Stay away from the Mellark boys.

It was the mantra of our childhood. There's hesitancy whenever I'm around any of the baker's sons. It's been trained into me since I was a little girl. But now, as I watch Peeta sleeping against the glass pane of the train window, I wonder what my mother will say.

I tried to stay away from Peeta, but our paths were tied from the moment Effie called his name out and he took his place beside me as tribute. My eyes drew to him and then quickly flitted away. I'd never so much as spoken a word to any of the Mellark sons, and now the youngest was boarding a train with me.

I didn't talk to him at all. Not at first. Haymitch smirked and thought it was some kind of strategy. But it was as if Peeta didn't realize I was shutting him out. Or he didn't care. When he stood next to me in training, I pretended he wasn't there. When he whispered a joke in my ear during dinner, I didn't react. When he took my hand during the tribute parade, I soaked in the praise of the crowd, but the moment the cameras were gone I ripped my fingers away from his and stormed to my room. When he confessed his unrequited love for me during his interview, I reacted by slamming violently him against the wall of our suite, breaking a vase and messing up his hands.

Stay away from the Mellark boys.

Haymitch wanted us to play it up. The whole star-crossed lovers bit. But the moment the countdown was over, I bolted from the Cornucopia and as far away from the baker's boy as I could.

I wish it hadn't shocked me when he joined the Careers, but it did. It made my stomach feel rancid when I spied on them from the treetops. When I heard Peeta playing up the Lover Boy act, telling them how to hunt me down. Making himself desirable. Giving himself value.

It wasn't until I sent a hive of tracker jackers plummeting into their camp that I realized I wasn't being played, they were. After I was stung and tripping out of my mind he came back for me. Peeta shoved me away to safety, hiding me in the woods before turning back to take on Cato and giving me a chance to flee. Peeta could have run. Cato would have been satisfied just killing me. But instead, he took on a Career alone and drunk and dizzy from venom.

I couldn't make sense of it. Rue said he liked me. A Mellark wouldn't like me. He's just another stuck up Townsperson and I'm just another dirty girl from the Seam. It was an act. He was vying for sponsors.

Then why did he nearly die for me?

I screamed when I lost Rue. After I buried her in flowers, after I sang her to sleep, I screamed. You shouldn't scream in an Arena. It draws in your predators. It repels sponsors. Still. I screamed.

I felt absolutely and wholly wrecked.

But then the rules changed. I could live, and so could Peeta.

My mind told me to stop. Stay away from the Mellark boys. But I took off in a sprint. I needed to find him. He'd saved my life twice now, and it was a debt I could finally repay. Even if he was a Mellark.

When I found him caked in mud and gravely injured, Peeta acted surprised.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, still not sure I was really in front of him, even as I gingerly stripped his clothes and cleaned his wound.

"You're hurt because you tried to save me," I reasoned. He could certainly see I owed him that.

"I did better than try," he joked, even as his skin grew pale and his wound seeped with puss. He gritted teeth as I forced him to his feet and hid him in a cave.

He didn't get better. He got worse hour over hour. I had handcuffed myself to an invalid. I should have just left him. I should have run. But as I watched him sleep, shivering from fever, I knew I'd never be able to do that. Then there was the feast. An answer. A way to make things right. I wondered what my mother thought as she watched me risk my life for the baker's son. As I nearly lost it.

I passed out from the blood loss next to Peeta's sleeping body. He woke to find me there, pale and cold and drained. He shook me hard and cried out my name. When I came to there was a desperation in his voice I couldn't register. It's just an act. It's supposed to be just an act. Except now we both knew it wasn't. We weren't pretending anymore.

Peeta made it though. With the medicine I'd won in the Feast, he'd almost entirely recuperated. It was strange, then, being around him when he was lucid. Talking. He wasn't that bad. I might even have liked him were our circumstances different. But somewhere in the back of my mind, the words cycled like song lyrics you can't get out of your head – Stay away from the Mellark boys.

It was in the end that I knew those words were wrong. When the rule change was revoked. When the only thing standing between me and survival was a Mellark. It was when Peeta threw his weapon to the ground. When he swore at me frantically when I dropped mine.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked. Words he'd said before, when I tried to mend his body, when I tried to put him back together. But I didn't have the right words to say back. Then he ripped the tourniquet from his leg and collapsed to the ground. He was determined to get me out with my life, even if it meant losing his own.

It was in that moment I knew I couldn't leave without him. That I'd never leave this Arena, not really. Not without Peeta.

I dropped to my knees beside him.

"Stay with me," I whispered as I felt him slipping away, my thumb running over his cheek bone.

"Always," he'd whispered before losing consciousness. His skin was white, his fingers cold.

No. No no no. I dug desperately in my pockets, finally finding the crimson poison I'd been searching for. Nightlock.

They need their victor.

Well screw them. They can't have one.

I could barely taste the toxic juice on my tongue when I'd heard Claudius Templesmith blaring on the speakers, declaring us both winners. I spit the berries in the dirt, wiping at my tongue with my hands, swishing my mouth with water from the lake, spitting it on the ground. I turned back and grabbed the fabric, trying to twist it back around Peeta's leg. They brought us up in the hovercraft, just like the do all the other winners, but Peeta was already gravely injured. I screamed his name and beat my fists on the glass before what little poison had slipped past my tongue found me and I finally passed out.

We were carried out of the hovercraft and into the tribute center. I saw the tapes. The Capitol kept our status under wraps. No one knew if we were alive or dead. I had no idea what had become of Peeta. I didn't see Haymitch or Effie or Cinna.

It wasn't until the night of the interview, when I boarded the stage, that I saw him. That I knew.

Peeta lived.

I ran across the stage, throwing myself in his arms, knocking him off balance. But as my chest pressed against his I could feel my heart slamming hard against my ribs. I could feel his, too, keeping pace.

He hadn't made it out whole. As I stared at his metal leg, guilt ate my stomach like rot in wood. Peeta lifted my chin, forcing my gaze away from what was absent and toward what was real. Peeta. He'd survived.

"Thank you," he said softly. "For saving my life."

Peeta's body stilled next to mine when he saw the footage with the berries. He shot his eyes to me.

"Katniss? Why would you –"

"Shut up," I said, wrapping my arms around his neck. "I wasn't leaving there without you," I whispered. I didn't think the cameras heard it but they had, and the audience swooned.

I thought things had gone as best they could. We were going home. Both of us. But Haymitch warned me under his alcohol-soaked breath that something was wrong. That they weren't happy. That the president wasn't happy. We'd made a fool of the Capitol. We'd made a fool of him. We made them submit to us in front of the whole country.

"You need to show Snow that you are head-over-heels, willing-to-die in love with this boy," Haymitch told me when the train had stopped. When we were alone out on the tracks. "That's why you pulled that stunt with the berries. It was nothing more than that."

"But it wasn't that. I just… they took him. And I couldn't let them win," I respond.

"They always win," Haymitch said coldly, taking a swig of liquor and then heading back to the train, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

And so now, watching Peeta sleep, I feel a heat under my skin. A need to protect him. I need to keep him safe.

I slide my hand across his lap and weave his fingers in mine. Peeta stirs, looking down at our entwined hands blearily before smiling and drifting back to sleep.

He's mine to protect. To keep safe.

I try to ignore my mother's words as the ring in my mind.

Stay away from the Mellark boys.

A/N: Hey lovelies! Thank you for reading my new fic! The title comes from Romeo's heartbreaking exclamation - I defy you, stars! This one is full on AU, hard playing up on the whole star-crossed theme. I hope you like it!