New Perfections

For as long as he could remember, morning had always been a reason for Peeta to get out of bed as fast as possible. When he was very small, it was because it was time for school and his father needed help in the bakery before he made the mile-long walk to school with his two brothers. His father had to get the bread ready for delivery to their customers who lived further afield, mainly families who have very small children or had relatives who were sick and couldn't get to the bakery early enough to get the good bread that they paid for. So, while his brothers were running rings around his steadily temperamental mother, Peeta would go down to the kitchen and help his father separate out the bread that the elder man had been up cooking for hours already so that his father's assistant could begin the deliveries. Peeta liked school, but he would always drag his feet on the way, hoping for a chance to stay home and help his father instead. By the time he got home from school, both his parents were stressed from a days work and his child-like mistakes went much more noticed and frequently punished. It was why his brothers had learned to stay away from their working parents when the bakery was open, but Peeta persisted because if nothing else, he adored the smell of the baked goods.

As he grew, so did the reasons to get up in the morning. School became the games, in a twisted maturity that didn't quite fit. He should have gone from school to work, but instead he found himself exchanging the mile-long walk to school for the walk from a District official's car to the train that would take him and his fellow tribute to the Capitol for the Hunger Games. The smell of freshly baked bread and frosted icing was exchanged for waking up to a noseful of mud-trodden leaves and skin-crawling insects. He thought that waking up in the train so that stomach-churning to-and-fro of the train cart made him nauseous, but waking up and instantly berating himself for falling asleep and not being on guard because it could mean the difference between life and excruciating death sickened him more.

Once the Hunger Games were over, he threw himself into his family's bakery, helping out as much as he could while he avoided Katniss and her indecision over her feelings for him. Oh, he knew his feelings for her were not only true but also incredibly strong, but it wasn't fair to throw that in her face every day when she had to decide that for herself. He tried not to string all his hopes on the happy ending with her that he – and the Capitol – wanted them to have, but on the days he did get a brief glimpse of her entering her house each morning after hunting still gave him that endless longing that he'd had since they started pretending to be in love. It didn't help that every night was filled with her screams, her mangled body, her being killed by Cato, torn apart by muttations that hunted her down even more so than the other tributes. He would awake in a cold sweat, his heart pounding like it had done in the arena and sometimes he swore he could still smell that mud and leaf concoction spread onto his skin. He stayed in his new home at Victors Village, leaving at the crack of dawn to walk to the bakery or staying in all day to bake alone, knowing that he could never go back to sharing a room with two of his brothers' when he knew the nightmares that would keep him awake.

Then, just like that, the Quarter Quell betrayed them and they were thrown back into the arena, doomed to die once again. Mornings – when he did sleep – were filled with fear and caution, and certainly no peaceful moments. This time was more deadly than the first, and it didn't last nearly as long before Hell broke loose and they were dragged from the arena.

After he was taken into the hands of the Capitol, he knew that he didn't sleep much. It was hard to keep track of the time when you didn't have a window or discernable morning-night pattern, so he could only assume by the moods and annoying chirpiness of the Capitol people who passed his room...cell...whatever they were calling it that day. It varied. He called it a tomb. He didn't think he would ever leave that room except to be dragged there for 'questioning' and 're-education'. People in the Capitol had a lot of interesting words for 'torture' that avoided them actually being punished for what they were doing. But why shouldn't be punished? He'd contributed to Katniss surviving to becoming the face of the rebellion, the Mockingjay herself. That was down to him. She had survived the arena twice to stand at the front of the revolution. He had survived to, only he had ended up on the other end of Panem in the hands of depraved Peacekeepers who daily reminded him that they had both survived the arena twice...and neither of them were supposed to.

