the silence breathes my name
this is what love is.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, story, or have any ownership of the Hunger Games

written for silvercistern.

snippets of Peeta's life in between the books "The Hunger Games" and "Catching Fire" because when I think about what it was probably like all I want to do is wrap myself up in five million blankets, turn all the lights off, and blast Morrissey while I eat fifteen cupcakes (approximately). I brought up the vague idea of writing this to Essie and she forced it upon me in a loving way so here we are. Can we count this as a nice good ol' holiday gift from me to her (and anyone who reads it?) Sure. It's full of holiday cheer~

(I apparently have a thing for sad Peeta one shots oop)br /
(no one is surprised)

thanks to kismet4891 for listening to my random yelling about ideas or just our cock conversations - I'm sure you're going to come back from your in–laws with twenty asks and messages and emails from me.

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so leave me in the cold
wait until the snow covers me up
so I cannot move
so I'm just embedded in the frost
then leave me in the rain
wait until my clothes cling to my frame
wipe away your tears stains
thought you said you didn't feel pain
landfill | daughter

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He should've known, really.

The word "love" always felt like an insult.

This is what it comes down to though, what the word "love" does to him, with him, for him.

He stands there in front of the crowd and cameras and smiles. He stands there and waves with one hand as he holds onto her other hand. She stands and holds onto his, and her hold is tight.

And then she lets go, moves without him to her family.

This is what the word "love" is to him; watching the girl he loves be welcomed home by her family, her sister and mother and cousins. Peeta Mellark keeps his smile and keeps waving as he finally makes it to his family.

This is what love is.

He limps and his eyes automatically go to his mother's because he's ready for her disapproval. She doesn't disappoint. Her face is a scowl that stares at his one pant leg, as if she could see the prosthetic, the area of him that's missing. He looks away. His brothers surround him, hug him, and it's stiff. They want to punch him in the arm like they used to but they watched him kill people. They watched his fight and he had strategy in the games and they're afraid of their little brother, because no, they don't really know what he's truly capable of, do they?

His mother squeezes his shoulder and neither looks at the other. The cameras surely will be able to make it look heartwarming; they have a way of spinning anything into the right angle.

Just watch the seventy–fourth games. Just ask Katniss Everdeen.

His father takes him in his arms and holds him close to his chest for a long time. Peeta Mellark can't even bring his arms around the man to reciprocate. Around his father, his dad, his father. Everyone around him is talking at once but his family is quiet and that's what he hears, their silence.

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"It's large enough for all of us, and then some."

His brothers are nervous and twitching. His father is silent. His mother doesn't look at him. But she's the one that talks. "It doesn't make sense, Peeta. We still have a bakery to run. At least one of us is always at work here, trying to get stuff done. The walk would add unnecessary time away from the work day. And during the winter? Why, the snow could stop us from opening. Stop being unreasonable."

Katniss Everdeen and her family is moving in that day to their brand new home. Peeta Mellark will live right next door in a house to himself.

"Do you need help packing up anything, son?" His father's voice is quiet and soft. As if Peeta Mellark is a wounded dying man. As if Peeta Mellark was wounded on live television for entertainment, lost his leg, and gained and lost the one girl that held his heart since he was five years old.

Oh. Right.

He can't even get himself to answer so he just shakes his head to say no. He packs up a couple of things: sketchbooks, pajamas and some clothes that feel worn in from the other Mellarks and himself –– a nice contrast to the stiff fancy clothes waiting him, something he always resented about being the youngest of three but suddenly the hand–me–downs are a personal, intimate object of a life he doesn't have anymore–– a couple of books he was able to get over the years, and he pauses in his room. He doesn't need the furniture. Any decorations aren't actually his but rather his brother's. His brothers who will each have their own room now that there aren't three Mellark boys living under the roof.

When Peeta Mellark went off to the Games, they adjusted their lives around the empty seat at the table, the empty bed. They adapted. They filled his shift, and now there's more room, of course.

