I am home. Warm spring days and bright, clean sunlight are an antiseptic washing clean the dark, ashy past from the promise of the future. More people arrive all the time because, after everything, we still call District Twelve home. More hands to help scrub and build, more hearts to help ease suffering.

Gale's friend Thom has become a de facto leader, assigning jobs and making sure everyone is cared for and included. He calls a town meeting and we gather together, everyone bringing a dish to share, and we tell stories about the ones we lost, sharing our grief and collectively putting them to rest. We have a discussion about our future and decide we're finished with mining, we'd like to build a factory where we'll make medicines. Paylor sends us giant construction equipment and we have a ground-breaking celebration as the machines tear into the earth, digging through the past and making way for the future.

I help develop a community garden, plowing the ash into the ground and planting crops instead. I love the feel of the dirt under my hands. The cold, crumbly darkness yielding up bright, strong vegetables and sturdy, healthy vines and stems.

I spend weeks cleaning and clearing out, rebuilding the bakery. Lef has come to live with us, having lost his family in Thirteen, and he makes an excellent apprentice. His new girlfriend Willa, a girl who was a few years ahead of me in school, tells me she'd always wanted to work with my father and she proves to have a deft hand and creative eye. Sooner than I'd have imagined, the business has become a thriving part of the town.

Haymitch is slowly thawing as well. A few days after I arrived, he emerged from his house, blearily stepping out into the sun, having drunk all his liquor. He and I walked to town together and Thom agreed to give him a bottle if he would first help with the digging they were doing in the meadow, a mass memorial with all the bones they'd been uncovering in town. Haymitch grumbled and moaned, but set to work quickly and reverently. He came every day after that until the memorial was finished, and would often visit it in days to come.

He and I get together every night, usually after dinner, and play cards or just talk. Lef often joins us and occasionally Thom. Haymitch pretends to hate the company, but never misses it. He complains he doesn't have a job anymore and, thanks to becoming a victor so young and spending most of his life as a mentor, has no marketable skills. We spend a raucous evening brainstorming potential jobs for him and he is variably offended, angry, or horrified. Until Lef jokingly suggests he needs someone to raise geese so he can make pâté, since I won't buy the disgusting liver glop. Haymitch's eyes light up and he pounces on the idea, enthralled. Even after rounds of hilarious ridicule from the rest of us, he remains steadfast. The next week, from a train bringing deliveries, he unloads a large pen filled with squawking, honking, frantic geese and proudly carts them away to the meadow where he can be found most days watching over them paternally from a drunken recline on the soft swell of grass under a spreading elm.

President Paylor is making rounds of the districts, celebrating growth and offering support where it seems to be needed. Her visit to Twelve is a festival affair as she brings the first of the many shipments of materials for the factory, and a brace of pharmacists to assist with production. Our tiny community is beginning to thrive.

Katniss has a long road to recovery. I do what I can to help, remembering how hard it was to fight my way back to finding myself after everything I was had been stripped from me. At first, I only see her in the mornings, bringing a fresh loaf of bread or some warm cheese buns when Greasy Sae arrives to make breakfast. I try to coax her into conversation, how did she sleep, her plans for the day. I start to bring her requests from town, things people are asking for her help with. At first she refuses the requests, but soon, she relents. The more she is able to be useful, to be around people, the more she emerges from her shell of mourning.

She spends a lot of time in the woods. She says she's hunting, but she comes back as often as not with an empty game bag. The color begins to return to her cheeks and she stands tall again, her eyes begin to clear. I ask her one day if I can come with her, and she eyes me skeptically before agreeing, on the condition that I stay still when she tells me to. Delighted by the spark in her eyes, I grin and promise to move like a shadow in the night. She snorts and shakes her head doubtfully.

The next day we meet in the late morning, after I have things up and running at the bakery. She wears her father's old hunting jacket and her hair is pulled back in an efficient braid down her back. I stop, breathless, as I drink in the sight of her. Straight and tall, her gray gaze is steady and clear, her cheeks a little flushed with the brisk morning breeze.

