Until the Mockingjay Sings

chapter one: april.

Peeta and Katniss had to relearn how to love each other. Things were different now— after the war. The games. The hijacking. The pain.
All of the things they had been through shaped them into the people they are now, yet there was an aura of fear that rose around Peeta every now and again. 

Peeta had returned to District Twelve when the first of the primroses were peeking through the ground. Katniss knew that, because he had picked some and planted them in the Victor's Village.

Peeta and Katniss had to relearn how to love each other. The Capitol had stripped Peeta completely of his identity, and they had taken every ounce of Katniss's dignity. She didn't have any family left besides her mother, and Peeta had nobody. Haymitch also returned to the district, deciding that he was going to raise a flock of wild geese. An interesting fate for a Victor, but it didn't stop his raging alcoholism. He would have the lovers over for supper at least once a week, and the night would always end with the three of them drunkenly recalling the events of their lives. Haymitch and Katniss were the ones who were in charge of rehabilitating Peeta now. There were no District Thirteen doctors to care for him now, only the two people who had repeatedly saved his life. Healing was not linear for Peeta— there were good days and bad days. Just like every other injury, the journey that he had to follow because of his hijacking was terrifying and rough. Peeta would have constant panic attacks, losing all sense of reality and the person that he truly was. During the day, both Katniss and Haymitch would talk Peeta down. They spent countless hours explaining to Peeta that what he was feeling wasn't real.

But in the dead of night, it was always Katniss who brought Peeta out of his panicked states.
Supposedly, that's how the two of them ended up in Peeta's bedroom one April evening on their first year back in Twelve. The blonde had his head in his hands, and his fingers were scrabbling frantically to grip onto his curled locks.

"I'm a mutt!" the man screamed, tears rolling down his cheeks. "Katniss, leave, I'm a mutt! I'll kill you, get out of here!"

"No!" Katniss kept her voice low, patiently bartering with her lover. "I'm not going to leave you. Every time I've left you, we've ended up hurt again."
Peeta squeezed his eyes shut, laying back on the bed and banging his head against the pillow multiple times.

"I'm a monster!" Peeta said, breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. "I'm going to kill you, Katniss. Please, just leave..."

"There's no way I'm letting you go through this alone." Katniss said with determination. "We're meant to keep each other safe. You know that you're not a mutt. You're a person, and you're wounded."

If you could stop looking at me like I'm wounded, then I can quit acting like it. Katniss remembered Peeta's words during the Victory Tour.

"I hate this..." he murmured, tears staining his rose colored cheeks. Katniss observed as his chest rose and fell rapidly with every shaking breath. She noticed how his eyelids fluttered every now and again, but they mostly stayed squeezed shut. She knew he was fighting something. She'd seen it before, when nightmares plagued his sleep in and out of the arena.

Silence fell over the room, and Katniss found herself collapsing next to Peeta, placing her hand next to his racing heart.
"You left me in the quell," said Peeta.  "Real or not real?" That's how all of their conversations went nowadays— asking questions for clarification on what is real.

Katniss froze. Not by choice. "Not real." she responded, voice wavering slightly. "Finnick and Johanna separated us because of Beetee's plan. But... Haymitch told me there was a bigger plan at hand."
"There was?" asked Peeta.

"Yes." Katniss's voice was quiet. She didn't know how much this new information would distress Peeta. "Half of the victors were in on it. They wanted... to rescue me."