Katniss watched them dance, a small but pained smile on her face, and shifted in her seat until she found a position where her ribs wouldn't ache. Around her, others danced and sang, continued to eat more food than most of them had ever eaten in one sitting. Music echoed through the cafeteria, songs she remembered from Twelve, other she didn't recognise at all. Above it all, winding its way around the room, was a sense of joy, of hope, of celebration.

She hadn't thought she'd be here for this - or that she'd necessarily want to be - but watching Finnick and Annie gaze into each other's eyes as husband and wife, she realised that she was glad she was.

Even if she'd had to get shot to attend.

It had been two weeks since The Nut had blown, two weeks since she'd been shot live in front of the nation. It hadn't killed her - not like she'd thought it would when she felt the bullet pierce her flesh and dig in deep - but had simply ruptured her spleen.

She hadn't even known what a spleen was until she didn't have one anymore.

They'd flown her back to Thirteen immediately - Boggs, Gale, Beetee, Plutarch and his crew in tow - leaving Lyme, the Commander in Two, in charge of the finally captured district. In the time since, they'd primarily sequestered her in the medical ward, dulling her pain with morphling that Johanna would often sneak in and pilfer straight from the IV.

Katniss had realised that the fellow Victor's nightmares weren't getting any better, and morphling was her only relief. Giving her the drug was the least Katniss could do - she knew herself what the nightmares could be like, how they could feel like they were taking over your life. She could only imagine how much worse Johanna's were right now.

"Katniss? Will you dance with me?"

Katniss took her eyes away from Finnick and Annie, and glanced next to her to Prim, who looked up at her hopefully. It sometimes amazed her how grown up her sister had become, how the girl in front of her was no longer little with the tail of a shirt sticking out of her skirt, but instead a teenager with one braid instead of two, a full belly and the hope of a future beyond the Seam.

"I don't know," Katniss replied hesitantly. "My body is kinda sore right now. Plus...my nurse told me to take it easy," she teased, throwing her sister's own medical advice back to her.

Prim grinned. "I won't tell the nurse if you don't. Plus I promise I won't hurt you," she assured, and then her smile dimmed slightly. "Just a short one, please? It's been so long since..." She trailed off, and Katniss knew she didn't need to say anything more. It had been a long time since any of them had had anything to dance about - Katniss couldn't remember the last time there had been dancing in District Twelve. And the last time she'd danced herself... Well, that had been on the Victory Tour, and that brought her nothing but bittersweet memories of Peeta and anger towards Snow.

She needed something better to think about than either of those.

"Okay then Little Duck, let's do it," Katniss agreed before she could talk herself out of it, and, slowly rose to her feet. She allowed Prim to take her hand in hers, and lead them over to where dozens of people were doing a livelier step than she'd ever be able to do, injured or otherwise. It was awkward at first, swaying to her own beat that was definitely not the one being played, but in the end Prim began to swing her arms in exaggerated motions and spin around in front of her, allowing Katniss to look like she was dancing more than she actually was. And she laughed, long and loud, not even caring that her body ached with every breath.

It felt like she was laughing for the first time in months. Maybe years.

And it felt good.

Peeta sat next to Cressida and Castor, a smile on his face and a drink in his hand as he watched his friends dance together. Finnick looked more alive than Peeta had ever seen him, the love for Annie he'd had to keep hidden for so long finally able to burst forth. In his eyes, Finnick could finally be the man he'd wanted to be for so long. The carefully cultivated Capitol persona he'd had to adopt had slipped away, leaving only the Finnick Peeta had gladly come to know.

As for Annie...Peeta knew she would likely never entirely recover from her time in the Capitol. She'd already suffered from her own Games, and he'd known it had been difficult for her to be Finnick and Mags' mentor during the Quell. She'd muttered about it long into the night while they'd been imprisoned, and Peeta had listened as she'd told no one in particular how people had offered her lavish sponsor gifts for Finnick in exchange for a night with him after he won.

Peeta had known she'd been clueless as to what Finnick had been forced to do over these years, but now she wasn't so oblivious. Or immune to it herself.

But for the first time, they could finally be together, with no fear of repercussions, and Peeta knew that would make all the difference in the world. And right now, with his own frustrations and confusion and annoyance coursing through him at how much he felt like he was being maligned and forgotten by his own allies, that knowledge alone was all he needed to prove that the Rebellion would be worth it. No matter how much - or, more correctly, how little - Coin allowed him to be involved.

