#titaniasics

[loveinpanem-blog]

Love is...Unconditional

Banner by the brilliant, amazing and perfectly talented @akai-echo

Parts 1 and 2 are available on AO3/ffnet! 

Epilogue will post on Valentine’s Day. 

A million thanks to my lovely friend, @eala-musings for betaing this, the incomparable @akai-echo for the prereading, making the gorgeous set of banners and for talking me through some plot points. And finally, to the wonderful @thegirlfromoverthepond , my other partner in crime with @loveinpanem for inspiring this fic. Thank you all!

Part 3 - Release

“I’m fine, I promise,” I said, holding the cellphone in the crook between my neck and shoulder as I spoke to Prim and packed at the same time.

“I know, I know, but I just worry. I’ve never gone a month without seeing you. When are you coming home?”

“Soon, Little Duck,” I said, using my most soothing voice. Peeta quietly took my bag from my hands and checked the room one last time before we shut the door behind us.

“Okay. I just need to know you’re okay and I’ll quit worrying.” Her voice was plaintive, sounding like it did when we were children.

I sighed and watched Peeta pull on his shoes and tie them, knots double-laced, as always. “This trip has been one of the most important ones I’ve ever taken.” He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised as if in skepticism. I held his gaze defiantly as I continued. “I wish it would never end.”

His face softened, becoming thoughtful, then sad, before he let his eyes drop down to his shoes where his fingers still rested on the laces. I wished my sister goodnight and retreated to the restroom to brush my hair and keep myself from falling all over Peeta once again.

XXXXX

We stayed in Haymitch’s house just long enough to notify the proper individuals regarding Haymitch’s possessions so that they would be properly disposed of before we took the next train out. With him being legally dead and yet having been so visible and active in the matters of that small town, we were in no position to allow ourselves to be caught up in the confusion that would likely ensue with Haymitch’s abrupt disappearance.

The train took us further southwest, to the coastline of Panem, where District 4’s seaside towns were located. The trip lasted nearly three days, as we were unable to secure a ticket on an express train. Dread, heavy like the stone I’d cast into the lake, sat in my belly as we neared the place where Peeta was last alive. I suggested several times that we make a detour, stop in District 7, or even make a clandestine visit to District 12. It was, after all, our home and wouldn’t it be nice to see it one last time? But Peeta demurred, insisting that we go to the sea.

“There’s one more stop we need to make,” he kept repeating.

“But why the sudden hurry?” I insisted, cloaking myself in a naive hope that I could prolong all of this, pretending that I didn’t know why he was now racing to get to District 4.  To Peeta’s credit, he didn’t indulge my fantasies, but he wasn’t cruel or blunt either. He simply smiled, running his hands along my hair and down my braid before releasing it with a small tug.

Those days on the train with him existed beyond all reality. I wasn’t sure how things could get any stranger than my traveling with the corporeal ghost of my deceased husband, but it did. No one existed except for us, even though the train was full of people going about their business each day.

No one seemed to notice that Peeta was different, except for a small toddler with curly blond hair who waddled up to him when we were visiting the dining cabin. The child could have passed for Peeta’s son as he stared at him, not with fear, but with confusion as to the nature of the kind, blond-haired man he’d been instinctively drawn to.

“He’s beautiful,” I whispered as his mother tugged him away. I felt a memory barrelling upwards, a memory I pushed violently away for fear it would make me bleed.

Peeta’s face went through a quick series of changes, first frowning, then smoothing out to impassivity. “Some people are more attuned to ghosts than others,” he said, turning the pages of the magazine next to his sandwich.  “Kids, especially.”

We fell into a tense silence, which persisted until the little boy finally left the car with his mother.

XXXXX

“Do you know I have a secret?” I said one night, sprawled out on our cabin bunk.

Peeta, who had been placidly reading at his side of the bed, looked up. “Really? Do tell.”

“Yes. Something I’ve never told you.” I took up most of the space on the bed as I spread out dramatically. “I had a girlfriend the very first year we went to college.”

Peeta closed the book, watching me as I smiled at the memory. “I had no idea.”

“Well, you and I weren’t actually dating yet. It was weird, really, how it all happened. I’m not exactly a people magnet, but she liked me and pursued me. She was very pretty - astonishingly so given what a social idiot I was.”

“I’m not surprised she pursued you. I’d been pining for you since I was five. How long did it last?”

