Know That Your Place Is With Me (Part 1)

Katniss and Peeta live in a Panem that classifies its citizens by Castes, forever dividing people from each other. But the heart knows no boundaries.

The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along.

from The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

The only thing that entered Peeta's awareness as he lay prone on the homemade mattress was the blistering heat of the hearth. Normally, it would have been a welcome respite from the snow and frost that covered the land, were it not for the throbbing pain of his flogged back. Katniss had covered him with a snow coat but the icy coolness that had momentarily relieved the all-encompassing, boiling pain had melted too soon, leaving him in a fog of suffering again.

At first, he'd felt courageous as they tied him to the pole in the square. Katniss' screams punctuated the space between blows until, by the 10th lash, Peeta's own voice had become hoarse from his cries and he'd become dizzy from the pain. By the 15th, he was delirious and no longer heard anything except the blood rushing to his head. In all, he had taken twenty lashes.

Katniss could barely handle his dead weight when he was untied and left to collapse unceremoniously to the ground. The crowd in District 12 was silent as she tried to drag him from the pole but Peeta was too heavy. Commander Thread did not give Peeta's moaning, semiconscious form a second glance, and he had even less attention to spare the Untouchable, who sobbed hysterically next to him. He simply pronounced his sentence succinctly, without compassion and through the confusion inflicted by his flogging, Peeta heard his and Katniss' life as they knew it come to an end:

"For the crime of Blood Contamination from the illicit union of this Merchant with an Untouchable, we hereby condemn them both to the severest penalty under the law. Henceforth, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark will be banished from Panem. Let no man, from this day forward, acknowledge their existence. Let no man lend them assistance. Let their names be erased from our ledgers for all of eternity."

Peeta watched Katniss' face became hard with grief and anger. She appeared to search the crowd, perhaps for her mother whose wail had pierced the air or her sister's anguished face. One by one, everyone in the crowd turned their backs to them in a final, symbolic gesture, severing their bonds from the community. Peeta's own mother was the first to turn away, a look of fierce disgust on her face. His brothers followed suit while his father lingered until he was one of the few who still refused until the last moment to turn their backs on them.

Gale Hawthorne, Katniss' hunting partner and best friend, clenched his hands with a face full of fury to rival Katniss' own and made to come towards them, but Katniss put her hands up and whispered "No!", a sound that carried across the silent open square like a gunshot. He would be killed on the spot if he helped them. Instead she muttered "Protect them," to which he gave a final nod before turning away as well.

Katniss turned her stricken face towards Peeta's and ran her hands through his damp hair. In that moment, he understood regret. He didn't regret loving her - he'd do it all over again, a thousand times through a thousand lives, for all of eternity. No, he regretted that because of him, she would be separated forever from everyone she fought to protect. Peeta was sure that had he known things would end up this way, he would not have insisted on being with her and would have simply continued to love her from afar.

XXXXX

1 year earlier

Peeta hadn't always known who Katniss was. He hadn't even known her name. The first time he saw her, they were both eleven years old. She was a slight, starving girl rummaging through the trash bins outside the bakery. The day was an angry as well as stormy one, for his mother had done the accounts and found they would just barely have something left over for themselves after paying the heavy taxes the Capitol imposed on its Merchant class.

Theirs was a stratified society - the Primes lived in the Capitol and were considered the pure bloods of Panem, worthy of ruling the remaining twelve Districts. The Capitol maintained their opulent standard of living through tithes that were paid each year - whether in money or in the materials each District produced. In the case of District 12, this was coal.

The Logos were the Public Servants - teachers, administrators and Peacekeepers. Their privileges were many but their tithes were steep - they turned their children over to institutes to be trained in the profession of their families. The children of Peacekeepers were removed from their families at the age of 7 to train in District 2's military academies and become the upholders of the Capitol's laws.

Peeta's family belonged to the Merchant class. They were the bakers, butchers, cobblers, seamstresses and so on. They maintained the commercial activities of the districts and provided the manufactured goods that were then sold either to the Capitol or to the citizens of their home districts. Their tithe was a flat tax that they paid each month, based on their income. In the case of the Mellarks, if they did not meet their monthly sales quota, between the tithes and expenditures required to run the bakery, they could be left with very little for their own maintenance.

