Author's Note: Sorry it's been an incredibly long time in between updates. I hope that this chapter somewhat makes up for it.

Chapter Seven

He visits every day that week. Every single day.

I start taking a bath every day, brushing my hair, dressing. Effie used to call it "making an effort."

I'm making an effort. And it feels like an effort. For the first time since the Quell I'm lucid consistently. No hiding in closets. No one depending on me for their sovereignty. But still, this is one of the hardest things I've ever done.

It's like getting out of a hole. I feel like every day since I came back to twelve, every day I spent in bed or staring out my window, I dug myself a little bit deeper. And now, here I am, standing at the bottom trying to get out. And I'm making an effort.

We don't say much to each other. Greetings, pleasantries, small talk. Nothing deep. Nothing about my mother. Nothing about Haymitch. Nothing about the people we've both lost, dead or otherwise.

But one day he doesn't show up.

I wait. He usually visits around lunch time. Sae made stew. She makes a lot of stews. I'm starting to realize that's the only thing she can make.

Eventually I eat without him. He must be late.

"Where's Peeta?" Sae asks.

"I don't know," I blurt out. "It's not like we had plans."

We didn't. Yesterday he didn't tell me he'd be here today. I just assumed.

Every day this week I felt like I was climbing out of the hole. Today I felt like I was clinging to the side, trying to grab a foothold.

It was dinner time. He still hadn't showed up. His lights had been off all day. It was dark now and they were still off. Was he out?

Every second he didn't show up was a second for me to worry about him. Was he angry with me? Had I done something to upset him? Had he gotten bad news? Had he gotten hurt?

I got into my nightgown and lay in bed wide awake. I tried every trick I had ever tried to get myself to sleep. Nothing worked.

I sprung out of bed and dressed quickly and quietly.

I crept out of the house and bounded over to Peeta's.

I didn't hesitate until I was at his door. I held my fist up ready to knock. But just like when I visited him for dinner, I stopped short.

Maybe he didn't visit me today because he has no interest in seeing me. Maybe he's staying home for a perfectly good reason that has nothing to do with me. Maybe me being here will only make both of us feel worse. Maybe we were never meant to be in each other's lives and everything would have been better if I had stayed in the Seam and he had continued baking for his parents.

Something about that last thought felt completely and utterly wrong to me. Maybe I was meant to live in the Seam but Peta was never meant to keep working for his mother.

I knock on the door loudly and rapidly before I can stop myself.

I wait. Nothing.

I wait more.

Either he wasn't there or he didn't want to see me.

Many things about this terrified me. If he wasn't there he could be in danger. It was dark and the rubble that used to be our home was barely safe for someone with a prosthetic leg in the daytime. And if he was home...

I trek into town. I have to know.

I squint, trying to see further in front of my face than the moonlight will allow but to no avail.

Muscle memory takes me where I needed to go. After the games, after the Quell, after the war, I still know my district.

Finally, I find him. He is cradling something in his arms near the stump of a tree that somehow made it through the Capitol's bombing.

"Peeta?" I speak barely above a whisper. I can't help but feel like I am intruding on something incredibly intimate.

Peeta turns to look at me. He seems younger than I've seen him in a long time. We have both grown up so much over the past few years. But something about the way he looks at me is childlike.

"Are you- What are you doing out here?" I ask, cursing myself for being somewhere I am not wanted.

Peeta looks at me sadly, and suddenly the youth is gone. He looks at least a decade older.

"It's her birthday," he tells me.

I am confused. As one of the four people in District Twelve, I am pretty sure it wasn't my birthday, Sae's birthday, or her niece's.

But then it hits me.

I turn around and I can almost see her on the porch, yelling at me as I try to take shelter under the tree. Screaming at me to get off her property. Reminding me how utterly powerless and low I feel.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Peeta asks me.

I look at him, confused. Nothing seems ironic to me.

Until I see what Peeta has in his arms.

"I burned it," Peeta admits. "I didn't realize the date. And then I threw it together and I lost track-"

He cuts himself off.

I look at the slightly blackened loaf of bread in his hands and I am reminded of how kind Peeta was. How sensitive. It meant a lot to him to be liked by people. It must have hurt to have his mother be so cruel to him. She didn't deserve a son like him. Someone so caring and thoughtful and gentle.

Somehow I don't think he would find that comforting.

Instead, I gently took the bread and placed it on the stump. I take his hands.

I don't say anything. I just stand with him a while.

After a period of time that could have been ten minutes or an hour, I gently tug his hand.

He looks at me. He's scared. He feels like he can't leave.

"I didn't-" his eyes dart around. He's panicking.

My breath catches for a second. I don't know how to keep him from going off the rails. I exhale. Hard. And take a new breath.

"It's okay. You came here. You did the right thing."

It feels clunky and awkward. But it was something.

He squeezes my hand.

"I miss her," his voice is almost inaudible.

I look at him. Tears stream silently down his cheeks. I think about the woman I saw who hit her son and yelled when he tried to help me. I think about Peeta growing up, never feeling like she loved him. How it would feel to lose that. To lose almost everything.

"That's okay," I tell him before wrapping my arms around him.