He doesn't say goodbye when he leaves with his one box of possessions.

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The cameras are around for a while. The hand–holding and kissing and "you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, Peeta," are around for a while.

The cameras leave. As they watch the train disappear he slips his hand from hers because it feels like it's stabbing him over and over again, making him write lines like teachers would do if you acted up, repeating, "it was all an act, it was all an act, it was all an act."

She leaves after a bit, Katniss Everdeen retreating away from him and to where she truly belongs to: maybe to her family or to the woods or just somewhere that isn't by his side. He watches the area that the train sped off towards, where the cameras went away to, and the wind picks up and cuts through his sweaty back as the sun beats down. He wonders what is going to be worse, having Katniss and acting like he truly receives her love and smiling, or the empty spaces all around him that will make up all the hours of his days now.

A customer whispers their concern to the baker. Your son is still out there, the lady says, looking at the train tracks. He's stood out there all day. Some kids earlier tried to get him to play a game with them like he used to. He didn't even move or look at them. Maybe you should ––

His father doesn't know what he should do, what he can do. He's the first to admit his faults at parenting, but this is even harder. How can you help the shell of a son that experienced things that no one should ever have to experience, all for the entertainment of people?

Peeta jumps when a hand lays on his shoulder. He realizes that he's shaking. Maybe from the cutting wind still forcing itself upon places he sweat or maybe the dropping sun in the sky. Or maybe he's shaking because his body has no other way to deal with anything.

"Let's get you home," his father's words come through to him and he nods.

Home now is a large house that he lives in alone, and his father navigates him past the bakery, past the second story area that he grew up in, that he called "Home" with a capital "H" and still loved despite the lack of love he was made apparent of every now and then.

Home is fitting now, the lights are off and it's away from the rest of the town, the area that he used to live. The Everdeens live across the street and their house's lights are glowing, and he's sure he can hear Primrose's laughter from somewhere inside.

The two men, father and son, look at the house in silence for a minute. Peeta wonders if his father is thinking about how Katniss' family moved in with her. Peeta wonders if his father really did want to move into his son's new home but was outvoted by the others. Peeta is already saying goodbye to his father in his mind but he doesn't say it aloud, can't, and he just turns around and walks into his house. He doesn't turn back to look at his father standing in front of the place with a look that resembles mourning. He doesn't turn on any lights but he's able to navigate through the rooms because the darkness is his friend, the stale air a usual companion.

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The best moments are the times when he wakes up and he feels whole. His arms stretch, his legs stretch, he feels every muscle. His eyes land on his prosthetic and he frowns. His one leg stretches. He moves his sheet to see the truth of how one leg is missing even though he swears he just felt it. The best moments are fleeting and don't last long enough, as if his body is hellbent on reminding him that he's not whole anymore.

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He'd be done with school for the day if he still had to go to school. He'd be walking home and hoping to catch a glimpse of a girl with a braid trailing behind her that he never uttered a word to as he tried not to show his distraction to his friends. He'd be doing some work with his brothers at the bakery and they'd be trying to cut out early and leave him with the dirty work. He'd be doing homework, he'd be helping with cleaning the dishes, he'd be going to bed and waking up for another day of school.

He'd be amongst people that he used to consider friends but he isn't too sure anymore because they don't come to visit him ever. Whenever he runs across anyone he's Peeta Mellark the Victor and they either smile too broadly with awe or cower away from the blood they must still envision oh his hands (because he can see it too, it's still there, he's sure the Capitol went through a process as they chopped his leg off to tattoo the blood on his hands because it's still there, it's always there). He's not Peeta their peer anymore. He's on a completely different level now, a plateau with a vacant meadow where he can watch as everyone else lives on below but can't figure a damn way to do it himself.

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Come over for dinner, he pleads with them. For lunch, or I can bring breakfast.

"You don't have to do that, we'll be baking already."

I can help, he tells them. I'm still your son, I'm still the baker's son. I can bake. I can take shifts.

