The List

by orphan_account

Summary:

"The list that Dr. Aurelius and I had made together was burning a hole in my pocket. A list of triggers. A list of things I should avoid." Peeta comes home after the war.

Chapter 1: Prologue

I could remember the train. It was one of the few things from before that I could recall with no shiny competing memories clamoring for my attention. I guess the Capitol hadn't really seen a reason to tamper with the idea of riding a train.

I was grateful because, despite where it had always taken me, I enjoyed it. I liked seeing the landscape of Panem flash through the windows. So many images, so many shapes, so many colors that I didn't normally see back in Twelve. And then, of course, there was that moment on the train ride back when I would first see the mountains again. It was the feeling of going home. I had seen "real" mountains, the ones in Two and Seven and around the Capitol. They were jutting enormous, majestic things that made me feel small. My mountains back home were soft and lush. They were green and purple, some days hazy and others bright. They surrounded the valley; we were always caught in their embrace. There really was no feeling in the world to compare to seeing them after a long time away.

Well, maybe there had been once, but I couldn't remember it anymore.

The list that Dr. Aurelius and I had made together was burning a hole in my pocket. A list of triggers. A list of things I should avoid.

I had met with him every single day, starting the day that I came out of the burn unit. I had expected something extreme, like they had tried in Thirteen, with morphling and video feeds. Instead, we just made lists. So many different lists. Things I liked, things I hated, things that made me laugh, things that made me sad in a good way, things that just made me sad, and on and on and on. They were to help me to remember. There were so many things I had forgotten. Or that had been stolen from me.

I tried not to think about it that way too much.

Once we had compiled a list of all of the life experiences I could remember or imagine myself having any sort of emotional reaction to, I had to relive them all in whatever way I could. A lot of times this just meant doing whatever the item on the list was, like baking a loaf of bread or tying my shoes. These things were easy, and I rarely reacted poorly to them.

More abstract memories were more complicated to recreate, and often required extra participants. Many, many games of Real or Not Real. Before Coin's assassination and the chaos that followed, Haymitch was there almost every day. Sometimes Delly came and we talked about our families, since we were both orphans now. Sometimes it was Johanna, who made fun of me in her mean-but-secretly-nice way, but was always going back and forth to Two so she could chop people into pieces (or so she claimed). I think the memories we shared together were as bad for her as they were for me, if not worse. But she came anyway. Annie taught me how to dance, even though it wasn't on any list. She just said it might be important. Effie came by a lot. She never talked much, though. I usually just held her hand while she pretended not to cry.

Once Gale came. Just once. It had been bizarre. Surreal. We talked about our school, and even who the cute girls in Twelve had been. The other ones, I should say. I don't know why he came. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and there was a gash across his forehead. After he left, I had my worst flashback since the end of the war. The next day, though, I could remember the name of my history teacher, the smell of rain in September, and literally hundreds of other things that had been gone.

Every day more memories came back. Sometimes they were as fragmented and confusing as the shiny images they replaced. On those days, I would go into the kitchen of my small apartment and bake all day to anchor myself. There were plenty of hungry people in the Capitol now that so much of it had been destroyed by the war, so what I made never went to waste.

Other days I felt wonderful, as though the world were suddenly new and fresh. I joined the work crews in the street to keep myself busy, and to help out. The people in the Capitol still treated me like a celebrity (I still was famous, though what that meant now was so different), but I ignored it and spoke to them as I would anyone. We were all too broken for me to care about something so pointless.

Some days, though, I just sat in my room and clutched my hair, trying desperately not to remember the long braid, small chapped lips, and the way soft arms had clung to me in slumber. These days, Dr. Aurelius said very little.

In the end, after we had relived everything I could imagine ever having done in my life before being taken prisoner, we had the list. Seven items that triggered the flashbacks.

"Peeta," Dr. Aurelius had said in his slow way, "I'm not going to tell you what to do. If you avoid the items on this list as much as possible, you will probably have very few memory incidents in the foreseeable future." Memory incidents was the term he insisted on using for the flashbacks. It made more sense, I suppose, because flashback implied I was recalling something that had actually happened. The doctor had paused for a long time, as he often did. I assumed that he was finished.

But he wasn't.

"You could probably go the rest of your life avoiding these things. But if I might overstep my professional boundaries rather recklessly, I would suggest that you learn to deal with them instead."

And then he said I was free to go. Go wherever in Panem I wanted. And then, with the slightest twinkle in his eye, he told me that when I got there I should to tell her to pick up her damn phone.

The next day, I took the first train back to Twelve. As my mountains loomed into view, I took the list out of my pocket and read it one more time, even though I knew the contents by heart.

Blood.

Bees.

Explosions.

Dogs.

Pain.

Gale.

And at the very bottom, in small block letters.

Katniss.

Chapter 2: Blood

Every morning, I wake up with the sun. It is a habit that was apparently unbreakable. Even during the darkest moments in Thirteen when I hadn't been able to remember how to make bread, or why I would possibly want to, my body was still ready to go do it at the barest peek of dawn.

So I was awake as the train slowed down into the station and because of this I noticed the flowers on the edge of the woods early the morning I arrived. The bright happy yellow was still stuck in my mind when I disembarked and gathered my luggage. Dr. Aurelius had told me that when things got stuck like that in my head, that it was my psyche trying to reassert itself. In other words, old Peeta – who had had opinions and morals and seemed to have been a generally put-together sort of person – was telling new Peeta – who some days would wake up see words on a paper, know they were words, even write down more words, but still found himself unable to read any of them – that he should take notice. These mental hiccoughs would become less and less frequent the more my original memories normalized, the doctor had claimed. But when things got stuck, it was important to figure out how to unstick them.

So I had walked back to my house, sat the few pieces of luggage I had on the porch, and then left Victor's Village with a wheelbarrow and a shovel I found in a shed – none of which I even remembered having owned before. These little surprises were a nice thing about having extensive memory damage. Maybe the only nice thing, but there was no point in being bitter about it.

I hadn't gardened extensively, or basically ever, before. At least, I didn't remember having done so, but I somehow managed to dig up five bushes and brought them back to Victor's Village. At this point, it was still only about six in the morning, so I assumed that everyone else would be asleep in their beds. I had forced myself to focus on the general idea of everyone so as to not focus on a more specific individual, thoughts of whom threatened to overcome me every few moments. I would plant the bushes, I would go into my house, I would unpack and then…

Well, then would try to begin the rest of my life, I guessed.

But as I knelt to the ground to plant the third bush, I head a door open over the nearly imperceptible clicking of my prosthetic leg, and then almost nothing. It was a sound I remembered well – noiseless feet running towards me.

Oh it was her already.

And then I remembered what it felt like when I was thirteen and in math class where she sat right in front of me. I had wracked my brains thinking of something, anything to say but nothing had ever seemed right, and so I had said nothing, just as I had done for the previous eight years, and just as I would continue to do for the next three. The strongest emotion the memory elicited was a general discomfort at the sort of unbearable embarrassment that only a thirteen-year-old boy can know, but it was a complex, detailed recollection that the mere realization of her nearby presence had unearthed.

"You're back," she said.

I looked up, and my reaction upon seeing her fragile body, frantic eyes, and matted hair was the convergence of two different thoughts at once: she is so beautiful and she barely looks like a person. How could those things be so simultaneously true? Neither had been the least bit shiny.

"Dr. Aurelius wouldn't let me leave the Capitol until yesterday," I tell her, trying to maintain regular breathing and neutral emotions, like he taught me. "By the way, he said to tell you he can't keep pretending he's treating you forever. You have to pick up the phone."

Her fingers pushed at her matted hair. She looked like a terrified, wild creature. "What are you doing?" it was almost a snap.

What was I doing? What were these bushes? Why was I planting them by her house? Yellow flowers, yellow flowers, yellow flowers... four petals they were...

Primroses.

"I went to the woods this morning and dug these up. For her. I thought that we could plant these along the side of the house," I managed to say, instantly regretting my pronoun choice.

Her response to me was bewildering, to say the least. She ran through about fifteen different facial expressions, starting with confusion, then on to that quick anger that she always had right before she realized she had made an incorrect snap judgment. Her face finally settled on gratitude mingled with shock, which barely masked what looked to be a sudden deeper realization and subsequent steely resolve. I found myself in utter disbelief at how clear these emotions were to me, someone who woke some mornings and couldn't even recognize the faces of people he saw every day. Of course, why she was reacting this way, of that I had not the slightest clue.

But she had no idea any of this was going on in my head, and after a quick nod, she ran back into the house. Shortly afterwards, I heard her making a ridiculous amount of noise upstairs. Something glass shattered. Then I could hear the water running in the tub. The bathroom window was open. I tried to stop listening after that because it had all already been nearly too much, but I still couldn't stop the thoughts that flickered through my mind. The curve of her shoulder in the interview dress. A flash of her bare thighs as she crawled under the covers. The smell of her hair. It was the same as always, and I knew where it would go, rushing headlong towards the images with edges that shimmered and shone. But thankfully, before I got to that point, the woman, Sae I remembered later, arrived and my thoughts sputtered into nothing. Despite never having really spoken before, she hugged me before she headed into the now quiet house.

"We could use some bread tomorrow," she said before closing the door.

Much later, as I was putting the shovel and wheelbarrow away, Katniss stepped onto her porch, bow in hand, dressed for the hunt. Her hair was washed and braided, and her skin was pink, as though she had been scrubbing it roughly. Eyes straight ahead, she tromped off her porch and marched resolutely towards the woods.

I baked the next morning, and I was just handing a loaf of bread over to Sae when Katniss came down the stairs, dressed to hunt once more. No one said anything, but instead of leaving as I had intended, I sat at the table, and we ate breakfast together in companionable silence. The next day, I woke up, baked, and came over to sit at her table once more. Without any sort of discussion, it became routine. It has been going on for weeks, and we still speak very little before she goes out to hunt. But it is something. Definitely worth waking up early in the morning for.

And now today, it is mid afternoon. I sit quietly on my porch writing a letter to Delly in response to the one I just received. It was an interesting read, to say the least. My sweet old friend met someone from the Capitol, another lost soul without a family, and they've been spending a lot of time together. Delly thinks she might be falling in love.

Her name is Julia.

It was an unexpected development for sure, but my first thought was how thrilled I am for her. I'm trying to write down just how much without sounding too shocked or excessively curious, when I hear a distant and steady trudging sound coming up the gravel road towards Victor's Village. There's only one person who it could be.

I try to ignore the way my heart leaps and focus again on the letter, the decision of whether or not I should apologize to Delly for being so distracted as to have completely missed the fact that she likes girls (or, at least, a girl) after knowing her for our entire lives is enough of a conundrum to demand most of my attention. I feel awful, somehow not realizing this about her before but I'm completely out of my element. Maybe she hadn't wanted me to know? Maybe she hadn't known herself? All I know is that she has been there for me when there was literally no one else who possibly could be, and deserves nothing but the best treatment any friend can possibly give, whatever that happens to be in this situation. I've just decided against apologizing – Delly's story is her own, and I might as well let her tell it in full before I apologize for anything – when I see a dark shape emerge over the crest of the hill. Steadily it grows until I see the body of a largish animal balanced behind a head crowned with dark hair.

She has not only felled a small deer, but then, instead of dragging it to the butcher, she carried it all the way back here. I'm uncertain why the relentlessly practical Katniss has taken this completely frivolous, not to mention physically taxing, journey until her eyes come into view. Then her smile. There is so much pride there that I'm breathless for a moment.

I stand, and the pages of my letter flutter to my feet. Sorry, Delly, but I will pick them up later. I want to run to Katniss, to pick her up and spin her around. I want to let her know how happy, how proud I am that she has done this. Not because I particularly wanted venison, although I'm sure it will be delicious, but because you would have to be an absolute moron to ignore the significance of this moment, to see how this small victory means that Katniss (my Katniss, a small voice echoes in my head) now has proof that her efforts to go through the motions of life are being rewarded.

That's what makes what begins to happen next all the more terrible.

I've seen it before I even process what it is I've seen. She climbs further up the hill, and there it is, on the side of her neck all the way down her shirt, across her breasts (which somehow makes it so much worse) dripping from the body of the doe.

Long smears of blood.

It's on her hands. There are flecks of it on her temples. In a flash, her joyful smile grows malevolent, predatory, evil.

No…

The world slows down, like it always does, and my last thought before the madness overtakes me is Please. Not now.

---

I often realize that I'm waking from an episode well before I comprehend where I am. The latter takes me a few moments, then it clicks that the fireplace I see is the one in my own living room. I sit up, as fast as I am able, and there is Haymitch, sitting in the armchair positioned near the foot of the couch. Sometimes I don't remember what happened during these things. This is apparently one of those times.

"Did I hurt her?" is the first thing I ask. My heart is desperate to know, but I dread his answer with every shred of my being.

He shakes his head.

I close my eyes in momentary relief, and then the rush of all the other implications my flashback will have on what we have so tentatively built hits and I put my face in my hands. I've ruined everything. She was so happy, and I destroyed it.

"Is she okay?" I say through my fingers.

He snorts. "Why don't you go into the kitchen and ask her yourself? She's making you dinner."

Dinner? Katniss? Katniss Everdeen?

I shake my head in confusion, and Haymitch, thinking I want to know more about what happened, heaves a sigh and begins to tersely explain. "Heard yelling. Woke me up. Came out, and the girl was shaking your shoulders, bellowing "Not real!" at you till you passed out. Helped her pull you in here where you've been asleep for the past couple hours. They been force-feeding you rocks in the Capitol, boy? You weigh a ton for someone so skinny."

"So she's not upset?"

"I'm not gonna say she's not a little shook up, but you didn't try to hurt her. Just kept telling her to go, or something. I dunno, it's all a little fuzzy. The two of you are loud as hell when you have a mind to be, I'll tell you that much." He pulls a flask from his pocket and takes a long drink.

"Why is Katniss making me dinner?" this is literally the first time I have said her name aloud since my arrival several weeks ago.

"I'd assume because she's hungry, and figured you'd be too once you woke up. Also, she's damn proud of that doe. I think she's pretty eager to eat some of it."

That is not the type of answer I was looking for, and we both know it.

"This is the point where a good mentor would ask you if you want to talk about what happened. I don't, really, but since I'm already here…"

"There was blood. On her. Lots of blood."

"Oh," Haymitch is thoughtful for a minute. "I know all about your list, boy. Does she?"

"She doesn't need to know."

He raises his eyebrows. "This afternoon's little performance seems to indicate to me that she does."

He's right, of course. I put my head back into my hands.

"She doesn't have to know she's on it, mind you. Or Tall, Dark, and Absent, for that matter. But this situation could have been pretty easily avoided if you'd just told her that the sight of blood sets you off."

"I'm supposed to be getting used to those things though," I say, feeling unbearably pathetic.

Haymitch laughs, and it makes it even worse. "Yeah, well, that's not exactly gonna be a quick process. I think, in this case, the combination of blood and her was a little much. Plus, she mentioned you looking really, really happy right before it happened. Made yourself all vulnerable."

"This is so humiliating."

"Boy, this is your life. And we're all pretty willing to help you, I think, but we can't if you don't let us. What's gotten in to you anyway? Since when do you care about being embarrassed? Aren't you supposed to be all sensitive and in-touch with your feelings? If Katniss was losing her shit, you'd be right in the thick of it, wouldn't you?"

I nod.

"So give the girl a chance."

He must see the doubt in my eyes, because his voice softens considerably. "Okay, I get it. She didn't exactly react as well as she could have to homicidal-maniac-Peeta back in Thirteen. But I've told you about five hundred times both before and since that you can do better than that bristly feral cat in there," he nods in the direction of the kitchen, "and you don't seem to give a damn. So, either you be honest with her about what sets you off, or you just avoid her all the time, because blood makes you crazy and that girl kills things for a living."

I swallow hard, and don't say anything in response. Haymitch stands and starts to leave the room. At the door, he stops and hurls his parting shot.

"Make sure you make the right choice, boy. Everyone knows you didn't just come back for the scenery."

Chapter 3: Bees

Haymitch's parting words from that night played themselves over and over in my mind for days afterwards. Why did I come back? What exactly do I expect to happen now that I'm here? I had come to Twelve to heal; to face the things that triggered me, ostensibly, but in reality, most of the things on my list could be encountered everywhere. The truth of it was that the pull of Twelve was too strong.

But what was it that drew me back? Was it Katniss? Sure, I thought about her with a constancy that was difficult to downplay, but there had been countless times in the Capitol when I had missed Twelve for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with her. I missed the rolling mountains. I missed the sounds of birdsong that met me every morning. I missed the colors. I missed the people. My people. Knowing that my home had been destroyed, and how much help was needed to rebuild it while I just sat in the Capitol focusing on myself had caused me a great deal of heartache. I really did love my home, and I knew a trade that could actually be useful to the brave people who had decided to come back.

But the fact remained that I couldn't say with complete certainty that I would have gone back to Twelve if Katniss had gone somewhere else. I really just didn't know.

