Sorry about the delay on this one! Things have been a bit rough these past couple of weeks and my mind has been jumbled. I left y'all at a semi-cliffhanger I guess, so here we go with the story again.

This chapter is pretty light-hearted, which not going to lie makes me feel a bit nervous. So I can't promise you that it'll stay, but slowly be seeping into the story more and more. I see their "growing together" as a constant push and pull, and hopefully I'm getting that across.

Thanks, always, to everyone that is adding this story to their favorites and reviewing. Each review makes me smile and want to write more and more. You guys are really so kind and brighten my day even with your words, haha :) I've always did writing as a hobby, and your comments upon it really make me smile. BreadInHotChocolate ask how old I was, and I'm twenty years o. Also, I've been semi-writing a fic revolving around Johanna Mason, that I might finish up and post soon, in case you're interested, so be on the lookout for that.

But seriously, thank you everyone and hopefully enjoy this chapter? You waited long enough, haha.

The first thing I took in was color.

It exploded in front of my eyes the moment the door opened. Peeta tried to drag me in more, but I was stuck right at the doorway. My eyes tried to look every which way at once, traveling all around the room again and again. The greens of the trees, the oranges of the sun, the reds of the apples, the browns of the dirt, the blues of the sky, the film of grey that seemed to forever coat the area of the Seam no matter what. All of these colors were enclosed in this one room, seemingly more alive than they were anywhere else.

I was in Peeta's art studio.

I took in the actual images next. I was a bit afraid to when I realized that I was in his art studio. Last time I saw his paintings, they were of the first Games. Those were hard enough. Thinking about everything else that we've been through, I almost lost my breath thinking how unbearable it'd be to see the hyperrealistic recreations of Peeta's of those scenes. But I was surrounded instead, by everyday life. Like his sketches. Stills of everyday life, but more than that. Here, in his art studio, it seemed that his paintings were the real things, the world outside just a cheap imitation made of pigments and brush strokes. He painted on canvases and tough papers. On the walls themselves – quick sketch paintings or swirls of different colors as if trying to figure out which colors to use together, and even some on his desk. The desk was messy, a change from the usual organized surroundings that Peeta was in. There were paints of all different kind in rows, loose papers with sketches, and photographs that I assumed he used as references.

Eventually I felt Peeta's eyes upon me as I took in the environment. I had moved into the studio at least, and realized that my hands were just inches from a board with a painting of a window in the sunshine. I looked at him and smiled, not a full one but a bigger smile than I've been able to do for a long while (then again I've never been much for smiling). Within seconds he was standing right beside me. "All of my paintings are boring now, I know–"

"No," I interrupted and turned quickly to look at him and then back at the painting in front of me. "Peeta, they're all wonderful," I whispered, my hand still lingering just inches away from the surface.

"Thank you." I looked up at him, and realized that he still didn't have a shirt on. I quickly got rid of that thought in my mind.

"They're very...different," I stated, vaguely, "from your other work I've seen." His other work, of the first games. I was curious about the subject matter. Back then, in another life, Peeta painted the nightmares and his dark thoughts to help him cope. The amount of nightmares that he has been through has only multiplied and I could only imagine the amount of subject material he found himself in.

He caught on to what I was referring to. "Everything is different now, Katniss." His voice was whispered, and I wondered, fleetingly whether I was going to cry. Yes, everything is different, isn't it? I thought to myself. He continued. "After the first games, all I could see when I closed my eyes were images from them. And you. And to get it out of my mind, I had to shut it off and paint it. And then, I changed a bit," His voice broke off to emit a humorless chuckle. "My mind got a bit darker, you know? In the beginning I tried... If I was having a hard night I'd try and paint what I saw. But I couldn't turn my brain off anymore. As I tried to paint the visions, they seemed to stare me down in the pigments... It wasn't a sort of therapy, or release for me anymore. I used to have a clear mind when I painted or drew, but my mind only came louder then. And anytime I'd try to draw my visions, it'd kick off a flashback." I shivered involuntarily. I knew how much art meant to Peeta and the thought of it leading him to an episode was disheartening. "So I stopped painting for a while. Drawing too. And then one time, after baking a good couple of loaves of bread, I took up a piece of paper and started drawing them. There's something rather different about drawing or painting from something that is right in front of you. You have to pay attention to it the whole time. Notice where the light hits it, where other objects are, everything. Trying to use my mind to come up with a piece just proved that I'd find some horrid corner of my consciousness. But painting what was around me, it helped my mind clear, and art came back to me."

