Better Games

1. First Sight

AN: All characters belong to Susanne Collins in her series The Hunger Games. Enjoy. ~Gail

He came about 6 months after. I had layed in my house unmoving and barley alive for a week before Sae came to take care of me. She would cook me two meals a day and always check on me. Every single day. It wasn't like I went anywhere though. I barely left the living room. I stayed in one spot for as long as I could until Sae convinced me to eat or if nature called. I started doing little things to bring me life, even if a little. I washed, spread butter on the bread myself, folded my blanket when I got up. One day I decided to put on my father's hunting jacket, the feeling of missing him overwhelmed me more than anything that day. That was the day I decided that I needed to leave before my thoughts consumed me. So for the first time since returning to 12 I went out into the woods. I didn't take my bow but I did go. And I went the next day, and the next, and the day after that and so on. It was the only thing keeping me sane. Every other day I would strap up my father's hunting boots and zip up his jacket to head out to the woods. To feel the leaves crunch under my feet, smell the must of the wood,  hear the familiar busy, twittering chorus of the birds.

When I first saw him I was coming back from the woods. It was the first time I had brought my bow and shot a bird, right through the eye in fact, which I thought was a good sign of being on the right track. While I was walking back to my house to skin the thing I saw him. He had his back turned to me and he was planting flowers. I would recognize those blond locks as well as those yellow petals anywhere. It was Peeta and he was planting roses, Primroses.

"Peeta," I barely whispered in disbelief. I was about a foot behind him by now.

He turned around and wiped his hands on his pants, "Katniss," he responded slowly but surely. As he stood up I dropped the bird but hesitated to act on instinct. Millions of thoughts  were running through my head, things to say, whether to run away or run towards him but my lost eyes met his mesmerizing blue ones all those thoughts diminished. I quickly closed the remaining distance between us and wrapped my arms around his neck, not sure if this was the Peeta I left in the Quarter Quell, or met in District Thirteen. All I knew is that I never realized that out of all the loss I felt, all the people I missed, I had missed my boy with the bread the most. Without hesitation he encircled his arms around me. I nestled my head into the crevice if his neck. My head was positioned to look at the Prinroses which was when I started shaking, on the verge of breaking down.

I ran into my house, leaving the bird, the Primroses, and Peeta