For anyone who read the original TGiAG Prompts in Panem submission, about the middle of this chapter is the beginning of new material that wasn't part of that submission.

…..

78.

Katniss ran.

She didn't know where she was, except she was obviously still in District Twelve. She didn't know how long she'd been running. She didn't know how far she'd gone. She must have been running in circles, at least to an extent, otherwise she would have come to the district fence by now. She would have headed straight for the fence and fled into the woods if that had been an option, but the fence was always on during the Games these days. So she had no destination. She followed wherever her feet carried her. It was pouring rain, and she was barefoot, and her lungs ached with the effort it took to keep breathing, but she didn't let any of that stop her. She knew Gale would be out looking for her by now, beside himself with worry, but she spared him no consideration. She just ran.

The past two weeks had been their own special kind of hell. The reaping had been a nightmare come true, and she had never woken up. And now she never would.

She had been deluding herself into thinking that it would all be okay. She recognized that now. Delusions can feel good in the moment, delusions can help a person function for a short time. But ultimately delusions can not insulate a person from reality. Katniss's delusion had been shattered when she watched the burly Career boy from District Four choke the life out of her precious Prim, while Claudius Templesmith cackled at Prim's feeble attempts to pry his hands from her throat.

In that moment, Katniss found she couldn't deal with the absurdity her life had turned into. Pretending to be a healer. Pretending to be with Gale. Pretending that anything she had done in the previous decade had been worth a damn, now that the only person she was sure she loved would be sent home from the Capitol in a wooden box.

So she ran.

Eventually, she was forced to succumb to fatigue. Her muscles burned with exhaustion, her movements becoming weaker and clumsier by the minute. She was soaked through to the bone. Her feet were covered in innumerable small cuts. Finally she collapsed, unable to continue. After several minutes of lying motionless, panting for breath, she was able to drag herself over to a small tree, and pull herself up into a sitting position. It was many minutes more before she had recovered enough to lift her head and assess her surroundings.

No. It couldn't be. How could she be here, of all places? If she'd had the strength left to do so, she would have gotten up and left. Unfortunately she barely had the strength left to breathe. In the entirety of District Twelve, some unconscious instinct inside of her had directed her feet to this spot. To the same place she had been during another rainstorm eight years earlier, the last time she had felt as desperately lost as she did right now.

Katniss thought back to that girl, who had collapsed under this same tree, and she found that she actually envied her younger self. Yes she'd been starving and half dead, but she'd had a purpose. Her life made sense. What sense was there in her life now? She envied that young girl because she'd had Prim waiting for her at home. She wished Prim was home right now, even just so they could starve to death together. She envied her younger self even that, the opportunity to starve to death. It would be a welcome change from this world where she was alone.

As she thought of the girl who had nearly given up on life under this tree just over eight years ago, her thoughts turned to the boy who had saved her. The boy with the bread, who braved a beating from his witch of a mother to give her bread, and hope. What a waste. His efforts were a waste, the life he saved was a waste, because it had always been all about Prim. And Prim was gone.

She tried to contain the sobs that erupted from her soul, but she could not. She bit her fist and held her breath and told herself that it was just the rain that coursed in torrents down her face.

"Katniss?"

As if summoned by her thoughts, he appeared out of the storm.

The boy with the bread.

…..

78.

Peeta went through the motions of preparing loaves to rise overnight, but his mind wasn't on his task. He didn't notice the destruction surrounding him, even as he deftly stepped around battered steel and broken glass. As he mindlessly went about his tasks, his mind was distracted by the emptiness in his heart.

He had felt it like a kick in the gut when Prim Everdeen was reaped two weeks ago. Suddenly he was right where he had been four years earlier, watching them take Rye away.

The earth-shattering wail that had emanated from Katniss had broken his heart. For the first time in his life, he was actually thankful for Gale Hawthorne, who had practically tackled Katniss with a huge bear hug to prevent her from assaulting a Peacekeeper. Yet he still couldn't stop the bloom of envy he felt watching Katniss break down in another man's arms, beating her fists against him, begging Gale to release her, screaming her denials that this could really be happening into the stunned silence of the square.

His thoughts over the past two weeks had been a confusing jumble. Sorrow for what Katniss was going through, hope for Prim that maybe she had a chance to come home, the jealousy of Gale Hawthorne that never really went away, all interspersed with moments when he would get lost in his own memories of losing Rye to the Games.