His father's smile is uneasy. Peeta wonders if it's because of his mother's words that are coming out of his father's mouth or if it's just because his son is something that sets him off. An unwhole, changed creature (I've killed and am no way no longer a boy, but I'm not a man, no, not a man).

"You're a Victor," his father lies (because how can someone that has the title of "Victor" feel so lost?). "You don't have to waste your time with the work of the bakery, and besides with your leg, you can't stand that long yet. You've helped out enough, Peeta. Thank you for sharing your money with us, we couldn't even think to take some of your labor also."

Peeta wishes he truly died in the games at that point. His father mourns for the fact that his son, in a way, is more dead than a corpse could ever mean. Peeta Mellark mourns for the dead boy that left on a train to the Capital as well.

Both hide their tears and don't speak anymore, just nod, and Peeta walks away from the bakery as his father goes back in. Peeta Mellark scuffs dry dirt on his boots as he walks but it doesn't matter because he's the Capitol's wonderful Victor and he has all the shoes he could ever want.

At least he makes it to his bathroom with his head in the toilet before he vomits.

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He's a selling point to his mother. The bakery is of the family of one of District Twelve's winner, that golden boy with the one leg. More people buy bread if just for the fact that they're eating from the people that created one of the Victors.

His mother never lets him in when the bakery is opened but he knows what she says. How she uses him as a pity point or a bragging point –– depending on the customer, on how they feel towards the boy that used to be Peeta Mellark –– for business.

It's the nicest thing she has ever said about him. It makes him want to cry.

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It's the first time in a while that he tries to get off to the idea of someone besides Katniss. He pictures someone that isn't anything like her, as if in some way it could spite her. As if she'd know, or care, or understand, or do anything about it. Jaela Fizner, the daughter of the Florist just down the street from his family's bakery. She's blonde and she's always smiling. Her breasts fill out her shirts too well and her ass is always hinting at almost being seen with her short dresses. He knows how all of his old schoolmates used to pant over her. He can't remember the last time he saw Jaela not smiling, and it's easy to think of what her laugh sounds like because he always used to hear it. It's so unlike Katniss.

Also, Jaela has always had a little crush on Peeta. That's quite unlike Katniss too.

He pumps his hand on his own cock and he tries to picture Jaela, the Florist's daughter, naked and smiling down at him and his half hard self. He tries to picture her taking matters into her own hands and helping him along. Her hands on him, her words, telling him how much she's admired him for so long and always had a crush on him.

But it doesn't work. He can't work himself to even being fully hard let alone a release. He didn't think to use lubrication because really, he usually doesn't need it, and all he has is a flaccid cock that hurts from the friction. He let's go of himself and sits up on the bed and tries to stop himself from crying because he's not going to let some stupid fucking tears fall over the fact of a failed attempt at jerking off.

He needs a shower he decides. A cold one.

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The clock's tick is loud and echoes with the stale air that he left from his screaming. Peeta Mellark sits upright in his bed alone and sweating, chased out of his sleep by terrors.

The clock's tick converses with a heavy breathing Peeta Mellark. It's four am, it tells him. It's four am. It's four am.

The moon glistens and laughs as it still sits hanging in the sky and he knows he has awhile until the sun will come and wrench it away.

He lays back down. He tries to calm down his breathing, match it to the loud ticking and tocking of the clock, and then even slower. He can still feel his yell that ripped from his throat and how it lays in the dark beside him like a lover. And he knows it was her name he yelled for, because in his dream as she walked away from him she collapsed in a pool of blood and he couldn't save her. She's right across the street and he wants to check on her, but he can't because they live on opposite anthills and there's no way of traveling from one to the other anymore. He wants to check on her but he can't because she really did walk away from him, but instead of dying she's thriving. Probably. He's sure of it. She has her family and her Gale and her woods, what more does Katniss Everdeen need? She never needed anything else, and on top of all of that she has food and money, the only thing that was lacking. She has to be thriving now, without him, he's sure of it. Sure, she probably has night terrors also, there's no way she doesn't, but there are people to wake her up and hold her. It isn't him with the waiting embrace.

