#Peeta and Haymitch react like 'NO you can't do that!' and Katniss instead holds on to Peeta like a kid gifted a whole candy bar.

[mellarked-katnisseverdeen]

AU Idea:

Peeta is rescued, non-hijacked. Katniss, in a desperate bid to be with him and by his side when doctors try removing her uses the wife card.

Coin, who may or may not know Katniss and Peeta weren't married, decides if Katniss is gonna act like they are married she will too. They promptly are requested to move in together. Sign a marriage certificate. And she loosely implies that Katniss and Peeta, as a young, healthy and presumably fertile couple will be encouraged to have children.

Peeta, at first, is SUPER bothered by this. They are being forced into things again and it feels gross.

Katniss on the other hand, is only seeing this as an excuse to have Peeta cuddle time. Which after all she's been through, she feels like she deserves. If it takes marriage to stop people prying him away from her she will happily do it. This reaction does a lot to soothe Peetas reaction.

[lemonluvgirl]

ROLE REVERSAL: More Hijacked Katniss AU (Alternate version of the lunch room scene)

"Your bread used to taste better." She says conversationally, as if she just wants to contribute something to the lunch room discussion, but her eyes cut to him and stay there. Narrowed and waiting for his reaction. All around them, their table grows quiet. Finnick stops separating Annie's carrots and peas on her plate. Gale's head snaps up from where he had been determinedly staring at his garlic/squash soup and shoveling it into his mouth dispassionately. And Haymitch cocks his head in her direction attentively. They are all watching her. This is the most she's said to him in days since their last botched interaction.

Peeta, though, keeps quiet as per their mentor's advice. Holding back a million things, he could say in reply. Like how District 13 only keeps the barest of ingredients in stock to make their food. No spices or herbs to add flavor. No add-ins like fruits or nuts or even butter can be spared from their spartan like rationing. Their ovens are also huge and dont heat to temperature evenly. They are for making large quantities of food fast and easily, not for slow cooking breads. Everything that has come out of them so far is either overcooked and dry or still slightly doughy in the middle. He can't seem to get them to produce a decent loaf no matter how hard he tries. They are nothing like the bakery ovens he is used to.

He gives her only a half shrug in reply, and the corner of her mouth twitches up in a near smile that sends a shiver down his spine. He doesn't like that look.

"Then again, maybe your bread was always shitty. Maybe everything you do is mediocre at best, like those kisses in the cave and those kisses on the Victory Tour, and Snow just messed with my head to make me think you were better than you are." She says the words, and they drip with undisguised malice.

The comment hits him square in the chest. Like a punch to the sternum. Just like she intended, no doubt from the way her gray eyes are glittering with hungry anticipation. They way she wants to hurt him and watch his reaction is so personal that it's vindictive. He never knows quite what to say to her when she does it. On one hand, it's better than when she's ignoring him completely. Like the way she treats Gale. As if he barely exists, and isn't even important enough to warant her disdain. He is like a nonenitity to her, a mild annoyance she occasionally frowns at when she can be bothered to acknowledge he even exists. Peeta can't imagine being that inconsequential to her after everything they've been through together. On the other hand, when she speaks to him, now it's excruciating. She's a sharp pointed weapon, as deadly accurate with her aim as she ever was, only now she uses her words instead of her arrows. Every time she opens her mouth, he's left feeling like a wounded fawn, shot through and left bleeding on the forest floor, heart pumping and blood racing in fear and desperation as she stands over him in violent triumph. He tries not to react to her words. Tries not to show how deeply she cuts him. Getting defensive only spurs her on he's learned. Because the more he struggles, the more she enjoys it. Like she knows, he'll bleed out faster because of it. He won't be able to keep his terrifying emotions in check. His broken heart will ooze from him and land in a puddle at her feet. Something for her to drag her boot through in disgust before she closes in for the kill.

A weezy chuckle breaks through the silence that has decended around the dining table, and it's their mentor who speaks while everyone's eyes are glued to the two of them.

"Of course, his bread used to taste better. You were in love with him. Everything in the world is better when you're young, stupid, and in love."

Peeta watches as the weight of their mentor's statement lands. Anger and something like embarrassment flash in her eyes. She scoffs, but two twin spots of color rise high on her cheeks. Evidence that the well placed volley has hit its mark.

Peeta exhales slowly. Fighting the urge to defend her and himself. It's a hard to break habit. And he knows that the urge to protect her will serve no one right now. She would hate him all the more if he even attempted it.

On the other side of his instinct is a strange kind of satisfaction at seeing her thrown off balance for even a moment.

Haymitch's words are a kind of vindication, and her reaction is further evidence, but the feeling that it leaves in his soul is bittersweet. Because it rings soundly true in a way that is simple and irrefutable. She did like his cooking once. Couldn't get enough of it, in fact. And she did love him in some way. She must have. The way she hates him now all but assures it. But Haymitch's use of the past tense when he talks about her feelings for him makes a place inside Peeta's chest ache with a sad longing that he fears will never completely go away.

Because she doesn't love him anymore, and now all that is left of their once profound connection is this. This cruel exercise in bloodletting that he really should walk away from but can't.

"I never loved him." She spits out, and if Johanna were here, she'd say something snarky and sarcastic about how Katniss is still a shit actress.

"That's what Snow wants you to think." Finnick says, looking squarely at Katniss, even voiced and confident in his words.

She sneers at him, opens her mouth, but Haymitch cuts her off.

"You did, and you still do. You're the only one who can't see it. Then again, even before the hijacking, you were pretty slow on the uptake. Still got the intuition of a fucking rock. Guess it's nice to know they didn't change everything about you." Haymitch says, words slipping out quickly, and punctuated by a loud burp that leaves a lingering stench of garlic.

It makes Peeta's nose wrinkle, and in the time it takes for him to shake his head to try and dislodge the smell from his nostrils, she bolts.

All he can do is stare at the empty space she had been sitting in and wonder if they will ever be able to have a normal conversation again.