A/N: In my version of Catching Fire, I mention that Peeta's birthday is in November, and Katniss' is in July. I just now remember that her birthday is May 8. So from here on out, it's May 8. Sorry for the confusion. Gale looks as if he wants to kill me. The rest of the troops look scared of me. Katniss is just mad. I set my bag down and she inches closer to Gale. If I wanted to kill her, she'd be dead already. Scooting over towards Gale isn't going to help her very much, it's just going to annoy me.

Boggs comes back from calling Coin, and just as I'd expected, she told him she wanted me here. I don't really see what the big deal is anyway. I may not have finished my training but I'm sure I can be of some help. I'm stronger than some of these soldiers anyway. Why are they so upset? There's power in numbers, right? They should be happy I'm here, they've got another reinforcement.

"I want a round the clock watch on him," Boggs says to Jackson, his second in command.

"The blond one?"

"Peeta." I correct her, but she seems to ignore me. Boggs nods his head. "Twenty-four hours. Two people in case one falls asleep. We can't afford an…accident."

Great how they speak of me like I can't hear them.

Do you really expect anything else? They've brought you back here knowing the memories you have here, knowing that you'll probably die.

I wanted to come back here. And dying doesn't sound so bad.

They could at least make it less obvious how much they hate you.

Yeah. But why would they? I mean nothing to them. I'm here for me, not for them.

Boggs takes Katniss off to the side, leaving Gale watching me start to set up my tent.

He won't take his eyes off me. He watches my every move. "Aren't you going to offer to help?" I ask him, hoping he'll get the hint and stop staring.

"Do you need it?"

"No. But it'd be better than you staring at me for no reason."

He laughs sarcastically, but still doesn't turn his gaze. After a few more minutes, I grow tired of it and I snap at him.

"I'm not going to hurt anyone! So why don't you just leave me alone and deal with your own problems?"

"Watch it Peeta."

I sigh angrily. "Look, if I wanted her dead she'd be dead."

"You certainly tried."

The guilt I feel now sickens me. I just look away, knowing that I'd lost this battle.

Finnick comes over to us, and gives Gale a look. "Cut him a break, he hasn't done anything since he's been here."

Gale, seeing that Finnick is right next to me, gets up and walks away, towards Katniss, who is returning with Boggs. "He's just worried about…"

"I know."

"You can't catch a break, huh? Being back in the Capitol? You okay?"

"So far. But the only thing I've done is set up my tent and try not to look around me for triggers."

"Triggers?"

"Triggers for my flashbacks."

"Ah. I know what you mean. Here," he says, handing me a rope.

"It helps. I don't have flashbacks, but it helps me stay in reality when my mind replays bad memories."

"Thanks," I say, cautiously. "You sure I should have this?" I ask sarcastically, noting that everyone here still thinks I'm a killer. "What you gonna do with it? It's only two feet long," he says, smiling.

I tie a knot with him there, and then pull each side of the rope so the knot slides shut tight.

"Pretty good. You could pass for someone from district 4."

"You gonna go back there?"

"You mean when this is all over?"

I nod.

"Maybe. It'd depend on Annie. She seems to be doing better in 13. Nothing there to trigger her flashbacks."

Oh, yeah. She gets them too. I remember her putting her hands over her ears, the way I do when I hear the high pitched frequency that nearly shatters my eardrums every time I get that headache inducing flashback.

"You?"

"What?"

"You going back to 12?"

"Not sure. There's nothing left for me in 12. But there isn't really anything left for me anywhere. So I don't know."

Finnick looks away then. "They take so much away from us. The Capitol. It's amazing how we lasted so long."

I just shrug, sitting in the doorway of my tent now. Finnick sees Katniss walking over to me and he nods his head towards her and raises his eyebrows at me, urging me to talk to her. But I've got nothing to say to her. If she wants to talk to me she can, but I doubt she wants to. She hates me.

She stops to talk to Jackson, who is sitting on a small chair holding her gun in her lap. Part of my tent falls so I get up to fix it and try to look busy while I listen to them.

