CF pg. 185: "Tell me about it," I say. "If I could've just hated him in the arena, we all wouldn't be in this mess now. He'd be dead, and I'd be a happy little victor all by myself."

It's his silence that clues her into the fact that somewhere between the lake and Victor's Village something went wrong. Whether she likes to acknowledge it or not, Katniss knows what Peeta looks like both in a real relationship (or what he thinks is one, anyway, even if one with a deadline) and in a faked love story.

In the cave, before the railroad tracks (before she broke his heart for the first time), he was incandescent with surprised joy, with greedy glee, with a wild desire to seize each and every moment for everything he could get out of it. He'd told her that if she couldn't put words to what was between them, he'd fill in the blanks himself, and he did. He dreamed up picnics and holidays and extended families. He'd told her stories of long-gone schooldays and treasured songs and favorite foods. He'd pulled her close and found excuses to kiss her and pressed his lips to even just her palm and cuddled close and done everything he could to comfort her. Even when frustrated or annoyed with her (for speaking down to him, for trying to protect him in her own way without giving thought to his own methods), he simply drew his lines and tried to find compromises; he wasn't afraid to tell her what he wanted and what he was and was not willing to do.

That's Peeta in love, she thinks. It wasn't a show, or a manipulation, or even contrived. It was Peeta at his most honest, his most hopeful (his most unbroken). The smiles were because he was happy, the kisses because he wanted her, the close proximity because he longed for her company, the stories because he wanted her to know him, wanted to know her, the compromises because he thought they were a real, equal team. And all unabashed, unafraid, unashamed, because he knew (better than she did) that the ending of the Games could be something not that surprising in the end (he suspected those were the only days he'd ever have with her).

But afterward (after the tracks, after she broke his heart, after they froze each other out), it was a part he was playing. He was sweet, and earnest, and gentlemanly, and everything the Capitol needed him to be to keep them safe…but it wasn't open and whole and sincere. He was quiet, he was reserved, he followed her lead (he filled in no blanks without direct guidance from her), and above all, he assumed nothing. Expected nothing. Dreamed nothing more.

And on the way back home from the lake, twilight shadows turning her familiar woods dark and haunting, Peeta is quiet. He doesn't ask her questions. He doesn't tell her stories and muse on plans for the next day. He doesn't reach for her hand, doesn't fall in step with her (no matter that she's slowing herself down, more and more, trying to match his pace rather than outstrip him), doesn't do anything but follow her lead and watch her for cues on what to do next.

Katniss hates it.

For one day, she got everything she's been afraid to want. There was laughter and smiles and shared food and jokes and playing, and he kissed her. She kissed him, but then…he kissed her. (He hasn't done that, not so openly, not so wantonly, since…since…since the first arena. Caesar's stage with a cloven crown between them.). He pulled her close as if he still wanted her (as if she hadn't ruined everything), and he kissed her.

And it was perfect.

And now it's over.

The cameras are off, but the public are too close, and Peeta has had too much stolen from him because of her that Katniss can't blame him for being leery of coming too close (she's the girl on fire, and for all his outfit matched hers in both parades, he's never been anything but burned by her flames). She'll never be able to do anything else but hurt him, accidentally, purposely, incidentally, in memorium, ad infinitum.

For one night, Katniss tries to be angry with him.

She's told him she's not good at this. He knows she doesn't know how to be a girl in love. An entire rebellion was sparked and fought because she can't fake feelings she's beginning to think she was actually feeling all along, and that should have been clue enough if nothing else was that she was going to make mistakes in any relationship.

Maybe if, just once, he reached for her first. Kissed her first. Told her what he wanted. Asked for what would make him happy.

But he won't. He won't because he's scared (because he did once before), because he can't face the consequences of being given what he wants (because it won't last, it'll only be a trick) or maybe not being given it (because she didn't last time, she played a part while he told the truth and that makes all the difference in the world). He won't because he's not bold enough (he thinks he forced himself on her, in those first Games, that she hated every touch, endured every kiss, counted down every moment they spent together), and so he will leave everything up to Katniss (who can't make a decision even if her sister's life is on the line, which…it won't ever be again, will it?).

