Katniss has a therapist now. Well, she's always had a therapist. A court-mandated therapist, but she's been screening his daily phone calls ever since she came back to Twelve. It took some convincing from Peeta to talk to him in the first place.

Honestly, she isn't even sure how he talked her into this. She supposes that he's still as much of a smooth-talker as he was before.

She talks to Dr. Aurelius every day. At least, she picks up the phone when he calls at eleven o'clock each morning and makes noncommittal noises to prove that she's still on the line when the silences on her end drag on too long. Because she doesn't really want to talk.

"Tell me about your daily routine," Dr. Aurelius prompts her during one conversation. And Katniss just sits there with the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder with her lips pursed tightly because she doesn't really have an answer.

He tries a different approach. "What were some of the activities that you used to enjoy?"

Well, that's a simple question. "Hunting," she replies automatically, before her throat tightens. "But I, um… I haven't gone."

"And why is that?"

Her eyes burn with unshed tears. She's sure that the sight of a bow would send her into a tailspin. That the feel of the string between her fingers would catapult her back in time, to the moment that she twisted around and shot Coin through the heart instead of Snow, to the moment that she watched her lifeless body fall over the balcony and crash to the ground, to the moment that she tried to chew her nightlock pill free from its hiding place and found Peeta's hand instead.

She can't shoot. She can't kill. Not now, maybe not ever.

Dr. Aurelius clears his throat. "Well, perhaps there's something else you could do. Work through your emotions creatively."

Unbidden, she thinks of Peeta. Thinks that this is advice better suited for him. She wonders if the doctor has his notes mixed up or something, if that's why he's telling her this. Because if there is one thing that she is not—and she's not a lot of things—it's creative.

But she has a glimmer of an idea.

…

When she shows up in Haymitch's yard, the geese flocking around her feet and honking to herald her arrival, he reacts as if a miracle has just occurred. And maybe one has.

"Well, look at that," he marvels, shaking his head as he wades through the fowl to greet her. "She's alive, after all."

"Nice to see you, too, Haymitch," Katniss tells him dryly.

He chuckles and tosses a few chunks of stale bread to the geese on the far side of the pen so that they have some space to talk. "I'm just surprised, is all," he says. "Thought you were down for the count, but I guess I was wrong."

"Wow, thanks for your vote of confidence."

"You know that I never stopped betting on you," Haymitch says, smirking. But she catches something in his eye. A flash of relief, maybe. And Katniss thinks that it's not so crazy to think that he was counting on her to get better.

He surveys her face. "I assume that this isn't purely a social call," he deadpans. "What do you need, sweetheart?"

For some reason, the term of endearment doesn't rankle quite as badly as it used to.

She leans up against one of the pine posts that keep the geese fenced in, crossing her arms over her chest. "I needed to ask you something," she says, and his eyebrows perk up, no matter how hard he's trying to appear disinterested.

See, they're both out of practice.

"About Peeta." Haymitch gives her a pointed look. Because it's the only thing they have in common anymore.

Katniss nods. "Yeah."

"You want to know how he's doing. How he's really doing," Haymitch clarifies, filling in the blanks for her.

Now she's sheepish. "Well… kind of. I had this idea…"

This isn't something Katniss ever imagined herself doing. Asking Haymitch for advice about therapy. But this is a unique kind of situation.

So she tells him what Dr. Aurelius told her, that she needs to find creative outlets. How it made her think of Peeta, and the plant book that they used to work on together, before the Quell. And how she thinks that they could record their memories in a book. Work through the grief in a constructive way. Together.

Haymitch's eyebrows are knitted together while she talks. It's like he's actually listening to her, now that he's not perpetually soused. She doesn't know if it's a relief, or if it's too much of a change for her to process.

"You want my honest opinion?" he asks once she's finished, chewing on a ragged thumbnail. Katniss tries to temper her frenetic energy, but it's useless. She thinks that she's found a solution, a hidden path out of the labyrinth, and she just wants confirmation.

