PART 3: THE MOCKINGJAY

Chapter 11

MJ pg. 23: "As bad as it makes you feel, you're going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it's costly."

"It costs your life," says Caesar.

"Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" says Peeta. "It costs everything you are."

The next morning, they eat the leftover bread, stale and hard from where they left it in front of the fire overnight. Peeta savors the taste (of his childhood made new, made better, made precious) and kisses it off of Katniss's lips (and almost doesn't hesitate at all in fear she's changed her mind).

It astounds him, how easily they slip into this new normal. She still scribbles in some notebook she thinks he doesn't notice. He still makes his bread deliveries. They still cook and eat together, still drag Haymitch into the light every few days, still work on their lists and their memories in the evening. Still take their walks through the woods in the afternoons, though now Katniss always brings a blanket folded in her gamebag and Peeta tries not to step too eagerly as they head into the privacy of the forest where Katniss is the most herself (the most confident, the most open, and always, always turning to reach for him).

Of course, it's getting too cold to do much besides kiss and run their hands over skin hidden by warm clothing, but there's a beauty to Katniss surrounded by red and orange and yellow leaves that Peeta wouldn't trade for anything. Even if all they do is walk side by side, hand in hand, it's enough (she smiles at him, a reversal of her usual scowl that has him staring and stumbling and losing all his words).

Every night, Peeta tells himself not to get too attached to this reality (it might be gone in the morning). Every night, waking from nightmares that have him panting and stiff, he reminds himself that nothing good in life is ever his.

But every morning, Katniss smiles at him, and kisses him, and holds onto him. Follows him downstairs and wraps her arms around his waist from behind and leans against his back, half-asleep and pliant (and so wonderfully eager for the kisses he can't help turning to bestow on her until he sets her up on his counter and sees just how fully he can wake her up). Asks him about his day and tells him about hers, one halting sentence by monotone word.

The tensest moment comes early, when he retreats into his study to call the number Gale left them, and talks to first one official, then another, then another, until finally the president comes to the phone. At some point, Katniss slipped in, and now she drapes herself over his back, arms tight around his waist, and Peeta makes himself speak.

(The last time he spoke to a president, it didn't turn out well for him.)

From a few things she's said, Peeta thinks Katniss knows Paylor somehow, but he's never spoken to her before himself. She seems stern, no-nonsense, and impatient, but he thinks she understands the hard terms he lays out for her.

He thinks…maybe…she'll listen.

Once the phone is hung up and he breathes himself steady again, Katniss kisses the spot just behind his ear. "Thank you," she whispers (and he'd do it a thousand more times just to repeat this moment).

Sometimes, like when Katniss wakes screaming, her whole body thrashing, her arms pushing him away, Peeta feels his whole life like a house of cards: fragile and so infinitely ready to crumble.

But he whispers reassuring words and lets his hand fall to rest, lightly, on her stomach, and gradually, Katniss calms. Reaches. Holds on. Hums his name.

Then it feels as if this could be their forever.

In the evenings, trying to focus on whatever project they're working on, Peeta often finds his eyes wandering to the hearth. It's lit more often than not as the nights grow longer and colder, but it's not the flames that catch his attention. Or rather, not these flames.

His hands, busy with paintbrush or pencil or charcoal, tingles with the memory of that heat as he held a piece of bread over it and waited for it to warm through.

Married. They're married.

It was Haymitch who slapped the piece of paper down on the table, when Peeta was about to bring over a pot of stew, and said, "Happy now, sweetheart? You'll stop hounding me and start letting me sleep in peace?"

"Yes," Katniss said, and squirreled the paper away—but not before Peeta caught sight of just enough words (the seal of the new Panem) to know that it's a marriage certificate.

His appetite disappeared, and Peeta could scarcely stop fidgeting until after Haymitch rolled his eyes, grabbed the plate of cookies, and disappeared.

"Peeta," Katniss said. "This is okay, isn't it?"

And he'd stared down at the paper she presented him.

"If you don't want…" Her eyes narrowed, her mouth tight in that familiar scowl. "You don't have to sign it. It's just paper without your—"

He nearly toppled the table reaching for a pen, and by the time he finished signing with a flourish, Katniss was giggling (a lighthearted sound that never fails to turn his heart buoyant) and nudging his hand for her own turn.

That was a good day.

Peeta looks away from the page where he's started (by which he means, there are a few halfhearted strokes of ink that could be anyone) a sketch of Seeder. His eyes, unerringly, find Katniss.

Her sudden look up has him dropping his gaze back to the page, feeling almost guilty.

"You don't have to hide," she says in her usual matter-of-fact tone. "I don't care if you look at me."

The words strike at some half-buried (half-erased?) memory inside him, but Peeta doesn't bother to trace it back to its origin. Instead, he smiles and teasingly says, "You don't 'care,' huh? Are you sure you don't 'like' it?"

