A/N: I realize that this fic deals with some potentially touchy subjects, so let me say right up front that, while I went about portraying various things as best I could, if I end up offending anyone or suggesting anything offensive about anyone (the transgender community in particular), 1) I am very, very sorry, 2) I didn't mean it, 3) please feel free to let me know what I did wrong so that I don't make the same mistake again in the future. :)

Also, if you'd like some visuals for fem!Peeta, I happen to think some combination of Eliza Taylor, Candice Accola and Imogen Poots is about how a female Peeta would look.

I don't know why they brought me here.

The girl is looking at me with her mouth open the slightest bit, lips parting over the white gleam of incisors like she's seconds away from clicking the K of my name. So she recognizes me. Of course she does. I'm the girl on fire. The Mockingjay. I suppose that's why they insisted I see her. It was probably more about her seeing me – like in Eight. Maybe she's important – she certainly looks familiar, though I can't place her. The Capitol must have been holding her for a reason, after all. Maybe she's a rebel sympathizer and I'm meant to convince her to fall in line with one of Coin's plans. Although, if they wanted to instill hope in this ex-prisoner-of-war by putting me in front of her, they seem to have failed. The tender flesh around her eyes is tinged pink, the irises themselves wet and vibrant in that way that people's eyes always get when they cry. Wet and vibrant and blue – all shades of blue, the light all mixed in with the dark in starbursts of color. She stepped towards me when they first guided me in, close enough for me to make out all those details, and it's not fair, it's not fair because those are his eyes, exactly like his eyes, and I'll never see his eyes again and –

I need to leave.

My feet collide clumsily as I step back, bare skin scuffing over the floor – the standard-issue hospital clothes don't come with shoes, and I came straight from my room. I'm turning, already shaking my head because I can't do this, and then my eyes catch on her face again and – it's not just the eyes. I know now why she looks so familiar. The wheat-gold hair, messy and halfway between curls and waves. That particular shape of nose, those faded freckles, the soft cupid's-bow curve of the lips.

It's a cruel trick of the universe, presenting me with this Peeta-lookalike girl just hours after I realized I lost him.

"They're back," Haymitch says. "We're wanted in the hospital." My mouth opens with a flood of questions that he cuts off with, "That's all I know."

And then I'm moving, the gray walls of Thirteen running into a haze around me like a watercolor in the rain, leading Finnick by the hand. Through the buzzing elevator and into the hospital wing, which is alive with frantic energy. Johanna on a gurney, skeletal and oozing blood. Gale on a cot with tweezers buried in his shoulder, extracting a shard of metal. And then there's a woman swathed in billows of bed sheets, calling to Finnick, crashing into him. Annie.

A sickly pale girl watches me from a doorway.

But where – where –

Boggs, looking a little worse for the wear but uninjured, finds Haymitch and me. He tells us about the recently-liberated prisoners. Johanna and Annie, both here, and an extra, the pale girl – they don't know who she is, just that she was being held in the same cells as the victors, so she must have done something pretty bad. Enoboria wasn't found.

Neither was Peeta.

I just stare, because of course Peeta was found. Of course they got him out. They must have.

But Boggs is still talking, saying something about propos, and how we haven't seen Peeta in one since he called for a cease-fire.

"No."

"Katniss." He says it so gently. "Katniss, maybe this is for the best. The things we saw in there – well, at least dead he wouldn't be suffering anymore."

"No," I insist, and I push past him, ignoring Haymitch's pleas. They're wrong. Peeta is here. I can tell. I would know if he was dead.

I tear through the hospital. I make a lot of nurses angry by slamming open doors and ripping aside curtains. I call for him, as loudly as I can, and I make such a racket that they bring security swarming down on me. By the time they converge on me, hands raised and voices lowered to placate me, I'm shaking so hard I can feel it behind my ribs. I can't find him. He's not here.

