Darker And Colder

4.15: After The Fall Of Panem

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April, later that same year

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Chapter 64
Katniss's POV

I lay the flowers down onto the wet ground, pristine white onto the grey brown ground. Something about them reminds me of the Capitol in a way I don't want them to, but white is always the flowers people use for death. Maybe that's why Snow used it so much.

I catch a glimpse of Johanna from far away, laying down three bunches of flowers. First, the white, the symbol of mourning. Then, the red. A sign of love. And the pink, another sign of love and romance.

She stands there tall, a small cannister of oxygen beside her that hooks up in little plastic tubes to her nose, Finnick holding her hand. Her expression is solemn, without tears.

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"You're invited, of course," Finnick says, after he and Annie describe the wedding.

"That's very kind of you," Peeta replies, stroking my shoulder.

I smile sadly, "Do you know if Johanna's coming?"

"Well," Finnick replies, shrugging, "she at least has the option to. But I explained she wouldn't be looked down on for not coming."

Peeta nods. I understand, as Johanna hasn't talked to us since Hazel's funeral. No matter what we try, she stays locked inside her house.

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The hovercraft to Twelve feels so strange. Every jolt of it reminds me where I'm actually going- home.

Not thirteen. Not some other district. Not the Capitol. Not a completely new place created after the fall of Panem, just home. But without the restrictions.

A free home.

When the hovercraft lands, although it's the same land, you can see the differences. New buildings on top of the ashes, the fence-border now mostly torn down. The only thing that looks exactly the same is the edge of the forest and the Victor's Village, the rows of large housing the same stately way it's always been.

Haymitch explains a lot of what's going to happen with everything, but I don't pay attention. I just breathe in the air of my home. The air of the new rising from the ashes, like a Phoenix.

I bring what little I have into the house in Victor's Village. It smells slightly of burning and roses, a little of the old house's smell breaking through; somehow, though, it doesn't feel like home.

I walk through each room, each one filled with memories, but not the same as they were. Everything seems colder now. Darker and colder.

I leave the box in the kitchen and walk out into the street, away from the house. It looks to clean and white, yet still stained by the smoke. I set toward Peeta's house, and knock the door.

I can hear a small bit of crashing in the background before the door opens. "Are you okay?" he asks.

I breath in, "I want to move in with you." His expression doesn't exactly change, but it looks different. "It doesn't have to be now, and I don't have to stay in the same room as you, and I don't have to at all if you don't want. But I don't think I can live in that house easily any more. It's both the same and it isn't- but I think it's only changed because we have. I'm not the same as I was before, and I don't want to be. And I just can't do that and live there- it feels wrong to ignore everything we've been through like that."

The levels of anxiety rise inside me as he looks around silently, until he finally answers, "Okay. I just... I don't want you to get hurt. If I... you know..."

"I won't get hurt," I tell him. "I know I won't. I trust you."

"And I don't want to break that trust." His eyes are wide and dark, his bottom lip hanging slightly below the one above, a small crease between his eyebrows and his fingers clicking nervously.

A smile breaks across my face despite it all. "You won't break my trust. If something starts to hurt, or it feels uncomfortable I know I can always walk away, but I don't think I'll need to."

He smiles back at me and steps away from the door, letting me in.

The house is still quite bare, with almost no personal stuff; I guess most of it was at the bakery. "I'm so sorry about your family," I say. "I've not said it anywhere near enough. Your father... and your brothers, and your Mom... I wish I could've saved them. My family are here, it's not fair that you don't have yours."

Peeta shakes his head. "Neither of us could have saved them. Neither of us had any choice- well, you even less. I miss them, of course. So much. But don't put that on you." A tear rolls from the side of his eye. "None of the losses are fair. All the deaths the Capitol forced..."

I hug him. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face deep in his shirt. After a moment his arms go around me and we stand there, crying. "I'm sorry," I say again.

"You don't need to be."

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Willow arrives with Prim; she had to be kept in the hospital before for some reason.

"Where's Mom?" I ask her.

She shakes her head, "I don't know. I don't think she wanted to come back. Too many bad memories."

"Oh," I reply, if you can call it a reply.

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Prim decides to stay with me and Peeta in his house, which Peeta is fine with. She sleeps in a room down the hall on the second floor as me and Peeta lay on the third. The attic room is large, and separated by wooden panels. Peeta offered me another room, but I didn't want another room. I want him.

Willow keeps waking me up in the night, but every morning I am greeted to Peeta baking and occasionally Haymitch eating whilst downing some kind of spirit, Prim eating the pancakes and cheese rolls that Peeta made for us, happy- mostly.

"I've missed this," Peeta says one day. "Everyone together."

"So have I," I reply.