Disclaimer: The Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins, not me.

It's been about a year since Peeta has returned to 12 when I open my door to find him standing there, blinking in the early morning sunlight. After so long I don't know what sort of reunion I was expecting. A tender embrace? A desperate, pleading kiss? Or worse. The feel of his fingers vice-like around my neck, that wild, cloudy look in his eyes, usually so clear and bright. But it is not like any of the scenarios that I have imagined during the long, lonely hours I have spent walled up in my house in the Victor's Village.

He doesn't say anything and neither do I. I just step aside and he walks in. We go into the kitchen and sit at the table almost like everything is normal, like there were no Games, no rebellion, no death, no hijacking. He folds his hands. Tick tock, says the clock on the wall. I dig out the worn bit of rope that Finnick gave me during the bombing at 13, the bombing that Peeta warned us about, and begin to tie knots.

I remember teaching Prim to tie her shoes in some distant past, but the memory feels fuzzy. I see her making bunny ears with those little shoelaces-pink with white polka dots- but the laces keep turning to snakes. Snakes with red eyes, Snow's eyes. I lay the rope aside, disgusted.

Peeta notices and catches my gaze. His eyes are clear now like they used to be… and kind. Somehow even in the worst moments of the hijacking they never lost that kindness, that goodness that inexplicably radiates from Peeta despite everything. That goodness that makes me ache when I think of how many times I have hurt him. But there is something missing in his eyes, too. They seem somehow vacant, haunted. I wonder what battle is raging behind that steady gaze.

After half an hour Peeta stands up abruptly as if a specified time limit has been reached and he heads for the door. I want to reach out for his hand, but I don't. On the threshold he turns around suddenly, catching me off guard. Will it happen now? The embrace, the kiss, the anger? No. Just a sad half smile, and he is gone.

We repeat these actions for days, weeks. After 3 months I can barely stand it any longer. It is confusing for me to be the one so desperate to initiate conversation, me who was always so much more comfortable speaking through actions, me who never knew the right thing to say. Words were always Peeta's gift and somehow his unwillingness to use them makes mine stick in my throat more than usual.

Sometimes Peeta stays longer now. We still don't do much of anything and we say nothing, but the routine feels comforting. One day Peeta bakes a loaf of the salty bread from District 4 and as we munch on it later, I know we are both thinking of Finnick.

The next day when Dr. Aurelius calls I answer the phone.

The leaves on the trees are starting to turn. They are the golden hue of Cinna's eyeliner, the crimson rings around the cornucopia, the orange of the sunset that last night before the Quell. I rarely leave the house these days, but when Peeta moves his easel outside to better capture the changing season I go with him, positioning myself across from him on the porch swing. He looks peaceful, his scarred fingers guiding the brush purposefully across the canvas.

Winter comes hard and fast, and Peeta brings over a bundle of wood. I have to remind myself that the smoke from our fire will not attract our assailants. We have none, not anymore. Peeta and I roast nuts in the fire. I wonder if he remembers throwing those nuts Mags found into the forcefield. Hesitantly I chuck one into the flames, almost expecting it to come flying back at me, smoking slightly. It doesn't, but Peeta looks sideways at me, just the hint of a grin playing around his lips.

Haymitch stops by from time to time. He is as sarcastic and crass and drunk as ever, but he is broken just like us, so we don't mind. Sometimes Haymitch turns on the television, which is collecting dust in the corner, and we watch news coverage of the reconstruction effort. The sound feels so jarring after all this time wrapped in silence that I want to cover my ears. I don't like the images of shiny new apartment complexes springing up from the ashes of districts razed to the ground, shopping centers popping up on blood stained battlegrounds. I see Seam refugees building house in town, workers shifting stones in the District 2 quarries. There are fishermen in District 4 throwing out lines and farmers from District 11 replanting their orchards. Is Rue's family there, I wonder? Might that be Finnick on the screen, drawing up lobster traps with his powerful, muscled arms if everything had gone a different way? As the clips flash by I long to ask Peeta, real or not real?