One of them steps forward with her arms out to trap me, and that's when I break down. I scream profanities at them while they fight to contain me, and a deep, hot rage roils in me like liquid lightning. It burns through the fog of pain and drives my limbs in wild, pointless struggling. They promised. They promised they'd get him back, and they didn't. They told me he would be here, but he's gone. Forever.

Hands grasp at me all over my body, pressing me to the floor. I'm screaming at them to get off me before they even bring out the needle.

Another feminine wail rises over my own – some semblance of my name – and one of the guards crumples under a flailing form. A flash of blonde hair distracts me, but before I can turn my head there's a sharp prick in my arm. From the prick spreads a bone-deep burning sensation, immobilizing my muscles wherever it touches, and numbness quickly follows. They wrench me off the floor and towards my room. I get in one last good thrash before the itchy heaviness of sedatives pulls my limbs and mind into stillness.

She looks like Peeta.

Haymitch dragged me from my hospital room when I had barely regained consciousness, only saying that there was something I needed to see, and this is it? This young – whatever she is. Refugee? Traitor to the Capitol? Avox? She hasn't spoken. Whatever she is, she looks like him. And it's not fair. It was cruel enough having those few minutes of hope, even joy, only to have it ripped away again just as quickly. And now this. This lookalike – as if the universe is actively mocking me. Maybe Snow intended it. Maybe that's why she was imprisoned: through no fault of her own except an unfortunate resemblance to Peeta Mellark, so she could be brought back and used to taunt me. Maybe she's just another white rose.

My throat closes like someone has their thumbs jammed into my windpipe, and the doctor takes my silence as permission to ramble.

"We were testing her DNA, to see if she's in any of our records –"

I don't care.

"Trying to find an identity, you know –"

Just let me leave.

"And we – well, we found a match."

Please. I just want to leave.

"A rather surprising… Well, to put it simply –"

I'm so tired.

"That is –"

Haymitch, evidently just as done with the doctor's hemming and hawing as I am, cuts in. "It's Peeta."

Something inside me hurts when he says the words, like a shard of shrapnel tucked neatly between my lungs.

"What is?" I say blankly.

Haymitch points. "Him."

His accusatory finger zeros in on the girl. She hasn't made any move this whole time except to fidget and glance between me and the floor, but now her expression changes. Her eyes – the eyes that look so much like his – flicker rapidly between Haymitch, the doctor and the various nurses in the room. A pink tongue slips nervously along her lips.

I don't understand.

They make me sit down on a stool and they explain it, first in medical jargon and then in layman's terms, and then I do understand. I just don't believe it.

Sex changes are common in the Capitol, they say. It's yet another thing the districts were denied. In the districts, if you were born in a body that didn't match your mind, you just had to make do with what you had. In the Capitol, the solution is a process that takes mere weeks, with a quick procedure here and there. Capitol citizens even do it for fun sometimes, the doctors tell me, since the process is so streamlined, and this sparks a hint of anger in the ashes of my heart. Fun? They do it for fun, when there are people in the districts who go without every year, living and dying in the wrong bodies? Then again, I shouldn't be surprised. It's just like the Capitol to take a necessity away from the districts and make it a luxury for its own citizens.

If the Capitol wanted to effectively render Peeta powerless without rendering him useless to them in the process, this would be a good way to do it. After all, people listen to him because they recognize him. Because they feel like they know him. Peeta Mellark, the baker's boy, the star-crossed-lover, the victor from the poorest district. Golden hair, golden heart and all that. People put up with me, but just like Prim, they genuinely like Peeta – even respect him. If he decided to speak out against the Capitol, he would without a doubt have followers. By giving him a female body, the Capitol could quickly and completely put an end to that. No recognition, no fame, no power. And, unlike with some other techniques they've used on POWs in the past – one of the doctors mentions the word hijacking, and it sends a chill through me for reasons unknown – it wouldn't destroy his mind or memories. He could still be of some use to them, if they needed. At least, that's the explanation the doctors have come up with.

Yes, I understand what they're suggesting. But it can't be true. I allowed myself to hope once already, and it left me all the more open and vulnerable to grief. That cannot be allowed to happen again. So, no. It's not true.

