CF pg. 65: "Then I made things worse too. By giving the money," says Peeta.

Peeta's resistance has always been quieter than weapons and gunshots and blood (camouflaged, she thinks, and if it was the bakery who taught him the trick of it, she thinks it's the baker's wife who taught him the need). It's ruthless and unflinching in its own way, his rebellion, but quiet too and filled with strange beauty. The refusal to bow. The insistence on remaining true to himself. The quiet turn from the televised fight to the death to the love story everyone rooted for. Money given to the families of people who didn't even talk to him. The way he spoke so quietly to the family of that District 8 girl on their tour.

His resistance is small, but it's indomitable (mesmerizing), and so much more enduring than all Gale's rants.

And he still resists. Fights. Stays true to himself. Katniss doesn't think she's ever admired (or envied) his ability to look at horror and find the one point of beauty more than she does now, watching his painted scenes of horrors become fodder for rainbows and colorful chaos.

After they've made a mess of his (horrible, horrifying) paintings, Katniss stands, panting, in the middle of his studio, her hands and arms and clothes and probably face and hair covered in so many shades of paint she must look like his discarded palette. She's tired and worn out (and her heart hurts to see proof of the bleak images that are trapped inside her Peeta), but it's all worth it to see the smile on Peeta's lips. To see the shine in his eyes and the way he shrugs and tells her to leave the mess for later.

"This chaos is the best this room has ever looked," he says, and he tugs her out of the studio and to the kitchen where he feeds her cold cheese buns and iced tea and leftover meat straight out of the container.

Katniss waits until she's swallowed the last bite of the cheese bun (she won't contaminate the flavor of her favorite food with this next topic) before she says, very softly, "I'm sorry about your bakery."

He goes still. Then, in a rush, he stands and starts a sinkful of dishes, each of his motions determined, intent (productive). "It wasn't mine," he says. "It was never going to be mine. If I was lucky, I could have worked there a few days a week on top of whatever other work I found."

"But…" Katniss frowns, suddenly unsure. "You loved it."

"I love baking," he says evenly. "But the bakery…" He stares out the window over the sink for a long while before giving a tiny shake of his head and saying, "Well. It's gone now."

Though she wishes she had something more comforting to say (though she wishes she could hug him and give him as much comfort as his hugs have always given her), she mutters, "This kitchen is pretty much a bakery anyway."

His laugh startles her. When she looks up, he's still smiling, looking at her over his shoulder, his eyes so bright, lit by the sunlight behind, that her breath catches in her throat. "That's true," he says. "I could start a whole new tradition here. Bakeries in kitchens, marketplaces in living rooms, galleries in the study. It could be the new thing. Everything you need within the confines of your own house."

"I like it," she says, thinking of the Hob. Gone now, every bit as much a torch as her sister. (But that's too painful, she can't think of Prim, not while Peeta's smiling and happy.)

"You can have a skinning station in the yard," he grants her, and Katniss's lips twitch in a reluctant smile.

Truthfully, she's not sure why he thinks this is so funny (her mother ran an apothecary in their living room), but she doesn't care. She'd listen to a hundred bad jokes just to see him smiling at her.

Making herself stand, careful not to scare him as she draws near with her own plate, she says, "I'd help you, if you want to rebuild the bakery."

He chokes on his inhale. Katniss's eyes fly to his, and for once, he doesn't look away. The hummingbird has alighted, paused, exhausted by its long labors.

"Thank you," he whispers. "But I…I can't. Not right now."

"Okay," she says.

How old is Peeta? How old is she? They haven't even lived two decades yet. She doesn't think they need to be in a rush to lock themselves into a lifetime's calling. (They've never been allowed to live before; most days she forgets that it's a possibility now, survival and something, anything, besides that never-ending train.)

"I want to," he adds, as if he thinks she's worried about it. "I just…it would be a lot of pressure. A lot of memories."

