Author's Note: So, this is my first Hunger Games fic. I read the trilogy a few weeks ago and happened to be listening to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition at the time. For whatever reason it inspired this. You don't really need to know the music to understand this; I ended up using each as a sort of prompt, expanding the last page of Mockingjay into this. It got so long I'm posting it as a two-shot. Reviews and feedback are always appreciated :)

Promenade

Katniss had run out her house in terror - eyes wild, hair wild, thin, wane, waxen, feral -, and Peeta had thought of Annie Cresta; beautiful, mad, Annie as they stared at each other.

He tried to block out the crashing coming from inside, tried to block out the helpless feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't until later, after he spent the day turning his house into the home it never was in the year he spent in it between games, that Greasy Sae had knocked on his door and he realized how bad things had been for Katniss.

Peeta carried her upstairs, careful not to wake her as Prim's cat followed on his heels, Sae bringing up the rear. "She's like her mother when Amos died," she said softly as he tucked Katniss in. "It will be better with you here, though. She actually showered and went out today; she hasn't done that since she's been back and it's been nearly two months."

He brushed the hair off her face, trailed his fingers down the hollowed out curve of her cheek, wanting desperately to believe the old woman, but not really managing it.

Interlude

It took a month to establish the routine his Capitol doctors had been so insistent about. He baked in the morning, joining Greasy Sae at Katniss' for breakfast. She would go hunting afterwards and he would rouse Haymitch, making sure he ate and showered and then they would talk for a while, Haymitch helping him sort the 'real' from the 'not real' as best he could.

Afterwards he would paint and tend his garden, then go for a walk around town and note the changes happening. There was a tent city on one side what used to be the square that housed those who returned to 12. There was talk of a medicine factory being built, but first they had to build houses so they all didn't freeze to death during the winter.

But this time of year the weather was nice. Balmy, Peeta thought as he walked through town, it's balmy.

"And how would you paint that?" His father's voice echoed in his head.

It was a game they had started when he turned nine years old and his mother had decreed that it was time for him to start learning the family business, to start 'pulling his weight' under her roof. But of course he was still a child and one morning he had snuck away to make chalk drawings with Delly.

When his mother found him out she was furious and by the time she had dragged him inside and sent him reeling towards the basement stairs and the ovens and his father there was a brilliant reminder of her displeasure painted across his cheek.

As he listened to the voices of his classmates floating in through the open window, enjoying their Saturday while he worked a great hunk of dough he got more and more despondent. So his father had made up a word game, hoping to cheer him up. It was simple: he would say a word, tell him what it meant, and then they would figure out how to paint it.

'Balmy' was an easy one. Hair that hung in greasy strands; a sheen of sweat on skin; a cotton shirt sagging limply under the weight of the humidity sponged up from the air because all 'balmy' really was, was a nice way of saying hot and sticky and unpleasant.

His father started keeping a dictionary next to the row of cookbooks, and as the bread baked he and Peeta would play their game. And when he got a little older they reversed it. He would ask his son to translate the life that teemed outside the basement window into a tapestry of words, to paint with them instead of the oils spread across the pallet in his bedroom. In the end it was the most useful thing his father had ever taught him.

By the time he walked through Katniss' back door for dinner with her and Sae that night his grief was pressing down on his shoulders with such weight that he felt like he was going to be crushed and flattened out on her hardwood floor.

The Gnome

"You know Coin sent you to the Capitol to kill Katniss," Haymitch said, scraping the last of his rabbit stew from the bowl to his mouth.

"Why?" Peeta couldn't even remember what question of his had led to all this, but he was enraptured by Haymitch's narrative even if he was horrified and disgusted at the same time.

Haymitch gave him a look that clearly called him stupid before continuing. "Katniss had - has - enormous influence because she's the Mockingjay. The last thing Coin wanted was Katniss giving her support to someone else once she served the purpose of uniting the districts. After that Coin's only use for her was as a martyr," he finished dispassionately.

A memory surfaced in Peeta's mind, Katniss tearfully saying all she wanted to do was go home when they were in the cave during their first game. He almost asked Haymitch if it was real or not, but he was trying more and more to figure it out on his own.

He looked up after a moment, confused as to way Haymitch was watching him so narrowly. "I'm okay," he said hastily. "It's just... all she ever wanted was to go home."