For the first time since I sat down, I look over at the girl. Her eyes were already on me, but they fall the second I turn my head.

She looks like hell. The freckles across her nose and cheeks are faded almost to the point of being invisible and her skin is as pallid as the skin of miners long denied sunlight. The only real color in her face is a touch of red around her nose and eyes and the bluish bruises that arc under each eye – those damn blue eyes that I can't make myself meet directly. She's shivering and jumps slightly at every motion, and one of her hands is locked around the opposite wrist like she's trying to cut off the circulation. She's exhausted. And scared. And she does look remarkably like Peeta. She has the same rectangular jaw, though it has a slightly more tapered, soft shape than his. Her brows are the same ashy blonde, but slimmer, less bushy, and contoured in a way that makes me think a prep team got a hold of her at some point within the past few weeks. There's the same cleft chin, the same nose. If I ignore the shoulder-length hair, feminine jaw and soft, hairless skin, I can almost imagine I'm looking at him. In fact, I don't have to imagine it. I feel it. Looking at her feels like looking at Peeta. And some small part of me wants to believe it, so badly I physically ache, but I know better.

I look back to the doctors. They're already watching me, waiting for my reaction. "That's impossible."

One of them shakes their head. "It's quite possible. If you'd like to see the DNA results, they're right here. DNA doesn't lie; this is Peeta Mellark." He thrusts his clipboard at me, but I leave it alone. I wouldn't be able to read it, anyway.

"You know, there are other ways to determine who someone is," Haymitch says, in a tone of voice that makes it seem like I'm an idiot for not thinking of it first.

"Ask me something."

I startle at the sound of her voice, which is strained and crackling from disuse but still unmistakably familiar. It's decidedly female, but somehow, it's his voice. Maybe half an octave or so higher than his, but still relatively low for a girl. A rough, smoky alto.

She's finally meeting my gaze, and I hers. My guts feel as if they're being stirred with a fork. Looking straight into her eyes like this… there's something much too familiar about it, about all of it, to just call it familiar anymore. I've seen those eyes. I know those eyes. It's impossible. And yet –

And yet.

"Ask," she pleads again.

I chew on a piece of skin at the edge of my lip, combing through my memory for something, anything the Capitol wouldn't know. Something that was never on TV. Something they couldn't have seen or heard through bugs. But there were so few unobserved moments in Peeta and I's relationship that for a few moments I can't think of one. Privacy is a precious commodity in a victor's life. With two victors together, it's nearly unattainable.

At last I come up with something. "If you are Peeta," I start – and it's the absolute wrong way to start, because she winces and looks to the floor – "Then you'll know what I asked you to do right before Gale was whipped."

She answers immediately. "You asked me to run away with you."

My jaw tightens. She shouldn't know that. And she certainly shouldn't be referring to herself as if she actually is Peeta. This is wrong – except that it isn't. The two halves of me pull and strain against one another, one shouting Liar! and the other whispering, Is it you?

I don't expect her to go on, but she does. "I said I would, but I didn't believe that you would. And I was right."

It's a trick. They must have found out somehow. They must have installed bugs somewhere near where we were walking that day.

But part of me whispers, Peeta, and I quash it with a firm, No. Peeta's dead.

"What was I holding when we – when Peeta and I went on a walk beside the train on the way back to Twelve? After the first games?"

"Flowers. Wildflowers. Little pink and white ones."

I clench my shaking hands, wrack my brains and spit out more questions. About Peeta, about me, about favorite colors and favorite foods, about our nightmares and the plant book and our childhood school.

Every answer kicks my pulse up a notch, and I can't silence the part of me that's thinking, maybe, maybe – maybe it is possible – maybe –

Eventually I run out of things to ask that I'm sure the Capitol wouldn't know. I don't think I could get them past my lips even if I could think of any more, anyway. She stopped trembling and started crying about halfway through the questions, and now she just stands there, watching me, my own emotions reflected back at me through her eyes. A little bit of hope and a lot of hopelessness, impossibly coexisting, wrapped up in a plea.

