Title: The Next Chapter

Author: Ellipses

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Don't own the characters or anything really except my own words.

Summary: After returning to District 12, how on earth did two broken souls end up finding their way back to each other? (Expanded Mockingjay chapter 27) K/P, 3-part.

Part 2

Peeta's new bakery is ready to re-open its doors to the public and I'm helping him out just for the day. It almost feels normal to see all the people coming through like nothing's changed. Of course, there's nothing normal about any of it except that each day seems to bring us closer to stability. I don't bake, but at least I can add, subtract, multiply and divide so I just help out out front. It's comforting to see all the familiar faces and sometimes I get some mixed responses. Clearly some people have been burned as badly as I have by the loss of their loved ones.

There is no demand for the pretty confections all frosted and colourful that Prim and I used to admire in the window. Any extra money that anyone manages to scrounge up goes back into repairs, provisions, medicines. The window just displays regular bread right now. I hope to see Peeta make those again in the future though. I think it makes him happy the same way I feel when I'm in the forest.

Life is going on without Prim and my mother. She calls sometimes but her calls are few and far between nowadays so I'm glad for the human contact my work here today has provided. It can be a bit depressing when all I have for company is a drunk, an angry cat, and Peeta who still has his ups and downs. I feel like we've come a long way though. And it certainly helps that we're not getting nightmares as often now that sleeping at my house has become an almost daily occurrence.

I'm glad he had the foresight to put his hand over the nightlock that day of the assassination. If we hadn't both made it out of all this alive I don't think the other would've been able to recover from that. It reminds me of the conversation I overheard between Gale and Peeta that time we were hiding out in Tigris' basement. They said I would choose whoever I thought I couldn't survive without. I think I understand what that truly means to me now. It seemed quite selfish at the time but I think after spending all my life being entirely selfish save for Prim, I have little care for self-preservation now. My selfish heart is so good at blocking people out I've even done it to my own mother. It's my heart and soul that need to survive, and thrive again.

So later that night, I thank Peeta for saving me from myself that day. But his reply surprises me, "It was selfish. I was only thinking of saving you for myself."

He's the most unselfish person I've ever known so the idea baffles me. Does that mean that even then, half out of his mind, he still loved me? I can't comprehend that right now. If that's how he felt then, why is it that he's so unsure now? It was only days ago that I asked if he loved me and he didn't answer. Couldn't or wouldn't though?

And then there was a spark of realisation and for a moment it seems like I never truly understood him before this moment. "Wouldn't," I say out loud by accident. He would never say anything because he didn't want me to feel pressured, or guilted, or like I should give him a false idea of my true feelings out of respect for him. So he must love me then...? Has he come home for me, to save me, and to win my heart? I know in my head that no one could ever love me better than Peeta – Gale's hate for the Capitol had always outweighed his feelings for me. But could I love him back the way he deserves?

One of the questions I've often asked myself before was what if there was no Gale? Would I be head over heels for Peeta? But now that Gale isn't in my life and probably won't be ever again...well, now I'm starting to realise that I've been using Gale as a shield, an excuse, because his absence hasn't helped me to figure out what I'm feeling, but I can definitely feel the chains around my heart that he helped to put there start to slip away and it feels liberating. And all of a sudden it all feels rather inevitable. Me and Peeta.

"What did you say, Katniss?"

"Oh, nothing, just thinking out loud."

And we carry on as we always have, putting the finishing touches on Madge's page. We've decided to give the book to Haymitch so he can fill in a few more missing details for us. The next shipment of liquor is in a week so he's sobering up right now. Hopefully that means he won't be as dead to the world as he usually is.

"Peeta, do you think you would've said anything if we hadn't been reaped?" I ask him one day. I don't think I've ever given much thought to 'what ifs' but it looks like I'm doing it more and more lately.

He pauses for a moment and his eyes squeeze shut. He's having a flashback. When it passes and he regains his composure, he finally says, "Probably not." He's thinking about it like he can't quite remember his old self. I can see why he's having trouble remembering. When I think of my pre-Games self I feel such a sense of detachment. How could Peeta have even loved that person?

"I thought at the time that you and Gale had something going on, that's why I never said anything. I felt like I had nothing to lose when I told Haymitch and Flickerman. I didn't think I'd make it out of there alive. And if it all hadn't happened...then I don't think anything would've come between you and Gale." I feel like I'm in his shoes just for a moment and it breaks my heart to know that the only choice he thought he had was death. Obviously, that was a pretty good assumption at the time but Haymitch used it against him to further my progress in the Games. I can't in all honesty even deny that Gale and I might have grown closer over time despite my aversion to marriage and all the rest.

I owe it to him to tell him, "I don't have any feelings for Gale. I want you to know that. I'm certain of it now." It's not exactly what he wants to hear, I know, but that's all I can offer him right now.

His mouth curves up a little at the corners. I imagine him doing a little fist pump in his mind. He could never be so crass, I know, but I'm not Peeta am I? I would just like to imagine a happier version of him.

"Good," he says. "I don't think I could take it if you said you might still feel something for him."

And I feel now that bit by bit the brick wall between us being whittled away to near-nothing. It's just now up to me to give it that final kick. And I'm so scared.

