Author's Note: So, funny how this came about. I had just got my sister to read the trilogy, and when she came to this paragraph in Mockingjay she asked me what it meant by "So after when he whispers…" (Insert everyone's favorite quote) And then she posed this very real possibility. So.

And people. This is my first time in the fandom. Respect it, yes? Awesome.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games or any aspect of it.

White Rain
(Alternately: Vanilla Twilight)

I ask him to open the window, whisper it really, and he does. Of course, he has no reason not to oblige with my request.

Every night, curled into his side, hoping, begging, pleading with him silently to not drift away from reality, to not lose himself to a nightmare, a hushed breeze billows the curtains, ruffles the sheets and my hair, mixes with his breath. And he's calm. If his sheets had previously been clutched white-knuckled in his fists, they no longer are. And my lungs release captive puffs of breath.

And the crisp night air is what can lull him to sleep.

But not tonight. I feel it, biting at my belly, tearing at my ribcage, aching for relief, searching for the answer. His back turned as he sweeps in the night, pushes out the stuffy Capitol-produced air of our Victor Village home, I watch every line of him, from the curve of his neck to the crease in the leg of his pants. I take it in, my stomach tight and hurting. Hurting so delightfully.

"Peeta," but it's more of a choked murmur. I can't feel my limbs, this hunger carving the inside of me hollow and empty. I need him to fill me up, somehow. I don't even care how. Just a kiss, a long, real, true kiss and I think I'll be fine. "Peeta," I force myself, stronger now.

He glances over at me, slipping his shoes off, sitting on the edge of the bed, our bed, gold curls brushing just over his blue, blue, blue eyes. I'm reminded that I need to trim his hair or I may never see those bright blues looking back at me so clearly.

I wave him to me and he comes, slowly crawling over sheets to sit beside me on the side of the bed closest to the open skies, never straying his gaze from my own. Usually we sleep on whichever side we drop on, but he'd lately been with his back to the window, his arms around me as I peeked over his shoulder at the moon that seemed to only exist over our District Twelve so perfectly. Tonight I didn't want to watch the moon dipping in and out of stark clouds that blend with the dark sky and porcelain stars.

Tonight I wanted to keep my eyes only on him.

I lean into him, the first time I had made the catalyst move into a hungry frenzy in the past months, maybe even years but I had lost record. After we had made the book, added our own mark to the family tome, he would come for dinner. And while Greasy Sae would grind meat, chop vegetables, stir up the left over water from boiling a groosling and make a hearty broth of it, we would sit at the dining table in silence. And one day, a few years after Prim's death and the birth of the new republic, he reached across the wood and held my shaking hands, ran his thumbs in small circles, whispered words that could be meaningless if I didn't know him so well. Things about bread from District Four, cheese buns, a new painting. A pearl.

A primrose, new and blooming in our garden.

Two years passed of him just doing this, of just talking, using his words as he always had, always would, and making everything okay. And then he'd have a fit, war raging inside of him whenever I'd ask him to please, please, please stay the night because my dreams weren't getting better and I needed him. I loved him. So please, just please, stay. He'd stumble out the door, slam his own behind him and I'd fall against the door frame, breaking from his absence, sobbing, holding myself. Because he wasn't any better and neither was I and where was my Peeta? Where was he hiding?

This continued for those long two years until one day, abruptly, the moment he walked through the door carrying a fresh batch of hearty bread with raisins and nuts, the same he gave me a lifetime and a day ago, he set them down, grabbed my face and kissed me right there, Greasy Sae and her granddaughter observing silently over a brew but not saying anything. Cinnamon, flour all flaring inside me, around me as I grabbed the back of his head and pulled him closer, as close as he could get.

Dinner went as smooth as it possibly could, two most probably insane kids with a young girl and an old woman all sitting around the same meal, all discussing the same topic, all breathing the same air.

Peeta stayed that night, and with him came warmth. And with the night came the dreams.