Things had cleared up a bit earlier that afternoon, when Triton from District 4 had crushed Prim's windpipe. Seeing another child dead, seeing Prim Everdeen dead, it had sent him over the edge. His revulsion at having to witness such brutality. His mourning for an innocent girl who didn't deserve to die in terror. His sorrow for what Katniss was going through at that moment. His certainty that Gale Hawthorne's arms were there to comfort her, and also his lips.

What Peeta felt in that moment was powerless, completely and utterly powerless. He could spend years buying game and berries and cheese, trying his best to keep just one Seam family fed, but in the end he'd still had to watch mutely as Prim Everdeen's life was ended by some brute from the fishing district. He couldn't protect anyone, not with a handful of coins and a few loaves of bread. He couldn't even manage to exchange more than a look and a small nod with the girl he'd been in love with for fifteen years.

He had control of exactly one thing, the bakery, and when he lashed out he vented himself on the one thing he could control. Dishes were smashed, utensils went flying, glass was shattered, steel was dented. He threw an entire set of wooden cooking utensils into the fire of the ovens, pretty sure that he had been struck with each and every piece of the set at one time or another and sick of having to look at them every day. When he was done, he sat in the middle of the destruction for a long time, catching his breath and surveying the damage. It wasn't too bad, really. The steel mixing bowls and wooden implements didn't care how hard he threw them. Most of the breakable items were in the apartment upstairs, what his parents hadn't taken with them when they moved out last year. Peeta took several deep breaths, retrieved what he needed from the chaos he'd created, and set about preparing for the morning rush.

It was as he was waiting for the loaves to rise that he thought he heard a commotion from out back. At first he dismissed it, it wasn't uncommon for people to go digging through the bakery's trash bins, and he wasn't really in a mood to see anybody. But when the noise didn't go away, he decided to investigate.

As he peered out the back door, his vision obscured by the heavy rainfall, he couldn't help but cast his memory back to another night, another rainstorm, another commotion behind the bakery. The night he had completely humiliated himself, throwing two burnt loaves at Katniss like she was some kind of animal, not even daring to look at her for fear of the hurt he would see in her eyes at his insult.

He thought he heard someone cry out from over by the apple tree. The same apple tree. He didn't know if he was seeing memory or reality when he spied the woman collapsed at the tree's base. "Katniss?" he asked in disbelief.

Her clothes were soaked through, clinging to her and weighing her down. Absent was the leather jacket she was almost always wearing when he saw her in town. Her hair was in one braid instead of two. No, this was not the Katniss of his memory. When she looked up at him, when he saw the emptiness in her face that he remembered so well from the mirror four years earlier, he did the only thing he could do. He knew from experience that words were useless right now. He waited to see what Katniss would do, and when she did nothing but continue staring blankly, he walked over to the tree, and sat himself on the ground next to Katniss. He draped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace. Katniss surprised herself by welcoming the gesture; she turned her head into his shoulder and abandoned herself to her grief.

The twilight had tapered into evening by the time her sobs eased. Finally she lifted her head to look at the man she'd let herself break down with. Gale had tried holding her like this in the time since the reaping, but his arms had never felt as warm or as comforting as Peeta's did now. She didn't want to feel like this, she didn't want to depend on anyone for anything, but she found she didn't have the will to reject his comfort right now.

Peeta opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything the sound of the rain falling was interrupted by a voice in the distance, calling Katniss's name. They exchanged a look; they both knew who would be in town looking for Katniss.

Peeta steeled himself, disappointed that his brief moment with Katniss was ending so soon, but he was unprepared for the look of panic on her face. "Katniss…?"

"I can't-" she stammered, unable to finish a thought. "I'm not ready- I can't go home yet- I can't see him right now-"

Peeta brought his hand to her jaw to still her mouth. "Do you want to come inside and dry off some?" he asked softly. Despite her earlier protests, he was still surprised when she nodded her head.

Katniss was unsteady on her feet when she tried to stand. Peeta helped her up, then wrapped an arm around her waist in case she fell again. Katniss mutely accepted the gesture, holding onto his waist in return and leaning into him for support as he guided her into the bakery. She didn't react to the destruction evident in the bakery kitchen; in truth, it actually set her at ease a bit. The kitchen looked like she felt. Peeta didn't offer any explanation, merely assisted her up the stairs to his apartment. He brought her through the living room into the unused bedroom, and once there retrieved several towels from the dresser. "There are clothes in the closet," he explained. "They're not your usual style, but they're dry, and they'll fit you a lot better than any of my stuff. Feel free to use whatever you want."

