It took months before we could touch each other in the daylight; before I could reconcile this new boy whose eyes were a pale imitation of themselves with the boy who let go of his entire life to present me with the locket I still have carefully wrapped in the bottom drawer of my dresser.
It took months of him frosting cookies so that they looked like the flowers I had draped around Rue's body, in all the shades of Effie's hair; even took one night of me hysterically screaming for him to destroy my old kitchen table so that I wouldn't have to be reminded anymore of a time when I couldn't tell which kisses counted and which ones didn't.
There are times when Peeta's not the only one who has problems recognizing what was real.
It took months for me to get past the Peeta who sometimes looks at me as if he's sizing me up, as if he's not sure whether or not to kill me or kiss me, to the Peeta who says my name in his sleep and leaves me fresh sprays of primroses across my pillow so that I take the sweetness of my sister with me into my dreams.
The book helped. It gave us an excuse to talk without having to look each other in the eye; gave us a way to relive some of the moments in which we grew. Gave me a way to see which of his memories had been tampered with and which ones I could still like myself in.
The day we began I made him start with Prim, Prim with the hospital whites that she was so proud of, her shirttail flapping behind her ever like a duck, her eyes a steely blue, her hair so like our mother's, so golden soft and lovely.
It took him hours, and when he was done his face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, deep red indentions bruising his fingers where they had pressed against his brush. Warning myself to be diplomatic no matter what his painting looked like, I leaned over his shoulder and found myself instead making a thin noise like the whistle of a kettle when the water's finally boiled. It was Prim at the end, Prim with her gentle smile, her capable hands, her healing nature, Prim at her best, and when Peeta turned up to me I saw his face twist in instant anxiety.
"It's wrong," he said, reaching for a fresh sheet of paper. "I got it all wrong."
"No," I told him when I was finally able to talk, reaching out to stop his hand, feeling the warmth of his fingers beneath mine. "No, you got it right."
That night when I dreamt of her and woke up weeping his arms didn't seem like enough, and when he kissed me in the dark I returned his kiss without trying to figure out what it meant, kissed him only because I wanted to.
The next day was the first time we laughed together, and after that it got easier.
But when he tells me he loves me I still don't know what to say.
"Peeta," I start, and he shakes his head.
"You know I do," he says quietly, and this steals the words from my throat and leaves me looking at him helplessly.
Of course I know. How could I not? He does it too well for me not to know, in the way he's coaxed Prim's bushes into flowering so that the smell of roses no longer sends me cowering against a wall; in the look that sometimes flares in his eyes after a particularly bad moment, when he uncurls his fingers from a death grip on a chair and looks at me like he's seeing me for the first time, a look that achieves what no one, even Cinna, has ever been able to do.
Beautiful. He makes me feel beautiful.
"Katniss," he says, and leans forward so that his thumb can stroke against my cheek, can capture a strand of hair and thread it gently around his fingers before sliding down to press against my lip. His brow arches in question and I try on a smile in response, shifting just a little as he moves closer to me and pulls me into his lap, his arms sliding around me as he lowers his head down to mine and kisses me against the smell of paint and oils.
In the split second before I allow myself to give in to his touch, his lips, I look at the canvas anew over his shoulder and for the first time realize that he's painted a subtle hint of my face into his sunset: my eyes the gentle slash of the gray clouds racing across the horizon, my nose the gentlest beam of escaping light, my mouth the downturned sweep on the top of the tree where he lay awake all night to protect me while I was busy cutting branches.
"Are you okay?" Peeta whispers against slack lips, and I make an inarticulate noise, feeling suddenly cold as his face turns from mine to see what has rendered me mute. I can feel his chest rumble with laughter, and then he turns to face me with a grin that tugs on one side of his mouth and makes him look almost young.
"Do you always do that?" I ask him weakly, and he offers his hand as he rises to his feet, pulling me alongside him as he takes me on a wordless tour of the canvases lining the floor.
The stage at the Capitol, the cornucopia, the training center, the meadow, all the Districts, under the city, in the dead grass, the fresh blooms of dandelions, in the sunrise, in the sunset, in the starry night and one gusted with snow and another that skates with dark clouds.
