The sun is already high in the sky when I wake the next morning. When I lift my head I see that Peeta is still asleep. It's the first night since returning home that I didn't have a single nightmare, and I can only assume it's because we were so tired out by the time we finally dropped off last night.

I can't help but reach up and brush some of Peeta's hair back off his face. His face scrunches up adorably at my touch before relaxing back into sleep. I can't help but think that this is how I want to wake up every day. Then I realize, now I can.

I think back on everything that's happened in the last several days. Was it really only three days ago that all the cameras and attendants went back to the Capitol and we were finally left on our own? The day the cameras left was last Friday, when we had our first family dinner together, Gale walked away from me, and I came to Peeta's house in the middle of the night and spent the night with him. The first day without any Capitol obligations was when I fought with my mother over breakfast and then moved in with Peeta. The second day was when I fought with Gale, got married, made an uneasy peace with Gale, and made love to Peeta. Today was day three; what could possibly happen now?

Our lives, I think with a smile.

…..

We spend that entire day at home. It's too late to get in a good hunting trip, and truthfully I'm feeling a little sore after last night, more than I was at the time. Peeta doesn't even cook anything, because we still have so much food left over from the toasting dinner. There's nothing to clean, since everybody stayed over after cake to help us clean up last night. For the first time in many, many years, neither of us has anything we have to do, and we both go a little stir-crazy. The supplies for our art talent can't get here soon enough.

…..

The following day we're both determined to leave the house. I head out to the woods and make good on my promise to Gale to run the snare lines for him, but I don't do much beyond checking the snares. I find that hunting has lost a lot of its allure for me, especially hunting alone. I have too many memories of using a bow against people to truly find peace in using it against animals.

I make my first appearance at the Hob since returning home, and for the first time I walk in with a pocket full of coins rather than meat to trade. It's a new experience, and more than a few of the vendors give me odd looks. I guess I'm not truly Seam anymore in their eyes. But Greasy Sae greets me warmly, and most of the people I used to trade with regularly take her lead.

Peeta heads to town to help out at the bakery, but when I return home that afternoon he's already there, having been turned away by his mother. Apparently having a Victor working at the bakery, admitting that his contribution to the business was valuable and was still important even now that his survival didn't depend on it, would be an embarrassment to her. She threw in a few more jabs about his new, undeservedly elevated status, and I'm sure about his marriage to me, but I cut off his story with a kiss and a plea to put the miserable woman out of his mind. We wind up with way too much bread around the house as Peeta bakes frustrations away. I want to stay with him while he works, so I claim a spot on the counter next to him as my own, sitting up on the counter like I do at Greasy Sae's rather than lurking somewhere behind him. This way I can see his face, I can reach over and touch him, and I can nip a bit of dough for myself if he's making something particularly good.

Peeta jokes that my perch on the counter leaves my breasts right at his eye level, and smirks at the blush that floods my face. I smirk back when his falls away as I whip my shirt over my head.

I learn that Peeta is easy to distract.

…..

Wednesday evening, we're enjoying a post-coital nap on the living room couch when the television snaps on. The set coming on by itself like that means a mandatory viewing is coming on, but normally mandatory viewings are announced ahead of time. Even turning on the television automatically doesn't do much good if people aren't home to watch it.

Apparently we now know how long it takes official records to be filed, because the impromptu mandatory viewing is President Snow proudly announcing our marriage. Somehow they've taken the bare fact that we got married and turned it into a ten-minute speech, filled with falsehoods and embellishments and plenty of empty platitudes about how excited everyone is for us and how much Panem loves us. Neither Peeta nor I can form any coherent response once the broadcast ends, we're still alternating stares at the now dormant television and each other when Haymitch comes barging in and sits himself down on the other couch. He just smirks and takes a swig from his flask while Peeta and I scramble to cover ourselves and explain in colorful terms how to knock on doors and why he might want to try it sometime. Haymitch ignores our concerns and proceeds to discuss the broadcast and all the various ways the Capitol is pissed at us inbetween pulls from his flask. He winds up getting drunk before getting to the point, and totters off in the general direction of his house without having told us anything useful.

We try to remember to lock the doors before getting naked after that. Peeta, ever the optimist, points out that it's better to have learned that particular lesson from Haymitch than from Prim. As usual, he's right.

…..