Her cheeks flush dark, but there's a promise (a spark of something he still catches his breath to recognize) in her clear eyes as she looks up at him. "I like it," she says. "I like it a lot."

"Really?" He slides closer to her, his knee bumping up against the coffee table and reminding him that stealth is not his talent. "How much is a lot?"

The way she bites her lip has his blood flashing hotter than the flames. "I don't want you to stop," she mutters.

"Just looking?" he asks even as his hand abandons their project in favor of almost brushing against hers, white-knuckled where she grips her pen.

"Maybe…" Katniss's skin flares pink in the firelight. "Maybe more."

"Like what, exactly?" he presses, his index finger just touching her thumb. "You might have to spell it out for me."

And at that, Katniss rolls her eyes and breaks the mood. "Really? Come on, Peeta, you know I'm not good at this."

He laughs and scoots closer until he can slide one (artificial) leg between her and the couch and curl the other around until he's surrounding her, clasping her elbows and tugging her closer to his chest. "I think you're amazing at this," he says.

"Clumsy and awkward works for you, huh?" she says, but she can't hide her smile, or pretend away the slow, lingering path her hands take up his chest to his shoulders.

"You work for me," he says, and then laughs at himself before she can. "And I'm obviously not great at it either."

"You're perfect," Katniss says (the opposite of clumsy: certain; the opposite of awkward: direct; and she's right: this definitely works for him).

"So are you," he murmurs before pressing his mouth over hers. Her lips open between his, her teeth nipping at him, and he feels the lighthearted mood slipping away in favor of something more passionate (more direct and certain, but still warm and wanted). "That's why I stare."

"I don't like anyone else looking at me," she says between kisses, her breaths coming shorter and shorter as Peeta's hands tighten against her. "Only you."

Katniss has only told him she loves him once (at their toasting, the toasting she initiated, the night she promised herself to him forever the way he's always been hers). But she shows it, intimates it, implies it, proves it in a hundred ways every single day.

Peeta thinks that the way she lives her love for him matters so much more than that collection of three words in the traditional manner.

Even with the fire, it's cold enough that he shivers when she pulls his shirt over his head. Or maybe that's because of the way she drags her lips down over his shoulder to his chest, to his ribs, her tongue painting patterns that sear through him. In a room warmed by a hearth, in a house heated by Capitol technology, Katniss is the most radiant thing there, and she blazes with inner brilliance that has Peeta cupping her cheek, directing her mouth back to his, and then bearing her (gently, she's still so small, so wounded, for all her inherent strength) to the floor so he can blanket her with his singing, shaking body.

"Katniss," he breathes into her skin, her hair, her heart (my wife, he thinks with a marveling astonishment he can't imagine ever growing out of).

"Peeta," she says back, because this is real. It's his life. It's not a part, it's not an act, it's not a delusion or a trick or a dream.

It's real.

Peeta latches one hand onto her thigh, wrapping it around him, and the other curled loosely behind her throat to keep her still as he paints his own unspoken truths all over her textured, scarred skin. He finds all the places he's discovered in these pleasure-hazed nights, exploits every sensitive spot she's uncovered for him, wishes that every kiss he drops over every inch of her could be her armor, her force-field, her Mockingjay suit. All to hide the tears spilling from his eyes to burn his flesh. All to mask the overwhelming, overpowering surge of emotion he feels.

It's everything. She's everything, and Peeta thinks of those mornings when he can barely make himself function. Those days when reality seems to waver and the world takes on a shiny hue. The nights when nightmares remind him of what used to be his reality and he can't tell if he's still waking or sleeping. All the times he's thought this could never happen, would never happen, and the many, many moments he thought he'd die unloved and unwanted and forgotten.

All worth it. Every single second…worth it.

For this. For her. For them together.

(His dearest wish, deepest desire, granted him here, at the end of all things.)

The way her hand curls over his bicep to invite him as close as he can ever be. The tiny kiss she presses, like a benediction, to his cheek as he shudders and tries not to shake apart. The sound of her breaths, the noises low in her throat, the gasp and the whimper she turns his name into, a lullaby she sings only for him. The trust they have one for another, shown here in their most intimate, most heated moments, when they both help each other find something so much better than the world ever wanted to give them.

The feel of her lips, sipping the tears from his cheeks (she knew they were there the whole time, and she knows what they mean, and she accepts them and makes them hers) as she holds him close and refuses to let him roll away, welcoming his weight as her own burden.

I love you, he thinks. But his wife is a woman of actions rather than words, and she hates feeling like she owes something she can never give back, so instead of saying them, he thinks them. And shows them. And proves them in every way he can.

