A/N: You all get this chapter tonight because of the-son-of-hutcher on tumblr. GOOD PEOPLE. This chapter is rated A for angst. And pissed off Peeta, which you'll rarely see in this fic. Starts with Cato's POV.

After the incredibly long celebrations ended, I headed home immediately. Of course, my mom decided to hang back to talk to people, as she always does-I'm convinced that's what she spends her days doing, and she probably hasn't been able to in a while because she had to babysit Peeta, so I wouldn't blame her. But I knew I wanted to go back as soon as I could.

I finally reach my door and twist the doorknob. It would be locked. So I end up digging in my pockets for what seems like an hour before I finally find the key. I unlock the door and open it, stepping inside my home for the first time in weeks. And it felt good. "Hello?" ~

I heard him speak when he first came in, which seemed to take longer than what it should have. But I don't say a word. I stay in my little corner of the closet, away from the view of the door. At this point, it's so quiet you could hear a pin drop. ~

Is no one home? That's not possible-Peeta had to be here. I put my left hand into my pocket and feel the note. "Peeta, where are you?" ~

I'm right here. I think. Completely vulnerable. You didn't even tell me before you left. I could have died. No, stop. Now you're just making yourself angrier than you are. Worry. Because it could've happened. And it would've been all your fault. That's not you, Peeta. But the sense of betrayal is making me think these things that I feel, but I only feel them to lesser degrees-though I know I should be much angrier than I am. Especially with my life on the line. ~

I throw my bags to the floor and kick my shoes off. "Hello!" I call up the stairs. No answer. He wouldn't be anywhere but in the house, and he isn't a heavy sleeper, so he had to have heard me. But if he was taken while I was away, or even while the partying was still happening outside... "Peeta...come out! I missed you and all I want is to see your face!" ~

I'm sure you do. And I want to see yours. But all of a sudden, all of the positive images I have in my mind of Cato-him laughing, smiling, kissing and hugging me, even just holding me-are tainted. All at once. Because he hid this from me. And he knew what the consequences could have been. And he hid it anyway. I remain silent. ~

Frantically, I run up the stairs and kick my bedroom door open. No Peeta. Not even in my closet, like we suggested. "I'm not in the mood for hide and seek! We've been apart for too long!" I go back downstairs slowly, thinking. Say...he was discovered here. It would've been everywhere. I would've found out somehow. Or they kept it a secret from everyone, as to not reveal that he was alive the entire time. Because that would've shown the Capitol's faults. My breathing grows heavier and heavier with each breath I take. "Peeta? Please be here..." ~

Now you're starting to feel the implications of what could have happened. Now maybe you'll feel a fraction of the fear I have over the past month. I know this is a terrible thing, but it doesn't compare to what he's done. Knowingly. Knowing that he's the only person in the world I trusted completely and fully. Now, I trust no one. ~

I turn in circles on the staircase about five times. "No, this can't be happening." I run back upstairs into my bedroom. "Not again!" I kick my nightstand, knocking down a few things, and look at my bed. My bed that has been made for once, but it's messed up on the side by the window. I lay the back of my hand on the spot and compare it to the rest of the bed. It's warmer. Someone was here. "PEETA!" I scream. "Where are you? Please be here!" I start sobbing over the thought that I'm imagining it and he was never really here. "Please!" ~

When I hear him crying, it's enough. I stand from where I am and quietly open the door to the closet and close it behind me. I look up to the top of the staircase directly above me, right by where the door to Cato's room is. "It was all a dream." I call up. ~

"PEETA!" I look around the room. "What do you mean? Where are you? You're here, right?" I can't tell where the voice is coming from since I'm so dizzy and delirious and I just want to see him. "What?" ~

"Downstairs, Cato," I say flatly. You earned this scare. "But it doesn't really matter...This is all just in your head." ~

Smiling just because I heard his voice, I run out the door and look downstairs and see him at the bottom step. "Well, don't just stand there! Give me a hug, a kiss, a something!" I slide down the banister to the first floor and land next to him. "What's in my head? How sexy you look tonight?" Tonight might be the night. ~

"No, Cato." I don't reach out to touch him as much as I want to. I'm too nice. I let myself out to be hurt, used, lied to. No more. "I'm in your head. I was never here." I pause, thinking only for a moment on what I am about to say. "Peeta Mellark died in the 74th Annual Hunger Games." ~