She doesn't need him like he needs her, like he needs even just her presence.

He sits back up as he receives his own embrace: the silence, the darkness, the empty house and all of its unused rooms. What are they going to be used for? A family that doesn't exist. Maybe he can use them for ... something, something other than the family he was born into that refuses him, something other than the family he grew up dreaming of starting with the girl across the street.

The clock's tick is loud. His head pounds a headache out to the sound. He doesn't know what he's going to do, but he knows that he's done with the attempt of sleep for the day.

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He's tugging at his hair as Haymitch looks at the him with narrow eyes and raises the damn bottle to his lips. This is his companion, a half–lucid drunkard that doesn't usually even use his name.

"Someone once told me that routines help. Why don't you try that?" Is the drunk's advice.

Peeta is angry at this, at many things really but all he decides to acknowledge is his anger at this piece of advice and he scoffs. "I see you took it to heart with your routine there."

Haymitch just shrugs and gives more of the bottle's liquid to himself. "Said someone told me that. Never said I tried it."

It's silent between them again and Peeta Mellark listens to the swishing of the moving liquid but doesn't look at Haymitch anymore. His elbows dig into his thighs. His fingers grip his hair. His eyes squeeze shut. His blood thrums in his ears as if amplified, as if it's the blood of twenty–two other people whose blood isn't flowing anymore.

"Why don't you try baking again?" Haymitch tries another suggestion for the boy in front of him.

Peeta's grip on his hair loosens. Maybe, he says in his head and then he says it aloud. "Maybe."

And just like that he can imagine the feeling of coating his hands in some flour, and his blood stops yelling with the vengeance of ghosts. For the moment.

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It's cathartic like he remembers. Kneading dough.

He over–kneads the first several because of how good and normal and everyday it feels. The old routine of waking up earlier than the sun and doing this to get a couple loaves in before the bakery opens comes to mind. He remembers the early mornings and keeping the doors open a bit after they were supposed to close to let last minute people run in for bread.

His arms flex in a familiar tension that he hasn't felt in a while. There's no death, no injury because of it, and for once he doesn't think of such things or even the lack of thinking of such things.

He takes out a pan and takes a deep breath. This, this he can do.

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He burns his first loaf of bread.

He throws it outside in the rain and he stares at it in a puddle of mud for a bit. He's lost in his mind, he's eleven years old again, there's a little girl he's throwing the bread at again, but it doesn't matter because it's not enough. He can't save her. He should've known. He's not enough.

The doors are locked and the lights turn off. The day he decides, is done with him.

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It takes four days for him to try to bake another loaf of bread. It comes out perfect and it's raining again.

He throws it into another puddle, and birds the next day come and pick at it.

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He's washing his chest absentmindedly in the shower when he looks down and realizes his cock is hard. Before the games he was just like any teenage boy with the amount of times he jerked off, the subject matter not ever fluctuating too much, really. He barely can even get himself hard anymore, his daydreams being of blood and death instead of nakedness and touching, his nightdreams similar. Once he woke half hard from a dream of a naked Katniss lying in the cave in a pool of blood and he was afraid of himself, afraid of how his body reacted to her still with it all, and he laid completely still and let the gore overtake his mind until he softened.

But he's hard now and it's almost a surprise. There's no thoughts in his mind of anything that can get him off. The idea of the last time he tried to do this comes to his mind but he pushes it away. His hand is soapy and wet as he grasps his cock. The water is warm on him and he stands underneath the stream and it feels good, the warmth, and it feels good, his hand working up and down himself.

