Wow! You guys are the best. I got some of the most encouraging reviews ever last chapter. You all have no idea how much I appreciate hearing what you think!

Also thank you for the suggestion to add this to AO3– I'll be doing that this week!

After breakfast, Peeta collects the dishes and begins washing them in the sink. I can feel my mind beginning to slip away as the morphling finally starts to unravel my thoughts.

As Peeta puts the now clean plates in the cabinet, he finally asks,

"Would you come cook with me today? I'd love the company."

Really, in all honesty, what I want, is to spend the day in the closet savoring my last two morphling pills. But, I can't exactly say I would rather hide in the dark than spend some time with him— and I'm absolutely not mentioning morphling or liquor to him. Peeta watches me while I try to decide how to respond.

"Well... I was planning on... umm... getting some rest. I didn't sleep well last night." Peeta chuckles. "Are you laughing at me?" I snap.

"Well... it's just that you've always been a terrible liar." He laughs. I glare at him. "Come on, Katniss. Just help me for a little bit. I promise I won't make you talk.".

I really don't want to and I have never been one to do things I don't want to do. But something about the way Peeta watches me, begging with those blue eyes stops me from refusing. His eyes look so normal without the confused haze clouding them. He looks like my Peeta again, not the Capitol's mutt Peeta that I left behind in thirteen.

I purse my lips indecisively, but finally give in with a nod. Peeta smiles broadly at me and quickly grabs his coat off of the back of his chair so we can go.

I follow behind him to his house. The morphling has definitely kicked in now. I'm not nearly as out of it as when I take three or four pills, but I can feel its effects nonetheless. My eyelids feel heavy and objects seem to move and shimmer past me at a faster pace than I actually walk. It's very surreal— very dreamlike. My depth perception must be off as well because as I try to climb his front steps I catch my toe on the very first one and fall into the back of him.

"Whoa, you alright?" Peeta says, as I cling to the back of his coat to right myself.

"Fine... clumsy..." I mutter embarrassed, as I focus hard on making it up the next three steps while clinging to the handrail. Peeta tries to take my hand as I make it to the door, but I pull away, giving him a defiant look. He only gives a small chuckle as he backs further into the room to let me pass.

I make it inside to his kitchen and move to lean against the counter for support. Large jars of ingredients are already sitting out along the length of the countertop, presumably from the fresh bread he baked that morning. There's a large floured breadboard waiting beside the sink and an entire box of spices sitting beside the window.

Before I realize what I'm doing, I've crossed the room and started opening spices so I can look at them and smell them. These tiny bottles remind me so much of my family. My mother and sister with all of their herbs for healing, my father with his extensive knowledge of all of the edible wildlife. It feels like a little piece of them here with me and it hurts. I pick up one labeled ginger and inhale deeply. Oh the memories— so many painful feelings welling up inside of me.

"My mother used to give ginger for everything. Nausea for the expecting mothers, stomach issues for the elderly, flu and colds. She used to say ginger was the miracle healer." I say absently to myself, with such a longing to see my family that it physically hurts inside my chest.

Suddenly, I look around to see Peeta watching me sadly and I realize I've said too much. I put the lid back on and move away from the box watching my feet. Peeta must have realized I'd again seen the pity on his face because he quickly steps forward.

"No, Katniss. I'm sorry. It's just that... I'm sorry your mom didn't come back to 12." I have to turn away from him as angry tears prick my eyes. I will not let him see me cry again.

"It doesn't matter. I don't want her here." I say the lie harshly over my shoulder at him, feeling a flare of anger at her that she could just leave me behind so easily. I don't look at Peeta and he doesn't reply. For a moment, he rustles through the box, clinking small glass bottles together.

"This is my favorite," he says, quickly changing the subject as he must have realized I don't want to talk about my mother abandoning me. I look around and he's holding out a bottle filled with green scraggly needles that look like tiny pine tree branches. They seem to shift and settle strangely in the bottle as I watch. I wonder momentarily if the morphling is causing odd hallucinations.