He smiled, as he glanced sheepishly around the room. "I get frustrated sometimes at how absolutely boring my paintings have become. Sometimes I try to exaggerate the colors. Or completely change them. Like here," He grabbed my hand and went to the corner by the desk, where he picked through a couple of the boards that he had piled and brought one out. "You see?" He said pointing to it. His voice was so animated and his face looked so happy that I smiled, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. "I did this painting of my hands from a photograph I took, but I messed around with the colors. You don't find that green right there in a real hand," he said pointed to the board. He pointed elsewhere, "And the red at your fingertips is never that vivid. And together, you see how offsetting those two colors are?"

I felt completely at a loss for what he was talking about. I've never been an art guru, and most definitely did not know the first thing about how colors interact near each other. "It's wonderful, Peeta," I told him, and it was. He smiled at me, realizing that he went off on a tangent that I couldn't really follow and placed the board back down. "You always painted people though," I said before realizing I spoke aloud. I looked at him. "You used to always paint people."

His smile was to one side. "Yeah well, like I said. I work from whatever's in front of me. I thought about sitting in the square and sketching the people around me, but I'm not really ready for that. I don't really interact with anyone really. I guess I could go over to Haymitch's after he passes out drunk and paint him, he stays still for long enough." He laughs at the thought. "That is just not a subject I really would want to paint. I see Greasy Sae and Jear around, but," he looked away from me hurriedly, and I understood. I all but closed that door yesterday with my actions. Not that Grease Sae would say no if Peeta asked, but more of the fact that Peeta wouldn't feel comfortable to ever even get to asking. I thought of Jear, and thought of how much she'd love a beautiful painting of her and her doll done by Peeta, until I remembered how I treated her. Her doll's head is off, anyway.

"I'm around," I brought up casually. I didn't know why I said it but I did. Peeta had painted me before, but he painted me as I was within the games. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious if he ever thought about painting me nowadays. It was a foolish, selfish thought, but I was a foolish selfish girl (woman, my mind cawed, you're a woman now, and eighteen).

I turned to him, and saw that he was stammering to try and think of what to say. To tell me he didn't want to paint me anymore, I thought to myself. It was a stupid thing to say, why did I say that? "I know you are," he finally got out and I looked away. "I just didn't ever ask you because I thought you'd be completely against the thought."

I thought about it. "Do you want to paint me?" I asked, quietly. I was embarrassed now, the question was a genuine curiosity of mine.

"Yes. Always." I looked up at him, and saw that he was the one that had a faint blush about him. "I always want to paint you."

I looked around the room, and then finally looked at him. I didn't feel foolish anymore, and stated simply, "so paint me."

He was silent for a moment, and then broke out into a smile. "Are you sure?"

I thought about everything we've been through. And how we came back to District 12 and we're different people. But deep down, there's still us. I see it in Peeta everyday. There's not just old Peeta or new Peeta, but so many different facets of him, all put together, making the person I see in front of myself. It was plainly just Peeta, always Peeta. I felt that there were different facets of me as well, sure, but they all were jumbled up in a heap. Picked apart, broken into more and more pieces, some parts just grains of sand. And I realized, for the first time coming back, that I didn't want to just simmer in the pieces. I wanted them to be put back together.

And I wanted to make Peeta smile. So I told him yes. He smiled, but then his eyebrows furrowed and I wondered if maybe I shouldn't have let him and that this was a bad idea. But as he started moving a chair to sit perpendicular to a light he turned on, I realized that he was just in his art mode.

"Just sit on the chair, however you're comfortable."

I sat and watched as he set up. He brought an easel with a board on it and planted it right in front of me. Adjusting the board height so he could see me just above it, he then took on the task to setting up his paints and other supplies. I felt a bit nervous, never having truly posed for a painting before. I picked at my nails absentmindedly, and looked up when he sat down.

We stared at each other for a bit, but then he got up and stood in front of me. He looked back and forth between the light and the my face, and scooted the chair I sat in at a slightly different angle. He set his hand on my shoulder, and warmth seemed to flow through me from his touch. He moved slowly, brush my hair over my shoulder on one side and letting it fall on the other. His hand trailed down my arm, and traced my scars. "I want you to realize how beautiful you and your scars are. I want to help you realize that with my painting."

Could he do that? I wonder if that's why I wanted to be painted; to see my scars. My scars all over my body. Oh. My body. "I–" I started. I didn't know what to say though, or what was expected of me. Was there anything expected of me?

He noticed the sudden tension in me and guessed easily. "Wear whatever you're comfortable with, Katniss. I'm not asking you to do anything out of your comfort zone."