Katniss asks her to put her in the rotation. The one that's in charge of watching me. She tells her that she didn't put her in the rotation at all and that leads an angry Katniss to then say, "Why not?"

"I'm not sure you could really shoot Peeta, if it came down to it."

This makes me smile. The fact that she couldn't shoot me. I feel a temporary sense of relief and happiness in my chest, and maybe something else. Like the reciprocating feeling that if I were in danger of her, I wouldn't be able to shoot her either.

But it doesn't last long. She says, quite loudly, "I wouldn't be shooting Peeta. He's gone. Johanna's right. It'd be just like shooting another one of the Capitol's mutts."

Johanna's involved in this? She called me a Capitol mutt?

You can't trust ANYBODY!

I guess not. I go into my tent and zip it shut, shutting myself away from the rest of the world.

I hear through the tent that Katniss is on rotation midnight to four, at the request of Boggs.

Am I too far gone to be worth saving? Of course, I don't expect to be saved. I expect to die here, just like I did every other time I arrived in the Capitol. But for some reason I never do. I can't count how many times I should have been dead but lived.

Still, am I too far gone to be the old Peeta again? I hadn't thought so but, the overwhelming opinion on this squad seems to be just that.

I am not Peeta. I am a Capitol-created mutt. I am useless. Worthless. Untrustworthy. Dead.

Everyone leaves me alone until dinner. I feel sadness for the first time since I left the Capitol. And I'd forgotten what it felt like to feel my eyes tear. I hold them back, though. I don't need anyone coming and checking up on me. I need to be here alone.

I didn't think I was holding onto the thought of her and I anymore at all. Deep down though, I guess I was, because her giving up on me has affected me way more than it should have if I didn't have any kind of feelings for her.

I have no family left. My only friends think I'm too far gone to be saved. The only person I could hold onto has given up on me. What will be left for me when this is over?

Dying in the Capitol for the rebellion, for the future safety and prosperity for the districts is the only way I can think of to redeem myself so that when I do die, I'd be remembered for fighting the Capitol. Not for all the other wrong I've done since I left it.

You'll always be remembered for trying to kill the mocking jay. Don't kid yourself.

I hadn't noticed, but in the time I spent thinking about my life it got dark. Then a figure comes up to my tent, with a flashlight. It's Boggs.

"You okay kid?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Listen uh, could you sleep outside by the heaters and some of the other troops?"

I think about asking "Why?" but I know the reason. He doesn't trust me. No one does.

She gave up on you. They all did.

It doesn't get easier the more I think about it. It gets worse.

Lying here in the dark, Boggs on watch duty, I look over at Katniss and Gale sleeping. They're both lying side to side and Gale tosses his arm over her, and she, in her sleep, rolls over out of his reach. Then he turns over in his sleep and faces the other direction. I don't know why I'm so fixated on them, so I look around the camp.

It must be at least a few square miles. At least a couple thousand rebel soldiers. Our squad only makes up a short amount. We're near the streets that the rebels plan on advancing into once they get the okay from command. We're on the front lines. Kind of pointless since Coin said we'd just be actors anyway.

Since I stepped out of the hovercraft earlier today, I've been relieved that the area we're in doesn't trigger any flashbacks. It's a grassy area, on the outskirts of the Capitol streets. Nothing to familiar to me. But I'm afraid that once command gives the okay and we move forward, that will all change. I don't know myself completely. I've been getting better, that I know. But what if the closer and closer I get to Snow's Mansion and the prison, the more unpredictable I become?

It takes an incredible amount of concentration to focus on the real memories and not the fake ones. The fake ones come back to me so often. And when they do, it takes an incredible amount of self control not to act on them. When I'm trying to fight off the flashbacks, my focus is on stopping them. If I have to do it more and more the closer we get, will that take away from my ability to think rationally?

