of flames and heat; a drabble
Peeta shivers in the cold.
He's asleep, and Katniss watches the mouth of the cave, arrow notched and hand tense. It's been too long she keeps telling herself. Eventually someone is going to come looking for them - someone is going to find them - and try to kill them. She's not going to let them suceed. (She wants to go home, and there's no way in hell she's going without Peeta.) Peeta shivers in the cold, even with his and Katniss' coat and the sleeping bag draped over him. He protested when she handed over her own coat, but she had smiled and let him hold a hand to her neck and feel the amount of warmth that she generated.
She had gotten another stupid looking smile in return - the kind where Peeta looked at her like she was something special, and not likely to char them both to pieces if she didn't keep her temper under control. The temperature is dropping too quickly, quicker than feasibly possible and so she knows that it's not natural, and it's really not a surprise when Peeta wakes, burrowing himself even deeper under the covers.
"Aren't you cold?" he asks out of habit, and almost immediately his eyebrows draw togethers. The Capitial is probably eating it up, having a Normal in love with a Mutant and forget about said Mutant's ablieties. Katniss doesn't mind, not really. It's nice to have someone look up at her and not think 'fire starter', but just see 'Katniss'. (She probably starts falling in love with Peeta for that reason.)
"Here," Katniss says, and checks to make sure there's enough rocks piled up that light won't seep out and attract any unwanted attention. "I do this for Prim and my mother when winter gets too cold."
After six years she's finally managed to control her Flame. She considers it lucky because if she attempted this six years ago, she probably would have burnt Peeta to a crisp. Slowly, she raises her body tempature and focuses it to the point of her palms, and Peeta watches (leans back wairly, but is rapt with attention) as a small flame flickers forward and spreads upwards.
"Don't speak. Don't distract me," Katniss manages to say before she really begins to concentrate. She doesn't want to burn her clothes off, or Peeta's, or set the sleeping bag on fire, and it requires so much concentration to even get the fire to leave her skin and spread. Slowly, she picks up Peeta's hand and inches it across to coat his, and he tenses in her hands and immediately relaxes. It's not like the fake flames Cinna had covered them both in. Katniss' flame will hurt and burn and singe if she doesn't control it. Not her, of course. It's never hurt her.
It feels like minutes, but she knows it's been hours, to the point that Peeta's staring up at her sleepily, head rested by her folded legs and she retracts the flame, and let's it spread over, gliding over her skin and clothes, licking her hair upwards as it reaches for the ceiling. For a few moments, she lets it cover her, lets it remind her that home is waiting, and the Capital will have to let them go eventually.
That as long as she can breathe, her flame can grow, and when they call her the Girl on Fire, they're not exaggerating.
"You're beautiful," Peeta murmurs, and when he reaches for her hand she has to pull the flame back to avoid burning him and let it cover the both of them. Her fire burns a little brighter, and she knows at this rate she'll burn herself out and that no-one will be left to guard the cave, but Peeta smiles up at her and it feeds the flames, so to say, and it won't hurt her to keep it going until the dawn breaks.
(He lets her sleep, later, for longer than she said he was supposed to let her. At first there are nightmares, of Cato and his impentrable skin, Clove and her talons, Glimmer and her glistening skin, and Marvel with his pinpoint aim. Then she feels a hand slip into hers and soothe her back to sleep and she thinks of Rue with her wings, flying through the trees, and Prim with that damn cat, cooing to it.)
(She wants to go home.)