Time is strange. It does not move in even, careful flows, but rather in soft lulls and sudden leaps. One weekend can feel like an eternity, but when you turn back around a year has already passed. Sometimes thing seem too never change, and it isn't until you take a good hard look at your past that you realize that nothing is the same. How could you even have tricked yourself into believing it was in the first place?
Healing is like time. Sometimes it feels like you're finally better, but the next day you're back where you started. Some days are easier than others, but some days are so hard you can't even imagine how you could ever get out of the hole you've fallen into. You go for months with no progress and then suddenly you wake up one morning a mile away from where you had been when you went to sleep; and maybe tomorrow you'll take two giant steps back. But maybe you won't.
For months I couldn't stand the sound of Cinna's voice. Even the sound of him clearing his throat set every cell in my body on red alert. It was only his touch I could stand, the barest brush of his fingers against mine. If he got to close, if the smell of him entered my nose or the small sounds he made reached my ears I was flung, full force, into a wild rage. They started by having my listen to short samples of his voice extremely distorted, slowly taking away the distortion until I could stand to listen to his voice.
But recording are different than the real thing.
They were so sure I'd be able to stand his voice the first time they had him speak to me after the recordings had such apparent success, I responded to their confidence by launching myself at him. If I hadn't been restrained, I would have gone for his throat just as I had the day they had rescued me. When I finally calmed down I cried, I cried so hard and for so long. The tension in the air and his hand trembling on my arm told me that he was crying too.
When I could finally stand the sound of his voice they began having me look at him. They placed him on the opposite side of a wall of glass and just had him talk to me. Even though I fought as hard as I could to destroy the glass between us and get to him his voice reached some part of me deep inside and soothed me. Strangely enough I became accustomed to the sight of him in only half the time it took me to be able to stand his voice. By the time I could be in the room with him without wanting to kill him a year had already passed, but that did not mean things were better.
It was true that I no longer wanted to kill him, but the very sight or sound of him made me sick. Every time he walked into the room my stomach rolled and contorted itself. More than once I actually vomited when he greeted me in the morning. The pain in his eyes was almost enough to make me throw up again; but I was determined to not hurt him again. I would let him down again. I had failed Cinna so many times and in so many different ways, but not this time. I'd wipe my mouth and straighten my shoulders and walk right up to him, looking him dead in the eyes as my body shook.
Two years passed before I could consider myself actually healed, from the jacking, at least, and at the same time it was the longest two years of my life and also the shortest.
In that time Annie and Finnick had a child, a beautiful baby girl. They named her Johanna.
My mother met a nice man. He had been Capitol but I do have to say he was in the running against Cinna for most-well-Adjusted-Capitol-Citizen-I've-Ever-Met. He made her smile, and at the end of the day what more could I hope for a woman who had been through and lost so much?
Prim is eighteen and convinced the boy she loves is the one she will marry. They are inseparable, ever since she set his leg after he fell off of a building during the rebuilding of Four he has barely left her side, and he looks at her as if she herself put the stars in the sky.
When the people learned that Coin had her hands in Peeta's death they rejected her as their leader. Now a group of officials from every District take the place of a president, and I'm ashamed to say that I am not nearly as involved as I should be, but I have a lot on my plate as it is.
It wasn't just myself that had to heal after the collapse of the Panem, brought on by myself and a few other liberated Victors. Once we went public with what really happened to us at the hands of Snow there was really nothing he could do to save himself from his own citizens. They say they found him dead in his house, one of his infamous white roses had been crushed between his teeth and enough poison was in his veins to kill an elephant. I can't say I feel sorry for the man who made my life, and the life of so many others, a living hell. I don't feel sorry at all.
Though we still have a long way to go in the ways of rebuilding the world we have to live in there is at least hope. We've gotten past the hardest milestones and every day we can see the improvement when so recently we had been able to see nothing but despair. The fences between the districts have been pulled down. The Avoxs have been returned home with new tongues that might take them a while to learn how to use, and the sun seems to shine just a little bit brighter every day.
The best part, for my at least, is the fact that after all this time I have finally been able to put Peeta to rest. Even though most of Panem will never know that his miraculous survival was a hoax I got the goodbye I had been denied before. It took me a long time but I finally came to terms with what had happened, and in the end it had made all the difference. Where I had found myself incapable of love for so long I am now over flowing with it.
We didn't want a big flashy wedding with pomp and circumstance, we didn't want the suits and dresses and formalities, even though I'm sure Cinna would have made this dress even more spectacular than the first, instead we did it the old fashioned way; just Cinna, I, and a fireplace. My mother cried when I told her and Prim couldn't stop screaming and jumping up and down. I'm sure there will come a day when Cinna tells me to stop saying that I love him a hundred times a day, but I can tell that he still revels in the sound of it flowing off my lips. I denied him of it for so long I want to make up lost time, I don't want him to ever doubt my feelings for him again.
I love Cinna, with all of my heart. He saved my more times than I can ever even count and he saves me again every day. True, it was not the burning young love of necessity I had felt with Peeta in the arena and for so many years after it, I don't think I will ever feel anything quite like that again, but it is deep and strong and it brought me back from the dead. Who knows what I would have become without his love and support. I definitely wouldn't be standing here today, of that much I am certain.
And as we look out at the field our children will one day play in, a field so much like a burial ground, I can't help but feel like something is closing around me. The end of an era, the passing of a season, the final chapter of a book that had been left to long unfinished; but as the end draws near I can also feel something new beginning. Something I can hardly describe in any words at all even though I will try my best. I can feel the beginning of a whole new life; even if it's not my own.