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As soon as Peeta came back, I ran into the house, peeled my months-old clothes off, and threw them in the fire burning in the fireplace. Since then, I have been better about my hygiene, and every morning, I meet Peeta by the primrose. I watch him water the plants that border my house in the Victor’s Village, caring for the flowers in the way that Prim can no longer be cared for.
At first, we only spend about twenty minutes every morning together, and I fill the rest of my days with sitting in front of the fire while Greasy Sae sticks around to ensure that Buttercup and I actually eat. Which is probably good, because I don’t think I would without her prompting—and not even intentionally; it’s entirely possible that I would simply forget.
For a while after the end of the war, I just forgot. I forgot about everything. I forgot about Haymitch, who lives only houses away, Gale, my mother, my father, Prim, Plutarch, Effie, Peeta, Johanna, Finnick, Snow, Coin, Annie . . . everyone, and everything. I forgot all of the basics. I forgot how to care for myself. I thought that nothing mattered anymore, because I had lost my purpose. Even though I won, I lost everything I had been fighting for in the process. I lost my sister. I lost Prim.
I was no longer the girl on fire; I was just some creature burning. I was no longer the Mockingjay; I was just a body with the broken silhouette of wings that had lost all of their feathers to the fight, to the fire.
When she died, I knew. I knew, without anyone having to tell me, that the bomb had been fatal to her young body and mind. And at first, I thought that I had no sister. But that’s not true. I have a sister. I have a dead sister. That’s something that’s irreversible. I will never be able to erase that label from myself: I am not Katniss, the tribute; I am not Katniss, the victor; I am not Katniss, the girl who was on fire; I am not Katniss, the Mockingjay; I am not a revolutionary; I am not the face of a rebellion—My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am eighteen years old. I am the older sister to a dead girl.
After a few weeks, I invite Peeta into my house after we water and admire the primrose. Greasy Sae discreetly excuses herself with a subtle smile on her kindly wrinkled face.
“Can I make you some bread?” he asks me after a quiet moment.
The idea of that is so appealing that I almost cry for no reason at all—but instead, I bite the inside of my cheek and say, “Yes.”
I sit in front of the counter where I once faced Peacekeepers after I had badly bruised my tailbone and ankle from jumping out of a tree onto the ice. Where Peeta and I had once kissed chastely as we put on this beautiful charade of a happy life as engaged victors with our family—my mother, Prim, and Haymitch.
But now, it’s just the two of us. I watch him methodically compile all of the ingredients into something better, something grander. This is where he seems most serene—when he is baking. It’s his passion. It’s like me when I’m hunting. For the first time in ages, I allow myself to really look at him. I look at his blue eyes, cast downward, and his long, blond eyelashes that almost brush his cheeks and should logically tangle every time he blinks. His golden hair is brightened by the warm light filtering in through the windows.
We don’t talk while he bakes, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. We know how to be quiet around each other.
When the bread is done, he sits beside me while we eat. It’s warm, and it reminds me of so many things. It reminds me of him, of that bread that saved me while I was out in the rain on the verge of my final breath, which would have killed the remnants of my family. It reminds me of the dandelion in the spring.
And halfway through the cleanly cut slice, I start crying. I cry for the first time in months, silent tears sliding down my face. Peeta notices quickly, and he doesn’t ask me what’s wrong; he simply sets his bread down and carefully puts one of his strong arms around my shoulders. For the first time in a long time, I feel at home. It’s so nice that for a moment, I just relax into his touch, which gives him the confidence to keep his arm around me—he isn’t gentle because he thinks that I will break; he’s gentle because he’s afraid that I might break him.
But for once, I don’t.
For the next week, Peeta comes over every morning either with ingredients to make bread or with a loaf he just took out of the oven. Sometimes, he even manages to drag Haymitch out of his house to join us. He’s in a bit of a drunken stupor, but it’s still good to see him, considering that I haven’t actually made any contact with him in months, despite our proximity.
We continue to water the primrose together, but I’ve stopped taking fifteen minutes while the sun comes up to just stare at the little flowers on the bush.
It’s beautiful. It’s always going to be beautiful, and I will admire that forever, but I don’t need to take time to re-realize it every single day. I know that I miss my sister. I know that I will always love her. I don’t need to cement that over and over again in my mind every dawn, because I already know. It’s just my guilt trying to eat away at everything good, trying to make me forget again.
I won’t, though. I won’t be like my mother was after my father died. Not anymore.
April comes around, and almost as soon as it hits, it brings rain. I wait on the threshold with the front door open out onto the porch so that I can watch as Peeta comes walking toward me, a loaf of bread stuffed in his bag and the hood of his jacket pulled up over his head.
We eat in silence, but when we’re done and Peeta gets ready to leave, I gather the courage to say, “Can you stay for a while? I want to watch the rain, but not alone.”
We’re both different than we were at the beginning of all this, but I see that it’s more apparent to him than ever in my request. I have become the Katniss that this damaged girl has needed me to be. I have become strong enough to ask for other people in my weakness—something I thought, and he thought, my stubbornness would never allow.
Peeta gives me a little half-smile, puts his bag back down, and says, “Sure.”
We sit on the floor before the front door and just watch the rain come down, cleansing everything around us, although everything bad cannot be undone or purified, only recovered from and accepted.
After that day, I begin braiding my hair down my back again. When I see Peeta again in the morning, while the rain is still falling, I see him notice and smile slightly. But he doesn’t say anything. We don’t need to water the primrose this morning, as the rain is doing that for us, so after we eat our bread, I look at Peeta and find the nerve to say what I’ve wanted to for about a week now.
“Peeta, will you come lay down with me?” I ask him.
He doesn’t take even a second to say, “Of course I will.”
We go upstairs and get into my bed, piling the blankets on top of us. Peeta pulls me into his arms, and I rest my head against his chest, listening to the sound of the heart that I tried so hard to keep beating, that I was going to give my life to sustain. Our fingers tangle together over his ribcage, and he’s strong but warm.
I close my eyes for a moment and remember our nights in the first arena, in the cave where he was dying while the rain leaked through the roof. It’s pounding against the steady ceiling now, and we’re wrapped up in each other, far away from the cameras and all of those dead tributes, far away from the Gamemakers and Seneca Crane, far away from the Capitol’s eyes, far away from Snow.
And when I look around the room again, I can recognize the difference. That this is the life I have. This mixture of tragedy and love, of hope, serenity, and fear. Of things changed and that which never will.
I turn myself over gently, propping myself up on my elbow while I disentangle myself from Peeta. His eyes open at my movement, and they’re so blue and full of the love that I was afraid I would never get to see in them again. And he keeps perfectly still as I lean in, until the moment our lips make contact and he kisses me back.
I feel that stirring, deep within me, and I know him so well that my heart aches.
So, when we part, I whisper a memory that rings true for me now more than ever, “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever.”
“Okay,” he murmurs with a smile, playing along.
“Then you’ll allow it?”
“I’ll allow it.”
I kiss him again, and he wraps me back into his arms, brushing his soft lips against my temple while the rain continues to clean everything around us. I listen to his heartbeat again, my dandelion in the spring, and think that maybe the thing that I always found the most far-fetched—more far-fetched than surviving the Hunger Games not once but twice, more far-fetched than killing any president, more far-fetched than changing the way an entire country lives, more far-fetched than anything I have ever done or been: happiness—is achievable.
With him.
With the first dandelion I saw when the rain cleared, the first thing that gave me hope after the tragedy.