A/N: So this is my first Hunger Games fic and honestly I'm a little nervous about venturing into this; I think it can be very easy to get very OOC with the characters, and in my writing I always try to stay as in-character as possible. Though I had heard of them I admittedly never read the books until I heard they were making the movie (which was awesome), and when I finally did read them (in three days) I got a bit obsessed. This was originally an epically long story, but it was bordering on 10,000 words and I realized I still had more, so it's now a multi-chap; M rating will come later. As always reviews are very much wanted and appreciated :)

P.S. I don't own Hunger Games or the song Come Away with Me

...

Come away with me in the night,
Come away with me
And I will write you a song,
Come away with me on a bus,
Come away where they can't tempt us
With their lies,
And I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day,
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high,
So won't you try to come?
Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountaintop,
Come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you,
And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof,
While I'm safe there in your arms,
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night,
Come away with me.

-Come Away with Me, Norah Jones

…

The morning I wake relatively calmly is about a week after Peeta returns, a week after he planted the primroses in my yard. I would be lying if I said my sleep was as gentle as my awakening, however. If anything, it's worse. The nightmares were still the same, almost tactile in their vividness; children burning in a scorching heat, screaming pleas at me as their skin melts off the bones of their bodies while I do not, cannot, do anything to help, and Snow smiling languidly from the front steps of his house as drops of blood leak sickeningly from the corner of his mouth. Just as I am certain my brain can't torture itself any more, Peeta comes charging out of the flames, his cerulean eyes now blood-red as his big hands clutch my throat and he hisses with a disturbingly innocent, feminine voice that I will always remember as hers,"You left me, Katniss. And now I'm gone, forever. I want to see you again. Peeta's only helping you come back to me…"

My eyes shoot open, as if they can't take the performance put on by my subconscious any longer. I take deep breaths as best I can to calm myself, and that is the moment I realize that my sheets, though thrown at the foot of the bed, are not in a tangled mess around me, and I don't have bruises on my arms from hitting the headboard. I can't stop my mind from replaying probably the worst nightmare I've had in a long time, which is saying something. It's as if it started out like a typical one, but that I was too entranced at hearing her voice again to scream, to kick and pound until I have no energy to live by the time I wake. Coupled with the bizarreness of hearing her come out of Peeta's mouth while he strangled the life out of me, I'm sure this was more than enough to keep me from fighting imaginary attackers.

Part of me wants to blame this on Peeta. I was fine to suffocate in the darkness of my house, to eat only when I felt it necessary and to mourn everyone I had lost both literally and figuratively, which even often included him. But here he shows up in Twelve, half of his old self, planting my dead sister's namesake flowers outside my window and giving me nothing else. Was he really giving me anything at all other than grief and a new kind of psychological torment?

I want my bruises and cuts back. They're all I deserve, matching the rest of my disgusting skin that blisters and peels as it attempts to heal itself after being burned in the fire. Peeta – I'm just sure it's him, his presence that has made this happen – has taken away the only part of my life that makes me feel, to experience anything other than depression and utter loneliness. I don't even hurt for me anymore. My heart simply aches for those whom I miss so, so much, that I will never see again and just want to wrap my arms around in a big hug, to tell them thank you and that I love them. At least the purple splotches that dotted my arms gave me something to let me know that my outer shell still existed and could still experience sensitivity, and not just my innermost demons.

It's unfair for me to think like that; I shouldn't think like that. In actuality Peeta himself has done nothing wrong, and aside from Greasy Sae and the rarely sober Haymitch, he's all I have left. Peeta's current mental state is exactly his worst fear that he expressed to me in the apartment the night before the first Games merely a year ago. The Capitol did this to him. The Capitol took everything from me: my family, my friends, my sanity… my Peeta. The Peeta that loved me when I had no right to be loved, unconditionally even, and who was always by my side, always there to offer the comfort of his arms whenever I needed it.

Another realization hits me as I lay there with my tormented, over-processed thoughts. Is my current mental state not partially what the Capitol intended for me? I'm practically a vegetable; for me, getting out of bed means a better day than normal. I have no 'good' days anymore; there's only 'horrible' or 'bad'.