It's not fair, she thinks, and then that is the end of her anger (because if anything's not fair, it's what life has done to Peeta).

It's not fair, but it's the way it is (and he wouldn't be Peeta if he pushed and insisted and asked and hounded and assumed).

(She wouldn't love him so much and want him so much and care so much if he weren't Peeta.)

It's his quiet that gave away the problem. But it's his smiles that keep her from giving up.

Out there, surrounded by nature and life and freedom, Peeta smiled. He laughed and he stared at her like he used to and he didn't flinch when she reached out for him. He trusted her enough to go into the water and he lit up every time she cut short her own swimming to rejoin him and he listened to every word she said (all so much easier to find and utter and share out there where she was once so happy with her father).

He was happy. She made him happy.

(He still wants her.)

So Katniss crawls out of bed when he does, helps him make breakfast, and doesn't keep the usual bit of space between them. She butters their toasted bread with her elbow rubbing against his as he fries the eggs. When he reaches for the plates, she ducks under him, one hand on his waist, to retrieve their cups from the dry-rack and pours their juice.

At the table, she unearths more words—observations on Haymitch's geese, questions about the rebuilding efforts, anything she can think of to let Peeta know she's not running (she's not taking anything back).

In the afternoon, they walk in the woods, though the sunburn he's sporting stops her from taking them back out to the lake. "Maybe tomorrow," she says (barely able to breathe through her wanting), and she laces her fingers through Peeta's when they turn back toward home.

She follows him to his house, and they sit down to work on their memory book. Katniss is slow to pick up her pen. Maintaining a level mood is a challenge on the best of days, let alone when so much hinges on her being able to reach Peeta past the scar tissue she's helped layer over his heart, and a wrong choice of entry now could send her spiraling back into bed for days more.

"We could do something else," he offers. "Something happier."

"Like what?"

He blinks, stumped. "I guess…we could write good things. Things that make us happy to remember."

"You think that'd take a whole night?" she snarks.

Peeta looks down at his blank pages, his colored pencils, and seems to shrink in on himself. "No," he murmurs. "I guess not."

Katniss wishes she could redo the last few minutes (the last few decades).

As soon as Peeta excuses himself to the kitchen with the pretense of making them tea, Katniss runs home and unearths the plant book. She's out of breath and still panting, but the plant book is waiting for him on their low table by the time he comes out with two steaming cups.

"What's this?" he asks.

"Something good," she says. "Do you remember?"

His smile only touches half his mouth, but that's okay (it's real). "Of course. I felt so honored that you didn't mind my work being a part of something so integral to your family."

"Didn't mind?" Katniss scowls at him. "I wanted you to be a part of it. It seems right."

There's more quiet, then, but this kind feels different (more organic, more the result of too much rather than not enough).

"We could keep adding to it?" she suggests. "Maybe we could take it with us on our walks and make it more complete?"

"I'd like that," he says before she even has time to hold her breath in suspense.

But the next day, Thom asks Peeta for help in the town square. They need every able-bodied man—and most women—they can get to try to get the most stubborn of beams up and out of the way of the new lines of shops. Though she knows how awful Peeta always feels after visiting the square, she's not surprised in the least that he immediately agrees.

Seeing the devastation she caused isn't her favorite thing either, but for once, Katniss doesn't need Haymitch's form of tough love (or just tough luck) to force her into doing what feels right. As soon as Peeta's followed Thom out, Katniss gets to work making up sandwiches of cold meat and the cheese they got from the train (someone in town probably has a goat, probably makes and sells cheese, but it'll be a long time before she's ready to face the memories that particular flavor will bring her).

Shortly after noon, she makes her way to the square and finds Peeta, a harder task than she imagined since his hair is turned nearly as dark as everyone else's by dirt, sweat, and grime.

"You need a shower," she says in greeting, but it does nothing to dull his smile at seeing her.

"You didn't have to come," he says.

"You're not hungry?" she asks, and turns to find a shaded place (with the least ghosts in sight) to sit and unpack his lunch.