Prim, Rue, Finnick, Cinna, Marvel, Clove, Cato, Thresh, Maggs, Wiress, Darius, Portia even. They all found breath and lost it within an instant inside my mind, screaming in agony. All the same, all dying, all innocent, all begging for another chance, for me to save them. All lost at the tips of my fingers. I couldn't reach them and yet their blood made it onto my palms, hanging over my head, splattering my cheeks, my lips, my forehead.

I'd scream, thrash, cry, beg, plead until I'd hear his voice, hear him whispering for me to wake up, it's time to leave them, Katniss, c'mon wake up, sweetheart. He'd hold me, my arms tucked between our bodies clutching to his shirt, shaking my head, tears streaming down my face. He'd just hold me. And eventually, with time, his lips would brush the top of my head, my temple, my neck until I was calm enough for him to talk over my silent whimpers.

Now, our lips pressed together softly, I feel the hunger again, stirring, it's genesis in the pit of my gut, spreading, the fire catching in my chest, my limbs, fingertips and toes, my throat. I feel my head burning with a fever that only had one cure. The hunger game rolling through me made my belly ache fiercely and I recognize this feeling from the kisses in the arena, the real ones that mattered to me. The ones that went beyond lights, camera, action.

The kiss that made me want another.

And another and another.

And he gives them to me, gives me every single one the moment I want it. My lips trail to kiss his jaw, to kiss just behind his ear where he and I share sensitivity. His hands curl around my neck, not threatening as the motion had once been, but in an endearing way, his thumbs brushing my cheeks as my lips come back to his.

"Stay with me," I murmur against his mouth, parting my lips just slightly with every word.

A gust of wind pushes through the curtains over the gaping window and whirls around him. And it seems to bring him to life. He puts his arms on either side of me, now almost on top of me, no longer sitting but on his knees. I tell myself I want this, and realize that it's the truth. I do, I want him.

This revelation hits me in the gut as I lay down with him, one of my legs between his two.

"Always," he finally answers, as if he's just recognized what I had said.

I slide my hands up his shirt because that feels like the right thing to do, like the only thing to do. Because that's what is right in the heat of the moment. I curl my fingers in the hair just under his belly button that leads down into his jeans and feel his muscles tense, his smile widen, silent and slight.

I'm abruptly nervous. Filled with the hunger I was growing to accept with very open arms but so nervous. Because I suddenly understand very clearly what this night has in store for us, the star-crossed lovers. The Mockingjay and her song.

He pulls apart and kisses my nose, tries to say something but the burning, the fire inside me is so real and so prominent that I cut him off with another kiss that he seems to take as consent, and I'm grateful for it. I was never so good with words as Peeta.

His palms press against my bare back and shock me into another frenzy of trailing kisses across his jaw, down to his ear, but this time blazing a trail along his neck. I graze my teeth on the base of his neck purely from animal instinct and he reacts cautiously, as if his mind has just torn him in two. I think I've done something terribly wrong—where am I to run to, trapped beneath him?—but I kiss his lips again, slow and careful, whisper his name with as much tenderness as I can muster and he's back, nodding and kissing my jaw.

He straddles me now, trying to remain as gentle as possible, though we both know that we can't always be gentle with each other, can't always trod on egg shells or we'd never be truly okay again.

The thought of Prim and Rue never having the chance to fall in love, to find someone to hold them through the nightmares they would've had clenches my chest for a moment and I freeze up. Peeta can feel it and has to stop moving to make sure I'm okay. He gives me a few gentle kisses, but I can already feel tears scrubbing away the dust on my cheeks. And his response is to kiss them away. Slow, careful and steady.

I don't want to think anymore, I don't want to feel their fingers crawling up the inside of my arms. I don't want them there, not now. I want them gone, at least for the moment. Peeta deserves at least that. So do I. So I force myself to stir up only good memories, Peeta and I laughing. Him cracking jokes. Baking bread. Hunting. Finding comfort in his arms. His kindness. Seeing everything bad about me and loving me for it anyway.

And I give myself to him.

So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"

I tell him, "Real."