Haymitch exceeds all our expectations when he returns our tribute book. We honestly never thought he'd get past one or two entries. In fact he's done 23 years' worth, all the way from the 51st right up to the 73rd Hunger Games, the one before mine and Peeta's. With the tapes Effie gave us, Peeta starts work on the portraits Haymitch left space for. Not having known them, he doesn't get into quite as much detail so he finishes in a matter of days. Once it's done we protect it, seal it, include a few mementos like a pressed evening primrose bloom from the plant outside and the photograph of Finnick and Annie's child.

It takes pride of place in the most inconspicuous of places, in my drawer next to our family's plant book. And that's when I find it. I'd almost forgotten it. Is this the only thing he ever truly gave me? It's the pearl. I can't believe it managed to find its way back. I don't even recall putting it here, but of course I don't. I wasn't even in my right mind at the time I was exiled here. It takes me back to that one unguarded moment on the beach. It's the one memory I never wanted Snow to distort with his trackerjacker venom.

Peeta's never mentioned it once. Is it possible for the venom to completely remove memories? I sure hope not.

There's a locket in the drawer as well, a different one from the one Peeta gave me the first time. That one was a weapon more than a gift, with which he was trying to manipulate me back then so I now look back on that particular speech with a frown. What I said back then is just as true now as it was then.

I pick up this locket which just has an old-looking scrollwork pattern on it instead of a mockingjay. I click it open and inside I find photographs inside just like before, except that instead of Gale staring from inside, it's a photo of Peeta. Seeing all of them smiling back at me, Peeta, Prim and my mother...well, it makes me choke back on the tears that are starting to spring up. I lock the pearl inside and slip the chain over my head. I sink into the corner like a tonne of bricks.

I spend the afternoon crying my heart out until I don't even know why I'm crying anymore. It could be for Prim. Or it could be for my father. My broken family. I don't want to think I can get this upset over Peeta.

So when he finds me there with my tear-stained cheeks I can't say a single thing. He joins me up against my wall and just holds me. He rocks me in his arms.

He's my dandelion in the spring, the sign of hope, my future. Gale is now just somebody that I used to know, my past, a destructive force that I don't need in my gravitational field. I'm self-destructive enough as it is. It's always been Peeta, I realise.

I look straight into his worried eyes and without saying anything, I bring my lips to his in a kiss that tries to convey all that I couldn't muster the strength to put into words. It's that hunger. It simply feels like I can't get enough of him, and he responds with his own desperation for me. It feels like we're back on the beach again but absolutely nothing's stopping us from going as far as the moment dictates. There's no one watching, no one listening, no one who already knows what's going to happen next. Absolutely nothing but the two of us and the joining of soft mouths fighting for purchase as if stopping will tear us abruptly away in a bright spark of lightning. No one's about to die this time but my heart clenches with the force of the rush of feelings, it's almost like I am. Our kisses turn to small pecks, nipping at each other's lips, finally tearing ourselves reluctantly from each other. We lean our foreheads together and stare into each other's eyes. We both smile.

"Our kiss on the beach. Real or not real?" He asks with his face so full of hope that I could never have said 'not real' even if that was the truth.

"Real. Completely real. And it was real for me too." I open up the locket and tip out the pearl I put inside onto his palm. For me it has come to symbolise the beach and the closeness we achieved in those final hours of the Quell, and like we were on the verge of something...real...except we never got the chance. Until now. He stares at it in fascination, like it's the first time seeing and touching physical evidence of a distrusted memory.

"I always thought it could never be real. But I clung to it anyway through the worst times even though I was convinced that it was planted there just to give me false hope," he says this all very fast like it was bursting to come out and he just couldn't hold it in any longer. And breathlessly, there are those words, "I'm still in love with you. You don't have to love me back, but I can't go on another day without you knowing that I never stopped loving you. I should have told you every day since I got back. But I could see you weren't ready to hear that from me when I saw you that first day when I planted those primrose bushes."

"How can you still love me? Why do you love me?" I can't comprehend it. I don't deserve him. I practically used him and spat him out into the arms of the Capitol, and yet he still finds something worth loving.

"How could I stop? They can trick me all they want but they couldn't beat it out of me. And Katniss, everyone has flaws. But that doesn't mean you're not worth loving. You don't seem to be able to see the forest for the trees."

He presses his lips to the inside of my wrist in the most feather-light of kisses. He places the pearl in my palm and wraps my fingers around it for me with both his hands. Squeezing tight, he leaves me there to start on making us something for dinner. My breakdown has left that chore unattended and yet he never complains about anything.

I wonder what he'd say if I told him that he was perfect, that he didn't have any flaws. He would probably just laugh and assure me that he did. I must be seeing a forest of perfect trees in him then. What a silly notion, really, if you think about it. But then I regain my wits and realise that perhaps what I see in him is exactly what he sees in me.

It feels like a glimpse into what it means to love.

AN: In the words of Beyonce (sort of), if you like it then you should put a review on it :) Please let me know what you think. This may not nearly be my first fic but it is my first HG one and I'm finding it somewhat difficult getting into Katniss' head so let me know if you think I'm on track.

Next part is the big finale...