He gives in. He thinks about Katniss. He thinks about Katniss coming into his house at night in only a robe that she sheds off with the lights on in front of him. He thinks about a secret mole she might hide underneath her clothes, maybe near her left nipple and he's the only one to know about it. He thinks of Katniss' body over his, grinding herself down into him and his hands upon her ass as he pushes her harder onto him. He thinks of Katniss laying on his kitchen table as he stands there, thinks of her staring at him and naked and her legs open and she's dripping for him. He thinks of her becoming impatient, taking his cock in her hands and forcing it within her herself, and him immediately picking up a fast hard pace that drives into her. He thinks of grasping her hips until she bruises, of the edges of their thighs pressed against each other because he's so deep in her, of thrusting harder, harder, harder, and the loud sounds he'd make come out of her mouth.

He's breathing heavy when he comes and he lets himself moan aloud, doesn't even try to stifle it, because he lives alone and not a damn person is around ever, it doesn't matter. The water is still warm as it beats down on his body and he stays still underneath it in a bit, letting himself be thankful for this one significant detail of his new life, this warm water in his shower. He doesn't feel the prick of shame and embarrassment he used to feel before the games whenever he let himself ride through a fantasy of Katniss Everdeen. He doesn't even feel the satisfied calm that usually comes from getting off. He just feels the warm water that feels like it's the only thing holding himself together for the moment, and he breathes deep. He slams a fist into the wall. He stays in for another half hour wondering if there is an end to the warm water but there isn't, of course not, because really, there's only warm water constantly for three houses in the entire district, it'd take a lot for them to go through it all.

The thought of drowning himself in his own shower crosses his mind and he almost wants to laugh because he can envision it now. How would the Capital react to a golden half of their Star–Crossed Lover Victors dying by his own hands naked and alone? He doesn't let himself think of how others would take it, of who would finally find him (and how, because it'd probably take the Victory Tour's date to come around for someone to finally find him and by then he'd be engorged with the water that still falls onto his body), of how his neighbors would react, no, he doesn't think of that at all.

No, it's a stupid thought. He turns off the water and wraps a towel around his lower half, not looking in the mirror as he walks past.

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It starts because of fondant. He decides to make a cake because his place is overflowing with breads and starting to stack up cookies and he can't seem to find a way to give it away. He wants to give it to people that need it because he knows there's so many but people in the Seam don't understand getting something without having to worry about debts so it's hard. He can't give to the merchants (he doesn't want to, regardless) because he'd be taking customers away from his own family. A couple of times he just gives a basket of baked goods to whoever of the family is working the front. He doesn't say a word and he doesn't wait for them to say a word. Once he saw one of his loaves in the pen with the pigs and they hadn't touched it yet.

No one wants anything that the hands of a killer made, a passing thought comes to him in such a way and he doesn't feel himself react to it.

But it starts because of fondant. It's red and he's going to make a red and yellow cake because that seems happy but all he can seem to really think about is fire, because warm colors like these are heart and fire and flames and flames just lead to Katniss, of course. But he erases that from his mind and decides on just red fondant to lay on the cake. He has a knife in his hand and he cuts through the fondant. It's odd, the difference between cutting through fondant or cutting through flesh. The red isn't flames but blood, the fondant is gone and he isn't in his kitchen but back in the arena, in the Games, slitting that girl's throat that was near death but not dead. He sobs out his apologies to his empty house but in his mind it's amongst the trees. He's still gripping the knife when he comes back around, the fondant in front of him blaring its red. He throws it out. He throws the cake out too. And then he takes all the different icings and colored icings that he made up for some cupcakes that are waiting in the oven and spreads them out in front of him.

He starts with the green because the arena's forest seems to be the exact shade of green he was able to create. He scoops some onto his finger and on his countertop he draws a line. He adds body to it, some other lines connect, and soon it sort of looks like a tree. He uses a plain white buttercream frosting and makes the shape of a person, pale against the dark marble. Dark hair frames her head and he uses the brown icing he made to create it. He can't remember her actual hair color –– what if she was blonde like him? What if she had red hair like that other girl he killed? –– the dark of the night took away his ability to notice those details of the girl that he killed.

