Author's Note: Here it is! To make it up to you guys for taking so long, you get an extra lengthy Peeta POV. Hope you enjoy it, and maybe tell me what you think?
For the first time, my father doesn't steal a glance to my direction while she is on screen, as if checking on me. His wet cheeks glimmer with the soft glow coming from the old television that has all of his attention, and I only then notice the hot tears running down my face.
On screen, Katniss sobs. And I dare to think that for the first time, most of Panem cries with her.
I envy her, even if it would make me the most selfish person in the world to say it out loud. My hand closes around a bunch of grass and I pull it off the ground just because I can, it doesn't make me feel better. Because somewhere in the Capitol, she just spent a full night crying to herself because of not being able to save a child that wasn't even her responsibility. Rue was nothing but another tribute, another person that had to die for Katniss to return Danny home, yet she still felt the urge to protect her, she still was heartbroken when she didn't. And it's my fault that she had to face that. It's because of me that she is in the Arena, that she is now for sure hating herself for killing Marvel. It's my fault she is never coming out for me to tell her that it's okay.
Still, I envy her. Because I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. Because when I get my brother back ― and I know I will, because if someone can twist the Hunger Games into making sure someone else wins, that is Katniss ― our reunion will be bittersweet because it means I will never get to see her again, to thank her. To hold her. And I will have to live with the guilt, with the loneliness, with the blood in her hands. That makes death a very creepy, but tempting, alternative.
I release the firm hold I've had on the handful of grass and the blood rushes back to my hand. I envy her for this meadow too, even if it's ridiculous to envy her for something she'll never have again. But as I look at the treetops before me, and I listen to nothing but the leaves brushing against each other and the gentle birds singing, I wish that this forest was mine the way it once was hers. I wish I had the right to use this as a shelter. Instead, I have to use it as a hideout only.
"What the hell are you doing here?" His voice startles me and I almost jump forward, I bet that would have made him very happy, to see me fall from a cliff. Instead I turn around. I should have heard him approach me: his boots are heavy and he is carrying what it looks like a bag full of game, he ought to have made some noise. But he wasn't like any other person.
I swallow back the impulse to shoot him an 'I could ask the same thing' because I know I have no right to be here. This are Gale's woods now. Not theirs, just his.
"They arrived already, you know?" I do.
"They are all here for you." The way he spits those words at me makes it clear that he has found a new way to say 'She is in there because of you,' and I look down because he is right.
"We should get going then."
"We?"
"You are her best friend."
Gale scoffs. "Yeah... well, it seems like the Capitol doesn't care about that."
The trail from my house to hers is permanently engraved to my memory. How many times didn't I walk it just to chicken out at the very last moment and turn around? I remember quite vividly walking it with my mother the day it all started. Yet, the trail from the woods to her place is entirely different. Still, it's eerily familiar to me and I walk it without hesitation, probably because of the many times I imagined her walking it, the many times she talked about it and I wished it was me walking it with her, not Gale.
After a moment, to gather both my breath and my strength, I knock on her door and I wait.
I shuffle my feet, and notice that for the first time they are not covered in flour but in mud, I guess this is just another sign for me to realize how much I've changed since she volunteered almost three weeks ago. I know the young woman I saw shooting an arrow through Marvel's chest is not the same girl that used to live in this same house.
She has changed, and I have lost her. Therefore, I've changed too.
I look up when Prim opens the door and she gives me a sad, shy smile. I keep waiting for her or Mrs. Everdeen to realize who I am and what I'm guilty of. I keep waiting for them to join the dots and hate me the way Gale does (even though he hated me from way before, and for very different reasons). Prim's arms close around me and I let out a relieved sigh as I hold on tightly to her. Today is not the day I lose the only thing of Katniss I have left.
"Are you guys ready?" I ask when I finally let go of her, noticing Mrs. Everdeen walking towards the door. They both nod and Prim and I step out of the way so I can walk them to my family's bakery, where the interviews will take place.
It was disturbing how soon after Rue's death we received the letters.
Dear Mr. Mellark,
We are proud to announce that your younger brother Daniel Mellark has made it to the final eight. As you know, it is customary for the families of the final eight tributes to join into our celebration by sharing a little more of them with Panem.
