CF pg. 139: "It means we're on your side," says a tremulous voice behind me.

They take a break from the memory book. Katniss feels like a coward, like she's taking the easy way out, knowing that the entries are counting down like a timer over a cornucopia in a new arena (all ticking down to zero: to Prim), but she can't face the blank pages and the filled papers anymore. Not when Peeta is so quiet and his drawings take him so much longer than they used to.

If it weren't for the fact that he still lets her stay with him each night, both of them braving the terrors in their minds together as if still district partners, Katniss would think he were slipping away from her. Again. (Or still? He hasn't been the same since the cameras, since they watched themselves onscreen…since he froze, all his words vanished away.)

She's trying everything she knows to keep him safe, and still she's missing something. She knows it. She can feel it. She can see it in the way his eyes slide away from hers.

When the train comes, Katniss volunteers to go pick up their orders. Peeta asks if she needs help (his eyes are fixed on the bread he's kneading), Haymitch tells her not to drop any of his precious bottles (he glares, and despite his caustic words about her allegedly steady hands, he looks from her to Peeta and back again with a distinct air of disappointment), and Katniss heads out alone.

Not that she wants to be alone. If she had her wishes, Prim would be right beside her. Gale would be out in the woods, checking the snare lines. Her mother would be tending to some patient in need of her help (but then, that one very well may be true, far away, in District 4). And Peeta…

Where would Peeta be?

Huffing, Katniss sets aside the stupid scenario. None of it matters. Prim is dead and Gale is guilty by proxy and her mother is a stranger and Peeta…Peeta is her district partner. Her neighbor. Her ally. Maybe her friend. But nothing more.

She's not good at anything more (not good for anything more), and never once has she been able to permanently protect anyone she cares about. Haymitch can accuse her of being dumb all he wants, but Katniss isn't stupid. She learns her lesson eventually.

"Hey, girl," Sae greets her. She, too, is standing and waiting for the train. In fact, there's a fair few people gathering, and Katniss feels her nerves rise like hackles in the presence of a predator. Try though she might to catch them at it, none of them are looking at her when she looks—but she can feel their eyes (the audience, always hungry, always waiting, always staring).

Katniss shuffles closer to Greasy Sae, trying to hide behind her shawled frame, and hunches her shoulders. "Hey," she mutters.

"How are you holding up?" the older woman asks. She's keeping an eye on her granddaughter, twirling in circles behind her, a fair distance back from the tracks, and Katniss appreciates not being the focus of everyone's gaze.

"Surviving," she says shortly.

"I'm sure." Sae's laugh is hoarse and followed up by a hacking cough she's had as long as Katniss can remember. "Eating a lot of bread, I assume?"

Katniss narrows her eyes. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I know who took over my job making you eat, don't I, girl," the old woman says. "Not hard to read between the lines there."

The feeling of everyone's eyes intensifies. Katniss's skin crawls. She can all but hear the click and shutter of the cameras.

"Peeta and I—" she starts (and she'll never admit that she has no idea how that sentence was going to end) when Sae leans in and lowers her voice.

"Don't worry. None of us here are going to ask questions. You both deserve some rest and some privacy. Don't you worry about any cameras they try to sneak in."

"What?" Adrenaline is a welcome friend buzzing through Katniss's veins. Every detail sharpens into clear focus. The hot blue (not pink) sky. The muggy air with flies buzzing in the shade (but not the slightest scent of saltwater). The chatter of those nearby, conversing politely among themselves (regular people, not Victors, tributes). Sae's granddaughter chattering half-formed words (like Wiress once did, before Gloss slit her throat). And Katniss's heart, pounding in her ears, rattling her breastbone, igniting her fight-or-flight response (like an arena).

"We've got you covered," Sae says. "Thom's told everyone to be on the lookout, and there's not a one of us not taking it seriously. So you and that boy of yours take all the time you need to figure yourselves out and build a new beginning for yourself. District 12 sticks together."

Katniss can't speak. Dimly, she hears the train clacking toward them, but the sound only calls up nightmares.

Another train, another ride to another messed up place, and the only constant is Peeta's hand in hers.

