Here's the next chapter! Enjoy! I do not own Mockingjay, any direct quotes will be in italics.

Ch. 17

"He did save your life Peeta." Says Delly, pause a second, "More than once." She did this with me a lot as if she were the mother; I was the young boy. Although she was a much kinder and nicer version of my mother, she used the same voice when trying to teach me a lesson.

I didn't like feeling like a child though, because I wasn't. At least not in the experiences I had been through. I have had to face death more than a person my age should have to. I had seen things people should never have to see. I had done things that went against the unspoken laws of humanity. But so had everyone else in Panem. That wasn't a very good thing to rely on. Still I did not want my words, my thoughts, to be looked down upon. I deserved my opinion even if it was altered by the Capitol.

"For her." I look at Katniss, trying so hard not to look at me, but failing time in and time out. "For the rebellion. Not for me. I don't owe him anything."

In the multitudes of hours that I had by myself, I thought about that kind of stuff a lot. Did I really owe anyone anything? Katniss almost eating the berries was not done because she couldn't imagine her life without me. We both knew that. In a round bout way maybe, but not directly. She couldn't live with the thought that I had died, but she could live without me. She knew and I knew, she did it to get home to her sister without being a bad person. She knew the outcome. She knew they wouldn't let us eat the berries. She knew and it wasn't for love.

Then Finnick, yes he saved my life, but it was because he was told to. Can I really look at him as a good guy, if him saving my life had motives behind it? Could I really trust him with the fragile and lost Annie if he had motives all the time? I couldn't trust Katniss or Haymitch or Gale or Finnick, the only person I really could trust was Delly who is always urging me to trust the people I can't.

"Maybe not." Katniss speaks up. Finnick was her friend, everyone was his friend, and she couldn't take the hijacked Peeta speaking down on him. "But Mags is dead and you're still here. That should count for something." And it should, but she would have died anyways. And things happen for some sort of reason, Mags died for a cause, the rebellion. There was no question behind her dying and me living, but there were other things. Other memories that made no sense.

"Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don't seem to, Katniss. I've got some memories I can't make sense of, and I don't think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance." Was her sleeping in my arms a sick game or an actual need? I know, parts of me anyway, that I needed it. It was part of my healing. But for her was it just some way to play with my heart some more? It didn't seem like much longer after that, I saw her kiss an ailing Gale. She couldn't have had done that without a clear conscious.

She just looks at me and doesn't say anything else. I hear Delly in my head, "She's was just confused." Is that still the case? I see Gale sitting next to her, they aren't touching, but you can tell that he is protecting her. If I were to lung I would find his skin and not hers. He loves her; does she love him? Had she ever loved anyone, but Prim, the young girl that, in a way, started this all?

"So, are you two officially a couple now, or are they still dragging out the star-crossed lovers thing?" I would have expected them to stop; after all it was the right thing to do. There was no chance that we were ever getting back together, not after I tried to kill her.

"Still dragging." I get the unexpected answer from Johanna, who never held back on what she said. I don't expect the anger to come either, but it does. The monster starts to come out, and slowly I try to control it. My hands try to do things I don't want to, they thirst for the grip of someone else's neck, but I won't give them that pleasure.

They stare at me shell-shocked. Well not Johanna, maybe she expected this from me, maybe she knew this was coming. Delly had experienced it before and still she looks worried maybe it's because the center of my monster is Katniss. Katniss is in whole the reason my monster comes out. And there she was, sitting across the table from me. A few feet away.

"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself." Says Gale, harshly, with a hate, that maybe the monster deserved, but not me, the boy trying to contain the monster with all he has.

"What's that?" I ask. I've learned that talking over the monster seems to make him go away faster.

"You." Gale says, his voice flat. He had already seen me, that one time I had talked to him for no more than two minutes.

"You'll have to be more specific. What about me?" I ask.

"That they're replaced you with the evil-mutt version of yourself." Says Johanna.

I'm not going to pretend like it didn't hurt because it did. Even all this time knowing that I wasn't me anymore. And telling people that they can't have me back and even saying they could kill me so that they could have their solution. But to hear them say it, to hear them tell me that I was a mutt, to see their faces as they got up and left. It hurt, it did.

I wasn't Peeta anymore, but I was human. I did have feelings, even when the monster in me told me not to.

Wow, sorry guys. I have been horrible, but I've gotten some recent inspiration and I'm excited for what's to come! Also, thinking about doing a five chapter fic after I finish this one that is pre-prolouge in Mockingjay. It would be really short, but...Tell me what you think!

Don't forget to REVIEW on the way out! Thanks! ~boywithbreadlover