"I get it." Katniss slides closer, glad when he doesn't tense at her proximity. "And you're baking anyway. Giving it away. Helping people."

He blinks at her. "That…that's just…that's not a lot."

"Yes, it is," she says as firmly as her faint voice can manage. "It means everything to some people."

"The bread again." He sighs and looks down at the dish he's been cleaning for what she guesses must be five minutes by now. "We can definitely let that go."

Katniss doesn't say anything. (Give up the memory of that bread he tossed her when she was hours from death? She can't. It's woven into every piece of her, the healing proteins that cover all her wounds with scabs that grow, eventually, into faded scars.)

"Did you ever think…" He shrugs, but halfheartedly, as if the motion is unconscious. "Maybe giving you that bread was selfish. If I hadn't, you'd never have felt that owed me. You wouldn't have had to risk so much to keep me alive. You could have—"

Terror is absolute and immediate. Katniss finds herself pressing her shoulder against Peeta's, reminder that he is here, alive, that she is not the sole Victor, that she is not alone.

"No."

He glances up, a quick flick of blue wings, there then gone. "But—"

"No, Peeta," she says again. "No. Nothing you give is bad, okay? Nothing you do could make things worse. That's just…it's just not possible."

She worries it might be too much, but for some reason, at her pile of clumsy words, his eyes soften. The frown on his lips melts away to reveal the hint of a smile.

"Katniss." His hand catches hers as she sets her plate in the sudsy water. His hand is slick with soap, heated by the water, but it's the warmth in his eyes that really keeps her frozen in place. "Thank you."

"Thank you," she replies. "For not giving up on me."

He doesn't know what she means (she looked at the television screen and saw her own obliviousness, but who knows what he saw? he never does see her flaws, not without Snow's interference), and that line between his brows turns into a furrow. Katniss resists the sudden, inexplicable urge to run her finger over it and straighten it. Her cheeks feel too hot as she steps from him, her hand slipping free of his.

"It's you and me, right?" Peeta says. His eyes are locked on the sink rather than her, but his words reach across whatever chasm is still between them and touches her all over. "We look out for each other?"

"We do."

But she can't anymore, not right now (not without breaking and clutching at him and begging him to stay with her), so she slips from his house out into the dusky evening.

But something's changed. Something's different. (A few words from her put a smile back on his face.) And maybe…maybe one day soon, she won't have to leave him for separate beds.

(Maybe loving him can save him rather than destroy him, like bright paint covering over the worst of nightmares.)

CF pg. 85: "Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?" I ask.

The pen moves over the paper, but Katniss isn't actually writing any words down. Instead, she watches from under her lashes as Peeta puts the finishing touches on his sketch of Mags. A flick of his thumb adds another wrinkle beside her eyes (at least Mags lived a long life, and she could still smile at the end), a curve of his finger etches in that dimple at the corner of her mouth that Katniss had completely forgotten about until she sees it staring back at her. Not for the first time, she wonders at Peeta's amazing memory for details (hopes he doesn't ask, again, how many windows the bakery had).

"There," Peeta finally says, and Katniss bows her head over her paper and pretends to be very busy. She makes the pen move, though the tip hovers in midair.

(The minute she agrees they're done, she'll have to start getting ready to leave for her lonely house and nightmare-ridden bed.)

"At least she got to choose the way she went out," Peeta muses as he waits for Katniss to finish. "She died making her own choice—saving people."

(Saving him, Katniss thinks, and blinks back fierce gratitude.)

"She still died," is all she says aloud. "Because of Snow."

Peeta is silent a long time before finally, in a very quiet voice, saying, "Look, I hate Snow too, but we can't make him into an all-powerful devil. Sure, he was responsible for the Games, but he doesn't get to take credit for the good moments too. For the brave choices and the kind sacrifices. That's solely the province of the people who chose to be good even in the most terrible of situations."