The air moves around her. A breeze cools her cheeks. It's not until she's panting, on her knees, deep in the woods, a painful stitch in her side, that Katniss realizes she ran (from the train; from the truth; from the realization that this will never be over and the train never ends and she's still a part of a rebellion she didn't even know existed).

She has a vague worry about the stuff she was supposed to pick up before she realizes that if the whole district is watching out for her (for their Victors), then they'll make sure their orders are taken to the Village. Will they deliver Katniss's to Peeta's house? Does everyone assume they're living together?

Of course they do. They're married, after all, or at least that's what everyone was led to think.

And Katniss has been sleeping in his bed for two weeks.

And Peeta looks at her in that way he used to (but more, with an added intensity, a new maturity, that freezes her in place when she lets herself notice it, strange shivers curling deep inside her).

And the District isn't watching them so much as watching out for them.

It gives a whole new perspective to this situation she's only barely realized exists.

Katniss meanders to a nearby stream and drinks deeply. She's run farther into the woods than she and Peeta usually make it, and from here it will take her only an hour to reach her father's lake. Since returning, she hasn't been out there, not able to stomach seeing the place where she and Gale told stories for Cressida and Pollux's cameras. Not able to risk hearing the mockingjays singing back The Hanging Tree.

(Not able to go back to that time in her life when she was alone and Peeta was a prisoner and there was so little hope left to them.)

Suddenly, she thinks of another time she visited the lake. It's been ages since she's thought of Bonnie and Twill, but even without Peeta asking with that meticulous thoroughness of his, she thinks she remembers every detail about them: their ill-fitting disguises, their trembling starvation…the stale cracker sealed with the brand of the mockingjay. Bread and fire—the symbol of the rebellion.

Bread (like Peeta). Fire (like Katniss). And maybe the world isn't against them anymore. Maybe the lovers (her cheeks burn hot at even the term) aren't star-crossed anymore.

(Maybe not everything she touches has to die.)

Suddenly decisive, Katniss reties her boots and heads for the lake. She'll harvest the katniss plants and catch some fish, and then she'll surprise Peeta with dinner.

Maybe, with offerings of food in hand (with the sure knowledge that he's well fed and right in front of her), she'll be strong enough to tell him that no matter what the outside world tries to force or trick or surprise them into, everyone here is protecting them. They don't have to do this alone anymore.

And maybe, if he smiles at her in response, she'll be brave enough to tell him that there's a lot more real now than there ever has been before (or maybe it always was—but she's realized it now).

(She wonders if he'll believe her.)

(She wonders if she'll ever be brave enough to risk him being taken from her by telling him that it's all real.)

CF pg. 159: "Almost thought you'd changed your mind today. When you were late for dinner."

By the time she makes it back to the house, she's sweaty and dirty, so she slips into her house to shower and change. It doesn't take her long to prepare the simple, familiar meal, but even so, she's surprised, when she turns away from the oven, to find Peeta standing in the doorway. He looks startled, as if he didn't expect to find her here.

"Hey," she says. "Dinner's almost ready. You want to get the plates?"

It takes him a long moment to answer, and even when he reaches for the cabinet, he doesn't look away from her.

"What's wrong?" she finally asks.

This is enough to jolt him back to himself, apparently, because his eyes fall away and he hunches his shoulders inward. "Nothing," he mumbles.

He's lying. For all that he can fool the nation with nothing more than a smile and some shyly downcast eyes, Katniss thinks she's learned to see beyond the charm (to spot the shades of truth amid the disarming evasions).

"Fish," Peeta observes after she divides the meal up between their two plates. "I didn't think they delivered that here."

Katniss rolls her eyes. "They don't. I went to my father's lake."

"Oh?" There's a new softness to his voice when he says, "Are you okay?"

Tears sting her eyes and burn at the back of her throat. Unable to stop herself (not willing to second-guess herself), Katniss reaches out and twines her fingers between his. "I want to take you there sometime," she says impulsively. "You'd love it there, Peeta. It's peaceful, and beautiful, and…it might be nice."

"What might be?"

Katniss smiles at him. "To see it through your eyes."