I shrugged. “Four months. But it was...intense. We saw each other every day. She was the first person I’d ever had sex with and I admit - we couldn’t get enough of each other. But then it just fizzled out. We never talked about the future, never mentioned marriage. It was just...what it was. So when she left, I let it go. She had marked an important period of my life, but I wasn't as devastated as I would have expected.” I turned my head up towards him. “I learned a lot from her but she didn’t break me when she left.” I rolled over and rested my head on his lap, looking up into his blue eyes, which danced with amusement and a certain amount of awe.  “It’s strange, the things that connect people.”

“Maybe it’s because you and I are married?” he whispered, playing with my hair.

I shook my head. “Marriage is a formality, nothing more. No, it’s because when I decided to love you, I gave it all to you - I made my existence completely enthralled to yours, and if you'd have stuck around, it would have been good. I gambled on the fact of you living, but I lost.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression pained.

I shrugged. “Don’t be. Maybe the odds weren’t in my favor. But you were worth all of it, even with the pain of losing you. Knowing what I know now, I'd still do it all over again, because simply being with you was a gift.” I ran my hands along his leg, reveling in the hard muscle beneath his pants.  “I'm learning to accept that I will live my entire life and never love anyone the way I love you.”

“It’s not true,” he said, helping me onto his lap. “You can love someone else one day.”

I shook my head. “Hey, I just admitted to surviving beyond you. That’s all the progress you’re going to get out of me today.”

Peeta snorted in disbelief, but he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he kissed me, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear before asking, “So, do you have any more secrets?”

I snaked my arms around his shoulders, realizing how many things we still had to learn about each other, and wondering if there would ever be enough time. “Yes, but for now, I think I’ll keep them to myself.”  

XXXXX

When we descended from the train, we walked out onto a two-lane road. One side was lined with shops and restaurants, while the oceanside featured a long boardwalk that went on for miles in either direction, punctuated by public beaches, quaint motels and wide stretches of sawgrass and mangroves. The sea was not masked behind even the tallest structures but made itself known by the deafening roar of its call and the overpowering smell of salt. It beckoned from the open spaces of beach and between the alleyways of buildings.

We searched the strip, or rather, I followed as Peeta wandered from one motel to another until we arrived at a small establishment with adjoining restaurant, buried under overgrown vines and trees, hanging thick with bougainvillea and jasmine. A sign with the handpainted name, The Seacomber, was posted proudly at the entrance and above the building.The smell intoxicated me, and I knew we’d arrived even before he’d stopped to consider the building.

“Here,” was all he said as he took my bag and stepped inside a tiny office with a faux-marble countertop that served as the front desk.  We were greeted by a middle aged woman with a face that smiled easily. A handsome young man, not much younger than me, with an unmistakeable resemblance to the woman, emptied the trash bins in the small office, pausing only to welcome us before exiting through a door in the back.

“I can offer you a poolside room on the first floor,” the woman suggested, showing us a map of the U-shaped property. A large pool area sat in the middle, surrounded by lounge chairs. The opening of the configuration faced out to the sea. I examined the layout more closely.

“Is that one available?” I asked, pointing at the leg of the U, at the end of which appeared to be a room that faced directly onto the ocean.

“That’s our honeymoon suite complete with a full kitchen, separate bedroom featuring a king-sized bed, and a lounge area that opens onto the balcony overlooking the beach. It’s...pricier...than this one.” The woman, who wore a name badge identifying her as Cecilia, pointed at the room she had originally assigned us.  

“I’ll take it,” I said, glancing at Peeta. He made to protest, but I silenced him.

“I want this. Please.”

He nodded and watched as I signed the credit card slip and gave it to her in exchange for a large room key with the number 11 hanging on it.

I was satisfied when we made it to the room. It was one of the loveliest rooms I’d ever seen - white-painted, wooden furniture adorned the open space. The sofas were dressed in homey prints of yellow and blue with matching pillows and a throw blanket. Sheer white curtains rustled in the breeze of the open window and the current created by the ceiling fans circling above. I set my bag down and crossed to the large balcony that, from the door, appeared suspended directly above the ocean. The shore only became visible when I approached the rail.

The smell arrested me - the aroma of flowers we’d encountered wafting up to our room, mingled with the sea, the sand, even the pungent odor of chlorine from the nearby pool. The squall of seagulls in the distance was the only sound we heard and I was grateful for the sparsely populated beach that spread for miles in each direction.

But it was the ocean that drew my interest. Rolling in on gentle waves under a partially-clouded sky, it did not give a hint of its menace. Rocks piled over each other to the south and the north beach curved into a bay that drew most of the sea-goers’ attention, for the water was smooth, almost mirror-like to swim in. But this savage beauty enticed me, nearly making me believe that it’s invitation into its depths was benevolent and sincere.

