let's say we trade heartbeats //Potato&Opal

The idea of happiness being anywhere but the distant past was a hard one to grasp. Where his childhood had been sixteen years of bliss, he'd found that the more he aged, the more the world had begun to caught up with him. In a world like this one, happiness was not something that everyone was entitled to. It belonged to the ignorant or the wealthy. For the longest time, Potato had belonged to the first category. Now that he knew more about life in general it was like all the happiness had been slowly siphoned out of him. They'd taken his fields, his garden, his Ma, Pa, Sis'.

Now there was Opal.

Potato couldn't pretend to understand the grand ideas that his sister would excitedly whisper about as they stargazed on summer nights when he was only twelve years old and hadn't blossomed yet. He was her favourite bowl to pour information into mainly because no one bothered to listen to her otherwise. She'd go on and on about fate, about the stars aligning to meet one fateful day every hundred years or so, about great lovers who lived hundreds of years back.

Potato didn't know what the heck his sister was talking about most of the time but he knew now that everything must have been about her because this was the love people wrote plays and poetry about, the love that was doomed from the start. It was beautiful to behold and people hoped for the happiness, the kiss at the end, the happily-ever-after but it wasn't going to come, not this time. He knew it just as certain as he knew the sun rose each day and that if you cared for the plants that grew in your field they would grow.

He chose to love her anyway.

AS she wrapped his arms around him, he leaned into her, laying his neck on her shoulder so that he could turn and kiss her cheek easily. "Beauty, ain't it?" he asked, gesturing at the wide world around him. It wasn't his type of beauty, certainly, he preferred endless trees, endless greenery. However if h had only a few days left, a view like this was more than acceptable.

Warmth grew and traveled along his veins as he turned to hold her in his arms, something that he appreciated more because he knew that every single moment he was holding her was leading up to the moment when he would have to stop. How do you tell someone that when your sister spouted poetry and song lyrics to sing at you for your whole life, suddenly you knew just who the songs were always about. 'I love you' wasn't enough becuse it didn't cover it.

'I breathe for you' and ''you are the light of my life, my reason to smile' were far more meaningful, but Potato could never even pretend to be eloquent so he ahd to settle for, "I love, love, love you, Miss Opal Shore," and he buried his face in her jacket.

He didn't have to hear her say it back because he knew that it was there, always hidden behind her teeth, ready to come out of hiding just for him. The words that he had been raised on were sharp on the tongue when put into this circumstance. They tasted different to the soft, melt-on-your-mouth words that his mother used to whisper to him every night before blowing out the candle. They didn't mean less, nor more, just different. Entirely different, in the sharpest, most terrifying way possible.

He would bleed for her if he had to, he would stand in front of any sword and take any beating for the love that he clung to. That was terrifying, it was like looking into a pit so vast and black that he couldn't see the other end. It was like faith, believing that there was a light at the end even as he was free falling. He had to believe that Ripred was there, just as he had to believe that the Love he felt was there. This love was more than faith, it was knowledge it was smart, it was enlightenment.

When he was holding her like this he could forget that the edge of the roof was only a metre or two away. He could forget that in three days or so he'd be heading into his death. He could forget it all because the only thoughts she ever elicited in him were those of love, of the garden he left behind and a summer's morning, sharp and swift. He wanted to hold onto that for the rest of his life, however long that may be. He wanted to find the eons he had left inside the safety of her hands.

He pressed his forehead to her's, refusing to shut his eyes in the proximity of her gaze, He didn't feel inadequate when they were together, he didn't feel like there was any reason to be sad anymore. The truth was, she made everything better and had been doing so for a long time. He had held on to the dream of her memory for so long now, although their brief meetings had never been long, he swore he knew her better than he knew himself.

It was improper.

If her father had been here, if he'd had the time, he would have gone to see him and asked him, palms sweaty and knees weak. He would have looked that man straight in the eyes, voice as firm as it could be and asked him. It didn't matter though, he never would have been able to without the games. They never would have met. So asking on a roof in the darkness of the moon was as close to proper as he would ever get. It was as close to proper as he could be. Ripred would understand.

"Marry me," he said simply, voice firm. "All's I gots ter offer is an empty field an' a one room house. All's I kin give is ther few days I got left but they were yer's anyhow. I was always yer's anyhow. Marry me, 'cause I love yer an' I wanna spend ther resta my life with yer."