AN: To the guest reviewer who pointed out that this was in the Katniss/Peeta section even though it's Katniss/Gale, that was my bad. I put it in the wrong section by accident. I suppose it could be Katniss/Peeta since it's mainly between Katniss & Peeta, but you're right, the romance is not Katniss/Peeta. And you'll see about Peeta's happiness. I can't give away the story now, can I? As always, thank you for the reviews!

The cold always feels even colder when you leave a warm home. But, what about people? Does a person seem colder after you've been graced by someone warm? It's a short walk to Peeta's house, which is falling rapidly into a state of disrepair. Even after our last fight, every spring he had planted a row of evening primroses beside his house, a respect to both Prim and I. He always made a point to maintain the perfect white paint, but the new chips in the clapboard didn't blend into the blizzard's white.

How exactly should I introduce myself? Friends is not the word, but strangely, neither is enemies. We are an odd sort of friendly, Peeta and I. Friendly enough to watch each other — through frosted windows and doorway cracks — live our lives, yet not daring enough to utter a word. It's sort of wrong, really, to leave our partnership in the Games, and the rebellion, to go to waste.

If he won't be the daring one in our unspoken friendship, I will. I tentatively reach out to knock, and end up rapping my knuckles against the peeling red door a bit more forcefully than intended. What if the hijacked Peeta is the one I end up facing?

The space between the time the door opened and my knock stretches on and on. I'm not exactly sure what to do with myself. Wrong, again, it seems, to stand here. I'm not a long lost lover, and at this point, barely a friend. I'm not here to apologize, either.

But, the bronze doorknob does click and does unlock. I step back instinctively, and there, there Peeta is.

I bite my lip and furrow my brow, darting my eyes back and forth from his eyes to just about anywhere else. "Hi."

While he takes time to craft his reply (whether it's baited with anger, pity, regret or sadness, I can only fathom a guess) I survey him. He looks a bit more scrawny then I remember, lacking the rich muscle of the baker's son. His hair is a bit overgrown, yet it now resembles a hair cut more suited towards a man than a teenager. His eyes have not changed the least, and his face is only decorated with a few age marks. All in all, he looks … fine. Not taken by morphling, or alcohol, or any past victor's drug of choice.

I repeat myself when his voice doesn't fill the silence. "Hi."

He stares back. Not into my eyes, or even through them, however. His gaze is nearly nonexistent, nor here nor there.

"Hi?" I say once again. "I'm sorry, I—"

Peeta finally blinks. "Hi."

"I—" I begin again.

"Hi."

"Hey …" I trail off. My social experience doesn't exactly know what to do with this situation. In most of the relationships of my past, right about now is when I'd be shooting an arrow into his heart.

"Why are you here?" Somehow, it doesn't seem hostile when he says it. His position remains unchanged, however. Peeta stands in the doorway plainly, arms hung not limply, but not firmly at his sides, his feet square. His shoulders don't sag, but I can't describe them as strong and confident, either. He simply … is.

"I don't know, I just—"

He interrupts me again. It's almost annoying, but I'm grateful he's interacting with me at all.

"Oh," he responds as if knowing I wasn't going to attack him was the best response I could have given him.

I turn the corner of my lips into an awkward smile, hoping it doesn't come off too stiff. Unfortunately, I think it does, as Peeta continues to stare nowhere in particular.

"I wanted to see how you were doing," I finally say. It took long enough, but it was the point of coming over …

"Oh," Peeta says again.

The irregular exchange of words is nothing like the conversations he was easily able to conduct with Caesar. He leaves me nothing to reply to, and I barely manage to do the same.

Suddenly, I find myself continuing to speak. "I invited you to the wedding. Or rather, Gale and I did. We did our toasting with your bread."

"I know," is all he says.

"I wore an old dress that Cinna had made me. Not one of the wedding dresses, though."

"That's a shame," he keeps his replies short and concise. At least he's replying.

I nod. "Hazelle wore one of them at her wedding."

"I know," he repeats. "I was there. With you."

Now it's my turn. "Oh." Conveniently, this turns the conversation starting point to him.

"How … how are your kids?"

I stare back at him this time and shift on my feet. "They're good," I'm not sure how much I should say to him. Considering how close we had once been, he's been missing in my life for a fair amount of time.

"That's good."

"So," I continue. "How are you?"

Peeta narrows his eyes, covering the sky blue eyes with his eyelids. I notice how his skin has settled into it's natural color, even if all these years later, mine still is slightly pink because of the skin grafts that covered both our bodies after the rebellion.

"Would you like to come in?" he replies instead. He opens the door a little wider, giving me a wider view of the mess inside. It's not as messy as I expected, but it is nowhere up to the expectations I had once held for him.

Expectations, however, are meant to burn. I follow him inside, continuing the awkward smiling, and settle by the wall.

"It's messy," Peeta says. He runs his hand down a cheek, down his chin, where surprisingly, no facial hair grows. He can't be too badly hurt if he manages to shave.

"It's not that bad," I reply. That's a bit of improvement, I think to myself. Managing to reply without spending too much time trying to figure out the right words to say. We're getting somewhere.

Regardless of how well I might fool myself into thinking it's going, it's uncomfortable standing in the doorway of someone I used to cherish. "You look good."

He looks me up and down. "So do you. Your skin is still a little pink."

"It never really settled quite right on me, the skin grafts."

He nods. "I can tell."

Another silence spreads between our words. I look down at the floors, which are shielded by a fine film of dust. Really, if you didn't look to closely, the picture of the falling apart home and falling apart Peeta didn't look too be bad.

If I didn't look too close. Yet, here I was, inside that very house, trying to salvage a conversation with that very person. I was in the belly of the beast, far beyond the point of just observing. "I see you, sometimes. In your house, through the window."

"I see you, too. And the kids and Gale."

"Do you still bake?" I ask. An odd question after his reply, but he still isn't giving me much to work with.

"Sometimes."

"There's no bakery in town, anymore," I say. "I miss the cheese buns."

He looks a little deeper into my eyes. "Now that you can finally afford it, there's no place to buy them."

I nod. "Funny, how that works, isn't it?"

"It is how it is."

I smile again. "Have you heard from Effie?" Somehow, turning the conversation to something distinctly from our past seems to keep the conversation at a steady, albeit slow, pace. It's the only way we'll ever get to talk.

Peeta remains motionless. "No."

"Me either," I use my own voice to fill the void. "Everyone though her and Haymitch had a thing … he's very happy with Hazelle, though. And she has to be special to him to be able to cure his alcoholism. Even we couldn't do that," I manage a small chuckle, which comes out sounding fake and forced.

"You mean you couldn't do that," Peeta says.

I glance around the room. "No, I mean he never could put down the drink during the Games. It didn't matter if he was trying to make sure we stayed alive, the whiskey was right there beside him."

"You mean, when he was trying to keep you alive."

I bit my lip. "No, I mean both of us."

"You were the favorite, Katniss," he says my name for the first time. I'm used to Gale's 'Catnip', Greasy Sae's new 'Cat' but I will never adjust to the cold way my name escapes his lips. Even after the hijacking, it was never like this.

"I didn't mean it like that —"

"I know," the cold tinge in his voice fades. "But, it's true."

"It might have been. That's not what I would have chosen. You know that … don't you?"