I must drift off a few times, because as it closes in on midnight, I feel well rested, though I don't remember sleeping. I sit up, still in my sleeping bag and I mess with the rope that Finnick gave to me. It helps to keep the arguing with myself away. And I don't want anyone to think of another reason to hate me, by seeing me argue out loud with myself.

Katniss wakes up for her watch. I don't know why she even wants to watch me. She doesn't have to. She could have been sleeping and have someone else deal with me. Why would she want to?

Because she doesn't trust you. No one does.

Gee, thanks. As if I didn't know that.

Did I say that out loud? No reactions, good. I focus harder on the rope.

While tinkering with the rope, though, a memory comes back to me. Katniss and I are in the arena and she's telling Rue she has no feelings for me and that it won't be hard to kill me. Shortly before she drops the tracker jacker on me.

This is the memory that comes so easily to me. But there's another hidden further back. In that one, the careers and I chase her up a tree, and she drops the nest on us while we sleep.

In both memories, she tries to kill me.

She isn't saying anything, but looks desperate to break the silence that's between us, so I speak up. "These last couple of years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth."

She scowls but the look doesn't last long. "I never wanted to kill you. Except when I thought you were helping the careers kill me. After that, I always thought of you as…an ally."

An ally? Is that all I was?

Considering she saved my life and I saved hers in that cave in the video I saw, I guess you could call us allies. What about friends? Lovers? Enemies? I seem to find memories in my mind to fit all of these labels and more. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Tribute. Hunter. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out. The problem is, I can't always tell what's real anymore, and what's made up."

When she doesn't respond, I search her eyes for clues but get nothing. Finnick is the one to respond to me. "Then you should ask, Peeta. That's what Annie does."

But I'm not Annie.

"Ask who? Who can I trust?"

Certainly no one here. And they don't trust me either.

"Well, us for starters," Jackson says. "We're your squad."

Well, for starters, I barely know you, Jackson. That's what I should say. But instead, I say, "You're my guards."

What I actually said makes more sense. How can I trust people guarding me? Controlling me? Isn't that what Snow did to me?

"That too, but you saved a lot of lives in 13. It's not the kind of thing you forget."

It's the kind of the thing that I forget, apparently. "I did?"

Katniss answers. "Your information on the bombing of thirteen gave us all enough time to get out. Prim…she was late to get underground. If you hadn't given us advanced warning, she…" Katniss stops herself.

And I get a flashback.

I'm in the room with the map again, talking on camera about the damage to the districts this war has caused. I remember the two sides of myself fighting about whether to tell Katniss that she could be dead by morning, or not to…

Then without thinking, my mouth blurts out the warning, giving 13 the information beforehand. Then Snow backhanded me, forcing me to the ground where I watched the blood from my upper lip and nose pool on the ground, the cameras still on.

When I come out of the flashback, I see Katniss in front of me, a fair distance away, but looking worried. "You…" She starts to say, but I just shake my head. I try to catch my breathe, and I close my eyes, putting my head down. I wouldn't know where to start to explain this to her. And I don't feel like trying.

The next three hours go by in complete silence, until it gets close to four. I see the way the green camo is illuminated in the light of the heater. Green. Such a pretty color green, too.

Someone's favorite color is green. I remember someone telling me their favorite color was green. I look first, to Katniss, pulling blades of grass out of the earth and then blowing them out of the palm of her hand.

"Your favorite color, it's green?" I ask her. I expect her to say no. Because if I had to guess, I'd say her favorite color would be gray, like the color of the sky when dawn breaks and dusk falls, or the color of her eyes, or the color of the mocking jay. But she says yes. "That's right. And yours is..orange."

It is? I don't seem to remember my favorite color. Snow wouldn't take that from me, there wouldn't be a point. But everything so pleasant to me is pushed so far back into my subconscious that hearing that I like orange is news to me. "Orange?"

"Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset."

I close my eyes and imagine it, the sunset.

Then I see Katniss swimming in the water in district 4 on the victory tour. I wonder if this memory is fake or real, but I decide that it's not important because it's a pleasant memory. The color of the sky while she swam on that day…it was a soft, but glowing orange.

