helped, but he found that, with Aurelius' assistance, he was finding it easier to move on, to accept that some parts of him would never be the same, would never be able to be found.
But the doctor was apparently more astute than even Peeta had thought he was, and the older man hadn't blinked an eye when Peeta told him he'd requested a hovercraft take him to Twelve. He'd simply told him to say hello to Katniss and Haymitch, and to tell them he was only a phone call away if they wanted to talk.
Taking a deep breath, Peeta began walking up the street, heading towards the Capitol house. It wasn't ideal - after spending so long in a city he despised, he didn't really want to stay in a house that had any direct association with it. But he had no choice - upon hearing of his decision on where to live, President Paylor had gifted him the house, telling him it was the least she could do.
He didn't have the heart to tell the new President of his own country, the new President who was intent on doing things right, that he didn't want her gift.
Peeta paused at the bottom of the stairs to the porch, looked up the street, at the rows of houses on either side. He remembered the first time he'd seen this street, the first time he'd stood on this porch - the way the snow had blanketed everything into a sea of white, the way everything had seemed so real.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Part of him wasn't surprised when he saw Haymitch Abernathy step out his front door and lean against the porch railing, his eyes boring into Peeta. After all, a lone man walking up an otherwise empty street stood out in stark relief. But Haymitch - his dark hair unkempt, his greying shirt untucked - didn't call out in greeting, didn't lift a hand. He simply nodded his head, just once.
Peeta returned it before he ascended the last few stairs, unlocked the door he'd probably unlocked a hundred times before, and closed it behind him.
All he could think about was the fact that, across the other side of the street, the Everdeen house had looked utterly abandoned.
The nightmares, he'd expected. But Peeta hadn't expected them to be as sharp, as bright, as heart-wrenching as they were. They were still of his family, still of Prim, still of bombs exploding in the hands of children.
But then there were the ones of Katniss. The ones where she didn't make it out of the sewers, the ones where he wasn't able to drag her back from running towards the silver parachutes. The ones where he had her in his arms, and then she was gone again, disappeared into thin air, and he didn't know where she was.
He didn't know for sure what he wanted, didn't know if he wanted Katniss or not. Snow had taken that assurity, had taken that past, those memories, that knowledge away from him. But some bonds, Peeta discovered, could never be broken.
Whether he wanted her or not, he realised he needed her. And to him, that spoke volumes.
He spent days gathering up the courage to see her, nervously trying to decide what to say. And in the end, he realised that nothing he ever practiced would ever feel right; for Katniss, he got the impression that actions had always spoken louder than words.
It was late in the afternoon when Katniss heard the knock on her front door. At first, much like when Buttercup had returned, she ignored it, expecting whoever it was to go away, to give up; sure enough, after trying for 5 more minutes, they finally relented. The satisfaction that they'd left her alone was grim, but it was satisfaction nonetheless.
Half an hour later, when she reluctantly rose to use the small powder room off the main foyer, she saw the rectangular envelope lying in the middle of the floor, slipped under the small gap at the bottom of the door.
It was almost like she did it without thinking - she crossed to it, bending down and picking the envelope up with two fingers, as though it would bite her if she held it any tighter. She wasn't sure what she expected when she opened it, but she didn't expect to see the card covered in a familiar scrawl, one she hadn't seen in a long time.
I thought you might like this. I found it on one of my memory chips and had it printed out and...well, it's yours. Peeta.
Her eyes widened and she flipped the card over, her hands beginning to shake once she saw what it was. It was a picture of her and Prim, sitting in their backyard, laughing together. She couldn't even remember it being taken, couldn't even place it in a point of time to try and get some kind of idea of when it was. But it was a photo of her, and of Prim. They were happy. And it was taken by Peeta.
Peeta.
Peeta?
She stumbled across the smooth wooden floors and flung open her front door, her hands shaking, her heart racing as her eyes scanned the front yard wildly. And then she saw him, sitting on the front porch of the Capitol house. He did nothing but tip his head slightly to her, the faintest of smiles curving the right side of his mouth.
Her knees buckled beneath her, and she gripped the doorframe to steady herself.
Peeta had come to Twelve.
It was another two days before Peeta saw her again, two days before he got up the courage to walk out of his house the moment he saw Sae coming up the road, and offered to escort her inside the Everdeen house.
He'd been there for an hour, nibbling on the bread he'd baked fresh that morning and making small talk, when Katniss finally stumbled downstairs, her eyes bleary, her hand covering her yawning mouth. It didn't take long to realise that since he'd seen her framed in the front door of her house, she'd obviously bathed, her hair brushed, her skin baby pink and tender and freshly soothed with salve, and was wearing clothes that looked new and clean.