“I never thought I’d come to the sea again,” I said. Peeta came up behind me, wrapping his powerful arms around my waist. “I don’t know that I can go in it.”

He squeezed, pulling me flush against him. “Then don’t. I’d never force you to do a thing.”

“But what about you?  Doesn’t it…?”

“Does it disturb me? In the beginning, I was terrified of everything. I didn’t understand what was happening. But I came to grips with this,” he spread his hands out to indicate the treacherous water that lay before us. “It was one of the first obstacles I had to overcome so I could go where I needed to go, which was to you.”

I crossed my arms over his. “I’ll never forgive it.”

Peeta sighed, turning me to look at him. “It’s useless to hate a mindless thing.”

“Well, then who else do I complain to about this?” He fell silent on this point. He’d died but he knew as little about everything after as I did. “Well, then, since no one is listening, you’ll have to forgive me for hating that thing for taking you away.”

He shook his head but didn’t protest anymore. It was useless to argue over such things, anyway.

XXXXX

The family who owned the establishment where we stayed was a small one. There was Cecilia and her husband, Caleb, a jolly man somewhat older than her but who still preserved a certain air of humor about him that rendered him youthful. They spoke of two boys - Jayden, who was studying in a residential engineering program in District 2, and Thresh, who also studied in north Panem but stayed back in the summers to help his parents run the motel.

“Thresh sure does love the seaside,” Cecilia said fondly of her son, who at that moment was wiping down the machinery in the back of the restaurant. “His older brother had more of an itch to go away, do something different. But Thresh will probably inherit the place, since he loves working here so much.”

Peeta and I sipped our coffee as she chatted. We were consistently the last customers to make it down to the dining room before the breakfast bar closed.

“Now, don’t you worry,” she said as I apologized for the third morning in a row when we arrived only ten minutes before breakfast stopped being served. “We keep those hours for the business folk who come in and have to eat early so they can get on to their meetings and things. You both are obviously on vacation. We can relax the rules some.” She winked as Caleb brought hot water for our tea. “I’m on the ins with the owner.”  

We spent the days walking along the beach, exploring the national park north of our location. There was a reef off the coast that was only a small boat trip from the motel but after two weeks, I still refused to go in the water.

On one of our walks, after I’d turned down yet another invitation by Peeta to go in the water, he paused, considering me before taking off his t-shirt, leaving him in his swim shorts.

“What are you doing?” I said, panicking as he exposed his fair skin to the sun. “You barely put on any sun block!”

“Worry wort,” he teased as he gave me a brief, lopsided grin before turning and plunging, head-first, into the ocean.

“No!” I shouted, scrambling to take off my dress and race in after him. When I reached him, I grabbed him by the arm and jerked him towards me.

“Get out! GET! OUT!” I screamed, pulling frantically at him.

“I’m fine, I’m not going out there, Katniss. Please!” he begged as I continued to shout at him until I had managed to drag him out onto the sand.

“How dare you do that to me!” I screamed, hitting him on the chest, not once, but several times, tears now streaming down my face. “You promised you wouldn’t force me!”

“I’m sorry!” Peeta said. “I just really wanted to go in, so you could realize that I’m okay. I can take a swim and nothing will happen to me.”

I leaned my cheek against his wet shoulder, trying to regain my composure. I remembered the ambulances, the police cars, the National Guard boats out on the open water, combing the rocks, the reef islands, the mangrove fields and not finding anything, leaving me on this very beach, just north of where they were now, kneeling and begging for the courage to throw myself into the sea too.

“It’s physical. I…” I looked up at him, calmer but still upset. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, scraping my cheek with the fine grains of sand. “I just can’t let it touch me. It’s taken too much from me.”

“Hey,” he said, holding me firmly to him. “I understand. I felt the same way when I first, well, after…”

“You’ve had more time to deal with it. This is the first time I’ve been in front of the ocean in three years.” I looked out at it, so warm and beautiful, calling to me, presenting itself as it is, without will or volition. It just was and could no more help itself than the wind could stop itself from blowing.

I turned to look at Peeta, who was staring at me with those confounding blue eyes filled with worry. The water dripped from his hair, down his chest - making his hair sparkle again. I ran my fingers through the damp hair, curling them before I released them. Taking a decision, I stood and helped him to his feet and. With his hand firmly in mine, I waded into the warm, lapping waves, shivering despite the temperature.

Terror raced over me but I swallowed it back, breathing deeply in time with the music of the seagulls in the distance. I squeezed Peeta’s hand, swaying slightly as we reached the break line, where the sea was most insistent, waves crashing with mindless force against us. Finally, the foamy, roiling water became gentle undulations that spread and caressed us, a contained fury that enticed us to let down our guard, to trust it, but never too much.

