A/N: A little bit more background and fluff in this chapter, but i promise, it will all mean something in the end! So bear with me, lemme know what you'd like to see more of! And don't forget to check out my other Galeniss story, She Misses You! Please and thank you :)

Chapter 22
When Peeta opened his eyes, all he could register was darkness. He tried opening and closing them again prove he wasn't asleep, but all he could see was darkness. He tried to move around him in the damp air, and after a couple of tries he discovered his left hand was handcuffed to a chain, and after following the chain, he realized he was handcuffed to a brick wall.

Peculiar. This slightly alarmed him, but he'd had dreams of much worse, so he didn't panic too much. He felt down his body, making sure his limbs were accounted for and he didn't feel any blood or daggers or anything.

So he started to retrace his steps, hoping this wasn't some S&M fantasy gone wrong. The last thing he remembered was Prim. He shouted something at her… what was it?

Run. The explosion.

He had told them to run without him. Because he'd been captured. Captive.

"Son of a bitch," he swore, not directing it at anyone but himself. He was so angry he had made those kids go into the woods by themselves. Rory could hunt, but the heavens only knew what Prim, Vick, and Posy could get themselves into. He started to sweat, thinking he'd let everyone down when—cough.

Who the hell was coughing? "Hello?" the same little voice asked. "Is anyone there?"

That voice. It was so familiar to Peeta.

"Yeah," he answered. "Who are you?"

The voice exhaled, the person didn't sound more than 10 feet away, easily close enough to kill him if this was a Capitol trick. The voice didn't respond. "Who are you?" Peeta asked again.

"Kat-Katherine, Katherine Everdeen."

Peeta felt his mouth turn to a small 'o' shape. "Katniss's mother?"

The woman laughed, "Yes…she's my daughter. Who are you?"

"It's Peeta! Peeta Mellark! From the bakery!" He started to talk quickly, so excited that he was here with someone from home. "How did they find you? What's happened?"

Mrs. Everdeen told Peeta about the mutts that attacked their group, how she watch Hazelle, Sae, and Madge's parents die before her eyes.

"It was weird," she said in a distant voice. "I didn't get a single bite. Hazelle had been screaming that each bite made her lose feeling of her fingers or toes or whatever."

"You didn't get any?" Peeta asked.

"Not a single one," came Katherine's answer from the darkness. "It was like, they'd see me or smell me and they'd go the other direction…"

Peeta thought about her words, could the Capitol be targeting her? But for what purpose? Surely they knew that she didn't know anything. Maybe they didn't. Peeta didn't like thinking about what would happen to the two of them.

As Peeta opened his mouth to reply, a door he had not seen opened. Light came spilling into the cell, illuminating the dark place they were in. bricks, bars on the windows, bars on the door, chains strapped to the wall, and the unmistakable blonde hair of Katherine Everdeen.

The guard came to Peeta and unshackled him, leading him to the door. As he walked into the hallway, he heard Mrs. Everdeen start to cry. Another Peacekeeper grabbed his arm and whispered in his ear through her helmet. "Mellark. I'm a rebel. Give them nothing. We're going to break you and Katherine out of here. Don't give them anything. I'll do my best to protect you. Others are watching you." The woman squeezed his arm in support.

Peeta looked around, what the hell was going on?

…

For the first few minutes, Gale was calm. He put his hands over his eyes, sinking into the chair behind him. "How did it happen?" he asked.

Prim looks at Madge before speaking again, "She and Greasy Sae put their selves on top of Rory so he wouldn't get bitten anymore."

Katniss can see the smile tempting his lips before his grief crushes it again, "How long will it be before he wakes up?"

"We don't know," Haymitch told him.

"So Hazelle, the Undersees, Sae, and Ripper are dead. My mother and Peeta are gone, and we are all that's left. Is that right?" Katniss asks.

"Looks to be that way, sweetheart," Haymitch answers.

"Do we think they were targeted?"

"Well sweetheart, seeing that they took your mother too, I would be willing to bet they thought they left everyone there dead. I can honestly imagine they were looking for Prim when they took your mother."

The color drained from Katniss's face and she tightened her grip on Gale's hand, "Why?"

"To break you, sweetheart. I don't think they believe you're dead." He looked down, unable to meet her eyes.

"So it didn't work, and we just endangered everyone we love," she stated.

"Well," Haymitch said, "you and handsome over here have two options. Option one, we let them know that you're alive and kicking."

"That seems like a smart option," Gale said.

"Well it depends on who you want to effect," Haymitch sneered. "They'd probably start torturing everyone you love in the Capitol, but the districts would rally together knowing that you guys got out."

Katniss ground her teeth, "So what's the other option?"

"Well, sweetheart, you keep pretending to be dead. The districts won't know anything, possibly stalling the rebellion, and we don't know when we'd be able to get Peeta and your mother out."

"So basically," Madge pipes up, "we have to go with option one."

Katniss's mouth hangs open. "You can't possibly weigh in on this! You don't have anyone you love over there!"

Madge looks down at her shoes, "That may be true, Katniss. But we don't know if they're planning on torturing your mother whether you're alive or not."

Katniss had always liked Madge well enough, from partner projects to making sure neither was alone at lunch. But this was too far. Who was this girl, the Mayor's daughter, to tell her that there was no hope? Katniss had lived on basically no food for most of her life, she knew when a situation was hopeless, and she also knew when it could be saved.

She turned to Haymitch, "If Gale, Keegan, and I come out that we're alive, and the kids come out with this bug attack, can we get Peeta and mom back?"

