Chapter 1

~ Peeta ~

Two years passed together. It didn't seem that long sometimes, and others, it felt like I'd finished one lifetime and started on a second. Some days were eventful, most were not. Recovery is like that. It's not to say that the uneventful days were pleasant (or that the eventful days weren't), as my thoughts often drifted of their own accord to the realm of painful, terrible fiction. And when I say painful, I mean it. But I'm dealing.

A light dusting of snow caught my eyelashes as I walked home from the bakery, but the air barely held a chill. Good thing too, I was hoping to make it home before these loaves cooled too much. Up ahead, I could just make out the second house from the left. Some of the lights were on, and a light smoke rose from the chimney. So she'd beaten me home after all.

"Katniss, I'm home," I called out over the creak of the front door. I made a mental note to add that bit of maintenance to my running laundry list.

The bread bag dropped to the kitchen counter as I folded my jacket over the back of a chair, and peripherally, I caught her slight form by the pantry door. "How was your day?"

Click. I looked up in time to watch her hand drop from the phone receiver. Her face was like stone.

"Katniss?"

A long moment's pause, and then she gulped. My stomach tightened; she did that every time she was in pain but intent on hiding it. I just stood there like a lump. Then, like I wasn't there at all, she walked evenly past me and out of the kitchen, her long braid tapping her back. Only her hastened footfalls as she ran up the stairs broke me from my stupor. A door slammed, and my gut twisted.

"Katniss?" I called after her, my cadence on the stairs far more distinct. Choked, broken sobs echoed from behind the washroom door. I stupidly tried the handle. Of course she locked it. I knocked softly.

"Please... are you okay?" Stupid question. I sighed at myself, sliding down the adjacent wall to sit on the floor, my heart thudding anxiously. Maybe I could hear her better from down here. "Just tell me if you're okay, Katniss," I asked. Sometimes she'd have a bad day. I wasn't the only one who had them, but hers were fewer and further between, and we always dealt with them together.

This was different though. It was bad, I could feel it. Who was on the phone? And what did they say to her?

"I'm... so-rry Peeta... I can't..." came her answer.

I heaved a sigh. "What can I do?"

A sniffling pause. "Just... go away."

"I can't do that," I told her. "But, I can be quiet. All right?"

I took her uneven breaths as an affirmative. This could be a long night.

It wasn't more than a few minutes like this before I heard two knocks at the front door. "I'll be right back," I told her.

Haymitch Abernathy hadn't changed much, except that his inebriation level had eased slightly, as had his wrecked appearance. Today though, he looked haggard as ever, red-rimmed eyes and all.

"Is she here?" He stepped inside.

"Yeah, something's got her all upset though." I closed the door behind him. "She locked herself in the bathroom and won't talk to me."

Haymitch sighed. "Her mom just called me, says they got disconnected. Wanted me to check on her," he sniffed.

"Oh." Well that answered the who. It's the what I was afraid to ask. "Did she say anything else?"

"Uh... yeah." The older man twisted an heirloom ring around his finger. "Gale was murdered this morning."

~ Katniss ~

It's been thought a thousand times, a trillion times a thousand times. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I'd known... hoped... wished... that I'd have a chance to say things to him... certain things I needed so say, that he needed to hear, and have my questions answered. Not questions I really wanted answers to, but that I... well, I won't ever get to. He's gone.

They said he was found in his room, a blow to the back of the head. They said his brother Rory found him during the night after he'd heard a muffled thud down the hall. They said there would be an investigation and an arrest made. They asked if I knew of anyone who would wish him harm. They said they'd keep me informed.

I didn't think this would hit me so hard. I wasn't expecting... you always think you have time. Someday I'd be just level enough to entertain the possibility of seeing him again, that the waves of painful memories would ebb enough to get me through such a meeting. You think the day will come, but the moment you realize something that was once permanent is gone, life becomes frightening. Uncontrollable. I wonder if this is how Peeta feels when the tremors hit him...

Peeta. I'd blocked him out, and he didn't deserve it... he never does. I'm a horrible person. He cried with me when I finally unlocked the door, though why, I can't fathom... except that anything that hurts me finds a way to hurt him as well. He was there, a hand resting supportively on my back, when I arrived in Two and met Hazelle at their home; Posy attached herself to my waist and wouldn't let go. Rory melted into the shadows and wouldn't talk to anyone. Peets stood back, watching, as I lay dandelions on the fresh grave.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to know things, eventually. I didn't want to know, yet, I wanted, needed to know. What really happened. And it wasn't just that. I did love him, right up till the end. Even still, regardless what transpired between us. He'd been family, was a brother. Now there were just ashes.

~ Peeta ~

In darkness, shiny things seem that much brighter. I should know. I mean this figuratively, of course. Periods of darkness feel less uncomfortable, if that makes any sense; there is no weeding through the portrayal of normalcy for signs of artifice. I don't have to guess so hard at what's real. And it's easier to avoid the tremors.

