THG Pg. 136: My cheeks burn again at the thought of Gale. "I don't have a boyfriend." "Whatever," says Peeta. "But I bet he's smart enough to know a bluff when he sees it. Besides, you didn't say you loved me. So what does it matter?"

Katniss has never liked change. In her experience, any new upheaval brings only grief and hardship. Since her return to District 12 (since she lost the person who inspired her to keep trying through the worst of the changes), Katniss has clung to routines. Bad ones, at first, as she moldered into decay and waited to join Finnick and Cinna and her father (Prim), but instead only ended up joining the ranks of those like her mother. But now, after a change incited by herself, one that hasn't (yet) brought chaos raining down on them, Katniss finds a new routine. A better one.

No bow anymore (she took it with her once, and made it only a little past the treeline before something about her silhouette with the quiver of arrows, or the twang of the bowstring, drove Peeta to his knees, clutching his head until his nails pricked drops of blood from his temples, and he couldn't look at her for days afterward).

No hunting, or even much foraging (they came to a bush fat with berries, but Katniss was struck still as stone trying to avoid a temptation that seemed all too near, and Peeta blinked and blinked and blinked again, as if blinded by sunlight, and couldn't seem to narrow any of his questions down to coherency).

No goats or meeting rocks (but still a grumpy cat), no sister or hunting partner (though, somehow, Katniss slowly grows to realize that Gale's specter might be as much a burden to Peeta as Prim's is a bittersweet torment to her), her trips no longer bound up in the simplicity of survival (for the first time, Katniss finds herself less concerned with filled bellies and warm nights, and more preoccupied with abstract concepts she once scoffed at), but still these visits to the woods are just as integral to her sense of self as they were before.

What makes the change worth it is that she doesn't go through the motions alone. She doesn't have to watch Peeta struggle though glass anymore; now, she is right beside him.

They meet for Sae's breakfast, linger over Peeta's freshly baked bread, then do the dishes before heading out toward the woods. On the way there, Peeta makes deliveries to the people trickling back to the District to clean up Snow's devastation. No one makes mention of payment for the bread (she thinks they see Peeta's gaunt cheeks, bruised eyes, shaking hands, and remember his worsening condition broadcast to all Panem; she thinks they understand, in their quiet way, just what Peeta gets out of being able to nurture others), but still, somehow or other, they always end up with their pockets loaded with small treasures (a comb, some strawberries, seeds for the garden they accidentally started, stones that glitter and gleam because she's not the only one who's noticed Peeta's weakness for beauty).

Together, weaponless, they wander through the woods (through the past she can never get back; through the landscape of nightmares, some that were real and some that weren't). Together, they teach themselves not to be afraid.

When it gets too much (when Katniss's shoulders curl in or her hands look for an absent bow; when Peeta's leg lags behind him, or his pupils dilate too frequently, too erratically), they head back where Katniss goes to feed Prim's cat and Peeta goes to feed their erstwhile mentor. Apart, they recollect themselves (remind themselves who and what and where they are in this present that neither of them chose).

They come back together to make dinner, sometimes at her place, sometimes at his (it depends on which of them breaks down first and has to hurry to make sure the other is safe, still alive, still here). They linger over tea (mint, because Katniss is used to the taste at the end of meals, and because Peeta, she learns, remembers when she fed him mint leaves in their first Games to stifle their hunger and it reminds him now, he says, that she fed him rather than hurt him). They eat cheese buns or some other dessert that Peeta stays up late to make because, inevitably, when the silence goes awkward, they part again for the night and end up facing their ghosts alone.

Eventually, when Katniss has woken up screaming and stared at the ceiling until she can detect the sunlight creeping through the window, she gets up and begins all over again.

And through it all, bit by bit, a question here, a hesitant observation there, they play real-or-not-real.

Play.

That's the word they use, like it's a game—and why not? In their short lives, they've learned that games are always life and death. Never harmless. Always painful. So yes, it is a game, one that makes Peeta quiet while he parses out coherency in question form. One that discomfits Katniss while she stirs herself to painful answers (even the most innocent question is turned serious and meaningful and weighty when she knows that Peeta uses her answers as building blocks to his own psyche. To how he views her.)

