Hello, friends! I hope you enjoy this chapter, I think it has some good moments between Katniss and Peeta. Thanks so much for reading! xoxo -HP

I turn my back to the hospital and find Cressida, flanked by the insects, standing a couple yards in front of me. "Katniss," she says. "President Snow just had them air the bombing live. Then he made an appearance to say that this was his way of sending a message to the rebels. What about you? Would you like to tell the rebels anything?"

"Yes," I whisper. The red blinking light on one of the cameras catches my eye. I know I'm being recorded. "Yes," I say more forcefully. "I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors." The shock I've been feeling begins to give way to fury. "I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do." My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. "This is what they do! And we must fight back!"

I'm moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage. "President Snow says he sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?" One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. "Fire is catching!" I am showing now, determined that he will not miss a word. "And if we burn, you burn with us!"

My last words hang in the air. I feel suspended in time. Held aloft in a cloud of heat that generates not from my surroundings, but from my own being.

"Cut!" Cressida's voice snaps me back to reality, extinguishes me. She gives me a nod of approval. "That's a wrap."

And with that, all the fight goes out of me. I turn and see the rest of the hospital collapsing into itself. All those people, many of whom I spoke to, I touched, are no more. I feel my knees buckle and I sink to the ground, defeated. Boggs says things to me but I don't hear them. Cressida and the insects review the footage, the bodyguards point towards the hovercraft that's landing nearby, but all I can do is stare at the flaming building.

I feel someone lifting me up, helping me to my feet, guiding me carefully to the hovercraft. Peeta. He sits me down gently in a seat and buckles me in. I put my head in my hands and wait for the trip to be over.

Back at Thirteen, I wind up at the infirmary, where they pull shrapnel out of my leg. The doctors seem more concerned about the damage my brain might have suffered, considering that I'm still recovering from from my concussion. But I don't have double vision or anything and I can think clearly enough. Peeta fares better than me, not only did he miraculously avoid any shrapnel but since he didn't have a concussion the explosions only affected his hearing, and only temporarily. They leave us in the same room we were in before.

I feel so exhausted that I wonder if they slipped me something to make me sleep. But all I see when I close my eyes are the people I met in the District Eight hospital. When I roll onto my side I see Peeta in his bed, looking at me. I reach my hand across to gap between our beds and he does the same. His hand is bandaged and he winces a little when I take it, but holds on.

"All those people," I whisper. He nods and moves his body to the edge of his bed so he can touch my forehead soothingly. "I couldn't help any of them."

"It's awful." he whispers back.

"We have to…" I say, sleep starting to overtake me. "We have to win."

I feel Peeta squeeze my hand tightly and I'm out.

When I wake up, my hand is dangling off the edge of the bed next to Peeta's. He's still out, breathing softly, his mouth slightly open.

I find myself staring at him a little longer than I meant to, so I turn away to stare at the ceiling instead. I suddenly felt nervous about what Gale and I talked about. Peeta was sure to ask about it, he must have noticed that Gale and I seemed on better terms.

Isn't this what you wanted? says a voice in my head. Okay, sure, I guess. I picked Peeta. Did that make anything less confusing? Alright, a little less confusing, fine. But what confusion I had before seems to have opened up into an entirely new collection of concerns. I'm not entirely sure what I'm supposed to do next, and the whole thing makes me want to crawl into a hole and die there. Why do I feel like this? My heart starts beating a little faster, and my stomach jumps around.

Nervous. I feel nervous. I scoff to myself. What am I nervous about? Hours ago, I shot down not one, but two Capitol helicopters with explosive arrows, while we were receiving active fire, while dodging bombs on a rooftop. And yet, talking to a boy makes me nervous. That's great, Katniss, I think to myself, Very mature.

Still, my stomach feels like it's going to flop itself up through my throat. Maybe I'm just nauseous from my concussion. Come to think of it, judging by the clock, I slept straight through dinner last night and it was now nearly time for breakfast. Nauseous and hungry, that's all. That's all that's wrong with me, nauseous and hungry.

