I'm a fool for not seeing it coming in the first place, I think when I set off the next morning for the woods. Peeta looks worried when he sees me sling my bow over one shoulder.

"Are you sure you're going to be okay out there?" he asks gently, and catches my hand as I turn to go. When I look down at him still swathed in a white sheet, stubble just beginning to come in glinting in the morning sunlight, perched on the edge of our bed…our bed, I think, wow…his eyes are so earnest. They're always so earnest. It's hard not to trust him. I should know. I've tried long enough.

I lean down and take his face in my hands. I can't help it. His hands come up and hold my wrists, and I kiss him good-bye for the day. I feel awful still, it's true, but I feel less awful than I would without him. Just the thought of him coming with me to the Capitol calms me, reassures me, all that steadiness.

I don't say anything but I try to put it in the moment. Going out today is something I have to do; I just feel it in my gut, even though he's right. It's illogical. Every move I make should be on some kind of continuum towards sanity, stability, normalcy. What I should be doing is going out on the crew again with him today. I liked it before. I might ask one of them if they could use an extra body, actually. But it's not what I need to do.

I know where I'm going before I leave and I've trodden the path so many times I do it without thinking about where I'm walking. I see game but I don't shoot anything. What did you think, that you were done with them forever? When has anyone in power ever not tried to use you for something? And now Gale's one of the ones in power. I miss Gale terribly sometimes, but not the Gale that wrote. I want him back, sometimes, too, but not the Gale that wrote. What I want does not exist. Gale is the opposite of Peeta; I don't know what to believe. I can't read him anymore. The thought that he built the bombs that killed my little sister haunts me. I know he's not an evil person. I know that for years, he helped keep her alive. But it's not something you can forget.

Are they ever going to just let me live my life? No Victors get this wish. I've forgotten. That hasn't changed.

When I reach my destination, I lie down and curl up into a ball. My eyes close, but I don't sleep. I just lie, afraid, in Gale's and my hollow under the rocks.

I see his face fall when I don't come home with game that night. I've been gone all day, straight into the evening hours. I spent much of it trying to decide how much time I need before I can go. I have to get in contact with Johanna and arrange her coming. I have to talk to Haymitch. Scratch that, I think. Peeta will already have done this by the time I get back, surely. Peeta keeps Haymitch in the loop far more consistently than I do, plus the nosy bastard has already deduced what's going on. As much as we clash since I came back, Haymitch, when it comes down to the wire, would not abandon either of us if he had a choice. I'm certain he'll feel similarly to me about it…by his standards, he has too many people around him now, much less in the Capitol. Even if it's illogical, I'm thinking of this in terms of sides. I need people that are on my side. Of course, the last thing is getting in contact with Gale himself. The thought of this is painful. The formality of the letter was like being stabbed. It felt so stilted and unnatural. And I didn't like some of the content, either. I wonder what Gale will do with all his power. He's unlike Peeta here, too: Peeta would never either want that power, or use it. I'm comparing them an awful lot in my head today, for some reason. I'll need at least a couple more weeks to accomplish all this. I wonder what Johanna will think. I remember what she said over dinner about my privilege coming with a cost, eventually. This was expected to her too, as it is to Haymitch. Little escapes her. Unlike me. It's still hard for me to focus, even after all this time. I miss things I would have seen before, even if no one notices but me. I'm hoping it's a temporary side-effect. At least I know she has a huge chip on her shoulder for them, like Haymitch and I. She laughed them out of the room when they offered her a government job. Johanna has an obvious talent for telling people to go to hell without wasting words.

On the walk home, I think about last night. I have sympathy for Peeta now, because stopping someone else when you want the same thing they do, and so much, takes considerable willpower. As it turns out, I know more about Peeta than either of us thought I did, because I could read his stream of thoughts from the second I walked into Haymitch's kitchen yesterday, as though I were clairvoyant. What I couldn't read was my own, because I didn't know until the moment he had stood away from me and I threw the letter between us that I had already chosen. All the time I'm learning new things about my feelings for Peeta, I think wryly. This has seemed to become an inevitability. Ironically, Peeta might be the healthiest thing in my entire life right now. It's a little hard to argue with. Something else I hadn't expected had happened, too: as time went on and we continued to remain so intimate physically, I stopped needing it, trying to lose myself in it. I began to, as I told him, want it instead. Want him. I stopped feeling driven into a choice by this ache and willingly let it carry me. All his love made mine, buried so deep now, want to come up to meet it.

