Thanks to adding this story to their favorites!

Dinner was different and loud, but no one left wounded. Graesy Sae didn't stay, saying that she needed to get back home and there were already too many mouths to feed. I wondered when three people became a "full house," and felt a bit sick. I was so used to three seats at the table, and I wished Graesy Sae would have stayed just so that with one extra I could feel like it was crowded. Haymitch kept the talk bright and loud, sometimes going off on his own rants, other times looping Peeta (and a couple of times me even) into conversation. In the end, it always boiled down to the three of us, as if we were the last people on Earth. And I guess in a way, we are. Of course there's Graesy Sae and her granddaughter, others in other districts that I maybe eventually will want to talk to, a mother not dead who is dead, a best friend that grew farther and farther apart from me until we didn't even know who the other was anymore. The three of us were surrounded by these shades of people who lived and died, but somehow at that moment, it felt to me as if we were the only three people that were real.

Haymitch at one point started muttering to himself and sat on the living room couch to have a comfortable place to pass out. I gathered the dishes and brought them to the sink and started to wash them, when Peeta joined me and helped. There was small talk, safe conversations floating between how hunting was, how baking was, and how I was absolutely not allowing Haymitch to sleep on my couch tonight.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" Peeta asked me as we were wrapping up the dishes.

I paused and looked at him. He was smiling, nothing about his appearance seemed hostile. "I'm not sure. Why?"

He wiped his hands on his jeans. "Do we need a reason to hang out? I just haven't seen you in a while and thought it'd be nice to spend some time together...I mean, if you want..?"

He seemed so genuine, and even nervous. I wanted to remember how he looked right here and right now in my kitchen, and save it. It wasn't old Peeta or new Peeta, before or after or anything. It was simply, plainly, Peeta. And I should have said no still, but I am a selfish fool. "I'd love to."

He left soon after that, towing a drunk and nearly unconscious Haymitch out the front door as he yelled "To the star-crossed lovers of District 12!" I closed the door behind the two of them, and felt a chuckle escape my lips. It tasted foreign and wrong, as if I didn't deserve to laugh. I didn't. I thought of all the different laughter (Prim's, Prim's laughter was a song) that used to echo all throughout this house. As I walked up the steps it felt like the walls were closing in on me a bit, but I tried to push the thoughts from my mind. I almost ran to Peeta's house to make him come back over and stay up and talk with me all night if only to keep away the dark. But that was before, something we used to do. Help each other through our nightmares. And now we live with them alone, locked in cages of our bodies only to come out and prey upon us when we were vulnerable or asleep. I knew he still had nightmares, he had to, and he always said they were about me. I had a feeling that I was still a big part of them, but in an entirely new way. I was the one doing the horrible things in his dreams, the things that made him shake and scream and clench his knuckles white.

I felt drained. Hunting, interacting with people, and my thoughts finally reaching me and I felt myself get drowsy. I washed up and got in my pajamas, and by the time I laid down I was asleep.

He was in front of me. There were doctors, maybe some other friends (ghosts) standing around, but all I saw was him. And he's laid on his hospital bed, bruised and bandaged, when his eyes opened and he looked at me. He stood and started to run to me, and I ran to him as well. I reached out to him and his arms opened as well, for me. I was smiling and crying, and his eyes showed a certain desperation. And then he stops short, right before me and his hands are out stretched, clawing and –

They found their way around his own throat. I screamed and went to stop him, but found myself stuck behind a glass wall. Peeta's hands clenched and he tried to scream, but he couldn't find his voice. He was blocking his own windpipe, and his face was turning red. I screamed, screamed at the people that were just here to help him, or help me help him, but no one else was there. I fell to the ground as he did, and his eye were turning red from blood vessels popping. He crawled over to the glass wall and me, and put his hand out to lay upon it near me. Before I could put mine up, he collapsed in a sudden stillness.

I woke up screaming, my hands grasping all around my bed for Peeta. Where was he, why wasn't he here, why am I not waking up to him holding me and telling me everything will be fine, it was just a nightmare, I'm right here–

I whimpered and my hands tightened into fists clenching the sheets when I remembered that that's not how it is anymore, the two of us deal with our nightmares separately. My tears wouldn't stop though, and as I laid there trying to calm my breathing I couldn't get the visions of dying and dead Peeta from my mind. What if he's hurt right now? The thought surged through my mind and my nails started digging into my palms with how hard I gripped the sheets. What if he's having an episode and it drives him to hurt himself, or worse?

I was off my bed and pulling on my boots before I even realized what I was doing. I needed to see him, to make sure he was okay. Peeta had every now and again been in nightmares of mine, but nothing so clear and horrid as this. Nothing that made it feel hard to breathe when I woke up, and nothing that felt so real. I just needed to see if he was alright. He's probably asleep. I just need to check.

I went through the front door without knocking and shut it quietly. Haymitch, Peeta, and I never locked our doors, which wasn't the safest thing for us to do, but in moments like this, it was good. "Peeta?" I whispered into the empty house with no answer coming back. I ran silently up the stairs and opened the door to his room. His window was open and the moonlight showed me his sleeping form in bed. I breathed a sigh of relief and was content to just leave, when I took in his body language. He was laying as stiff as a board on his stomach, his fists at his sides and clenched to the point where I wondered if he was going to be bleeding. His sheets were tangled up all throughout his body, and he was wearing just boxers. All of the scars on his body seemed to scream out at me in the moonlight, yelling about how I was at fault for all of them. There was sweat on his forehead, his hair plastered to his face. His eyebrows were pulled down, and there seemed to be tears in his eyes. My mind flashed back to my nightmare I just had, and I shivered a bit. I couldn't just leave him like this, in his nightmare. But what if the nightmare is about me hurting him? Seeing me here will not help that. I took a deep breath and decided I didn't care. I'd do what I could to help, just as he always did for me.

I stepped gingerly over to him and wrapped his one fist that was closest to me with my hand. "Peeta," I whispered kneeling down. I brushed some hair out of his eyes. "Peeta, wake up. You're having a nightmare."

His breath stopped short, and his fist seemed to clench even harder in my hand. His eyes opened suddenly, and wide, and stared right at me. "Katniss?" He asked, his voice high pitched and near hysterical. "You're here. Real or not real?" He asked me.

I smoothed more of his hair down. "Real. You were having a nightma-"

"Katniss you need to leave." He pushed my hand that was holding onto his fist away and sat up, taking my hand's pull on his hair away. He sat in the middle of his bed, the sheen of sweat on his back shining in the moonlight. He buried his hands in his hair and kept his head down, shaking it every now and then.

"Peeta-"

"No," He growled. I stepped back involuntarily at the sound. He looked up at me, and there seemed to be a hundred different emotions battling to take control. I focused though, on his eyes. There were dark, and had none of the light blue that I was used to. He took deep breaths. "No," He said again, less threatening, but there was still an edge of hostility. "Katniss I need you to leave."

I stood in silence, and still. He shook, and tried rubbing his eyes with his hands. The war may have been over for everyone, but Peeta was always battling the Capitol now. Like everything, my fault. They used him as a piece to break me, and then kill me. They were able to do the former, and still were. He turned to me suddenly, and his eyes seemed to burn with madness. "Katniss. Leave."