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There are days now when memories of the Games and the war hardly cross my mind, when I can easily banish them from my thoughts.
Today is not one of those days. I woke from a nightmare made of memory, and Peeta was there. Peeta is never far from me when I sleep. But the conversation I dreamed about keeps playing on repeat in the back of my head all day.
I should be grateful to have only dreamed about a conversation. No howling mutts or starving children last night. My life wasn’t in danger, and neither was Peeta’s. We were safe—as safe as we could be—in District 13.
Maybe, it’s a good sign. That my dreams have started to work through the memories of death and despair enough to start showing me conversations that merely broke my heart, not my body. And unlike my memories of the people I couldn’t save, there’s still something I can do about this one.
Dinner is rabbit stew and cheese rolls straight from the oven. There’s no Haymitch today; he’s at home with his geese. So it’s just me and Peeta at the dinner table which is nice because I don’t have to make up a reason for Haymitch to leave us alone.
The stew and the cheese rolls are delicious, and Peeta is telling me about his plans for a painting, it’s such a nice scene that I don’t want to bring up what I’m thinking about and ruin the moment, but Peeta can always tell when something is eating at me, so he says, “Katniss. What did you dream about last night?”
I pause before I answer. “District 13,” I say.
Peeta doesn’t press me for details. He just finished his bowl of stew and starts to clean up the dishes, but I know he’s still listening.
“Do you forgive me?” I say while his back is turned. He is broad-shouldered with his wheat-colored hair growing out, spilling past his ears, but for a moment, I can’t help but remember Peeta in the hospital bed in restraints, thin from hunger and pain, with his hair shorn close to his scalp. Even though in this memory he is in no danger, it still cuts me to the core.
He pauses in the middle of packaging up the leftover cheese rolls, probably to bring to Haymitch, pondering what I said. “For District 13?
“For not trying harder to bring you back. For getting angry with you,” I say. I struggle to keep myself composed, and I try to remember what Dr. Aurelius has been telling me about focusing on my breathing and making lists of my surroundings. Peeta’s back. His apron as he turns around to face me. The painting on the wall of a field of primroses in bloom. The empty stew pot. The light of the setting sun through the window.
“Of course,” he says. “I didn’t make it easy on you.”
I shake my head. “That wasn’t you. If the situations had been reversed—“
“I would’ve been devastated. And then I would have found a way to bring you back,” he says. “Just like you did.”
“It wasn’t me. It was—“ Saying her name is too painful. “The doctors at District 13.”
“It was you,” he says simply.
I think about that. I think about the moments where he seemed to come back to me, Peeta remembering my favorite color, us saving each other in the Capitol, and nights of Real or Not Real… I don’t believe that I could have brought him back from the hijacking on my own, but maybe I did play a part.
I get up and help him with the dishes. When we finish, I put my head against his shoulder. “I’m still sorry.”
“So am I,” he says.
“How much of it did you mean?” I burst out, my face still pressed against his shirtsleeve.
“Of what?” he says. His strong fingers run up and down my upper arm comfortingly.
“What you said. In the hospital in District 13. When I came to visit you after… after the wedding when you asked to see me.”
His fingers still for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says. “I thought that I did. It was like there were two versions of you in my head. The Katniss that the Capitol made up, and then the real you. And I was talking to the Katniss that the Capitol made because I thought she was real. Not you. Not my Katniss.”
I nod, still pressed close to him. I wonder how many versions of me can exist—tribute, Mockingjay, mutt, lover—before I’m permanently shattered. But somehow the idea of him talking to an imaginary Katniss makes me feel a bit better.
“You said I wasn’t pretty.” It’s a ridiculous comment to hold onto. It shouldn’t matter a bit. But being with Peeta has always made me feel beautiful.
“I said not particularly,” he says. “And you know what the standard for beauty is like in the Capitol.”
“Garish? Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I say.
“No, but I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the—“
“The fake me, right.”
“I still thought you were pretty,” he says softly. “Too small and pretty to be a mutt. But I didn’t remember how beautiful you are until later.”
“Is that how that works?” I ask, somewhat skeptically.
“Yes,” he says, kissing the side of my face. “Once I could connect you to the right Katniss, I could see it again. When I remembered you singing and you volunteering for Prim and sleeping together during the Victory Tour and the day on the rooftop before the Quarter Quell.”
I think that makes sense. I remember the times I found Peeta beautiful, holding hands during the chariot race at the 74th Games and when I saw him again once we had both been crowned victors and when he gave a portion of our winnings to District 11 and the kiss on the beach… He’s right. It’s the memories that make someone beautiful. I can’t begrudge him something he said when his were so mixed up.
I nod again and pull him into my arms, breathing in the way he smells like yeast and sunshine. “Thank you,” I say.
He huffs a laugh. “You don’t need to thank me.”
He kisses my forehead, then my nose, then my lips. “My Katniss. My beautiful Katniss.”
As I melt against him, my dream from last night seems a million miles away, a distant memory, almost like it happened to someone else.