"That's right," he said approvingly. For a drunk he sometimes had a remarkable memory. "But it didn't matter to Coin anymore than it did to Snow." Haymitch stood up and grabbed a bottle of white liquor from the icebox, taking a long, numbing pull on it. "I don't know who in your unit was reporting back to her, but when it became clear Boggs wasn't going to let you hurt Katniss she had to make other plans."

Peeta considered those last few days of the war in the Capitol in a new light, everything from his arrival in Katniss' unit to the bombing outside Snow's mansion that effectively ended the war. His hands started shaking from the effort it took to contain the anger and betrayal he felt. That street with the pods where Boggs died, that had definitely been an attempt on all their lives; if Mitchell hadn't stopped him he would have killed Katniss there.

Mitchell. Peeta shot to his feet, retching into the sink. "Do you think Gale knew what was going to happen to Prim?" he asked once he'd washed the sick out of his mouth.

"No," Haymitch said sadly. "Coin was probably hoping that killing the person Katniss loved most would push her over the edge, that she'd kill herself. It happening at the hands of her best friend was just salt in the wound. Didn't really work out how she wanted in the end though."

For all the times Katniss had been difficult and flighty and selfish and just plain thick-headed Haymitch was fiercely proud of her for killing Coin.

"Do you think she'll ever forgive him?"

Haymitch shrugged indifferently. "I doubt it. Why?"

Peeta looked out the window, towards Katniss' house as if the answer would be written on the siding. "Sometimes, I remember things about me and her and I feel and angry and jealous and... possessive, but I don't really know if I should feel that way; if it's really me or something the Capitol did to me."

He thought back to the dinner table at 13, how he had scared Annie by saying he would steal her away from Finnick and implied that he and Katniss had sex during the Victory Tour all because he wanted to make Katniss jealous and Gale angry just like he had been seeing them sitting together and being happy.

"If you hadn't been reaped would you have ever plucked up the courage to talk to her?" Haymitch asked shrewdly.

Peeta looked down at his hands. He had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he would probably watch her marry Gale, that he would end up loving her at a distance the same way his father loved her mother. It was different then though, when she had never returned his affection for show or otherwise. He really tried to fall for another girl as the years went by, to put Katniss out of his mind, but no matter how many pairs of lips he kissed his heart always got in the way of his head because they weren't hers.

"Whatever you might think she would never let anyone take care of her the way she lets you. Maybe it's not much, but it's more than anyone else since her father died."

But it wasn't him taking care of her that day. He left Haymitch to his bottle to fritter away the afternoon with his paints, but ended up prostrate on the couch, thinking things over. His dozing led to sleep, and his musing to nightmares. Coin took on new proportions in his imagination, turning into an evil, grotesque imp who slipped in and out of the shadows tormenting people.

He tried to stop himself following the orders she whispered in his ear in that residential street in the Capitol, tried to warn Mitchell and Katniss that it was a trap, but he couldn't and had to watch a different version of himself kill them both. At least until Katniss shook him awake. He might not thrash and scream like she did in her dreams, but his clenched jaw and pleading whimpers were enough to make her feel like her heart was being torn out.

"It's okay, Peeta," she said soothingly, brushing away the wetness on his cheeks. "It was just a nightmare. You're back home. You're safe."

He wanted to tell her it wasn't his safety he was worried about. Instead he let her coax him to dinner, her hand soft and warm and reassuring in his as she led him up the sidewalk to her house.

Interlude

In a different world Peeta would have courted Katniss. Would have brought her cookies and bouquets of wildflowers and sketches of her favourite things. His mother would have hated it, and he wouldn't have cared. She would have worn her mother's pretty blue dress and danced with him in the square on Saturday night when everyone was feeling festive and the fiddlers were playing because they had passed another week without a mine accident.

She would have blushed and known down to her bones that the sweet words he whispered in her ear were meant for her and not an audience of millions. And neither of them would have cared that it would be considered old fashioned in the Capitol because their world was District 12 and that was the way these things were done.

They would have fumbled their way through their first sexual experiences together with nervous laughs and soft lips and uncertain fingers. Their classmates had always thought Katniss was cold and hard, frigid even, but Peeta knew better. She felt too deeply, loved too fiercely to be those things. He knew before she even set foot in the Hunger Games arena that she was the Girl on Fire, and he would have knocked down all those walls she built around herself after her father died so she could burn for him, just him.

