Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I am not earning any money with this (I wish I would, though.). Suzanne Collins does. Quite a lot, I would presume.

Note: I recently read the Hunger Games Trilogy and became a little obsessed with the star-crossed lovers from District 12, who weren't really lovers at all until in the end, when they finally were. Although I am working on my own first novel, I just couldn't concentrate on anything but the fact how Katniss bugged me because the girl would just not notice that she was totally in love with Peeta! I mean, seriously, who wasn't halfway throughout book one? So I just had to get this out of my system! :-D

The following story picks up in the end of book two, just before Peeta was abducted, because after that, things between Katniss and Peeta really started to go downhill. Besides, there was too much killing of people and peoples' sanity in "Mockingjay" so I'm just going to ignore it and find another ending. Not that I don't totally love S. Collins book, but after "Catching Fire" I felt Peeta and Katniss had already been through enough! After all, Joss Whedon was right, when he said:

"There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it's called 'fan fiction'."

Chapter One

I'm sorry, Peeta, I think. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. Save him? More likely I stole his last chance at life, condemned him, by destroying the force field. Maybe, if we had all played by the rules, they might have let him live.

The hovercraft materializes above me without warning. If it was quiet, and a mockingjay perched close at hand, I would have heard the jungle go silent and then the bird's call that precedes the appearance of the Capitol's aircraft. But my ears could never make out anything so delicate in this bombardment.

The claw drops from the underside until it's directly overhead. The metal talons slide under me. I want to scream, run, smash my way out of it but I'm frozen, helpless to do anything but fervently hope I'll die before I reach the shadowy figures awaiting me above. They have not spared my life to crown me victor but to make my death as slow and public as possible.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, page 458-459 by Suzanne Collins

I prepare to fight a last and desperate fight. If they are going to kill me, I will at least go down taking some of them with me. Although I am determined to be strong for one last time, tears well up in my eyes, making my sight swim and blur. For a second the outlines of people come into sight, before I sense something coming up behind me. After a strong, sharp pain on the back of my head, the world grows dark and I feel nothing.

The darkness stays at first when I regain consciousness, only becomes less thick and impenetrable. I can hear a low distant humming around me, and the blackness before my eyes fades to a dark grey, with moving flecks of a brighter shade. Somehow I can't yet find the strength to force my eyelids open so I keep lying still, listening to the humming in my head and trying to regain the memory of what happened and how I got here. For what seems like a long time, all I can remember is the morning of the reaping and how prettily the sun broke in the branches of the trees as I strode through the woods, hunting for game. My head starts hurting, badly, as slowly but surely, the events of that day come back to me. The reaping, Prim's name on Effie Trinket's lips. I volunteer! I volunteer as a tribute. Then the boy: Peeta Melaark. The name seems to hit a raw spot in my brain because within a heartbeat everything, the games, the pretend, the victory, the nightmares, the silence between us, the victory tour, the nights in his arms, the games all over again, comes back to me. It hurts so much now, I feel I can't take it and now it is not just my head.

Slowly, the humming around me gets louder as I try, try my hardest, to just open my eyes and finally wake from this daze I am stuck in. Then suddenly, I manage and the humming makes way for an earsplitting silence. My heart is hammering against my chest as I sit up too abruptly and stare into the room around me.

Two things I notice at once. I am in a hospital, wires and drain tubes coming out machines and into my body. The second is that Gale is sitting next to my bed, sunken into his chair and obviously fast asleep. The next thoughts my mind can forms are: I am not dead. The arena blew up, but I got rescued. They did not kill me after that. Then, and this has me on shaky, weak feet within seconds, ignoring all the cables in me, Where is Peeta? I am here, but where is he? It was my dying wish, my only mission: keep Peeta alive. Haymitch and I had a deal.

"Katniss!" Gales voice is full of joy. His second shout tells me he does not approve of my sudden mobility. "Katniss! Lay down!" Quickly he is up on his feet and gently trying to push me back on the bed again as I give my beast to fight back with a swimming head and his name on the tip of my tongue, that seems to just not work as I'm used to yet. I try several times, before it comes out, inarticulate and almost incoherent.

"Peeta!"