She stopped in her tracks, her mouth hanging open in shock.
"Mornin', girl," Sae greeted, as though it were any other morning. "Peeta here brought over some bread for ya to eat. I wasn't expectin' ya to sleep in so late, and I made plans to head off early. But Peeta can keep ya company for a lil' while, alright?" She rose to her feet, collecting her plate and moving over to place it in the sink. "I'll be back for supper."
And then she was gone, and Peeta didn't know whether he or Katniss were more surprised by how quick the exit had been.
"Hi Katniss," he murmured. "I, uh, hope you don't mind that I came over with Sae."
She stared at him, almost as though she didn't think he was real. "What are you doing here?" She managed to choke out.
"Breakfast?"
"No," she hissed. "Here. In Twelve."
"Oh. I had nowhere else to go," he admitted, and he wondered how pitiful he sounded. "I couldn't stay in the Capitol."
She folded her arms across her waist, her fingers wrapping tightly around her bony elbows. "Haymitch told me you were."
"Only so long as to finish up some testing with Dr Aurelius. After that, I had to decide where I wanted to live."
Katniss blinked. "You chose to live her? You...you weren't sent here like I was?"
He shook his head. "No. I wanted to come here. He told me to go somewhere that felt like home."
"And Twelve felt like home?"
"Yeah. For some reason it did." He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck nervously. "But if you don't want me here-"
"No!" The word burst from her, and the surprise on her face at how loud - and how quickly - she responded, was clear. "I mean...I do. I don't want you to go." She licked her lips, lips that were dry and cracked. "I think Twelve will be good for you. And you said yourself...you said yourself you liked the trees here."
"I did," Peeta agreed. "I mean, I do."
She nodded then, and they fell into silence, neither sure of what to say. In the end, Peeta rose to his feet, shuffled them nervously. "I should go. I have some work to do."
"Work?"
"It's not really work, I suppose. I promised Aurelius that I'd start taking photographs again. He told me I need to, to try and get back to some semblance of normalcy, so…" he trailed off. "Anyway, I'm going to go out. Take some photos."
"Okay."
"I'll come back for breakfast tomorrow?"
"If you want."
"I want. After all, we're friends, right?"
The smile ghosted across her lips, and it was gone again so quickly he almost thought he imagined it.
Later, Katniss watched him climb the trellis, watched as he positioned himself on the roof of the porch of the Capitol house, capturing various angles of the Village. And she remembered the first photo he'd taken of her from that spot, the portrait of a Victor who was isolated and alone, who wouldn't let anyone in.
But she'd let him in anyway.
Her nightmares were the worst she'd had in a long time that night, and she cursed the fact that Peeta was so close, and yet so far.
Katniss wasn't exactly sure when, or how, it changed. It crept up on them, like Winter had done to Fall - one minute the leaves were golden and on the trees, the next they'd been stripped, leaving the branches bare and frozen in the chilly air. Much like how one Saturday morning they went from calmly going about their usual routine of baking bread and cookies to suddenly kissing themselves breathless against the kitchen counter.
When Peeta had first returned and reached out to her with the photograph of Prim, Katniss had already resigned herself to the fact that they were done, that she would have to be content with him as a friend. At least he was in her life, she told herself. At least he wasn't lost to her forever.
So they'd begun to really be friends - he would join her and Sae in the mornings for breakfast, he'd wave to her as he'd tromp around the village - or back from the woods - with his camera in hand. After months of self-imposed solitary confinement, Peeta had gotten Haymitch out of his own house, and twice a week the old mentor would join them for dinner. He never said much - rarely about anything beyond the geese he'd begun raising in his front yard 'for lack of anything better to do' - but he was there, flask in hand.
But gradually she began to see a shift in Peeta's behaviour, in the way he looked at her, in the way he spoke to her. Only the month before, he'd stopped in the middle of a sentence, his words trailing off as his gaze had locked on her lower lip, as his tongue had darted out to wet his own.
She'd blushed and looked away, and he'd made some excuse and run out, not returning for breakfast for another two days. And when he had, they'd sat on her front stoop, an awkwardness she hadn't felt in a long time building between them. But when he opened his mouth to speak, she'd been shocked at the words that had tumbled out.
He'd inhaled deeply, had scrubbed a hand across his face. "I've tried sleeping at the Capitol house, but I can't. Not properly. The nightmares I have there...I just keep thinking of my family and...everyone. And Haymitch…" Peeta trailed off. "His house isn't really suitable for guests. Not long term."