And he believed them, after a while. The re-education that they submitted him to each day began to warp his mind. He didn't even feel it slipping away until he realised that it was already gone. By that time, he knew day from night by the screams. He was kept awake by either Johanna or himself screaming at the images the Capitol put in their heads. Some nights, when he was screaming about Katniss, Johanna would scream back to him to forget the Capitol's words, to remember that he loved her, that she loved him. But he wasn't able to believe her. Not then. Not her. No, that had to come from Katniss – the heartbreak in her eyes that she was trying to hide whenever she looked at him once District 13 had retrieved them from their own personal Hells in the Capitol. Slowly, he had come back, even though his moments of relapse were still frequent, he still loved her, still cared and craved her, and as their recovery took them back to District 12 he found her to be the perfect distraction from the dark thoughts that still hid in the furthers corners of his mind. It hadn't taken him long to work out that while he still had lapses in his sanity, it was never when she was there, never when he could see her, hear her voice, grasp her hand just to remind himself that yes, she was there, and no, she wasn't a thing like the Capitol had told him she was. She was alive, she was safe, and most importantly, she was at his side.

Mornings were filled with Katniss, one way or another. They easily fell into their previously adopted habit of sleeping entwined together, for each other's arms fought away the nightmares like nothing else. At first, they had resisted this urge and it wasn't until they had been forced into remembering how they escaped the nightmares before that they returned to this habit. It had been a Tuesday evening. Tuesdays they ate at Haymitch's house, something that Greasy Sae had enforced simply to make sure that if nothing else, they travelled between the houses of use in the Victors Village. If it wasn't for this, neither Haymitch or Katniss would ever leave their homes. So they alternated dinners and that night had been at the surprisingly clean house of Haymitch. He was cutting down on his alcohol when he realised that it was no longer working as a deterrent for the nightmares of his own, replacing every other drink (just as a starting point) with the act of doing something physical to distract him from wanting it. This something was cleaning, and gradually his house was becoming more hospitable and less of a health hazard to visitors. It was the first day that this house had been so clean that not a single one of them would have had doubts about food cooked in his kitchen area, but both Katniss and Peeta had been too exhausted to even notice. Instead, they had dragged themselves into the kitchen and almost fallen asleep into their stew. Haymitch reminded them that they used to sleep perfectly soundly on the train to the Capitol on the Victors Tour, but they had stubbornly refused to do that, wanting to each prove that they could defeat these nightmares individually, but it was wishful thinking. Later, while talking, arms casually fell upon each other and Haymitch looked up in a moment of silence to see that the pair had fallen asleep in each other's arms. Even he didn't have the heart to move them, so had thrown the blanket from one of the ever-unused spare rooms of the house over them and gone to bed himself.

Since then, they hadn't spent a night apart. Even if Peeta was only in bed for three hours between rebuilding his family's bakery and starting again on the early morning bread, he still spent those three hours entwined with Katniss. Years passed, and in between these nights together they learned to heal, learned how one another truly worked, and more importantly they learned how to live rather than to survive. The importance of survival was no longer needed, not when there was no longer a threat to require it. All that was required from them now was to bring a meaning to the day rather than just being able to witness the next. They had done it, they had contributed to the world being the safe place that people had relied on their image for. Panem was a secure land, a place of peace where children could grow up without having to have their names entered in something as cripplingly damaging as the Hunger Games. Now, they had time. Time to be young. And part of being young was falling in love.

Whether they intended to or not, that's what happened. Between the largely mature laying together in the same bed, holding each other with all the casual romance of an elderly couple who had been together since reaching an age where parents allowed them to marry, they acted like younger teenagers experiencing romance for the very first time – ignoring the time they had half pretended to experience it, that is. They smiled shyly at the brushing of hands, they felt fluttering in their stomach at their initially hesitant kisses, and the first time anything went beyond kissing they felt so young and free for the very time that everything that happened occurred between irrepressible laughter. Together they showed Peeta the difference between longing and loving, and at the same time Katniss learned the difference between surviving and living. Between their kisses, their embraces and their everyday living and breaking, they learned to associate living and loving not only with one another, but with the person they awoke beside.