On Thursday I spy a good sized doe in the woods, but just as I'm about to release my arrow it turns and looks me straight in the eye. I spend the next hour sobbing uncontrollably over Rue and bring Hazelle nothing but a fistful of coins that day. She doesn't say anything, she can see my face, she just takes the coins and lets me go home to Peeta's comforting embrace.

…..

On Friday, Peeta makes his first batch of pastry buns with goat cheese, which he so very creatively calls cheese buns. They may in fact be one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten, with the bubbly melted cheese toasting over and turning a little nutty, and the perfect golden crust of the slightly sweet bun. After my first bite, I quickly shove the rest of the bun into my mouth and grab a second; if Prim hadn't come over for the occasion and been right here waiting for them to come out of the oven then she wouldn't have gotten the chance to try one. I don't even care when Peeta teases me for inhaling them so quickly, or points out that I thought the recipe was a bad idea when he came up with it. In order to respond to him I'd have to stop eating, so I don't. I try to be mad at Peeta later for making fun of me, but then he kisses that spot where my neck meets my collarbone and I lose the capacity for rational thought.

…..

On Saturday, I decide that since I'm not hunting game anyway, there's no reason not to bring Peeta with me to the woods. So much of my self is tied to the woods, and I want to share that part of my life with him. So I wait for him to finish baking in the morning and go to the woods later than I would for a hunting trip. I carry my bow and arrows, Peeta carries a picnic lunch. Peeta is louder than ever with his new leg, but I don't care today.

I can see from his face that this reminds him of the woods in the arena; it makes sense, since those are the only woods he's ever spent significant time in. I reach out and twine our free hands together. Peeta tries to flash me a smile but doesn't quite manage it, his face still tense.

"Are you okay?" I ask him.

"Fine," he says tersely.

We walk on for another minute.

"You know you're safe out here with me, right? I've been coming out here all my life, I won't let anything happen to you," I tell him.

"I know that," he says, and musters a small but genuine smile. "Just like you know that I'm in bed with you and not bleeding to death on the Cornucopia."

"Do you want to leave?" I ask. Damn my selfishness, dragging him out here with me just because it's something I love, not giving any thought to the possibility that he may react differently. Have I tried to push him too far? "I can check the snares on my own."

"No, I'm fine," Peeta says, even though we both know he isn't. "Look, it's just going to be like this for us sometimes. Part of us is always going to be in the Games. Maybe over time that'll be a smaller and smaller part, but it'll never completely go away. I don't look at the woods and see the beauty, I see the place the Careers almost killed you."

"I think we can fix that," I say, deciding the snares can wait and pulling Peeta in the other direction. "Are you up for a hike?"

"Sure," he says, uncertain but willing to follow wherever I lead.

"Are you sure you don't want to go home?"

"No. I want to be out here with you." It's the most conviction he's managed to put into anything he's said today, and I can't help but smile up at him.

We don't talk much on the walk, but it's a comfortable, companionable silence. Peeta seems to relax bit by bit as time goes on. I watch for any predators attracted by Peeta's heavy steps, but nothing approaches us. I don't bother to shoot the few rabbits I see.

It's a long walk to my father's lake, and we have to go more slowly than I'm used to at times because this is the first time Peeta's used his prosthetic on uneven terrain like this. But it's all worth it when I see the look of awe on his face when he takes in the view for the first time. The morning mist has burned off by now, but there's a flock of waterfowl near the far shore, and tall grasses surrounding the waterline. It occurs to me that, after living his whole life inside the fence, this may be the first natural body of water he's ever seen. Well, there was the lake in the arena, but arenas are anything but natural.

We sit in the dirt looking out over the water, and I tell him all about my childhood, about hunting trips with my father, about long summer days spent swimming in the lake. I learned to swim before I even learned to shoot, so long ago that I don't even remember learning. I just remember diving, turning somersaults, and paddling around. The muddy bottom of the lake beneath my toes. Floating on my back, staring at the blue sky while the chatter of the woods was muted by the water.

I show him several of the plants that grow around the lake, including my namesake katniss plants. Before we leave I even shoot a few ducks, the first animals I've killed since returning home. I still wouldn't call it hunting, the birds out here are so unused to human predators that they're easy pickings.

We don't get to spend much time at the lake due to our late start, and because I still need to run the snare line. I promise Peeta we'll leave earlier the next time we come out here, early enough that I can teach him to swim. Peeta's face brightens at the mention of a next time and then dims considerably at the prospect of trying to swim, but I kiss him and promise not to let him drown.