I take a whiff. The smell is very strong, almost an overwhelming woodsy aroma, but not unpleasant.

"Rosemary," he says. "It makes some of the best cheese bread or maybe this one. It's delicious in herb bread too," he says handing me another bottle to smell. I can't quite identify the new herb. It's almost a spicy-sweet pungent aroma, but it is familiar. "Oregano." Peeta says. Oh yes, my mother used to prescribe it for minor infections.

"My favorite is cinnamon," I say softly, not looking at him. For some reason the admission feels vulnerable, like I'm letting him into my mind a bit too much.

He digs through the box for a moment before pulling out a glass bottle filled half way with brown powder. We never had cinnamon growing up. It doesn't grow around here and was expensive to get shipped from the Capitol. A luxury that our starving seam family couldn't afford.

I can't help but smile sadly as I open it to take a whiff. It reminds me of the cinnamon cookies that Prim and I would gaze longingly at through the glass windows of the bakery. "We could smell your cinnamon cookies from all the way down at the butchers," I tell him quietly. Peeta pauses for a moment, staring off into the distance. I wonder vaguely if he's thinking of the bakery, or his family.

"Would you like to make some?" He says finally, taking the cinnamon back from me.

"Oh..." I say hesitantly. I had always imagined what those cookies were like, but never had been able to try them. Recollecting myself slightly, I tell him "I would like that. I've never tried them before."

Peeta looks pleased with my consent and begins busying himself collecting cups, bowls, and ingredients. He starts measuring out flour and sugar from memory.

"Here you can pour these into the bowl," he says nodding at the large white ceramic bowl beside the cups he's already measured. I pour them in as he hands me more things to put in the bowl— milk and butter and eggs. Finally he lets me measure out the cinnamon with a tiny silver spoon and pour it in.

He takes the bowl and begins stirring with a large wooden utensil. Leaning against the counter watching him, I lick the spoon of the delicious smelling cinnamon.

"Ugh!" I choke out as the cinnamon burns my tongue. "That's disgusting!" Peeta turns to look at me and realizing what I've done, starts to laugh.

"Oh, you don't want to eat it by itself," he chuckles, "It smells great, but tastes terrible."

"Eww... why would you put that in cookies?" I exclaim. "It will ruin them!"

"No, no" he says smiling. "It's delicious when mixed with everything else. Here try some of the dough," he says as he finishes stirring it. I can't help but be suspicious as he hands me a spoonful. The cinnamon was terrible. I look at the brown specked dough uncertainly, but when Peeta puts a spoonful in his own mouth and smiles I'm persuaded.

He's right. It is delicious. I could eat all of the dough raw, but Peeta insists on rolling them out and stamping them into circles to bake.

"Here," he says dumping the ball of dough onto the floured breadboard and handing me a rolling pin. "You can roll them out and I'll clean up." I try to roll the dough flat on the board but I struggle with it sticking to the pin and tearing as I pull the pin away. I can't quite tell how far away the dough is as my vision expands and contracts. I end up pressing it out paper thin in spots and thick as my thumb in others.

"Here let me help," Peeta says when he hears me grumble as the sticky dough gets stuck to the pin and tears again. I sigh agitatedly and start to move away from the dough. "No wait. I'll show you," he says, gently turning me back towards the counter.

He comes up behind me, with arms on either side of my torso and rolls the dough into a ball to retry. He dusts his hands with flour and then rubs some on the pin and the top of the dough. "There you go." He says gently, handing me the rolling pin. "Now it won't stick," I put the rolling pin into the middle of the ball and press down.

"Wait, gently," he says placing his large warm callused hands over mine to guide the pin back and forth slowly across the dough. I can feel my breath catch slightly at the unexpected touch, but I don't pull away. I don't know if it's the morphling causing me to be less inhibited or the comfort of feeling his arms around me once again, but all I want to do is lean into him as our arms follow the same gentle rolling movement. But we are friends— friends don't cuddle into each other. So I refrain and instead, I close my eyes to the rhythmic, calming strokes of the rolling pin and feel his arms flexing slightly against mine as I breathe in his baker scent.