Others drift by, of course, and Katniss made plenty extra, so soon enough everyone is sharing what they've brought, turning the lunch eclectic and more like the tiny hors d'oeuvre that circulated through even the shortest Capitol event. Katniss catches Peeta's eye, wondering if he's thinking the same thing, but for once, he doesn't look like he even remembers the Capitol at all.

He looks happy. So happy. His smile is real, there's a bit of mustard above his lip, and he looks tired in a good way.

If she were making a list of good things, she thinks, the sight of him exactly like that would definitely be on it.

Thankfully, they were apparently nearly done, and so Peeta walks back to the Village with her.

"Thanks for lunch," he says. "It was a nice surprise."

Katniss tenses (surprises have never been nice, as far as she's concerned). "I should have told you I'd come."

"No." He nudges the back of her hand with the back of his. "It was nice. Something unlooked for, but even better because of it."

It sounds like a nightmare to her, but then, she and Peeta have always been so very different. He's always able to see the good in even the darkest, unlikeliest of things.

And he's not the only one who's changed these past few years.

She shouldn't want him, not like this (not so badly, so desperately). Making him happy is one thing, but wanting just because she longs for it is dangerous. The more she wants something, the more she loves something, the easier (the more likely) it is to be taken from her. Just a few months ago, she decided she couldn't risk it (that keeping Peeta at arm's length was the wisest decision she could make), but now…feeling the warmth of him, smelling him even at his least savory, longing to trace the feel of that soft smile on his lips…well, Peeta is worth the risk.

Besides, she'll protect him (like she should have before).

CF pg. 211: "Do you think we'd have ended up like this if only one of us had won?" he asks, glancing around at the other victors. "Just another part of the freak show?"

The trek out to the lake is long, but there's an early autumn breeze that keeps them cool enough, and Peeta doesn't complain. Not that he will, Katniss knows. Still, she watches him closely, prepared to announce a break if she sees any signs of him tiring, and she is careful to make him drink from their canteen frequently.

The water is cool—almost too cool at first—and refreshing, and the trees cast yellowing shade over much of the shore. Katniss busies herself setting the blanket and towels in place while Peeta strips to his underwear, and she appreciates his own tact in pretending interest in the sky while she does the same. She doesn't remember being quite so self-conscious last time, but then, she didn't feel quite so compelled to keep staring at him last time either.

(It's dangerous, this growing dependence on him. She can't quite bring herself to care enough to deny herself, though.)

This time, Peeta dares swimming out a bit farther, something Katniss rewards him for by staying close enough she can keep a hand on his back (a reminder that they are still partners).

"I always thought it was scary out here," he says.

Katniss tries to focus on him, but the droplets scattered over his chest are catching the light in just such a way that it makes him glitter and glow.

"It can be," she hears herself say.

"Not when you're with me," he tells her, and he smiles that sweet, shy smile at her, and Katniss has to let herself sink under the water to keep from twining herself around him and never letting go.

They share their lunch on the blanket, and if Katniss feels his eyes lingering on her legs, on the curve of her hip, on her collarbone, she doesn't let on (turnabout is fair, after all).

"This would be good," he says when they're lying side by side, their hands just barely touching, basking in the sunlight. "If we were writing good things."

"It is good," she murmurs. In fact, it reminds her of their rooftop picnic—but better because this time neither of them have to die (at least, not yet).

It isn't until they're nearly about to leave, both of them drifting back toward shore after watching the ducklings for a while, Katniss shivering a bit in the cooling temperature, that something goes wrong.

She should have seen it coming.

Just before they hit the upslope coming out of the water, there's a tangled mass of stones and algae on the lakebed. If she'd been paying closer attention (if she hadn't been caught in a daze of watching the muscles in Peeta's back contract and expand as he half-swam toward shore), she'd have known to warn him.

But she doesn't.

Instead, she lets his metal foot tangle in the debris. She watches as he splashes down into the water. And she only moves when he's already panicking, hands straining out of the water, his face blanched, feet scrabbling for purchase.

"It's okay," she tries to say.

A mistake.