How is she supposed to leave his side now? Doesn't he know what it does to her, when he says these things that are so poignant, so kind, with his eyes all blue and his lashes gleaming gold in the firelight and his hand so close to hers?

Unable to resist, Katniss nudges her knuckles up against his. She thinks maybe he smiles (or maybe it's a trick of the firelight).

"Peeta," she hears herself say, and she sets the pen down and straightens to reveal her paper, filled with ink front and back over an hour ago. "Could you…"

"What?" He blinks at her innocently (contentedly).

"Could you let me see the drawing?" She stares sightlessly at the sketch he presents, and then, dumbly, she says, "Blue eyes, right. I wasn't sure." And she leans over her paper and pretends to be writing again.

Peeta's laugh is as startling as it is warming, like she's swallowed embers and now they sit, glowing gold, in the pit of her belly. "It's a charcoal drawing, Katniss."

"It's a good drawing," she defends herself. "Seeing it…helped me remember."

"Hmm." His eyes narrow at her.

Let me stay. The words are the embers, rising up from her stomach to burn through her throat, smoldering in her mouth. She chews on them, but Peeta's living room is cozy and neat and there's no way she can spit out her messy, singed plea for him to have to clean up.

"I should go!" she blurts. She's on her feet, her short biography of Mags fluttering on the table from the force of her movement, when Peeta catches her hand.

"Katniss…" His brow furrows (Katniss clenches her fingers tight to keep from smoothing that narrow chasm) as he gazes up at her. "Do you…"

"What?" she asks, desperate.

But he says nothing, and after a moment, he lets his hand drop from hers.

He looks tired, she realizes. As tired as her. There are circles under his eyes and bruises smudged in the hollow of his cheeks and she promised to take care of him.

"Can I stay with you?" she spits out.

For an instant, she thinks maybe the embers went out, drenched by the cowardice inside her mouth. But then, his eyes widen, spark, and they burst ablaze.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, if…if you want."

"Okay."

And then they are frozen, arrested, not quite sure how to transition from their normal routine to this new (old) tradition.

"I have an old shirt you can sleep in?" he offers.

"Okay."

"There's an extra toothbrush in the bathroom."

"Okay."

"Do you…do you need a glass of water?"

"Okay."

Peeta laughs at her. Katniss's cheeks burn, but she rolls her eyes at them both and heads for the stairs.

"I'll see you up there," she says, and leaves him to put out the fire and lock the doors.

It shouldn't feel routine, to use his bathroom and smell the spearmint in his toothpaste as opposed to her own peppermint, to slide on the shirt left folded on his bed, and then to choose the side of the bed he always lets her take. But it does. It all feels absolutely, perfectly right—especially when he comes into the room dressed in his own pajamas, hauls the window open to let in a cool night breeze, and then slides into the bed opposite her.

He left the light on out in the hall. His every third breath is a second longer. When he moves to scratch at his neck, it tugs the blanket from where it rests against Katniss's shoulder, and she pretends this slight nudge is enough to roll her closer to him. He doesn't complain (doesn't flinch) and so she scoots closer still. Now, his every other breath is ragged with new tension. But when her head butts up against his bicep, when she nuzzles at his arm, he lifts it without a word and pulls her close, until she is half-resting on his chest, safe within the circle of his embrace.

Slowly (like trying to touch a snowflake, gone too soon, its beauty so breathtaking and so transient), she rests her hand over his heart. It pounds, there beneath his flesh, beneath his bones, still working away, quick and light and all the lullaby she'll ever need.

(Everything she needs to survive, and memories of another night, another room, another place altogether, threatens to rise up—the cave, the train, the tunnels—but she ignores them.)

"Peeta," she whispers (because he's here and he can hear her and it's been so long since that's been true at night in a bed).

"Hmm?"

Bit by bit, his heartbeat slows to a more sedate rhythm. His breaths have evened out.

"Good night," she manages, and he hums in reply.

