I REMEMBER YOU
A/N Song inspiration for this is "I remember You" by Skid Row. The link is watch?v=Uahy-ybKBZ0 in case you're interested.
I Remember You
The day was beautiful, hazy sunshine and fluffy white clouds against a brilliant azure sky. She tilted her head back and let the wind catch her loose hair blowing it hither and yon. The warm caress sparked thoughts of other days and the feel of work roughened fingers that softly touched her face, pushing those same errant strands aside. She felt tears sting her eyes for a second before mercilessly pushing them back. Now wasn't the time. Not yet.
The sapphire sky caught and held her gaze. Blue, always blue. Anything in that color was bound to seize and hold her attention. She felt the familiar lurch her heart gave each time that color made itself known. It was blue, beautiful and vivid. But it was the wrong blue. Her blue was lost, vanished without reason or rhyme and she had yet to find its match. How do you replace something that is irreplaceable? The wrong blue. Her breath caught and held, tight in her chest. It snarled and clenched until she could point to the place in her where it lived. She felt herself breaking and sought any distraction to pull her back, rein her in. She slid to the edge and perched there, balanced on a knife edge of grief and despair. But she held firm, lost in a memory of blue eyes and a wide smile. It was perplexing. Blue drove her forward, pushed her to the point of falling, and then gave her the only reason she could find to hold on. Without her, who would remember them?
She stopped at the edge of the meadow, letting her eyes trace the familiar landscape. It didn't look like a graveyard. The thick grass stretched out like the finest carpet, dotted here and there with splashes of color in every shade. Canary yellow dandelions, wild pink roses, blue iris, purple violets. It was a virtual garden in the wilderness, seeded and sown on the bones of those lost and forsaken. She let her gaze wonder to the marker they had erected and the names engraved on its face. Each name brought with in a hundred images: smiling, laughing, crying, and hoping. She let the flood consume her, as she did every year on this day. They lived on in those memories; she owed it to them to let them have their time.
Her fingers found two names, more beloved than the others. Her fingers traced the outlines, following the whirls and curves of those letters as they once ghosted over the features of those she loved. She let the tears flow then, silent and burning as they fell to the scorched earth that now cradled the remains of those who had taken her heart with them when they fell. Lost in the same minute on the same day. Taken on wings of fire in a haze of ash and smoke.
She heard footsteps rustle the grass behind her and, without turning, spoke quietly, "Why do you insist on coming here every year, old man? Why can't I have one moment's peace?"
Haymitch grunted his eyes on the marker, knowing from experience that she wouldn't be looking at him as she voiced the same questions she asked year after year. "Because you don't come here for peace. You come here to tear yourself down, sweetheart. You just do it much more economically than I ever did."
"You're wrong," she whispered, fingers still sketching the letters. "This is the closest that I can get to them. I need to be close to them. Why won't you see that?"
Haymitch finally turned her so that their eyes met, gray boring into gray. "Katniss, it's been fifteen years. They wouldn't want this. You know they wouldn't." His hands grasped her shoulders, shaking her slightly. "You're alive. They died and you miss them. But you didn't. You're still here. Why do you live like you're lying here with them?"
Her voices trembled, but she forced the words out knowing that they weren't what he hoped to hear but saying them anyway. "I am here with them. I died that day, Haymitch. I just haven't lain down yet." Her fingers searched out the letters, outlining the forms, tracing the shapes. "He died trying to save me. I died trying to save her. We both failed. Why can't you see that and leave me be?"
"Katniss, please," the old man stuttered. His eyes looked defeated, not an expression she was accustomed to seeing. "Please stop this. You didn't die."
She ignored his pleas, just as she had for the past fifteen years. She knelt down to the small bundle of twigs and grass she had prepared. The tinder was dry and the spark hungrily engulfed the ready fuel. The orange-gold flames danced, sending a tendril of smoke upward, consuming and destroying the very thing that created it. She lit the same fire each year to remember them, the two halves of her heart that had danced this same dance. They had made her, fashioned her into an inferno that burned down the world they knew. Like a phoenix, the new order had arisen from the old. But for her, the price was more than she was willing to pay. Everything she loved was gone, lost in an instant.
She toed the embers until they flickered and burnt out, the remnants cast to the shifting breeze. Kissing her fingers, she touched first one name than the other and let the tears slip silently downward. "I love you always," she whispered hands lingering for a brief instant before falling unnoticed to her side. Her gaze met Haymitch's miserable one and she smiled, a funny whimsical smile that barely touched her mouth. "I appreciate everything that you did for me. I know you care and I love you for it. But this is my life, Haymitch. It's mine to spend how I choose and I want to give it to them. It's the only thing I have that is good enough to honor what they gave me. Can't you see that?"
"You honor them by living, Katniss. Live like they never got the chance to. That is the best tribute you could give to either of them." He said quietly.
"I guess we see things differently, old man." She smirked with a trace of her old fire. "Some things never change." She walked away, head down steps light. Leaving him to curse the day he had met her, damning her stubborn soul even as he damned the Fates that left her here with only him to watch over her.
She walked slowly to the edge of the meadow before looking back. His slumped shoulders made a flicker of guilt twist in her gut before she squashed it. He didn't understand. No one did. But that didn't matter. The only thing that meant anything was the two whose faces never left her thoughts. She closed her eyes and they stood before her smiling. Her golden hair and his bottomless blue eyes. That was all she needed and wanted. "I love you both." She muttered again, tears slipping down her cheeks. "Always." Her path chosen, she didn't look back again.
A/N This is an alternate ending to Mockingjay…Peeta & Prim both died in Gale's bomb. Don't ask me why I wrote this…I was just in a mood. Read and review if you like. Until next time, Salanderjade