Katniss's POV
It wasn't until that night that I realized happiness would come and go. It was one of those things that I never thought I could have, but I knew now that I could, with Peeta.
"How did it get so cold so fast?" Peeta asked slipping across the ice from behind, trying to catch up to me. The day was long gone by now, and the stars had just taken over the night sky; illuminating it to a perfectness that made my eyes never want to look away. The snow had begun to pile up again; and I was frozen against the dark night.
"I don't know," I paused, breathing in the light crisp hair. "It looks like it's going to snow though." My air trickled out in small clouds of ice, and I felt my cheeks warm just with the movement of speaking. Peeta came up behind me, stopping just a step away as we both looked out into the darkness. There was of course, the exception of Haymitch's porch light on, which helped me see a little better.
Before I found myself doing anything else, I tilted my head over so I could just see him through the vision my eyes supplied. His breath also came out in swirls that looked almost tangible in the air and his eyelids rose at the slight movement I made. For a second, he kept his eyes forward, out toward the lands still left untouched, and then, he followed his gaze towards me.
"Katniss, I've been thinking a lot lately," the reflection of his face in my mind mirrored the scared boy at the reaping; his features left untouched and his eyes full of tiredness I watched in my memory as those eyes turned to strength and then to sorrow, to misery and then relief. They held a promise of their own in there, and I couldn't help but look down.
His voice, it was serious, and I knew I would have to pay further attention; I wanted to. My vision blurred as it roamed back up to his face.
"It's been over a year that I've been without my family, and well you too," I wasn't sure of where he was going, what bizarre world his mind would take us into now, but I breathed out slowly, trying to ignore the worriedness in my heart.
"My mother and father, and both of my brothers, well they're gone....but I'm not sure, it just doesn't feel like anything's changed. They never really were involved I guess, so that stays the same," he turned to look over the night sky; inspecting it for each and every star it held. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I keep expecting my name to be pulled, or my neighbor's named, or even someday my children's named to be pulled from that glass ball....And I just can't. I feel like days like this," he smiled at me, a gleam lighting a spark in his eyes, "amazing and beautiful will be," he grit his teeth, "can be taken away."
As much as I wanted to refuse, turn away from this offer of thought and of speech, I knew more than anything in the world how Peeta felt. I understood the way his heart beat faster every time he closed his eyes, scared for what could happen when they were shut. I understood the feeling of loss and ache he felt every morning he woke, how it screamed all my friends' and family's names in search of an answer. One that I didn't have.
This was my life; in fact, my life is a game.
Like the mutts, grueling and demented, they are the dreams that suck me into the dark world I never want to be submerged in.
Like the tributes who played at my side, their lives were just pieces, Rue and Cato and Marvel and Mags and Wiress. Their lives just add onto the misery of my own.
That bird I was, the mockingjay, it was just a symbol; a promise of sorts that begged for the need of attention. It promised us a better tomorrow, as Peeta promises me a better future.
But most of all, it is the flames that overtook my dresses and my hair, my flesh and my bones; it made my blood boil and heart pump, the flames were my determination my perseverance. It would burn and rage as though would my beliefs, and sometimes flicker and loose its heat. But it is now that I have the most flames surrounding me. As much as Cinna provided me those flames my first games, the flickering lights after the 'victories' and into the rebellion it is here, and it is now that those flames shine the brightest. This future that I fought for, lost for and vowed for is a future that I am holding onto with everything that I have.
