Life did not simply continue on after that. The next day I only rose from bed twice, both times to use the restroom. When Peeta returned from the bakery and found me exactly where he'd left me in the morning, he grew concerned. As he suggested a walk through town for some fresh air, I mustered a shake of my head. I didn't want to leave the safety and comfort of the warm bed and the cool room. The sights around town would only stir up memories, memories I didn't want to face.
Plus, I was exhausted. Sleep would not come and in the brief instances when it did, I preferred to be awake. My nightmares returned in full force, and no amount of reassurance from Peeta helped chase them away. All I could see when I closed my eyes was Gale and Prim. They haunted me equally.
The second night was no better, and the second day followed in the same pattern, though Peeta grew worried still. "You have to eat," he said as he lingered on the edge of the bed, his body half there with me and half on his way out to the bakery to start the morning loaves.
"Not hungry," I mumbled into my pillow, which felt slightly dirty from my constant presence. I couldn't be bothered with a bath, no matter Peeta's urging. It required more energy than I had left.
"Katniss." His eyes were tired as he rubbed the bridge of his nose with exasperation. I hated to inflict these feelings upon him, hated to cause him worry. But I didn't have the answers that he wanted, and my body wouldn't feel the emotions I needed to pick myself back up. I hadn't realized until I returned that I had been hoping that somehow, Gale and I would be able to make it work. That he would apologize and beg for forgiveness. Things wouldn't return to the way they had been, they could never be that again, but we would at least find a way to be friends.
That lingering hope had died on the train back to Twelve. In its place was yet another empty hole in my heart, punched out from another loss I knew I would never get over. It didn't matter how much Peeta tried to tell me that we just needed more time. No amount of time would be able to fix it, and I knew that finally. Whatever Gale and I had, whatever we could have had, was gone, evaporated in the heat from the bomb that had taken Prim and left me a scared and broken mess.
"I'll eat later," I lied to appease him.
Peeta wasn't fooled by the empty promise. "You can't just lay around all day."
"Why not?" I asked, lifting my head briefly off the pillow. "I've got nothing better planned. I have no where I need to be, nothing that has to get done." No purpose left, I thought but didn't say.
Leaning back across the bed, Peeta collected my hands in his when I failed to tuck them away under the pillow fast enough. "I know that seeing Gale was painful. I don't know what happened, but I know that it hurt. And I'm sorry, I am. But you can't hide out in here forever. The world keeps turning outside. You have to turn with it."
I didn't have to do anything, I was fairly certain of that. If Prim could die, if my mother could leave, if Gale could be Gale, if Haymitch could drink his life away in his house, then there was nothing I felt I had to do.
Then Peeta opened his mouth again, and he said something I couldn't argue against. "Stay with me," he said softly, his fingers stroking mine. "Please," he added, having the manners I never had nor would ever have. Then he kissed my knuckles and left to open up the shop.
I had one thing after all, it appeared, that I had to do. I had to stay with Peeta; he was right. He wasn't allowed to abandon me and I wasn't allowed to quit on him. It infuriated me, this sole purpose I possessed. But it did nothing to get me out of bed that day. If anything, it made me burrow in deeper, crushed under the weight of that responsibility.
When Monday arrived on the third day, Peeta decided to leave the bakery shut for the day and stay in bed with me. To his credit, he didn't pressure me to get out of bed. Instead, he treated it as if it was a great idea. Declaring a day off would do him good, he rolled over when he woke and found me staring at the ceiling, making no attempt to rise.
His arm casually snaked across my stomach, his hand resting on the curve of my side. "Unless you'd rather be alone," he allowed, giving me a chance to opt out if I wanted.
Part of me wanted to tell him to go, and part of me was glad he was offering to stay. I'd almost asked it of him the day before, but I was tired of being selfish. And besides, the bakery was a raging success. No matter what time of day I passed by if the bakery was open, there were people lined up to make purchases. It didn't hurt that Peeta hardly charged a thing at all. He just managed to cover his costs, and that was fine with him. He wasn't in it to make a profit; he certainly didn't need the money. Money was something neither of us would ever worry about again. Some days, I cursed that particular part of my fate.