I can't help it. She looks so much like him, and she sounds so much like him, and she acts so much like he would, and I want so badly for it to be true. I want him back. And if it is true… If I do have him back… If it's possible… Who am I to care what form he came back in?

And then she – he? – finally says my name, and there's something about those two syllables that makes it click.

"Katniss," Peeta says, "Please."

His arms rise, just the slightest bit, like he's about to reach for me, and I don't care anymore. I bolt forward, and I don't care that his shoulders are much slenderer than they should be, and that the cheek rubbing against my temple is flawlessly smooth instead of scratchy with stubble, and that my chest is pressed against the softness of another pair of breasts instead of firm muscle. The only thing I care about is that I have him, and I am never, ever letting him out of my sight again.

I tuck my nose into his neck. He smells right, and it's the final nail in the coffin. I believe.

I believe it, now, but I still can't fully accept it. It's too bizarre, too impossible. I keep expecting someone to jump out and yell, "Gotcha!" But slowly – very slowly – that disbelief is wearing away. Every expression, every habit, every gesture that she – he – makes chips away at my resistance a little more. Because it's him. The way his tongue pokes out, slightly off-center, when he's deep in thought. The way he locks his fingers together or crosses his arms when he doesn't know what else to do with his hands. The way his knee bounces, the way he works his jaw, the slight movement of those impossibly long, pale eyelashes when he blinks. But what really convinces me is his eyes. More specifically, the way they fix on me. I've never found anyone who looks at me in quite the way Peeta does. It used to make me uncomfortable, because I knew I couldn't ever give him what he wanted from me. Now, it gives me – well, maybe not certainty, but hope. Because no one could replicate that look.

And really, apart from being female, his body hasn't changed all that much. I mean, yes, his waist is more pulled in, his hips and thighs are wider and more curved, and his arms and legs aren't as thick as they were. And there are the breasts, obviously. But his height is exactly the same, as well as his stocky build, and his proportions haven't really changed. Long artist's fingers, strong limbs, relatively large hands and feet – though, they're a bit smaller now than they were. One dimple just beside his mouth. Stubby, rectangular fingernails. Scars from the Quell, buffed down to near nonexistence by a full-body-polish – likely something done just before that first and only interview – but still the right shapes, in the right places. To put it simply, he's exactly like he was – except female.

I spend a good hour just staring at him while the doctors run endless tests. They haven't yet decided if this will be public knowledge, or if they'll keep it hush-hush. Prim knows, anyway. They fetched her a while ago, and now she's in the middle of all the action, helping the nurses examine him for "complications or abnormalities." She's the only one of them he'll let touch him. Prim, and me. He flinches from the hands of anyone else.

Eventually, Plutarch barges in and starts talking about how this is really a wonderful opportunity, though "rather unexpected." A nurse escorts him out the door again, but not before he has the nerve to congratulate Peeta on a "successful transition" – he even goes so far as to say he turned out "beautifully." And I mean, I don't exactly disagree. Peeta's new form is not unattractive. He's a little too skinny, but that's due to a poor diet, not his body itself. Even freshly rescued from a torture chamber, it's a good bet that underneath his hospital gown, he's curvier than I am, and definitely prettier. But Plutarch's comment feels wrong. Peeta didn't ask for this. This isn't something to be congratulated about.

Finally, finally, they leave us alone. We sit side-by-side on the hospital bed, not talking. After that first embrace, neither of us has dared touch the other more than a quick tap on the shoulder or a bump of shoulders.

When they first returned, I thought Peeta would be kissing me the moment he saw me. Now he barely meets my eyes. I want to hold him again, just so I know for sure that he's here and that he's not going anywhere, but I don't know if he'd want me to. Different as it is, this new body is still his, and I don't know what new boundaries come with it. So I keep my hands to myself.