His eyes widen. His throat works, but no words emerge. Daringly, Katniss squeezes his hand and doesn't let go. They both eat, a bit awkwardly, each with only one hand between them, but Katniss has never enjoyed a meal more. (A memory of her father, the familiarity of family, the bounty of Twelve, and Peeta hand in hand with her; most of her favorite things together.) It's perfect.

At least, until he finally speaks, his eyes trained on his empty plate, his palm sweaty against hers.

"I thought maybe you left."

There's a bird outside, somewhere, singing a melodic trill. It's repetitive, and a bit shrill, but it's something she can latch onto, something to distract from the doubt peeking out behind Peeta's bright eyes.

"You never came back with the supplies, and when Thom dropped them off, he said you'd run into the woods."

And Peeta's always waiting for her to leave him behind, isn't he? He's still trapped beside the train as her hand falls away from his. Still frozen in that moment with a gunshot echoing through a bloody square in District 11, his fist dripping shards of a shattered lamp, secrets spilled out between them that he's had no part in. Still playing chess with Haymitch and watching the door and imagining her and Gale beyond the fence. (Still left behind, abandoned, waking alone in a cell with no idea where Katniss is and how much she knew and if this was the plan all along.)

He's always so unsure about her, and for all she tries, she's never able to make him see how much he means to her. Even before Snow (before hijacking and a suicide mission), this (her) has always been a question, a doubt, in his mind.

As if he thinks she doesn't mean to reply, he stands and moves to put his plate in the sink. Katniss stands too, everything inside her aching at the sight of him walking away from her.

"I wouldn't leave you," she says, her voice barely audible, her eyes falling away. If only she knew how to make him believe her (if only she hadn't spent the last year or more proving the opposite.)

"I know," Peeta says. His gaze is very level. Not at all reassured. "Because you owe me. Because of the bread."

"No!" she blurts, and only realizes she takes a half step forward when he startles backward. "No," she says again. "It's not because I owe you. It's not because of the bread. It's because…because I don't want to. Okay? I don't want to do this alone. I don't want to…I don't want to lose you. Not again. Not ever."

He blinks at her for a long moment that would seem comical if the evening sunlight didn't perfectly showcase the way his pupils are growing and shrinking in unnatural turns. Katniss waits, patient as she can be in the woods when waiting for life to venture close enough for her to snatch, careful as she waits to see if she is marked as a predator.

But then Peeta sags, his whole body just shrinking in on himself, as he slides closer to her (an invitation). Katniss doesn't hesitate. Her arms come up to encircle his broad shoulders, her slight frame bears up under his drooping weight, and she begins to hum, a soft tune she can't name but that flows effortlessly from her.

"I don't want you to leave," he whispers (as if it's a secret he's been sapping all his energy and effort and will to hide from her). "I know you deserve so much better than to be stuck with me—I know I'm dangerous—but I—"

"Peeta," she hums. "Peeta, no. No, I'm not stuck with you, okay? Don't think that. Don't ever think that. That's not what this is."

Slowly, his arms fold around her waist. Katniss presses closer, and closer still when his hands fist into her shirt. There are tears on her neck, and she can't think of the last time she's seen Peeta cry (on Caesar's stage, with a fake baby between them and a sure death coming for them?), but she lifts her hand and smooths it down through his hair, wanting more than anything to take the sadness from him. She already carries so much; she can carry his too.

"Katniss," he nearly whimpers, and Katniss hums that little melody again, pressing her lips against his head and hoping it will sink deep inside him.

"I'm here," she says. "This is real, I promise."

"I'm so tired," he whispers, and Katniss squeezes her eyes shut and leans her head harder into his.

"Me too," she confesses. "Let's leave the dishes. Let's go upstairs. Okay?"

"Okay." But he doesn't let her go and Katniss cannot bear to pull away. It's only as the warmth of him seeps into her from head to toe that she realizes exactly how chilled she's been (Prim died in the heart of winter, and somehow, Katniss has never emerged from that frosted season…until now). Like the warming spring, Peeta thaws her from the outside in, and Katniss holds him until her calves burn from straining up into him.

"Let's go to bed," she says again, and even though she drops her arms, she makes sure never to stop touching him. Her hands slide into his, and at his blank stare, she tugs him forward. It's a strange way to go upstairs—her walking backward, leading him by both hands, him following so docilely—but Katniss wouldn't change it for anything.

