As the sun begins to peek through my open window, I squeeze my lids tighter to block it out, feeling angry at the world. Last night was rough. It took forever to get to sleep. I kept replaying Peeta's and my conversation over and over, wishing I could go back in time and say things differently. I thought of a million things to tell him after the fact, but they're no good to me now.

I throw the covers back and slide on my socks and a robe. I'm definitely going to need coffee today. I'll probably consume an entire pot on my own just to stay awake, because as tired as I am, my mind will not shut off. No matter how hard I try, I can't unsee that look in Peeta's eyes - the way they reflect the disdain he has developed for me. And I can't unfeel that sliver of hope I had when he told me he came for me.

A flash of anger springs to the surface as I wonder why he didn't call first. He should have at least let me know he was coming. What person just shows up out of the blue from across the country? My anger deflates when I think that, had he called, I probably would have told him not to come. He had to have known that.

I start the coffee after creeping quietly downstairs, and fold my hands across the counter, laying my forehead on them as I wait for the decades-old coffee pot to brew the slowest cup of coffee ever.

"Hey." I'm startled and whirl around to see Prim leaning into the doorway of the kitchen. She looks sleepy, but not weary like I feel.

"Hey."

"You skipped out without saying goodbye last night. I was worried. Are you okay?" she quizzes me. I think for a minute, about whether I want to get into this conversation with my sister just days before her wedding. She doesn't need my drama piled on top of her.

"Sure," I say obscurely, shrugging my shoulders.

"Katniiiiiss," she warns, dragging out the 'i' in my name the way my mother used to when she knew I wasn't telling the whole truth.

"Fine. It was hard, okay? Is that what you want to hear?" My exasperated tone doesn't seem to catch her off guard.

"No. I don't want to hear that, but I think you should talk about it. You've kept everything to yourself for so long, Katniss. It's not healthy." Even though she doesn't say it, I know that she's insinuating our mother.

"I'm not like her," I snap. Doesn't she see? That's why I left. So I wouldn't turn into her. Before I can explain she responds, so quietly I almost miss it.

"I thought you weren't like him, either."

As the weight of what she is accusing me of hits, I have a loss for words. It's like a sinkhole opened up and swallowed any potential thoughts I could string together. I open my mouth several times, and each time I can think of nothing. Did my baby sister, the one who I spent my teenage years taking care of, just liken me to our derelict father?

We stare at each other for a few moments, before my rage finds its way out. "I'm not like him!" I shout.

"Katniss," she starts, her voice mild and peaceful so as not to cause my skittish nerves to explode. "I think you need to take a long, hard look at what happened. You were so scared of ending up like Mom, that you acted out like dad. What was the difference between what he did, and what you did?"

"Prim, you have no idea-"

"Then tell me, Katniss. Talk to me! I'm your sister for Pete's sake!" Prim is yelling now. Prim never yells. She's always been so calm, so sweet, so… low-key and happy. "Do you think Peeta was the only one you left behind?" she adds, and I can see that same pain in her eyes that I saw in Peeta's.

"Prim, you were eighteen when I left. You weren't a child anymore," I tell her, confused as to why she is having an issue with this.

"You're right, Katniss. I was technically an adult. An adult with no father figure, and a half-sane mother who wasn't a mother at all. My mother," she stresses the word, looking poignantly at me, "the person who raised me, moved across the country. For no good reason that I know. I can piece together some things, most of them having to do with Peeta, but whenever I asked you about it you just fed me this BS about making your own way. I want to know what happened," she demands. "Once and for all."

Prim stares a hole through me, and I know this time she won't let it go. I can't avoid this any longer, so I take a deep breath and start where it all went south.

"Peeta asked me to marry him, Prim. And I freaked out." The surprise in her eyes gives away the fact that Peeta never said anything to her, and I wonder if he kept it a secret from everyone?

"Okay, so….?" she says, prodding me on.

"Isn't that enough? Do I need to explain it further?"