It all stunk of the most loathsome word of all: obsession. Old Peeta and new Peeta, and even homicidal maniac Peeta all hated to hear it, but that didn't mean people hadn't brought it up, especially the doctors in Thirteen. No matter how I felt about Katniss, to say that I was obsessed essentially negated whatever my feelings towards her were. I loved her enough to die for her? Nope, just obsessed. I hated her enough to kill her? Nope, just obsessed. Some other more confusing feeling that I couldn't yet explain? Nope. The accusation was worse than realizing I had been hijacked. At least hijacking had been done to me completely against my will. To say I was obsessed implied something which I allowed to happen, or perhaps even brought upon myself. I couldn't really progress in any sort of direction after it was brought up; I just ended up thinking in wide, loopy circles.

Luckily, Dr. Aurelius had never even uttered the word. The one time I mentioned it, he raised his eyebrows and suggested that those who thought they knew what I was experiencing should, perhaps, grow up with an abusive mother, then enter themselves into two death matches with a person they loved, followed by a round of nice, rigorous physical and psychological torture, and ending with burns that covered seventy percent of their bodies.

"And lose a leg," I added.

He smiled at that.

So the idea of obsession was summarily thrown out, never to be approached again, replaced with the notion that life and emotions and decisions were complicated enough on their own, but became exponentially more so when things like torture and war were added into the mix. Twelve was where I wanted to be, and Twelve was where I was. End of story.

But that didn't really answer the question of how I was going to interact with Katniss for the foreseeable future. We were, if nothing else, neighbors. She was required by law to stay here, and I didn't have the capacity to even imagine living anywhere else. Before that day with the doe, I hadn't taken much time to think about how we should interact. Old Peeta probably would have considered such things, but old Peeta also didn't wake up some mornings feeling completely perplexed by his toothbrush. Silent breakfasts were all well and good, but what if she broke her water glass and cut herself? What if I tripped and fell on my way in the door and the pain set me off?

Haymitch was right. She deserved to know about the list. And, more than that, I needed to be honest with myself about what I expected from this whole situation.

Did I expect her to love me?

It was just unfair, after everything she'd been through, to show up and expect such a thing, especially given the fact that so much of our previous interaction had been, if not completely staged then at least spun in such a way as to always be convincing to an audience. Even if she managed to work through the mountains of pain that had been heaped upon her and came out seeking me on the other side… well, there was the last item on the list to be considered: the thing that happened if I let myself think about her the way any eighteen-year-old, no matter how noble or respectful he might hope to be, incessantly thinks about the woman he loves.

Friends then?

That seemed more doable. She had made me dinner, after all, which seemed to indicate that she was not completely avoiding me. Of course, by the time I had dredged up the courage to go into my kitchen and eat some of it, she'd already left through the back door. The meal had been on a plate, next to a little note that said, "Eat this."

Since then I think I've read over those two words at least two hundred times.

It had to be friends – it couldn't really be anything else – but that was still going to require some effort on my part. Part of the problem was that since I've come back, I haven't really done much. Dr. Aurelius told me it was important to give myself time to ease into things, but he also stressed the importance of a routine. Right now, my only routine has been baking before breakfast, and even then, it's only enough for Katniss, Sae, and myself. There are other things that I think I'd like to do with my life.

So it's probably time to start doing them.

I put the morning's bread in the oven, and decide that today's the day I get to it.

Katniss is already downstairs chatting quietly with Sae when I arrive. She seems to be asking what sort of game the old woman would prefer she bring in. It appears she has reached the point where she's regained enough confidence in her hunting ability to pick and choose what her targets will be. The thought makes me smile inwardly.

"Sorry I'm a little late this morning," I say quietly, not wanting to disturb the peace that flows through the room. I lay the bread down on the table and Sae brings over two plates of eggs.

Sae smiles in response to my arrival, and excuses herself, explaining that she has some things to take care of and that she'll see us tomorrow. Katniss says nothing, but this is typical. At breakfast, she is all business, shoveling food into her mouth with rugged determination. I believe that this is probably because she doesn't want to eat at all, but has committed to doing so anyway. She never says anything as she eats, and since breakfast is the only time I see her regularly, the things she said to me during my flashback, which I inconveniently do not remember, are probably the most she's spoken to me since I've arrived.

But this morning is somehow different, and in the quiet after Sae leaves she speaks.

"I found an early blueberry patch. I'll bring you a bunch tonight. Maybe you can put them in something tomorrow."

I try, and am mostly successful, to hide the shock that she has broken her silence and made a commitment to seeing me again today all in one go. But this is sort of her way. She was probably one of those children who did not speak until she was two, but once she did it was in complete sentences.

"They would be great in some muffins," I say.

She nods.

I know I shouldn't, not yet, but the words tumble out before I can stop them. "I wanted to talk to you," of course what spills out of my mouth would be the sort of statement from which there can be no turning back, so I plow forward, "about my episode, I mean."

Her eyes get that wary, appraising look, and I can tell she is uncertain, nervous even, but I keep on going, though as I do I'm suddenly terribly worried about how I can tell her about the list without making it sound like my flashback was her fault.

"It was very nice of you to leave me dinner, first of all. That was the most delicious meat I've had in probably a year."

This relaxes her a bit, and this buys me a little more time. I know that once I would have been able to explain all of this with ease, but now I am at a loss. I could wait for another time, until I at least know what to say, but the longer I wait, the more unfair this all is to her. I could have a flashback in any one of the hours that pass between now and then.

She shakes her head, "Don't worry about it. We were hungry. I had food. Plus, you feed me every day." She says, as though it were simple. As though things between us could somehow be simple. It also dismisses the small side topic, and I have to press on.

I decide to be as direct as I can. "When I was with Dr. Aurelius, we worked through a lot of stuff. We figured out that my flashbacks don't really come from nowhere. Things set them off–"

"It was the blood, wasn't it?" she interrupts me, making it obvious that she is much more direct than I will ever be.

I nod.

Her face is set and it's clear she's on the defensive. I've already completely lost control of the situation. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have–"

"I know. It's my fault, Katniss," this is the first time I have said her name to her since arriving. "I should have told you right away, but I didn't. And I'm sorry. It wasn't just the blood, either. When I'm feeling very strong emotions I can be more susceptible to the things that trigger them. And I was really… happy when I saw you with that deer." This had been something that I had planned on keeping to myself, but there was no taking it back now.

This seems to take her aback, "You were happy?"

"Yeah," I don't want to make her more uncomfortable than she already is, but I don't want to lie to her either. "I had just read a really great letter from Delly, first of all. And then I saw you and I felt even happier."

"Why?" she won't just let this go. It's not too surprising. She has always been so suspicious of people's affections, as though they're always just a trap designed to get her to lay down her guard.

"Seeing you with that deer, I mean, I was proud of you, but more than that, it made me feel like life was actually moving forward. That we all can get through this. It was… hopeful." It wasn't a lie, or even twisting the truth. It had been hopeful. It still was.

I've clearly said the right thing, because she smiles more softly than I can recall. Maybe there are more smiles like this buried in my memories of her. I hope so. I promise myself to work really hard to find them.

"It was a lucky shot," she says and her cheeks are just the slightest hint of pink.

"I doubt that," I say, even though I probably shouldn't, because it makes her blush even more.

"So no blood, then," she changes the subject.

"Well, the goal is to get to a point where blood and all the other stuff no longer sets me off. Exposure therapy, it's called. But, I need to be expecting them at first, otherwise it's really hard to control."

She nods, and her eyes look set and dedicated, like this is something that is important to her. "So what are we going to do about them?"

I did not anticipate this. I expected her to run into the woods, or maybe stomp into in her room and slam the door, or at least to look a little… surlier. In my wildest, well, most moderately wild dreams, I never imagined her wanting any level of involvement.

"I… well… I have a list," I pull one out of my pocket and slide it across the table to her. It is not the list. It has two fewer items. But of those, one she has no control over, and the other I have no intention of avoiding, so she doesn't need to know about them. "These are the triggers."

"How did you figure these out specifically?"

I grimace, "Lots of work."

Her eyes grow even more determined, and I want her to stop because she is making it so difficult for just friends. But I am a man who has been through more than most people have in a lifetime, and if I could incite the complacent, hedonistic Capitol to riot with my words alone, I can certainly restrain myself for her, someone who deserves more than anyone else to have her boundaries respected.

She scans the list, "So you need to stay away from these? Or not be surprised by them, at least?"

"Yeah, that's basically it."

Her eyes flash and I see plans there, but she doesn't reveal them. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. I need to go hunt now. I'll see you tonight."

And with that, pushes her chair away from the table and leaves.

I spend the rest of the morning at my kitchen table strategizing. Twelve has no infrastructure to speak of. There is no food other than the regular (awful) emergency rations that come from the supply train, and the things that Katniss and a few others bring in from the land and surrounding woods. I know that Gale and Beetee are working with the military (I think Gale is the military, actually) to establish infrastructure within and between the districts, but it's not something that can happen overnight. Basically, this place needs a significant amount of food, and that's something I can do. I know that if I call her, Effie can fill a car on the next train with enough flour from Eleven to last me for six months. That will be a start. For now, I can work out of my house. But that won't be something I can do forever.

I've avoided doing this for weeks since I arrived, but I have to go into town.

I bring a sketchbook with me to keep track of things. I consider asking Haymitch to join me, but some walks you just have to take alone.

I return in the early evening feeling drained of energy and filled with purpose. That afternoon I ran into Thom, who I knew before as only an acquaintance of Gale, but he's now leading the entire cleanup of the town. He showed me that most of the grisly horrors of the firebombing have been cleared away, and now the district is nearly ready to be rebuilt.

Not all of them, though.

The front of my father's bakery had been completely obliterated. They think that it was the target of the first bomb. My family didn't stand a chance. It hurt too much to even think about whose fault it had been. Everyone and no one's.

"We didn't want to take it down unless you wanted," Thom said as we stood in front of the rubble. "It's yours now, and the land it sits on. Most anyone else who owned a shop… well, they're nearly all gone."

"Was there anyone inside?" I asked him in a choked voice.

Wordlessly, he led me through the absolute ruins of the Seam to the Meadow. It had been converted into a mass grave. Somewhere under the pile of ashes were the bones of my father, mother, and brothers, mingled with those of so many others.

"The Peacekeepers that the Capitol sent cleared it out 'fore I got here to stop them. Put everyone down here. Sorry, Peeta. We woulda done something special for them for you."

Somehow, against all odds, I didn't have a flashback, despite the roaring pain that filled my mind and heart.

"Thanks Thom. I understand," I said after a long time.

After that, I followed him on his rounds, getting to know the current needs of the district as it is now. How many families there are, where they're getting things like eggs and milk (if they are at all), and how best to arrange to deliver bread to them. It's going to be a lot of work, and cost a lot of money, but I just happen to have a lot of spare time and a safe full of gold.

"Thom?" I called out, as I began the walk up the hill to my home.

"Yeah?"

"Tear it down. I'll be back tomorrow with blueprints."

So now, as I reach the crest of the hill, I feel exhausted enough to sleep for a week. I want little other than to curl up into my bed. But Katniss is sitting on her porch as I arrive. Next to her is a large bowl full of blueberries. She picks it up and stands, stretching like a cat before walking purposefully towards me. Her feet are bare and her pants are rolled up to the middle of her shins.

"Here," she says. Her cheek, jaw, and neck are swollen, as though she's been bitten several times by something. She hands me the bowl, and I look down at her hand and arm. There are several more swellings of different sizes and colors. It looks painful. I glance at the other arm. Same thing.

"What happened to you? Are you okay"

"Oh, it's nothing," she pushes the bowl into my hands and turns to leave.

"It doesn't look like nothing, Katniss," I refuse to let her go like this.

She turns and stops, looking at me with mild annoyance. "It's just a few stings, that's all. Nothing to worry about."

"Katniss, this does not look like a few. They're not even all the same kind of sting. You're really good at being in the woods. You don't get stung like this. Are you okay?" But of course she's okay, she's already said as much, and clearly not in excruciating pain. "Are… are there a lot of them around here now?" I try not to let the panic edge into my voice, but it's impossible.

She smirks, "Not anymore there aren't."

"What?"

"I knocked them down."

"You what?"

"The bees nests. In Victor's Village. There were a lot of them, actually. Two on your house. And I figured you'd probably be walking to town, so I did a bunch of the trees along the road. Anywhere I could find, really. They'll come back, cause that's what bees do, but for now at least, they're gone."

And then I'm smiling and laughing in absolute shock. "How many times did you get stung, exactly?"

"Oh, just… maybe… fifteen? Twenty? It's not like they were tracker jackers."

I want to hug her. Am I allowed to hug her? I don't know but before I realize what I'm doing I've stepped forward and done it, lifting her off the ground in my enthusiasm, and spilling all of the berries on the ground.

She makes a small sound of surprise, between a squeak and an "oof," and I let her go as quickly as I picked her up. She jumps backwards to get her balance and lands delicately on her bare feet.

"Thank you," I say as I crouch down and pick up the blueberries, none of which she has stepped on.

"Those muffins better be delicious, Peeta," she calls out as she walks towards her house

It's the first time she's said my name since I've come back.

Chapter 4: Explosions

Today is not going as well as I had hoped.

It started almost the instant I got out of bed. After I secured my leg and stood to cross the room, I found myself in my shorts, gazing at my reflection, at the patchwork of scars that covered most of my body. I stared for a long, long time. The person I saw was not the person I remembered. After the Games, there had not been an ounce of fat left on my body, and in the absence of that, during my Capitol torture, the muscles I had inadvertently built up over my entire life had begun to atrophy as I felt the effects of starvation. The burn unit hadn't helped, as the time spent in the tank on intravenous fluids had deprived me even more. It wasn't that I didn't still have my strength (Mitchell, Mitchell, Mitchell replayed itself in my head), but I did not look like myself.

Conveniently, I wasn't really myself anymore anyway, so I guess it made sense.

After this depressing moment of contemplation, as I dressed myself I found that I had forgotten how to tie my shoes. Things like this happened occasionally, and the muscle memory always came back to me, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. The more I tried to remember, the more perplexing the laces appeared, so I just went downstairs and made bread and muffins in my bare feet. Or, bare foot, I suppose.

That part turned out to be sort of pleasant, so I resolved to do it more often.

I accidentally burnt the bread a little bit because I was sitting on the floor, trying to remember how my shoes worked. It wasn't inedible, probably still tasted fine, actually but dear old mother would have knocked me around for it nevertheless. It hurt to think about her seriously, so, at least at this point, I would only ever allow myself rueful dark humor at her expense. I tried not to think about Dad or Rye or Will at all, if I could.

There was nothing else for it – I could not figure out how the damn shoe worked, and unless I did, I was going to be useless for the rest of the day. So I picked up the loaf of bread leaving the muffins to cool and went to see Haymitch in the bit of time that remained before breakfast, my untied laces flapping as I walked. I knocked on the door, but he, of course, didn't answer. It was obvious that he was still asleep, but since at this point he was likely still pretty drunk, he probably didn't even remember these visits when he finally roused for the day. Maybe they just seemed like weird dreams.

Letting myself in, I called out his name pretty loudly. In response, I heard him roll off of the couch and knock over several bottles.

"What'd you forget this time, boy?" he called from his position on the floor. "Last time it was a comb, which I still don't really get – your hair isn't exactly lush at this point."

I sheepishly ran my fingers through my hair. It was a lot better, but the first week I was back it had been pretty singed, and I had woken Haymitch up because I had forgotten what exactly it was that a comb did. I guess he remembered these little meetings after all.

"It's shoes."

"Come 'ere then. Sooner we deal with this the sooner I can go back to sleep."

Avoiding the more disgusting bits of whatever that were scattered on the floor, I crouched next to him.

"Thanks. I brought bread," I told him, watching intently as his drunken fingers deftly retied my shoes, and then double-knotted them for good measure. As soon as he finished, the memory clicked, and my brain started functioning properly again. It was a relief, because I was really sick of thinking about shoestrings.

He looked at the loaf in my hand and scoffed, "It's burnt. You forget how to bake, too?"

"I was busy trying to figure out how to tie my shoes. It's only a little burnt."

"I'm sure it's delicious. Now get the hell out of here and let me sleep," he curled up where he was and did just that. I poured him a glass of water and sat it on the floor where he could reach it, but wouldn't knock it over in his sleep, and then went back to my house to get the muffins.

When I opened Katniss' door, Sae was just gathering her things to leave.

"Breakfast is ready, but the girl isn't coming down today."

My heart sank into my toes, "Oh. I brought her, er, us muffins." There was a pause, as Sae didn't really have anything to say to that. "Here. Take some for you and your granddaughter." I gave her half of what I had made, which is what I had intended on doing from the start anyway, but I think it looked like I was just trying to be nice to alleviate the awkwardness.

Sae's wrinkly face smiled. "She'll be just delighted. She loves a little something sweet, my girl does."

I nodded, trying not to look too disappointed, and probably failing miserably. Sae closed the door behind her, and I was left in Katniss' entryway, not sure what to do. She had really wanted these muffins, basically asked for them when she gave me the berries, and then even teased me about them. What was I supposed to do? I could knock on her door and bring them into her room?

No way. Friends have boundaries.

But if I left them on the kitchen table, she might not see them for days. Maybe having them would cheer her up? Or maybe it would make her worse.

In the end, I put a few muffins on a plate and sat them right by her bedroom door where she would be sure to see them if she opened it. I left a note.

"Eat this."