I can see myself in them all.
There is no forethought as I kiss him hard enough for our teeth to clash, as I reach out and pull him as close as I can; ignoring every clanging warning that cautions me against this, ignoring every gnawing memory of Gale, ignoring every barbed thought that this one thing that saves me might be the same thing that destroys him.
Ignoring everything except this boy whose entire life is centered around my eyes.
The number of times he's kissed me has to be in the thousands by now, and only a handful have stirred anything in me other than duty and affection; but tonight, in the dust, in the moonlight, the scent of oils wrapped around us like the coziest of blankets, there is something new about the soft feather of his hair tickling my fingertips, the grip of his hands on my waist, the tangle of his legs against mine. My stomach is doing slow flips as his lips draw the breath from my mouth into his, and the sweetness of his exhales has me tugging him even closer, leaves me wanting something more than he is prepared to give.
Finally in what could have been seconds, in what could have been years, he stops and leans back, his breath coming heavy, and I look up at him in a daze, my lips feeling bruised without his touch, only to find him with his head ducked, his fingers pressed hard enough against his eyes to turn his knuckles white.
"Peeta," I say, then, a touch impatiently, "Peeta!"
I wait, and when he refuses to look at me I pull his hand down and hold it in between my own.
"You love me," I say, and this bald declaration startles him enough so that his eyes finally meet flip up to meet mine, guarded.
"Yes," he says carefully. "Yes, yes, yes. But Katniss, if you keep-"
A swallow bobs in his throat and he claps a hand back over his eyes.
"If you keep looking at me like that," he says miserably, "then in about thirty seconds I'm going to do something that we both know I shouldn't do."
A soft flare of sparks ignites in my stomach like a teasing flutter of butterfly wings, and I cannot keep from smiling as he finally sucks in a deep breath and uncovers his eyes.
"Katniss," he says again, and I reach forward and cover his mouth, not unkindly.
"I'm going to tell you a story," I say to him. "It's a fairy tale, okay?"
He nods warily against my touch.
"Once upon a time there was a girl," I say. "And she was incredibly unhappy. She lived her whole life feeling like she had to carry a burden that no one could understand. She finally met a man who did understand, but even that wasn't enough to make her happy.
"Then one day the girl was kidnapped by an evil monster. The monster held her captive, and told her that she could never come home again unless she was willing to make her life even worse."
I break off and look at the desolate cast of Peeta's face.
"Don't worry," I reassure him. "It's about to get better."
I take a long minute to think over how to explain before I can continue.
"To make things even harder than they'd already been, she met someone else in captivity. Someone who didn't understand, but it was better that he didn't, because he made her happy. The monster hated that. He did everything he could to turn them against each other. He even set the girl on fire. And once she burned out, once she was found that she was only made of ashes, she realized that she didn't need the man who understood. Even the monster could do that. She needed the man who made her happy, because he was the only one who cared enough to bring her back."
Peeta is looking at me miserably when I take away my hand, and I offer him a hint of a smile in return.
"I guess it's not really a happy ending," I tell him. "More of a cliffhanger."
"You really don't think I understand?" he asks, and I shrug.
"Not like Ga- like other people did," I say. "You never put your name in extra times for tesserae, right? But I don't need someone who understands where I came from. I had that for years. Peeta, you-"
For a long moment we watch each other, and then his eyes start to glow.
"You understand where I'm going."
"The same place I am," he agrees, as if it's the easiest answer in the world, and when he kisses me this time there's no chance that he will stop. His lips are insistent against mine, his hands gentle as he leads me back to the bed that for years now there's been no question that he will share. At one point he grows impatient enough with my clumsy feet to scoop me up and carry me the rest of the way, and this makes me laugh against his lips, hard enough for him to stop kissing me to ask if I need to have my head inspected.
"That's not a nice thing to say to someone who's mentally disoriented," I chide him gently. "I have the bracelet to prove it. Somewhere."
"Don't act like you're special," he teases me. "They let me have a bracelet too."
"I was just thinking," I tell him, "of all the times I would get frustrated with how you walked. I don't think I've ever been the one with heavy feet before."