"Okay, I think it's ready to cut out now," he says releasing my hands as I snap out of my reverie. He scoots away from me with a small smile playing across his lips as he retrieves a little metal ring. "Here just cut them out with this and I'll get a tray to bake them on."

Soon we have two dozen cookies cut out and placed around the pan. Peeta lets me have the last little spare ball of cookie dough, too small for rolling and cutting out.

I settle myself at the table and nibble slowly, savoring the sweet dough as he puts the pan into the oven and begins putting lids on all the containers spread around the counter top. He suddenly glances around at me looking confused.

"We've baked together before. Real or not real?" His eyebrows raised in question. I have to pause to think about it for a moment. Had we really never baked together in all this time? No, our entire relationship consisted of the games, the visits to the Capitol, his spell of insanity at 13, and our squad hunting down President Snow. Unless you counted our measly meals cooked over fire in the arena, we had never baked together.

"Not real," I say quietly. He gives a little nod of acknowledgement and turns back to the counter.

How much can he not remember still? Still trying to sort through his memories and determine which are real and which are fabricated. He said he sometimes has bad days. How bad? Does he turn back into the Peeta screaming that I'm a mutt? The Peeta that tried to kill me?

"Katniss?... Hey, Katniss?... Katniss, you okay?" Suddenly I realize that I'd been so lost in my thoughts and my drug haze that I wasn't hearing him. I give my head a hard shake to physically pull myself back to his kitchen. He's crouched in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, looking at me with that soul searching look.

"Uh... Fine." I say a little shaken. How long had I zoned out again? Peeta doesn't move, just watches me with concern.

"What's going on Katniss?" He says.

"Uh... It's some of the medicine from the Capitol," I finally tell him. "It makes me a bit... out of it." I don't mention that it's morphling and not just a side effect of one of my other pills. I don't mention that the haze is because I took a double dose. Peeta doesn't need to know any of that.

"Oh, alright then." He says looking relieved. "For a minute there I thought you might black out again. You look a bit pale. You sure you're fine?"

"Yep, really." I say forcing myself to get up from his table. I wander out of the kitchen just as the timer starts to sound.

"I'll grab the cookies out of the oven..." he calls as I peer around his living room. His house has the same layout as mine, only his is less dusty. He must have cleaned it up some since returning to District 12. I quietly look around. His jacket is crumpled haphazardly in a chair and there's a large coffee mug sitting on the table with a pad and pencils beside it, but very little else in the room. No pictures hang on the walls or sit on the tables. I spin in a slow circle in the middle of the room taking it all in. There's a tower of tiny boxes sitting stacked around the tv. Curious, I go to look at them. They look like tapes but as I turn one slowly in my hand I see there are no labels or pictures to indicate what's on them.

Peeta comes into the room behind me.

"We'll have to give them a little bit of time to cool. The icing would just run right..." he stops dead as he sees me holding the tapes. I look up at him and seeing his strained face, I feel embarrassed as though I've been caught snooping around his bedroom while he was out of the house.

"Sorry, I just was wondering what the tapes were." I say apologetically and he gives me a small reassuring smile.

"It's okay." He says moving to meet me at the tv. "It's just that the doctors sent those with me." He gives a little laugh that doesn't reach his eyes. "I guess neither of us wants to admit we struggle." There's a long pause as he eyes the tapes in my hands. Finally he reaches out and takes one from me. He holds it up saying "These are just clips from our games and the propos. I watch them to help remind myself what's real or if I'm having a flashback." I stand there a bit confused.

"Your telling me you rewatch our games whenever you have nightmares? That's the last thing I'd want to watch."

