Chapter Rating: T
Author's Note: It looks like there will be one more chapter of SKW. In which case, there will be a censored version of the final chapter available at FF and an uncensored version available at both LJ and AO3 under username just_a_dram. Pick your poison. All my lovely readers are the best. Thank you for your comments, favs, and alerts. If we're not friends already on tumblr, where I'm justadram, we probably should be.

Chapter Ten

I wake up, roll onto my back, and realize I'm alone. Not alone in the house, but alone here.

Peeta is baking. The smell of yeast has already reached our bedroom.

The sun slants through the window. Too late to be asleep.

I roll onto my stomach and press my face into Peeta's cool pillow.

…

The uneven thump of Peeta's tread on the floor draws me from my sweaty slumber.

"Katniss?"

I groan into the pillow. I've drooled in my sleep and the cotton of the pillow slip is soaked through.

"You getting up?"

I kick my legs, freeing myself of the scratchy sheet that covers me. The room is getting too hot to sleep.

In a minute I'll get up. Just a minute.

I hear the water in the bathtub run. Sometimes he takes a shower, but the balancing act is awkward. When he's tired, it's easier to soak. I know I kept him up late last night, fighting sleep with dark thoughts of Prim crowding everything else out. He must be exhausted.

I wait to hear the door shut, but it never does. Peeta sometimes has a striking lack of boundaries.

"You want to join me?" he calls, his words echoing on the tiles of the bathroom.

It's probably a joke. Maybe.

…

"Hey."

My eyes open, and I cringe at the light, rubbing at the crusty sleep that's collected in the corners of my eyes. Peeta sits alongside me, his hair slicked back, wet from his bath. There are little beads of water clinging to his shoulders.

"You need to get up, Katniss, and eat some breakfast. I made cinnamon raisin bread. It's still warm."

I wrinkle my nose. The cinnamon part would be good with melting butter, but the thought of picking out the raisins sounds like a lot of work and wasteful. I try not to be wasteful, but sometimes I just can't stomach anything. Lately that's been the norm.

Peeta traced the outline of my hip not so much with teenage enthusiasm as concern last night, but at least he was touching me. After our one real foray into intimacy, he'd pulled away from me. He just needed time to trust himself, to quiet the voiced, but I needed the ghost of his touch even if it wasn't the kind to ignite a fire. It was probably better that way. If he lit a fire in me now, I might collapse into ashes.

"I'm just going to sleep a little while longer," I say slowly, coming to the conclusion as the words leave my mouth.

His hand closes around my wrist. It's too warm in this room to be touched, but I manage to resist jerking my hand away. I just close my eyes again, and it's almost like he's gone.

"I need to make my deliveries." There's a long pause, where I wait for him to let go of me and get off the bed, so I can get back to the business of sleeping. "Are you okay?"

"I'm hot," I mumble, finally giving into the urge to reclaim my arm with a sluggish tug.

His hand presses to my forehead. "Do you feel sick?"

I flop over, putting my back to him. I can wait him out.

…

I'm not sure, but I think he checks on me twice more before I find myself weakly fighting him, as he kneels over me in the sheets, dragging me upright.

"You're going to sit up and eat some of this or I'm going to call your mother."

The threat pulls me from my lethargy. The room is dark except for the gentle glow of the lamp on the bedside table. A bowl of stew steams on the floor with a thick piece of bread balanced on the rim, soaked half way through, darkened from the stew, and probably soft enough to fall apart in my mouth. My stomach doesn't so much as growl.

It can't possibly be nighttime.

"What time is it?"

"Time to eat," he insists stubbornly. He leans over and brings the bowl up to my hands. I take it from him, but make no move to touch the spoon. "I'm not going anywhere. You can't ignore me."

I can try.

He runs his hand through his hair, leaving clumps of curls standing upright. "I mean it, Katniss. You eat this bowl of stew or I'll call your mother."

He wouldn't call her. He wouldn't.

But he's got this determined set to his jaw that makes me toy with the spoon. If I take a few bites, there's a chance he'll leave me alone. I let the stew fill the spoon and then tip it enough that it pours back into the bowl.

My mother didn't choose me. She chose a new life. I'm the one that keeps the memories close. I'm the one left to remember Prim. Doesn't he know how that makes me feel?

I let the spoon drop.

"Why would you even say that?"

"Because you're frightening me." I look up from the bowl and see the tension written in the furrows of his brow. He's been on edge lately, and my behavior today can't possibly be helping. "She lost Prim too. She's the only other person that understands what you're feeling."

Peeta looks angry—his lips a thin line, his blue eyes slightly narrowed. Not on the verge of an episode angry, but as if he's as angry with my mother as I am, for leaving me, maybe even angrier. He didn't leave. He chose me.

The reminder is sharp; it causes a feeling to well up inside of me that cuts through the dull darkness.

"That's not true." I let the hot bowl come to rest in my lap. "You understand." Better than anyone. We remember together. We share that burden.

His hand closes on my bare thigh. "Then let me help."