"Peeta, you're right here..." I reach out to hug him, but he steps back. "Why?" I look into his eyes, and that's the moment when I realize I might've been right. Maybe I am insane. He would never do this to me, even as a joke. He was never here...and I'm only figuring this out after the Victory Tour? My eyes start getting watery again as I ask, "You're not real?" ~

I think for a moment about continuing this. Part of me wants to stop it right now, and kiss him. Allow him to finally be with me and have me. But the rest wants me to continue this dark charade. "You must be mad. The fact that your mind concocted something so far-fetched to make you have me back? How did you even believe it in the first place?" My eyes are cold and empty, because I feel nothing. I do not feel badly about making the love of my life cry. I'm the one that must be mad. ~

"Because...there's only one Peeta." I shake my head and wipe my tear-drenched face with the sleeve of my jacket. "My mind can't create something as perfect as him." But he wouldn't be doing this to me right now. He said he never wanted me to cry because of him. So that's completely out of the question. I shut my eyes tightly, rub them, and open them again, and he's still there in front of me. I collapse to the floor at his feet. "Then what are you...please stop tormenting me..." ~

I shake my head. "It's enough, Cato." I turn my eyes from him. "It's enough. You're not insane." My hands grip tightly into fists. "Peeta Mellark didn't die in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, but he might as well have." I turn away completely. "But he might as well have, considering he spent his luck and newfound life unknowingly living in the same home as the one man completely hell-bent on finding him and making sure he was dead." I walk away from his collapsed figure, putting my hands in my pants pockets and standing in the living room about ten feet away. ~

"What?" I look up at him walking away. "I don't get what you...Peeta?" I roll onto my back and sit up, still shaken. "What are you doing to me?" Then it clicks in my mind. He found out about my dad. ~

"Giving you a taste of the hell I've lived through this past month." I say through my teeth, trying not to yell right out of the box. ~

Not knowing what to feel is confusing as hell. I want to be beyond happy that he's still here, but I'm angry that he's messing with my one insecurity, but I know above all that I can't be either. Because he's pissed. "I...you're okay, though." ~

"Does that even matter?" I don't turn to look at him yet. "That's only because of your mother, who had the decency to tell me that he decided to come home for the month so he could watch the recaps of you at night with her-you know, when he came back from work!" I'm shaking with anger at this point. "From being the Head Peacekeeper in the District that practically is a part of the Capitol and manufactures Peacekeepers!" ~

Quickly, I scramble to my feet and run over to him. "If I told you, you would have left!" I put my hand on his arm and try to turn him to face me. "I said I'd keep you safe here..." ~

"I wouldn't have left, Cato!" I yell, strained. "I just would have been more careful! I told you that I would stay with you forever, and the conditions of your family didn't apply!" As soon as he goes to grab my arm, I pull it out of his grasp. "Don't touch me! Lying to me isn't keeping me goddamn safe! It's making me look like an oblivious idiot!" ~

"No one thinks you're an idiot!" I try grabbing his hand, but he pulls that away, too. "Please, Peeta, I don't want to fight...not with you..." I drop to the couch and look up at him. This is too serious for the tears. No more. "I thought about telling you...but I thought it would be a bad idea...I told you, I'm stupid!" ~

"You brought this fight upon yourself!" I still can't even look at him. "You thought it was a better idea to lie to me then, right?" I take a deep breath. "Because you said no more lies! But that was just another fucking one, right? I can't even imagine what else there's been!" ~

"There was nothing!" I jump when he says fuck, because that's reserved for when he's very angry, which he's never been at me. "Everything I said about how I felt for you was true! That was the only one, Peeta...please don't...you're safe, and that's all that matters, isn't it?" ~

"No." I say simply. "That isn't all that matters, Cato." There are so many times when I'm speaking that I want to call him 'love', but I won't. Not now. "What matters is that you were the only person in the world I trusted completely with everything. My body, my mind, my heart, my life." I pause. "And now I have no one." ~

"I don't know what else to do or say." What comes out of my mouth is stupid, but it's true. There's nothing I could do. I'll be forever finding ways to apologize for what I did but they will never amount to what's necessary. "I...wouldn't trust me either." I stand up and walk towards the stairs, with the intent of locking myself in my room for days. "You win, Peeta. I'll never be anything but sorry." ~

