Regrets and Returns

by Lilliana-Lissa HathawayDavid97

Her biggest regret is leaving him. His biggest fear is that she'll never come back. Now, two years on can things go back to what they were or will every have changed? A repost of a story by the same name... It got deleted on me... I Suck at summaries, but it's better than it sounds, take a look if you want. Sorta AU.

1. Chapter 1

Regrets and Returns

Chap 1

As time goes by, I think about the time I lost, the time we lost. And now it's too late to get any of it back. Too late for me, anyway. He can marry the girl he's with now, have children, grow old watching his grandchildren play. I won't be that lucky. I left him for too long. I kept him safe for too long. And now I won't ever be able to hold him in my arms again, because now he's with someone else. I should have seen it coming, really. He is at the top of most girls 'dream boyfriend' list. I left him because being with him was putting him in danger.

But he doesn't know that. He can never know that. Not now. I was stupid to think he would wait so long. Two years is an awfully long time for two 18 year old kids. The only good thing is that he doesn't know I'm back. He doesn't know how much it hurt me to disappear on him, and everyone else in Twelve, and how much I knew it would hurt him. But I hurt him anyway. Because if I hadn't, he would be dead, and I can't live in a world where The Boy with the Bread doesn't exist.

At least I came back to see that he is safe, and happy, and now I can leave again. It's going to be even harder to leave this time, now that I know to leave is not to protect those I love, but to leave the one I love most in this world to be happy with a girl who is not me.

As I turned away from the bakery window, I swear the boy, or should I say man now, glanced up from the cake he was icing, and caught my eye. I quickly broke the eye contact that made my heart ache to go into the shop and touch him, and ran away from the bakery, speeding through the square, with tears spilling down my face. I sped to the one place I knew no one would find me. The place only my father would have known where to look for me, but he's long gone. He was the first casualty before I ran away, to keep everyone else that I loved safe.

I slipped under the fence, through a hole that had been there for years, and just kept running until, at last, I reached the little shack near the lake my father and I had found when I was 5 years old. As soon as my eyes focused on the fresh shoots of Katniss tubers sticking out of the lake, I broke down and sobbed.