Peeta doesn't talk much. In fact, he doesn't talk to anyone, ever. Except for me. It's such a change from hid old amiable, chatty self that it worries me. All he says when I confront him about it is, "Wrong voice."

Johanna visits a couple days after the rescue mission. Turns out, he'll talk to her, too. Quietly, and one word at a time, but still. It's something. Her presence still unnerves me, partly because she's shamelessly crass and I don't quite know how to respond to that, and partly because I half-expect her to attack me again any moment like she did in the arena. I know she was just trying to get the tracker out of my arm, but still. I'm not exactly jumping at the chance to be all buddy-buddy with her. She's nice enough to Peeta, though, and doesn't tiptoe around him like he's made of glass, so I guess she's not all bad.

We're all sitting cross-legged on the bed, backs up against the wall and lunch trays balanced on our laps when she says, "So how's having boobs?"

I choke, Peeta's eyebrows fly towards his hairline and Johanna shrugs.

"What? It's a legitimate question."

There are a few moments of silence, in which I'm sure Peeta is just going to ignore her, and then he swallows a bite of bland hospital food and quietly says, "Bouncy."

I cover my face with my hands while Johanna howls with laughter.

At least he's smiling.

They're beginning to think that it's not just his feminine voice that's discouraging him from speaking. Apparently, he displays very similar behavior to that of abuse victims, and it leads to the various shrinks of Thirteen taking turns interrogating and diagnosing him. They all come to the same conclusion: the Capitol conditioned him to associate speech with pain. If he talked, they would shock him. Just another way to ensure he wouldn't be using that silver tongue of his against them. Johanna, when questioned, confirms this.

I want to march directly to the Capitol and burn the whole thing to the ground. I want to go to Peeta and wrap my arms around him and never let anyone touch him again. Instead, I sit quietly on my stool while Prim braids my hair and Peeta brushes his. It gets into his face constantly, falling out from behind his ears, but he refuses any offers of clips or braids.

I extend a hand, slowly, so he has plenty of time to pull away if he wants, and comb a lock off his forehead. My fingertips graze his skin on the way by, and he surprises me by tilting his head ever-so-slightly into my touch. It's softer than it was before – his skin and hair both – and my own skin cries out for more the second I drop my hand.

My throat burns. My elbow strikes the wall as I writhe, trying to buck him off, but there's something warm and heavy tangled around my limbs, restricting my movements – restraints? It's dark and I don't know where I am and I'm making some horrible noise because he's choking me, he's staring down at me with utter loathing and strangling me like a mutt and I don't understand and I can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe can't breathe can't-breathe-can't-breathe-can't-breathe–

Something clamps around my wrists, prying my hands away from my neck even as my fingernails scrabble against the backs of his hands in a pathetic attempt to loosen his grip. A girl's voice is yelling in my ear, and there's a heavy, warm weight on my hips and stomach and two strong thighs along my sides – but that doesn't make any sense, Peeta is the one that's straddling me, strangling me, not a girl – it can't be both – I don't understand what's happening, but I can't breathe and the room is spinning and dark spots spiral across my field of vision –

"Stop it!" the girl yells, frantic. "Stop it, let go! You'll hurt yourself, let go!"

I struggle, crying out weakly, trying to get away from the strange presence and the squeezing hands at once –

Cinnamon. I smell cinnamon.

Oh. It's Peeta. Not the emaciated nightmare-Peeta with sunken, crazed eyes. The real Peeta. The healthy, quiet, long-haired Peeta in my bed.

I stop fighting the restraints – but, no. Not restraints. Just blankets. And there are no hands at my throat except my own. My nails left raw, stinging lines on the soft flesh, and I can feel blood at my fingertips, slippery and warm.

He finally succeeds in pulling my hands away, and I take a deep, rasping breath that's somehow just as painful as the burn of oxygen deprivation. My body flexes hard, trying to curl in on itself, but Peeta is still sitting on top of me and I only manage to twist in place. He slides off of me quickly, and all at once the adrenaline gives way to long, watery wails.