I nodded, and he went back to continue setting up. I sat there, moving around a bit. Comfortable. What was I comfortable with? Nothing, really. Absolutely nothing. I shook that out of my mind. No, this was about need. What did I need? Did I need to see past my scars on me? I looked down on my left arm, the angry raw skin seeming to scream at me. What I needed was to be able to see past my scars. I could see past Peeta's, but I couldn't see past mine. I watched him as he started squeezing the paints from the tubes on a palette, and tried to focus on his scars. He still didn't put his shirt back on. Did he do that on purpose? Did he want to keep his scars out in the open for me to look at and see? And then suddenly, as I looked at his scars, they didn't make me feel guilty, or sad, but empowered. And mine too. I needed to conquer mine.

My mind fleetingly thought back to Johanna Mason as my hands were at the bottom of my shirt. I hadn't thought of her in a while, mainly I guess because I didn't feel as much guilt over her than others. She had no one left to love, she told me, before meeting me. I couldn't rip that away from her, like I did with so many others. But she still got tortured for me. For "the cause." I thought of before we really knew each other (do we really know each other now? We were women within walls, under floorboards, behind armour. Did we really know each other? Or was it that there was no one else that could understand me more than her?). When I first saw her, she completely stripped. And Peeta said it was because I was pure. Pure. What a silly word for me. I've ruined too much to be pure. My scars were created of nothing pure, but instead the black poison that I both drank and distributed. I am not pure, and never would be. In one motion I yanked my shirt off over my head. I waited for a moment for a blush to creep in or embarrassment to sink through, but it didn't come. Proud of myself for that, my hand went to the clasp on my bra.

When Peeta looked back up at me I registered the surprise on his face. I smirked slightly, knowing that he expected to be painting a fully clothed Katniss. Before him I presented the scarred Katniss that I became, the Katniss that he would have to paint and portray. I thought briefly, that I should be embarrassed now, naked from the waist up. Instead I shifted in my seat, my legs crosslegged, and stared straight at Peeta. He nodded, picked up a pencil to start the initial sketch, and went to work.

I stayed as still as possible. Every now and then I'd glance down without moving my head to my body. My prep team from the games had seen me naked more times than I could count. All of Panem had seen varying degrees of skin over the course of games. "You're slouching," Peeta told me teasingly, and I straightened up my back. Maybe, if I modeled for Peeta before the war and everything that happened, I'd be embarrassed and completely wrapped in blankets. I'd be too afraid of his loving eyes caressing my skin with just a look, him learning even more about me that I didn't want anyone to ever know.

The war stripped me of my modesty though. It stripped me of every part that made me feel human. I didn't know what I was anymore, besides Katniss. I was Katniss. Peeta was Peeta. And I didn't feel any embarrassment in this setting with my entire top half exposed. I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that I was merely just modeling for a painting by Peeta. Peeta was in full-blown art mode, and I wondered if he could even get excited by the sight of a breast in this mindset.

He put his pencil down, and picked up the paintbrush.

I watched him closely, carefully, as he swirled the brush with several different pigments and set it upon the board. I wondered how the painting would come out, if he really would portray me and my scars beautiful. I laughed inwardly, thinking how a painting of scarred and gritty Katniss would look next to the paintings beautiful sunsets, hunger-inducing baked goods, and beautiful every day snippets. I remembered the sketch he did suddenly, of the Primroses. "Prim..." I said aloud by mistake.

Peeta's eyes shot up to mine, his hand hesitating. I cursed myself for breaking him out of his artist moment, and smiled at him and nodded so that he'd know that I was okay and he could continue.

"You saved her, you know," I said quietly. I didn't know if Peeta could talk when he was painting, or if it'd be a distraction that he'd ignore.

Without breaking from his strokes, he asked me, "how?"

"When you were still...away." I didn't want to say 'Capitol," or anything associated with it. That word felt taboo to say aloud, and I didn't want to invoke an episode because of it. "You warned us about the bombs. You gave us a heads up to go into shelters, gave us at least ten minutes more to be able to collect ourselves and get down to safety." I gulped, but continued to watch him as he continued to paint. The only recognition that he could hear me even was a slightly tighter grip on the paintbrush. "You saved Prim. She ran through the doors just in time, delayed because she went back for the stupid cat. If you didn't tell us–" I stopped myself, and blinked for a long bit. If you didn't tell us she would have died in flames for my fault, just sooner. It seemed no matter what, Prim was always, truly, the girl on fire. But Peeta saved her more than I ever could. "Thank you."

"You don't need to thank me Katniss," He said, and that was the end of that conversation. Talk continued to come and go as he painted me, but subject matter stayed lighter. The moon crawled lazily across the sky as the time went on. My bones ached and wanted to move. But I didn't. And then finally, Peeta looked at me smiling, and said, "done."