Shaking his head to bring himself back to the present, he glanced around the room, and the combination of Capitolites, refugees from Twelve and the inhabitants from Thirteen. A mixed group of people, all here for that one cause.

And then he saw her across the room, dancing awkwardly with her sister.

The monitor echoed - beep beep beep - in time with each beat of his heart, reminding him so much of the time he'd watched over Mags in hospital after her stroke. The monitor itself didn't tell him much, other than that she was alive, but he supposed he hadn't really come here for answers.

He still wasn't entirely sure why he was here anyway.

He studied her freely - no awkward pauses where he'd feel guilty or creepy for looking at her - and took in this young woman who'd stood in front of a loaded gun and virtually told a man to shoot. And while the man himself hadn't - the shot had come from further away, someone with an untrained eye and less experience with a gun than he would have needed for a kill shot - the fact that Katniss Everdeen hadn't flinched away told him more than anything anyone had told him in one of his sessions.

She had courage. And strength. And even if she hadn't wanted to be this Mockingjay that they called her, it was a role he was certain only she could have played in the Rebellion.

She looked pale and drawn on the white hospital bed, her eyes closed but the eyelids flickering as she dreamt in her sleep. Her dark hair twisted simply over her shoulder, the braid fashioned by Prim, and he hesitantly reached a hand out to lightly touch the curled end.

"Peeta."

He snatched his hand back, swivelled in his seat to see Haymitch behind him. The old Mentor's face was wan and tired - no liquor meant severe withdrawal - and he folded his arms across his chest.

"What?"

"What are you doing here?"

Peeta opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was no point in making something up - Haymitch wasn't one for bullshit. "I don't know," he replied honestly.

"You've been coming in every day since she got back here."

He felt his back stiffen defensively. "So?"

Haymitch sighed,scratched at his chin. "Kid, I'm just trying to understand. You don't know her, don't remember her, yet you're here. Why?"

Peeta clenched his fist in his lap, glanced down at the ground. "I don't know," he repeated. If he understood it himself, maybe he'd feel better about it. "I just...feel like I have to."

Haymitch moved around him so that he was seated in the chair on the other side of the bed. Katniss, prone and unconscious, lay between them. "Alright. Do you think those sessions with Blondie are helping?"

"What?"

"Don't know why you're here? Let's try and figure it out, by starting with whether you think those sessions are helping."

Peeta shrugged, eyed the man warily. It took him a few moments to decide whether to say what was on the tip of his tongue, until he realised whether he said it or not, it didn't matter. What would it change anyway? "I'm not sure if it's working. I don't know what's real and what's not."

"What do you mean?"

"You really want to know?"

Haymitch rolled his eyes. "Geez, just humour me, kid."

Peeta ran his tongue across the front of his teeth, focused his gaze on the white bedsheets. "Fine. I get told things about Katniss; about me, about us. And now I have all these memories in my head - but I think they're just other people's memories and impressions. I don't know if any of them are actually mine."

"Then run one of them by me."

Peeta looked up, narrowed his eyes. "Huh?"

"Tell me one of these memories, and I'll see if I can tell you if someone has told it to you."

"How would you know?"

"A, surveillance here is prime, remember? Plus, B, there were some instances, kid, when you were alone without anyone else there. Or do you think you kissed her only when people were around?"

"Alright, fine," Peeta agreed stiffly. He shifted in his seat until he felt less awkward. "There's one...where we're on a beach. Sitting under a jetty, I think it's one in Four. I told Katniss that I had to stop seeing her, that it was too dangerous. And she was angry, so angry. Her eyes would have seared me alive if they could have. She stormed off up the beach, and she locked herself in her room for days afterwards. She wouldn't speak to me."

Haymitch eyed him carefully. "Alright. I can tell you that no one here has shared that story with you here."

"I knew it."

"But I know it's true."

Peeta blinked. "What?"

"It's true."

"How do you know? Were you there?"

"No, I wasn't. But I had to deal with her moods for days after that, and I reamed the shit out of you a few days later about it. It was just before the Reaping."

Peeta glanced back down at his lap, rubbed at his brow with his forefinger and thumb. He remembered that day, remembered it explicitly. Hearing the names of his friends and allies be called to go back into the Arena. Feeling it hit him like a sucker punch. "So that's real."