We look forward to meeting you.
I remember too vividly the pain in my father's face as he handed me a second letter.
One for Danny's brother, one for Katniss' fiancé.
In the letter, there was also the instructions we had to follow. They would meet us at ten sharp in my bakery, the five of us. They would get us ready and then film us answering some questions about Katniss and Danny's past, as if they hadn't taken enough from us already. When Prim wandered into the bakery I promised to pick her and her mother up at nine thirty, so they didn't have to go through the camera-crowded city square alone.
For the first time, the warm bakery seems safe and comforting, as opposed to the Capitol people that roam our District.
"And this, is Cinna." Effie has talked our ears off for the past ten minutes, introducing us the camera crew and going on and on about how proud she is of her tributes. If I hear her calling them that one more time I might lose it, but Prim's little hand curls around my fist and I calm down.
I look up from our joined hands, expecting to see another crazy-looking Capitol person. Instead, I'm relieved to find a dark skinned man smiling gently at us. "He is Katniss' stylist, and he is here to give you some final touches before you go on camera."
Cinna offers me his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Peeta. Katniss is very special to me." There is something about the kindness and sincerity in his voice, and the way he speaks of her in present tense that makes me immediately trust him, even like him. So I shook his hand and muster half a smile from him, which is more than anyone outside of Prim is getting from me lately.
I'm slowly starting to calm down after seeing Cinna, and then through the door enters the man most opposite to him I could ever imagine, the same man I would have never expected to cross the door of my family's bakery: Caesar Flickerman.
His hair is electric blue, not powder blue anymore the way it was when he interviewed the tributes before the Games started. And his personality is just as electric as his hair is, still I can't bring myself to hate him. Caesar enthusiastically shakes my hand and kisses both of Prim's rosy cheeks, twice.
"Let's get this started, then."
Mrs. Everdeen goes first. She talks about how much Katniss reminds her of her late husband, she tears up when Caesar brings out the memory of Katniss singing to Rue and he offers her a handkerchief, he seems to be fighting tears himself. There is something odd about Caesar, and I can't help but to think that maybe even after doing the same thing for the past decades, he can't bring himself not to care about the people he interviews. Maybe Caesar loses twenty three friends every year.
Next, my parents sit together in our living room, but no matter how much Caesar tries to get her to speak, it's my father who does all the talking. He shares a few anecdotes of a younger Danny that make the camera crew aw and swoon a little, it's kind of creepy how he has managed to wrap all the Capitol around his finger. Then, my father speaks highly of Katniss and her sacrifice. Of how he feels like it's both his children inside the Arena and Caesar looks just as heartbroken as my father sounds. I'm glad it's Prim's turn next, because there is a lump in my throat I can't seem to swallow.
"I am very sorry that you have to go through this," Cinna says as he replaces Prim standing next to me. The people that Effie introduced as Katniss' prep team are now taking care of the lighting and the almost invisible make up in Prim's face. "It is unfair from us to ask you to rejoice for this awful happening. Having a relative in the Arena is already horrible, I can't imagine having two."
I look up to him, trying to muster an answer, but we are told to shut up immediately after that as Prim's interview is about to start.
When Danny was interviewed by the same man, it was easy to see the effect he had in the Capitol people. He quickly climbed his way up to the top favorite, and I could see Prim doing just the same. She shared a story of Katniss taking her and Danny camping (claiming it had been in her backyard, instead of the forbidden woods) and saying how much she missed them both.
"If you could have one wish, dear Prim, what would it be?"
"To have them both back," she answered without hesitation and the look in Caesar's face said the same thing than mine. Me too, Prim. Me too.
I sat down on the very same couch where I had spent afternoons with Katniss, where I had tickled my brother, where I had sat down to watch both of them fight for their lives in the games.
"Congratulations on your engagement, I just wish the circumstances were different." Caesar's tone is honest and I nod at him grateful, after the prep team gives me a final touch a light goes on and I am let know I am on the air.
Caesar speaks with his usual enthusiasm this time. "Ladies and gentlemen, the moment we've been waiting for is finally here. I am honored to be here with Mr. Peeta Mellark, Katniss' fiancé and Danny's older brother." He turns to me and I try hard to focus on him instead of the camera. "Peeta, Danny told us about you going on and on about Katniss for years before you even started dating, and we all know how lovely your girl is. But tell us, how did you start dating?"
