everything is wrecked and grey.
gale-centric. gale/katniss, peeta/katniss.
warnings: mentions of sex. a shitload of dead characters.
there's really nothing beautiful about it.
he knows this. of course he does - it's a true all around them. not to say that the world before was anything to brag out. but it did have flowers. trees. grass. now it's all just greys and blacks, drab and metal with an almost consistent smell of either dust or disinfectant.
it's nothing beautiful. but gale's never really had an eye for beauty. so he doesn't mind.
it's all teeth and nails and fucking with them.
(sometimes, gale wonders if with him, it would've been kisses and fingertips and making love for her. it doesn't matter, in the end. gale knows he'll take what he can get. he always has.)
sometimes, when katniss "goes", (as aurelius likes to call it), gale will pick her up, carrying her to the tub. he'll lay her down in it, fill it with boiled water, and he'll will her limbs to move again. sometimes he wonders if he's trying to get back that sixteen year old he thought he knew. he'll wash her hair, scrub her skin raw, and gale's sure it's just about the most loving thing he's ever done. he wonders if it matters to her at all.
he loves her. gales knows this, he's known for so, so long, and he loves how her skin is about the cleanest, brightest thing in the world they've been left with. gale wonders if the foolish, everlasting love he has for her will ever be enough for her.
(gale knows he loves her. but he's not sure it's in the right way. he's not sure it's in his way.)
he hates the nightmares. gale wants to drive them away, wants to choke them and gut them and bring them back to her, a symbol of his love or loyalty or i'm here, i'm fucking here and you don't even - but gale can't wake her up. no matter how much he yells, shakes her, wills her awake. he tries to forget when aurelius tells him that it was possible for someone to wake her up before. he doesn't have to ask for any names. try as he might, gale's never been good at forgetting. (or forgiving.)
gale finds her propped against the bath tub one day, her legs stretched out in front of her, her arms at her sides. she looks like she's given up, a slouch in her shoulders. gale can't say he's surprised. he leans his hip against the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. the words come before he can stop them.
"you love him."
immediately, gale knows this is a mistake. he's broken their unspoken promise; pretend peeta, prim didn't exist. none of them. and then it's like it's a beat shaking the room, the whole damn floor. he can hear their names ringing in his ears. prim, haymitch, messalla, castor, finnick, the leegs, homes, boggs, mitchell, jackson. and peeta. peeta's name almost rings loudest, along with prim's. peeta, who was the last to die for the rebellion. who shouldn't have died. (who died for her, gale thinks. and how could she ever love gale properly after that? after that damn boy gave his life for her?)
katniss just raises her eyes to his, as though he hasn't just acknowledged that the damn fucking boy existed and gave his life for you, and he had to fucking bleed to death and he had to wait to die, katniss, he had to wait to die and all he needed to be sure it was the right thing was your goddamn hand in his.
"i need you."
(gale would've died for this when he was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen... but now, gale swears he could scoff at the words; she doesn't need him. she never did. not really. and he knows what she's really saying, after all. "you lived. he didn't." he could flinch, could be offended, but it's all just so damn dull, it feels expected.)
that night, her screams consist of his name, of begs for him to come back. (no peeta no you can't no peeta don't peeta please peeta please come back come back come back.) he doesn't. there's only gale, lying awake, not even trying to wake her up. there's no use. gale wills himself to be enough, puffs warm breaths of air in his lungs, trying to fill himself up. neither of their pleas go answered.
she's silent when she leaves. (is it a year later? two? or is it four?) she doesn't take anything with her. gale can't say he's surprised, though he wishes he was. after resting his forehead against the mirror, letting the coolness of the glass seep into his skin, gale murmurs the word to himself. it's a sort of promise. it holds a shitty sort of comfort.
enough.
(then again, gale was never too good with words.)