"Of course it's real. Unless you can tell me some other way you think it got into your brain." Haymitch leant back in his seat, lifted his arms so his hands were linked behind his head. "You might not think those sessions are working, kid, but they are. Somehow. And while you might not remember her the way you should, it's coming back to you. Even if it is in dreams, and fits and starts."

Peeta lifted his gaze slightly so he could trail it down the smooth, olive skin of Katniss' arm, the way her fingers played against the white sheet in her sleep, as though searching for something to grasp. She still didn't look familiar to him - nothing more than a girl he'd met in Thirteen weeks before - but there was something there. He knew there was. There had to be.

There wasn't any other reason for him to be there if there wasn't.

"The cake, my friend, was marvellous." He felt Finnick's hand slap across his back, and Peeta glanced up in time to see him slide into the seat next to him. Cressida and Castor were nowhere to be seen.

"I'm glad you liked it," Peeta said simply.

"Liked it? It was amazing. Best cake I've ever had, and I've eaten at Mellark's before."

"And my mother played off that first visit for a good six months," Peeta reminded him wryly, hating the memory of Deliah Mellark fawning over Finnick in the overly false way she had about her. "You became the marketing budget she didn't even have to fork out for."

Finnick shrugged, picked up Peeta's glass and took a deep swallow of water. "I got used to your Mother, she was nothing compared to some people. Oh, and by the way, Plutarch wanted his crew to look over some of the footage from tonight," Finnick said, before Peeta could ask of his companions whereabouts. "They told you before they left, but you seemed a million miles away." Peeta simultaneously flushed, and screwed up his nose in distaste.

"I still can't believe Plutarch is going to use footage from tonight as a propo." It wasn't something that had sat well with Peeta when Finnick had told him Plutarch's plan - host an elaborate (or as elaborate as Thirteen could get) wedding, and broadcast it on every channel they could across Panem, to show President Snow that nothing would stop them, and to show the Rebels that hope was strong and a free future was imminent - but most everyone else had been willing to go along. Peeta just didn't like the idea of his friends being exploited any more than they already had been.

"I know you don't like it," Finnick acknowledged, placing the glass back on the table. "Regardless of whether Plutarch uses the footage or not, it doesn't matter to me. I just wanted to marry Annie. It felt like a small price to pay to finally be able to call her my wife, you know?"

"No, I don't really, not personally," Peeta murmured, his gaze almost unwillingly moving back to Katniss. "But I can understand what you're saying."

Finnick sighed, then followed Peeta's line of direction. "Have you spoken to her since she got back?"

"To say what?"

"I don't know. Hi? How's your injury? Anything?"

"I..." Peeta trailed off, glanced back at Finnick. "I visit her when she's sleeping."

"What? When?"

Peeta felt the faint sting of embarrassment. "Every day, while you guys are training to invade the Capitol and I'm left behind to be nothing more than a test subject." He said the last part bitterly - he'd fought many times over the last few weeks to be allowed to join the ranks, to be allowed to train and then go and fight on the front lines. Every request had been bluntly shut down by Coin. He had no idea why.

Finnick's eyes widened. "So you remember her then?"

"No."

The look in Finnick's eyes moved into confusion, the brows shades darker than his bronze hair drawing together. "Then why-"

"I don't know," Peeta interjected. "I already had this discussion with Haymitch. He seems to think that the sessions with Prim and Dr Aurelius are working, subconsciously at least."

"Maybe they are." Finnick couldn't hide the excitement in his voice, even though Peeta could tell he tried to. "This is good news!"

Peeta shrugged. "I suppose so. If the sessions are working, maybe it means they'll finally let me go to Two, help with the overtaking of the Capitol."

"That's not what I meant," Finnick said firmly. "I meant about you and Katniss."

"There still isn't a 'me and Katniss'," Peeta replied quietly. "Just because I might have memories surfacing doesn't mean anything. I don't have enough of a tangible connection to her to think of us in that way."

"But...do you want there to be a tangible connection?"

Peeta looked across the room, back to where a giggling Prim was leading Katniss - breath heavy and sweat pearling on her brow even as she had a smile on her face - back to their table. "I just want to be me," he finally said. "I don't want to be a piece in Snow's games, and until I know for sure who I was before, I am. So...maybe."

Right now, it was the best he could give.

Maybe.

"No, Soldier Everdeen. You're not well enough to travel, nor are you well enough to represent the Rebellion in a battle or fighting situation."