This is his life now, and he will fight for it in every way he can (by getting up even when he doesn't feel he can; by struggling to sort reality from delusion no matter how exhausted he feels; by listening to her and believing her every time she says real). It'll take a lifetime for him to truly accept it, he knows, but for the first time, the thought isn't a daunting one.

"Don't go to sleep just yet," he murmurs with a lazy kiss to her neck. "I have to 'look at' you some more."

Her giggle is light and easy (and he knows she heard him, she understands what he's really saying).

I love you. I'll never leave you. I'm yours.

MJ pg. 51: "The tributes were necessary to the Games, too. Until they weren't," I say. "And then we were very disposable—right, Plutarch?"

It's the first snowfall that destroys the giddy dream Katniss has been hiding inside. The white powder coats the ground, just barely clinging to the yellowed grass, and suddenly she cannot breathe. Peeta's hand is burning hot wrapped around hers; she clings with everything she is and tries to focus the entirety of her being on him.

He blinks in surprise when she tugs them into a near run, and half-laughs as he tries to ask her what the rush is when she stops, just inside the treeline, and pushes him back against a tree.

"Peeta," she says (to remind herself of what she still has).

Her lips crash against his so hard she thinks she might bruise, but if so, these would be the most welcome badges of pain she's ever worn. She licks her way into his mouth and traces the ridges of his teeth, tastes the unsugared tea he drank for breakfast, sucks his tongue into her mouth and lets out a mewling (pleading) sound that has him gasping and shuddering, his arms closing around her so solidly she can't think of anything but this.

It's cold. She doesn't care. Her hand on his shoulder pulls him forward, and easy as that, she spins them, taking his place backed up against the tree, rough against her back and warm from Peeta's body heat.

"Peeta," she says again, a gasping pant that never fails to have him turning pliable and hungry for her.

His mouth is gentler against hers than she was to him, and for some reason, it makes Katniss impatient, anxious, nearly jittering with nervous energy. Panting his name again, she nips at his bottom lip and drags her hand down from his shoulder to his hip. Her grasping touch, the arch of her back as she pushes her body into his, it's enough to show him what she wants (what she needs).

His hips rock against hers, slowly, and then, as she tugs and pulls and begs, more urgently.

"Katniss," he groans into her ear as he traces the lobe with his tongue and then pulls back to devour her mouth.

White-hot brilliance explodes through her and Katniss lets out a soft cry (she can't imagine any snow surviving that sudden flashfire; it must all be melted away, yet another thing Peeta has saved her from). A starburst forms behind her eyes, so bright that when she manages to open her eyes, she sees the afterimage of it still playing across Peeta, his own eyes wide and glazed and shining as he watches her.

"Peeta," she says again, and she can smile again, and does (he loves to see her smile), and his whole body judders against her. His hair tickles her cheek when he drops his head to rest on her shoulder, panting and shaking all over. Katniss feels such an overwhelming surge of tenderness that she can't help the way she kisses his brow and pets his hair until they're both ready to walk on again.

"Are you okay?" he asks her (because he's Peeta and he never stops caring).

"I am now," she says.

And she is. She doesn't lie to him (they have a pact, she's promised to tell him what is real and he's promised to trust her even when the answers seem too good to be true). But it doesn't last long enough.

The next morning, there is more snow. Winter is well and truly upon them.

Which means it's been nearly a year.

She's lived a year without her sister.

She's survived the unsurvivable (she's happy, in this world turned desolate without Prim).

It's enough to send her flat to her back. Which is exactly what it does.

Katniss is aware only of her nightmares growing worse. Barely an hour passes in bed before she's thrashing and screaming and able to breathe only when Peeta wraps himself completely around her and vows not to let go. She thinks it's been one night, possibly two, or maybe three; it's hard to tell when she stares up at the ceiling and forgets to notice how the light arcs and grows and shrinks and fades.

Prim is gone. Gone in a bright flash of incendiary destruction, the snow falling from the sky to mix with rising ash that looked all too similar to its colder, wetter counterpart. Prim is gone—and so is Snow, so is Coin, so are the Games. But Katniss is still here, and how is that fair?

She should have died. She should have died in the first arena, just swallowed a few berries and been safe in the knowledge that Prim would live and flourish, Peeta would become a Victor, and District 12 would be well-fed for a year. Everything would have been better then. It's her fault that everything fell apart. Her fault that the whole fragile system crumbled under the weight of two Victors.

Dimly, in some small forgotten pocket of her mind, she's aware that Peeta is there with her. She sees the tiles of the bathroom occasionally, feels the flow of warm water around her, hears his voice soft and careful in her ears. Once or twice, she thinks she tastes a savory soup sliding down her throat; more often, she is aware of gulping thirstily at cold water held to her lips.

For a while, Katniss looks for the dark. Somewhere close and tiny, confined and hidden (like a cave; like the shelter of strong arms and stolid chest shutting the rest of the world away from her). She curls into a ball and rocks and remembers.

