Disclaimer: I do not own Hunger Games/Catching Fire/Mockingjay.

I don't have any more time to dwell, though, because suddenly there is Coin. My mind shifts, away from the burn unit and pearls and staring and longing for Katniss to the moment, to the words Coin's speaking. And I suddenly think I must have totally tuned out because I hear something so absurd come out of her mouth. Some idea about a new Hunger Games with the Capitol's children. Without thinking, I just yell out, "Are you joking?" I take a quick glance around the table, wanting to see the aghast faces of everyone else, knowing they'll wonder what the hell Coin is talking about too.

But, that's not how it is. Johanna, Enobaria, they both have bloodlust in their eyes and seem to like the idea. To their credit, Annie looks distraught, Beetee uncomfortable. I glare at Haymitch, and he just has his look, the one that masks any emotions he's actually capable of feeling. I am suddenly afraid to look at Katniss, scared of what I might see. I yell out my disapproval of this plan, this horrific, barbaric idea that Coin has. Annie supports me, but we're waiting on Haymitch and Katniss. I can't look at either of them. Instead, I look down at my scarred hands. I know her. I know she won't vote for this. I know she never could.

We wait. It is absolutely silent in the room. Then she says it. She votes yes. For Prim, of all things. Like Prim would ever approve! I am beyond shocked, I am totally disgusted and feel like my brain just got hijacked again. Then it's only Haymitch left, and suddenly I'm yelling at him. Everything I want to say to Katniss about the horror and atrocity of the idea. Only I can't say it to her, so I let him have it. Then he speaks. He sides with the Mockingjay. I'm shellshocked and just slump back in my chair. Maybe everyone's been hijacked. Because I feel like suddenly I don't know anybody in this room, and I don't want to know them.

We're ushered out of the room, and Katniss won't look at anything but the floor tiles. It's time for her to take out Snow. She hates Snow. I know she does. But, if she's agreed to a Hunger Games, how's that showing her hatred of him? Hating equals the killing of innocent children to her? It doesn't add up, and I feel a relapse coming on. All that time in the hospital, the painstaking work to get better, and I feel it starting to unravel. The doubts I had about her, the anger the Capitol made me feel towards her. It's clawing its way back in, trying to reclaim its prominence in my brain. I fight it. I know her, I tell myself. I know her and I love her and this can't be right. Confusion is setting in, I'm getting angered at her, remembering her tactics and manipulations in the Games. How she always had an angle, a plan. How she and Haymitch had this unspoken thing, how they knew each other's thoughts, how they schemed together. And it's starting to make sense. I'm quickly putting the puzzle together, finding all the pieces.

All the remaining tributes are placed into a semicircle about ten feet behind Katniss. I see Snow up there, secured to a post. I see Katniss getting ready to aim her arrow. And about two seconds before she fires it, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place. I get it, I see it, I know what she's doing. Relief floods though me, relief that she does hate Snow, that she hates the Games and everything they mean, that she hates the senseless killing of children. That she understands what's going on right now, probably better than anyone else here. So it doesn't surprise me when at the last second, she moves the angle of her bow, changes her target. And just like that, I'm reminded of the squirrels she used to trade with my dad, because Coin falls dead with an arrow through her eye.

All hell breaks loose after this. But I can't take my eyes off of her. Not for the same reasons as before. Not because of the pearl and the little drop of hope. Not because I want to touch her. But, because I am trying to think like her, to keep up with her plans and schemes. Through the mayhem, somehow I hear her whisper "goodnight" to her bow, and then I know. It's not just goodnight to the bow, it's goodnight to everyone and everything, and I have to stop her. I leap forward, I know she's going for the nightlock, and I know where it is. This time I won't be too slow, I won't fail. I'll make it to her this time.

And I do, I get my hand there, just in time for her to sink her teeth into it as she attempts to rip open the pocket. I look hard into her eyes. I won't look away. I'm not that little boy. We've been through too much for that. She's got a crazy look in her eyes as she screams at me, "Let me go!" And I answer the only way I possibly can. "I can't." Then guards are pulling me off of her, others are pulling her away. I'm screaming, she's screaming. No one even knows what anyone is screaming, the place is just in absolute pandemonium.

