And On.

They don't talk about it, they don't even think about it, this sharp tongued girl and brooding boy who had given up their futures long ago. They live together because they didn't want to not see each other, but they don't try to define anything. They are just trying to make it from one day to the next through nights that don't belong to them.

So neither of them knows when it happens. Maybe it is when he picks up something pretty and useless just because he knows she will like it. Maybe it is when she finds herself picking up his shirt from the floor just for the comforting smell of him. Maybe it is when he finds her on the floor of their house with Posy, carefully explaining the importance of a load bearing wall in the dollhouse they are building. Maybe it is when she breaks into a smile at the sight of him. Maybe it is when he smiles back.

There are still days when he disappears and nights when he is gone, but he always comes back. She can tell from the darkness that clouds his face, the twig in his hair, the rock dust on his boots, that he did something stupid, reckless. But he always comes back. There are still times when she itches to move on, to run, so she does, sprinting as fast as she can through the roads on the edge of the village, weaving through trees, until she hangs over her knees panting, completely spent. But she always comes back. The first time he had run after her, running as fast as he could to keep up, yelling after her. When she had finally stopped, miles down the road, she looked at him silently while she gulped air back into her lungs, a little sad and apologetic and a little scared. It was only after they were sitting in the back of the empty truck she managed to flag down that she reached over to him and silently laced her fingers with his, pressing the length of their arms together. He doesn't go after her anymore, she always comes back.

Sometimes she lashes out, like a cornered animal, attacking wildly and recklessly with no thought of anything else. Sometimes he shuts down, dark and forbidding and stonily silent, letting nothing in and nothing out.

But they always come back.

They make the house on the edge of town into a home, filled with more stuff than he could have imagined owning in two lifetimes, all of it beautiful.

She does find a place in the burgeoning government to work, to help, in a different department, in a different building from Gale. They work hard, the two of them, as hard as they have ever worked, the only way they know how. And when they go home, they know that someone will be there, ready to agree that Plutarch is a pompous ass, that the District 5 council can make all the demands they want, but District 6 can only produce vehicles so fast, that there is no point in doing something if you aren't going to do it right.

The doctors tell her that they don't think that she can get pregnant. "Not with the elec- everything…" the doctor had said, refusing to look her in the eye. She could have laughed at how terrified he looked, this import from the Capitol working among the district people. She was sure that any sudden movement from her would have had him running out of the room, so she reached across him for her jacket a little faster than she had needed to. He had flinched.

She tells herself that this has no effect on her, that she didn't want children anyway, not with everything she has seen, but she hates that it is no longer her choice, that this is one more thing the Capitol has taken away from her. The flash of sadness she sees in Gale's eyes when she tells him fills her with a white hot rage that she pours out at him.

"As if I care! As if I want to bring a child into this world. They did me a fucking favor! You want to knock me up? Make me into your little wife?" She spits the word out with disgust. "Well you can't. So you should probably go find yourself some sweet, spineless little girl who still has all of her parts in working order. I am sure it wouldn't be too hard for you Mr. Big Shot, Mr. Television Star-"

But he just gathers her up in his arms, runs his fingers through her hair until her rigid body relaxes against his.

"You're all I want," he says into her hair. But he sees the way that she is with Kenn, the way her whole body seems to relax, the gentleness he had never seen before, the joy in her smile when his little hand had gripped her finger, and he is sad.

They are dedicating the new technical institute that they have built in District 3 to Wiress and Fil in a ceremony that is almost certain to be over the top and terrible, but Gale still insists on going. He wants to see it, a real institute of higher education in one of the districts, the first of many. A real opportunity that never would have been possible before.

He still talks to Beetee on the phone, usually at the office or when Johanna isn't home, not secretly exactly, but privately, for help or advice or ideas. For the times when he needs someone slightly more patient and less insulting than the girl he lives with.

So they go. Johanna grumbles about cameras and the certain weirdos that will populate "Nuts U.," but she is the one who insists on going over a day early, renting the small house near Beetee for an extra night. She leaves him that afternoon, saying only that she is going exploring, and he goes to visit Beetee alone. The rush of patiently explained logic even just on mundane seeming logistical problems makes him feel better, calmer, like things can be done.

