The Night Train | EVERLARK

Chapter 1: Night One | What Could Have Been?

NIGHT ONE

Toss turn. Turn and toss.

That is all Katniss Everdeen has done for the last two hours of her life.

She tried to remember back to a time when sleep would come to her easily. Back to a time when her father could silence the birds with just one note of a song. Back to a time when death wasn't a constant threat, looming around the corner ready to take her as soon as she made one wrong move.

Now, as Katniss watched the moonlit woods speed past from her window, she knew that death wasn't just around the corner anymore, it was right behind her. It was breathing on her neck. It was so close that she could smell the blood and artificial roses from the man who promised her this fate.

President Snow had made sure of this when he had come barging into her house in the Victor's Village, his bloodstained mouth articulating her deepest fears, and spilling her most intimate moments. Her kiss with Gale. Her fakeness towards Peeta. Nothing was sacred for her.

Now, having only just begun her victory tour, she felt no closer to convincing anybody that she was madly in love with Peeta.

Oh, Peeta. Sweet, smart, stupid Peeta. Didn't he know that she was a bomb about to go off? A grenade without its pin? Surely he knew that there was only a short time before she would go off, taking everyone down with her.

Sitting up from the bed, dressed only in her thin nightgown, Katniss knew that sleep was not an option tonight, not after seeing that man get gunned down in District Eleven's square earlier that day.

She glanced at the time. There were more than twelve hours before she had to be awake and be paraded around another district, another twelve hours to wonder how President Snow was going to kill her family.

Bomb? Firing Squad? Torture? The list was more than endless.

It was in the midst of her fretting that three short raps sounded on her bedroom door.

"Katniss? Are you awake?" Peeta's soft voice called from the other side.

Katniss only managed to restrain herself for a second before she flew to the door, opening it to reveal Peeta, also in his bedclothes, looking worried as he scanned Katniss' room, stepping into it without a single word.

Katniss shut the door behind them and watched Peeta survey her room, she could tell that he had just awoken from a terror.

"Sorry Kat I just had a dream that..." Peeta trailed off, sitting on her bed, his head in his hands. He looked as exhausted as Katniss felt.

She felt no need to reply to him, choosing instead to sit down next to him as he explained.

"It was a new one. We were in our cave but it wasn't our cave. The mutts, they found us," Peeta explained, his hands shaking as he looked over to Katniss.

His eyes were so blue, and Katniss wondered why anything that beautiful would have to live through such pain.

"I know," Katniss replied, reaching out for Peeta's sweaty hand, and taking it in her own.

Peeta sighed and clasped Katniss' hand, looking down at his lap, Katniss wanted to be able to take all of his pain and feel it for herself. It didn't feel right for the boy with the bread to feel so hopeless.

"It won't always be like this, you know?" Katniss whispered, using her free hand to comb through Peeta's hair, his sweat-coated curls were all over the place.

Peeta faked a smile and nodded, clearly trying to appease her.

"I just wish that you and Haymitch had told me about Snow," Peeta whispered back, careful in case of her room being bugged.

"You know now," Katniss replied, stroking his cheek and wondering what Peeta's life would look like without the reaping. Who would he have married? Would he have taken over the bakery? Or even found a way to sell his art? Would his children run wild in the shop, stealing baked goods and bickering over which one of them would get a piggyback from their father?

Katniss had to force herself away from these thoughts. They only hurt her.

"Will you stay with me?" Katniss asked, suddenly nervous that he might reject her.

But she obviously didn't know him as well as she thought, because he immediately nodded, kissing the top of her head gently.

"Sorry, I know we're not supposed to do that without the cameras," Peeta explained, cautious of Katniss' reaction to being kissed on the head.

Katniss, who a couple of days ago would have probably thrown a tantrum over such an act, didn't have the energy to pretend to be mad, instead choosing to bury her head in Peeta's shoulder. She breathed in his unique combination of dill, bread and paint, wishing that she were anywhere else except here.

"It's okay," Katniss offered, letting Peeta know that he could kiss her. The thought of him kissing her just for them and no cameras made her feel slightly better. Peeta was much too good an actor, that Katniss had to regularly remind herself that it was all fake.

"Do you ever think about what life would've been like if we hadn't been reaped?" Katniss asks, looking up at Peeta's profile, half of his face was softly illuminated by the moonlight.

"Only every day," Peeta laughed, it was hollow, making Katniss feel guilty for asking such a dumb question.

Katniss hadn't expected this answer from Peeta. Oddly, she thought that Peeta wasn't as nostalgic as she was. He struck her as the type of person to live in the present.

"Do you think we would have ever spoken?" Katniss asked. She had no clue why she was itching to hear the answer. She didn't even know what answer she truly wanted from him.

She felt Peeta let out a long saddened sigh.

"I wish I could say yes, Katniss. I wish I could say that I would've found you no matter what. That one day we would have bumped into one another, and I would have stammered and you would have scowled at me. But I would've persisted because I loved your scowl. I wish I could say that I would have met you every day in the bakery as you traded, and would've made you laugh and snuck you cookies. I want to say I would have asked you out until you finally said 'yes'.Then I would have taken you out on a real picnic, sneaking cheese bread and butter and talking until the moon came up. I wish I could say that we would have eventually gotten married and toasted our bread. I want to say we then would've made true love under the stars. But the reality is... I would have never spoken to you without the Games. I probably would have admired from afar as I always have, marrying Delly Cartwright quietly as I watched you go off with Hawthrone."

Katniss was truly taken aback by this confession, letting herself get lost in a world where there were no Hunger Games, where the fence was gone and Snow was dead.

She found herself wiping tears from her cheeks as Peeta closed his eyes, not daring to look into Katniss'.

"Can we sleep now?" Katniss asked, her heart too heavy to argue with Peeta, she should have kissed him and told him that he was wrong. But she couldn't. Because he was right.

Peeta finally opened his eyes, nodding and lying down in Katniss' silky sheets, allowing her to burrow into his side as he dragged the duvet over them.

As the two drifted into sleep, Katniss let herself imagine that she and Peeta were married, cuddling up in bed together after a long day of looking after their kids. One girl with blue eyes and dark hair, and one grey-eyed blonde boy.

Neither of them had any more nightmares that night.