I have the same dream I always have.
Summer sunlight warms my face and the air tastes of sweetness.
The Capitol unfolds below me from atop the Tribute Center. Peeta sits beside me, and this image of him – this image – well, I find it incredible that it has survived all this time.
I lay with my head in his lap, flowers betwixt my fingers.
Sometimes I can even recall the feel of his fingers running through my hair. Other times there is only the feeling of his pulse, reverberating in my bones, and the warmth of his palm brushing my cheek.
In my dreams, he gets to be warm again.
He was warm, once, without dreaming. I can remember that, too.
In this reoccurring dream, I can even remember the sound of his voice. Our conversation had been muted, but his whispering reaches me across time. One fleeting handful of words that tears at my heart and mind and makes me ache to my very bones.
"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," he says.
"Okay."
"Then you'll allow it?"
"I'll allow it," I had said, only that one time.
If it weren't for the Quarter Quell, maybe we would have gone somewhere. That step, in which I had allowed him to love me… well that could have led to more instances. Those kisses that he gave me, on that beach, made me feel something deep within myself. A glimmer of the desire I saw in his eyes, reflected back at me. All of it – the falseness of our first Game, the grueling Victory Tour, the Quell, the rebellion – were all a sick joke; the true plot of our otherwise tragic star-crossed love story.
If only we could have let that love story play out until the very bitter end, but the Capitol changed him. They had wrought Peeta into a machine meant only to kill me. And, of course, the boy with the bread would be the only person to claim driven mad by love.
Yet, even now, there is the reoccurring dream.
No amount of tragedy could root it out of my memory. I have locked this memory tightly inside of my heart, and this moment has only increased in pull since the loss of him.
"You'll allow it?" Peeta asks again, and I jerk awake, gasping.
I cannot get myself from the bed and to the bathroom sink fast enough. What little dinner I managed to consume last night retches itself back up.
Hands shaking, I scrub cold water across my face.
I turn away from the sink more harshly than necessary.
I do not go back to my bed, but I seek out the moonlight.
I walk the barren streets of District 12. The stars burn overhead, undisturbed by the metropolis lights, and the summer air is tinged by meadow flowers. I walk by the vandalized Victor's houses and only briefly consider disturbing my old mentor.
I walk in a straight line toward town square. There, I know what I will find.
The lifeless statue set in the middle of the square, of the Mockingjay, with her bow raised in a combat position, looks nothing like me.
The statue is a woman I do not know. The old Katniss Everdeen. Someone who had a little sister. A star-crossed lover. A best friend. I have none of those things anymore. I am not her.
I trace the edge of the concrete base underneath the statue, then slump, defeated, against it.
All of my loved ones have died; everything that had fueled my fire, that had livened the embers of the rebellion, that had been the fodder for my righteous war propos, has left me. I am a shell of something that may have once been human. I feel wretched and empty. The burn scars across my arms and torso morph me into a scarred creature more fitting for this form.
Come the dawn I have no choice but to rise and move on. Early rising townspeople frown at the sight of me. They are weary of this new creature that I have become. I do not blame them.
There is a car idling in front of my house as I walk up the street. No doubt it is some government official come to check on me or to make sure I have not done anything to worsen the state of the ravaged district.
A stranger hails me as I approach.
"Katniss!" the man calls.
I ignore him and walk to the door. He follows.
"How are you?" the man asks, entering the house behind me, completely uninvited.
"The same," I say.
"Well, that is to be expected." He awkwardly stands in my kitchen. When I make no move to say more, he offers me his hand to shake. "My name is Emilianus. I have come to check on you. Many are concerned for you and your progress."
Out of politeness, I shake his hand.
"You're a doctor," I say, but it comes out as an accusation. "I've had enough of doctors. I have been evaluated by tons of doctors since the war ended a year ago. Why are you here?"
Emilianus drops my hand.
"It is well known, Miss Everdeen, that you are unhappy here."
"I like it here," I say. "This is home."
"Well… many of the townspeople are weary of you. I think it is in both yours and the townspeople best interest if you were to leave District 12 and return to New Capitol. President Coin is fond of you! There are numerous –"
"I don't want to live in the Capitol."
"New Capitol," says Emilianus.
"I don't care what you call it," I say. I bristle at the mention of President Coin. "Now, leave."
The man reluctantly turns to go, but before he is out the door, he asks this: "If you could go back and change what happened, what would you change?"
"Nothing can be changed," I say.