It's a game that often leaves them both clumsy and unsure, awkward and unhappy—him with her answers and her with just how much he needs verified and validated and clarified.

For all they were partners and allies and co-victors and even friends, she begins to realize, question by answer, just how little they were ever on the same page.

"You hated me, when we got home. Didn't you?" Peeta pauses, tilts his head as a squirrel darts into the tree just ahead of him, then belatedly says, "Real or not real?"

"I never hated you," Katniss says blankly. She's glad he's not scared of every rustle and shake of the branches now, but she wishes he'd forget the stupid squirrel and look at her (she wants to see on his face that he knows she never never never hated him).

"Not real," Peeta says. Automatically. Like it's so apparent he assumes she's merely testing him.

"Peeta," she snaps, "not real."

Now (when she's glaring and angry and nothing at all like that little girl in the red dress he once fell in love with), he turns to face her. He seems surprised by her expression, but his eyes remain blue and unclouded.

"You tried to kill me," he points out. Abruptly, his certainty fades. His voice wavers as he adds, "Right? You…I remember that tracker jacker hive falling. You…you cut it down. I was right underneath it. You wanted me to die."

There's a lump in Katniss's throat and a boulder on her chest. Her boots are weighted in solid concrete. She can't speak. Can't move. She wishes she were anywhere but here (even the Capitol again, in the Tribute Center, up on that rooftop where Peeta and she first swapped confidences, where for one day, they were allowed to be regular children).

"I know you came and found me and saved me later," Peeta says, as if to prove that he listens to all her answers (memorizes everything she says and stores it up in his mind to build a picture of her that she hopes isn't accurate), "but you would have done that for anyone. For Rue. For Thresh. For Wiress or Mags or Beetee. Even Johanna."

Katniss feels her hands curling into fists. For the first time in a long time, she wishes she had her bow with her. It would give her something solid to hold onto.

"But when we both survived…" Peeta squints, his eyes unfocused (but still blue), his head tilting once more. He's like a bird, sometimes, really, always chattering, always chirping, always curious (always repeating everything back, like a jabberjay, programmed with lies). "You had to pretend that you loved me. You had to let me touch you. You had to kiss me. You were forced into everything you never wanted. Of course you hated me."

"I didn't," she says. It's so faint even she can hardly hear it. Peeta (never a hunter even when forced to it by life and death stakes) misses it entirely.

"You didn't talk to me for months. You avoided me. It was like we didn't exist to each other."

She can't help her flinch when his eyes zero back in on her. And of course that's what he notices (Peeta has always been good, she realizes, at picking up on cues that disappoint him; less so on the things she thinks are obvious).

Carefully, Peeta backs up a step. He keeps his hands loose at his sides. He slouches, just a bit. (A mutt making himself look safe.)

Katniss wants to do something stupid (like cry; like stumble forward and hug him until he stands up straight; like pry open her mind and her heart so he can see everything she keeps inside and know once and for all that she doesn't deserve him).

"I'm sorry," he offers. She can tell he's confused (but then, he so often is; he's grown used to it), but he moves farther away and tries to look as harmless as possible.

"Peeta," she says. Her voice is so thin. She straightens her own spine and steps toward him, erasing the distance he placed between them. "I didn't hate you. I never wanted you dead, not really. I mean…I'd promised Prim I'd try to come home so I…I thought you'd have to die, but I hoped it wouldn't be me who did it. I hoped you'd survive as long as possible. And that hive…I didn't think, I didn't realize, I just needed to get away, and I thought you were working against me and—"

"Katniss."

She meets his eyes. Something inside her steadies (even if she still wants to cry).

"Okay," he says. Just that. Acceptance. Belief (the nonbelieving, polite kind of belief).

"You were kind," Katniss blurts out when he makes as if to turn away (as if this is the end of the conversation; of everything). "You've always been kind. I noticed. How could I not, after the bread? When it was you, at the Reaping, I wished it was anyone else. When we helped Haymitch, on the train, I knew I couldn't kill you. And even after your interview, I was mad, but…I never wanted you to die," she says in a small voice that sounds far too young for someone responsible for as many people's deaths as she is.