Peeta (it occurs to her) will never lead in this because he thinks he already has. He spoke his love aloud as what he thought were his dying words (his one wish to hold onto in the hell of the arena) and, in his mind, trapped them aboard this never-ending train. He wasn't there (in his right mind) to see that train (spewing smoke and fire as it careened out of District 2's tunnels) finally go off the rails and crash and burn. He didn't see her (old, not-real self, mired in numb untruths and disorientating denials) fall and die before the world, waking only for the beauty he frosted onto a cake and the truths he spoke in a bare white room.

He doesn't know that this is all different now. That this is something they both choose (and that even on that old train, she didn't not choose him, and she never, never blamed him).

So she leads. She chooses him, visibly and noticeably and step after step, both hands twined through his.

She's the one who leads them into her bedroom. She's the one who guides him to the bathroom and puts a toothbrush in his hand and stands next to him at the sink. She's the one who's there when he comes out in sleep pants and a t-shirt, ready to pull him down into the bed where she's already drawn back the covers. She's the one who hums while she's in the bathroom changing (so that he never stops hearing her, knowing she's there), and when she emerges in her own sleep shirt, she's the one who climbs under the covers and burrows up into his side.

"Sleep, Peeta," she murmurs. "I'm here. I'm not leaving."

"Not even when I'm asleep?" he asks, his words slurred and exhausted.

"No," she says (thinks of sleep syrup and his look of betrayal and the way he woke up to her bleeding and hurt beside him). "No, Peeta." (She thinks of his slipping into unconsciousness, into death, after that first arena and waking up surrounded by Capitol doctors.) "Never." (She thinks of the chaos of the second arena, and Peeta seeing lightning hitting the tree where she screamed for him, and then waking up in the Capitol, surrounded by torturers and Snow.) "I'm going to stay with you, Peeta." (She thinks of a tiny room buried deep in the twisted roots of Thirteen, white and barren, and wonders what Peeta must have felt to wake up there and learn that he was alone again, that Katniss had run away to Two, that she'd left him for the Capitol, that she never cared to come see him.) "Always."

(She thinks of watching him through a window, seeing him knelt in the snow, alone and hurting, and she remembers her vow to never let him face the world alone.)

"Always," Peeta breathes in echo of her. His arm tightens around her waist. His other hand clasps hers, placed protectively over his heartbeat, and Katniss never wants to move from this spot. He smells of cinnamon and dill and if he were to turn his head toward her, his eyelashes would tickle her brow, and she has never in her life felt so safe as she does now.

How can holding onto him be wrong? How can she protect him if she keeps him at arm's length?

"Peeta," she says, simply because she can, and is rewarded by him curling in closer around her. His breaths are even, steady, tiny little snores that make her lips twitch up in what she belatedly realizes is a smile.

Katniss listens to his steady heartbeat thumping in her ear, a metronome that counts time for her as she hums him deeper into sleep. (It's the bread that ties them together in her mind, but in Peeta's, it's a song and her voice and a shaft of sunlight falling on her.)

"I'm going to save you," she promises his sleeping form, and stays up all through the night, keeping watch against the nightmares while he rests.

CF pg. 178: "Like you said, it's going to be bad no matter how you slice it. And whatever Peeta wants, it's his turn to be saved. We both owe him that."

Peeta isn't sure what to expect the next morning (he never knows what to expect, always living precariously moment by moment), but he's still surprised by Katniss's smile. She has dark hollows under her eyes like she didn't sleep at all, which makes her apparent energy all the more confusing. Before he's done more than gone to his place to shower and change, she's already changed and packed a whole lunch, extra clothes, and a few towels into her hunting bag.

"Now?" he asks, blinking and trying not to reveal just how off-kilter he feels.

This isn't their routine. It's not their carefully mapped out strictures and careful methods to get them alive and somewhat sane through the day.

"Now," she says. But then hesitates. "If…if you want to?"

"Yes," he decides (there will be a barb hidden somewhere, a cost he will have to pay for hours of a smiling, gleeful Katniss, but he's willing to endure it for this chance).

