Piece By Piece {Completed}

Chapter 1: Dark Days

My eyes shoot open as I gasp for air, I'm panting as the dream replays in my head and I feel an overwhelming urge to stay in bed to which I give in to. I don't deserve to live, not when I'm alone and innocent people have lost their lives all because of me, including Prim... who was too innocent, too kind to be taken from this world. Prim, my little duck, she was the only person who truely understood me, who knew how to make me smile but she's gone and so is that future I dreamed of us living here, no fear and happy.

I manage to get out of bed and descend down the stairs, like usual Greasy Sae is in her kitchen making me a meal that I won't eat, her twelve year old granddaughter playing with Buttercup. The only person in this town who doesn't frown down at me was Greasy Sae and her granddaughter, the old woman who lost all her family apart from her granddaughter, she started coming over and cleaning or even cooking for me when she knows I won't eat it and she even forces me to keep clean, demands to see me clean before she leaves me alone

"People are accepting what's happened, Twelve is accepting everything" Sae tells me, putting the food on a plate

"They're working together to rebuild the district, there's talk about rebuilding the fallen victor houses" she adds, I just turn from her and sit in my sitting room, looking out the window and watch as trees wave in the spring air, flowers blooming and grass growing, starting a new life... one without destruction and chaos. The sound of Haymitchs wondering geese surround my ears and I hear the drunk cursing as he tries getting them back into his yard

"Katniss, dear" my head turns to Sae who's walked in with her granddaughter

"I've got your food wrapped for later if you want it. I'll be back tomorrow" she says, I turn my head back to outside, she says a goodbye before leaving my house. I sit there for hours just watching out my window, birds fly by and people walk past chatting like the events from a couple of months ago didn't really happen. I get sick of hearing people's happiness when I don't have my own, I need to escape from this... I immediately know the one place I can be alone and so I get up to get ready to leave my house for the first time in a couple of months.

I let out a deep sigh as I release the arrow, hitting the squirrel right in its eye, the woods is where I can be and still feel somewhat like myself again, surrounded by the nature that has always felt like my home. I'm not hunting for very long until I get to an opening, a meadow, the first place my father took me on our trips, the place Gale and I came to on a good hunting day, the most beautiful place that's connected to my district. I decide to sit down on top of the soft grass and watch as birds fly freely around the area, butterflies flutter around trying to find beautiful flowers and for once in many years, I feel peace and closure, it makes me feel like I haven't suffered great losses but I remind myself that I have and that I can't live in a fantasy.

Getting money from the butcher with all the meat I had to offer means nothing to me but he had insisted which I gave in to. I keep my head down as my walk into town feels long and judgemental but I could hardly care what they think of me now because they don't measure to how much I hate myself, all the things I've done has always gotten people hurt or killed and I'm a monster. Walking into the Victors Village I pause in my steps as I see someone digging around the front of my house, my walking gets faster as I get ready to yell at the person, they hear me walking and they get up but when he turns my eyes grow wide

"Peeta..." I barely whisper, I look down at the small yellow flowers he's holding

"I found some out by the forest, right near the edge. It's primrose, for her" he says, I look at him and notice how much better he looks in the months he's spent in the Capitol, he looks healthier and his blue eyes look more familiar. It's too much to take in all at once and I immediately run inside my house and all the way to my bedroom, I cower under the covers not knowing the reason he could be back, nothing he has is here, he's got no reason to be back but I don't want him to leave either.