This morning was one of those mornings where he had no desire to move. They were rare before...before the Hunger Games, before the passion for baking, before her, but today was certainly one of them. He wanted to stay underneath the blankets, warm and snug, far away from the world that claimed to hold more beauty than what he knew he would see when he opened his eyes. Today, the true beauty of life was here, in his home, in his bed, in his arms. The beauty of life would be appreciated today through the slow awakening from a short night that was ending too soon with the crack of sunlight through the curtains. Beyond that, he could hear the subtle and sweet birdsong from outside the window. Even after all this time, he still slept with the window open. He wasn't sure if it had started as a comfort to him because it was something he knew he always did before...before everything...or it if it was because it was something about him that was important for Katniss to remember, and for her to continue to remember all this time.

The closeness of the woman in his arms – his lover, his best friend all rolled into one beautiful sleeping package – still gave him a curiousness. He always wondered, if she could sleep so contently this close to his person, could he have her closer tomorrow? She was still, after all this time, his greatest desire, and though she'd hate him for saying it out loud – his greatest achievement. She was heavily above such references as prizes and winning, but he had won her, the greatest prize. He'd fought through the fog of his own mind for her, and he had managed to convince her to love him in return, and it was that love that bought her into the bed that they were curled in at that moment.

He wanted to be able to describe this moment with such intensity, using the most perfect pencil strokes to sketch the fit of their arms against one another's, entangling them so they were the same person essentially. He wished he could copy it all down more beautifully than it would be to look upon it, so that he could show it to her with a "see, look, read this and know how much you mean to me". He wanted to paint it out and hang it on the wall, show it to the world and prove to them all that they worked so perfectly beyond their partnership in the Hunger Games, that it was more than survival that cemented their lives together, he wanted to send it to the Capitol and dare their media circus' to try and interfere with this perfection. There was nothing here that they could comment on which would change them, nothing which would change the way they would feel about, there wasn't even the requirement to get up and use the bathroom, which told him that he hadn't been asleep for a very long time in the first place.

But right now, he couldn't replicate this moment on paper or canvas, because he couldn't see it from outside his body. He could feel it, though. He could feel it as easily as he could feel crusty bread by the time that the sun hit the horizon. His nose was filled with the scent of the Capitol-sent shampoo, the same one that overwhelmed the bathroom with a humidity unlike any other when she stepped out of the shower. Despite last night causing a desperate need for a rinse down for the both of them, her hair was still soft and one stray strand has escaped her braid and was tickling the very tip of his nose with each breath. If he had the desire to move at all he'd have tangled his fingers in the braid and unravelled it, but the realisation bought about the sensation of her hair already beneath his fingertips. On the side he lay on, his arm was cradling her head, his hand already cradling it to his other shoulder so that his fingers were resting against the very roots of the thick dark locks she was attempting to control with a braid.

Her head was pressed tightly against his shoulder, though he couldn't tell whether it was from the cradling of her head or the fact that her arms were both curled around his other arm. Were they not holding him in that way she probably would have had her head resting on the pillow beside him rather than against the muscle of his upper arm. Her nose was pressed into him and he could feel each exhale against the contours of his arm. When she would move ever so gently, something he noticed she did in her sleep, it was because both her hands were unoccupied and she soon settled when they found his skin, tightening them around his bicep with not nearly enough strength to be considered her usual kind of hold on him. His other arm was curled around her torso, winding underneath the slender hands on his upper arm and settling on her lower back right above the most dangerous curve of her body. If she awoke with his hand any lower it would only end one way, and that would get the morning of to a most fantastic start – the first thought that actually made him consider moving – however he found that a sleepy exhaustion was still keeping him firmly horizontal on the mattress. Any movement of limbs would only be to readjust this comfortable position. Last night had exhausted them completely and the lack of sleep on his part was no mirrored by Katniss – he always joked about his ability to wear her out about just as often as she commented that she had ruined him for other women.

The blankets were only pulled up to just below their shoulders, which was rare for this time of year. He recalled only last week they awoke tangled in a similar way but with the blankets almost covering their heads – sleeping with the window open at winter was a downside in that respect. She took another breath and her upper body pressed against his for a small second, which reminded him once again of the previous night – he couldn't count the days which they had last spent pressed skin to skin like this. Their nights were always exhausting but usually because of distractions and not their usual evening activities and it more because falling asleep had become a crime of opportunity in their bedroom at the moment, with either of them more likely to be found catching a nape in the small hours of the morning on the couch, leaning against a counter in the kitchen and once, in Peeta's case, sat in the bathroom in the middle of a more personal moment.