At the sound of her voice, he stiffens—which makes him sink again. With her hands still on him, his inexperience in the water, and the waves closing over his head, she should have guessed there'd be an episode coming on.

When he explodes up out of the water, he does so with his arms swinging. A burst of pain flares over the side of her face and Katniss goes splashing backward. A belated surge of common sense has her sinking, quiet and still in the waves. Holding her breath isn't hard, and Peeta needs space and time to pull himself free of whatever is choking his mind.

Ordinarily, Peeta can get the episodes under control in a minute or two. Unfortunately, here in the water, in an unfamiliar place, he seems to flounder. She watches through the green-shaded water as he drags himself up onto the bank, her heart aching to see his hands fisting in the reeds and dirt (like snow, steaming beneath his hot grip, on a different day when she watched through a different kind of layer, glass rather than water). Stalks bend and break beneath the force of his grip, and his whole body shakes, full-force convulsions that are painful to watch.

Katniss surfaces quietly to breathe, then hides herself below the water again. Even the slightest glimpse of her, she thinks, could send him back into the wasteland of the venom's madness.

It kills her to stay there and watch (like she promised she'd never do again), but out here, alone, she's suddenly and acutely aware of how vulnerable she is. Even underweight and scarred, Peeta outweighs her by a good bit. Unclothed, so near the water, surrounded by rocks and sticks and with her bow far out of her reach, he could so easily hurt her (kill her).

(It could all be over: the nightmares, the grieving, the sharp reminders of Prim, the aches and twinges in her scars when she least expects them, the constant work of keeping herself alive and out of her rocking chair.)

She won't do that to him. Peeta would never forgive himself. (He'd find a nightlock bush, or a cliff to walk off, or the middle of this lake to sink into, and the very idea of a world without Peeta is too dire to contemplate.)

But Peeta's still shaking. Still crushing fistfuls of dirt in his hands. Still suffering.

"Peeta," she says, so soft, so quiet, that her breath barely stirs a single ripple in the water under her chin. "Peeta. Peeta, it's okay. The lake is real. We're really here. You're not alone. You're safe."

(Lies, lies, lies, all she can ever give him are lies, truths that are premature or expired, never just in time.)

The line of his spine, visible through his skin, goes rigid.

"Peeta," she says again, trying to call him back to her. "Peeta."

Around their heads, like last time (when they kissed and she thought she'd finally found a safe place), the mockingjays take up the call. She's never heard them repeat any other name, but just like in the first arena, when she searched for him in the mud and the trails of blood, they repeat his name until it becomes a song (or maybe his name is always a song in her voice; maybe they recognized the truth before she did just like the rest of the Districts).

Peeta! Peeta! Peeta!

Gradually, a muscle at his time, his shoulders relax. His back curls inward. His shudders die away until there are only intermittent spasms every once in a while.

"I'm here," she says, soft and gentle (a predator stalking prey; or no, like the lynx that once followed her in the woods from place to place, a silent ghost that trailed her steps and took what nourishment she sent its way). "I'm here, Peeta. This is real. Real. Peeta."

"Katniss," he chokes.

Biting back her sob of relief, she joins him on the shore, careful to make some noise with her steps, hearing the water drip from her body to splash back into the lake. Careful (she doesn't want to scare him, this boy who leaves gentleness and kindness and wisdom in his wake for her to gobble up and take up as her own), she lays a hand on his shoulder.

He flinches but doesn't draw away. (He's not afraid of her; he's ashamed.)

No. No, she can't let that happen. No more drifting apart. No more taking steps backward.

This isn't his fault (it's hers). These episodes aren't a mark of weakness, but sign of how far he's come.

Maybe it's an act of bravery (more likely, it's simply because she can't hold herself back anymore), but Katniss folds in around him. His skin is hot, nearly feverish, and Katniss presses close, flesh to flesh, every inch of her draped over every inch of him, her head laid against the nape of his neck, her lips pressed against a tiny spot just behind his ear.

"Peeta," she whispers. "I'm here. It's okay. You're safe. I'll protect you. I'm not leaving."

His shoulders shake and judder, and she'd think he didn't want this if he didn't reach up and put his hand over hers. "Katniss," he breathes. In. Then out with, "Katniss." Another breath in, and he expels it, "Katniss."