Then I went back to my house and finished the plans for the bakery I had started the night before. When I was finally happy enough with them to show Thom, I rolled them up, put them under my arm, and started the walk to town. While walking down the hill, I tripped four different times, but luckily no one saw because all the workmen were gathered to watch something, which I curiously approached.

And now that's where I am, standing at the edge of a crowd while the whole morning is flashing before my eyes in the slow, dreadful moment before I have an episode. Oh this has just not been a great day, and now it's about to get so much worse.

Because what remains of my family's bakery has just exploded.

---

I wake to the sound of Katniss yelling. She sounds like she wants to kill someone. I don't think I've ever heard her this angry, except maybe the time that Gale was whipped and her mother made her leave the room. I keep my eyes closed. Best to stay hidden. I try to figure out where I am by feel and sound alone. It sounds like the outdoors. It definitely feels like I'm lying in the middle of the road. In public. Yep, this is just a great day.

"You blew up the bakery? Without telling him? Right in front of him?" my head is killing me, but I figure I'm better off than whomever it is she's yelling at. I'm also assuming that, since we're still in public, I haven't hurt anyone. I really, really hope that's the case.

"Calm down, sweetheart. You're overreacting," this is Haymitch's voice, and I can tell he's smirking. It also sounds a little strained, as though he's being yanked around. Probably because he's holding her back from ripping someone to pieces.

"We didn't realize he was even here," this is Thom now, and I realize he's the focus of Katniss' ire. "He told me yesterday to bring it down, and the reason it was still even up is cause of that old clay oven. Thing is nearly two stories tall, if you count the chimney and takes up most of the back room. Only way to bring it down was to blow it up! I swear, if I had known…"

"You should have asked," Katniss hisses.

Haymitch laughs, "Like you did before you showed up in front of his house covered the blood of your slain victims?"

Oh Haymitch. It was nice knowing you, it really was.

Before Katniss has a chance to annihilate him, I push myself up as quickly as I can, which isn't really quick at all, and, opening my eyes, ask, "Did you like the muffins?"

She is wearing a loose tank top and tiny, tiny shorts, the sort of outfit I recognize from a foggy memory of a night in the Training Center. Something that she sleeps in. Her feet are bare, and in one of her hands is a half-eaten, half-squashed muffin. She is supposed to be smiling right now. This was a funny thing. Oh, Peeta has just had a flashback, but now he is making jokes. No one appears to be injured. Let's all just relax.

Instead, she makes a frustrated noise and runs away. She's surprisingly fast for being barefoot. There's no way I could catch her in my current condition. And we're friends, but just that, I remind myself. I can't just chase her down, especially when she's dressed likethat. If she's running, it's because she wants to go. Boundaries.

I slump back down on the ground and groan.

"Not much of a sense of humor, that one," Haymitch offers.

Despite the situation, Thom chuckles. And then, Haymitch begins to laugh himself. And then I'm laughing. Because I am unstable and she's unhinged and Haymitch is a drunk and Thom is trying to put an entire District back together with a crew of unskilled, homeless ex coal miners and, well, us. Because if we don't laugh we are all going to go flying off the deep end. And it really is just kind of hilarious.

After we laugh for some time, with the rest of the workers looking on in confusion, Thom offers me his hand. He pulls me unsteadily to my feet, and I pick up the plans for the new bakery off of the ground.

"Mind taking a look at these?" I ask.

Haymitch, sensing that the crisis is over, looks off in the direction that Katniss has run. "Guess I'd better go handle that," he mutters. Now that the laughter is over, I feel awful about how upset my episode has made her. Maybe I should go…

To his credit, Haymitch can tell what I'm about to say, and cuts me off, "No, you stay here, boy. You've got business to take care of."

I return to Victor's Village that evening after having dinner with Thom and his crew, still a little lightheaded from the day's episode. Thom likes the plans, he thinks they will work with a few structural modifications. He promised to send the request for the construction supplies to the Capitol in the morning. Many of the things we could get here, but we don't have the manpower yet. But the Capitol, weakened as it is, should still be able to do something. And, of course, they'll do anything for the "husband of the Mockingjay."

Oh, I need to sit down.

After today's flashback and thinking so much about the bakery, I cannot help but remember my family. I may have been ready to lay down my life for Katniss and never see them again, but that doesn't mean that they didn't matter. They just didn't need me. I was the youngest of three sons and they had a business only one could really inherit. I don't think my mother knew what to do with me, the last, unexpected child who couldn't just be married off. I think she was certain I'd have to go into the mines from the day that I was born. Obviously, she didn't deal with any of it very well.

But my father didn't see it that way. He was such a kind man, with a quiet strength and…

Thinking about this just hurts more than I think I can bear right now.

I enter my house in the dark, and I know before I see her that Katniss is there, huddled on the sofa in a little bundle. I suppose after the Games and the War and everything else I can pretty instinctively feel her presence anywhere. I don't know what that means, really, and the romantic part of me wants to make it more than it probably is.

Quietly, hoping not to disturb her, I creep through the darkened living room. But she is awake, and I see her eyes follow me, so I sit down on the armchair. Her head is on her knees, and is clutching her legs.

"Are you okay?" we both ask at the same time.

I can see that she is embarrassed that she has even asked in the soft light of the moon streaming in from the windows.

"Well, I'm not sure. You see I just got home and I think someone's broken into my house."

She smiles, just a little, and tries to be annoyed. "You always try to make everyone laugh."

"My brothers, I think. Growing up, well, with my mother the way she was, you had to just laugh, or…"

"You thought about them a lot today. That's why you had a flashback." She's playing the game. Or asking. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

"Real. That and the pretty enormous explosion."

She smiles again, and even laughs a little, then her face becomes fragile and sad.

"We're forgetting them," she says unexpectedly to the floor.

Without wanting to, I gasp out a sound that might be a sob, then gulp it down. I don't know what to say. Now that the general structure of my memories has been sorted out and I can usually tell what is not real, the pain of loss is so raw. I'm afraid if I think about them too much, I'll just lose it again, turn back into a monster.

"When I try to think about," she swallows hard, because she can't even bring herself to say the name, "her I can't… I can't get out of bed. I can't do anything. I just feel dead inside."

I gently touch her shoulder, "Katniss, it takes time to heal."

"If I take too much time, I am going to lose her. I'm going to lose all of the memories I have. I will lose her smile and the way her hair smelled and the sound of her laugh. It will be gone forever. And you, it's the same for you. When you try to remember it's easier for the flashbacks to come. So you don't try and the memories just stay gone. We don't remember them, and they deserve it."

I'm stunned that she knows this. I've never told anyone. I always just assumed Dr. Aurelius knew, and when Delly and I talked about our families, it had been because I had to. Because it was Delly, I never had flashbacks while she was there, but once she was gone I would often fight them off for the rest of the night. Since then, I've left the thought of my family largely untouched.

"We have to remember them, Peeta," Katniss takes my hand and squeezes it hard before grabbing her legs again. We are silent for a long moment.

"When I was in the Capitol, I would talk about my memories with friends. Delly, Johanna, Effie, Annie… even Gale." The look she gives when I mention his name tells me that Gale is very much off-limits, so I continue as though he were a minor part of the story, which in this case, he mostly was, "It was easier to bring up memories with friends, and being with them, being focused on that task only, made it easier to keep control. It was something that was easier to do together." And then we are quiet again. I don't really know what it means. Have I just suggested we remember together? Maybe it's too much, too soon.

What she asks next is said so quietly, in such a delicate voice, I wonder if I'm not imagining it, "If I described her to you, could you paint a picture of her?"

I know what she's asking. Of course I knew what Prim looked like. I could paint her likeness right now, probably even years from now. I, and everyone else who has lived through these dark days, will never really forget the face of Primrose Everdeen. But that's not what Katniss wants. She wants me to paint a memory, a set of feelings, which is so much more difficult. It's not even my memory, so it might even be impossible. But only might.

"Yes," I tell her.

She smiles.

Today could have been a lot worse.

Chapter 5: Dogs

I am lying on my back in a pile of puppies. They are wiggling and squirming and nibbling on my ears with their sharp little teeth. They're making sweet little whimpering noises. They're nuzzling. They're chubby. One has fallen asleep on my neck.

It should be against the law for something this cute to happen to one person. Maybe it is. I've definitely broken plenty of laws in my lifetime.

Katniss is standing by my head, leaning over me. She's wearing a bemused grin, and her braid is swinging slowly in the air. One of the puppies jumps to catch it, but just ends up landing on my face.

She laughs, and I wonder how on earth I managed to find myself in this blissful situation. Is this some sort of bizarre dream?

By now it's been a few weeks since she asked me to paint Prim. Since then, we have added a new step in our daily routine. Every night when I return from the reconstruction of the bakery, she comes to my house and together we make dinner in the kitchen, often from game she's brought back from that day's hunt. Usually it's a quiet affair because she says little and I don't want to push her. Occasionally something has happened during the day which seems noteworthy, and we talk. Sometimes I make her laugh. On a few memorable occasions, she's made me laugh too. Once dinner is finished, we head upstairs into my studio, where I work on the painting of Prim.

Actually, we both work on it. In this space, Katniss tells me stories about her sister. She points out little details as I paint, stressing the importance of this dimple, or that freckle. I have no doubt that if it were anyone else, this level of micromanaging my art would be unbearable. But not with her. I find it almost impossibly easy to translate the things she describes into images on the canvas. I understand why she is doing this, why she must, and I feel myself remembering details about my own family as I try so hard to recreate hers. The going is slow, but it seems better this way. I haven't forgotten how to tie my shoes or brush my teeth since we started.

"We need to do this for everyone we've lost," she announced last night, as I walked her downstairs. Usually, after we are finished for the night, she says nothing, just quietly walks home as though she is fighting off a darkness that threatens to consume her.

"We can do that, if you want," I said. I was feeling very drained myself. It had been the day I worked on Prim's eyes. Achingly blue.

"Do you remember the plant book?"

This was something I had not thought about in a long time – those blissful moments that I had spent with her, just her and no cameras, where life had seemed almost normal. Part of me was convinced that it hadn't been real.

"That was real then?"

"Very real. I want to make a book like that… for them. Write down their stories with their pictures. So we can always remember, no matter what happens."

As someone heartbreakingly familiar with the horrors of forgetting, I could say nothing other than, "Yes."

"Will you be okay?" she asked hesitantly.

"As long as I don't have to do it alone."

Unexpectedly, she turned and gently wrapped her arms around my waist.

"You don't."

And then she was gone.

Later, in bed with the window open, as I struggled to fight off the shiny images that arose every time I recalled her embrace, I could hear her screams that went on all through the night.

This morning she gave no sign of her turmoil, other than dark circles under her eyes that were more prominent than usual. As I sat down at the table she turned to me and asked, "What are your plans for this afternoon?"

My mouth hung open a little longer than was appropriate before I answered, "Well, I was going to help out at the construction site, and bake and deliver some bread, although probably in the opposite order." A week ago, Effie had sent me an enormous amount of flour, sugar, and other supplies. As we spoke at the breakfast table, enough dough to make bread for the entire district was either rising or baking in the oven.

"It's going to be really hot today. I don't think they're going to be doing much work out there. You should take the day off."

"Katniss, people still need to eat. Plus, I don't know what I'm going to do with five dozen loaves of bread."

"Then I'll help you with the deliveries. It will go faster. Then we can meet by the bakery. I want to show you something."

"Aren't you going to hunt?"

"It's too hot to hunt."

"Okay then."

About two hours later, just in time for the bread to finish, she showed up at my house with a large backpack and most of her hunting gear, save her bow and jacket.

"I thought you said you weren't going hunting?"

"I'm not. But this is for later. Wear something you can hike in. Now give me that bread."

I hadn't really worked out the best system for delivery yet. Typically it was just me and the wheelbarrow, which I had washed and lined with a sheet. I stuffed as many loaves as I could into her backpack without crushing them, and then asked where she wanted to go.

"The Seam," she said without question, "It's further for you to walk, and I… I haven't really been there in a while – just always run past. Sae says they've rebuilt some houses. I guess it's not even really the Seam anymore. Just a place where people live."

"See you at the bakery then?"

"See you."

I made my deliveries in a lot less time with Katniss taking on the far spur of my trip. Even with the shortened journey, it still took most of the morning. I was probably going to need to hire someone to help, maybe one of the few older children who had moved back with their parents, especially as folks steadily moved back into the District. I also could probably save some time if I didn't talk with everyone I met, but doing so seemed almost as important as the deliveries themselves.

Katniss had been right – Thom and his crew were only doing a bit of light cleanup around the site. Today was going to be too hot. The bakery itself was looking promising. It was going to be bigger than the last one. A specialist was coming from District Nine to build a new clay oven to replace the one Thom had blown up, and I had ordered two state-of-the-art convection ovens from Three as well, although it might be some time before we had the electricity to actually use them.

Thom stopped what he was doing when he noticed I had arrived. He, and several of the other workers came over to begin distributing the bread among the entire group. His hat was off, as it always was whenever we ran into each other, as though I was some sort of respectable official. Old habits die hard, I guess. Today, instead of steadily holding it while he looked me in the eye, he was twisting it nervously in his hands.

"I was wonderin' if I might have a word with you, Peeta," he started, after we shook hands.

"Sure, Thom. Anything. Is everything okay?" Thom never really asked for a word - if something was going on with the construction, he'd usually just come right out and say it.

"Well, yeah, actually. Things are really okay. More like great, really. Y'see, I'm having a toasting in a few weeks."

A wedding. "That's wonderful news! Who's the luckiest woman in Twelve?"

Thom blushed and twisted his hat even harder. "Well, she's actually from Thirteen. Met her while we were there. She's moving here with her sister in a few weeks, and we're getting married an' all."

"Do you have a place to live? There are plenty of homes open in Victor's Village." This was true, and yet few of the Twelve inhabitants had moved into them, even after Katniss, Haymitch and I had been inviting them to for months. They seemed to think we deserved the privacy.

"Oh, no, we could never do that. You all deserve them homes, plus I'm buildin' us a little place myself. But Susie, well, she saw the cake you made for Mr. and Mrs. Odair, and she just loved it. Couldn't stop talkin' about it. I was hopin' that maybe I could buy one from you, and we could have it for the toasting, as sort of a surprise. She really likes trees and flowers and things like that."

"Let me come to the toasting, and it'll be your wedding present."

Thom nodded thoughtfully and he said that he thought he just might be able to do that.

I finished the rest of the deliveries, and came back to the bakery to see Katniss sitting on the ground where the old apple tree had been. She looked lost in thought, until she noticed me standing there.

"What?"

"You just looked very preoccupied."

"I was remembering." She didn't go into details, and I didn't want to pry.

"So where are we going?"

And that's how I ended up here in the home of Sae's neighbor, whose dog had just whelped. Katniss sat me on the floor and, one by one, brought in the puppies. They were so unlike the creatures that triggered me that for a moment the trigger itself seemed completely absurd.

"Feel any flashbacks coming on?" she sits on the floor beside me, pulling the puppy off of my face and fighting with it as it chews on her braid. She is proud of herself, and I am reminded once again of how much gratification she is given by taking care of the people she loves.

With shock I realize that might make me one of them.

It is a really question to be considered. Since I've shown her the list, she has been nothing but accommodating, even gone out of her way, as she's doing now, to help me work through my issues. Why is she doing this? Is it out of guilt? I know that in many ways, she believes herself responsible for my hijacking because it was so specifically directed at her. Without her, the Capitol would have had no reason to destroy me, save perhaps along the lines of what was done to Finnick. But the truth of the matter is, the reverse is true as well. The attention that my affections in combination with Cinna's costumes gathered her during the Games made her into the Mockingjay. None of this would have happened otherwise. People just wouldn't have been paying enough attention. And I know she doesn't blame Cinna. She's usually so obvious with her emotions that I am pretty certain she doesn't blame me either.

Her behavior now doesn't really reek of guilt. She's still acting like we are a team, more than anything else. We help each other, that's what we do, so that's what she's doing . The thought is sobering, when I consider the screams I hear every night, and how powerless I feel when it comes to helping her. But she is waiting for an answer, so I need to give her one.

"I don't know, Katniss. I'm covered with several vicious beasts here." As if to prove my point, a puppy that has fallen asleep on my chest slowly slides to the floor.

With a sharp tug, she finally pulls her braid free, and stands up. "Come on then, we have things to do."

"Such as?" I sit up. The rest of the puppies slide to the floor and begin gnawing on each other.

"You need to meet the mother, first of all."

I pause, halfway from standing.

Katniss pulls a sharp knife from the back of her pants. "Don't worry, I won't let her hurt you."

And she doesn't, not that there's any threat whatsoever from an old, tired dog who had probably given birth to her last litter. But I still tremble a little (though it seems a lot more, since I know Katniss has noticed) as I gently pet her and her long tongue lolls out to kiss my fingers. After a few moments, I relax. It's a dog, right here, that I'm petting, and I'm not even remotely close to having a flashback. A nervous laugh of relief escapes me.

"You okay?" Katniss asks.

I nod.

"Alright then, let's go," and she's off, trudging through the house and out the door. I have to run to catch up, only to find that she's leading me into the woods.

"Where are we going, Katniss?"

"Swimming."