The next day, at the end of the ceremony that was just as ridiculous as he had thought it was going to be, filled with just as much hot air and skewered with just as many snide comments from Johanna as he was expecting, he still feels lighter. He laughs as Johanna makes bitingly accurate comments about the suit the newly appointed school President, clearly a former Capitol citizen, wore in his attempt to look appropriately scholarly but also blend in to the district. They are slipping behind the crowd on the large green lawn in front of the main building, heading away from the many cameras and back toward a side street.

"Right, I'm sure he picked out that hat all, 'district people love brown, right? But also, it looks-'"

His smile dies on his lips as they round the corner because there it is, right in front of him, the distinctive dark braid. And there he is too, right next to it, right next to her, holding her hand tightly.

Katniss and Peeta turn around when they hear the noise of someone behind them, and suddenly they are all face to face for the first time since – for the first time since the world ended, shattered, and came back together as something completely new. The two of them stand tall, the matching scars that lick the edges of their faces no longer red and angry but part of them, their eyes sad but clear.

Katniss and Gale's eyes are locked together, grey to grey, searching each other. He doesn't know why he didn't think of it, of course they would be here too. She has been able to go on certain approved trips for months. It was big news, he had given the announcement to the press himself.

Johanna's lazy smirk and relaxed pose is betrayed only be the quick flick of her eyes, back and forth between the two of them as she watches them both intently, sizing up the situation, waiting to see how and when to attack.

But Peeta just takes the two of them in, and in a second he is crossing the space between them all, enveloping Johanna into a hug, a real hug. She is startled for a second before she relaxes, taking in the strength that she can feel back in his arms, the emotion in the voice that sounds like his again as he says her name. He is whole, as whole as he can be, and so is she.

They know each other intimately, more intimately than two people should know each other. They know each other's screams and they know each other's secrets, and suddenly she finds herself crying against his shoulder, wondering when she became this person who cries all the damn time.

For once it is Katniss who finally breaks the silence, saying the right thing.

"So, what do you think? Do we need to be worried here?" she asks as she cocks her head in Gale's direction. Gale isn't sure where to look or what to do, if he should be more worried about his seeing Katniss or Katniss seeing him or Johanna seeing them together or Katniss seeing him and Johanna together.

Peeta and Johanna break apart as Johanna barks out a wet laugh.

"As if I would want anything to do with this mangled, gimpy-" She stops as Peeta shoves her lightly. He runs a hand awkwardly through his hair before offering it to Gale, who shakes it stiffly.

Johanna grabs Peeta's arm.

"C'mon," she says, roughly wiping her eyes, "I need a drink, and since it doesn't look like you managed to drag Haymitch along with you, we are going to have to find something in this wasteland of a district."

Peeta squeezes Katniss' hand for just a second, silently, before he goes off with Johanna, leaving Katniss and Gale alone in a small alley in District 3.

Gale knows that there is nothing he needs to apologize for; he has spent months learning to forgive others and in the process has maybe started to forgive himself, but when he sees her in front of him, scarred and broken but still standing, he finds himself breathing out "Katniss, I... I'm sorry. So sorry," his eyes shiny with tears he won't let himself shed. And she is looking at him, whispering 'sorry, I'm sorry' too, and there are tears streaming silently down her face.

Suddenly they step towards each other, into each other's arms, and they keep apologizing, not really knowing what they are apologizing for. For not being the same people that they used to be, and for all the horrible things that happened to each of them. For every time they weren't able to protect each other, and for every time that they did.

"I've missed you," she whispers. "I've missed my best friend."

"I've missed you too," he whispers back.

And they know that things will never be the same again between them, but that they are okay. They can figure this new thing out because they have been tied together too tightly for too long to let it all just go.

They all work their way back to the rented house down the street, wrung out and drained. The four of them sit around the unfamiliar space, filled with someone else's things, trying to figure out how to interact with each other and sitting in deafening silence instead.

Eventually Peeta walks into the kitchen, looking through the cupboards and drawers, and starts preparing rolls, pulling a small packet of yeast out of his pocket. Johanna rolls her eyes so hard she almost gives herself a muscle cramp but keeps her mouth shut. Katniss watches his every move, her fingers unconsciously moving over an invisible bow, her body rigid with tension on the edge of her seat.

In a minute, Gale wordlessly moves in next to him, deftly skinning the rabbit they had bought earlier, cutting vegetables, pulling out pans. The two of them move around the kitchen, not speaking but working side by side, accepting each other, a tenuous understanding between them.

Katniss looks over at Johanna, eyebrows raised questioningly, but the older girl just shrugs. They are all doing the best they can, the only way they know how.

