AN: Apologies for the considerable delay that precipitated this chapter. As you might have noticed, my writing experience has not proven fruitful of late (comprising a good amount of time gazing forlornly at the screen, imploring words to materialize independent of my involvement) but I appear to be back on track for regular updates. My infinite gratitude to anyone who commented on this story… it sparks the imagination and produces a goofy grin of glee every time. (I suppose psychedelics would help, as well, but that's a method I won't be trying.)

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"I always feel: when one person is indebted to another for something very special, that indebtedness should remain a secret just between the two of them."

- Rilke, A Love Story in Letters

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"The good news is you can cross over," Haymitch muttered as he shuffled around in his desk, hopefully in pursuit of something that had not absorbed the stench pervading the remainder of his belongings. Random items tumbled out the sides of the drawer as he burrowed, bits of an orange peel that had started to fossilize and yellowing notes long forgotten.

"Cross over?" Katniss heard herself with no minor measure of befuddlement. "To where?"

Haymitch "The bad news is also that you can cross over, meaning someone managed to kill you there."

"Kill us where?" Katniss startled as Peeta's familiar baritone gave form to her thoughts, glancing over to find he had materialized seemingly out of nowhere beside her. For a moment the situation faded from her attention as she seemed exclusively capable of focusing on the figure beside her, his bright hair and kind eyes and impossibly handsome features.

Somewhere on the fringes of her senses, Haymitch's voice hazed back into notice as he continued blathering irrespective of Peeta's inquiry, "But at least you won't be forced into anything there."

"Haymitch!" Peeta snapped. "Finish a complete sentence!"

Finally, Haymitch turned from the desk with the calm, focused expression she typically associated with Peeta as he perfected a delicate frosting flower before reaching over to add a bit of warm goop to the edge of her nose. The type of countenance that his alcohol consumption typically prohibited.

"What if I told you I could ensure your families were safe and you wouldn't have to go to the Capitol?" His pale Seam eyes flickered between them. "Would you do it?"

Katniss couldn't help a scoff. "What's the completely gigantic catch?"

Again his expression evolved, this time reflecting a certainty of sorrow as he specifically focused on her. "You'd never be able to see your families again. As far as Panem's concerned, both of you will have simply vanished."

Silence for several beats before Peeta's soothing tones punctured the void. "Won't that be awfully suspicious, if one day we just… disappear?"

"Of course," Haymitch steepled his fingers, seeming satisfied, as though they had produced precisely the correct question to advance the conversation in the manner he had intended. "Which is why we'll have to fake your deaths."

"What about Prim?" Katniss piped up, the fringes of panic skimming the edges of her nerves such that she felt infused with the impulse to flee. "I can't leave her."

"But you have to," Haymitch's voice softened into something almost… empathetic? "The alternative is-"

Something she absolutely, positively did not want to consider, or even speak aloud, so she punted in a simple monosyllabic acknowledgement to halt the verbal consideration before it progressed. "Yeah." She found herself suddenly, startlingly aware of Peeta's physical presence beside her.

The comfortingly disconcerting figure beside her gave voice to her thoughts yet again, either predicting her concern and accounting for it or actually acquiring it himself. "But President Snow will just punish them for our disappearance."

"He won't have the chance," Haymitch insisted. "Both of your families have already boarded a hovercraft and are headed to thirteen. They're just waiting on me."

"Thirteen doesn't exist."

"Oh, but it does. They've agreed to house me and your families, and even that hissing mongrel of Prim's, but they wouldn't take you in."

"Because…" Katniss prompted.

"Because it's not time for the revolution yet. They're not ready. They want to wait until the opportune time," Haymitch's eyes seemed to bore into her like steel. "But I'm not willing to let you both live like Finnick until they decide it's time to finally stand against the Capitol."

She felt more than sensed Peeta shift beside her, and after a moment the large fingers of his left hand weaved into her right, clasping tightly. She found herself struck again by their relative size disparity, how if one fashioned them of clay the sculptor would require three Katnisses to make one Peeta. Without considering the action, she leaned into his warmth, blindly seeking that security he somehow always offered.