With that uncommon possessiveness, which would ordinarily drive me away, I don't recoil, because I see the fear. He's afraid that I'll be gone, and he won't even say it aloud. I know this is because Peeta doesn't want to be the one influencing my decision. He will not, still, put his own feelings ahead of mine. My reaction to this mirrors his own; when I awake that night it's with a wild sense of possession that I might even have carried out of some dream. I feel a little guilty because as much as I halted Peeta for reacting to that letter, I did, too, with a need to stake a claim. I'm no longer a neutral country, I guess. The funny thing is, I didn't need to consider it much. I know his body like I know my own, and I sought it out not so much for the sex, but because I wanted to feel him so close to me, wanted to breathe into his mouth, feel his muscles contract under my hands and those soft curls against my cheeks. Only the reality that the sex, if we had it, would not really be about us stopped me from continuing.

I want him again today, after a long, painful day inside my head, the first and hardest one of building myself up to write the letters I need to write. But I stop by Haymitch's on the way home. It's just him, in his kitchen, with his nightly bottle of white liquor uncorked in front of him. I notice with some sense of relief that he hasn't gotten to much of it yet; he's obnoxious when he's drunk. When he sees me, he regards me shrewdly for a moment before I speak.

"Are you coming?" I dispense with the niceties immediately.

He swings his chair around to face me before he responds. "You know the answer to that. Although I have to say it, I think Effie would be disappointed. I'm not that excited, even for the food." He eyes the bottle.

"What do they want with me, Haymitch?"

He sighs and takes a swig. "They want a poster girl. The same thing they wanted before. They want someone who'll chirp about how well rebuilding is going and how thrilled she is with the new leadership. And they probably want you for logistical issues, too."

The first part is evident if nauseating. The second part, I would guess, is more complex.

"Logistics?" I ask.

"Yeah. They convicted most of Snow's regime recently, according to the talk in town. The leadership council are the ones who get to decide on the appropriate punishments. They'll want your opinion on that. Word is execution is the most popular right now. They'll want to solicit your report on what's going on here…'spect they have people who worked with them in every district giving reports back…and you'll probably have a forum to make requests or suggestions or whatever."

He takes another swig as I digest this.

"And there's one other thing."

"The Games," I say. He nods.

"They'll be beginning to deploy their planning team accordingly with the decision that was voted upon last year. I 'spect that part is going to be difficult. I don't think everyone feels the same way now that we've gotten some distance." I know he means me. He's not wrong about that, either. Maybe it's Peeta's influence, but I've lost my stomach for revenge.

"Alright. Do you think they'll want the same input from the rest of us?" I ask.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised," he says grimly, "And I'm not any more thrilled with it than you are, but it's not unexpected. You know how the Capitol loves to interfere in the private lives of their Victors and turn them into public spectacles."

"This is a different Capitol," I remind him.

"All Capitols are the same," he sneers, taking yet another pull from the bottle. "One of these days you'll realize that."

"How come they didn't invite you directly, too?" This is a genuine curiosity to me; it would have made Gale's letter seem much less personal. Of course, there's a reason he wrote it and not the President. It's not just official business between he and I. But I'm surprised someone hasn't written to them too.

"They knew you wouldn't come alone, I imagine," he mutters. "Why would you? They know who you spend your time with."

"How do they know that?" I ask, bewildered.

He gives me a look similar to the one I get regularly from Johanna. It's the look that says, did you fall off a turnip truck?

"Do you think for one second they don't have allies in this district giving them information when they need it?" he asks. The immediate answer to this question is, of course, no. I was still so ridiculously unstable when they brought me back that it would have been logical for them to have surveillance, even. But it's probably very beneficial to them on a continuing basis, too. As Haymitch recognized in advance.

None of this makes me feel better, naturally, barring the answer to my original question.

"When?" he asks me. Because I was the one who was asked directly, I guess I'll be the one making that decision. I sketch out my time frame for him and he nods.

"How long do you think they'll want us to stay?" I ask.