And that's that. Hiking through the woods with only one leg is always a little difficult, but I hardly notice, because Katniss Everdeen is taking me swimming. We're going to get wet. Her clothes are going to stick to her. Or maybe she will just take them off. Whenever this has happened before, there was always the somewhat extreme distraction of imminent death. Also, the thought of seeing her naked didn't make me want to kill her back then.

"I'm not sure if this is a great idea," I say, trying to catch up.

She stops and turns around. Her eyes are defensive and full of distrust, something I have been working so hard to prevent. "Why?"

"There's no one out here to help you if I have an episode."

She turns and continues moving forward, "Why would you have an episode? Swimming's not on the list."

"I could hurt myself, there could be bees, all kinds of different things…" and you still don't understand the effect you have my mind finishes. The cruelty of the situation, something that I try very hard not to think about on a regular basis, is nearly unbearable. A part of me wants to rip the throat out of every single person who ever touched me during my captivity, reminding me that my old friend homicidal maniac Peeta is alive and well. At least he's focusing his attention on the people who violated my mind.

"Peeta, it's hot…" but it's obvious that she's disappointed I don't want to do this for reasons other than the heat. There was something more than just swimming that she wanted to share. Wanted to share with me, specifically. I need to fix things but there is not a single way I know of that will work. I don't have faith in myself to keep control in this situation. Should I tell her the truth?

"Well Katniss, the thing is when I think about you sexually, I have a flashback. And since seeing you in wet clothes or, if I'm really unlucky, your underwear is bound to be overwhelmingly arousing, I can't really see this ending well."

No, that's not going to work. But otherwise I am being dishonest. And she has been misled so many times. Both of us have. The words just come out before I can really think about them.

"My scars make me uncomfortable."

This stops her in her tracks. Although it's not really a lie, it's a lie in this context, and I cannot believe I've lied to her when she's trying so hard to heal. I'm so distracted by being disgusted with myself that I don't realize what she's doing until she's done it.

She's taken off her shirt.

"Mine too."

And so there it is. Katniss Everdeen is standing in front of me in just a plain cotton bra. I've seen her in less, and it shouldn't be so overwhelming, but that was before the hijacking, and never has this happened when we have been so completely alone. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek until the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth, because I'm pretty certain that even though it's on the list, pain is the only thing that can help me now. I hope against hope that I pass out quickly when the flashback hits and she can run away. I hope that if not, she just kills me quickly. At least she has a knife and I am unarmed.

And then, though I fight it for as long as I can, I look at her. Over the smooth curves of her stomach and shoulders I see the ridges of scar tissue that connect the patches of skin. Ones that match my own. I see the muscles in her arms and the callouses on the soft inside of her elbow from where her bowstring has hit her. I look into her face, beyond her defiant jaw and teeth set in determination and I see the vulnerability in her eyes. They meet mine and everything else falls away. She is utterly fragile. So completely precious. And these things, though they are manifested there, have so little to do with her body, despite how intoxicating I find it. This realization pulls me away from my arousal and I cannot help but love her in such an all-encompassing way that I cannot think of anything else.

"Haymitch told me how you got burnt, that you pulled me out of the fire. So thanks, you know. For saving my life," she pulls her shirt back on, and I can breathe again. I can see that she is blushing hotly, and I am not surprised. Never in a million years would I have expected her to do this. Somehow, despite everything that has happened, she still remains so innocent. I am a dog for even struggling with this in the way that I have. This was not the first move in some sort of elaborate game of seduction. She was trying to make a point, a point that she thought would help me.

And she managed to make it pretty well, though not in the way she intended. I have to go with her. There's just no other option.

"Thanks for not killing me," I say, trying to make it into a joke to ease her embarrassment, but it comes out more sincerely than I'd like. As the pink in her cheeks dies away, she gazes at me curiously, as though she's just recognized someone. She comes closer, until our noses are only inches apart, and looks into my eyes for a long time, like she's looking for something.

"Your eyelashes have grown back," she murmurs. I hear her breath catch. Then her eyes grow wide, and she turns away.

We slowly walk on, and she leads me to a small, placid lake. Once there, we ease ourselves into the water with our clothes on. Whenever I feel myself losing control, I look at the callouses on her fingers and center myself again. I can deal with the repercussions of this day later, in private, where she doesn't have to know. She tries to teach me to swim, but as soon as I've learned to float on my back, I'm content to do just that and gaze at the sky. After some time, we lie on the grass with our heads together and our feet pointing opposite directions. The hot afternoon sun slowly dries our clothes while we eat wild strawberries. Everything smells wonderful. It is so blissfully perfect that I want to stay here forever, and I know that once, in what seems like a different life, I've felt the same way before.

"This place was my father's and mine," she whispers, when she thinks I'm asleep. "Today was his birthday."

And then, very softly, she starts to sing.

Chapter 6: Pain

"Boy, I have a list too. Only it is a list of things I don't want to hear about, and on the top of it, right under the health hazards of alcohol consumption, is the details of your sex life."

I knew talking to Haymitch about this would be a mistake.

"I don't have a sex life."

"Well it certainly sounds like you're considering starting one up." He's not drunk right now, but it sounds like he clearly wants to be.

"Why am I even talking to you about this?"

"That," he yawns bad-naturedly, "is a question for the ages."

Once again, Haymitch is horizontal on the floor as I sit next to him. This time, though, instead of six in the morning it's closer to noon. I don't really understand his habits even after all we've been through. He doesn't exactly have what could be called a sleep schedule.

"I need advice," I hold out the day's bread. I purposely made sure he was my last delivery so that we could talk uninterrupted while Katniss was off hunting. He snatches the large, crusty loaf out of my hand then puts it under his head like a pillow.

"Isn't that what you have a therapist for?"

"No. A therapist is for therapy. Mentors advise." He turns toward the couch and away from me, trying to go back to sleep, but I won't have it. "Plus, Katniss and I have the same therapist. I'd like to know who managed to miss that glaring conflict of interest."

"Maybe you didn't notice, but you have the same mentor as well. One who doesn't want to talk about this, unless, of course, it's to mock you about it after the fact." He pauses for a moment, and then throws out casually, "At this point, all this is just speculation anyway. You have no idea what would actually happen."

Against his will, he's helping. I'm not going to pass up this opportunity because there is literally no one else I can think of to talk to about this. "Well I know what happens now, and–"

Haymitch begins to laugh, turning and looking at me as though I'm the biggest idiot he's ever seen, "This may come to a surprise to you, boy, but what you do alone in the privacy of the bakery is not the same as actual sex with another person." This was just too much. He's running nearly thirty steps ahead of what I'm trying to talk about.

"I don't do it in the bakery! I mean, I can't really do it all now, but especially not there. It's not even built yet, but if it were… That's just–"

"You've gotta be kidding me, kid." Haymitch gets up on his elbows as he cuts me off. He actually looks sympathetic. "You mean, you physically can't?"

I sigh angrily, "Oh no, I'm quite capable. But whenever I do, I have a flashback…" I trail off awkwardly. This is just about the most unpleasant conversation I can ever remember having.

"…because you think about her," Haymitch finishes. "That's your problem. You've gotta think about someone else."

Is he joking? "You've known me long enough to know that there isn't anyone else."

"Look, I'm not saying you start fantasizing about… hm… damn. Who's not dead or crazy?"

"You are a repulsive person, Haymitch."

"Yeah, well, whatcha gonna do? Anyway, it doesn't have to be someone specific. You're not an idiot. There are sexy things in this world other than her. I mean, Effie told me that Delly Cartwright has a girlfriend…"

"Delly is like my sister." Okay now this is definitely the most unpleasant conversation I can ever remember having. "And wait… you're talking to Effie on the phone now?"

"Yeah, well, her girlfriend ain't your sister. And that's none of your business."

"Haymitch, no. That's a real relationship, not some sort of masturbatory aid."

"Okay fine. No lesbians. No one you know, living, dead, or insane. But look, half the time it's just random abstract images anyway, isn't it?"

He has a point.

"I'm just saying, you gotta get a handle," he says the word slowly, just to make sure I get it, "on this sooner rather than later, kid, because I saw her checking out your ass the other day."

"You're lying."

He holds up his hands, "I swear it. She threw her knife at my head when she realized I'd caught her. I can show you the dent in the house, if you want. I'm not even certain she missed on purpose."

I'm suddenly completely distracted. "Wait, what? She did?" This is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to achieve here. "No, nevermind. Telling me this is not helping the problem."

"I'm just saying that both of you are kidding yourself if you think that you're going to go on like this. "Just friends?" Yeah, right."

And then, out what probably seems like nowhere, I'm furious. "Haymitch, I'm not trying to get laid!" I take one of the bottles scattered on the floor, and I throw it against the wall where it shatters into pieces that scatter all over us.

"All I want to do is get over this so she doesn't have to sleep alone with those nightmares," I say through my gritted teeth, trying to catch my breath and calm down.

Haymitch's mouth is hanging open for just a moment, and then he has fallen down onto his back, howling with laughter.

"Oh Peeta, that girl is never ever going to deserve you."

I stomp back to my house angry and mortified. This is hopeless, just hopeless. My life is some sort of tragicomic joke. And now I realize that there really is only one other person I can talk to. Certain Katniss won't be home for at least another hour, I pick up the phone and dial the number of the single individual I know who might be able to help just a little bit.

"Defense Minister Hawthorne's Office, how can I help you?" the chipper voice on the other line answers. I clear my throat awkwardly before I ask:

"Can I speak to Johanna Mason, please?"

"Of course, sir. One moment." The line clicks and I swallow nervously in the few seconds before the line is picked up again.

"What?" her annoyed voice demands.

"Hi Johanna."

She switches from surly to excited in about a tenth of a second. "Peeta! How's life in the fair land of coal and the mentally unfit?" This is, of course, meant as a friendly jibe, but I don't have any witty banter left in me right now.

"Uh, well… not too great, actually."

And just like that, her voice switches again, this time from jocular to serious. "Hold on just a minute. I'll be right back," I hear her sit down the phone, and then in the background she yells, "Oi, gorgeous! I can't make the lunch meeting today!" There is a pause, and then she shouts again, "Gale, I don't care if it's Paylor's monthly briefing! Something came up! I don't even officially work here!" Another pause, "You'll make a great excuse for me, I'm sure." Then I hear the sound of a door close, and the scratching noise of the phone being picked back up again.

"Okay, so what's up?"

And so I tell her, because Johanna Mason is the only other person who knows what it's like to be tortured, who knows just how much they did to me, and who is also somehow still alive. By the time I've finished explaining, my voice is thick with self-hate and humiliation.

"They really messed us up, didn't they?" she says quietly.

I exhale heavily, "Yeah."

"Look, after what they did… it was really, really hard. Impossible sometimes. I mean, what they took from us…" her voice is brittle and furious all at once. I wish I could have called someone else. She doesn't need to relive these things if she doesn't have to. She coughs for a few moments, and I know she's trying to fight off the tears. When she comes back to the line, she sounds a little stronger, though, "If you don't move forward, then they all win. Every single one of those bastards. Killing them isn't enough, trust me. You gotta just keep living. You gotta take back what they took."

"Johanna, how am I supposed to do that? I mean, like this… with her…"

She knows exactly what I'm referring to.

"It's not exactly something I have a lot of experience with yet. But… I guess it started to seem possible when I could just be with someone who didn't pry or expect to fix me – just… was there and patient and understanding in his own weird way. Called me out on my shit, really. I had to be really, really honest whenever I could. I mean, it's not like I'm better. I'm never gonna be completely better. Neither are you. It's just the nature of what happened. But now at least I allow a bit of intimacy, where before I'm pretty certain I'd have cut his hands off. I mean, I don't really know what the answer is. If I did, maybe… well, there's a lot I still have to work through, and they didn't even try to obliterate my mind the way they did yours. I don't know if what's going on with you is ever gonna stop. But I really think that you just gotta tell her at some point, Peeta. If she's the person you've thought she is for forever then she'll stick around. If not, well… I wish I could make promises, but I can't. And even if that happens, you still have me and Delly and Haymitch and Effie and Beetee. It's not just you all alone out there."

"I need to tell her, I really do. I just don't know how. She blames herself for so much already."

"If there's one thing I'm learning is that you can't rush this. This didn't happen to her; it happened to you. You'd never push her to confess things she wasn't ready to say, would you? You don't make her talk about Prim or her dad or Finnick or…" and then she is really crying, and all I can do is apologize over and over for asking her to talk about this.

"No apologizing!" she says angrily through her tears. "Who the hell else are you gonna talk to? Just… he got through it, Peeta. And if he could after ten years of the same sort of torture, the sort of thing that he had to smile through, then any of us can. We have to. We owe him that much." And there really isn't anything I could say to that, so I just don't say anything for a long time.

"Plus, you know, if you don't tell her, she'll still find out anyway. And when she does, she's gonna kick your ass."

I laugh, "You're right. Thanks, Johanna."

"Of course I'm right. Anytime, Breadboy," and with this I know that Johanna is finished with any sort more serious discussion.

"When are you coming to visit?"

"Well, not until after you take care of this, obviously. Sexually frustrated Katniss is not something I'm at all interested in encountering."

"I don't think that she's–"

"Believe you me, she is. She just doesn't know it yet."

I spend the rest of the day at the construction site. The outer structure of the entire building is finally completed, and now the workers are just beginning to frame the interior walls. The guy from Nine is coming tomorrow, and I feel more excited about this than I have about anything else in a long time. The anticipation is enough to distract me from my earlier conversations and the underlying impetus for them, but only for a short period of time. This whole day is leaving me feeling raw and embarrassed and anxious all at once.

When I come home around dinner, Katniss is nowhere to be found. I call for her and knock at her door, but there is no response. I'm debating whether or not I should go inside, when Haymitch stumbles out of his house. He throws a bottle across the yard and it shatters in the grass somewhere.

"She's not coming out," he says, putting his hand on the doorframe to steady himself.

I'm instantly worried. "Did something happen? Is she okay?"

"Lots of things happened, kid. You were there for most of them. Sometimes she just has a bad day. She's allowed, you know?"

"She hasn't eaten…"

"Did she have breakfast?" I nod. "Then let her alone. She'll come out when she's ready. She's up there with that awful cat of hers."

"Do you want dinner?" I ask.

"Ahhh… sure. Why the hell not?"

I make Haymitch dinner while he sobers up at my kitchen table, then we watch the news on television as we eat. Beetee is being interviewed about something that seems a bit too complicated for the general public to understand. He looks well, though he never did regain the strength to get out of that wheelchair. After dinner, Haymitch works hard to unsober himself, until I finally have to carry him back to his house in the growing dark. He's lighter than he was the last time I had to do this. Or I'm stronger. It's unclear which.

Not sure what else to do, I dress for bed, but I cannot sleep, so I go to my studio and begin to paint, still in my bare feet and baggy sleep pants. I decide to try to recreate that day at the lake, hoping it will calm me. I've gotten halfway through the reflection of the trees on the water when I hear her screams and they are worse than any I can remember.

Before I realize what I'm doing, I've run out of my house and into hers, still in my pajama pants, bare chested, and barefoot. I open her bedroom door. She is thrashing helplessly, legs hopelessly tangled in the covers, as though she can't wake up no matter what she does. I kneel next to her and shake her gently.

"Katniss… Katniss, it's only a dream. Wake up Katniss, everything is okay."

The look in her eyes when she finally wakes is so full of terror that I wrap her in my arms without even thinking about it. She's shaking, and I feel her hot tears against my skin.

"Shhhhh. It's okay. Shhhhh."

"I can't stop seeing them. They won't stop, they just won't ever stop. This room is a prison full of the dead!" she cries wetly into my chest.

I stand, and pull her up with me. "Come on, let's get you out of here. Let's go for a walk." It's a testament to how shaken she is that she doesn't even question, just walks next to me as I wrap my arm around her shoulders.

We do slow laps through our adjoining yards, wandering aimlessly as I try to calm her down, whispering soothing words as we walk. The night is so warm that I haven't even noticed my state of undress, but I feel her shiver in her tank top and shorts, and pull her closer. I'm too distracted to feel anything but worry, though.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I ask after we've been walking for some time.

She laughs a small, bitter laugh, "I've seen too many people die. Some of them I killed, and now I dream about them every night. It doesn't even matter what they're doing in the dreams anymore. It's always horrible."

I don't think its possible to pull her any closer, but I try.

"I know you didn't come to dinner tonight, and I was wondering if something had happened today. You don't have to talk about it, though."

"Nothing happened, really. I just felt pain, and it wouldn't stop, so I thought maybe if I slept it would go away. I don't know why I thought that. I never sleep for very long, even though I always just want to sleep forever."

I'm about to say something in response, when a sudden, dreadful sharp pain sears through my foot and travels up my entire leg. And then I can feel it. I can feel the world slow down and my grip on Katniss grows hard as steel. In the precious few seconds before the episode starts, I fight as I've never fought before, because if it happens, there is no way she will be able to get away unharmed, standing here so close to me.

"Peeta?" she asks, sensing the change in my grip. She down at my foot and sees the dark shine of blood seeping in-between my toes.

"Run," I choke out.

But she doesn't. And then it is so much more awful than even the typical horrific nature of my episodes, because this is one that I'm fighting hard, which means I'm going to stay conscious when it hits. I'm almost on the edge, to the point where I feel my mind snap and break in two; almost to that moment where nothing makes any sense.