He takes a bit of the fondant he threw out and cuts out a long line, placing it upon the buttercream blob of a human–like figure he finger painted. He stares at it for a bit with heavy breath until he looks away and quickly washes off his counter with more "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," to the girl whose name he never knew and never will know ringing out with every stroke of the cleaner. Within five minutes you can't tell anything he just created.

He figures it'd make more sense to try to do this in paint.

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Prim is coming home from school one day when he sits on his porch and stares. He remembers seeing Haymitch do the same thing a couple days ago and he feels himself becoming the man without the drinking problem –– yet at least. Primrose Everdeen pauses in the street and makes her way over to him to see how he's doing. She hasn't seen him in so long, no one has. And she truly does wonder about him but knows better than to ask her sister. There's something in his hands and when she gets closer she realizes it's a platter of cookies that seem to still be warm and gooey from just being made.

"Hi Peeta," she finally calls out. His eyes try to focus in on her and it's strange to watch them going from looking at something that's not actually there to focusing on her.

"Hey Prim," he manages to croak out.

She climbs onto the porch and stands in front of him. She wants to say something but she doesn't. It frustrates the girl a bit, how she's able to take a look at any medical problem and quickly assess with how to proceed but she doesn't know what to say to Peeta to take off the coat of sadness he seems to be burdened with.

Her sister wears a similar one.

She finally speaks up again. "Can I have a cookie?" she asks because the smell is infiltrating her nose and she just needs to, needs to eat a cookie. They look better than even the ones at display at the bakery, the ones that she can go and buy if she wanted to, that she can afford.

There's a ghost of a smile that comes forth as he hands her the entire plate. She accepts it after some debating with a hundred thank you's being flung to him and he nods with that almost kind of smile there again.

"I have some bread too. Pastries, cupcakes. I can bring some over whenever you want them."

Her eyes are wide at the idea. He comes back a bit more even and nods. "I'll see you tomorrow morning then with some."

She smiles as she walks home and sets the plate down at the kitchen table. She hopes that Katniss will see them because she knows that Katniss will know that Peeta made them and that there they are, for the Everdeens. For the girl that toyed and tore his heart and her family. She wants her to see it so she'll think maybe to reach out to Peeta herself.

But Katniss doesn't come downstairs that day. They're stale when she finally comes through the kitchen and she doesn't even notice them, or the bread, or the cake with a piece taken out that Prim took for her friends at school.

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Last year he'd be sleeping still in a room he shared with his brother, waking up just slightly after five to begin a day of baking. Last year he'd be shoving his brother awake as his brother shoved him back and growled a "five more minutes." Last year he'd be imagining telling the girl of his dreams, that Katniss Everdeen, of his feelings and sometimes in his mind she was so happy she'd laugh and cry at the same time and tell him it's the same for her.

But he's sleeping alone on a couch, alone in a house, still awake from just dozing on and off throughout the night. His brothers maybe shove each other, or maybe now they're too old for that. He doesn't know anymore. All he knows is that he feels old himself, and wonders if he can pass away in his sleep from an old aged heart, mind, and soul.

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He walks around aimlessly one afternoon and is near the school when everyone is let out. He stands off to the side, against a tree, and most people don't look his way. He doesn't know if they don't look at him because he's just become a general state of nothing, nearly invisible, or if they just don't want him to know that they know he's around, they don't want interaction. It's weird, because as much as he doesn't want to deal with people being scared or proud or whatever the hell he makes them feel, he wants some form of something with someone.

Living alone is hard for Peeta Mellark. The only constant companion he has available is Haymitch and that man alone will drive Peeta to drink soon enough, he's sure, if he spends all of his extra time with the man.

The people that are his age but at the same time are so much younger walk past laughing and skipping and running and he aches because something within him reaches for them, reaches for when he was amongst them and doing the same thing. It feels like it's been ages, like he's an old man made up of regrets that watches strangers and wants their legs instead of his own that don't work as well.