"Ready?" she asks, eager to be going.

"Ready," I reply, fighting to keep my voice steady. "Did you sleep well?"

She shrugs noncommittally. "As well as ever. Let's start by checking the snares. Greasy Sae is asking for some rabbits today."

We move through the woods in the dappling morning light, birds singing a warning at our approach and the occasional scuffle of a small animal through the brush. She keeps looking back at me as we go and I worry I'm aggravating her by making too much noise. Finally, she stops and turns to me.

"I can barely hear you," she says curiously. "Where did you learn to move so quietly?"

I grin at her, absurdly proud of the compliment. "Must be the new leg," I say, pulling up my pants to show her. She smiles back and runs a finger along the realistic flesh.

"Nice. They must have set it to 'silent mode.' Come on, it's just ahead."

We spend the most part of the day collecting from and resetting the snares, though she does take a large, surprised wild turkey. While she quickly dresses it, I gather greens and berries from the heavily laden bushes near the stream. When we head back, we are late and gratifyingly tired.

In her kitchen, as Greasy Sae exclaims over the haul, Katniss looks the most relaxed I've seen her in ages. She asks me to stay for dinner and I agree happily, contributing a batch of butter rolls and a salad with the fresh greens and some vegetables from the garden.

Over dinner, Katniss tells me about the idea she's had.

"It's like the plant book," she says, her eyes shy. "Only, I want to remember the people we've lost. The details and memories I don't want to forget."

"I love it," I say softly. "It's perfect."

"Will you do the pictures?" she requests. "Most of the time I don't have a photograph."

"Of course," I reply, touched that she'd ask. "I'd love to help. It's a fantastic idea, Katniss. Thanks for including me."

She blushes and nods, not meeting my eyes.

Haymitch comes over after dinner and we tell him the plan for the book. He loves it and asks if he can contribute as well. We stay up late into the night making plans and sharing memories and stories of the people we miss. Finally, Haymitch yawns hugely and stretches his arms over his head, his shirt pulling up over his belly. He says good-night and we watch out the door to see that he makes it across the green and inside alright.

Katniss is ready for bed as well and I tell her to go on upstairs, I'll get the dishes and let myself out. She sleepily agrees and thanks me as she stumbles blearily up the steps to her room. In the kitchen, I clear up and wash the dinner plates, setting them to dry in the rack by the sink. On a whim, I whip up a pan of cinnamon rolls to rise for the morning.

As I'm finishing up, a strangled scream from upstairs chills my blood. I sprint up the stairs and burst through the door to Katniss' room where she's thrashing and crying out. But she's alone, the horror she fights is only visible to her, haunting her in her sleep. Calling her name, I sit on the edge of the bed, stroking her back and her hair, whispering calming nonsense and murmuring for her to wake. She leaps up in the bed, eyes wild and lips quivering, then flings her arms around my neck, clinging to me and shivering as she whimpers.

I hold her, whispering into her hair and stroking her back while she trembles, until she finally pulls a few shaky, gasping breaths and unclenches her fists from my shirt. I lay her back on the pillow and run a hand over her braid, pulling the blanket back up around her. But as I stand to leave, she grips my hand.

"Peeta," her voice is a whisper. "Please. Please will you stay with me?"

I stand next to the bed, memories flooding over me. Now, as then, I really don't have a choice. She needs me. "Always," I whisper back, and she holds the blanket up for me to slide in next to her. I slip an arm under her and she wraps her arms around me, her head pillowed on my chest and a leg thrown over mine. I hold her tight against my heart, and we face the night together.