Katniss has turned herself in my arms, and her small hands gently grasp my face. "Not real, Peeta," she says softly. Her fingers stroke my cheeks. My body is jerking now, trying to force my mind over that precipice, but the soft motion of her touch holds me back from going over.

She turns her body even more, so she is standing directly in front of me. My arm is still holding tight to her shoulder, making this into some sort of mockery of an embrace. But she's still holding my face, still speaking softly in a calm voice, a long stream of soothing words, "Peeta, it's Katniss. This is not real. We're in your yard. You just stepped on a piece of broken glass. What you are feeling, it's not real. Everything is okay. Look at how beautiful the stars are. It is such a lovely night. You just came and woke me and helped me to feel better. Do you remember? What you're seeing other than that, it's not real. Please don't leave right now. Please."

I fall to my knees, still shaking, but with less violence. I'm still conscious. It still hasn't happened. This has only occurred one other time that I can remember, and that was when she kissed me in the Capitol.

She kneels with me, still holding my face, still softly whispering, but now all she's saying is, "Not real. Not real. Not real. Not real."

Slowly, my body stops convulsing. I'm covered in sweat, and I've bit through my lip. My hands are trembling from the effort, and I can barely hold myself up.

"Let's get you cleaned up and see about that foot," Katniss says, and with the strength that always surprises me, she positions herself under my arm once more, and lifts me up.

We end up in my bedroom, where she sits me on the bed and cleans my foot. Then, she stitches it, which causes another wave of pain and trembling.

"Look at me, Peeta. Look in my eyes."

I do, and she holds my gaze as she stitches my foot, only glancing down now and again to make certain she's doing it properly. When it's over, she puts the thread away and washes away all of the blood, careful to leave no trace.

"You were very, very brave," she says softly. It's the sort of thing you would say to a child as he was given a shot, but I don't feel embarrassed. "I can't believe you fought it off. That was an awful cut. It must have hurt a lot, and it came out of nowhere." She brings in a soft rag from the bathroom and gently wipes the sweat off of my face. Then, to my surprise, she softly rubs it across my shoulders, and arms, and even my chest and back. I'm too weak to tell her that she doesn't have to. That there are no cameras to perform for, and it's just sweat. That we're just friends. I'm too weak to do anything, really.

Then, after she fluffs up the pillows and gently eases me onto them, I assume she will leave. She even gets up and turns off the light. But then, I feel the bed dip, and the covers pulled back, as she snuggles next to me. With the little strength I have, I wrap my arms around her as tightly as I can.

"No more nightmares, you hear?" I whisper hoarsely.

And then, I fall asleep.

Chapter 7: Gale

When I woke up the next morning, I felt certain I was in some sort of wonderful dream. A dream where everything was soft and warm, and I could feel Katniss in my arms and nothing was even remotely shiny anywhere. A dream where Haymitch was right, and having Katniss beside me actually made the madness that was connected to the thoughts of her soft, warm, wonderful body go away. But since this was a dream, I felt I should probably just pull her nearer, to wrap her in my arms as close as possible, just to make this last as long as I could. She smelled so wonderful…

It was then that I realized that she was, in fact, actually in my arms, and I was, in fact, coming rapidly close to the disaster that would result from her noticing just how tightly I had pulled her in my sleep and just how enthusiastic I felt about it.

I fell out of the bed, pulling all of the covers with me.

Like a shot, Katniss was up, trying to get her bearings, ready to defend herself. Then, realizing that there was no danger to be found, she collapsed back down onto the bed. For a moment, I assumed she had never actually woken up and it had all been an impressive instinctual reaction.

"Give them back…" she groaned sleepily. From my position on the floor I could see her arm reaching out for the covers, or maybe me, only to find neither. She sat up again, blinking slowly and looking adorably confused. She had to have slept incredibly deeply last night to have woken up this out-of-it. "You're on the floor?" she asked with a yawn.

"Yeah. You took up too much of the bed," this was, of course, a joke, because Katniss took up the general size required for a medium-sized rabbit when she slept.

"It's early," she grumbled and flopped back down onto the mattress. "I'm not ready to wake up yet. Come back." Having never startled her from a sound sleep, this grumpy morning Katniss was something I had not yet seen. I found myself unable to resist teasing her. Additionally, there was no way I was going to be standing up for at least the next five minutes. Especially when she was asking me to get back into bed in that husky, sleepy morning voice that she probably had no clue even existed.

"I'm a baker. This is when I wake up. Actually, this is later than I normally wake up. This is when you usually wake up."

"Then go bake and give me the blankets. And you're lying. The sun hasn't even risen yet." She covered her head with the pillow.

How was I not having an episode? If I had been imagining this scenario, I would have been in the middle of a flashback almost instantly. I didn't understand it and part of me just didn't want to even try. I assumed if I did then what I had somehow managed thus far to avoid would inevitably occur. But I couldn't just ignore the notion that this was the first time I had managed to stay both aroused and myself since returning from my extended and non-consensual stay in Snow's prison. Maybe what Haymitch had said hadn't just been to mock me. Maybe there was actually something to it. Because right then, with her in that room, I wasn't thinking or worrying or anything other than just being and it felt so damn good.

But I still wasn't about to get off the floor.

"I think I'm just going stay here, actually."

"Give me the blankets, Peeta."

"It's not even cold!"

"I want them to snuggle in," she muttered into the mattress.

"Did you just say what I think you just said?"

She shoved the pillow back underneath her head and collapsed on it with a huff. "I'm tired. Let me sleep!"

And then I couldn't help myself. After scooting my body so that I was flush against the bed, I laid my chin on the mattress and looked at her. She scowled back at me, but I reached out to brush a stray hair from her eyes anyway. This was not a "just friends" gesture, but neither had been so many of the little pieces we had slowly, unintentionally been gathering from the small spaces where our routines intersected. Her scowl disappeared, replaced by the curious expression from the day at the lake.

"Thanks for calming me down last night," I said, and my voice was rough in a way I didn't expect.

"I took your leg off when you were asleep. I had forgotten about it but I didn't want you to be uncomfortable. I hope you don't mind."

"No… not at all… I…" She had suddenly gotten closer. How was she closer? I couldn't breathe.

She was looking at me under her eyelashes. My eyes flickered to her lips, just in time to see her tongue dart out to moisten them.

I closed my eyes.

Then I jumped about five feet backwards at the sound of an elderly woman's voice screaming my name.

"Peeta!" It was Sae, yelling as she banged on the front door directly under my open window. "Katniss is missing!"

Katniss made an embarrassed noise and hid under the pillow. Reaching for my leg, I quickly attached it, and gingerly made my way to the window, trying not to step too hard on my injured foot. "No she's not!" I shouted back. The moment was destroyed, but it hadexisted to be destroyed, and after everything I had gone through to get to this point, that meant almost as much. After waiting as long as I had, I could certainly wait a bit longer.

Even from a story above her, I could see the old woman's grin. "Well, you make her breakfast then."

So I did.

And I didn't really stop. In the weeks that followed, Sae stopped cooking us breakfast, and Katniss stopped sleeping in her own room. In fact, she basically quit living in her house altogether. Slowly, and steadily, her possessions made their way into my home and then just stayed there. There was never any sort of organization about it. She would drape a jacket over a chair, and scatter shoes in a corner. When I tried to straighten things up, and put her items in a more permanent location, she would stop me, telling me that she would take her stuff home soon, and not to make the effort.

My house got pretty messy after a few weeks of this.

There have been no repeats of what had happened that first morning. This was probably for the best, though. The whole day afterwards, Katniss had alternated between skittish and surly, snapping at things for no reason, and disappearing at the drop of a hat. During a few afternoons when I was alone in the house, the thought of her soft skin against mine had me holding on to the edge of the bathroom sink, trying to fight off the shimmering images. But we're still working on the picture of Prim, which has somehow evolved and expanded into a book of memories, and every night, I wrap her tightly in my arms and try to ward off her nightmares.

This morning, something feels different. Katniss is, for once, awake before I am. As the fingers of dawn curl in through the window, I've woken to find that she has quietly sat up on the edge of the mattress. Her hair has loosened itself from her braid, and it falls in soft waves past her shoulders. She is silhouetted by the soft orange pink glow of the sunrise.

"Today is the day that Prim died," she whispers softly.

"Oh Katniss," I say, reaching for her, though I know there is no comfort to soothe this pain.

"No. I'm not going to be sad today. There are three hundred and sixty four other days in the year when I can feel sad. Today was the last day she got to live. I want to live today too."

And then she turns around and kisses me.

There are no words to describe the feeling of her lips against mine in this moment where there is no one to see but the dawn. I cannot keep my body from trembling when she wraps her arms around my neck as tightly as she can. I am on my knees, and I ease back into a sitting position, slowly turning her, so that I can put my arms around her waist. She moves slowly, as though we have all of the time in the world.

I suppose we do.

I am not sure if it is many kisses, or one long unbroken kiss later, but she finally pulls away. I don't know what to do or say. This has never happened before. Never like this.

"I'm going to go hunting," she says calmly, and then leaves the room to dress. But as she closes the door behind her, I see her smile into her hand.

I bake her cheese buns for breakfast, even though they're not really a breakfast food. It doesn't matter though. Katniss Everdeen just kissed me. I can do anything I want.

"Paylor's making an announcement tonight," she says as she grabs a handful and walks out the door. "I want to watch it with you and Haymitch. I won't be back till then."

For the rest of the day, every moment that is not spent focusing on a specific task is spent fighting off shiny memories, but I do not care. I will fight off a thousand years of shiny memories if she will just kiss me like that again one more time. Somehow I make it through the day, and find myself sitting in my living room with a drunker-than-normal Haymitch and Thom, who came with news of the bakery and was invited to stay because Haymitch was becoming nearly unbearable on my own.

Right before the broadcast is set to begin; Katniss enters the house. Her mouth is stained with raspberry juice and her hair, though braided is wet. A string of squirrels hangs from her belt, every single one of them shot through the eye. Her game bag is full of pheasants. She pulls a jar from the same bag, and I see that it is full of enormous, dripping honeycombs. On a table by the door, she sits a knotted cloth that is nearly bursting with berries. The spoils of the day deposited by the door, she comes and sits next to me. She smells like sweat and pine and sunshine. I want everyone else to leave.

But it is time for Paylor to speak.

"It has now been a year since the Capitol fell under the united power of the Districts' rebellion. During the war, I, and my comrades killed many of those who fought on the side of the Capitol, and some who did not fight at all. In turn, many of my dearest friends were killed themselves, some far removed from the battlefield. It is difficult to find one among any of us who has not been touched by the horrors of this war in some very intimate way. We have all suffered. We are all guilty. So it is on this day of remembrance that we choose to commemorate those who were killed, those whom we killed, and those who we allowed, either through our neglect or cowardice, to be killed, not by our words but by our actions. We remember them by learning from our past, and by looking toward the future, where the power of annihilation belongs to no one."

The president looks across her audience with an unwavering eye. She is not trying to play to anyone's emotions. Her speech is firm and full of harsh words. She is committed to taking responsibility both for what has happened and what is to come. She is still a soldier, after all.

"To this end, today begins the mass nuclear disarmament of Panem. Proposed by Defense Minister Hawthorne, and supported with full cooperation from both my office and the Ministry of Science, a plan has been set into motion to see that the missiles residing in both Districts Two and Thirteen be disassembled, their warheads materials used as clean reactor fuel to power our homes. Furthermore, the Ministry of Science has begun intensive research into the use of alternative, sustainable methods of generating power, so that this method too, can be eventually replaced. We will no longer depend on nonrenewable fuels, such as coal, the acquisition of which has caused so many deaths."

"It is the hope that someday soon, we will no longer be party to creating weapons designed to destroy, or mindless distractions designed to provide temporary pleasure to the very rich. From now on, our most brilliant scientific minds will work to develop technologies that enrich all life."

The president is met with thunderous applause, and for good reason. I can hardly believe something like this is happening. Well done, Gale and Beetee. Well done.

"Well, if that don't beat all," Thom says in amazement. "I never did want to see the inside of a mine again. Guess I don't have to now." Haymitch holds up his flask in a toast, and then Paylor continues to speak.

"Before I take any more credit for something that is not mine, it is with great pleasure that I introduce the man who has worked tirelessly for the past year to make this dream a reality: Defense Minister Gale Hawthorne." And then Gale himself takes the stage. He looks a little better than the last time we saw each other in person. He is less anguished but still seeming tremendously exhausted, even through all of the makeup he's no doubt wearing for the broadcast. The faint look of a man just back from the dead is finally fading.

I've seen him on television quite a few times since I left the Capitol. It's something I've done on my own, or sometimes with Haymitch, if I'm feeling anxious. The idea has been that, like everything else on the list, exposure to him will allow me to work through the trigger. If I could, I'd be around him in person, but I honestly don't know how either of us would really take to that. So far, doing it by proxy seems to be working pretty well. I'm really impressed by what he's doing in Two, and he's… well… not here. I'm really not certain if he'll ever be able to come back. While we know that he did not send them, the bombs that killed Prim very well could have been of his design. Although I hope someday she can do it for her own sake, I know that Katniss may never find herself able to forgive him. There is a part of me, a disgusting part that I despise, that finds comfort in the thought that he is no longer a threat to whatever it is that I have with her. But she does not belong to anyone but herself, and thinking like that does not help me or her at in the slightest.

So as Gale begins to describe the more specific details of what sounds like the first step in a much larger nationwide plan of disarmament, I turn my head to look at her as I've longed to do since she sat down. All this time, we've been sitting on the couch so that we were almost touching, but not quite. During the entire speech, the infinitesimal space between our shoulders has crackled with electricity. Now that feeling is gone, and her expression is unreadable, but disturbingly intense. She hugs her knees close to her body. And somehow, this gesture that I don't even understand encapsulates all of the fear and uncertainty and guilt I have been feeling for the past six months, piling up as I considered just how I could possibly tell her about the last two items on the list, and enhanced by my own anxiety as our relationship evolves into something that I can only hope to be true. But instead of logically considering this, and calmly trying to support her in what has to be an overwhelming moment, this, the anniversary of her sister's death, all the roaring monster in my mind says is one thing:

Gale.

This time the world does not even slow down. It's so fast, I'm not even given time to fight it, and yet somehow I'm still present in the instant that my mind has split in half. I'm going to remember this. I can see this happening. This is going to end up being one of the worst moments of my life.

I feel myself sliding close to her on the couch, while all I want to do is lock myself and this monster who has possessed me into the closet.

"Bet you think he looks pretty good there," he murmurs into her ear in a smooth, silky voice that is a mockery of my own. My nose nuzzles against her ear as he continues, "When exactly were you going tell me about what you two have going on, hm? Were you hoping to make a fool out of me in front of the entire country again? Is he going to announce that tonight too?"

Her body stiffens, and I can tell that she wants to turn her head, but my hand is grasping the base of her braid tightly, keeping her from moving. Like lightning, he moves my other hand to cover her mouth. I can't help it. I can't even talk. These aren't my words. Someone needs to stop this, but Thom is too engrossed in the broadcast to notice. Haymitch is too drunk.

"If you make a noise, I am going to snap your neck right now. You know I can. 'Peeta can throw hundred pound bags of flour,'" my voice is high as he mocks her. "And I am going to kill you, you little slut. Just not yet. You're going to tell me all about the dirty things you've been doing with him first. Maybe even show me." He runs the tip of my tongue delicately across the shell of her ear. Something that I've never done. Something that I've desperately wanted to do for so long. And he's ruined it. They've ruined it. They took this from me, just like they took my leg and half of my sanity, just like they took Prim from her and Finnick from his family. Just like they took basically everything from Haymitch and Johanna.

"You gotta take back what they took," Johanna had said.

Okay then.

"NO," I roar. Too hard, but it is either this or nothing, I push Katniss off of the couch and as far away from me as possible. One of her knees slams into the low table, and she is spun around, falling onto her back. I stand up, and turn to Haymitch, shouting, "Knock me out! Knock me out right–" but he interrupts, swinging my head back around in a fluid, almost reptilian motion.

"Katniss… baby… we can work this out. Just tell everybody here how you and Gale have been screwing behind my back." He brings me to my knees, and then pulls her sharply toward me by her feet.

Thom is grabbing my shoulders, trying to pull me up and away, but my fist swings and he is out cold. He may be a strong, smart, guy: rugged, even, but right now a madman is in control of a body that survived two Hunger Games, torture, and a war. No contest. Haymitch stumbles to his feet and drunkenly half runs, half falls out of the room towards the kitchen.

"Pathetic drunk," I hear myself saying. "Now Katniss, why don't you tell me all about Gale, since it's just me and you. I want to hear every. last. detail."

She is looking into my eyes and her voice is mostly even. There's hardly anyone who would be able to notice the slight trembling behind her words.

"Peeta, this is not real. There is nothing between he and I. The last day I talked to him was the day I killed Coin. This morning, we kissed. Remember? I want you to kiss me again, and it scares me a lot because it's real. Not Gale. That's not real."

Even as I am stunned by her admission, I notice the tremor in her voice. I'm certain it's just the emotional weight of what she's admitting during the most awful circumstances possible, and maybe just a bit of fear, but he notices, too and he doesn't think it's fear at all. "You lying bitch," and my hand swings out as he uses it to backhand the woman I love across the face.