I eat the paltry breakfast they give me, bread dipped in milk, which is very disappointing, before Peeta helps me into a wheelchair so that we can head to command. I think that the wheelchair is overkill, after all, I feel fine really. It's just my head, and my leg, and the soreness from the bruises, and the nausea that only intensifies after I ate. Alright, maybe the wheelchair is a good idea.

I let Peeta push the wheelchair, even though I want to do it myself, because my right elbow feels stiff and sore from getting pushed to the ground so much yesterday. Since Peeta was the one doing most of the pushing then, I figured he wouldn't mind doing some now.

"How are you feeling?" he asks. I crane my neck up to look at him. He seems to me grinning, and I have a sneaking suspicion it's because of the chair.

"Never been better," I say through gritted teeth. I'm immediately regretting looking upwards because now I'm feeling motion-sick on top of everything else. I try some deep breaths and feel Peeta's hand grip my shoulder gently. His steadiness somehow seems to calm my churning stomach, so I touch his hand before he has to use it to steer me around. I feel a sensation in my chest, but it's not unpleasant, and I don't think it has to do with my concussion.

When we get to command, Messalla and Cressida officially introduce me to the cameramen, two brothers named Castor and Pollux. They seemed so genuinely pleased about the footage they got I can't help but beam back at them. Others start to trickle in, and I'm expecting there to be some animosity towards me, considering how flagrantly I disregarded orders the day before, but the only one who seems upset with me is Haymitch. Gale is even in the corner, talking to Coin and looking positively chummy.

Everyone loves the propo, even Coin. I realize that she doesn't know that I disobeyed orders, even Boggs is lying to her. They want her to think that it was their idea I went into combat, that I'm under their control, even if that might not actually be true.

It's decided that within the next few days we would being shooting for another propo in District Twelve, because Cressida wants to get interviews of me, Peeta, and Gale about the bombing. I don't want to go back there, of course. But maybe if people see what the Capitol did, maybe it will help.

Several days later, when we reach Twelve, my stomach is in knots. Cressida, Castor and Pollux circle us, recording our reactions. We've all seen it since it was destroyed, but it's not any easier a second time. We're all dressed in the Thirteen jumpsuits, maybe to show solidarity. They decide to focus on Peeta first, Gale and I hovering nearby while he speaks. Always so well spoken and good in front of the cameras, Peeta comes off as comfortable and confident.

"So, Peeta," Cressida starts, "Tell us what it was like here, before the bombing."

"It was home." Peeta looks around the town square where we're standing. "The Capitol never treated us fairly, people would go hungry, be forced to work themselves to death, very few people had everything they needed. We were always just part of the machine to them. But the people here, they were real. They had hopes, dreams, families, people they loved. Living here was never easy, but it was because the Capitol made it that way."

"Tell us about where we are now."

"This is the town square. I watched Katniss volunteer for her sister Prim right over there. And then I heard my own name called, from there." Peeta looks at me and I feel sure that one of the cameras is trained on me, even if I can't see them. "The Capitol has been reaping kids for seventy-five years. It's not right, it's never been right, and it's time to stop them."

"What were you thinking, when Katniss volunteered?" Cressida asks, although I wish she hadn't. I don't want to revisit that day. So many of the people who were present that day are dead now.

"I was thinking," Peeta started slowly, "How brave she must be. To volunteer. That was the first time I saw Katniss stand up to the Capitol. And it wasn't just me. It was everyone Panem. She wasn't volunteering because she was a Career and wanted glory or anything like that. She was doing it because she wasn't going to let them hurt her sister."

"And what were you thinking when your name was called?"

To my surprise, Peeta grinned.

"I thought, 'Well, now you'll have to talk to her.'" he said with a laugh.

"You did not." I say, frowning at him, but he just nods.
"I did. I'm sure you never noticed, but I'd been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you for, well, years really, but I'd been really thinking about it for a few months before the Reaping. Obviously, I never actually got up the courage before that day. But the first thing I thought when my name got called was that I wouldn't have any more excuses. After that, though, it started to sink in what had happened, and talking to you didn't seem as scary anymore. Not compared to the arena."