Peeta steps toward her. The tiniest step. He must crunch through a dozen leaves in taking it, though, and it nearly makes Katniss smile (Peeta's never been able to sneak through her life, not really; always, in every way, he makes an unmistakable impression).

"I was glad it was you who could go home with me. I was terrified that you would die just because I'd never paid enough attention to my mom to know how to save you. I chose to die rather than leave you in that arena. And afterward…that whole lovers story was done just as much to you as to me. It was a weapon Snow used against both of us. How could I blame you for it when you never even imagined you'd survive? Neither of us wanted it."

"Katniss," he says, so soft, so gentle, so happy. (It's the most like the old Peeta he's sounded since they sat at a round table and voted on whether or not to continue the atrocity of the Hunger Games.)

She raises her head and meets his gaze. "I'm sorry I ignored you when I got back. I ignored everything. I just wanted to pretend none of it had happened. And I was afraid…"

"Of what?" he asks.

"Of how much I liked you. And how much I could hurt you."

Strange, to think that this is a revelation to him when it's been a fact of life for her for years now.

Peeta has never been a stranger to her. He's never been just another body. Since she slumped on the precipice of death and he fed her back to life, since he never confronted her about it, since he just watched her from afar (always ready, she thinks, to save her again), he's been important. Special. Irreplaceable.

How could he not have known?

Daringly, Katniss lets her hand drift toward his until she can curl just the tips of her fingers around the curve of his palm. He responds just enough so that she feels the pad of his thumb tickle against her knuckles, but he doesn't hold her there. Doesn't do anything but watch her with eyes as clear as the sky.

"I would never have played star-crossed lovers with anyone else," she says.

It's not enough (something flickers across his face), but it's the truth (it's all she has to give him).

"Thank you," he offers, later, when they're walking back toward their houses. She's not sure if he means for her answers or for something else (for not hating him). Either way, it makes her uncomfortable.

"It's nothing," she says (she's never chosen to like him; he simply makes it impossible not to).

Peeta nods, and is silent the rest of the way home.

THG Pg. 137: "After he said he loved me, did you think I could be in love with him, too?" I ask. "I did," says Portia. "The way you avoided looking at the cameras, the blush."

Today, she hardly spends any time in the afternoon without him. Almost as soon as she's washed away the sweat from their walk and changed into clean clothes, she's at his house, slipping through the door and sliding into a chair where she can watch him bake. She lets his gasp and blinking eyes pass without comment, until he's used to her presence and she can fade once more into the background.

He's so sure, here, in his kitchen, with flour and yeast and dough and hot ovens. There's no pause to his movements, none of the hesitance that has crept into the rest of his life, no little stumbles as he tries to maneuver through a landscape of real and not real.

He always used to be sure (in everything and with everyone but her). In some ways, she thinks that's what most intimidated her. She was lost, aimless save for Prim, so adrift that she couldn't find any fixed point at all. But Peeta just kept going, never missing a step, always so focused and intent. It annoyed her. It scared her. It made her feel inferior.

But now, studying him and the differences in him here versus him out in her woods, Katniss thinks that she'd give anything for him to reclaim his confidence. She hates Snow (wants to kill him, for real this time, no diverted arrows, no double-edged votes) for breaking that surety that always lived inside Peeta.

Sunlight gleams through the windows, casting halos on drifting flour, bouncing gleams off Peeta's hair, spilling in heavy drapes over his hands. Katniss stares. His wrists jut out, now, in a way they didn't before, and there are extra shiny spots where burns have left their mark, but there's something graceful about his hands. Something…beautiful…about the way they create rather than destroy.

Peeta tilts his head at her.

Flushing, Katniss looks away.

"Do you want to help?" he asks.

"No," she says shortly.

He says nothing more, just goes back to whatever it is he's doing. Something with food—Katniss can't concentrate past that. He's always working with food (or paints; or her), always nurturing and feeding and caring. It's ridiculous, really. She almost wishes he'd do something selfish.