Coin's tone was firm and cold, and she stared blandly up at Katniss from her place at the head of the conference table.

Katniss scowled, slapped her hand on the smooth tabletop. "But I want to go. I need to go. You wanted me to go to Two - why is this any different? Don't you think of everyone, I deserve to go?"

It felt like the thousandth time she'd had this argument with Coin in the last week, and she still wasn't getting anywhere. Everyone else - Finnick, Gale, people she didn't recognize, even Johanna, had been training while she'd been recovering from her bullet wound and surgery in the medical ward, as plans had been changed and made and put into place of storming the Capitol. Firearm training increased, hand to hand combat training was a day to day occurrence, studies began of street maps of the Capitol and its security systems, simulation fight scenarios were set in holographically recreated streets and suburbs of the Capitol to test the instincts of the newly trained 'soldiers'. Katniss wanted to be one of them.

But Coin didn't, and her backflip from her obvious desire for Katniss to go to Two was confusing. Every time Katniss thought she had the woman pegged, she'd do something that made absolutely no sense.

"I think we all have a case of deserving to go," Coin replied, her voice level. "Your injuries prevent you, nothing more, nothing less."

What a load of shit.

"Then pump me even more full of morphling and put me out there. You continue to call me a Soldier, President Coin, let me be one."

"Must I remind you that you got shot live, for all the nation to see?"

"And do they know I'm not dead? Do they know your Mockingjay might have been shot, but is still alive and well, and wanting to fight?" Katniss could hear the vague hysterical note to her voice, tried to rein it in. "You keep looking for people to join the fight, to 'Join the Mockingjay'. Isn't that what all of Plutarch's propos call people to do?! How can they join me if I'm not even fighting myself?" She turned her piercing gaze to the Gamemaker who sat silently beside the President, his head buried in his tablet. "Plutarch, I should be out there, shouldn't I?"

Plutarch looked up, his eyes sliding over to Coin before looking back at Katniss apologetically. "I'm sorry, Miss Everdeen. This is the President's call."

"Let her go."

Turning, Katniss saw Boggs - silent, still, always watching, always taking everything in - in the corner, his arms folded behind his back. "Let her go." He repeated. "I'll be responsible for her."

"She's not ready, Commander Boggs." Coin's voice was clipped, angry. It was obvious that she didn't like being overruled by one of her own.

The shake of his head was almost non existent, but it was there. "I think she has everything that she needs. Give her a higher dose of morphling, and send her back to training. She'll do us more good there, inspiring the troops, than what she will here."

Coin let out an almost imperceptible hiss of annoyance, her lips firming in a straight line. The silence that followed was heavy, full of annoyance and obstinance. "Fine," Coin finally conceded, though her eyes told a story far from being happy about the decision. "Put her with Jackson and Hawthorne, and make sure she's ready to ship out with everyone else in two weeks. If she's not, then she stays here, and that's the last I hear of it."

"Thank you, President Coin," Katniss said gratefully. Coin glared at her with all the annoyance she could muster.

"Don't thank me yet, Soldier Everdeen."

Three days later, Peeta joined the training ranks as well.

He wasn't in the same group as she was - he trained with Finnick, and a man named Homes, and twins that Katniss still couldn't tell apart who she just referred to as Leeg 1 and Leeg 2 for convenience - while she trained with Johanna and Gale, a quiet man called Mitchell and a tough looking woman named Jackson who didn't take shit from anybody. Boggs watched over them all with a concentrated eye, his body always alert and tense.

But Peeta was there, and with each day, she watched as his body grew stronger, as he got more competent with a gun, as the desperation in his eyes that she'd seen in the medical ward slowly began to drift away.

She knew from Haymitch and Finnick that they had fought for his inclusion, knew that Coin had been opposed to it every time it had been brought up. Katniss wasn't entirely sure why - other than Plutarch, Peeta probably had the most intimate knowledge of the City Circle and the Mansion - but part of her wondered if Coin simply enjoyed exerting her right and power over everything she could, whenever she could. It was the only conclusion she'd been able to come to about Coin's original decision not to send her on the latest mission. Having hundreds of new people in her control had probably shifted the balance a little - especially those from the Capitol, who weren't used to hearing no for an answer - and she would take any chance she could to reassert herself.

But apparently allowing Katniss to join had finally changed her stance on Peeta as well.

