Introduction

His eyes slide open, fists clenched and nose flaring from ragged breathing.

It was her. It was Katniss, and Cato's sword. Her, a silver, glinting blade, and blood. Lots of blood and screaming. Red pooled around her body like the over-abundance of sheets twined through his thighs—the one real, and one metal—between his spine and the mattress, curled into clumps inside the palms of his hands.

Peeta runs a hand over his hair, fingers ghosting over his scalp. He grasps his temples as waves of nausea overcome him, and he is gulping back bile. He takes quick, short breaths.

... in, out, in... she's alright; out, in... he's dead... out...

Lines crease his forehead when he leans over the toilet, before he shakes his head, closing the porcelain lid and taking a plastic cup. He fills it to the brim with water, not caring about puddles that will cause him to trip over his feet later in the dawn.

He'll work diligently until the landscape is outlined well, the plains of her face framed in the scratches, blisters and the gorged-out eye socket that inhabited his dream. His brush will trace over her eyes—her eye, rather—more than once, so that her irises take on the darkening, glassy look that they had the time he saw her, arrow aimed at his chest.

Then that painting will be set against the wall to dry, and he will take a jagged fingernail in his mouth, teeth gnawing for only a second until the boom inside his head signifies her death, the last gooey clots of life smearing the grass as her limp form is lifted into the sky...

No!

Peeta's hand tightens around the handle of the paint brush for a moment. He releases a long-held breath, feeling the lightness leave his head.

He can't let it get to him; not now, merely hours before the Victory Tour. He can hold it together a little longer.

He feels his muscles relax, and slumps down beside his stool. His head tilts back to see the bland ceiling's off-white color. He'll have to change that, he thinks. He starts to comprise a list in his head of things he could do with that expanse of space.

Peeta stands up, hears his knees crack from being cramped on the floor for so long.

She can faintly feel the memory, tickling at the back of her head like an annoying itch. One she can't reach, something that is irritating, but also something that can't be changed.

Her eyes roam the walls, scanning over the up-done portraits of past Victors, and things that nobody from here would care about: baskets of jewels, strung up and around the ridiculous ballroom, a purplish glow casting holographic images of the freak show on the lavender curtains; this causes the video-feed to ripple with the gusts of wind that bring bodies closer and touching.

Katniss closes her eyes, trying to think of something else, yet finding her mind stuck on nothing but what she wants to avoid.

Her father. The explosion. Peeta.

It all ran through her mind, so fast, and in a sequence of flashes that made no sense. First Prim, wailing at her mother to come back, to look at her and say something. Then to her supposed lover, Peeta, and his blistered hands tossing two loaves of burned bread in her general direction. His eye was already swelling. Next was her father, remains crushed, cracked, and hair singed—voice lost.

There was a never-ending soundtrack to this horror, its lyrics bringing fresh tears to the younger, more vulnerable Katniss's eyes. But her face was confused, as though she never knew what this song meant, but sobbed anyway.

"Deep in the meadow, under the willow..."

It skipped then to six years later, a wretched voice like that of nails on a chalkboard calling out a name. One, single name.

"Primrose..."

And it never finished the second half of it, as there was another shout combined, in another pitch, this one even more hurtful to the ears.

"I volunteer!"

The music swelled, reaching a terrific staccato beat—a pounding against wood, or glass, a shattering and the pieces embedding themselves into Katniss's skin. She wanted to scream, but her throat felt constricted...

A small whimper escapes her mouth now, such a small sound that she doesn't believe it happening. She draws her knees to her chest, biting her lip until she tastes blood.

No wonder Prim sleeps with her mother.

Forget habit—she has her own space now, closets filled with frilly dresses and skirts, blouses and ribbons. Prim didn't choose to have her own room. She wanted to bunk with either her sister or her mother, and she did, up until one night Katniss woke to a fistful of blonde hair in her fingers, tears streaming down the little girl's face.

She regrets it wholly now, just as she did then, and moves slowly underneath the sheets. She hopes no one heard her tonight. She knows that she must have screamed murder tonight—which is exactly what it was.

Peeta's fingers thrum against the wood sill of his window, and he looks out, seeing the grass covered in a thin layer of white. All of the houses, except three, on the Victor's Village lane are empty, glass panes frosted like the rest.

Katniss's window is dark, he observes. His eyes water from lost sleep, and he brings his hands up, pressing the heels of them in and rubbing until he can feel a heat. His head aches, throat stinging.

Peeta takes a longer gaze out into the night, after opening the window and taking a deep breath. He exhales.

Dark, yet light. A spread of indigo, dotted in sprinkles of yellow, gold and white. Something no artist could ever replicate.

He looks across the lawns to her house again, seeing nothing but her clamped-shut window, the glass pane reflecting dying embers and casting a little glow onto the outside world. He wonders how she's been.

He wonders how she deals with her pain, her dreams—yet, he is unsure how much he cares anymore.