Wrenching control again, I fling myself backwards pleading with her, "Katniss, please! Make me stop! I know you have a knife. Useit!"

And then I'm gone again, but in the short time she has jumped to her feet. She's standing unevenly, and I know the blow to the table must have hurt her knee somehow. He has me on my feet again, and I have to look her up and down disdainfully, lustfully while I'm bouncing on the balls of my feet. I see the blood that drips from her split lip, and I can feel his excitement. I try to remember every single thing in my living room that I can use to stop myself, because the next chance is probably the last one I'm going to get. He curls my body and gets ready to lunge at her. Why won't she just kill me?

A slurred, drunken voice states, "Boy, you really need to find a healthy outlet for some of this frustration," and then for the split second before everything goes dark, I realize that it really, really hurts to be hit in the head with a frying pan.

---

When I wake, I can tell by the heat of the room and the silence of the birds that it is the next morning, and well past the time when I should normally be up. My face is uncomfortably wedged between the back of the couch, and the cushions. With the exception of the time in the arena when I was pretty much dead from blood poisoning, I've never slept this late in my life. I worry about the bread that needs to be made without really thinking about why I'm on the couch instead of in my bed. Then the headache hits, and I wish Iwere dead from blood poisoning or anything really.

As I remember what has happened, I realize that there is nothing I would rather be than dead.

I think I moan out loud with that realization, because a voice says:

"Don't sit up too quickly. I think Haymitch gave you a concussion."

She's still here. I can barely believe it, but I wish she weren't because there is something in her voice, an edge to it that lets me know that things are definitely not okay. And why would they be? I cannot even imagine how I can look in her eyes, knowing what he… what I…. I don't even know who it was… but just knowing what was said to her. The accusations. The threats. The day that I made them.

"Katniss, I'm so sorry. I hurt you, and those terrible things that I said–" I struggle to move.

"I'm not mad that you had a flashback, or upset by what you said. That wasn't you. You managed to fight it off pretty well, anyway," this should be reassuring, but her voice is cold. I hear the sound of a chair creaking as she stands up. I want to turn and look at her, but my body is too leaden and slow to move.

"You lied to me, Peeta."

I feel something lightly land on my side.

"Don't ever lie to me again."

The door slams, and I weakly reach up to grasp whatever it is that she's thrown at me.

It's the list.

The real one.

Chapter 8: Katniss

There are no words for what I've done.

I lie curled up on the couch for hours, barely able to move, though I am not certain whether it is due to physical or psychological agony. Either way, it is a familiar ache, and one I might as well get used to because I am never going to get better. I don't know how I could have possibly believed that I could get past this. The extent of my misery is so profound that it is difficult to even gauge what it is that I have actually done. I have betrayed her in more ways I can count. What can I possibly do to fix this? I don't deserve to fix this. I need to live with this for the rest of my life.

Eventually, the phone rings. Based on the time, and what day I think it is (although I'm not sure, because time seems to have lost its meaning), it's Dr. Aurelius' weekly phone call. I let it ring. I'm sure he'll be concerned, but I can't bring myself to care. There's no way I can explain what has happened, the dreadful scope of what I've done. Moreover, he will try to help me through this, to work myself to a point of peace. This is something that I never want to reach. I don't want him asking Katniss about it either. Best she never has to talk about it again.

In my hand, crumpled beyond recognition, is the paper that she threw at me. The original that I brought back to Twelve, written on thick, expensive Capitol paper.

The list.

Slowly, I raise myself from the couch and stumble into the kitchen. My bad leg is unbearably cramped from my night on the couch still strapped to the prosthetic, and the laceration on my foot burns. I unfold the list and turn it over, beginning anew on the back. Then, I begin to compose a new list, one of the ways I have hurt Katniss, so that I will never forget them.

Lied to her

I start with the first, and what she seems to believe is the worst offense. She is probably right. If I had told her from the beginning the last two items on the list, she likely would have avoided me altogether. This entire calamity could have been avoided.

Pushed her so that she hurt her knee.

Hit her in the face.

Pulled her hair.

Although these fall under the umbrella of "physical harm," I cannot list them together. If I ignore the details, it somehow takes away from the horror of what I've done, something I will not allow myself to do.

Mocked her.

Not only did I do this, but I mocked the memory of her arguing for me, against me. Somehow this makes it all the more awful.

Called her a slut.

Called her a bitch.

I don't know if these are worse than "mutt," but the sexual overtone of each term brings bile to my throat.

Accused her of lying to me.

Brought up Gale.

Again, these are very similar, as I claimed him to be the center of her deception. But they must be separate. I know, and have known for months, that the mere idea of Gale causes her so much pain that it is a subject we are not allowed to discuss, ever. To mention him under such implications is infinitely worse than accusing her of lying in some other way.

Threatened to kill her.

This is truly horrible, but it is the one thing that, out of everything, I had already agonized over so much with Dr. Aurelius that I'd come to a strange sort of peace with it. What the Capitol had done to me was extreme conditioning solely directed to one end – Katniss' death. With the exception of my first encounter with her in Thirteen, and in this most recent episode, I had managed to overcome this conditioning in every scenario. This had been the first time that I had even threatened to hurt her in over a year. So, although if it had happened, I would have slit my wrists, I would have at least had the cold comfort of knowing that what had happened was not Peeta Mellark but the actions of the disease that lived in his mind.

Threatened to…

At this, the pen falls out of my trembling hand. Threatening to kill her, as the target of my conditioning, terrible as it might be, was a specific program planted in my brain. It was something foreign and alien. Threatening to… force her, on the other hand, was some sort of twisted, horrible thing that had to be a part of me. The Capitol had never put it there.

"I am a monster," I whisper.

Then I am weeping until the world falls away.

---

I awake to the murmur of unfamiliar female voices. I open my eyes, to realize that I am once again on my couch, although this time I am lying on my back, and two very different, but equally concerned faces lean over me.

One is Delly's. She looks better than I've ever seen her. Her once pudgy face and body has smoothed into something curvy and feminine. Her hair hangs in ringlets that almost touch my face. But she is still so much like herself – forehead furrowed with concern and her clear, light eyes clouded with worry at my condition.

"Peeta? Can you hear me?" she asks anxiously.

The other woman has to be a stranger, because she is so striking that I am certain I would have remembered her if I'd seen her before. Her face is angular, with high cheekbones and skin as dark as ebony. Her hair is short and tightly curls against her skull. Along her neck are delicate golden tattoos. But it is her dark eyes that strike me the most. They are piercing and analytical, alight with a burning intelligence.

"Delly? How did I get here? Why are you here?"

"We're here for Thom's toasting tomorrow. We're staying with you, didn't you read my letter? He brought us up here, with our luggage. What happened to his nose? It looks broken! And why are there five dead squirrels on a belt by your door? How did you end up passed out at your table?" This barrage of questions overwhelms me and I groan and cover my face with my hands. On top of everything else, I've ruined Thom's wedding. I'm supposed to baking his cake right now, and I can barely stand.

"The squirrels are Katniss'," I mutter.

I can hear Delly say "Hm," and I know that right now she is trying to figure out how to best fix the situation. With a sigh, she begins to speak.

"Okay, well, I'm going to take those squirrels over to Katniss before they go bad. They might be bad already. I'm going to leave you here with Julia. You really don't look well. Do you know you have an enormous lump on the back of your head?"

She focuses her attention on the other woman, "Can you look at his head, 'Lia? I'm really worried."

The woman murmurs her assent, and then I can hear Delly running across the porch. She is definitely not going to see Katniss just to deliver some rotten squirrels.

A strong hand is behind my back, and lifting me slowly into a seated position.

"Let's take a look at your head," she says in a rich voice. "It's Peeta Mellark, right?"

"Yeah."

"I recognized you from the 74th Games…" I am about to sigh in annoyance when she continues in a soft, bemused voice, "I was quite irritated with you, actually. I wanted that redhead to win. You lost me a lot of money."

Somehow, this is the most disarming thing I can imagine her saying, even though it is an awful, dark joke about someone who she was betting on in a death match and whom I accidentally killed. At least it's honest.

"I need you to look at my finger and follow it as it moves, okay?" I do so, and she continues to talk quietly, even though it's obvious that I don't want to. "My name is Julia Applethorpe."

"Yeah, Delly's mentioned you a bit."

"All good things, I hope?" asks coolly, while she loudly snaps her fingers next to first one ear, then the other, causing me to flinch.

"Yeah, well, you know Delly. She could say good things about President Snow if you let her."

"Glad to see you have such confidence in her ability to read people."

"I don't know if I would really trust anything I say right now, as you're checking me for brain damage." I'm being so horribly cold, but there's just no point anymore. No point in even trying to be nice. I want her to leave me alone.

She reaches forward with her pointer finger and closes one of my nostrils, then holds her wrist under my nose. "Tell me what you smell."

"Nutmeg."

She switches wrists, and nostrils, "Now this one."

"Cardamom."

She smirks, "You know your spices."

"I'm a baker. Do you wear two different kinds of perfume in case you run into concussed people on a daily basis?"

She continues to examine me as she speaks, "No I… okay smile for me… just like the combination…now clench your teeth… it reminds me of my mother… now whistle."

"I can't." She looks professionally concerned, so I clarify. "I mean, I don't know how. I never learned, or I've forgotten or something. I've forgotten a lot of things, plus I was never very musically talented." Everything I say sounds dour.

"Okay, well, pucker your lips like you're going to kiss someone," she must see the dead look in my eyes, because she adds, "or like you're pretending to be a fish."

I do so, and she nods then using her long fingers, she firmly palpates the muscles in my neck. Her confidence level seems to indicate that she really knows what she's doing. "Are you a doctor?"

"No. So I suppose I should inform you that you should probably not listen to anything I do or say."

"Then how do you know all this?"

"I was a third year neurology student before the rebellion. Studying brain trauma, and specifically memory loss. Youngest, and the top of my cohort."

"So you aren't now?"

"It lost its appeal." She dismisses the question, and then continues, "I was in the middle of some pretty groundbreaking research at the time of the invasion of the Capitol. When everything was said and done, your doctor asked me to consult with him on your case, actually."

"And what did you suggest?"

"Nothing. I refused. I wanted nothing to do with you. And then I wanted nothing to do with becoming a doctor."

"Did I do something to you I don't know about?" I ask meanly.

"My ten-year-old twin brothers were killed by the bomb in front of the President's Mansion. My father and mother were executed by Coin. So I guess you could say I didn't much want to be the sort of person who could help the Mockingjay's husband."

"Yeah, well, here you are anyway. That marriage thing was all a sham, if it matters," I mutter darkly. If I weren't in such a horrible position, I would be disgusted at my complete non-response to the deaths of this woman's family. I guess I am disgusted, underneath all of this. Pile it onto the mound of things I need to hate myself for.

"No it wasn't," she responds immediately, more conversationally than confrontationally.

"Did Delly tell you that?"

"She told me some things. But even if she hadn't, no once uses a tone like that when they're talking about something that never really existed. Hold up your arms," she looks at my trembling hands seriously for a moment. "How long have these tremors been going on?"

"They always happen when I have a catastrophic memory incident," I use the term mockingly. "Sometimes they go away after an hour. Sometimes they last for a lot longer."

"When was the incident?"

"Last night."

"Is that when you got this bump on the head?"

"Yeah. Haymitch Abernathy hit me in the head with a frying pan to stop me from raping and then murdering my sort-of girlfriend," I spit out bitterly. Even through the wall of bitter words and self-loathing, my stomach still flips and twists itself in knots. I think I'm going to be sick. But I've said it. I don't even know this woman, but she might as well know what kind of a fiend I am. Maybe she can tell Delly, so I won't have to. A sardonic little voice also adds that Katniss would have something to say about me calling her my girlfriend, but it's the most convenient word to describe the nature of our relationship, not that it matters anymore anyway.

Julia does not look disturbed by this in the slightest. In fact, she doesn't seem concerned about what I claim to have nearly done to Katniss at all. She's more worried about my concussion. "And you've been left alone to fend for yourself ever since?"

"No. I think she stayed with me until I came to, which was basically all night and well into the next morning. Then she left when I woke up. After she yelled at me." How can she care about a minor head injury in a situation like this?

"She should have stayed with you. You should not have been left to pass out on the table like that. You could have fallen into a coma had your concussion been more severe, of which I am assuming she had no way of being certain."

"Did you not hear what I said? I tried to–" I gasp and pull at my hair, unable to say the words for a second time.

She sighs with mild frustration. "Before you destroy any more of your hair, you probably should know that you're the only hijacking victim who has ever survived, and they've been experimenting with this technique for a long, long time. In one hundred percent of all other cases, the victims ended up insane, killing themselves at the first opportunity."

"They had the right idea."

"Stop it," she says bluntly, but without anger.

"What?"

"I said stop it," her dispassionate response upsets me even more.

"How can you possibly think you have the right to say that?"

"Tell me this, Peeta Mellark. How many people did you know personally who are now dead?"

I glare at her, "Nearly all of them."

"Then you don't have the right to kill yourself," she says, almost casually. "What's more, you don't have the need. What you have experienced is the perfectly understandable reaction of a mind that is attempting to normalize itself after severe trauma. What Delly has told me, combined with your "sort-of girlfriend" statement leads me to believe you are on the cusp of an intimate relationship with the target of your hijacking. The fact that that is even possible for you is almost fascinating enough to send me back into my research, but what's not at all shocking to me is that the anxiety connected to this new development in your intimate life would direct your memory incidents towards violence of a sexual nature."

"Are you trying to tell me that this is a good thing? What the hell is wrong with you?"

She responds firmly, but with little emotion, as though she's simply stating a fact. "What I'm telling you is the truth. You have a list of triggers. I saw it on the table. But what all of these triggers have in common is one thing: anxiety. When you are anxious, or afraid, that is when you have a flashback. Aurelius helped you to discover the things that you are most afraid of, and you simplified those items into a list, to which, I'm assuming, you were then to become acclimated. It was a brilliant tactic, from a therapeutic standpoint, but the fact is, it's simply not true in clinical reality."

"Ms. Everdeen does not cause your flashbacks, any more than bees, or dogs, or explosions. You do, or at least your brain chemistry does, when you are anxious about the possibility of her rejecting you, or the implications of your relationship, or a million other perfectly normal anxieties that people in relationships have. I would have to do some tests to be certain, but I believe the cocktail of hormones released into your bloodstream in a state of fear inhibits your mind's ability to see the difference between reality and the alien memories that were implanted there. It's not surprising to me that these memories have almost taken on a personality of their own. I saw Defense Minister Hawthorne's speech last night. It was amazing, and something I most certainly would have felt anxious about, if he had been previously involved with of the love of my life. The fact that you had a catastrophically large incident with sexual overtones is hardly a surprising result. You have not taught yourself to ignore a set of triggers. You have taught yourself to deal with fear. It just so happens that the last two items on your list are the most terrifying of all."

"But if all that is true, why can't I fantasize about her without having a flashback?" bursts out before I can stop myself. I don't know how I am able to ask this mortifying question. Maybe it's because this woman is so cold and clinical, or maybe it's because I've already told her the worst thing I can possible imagine telling anyone.

"When is the last time you have been able to think about her in any circumstance without worrying for her safety or sanity? You have a great deal of difficulty thinking about her without feeling anxiety and concern. If you're trying to evoke sexual arousal through images and thoughts of her, I'm certain there are a host of other subconscious feelings associated with that. It has nothing to do with her or sex – it has everything to do with fear. You've already proven that you can overcome the conditioning to execute her. No one else has ever been able to do this before. You have already beaten this in a way that is so far beyond what any doctor could have anticipated, that everything else is just details. Are you able to be physically close to her and feel aroused without having an incident?"

"So far, yeah. But they've always been spontaneous, and happened before I could stop. I mean, she kissed me one time, and sometimes she wears these little shorts and... apart from the fact that I don't know what she wants, I don't feel like she'll be safe if I initiate anything, and I don't want to lose it and hurt her."

"I don't think you will. With the exception of last evening, you certainly haven't done anything extreme thus far after seeing her nearly every day for six months. I might add, that woman has a reputation for being able to handle herself. When you are together romantically, you're not thinking about anything other than her, are you? There's no room left for anxiety, thus, no incident." She raises her eyebrows just a little bit, and I can see that she considers all of this extremely obvious.

"That doesn't change what I did last night."

"You don't know that you would have assaulted her when the time came. You were knocked out before you could follow the incident to its crisis. I am not convinced you would have been able to go through with it. In fact, now that it has occurred, I doubt it will ever happen again."

"That's not something I'm willing to risk."

"Then you are most definitely not the "bravest, most hopeful man I know" as Delly has so poetically described you. But, I have more faith in her judgment than I do in your frantic, concussed ravings." And then she smiles a chill sort of smile, as though daring me to be who Delly claims I am. It reminds me of Johanna, just a little bit.

I can't help it. I'm smiling, despite last night and this morning, and this entire conversation. "What on earth do the two of you talk about? I don't think I've ever met anyone less like Delly in my life."

"Love doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?"

"No, it doesn't."

"I'll tell you this: You should not be alive. You should not be sane. So if it's love that did that… well, I guess it doesn't have to make much sense."