"Won't your girlfriend be upset that I'm wearing her clothes?" Katniss asked.

Peeta huffed out a small laugh. "I don't have a girlfriend, these are clothes my mother left here when my parents moved across town. And yes, she would be very upset to see you wearing them." With that he left to dry off and change clothes himself.

When Katniss emerged from the bedroom, dry and changed and her hair freshly braided, she found Peeta in the kitchen serving out tea and bread rolls. She opened her mouth to protest, but Peeta cut her off. "No, don't even try it. If you're going to be in my house, you're going to eat something." Katniss silently accepted a roll and a mug of tea.

They didn't speak again for a long time. They silently consumed an entire basket of rolls, and a pot of tea, and a box of broken cookies. Staring at the iced designs on the cookies, Katniss was reminded of the beautiful cakes Prim liked to admire in the bakery window.

"How do you do it?" she asked. "How do you go on when they're gone?"

Peeta sighed, then gave a small shrug. "I don't know. You just do," he said. "The pain never really goes away, it just sort of becomes part of you, until one day it feels normal to hurt that much. So normal that it stops crippling you, even if it never really stops hurting." He paused for a minute, but Katniss said nothing. "You must have done the same thing, when your father died," he said.

"I didn't let myself feel anything when my father died," she said. "I couldn't break down like my mother did, I had to take care of Prim." She ordinarily didn't talk about that time of her life, but she found herself opening up to Peeta. He had already seen her at her worst, both eight years ago and an hour ago. And there was just something about him - the softness in his expression, the lack of pity in his blue eyes - she knew he wouldn't judge her. And she knew that Peeta Mellark was one of the very few people in Twelve who really understood what she was experiencing, and the only one she trusted.

They talked sporadically throughout the night, short bits of conversation separated by long silences. They began by talking about their shared trauma of losing a sibling in the Games. Eventually they moved on to other topics. Peeta explained how his remaining brother had distanced himself from the bakery after Rye's death, eventually apprenticing at another shop, and the circumstances that lead to his parents moving to a house across town and leaving Peeta alone with the bakery. Eventually, Katniss even explained how she had been posing as Gale's girlfriend so that her joblessness wouldn't stand out.

"But I don't think I can do it anymore," she confessed. "Now it just seems so… silly. Like I've turned myself into something I'm not. I want to live as myself."

"So why don't you?" Peeta asked.

"Because I didn't think I could handle working in the mines, and they're the only ones who would hire me," she explained.

They were quiet for another while as Katniss reconsidered nearly every decision she had made since her last reaping two years earlier. A person's last reaping was a life-changing event, the true beginning of adulthood, when a person's life began to take the shape it would hold from then on. School ended, and people moved on to the jobs they would hold for the rest of their lives. Many people married soon after their last reaping, and almost everyone did within a few years.

Katniss could see now that what she had done was to try to prevent all of those changes. Her life as it was left much to be desired, she risked beatings or execution every day by hunting illegally and despite her best efforts her family was still rarely more than a step away from starvation. But the only thing she cared about was that she was able to take care of Prim. She had done so for many years, and she was terrified that any major change in her life would mean changing that as well. She refused to endanger Prim's future by acknowledging her own adulthood. So she pretended. She pretended that her life wasn't changing. She pretended to get along with her mother to avoid upsetting her sister. She pretended to apprentice with her mother to avoid having to work in the mines. She pretended to be in a relationship with Gale when that excuse had worn thin. She pretended that she wasn't being cruel to her best friend by making him fake a relationship he wanted so badly to be real. She pretended her whole life away, until the only real thing left in it was Prim.

So what was she left with now? She shook her head in sad acknowledgement of reality. She was left with nothing. Nothing. Prim was dead. The foundation she had built her life of lies around was gone, and she was left with nothing. A mother she had never really forgiven for abandoning her, who was now all too likely to do so again. A friendship that had been strained to the breaking point by faking something more, something more that he desperately wanted and she desperately didn't. Nothing.

"I don't know where to go now," she blurted out loud. She flushed in embarrassment, she hadn't meant to say that out loud. But something in her was letting her words flow more freely tonight. Maybe she was so bereft that she simply didn't have it in her to maintain the emotional walls she normally lived behind. Maybe her beloved sister's death had driven her completely mad, and that's why she found herself speaking so freely. She had never shared her true self with anyone after her father died, not with her mother who she felt alienated from and not with her sister who she had to protect and not with her friend who she wouldn't let herself appear weak in front of. Maybe she was finally discovering what a comfort it could be to open up to someone. Someone who understood. Someone who had been through a similar experience. Someone who she somehow knew would never judge her, or embarrass her, or be disappointed in her.