"I'm not surprised," she'd murmured. She hadn't ventured inside in a long time, but it wasn't hard to imagine.
"I just - I have nowhere else to go. And it's probably too much, but I was wondering if...if...I could stay here. Just for awhile. Just until I feel okay about staying in the Capitol house again. I know you have nightmares too - I can hear you. I just thought maybe...at least having someone else in the house might help." She'd felt her face go pale, then red, then pale again, and her hand had tightened around the rung of the step. He'd shaken his head, hurriedly risen to his feet, his own face aflame. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked. It's okay. I'll ask Haymitch. It would be too we-"
"Yes." Her voice had been quiet, barely more than a whisper, but it had still been more than enough for him to stop, for his eyes to brighten, even just the slightest. "Yes, of course you can stay here."
So he had.
He'd moved into the guest room downstairs, and while neither of their nightmares abated completely, there was a comfort in knowing that he was downstairs, just a hall and a staircase away. And so they got into a simple routine, learnt how to be housemates, and if she occasionally wished for more, she ignored it. That wasn't why Peeta was here, she told herself firmly, every time. He's here as your friend.
Which was exactly what she thought until the moment he was laughing at a streak of flour on her cheek, when she flicked a wooden spoon towards him in retaliation, batter splattering across his shirt. And then somehow, before either of them knew it, his hands were on her cheeks, brushing away the flour, his mouth covering hers and - in the only way she could describe it - devouring her.
It was like coming home and something new all rolled into one.
Peeta knew he shouldn't have kissed her, had known the moment he did that it would change things forever. But he hadn't been able to stop himself - the look on her face as the batter had hit his shirt had been the most carefree he'd seen in a long time, her smile wide and genuine and real. Her eyes had been bright and her hair - finally beginning to grow out again - had hung over her shoulder in a messy plait, wayward strands drifting over her forehead.
And the need to kiss her like the only time he'd ever remembered ran through him, faster and deeper than anything he'd ever felt in his life. It had made his heart pound, his stomach hurt, made him feel lightheaded and breathless. So he'd kissed her, and he hadn't given a damn about the consequences, about the ramifications. Especially when her hands had gripped his forearms, and she'd kissed him back.
It was like coming home and something new all rolled into one.
They took their time - a hug here, a gentle brush of a hand there, a walk in the afternoon to the rotunda where she told him they'd once spent so much time together.
They talked; about those they'd lost, those who were starting their lives over, those who were slowly but surely returning to Twelve from Thirteen.
They watched as the District got rebuilt, as a new Justice Building appeared, as ground got broken on a new pharmaceutical factory, as Seam and Merchant folk forgot about the divide that had once separated them.
They watched as Haymitch stumbled over geese that were wilier than he'd probably expected them to be, watched as Delly Cartwright moved into a house at the end of the Village, with Thom Wilkinson following two weeks later, a suitcase in hand and a grin on his face.
They watched as the meadow, the resting place for those who had lost their lives in the bombing of Twelve, began to bloom again, the grass as green as they'd ever seen, wildflowers swaying in the soft breeze.
Eventually, their nightmares drew them together at night; while Peeta couldn't remember, Katniss knew the solace and comfort that his embrace had once brought her, that his arms and the soft and steady beat of his heart under her ear as she rested her head on his chest had always left her nightmare free. So when they accidentally fell asleep on the sofa one night, and had awoken the next morning wrapped around each other after an uninterrupted night's sleep, they didn't spend another one apart.
But they didn't kiss again, not like they had in her kitchen that day. Not until spring had arrived and the sun streamed through the window of her bedroom, rousing them both from sleep. He'd gently run a finger across her cheek, and her breath had caught, and then he'd leant in, tentatively at first. Then desperately, then needily, hungrily. They were both gasping for breath when Katniss pulled away, when she rested her forehead against his and asked, full of nerves, if he could ever love her again like he had before.
He told her he already did.
There was moonlight, and the gentle sounds of the wooden chimes that Delly had hung on her back porch. There were sighs, and moans, and gentle murmurings of assurances; strangled gasps and whispers of names. There were gentle touches along thighs, open mouthed kisses over chests, down necks, and tender spots beneath ears. There was the rhythmic sounds of flesh sliding against flesh, of bodies moving against each other, of hands clutching eagerly as they raced to a finish, mouths fusing together in desperation.
Peeta never remembered their first time. But he never forgot their second.