Peeta pulled me up so that he was holding me, forcing me to wrap my legs around his waist. The water came to our mid chest, so we let it carry us, each anchored to the other. Despite my terror of earlier, I felt safe and protected, the way I could only feel with Peeta. I still eyed the sea in anger and no small amount of hatred, but I could also admit its beauty and serenity into my consciousness. My arms were wrapped loosely around his neck and I heard his murmurs in my ear, dampened by the low roar of the surf.

“Hmmm?” I asked, unable to capture his words with any clarity.

“Oh,” he said, as if he hadn’t been aware that he’d been speaking. “It’s a silly thing really,”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

He looked sheepish but he spoke again, this time so I could hear:

We the mortals touch the metals,

the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,

knowing they will go on, inert or burning,

and I was discovering, naming all these things:

it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

 I kissed him then pulled back. “That’s beautiful...and so sad…”

Peeta shrugged, pulling me back to my place, head on his shoulders, arms and legs wrapped around him. “It is, isn’t it?”

XXXXX

We spent so many days that way, where the goal was not where we were going or what we were doing, but that these things were done together. Peeta had always had a gift for sketching and I sat next to him for hours as he indulged himself, making drawings of me, of himself, the birds and oceans. And he gifted each creation to me, amongst the most precious things he ever gave me.

We took long naps in the afternoon, retreating to our room to talk, read or make love - whatever and whenever the mood struck us. In the quiet rhythms of our time together, we learned more about each other than in the ten years we’d been married, punctuated as they were by the constant freneticism of work, obligations and an ever present to-do list. I imagined myself doing this forever but my imagination would not reach that far. It was funny how people were made - we could get used to almost anything and I eventually became accustomed to the uncertainty, living as fully as possible in the moments I spent with him.

Some days, when Peeta napped and sleep eluded me, I wandered the premises or the beach, though I refrained from going in the water without him.  There were small, secret places in that motel, and I wandered into one of them after nearly a month, drawn by the lonely chords of a beautiful piano piece I nearly recognized. I followed it, searching for its source until I reached a conference room, its door closed but not locked. I opened and walked through.

The music drew me in, a gentle melody that was executed with a practiced, if hesitant tempo, as if the player did not fully trust their ability to play. I followed the music, which I recognized as Comptine d’un Autre. It took me back to my youth in District 12, and to, Madge, who would invite me to her house nearly every day. Each time, at some point in the visit, she would sit me down next to her as she played this melody and others, all the while pausing between songs to chat. Sometimes we said nothing at all and she just played song after song, which suited me fine because I loved listening to her play.  My visits always smelled of tea and cookies, sometimes homemade, mostly bought from Mellark’s Family Baker.

The thought brought Peeta to my mind, causing me to nearly turn back. I missed him when I wasn’t with him, but he’d had been sleeping so peacefully, I was loathe to disturb him.

I forced the door open and stepped inside. A young girl of about 12 sat at a fairly old and well-worn piano. She wore a blueberry-colored dress with a crisp collar, the color of whipped cream. Her slender fingers danced, occasionally missing a key, which she corrected with a smooth shift of her hand. Her skin glowed smooth and brown, her tight curls fastened into two fluff buns on either side of her head, held in place with ribbons the color of her dress.

Drawn by the music and the nearly picture-like perfection of the girl, I stepped up to the piano, capturing the expression of surprise on the sweetest face I’d ever seen.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly, noticing that she wore the same look of being on the verge of a smile that Cecilia and Thresh possessed. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

The girl, who had paused in her playing, spoke with the voice that reminded me of trilling birds.  “Oh, you’re not. I’m just keeping myself busy, like my brother always says.

I was confused. Cecilia had only mentioned two boys, but I kept it to myself. “My best friend used to play that piece. When I was young, it was my favorite and I always made her play it.”  I smiled as she giggled. “I’m Katniss.”

“I’m Rue,” she said, resuming her playing. “I want to practice so I can play at the school assembly. But I have to learn it perfectly first.”

“It sounds perfect to me,” I said, taking a chair next to her. She took up humming the tune under her breath. I watched the soft undulations of her shoulders as she brought her arms to her side, chasing the tune with child-like persistence. A sound, harsh and short, caught my attention and I turned. It jarred, not because it was loud but because it reminded me of a wound being torn audibly open.

I saw that Thresh had taken a seat at a long table behind me, watching with an expression of agony as the girl played on.

“You can see her?” he asked, the sound barely audible over the tinkling of piano keys.

