Peeta tells her what it was like, all that time, as they lie together back in 12, entwined in her bed. They can go anywhere, anywhere at all, and yet they're here. Katniss doesn't think she'll ever leave, this bed. "I was there but I wasn't. I couldn't see you. I couldn't find you. I thought once that I'd found you again, in the face of a little girl with two dark braids."

"Hana," she supplies, kissing the soft skin behind his ear. She's relearning him, every place on him.

"Yes," he says, tasting the name. "In some twisted way, I thought she was you. From a long time ago." She'd been jealous of a simpleton for all the wrong reasons. "It wouldn't let me see you."

It, he says, as though the hijack is some living, breathing thing. Or maybe he means the venom. She can never be quite sure.

"What did you see?"

"A stranger. I could hear you, I could look at you, but you wouldn't…stick. I thought you were gone. I thought you had left me with a stranger. And I didn't understand, where you were."

"I'm sorry." She knows now, why Gale can never stop saying it.

"I'm glad," he says. "I'm so very glad it was you, all along. You didn't leave me." And then he buries his face in her hair and he weeps.

They have good days. So many good days. Katniss delights at the look in Thom's and Sae's eyes when she introduces them to Peeta—the real Peeta—for the first time. He's still good with Hana. And he can help Clay in the bakery for real now, making the fanciest cakes in all the districts.

One day, he brings home a wedge in a napkin. "It's a piece of wedding cake. I thought," he says, and he hesitates, the way the old Peeta would never have done. "I thought we could use it." And they do, toasting in their own private ceremony. Afterward, when they're crying and laughing, Katniss smears icing on Peeta's face and…other places.

"Wouldn't want that go to waste," she says, and licks it right off.

There are still dark days, too. Mornings where he opens his eyes to static. Days where he goes mute for hours, holding on to something so very tight. Nights where he wakes and screams at her that she can't be here. But in those times, she wraps herself around him and doesn't let go. She'll never let go. When another morning comes, there's always the sun, coaxing Peeta back to her, the way it does. And he'll cling to her right back, exhausted, and ask, "Why did you stay with me? Why would you do that?" He's not sure he'll ever fully understand, that year of darkness.

And she answers, the most important word, their word: "Always."