A/N: This story is set in a similar world to Our Anthem in which Katniss is a refugee from Hebridia (formerly Scotland) and came to Panem at the age of eight. You DO NOT need to read Our Anthem to understand anything in this story, as everything is revealed as the story progresses. This story is Part One of Two, followed by Freedom Fighters.

I will update this story weekly, posting a new chapter on Tuesdays and another on Fridays.

Hang on tight, because this story sure is a wild ride. Hope you enjoy!

KATNISS POV

I never intended on it happening, but it did. It was the night before the 74th Hunger Games and I couldn't sleep due to the noise of the crowd of the Capitol, so I left my room and found him sitting beside a window staring out of it. He didn't hear my quiet steps approaching, but I also didn't try to conceal them. "Couldn't sleep?" I asked him, and he startled slightly, turning his head to look up at me.

"Hey," he said cheerfully, a smile stretching across his face, as if only a few hours ago, I hadn't shoved him into a plant after his admission of love for me in front of the entire country. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, just... couldn't sleep," I said, gesturing to the racket outside.

"Neither could I," he muttered back as I sat down on the floor across from him. A moment of silence passed between us, he staring out the window and I staring at him, his blonde curls in a mussed state above his eyes.

"I'm sorry I shoved you into a plant," I told him sincerely, and he looked at me.

"It's okay," he said. "I'm sorry I embarrassed you on TV. I hope I didn't..." He paused for a moment. "I hope everything will be okay... when you go back home..." He seemed so sure that I would win, but I didn't want to talk about the Games right now.

"There'd be nothing waiting for me," I confessed. Another moment of silence passed between us. "What are you thinking about?"

"How I don't want them to change me, or who I am..." he said.

"You won't kill anyone?"

"I'm sure if it came down to it, I'd kill like anyone else... but I don't want to have to, and I don't want that to become my new definition."

"You know yours, then?"

"I think so."

"What is it?"

"I don't know... People say I'm nice, charming... a screw up for sure, and not very good at a lot of things..."

"You're not a screw up, Peeta." It was the first time I'd said his name since this morning, and for some reason, it felt different, not only to me but to him as well, and he noticed it. "You are nice, and charming, and you're not a screw up and you are very good at a lot of things. You told me you decorate the cakes at the bakery... I've seen them, and they're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I've had your bread before, when your father and I traded bread for squirrels, and you make the best bread out of everyone there. You're the kindest person I know... you were the only one who was kind to me when I first came here from Hebridia... No one else was. I'd been through something awful, and the kindest person to me that wasn't doing it out of sympathy was you. That's something that not everyone is good at. You're just... you're incredible, Peeta... and I don't want... I don't want... I just wanted you to know, before..." I didn't want to say 'before you die', because I knew that in order for me to get home, he would have to die, and I didn't want to admit to that, either. I looked down at my feet, feeling tears stinging at my eye, and I tried my best to hide them, but I felt a thumb at my cheek swiping the tears away, and when I looked up, my eyes were met by a handsome pair of sky blue eyes. "...and you're handsome, too..." I whispered, and he smiled.

"I didn't think you remembered any of that... from when we were kids," he told me, pulling his hand away from my face. I immediately missed the warmth of his hand and silently begged him to put it back.

"We're still kids," I told him. "I remembered everything... even though there were times that I didn't understand what you were saying to me, I knew that you were being kind." I glanced back down and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. "I think we should try to sleep..." The smile on Peeta's face faded as he remembered what tomorrow would bring.

"Yeah," he whispered, and he stood and then held out a hand to me, the same way he had when Merx Mueller had pushed me into a mud puddle when I was nine years old - the moment, I realise now, that I fell in love with the kind and selfless Peeta Mellark. I held his gaze for a moment, then took his hand and allowed him to help me stand, and we stood in front of each other, never letting the other's gaze drop. "Goodnight, Katniss," he whispered. He let go of my hand and started towards his room, but I wasn't ready to let him leave. I wasn't ready to be without him and I couldn't stop myself when I turned around and cried out,

"Peeta, wait!" He stopped, then turned around to see what probably looked like a maniacal, panicked expression plastered on my face.

"What's wrong?" he asked me, worry etched in his brow, and after a moment of contemplating if I should just say 'nevermind' and go to bed, I launched myself at him and leapt into arms, wrapping mine around his neck tightly and causing him to stumble backwards. "Katniss, what's the matter?" he asked me, surprised that I had done this, but that didn't stop him from holding me and protectively running a hand through my hair and rubbing my back.

"Stay with me, Peeta... please..." I begged him, and I felt his lips bury themselves in my hair.