Commander Lyme had continued to oversee Two, The Nut now completely within the control of the rebels. Troops - as Plutarch called them - moved in from various Districts, waiting at the base of it before that final push. Thirteen's representatives would be travelling there within days via hovercraft, and then it was all or nothing. It was overpower Snow, and the Capitol - or they'd go down trying.

Two days later, in a Capitol street simulation, Johanna got caught in a flood that engulfed the holographic streets, and went straight back into the medical ward, and off the list of those going to the Capitol. Her desire to take down Snow for what he'd done to her had been derailed exactly by what had been done to her. She'd heard the murmurs of Johanna's torture as much as what she'd heard of Annie's.

She couldn't blame the Victor for her reaction to being almost drowned again.

Stretching out slowly on her bed - her muscles aching and contracting with the movement, her body still not completely healed from her gunshot, and worn down by constant training - Katniss glanced up at the ceiling, wondered if she was passing the invisible tests she knew Coin was still judging her by. She'd never worked harder - not even when she'd been training with Haymitch to go back into the Arena - and she knew she'd work harder still if it meant she wouldn't be left behind.

If there was one thing she was going to do to end this war, it was going to be killing Snow. She just hadn't told anyone that yet.

The hum was barely audible, a slight quiver in the air the only indication that they were flying at breakneck speeds. Everything else was deathly silent - not a word was uttered, not a machine beeped, not a chair squeaked. Everyone knew where they were going, and any frivolity had been left behind in Thirteen, with friends, family and loved ones.

The hovercraft was full, of soldiers, of commanders, of the film crew that were accompanying them to Two and into the Capitol. For the Rebellion. For what was, essentially, the last stand.

Katniss didn't know if they were all ready - Thirteen may have been training for this for years, but what of the refugees from Twelve, the new soldiers from other Districts who would never have thought they'd be preparing for a war? Days or weeks or months of training just weren't enough. Though, when she thought about it, when was anyone ever completely prepared for a war? If it was anything like an Arena, they could do all the training, all the sponsor lobbying, all the studying and planning they wanted. But the minute you stepped into it, it was unpredictable and unexpected. Maybe there really was no difference between a day's training and a year's.

But the level of experience those on board had wasn't what was on her mind the most as they flew towards Two. It was the bitter blow she'd been dealt, the one that she thought was going to make it even harder for her to reach Snow, and fulfill her promise to herself. To Katniss' disgust, annoyance and frustration, she wasn't going to the battlefront. She was going to be nothing more than a propo. And so were those closest to her.

None of them were happy about it.

Coin had announced it two days earlier, to a shocked group who had been under the impression they were going to war, that they were going to the front to storm the Capitol. Instead, the President of Thirteen had stood at the front of the group in the training hall, and had told them they were part of an elite group - a squadron whose task it was to go ahead and sneak in through the back streets of the Capitol, back streets that had already been cleared of any security measures - to film propos to send out to the rebels, to show the advancing stages of war, and their increasing chance of success. Give them some hope, give them something to fight for, Coin had said, while distracting the Capitol from the fact that our soldiers will be attacking from another angle. They'll be watching you, the Mockingjay, not us.

It had taken long enough, but Coin had finally revealed her plan for Katniss.

Bait.

After the announcement, they'd no longer trained with the rest of the soldiers. Katniss and Finnick's groups had merged into one, and with the addition of Boggs as well as Cressida and her crew - cameramen Castor and Pollux, and her assistant Messala - they had officially been tagged as Star Squad 451. They spent their remaining time in Thirteen studying the simulation street maps that were dotted with brightly coloured lights, each one indicating an individual security measure.

Pods, Plutarch called them, and it sounded like such a friendly term for what was nothing more than a killing tool.

The pods were like landmines, carefully crafted and hidden in the simplest of items as a security measure - a booby trap, as Boggs had referred to it. They were set up all across the Capitol, and thanks to intel Plutarch had pilfered before his escape, they knew the basic layout of where the pods where located, for every part of the city centre and its surrounds. He admitted there had likely been changes to the location of some pods - after all, it had been months since the liberation of the Victors from the Arena, and by now Snow would be well aware of the intel that had been compromised. But it was close enough, and Plutarch had announced that the areas that they would access had already been fully swept by comrades from Two and Three. They were safe. They were clear.

At his words, Katniss had looked at Finnick and Haymitch across the simulated map, and knew they were thinking the same as she was.

This was nothing more than another Arena. And nothing was ever safe or clear.