I don't want to tell them this, but I know Katniss for sure didn't want the Capitol to know about how I fell in love with her, or how I proposed to her in that velvet couch where we said our goodbyes. There was a reason why Katniss, the most reserved person I know, said all that: to win sponsors. And if I can help her, even with just this, then I will.
"Well, when I was sixteen I once got burnt while baking. She says that I did it on purpose, and I only can say that if there's a person for whom I'd willingly stick my arm inside the flames is Katniss." Caesar chuckles and some of the Capitol women fan themselves, I clear my throat and continue. "So my mom, she took me to Katniss' house, because her mom is a healer, but she wasn't there. So Katniss opened the door and told us that, and we were just about to leave when she said that she could do it, heal me, that is. My mother and I went inside and Katniss started grabbing small flasks from shelves, her hands were shaking and I could tell she had never healed anyone before. Luckily for her, or for the both of us, her mom crossed the door just before she applied some weird ointment on my skin. The wrong ointment, I should mention."
This elicits a few chuckles and giggles and I continue to tell the story, the memories flow easily and find their way to my mouth.
My eyes reluctantly left her face when I heard her mother walking in and crying out for Katniss to stop. Relieved, Katniss stepped back and allowed her mom to heal me, a few minutes later my mother and I were walking back to the bakery. Somehow I knew things had changed, that our relationship wouldn't solely consist of me stealing glances of her whenever she wasn't looking, of me begging my father to trade bread with her even when squirrels were fair payment.
A few days later, she proved me right by approaching me at the school, two coins in her hand. She placed them in mine and I tried to pretend like her touch didn't burn in the best of ways. They were the same two coins my mother had paid to hers for healing me.
"Now we are even," she said. And I stared at her dumbfounded.
"From when we were kids, the bread?" I blink because I can't believe she has remembered that for all those years, but she mistakes my surprise by anger and she stammers an apology. "I wanted to thank you, before. But I didn't know how. You... you saved my life, and I don't like owing things to anybody. So now we are even."
I smiled to her for the first time on my life and returned the coins to her hand. "You don't owe me anything Katniss." She stubbornly resisted to me giving her the money so I just sighed and said. "So, if this is my money, it means I can do whatever I want with it, can't I?"
She nodded, and after a deep breath to give myself the valor to do so, I grabbed her hand. "Well, then. Let's go get some ice cream."
"It took me almost two years for her to warm up to me enough to kiss her, and I enjoyed every moment of it, of us."
Caesar takeshis hand to his chest and smiles at me, nodding. "I wish I had enough time to ask you all about that first kiss, but I am sorry to announce we are in a very tight schedule," behind him Effie nods, pleased. "Because we have some very exciting news tonight. If I could have the rest of the relatives join Peeta in the couch, please?"
My parents, Mrs. Everdeen and Prim walk into the room hesitantly and Prim has to sit on my lap because of the small space. Someone turns on my old tv and I tighten my hand into a fist. How dare they record us while watching the Games? Don't we have to go through enough? They have towatch us go through it?
The screen is divided in two, as it often happens when two interesting things are going on at the same time. Except that this time nothing is really going on. On the left side of the screen, Danny is pacing nervously in their cave, waiting for Katniss. He knows from the faces in the sky that she is alive and Rue isn't, but I can only imagine what it is for him to be on the Arena all by himself. On the left, there's her. She is still crying, more quietly this time, but she seems to have a hard time to pull herself together enough to face Danny, the urge to comfort her must be obvious in my face because out of nowhere Cinna's hand lands on my shoulder.
Trumpets go off and both of them stop what they are doing to pay attention. For the most part, the only communication the tributes get from outside the arena is nightly death toll. But occasionally, there will be trumpets followed by an announcement. Usually, this will be a call to a feast, a way to round up the tributes together and assure a second bloodbath. I know both Katniss and Danny are too small to go to one of those.
Claudius Templesmith's voice booms into the screen and he excitedly tells us something very confusing. There's been a rule change in the Games. A rule change!
"Under the new rule, both tributes from the same districts will be declared if they are the last two alive."