This time, they're not trapped in the tunnels under the Capitol. He's not warning her about approaching mutts, isn't throwing her and everyone else ahead of him, isn't begging her to leave him behind (at least, not in so many words).

This time, he is weaving her name (her presence, her promises) into the foundation of his soul that he rebuilds every time another episode quakes it apart.

"Katniss."

The mockingjays don't repeat that, but it's okay. Katniss's heart is imprinted itself with this tiny, monumental moment, and every time it beats, she will remember the sound of his voice saying her name as if, were he ever given the choice of only one word to utter for the rest of his life, he'd choose this: Katniss.

"Peeta," she whispers back every time he breathes in, until they are a shifting, alternating pattern, reminding each other who they are and what they mean to each other.

When they finally uncurl from each other and stand up, dress and start back, Katniss makes sure their hands are wound tightly together. The woods are dangerous, so she's sure to keep a careful eye out around them, but most of her attention centers on Peeta (and she wants him to know that).

"I'm sorry," he tries to say when they have to part to their individual houses to shower before a late dinner. His eyes won't meet hers, his cheeks are flushed, and Katniss doesn't pause in throwing herself at him as she shushes him.

He catches her (she knew he would; he always does). For a long moment, they stay like that, so tightly pressed against each other that she can feel the thrum of his heartbeat against her breastbone.

"You're the strongest person I've ever known," she tells him.

Only when his arms loosen (in surprise, she's fairly certain) does she pull back and slip into her house. Rather than heading up to the shower, though, she goes to the phone she mostly just ignores and dials the number Dr. Aurelius told her she could use whenever she needed to (this is the first she actually does).

"Katniss?" he asks, his voice almost devoid of surprise.

"What if I want to take a break from writing down memories of the lost?" she asks. "What if I wanted to write something good? Something that…that doesn't make us sad."

There's silence for so long she nearly gives this up as a bad idea.

But then the doctor shifts, a rustle of movement that sounds down the phone, and says, "That's a great idea, Katniss. So many terrible things have been done to you that wanting to think on the good things people have done instead is an amazing step."

Huffing impatiently, she grips the phone tighter. "It was Peeta's idea. I just…how can I find enough good things to keep writing?"

"Why don't you start a list? You've mentioned before that you find hope in something as small as a dandelion because of the bread Peeta gave you as a child. That was a kind act done for you by someone who had nothing directly to gain from it. How many other times has that happened? It might help you to start looking around and noticing the kindnesses people perpetuate."

"Not just to me?" she asks.

"To anyone. An act of kindness can be anything and can come from anyone. You yourself probably do more than you think."

Katniss rolls her eyes and hangs up the phone. A list. She can do that. Peeta wants to see goodness in the world (he deserves to have his view of people not be as wrong as she thinks it probably is), and it's the only thing she can remember him asking for in this new world.

Writing a list can't be that hard, not for him, and she knows exactly where to start.

With the bread.

(With Peeta.)

CF pg. 241: "You'd have thought we planned it," says Peeta, giving me just the hint of a smile.

"Didn't you?" asks Portia. Her fingers press her eyelids closed as if she's warding off a very bright light.

"No," I say, looking at Peeta with a new sense of appreciation. "Neither of us even knew what we were going to do before we went in."

Guilt and shame are a foul mix that should be represented by an equally foul color. Unfortunately, Peeta can't seem to find the right combination of paints to produce a color bilious enough. Greens and yellows with a bit of brown mixed in only produces a color he finds himself turning into the reeds and rushes of the lakeshore (which calls to mind the reason for this feeling he wants to paint out of his mind, if not the foulness of it). A mélange of red and yellow and black gives him shades of a sunset over his unplanned landscape, but still nothing that can, upon simple sight, represent the sick feelings twisting him up from the inside out.

"That's beautiful."

Katniss's voice behind him no longer makes him flinch (no longer makes the two halves of his broken mind immediately devolve into a duel for control of his motor functions), but it still takes him a moment before he can bring himself to turn and face her.