"Uh, yeah," she pauses for effect, all wild-eyed and incredulous, and I have to say, the sarcasm I find in her tone is unbecoming on her and adds a layer to my defenses. "A guy - a great guy I might add - asks you to marry him and you leave town over it? Did you not love him or something? I just don't get it."

"Of course I loved him, Prim!" I shout, narrowing my eyes at her. "That's why I had to go. Mom loved dad, and dad said he loved Mom, and then he left and she hasn't ever recovered! I can't go through that," I say with finality, crossing my arms over my chest.

"You actually thought Peeta would do that to you?" she asks me. I don't answer right away, allowing stillness to fall between us, because if I say yes, then I'm admitting to thinking the worst of someone I was supposed to love. And really, I know in my heart of hearts that Peeta wouldn't have done that. But if I say no, then what motivation did I really have for leaving?

"I don't know," is my lame reply, as my arms fall to my sides and grip the counter behind me. "I guess... I guess it was more about me," I whisper, really digging down deep for the reason that has been laying dormant in my thoughts for so long. I've never given it a voice. Never wanted to put into words what I feel, because no one could possibly understand.

"You?" Prim questions, her brow furrowed in confusion. I've never realized how small this kitchen is as the minutes pass, dripping with the torture of the unspoken.

"I wasn't enough," I finally admit out loud through a shaky breath. I slap my hands onto my face, stinging the skin there but I don't care. I need to hide my shame. I'm ashamed that I wasn't enough to keep my father from leaving. I'm ashamed that I must have done something to drive him away, even though I've wracked my brain for the longest time trying to think of what it could have been, coming up with nothing. It has evaded me for ten whole years, and it's all my fault. Everything that happened to Peeta, my mother, my sister.

I feel Prim's arms encircle me as she hugs me tight, and the contact unleashes the blubbering sobs. The kind of sobs that people refer to as an 'ugly cry'.

"Katniss, you can't blame yourself. Dad made his choice, and as sorry as I am that it wasn't his own family, that will be his cross to bear. Not yours." She rubs my back as I try to stop the unrelenting downpour, tucking her words away for a time that I can really think about them. Right now I'm just so embarrassed that my baby sister is having to comfort me. In the past it was always me comforting her when things were bad.

I pull away slightly, enough to grab a paper towel and dab the wetness from my skin. I give Prim a weak smile, letting her know I'm okay. We separate and she pours me a cup of coffee as we sit down at the kitchen table.

"Thanks, Prim," I say, looking down into the steaming, black liquid.

"You can talk to me about anything, Katniss," she says, and there is one question that hasn't escaped my mind since the night before.

"Did you know?" I ask her, wadding the paper towel up in my hands for something to do while she stares at me.

"Know what?"

"That Peeta came to see me? In L.A.?" Her eyes display clear astonishment.

"I had no idea, Katniss! When?" she begs.

"Six months after I left apparently. I never knew. He told me last night that you gave him my address." I'm trying not to accuse her. She seems as if she genuinely hadn't known.

"Oh, Katniss," she says, and I see her mentally piecing the puzzle together. "He asked for your address so he could write to you. Said you wouldn't answer his calls and he had some things he needed to tell you. If I had thought at all that he was going to try to see you I would have warned you - you have to believe me!"

"I do, Prim. I do," I say, patting her hand. "He, uh, said he saw me with someone. A, a guy. A-and he thought… he thought I had moved on." I blink back fresh tears. "I think I still love him, Prim." I couldn't have stopped the words coming out if I tried. "And he's, he's with her. And she's so, so… nice. Why couldn't he have been with someone easier to hate?" I ask, and Prim looks at me with mischievous eyes.

"She's not that nice, Katniss," she tells me, whispering the information as if it were a secret. "She's terribly vain, always in heels with manicured nails and a new designer purse every time she visits. And those perfect teeth? They're veneers. She showed me a photo of the befores." Prim makes a disgusted face, and I laugh out loud for the first time since before I arrived. "You are sooooo much better than her, Katniss. And your Prince Charming will come along and sweep you off of your feet one day."