She just wants to know if she can do something for Peeta, after all he's done for her.

"I think…" Haymitch pauses while he watches the geese squabbling over a patch of undisturbed grass, then turns his attention back to Katniss. "I think it'd be good for him."

"You do?" Her cheeks bloom with vitality.

Haymitch nods slowly. "Yeah."

It registers with Katniss once the wave of relief has washed over her that he's not smiling. That he's wearing this almost somber expression. "He's… not doing well on his own, sweetheart," Haymitch says, keeping his voice low. "You probably know that."

There's that familiar piercing pain in her chest. She's so distracted by it that she can't find the words to speak. Wouldn't know what to say if she could.

"He needs this," Haymitch adds, nodding at her. "And, damn it if I'm wrong, but… he needs you."

Katniss' lips move, but no sound comes out.

"And maybe you need him, too."

…

Peeta's quiet at dinner, and Katniss suspects that it has something to do with his phone call to Dr. Aurelius.

He glances up at her occasionally and offers a wan smile before returning to poking at his rations. And as much as she wants to ask him what's wrong, she can't. It's another invisible boundary between them.

She thinks about what Haymitch said this afternoon as she chews her pasta in silence. About how Peeta's not doing as well as he'd have her believe. It makes her think that maybe Dr. Aurelius increased his medication, or said something to make him feel like a caged animal.

She's familiar with the feeling.

The funny thing is, up until a few weeks ago, she saw him that way, too. A wild animal that might pounce at the slightest provocation. And then she realized that she was seeing him the way he saw her in Thirteen. A mutt. A monster. She wasn't—isn't. And neither is he.

"Hey," she says, in a gentler tone than she's used to speaking in. Peeta's head snaps up at that. She can't miss the fear prickling in his features, the fear that takes a few moments to dissipate, and tries not to blame him for it. "Can I talk to you about something?"

He swallows hard, his throat bobbing. "Okay." But he still looks fearful.

Katniss decides that it's better not to speak. She excuses herself from the table and disappears into the study, where she keeps the book. For a moment, she grazes the leather cover with her fingertips, feels the well-worn cracks.

This was her family's plant book, but she's about to give it new life.

She sets it down in front of Peeta when she crosses back into the dining room. Watches him pore over it, the tension lifting from his shoulders and the light returning to his eyes as he flips through the pages, brushing them with reverent fingertips. And then he pauses on the last page. The last page that he worked on, all those months ago, before the Quell. A dandelion blowing in the wind.

"I thought we could work on it together," Katniss says, when she's brave enough. When her voice is strong enough. "But, you know. For the people that we… we lost." Peeta slowly meets her eyes, and she doesn't shy away from his gaze. "I write, you draw."

He's quiet. And she feels her resolve starting to crumble—maybe Haymitch was wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. "I—I mean, if that's okay with you."

Her heart thuds uncomfortably in her chest. Then Peeta cracks the tiniest of smiles.

"I think I'd better draw," he murmurs, and it takes Katniss a second to react. She blinks and lets out a startled chortle. "If that's okay with you."

She bites her lip to keep from smiling. "Yeah," she tells him. "It's okay."

…

He can't do it at first.

It's when Peeta's shading in a drawing of Rue, the little girl standing on her toes like a bird about to take flight, that he starts bearing down on the paper with his colored pencil. Hard.

The sharpened point snaps, and that's when he does, too.

Katniss doesn't know what to do, just remains paralyzed in her chair as he starts shuddering. Violently shuddering, like he's lost control of his body, and maybe—terrifyingly—his mind. And she doesn't know if she can save him.

She contemplates getting Haymitch, calling Dr. Aurelius, doing something, when he forces himself to stand on shaky legs and grips the back of the wooden kitchen chair until his knuckles turn white.