"Hey sweetheart."

Katniss felt the hand rest heavily on her shoulder, just before she was about to take the first step up the gangplank into the hovercraft. She turned to see Haymitch behind her, grey eyes tired and concerned. Not only had he unwillingly dried out in Thirteen, but he'd worked. Constantly. Keeping an eye on her. Making plans. Brushing aside plans he thought were stupid. Calling people out on their shit.

She didn't blame him for looking tired.

"Yeah?" She moved away from the gangplank, allowing others to pass by and board.

"I just...wanted to tell you to be careful out there."

She allowed a small smile to creep across her lips. "Worried about me?"

"It's my job to make sure you come out alive," he said simply, though she knew it was more than that. "Plus, you know, you have to come back for Blondie. She'll kill me if you don't."

Katniss shook her head slowly. No, she knew how much the crotchety Mentor had come to mean to her sister in the last year. He'd be close to all she'd have left if she didn't survive. "Prim wouldn't do that. She'd need you. And anyway, I probably won't see any action, not with being in the 'Star Squad'." She rolled her eyes. "I won't be anywhere near anything. Of course I'll come back alive." Maybe. Possibly. It all depended on how successful she was with attempting to kill Snow.

"Good," he said firmly. She didn't know whether he believed her or not, and it didn't matter. Right now, pretending for both of them was good enough. "And, uh, you should keep an eye on the boy too, while you're out there. Peeta."

At his name, Katniss automatically looked towards the gangplank she knew Peeta had already walked up, then back at Haymitch. "There isn't much I can do there, Haymitch," she murmured. "We haven't spoken in weeks. There isn't anything between us anymore. It's done."

"Bullshit," he snapped, then sighed. "Sorry. But just...do me the favour, okay? Keep an eye on him. He has friends out here with him, but I don't think they know him as well as you do."

"They've known him for years," Katniss reasoned. "I'm sure they know him better than I do, considering I've known him less than one." How could someone she'd known for less than a year left such an indelible mark on her? How had someone come to mean that much to her in such a short amount of time, only for them to be ripped away?

He swallowed heavily, lowered his voice as though he didn't want to say the next words. "Look, it's been a long time since I felt the way about someone that you two feel - or felt - for each other. Connections like that overcome any length of time rubbish. I'm not going to get into the whos or the whats or the whys about this, or get smushy because that's not my thing. But just do it, okay? I've kinda grown to like the kid."

It was high praise indeed from Haymitch, and she couldn't help but sigh. "Fine. But if he rejects my help-"

"He won't."

"Then there's nothing I can do," she continued, as though Haymitch hadn't interrupted.

"Trust me. He won't. You both just need to watch out for each other."

Katniss shrugged, then looked back up the gangplank. "I have to go. Keep an eye on Prim and Mom, okay?"

He nodded, lifted an arm as though he was going to hug her, then let it drop. Awkwardness hung in the air until she took a step towards him, wrapped her arm around his shoulders. "See you soon." Maybe.

"Get outta here," he said gruffly, but she felt his own hand rest lightly against her back just before they drew apart.

She didn't look back once, because looking back was always a mistake.

Camp was quiet. In the darkness of night, the tents set up across the plain looked like little black triangles, silhouetted against a sky lit only by the light of the moon, the faintest twinkle of stars. It reminded Peeta of the times he visited Twelve.

Katniss and her life in her District might still be unknown to him, but the memory of the stars there, unfettered by the Capitol skyline, were as clear as day.

He folded his hands across his stomach, continued to connect the small stars like dots, hoping it would lull him to sleep, like everyone else in their group. He envied them their ability to just shut down, close off, and lose themselves in a few hours rest.

He felt like he hadn't slept in days.

So far, their time in Two had been non-eventful. Quick trips to the outskirts of the Capitol, where the Star Squad filmed and refilmed their 'progress' - aka, barely more than 5 meters into an abandoned street, a fake pod being set off to show some excitement and add a layer of believability that they were 'infiltrating' the Capitol - before returning to the temporary camps of the rest of the soldiers waiting for that moment, the moment they were deployed to take over the city. Peeta himself was no more than supporting cast in the propos - not even a fighter, but presented as the Capitol Rebel, the man who turned his back on the life he'd known for the love of a woman.

A woman he had to stand beside and smile at for the camera while he desperately searched for even the slightest bit of recognition of being this close to her before.