I fight to control my breathing, but my lungs have a mind of their own, and I'm gasping with sharp, irregular sobs when he starts to rock me. I didn't even notice when he started to hold me.

"It's okay," he murmurs in my ear. It's been a couple weeks, now, and I'm still not quite used to his new voice, but it doesn't jar me as it once did. "You're okay. You're safe."

I open my mouth to explain, and it takes me at least a dozen tries before my diaphragm stops jolting quite so quickly and I'm able to spit out, "He ch-changed you – made y-y-you hurt me – m-made you h-hate me – you were th-the-there but you were gone – w-wasn't you ins-s-side – c-couldn't breathe –"

"Oh, Katniss, no," he whispers. "No, it wasn't real. I could never hate you. I'm right here."

Recounting my nightmare only served to redouble the terror of it, and I cling to him as I ride out a fresh wave of sobs. The salty tang of snot and tears slides down the back of my throat and my whole face prickles with heat, and I'm sure I'm leaving a nice big, lovely wet patch on his pajama shirt, but he doesn't seem to care. His hands slide up and down my back in long, soothing strokes, and though it's strange to feel such comparatively little hands rubbing against me, the familiarity of it overrides the strangeness. He's done this a hundred times before – held me, rocked me, soothed me. This is no different.

Since the first night after he was rescued, we've been sharing a room, unwilling to leave each other for a whole eight hours to sleep. First we shared a hospital room, and then, when they deemed us healthy enough to return to the regular residential area, we moved into our own quarters. Before now we kept to opposite sides of the bed, arms and legs touching occasionally, but never intentionally. This is the first time he's held me – really held me – since the Quell, and that was months ago. It's the training center all over again: I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness. For the feel of him beside me in the darkness. And it feels so impossibly good, being snuggled up against his warm, solid form under the rumpled mass of blankets, that I know I will not be the first to let go. For all the foreign softness of his breasts, hips and belly, Peeta's as tall and stocky as he ever was, and his form still easily enfolds mine. And really, the softness isn't all that bad. It's actually kind of nice. I wriggle against him, just slightly, basking in the comfort of another feminine body against mine.

Our legs slip together, intertwining almost accidentally, and a cold prosthetic presses against my calf. I smile through the last of my tears, because he always used to kick his feet out from underneath the blankets, no matter how cold it was outside, and they'd always be freezing come morning, flesh and prosthetic alike. This prosthetic is a different one than he had before, cut slimmer to match his other leg.

"I could never hate you," he says again, gently, as my muscles finally begin to unwind against him. "Never. I love you."

He tenses immediately, and the hand that had been stroking my hair goes still. Then he starts to pull back and panic flashes through me, tightening my arms around him without my consent.

"No, please," I gasp. "Don't. Don't go."

He hesitates. My heart thuds behind my ribs. He settles back against the pillow and I sigh my relief into the hollow of his throat.

I fade away an indeterminable amount of time later, carried by the predictable rhythm of his breaths.

We wake, for the first time since the morning before the Quell, tangled together comfortably under the blankets, with my head on his shoulder and his hand in my hair.

I shoulder open the bathroom door, my hands full of pajamas and a towel, and turn around to find Peeta standing before the mirror.

It's floor-length but narrow – only about a foot wide. The bare minimum amount of glass necessary to allow a full view of oneself. Typical of Thirteen. Peeta is staring into it as if it was a screen, or a painting, his gaze intense and unwavering. And he's completely nude.

I catch the briefest glimpse of cream-pale skin streaming with water, wide hips, the smooth dip of a waist and two pink-tipped breasts, and then I shove my face into the bundle of cloth.

"Sorry," I say into my towel. "I didn't – sorry. I'll just. Come back. Later."

I'm already halfway out the door again when he says, "No. It's okay."

I halt, but keep the towel pressed firmly against my eyes.

"I don't care if you see me."

My weight shifts back and forth, and then I drop the towel to my side and turn back around. My eyes find a nick in the wall, a few feet to his right, and stay there. I can still see him in my peripheral vision, though, as a pinkish-pale form topped with a dripping mane of gold. I hold out the towel to him. "Here."