“Yes,” I answered. “She’s a very good player, you know.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking a paper napkin from his pocket and gripping it in his fist. “She comes and goes, always playing that song. I’m the only one who ever sees her. At least others can see your husband.”

“You noticed that,” I said, more calmly than I should have. But it was clear that Thresh and I were two of a kind. “Why is she here?”  My proximity to this world taught me that there was always a reason that the dead lingered, always a knot that they were seeking to untie before they could be free.

“It’s me,” he said, his voice sounding more tired than anyone should sound at his age. “When she was born, I was so jealous of her. My parents paid so much attention to her, and my older brother - he was too busy with his own things.” His face clenched as if he had been struck. “I only learned later that she had been born sickly and my parents were just trying to...keep her comfortable. Alive. By the time I figured it out, I’d wished her dead so many times that I was sure I was the one who made her sick.”

“It doesn’t really work that way,” I whispered, though who was I to lecture anyone on regret?

“When she turned 11, she died.” He rubbed his face, as if trying to keep all that he felt by physically shoving those feelings away. “She won’t leave because she knows my evil wishes killed her.”

Rue stopped playing and turned to look at him, staring without saying a word.

“She does that too,” he says. “Just stops and stares at me, like she’s accusing me.”

My heart ached for him and Rue. For Haymitch and Maysilee.  For myself and Peeta. For all the spirits torn away too soon and the broken souls they left behind.

“I don’t think she’s here because she’s angry. They never come to us out of anger.” I closed my eyes and thought of my husband, how I could describe in every way his presence in my life but never as a haunting. The living were haunted, not by ghosts, but by their own regrets.

“I think she’s just waiting for you to forgive yourself. You were just a child. No amount of wishing in the world could have made her stay or leave.”

Thresh stared back at his sister, who held his gaze with innocent purity. “I didn’t know, Rue,” he said, his voice now broken. “I didn’t know.”

Rue stood and walked towards him, her small dress swishing about her knees. When she reached him, she touched his hand and smiled, provoking a hiccup of sobs from him as he took the little girl’s hand and pressed it to his lips. He held it there as if it would keep all the grief in the world from spilling out of him and blotting the bright sunlight beyond the windows. With her other hand, Rue cupped his cheek and, like a blueberry tinted rainbow, shimmered and dissolved into mist.

XXXXX

I quietly left Thresh in the dignity of his solitude, knowing those moments belonged only to him. I couldn’t get a handle on how I felt after that. I stumbled out of the room and down the hall, my memory attempting to betray me again, reminding me that I, too, had an account to settle, a ledger on my balance.

I thought if I walked quickly enough, I could escape it. But it had become another spirit, one less benevolent than all the ones I’d met. It was vengeful, insistent and emanated purely from my guilt. As I pushed the door that opened onto the sparsely populated pool and I wound my way to the stairs that would take me to our suite, the spirit of that memory overcame me, and I had no choice but to stop under its power.

I was back in District 4, the night before Peeta died. We’d return from a walk with Finnick and Annie, both aglow with joy from the good news. They were expecting their first child in the fall, and they had infected both Peeta and I with their excitement. In particular, Peeta was as ecstatic as if the good news had been his own.

When we returned to our guest room, Peeta had acted immediately under that borrowed happiness. He’d taken me and kissed me, his hand sliding over my belly to grip my waist, his intent clear. No matter what happened between us, how angry the fights or how deep the disappointments,we always had this way of connecting, through the physical rhythms of our bodies, moving in synchronicity - a dance that always brought us back together.  Our unity of motion coaxed the same in our hearts.

When it was over, Peeta had whispered, “What about us?”

I had known what he was asking for he had asked for it often in the years of our marriage. There had always been a way for me to put him off - first our need to finish school, then the more pressing need to save money - all to hide the real reason I didn’t want to have children. I was terrified to death of having them, ruining them and, most compelling and ironic of all, of losing them.

“Maybe when we move back to District 12,” I had answered lamely. I knew Peeta had hoped for something more enthusiastic and committed from me but that night, I had failed. And it had been a critical failure.

Peeta was far too sensitive to me. He perceived the hesitation, and, soon, all I felt was ice from his side of the bed. I reached out to touch him, to try to find that connection to him again, the one I had severed with my answer. But he sat up suddenly, swinging his legs over the side of his bed and dressed quickly.

I sat up also, gathering the bed sheets around me.

“Where are you going?”

He paused, his rigid features visible only in profile, but it was enough to capture to depth of his hurt and anger.