Delly Cartwright looks right at him though, she sees him and she waves at him. It's been a while since she's seen him since he's not around in the bakery or town at all, and whenever she knocks on the house door he doesn't answer. His lights aren't even usually on either, and she's sometimes not sure of which house he lives in, that maybe she's knocking on a vacant house. She starts to walk over to Peeta. He can't deal with this, he can't deal with his best friend or used to be best friend or whatever Delly is. Was. He turns around as if he never saw her, and walks away without looking at the hurt look on the girl's face.

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He's outside when she comes back from hunting one day.

His eyes meet hers in the middle and they both stand still.

She looks away. She walks away.

They're neighbors but they're not because they live upon two different planes that could never exist at the same time, in the same place. She looked away from him, she walked away from him.

This is what love is, Peeta Mellark knows it now.

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A train with a delivery comes a week later and Peeta Mellark hobbles back to his house with a box in his hands. When he gets inside he goes right upstairs and closes himself in one of those unused rooms. As he opens up the box to his new paints the room suddenly becomes what he intends to have it be: his studio. He inspects every tube of paint they sent, every brush, the long roll of canvas and other supplies. He gets to work, setting up the two pieces of wood that he figured together with their stands some feet apart and he uses the tools that came with the house to fasten a piece of canvas to it, stretched and taut. He stands in front of the clean canvas for a bit and takes in the scent of his new material in front of him.

He always used to draw, and sometimes the delicate work of icing would bring him to thoughts of using actual paints. And here he was.

The first time he gets his palette ready he's nervous and careful. He lays down a blob of the black and the white first. Then right nearby he lays down some earth tones. Then he goes for warm colors, and then cool colors. And then he sits and stares at the colors that he holds and then he sits and stares at the blank canvas in front of him and thinks about how somehow, it's all supposed to come together.

Something snaps. Instead of painting he's flinging the paint mixed with some of the other liquids he was given at the canvas and trying to keep himself from crying. He stays away from red because of blood, and he stays away from the tree's green, the night's blue. After an hour of this he realizes in the process he's taken off his shirt and he's half clothed and fully armoured in paint smears and sweat.

He picks up his palette and walks around his canvas to the back. In a couple of places the paint was thick enough to show through but for the most part he stands in front of a blank slate. He likes the idea of that. Slowly, he takes a brush and dips it into ochre, because the color seems safe, is safe. Taking a deep breath, he looks outside quick for a reference. It's his favorite time of day. Bringing his paintbrush to the canvas, he starts the beginning of the falling sun and its colors.

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He loses himself in the pigments. It's better within them he decides. A lot of times he ends up painting his nightmares (he ends up painting her) but it helps to focus on reimagining them upon a canvas as opposed to going over and over again reliving the details. Everything just becomes colors blended with other colors creating shapes amongst a flat surface. Sometimes after a painting is done and it's too much he looks at it squinting so everything blurs together.

It's so much simpler on a canvas, his nightmares. It's easier to face them as they stare him down, and soon he's lining his entire house with paintings of the games. Katniss appears in and out of almost every painting. In his house it's silent and dark and lonely, but the paintings come to life and he exists in a way that's both better and worse than it has been for however long it's been now, he's lost track of days and months and people.

Sometimes when he walks past paintings with trees he can hear the rustling of bushes and crunching of leaves, because he could never walk quiet enough. Sometimes when he walks past paintings with his bloody leg in the cave he feels an ache where it once was. Sometimes when he walks past images of the cornucopia he can still hear Cato's agony that rang throughout the night.

He's still lonely and alone and even more lost than ever before, but it doesn't matter. He may as well let the demons that dwell within his ribcage come out and play, the accusing finger surrounding him instead of just waiting in a mirror.

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He hears her say his name.

It's not to him and he isn't supposed to hear it, but for a boy who's been told he steps loudly he's become a ghost. They don't notice that he's in Haymitch's house. The man is dripping and drunk with his knife in his hands and she, she stands there and she is beautiful.