After that, we spend every night together, wrapped safely in each other's arms and pulling strength to fight the terrors of the dark together. Katniss is blooming back to herself, now that she actually rests and is able to finally recover. Her smile reemerges and when something funny happens, it's me her sparkling gaze flies to, eager to share the moment. Or when a terrible memory overwhelms her, it's my arms where she seeks comfort. One bright morning, walking into town together, it's as natural as breathing when she slips her hand into mine as we walk. My heart is full and I grin stupidly at the puffy clouds in the dazzling blue sky.

We measure time by events of growth and healing. When the Justice Building reopened with an elected mayor and appointed security force. How many bushels of sweet peas the garden yielded. How everyone joined together to raise storefronts on the new merchant street. When the factory produced its first shipment of "Fireball" burn cream for delivery.

Katniss begrudgingly agrees to let me paint her and we set up in the woods, on the rock where she used to wait for Gale to join her. As I sketch a quick outline, Gale seems to haunt us. She tells me how they met and became friends. Talks about how they seemed two halves of the same person as they hunted together, with the threat of discovery hanging over them all the while. Her eyes are distant and sad as she tells the story and I notice she is running her fingers over a slight bump beneath her collar. I recognize the outline and the chain and my stomach drops, a hollow ache in my chest that I do my best to keep from showing on my face.

But her sharp gray eyes don't miss the catch in my breathing, the slight freeze of my hand in its quick lines. A tiny smile pulls at the corner of her lips as she slides down off the rock and moves toward me, pulling the locket from under her shirt. She stops only a breath away from me.

"This was delivered to my house when I came back," she says, holding it out so the mockingjay glints in the sun. I touch it with a delicate finger.

"I'm glad you still have it," I say, wanting to be pleased she has this reminder of the people who are so important to her.

"Me too," she says. "I like being able to see the people who mean so much to me, even when they aren't here with me."

Her clear gray eyes hold mine as she slides a finger over the hidden catch and the leaves pop open, revealing the photographs inside. Prim, her mother, and – not Gale? My eyes flash up to hers, and find them lit with tenderness.

"It was kind of crooked after all it went through," she tells me, her fingers twining through mine. "I pulled it free and found yours underneath. It was there the whole time." In her eyes I can see that she feels it, too. The tether that connects us, one to the other, across time and distance. "You must have loved me a lot," she whispers.

I take her face in my hands and bend to her mouth. Her lips meet mine with a sweet urgency that echoes my own. The familiar hunger wakes deep in my belly, the need for her consuming me, the heady joy of certainty like fitted pieces locking together in place. Her hands grip my collar, pulling me closer as she presses against me, and I wrap my arms around her waist, holding her tight and close until, breathless, I slide my mouth along her jaw and kiss her ear, her hair, coming to rest with her head tucked under my chin and our bodies twined together so tightly we could be mistaken for one and I can feel her cheek raised in a smile against my collarbone.

A few nights later the whisper claims me in my sleep. The fiery-winged demon shrieks through my mind, blazing her fury in flaming arrows that kindle the newly built homes and freshly repaired shops. The residents of Twelve again run screaming and burning as she hurls destruction around us. My family is still here, still burning, still calling for me to help them, but I'm chained to the stocks in the square and Snow's whip cracks across my skin while I fight to get to my mother, my brother.

Katniss' voice pulls me from the dream.

"Peeta, it's not real! It's not real, Peeta, come back to me. It's not real."

I wake with an aching groan and pull her close, burying my face in her neck as she wraps her arms around me, clenching handfuls of my shirt and gripping me tightly while I try and shake off the dream. My hands in her hair, I search for her mouth in the dark and she breathlessly kisses away the horror of the nightmare. Shuddering, I pull her closer, needing her to be closer. Ravenously, I claim her lips with mine, and she answers my craving with an insatiable hunger of her own. A tingling, buzzing joy blazes through my veins, burning the darkness away as it races over my skin, igniting at her touch.

After, when she lies wrapped in my arms, her heart beating against mine, I smile into the dark and whisper the question I already know the answer to. "You love me. Real or not real?"

And she tips her head up so her lips brush mine, her answer a kiss. "Real."

THE END