After he takes the bag from her, they walk to the meadow. It takes conscious effort for him to remember that this is a grave, that these are bones he walks over, and he thinks the change is good. Humanity has been on this earth for uncountable years, and no matter where they walk, he thinks, they are walking over history and legacy, stepping in the footprints of others, finding their own way but following the same trails.

Summer heat wafts beneath the heavy boughs shading their heads, and flies buzz among the undergrowth. Flowers are so wide-petaled that their own weight drags them to the ground, so as they walk, Peeta picks a few and practices his knots by making a lopsided crown of them, all blues and purples and yellows with just a splash of white. Katniss stares at him, when he tugs on her sleeve to get her to stop long enough for him to drape the crown over her dark braid, but the blossoms look so pretty there, so right (so much better than the Victor's Crown she could never wear after it'd been split to share with him), that he smiles down at her.

Her answering smile is slow, and shy, and achingly sincere.

Peeta's heart patters in his chest. This all feels…real. Real in a way nothing else has, not since an arena with a pink sky and heat so heavy he could nearly drink it.

But it also feels like everything he's ever dreamed of, and how can he believe it?

(Every time he's dared to believe his dreams could be made reality, he's been left disappointed and hurt, left lonely and confused in the wake of reality.)

They walk for what seems forever. The woods keep going, on and on, and Peeta tightens his sweaty grip on Katniss's hand and keeps his focus on her. (Even in the arenas, there was an end, a place where the shadowy landscape would simply stop; but here, out in the wild where anything could be lurking, there is no end, no way to ever be found should he go missing and everyone forget to come searching for him.)

She's beautiful. Of course, he thought she was beautiful when they were both five years old and she'd already distinguished herself before the world while he was still sitting in the background and trying not to miss his dad. Even dressed in the most ridiculous of fashions, or dirty and sweaty and blood-stained, Katniss is always the most beautiful thing in sight. But out here, with the green and the brown and the endless wild as her backdrop, Peeta realizes that it is more than just the gray of her eyes and the bronze of her skin and the fall of her braid.

It's the spark in her eyes. It's the way she walks as if certain of every step (as if she never need fear anything that might confront them). It's the feel of her hand holding onto his (and not letting go).

"Are you ready?" she asks, looking back at him over her shoulder.

For an instant, Peeta's hand spasms tighter around hers, not wanting to let go, before he remembers (holding on isn't love; keeping isn't love; letting go is the only thing she's ever asked of him) and opens his hand. Hers slips for a mere second before she's turning and weaving her fingers through his, taking his other hand too, guiding him backward like she did the night before.

And then the world opens up behind her and blue fills the horizon and mockingjays twitter a tune he thinks he's heard Katniss sing during the nights when the night terrors are strongest. Peeta gapes at the panorama of lake and shore and sparse thickets over Katniss's shoulder—and then he stares at the way the blue of the sky (sapphire and robin's egg blue) and the blue of the lake (midnight and navy and hints of green) turn her radiant. The sunlight pierces through coasting clouds to fall like spotlights (but not the Capitol's, softer, safer spotlights) over her, setting her alight, exposing her inner brilliance.

"Katniss," he breathes.

And still she does not let go of his hands.

"My father showed this lake to me," she confides in him. "It was our secret. Our special hideaway. It's where he taught me to find myself. And you're the only person I've ever wanted to show it to."

His hands tighten over hers (she doesn't wince). He steps closer to her, once, then again, again, until his boots are nudging up against hers (she doesn't look scared).

"I love it," he tells her (she doesn't tense at that word like she used to).

In fact, she smiles at him.

"Me too. Come on."

Together, they strip down to their underwear and wade out into the lake. Peeta sticks close to the shoreline, never venturing out past where his foot can feel the mud seeping between his toes, but Katniss doesn't push him. Rather, she orbits him. Swimming out, then looping back around him, tugging him this way and that to show off the root-like plant that is her namesake (he tries not to consider how deeply she's rooted herself into his heart) and the fish that dart, silver and gleaming, through sun-dappled water and the ducks that peer out from between the shelter of the rushes.

They both quiet and go still when a line of half-grown ducklings venture out after a green-necked mallard to enter the lake on the far side. The tiny creatures seem unafraid of the lumbering humans on the other side of the water, and Peeta actually laughs aloud (he's not a monster here, not a mutt, not anything but a boy who barely knows how to swim and would find it impossible to catch a few little ducklings).