Or was that what his love for her was? The one thing that was his own, just for him, clung to and protected and sheltered deep inside his heart even when the whole world (including her) wanted him to let it go. Even when it hurt (especially when it hurt, because Peeta's whole life, she thinks, has taught him that love is pain), he didn't give it up.

He wouldn't let anything change him.

And then she turned him into a pawn anyway.

Why would he ever think that she'd blame him for the story Snow forced them into when she was the one who made it so necessary?

Everything would have been so much easier if she could have just pretended to love him. If she could have made all the Districts believe it.

Of course, District Eight had obviously believed (they cried about the baby she'd already forgotten; they mourned with her for Peeta's pain). District Thirteen had depended on it, really (Coin had banked everything on it, when she sent a boy just putting himself back together out to the front lines). The Capitol had never once doubted it, and been moved, inspired in a wholly new way, to demand a different end to things. The people of all the Districts had cheered, when Peeta stood at her side for Snow's execution.

Gale, who knew her better than anyone, grew hard, stiff, his jaw clenched, any time Peeta's name was mentioned, and he'd chosen to risk the deaths of his entire family rather than to let Peeta escape with her.

And Prim…Prim, who was so wise, so insightful, so good, had never said much, but she'd given Katniss all the tools to fight for Peeta's rescue, and Peeta and his doctors the method of tearing chinks into the hijacking.

So maybe Katniss had convinced everyone. Even if she couldn't act.

(She'd certainly convinced Snow. Every day, she watched Peeta fight the scars left from Snow's belief: It's the things we love most that destroy us.)

"We don't have to do this," Peeta says.

Katniss tries not to startle (he'd startle in turn), and meets his eyes.

He looks strangely self-conscious in a way she doesn't recognize (I don't care if you see me, he told her once, and she knows it was true because he's never hidden his heart).

"I know this is probably boring for you," he adds. "We can do something else."

"I…" Katniss doesn't want to move. She doesn't want to have to focus her attention on something else.

She likes sitting here. Hearing someone else (Peeta) living and moving and breathing. Not being alone.

"I'm okay," she says.

"We could go feed Haymitch's geese. He probably hasn't."

"They'll live."

"We could—"

"Peeta." She looks straight at him. "I'm okay."

He smiles (there's a pinch behind her breastbone) and shakes his head (flour stirs from his curls and she can't breathe). "You're bored silly, Katniss."

"No, I'm not."

"You're such a bad liar."

Her heart contracts like a tight fist.

She is a bad liar. She's a terrible actress. He's always been able to read her (even if he doesn't realize how right he is when he reacts to her).

And the whole country thinks she loves him.

So…

So maybe she does.

(Maybe it never was as much of a bluff as she and Snow thought it to be.)

When she blinks and blinks and blinks again, Peeta is sitting in the chair across from her, his hands splayed carefully on the table. He's watching her, his eyes intent, and he can't hide his relief when she sees him.

The sunlight outside the window is gone, given way to a dusky blue.

"Katniss," he says, tentatively.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

His brow furrows (second-guessing himself; she did that to him, when he thought she loved him and she thought she didn't and he thought he was wrong when maybe he was right all along). "You…I think you zoned out. For a while."

"I did?"

"Unless…" Peeta swallows. She hates the doubt on his face. "Unless I did?"

"No, I…" Katniss wraps her arms around herself. She feels stiff, her back protesting against the wood of her chair. "I must have. I'm sorry. I did it a lot, before."

"Before…?" Peeta watches her carefully. "Before I got here?"

"No. I mean, yes, probably, but I meant in Thirteen."

"Thirteen."

"Before you got there too."

"Oh."

Katniss shifts uncomfortably. "The doctors there called it 'mentally disoriented.'"

"I'm sorry."

"I had a concussion," she says stiffly.

"Okay." Peeta tilts his head. "You're…better now?"

"I don't have a concussion anymore."

Katniss almost laughs at this conversation. She's hardly an expert at dialogue, but even she can tell just how ridiculous this is. But her laughter, the last time, when she saw a duck out in the woods, had left Peeta shaky and quiet, and then, when she'd dissolved into tears, she'd barely been able to walk him back to their houses. She doesn't want a repeat of any of that. So she closes her mouth over the laughter, and slides her hand closer to his.