It's this last thought that I keep with me as I shower and get ready for Prim, Mom and me to spend Christmas morning with Rory's family. It's not that I doubt there is a right man for me. It's that I think he's already come along, and I screwed it up.


Brunch at the Hawthorne's is entertaining enough to keep my mind in the present, and in the room. Gale and I talk about what he's been doing the last four years, about his job and how he gets to travel around the state, and that's how he met his current girlfriend. He's thinking it's pretty serious, and I'm happy for him.

Mom sits on the couch. Gale's little sister Posy is at her side, asking too many questions about that gargantuan scarf she insists is a table runner. I smile at how adamant she's been that it's a runner. By the length of it I wonder what feast she's preparing it for and how many hundreds of people are expected to attend.

On the other side of the room, I watch how Prim and Rory interact as Gale and I talk. How they look at each other the same way our parents did. It scares me for her, but I don't think Rory would do that to her any more than Peeta would have done it to me. I hope with everything in me that I'm right. I couldn't bear to see Prim like Mom.

"So," Gale says, pulling my attention back to him. "Peeta seemed a little perturbed when he came back into the bakery last night. Is everything okay between you two?"

I bite my nails in distraction, trying to think of a polite response since 'it's none of your damn business' doesn't seem like the right thing to say in his mother's home on Christmas day. As much as I have dreaded anyone asking me about the situation between me and Peeta, I am increasingly curious to know what others may know, or what they think went on. I turn my shoulders to face Gale fully.

"Did you know he came to L.A.?" The blank stare in Gale's face isn't confirmation one way or the other. When he doesn't offer a reply, I add, "he came to bring me back."

"Whoa. That's intense," he says, allowing a look of disbelief to cross his features. "No, I had no idea. I'm not sure anyone did." There's a long pause between us. I don't know what else to say. What I told him doesn't answer his question, but it seems to have informed him of something.

"Come to think of it, he did go away for a week after you left. It wasn't right after, though, more like months. Right after you left he was barely functioning as a human being."

"How long has she been coming here?" The question slips out of me.

"Who? Cassie?" he asks, and I nod slightly, picking at a loose thread in the hem of my sweater because I don't have the courage to look him in the eye. I'm not even sure I have enough courage to stay and listen to the answer.

"Well, I guess they've been seeing each other for two years. At least, she's been coming around that long. She's still in school, so she comes during holidays and he goes to her once or twice in the summer. Did you know she's from L.A., too?"

"He uh, yeah, he met her the time he came to bring me back. He decided to move on before he had a chance to talk to me." The clipped way I say the last few words, and the understanding nod Gale gives me tells me it's time to change the subject.

We talk for the next hour about California, my job, my friends there. The fact that I'm not close with them like I was with the group here, and how much I miss it. Before the subject can lead back to Peeta, which it is getting dangerously close to doing, I excuse myself to find Prim. She's in the kitchen with Rory and her soon to be mother-in-law.

"There you are," I say, getting her attention. "I'm going to walk home."

"Are you sure? You don't want to stay longer?"

I shake my head. "No, I think I want to be alone for a while. Don't worry," I tell Prim when I see her brow knitting together with concern. "I'm fine, really." Oddly, I'm better than I have been in a while. I'm just so emotionally drained, and with one sleepless night under my belt, I really want to take a nap. "You're okay bringing Mom home?" I ask before slipping out. She says they'll be fine, and to get some rest. Tonight is the night we always used to go one town over, where they have the most amazing display of holiday lights through two upper class sections of the city.

I'll have to tell her later that I'm going to pass on that one. Last night was quite enough for me.


I stopped here because the next scene is getting long, and I want to keep you all on the edge of your seat waiting for the next interaction between Katniss and Peeta. Don't expect a happy reunion any time soon. There is still lots of healing and communicating to do if I want to do this fic any justice. I do love to hear how you think it's going, so please comment, review, or PM me. Pbg