Johanna smiles slyly into the silence, pulling out a bottle of white liquor that she scrounged up from somewhere, and plunks it in the middle of the table in the kitchen.

"Okay, hell if we are going to sit here, four sniveling, mentally disoriented wrecks, crying with each other," she says. "Pull it together, soldiers."

She pulls down four glasses and starts mixing them drinks with whatever she can find in the house. Katniss gets Johanna's portable music player from the other room at Johanna's demand and starts fiddling with the controls, trying to find the most upbeat music chip she can.

Slowly they allow themselves to relax a little, the white liquor that burns its way down their throats helping with that.

"Johanna, this drink is terrible," Katniss says, her face puckered in a grimace. "Do not become a bartender."

"Added to the list," Johanna replies breezily. "And you will drink that drink and like it."

Gale smiles as he slips the vegetables into the oven under the rolls that are already in there. Someone else on the receiving end of her pronouncements.

The four of them move around the kitchen, Katniss setting the table, Gale and Peeta finishing cooking the meal, Johanna mixing them all another drink and telling them all what they are doing incorrectly from her perch on the kitchen counter.

They start talking, slowly, dancing around sensitive subjects, finding that everything is sensitive.

"So the love story continues, I see," Johanna smirks at Katniss.

"Yup." Katniss responds, failing to elaborate. "And I see my cousin still isn't afraid of you."

"Well, not most days," Gale answers for her, with a quick grin Johanna's way. He smiles sheepishly at Katniss, who smiles a little sadly back at him. They both know how different things are between them. They will never go back to the way things were. It's better, it's impossible to go back, but they are both a little sad nonetheless.

Peeta asks about their jobs in District 2, and Katniss listens. Gale asks about how District 12 is coming together, and they tell him; how things are the same and how things are different, who is back. They don't say anything about all the people who aren't there. They start to talk more easily, with fewer pauses after every question, every sentence, with less time spent silently trying to gauge the reactions of everyone else at the table and more time spent getting to know the people they have each started to become.

Later they sit around the table, finishing the last of their meal, laughing at a story that Peeta tells about the ever escaping gaggle of geese Haymitch has been attempting to raise, and for a second they look like four friends, enjoying each other's company, nothing more, nothing less.

They don't run as often, either of them. They start to figure out how to rely on each other, these two people who had been so used to relying on no one but themselves.

She is not used to having a family, she is used to having personal relationships used as bargaining chips against her, so it takes some time for her to let her guard down.

Hazelle had watched her, carefully, with the observant grey eyes that she had passed on to her son, but has clearly concluded that she likes this fiery girl, different from the one on television, whose own fire had somehow tempered her boy's. Posy had decided that they were going to be friends from the very beginning, slipping a small hand inside Johanna's and causing her to look up at Gale with an amusingly panicked look. Vick, always easy going and social, gets along with everyone. In fact, if he didn't look so much like the rest of them, Gale would wonder if they picked him up from some other family. It was Rory, so much like Gale but gentler, more sensitive, who took the longest to decide how he felt about her. But now Gale is pretty sure that Rory tells her things that he doesn't tell anyone else, or at least not his older brother.

The two of them go to District 4 as often as they can, visiting Annie, watching little Kenn grow up. He looks exactly like Finnick but with Annie's dark hair, laughingly mischievous but with her softness around his eyes. Watching him run down the beach, dragging a stick in the wet sand behind him, making friends with any man, woman, child, or bird he comes across, Johanna sees Finnick and laughs.

"You have a little heartbreaker on your hands," she says to Annie, who's tired sigh can't hide her smile.

They even go to District 12, for the groundbreaking on the new medicine factory, and again, later, Gale deciding that he wants to see what the place he used to call home is becoming. They stay with Katniss and Peeta in what used to be Peeta's house but is now theirs, for all the world like friends. Haymitch threatens Gale with a slight sway the first time he sees them.

"Don't make me have to kill you," he says looking in Johanna's direction. Gale just smiles.

"As if you could," he says, but he gives Haymitch a nod.

"And whatever you do, don't tell me about it if you guys all decide to switch again," Haymitch says while taking a large pull from the bottle in his hand. Gale just shakes his head at Haymitch's back.

And they are making a difference, both of them. They work hard and they see results. Their lives are full, and they are happy. So he doesn't understand when he finds her one day motionless in the middle of the living room staring up at the ceiling, her old, ratty shoulder bag clutched in her hands.