“The thing I’ve always looked most forward to in our life together was the possibility of having a child with you. To have someone who carried a piece of you together with a piece of me.” He inhaled loudly, as if it would steady him.

“I want that too, some day…” I said, hearing the emptiness in my words as I said them and knowing that I was continuing to fail miserably.

“One day?” he asked with a bitter laugh. “I don’t understand why you would marry someone you don’t want to have child with.”

“That’s not true!” I said, anger now spewing out of my chest, at him and at me. “That’s such an unfair thing to say!”

“Why the hesitation then, Katniss? Why else but because I just don’t inspire that in you? Maybe someone else would be better able to do that.”

“Hey, hold on,” I said, oblivious to the fact that my blankets had fallen away and my voice was rising. “You don’t have to say things like that to me!”

Peeta stood and whirled around, hands balled into tight fists. “Oh, come on!  You keep putting up every fucking obstacle that you can find to actually settling down and starting a family. You keep postponing our move back to 12, you’re completely unenthusiastic about me taking over the baker…”

“I just want to make sure we have enough money, that’s all! You’re just turning everything around so that you don’t have to take responsibility for your own unhappiness!”

Peeta grabbed his hoodie and threw it haphazardly over his head. “You know what? My happiness depends as much on you as yours does on me. I take responsibility for that. You’re the one who keeps pursuing goals that take no account of how I feel!” He shoved his feet into his shoes. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this. I’m taking a walk.”

“Don’t...don’t go,” I said, suddenly horrified by the argument, by our words. “Please, let’s talk it out. Maybe I can…”

“You can what?  Keep putting me off? I’ll pass on that, thanks.” He turned, opened the door and left the room. I was so stupid. I should have gotten dressed. I should have gone after him. Instead, I kept thinking that if I gave him time, he’d come around, become the Peeta that I loved, the Peeta I’d taken for granted - the patient one, the one who was always willing to apologize first, and make amends.

I chose to sit on that bed and wait in my self-righteous anger.

It was the last time I saw him alive.

XXXXX

Tears blinded me as I finally arrived in our suite. Peeta was awake and making coffee in the kitchen. I tried to calm down, tried to find a stable place. We had so very little, precious time.

“Are you okay?” Peeta asked as I paced the room. Memories had become feelings that rose up to swallow me and God knows I didn’t want them. I didn’t want them to make their appearance. I pressed my temples as if I could push them back behind the wall of darkness where they could haunt me without my awareness. But it was futile. The time had come, and I could no more keep them back than I could hold back the waves that had taken my husband’s life.

“You have no idea what these last three years have been like for me,” I said between clenched teeth.

“No,” Peeta said softly. “I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

I wiped my cheeks, trying to take in air. “No one has ever hated themselves more. You have to understand,” I leaned against the window, gazing at the sea, at once so calm and beckoning, yet full of treachery and death. “I let you die with that stupid argument between us. I didn’t realize how...how badly you wanted them.  And I was too proud to tell you how afraid I was.”  I turned to him. “Why did we let it go so long?”

“Because I never pushed you,” Peeta said, suddenly next to me, flexing and unflexing his hands in that confounding habit he’d come to have. “I didn’t want to force you and have you hate me if you weren’t happy with the decision.”

“You should have forced me!” I shouted, all of my self-hatred and regret rising out of me in one enormous wave of feeling, powerful enough to pull me under. I was forced to take a seat on the divan. “You don’t know how many...how many times...I...cursed myself for saying no to you. For not going after you and telling you, once and for all, that I would give you everything you wanted.” I balled my fists against my eyes to keep the tears from escaping again. “If I’d have just done that, you would still be here, with me and not dead...and fading…”

“Katniss, please! I told you not to play this game!”

“I should have had your baby!” There it was, the truth. I would have had someone to comfort me, to make my life worth something in the event he left me and took my heart, my soul, my will to exist with him. “I should have just said yes.”

“Katniss…” he whispered, rubbing circles between my shoulder blades while I sobbed. “You weren’t ready. I...I made the mistake. I shouldn’t have said what I said to you.”

His words still stung, even with the distance of memory. “I was...haunted...obsessed...by the thought that if I had only just said yes...if I had only just given in.” I sobbed between my words, forcing them to make sense. “And this...thing...this regret...it nearly killed me. And now it traps you here.” I look up at him, feeling so unworthy of him, of everything he had given me and continued to give me. “Why did you even bother to come back?”

Peeta sank down onto the divan next to me, flexing his right hand again. “I have a confession to make.”

I stopped blubbering enough to listen to him. “I thought I was the only one with secrets.”

“That’s not entirely true. I...I owe you an apology.”

