Hey everyone, just had the urge to write this. I found it so hard to swallow that Katniss and Gale would have such an abrupt goodbye with no closure and that there was no exploring her and Peeta finding each other again so this is my little version of that. Hope you enjoy it
"The stars are bright tonight,"
I jump and whirl around on instinct my knife raised automatically.
Peeta's eyes dilate and he curls into himself at my aggressive response and I have to curse myself, yet again for doing nothing to ease his recovery.
I lower the knife and tuck it behind me into my waistband, raising my hands in a placating way.
"Sorry it's just…habit I guess."
His eyes are still clenched tight but he nods. "I'm sorry I frightened you."
"There's nothing for you to apologise for Peeta,"
He opens his eyes and there's a brutal honesty in his gaze. "I will never run out of things to be sorry for Katniss."
I sigh and turn back to the sky which is in fact quite clear tonight. Ironic, since my thoughts are so clouded.
"Come back to me," he whispers.
I turn to face him. "Sorry?"
"You're trapped up in your head, I can see it. Do you want to talk about it?"
Yes. No. Maybe. Not with you. Not with anyone that's here anymore.
He smiles softly, understanding my conflict. I'm sure he's very familiar with arguing with voices in his head.
"You've been up a lot the past few nights," he muses. "You should really be resting."
"How do you know?" I accuse.
"Because I'm up just as much if not more," he replies simply.
"Shouldn't you be resting?" I shoot.
He shrugs. "I lose myself in my sleep. My identity slips away and all I'm left with is blood…so much blood all around me, in my eyes, my mouth, dripping down my hands…"
I shudder. I can't listen to this. My nightmares are bad enough. I'm too weak to take on his too.
"Are you nervous about tomorrow?" he asks quietly.
Tomorrow. The trains arrive tomorrow with fresh supplies and people to fill District twelve. The noise, the laughter and the constant sense of what has been lost suffocates me.
I hate when the trains arrive because I know my mother will never be on them nor anyone else I may have cared about.
"I don't like the noise," I say finally.
He eyes me and we both know that's only part of it but as usual with us we sit in a silence of words we will never say.
"I miss them," he says quietly.
"Your family?" I ask.
"The boy with the bread and the girl with the bow," he says.
This little omission nearly breaks me.
"You still have your bread, and I still have my bow," I point out.
"Different people holding them."
I sigh and turn back to the stars. "I wake in the night and come here to watch the stars because I like to think maybe they're watching too. Finnick, Cinna, Boggs, Portia…and…"
I break off and cover my mouth, shocked at my own words.
"I think they'd be watching you Katniss. That's what I imagine when the mornings are hard and I can't seem to shake myself from the darkness. I imagine they'd be watching, deeply disappointed if I couldn't find the strength to live a life they had taken away from them."
Peeta. So beautiful with his words. So extraordinary with his ability to ease wounds with a simple sentence.
I lean back against him. Solid. Warm He is the rock and I am the water that keeps slipping away.
I look up into those deep blue eyes and I have never hated myself more for being the reason he cannot sleep, his hands shake or he needs constant reassurances of reality.
He looks down at me with his warmth and faith and as our eyes catch he moves closer, aiming for my lips.
"I think I'm going to bed," I whisper before his lips make contact.
He immediately pulls away and the warmth is wrenched away with him.
"Of course. Good night Katniss,"
He moves away swiftly before I can call him back and apologise. Before I can tell him that I only push because I feel so undeserving of his light, and his love. He leaves before I can apologise for being a constant monumental disappointment to him.
I look up at the stars again. Praying they aren't really watching me mess up a life they died giving me.
I'm awoken the next morning not by the usual smell of Peeta's cooking but the absence of it.
He has not come over this morning to cook me breakfast. He has not come to see if I made it through the night ok and I'm disgusted with myself that I feel so betrayed by him.
"Get yourself together Katniss," I hiss. "Haven't you got enough to feel guilty about?"
I forced myself out of bed and stumble into the shower, just sitting on the tiles and letting the water wash over my skin, imagining that with every drop I am being cleansed of past indiscretions and crimes.
I think I could sit here for the rest of eternity and never be clean.
