A/N: Trigger Warning: This chapter contains sexual violence, and domestic abuse

Peeta comes and sits with me on my lumpy loveseat. He puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes lightly before saying, "Ok, what did you want to tell me?"

I draw in a deep breath before I begin, "Well, when you come meet my family, it will just be my sister, Prim, and my mom. My dad died when I was 10. There was an accident at his work and he- he just didn't survive it. I had to kind of take over taking care of my sister for a while because my mom was really depressed, which is totally understandable, but she went to therapy and she still has bad days, but she's fully functional now. Prim doesn't have to fend for herself while I'm gone." I look at him, swimming in his blue eyes. Hoping I can stay afloat.

"Oh, God, Katniss. I am so sorry. That's terrible."

"I know it was, but we're ok now. Yeah, I mean we miss him like crazy, but we know he would want us to be happy and he wouldn't want us to be living under the dark cloud of his absence."

"You are so strong." He tells me as he presses his lips to my forehead.

When he pulls away I see that the pizza is here and delivering the pizza is Cato. I tense up, but Peeta doesn't seem to notice. When Cato knocks on the door I ask if Peeta doesn't mind answering because I have to go to the bathroom. As Peeta gets up to get the door, I all but run to the bathroom. That, Peeta notices. When I hear the door close and Peeta is no longer talking to anyone, I feel it is safe for me to come out of the bathroom. I make my way over to the pizza and grab a slice.

"What was that about?" Peeta asks me suspiciously.

"What? It was nothing, everything is fine." I say probably too quickly.

He doesn't seem satisfied with my answer but doesn't push the issue any further.

After we've eaten our fill of pizza we pick up our discussion.

"Peeta," I begin uncertain of how to ask what I want without being offensive, "who ever told you that you weren't worth noticing, or having someone care for you?"

Peeta turns red and starts stuttering a bit, not sure of how to answer my question until finally he says, "It – it was…my mom. How did you know?"

"I knew someone hurt you, just like you knew Gale hurt me. Once you've been wounded, you have a way of seeing others who have been wounded."

He doesn't say anything back. He looks mystified.

"She was wrong, you know." I tell him. He looks at me, his deep blue eyes cloudy. "I mean it, I care about you Peeta, a lot, and I would never hurt you intentionally. I will always be here for you when you need me. Peeta, you are something special and I have never had anyone make me feel the way you do before. You are literally the best person I know."

Peeta's eyes are watering up now. "Thank you, Katniss. You're something special too. And I'm s glad you wrote me a note in Dr. Coin's class, even if it was so ninth grade, or whatever."

We both laugh a little before he tells me more about his mom. How she likes his older brothers more, but not much. She physically abused all of them, but Peeta got the brunt of it because as she said herself, she never wanted him. Using her logic, since she never wanted him, nobody would. His dad has stayed with her all this time because he thinks she needs help and he is trying to help her. Peeta's dad saw her hitting him and his brothers only a few times, and when he did see it happening, he intervened. After that, his mom got smarter, hitting them when their dad wasn't around and in places where bruises wouldn't be visible while they were fully clothed.

I couldn't believe that someone could be so horrible to Peeta. Nobody deserved to be treated like that, especially Peeta. This poor boy in front of me had a more hellish childhood than I did and I was forced to grow up too fast because of the death of my father. I comfort him the only way I know how, I climb in his lap and wrap my arms around his neck and just hold him. How long I held him I really don't know. Finally, he presses a kiss to the top of my head and I look up at him as a single tear runs down my face. I wipe it a way as I say, "I guess it's my turn to tell my story." I slide off his lap and return to my place on the sofa. "Well you know that Gale was an asshole, but I guess it's time for me to tell you how bad it was."

I tell him how it started off normal enough but my mom and sister never liked him and gradually he got meaner and meaner. He was jealous, controlling, and possessive, he deleted all the phone numbers in my phone that were male names even if they were my cousins. I eventually lost contact with all of my friends. One day I found out he was trying to hook up with my fifteen year old cousin so I slapped him, for the first time. Many of our arguments after that came down to us hitting each other. Sometimes I would hit him because my anger would get the best of me, there's only so many times you can hear horrible shit about yourself that you know isn't rue before you snap. Other times I would hit him because I could tell he was going to hit me and it was always better to swing first. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict, he forced me to do meth. He wanted me to become a prostitute who accepted drugs as payment. He raped me and one time he beat me so bad I thought he was going to kill me. After that I quit talking to him as much and started using the internet to talk to other guys to get my mind off of him. One of the guys I talked to was Cato, the pizza delivery guy. I agreed to go over to his place one afternoon after explicitly saying I did not intend on having sex with him; when I got there he took me straight to the bedroom and took my clothes off and started to have sex with me, I told him no and he told me to let him finish. I ended up telling Gale about it and he got mad, not because I was raped but because I could get laid and he couldn't. He was depressed that I was he only person he'd ever be with. So I ended it, permanently.

To my surprise, I didn't cry when I told him about what happened to me this time. I was getting stronger.

Peeta looks at me in disbelief, "Katniss, I am so sorry that happened to you." He reaches out and cups my face in his hand.

I smile slightly, "Don't be sorry Peeta. That made me who I am today. It allowed us to meet, to become what we are and I am so thankful for that."

"You are so strong. I am so impressed by you."

"Don't be impressed, it's just life. Now, enough sad stories, what do you want to do when you graduate?"

"Oh, wow, we really haven't talked about a lot of things have we? I want to teach art."

"Really? I would love to see some of your work sometime."

"Well, now that you mention it…" Peeta trails off as he stands up and crosses to the bag that he leave here most of the time. He reaches in and pulls out a worn black notebook and tosses it to me. I open it and realize it's a sketch book. There are beautiful sketches of landscapes inside, one of which I recognize as the location of our first date, it's so beautiful I feel like I am there all over again. I turn to the next page, it's the only portrait in the whole book; it is me this morning before Peeta left for work. I am sleeping the morning after the first time Peeta and I had sex and it is the first time I have thought of myself as beautiful.

"Oh, Peeta, these are wonderful," I gush to him. "I wish you would've shown me these before now."

"I'm sorry," he says sheepishly. "And I'm sorry for sketching you without you knowing, you just looked so beautiful, and I wanted to remember you exactly as you were forever."

"Don't apologize for that. I love that one actually."

"Yeah, me too. Anyway, what do you want to do after graduation?"

"I actually want to teach too, but I want to teach a different kind of art. I want to teach English. I want to teach kids to not just tolerate reading, but to love it."

We sit there and just look at each other just a bit longer before I climb into his lap again and press my lips against his. We spend the rest of the night talking about art and books and laughing and kissing until we fall asleep.