When Katniss's weight started to feel dead in his arms, Peeta relaxed a little. She acquiesced; had fallen asleep. Good. She looked like she needed it and badly at that. It was when he was when she started talking in her sleep that Peeta started to worry about. Brow knit with concern, he kept his head held high and made his way back into the complex, not wanting to show that both of them were weak if the rest of Panem really was watching.
He'd attempted to convince Katniss otherwise, but eventually even Peeta had to admit, he wasn't so sure they weren't still in Panem, maybe unwittingly on the run and they really ought not be using the communication system the people here had set up and welcomed them into. Were those people rebels by not telling the President that he and Katniss were both alive and out of the arena? He didn't have a lot of time to think about it before his focus was pulled again. He kept hearing the names Rue and Prim. Peeta's heart broke a little for Katniss. She'd never feel for him the way she felt for Gale, probably, but the hold Rue and Prim had on her heart had a different, more powerful tug to it that was different, too, from the way Peeta felt about her. It was a feeling he neither understood nor could truly empathize with, but he knew whatever it was that Katniss was seeing in her sleep, it was upsetting her.
The elevator doors opened on their floor and Peeta wasted no time getting to and inside of Katniss's apartment, kicking the door shut with his bad leg barely flinching at the slam behind him as he made his way toward Katniss's bedroom. He hadn't even cleared the living room when he heard the last thing he wanted to hear coming from her lips. It was, of course, the name he'd been expecting to hear the whole time she'd been mumbling to herself, but it didn't make it sound any less like fingernails on a chalkboard to him. Ignoring it as best he could, Peeta rounded a corner and deposited Katniss onto her bed, crawling in after her and guiding her into his arms the way he always did when she was having a nightmare. He held her close and tucked her head beneath his chin only for a second before she started thrashing against him. It felt as though she was putting in little to no effort which meant that she was either still asleep with her eyes open or she really was ill. Peeta was betting on the latter.
The sting of Katniss's desperation for Gale cut Peeta more deeply than he would've liked to admit. He forced himself to remember that, as far as the rest of Panem knew, Gale was just Katniss's cousin. Anything to keep his face from registering the hurt that she was frantic for Gale but not for Peeta himself. "Katniss," he said softly, sympathetically. "Gale's not here. It's okay, he's home. We're not in District 12," he reminded her, stroking her hair and looking with concern at her face, trying to catch her attention as his arms tightened around her. "He's not here. It's just me," he added sounding almost as defeated as he felt.