I bring Peeta back to the fence and let him take a couple of ducks and a sack of katniss tubers home while I run the snare lines, then bring the meat to Hazelle along with a the rest of the ducks I had bagged. By the time I return home Peeta has already cleaned the birds and has one started in the oven. He says he gave the other to my mother and Prim, and after spending the day at my father's lake the small gesture nearly knocks the wind out of me. I know Peeta will take care of my family just like I do, but every time he does something to remind me of that fact is blows me away. It's been so long since I had anyone other than myself I could rely on to take care of Prim.

That night, Peeta and I make a meal of roast duck and katniss, the same meal my family would enjoy before my father died, while he tells me about his very first baking lesson.

…..

On Sunday, I head out at dawn and meet Gale in the woods for the first time since returning home. Hunting with Gale feels very different now. For one, I'm not hunting much, which Gale doesn't understand. I manage to take down a rabbit and a few squirrels. But then one time in mid-morning Gale spooks a flock of birds for me, and I let them all fly away as I become distracted by memories of the mockingjays in the arena. He stops trying to coax me into shooting after that. I leave the game to him.

I can see the effect working in the mines has had on Gale. He's tired, slump-shouldered, and I wonder how hard it was for him to be out here at dawn. Several times I catch him with his eyes closed, standing with his face turned up towards the sky, doing nothing but feeling the sun on his skin. He never did that when he was out here every day, before he spent six days a week underground. He seems embarrassed every time he does it, so I don't say anything about it. We've become very good at not talking about anything important, Gale and I.

We spend hours out in the woods, Gale hunting and both of us running the snare lines, but we never discus anything of consequence. My marriage, my husband, Gale's new job, the extra coins I've begun slipping into my deliveries to his mother, none of them make appearances in our conversation. I'm left feeling vaguely unsettled when we part at the end of the day, but I suppose the day went about as well as I could hope for, given everything between us now.

…..

Peeta and I both have some difficulty adjusting to the life of a Victor, but eventually we fall into a comfortable routine. Routines become important to us. Peeta's been working in the bakery his whole life, and I've spent nearly all my free time since I was eleven trying to feed myself. It's quite an adjustment to suddenly have no obligations.

We quickly learn that whoever gets up first should wake the other; the extra few minutes of sleep aren't worth the panic of waking up and finding the other missing. Maybe with time our first thoughts will shift to "She's showering," or "He's baking," instead of "They were eaten by mutts," but we're not there yet. Luckily, both of us are used to getting up long before the sun – my hunting and Peeta's baking both had to be done before school opened for the day.

We fall into certain patterns with each other as well, though neither of us discusses them. Neither one of us ever says, "I love you, too," as if our love is merely an addendum of the other's. I never want Peeta to think that I only love him because he loves me. And neither one of us ever uses a nickname for the other. We're both too wary of even subtle dehumanization, both still scarred by being reduced to television characters for public consumption. The Girl on Fire and the Boy in Love. The only exception we occasionally use are the titles we chose for ourselves, husband and wife.

I go out and check Gale's snare lines at least ever other day. My original intention had been to go every day, but some days I just want to stay home with Peeta all day, and now that I have that luxury it doesn't take much to convince myself to indulge in it. Sometimes, Peeta stays home and bakes, but often he comes with me on my trips into the woods. Since I'm mostly just checking the snares and tracking game isn't a necessity anymore, his loud gait isn't a problem. I try to teach him to shoot one day, but he's hopeless. He never looks comfortable holding the bow, and nearly shoots himself when his fingers slip at the wrong moment. Surprisingly, though, he takes readily to the snares when I show him how to set a few. Soon I begin teaching him every snare we have, and he learns them far more quickly than I did when Gale taught me. All those years decorating cakes have trained his hands for precision work.

He even starts accompanying me to the Hob. Though nobody ever speaks to us of it, I found out from Gale that during the Games, Greasy Sae started a collection to sponsor us in the arena. It started out as just a Hob thing, but a lot of other people heard about it and chipped in as well. I don't know exactly how much it was, and the price of any gift in the arena was exorbitant. But for all I know, it made the difference between both of us living and both of us dying. So we always spread our purchases as widely as possible among the vendors, handing shiny new coins over to as many people as we can.