"I'd rather you stayed," I admitted, turning my head slowly to face him while staying on my back. "But I know you need to go."
"I don't need to do anything." It was true, I supposed. After all, hadn't I thought something similar just a moment ago?
He got up a little while later, but only to venture down to the kitchen to scrounge up some food. He returned a few moments later, and I immediately ate anything and everything he offered. For a while, we did nothing but sit in silence. He didn't pry and I didn't volunteer.
But as the morning stretched on, the weight of things left unspoken threatened to pull me apart inside. "I'm more confused than ever." I'd lost track of time, but the words finally spilled out at some point during the late morning or early afternoon.
A noncommittal sound resonated from Peeta, but he remained silent otherwise.
"I want to let it go so badly and just move on. But one look at Gale brought up everything I've been trying to forget for the past few months." Still, Peeta didn't say a word. "How do you deal with it?" I finally asked, though I was somewhat afraid of what his answer might be.
He shifted slightly in the bed beside me. I heard him let out a wide, loud yawn. I realized then that perhaps he had needed the day off after all, and that it wasn't all about me. Maybe he needed a day of nothing but relaxation to let himself catch up with his own success.
"I don't try to forget it," he said after a long while. "Avoiding it only gives it more power, more strength. I try to deal with it face on, to overcome it each time it encroaches on my life. It's not easy," he admitted, "but it gets a little easier each time I overcome it."
"I don't think I'm strong enough to do that." There, in the comfort and safety of the bed, it felt safe to say. It wasn't something I would ever be able to speak outside the walls of the house, or perhaps even outside the bedroom.
"I have faith in you," he said softly. I felt his fingers reach across the gap between us, and as his hand settled on mine, I held it gratefully. "I'll help you," he added, "just as you help me. We save each other, right?"
The question then became, did I want to be saved? Did I truly want to find a way to deal with Gale's betrayal, or was it easier to blame everything on him so that I didn't have to think about my own involvement in the steps that lead Prim to that particular place at that particular time. I wasn't sure.
Peeta sensed my hesitance. "You don't have to do this by yourself," he reminded me, but even as he said it I felt him pulling away. The mattress shifted under his weight and sprung back as he got out of the bed and disappeared out the door without explanation. My eyes turned to the open door in surprise, wondering where he was going and if he was coming back, confused by his sudden, unexplained departure.
When he returned a minute later, he was no longer empty handed. Tucked under his arm was an object I knew all too well. Just the sight of it made me anxious after everything we'd just talked about. As he set it on the bed near my side and crawled back into the comfort of the covers, I could read his mind. I didn't like what was coming next.
"It's time," he told me gently, opening the book up to the first clean page. He dropped an assortment of pens onto the duvet next to it. "We owe it to her."
I ignored it for a minute, ten minutes, an hour. Time warped around me as I stared the book down, but it wasn't going anywhere. Peeta had that determined look on his face, and I knew that while he hadn't been pressuring me to get out of bed the past few days, this was a subject he wasn't going to drop. Peeta would win this fight, one way or another, no matter how much protest I put forth.
So I slowly caved. We started by just staring stories, some he'd heard before, others I hadn't shared with anyone. It brought fresh waves of pain to my entire body, and I was thankful I was in bed; my legs would not have been able to support me. I talked and shared for ages, and Peeta doodled aimlessly on a few loose pieces of parchment we had tucked inside the book against the back cover. Once I started, a tidal wave rushed through me, and the words wouldn't stop. At some point, Peeta handed me a pen, and I began to write as I spoke.
It took hours and I filled page after page. The sun set, and we had to switch to artificial lighting as the night wore on and we continued to work. We didn't stop to eat or sleep or work on anything else. I was devoted, completely, to the project. I couldn't save her, but I wouldn't forget her. I wouldn't let anyone forget her. She would remain forever recorded, on the sheets inside the book, with all the others who had worked so hard and lost so much.