"Well it's not exactly our games," he says shaking his head. "It's just tiny clips. Anything that has you in it. I don't watch all the killings. Just little bits and pieces of you from the games," I raise my eyebrows at him. "Well, us..." he says quickly, his face reddening just slightly "I watch the clips of us."

I still can't imagine intentionally reliving our games everyday. All I try to do is forget them. But I knew back at 13, they had been showing Peeta clips to help him realize that the memories he thought were real had actually been altered with tracker jacker venom. I guess I understand trying to sort out the confusion. I'm just glad I'm not trying to figure out anything about the games.

"I could show you, if you'd like." He says watching me hesitantly.

"No. No, I'd rather not remember any of it." I tell him, handing back the other tape remaining in my hand. He gives an understanding nod and places it back beside the tv.

"Katniss," he says thoughtfully, "Could I ask you about the tapes sometime? Some of the stuff that doesn't make sense?" He's watching me as I shuffle my feet nervously. Yes, as long as you don't ask about kisses or our fake relationship.

"Yeah, Peeta," I say apprehensively.

"Could I ask you something now?"

"Sure," I say shiftily.

"You lied to me to go to the feast during our first games. Real or not real?"

"Real," I say back quietly, remembering the hurt on his face just before he fell asleep in the cave from the syrup I tricked him into taking. Remembering how in that moment I thought he looked as though he'd never forgive me.

Peeta watches me thoughtfully for a moment trying to read my face as he considers my answer.

"You did it to save me. Real or not real?"

I remember how desperately I wanted to save him— as vivid as if we were sitting in the damp cave again right now, Peeta slowly dying in my arms. How heart sick I felt that I might lose him forever during those games through my clumsy, useless healing efforts. How I'd never forgive myself if I didn't try to get the medicine he desperately needed, even if it meant putting myself in harms way. I can feel a hard lump in my throat. I can't speak now for fear that my voice might crack. I just give a small nod and stare at the tiny stack of tapes.

Peeta doesn't press on. Probably sensing that I'm struggling with the memories he's already brought forward.

"Come on Katniss. Let's go see if those cookies are ready to frost." He says gently.

When I enter the kitchen, I find rows of beautiful golden cookies with tiny brown specks lined up on two small racks for cooling.

"Oh, Peeta," I say with a little sigh. "They smell amazing and they're already pretty. I don't know if I even want to frost them." Peeta smiles at my sincerity.

"Oh but they taste so much better with a little frosting." He says as he reaches around to grab a box on the far end of the counter that I hadn't noticed. Inside are more than a dozen little plastic bags filled with different colors of frosting from soft muted yellow and orange to forest green and even black.

"Why do you have all these?" I ask. Now that he isn't working in his family bakery, it seems like it is such an unnecessary hassle to make all of these colors of frosting regularly.

"I like frosting stuff. It helps calm me down and gives me focus." He says simply. I know what he means. Hunting in my woods was always my quiet moment where I focused on the bounty instead of any other worry on my mind. It was my sanctuary.

"Here you try," he says, waving me over.

"Oh I don't know Peeta. I'll just make a mess of them." I say shaking my head but Peeta only laughs.

"Well they taste just as good either way. Come on. I'll show you."

I move towards him and he gives me one of the bags.

"Okay, what do you want to make?"

I think for a moment, trying to come up with something that doesn't hurt.

At first I think of the mockingjays that my father used to sing too, but it brings back memories of Rue's song of safety just as she died, of Cinna and his fabulous winged dress, of the Jabber Jays in the clock arena mimicking Prim's agonizing screams and of the role I had to play for the past year that eventually lost me everything.

I think of flowers, the thing most girls would want decorated onto a cookie, but everything I can come up with is too painful. Primroses—my sister, Roses—President Snow, Rue— my dead ally.

Animals, like deer or rabbits or squirrels, just remind me that I can no longer hunt because of the shaking in my hands. I have lost such an essential part of who I was before and during the war.