"It happens sometimes," she offers. "I try not to let it, but I can't help it."

Peeta's lips quirk. Not quite a smile, but the possibility of one (Katniss likes it; she tries desperately to memorize every detail of it). "I get that, believe me. If we could help any of this, maybe we'd be worthy of the legends they've made of us."

"I hate that they tell stories about us," she says, muscles tensing despite herself.

Peeta just shrugs. "Everything's changing. They need something to hold onto. The stories are just their way of trying to understand things. It doesn't really have anything to do with us."

"But they're about us," she says flatly. "They think they know everything about us, but they…they don't."

"Do you want them to?" Peeta asks her, the question soft.

"I don't want them to have anything of mine," she says fiercely. "They've already taken so much. They—" She can't speak. Her throat is on fire, her chest tight, her eyes misting over.

She's always liked Peeta. She always noticed him, always kept tabs on him, wished happiness for him. If it weren't for the rest of the world (if it weren't for Games and Snow and endless, suffocating pressure, and his own wounded eyes), would she have gravitated toward him anyway? Would there have been…maybe not a toasting, not with the constant threat of the Reaping, but at least friendship, all watched and encouraged by Prim's kind insights and wise encouragement?

"Forget them," Peeta says. Katniss latches onto him, the clear blue of his eyes, the possibility of a smile there on the edges of his mouth. "The stories they tell…they're not real. They're just using our names to make up fiction that they think will help them. So let them have it. You still have everything that's real."

His hand is right up against hers. He's so warm (she remembers clinging to that warmth in the night, letting it soothe her nightmares away) and that warmth emanates out toward her. His expression is kind and soft, and his words are like a salve against weeping wounds she'd nearly forgotten.

He's real.

And he's here, with her.

She still has him.

(More, better, now she knows she wants him.)

So Katniss does the only thing she can: she runs.

(Because everything she loves…dies.)

THG Pg. 211: "…Destroying things is much easier than making them."

It's raining. Peeta tries not to let it bother him, fixing his attention on breakfast and on counting how many bites make it from Katniss's plate to her mouth. But all too soon, as if the moments are like quicksand, slipping away and entangling him in place, the dishes are done and Katniss is lacing up her boots, ready to brave the elements for their daily walk.

Peeta swallows. It's a spring shower, light and not too cold, really. In fact, the sound the raindrops make on the roof, against the windows, is pretty, almost rhythmic. There's no thunder to rattle him, no lightning to take him back to a jungle arena, nothing but soft rain and memories he doesn't want to give way to.

"Maybe…" He sits, slowly, his jacket still draped across the back of his chair. "Maybe we should stay inside today."

Katniss's brow furrows. "Why?"

A spattering of rain flicks across the kitchen window, rat-a-tat-tatting in a blurred sound that makes him remember the slick warmth of a sleeping bag. The silver of gray eyes merging into the haze of rain. The closeness of a cave and the feeling of a half-full stomach and the laughter he never thought he'd be privileged enough to share with District Twelve's huntress.

"It's raining," he says dumbly.

Slowly, Katniss looks outside. Back to him. She's trying to figure him out. He can tell by the narrowed tilt to her eyes, the loose lines around her closed mouth, the careful way she moves.

(He wonders, sometimes, if she really is so scared of him. He wonders, sometimes, how she can't be.)

"We don't have to walk every day," he says, and knows it's the wrong thing even before he sees Katniss's eyes shutter.

He likes their routine, really; the woods don't even scare him, most days, when Katniss is close beside him and his mind cooperates. But the rain…the rain might just tip him over, and he can't afford that. Not when every moment between them could so easily be taken away. Not when what they're building is still so fragile.

"It's raining," he says again. "Maybe it'd be better if, just today, we did something inside."

"You can't want to bake some more," she says with a flash of humor. "Seriously, Peeta, there's only so many loaves of bread a person can bake in a day."

Peeta smiles to hide the flashing memory of the bakery, of his brothers jostling against him, of his dad's quiet labor, his mom busy up front with customers (his mind always dreaming of Katniss biting into this loaf of bread, savoring the smell of these cheese buns, admiring that cookie). "We could paint."

