A/N: I don't have anything to say, really. WARNING! MOCKINGJAY SPOILERS!

Disclaimer: I do not own Hunger Games or the characters or anything. They belong to Suzanne Collins.

Book: Mockingjay

Scene: It's set in the cellar, but I made up what happens.

Pages: None, obviously.

Point of View: Katniss in the beginning, and Peeta later.

Katniss Point of View

I wake up from the nightmare, gasping and sweating. I lay still for a moment, then I shift, sitting up and surveying the cellar around me. I'm curled up against the wall, Peeta a few feet away. Gale, Cressida, and Pollux are asleep on their own piles of fur on the other side of the cellar.

I sit there, quaking from the nightmare. My hand strays to my pocket of its own accord, and I pull Peeta's pearl, the one he gave me during the Quarter Quell, from it. I press it to my lips, seeking the comfort of the boy who gave it to me. I feel it, and my eyes drift close.

"Katniss?"

My eyes shoot open, searching for the speaker. For a minute I wonder if I dreamt it, but, no, he's awake.

Peeta sits up, squinting in my direction.

Peeta Point of View

I wake up, disoriented. Another nightmare. This one alternated between Katniss killing me and Katniss dying. I rub my eyes, squinting into the gloom around me. But wait, someone a few feet away is awake also.

Katniss.

She's sitting atop her fur bed, pressing a small round object to her lips, with her eyes closed. As I watch, she sighs a happy sigh.

"Katniss?" I whisper. She freezes and looks up at me, almost guiltily. I see the thing in her hands is a pearl.

My pearl, the pearl I gave her in the Quarter Quell arena.

Her hand drops from her lips and I say, "Is that… Is that the pearl? From the arena?"

She opens her palm, revealing it, and nods sheepishly.

"It…" she starts, dropping her eyes from mine, "It comforts me, when I have a nightmare, like you used to."

That makes me pause. It's not like Katniss to be this open. Mutt-Peeta hasn't attacked once during this confession and I take the opportunity to scoot closer.

Katniss goes on, her eyes now meeting mine. "When I hold it, it feels like you, the real you, not the… mutt version… are here."

She sits there, looking vulnerable and uncomfortable. I move even closer until I'm right next to her. I reach out and feel the pearl in her palm. It's warm from touching her lips.

Katniss looks up at me through her eyelashes. There are tears sparkling on them. One spills over and traces down her cheek. I wipe it away.

"Peeta, I can't do this," she murmurs. The tears are flowing freely now, but her voice is steady. I wrap her in my arms, relaxing immediately at the contact, just as she does. Her tears stain my shirt, but I don't care.

"Katniss, that's not true. You can do this, I know it," I say.

"I can't. At least, not without…"

She leaves the sentence hanging but I got what she meant. Me. She can't do it without me, the real me, not the mutt version. A memory floods into my mind.

I pushed the locket at Katniss, saying, "No one really needs me."

I wasn't really upset about this fact. I had just wanted her to live and have Gale and be happy, but I could see this wasn't going to work the way I wanted it to.

An understanding look crossed her features. "I do. I need you."

I was distressed, and opened my mouth to argue, but she covers it with hers.

Katniss kissed me with a hunger and force I had been holding back for a year. Twice I try to pull away to continue my argument and twice she stops me. And the more we kiss, the hungrier her kisses get. I'm in heaven.

The memory has an underlying feeling of fear and anger from the tracker jacker venom, but I hardly notice it. I revisit this particular memory so many times, before and after the hijacking, that I knew it was true.

Katniss grips my shirt, begging me to look at her.

"Don't let him take you away from me," she pleads, "Stay with me."

"Always."

A/N: I know Katniss seems OOC, but I felt like she needed to let the walls down for once. Especially with Peeta. I think that if she would have done that in the first place, he would have gotten better faster and they'd both be better off in the long run. But that's just me. There'll probably be more like this one, where she lets him in, later on. I have so many ideas swarming through my brain right now, it's a chore to decided which one to write ha.

There will be more about HG and CF but I really need to get the Mockingjay one's on paper first. Plus, Mockingjay has so many indirect gestures and feelings and movements from Katniss that the fact she loves Peeta feels more real, so it works better.