Thank you so much for your reviews! They keep me writing, so keep them coming! :D

In this chapter, we're going back in time again, to the day after Their First Time. This one is written in Peeta's POV – it's the first time I write things from his perspective, so I'm a bit nervous about it. Plus I'm not used to writing from a man's POV. But here it goes.

I hate that I hurt Katniss.

She says it's okay, but I don't think me hurting Katniss can ever be okay. I've hurt her too many times, and to do it yet again – even, or perhaps especially, in an act of love – makes me feel sick to my stomach. Cleaning up the dried blood, seeing her struggle to even walk down the stairs and then face Haymitch... I've cursed myself repeatedly for losing control, my lack of experience making me unable to hold back as much as I should have.

"Did it look like I wasn't enjoying myself?" she asks later, when I'm trying to broach the subject of how sorry I am. We're lying on the couch drinking warm chocolate. She's smiling with a secret smile.

I blush. "You did seem… Pretty happy about it… After a while."

Katniss looks like a cat that's caught a mouse. "I did feel pretty happy about it. You were pretty amazing, you know." I try not to smile a big, goofy grin, but it's impossible to hold it back, because she's making me feel ridiculously pleased with myself despite it all.

When Katniss falls asleep on the couch, I get up, carefully.

She doesn't wake. I take a deep breath, and walk out the back door. I sit down on the steps, next to two evening primrose bushes. They are bare now, covered in snow. I know I'm hidden from view from the neighbors. The sun is setting.

Suddenly, my hands start shaking.

I think back of last night, of the way Katniss looked when I entered her – pain mixed with love and trust. She opens her mouth, and bares fangs, dripping with blood. She's out to get me. Her eyes change, suddenly they are filled with deadly fire, and her cunt is twisting around my cock, tightening, hurting me, it feels like she'll tear it off. I scream, but I'm unable to pull out, trapped. She will take away everything that I am.

My eyes snap open, I'm panting, my body is covered in cold sweat.

They've destroyed this, too. Managed to infiltrate even the memories of the most powerful and wonderful moment in my life. I suddenly realize that tears are running down my cheeks.

I can't let them destroy it.

Can't.

Fight it, Peeta.

Fight.

I close my eyes again, force my breathing to slow. As soon as I close my eyes, the vision returns. It's all too familiar. I've spent so many nights awake, painting furiously until I'm so exhausted I'm practically unconscious, because I just couldn't face those fiery eyes behind my eyelids.

Not to mention my own need for them.

I force myself to breathe steadily, remembering the techniques Dr Aurelius taught me. Analyze it, Peeta. Analyze. Put your fears and feelings aside. Is it real? Look for signs that it's not real. What doesn't fit into the picture? How do you differentiate real from not real?

Analyzing it, coldly and detached, makes it easier to ignore the deadly grip on my cock, to keep the fiery eyes from consuming me. It took me countless hours of therapy to be able to analyze those fiery eyes without screaming my head off.

The picture is too bright. Yet it's slightly fuzzy in the lower right corner. The first time I recognized that the right corner was a giveaway was a breakthrough. The first night after Dr Aurelius helped me identify it, was the first night I was able to fall sleep without being knocked unconscious by intravenous drugs.

Then I see them. Another dead giveaway. The green bubbles. Tiny, tiny, I have to look really hard to see them. I have to know what to look for. But they are there, they are swimming in her eyes, mingling with the fire.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

I open my eyes again, forcing myself to stay calm.

It's not real.

Then what is?

Me struggling with taking off her bra. I focus on that picture. Going through it, examining every detail closely, including my own ragged breath and nearly painful arousal. Clear. No fuzzy corner. No bubbles.

So real.

The taste of her when I go down of her, making me feel dizzy, her screaming and panting and writhing underneath my tongue.

Real.

Burying my cock inside her, slowly, her soft whimpering, the way her body tenses, clenching around me, then thrusting hard, hurting her. Now that's a memory that makes me stop, it's so crucial that I have to go over it, again and again, examining every detail to make sure I can categorize it correctly. Real or not real? However closely I search, there aren't any bubbles. Her eyes are filled with tears, not fire. The picture does seem fuzzy, but it's not just one corner, it's all of it. I take a shaky breath, and open my eyes.

It's real.

And I know I have to file that memory, store it properly, in the "real box" Dr Aurelius helped me construct. It's where I keep the memories I have to revisit, when I encounter situations or memories that I can't trust or don't know if are real. Then I take those memories up from the box, revisit them, go over every detail. Hold on to the fact that they come from the safe box. Focus on the real memories, not the twisted, false, implanted ones. At first, only the memories that Dr Aurelius put into it for me were in the real box. Then, with his help, I was able to store memories in it on my own. First just tiny ones, like the first flower in spring, the smell of soap. Then gradually they grew bigger. My father baking bread. Katniss volunteering at the reaping.

This is a huge one.

I revisit the memory, reveling in the feeling of Katniss' cunt closing around my cock, but not twisting, never painful, just hot and so wet and almost too tight. Her whimpering, and my own worry and helplessness knowing I've hurt her, the all-consuming love I feel for her at that moment, her absolute trust in me, the passion making me unable to stop. Then how she goes wild underneath me, falls apart, how we fall together. I take the memory, wrap it in cotton to keep it safe, it's so precious, and place it in the gray cardboard box marked "real". The drawer is placed next to another box which looks exactly the same, only it's marked "not real".

I feel confident now, that the memory has been placed in the right box.

I open my eyes, breathing deeply. It's a memory I know I'll have to revisit very frequently.

I'm hard, so hard it's nearly painful. My cock is straining against my jeans, wanting to be set free.

It's cold outside. I shiver, I've been out here for too long. I go inside again, finally daring to breathe in the same air that Katniss is breathing. She's lying on the couch, sleeping like a baby. I kneel in front of her, staring at her, drinking in every detail. Examining it for signs that it might belong in the "not real" box.

In the soft light of dusk there is only love.

I know I can't touch her. For a moment I consider jerking off in the bathroom, but decide against it. Instead I lift her up, carefully to avoid waking her up, and carry her upstairs to our bedroom. Walking downstairs was painful for her, I don't want to cause her any more pain today.

Real. It was real.

I put her down on the bed, kiss her hair, pull the covers up over her. Her eyes flicker open for just a few seconds. There is no fire there, only sleep. She looks a bit confused, then smiles a secret, slow smile, and falls asleep again.

I lie down behind her, feeling her warmth cocoon me as I hold her.

Real. It is real.

I originally had some smut planned for this chapter, but suddenly it turned angsty, so you'll get some smut another day, I guess. ;) The smutty plan I had in mind was to write about their second time together, but I'm not sure about which POV to choose. What do you think?