Disclaimer – Suzanne Collins owns the Hunger Games, Catching Fire and the Mockingjay and all of the characters from those books. Lucky girl.

Building

"Katniss, get away from that!" Peeta yanked my hand back from the open flame.

"It is just the stove. You have to let me use the stove." I took my hand back and put a skillet onto the gas burner.

"I'm sorry. I'm trying. Of course, you can use it. Just tell me before you turn it on so I can be ready, look away or something."

"Okay, now, how do you want your eggs?"

Peeta was actually much better. It had been a long time since he had had that crazed look in his eyes. The last time was more than a month ago when we had taken a walk near where the square used to be and he tripped over a piece of charred wood. Later he told me that, once again, he had seen me laughing maniacally, setting fires while mocking him. For a moment he had hated me, but he knew it wasn't real.

His new issue was fire, not the old fires, but live ones. He had been there in the city square, had seen me ignite, even as he himself was burning. He claimed that this new horror dimmed all the other memories, the ones that weren't real. But this one was completely different, at least for me. Now, he was afraid that I would get hurt, back to protecting me. So I avoided fires as much as I could. We were working on using the gas stove in the kitchen.

"Hello? Are you there?" Peeta waved his hand in front of my face.

"What?" I said, startled.

"You haven't eaten anything. And when I asked you what was wrong you said 'Um, yeah.'"

"Can we go for a walk?" I asked. I still had trouble having some conversations in the house.

"Sure," said Peeta and we headed out, leaving breakfast for later. Buttercup followed us. He must have wanted to hunt.

The dream, like all of the worst ones, had seemed so real, although when I started telling him about it, it didn't sound real at all.

"I was trying to kill Snow, then he turned into Coin, but she became Plutarch, then I thought maybe he was Haymitch, then some sort of horrible mutt version of Snow appeared and just as I was about to fire my arrow I realized it was my mom." I babbled on, glad that it was starting to sound more bizarre than frightening.

Peeta knew that I just needed to tell him about the dream, so he listened. Then all of a sudden he said "This is silly."

"It isn't silly. What do mean?" I had always been able to count on him not to laugh at my nightmares.

"Not your dream. Having to go outside to discuss it. Its our house. Snow is dead. Why're we out here?"

"Because he was in that house. I don't trust that house," I snapped. "Who knows what cameras or listening devices are still in there?"

"But no one listens to them anymore," he said.

"How do we know that?" I knew I sounded paranoid.

Peeta shrugged. "So let's build a new house."

I stopped walking. "What do you mean? Where? How? We don't know how to build a house." But I was wondering why I had never thought of this before.

"We could tear down my old house and use the materials for a new house. Either in the same place or somewhere else if you wanted," Peeta said.

I was afraid to get too excited. "I don't know. It would be a lot of work. And we aren't completely healthy yet." Actually, we both knew that he was the one who wasn't quite back to normal. Normal, of course, was never going to be what it had been. We both had problems with our new skin. We needed lots of lotion and we had to be sure to wear sunblock outside. But for Peeta it was more than that. He was still tiring too easily. He never complained about it, but I could tell when he was not feeling well.

"The exercise will be good for me. It will get me back in shape. Where would you want our house to be?"

"Do you think we could get some land closer to the woods?"

"Sure, we would have to talk to the city council and see what's available over there, but there is plenty of space. Or we could use your parents' land. That still belongs to you."

I could not believe how much I loved this idea. We went walking where the Seam had been. All the old houses had been destroyed, but the mess had been cleaned up. I was amazed at how nice it looked. Several families had come back and rebuilt houses. Hazelle and her kids - the younger ones anyway - were putting up a much bigger house with a garden in front and a fence around it to keep the chickens in. We decided that we didn't want to be too far away from neighbors and my parents' land would work fine.

Only a few days later we were watching Greasy Sae and friends pour the cement foundation for her house. We took notes and helped where we could, then started buying the materials we needed to pour our own. Everything still went mostly by bartering, so we started taking Peeta's old house apart and trading away wood, doors, pipes, for cement. Peeta insisted that we keep the central heating system, even though it would need a lot of modifying. He did not want our home heated only by fireplaces and the open flames inside them.

Most of the things we needed we could find or make here in the district. Bristel had actually started a blacksmith shop and could make some things out of the metal we dug out of the rubbish heaps. Anything that just couldn't be found in District 12 could be ordered from District 13 and delivered on the hovercraft that came once a week.