"Peeta—" Katniss wheezes, as if the air has been forced from her lungs. She can't get anything out beyond his name, and really, would it matter if she did? Would he even hear her?

His eyes snap to hers, and though they're wild and dilated, they aren't clouded. At least she can take some comfort in that. "I—need something to hang onto," he gasps. "Until it passes."

She nods, unable to speak. And she waits.

It doesn't happen every time they work on the book. Actually, it doesn't happen much at all, these episodes, which Katniss is kind of surprised about. From what Haymitch intimated, she expected Peeta to be a puddle whenever he had to confront the past. But he's surprisingly lucid when it comes to that.

But when it does happen, she's terrified for a split second. Not that he'll try to kill her, but that she'll lose him all over again. That he'll have to go back to the Capitol, and leave her here to battle her demons alone. It's something she can't let herself consider for too long, because she doesn't want to think about the implications of thoughts like that.

She's not terrified that he'll hurt her. She's terrified that he'll get hurt again.

So she waits out the storm. And when the energy leaches out of him, and he sags into the chair, pale and haunted, she's there to see him through to the other side.

He always stutters out some apology, as if he had any control over it. And he always seems genuinely surprised when Katniss brushes it off and touches his hand, to calm him.

"If you don't want to do this anymore…" he'll say sometimes, meeting her eyes with a guilty look.

But Katniss shakes her head every time. "I want to," she tells him.

There's always a pause, and then he smiles. "Me, too."

…

He asks her one day about the stack of unopened letters on her coffee table, and even though it's an innocent question, she can't help but snap at him.

"Look, I just—really don't think that's any of your business," she fumes, actually setting her pencil down and meeting his eyes with a hard stare. "I'll open my mail when I feel like it. Okay?"

Peeta looks kind of stunned. "I wasn't trying to pry," he says carefully. "I just—"

"Please," Katniss insists, her eyes welling up with tears and betraying her hardened exterior. "Can we not talk about this right now?"

He backs down, eyes going wide when he sees her trying not to cry. "Okay."

Katniss sniffs, albeit pathetically, and returns to her task of recalling Finnick's memory. But her heart's just not in it, and she can't seem to focus. Not when he's looking at her like this, like she's more fragile than he is.

"They're from my mom," she says without thinking, not looking up from her work. "But I just—I can't open them." Her eyes start to water again, and she has to blink furiously to stop it. "I don't want to know what she has to say. Or what I would say to her."

Peeta's still staring when she finally lifts her eyes to him. "Sorry," she says gruffly, swiping at her eyes. "You didn't need to hear that."

He shrugs. "It's okay."

"No, I shouldn't complain," she concedes, realizing how terrible she must sound to him, a boy who lost his entire family without getting the chance to say goodbye. Not that he was close with them, from what she can surmise, but still.

Peeta settles back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. "Well, maybe that's true," he says. "But you don't have to feel guilty for feeling like that."

Katniss purses her lips and drops her eyes to the blank page before her.

"She's still alive, though," Peeta adds, almost as an afterthought. "And she's thinking about you. Probably worrying about you."

She scoffs. "You know, I kind of doubt that."

"I don't," he says, and when she looks up at him with furrowed eyebrows, he looks grave. "All I'm saying is… she's family. You're lucky to have that."

Lucky? If there's one word that Katniss would hesitate to use to describe her life, it would be lucky. Lucky to be alive, lucky to have her emotionally unavailable mother in her life. It's just a farcical idea.

Katniss hums and picks up her pencil. "Maybe." But she's unconvinced.

…

She doesn't tell Peeta, but one night, she opens the letters.

Her mother is in Four. Helping Annie cope with her loss, which almost makes Katniss laugh bitterly, because if anyone is wholly unqualified to counsel the bereaved, it's got to be her mother.

But she does share some news: Annie's pregnant. It's incredible and heartbreaking all at once, and Katniss isn't sure whether she should send her congratulations along or offer condolences. Because it's a child that will never know its father, a tragedy so unfathomable she can't even conjure up feelings of empathy. She just can't wrap her head around it.