Nervous now, I stood up slowly feeling the blood rush back through my entire body. Peeta was standing, looking at the piece nervously and back to me, anticipating my reaction. He came over to me and laughed, put his hands over my eyes and guided me to stand in front of the board. "You ready?" He whispered in my ear, just an inch away. I nodded, and he uncovered my eyes. "It's still wet, so be careful."

The painting in front of me was of me, but there was no way it was me. She sat up straight and tall, and most importantly, strong. She wasn't afraid, and stared right at you, as if demanding a confrontation for looking at her. Her top half was naked, but adorned in scars. And the scars were a part of her, as much as her hair, her fingers, everything. They looked so natural upon her, as if she was born with them. But she couldn't be, and her stare told you that she earned each and every one. Colors jumped out all around. Reds and yellows, oranges blended in between, and blues and purples filling the shadows. Every area had a color, and they all weaved together to create this woman. To create me.

I wanted to touch it, but remembered that it was still wet. "Peeta," came out in a breath of mine as I stared at it. He turned me around, his hands locked on my shoulders and his head down on my level. "It's beautiful."

"You're beautiful," He answered automatically, and I just smiled. He smiled in return. I saw on his arms scars that seemed small dots, and brushed my fingers over them. "These are the scars from when they tried to make me hate you," He said. The hijacking scars, from shooting venom into his bloodstream. He took my hand, and laid it on a burn scar on his chest. I absentmindedly took in the paint on his fingertips, and splotches of color on him as well. His heartbeat sang to me. "These are the scars from when I tried to save you." He made it to the square, was there when I was on fire. Ignited as well.

I snaked my hands from his chest to around and up his back, and pulled him into a hug. I laid my head on his shoulder, and his went on mine and nudged my hair. There was little to no space between us. "Thank you," I cracked out. Could I ever say thank you enough times to Peeta? Would I ever get beyond being in thanks of him? I knew I wouldn't and that he deserved to hear it. He said, "Thank you," as well, which confused me a bit but I didn't dwell on it. What was there to thank me for? I didn't care, and just closed my eyes for a bit, and when I opened I saw us at an angle in the room. I almost laughed at what I saw, our scars lined up almost to the point that it seemed as if we were just two jagged puzzle pieces lined up. We seemed a cocoon of old and new flesh, bound by the raised and darkened scars.

Suddenly I realized as I looked into the mirror that we both didn't have shirts on. And although I felt no embarrassment before with my exposed skin, I blushed now. Then I was just becoming a piece of art, modeling for a painting. Now though. Now I was hugging Peeta. Skin was touching skin, and everything felt immediately more intimate. I felt my breasts pushed against his chest, my nipples slightly hard by either the touch or maybe just by being exposed. Skin touching skin. I quickly untangled myself from him and stepped away, going to my chair and throwing my bra and shirt on again. I was blushing still when I turned back to him, and he was as well. I felt an old part of me emerge for the moment, and the need to run out overcame me. "It's getting late. I should go."

A flash of disappointment came across his face, but he nodded. I went up to him, and tried to quiet my need to get out a bit as I hugged him again. "Thank you," I said again, into the crook of his neck, and he tightened the squeeze. I let go and stepped back. I wanted to kiss his cheek, or maybe his jaw, or his lips. I wanted to stay and sleep here, in his bed. I wanted to wake up with him holding me. But I couldn't. So I just nodded, and started to walk out of the room. "I'll see you for breakfast," He said to me, and I nodded again. My brain was working too fast and too much. I couldn't follow it, but I tried to push all thoughts of Peeta out of it as I left his house and entered back into my own. The difference between my house and his was almost unsettling. Peeta's was warm, friendly, and inviting. It felt like a true home at moments as well. Mine was cold and dead, a true ghost. It was haunted by memories, which soured it. I shook my head, but knew what I had to do.

The thought ran through my head the moment I stepped into the house. I went up the stairs and opened the door of Prim's room. I swallowed, looking at it in it's slightly disturbed space, and then exhaled loudly. I shut the door, locking myself in. I had done this before, many times actually. But I was not here to lay on her bed and cry, unmoving. I moved a basket that she had in her room in front of the door, and started off by taking the doll that Jear was playing with and put it in the basket. Prim would not want me to hold on to these things. She would want me to give it to those that didn't have toys. What I should have done on my birthday was let Jear play with the doll, and choose whichever she wanted to go home with. What I did was force them out. I needed to right that. Ashes to ashes, I told myself.

Reviews are appreciated! Hope you have a great day

xx