He ends up making me eat two bowls of stew and promise to call Dr. Aurelius the next morning. I know Peeta trusts Dr. Aurelius more than I do, because he helped Peeta gain control of himself, so he could return home and return to being the boy he once was. Or something close to it. I'd normally put up more of a fight about calling the doctor, who I'm always afraid will suggest new pills to dull my senses, when I'm experiencing some kind of set back. That feeling of wanting to sleep endlessly, of wanting even Peeta to fade into the background, so I'd be alone with the darkness, frightens me enough that I do as he asks.

I am my mother. The mother who is so deadened by grief that she can't even choose the daughter she has left. If it was just me, I could slip into that same abyss, but there's Peeta, and I think he needs me as much as I need him. He promised me he'd stay—Always. I can't offer him any less; I can't just give up.

"Make a list," Dr. Aurelius says. "A list of all the good things. All the things that make getting up worthwhile, that make life worth living, and then read it over when you feel like you'd rather stay in bed. The next day write a new one, add something to the list. Focus on the good."

It sounds hokey and sentimental, and I'm terrified I will have precious little to write on that list, but when I try for the first time, the list ends up filling the front of a yellowed sheet of paper. Peeta appears on it more than once. More than three times. Peeta's at the heart of the list. That's no surprise to me. Peeta is the bright spot in my sometimes dark world.

I make a list for eleven days in a row, and although on the third day I don't pull myself from the bed until late afternoon, I manage to slowly free myself from the grasping hands of darkness. The list helps. I don't forget about Prim or the mausoleum that is her room, which awaits my attention some day in the future, when I'm feeling stronger and Peeta is at my side to tackle it, but the sadness associated with her memory settles into the back of my mind, letting light back in.

On the twelfth day, I awaken to the sound of the shower. Peeta must be finished baking and is washing up before he heads out on deliveries. I consider pulling the sheets of blank paper out of the bedside table drawer, where I have them stashed along with a nub of a pencil with a chewed off pink eraser. But something is different about this morning. I want to get up without having to list the reasons why it is worth it to me to face another day. In fact, I know exactly what I want to do now that I'm awake, and if I lay staring up at the ceiling here in bed, I will miss my chance.

I slip from the bed and pad towards the bathroom, the sound of running water growing louder as I toe the door open and step over the marble threshold. Taking a deep breath, I yank my t-shirt over my head and hold onto the towel bar as I kick out of my white cotton underwear.

Lists are good. Routines are good. But if you want to add something to the list, something new, you have to break with tradition.

I peak around the curtain and Peeta's back is to me, facing the showerhead and working shampoo through his curly hair with one hand while the other hand splays against the tiles, helping him balance. I don't let my eyes dip below his shoulders, where the muscles bunch as his hand scrubs back and forth.

This is a lot all at once. Too much probably. Most probably too much for him—he was having problems with our increased intimacy and this is definitely intimate—and without question too much for me.

I am about to duck back out, when he asks without turning, "Admiring the view?"

I huff and roll my eyes. "You did invite me to join you," I say, pulling the curtain open a little further.

"I did. So come on in."

"Don't turn around," I instruct him, as I step over the edge of the tub.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I can hear the smile in his voice, and though my heart is racing, the thought of his smile keeps me from retreating, when the spray of the water spots my skin and my eyes skirt over the small of his back and lower.

My skin heats and it's not just the steam from the shower.

I stare down at my toes in the puddling water and grab hold of the end my braid, which is messy from sleep, pulling until it comes loose, raking my fingers through the tangles.

Peeta clears his throat. "This is all backwards."

I reach for the shampoo, perched on the edge of the tub, as I ask him what he means.

"I mean, it's nice. It would be nicer if you let me look," he adds, as he turns his head to the side. Not far enough to see anything, I don't think, but I cock a brow at him in warning just in case. "But, we've skipped a few steps."

"We've skipped a lot of steps." I flip the top of the shampoo and squeeze. The pearly, glistening shampoo pools in the palm of my hand. It's Peeta's, but I haven't used anything but his shampoo in months. "We live together."

We share things like shampoo and drool on each other's pillows. We hold each other up.

"Do we?"

I think so. "You're not going to go back to your house, are you?"

"No."

"Then we live together."

I soap my scalp, though standing at the back of the shower, I'm barely wet enough to get suds to form. Peeta stands unmoving before me. He's obviously finished with his shower, but shows no signs of climbing out of the shower. I don't know how I'll rinse this soap out of my hair with him standing there like a sentinel, his broad back blocking the flow of water.

"Do you want us to live together?"

He places stress on want. Maybe it's important to him that I want this, that it isn't just about survival.

"Yes." It's strange, but I'm able to say things that would normally make my insides twist with greater ease with us both naked and within arm's reach. There's something about the intimacy of the moment that makes whatever I have to say seem much less daunting by comparison. "I want you here."

I can't imagine not waking up alongside Peeta. My list would suddenly be greatly abbreviated if he left my side.

"Can I please turn around?"

It's my turn to smile at the unfiltered need in his voice.

My consent is barely spoken above a whisper, but he must hear me, because he maneuvers to face me. He doesn't need the wall to balance, not with his arms sliding around me, wet and solid. He tugs me under the spray of water, pressing our bodies together. Water runs over our heads, down over my lips, as his mouth finds mine.

It's the brightest morning in months.