Peeta is baking more than we can eat, and decides to try to sell the surplus to at the Hob. They won't take the bread for free like he was hoping, but he's able to sell it for far less than it would normally cost. I worry that he may be hurting his family's livelihood by undercutting their prices, but he just shrugs and explains that his mother would never allow them to sell to the Hob anyway.

I never trade meat at the Hob anymore, every bit of game I collect that I don't keep goes to Hazelle. Whatever supplies she needs that I would normally trade some of the game for I now purchase with either my Victor's money or Peeta's bread. Most days I slip her some coins as well. It's far more than Gale and I ever collected, and she must know this, but we seem to have an unspoken arrangement where Hazelle will accept my help as long as neither of us mentions that it's help, and Gale doesn't say anything about it so long as I always come while he's away at work.

…..

It's a little over two weeks after the wedding when our art supplies arrive, crates and crates full of the stuff delivered to our house in the Victor's Village. Reams of heavy paper, leather-bound sketchbooks, and dark charcoal pencils. Stacks of canvases and more kinds of paints and brushes than I knew existed. I view the supplies with trepidation. I agreed to this talent on impulse, desperate at the time for any prospect of spending time together with Peeta. That is less of an urgent need now that we're married, live together, sleep together, and now that I can think clearly about it I know I won't be any good at this.

Peeta, on the other hand, looks like a child with a new toy. How long has he dreamed of taking his artistic skill beyond frosting? That camouflage he did in the Training Center, he didn't learn that in three days. In his head he's already seeing the artworks he'll create with these supplies. Which will undoubtedly be incredible, and make mine look even worse by comparison.

My mood is growing steadily fouler at the prospect of my impending failure when I feel two strong arms snake around me from behind as a chin rests on my shoulder. "If you promise to smile, I'll make you cheesebuns," Peeta says into my ear.

"You'll probably make me cheesebuns anyway."

"Well, that's true," he admits. "How about if I make you hot chocolate?"

I spin around to face him. "Where did you get hot chocolate?"

"Where do you think?" he says with a laugh. "I ordered it from the Capitol, it came in on the same shipment with our art stuff."

"And you've been hiding it from me for all this time?" I ask in indignation. The delivery people arrived ten minutes ago.

"Does that mean you'll stop scowling at the workers and come have lunch with me?" he asks with a cheeky smile.

I grudgingly agree.

…..

The first time Peeta meets Greasy Sae is a day towards the end of September when we decide to grab some lunch while we're at the Hob. I should have expected she would try to shock the delicate sensibilities of an all-to-rare merchant customer.

I boost myself up to sit on the counter, and Peeta takes the seat next to me. When Sae brings us our soup, Peeta politely thanks her for his bowl and digs in, but I know better than to do that with Sae's sometimes-questionable concoctions.

"What's in the pot today?" I ask as I stir my bowl a bit.

She waits until Peeta has another spoonful in his mouth before answering. "That's the dog you and your cousin brought in here last Sunday."

Peeta starts and swallows hard, and turns his wide eyes towards me, but rather than say anything about his lunch all he says is, "You shot a dog?"

I try to shrug it off. "We wound up treed by a pack. We shot a few of them before the rest of the pack left."

He still looks concerned. "You didn't say anything about being treed."

"Peeta, I'm fine. It happens sometimes. You just run up a tree and wait them out. I've been hunting on my own since I was eleven. Now I'm older, more experienced, and I have Gale with me. I'm fine."

He puts his bowl down on the counter and stands, stepping closer to me and taking my bowl from me before depositing it next to his and taking both my hands in his. "Were you okay?" he says quietly, and I know what he's really asking. He knows I still don't hunt as much as I used to.

"There was a moment, when I looked down and I thought I saw Glimmer and Cato. For just a split second I thought Gale had shot Glimmer, but then I blinked and they were dogs again. I'm telling you, it was fine."

Peeta nods, but I can tell he doesn't quite believe me. "I'm just worried about you."

"I know. But I'm safe. I swear."

"I'm still going to worry. I always worry when you're not with me," he says.

"I know," I say. We both do.

He sits back down after that, and resumes eating his soup. Sae gives me a funny look after witnessing the exchange, but her primary interest remains on Peeta's reaction to the main ingredient in his lunch.

"So what do you think?" she prods him.

He looks up at her and gives her a winning smile. "This is definitely the best four-day-old-dog soup I've ever had."

