Disclaimer: The Hunger Games and all its characters belong to Suzanne Collins.

I am just an image of something so much greater
I am just a picture frame, I am not the painter
Where do I begin, can I shed this skin
What is this I feel within
It's only love, it's only pain
Human - Civil Twilight

There are good days, and there are bad days, and on rare, rare occasions there are great moments.

This is a bad day.

Peeta recognizes this the moment he wakes. There is a strange still fogginess in his eyes, his mind, his limbs - the world. He gets out of bed (still his bed, all his own, locked away in his lonely house, in his part of town, in his lonely little District) and sees the TV in the corner, smells a murky rose-smell and lashes out at whatever is closest.

(clumsily bandages his bleeding knuckles and leaves the broken pieces of the ceramic pot and its leaking contents on the floor. there will be a stain)

Haymitch drops by, stumbling up the last step into the kitchen (Peeta vaguely notes that this is something he only does when he is S.O.B.E.R. and then spends the next twenty minutes trying to remember REAL Haymitch and not the slobbering, nebulous, black-eyed monster created by tracker jacker venom). S.O.B.E.R. Haymitch smells like roses and blood.

[REAL NOT REAL]

Peeta remembers at noon that he was supposed to help with something, but the thought of voluntarily going to see the gray-green MuttKatniss is overwhelming, so instead he locks his front door and bakes trays and trays of cookies which he decorates poorly, until he remembers that Katniss is real, alive, and they'd meant to work on The Book today.

He means to call her, explaining away his absence, but then he thinks of all the muddled memories in his head and the fog in the world and it all becomes too much, too much, too MUCH.

(the bandages keep the splinters out of his hands when he smashes a chair in two)

The next four hours are spent drinking the white liquor he'd purged from Haymitch's three days ago (this explains why the man came to visit him S.O.B.E.R) as he stares at a news feed of Paylors real election (not the hurried, hustle-rush of installing her into command, but real people really deciding this new Game). The flash of white hair and beady eyes that is REAL NOT REAL makes him vomit everything up, so he turns off the TV and sits, sits, sits...

He wakes up to the sound of a broom sweep, sweep, sweeping up his mess. A moment of blurry-confusion while he wonders why his assassin in cleaning up his mess, and then clarity; this is Katniss.

Everything goes cloudy as he fights to remember the name, hisses it out in short breaths: Katniss Katniss .

When she looks up at him there are tears in her eyes. He thinks he should probably care.

"You're here to kill me. Real?"

The slump of her shoulders makes him feel a twinge of something. Guilt?

"Not real."

"Kiss me?"

"No," she says, frustration in her voice, while she tosses trays and trays of burnt cookies in a bin.

Katniss, girl on fire, bursts into flames before him, and he grips his chair hard. She's going to burn him. Burn them all. Burn them up until there's nothing left but ash.

The flames hiss and crackle, and he hears her scream, but then there are words, words he should listen to, words he should hear.

"NOT REAL! Peeta! Not real!"

Not Real. Not realnotrealnotreal.

The fire goes out.

The scared look in her eyes makes him want to comfort her, but he cane barely remember she's real, let alone how Peeta used to comfort Katniss.

"You should go home," he says.

(this is not right. wrong. all wrong. but he is not Peeta and she is not Katniss and this is not real. there are missing ingredients and the dough won't rise. he'll have to throw this batch out.)

She turns her back to him while she cleans vomit from his floor.

Peeta goes back to sleep.