Disclaimer: Got nothin'.
A/n: This takes place post-Mockingjay, and is therefore full to the brim with major MJ spoilers. And angst. ;D (Also, title slightly ripped from a beautiful song by The Fray) And if you were wondering, yup, this is still for the Girl on Fire ficathon. Seriously, wrote so many for that wonderful, wonderful thing!
Prompt: gale/katniss; sometimes we jump across every cloud, fly away get lost and never be found (For magic_knickers)
No Way To Reach Me
It was pouring rain and blowing cold, the type of storm that tends to occur in late autumn days before the rain will become snow. She stokes the flames in the fireplace and wraps her arms around herself, feeling chilled and alone. Not lonely (well, not today), just by herself.
It could be worse (it usually is) and for no reason at all, today isn't a bad day. (She didn't wake up screaming – first time in weeks, in months – and she didn't spend the day numb and crying, something which has become routine ever since she got back.) Her thoughts flit briefly to Peeta, wonders where he is, misses him, his warmth and friendly face. Hatred flashes through when she thinks of how he was taken from her, wrecked and destroyed. He's recovering, but so slowly, and they both felt it was easier to keep some distance for now. (She hates that too, whether she agrees with it not, because it's Peeta… except not anymore.)
When she goes to the window to look out at the dark and cold, to see Peeta's unlit home, she realizes someone is on her doorstep. She yanks open the door and Gale turns to her, completely soaked and shivering, lips blue and trembling.
"I… I don't know…" he croaks.
"Gale!" she gasps, hauling him inside. He feels like ice. She hastens him over to stand by the fire. She hasn't seen him in so long. "What the hell are you doing? How long have you been out there?"
His teeth are clattering but he manages to answer, in a voice so quiet and broken she wants to burst into tears, "I couldn't knock, I… I needed to…" he blinks and his face is wet with more than rain. "I just don't know if it was me or not."
She straightens her spine – Prim. This is about the bombs.
In the aftermath, she can't look him in the eye, can't look at him at all. Nobody knows if they were his bombs, Beetee's bombs. There was chaos and confusion and it was war so who's to say that someone didn't take the plans? Steal them, copy them, simply use them without him knowing? Who's to say he was involved at all? Except he had a hand in building them, and whether he directly dropped them or not, right now she can't help but feel like it's his fault. If only he hadn't come up with the ideas for them, invented certain parts of them, then maybe her sister would still be alive. (Or would she?)
Even if she could manage to put that aside, it's all too fresh. Everything about the war is. Maybe there's peace now, and maybe she's not getting thrown in prison for assassinating Coin, but she feels anything but peace, and that whole time heals all wounds shit is just that. There's no way she's healing from this, from any of it.
And if she can't look at him, she most certainly can't talk to him. The silence is sticky and teeming with blame and guilt and grief and there's nothing she can – or will – do to change it. Not now.
He opens his mouth to say something but she turns away. A couple days later he leaves for District 2 without even saying goodbye.
She holes herself up in her home (can she really call it that?) in Victor's Village after the trial, after coming back to District 12, after Gale leaves, after Peeta heads off to recover. Her mother stays in 13, working as healer. She's happy for her mother, she supposes, for being able to have some sort of life, but she hates her too, because she feels like the world should have died with Prim. How can the world still be spinning without her in it?
"Gale…" she reaches out to touch his chest but remembers how they left things, how he left things – left her – all that time ago (has it really been a year? More? She can't understand how she has lived – survived this long after all that has happened).
She doesn't know what to say. She can't comfort him because she has none herself. And she still thinks that time heals line is crap, but maybe distance is what helps. It's all still there, still raw, still shakes her to her core, leaves her breathless and aching sharply without warning, makes her fall to her knees in this house, in the woods, shoulders shaking for all she has lost. And yet…
Yet something has shifted inside. She can't find the fire to place blame anymore. The Capitol was cruel and horrible, they did so many evil things. But during the war, when they were fighting for peace and freedom, how many times did they do evil things too? How many lives did they take all in the name of right instead of wrong, and call themselves saviours and heroes? (She can never erase the images of her killing that woman in cold blood, of Finnick being torn apart, of the pods' destruction, of the people – the children, Prim – on fire.)
"I don't blame you." She whispers.
He still looks so tortured (and too thin, she realizes) and she suddenly wonders what kind of hell he has been putting himself through since everything happened, since he ran away. He looks like he doesn't believe her, like he just can't – like whatever guilt and grief that has been destroying him is the punishment he absolutely deserves for possibly having a hand in killing Prim and those children, in taking her away from Katniss forever.
She's not the strong one, she never has been. She's fragile and weak and incredibly broken, parts missing and scarred, she's been through too much and some things will never fade and she can't let go. But his pain is overwhelming and she thinks for a second that maybe she can help, maybe she can somehow be the stronger one, just for a moment, just for now.
Wordlessly she strips him of his soaking wet, ice cold clothes (and he just shivers and trembles, eyes dark and dull) and wraps him in a blanket. He's a ghost, a shadow of her best friend, and has never felt more far away and unreachable. She has no clue if she can ever bridge the gap that war made, that the Capitol and the Games made, or if she has the energy to try.
It's not like she knows what to do because she's never been that good with people (not like Peeta – he would know what to do) but it's Gale, and just maybe she can pull him back from the edge.