I know Sae can give as good as she gets, but she doesn't know Peeta at all, and for just a moment I think he's offended her. But then she flashes that mischievous grin of hers at me. "You better keep an eye on your boy here, he's a real charmer."

I roll my eyes at her. "Tell me about it."

"I guess you'd know," Sae says. "Seeing as how he's already cracked the toughest nut in the district." She and Peeta share a conspiratorial smirk as I feel my face redden, before Sae moves on to help a new customer.

"I didn't bring you here so the two of you could gang up on me," I say, half-seriously. "You know she was hoping for more of a reaction from you to the dog soup?"

"I know," he says. "We used to pay you for squirrels. You think I'm going to turn my nose up at some wild dog?" He pauses and has another bite. "Besides, I wasn't kidding. This is good."

"It's the spices," I say. "I think Sae and the spice vendor Digger have a special arrangement."

Peeta opens his mouth to respond, but before he can we're interrupted by the approach of a Peacekeeper. Peeta immediately tenses, as if he's getting ready to fight or run, but I give him a look to tell him to relax. Any Peacekeeper in the Hob isn't here to cause trouble, and I recognize the man approaching us as Darius, one of the best of the lot. He doesn't try to intimidate or blackmail any of the vendors, and is usually good for a laugh or two. If an unrepentant criminal could have a favorite law enforcer, he'd probably be mine.

This is the first time I've encountered Darius since the Games, and his booming, cheerful voice hasn't changed. "Well, if it isn't our favorite Victor! Still slumming it with the rest of us?"

I roll my eyes at Darius's antics. "It'd take more than the Hunger Games to make me give up Greasy Sae's soup," I say.

"Isn't that the truth!" Darius agrees. He starts playing with the end of my braid like he always does, but now I see Peeta watching him carefully as he does so. "You're a Victor now. Shouldn't you look better?" Darius asks. "Maybe a ribbon in your hair or something? Show some district pride, Miss Everdeen!"

I make no move to stop Darius's actions, but I say, "You might want to stop fiddling with my hair, Darius. I'm not some random girl you can mess with anymore. I'm a Hunger Games victor, and so is my overprotective husband."

Peeta stands and offers Darius his hand. "Peeta Mellark. Pleased to meet you, Officer Darius."

"Oh that's right, you're not even Miss Everdeen anymore, are you?" he says as he drops my braid to shake Peeta's hand. "Assuming the broadcast from the Capitol can be believed."

That's a dangerous sentiment, coming from a Peacekeeper. I look at Peeta, he has nothing but questions in his eyes. He knows I know Darius, he's letting me decide how much to trust him.

"That one can," I say carefully as Greasy Sae hands him his soup.

From the look on his face, I can tell that Darius understands exactly what I'm saying. "There was some discussion in the barracks, some debate over just how… real this whole thing was. Some people think it was nothing but a strategy for the Games."

"Seems like a lot of people like to debate each other about us," Peeta chimes in.

"Care to settle the discussion?" Darius asks. Anyone who didn't know him would think he sounded playful, but I can hear the seriousness beneath his words.

"Would you believe us?" I ask.

"I would believe you, Miss Everdeen," he answers.

"It's Mellark," I say without thinking.

"So it is," Darius says, and his expression is unreadable now. He takes a seat next to Peeta and digs into his soup. Peeta sits back down himself, but doesn't resume eating. I'm still not completely sure I haven't just imagined the deeper meaning of this conversation. Darius is a Peacekeeper, after all. But that also means he might know something about the situation in the Capitol. He could potentially be a valuable source of information.

"I get the impression you don't entirely believe us," Peeta says.

"Katniss Everdeen, happily married? That does seem like a bit of a stretch," Darius says.

"What do you want us to do, make out on Greasy Sae's counter?" I ask testily.

"That would attract some business, wouldn't it?" Peeta asks with a grin. "I mean, we haven't made out on television for what, almost a month? People must miss us."

I scoff. "That would be funnier if it weren't true."

"I don't care how famous you are now," Sae chimes in, rejoining the discussion after serving other customers. "No making out at my counter. People have to eat here."

"But you let her sit on the counter!" Darius protests.

Sae doesn't miss a beat. "Katniss is a very clean girl."

I give Peeta a glare to try to stop him from responding. It sort of works; he doesn't make any crack about my cleanliness. "So does that mean I'm the problem?" he asks Sae. "If I were cleaner, then could we make out on the counter?"