Sleep, usually so hard-won, sneaks up on her like a stealthy hunter. Before she's even realized it's close, it's pulled her under its enveloping hold, and it takes the stiffening of every muscle underneath her to jolt her, hours later, out of (a dreamless) sleep.

"Peeta?" she asks even before she's aware of where she is.

But for the first time in far too long, he's here with her. Not that he hears her. Under her cheek, his heart rattles like the pearl in her pocket during a series of explosions, and Katniss's heart leaps to match its panicked pace.

"Peeta?"

He doesn't answer. When she rises on her elbow and looks down at him, his face half illuminated by the light that slants in from the hall, she sees his eyes rolling beneath his eyelids.

Maybe she should be afraid. Maybe her neck should ache with the memory of bruises. Maybe her survival instincts (honed to such a fine point) should bristle and rise from the ashes.

But instead, Katniss thinks of a train, and endless nights sleeping beside Peeta's vibrant heat, and the countless times he gentled her cries and soothed her fears and held her close.

"Peeta," she whispers, and she caresses the side of his face. Touching him is electric. It feels, somehow, impossibly, as if she's been dead for ages, but now, at this single intimate touch, she is brought back to life, breathed back into an arena (we protect each other). "Peeta, it's okay. It's okay."

He stiffens even further. His eyes fly open and latch, instantly, on her.

"Katniss?"

He sounds so scared that she nearly checks his leg to make sure the infection hasn't spread beneath the weight of their shared sleeping bag.

But then he blinks, and blinks again, and it's this Peeta looking at her (her Peeta, but older and more scarred and wary rather than hopeful).

"Katniss," he says again, this time almost questioning.

"I'm here," she says. She can't help it, the way she drags her fingers back through his hair, exposing his sweaty brow and the place where his eyebrows are still trying to grow back. "I'm here, Peeta."

"You're…you're safe?"

"I am," she says (she doesn't stop to consider whether he means safe from harm or safe for him to be around; her answer is true regardless). "You're okay."

The sigh that slips from him is warm and smells of spearmint and makes her want to break down and weep that he's still alive to breathe in and out.

"Peeta," she says, and caresses his brow and his hair once more. "What happened to your eyebrows?"

He laughs. It's a wet laugh, garbled beneath exhaustion and lingering terror, but her lips curve at the sound of it anyway. "You really don't pay attention, do you?" he mutters.

Katniss frowns. "I noticed. I just… You have burn scars. But you were supposed to stay back. You weren't supposed to come into the square itself."

"You were on fire," he says simply.

And she knew. Of course she did. Her scars cover her torso from where she faced the blast of her sister's pyre. His scars cover his chest and his face from where he curled in around the flamebird he carried in his arms to safety.

"Weren't you scared?" she whispers.

"Of course I was." Then he blinks, as if just realizing that she meant scared of her, and he adds, hastily, "I had my nightlock pill with me. I wouldn't have hurt you."

Her heart nearly stops in her chest (and there is no Finnick, anymore, to breathe them back to life). If he'd taken it…she wouldn't have been able to shove her hand between his teeth to save him. He would have slipped away from her and she might never have known, might never have come back to awareness enough to wonder at his permanent absence (might never have crawled out of the premature grave she made for herself in the rocking chair by the window).

"Oh, Peeta," she finally whispers, and then she hugs him. Well, it's meant to be a hug. Due to the way she's already half-laying over him, though, it turns out to be mainly just draping herself all along his form from head to toe, her eyes tightly shut against this new horror added to her catalog of nightmares, and her hand knotted in his hair.

He doesn't ask her what's going on in her head. He doesn't tell her what nightmare haunted him before she woke him. Instead, he just wraps his arms around her waist, and holds on, and together, they breathe.

Together, they fight death back in their endless game.

CF pg. 111: "What about Darius?" Peeta asks.

