Note: This is my first fanfiction, I hope it does the story and characters of thg justice! Please review with either praise or constructive criticism, it would mean a lot! I'll update tomorrow with a longer Chapter, it'll have Gale and maybe some Peeta in it. This chapter is just introducing the story, I hope everyone likes it! Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1: Haunted
"It's not like it used to be before, when we could tell each other anything. The Games have spoiled even that. I keep hoping that as time passes we'll regain the ease between us, but part of me knows it's futile. There's no going back."- Katniss, Catching Fire
Eight weeks. It's been eight weeks since I returned from the Games. I only know this because it's the eighth Sunday I've spent in District 12, the one day I get to spend completely with Gale. It feels different. I didn't expect for life to go back to normal in a matter of weeks, hell, I don't expect life to ever go back to normal. What is normal, anyway? I can't even remember. School, hunting, trading at The Hob… It seems like a lifetime ago. But the main thing that's different is my relationship with Gale. No, my friendship with him. It's nothing more than friendship. But if that was true I wonder why I have to reassure myself that we're 'just friends' every time I think of him or look at him…
We used to share everything, from food to secret thoughts and everything in between. But we've both been avoiding the difficult subject of The Hunger Games entirely. He's sensed I don't want to talk about it or even think about it. But I know we can't avoid it forever. I certainly can't, anyway. I relive it every night. Sweet little Rue. How she died in my arms. If I'd only been there a second earlier, if only I'd had the sense to lead her away from the meadow. It seemed so comforting and safe. But it was the worst place to be. It was the wrong place to be. This brings me to the boy from District 1, Marvel. Little did he know he was in the wrong place, too. I killed him without a second thought. I ended his life, like he ended Rue's. Without a thought, without a word, without regret. It haunts me now. But I don't regret it. I never will. I hardly had an option, did I? It's kill or be killed.
Glimmer's once glittering green eyes are now piercing, glaring at me every night. They were once sparkling with hope, energy and determination. Now she's in my nightmares giggling as the trackers jackers sting me countless times. Clove cuts up every limb, every inch of my body every night. Sometimes they tear me up in their mutt forms, sometimes it's in their human forms they torment me. I relive the Feast sometimes, but Cato always kills Thresh right in front of me before he can be close enough to do me any good by killing Clove. Instead of Clove screaming for Cato, it's me screaming for Peeta. Sometimes I scream for Gale. Last night, Gale came for me, but Cato cut him apart as I watched, Clove's sickening cackle almost drowning out my desperate screaming and pleading.
That brings me to Cato. His death haunts me the most. Sometimes he throws Peeta and I to the mutts. Usually, though we fight him until I have to look the poor, tormented soul and monster of a boy in the eye and send the arrow to his hand, watch him fall and listen to the mutts tear him apart for hours on end; knowing full and well that his suffering is not only at the bloody hands of the Capitol, of President Snow, but more directly at my hand. Even though he attempted to strangle me to death and appeared to be enjoying it, even though he had it out for me since the beginning, since I upstaged and outscored him- even though he'd have been proud to end my very existence and extinguish my flames and erase whatever legacy I had for the whole of Panem to see… He was a boy. A boy that only realised how the Capitol had manipulated and destroyed him, robbed him of a childhood and robbed him of a life that never was his own to live, when it was too late. When it was too late for him and the rest of them. I suppose he redeemed himself just a little from his insane sounding but nevertheless heartfelt speech before I… I killed him. He was just a naïve, albeit slightly insane, disturbed and maybe even twisted boy underneath and behind it all and he was a boy that I killed.
I wonder if it had ended differently, if any of the Careers had won instead of Peeta and I, which seemed more than likely- in fact, almost certain to happen, I wonder if they'd have been haunted every night by everyone they'd killed. Everyone they'd killed and laughed about killing later. I wonder if they'd have been haunted by how they killed me, like I'm haunted by how I killed them…