The urge comes from practically nowhere. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and cringe a bit when my feet touch the cold wooden floor. My legs, once taught and toned but now mostly skin and bone, carry me to the ensuite bathroom and my skeletal arm reaches in the shower to turn on the water and adjust it to the perfect temperature. I shed my disgusting nightshirt and step into the steaming water, instantly feeling some kind of relief in my shoulders. I haven't been in here in a while. It's just been too tempting to lock myself away and drown in the hot spray.

As the sweet-smelling shampoo lathers in my scraggly, burnt hair, I decide that this shell of a person I am now has to go. My non-living is exactly what the Capitol worked for, and I made a promise to more than myself to not be a ploy in any of their games. I watch the soap sink into the drain and a few large flakes of skin mix in with the suds. After only hesitating a moment, I grab the medicated body wash that the doctor gave me for my skin for the first time. It tingles and stings but the sensation is welcomed.

When I step out of the shower after a deep conditioning treatment in my hair and a few more minutes under the warm water, I almost feel… invigorated. Like my old self again. It's a fleeting experience. While I feel I have made leaps and bounds in a mere twenty minutes, it will take much more time for me to even come close to my old self, if that's even possible. Do I want to be my old self? As I step in front of the fogged mirror, the girl staring back at me that is scarred and damaged is certainly not the girl on fire, nor is she the Katniss whose life revolved around keeping her family alive. My solution to the question for now is to put faith in the old saying "time will tell".

I step away from the mirror, and keeping up with the morning's theme of following the doctor's orders, apply some of the ointment to my burn scars and peeling skin. It smells like mint and honey, almost like one of my mother's homemade herbal remedies, but the underlying stench of medicine is also present. It cools and soothes my pink skin, however, so I apply more all over my body.

As soon as I open the door that leads to my room in my quest to find some clean clothes, the utter stink in my room makes my face scrunch up in disgust. Was I really living in this? Fighting not to gag, I change into a pair of comfortable, lazy gray sweatpants and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt, and fling open the window as soon as I'm decent. It will take a while for this smell to get out, but the least I can do is take the sheets off my bed, which smell as though they've existed in Haymitch's basement for years.

I yank them and my pillowcases off the bed and, not wanting to get my clean clothes smelly, toss them to the bottom of the stairs. To my shock a woman appears out of nowhere and grabs them before I can say a word. She looks up at me and smiles genuinely. "Hello, Katniss."

Sae disappears around the corner and I fist my hands in anger. I wanted to do this on my own. This was the start of my recovery. I cleaned myself, and now I want to clean my things. My argument sounds juvenile even in my own head, but after so many weeks, months, however long it's been, of doing nothing for myself, my old independent streak has reared its head once again.

I stalk down the stairs and out the door to my backyard, where Sae is hunched over a metal tub not unlike what I used to bathe in, soaking the fabric in the soapy water.

"I want to do it." My voice is cracked and rough from being used only to scream for so long. When she turns around with surprised eyes I realize I've been rather rude. "Thank you, Sae, but I can do it. I need to."

She hesitates a moment as if she's still too shocked at my active presence to do anything, but nods and rises to her feet. "Ok, Katniss. I need to make lunch, anyways. Will you eat if I prepare something?"

My initial reaction is to deny the offer. Why should you eat if so many can't any longer, my brain asks my stomach. But then I remember that all those people wouldn't want me to waste my own life away, and that that is exactly what the Capitol would have wanted. With this thought I finally nod and turn to the tub of water.

The physical work of scrubbing the pieces of fabric individually and diligently is a surprisingly satisfying task. Old Katniss would have hated doing it, would have found it unnecessary and a waste of time when there was food to be caught in the woods, or the Katniss in Thirteen would have written it off as another pointless chore meant only for busy work. This Katniss is happy to simply have anything to do at all that almost takes her mind off Prim. I doubt she will ever be gone from my head. In a twisted way I cherish that. She will never be forgotten to me, but in return I must deal with the agony of seeing her face every day in my mind's eye, hear her voice randomly even though I'm completely alone, see her burn in my dreams…

I don't realize I'm crying until I taste the salt in my mouth. I repress deep sobs that threaten to consume me as they did in the beginning, and as I hang up the last pillowcase on the line, I collapse into the surprisingly soft grass and allow the late spring sun to swathe my face in a blanket of outer warmth; it fails to completely reach my insides. I'm simply too sad and I miss Prim too much for the sun, a symbol of hope and prosperity, to comfort me just yet.