One day a late winter snowstorm catches us by surprise. Peeta is doing the dishes from dinner and I am repairing one of the wooden kitchen chairs that Peeta broke during his last episode. Since that first time when Peeta tried to strangle me I have never felt afraid when the tracker jacker venom seizes him, just a deep, resounding sorrow in the pit of my stomach. The fear, I think, would be easier.

After an episode Peeta stays away for a few days or a week. It is agony. But when he comes back we fall back into our silent routine, the only difference is that it feels like we are treading even more softly, tip toeing across the graves of the dead, afraid to awaken old memories.

I tighten the last screw and set the chair upright. The slight scraping noise causes Peeta to turn around. He stares at the chair sadly for a moment and I want to cry out to him, to tell him that it's not his fault and that I don't, that I couldn't, ever blame him for anything, but before I get the chance Peeta opens his mouth and says simply, "Look Katniss, it's snowing".

Taken aback, I don't know how to respond, "Um, yeah, I guess it is." I shoot him an inquisitive look. His words are so strange that I frantically search his face, so familiar to me after all these months of silence, for a sign that he is having some sort of episode. He looks calm and maybe even…happy?

"It's snowing." He repeats. Before I know what is happening he grabs my hand, our first physical contact since the war, and pulls me into the coatroom. We throw on our coats and hats and plunge into the darkness, big white flakes falling around us, settling on our heads and eyelashes. It feels so clean, so fresh.

"It's snowing!" Peeta crys again, his face splitting into the first real smile I've seen in ages. I can't help it, I smile, too. And then I'm laughing hysterically, cantering about like I'm five years old and I was never the mockingjay, never the girl on fire.

Then we are sliding across the icy walkway, planting snow angels on the lawns of the Victor's Village, whooping and hollering and laughing. I feel Peeta's strong, sure arms lifting me from the ground and spinning, spinning, spinning, until we both collapse in a heap of arms and legs. We try to catch our breath, sobering a bit as we look up at the night sky, which is still dancing with feathers.

"Peeta?" I ask hesitantly because I'm afraid that I will break the moment and we will slide back into silence.

"Mm?" He murmurs turning his face towards mine, his blond locks stirring slightly in the wind. I take a moment to gather my thoughts before I continue.

"Why did you come back?"

The question hangs on the air like the mist from our breath and he takes so long to respond that I think maybe he won't. Despite all of my guardedness and that constant, nagging feeling that Peeta would really be better off never speaking to me again, the sound of his voice today has stirred some fire deep within me and I am desperate to hear it again.

Peeta's eyebrows knit together the way I know they do when he is choosing his words very carefully, "I came back," he says, drawing a deep breath, "Because you can't pick up the pieces of your broken life if you can't remember where you've dropped them."

I nod slowly, my gray, Seam eyes locked with his clear, blue ones. That makes sense. Tentatively, I decide to push a little further, "And if you do find them, how will you glue them back together?"

"Time," Peeta responds plaintively. "Just time, I think." He smiles at me again, but it's that old, sad smile now.

"Tick tock," I agree with a sigh.

I can sense that this is the end of the conversation, at least for tonight. We stand up and brush the snow off ourselves. But when Peeta turns towards his own house I reach out impulsively for his hand, which still feels impossibly warm despite the snow.

"Stay with me?" I manage to get out, letting him see for a minute that vulnerability that I try so hard to hide. His fingers tighten around mine in response and moments later I find myself in my bed wrapped securely in his arms. No cameras, no capitol audience, no act—just two broken souls.

"Katniss?" Peeta whispers, his warm breath on my neck sending a shiver down my spine. "I think I found one of the pieces."

"Me too," I whisper back.

That night we both sleep soundly for the first time in years.

After that, it's like someone has shot a hole through the chink in the forcefield between us. I'm still guarded and withholding and he's still patient and open, I don't think that will ever change, but the distance is gone. And even though there are still topics that we rarely breech—Prim, Peeta's time in the Capitol, Gale—it feels like words are unnecessary there.

