It isn't until the door is shut tight behind her that she feels it. Fear. Creeping through her limbs gripping her heart with a cold, iron fist.
Peeta hasn't had an episode like this in weeks; months, even.
Katniss snaps herself back to the matter at hand, shaking memories of past episodes from her head. Peeta is there, kneeling by the table in the kitchen, his hands grasping the back of one of the chairs so hard his knuckles have long since turned white.
She goes to him, despite his choked out warnings from earlier about "getting out" and "finding Haymitch."
He tells her the same thing every time about his episodes after they're over. "I can't control myself, Katniss, it's too dangerous for you to be there with me." But she isn't about to leave him and save herself. She isn't afraid of him when he gets like this.
When his body shakes with anger that is not his own, and sweat drips from his forehead and down his back as he tries to remember that he is Peeta Mellark of District 12.
Not a mutt from the Capitol, molded and warped into doing their bidding.
Katniss slides her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. The fear, once rising, is receding, and she closes her hands over his.
"It's okay, Peeta, it's not real."
She peels his hands off of the wooden chair; holds them in her own. His eyes are shut and his breathing loud and harsh.
"The cookies you gave to old Sae this morning made her granddaughter so happy, I think you give children cookies just so that they can worship the ground you walk on."
The tension in his body remains, even as she leans down and wraps her arms around his shoulders, hands still holding his, her cheek pressed to his ear.
"All the children in the District are in love with you. They'll be coming out to the Victor's Village to fight me off soon."
She kneels down too, one knee on either side of his legs. Katniss moves her arms to his waist, rocking him side to side gently.
"Deep in the meadow, under the willow. A bed of grass, a soft green pillow..."
Katniss doesn't sing anymore. Not even when she is alone in the woods, hunting. But when Peeta is like this, struggling to hang on to what's real and to let go of what isn't, she sings, softly, into his ear.
Peeta slumps against her, his body heavy and his face splotchy. She releases on of his hands to wipe his hair back from his forehead.
"You love me, real or not real?" he asks, turning his head so the his nose is pressing against the underside of her jaw.
Her knees are beginning to ache from kneeling on the hard wood floor, and Peeta's weight grows heavier with every passing second.
Katniss combs her fingers through his hair, tucking sweat-damp blond curls behind the ear that isn't pressed to her skin. "Real."
Somehow they end up sprawled out on the kitchen floor, Peeta's arm slung across her waist turning the silver band on her ring finger, his head on shoulder.
"You shouldn't stay, I told you. I might lose control and hurt you."
Katniss rolls her eyes, but continues to sift her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "I'm not going to leave you."
Peeta tries to lift his head, but Katniss pushes him back down. "You won't hurt me, Peeta, I know you won't."
He would never hurt her. She knows that. Whatever he might think, Katniss knows Peeta Mellark.
Not Peeta Mellark the deranged, hijacked mutt, or the Hunger Games Victor.
But Peeta Mellark, the boy with the bread. The one that fell in love with her when he was six, and gives cookies to children, and saved her life more times than she would ever admit.
She knows Peeta even when he does not know himself.
And on top of that, she loves him too.