I teach teenagers and own one, which
means I'm insane or have oodles of patience. I think it's the former.
Believe it or not, I’m writing the conclusion to a fic I didn’t finish from 2012! Hope is the thing with feathers is almost done, so here’s a preview:
Katniss holds tight to Peeta’s hand as they walk through the Meadow. This way, she muses, she can keep pace with his slower and noisy gait. Her main goal today may not be hunting, but she still has a knife tucked into her belt. Katniss would be foolish to enter the woods unarmed. Even Peeta had his folding knife in his pocket. Two arenas left them prepared for the worst, but Peeta wanted to make certain that his knife wasn’t as easily accessible.
Just in case. Katniss shudders.
“Are you cold?” Peeta asks.
It’s a beautiful, warm spring day, so no, that’s not it. But she just replies “I’m fine,” and they keep strolling through the Meadow, hand in hand.
Peeta’s flashbacks have been fairly self-contained. When he can feel himself slipping, he usually leaves and heads to Haymitch’s. Or, at times, he’s been alone and the only way Katniss can tell that he’s struggled through a flashback is that there is some part of the house in disarray. Once, he threw a can of paint on a, thankfully, blank canvas. When he was himself again, he called it a new style of art, and he managed to make her smile regarding the splash of blue dripping on the canvass. Once it dried, Peeta framed it and hung it in his painting room, as a reminder that he can get past some of his difficulties in a more positive way.
It’s when they hit during the night that makes them scary. Katniss has some pretty horrifying nightmares too, so they manage to comfort one the best way they can. Lately, she isn’t sure if it’s the weather or something else, but they’ve both been sleeping well.
Perhaps it was that first night, and the subsequent nights when they’ve been intimate. A blush raises to her cheeks when she thinks about how that made some of the horror go away. For both of them – they can both exhaust themselves in loving one another – and their bodies are too weary to do anything other than to fall into a deep sleep.
Thinking about how long it’s been since she’s been able to enjoy his body and find that peace that comes from loving each other physically brings a blush to her cheeks and a smile that she has to bite back so Peeta won’t notice.
So, of course, he does.