As always, she is responsible for such a chaotic mixture of reactions inside him (none of them her fault, of course, only ever his for assuming, for believing, for hoping, for knowing better). There's the leap of his heart (twinned with the memory of her kiss pressed clumsily and sincerely to his lips). There's the lurch in his gut (accompanied by the knowledge that he could have killed her, could have hurt her, did scare her). There's the brightness of his vision (she brought him lunch just because, and wanted to show him the lake, and holds his hand whenever she sees him, and drapes herself over him in the bed even without the intrusion of a nightmare first) and the learned resignation he forces himself to recall (there have been no more kisses, and she stares at him constantly as if she cannot tell what to make of him always being there, and he scared her so badly that even his meager apology was too much for her to hear).

But aside from all that, she's Katniss. A girl who's been through hell and lost everything she loved and come through it all with her voice intact and her mind still struggling to endure. She's still radiant and beautiful and everything he wants. And still just a girl, a regular girl who didn't ask to be the center of his love, who never wanted his attention or his affection, who doesn't deserve to bear the weight of his scarred dreams.

Finally (when he wrestles control of his heart and calms the turmoil in his stomach), he manages to respond to her.

"It's not what I meant to paint," he says.

"I love it." Her eyes are steady on him. "It makes me feel like we're still there."

His eyes fall closed for a moment to absorb the weight of that before he reaches for a dropcloth. "I'm sorry. I'll cover it."

"What?" That wrinkle between her brows makes his finger itch to caress it away. Drifting closer, she nudges the cloth away from him. "Those have been some of my favorite days."

He looks away. "Not real."

"Real." Her voice is so firm that he's startled into looking at her.

(She doesn't look skittish.)

"I could have hurt you," he whispers.

"I don't think so." Katniss shrugs. "You never even went for me."

And now his fingers do move (slowly, lest he scare her again) to reach out and trace the shadow of a bruise on the side of her face. "I hit you."

"Not on purpose."

At this, he can't help his full-body recoil (that's what his mom told his dad too, when Peeta couldn't twist his body, couldn't open his right eye, couldn't go to school).

"You were scared and you thought you were drowning," Katniss explains. "I was just…in the wrong place."

"Near me," he says bitterly. "That's always the wrong place."

"Don't be ridiculous."

Peeta can't help blinking at her. She doesn't sound angry or upset, just…impatient.

"Haymitch hit you," she says suddenly. "And he did it on purpose. Do you think he's too dangerous for you to be around?"

It takes him a moment to remember the incident (dredged up between shiny memories of Katniss threatening to kill him on the train and duller memories of her throwing a knife at Haymitch in response to the punch he landed on Peeta).

"That's…that's not the same thing."

"I know. Haymitch was as much in his right mind as he ever is. But you weren't."

"Every moment, there's a chance I may not be," he points out. "That makes me more dangerous."

"Peeta." Katniss steps up until her toes (bare, he realizes with a jolt of surprise) are against his. Even in his metal foot, he fancies he can feel the warmth of her radiating outward. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm never going to be afraid of you."

"That's worse," he says through numb lips. "Now I know that you'll never even be expecting it when I go for you."

"Like when?" she demands. "When have you gone for me? When we first got you back—when you were still doped up on the venom and half-dead? When you were sent to the Capitol like you were nothing more than a gun and surrounded on all sides by people who openly talked about killing you at a moment's notice? Those are the only two times, Peeta, and both of them were made up of nothing but extenuating circumstances! You're not going to hurt me! You never hurt me, Peeta—you only ever help me!"

There are tears clouding her gray eyes. It seems to him, sometimes, that there are always tears in her eyes now. Just once, he wishes they could go through a day without any tears at all (except they did, didn't they, that first day out at the lake, crystal-clear and perfect in his mind's eye).

"Okay," he says. "Okay, Katniss, I'm sorry."

"Don't!" Her hand falls over his lips, and they both stare: her at her own hand, him at her eyes, trying to puzzle her out (Haymitch talks as if Katniss doesn't like being touched, but Peeta's never noticed that; she's always seemed so tactile to him). "No more apologies, okay? You don't ever have to apologize to me."