Prim and her cat. Prim and her flowers. Prim and her healing hands. Prim.

But in the dark, in the back of the closet, Peeta can't join her—not easily. Not without hurting his leg.

So Katniss stops hiding in the closet. Stops hunkering down in the bottom of the bathtub.

And then it occurs to her that Peeta must be tired, trekking up and down the stairs from the kitchen to her and back again. He shouldn't care about her. It's a waste of his good heart and everything beautiful he has to offer, that he gives his all to her, but Katniss has long since given up wishing him away (if she ever really did). It would be wrong of her to make more trouble for him.

Though it takes every bit of her energy, Katniss crawls her way downstairs. She thinks it's morning (the sunlight is bright and pale through the windows), but even if it were pitch-black, she'd be able to make her way to the rocking chair where she sat for months wasting away (waiting for Peeta).

Peeta exclaims something when he finds her (she thinks maybe he smiles), and soon sets himself up near her with his sketchpads and his papers and pencils. The sound of lead or graphite or charcoal against rough sketching paper fills her hazy mind, and eventually, a bit at a time, Katniss realizes that she's staring, entranced, at the image taking shape beneath Peeta's talented attention.

It's Prim. A young, beautiful girl with eyes undimmed by death or fear, smiling down at the goat in her arms.

"A happy memory," she rasps, scarcely able to recognize her own voice.

Peeta startles, but doesn't turn to look at her. Just reapplies himself to the picture. In a moment, the goat has a ribbon tied around her throat, a pretty bow that puts a happy tear in Prim's eye.

"The happiest you had," he finally says.

She remembers. Oh, of course the day memorialized in ink and paper—but more, she remembers that day, in the cave, beneath the sound of rain, Peeta's feverish chills warming the close interior, his eyes too-bright and fixed on her, asking for details, memorizing every particular so he could recreate it now, here, years later (fighting through venom and brainwashing and the harsh cruelties of life in Panem).

All so he could give it back to her.

"You made her happy," Peeta murmurs. "I probably didn't do it justice, but I know she was so happy with that goat you got her."

"It looks exactly like her," she reassures him. For the first time, she becomes aware of her own limbs, because it takes her more effort than she expects to reach out a hand and place it over Peeta's. "You brought her back to me."

Suddenly, Katniss longs for spring. Well, she usually longs for spring (for dandelions and green growing things and stocked woods and Peeta slinging bags of flour outside the bakery). But just then, with Peeta turning his hand to clasp hers so sweetly, she longs for the quiet days and long nights that lead to spring.

Because Peeta's here. He's with her (he is her spring). He keeps her warm through the cold months, and reminds her of spring even where there's several feet of snow outside, and reminds her that there is still good in the world (not Prim, maybe, but primrose bushes and happy memories and Peeta himself, healed and helped along by Prim all that time ago in another District).

"I want to write about her," she decides.

Peeta looks unsure, but he doesn't argue. She can feel his eyes intent on her, a focus that grounds her, anchoring her to this moment (without Prim, but with Peeta). In no time at all, she is settled at the low table, a stack of blank pages to her right, a pen in her hand, and the sketch of Prim propped up just in front of her.

How many times has she tried to start this entry into their memory book? How many evenings has she dared herself to write down her sister's name—and keep writing, and writing, and writing, until everything worth remembering about Prim (everything) is put down for posterity?

So many times, but this is the very first time that she gets her sister's name down. Her birthdate. Her physical qualities. And then, pouring from her pen like blood from an open wound, more and more and more, filling page after page after page.

Peeta is silent (as silent as he can be, with his heavy footsteps and loud love) beside her. Hot cups of tea materialize at her elbow, warm cheese buns waft their tantalizing smell from in front of her, a blanket appears around her shoulders…and still Katniss writes. These signs of Peeta's love bolster her flagging resolve, strengthen her waning energy, and remind her why she needs to grieve this loss.

She could never call Prim or anything about her poison, but somehow, when finally she pries the pen from her cramped and aching fingers, Katniss feels light and hollowed out, lanced of a toxin that has been slowly eating away at her (not Prim, just the death's grip Katniss kept over that last memory of her: staring, saying her name, and then incinerating in a single burst of flame).

"It's done," she says.

It never will be, not really. She thinks she'll always be able to think of something else that needs adding, some additional memory that slipped away from her only to return in a spare moment. But for now, with a stack of blackened pages before her, Katniss thinks that Prim's eulogy has finally been spoken.

"Should I add it to the book?" Peeta asks. There's a slur to his words, a drowsiness to his eyes, that makes her think he'd dozed beside her, but he's awake enough as he retrieves the memory book—reams of paper all sewn together and sealed with salt water.