His eyes are blazing when they look down at me, and I can feel the smooth muscles in his arms tense.
"You do have a certain sort of grace," he says as he pushes aside the door and deposits me neatly on the end of the bed, one hand coming down to grip mine as he sits down next to me, as the other brushes messy strands of hair from my face and I see a ghost of a smile whip across his face. "On your feet anyway."
"What if it makes things worse?" I say suddenly, and he laughs a little even though I see my own nervousness blossom in his eyes.
"Still no idea," he murmurs. "The effect you can have."
I frown at him in exasperation, and he leans forward.
"Katniss," he says. "Do you know how many times you've stopped my heart?"
He starts to tick off on his fingers.
"When I first heard you sing. When you would wear red to school. When you volunteered at the reaping. When Cinna set us on fire and you gripped my hand like you would never let it go. The first time you kissed me, and the second time you kissed me, and every kiss after that. When I had to propose to you in front of a crowd, and every word I spoke was like eating glass. Literally, even, when I ran into the force field."
I laugh, shakily, and he gives up on counting and takes my hands in his and presses them both palm down against his cheeks, locks his eyes on mine.
"When I saw you go for the nightlock and it was the first arena all over again," he says quietly, "only this time I wasn't going to stand aside and let you die.
"And after all of that," he says. "You worry that this is going to be something bad?"
I kiss him because I can't think of a response, operating on instinct because I'm afraid that reason will throw me a thousand new reasons why I don't deserve this from him.
"Have you ever," he says, pulling away from me, valiantly struggling for his words. "Have you ever thought that maybe you could – that we would-"
"Twice," I rescue him, amused to see Peeta, normally so swift with his words, finally at a loss. "Once in the cave. Once on the beach."
His fingers splay over my chest, over my heart, and I realize at once that he understands as well as I do that our long ago promise means that each beat of his heart counts my own accordingly; that if his had ever stopped it wouldn't have taken very long for mine to catch up.
Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without I hear Gale's voice, and I immediately shut him out.
Maybe I can't survive without Peeta, but I can't live without him either.
The second kiss came two weeks after the first, but the third came just a few nights later, and the fourth and fifth the next morning. After that it grew natural for me to accept his kiss before I disappeared into the woods, made it seem like something was missing if he didn't kiss me goodnight, even if his kisses were nothing but routine.
It took us months, but he got much more relaxed with his kisses, even dropping one on me in front of Haymitch, who shot me a smug look that resulted in him being shoved unceremoniously out into the snow.
A few days later Haymitch caught me while I was trying to slip unnoticed behind his house, the first stray light of the sunrise turning the world gray and pink, the dew on the grass glittering beneath the soles of my boots. He was sitting on a chair on his back porch with a cup of tea jittering in his shaky hands, a brown feather trapped in his hair. His bloodshot eyes were dark against a face that would not have looked out of place in the Capitol; he almost looked as if he had painted it white.
"You know, sweetheart," he said. "You're always leaving him. Have you noticed that?"
"I always come back," I said after a defensive pause, because I could think of nothing else to say, and Haymitch waved a hand at the chair next to his, slopping liquid over the rim of his cup.
After a brief internal struggle I crossed the grass and walked up to him warily, perching on the edge of the chair, laying my bow down next to me where I could grab it quickly if I had to do the world a favor and shoot him.
"What do you want, Haymitch?" I asked him. "Greasy Sae asked specifically for deer, and that's a hard one for me to do by myself."
He looked at me appraisingly and took a long drink, spilling most of the liquid onto an already drenched shirt.
"I see you're kissing him again," he said finally. "Or was that just for my benefit?"
The silence stretched in between us like a spider's web, delicate, gossamer-fine, poised to snap at the slightest misstep.
"Not that it's any of your business," I told him. "But yes. I'm kissing him again. Do you have a problem with that?"
"That boy is in love with you," he said, and I jerked in surprise, bringing a vindictive smirk to Haymitch's lips. "And depending on how you're planning to handle it, you and I might have a problem."