"Snow won't be able to track us down?" Katniss inquired, her voice seeming tiny to her ears.

"No."

Well, even if Haymitch's advice proved incorrect, his resolve certainly offered some degree of comfort. She glanced up at Peeta and he echoed the motion, one eyebrow twitching as though to prompt, "Well?" Awaiting her direction, as always. Yet another person who put altogether too much faith in her.

"I…" Katniss swallowed around the rock that had materialized in the back of her throat at the prospect of leaving Prim. "I guess we'll do it."

"That's a relief," Haymitch stood. "Because, sweetheart, your house is currently on fire."

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Be it a vision, a dream, or a brief foray into insanity, the interaction with Haymitch vanished with a blink and the world as she last remembered it surged back into existence, the bumpy ground flush against her back with grass tickling her shoulders as she gazed up at the intricate dances of willow branches.

Except it wasn't the world as she remembered. The climate, most notably, had severely increased to the point that she could empathize with the poor hunks of dough Peeta shoved into the ovens. A fierce sunlight skittered between the willow branches, prompting the rapid squint of unprepared eyes and a frantic shuffle to push themselves into vertical positions.

Utter silence reigned for a moment, shock encasing them like a white haze of blotted noise.

Katniss formed an unidentified syllable before her breath cut off and she lapsed back into silence. She had never before experienced her mouth actually falling open in shock, but it would not seem to close as she gaped at her surroundings with eyes so wide the breeze threatened to tug tears from the corners.

The seemingly-innocuous and perfectly ordinary forest they had inhabited just a moment ago had simply vanished. She and Peeta found themselves standing side-by-side in the middle of a vast meadow, a massive expanse of unimpeded grasses punctuated by dots of yellow wildflowers and exuberant, fluffy-tipped weeds. Far ahead, massive trees indicating tremendous health in their mammoth size and glossy emerald sheen had gathered themselves into either a patch of trees or the circumference of a forest. The weeping willows swayed calmly behind them to some faraway rhythm only they could discern.

"It's beautiful," Peeta whispered, his voice stooped as though in reverence. Katniss attempted to produce a sound indicating concurrence, but filtered through her abject shock it emerged as almost a scoff. They gaped at their new surroundings, standing sentinel side-by-side, their arms brushing.

"It's impossible," she heard herself note, her eyes still licking the promising greenery in the distance.

"That, too," Peeta concurred, his head swiveling to scan the skyline. The midday sun cast golden highlights on his thick profusion of curly hair, and despite the distraction of her altered surroundings (or perhaps as a reflection of their impossibility), she found herself gawking at the dulcet colours.

"Are we dreaming?" Katniss wondered aloud, finally recovering enough to formulate words approaching coherence.

A moment later she felt a sharp pinch on the outside of her wrist. Bounding lightly away, she reached over to thwack a grinning Peeta across the chest. It had all the effect of a pebble against a stone wall.

"Excuse you!" She huffed, continuing her attempts to thwat him but her hand never quite finding purchase on his chest. Her indignation completely evaporated when Peeta produced a series of breathy laughs. Sunlight ricocheted off the fair skin of his face, gleaming against the light brush of pale blonde stubble that coated his chin. The sight did something strange to her stomach.

Peeta seized her moment of distraction to encase her wrists, twirling her around so he stood directly behind her, holding her arms across her chest. She felt him drop his chin lightly against the top of her head and didn't bother to struggle against his grip, instead muttering on a sigh, "What…"

"No idea." Peeta responded to the inquiry she had scarcely produced.

A fierce trickle of dread threaded down her spine and sent words ricocheting into the air: "Did Snow summon us to the Capital without our knowing?" For surely if their minions could dematerialize the most horrific of body aberrations and formulate the most extraordinary of hellish arenas, they could devise a means of transporting humans against their will. They probably only shuffled the reaped around on trains to preserve the illusion of conformity to the conventional laws of transportation and physics.

"They'd never take us anywhere so beautiful," Peeta countered, ever the voice of reason.

Katniss couldn't argue with that.

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