I turn back to look at him finally. "You don't have to be sorry. There's nothing more you can do." My eyes are still empty and cold. I probably wouldn't have recognized myself if I looked in a mirror. "I didn't want to win anything, Cato. Don't you dare walk away from me like this." I'm breathing heavily and realize my fists are red from clenching them so hard, but I've become numb to the pain. ~

I stop and turn to look at him. This isn't him at all, no matter what I did. "Don't even waste your breaths yelling at me. I don't deserve to hear your voice. I don't even deserve to be in the same room as you." I look down at my feet to avoid his eye contact. "Don't love me anymore, please, I'm begging you." ~

When he looks away from me and says that, I run up to him and grab him by the front of the shirt. "Don't go and fucking pity yourself now! You're being ridiculous!" I use my free hand to lift his chin and force him to face me, but he still won't make eye contact. "I spent weekends down in a corner of the cellar, because it's the only place in the house he doesn't go-he took off weekends to spend alone time with your mom! There were times where he'd come home early, and I'd have to hide in the most ludacris places because I'd be in the middle of the kitchen, baking a goddamn Welcome Home cake for you and he'd waltz in the front door! I've been in cabinets, closets, the fridge, under your bed for hours... There were days where I wanted to stop hiding because I felt like it wasn't worth it anymore, and then I'd turn on the fucking tv, and I'd see your goddamn face-and at the same time, I'd get so angry and get the will to live again! I tried to hate you for it, but I realized I never could! Don't you get it? I still finished the damn cake-I did this morning, even! I worked on it for six hours today alone! And yet, I was still angry at you! I am still angry at you! Part of me wanted to sit in the closet under the stairs and just wait, so you could feel what you might have felt if he ever actually found me! Because I've heard him fucking talk to her, you know? They don't want me dead. They want to torture me. On television. Because I didn't get my proper televised death in the Games! You don't understand what it's like to have to sit in complete silence and listen to how people want to kill you! And that's not even the fucking half of it! That's just the general premise-the list of ways they want me tortured goes on and on! And then, hearing him say that maybe that'll make you get the hint that you weren't supposed to be into guys-you know, that it was just a bad idea? Hearing that and wanting to spend my life with you? That this man, your father, wants me tortured to death on television as a punishment not only for me defying the Capitol, but for you for having gay feelings? It was like my childhood to a new extreme, Cato!" I finally take a breath. "Look at me! You can't even give me the respect of looking at me?" ~

"I can't..." I shut my eyes again, rip my shirt from his hand, and collapse against the wall. They wanted to torture him on national television. My dad considered it a punishment for me. Peeta went out of his way completely to stay alive for me. For the worst person in the world. I wish someone would just tell me that he doesn't love me, or better yet, that I'm insane. The entire time he's been yelling at me, my head was spinning as I played a mental game of pong, going between whether I'm imagining this or not. And I thought I was having trouble with this while we were apart-now, it's much worse while I'm with him. "I don't condone his behavior, Peeta...I had no way to help you." When I open my eyes and look up, he's just staring at me the same way as before. "Are you finished? Is there more?" ~

And suddenly, at the thought of what I am about to say, every emotion floods into me. "Just one more thing." I pause. This is it. "Despite every effort I have made...Every time I have hidden, each bizzare place I've concealed myself..." I look down at him. "I think he knows I'm here." I shut my eyes this time. "I think he was just waiting for you to get back to take me in. So you could see." I open them again, this time, swamped with every possible emotion. "So I have to leave, or die." My voice cracks. "And I want you to make the choice." ~

"But how do you know?" I ask him. I fear that maybe he heard something that gave that away. Maybe it's just paranoia. "How are you sure?" ~

"The way he's spoken? He's almost spoken as if he knows I'm listening now. Telling me what he's going to do. He's glanced in the direction of my hiding spots on more than one occasion and given a knowing look." I say, distant. "He knows, Cato. There's no avoiding it. Now decide." ~

"Leave," I say immediately. "If he knows you're here, you have to go...dying out there somehow is better than being tortured on national television for god knows how long." I push myself up and play with my hands for a moment. "I'll go with you. I will...if you still want me to. I wouldn't change my mind this time. I understand, that after all you've said to me...if you don't want me to go, I'll understand." And I brace myself for the answer. ~