"No!" she says emphatically, earning laughs from all three of us. "You two have giant Victor's houses. You can find someplace to make out that's not my counter."

"It's alright, Sae, we'll try to contain ourselves," I tell her.

"But only because I don't want to miss out on the best soup in the district," Peeta says.

"Told you he was a charmer," Sae tells me before heading to the other end of the counter to handle more customers.

Darius comments, "Well, you've got the banter down flat, at least."

"Look," I say to him, "I've already had to have long discussions about this, trying to justify my marriage to my mother and Gale. I'm not doing that for anyone else. You can either take my word, or not."

"And your mother and Gale, did you convince them?" Darius asks.

I'm reluctant to answer, but Peeta takes me by surprise when he answers for me. "Not really," he says.

"My mother is convinced, she just wasn't happy about it at first," I say. "And you know how stubborn Gale is."

"So you two are for real, then?" Darius asks.

"Yes," I answer simply.

"Everything we saw on-screen was real?" he asks.

I sidestep his question. "Everything we do off-screen is real," I tell him.

Darius takes the next several bites to consider what we've told him. "I heard you two were living together," he says casually.

I'm already getting sick of this discussion. I answer tersely. "Married couples tend to do that."

He accepts this answer mutely as he eats more of his soup. After a few minutes of silence he speaks up. "You've been mentioned in quite a few bulletins lately. You can understand my curiosity."

This immediately grabs my attention. We've been discussed in Peacekeeper bulletins? Peeta says, "We can certainly understand not wanting to be left uninformed."

"Is that unusual?" I ask. "To have notices about the new Victors?"

"Well, I've never had Victors in my district before, but I've never seen this many bulletins about any previous victors," Darius says. He says all of this without looking up from his bowl, as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

Now Peeta asks a question that had never occurred to me. "When you said you, did you mean us, or did you mean her?"

Darius pauses for a moment before answering. "Bit of both. But mostly her."

That really throws me. This isn't just about the new Victor, because we're both Victors. For some reason the Peacekeepers are being issued notices about me, specifically me. I want to know why, what those bulletins say. The question is on the tip of my tongue, but somehow I know that asking it would be pushing this information exchange too far. Darius may frequent the Hob, he may laugh and joke with the lawbreakers who populate it, he may like me personally, but he's still a Peacekeeper. Ultimately his loyalty is to the Capitol, not to me, not even to Twelve.

"Is there anything we should do?" Peeta asks.

Darius finishes his soup, and stands to leave. "I wouldn't worry about," he says. "Twelve is quiet, after all. You're here, and nothing's happening here." My mind races to parse what he's really saying. Nothing's happening here, meaning something is happening elsewhere? You're here, meaning we can't be connected to whatever is happening, wherever it is happening. Somehow I doubt President Snow will be that generous.

"Nice to met you, Mr. Mellark," Darius says, clapping Peeta on the shoulder. "Congratulations on accomplishing the impossible. And on winning the Hunger Games." He chuckles to himself as he leaves. Neither Peeta or I are in a laughing mood.

In the end there's nothing we can do, because as Darius said, whatever's happening isn't happening here. All we can do is go on living our new lives and hope for the best.

…..

It takes about a month for Peeta's mother to decide that the market for cakes made by a Victor is large enough to override the embarrassment of making a Victor work, and Peeta begins going to the bakery occasionally. I hate that woman and I hate that he'll be subjected to her again, if I had my way he would do all of his work at our house and just deliver the finished product. But I know he misses the bakery, misses working with his brothers and his father. I make him promise me that he'll walk out if she ever touches him again.

I don't know what he ends up saying to her, but she seems to be on her best behavior. Aside the occasional minor burn from the ovens, Peeta never comes home with new marks or bruises. We even end up going into town to have dinner with his family about once every other month. During these meals Mrs. Mellark is unpleasant, but marginally civil. I'm not entirely sure why she even hosts these dinners, considering she hates me and doesn't seem to like Peeta all that much better, but with how little Peeta sees his family now I'm not about to ask him to pass on the opportunity.

…..

Our art talent goes about as well as I expect it to.

Peeta's work starts out looking like a slightly distorted version of his cake designs, as he adapts to the new medium. But over time he begins producing the kind of paintings I knew he would, beautiful and finely detailed and intimidating as hell for me.