He would have done things the right way, with ring and her mother's permission, and when he proposed it wouldn't have been on a stage, for show. It would have been real.

Peeta imagined his hand as hers, imagined the warm steam of the shower as her lips on his neck as he thought their wedding night. His hips twitched up, seeking the imagined heat of her as he spilled onto the wet shower floor.

It was ritual now, this, before bed every night. It took the edge off his want, kept him from tossing and turning for hours thinking of her, wondering if she was doing the same. But it didn't stop him wondering who she thought about when her fingers sought the space between her legs.

There was a canvas propped up on the easel next to the window. The foreground showed the backs of people's heads, all the people who surrounded him during the Reaping. In the background though was Gale tearing Prim away from Katniss. He didn't know then the whole scene would be prophetic, the only thing he was aware of was the look that passed between two of them, now perfectly rendered in oil, beautiful and tragic.

Maybe this is the only way he could ever compete with Gale Hawthorne. Maybe it was only possible in a world where he had killed the sister Katniss loved more than anything.

The Old Castle

"Where's Katniss?" Peeta asked when he walked into her kitchen for breakfast to see her seat at the table empty.

"Upstairs," Sae answered, stirring a pan of something on the stove. When he started for the stairs she stopped him with a look. "She was crying, Peeta, said she wanted to be left alone," she warned him.

He nodded in acknowledgement, but took the stairs two at a time all the same. Her room was the biggest one in the house, just like his, but unlike his she had done nothing to personalize it aside from a picture of her family on the dresser and her bows propped up in the corner.

He tried to keep his footsteps light as he crossed the floor, but even if he didn't sound like an elephant stomping across her floor Katniss knew he it was him, could have sworn she felt him as soon as he walked through her backdoor.

She was curled under the covers facing away from him and for the first time in a long time he remembered how small she actually was. It was easy to forget since her personality made her seem larger than life. He didn't try to coax her out of bed, didn't say anything at all as he sat next to her and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I hate this house," she grit out, fisting her hands in the sheets like the words clawed at her throat painfully. It wasn't always so bad during the day with Greasy Sae and Peeta coming and going, but when it was quiet and empty after they left everywhere she looked was evidence of her mother and Prim and the house felt like the tomb it really was. And once the ghosts pounced they were loathe to let her go. "All it does is remind me how alone I am."

And she hated sleeping alone. She never really had before the Reaping, and maybe that was why it upset her so much, because sleeping alone was something she had come to associate with impending death. And the nightmares of course, of course there were those too. It had been so tempting since Peeta came back to beg him to sleep next to her every night and keep them at bay. The only reason she didn't was because her boy with the bread had been used enough.

"But you're not," he murmured leaning over to kiss her shoulder and remind her that he was here and he was real.

"Don't," she hissed out like she was in pain. "Why are you even here?"

"Because I love you," he said before he could stop himself.

She looked at him over her shoulder, just a quick flash of tortured gray before she turned away, and he felt the wall go up around her. "You deserve someone better, Peeta. Someone who didn't run away when you were hijacked because it hurt too much thinking I'd never get you back. Someone who didn't kiss her best friend to forget about you. You deserve someone who would have stayed and fought for you the way you would have done for me."

She wasn't trying to be horrible and hurtful, just honest. It still hurt.

And it took him until dinner to come up with a rebuttal.

She still hadn't gotten out of bed, so he took her up a tray of food, a small bouquet of wild violets perched on the side. He sat down on the bed next to her; he doubted she moved an inch since the morning.

"I've loved you for the better part of forever. I don't care if you think I deserve someone else, I want you. It's always been you." He reached out with gentle fingers to knead at her back, working out the knots that were surely there. "I think we both deserve to be happy, and if... if I make you happy, stop pushing me away."

She didn't say anything, but after awhile he felt her relax, felt her breathing deepen and knew she had fallen asleep.

Interlude

Katniss dug around in the cabinets under the bathroom sink. Someone on her prep team had filled it with tubes and jars and bottles of products, probably in the vain hope their little Mockingjay would use them so it was easier to get her back to beauty base zero when they needed her on camera. As if that would happen.