Katniss watches him take her new pages (his touch nearly reverent) and begin punching holes through the side with a strong needle. His eyes are narrowed on his task, and the muscles in his arms and chest work as he sews first these few pages into the others, then the next, and the next, until it's one thick book before them.

She thinks of the entries with his family. His mother, cruel and aloof and forever a mystery he'll never be able to solve. His father, loved and loving and maybe even more of a mystery in his silence. His two brothers, both older, both darker, heavier versions of him, all their moments together consigned to the past.

She thinks of Finnick (and Annie and the baby) and all the other Victors they lost, not just from the Quarter Quell, but from all the Games. All the tributes, all the families left behind, the futures they never saw, never realized.

She thinks of Mitchell and Mesala and the Leegs and Jackson and Castor and Boggs. Of that old man in District 11's square. Bonnie and Twill. Mayor Underhill and Madge and Delly's parents and everyone else who lost their lives.

But something is different, in some way she almost can't pinpoint. She thinks it's the lack of guilt crushing her. Usually, just the mere thought of all these losses are enough to flatten her beneath the mountain of responsibility. But now, for the first time, Katniss thinks of all these people she's known, all those lives cut short—and she thinks of Snow.

Snow, and Coin, and Crane and all the others who thought their own agendas were more important than anyone else's lives. To them, each person was nothing more than a tally-mark, a game piece, collateral they never bothered to calculate.

In Snow's perfect world, tributes were worth only their deaths, and Victors were worth nothing more than the price on their heads.

But Snow's gone, and the Victors aren't just rotting away in luxurious homes. Now, Annie has a newborn son she loves enough to fight to be present for. Johanna seeks purpose and usefulness in every place she goes. Beetee turns his mental energies to rebuilding and refining rather than inciting and destroying. Even Enobaria has allowed her teeth to be sanded down, back to normal, while Haymitch…Haymitch remembers with them (and lives, each day, rather than giving into the final end at the bottom of the last bottle).

And Peeta loves her.

And she loves him.

"Peeta," she says. She places her hands over his, a stack of fingers resting atop their memory book. "I love you."

His breath catches in his throat (but he doesn't look surprised, a comfort to the tiny bud of insecurity within her).

"Real," she says anyway, because somehow, someway, that word has been irreversibly entwined and tangled up with her love for Peeta.

"I know," he says. "And I love you too."

"Always?" she asks.

His smile is slow and sweet and soft. "Always," he says.

Katniss is afraid she'll cry, but she doesn't. Instead, she smiles. A bright, happy thing she wouldn't recognize if she were to look into a mirror. Not that she plans on looking away from Peeta anytime soon (or ever again).

Peeta hesitates, takes a breath, then leans his shoulder against hers and says, "Will you stay with me now?"

The old Katniss might have played to ignorance, misunderstanding (she's been living in his house for half a year now), but this bolder, stronger Katniss tilts her neck and kisses his cheek.

"Yes," she says. "As long as I can."

He sags against her, letting her bear his weight as the shadows under his eyes deepen. "I missed you," he breathes.

"I'm here," she says, and she turns, tugs her hands free of his so she can pull him up onto the couch, over her, guiding his head down to her chest. "It's okay. I'm here now. I'll watch over you now, okay? I'm here. I'm here, Peeta."

His body trembles a bit against hers, a release of pressure she doesn't begrudge him, and then he drapes one of his arms low over her waist and the other up where his hand can tangle in her hair. His breaths are hot and moist against her throat as they slow and deepen into sleep.

"I'm here," she whispers (a promise to follow him into his dreams, a guard against the nightmares). "I'm not leaving. I'm never leaving you again."

She pets his hair and keeps a lookout for them both, and kisses him awake from a dreamless sleep under the glow of rousing sunlight.

MJ pg. 100: "And if we burn, you burn with us!"

Peeta is especially clingy the next week or two. While once, younger and sterner (and brittle), she might have chafed at the way he constantly checks that she's near, this newer, older (wiser) Katniss steps louder so he can hear her, touches him often so he can feel her, stays close even when he doesn't protest her moving away. If he were the one to suddenly stop talking, stop getting out of bed, stop responding for nearly two weeks, she'd need a bit of reassurance too.

But Peeta's always been better about letting her go than she's been for him, so soon enough, he only smiles when she mentions heading into town to trade for some few things (sweaters that will actually fit him; his shoulders are growing broader, his frame filling out from that worrying thinness, and he needs to be warm), and waves her out the door, intent on decorating a few cakes for some couples planning their toastings.

Though it makes her cheeks flush at the domesticity of it, Katniss delays long enough to kiss him goodbye. And why not? Sure, she never once thought this would be her life, but did she really guess anything that happened to her? She's always, it seems, been caught in the grip of bigger forces than she can comprehend, her life forever used as a game piece, but Peeta? Well, she chooses him.

