Oh my word. I don't even know what to say other than- THANK YOU! All those reviews and favorite-ing make me feel so blown away and so humbled. You guys are amazing. You not only made me smile, but giggle like a little girl. Teehee. Thank you!

I do not own the Hunger Games.

She wakes up to the feel of Peeta's fingers in her hair and the sun setting through the windows. She stares at him, groggy, feeling something unfamiliar she can't name. He's grinning at her and she realizes that he's sober.

"How long was I out?" she asks, sitting up, but not getting out of his bed. She feels so comfortable here, can't make herself move even though she knows this is stupid.

"Awhile…seven hours? Eight?"

That's when she realizes this unfamiliar thing is that she feels rested. When was the last time she slept for eight hours?

"You sobered up, then, Haymitch?" she asks him, but she isn't angry with him anymore. She hasn't felt this well, this whole, in weeks, maybe months. He's grinning.

"I threw up four times," he tells her, laughing. "I'm so glad it didn't wake you up. You were really out."

He raises his eyebrows. He's looking for a response from her because he knows she never sleeps. He is probably more aware than her of what a big deal this is, and he wants some confirmation that he did the right thing, letting her sleep until sunset.

"No nightmares," she confirms, and he grins.

"That's a first, isn't it?" he asks. "Since I've lived here?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she mutters, looking down, angry again at her inability to be kind to him. But if she's kind to him, she's leading him on. And she doesn't need him.

He sees this, this change in her demeanor from cautious joy to cold distance. He sighs.

"Hungry?" he asks and she nods. They get out of bed and she tries so, so hard, not to think about how much better it is sleeping in his arms than sleeping on her own. She can't handle the nightmares, not without him, but she could never tell him that. She doesn't know why she's so damn proud. That doesn't mean she needs him, just that she likes having him there. That she loves him.

She thinks of her dangerous confession, and though she's sure he didn't hear it, sure he has no idea what she said to him before falling asleep in his arms, she feels like things might be different. She loves him. She loves him? When the hell did everything get so confusing?

He's looking at his hand as they descend the stairs. She blushes, trying to pull some of that pride back up, but it is gone as he looks at her clumsy stitches. Why couldn't she have had a bit of her mother's blood?

"You did a good job," he tells her, smiling. "This doesn't look half as bad as I thought it did." She laughs, then, at his confession that he thought she'd done a terrible job.

"I didn't do a good job, I did a barely competent job," she tells him. She feels a genuine smile on her face. He's the only one who can make her smile.

"But thanks for the vote of confidence." He laughs. Is she the only one who can make him laugh?

"It looked worse drunk," he confesses. He pauses. "Katniss, will you make supper?"

His voice is hesitant, and she looks at him, confused. Of course she'll make supper: his hand is a mess, her haphazard stitches sure to catch on everything. She nods, though, saying nothing, and he heads to his studio.

He isn't gone long; she has heated up some rabbit soup on the stove, sliced bread, and is pouring milk when he comes into the kitchen, sits in his chair, and shoves a piece of paper across to her placemat. She places the milk on their placemats before she picks it up and unfolds it.

She gasps. It's a picture of his nightmare. She feels her nose prickle, and the tears begin before she's even fully taken it in. She tries desperately to cling to some negative emotion: resentment that he has an outlet and she doesn't (as if it's his fault he's well-adjusted and she's not) or jealousy at his talent (this took him less than ten minutes) or anger that he's pushing this on her (but honestly, all he's doing is answering her question). She can summon absolutely nothing but shame. The sketch, so beautiful, coming alive on the page as his pictures always do, is of her cutting into his hand, engraving it with the same attention and care he gives his paintings. She has a knife—"Clove's?" she inquires, looking at him across the table, and he nods. She's cutting into his hand, looking straight at him, carving him and drawing his blood without flinching. The worst part is that he is not fighting back, trying to get away, or even looking pained. He's staring at her, looking into her eyes, and she can't tell if he's expressionless or in love, because all of his expressions show how in love with her he is. There's a close-up of his hand, beside this disturbing image, and she can see that in his nightmare, she was carving a flame into his skin, the blood pouring from it like billowing smoke. It's beautiful, intricate, perfect. Girl on fire. Lighting everything on fire that she comes into contact with, and not in the way his smile lights up a room. In the way the fire burned her, burned him, killed Prim…she is destructive, an inferno. Is she destroying him?

She's sobbing, hasn't even realized it until her tears spill onto his beautiful picture. Then, she's crumpled, setting the picture down because it's so beautiful, she can't destroy it. She destroys everything. She would've fallen onto the ground if he hadn't caught her, pulled her into his lap. She sobs into him, wanting to pull away because she's destroying him, but she can't. She can't let go.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, rubbing her back, his lips on her hair. "I'm so sorry, but you asked. You asked, and I didn't want you to think—"

She's crying too hard to let him finish, so he just holds her until she's calmed down. She's thinking of Prim and the fire, thinking of how much she has burned, how relentless her destruction is.

"You asked," he whispers, picking up where he left off as if she hadn't just been breaking down in his arms, "and I didn't want you to be confused. Yes, my episodes and nightmares are all about you. Snow made sure of that. But, Katniss, having you wake me from the shiny nightmares, the confusing hell of my episodes, is nothing like how I woke from this one. I needed to know if the pain was real or not real, if you really cut me like that, if you really…" He trails off with a sigh, pausing to push her hair back from her tearstained face.

"If I really what?" she asks. This time his sigh is softer.

"If you…if you're really the girl from my nightmares. When you're there, I just have to ask, and once I see you're there, I know you would never hurt me. I know you hurting me is not real: I don't need real pain to confirm it. When you're there, I feel like a person again, like I'm whole. You make me trust that I'm…well, real."

She's still sobbing, at his beautiful way with words, at how complete he makes her feel, like she's important, like she's needed. But she would hurt him, she did, she still is. Is she destroying him? No, no, because she's the one who pulls him out of his episodes whenever he pushes himself over the edge of his sanity…

"You have to stop," she whimpers, pulling herself closer to him. "Please, please stop. You're pushing yourself, you're begging the ghosts to come back, you're making yourself have episodes and I can't—I can't—"

She can't get anymore out; she can't get past all the unsaid things, even though she knows it's the unspoken words that really matter.

"I'll stop," he promises, holding her as tight as he can. "I'll stop pushing myself, I promise. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"

"No, I'm the one who should be sorry!" she bursts out, still not in control. "You- you were pushing yourself because you thought I'd leave. It's my fault! I…I made you think I'd leave. I made you think I didn't love you enough to stay. I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

That's all she can manage. She can't tell him she needs him, she can't need him, but she can offer him these words as she shudders into him, sobbing into his shoulder, knowing that he needs so much more from her than she could ever give, hoping that she is not truly the girl in his nightmares.

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