A/N: Continuing on the path of discovery. Sorry if the story seems to keep jumping from present to past thoughts and then back again. I thought it was important to try and intermix the thought process that gets our character through each smalls step.

Update 3/12/13: Fixed formatting to add more line breaks - easier to read.

Routines

My daily routine was slowly being established. I no longer needed to hunt to provide for my family, but I still felt a need to give to those that were just like me only a few short weeks before. So I hunted for them.

Of course, I had to hunt alone these days as Gale had taken his rightful place among the miners. Six days each week he "slaved" in the depths of the earth. But Sundays were mine. Our first Sunday was so surreal. I had made my way through the town, out into the meadow, and under the fence.

It felt like an eternity, each slow passing second he wasn't there. When I thought he wasn't coming, my heart sank. Then the thoughts began to race and my heartbeat picked up and a cold sweat plagued my body. I had thought of Gale differently during the time in the arena. I think it was Peeta's obvious affection for me that started to stir up feelings that I must have suppressed all those years growing up with Gale.

Peeta's admission of the "crush" during the interview opened up an area of my life I didn't even realize was a part of me. Sure I was a 16 year-old girl and trudging through the middle of normal adolescence as far as hormones were concerned, but my life didn't afford the opportunity to explore any of those feelings. I honestly had never considered myself as loveable.

I suppose I always thought Gale looked at me as just a hunting partner with whom he could depend on to help him ensure his family's survival. We had countless conversations and even went down the road of how our life would look when we weren't subjected to the potential horror of a reaping. "I could get married one day," he had said. "Maybe even have a family."

My response was to adamantly affirm the decision I had made when my father died - that I would never get married and never have children. Of course Gale wasn't talking about marrying me. He was thinking hypothetically about some girl who would come along and depend on his ability to care for her and provide for their family. But during the games, and with that door to my heart opened up, I began to think about Gale in a different light.

Not that my love, or any affectionate feeling, came bursting out, but to the possibility that he may have thought about me during those conversations. This, of course, caused distress within me as he became someone else to protect and try to care for. Maybe not physically, but emotionally.

All of these thoughts and feelings were even further confused by the knowledge that Peeta had declared his affection for me. An affection that apparently started when I was just five years-old. I went from being, in my mind, undesirable to being in the middle of a love triangle. That thought made me laugh a little. Those guys had no idea what they were pining for.

But Peeta's declaration added another piece to the compounding issue of having to face him in the arena. I was already sick knowing I may have to kill him, the thought that I never truly thanked him for saving my life, and something else that I couldn't quite put my finger on right then. He was still such a confusing part of my life, but as I reflected on it, he seemed to have always been a part of it.

I was actually thankful for the mentality forced on me during the games, as I was able to convince my mind that everything that happened in the arena was for survival and nothing else. Yes, that's what I told my mind at least a thousand times – in the cave, on the train.

But then that uneasy feeling, the one I couldn't quite put my finger on, still lingered. It was of no surprise to me when I returned to district 12 that I shut him out of my life. That was easier. Now I would simply worry about what damage my act had done to Gale.

So sitting at the edge of the forest counting the impossible seconds Gale wasn't there, I am filled with guilt that I had somehow failed and dashed his hopes of anything more with me.

I am surprised by a fresh wave of anger that I had blown a chance with him, a chance that I didn't even know if I wanted, but nonetheless it was one more thing that I didn't have control of. Then just like that he was there walking toward me.

The sunlight behind him made it impossible to read his reaction until he was right in front of me. The seconds were tense and then he smiled. It was the same smile I remembered all those times we had spent together in the forest. The smile of a friend with nothing else attached. I felt foolish for even allowing my mind to think about anything more between us and then it happened.

Had he planned this all along? Did he watch the games with a feeling of guilt that he never looked at me like this, or made his feelings known? Whatever the reason, his hands were on my face before I could think and then his lips were crashing into mine, a mixture of heat, aw power and desperation. When he backed away, I was still startled and had no idea how to react.

This changed everything. I knew that. I knew I should say something, but the words weren't anywhere to be found. His eyes searched mine for some affirmation that it was ok, but his pained expression told me I must not have given him that affirmation.

He told me that he just had to do that, even if was just for this one time. Maybe it wasn't an act of love and affection, but more an act of overwhelming joy at confirming that I was really still alive.

Whatever the reason, we started to walk into the woods and no words were spoken about the kiss anymore. After an hour or so of hunting, it was almost back to business as usual. On the outside it looked like we picked up right where we left off, but there was an uneasy tension, even if neither of us openly acknowledged it.

I found it strange that in the weeks since I had returned I hadn't really given Peeta much thought at all. I had resolved that it was just simpler to dismiss him and his feelings for me, out of my mind. I took the extra effort to avoid him as much as possible to help make that train of thought more real. It was working, up to the point of that first meeting with Gale.

How had his presence opened that train of thought? It didn't make since to me – at first.

Over the next few weeks I found myself thinking about Peeta more and more. The thoughts were silly really, wondering what he had for breakfast or what he did with his free time. The strange thing about these thoughts is they didn't flood my mind until I was out with Gale.

On those nights as I lay down to sleep, before the nightmares would take hold, I would let my mind drift to the moments Peeta and I had experienced together. Sometimes it was just memories of the train ride to the Capitol, or the food we experienced. The longer I thought about this, the more the memories edged toward the arena – more specifically the cave.

I couldn't deny that something inside me had stirred while we were in the cave.

Now here I was fighting off sleep and the impending return to the nightmares as the sun's first light started to make its presence known. The nightmares had become more and more difficult to deal with, most likely because the victory tour was only days away.

I had dreaded the tour for so many reasons. Mostly, because I would have to look at the faces of 22 other families whose dreams I helped shatter when I walked out of the arena as one of the victors. But I was also dreading the facade of being in love with Peeta.

I knew we would still have to act for the crowds and more importantly the Capitol, but it was going to be especially hard this time around because I knew Peeta wasn't acting. He never had acted.

Then immediately he is in my thoughts again and a familiar feeling begins to fall over me.

It was the unsettling feeling that I couldn't put my finger on before we entered the arena. It was the same feeling that made me call out his name when I learned we could both go home from the games.

It was the same feeling that had plagued my thoughts when I was with Gale and daydreaming about those times with Peeta. As much as I tried to deny it, I had slowly begun to give into what I knew to be true.

Peeta wasn't someone I could just simply push out of my mind and my life. He was someone I didn't want to push out.

Pain was the next feeling that hit me in this thought process. If I was allowing myself to have deeper feelings for Peeta then I was opening up the possibility of being hurt. Not by him voluntarily leaving me, but by him being taken from me.

Wasn't that part of my resolve to push him out? It was a struggle to deal with the confusing feelings, but it also meant he was not someone who could be used to punish me. He also wouldn't be the source of an unquenchable grief that would surely be there if I developed feelings for him only to have him taken like my father was so many years ago.

No, that was the reason I purposed my heart and mind to never be intimately involved with anyone. But here I was allowing the idea of deeper feelings to wash over me.

It was this exact realization of those feelings that also forced me to think of how I felt about Gale. I had never mentioned the kiss, or the complexity that it brought along with it. However as each Sunday had passed and the thoughts of Peeta had become more and more often, my true realization that I would never view Gale in any other light became clear.

Of course I hadn't told Gale this as I struggled to keep our routine as close to normal as possible, but I knew that regardless of my feelings or any future with Peeta, I owed it to Gale to be honest.

That honesty talk seemed to loom larger and larger as my resolve to keep Peeta out of my life grew weaker.