always
078. 12 years-old Peeta stood in front of the counter of the tesserae organizer a few days after watching Katniss leave the building. He carried two loafs of fresh bread, and asked him how much tesserae the girl had got. “That is information not to be shared, boy,” the man answered at first, but quietly told Peeta that Katniss Everdeen had +3 entries for tesserae after he slid one of the loafs on the counter. “Put my name instead of hers. Give her the supply, but put more entries with my name. Please.” The organizer denied at first, but Peeta promised him free bread for a whole year, and he accepted it. From this year until the year Peeta and Katniss were thrown together in the Arena, Peeta had his name added more 15 times to the bowl, decreasing Katniss’s odds of fighting to the death and still delivering essential food to her family.
071. For the few seconds Peeta was dead after touching the force field, his mind wandered into the darkest places at every amount of air Finnick blowed into Peeta’s lungs. He saw Katniss looking down at him, crying and noticeably worried. She repeated three words to him: “Stay with me.” No matter how hard he tried to answer, the words wouldn’t come out of his tight throat. He finally came back to life when he whispered truthfully to Katniss: “Always.”