The memory book taunts him. His endless sketches are placed in tidy stacks beneath the low table, while Katniss's neat script marches over the pages stacked on her side of the table. His paints and markers, charcoals and pencils, sketchbooks and doodles, struggle to escape the portfolio he's tied them tight within. And all of it, every piece, every color, every scribble, is another life gone too soon.

Even now, Katniss hunches tight over the page in front of her, her hand cramped close around her pen, her face drawn into a fierce scowl, oblivious to the fact that he's not even next to her anymore. She didn't notice when he got up, when he spent too long in the kitchen making tea, when he set a cup on the end-table beside her. The entirety of her focus is on the paper in front of her—and the man she is intent on freezing for all time on paper.

Peeta doesn't let his eyes glance over to the portrait of Darius, left finished before his empty spot. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't tear his gaze from Katniss.

All these people she knew. All these relationships she's lost. She punishes herself with them, night after night, and at first, Peeta thought this would be healing. It would let them both find closure, would remind them of everything that's brought them here, now, to the present, still alive. But instead, he thinks, now that weeks have passed and still Katniss is just as fierce with each new entry, he thinks it is only chaining her to this self-imposed role of memory-holder (as if she has no other reason to exist than to remember those who have died).

"Katniss," he tries to say, but he knows even before the name drops between them that it's useless.

He wishes she'd reach out to him. Ask him for something to add to her memories of Darius, the kind peacekeeper who paid for his mercy with his tongue and then paid for his life with torment until the end. Peeta knew him too, after all, sold him bread and dared to joke back with him a time or two (watched him die, slowly, a finger at a time, soaked in blood and drowning in the pieces of himself).

Peeta grits his teeth. Looks down to the mug in his hands. Waits until the ripples in the surface of the tea soften, fade, disappear, his hands steady once more. Then and only then does he look back up to Katniss.

She won't ask him. She won't even think to. Before, he might have let that frustrate him. But after all these weeks, Peeta has learned something new about this girl who grew acquainted with death and responsibility far too early.

To Katniss, grief is always private and individual and solitary. No one empathized with her when her father died, and so she's never bothered to expect any different from anyone else. These people they memorialize—Peeta lost them all too, but Katniss can't recognize that. He thinks that if she does, if she lets herself realize she is not alone, she will find solace…and she doesn't believe she deserves that. Not when she's alive and these people she remembers aren't.

It hurts his heart, to see this girl (too young, too pure, too radiant for this dangerous, cruel world) try to take on all the grief as if it is her burden to carry.

"Katniss," he says again, but this time, he sits at her side (not in his usual spot, but on her other side, separate from their supplies on the table), and rests his hand, palm-down on the table.

Then he waits, as her scowl lessens, her furious writing slows, and she finally reaches an end to this latest entry.

"He shouldn't have been in the Capitol," she mutters after a long moment.

"I know." Peeta eases the pen from her hand and rubs his thumb over the marks where she was gripping too hard.

"He used to patrol the Hob mostly, and the fence. He could have made it out with the others."

"That would have been nice." He holds her hand until he can place his own mug in her hands, not wanting to turn and try to retrieve hers from behind him. Carefully, he wraps both her hands around the warm cup.

"He was only an Avox because—"

"Because he chose to try to save someone from a whipping," Peeta says (he can't quite say his name, not here, not in this quiet, fragile moment). "Because he was kind. Because he made his own decision, even knowing what might happen."

"You're right. He saved Gale. Or tried to. I owed him for that. I should have—"

"Picked him up in front of everyone and carried him outside the fence?" Peeta arches a brow at her (though belatedly, it makes him self-conscious, remembering her question about his eyebrows).

"If Haymitch had told us there was a rebellion, we could have made sure they saved him from the Tribute Center," she says stubbornly.

Peeta can't help his smile at her even as, inwardly, he rolls his eyes. "And how would we have done that from inside the arena?"

"We…we should have been able to save him." She looks away, her shoulders rounded, looking so unbelievably small.

(Would Gale have been able to save him, if it were him rather than Peeta that went to the Capitol with her? Is that what she's wondering?)