It dangles off my fingers, swaying in the gust of dry air from the vent above our heads. I wait. I've memorized the shape of the scratch in the wall by the time the towel slips over my fingers, vanishing so suddenly that my hand lifts a bit in response, compensating for a weight that isn't there anymore. There's a flutter of movement and the low sound of cloth against skin, and when I chance a quick look he's fumbling with the corners of the towel, trying to figure out how to fix it so it stays. Then he's back to looking at the mirror.

"I'm going to take a shower if you're done," I say uncertainly, and he nods.

I drop my pajamas on the sink counter, moving slowly. He's acting weird, and I'm not sure I want to leave him alone until I know what's going on. At last I say, "Are you okay?"

His jaw works back and forth, like it always does when he's mulling over a problem, and then he spits out, "I don't hate it."

I tilt my head in question and he goes on.

"It's… strange, definitely. New. And I don't know if I like it, exactly. But I don't hate it. And that's the worst part. I want to hate it. I should hate it, because they forced me to… They made me…" He waves his hands over the areas the towel conceals. "And it's not like I had any choice. It's not my body. I shouldn't be getting used to it."

"But…" I prompt, after several seconds of silence.

He shrugs, and the hem of the towel lifts and drops with the motion. "I am. It used to feel wrong all the time. Now… only when I think about it."

"Is that bad? I mean, isn't it better than always feeling wrong?"

"But it's like I'm letting them win," he bursts out, abandoning the mirror to round on me. "They did this so I'd lose my identity, and so that I'd lose you, and – what if it's working?"

"Peeta," I start, but I don't know what to say after that, so I fall silent.

The agitation in his eyes fades to defeat and his palm scrubs over his face in a gesture of frustration so familiar it triggers an ache in my chest. It's only after he takes several shallow breaths that I realize he's trying not to cry. "Look, if –" he starts thickly. "If you'd rather go stay with your mom and Prim, I understand. You don't have to feel obligated to – well, if you can't be with me, the way we were, I understand that too."

"Stop it."

"I know it's not the same. I know I'm not the same. And I don't want you to feel like you're stuck with me. For any reason."

"But you didn't change. Not in any way that matters."

"Didn't –? Look at me!" His hand fists in the front of the towel and he yanks, and I jerk my gaze to the floor. He gives a hollow laugh. "See? You can't even look at me. Don't tell me nothing's changed."

Heat shoots through me. I look up.

I was certainly right about him being curvier than I am – but then again, it's not exactly like that's unusual. I'm stick-straight and twig-thin. Even Prim has more shape to her than I do, and she's barely a teenager. Peeta's filled out a bit more, though, after weeks of adequate nutrition, and it's obvious how naturally shapely he is – if any of this can be called natural. While he used to have a light dusting of hair trailing across his chest and down his stomach – I know from that sweltering shirtless night in the Quell – now he's completely hairless everywhere but his head. My eyes flicker over the rosy cleft just between his thighs, and then up past the breasts that rival Johanna's and to his face. Crying has left hints of color at his cheeks, eyes and nose, easing the sun-less pallor of his skin. And I feel almost guilty for thinking it, but he is beautiful.

I wonder if it was deliberate on the Capitol's part. If they altered him intentionally to be desirable, for their own sick amusement, or if this is just how he would have looked anyway, if he had ended up with two X chromosomes at conception instead of one.

He watches me watch him, and though his expression is taut with nerves he makes no move to back away or cover himself. I can feel my pulse in my temples and fingertips when I move forward. I stop within arms' distance and look him in the eyes. I'm mortified, and my whole face – my whole body – is flushed with heat, but determination overrides it.

"You are the same," I say firmly, and he gives his shoulders a little wriggle that I think is meant to be in sarcasm – or else defiance. "You are. You're kind, and generous, and you look for the beauty in things. You're still you."

