A/N: This is actually a Katniss/Gale story but also actually a Katniss/Peeta story. Oh just read it!
I'll close my eyes
Then I won't see
The love you don't feel
When you're holding me
- Bon Iver
We're lying in bed. As we do every night for the last three years. I should be happy. The love of my life, the girl of my dream in my arms. She's trying. God, I know she is. I'm her best friend and I know she loves me. I will always be a part of her as she will always be a part of me. But I also know I am not him. I never will be. She is so close but so so far away.
She closes her eyes every time we make love. I can't help but wonder if she's thinking of him. And then I close my eyes to make sure I won't see in her face how much she wishes I were somebody else. When she falls asleep she screams his name.
I came back five years ago when I heard what happened. She has always been strong and independent. She never wanted to end like her mother and yet that is exactly what happened. She didn't speak for months; she was like a soulless vacuum. It took me almost a year to get her to at least leave her house. She went to the woods but avoided his tree. She said she wasn't ready. She didn't want to say goodbye.
We made love when she came home after the first time she visited him. She wanted to get distracted. She was mad at him for leaving her. I should be angry because I know she was just using me but I wasn't. Because I love her. And if that's what she needs me for, then that's what I'm going to be.
Even years after the war, Peeta seemed to be unable to win the fight against his own demons. He saw things no one else saw, felt things no one else understood. He always believed that his greatest fear has become reality. That they turned him into a monster. Katniss tried. She did everything to help him. Help him realize it's not his fault that his family, Rue, Prim, Finnick and all the others died. She made sure to tell him every single day that she is never going to leave. She is here to stay. She loved him. And she always will. But his own reality was too much for him to handle. She found him one day hanging on a tree with a note in his hand: I want to die as myself. I love you. I'm sorry
I know I can't make her love me as much as I love her. But she's here and we're together. And that's enough for me.