Everything's on fire
The war outside our door keeps raging on
Hold on to this lullaby
Even when the music's gone.. Gone
---
(Katniss&Peeta (at the train) during Victory Tour)
When I open my eyes, it's early afternoon. My head rests on Peeta's arm. I don't remember him coming in last night. I turn, being careful not to disturb him, but he's already awake.
“No nightmares,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“You didn't have any nightmares last night,” he says.
He's right. For the first time in ages I've slept through the night. “I had a dream, though,” I say, thinking back.
“I was following a mockingjay through the woods. For a long time. It was Rue, really. I mean, when it sang, it had her voice.”
“Where did she take you?” he says, brushing my hair off my forehead.
“I don't know. We never arrived,” I say. “But I felt happy.”
“Well, you slept like you were happy,” he says.
“Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?” I say.
“I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror,” he says.
“You should wake me,” I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night. About how long it can take to calm me down.
“It's not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you,” he says. “I'm okay once I realize you're here.”
---
(Katniss&Peeta (at her room) making family book)
It's quiet, absorbing work that helps take my mind off my troubles. I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers' guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.
One afternoon Peeta stops shading a blossom and looks up so suddenly that I start, as though I were caught spying on him, which in a strange way maybe I was. But he only says, “You know, I think this is the first time we've ever done anything normal together.”
---
(Katniss&Peeta (at the train) on the way to the Capitol for Quarter Quell)
I order warm milk, the most calming thing I can think of, from an attendant. Hearing voices from the television room, I go in and find Peeta. Beside him on the couch is the box Effie sent of tapes of the old Hunger Games. I recognize the episode in which Brutus became victor.
Peeta rises and flips off the tape when he sees me. “Couldn't sleep?”
“Not for long,” I say. I pull the robe more securely around me as I remember the old woman transforming into the rodent.
“Want to talk about it?” he asks. Sometimes that can help, but I just shake my head, feeling weak that people I haven't even fought yet already haunt me.
When Peeta holds out his arms, I walk straight into them. It's the first time since they announced the Quarter Quell that he's offered me any sort of affection. He's been more like a very demanding trainer, always pushing, always insisting Haymitch and I run faster, eat more, know our enemy better. Lover? Forget about that. He abandoned any pretense of even being my friend. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck before he can order me to do push-ups or something. Instead he pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.
And why should I? I have said good-bye to Gale. I'll never see him again, that's for certain. Nothing I do now can hurt him. He won't see it or he'll think I am acting for the cameras. That, at least, is one weight off my shoulders.
The arrival of the Capitol attendant with the warm milk is what breaks us apart. He sets a tray with a steaming ceramic jug and two mugs on a table. “I brought an extra cup,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“And I added a touch of honey to the milk. For sweetness. And just a pinch of spice,” he adds. He looks at us like he wants to say more, then gives his head a slight shake and backs out of the room.
“What's with him?” I say.
“I think he feels bad for us,” says Peeta.
“Right,” I say, pouring the milk.
---
(Katniss&Peeta (at the training center) spending their last day together before the Quell)
“So what should we do with our last few days?” I ask.
“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.
“Come on, then,” I say, pulling him into my room.
It feels like such a luxury, sleeping with Peeta again. I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness. For the feel of him beside me in the darkness. I wish I hadn't wasted the last couple of nights shutting him out. I sink down into sleep, enveloped in his warmth, and when I open my eyes again, daylight's streaming through the windows.
“No nightmares,” he says.
“No nightmares,” I confirm. “You?”
“None. I'd forgotten what a real night's sleep feels like,” he says.
We lie there for a while, in no rush to begin the day. Tomorrow night will be the televised interview, so today Effie and Haymitch should be coaching us. More high heels and sarcastic comments, I think. But then the redheaded Avox girl comes in with a note from Effie saying that, given our recent tour, both she and Haymitch have agreed we can handle ourselves adequately in public. The coaching sessions have been canceled.
“Really?” says Peeta, taking the note from my hand and examining it. “Do you know what this means? We'll have the whole day to ourselves.”
“It's too bad we can't go somewhere,” I say wistfully.
“Who says we can't?” he asks.
The roof. We order a bunch of food, grab some blankets, and head up to the roof for a picnic. A daylong
picnic in the flower garden that tinkles with wind chimes. We eat. We lie in the sun. I snap off hanging vines and use my newfound knowledge from training to practice knots and weave nets. Peeta sketches me. We make up a game with the force field that surrounds the roof—one of us throws an apple into it and the other person has to catch it.
No one bothers us. By late afternoon, I lie with my head on Peeta's lap, making a crown of flowers while he fiddles with my hair, claiming he's practicing his knots. After a while, his hands go still. “What?” I ask.
“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.
Usually this sort of comment, the kind that hints of his undying love for me, makes me feel guilty and awful. But I feel so warm and relaxed and beyond worrying about a future I'll never have, I just let the word slip out. “Okay.”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “Then you'll allow it?”
“I'll allow it,” I say.
His fingers go back to my hair and I doze off, but he rouses me to see the sunset. It's a spectacular yellow and orange blaze behind the skyline of the Capitol. “I didn't think you'd want to miss it,” he says.
---
(Katniss&Peeta (at the Quell arena) after she attacked by Jabberjay)
I know it's stopped when I feel Peeta's hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle. But I stay eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, muscles too rigid to release. Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently. It takes a long time before I begin to relax the iron grip on my body. And when I do, the trembling begins.
“It's all right, Katniss,” he whispers.
“You didn't hear them,” I answer.
“I heard Prim. Right in the beginning. But it wasn't her,” he says. “It was a jabberjay.”
“It was her. Somewhere. The jabberjay just recorded it,” I say.
“No, that's what they want you to think. The same way I wondered if Glimmer's eyes were in that mutt last year. But those weren't Glimmer's eyes. And that wasn't Prim's voice. Or if it was, they took it from an interview or something and distorted the sound. Made it say whatever she was saying,” he says.
“No, they were torturing her,” I answer. “She's probably dead.”
“Katniss, Prim isn't dead. How could they kill Prim? We're almost down to the final eight of us. And what happens then?” Peeta says.
“Seven more of us die,” I say hopelessly.
“No, back home. What happens when they reach the final eight tributes in the Games?” He lifts my chin so I have to look at him. Forces me to make eye contact. “What happens? At the final eight?”
I know he's trying to help me, so I make myself think. “At the final eight?” I repeat. “They interview your family and friends back home.”
“That's right,” says Peeta. “They interview your family and friends. And can they do that if they've killed them all?”
“No?” I ask, still unsure.
“No. That's how we know Prim's alive. She'll be the first one they interview, won't she?” he asks.
I want to believe him. Badly. It's just ... those voices ...
“First Prim. Then your mother. Your cousin, Gale. Madge,” he continues. “It was a trick, Katniss. A horrible one. But we're the only ones who can be hurt by it. We're the ones in the Games. Not them.”
“You really believe that?” I say.
“I really do,” says Peeta.
---
Just close your eyes
The sun is going down
You'll be alright
No one can hurt you now
Come morning light
You and I'll be safe and sound
(Safe and Sound, Taylor Swift)
