A/N: So, this happened. The Hunger Games hit me like an... avalanche? over four nights of late reading, and well, better late than never, eh?! Would love to know what you think, so if you have a moment, please, let me know :)

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved/in secret/between the shadow and the soul ~ Pablo Neruda

"There isn't much time, so tell me. Is there anything I have to apologize for?"

"Nothing."

Ara

An altar; an elevated place or structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes.

It is something from the time long before.

An altar. She cannot remember learning the word or its definition but it is apt for the moment when her dress became points and feathers.

A sacrifice. This is a word she understands well, in all its permutations. It runs through her like water, living is a sacrifice; an offering.

His life for hers.

Life will break you and the pieces will be small and insignificant.

Some of their eyes close, for a split second when the words pass Peeta's lips, but hers remain open although she does not see. It is dark. There is nothing. Then she is falling, slipping from the seat and onto the floor. Beneath her ribs a flicker begins that moves to the centre of her chest and Katniss is aware that she is breathing. Hands lift her and she clings to those faceless crutches on either side as a wave of noise spirals and shatters in the black.

"A nice touch," Haymitch says. "The fainting. As if the moment couldn't get any more melodramatic."

Katniss hears him but her eyes focus somewhere near the tip of his ear, so he waves his hand at her, flicking his fingers out as if shaking something from their tips.

"The cameras are gone, sweetheart."

She tastes metal and realises she has bitten her tongue. The mockingjay is heavy on her back, on her hips, pulling her into the ground when she should be soaring.

"Someone get her some water," Haymitch says, annoyance turning his upper lip, he takes a perfunctory glance around the corridor for an Avox, but they are alone.

There is silence, the kind that is like drowning.

"Now what?" Peeta says.

Haymitch crosses to the window, and watches the pulses of colour and light as the streets below erupt, the earth has moved beneath their feet, and just for a moment they are all culpable. They flee but a fissure has already appeared and it will swallow them.

"It won't be enough to stop it, even with her acting," he watches Katniss, waiting for something to stir behind her eyes, "some of which she should save for the arena."

He has no last words for them; he walks away down the corridor and does not look back.

Carina

A keel; runs through the middle of the ship, from bow to stern, providing the main source of structural strength.

He listens to the sound of water, his feet planted firmly on the carpet at the side of the bed, his elbows resting on his knees. He is grounded. Blue sparks. Alcohol burns blue; he knows that from setting fire to soiled clothes on a day filled with snow. If he thinks of her he thinks of orange, a fire at the beginning, before it roars.

A mockingjay. Of course.

As Katniss span he knew the smoke to be a trick, a clever piece of engineering, but just for a moment he saw her burn and the fire die, just as it had in her eyes as he looked to her in the audience. Perhaps it is a kind of arrogance, to be one step ahead in this game, to save an apology for afterwards, when the words cannot be unsaid. To masquerade as her partner, her ally, and all the time give no hint of the course he is charting.

She professed to need no apology but her silence says otherwise.

It costs him nothing to manipulate the emotions of the rabid Capitol public, to bring tears to the eyes of a man with lavender hair, but he fears he has exploited something he shouldn't have. Perhaps it is fear. The fear that this world could ever kill a child of hers.

He will do or say anything to save her. Let everything else crumble around them.

This is the problem. He will do it for her, he will not rise from a platform bearing wings, he will not unite what is fractured; he will die and hope only that she lives.

Katniss emerges from the shower room, a cloud of steam blurring her edges. Peeta smiles but she does not smile back. Turning away she drops her towel and pulls a pair of pyjamas from a drawer and he has to avert his eyes from the base of her spine, the juts of her shoulder blades, the bruise that is turning purple near her hip.

She swipes her hand across the control panel and the room goes dark.

He listens as she lies down and pulls up the sheet; he can barely hear her breathing. If she didn't want him here she would ask him to leave. Peeta lies down beside her on top of the quilt. He can sense she is facing away from him. He rests his hand on her hip and she doesn't move away. Nightmares fill the space between them and he doesn't want to wait for her to cry out to bridge the gap. Shuffling forwards he rests his cheek against her back. She is warm from the shower but she does not smell of a bizarre concoction of soaps and powders, she has removed every trace of the evening from her skin.

"It's almost like we're back on the victory tour. It's always felt like this moment was there, waiting. I never felt safe; I wish I'd enjoyed not really knowing this would happen," he says.

"Would it have changed anything?" Her voice surprises him and his lets his thumb press a little harder against her hipbone.

"I'd have smiled more."

"I couldn't have smiled and waved any more than I did."

"I mean away from the cameras," Peeta says.

They did live away from the cameras, in shards, entwined together beneath the covers at night, shattered pieces that made a whole. She cut into him like a blade, any defence he had left bleeding into her, leaving him pale in her absence. She flinches slightly beneath his cheek and he moves his hand up to run along her ribs, she is thin again, despite their training, and he senses a physical fragility that scares him.

"You passed out, didn't you? I know you're not that good an actress."

"You have no idea how good an actress I am."

Horologium

Pendulum clock; a clock that uses a swinging weight as its timekeeping element.

She goes onto the roof to see the stars. If they are stars, not a decorative illusion for the Capitol residents' viewing pleasure.

She is a decoration, here, and when she speeds up she lets things run off course, she does not keep time. Peeta keeps them running far more than Effie and her scheduling. He is constant, still in mind if not in heart. She knows he will wake and finding her gone know exactly where she is, and when Katniss turns around he is already there, a vine concealing half his face. Lights shine somewhere among the foliage and they play on his cheekbone as he moves forwards.

"What's going on?" he asks.

She shrugs, it is such a reflexive childish gesture that she hunches her shoulders halfway through.

"Personally, spending the night lying next to you pretending to sleep was more what I had in mind, rather than roaming the roof."

"What if you could throw yourself off?"

"I wouldn't do that."

"I know you wouldn't."

"Neither would you," he says, reaching for her hand.

She crosses her arms tightly.

"You really think I don't know you?" Peeta asks.

"I didn't say that," she replies, and she wants to run.

He shakes his head. "We stopped running."

"What?"

"When we started to train, watch the tapes, put on our 'show,' but at some point you started running again. I can't even pinpoint when, I just felt it, and then tonight you hit a wall."

She is trapped, by his honesty, by the gentle way he is watching her, the crease in his forehead as he tries to take her hand again. This time, she lets him. She falls against his chest, her arms wrap around his neck, and her lips touch the skin between his jaw and ear. He tastes of yesterday. He tastes of the train as it rumbled through the dark, and she clung to him, her tears drying on his shoulder as she curved around him.

"Did you truly think they would let me go if you said that?"

"No, but I knew the effect it would have on the audience. If you really were pregnant you would never have got this far. They don't know me if they think I would have let that happen. Now, I can only make it as hard as possible for them to kill you."

She knew this is how it would be, that they would be keeping each other alive, waiting for a chance to die as the other ran to the finish. She knew, but it had not altered her determination, the feeling she would like to seal her deal with Haymitch with something tighter than words, it had changed nothing. The game is always the same. Until it isn't.

She lets him lead her back to bed and they resume their positions, his arm around her waist. He kisses the back of her neck but her body remains rigid.

"Katniss," Peeta whispers, pulling a little on her hip so she turns over to face him.

She cannot see him in the dark, not clearly, the silvery lines of his nose and lips barely visible.

"You can't stop me."