"So you think," says the man, and then he is gone, heading back out to his car.
I angrily leave the kitchen and find myself in the upstairs hallway. At the end of the hall is Primrose's closed bedroom door. I have never been able to go in there since her death. Everything in there is just as she left it, gathering dust. Even now, as I pass the door to enter my own bedroom, I am barely able to pause and gaze at it. Prim's ghost haunts these halls. Her laughter rings in the back of my mind. Then the image is overwhelmed with reality; the explosions on the steps of the mansion, the screams of the dying, the pink mist in the wind...
I lay in my bed, seething.
I do not trust the man, that Emilianus. I can tell by his attire and his name alone that he is from the Capitol, and not the new one either. Perhaps he is among those few traitors that were pardoned by President Coin at Heavensbee's request. What he said to me was taunting and uncalled for.
Why would he say something like that? Why torment me? Why pretend anything could be different when the world was such an unforgiving place?
"I won," I mutter to myself.
The rebels won. I had won, at the expense of everyone I ever cared about.
"I won, I won, I won," I repeat. "Real. Real. Real."
After Finnick's death, the rest of our special forces squad died, too. Even Peeta, who took a bullet for me, as I ran down those paved Capitol streets in pursuit of revenge. I had one goal in those moments: President Snow. I lost Prim on the steps of his mansion. The firebombs slowed me down, but I still limped my way beyond the mutilated bodies in his front yard. Following the second explosion, the rebels were pouring into the City Circle. I made it into the mansion. The walk between those front doors and to where President Snow was hiding, I don't remember much, only the shaking, driven by the anger in my heart.
I had personally put the bullet into President Snow's brain, and still, I am angry.
What ensued that was nothing pretty. President Coin's rise to power happened quickly. The reinstating of the Capitol as the New Capitol took only weeks to establish. The beginning of the new Hunger Games, using the people of the Capitol as the tributes, heralded the new age of pain.
While President Coin admonished me for killing President Snow, sans a trial, she still rewarded me. She allowed me a place in District 12, money, anything for the asking… the problem is that I have nothing left, nothing I want.
The constant swirl of day to day memories leaves me exhausted, and that alone is enough to keep me going, knowing that if I exhaust myself this way I will get to sleep soundly and dream that dream again.
Only, tonight, my dream is different.
I am out hunting in the woods of District 12. I am tracking a deer. I crouch against a tree and adjust my grip on my bow. I take a moment to breathe. The dream feels eerily real. I can smell the distant approach of rain. The leaves overhead whisk in the breeze.
A twig snaps behind me. I turn, bow raised.
"Oops," says Gale. "Didn't mean to scare you."
I start to glare, but then I take him in fully. The dream is too real. Gale died in the Capitol dressed like a rebel soldier. This Gale wears his hand-me-downs from his deceased father with their patched holes and sloppily sewn seams. He holds his bow aloft.
Gale cocks his head to the side.
"You alright?" he asks.
I realize I have not spoken. I lower my bow, but I am distracted by my hands. There are no burn scars.
As I turn my hands over in front of my face, Gale shakes his head.
"What's up with you this morning?" he asks.
"What's today?" I find myself asking. I wonder why I am dreaming this dream. Why this moment is so important. I cannot recall this memory, the way I can for other dreams.
"Tuesday," says Gale. "Like, just a normal Tuesday."
He walks over to me and rests a hand on my shoulder. I stare at his face, marveling at how many details this dream has etched into him: the lines in his irises, the scar on his left ear.
"You sure you are alright?" he asks me.
"Yeah," I say. I relax. "Everything's fine."
"Good. Let's finish up the snare trail and get back before school starts," he says.
I follow him through our woods.
After the rebellion when I returned to District 12, the woods around the district were never the same. The rebuilding of the district had impeded on our woods, and the reach of the firebombs had forever impacted the local wildlife. In this dream, it is the same woods from my childhood. The familiar snare trail is untouched by fire, by change. Gale who meanders through the pre-dawn routine is unchanged. I cling to this simplicity. I choose not to question the surrealness of the dream.
Not until I am walking through the Seam, and I spy my old house. Primrose stands in the front yard, milking her beloved goat, Lady. I cannot stop myself from rushing over and embracing her.
"Katniss," says Prim, laughing and pushing me away. "What're you doing?"
I cannot seem to let go of her, even as she swats me away. I hug her to my chest, marveling again at how finite the details in this dream are. Prim is so small between my arms.
"I love you," I say to her.