So, I did what I set out to do a long time ago. I saved her, I saved Katniss. And, just like all the other times I planned to do it, I can pretty much guess she hates me for it. And it hits me square in the gut when I realize it doesn't matter anyway. Katniss just assassinated the President of Panem. There's no way she's getting out of this alive.

I'm taken back to the burn unit. My violent scuffle with the guards pretty much shredded half my grafts. I wonder if the same happened to her. I am desperate to see her. It's not like last time, when I insisted on being better first. No, now I just have to see her. I scream out her name. Over and over again. This doesn't help my situation. The way I grabbed her after the assassination and my screaming now are interpreted as a "relapse" – that I want Katniss dead. No, no, no, never. I don't want her dead. I just want her alive. I just want her.

I lie in my old bed in the burn unit, restraints pinning me down again as my mind explodes with fear of her execution. I am desperately afraid that I'll never see her again. Haymitch comes to see me, assures me there will be a trial, tries to convince me she can make it out alive. He tells me she's in the Training Center. I can picture her room exactly, remembering our last night there before the Quarter Quell, when she stopped me from going to my room. Our uneasy sleep, the way we desperately clutched each other.

Days pass, I'm moved to a new room. It's no longer the burn unit, but it's equipped with a very familiar series of restraints. Each new place I go, I carry the pearl, Katniss' pearl with me and set it on the bedside table. I still don't know what it means exactly, why she carried it with her everywhere. Now I don't think I'll ever get the chance to find out.

Haymitch visits me sometimes, never staying for long. I beg him to let me see her, but he tells me he isn't even allowed.

"And I was her mentor," he grumbles.

I wonder if the star-crossed lover thing still counts for anything, but I decide not to ask.

More time passes, and they eventually decide I'll be okay without the restraints. I guess since Katniss is locked up tight in the Training Center, they don't see a lot of risk with me. Of course, there's so much security at the end of the hall, I don't think I'd make it far anyway.

It feels better to be out of the restraints and able to walk around, but I'm also at a loss for what to do. That changes when I get an unexpected visitor.

"All this time, I didn't realize you were here too," Annie says. She tiptoes in and stands tentatively in front of me. Of course, Annie would be here too. The floor for the mentally unbalanced. Slowly, she lifts and extends her arms, and I am slow to figure out she wants to give me a hug. Annie's not exactly someone I know very well. But I go ahead and pull her into an embrace, an awkward one at that, but an embrace nevertheless. I suppose we are some kind of kindred spirits – our brains twisted almost beyond recognition by the Capitol, grieving the loss of our loved ones. But I can't say that to her, because her love, Finnick, really is dead. I feel like that will be true for Katniss, but it isn't yet. So, I just pull back and try my best to give Annie an encouraging smile. She runs her fingers down my arm, seeking my hand, and grasps it.

"It's good to see you, Peeta. To see someone who knew him," she says. Her eyes, like Finnick's are the color of the sea. In them I see the hurt and pain she feels, from all she has suffered. Her hand feels warm in mine. I realize this is the only human contact I've had, other than being pulled and thrashed by guards and worked on by doctors, since the embrace with Katniss. It's nice. Different, but nice, and it reminds me of what it's like to make that connection with another person.

Annie lets go of my hand and we sit down, me on the bed, she on the one chair in this tiny room. Other than Haymitch and Dr. Aurelius, she's the only person I've even had a conversation with since Coin's assassination. As much as her brain is mushy and confused at times, I have to say it's a welcome change. She's got a warmth to her that is definitely lacking in Haymitch and not exactly oozing out of Aurelius either.

We make small talk for awhile, and touch on some bigger things too. Things she misses about Finnick, like his penchant for mint ice cream. I would have never guessed. She asks about Katniss, how I think the trial will come out. This is a subject I can't talk about, so I keep it short.

"I understand why she did it," Annie says unexpectedly, after a silence. "Why she killed Coin. She…she was brave to do it." In Annie's voice is a kind of hardness, a toughness that never has shown itself before. Almost like she wishes she had done it herself.

