Disclaimer: (insert something clever)
A/n: Yup, more Gale/Katniss. I think it's an addiction now - I don't know how to tell. Thanks to everyone who has been reading all my HG fics, you guys rock (and enable me)! Another short one this time, but the next one I post will be longer.
Prompt: gale/katniss; despite everything he is still the one person, in all her life, who has never asked her to pretend. (For lovelyracketeer)
Just Me With Just You
They wax and buff and pluck and shine. They add color and twist the hair on head into pretty designs, braid it down, make it simple. They make her closer to their version of beautiful, they keep her pure and innocent (their version of pure and innocent).
They tell her how she needs to act, how she needs to come off in the interviews, how she needs to be in front of people. It does not matter if it's not her real personality or her real feelings in the slightest. This is TV, this is entertainment, and she has to play her part, become an actress, become the favorite, the one to watch, the one to win.
She has to find him, protect him, take care of him, kiss him and love him. She has to maintain this façade, this ruse, this story that she would die for him. And maybe by the end, she might really have done so on her own terms, might really care for him in her own way, but that does not matter and why should it? This is TV, this is entertainment, and she has to play her part, so play it she does, even if it means breaking his heart when there are no cameras to watch (because, even if only to just her, the truth still matters).
And when she comes home and is crushed in Gale's warm embrace, all that pretending and coaxing and faking washes away, finally finally finally. She has to be the strong one for Prim, the head of the house for her mother, the provider for their household. She has to conquer the Games and protect Peeta, win sponsors and listen to Haymitch. She has to smile and glow and be in love and be waxed, buffed, plucked and shined. She has to be everything, all the time.
But not so with Gale. With Gale, she can simply settle down in tall grass and say nothing, do nothing. Nothing is expected, nothing is required, nothing is forced, faked or manipulated for maximum ratings – never has been.
She threads her fingers through his as they make their way through sun-dappled woods and hopes he understands: she'll never be able to put into words how much this, how much he, means to her.