When I manage to take down five birds in one round, I realize it's so quiet I can hear each one hit the floor. I turn and see the majority of the victors have stopped to watch me. Their faces show everything from envy to hatred to admiration.
After training, Peeta and I hang out, waiting for Haymitch and Effie to show up for dinner. We sit on the overly bright sofa in the living room area. Our hands entwine while our eyes meet, and I find myself smiling at him. It seems incredible that I can muster any sense of happiness, considering that I probably have a week, at most, to live, but when have my emotions been logical?
"I had no idea you could shoot like that," Peeta says, with a touch of wonder in his voice.
"I don't know what you're talking about. You ate my squirrels every week, didn't you?" I remind him.
Peeta pauses. "I knew that you shot them through the eye, which is impressive, but I think it was more that I didn't know how it transformed you. The concentration on your face – you were so invested in what you were doing. You made it an art."
"Like your sketching," I hear myself saying before I can stop myself. "In my family's book."
He brushes my hair off my face and gives me a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes. I'm amazed, yet again, at how incredibly kind they are. Peeta is so innately good. This is why I have to save his life. Cinna has to make up a talent for me, but Peeta merely breathes and the world has more love in it.
Impulsively, and probably unwisely, I lean my head on our hands. It seems so strange that they're warm and pulsing with life, while we're both about to face death in just five days.
"What do you think would have happened if we hadn't ever been tributes, Peeta?" The question leaves me before I can think. I instantly regret it, but Peeta just furrows his brow and waits a few moments before speaking.
"Well, first of all, we wouldn't be here a second time. And we certainly wouldn't be engaged."
"Are we still 'engaged'?" I laugh. "Can you be engaged if there's no possibility of a wedding?"
Peeta looks at me sadly. "No, I guess not. At any rate, we wouldn't even be talking if we'd never been tributes."
For some ridiculous reason, unknown to me, I ask him, "You wouldn't have ever mentioned that you had a giant crush on me?"
"Be honest, Katniss. You barely knew who I was before the Reaping."
This is partly true. I certainly knew him as the boy with the bread, but even though I saw him every day at school, I only ever really thought about him as a little boy in the rain. So even though it is in a sick, twisted way, the Games have given me this friendship, romance, whatever you want to call it. And now it's so essential to my life that I'm preparing to die for it.
In answer, I lean forward and tentatively press my lips against his. We haven't kissed since the Victory Tour, unless you count the embrace on the last train ride to the Capitol. And after all, he's not my fiancé. He's not even my boyfriend. But I do know that my world would be lifeless and gray without his smile, his laughter, the ease that he brings to conversation. And it's for all his goodness and courage and sacrifice that I need to kiss him. Because whatever other labels don't fit, he will always be, simply, my Peeta.