"I love you, too," says Prim, rolling her eyes.
She finally wriggles free of my hold and reaches down for the pail full of goat milk.
"Did you get a good haul?" she asks me, indicating the game bag around my shoulders.
I shrug the bag off.
"Just a rabbit and a squirrel," I say.
"The baker does love his squirrels," says Prim.
I am standing there, before my little sister, in the old Seam, in my old body, when it hits me. This is not a dream. I pinch myself. It does nothing but inflict pain. I enter my old house. Mom is sleeping. I walk over to the bed Prim and I share, and even when I lay in it and close my eyes and will away the dream, I do not wake. There is no reason to wake. I am awake.
Somehow, someway, I am back to the beginning. It takes only a few questions to Prim to figure it out. I am fifteen. The reaping that will change my whole world is less than a year away.
Three years is a lot to lose. Except, I am able to maintain my composure. At least, for Prim. I have mastered composure at her sake for years after Dad's death. Even though my hands are shaking as I change for school and tuck away my gamebag, I maintain a smile for her.
It is all for her.
I walk my little sister to school. It is the same old routine we had maintained for years before that fateful reaping day. I spot people who were killed during the firebombing of District 12 going about their days: walking to school, to the mines, opening their Town businesses for the morning. I see it all, I feel it, and somehow, I feel detached.
That is, until I spot Peeta Mellark walking across the schoolyard.
I stop walking without meaning to, rooted in place. If I had any lingers doubts about this being a dream, they all vanish at the sight of him. Walking on two good legs, smiling at his friends. The sunlight glints off of his blonde hair. He is so alive, so unchanged, so… untainted. He is not the mad boy that had taken that bullet for me. He is not my Peeta, either, not yet, but he is something untouched by the tragedy.
Prim tugs at my hand.
"What's wrong?" she asks me.
She follows my eyes to the boy with the bread. She gives me a weird look.
I shake my head to clear it.
"Sorry, I thought I recognized someone," I tell her.
I drop Prim off at her class door, and then find myself in my classroom. I have a momentary struggle to remember where my assigned seat is, but then I see Madge Undersee. The teacher had always sat us next to each other, so naturally I must sit beside her. I take that seat, and cannot help but stare at Madge's lowered head, as she scribbles words out in a notebook.
Madge notices my stare. She gives a shy smile, then returns to her work.
I have no idea what to say to these people. Madge is dead in my reality. All of them should be dead. It is jarring to know this old reality, but to see that it is plainly no longer true. They are like new people. People I have never met or have known. I will have to know them all over again.
Except, it is hard to look at them and not see the future I know.
How could I explain to Madge that she will one day give me the golden mockingjay pin that was once her aunts, and that it will in a years' time become the face of a rebellion that will bring down the Capitol?
But then I realize – that could be changed.
Anything could be changed. Peeta could still have two legs in this new future. Madge does not have to burn down with District 12. Prim and Gale do not have to die in the Capitol. President Coin does not have to take over and reinstate the Hunger Games.
Except, how could it be changed? How can I stop something that feels inevitable?
I am overwhelmed by it all. I let the impossibility of the task consume me.
That is, until Peeta Mellark walks into the room.
I stare at him across the room as he takes his seat. I cannot help it. Old Katniss would never have done this. I barely took note to him before the reaping; now, I blatantly watch him pull out his notebook and pencil.
Peeta glances up, catching my eye.
He looks startled by my regard. Then he smiles. The warmth that spreads through my chest jars me. The hope that snakes into my heart is unstoppable. Somehow, someway the hope ignites in me that old fire, the fire that had been subdued by the war, by the bloodshed and loss.
I continue to stare, without smiling back. Peeta gives a weak wave of his hand.
My hand returns the meek wave.
His smile widens, and then he turns back to his notebook with some new vigor. As if my one wave, my one insignificant first acknowledgment of his existence, has given him a high that will carry him throughout the day, perhaps the week.
I look down at my desktop, startled by how hard my heart is beating. I pick up my pencil with a shaking hand.
At first, I think to myself that I wish I could feel what Peeta is feeling; the simplicity, the untainted moment, without the past – or, well the future – tinging our interactions. Then I realize what this means: I am in love with Peeta Mellark. I love him probably more than he loves me, and I am the one with the unrequited love for the first time in my life. I have no idea how this will change our future, if it even does, but as I resolve myself to change the future for the better, to protect and save those I love, I know irrevocably that Peeta is a large part of that.