CHAPTER 1

"Peeta and I grow back together."

We learn to offer our ears and arms to each other's sweaty nightmares and tormented flashbacks and it's like we're back in the arena again, when they announced that the rules had changed and there could be two winners from the same district. That same surge of relief that swooped over me as I screamed his name comes to my rescue every night, as he embraces me and reminds me it's all over, fishing me out of dreams of lost children and bloody mutts. And I am finally able to reciprocate his attitudes with the same amount of kindness he offers me.

Well, almost the same. While I fully commit to aiding him during those tempestuous moments, offering him the same amount of compassion and care as he does me, I am still not able to say that I love him. I do, he is one of the few people I wholeheartedly care about left. But I do not and have not ever loved him as he loves me. In the romantic sort of way.

I cannot dig up any logical explanation for that other than that the romantic part of my existence has been completely erased from my body after so much horror. It must be this. I, Katniss Everdeen, am no longer capable of loving anyone, even the most deserving person, in a romantic way.

Although this is what would make the most sense, there is still a slight detail that keeps me from fully trusting this hypothesis. Gale.

Not the Gale from now. The old Gale. The Gale who managed to make me smile even though I rarely did. The Gale who was more like an extension of my own body than a hunting partner. The Gale who talked about running away into the woods and expressed a suppressed desire for children.

All that was before I had even been reaped, and yet I had not ever, even for half a second, had any romantic thoughts about me and him. He was also deserving, wasn't he? The boy every girl in the Seam desired. The handsome hunter and responsible head of his family. My best friend.

Maybe I just wasn't born romantic, then. Maybe I wasn't just practical in my day-to-day life, while hunting and taking care of the family. Romance wasn't practical, as I well knew. It made you vulnerable and dependent on something that could easily be taken away from you. Take my mother, for example, after my father died. She was everything but practical, as she sunk into the depression that almost got me and Prim killed. I could never put myself in that position, could I? I knew better ever since I was a child.

"I think I got the ribbon right, Katniss," Peeta's voice startled me. He noticed and softly placed his hand over mine, "Did I scare you?"

"No," I said quietly and discreetly snatched my hand away. He hadn't. I just didn't like being caught thinking these things about him when all he gave me was kindness and true love. It felt like I was cheating, even though we had not taken our relationship back there again. Every time he tried inserting romance back between us, I fled, feeling even more guilty, if it was possible. Considering the dreadful tracker-jacker memories he had been given of me, it must have been quite a struggle for him to get back in love with me. And although it would be easy for me to let him kiss me when we embraced after a rough night, I did not.

"So, what do you think?" he smiled at me, proudly displaying his painting of Lady, Prim's goat, with a pink ribbon around her neck. It was for the memory book I was putting together and it was absolutely perfect, almost as if he'd met the goat before… before she and Prim were gone.

My teary eyes and warm embrace answered him and his smile got even bigger, if it was possible.

"Good," he said, "I want to make sure everything is perfect."

I know, Peeta. You will try and try and fight until you get it right. Me, on the other hand, will not even keep my face still when you try to kiss me, because as simple as it sounds, I can't do anything for anyone except myself.

"I'm going hunting," I announce as I stand up and move towards the door. Guilt is heavy on my shoulders and I turn back, trying to soften up my face, "But I loved the painting, Peeta. You got her just right."

He smiles at me again and I turn before guilt overpowers me again.

I kill one squirrel just so I don't come back empty handed. Peeta is not stupid. I could tell that his last smile was dimmer than the preceding ones. He knows me better than anyone else now and he can tell something is on my mind.

But what could I say to him? After all he's been through, I owe him now more than ever. The bread is nothing in comparison to this. But at the same time, I could not lie. I did once, and when we got out of that arena and he found out my kisses had just been strategies to keep us alive…

No, I will not think of that.

I am still learning how to handle myself again, I cannot afford to think for two. I will focus on my book. I will hunt. I will keep things between Peeta and I just the way they are until… Until when? He will never stop loving me and I will never be able to live without him here. We only have each other. The others that have returned to District 12 are simply familiar faces, but none of them have been my close friends even before any of this happened. And Haymitch, despite having been there for me (even if most of the times, drunk) all along, does not count. We tolerate each other and know what it's like to be each other, but that is that and that has always been that.

Peeta is truly my only friend. I'd gladly live alongside of him forever as best friends, but I know it's now what he wants. He is not like me now and has never been. He has never seen love the way I have, in that cold and practical sense. In fact, while I have never felt that kind of love, he has felt it for me ever since we were kids. He depends on me, and I guess I do on him too, but less so.

Suddenly I feel wrong. Being here feels wrong. Even though these woods hold mostly good memories for me, from before the Hunger Games, I do not feel right standing here anymore. I came back to District 12 because it was my home and I thought I belonged here. I don't anymore. Hunting seems pointless, with no Prim and mother at home to feed. Feeding Peeta and Haymitch instead feels odd, since I never had to. Actually I still don't have to, us three being victors and having enough money to live with. Besides, there is Greasy Sae looking out for us, in case we forget to.

There is nothing here for me. I was wrong. I do not belong here anymore. Especially living in the Victor's Village. I had felt it the first time I moved here, but at the time I still had Prim and mother. Now that I am alone, now that everything that held me here and made it my home is gone or different. I realize there is no point in staying.

