#everlarkfics

He'd returned four months ago to Twelve. Until then Dr. Aurelius held him in the Capitol, until he could be deemed recovered enough from the abuse and brainwashing Snow and his men happily inflicted upon his psyche.

Peeta had spent nearly every day around me in some fashion since coming home, since I'd began to hunt again and he'd started to bake and sell from his own kitchen. Since we'd started having dinners with Haymitch and bonding again, starting from almost ground zero in our friendship. Snow had done irreparable damage to Peeta's memories of me.

There's little hope he'll ever fully remember me as he once did. That he'll ever see me the way he once did.

I've gotten extraordinarily good at pretending it doesn't bother me in the least, pretending that it doesn't hurt when he doesn't wish to see me or a flashback comes on that he refuses to let me talk him through. Because my voice, my face, my very presence makes it worse.

I myself make it infinitely worse on Peeta. And there's nothing I can do to fix it.

He makes his way over to us now, just as I'm about to ask the stranger how she knows him. But she's not looking at me anymore and I realize, probably wisely, that anything I try to say will just be ignored.

"Peeta Mellark! Oh my goodness gracious," she exclaims vigorously, tossing her arms around his neck as soon as he's close enough to reach, launching herself into his embrace.

And he welcomes it. He seems to revel in it, in fact. His arms lock around her and he sways her gently and his smile, his wonderful, genuine smile, brightens his face so powerfully, it rivals stars in a night's sky.

I love that smile, I realize suddenly.

I only wish I saw it directed at me.

As soon as he lets her go, the girl is talking a mile a minute, her tone getting higher and higher, and becoming more scrambled and vivacious. And Peeta listens attentively, asking questions about how long she's been here and where's she staying and how's her cousin.

And I slip away, retreating from where I came from, back down the road towards my house.

Neither party realizes I was even there.

/

"Katniss, I need that!" Peeta yells two nights later, his voice caught between exasperation and laughter. "I need to see if the recipe turns out right."

"I can tell you the dough has turned out spectacular," I offer, digging my fingers into the bowl of mixed ingredients.

"You're disgusting," he remarks, coming to a sudden halt behind me now. "I'm still going to bake that. Even filled with your germs."

"Germs?" I pick, only half pretending to be offended.

"Whatever you call those tiny fingers."

I narrow my eyes at him, choosing to hold the bowl even tighter against my chest in defiance. "I'm definitely not giving this back after-ah!"

In the span of one second, Peeta had managed to grab an ice cube from the tray on his counter and slide it underneath my shirt, right up against the bare skin on my lower back.

"Peeta!" I yelp as he yanks the dish from my hands and sets it on top of the refrigerator. Where I cannot easily reach. "That was below the belt."

"So is stealing my batter," he shoots backs, remorseless for the way he'd launched a surprise attack on me.

"You called it a dessert experiment."

"That I will never know the outcome of if you don't stop eating the dough."

"But I'm hungry."

"So go hunt something. You were just saying earlier that deer are starting to reappear in the woods."

"I wanted something sweet," I murmur, maybe a little petulantly.

"Go ask Haymitch for a cup of sugar," he suggests wryly, and then laughs at the image. "I'm sure he hasn't touched anything I stocked his cupboards with."

"But I already sampled the dough," I point out, my mouth watering at the seconds old memory.

"And?"

"And my germs, as you called them, are in that batter now anyway."

At that Peeta rolls his eyes. "I've had your germs in my mouth before, Katniss."

I'm taken aback at the innuendo. In the time since he'd returned to Twelve, he's kept things between us simply platonic. Playful on his good days, distant—extremely distant—on his bad, but never once has he ever made mention of our past romantic entanglement before. Real or not real, those moments between us remain unspoken.

As if they never even happened at all.

And I abruptly realize I don't know what to say now that he has. Now that he's made a not-so-subtle reference to our shared kisses, I'm unexpectedly rendered silent.

Luckily he doesn't seem to notice. Or if he does, he takes mercy on me.

"I can't trust you in the kitchen anymore," he asserts, with a teasing edge in his tone. "Go stir the frosting in the dining room for me."

I let out a sigh that's far more irritated than I truly feel. "Ordering me around now?" I murmur with an air of superiority, but I follow his request just the same.

"Yes," he smirks, matching my arrogance. He smacks my backside as I slip by him. "Anything to keep you out of my dessert experiments."

/

"Who was that pretty blonde you were talking with?" I ask the next morning, hoping my tone came off casual. Peeta had invited me and Haymitch over for breakfast, claiming he wanted us to try his new chocolate filled crepes.

The crepes were great but truthfully, they weren't the reason I took him up on the invite.

I wanted to ask him about the girl, the blonde girl I'd met in town the other day. Especially after finding out Haymitch declined breakfast this morning, I thought my opportunity to slide the inquiry subtly into the conversation was actually presenting itself.

Of course, last night while helping—a term Peeta himself would use loosely with my presence here the night before—him try out his new dessert recipe would have been an ideal chance as well to ask who the stranger with the pretty face and beaming eyes, for him evidently, was.

But he was so joyous last night. He was so happy and carefree and playful with me, in a way I've found it difficult to count on since the war, and I'd be lying if I said the idea of mentioning this girl, of taking a risk and bringing up an unknown stranger, that's clearly not from Twelve, didn't absolutely scare me. Didn't raise the possibility in my mind of souring his good mood.