When he looks back down, Katniss is just in front of him, glittering with a thousand water droplets painted over her skin, staring at him as if she's never seen him before.

He's never seen that look on her face before, not even directed at someone else (he's thought he saw it, a couple times, out of the corner of his eye: sketching plants in her book; giving speeches to riotous Districts; holding her close when she screams herself awake in the dead of night—but then, he's fooled himself into thinking he's seen a lot that were nothing more than self-tricked delusions).

"I brought your sketchpad and some colored pencils," she offers, as if breaking a moment (was it a moment?).

"Okay," he says.

But when they crawl up onshore and sprawl out over the towels Katniss spreads over the muddy reeds, Peeta doesn't do anything more than fiddle with a pencil in his hands (Katniss lies beside him, all slight curves and sharp shadows and bare skin, and he's too afraid of what image will come pouring from his mind to be exposed to scorn and ridicule outside his head).

Eventually, when they've dried, Katniss pulls out the food she packed away, sandwiches and fruits and slices of cheese paired with raisins, and Peeta nudges the cheese her way and eats the extra raisins she sneaks onto his side, and he wishes he could live in this moment (before the fall to reality) forever.

"Thank you for bringing me here," he murmurs to his sandwich.

"I should have done it sooner," she murmurs back.

He wonders if she means the year before (or the year before that; if this is still about the bread), but he doesn't ask. He lets this daydream spool out for just a few moments more.

Eventually, when the shade almost feels too cool, Katniss packs up their towels and wet clothes, and they dress in the dry things she packed, and Peeta has to stop and remind himself that this really happened because, so quickly, it is as if they were never here.

"Do you think we can come back before the ducklings are grown?" he risks asking.

"We can come back every day if you want," Katniss replies.

His smile is more real than it's been since he died in a white cell.

This has been a good day. The best he's had in…in lifetimes. He won't risk it by pushing for anything more (by asking why he's the one she wanted to show, and how many people she's shown it to already besides him).

He turns to go, then is stopped by the tickling feel of Katniss's fingers alighting on his wrist, sliding down along the meaty part of his palm, curving into the curl of his hand.

"Peeta," she says, as softly as if they're still in a dangerous arena. "I wanted…I want…"

"What is it, Katniss?"

(This will be the barb. The price. The reminder that whatever he thought this was…it isn't.

But it was the best day, and it's worth any cost.)

"This place is special, and I wanted to…I wanted us to…" She bites her lip and looks up at him, eyes wide and so gray they are nearly colorless, reflecting back the darkening blue of the sky. "It could be like our new start."

And she kisses him.

Quick. Artless. A simple press of her lips and then an immediate retreat.

Peeta can't breathe. He can't think. He can't move.

(It's a trick. It's a scheme. It's a part they're playing and the cameras are clicking away and Haymitch had a private talk with Katniss and Peeta's the fool on the outside, the puppet nudged this way and then that, camera-ready and picture-perfect and easily disposable.)

But there's a hot flush to Katniss's face, and she's chewing on her lip, and her hand is still wrapped in his.

And she looks at him, pupils dilated, pink-cheeked, as if she's seeing him in a way she never has before. As if…as if…

(As if she wants him.)

"Katniss," he whispers. (It's me, he wants to say. It's Peeta. I'm Peeta. You don't want me.)

"Peeta," she says back, and then again as she goes up on her tiptoes. "Peeta."

And when she kisses him this time, he can't help but to kiss her back. His arm wraps around her waist (careful, careful, light and gentle, the opposite of a prison), and his hand cups her jaw, her cheek, to angle her mouth better against his. And Katniss lets out a breathy little sigh and says, "Peeta," again in such a way, in such a tone, that the mockingjays pick it up on every side of them and his name echoes across the lake from a hundred throats.

Real. Real. Real.

(She's the mockingjay because he's the jabberjay and it's like they're home, like it's family surrounding them on all sides.)

Peeta kisses Katniss again and again and hopes he doesn't have to endure another stay in another prison cell to pay for this beautiful mirage.