Haymitch wasn't happy about our new plan until we convinced him that his house would be a lot quieter now, and if it was too quiet, we could build him a new house in the new neighborhood.

"Be easier than cleaning this one," he muttered and soon he was watching over and criticizing the way we poured our new foundation.

It was amazing to have something to do. The framing was next, but first we had to start seriously dismantling Peeta's old house. That was harder than I expected since we had to do it very carefully, both to save as much drywall and wood as possible, and also to study how everything had been put together.

One thing I had been right about: the place was infested with cameras and microphones. The camera lenses were squares about an inch wide made of some sort of reflective metal. We found five of them in various corners of the ceiling, then went and found just as many in my house. I couldn't believe I never noticed them before. The ceilings were painted a gray shade that matched the metal, but the shine of them was easy to spot once you knew what you were looking for.

The microphones were tiny metal cubes and they were everywhere.

Once when I was wiping off the kitchen table I ran the cloth under the edge of the table. It caught on something. I peered under the corner and saw a microphone. Suddenly I remembered whispering to Gale as he lay on this very table: "I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble." My stomach lurched. I had spoken almost directly into a microphone. How could I have been so careless? Had I been basically volunteering for my second trip into the arena with those words?

I ran out of the house and stood on the front walk with my hand clamped over my mouth. I didn't remember where Peeta had said he would be.

"Peeta!" I yelled between panicked breaths. He came hurrying around from the garden in the back.

"Katniss, what's wrong?"

I went to him and whispered, still afraid of being overheard: "There is a microphone. Under the corner of the kitchen table. They heard everything."

"Are you sure?"

"Come see." I took his hand, feeling I could only go back into that house if I was holding on to him.

I showed him the one I had found, under the corner of the table. He crawled under the table and pried it off with a knife. Then he saw another one at the other end of the table. We spent the day in silence, scouring both houses for microphones, scraping them off and depositing them in a bag. By the end of the day we had found more than a hundred.

From that day we did not go into either house any more than we had to. Even though there was probably no one listening any more, we felt haunted, unsafe. It was late summer and the nights were warm so we began sleeping in a tent in the open area in the center of Victor Village. I found I liked the tent. Some nights we slept under the stars and that was even better. But we slept well. The manual work all day, then making plans late into the night, wore us out. We both slept too deeply for nightmares.

One night as we lay under the stars Peeta said "Greasy Sae says we should be able to have the house habitable by the end of September, mid-October at the latest."

"We'd better," I answered. "It's going to start getting too cold for camping by October."

"Once the roof is on we can camp out in the house if we need to. The heating system will be useable in a few weeks."

"That could work," I answered.

"How about a wedding in December?" asked Peeta.

I was silent. We had done our toasting. The whole world considered us married, including me. We just hadn't had the big party where you invite everyone you know. That was the problem.

"I don't know if she'll be ready to come back here," I said. He knew who I was talking about.

"Or is it that you are not ready to see her? You are coping with being back just fine."

"She brings back so many memories. And . . . ." I couldn't say what I was thinking. My mother acted like the only daughter worth having was gone. She and I hardly even felt related to each other.

"Your mother misses you. I know she does. She is waiting for you to be the one who asks her to come back." Peeta and I had been through this discussion before.

"Why would she do that?"

"She doesn't want to intrude if you don't want her." The problem with Peeta was that he always thought the best of everyone. I actually loved that about him, especially since it had taken awhile for that part of his personality to return full time. But I wondered if it didn't keep him from understanding my mother.

"How about if I say 'maybe?' Is that good enough for now?" Peeta didn't ask for much. I hated to disappoint him. But how could we have a wedding without the whole thing reminding us all of the very public proposal, the wedding gown selection contest, the burning mockingjay gown? There was so much baggage with this topic.

"It can just be a simple, sweet wedding. You can wear the dress Annie wore. It would give everyone who has come back to the District a chance to celebrate. And maybe bring back some people who are gone."

I knew who he meant. "We can't invite him," I said.

"His whole family is here. We have to invite him." This was the only other topic that Peeta and I argued about. Even then we were still too careful with each other to seriously fight. Or maybe he was too nice. I knew that I wasn't. But he didn't understand why I never wanted to talk to Gale again. Never wanted to see him again. Never wanted to think about him again.