Then again, the bright smile he'd given her a few days ago in the town square leads me to believe nothing about the blonde holds a negative connotation to him. The look on his face that day indicates nothing about the girl sets him off, triggers a bad image or a distorted memory, reminds him of the war that surely was their catalyst for meeting.

In fact, I laid in bed last night and considered the possibility of her newfound presence in Twelve being the reason behind the rapid improvement to his mood.

The likelihood of that being true stung enough to keep sleep away. Stung enough that I could physically feel the ache spreading across my chest.

Well, lucky her, I remark snidely in my mind before taking a deep breath. I don't want to let myself go down that road. That road of bitterness and anger, of all the things that'd happened that just aren't fair or right. All the things that Dr. Aurelius tries to get me to work through on the rare occasion I actually do pick up the phone when he calls.

I intended all through breakfast to bring up his mysterious new acquaintance, but whenever I got close to approaching the subject, I either second-guessed my words or Peeta made an obvious segue to a new topic. And remarkably quick, in my opinion.

But after we finish eating, I realize my time is about to run out and my curiosity gets the best of me and, instead of the subtle way I practiced in my head, I merely just blurt out the question.

"Who?" He says, raising an eyebrow, seeming truly confused. But it only takes him a second to grasp what I'm referring to. "Oh, are you talking about Bailey?"

"Is she the pretty blonde girl you were smiling at?" I ask, trying to ignore the way my stomach twists, waiting to hear the answer.

"Yeah, she is," is all the response he offers verbally.

But there's a slight blush to his cheeks now and the pit in my stomach deepens. "How do you know her?" I murmur, my tone suddenly faltering.

He hesitates, biting his lip, considering his words very carefully. "Bailey was in therapy with me. In the Capitol," he finally explains.

Oh. That admission gives me pause. This girl was in the Capitol with Peeta, in therapy?

I must look as confused as I feel because he elaborates further. "Dr. Aurelius put me in group therapy near the end of my stay. He thought me interacting with others who'd also had... traumatic experiences may be helpful to my own recovery and memory corruption..."

I nod then, seeing the doctor's logic. "Did it work?" I inquire, keeping my gaze on the plate I'd been drying for two minutes straight, afraid to put it down and then have to meet the blue eyes that could make me bare my soul without having to ask.

"Work how?" He murmurs softly, looking at me now like he could see the sun, moon and stars in the side of my face. Looking at me in a way that makes me wonder if I'd imagined his interaction with the blonde.

"To fix your... memory corruption." The phrase seems so foreign and overly formal, but it's the only way I can think of to refer to his hijacking.

I see Peeta take a deep breath in my peripheral vision and I feel his gaze intensify, burning into me like red hot fire before he finally shakes his head. "Not as well as I wanted."

My heart thuds loudly at his words. It's been months since he came home, he's come over to my house nearly every day, ate countless meals with me and Haymitch, laughed with me, held my hand during moments of fear, helped me tend to the primroses he'd himself planted, picked up my shipments from the train without request and yet, there's still a wall that flies up between us. A wall that seems impenetrable between us some days.

I don't know if it's by Dr. Aurelius' suggestion or if Peeta has made this decision, consciously or unconsciously on his own, but he has repeatedly pulled back from getting too close to me. He's always kind and friendly and even polite, but every so often, something between us will go into uncharted territory, something will cross an invisible line I never even knew existed, reignite a spark that evidently can't be lit and Peeta closes down completely.

And when that happens, when he pulls away from me, whether it be emotionally or physically, my own happiness is crushed as well.

I suppose though, I should have expected this after last night. I should have known by the unguarded way he'd laughed, by how freely he'd touched me, that he was bound to pull away soon.

"Is Bailey planning on staying in town?" I ask after a long pause, hoping to alleviate some of the tension now lingering in the air between us.

It has the opposite effect though. Instead of easing him, Peeta adverts his gaze to look as far from me as humanly possible. Which only serves in further piquing my desperate curiosity. "I'm not sure where she'll be staying," he finally states and then carefully slips the bone-dry plate from my hands.

I don't miss his meticulous word choice or the rigidity in his posture now.

"I'll wipe down the table-" I start, trying to find a way to useful rather than just gawking at him, prying into his treatment in the Capitol or the girl he'd very blatantly managed to befriend in the process.

The girl he'd evidently befriended while I was sitting in my training room, going out of my mind with grief for my dead sister and a court of people debated if I was a danger to society or not.

"You don't have to do that," Peeta cuts me off, his voice insistent. "It's fine, Katniss. I can handle things from here."

There's something in his tone that makes me suddenly uncomfortable. Something in his baby blues that makes me feel like he wants me to leave.

But it's something I don't have the gull to question. After the way this conversation made me feel, I don't have the will to ask another inquiry again and instead of pressing further until I know exactly what his problem is, I find myself leaving, allowing the uneasiness between us to only gain strength, allowing the awkwardness to transform even my simple goodbye into a loaded statement, desperately searching for an explanation of some kind.

I get my explanation the very next morning though, bright and early.

In way of long blonde tendrils splayed across Peeta's pillow, her cheek rested against his chest, her hand rubbing his arm.

All visible from where I stand outside, peering into Peeta's open bedroom window.