"Always," he whispered into my ear. I led him to my room to sleep, refusing to let go of his hand, and when he climbed into the bed and shifted the covers to make room for me, I dove on top of him and grabbed his face in my hands, pressing my lips against his firmly. I have no idea what came over me that night, but something in me refused to die without knowing what this beautiful, wonderful boy with the bread's love felt like. We were just kids, hardly sixteen, but we felt like adults, with all we'd been through. We shed our clothes and our hands found our most private and intimate places before we were joined in an action meant only for lovers. Were we lovers? Peeta confessed to having feelings for me since we were children, and I had no idea where my feelings lay, but I knew that the place in my heart, the hole that, according to Hebridean belief, is empty until it is filled by the joining of bodies of yourself and your soulmate, belonged to him. And it scared the shit out of me.

I don't think I need to go in detail about the Games. You already know what happened. You remember the historic rule change I'm sure, the one where they allowed two victors from the same district instead of one. You'll remember how I found Peeta by the riverbed and cried tears of joy when I found him alive, but injured. I tended to his wounds, blushing furiously when he sat naked before me while I washed his clothes in the river (he wouldn't stop flirting with me and trying to embarrass me more, but I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that he was the one naked on Capitol television). We kissed more in the cave and he tried to get a confession of love out of me, one that I wasn't fully ready to give, I defied him to get his life-saving medicine that would give me more time with him, a point I made with my lips against his. You'll remember how we battled Cato and had to hear his insufferable wails while the mutts attacked him, until I finally put him out of his misery with an arrow to the head, and how the gamemakers proved that they didn't really want to save us both after all - they wanted the drama of one of us killing the other, something we both refused to do.

" The earlier rule change declaring that two tributes of the same district may win has been revoked, and there can only be one victor. May the odds be ever in your favour ." came the announcement, and my heart sank. I looked at Peeta, who didn't look shocked, but the pain in his eyes told me that he was already beginning to accept his death - something I couldn't allow. We should have known - they weren't really going to let us both win.

"They can't do that," I whispered. "No, they can't do that!"

"But they are," he told me quietly. I thought that we were getting out, that we'd both go home and we'd be happy for the rest of our lives. Maybe we'd be friends, or maybe we would be lovers, but now, we'll never know. One of us would have to die, and we wouldn't get to be together after all. I watched as Peeta pulled a knife out of his pocket, and I reached for my bow with the thought that he'd faked it the whole time because he knew he wouldn't have stood a chance otherwise flitting through my mind, but then he simply flipped it over in his hand, offering me the handle. "Go on, do it." I stared at him incredulously. He was trying to sacrifice himself for me. "Katniss, take it."

"No," I said, throwing down my bow and my quiver of arrows. "I won't."

"Katniss, one of us has to die," he told me with a tone of annoyance in his voice.

"Then it'll be me," I replied.

"You have something to live for, I don't. Please, Katniss... let's just get this over with, so you can go home and get back to your family," he begged me. I didn't know what to do. Maybe I could take the knife and stab myself with it? If he was telling the truth, he may not be able to handle it, but he'd eventually move on, right? I took the knife, looking down at it in my hands. "Just do it quickly..." I looked up at him, then shook my head as I realised exactly what I should do and threw the knife as far away from us as I could. "Katniss-"

"I'm not killing you."

"I'm not killing you, either. Do you really think that I could? Katniss, I've been in love with you since we were eight years old. I can't! Please don't make me..." I pulled him into a tight hug, which he returned, and brushed my fingers through his hair.

"If you won't kill me, and since I won't kill you..." I reached for a pouch on my belt, then opened it up, dumping the nightlock berries we'd found earlier into the palm of my hand. "...then we'll go together." He stared for a moment at my hand, and then looked up at my face. It dawned on him what I was asking him to do - if we both couldn't leave the arena then neither of us were. "If they want to take one of us away from the other, then they won't have a victor this year. It's either both of us or neither of us."

"Katniss..."

"Hold out your hand." He did as he was told, and I dropped some of the berries into his open palm. He looked at them for a moment, and then back up at me, tears threatening his eyes.

"I can't let you do this..."

"I'm not leaving this arena without you," I told him defiantly, and he nodded gently. With my free hand, I caught his chin with my fingers and brought his lips to mine one final time, kissing him with a passion that I was convinced I was only pretending existed. I broke the kiss first this time, and then met his eyes. I couldn't stop the tears that were falling from my eyes, and using his thumb, he wiped them away, then took my braid between his fingers. "Together?" I finally said, and he nodded gently.

"Together," he replied, and we raised the berries to our mouths.

I felt the berries touch my lips when we were both startled by a loud booming, "STOP," and then silence. "May we present the victors of the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark of District Twelve." Peeta and I both threw the berries to the ground and I threw my arms around his neck and he lifted me off of my feet, peppering my face with kisses as I did his.

"We're going home," he said to me through tears of joy. "Both of us, we're going home..."