She chooses him because he chose her first.

The walk to town is solitary, the only sound that of her boots crunching through the layers of packed snow. There's nothing to distract Katniss from this mundane revelation.

Would she have ever loved Peeta if he hadn't first loved her?

It's the bread that made her notice him, and while he's kind, she knows now that he threw that bread because he already cared for her (had for years). It's the bruise he took for her, the way his eyes sought hers in that schoolyard, that drew her attention to the dandelion. And even then, for years, she did nothing. The reaping brought her back to mind (made her desperate that she find some way to ensure he didn't die by her hands), but it was him that brought them together, first just in little things—like helping a passed out Haymitch or waving hand in hand to the crowd—but then with his jaw-dropping confession on Caesar's stage.

His quiet support during their training.

His words on the rooftop.

The shake of his head as the countdown played and she looked toward the cornucopia.

And still, she would have killed him (memory of the sound of that tracker jacker hive falling, dropping so close to Peeta, now makes her shudder and nearly vomit, at this idea that she's the first one who poisoned him with that reality-destroying venom).

Every time Katniss would have given up on Peeta, he did something else to show that he valued her life over his own. And to Katniss, Seam-born and bred, there was no faster way to ensure she also, in return, valued his life over her own.

But that isn't the only reason she loves him.

Katniss scoffs and kicks a clump of snow down the road, abruptly angry with herself. She's not that selfish, is she? To only care because he first did?

"Hey, girl," Greasy Sae greets her. She's wrapped in shawls, a blanket on her lap, and Katniss hastily closes the door behind her. "Bring anything good?"

"A rabbit."

It's an experiment, really. Katniss left early one morning (when the pull of her bed and memories of fire grew too tempting) and ventured into the woods alone, with her bow. She still hasn't felt the same peace as before, but she also didn't have a panic attack taking down the white rabbit, so maybe that counts as some kind of healing. (Maybe the reason she doesn't feel the need, the drive, the peace, to hunt is because it's no longer the difference between life and death for anyone she loves.)

"Good size," Sae says approvingly. "That boy of yours didn't want him for a stew?"

"He's not a boy," Katniss grits through her teeth.

Sae's wrinkled brows rise. "Is that so? You never minded before."

Katniss looks away, staring longingly back at the door she just came through. "You want the rabbit or not?"

"I'll give you one sweater for it, and another for one you'll agree to bring me later."

It's a good deal and she agrees to it quickly. Sae sets aside her knitting needles and rises, slowly, to retrieve the sweaters.

"A word of advice, too, for free," she says as she hands them over. "You can never tell someone enough what they mean to you."

When Katniss meets the old woman's eyes, she sees a wealth of wisdom and a lifetime of experience looking back at her. Greasy Sae's lost her husband, her children, her extended family, everyone but a single granddaughter who will never be able to take care of her in her old age—and a District on top of that. Next to her, Katniss feels a little like the child she is—but also the woman she's become. A survivor. A Victor. A wife. A whole person, despite her tragedies, with a life of potential still waiting in front of her.

"There's a squirrel there too," is all she says she hands over the wrapped meat, and she escapes out the door before Sae can protest.

The air is icy in her mouth, cold in her lungs, and Katniss follows the trails of vapor rising in front of her to a few other storefronts along the square. A cobbler, a couple food kiosks, a general merchandise store, the place where people put in orders for the train shipments—and a blank space just in the middle.

"It's for Peeta," Thom says from behind her. "When he's ready."

"A bakery?" she asks, startled.

Thom smiles down at her. "Of course. Wouldn't quite be District 12 without a Mellark's Bakery, now would it?"

"Have…" Katniss swallows. "Have you told him?"

"I don't want to pressure him. Not enough people here yet to need more than what he bakes in his own kitchen, and he's young yet. But one day…"

"You'll keep saving it?" she checks.

"Yeah. We all agreed."

She narrows her eyes. "Who's 'we'?"

Thom tilts his head, resembling some kind of long-legged quizzical bird. "Everyone," he says simply.

It's an even more silent (more thoughtful) walk home than to town. Katniss keeps her gamebag with her few purchases slung over her shoulder and steps lightly over snow rather than the places ice has formed, but most of her mind is bent toward Peeta.

Sure, it was the bread that made her notice him (the bakery that the town first knew him by), but it's who he is that kept her always keeping tabs on him, checking on him, talking to him, following him up to the rooftop, urging her to seek him out in the arena, prompting her to make deals for his survival above hers in the Quarter Quell, shutting down entirely when he was taken. (It's everything he's done and every sacrifice he's made, televised for all to see, that has all of Twelve quietly rooting for his recovery.)