"That doesn't mean she still wants to talk to me ever again. On top of everything else, I lied to her."

"I would imagine in such a case, an apology might be a useful tool," her eyes sparkle, and I wonder if maybe there is something there that Delly sees after all.

"Julia, you need to do me, and yourself, a favor."

"And what's that, Peeta Mellark?"

"Become a doctor."

Chapter 9: Fear

I spend the rest of the day baking. The cake for Thom's wedding is incredibly behind schedule, and I am not about to disappoint this man after punching him in the face. Julia asks me where the best place to talk a walk is, and I send her on a long looping journey through town, giving her a note to give to Thom. It promises that the cake will be at the wedding as anticipated, and apologizes for his nose.

Delly returns after a great deal of time in Katniss' home, but she gives no indication of what has gone on there, and I don't ask. "How's your head?" she questions gently.

"I just to need to make sure I don't have any dizzy spells or bleed out my ears, I guess, and I should be fine. Doesn't make it hurt less, though."

I feel the air pushed out of my lungs as she attacks me from behind, pulling me into a giant hug, "Everything's going to be okay, Peeta."

"Did she tell you what I did? I don't know if there's any way for that ever to be okay."

"She knows that it wasn't you."

I slam the counter with my fist, "I don't care if it wasn't me. I don't want it to be an issue that she, or anyone else for that matter, has to deal with. Look at what I did to Thom!"

"I… I'm sure Thom thinks his black eye makes him look… tough…" she attempts lamely.

And then I'm laughing hysterically, and she is too, and I decide to stop talking about last night. Whatever Delly and Katniss spoke about, I am not allowed to know, and it's only going to make further conversation strained and uncomfortable.

We work on the cake together, like we did back in Thirteen. Delly is not very skilled in the kitchen, but she is good at gathering ingredients and cleaning things as I use them, so it makes the work go faster. Mostly she just keeps me company and chatters away, explaining how she met Julia – she was a volunteer at an emergency shelter in the Capitol where Julia was forced to stay – and many other things about their relationship that I had wondered about, but felt that it was somehow unacceptable to ask. When I ask her if I had somehow missed something, she smiles and says, "Not really. I think I was just waiting for her." She keeps me from thinking about what I've done, and allows me to focus on the liberating task of creating this cake.

It's well past midnight when Julia comes down to find Delly asleep at the kitchen table as I work on icing the first layer. Julia smiles softly, then leans down and whispers something into Delly's ear before she gently leads her to bed. The moment is so sweet it makes my heart ache but I only allow myself a nod goodnight to them before focusing on my work once more. Though I love to paint, there is something infinitely more beautiful about decorating a cake, a transient item that is not meant to last but instead to commemorate a special time in someone's life. Thom has said that Susie loves trees and flowers. I can only imagine how desolate it would be to grow up essentially underground, so I work my hardest to create something that uses the images of nature to make her feel welcome in her new home, in her new life.

As dawn peers into the kitchen, I am just finishing the final touches on the top layer. I feel a strange sort of peace with myself and the world. For a moment, I feel like I almost know what to do, but then it slips away.

So I begin baking once again.

There is, of course, the bread that is needed for the toasting itself, but I plan on creating an extravagant amount of pastries, cookies, and breads. The whole district, small as it is, has been invited, as well as people like Dalton, who grew close to Thom in Thirteen. He will now be his "best man," a tradition that we in Twelve are unfamiliar with, but apparently they have in other places. Whatever the reason they are here, most of these people have spent an entire year trying to rebuild our community, and I intend to thank them for it the only way I know how. The toasting itself will take place in the bakery, using for the first time the enormous oven that has just been built. The party afterwards will be in the newly completed town green, which is now located mere feet from the baker's storefront. As I bake, I know that Thom's crew is setting up an enormous tent on the soft grass.

I am putting the finishing touches on a batch of iced cookies when there is a gentle knock on the front door. I'm surprised. None of my neighbors ever knock. I open the door to find Rory Hawthorne. He's sixteen now, and just beginning to grow into his tall, lanky body – even taller than his brother's. There is something about him, a quiet sadness that I've seen in so many after the war, but not as often in those who didn't fight in the battles themselves. Somehow the war has obliterated something precious and secret inside this boy.

"We just moved back last night, Mr. Mellark," I can't believe that he's calling me this – I'm only two or three years older than him – but I don't know what to say other than to nod, "We're neighbors now, even. Live up behind Haymitch. We were going to come for the wedding, but Momma decided she didn't want to live in Two anymore, even though Gale's there, so we came to stay. Missed home."

"I understand what you mean, Rory. I missed it too."

He looks nervous for a moment, and then blurts out, "I just… I just wanted to say that the flowers you planted… I think she woulda liked em. Anyway, I'll see you at the toasting." He runs back to his house before I can stop him.

Standing on my doorstep, I look across the yard to the row of primroses along Katniss' house and glance back to the same that line my own.

Sixteen is so young to be burdened with that kind of pain.

After making a few enhancements to the cake's design, I realize I am at a loss as to how to bring the cake down the hill, other than once piece at a time, which is a difficult scenario at best, considering it is supposed to be a surprise. Haymitch, shockingly enough, manages to wake up early and throw together three wooden boxes, one for each layer, so that the workman can carry them down in secret.

"Might as well do something with myself," he shrugs when I look at him with confusion, "gonna get fat just sitting around here."

"You woke up early," I say delicately, replacing "sober" with a less aggressive term.

"Gotta pick up Effie at the station in an hour. By the way, how's your head?" he asks with a smug look, keeping me from questioning him further.

We both let each other alone.

Delly has somehow organized everyone who is not a part of Thom's crew to carry all of the things I have made. There is a constant flutter of activity, with people going in and out of my front door and joking around on the porch. I wish I could enjoy it, but I keep looking across the street at Katniss' desolate-looking house, feeling intense waves of shame and regret. The windows are all shut. Shutters drawn. Sae goes inside at one point, and doesn't come back out again as far as I can see.

Hazelle lets the bride and her sister use her house to get ready, so Vick and Rory spend the morning helping me out, in part by carefully loading the cakes into the boxes Haymitch has made. Vick, especially, is fascinated by it, and asks me a lot of questions about how I did the decorating. Haymitch and Dalton sit on my porch and make jokes at Thom's expense. The man of the hour just paces back and forth in my kitchen.

"I don't know how to do this, Peeta," he finally says.

"What do you mean?" At this point, everyone in Twelve knows that Katniss and I are not, and never were married, so I don't know why exactly he would be coming to me for advice. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that there are few couples left at all. With the exception of the few families who lived on the very edge of the Seam, next to the Meadow, almost everyone has lost someone, and usually that someone is a spouse. So I suppose, for Thom, I have the most stable relationship of anyone he knows.

Knocking him out so that I can try to kill her and all.

"I mean… I don't know how to just have a normal life. There's all this talk about changes, and no more mines, and no more starvin'. I don't know how to be like that. All I've ever known has been the hard times," he continues.

"Thom," I say quietly, "I don't know either."

We are silent for a moment.

"My advice is, whatever Haymitch is doing, do the opposite. You should be okay then."

This makes poor Thom laugh until he cries.

It's almost time to go and I'm standing in front of the mirror in my room, having dressed in a dark blue linen shirt rolled up at the sleeves and some light pants. I hardly look like the same starving boy I was six months ago. I don't forget things like I did, although my memory is still not great. My hair has grown back, and my scars are slowly fading. My shoulders are broader than they were even in those months of training before the Quarter Quell. I've actually grown taller. I need to order a longer leg, as ridiculous as that is to consider.

If my father were here, he would probably say something about me being a man.

I just want to hold Katniss so badly it hurts.

Delly, Julie and I walk to the wedding with Haymitch, Effie, and the Hawthornes, except Rory, who is conspicuously absent. Vick carries Posy on his shoulders and she talks incessantly, about her new home, about Two, about her brother and his friend "Hannah" who I am surprised to realize might actually be Johanna. Haymitch has put on a clean shirt, and Effie is not wearing a wig. Her long brown hair is twisted into an unassuming chignon, and she is wearing a plain golden dress. Delly's dress has polka dots and ruffles, and she clashes delightfully with the dramatic yet simple green slip that Julia wears. They hold hands.

As we pass her house, I want to knock on Katniss' door, but I don't know how to even begin to tell her I'm sorry. I'm about to walk up and do it anyway when Delly catches my eye and gently shakes her head.

We gather with the growing crowd in front of the bakery and stand outside. Before the war, toastings were always such small affairs that these sorts of get-togethers were essentially nonexistent; this time we didn't really have a system, so we just made it up. Thom, and Susie, along with Dalton and Susie's sister are in the bakery, actually doing the toasting ceremony. They had invited me inside since it was my oven, but I more than most can respect a couple's need for privacy, so I declined. However, they still need the bread, so I crack open the door and hand it wordlessly to Dalton before leaving. Maybe that's what the best man does? Takes care of the bread?

Effie bounces on her toes excitedly, "This is such a big, big day! The bakery's opening, and the first wedding here after the war, and oh look at you Peeta. You're all grown up!" She hugs me tightly, and I hug her back. Over her shoulder, Haymitch pretends to hang himself with an imaginary noose.

The crowd begins to clap as Thom and Susie come out of the front door, holding hands. Dalton, and Susie's sister follow, arm in arm. And then, it's a real live wedding, just like the one back in Thirteen, so they tell me. There are tables on the edges of the tent absolutely loaded with food, although, I notice that meat is few and far between. Children run underfoot, and everyone is laughing and talking and having an absolutely wonderful time. Thom, black eye and all, looks happier than I have ever seen him, and Susie, in a simple shimmery white dress, glows with happiness. Dalton has brought his guitar, and Haymitch, of all people has ended up with a banjo on his lap. When I look at him questioningly, he says "I had a talent other than drinking, kid." A few of the members of Thom's crew have things like a harmonicas and mouth harps. The music they play is joyful, ecstatic even, although it catches a little without a fiddle. Many of the guests line up and prepare to dance.

We are interrupted by a shrill whistle, and everyone stops in silence, trying to see where the sound has come from. I think it's come from the other side of the bakery, towards the Seam, but I can't be sure. Then I hear the steady plodding of booted feet. A sound I know very, very well.

"Would anybody like some venison?" Katniss asks nervously, as she rounds the corner. She is dressed in her hunting gear, hair braided, as though it is any other day. Behind her, comes Rory, and then I realize that between them on a spit they are holding the rotisseried carcass of what had to be an absolutely enormous buck.

"Sorry we're late," Rory mutters, and he fidgets with the violin case strapped to his back. Coming up behind them is Sae, holding an enormous pot of stew that I can recognize by its odor to be squirrel.

"Come on then. Help us get this set up," the old woman says with a grin.

And then there is an enormous cheer, louder than I would have thought possible from the small crowd. Thom's crew rushes out to take their offerings, and in the resulting mass of people Katniss vanishes. Before I can get to her, she is gone.

Rory joins the band, and it is now that the party really begins. He is far and away the most talented musician I have ever heard. I wonder where he even learned to play. His fingers move like lightning, and a fine cloud of rosin smoke rises from the bridge of the violin as he plays. Haymitch and Dalton give each other exasperated glances as they try to keep up. Between every song, they laugh and joke with him, but I can see the quiet torment in his eyes. It kills me.

The venison is absolutely delicious, and for many of the Twelve residents, this is the first time they have ever tasted it in their lives, despite living so close to the woods that could feed them. It is an absolute feast, the likes of which I haven't seen since before the Quarter Quell. I think I'm slapped on the back by at least fifteen different men, and fifteen more want to shake my hand. They call me Mr. Mellark, and although my heart swells with pride, part of me hates it because that title is reserved for my father and he is not here to see this. I know few things that would have made him happier to be a part of. My brothers would probably be fighting each other to get to the bride's sister, and my mother… well, she'd probably be furious at how much bread was being wasted on people who didn't pay. But it doesn't matter. I miss them all.

Even if they were still alive, I still don't think I'd be able to enjoy this the way I should. Behind everything is the inescapable knowledge of what I have done, and with no task to distract me, there's little else I can think about. I have to fix this, but it seems so impossibly broken, despite what Julia has told me. Even if there is hope for the future, how can Katniss ever forgive me?

The musicians are finally taking a break when I corner Haymitch. He probably won't help much, but I don't know what else to do.

"We need to talk," I say.

"Look, if this is about Effie…"

"It's not about Effie, and you know it."

"Yeah boy, I know," he collapses into a chair and gestures I sit down too.

I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off, "Look, kid. I know. You hate yourself. I probably would too, if I were in your shoes. But I just want you to keep something in mind."

"That girl is a born killer, but the other night she didn't try to fight you off at all. When I left that room, drunk as I was, and honestly, boy, I'm real sorry about that, I left confident that there were at least seven different ways that she could have used to off you if it came to that. She wasn't even close to that point when I knocked you out, which, frankly, I did more for you than for her. Figured you weren't gonna be too pleased with the things you were saying. She yelled at me for a good hour after that, telling me I should have given her the chance to calm you down. Thinks she can handle you when you're having an episode. Says it's not who you really are."

"Haymitch, that is the very definition of an abusive relationship. I can't be that guy."

"Maybe it is, except for the really important thing: she's not scared of you. Not in the slightest. I've seen plenty of women whose men beat 'em. They're beat down. Terrified. Katniss might worry or fuss, or even feel scared for you, but you never scare her. When you lose control, she keeps it. So if you want something to work, you're the one whose gotta stop being scared of her."

I sigh. I want to argue, but I'm not sure what to say. Katniss is not a victim, not in the slightest. She takes control of whatever situation she's in. I can't help but remember the day when she knocked down all the bees nests. Despite the massive number of painful stings, she was proud of herself for what she'd done.

"And also probably grovel, cause she's real pissed about that list," he adds as an afterthought.

"Thanks, Haymitch. Really."

"I just wanna see you two idiots settle the hell down. Maybe I can finally get a bit of peace if you do. Raise geese or something"

He drains his drink and sits down the glass as he stands. "Hey princess!" he calls out. "Wanna dance?" From several feet away Effie looks at him bewildered and embarrassed, and he pulls her onto the floor. She acts like he's causing a scene, but I can tell that she's secretly pleased.

And then I see a bare leg step through the far end of the tent and my heart stops beating completely. Katniss has come back.

Her hair is down and it's obvious that all she's done is taken it out of its braid, but the soft waves still frame her face perfectly. She's not wearing makeup, but her cheeks are tinted pink from the day's sun and flushed with what looks like nervous excitement. Her feet are bare, and the olive tint of her skin contrasts strikingly with the color of her simple cotton dress.

It's the deep, muted orange of a sunset.

She sees me from across the room, and we stand and look at each other for a long moment. Her gaze is cloudy and unreadable. If we were in the Capitol right now, I'm certain that everyone in the room would be staring, but this is Twelve. People give us our privacy, and if they notice the tension, they don't let on. I'm about to cross the room to talk to her when Dalton stands on a chair and announces that Thom has a special surprise for his wife and his guests. Then Vick, whom I promised could have the great honor, rolls out my cake.

I can hear Katniss gasp from all the way across the room.

The cake is Twelve, with the rolling mountains and verdant woods. There is the Meadow, and the bakery, and Victors Village and the slowly growing neighborhoods of rebuilt homes. Instead of icing this cake, I painted a single layer of buttercream with edible dyes to maximize the level of detail. This was necessary so I could include every single person I know that now lives in the district. They begin to find themselves, and turn to each other excitedly. Posy is collecting flowers in her yard while Hazelle hangs sheets from a line. Haymitch is asleep on his back porch. The crew works to rebuild a shop. Women look on while children play. Sae hands a muffin to her granddaughter. On the flat top of the final layer, replacing the little figurines that most wedding cakes have, is a more detailed painting of Thom breaking ground to plant a field, as he has often told me he longs to do. Susie stands a short distance from him, the wind blowing her hair.

The real Susie embraces her husband, and exclaims that it is beautiful, wonderful, just perfect. I find myself slapped on the back more times than I can count. Effie takes a photograph with a fancy camera, and then begins to snap pictures of the couple as well, promising to send them back in a book on the next train.

Katniss slowly approaches the cake, and I can see that she's found herself, perched in the branches of a tree, eating blackberries. She looks further, and I see her gazing at the image of the bakery.

She's looking for me.

Feeling completely overwhelmed, I walk outside into the gathering dusk. I am sitting where the apple tree used to be when she finds me. It hasn't taken her long.

"Why did you lie to me?" she questions accusingly. She stands about ten feet away, the wind whipping her dress around her legs. A scowl dominates her face, and her arms are crossed defensively.

"Because I didn't know what I was doing," I respond after staring at the ground for a long time. "I felt like you knowing about those two names would pretty definitively sum up all of the awkwardness there has ever been between us and–"

"Gale is gone, Peeta!" she interrupts me. "He was really important to me once, and I guess he still is, but too much has changed. I can't… I don't love him the way that he wants, and I never will."

"Oh." I don't know what to say, really. I know her well enough to know that her rejection of Gale's affections does not mean that she has chosen me by some sort of default, but it soothes my heart in a tiny way nonetheless.

"So you can just stop being so afraid that he's going to show up and I'm going to run off into the wild. I'm not going anywhere," she adds with finality.

