Author's note: Obviously whatever you recognize is not mine. It's Suzanne Collins', in case you were wondering. I promised myself no more fan-fictions, and yet here I am. I finished the Hunger Games trilogy last night and couldn't take this story out of my head, so I know I have to write it down to get over it and go on with my life. This has not been beta-read, and I am not an English mother tongue (Mamma mia, I am Italiana!) so excuse my grammar, vocabulary, typos and anything that might create any discomfort to you while reading this. If you want to beta this for me, by all means, send me a correct version of it in my inbox. If you don't, no worries. I don't really mind. It is just because I need to get on with my life really. This story starts exactly at the end of the last chapter and goes on until the Epilogue. I felt like too much was left out at the end about Peeta and Katniss and needed to fill in the blanks.

Chapter 1

So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"

I tell him, "Real."

His arm tightens around my shoulders and I just snuggle closer to him. In the shadow of my room – suddenly I wonder if this is our room now – it is hard to make out an expression on Peeta's face, but somehow I know he is smiling. His hand finds mine on his chest and he plays with my fingers for a while before he takes it firmly in his grip and his cheek leans against my head. We don't say anything else, we fall asleep and sleep through the night with no nightmares, neither of us, and I know that because when I wake up we are still in the same position of when we fell asleep.

xxx

Things seem to change and yet to be the same. Now that I know something more about me, who I love, who I want spend my life with, who I can't live without, I feel suddenly happier. Nobody seems to notice though, not Greasy Sae when she comes in to make us breakfast, nor her granddaughter nor Haymitch. That makes me feel even more thrilled about my new discovery. There are only a bunch of people that live in the Victors' Village of 12 right now, and it is not easy to keep a secret from them or even to do something privately without others knowing. It feels wonderful to have your private life for yourself after it has been distorted on television for everyone to see. I am surprised as to see that my real private life that nobody knows about it and the not real one are the same.

Today, I want to go hunting and a really stupid idea crosses my mind. I want Peeta to come with me. I think that would mean coming home with nothing in the bag. But I could take him to the lake and just show him what he has only seen on television – if they had let him see the propos at all when he was still at the Capitol. It feels a bit weird, because the woods are Gale's and my place and somehow I feel like I am betraying my friend. Ex-friend. Hunting partner. Ex-hunting partner. I don't know how to call him anymore. Not that it matters, since I haven't seen him in months. But suddenly I understand, I don't need to hunt anymore. I mean, I don't need to hunt the way I needed to hunt before. For food. I need to hunt to preserve my sanity, or what little remains of it, and who better than Peeta would understand that and would help me to do that. That's a lie. He would help me doing everything.

I hurriedly braid my hair and grab my bow and arrows, I am already dressed and all I need to do is finding Peeta now. That is not difficult either, I could follow the track that he has obviously left behind him. The scent of cinnamon, some flour on the floor, paint maybe. But I don't even have to. I know perfectly well where he is, so it is no surprise when I find him in the small room next to the living room. The painting room as we decided to call it when his paintings had covered every single surface and had started to pile one above the other. I don't like to go in there and he had promised to never take them out since all he can paint are things that I want to forget.

I stand on the door and look at him for while before I decide to let him know that I am there. His body is tense and I can see his hand is firmly painting the golden lines on the minuscule body of a tracker jacker.

"I am going hunting," I finally declare, when I can't stand the view of that vicious mutt any longer.

Peeta turns towards me and nods, a soft smile playing on his lips. I don't want to be presumptuous but I feel like that smile is there because I am there. "Shall I place my order on some kind of meat?" he asks when I don't seem to move.

"I'd like you to come with me," I blurt out before I can stop myself.

Peeta frowns, probably trying to understand if I am joking after all. When he finally convinces himself that I am serious he decides that this conversation doesn't seem complete without a joke anyway. "So, no meat at all, today?"

I can't help smiling a little. That is something that I love about him, he knows his limits and doesn't mind them. He knows he is as subtle as an elephant when he walks around and that he is not a good hunter at all, but still, he has the certainty that he has so many others good qualities that it doesn't matter if there flaws as well. For a moment none of us says anything, then he stands up from the stool where he was sitting and walk to me. "I'd love to go with you, Katniss," he says, undoing the knot of the apron he has taken the habit to wear when he is painting, and follows me in our room. I don't think there is anything he can wear amongst his clothes that one could say, Yes, that is spot on for hunting, good job, Peeta. So, I just pick something comfortable enough for him to walk in the woods. He doesn't complain about anything, not even when the pants I choose get caught into his artificial leg.