His throat constricts in a hard swallow, and then his hands shoot out in a flicker of movement, curling around my own. Before I know it, he's yanking my own arms forward, pressing my palms hard against the dip of his waist. I startle, but I don't pull back, and he searches my eyes intently as his fingers press mine into the smooth skin. I don't know what he wants me to do, or what he's looking for, but he doesn't stop until my hands flex under his own. Then he drops his arms, slowly, his fingertips tickling over the backs of my hands and sending a deep shiver up my torso. Ripples of goose bumps follow it, spreading over my flesh – and his. I can feel the skin of his waist pucker under my touch.

"What are you doing?" I try to say, but there's something so tense, so fragile about the moment – like the first film of ice across the lake back in the woods – that it comes out a whisper. Any louder and I fear something might break.

I'm not quite sure how, but we've ended up quite close. Close enough for our lips to bump by accident. And then again, not by accident.

I'm inexplicably nervous at the first cautious brush of lips. Will it feel like those kisses on the beach? Will it be the same?

It is. And it's not. There's Peeta's steadiness, the warmth with unexpected heat behind it, same as always. There's the gentleness of his movements, like he's ready to pull away at the slightest hint of uncertainty from me. The cold strands of long, wet, curly hair sticking to my cheeks and throat, though – the soft slenderness of his torso – those are new. And after spending several nights curled up together, I thought I was used to the feel of our chests pressed together. This is different. Silky and supple, especially with only one layer of clothing between us. The kiss is at once jarringly foreign and agonizingly familiar.

His hands slide up the back of my neck to the base of my skull, slim fingers pushing into my braid, and I realize that my own hands have slipped from his bare waist to the small of his back.

"Hold me," he pleads against my cheek.

"I am."

"No, really hold me."

I hesitate, my breath catching before it rushes out again against his neck, and then I'm gently driving him back until he bumps against the wall. His skin is still studded with droplets from the shower, and they dampen the front of my shirt and pants. He shudders and finds my lips again, nipping and then sucking. It could be an accident, the way he shifts just slightly until his thigh pushes between my legs, but everything else is definitely intentional. The curling, grasping fingers at the roots of my hair. The light scrape of teeth against my lower lip. The first tentative touches of his tongue, hot and wet and soft. We've never touched tongues before, except for once, very briefly, on the beach. The slick warmth of it turns the backs of my knees soft and pulls breathy sounds up my throat, and it only encourages him. Before long he's eased the muscles of my jaw with relentless laps of his tongue, leaving my mouth open and pliable for him. I may be the one pushing him against the wall, but he's the one in control.

And then he pushes back and his bare thigh slips against the fabric of my pants, rubbing along the juncture of my own thighs, and my breath leaves my lungs in a hard huff that pulls our lips apart. The muscles in my abdomen contract, urging my hips forward and down until the pressure unleashes an aching swell of heat that clenches low in my belly – and am I imagining it, or has his thigh lifted higher, so it's easier for me to reach? His fingers tug at the roots of my hair at the same time that he draws his knee up another inch, and I don't even care about the moan opening at the back of my throat. It feels too good.

And then I do care. I shouldn't be doing this – any of this. Peeta said himself he's just barely getting used to this body. I can't ruin that – can't soil that by letting my own body take charge.

I take a half-step back, ripping myself away from the warmth of his skin. His hands and eyes follow me, trailing after me as I stumble slightly. I feel as if I've slammed to the ground after minutes of free fall. All my limbs are heavy and wooden, like they've fallen asleep, and a fog wraps around my thoughts. The heat in my belly pulses.

"I'm um," I say. "I'm going to –" I jerk a thumb towards the shower, moving in that general direction.

I'm about to slide the fogged glass door shut behind me when I reconsider. I turn back to find his eyes dark and his chest rising and falling in deep, accelerated breaths, and I give him one more incredibly chaste kiss, just so he knows I'm not mad at him.

I am mad at myself, though.

That doesn't stop me from bracing myself against the tiles and tucking one hand between my legs once he's gone.