I don't know how to react to this story. I feel pulled in a number of directions. My natural instinct is to run as far away as possible, because this type of vulnerability is extremely intimidating to me. The part of me that had spent so many months in front of Capitol cameras pretending to madly in love with Peeta is telling me to go to him, caress his face, tell him some nonsense about him being just as brave. But then there's another part of me, one that I really haven't heard from very much before, and that part seems to win over. I walk over to Peeta and take his hand in mine. He looks at me, surprised, but gives my hand a squeeze before looking in the direction of the bakery. He's thinking about his family, how could he not be? The bakery is just rubble now. If you didn't know it was supposed to be there, it would be impossible to locate it.

I start to get angry. Peeta never deserved any of this. He was just trying to protect me and his family got caught in the crossfire. The Capitol knew what they were doing when they attacked Twelve. They thought they could silence me by killing the people I love. But they messed up. My family survived, Peeta survived, Gale survived. They didn't silence Peeta and they won't silence me.

"President Snow once told me that the country is very fragile, but not in the way that I supposed," I blurt out to Cressida and I see her waving one of the camera men to move to me. "He told me this after he ordered me to make sure everyone in the country believed that Peeta and I were in love—because apparently some people didn't believe it. He wanted to make sure that everyone who saw me hold out those berries knew that I did it because I was young, stupid, and in love because otherwise it might have meant something else. It might have meant that I was defying the Capitol. And if a sixteen-year-old girl could defy the Capitol—what was stopping the entire country from doing it?"

I'm staring at the camera now, feeling the rage flickering inside my chest.

"This country is fragile because the Capitol relies on the Districts for everything. Food, power, jewelry, clothing, electronics—everything! The Capitol needs the Districts, but the Districts? We don't need the Capitol. That's why the system is fragile. If we aren't there to do their dirty work, the Capitol would be nothing, and have nothing. But if the Capitol wasn't there to starve us, work us to death, steal our children and make them kill each other, where would we be? It's time we found out."

Peeta has somehow receded into the background with Gale and I'm standing alone in front of the cameras.

"I held out those berries because I didn't want to be a piece in their games. None of us needs to be a piece in their games any longer because we don't need need us!"

I feel the same silence around me as I did in Eight. Something courses through my veins and it takes a moment to realize what it is. Power. It's power.

"Cut!" says Cressida, and she's beaming. Castor and Pollux give me a little applause and I wave them off, embarrassed. I hadn't planned on saying anything at all and instead I really went off script. But Cressida says I did great, so I take her word for it.

Cressida then films Gale retracing his steps the night of the bombing. We follow him all the way through the district, and into the Meadow, Cressida asking Gale questions about that night the entire time. Peeta and I lag behind, which feels appropriate since neither one of us were actually there.

We trudge through the tall grass in the meadow and it's such a beautiful day that when Gale stops talking, I can almost forget why we're here. The sky is that bright, unattainable blue, and there's a warm breeze moving around us. Peeta seems to be soaking it all in, and that's when I remember that he's never been here before.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I ask him quietly, not wanting to disturb the filming. He nods, smiling sadly. I watch him as he walks. He runs his hands through the grass, feeling the blades between his fingers until he catches a tall purple flower and plucks it. He looks at it like he's surprised, like he didn't even mean to pick it up. I don't know the name of it, but it reminds me of a daisy, the way the thin petals encircle the yellow cone in the middle. He holds it up to me.

"For you," he says, grinning broadly. The way he says this, the way he holds the flower out to me, it's as if we're just here together like normal teenagers, out in the meadow on a beautiful summer day. The thought of the people we could have been, unscarred, unbroken, still whole. I wonder what our lives would have been like if we'd grown up somewhere else, without pain, hunger, out from under the thumb of the Capitol.