She's not really convinced, but she follows him readily enough to his house. It's still strange, seeing her there, amid his things, like a ghost he once conjured up now made flesh and blood (she haunted him, before, here, in ways that comforted as much as tormented). Peeta halts, uncertainly, in front of the door to the study he turned into a room for his paintings.

"Wait here," he says. "Just for a second."

Understanding writes itself across her expressive face, and Katniss lets him slip into the room alone. Peeta flips the light on and finds himself face to face with a room full of Katniss. Her eyes stare at him from a dozen canvases, her braid is woven across tens of sketches, her hands pull the bowstrings on several chalk experiments, and the gray and black and bronze that make up her form litter the room on countless palettes, stains, and rags. (His eyes slide away from the poisoned purple that also splashes over the paintings, the white of bones, the crimson of life-blood, the shadows of death's specters lurking in the background; they're not real.)

Peeta stacks the canvases facing the wall, tidies away the sketches, drapes a cloth over the chalk works, and hopes Katniss won't recognize her own color palette. When he pulls the door open for her, she steps in as unhesitatingly as she does most things, but then stands there, almost awkward, in the middle of the room.

"I'm not a painter," she says, unnecessarily.

"Anyone can paint," he says. "It's therapeutic, you know."

Katniss watches him set up a small canvas and squeeze out a myriad of colors for her to choose from. "You painted me," she says before he can hand her the palette. "Do you remember?"

Anxiety is like a stone in his throat. He doesn't. There are endless hours, lingering days, that he recalls, between their return from the first Games and their Victory Tour, but he thought he mostly just painted the arena. The tributes. The endless methods of death. But he doesn't remember a portrait, and the idea that this was taken from him, plucked like a piece of his heart out of his chest, makes him want to scream.

"You painted me into a field of flowers. The morphlings from District Six helped."

"Oh." Peeta relaxes. "Yes. I remember."

Vaguely. He thought it was a dream, actually, but he feels a smile curve his lips as he slots that hazy vision into real.

"Dandelions," he adds. "That's what I painted. The morphlings didn't realize at first, and there were some daffodils, some sunflowers, even a few jonquil mixed in, but mine were all dandelions."

Better than rainbows, he thinks (and shoves aside the feel of a body going limp in his arms, blank eyes staring up at him, blind to all colors, all beauty).

"Oh." Katniss takes the paintbrush he hands her. She stares at him rather than the canvas. "Why did you choose dandelions?"

"You like them," he says. There's something almost painful (almost like hope) in her eyes. Peeta can't face it (not with the rain still pattering away outside their shelter), and he turns to make up his own colors. He deliberates only a second before covering the canvas in broad strokes of blue. He doesn't want to paint anything painful (anything that calls up memories); he'll try something new. Something different. Something fresh.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Katniss start painting. She wields her paintbrush like a knife, and views the paints like poisons, but eventually, she manages to coat her canvas in a too-thick coat of gold and white.

Peeta adds flurries of white to his blue. Blends them in with streaks of purple and lightest pink.

Katniss splotches dabs of sapphire over her gold. A bit of the azure paint splatters lightly against her cheek, like freckles, and Peeta feels his heart lighten as he adds the impression of a black bird flying through his skyscape.

"It's a mockingjay," Katniss says. She's looking at his painting, not her own (like mirror reflection to her, Peeta does the same, and sees she's created an abstract of blues, golds, blush-pinks, and just a hint of dark red).

"No," Peeta says decisively. "Not a mockingjay."

It does look like one, though. There's even white striped along the wings. But this day isn't for memories, or the past (or anything that will make this rain give him false hopes that have already been dashed once and again and again). It's for new things.

"Not a mockingjay," he says, and he adds a long, draping tail of black and white to the bird. "A magpie."

Katniss is silent for a while. Peeta's cleaned his brushes and is putting paints away before she asks, "Why a magpie?"

"Because." Peeta meets her eyes. "I felt like it."

Her expression lightens.