Below the Merchants were the Laborers, the class that worked the mines, fields and factories. Their lot was harsh and impoverished but they still had some status in the community. Their offering was their labor and the production quota for each month in their respective areas. Coal miners produced coal in exchange for enough to feed their families, keeping them just barely out of starvation.

But the worst off were the Untouchables. They were the invisible members of society: the orphans and widows, infirmed and handicapped, aged Avoxes who were no longer useful to their owners. In short, they were the people no one wanted to see. They survived through self-sustenance: small gardens and domesticated animals. They engaged in lowly services. Or they begged. The children of the Untouchables even had their own small schools but they learned very little.

The Untouchables lived in the most impoverished part of the laborer quarter called the Seam. This section of the district bordered the fences leading to the Wild Lands beyond, where no man ventured for fear of the creatures that were rumored to live there. In fact, there were elaborate superstitions and horror stories about the fate of those who dared violate the boundaries of the community. On the border between civilization and the untamed, those unwanted people were easy to ignore.

Was it no wonder then that, until the stormy, thunder-filled day, Peeta had never noticed the grey-eyed girl who collapsed beneath the apple tree?

But that day he had. It was as if all the fight had gone out of her, especially after his mother had run her off from their garbage bins, shouting obscenities about Seam filth and defiled Untouchables. He watched the girl scurry away, crossing the yard in front of the bakery, before she crumpled to the ground. Her exhaustion was so absolute, Peeta felt the heaviness weigh down his very soul.

At that moment, he heard the bell from the oven timer go off but instead of leaping to attention to pull the berry and nut loaves from the burning maw of heat, he let them go. After several minutes his mother barrelled down towards him, her rage flaring above the smell of the burning bread. She pulled the loaves out of the oven and, with her heated hand, slapped Peeta across the face.

"You beast!" she shouted, her flat, blue eyes darkening in anger. "Feed it to the pigs, you stupid creature. Why not? No decent person will buy burnt bread!"

Peeta took his blow silently - he knew how to take a beating - and gathered up the burnt loaves in his arms. Making his way to the pig pen, he stopped at the fence, tearing off pieces of the bread as his mother watched him like a gargoyle. When the front bakery bell rang and his mother disappeared to help a customer, he surreptitiously searched for the girl again. The rain was falling mercilessly now, and though he was covered by the awning above the pen, she was exposed to the elements, the wind and water howling over her small body. She looked up at him and the hollow emptiness of her eyes that gripped him, penetrating to the depths of his soul, moving past his compassion and empathy and rooting itself in the very center of his existence. They were two mournful crystals that affixed themselves to the pendant of his heart and, instead of tossing the bread to the snorting brutes, Peeta launched them with almost perfect precision towards that suddenly lovely girl. Her eyes widened in shock, then softened, before she stuffed the loaves in her oversized shirt as he moved towards the bakery without a backward glance.

XXXXX

He saw her again the very next day, standing at the edge of the field beyond the bakery in the late afternoon. School had let out some hours ago and Peeta had already begun his shift. He was taken aback at seeing her twice in so many days, when he had never been aware of her existence before. He stopped, for the coincidence of her apparition was too strong to ignore.

Her incredibly clear, grey eyes appeared to traverse his features, lingering over the swollen cheek where his mother's blow had landed. She furrowed her brow before moving her eyes past him to stare at some indiscriminate point behind Peeta. The intensity of her gaze was so powerful, he felt compelled to follow her line of sight.

Turning about, all that he could see was the ground, with its patches of vegetation growing up between the rocks and a lonely dandelion, which stood turgid and proud in the midst of that wasteland of blooming grasses. Peeta was confused and turned back to the girl, as if her eyes could solve the mystery but when he searched the spot where she stood before, he found it empty. Like the wind, Katniss had disappeared.

XXXXX

After several months, Peeta began to see Katniss more frequently in town. She came around, accompanied by an older Seam boy who was so similar in appearance to Katniss that Peeta thought they might be related. They had the same olive skin, straight black hair and grey eyes. They were careful to avoid Peacekeepers as they went to the poorer homes in the Merchant quarter to trade squirrels and other wild game. In a society where even speaking to an Untouchable was considered contaminating, the idea of buying food caught from those people would have been considered an abomination. However, this detail of Katniss and her friend's caste did not deter Peeta's father and others from trading with them for the fresh meat they offered. Hunger was the great equalizer.