"Katniss?... You still with me Katniss?" Peeta's grip on my arm is tight as I come back out of my trance for a second time.

"Ummm..." I've lost my train of thought entirely. "What?"

"I was just asking what you'd like to put on your cookie." Peeta says watching me with an uneasy look.

"I... uh... I don't... I'm not sure..." and I can feel my heart racing as the memories come seeping in. I try to control my breathing while the panic overtakes me. I should have taken more pills. The two aren't cutting it.

"Maybe fruit, like apples or a bunch of grapes," Peeta says watching me, "Or the sky. We could do the night sky and the day. Or I could show you how to write letters." He pauses still watching me.

"Do you need to sit, Katniss?"

"No, I'm fine." I'm not sure why I keep telling him this. I'm obviously not fine. But I can't stand the apprehensive look he keeps watching me with. As though I will break down and lose my mind at any moment. "The sky. I want to do the sky." I tell him as I start to get my heart rate back under control. He smiles a half- hearted smile before turning back to the cookies.

"Okay here. You take the black and cover the cookie and then you can use the white or yellow to do a moon and stars." He says handing me the black bag of frosting.

I take it from him and carefully begin covering the cookie, but soon I find that the more I try to hold my hands steady, the worse they shake. I try to do a small crescent moon in the soft yellow, but it ends up a squiggly worm running from top to bottom of my cookie. I'm getting frustrated and I'm about ready to throw my ugly cookie across the room.

But, Peeta, who has still been watching me intently, sees me struggling and comes once again to help.

"Here," he says from behind me, gently taking my shaking hands into his warm steady ones. He gets a new cookie and we try again with gentle steady motion.

He doesn't comment on my hands trembling beneath his, but he doesn't let go. His warm body pressed against my back, his hands gently squeezing mine as he gracefully guides our movements.

I don't understand how his hands can be so stable. How he can design with such smooth perfection even while supporting my tremors. I remember when he was rescued from the torture at the Capitol, how his hands shook constantly.

"How did you get your hands to stop shaking?" I ask and then instantly regret the vulnerable question as my hands continue to quiver beneath his. His arms flex suddenly, and his chest tightens against my back as though giving me a hug in mid-air.

"Time," he says simply. "And focusing on something I loved to do. Decorating cakes definitely helped. I just kept trying until one day it wasn't a splotchy mess anymore."

I'm not sure how long we stay like this, but I never want to let go. His strong arms guiding me as he shows me his awe-inspiring talent. I feel like I'm seeing a different side of Peeta that I haven't seen before as he gazes so intently, so patiently, at his work. Every movement precise. Every detail exact.

We do deep night skies with shimmering stars, glowing golden suns with cloudless blue skies, grey overcast clouds embellished with tiny raindrops, blue skies with white fluffy clouds, soft faded rainbows, and my favorite— an amazing sunset of pink and orange and purple. They're simple designs, but through Peeta's expert touch they are extraordinary.

"They're amazing," I whisper as Peeta does the final touches to the raindrops. "Much too pretty to eat." Peeta laughs.

"Well of course we are going to eat them. You wouldn't waste something you worked this hard on would you?" I smile. He finally releases me and I no longer fill grounded, as though Peeta was the only thing keeping me from floating away.

Peeta offers to show me his paintings or take me to the woods to hunt, but I decline. I've already over done it. I can tell by the way my shaking is no longer just my hands. It has moved up my arms and into my entire body.

Peeta packs me a little box full of cookies to take home with me.

"Can I walk you back over?" He asks.

"Peeta I only live two houses down. I think I can find it." I tease. "Thank you for... today." I tell him once again not meeting his eyes. I hope he can tell how genuine I am even if I don't have the right words. "It's been nice." And with that I head out the door, back to my empty house. Back to my reality that escaped from for a few hours. Back to my last two morphling pills.

So there you have it! A moment of feel good Everlark. The calm before the storm.

If you have just a moment, leave me a review! It makes my day and really encourages me to keep pursuing this story!