"Katniss, please, just don't get up, okay? I will get a doctor. Please stay!" I hear Gale pleading. His hands are stretched out over me, as though to keep me down, but I think he's not actually touching me. I would have felt touching because obviously I am not paralyzed or anything. Good, I think. My mind is starting to run a tad more smoothly. It's strange, feeling myself coming back into me like that. A thousand questions crash in on my mind but there is one thing, clear above all, one thing I have to ask.

"Did I do it? Is Peeta alive?" I see the hurt look in his face, but I am far from caring about his scarred pride.

"He is that important to you, huh? That you ask for him before you ask for your mother or Prim?" Is he? I feel a pang of guilt knotting my guts and turning my stomach. Of course I want to see my mother and Prim. Her most of all, but I left them as safe as they could ever be back home in District 12 when I left to fight in the Games for a second time. He was with me then, and I vowed to myself to keep him safe. "I had a mission. I wanted to keep him alive." I say irritated at the fact that Gale won't answer my question and a horrible thought creeps into my mind. "Is he dead?"

"No, he is not. He's fine. Rest for a minute, I'll get a doctor. You've been out for a long time."

"Gale, wait!" I call as loudly as my pounding head allows me. "Tell me what happened!"

He pauses in his steps, though I can see only reluctantly and while still looking at the door as if he hopes for a doctor to rush in any moment. But now that the first wave of fear for Peetas live has receded a little, other questions demand to be answered and there's no way I'm letting Gale get anyone before I know what happened and whether I am safe or have to fear a squat of Peacekeepers bustling in under President Snows command and turning me into the easiest target practice in Panem.

But nothing like that happens. And from what Gale tells me, it seems like I never have to fear anything like this happening again. Snow is gone, his government is gone. Already during our Victory Tour Peeta and I have felt the anger of the people, have felt the change in their attitudes, have felt the aggression against the repression of the Capitol. Apparently things have really gotten out of control only shortly after we have been sent in the arena and a sudden, violent but successful subversion has deprived Snow and his government of all his power. I have been unconscious for almost a week. Apparently in that time, things have changed a lot. People, especially the leaders of the rebellion that have been waiting and plotting in a secret facility in District 13 which is, as Gale tells me, not as war-ravaged as the Capitol wanted us to believe. District 12 was one of the first to rebel and many men and women lost their lives as they rose to free themselves from suppression. Prim and my mother however, are alive and well, hoping to hear news about me waking up any day. All these information crashes in on my still weak and dizzy head as I lay back in my hospital bed. Could it really be? Is it possible that anything I have hoped and wished for has come true? Snow is gone, the rebels have declared the Hunger Games over forever. I am alive, my family is home, safe and sound. Gale is out of danger too. And Peeta. The sudden longing to see him almost overwhelms me as I let this mind-bending realization wash over me.

"Where did they take Peeta?" I wonder why he is not here at my bedside instead of Gale. Not that I am not grateful but after all we have been through, after all the times I have woken up from sickness finding him keeping watch at my side, I can't help to fear that something is terribly wrong about him not being here. Maybe it is all just too good to be true and I am looking for the proverbial worm in this shiny, red apple of life I feel I've been handed. Or Maybe it was all too much for him? I have often wondered how much more he will take until he finally tells me to fuck off and leave him alone. I never thought about how that might have made him feel, when I asked him to stay in my bed, let him comfort me from my nightmares, while all the time he knew I did not do it out of love. Or did I? It must finally have happened, the thing I knew was bound to happen sooner or later: Good and kind Peeta Melaark has finally figured out what kind of person I am. And who could ever love such a person?

This thought shakes me to my very core. It feels like the few long moment in the arena when Peetas heart has stopped all over again. I gulp and blink hysterically, trying desperately not to break into tears before Gale, who has been so loyally waiting at my bedside for me to wake up. He notices something is wrong anyway and is on my bed within seconds, wrapping his arms around me. The physical contact is comforting, though it is not the contact the I desire, that can make me feel calm and peaceful and whole.

"Hey, Catnip!" Gale says softly. "What's wrong? I know this is a lot to digest, but all of it is good news."

"Yeah. I know. It's just…" I can't tell him what I fear, I just can't say it. To him least of all people. I'm only just beginning to see it clearly myself. And I almost fall to pieces and bury my face in my hands as the tears start to streams down my cheeks.

"Katniss, you're awake!"

My head jerks up at the familiar voice so soft and warm and full of joy. I stare. Peetas has the widest, most beautiful smile on his face, his blue eyes shining with happiness and my heart skips a beat.