I disclaim any ownership of The Hunger Games Characters. ILY Suzanne Collins.

A/N: Thanks for the comments! All thoughts appreciated.

He had no idea what had happened to Katniss, whether she was alive or dead. He missed her. He wondered if she missed him, then he put those thoughts away. He of course took her feelings into account, but he'd long ago conditioned himself to move past things he couldn't do anything about. He'd exhausted all of his solitary confinement entertainment options. He's slept, he'd exercised, he'd experimented with the shower options, he'd pounded the walls until he bruised and bled, he'd replayed his time in the arena (but especially the last hour) in his head a hundred million times. He'd built card houses. He'd thought of her and that night, of the beach, but the ache in his heart was not alleviated by emptying his groin in the dark.

President Snow visited him. "Would you like to know what happened to your family, Peeta?" Those words could have sounded comforting coming from another person, but they were not meant to be. They were meant to wheedle their way into his heart like parasites; to dig into soft tissue and destroy him from the inside. Snow described the bombing, in brutal detail. When he covered his ears and screamed Snow waited patiently for him to stop and then picked up where he left off. He finally just listened. Just to have it over with.

He could not help but think of them. He told himself the story of his family. So they wouldn't be forgotten. Even if it was only by him, for whatever time he had left.

He missed his father the most. He missed his brothers and mother as well, and he never would have wished their fate on them, or anyone. But his father's thoughtfulness, his kindness and his sensitivity had simply vanished from the world and it was a palpable loss. He knew his father had always favored him in secret. He wasn't sure if his brothers-who took after their unintuitive mother-ever noticed. Their father had said he loved them all often enough, and he had. But it was in the quiet hours he had spent teaching Peeta to mix and color different kinds of frosting and work the tricky nuances of rare treats like marzipan or fondant that Peeta knew he was most like his father. They worked well together, understood and predicted one another's moods and rhythms in comfortable silence. On lighter days they cracked jokes, or made note of the details of the world that the other members of their family simply didn't see. There was not much the elder baker did not see.

He knew the story of her mother by heart, even though his father had only told it to him once. He remembered it because it was the day he met her. Katniss. He had whispered her name in the dark so many times, painted her face in his mind. It helped him sleep. He knew he had always been meant to be there for her, even if that meant giving her up, or dying for her. His father had given up Katniss's mother once, for the same reasons. Had taken comfort in it when she was so obviously happy, with her coal miner and her daughters. She had glowed with it, and Mr. Mellark had loved her even more, still.

When the coal miner was killed, the worry lines that cobwebbed his father's face grew deeper. His eyes got a shade or two darker, or maybe they had sunk a little deeper into his head, throwing new kinds of shadows. Only Peeta noticed. Even though at eleven he was much too big to cuddle like a small child, he sometimes curled up in a blanket on the sofa next to his father after dinner and asked for a story. His father always obliged, then sent him to bed with a kiss on top of his little blond head and a ruffle of his hair. His mother would shake her head, her hands busy darning socks or mending pants; an endless chore in a house full of males. "You baby that boy," she had said. His father said nothing back. There was nothing he could tell her about how it was Peeta taking care of him, not the other way around.

Mrs. Mellark had always known that she was not Mr. Mellark's first choice for a wife. Their arrangement was purely practical. He was a stable bet; she could give him children. She was efficient to a fault and she liked things a particular way. Hers. She was rigid and suspicious and petty but she was always what she appeared to be. A complete contrast to the pale, ethereal healer he never stopped loving. But his wife was also reliable and sturdy, despite her volatility. She cared enough for her family. As much as someone could who considered feelings to be a weakness in other people. Her ability to always place the blame anywhere other than on her own shoulders saved her the indignity of feeling remorse or guilt for what she did with her temper. Peeta got the most of her contempt because he wasn't good at hiding his feelings at all at first.

Peeta didn't know everything about his family, though.

The boy's father had watched him fall deeper and deeper into the abyss every day. Watched him watch her. He had watched him burn valuable bread and pay the price for it at the back of his mother's hand. Later that night he comforted his child, checked the bruise and said warm words. Snuck him a small cookie. Because Peeta was kind and selfless and brave, and he didn't want to see that beaten out of him. Because Peeta was already devoted. The father could only hope that things would turn out differently for the son. It had been enough hope to salve his own pain sometimes, but it had also been excruciating to watch. So much heartache, between the two of them. Sometimes he felt that he had somehow passed it on, that it was something genetic. An inheritance of misery. The weakness of a friable heart. But Peeta had also inherited his mother's solidness and reliability; her determined steadiness. And his warmth was from his heart, not from anger. Mr. Mellark had hoped maybe that would be enough to protect his son. It was a small condolence for his choices.

The baker had said nothing to Peeta about his feelings for the girl with the braid, and he had guarded the secret from the others. Nothing good would have come from them knowing. But he had spoken of Katniss and her hunting skills nonchalantly at dinner over squirrel and stale bread, when his wife was preparing for the next day or had gone to bed early. He fed Peeta any information he happened upon regarding her. How the people in town as well as the Hob had respected her father and intended to show his girl the same, if she earned it. Which she did. "She's a fighter," they'd say. Even before the Reaping.

Someone much too young bearing the burden of an entire family was not uncommon at all where they lived. But it was unusual for an eleven year old girl to take so much weight. She seemed so young and so reserved. No one would have blamed her for breaking, for giving up and giving in to starvation and hopelessness, but she never did. No one came to doubt her strength. He didn't blame his son for loving her, or for helping her the one time she had come so very close to breaking. And no one could help but adore Prim, the wispy wildflower of a creature that reminded him so much of the girl he had grown up with. Of course he had helped them whenever he could. He had never wanted Katniss to feel that she was getting charity though, he knew she would have balked. And because it hadn't been. She had earned every single small kindness he could give her, and more.