We're supposed to be making up this stuff, playing at being in love, not actually being in love.

I never see these things coming. They happen too fast. One second you're proposing an escape plan and the next...

Katniss: I guess all those hours decorating cakes paid off. Peeta: Yes, frosting. The final defence of the dying. (252)

Today I might lose both of them. I try to imagine a world where both Gale's and Peeta's voices have ceased. Hands stilled. Eyes unblinking. I'm standing over their bodies, having a last look, leaving the room where they lie. But when I open the door to step out into the world, there's only a tremendous void. A pale grey nothingness that is all my future holds.

But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.

I drink in his wholeness, the soudness of his body and mind. It runs through me like the morphling they give me in the hospital, dulling the pain of the last weeks.

Knowing it and seeing it are two different things.