A/N - DEAR AMAZING READERS. I know, no excuse. It has been way too long since I updated. I could give a million excuses but that just keeps you from reading the new chapter, right? Okay, SO this new chapter is a big chapter emotionally for both Peeta and Katniss so it was really a difficult chapter for me to write period. BUT...deciding whose point of view to write it from? Impossible, so I improv'd a little bit (hey I'm the author...I can do that!) and alas...you get it from two POV'S! I know it's a little confusiong so Peeta's sections are in regular font and Katniss POV is in italics. Hopefully this will not be too confusing.

Sometimes you have all these ideas about life and how simple it's going to be. You're going to grow up, marry someone, have children, and work at the bakery. You know that your childhood crush is probably going to remain just that and life will go on. Easy, attainable goals. Actually, high reaching goals given the state of Panem under Snow's rule.

Then, you go to the Hunger Games. You realize the girl you've been infatuated with since you were five is everything you always thought she would be even if you've never talked to her before. She's even more than that because she's saved your life and at the end of it all, you think she loves you like you love her.

Then, life becomes complicated. I never planned on Katniss Everdeen. Had the games not happened I had every confidence I would be finding another girl to marry in the future. Let me correct that, because the games would have happened regardless. Had I not been part of the 74th Hunger Games and been given the opportunity to get to know and spend time with Katniss, what was just a crush would have remained just that.

I know from stories my father would tell while baking that sometimes someone you may have had delusions about never really lived up to the vision you have in your head of them. While Katniss had her own inner battles to fight, she was every bit of what I thought she would be. That had become the first problem. When there is nothing to destroy the grand delusion you have in your head, it becomes impossible not to fall in love.

It makes it all that much harder when you realize that love is unrequited. To say I'd been crushed when I figured out Katniss had been putting on a show in the first arena would be an understatement. Devastated, heartbroken, angry, embarrassed…those might have fit.

Then another game happens, and you're back in the arena again, and suddenly you hear that there is a chance she loves you again. And this time, you feel like it's real. Problem: you could die any second, she could die any second, suddenly this new dream is feeling farther and farther away. Then to have her ripped away from you… I thought it was over, that I wouldn't have to complicate the delicate dance of life again. I was going to die, tortured to death by the Capitol.

That, I could have lived with, but being rescued, only to end up almost killing her and later remembering that's not something I could have even considered in my right mind? Yeah, I am not okay with that. However, the past is the past. That's what I'm told anyways.

While I've had my suspicions lately that Katniss may have again become fond of me in a way that didn't include just friendship or a person of comfort, I'd kept the light of hope from bursting to life. You see, it is impossible for me to not love her. I will always love her. She will always be my center of everything from now on.

But to hear her say that, blatantly and without hesitation, to the person who'd always stood between myself and her…I couldn't stop the elation spreading through my body. For the first time, I feel invincible. It seems like she is always the one protecting me and right now I feel like the one who could take on the whole arena of tributes without a single weapon in reach.

This is nothing that compares to the feeling of knowing, once and for all, that you are loved by the person that you have waited so long for.

Still, I'm not sure if this could possibly be real. I'd come back to the little house we were staying in as Katniss had asked. I'd sat down on the couch. Perhaps I'd fallen asleep? Perhaps I'd just dreamt that I'd gone back because I'd felt like things were just not right. My dreams have given me what I want. When I wake up I'll still be laying on the couch, waiting anxiously for Katniss to return.

With this certainty in my head I decide that since it is a dream, a pleasant one after so many horrible ones, I'll enjoy it.

I can hear my own heart pounding. Right now the reasons are hard to determine. Fear, anger…her. I'm standing in the bedroom and I can't remember what I'm doing here. All I can see is her being backed into a corner, hearing her say she loves me, but she's not telling me…she's telling him…

"Peeta," she whispers behind me and I remember my hand is laced into hers.

I turn back towards her and I feel like the first time I saw her on the day of the reaping. She's a little more scarred and her eyes carry a heavy weight of grief and fear. A moment of trepidation passes through her eyes and I know it doesn't matter that she told him before me. It matters that she said it at all. I pull her close to me, my arm wrapping around her waist. My fingers trail down her cheek and her breath catches in her throat.

He looks confused and sure all at the same time. It doesn't make any sense to me, but any concern for what it means is lost to me. He's here and for once I'm sure of what I actually feel. I take a deep breath that catches in my throat.

Say it, just say it, my brain berates me but with the fire brewing in his eyes and I feel like maybe this isn't the time for talking. Or you're just avoiding it. I squeeze my eyes shut and will the conscience concealed inside my head to ever so gracefully shut up. Peeta's hands cup my face but I don't move, I can't look at him, not right now, I still feel too guilty.

Gale shouldn't have been the first person to know that I love Peeta. I should have told him first, but I couldn't. I had the opportunity on the train and I couldn't then. I can't now. I'm afraid when those words come out of my mouth everything they mean is going to be taken away from me.

I can't do that again…I can't lose everything again…

Her hands grip my wrists as my hands rest against her jaw. Her eyes are squeezed shut and I sense some battle happening in her mind, but as always, she tries to keep the doors shut. She tries to keep me from looking in.

I could talk to her, I could say a thousand things but I feel like right now it isn't going to mean much. Besides, I'm tired of talking her off the ledge, it's time for her to see instead of hear. I step forward and lightly kiss her forehead. Her hands loosen around my wrists and rub lightly up my forearms.

