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So we spent what was left of our serotonin
To chew on our cheeks and stare at the moon
Said she knows she lived through it to get to this moment
Ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor, and I knew
I would do anything you want me to
I would do anything for you
I would do anything, I would do anything
Whatever you want me to do, I will do
-Phoebe Bridgers, “Graceland Too”
I don’t see Katniss smile much in the first few months I’m back in 12, but I commit each instance to memory as something to hold onto while we slowly open up to each other again. Once it is Buttercup meowing at a particularly fitting moment in a conversation we’re having with Sae, as if decidedly giving his opinion on what we should eat in the coming week, that pulls her lips upward slightly, if only for a fleeting moment. Another time it’s because she sees Haymitch watering the primroses along the side of her house when he thinks no one is looking.
I do my best to coax small smiles out of her when I can, singing quietly off-key or pretending to forget there’s flour on my nose while baking in her kitchen. But mostly she just watches me, quiet, almost reverent, a look in her eyes that is close to what it was before, but not quite the same. I doubt it will ever be the same.
One evening after dinner she falls asleep on the couch and I carry her up to bed. As I tiptoe to the door, cursing my prosthetic leg, which keeps me from being as quiet as I’d like, I hear her whisper, “Peeta. Stay.” So I do.
The days pass more quickly once we make a habit of this, perhaps because I look forward to holding her at night even more than I fear the nightmares that are sure to come. And they do, still, for the both of us, but they are far less frightening knowing we are not alone.
One night before bed we’re sitting on the floor of her room--our room now, I suppose--in front of the fireplace, eating leftover sweet bread from this morning’s batch. As I stare into the flames, an old favorite daydream of mine dances into my head; I imagine our toasting ceremony. Somehow, a small part of me knows with certainty that it will happen, maybe not soon, but someday. My former fantasy will become a realized plan.
“Peeta,” she says quietly, and for some reason I feel embarrassed, as if she’s been reading my mind and is about to call me out on how ridiculous I am. I hope the orange cast of the firelight hides the pink tinge spreading across my face.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Look,” she says, pointing at the large window to the left of the fire, where a crescent moon hangs low and yellow in the night sky. “Prim used to love when it looked like that,” she adds quietly.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and then, hoping I’m choosing the right words, “I think she’d want you to love it, too.”
“Maybe this is why we lived,” Katniss says suddenly, turning to me. “For moments like this. To remember her--to remember all of them. Do you ever think about that?”
“All the time,” I say.
As we get into bed later that night, I watch her deftly pull her hair into a braid, and she gives me a smile larger than I’ve seen in a long while when she catches me looking. And I know, as I have since I was five years old, I’ll do whatever Katniss Everdeen wants me to.