I stand up and approach her, not even certain of what I am doing, "It's not just about Gale, Katniss. I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to burden you with any of this, or to make you feel responsible, or guilty."

This infuriates her, "Peeta, it wouldn't matter if I felt guilty! You don't get to decide what I need to feel! I had a right to know!"

"You did, and I'm sorry. I swear, I won't ever lie to you like that again. I just… didn't want you to go away," I say the last part as quietly as I can, because it's such a pathetic reason, but it's the only one I have. "It was selfish, all of it and I understand if you don't want me in your life anymore. I don't deserve to be here, especially after what I did the other night."

As I say this, her face grows furious, to the point where she doesn't even seem to care about the lying anymore. "Stop thinking that! It wasn't you!"

"How can you say that, Katniss? After what I almost did…"

She's exasperated by this, and I still don't understand why what I've done isn't upsetting her the way it should. "You didn't almostdo anything – you just talked about it. Yeah you were violent, and creepy, and pretty offensive, but I could have stopped you. I'm faster than you. I've watched you enough after all this time to know what I need to do to make you stop," there is a hardness in her words that indicates she means more than just incapacitation. "I know what is important to you. After everything, I owe it to you to keep you from doing something that you couldn't live with. But I'm also not going to knock you out, or worse, unless I have to."

Everything clicks together for the first time in forty-eight hours.

"So you were trying to protect me?"

She falls quiet for a moment, then responds softly, "Isn't that what we do, protect each other?" I know what she's remembering, but I refuse to let her use it against me in this situation.

"Not when it's at such an incredible risk to yourself."

"Why are you the only one who is allowed to be self-sacrificing for the people you care about?" There really is no arguing with this logic. The last time I tried, she ended up even more convinced that she was right. "If I was the one who had been hijacked, we wouldn't even be having this conversation! You'd refuse to even consider keeping away from me just because there was the small chance I might hurt you."

"But the… way I said I would hurt you…"

"That's what you're upset about? Peeta, you were out of your mind. Seeing Gale set you off. When you had the flashback during the explosion, you started raving about burning things down. You might not remember, but I do. I wasn't worried you were going to burn down the bakery."

I hadn't known this. I guess I had never thought to ask. But it didn't matter. "It's not the same!" I shout.

"Maybe it isn't the same to you, but it is to me," she says bluntly. I should have known this. Ever the pragmatic one, Katniss learned a long time ago to keep a cool head in the face of danger. My mad threats and insinuations were just that, and she didn't take them seriously. "If you were really going to do it, you would have just done it. When you attacked me in Thirteen and in the Capitol you just did, without any sort of talking. Now, even if you said mean things and hit me in one isolated incident, it just doesn't feel the same. You fought it when it was the worst. Now, it's just… you know, they're flashbacks to what they did to you. Not the way you really are. I just… I don't feel threatened. Only worried about you," as she says this, her voice has become quiet, and she looks at me with pleading eyes.

"How do you expect me to put you in a situation where you might get hurt, Katniss? Especially hurt like that." I desperately try again to make her see.

"Because if you don't, then one of us has to leave... and I… I can't lose you."

Her statement hangs in the air between us. I don't know what this means. I won't assume anything. I can't do that to her. I can't do it to myself.

"But I can't…" her breathing quickens, as she struggles for the right words. "If we're not completely honest with each other I can't…" What can't she do? I don't know, but I just can't hold this back anymore. If she wants truth, then all I can do is oblige. But I don't even know where to start.

"I want kids," I blurt out.

"What?" she is completely baffled.

"I want children. I have since I was a kid myself, but I only want them with you. I can wait, forever, really, if you don't want them or me. I mean, if you even could ever possibly imagine having them with–"

"Peeta, what are you talking about?"

I move on to the next secret, "And I can't… I can't think about you sexually without having a flashback. Unless of course you're in the room, and then I'm somehow fine, because there's nothing to think about but you." I don't think it's possible for me to blush this much without passing out, but somehow I'm still conscious. There are more things she needs to know.

"I…" she's blushing too, and I can tell she has no idea why I'm bringing up these things.

"Just listen, okay? I'm trying to be honest. When we were in the Capitol and you were asleep in that stylist's shop, Gale and I had a conversation. He said you would choose whichever one of us that you couldn't survive without. It made me angry because he made you sound so cold, and I still feel awful for not standing up for you."

"I wasn't asleep…" she says softly, and it shocks me for a moment but I continue, and now I''ve come to the most vital part of all of this, although I didn't even realize it until this very moment.

"During the battle I was so confused. You were so important, but it felt like you were important because someone else had made you that way, the way they put those memories in my head. It was important that you stay alive. It was important you die. I couldn't tell what was mine and what wasn't, and it made me feel like I everything I was feeling, the love and the hate, were forced on me. I did things, like pull you out of the fire, and stop you from taking the nightlock, but I didn't know why, I just felt like I had to do them or… the world would end." I close the distance between us and gently grasp her shoulders so that she has to look at me. I'm trying to hold my hands steady, but the mere feel of her skin has sent me trembling in a way that has nothing to do with any sort of flashback.

"And then I came back to Twelve because I knew I had to but I didn't know what the reason was. I didn't expect you to run into my arms; in fact, I was certain that we would only ever be neighbors, maybe friends. There was whatever you felt, of course, which I had no idea about, but in addition to that, I would feel episodes start to happen if I thought about kissing you on the beach or if I saw you in those damn little shorts you wear as pajamas. It just seemed so definite that things could never be different. But then you knocked down all of those bees nests, and told off the construction workers, and covered me in puppies, and took off your shirt, and took me to that lake. Somewhere in-between those things and the quiet we spent together working on the book and just beingtogether, I realized something."

She's biting her lip and looking at me with those quicksilver eyes. My heart feels like it's about to explode out of my chest.

"No one ever made me love you. It was mine the whole time. They couldn't take it away from me, so they tried to twist it, but they couldn't even do that, not permanently. Katniss, you are the thing that tethers me to this world, to sanity. You're what kept pulling me back from the brink of madness, and now what keeps me here even though I am terrified that I might lose control. And it all scares me so much, because really, I don't feel like I have the right to ask this of you and…," I exhale sharply. This is it; "I have no way of knowing that you'll want me in your life in any capacity when everything is said and done. But there's nothing else I can do other than trust you. So I do." I drop my hands and shrug. "I trust you with everything. So… you do what you need to do, and I will be here. Always."

She has the curious look in her eyes again. Lifting her hand, she ghosts her fingers across my forehead, gently touching my eyebrow. She doesn't respond to anything I've said, just looks at me like she's discovered something that she was convinced had been lost.

"I've missed you," she whispers into the quivering silence.

From the tent, comes the sound of Rory's violin playing a haunting old love song. The back of my mind registers that it is now dark, and the air around us is slowly filling with the flickering light of hundreds of fireflies. Without thinking about it, I take one of her hands in mine, and wrap the other around her waist, pulling her close. She leans into me, not breaking eye contact, murmuring again, "I've missed you so much. But here you are. You're right here." I press a kiss to her forehead, and we slowly begin to dance.

When our lips finally find each other, I don't know where the dancing ends and the kisses begin.

I guess Annie knew what she was doing.

Chapter 10: Real

She's leading me home.

Her small hand is in mine, pulling and coaxing me to follow her quickly, quickly. She's gentle, but unrelenting. I follow like a man in a daze, reeling. Is this real? I feel the callouses on her fingers rub against mine as she tugs me up the hill and it grounds me. This is real, my mind repeats incredulously. It is dark, but in the light of the moon and stars I can see her dress swish around her legs. I want to kiss the soft skin behind her knees. I want to kiss her everywhere. When we reach the porch, I kiss under her ear, and on her shoulder, and then each corner of her lips.

My house is dark and silent, but on the doorknob is a note that comes away in my hand as I turn it.

"Sae let us in to K's," is all it says. In a small moment of confusion, I wonder how they knew this would happen. How could something seem so inevitable to everyone else, and yet so incredibly impossible to me? Katniss pulls the note out of my hands, and she lets it fly into the night, drawn away by the wind. Her eyes are wild.

I kiss her on the mouth.

We fall through the door and it closes behind us as we stumble to the floor and separate. For a moment, I feel a swell of uncertainty. What is supposed to happen now? We are alone. We are completely alone. I reach out and take her hand, then gently kiss the tip of every finger. My hands are shaking. My body is shaking and I cannot stop it.

She smiles slowly, gazing at me from under her eyelashes, and I am completely undone. I lean forward and kiss her hungrily, filled with the passion that has been slowly simmering for almost fourteen years. Since before I even understood it. I feel her hands run through my hair, as she kisses me back with equal fervor, pushing into me until I am leaning on my elbows.

Real. Real. Real.

Her nimble fingers unbutton the first three buttons on my shirt, and then she begins to kiss my collarbone, my neck. My head falls backwards. I can hear myself whispering her name into the darkness. She slides her hands across the expanse of my chest, leaving trails of fire in their wake. I am utterly consumed by her.

Is this how things happen after months, years, a lifetime of waiting? Are terrible moments meant to collide into each other and in their devastation emerge a beautiful reality?

How is this real?

I sit up and gently but firmly hold her at an arm's length.

"Katniss…" I begin to ask.

She looks up at me through heavy-lidded eyes that flicker and burn. I remember seeing them like this, as waves of salt water gently rocked against the shore. "I need you," she says, as she did then, but with a fragile longing in her voice that I have never heard before.

Somehow it tells me all I need to know.

In fits and starts, we make our way across the living room then up the stairs. She smells sweetly of trees and sweat and sunshine. I am intoxicated with the smell of her. On the middle stair, she pushes me firmly against the wall, and her deft fingers unbutton the rest of my shirt. She slides it off my shoulders, calloused hands scraping deliciously across my skin and I start to shake all over again. She ever so gently scratches her fingernails down my back, and I hear myself whimper.

It takes several minutes to get to the top of the stairs and down the hall. I am so distracted by the feel of her lips against mine that simple things like walking are barely even possible. Her fingers play with the hairs on the back of my neck, as I back her towards the bedroom door, and somehow I trip over the rug and we tumble onto the floor once more. She lands on her back, and I fall on my knees before her. The position is so like what happened when I lost myself, that I am shocked into stillness.

Katniss senses my terror, and she reaches up to me. "Shhhh, Peeta. This is real. You're gentle, so gentle. You're never going to hurt me." She plies me with kisses, on my hands, the insides of wrists and elbows, my neck, my ears. "I missed you so much," she whispers softly once more. She's been saying this over and over, like a mantra.

We stumble to our feet, and open the door of my bedroom. I step backwards through the entrance and pull her in after me, then catch her as she lightly falls into my arms.

"How are we even here?" I whisper into her hair.

"We were always going to end up here," she answers in a barely audible voice, as she runs her fingers up and down my chest.

I let out a small laugh that sounds like crying, but she silences me with another kiss that lasts for a blissful eternity. I feel her fingers fumbling with my belt buckle, and then my trousers have fallen into a pile on the floor. She gently leads me to sit on the bed, and kneels at my feet. With the softest of touches, she removes my prosthetic, placing tiny kisses all along the scarred skin where flesh and metal meet. My lungs have forgotten how to take in air.

Setting the prosthetic aside, she stands and looks down at me with the most serene, even gaze I have ever seen. Then, she grasps the hem of her dress and lifts it over her head. I hear the fabric fall to the ground with the softest of thumps.

"I hope you don't mind," she looks into my eyes and smiles gently. "I wanted us to match."

The scar-crossed lovers from District Twelve.

She kisses me again, and we fall backwards onto the bed, where she gently removes the last barriers between our skin. Is this happening? This is really happening. I need…

"I don't… I don't have anything for…" I try to say with my last remaining ounce of self-control.

"They gave me a shot," she murmurs, kissing my throat, "lasts for five years."

"Are you sure you want–"

"Yes," she interrupts with complete certainty.

Everything after this moment defies description.

---

There are no words for what we've done.

Katniss lies beside me, her dark waves wild against the pure white of the pillow. Many hours have passed, very few of them spent in slumber. I hold her hand to my lips, and her thumb softly grazes them over and over. Our bodies are so tangled together, I can't tell us apart. The light in the room is beginning to change as the fingers of dawn reach in through the open windows. Soon, we need to rise to begin the work that feeds our friends and neighbors.

Not yet, though.

After the breath and the heat and the fire and the life there is a wholeness in my mind and soul that I have not felt in so long. Maybe ever. I am not completely certain what this is, but I have an idea that is so desperately wonderful I can barely believe it. But I need to know.

It's a whisper.

"You love me. Real or not real?"

There is a softness in her eyes, and a light there that I've only ever seen in my wildest dreams.

"Real," she tells me.

I pull her to me in ecstasy once more.

..

Six months later, there arrives a cold, rainy day on the very cusp of winter and spring when I stay home from the bakery. Today I am only making a single loaf of bread. I fill it with nuts and dried fruit and hopes and dreams. As it bakes, I go to Haymitch's house and crouch next to him on the floor.

"I need your knife."

With bleary eyes, he asks, "What the hell for, boy?"

"I need to slice some bread. I'm making toast."

He hands it over without a word.

Chapter 11: Epilogue

Hope dances on my father's grave.

Her delicate, pale arms are held aloft as she spins, whipping her dark braids through the air. Her smiling blue eyes sparkle with joy. Her chubby blonde little brother tries to catch up, a look of dedicated concentration in his steely eyes. She flits away, giggling. He topples over, falling on top of some dandelions. Their seeds fly into the air and drift across the Meadow.

Dad would have loved this.

I can barely believe it myself. Katniss was so adamant that we would never have children, that we never could have children. And I accepted it. But that didn't mean that I didn't still long for them. I suppose it is impossible to hide something like that from someone who has been through so much with you, because she always knew. Every time a child came into the bakery and she saw that I noticed, her eyes would cloud over with guilt. I always smiled, and told her to stop. But when the day came when she informed me that she hadn't renewed her shot, and asked what exactly I was going to do about it, I threw her over my shoulder and took the stairs two at a time.

The pregnancy was difficult for her. We had to put away the picture of Prim, and the memory book. I would often come home to find her hidden in the dark of our bedroom closet. She spent many tearful hours on the phone with Annie and her mother. I tried so hard, but nothing could alleviate her terror and despair until the moment she held our baby in her arms. Carrying him was a little easier for her, but difficult in other ways. Realizing our daughter was about to have a sibling made me long for mine constantly, and I often found myself roaming the Meadow alone. The first month after his arrival, I woke in the middle of each night, taking him sleeping from his bassinet and rocking him for hours as both he and Katniss dreamt on peacefully.

She is beside me now, a thoughtful look in her eyes. I know what she is thinking. How can we possibly tell them what lies underneath their playground?

I have no clear idea, really. But I know we'll do it together when it is time.

The years have been kinder to us than most, perhaps to make up for the brutal early days of our young adulthood. But I cherish every faint smile line that has crept onto her face. Lines that I know I helped to put there.

Twelve has flourished. To replace the industry of coal, a factory was built to manufacture medicines from the abundant natural life that surrounds us. Vick works there now. In fact, he practically runs the place. Thom began to farm, just as he always hoped he would, but somehow also managed to be elected Mayor without asking for the job. I certainly voted for him. Delly stayed in the Capitol with Julia. Together they opened a treatment center for people who struggle with mental illness, with Delly as the administrator and Julie as the head neurologist. I miss them both, but they visit as often as they can. My mother-in-law arrives to see her grandchildren every three months, like clockwork. Annie and her son often join her. He is an absolute hellion at nineteen, and looks just like his father. Johanna and Gale come out on "official business," but I think that's just an excuse. Their children seem to love it here.

We are, all of us, still a little bit broken, though. Some more than others. Haymitch started raising those awful geese, but he never did stop drinking. I'm pretty certain it's no coincidence that his monthly delivery of liquor is often accompanied by a clandestine visit from Effie, and I am glad for this, at least. Rory moved into a small cabin he built for himself in the isolated woods. He rarely comes into town, and already the other young children have developed a sort of mythology about him – the wild man of the woods. I don't think he ever got over the loss of Prim. Honestly, I don't think anyone really has.

Katniss' nightmares still get bad with a regularity that we have both just resigned ourselves to. There are occasionally days when she cannot bring herself to get out of bed at all. I bring her cheese buns and kisses. I hold her and tell her I love her while Posy, who has just become the schoolteacher, watches the children. It's all I can do but she tells me it is enough. It has to be enough because there is nothing else.

The flashbacks never completely went away, but I haven't hurt anyone since that terrible night nineteen years ago. When they come, which is always on days that I feel the strain of immense anxiety, I grab on to the back of a chair and hold on for dear life. It's not nearly as bad as it once was; I don't even black out anymore. When the episode has passed, I sit at the kitchen table and with trembling hands I make a list of everything beautiful I have that hasn't been taken away from me, of everything beautiful that I've had, even for a short time, and everything beautiful that I have been given. Afterwards, I bake or I paint. Eventually the stress fades.

Life, for the most part, is blissfully uneventful.

And when I incredulously wonder aloud, as I sometimes do, if this marvelous existence can really be my life, my daughter wrinkles her mother's nose and looks at me with my father's eyes.

"You're so silly, Daddy. 'Course it's real."

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of The Ashes of District Twelve