A/N: I'm not upset with how mockingjay ended. It's actually pretty brilliant, but I couln't call myself Team Gale and not do this. This is unbeta'ed. If this bugs anyone too much then you're welcome to pm me and beta it yourself. ;)
Extinguished
He's imprinted in my mind as an animal. A mutt. I hold him inside my head that way because to think of him as anything more is to think of him as a real person. And to think of him as a person is to think of them together. And to think of them together is to destroy what is left of my sanity.
If ever I was sane to begin with.
Over and over the animal asked us questions. Over and over we answered as best we could. She answered because she thought it would fix him. I answered because I thought it would fix her. I believed that if we did everything we could for him, if I let her do her best by him, she wouldn't blame herself when it ended badly. I could see no other way for it for end.
It happened so gradually that I didn't realize until it was too late that he was getting better. The questions were the pieces that destroyed him, and the answers we gave helped to put him back together.
I helped put him back together and in doing so, I sealed my own fate. Katniss and I would never be.
She's laughing behind my eyes. She's sitting on the edge of our lake. Her hair is pulled to one side and the sunlight is reflecting back onto her face from the water's surface. Her legs are crossed and she's cleaning our kill in her father's coat. But there is no blood. Blood is not allowed in my memories of her… this limits the number of those memories considerably. Then she looks up at me and our eyes meet. We are in perfect harmony. I am complete. I look away from her smile to see something falling from the sky, a silver parachute. She picks it up. She's smiling over it. Something isn't right. I open my mouth to tell her that something is wrong. Her face becomes Prim's and she bursts into flames. Her screams wake me, or possibly they're my own.
It takes me a moment to get my bearings. I'm not at home in District 12. I'm not a refugee in District 13. I'm not on any assignment. I'm not a soldier. The war is over. The war is over. The war is over.
I have a house here in District 2. It used to belong to citizens who became casualties of the war. They had children. I know this because there are two extra bedrooms upstairs and there was a doll under the floor-boards in one of them. I killed this family when I caused the avalanches that buried the Nut. I know this because when I asked outright if that was the case, no one would look at me. No one answered. That's how I know.
There's water in the glass beside the bed, I drink it as I consider the phone beside it. I stare at it as I have a thousand times before. I know I won't pick it up. The time for talking is past. There are no words.
Greasy Sae won't call anymore. I told her to stop. Her calls about Katniss were once my reason for living. When they stopped having that effect, and started having to opposite one, I told her to stop.
"I'm sorry Gale." Her familiar voice crackled over the line.
"Don't be." I reply. "Thank you for…" I think back to the days before the Games, the evenings we spent in the Hob eating whatever it was she could put together, then later, to the evacuation where I watched her tirelessly evacuating our District members, to more recently, when I'd made her promise to go back with Katniss. 'She can't be alone,' I'd said, 'I need to know she's being taken care of.'
"Everything." I finally finish. It's insignificant, but it's all I have.
I always hated the Capitol. There was always a burning need in me to fight back, to have a hand in destroying it. Had I known the cost, I would have lived with my discontent.
When my hands were around Snow's neck and I was choking the life out of him I was thinking about that. I wasn't just killing him for Katniss. I was killing him for his Capitol, for his Games, for his Districts, and his laws. I was killing him for Peeta. Not because of what he did to Peeta, but because I couldn't kill Peeta myself without killing whatever was left between Katniss and I. I wanted to believe that killing Snow would clear the way somehow. Through the roaring in my ears and the screams around me I killed Snow with a sort of single-mindedness that bordered on primal. But it didn't fix anything, not that I ever really believed it could. And when I watched the tape back I saw her screaming for me. When she knew all was lost, she didn't scream for him, she screamed for me. She wanted me to kill her. She wanted to die knowing that I did what was best for her.
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free.
They gave me a fancy title, a job, a house, and the promise that Katniss would never know the roll I played in Snow's death. I took her sister from her, I didn't want her to feel like I took this too.
I knew she would come to me if she couldn't survive without me. I thought Peeta was too broken to be able to help her. I was wrong and too afraid that if I went to her, I would be turned away.
"There's an ancient saying," Greasy Sae said to me once. We were back in District 13 and I was trying to understand Katniss's desperation to help Peeta out of his hijacked state. "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime."
For a moment I don't understand. Then it dawns on me. Peeta gave her one loaf of burnt bread. I taught her to hunt. Greasy Sae thinks that given time, Katniss will see my worth and stop taking me for granted.
"Give her a little more time Gale," she says to me with a friendly nudge to my shoulder, "Deep down, she knows who she needs to survive. When this is all over, she'll see."
Greasy Sae was wrong too and the saying is incomplete. "Give a man the fish that saves his life, and he'll never stop trying to repay the debt."
I'm outside my District 2 house now. The night is cool and the moon is bright. I hear a rustle in the tree nearest me. A mockingjay is watching me with unblinking and accusing eyes.
"I'm sorry." I tell it.
It's insignificant, but it's all I have.