What she needed though was something to make her hair grow longer. The fire that had left her skin mottled and scarred had taken most of her braid with it. And she had gotten so much flour in it by constantly having to tuck it behind her ears while she helped Peeta bake that she looked like she was going prematurely grey.

Ever since people found out he was back in town they'd been knocking at his back door looking to buy or barter for bread. She'd been doing a brisk trade in game meat too lately. At least until she had twisted her ankle badly while out hunting. The first day she had she had stayed home she had nearly gone crazy, so Peeta asked for her help baking.

Katniss shoved the beauty products back in the cabinet, disgusted, and went downstairs to grab a bottle of oil to massage into her hair, the same way her mother did before her father died and she stopped caring.

It was just annoying having to brush her hair out of her eyes every five minutes. It definitely wasn't because Peeta had mentioned that he liked it long. Definitely not because of that. She simply wasn't that kind of girl.

Dispute Between Children At Play

"When was the last time you were here?" Peeta asked as he followed Katniss through the woods. He knew they were going to a lake, to the lake her father had taught her to swim at when she was little, but that was about it.

"The morning Gale got whipped. I needed someplace to talk to him where I was sure we wouldn't be overheard; it was the only place I could think of."

"Why?"

"I wanted to talk to him about running away."

Peeta frowned. He remembered that morning. She must have talked to Gale before she met him going into town. "Can I ask you something?"

"Hmm?"

"Whenever you needed something you go him... or Haymitch... why didn't you ever come to me first?"

Katniss shoulders stiffened defensively. She knew the reason, it was ready to fly off her tongue before the thought could even really manifest in her brain. Asking Peeta for something meant more than asking anyone else. Not because she felt she owed him so much - though she did -, but because it meant more.

"I guess because I've known him so long," she said evasively. "We spent years looking out for each other while we hunted. I trusted him." And she was still unbearably bitter over that.

Her answer didn't explain away Haymitch, but Peeta decided to keep his mouth shut and not ruin their day since Katniss was taking him someplace special.

By the time they reached their destination the sun was high in the sky and they were both flushed and sweaty; summer had finally turned from 'balmy' to 'scorching'. Peeta deposited their picnic basket in the shade of the little cabin, giving Katniss some privacy as she pulled a slip over her underclothes and got in the water.

When he turned around he nearly choked on his tongue seeing her floating on her back, her clothes clinging to her wet and obscene. The girl still had no idea the effect she could have on him. He had to wait until she ducked underwater to get in just so she wouldn't see the growing problem between his legs. Mercifully, the water was cold enough to cure it.

She popped up behind him like a cork. "Do you remember how to swim?"

"I don't think I'm going to be very good at it without a floatation belt," he deadpanned.

A huge smile lit up her face. It was ridiculous how his memory for the little things pleased her. "I'll help you," she said, reaching out for him.

It took him awhile to get his body to move the way he needed it too, mostly because he kept getting distracted by her. Not her body - though there was that too -, but by her mood. She looked younger here, laughing and carefree; happy like a girl who had never entered an arena or lived through a war.

Ever since her 'bad days' a few weeks before things had changed between them; not in a huge way, just an encouraging way. They talked about their past, and very, very tentatively the future; not 'their future', just 'the future'. But she was opening up to him and that was something.

And he'd never deny how much he enjoyed it when she kissed his cheek in greeting and farewell now, of how she held his hand under the table as they ate. It felt like they were getting back some of the things the Capitol had robbed them of along with their innocence.

By the time mid-afternoon rolled around they were starving and spent, but felt lighter than they had in years. Peeta didn't really know how it happened, one minute they were making their way towards shore, and the next his arms were full of Katniss, but with her pressed against him he forgot to take things slow and careful, and so did she.

Before he could stop himself his lips were on hers, and it felt like the homecoming he should have had after his rescue, after returning to 12. It was hungry and demanding and needy and he loved it and her.

"I missed you," she whispered when he lips moved to her neck, a long delayed apology for staining her pale skin purple the last time she welcomed him home. But it was her phrasing that made his heart swell because she said 'I missed you'. Not this, or it, you. She wasn't doing this because she was lonely, or because she owed him something, but because she wanted him.

"I missed you too," he mumbled against her skin.

