Summary: Sometimes he felt like he was just the default choice, the one who didn't kill her sister.
Disclaimer:The characters and world do not belong to me.
Pick Your Poison
He once told her that sometimes it felt like he was just her default choice, because Gale's trap had killed Prim. She had wanted to punch him, scream at him, demand from him how he dared use Prim to justify his insecurities. Instead she had gone to the woods. It had been soon after the war. Being in a semi-normal relationship had been new to them.
She sat by the katniss pond, memories lapped at her mind like waves on a shore, she burrowed her toes further into the soft brown mud and tried not to drown in them.
Her name was Katniss Everdeen. She lived in district twelve. She had food in her belly. She had a warm house to go back to. She had nothing to fear. She did this; she catalogued. It was something safe for her mind to do. There was too much time for thought in this new life of hers. Before she was always a stride ahead of her demons. Now that the running and the fighting are over she cannot outstrip them anymore; her new life does not demand constant action, constant presence in the now. She thought she would like that, but most days she hates it.
Peeta is different from Gale. He doesn't automatically understand her motivations. They don't think in such similar patterns that they barely have to speak like she and Gale had. Gale knew that the moment his trap killed Prim any chance he had had was gone. But she thinks he must have known before then too. Sometimes he was better at knowing her mind than she was. Somewhere, subconsciously, probably since sometime during her second stay in an arena, she had known she and Gale would never work again.
At Capitol events she had often been asked to 'pick her poison' by a multi-coloured waitron bearing alcohol. But they had picked the real poison for her; nightlock, tracker-jacker venom, doubts and fears and memories of dead kids. She'd had her mind messed with one too many times. She'd been manipulated and targeted and hero worshipped. She was damaged. Peeta had been fed the same poison. He was damaged too.
Gale was different. He was hardened from living in the seam, hardened from fighting in a war, but not damaged. She had been that way once too. She had been a sixteen year old with a family to feed, dirt beneath her finger nails and a bone to pick with the world. Then she had lived a life that made that girl look innocent.
Maybe if she had remained that girl she would have ended up with Gale. But she didn't. Instead she saw Glimmer turn into a shapeless mound of flesh, covered Rue in flowers, fed Cato to the wolves, looked into Peeta's eyes and knew she could eat the nightlock… instead she had sparked a rebellion she'd never meant to spark. The girl who was on fire? She had played with fire and she had been burned.
Maybe Peeta didn't know what she was thinking all the time, but even if their minds weren't the same, their scars were. Gale's nature was too much like hers, his experience too foreign. She and Peeta were similar and different in all the right ways.
He couldn't see it. Gale had. Prim was a barrier they would never be able to cross, but they had had those way before she died.
She shoved her dirty feet into her hunting boots and stood. If Peeta needed to hear it all out loud it was okay. She could tell him what she was thinking, just like he could let her go into the woods alone.
AN: This is something that has been sitting on my computer for ages along with a couple of other Katniss/Peeta drabbles. If you enjoy this let me know and I'll add the others on to this fic. Reviews would be greatly appreciated!