He doesn't agree, but when her hand falls away, he leaves his studio and takes her to the kitchen to make cheese buns (apologies can come in a variety of shapes and forms; his dad taught him that).

He's afraid to try the lake again, but Katniss drags him out three more times in the next couple weeks. There are no more episodes (yet), and each day, Peeta finds it easier to set aside that foul feeling and think instead on those kisses.

They haven't kissed like that again, but Katniss has started kissing him good night. On his cheek, at first, and then, after a few nights, on the corner of his lips. Peeta equally loves and hates those first moments they crawl into bed. Her squirming to get comfortable against him, her breaths against his neck, and then the press of her lips, closer and closer to his mouth, is so intoxicating that he can't help but to start thinking that maybe…maybe…

But she never does anything else. It simply becomes their new normal.

Like the kiss she starts giving him when she has to leave him. Not quite on his mouth, but awfully close. Or the ones she drops into his hair and across his brow after he wakes from a nightmare. Like the one she sears over his lips when he wakes her from a thrashing dream that has her sobbing his name and holding onto him so tightly he thinks he'll probably have bruises.

It's tempting to think that this is a natural progression, but Peeta doesn't like how dependent he's starting to feel on these kisses. They're like a drug, another hit of Katniss (her lips, her care, her affection, her attention), and he watched too many videos in the build-up to the Quarter Quell, saw too many other Victors in the grips of whatever addiction they found to numb the world around them, spent too much time listening to Johanna's rambling from the cell next to his. He knows how dangerous it is for anyone who's come through their amount of trauma to get hooked on something.

(Because one day it will disappear.)

And besides, these kisses aren't for him. Not really. He's here, and she's fond of him (she owes him), and so he understands how confusing it can get. But every day the weather turns cooler, the leaves change colors from the cool spectrum to the more fiery versions of themselves, and it becomes impossible not to think of who her kisses are actually for.

One day, Gale, she told him on the phone. I promise.

Peeta doesn't know what day she means (is it today? Tomorrow? Five years from now? When will he lose her for good?) so every day potentially becomes the last.

It's all well and good to enjoy her kisses in this moment, but when she's gone, when Gale's back, when Peeta's once more left on the outside, alone and abandoned and not enough, what will he do then?

Will he turn to liquor? To morphling? To the pills his cabinet is filled with, so many of them he can't even remember what they're all for? Or will he just stop altogether?

No. Better not to fall into the dream at all. Better not to invite in ways for him to become just like the other survivors of the Games.

"What are we doing, Katniss?" he asks her one night.

It's a coward's way of confronting the problem (there are blank pages between them and an evening's hours to fill up). He's not surprised that Katniss misunderstands him.

"I…I've been working on something new," she admits, almost shyly.

Peeta, mouth already open to clarify, pauses.

"I've been working on it on my own first. I wanted to have a good bit done before I showed you."

Without him. (It's already starting.)

"Another memory book?" he asks. He remembers her saying they should write about the events that happened, and his whole soul revolts at the thought of having to read about Prim being reaped, Katniss volunteering, Gale stepping out of the crowd to take her sister and pledge his care of her.

"Not exactly. It was your idea. You said we should write about something good."

"I did?"

"Yes." She slides closer to him, their legs stretched under the coffee table and pressed together from ankle to hip, her shoulder wedged up against his, her loose hair drifting across his cheek. "I talked to Aurelius and he said I should do it."

"A book of good things?"

"A list, really. Here. There's so much more than I thought there'd be."

Peeta stares down at the pages she passes him without really seeing them. Her hair smells of forest and oranges and smoke, and her warmth is so inviting that he actually feels himself swaying toward her. Just barely catching himself, he forces his attention to her words. The first entry on her list hits him in the center of his breastbone so forcefully that he can't breathe for a long moment.

Peeta giving me the bread.

It's always about the bread (it will never be about anything else).

Peeta hates that bread (but can never regret it because she would have died without it, according to her). He hates being reminded of it constantly (the way he threw it in the mud as if she were another pig). He hates that it is what she thinks of every time she looks at him (she doesn't love him, but she will never cut him loose because of this simple act he cannot convince her is not an obligation).