I take the flower and feel my cheeks getting warm, so I stare at it and avoid looking at Peeta. I feel the same nervousness I did this morning, my heart starts pounding, my stomach twists into knots. I keep walking, but I don't say anything to Peeta, I just keep staring at the flower. So he gave you a flower, what's so wrong with that? Nothing's wrong with it, that's not what I'm upset about. Then what are you upset about? I don't know, there's lots to be upset about. The war, Coin and my misgivings about her, Thirteen, its collection of weapons and hovercraft, Snow, the Capitol, Peeta, the Districts, Peeta giving me gifts, Peeta giving me a pearl on the beach, the Games, Peeta dead on the ground in the jungle, Finnick reviving him, Johanna hitting me over the head, Peeta kissing me right before I shot the forcefield—my thoughts start to jumble when I try to dissect my feelings, so I shake my head vigorously, trying to get things back where they should be.

"Are you okay?"

I look over and see Peeta frowning. He must have been watching me.

"Just…confused." I mumble. "Head."

He looks at me, concerned.

"I'm okay." I say defiantly, even though the heat is starting to make me feel a little lightheaded and my mouth is so dry it feels like it's full of cotton. Peeta hands me his canteen and I take sips. We're almost to the lake, and there I'll be able to rest.

It takes almost all of my energy, but I make it to the lake and collapse in the shade of a tree. Cressida continues to interview Gale as they walk around the edge, so I close my eyes and lay my head on Peeta's lap. I'm still feeling a little woozy, but Peeta starts to stroke my hair and it seems to help. I nearly fall asleep, but at the last minute I open my eyes and come out of it. Peeta's looking at me with that look he has. The one he has when I catch him looking at me. He sees me open my eyes and his face changes. He looks embarrassed to have been caught staring, and starts examining a tuft of grass.

"What?" I ask.

"Sorry," he says, sheepishly. "I was watching you sleep. You were scowling."

"Oh, great." I say, pushing myself into a seated position. What he said reminds me of something. "Peeta?"

"Yeah?"

"When we were in the cave," I say, unable to meet his eyes. "The first Games. Did you…did you really believe, that I—I mean, did you believe everything I said?"

"Well," he says, slowly. "I knew that it was, you know, our strategy. So at first I assumed you were just playing along. But then, I don't know, maybe it was stupid, or maybe I just really wanted to believe it…but at a certain point I thought, maybe, you know, you really could have felt the same? But, now, I think I know you a lot better. If I'd known you a better back then, I think I would have known that it wasn't real. Back in the first Games, I mean."

"There was a moment," I say quietly. I'm not sure why, but I want to tell him this. "In the cave. It was during that rain storm, we were so hungry but I couldn't hunt in the rain."

"I remember."

"You told me all these things. About me singing at school, my dress."

"You mean," Peeta says with a grin, "How I've been crazy about you forever?"

"Ye-es." I say to the ground. It's funny, because I feel desperate to shut the doors, close myself off, just like I did then. But then it was because of the cameras. Now, it's just the two of us. No one's listening. Peeta and I are friends. More than friends. I can tell him what I'm thinking. I take a deep breath. "All of that. When you told me that…I was confused. Because I thought that it was just supposed to be pretend, it was all supposed to be for the Games, and I didn't think…Anyway. There was a moment before I got confused about the whole thing where I felt really happy."

I finally get the nerve to look up at him and he looks surprised.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I remember because it was part of what made me so confused afterwards. I wanted to trust you, but I was still scared that you'd turn on me. I didn't want to get played."
"I would never turn on you." Peeta says, seriously.

"Well, of course I know that now."

Peeta grins like I've just told him something wonderful.

"What?" I ask, suspicious.

"The day I told Haymitch that I wanted to be coached separately, have I ever told you about that?"

"No."

"Well," says Peeta, laying his head on my legs this time. "You'd just scored an eleven during your session. You really had a chance of going home. I'd been pretty sure of it since you volunteered, but when you got an eleven something really clicked for me. And I knew that I wanted to help you win. So, I found Haymitch and told him everything."

"What do you mean?"

"I told him that I really liked you, and had for a long time. I told him I didn't think you felt the same way, but it didn't matter to me, I just wanted to help you win. He must have thought you had a pretty good chance too, because he helped me come up with the plan to tell Caesar."

