Peeta and I both sleep through the night. No nightmares. It is peaceful and quiet and long. The next morning I wake up first. The air in our bedroom is cool from the autumn night air creeping in through the open window, but under the blankets I'm warm and wrapped in the arms of a naked boy. This ridiculous grin crosses my face remembering last night.
"I love you," I whisper to him. He keeps sleeping. Well, now I've said it twice, although this second time was just for me. I slowly extract myself, careful not to wake him, wrap a blanket around my body, and sneak into the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror. I'm wondering if I'm supposed to look different now. My hair is tousled. My body looks just as burned as it did yesterday. I look the same, but I feel beautiful and loved and happy in a way I've never felt before. I feel free. I love Peeta. This is our life now, together. When I creep back into the bedroom, Peeta is sitting up and looking around the room frantically. When he sees me the worry melts into a giant grin that makes his blue eyes glisten. I jump back into the bed and he wraps me into a giant bear hug.
"For a second I thought maybe it wasn't real. Like I just had the best dream of my life," he says.
I give him a shy smile. "It was real," I say, and press my mouth to his.
"No fair! You brushed your teeth! I'm sure my breath is horrible," he says, pulling away and covering his mouth.
I straddle his lap and push my mouth insistently back on his. "I like the way you taste," I whisper as I stroke his lips with my tongue. He lets me in and my tongue finds his. I'm quickly there again, and I grind into Peeta with my hips. He groans into my mouth and keeps kissing me.
Downstairs, I hear the front door slam and Haymitch calls up, "Are you still in bed, Mockingjay? It's almost 10."
I feel what Haymitch once referred to as my "insatiable murderous streak" rearing its ugly head. I glare at the door, but I feel Peeta cup my face and say to me, "Come on, let's go make the old man breakfast." Yes, I suppose that's better than killing him. Leaving this room is the last thing in the world I want to do, but I roll off Peeta and dig some pajamas from a drawer. I open the next drawer down and pull out something for Peeta and toss it to him. I look at his drawer and pause.
"I think you should bring all your clothes here, not just a drawer," I say, my back still facing him.
I hear his smile in his words, "Okay."
We head downstairs. Both Haymitch and Effie are sitting at our bar chatting with one another. Effie laughs and puts her hand on Haymitch's leg. When she sees us on the stairs, she quickly withdraws it. Peeta pulls a large mixing bowl from the cabinet and begins adding ingredients for pancakes. I realize that's not my bowl. I don't know when it made its way here from Peeta's, but it makes me smile all the same. I stand next to him and say softly, "Maybe all your kitchen stuff, too?" He just smiles and keeps his eyes on the batter.
"Okay," he says.
The pancakes are fluffy and golden. Peeta digs out some maple syrup from the cabinet (also not mine), and we sit to eat. Breakfast is a normal breakfast, but we are all smiling like idiots. Effie even at one point wipes syrup off Peeta's face with her napkin, and we laugh as he squirms and pulls away from her. They leave, and Peeta and I decide to head into town. He's been fighting with what to do with the bakery. He has a hard time even being near it. Last time we went down, he had an episode in the middle of the street that left him mute for hours afterward. He misses his father.
As we walk down the street, Peeta tells me about him. "He used to love watching Prim through the window. She'd stop and stare at the cakes nearly every day."
"I remember," I say. "I used to have to drag her away. She told me once it was the prettiest, happiest piece of 12."
"My dad always had a soft spot for her. She was blonde and blue-eyed, sensitive and empathetic. She could always tell when he was having a bad day and would make faces at him through the window until he smiled at her." He stops walking. "Prim looked nothing like your dad."
I stop now too and give him a look. "What exactly are you implying?"
"Oh no, Katniss, that's not what I meant. I just mean that whenever he saw her coming home from school, his face just lit up. I think… I think when my dad looked at her, he saw what might have been. Had he married your mom. I know our parents were childhood friends, but I think it was more than that to my dad. He never said it was, but after that night with the strawberries, I could tell something was there. Something old and stale but never truly gone. I think it's why he liked Prim so much. It's also why I love my dad. Some men, in the same position, would feel bitterness toward her, but it made my dad love Prim even more. He told me when we were in the Arena, even before the rule change, he stopped her every day on her way home from school and gave her cookies and sweets. He couldn't bear to see her hurting."
He's right. Other men would probably resent my family. Me with my coal gray eyes, the product of my mom loving a miner from the Seam, and my sister, looking like she belonged in another world but forced to live in ours. The baker used to drive me crazy because he'd pay more for the squirrels I brought him than he really should have, but it makes sense now. He was looking out for my family. He always made me smile, though. Few people could coax one out of me back then, but when he'd compliment my marksmanship, one would escape and the corner of my mouth would creep up. "Every time, right in the eye," he'd say.
"I know I didn't know him that well, but I miss your dad, too," I say. Our feet carry us forward, and before long we are in the center of town. Peeta smiles and greets people, I just keep to myself. Old habits die hard. When we reach the remains of the bakery, Peeta's pace drags. I can feel the anxiety dripping from his body. The site has mostly been cleared at this point. Really just the foundation remains. Peeta steps over it and stands inside the frame of what used to be his home. I watch him slowly move from room to room. He lingers where the ovens used to be. I see him there, with his dad, kneading dough and laughing. I see his oldest brother, Bannock, giving them a dirty look, his other brother, Rye, burning something. Peeta said Rye never had a knack for baking. I see it all play in Peeta's eyes. For him, this site is now a grave.
I step over the foundation and go inside. I approach Peeta slowly, but I can feel his heart breaking from where I am. My foot catches something hard in the dirt, and I reach down and find a knob from one of the ovens. I dust it off. It's not shiny anymore. It's just a more recognizable piece of rubble, but I know it means something to him. Peeta is facing away from me. When I reach him, I wrap my arms around his waist and press my chest into his back. I push the knob into his hand. His body trembles slightly, and it slides down mine to the ground. I drop to his level and pull him back into me. He just sits there silently, spinning the knob in his hand slowly. I rub small circles on his back and feel his muscles slowly give into me.
"We should rebuild," he barely whispers.
"Okay," I whisper back. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hold him against me for a long time. We are exposed. There is no privacy in the shell of the bakery. No walls. It's just Peeta and me, and the ghosts, and just a few yards away the world moves on without us. I don't really care who sees us here. District 12 is our home, I trust the people here, and Peeta needs this moment. I intertwine one of my hands with his and pull it to my lips. It's intimate, but I need him to know I'm here with him. And I am, I think I am, until I catch the flash of a camera bulb. I jolt away from Peeta, and to my right I see the bulb flash again and again. I can't see who is behind it. I don't care. I bolt.