Spring arrives, green and wet. Peeta teaches me to paint and I teach him how to shoot—we're both hopeless, of course. To my chagrin, he hangs up my stick person drawings on the refrigerator anyway, maneuvering his body smugly to prevent me from tearing them down. When Peeta finally hits something with an arrow (a bush), I joke that Plutarch Heavensby will probably start marketing it as a new delicacy: "Bush"—the preferred dish of the star crossed lovers from District 12. We both double over laughing.

Late at night when the house is still and we lie side by side, Peeta reminisces about his family, weaving stories with words as only he can. I try not to remember that all he has is stories now, because they are all gone. We walk through town and I hold Peeta's hand for a long time at the place where the bakery, his childhood home once stood. I don't say anything. There is nothing to say.

I tell Peeta stories about my father and we visit the lake, our special place. Peeta and I adorn the shore with wildflowers in memory of the firebombing victims and we hold each other as we cry, sinking into the muddy bank, sobbing, clinging. None of the pieces seem to fit together and there are so many. It's the first time that either of us has cried in a long time.

After a while I start to notice Peeta's things accumulating in my house. A sketchbook here, a sock there, and even though I know what this means, somehow I'm no longer afraid. One day in early summer when I open the cupboards to find them fully stocked with bags of flour, sugar, vanilla extract, cookie cutters—things that I would certainly never use—I tell Peeta, "You should move in."

"Ok," he agrees. Peeta barely looks up from his book, but I can hear the smile in his voice. I know he's been waiting for me to ask, letting me dictate the terms of this—what should I call it really… arrangement? That sounds too clinical. Relationship? Too normal. I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders, resting my chin on his head. He reaches up and strokes my arm absently, his fingers tracing lines over the scars we can never forget.

"What are we Peeta?" I ask as he stands up to face me, drawing me so close that I find it hard to breathe. I used to always be the one giving orders—Don't eat that! Quiet! Climb that tree, hide behind that rock. Run! Dive! Out of the way! Let me handle this!—now I feel like I'm always asking questions with Peeta. "What are we Peeta?" I ask again, desperate this time.

Peeta runs his thumb across my cheekbone. His answer is just three words: "We… are alive."

I feel myself trembling as I try to work out what he means, and then, suddenly, I can't tell which direction is up and which is down. The room is on fire! Because Peeta is kissing me. Kissing me with a kind of ferocity that I have never felt before, no longer hesitant or unsure, but hungry. And his words "we are alive" finally make sense to me as the very vitality of our embrace comes into sharp relief—his soft warm lips trailing along my neck, his breath catching in his throat, the feel of his hands, always so steady, moving up the small of my back, drawing me still closer. And I'm kissing him back with equal hunger, never wanting it to end, feeling so alive for the first time since Prim's death.

It does end eventually, and we cling to each other for a long time, listening to the other's heartbeat slowly pound back to a steady tattoo. And when Peeta asks me, "You love me, real or not real?," I finally have an answer. I tell him, "Real."

Peeta and I never do get married, not officially at least, because we both feel that the Capitol has ruined that for us. Ceremonies, costumes, cameras—pretty much all the aspects of a wedding remind us of the charades we played as victors, as marionettes with machetes. Much to my own surprise, I am actually the one who suggests that we at least do a toasting, and I think Peeta is pleased, even though he says that we belong to each other regardless of any ritual.

I hold firm to my oath to never have any children and Peeta hardly even tries to convince me otherwise. I know he understands because he sees them too—the children in our nightmares—their vacant eyes and limp forms. We both see them often, though the nightmares become less frequent over the years.

We do, however, take in a long string of foster children, mostly orphans from the war. Sometimes when the house is full of sunlight and the smell of freshly baked bread and the peals of children's laughter as Peeta chases them round and round the living room, I smile to myself and think that all of these broken pieces almost make a whole. When Peeta catches me in one of these reflective moments he will kiss me softly, and even after we have grown old and our scars have been lost in wrinkles, the warmth reminds me, we are alive.