When we walk downstairs, the door burst open and Greasy Sae walks in as we pass her on our way out. "We are going hunting," I say lightly, I know I am smiling even though I don't know why.

She looks at me and then at Peeta and shakes her head muttering something about love and stupid and young and blind. I don't care. I think I would have in the past, but I feel much bigger than that now. We walk through the Meadow and the Seam, I want to get out the way I have always done. There is no electricity in the fence and we are on the other side without even noticing. I am dragging him, I didn't even notice, but now in the silence of the woods, I can feel his ragged breathing and I know his leg must be of some discomfort to him, even though he never mentions it. I don't stop, not even when I've reached the rendezvous place that I used with Gale. I want to show Peeta something else. I stop only when the lake is well visible in front of us. I don't think he has ever been in the woods, I know for sure that he has never seen the lake. I drag him for a few more yards until we reach the hut where so many memories are kept. My father, Gale, the Capitol girls that were about to go to 13. It hurts a bit to be there, but that is when I am glad Peeta is with me.

The day is glorious, and we decide to sit outside. Peeta is lying on the grass and I have my head on his lap. I don't mind that if I close my eyes I am back to the roof of the Training Centre in the Capitol. Even though I despise that city with all my might, that is one of the happiest memories of my whole life and I stop wondering why when I remember that Peeta was there to share that moment.

"So this is how you hunt?" he asks after a while. "And to think I imagined you day after day fighting with your bare hands against a wild dog or taking down a deer with a single shot of your bow."

I punch him playfully in his good leg. "I am hunting memories today," I say, trying to sound cheerful. Somehow I fail. Not very good at pretending, am I?

"As long as memories don't hunt you," he replies simply.

I close my eyes and think about what he is saying, as always he is right. Doesn't it annoy him to be always right? It would annoy me, that is why I am always wrong, to add some variety to my life. "No, they can't hunt me if you are here."

I tell him everything. About my father, about the plant I was named after, about Gale and his kiss – I see him stiffen up when I do, but I try to be as quickly as possible to change the subject – about the girls. I know I want him to know everything I do. I want to share everything with him. And I want him to share everything with me. So he tells me about his family, about his witch of a mother (even though these are not his words and my mother would not approve of me talking about the deaths in this way) and his father after whom he took his kindness. I remember what he told me about his father wanting to marry my mother, and I wonder what kind of offspring that union would have generated. I am suddenly glad that didn't happen.

When I raise my head and decide it is time to go I cannot believe my eyes. I grab my bow and before Peeta can even start making any sound at all, my arrow is flying right in the direction of a deer. Let's see tonight who's going to shake her head Greasy Sae!

When we bring it back to the village, on Peeta's shoulders, as he insists, everybody is looking at us with confusion. They are used to see me with such an animal, but not the Baker as everybody calls Peeta. Greasy Sae is over the moon and suggests that we go hunting together more often. Probably she is right, because while we were there, in the proximity of each other, I noticed that a couple of times we had just stopped breathing, too caught in the emotion to even do that. We had to be more invisible than rocks at that moment. When I hunt alone I know I keep breathing and that is really of no help at all. Maybe we can really hunt together after all.

After our shower, Peeta is already in the kitchen, baking cheesy buns for me to go with the stew that Greasy Sae is cooking on the stove. We are only using half of the animal, but still we have more than enough for the five – Haymitch joins us after I throw him a bucket of water and ice and he throws a knife at me – of us.

"Let me get this straight," he says, washing down a spoonful of stew with half a glass of liquor. "You and Peeta hunted this?"

I nod, stuffing my mouth with more stew.

"Pee-taa," he says, "are you sure you didn't mean, I don't know, Butt-ter-cup?"

I roll my eyes emphatically . "We are a very good team," I say, smiling at Peeta.

"Well, she is," says Peeta, grabbing my hand on the table, "she can get an animal right in the eye."

"And you can throw bags of flour around," I say simply.

Haymitch pretends to puke in his napkin, or maybe he is really puking, depending on his level of drunkenness. "Do you even hear yourselves?" he blurts out, finishing his glass.

Greasy Sae shuts him up before we can't reply anything, she asks him if he has never been young and in love himself. We all have to get out of the kitchen when she starts telling us about her first love and the spicy description of their bodies entangled in the steam of the night is too much for us. Somehow I know that Haymitch wasn't talking about our being in love. I know that those were the exact same words we exchanged during our trainer before the Hunger Games. I guess that, after all, memories can hunt you all right, no matter who you are with.