When she came to the door of the bakery, Peeta sometimes let her in and that's how he first learned that her full name was Katniss Everdeen, which he sometimes said to himself, enjoying the feel of those syllables on his tongue. As the years passed and they both became older, her face changed, at first dramatically and then more subtly as she grew into her femininity. She was always brisk and business-like during her trades, as if she didn't remember that he was the one who had tossed her the bread on that blustery, rainy day so long ago.

At first, Peeta took in stride the fact that they did not communicate. She was an Untouchable, after all, and in Panem, they were simply ignored altogether. It was her position in society that silenced his tongue. But that soon turned into intimidation, admiration and then an unnamed anxiety that caused his stomach to curl in on itself, the blood rushing through his body with the force of a detonation. He watched the alleyways between the shops to follow her progress as she made her way from one trade to the next. In all that time, they never said more than hello or goodbye to each other, though a repository of words began to build inside of Peeta, all the things he imagined he would say to her, each word piling up on top of the other like snow falling on an ice-laden roof.

Peeta finally had his chance when they were both eighteen. He'd finished his formal schooling by then and was now working full-time in his parent's bakery. It happened on his return from a bread delivery to the Mining office, which bordered directly with the Seam. That is when he saw a figure moving quietly through the vegetation along the fence outside of the District. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was Katniss herself. Peeta carefully watched in shock as Katniss made her way down towards the sloping foot of a green meadow, near to which the fence seemed to be misshapen.

Peeta's heart pounded. It had never occurred to him that she actually left the District and entered the Wild Lands to hunt the meat she traded. The legends told about them were terrifying - bands of giant wolves that would tear a grown man apart in a matter of seconds, mountain lions as large as tanks, birds that clawed their victims slowly to death. He could not fathom Katniss venturing into that milieu of nightmarish creatures. As he tried to remain inconspicuous so he could continue to watch her, he caught sight of the tell-tale white uniforms of two Peacekeepers approaching the meadow. They spoke quietly between them so they did not quite catch sight of Katniss making her way unawares towards the opening of the fence.

Peeta felt his heart race with terror. If Katniss was caught outside of the fence, she would be punished severely. It was considered a serious offense to leave the District, even for an Untouchable. He had to move quickly and, without thinking too deeply about his plan, gave a loud cry as if he had suddenly been hurt.

"Oh, ow!" he howled in agony.

The two Peacekeepers looked up from their conversation and approached where Peeta was sitting on the ground, holding his leg in what he felt was a rather good approximation of pain. He hadn't thought through the precise explanation so he said the first thing that came to mind.

"I think a snake bit me!" he wailed, showing them the offending leg.

One of the Peacekeepers, a red-head that Peeta recognized as Darius, bent down to look at his leg. "Snakes don't usually come out in the winter and I don't see any puncture wounds. Are you sure?" he asked skeptically.

Peeta took a glance past Darius' shoulder and saw Katniss frozen in the middle of the trees. As quietly as possible, she slipped beneath the opening beneath the fence.

Breathing with relief, Peeta looked at the Peacekeepers with a sheepish expression. "Sorry guys, I think it was just a shin splint. It hurt like hell!"

He still continued to study Peeta's leg while his companion Peacekeeper muttered angrily to himself. Satisfied with his examination, Darius said "Well, stretch it out and go on home. You shouldn't be in this part of town anyway."

Peeta nodded, glancing quickly at the woods beyond the fence and was relieved to see that Katniss was no longer there.

XXXXX

Several days passed during which Peeta obsessed over the idea of Katniss hunting in the forest. He had dreams of her doing battle with those fabled creatures until it occurred to him that they just might not be real. It also occurred to him that there were only two people in all of District 12 who could actually confirm this, for Gale was likely not only her trading partner, but likely her hunting partner as well. This realization twisted his stomach - maybe they were a couple?

Like the quickly-descending mists so typical of the mountains where they lived, Katniss appeared at the back door of the bakery, breaking Peeta's revery. She wore her hair in what he now considered her signature braid, her leather jacket shiny in places from being worn so often. Her button-down brown shirt was worn at the collars and cuffs and her pants were at least two sizes too large - held up by a man's belt. Yet her face was as clear as a spring morning, the fresh, crisp air of the forest emanating from her body, filling the yeasty air of the back room with the intoxicating smell of pine cones and acorns.

"I have two squirrels and a quail today," she said without preamble, though her voice was less steady than usual.