"However long they want you to stay, only stay as long as you can," he says brusquely, "It's not your job anymore to make them look good. You have enough on your plate as it is." This, I know, is Haymitch's way of being protective. This is also the advice Peeta gave me, but what it comes down to is waiting it out, I guess. Something I'm notoriously bad at. I can't even anticipate right now how long I'll be able to stay before I begin to…what? What do they expect to happen to me?

You did spend all day curled up in a hole, I think. It's not just the stress of returning to the Capitol, its very environment, clouded with deaths of people I love. Nor it is just returning to the stress of making consequential decisions…life and death decisions, if all goes as Haymitch expects…it's also personal. Because of Gale, of course. All of this is bound to compound the difficulty, I know. I'm reliant on my mental toughness to push through, and I don't expect it to fail, but I'd be a fool to walk into it oblivious to the reality that I didn't, in the end, come out feeling particularly stable last time. I'm not going to be able to go within five blocks of the place where my sister was killed, and their headquarters is near the mansion, so that should be interesting. The least I can do is make their lives difficult while I'm there, I think wryly. Haymitch has, for now, told me what I need to know. I nod to him a final time and turn to go home.

The first new spring plants are beginning to come up, even though the nights are still cold. Next time I go into the woods in a better state, I'll have to keep my eyes open. My options will soon become more bountiful. Peeta's crocuses are just rearing their heads outside our door. It's amazing that I've become to regard his house as ours. I rarely return to my own, now. All the things I need, which aren't many anyways, are here. And today, someone else besides us is here too, apparently. Buttercup is sitting on the stoop when I come up the path. He hisses when he sees me. I can't really begrudge him this, given our last adventure together. But neither am I going to apologize to a cat. I do feel a bit better though that he's returned, even if it's only for my sister's memory. I let him inside with me, and the scent of fresh bread wafts out to me, mixed with chocolate. It's a tempting smell. The house is warm and bright. When Peeta sticks his head out the kitchen door, one cheek smeared with flour, shaking his hair out of his eyes, he looks concerned. I drop my empty bag as his eyes flicker down to the cat, meowing plaintively even though he doesn't look any thinner. He knows how to hunt for himself.

I sense the questions in Peeta's eyes but I am not going to explain that I had a mini-breakdown and curled up in that hole all day. That's going to do nothing but make him worry, and he already is. My conspicuous lack of game is a giveaway even without the admission. Still, I'm glad the letter didn't come a few months ago, when I was still screaming in my sleep and wandering around in the dark, like the night Peeta found me and then we found each other in front of the fire. Gale…or whoever's running him…was wise enough to wait. I'd rejected their offers when I left 13, which would have been a clear message to them, I suppose.

I cross to Peeta and use the end of my sleeve to wipe the flour from his cheek. I know how to make him stop worrying, smooth the creases in his forehead. I hate to see him worry about me. He hasn't had one of his meltdowns in a long time, that I know of, but I suspect he hides his own issues sometimes for my sake, which he shouldn't have to do. Not now that I'm getting stronger, especially.

"I think I want to live with you," I tell him by way of greeting. "I mean, officially." The light that floods his eyes lets me know I guessed right. The creases smooth out and he looks hopeful instead of worried.

"Really?" he asks.

"Nah, I just thought it was something to say," I tease, despite myself. I'm smiling. It's hard not to, whenever I make him happy. "We already mostly are." By the time I make these decisions, they're largely practical anyways. My saying this is almost completely symbolic, since I have near nothing of importance in the other house and don't like it much anyways. This house is always filled with warmth…it emanates from the bread cooking, the fire in the hearth, Peeta. I feel safe here.

"What does that mean?" he asks, his brow furrowing again as he probably considers the same thing I just thought about.

"It means next time Gale writes me, we can let him know to write to #10," I say, before knowing I'm going to say it. I'm not sure if this is a dig at Gale, but it's also a mental shift, for me. I've never lived with anyone but my family before. But then, Peeta's the closest I have to family now in 12. He wraps his arms around me and links his hands at the small of my back, lying his cheek on my hair and breathing in. For a few minutes, he just holds me in the bright kitchen, and we stand together listening to each other's heartbeats. Then he pulls back to look at me, and he's smiling the smile I carry with me into all the darkness. I spent a year hoping that smile would return.