At the post-Games interview, I couldn't stop myself from touching him constantly. I feared that if I stopped, he would disappear and I'd never see him again. It had been days since I saw him in the arena, when they took him away from me and separated us. They got us camera ready yet again and when we were finally reunited, I ran to him and leapt into his arms and he held me tightly, and since then, I haven't let him go. That same night, before we were due to get on the train back to District Twelve, Peeta tried to go back to his room, but I panicked and clung to him, crying into his shoulder until he agreed to stay with me. I don't know what led me to act like a silly fool in love, but perhaps, although I didn't know it at the time, I was.

On the train back, when we'd stopped to refuel, Peeta took my hand and led me out to walk along the tracks while we waited. He handed me a handmade bouquet of wildflowers, and I couldn't help but smile at the fact that they were the tops of wild onions. He saw my smile and the gentle blush that formed on my cheeks and he lightly pressed a kiss against my flushed cheek, giving my hand a squeeze as we walked along the tracks. "You're so quiet," he said after a while. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I told him, a distant look in my eye. I let go of his hands to cross my arms across my chest insecurely, refusing to meet his eyes.

"It doesn't look like 'nothing'," Peeta said to me, clearly bothered by the fact that I let his hand go.

"I promise, Peeta. It's nothing," I replied, and he let out a sigh.

"Okay," was all he said, and we walked in silence for a little longer. After a while, we each felt a hand grasp our shoulders and we jumped and turned, the bouquet of onion flowers whacking Peeta in the chest.

"Whoa, calm down, you two," said Haymitch with a chuckle. "Just wanted to tell you great job and remind you two to keep it up in the district until the cameras are gone. Then we should be okay." Oh shit. My stomach dropped, and my eyes quickly flitted to Peeta's and noticed the confused expression on his face. I thought I would have had more time to explain myself, or to maybe fall in love with him for real at the rate we'd been going, but now Haymitch has ruined everything, and I steeled my face and glared at him.

"Keep it up... Keep what up? Katniss, what's he mean?" Peeta asked me, turning to look at me, and I held the steeled expression on my face. I might as well tell him the truth.

"It's the Capitol. They're pissed about the stunt with the berries," I told him neutrally.

"Stunt? What? What are you talking about?" he asked me, a touch of hurt showing in his voice. Perhaps I shouldn't have called it a 'stunt'.

"It seemed too... ach, what's the word... rebellious? Haymitch has been coaching me through the last few days, so I wouldn't make it any worse," I explained, struggling for a moment with my language barrier. Despite the fact that I had been speaking English almost constantly for the last eight years, I still struggled with some of the words.

"Coaching you... but not me?" The hurt was gone, and there was anger in his voice. I didn't dare meet his eyes. " Katniss ."

"He knew you were smart enough to get it right, I'm not," I told him quickly, almost mashing the words together and keeping my eyes averted.

"I didn't know there was anything to 'get right'," he hissed. "So what you're saying is these last few days... and then I guess back in the arena... all that was just some strategy that you two worked out?"

"Boy, you popped the idea for it!" Haymitch said, coming to my defence, but I held up a hand to stop him. I could handle this on my own, and I finally met Peeta's angry eyes.

"How could it be? I couldn't even talk to him in the arena," was what stumbled out of my mouth. Goddamn it, where did that come from? It only made him madder.

"But you knew what he wanted you to do, didn't you?" I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off. " Didn't you? " I couldn't speak, except for a small squeak that I let out as Peeta took a step towards me, glaring down at me as I took a step back. It was like his words had reached out and grabbed my tongue, slicing it out like an avox. "So it was all an act... For the Games, how you acted. All of it."

"Not all of it," I whispered, defeated. I could see the pain in his eyes, masked by fury, and it broke my heart to see him this way. I had to tell him the full truth. I couldn't keep denying my feelings, not to myself and certainly not to him.

"Then how much of it? No, forget that. I guess the real question is what's going to be left when we get home?"

"I don't know. The closer we get to Twelve, the... the more confused I get. I don't know what I feel exactly. Peeta, I-"

"We gotta go, kids." Haymitch said, interrupting us. Peeta glared at me, and I only glanced at him sadly.

"Well, let me know when you work it out," Peeta told me, and he began to stalk off towards the train after Haymitch.

"Gladly," I said back, and he stopped. "Haymitch, hold the train for five minutes."

"Effie ain't gonna like that," Haymitch warned me.

"I don't care. Tell her she can personally pull off any strip of wax on my skin that she chooses," I spat back, shooing him away. Peeta remained rooted where he stood and I took a few steps towards him. "Peeta, look at me."

"I don't want to," he said, somewhat childishly, so I stalked around to the front of him and faced him.