"That's a lot. A loaf of sourdough sound fair?" he asked.

She lifted her bright, grey eyes to his face and he was taken aback by the penetrating gaze, the way it bore down into him like two shiny pearls of light. If the utter perfection of her eyes confounded him, what she said next disarmed him completely. "Nothing. I don't want anything in exchange for the game."

Peeta furrowed his eyes as he processed her words. "Nothing?"

She placed the game directly on the counter. It was inside a game bag tied with a piece of orange ribbon. The tie itself was adorned with an evergreen bough whose needle tips appeared to have a dusting of powdery-white frost.

"I...to thank you...for yesterday…" she stuttered, shifting uncomfortably on her feet.

Katniss had left him speechless. She had never spoken so much to him in all the time she'd come to trade and her voice sounded liked warmed honey - husky and yet unmistakably feminine. Her words hung in the air, demanding attention and he finally shook himself from his stupor to respond, "You don't need to thank me."

"I do!" Katniss said abruptly. "I'm no one that you should care about what happens to me. You shouldn't even be speaking to me!" She pushed the bag further towards him. "The bough - it's from a special tree. If you ...wrap it and place it in a drawer, it will leave a nice smell...on your clothes." With that, she turned around and slipped out the door before he even had the presence of mind to try to stop her. Stealthily, like a cat, she moved through the alleyways of the buildings until she had disappeared.

Setting the meat in the cooler, Peeta went swiftly upstairs to his bedroom. He promptly wrapped the bough as she had instructed and placed it inside the drawer where he kept his pajamas. That night he slept with the smell of Katniss on his skin and a powerful longing for her blossomed within him, a longing that began to invade his every dream.

XXXXX

Katniss' next several visits were unremarkable. She came. She presented her catch. She negotiated with his father for bread and left as quietly as she came. Outside an occasional glance in Peeta's general direction, she gave no indication that she even acknowledged his existence. Meanwhile, he had become fixated on the small tidbits of information he'd collected about her - her dark, braided hair that always lay over her left shoulder, the worn leather of the too-large men's jacket, her jagged fingernails often caked with dried blood, the way she had of standing so still, she seemed to merge into the background with the furniture and wallpaper; the smell of spring that would now always remind him of her.

He found himself wandering the edge of the Seam over the course of the following week, a place no one of his caste ever visited for any reason. In particular, he would have no cause to visit the green meadow with the fence at the foot of the slope, no reason to linger near the bent opening of the metal meant to keep humans in and wild animals out. But he did so in the hopes of seeing her again.

Each day, every day, at times that varied with his instinct, his mood and the number of people he had to avoid, he went to where he thought he might find her until one day, when he had almost tired of waiting and was ready to turn back, he finally saw Katniss. Her hunting bag swung heavily from her shoulder and Peeta supposed it must have been a good hunting day.

Peeta had not considered what he should do if he did come upon her, nor did he have much time to devise a plan, for when she slipped under the fence, she caught sight of him right away and froze in place. Her eyes went wide with terror and her body became very still. Peeta had no idea what he should do as he ran his hands through his thick, ashy blond hair to calm his nerves.

"I...the evergreen branch. I've...never smelled anything like it," he stammered.

Katniss stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, her body almost leaning as if she would take off at any moment and disappear into the woods again. After several uncomfortable minutes, she answered, "White fir."

"White fir?" Peeta asked, puzzled.

"The tree. My father called it a White Fir tree. It smells for weeks." She relaxed her stance though her eyes still held a residual wariness.

Peeta smiled. "Well, I wanted to tell you that it is the most amazing thing I've ever smelled." He stepped closer to her. "It reminds me of you."

Katniss's eyes narrowed as she visibly processed his words. "You should not speak to me."

"But I want to."

"What you want doesn't matter. It's the law," she said, her voice hard.

"If I didn't live in this place…" he started but Katniss cut him off quickly.

"But you do."

"If I didn't live in this place…" Peeta repeated patiently, "I would be your friend."

Katniss studied him further, taking in his appearance. Peeta knew what he looked like to others - he was of medium height, stocky from lifting bags of sugar, with ashy blond hair that fell in waves over his forehead and became light blond in the summer sun. And his eyes were a deep blue, a trait he inherited from Nanna Mellark, eyes no one else in his family possessed. He wondered at that moment what he might look like to Katniss.