Reading Haymitch's thoughts has always been one of my more unfortunate talents, and when he looked at me I knew he was thinking about the morning after I figured out why Snow was holding Peeta, the morning we were finally allowed out of the bunkers and they tried to make me shoot post-bombing-I'm-okay-we're-okay propos, the morning I cracked like fine china and howled for Haymitch, wanting only him because he loved Peeta
too.
Too.
"You don't need to worry about it," I snapped.
"Don't I?" he asked mildly. "I saw all of the footage, you know."
He sketched an imaginary flower over my cheek and I immediately heard Peeta's voice
Thank you. That looks beautiful.
"I saw how he handled himself around you when he was trying to convince you that you could live without him," he said. "And I saw how you fell apart when you had to try. And now I see how you're still tiptoeing around him and it makes me want to grab you and shake you senseless."
"Don't you dare," I hissed, and Haymitch held up a hand.
"I'm not going to touch you," he said dryly. "I know that things are never going to be normal with the two of you, but you're not stupid, sweetheart. When are you going to just admit what we all already know?"
"There's nothing to admit," I said through lips that suddenly felt numb.
"Are you sure?" he asked, and I jumped from my seat and grabbed my bow, stalking off without looking backwards, listening to the low crackle of his laughter.
That was the beginning of me realizing all over again that maybe I didn't only need Peeta, that maybe I wanted him too.
"On the beach," he says now, just a hint of a smile in his voice. "When you and I – until Finnick-" He stops and takes a breath. "I've never wanted - I don't think-"
A tremor flicks across his shoulder as his brow furrows against the onslaught of false memory, his pupils dilating in the muted light until his eyes go black, and I wrap my arms around him and press my hands firmly against his back, hold him even closer as I feel his chest heave with interrupted breath
.
I don't know what to do – have always been one step behind when it comes to knowing how to help him – but when I open my mouth to say something inane and comforting I find myself singing instead; the only thing I knew to do to save me from myself; the only thing I can think of that will draw him back to me, because it was the reason he noticed me in the first place.
When I look up his eyes have calmed, and everything from that point on is as sweet and steady as Peeta himself.
When it's over, when he says my name into the dark, I reach for him and find I'm not the only one who's wept. It doesn't surprise me to feel the dampness on his cheeks; I was always the one who saw that as a weakness, when he was the one who realized that it was only a weakness to pretend to be someone that you're not.
Always I think.
The room falls silent in the pale moonlight that tumbles in from the open window and puddles on the floor, on the thick blue quilt that we have thrown to the end of the bed, on his skin, which is as pale and pure as the white fluff of a dandelion seed, as the sheen of a pearl, and then he sucks in a breath, as if steeling himself for disappointment, and looks over at me.
"You love me," he whispers. "Real or not real."
I blink once, twice, and then force myself to meet those blue eyes, and remember the feeling that burned up my spine like an electric current when I saw them appear out of the mud like magic; the way I had taken them down with me with his declaration burrowing along (always) saving itself for the moment when I needed it the most; the horrible flatness that had descended across them like a dull curtain after he had woven together a proposal lovely enough to bring an audience to tears (Not like this. He wanted it to be real); the laughter that twinkles in them when Haymitch, who has barely loved a soul in twenty-five years, waxes on for hours about his geese; the wistfulness that he tries in vain to hide when he is reading the letters from Annie that always include pictures of a tiny boy with dark hair and seafoam eyes.
The relief that laps like warm water when I tell him something is real and I see him look at me the way he did when we sat curled up on the love seat in front of Caesar Flickerman: like seeing me is best thing that has ever happened to him, like he cannot believe it's not a dream.
A sudden warmth creeps over me when I realize that I might be the fire of the sunset, blazing bright and fast in the instant before dark, but it is Peeta who is the sky that supports it, constant, unchanging, always flawless and unending behind the clouds.
My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am nineteen years old. My home is in District 12. My home is with Peeta. I used to have wings, but no one ever thought to teach me how to fly.
I love Peeta. Real or not real?
...when are you going to just admit what we all already know?
I reach over and lay a gentle palm over his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart against my fingers, as soothing as he is, as strong, and without any hesitation, without any trepidation, I look into those blue eyes I never had a chance against.
And tell him, "real".