My own work starts out as little more than stick figures and somehow gets worse form there. Children drawing with a stick in the dirt could make something clearer than my paintings. Sometimes I get frustrated by the whole thing and just pour a whole pot of paint over the whole canvas and let it dry that way.

Peeta tries to placate me. He actually reads the art books that came with our supplies, and he claims that there's a whole style of painting based on eliciting emotions from the viewer without making a realistic-looking picture. Easy for him to say.

Peeta begins with some test paintings recommended by the books. He paints a bowl of fruit. He paints the view out the window of the spare bedroom we've turned into a studio. He paints one of his shirts hanging over the back of a chair. When he feels confident enough in his abilities, he paints the katniss-and-dandelion design from our wedding cake. We hang that one in our bedroom, where it's eventually joined by his painting of Lady licking Prim in the face while she tries to feed her.

It bothers me when Peeta begins painting his memories of the Games. He begins with little things, things you wouldn't even recognize if you hadn't been with him in the arena yourself. Water dripping through the cracks in our cave. The dry pond bed. A pair of hands, his own, digging for roots. Others any viewer would recognize. The golden horn of the Cornucopia. A shiny tracker-jacker.

Then the other tributes begin showing up. Clove arranging the knives inside her jacket. Marvel posing arrogantly with a spear. One of the mutts, unmistakably the blond, green-eyed one meant to be Glimmer, snarling as it makes its way toward us. And me. I am everywhere. High up in a tree. Beating a shirt against the stones in the stream. Lying unconscious in a pool of blood. And one I can't place - emerging from a silver gray mist that matches my eyes exactly - until he explains that this is how I looked when his fever was high.

I don't understand it at first. All I've done since we got home was try to forget about the arena, and he practically brings it back to life. But he explains that it helps him deal with the nightmares. To get the images out of his head. He even suggests I try it, but the one time I do things don't go well.

I stand immobile, my brush poised just inches from the canvas, as I try to will myself to begin painting something. I don't know how long I remain like this until I realize that my arm is shaking from the strain of gripping the brush as hard as I am. I end up hurling the brush across the room, and pouring an entire pot of black paint over the blank canvas. "There. That's what I want to remember from the arena." Then I knock the painting to the floor and flee the house faster than Peeta can follow, making it all the way to the woods before I break down and cry. I don't return home until long after dark.

…..

Prim calls my paintings "interesting." Peeta calls them "evocative." Haymitch calls them "Exactly what I would have expected from you, Sweetheart." When we send samples to Effie in preparation for the Victory Tour, she calls them "sort of Expressionistic," whatever that means.

I call them "The best they're gonna get." They should have just let me do target shooting.

…..

It's the little things about Peeta that I begin to notice. Like how he ordered hot chocolate from the Capitol just because I liked it. How he always has a loaf of bread and a bag of cookies ready to go whenever I go over to my mother's house to see Prim. How he begins making cheese buns every day once he sees they're my favorite, to the point where I have to ask him to make other things. The way all my pants wind up with flour on them because he can't keep his hands to himself when I'm sitting up on the counter watching him bake. The way he sometimes bakes shirtless, because he knows I can't keep my hands to myself either.

I like to watch his hands as he works, deftly manipulating ingredients and clumps of dough, or making a blank canvas bloom with life. The blond waves of his hair constantly fall over his forehead, just begging me to reach out and brush them back out of his eyes. When he concentrates on his work his usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I don't know quite what to make of it right now, but I can't help but look forward to unlocking it as we get to know each other better.

I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But in the light slanting in from the back window, they stand out as a light golden color, and they're so long that I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks. Then he does blink, and looks up at me so suddenly that I feel as though I've been caught spying on him. In a strange way maybe I was, but I think I have that right now. So I just stare back, and he breaks out in a breathtaking smile. I still don't know quite shat he sees in me, but whatever it is I couldn't be happier that he sees it.

…..

My hunting improves over time. As I refamiliarize myself with my own woods, my mind's tendency to superimpose visions of the arena diminishes. By late fall I'm back to something resembling my usual routine, just in time for winter weather to arrive in force and make game frustratingly scarce.

Things with Gale seem to improve hand-in-hand with my hunting. He relaxes more and more into our old partnership as I return to my old tendencies. The few times I see something from the Games and panic in his presence, he gets uncomfortable and frustrated, because it's a reminder that there's only one person who can really help me at a moment like that, and it isn't him.