And she wants to know how Katniss is doing. Each letter conveys an increasing degree of franticness, an increasing amount of sorrow. She talks about Prim sometimes, about how much she misses her baby, and even though Katniss can relate, she can't help but feel a little hurt that her mother never says that she misses her.

She doesn't owe her mother anything.

She writes to her anyway.

…

Dr. Aurelius would call this 'progress.' Between the book and reaching out to her mother after months of neglect, Katniss is slowly coming back to herself.

But there's nothing as significant as the day she returns to the woods.

She can't remember the last time she gulped in this much fresh air. It almost hurts her lungs to breathe it in, almost hurts her eyes to look up at the brilliant sun.

Hunting is out of the question, for the first few days, at least. But she can gather, and she can set snares, even if they aren't as accomplished as Gale's were. She picks wild strawberries and chives and manages to trap a rabbit, and actually finds herself mentally sorting out a dinner menu.

And when she finally has the courage to pick up her bow, she trembles. Squeezes her eyes shut and releases the arrow, not wanting to see it find its target. When she wrenches them open again, she finds a yearling lying prone on the forest floor, twitching slightly as the life drains out of its wide eyes.

It gets easier after that first kill.

The woods will never be the same without Gale. She'll never be the same, but it's something she needs to make herself do.

…

She learns things about him that she wouldn't have learned if this hadn't happened to them. If they weren't alone like this, with only each other to turn to.

His stories come in short bursts and end just as abruptly, punctuated by embarrassed silences and cleared throats. She'll mention that she got another letter from her mother, and somewhere down the line, that gets him talking about his own mother. He doesn't say it in so many words, but she can tell from the tightness in his voice that she used to hit him.

And somehow, he still blames himself for it.

"I just keep thinking… she died, because of me. They all did," he says, bowing his head over the open pages, perhaps so he doesn't have to meet Katniss' eyes when he says this. "I cost a lot more trouble than I was worth, didn't I?"

It has to be the lingering effects of the venom. "You can't really think that," Katniss breathes, imploring him to look up at her when she touches his arm with the lightest of brushes.

"I do," he says. And there's no self-pity in his voice when he admits it. "You don't have to placate me, Katniss. I can take responsibility for these things now."

She feels like she might cry, doesn't know why.

"Did you eat?" he asks suddenly. When she shakes her head, he pushes back from the table and heads for the kitchen. "I'll make us something for lunch, then."

Katniss watches him disappear into the kitchen and waits for the comforting sound of him rummaging through her drawers and cabinets before she chances a glance at what he was working on.

A drawing of the bakery. Floral cake displays in the window. The crimson-lettered sign rocking in the breeze. A blond boy visible through the glass.

Now she really might cry.

This must have prompted his stories about his family. And she's kind of relieved that he's able to talk about them without breaking down, but if she's being honest, she doesn't know if she likes him talking about them like this. Taking responsibility for their neglect, their abuse. Peeta wears rose-colored glasses, she knows, but this is too much.

He deserves better than a shimmery, gilded memory of a family that couldn't have cared less about his well-being if they tried.

Peeta returns to the table a short while later, sandwiches in hand, and smiles at her when he sets a plate down in front of her.

"What?" he asks, when he finds her staring at him after he's already taken a bite out of his own sandwich. A nervous smile flits across his lips, and she shakes her head to reassure him.

"Nothing. I was just thinking," she says, before she loses the nerve. "That it doesn't matter what happened before all of this. You're my family now."

When he kind of gapes at her, she doesn't know what to do. So she picks up her sandwich and takes a huge bite, concentrating on the taste of the bread and the life it gives her.

"I'm glad you think that," Peeta says, and when she lifts her eyes to him, he's smiling. Shyly, but smiling nonetheless.

"You're my family, too."