The rain tinkles out a melody behind him (he remembers the taste of lamb stew, the press of a warm body against his side, the feel of her mouth pressed freely—he thought—against his).

"Should we invite Haymitch to dinner?" Peeta asks almost desperately. "It'd do him good to get out of his house."

Despite her immediate frown, Katniss grudgingly agrees. Peeta's almost overwhelmingly relieved. He shouldn't be alone with Katniss, not when it's so easy to mix up real and not real (not when he wants so badly for something to be real that he knows isn't).

She leaves him to start dinner and heads over to see Haymitch. Really, that'll probably succeed in rousing Haymitch on its own. As far as Peeta knows, Katniss never goes and sees their mentor.

Sure enough, nearly an hour later, a disgruntled Katniss shoves an inebriated Haymitch ahead of her into Peeta's kitchen.

"You should be happy he bothers to feed you at all," she's saying, and Peeta feels the curl of laughter deep inside him at the sight of Katniss and Haymitch's matching scowls.

"Thanks for coming, Haymitch," he says graciously, and actually does laugh when his mentor grumbles at him.

Truthfully, Peeta worries about Haymitch, and there's a deep relief inside him to know that the old man hasn't completely lost the ability to leave his own house—but more predominantly, he's just happy to know that he won't be alone with Katniss.

The rain hasn't stopped. If anything, it's only coming down harder, making it more difficult for him to put it out of mind.

Haymitch and Katniss are both characteristically silent over dinner. Peeta makes a few conversational forays, coincidentally (or not) whenever the rain picks up, and busies himself clearing the table as soon as possible.

"Always a bundle of laughs spending time with you kids," Haymitch says. His hands flex over the table (looking for a bottle, Peeta supposes), but there's a softness to his voice that makes Peeta set down the plate of cookies right in front of Haymitch. "What's the matter? The woods too scary today?"

Katniss bristles (she's never liked admitting weakness, and part of Peeta likes that she doesn't want anyone poking at his fears either). "For your information, we were painting," she says defiantly. "We don't always have to walk."

"Really?" Haymitch raises a skeptical brow. "And just what did you paint, sweetheart?"

"A beautiful abstract," Peeta intervenes. "I forgot to say, Katniss, but I love the colors you chose."

Incomprehensibly, Katniss blushes and avoids his eyes. "They're my favorite colors," she mumbles.

Peeta freezes.

He can't hear anything except the flurry of rain outside. Inside, it's warm, and Katniss chose to stay with him, and they laughed together, and everything is good (as good as it can be after he tried to kill her and she tried to die) between them.

But it's not real.

Of course it isn't. It never is. He should have known. He's such an idiot. When will he learn?

Katniss doesn't choose him. She doesn't want to spend time with him. They don't laugh together. If she weren't so honorable and so stubbornly intent on fixing him, she wouldn't even be here at all.

He's made it all up. The cracks are starting to show—he was sure she'd painted blue and gold, but her favorite color is green (they're friends, but not really, only by necessity, and no amount of favorite colors or favorite foods will ever change that).

Something warm clasps his hands. Something melodic calls him back to himself.

He stands in his kitchen, and Katniss stands in front of him (too close), holding his hands with her own, and Haymitch is gone, the plate of cookies vanished with him.

"Peeta," Katniss is saying, over and over again. "Peeta, it's okay. It's okay. Come back to me."

There's an ache to his knuckles that tells Peeta he's been clenching his hands too tightly, and a headache brewing at the base of his skull that warns him another bad night is coming, and a metallic taste at the back of his throat that stings like tracker jacker venom.

Shame engulfs him. One day. He can't even be normal for one day. And in the background, laughing at him, the rain still falls.

"Your favorite color is green. Real or not real?"

Katniss pauses.

She lied. She lied to begin with, or she lied today, or he made it all up and she died in the Capitol square and he's alone and his mind has broken and—

"It used to be," she says, "real. But now…now I like blue. And gold."

"Oh." Peeta can barely hear his own voice when he says, "You painted those colors today. Real or not real?"

"Real."

His sigh of relief is so large that he droops, his forehead falling to lean against Katniss's. "Oh," he says, and tries not to cry.