"I didn't know you still had that thing," he says slowly as he approaches her carefully.

She snaps her head down toward him at the noise, and he can see the sheer terror in her eyes.

"Jo," he says quietly, still walking slowly toward her, "what's going on?"

He pries the bag carefully out of her fingers as she still doesn't say anything to him, looking like the only thing that is keeping her in one place is the tension of trying to run in four different directions at once.

"I thought…" His eyebrows knit together in concern. "I thought we loved," his voice catches just a little on the word. "Each other…"

She looks at him and inhales for what seems like the first time since he found her.

"I'm pregnant," she says quietly.

And now he can only stare at her in stunned silence while she looks increasingly worriedly at him.

His mind whirls, flooded with a hundred thoughts, a hundred emotions.

"Say something," she snaps at him, breaking his reverie.

He looks at her, a smile breaking out over his face. This is a new step, and it is as scary as anything he has ever faced, but he knows that they can do it together.

"Marry me. Marry me Johanna Mason," he says.

She looks at him in surprise, but his face is joyful and earnest, so she laughs, clear and light as a bell.

"Why do you always call me that? And that's it? That's all you have to say? I drop this terrifying piece of information on you and you just want to go and making even more fucking terrifying?"

He just smiles at her. He is sure, more sure than he has even been of anything in his life.

"We can do anything together," he says to her. "We prove it every day. We can do this."

Her shoulders relax. She is starting to look like she might believe him.

"Fine," she says as she closes the space between them, "but I am keeping my name."

They have a boy, followed by another, and a baby girl last.

"Stupid Capitol doctor probably couldn't find his own penis with two hands and a map let alone figure out anything about anyone else's parts," she had grumbled the third time. "This baby maker is closed for business."

Gale had laughed, but she thinks that they were both secretly relieved when their last one was a girl.

The first time she had looked down into the face of her little boy, she felt something in part of her heart that she thought she had lost long ago. She knew that whatever else she had done or not done, whatever she had lost or taken with her, the fact that her little boy would never have to watch a piece of paper that may or may not have his name written on it pulled from a huge bowl on a stage meant that she had done something right, something worthy.

Katniss and Peeta come to visit after their daughter is born. After seven years of exemplary reports from Dr. Aurelius and Haymitch, Katniss is finally free to move around the country like any other citizen, and Johanna appreciates the adult company.

Gale and Peeta go out with a couple of guys from Gale's office to play darts and drink beer at one of the new bars that have opened up in town, filled with games from before the Dark Days, when people used to play games. Katniss watches them go with a slightly bewildered look on her face, like she still can't believe that the two of them actually seem to like each other.

Katniss sits in the boys' room playing with Luka and Culley while the baby sleeps. She loves the boys, but she is not easy with them like Peeta is; unlike him, she finds that there is a limit to the number of games of peek-a-boo she can play in one sitting, and she always seems amazed that they aren't scared of her, that they love her back. Johanna comes into the room as Katniss and Culley attempt to build a multi-colored tower with the blocks Peeta painted especially for him, while Luka waits for the chance to destroy whatever it is they create. Katniss' voice fills the room as she hilariously narrates every move in a sing-song voice.

"There's my beautiful boy," Johanna coos as Culley catches sight of her. Katniss smiles a little and wishes that Finnick could have seen his acidic Johanna Mason like this. That Johanna and this Johanna seem like two different people. In many ways, they are, she thinks to herself. They all are.

"How do you do it?" Katniss asks softly after a while, looking at the blocks she is turning over in her hands.

Johanna turns from her son to look at Katniss carefully. "Well, I didn't have much choice in the matter," she starts, but there is an edge of laughter in her voice. "Those brainless doctors didn't know they were up against the Hawthorne seed, and by the time we figured out that little problem, it was already too late."

"Ugh, come on, I don't need to hear anything about any 'Hawthorne seed.' Ew."

"It is just so powerful. Beyond the understandings of modern medicine," Johanna laughs, the naked girl in the elevator again. Katniss throws a block at her with a smile. But she looks at Johanna questioningly again, and Johanna sobers.

"It was terrifying," Johanna starts again, slowly. "It is terrifying."

She pauses and looks at Katniss. She knows that Peeta wants children, anyone who sees him with Kenn or her own children could see that, so she watches the girl carefully as Katniss absently plays with the blocks in her lap with fear and uncertainty in her eyes.