"I meant what I said when I said, 'not all of it was an act' and if you would like me to tell you exactly when it stopped being one, I gladly will, but I don't think that's what you need to hear. What you need to know is..." I paused, trying to find the best way to word my answer to him while he waited silently and stoically for me to answer him. It wasn't just my language barrier that was a cause for problem in my speech - I was just simply terrible with words. "You've had years on me, Peeta. You say you've been in love with me since we were eight. That's eight years . I've only just begun to realise that I even have the ability to have feelings for someone. How can you expect me to fall in love with you the minute you announce to the entire country that you're in love with me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" He didn't answer me, so I continued. "Peeta... I told you before, you were the only one who was kind to me when we were kids, and that's stuck with me. I didn't forget any of that. I don't have the time to go into full detail right now and maybe someday I will but... Peeta, when I first came to Panem, I had just lost my entire family. My parents, my five brothers and my little sister."

"Your brothers?" Peeta asked, interrupting me.

"Yes, I had five brothers and a little sister, one that wasn't Prim. She's my cousin... but I'll explain that another time. When I came to Panem, our ship was attacked and I lost everyone. And when I arrived, alone and scared and not speaking a word of English, the people were so cruel to me, even Agnessa, who was supposed to be a mother figure to me, was cold. I learned how to hide any feelings of affection I had for anyone, except for Prim, because it just got me scolded or laughed at or hurt. Perhaps I buried that knowledge too far, because I don't know how to love anyone but her." He remained silent, and perhaps I still hadn't said anything good enough to answer him. "What I'm saying is... I'd be lying if I told you I... didn't... have feelings for... for you... I don't know what they are. Maybe they're love... Maybe they're friendship... But I don't know. It's going to take me more than a week to figure that out, and I need you to show me how. And thank God you're alive so I have that chance." I gave him a gentle smile, but his face remained stern. "You know your way around your heart, I'm only just discovering that I still have one..."

"So when you kissed me in the cave... when you told me that you wanted a lifetime of those... Did you mean that?" he asked me. I couldn't say anything, as it would give away the tears that were threatening my eyes, so I nodded. "And when I picked the berries, when we heard the cannon and you thought it was for me... When you cried and yelled at me for scaring you and kissed me, did you mean it then?" I nodded again. "And right before we tried to eat the berries, when you said you weren't going to leave the arena without me... did you mean it then?"

"Yes... I knew that if you'd died, I'd never leave that arena," I told him, tears threatening my eyes. I wanted to look away, but if I wanted Peeta to believe me, then I had to look him in the eye, even if it meant that he saw me crying.

"What about the night before the Games? You know... When we were together... Did you mean that?" This one caught me off guard because he hadn't mentioned it since it happened - in fact, neither of us had. I almost thought he'd forgotten about the night we'd claimed as lovers - the night we gave ourselves to one another in full. Slowly, I nodded my head.

"Yes, I did, and everything I said before that moment," I told him, now closing my eyes as a tear slid down my cheek. I couldn't look at him anymore, not without the threat of more tears spilling from my eyes. I felt the pad of his thumb wipe that single tear away, and I opened my eyes to see that he had stepped nearer to me and his hand hovered over my cheek. "Help me, Peeta... I don't know what I'm feeling..." I couldn't control the tears any longer. It was like a dam had broken behind my eyes. He pulled me into his arms and I threw mine around his abdomen, sobbing into his shoulder as he held and soothed me.

"Shhh, Katniss... Let's just start over, okay? Pretend the last couple of weeks didn't happen..."

"I can't do that..."

"All right, then let's just start on a blank page." He let go of me and stepped back, then held out his hand in front of me, a boyish grin on his face as I wiped the tears from my eyes. "Hi, I'm Peeta Mellark." I smiled gently, then took his hand in mine.

"Katniss Fòlais."

"Fòlais?"

"That's my family's real name... Everdeen was, I guess, an English version of my mother's family's name, Èibhinndùn, but... Fòlais was my name before I came here. And you can't call me that in Twelve... only when it's just the two of us, and there's no chance of it being heard. Nobody... nobody else knows about that... except Agnessa and Prim, of course." He smiled at me, glad to be the only one outside of my family to know my little secret.

"Well... Katniss Fòlais... it's a pleasure to meet you." We were interrupted by a loud whistle coming from Haymitch.

"Get your asses back on the train! I can't give ya any more time!" he shouted back at us, and we both chuckled to ourselves.

"Can't wait you get to know you," said Peeta with a smile, and I couldn't stop myself from returning it. He really was too good for me. We started heading back towards the train, not holding hands but not far apart, either.

"These are onion flowers, by the way. They're for eating, not for trying to seduce a girl," I told him with a teasing tone, and he chuckled.

"I'll remember that next time," he told me as we approached the car. "What're your favourite flowers?" I stopped as I climbed the steps of the car and looked down at him, a gentle blush creeping up in my cheeks.

"Dandelions," I replied.

A/N: Was Peeta wrong to give Katniss a second chance?

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