I had told Peeta that it was Gale who killed Prim. Of course, he didn't see it that way. He did agree that the bombs timed to go off when the rescue workers had arrived were despicable. But there were a hundred reasons why he thought I should at least talk to Gale again. He always pointed out that we had been best friends. That that was something you do not just throw away. I didn't think he would ever understand.

A wedding was something I would probably agree to eventually. But not Gale.

The next day we were both being extra nice to each other. I hated how distant I felt from Peeta after we quarreled.

"Do you have time for a walk?" he asked after breakfast. "There's something I want you to see."

I would probably have agreed anyway, but now I was willing to say 'yes' to almost anything. We walked over to the river behind the old east entrance to the coal mine.

"Look what I found," he said, pointing into the river. I looked, but had no idea what he was so excited about. The river did look a lot better than it used to, when it had been coated with a fine black layer of soot. Now that the mine was closed it was fresh and clear.

"Am I missing something?" I asked finally.

"It's the rocks." They looked like normal rocks to me. "Look closely. Do you see how some have shades of blue, some are more green, some are almost purple?"

I tilted my head and tried to see what he could see. "They are kind of pretty," I said.

"Would you like them for our fireplace?"

"Are you okay with a fireplace now?"

"Yes, now I can picture it. It'll be beautiful." Peeta's eyes focused on something only he could see. "Maybe someday we can even burn a fire in it."

I found I didn't care about actually using the fireplace, but having one would make our house feel like a real home. And I knew Peeta would make sure that it was perfect.

I had no idea how happy I was until it was gone.

The night before, I was falling asleep when the phone rang. Peeta hurried inside from the tent to answer it. I followed close behind. No one but Dr. Aurelius ever called us and he always let us know ahead of time when to expect his calls. My mind ran ahead. It must be bad news.

But Peeta was smiling. He covered the phone with one hand and said "It's Annie. It's a boy!"

"Let me talk to her," I said as I almost grabbed the phone out of his hand.

"Annie, how are you?"

"Hi, Katniss. I'm wonderful. He came this morning and he's perfect." Annie sounded a bit tired, but happy.

"How are you? How is he? What's his name?" I couldn't remember what were the questions you were supposed to ask someone who just had a baby.

"I'm fine. My mom is here. She was with me and she helped a lot. He's enormous, 10 pounds, 4 ounces, very healthy lungs. I named him Finnick Cresta Odair. Katniss, he looks just like Finnick. He's beautiful."

"I'm so glad, Annie," I said, but my voice was suddenly tight. "Here, Peeta wants to talk to you."

I handed him the phone. He would know what to say. I went and sat on the front steps, waiting for him. How could Annie be so brave? She sounded genuinely happy, not worried at all about how she was going to raise this baby on her own.

Peeta came out a few minutes later. "Annie says she'll bring the baby out to visit us as soon as he is big enough, well, old enough anyway, to travel. I told her about our new house. She said she wants to see it."

"I hope she will really come," I said.

"She'd have to come for a wedding."

I rolled my eyes at him, took his hand and we went back to our tent.

The next day we went to the new house. We were putting up and joining the framed out walls. Haymitch and Greasy Sae were there, along with Thom and Bristel. Haymitch and I held one wall while Thom and Bristel held the another. Greasy Sae and Peeta worked at the joint, nailing the walls together and connecting them to the wooden beams we had already attached to the foundation. The other two walls were also framed out and ready to be put up as soon as we got to them.

Suddenly, I realized that Peeta's hammer had been silent for a while. He was on the inside of the joint and Haymitch and I were on the outside of the wall so we couldn't see him.

"Peeta, is everything okay?" I called, but he didn't answer.

I eased to the edge of the wall, still making sure to hold it up. I peered around the edge and saw Peeta hunched over, leaning with his arms on his knees. My first fear was that he was losing it again.

"Are you okay?" I asked carefully. He held up one finger, asking for a moment. His eyes were calm, but tired. His face, however, was strangely gray.

"Just a minute," he whispered, "I don't feel good." And then he collapsed.

Thanks to my fantastic reviewers:

SamSnead

November92009

Solaryllis

Catching Fire 54321

Analyn Lana Ruse

MockingJayzz

MountainAir

KidsInLovex

Heart the Squid

wisdomgoddess26

Thanks to IrishLuck19 for your amazing beta work!