"I can't afford to take the risks you take. I have...my mother and sister. They depend on me."

Peeta nodded and spoke to her in his gentlest voice. "I understand. I just feel like...we're connected somehow. Don't you think?"

Katniss looked at him for a few more seconds and, without any further discussion, turned on her heel to walk swiftly down the path. Peeta's resolve withered somewhat at her abrupt departure and he could do nothing more than stare after her retreating form.

XXXXX

Peeta was persistent in waiting for her for an entire week. If he had asked himself why, he would have given himself the same answer he gave her - that they were connected. He had very few strong bonds with anyone, though he was affable and had many friends. He had his family but there was so much conflict at home, he always felt himself on one side or the other of a battle line. It was not an environment in which such feelings as solidarity and fealty could grow. He felt himself allied with this girl in a way he was not to others in his life.

So he waited again, every single day before and after his shift until she appeared again, this time, approaching the fence from the Seam.

"You're a pain," she said by way of introduction. "Why do you risk the trouble?"

Peeta straightened up, removing his hands from the pockets of his beige work pants. "I told you. I want to be your friend. I want to get to know you."

Katniss pressed her lips into a thin line. "I'm not like those slag heap girls, you know. I don't need to do that to eat."

Peeta's eyes widened in shock. "I'm not here for that!"

"Well, I'm just giving you fair warning in case that was what you were here for. I hunt for my family and it keeps us alive. I don't have to sell myself," she said firmly, though a deep crimson flush crept beneath her olive skin.

"I promise you, that's not what I'm looking for," he said with equal firmness.

"Fine. I have to hunt though. You've been hanging around here every day and I'm running low on supplies," she said brusquely.

"Wait, so you knew I was here?" Peeta asked, astonished.

"Well, at least for the last couple of days. But I can't put off hunting any longer." She made to go under the fence when Peeta stepped towards her.

"Let me go with you."

"No!" exclaimed Katniss. She stood up straight and looked Peeta in the eye. "First you talk to me when you shouldn't, then you want me to take you out in the woods? Do you have a death wish?"

"I've never been out in the woods before." Peeta was ready to beg. "Let me come along. At least we can talk without anyone catching us."

Katniss took a deep breath, looking up at the deep blue early spring sky as she considered his request. Shaking her head, she turned towards Peeta. "Fine, you can come. Just don't get in the way of me and my haul, okay? Be as quiet as you can."

Peeta ducked under the fence behind Katniss, looking around to make sure that no one saw him. The difference in the air could not have been more significant - what possible difference could a chain-link fence make? Yet Peeta felt it - it was a feeling he had never experienced in his life. He tried to put a name to it and came up with the closest approximation that he could find.

Freedom.

This, too, would be forever connected to Katniss in his mind

.

XXXXX

Katniss' idea of quiet and Peeta's idea of quiet were clearly two distinct concepts. As silently as Peeta tried to tread, he was still too noisy for Katniss, who walked as if she were made of air. She pulled a homemade bow and arrow out of a hollow tree trunk and slung the quiver across her back. She gave him more than a few withering looks as he stomped through the forest behind her, occasionally stumbling and altogether making an incredible racket. His distraction was partly to blame - he had never been surrounded by so many tall trees and he lost his concentration several times as he took in the wild environment. At one point, Katniss slung her bow across her back and sighed in frustration.

"Let's go this way," she said in a clipped tone and though he was sorry to displease her, he was far too enraptured by his surroundings to think too much about it.

She indicated a large boulder not two hundred yards from the fence and pointed at it. "Sit there." She ordered. Peeta did as he was told, settling himself on the hard surface of the rock.

"I won't be long," she said and turned to walk further into the trees.

Peeta waited patiently, taking in the crisp air, observing the way the trees towered over him, giving him a kind of vertigo. He studied a soft carpet of green that lay across several stones. He didn't resist the urge but touched it slowly, shocked at how soft it was. He turned over stones to find insects and worms swarming below. The silence was so absolute and yet full - of birds and the wind - so different from the quiet of town. He was in a magical place and did not want to leave.

After almost an hour, from what he could tell, Katniss returned with a full game bag. He looked quizzically at her, then grinned sheepishly.

"I was that noisy, wasn't I?" He looked apologetic and though Katniss did not smile along with him, her cheeks became rose-colored.

