Our Anthem

My Rainbow

......................

PEETA POV

......................

It took me two additional weeks to recover enough from the burns in order to properly be fitted for my new prosthetic. I hated looking down at the angry scars that made up the stump where my leg used to be. I'd never feel anything on my right foot again. Not grass, not soil, not hardwood floors, not water. It seemed silly, mourning for a lost foot when I'd lost my brother, my friends, my child and, seemingly, my wife as well, but it seemed that every piece of me was all that I had left, and even I wasn't whole anymore.

Haymitch called me every day to update me on what Katniss was up to. Apparently, he forced his way into her house every night for dinner and made her talk to Dr. Aurelius, who wasn't getting very far considering how stubborn Katniss was. She wasn't telling him anything, only answering yes or no or giving very short answers. She never talked to me, nor did she want to talk to me.

Cailean thankfully didn't disappear from my life with his sister. He came to visit me a few times, as he was helping design the most comfortable and most efficient prosthetic leg for me that he could. "If I come up with any better designs, you'll be the first to know. I won't stop until you've got your leg back," he told me.

"That'll never happen, so I guess you'll never stop," I told him, attempting to be lighthearted but failing.

"Don't give up yet on hope, bràthair . I was experimenting with lizards and how they can regenerate limbs in Fourteen," he told me, calling me the Gàidhlig word for 'brother'. I supposed that I was his only brother left, even though I wasn't his brother by blood. He'd lost all of his other brothers, leaving just the guy who married his sister, which happened to be me.

"You are not giving me green lizard legs," I teased him, resulting in probably the first genuine smile I saw come from him since the end of the war.

"When you get out of here, where are you headed off to?" Cailean asked me. "Wherever Katniss is, I'm assuming?"

"She's in Twelve right now, so I'll be going there," I replied. "What about you?"

"I wanted to give up the position of Senator for Thirteen, but they wouldn't let me, said it's a bad idea to change up the senate so soon and before the elections next year. They said I don't have to live in Thirteen if I didn't want to, that I could live in the Capitol if I wanted to, but I said no. I don't want to live underground or underwater or in one of these damned sky high birds nest kind of places. I want to live by the sea, where I can walk outside and smell the salty air and not be trapped under the waves. I'll be going to Four in a couple of days. Already got me a house there. Carolina's coming, too. Said she loved what she did with Fourteen, but that Fourteen isn't going to have any residents once the people move back to Thirteen or even to the other districts so it'll be converted into a research facility. She said I'd have my own personal lab." He chuckled gently. "We're sharing the house. It has three bedrooms. When Katniss is better, you two should come and visit."

"I'd love to. Katniss wants to move to Four so we might be your neighbours," I told him with a smile.

It took almost three weeks for me to properly get adjusted to the prosthetic after trying model after model after model and then finally select one and learn how to walk on it. It was strange, at first, but I guess not all that different from walking with a regular foot. The only difference was, I now felt the pressure of each step about a foot up my right leg, while my left foot still felt the ground. Now that I was healed, my hair and my eyebrows were growing in nicely and I could finally walk properly, I finally felt fit and ready to go home to Katniss in District Twelve. It had been five weeks since I had last seen her, since she ran off to Twelve, and I couldn't wait to wrap my arms around her. I hoped she'd made some progress and wasn't so afraid of me anymore, but when I called Haymitch the day before I was officially discharged from the hospital, my hopes faded away.