Haymitch put his hand on his chin, thinking. Finally Beetee, who had recently entered the room with Keegan, walked over to Katniss, "Yes, I think it could." He shifted his glasses, also adjusting his hold on the baby before handing her to Prim, "It would also be a good opportunity to evacuate some of the other victors we talked about, Haymitch. Johanna and Finnick can't just walk out of their district like I did; they've had problems with Snow before."

Gale just looked at Katniss for half a second, and she saw confusion cross his features, obviously unaware that the rebellion was going on, much less that people were actually committed to it.

Haymitch thought a little while longer, weighing the options in his mind. Katniss wondered why he wasn't referring to the President, wasn't she supposed to be in command of the whole operation? But maybe these people didn't like the total control a president had, so that was why they elected for majority type leadership. It didn't really matter, because she didn't really like Coin. She had a pompous, arrogant attitude, and Katniss didn't like many people who had an attitude like that.

She smiled, thinking that Gale could possibly be looped into that category of pompous and arrogant. But he was never serious about the opinion he held of himself, and Coin was.

"Okay, okay," Haymitch said, throwing his hands up. "Beetee, I want you and Hawthorne to make some kind of plan where we can distract the Capitol citizens long enough to rescue the valuables. We'll wait a few days to see what the Capitol does with its prisoners before we act."

"Now," he continued, "It's getting late and I need a drink. So if you'll excuse me…" and with that, he was off down the hall.

Gale turned to Katniss and hugged her, "It will be okay," he whispered. He didn't like how often he was doing that or saying it these days. But he knew it would be. He knew it wouldn't be long before this whole mess was over and they could raise their baby the way she deserved to be raised.

That reminded Gale… "What's today's date?" he asked to anyone in the room.

"April 30th," someone answered. "But it's 11:59, so almost the first of May."

Gale smiled and took his daughter from Prim and kissed her forehead, "Happy birthday, my beautiful baby Keegan."

…

Katherine looked around her, still surrounded in darkness. She didn't like it when Peeta was gone, and he was gone often. Peeta being there gave her someone to talk to, to speculate with, to make sure she didn't surrender to the zombie state.

It'd been so easy after..he died. She couldn't even let herself think his name without starting to cry. She'd loved him so much, she'd given up her easily life for him.

And Peeta being in here with her… it left all the wounds fresh, as if she were seventeen again, and her hardest decision was which boy she wanted to take her out. All she can really do is think these days, and she's been thinking about him a lot. She wonders what he'd say about this thing or that thing, but she knows he'd really probably be angry with her for zoning out like she did. But if he hadn't taken the job in the mines like she'd wanted… well, that was her fault too.

Twenty years before, Katherine was the belle of every ball. She had the blonde hair and blue eyes of most of the merchant kids, but her father's apothecary shop was the wealthiest in town. She would always feel bad whenever she saw the Seam kids, but she felt as if there wasn't anything she could do. Ironic, she thinks.

Boys chased her almost everywhere she went, and it wasn't uncommon for her to come home to freshly picked flowers with some card from a random man she had seen the day before. She did love the attention, but she always wondered if these men were interested in her actual personality or just the way she looked.

She had a best friend, his name was Elliott Mellark. Elliott was the baker's son, and he knew one day that he would take it over. The two of them went everywhere together, and everyone in the merchant class just knew they'd end up together forever. On Elliott's few days off, they would skip around the meadow just inside district 12's fence, laughing and carrying on. He always took the time to compliment her, and he always blushed so red whenever she joked with him.

One day, they heard a man coming from the woods. They knew the woods was off limits, so why was this man out there? She looked to see that he had animals strung to his belt, the long day's worth of coal dust on his face. He didn't look to be much older than she was…but who was he?

"Ross Everdeen," Elliott said, reading her mind. Ah, Katherine knew who he was now. He had been 3 years ahead of her and Elliott, going straight to the mines as soon as he was old enough.

He saw her stare and smiled a brilliant smile, one that made her smile in return. He looked to the trees and started to whistle. Katherine looked at Elliott with confusion, what was he doing?

Then he started to sing.

Katherine to this day couldn't tell you what he sang, all she could tell you was that it was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard. Three verses and a chorus later, she was in love.

Katherine sighed, wondering how different her life would've been if she hadn't smiled the way she did at him, if he hadn't come to her and asked her name, if he hadn't asked to see her again. She wondered if she would've felt the love for Elliott that she felt for Ross, even after all this time.

No, she smiled, probably not. All her family had supported her even though she had run off with a coalminer. They were so happy that she'd found the truest kind of lover in Ross. But Elliott's family was much less forgiving. In fact, she still hadn't spoken to Elliott since the day of her toasting. To her, it wasn't her fault, because he'd never spoken up, but bygones were bygones.

A few months after the wedding, she'd begged Ross to go to work for her father in the apothecary shop, but he wouldn't do it. She was then carrying Katniss, and he knew he'd make more money in the mines, and that was what they needed because hunting simply wouldn't be enough for a newborn.

As her mind twisted into her two daughter's births, the door opened, light spilling into the room. She looked up and saw Peeta being thrown to the floor. Her chains had long since been undone, so she ran to him, using what little light that was there to see how bad he was. But there were no wounds, no obvious signs of torture.

"What happened, Peeta?" she asked.

"They asked if Katniss was alive, I told them I didn't know, so they let this weird kind of grasshopper bite all the toes on my foot…now I can't feel it."

Katherine stopped. She suddenly understood why those grasshoppers had been made.