He stops and shakes his head.

"I felt bad, you know, not telling you about that beforehand. It's not how I would have liked to tell you."

"I didn't believe you. I thought it was just part of your own plan to win."

"I figured." Peeta says, closing his eyes. "But I wanted you to believe me. Haymitch told me that you would take a lot of convincing. He knew you, even back then. I wonder if I'd told you before all this, if I'd just talked to you, if you still wouldn't have believed me."

"I wouldn't have." I say this without thinking. Peeta peers up at me and grins.

"I think I could have convinced you."

I snort. I think about my life before the Hunger Games. Every spare moment I had I'd spent hunting or trading, desperately trying to take care of my family. I imagine what it would have been like if Peeta had come up to me at school, or in the bakery, or anywhere for that matter, and told me that that he'd been in love with me since we were five. I don't know how I would've reacted.

"I thought about talking to you all the time," he says, "Imagined it a hundred different ways. I came really close one time, I don't know if you remember."

I shake my head, surprised.

"We were at school, it was maybe a month before the Reaping. Our Reaping. I'd had to stay late to talk to a teacher and when I was leaving, I saw you sitting under a tree, hiding, I think. You were alone and you looked upset. Like you'd been crying."

Not for the first time, I'm amazed at his memory. I remember this day too, now that he's describing it.

"It was the anniversary of the mining accident." I say quietly.

"I wondered if that was what it was," he says softly, sitting up and touching my shoulder. "I wasn't sure, then. You looked so sad, I wanted to go to you, just to give you a hug or, I don't know, tell you that it was going to be okay. And I almost did. I got about five feet away before you saw me and took off."

I grimace. I remember that too. I was dreading going home because the anniversaries were particularly hard on my mother, who would typically spend the night silently crying while Prim tried to make her feel better and I tried to ignore her. I couldn't face going home right away after school, so I dodged Gale and hid under that tree. That's when the tears came. I couldn't stop them, I just felt helpless and sad, and I missed my father so much. It was a moment of weakness and when I looked up, I saw the one person who had seen another moment of my weakness years earlier: the boy with the bread, Peeta Mellark. I hadn't even registered that he was coming towards me, I'd just seen him and ran away.

"I didn't know you were coming to talk to me." I say, "But even if I had, I probably still would have avoided you."

Peeta laughs.

"Either that or punched me."

"Probably both." I say with a small grin.

He puts his arm around my shoulders and we both look out over the lake.

"I would have liked to take you here, you know," I say. "My father used to bring me here to swim or go fishing in the summers."

"We're here now," he says.

"I would have liked to bring you here from Twelve. When it was still Twelve."

He nods and holds me tighter.

Eventually, Cressida comes over with Messalla, Castor, Pollux, and Gale, and I move a few inches away from Peeta. He doesn't seem to mind, and starts talking to Castor and Cressida. Pollux points to the trees across the lake, where we can hear mockingjays singing.

"Yeah," I say to him. "Those are mockingjays."

He makes a gesture, pointing to his mouth, then to me, then the birds.

"You want me to sing?" I ask, unsure. He nods enthusiastically.

I start softly, singing a song that my father used to sing, The Hanging Tree. When I'm done, the mockingjays are singing along, and I notice that both Castor and Pollux have been recording this on their cameras. My face flushes and I look away. Cressida shakes her head, in awe.

"How do you come up with this stuff?" she asks.

I mumble something vague and catch Peeta's eye. He's beaming, ear to ear.

By the time we get back to Thirteen, I'm so tired I can barely think. I head straight to my family's apartment with Peeta, who gives me a small kiss on the forehead before turning towards his own apartment, next door.

"Peeta, wait." I say before he goes inside. I don't want to be alone. No, that's not really right. I want to be with Peeta, to fall asleep next to him, to let him stroke my hair while I lean on his chest. But for some reason I can't say any of that. I just stare blankly at him, my mouth half open.

"Do you…" he starts, furrowing his brow. "Do you want to come in?"

I nod, and follow him.

My goodness! What a cliffhanger, lol. More to come! XD