Her dress on the tour in one of the other districts was also a soft orange, with autumn leaves embroidered on it, and it matched her face, her face seemed to glow to match the dress.

Glow…

Pregnancy.

Was it real? Was it not? Doctor Hersch and I covered it in the early days of my therapy..but it's still foggy.

Finnick telling me to ask replays in my mind, but I can't ask a question like this with so many people in earshot. Especially Gale. What trouble that would cause. So I keep it to myself, pledging myself that before I die here in the Capitol, I'll get the answers to the questions most important to me from Katniss herself.

I open my eyes now, and she's still watching me, waiting for some kind of confirmation that I remember. "Thank you."

She smiles and begins to turn her head, but then she stops and thinks about something. Without making eye contact for some reason, she says, "You're a painter, you're a baker, you like to sleep with the windows open…"

I like to sleep with the windows open? Does this answer my previous question? How would she know that if she didn't sleep with me in the same room? It doesn't confirm what I think to be true, but it's possible.

She goes on, "You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double knot your shoelaces."

At this last sentence, I look at my shoes. Double knotted. I look at the rope in my hand, double knotted. How does she know these things? Does she really pay that much attention?

But she says nothing else, and I can't ask anything else, because then she goes back into her tent like she never said anything at all.

I must have fallen asleep, because the last thing I remember is lying down and looking at the opening to her tent, hoping she'd come back out so I'd have a few more questions answered. But she never did.

I wake up to the sound of the Leeg girl. She says, "Wake up Peeta, we have a game for you."

It takes me awhile to fully wake up and sit up in my sleeping bag, but once I do, I find that everyone there, except for Katniss, Gale, and Finnick, are sitting around me in a circle.

"What's this?"

"It's called, Real or not real," Leeg says, "It was Jackson's idea."

Jackson nods and smiles. "Basically," Jackson says, "You ask us a question, about anything that bothers you. And we'll tell you if it's real or not real. It may help sort out some of your confusion."

I look around once more for Gale, Finnick, and Katniss. Most of my questions revolve around either myself or Katniss. So without the people that know me better, I'll only get superficial, basic details about things. But it's better than nothing, and they're all so eager to play this game.

They're probably just bored of sitting here, waiting for command.

"Sure," I say.

"My name is Peeta and I'm eighteen."

"Real."

This, obviously, doesn't require an explanation.

"I'm from District 12"

"Real."

For a few minutes, the game consists of real basic things that the entire country probably knows about me. My birthday, my district, my father's profession, my skill in the games. Those things.

It doesn't start getting more in depth until Finnick, Gale, and Katniss are visible in the distance, heading back towards us. I continue asking my questions when they get to camp, and Boggs explains the game to Katniss while she watches me, curiously. Her arms crossed in front of her.

After the group answers my questions, I look at her, and she either shakes her head no or nods her head yes, confirming what they say.

I ask about the fire in district 12, and about the fate of my family. Most of the things I already knew but just wasn't sure about. What I didn't know, was that it was the Capitol who bombed District 12, not Katniss, not 13.

It is revealed to me that the Capitol destroyed my district the same way and for the same reason it "Destroyed' 13- which was to send a message to the rebels.

Didn't work.

I get another flashback.

This time, I'm in Snow's study, shortly after being reconstructed after coming out of the second games. It's here that Snow tells me that an army of rebels from 13 took only a few select citizens from 12 before blowing it to bits. He tells me I have only myself and Katniss, "Or what we made her into" to blame.

I remove my palms from my ears after the headache leaves me, but the ringing in them still lingers. I shake my head violently from side to side, and it fades, but is still there.

"I think we'd better stop for now," Jackson says, and Boggs nods his head.

"Later on, it might be beneficial for Peeta to have someone that can answer his more personal questions. So for tonight's watch, Boggs with Gale, and Leeg with Finnick for the middle shift. And for the last shift, I'll stay up with Katniss." Jackson says. Everyone seems to agree.

Maybe now I can get some things cleared up.