"A little." Katniss dropped her eyes in embarrassment and took a seat next to him. "I normally don't need a lot of time to catch game this season of the year but you were scaring everything away for at least 10 miles."

"Sorry," he said. "I'll trade whatever you've got there for something special this afternoon, to compensate for the lost game."

Katniss gave him a sideways look. "I don't need charity. I still managed a good haul."

"But it might have been better if I hadn't come along. Please, stop by the bakery this afternoon after closing. I'm on the evening shift. I make the best cheese buns in my family."

"I know," Katniss said, turning her head away but not before he saw the small smile that danced on her lips.

Peeta became excited at the prospect of seeing her twice in one day. "So you'll come?"

Katniss nodded, twirling the tie of her game bag compulsively around her smudged fingers.

"Okay, I'll come."

XXXXX

True to her word, Katniss appeared at the back steps of his parent's bakery after the shop was locked up for the night. His parents were resting from having woken so early and his older brothers were out and about. Peeta was a bundle of nerves, taking extra care to make the buns and keep them warm. His mind raced between the certainty of her visit and the fear that she would change her mind.

So when he saw her outline in the window of the back door, he leapt out of his skin from excitement.

"You can sit here. You have to try them while they're still warm," he said as he pulled the basket of cheese buns to where she sat and fetched a plate and a cup. "Whenever we have some leftover cheese, my mother lets us make some. Not many but we each get to eat two of them because we sell the rest." He felt himself rambling and only just caught the strange look she gave him, a mix of chagrin and pity that confused him.

"What is it?" he asked, worried that he might have done something wrong.

"I just thought…I mean…with all this bread…" she said confusedly.

"You thought we had it made? I mean, we aren't exactly starving, that's obvious. But we never eat fresh bread, except on very special occasions, like birthdays, the Harvest Festival or when special friends come over to trade cheese buns for squirrels," he smiled, placing the warm bread on the plate before Katniss. He watched her close her eyes and breathe in the scent of the decadent buns. As she took a small bite of one of the warm puffs of bread, Peeta went to the stove and picked up a small milk pan. He poured the burbling, dark liquid into a mug – just enough to fill it halfway before he took a spoon and scraped out the last of the thick concoction from the sides.

"This is so good!" she said around a mouth full of bread. "What is that?" asked Katniss, eyeing the warm mug with curiosity.

"Hot chocolate." Peeta smiled proudly at the mug. "I chunked dark chocolate and added cream and sugar. Take a bit of the bread and dunk it in."

Katniss looked at him skeptically before breaking off a piece of the bread and doing as she was told. She released a moan that was so full of pleasure, Peeta though his chest would be crushed from the sudden onslaught of something he could only describe as hunger.

"Wow," said Katniss with reverence.

"Yeah, wow," whispered Peeta, carried away by the transported look of satisfaction on Katniss' face. His gaze must have been intense because Katniss swallowed nervously and asked, "What?"

"You just have no idea the effect you can have, do you?" he whispered, to which she lowered her eyes, unable to hold his gaze. He watched her take the second bun and eat it slowly, savoring the luxurious, buttery flavor. When she was done, she looked up to see him staring at her. Peeta felt the tension in the room rise and he was uncertain how to break it without scaring her away. It was Katniss who finally dispelled the mood.

"I should go, before someone comes. This was…generous…of you," she said quietly.

"Please, take the other ones. For your sister and your mother." Peeta took the precious bread and packed it carefully into a paper bag.

"It's too much!" said Katniss in frustration.

"It's not too much. I scared away the game! You said it yourself," Peeta said with equal vehemence.

"I can't." Katniss stood up suddenly, pushing the empty dishes and cheese buns away from her. "You're worried about game and buns but who should repay you for saving my life?"

"I don't understand…" said Peeta, genuinely confused.

"I remember…about the bread. That day, when you tossed me the bread." Katniss made her way to the door. "I shouldn't be here for a million reasons but most of all because I will never be able to repay what you did that day!"

"Is that why you're here? Because you want to pay me back?"

"No, it's because I can never pay you back that I shouldn't be here. Just let me go."

"Were you really that close to…?" Peeta couldn't finish the sentence.

"I hadn't eaten in days, Peeta. I would have died." Katniss said softly before scowling again. "But that doesn't change the fact that you need to stop being so reckless. You're going to get in trouble for talking to me or if your family finds out you fed me."