My stomach is twisting in knots and I feel heat spreading through my chest. Again, the vision of Gale having her pressed up against the wall and just as quickly, my anger flares again and I want to pull her close and protect her from the world. Hasn't she seen enough of the ugliness of the world? How do I keep her from having to see any more of it? In short, I can't, I can only be there when the world is falling apart and hope that's enough.

I wish I could stop fighting, but I don't know how. Fighting against everything is the only way I know how to survive. Fighting my feelings now because given enough time they could only turn around and hurt me when Peeta is taken away is the only way I know how to move forward.

I feel a tear slip down my cheek and Peeta's thumb moves quickly to swipe it away. I'm tired. I'm so tired.

I open my eyes to meet Peeta's gaze and what I find isn't a boy lost in his own head, but eyes filled with determination and…love. I know Peeta loves me, he always has, it has always been selfish of me to know so certainly he loves me and me to never be able to feel the same way.

Now I do and I can't say it. I can't find the words stuck inside me throat. Of all the things Peeta deserves, he deserves those words more than anything. But he isn't waiting to hear them, he leans forward and our lips meet. Every thought of apprehension and fear falls away because for one minute, what I have to say doesn't matter.

My hand slides under the sleeve of his shirt and I feel a jagged scar along his shoulder. I gasp, surprised, breaking us apart. I'd not seen Peeta without a shirt on, I didn't realize he carried scars to rival my own. He gives me a confused look before realization dawns across his face. He takes a step back and pulls his shirt off. At first I see nothing but the conditioned muscles that haven't been lost even in the aftermath of the games. Then, I see one scar, two, three…fifty.

He turns and I feel tears collect in my eyes as I wonder if there's one whole inch of his back that wasn't open and bleeding at some point. I trace my fingers over some of the worst and I imagine what it felt like. These should be mine, had it not been for me, Peeta would never have felt this pain. This is my pain to bear.

Her hands are warm and soft against my back and for the first time since my name was called in the first games I realize I'm thankful for every moment of pain I've suffered, because it's brought me every moment of joy, it's brought me her, and it's brought me peace at the end.

I turn because I know her well and I know she's only blaming herself for every scar. She's taking each scar and in turn branding it to her own skin in her mind.

"I'd gladly take a million more if it meant your safety," I say as I turn back toward her and all I can see in her eyes is pure self-hate. She can never let herself see the good, only the bad, and sure we've both had an excess of bad to last forever but why can't she see me whole and alive standing right in front of her?

You haven't given her reason to, aside from punching Gale in the face, I suppose, my mind so merrily informs me.

Kind of ironic what epiphanies you have in the oddest moments. She still treats me as wounded because I let her, because in some ways I still act like it. I handle her with gloves like a fiery volcano that's one push from exploding and weaving a path of destruction that seems inescapable.

I see her preparing to say something else in return, but I feel like this time she doesn't deserve a chance. This time, showing her scars mean nothing to me is all that matters.

Emotions are such fickle things, one second guilt is circling my heart like a tourniquet and the next my heart is bursting from its confines as Peeta's arms encircle me and his mouth assaults mine. I have little time to think as he brings me to the edge of the bed and I feel like I realize what's about to happen but I can't stop it…I don't want to.

My body is literally ignoring my brain. My brain says too far, too fast, too much while my body screams finally!

Though Peeta's body is marked with enough scars it almost seems like some form of art, his skin is soft and warm pressed against mine and for a brief moment of time I wonder when that happened.

I'm not completely innocent; I know what happens when adults are behind closed doors. I just never really considered I might be one of them. In so many ways I feel older than time, and at this moment I feel younger than my nineteen years.

I have no idea what to do with my hands or anything really, I'm trusting my body to know what it's doing because Peeta seems like he went to finishing school and learned nothing but the delicate ins and outs of the human body. I feel like a flopping fish.

I take a breath and Peeta seizes the moment to bring our bodies together. It's a strange, painful sensation that after a few more moments I realize the pain has turned into desperation for more. I realize that all I need in life is this sweet, blissful oblivion where Peeta and I exist alone and the world doesn't matter.

It's over quickly…and awkwardly, but as we both settle under a blanket next to each other I hear an owl hooting in the woods. I feel like I've been stripped of every barrier between myself and Peeta and I don't mean clothing. For the first time in forever, I don't feel like I'm the one protecting him. For the first time in forever, I sigh, cuddle close to his warm body, and I'm almost asleep within minutes without a care in the world. Peeta is here, he will take the watch, and he will guard me from the night.

I'm almost asleep when I hear his question and this time, far from making me feel guilty it makes me smile.

"You love me, real or not real?"

"Real," I tell him without hesitation.

I can feel her breathing become slow and even and I'm sure it has to be the first time she's ever fallen asleep first. With that fact alone I let hope soar to the moon and back. She loves me.

She loves me.

Not as some act for the Capitol, not to keep us alive.

She loves me.

Scars, nightmares, weird twitches, fears, punching Gale in the face and all.

She loves me.

And I love her; I always will.

Maybe it wasn't a dream after all, at least I'll hope so for tonight.

A/N- Since this is rated TEEN I decided to keep the chapter pretty clean, although let me tell you, I'm no n00b at writing smut, but alas, I leave the chapter as is. It's a little shorter than the other recent chapters have been but as I said, it was mostly an emotion based chapter. More action is up and coming in the next chapters that will HOPEFULLY not take so long to come out. Thanks again! You guys are the best!