It hurts.

He stands there and takes her in for a bit. It's the closest they've been in –– in –– how long? A long time. He would let himself think too long but he can't because he's sure that she thinks not long enough. She's gained some weight, more than she had even before the games, but she's still too skinny. Her hair is dark and the braid that he sees flying as she runs away from him in his nightmares hangs farther down her back. He can read the nightmares in the shadows under her eyes. He can read the demons in the way she holds herself, or rather in the way she doesn't hold herself. He wonders what her nightmares are, what she thinks when a sibling places a hand on her back just in a friendly gesture and ends up with a leering Tribute for just a second, ready to kill.

He's surprised that he can talk, that he can even form a sentence, can even ask her a question and he says, "asked me what?"

He doesn't remember the last thing he said aloud, let alone the last thing he said aloud to this girl. He watches her body tense by the sound of his voice as he steps further in and joins them in the room. There's a chill suddenly, or maybe it's just his heart freezing over and being cracked apart by this girl. Again. He allows her to do it, and he knows he'll continue allowing her to do so, over and over and over again.

Ignoring the pain in his chest he sets the loaf of bread that was the reason he came over on the table and waits for Haymitch to hand over the knife in his hands. Haymitch does while explaining to Peeta how he woken him up without giving the old man pneumonia. The knife gets clean and he tries not to check to see if there's blood on this knife in his hands, because surely any knife he comes in contact with is dripping with all of his sins.

Peeta Mellark hands over a piece to Haymitch to make sure the drunk has some food to soak up the liquor. And then he turns again to the girl, to Katniss Everdeen and offers her a piece.

Everything between them is chipped and brittle, and the drunk voices it. Katniss disregards it and doesn't look at Peeta again as she leaves. Haymitch says some more to the boy but all he can see is that swinging braid as her figure leaves again, moves away from him, and he wonders how he feels like he loves her even more.

It's sick, and it's not healthy. But this is what love is, Peeta Mellark realizes.

He goes home alone and starts another painting of a lone dandelion being covered in snow and ice, giving into the winter of the earth around it. The painting is in the garbage before the sun rises.

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She runs towards him and it's snowing. She crushes him to her and he spins her like a top when she's in his arms. His mind is blank as the world blurs around them and all he can focus on is Katniss. He isn't the best with his prosthetic so they topple over. The cold ground is biting at his back but Katniss Everdeen lays atop of him and her smile can almost feel genuine. She's warm and he pushes away the hurt that comes from the thought of something genuine or not genuine with Katniss Everdeen by grabbing her face and bringing her lips down to his and tasting life for the first time in months. He can feel the cameras on them, can feel them in the way that Katniss kisses back.

They part after a while and Katniss gets up. He wonders for a moment if she intends to just leave him in his yard and the snow, at the rate it's coming down he could be buried in it by the next day. But soon her hand is in front of him and she helps him up. He depends on it more than he wishes were true, his damn lack of a leg making him need the help that he's finally been given. Katniss smiles a thank you to him, a thank you for kissing her back and not giving her up despite the moss that's grown between them in the past six months. It's odd because she wasn't around before, she always had been away from him except for his time at the Capitol. But that place gave him the taste of what he's always wanted and made it feel more real than he could feel possible, and then she ripped it away herself. And suddenly not having Katniss Everdeen hurt that much more, her kisses and hand holding digging that much deeper into him.

It's a vicious cycle, this new life, full of loneliness morphing into not real comfort morphing into emotional pain that feels physical that morphs into anger at her that morphs into anger at himself that morphs back to loneliness. This is what love is, Peeta Mellark knows, it's engrained into him. This is the only thing love will come to manifest within him, something that he knows will consume him in a fire that freezes him out.

She kisses the corner of his mouth and her lips form a smile as she does it when they wait for their train.

He tries to smile too.

This is what love is.

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