Shifting his head at the sudden sound of a rustle, he looked over in time to see Katniss sit up bolt right in her sleeping bag, her hand held to her heart. Much like many others, she'd chosen not to burrow inside her tent, instead dragging the thin bedding out in the open. Earlier, they'd watched each other complete the identical maneuver at the same time, on opposite sides of the small fire that Gale had built, then promptly looked away.

Peeta knew they couldn't go on like this. If they had a past, he needed to reconcile it, needed to have some semblance of normalcy with her. If anything did happen to either of them while they were here, he didn't want whatever was left behind to be messy and complicated and answer less.

But one thing he had learned of her told him she wouldn't be the one to start a conversation. It would have to come down to him to take that step.

"Nightmare?" He finally asked her, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the crackling of the fire. She glanced across at him, eyes wide, and he could see her chest heaving with breaths she was trying to control.

"Uh...yeah," she murmured, lifting the bottom of her sleeve to her brow to wipe it dry.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"And your, uh...wound?"

She tugged her legs up so they were folded against her chest, wrapped her arms around them. The wince on her face with the movement was clear. "It's sore after today. But there's not much I can do about it."

"No more morphling?"

"Coin wouldn't let us bring it. Essentials only." Katniss said it blithely, but he could hear the frustration in her voice.

"She doesn't seem to be the most sympathetic of people."

"She's confusing and frustrating and..." she trailed off, glanced around the bodies strewn around them in various stages of sleep. Many of them were from Thirteen, and even from miles away, he knew Katniss knew better than to criticize their leader - especially if they weren't asleep as they appeared. "Yeah. I don't think she likes me very much."

"It's because you have charisma, because people want to follow you; both something she lacks." He didn't care if he was speaking negatively of Coin, or whether her soldiers heard him or not - truth be told, in the few times he'd met with Coin he'd been just as impressed by her as he was of the other President he knew. Which was not at all.

"You don't know that," Katniss muttered, glancing away. "You don't know me."

The crack in her voice was clear.

"You're right," he agreed. "I don't. Not in the way you know me. But I've seen you, Katniss. I saw you get shot. I've seen the propos from when you were in Eight, and I've seen what the simple presence of you in a room can do. And Coin doesn't have anything like that."

She didn't say anything at first, continued to look everywhere but at him. And then she pulled herself abruptly to her feet, crossed the few short feet that separated them and dropped to the damp ground beside him.

"You need to stop saying things like that," she hissed, and up close, her silver eyes glittered with unshed tears.

"About Coin?"

"About me." She shook her head. "Do you know how it makes me feel when you say something like that? How it makes me feel when we have to stand next to each other and talk and look happy together for Cressida?"

Peeta blinked. "I..."

"You've gone through so much, so much you don't deserve to, and I'm sorry for all of it. It isn't fair and I wish it had never happened. But...you lost your memory of me, Peeta, and it's killing me," she bit out. "And every time you say or do something nice to me, another part of me dies inside. But I keep taking it, because it's all I can get, and it's stupid of me, and I need to stop. I need you to stop."

He swallowed heavily. "I just want..." What did he want? "I'm just trying to fill in the pieces, Katniss. And it's working - sort of. And I don't think I can stop saying nice things to you. There's just something in me that has to. I can't help it."

A piece of wood shifted in the fire, shooting a handful of sparks into the air, startling them both. It crackled, a plume of smoke shot into the air, and they both watched it bank and settle again in heavy silence. Inside, Peeta's heart was racing, not sure what she'd say. Unsure why he'd even thought it was a good idea for him to say what he just had in the first place.

Finally, when she spoke, Katniss' voice was soft. Hesitant. The bitter tone was gone. "What do you mean it's sort of working? You mean the sessions with Prim?"

He nodded slowly, stared at the fire. "Yeah. Mostly I just think my head is full of other people's stories of you, but Haymitch seems to think that something is working. I'm still just trying to work out what's real for me, and what's real for others."

The sound she made was a combination of a scoff and a muffled expletive. "Haymitch," she muttered. "Of course he'd know." She slid her gaze across to him. "You don't think it's working, though?"

"I don't know what to think," Peeta replied honestly. "It's like I have this...black pit in my mind and it's being filled up with murky images. Some want to break free. Others are insistent in just...lurking. Mostly, though, it just feels like I have a tether to you, and I don't know whether it's being forced on me, or if it's something I want."