Feeling strangely detached, I make my way back home and make a point that Peeta sees the squirrel in my hand. He watches me intently, a strangely familiar look on his face. The same one he gave me in the train, after we won the Hunger Games and he realized I had been pretending all along.

"Peeta, I – "

"Save it," he snaps abruptly, his eyes falling to the ground and his face going hard, "I should have known better."

"But I –"

"Katniss, it's okay. I don't know why I was stupid enough to fall a second time. To think you would ever love me. I just…"

"I do love you!" I protest and strut over to where he is sitting so that he will face me, "But I just don't belong here anymore!" I explain everything about how I don't feel right here anymore, leaving out the parts involving him of course.

"So you're saying that this is not about me?" he narrows his eyes with a sarcastic tone to his voice, "That old 'it's not you, it's me' speech?"

"No," this time it's my eyes that are avoiding his, "but I don't see how that has to do with what I'm telling you now."

"It has everything to do with it," he sounds tired, "If you did love me, you wouldn't care that this doesn't feel like home. You would make it feel like home with me. That's how I feel, you know. I lost everything I had before here too."

It's true and I don't know what to say to that.

"Come with me," I say instead. What? Why? His eyes dart upwards to meet mine and the guilt is just unbearable. But what am I supposed to do? Leave him here with nothing but his flashbacks?

"Where… where would we go?" he asks quietly.

"The Capitol. We'd keep busy there." I haven't thought it out, but it's what makes sense to me now. He seems to weigh it in for a moment, and then lowers his eyes again,

"I don't know. It wouldn't make a difference. Here or there… you'd still feel the same."

Now I lose patience.

"Peeta, this is so unfair!" I let out, feeling my eyes teary with guilt and exasperation, "I try and I try and I do love you, but just because it's a different kind of love it doesn't mean it doesn't exist! I am sorry that it's not enough, I wish it was, but I can't change it and I won't lie to you and make things up!"

"It's not like you haven't made things up before," he regrets it the moment he says it. I can see shame and humiliation flooding his face. He feels it, but he wishes he hadn't admitted it. That he would be fine with me pretending to love him, rather than being declined but told the truth.

"Peeta.."

"I don't mean that," he blurts out and storms up out of the room, his face red. I hear him banging the front door and I watch him through the window make his way to his house for the first time in weeks. He had been sleeping with me for some time now and the house immediately feels even more unfamiliar as the silence creeps in.

I don't sleep all night, which definitely feels different, since I had been managing to sleep a few hours with his arms around me these past days. Instead, I make a few practical and short calls and arrange my departure, including Peeta in my plans just in case he decides to come. Then I pack my few possessions and his art material along with my precious memory book. Since it's nowhere close to dawn yet, I keep myself busy cleaning the house until I hear a knock on the door.

"Lover boy is breaking his entire house down and I thought I'd come over to check on you," Haymitch taunts me with alcohol on his breath as I open the front door.

I don't answer, but let him in. I head straight to the kitchen and bring out a bottle of white liquor and pour us both some.

"Just like old times," Haymitch smiles unpleasantly. Last time we drank together I wasn't feeling at my greatest either.

"I tried, Haymitch. But I can't lie to him," I say, feeling the liquid tear pieces of my throat away as it descends.

"Not saying you should."

We drink in silence and I feel glad I have him, despite my thoughts about him earlier. We are so much alike each other in some ways, we don't have to speak.

"What are you going to do? I heard you are headed to the Capitol," he says.

"I want to finish my book and publish it. I guess I'll start with that," I offer lamely. I have no clue what I'm doing.

"Sounds like a good plan," his voice is dripping of sarcasm.

I scowl at him until he chuckles and speaks again,

"Look, Paylor called me to invite me to come too. She thinks I'm the only one who can know some sense into you, which is not entirely untrue and we both know it. But I won't go."

"I wouldn't ask you to."

"I know. But I think you should be alone for a while. She said you told her Peeta is going too, but I just don't see how, considering –"

"I just said it in case he changed his mind," I explain and he nods in assent. He pours us some more liquor and continues, "In any case, Paylor and I both agreed you should keep busier than that meager plan of yours."

I open my mouth to protest in defense of my book and he lifts a finger and cuts me off,

"Not that the book is unimportant. It is probably going to be the most meaningful published text of this new era and all. But you and I both know you will not be content with working on it all day and I have a solution for that."

He goes on to explain about a new hunting squad the Capitol is putting together to collect different types of game that will be studied, catalogued and later on artificially manufactured in order to tend to the growing food demand. They plan on extending the Capitol's wealth and abundance to the rest of the districts and need to step up the food production. Why they hadn't done it yet is a mystery to me, but the idea sparks a bit of hope in my mind, both for the future of Panem and for me. I could picture myself doing that. Hunting not to feed others, as I have no one left to care for, but to end the widespread hunger and injustice I have battled with ever since I was born.

I immediately set down my liquor. No point in drinking now. I feel like part of me is back, an electric surge of hope pulsing in my veins. Haymitch smiles and mumbles something about checking on Peeta, and takes off with the rest of the bottle.

Dawn is beginning to peek through the night skies when I go out to the woods for one last time. My goodbye is quick and before I know it, I am boarding the hovercraft that has come for me.