Peeta is like the sun, I think. He's large and bright; hard and soft at the same time; beautiful and calming, dependable and routine. He comforts me like no one has ever been able to before, except for my father, maybe. He never fails to be there for me, even at my worst. I feel more tears stream down my cheeks as I think of what he must go through with the hijacking episodes, how he turns from my sun to literally my worst nightmare at the flip of an unexplainable switch.

My sobs cease to the occasional sniffle when I realize that if I keep making progress, I might actually be able to face Peeta, to get to know him again, to simply be in his presence and enjoy it. It's this that drives me to sit up and attempt to wipe off my sun-dried tears with pruned fingers as I enter the house again.

I'm sure there's no doubt that I've been bawling when I enter the kitchen, where Greasy Sae is calmly ladling some kind of red-orange broth into a couple of bowls. Apparently I'll have company for my first actual meal in no telling how long. Sure enough she places one bowl in front of me and the other at the setting for the chair next to mine. Though I'm sure she notices, I'm embarrassed and try my best to avoid eye contact, and she knows me well enough even after all this that it's best for her not to say anything.

I feed myself a spoonful of the soup and am surprised that it actually has some kind of flavor. Until today food has been bland and tasteless to me, which only contributed to my lack of appetite. Today, though, I taste tomato and celery and carrots and some kind of spice my inexperienced pallet doesn't recognize. Whatever it is, it's good, and I take another spoonful.

I hear the scraping of china on the wooden table. "I forgot. Peeta brought me some bread earlier."

I lift my eyes enough to look at the bread, and I almost start crying again. The bread is simple, one that we had often when we could afford it. It was a white bread, baked with all kinds of tiny seeds that gave the soft middle a wonderful and satisfying crunch, just like the golden crust. I shakily reach for it and tear myself a piece from the middle. I bring it to my nose and inhale before taking a nibble of it. It smells like him, and though it's not warm it's almost just as comforting as warm bread simply because it smells of him, and the taste brings a wave of nostalgia that is hard to shake.

My eyes water involuntarily and I close them, willing the tears away. I don't want to cry. I want to get past crying. I realize what I want, more than anything, is Peeta.

When I open my eyes I see Sae watching me, and for the first time ever I see that she is about to cry as well. "Thank you, Sae, for everything," I whisper gratefully. It's all I can manage right now.

Sae nods and without warning leans forward and embraces me. I startle immediately. This is the first skin-to-skin contact I've had with anyone in a long time, and it's become a foreign experience. She leans back and pats my shoulder comfortingly before taking my bowl from me. I know she wants me to eat it, but I just can't right now. I have too much on my mind. I save the bread, though. I carry it to the living room and am surprised to find the couch fixed into a makeshift bed; Sae undoubtedly went into my room and discovered the smell.

I collapse onto the plush cushions and lay my head on a fresh pillow, inhaling the clean scents of sun-dried linens and the piece of bread that I clutch in my hand. Greasy Sae comes in a moment later and covers me with a blanket. Exhaustion overtakes me, but I find myself terrified to go to sleep. To my great frustration tears well in my eyes again and I make a choking noise as she begins to leave. I try to explain that my nightmares are too horrible to deal with just for the sake of rest, but she just shushes me and strokes my hair, which I only barely find comforting.

In this moment I don't want my cuts and bruises, my mother or Gale or even Sae. I just want Peeta. And if there's one thing about the old Katniss that I hope sticks around, it's that when old Katniss wanted something, she did everything in her power to get it.

…

A/N: Norah Jones is awesome she has some amazing songs, the one way above being the inspiration for this story. And I already have a couple more chapters, so more reviews make me want to post more chapters faster!