A cloud of smoke escapes the kitchen when Katniss pulls open the backdoor and walks into the kitchen. Before she can start to panic, she sees Peeta bent over his stove, muttering fiercely to himself as he retrieves a cookie sheet filled with tiny blackened coals.

"What happened?" she asks, and has to bite back a smile at the sight of him blinking up at her, cheeks red and eyes wide.

"A new recipe I was trying." Peeta looks down at the pan dolefully. "I burned them."

An instinctual shudder works its way down Katniss's spine (If we burn, you burn with us! her voice echoes through her mind's inner corners).

"What were they?" she asks. She sets her gamebag down in the corner and moves forward to prop the window open. Cold air rushes in, immediately lessening the smell of smoke.

"A mistake," Peeta says shortly, and he kicks open the trashcan and begins scraping the charred cookies off the pan with short, irritated movements.

"Peeta," she says slowly.

His shoulders tighten. "I'll make something else," he says without looking at her. "Something I know how to make. How about cheese buns? They're your favorite anyway. I should have just stuck to those."

Katniss takes an extra moment to study him. Even with his back mostly turned to her, his face in profile, she can tell that he's tense. Uncharacteristically on edge. But he was smiling this morning (when she left him).

(He's always been so good about letting go of her.)

"I like anything," she finally says, gliding forward soundlessly until she can wrap her arms around him from behind. He stiffens, then melts, his jerky motions ceasing. Slowly, Katniss takes the pan from him and sets it aside, then clasps her hands at his waist and leans her cheek against his spine. "Why did you decide on something new?"

"I thought you might be getting tired of the same old things."

"I'm not that picky," she says wryly.

His whole body turns rigid. "I know."

She's missing something. Katniss can all but see Haymitch giving her that look of his (as if he's never seen anything as dumb as her), can all but hear him calling her sweetheart and saying something that makes it all come clear.

But what?

"Should I not have gone into town?" she asks.

Peeta jerks and pulls away from her. Grabbing a washcloth, he attacks the stove as if it's personally offended him. "You can go wherever you want," he says. "I'm not stopping you. I'd never stop you. I hope you know that."

Katniss narrows her eyes. "There's a difference between stopping me and not wanting me to do something."

"You can do whatever you want."

A tangle of impatience rises up her throat. "I don't want to do whatever I want," she says, a bit sterner than she intended. "I want to do what we both want."

Peeta's scrubbing slows. "I want you to be happy."

"Peeta," she says. Slowly, softly, she steps up to him and lays her hand over his, the rag wet beneath them. "Please. You know I'm not good at figuring these things out."

"There's nothing to figure out." Still, he avoids her eyes. "I just…I wanted to make you something new. Something different. Maybe a bit more exciting. And I ruined it." He forces a smile so fake it wouldn't have passed even with all of Caesar's stagelights on them. "It doesn't matter. Recipes don't always turn out."

"What was it?" she asks again.

"Just some apple and cheese tarts. Not goat cheese," he adds hastily. "A different type of tart."

Katniss smiles through the pain. "That does sound good."

His brow tightens as he looks down at their joined hands. "Yeah."

If we burn, you burn with us!

The words, so recently called up, echo again through the kitchen.

Katniss looks down at their hands too: the matching burn scars. The places where they were both licked by the same flames. (Prim exploded, and Katniss caught on fire, and Peeta caught her up and suffered the sear of the inferno voluntarily.)

Suddenly, she wonders if her words, that moment (that challenge, that dare, that grief-stricken rage) is when Snow decided he knew how to destroy her. Had they already started dosing Peeta with the venom? Or did they start then? How did Snow know that destroying Peeta would destroy her?

How does the whole world know that when she's only just so recently realized it for herself?

"I left," she says slowly. "When it snowed, I left."

Peeta goes completely still.

"You were alone here. I mean, I was here, but…but I wasn't here. And then today I left and you were alone again."

"Our toasting was three months ago," he blurts. When she blinks up at him, he flushes and shrugs uncomfortably. "Three months ago today."

"Oh," is all she can manage.

"I just…" Peeta takes the pan to the sink (their hands fall away from one another, and this is always when things go wrong) and plunges it into soapy water. "Never mind. It's stupid."

"I got you something," she says (she didn't assign the day any special significance, hasn't been counting days with him, but she does think of him, always).

He looks confused as he turns back to her. "You…"

Hastily, Katniss rifles through her gamebag and pulls out the two sweaters Sae made for him. "I hope they fit you better," she says, awkward and unsure and earnest (everything she's always been around him, but he says it works for him and she can only hope that's still true).

With dried hands, he strokes the softness of the wool. She ordered it on one of the trains, and made sure it was sent to Sae so he wouldn't see it, and she doesn't know how to knit herself, but she can hunt, and trade (and maybe she can hunt again so long as the end result is something good for him).