Unconsciously, he tightened his arms around her and she moved with him, snuggling against his shoulder a little more. If she were trying to get closer to him it had worked, and the corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly within the mass of hair that was covering his face. She hadn't lost any of her beauty or her damaged grace since she had first laid eyes on her, and if anything, it had increased with every piece of her that she revealed, whether it was another part of her emotional detachment or the time that she overcame or the time she had confessed that she once had a strange desire to clean Haymitch's house and see how long it took him to notice.

But he could begin this moment starting to end, this blissful morning of no movement and touching skin. He could feel that, like himself, she was starting to wake up. He could feel it in her fingertips, which had started to move against his arm with a bit more feeling and the rhythm of her breathing was starting to change. Then, he felt the fluttering of eyelashes against his skin and her muscles began to stretch out, pulling parts of her away from him. He let out a moan of protest and tightened his arms around her. "Mmm. Comfy," he mumbled, his voice gruff and filled with sleep.

"Sleep," she mumbled in reply.

"Comfy," he repeated, his face settling down into her hair again, satisfied that she wasn't going to move and that their bodies were matched together again.

They were silent for a while, deep, sleepy breaths overtaking them as they enjoyed the afterglow of a few hours rest in each other's arms, but before long, Katniss was moving, her arms pulling away from him. "No," he protested, pulling her back.

"Gotta get up," she told him.

"Later," he said simply, his eyes still closed and his arms even tighter around her now.

"Peeta," she laughed, a tired laugh that rippled down her back down to where his hand rested dangerously low. He put pressure on her back, just enough to show her that he had no intention of letting her get out of bed yet. "Peeta, we can't stay in bed."

"Oh, we can," he grumbled into her ear, shifting a little against her. "We absolutely, definitely can."

"Okay, we can," she agreed, "but we shouldn't. We have to get up soon."

"No, we don't," he assured her. "All is quiet and still and comfortable...no reason to get out of bed at all."

To seal his declaration, he pulled his head back a little and directed his lips to hers. He loved their early morning kisses, slow and sensual with a casual laziness. Slowly at first, they brushed their lips against one another's before he claimed them completely, placing his lips fully against hers. Butterflies flew from their both, a strange experience that he could only describe after all this time as happiness that could not possibly grow any more intense, even though their kisses had long amounted to more than they could count to. After a few gentle kisses he sought entry into her mouth and she parted her lips eagerly, despite her earlier insistence that she needed to get out of bed, and allowed his tongue to clash with her own. Her hand moved from his arm, travelling to the back of his neck and tangling with the soft hair that grew there. His arm trailed up from the small of her back to caress her cheek. Katniss let out a sigh against his lips which only encouraged him further.

Katniss clung tightly to him and whether it lasted a minute or an hour, neither of them really knew or cared. All they knew was that each second of contact left them feeling as dizzy as it had done their first night together, yet at the same time it filled them with an energy rarely felt outside one another's embrace. Parting, but not moving an inch away from him, Katniss opened her eyes to see Peeta already smiling down at her, their foreheads pressed together.

She gave him a weak and exhausted smile. "Good morning."

"See, aren't lie-ins wonderful?" he asked her cockily.

"I thought we weren't due for one for years."

"I know, me too," he grinned. "What a lovely surprise. We should take full advantage of it." He took his own invitation to return his lips to her more than willing ones, still swollen from the first caress. This time, however, their kiss was interrupted by a cry from the other side of the room and they broke apart with a small laugh.

"I think she heard us," Katniss said, starting to climb away from him but he stopped her.

"I'll get her," he told her with a swift kiss as he swung his legs around the bed and pulled on a pair of underwear he'd discarded the night before. He then crossed the room to the approach the newest piece of furniture in the room that was placed in the only corner that wasn't affected by the breeze from the open window, the crib that held their daughter. Their daughter. He still couldn't get over the warm feeling when he said that.