We still don't talk about my new home life. He doesn't want to hear about how easy I have it now. He doesn't want to hear me complain about my troubles with painting, or the difficulties we have using up all of Peeta's baked goods before they go stale, not when he spends twelve hours a day underground trying to support his family and receives a pittance for it compared to my Victor's winnings.

The few times I mention my husband, Gale reacts by scowling even harder than usual and stomping around so loudly he scares all the game away. The second or third time this happens I compare his stomping to Peeta's heavy gait, and that's enough to basically ruin the rest of our day.

The worst day is when Gale finds out that I've been teaching Peeta the snares. He throws a fit, and when the ensuing argument makes reference to Peeta's and my sex life, he has a complete meltdown. He continues ranting at home, which drags Rory into things and almost ruins his friendship with Prim when he repeats what he'd heard. I almost stop hunting with Gale altogether, but Peeta convinces me to give him another chance. He really is too nice for his own good sometimes.

Although Gale and I continue hunting together on Sundays, our friendship is more strained than ever. I can only hope things will improve with enough time, but I finally admit to myself what I probably should have known since I got home: We'll never be as close as we were before I went into the Games. There's no going back.

…..

As her 13th birthday approaches, Prim begins to shoot up like a weed. I don't remember growing this much when I was thirteen. Of course we didn't have food when I was thirteen, whereas Prim lives in the Victor's Village two doors down from a man who's constantly producing too many baked goods. By the time her birthday arrives, she's only a few inches shorter than me. It's clear she'll be tall and beautiful like our mother.

The cake Peeta makes for her birthday is larger and more elaborate than the one he made for our wedding, because he has more time to work on it. It's three tiers, covered in hundreds of yellow confectionary primrose blossoms, so many that Peeta had to start making them days before he even baked the cakes. Prim, of course, loves it. She even tries to feed some to Buttercup, who winds up with frosting smeared in his fur.

None of us has ever had a cake on our birthday before, even before my father died we could never afford something so extravagant. Now we can have them every day if we want. Sometimes thinking about how much my life has changed makes my head spin. But the joy on Prim's face, the gentle smile of my mother, the warmth of the man pressed against me holding my hand under the table, these are all things I can no longer imagine my life without, no matter how recently I became accustomed to them.

…..

And this is our life. I hunt. Peeta bakes. Haymitch drinks. Peeta paints. I try to paint. I spend every afternoon after school with Prim. She wants for nothing.

Peeta and I spend every day together. We go out to the woods together. He watches with an amused smile as I struggle to create something legible on a canvas. I sit up on the counter and watch the muscles in his arms and shoulders as he works the dough. We always remember to lock the door now.

We finally begin to get a full night's sleep, first only occasionally but then more and more often. But there are plenty of bad nights, too. I still see everyone I love die brutal, bloody deaths. I still see Rue calling desperately for me to save her. I still see Clove, and Cato, and an ever-changing variety of mutts. But Peeta's arms are there to comfort me. And his lips. And…

Prim is well taken care of. Peeta is with me, always. And despite everything, despite the nightmares, despite the memories of the Games, despite losing some of the close partnership I used to have with Gale, this new life I find myself in is pretty great.

And this is our life.

…..

I really like this chapter, because (spoiler!) (though only for people who've never read Catching Fire or Mockingjay) this is basically the peak of happy!Everlark in this story. They're in love, they're together, and they have five months where the world leaves them alone and they get to just be. It's a rough ride from here, though (hopefully) a bit less rough than canon.

I'd like to take a moment here to address one point that was recently raised by an anonymous reviewer (since I can't respond to them directly, and maybe there is more than one person operating under this misconception). Panem is an oppressive, dictatorial, police state. One where the districts are essentially operated as forced labor camps. With that in mind, when I write in this story about Panem inflicting a particular kind of oppression on district residents, that does not mean that I endorse the infliction of that kind of oppression in real life. Believe it or not, I do not support real-life child murdering games, or enforced starvation, or public floggings, or any of the other horrible things Panem does to the district residents. I know this seems obvious, but like I said, there was at least one person confused on this point, so I wanted to make double plus sure that we were all clear on this..

Next chapter: It's the start of Catching Fire, which means someone will be saying this:

Preview quote from Chapter 11:

"I think we'd make this whole situation a lot simpler if we all agreed not to lie to each other."