"I love it," he says, and then he frowns, nearly distraught. "But now I don't have anything for you. I can make some cheese buns—they'll be ready in an hour—but, no, you have those almost every day, you need something more—"

"I need you," she says. And steps close. And places her hands on his shoulders. (And hopes he believes her.) "Peeta, you're the only thing I need. You could burn all the tarts and cheese buns and I'd eat them anyway."

The sweater is crushed between their bodies, the only thing that keeps them (even a finger's width) apart. His hand spans her hip and pulls her close.

"You wouldn't get tired of them?" he asks, a catch to his voice that has her heart lurching toward him.

Katniss sets the sweater on the counter and winds her arms around his shoulders. "I'd eat them every day," she promises.

A tiny sigh escapes him and he lets his brow fall, gently, against hers. "I'm sorry, Katniss. I don't know why I…"

She kisses him. A soft, short kiss that steals his words from him (she's the only one, she thinks, that has ever been able to keep him from spinning endless webs with that silver tongue of his; though stops is the wrong word, maybe; she transforms the ways he spins golden dreams into reality).

"Peeta," she says (refuses to let her shyness rule this moment). "I love you. I…I know I don't say it often and I'll work on that, I promise, but I do—"

"You don't have to." He kisses her too, the same kind of kiss (it settles the ache in her heart, the urge to move thrumming beneath her skin, the restlessness that afflicts her so often; he's always been able to do this, make her comfortable in her own skin, make her rest and at peace). "I promise. You really don't have to."

"But you deserve to hear—"

"My parents said they loved me all the time." His eyes dart away before he forces them back to her. His arms are tight around her, his fingertips pressing into her back. "Even my mother. They said it, but it was just habit. Like rote words they said because everyone expected them to say it. Say it, but not show it."

Katniss makes a tiny, unhappy noise, and tries to crawl inside Peeta's skin. She's never been much of a healer, but she'd learn if it meant she could tend his broken, bruised heart.

"I think it's more important to live your love," he says. "And you do that, Katniss. You do that with every breath you take. I'm sorry I forget that sometimes."

"Don't be sorry. You never stop loving me, even when I'm unlovable."

He'd argue with her, she knows that, so she curtails whatever words are brewing inside him by pressing her lips gently over his. A press, and then a retreat. Another press, a sip as she sucks at his lower lip, then pulls away, only to come back and taste his upper lip this time. This time, when she makes to pull away, he groans and cradles her cheek in his hand and slants his mouth over hers completely.

The stove radiates warm air, the window lets in cold air, and situated just between them, Katniss clings to Peeta with everything she is. He hoists her up against him, so insistent and heated that she wraps her legs around his waist (keens at this new feeling) and lets him walk her back to the counter. Her head presses back against the cabinet when his lips drag from her mouth to her throat, hot against her flesh but leaving behind cool patches that tingle in the draft from the window.

Her skin erupts with goosebumps when he pushes her coat off and pulls her shirt up over her head. Katniss tears his own shirt getting it off him, then plasters herself to his warmth, her hands urgent and restless as she maps the trails of cold and hot on his flesh.

Abruptly, Peeta lifts his head and kisses her, so deep and thorough and long that she inhales air greedily through her nose just to ensure he doesn't pull away from her. She scoots to the edge of the counter, angling down into him, and smiles fiercely at the sudden sound that escapes him in response. She swallows it down greedily, then lets out her own cry at the feel of his hands tracing the contours of her body, starting at her thighs and moving up all the way to her chin, where he tilts her face for a sweeter kiss before pulling back to rid them both of their last bits of clothing.

Katniss shivers at his absence, but shudders a whole-body shudder at his return to her. Her legs wind around his waist, marrying him to her, and her hands draw patterns through his hair and down his neck and shoulders, while his brand molten heat through her hips, her chest, her thighs. He's the one who seems hungry for new tastes, his tongue licking at her lips, her throat, her breasts, her ear, her fingers as he pulls it free of his hair and clasps his hand with hers.

It's a new kind of burning. A different kind, one Snow would never have understood and Coin would have disdained and even Katniss herself didn't know to desire. But her long-ago cry is still true enough: his flesh burns against hers, and he where he burns, he makes her burn too. Her every nerve ending is alight, every inch of her skin needing his touch. She cannot stop wanting him, cannot stop clinging to him and craving him and glutting herself on him—and she knows to her very last cell that he is the same. The burning spreads equally between them both (no matter what came first, the song or the bread, the confession or the berries, the volunteering or the reaping, the wounded heart or the poisoned absence: this thing between them is entirely equal, entirely mutual), and can be alleviated only by the other.

In her arms, Peeta becomes a phoenix, and in his embrace, she becomes a sun, and together they rise. Together, they conquer.

"Real," she whispers, and together, they fall all to pieces and then are remade for this new world.