Katniss's slight form, her back toward me, silhouetted against the moonlight from the traincar window. The magnetic hum was so low that I could easily hear her breathing. They were uneven, her breaths, betraying her wakefulness. I lightly placed my warm hand on her back. It was all I could do, all she would let me do for her.

After a long moment she sighed and rolled over, hesitantly, to face me. Eyes exhausted and sleep-deprived, she read my expression, and her breath hitched in her throat.

Seeing her this way was torture. My hand moved to her side.

"What can I do?" I whispered.

She sighed and shook her head, but held my gaze. Her eyes were darker in the low light, but the moonbeams illuminated her hair. Even in sadness, she was a terribly beautiful creature.

And so I kissed her. My hand moved to touch her cheek, my mouth brushed hers softly. And when her chapped lips moved against mine, I knew I was still hers. She was still with me.

I pulled back a bit to gauge her reaction, and selfishly, to save myself the heartache of her pulling away first. I did tuck a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear, though. I couldn't bear to lose that small bit of contact I'd initiated.

And then, she finally spoke, slowly though, as if she were thinking it through as she went along.

"Peeta..." her voice was quiet, raspy. "I'm so... so sorry, for the distance I've put between us," she began. She sniffed, her breaths hitching lightly, echoes of the effects of so many tears. "You're so wonderful. The last few days would have been much harder without you."

I sighed, my eyes never leaving hers. Normally, I'd offer her a tiny smile in answer, but we were both so drained and the circumstance so miserable, I settled for placing a soft kiss on her forehead. I knew she'd accepted when her small hand found my cheek and settled there.

"Sleep, Katniss," I whispered. She closed her eyes and nodded, and moved to curl against my chest. I brought my arms around her and vowed to get some sleep as well. Twelve was a mere four hours away.

~ Katniss ~

Getting out of the house before dawn was a recurring theme. Honestly, I was tired of the glances of pity, of everyone walking on eggshells around me... and that look on Peeta's face. For years, since I began to accept that my feelings for him weren't a default of the Capitol's manipulations, I'd wondered how he felt about his 'place' with regards to Gale. Yes, I was forcing myself to think about Gale; trying not to think about him made the pain when I did think about him more acute, and anyway, I'd have to think about him sooner or later. I wondered sometimes, during particular moments, whether he felt that I was with him only because Gale had... or hadn't... well, I would never know for sure. But I wondered, all the same, if Peeta questioned my motivation, that somehow I had 'settled' for him. Which isn't the case at all, it never was, even when Gale was a possibility. Which he wasn't... now I was just confusing myself. Anyway, the grass was greener on the other side of the meadow, so every day it called to me.

Miles of groundcover touched these boots. I didn't go anywhere in particular, and sometimes I'd end up in the same places or somewhere new entirely. My route was never planned. I just needed to move. To the fishing pond. And then sit, my back against a tree. And think. About everything. Everything, and nothing, and Peeta, and Gale, my mother, Sae, Haymitch Madge Finnick Cinna Rue... and Prim... and everything. And nothing.

Katniss...

I startled. I'd gotten so lost in my thoughts, the tree trunk at my back felt foreign for a long instant, the hairs on the back of my neck pricked. A light wind brushed the pond before me, wrinkling its mirrored surface, shifting the mist that had settled on the grass. No other sounds were evident. I finally released the breath I was holding. Must have been my imagination.

Katniss...

It was closer this time. My bow was armed in an instant and I was on my feet, panning the place where I stood, the tree to my back. Crouching, I sidestepped slowly around the trunk, peering into the mist.

The wind shifted again and the mist obeyed, silhouetting a form just beyond, where I couldn't quite see. My fingers were rigid on the bow, light on the arrow's tail. I could release in less than a breath if I had to.

"I see you," I say. "Show yourself."

If the wind ever had a mind to comply, it did at that moment. And I could never have prepared for who I saw.

He stood, uniformed, clean and well-fed, better than I'd ever seen him, even on Reaping Day, even in Thirteen. My voice was barely a whisper.

"Gale."

His full lips formed two short words, but the blood pounded in my ears and I didn't hear. I hadn't realized I'd fallen to my knees, the arrow pointed at the ground.

"No... Gale, you..." I started, but I couldn't bring forth anything more.

The form that was Gale took two deliberate steps and raised his voice to me, a thing he'd never done in life.

"Avenge me."

"Gale!" I blinked, but I was in darkness. A hardness was pressing into my back, the tree from a moment ago... but where was the mist? And where was...

I whipped around. There was a bit of moonlight coming through where the treetops were sparse, but nothing else. Just the sounds of the forest at night. I dropped my face in my hands and heaved a shuddering breath. I'd fallen asleep. Retrieving the sheath of arrows and my bow, I decided that being in the woods was probably not the best idea, especially at night, and I had a long walk ahead. And more thinking to do.