It's so nice to be writing again...even if it is little oneshots about character's thoughts. It's a start.
This is based after HG when Katniss comes back from the Games. It's based on how much Gale hates Peeta (I don't care if he ever actually hated Peeta at any point in the series, I think that he totally should've and had every right to) because I hate Peeta with a passion.
So, ah, read and review and whatnot.
It's hard to hate someone like him.
He cares about people. He's gone through plenty of crap in his life (though nowhere near as much as I have) and yet he still manages to be nice to everyone he meets.
He has blond hair and blue eyes, making him seem like a child who would do anything to be free of enemies.
But I manage to hate him, if for only one reason. He ruined her life.
She would've made it. She would've fought her way through and made it home, no matter what she had to do. And she'd come back on that train, and I could run up and hug her, as much as I want to right now, and there would be no repercussions. I would be allowed to love her. I wouldn't have to be her cousin.
But as she steps down the metal stairs, she's bound and gagged to the Capitol's will. Because he felt the need to share his precious love for her with the rest of the world, and chose the Games, the horrid, forsaken Games as the time to do it, she no longer has a choice. She can love Peeta, or she can lose everything she's ever loved.
The Capitol wouldn't have it any other way.
So I stand here, and I wait. For what, I don't know. For her to tell everyone that, no, she never really loved Peeta, that she pretended to, and she could really care less about his fate? No. She's not heartless, and the Capitol would take her admittance to lying as an opportunity to kill her. To say that during the Games, in a state of hysteria, she convinced herself that she loved him, only to come back and find it otherwise? Like anyone would believe that. Maybe I'm just waiting for her to marry him and get it over with, so my mind will finalize the fact that I've known to be true since his name was pulled out of the bowl:
I can never be with her.
She smiles at me from over her mother's shoulder, but it turns to an expression of confusion as Mrs. Everdeen makes it clear that I'm her cousin now. She turns away from her mother and sister and comes towards my mother, the kids and I, smiling. It doesn't reach her eyes.
I wrap my arms around her in a friendly hug, nothing more.
"Welcome back, Catnip."
Too bad she'll never come back to me.