"I honestly don't care about my family or the government or anyone else, Katniss," he said as he followed her to the door. "And I'm not trying to even a score. I…like you and just wanted to spend time with you."

Katniss didn't say anything. His last words tumbled out of the open door as Katniss cast him a mournful look before escaping into the night.

XXXXX

The expression Katniss wore when she saw him the next day, standing at the very spot where she entered the woods, was almost comical.

"You're starting to annoy me," Katniss said, but her acerbic tone lacked real anger and Peeta could almost believe that she was pleased.

"You said I was persistent," Peeta retorted with relief. This time, he'd had to dodge a crowd of miners heading down one of the paths near the Mining Office so he was sure that he'd miss her. Katniss turned towards the fence and he did not wait for her to invite him as he slipped through the fence behind her.

They walked companionably through the woods, Katniss in no real hurry to shoot anything. Peeta took in the air and woods and he thought for a brief moment that they were a pair of birds that could take flight. The image filled him with an intense joy at simply being alive and here in this place with Katniss.

After hiking for an hour, they arrived at what appeared to be a clearing but, upon closer inspection, was actually the slope leading to a small lake. Peeta stopped, in awe of the place. He had never seen a lake before and he thought the beauty of its clear water and reedy banks would slay him completely. The lake was fed by a stream that flowed down from the mountain ranges above District 12, so that water was cool and fresh to the touch. Peeta loved beautiful things and he was very good at reproducing what he saw in drawings and paints. He was sorry he had not thought to bring a sketchbook because he was sure this would have been the most perfect sketch he had ever made.

Perfection and beauty. He would associate that with Katniss also.

"How did you find this place?" asked Peeta when they sat down to rest along the lake bed. Katniss pulled a small wooden cup from the pocket of her jacket and filled it with the running water from the entering stream. She took a long drag, emptying the cup before rinsing it and passing it to Peeta. He didn't realize how thirsty he was and drained it with equal speed, handing it back to her as she refilled it again. They passed the cup back and forth a few more times before their thirst was satisfied.

"My father. He taught me everything I know about the woods. We've known about this lake for generations. And not just this lake. There is a larger lake further on beyond that valley." She indicated with her head towards the deep green vein that split the low mountains just above the tree line. "We only visited that lake every now and then because it takes almost a day to get to but it makes this one look like a pond."

Peeta studied her as she spoke and enjoyed the way the light played patchwork games of shadows on her skin. She was like a kaleidoscope springing to life as the sun danced amongst the leaves. "What happened to your father?" he asked quietly.

Katniss pulled out an arrow from her sheath and sharpened the point with a stone. "He died in that big mining explosion seven years ago."

"I remember that." It had been epic – the explosion took out half the mine and buried 40 miners in its cavernous depths. It was the largest mining accident to take place in the last twenty years. "I'm sorry."

"Well, it wouldn't have been so bad, I think, but my mother was estranged from her family because she married below her caste, you know? She was a Merchant and my dad was a Laborer. Even though it isn't technically illegal, my mother's father disowned her. When my father died, we were on our own. That's how we ended up in the Seam," she scowled angrily. She didn't have to say it but that was how she became one of the unwanted in their society.

They sat quietly for a long while, each lost in their respective thoughts. Peeta didn't think Katniss would speak again - she had broken a kind of record in the number of things she had shared and,while he wanted her to speak to him, he did not want to mishandle this moment.

"My mother became very sad after my father died and had a hard time taking care of us." Katniss said this as if it were a dirty secret but instead of embarrassment, Peeta had to physically keep himself from putting his arms around her. "Still, my mother taught us how to count and read well. She also taught us to use plants to heal. She even taught us how to set a table and eat with manners," she scowled still more deeply.

Peeta captured her meaning without having to be told. She was upset because she was in a situation, not because of her worth but because she had the misfortune of being born in the wrong social class.

Katniss suddenly looked up at Peeta. "Have you ever seen my sister?"

Peeta shook his head. "If I did, I probably didn't recognize her."

Katniss' face softened. "Prim is beautiful. She's very sweet and a great healer, better than my mother. And she has such a good heart. I tried to teach her how to hunt but she just couldn't stand to watch the animal die. She is so much better than anyone I know and yet she's trapped. She'll never have a full life."