“And apology? Why?” I look down at his hand and notice the subtle phase shifting like Haymitch, noticed his hands as they curled into a fist and opened again. “You’re fading, aren’t you?” I gripped his arm in a panic. “You’re beginning to fade!”

He shrugged, capturing my hand in his and squeezing. “I’m always coming and going. That...that’s not...Katniss, I’m not just here for you.”

“Not here just for me?” I repeat, never having posed the question of his current state of existence, even to myself before today.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, why I’d held on, why, when other spirits were moving on, I was stuck and couldn’t leave. I needed to make it right with you. I needed...I shouldn’t have left you that way. I should have never said those things to you.”  His ragged breath prefigured the tears that now fell.

“Shhhh….” I whispered, pulling him towards me.  “People say things…”

“You were alone for so long,” he continued.  “I could hear your grief, Katniss. It was like a lonely chord rising above a symphony of existence, a note that only I could hear. I followed it because if you suffered, it was because of me. I’m the one who left you alone after that argument without making amends. I had no choice but to come to you. I had to fix that.”

I gripped him to me, revelling in the feel of him, a feeling I never wanted to duplicate with anyone else ever again. “You have nothing to apologize for. We got a little lost, that’s all. But it never changed anything for me. I love you. I loved you then.” I looked up at him. “The only thing that could fix everything is if you stayed. We could live here, if you like, or in the mountains. Any place would do.”

Peeta shook his head. “I’m not in the right place.”

He stood, stepping toward the large window I had just vacated, beyond which lay the sea. He had no fear of it - he’d demonstrated that to me already when we swam in it. But he leaned towards it, as if it beckoned to him, and I knew, I knew I wasn’t ready. I could be - I could make myself strong, but just not at that moment.

“No, not yet!” I shouted, hurling myself at him, gripping his arm, not realizing that his edges had been blurring until my hand landed on him and he became solid. “Please, I’m not ready.”

He shook his head. “Neither am I,” he said, pulling me into a tight embrace. “I’ll never be ready to be without you.”

We held on to each other for a long while before he spoke again, his words rumbling in the depth of his chest, radiating in my ear.

“Please? Stay?” I begged, but weakly, because I knew it was only a delusion.

“I’m fighting everything to be here, but I only have so much strength until the tide turns and takes me away again.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Peeta!” I shouted. “That’s such a horrible metaphor!”

He froze, perhaps not expecting such a reaction from me, before chuckling into my shoulder. “You’re right. That was downright lurid.”

XXXXX

After we exchanged more reassurances, more words, the exactness of which I can no longer remember, but there was healing in them. We cleaned up and took a walk down to the small shack of a restaurant that served fresh seafood. We ordered several plates and a bottle of astonishing good, local white wine. We sampled everything on the menu, stuffing ourselves until my belly felt sloshy and full.

I told him all my secrets then. About the time I’d caught a deer after my father died and let it go because I couldn’t stand to kill it, even though the meat would have been welcomed. The only time I’d cheated on a test. How much I first envied my sister when she was born. How desolate I was when my father died and my mother couldn’t pull herself from the depression that followed.

And he told me his. The crush he’d had on our fourth-grade teacher. The time he nicked gumballs from the sweet shop, so proud he’d gotten away with it that he’d saved those round, shiny treats until they became brittle and nearly disintegrated to powder in his desk drawer. The night his mother had gotten piss drunk and woke him up in the middle of the night to confess that she did love him, with all her heart, but she was a right piece of shit and didn’t know how to show anyone how much.

“I can’t believe your mother would say that,” I said, feeling drunk in my own right.

“That’s mom for you - she isn't afraid to drop a surprise drunk confession on you in the middle of the night.” He looked up at me, his face suddenly serious. “Does it make me a horrible person that I didn’t once think of going to look in on my family?”

I thought about it. “Well, I never once mentioned it so that makes us both lousy human beings.”

He lifted his glass in a mock toast, before downing the glass of white wine in one gulp. “Come on, woman. Let’s pay this bill. I”ve always wanted to make love to you on the beach.”

I smiled as I paid the bill and we strolled for a long way along the beach. It felt terribly like something on a bucket list, which I indulged him. We did make love on the sand, the gritty grains getting everywhere, invading places where they shouldn't be. But when he poured salt water over me with his hands, cupping the warm water and letting it fall over my arms, my shoulders, the warm liquid racing in rivulets over my belly, I forgave all the discomforts. We melted into the gentle waves, clinging in the unfathomable darkness to one another. The waves pushed us gently together and I thought how ironic that, on our second last night together, the sea would conspire to unite what it had so violently torn apart.