"Darius wanted to save someone," Peeta repeats. "And he made that choice multiple times for different people. It's a tragedy that he died, but it's not your fault, Katniss."

She scowls. "Not real."

"Real," he counters, and nudges her hand with the mug until she takes a sip. Her eyes soften even though her scowl remains.

"Peeta—"

"You're not responsible for everyone," he interrupts. When he meets her eyes, no matter that his stomach squirms (with longing; with guilt; with terror), Peeta doesn't let himself look away. He makes himself sit there and watch her watching him; connecting with her, staying in the moment (letting her see his own barely coherent pieces). "You're not. We do what we can, but that's all we can do. Snow isn't responsible for our good choices, but that means you aren't either. We each make our decisions, and then we live with them."

"Or die," she says shortly.

"Or die," he says as evenly as he can with that sick feeling growing out of his stomach and up into his throat. It makes him want to hide, to pull branches and mud and a cave over him until he is safe to be near again. It makes him want to rage and scream, because the war is over and why can't this ever be easy?

But he can't do either of those things, so in the end, he just sits there, useless as anything but a consolation prize (a companion to fill the space that is Gale's, that will be Gale's again when that one day Katniss promised him arrives), helpless to change his fate. Helpless to do anything but agree with Katniss that all things die.

It feels too blunt (he's so tired). It's probably too cruel (he's so scared and so torn and so lost). But for some reason, it settles Katniss.

"Yeah," she finally says, and she looks away so she can take another sip of her tea.

Eventually (with her eyes elsewhere), Peeta can dull that sick feeling, and he sips from the cup he'd left for her earlier, his shoulder pressed against hers.

He likes this. The closeness. The comfortable silence. The feeling of not being alone.

"I'm sorry," Katniss finally murmurs.

Peeta cocks his head, not quite ready to look at her again but not fully able to keep his eyes from flicking in her direction. "For what?"

"Just…" She shrugs and empties her cup. "I know he was there. In the Capitol. With you."

"Yeah." Peeta swallows and forces himself to set his own cup down before it shatters in his hands.

He should say something. Offer her some comfort. Give her some wide insight to add to Darius's entry.

But his throat is twisted closed and his tongue is like iron in his mouth and he just wants to sit here, for a while more, with her warmth plastered against him.

(Katniss sees grief as a solitary thing, something to be memorialized and to hold onto when all else is lost.

Peeta sees grief as a weight he can only bear when there is someone next to him; his memories are safe inside him, internalized and turned to lessons he hopes he can live up to, but he doesn't need to share them or to write them down or to freeze them in time. He just needs to know he's not alone in the world and there is still good to be found and he can live a life good enough to make that loss mean something.)

"Peeta?"

The room is spinning around him. Probably a side effect of the way he can't pull in a breath past the tightness in his throat. He shapes his mouth into a smile (Katniss has enough to worry about without thinking he's about to have an episode) and collects their cups so he has an excuse to go into the kitchen.

But once there, he wishes he hadn't moved. It's dark, and the fire doesn't reach this far…and Katniss didn't follow him.

He's all alone. (He's always been all alone.)

The cameras are gone and there's no reason left for anyone to stay with him. The audiences have turned their attention to the next big thing and he's forgotten in the mud of a riverbank, slowly dying, his pain not even worth being broadcasted.

"Peeta?"

Like the sound of mockingjays singing his name, like a trail of blood left in his wake, Peeta follows that voice (his name in her voice) back to the living room. Back to Katniss, watching him come with a puzzled expression.

Every instinct he has urges him to sweep her up in his arms and hold her close and breathe in the smell of her hair. But he can't (there aren't any cameras). He shouldn't (she doesn't want him). There's no reason (he'll still be alone in this, as he's always been).

"Are you all right?" she asks.

"Yes," he says.

(Because without cameras to turn him honest, he's nothing but a lonely liar.)