There. There it was. The one thing that had been going on and around in his mind for days, weeks even. Whether he wanted that connection to her. Whether it was a connection he felt, or that he felt like he should feel.

And even though he could see the pain on her face at his honesty, he knew it had been been the right thing to say.

"I don't want you to feel obliged to me, Peeta. I know what it's like to have to do something you don't want to, and if being with me is something you don't want, then I accept that." He opened his mouth to argue with her, that it wasn't that he didn't want to be with her, but more that he still didn't know enough, that things were still just too confusing for him, but she barrelled on. "But if you have questions, I'll answer them. Help you to determine what's real for you."

His eyebrows lifted in shock. "You'd do that?"

"I did it before," she reminded him, and Peeta looked away shamefully. Of course she had. He'd asked questions, and had the gall to ask if they'd been intimate together. The despair on her face had told him the answer before she'd said a word. He'd regretted the question immediately.

"I'd appreciate that," he said.

"Okay," Katniss replied. "And other than that, just...try not to be so nice to me. Please." She stood up then, and walked back to her tent without another word, dragged her bedding inside. He heard one muffled sob, and then nothing.

It was just him, and the crackling of the fire.

The morning the first unexpected pod was detonated began just like any other day. The squad woke early, crossed Two's border, and moved into the Capitol. Boggs led the way, a small holographic device in his hand that showed him a 3D map of the city - and the placement of any security pods - with Gale close behind, Katniss hurrying to keep up. The Leegs whispered in some kind of twin language only they knew, while Finnick, Mitchell and Homes discussed the impending rain that had been predicted; Jackson marched on alone, alternatively looking both angry and frustrated. Castor and Pollux communicated with only their hands, and Cressida and Messala discussed in hushed breaths their shot list for the day. Peeta lingered at the back, after having woken already tired - he'd stayed up late the night before with Katniss, asking her questions that he knew hurt her to answer. Did this memory happen? Is this mine or someone else's? I had this dream...

He figured whether he'd wanted to or not, he'd been keeping his word to not be so nice to her.

But it seemed normal, as much as any other day, as they took a right, then two lefts into a street they hadn't ventured into before.

And then the shout was sudden, and unexpected, and they all turned at once to see Mitchell frozen in place, his eyes wide in horror.

"I...stepped on one." His voice was garbled, as though he was choking on something, and a moment later blood began to dribble and pour from the side of his mouth, his body jerking violently before his head slumped forward. The end of the spear that had pierced his entire body, penetrating up through his foot first, protruded from in between his shoulder blades.

"Shit." Not two feet away from him, Finnick breathed out heavily, his face drained of colour, eyes scanning the rest of the street as though a pod would pop up out of nowhere at any moment. Peeta was surprised his own heart hadn't leapt right out of his chest, and his fingers quivered on the gun he'd been assigned as more of a prop than anything else.

Though he figured whether it worked or not, it had zero chance of saving him from an active pod.

"Heavensbee was wrong. It's not safe," Boggs announced, eyes focused on the holomap. "There are new pods. There is nothing on this map to indicate there were ever pods on this street."

"I thought this place had been swept," Jackson snapped.

"It had," Boggs murmured, still not looking up. "I guess the Capitol is watching us even closer than President Coin anticipated, for them to move this quickly. We have to be careful. Anywhere and anything could be-"

A snap, a crunch. A giant claw reached up from under an innocuous stone in the path, snapped Messala in half as though he was nothing but a rag doll, blood splattering across the ground, across those closest to him. Cressida jumped back in terror, only to knock a pot plant off the windowsill of a house painted bright purple. They all froze, waited for the inevitable.

After 5 minutes of standing as still as statues, and being able to do nothing but stare at the two mutilated bodies of their crew, they all almost simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief when it didn't come.

"Okay," Boggs started, his voice firm and strong."We need to go around here to the right, get back onto the street we were on yesterday. Then we can get back to base. It's too unpred-"

His words were once again cut off, but this time it was from the command of Jackson to get running, to get moving. And with one glance over his shoulder, Peeta could see why.

A black, smoking, roiling sea of liquid was heading straight for them, overhauling anything in its path.

They ran.

A/N - As always, thank you for your favourites, follows and reviews, I appreciate every single one. You can probably tell that we're very close to the end with this, and I hope it won't be too long before I can post the final couple of chapters. :)

You can find me on tumblr under sponsormusings. I'm always keen to chat with other THG fans!