Eleanora was still only twelve weeks old, but for the first few months of their baby girl's life, life was passing too quickly for either of their liking. He wished that he could go back in time so that he could once again see how Eleanora had blessed them both with her first smile last week or watched how they struggled to bathe her together for the first time. More than anything, he wanted to experience the rush again. Loving Eleanora was easy and constant, but that rush of emotions he'd not expected when he first heard her cry, when she first gripped his finger, when he held her against his chest and felt her breathing against his neck, when he saw Katniss with tears on her face as she cradled their safe little girl...that rush was indescribable and hadn't faded at all, he just wished he could feel the start of it again.

With a newly discovered ease, he changed his daughter's diaper and wrapped her back up in her bedclothes. Eleanora looked up at her father the entire time – she may have grumbled incredibly during every bath, but as long as her father was above her she was quiet and content. She adored her father, even at three months old. She already recognised his voice and not just her mothers, and would try to move her neck around to see him no matter whose arms she was in at the time. Then again, she loved her mother as desperately as she could for her age. She knew immediately when Katniss had her in her arms, even if she was sleeping. If a sleeping Eleanora was passed to Katniss, she would open her eyes for a fraction of a second, see that it was her mother, then fall back asleep. She was always well behaved for her parents – unlike dear Uncle Haymitch, who was trying so hard to be her favourite and not complain about how she was testing her vocal limits with.

Now that his daughter was fresh and clean, Peeta bought her over to the bed, still holding her as if she were the most precious and delicate thing in the world. No one, it seemed, was ready to get up yet and as Eleanora wasn't fussing for a feed yet they decided that going back to bed was a much more inviting option for now. He placed Eleanora on the bed between them, her parents lying down either side of her to look at the life they had created.

Eleanora made some incoherent, yet pleased noises when she saw Katniss looking down at her. "Hey there, beautiful," she cooed to her softly, moving to hold her hand above her as Eleanora reached for her, wrapping her tiny fingers around it and exploring it with a deep, clear concentration on her tiny face.

"I think she grew again the night," Peeta said sadly.

"She's a baby, Peeta, she's always growing," Katniss smiled.

"Not this one," he decided. "I want her to stay exactly how she is in this moment."

Katniss laughed at him. "But then she'll never learn to walk."

"Which prevents her from running away."

"And she'll never grow her hair long, so you won't be able to brush it and let her wear all those dresses from Annie that you've been hiding." She glanced up at him and saw his guilty expression.

"At least the boys won't be able to steal her away from me then."

"She'll never say her first words," Katniss smirked.

"So she'll never be able to answer us back," he insisted.

"But she'll never say 'daddy' for the first time," she teased, and looked down at the baby. "Do you hear that, baby girl? He doesn't want you to speak. I hope you remember this because it means that you should say 'mama' first."

"Oh, shush," Peeta told her, leaning over and pressing his lips to hers. "She's tiny and perfect and I would love to see this perfection every day of my life, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to watching the new perfections she learns as she grows up."

He kissed her again, and laid back against the pillows so that his face was level with his daughter's. She turned her head to him for a moment and then went back to exploring her mother's hands. Last night had been spectacular, the first time since their little miracle had arrived that they'd had the luxury of an uninterrupted evening with both of them having enough energy to consider something other than collapsing face down into a pillow, and he had been greatly hoping for a morning encore. He wouldn't trade anything for these moments, though. It had taken a long time for Katniss to be okay with the idea of children, and he had suspected even during her pregnancy that she was only doing it for him, but all those doubts went out the window when he saw her holding her daughter – their daughter – for the first time. She loved their baby as much as he did. Eleanora would never be a regret for either of them.

If he thought about it carefully, he estimated that Eleanora had been created a year ago. It was hard to tell exactly, but he could pretend it was today. Creating this little girl was something to celebrate, and they had celebrated with sleep, with embraces and with this morning of observing the beauty they had created. Eleanora, their still-new baby, was their own imprint on the world, their new reason to get out of bed in the morning.