"I still don't know if I can do it. But I love them so much I know I am going to try. No matter what. I didn't know I could love something this much." This is what makes Katniss look up at her.

"Yeah, it scares me," she responds to Katniss' silent questions, "But loving them makes me better. And Gale is always there. Like Peeta would be." Johanna wonders if she is pushing the issue, but Katniss just nods.

"I think it is good that it happened the way it did for me. If I had had any choice, if I had been able to think about it at all, I don't think I ever would have been able to put myself up for this type of risk. Not after everything I had lost." She stops.

"But they are pretty great," she says as she wrestles Luka, who had started climbing on her back, over her shoulder as he giggles. "Aren't you? Aren't you pretty great?"

"I just..." Katniss drops her eyes again, and Johanna stands Luka up and tells him to color at the table with his brother.

"Yeah."

"Look, don't do anything you don't want to do. That's what we fought for. And it is hard. Hard." She pauses, thinking.

"When Luka was first learning to walk, he tripped and fell into the table downstairs. Banged his head. And that was the first time he had really hurt himself, you know? He had a mark. On his head. And I hadn't protected him from it. It was terrifying." She looks intently at Luka like she could still see where the mark had been.

"I think I cried harder than he did. If Gale hadn't come home right then, I am pretty sure I would have taken that table to the backyard and axed it into splinters. Splinters." Johanna shakes her head at the memory. "You tell anyone that story, and I will kill you."

"But now? I can't imagine my life any other way. I can't imagine life without them. They make me happier than anything I have ever known." She looks at Katniss again. "And I tried most colors of those Capitol pills back in the day, so I should know."

Their other boys come home then, Gale complaining that Peeta must be finding some way to cheat at darts. These old games are quickly gaining popularity as life becomes less of a daily struggle for regular citizens, and somehow Peeta, easy going and charming, excels at all of them. Gale always clamors for a bow when playing with him, amazed that such a mediocre shot can be so good at this stupid game.

"It's the gentle touch, Gale," Peeta is laughing as they come down the stairs, Johanna carrying Culley and Katniss holding Luka by the hand. "You have to feel it. Don't make me feel sorry for Johanna..."

Luka struggles to free his hand from Katniss' when he sees Gale, so Katniss lets him go, lets him run over to his daddy, who scoops him up and hangs him upside down for a second with a hey little man. Gale bends for a quick hello kiss from Johanna before dropping a kiss on Culley's head.

"Anybody wakes the baby, I kill 'em," Johanna says warningly with a smile.

Katniss and Peeta stand a little off to the side, hands clasped together, taking in the family tableau with smiles that have just a little sadness behind them before Peeta continues, "So Johanna, your husband continues to embarrass himself at darts. It's getting sad, really. You might have to think about divorce."

Sometimes she doesn't recognize herself, anchored down by so many things, so many people, yet loving them for it. Sometimes she doesn't recognize this life of hers that was built on the razed ground of everything she ever known, but she knows that the cost of that foundation was so high, that she has to do everything she can to make it worth it. And most of the time, she succeeds. They succeed.

She knows there are things, horrible things, that she will never forget, but she also knows there are joys beyond anything she could imagine still waiting for her. The only thing to do is move forward, not at a run, not to escape something else, but with her head held high and shoulders square.

It's later than usual when she opens the door to their little house, expanded by the work of their own hands, and is immediately accosted by one of her boys smearing pale pink frosting across her pants. She walks a little farther into the house, coming onto a scene of barely controlled chaos in the kitchen. She catches the guilty look of her husband as he is caught in the act of spooning cake into their little girl's mouth. The remainder that is sitting on the counter looks distinctly like something Peeta must have sent up on the express train.

She looks down, suppressing a smile, before looking back at him as seriously as she can with dancing eyes.

"What on earth is going on here? I show up one hour late and all semblance of order goes out the window? We just eat cake for dinner and run wild hopped up on sugar?"

Gale starts to stammer something as she throws her jacket on a chair, clearing dishes and wiping down the table before she cuts herself a big piece of cake and sits down, pulling her oldest onto her lap.

"Well, that blond sop always did know how to bake," she says as she takes a bite. She looks around the room, noting the dangerous location of a toy train and the mysterious presence of a single, unmatched shoe. She shakes her head a little as she watches Culley get more milk down his shirt front than into his mouth. She smiles as she breathes in the little boy smell of her son and takes another big bite of cake.

Gale catches her eye with a little shrug and smiles back.

Most of the time, they succeed.