You pass a mirror in the hallway, seeing your own crazed expression, recoiling from it, and as if it was encoded into each strand of DNA in your body, your fist is curling, arm winding, you think of the arena, this adrenaline didn’t feel so different, it’s rushing through your ears and it’s driving your fist into the glass of this poor mirror Peeta picked out from the market a year ago.

It shatters, your image splitting into a million, and perhaps that’s the boom, crash, bullet-rip that scares the wild animal in you into the bathroom down the hall.

There were no victors, you’d been told by one dear friend. You’d dare call him a father. Only survivors.

As your breathing comes in rasps, you grip each side of the bathroom sink. Things were meant to be good now, weren’t they? The Capitol no longer loomed over your life. You lived in a comfortable house with the love of your life. Haymitch lived down the street, as did your mother, in a rebuilt District 12. The victors you had grown close to, they were a quick letter away, though the furthest friend lived all the way in District 7. Peace was working its way into the fibers of your muscles, the marrow of your bones, flowing through your arteries and cooling the sharp awareness your blood had carried before the rebellion.

Bread was sitting on the kitchen counter from yesterday, fresh and wrapped in a towel. Two toothbrushes sat in a cup by your thumb. If you were to open the cabinet inside the mirror, you’d find shaving cream sitting beside your perfume.

And still, you couldn’t dispel each bruising memory. Each person you’d lost was another crack in your knuckles, which, looking down at now— they were bleeding, and a small shard of glass was lodged in your pointer’s knuckle.

As you grabbed the tweezers to pry out the mirror bit (too rashly, mind, you were picking and ripping at the raw skin with your shaking hand,) you can’t stop your mind from reeling. Spinning with thoughts of a little girl in the arena you couldn’t save, could only sing to. With memories of a man you’d come to trust, slipping down a ladder and falling to faceless, groping hands. Thoughts of a sister, a baby, her visage disappearing behind a blinding light and ear-splitting, horribly man-made sound.

Your eyes are blurred from tears. Just your luck, you continue to pick fruitlessly for that little shard of glass. Eventually you get it out, you throw the tweezers in the sink like it was refuse.

Meeting your eyes in the mirror, you take a sharp inhale. Was that you? Jesus. Your attention darts all over yourself— regaining a little bit of composure, you fix your sleeping-tank to cover your bra. You try to run your fingers, the unharmed tips of them, through your dark tresses— they’re tangled from tossing and turning in bed, though, you don’t get very far. You try to rip your nails through, thoughtlessly, and grunt at the sting at your scalp.

Your hands are moving, but your mind lags behind, as you reach inside the cabinet above the sink again, taking away your sorry image in the mirror. Bloody, cracked fingers find the scissors you use to cut Peetas hair— the memory of sweet conversations, his bare back to you, his comment about the cool steel on his nape, it reminds you to breathe.

You’re grabbing the ends of a lock of hair, tugging tight, pushing the scissors through, just below your chin, baring your teeth with effort and avoiding your image in the mirror. Saltwater once again creates a blurry mask over the bathroom, your vision leaving you a bit of a comfort right now.

A frustrated cry splits your lips, you blink the tears down your flushed cheeks— so, when Peeta appears beside you, you see him perfectly clear, his sweet brown eyes wide for a man who just woke up, his shirt wrinkled and sleep-shorts rumpled from sleep.

Peeta breathes your name, taking in what’s in front of him. He points over his shoulder as he steps to you, as if to mention the mirror, but he decides against it. His brows knit as he steps to you, he can’t help gawking a little. “Jesus, baby, what’re you doing?”

His calloused, strong hands reach for the scissors, you let him take them from you. He sets them down, his eyes darting over his wife. What a sight you must’ve been, just then, your words coming in teary gasps. “I— I just..”

“Nightmare?” You swallow hard and nod. He mirrors you, mouth hanging open slightly. He gets them too.

Peeta grasps your hands, first and foremost, inspecting them with a gentle grasp on your undamaged fingertips. You breathe deep so that you don’t speak in a sob, though your voice is terribly hushed to try and keep it even. “I’m sorry about the mirror.”

“Don’t be. Just a mirror.” Peeta dismissed, a hand on your shoulder guiding you to sit on the toilet seat. He closes the lid for you, keeping one hand grasping your fingers and the other one reaching into the cabinet, finding the hydrogen peroxide. Like he knew what to do, like there were directions on how to care for you etched behind his eyelids.

You’re just grateful he shut his dropped jaw and wasn’t looking at you with any pity. Worry, definitely. Not pity.

Peeta goes wordlessly about pouring some of the clear liquid on a towel, dabbing your knuckles. Eventually, he speaks, his voice soft as it falls on your currently-sensitive ears. “A bad one, huh?”