XXXXX

Peeta fell asleep as soon as we returned to the suite.  I barely closed my eyes, opening them every few minutes to check that he was still next to me. But he was. In the silence of the room, and the depth of his exhaustion, I watched him sleep, memorizing him, cursing my inability to generate even the most rudimentary picture. While at Haymitch’s, I had tried to capture him with my cellphone but he simply refused to appear.  

“You can’t break every single law of physics,” he had said as I showed him the shot I’d taken. There was only an outline, like capturing the scattering of light, which only hinted that a person was standing there.

“It’s like those ghost pictures that you see in magazines sometimes,” I said.

“I guess you’re not the first person who’s thought about taking a picture of a ghost.”

Now, I had only my eyes, my memory, which would fade and leave only the impression of the man I loved, a poor duplicate for someone I had come to need for my very survival. But feast I did, until I was bleary-eyed from exhaustion. It was an exercise in futility, for no amount of staring would ever be enough. And he hid, in the sweetness of his slumber, the most striking thing that made Peeta Mellark who he was - his deep blue eyes, full of the texture of his kind heart and gentle soul.

When he woke at dawn, I was exhausted and he was struggling. His edges blurred and he compulsively flexed his hands into white-knuckled fists. I put my hand over his. “It’s how you focus, isn’t it?”

He nodded, his face strained. I would never truly grasp how much strength he’d needed to hold himself together until now. He was suffering and I knew that there was nothing to be gained by letting someone I love suffer, even for my sake.

“I wish I could beg you to stay. I wish I knew the formula that would keep you with me forever. But I know now that I can’t,” I said, holding on to his fists more strongly, my breath threatening to escape my lungs and leave me without speech. Everything in my body rebelled against it, but the time was near, and I had to cut the strings and let him go in peace. I had no idea how I would survive, but I knew, for his sake, that I had to try.

“Do you know that we are only aware of .04% of the universe?” he said suddenly.

“I...okay…” I said in confusion, wondering if his sanity would be the first thing to go.

“It’s so immense. It’s been around for so long and it’s expanding, always expanding, and will do so possibly for all of eternity. And our lives are like a flash in the middle of stars blazing their finite light in an infinite darkness - blink and you miss it.” He looked at me with eyes melting into the very stars he described. “I was so privileged to live in that infinitesimal moment in time, to have been alive when you were, and to have had, for that incredibly tiny interval, the gift of your love.”

“Peeta...don’t…” I was sobbing. Leave it to Peeta and his silver tongue to magnify the pain of his leaving a thousand times by simply opening his mouth.

“But I did what I had to do.” He released my hand and place his palm over my belly.  

I looked down at the deceptively flat expanse, warmed by the heat of his palm, and suddenly felt something, perceived in one, fierce vision of illumination the tiny life stirring beneath. My mind struggled to accept what my body had already known, had been preparing for since possibly the first moment the universe was cleaved into a billion pieces, setting in motion the timeline that would bring us to this moment.

“How...how could it happen...how can you possibly know?” I babbled in awe as I put my hand over his and held it.

“I told you...I know things.”

“But you’re a ghost!” I shouted.

Peeta shook his head. “We’re the same,” he raised his hand, shimmering like a collection of constellations. “We are both light and energy, mass and heat. And love. So much love. Einstein got some of it right, at least.”

I held his hand, the solid one, like a captive over the place where our child was taking shape. I had no words for this moment. It was too much for one person, so I just clung to the part of him that was still solid, still here.

After a time, Peeta said, “You’ll never be alone again.”

I smiled, despite the immense pain of my heart breaking in two. I smiled. I cried. I wailed. And finally, I laughed. I flung my arms around him and laughed and cried into his shoulders. “God help me, Peeta. All I can think about is I’m going to have one helluva story to tell when I get home.”

Peeta gripped me and held me close to his him. “Just be sure to leave the good stuff out.”

XXXXX

It happened like a star falling out of the sky. At sunset, I helped him down to the sand, where we both stumbled, falling in a pile on top of each other. We laughed like idiots because we were idiots. Who the hell did stuff like this happen to?

But when we sat in the sand and he became nearly transparent, I beckoned him to me one more time and his eyes became filled once again with the color of the dying sun. “We’ll see each other again, won’t we?”

Peeta became solid as he answered. “We will. Not for a while yet. But we will.”

“Okay,” I said, running my fingers over his face one more time.

“Can you do me one last favor?” he said, flickering now like a candle.

“Anything.”

“Call her Amada. Tell her she was given that name because she is beloved.”

And with that, he was gone.

Epilogue will post on Valentine’s Day.