It's raining out, an icy cold rain in mid-October. Peeta follows me into the kitchen as I prepare us a small dinner, reheating some of Greasy Sae's soup from the night before.
With the pot on the stove, I wander towards the breadbox, and then realize it's empty. I turn to Peeta, intending on asking him to bake some more bread tomorrow, and am taken aback by what I see. Because no matter how many times I see him like this, it still causes me such an intense pain.

His fingers grip the smooth countertop, and his eyes lock on a vase of pale yellow flowers sitting about a yard away from him. Taking a deep breath, pushing away the pain in my chest, I watch him closely and wait.

I wait until his jaw unclenches to walk slowly to his side and wrap my arms around his middle, my cheek coming to rest on his chest. He flinches at my touch, but relaxes a second later, snapping back to reality, and his right arm encirles my shoulders.

"You okay?" I ask him quietly, my voice muffled by his shirt.

"Yeah," His hand rubs circles on my forearm, and other arm wraps around me, pulling me closer to him. It's almost like I'm the one in need of comfort.

"What was it this time?" My head tilts upwards to find his eyes trained on me. He presses a kiss to my hair, "Nothing you need to worry about."

Tightening my arms around his waist, I press my face into his chest, letting myself relax completely under his embrace. Taking in the warmth of his body, his firm grip on me, the scent of fresh bread that always seems to follow him.

"You can tell me," I say.

He doesn't say anything for several moments and I'm starting to wonder if he heard me when his voice reaches my ears.

"I heard them..." He whispers, just loud enough for me to hear.

"Who?" I ask, trying not to pry too much.

"Darius and Lavinia... I could hear them scream while they were being tortured... It was like nothing I've ever heard, Katniss. They were in such pain... It was just terrible."

I look back up at him and my breath catches. Within seconds, he's transformed back into the boy I saw in that second interview after the Quarter Quell. The weak, hollow shell of a beautiful boy. Beaten, battered and bruised.

Tears surface in my eyes the way they always do when I think of everything they must have done to him at the Capitol. He says I shouldn't blame myself for all that happened, but no matter how you look at it, it was because of me that all those terrible things happened to him.

My eyes go to a scar on his left wrist. It isn't particularly large, deep or gruesome. Just a jagged cut about an inch long, stretching onto the heel of his hand. In all the months since we've been back home, I've never been able to figure out what made the mark on his smooth skin. The way the skin around it ripped and curled, I've never seen a weapon that could inflict that specific kind of damage.

I reposition myself slightly and take his hand in mine, covering the ugly scar with my own pristine wrist.

Standing on my tiptoes, I reach up and press a kiss to his jawline, then return my head to it's place on his chest.

"It's okay now, though, Peeta. We're safe and they can't hurt us anymore." I say gently, trying to mimic the quiet, soothing words he whispers to me in the dead of night whenever I wake from a nightmare.

He sighs, then rests his head on mine.

"Thank you, Katniss." He says simply.

"For what?"

"Everything." A quizzical expression crosses my face ever though I know he can't see it.

"For what? Getting you abducted by the Capitol, tortured and hijacked just because you loved me?" I ask, trying to make my voice sound light, like it was a humorous comment, but the pain rings through anyways.

"Katniss," He lifts his head and pull my chin up so I that I have no choice but to meet his gaze.
"You know what I mean. Putting up with me through all of it, standing by me... Anyone else would have written me off after I came back from the Capitol and tried to kill them." He pauses and I try not to wince at the memory. I don't mention that I did write him off. While I was in District 2, and he was in recovery, I wrote him off entirely. Being solely convinced that he's never come back to me. Never be the person I knew.

He wants to continue and I know it, but I don't want to talk about this anymore. I know there are about a million things I could say to interrupt him, but words have never been my strong suit.

So, before he can say anything more, I raise myself up a few inches and capture his lips with mine.
He doesn't resist, only leans down for better access. His hands go to my waist, trying to pull me closer, as if closer were possible at this point.

And there it is again. That feeling. That warm stirring in my stomach that makes it hard to breathe, hard to think straight. The warmth speads through me as it did in the Quarter Quell, through my arms, my legs, every part of my being. The warmth slowly builds to a heat. A fire inside of me, making me more and more desperate every moment. For his kiss. For his touch. For Peeta.

My hands reach up to his face. To cup his cheeks in an attempt to pull him closer, because, even though there isn't a millimeter of space left between us, somehow we're not close enough.

His lips wander to my neck, leaving trails warm kisses down my throat, and a moan escapes my lips. He presses his lips to a visible scar, harder than needed, as if to remind himself that I'm not as fragile as my scars sometimes show me to be.

My skin burns everywhere he touches me, fueling the fire inside my chest.

His lips return to mine and I feel a shiver run down my spine, giving a small jump, I wrap my legs around his waist. He grunts in surprise, but steadies himself easily.

After several minutes of hungry kisses, he begins to move away from his place at the counter. Slowly, he carries me to the stairway. Neither of us want to let go, deathly afraid that if we lose contact for even a moment that the feeling will vanish and we'll be left to wonder what the point of any of it was.

I ease up on the kisses long enough for him to stumble up the stairs, but the second we're at the doorway to my bedroom, his lips cover mine again. Slower, steadier this time. Not quite as urgent or hungry, but almost twice as satisfying.

He walks over to the bed, and gently lays me down on the soft matress, one hand caressing my face, and the other running over my stomach and hips.

Half an hour later, we're lying against the pillows, catching our breath.

We lay in silence for several minutes, both afraid to speak for fear of ruining the beauty of what we just experienced.

My eyelids begin to droop as exhaustion sets in, and my eyes flicker to up to find Peeta's gaze locked on me. His hand finds mine and our fingers interlace. I move closer to his body, laying my leg over his and my head in it's place on his chest.

I close my eyes, feeling completely content for the first time in a long while, and begin to let myself drift off, lulled by the steady beating of his heart.

Just as I'm about to slip away into dreamland, I hear his voice. It's soft, and just above a whisper, but still I hear it.

"You love me. Real or not real?"
And so I tell him, "Real."

a/n: Viola! My first ever Hunger Games fic! I enjoyed writing it, and I'm actually kind of proud of it. So, yah.

I tried not to get too racy with it, because I like how, in the books, Katniss and Peeta's relationship is kept fairly innocent, pure. But I felt like this was just bypassed a little too easily in the end of Mockingjay, so I wrote this. Hope you like it :)

Reviews make my day *heart*

xx,

Cat