"Peeta," Katniss says, so softly, so gently (and how can she think she's cruel, savage, nothing but a killer, when she's so very careful with him, so nurturing, a true healer?). "What's wrong? You've been distracted all day."

He's so scared. Terror floods his veins, but with none of the adrenaline, the jolt of urgency, that the tracker jacker venom used to lend it. And she's still here, holding his hands, her brow warm against his.

(And they're not in the Games anymore.

She'll tell him the truth this time.

He won't be just a dupe.)

"It's raining," he confesses.

He can actually feel Katniss's brow wrinkle against his, a tickle that sparks a surge of affection in his chest. "I know."

"It rained before," he says. He swallows, reminds himself to be brave (reassures himself that she won't let him play the fool this time), and says, "In the cave. When we were together."

She's silent. That's okay. Peeta's used to her silences. In some ways, they're easier to read than whatever words she parses out to him.

"I know we were still in the Games then, but I…I was happy, Katniss. They were some of the happiest moments of my entire life. But then, later, afterwards…it wasn't real. None of it was real."

"Some of it was," Katniss says in a very small voice.

"But I couldn't tell the difference. And I felt like such an idiot. I don't blame you, Katniss, really, I don't, you were doing all of it to save us both, but…I just wish I hadn't been so ignorant. It makes it seem like I didn't even care about you, like all I wanted was my own dream, and I shouldn't have expected you—"

"We were dying," Katniss says. "You'd been living in a constant state of terror or pain the entire Games, and then after you were better, you still thought you could die. They might have been your last days. Why wouldn't you take what happiness you could get? You weren't stupid, Peeta. You've never been stupid. I've never once thought that."

"But you weren't happy," he breathes out. "You weren't, and I didn't even know. How can I claim to love you when I can't even tell when I'm imposing on you?"

Because he does. He knows he does. His feelings for her have always been an imposition. She tried to tell him, with that shove that sent him into an urn and made his hands bleed. If only he hadn't thought he knew so much better than her (if only he hadn't been so intent on being noble about his death, when really, the Hunger Games never allowed anything of honor in them). If only he'd actually taken out Cato and laid down next to him to bleed out in a blur of tracker jacker hallucinations.

But he survived. They both did, and then he found out just what a hallucination really was when Katniss pulled away from him and he realized that she'd never wanted to be by his side.

And then there was the Victory Tour and the hours with the plant book and the Quarter Quell and then…and then…and then all the lies were stripped away only to be replaced with a new set of them. And still Katniss was required to care for him, expected to help him, supposed to just accept him back into her life as neighbors and whatever it is they've been becoming.

"Look," Katniss says (he's dimly surprised that she hasn't stepped away from him yet), "I never could forget where we were or what was facing us outside our cave. But…yeah, those were the best moments in any of the Games. There was a moment that…everything was real, so real that it…" She stumbles, bites her lips, the heat of the blush in her cheeks so fiery Peeta can feel it on his own. "You weren't imposing, Peeta. Like I said, I wanted to die after Rue. But you made it easy to hope again. It wasn't all pretend."

It's more than he expected. He should let it go. He will let it go—as soon as he asks one question more.

"Do you think it ever could be real for you? One day?"

He's ruined everything. He knows it immediately. Katniss freezes up. Her hands clench spasmodically, torn free of his. Her eyes are darting to any and every possible exit, desperate to escape him. They're not touching anymore. She doesn't say his name.

Outside, the rain's stopped.

It's funny, Peeta thinks, when he flinches at the sound of the door closing behind Katniss. As he rights the chair she tore past, and wonders if she'll ever be back.

It's funny that Katniss didn't flinch at his earlier episode; that she stays beside him during every flashback, answers every question his fragmented mind can produce. None of that fazes her, but this (the admission that he still hopes she can love him, even after he's learned better than to hope) is enough to drive her away. How strange it is, in this upside-down world, that to be a victor means losing everything, and to be a survivor means wanting to die, and his hate is more acceptable (less of a burden) than his love will ever be.

Peeta doesn't bother going to bed. Instead, he locks himself in his art room and waits for the flashbacks to raze his mind anew.