And because nothing could ever be perfect for them for long, his artificial foot slipped on the slick bottom of the pond and he tipped backwards, getting a mouthful of pond water in the process. A moment later he felt her hands wrap around his arm and pull him up, the sound of her laughter filling his ears as he broke the surface.

He shook the water away and opened his eyes. The droplets looked like diamonds spinning through the air, refracting in tiny, impossible rainbows of color. Suddenly her laughed turned to a cackle and her hands turned from helpful to threatening. She was trying to push him under, trying to drown him and laughing madly as he struggled to free himself.

But there was something else, something tickling the back of his brain telling him this was all wrong. He heard someone calling his name from far away, a bleated Peeta reaching his ears as if it had been carried in on the wind that swept down from the hills they had hiked to get here. It was gentle and insistent, and he focused on that, as he tried to work out where he was and how he got here.

It wasn't until the voice calling him turned from entreating to pained that he snapped out of his stupor. When he came back to reality Katniss was still in front of him, her expression tight, but her voice even as she said his name over and over again.

He looked down in horror, seeing his hands clamped around her middle so forcefully he could feel the bottom of her ribs digging into the top them. Horror and disgust weren't strong enough words to convey what he felt at the sight. Wet, shaking, bile rising up in his throat he pushed her away. She splashed after him awkwardly until she grained solid ground, but by then he was gone.

Katniss caught a few glimpses of Peeta was they each wove their way through the woods and towards home; just enough to assure her that he hadn't been attacked by wild dogs or gone dangerously off course. She was held up at the fence by a couple of people she knew from her days frequenting the Hob, asking if she had fresh game.

She shook them off, but by the time she mounted the steps to Peeta's front door he had barricaded himself inside. "Fine," she huffed, pushing her hair out of her face. "Just... fine!" She stomped back to her house, slamming the door behind her.

As much as she felt like going in the kitchen and breaking plates she went upstairs and took a shower. Katniss frowned at the dusky bruises bookending her sides when she got out, imagining Peeta's reaction if he saw them. The best thing she could do was hide them, so she pulled a dress out of her closet, identical to the one of her mother's she wore to the reaping except soft yellow in color.

She had a closet full of beautiful dresses Cinna had designed for her, but they were entombed in the special closet downstairs, a shrine to their creator. This dress was payment for a wild turkey; District 13 was in charge of the rebuilding effort and though their policy of giving workers exactly as many calories as they needed a day kept them healthy, it didn't keep them full.

Katniss never thought she'd actually wear the dress, and the trade had been a bad one on her side, but most of them were these days; she didn't need to barter to survive anymore. She slipped it on, unexpectedly enjoying how much more comfortable it was in the heat than her usual pants and shirt. But the real appeal was still that Peeta was too much of a gentleman to pull it open and reveal the bruises.

She tried to occupy herself, to settle to something to keep her mind busy, but spent the remainder of the afternoon pacing and chewing her nails to nubs trying to control her fear that now that Peeta was gone he was never coming back. When he didn't amble through her backdoor with Greasy Sae for dinner, she just about crawled out of her skin. Instead, she crawled through Peeta's window.

He was working away at a painting when she found him. "You shouldn't be here," he said, refusing to turn and look at her where she stood in the doorway.

"Peeta," she whined, hating the way her voice sounded but knowing how it would affect him. She walked up behind him and fitted her hands to his shoulders. Even through the fabric of his shirt she could feel how tightly strung his muscles were.

He shrugged her hands off. "I could have killed you today, did you think about that? Please, Katniss... please, go home," he pleaded with her.

Suddenly, she was furious with him. She had thought about that, but Peeta was the last thing she had left. Prim was dead, her mother might as well be, but even that was bearable as long as she had Peeta. And for him to push her away after everything they'd been through - after the hunger games and the war and everything that he had said to her when she refused to get out of bed - it was just one thing too many.

So, she did. Right out his front door and right through hers. A minute later she was back, a bundle of clothes in her hand, and her bow hanging off her shoulder. Peeta flew out of his makeshift studio with a look of horror plastered across his face. "What are you doing?"

"Moving in," she snapped, pushing him out of her way. "You won't hurt me. I know you won't," she said with finality. She sat down on his bed, looking up at him petulantly, daring him to make her leave. They both knew it was pointless. She smiled triumphantly at the door when he slammed it shut and went back downstairs grumbling about how stubborn she was.