"The bread," he says. He doesn't recognize the sound of his own voice.

"The bread," she says with none of the same resentment or defeat. "That's the kindest thing anyone ever did for me back then. It's the only reason I was able to keep Prim alive. The bread, and then, when I looked for you in the schoolyard to thank you, there was a dandelion at your feet. It reminded me of how my dad taught me to survive, about the woods and the food there. You're the dandelion, Peeta."

"A dandelion." His mind is fixated on the bread. "Isn't that a weed?"

"You can eat them," Katniss says. "We had dandelion salad with the last of your bread. We ate it until I figured out how to hunt again. It kept us alive."

"I don't…"

"Keep reading, Peeta."

He looks at the paper. The words blur and merge, but he picks out a few things. Prim saved Buttercup. Rue helped my tracker jacker stings. Peeta washed Haymitch himself. Mags volunteered for Annie. Greasy Sae finds places for her granddaughter to dance.

"Do you see?" she asks.

"Good things," he manages, feeling dull and slow (heavy and loud and an imposition she shouldn't have risked in the arenas).

"You," she says.

Peeta blinks at her. "I don't…"

"Keep reading, Peeta."

His hands are shaking. The papers crinkle before he flattens them against the table. More words resolve into legibility.

Peeta stepped in front of me and Gale at the whipping post. Finnick carried Peeta even after Mags. Prim healed everyone she could find. Peeta gave a cookie to a little girl.

"You didn't write any of your own," he realizes.

Katniss shakes her head impatiently. "That's not what this is about. Do you see?"

"See what?"

"You, Peeta."

And with her saying his name, he sees the page as a whole and can pick out his name, here, there, ten times, a dozen, a couple dozen, more continued onto the next page, and the next, and the next.

Peeta told me flames suited me. Peeta gave me his jacket. Peeta said he'd do the talking for me. Peeta made Pollux feel better. Peeta chose to be friends. Peeta painted with the morphlings. Peeta helped Thom even though it meant going into the square. Peeta…Peeta…Peeta…

"The other day, a few weeks back, you said that being around you was the wrong place, but that can't be true. It'll never be true. Look. These prove it."

"Prove what?" he asks.

"That you're my good thing. You're the good in my life."

His breath catches in his chest. "Not because of the bread?"

(The bread is only listed once, but his name…that repeats. And repeats. And repeats.)

"Because of you," she says. "You told me to look for good in the world, and I found you."

"Like a dandelion," he realizes.

She smiles, bright and earnest and real. "Yeah. Like a dandelion."

(The bread isn't everything. It's just the start, her start, like her song is the start for him, but there's so much more to her than singing.)

A laugh escapes him. "I don't even remember telling you to look for good."

"That's okay. I'll remember for you. Partners, remember?"

"Yeah."

And this time, when he tilts toward her, his own body swaying toward the beauty of her orbit, Katniss leans up—and this isn't a kiss on the cheek. Or the side of his mouth. On his brow or in his hair.

Her lips press over his, and then, with a simple tilt of his head, her top lip slips between his and she nips his bottom lip, and an instant later, her mouth is open and her taste floods his senses. She whimpers and presses closer, and on instinct, Peeta turns, his knees falling open, his arms reaching—and she's in his lap. He pulls her flush against him, and her tongue traces the inside of his mouth, and her hands are in his hair, and he can feel the knobs of her spine, the silk of her hair, the quickness of her breath against his burned palms.

"Katniss," he gasps as everything spins all around him. His grip tightens on her, sliding down to her hips to pull her closer.

"Real," she breathes without pausing, and kisses him again.

Real. It's real. This is real (not a drug, not a mirage, not a delusion, not an addiction). She's real (not a figurehead, not an ideal, not a childhood dream). They're real (not an act, not a part, not a consolation prize).

Real.

I love you, he thinks, and maybe he doesn't say it aloud, but it's layered in every touch, every kiss, every beat of the long embrace their kisses transition into.

(And for the first time, he wonders if that possibly goes both ways.)