He leans down and kisses me, and when he lifts me up and perches me on the table, I know these kisses are baptismal. We are something else yet again, ever-shifting. The kisses he peppers my mouth and cheeks and neck and shoulders with are tender, intimate, and I feel us existing as different parts of one organism in all the quiet. I wrap my legs around his thighs and I can feel him pressing into me, hard and delicious. It makes me shiver. What I want is for him to lie me down right there on the table, covered in flour, and remind me of all his love, over and over. But it's not the time, I guess. I can already smell that he's going to lose his bread if he doesn't pay attention. I poke him gently. "Bread," I say. He blinks and it takes him a moment to return to the world. He groans comically when I push him away and goes to take the bread out.

There's something else in the oven that's a surprise. He's made brownies. My mouth waters when I see them. I ate berries today for the most part, and brownies are not a balanced dinner, but at the second they're all I want. I cross to the oven and inhale them. When he lies the pan out I poke it experimentally and begin to pick at the top. He brushes my hand away.

"You're going to burn yourself," he admonishes me. But when his back is turned I pick again in a rather astonishingly entitled way, as this makes them look terrible and unfit for consumption.

"Ouch," I say when I burn my fingers. He rolls his eyes.

"Just like a little kid. Eat some real food."

I've appropriated a knife and now I'm trying to cut into them without touching the pan. I ignore this directive because nothing much appeals to me at the moment besides this wafting chocolatey smell.

"It's your fault, you made them," I sniff. I sit on the table, eating. He comes back over and opens his mouth for a bite, giving in, and I pop one into his mouth.

"Not bad," he says. He kisses my temple. "I'd love it if you would live with me."

"Because you enjoy so much dealing with my temper tantrums," I state factually.

"Because I enjoy so much having you around," he replies. "And really, you should act more grateful. How many people tell you that?" He smirks. I wrinkle my nose at him.

"I keep calling it our house and our bed," I admit. He laughs. When I finish a couple of his brownies I sigh, because there's something I need to do and don't much want to, for the first time since we've been communicating. I need to write to Johanna. I have no doubt she'll respond to my call for help, kabar knives in hand, but it's nevertheless one I wish I didn't have to make. I wonder if she'll bring her dog. I hope so, and not just because it will make their lives difficult. Peeta takes some mending with him into the living room and sits by me as I stretch out in front of the fireplace to write. Thankfully, I guess, it's not a long letter. Anything else I have to say she can hear firsthand. Peeta sews buttons and cuffs back together with neat little stitches, which amuses me for some reason.

I suck on the end of my pen as I try to figure out what to write. Peeta puts his sewing aside and pushes my hair off my forehead. He tugs the ends gently and then moves his hands down to my sides, running them down the slight curve from my ribs to my hips. His fingers begin to wander under the old flannel I'm wearing. I smack one of them. "Stop," I say. "I have to concentrate."

"You always do that when you're thinking," he says, amused, watching me chew on the pen. I take it out of my mouth so as not to give him the satisfaction of being right too many times in one day. He slips his hand back up my side and turns me over so he can reach the rest of me. I sigh exasperatedly and prop my head up on my bent arm. "What do you want, exactly?"

"You know," he whispers conspiratorially. His hands are rough from working with the building crew, callused. He dips down and kisses my belly as he tugs the bottom of my shirt up. I get goosebumps everywhere and a jet of heat shoots down through me. He runs his nails down my side. He's really trying to get me now. I can't help but inhale sharply, but then I start laughing.

"Stop!" I whine, trying not to be turned on. I really want to just get this letter over with now. His hands are wandering around my back looking for the clasp he can undo with one hand in the dark, now. I know once he gets to it I'm a goner. I can feel the throbbing between my legs. We're going to have to do this about a thousand more times before it even remotely gets boring. Making up for lost time, I think. Johanna's not wrong. 18 does seem a little advanced in age to not have given in to the hormones I thought I didn't have.

"Really?" he asks, and in a flash, I realize what Johanna meant when she advised me to come up with a word that means "stop" besides the actual word itself. Because I realize that not only am I not sure that I really want him to stop, I'm kind of curious to see what happens if he ignores me and takes what he wants anyways. That thought only makes it worse.