Someone who might have already found a place inside those emotional defenses, longer ago than she was ready to admit.

Whatever the reason, however new and unfamiliar the experience, she found herself unburdening herself to Peeta Mellark. "I don't think I can face that house, not with Prim gone, and my mother… And Gale, I don't even know what to say to him now. How do I break off a relationship that was never real to begin with? How do I tell him that without breaking his heart?"

"You can stay here, if you want." Peeta faltered when Katniss whipped her head up to face him and he saw the shock on her face, but he pressed on. "I have the extra bedroom, you can stay in there as long as you like." Katniss said nothing in response, she just kept staring at him, as if she didn't quite believe she had heard him correctly. With nothing to lose, Peeta voiced his next thought without taking the time to think about it. "And if you're worried about finding a job, um, well, you could work here. It's just me running the place right now, I could use some help."

Katniss's mouth opened and closed several times before she gained her voice. "I can't bake."

"I can teach you," Peeta said. "Or you can work the front of the shop."

"Yeah, that's a great idea," she scoffed. "I'd drive away all your business."

"Katniss, this is the only bakery in Twelve. Where are they going to go?" he joked. "Even if all you do is clean up a little, it would still be a huge help."

Katniss shook her head, and asked the question that was really on her mind. "Peeta, why are you always helping me?"

Peeta stopped and thought for a moment. He raked a hand through his blond curls, and gave her a weak grin. "Do you want the safe answer?"

"I want the real answer," she said with conviction.

Peeta nodded. He let out a breath before he began speaking. "Well, the truth is that I had a huge crush on you when we were in school."

Katniss felt her jaw drop open. She didn't know how to respond to that. "Do you remember our first day?" Peeta asked.

Katniss was incredulous. "What, when we were five?"

Peeta nodded in confirmation. "That day, you sang the valley song in front of the music assembly. You were fearless, walking right up to the front of the class. And your voice, I swear it's the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I was a goner as soon as I heard you sing."

Katniss stopped to think for a moment, taking the time to reassure herself that she really did want the answer to her next question. "And when did your five-year-old crush go away?"

Peeta wouldn't look at her as he answered. "It didn't."

They were quiet as they each paused to let Peeta's confession sink in. This was a subject she had always sidestepped and shied away from whenever Gale brought it up, and her instinct was to do the same now. But taking that approach with Gale had lead her to where she was now, hiding from him with a man she had never spoken to before tonight. So she decided to go against her gut and confront the subject directly.

"I don't want to string you along too," she said bluntly. "I know I've hurt Gale, I don't want to do that to anyone else."

"That's not why I'm doing this," Peeta said. "I'm not asking you for anything like that. I don't want… I'm not trying to coerce you into anything. I just want to help. If that's what you need, a job and someplace to stay for a while, I can offer that much. Please, let me help."

Katniss considered his offer for just a moment. She never accepted help from people, never accepted anything that she didn't know for sure she could pay back. It took her years of working together before she stopped haggling every trade with Gale.

But that wasn't really an option when it came to Peeta. She already owed him her life, a debt she would certainly never have the opportunity to repay. She used to harbor fantasies that Peeta would contract an illness that could only be cured with herbs from the woods, and she could finally relieve the burden of her debt, but realistically there was never going to be a time when Peeta's survival depended on her.

If she was honest with herself, that was the real reason she never thanked Peeta for that bread; she couldn't face him because of the burden of the debt she didn't know how to pay off. But now, somehow that debt didn't feel as important. In the face of what they had both lost, of what importance was one debt? Given how fragile life was in District 12, should she really deprive herself of Peeta's friendship just because she would always owe him? And what of his new offer, the offer of escape. Not escape from the district like Gale would sometimes delude himself into considering. But escape from a house without Prim. Escape from the tortured, ruined thing her friendship with Gale had become. Escape from what her life had degenerated into. What if she did accept his offer? What was one more debt when she already owed him more than she could ever hope to repay?

"Okay," she told him. "I'll allow it." Peeta allowed himself a small smile at her acquiescence, and Katniss found herself returning it. For the first time since she saw Prim die, she got the feeling that maybe she could face her future.

…..

Next chapter: 80th Games.