You nod vigorously. Peeta frowns, glancing up at you often, but you only meet his chestnut gaze once, as he’s pulling away from you. He stops, leaning over to kiss your temple. He fondles gently the cropped section of hair, pressing his lips together and raising his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, your voice still wobbly as a woman on crutches. Peeta shakes his head.

“Why would you be sorry?” He murmurs, his hand moving from your hair to your flushed, wet cheek.

“You liked my hair,” A quiet bawl rips from your lips, your fingertips rubbing your eyes raw. Peeta pulls your hands away from your face with a featherlight touch, and leans close to you to drop a kiss into your hairline.

His voice is low, but sweet as a birdsong, “Baby, I like you. It’s just hair.” When Peeta pulls away, your eyes are on him, and he can’t help but see just a teenage girl again, ripped up in the mind, but never more beautiful regardless. He can’t help but see the girl who nursed him to health in that first arena, and the girl who made the second one bearable. The girl he’d fallen in love with, twice.

Wordlessly, he’s taking the scissors again after a quick inspection of your cleaned knuckles. He guides you by the elbows (the hand holding the scissors simply pushes his knuckles against you, obviously not wanting to cut you,) to stand.

It’s silent, as you lean slightly over the sink and let him snip away at the rest of your hair, slowly bringing the rest of the locks to the same length. The dark strands fall into the ceramic sink, floating like feathers, and you focus simply on that. Peeta looks up from his task to check up on you through the cabinet mirror, his brown eyes cautious and warm. Soft as anything. The only sound is the occasional owl that lived in the pines near your home.

The look of a man in love, a man who’d be in love with you in every scenario, and through every hardship. You’d been through so much together already— there wasn’t anything worse the world could throw at you that you couldn’t handle, not with Peeta beside you. Baking you bread. Making your chin tip back with unabashed laughter. Dipping your mattress at night, before drawing you close.

Cutting your hair over the sink over a meltdown, not shaming you, not scolding you, not even questioning you— just doing what he knew you needed him to, without your spoken instructions.

Eventually, though, your Peeta speaks, setting down the scissors and grasping your shoulders to get you to face him. He mutters your name, his brows drawn. Your eyes dart around the room, the soft yellow tiles, the Chantilly-curtained window letting a breeze rolling down from the mountains into the bathroom.

When he repeats your name you finally look at him. There it is, rolling over you in waves— shame. Embarrassment.

And there it is, receding like the tide pulling back into the ocean, a warmer feeling replacing it, when Peeta brushes a knuckle across your jaw and offers you an easy smile. “You look beautiful.”

You sniffle a little, huffing almost indignantly. He looked beautiful. His golden hair was smashed to his forehead, his sun-freckled cheeks pushed up and creasing his oak-colored eyes. After all these years, he still brought a flush to your own cheeks— if they weren’t already flushed from that breakdown. You were certain that you didn’t look as good as he did. “I look a mess, Peeta.”

“No, no. You look beautiful.” Peeta insists, shaking his head, closing his eyes a moment as if this was final. The smile that creases your tear-tracked cheeks broadens his own. “This haircut suits you.”

You hummed indifferently. Peeta tucks your freshly cropped hair behind your ear, mimicking your hum. He manages to work a soft, almost-laugh from you. That’s enough for him.

“I don’t know what got into me,” you murmur, eyes darting twixt his own. Your husband shakes his head, and it goes unsaid, but you know what he means. He knows. He understands. And it doesn’t change a thing.

“It’s okay,” Peeta cooes, his voice quiet, just for the two of you. He’s close enough to thump his forehead against yours, his hands roving up and down your upper arms. “Look at what we went through. It’s only natural.”

You press your lips together, nodding a little. You realize for the first time, that your mind is the clearest it’s been in the past ten minutes. Your breathing comes in soft, even puffs, your eyes swollen and red, but vision clear as glass. Silently, he leans forward just a bit, presses his warm lips onto yours, and you think that you could stay there forever, letting him lift you out of the mud, guide you through the murkiness that rose to your neck.

You couldn’t begin to describe just how good he was, your Peeta. Just how little you deserved him. Just how golden his heart was. Almost under your breath, you tell him, “Thank you.”

He shakes his head. Don’t worry about it, his warm eyes mutter. I’d do it again, his hand brushing up your shoulder speaks. I’m here, and i’m not leaving, a sweet, boyish smile on his face yells.

With his words, though, Peeta mutters, “I love you.” Easy as breathing. Easy as the sun rises— easy as the room lightens, just a little, as that long-forgotten nightstand clock’s fingers point a bit closer toward 5:30.

You whisper it right back to him, “I love you too.” And you mean it, from your split knuckles to your wracked mind, you mean it with your whole being. Peeta was the type of man you could trust that whole being with.

The type of man who’d wake up in the middle of the night, wordlessly cut your hair over the sink, silently take your rash bite and turn it into something beautiful. Love you in your worst moments. The type of man you could trust to take care of the wounded animal in you.

Peeta was exactly what you needed to heal.