I give him a plaintive look. "Can I just finish this first? Or start it. Or whatever." I'm flustered. His fingers have hooked into my belt loops and pulled me tight to him. His open mouth is against my neck.

"Say pretty please," he says. He likes this game. He knows I wouldn't do it with anyone else.

"Pretty please," I say, batting my eyelashes at him and feigning innocence.

"Tell me I can have whatever I want once you're finished," he says. What he's doing now is what I was doing before…he's trying to distract me from this mess. It's working, too.

"No sex," I say. "Everything else." But this feels like it's a limited state, lately. For all intents and purposes, we've already been pretty much as intimate as we can get, so the actual act of sex is beginning to feel inevitable, and closer. I'm welcoming it. I'm glad we waited as long as we have, because I feel more confident now. He nuzzles my neck. I wrap my arms around his own and snuggle in closer.

"Tell me you love me," he says, and I hear just a tiny note of vulnerability there.

"I love you," I murmur into his ear, and kiss it. He exhales slowly as I reach to stroke his hair. "I want to live with you, don't I?" I feel him nod against me. He feels so good in my arms, I forget about the letter for a minute. I forget sometimes that this must have been hard on Peeta, all the uncertainty from my end about what I feel and what I'm going to do. He gives over his weight to me in this moment and for once, I'm there.

He lies in my arms for a little while, but he doesn't come on to me anymore for now. I'm disappointed and gladdened at the same time, because this is deeper. When he leans up and kisses my forehead, he moves away and I know I'm free to finish what I started. He picks up his sewing again, but somehow my writing seems easier now, because I'm thinking about the incentive of finishing it. I stick the end of the pen back in my mouth again and Peeta's mouth twitches. Then I begin.

Dear Johanna,

I hope you got home safe. I wish I wasn't writing about this, but I'm sure you won't be surprised in the least. I recently received word from Gale that the Capitol is requesting my return for some time. I have no idea how much of it is him, personally, and how much is the higher-ups, but Haymitch is guessing that a lot of it has to do with the trials ending and the questions about continuing the Games later this year. I'm planning to acquiesce under the conditions that I can bring you, Haymitch and Peeta along with me, which they've indicated won't be problematic, and that I only stay as long as I feel able. I don't feel prepared to go alone—I don't feel prepared to go at all—but my feeling is it might be better to get it over with now. I don't expect that they'll take a no forever.

So, of course, I'm writing to ask if you'd like to come along—or if you wouldn't like to, if you'll come along anyways so we can hate it simultaneously. I have no idea if they'll let Mutt tag along or not, but I'M inviting him now, since I'm the Mockingjay and all.

…This is sarcasm, but she'll know that…

My time frame is within the next few weeks. Please write me and let me know if you'll come and what arrangements we can make for travel. I could use all the support I can get—you know how they are. Gale's motives are unreadable. Peeta, predictably, got anxious about his presence in any form, but somewhere along the line I realized that it stopped being about Gale at all, and I told Peeta so. I think we're okay now. But I'm still dreading it, and my nerves are coming back again. I wish they'd just leave us alone, but I guess that will just make you laugh.

Hope I hear from you soon,

Katniss

I find myself revealing more than I expected to in this letter. But I'm only answering the questions Johanna will have anyways—she'll know that that letter will have a definitive impact on my mental state and by extension, Peeta's. The rest of the details I can fill in in person when I see her again. I proofread quickly, then fold the letter neatly. I'll mail it in the morning. Given the unreliable state of the mail, it might even take the week to reach her, and then I have to wait for a response. But I can respond to Gale simultaneously, and tell him that I'm still making arrangements with Johanna, but that I'll come given my conditions. I could call both of them, I know, but I'm stalling for time. But I'm not writing Gale tonight. I need to space out my mental stress and I've had enough of it today. I feel drained just writing this short note. When Peeta sees me finish, he stands and stretches his arms above his head. "I mended those pants," his says, tossing them over to me. Peeta cooks, cleans and sews my stuff back together. And never complains about any of it. I wonder what I do besides what I want to do anyways. I wonder if he likes doing all those things.

"Do you like cooking and cleaning up and fixing stuff?" I ask curiously.

"I don't mind," he says. "I did it at home anyways. If things need to get done, I don't think it really matters who does it."