"You drunk or just wasting the hot water?"
I shriek and work to cover myself as Haymitch stares at me lazily through his haze of alcohol.
"Haymitch! Get out!" I scream.
"If YOU had about ten minutes ago I wouldn't have had to come up here and give myself nightmares looking at the animated carcass that is your body."
I stare at him defiantly, hurt by his words. I uncover myself and turn to face him full on.
"Take a good look," I hiss. "I'm just the female version of you."
He smirks at me and takes a swig of the bottle he's carrying. "Good to see you still have some fight sweetheart."
"Go pass out somewhere that's not here," I snap as I gingerly pat myself down, my skin still sensitive after six months of treatments and therapy.
"I just thought I'd let you know the train is about to arrive."
He must sense that I'm about to go for his throat because he quickly adds.
"Thought you'd want a heads up about who's arriving today,"
That freezes me in my tracks. "My mother?"
He actually looks at me with pity and my rage comes back ten fold. "Not her."
"Well who then?" I snap.
He smirks again. "You'll have to come and find out…might want to put on some clothes first though."
Drunk, old and broken he is still able to duck the hair brush I throw at him as he shuffles out of the bathroom.
If it's not my mother returning there can only be one person Haymitch would ever give me a heads up about. The knowledge brings me crashing back down onto the floor and I'm shaking all over.
"Katniss!"
Not right now. Not like this. Please just be another voice in my head.
"God Katniss what have you done?"
Familiar warm arms wrap around me and I'm carried to the bed as if I weigh nothing more than a feather.
"You're here," I whisper.
Peeta looks down at me impatiently. "Of course I am, aren't I always?"
"But this morning…"
He brushes my words away. "I was in town helping with the bakery, the more hands the quicker I can have it up and running."
He looks down at me sadly. "I didn't think you'd notice I was gone."
That's how little he thinks of me. Just some girl that sends him away whenever he gets too close for comfort then is too self absorbed to notice when he reappears.
"I should get dressed," I say turning away from him, effectively shutting him out again.
This time he doesn't rush away as he has the past few months.
"You can push all you like Katniss and you can pretend all you like that this is nothing but I am not going anywhere and I'm never going to go anywhere. Lie to yourself all you like about your feelings but do me the respect of not lying to me."
He stares at me intently until I turn to meet his gaze. "Peeta, I'm ruined. Not broken. Don't you understand the difference? I can never be what you want."
"Katniss, you were all I ever wanted. Just you, the way you were. The truth is that I'm the one that can't be what you need and yet here I am, every day, every night fighting as hard as I did in the games, just not for my life this time, for ours."
He leaves me alone with this confession and I am so exhausted from this small conversation that I don't get up and dress as I should, I just lie in bed, curled into a ball wondering how the hell I was going to fix this mess this time.
Hours later I don't head to town to see who's arrived and the construction on the town but instead I move at a steady pace into the woods, walking at a brisk pace, determined to get myself as far away as I could from Peeta and his sad confessions, Haymitch and his drunk sneering, the train full of people and my emotional baggage that came with it.
It's not until I start to feel fatigued that I even slow my pace and look around me to get my bearings.
I'm at the little lake where my father showed me. I'm not even that far from the fence and I am exhausted. How weak I have become, how fragile.
I sit on a rock and let my feet dangle in the water for a moment before I'm reminded of my first games and I snatch them back immediately.
I hear a shuffle behind me and I'm on my feet immediately, knife in my hand facing a very tall, very handsome and very broken Gale.
He looks at me like I'm a stranger and then as if approaching a predator begins to edge towards me step by step.
This is not the happy reunion I imagined, this is not the boy who saved my life a million times over, this is not my best friend, this is an entirely new Gale.
One with weight on him, muscles, shorter hair, fancy uniform and eyes full of vacancy.
"Hi," I manage to croak.
"Katniss," he says coolly and then he turns and walks back the way he came, leaving me behind just as I left him.
I wait until he's out of sight before I allow the sobs to wrack my body.
My name is Katniss Everdeen, I am the girl on fire.
In a world that has been reduced to ash.
I am everyone's enemy.