Title: An Elegy for Mockingjay
Summary: In the end, it makes sense why it is Peeta she must be with and not Gale.
Pairing: Gale and Katniss and Peeta
Notes: Doesn't really fit in with my drabble series… this is my way of reasoning with myself about the characters through Katniss. Just thoughts mostly.
One day she thought about how the Capitol would never be free of any aspect of her life. What an awful day it was; she sat in her corner of the forest where the grass was patchy and the smell of evergreens trickled through the breeze and stuck in her hair.
She couldn't even choose a boy without the thoughts sneaking into her mind, unconscious whispers that began to drown her conscious thoughts.
Who does the Capitol want me to be with the least?
It should not have even come into her mind, and it made her want to tear at her hair and cry and scream because not even the Mockingjay could save herself from the evil that was the Capitol.
She thought of the future and how, even if everyone else was able to live their lives freely and under a new rule, she would be trapped in the past. The Mockingjay would never leave her; its calls would ring in her ears, and she would not forget.
At one time she decided she didn't want to forget everything when the time came that this time now would be memories only. She wanted to remember her friends and how she made some people smile, and she wanted to remember some of the pain just so she could compare it to how her new life was going. How it was so much less painful, how it was wonderful.
But now she took it back. She would give anything to move on and be lifted from this suffocating labyrinth of good versus evil, of her versus the Capitol, of her versus the world.
And so she took a deep breath and concentrated on what she had come to think about.
Who can you see yourself with twenty years from now? Who will help you forget about the Capitol?
She thought of how Peeta should remind her of everything Games and suffering.
She thought of how Gale should remind her of her life before the Games, of the hardships of her family and the lies that ate at them each day in the woods.
But Gale, he needed rebellion, and he needed his opinion heard. He was loud and defiant, and he would never be able to settle quietly.
And Peeta would. Peeta came from a stable home where good and quiet was not a show he put on for the government but reality.
And – but – shouldn't she be with Gale just because he was like what she was supposed to represent – he was defiant, he was rebellious, he was Mockingjay material.
She needed to let it go, though. That was the point. If she would be forced to be the Mockingjay for the rest of her life, Gale would be perfect.
But she would not be the Mockingjay forever. Her sanity would be gone if she could not envision the day where she would drop this symbolic mask and run.
Oh, how she could not wait for that day. And it became clear to her the way light lets you see what you cannot in the dark. The epiphany had her mouth opening into an "o" and her heart pounding.
She could see the day when Peeta would rescue her, when they would live together with the common goal of forgetting the Games. They would live in a small house on a mountainside away from everything. They would escape the Districts; it would be possible, she imagined. And they would have kids, maybe, but maybe not, because it might take too long to recover.
But they would go away.
They'd be free.
And they'd forget just enough to be happy.