Peeta could think of nothing to say to this. It was the way things were in their land. Caste was destiny and they were all trapped. There was no real freedom except the one he felt at that moment, sitting on that rocky outcropping, the whisper of winds and breezes ruffling through his hair, birds and insects calling at their backs.

"I'd be an artist, a painter maybe, if I weren't here," whispered Peeta. Katniss tilted her head to look at him and gave him a small smile, her eyes full of compassion.

Without thinking, Peeta reached out his fingers to brush Katniss', in solidarity and comfort. He was surprised when she quickly captured his hand and threaded her fingers through his. She turned her face to observe the emerald-green foliage of the late spring forest as he stared at her profile, wondering how he had lived without this kind of beauty for so long. They sat in this way for a long while, taking in the peace of the forest that knew no boundaries or social class before returning quietly back to the fence.

"I'll be back here tomorrow," said Katniss in parting before running off towards her section of the Seam. Peeta simply stood, watching her receding figure with perhaps the happiest smile he'd ever worn in his life.

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They met as often as they could at the edge of the fence. Sometimes it was difficult, because of the bakery or Katniss' mother and sister. They sometimes needed help with patients, as they were the only healers that other very poor Untouchables and Laborers could afford. The town physician, Dr. Abernathy, was too far out of their reach. Katniss and Peeta devised a system to alert each other if they were free to meet that day - Katniss wore a green sprig of white fir or some other evergreen on her lapel when she came to the back of the bakery and Peeta sported the orange ribbon tied like a bow over the strap of his apron. His brothers made fun of his decoration but he simply explained that it was for good luck, which only brought on more teasing.

One day at the lake, Katniss took Peeta by the hand and showed him her secret place

"My father used to bring me here when we came to fish," she explained as they walked directly into a tangle of brush. Peeta wondered what could be hiding in that thick bramble of thorns and vines but Katniss knew her way. After walking for a few hundred feet, they came upon an old, somewhat decrepit one-room cabin, buried in a copse of dense trees. Inside was a small hearth filled with dried leaves and other detritus. The table and bench had been built directly into the wall. On the far side of the room was an elevated frame to place a mat or a bed.

"I haven't been here in a while, ever since Gale started working in the mines," said Katniss quietly. Though Gale was technically of the same caste as Katniss, he was young and strong so he had found a place working in the mines. There was always room for more able-bodied men and it was one of the very few professions an Untouchable could work.

Peeta stood in the middle of that humble building, taking in the small windows, the dusty spiderwebs, and the musky smell of earth while an unfamiliar feeling crept over him. He suddenly felt awkward and vaguely miserable. "Are you and Gale...you know…a couple?"

Katniss' eyes went wide. "No! He's like a brother to me. I don't have those feelings for him."

"Oh, okay, I was just curious. I don't want to get a beating or anything," he trailed off, feeling like an idiot.

Katniss said nothing, but her eyes, already dark from the dim light, became almost black with an intensity that filled Peeta with a strange expectation.

"I wouldn't let anyone beat you," she said quietly. She stepped towards him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and melted into him. She trembled slightly, the reverberation of her body spreading like ripples from a pebble cast across a lake. Peeta did not waste any time responding in kind, pulling her slender body against his. When she leaned back slightly to look up at him, he saw her undisguised need, her open vulnerability before him. He brought his lips down to kiss her, a lingering pressure against the soft skin that felt like he was sinking into a cloud.

When he pulled back, he studied her face for a reaction. She stared back unabashedly, in a way she never did when they spoke, her mouth falling slightly open. When Peeta kissed her again, he tasted all the things he had associated with her - spring and beauty and the forest and freedom - and memorized the flavors until he was drunk with her. The passion between them built as their kiss deepened. They explored each other in awe of the newness of being so close.

After they broke apart breathlessly, they twined their hands together as they explored the cabin. Katniss refused to let Peeta's hand go even while they walked back to the opening of the fence, releasing it only when they were forced to go their separate ways. What had once signified the boundary between the civilized and the savage now became the portal to their own little freedom, where only the ageless forest bore witness to a crime as splendid and perfect as the woods that protected it.

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This was specifically written for madamemarquise. Thank you for being such a wonderful friend! A million thanks to bubblegum1425 and peetabreadgirl for their support and hard work as betas. I have to give a shoutout to nightlockinthecave who created the most amazing banner for this work. Keep an eye out for part 2, to be released on Day 7, Black and White.