"Should I be doing more?" I ask guiltily. I don't know how this living-together thing works. It feels stiflingly domestic for a second, asking. But Peeta only smiles.

"You do what you like to do," he says. "Hey, speaking of that, Luceid asked me today if you'd be interested to have a place on the crew, or one of the other ones. They have plenty of room on all the rebuilding crews. It'd give you a change of pace." I can tell he approves of this idea. So would my shrink, I think. My shrink is big on reminding me how I'm going to downward spiral unless I'm busy all the time. He doesn't know, either, that I stopped taking my medication in the past few months. I went down on it slowly, but I refuse to take it forever. I don't want to become dependent on something external to function. I hate taking pills, after being so doped up in 13 half the time. One of the things that surprised me was their willingness to rely so completely on medication. Growing up, we had to carefully mete out the medications we had for emergencies. Even at her lowest, my mother never took anything, and she should have, even I'll say that much.

"Tell him yes," I say, without having to think about it. This is something that I've already been considering. "Have him put me wherever they need people; I don't mind."

He moves to me and kisses the top of my head. "Good. That's good. I think that'll help."

"I'm done for the night," I announce. And then I laugh, because he scoops me up like I weigh nothing at all. Our bed awaits us warming it up. Our bed, for the first official night. I wonder if Peeta is thinking this too. He's kissing me as he carries me up the stairs and it's clear he can't do both at the same time. "Stop!" I berate him, into his mouth. He's grinning. "You're going to drop me!" He feigns dropping me and I yelp. But we manage to stagger up the stairs and he drops me on the bed and then jumps next to me.

That's the first night I let Peeta tie my hands to the top of our bed. Within an hour I'm begging. After the first hour he lets my hands free and ties my ankles to the other end. Within two I can't remember my own name. He never lets me come that night, no matter how much I beg and plead. I can feel the waves of energy and hunger that roll out from him as he plays with me. When he decides he's ready, he works himself to orgasm, sliding into my waiting mouth just as he finishes. Our sheets are so soaked they're transparent by the time he comes up next to me, and I'm shaking. He folds me up in his arms and cuddles me, like an apology, but he's plainly enjoying my suffering, which only serves to make me want him more.

"Don't worry," he says, "Next time I'll make you come over and over to make up for it." He's grinning wickedly.

"You'll…make me?" I breathe. I'm still trying to catch my breath. I don't know how I'm going to think straight with all this pent-up energy. I'm kind of praying that he takes pity on me soon.

"Yep," he says. Then he pauses. "You're…okay with all this, right? I haven't asked that in a long time. It still feels a little strange sometimes."

I'm completely limp on top of the cooling sheets, and I know I need to get up and change them in a second because underneath my squirming, plaintive need there's complete exhaustion, but I smile. "Johanna approves," I get out.

"That's because Johanna's into this stuff," he snickers. I blink and my head swivels. Apparently this was not confided in secret just to me. "Hey, imagine if we teamed…"

"Don't EVEN think about it," I say. Who are these perverts? I think, amused.

But because the question merits a serious answer, I answer it seriously. "If I'm uncomfortable, then we'll talk about it, but I've been okay so far. It's so nice not to have to make decisions for like six hours a week," I say fervently. This is absolute truth. I have no idea what the roots of this interest are, or if it indicates something psychological…I bet my shrink has some medication that will rid me of it…but I don't really care, either. I never had anything to measure the sex Peeta and I have against, so I have no idea what the spectrum of normalcy is. So far, two other people besides me, that I know of, are completely okay with it, and they're both people I trust, so that's about as far as my thinking on the matter goes. Peeta looks relieved.

I pull out some new sheets and Peeta shakes them out. By the time we climb in together, my lust is cooling. By the time he wraps me up in the blanket and pulls me into him, I'm yawning. Tomorrow is the harder part, but it's not tomorrow. I keep reminding myself over and over that I can only manage each day as it comes. And each one is getting a little easier, or I'm getting a little better each day, or both. Even the bad ones now are not even close to what a bad day would have looked like four months ago. The last little flickering thought I have is not a thought at all, just a tiny flame of hope. That one day, maybe I'll even get to something resembling normalcy. I hope. I hope.