You're pushing me all the way
off the rest of the world,
you're taking me away
from everything I've known.
And somehow I can't stop
when I look in your eyes,
I see something there,
that I've never been shown.

A/N--Yayy for another chapter :). This made me so happy to write! Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing this story! It makes me so happy to get the reviews! Over 50 now! Keep it up :))))

Disclaimer--I am not Suzanne Collins. I do not own The Hunger Games. I will not cry. I will not cry.

Enjoy :)

"Peeta?" She gulps in breaths of air, tears are streaming down her face, and it's everything I can do to keep from running to her. Everything within me screams to take her up in my arms and make those tears stop flowing. Every single thing I am wants to go to her, but my promise. It's the only thing that keeps me planted firmly in her doorway, torn apart inside, but I must keep my promise.

I open my mouth to speak, but I don't know what to say. I can't think of a single thing that could comfort her, that could make her understand. I strive for a way to silently communicate to her that I'm being like this for her, to help her heal. But I can't do it.

Her eyes cloud over with the tears she's trying to hold back now. Her hands clench at her sides, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her palms. Sobs rack through her chest and I can't help but gape in wonder at the sight of this strong girl falling apart. No, not apart. Katniss will never fall apart. She is too strong, too flexible, too practical, too there to fall apart. But there is something happening within her. Something changing. I can see it changing. I watch silently as it takes hold of her, and the girl I love transforms before my eyes.

Maybe she has always been the girl on fire, ever since the Capitol. But now she is not just on fire, but of fire. Fire burns in her eyes, and her soul. I can feel the heat as if it is a tangible thing, pulsating out from her and engulfing me from all the way across the room. She has changed again. And this change--it seems somehow more permanent to me than any other she has gone through.

Katniss, the girl on fire.

Truly burning now, forever, from the inside-out. She is a sign, a light in the darkness that is existence. Something to strive for, something to work for, a goal, a flare.

It burns away the tears from her eyes, quells the shudders of her body and makes her still. Strong. Smiling at me. It is somewhat maniacal, and I am momentarily worried about this new development.

But I smile back. I don't know what this change can possibly mean. I try to understand what has solidified inside of her, what triggered it. Was it the dream she just awoke from, or something else entirely? Hope floods through my body when I think that it could have something to do with me. She was looking right at me when it happened. And, even now, she is looking at me. Staring me dead in the eyes. The stormy grayness blazing with such vivid power and surety that I am overwhelmed.

"What changed?" I ask her seriously. I hope that she has been following my line of thought, and I wish that I could have a brief glimpse into her mind.

She takes a few steps towards me, then hesitates. I am still not sure what she wants, so I don't move. I am paralyzed. I want so badly to be closer to her. That part of me, that has always stayed with her, even after I promised myself that I would let her decide, it calls to me. It tries to propel me forward and wrap her in my arms. But I stay. And she takes another step toward me.

Her lips curve into a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, and my breath catches in my throat for a completely different reason than when the same thing happened less than an hour ago.

Something happens--something that I miss, because one minute she is standing halfway across the room from me, and now she is wrapped in my arms, and I am pulling her against me and holding her with as much strength as my surprised limbs can muster. Her arms wrap around my neck and she kisses my cheek.

"I thought--" She starts, but chokes off with a sob that cries nothing of weakness, and everything of incredible strength.

I press my lips against the top of her head, and for this moment, everything that I have ever gone through is worth it. I don't forget my promise, but am surrounded by the comforting feeling that by holding her like this, I am actually keeping it.

"I lost you." She says, and I grudgingly pull away to look her in the face.

"No." I tell her. A stern look crosses my face. She did not lose me.

"I thought, I lost you." She says again, and my mind rapidly retraces every step I've taken in the last two days, trying in vain to come up with the moment that she thought she lost me.

I had died, briefly. My heart had stopped, and I'd experienced a small slice of Heaven. But that's not what she is referring to now. Not lost to death, but lost to something else.

To my promise? What else could she mean, if not that? "When?" I ask her. I can't make complete sentences, and I wonder why she never answered my first question, but dismiss the thought when she starts to speak again.

"When you didn't come. You didn't come, when I woke up. You weren't there."

Yes, she thought that she had lost me to my promise. She thought that something had changed inside of me, and that I didn't want her anymore. But she had had Gale with her.

"I just--" I grope for the right words. I have to make this count, because in no moment of my life, have words mattered quite as much as they do in this moment. "I need to know what you want." I say, because telling her that I need to know who she wants might shatter something inside of both of us--something that could not be fixed.

"This." She says as simply and as meaningfully as anything she has ever said. Then she kisses me. A real, deep kiss that severs something inside of me, while at the same time reattaches everything. I had thought that I was connected to Katniss in every way possible. That no amount of anything could ever make me love and need her more. I was wrong. I need her more now, I love her more than ever before. And I know that it is because this kiss is real for both of us. I've had real kisses with her before. At my house the other night, that kiss had been real. So had a few of the ones inside the Arena. There had been times where I felt that her lips against mine really meant something, and I had continued to feel that even after I knew it was all a charade. But even those kisses, what they meant, they meant in friendship, not in love. An attachment that was formed because we needed each other to stay alive.

This, though, this means so much more than that. Whatever had caused the fire that I had just seen erupt inside of Katniss, transfers through our lips and into my own soul. I feel it burn. Not burning to kill, but soldering us together, into the single entity that I have always wanted us to be. I cannot describe this joy, even to myself. It is meaning beyond any possible meaning, and whatever has just connected me to Katniss--completely and wholly and undoubtedly permanent--can never be cut without cutting away my life. Not just my heart, which has always been connected to her, but my body, too.

I cannot live without the girl on fire.

She breaks away from the kiss and pulls herself in closer to me, resting her head on my chest. I feel so peaceful that I can't help but think that not even President Snow himself could ruin this moment. No one can make this joy I feel any less. I've always known that if Katniss lives, I can die happily. But now I know that as long as Katniss loves me, I can live happily, too. And I cannot interpret the way she is holding onto me right now as anything but love.

"Katniss." I whisper against the hair that is cascading over her ear. I do not need her to answer me. I am so suffocated with joy that it is all I can do to get the word out. She clings to me even tighter when I say her name, and she pulls me down off the face of the planet. Because nothing on earth could have this much meaning. Nothing in Heaven or Hell or earth could possibly be this real. This true.

And I want to say 'I love you', but the words want choke out of my throat, so I let them fizzle in the air. I know without doubt that the love I feel for her is flowing so freely from me to her that she can hear the words without them being spoken aloud.

Her head rests on my shoulder and my eyes stay closed in contentment. My hand strokes her hair. It is down right now, not in its usual braid. That doesn't matter, she is always beautiful, but the detail still feels important to me.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like a bad omen. The fact that her hair is not in its natural style, makes me feel like Katniss herself is in a different state of thinking than normal. I feel like if her hair goes back into a braid, she will go back to what she was like before.

The feeling is so strong, that I can't help myself. My hands twist through her hair, forming the braid that I have become so familiar with. She doesn't move as I drape it down her back.

A second after I am finished, the feeling of ease flushes back through my system, and I shake the insane thoughts away from my mind. The change must have been permanent.

Then Katniss gasps, and I turn to see what is the matter.

What I had thought was permanent seems to shatter in front of me, and I see the fragile pieces of my heart crumble to the floor.

Standing in front of me, staring at Katniss with the unforgettable accusation of betrayal, is the only person who could ever break the confidence that Katniss loves me--Gale.

A/N-- I hope you liked it! Sorry if it was too short! I'll get more up as soon as I can!!! REVIEW PLEASE!