"So...What you're saying is..live, or die..you'd rather still be with me than save your life here?" I say softly, my voice in pain from the yelling. ~

"Like I said before...everything I said about you was the truth. And I said that I love you more than I love myself, remember? I'd rather be with you, unless you don't want me." I reach out to him, asking for some type of touch. A kiss. A hug. Hand-holding. Even a tap. Anything. ~

I look at his outstretched hand, but I don't react to it. Not yet. "So...If I told you I would rather stay here and risk him knowing and getting captured, you'd stay with me?" My voice cracks. "Because I'm tired of running, Cato. I ran for three months. I don't want to run anymore." ~

"I don't think risking your life here would be the best idea," I say, still with my hand outstretched, "but if you want to...I'll stay. Wherever you go, I go." ~

I glance up at him, and back at his hand, back up, and down. I can't do this anymore. "I'm terrified, Cato." I say weakly before collapsing into his arms and burying my face into his chest. "I'm going to die. They're going to kill me." I begin sobbing, letting out everything I've locked in for the past month. Both sobs I had felt, and new ones, from doing to myself what I had done as a child; stopped myself from feeling. Only this time, I hid behind hate, and not smiles. Now, I'm Peeta again. Peeta. Only a boy. Scared. ~

"Shh," I try calming him down as I stroke the back of his head and hug him. It's so good feeling him again. And now, I could be wrong, but I don't think he hates me. I hope he doesn't hate me, even though he should. "I told you! I won't let them do that to you. If they did...I'd go with you. Peeta, don't be scared..." He snapped back and forth between being the most angry person I've ever seen to being normal, sweet Peeta so fast, that it didn't even seem right. "Are you...you again?" ~

I look up at him, my eyes watery. "W...what do you mean?" I don't let go of him. Not for a moment. "I've always been me, love." Love. Yes, he's my love. I can't ever forget that. ~

"I've never seen you so angry...I was actually terrified of you." I laugh at the ridiculousness of someone being afraid of him. "Maybe I'm just crazy." I hug him tightly and kiss the top of his head. "I'm so sorry that I never told you...I didn't think it would turn out like this. Just, please, never be that mad again. It doesn't look right on you." ~

My chest hurts a little. "I..won't. But you...never, ever lie to me again." I'm suddenly very serious, and all the fear escapes me. "I don't care if it'll make things easier. I don't care if it's a silly little thing. Because..." I look to my feet. "There's part of that trust that I had in you that's going to take a while to grow back. But...But if it ever gets broken again, I don't know if I'll be able to fix it." I look up at him. "Promise. On my life." ~

"I won't. I swear on your life. And mine, if you still don't believe me." He has no reason to believe me. "So...are we staying or going?" ~

I'd thought about this before he came home. "We're staying." I say, my throat going dry, knowing it has just given me an almost sure death sentence. "I won't run. Not anymore. If this may be the last bits of time I have...I want to spend them doing things I want to do. With you. Not stressed and hiding, trying to escape only to get shot down without getting to say goodbye." ~

"Okay..." I force his hand into mine and lead him upstairs. "I missed you, Peeta." ~

"I missed you, too, you charming bastard." I kiss him, getting on the tips of my toes to do so right outside his bedroom door. ~

"So you don't...hate me?" I ask. "This isn't another trick so that you could yell at me again, or tell me that nothing is real anymore, that you were never here? Did you really miss me?" ~

"More than you even know... I said it when I was yelling at you, Cato, that no matter how much I tried to hate you while you were gone, I couldn't. I love you too much to ever hate you...did you even read my note? I told you I'd love you..no matter what either of us said. What kind of proof do you need?" ~

"But you wrote that note before you found out." I shrug. "I thought that would've changed everything." I think for a minute. "I had to read that note every day, because I forgot you were here. Then I got home, and I couldn't find you, so I thought you were never here...and then you told me you were never here, and I thought that was real. I don't know anything anymore, Peeta." ~

"I can't blame you for that. And...I'm sorry I took my anger out on your insecurities." I wrap my arms around him. "But I am real, love." I take his hand and place it on my chest. "Do you feel my heart beating? It's real." Then, I get myself taller again on my toes and begin kissing his neck gently. "This...this is real." ~

A/N: And how about that? Questions? Concerns? TELL ME. xx