We talk a bit more, but then she has to go. We stand, and I wonder for a moment if she'll hug me goodbye again. I don't know if I want her to or not. It was uncomfortable in the way it feels strange to share personal stuff with strangers, but it was also comforting. Her warmth and softness.

I watch her go, and think about what that's like. To touch someone. To touch, to hold a person. One person in particular. And it gives me an idea.

When Aurelius comes to check in with me, I ask him for just a few things. No, not ask. I tell him there are some things I need. He looks skeptical, but just nods, and sure enough, the next day they're waiting for me. Paints, brushes, a canvas.

How do you paint the way someone feels? How do you capture not just their features, their curves and angles, but the other things? The way their skin feels under your own rough hands, the smell of their hair, the whisper of their breath. You can't spend every night with someone, sharing a bed, wrapped in each other's arms, and not know what they feel like. I don't even know if Katniss realizes how aware I am of her body. The parts of her that are soft and delicate, the parts that are too bony from a lifetime of hunger. Her smell, the salty taste of her neck, the way she curves herself around me to form us into one being.

So this is what I try to capture in my painting. It's different than all the other paintings I've done before. All those pieces I did after the first Games. With those, it was all visual. My memories of what everything looked like to me. I was able to complete each of those in two days, maybe three.

This one is different. It's all about feel, not just an image of her face or her arms holding a bow. It's painstaking, but I need it. It's an anchor to me, and I find it consumes me in all my waking hours and even sometimes in my dreams.

Annie comes by every day. I don't show my work to anyone but her. Somehow, I feel like she understands what I'm doing. She sits and watches me paint, never says anything that would be considered critical, but instead asks me questions to help me. Like, "When you wake up next to her, what part of her do you notice first? Her hair? Her eyes? Her mouth?"

I don't even know how long this painting takes me, but finally, I'm done. The day I finish, I just stand and look at it. Maybe for a few minutes, maybe hours. I don't really know. I just see it, and I feel her again. I feel her arms wrapped around me, her head on my chest, the way she was protecting me while I was protecting her.

Annie comes in and looks at it with me. We stand in silence. And then she tells me goodbye.

I'm stunned. "What do you mean, goodbye?" I ask her.

"I'm going home. To District 4. No, not to my house or anything like that," she says as she sees the question in my eyes. "To their hospital, of course. I just need to be there now. I just need it now," she says again, but more to herself than to me.

I can't stand the thought of Annie leaving and I feel sick. Annie, my only connection to a living, breathing human, and she's walking out my door.

Not knowing what else to do, we just stand there, side by side, staring at my painting. Finally, she says softly, "You did it, Peeta. Your painting. I know exactly how Katniss feels to you."

I suddenly don't even know if I can hold it together with this goodbye. I feel totally blindsided, because I really hadn't considered the thought of Annie leaving. She must sense my pain, because she turns and gently wraps her arms around me. We just stand there, holding each other, then she whispers, "You know, sometimes life springs unexpectedly from the ashes. Find your way home, Peeta."

These are the kinds of things Annie often says. I don't understand them, but I know her well enough by now that they're not just random comments. I just keep holding her, and suddenly I notice something. Something I hadn't noticed in all this time. Annie feels, well, it's her tummy. I suddenly note the sensation that her tummy is larger than it was before. I release her, hold her at arms length, and my eyes travel down to just below her waist. And there it is, a bump I hadn't seen. Her words run through my brain: "Sometimes life springs unexpectedly from the ashes."

I look back at her eyes, which are now wet, and start to say, "Annie, are you really pr…" but she stops me with a finger in front of my lips and a soft shush. I don't understand until I really look into her eyes. Besides the tears, there is fear. And I get it. Fear of losing this new, tender life. Fear of even talking about it. So, instead, I lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. "Take care, Annie. Take care of yourself," I say, and she turns and leaves.

I am devastated by Annie's absence. I stare at my painting. Here I am, staring at Katniss again. It fills me in some ways, connects me to her, reminds me of what we shared. But it also hurts so freaking much.

I think about Annie's last words: "Find your way home, Peeta." Home. Where the hell is that?